Merciful Wrestling

In Genesis 32, Scripture records an account nearly all of us are familiar with – the account where Jacob wrestles with God.

Like most of you, I’ve read and been taught this story since I was a child.

Most of the time, the point driven home by the one teaching from this account, sort of the big picture lesson, is that we don’t need to resist God, because if we do, we may face some serious consequences.

And we can point to Jacob’s hip being put out of joint and him walking with a limp the rest of his life as proof of such consequences.

In no way do I discount or deny that as an important lesson to learn from the story.

However, if that’s all we focus on, I think we are missing another wonderful truth found there.

I have to confess that, as far as this account goes, I’ve only recently considered this other element of the story.

As I was studying through this sometime back, I read Alexander Maclaren’s writings on the passage and was just in awe of what the Lord revealed through his insight.

Maclaren describes this scene as a “twofold” wrestling match.

And really, if we look at the passage closely, we see the wrestling took place in two stages.

I think most often we see it as God being the initiator, because verse 24 says that the Man wrestled with Jacob.

That begins the first stage.

Then, of course, the Man did not prevail against Jacob, so He touched Jacob’s hip and put it out of joint, and told Jacob to let Him go.

The second stage of the match is when Jacob refused to let Him go until he received a blessing.

Interestingly enough, the way the passage reads, Jacob actually prevailed and ended up receiving the blessing he asked for.

Now, all sorts of questions arise when you think about what happened there.

It’s funny how, as adults, we tend to lose our curiosity and don’t ask the questions we should.

When I taught through this in our Wednesday night adult Bible study, we had a good discussion, but no really probing questions were asked.

Contrast that to just a few weeks ago when I was teaching our youth Sunday School class and our Sunday School material had us studying this account, and those youngsters had some questions – good questions.

One of the questions was: “How could the Lord not prevail over Jacob?”

That’s a good question.

Could not the One who, with a mere touch of a finger, dislocate a man’s hip, not have easily prevailed?

Of course He could have.

The answer I gave the youth that Sunday morning, and the point I want to make here, is this: It wasn’t that God could not prevail; it was that He intentionally did not prevail.

If you study Jacob’s life up until that point, you quickly learn that he was a strong-willed and self-reliant man.

In any situation that arose, he was always scheming and trying to figure out how he, in his own power, could fix things or work them out.

But what you can also see in all of Jacob’s life before this point is how God was constantly at work, moving him away from his self-reliance, to a place where he was fully leaning on Him.

And this physical altercation is sort of the culmination of that much longer episode of Jacob wrestling in his relationship with God.

As I worked through this passage, the thought that occurred to me that I had not considered is the absolute mercy of God, in that He actually allows us, as fallen man, to wrestle with Him.

I began to think of all those in Scripture who wrestled with the calls and commands of God, not physically, but certainly spiritually.

Moses and Gideon strongly resisted God’s calls initially.

Jonah flat out rejected God’s command and even ran from his duties.

The Apostle Peter in Acts 10, when the Lord told him to “rise … kill, and eat,” said no.

And there are many others, but aren’t they all pictures of how we, still today, wrestle with God?

And to think, the Sovereign God of all creation, who has every right to strike us down for our sinful stubbornness, allows us at times to wrestle through things.

What a sheer act of mercy that is on His part.

It is an act of mercy because what God is doing is moving us to a place where we are not forced, but where we willingly lay it all down and yield to Him.

That’s what happened to Jacob.

Right before the Lord changed his name, God made Jacob say his name out loud.

Jacob – supplanter, schemer, trickster.

In other words, in all that wrestling that God in His mercy allowed, He brought Jacob finally face to face with who he really was, and who he really needed.

What a merciful God we serve, who allows us to wrestle with Him until we come to the place of surrender.

“We overcome Him when we yield. When we are vanquished, we are victors. When the life of nature is broken within us, then from conscious weakness springs the longing which God cannot but satisfy …” Alexander Maclaren.