Glorious Surrender

This night-scene story is one of the most loved and one of the most mysterious stories in the Bible. It is a story of a nighttime wrestling match. It was Jacob wrestling with a Man in the dark of night. He was wrestling with an angel of the Lord. Jacob comes to the realization that he was wrestling with God.

Twenty years before, Jacob learned at Bethel to know God as a living and present Protector, which is a great step in spiritual life. Last week we saw him go through the school of hard knocks with his uncle Laban. When we think of our spiritual life, we must understand that there is still much more work to be done once we come to the decision to follow God.

We’ve come to the point in Jacob’s life that he is heading back home, a turning point, you could say. He is about to reencounter with his brother, Esau, whom he tricked into stealing his birthright. Esau vowed to kill him, so Jacob is going to be afraid to meet his brother. So he actually split his family into two groups. If Esau attacks the first group, then the second group can escape. So Jacob’s scheming and planning and going back to the land of Canaan. So verse 7 says that “Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed.”

Jacob looked back that night before he met his brother, Esau, and he remembered his sins. Our past sins can make us cowards. He hadn’t dealt with them; he hadn’t confessed them. So when he knew that Esau was coming to meet him with 400 armed men, he freaked out. Jacob remembered that he had lied to his father, Isaac, he lied to his brother, Esau, and his mother had to send him away, and he lied to Laban and tricked him. So he was living with the guilt of past scheming.

Jacob, by the way, represents a carnal Christian. It’s a person who knows God, believes in God, loves God but doesn’t live for God. They live for self. They still have self on the throne. They haven’t been filled with the Spirit. They haven’t made Christ the Lord of their life. There are a lot of people who say, “I’m a Christian,” but you’d never know it by the way they live, because they are living for the things of this world. They’re scheming or they’re on and off in their walk with God. Jacob is a picture of that flesh or that carnal Christian life.

He looked back and saw his sinful scheming, and he looked ahead and saw Esau coming. Esau had 400 men armed. Jacob basically said, “I’m a dead man!” That’s why he was so freaked out. Then he looked up and saw God and he started to pray. It’s a good thing when you’re afraid to look to God.

In chapter 32, verses 9-12, he prayed, “God, this coming back to the land is Your idea. I’m not worthy of Your blessings. I want You to deliver me, because I’m afraid of my brother, Esau. Remember You made a covenant with my grandfather, Abraham, with my father, Isaac, and then You reinstated the covenant with me. So God, I’m trusting You, I’m pleading Your promises that You’ll protect me and You’ll go with me.”

If you know God loves you, you love Him and you’re resting in His purpose, in His providential care, then you don’t need to worry about your past, you don’t need to freak out about your future. You can turn to God and trust Him with your present. God will take care of you.

But Jacob is still Jacob, so he starts to scheme. The background to chapter 32, verses 22-23 was that he was going to give gifts to Esau of about 580 different animals in five different groups to try to appease Esau and win him over so he wouldn’t attack him and kill him. Jacob is still scheming, still in the flesh and he hasn’t been broken by God yet. And so God comes in the middle of the night to wrestle with him.

What do you do when God shows up, starts to wrestle with you, cripples you and now you’re walking with a limp? You surrender.

God wants to subdue you. He wants us to surrender our lives to him. Even though we make plans for our future if they are not according to His plan for your life He will change those for you. God doesn’t always do what we want Him to do. He doesn’t always lay things out the way you want Him to do it. He cripples your ambitions and your goals. Maybe He’s crippled your health, crippled your wealth, crippled your work or your career.

We see at the end of the story; Jacob is hanging on and confessing. We know that God is in control, so when God wrestles with you, He wins. But He wins when we surrender when we submit. When we lose, we win. When we are broken, we are blessed. That’s the principle that we learn in this story.

Jacob wasn’t in control; he was crying and broken. He’s sweating, bloodied, and bruised, and his clothes are torn. He has dirt all over himself, and he’s been wrestling with the Lord. He finally says, “I will not let You go unless You bless me!”

One of the things you need to do when God is in the breaking process of your life is you need to cling to Him. Hold on to Him. If you find that you’re struggling right now in a difficult time, hold on to God. He’s holding on to you. Seek the Lord and seek the blessings of God, and He will bless your life.

There is a song called “I Just Held On” it goes

You ask me how it is that I'm still standing You wonder how I made it through the storm I can't boast of any special powers There's no secret, I just held on I held on til the storm was over I don't claim to be a hero I don't have all the answers But I held on til the storm was over It's not because I'm good Not because I'm great Not because I'm strong I just held on

You ask, “What kind of a blessing was his limping? He’s crippled.” This is the crippling that counts. When God cripples us, it’s for our good and for His glory. Jacob receives a new name “Israel” and he would surrender his old title of the trickster to being dependent upon God and governed by God.

You see friends sometimes it takes those hardships of life to get a hold of us. God’s love for us is so much stronger than any of our problems that we face here on earth, we must trust and believe in him.

We have to stop fighting against God, we’ve resisted God, we’ve struggled with God. It took Jacob all night to finally surrender to God and what a glorious surrender it was. Friends don’t wait too long to surrender your life to God.

I want to give you three simple takeaways as I wrap this up. Number one, God’s crippling counteracts pride.

One of the worst things you can ever do is to be proud. The Bible says, “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” It was the first sin committed in heaven by Lucifer. He tried to exalt himself over the throne of God, so he had to be kicked out of heaven. Lucifer became Satan, the devil, because of pride. God gives us crippling in order to humble our pride to keep us useable.

It’s a fearful thing when you don’t need God. “I’m strong. I’m smart. I’m rich. I’ve got it together.” I don’t want to watch. God’s going to break you. God’s going to humble you. You say, “Well, that’s not very loving.”

It’s the most loving thing He could ever do. Because He knows that you need to “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.” So He may take your job away. He may take your health away. He may take a loved one away. You don’t know what’s going to happen, but God has a way of breaking us and humbling us. This is the bitter thing that we can be thankful for when we see the blessings that are coming to us.

Number two, God’s crippling is the secret to victory. Jacob lost the battle but won the victory. I think of the fact that so many times we resist God’s wrestling in our lives. We don’t surrender and yield to Him, so we only forestall the good thing that God wants to do in our lives.

Number three, God’s crippling makes us think little of this world but much of the next. From this point on, Jacob said he was a pilgrim, a sojourner and he was living for heaven. Like Abraham, his forefather, “He waited for the city…whose builder and maker is God.”

Those who have done the most for God in this world are those who think most of the next world. Our problem isn’t that we’re so heavenly minded we’re no earthly good; our problem is that we’re so earthly minded we’re no heavenly good. Oh, to think more about heaven! Oh, to be motivated by heaven.

Heaven isn’t just a destination; it’s a motivation. It’s not that just some day in the sweet by-and-by, I’m going to be in heaven. I want to live for heaven now. I want to follow the Lord of heaven. I want to speak heaven’s language. I want to follow heaven’s laws.

Philippians 3 says Dear brothers and sisters, pattern your lives after mine, and learn from those who follow our example. 18 For I have told you often before, and I say it again with tears in my eyes, that there are many whose conduct shows they are really enemies of the cross of Christ. 19 They are headed for destruction. Their god is their appetite, they brag about shameful things, and they think only about this life here on earth. 20 But we are citizens of heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives.

If you’re a Christian, this world is not your home. Don’t get too comfortable here. Don’t get too attached. Let your contact with the world be as light as possible. Heaven is your real home. Keep that in perspective.

So the crippling counteracts pride, it keeps us humble and dependent on God, it is a step to victory by surrendering and giving up to God’s will and it keeps us focused on eternity: the things that really matter in life.