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But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
You may be seated. In the name of Jesus, amen. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a friend’s house and they’ve given you something to eat as some sort of dessert, and you said, “What’s in that?” And they tell you the ingredients: “This, this, and this.” This text reveals to us the ingredients of the Christian life. If you were to look at God and say to God, “What’s there in the Christian life?” the Lord would say, “Well, I’ll tell you. It’s not sugar and butter and eggs and flour. It’s faith and prayer and suffering. Faith and prayer and suffering.” And that’s what the life of Jacob shows us, especially this text.
But we want to get this text in the contours of the history of Jacob. Remember, Jacob was the one who was born to inherit the promised seed—the promise that God gave to Adam and Eve in the garden: “Your seed,” He said to Eve, “will crush the head of the serpent.” And then the Lord gave that seed promise to Abraham. Abraham waited and waited with Sarah till finally the Lord granted that promise and then gave it to Isaac.
When Rebecca was pregnant and Isaac and Rebecca were about to have their children, it was revealed to them that they were going to have twins together. The Lord gave the promise then, when the babies were still in the womb, that the older will serve the younger. So Jacob, the younger, is born to be served by Esau, the older. It was Jacob born as the child of the promise, but his whole life—this is the big drama, that middle part of Genesis—his whole life seems like it’s fighting against that very promise.
So that if you were to look at the childhood of Jacob and Esau and say, “Who’s going to inherit the promise?” it looks like Esau. Even as they get older, it looks like Esau. Jacob has to even get Esau to sell him the birthright, which was already his. Still, their father Isaac is getting ready to bless Esau instead of Jacob.
They’re 77 years old, so they’ve aged quite a bit. Isaac says to Esau, “Go and hunt for me and bring me some stew, and I’m going to give you the blessing.” Rebecca and Jacob hear about this and say, “Isaac is going to do it again. He’s going to give the blessing to the wrong person.” So they quick cook the stew and remember, they get the hair of the goat on Jacob’s hands. Isaac says, “Well, it’s the voice of my son Jacob, but it’s the skin of my son Esau.” How hairy was Esau that they have to use the goat skin to deceive his father? But that’s what they do.
We look at that and say, “Look, Jacob is trying to steal the blessing from Esau.” No, Jacob was trying to get the blessing that he should have had all along. And here’s the trouble with Jacob: he has the promise, but that’s it. He’s got nothing to confirm the promise, nothing to prove the promise, nothing to support the promise, nothing that he can lean on. All he has is the promise.
Isaac gives it to him, and they think, “Well, did we solve the problem?” But in fact, the opposite is true. Esau is going to come and kill him now, so he has to run away. Here’s Jacob, 77 years old. He’s got nothing but a bag full of snacks. He’s on his way to his uncle Laban’s, and he thinks that God has completely abandoned him. But the vision comes of the ladder and the angels going up and down in Bethel, and now Jacob knows that the Lord is with him.
But look, every time, it goes like this: the Lord will give some comfort to Jacob so that he can endure the great trials that follow. He goes to work for Laban, who is a crook, his uncle. He first reverses this promise of the dowry so he can marry Rachel, and he works for seven years. When the time for the marriage comes, he flips the daughters so that he marries Leah, then he marries Rachel, but for another seven years of work.
To get some wealth so that he can take care of his family, he starts working for him. So it’s six years, and every few months, Laban is changing the contract to try to steal more and more from Jacob, so that if it was up to him, there would be nothing left. It’s 20 years later. Imagine this: Jacob’s been slaving for 20 years. The Lord has provided for him graciously. God be praised. He’s under the tyranny of Laban, and the Lord finally comes to him and says, “It’s time for you to go back home.”
So he’s 97 years old. He leaves Laban. Laban finds out about him and comes to destroy him. The Lord has to stop Laban’s destruction by appearing to him in a dream. That’s the only way he survives that. Then he gets to this Jabbak River, which is right about where our text is. He gets right to the river and sends guys across to check on his brother, and they come back with the report: “Esau knows that you’re coming, and he’s coming to meet you with 400 men.” He’s coming to meet you with an army. Jacob understands this: he’s coming to destroy you.
So Jacob is there and prays to the Lord. At the beginning of the chapter, we hear how he prays to the Lord: “Lord, preserve me. Lord, help me.” Then he starts making plans. He sends gifts one after another, like groups of sheep, to placate Esau’s anger, arriving one after another.
Jacob says, “I don’t know what else to do,” so he divides his family in two. His thinking is, “Well, Esau is going to destroy one or half or the other, but at least he won’t destroy all of us.” While he’s killing half of us, the rest can get away into the woods. He sends his family across the river, and now he’s praying. We can imagine his prayer: “Lord, what is going on? I thought you gave me the promise—the promise that from me the Messiah would come. I thought you promised to bless me. I thought you promised to keep me. I thought you promised to be with me. And here I am right on the edge of destruction. After 97 years of affliction, where are you? Why don’t you help? Why don’t you keep your promise?”
In the middle of that prayer, the Lord shows up. Now, I promise you it’s not what you expect. I mean, normally when the Lord shows up, Jacob would fall on his face and worship, or the Lord would show up and he’d build an altar and offer a sacrifice, or the Lord would show up and he would fall down on his face, or something like that.
But what happens now? The Lord shows up, and this is how I picture it, at least. Jacob sees this man—at least it looks like a man—and he’s walking towards him. As he gets closer, he realizes this is not a normal man. It looks an awful lot like an angel, right? As this angel-man gets closer and closer, he keeps getting closer, and Jacob maybe takes a step back and another step back, and then it’s the Lord Jesus there, just jumps on him and grabs him. I guess Jacob fought back.
The Lord takes Jacob and throws him on the ground. Jacob grabs onto him and tosses him there, and here they are wrestling with one another. Can you imagine—arms on each other’s shoulders, throwing each other down? Now Jesus has Jacob in a headlock. Jacob squeezes out, covered in this Jabbak River mud, and he throws Jesus over his back. They’re back and forth and back and forth, and they’re wrestling, and it’s like this all night. What in the world is going on? What’s happening there? The wrestling just keeps going.
I imagine Jacob, at some point, realizes what’s going on because he knows at last who it is. He says, and the Lord tells him, just in case he misses it, “You’ve seen the Lord; you’ve fought with the Lord face to face, and my life has been preserved.” He calls the place Penuel, which means “the face of God,” and Jacob realizes at some point in the middle of the night, “I’m actually fighting with God.”
And every once in a while, I’m winning. Amen. Now, this is an amazing thing that the Lord Jesus, who could have just wiped him out, doesn’t. He shows that He can because He, at some point, reaches out there and just touches Jacob’s hip, knocking it right out of socket, so Jacob limps for the rest of his life. The Lord’s showing, “I’m more powerful than you, but I’m not here to destroy you, nor am I here really to make it easy for you.”
In the middle of this fight, the Lord gives Jacob a new name. He says, “No longer is your name Jacob. Now, your name is Israel.” That word, Israel, means “wrestles with God.” “You’ve striven with God and with man, and you’ve prevailed.” Then Jacob says, “What’s your name?” And He says, “Why do you ask my name?” In other words, “You know who it is.”
Can you see Jacob? He can’t even stand up on his leg; he’s limping, bruised, bleeding, covered in mud. The Lord Jesus is trying to get away from him, and he just won’t let him go. He’s holding on to His ankle. “Let go of me.” “No, I’m not going to let go of you until you bless me. Let go of me,” says Jesus. “No, not until you bless me.”
So finally, the Lord Jesus blesses him, and Jacob lets go, and Jesus is gone, and the sun comes up, and Jacob crosses the river. Now, the rest of the story, by the way—now we’ll come back to what all this means, but the rest of the story is they go across the river, and Esau comes with all of these men whom Jacob thinks are going to destroy him. Instead of destroying him, Esau comes in peace. In fact, he gives back the gifts and says, “Welcome back,” and it’s this marvelous sort of restoration—something that would have never happened.
When Luther gives us the interpretation of the text, he says that when Jacob is wrestling with Jesus, Jesus is changing Esau’s mind at the same time, so that when he arrives—when he shows up—he shows up not to destroy but to bless. It’s an amazing thing.
Now, what do we make of all this? What do we make of Jacob standing there muddy? Can you imagine in the morning when he crosses the river? Maybe he wipes the mud off of his face, but his clothes are drenched, and he’s bleeding and bruised. He shows up, and Rachel says, “What happened to you? What happened over there?” How would he explain it? “Well, Jesus showed up.” “Yeah? And then what?” “Well, then He threw me on the ground.” “Well, what’d you do?” “He says, ‘What?’ Thought back.”
Why is this here? I mean, number one, why does Jesus act this way with Jacob? And why is it recorded for us? Here’s what I want to suggest: that this is how the Lord Jesus does it. This is how Jesus makes Christians. This is what Jesus does not only with Jacob, but also with Isaac, and also with Abraham, and also with Esau, and also with David, and also with Moses, and also with Paul, and also with Peter, and also with you. You are also Israel—you are those who wrestle with God.
It works something like this: the Lord Jesus gives you a promise—that your sins are forgiven, that He will never leave you or forsake you, that you will survive through death into life eternal. He gives you a promise, and then everything else in life seems like it’s fighting against that promise. This is your job: to hold on to His ankles and not let go. To not let go until He blesses you. To not let go until He keeps His promise. To not grow weary in prayer.
Know that this life of suffering does not mean it’s not a Christian life, but that it precisely is a Christian life, and that the Lord is with you. It’s a strange story, but the more we think about it, the more familiar it becomes for each one of us.
Here’s the point: the Lord Jesus has given us great promises that we cannot see. So we hold on by faith, trusting in His love, relying on His mercy, holding on to His gifts, and knowing that He cannot leave us or forsake us.
I imagine this night was uncomfortable for Jacob, but it could have been a lot worse. The Lord Jesus brings us through all of these difficulties because He knows the sun is coming up, and He knows He wants to bless us.
So we rejoice that this Christian life—the life of faith, the life of prayer, the life of suffering—is the life the Lord has given us, and we rejoice in it. May God grant us that faith and that courage and that wisdom through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
The peace of God which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.