COME AS A CHILD LESSON 85 WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU WRESTLE WITH GOD AND HE LETS YOU WIN

(Written by Sheila Gail Landgraf)

The place where the angels met Jacob and his family was near Harran.  After spending one night in the camp near Harran Jacob sent his caravan on across the Rabbok River. This included his wives, his sons, his servants and all of his many possessions.

The Zarqa River, as we now call it, is said to be about 30 million years old.  It is a tributary of The Jordan River, and it flows through the valley of Jordan.  This river is what Jacob knew to be the river Rabbok.  It leads west into the Sukkot Valley, from where one crosses over the Jordan and can easily reach Shechem.  This river later became the boundary separating the territories of Ruben and Gad from Ammon.  The Rabbok valley was an important passageway connecting the Eastern Desert with the Jordan Valley.

Present day Jordan is trying to restore the water quality of this river which has been heavily polluted by oil companies and other industrial endeavors.  The estimated cost to restore it is $30 million, and it seems a hopeless task.  In the days of Jacob though, the water was probably clean and useable.

He helped his family across the river and he waited on the other side.  Does anything about those words sound familiar?  I get a vivid vision of all those who have gone on to God’s eternal life before those of us who are left on this earth.  Jacob waited on the other side and did not cross the river  yet. 

So, Jacob was left alone and the scriptures tell us a man wrestled with him until daybreak.

What strange words!  Whatever does that mean?

We are not given the meaning of the “man” but we are told that the man could not overpower Jacob but he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that Jacob’s hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. 

Who was this mysterious “man?”

Most have come to believe that the “man” was a Christophany, or the pre-incarnate form of Christ in the bodily form of a man. 

Could Jacob have wrestled with Christ and won? 

To know Jacobs story is to know of deep, deep struggles against huge odds.  That night as Jacob lay his head down to rest he was at the place of his largest struggle ever, that of facing his brother Esau.  He had actually reached a place of “in-between” struggles.  He was forced to leave his father-in-law because of the mistreatment he received from him, yet leaving made him have to face the brother who wished him dead. There were struggles any way Jacob turned.

In order to face his brother, he had divested himself of all he owned.  He sent his possessions and his family on ahead of him.  He is left alone, with nothing.

 

It is just Jacob and God at Peniel.  There will be a Peniel for all of us, a time when nothing that we own or no one that we know can help us.  Everything will be laid bare before God and we will have to give account for our own actions.  Whoever leaves Peniel either goes God’s way or continues in their own strength. 

 Jacob had conned his way out of every situation up until this point; but could he con God? 

He knew he could not.  

He had learned through all this time of struggling that eventually you had to face things honestly and straight on.  This was Jacob’s time to face God with who he really was.  It was a time  to receive forgiveness for his past mistakes, and convince God that he was worthy of another chance at being the person he was designed to be. 

Basically, at Peniel Jacob was going through the process that all devout Jews and a few Christians follow during the month of Elul that lead up to Rosh Hashanah.  He was reevaluating himself before God.  He was reconsidering where he had been, looking and learning from his past mistakes and begging for God’s mercy to try again.

These are the things that Jacob “wrestled” with at Peniel. 

Frederick Buechner said Jacob’s divine encounter at the Jabbok River symbolized the magnificent defeat of the human soul at the hands of God.  Like Jacob all of mankind has struggled with fear, darkness, loneliness and vulnerability.  At some point we all experience empty feelings of powerlessness and exhaustion and relentless pain.  There is only one thing that will change it, and that is the blessings of God.  

In order to get through to God for His greatest blessings, we all must have our wrestling encounters with Jesus Christ.  If He needs to, Christ will inflict pain in order to save our souls from eternal damnation.  Whatever it takes to save us, that is just what Jesus has in mind.  That is exactly what happened to Jacob.

God could not forgive Jacob and have mercy on him because he had been basically unrighteous in his deeds.  There was one hope though, the atonement of the blood of Jesus.  God would never deny that sacrifice.  This Angel of The Lord that wrestled with Jacob was Jesus before the cross.  God would grant Jesus the power and ability to negotiate with Him for the souls of mankind.  Jacob had to prevail with Christ in order to keep his place in the family.  God loved Jacob.  He came, through Christ, in Jacob’s place in order to live the life that Jacob could not live.  Jacob’s place, my place, your place, none of us measured up.  We all have been wrestling and we all have our broken hips to prove it.

It must have been a tough struggle, because at one point “the man” almost left without giving Jacob a blessing.  It seems that He needed Jacob to acknowledge that He was the only One who had the power to bless him.  Jacob was pretty stubborn, and so are we; but Jacob did finally have the good sense to admit this. By asking for the blessing, Jacob acknowledged his inferiority and Christ's supremacy over him.

The man noticing it was daybreak told Jacob to let him go, but Jacob held on to him and said he would not let him go until he blessed him.

The best advice I could ever give you is to hold on to Jesus until He convinces God to bless you.  It was through wrestling with Christ that Jacob came to see God face to face.  That was the greatest blessing of all blessings!  Jacob saw the face of God and lived to tell about it.  It  could have only happened through Christ who came to this guilty man in the form of humanity and brought him to a place where God would agree to face him yet have mercy on his soul.  Christ did this for Jacob, and He did it for us. 

Jacob had finally wised up.  He knew that God’s will was more powerful and better than his own will.  He had an injured hip to remind him of that for the rest of his life.  

We all need reminders.  What is the broken hip in your life?  I have many injuries, each one of them have taught me and led me to a place of God’s will and purpose for my days.  Without the scars I would not be able to see the stars.  I’m thankful for the broken hips.

The man asked Jacob’s name and he told him.

Then the man said “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, for you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.

Therein friends lies the secret to eternal blessings, to struggle with God and humans and to OVERCOME.  Many think this implies that Jacob overcame the strength of Christ in the wrestling; but that is not so.  I take this to mean that by wrestling with Christ, Jacob overcame the problems he had within him that came from sin and his own ways.  He did this by surrendering to God.  In overcoming, Jacob surrendered to Christ and to God’s way of life totally and completely.  He had already started this process as he worked for Laban, but at Peniel, Jacob surrendered all.  By asking for the blessing he gave God total authority over his life.  If he had not met Christ and wrestled with Him at Peniel, this might not have ever happened. 

Revelations 3:21 speaks of a type of Jacob’s victory in this battle: “to the one who is victorious, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I was victorious and sat down with my Father on his throne.”

We can expect to see Jacob with a changed name sitting on a throne in the Kingdom of God.  He will be called Israel.  Under his new name he will represent the House of David before God.

Just as Jacob had faced his troubles in the world and was in the process of bringing the house of Abraham home, Christ too has faced the sin of all nations and is in the process of bringing all of us who follow him into the Kingdom of God.  We know this from the words of John 16:33:  These things I have spoken unto you that in me ye might have peace.   In the world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.

Jacob had overcome his fears and faced God at Peniel.  He was being strengthened and prepared to meet his worst enemy, and to come out of it victorious.  At Peniel God assured Jacob of who he really was, and  reminded him of the covenant of God that covered him. 

Jacob then said to the man who wrestled with him “Please tell me your name.”But the man replied “Why do you ask my name?”  Here we are reminded of that passage in John 14:9 from a later time where Christ speaks to Philip and says:  “Don’t you know me Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time?  Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.  How can you say, ‘Show us the Father.”

Christ has appeared to Abraham and his people over and over in the form of The Angel of The Lord.  He had appeared to Jacob at Bethel.  He had appeared to him in his pastures as he was tending sheep in a dream back in the land of Laban.  Jacob should have recognized The Angel of The Lord, and by seeing him, face to face, Jacob had looked into the face of God, because Jesus said if we have seen Him, we have seen the Father.  The two are One.  Jacob should have recognized Christ as The Angel of The Lord.  This is why he did not tell him his name. 

And after that “the man” “The Angel of The Lord” “Christ Incarnate” “God Himself” blessed Jacob.

And Jacob called the place Peniel because it was there he saw God face to face, yet his life was spared.  When Jacob realized that he had wrestled with Christ, he also knew that he had only been allowed to win the wrestling match.  After wrestling with all his strength all night, the Angel Of The Lord simply touched the place on his hip and it was permanently injured.  Jacob had thought he was winning on his own strength, but after that moment, he knew for sure that nothing good ever happened to him unless it was allowed by God.   This was a continuous lesson that played out over and over again in Jacob's life. 

When the sun was high in the sky Jacob passed out of Peniel and he was limping because of his hip.

To this day the Jewish people do not eat the meat that is the tendon that attaches to the socket of the hip, because that was where the socket of Jacob’s hip was touched.