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WRESTLING WITH GOD

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Genesis 32:22-31

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God works through our struggles

to change us.

A sermon preached by

Rev. William O. (Bud) = Reeves

First United Methodist Church

Hot= Springs, Arkansas

June 15, 2008

Today, being Father= 217;s Day, I thought we would talk about something the guys could get into—wrestling! Or as t= hey say on TV—rasslin’.= You might call our Scripture text = today the first smackdown …or not. <= /span>

We find Jacob today at= one of the critical points in his life journey. He is about to meet up with his estranged brother Esau, and he doesn’t know if Esau is coming as a fr= iend or foe. Twenty years earlier,= Jacob had tricked the dim-witted Esau out of his birthright as the elder son, and= then tricked their father Isaac into giving his final blessing to him instead of Esau. Esau was ready to kill = Jacob, so Jacob fled to the home of his uncle Laban, back in the ancestral family hometown of Haran<= /st1:City>.

While he lived with La= ban, Jacob married both of his daughters, Leah and Rachel. Laban tricked Jacob into working s= even years, only to marry Leah, the less attractive sister. Then, seven years of work later, he married the prettier one, Rachel. Twelve children later, with flocks and servants and quite a load of wealth, Jacob decided to return to Canaan. He and Laban made an uneasy truce.= Then as he crossed the border into= his homeland, Jacob was greeted with a vision of angels welcoming him home.

The next thing Jacob h= eard was that Esau was headed his way with 400 men. This brought a moment of panic to Jacob’s heart, because he had left things unsettled with his brother,= to say the least. So he devised a plan. He put together a massi= ve herd of goats, sheep, cattle, and donkeys to be sent ahead to Esau as a pea= ce offering. Then he lined up hi= s two wives, their two maids, and his twelve children, and sent them ahead to meet Esau. I don’t know if t= he idea was that Esau’s heart would soften when he saw all his cute litt= le nephews, or that Jacob would still have an opportunity to escape if Esau’s men started killing his family.

Under cover of darknes= s, Jacob ushered all the livestock, all the servants and all his family across= the river. Then, as Jacob was left alone on the riverbank, out of nowhere came an attacker. Jacob could not make out who= his attacker was, but he was one scrappy fighter. All night long they wrestled and f= ought and struggled. As the sky in = the east began to redden, it dawned on Jacob who this might be. At that moment the man struck Jaco= b so hard that it dislocated his hip. Writhing in pain, Jacob managed to grab and hold on to his attacker. The assailant begge= d, “Let me go, for dawn is breaking!”

That’s how Jacob= knew that his opponent was a spiritual being.&n= bsp; He said, “I won’t let you go until you bless me!”<= o:p>

“Then quick,R= 21; the spirit answered. “What’s your name?”

“Jacob.”

“No more will yo= u be called Jacob the Grabber,” the attacker said, “but Israel,= the Striver, because you have wrestled with God and prevailed.”

Jacob couldn’t l= et it go just at that. He asked, “So what’s your name?”&n= bsp;

For just a moment thei= r eyes met, and the attacker said, "You don't really have to ask me that.” Then he was gone.

As the sun rose, Jacob= , in serious pain and exhausted from the night, limped across the river to catch= up with his family and to confront his brother Esau. But in his struggle, he had seen t= he face of God.

This is an ancient and unusual story out of the life of Jacob. What is not unusual or outside of o= ur awareness is the fact that sometimes people of faith wrestle with God. In fact, every true disciple, at one time or another, has to wrestle with the claims God has on his or her life—if we take them seriously at all. This all-night wrestling match was= a spiritual battle as well as a physical fight. At stake was the control of Jacob’s soul. As discip= les of Jesus Christ, we find ourselves in a constant tug-of-war with our Creator.<= span style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'> There may never be any doubt about= our relationship, but sometimes it can get pretty testy.

Elie Weisel, the Jewis= h author and Holocaust survivor, once wrote, “One can be a good Jew, or a good Christian, with God or against God, but not without God. One may be against= God for the sake of his Creation. I quarrel with him, fight with him, make up w= ith him, but I am never without him.”[1] Wrestling is part of the relations= hip.

In the movie “The = Apostle,” Sonny Dewey, played by Robert Duvall, is a Pentecostal preacher, the leader of a large congregation, who finds out his wife is hav= ing an affair with one of his associate pastors. They have effectively stolen his ministry out from under him. = Sonny goes to God in prayer, but it is not a pleasant conversation:

Somebody, I say, somebody has taken my wife; they’ve stolen my church. That’s the temple I built for you! I’m gonna yell at you ‘= ;cause I’m mad at you! I can&#= 8217;t take it! Give me a sign or somethin’. Blow this pa= in out of me. Give it to me tonight,= Lord God, Jehovah. If you won̵= 7;t give me back my wife, give me peace. …Give me peace.

…I’m confused. I’m mad. I love you, Lord. I love you, but I’m mad at you. I am mad at you! So deliver me tonight, Lord. What should I do? Now you tell me.= Should I lay hands on myself? What should I do? I know I’m a sinner and once= in a while a womanizer, but I’m your servant.

Ever since I was a little boy and you brought= me back from the dead, I’m your servant! What should I do? Tell me. I’ve always called you Jesus; you’ve always called me Sonny. What should I do now, Jesus? This is Sonny talkin’ now.[2]

People of faith wre= stle with God. Sometimes we wrestle with sin and temptation. There is alwa= ys a struggle to keep our lives on the narrow way of righteousness. We are called to holiness, but we = never seem to make it completely, do we? We know what St. Paul is talking about in Romans 7: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. …For I do not do the good I = want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.&n= bsp; Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells in me. …Wre= tched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”= = [3] Jesus will deliver you, b= ut it doesn’t mean you won’t have to struggle with temptation and sin= .

We wrestle with relationships.&nbs= p; Getting along with human beings is a struggle. You can’t have a marriage wi= thout working at it day after day, year after year. You can’t have a good relati= onship with your kids until you invest the time and energy it takes. You can’t get along with your parents without putting some effort into it. Look at Jacob’s family; ther= e was never a more dysfunctional group on the planet—cheating brothers, conniving father-in-law, thieving wives.&n= bsp; There are rewards, to be sure, for maintaining harmonious family rel= ationships and friendships, and I thank God every day for the friends and family I have. But it doesn’t co= me without work.

We wrestle with our calling.&n= bsp; Each of us has special gifts and graces, unique ways that we can mak= e a contribution to the Kingd= om of God. But it’s a struggle to deter= mine what God wants us to do and where he is leading us.

My night of wrestli= ng with God took a whole year. When I= went away to college, I was sure that I wanted to be a doctor. I had always wanted to be a doctor= ; my parents had encouraged my ambition to be a doctor. I was set—pre-med all the wa= y.

Then I got to colle= ge, and all the love I had for chemistry and biology in high school faded like the evening sunset. I was miserab= le; I felt like all I did was eat and sleep and study. I was struggling. Gradually it began to dawn on me t= hat maybe there was a reason for the struggle.= Perhaps the difficulties I was experiencing meant other doors were opening. The things I enjoyed= doing pointed me toward the ordained ministry.&n= bsp; It took a year of wrestling, a year of intense conversations with trusted friends, a year of staring at the ceiling in the darkness and asking God, “Where do I go from here?” But after a year I knew. I am called to ordained ministry.<= span style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'> God, with his quirky sense of humo= r, chose me. I have received the= blessing of a life that sometimes looks like a vision of angels…and sometimes feels like a dislocated hip!

What I want to sugg= est to you today is that your struggles in life may be God’s instruction for you. Maybe the Lord is trying= to lead you. Maybe your steadfas= t, loving Father is trying to tell you something. Maybe you’re wrestling with = an angel. Sometimes you have to = go through the pain to get the gain.

Singer-songwriter a= nd author Jennifer Rothschild grew up wanting to be an artist. She loved to draw and paint. But as a teenager, she developed a= rare eye disease that eventually took her sight. Instead of making pictures, her mu= sic became her palette, and today she has a ministry through singing, writing, = and public speaking that takes her all over the country. In Decision magazine, she wrote:

One of the hardest lessons I've had to learn = is that God uses painful circumstances in our lives for good. My hero, Joni Eareckson Tada, who has been in a wheelchair since she was a teenager, makes this point well when she says that God allows what he hates in order to accomplish what he loves. I know that God's heart is broken when he sees our hearts break. …I'm convinced that God is well acquainted with the sor= row and struggles that I experience. Yet, at the same time, he loves me enough—and this is why I'm so loyal to him—to let me encounter sorrow, taste bitter emotions, and feel loss. He trusts me to be a good ste= ward of that sorrow. He loves me enough to let me experience that pain so that he can accomplish something he loves—which for me has been a deeper character and a more eternal perspective.[4]

I believe God is wo= rking through our struggles to change us for the better. I believe our character is defined= by our struggles as much as our blessings.&nb= sp; I believe that what we become is because of what we have overcome. When Jacob wrestled with the angel= , it changed his identity. Jacob, = whose name meant “Conniver, Supplanter, or Grabber,” was changed to “Israel, the one who strives with God.” When we give control of our lives to God, we receive a new identity. We become a new cre= ation.

Let me give you thr= ee ways to receive this new identity today. One, embrace the struggle. Whether you= like it or not, your life will sometimes be like a wrestling match. Don’t try to avoid that. Instead, embrace it, and learn fro= m it, and gain strength from the struggle. God is at work in it, and if you can see God in it, you will get the blessing.

One of the things I= truly love about summertime is fresh tomatoes.&n= bsp; I’m talking about real, garden-ripe, home-grown tomatoes. You cannot buy these tomatoes in t= he grocery store. The stores hav= e all gone for tomatoes shipped in from California. These false tomatoes are great for grocery stores because they ship easily and have a shelf life of about a century. They pick these toma= toes out in California= while they’re still green. They put them on an assembly line belt, and they spray them with a certain type of gas. Then they expose them to intense light for a few seconds, and that turns these green tomatoes a rosy shade of pink. They pack them in styrofoam crates, and they can ship them anywhere in a the wor= ld without so much as a bruise in a bushel.&n= bsp; There’s only one problem: the styrofoam crates have more taste! If you want a tomato t= hat really tastes like a tomato, yo= u have to let it ripen in somebody’s garden in the county where you live. It has to be exposed to the hot su= mmer sun and the cool dewy evenings. A real tomato is vulnerable to disease and insects and birds and bruises, but= in the struggle to grow and ripen, it develops a flavor that is unlike any oth= er fruit.

So it is with the g= rowth of our spirit. The blessing of G= od is born in the struggle. Our adversities are the birth pains of a new creation. We are not just wrestling; we are ripening. God is leading us, straightening us out, purifying us, refining us. We are being molded by God i= nto the beautiful, godly people he created us to be.

Two, when you wrestle, let God win.&nbs= p; The point of the struggle is not to be self-sufficient. The point is to let God be suffici= ent for every need you have. The struggle, whether it is with the devil or whether it is with God over contr= ol of your life, is a holy battle. Let the Holy One win.

Nikos Kazantzakis, = the Greek novelist, was an intensely religious person, and one time he made a pilgrimage to a secluded island to see a saintly monk named Father Makarios. He asked the wise a= nd holy man, “Do you still wrestle with the devil?”

“Not any long= er, my child,” replied the godly man. “I have grown old, and he has grown old with me. He does not have the strength. I now wrestle with God.”

“With God!= 221; exclaimed Nikos with astonishment. “And you hope to win?”

“No,” a= nswered the monk. “I hope to lose.”[5] In the struggle of life, the best = we can do is to let God win.

Finally, hang on for the blessing. With Jacob, the blessing came not = when he was wrestling, but when he was clinging. God will bless you, if you will ju= st hang on. Don’t ever let= him go. When sin is threatening t= o pull you from the path, hang on, and God will bless you with forgiveness and holiness. When relationships = are trying your patience and wearing you out, hang on, and God will bless you w= ith peace and reconciliation. Whe= n you feel called to serve God, but you don’t know how or where, hang on, a= nd God will bless you with direction and purpose. When you feel like you’ve be= en through an all-night wrestling match, hang on. You may be wounded, but you’= re not defeated. Hang on; the dawn is breaking, and you will prevail! Amen!