This morning’s Old Testament text about Jacob and God wrestling can be confusing and might leave us scratching our heads. Why did God wrestle with Jacob? For many Christians, this text often winds up getting turned into a “how-to lesson” on perseverance. This attitude ends up verging on teaching a doctrine of God or God testing us. Somehow, according to this wrong interpretation of Jacob we might be tempted to think: God is testing us and we are called to outwrestle and outlast God by our prayers and determination in challenging him, then He will give us what we want. So, you hear this kind of language: “stick it out, fight hard, and stand your ground, pray unceasingly” those are not bad words if referring to battles against the devil, the world, or the temptations of our flesh with events in our life. But if we mean to stand your ground, stick it out and fight hard against God… well something is not right.
So… why did God wrestle with Jacob? Why didn’t Jesus answer the Canaanite woman straight away. What does this mean? What is God endeavoring to teach us with these accounts?
Let’s review who Jacob was. He was the grandson of Abraham. Jacob was the younger twin brother of Esau, and there was a lot of bad blood between the two (which was primarily Jacob’s fault). Jacob wasn’t exactly a good guy. He certainly wasn’t a good brother. He had tricked his brother into giving up his birth right and then he tricked his blind father, Isaac into thinking that he was blessing Esau as the eldest, but it was really Jacob. Then Jacob fled. He ran away. Because Esau was beyond angry. He was fed up with Jacob and wanted to kill his brother. Jacob having been blessed and then directed by Issac and Rebekkah to leave to go to Laban, left. As he had been on his way to Laban, Jacob was visited by the Lord and despite his past wrongs, the Lord blessed him and made with him the same promise that He had made to Abraham and Isaac “in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”
His uncle, Laban, was Jacob’s match for trickery. That is its own story. At the time of today’s Old Testament passage, Jacob was married to not one, but two ladies—Rachel and Leah. He had been blessed with 12 sons, all kinds of servants and wealth and goods. He had been blessed! After all those years, Jacob was attempting to return home, not because he’s homesick, but because he’d worn out his welcome with his father-in-law.
Anyway… Jacob and his household had found themselves on the river’s edge that separated his homeland—the Promised Land—from the foreign land he’d been calling home for the past several decades. He wants to cross over into this good land; the land that had been promised to his grandpa Abraham and father Isaac and to him, but he was afraid. He was sure Esau still held a grudge even after all these years. Despite God’s promises, Jacob was sure that Esau would kill him and his family on sight and plunder all his goods. So, Jacob devised a plan. Rather than trusting in God’s Word and Promises, he decided to split the party up into two—half and half. The idea was that Esau may get one group, but he wouldn’t get both. After Jacob gets done sending both parties across the river under the cover of darkness, he laid down to get some rest. Notice: He’s not with either group! What a brave guy, right?!
In his loneliness, and fear, he laid down to sleep and that is when God actually/physically comes to him and wrestles with him… all night long.
After hours and hours of this brutal wrestling match, Jacob finally gets God in a leg-lock and demands that He tell him His name and give him a blessing. (He still doesn’t know he’s wrestling with God.) And how does God respond? He blesses Jacob, “Because you have striven/struggled/wrestled with God and man and have prevailed.” Okay…so the moral of the story is to fight and wrestle with God until you get your way? NO! That’s not what this is teaching us. I know that’s what we want to hear, but that’s not the point of the story.
What actually was the lesson, was that the difficulties that Jacob had faced, the wrestling and struggles of the past, even his worries and fears regarding Esau were of his own making. By doing it the wrong selfish way, he had been wrestling God all along. God had made Jacob a promise, but Jacob hadn’t believed Him. Jacob had still wheeled and dealed his own way, and now there he was: alone, afraid. He had claimed to believe God and His blessings/promises, yet his prayers and actions revealed the fact that he really didn’t trust God.
What does God do? He comes to his troubled, rebellious, disagreeable child. God takes on human form and wrestles with Jacob (and lets him win) all so that God can teach Jacob a profound lesson on trust. The wrestling with God was God showing Jacob that as long as Jacob wrestled against God in his unbelief, there could be no rest.
Also, God was teaching that He NEVER forgets His promises! God NEVER forgets His blessings! Let us remember that too! God had already promised that He would bless Jacob. Esau wasn’t going to be able to undo that.
What was the blessing, Jacob received? It wasn’t “more stuff.” Jacob’s blessing had already been given to him before when God Himself had first promised to make his name and his family line great with the birth of a Savior. God blesses Jacob now with a new name—Israel—which means “one who wrestled with/struggled with God.” To Jacob, now Israel, God left him with a reminder to trust, and not rely on His own wits and effort. He dislocated Jacob’s hip which likely bothered him the rest of his life.
How is any of this a blessing?! That question reveals our lack of understanding of what it means to be truly blessed by God. Jacob had a new name and a new perspective. Every time he heard that new name; he remembered God’s promises and blessings that he wrestled God, yet God was still merciful and gracious to him. Every time he had to limp somewhere, he remembered his face-to-face encounter with God. “I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered.” He learned that He must live by faith.
Esau by the way, did not hurt Jacob but was glad to see him. Jacob—Israel—was a changed man; a new man; a man who truly walked (or limped,) by faith.
There are many things that you and I wrestle against, and there are many times that you and I make things worse because we resist what God wants for us. By our pride, our, fear, our doubt, our unkindness to others, we end up wrestling not against our enemies of the devil, the world, and our flesh, but against God and making things worse.
There are some things you simply can’t overcome or beat, no matter how hard you try. Sometimes God says “no,” and that’s His final answer. The Devil, the world, our flesh? there is no way we can defeat them on our own. Persistence only pays off by faith seeking the blessing and grace of God by that trusting faith.
The lowly Canaanite woman in the Gospel lesson who did trust in the mercy and the promises of God persisted as a witness to the others and received that which she received, not only healing, but forgiveness of sin and affirmation of her faith. Why did the Lord do what He did? To show the persistence of true faith. It doesn’t give up. Like that passage about love, true faith bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. How is that possible? Because true faith comes from God and His love first shown to us in Christ, sowing that love and that faith within us.
We are by our sinful nature little “Israels”: wrestlers against man and against God. Stop wrestling God. Stop resisting His truth, His way, His grace. That is why we find it difficult to rest. If we repent of our sin, and hand all our troubles over to God for the sake of Jesus Christ, we can finally rest: in Him.
You have been given a new name to remember God’s promises. God Himself put that name upon your forehead and upon your heart in Holy Baptism. The name of Christ as you were baptized in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Clench and hold fast to Him, not in wrestling, but in faith. Hold fast to the blessing that He has already blessed you with in Christ. No matter how bad things may get, you belong to Christ. You are a child and heir of almighty God, and nothing and no one can ever take that from you; not earthquakes, not floods or any other disaster, crooked government, or wicked men. Not even the gates of hell can prevail against our Lord’s Promise to you! Jesus came down to earth and was crucified for you. Jesus Christ overcame the Devil, the world, your sin, and all the temptations of the flesh for you.
There are going to be times that you will doubt and despair. There are going to be times that you will not let God work, be it His way or on His time schedule, firmly convinced that you know better than God; firmly convinced that He needs your help. Don’t wrestle Him. Let Him come to you in your trouble, to take your trouble away. Here is where He speaks to you and reminds you of His promise of salvation by the forgiveness of sins. Here is where Jesus comes to remind you that you are not alone as He feeds you along with your brothers and sisters in Christ here and throughout the world with His crucified body and blood in the bread and wine for you.
God is not against you. The Father turned against Christ so that He would never have to turn against you. The Lamb of God stands before the Father’s throne for the rest of eternity, bearing the wounds of His crucifixion, forever reminding His Father that all our debt has been paid in full by Him. This is your blessing. Believe and receive. May you never lose sight of or let go of this great gift in Jesus Christ, Amen.
Pr. Aaron Kangas