Read Genesis 32:22-32
Who here likes a bit of alone time, the family have gone off on a trip and here’s an opportunity, there’s that novel that you would like to finish reading, that project that you’ve been wanting to finish or in my case get started, the hobby that it would be good to lose yourself in for a few hours or that patch of garden you want to weed, the biscuits that you have been wanting to bake as a treat to yourself, the Netflix movie, the whatever it is; you get where I’m coming from, that valuable alone time…a bit of that just me time.
Having read the passage from Genesis; let’s remember. This is a highly stressful time for Jacob, earlier in the chapter we see that angels of God had meet with Jacob, he had had a divine encounter. Then some of his own people returned to him after he had sent them out to his brother Esau, yes, the brother who he deceived out of his inheritance. He was told by these men that Esau was okay with that and that he held no grudge. Not likely, Jacob was told, Esau was on his way his was with four hundred men, what sounds like a small army. Jacobs blood pressure immediately shot through the roof, verse seven say that he was “greatly afraid and distressed.” You can imagine him running in circles panicking. He then divided his flocks and family up, the wives, the kids, the servants, the camels and donkeys into two camps. He believed that if Esau and his army attacked one camp the other would survive. Then he prayed to God, a good long prayer, a repentant prayer, a prayer of pleading deliverance. Then he put together a gift, a huge gift for Esau, which he gave his servants to deliver to Esau. His thinking was with such a generous gift he could appease Esau. Hundreds of goats, Billy goats and sheep, rams and milking camels, cows, bulls and let's not forget the donkeys.
Here's Jacob from verse 22 to 32, a bloke with two wives, their female servants, a heap of children, a few herds of noisy animals and all these possessions and servants and he’s taken the tents down, and he’s got them all moved, he took them all to the ford across the stream called Jabbok which is incidentally a river that flows westward into the Jordan Valley 39 kilometers north of the Dead Sea.
Then he has sent them across and is alone. After the frantic send off, the serenity, ah the serenity, peace, the quiet, a few moments alone. This time alone was part of his cunning plan not to get monstered and smote by Esau and his four-hundred wild men. A little time to relax, take stock, maybe enjoy that jar of biscuits that he has kept secreted away in his camel's saddle bag, the skin of thyme and rosehip tea...then some bloke turns up and ruins it all. He doesn’t know this guy by sight, but he’s in the way.
A fight breaks out between them. Time to teach this stranger a lesson.
Here’s a big question was this a man, an angel or as some commentators say it could have been God as Jesus himself? Well then there are those who ask was this a metaphor, a dream or was it real. I would like to point out here that injuries don’t occur through metaphors or dreams. This was a real tussle. An all-night scrap that resulted in a permanently damaged hip socket for Jacob. On a human level this was an even battle between two men, no one was really winning, and the fight went on all night. Jacob was evenly matched with the man, the man seeing he was not going to win put Jacob’s hip socket out of joint. Then he asked to be let go for the dawn was breaking. Jacob’s reply, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
Then comes the blessing, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with man and have prevailed.”
Now the question of ‘who’ this is that Jacob wrestled with, the restoration scriptures lean towards this being God, Jesus is fact, remember that God walked with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, God and two angels visited Abraham just before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. God is also not limited by space, time or matter, remember it was He who spoke these things into being at the beginning when he created it all. It’s worth remembering here that Jacob never hears the man’s name. But it becomes evident to him who it was that wrestled him, who it was who changed his name and damaged his hip.
Jacob believed once his name was changed to Israel... that he had seen God, remember he says this “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered.” Jacob named the place of the fight ‘Peniel’ which means the face of God.
A bit of an aside, I can remember when I have pulled a few all night jobs out of necessity back in my power distribution days when a fault would require repairing, nothing like a 24 plus hour day to exhaust you. Lack of sleep is never a good thing, but in Jacob’s case it led to a change in the man who was named Jacob or deceiver and became blessed and as a result re-named Israel; meaning “he strives with God” or “God strives.”
Have you ever wrestled all night with God?
Another little me story, I went through a real struggle, mainly of my own making, thinking and due to anger and too much caffeine in Sri Lanka, where I was awake all night and ended up in hospital due to an atrial fibrillation (if you don't know what that is it's like your heart is doing it's own little high speed dance instead of beating normally, mine was at 160beats per minute) it took 4 days to come right. Why do I share this with you, you are thinking? A good thought. Because sometimes we really struggle, really battle before we realise just how wrong or foolish we have been, it can even be fatal. There are people who are out of sorts with God right now, whose lives would go from a storm to a peaceful scene if they surrendered to his leading, if they would only give up battling him. Theirs like Jacob’s could be a salvation story.
In Jacob’s case he, had come out of the womb holding onto his older brother Esau’s heal, he had grown up a deceiver, stealing Esau’s inheritance as he deceived his old Dad, Isacc, on his death bed into believing he was Esau. Jacob was a nasty piece of work. But God had a plan for him. Remember this ‘God always has a plan to give us hope and a future.’ (Jeremiah 29:11-14) Sometimes there’s a battle and always surrender involved in receiving it.
In that fairly strange passage of scripture in Genesis 32 verses 22 to 32 we see God make a way for Jacob to be a new character, this occurs with an encounter that is a struggle and he becomes a new man through that encounter, his story takes a real shift, his life is no longer one of deception but one of go-getting, being motivated to do God’s will, not his own will. God blesses him as he stops fighting!
He was seeking after God, he had been praying, seriously praying, no half-hearted sort of prayer but heartfelt and needing God’s help, really needing God’s help. Jacob was hungry for God to intervene in his life, to see the promises God had made to him realised and fulfilled. One thing I know from experience is that when we are serious with God, he will answer our prayers, he gets things done. In Jacob’s case he seriously showed up, he wrestled with Jacob and Jacob received his blessing, but he also received a new name and a lifelong injury. I think at this point it was when Jacob, ‘Israel, the man’ became really connected to God, this was a time of real revelation, of attachment. It is almost like the injury to his hip was a seal of understanding between the two of them, Israel the man and God. Note: in verse 9 when Jacob prayed, he prayed to the God of his father Abraham and his father Isacc. I think that up until this time, around mid-life that he was not at all secure in his relationship with God. The Tynedale commentary on the matter says this, “The crippling and the naming show that God’s ends were still the same: He would have all of Jacob’s’ will to win, to attain and obtain, yet purged of self-sufficiency and redirected to the proper object of man’s love, God Himself.” (Genesis: The Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries; IVP London 1976.) This was the culmination of the battle of a lifetime, a kind of homecoming for a once deceptive individual, in his defeat he won, he was blessed and gained a new name and life. God became the proper object of his affection, no longer himself and his own wants. God from this time came first.
Last time I spoke on Jacob, aka Israel, aka “he strives with God.” I quoted Oswald Chambers, can anyone remember what Oswald said?...Me neither, that’s why I’ve wrote it down and am going to read it from my notes: Oswald said this;” [Jesus] cross is the door by which every member of the human race can enter into the life of God; by his resurrection he has the right to give eternal life to anyone, by His ascension our Lord entered heaven, keeping the door open for humanity.” End of quote, Jesus has made a way for us where there was no way. Jesus’ life death and resurrection is a salvation story.
You see that like Jacob until we give it all to God we are at odds, at odds with God, at odds with our siblings, at odds with our fellow humans, and strangely enough and probably the hardest to take on board as a real truth at odds within ourselves. This story of a night of wrestling is a salvation story. Like Jacob we might be injured, it is well worth remembering that this tent we live in is a temporary part of an eternal journey.
Jacob was still one man but now a man who had encountered God’s grace. Did he still have to come face to face with Esau? Yes he did, but he did so knowing that he was blessed by God. This is a salvation story, a redemption story.
Maybe there is someone in your life you have to face like Jacob had to face Esau, the outcome may or may not be pretty, but with God’s leading it will be the best outcome. This is a redemption story.
Our lives have their ups and downs, but ours too can be a salvation story. You may have been on a journey with God, battling with him, acknowledging him as someone else’s God, but I would challenge you today to make him yours. You may already carry injuries that you believe keep you from him, is it time to carry those as a mark of his grace and take on the new name of Christian as your own name.
Is there someone that you have to bring to God in prayer, maybe all-night prayer for his impact, for his power to be real in their life so that they too can be aware of his presence, of his leading. Is it time to wrestle with God in prayer.
While this is a message about a man who deceived and struggled he was made new when he encountered God, are you ready?
Like Jacob for many of us “were dead in our trespasses and sins following the course of this world… But God being rich in mercy because of the greater love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses made us alive together with Christ, by grace we have been saved and raised up with him and [he] seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” Why? “So that in the coming ages he might show immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.” (Ephesians 2: 4b-6)
Are you ready to claim that truth, this is a salvation story, are you going to live saved?
Benediction:
In your day to day life.
May you find the outcomes of days of struggle draw you closer to God,
As you accept and take on his blessings you will be victorious even though you may walk with a limp.
Amen.
