[00:00:01] Welcome to the River Church podcast. We're all about bringing the life, hope and love of Jesus to everyone around us. For more information, check out our
[email protected] right, so let's see where we're going today. So we're just talking about reading through the Bible. We're doing that as a church. Maybe not in a year. I think we'll maybe take a bit longer. We're still in Genesis at the moment, so might take a little bit more time. But if you were going to meet God, where would you expect it to happen?
[00:00:30] Maybe a lovely, big, pretty cathedral, very holy, very swish.
[00:00:35] Maybe on a mountaintop.
[00:00:37] Fantastic views, really beautiful. Or maybe just in a quiet moment.
[00:00:42] One thing you probably wouldn't expect is in a wrestling ring.
[00:00:48] Who would expect that? No, of course not. And yet one of the most unusual moments he was talking about, Julie was talking about hard moments in the Bible. To understand, one of the most unusual moments in the Bible is God wrestling with a man.
[00:01:05] And it changes him forever.
[00:01:08] Now, today, that's what we're going to look at. We're going to look at the carry on in our story in Jacob, the man who wrestled with God and indeed lived to tell the tale.
[00:01:16] Now, as we go through, we're going to talk a little bit about actually our struggles with different things. Things like control, but also what it looks like to wrestle with God and how actually grappling with God is what changes us.
[00:01:31] So before we do get into the passage, I just want to set us up a little bit. Oh, I missed that. There we go. So this is Jacob. So far, he's looking very serious. He's kind of got that. That wrestling kind of face, and he's about to walk on.
[00:01:44] Before we read this is what we know about Jacob. Jacob is a man who grabs, he deceives, he manipulates, he takes his brother Esau's birthright. He tricks his father into giving him the blessing instead of his brother. And he spends years out maneuvering his Uncle Laban.
[00:02:02] He wants God's blessing, but he really wants it on his own terms.
[00:02:07] And now it's all starting to catch up with him. Now, I want us not to forget what Jackie taught us last week. Actually, Jacob is deeply flawed, we can agree that. But he is chosen by God.
[00:02:17] Okay.
[00:02:19] It's complicated. It's not as easy as sort of good, bad and stuff. Actually, God has his plans and purposes and we're called to follow into them. God, in fact, has told him, at this point, Jacob, he's told him to return home.
[00:02:31] But that means facing Esau, the guy that he sort of conned out of his blessing. The brother who, by the way, last time he saw him wanted to kill him. Okay.
[00:02:42] And actually, as he gets nearer and nearer, he sends. He tries to do things to sort of placate Jacob, Esau.
[00:02:49] And then he hears this news. Esau is coming to meet him with 400 men.
[00:02:56] That doesn't sound great, does it?
[00:02:59] If you just for scale, there's about 200, maybe 200 people here. So let's double that.
[00:03:06] This many people are coming towards you and you know, they got a grudge.
[00:03:09] Scary, isn't it? It's not good. Not good at all. So this is the night where basically everything could be done.
[00:03:16] Jacob sends his family ahead and he's left alone in the dark.
[00:03:21] Let's read what happens next. If you want to turn in your Bibles, you can turn to Genesis 32. We're going to spend most of our time there today. We will dart back and forward, but don't worry if you've not got a Bible, I'm going to pop it on the screen.
[00:03:33] If you haven't got a Bible and you want one, come and talk to us. We will make sure you get one. No one should be without a Bible.
[00:03:40] Let's get reading.
[00:03:43] So that night, Jacob got up and looked and sorry and took his two wives, his two female servants and his 11 sons, and crossed the fall of the Jabbok.
[00:03:52] After he had sent them across the stream, he sent all over all of his possessions. So Jacob was left over alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.
[00:04:06] When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip. So his hip was wrenched. And as he wrestled with the man, then the man said, let me go, for it's daybreak.
[00:04:19] But Jacob replied, I will not let you go unless you bless me. The man asked him, what is your name, Jacob? He answered, and the man said, your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.
[00:04:38] Jacob said, please, please tell me your name.
[00:04:41] He replied, why do you ask my name?
[00:04:44] Then he blessed him there. So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, it is because I saw God's face. I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.
[00:04:58] So as we go through this, I like to chunk things up to help us sort of remember stuff. So we're going to be looking at this way. We're going to be looking about the wrestle for Control. We're going to look about wrestling with God and also wrestling for change. But let's start with the control side.
[00:05:15] So it's not just about this passage, by the way. Okay, so Jacob's whole life has been a wrestle for control.
[00:05:23] He wants security, he wants identity, he wants blessing. But instead of trusting God, he tries to secure it himself through manipulation, through deception, through strategy.
[00:05:36] Even with God, he tries to barter with him to make deals. And I think it's in Genesis 28. So a few chapters earlier we have this amazing moment. You might have heard this vision that Jacob has about Jacob's ladder where there's angels ascending and descending. And basically God reaffirms this covenant promise. Now, if you hear that word, covenant, you might remember we've been talking about that last few series we're doing.
[00:05:58] Don't worry if you've missed it, it's okay. This is a covenant promise, a serious promise that God has given to God's people and is saying, I will fulfill this in you, Jacob. I will give you a homeland. I'll make a great nation out of you, and all the people of the earth will be blessed through you. So he reaffirms it. This is wonderful. Jacob's really pleased with this. He's really excited.
[00:06:20] But there are little cracks in his response.
[00:06:24] He says, if you do this for me, God, if you do this for me, then you'll be my God.
[00:06:33] He might believe in God, but he doesn't seem to fully trust him yet, does he?
[00:06:41] Now, we're piling on Jacob at the moment, but it's our turn.
[00:06:45] If we're honest, this is not just his story, it's ours too. We wrestle for control in all kinds of ways. We try to manage situations and outcomes. We try to shape how people see us. Think about how easy that is now with social media and everything. Actually, it's so easy to present a certain kind of image.
[00:07:04] We rely on our finances, our good grades, our security and identity and success. That becomes the big thing. And actually prayer becomes an afterthought or routine rather than the very air that we breathe.
[00:07:22] Yes, right. Isn't it like Jacob, we all fall into the trap of self reliance and striving.
[00:07:29] The wrestle becomes about what's in it for us.
[00:07:33] We struggle to trust God with our lives. Now I'm going to try and do a little physical illustration.
[00:07:41] No, I'm not going to make someone come wrestle with me. That'd be really. That wouldn't work well, but I'm going to try also. I'D be too scared, honestly. I'm going to just grab two of these chairs. See, I know you were wondering this whole time, wondering what? With the two chairs, this is what I'm going to. And if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. But we'll try.
[00:07:58] So this chair represents our sense of control without God. It's all on us, really, our sense of control. We have to get it sorted. We have to sort everything out ourselves. It's all on us. Finances, future, all of it. It's all on us.
[00:08:16] But what happens actually when we meet Jesus, when we realize who he is, he moves us. He brings us over to this chair, which is actually acceptance. It's not changing. It's acceptance that we are dependent upon God. We need. He's the one in full control. And so we accept that and we trust that and we do that. When we give our lives Jesus, when we say yes to Jesus, when we become believers in Jesus, then hard times come, or struggles come, or we see something we really want, our desires are there. And suddenly we start looking at that chair, we go, maybe I'll just pop back here and just take a little bit of control. I'll take a little bit control back, actually. Maybe just a little bit. I'll just sit here, you know, and I'll put one foot over there.
[00:09:07] I'm still with God, but I'm sorry, I need control on this little bit. Other times we are over here and we're just trying to be really subtle and just so that God doesn't look kind of looking, oh, oh, look what happened.
[00:09:21] But does anyone resonate with that at all? I think we do, don't we? You know, I certainly do. My goodness. It's one of my big flaws. I like things a certain way. I like to be in control.
[00:09:32] And yet I'm not.
[00:09:34] I'm not. I need God. I need to understand, I need to acknowledge that God, the living God, is the one who's in full control. You know, Psalm 20 says that some trust in chariots, some in horses. Don't know what today's equivalent is. Cars, money, relationships, popularity.
[00:09:53] But we trust in the name of the Lord.
[00:09:56] So let me ask you this.
[00:09:59] Where are you wrestling for control?
[00:10:02] Where are you trying to take control away from God? What areas of your life are you holding back? Do you know how you see that if God asks you to give it up, will you try and put it in its right place? Priority wise, it gets difficult.
[00:10:19] Where.
[00:10:21] What areas of your life are you holding onto? And you need to really give over to God.
[00:10:28] So we talked about wrestling for control.
[00:10:31] Let's move on to wrestling with God. Now come back to the beginning of our passage. Jacob is alone, he's vulnerable, he's out of options. And then in the dark of night, he's confronted by a man.
[00:10:48] One of the most famous wrestling matches in all history begins. But as the story unfolds, we. We know, don't we? This isn't a stranger, this isn't Esau.
[00:11:01] This is God himself. Let me just see if we've got that there.
[00:11:08] I'll come back to that in a second.
[00:11:10] Now this is. I'll stay on this really briefly, but actually this is an example where God turns up in a really powerful and physical way for many people. They would say this is a fancy word, it's a theophany, or it's a christophany, which is the appearance of Christ before the New Testament.
[00:11:30] God is the God who is involved throughout history. He's not a distant, disconnected God. In fact, he gets right in by, okay, have you ever been confronted with the consequences of your choices?
[00:11:44] There are moments in life where we see the structures that we've built just fall apart. And sometimes the fact is it's God who takes that away so that we can throw ourselves on him.
[00:12:00] We need to see that God is the one who's in full control.
[00:12:07] It's his desire as our good Father to develop and sanctify us that will allow these situations to occur, even confront us directly through the power of the Holy Spirit.
[00:12:18] It's not comfortable when that happens, but it is good.
[00:12:23] So they wrestle all night.
[00:12:26] Jacob is stubborn and continues to resist and he fights back. And then in a moment, I think it says, yeah, it says that he, God, just pokes Jacob's hip and dislocates it. It's funny because obviously it says, doesn't it? It said, you know, the man, he could not overpower him. Couldn't overpower God. Madness?
[00:12:45] Well, no, just. No. God was always in charge.
[00:12:48] You see that by the fact he pokes him and he's done.
[00:12:52] The thing is, God could have ended the fight instantly, but he doesn't.
[00:12:56] Because it's not about winning in this situation, winning a fight, it's about changing a man.
[00:13:03] And maybe this is where Jacob starts to realize that he's fighting who he's fighting.
[00:13:09] Because the way he wrestles completely changes. Jacob lets go of his self reliance and he fastens his grip on God.
[00:13:23] He says, these are mortal words. He says, I will not let you go unless you Bless me.
[00:13:30] Jacob starts wrestling to win, to take things from God.
[00:13:35] And instead he starts clinging to God, acknowledging his dependence, his utter dependence on God. We just sang that song, didn't we? Lord, I need you. Oh, I need you every hour I need you. My one defense, my righteousness.
[00:13:51] Oh, God, how I need you. That is a desperate acceptance of our weakness and our need and desire for God. And this is the difference between the two kinds of wrestling we've seen. There's a wrestling that goes against God. I want control. I'm going to do it my way.
[00:14:06] I don't trust you. I don't trust you with this. I'm going to have to look after this. And then there's a wrestling that happens with God. Not against God, but with God.
[00:14:14] I need you.
[00:14:18] I'm not letting go. I'm desperate for your blessing.
[00:14:23] Now, I just want to quickly say a little word about blessing, actually, before we carry on. Blessing biblically is defined as receiving grace and favor and good from another. Often in the context of God is the one who gives this.
[00:14:36] And we should seek and earnestly desire for God to bless us as he does. In fact, we should hunger. I don't know about you, but this morning it's felt like there's been a hunger for Jesus. Is that right?
[00:14:48] Yeah. Come on. You know.
[00:14:52] But I want to be careful because there's also can be this idea when we talk about blessing, that today it means when I get God's blessing, I'll get everything I want.
[00:15:04] God will always give me perfect health.
[00:15:07] I get to live in total victory in my finances and everything.
[00:15:12] I mean, Jacob does. He comes away from this injured, and it doesn't. There's nothing that says he's healed from it. So that kind of flies in the face of that, doesn't it?
[00:15:22] Let's not make that mistake. God is always seeking to work things for the good of those he loves.
[00:15:29] But it won't always look like quick fixes or instant gratification.
[00:15:34] That's where trust comes in.
[00:15:36] We will face all sorts of seasons of change and pressure and challenge and pain, and we will have doubts and questions. The key is, when these times occur, do we hide it or do we cling close to God because we need Him?
[00:15:54] We surrender every thought to him. Honestly, who struggles being honest with God?
[00:16:03] You can be honest.
[00:16:05] You know, we see this kind of wrestling throughout Scripture. Moses intercedes on behalf of the people and prays for them when they build a golden calf and get into idol worship.
[00:16:18] David. Now, David, we know King David don't we? He's a man after God's own heart. If they're the example of examples in the psalms he sings, he says, where are you, God?
[00:16:28] Why have you forsaken me? Why have you given up on me?
[00:16:32] Did God give up on him? No, Never. Not once.
[00:16:36] But he's pouring out his heart. He's being honest with what's going on. And by the way, it's always good to be honest with God. He knows anyway.
[00:16:43] Job struggles with suffering in a way that many of us will never experience.
[00:16:48] This is so important. God is not afraid of your wrestling. In fact, he invites it. You know, in Hebrews it says, for we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weakness.
[00:17:03] We have one who's been tempted in every way, just as we are. Yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
[00:17:15] Some people think Christianity being a good Christian, whatever that means.
[00:17:20] It means no questions, no doubts, no struggle.
[00:17:25] Real faith looks like clinging to God even when you don't fully understand. God sees the whole tapestry of life.
[00:17:34] It's natural. There will be gaps in my own understanding. And so when I'm struggling, I grab hold of the one who is powerful, who's mighty to save. He's all knowing. And I pour out my heart.
[00:17:47] You know, there have been seasons in my own life where that's been my prayer. And I've had lovely prayers and praise filled prayers. I've had sad, I've had devastated prayers. And yes, I've even had angry prayers. And I've repented later. And I thank God for his patience with me, his kindness.
[00:18:03] But not all of our prayers have to be polished. In fact, I almost argue that we don't want to look for polished, polite prayers. This is not a dinner table.
[00:18:11] You know, we want honesty.
[00:18:15] It's all we would want from our children, isn't it? To be honest with us.
[00:18:20] Prayers like God, where are you?
[00:18:24] I don't understand this.
[00:18:27] You know, recently, I won't go into heavy detail, but recently Abby and I were facing a very scary situation.
[00:18:34] It was actually a life and death situation for someone we really care about very deeply.
[00:18:41] And I was afraid, you know, I was really afraid.
[00:18:48] Hard me to admit that, but that's true. Oh, perfect. I've got sat with you. Yeah, thank you for that, you know, but I was afraid.
[00:18:57] I'm a man who. I like to help. I like to Be useful. I like to have a plan. But there was no power in these hands to do anything.
[00:19:07] I couldn't change anything in the situation. So the only thing I could do was pray and throw myself on God.
[00:19:17] I remember in the evening just going to a separate room and just pouring out and saying, jesus, I need you.
[00:19:25] I need you to show up.
[00:19:27] There's no one else. It's only you, Jesus.
[00:19:31] And we praise God that He gave this person another day and another day and another day until they were stable and well and.
[00:19:42] Yeah, and all was good and all was well. So we thank God and we praise him for that.
[00:19:48] Amen.
[00:19:50] But I want to make sure we're not just romanticizing. There have been other times where things haven't gone the way that we'd hoped.
[00:20:00] We'd been left with questions, grief and loss, wrestled with doubts and temptations to despair. In each of these moments, I trust God who sees us. He knows us. He knows the plans he has for us and is kind enough to let us wrestle. Let us be honest with Him.
[00:20:20] Sometimes we do get to look back, actually, on the situations we've been in. We can see the plan that God has had and the work he's done.
[00:20:27] And that's a real blessing and a real wonderful thing.
[00:20:30] We don't always get that. And for some things, we may not get that until eternity, when all wrongs are righted, when we are fully redeemed and fully sanctified.
[00:20:44] I was having an eye about this, and maybe it doesn't relate to anyone, but I kept having the song.
[00:20:51] It's Got the Whole World in His Hands. Anyone know that one?
[00:20:56] Yeah. Come on. There we go. I knew that one even when I didn't believe in Jesus.
[00:21:02] And maybe it's not relevant, but I just felt some people need to know right now that's still true.
[00:21:09] He's still got the whole word in his hands.
[00:21:12] He's got you in his hands, and you just. If there's something you're holding back, you need to just give it to Him. You need to, and give it to him hard. Be honest.
[00:21:21] What are you wrestling with right now?
[00:21:24] What do you need to bring to God today as we cling to Him?
[00:21:30] Okay, Let's go on to the last one, the wrestle that changes Us.
[00:21:41] Now God invites us into the ring so that we may become changed.
[00:21:47] In the passage, he says this question, what is your name? Now, God knows His name, but he's trying to make a point. So we go, jacob, Jacob again. What does it mean? It means deceiver it means grappler, means someone who strives.
[00:22:00] But God says your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel. Because you have struggled with God and with humans, man, and have overcome you don't wrestle with God and stay the same. This is the beauty. When we're honest, when we're open, when we're building that relationship and that conversation is real, actually what happens, our relationship goes deeper and we get changed because of it. God doesn't need change. He's pretty sorted, you know, it's true. It's a living God, isn't he? You know, he's been around a while, hasn't needed change.
[00:22:30] But, you know, Jacob gets a new name, he gets a new identity, no longer defined by his past.
[00:22:36] He's defined by what God says about him.
[00:22:39] And this is where it connects to us.
[00:22:43] Because through Jesus, who gave his life for us on a cross. For us, for you, every one of you, we are given a new identity.
[00:22:54] We're no longer strangers, but we're sons and we're daughters. We're no longer guilty, but we are fully forgiven. We are no longer just around. We are chosen.
[00:23:05] Chosen by God, loved, restored by the living God. Not because of our effort, because we're really clever, or because we've managed to manipulate the situation. Not because of our bank balance or our history, but. But because of the living God.
[00:23:21] It's only Jesus. It's only because he died that our deceptions have been defeated on the cross, leaving us free to pursue him with everything we have. Amen.
[00:23:31] Amen.
[00:23:35] If you're not sure what to do about this, you have to live in the upside down world.
[00:23:42] If we want to have victory with God, we need to surrender, understanding that he is more trustworthy. I trust his way more than I do my own flawed way.
[00:23:54] So what does that mean?
[00:23:59] After this we somewhat dramatic incident, the story continues with many bumps along the way.
[00:24:06] Jacob and Esau, they meet, they eventually reconcile. And God does fulfill the vision that he gave Jacob of many descendants, a homeland and people who would bless other nations happily ever after.
[00:24:20] No, they're still wrestling. The people of God continue to wrestle with him back and forth throughout history, even to this day and to us in this very room.
[00:24:30] But we do it with the trust and the promise that one day, when all wrongs come apart at the seams, we know him fully and completely. We will be his people and he will be our God in eternity. Amen.
[00:24:45] Amen.
[00:24:47] So we've got a little bit of time left.
[00:24:51] Lloyd, can you come and do some music? For us. All right, thank you so much, Lloyd.
[00:24:57] We want to spend a bit of time just in prayer.
[00:25:01] And this is your chance to decide how you want to. How you want to respond. We can do it in pairs, we can do it in freeze. It could be that you just want to have a little bit of time, just you and your Jesus, rather than rushing on to the tea and coffee where we talk about how busy our weeks have been, you know, and all the food we've got to do. So I've mentioned food. That's. That's a terrible idea.
[00:25:21] How, how might you respond today?
[00:25:25] Well, let's talk about control.
[00:25:27] What areas are you still not letting go? What areas do you need to lay down at Jesus feet to name today in prayer?
[00:25:36] Is it your future, your career, your relationships, identity?
[00:25:42] Hand over control. Get off of that seat. Sit fully with the living God?
[00:25:50] What about. Actually, you're maybe going for a bit of a hard time and maybe you've been holding back a bit because you want to be reverent. You know, we want to be reverent. We want to be honoring to God. Absolutely we do. We can say sorry later.
[00:26:02] Be honest.
[00:26:03] He knows anyway and he loves you the same.
[00:26:09] Maybe this actually is one of your first times in church and you've sort of been thinking about Jesus. But, you know, you just need to surrender and accept the identity that Jesus has given you. A son, a daughter, chosen, loved.
[00:26:25] Do it today. Don't delay.
[00:26:29] Let's take a few minutes again. You can do it in groups. You can do it by yourself. This is your time, and I'll come back and we'll finish.
