This morning we begin a series of messages titled The Journey to Advent.
These are not Advent messages, per se, but are messages leading us to
the season of Advent. I had been
thinking about what to do after completing the brief series on the Reformation
and Tanya mentioned to me that I should do something like the Lessons and
Carols service we observe on Christmas Eve. I thought that was a good idea, and since I’m used to doing
what Tanya tells me, I began working on creating a series of messages that have
the kind of Biblical/historical sweep that we find in the Lessons and Carols service.
That service incorporates Scripture readings that carry us from the beginning
of time, telling us of the story of salvation as laid out in the Bible, from
Genesis to Revelation. My intent in
offering this series is certainly not to hurry Christmas along as much as I am
working to prepare us spiritually for the season of Advent, especially in the
onslaught of the commercialized version of Christmas that is already upon us.
I will
use four different Scripture texts for this series, beginning with a passage
from Genesis, which tells the story of Jacob wrestling with God. The story of Jacob wrestling with God
is, on the surface at least, a strange sounding story. What are we to make of a human being
wrestling through the night with God, seeking to wrest away a blessing. And, at the end, God touches the hip of
Jacob, knocking it out of place, resulting in a noticeable limp. (I understand that some may be
thinking, wait a minute Dave; isn’t it a
story about Jacob wrestling with an angel, and not God? Most often, that is how the story is
told, and it is how I have interpreted the story most of the time. In this message, however, I am speaking
of Jacob wrestling with God because that is what Jacob himself implies at the
end of the story, when we says in verse 30, I
saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.)
Follow along as I read this
fascinating story, from Genesis 32:22-31 –
22 That night Jacob got up and took his two
wives, his two female servants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the
Jabbok.
23 After he had sent them across the
stream, he sent over all his possessions.
24 So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled
with him till daybreak.
25 When the man saw that he could not
overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was
wrenched as he wrestled with the man.
26 Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is
daybreak.” But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
27 The man asked him, “What is your name?” “Jacob,”
he answered.
28 Then the man said, “Your name will no
longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with
humans and have overcome.”
29 Jacob said, “Please tell me your name.” But
he replied, “Why do you ask my name?” Then he blessed him
there.
30 So Jacob called the place Peniel,
saying, “It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.”
31 The sun rose above him as he passed
Peniel, and he was limping because of his hip.
The setting for the story is when Jacob is
caught between two family members with whom he had very strained
relations. In the previous chapter
he is fleeing from his father-in-law Laban, whom he had also deceived, increasing his flocks at his uncle’s
expense (Genesis 30:25-43), and as this chapter opens he is about to
meet up with his brother Esau. You
will remember that Jacob stole Esau’s birthright from him and the two brothers
have not seen each other in quite some time. In fact, Jacob had long avoided Esau because of his brother’s
desire to kill him on account of the stolen birthright (Genesis 27:1-40). Jacob
even tried to deceive God when he prays the night before he is to meet his
brother Esau, claiming that God made a promise to him that God did not actually
make (Genesis 32:11-12).
The setting for today’s text is the night
before the two brothers are to meet, and Jacob wonders if Esau is still
planning to kill him. In order to
gain his brother’s favor, Jacob prepares a large gift for Esau and sends it to
him. Jacob is hoping, basically,
to buy his way out of a jam. Then
he sends his family and all he has across the stream of Jabbok and spends the
night alone, and it is then that he wrestles with God.
Jacob is, we should say at the outset,
more than a little bit of a sketchy character. Jacob was, to put it bluntly, a cheat, a scoundrel, and a
rascal. In fact, the very name of
Jacob tells us something about his character. Jacob means one who takes
by the heel and supplants, or, in simpler fashion, deceiver. People have
long debated whether or not a person’s character is a matter of nature
or nurture. When I was younger –
and not a parent – I tended to think that people’s character was more a
function of nurture than nature.
Like most others, after becoming a parent, I decided it was more nature
than nurture. In Jacob’s case that was certainly true,
as his name was predictive of his behavior, as deception was a way of life for
him. But lest we be too hard on
Jacob, we should also remember that we are not entirely unlike him, as we will
see as we go through the story.
1. Jacob attempts to bargain with God.
In 32:11 Jacob begs God to save him
from the hand of his brother, Esau. Now, I have two brothers, and I know how brothers can be, because
we did not always get along, but when you are fearful for your life because of
what you have done to your brother, you are indeed in dire straights.
What’s important to note about Jacob’s
bargaining with God is this – he was attempting to bargain himself out of a
situation of his own creation. Jacob
was not a victim here. He had not
fallen on hard times because of what someone else had done. He had not had a business downturn
because of a changing economy. Jacob
made a bargain with his brother that we call an Esau trade. An Esau trade is a bad decision, a bad
choice, or, in this case, the pulling of someone into an unfair bargain in
order to take advantage of them.
Esau did indeed make a very bad deal, trading away his birthright, but Jacob
set up the entire exchange in order to take advantage of his brother. It does not speak well of Jacob’s
character that he not only took advantage of his brother at a weak moment;
Jacob created the weak moment and the snare in which Esau found himself.
And in this moment of reckoning,
fearful of what his brother might do to him, Jacob seeks to bargain with
God. Jacob has created his own
difficulty, he has put himself in a very tenuous position, and then wants God
to rescue him from a difficult situation of his own making. The reality is, however, that Jacob
does not have to bargain with God, because God is going to protect and care for
him, but Jacob does not trust God.
As the maker of his own difficulty Jacob assumes he’s about to get what
he has coming to him. He doesn’t
understand that God doesn’t always give us what we have coming to us; instead,
he gives us grace.
But here is how we are like Jacob –
haven’t we all bargained with God?
How many of you have bargained with God? Who hasn’t, actually?
I have sought to strike a bargain with God on any number of occasions,
and I must say that I am very grateful that God generally has not taken me up
on those bargains, because if he had, I would have come out the poorer in the
long run. The reality is, we do
not need to bargain with God.
Bargaining with God betrays our lack of trust, just like Jacob’s lack of
trust. Throughout the gospels
Jesus reminds us that God is always working on our behalf, for our good. We do not have to convince him to do
what is best for us, as it is already his will to do so. As Jesus says in Matthew 7:9-10, 9 “Which of you, if your son asks for
bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or
if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11 If you, then, though you are evil, know
how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in
heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!
2. Jacob was always grasping and striving
for more.
The
image of Jacob wrestling through the night with God is such as apt image, as he
was trying to wrestle away a blessing from God. In verse 26, in response to being asked to let him go, Jacob
even says, I will not let you go unless
you bless me. The only way
Jacob believed he could get a blessing was to take it, to wrest it away. He wrested away a birthright from his
brother Isaac, he wrested away livestock and other blessings from his uncle,
Laban, and then, demonstrating his gall and desperation, he seeks to wrest a
blessing away from God. What would
satisfy Jacob?
Why
Jacob feels he must wrestle a blessing away from God is beyond me, as God had
already blessed him in many ways.
It was never enough for Jacob, however, as he schemed and wrested his
own way to blessings. Whatever he
had – or took – never seemed to be enough. With Jacob, it always seemed to be about getting more. Why, in spite of all he
possessed, was it never enough for him?
Why was it necessary that he continue to scheme and claw his way to get
more and more? So much of Jacob’s
life was built upon lies and deception, and those lies deceptions helped him to
become a wealthy man.
But look at what it did to him – Jacob was
running from one place to the next, trying to outrun those whom he had
deceived, and yet his life continued to be one of taking rather than
receiving. It wasn’t enough for
him to receive his own blessing from his father Isaac; he had to take his
brother’s blessing. He then spent
years fleeing from his brother and years estranged from his family because of
his deception. He deceived Laban
and had to flee from him as well and now, in a moment of crisis, wrestling with
God, he is still trying to take rather than receive.
Again, we are not unlike Jacob, as we struggle to wrest something
out of life. Maybe we don’t scheme
and deceive like Jacob in order to get what we want, but we can easily fall for
the same deception that says just a
little bit more, just a little bit more. I think one of the great myths of our society is the promise
of satisfaction from what will not truly bring satisfaction. The myth says to get this thing, or if you get
a little bit more of this or that, you will be satisfied. You’re not quite there; just a bit more. But the bit more never is enough. We are so often promised satisfaction,
but satisfaction so seldom comes, despite those promises. In our striving we find the law of
diminishing returns. We buy
something, hoping to find satisfaction, and enjoy what we have purchased, but
after a time that satisfaction goes away, so we buy something else, trying to
recapture the feeling.
Unfortunately, we find less and less satisfaction as we purchase more
and more. But we want satisfaction
so badly that we seek and strive, and like Jacob, sometimes maybe we do scheme
and seek to wrest that satisfaction from somewhere or someone else.
But we don’t have to try and take anything from
God; God wants to give and he wants us to receive.
3. Jacob’s struggle with God becomes a
real wrestling match.
I
think it’s interesting that this wrestling match takes place at night, because
that is a time when we are more vulnerable. And perhaps this is where we are most like Jacob, wrestling
at night with our worries and anxieties.
It’s hard to hide from our worries and anxieties in the middle of the
night, isn’t it? We can occupy our
minds easier during the day, but at night, it’s hard to hide from what worries
us.
Who
among us has not wrestled through the night with our worries and anxieties
about a friend, a child, or a loved one? Who has not feared that someone they loved had become
incorrigible, and worried, can even God
get through to them? How many
of you have been awake at night wrestling with your worries and anxieties? I go through patterns of wrestling at
night with worries and anxieties.
Sometimes I stay up, trying to occupy my mind, because there is
something on my heart or mind that I just know is going to keep me up, and when
I wake in the middle of the night I fear it will come alive in my mind and keep
me awake.
With what are you wrestling? What is in your past or your present
that consumes you with worry, with anxiety, and with guilt? Jacob spent one night wrestling with
God but years wrestling with himself because of the things he had done. Don’t spend you life wrestling with
guilt, don’t spend your life wrestling with the belief that you cannot
change. Accept God’s transforming
love and power today.
4. We come away from our encounters with
God with a mark.
I
know people who have had very powerful spiritual experiences, as though the
curtain between the temporal and the eternal is pulled aside for them, for a
few moments. I have always envied
people who have these types of experiences, those kinds of experiences when God
breaks through the wall that separates the physical from the spiritual and
something very powerful and very real happens to them. I’ve never had one of those very, very
profound experiences that some people are fortunate enough to have, and I envy
them for what they have experienced.
Imagine the power of Jacob’s experience, as he wrestles through the
night with God.
But
there is a rather odd part of the story that has always puzzled me – what is
the deal with God touching Jacob’s hip and putting it out of joint? Doesn’t that seem strange? What does that mean? To be honest, every time I have
preached or taught from this passage I have finished with the sense that I have
never quite nailed down all that this story seeks to teach us. And I feel that way this morning as
well. I don’t know that I have completely
captured all the meaning of this story, especially the part of God touching
Jacob’s hip, but here is what I have settled upon by way of explanation. First, why the hip? Why not some other place on Jacob’s
body. Why not the arm or the hand,
the eye or the ear? I think it’s
because the hip would provide such a constant reminder to Jacob. How many of us walk anywhere out of
necessity? We have to go out of
our way to walk anywhere, but that was Jacob’s primary mode of
transportation. In Jacob’s day
travel was difficult because you walked.
From this point on, every step Jacob would take was a reminder – a
reminder, first, of his former self, the one who wrestled with God because he
was trying to steal yet another blessing.
Second,
when Jacob limps away, what will happen when he encounters people? They are going to ask him what happened
to cause his injury. Hey Jacob, what happened to your hip? What’s he going to say? Well,
I was wrestling all night with God, trying to wrest a blessing away from him. That doesn’t cast Jacob in the most
positive light, but it would cause him to have to confront himself about some
of his decisions and the way in which he has lived and he would have to own up
to some things in his life. By
giving him a wound, God makes it impossible for Jacob to avoid dealing with his
past. Third, there is some pain
involved, physical pain, because Jacob has to confront his brother Esau, whom
he cheated so long before. That’s
a painful experience, facing up to someone you have wronged. Jacob was certainly confronted with his
own pain, festering in his soul over those many years, but also the pain he had
caused his brother Esau. And,
lastly, it was a reminder of the reality that no one comes away from an
encounter with God without some kind of mark on them, and Jacob’s mark was to
give us a new insight on what it means to walk
with God. We use that phrase,
but it had a very different meaning to Jacob. To us, it’s just an expression, but Jacob walked with
God. Where he had previously run
from God, run from himself, run from his brother, and run from his past, he was
now released and his literal walk was with God, and everyone saw it was
different.
But let us note as well that Jacob was given a
new name – Israel, which means he who
strives with God, signifying that his nature had changed and he was a
different person. Once Jacob
acknowledges his nature, once he finally owns up to who and what he has been,
God is then able to transform him.
When we think of the patriarchs, we generally think of Abraham as the
one who is primary, and in many ways he is, but Jacob is the one who will bear
the name – Israel – of the nation
that is formed by God’s people. It
is Jacob who will be the father of the sons who will bear the names of the
twelve tribes of Israel. The
change in name is tremendously significant for Jacob. In the past, I have had several nicknames attached to
me. Some were very temporary while
others – one in particular – stayed with me for many years. To be honest, I was always happy to
divest myself of every nickname I have ever received. Most of the time, I was only able to escape a nickname by
moving to another town or state.
The problem with nicknames is that they define us according to one time
in our lives, and that definition may no longer be true. For Jacob, the person he was – the schemer,
the deceiver – had passed. Now he
was someone new, and God gave him a new name to symbolize the change in his
life.
I have known some people who have changed their
names. They followed the legal
process, for various reasons, to do away with their old name and to take a new
one. In all the cases it is to get
a new start, a new beginning in life.
It is always a powerful moment for the person, and often their new name
will be representative of something important to them, usually making a
statement about their new life.
Jacob was given a new name.
I suspect that some people may have been hesitant to call him by that
new name, perhaps because they could not accept that he had truly changed. Perhaps time demonstrated to them that
he had changed, and they would be more accepting of his new name. People sometimes have a hard time
accepting the reality that we change, and that we are no longer the person we once
were. Don’t be held back by those
who are unable – or are unwilling – to see what God has done in your life.
Perhaps this is where we are most like Jacob –
Jacob changed, and we can change too.
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