Genesis 32:6-12 & 24-31: How Jacob Wrestled with God

INTRODUCTION

People admire strength—strong bodies, strong minds, strong convictions, strong personalities. I had a gym teacher in junior high school who could do pushups with one hand. I have heard of men who could bend heavy iron bars.

When I was a child I took Popular Mechanics Magazine. In every issue was an advertisement by Charles Atlas for his body-building course. Charles Atlas claimed to have once been a 97-pound weakling, but using his method of “dynamic tension” Charles Atlas had become so strong that he could pull a locomotive! I saw a picture of him doing it.

But to enter into strong companionship with God is impossible for those who are strong in themselves.

God tests us, and humbles us, and wounds us, as he prepares us to share his life and receive his blessings.

St. Paul had some kind of bodily affliction. He called it his “thorn in the flesh.” He begged the Lord to remove it, but the Lord told him, “My strength is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness.”

And Paul learned one of the most important lessons in his life. He said, “So I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong” (1 Corinthians 12:8-10).

Several weeks ago we looked at the story of Jacob, told in Genesis 28.

Jacob got himself in trouble with his brother Esau, who wanted to kill him. So Jacob fled. Homeless and friendless, he arrived at a certain place where, we read, he took a stone for a pillow, lay down, and dreamed about angels going up and down a stairway to heaven. And he heard the voice of God, and God promised that he would always go with Jacob and never leave him and would someday bring him back to his home. That dream changed Jacob’s life.

Jacob was so awed that he exclaimed “Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it! … How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of Heaven!”

Jacob continued on his journey until he got to the home of his mother’s brother Laban.

He worked for Laban, acquired wives, many children, and flocks of sheep.

I. But the Lord appeared to him one day and told him: “Arise, and go from this land and return to the land of your birth.”

A. So Jacob secretly fled with his family, his servants, and his animals.

He had a narrow escape when his angry father-in-law with a band of armed servants had caught up with him.

He got away from his father-in-law and continued on his journey with his wives, his children, his servants, and his flocks of sheep.

B. He sent servants to try to make peace with his brother Esau, who he had wronged and who, he feared might still want to kill him.

He sent messengers before him to his brother to make peace. The messengers returned to tell him, “We came to your brother Esau, and he is coming to meet you, and four hundred men are with him.” Then Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed; and he divided the people that were with him, and the flocks and herds and camels, into two companies, thinking, “If Esau comes to the one company and destroys it, the company that is left will escape” (Genesis 32:6-8).

C. Now, in this time of great danger Jacob prayed hard (Genesis 32:9-12):

“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, and I will do you good.’ I am not worthy of the least of all the steadfast love and all the faithfulness that you have shown to your servant, …

“Deliver me, please, from the hand of my brother, …for I am afraid of him; he may come and kill us all, the mothers with the children. Yet you have said, ‘I will surely do you good and make your offspring as the sand of the sea, which cannot be counted because of their number.’”

II. Jacob finally came to the ford of the River Jabbok. He sent his family along ahead, and there—in the middle of the night—occurred the most famous wrestling match of all time.

A. Here’s the story: (Genesis 32:24-31):

Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him.

Then the man said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.”

But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

So the man said, “What is your name”

And he said, “Jacob.”

Then the man said, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.

Then Jacob asked him, ‘Please tell me your name.”

But the man said, “Why is it that you ask my name?”

And there he blessed him.

So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.”

The sun rose upon him as he passed Peniel, limping because of his hip.

B. As they wrestled, Jacob realized that it was no mere man with whom he was wrestling.

It was the Lord himself—or, as the prophet Hosea has it, an angel (Hosea 12:4).

The new name, the angel gave Jacob—Israel—means “one who struggles with God” or “one with whom God strives.” And there is another meaning for that name: “a prince with God.”

All three of those meanings apply to Jacob’s new identity.

Jacob then asked his opponent for his name, but his opponent wouldn’t tell him.

I think the reason why the angel wouldn’t tell him was that by this time Jacob knew with whom he had been wrestling.

In the darkness Jacob had met the Lord. He didn’t know his name, but in the mystery of his presence, and holding fast to God, he received God’s blessing.

Jacob didn’t say, “In this place I have wrestled with God and prevailed.” He said, “In this place I saw God face-to-face, and yet my life is preserved.”

In the Hebrew idiom “to see the face of God” meant to have an audience with God, to stand in God’s presence.

And Jacob went on, limping. Jacob was humbled, ready to depend on God as he never had been before.

Looking at the encounter in one way, God won the match.

But Jacob also won because God had left Jacob with a blessing.

III. So what did this experience mean for Jacob?

A. Jacob needed to know a greater fear than that of Esau. Jacob needed to know the fear of God.

He needed to know the majesty and greatness of God.

He needed to know the goodness of God.

He needed to know his own weakness and unworthiness.

Jacob was a man of struggle. The Bible tells us that he even struggled with his twin brother in his mother’s womb.

Up to now Jacob had striven with his wit and cunning to get what he wanted.

But what he really needed was God’s blessing.

That may be why God crippled him, to bring home to him his need.

In this place—where Jacob stood to lose everything—God met him and blessed him.

But, like sometimes with us, God’s blessing came with a cost. As long as Jacob lived, Jacob limped with his cane. His crippled leg reminded him of his weakness and his need for God.

B. God said, “You have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.” So how had Jacob “prevailed”?

Jacob “prevailed” because he had held on to God.

Yesterday at Bible study we talked about Matthew 15. In it we read the story of the Canaanite woman who came to Jesus asking for him to heal her daughter.

Jesus spoke to her harshly. He seemed to push her away. But that woman was determined. She was woman of faith. She argued with Jesus—and she prevailed! Jesus gave in and healed her daughter. Jesus said, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.

As far as I know, the Canaanite woman was the only person who ever won an argument with Jesus. At the end of the day she was blessed in a way she could not have been if Jesus had just granted her request and sent her on her way.

As Jacob was struggling with God, God was at the same time bringing Jacob into submission.

In this experience, Jacob learned how much he needed God—and how much everything depended upon God.

It was a crippled and humbled Jacob who went on now to meet his brother. And the outcome of the story was that Esau received Jacob generously and they parted as friends.

APPLICATION

Sometimes we feel like God is striving against us.

But what God is really doing in our tribulations is seeking to strengthen our desire and bring us to submit our will to his.

Progress in spiritual things always involves pain.

The story is told of a man who found a cocoon of an emperor moth and took it home to watch the adult moth emerge. He waited and waited, and nothing happened.

Finally, one day he saw a small opening appear in the cocoon.

For several hours the man watched the moth struggle, but it couldn’t seem to force its body through the opening. Deciding to help his moth, the man took scissors and snipped the remaining bit of cocoon. The moth emerged easily, its body large and swollen, the wings small and shriveled.

He expected that in a few hours the wings would spread out in their natural beauty, but they didn’t. Instead of developing into a creature free to fly, the moth spent its life dragging around a swollen body and shriveled wings

The man learned that the constricting cocoon and the struggle necessary to pass through the tiny opening are nature’s way of forcing fluid from the body into the wings. The “merciful” snip was, in reality, cruel. Sometimes struggle is exactly what we need.

God wants to give us his blessing, but he wants us to really want it.

He wants us to have the character to handle the blessing.

God may wait until we feel so crippled in ourselves that we are ready for a blessing that can be given only to one who is utterly dependent upon him.

God wants to give us the experience of seeing him face-to-face—that is, to feel ourselves in his presence.

In Colossians 4:12, Paul writes of his fellow-prisoner Epaphras, who, he writes, “…is always wrestling in his prayers” for his brothers and sisters back in Colossae.

And do you know someone else in the Bible who “wrestled” with God?

Jesus wrestled in the garden. He told his disciples, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death” (Mark 14:34).

Then he began his struggle with God. He begged that this hour might pass from him. He cried out to God: “Abba, Father, everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me.” And then he added, “Yet not what I will, but what you will” (Mark 14:36).

And we read, “Being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground” (Luke 22:44).

But, with us, we aren’t really struggling with God, although it may seem so.

We are struggling to get past our selfishness, our laziness, our self-sufficiency, our self-satisfaction.

We are struggling to give in to God.

In all our prayer, God is struggling to bring us into submission.

And we are struggling to keep a hold on God.

Wrestling with God in prayer isn’t begging and begging and insisting on what we want.

Wrestling with God in prayer is to holding onto God and never giving up.

Faith is resting in Jesus.

And faith is also struggling.

Both are true.

The Bible doesn’t say that living for God is easy.

Jesus said that the road to life is a “hard road.” The “easy road” leads to destruction.

A great saint, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, said, “The road winds uphill all the way—yea, to the very end.”

It’s a hard road, but our destination is glorious!