Wrestling with God
Notes
Transcript
Welcome
Quick intro on me
Lesson - Genesis 32
Intro
I want to start off this morning by sharing a story.
When I was a freshman in college...
Tell Newsome boxing ring story
The story we’re going to read about this morning is also about a bit of a mismatch, but let’s get up to speed on where in the Bible we’re at first
Background
Anytime you’re doing a topical study or picking up your Bible and reading in the middle of a book or chapter, its always important to understand what is going on so your reading doesn’t get taken out of context
So let’s set the stage for where we are before we start reading our passage this morning
We’re going to focus in on a story that involves Jacob
Jacob was the son of Isaac, who’s dad was Abraham, and he had a twin brother named Esau
If you remember, Esau was the manly man of the family - big hairy guy that liked to hunt, dad’s favorite kid, but Jacob was more of a momma’s boy
Jacob was also kind of a scoundrel and a schemer
He stole his brother’s birthright for a bowl of stew
He stole his brother’s blessing from his father (remember the story of him dressing in goat fur to trick his dad Isaac to get the blessing)
After running away from Esau b/c he thought his brother was going to kill him, he met his match with his uncle Laban who tricked him into marrying the wrong girl (Leah instead of Rachel)
But Jacob would eventually trick Laban into letting him amass this huge wealth while working for him
In fact, Jacob’s name means “Heal catcher” or “deceitful”
After many years (and many kids - 11 at this point), Jacob decides to leave Laban and go back to the land of Canaan with his family, so they pack up with all the kids and servants and herds and make this huge journey westward
On the way, Jacob has to pass through the territory his brother is in charge of, and after he sent a delegation to politely ask permission to move on through that land, he gets word that his brother Esau was coming to meet him
Jacob is terrified. The last time he was around his brother, he had just stolen the blessing that was reserved for the firstborn and Esau was ready to kill him - the last words Esau spoke about Jacob that we have recorded in Gen 27 are “I will kill my brother Jacob.”
So when Jacob heard that Esau was on his way to visit him, with 400 men nonetheless, he was in panic mode
So he does this amazingly spiritual thing that wasn’t like Jacob - he prayed
Verses 9-12
Jacob cried out for God’s mercy in this prayer of faith and trust, but then just one verse later, Jacob goes back to his old ways of scheming
Verse 13
Jacob comes up with this idea to get a huge gift of herds to give to his brother (back then, herds = wealth, like buying cars/houses/stuff to try and please Esau)
All the faith and trust that he just had a few moments ago during his prayer, it seems like it was never really there!
And I think if we’re honest w/ ourselves, we can do this too
A situation, an issue, a struggle comes up in our lives. And many of us know what the “right” answer is to do - pray!
So we pray, “Dear God, please help out, I’m not sure what to do but I know you can fix it, amen!”
But as soon as we say “Amen,” our brains start to think about how we’re going to fix the situation
It shows that our hearts don’t really trust in the Lord. We don’t really trust that He is good, that He can deliver us, that His plan for the situation is for a great purpose
We think we’ve got it all figured out; the prayer was to get God behind us instead of getting us behind God
So Jacob schemes and comes up with this “brilliant” idea in his mind on how to fix this really big challenge that he’s about the face the next day
Gets the gift out in front of him, gets his family away from him, and he sets out by himself to try and get a good night’s sleep
Verse 24
Sometime that night, some dude shows up out of nowhere and attacks Jacob, and it turns into an all-night wrestlemania match
And as we’ll find out in a few verses, this is no ordinary Man that goes after Jacob, this is God in human form
It’s a special appearance of Jesus in the Old Testament - also known as a Christophany
Happened in other places in the OT to Abraham, Joshua, and Shadrack, Meshack, and Abendigo in the fiery furnace to name a few instances
So Jacob is in this wrestling match with God and he goes at it
He doesn’t give up, he doesn’t quit, he tries as hard as he can for as long as he can to win this fight
This section I think begs each one of us to ask a question of ourselves this morning - are you wrestling w/ God like Jacob did?
Not physically of course. But this story is going to have a lot of practical spiritual application for our lives as we look to see how this story translates to our lives
Jacob was in a big trial at this point
He was trying to move his family away from Uncle Laban and into a new land
And in the midst of this move, he finds out his estranged brother Esau is coming to probably kill him
As we talked about before, Jacob was a schemer, so even though he “prays” about the situation, he came up with this plan on how to fix it
You see, in a way, he was already wrestling w/ God before the actual physical battle ever took place
It was a fight of wills - Jacob’s will vs. God’s will for his life
God, through the prophet Hosea, has some interesting commentary on Jacob’s life
2 “The Lord also brings a charge against Judah, And will punish Jacob according to his ways; According to his deeds He will recompense him. 3 He took his brother by the heel in the womb, And in his strength he struggled with God.
Jacob struggled in his own strength, in his flesh, against the Lord
Yes, Jacob prayed, and I think if you asked him, he would say that he trusted God
But his actions showed a “I trust God, but....” mentality that I think many of us can be prone to have
We all have our own moments of trial like Jacob
Maybe its a difficult situation in our life - a struggle with a spouse or a family member
Maybe its sickness or disease
Maybe its a challenge at work -struggles with the boss, layoffs, cutbacks
Maybe its a financial struggle, its been really hard to make ends meet lately
Maybe its a tug at the heart to not settle for the status quo in your faith any longer and to go deeper in your walk with Him
Maybe its a sin God is calling you to finally overcome
It could be so many things, but we all have them
And when we do have these moments of trial, the question that comes out each time, whether we think about it or not, whether we even acknowledge it or not, is do we trust God?
“Oh yes, of course I do...”
No, do you really, truly, trust God?
Let’s be honest, many times we don’t
We’re like Jacob and while we might say we trust God, while we might outwardly do the right things like pray or read our Bibles for answers, in our hearts we don’t really believe God will work things out
Or maybe its not even as deep as that. Many times we just think we don’t need God, we can figure out how to fix the problem
I know that’s how I am. I’m a planner. I like to plan things out and try to weigh the pros and cons and come up with solutions
So while I don’t come out and say that I don’t trust God, the very fact that I won’t surrender a situation/trial to Him shows that I don’t fully trust Him
That’s what Jacob is doing here. He has this plan, he’s got it all figured out. He’s got a way to appease his brother.
And then when the wrestling match starts, he is so confident in himself that he won’t quit, he goes all night long, mano e mano with this guy
So let’s see what happens next
Verse 25
At some point, God decides that this match is over and touches the socket of Jacob’s hip and it goes out of joint - boom, game over
I think there’s a couple of remarkable things we see out of this
God allows Jacob to wrestle with Him all night
Could God have touched his hip at any point and ended the fight? Yes!
But He didn’t, God allowed Jacob to struggle and fight and strain and push until he was probably just exhausted
Wrestling is an intense sport, its tiring. To do it for as long as Jacob did and probably under this pretense that he’s fighting for his life (gets jumped by some random dude in the dark, probably thought the guy wanted to kill him), that’s a ton of energy exerted by Jacob
We also see that once God wanted the fight to be over, He pins Jacob in an instant
It’s not a long, hard fought victory that God barely comes out ahead, its not a judge’s decision, He just has to touch Jacob and its over
I think these two facts are also true when we struggle with God
God allows us to struggle and wrestle with Him
He doesn’t just flick us on the top of the head and make us stop our struggle, He lets it go on
God allows us to exert our free will
While God has a plan for you, while He has an answer to your trial, a direction for your to go, and He wants to empower you through the Holy Spirit to have the ability to overcome your sin or your challenge, He will never force you to go down His path
He has created us with free will. So if you want to fight and struggle against God, or if you want to try and go your own way and plan things out and try and scheme to the solution, He’ll let you go that way
And secondly, just like He did with Jacob, God can change the direction of the fight in an instant
Sometimes we’ll exhaust ourselves trying to fix things before we involve God
We get to the end of our rope with no strength to move forward, beat down, discouraged, and all it takes is a simple touch to end the struggle
Verses 26-28
So the Lord touches Jacob’s hip and it goes out of socket, and Jacob can do nothing but cling onto the Lord and ask Him for a blessing
Jacob hit this realization that he couldn’t win.
He had to bring himself to the point of surrender and confession
He had to surrender control over to the Lord
And he had to confess that he wasn’t strong enough to win
And he asks for God to bless him b/c that’s all he could muster
Jacob found himself in the best possible place he could be at this point
You might look at that at first and question my statement
“Jacob lost. He’s weak, he surrendered. How is that a good thing?”
In the midst of our trials and struggles, being surrendered to God is the best thing possible we can do
We cannot get anywhere in our faith, we will not make any progress towards the calling God has for each one of us, as long as we struggle against Him or try and plan our own steps
It is only when we surrender to God and cling onto Him that we get anywhere
9 A man’s heart plans his way, But the Lord directs his steps.
21 There are many plans in a man’s heart, Nevertheless the Lord’s counsel—that will stand.
Maybe you’re in that struggle right now. Maybe you’re in that place where you’re in a trial and things are going well
You’re trying hard to stay above water, you’re trying hard to hold things together, and you’ve even prayed about it a time or two
But no matter what happens, you don’t come out on top. You don’t follow the path the Lord is showing you. You feel like you’re failing in the trial
You need to surrender
Surrender is one of the hardest things we can bring ourselves to do as human beings
There just seems to be something inside of us that doesn’t want to admit our failures or inabilities
We’ll wear a facade when we’re going through a hard time, letting people think we’ve got it all together and are handling the curveballs thrown at us, when in fact we’re breaking inside
We don’t want to admit that we’re struggling, we don’t want to admit that we can’t fix it, or that we’re scared or anxious about the next steps
But that’s exactly where we need to be - at a place where we wholly surrender the situation, the struggle, the decision up to God
We see this direction repeated in so many familiar places across scripture - if time
28 Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
Explain what yoke is - wooden cross piece between 2 animals, designed for stronger animal to carry load
We need to give our burdens over to Jesus!
5 If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. 6 But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind.
Ask in faith (full trust!)
6 Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, 7 casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.
Cast (give entirely - not a hand off, not a shared load) your care on God!
5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding; 6 In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths.
All your heart, in all your ways, not on yourself, and He shall direct your paths
One more thing that is interesting about this is as Jacob asks for this blessing, God asks him what his name was
Did He forget or not know?
No
He was doing this to get Jacob to admit who he was
My name is Jacob, heel catcher, deceitful
And sometimes God needs us to admit who we really are before He can move and bless in our lives
I’m a sinner, I’m prideful, I have a hard heart, I want to impress the people around me, I care so much about my reputation, I’m a worrier and am fearful, whatever it is, confess it
Then God blesses Jacob and changes his name to Israel
There’s a lot of discussion what the Hebrews meaning for the word Israel means. I’ll save you the time and say it likely means God rules
“You shall no longer be known as deceitful, you shall now be known as Israel - God rules”
That’s exactly what we need to be to win in the struggle, we need to let God rule in our lives
It says here that Jacob won
Not b/c he was the victor of the fight, not b/c he pinned God down and made Him bless Jacob, not b/c he had overcome some great obstacle
But Jacob won b/c he chose to surrender to the Lord
Verses 29-32
Here we see the realization Jacob has that this wrestling match wasn’t against some superior luchador, it was against God
He names the site of this match Peniel (Pen-ee-el) which means “Face of God”
He had this realization that he had just experienced God’s mercy
He should have died. In the presence of God’s holiness, no human can survive
Crazy to think about that. God is so holy, so perfect, so pure, that we can’t even be in His presence b/c we would die
20 But He said, “You cannot see My face; for no man shall see Me, and live.”
Remember that Christian, God is holy. We shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near Him b/c of our sinfulness, but...
4 But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6 and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
Jacob experiences God’s mercy, he is blessed, he is changed and has a new name, and notice something else about him
He now walks with a limp
Jacob was permanently reminded of the night that he wrestled with God and surrendered
So too, when we bring ourselves to the point of surrender, when we finally put our full faith and trust in God and let Him take control of the situation or our lives, we are permanently affected by the Lord
There is a reminder
So the next time the struggle comes, or the trial comes, hopefully the reminder of how God worked in mighty ways is right there, and it can prevent us from spiraling down that same path
Something else that’s cool, not only was Jacob reminded constantly about the work that God did, everyone else around him could see the change too
It was such a significant change that this superstition arose in the children of Israel that no one would eat this muscle that shrank on Jacob
When God touches our lives, when He gets us to the point of surrender, when we let Him work in our lives instead of trying to plan out all our own steps, people around us will notice
It will be a witness to them
People can see the difficulties and struggles that we go through, and see that we come out on the other side with hope and joy and peace
Not that people will see that life is perfectly perfect for Christians - that’s not the case
The rain falls on the righteous and the wicked
But they’ll see the result, that we’re not in despair, that we have hope b/c we have surrendered the situation to God and we trust that He is going to do mighty things
So I’ll close with this question - do you trust God
Not the surface, “yes I trust Him b/c He’s God” answer, but do you really trust Him?
Do you trust Him w/ your marriage? Do you trust Him w/ your kids? Or w/ your job, your finances, your health, your anxieties, your fears, your sin, your life?
Surrender to God. He is worthy to be trusted.
Pray