Jacob No.6 The Wrestler

Genesis chapter 32, Jacob also went on his way and the angels of God met him. When Jacob saw them he said, this is the camp of God, so he named that place Mahanaim. Jacob sent messengers ahead of him to his brother Esau in the land of Sire, the country of Edom.

He instructed them, this is what you are to say to my master Esau. Your servant Jacob says, I have been staying with Laban and have remained there till now. I have cattle and donkeys, sheep and goats, men's servants and maid's servants.

Now I am sending this message to my Lord that I may find favor in your eyes. When the messengers returned to Jacob they said, we went to your brother Esau and now he is coming to meet you and 400 men are with him. In great fear and distress Jacob divided the people who were with him into two groups and the flocks and herds and camels as well.

He thought, if Esau comes and attacks one group, the group that is left may escape. Then Jacob prayed, oh God of my father Abraham, God of my father Isaac, oh Lord who said to me go back to your country and your relatives and I will make you prosper. I am unworthy of all the kindness and faithfulness you have shown your servant.

I had only my staff when I crossed this Jordan but now I have become two groups. Save me I pray from the hands of my brother Esau for I am afraid he will come and attack me and also the mothers with their children. But you have said I will surely make you prosper and will make your descendants like the sand of the sea which cannot be counted.

He spent the night there and from what he had with him he selected a gift for his brother Esau. 200 female goats and 20 male goats, 200 ewes and 20 rams, 30 female camels with their young, 40 cows and 10 bulls and 20 female donkeys and 10 male donkeys. He put them in the care of his servants, each herd by itself and said to his servants, go ahead of me and keep some space between the herds.

He instructed the one in the lead, when my brother Esau meets you and asks to whom do you belong and where are you going and who owns all these animals in front of you, then you are to say they belong to my servant Jacob. They are a gift sent to my lord Esau and he is coming behind us. He also instructed the second, the third and all the others who followed the herds.

You are to say the same thing to Esau when you meet him and be sure to say your servant Jacob is coming behind us. For he thought, I will pacify him with these gifts I am sending on ahead. Later when I see him, perhaps he will receive me.

So Jacob's gifts went on ahead of him, but he himself spent the night in the camp. That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two maidservants and his 11 sons and crossed the ford of the Japok. After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions.

So Jacob was left alone and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. 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. Then the man said, let me go for it is daybreak.

But Jacob replied, I will not let you go unless you bless me. The man asked him, what is your name? Jacob he answered. Then the man said, your name will no longer be Jacob but Israel because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome.

Jacob said, please tell me your name. But he replied, why do you ask my name? Then he blessed him there. So Jacob called the place Peniel saying, it is because I saw God face to face and yet my life was spared.

The sun rose above him as he passed Peniel as he was limping because of his hip. Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the tendon attached to the socket of the hip because the socket of Jacob's hip was touched near the tendon. Amen.

Genesis in chapter 32. You could at one stage, I don't know whether they still have the little leaflet, the little sticker, go to the Christian bookshop and you could buy something that says this, please have patience, God has not finished with me yet. In other words, the inconsistencies you see in my character, bear with, I'm still in the process of responding to the disciplines of God.

There was a lady who was a domestic in the United States of America and she was in the service of some sculptor and he was chiseling from a block of marble an effigy, a likeness of one of the American presidents. After he got well on in his work, the lady came into the studio on one occasion and she said I never knew that Abraham Lincoln was in that piece of stone. The fact of the matter is that when God deals with us it is to so refine and develop our characters that we become what we never were originally.

It's only on that basis that you can really begin to understand anything of the story of the man whose career has occupied our studies on a Sunday night for the last couple of months or so. We've already made reference to the fact that Jacob is not perhaps the first choice that you would have had had you lived in his day and had the opportunity of inviting someone to be your close friend. But then, what about your closest friend? Why did they choose you assuming you've got a close friend? Somebody has said this about God.

I've quoted this before at the tab but it was about ten years ago so I should be terribly impressed if anyone remembers. In fact if you can't remember the instructions I gave you in a hymn two minutes ago then how are you going to remember something that I said ten years ago? Actually it came from the lips of a great missionary statesman, Oswald Saunders. There is an optimism in God, keen eyes he has for the latent elements of nobility and promise.

He is the God of the warped personality. He delights to begin where others have given up in despair. He has the solution for every problem of personality or temperament.

If men will surrender their lives into his hands for drastic and radical treatment he will bring into play all his resources of love and grace. I don't know whether there is a noun, undiscourageability but if there isn't there should be. God is undiscourageable.

Now I used to find that very difficult to develop as a characteristic when I was a school teacher in London. I mean there were some kids who I really didn't feel would ever make sense of mathematics let alone English grammar. But when God has you in focus he is undiscouraged by the imperfections that he sees at that particular moment.

Incidentally that's the only way that I reckon that I can understand how our beloved Lord invited anyone of the disciples to be his followers. He did not call them because of what they were at the moment. He called them because of what, if I may use a technical word was latent within them.

Like if you please, latent within that stone that lump of marble as a result of the deft fingers and the expert use of the chisel and the hammer on the part of the sculptor as there was Abraham Lincoln there So Jesus perceived in the fisherman Peter who really had a quicksilver sort of personality or a quicksand rather sort of personality he saw a man who could become stable strong and a leader. God is undiscouraged by what you present to him at this moment. That does not mean to say he can compliment you because of your contradictions, he doesn't.

But what he promises is this what I did with Jacob the Shylock of the Old Testament I can do with you. I will associate my name with your name. You can become part of my family circle.

Alright, a little bit of theology. In the seventh chapter of Romans to which you have no need to turn at the moment you have the Apostle Paul telling us a little bit about his own Jacob dilemma. I mean by that, he acknowledges though he doesn't use the terminology I will extract it in terms of what he's saying in Romans 7 he says that there is within him a sort of split personality there is the Paul that he wants and there is the Paul that is and he puts it in some very famous words he says the good that I would the person that I want to be I often am not and the evil that I do representing the person I don't want to be so often that's me.

And the dilemma is to get from that to that. And that's exactly though he didn't put it quite as honestly because he wasn't aware of the problem but that represents Jacob. But you know my lovely young person who is prepared to spend some time listening to an older preacher this evening I don't see Jacob in the Bible at this moment I see me.

I don't just see me I see you. What God did here is interesting because this is what God can do for you and for me. So let's go back to the story of Jacob.

It's a very exciting one actually he's left Uncle Laban his family relationships were not exactly the best well I think that's a reasonable conclusion to make after all your uncle doesn't generally charge after you looking as though he's got murder in his eyes and ready to pounce on you with all his men but that was the case with Jacob he's now left Laban. In fact you remember those of you who were present the other Sunday evening that Jacob the nephew and Laban the uncle have got an agreement they're not going to trespass on one another's territory anymore they've built a little mound and they've compacted together and this is the promise they've got Jacob will not go back into Laban's territory. You see he had a rough time with his uncle if God wants to show you what you're like very often he'll bring you alongside someone who's as bad as you are and you will say how is it that they can behave as they do and they're saying how is it that you can behave as you do very often within the inadequacies of other people's personality we get a reflection of ourselves and Laban and Jacob were like sandpaper rubbing against one another and they both seemed to be fairly glad when they parted company Jacob's been a long time from home from his elderly dad and as the years have gone by and as he's now married he has this particular problem of going back to the land where he was born if going back to the place from which he'd just come Laban's territory was unacceptable the idea of returning home was also equally fraught with difficulty you see it wasn't just that Jacob had problems with Laban he'd had problems with Esau and Esau was his brother in fact Jacob had just about had problems with everybody that he ever met this is why it makes it even more curious or as they would have said in Alice in Wonderland curiouser and curiouser that God wants to deal with Jacob but he did and he does you know Jacob had to move to a moment of truth when he saw himself as he really was and God sometimes does this by causing pain I want to thank God for the pain he has brought into my life because it's only through pain and correction that he can really deal with my twisted personality behind Jacob, problems in front of Jacob, problems and if Jacob stays where you find him in this chapter he's equally in difficulty because he's in the unattractive desert land and there are marauding tribes who will like to take him and his wife kill them and have the booty that they brought with them so that's the conundrum of Jacob, he's absolutely boxed in, he does not know how to shift and it could well be that somebody's within my hearing like that in the tab this evening indeed I'd be very surprised if that was not the case so what happens? well Jacob is given this remarkable indication from God that actually the Lord is still with him in fact he has this extraordinary experience in the first three verses of this chapter outline it of some angels coming along and seemingly assuring Jacob that the Lord is on his side and now immediately you think of angels, you think ah well that fell in the pulpit he really is so antiquated he's as out of fashion as a dodo if he believes in angels well sticks and stones may hurt my bones but calling names won't hurt me, I do believe in angels I believe the angels of the Lord encamp round those who trust him it's not always the case that you can see all that there is with the naked eye but who told you that all there is, is capable of being focused by your eyes Jacob is aware that God is still with him he's also scared out of his wits by the fact that messengers have gone on from Jacob's camp to spy out the land in terms of Esau and the way that he's going to receive his brother, who you remember has filched his birthright and it goes up like a lead balloon when the news comes back, verse 6 we went to your brother Esau and now he's coming to meet you and 400 men are with him hooray now wonder verse 7 comes in with the understatement of scripture in great fear and distress Jacob divided the people who were with him into two camps what would you have done he's coming to an end of what a hymn writer will call his hoarded resources his own ingenuity and sometimes the beginning of wisdom occurs when you're spent of human ingenuity Abraham Lincoln not the one who was chiseled out of the stone, the real guy I mean he had a packet to try and cope with imagine looking after the Americans well Bill Clinton does need our prayers doesn't he Abraham Lincoln once said the president of the United States of America sometimes I am driven to my knees because I have nowhere else to go when the problems press in and there's no other option, try praying General Montgomery said he never met an atheist on the front line Oh God of my father Abraham God of my father Isaac Oh Lord who said to me go back to your country and your relatives it's really oh Lord your fault I'm in this mess and there is a sense that the old Puritan Nathaniel Trapp, what a lovely name was correct when he said if you quote God's words at him you do have him trapped when you quote the promises of God to God he always honors them you said go back to your country and your relatives and I will make you prosper but the most important thing is what comes in the tenth verse I am unworthy of all the kindness and faithfulness you have shown your servant it took God two decades to get Jacob to recognize his total unworthiness and my friends it's when you come to that point of confession that God can do something with you and begin to shape you so that out of the Jacob that spiritual being that he wants to take the place of Jacob can emerge the spiritual within you is sometimes so squeezed into your personality it's claustrophobic, it has no room to move at all because the fleshly and the carnal the sort of thing that says I'm the captain of my fate I'm the master of my destiny that rides triumphant and the good that you would you don't do because the spiritual that's in you is almost squeezed out of existence I am unworthy and he never spoke a truer word of all the kindness and faithfulness you have shown your servant I had only my staff when I crossed this Jordan but now I have become two groups look there's not a kid here who came into this world with anything you didn't there's not a middle aged person, there's not an older person the very breath that you breathe, you didn't produce yourself you are totally dependent on forces of which if you're not a Christian you don't know their nature, you don't know their origin you don't know their source, but the Bible says that all these forces that create the possibility of life they come from God, you are utterly dependent on this God and Jacob is, don't you see compelled to realize this as he confesses, what I am, I am by your grace and I am totally unworthy of it now it would perhaps have been wise of Jacob if he'd have left it at that, but you know he tinkers around with divine sovereignty don't you see we all do that even the elders in Worthingtown we all think that the Trinity needs our input God the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit and us it's very difficult to rest and relax within the sovereignty of God and Him, allow Him to work everything out it's human nature and our God just chuckles and He says there they go again when will they ever learn so Jacob sends his wives and his their children and the servants and all his provisions, sends them on ahead and you discover that at night he's on his own verse 24 so Jacob was left alone the most honest moments, listen to me when you can determine what you are really like are not spent in company, not even in the company of a church congregation, the most honest moments are when you are on your own and sometimes it takes a great deal for God to get you on your own because we live in a world that is saturated by noise and will not listen to anyone from outside beaming in His message and we're almost so committed to community that to be on our own is to be in a fearful condition so the moment we wake up it's the radio and for three or four hours if you're an average Brit, God bless you, in the evening it's Coronation Street right to news at ten until they shift it and put something on that's even more unhelpful Jacob is left on his own and we are told that a man starts to wrestle with him it's not an ordinary man it's not an ordinary conflict it's not just spiritual, it must be physical because when the whole incident is through Jacob limps away and you don't generally find yourself crippled as a result of something that's spiritual or just imagination the conflict did not originate with Jacob, it originated with God for that is who is depicted in this particular incident Jacob was left alone and a man wrestled with him you see there were occasions before our Lord Jesus came on earth incarnate as a babe and eventually developed matured into a man, there were occasions in the Old Testament when our Lord Jesus had sort of prefigurings of His incarnation, times when He would involve Himself with the lives of individuals, they were exceptional they were dramatic, but they were real and this is one of the occasions He wrestles with a man not just an ordinary man when you read Hosea, as the prophet refers to this incident he calls this man the angel of the Lord which is, if you like, a pseudonym for God's own Son, the second person of the ever-blessed Trinity dogging the footsteps of Jacob dogging the footsteps of men and women, boys and girls in worthing tabernacle, is none other than the hound of heaven even Jesus Christ, who by the power of His Spirit wishes to wrestle with you and to bring you to an end of yourself, it's not that Jacob was wrestling with God, it was that God was wrestling with Jacob it's not that Jacob wanted anything from God it's that God wanted something from Jacob what did He want? He wanted from Jacob what He wants from you He wants from Jacob a confession that He cannot continue into the future unless God is with Him A.W. Tozer says, God can never use a man until He's broken him and it's the brokenness that sometimes we humans in the 20th century are so incapable or so unwilling to give to the Lord in recognized weakness lies our strength did you know that? you see, when our Lord is on earth, He deliberately takes Peter, I wouldn't have taken Peter when our beloved Lord is raised from the dead and He makes His first appearance, who does He choose? I'd have gone for Annas and Caiaphas, the high priests I'd have put the fear of death into them, wouldn't I? but our beloved Lord, in the magnanimous grace that is His He picks just a woman I say that not in a belittling sense, but in those days the testimony of a woman counted for very little, if anything, legally our Lord takes the foolish things the things that are not reckoned to be so creditable, so powerful in our world and He uses such beings, such people for His honor and for His glory, so that none can say that what has resulted is because of human ingenuity and enterprise, it all redounds to the honor and the glory of God, this is why God delights in Jacob you see how God lives in the future as in the past as well as in the present and you can almost think of God sort of anticipating history 2,000 years, 3,000 years, 3 millennia hence looking back, what will those people say about me choosing Jacob, well let me choose Jacob and I'll show them a thing or two, what is it great God you're showing me? I am showing you that I can take a man who's as twisted as a corkscrew and associate my name with him and from his loins will come my people and he shall become not just a twister and a supplanter not just a cheat, he will become a prince, he will be nobility, there will be royal blood pulsating through his veins not because of what he has done, but because of my grace within him and don't you see my friend this God is our God and what He has done for Jacob He can do for you and for me Jacob wrestles with this remarkable being throughout the night, now Jacob's a winner Jacob always wins but you see that was his problem he won against the old man Isaac deceiving his father with the dimming eyesight, he won against Esau, he won against Laban he always wins, but the day has come in his life when he will not win when he will come to an end of his ingenuity and in bankruptcy of soul he will cry to the Lord the time will come when Jacob stops fighting and then then he will cling and the reason why he will cling is this, that the very source of Jacob's power has been touched by the hand of the man with whom he wrestles, he touches the socket of Jacob's hip the strongest part of the human anatomy is put out of joint and from that moment on, thank God Jacob can no longer fight, he can only cling and that is what Christians essentially are they are clingers to Jesus Christ they are men and women who have come to an end of themselves, utterly spent and they say nothing in my hand I bring simply to your cross I cling, naked fly to you for grace, helpless come to you for dress foul I to the fountain fly I wash me Saviour or I die it's daybreak, I must go says the man who wrestles with Jacob but Jacob says I'll not let you go unless you bless me now God wants to bless you that is true for Jacob it is true for the Jacobs in my congregation but the blessings you can receive must be correlated to linked to the recognition of who you are so Jacob is asked what is your name which seems to be a plump stupid question taken at face value I mean if who I say is wrestling with Jacob really is wrestling with Jacob then he is the source of all knowledge he knows Jacob's name now in the mystical religions of ancient times to speak to a man by his name was to hold power and influence over the man and of course the Bible gives no vestige of evidence to say that it supports such a fanciful notion but what the Bible does say is this that very often embedded in the name is the character of the man and when Esau has been cheated by Jacob he says in effect in an earlier chapter he has lived up to his name what does Jacob mean cheater, cheat, supplanter the sort of man who has always dealt crookedly and harshly the man who has always had to win Jacob tell the man your name and he is no fool he knows the reason why the question has been asked my friend you can never do dealings with this divine assailant and know his blessing unless you confess who you are righteous people Jesus did not come for only sinners he can do nothing for the righteous he can do nothing for the smug and the arrogant he can do nothing for the 20th century man who believes that he's got everything in control Jesus has come for men who are sick and confess their sickness Jesus has come for boys and girls, young people who recognize that their lives are skew and when you tell him your name when you admit to what you are and who you are then he will have dealings with you and say no more no more are you Jacob, no more are you a sinner you shall be Israel, you shall be a prince of God you shall be a disciple of mine you shall be a son of the living God because in your struggle with God you have confessed and as a result you have overcome and Jacob who wants to know more of this great assailant of his and yet the knowledge cannot be revealed at that time because well, centuries are still to come before Moses and even more before the Lord Jesus and the full revelation of God to the earth shall be revealed but sufficient information is given to Jacob to realize that from this moment on he no longer needs to be as he has been, he can be the Israel that the sculpture has been able to fashion from the stone he can become the man that God wants him to become so Jacob goes from that place and he uses a play on a Hebrew Aramaic word he takes the name Peniel which means face of God and he says that very point where I have spent this night will always in my memory be the face of God because that is what in effect I have begun to see and you are left with one of the most marvelous pictures in the whole of scripture as you get to the closing verses the sun rose above him as he passed Peniel and there silhouetted against the new light of the emerging day is the figure of Jacob Israel and he limps and he will limp for the rest of his life and the limp will always be a reminder to him of the day when Jacob died and Israel was born not that he will never struggle again for Jacob has a tendency to be resurrected but it is the Israel nature that will begin increasingly to predominate but there is a mark that registers this the limp in his physical being as there is a mark that is placed within the personalities of men and women who have confessed Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior they know what it is to be crucified to the world and to be alive to him to turn their back on the third rate standards that predominate in our world today and be amongst that tiny group of people who swim against the tide and say because of God I'm traveling in a different direction and because of God and his grace I can achieve something in my life the message of the Bible is never the message of despair it's always the message of recovery God deals with Jacob he wants to deal with you he can make you into what you could never in your wildest dreams have conceived that you would ever become and the only thing that God is asking of you is your willingness you can become a leader you can become a holy person you can graduate in the school of sanctification God gives you that opportunity once you commit yourself to him the horizons are so wide and the possibilities are ginormous but you must come to the point of admitting I am totally unworthy I cannot fight anymore I'm clinging on you on your gospel I'm clinging to the old rugged cross of your son who now is my savior let us pray I say this thoughtfully measuring my words I do believe that something of what was said this evening is for a certain category of people here and it needs a response for this place itself could and can and maybe has become a penial but you could go away still fighting still refusing to surrender and what you need to do is to confess your need of God boxed in behind in front and at the side there's no room for maneuver but when God has got you clinging to him he has maneuvered you into the position where you can cope with what went behind and what is here now and what lies on in the future for your step into tomorrow and next week knowing the presence of God like Jacob limping with his divine companion the path of the just to be followed as a shining light which shines more and more into the perfect day accept his grace confess your need receive his forgiveness and all the people of God said Amen let's go to an old hymn Jesus you lover of my soul other refuge have I none hangs my helper soul on thee leave or leave me not alone still support and comfort me all my trust on thee is stayed all my help from thee I bring cover my defenseless head with the shadow of thy wing plenteous grace with thee is found grace to cover all my sin let the healing streams abound make and keep me pure within 372 let's do it Jesus you lover of my soul other refuge have I none leave or leave me not alone leave or leave me not alone still support and comfort me all my trust on thee is stayed all my help from thee I bring cover my defenseless head with the shadow of thy wing plenteous grace with thee is found let the healing streams abound