Genesis 32:22-30 Bless Me

Genesis 32:22-30 (Evangelical Heritage Version)

22He got up that night and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven sons, and crossed over the ford of the Jabbok. 23He took them and sent them across the stream, and he also sent his possessions across. 24Jacob was left alone, and he wrestled with a man there until daybreak. 25When the man saw that he could not defeat him, he touched the socket of his thigh, and the socket of Jacob’s thigh was dislocated as he wrestled. 26The man said, “Let me go. It’s daybreak.”

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

27Then he said to him, “What is your name?”

He said, “Jacob.”

28Then he said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have fought with God and with men, and you have won.”

29Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.”

He said, “Why do you ask what my name is?” Then he blessed him there. 30Jacob named the place Peniel, because he said, “I have seen God face-to-face, and my life has been spared.”

Bless Me

I.

God’s promise of blessings is the beginning of all sorts of problems. That sounds completely backwards, doesn’t it? It wasn’t really God’s promise that caused the problems. The problems really start with Jacob’s, and his mother’s, reaction to, or interpretation of God’s promises. In a very real sense, God has to break Jacob before Jacob could really trust in his promise to bless him.

Jacob and his brother, Esau, were twins. Jacob was the younger. God’s promise to his parents was that Jacob was the one to carry on the line of the promised Savior.

Jacob heard all about God’s promise. He took matters into his own hands. He tricked Esau into selling his birthright as the firstborn to him. Rebecca got into the picture by helping Jacob to trick his father, Isaac, into blessing Jacob when he thought he was blessing Esau. Jacob and Rebecca interpreted God’s promise as something that needed some intervention, or some help, to make it happen.

Esau was enraged. He threatened to kill his brother. God’s promise to be with Jacob and bless him must have needed some more intervention. Jacob fled to the homeland of his mother.

While there, Jacob became a family man, and a wealthy man. God had promised that, too, but Jacob must have thought he needed to make sure God’s promises turned out right. He made deals with Laban, his father-in-law. He thought he had to use his own ingenuity to manipulate the results so that he would obtain what God’s promised blessings were more quickly.

Jacob’s manipulations came with some consequences. His father-in-law and brothers-in-law got tired of all the deception and the lies and the manipulations. The time had come; God directed Jacob to journey back to the land of his father. But Jacob interpreted God’s promise to be with him and decided he should leave—with his wives and his servants and his flocks and his herds—but he was afraid to tell anyone they were leaving.

Jacob was on the way home. He messaged Esau that he was coming. Then the report came that Esau was on his way to meet him with 400 men. Jacob took action.

He divided his family and all his servants and possessions into two groups and sent them in different directions. Before today’s First Reading Jacob began to pray. He said, in part: “I am not worthy of even a bit of all the mercy and all the faithfulness that you have shown to your servant... 11Please deliver me from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau... 12You said, ‘I will surely do good for you and make your descendants like the grains of sand of the sea, which cannot be counted because there are so many’” (Genesis 32:10-12, EHV).

Was Jacob finally starting to rely on God’s promises instead of taking matters into his own hands? Perhaps he used the concept attributed to Saint Augustine, or Saint Ignatius: “Pray as if everything depends on God, and work as if everything depends on yourself.” After praying, he sent a gift ahead for Esau.

All that comes before today’s reading. “He got up that night and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven sons, and crossed over the ford of the Jabbok. 23He took them and sent them across the stream, and he also sent his possessions across. 24Jacob was left alone, and he wrestled with a man there until daybreak” (Genesis 32:22-24, EHV).

Luther calls this all-night wrestling match “among the most obscure passages of the whole Old Testament” (Luther’s Works 6, p. 125). While I don’t envision the taunting between combatants that we might have expected in the WWE, things were probably said between the two. As he wrestled, Jacob also had an internal struggle of emotion as he thought about all those sins of the past—all the times he failed to trust in God and, instead, took matters into his own hands.

The struggle was about breaking Jacob without breaking him. It was about breaking his self-reliance without breaking his faith. It was actually intended to not just leave Jacob’s faith unbroken, but to bring a tremendous increase of faith. As Jacob battled physically, perhaps he also reflected on the blessings God had shown him throughout his life. Finally, after all those years, he realized it was God’s promise, not Jacob’s strength and ingenuity, that had prevailed.

II.

Did all that Jacob experienced before his wrestling match remind you of anyone? I said at the beginning: God’s promise of blessings is the beginning of all sorts of problems. But not really God’s promises, rather it’s the reaction to or interpretation of those promises.

Jacob had a long track-record of interpreting God’s promises and trying to force them to happen in his time and his way. Isn’t that familiar? Perhaps when you look back over some of your own past disasters, it brings shame and guilt to wrestle with.

We have the promise of forgiveness in Jesus, but sometimes we don’t feel forgiven. People we might have wronged in the past said they forgave us, but their attitudes and actions indicate they still hold grudges.

So we wrestle. We wrestle with our shame and our guilt and our sin. We wrestle all through the night until daybreak. We wrestle with the past, in which we have interpreted God’s promises to our own liking.

God had to break Jacob without breaking him. God has to break us without breaking us. He wants to shift our thinking away from ourselves to him. Why do we keep holding on so tightly to guilt over the past when Jesus paid for those sins on the cross? Do we think it is better somehow for us to hang on to our guilt rather than give it over to the One who can handle it for us—who has handled it for us? Why do we continue to rely on our abilities to ward off the attacks of Satan? Are we that proud of ourselves that we think we can handle those struggles well enough on our own?

God wrestles with us to make us take a long, hard look at ourselves and what we are doing—relying on ourselves and wallowing in self-pity rather than recognizing the power and promises of God. He has already dealt with all our sin and guilt to leave us free to be joyful servants of God.

“When the man saw that he could not defeat him, he touched the socket of his thigh, and the socket of Jacob’s thigh was dislocated as he wrestled” (Genesis 32:25, EHV). Do you really think God “could not” defeat Jacob? Or did he choose not to defeat Jacob?

As we wrestle with God, he causes us to look more carefully at his promises instead of at our own ability to deal with all our issues. When we look at his promises, we wrestle with more confidence. When thoughts of guilt confront us, we throw a counter-move which points to Christ, who has paid for that sin. When temptation comes to lure us back to sinful habits, we point to the promise that the Lord will help us overcome temptation and put a stranglehold on those habits. No longer is it self-reliance that fills us with confidence to win the match, but reliance on Christ.

III.

“The man said, ‘Let me go. It’s daybreak.’ Jacob said, ‘I will not let you go unless you bless me’” (Genesis 32:26, EHV). The long wrestling match was coming to an end. As Jacob wrestled with God, his adrenaline kicked in. Mentally and emotionally as well as physically, Jacob wrestled in prayer—the whole night long.

It wasn’t really adrenaline, though. It was strength from the Lord. The Holy Spirit worked in him and strengthened his reliance on the promises of God—and God’s own timing for those promises.

“Then he said to him, ‘What is your name?’ He said, ‘Jacob.’ 28Then he said, ‘Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have fought with God and with men, and you have won’” (Genesis 32:27-28, EHV). God’s purpose in wrestling with Jacob in the first place was to have him win. Not to let him win, but to have him win. God wanted Jacob to have certain blessings. Rather than trying to manipulate God’s promises, Jacob had won the ability to confidently anticipate God’s promises—and then wait for God’s own good time.

God has made many promises to us, too. Perhaps sometimes we push those promises to the background in favor of self-reliance. God wants us to wrestle and be reminded of those promises—and learn to rely on them with an unflinching faith.

God has promised to work everything to our good, even the challenges and difficulties in life. We are promised the same forgiveness of sins he promised Jacob; Jacob looked ahead with the eyes of faith to the Savior; we look back with the same eyes of faith on all that he has done for us. Jesus wrestled with Satan and hell for us and won. His victory is our victory. Our God-given faith relies firmly on that promise of God to overcome and win the daily wrestling matches against sin and depression with which Satan attacks. Satan might try to rob us of our trust in God, but he cannot win, for God has already given us the victory.

IV.

Jesus spoke about persistence in prayer in today’s Gospel. He said: “Will not God give justice to his chosen ones, who are crying out to him day and night? Will he put off helping them? 8I tell you that he will give them justice quickly” (Luke 18:7-8, EHV). The promises of God give us persistence in prayer, just as Jacob had. We wrestle with God—by the power of God—and in the struggle, God increases our faith.

When Satan wrestles us, he wants us to look to ourselves and think we’re fine on our own. Failing that, he wants us to think there is no way God would stoop down to help us. Failing that, he wants us to contemplate our own unworthiness and be led to despair.

When God wrestles us it is to strengthen us. He does it to make us reflect on all his many promises. God wrestles us the way a father wrestles with his 3-year-old son—to teach us, and to build our strength; to show us his great love for us. He doesn’t bring the full strength of his will to bear on us, but uses what is needed to cause us to grow.

“Then he said, ‘Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have fought with God and with men, and you have won’” (Genesis 32:28, EHV). Jacob received blessings from the Lord in his wrestling match. He learned to understand that his real strength came from the Lord, not from himself. His confidence grew, not because he was self-confident, but because his confidence was in the One who never lies or falls short of his promise. His name was changed to Israel: “one who struggles with God,” as a constant reminder of those blessings he had received.

When you struggle with God, you receive the same things. Your strength is in the Lord, not in yourself. Your salvation is in Christ Jesus alone, not in the works you might try to do to make yourself right with God. Your name has been changed to the new Israel—the name Christian. When you wrestle, always remember that God has blessed you. Amen.