Wrestling with God: Genesis 32.24-31

 

How do we learn things?  Some of us learn by reading.  I’ve been learning on YouTube.  We can learn by watching other people.  Sometimes we have to learn by doing it, like riding a bike, for example.  There’s nothing like doing it.  Today we are in the same passage we were in last week. Jacob will wrestle with God.  How do we wrestle with God?  In Genesis 32 Jacob wrestles with God.  So many times in scripture there’s an encounter with God.  Some things we can only experience by doing them.  

We are now twenty years past the event where Jacob encountered God with angels and the stairway to Heaven.  Today we look at another encounter with God.  This is a different encounter; it’s not about reconciling with man, but reconciling with God.  How do we reconcile with God?  How do we get everything right?

Be broken.

That may sound painful and it is!  Jacob will spend time with God.  God has to break us.  Jacob is alone; they’re split into two camps. He’s finished telling God how unworthy he is for all the blessings God has given him.  He’s alone with God.  This is how God does his great work.  For the most part when our soul is before God we wrestle.   Jacob will wrestle with God.

                        ²⁵When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. 

Jacob does not realize he’s wrestling with God.  He thinks it’s a man who grabbed him.  He later realizes it is God.  It’s a physical encounter but it’s a spiritual work that’s happening.  Jacob has run from problems and he has been deceitful.  God has a hold of him and they wrestle all night.  That’s a fear we have, someone grabbing us in the middle of the night!  It’s also frightening to be separated from God. What we find is that God has not come to destroy Jacob but to restore him.  Jacob fights and fights with God.  Have you been in a place where you wrestled with God all night agonizing over something?  Pouring out your heart before God?  We are stubborn people.  I’m stubborn.  I want my own way.  I want to make my own choices.  God has to break us down.  Have you ever seen a child fighting sleep?  Their eyes get tired and it becomes evident they need sleep.  They fight it.  You love the child and know they need to sleep so you tell them to go to sleep but they keep fighting it. 

Jacob keeps fighting and God touches his hip.  The power of God is so much his hip is out of socket.  Jacob will have a permanent limp after this.  What can God do?  God can annihilate and destroy us.  A small touch wounds Jacob and it’s for Jacob’s good.  Sometimes God wounds us for our own good.  God breaks him.  This will be a weakness Jacob will have that will be celebrated throughout the history of Israel.  God gently breaks us.  Maybe your heart and your stubbornness needs to be broken before God?   What we see as a weakness is actually power.

In 2 Corinthians 12:10 Paul says, “For when I am weak, then I am strong.”  In 2 Corinthians 11 Paul talks about his inability to speak.  Paul is one of the greatest writers!  He’s one of our heroes, bus in 2 Corinthians 11 he says he is not a good speaker.  People would not listen to him.    In Exodus 4 God calls Moses to speak, to be a leader.  Moses tells God he can’t.  He says he isn’t a good speaker.  Two of the great heroes of the Bible were not great speakers.  We wrestle with God in our weaknesses.  In our weaknesses God is strong.  Can we bring our weaknesses to God and say, “God, FIX ME!  USE ME! BREAK ME for Your glory!”  This is what God does for Jacob in this painful moment. 

Hold on to God.

Jacob holds on to God.  In these moments when we feel separation we hold onto God.  When Jacob holds onto God he asks for a blessing.  He clings to God.  I pray we will do this as well.  In our most painful moments, God is there.

                        ²⁶Then he said, “Let me go, for the day has broken.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

Jacob was a fighter.  He’s holding onto God like a kid with an ice cream cone!  He’s asking god to bless him.  Jacob has money; he has a family.  What more does he want?  He wants a spiritual blessing. He wants to be made right with God. This is what we want in these moments.  The deepest need in our hearts is to be reconciled to God.  God tells Jacob to let go because the sun is coming up.  Why would God tell him to let go?  Man cannot see God and live!  This is part of God’s grace, to let go.  We cannot see and know all about God.  We cannot handle it.  Jacob cannot handle the fullness of God.  Can you pray, “God, I want to understand You.  I want Your blessing,” We cannot fully comprehend all of God.  Students reach that point at the end of a day when they’re glazed over.  In the Old Testament you cannot see God and live.  In the New Testament, in Matthew, God sends His son into the world for us, He reveals Himself to us.  Now we have more understanding of who God is.  We are people who have been graced by god to know Him.    God gives us a blessing and we are able to write a new story.

Write a new story.

The way God blesses Jacob is He gives Jacob a new name.  God changes his character.  God writes a new story over Jacob.

                        ²⁸Then he said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.” 

Jacob’s name is changed to, “Israel.”  Israel means to strive or fight with God.  We know this name because it’s used still today.  God transformed Jacob in this moment.  Jacob’s identity is different.  If we are honest with God we too can have a new story and a new future.  Jacob means, “deceiver.”  Jacob’s life story is deceiving people to get what he wants and then he runs away and has to leave.  He deceives and runs away but now he’s the one who stays and fights and wrestles with God!  We are no longer the deceiver, we are the people who stay and fight.  God wrestles with us too.  All great stories have great endings.  What’s the best ending to every story ever written?  “And they lived happily ever after!”  That’s often not the way our story ends.  If you could choose one word to say about your life what would it be?  Just one word.  Envision yourself wrestling with God and God saying to you, “You will no longer be _______, but now you’re _________.”  What would that new name be?  God is in the business of wrestling with us, not to destroy us, but to restore us.  This is the God we serve, the one who comes down and writes a new story over our lives!

Become the person your soul longs to be.

                        ³⁰So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered.” 

Jacob realizes Jesus is present.  Jesus didn’t come into existence in Bethlehem.  Jesus is eternal.  This is a theophany, when God comes in the flesh, the preincarnate Jesus.  There are times when Jesus shows up, even today.  Jacob knew it was God.  Jacob was aware he saw the face of God.  He named that place, “Peniel,” the face of God. 

God meets us where we are.  When we wrestle with God and are broken we find hope, purity and the lives our souls long for.  We see who God made us to be.  You’re a child of the King!  God gives you a new life and a new identity.  Jacob will live this way for the rest of his life.  God calls us to be who we are in Christ.  It’s a painful experience to wrestle with God.  It’s hard stuff.  IT’s what God does.  God walks with us, wrestles with us, breaks us down and gives us a new future.  Will you allow God to do this in this moment?  God, I pray You will break us in our alone times with You.  Please do a great wok in our hearts and lives. 

Sermon Notes are taken, transcribed and posted by Jeni Martin Johnson.