Wrestling And Reconcilliation Series

And Jacob came safely to the city of Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan, on his way from Paddan-aram, and he camped before the city. And from the sons of Hamor, Shechem’s father, he bought for a hundred pieces of money the piece of land on which he had pitched his tent. There he erected an altar and called it El-Elohe-Israel.

Jacob was:

1. Humbled by God

2. Humbled by Life

3. Humbled by Grace

Let’s look at Jacob’s experience:

1. Humbled by God

We learn from the example of Jacob. If we are to accomplish what God has called us to do, it has to be by faith in who He is and not belief in our own strength and ability to accomplish the task. God will often bring us to the place, as He did with Jacob, where our self-sufficiency is proven insufficient.

God wrestled with Jacob, wounded him, weakened him, leaving him, in a sense, powerless. We don’t know how long he walked with a limp but Jacob would learn to walk in this new normal and there is no record of him ever being healed.

Why does God do this?

Is it because of our tendency towards pride and self-sufficiency? The apostle Paul said:

So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited (2 Cor 12:7).

Whatever this thorn was (physical, spiritual, or emotional affliction—or something else entirely), Paul recognized that God’s goal in allowing the thorn in the flesh was to keep him humble. This thorn was a source of real pain in Paul’s life and God would not take it away though he prayed. Nevertheless, God gave him more overwhelming grace and more compensating strength. Paul learned that God’s “power is made perfect in weakness.”

Could it also be that it is so we identify with Christ’s suffering?

Often in contact sports players get wounded, they may sit out for a while, they get patched up and go back into the game, one American football player said, “We are never operating at 100% but because the game is more important than our injuries, we get back in the game, we have learned to play wounded.”

So is it in our families, in our friendships, in our marriage, and ministry. We will get hurt and need times of patching up so we can get back in the game (for lack of a better word) because life is not all about us, it's about God and putting His Kingdom first, even when we aren’t at 100%. What is our end goal as Christians? What does the Westminster catekism say the chief end of man is? “It is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” Would we even seek to glorify God in each circumstance of life if we were only watching out for ourselves?

Would we really put God first If we have everything we need physically and materially? Probably not. Jacob was humbled by God, and because of his poor decision he was also...

2. Humbled by life

We see that after 20 years of a self-imposed exile, Jacob’s life comes full circle. After wrestling face-to-face with God he now comes face-to-face with Esau, expecting to have to wrestle with him in his wounded state. Life and time has a tendency to remind us of how frail we are. So what does Jacob do? He frantically arranges his family for a formal presentation to his brother and greets Esau as a servant. And what does Esau do? Runs and greets Jacob like a brother, embracing him, kissing him on the neck. God had answered Jacob’s prayer, Esau was no longer a brother filled with rage and revenge. He wasn’t there to wrestle but to be reconciled with Jacob - not the outcome that Jacob was expecting with Esau and the four hundred men accompanying him.