pilgrim people

Wrestling with God or Faith on Trial

Leaving Haran and Laban behind him, Jacob probably thought his biggest troubles were behind him. After twenty years of being swindled, cheated and ripped off by his uncle, he was finally free. But now, Jacob faced an even more threatening problem: his brother Esau was coming to meet him with 400 men. His situation seems to go from bad to worse. And now, when he needs comfort more than ever, he finds himself in a wrestling match.

After all the promises he had received from God, it probably seemed very strange to Jacob that he was experiencing these struggles, battles, and hardships. The same is true for us. Often, Christians make the mistake of thinking that once they come to faith in Christ, the battle is over. What is often misunderstood is that the battle has just begun! The world, the flesh, and the devil are no longer your masters, they are now your sworn enemies. But what is very strange is that throughout our lifelong pilgrimage to the Promised Land, we sometimes find ourselves wrestling not with our enemies, but with God himself.

Maybe you have been wrestling with God lately. You may be in a real spiritual crisis in your life right now, feeling as though your faith is being tested in ways that it never has before. Will you be victorious, or will you fail? And what does the Gospel have to say to those of us who find ourselves in a wrestling match with God? That is what we want to consider this morning from Genesis 32. So, think with me about this episode in redemptive history and what it means for us. I want you to notice three things in particular: 1) Jacob’s Struggle; 2) Jacob’s Success; 3) Jacob’s Savior.

I. Jacob’s Struggle

Now, keep in mind the setting here. Jacob is in a tough spot. His brother Esau – whom he ripped off twenty years earlier and from whom he had to flee for his life – is coming to meet him with 400 men. Verse 7 says that “Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed.” His worst nightmare was coming true. Jacob knows that he is vulnerable and defenseless before Esau. He has no army. All he is really armed with is his wits, his physical strength, and the promise of the Lord. So, he splits up his camp into two, hoping to increase his family’s chance of survival. He then calls upon the name of the Lord.

This is what we heard earlier in the chapter. Jacob addresses the Lord with the same covenantal language that the Lord used to reveal himself: v.9: “O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, O LORD who said to me, ‘Return to your country and to your kindred, that I may do you good.’”

Then he recognizes and confesses his own unworthiness before the Lord: “I am not worthy of the least of all the deeds of steadfast love [hesed] and all the faithfulness that you have shown to your servant, for with only my staff I crossed this Jordan, and now I have become two camps.” Jacob had lived by faith in God’s promise for twenty years now, and he had come to understand his own unworthiness more and more over that time. The result of one who has true faith in the promises of God is that it produces gratitude and a profound sense of one’s unworthiness. This is the transformation that we are able to witness taking place in Jacob.

Only after he invokes the Lord properly and makes confession to him does he then bring his petition to him: “Please deliver me from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I fear him, that he may come and attack me, the mothers with the children.” As the servant and vassal in the covenant, Jacob cries out to the Lord, the suzerain of the covenant for protection and salvation.

He then appeals to the Lord’s promise: “But you said, ‘I will surely do you good, and make your offspring as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude.’” As we heard before, God’s promises to us are the title-deeds of our hope. Jacob appeals to that title-deed and bases his future on it.

But notice that Jacob’s deliverance came in a very unexpected way. In v.24 we read that “Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day.” As heirs of the covenant, we not only have the privilege of crying out to the Lord and asking him for help, we are commanded to do so! The Lord tells us to “ask, seek, and knock,” to “cast all your anxieties upon him,” as the apostle Peter tells us, “because he cares for you.” The Lord tells his people to come to him, believe his promises, and ask for deliverance. And yet, that DOES NOT mean that the Lord will deliver us in the way that WE expect him to, or in the way that WE think is best. The Lord’s providence is full of surprises for us. And it often doesn’t make any sense to us at all.

Jacob didn’t pray for a wrestling match. He didn’t cry out to the Lord, “O God of my father Abraham and my father Isaac, please give me a sparring partner so I can have good fight until the break of dawn.” No, he asked for deliverance. He asked for the necks of his family to be spared. He was anxiously waiting for was a messenger to arrive and tell him that Esau wasn’t coming. He was hoping that the Lord would stop Esau’s army, perhaps send a larger army to attack it. Jacob was waiting for a change in news. But instead, the Lord sends him Friday Night Smackdown! It’s really bizarre when you think about it.

But that is just the sort of unexpected thing we see the Lord doing over and over again in the record of redemptive history. And it is the same sort of thing every Christian has experienced in his or her life at one time or another. You pray to the Lord and ask him for deliverance, and he answers by sending something your way that doesn’t seem to make much sense. When he does that sort of thing, it usually isn’t an easy experience. It is a real struggle. Your situation seems to go from bad to worse, and you find yourself in anxiety, fighting and wrestling. And it might seem as though the Lord is nowhere to be found. You wonder, “Where is he? When is he going to answer my cry?” But what you haven’t noticed is that he has already shown up; that he is already there with you, only in a way that you did not expect. In fact, it is actually HE with whom you are wrestling.

In Ephesians 6, the apostle Paul tells us that as Christians, “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against…spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” There, he is speaking in the context of spiritual warfare, which is fought with the armor of biblical doctrine – knowing what we believe and why we believe it – so that we can stand and fight against the schemes of the devil as he seeks to twist the truth with false doctrine.

And there is also the life-long struggle we experience against our own flesh, against our own sinful desires that “wage ware against your soul,” as the apostle Peter says.

But there is also another kind of wrestling with which we are sometimes involved, a wrestling match with God. Calvin says in his commentary on this passage: “[This passage is designed] to represent all the servants of God as wrestlers; because the Lord exercises them with various kinds of conflicts. Moreover, it is not said that Satan, or any mortal man, wrestled with Jacob, but God himself: to teach us that our faith is tried by him; and whenever we are tempted, our business to truly with him, not only because we fight under his auspices, but because he, as an antagonist, descends into the arena to try our strength.”

You see, there was far more to Jacob’s situation here than met his eye. This wasn’t about Esau coming to get Jacob; this was about Jacob’s faith on trial.

Whenever we go through suffering, it always feels like the whole world has come to a halt. But in reality, the Lord is still in control as much as ever. He has been in control since the beginning of time, and will be in control for all eternity. The evil sent upon us in this vale of tears is something that he has allowed in his sovereignty. It is never pleasant, of course. It hurts. And it doesn’t seem to make sense. But the Lord’s ways are not our ways, and he sees what we cannot. And though he may allow us to walk through the valley of the shadow of death where it is dark and thorny, his goodness and promises to us never change.

He may descend into the arena with us, to test our faith, to strip us of everything that we can grasp, so that the only thing left for us to grasp is the Lord himself. We are finally brought to that point where we can truly say with the psalmist, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.” (Ps 73.25)

And this was the irony of Jacob’s success…

II. Jacob's Success

We read in v.25 that “When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him.”

This mysterious man was the very Angel of the Lord, that is, a pre-Incarnate appearance of the Son, appearing as a man. It was not that Jacob was stronger than God; rather, the Lord deliberately accommodated himself to Jacob’s abilities in order that Jacob would continue to press on in the fight and continue his desperate and persistent struggle for hours. He allows Jacob to wrestle with him through the night and do what comes most naturally to him, which was to rest on his own strength rather than the Lord’s.

And it’s just at the point where Jacob seems to have victory that the Lord reaches out and touches his hip, and down he goes. Jacob is injured in the conflict and made weak. He has nothing left to grasp except the Lord himself. He says, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” And so, the Lord blessed him. He said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.”

Jacob’s victory was a strange one. He was successful only after he was rendered lame and helpless. As Ed Clowney put it, “Jacob’s victory was not a conquest. He had not mastered the Angel of the Lord. Lame and helpless, he could only cling to the One who had laid hold of him. His victory was a victory of faith.”

THIS is the kind of success that the Lord brings us in life! It is a success that looks very backward to the world. It is not success in power and money and all the material things that are here today and gone tomorrow. The Lord may bless you in this life with those type of things, or he may not. But that really does not matter. All that matters is that we run our race looking to Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith.

The success that the Lord is interested in for us is not health and wealth in this temporary life, but a success in a purified faith that results in his praise and glory. He is not interested in our temporary happiness so much as our eternal holiness. He has “predestined us to be conformed to the image of his Son.” That means that the pattern of our life is to be like Christ’s: suffering now, glory later.

It means that in this life we called to the way of the cross, to a success that comes through suffering, through being brought low, through being humbled and stripped of everything and crippled, so that what the one thing that matters most in us is purified and refined.

Peter says that we are, “for a little while…grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith – more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire – may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”

We forget all the time, don’t we? We forget that, as human beings, we have been made in the image of God for his praise and glory and honor. Our tendency is to think that we have been made for ourselves, for our own praise and glory and honor; that we exist for our weekend, for our free-time, for our interests, for our futile little dreams and plans in this temporary life.

The truth is, we exist for one reason and one reason only: for the glory and pleasure of God. That is why we have been created and why we have been redeemed. And if we are members and heirs of God’s covenant and believers in his promise, then we are in his school of discipleship from which we never graduate in this life. And hopefully, by God’s mercy and grace, we are learning in this school all the time, even though our flesh detests it and our faith shrivels back from it. God is nevertheless constantly calling us out of ourselves, telling us what is so opposite to the world’s message. He says to us, as he said to the apostle Paul when he pleaded with the Lord to remove the thorn from his flesh, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness.”

He tells us not to rely on our own strength, not to turn inward and focus upon our feelings and personal experience; but to look away from ourselves and rely upon his promises; to persevere in the way of hope, and to continue laying hold of him, who has laid hold of us and promised that he will not leave us nor forsake us, nor let anyone snatch us out of his hand.

Success comes not from relying on ourselves, not from turning inward and finding empowerment from within; but in humbling ourselves before the Lord and trusting in his promises. That is exactly what the Lord told the tribes of Jacob centuries later when he sent the prophet Hosea to them and reminded them of their forefather’s strange success: “He strove with the angel and prevailed; he wept and sought his favor.” (Hosea 12.4)

Sadly, they didn’t listen to the prophets. They just continued to do what they thought was right in their own eyes. The Lord came to struggle with them, this time in as the fully incarnate God-man, Word-made-flesh. But for many, there was no fight at all, no clinging to the Lord, no seeking his blessing; they just weren’t interested. And for them, though they were Jacob’s descendents by blood, they were not Jacob’s descendents by faith, for they knew nothing of Jacob’s Savior. Yet, it was precisely this Savior with whom Jacob was brought face to face…

III. Jacob’s Savior

This mysterious man renamed Jacob. He would now be known as “Israel,” which means “Prince of God” or “one who strives/fights with God.” Once again, Jacob was reminded that his life was not his own, and that his life was part of a much larger story.

But who was this mysterious man who possessed the authority to change Jacob’s name like this? Jacob realized that this strange visitor was the same Person who appeared to him in his vision at Bethel. The same Person who appeared to his father Isaac and his father Abraham before him. He had been wrestling with the Lord himself. Suddenly, his fear of Esau wasn’t so great. Limping on his leg, he called the place “Peniel… ‘For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered.’”

Jacob was brought face to face with God…and so have we. John tells us at the beginning of his Gospel that “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.” And Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 4.6: “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone into our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

We know where we may find God. Not in dreams, visions or spiritual journeys, but in the Person and Work of Jesus Christ. For in him, God is on display before us! He is the testimony of God’s love for us, of God’s acceptance of us, and of all God’s unchangeable promises to us. He is the One of whom this whole passage testifies!

Much more fearsome than Jacob’s struggle was the struggle of the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ struggled in the Garden of Gethsemane when he wrestled with the Father over his mission. He knew he faced great danger, not the danger of a 400 man army, but the danger of the wrath of God being poured out on him. He was to became a foul and detestable thing when our sin imputed was imputed to him. Like Jacob, he cried out to God for deliverance: “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. ”

Yet, for Jesus, there was no answer from heaven. There was no response. The Father left him hanging…literally! So much so that that Jesus felt the abandonment of his Father and cried out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me.”

But you see, loved ones, because Jesus cried out those words, we will NEVER have to cry them out! It might feel at times as if God is nowhere to be found, nowhere to be seen. It might feel at times as if God has forsaken us. We are in crisis. Our situation has gone from bad to worse. We find ourselves wrestling and struggling. But that is precisely when we are to go to Peniel! We know where to find God: in the Person and Work of Jesus Christ!

Jesus could not make that humble confession that Jacob made, “I am not worthy,” because he WAS worthy! He had no sin to speak of! He was the only worthy man and worthy servant of the Lord. And he went to the cross as a righteous man to be condemned and face hell for the sins of others. THAT is your guarantee that God will never leave you nor forsake you. THAT is your guarantee that nothing in this life can separate you from his love. That guarantee comes to you ONLY in and through him and what Jesus accomplished for you in history!

And Jesus – the greater Jacob and true Israel – was successful in his mission. He did not merely have his hip dislocated; rather, he was crushed under the weight of God’s judgment. “He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

Do you know this Savior? Have you ever wrestled with him? Or do you refuse to step into the arena with him? Run to him now while his arms are open to you. Run to him and know his mercy and forgiveness. Run to him, limp, crawl if you have to! Go to him and have your weak faith strengthened.

Dear Christian, you may be in a wrestling match even now. Look away from yourself and look to Jesus, who loved you and gave himself for you. Look to him and continue your journey to the promised land and the inheritance that is yours in heaven. Amen.