190317 Sermon on Genesis 32:22-32 (Lent 2) March 17, 2019

190317 Sermon on Genesis 32:22-32 (Lent 2) March 17, 2019

I’d like to begin today by setting up the background to our Old Testament reading about Jacob wrestling with the mysterious Man.  Jacob was the grandson of Abraham.  Abraham was the man God chose from among all others to be his own.  God promised to bless him and his offspring.  They would be fruitful and multiply.  They would possess the land of Canaan.  The Messiah would come from among his sons.  This promise was passed down to Abraham’s and Sarah’s only son Isaac.  Isaac and his wife Rebecca were given twin boys by God, Esau and Jacob.  Esau was born first, Jacob came right after, grasping his heel.

Normally Isaac’s blessing would fall upon Esau since he was the firstborn.  But a couple things intervened to make that not so.  First of all, one time Esau came into the house extremely hungry and Jacob had made some food.  Esau evidently cared so little for God’s promises that he agreed to give them to Jacob, if only Jacob would give him his food.  Second, later, Jacob and Rebecca his mother tricked his father Isaac into giving him the blessing by dressing up and acting like Esau.  And so it happened that Isaac as a blind old man blessed his second son Jacob instead of his firstborn Esau—the one he preferred of the two.

As you might imagine, Esau was extremely displeased to hear that his birthright had been stolen away from him by his brother Jacob.  Esau was also nobody to mess with.  He was a ferocious opponent.  And so Jacob’s mother sent Jacob away to Laban her brother.  God was good to Jacob.  He gave him his two wives Leah and Rachel.  God gave him many children.  God also blessed both Laban and Jacob with wealth.  Jacob ended up living and working together with Laban for twenty years.

Eventually, though, God told Jacob that he should return to the land that God had promised to give him and his descendants.  But to do that Jacob would need to leave his father-in-law and business partner.  Jealousy, like it so often does, had degraded the relationship that Jacob had with Laban.  Laban thought that Jacob had become successful at his own expense.  And so not long before the time of our reading this morning Jacob left Laban’s country secretly and when Laban found out about it, he was hot on his tracks.

Soon Laban caught up with Jacob.  Jacob and all his household were worried about what might happen, but God had intervened with Laban.  He had told him that he was to leave Jacob alone and let him keep his property.  And so Jacob and Laban established a boundary between them.  Laban would not continue to pursue his son-in-law and his daughters.

Jacob then sent messengers to his brother Esau because he was now moving closer to the territory of where Esau lived.  The message he sent to his brother was that God had richly blessed him and he was intending to give Esau a goodly share of his bounty.  He was telling his brother that gifts were on the way.

But when the messengers returned to Jacob they did not have the reply that Jacob was hoping for.  Jacob had hoped that Esau would be satisfied with the promise of gifts and stay where he was at.  But what had happened is that Esau gathered four hundred men and they were on their way to meet Jacob.  Jacob thought that Esau was still angry for having stolen his birthright, and that now he was coming to kill him, his wives, his children, and his servants.  Jacob’s desperation can be seen in his subsequent plans.  He splits his family and servants into two groups.  His hope was that if Esau attacked they would stay busy slaughtering the one half, while the other might have time to get away.  Think of the frame of mind that is necessary to come up with that plan and carry it out.

This brings us to our Old Testament reading today.  Jacob had sent his whole family and all his possessions across the river.  He was on the other side all alone.  At some point a mysterious Man emerges and the two get into a tussle.  It wasn’t clear to Jacob who this Man was.  He didn’t seem to be friendly.  Jacob was using all his strength to prevent his defeat.

Who was this Man?  The most common answer among Christians is that this was the pre-incarnate Son of God.  That seems the most likely answer to me too.  God the Son wrestled with Jacob before he also became true Man in the womb of the Virgin Mary—something that would happen well over a thousand years later. 

There are several reasons why this Man is identified as being true God.  He was able to dislocate Jacob’s hip by touching it.  Jacob asks for a blessing from him and is given a new name—something that God also did with Abram and Sarai.  God gave them the new names of Abraham and Sarah.  Jacob is given the name “Israel,” which is the name that his descendants would go by.  Finally, the most convincing proof that this was not just an ordinary man is the name that Jacob gives to the place.  He calls it Peniel or Penuel, both of which mean in Hebrew “face of God.”  Jacob believed that he had wrestled with God at that place and he had lived to tell the tale.

So what should we make of this?  Is this a good thing or a bad thing that happened to Jacob?  It was a good thing, but we should say that too quickly without putting ourselves in his shoes.  I’ve brought up the back story to what was happening before Jacob was attacked at the ford of Jabbok so that you could better understand the state that he was in.  To say that he was under stress is inadequate.  He had just been pushed to the limits with his father-in-law.  He was about to enter into a territory that was unfamiliar to him after having been gone for twenty years.  He had the worry and toil of carrying all his earthly property on the move.  The person he had been fearing for twenty years, his brother Esau, had given him ominous signs of impending doom.  The best Jacob seems to be hoping for is that he can somehow straggle away with half his family and property.  All of this responsibility and worry was weighing heavily upon him.  I don’t think that any of us have borne such a burden as he was carrying.

And then, to top all this off, he is attacked by a stranger in the middle of the night.  Doesn’t that seem like a fine time for God to test him?  Why doesn’t God just leave him alone?  Why doesn’t God let him get his strength and his peace and his sanity back, before he throws another monkey wrench into the mix?  This night at the ford of Jabbok may have very well been the lowest point in Jacob’s life.  That night even left its mark on him for the rest of his life.  He walked with pain and he walked with a limp, because God had put his hip out of joint.

And so what happened to Jacob that night was a good thing, without question, but according to the Spirit and not according to the flesh.  The flesh does not like pain and suffering.  It does not like worry.  It does not like uncertainty.  It does not like living by faith.  The flesh wants to have a comfortable chair and a comfortable bed.  It wants the table filled with tasty things and a whole bunch of money in the bank.  It wants perfect health and it never wants to grow old or die.  None of these things that the flesh wants are sins in and of themselves.  In and of themselves these are good things—blessings from God.  But the flesh is incapable of looking past all the creature comforts of the earth to the God who has made them and us and with amazing generosity loads up all people with gifts.  That is why God will discipline those whom he loves.  He will take away the things that we love so much so that we become aware of our real state and live alone by mercy and by faith.

Most people will recognize that living by mercy and by faith in the one true God is a good thing—at least theoretically.  But nobody by nature can see that living by mercy and by faith alone is a good thing.  That can only be taught by the Holy Spirit in the school of hard-knocks.  What we all would like is that we could live by mercy and by faith and at the same time have everything else that we want.

That desire is understandable and reasonable, and in fact it is the way that things were supposed to go as God originally intended it.  If we were not sinners then we would be able to have both earthly bliss and that our hearts would be overflowing with faith and love towards God.  God intended for Adam and Eve and their children to have lives of happiness, lacking no good thing—and the greatest portion of their happiness would have been the joy that they had in their Creator.

But sin changed all this.  We became incapable of not committing idolatry with all the good gifts of creation unless God himself would intervene.  Whatever gifts God gives us, because we are sinners, we can’t help but receive them in a bad way.  We love them and trust in them and become proud of them. If we could only receive what we have without hanging our heart on it, and if only we could have no fear of losing it, and if only we could be truly thankful to God for it, then none of this stuff could hurt us.  But our hearts are corrupted.

And so God must break our hearts.  That sounds odd.  It sounds cruel, perhaps, but it is not.  God must break our hearts that are ever so eager to love and trust in everything except for him.  And so he will take things away.  “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”  This is what is happening at the time of Jacob’s wrestling with God.  His peace and security and happiness are taken away.  As he’s wrestling with this stranger it seems even as though his life is about to be taken away.  Everything either has been or is about to be or seems to be taken away.  All hope is lost.  The only hope that is left is in this One who is attacking him.

Here we must learn an all-important lesson from Jacob (and we can learn it from the Canaanite woman in our Gospel reading today too)—the way that we should respond.  Everything has been taken away—even their dignity has been taken away—but what do they say?  “I’m not going to let you go until you bless me.”  Both of them know full well who it is who has been causing them their difficulties.  They are not stupid.  But they say, “Bless me!”  And this is what we must do too, when God is putting us through the wringer.  We must look to the one who has put our life out of joint and say, “Bless me!”  You heard how Jesus responded to the woman.  He didn’t hate her.  He loved her very much: “O woman, great is your faith!  Let it be done for you as you have desired.”  The same is true with Jacob and with you.

I want to point out to you how different this is from the way that the world responds to trouble—and this is what is also comfortable to our unbelieving flesh.  The way that the world responds to trouble is it says, “Oh, that’s too bad, but things will change.  Time heals all wounds.  Better luck next time.  But don’t give up.  Think positively.”  I could go on and on.  This is the wisdom of the world, and indeed, there is some wisdom to it.  But you know when that kind of wisdom falls silent?  It has nothing to say at the death bed.  When death is approaching the world can’t say, “Thinks will get better.  Your luck will change.”  It can’t say anything.  But that can be awkward, and so I’ve noticed actually that it will change tack and instead of looking to the future it will only look to the past.  Past experiences and joys will be recollected.

Instead of those vain babblings that can’t change a thing, how about turning to God and saying to him, “I’m not going to let you go until you bless me?”

All those things that the world speaks about in the face of trouble and death, can’t actually do anything.  Nobody has ever been blessed by luck.  Nobody has been redeemed or saved by the quality of life that he or she has had.  None of this stuff has the power to save.  The only reason why the world clings to these things so firmly is that they do not believe in the true God.  These substitute gods are the best thing that they have or that they know of. 

But that God from whom you demand a blessing is able to help you—truly help you.  He helped Jacob.  He helped the Canaanite woman.  And he will help you too.  And there is nothing that he can’t help you with.  Even death, our worst enemy, must submit to our Lord Jesus Christ, because he has defeated it with his atoning death and his glorious resurrection.

And so there is wisdom to be gained from Jacob and the Canaanite woman.  It is especially important for us to think about this wisdom carefully and thoroughly because it is so different from the way that the world deals with trouble.  But the world is a fool who says in its heart there is no god—or at least that God can’t help me in my present troubles.  That is a lie.  The truth (and it is demonstrated to you powerfully by our readings today) is that God will bless those who cling to him and demand mercy from him.