Sermon on Jacob wrestling with God - October 20th, 2019

Have you ever been in a situation where you didn’t know where to turn? You’ve analyzed and struggled; thought about all the options, sought advice from wise friends and . . . still you feel paralyzed?

Perhaps you have struggled with a personal faith issue.  You’ve looked at passages in the bible, reached out to mentors, and . . .

You are exhausted from praying.  

You’ve asked God

Pleaded with God

Yelled at God

And you feel silence.

IS ANYBODY UP THERE LISTENING TO ME??????

Maybe you have felt a tug, a gentle whisper that God is wanting you to do something.

Maybe you’ve been beaten over the head with a bat as God is INSISTING that you go somewhere, take some action.  DO SOMETHING.
And you’re just . . . not . . . interested!

Perhaps you have found yourself with nothing to say.

You’ve prayed and prayed and, you don’t know what to pray for anymore.

If ANY of these situations sound familiar – you’re in good company.

You’ve been wrestling with God!

Let’s look at this story of Jacob.

Younger son. Mom’s favorite – Dad liked the older twin – Esau, the macho man.  It is said that he wrestled, if you will, with Esau, that he was clinging to Esau’s heel when they were being born.

Get’s Esau to sell his birthright to Jacob for some food.

At Mom’s direction, steals the Blessing that was meant for Esau.  And then flees.

Struggles with his father-in-law Laban, cause he’s in love with Rachel.  Leah becomes his first wife (Laban’s older daughter), and he has to work even longer for Rachel to become his wife too.

He lives his life.  And here, as he is older, Jacob’s decided to return to the homeland.  

What will he find?

Will Esau STILL be angry, ready enough to kill him for all Jacob did to him?

There is, perhaps, fear in his heart.

But he is a wise man.  

He sends everything he has – his wives, children, flocks, all his possessions, across the river – to Esau’s land – and is left alone.

And then, in his fear, with no comfort – all alone – he has an exhausting night.

He wrestles with an angel – whom he believes is God himself.

Life is like that sometimes.  We bargain. We barter. We challenge. We live. And then, we come up to a point where we think:

Maybe I can go back. Maybe I can make amends. Maybe I can go home.

But will they accept me?  As I am?  Warts and all?

And then, in our fear, we pray.  

In Western culture and even in our churches, we celebrate wealth, power, strength, confidence, prestige, and victory. 

We despise and fear weakness, failure, and doubt. 

Though we know that a measure of vulnerability, fear, discouragement, and depression come with normal lives, we tend to view these as signs of failure or even a lack of faith. 

However, we also know that in real life, naïve optimism and the glowing accolades of glamour and success are a recipe for discontent and despair. 

Sooner or later, the cold, hard realism of life catches up with most of us. The story of Jacob pulls us back to reality.

Frederick Buechner, one the most read authors by Christian audiences, characterizes Jacob’s divine encounter at the Jabbok River as

 the “magnificent defeat of the human soul at the hands of God.” 

It’s in Jacob’s story we can easily recognize our own elements of struggle: fears, darkness, loneliness, vulnerabilities, empty feelings of powerlessness, exhaustion, and relentless pain.

In the end, Jacob does what we all must do. 

He confronts his failures, his weaknesses, his sins, all the things that are hurting him . . . 

and faces God.

Jacob wrestled with God all night. It was an exhausting struggle that left him crippled. 

It was only after he came to grips with God 

and ceased his struggling, 

realizing that he could not go on without Him, 

that he received God’s blessing .

As Christians, despite our trials and tribulations, our strivings in this life are never devoid of God’s presence, 

and His blessing inevitably follows the struggle, which can sometimes be messy and chaotic. 

Real growth experiences always involve struggle and pain.

Jon Bloom, Will You Wrestle with God? Writes:

What do you really need from God right now? What blessing do you want from him? How badly do you want it?

There are times when God only releases his blessings on us after a season of prolonged and even painful wrestling with him.

God even afflicted Jacob with a debilitating injury. 

This had the effect of making Jacob even more vulnerable to Esau, 

forcing Jacob’s faith to more fully rest on God and not himself. 

If necessary, God will cause us to limp to increase our faith.

When God calls us to wrestle with him, there’s always more going on than we first understand and God always uses it to transform us for good.

Do Not Let God Go Until He Blesses You!

God will meet you in your anguish, fear, and uncertainty. 

But he may not meet you in the way you expect or desire. 

He may show up looking at first like your adversary, inciting you to wrestle with him.

If so, remember Jacob. 

There are multiple blessings in the wrestling. 

You may not need soft words of comfort,

 you may not need to be left alone with your thoughts, 

you may not need sleep, 

you may not even need a healthy hip! 

What you need is God’s blessing!

When you wrestle with God, you are already in his arms, which is where God wanted you in the first place!