Wrestling with God, Part 1

Genesis 32v3-24

16^th September 2022

Over the last two weeks, we looked at the beginning of the story of Jacob. You'll remember he was one of twins, and even as his elder brother Esau was being born, he was holding Esau's ankle. Esau was the first-born, but Jacob was fighting him while still in the womb. His parents, Isaac and Rebekah, called him Jacob, which means "grasper" because he was grasping his brother's ankle. It can also mean "cheat" or "swindler".

Jacob cheated his brother Esau out of his birthright, the right to inherit from Isaac, the patriarch of all God's people. Later, Rebekah prevailed upon him to also steal his father's blessing from Esau. When Esau found out, he wanted to kill Jacob, and Jacob ran for his life.

God met with Jacob at a place we call Bethel, the house of God. Jacob saw a vision of a ladder extending from where he was lying, up to heaven itself, with angels ascending and descending on it. Some people call it the stairway to heaven. There, Jacob made an oath to serve God.

He then continued on his journey to the home of his uncle Laban, where he lived for twenty years. Laban was crafty like Jacob, and they cheated and manipulated each other to achieve what they wanted. Jacob married both Laban's daughters, Leah and Rachel, and had children by both of them and by their maidservants Zilpah and Bilhah. He made himself rich by the force of his own personality and by his own cleverness and immorality.

When his relationship with Laban had completely broken down, as Jacob was hurtling towards middle age, God told him to go home to Beersheba:

Genesis 31v3
Jacob heard that Laban's sons were saying, "Jacob has taken everything our father owned and has gained all this wealth from what belonged to our father." And Jacob noticed that Laban's attitude toward him was not what it had been.
Then the Lord said to Jacob, "Go back to the land of your fathers and to your relatives, and I will be with you."

He gathered up his wives, his eleven sons (Benjamin would be born later) and his daughter, his flocks and his herds, and began the journey back to his own country. He had to run away from Laban's house, just as he'd had to run away from Isaac's house all those years before, as twisters do. Laban pursued him and caught up with him in the hill country of Gilead, where they both aired their grievances. They set up a pile of stones and agreed that Laban would stay north of that place and Jacob would stay south of it. Another broken family.

Jacob knew that he would have to seek peace with Esau, so he sent some of his men to the land of Edom, where Esau was living, but they came back and told him:

Genesis 32v6b
"We went to your brother Esau, and now he is coming to meet you, and four hundred men are with him.".

Afraid for himself and for his family, Jacob divided them into two groups, thinking that, if they were attacked, at least one group might escape. Then, after a time in prayer, Jacob sent Esau gifts and soft words in the mouths of his representatives, hoping to pacify him. That night, he sent his wives and his sons across the river Jabok, then he sent all his possessions on ahead. He could have crossed the River Jabok with them but he choose instead to remain behind. I suspect he was too afraid of what Esau might do.

Once again, Jacob was alone, just like he's been at Bethel twenty years before.

Genesis 32v24b
And a man wrestled with him until daybreak.

This encounter changed his life.

Jacob, who had amassed considerable wealth for himself by the force of own personality, his own trickery and cleverness, was going home at God's command to take possession of what was now his. But I suspect he intended to do so in his own strength. That was who he was. He was going to do it his way. Suddenly, he found he couldn't do what he planned to do. He couldn't do what he wanted to do. He couldn't even do what he believed God had called him to do, because one man stood on the bank of the Jabok and wrestled with him all night.

As that weird wrestling match, out in the country in the middle of the night, continued, Jacob came to realise that this can't just be a man. He must be God. But Jacob he carried on wrestling God until daybreak, and God carried on wrestling him. Of course, God could have just given him a good whack, and laid him out, but He didn't.

In his own strength, Jacob had achieved so much. By God's grace he had such positive experiences of the presence and love of God. Yet he couldn't do this simple thing because God chose to stop him. As Jacob wrestled with God, he must have wondered why God would stop him doing what God had told him to do.

I believe the answer to this, for Jacob and for us all, is this: God has great planned things for of us, but we have to do things in His strength and His wisdom and not in our own.

You and I wrestle with God. We want to achieve certain things. We want to get somewhere. In some sense or other, we want to be somebody and achieve something. Sometimes it's something God wants us to do. Sometimes it's even something God has commanded us to do, led us to do. But we can't do it in our own strength and our own cleverness.

You've probably wrestled with God – Why is my life so unsuccessful? Why is my family so unwell? Why has my career come to an end? Why am I poor? Why am I friendless? Why are my dreams unfulfilled? What's going on? – Why have things been so hard? All Jacob wanted to do was cross a river that God told him to cross, and God prevented him doing even that!

To achieve His purposes for your life, to enable you to have His best, to mature you, to draw you closer to Himself, God is willing to stand in your way, and wrestle with you. God wants to change our attitude more than He wants to fulfil our dreams.

In Paul's letter to the church in Colossae, he says of Epaphras, their pastor,

Colossians 4v12
Epaphras, who is one of you and a servant of Christ Jesus, sends greetings. He is always wrestling in prayer for you, that you may stand firm in all the will of God, mature and fully assured.

It's good to wrestle in prayer with God. Which doesn't just mean being persistent. It means trying to think through, and trying to hear God, on issues like "Why can't I cross this river?" I wrestle with questions like: Why isn't my church bringing more people to faith in Christ? Why are some many of my brothers and sisters in Christ unwell? Why are some of us suffering from depression? Why do so many of my prayers about the government seem to remain unanswered? We wrestle in prayer about questions like: "If God is so loving, why does my wife have so much pain?" "If God can save me why can't He save my husband?" "Why does God let my children be bullied in school?"

We wrestle with these things because we have two choices. You can wrestle with them or you can give up. Jacob, for all his bad attitude, got this one right. He would rather wrestle with God than give up. And I suggest that we must have the same heart.

We'll finish looking at this story next time.