It had been over twenty years since Jacob had last set foot in his father’s land; twenty years since his flight from his brother’s wrath, twenty years from that blessed encounter with the Lord at Bethel. Now, after two decades, Jacob was coming home.
He had left his home alone, with nothing but his walking stick, and now he was returning a greatly blessed man. Jacob returned with two wives, eleven sons, an abundance of sheep and servants. His time away from home proved successful; and yet Jacob was uncertain of what was to come.
Jacob was uncertain of his future and his safety. When he had left, his brother had threatened to kill him, and Jacob feared that Esau may still follow through on his word. Besides that, there was no telling how powerful Esau had himself become in the last twenty years, he may steal away all of Jacob’s family and possessions, claiming it all as his rightful share. There was no telling what might happen. Jacob’s desperate situation called for a desperate prayer.
Before entering his brother’s land, Jacob prayed for God’s blessing and deliverance. If you stop and analyze Jacob’s prayer, you will find a textbook prayer that people still use today to guide them in their devotions. Some of you may be familiar with the ACTS form of prayer. ACTS is an acronym which stands for: Affirmation, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication.
The first step of Jacob’s prayer is affirmation. He began his prayer by affirming who God is and what God has done. In verse 9 he prays, “O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, O Lord who said to me, ‘Return to your country and to your kindred, that I may do you good,’…” It is not unlike the way we start our prayers today. Take for example the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…” When we pray, we begin by acknowledging to whom we are praying; and we state the character and holiness of the God we worship.
Next is confession. Proclaiming the identity of the God to whom we pray illuminates our own sinfulness. When we declare the holiness of God, we must then confess our transgression. Jacob continues his prayer saying “I am not worthy of the least of all the deeds of steadfast love and all the faithfulness that you have shown your servant…” Realizing his own nature in the light of God’s glory, Jacob could no longer cover up his life of deception; so he came to God openly and honestly.
Confession leads to Thanksgiving. Realizing that all he had came from the steadfast love and faithfulness of the Lord, Jacob gave credit where credit was due. “With only my staff,” he says, “I crossed this Jordan, and now I have become two camps.” The Lord had blessed Jacob, and before he could dare to ask God for more, he must give his thanks.
Finally, Jacob turned to God in supplication. He had set the stage, and now he asked for what he really needed. “Please deliver me from the hand of my brother, for I fear him…”
It is a textbook prayer, Affirmation, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication; and Jacob even goes one step further. He concludes his prayer reminding God of his promises, making sure that God would follow through. It was a prayer that would make Dale Carnegie proud, there was no way that God could say no to this.
As perfect as his prayer may have been, however, our reading this morning suggests that Jacob still wasn’t sure that God would deliver him. We see him spend the day getting his house in order, sending his sheep and his servants ahead of him to Esau as a peace offering. And as night approached, Jacob still found no peace, so he sent his family across the river so that he could be alone.
What happened next is a story with which we are all very familiar. Genesis tells us that when Jacob had been left alone, “a man wrestled with him until the break of day.” Jacob, it is said, wrestled with God through the night, refusing to let go, even when he had been wounded, holding on until he had received a blessing.
The Hebrew word used here for “wrestle” warrants our attention. It is a seldom used word in the Bible, appearing only three times in the Old Testament. What is fascinating is that it comes from the root word which means “dust.” Quite literally then the word means “to get dusty” or even “to sit in the dirt at someone’s feet.”
Now I know what you are thinking, “Ethan, you’re going off into the Hebrew again,” so let me bring this all back together. Jacob had gone to the Lord in prayer, seeking deliverance and a blessing from God, but he wasn’t sure that his prayers would be answered. He feared for his life, and he knew he could not go forward without the Lord being with him. So Jacob went back to God in prayer, but this time he got down and dirty with God. He wrestled with God, he got in the dust with God, and he would not let go, he would not stop struggling, he would not stop praying, until he got what he came for.
The Jacob that came away from this wrestling match (this dusty-dirty, prayer with God) was a changed man. Most noticeably, Jacob now had a limp. Jacob held on to God until he received God’s blessing, but he was not unscathed. We read that the man touched the nerve of his thigh, crippling him for life. Jacob had wrestled with God, and God gave him what he demanded, but God also left his mark on his life. No longer was Jacob the strong and self-sufficient man he had made himself out to be; he was now solely dependant upon God for his strength and his prosperity.
But Jacob wasn’t just humbled through his prayer, he also received a new name; he walked away from his prayer with a new identity grounded in his relationship with God. From this time forward, he would be known as Israel, the one who had wrestled with God. His new name summarized his life, but it also defined his new relationship with the Lord. Now the Lord would strive for and alongside Israel. This was his promise and his blessing.
Today we often find ourselves in Jacob’s position. We are troubled with worries and anxieties; our future is unsure at best, and we desperately seek God’s blessing and deliverance. When reading the morning paper or listen to the conversations down at Holder’s, it is easy to pick up on a mounting anxiety that many people have over the future of our little town. Town leaders are concerned with ways to attract new businesses to the community, but they also want to find ways to create good paying jobs that will help keep our youth here in Alva, as well as draw new young families in. But how does a small town compete with the big town with its luxuries and conveniences?
I have also perceived an increasing worry that several pastor’s in our community churches share. Our congregations reflect the composition of our community; and faced with smaller congregations and tighter budgets, some begin to wonder what is the future of our congregations here in Alva.
We remember that scripture teaches us “Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God”; and we are wise to take our concern to God in prayer. We pray for our community and our congregation during worship, and I am confident that you are praying for this town and this church on your own. But sometimes our traditional prayers are not enough – sometimes we need to get down and dirty with God, we need to wrestle with the Lord, to hold one to him through the night, pleading and persisting for his blessing to be made known.
Our Lord Jesus taught us this, and encouraged it in our prayer lives. In Luke 18 Jesus tells the parable of the woman who pleaded her case before a judge who neither feared God or respected man. When she would ask for justice in her case, he refused, but she kept coming and bothering him, holding on to him, if you will, until he finally gave in. If this is what an unrighteous judge will do, Jesus says “will not God [also] give justice to his elect who cry to him day and night?”
Again, in Matthew 15 we read the story of the Canaanite woman who pleaded with Christ that he would heal her daughter. At first, Jesus ignored her presence, but Matthew says she knelt at his feet, she got down in the dirt, and she begged the Lord to heal her child. Finally Jesus answered her, “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.”
Sometimes when we go to God in prayer, we need to get down in the dirt and wrestle and struggle with the Lord. If we, like Jacob and these persistent women, fall at the feet of our Lord, persist in our prayers, seeking the Lord’s blessing in our lives, in our churches, in our communities, we are assured that the Lord will meet us, bless us, and change us forever.
Now, when we meet the Lord in our prayers, we will be changed. God will leave his mark on our lives and we will find a new strength and a new weakness.
Like Jacob, we too may be given a limp. In the first chapter of Luke, when Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist was praying in the temple he encountered an angel of the Lord. The angel Gabriel told him that they would have a son in their old age who would be a great prophet of the Lord. Zechariah was indeed blessed by his encounter with the angel of the Lord, but he was also left speechless for the next nine months.
Likewise, in 2 Corinthians 12, the apostle Paul talks about having been caught up during his prayers to the third heaven, hearing things that he could never share. But to keep him from being to elated by his revelation, he was also given a thorn in his side to keep him from boasting; to keep him dependant upon the Lord.
When we actively seek the Lord in our prayers, when we get down and dirty and wrestle with God for God’s deliverance and blessing, we may limp away from our prayer. Dr. James Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, once shared that his father, a pastor of a 15 member church in Sulfur, TX, was known as the man with no leather on the toes of his shoes. The reason he had no leather on the toes of his shoes was that he spent three or four hours a day on his knees in prayer, and he would wear out the toes of the shoes before he wore out the souls. That much time on one’s knees has got to be murder on the body, not to mention the shoes; as we are humbled in our prayer we will learn to depend on the Lord who is our strength and our shield.
But we will not just be humbled through our prayer, we will also received a new name; we will walk away from prayer with a new identity grounded in our relationship with God. Revelation 2:17 tells us that “to the one who perseveres I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it. We, today, have been given a new name, the name of Jesus Christ, through whom we have the blessing of God and the assurance of the deliverance into eternal life.
Today we live in an uncertain time. War and violence is in our daily news; the safety of our children in our own backyards has been threatened. It is a desperate time which demands desperate prayer. In 2 Chronicles 7:13-14 God says to his people, “When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” Now is the time for us to return to the Lord in prayer, for our church, for our community, for our nation; to wrestle with God, to plead for his mercy and grace; to hold onto the Lord until he gives his blessing.
