The next 4 sermons in our exposition of the book of Genesis will focus on Genesis
32:22-32. Our focus will be on the God who will not leave His chosen children alone in their sin. He will wrestle them down and then He will restore them, and they will be conformed to His will.
OUTLINE
1.
32:22-24 Wrestling with God
2.
32:25 The
Touch of God that Hurts and Heals
3.
32:
26-28 Winning by Losing
4.
32:29-32
Reaching the Place of Blessing
1. WRESTLING WITH GOD (32:22-24)
Jacob, after he has served his uncle Laban for 20 years in a
self- imposed exile (motivated by fear for his brother, Esau) is now on his way
back to the land that God had promised him and his descendants on oath. God had sovereignly chosen Jacob to be the
covenantal head of the chosen seed, from which the Messiah – Jesus, would eventually
be descended according to the flesh (Gen.25:23).
Against
the background of this high calling we
stand amazed to discover that Jacob
is such a poor reflection of his high and holy calling. His sinful
deviousness is the reason why he
spends 20 years in a land
of no promise, and no
spiritual blessing, and under the yoke of
his uncle Laban, who is more than
a match for him when it comes to being
deceitful.
In fact, it almost seems that the plan of God is undone at the hand
of the sin of man. But the God of the Bible surprises us time and again – and
just at the right time. Human sinfulness and evil appears to be capable of undoing God’s work in the world. But
God! The supreme illustration of this
fact is seen on the cross. Just when Satan and his demonic and human agents
thought that they had disposed of Jesus, God raised Him up from the dead. So too it is in the book of Revelation,
Chapter 11. Just when the beast that
rises from the bottomless pit thinks that he has disposed of the two witnesses
(Gospel churches and gospel messengers), they rise from the dead, after 3
½ days. Evil comes close, but it never
ultimately triumphs.
And so, here too we were fearing the worst for Jacob, but God commands His angels concerning him (Psalm 91:11,12)[1].
We learn from the Bible that God allows
human sinfulness to take its course and its time and its toll, BUT it cannot ultimately undo the plan and purpose of God. God
is sovereign, and not man. In the end
God’s will be done and not man’s.
And so we saw in 32:1 that
the angels that ministered to him as he left the promised
land (Gen. 28:10-22), meet him again as he prepares to come back to the
promised land. Right now Jacob, now on his way back to where God wants him to be, wavers between
faith and fear, as he prepares to
meet with Esau. God has more work to do in Jacob, for at this
stage Jacob fears Esau more than God. Jacob needs to be conquered by God.
How God conquers Jacob
Our story begins with the crossing of the river Jabbok (32:22). Jabbok
in Hebrew means “wrestler“[2].
At this river Jacob sends everyone and everything ahead (32:23), and we read that “Jacob was left alone…”. This proved
to be a VERY significant time in Jacob’s life, for it is here that we are told,
“that a man wrestled with him
until the breaking of the day”. This is all very amazing. Jacob wrestles (Hebr. abhaq ) at the river Jabbok
- the “wrestling river”.
The significance of this encounter is that Jacob was left
alone in this wrestling. There are times when we must wrestle alone. There are times when nobody can be with us,
because God has a work to complete in us. He is committed to complete the good work that He has begun in us (Phil.1:6). Before Jacob could enter the land, he needed to be thoroughly
humbled and be made more useful for God’s purposes. In this Jacob needed to be
alone.
What was the work that God needed to do in Jacob? And now
remember that for 20 years, away from home, away from Esau, Jacob had suppressed
his sinful past. During these 20 years (Chapters 28-32) we read of no spiritual
progress in Jacob’s life. The only prosperity we read of, is material
prosperity. We read of no spiritual
progress in this head of the covenant family -no progress in his spiritual walk
with God. To begin with, he was in the wrong place. I wonder whether you can relate to this. Perhaps you have run away from a situation,
and you find yourself not at peace with God, or
with your fellowman or yourself. Somewhere along the line you had said to yourself, “if
only I can escape from this or that situation or
this place of oppression ( insert ....town/city/country) I can
start again elsewhere.“ By escaping
from such a situation we thought that
we may forget our situation or our broken relationships, our sin and we think
that by running away we have escaped that situation and the sin. For a while we may think that we are succeeding.
We may even prosper materially, but deep down there is a restlessness. We know
that we are not in the right place. Sin is
not just a theory or a doctrine. It is a stubborn fact! And suddenly, something unexpected happens. The God who has called you into a covenant
relationship loves you too much to leave you as you are. He will not give you
any rest until you have dealt with the matter.
He stirs the memory, and the undealt with sin is resurrected. It stares us
in the face once more. It insists on being dealt with,
decisively. We must learn this lesson
well. Sin that is not dealt with in
Christ, is never buried. It remains there below the surface, in a place
called the conscience. Even an unbeliever like king Herod, who had John the
Baptist killed, was not able to forget that he had that righteous man executed.
His conscience troubled him. At one time he even thought that Jesus was John
the Baptist resurrected (Matt. 14:2).
Peter’s conscience in denying
Christ was not dealt with until Christ
had dealt with him (John 21) . John’s first
letter in chapter 1 urges us to keep short accounts with sin. Christian’s though they are forgiven, still
have to deal with ongoing sin in their
lives. Douglas Mc Millan reminds us that “there is only one place
from which sin cannot be resurrected, and that is the grave to
which the Saviour took it , when he paid its price upon the cross.” [3] Have your sins and your guilt been buried
with Christ? The gospel says that when
God forgives our sins in Christ, then He forgets them (Jer. 31:34 à Hebr. 8:12).
Here on the border of the land to which Jacob was returning,
his memory and his conscience were awakened, “…and Jacob was left alone.”
He found himself between God and his undealt sinful past. There is a
sense of loneliness and isolation when you are locked in between with God and
your sin. He was somewhere between God’s will and his own will, and he now had
no friend to help him or to counsel him. He was now wrestling with God alone over
his prideful sin and God was going to humble him.
Some of our most profound experiences in life are the times
when we are all alone. We are alone in birth. We are alone in death. We are alone
in all the great crisis experiences of our life. Each one of us must one day stand alone,
before the great judgement seat of Christ, where according to Romans 14:12, “each of us will give an account
of ourselves to God”.
When our sins catch up with us we can
feel very alone. Depression and bi-polarism or schizophrenia may well be the modern diagnosis. It’s a lonely
experience, and you may even have this
sense of loneliness now as you sit in this congregation. The very
symbolic place of wrestling (i.e. the river Jabbok) is a lonely place for
Jacob, and there is no one who can deal
with this situation,but God. Thank God!
He is there in the lonely turmoil of our struggles. We are not alone
after all. Let the wrestling begin!
Wrestling with God
For the Christian person this too is part of God’s grace in
our lives. Our lonely experiences in the
dark night of the soul are known by God and God’s grace is sufficient for such
dark times. Douglas Mc Millan in his
book ‘Wrestling with God’ speaks
about the ‘isolation of grace’[4]. God is actually the cause of that isolation.
Because He loves us too much to leave us as we are, He brings us to
that place because of wrestling. He the God that will sanctify us through and through (1 Thess. 5:23). He disciplines those whom he loves (Hebr. 12:6). He will
bring us to the place where He can have our undivided
attention!
In a greater sense this isolating grace had been operative in
Jacob in a sovereign way even before
birth (Rom. 9:18). Like Jeremiah (Jer. 1:5) and Paul
(Gal. 1:15), and like every
true believer (Eph. 1:4) Jacob was set apart from birth for God’s purposes. He was isolated by God’s grace, for God’s
purposes, and God has a way of making this known time and again in a
believer’s life in terms of crisis experiences. And so, on this night, Jacob found
himself alone at the river Jabbok - and yet
he was not alone. He was alone with the God who had isolated him for a
purpose. This is how the Scripture puts it in Genesis 32:24, “and Jacob was
left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day.”
From 32:30 (Peniel… for I have seen God face to face
) and also Hosea 12
we know that the man with whom he
wrestled was not just any man, but God
Himself in the form of a man. The
prophet Hosea[5]
uses this incident of Jacob’s life to describe the contemporary deceitfulness of Israel against God in his
day. There we read,
The Lord has an
indictment against Judah and will punish Jacob according to his ways; he will
repay him according to his deeds. In the womb he took his brother by the heel,
and in his manhood he strove with God. He strove with the angel and prevailed; he
wept and sought his favour. He met God
at Bethel, and there God spoke with us…” (Hosea
12:2-4)
Hosea tells us
that Jacob’s wrestling with God was in the form of prayer: “… he wept and sought his favour…”. This was soul agony. God was dealing with the
depth of his sin, and Jacob was alternatively defending, and then repenting and
letting go of his sin.
Please do not come to the conclusion that this was a
wrestling match in which the outcome was 50/50, and where poor God was at times
close to losing the wrestling match. No! This is figurative language, and this
is what happened. The angel of the LORD came to Jacob. He dominates the scene;
he dictates the pace; he directs this encounter until the breaking of day. Jacob’s stubborn
persistence needed to be broken, and God allowed him to wrestle himself to the
point of exhaustion. Horses, I
understand need to be worked with to the point of exhaustion – and when they
are broken in, they become useful for service.
Isn’t that true for us Christians as well? Is not a part of the problem that we have
dwelt too long in the country of Laban? Our lives there are not lived in
conformity to God’s Word and will. We
have prospered in Laban’s land, with material goods, homes and families, but we
have been soft on sin, our personal sin. We know in our hearts that we are not
at home with God. We need to be broken
and healed by God. Next week I would
like to consider the touch of God which broke Jacob and at the same time healed
him.
May our good, gracious, sovereign God bring us in these days
to the wrestling river and cure us from our sinful, obstinate stubbornness-
whatever that may be, and it may not be the same for everyone. It has different dimensions and degrees for
everyone! Thank God that He is committed to changing us for our good, even
though in and off itself this may be a painful experience. Such pruning is
designed to make us bear much fruit (John
15). Thank God that the end product
is spiritual freedom and liberty, and peace with God, as our hearts grow more
and more attached to Jesus, and less to Laban’s world.
[2]
H.C. Leupoldt: Exposition of Genesis (Vol2) , p.874
[5]
Hosea has been called the death bed prophet of Israel, because
he was the last to prophesy before the northern kingdom fell to Assyria in
about 722BC.
