Dennis Tuuri

It will come from Genesis chapter 32. We’ll read the entire chapter. Genesis 32. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

Genesis 32. So Jacob went on his way and the angels of God met him. When Jacob saw them, he said, “This is God’s camp.” And he called the name of that place Mahanaim. Then Jacob sent messengers before him to Esau his brother in the land of Seir, the country of Edom. And he commanded them, saying, “Speak thus to my lord Esau.

Thus your servant Jacob says, I have dwelt with Laban and stayed there until now. I have oxen, donkeys, flocks, and male and female servants, and I have sent to tell my lord that I may find favor in your sight.” Then the messengers returned to Jacob, saying, “We came to your brother Esau. He also was coming to meet you and 400 men are with him. So Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed. And he divided the people that were with him and the flocks and the herds and camels into two companies.

And he said, “If Esau comes to the one company and attacks it, then the other company which is left will escape.” Then Jacob said, “Oh God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, the Lord who said to me, return to your country and to your family, and I will deal well with you. I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies and of all the truth which you have shown your servant. For I crossed over this Jordan with my staff.

And now I have become two companies. Deliver me, I pray, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I fear him, lest he come and attack me and the mother with the children. For you said, I will surely treat you well and make your descendants as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude. So he lodged there that same night and took what came to his hand as a present for Esau his brother.

200 female goats and 20 male goats, 200 ewes and 20 rams, 30 milk camels with their colts, 40 cows and 10 bulls, 20 female donkeys and 10 foals. Then he delivered them to the hand of his servants, every drove by itself, and said to his servants, “Pass over before me and put some distance between successive droves.” And he commanded the first one, saying, “When you meet my brother Esau and he asks you, saying, ‘To whom do you belong and where are you going?

Whose are these in front of you?’ That you shall say, ‘They are your servant Jacob’s. It is a present sent to my lord Esau, and behold, he also is behind us.’” So he commanded the second, the third, and all who followed the drove, saying, “In this manner, you shall speak to Esau when you find him, and also say, Behold, your servant Jacob is behind us.” For he said, I will appease him with the present that goes before me.

and afterward I will see his face. Perhaps he will accept me.” So the present went on over before him. But he himself lodged that night in the camp. And he arose that night and took his two wives, his two female servants, and his 11 sons, and crossed over the ford of Jabbok. He took them, sent them over the brook, and sent over what he had. Then Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until the breaking of day.

Now when he saw that he did not prevail against him, he touched the socket of his hip. And the socket of Jacob’s hip was out of joint as he wrestled with him. And he said, “Let me go, for the day breaks.” But he said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” So he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” And he said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have struggled with God and with men, and have prevailed.” Then Jacob asked, saying, “Tell me your name, I pray.” And he said, “Why is it that you ask about my name?” And he blessed him there.

And Jacob called the name of that place Peniel, for I have seen God face to face and my life is preserved. Just as he crossed over Peniel the sun rose on him and he limped on his hip. Therefore to this day the children of Israel do not eat the muscle that shrank, which is on the hip socket, because he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip and the muscle that shrank.

Let’s pray. Father, we pray that your spirit would lead us to a further realization and faith and submission to the greater Jacob as we ponder this text. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

I did not know when I selected the songs for this Lord’s day that some of the ladies at church would produce this beautiful looking banner for what the church has historically celebrated as Palm Sunday. Blessed is the king that comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna. Blessed is the Lord Jesus Christ. And he came into the city at the beginning of Holy Week. The crowds laid palms for him. He is the sky rider, Skywalker. He comes in the clouds and he comes to his people. He comes as king. And yet that coming ushering us into his victory is accompanied by Good Friday.

Holy Week begins at Palm Sunday, but it moves to Good Friday before it moves to Resurrection Sunday. And so the text before us is kind of a picture of that. It’s a picture of the one who will come into the promised land in the name of the Lord as a king or prince over the land of Canaan, the owner of it according to God’s providence. Blessed is Jacob. That picture of the greater Jacob to come as he came into the land. But as our Savior moved from Palm Sunday to those same crowds yelling crucify him, so Jacob’s life has moved in the context of trials and tribulations, perpetual wrestlings with men, but ultimately with God.

I didn’t know that we were going to sing and that this banner would be here, but we did sing of this very thing in the psalm this morning that we sang. Verse 5, we sang, “Hosanna, ever blessed is he that cometh in God’s name. The blessing of Jehovah’s house upon you we proclaim the light of joy to shine on us that the Lord our God has made. Now be the precious sacrifice upon his altar laid.” There is in this movement of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ to be king. A movement to the sacrifice.

We have in the account before us then a picture of all that very appropriately in the providence of God bringing us to this text on this particular day. I had not intended to preach a separate sermon on this concluding portion of my sermon a month ago on Jacob. I had intended to be the final point of the outline talking about the great picture of what we talked about from Jacob’s life is not really the characteristics of Jacob or Rebecca or Rachel or whoever it may be.

Rather, it is the covenantal God who takes men who are of themselves sinless and worthless as Jacob proclaims in his prayer that we just read and yet creates in them the communicable attributes of the Lord Jesus Christ that they might portray those in the context of the world. This story I want to focus on the last portion of this chapter. This narrative account of Jacob about to move into the promised land to enter through those gates but understanding that he goes through limping.

Picture of the sacrifice being laid on the altar is Jacob. This is a fascinating account as I’m sure most of you are familiar with it. It brings to mind various literary items. We talked before as we looked at the life of Abraham and Sarah and then the marriage of Isaac and Rebecca and then the marriage of Jacob and Rachel and the importance of wells. We’ll see it again when Moses meets his wife at the well, the Midianite princess. These are wonderful love stories and a Christian culture likes love stories, like romances.

As a culture moves away from being a Christian nation and moves away from romances in the sense of love stories and it moves more toward the seedier side of life in the literature, and that’s what we’ve done in this culture. You know, we’ve moved from some of the great love stories of men like William Shakespeare, for instance, to now magazines such as those by Larry Flynt, and that’s the movement away from a Christian culture. We love stories. We love the love stories portrayed in the scriptures because they all portray the greater love story of the Lord Jesus Christ coming and seeking his bride, the church. And that’s why we like them and that’s why they’re supposed to reflect that kind of truth.

Now we also like other kinds of literature and this particular account of Jacob at Peniel is looked upon in various cultures in various ways as reminiscent of other sorts of stories. I’ve listed Rumpelstiltskin, for instance. You know, Rumpelstiltskin—he needs them to guess his name and then he’ll bless them. And so we have Jacob wanting to know the name of God and naming and blessing occurs here at the meeting at Peniel. Dracula—God as he wrestles with Jacob the angel of the Lord says let me go for the day is breaking and so he has to flee away before day comes. Why? Well, it’s led to these stories of vampires and such that as soon as the light dawn they lose their power and efficacy. Of course that’s not what’s going on here. These are perversions of a biblical narrative.

Star Wars has this kind of explicit attempt to create a myth or a folklore. And I know many of you are looking forward to seeing the next Star Wars movie. And one thing you might want to look for in these Star Wars movies are the sort of narrative structures that always accompany myths and folklore. Luke Skywalker is a picture of breaking with his family of the past, moving to the future. He’s got an adversary that tries to prevent him from his goal, which is his father.

And ultimately in the cave with Yoda, he realizes his adversary is himself. Star Wars is one up on some of these other accounts because it does portray the wrestling as being with a single force—good force and bad force. What sets this story here apart from other sorts of myths and folklores of heroes who are called to go to a particular destination. They have a calling. They meet an antagonist on the path. The demon of the river or whatever it is, the knight who prevent the guy from crossing over the bridge in Monty Python. These various accounts of impediments to the commission that a man receives from God and then finally him conquering the impediment and being blessed.

Well, here in this story the change is that God is the one that has both commissioned Jacob and is the one who is wrestling with Jacob preventing him seemingly from doing his task. And yet really in that preventing he is enabling him to do his task. And so Star Wars is a little bit more like that. But of course the evilness of Star Wars is that it posits an impersonal force and man is the determiner of how that force is used as opposed to the personal God of the scriptures.

It can’t get much more personal than this account gives us of Jacob wrestling. And the word wrestle here means to be joined together, sticking to one another, wrestling with God. Very personal account. So what these stories represent to us are the truth of God and how he interacts with men. And because of that the various other articles or stories, books we read, movies we watch of fiction—that’s why they appeal to us as Christians because they pull on these same themes that ultimately come from the scriptures, frequently distorting them and perverting them, but sometimes portraying them correctly.

And so this account here is that kind of tale that brings to us some massive themes relating, as we said earlier, ultimately to the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. So we want to look at this a little bit. We want to remember as I said before, this is kind of the last part of my sermon that I gave a month ago. The Frasers are here today. They actually heard my sermon a month ago last week at CSCC. So this will be a little easier for them to see the correlation. Hopefully you’ll remember what we talked about.

We talked about this love story of Jacob and Rachel. And we talked about Jacob as an exemplar bridegroom to us, as an example for the young men of our church to attain to as they seek wives, as an example for the men of the church as they have wives to act toward them. We said that Jacob needed to be rehabilitated a bit because people tend to look at Jacob as a bad guy.

Many commentators the way you read their account of this particular narrative we’re dealing with today, the battle at Peniel, they would have just assumed that God had prevailed over Jacob instead of God saying that Jacob had prevailed over God and men because they want to see a major change here in Jacob’s life that isn’t continuous with his past. But I think that we’ll see based on other scriptures here in a couple of minutes that there’s a continuity of Jacob’s life of wrestling.

Yes, there’s a change. There’s an enablement, a further enablement for going into the promised land, but ultimately it’s of a piece of what went before. Many commentators read into the text or the narrative their bad opinion of who Jacob is. But yet, we said the scriptures tell us quite clearly and definitively that Jacob as he matured into adulthood matured as a righteously mature man in the sight of God like Noah, like Abraham, like Job.

That’s the kind of guy the scriptures clearly identify in the text of the narrative as to who Jacob was. The scriptures clearly identify this and then pit him in contrast to Esau. From being struggling in the room wrestling here with God at the end of this narrative wrestling with Esau in the womb and wrestling with Esau throughout the course of his life leading to the confrontation that we’re going to see beginning here.

So it contrasted Jacob with Esau who was a picture of a beast-like man. It contrasted Jacob with his father Isaac as well. Isaac wanted to give the blessing to the beast-like man. The one who didn’t represent the characteristics of God as opposed to Jacob. In spite of God’s revelation to the parents that the elder shall serve the younger, Isaac tries to combat God’s own provision of the blessing and birthright to Jacob.

In addition, of course, Jacob ends up struggling for 20 years with Laban, who he works 14 years for Leah and Rachel and another six years for the flock before he finally gets to leave. Laban’s a picture of the Pharaoh who first welcomes Joseph. Later on, a Pharaoh arises that knows not Joseph. And so Laban changes in his attitude toward Jacob, makes him into a servant or a slave, claims the wives that he provided supposedly as Jacob tries to leave—a picture of Jacob wrestling with a Pharaoh-like person.

So Jacob manifests his tremendous characteristics to us in these contrasts. He manifests himself as being reverential and covenantal. We’ll see that again in the prayer today. He manifests himself as being energetic, strong, and service-oriented. Young men, he teaches you how to make a good impression on your bride to be or upon her parents. He rushes to roll off this big heavy stone from off the well. He rushes to minister to his wife and the flocks of Laban—his future wife, that is. So he is energetic, he’s strong, he’s service-oriented to his extended family.

He’s cognizant of God’s presence, God answering his prayers at the well, and so he weeps as he embraces Rachel. That embrace is not a love embrace at that point in time. It’s the embracing of the family that he has been sent to search out and God has answered his prayer by providing the family member at the well.

He is self-sacrificial and patient, willing to lay down his seven years of his life for his bride in working for her. And then he has the patience of God who, as the scriptures tell us, a thousand years is as a day. So Jacob, the seven years to Jacob is as seven days. Jacob is a representation of those character qualities that husbands and bridegrooms and potential bridegrooms should manifest.

He’s tenacious in his work and yet he’s humble and submissive to the mark of God upon him as well. He is humble and prayerful as we saw and we read about in the prayer today acknowledging that he is worthy of absolutely nothing. But ultimately, these characteristics of Jacob really point us to the greater picture and that is the sovereign covenantal Lord in the context of this narrative.

And we want to talk then today about promise and deliverance. Now, I say promise and deliverance, deliverance being in quotes because it’s not the sort of deliverance that we would normally think of. You know, you’ve heard these songs. There’s a song by Bruce Cockburn. “Somebody touched me, making everything right.” I don’t remember all the lyrics, but the idea is that Jesus has touched Bruce Cockburn. It’s a time about his salvation. You know, God touches him and makes everything right. And there’s this, I think there’s a gospel hymn, “He touched me.” And it’s kind of, you know, “he touched me, and the wonderful thing of that made my life great and new and everything.”

Well, here what happens is God touches Jacob in the wrestling and he dislocates his hip. So, you know, he’s touched by God, touched by an angel, but it isn’t quite the way we think of it, is it? And you see, that’s kind of a picture, I think, of the whole thing here, that God’s deliverance of his people in relationship to his promise to be with us and protect us doesn’t look frequently like what we think it should look like. It doesn’t sound like those nice songs when he touched when he touches us. Sometimes it hurts and it hurts badly.

Now, it is deliverance. It’s definitely that as we’ll see, but it’s a different kind of deliverance. One other thing before we talk first about the promise to Jacob and that is that I put in your outlines. I believe that there is the centrality of this scene. When Jacob begins to come back to Canaan, there are seven specific scenes drawn out and this is the middle of those seven scenes. This is the central scene of Jacob’s return to the promised land to come in the name of God back in there. It has a significance to it.

And this is a liminal event. It’s a word I learned a month or so ago. I’ve heard guys talk about liminal space or liminal time. That word liminal refers to a limen, I think is the noun, which is a threshold or a doorway. We’re reading a book called Hallowed Be This House right now in our family worship time. And one of the first chapters talks about doorways and what they represent to us as Christians. Doorways are important. They’re not just something you walk through.

You move from one space to another space. You move from one order to a new order as you move through liminal space. There’s a sense in which the worship of God’s people is that threshold as we approach God in eternity in worship that changes us. Every week, God presses into us the qualities of the Lord Jesus Christ as he comes to be with us through the work of the spirit and the word and the sacrament. And we then move out of here differently than when we came in. We’ve gone through a doorway or a threshold.

And Jacob, as he moves from outside of the land to now inside of the promised land, moves through a threshold. It’s a reminder to us, of course, of the exodus of God’s people as they move through the Red Sea—different location, but still a boundary to the promised land. It’s a reminder that Jesus identifying with his people, with Israel, goes to Egypt and comes back across the Red Sea going through this threshold to bring in a new world as it were, a new creation through his work on the cross. And the cross itself represents that threshold through which our Savior goes to affect the new creation, the new order in his work.

And so the work of Jacob here is that kind of critical core event to him and should help us then to interpret our lives when we have similar events occur to us. Okay? And what I’m saying here is that this represents deliverance. Deliverance based on the promise of God. The promise of God is portrayed for us in the various references I have under point one of the outline.

Genesis 25:23 and following. In Genesis 25:23, the Lord says to Jacob’s mother, “Two nations are in your womb. Two people shall be separated from your body. One people shall be stronger than the other, and the older shall serve the younger.” This is the beginning of the promise to Jacob. Now, it’s given to his mother, but still it’s a promise relative to Jacob. The older shall serve the younger. Jacob will have mastery over Esau. The promise of God.

This promise is further articulated in Genesis 27:28 and 29. Here Isaac is speaking and he’s giving the blessing to Jacob. He says, “Therefore may God give you of the dew of heaven and of the fatness of the earth and plenty of grain and wine. Let people serve you and nations bow down to you. Be master over your brethren.” See, he’s really in the providence of God through the deception of Isaac and Rebecca. He is giving the correct blessing. “Be master over your brethren just as God had said in his promise to Isaac—or rather to Jacob—that the older shall serve the younger.”

And Isaac goes on to say, “Let your mother’s sons bow down to you.” Clearly a reference to Esau. “Cursed be everyone who curses you and blessed be those who bless you.” A reiteration of the initial promise to Jacob.

Again this promise is articulated and further developed in chapter 28:3 and 4. Again coming from Isaac’s mouth. “May God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you that you may be an assembly of peoples and give you the blessing of Abraham to you and your descendants with you that you may inherit the land in which you are a stranger, which God gave to Abraham.” So it’s the Abrahamic blessing or promise that is pronounced upon Jacob.

Now as we hear these promises, I hope as you hear promises like these that there is a personal apprehension of these, an appropriation rather, of these blessings because ultimately these blessings don’t belong to Jacob apart from the work of the coming Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. And because they’re ultimately to Christ, the greater Jacob, they are to us as well. These are the promises of God to us and the promises of God to Jacob again in Genesis 28:13-15.

And here we have Jacob and he has the dream and sees the angels ascending and descending and God speaks to him. It says in verse 13, “Behold, the Lord stood above it and said, I am the Lord God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie, I will give to you and your descendants. Also your descendants shall be as the dust of the earth. You shall spread abroad to the west and the east, to the north and to the south, and in you and in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

Behold, I am with you, and I will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have spoken to you.” You see, it’s on the basis of that specific articulation of the promise to Jacob that he enters into that prayer as he’s about to cross over Peniel. He calls back to this promise by God and says, “You said you’d bring me back to the land. I don’t deserve a thing. Don’t think I’m pleading with you based on my rights, but you said you’re going to do this, and I pray that you would bring this to pass.” The submissive, devotional Jacob prays in that manner.

And then the final reference I have here is to the first couple of verses of this particular chapter, Genesis 32. And it isn’t really an articulation of the promise as such. It’s kind of a fulfillment, but it’s a wonderful picture to us of how God is keeping these promises in bringing Jacob to deliverance in the light of these promises. We read in those first two verses that Jacob went on his way and the angels of God plural met him and when Jacob saw them he said “This is God’s camp” and he called the name of that place Mahanaim, or two camps.

So Jacob here understands and God’s further promise to him is kind of reinforced with Jacob being able to discern that the angels of God are encamping round about him. He moves with God’s, with God’s ministers in his context. Matthew Henry says that those who keep in a good way have always a good guard. Hebrews 1:14 speaking of angels says, “Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister for those who will inherit salvation?” Jacob is the one who’s going to inherit salvation. The angels are sent forth as ministering spirits as a manifestation of the presence of God.

The way that God manifested himself with angels back at that promise on his way to seek his wife, the promise that he now has called and calls upon God to keep. So these angels are ministering spirits. Psalm 34:7 says, “The angel of the Lord encamps all around those who fear him and delivers them.” So here are the angels encamping around Jacob to bring deliverance in relationship to God’s promise to him.

Psalm 91:11 says that he shall give his angels charge of thee. The idea here is angels and the name that Jacob gives to this place means companies—two companies of angels and the idea is that Jacob before and after is protected, guarded and guided by the presence of God. So God has made these promises to Jacob and he’s made these promises to you and I. But the way he fulfills those promises and brings them to pass in our life, the way he accomplishes our deliverance, as I said, is not always the way we would want.

It’s virtually never the way we would want and it’s not the way we would expect unless we are familiar with what the scriptures assert over and over again that as we move from Palm Sunday being victors in Christ to resurrection and ascension strength we do so by means of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. So God affects Jacob’s deliverance in the context of this struggle. And as I said, we must see in this struggle the answer to Jacob’s prayer that he is praying to God that God would indeed save him.

Now, let’s look then at the specific text or narrative of the struggle itself in chapter 32 verse 24. Jacob was left alone. And by the way, we are told earlier that he verse 22, he arose that night. The struggle begins with Jacob alone and at night. It is a picture of the dark night of the soul. It’s a picture of aloneness that we sometimes experience—an apprehension of aloneness and night representing the fears and anxieties of God’s people. He is here all by himself at night. And in the context of that, his deliverance takes place.

A man wrestles with him until the breaking of day. Now, as I said, this is a 99-year-old fella in Jacob and he’s now wrestling with the angel of God with God himself taking human form or appearance and this wrestling goes on till the breaking of day. When he saw that he did not prevail against him he touched the socket of his hip and the socket of Jacob’s hip was out of joint as he wrestled with him.

We have here a description of the struggle between God and Jacob in this scene of deliverance or answer to prayer. We have some names here we should think about. The man Jacob is at the place Jabbok. Jacob, Jabbok. You turn the B and the C around and you have J-bach instead of Jacob. And the wrestling is Abbach using the same basic consonants as Jacob and Jabbok. So this all is brought together in terms of the deliverance scene that God enters him into. These things are interconnected.

Jacob must Jabbok at the Jabbok before he gets to the promised land with God. Jacob clings to God in the context of this wrestling. Turn if you would to Hosea chapter 12 verses 1-6 and we have a biblical commentary on this text. Hosea 12:1-6. We read in Hosea 12, Ephraim, now God is here rebuking Ephraim. “Ephraim feeds on the wind and pursues the east wind. He daily increases lies and desolation also to make a covenant with the Assyrians and oil is carried to Egypt. The Lord also brings a charge against Judah and will punish Jacob according to his ways. According to his deeds, we recompense him.”

Jacob here is a reference to the tribe of Israel. So, he’s talking about the northern and southern tribes in terms of judgment. Judah being the southern tribe and Jacob, Israel, the northern tribe. Now, playing off of that reference to Israel as Jacob, Hosea now moves to a citation of the positive example of Jacob as an example to the sinning Ephraim. In verse three, he says, “He took his brother by the heel in the womb. And in his strength, he struggled with God. Yes, he struggled with the angel and prevailed.

He wept and sought favor from him. He found him in Bethel and there he spoke to us—that is the Lord God of hosts. The Lord is his memorable name. So you by the help of your God return observe mercy and justice and wait on your God continually.” Hosea gives the positive example of Jacob wrestling with God at Peniel and actually tells us that this wrestling was related to the very womb itself. We read in verse three, “He took his brother by the heel of the womb and in his strength he struggled with God.”

Hosea is very instructive to us. It tells us first of all that the struggling with God was not simply a physical struggle but was a spiritual struggle and that Jacob struggled by means of weeping and beseeching or seeking favor from God. So the picture is that God touches his socket. Jacob clings to God for all he’s worth and will not let God go until he secures a blessing from God.

Jacob is in this a picture to us of the tremendous motivation we should have to see manifested in our lives the deliverance to the promises God gives us in Christ. Jacob is a picture to us of our need to weep and struggle in prayer with God as he brings difficulties into our lives that are tremendous sources of problems—trying trials and tribulations—to see ultimately behind those difficulties, the Lord God himself bringing about our deliverance from our sinful state and our movement into being Israel.

Israel is the name that means fighting for God, ruling for God, ruled by God or fought with by God, to the end that he rules and fights with God now. He’s God’s representative as a prince in the land. That’s where he’s going. That’s where we’re going. And we get there by means of the difficulties and trials. So Hosea tells us that this struggle of Jacob is not simply a physical struggle. Now we don’t want to just turn it into a spiritual struggle without the physical component. Here we have a picture of the unity of the physical and spiritual nature of mankind in the struggling of Jacob.

Real physical wrestling with God and yet being portrayed by Hosea as a spiritual struggle which Jacob is praying and crying and pleading with God for the blessing. It’s a picture to us in the midst of our difficulty of what our response is to be if we’re in the greater Jacob. But notice also that Hosea, as I said, ties this directly to the entire struggle of Jacob’s life. Verse three, “He took his brother by the heel in the womb, and in his strength, he struggled with God. He struggled with the angel and prevailed. He wept and found favor.”

See, Jacob’s struggle with God at Peniel is a picture of the entire nature of his struggling with God in the context of his life. And it tells us since God says that you have prevailed with God and man, it tells us that all those struggles that he was involved with, they are put in the same place as his struggling with God here as being tied to the blessing that God puts upon him. In other words, this struggling and God’s citation of his struggling and prevailing with man and Hosea’s connection of this struggling with the struggling with Esau beginning in the womb tells us that this struggle is not a discontinuous event in Jacob’s life.

It relates to all the struggles that he’s gone through. When he struggles with Esau, this reveals he’s actually been struggling with God. When he struggled with Isaac, he’s been struggling with God. When he struggled with Laban, he’s been struggling with God. Not because he’s sinful. Not because he’s sinful. Because God says, “You have prevailed. You have done well in your wrestling and struggling. And now I’m going to give you a new name and I’m going to give you a picture in your limp of your dependence upon me that you’ve had all your life.” He had a dependence upon the blessings of God and sought those blessings just as he tenaciously clings to God in the wrestling.

So he has tenaciously clung to the promises of God’s prophetic word to his mother that he would receive the birthright and the blessing. It’s a picture of our struggling and our deliverance. Now so God describes for us here the struggle as Jacob clings to God and Hosea tells us the nature of that struggle and also as a result tells us also that we must also engage ourselves in weeping and supplication ultimately relying upon the strength of God himself.

The Holy Spirit intercedes for us. We cannot struggle with man or God and prevail were it not for the strength of God in calling us and bringing us to that state. Now there’s a dialogue about names in all of this. When Jacob at the end of this struggle—again going to the text—God says let me go for the day breaks. Probably that’s a reference by the way, you know, no man can see God face to face. Jacob says that he has been with God face to face but it’s been in the dark. It seems like it’s related to this thing that God says let me go for the day breaks.

Jacob says I won’t let you go unless you bless me. So he says to him what is your name and Jacob says Jacob and he says your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have struggled with God and with men and have prevailed. And then Jacob asked, saying, Tell me your name, I pray. And he said, Why is it that you ask about my name? And he blessed him there. That is, God blesses Jacob. And then Jacob names the place.

At the center of this central scene in Jacob’s return to be a prince in the promised land. At the center of the central scene is this dialogue between God and Jacob about names and God asks Jacob for his name, gives him a new name. Jacob asks God for his name. God says, “No, I’m not going to give you my name.” And Jacob then names the place Peniel.

God brings Jacob before he blesses him into a realization of who he is. When you’re asked what your name is in the Old Testament, your name is a picture of your character, who you are. And Jacob reveals himself. He becomes self-reflective on who he is by God asking him what his name is. I am Jacob. I am suppler. I am a wrestler man who have been called by you to supplant my brother and then to wrestle all of my life. That’s who I am.

And God says, “That’s right. I’m glad I’ve caused you to reflect upon who you are. But recognize that who you are now.” In addition to that, we’ll see that Jacob’s struggles are not over, but who you are now is Israel. You who have been ruled and governed and fought over by God, and you who now rule and govern for God. Jacob and Israel are his names. Jacob and Israel are our names as we wrestle with trials and difficulties, but we move into blessing and dominion in the context of God’s providence.

Names are at the center of this, and names also tell us that in Jacob’s naming of Peniel, it tells us explicitly that this scene is the deliverance that he sought earlier in the text when he prayed to God that God might save him. The same word is used where we read in verse 30, Jacob called the name of the place Peniel for I have seen God face to face and my life is preserved saved. So here we have explicitly in the text itself by way of using the same word that he requests in the prayer. Now the deliverance comes from God in the wrestling and then God’s blessing upon him at the end of the wrestling time.

Notice that Jacob does not name this place I prevailed against God or I was strong or I got to you know work hard and beat God. I prevailed over men. None of that. Jacob names it Peniel because he has seen God face to face and God delivered him there. He doesn’t speak of his strength. He speaks of God’s presence and God’s presence as delivering him in answer to his prayer.

So the naming here is an exceedingly important thing. Jacob has been the one who was born under a bad sign—been down before he began to crawl in the womb. He had to struggle and yet God says he has prevailed and he receives the blessing of Almighty God for his prevailing in this wrestling. He prayed for deliverance. Save me. God answers him saying indeed that he has been prepared. He has been given the covenant promise and blessing and its manifestation here through his wrestling with God being brought into an awareness of that.

And third, then there is the departure to victory that we’ve spoken of, but it’s such an important picture to keep in mind. He names the place Peniel. And then verse 31, just as he crossed over Penuel, the sun rose on him and he limped on his hip. Therefore, to this day, the children of Israel do not eat the muscle that shrank which is on the hip socket because he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip and the muscle that shrank.

So all night long he’s wrestled and now as he’s going to go through this liminal threshold—this threshold—he’s moving through the doorway to go back to the promised land and he’s going into a difficult situation with Esau. He’s looking for deliverance from being killed by him. He’s looking for establishment. He’s looking for the land that God promised to give to him. He’s looking for safety for his family.

And as he wrestles with God and God blesses him at the end of that the sun rises kind of at his back. He’s moving westward direction. The sun rises on him and it seems like we have a picture in Jacob of the sun coming out of his chamber that God—Jesus is that great Nazarite warrior. The sun coming out of his chamber making its circuit over the earth. And Jacob is coming now in the power of the resurrected Savior in the power of the rising sun. He’s walking into victory in the promised land by crossing the threshold at Peniel, at the Jabbok, at the wrestling river where God has put him through trials and difficulties.

God brings deliverance in regard to his promises but he brings it in a way that is not normal to us but it is the way that the Lord Jesus Christ had told us through his life and through his words we all will pass. Matthew 27:46 we read that our Savior, the greater Jacob, welcomed into the city as the king of kings. Hosanna, blessed is the king that comes in the name of the Lord. How does he affect that kingdom? He goes to the cross and on the cross itself, he cries out, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani,” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus is brought into suffering, wrestlings, trials, and tribulations of a sort that Jacob was never called to enter into, of the sort that no man is called to enter into.

And at the height of that separation from his father, he has no understanding really. He says, “Why? Why does this happen?” Jacob, for 99 years, “Why? I was the recipient of the blessing while still in my mother’s womb. Why do I struggle? Why do these things have to happen to me?” And our Savior seems to be saying here, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

We go through struggles and difficulties, but we go through them in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. The scriptures tell us in Acts 4:27 that against your holy servant Jesus whom you anointed both Herod and Pontius Pilate, the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel—Psalm 2 finds itself played out. They were all gathered together. Why? To do whatsoever your hand, talking of God, your purpose determined beforehand to be done. Ultimately, the why, the answer is God has ordained it. God has said that is the threshold, our struggles, our difficulties, our trials and tribulations by which we are brought into deliverance in regard to those promises and become the full possessors of the promises of the Lord Jesus Christ.

It is through struggle. It is through trial and tribulation. It’s not from a retreat. Jacob’s not a picture of a guy who just sits in his prayer closet. He is a picture of an active struggling guy. And God does not chastise him for that. He empowers him for that. But he tells them, remember that in all your struggles, ultimately I am the one you’re struggling with. I’m the one who through these struggles are bringing you into becoming a prince in the land, the true Israel who fights, rules for God.

Samson’s father had been visited by an angel as well, the angel of the Lord, Manoah. The angel said, “You’re going to have a deliverer. 40 years of Philistine occupation is enough. Samson’s going to come out and he’s going to do battle.” And so Manoah wants to know his name. And the angel says, “Well, why do you want to see my name? Seeing it is wonderful.” And then Manoah offers up a sacrifice. Gets an altar, puts some stuff on the altar, burns it up, and the angel of the Lord ascends in a wonderful fashion. The text tells us in that fire from the altar, he ascends to heaven.

You see, drawing back to this scene, the scene with Samson, how do we attain deliverance? How does God empower us to be great Samsons under the greater Samson, the Lord Jesus Christ? He does it through sacrifice. He does it with the Lord Jesus Christ offering himself in that altar and ascending to the Father and then giving to us power and glory and dominion. But giving to us in the same way as we enter into the sufferings of the Lord Jesus Christ, we thus enter into his deliverance, his victories as well.

Our promise in deliverance is related to Jacob’s and to our Savior. We are to be overcomers. Remember the seven letters to the churches in Revelation chapters 2 and 3. Overcome. If you overcome, I’ll give you a new name. He tells the church at Pergamum. Overcome. Overcome. Overcome. There’s going to be difficulties. No matter what kind of church you are, those seven, you’re going to have trials and tribulations. You’re going to have to wrestle. Some more, some less. Some more like Abraham not wrestling as much. Some like Jacob wrestling all of their lives.

But there’ll be wrestling. But don’t think by that I’m not in control. I’m using those things to test you. You overcome the beast where at the door of the church. And God at that threshold for Jacob says, “Are you going to overcome?” Cain didn’t do it. He succumbed to the beast. The beast was at his doorway and took over him because he relied on his self-sufficiency, his works, his ability. Jacob through all his life had depended not upon himself or his strength, but upon the grace and mercy of God and God’s covenantal promises.

And Jacob conquered at the door, conquered the beast and was ushered into the promises of God. And so are we. So are we in the providence of God. Jacob wasn’t the only one who suffered. Rebecca, his mother, had to struggle all of her life with Esau, at least most of it. And Esau goes takes these Canaanite wives, and she says, “If Jacob takes one of those, my life is worthless. My life is so bad because of these two awful women that Esau has brought into the extended family. I just—” Think what a struggle it was for godly Rebecca struggling with Esau, but even more than that, struggling with her husband who chose the wrong son, chose the ungodly son.

Rebecca is a picture of the same thing as Jacob. Struggle, difficulties. Rachel struggling to bring forth children. She’s that closed well and eventually the heavy lid will be lifted off and Rachel will have children, but she struggles for years because of it. The wife who has children struggles with God ultimately for years having children thinking he’ll love me now. He’ll love me now. He’ll love me now. Realizing at the end it doesn’t matter if he loves me or not. Ultimately, what matters is that I praise God in the context of my struggles.

Do you know where Leah ended up at? She ended up in the cave at Machpelah at the burial place where Abraham and Sarah were, where Isaac and Rebecca were. That’s where Leah and Jacob ended up. Rachel wasn’t there in the providence of God. Rachel was buried elsewhere. So Leah the struggles ultimately with God. And as we submit to God and ultimately acknowledge that our difficulties are not the people round about us or the things that God puts in our way, but it is God himself that we struggle with. And as we struggle, right, submitting to him in the power of the Lord Jesus Christ who came to die and then resurrect and ascend, God blesses us and he brings us then to reconciliation with man and victory in the context of man.

But we then go about it a completely different way, don’t we? Jacob doesn’t go across and say, I’m the victor now. Get the troops out. We’re going to go whip Esau’s behind. No. Jacob goes out in treating.