Introduction

I want you to take a moment to think about this next statement..”When you tell God, He needs to change one situation or another, in the end He inevitably needs to change you”

Before we get into today’s text, let’s list some, interesting, people God calls…
Abraham - Liar, coward, tries to second guess God.
Noah - Well there are some very interesting suggestions about his behaviour, but I’ll leave you to research.
Moses - Murderer, coward, reluctant, tries to divert God’s call.
Samson - Arrogant, ladies man, liked prostitutes,
Saul - Starts well but we know how that ends.
David - Where to start, really, murderer, adulterer, rapist, ineffective and absent father, corrupted by power
Solomon - Liked a lot of women, became obsessed with wealth, eventual heretic and then a worshipper of other gods.

There are a few more than that we could go into but you get the picture.

And so, here we have Jacob - Father of the 12 tribes of Israel. Sounds like a good bloke. A good sort of person… However he was a...
Conman, cheat, deceiver, manipulator, usurper and a serious flight risk.
No matter how bad he gets and how bad he behaves, he always seems to float to the top - He acquires riches and blessings (according to what the world thinks anyway)
Pious he is not, moral not a chance, submissive don’t make me laugh.

But for the Jewish people, Jacob is a role model.

The story we have just heard is the place Jacob finds himself between praying that God would help him and a very serious problem he is about to encounter.

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Before Jacob wrestles

The event we read is happening after 20 years of running. Jacob is returning home and must travel through the land of his brother Esau. Their relationship was bordering on the level of Grant and Phil Mitchel from Eastenders. There really is nothing new under the sun, especially in Eastenders. Jacob had cheated Esau and knew the result of meeting again wouldn't be good for him.
He is homeward bound because he was running once more, this time from Laban, his uncle, who he had been stealing the best of his flocks and Laban finds out. They were reconciled but he was on his anyway.
Then Jacob hears that Esau is coming to meet him with 400 men. Doesn't know what he will encounter, but on the strength of the information, it doesn't look good.

Will he face it or will he, as usual, run?

Jacob however prays...9 Then Jacob prayed, “O God of my father Abraham, God of my father Isaac, Lord, you who said to me, ‘Go back to your country and your relatives, and I will make you prosper,’ 10 I am unworthy of all the kindness and faithfulness you have shown your servant. I had only my staff when I crossed this Jordan, but now I have become two camps. 11 Save me, I pray, from the hand of my brother Esau, for I am afraid he will come and attack me, and also the mothers with their children. 12 But you have said, ‘I will surely make you prosper and will make your descendants like the sand of the sea, which cannot be counted.’”

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Jacob wrestles

This is where we now find Jacob. He is between prayer and his problem. Or really he is between his supplication and the eventual solution. He just doesn’t know it yet.

The prayer is full of repentance “I am unworthy” now he is submissive “shown to your servant” He evokes God’s promises and reminds Him of His words to him. But more needs to happen for Jacob’s turnaround to be meaningful.

Before Jacob wrestles with the stranger, He leaves everything behind. He takes everything he has been given, blessed with, his wealth, his flocks, his family and he sends them away. Yes it is out of fear that he would lose everything to his brother and that his family would be killed but he is now very much alone.

All he has, he separates himself from, he is alone and without the trappings of the material world. “For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it” 1 Tim 6:7. Now the change begins as Jacob recognises that before God he has nothing. His wealth, status, his blessings, his past actions are laid bare and his future is no longer in his own hands.

This is where Jacob needs to be when he meets God, face to face.

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It is only when Jacob is alone that he is visited and embarks on grappling with God. And Jacob is not unused to wrestling. He has always been a wrestler, even in the womb his estrangement with his brother is born, as they struggled together. Genesis 25:21-27 Not sure what hold Jacob used but he clung to his brother as they were born.

A question we might ask ourselves here is this…

Is it OK, then, to wrestle with God? Whenever this comes up I always remember a conversation I had with a father and daughter many many years ago. No they weren’t a family wrestling tag team. Now although my first real experience of church, at the age of 20, was one where some people’s views of God were very well defined, for them, and very static. And the father and daughter were of that thinking. Now I’m not suggesting that God is not permanent, eternal and holy, but they were absolutely sure they knew what God was about and knew His ways. I have always worried that when we think like that, that it makes us bigger than God.

Anyway. They were going through an especially difficult time and at one point in our conversation I did say “ have you got angry with God yet?” I thought, seven very harmless words. Well, the reaction was as if I had drowned some kittens. I still remember the look of incredulity and disdain on their faces. It had never ever occurred to them that you would do such a sinful thing as shaking their fists at God. Neither of their stories end well.

1, So are we allowed to hold God to account - Just as we are bound by our promises to our children and God help us if we renege on them, God is bound by His to us, His children, so we are allowed to remind Him of that fact. The real issue comes and I think the reason we can wrestle with God is that we often hold Him to account on our terms. We believe we know what God meant or we use our own understanding to try to force God’s hand. That is not wrestling with God that is “passive aggressive prayer”

I have always known deep down, and maybe it is part of my nature or even the way my environment has shaped me, but I can’t count the times I have said “it’s not fair” to God, and I’m not talking about when I was a child either. “It’s not fair” is part of our wrestling with God. It doesn’t mean we are right.

2.Psalms prophets and Jesus - You also don’t have to go very far in scripture to see people struggling and grappling with God. The writer of the Psalms was very often demanding answers from God for this and that happening to them and often uses the same tactics as Jacob by reminding God of His promises.

The prophets were never shy about remonstrating with God when it came to who and how God was likely to save this or that people. Jonah is a particular favourite of mine. A man who you would have thought might be a little more gracious to the people of Nineveh after what happened to him but NO he was still not happy and let God know about it.

Jesus also had His own wrestling with God to do. As Jesus reflected on the enormous and painful task He was about to embark on, there in the garden of Gethsemane, after Jesus puts into words His struggle “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death” “He fell with his face to the ground and prayed,” “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. After that struggle, He responds “Yet not as I will, but as you will.”

3. The wrestle tells more about us and about God

When we “Grapple with God” That fight is always at close quarters, up close and personal. Now I am not a great wrestling aficionado but I know one thing about wrestling and that is, you can’t do it if you are “Socially distancing” - You are in amongst each other when you wrestle. God wants that closeness as much as we do. He wants to be up and in our lives. He isn't afraid to grapple in the dirt, sweat and struggle of our everyday lives. The very basis of the incarnation is “God with us”.

God so loves us that He came in the form of a babe, in a barn, in a small town, in the midst of life. God’s desire is to be in and about our lives, struggling with us, as we endeavour to live it as best we can.

And here the word used also has a sense of fondness as well as fight. The closeness that comes from a hug, and embrace, a moment of love. More than a mere kiss but a wholehearted seizing of us. Both an acceptance of each other and commitment to each other.

The timing of this encounter ends at the break of dawn - Between the complete darkness of night and the revealing light of day. That mysterious time where night is not quite done and the light of day is still held back.

It is for Jacob a moment of change. It is what will define him for a while to come. He has grappled with God and now is about to see what God will do. Jacobs is between his prayer and the problem that still exists. His supplication has not been answered with God’s solution.

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After Jacob wrestles

We have to ask ourselves that if we truly encounter and wrestle with God we always come away changed somehow. If not then did we grapple wholeheartedly?

Jacob comes away a changed man. He was wounded - now, we might then begin to wonder if that's a bit unloving of God to jab Jacob in the hip and leave him with pain, a limp. What we are being told is that Jacob is now a very different person than when he first came into contact with God and wrestled the Almighty. He is changed forever and he and everyone else will know it. Why? He has now got a limp.

The cost, and I mean cost as it is always a loss of something for us, of truly drawing near and grappling with what is right and proper for God, is that our idea of God, ourselves, the world and everything is changed. The arrogance of our world view is changed. The proud resistance to God’s purposes in the face of our losing out on what the world is enjoying. Whatever it is that is not right God takes care of in the exchange.

And God does not punish according to our rules -

1. Challenges us (wrestle with me - with what I say is right, my purposes, my call on your life)

If we are truly honest we sometimes avoid coming to God as Jacob did because we are afraid of the challenge we know will come. Never really shake our fists at Him for fear that He will remind us of our failures, our behaviour and the importance we give Him in our lives and that we will be changed. The challenge of allowing God up close and personal is daunting but is worth it.

2. Reshapes - Hip/limp (we’re never the same again) Because as we do exactly that God reshapes us. He makes us new and more complete. A limp is not cool. We might be reshaped into someone the world doesn’t admire or feel is relevant because they see the limp. The limp means you are damaged, less than perfect.

But God sees the limp and knows someone who is humble, courageous because they have faced fear and with His help conquered it. Someone whose faith is real, even physical, they are now different.

3. Weakness in power, power in weakness (Mark 10:35-45) - 42 Jesus called them together and said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. 43 Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. 45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

And as Paul talks about the thorn in his side so it’s like Jacob’s hip “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me... (2 Cor 12:9-11)
Being wounded is not a bad thing at all. The kingdom of God is not like any other Kingdom, where might is king, but a kingdom where God’s power is seen and greatest in those who are weak. Those who rely on the power of God and not the power of themselves.

Wrestling with God is allowed. You might first think you have a proper and lawful case to engage in that fight. Thankfully God is not vindictive and uses our genuine openness of our hearts and emotions to challenge and reshape us. To make us new. To make us stronger in our weakness.

Jacob was changed. He became Israel and the father of the 12 tribes. His new name was also a mark of that time he grappled with God and eventually demanded a blessing from Him. What was the blessing, the new name, the renewed relationship with Esau, the eventual forming of the nation that bore his name.

Or was it the limp?

God Bless