The Revelatory Power Of A Crippling Moment

The Revelatory Power of A Crippling Encounter

TEXT:

Gen. 32:22 (CEB)             

Jacob got up during the night, took his two wives, his two women servants, and his eleven sons, and crossed the Jabbok River’s shallow water. 23 He took them and everything that belonged to him, and he helped them cross the river. 24 But Jacob stayed apart by himself, and a man wrestled with him until dawn broke. 25 When the man saw that he couldn’t defeat Jacob, he grabbed Jacob’s thigh and tore a muscle in Jacob’s thigh as he wrestled with him. 26 The man said, “Let me go because the dawn is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I won’t let you go until you bless me.” 27 He said to Jacob, “What’s your name?” and he said, “Jacob.” 28 Then he said, “Your name won’t be Jacob any longer, but Israel, because you struggled with God and with men and won.” 29 Jacob also asked and said, “Tell me your name.” But he said, “Why do you ask for my name?” and he blessed Jacob there. 30 Jacob named the place Peniel, “because I’ve seen God face-to-face, and my life has been saved.” 31 The sun rose as Jacob passed Penuel, limping because of his thigh. 32 Therefore, Israelites don’t eat the tendon attached to the thigh muscle to this day, because he grabbed Jacob’s thigh muscle at the tendon.

OPENING ILLUSTRATION & INTRODUCTION:

In His Book, "In the Eye of the Storm," Max Lucado tells us about Chippie... Chippie, the parakeet, never saw it coming. One second he was peacefully perched in his cage. The next, he was sucked in, washed up, and blown over. The problems began when Chippie's owner decided to clean Chippie's cage with a vacuum cleaner. She removed the attachment from the end of the hose and stuck it in the cage. The phone rang, and she turned to pick it up. She'd barely said "hello" when "ssssopp!" Chippie got sucked in. The bird owner gasped, put down the phone, turned off the vacuum, and opened the bag. There was Chippie -- still alive but stunned. Since the bird was covered with dust and soot, she grabbed him, raced to the bathroom, turned on the faucet, and held Chippie under the running water. Then, realizing that Chippie was soaked and shivering, she did what any compassionate bird owner would do . . . she reached for the hair dryer and blasted the pet with hot air. Poor Chippie never knew what hit him. A few days after the trauma, the reporter who'd initially written about the event contacted Chippie's owner to see how the bird was recovering. "Well," she replied, "Chippie doesn't sing much anymore -- he just sits and stares." It's hard not to see why. Sucked in, washed up, and blown over . . . That's enough to steal the song from the stoutest heart. (Max Lucado, In the Eye of the Storm, Word Publishing, 1991, p. 11.)

Have you ever had a moment or a series of moments like Chippie? The Bible character Jacob did. In fact it seems like his entire life was one episode after another of being sucked in, washed up, blown over... Trauma. When we first meet Jacob, he is in the womb. The womb is a place God intentionally created as an incubator where the creature that he has chosen to place His image in grows and becomes for 9 months before they are born. When we first meet Jacob he is wrestling with his twin brother, in the womb. He is matched with a wrestling partner from the first moment of life. Jacob was struggling, kicking and shoving even before entering the world. It was before the invention of ultrasound and so she went to the local shrine to ask for a word from God. She was told that there were two children in her womb and the older one would serve the younger one.

Jacob lived his life continually fighting his limitations. Prophetically, he grabbed his brother’s heel as he came out of the womb. He tricked his brother into selling him his birthright. He did not like the he was only going to receive one-third of the family’s inheritance. He did not like the limitation of being second born. He and his mother sought to overcome this with trickery. He wanted his father’s blessing. He dressed up and disguised himself as his older brother and went in to his elderly father and again tricked him into giving him the blessing. When his brother found out about it, he was so angry he wanted to kill him. So Jacob ran away. He went back to the old country to find a wife.

On his way he stopped one evening and made himself a bed in a place called Luz. Here he had the famous dream of the ladder reaching up to heaven and a host of angels going up and down it. The Hebrew text can be translated as the LORD standing at the top of the ladder and speaking to Jacob or standing next to him. Either way Jacob is laying there immobilized by sleep. Sleep has limited him. He is unable to do anything but listen. No wresting, no trickery. All he can do is listen. It was in this moment that God became real to Jacob. God reveal to him that He was the God of his ancestors and that He would be his God as well. God promised that He would protect him, and gave him promises that He said He would stay with Jacob until they were fulfilled. It was in his moment of the paralysis of sleep that God revealed Himself to Jacob. There is a revelatory power in our moments when we can do nothing but listen.