Hello everyone!
Jacob’s wrestle with God, to which I referred in Sunday’s message, lends itself to various insights about prayer and how desperate we need to become in prayer – especially with regard to the “self-life.” To refresh your memory, here is the scene again…
Genesis 32:23-28 After he [Jacob] had sent them across the Jabbok stream, he sent over all his possessions. 24 So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. 25 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. 26 Then the man said, "Let me go, for it is daybreak." But Jacob replied, "I will not let you go unless you bless me." 27 The man asked him, "What is your name?" "Jacob," he answered. 28 Then the man said, "Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome."
This scene is so full of powerful imagery. But the aspect I want to focus on here is Jacob holding on in determination, absolutely refusing to let go in the struggle, until he has a breakthrough. This is so much like the prayer struggles I have experienced over the years. There comes a point, just before a new season, where I know something has to change in me if I am to properly and fully able to enter that new season in God and experience all He has for me. Jacob’s name means, “supplanter” (one who wrongfully takes the place of another), or “deceiver”. He had worn that name since birth. Over the twenty years of self-imposed exile working for his uncle Laban, God reveals to Jacob that it is time to come home. During those years, Jacob, has built a relationship with God and had learned obedience that brought amazing blessing on his life. What God did for him was truly remarkable.
And so, he starts the long trek home to Canaan with his wives, children, servants and all his livestock. There is considerable wealth in all of that. But Jacob knows that he is entering into a new season. God has told him so. He gets to the Jabbok tributary that borders Canaan. He sends his family, servants and livestock across the ford there, but he, himself, stays behind before setting foot once again on his home territory. Why doesn’t he cross over? Why does he stay? Well, were not told in specific terms. All we know in verse 24 is that Jacob was left alone there, and next thing he wrestles with “a man” until dawn. That’s it. There has been much commentary on this scene. Here is one insight from the great scholar F. B. Bruce.
“The Angel who wrestled with Jacob could have been none other than the Son of Man, who is also the Angel of the Covenant and Son of God. It was not that Jacob wrestled with the Angel, but that the Angel wrestled with him, as though to discover and reveal his weakness, and to constrain him to quit reliance on his own strength and to learn to cling with the tenacious grip of a lame man, who dare not let go, lest he fall to the earth. Ah, it is well to be even maimed, if through the withered thigh we may learn to lay hold on the everlasting strength of God, and learn His secret Name!”
An interesting observation. But I think there is more going on here. I agree with Bruce, but I also believe that Jacob doesn’t want to go into the new season with the reputation of a supplanter which came out of his self-life. He wants to go with God now. There was too much at stake.
FINAL WORD
So, Jacob wrestles with God. These are some of my personal meditations on this amazing scene. Jacob won’t let go until there is breakthrough – he knows he needs that breakthrough to go any further with God in the new season. Without the breakthrough, this is as far as he can go. The wrestle lasts all night. His refusal to let go brings the divine touch to his hip, thus painfully wrenching it. Still Jacob won’t let go.
Finally, he is asked, “What is your name?” (Who are you?) Jacob says, “I’m supplanter”. He was owning up to his self-life, but wants to be finally free of it. He is desperate. The man said, [Hebrew] “Your name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince you have power with God and men – [because] you have prevailed.” Not your standard English translation, is it? A withering blow is struck against Jacob’s old self-life. It is painful, but necessary. There is breakthrough, and a new identity – with prophetic anointing, too. “You are now a prince with the power of God amongst men, for you prevailed in the struggle.”
Jacob prevailed in prayer, as it were, to deal a withering blow to his self-life – and God obliged him. It hurt. He walked with a limp after that. But did not Jesus say,
Matthew 5:29-30 “If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.”
This wrestling in prayer with God to deal that withering blow to the self-life is no easy thing. But it is necessary. Yes, it is painful sometimes. Many a believer has come so close to doing so in prayer but did not prevail and breakthrough – and they will never know how close they came to crushing the hold of a besetting sin! They wrestled in prayer, but did not hold on until they had come to that desperate place where, in utter agreement with God, He did in them what was necessary. They did not wrestle in prayer and come to that painful place where one wrestles through despite the pain, and can let go of the self-life thing in the power of the Lord. And that is how it works, dear friends. God will respond with the powerful application of the work of the cross to crush a sin desire – to crucify that self-life thing in us - if we will hang on long enough to come to hate that thing and refuse to let up, until we desperately desire it dead once and for all. That is the place of breakthrough. The place of death to the self-life by the power of the cross, the place where sin desire is withered in us – piece by piece, attitude by attitude … day by day. This is how I have learned to pray into breakthrough. The apostle confirms …
Philippians 2:12-13 “… continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, 13 for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.
God’s good purpose designated Jacob a prince of Israel that night at the Jabbok stream … and from his line, in the fullness of time … came the King of Kings.
You are so dearly loved.
Ps. Milton