Are you a troublemaker? Do you ever feel like you are being singled out for constant punishment? Like me, did a teacher ever place your desk way off in the corner of the room where none of the other children could talk to you?
Curiously, some teachers are drawn to the troublemakers. Some of them discover that they really enjoy the kids who drive their colleagues crazy. My wife is like that: we enjoy telling each other stories about the difficult young men we have taught who nevertheless burrowed their way into our hearts forever. I looked one of them up online just this morning (and discovered he is working as an oil and gas landman!).
Jacob was one of God’s troublemakers. When the twin sons of Isaac were born, Esau came out first but Jacob’s fist was wrapped around his heel. They called the second born “heel grabber” and the name stuck, indicating the way he always seemed to be struggling to get what was coming to him.
Jacob later conned Esau out of his birthright, then deceived his blind father into speaking over Jacob a blessing meant for Esau. But Jacob was a victim too–he who lives by the sword shall die by the sword, right? Jacob was manipulated many times by his father-in-law, Laban, and years later ten of his sons conspired to sell son number eleven to human traffickers, and for thirteen years Jacob grieved for a son he thought was dead.
Jacob’s entire life was one of constant struggles with people.
Sometimes the man won, sometimes he lost. But Jacob never stopped fighting. (The man had no chill.)
Yet, God delighted in the contentious heel grabber.
Like a father who is amused by that difficult child that can’t stay out of trouble, I imagine God turning on the Jacob Show every day and just watching the fireworks. What would the man of strife do next?
Think about this. The Bible reports many dreams. God came to prophets and showed them so many things. Other times, he walked up in human form, as He did with Abraham, and talked to him about Sodom and Gomorrah. Daniel walked around with God inside the fiery furnace. John saw visions of the future while he was alone on the island of Patmos. God talked to Noah and Moses and Paul. God even spoke to Jacob’s mother, telling her “Two nations are in thy womb … and the elder shall serve the younger” Genesis 25:23.
Most of God’s interactions with people can be described as conversations. Or maybe conversations with dreams or visions attached.
But with Jacob it was different. God delighted in the troublemaker; He had something special in mind for Jacob. A divine interaction like no other. God came to the man late one night:
“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 that 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 asked him, ‘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 man and have overcome.’
Jacob said, ‘Please tell me your name.’
But he replied, ‘Why do you ask my name?’ Then he blessed him there.
So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, ‘It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.’ The sun rose above him as he passed Peniel, and he was limping because of his hip” Genesis 32:24-31.
Wait, what? God came to Jacob so the two men could … RASSLE? Seriously? Can you imagine that? Look at the pope in his tall hat (the mitre) and the fancy robes, the cathedral filled with the smoke of incense, and all the fat, old cardinals in red robes, and think about this: the God they dressed up to serve so piously came to Jacob in the middle of the night because He wanted to wrestle! Wrap your head around that!
And the same is true for all our churches. In one way or another, all of us value a level of decorum and sobriety. We wear nice clothes, we drink coffee, and we behave. As we should. The Bible clearly says that God is a god of order and our worship should be ordered and reverent.
But it is refreshing to remember that God wrestled with Jacob.
Boys love to wrestle. I wish every young man could spend hours wrestling with a gentle, but much stronger father. It is so valuable–and a great way to communicate love and affection between father and son. But wrestling is more than that. It is a competition. It is grappling. It is fighting, though a rather safe kind of fighting, where a boy learns rules and to respect an opponent.
But why did God do this? Why did He take on flesh, gird up His loins, and wrestle all night long with Jacob? For one thing, God loved Jacob. He did. It seems so obvious to me. God looked at the life of this striving, angry, scheming, sometimes devious man, and God just loved him. And God knew how to reach Jacob. Jacob did not want a dream or a vision or a postcard from Heaven. Jacob was a man of action!
God knew that a good night of wrestling would reach Jacob on a deeper level than anything else.
So that’s what He did: God showed up and wrestled with the man for hours! And God limited himself. He limited himself to a level of power similar to Jacob’s. Thus, neither one could quite seem to win. It was almost as though God made himself Jacob’s twin. The two were evenly matched and they wrestled for hour after hour.
Jacob must have been thinking of his twin brother the entire time. After all, he had not seen Esau in twenty years, and he knew he would be seeing him the next day. Not only that, but the person Jacob had wrestled with the most in life was surely his twin brother Esau. The two of them must have wrestled for hours growing up. That’s what brothers do. But Esau had promised to kill Jacob. There was so much bad blood. Esau was on his way with an army of four hundred men. The brothers would meet again tomorrow.
And now Jacob is spending the entire night wrestling with someone he can’t quite defeat, but who can’t quite best him either. Over time, an awareness comes to Jacob. This is no ordinary man. No ordinary enemy. None of Jacob’s favorite moves seem to work on this guy. But every time the man has a chance to take a kill shot, he doesn’t do it. So the two wrestle on.
What does this crazy, almost sacrilegious story have to do with me and you? First, if you consider yourself a troublemaker, a deceiver, a heel grabber, or a failure of any kind, God loves you. God can look on your life and delight in you when no one else can.
When God looks at you, He sees someone He deeply loves.
Second, WRESTLE WITH GOD!
WRESTLE WITH GOD IN PRAYER!
Go for it. When you have a need, a desire, a dream, or just something small that you want, WRESTLE! Don’t look at prayer as just a mild conversation, like handing God your shopping list, then walking away.
God wants to be involved in your life. He wants to engage with you, to wrestle with you, to hear from you–a lot–and to talk back so you can hear from Him.
When you are praying for something, pray like Jacob who said, “I will not let you go until you bless me!”
Grab onto God and demand that He bless you. Don’t worry about praying wrong. If you pray wrong, or your tone needs to be adjusted, God can show you. But for now, be like Jacob. Grab onto Him and ask Him to bless you.
Finally, this is a proxy wrestling match. Jacob was wrestling with God. But he had to be thinking about his brother. Jacob was extremely anxious, but after wrestling for hours, I think Jacob was able to face Esau with peace. If Jacob was not confident, he was at least spent. His energy was drained while he “pulled an all-nighter” for the ages. What was left to fear?
The next day Jacob would be reunited with the greatest wrestling opponent of his life.
Everything Jacob knew about wrestling he and Esau had discovered together. That is the way of brothers. God understands that, and He wrestled all night to show Jacob that things were going to be okay. In the end, God blessed Jacob, gave him a new name, and made his hip lame to remind him: he had wrestled with God.
And things worked out. Esau forgave Jacob, even refusing his gifts. And Jacob spoke to Esau in words that harken back to a night spent tumbling in the dirt:
“Accept the gifts I offer, for I have seen thy face and it is as if I had seen the face of God, and He was pleased with me” Genesis 33:10.
I imagine it this way:
God wrestled with Jacob with the ferocity and well-matched strength of a twin brother, and Jacob was reminded of Esau. A few hours later, Esau showed Jacob astounding forgiveness, and Jacob was reminded of God.
For the rest of his life, Jacob would know he had survived an all-night wrestling match with God. (Who else can say that?) What else could life throw at him? Whatever might happen, Jacob would face the future knowing he could handle it. He would survive. He would survive the loss of Rachel and of Joseph, knowing full well that he had “struggled with God and with man and prevailed” Genesis 32:28.
AΩ.
Household Words: 