Focal Passage: Genesis 32:24-32
When a Bible passage becomes a mirror into your own life, it’s time to sit up and pay attention. I read the story of Jacob in Genesis 32 this week, finding that I identified all too well with him.
How often have I tried to cling to control or run away when facing some hard truth? How often have I simply trusted in my own cleverness more than I trusted in God’s providential care?
Jacob’s story tells me there comes a time when God no longer lets us keep doing things our way. There comes a time when we find ourselves wrestling with a loving God who refuses to let us stay the same.
I wonder if, like me, you can see yourself mirrored in Jacob’s life. Think about it.
*****
Jacob stood alone on the bank of the Jabbok River on a night that probably felt darker than any he had known.
Over the course of the day, he had sent out three separate caravans loaded with lavish gifts, sending them across the river on a march toward his estranged twin brother Esau. Jacob hoped to placate Esau’s anger for his callous and selfish acts of betrayal some 20 years earlier.
Then, just before sunset, Jacob sent his two wives, his children and the remainder of his possessions to set up camp across the river in expectation of Esau’s arrival the next day.
As his family faded into the night Jacob stayed behind in the darkness trying to devise some novel scheme to get out of the mess he created of his life. One good scheme deserved another in Jacob’s eyes.
As a young man, Jacob tricked a desperately hungry Esau into giving away his birthright as the first-born son in exchange for a bowl of stew. With his financial future secure and with the help of their mother Rebecca, Jacob later duped his blind father Isaac into extending to Jacob the family blessing, which again, rightfully belonged to Esau.
Cheated twice out of his heritage, Esau pledged to kill Jacob as soon as their father died. Rebecca, afraid for Jacob’s life, sent him back to Haran to stay with her brother Laban until things in Canaan cooled down a bit. Rather than deal with the consequences of his actions, Jacob ran.
This escape to Haran began a long, difficult 20-year journey of love, labor and deceit. Laban manipulated Jacob’s love for his daughter Rachel, turning it into 20 years of indentured servanthood. Every time Jacob wanted to return home, Laban found another way of keeping him there.
When it finally appeared that Laban might never let him go, Jacob gathered together his family, his servants and his livestock. In the dead of night, he ran.
Jacob spent his whole life manipulating the circumstances of his life in his favor. Trying to take advantage of every situation to gain the upper hand.
So, that night he stood on the bank of the river…con artist who had been conned, a manipulator who had been manipulated…calculating outcomes that might happen if Esau rejected his gifts. I suspect running away rose to the top of the list. It had been his go-to solution every other time circumstances got the better of him.
Jacob was still scheming with one eye looking toward Esau and the other looking for the best escape route. God had other plans. Before Jacob could face Esau, he had to face God. Before he could run away again, he had a run in with God.
You’ll find the passage in Genesis 32.
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 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 said, “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 humans and have overcome.”
Jacob said, “Please tell me your name.”
But he replied, “Why do you ask my name?” Then he blessed him there. (Genesis 32:24-29)
I don’t want to make it sound like Jacob was a horrible individual. He wasn’t. While he crossed more than one ethical line, there was something inside him that longed for God.
Go back a few chapters in Genesis. Jacob is running as fast as he can to Laban at his mother’s insistence. He’s tired and worn out. The man with a stolen estate has no home in which to sleep. He pulls a flat rock for a pillow and dreams of a stairway to heaven. It’s as if God is saying, “Home may be out of reach right now, but heaven is not. I am here.”
Through his dream God renews with Jacob the covenant he made with his father Isaac and his grandfather Abraham. The land upon which his head rests will be his land and the land for all his descendants. Through his lineage, scripture says, “the people of the world shall be blessed.” Jacob holds on to that promise for two decades.
As Jacob’s wealth increases during his time with Laban, Jacob gives God the glory for every success.
Jacob recognized God’s presence in his life, he just didn’t always trust him. Jacob always felt that if anything good was going to happen, he had to make it happen. He lived up to his name every step of the way… “the heel grabber,” “the grasper,” “the striver.”
God commands Jacob to “return to the land of your fathers” (Genesis 31:3), telling him, “I will be with you.” The closer Jacob gets to the border of Esau’s land, he grows more anxious, worrying about Esau’s retribution.
Jacob didn’t think God was capable on his own of working things out, so he rolled out the gifts. He divided his family and his flock, hoping that one group might escape if Esau attacked the other. He searched through the night for any other advantage that might give him the upper hand.
Jacob left God no other choice. In one of the most understated verses in scripture, a “man wrestled with him until daybreak.”
It’s almost as if Jacob turned to run away again only to be tackled by a man ready to rumble. Theologians debate whether this man was an angel, the pre-incarnate Christ or God himself. As far as Jacob was concerned, “I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.” (Gensis 32:30)
It’s almost laughable when you think about it: God wrestling a man. Yet, God and I have gone more than a few rounds over the years. I suspect you have, too. Each of us at one time or another has wrestled with what we know God is calling us to do.
In addition to his more manipulative traits, Jacob was also clever, resourceful, determined and strong-willed. He was all those things, but he was not yet surrendered. God knew it was time for Jacob to stop conniving, to stop running, so they fought it out in a match that lasted all night.
I don’t know about you, but some of my wrestling matches with God last a lot longer. I can put up a quite the fight when I don’t want to do what God wants me to do. I can find excuses or what I think are pretty valid reasons why I’m right and God is wrong. My ideas always seem better.
Notice this, however. Jacob’s bout with God didn’t last until daybreak because he and God were evenly matched. The prolonged struggle lasted as long as it did because God was exposing Jacob’s stubborn independence.
When we are wrestling God for control of our lives, that fight goes on until we recognize our own stubbornness. It will last until we surrender and call him Lord.
The scripture declares clearly the moment Jacob gave in. As the morning approached, I think he still wanted to run away…to do things his way. At that point, with a touch intended to put an end to Jacob’s resistance, God dislocated his hip. Running was no longer an option. Pastor Adrian Rogers put it this way, “God crippled him to conquer him.”
When Jacob realized he had no choice, he surrendered, wrapping his arms around the ankles of the only one who could make things right.
Here’s the interesting thing to me. One moment Jacob is wrestling against God; the next moment he is clinging to God. Jacob, the man who had stolen the blessing of his father, was now begging for the blessing of the Father God.
When Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me,” it is not defiance, it’s desperation. Jacob quit fighting to win and started depending. Wrestling became an embrace.
In a culture that prizes self-sufficiency and self-reliance, surrender seems a coward’s option. It may well be one’s greatest act of courage. God’s work in us flows best through surrender.
Jacob’s story reflects our own tendency to run from God’s call, conviction or presence. Like Jacob, we are met by God, through circumstances, reflection or divine confrontation. Sometimes, he stops us in our tracks so we can no longer run from him.
Surrender brings transformation.
Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome. (Genesis 32:28)
It’s not saying he outwrestled God. Jacob overcame his own stubbornness, his own self-reliance.
Theologian Frederick Buechner called Jacob’s divine encounter at the Jabbok River the “magnificent defeat of the human soul at the hands of God.” In Jacob’s story we can easily see our own struggles with our desire to take control of our lives. Our failed efforts to find escape from our own fears and vulnerabilities.
Out of these experiences God offers blessing.
In the end, God did what he had to do. He confronted Esau. He grappled all night for what was truly important. When Jacob could wrestle no longer, he surrendered. He clung to God with greater strength than he resisted, realizing that he could not go on without him.
Jacob’s story invites us to ask simple but searching questions: Why am I still wrestling? Where am I still wrestling with God? The blessing came only when Jacob stopped resisting and held on in surrender. The same is true for us.
God meets us in the places we fear most, not to destroy us, but to reshape us. And though surrender may leave us limping, it also leaves us blessed.
Next time you see me, I hope you see me limping.
Thinking Points
Where in my life am I still trying to manage outcomes instead of trusting God?
What fear or unresolved situation keeps me looking for an escape route?
What would it look like for me to stop wrestling with God and start clinging to him?
What new identity or new way of walking might God want me to embrace when I surrender control to him?