We’ll be looking at the life of Jacob and God’s faithfulness this morning as we prepare for the reading of God’s word. If you please join with me in prayer. Bless a Triune Lord in your great and kind providence. All holy scriptures were written and preserved for our instruction. We ask that you give us grace to hear them proclaim this day, that you would strengthen our souls with the fullness of their divine teaching. Keep us from pride in their reverence, and may it please you to guide us in the deep things of your heavenly wisdom, and from your great mercy, that you would lead us by your word into everlasting life. And this we ask through Jesus Christ, our Lord and savior. Amen. Genesis 32: 22. The same night he, Jacob, arose, and he took his two wives, his two female servants, his eleven children, and crossed the four of the Jabbuk. He took them and sent them across the stream and everything else that he had. And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hipsocket, and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrest with him.
Then he said, Let me go for the day has broken. But Jacob said, I will not let you go unless you bless me. He said to him, What is your name? He said, Jacob. Then he said, Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God with men, and have prevailed. ‘ Then Jacob asked him, Please tell me your name. ‘ He said, Why is it that you ask my name? ‘ And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the name of the place, ‘Denial, ‘ saying, ‘For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered. The sun rose upon him, and as he passed renewal, limping because of his hip. ‘ Therefore, to this day, the people of Israel do not eat the sinew of the thigh that is on the hipsocket, because he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip on the sinew of the thigh. The word of the Lord. The life of Jacob was made for a mini-series. It has absolutely everything in it. You have battling twins, parental favoritism, an elaborate deception to trick Isaac, his father, running from his brother, fearing his life, meeting the girl of his dreams, an elaborate deception to trick Jacob, warring lives, a desperate flight to get away from his father-in-law, a desperate fight with an unknown assailant in the night, reconciling with his brother, his son Joseph with a coat of many colors, losing his son Joseph to the hand of the other sons, getting his son back and moving to Egypt.
Who wouldn’t want to binge on this? We’re going to walk through some of these highlights, focusing on Chapter 32 and Jacob wrestling with God. It’s one of the most enigmatic and mysterious accounts in the Bible. What we will see is that Jacob finds that his greatest problem in his life is not what he thought it was. His greatest struggle is with God. And then we see that he’s actually crippled with a blessing How often in our life we are so sure of what the main problem is. We often have a name for that problem, or we like to talk to other people about that problem. It might be a person. It might be something out there that we think is our enemy. All along, we come to realize it’s been God. Because the Lord is our highest and greatest good, our very first priority, we must learn to see through the struggles of our lives all of our life from this vantage point. What we thought or what we see throughout the Bible is just how relational God is. He didn’t just send us a book of principles and abstract thoughts. He’s entered into his creation and he walks with people that he knows by name.
From Genesis 3: 15, we’ve already mentioned that the first proclamation of the gospel. There the Lord has set in motion his plan of redemption for humanity. And this plan is woven into the lives of his people that he calls by name. Here, too, we begin to understand the beginning of our own struggles. Will I be crippled with the blessing of knowing my God? Can’t I just keep God at a safe distance? He does his thing, I do my thing, and we just go about business as usual. And along with Jacob, we hear the clear answer is, no, no, you can’t. You can’t keep God at a distance. And last week I mentioned how Abraham, who was promised the land as far as he could see, descendants more than he could number, he died with only one son of promise, and the only land in his possession was a burial plot. And that was it. And then the story is taken up once more in the life of his grandson, who seems to be anything but reputable. The life of Isaac is mostly skipped over. Jacob becomes the next great narrative in the Book of Genesis.
His life brings together the themes of election and conflict in the life of a believer. We see from the start that Jacob’s life is scandalous. There are many things about it, again, that not commend itself. Back in Genesis 25, Rebecca is about to give birth to two twins who’ve been struggling in her womb. The first born is Esa, and the second is Jacob, who’s holding on to Esa’s heel as he comes out. The name Jacob has that meaning of supplanter, one who grasped. It has a connotation of cheating in some way. A strange way to name your kids. Like calling somebody larcony or depressia. But Jacob carries with it because of his grasping at his birth. While this was taking place, Isaac had inquired of the Lord about this. He was told that two nations are in Rebekah’s womb. One would be stronger than the other, and the older would serve the younger. Like Isaac, the younger son is the son of promise. These two brothers are nothing alike. Esa is the manly man, and Jacob is a quiet man. One day, coming in from a long hunt, Esa is absolutely famished, famished and by his own account, ready to collapse.
Jacob has some stew, and Esa would like some. But Jacob demands Esa sell his birthright to him in exchange for some stew. Now, the birthright refers to the majority of the inheritance given to the older son. This is an exchange that Jacob is demanding before he gives some to his brother. A little later, as Isaac thinks that he’s nearing death, Isaac is old, hard of hearing, difficulty in seeing, and he wants to bless Esa before he dies. Rebekah overhears this, and she comes up with a plan of her own. She tells Jacob to pretend to be Esa so that he can get the blessing instead. And so Jacob goes ahead. He deceives his father. He gets the blessing. And hardly before he leaves, Esa comes back and everything blows up. Jacob gets Esa’s birthright and his fatherly blessing. Now, for us, that’s That seems strange. How do you get something by fraud? Doesn’t that negate it? Contracts, obligations, promises. If you’re fraudulent, it should just throw this out. And why can’t he just give another blessing? What we see is this isn’t the same for us because this is God’s covenantal people whom God has promised to bless.
To be a blessing to the nation. It’s difficult for us to fully wrap our mind around this, this blessing that God has intended for Jacob. Is given to Jacob through deceit. It’s catastrophic for Esa, for Isaac. We read in Genesis 26, As soon as Esa heard the words of his father saying, ‘I’m sorry, son, Jacob is going to be blessed, ‘ he cried out with exceeding great and a bitter cry, saying, Father, bless me also. But Isaac said, ‘Your brother came deceitfully and has taken away your blessing. Jesus. I said, Is he not rightly named Jacob? For he has cheated me these two times. Esa hates his brother. He plots to kill him after Isaac dies, and Rebecca gets wind of this, and she sends Jacob far off to Uncle Laban. Jacob is the son of promise. And so far, his life is a scandal. And along the way, While he’s sleeping, the Lord comes and he visits Jacob in a vision. And Jacob sees this ladder from heaven to earth and angels ascending and descending to him. And the Lord recounts to Jacob the promise that he made with his grandfather, Abraham. Then the Lord says this to Jacob.
He said, In you, in your offspring, shall all the families of the earth be blessed? Behold, I am with you. I will keep you wherever you go. I will bring you back to this land, for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you. That seems so out of place. Jacob, the deceitful son, is blessed abundantly by God. Now, over the next 20 years, Jacob has to wrestle with his crafty and deceiving father-in-law, Laban, who makes life hard for him. He accumulates a large family, lots of wealth in cattle and sheep. And then it’s time to go, and Jacob tries to flee in stealth from Labern. And God is the one who has to intervene to get him out. God comes to Jacob in a dream again, and he says, It’s time for you to go, to go home. And now loaded up with all his abundant possessions, Jacob heads back home. But the one major problem he still has to contend with is his brother Esa. For Jacob, it has always been about his older brother. From the womb, this is the one he’s contended with. By seconds, Esa Esa is born first, and all the cultural rights are given to him.
It seems so strange. They’re twins. Just seconds separating them, but the older brother wins. He gets the inheritance. Esa was the favorite of his father. He was the epitome of masculine Judaism. Everyone looked up to Esa, a manly man. And Esa hates him. He wants to kill him. And there’s nothing that Jacob can do about it. The struggle has always been with Esa. And from this scandalous life that God is promising to bless, we also see how Jacob ultimately is justified by faith alone. Nothing he does to earn this. Team Jacob heads back home and he sends out messengers to go to his brother, problem number one. And in Genesis 32, he said, The messengers returned to Jacob and they said, ‘We came to your brother Esa, and he’s coming to meet you. ‘ With 400 men. ‘ That’s generally not a good thing. That’s a large army of people for this time period. Jacob is a family. He has nothing like this. The man who has sworn to kill him is coming to meet him. It says, Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed. Understatement. He knows what’s coming. And he quickly devises a plan to split all of his possessions into two groups, hoping if he attacks this group, at least this one will be spared.
And then he has this idea. He sends three ways, three droves of goats and sheep, cattle, camels, and donkeys. And each one’s to go ahead when they meet Esa, he’s supposed to say, These are yours from your servant Jacob. He’s trying to appease his brother. And in a sense, he gives back to Esa the fruit of the birth right in these gifts of appeasement. And in Genesis 32, we also hear Jacob’s prayer to the Lord, O Lord, who said to me, Return to your country and to your kindred that I may do you good. Please deliver me from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esoth, for I fear him that he may come and attack me and the mothers with their children. But you said, ‘I will surely do you good. I will make your offspring as the sand of the sea which cannot be numbered for the multitude. ‘ And if you want to put that in summary, God, I’m in trouble because of you. You’re the one who told me to do this. Can I trust you to be faithful to your word? Will you keep your promise? Will you deal with the main problem of my life who is my brother Esa?
And it’s now into the night. He sent his family and everything over the stream of Jabbuk. He’s all alone preparing for this confrontation with his brother. And then we get, again, one of the strangest, enigmatic, and mysterious accounts in scripture. A man attacks him, wrest with him until daybreak. What on Earth is happening? In Hebrew, the word for wrestle sounds like the name of Jacob and the River Jabbat. One commentator put it this way, the wrestling, you could almost say he Jacobed him. It’s an intentional play on words. He’s wrestling, he’s Jacobing in the night with this man. We’re meant to see a connection. The two are equally matched. Neither is gaining over the other as they wrestle on towards dawn. In verse 25, When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip pocket, and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrest with him. Now, this has been an equal match, except for the man just goes with his finger, and he disables Jacob. And then he says to him, Let me go for the day has broken. Why does he need to go before daylight?
Presumably, it’s so that Jacob doesn’t see him. Jacob has finally figured something out. I’m not fighting an ordinary man. Probably after the finger touching the hip went out. This isn’t adding up. But Jacob’s a quick study. I will not let you go unless you bless me. Again, the importance of blessing in the Book of Genesis. You’re like, How How did he connect those dots? His life has been one about trying to get blessing. It’s strange to us that he would ask for it. What did he understand? And then the man, he says to him, What is your name? The man says to Jacob, Jacob. And then the man says, Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed. The name change is significant. Israel has the connotation of striving with God. Jacob has been striving with everyone in his life. He’s striven with his brother, he’s striven with his uncle Laban. He’s got trouble at home domestically. He’s been a constant striving. And now he sees the Lord has been at the center of all of it. Jacob asks him for his name, but the man only gives him a question in response.
And we’re going to see this request once more in the life of Moses, who asked to see God. In Exodus 33, Moses tells the Lord, Please show me your glory. And there the Lord says, I will make my goodness pass before you. I will proclaim before you my name, the Lord, and I will be gracious to whom I be gracious. I will show mercy upon whom I show mercy, but you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live. These two redemptive acts are tied together. In both of them, God’s generational faithfulness comes to the forefront. He fulfills his promises, even as the scope of the covenant is expanding from a man to a small family, to a tribe, to now a nation. And God’s revelation is increasing. In Genesis 32: 29, He says, And there he blessed him. God blesses him. Jacob called the name of the place Peniel because I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been delivered. Peniel means face of God. Jacob is connecting these thoughts. They said, The sun rose upon him as he passed Peniel, which is this is different spelling, limping because of his hip.
All of his life, one way or another, Jacob Jacob was fighting his brother. And as he’s poised to enter into the promised land to come home, it is the figure of his brother that looms large on his horizon. But it’s the Lord who contends with him. Hoseia 12 tells us that he strove with the angel of the Lord, the same difference. It’s the Lord who’s been struggling with his entire life. The amazing promise is given about Jacob to Isaac at his birth, but Isaac chooses to ignore it. The Son of promise is not hearing this for the next Son of Promise. And so Jacob, the on a promise in order to get it, he’s going to have to take up his own cause because obviously the Lord is not doing anything about it. Later for Jacob, I meet the girl of my dreams and I get cheated. God, how could you have done this? How could you let this happen? My father-in-law is constantly cheating me. My life is hard. This is so unfair. If you follow Jacob’s prayers to the Lord, he starts out by saying early on, Oh, Lord, the God of my fathers.
There’s a separation between how he speaks of the Lord. There’s a third person. In his encounter with the Lord at Bethel on his way out of the promised land. There’s a rather mercenary prayer. There he says, If God will be with me, if God, not you, if God will be with me and keep me in this way that I go and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear so that I come again to my Father’s house in peace, then the Lord shall be my God. I will do if. Very mercenary prayer about this. This is how he enters into his life of ongoing struggle. And yet at the end of his life, when he God says, Joseph’s son, we hear him say this, The God before whom my father, Abraham and Isaac, walked, the God who has been my shepherd all of my life long to this day. This transformation, this change of heart that takes place Because Jacob thought his greatest struggle was his brother, but that’s not what it was. His greatest struggle was God capturing his heart. That was his greatest struggle. He needed the Lord of glory to capture his heart.
And in Genesis 33, when Esa finally meets him, this great moment where you’re thinking a Cain and Abel murder story, something else unfolds. All this fear, all this desperation, all this striving, all this contending. And we read in verse 4, But Esa ran to meet him, embraced him, fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept. That wasn’t what he was expecting. In many ways, Esa behaves more righteously than Jacob. And what we see is Jacob is justified by faith alone. God has given to him the promise, and from an outward perspective, he’s not very deserving of it. At the end of Jacob’s life in Genesis 48, he’s blessing the sons of Joseph, the two sons of Joseph, Ephraim and Nasser. And he does this with his hands. He swaps them. And in doing so, he blesses the younger first before the elder. Joseph said, Hey, hey. Joseph said, I know, I know. It’s okay. That’s how easy it was for the Lord to accomplish his will. Jacob had a life of learning to trust God and not his own efforts. That the Son of promise would receive the promise because God promised to give it to him.
He had a life to learn this. It’s the very act in the Book of Hebrews that Joseph is commended, I mean, that Jacob is commended for. He’s commended for this blessing of the two sons. We read in 1 Corinthians 1, But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing the things that are so that no human might boast in the presence of God. Jacob was not going to boast in God’s presence because God chooses the weak and the foolish to accomplish his purposes. Jacob was a type of the son of promise, as was Isaac. While Jacob wrest with God and he won by losing, another would have to come to take the weight of the sin of the world on his shoulders, who also would have to win by losing. A willing son goes to the cross to bear the sins of the world so that we could experience the blessing of God. That’s the good news of the gospel.
This is what Jacob in his private and personal story is connected to, this greater redemptive work that God has promised from Genesis 3 that culminate finally in the end in Revelation with Jesus at the center of history. And what we see with this as well that when we wrestle with God, we often are going to be wounded in order to receive a blessing. It is the wounding, it’s the suffering, it’s the difficult places that God takes us, that we find the blessing, and nobody wants to be there. Nobody wants that phone call, nobody wants that diagnosis, and And there, the wounding of God becomes so crystal clear. What am I struggling with? What is it that I am contending with? I tell you, in three decades of pastoral ministry, I have had so many people come over the years and say, The greatest threat facing Christianity is, and it’s exactly what you think it would be, quatrodesianism. Oh, those followers of Firmoseus. Not ringing a bell? How about the Borgers? They were a problem. Now, the Vikings were, too, if you were in Lindisfarne. You heard of the Vikings, but probably not the rest. If you lived at that time, it was a problem.
It’s not that your problems aren’t problems. It’s not that they’re not things out there. They’re real. But you don’t know what those are anymore because the main problem is not those things. The main problem is God capturing your heart, you surrendering to him in the of those difficulties. That’s where God wants to take us. Those problems are going to shift and change. Just wait long enough, something new is coming around the horizon. It’s so easy to get distracted by The problem. The problem takes us off of Jesus. The problem we name, it’s my spouse, it’s my kids, it’s my job, it’s my health, it’s my fill in the blank. It’s those people out there. It’s those people who think this way, those who are doing these things. While they could all be problems, to be sure, the main problem is God capturing your heart in the midst of them. What is God doing with you in that moment to show you the struggle ultimately is with him being your greatest, your highest good, the priority of your life? And he’s using all of those things to take us to that place to receive that blessing, that blessing of Christ, even to the point where he wounds and afflicks us.
Because he has first wounded and afflicted his son, that we would receive his righteousness, his justification given to us by faith alone. We’ve done nothing to deserve it. That is the good news of Christianity. That is the message that we get to proclaim and to live and to joyfully go into life in the world around us. It should lift our boat. It should fill our sails with divine wind. That whatever is there that we can come, and yes, there’s a maturity, yes, there’s a growth, but being able to come and say, God, you have been faithful. I’ve seen your faithfulness all through the lives of your people, and Lord, you have been faithful to me. And I see that as I look to Jesus, the saints of the Old Testament, looking forward, all of us looking back to the person and work of Jesus Christ, the Son of promise, who accomplished his Father’s will for us. That everything is culminating and rushing to that point and is now moving away from that. Our greatest struggle is God capturing our hearts. Him, trying to live with him at a distance, trying to control and put the parameters around our life of what we think is what we deserve or ought to be.
Allow the Lord to come in and just to mess all that up. Because the greater end to his goal is that you would continue to be made in the image and likeness of Jesus. And that, brothers and sisters, is our greatest and our highest good by a good and a kind and faithful God who keeps his promises. Pray with me. Father Almighty, we do thank you. We thank you that you have been with us every step of the way. And Lord, we do ask that you would forgive us how easy it is to see circumstances and question your goodness, to question your faithfulness. And Father, we ask that you would forgive us, or we have done that. And Lord, we would pray that you would continue to strengthen us, to look beyond our own resources, Father, to see you. Lord, that you would open the eyes of the blind, that you would unstop the ears of the deaf. Father, that we would know you, that you would capture our hearts. We pray and ask this all in the blessed name of Jesus, our risen savior. Amen.
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