Jacob – Genesis 32:24-26 - ‘Then Jacob was left alone; and a Man wrestled with him until the breaking of day. Now when He saw that He did not prevail against him, He touched the socket of his hip; and the socket of Jacob’s hip was out of joint as He wrestled with him. And He said, “Let Me go, for the day breaks.” But he said, “I will not let You go unless You bless me!”’
What an incredible scene we have before us in these few verses – God Himself comes to wrestle with Jacob, and rather than God beating Jacob straight away as you might think, they are wrestling together all night! What’s more, the Bible tells us that when God saw that He couldn’t ‘prevail’ against Jacob, He cripples Jacob for the rest of his life, but Jacob still will not let go and announces his determination to hang on until God blesses him. So what is this all about?
Firstly it seems that Jacob’s life story all stems from the fact that Jacob knows how important God’s blessing on his life is. He views it as so important that in his early years he did anything he could to get hold of this blessing – firstly we’re told of his manipulating his brother Esau to get his birthright off him, and then when he’s a bit older he lies to and deceives his father Isaac, and ends up stealing the blessing that should have been Esau’s. In fact, from that evidence you have to say that on a list of people who deserve God’s blessing, Jacob wouldn’t be anywhere near the top – and yet he knows how important it is.
How would our lives change if we realised that God’s blessing on our life is so much more important that all of the stuff that this world can offer us? I think our priorities would probably change a bit, and our prayer life would be quite likely to increase. Maybe we, like Jacob would try, or have already tried to get God’s blessing in the wrong way, but as we see from this account, God doesn’t use that kind of thing as an excuse to disqualify us, but rather is in the business of changing people, and making them into the kind of people that He wants them to be.
That’s exactly what seems to have happened for Jacob – he was forced to flee from his angry brother when he found out that he had stolen his blessing, but straightaway God meets with him and promises that He will bless him. Then Jacob spent the next couple of decades or so working for his uncle Laban, even being deceived himself and being given the wrong wife by his uncle. All the time it seems that Jacob’s selfishness and pride that would do anything to get what he wanted was being knocked off and Jacob was being humbled by the work he had to do. Eventually he left his uncle, and God told him to go back to his brother Esau, and it’s at that point that Jacob prays this incredible prayer – showing us the change that seems to have been made in Jacob’s heart:
“O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, the LORD who said to me, ‘Return to your country and to your family, and I will deal well with you’: I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies and of all the truth which You have shown Your servant; for I crossed over this Jordan with my staff, and now I have become two companies. Deliver me, I pray, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau; for I fear him, lest he come and attack me and the mother with the children. For You said, ‘I will surely treat you well, and make your descendants as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude.’” (Genesis 32:9-12)
What a change – Jacob is still out for God’s blessing, but he now recognises his complete unworthiness to receive anything from God – he’s no longer out to manipulate, deceive and grab the blessing for himself, but places himself entirely into God’s hands, and leans totally on the promises that God has made him. What incredible humility comes out of this prayer – Jacob is no longer full of himself, but seems empty of himself and dependant entirely on God’s amazing grace.
You might think that would be the end of the story and of God’s dealings with Jacob, but there is one more significant way in which God puts the final nail in the coffin of Jacob’s pride, and that’s the prayer we began with. Jacob wrestles with God and strives with Him all night and 2 main things happen. Firstly God brings Jacob back to one of those first points in his life where he had tried to manipulate the blessing of God – just as Jacob’s father had years ago, God asks Jacob his name. This time there is no manipulation, pretence or deception, but Jacob answers the truth – where he had once answered ‘Esau’ he answers Jacob (which means deciever) and God changes his name from then on to Israel. Secondly God is so committed to preserving Jacob’s humility that He goes so far as to physically harm Jacob that he might have an ever present, painful memory of the time he fought with God. For the rest of his life Jacob had to walk with a stick because of the injury God caused him on that day, and it must have been a constant reminder that it is only in humility and not manipulation that we truly can obtain God’s blessing.
What can we learn from Jacob? We can imitate his incredible desire for God’s blessing on our lives. We can rejoice in God’s willingness to bless bad people like Jacob, but we must also be ready, when we desperately want a prayer answered, that God might just use it as an opportunity to change us and to transform our character so that we more fully resemble Jesus in this world. It might hurt, and it will certainly be tough, but it’s certainly worth it.