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Genesis 32: 22-32

On a Thursday night not to long ago I caught a few minutes of WWF Smack

Down, trying to get a current picture of what comes to mind when the word wrestling is

mentioned. It has been quite a few years since I watched wrestling -- not since the days

before Hulk Hogan, when Dusty Rhodes was the ageless warrior and Rick Flair was

plotting to overthrow him as the world champ. In fact, wrestling as we know it today was

just beginning to blossom.

Vince McMann, the force behind wrestling's current manifestation was still an

unknown. With his ascension to wrestling's ruling class, today's particular breed of

wrestling has become as much a caricature of what pro wrestling used to be as pro

wrestling in my youth was of olympic wrestling. Today, pro wrestling is a sub-culture all

its own where the men in the ring portray and are perceived as super-hero types. To

watch WWF is to watch a world all its own. The drama outside the ring is just as

important -- if not more so -- than what goes on inside the ring. If you want to see

wrestling today, you have to sit through a parade of skits and endless banter offered by

gravel-throated titans. Oh, for the days when all that was needed to entertain a young

mind was the senseless violence of Ricky Steamboat giving the atomic throat chop off the

top rope to the evil Mr. Wrestling.

After getting an idea of what wrestling has become today, I began thinking about

how it compares to its noble predecessor, olympic wrestling. Olympic wrestling is a

contest of endurance, skill, and passion. Those who wrestle for competition are fanatic in
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their discipline -- using extreme measures to make weight, pushing their bodies beyond

all reasonable thresholds as they grapple with their opponents. It is far removed from the

choreographed, exaggerated action of the pro wrestling scene. Olympic wrestling is a

true contest of athletic prowess and heart. WWF, while requiring acrobatic skill, fakes

competition for the sake of entertainment -- its matches are predetermined and

movements carefully planned to look like the real thing.

I initially wanted to title this message "WDJD Smack Down!" Or "What Did

Jacob Do" Smack Down! I was going to open with an announcer type dialogue that

ended with "Let's get ready to rumble!" But as I thought about the nature of pro

wrestling compared to Olympic wrestling, I was forced to acknowledge that our passage

this is closer to Olympic style.

Genesis 32:22-32 tells us of Jacob's bout with a beloved opponent -- who is later

revealed to be God. An intriguing notion -- wrestling with God. What does that mean?

How does one wrestle with God? What happens when we wrestle with God? These are

the questions before us to answer this evening. To answer them we will first need to look

at the venue for the wrestling match -- how did Jacob get into this match with God?

Second, we will need to look at the match itself -- what happened and who won? Finally,

we will look at our own careers as wrestlers -- what kind of wrestler are we, olympic or

professional?

So what lead Jacob to this match? Well, the best way to set up the venue for his

bout with God is to read Genesis 27-31. But since this sermon is only supposed to be 45

minutes….just kidding -- Let me summarize its content quickly. Jacob, through deceit,

has stolen the blessing of the eldest son from his brother Esau. Naturally, Esau is a tad
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upset and forces Jacob to flee for his life. Jacob's flight, however, is not simply running

away, he's running to the house of Laban, his uncle in Haran, to get a bride. On the way,

as he sleeps one night, he has a dream -- the dream of Jacob's Ladder. In the dream God

promises him that he will be with Jacob and extends the same promise he made with

Abraham to Jacob. God will make him a great nation and all nations will be blessed

through him.

Once with Laban, Jacob gets more than he bargained for -- he gets two wives,

Leah and Rachel. After much hard labor and prosperity, Jacob feels the tug of home, so

he packs up the wives, etc. and heads back toward his father's house. As he approaches

the boundaries of his homeland Beersheba, Jacob becomes increasingly anxious. Then he

hears the news that his brother, with a sizable band of soldiers, was coming to meet him.

So he does what any one of us would do in his place. He divides his entourage, in hopes

that some would survive the wrath of Esau and then, he prays. His prayer is crafted to do

one thing -- remind God of the promise he made Jacob twenty years before as he was

fleeing Esau. Listen:

O God of my father Abraham, God of my father Isaac, O Lord, who

Can you believe the gall of this man? He goes back to his homeland because – as we find

out in the prayer -- God has told him to go. Then the moment he hears the news that Esau

and his minions are on their way, he challenges God! It's like he is saying, "Uh, God.

Remember when you said I would be a great nation…. Well now is the time to prove it!"
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Now please, don't get me wrong. Boldness in prayer is a wonderful thing. In

fact, we would do well to take a page out the Hebrew prayer manual. One of the staples

of Hebrew prayer is reminding God of the covenant he has established with us. The

Psalms are full of such references, Psalm 30 being a prime example. Recounting God's

acts in redemptive history is a great way to bolster our faith in the midst of prayer. But

the actions Jacob takes after the prayer leads me to believe his prayer is a challenge to

God to act, not an acknowledgement of God's faithfulness to prop up his own sagging

faith.

In vv. 13-21 of chapter 32, after Jacob prays, he immediately begins plotting his

own course to appease Esau. He lines up some of his live stock in five flocks and herds

as a gift for Esau. Then he sends them out toward Esau, one a little while after the other

so that as Esau closes in on him, he keeps running into these extravagant gifts. Jacob

hopes that by doing so, Esau will be placated by the time they meet. So what Jacob does

is he prays "God, take care of it!" and then sets about choreographing how God will take

care of his problem with Esau. Sort of like WWF wrestling. What Jacob gets, however,

is far different than what he planned.

So, Jacob has laid the groundwork for the match to take place. In his mind, he’s

even fixed things so that the odds favor him. But he is still not at ease. Now, I want to

point something out here to help us get a little insight into the character of this patriarch.

In Jacob’s day and age, a name meant something. It reflected the character of the person

who bore it. “Jacob” means “the one who grasps the heel” or put in plainer terms “the

one who trips up.” This was a euphemistic way of saying “the one who deceives.”
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So, here is “the one who deceives,” he’s still worried sick about Esau. So he gets

up in the middle of the night, moves his entourage across the river while he stays on the

far side. Now think about this for a moment. He’s already divided his entourage into two

groups, so that one might survive if Esau attacks. Then, he places them across the river

between himself and Esau – like decoys or something – while he stays on the far side out

of harms way. And this after he has prayed “God, you take care of it.”

But God had other plans for Jacob. He had a lesson for our beloved patriarch that

he will never forget. Look at vv. 24-28

So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak.
When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the
socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with
the man. Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”
But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
The man asked him, “What is your name?”
“Jacob,” he answered.
Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel,
because you have struggled with God and with men and have
overcome.” 1

Picture this. Jacob is standing in the dark beside the river, intently watching the

shadowy outlines of his entourage across the water for any signs of attack. His ears and

eyes are piqued to max efficiency. Then, without warning, strong arms lock about his and

the match is on. He was probably too terrified to scream. He must have thought that

Esau had found him out. Fearing for his life he fights back.

Now, when Moses wrote this story for the children of Israel, his view of wrestling

was much closer to the olympic model than the WWF model. Wrestling consisted of

grappling on your feet with your opponent, trying to win a battle of balance, the object

being to throw the competition to the ground. So Jacob and his beloved opponent are

1The New International Version, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House) 1984.
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standing, locked in a vice-like embrace, each looking for an advantage. We don’t know

how long this battle went on, how late in the night it began. What we do know is that the

unnamed assailant wanted it to end before daybreak and he was having a difficult time

overpowering Jacob.

As the two struggled – something odd happens. Whether the beloved opponent

lightly touched or struck heavily at Jacob’s hip, I am not sure. Whatever he did, however,

wrenched Jacob’s hip, laming him. For those of us who have sustained strains, sprains,

breaks or tears in our leg muscles or bones, we know that it is nigh on to impossible to

have enough leverage on one leg to do much more than stand up! Not to mention wrestle

someone to the ground when you lose use of the injured leg. So Jacob does the only

thing he can – he latches on even tighter to his assailant, using him to maintain his

balance. He becomes helpless to stand on his own two feet without the assistance of his

attacker, so he tries to wrest that assistance from him.

Now it is obvious that the assailant has Jacob at his mercy. Jacob is in a totally

defensive posture – probably waiting for that dreaded touch to his other hip. Instead, the

assailant says simply, “Dawn is here, let me go.” But Jacob refuses, not unless his

attacker blesses him. Then the blessing comes – Jacob’s name is changed from “the one

who deceives” to Israel, “the one who struggles with God.” Why? Because he has

struggled with God and with man and has overcome. Jacob, now Israel, appears to have

won.

What’s going on here? Why does God, through the hand of Moses, tell us this

story? Well, let me explain by equating wrestling with prayer. You see Jacob, by nature,

is a WWF-type wrestler. He wants all the moves choreographed and the outcome to be
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known well in advance. In the language of the street, Jacob wants to “get over.” He

doesn’t want to struggle, he doesn’t want to fight, he wants to find a way he can “get

over.” It’s that simple. He puts on a good show in prayer, but there’s no depth, no

struggle, and no heart to his prayer. He offers a caricature of prayer and then sets about

in his own strength making his prayer come true.

God, on the other hand wants to teach him how to be an olympic style wrestler.

To strain, to struggle, to put his heart into every syllable. To pray as if his life depended

on it and then, having prayed, trust God to answer in his time and in his way – which by

the way is perfect. God wants Jacob to know the true nature of prayer, not just its format.

An elder in a church I served once asked why God wants us to pray even though

he already knows the beginning from the end and has ordained how history moves from

one to the other, let me submit to you just one answer.

Notice what God does to Jacob. He takes his feet out from under him so that

Jacob has no choice but to lean on him. Jacob is helpless, and yet he prevails, how? “I

will not let you go unless you bless me.” Jacob prevails by surrendering. By asking for a

blessing, Jacob admits he’s outmatched. He acknowledges God’s prerogative and

submits his way to God. Warren Wiersbe says it this way:

Keep in mind that Jacob was not wrestling to get a blessing from God;
rather, he was defending himself and refusing to yield. The Lord wanted to
break Jacob and bring him to the place where he would honestly say, “Not
I, but Christ” (Gal. 2:20). All night long, Jacob defended himself and
refused to surrender or even admit that he had sinned. Then God weakened
Jacob, and the wrestler could only cling! Now instead of scheming for a
blessing or bargaining for a blessing, he asked God for the blessing—and
he received it.2

2Warren W. Wiersbe, Wiersbe’s Expository Outlines on the Old Testament, (Victor Books:
Wiersbe’s Expository Outlines on the New Testament) Wheaton, Illinois.
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In other words, the message here is the same one we find in the book of Revelation: God

wins.

You see, prayer is not to sway God to our will as much as it is to mold our will to

God’s. When we pray, we acknowledge that our times and moments are in God’s hands

and that whatever the outcome we will say with Job, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has

taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord.” Or probably more to the point, we can

join in the prayer of Christ in Gethsemene; “Not my will but yours will be done.”

Submission to the will of God is one of the primary purposes of prayer.

Now, let me begin my third point by saying this is probably one of the more

difficult sermons I have preached. Not because the material or the passage is particularly

tough, but rather because it involves me in my own wrestling match.

I mentioned earlier what my original title for this message was going to be. When

I first wrote this message, I reflected on the nature of prayer and how it relates to

wrestling. As I did so, I became increasingly uneasy. You know why? Because the more

I thought about it, the more convicted my heart became. The Holy Spirit wasn’t going to

let me get away with some antiseptic exegetical work – in other words, God wasn’t going

to let me just preach his Word. One of the dangers of preaching is that inevitably your

going to run into a message that wounds you – that touches your hip, so to speak. God

wounds you through your own words. But what a blessed wound it is – a wound, believe

it or not, to be coveted.

You see, as I mused on the nature of wrestling in relation to prayer, I began to

realize that my own prayer life is more like the WWF variety than it is the Olympic. My

prayers were choreographed, each movement calculated to say the right thing, in the right
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way for maximum efficiency. I appeared to wrestle, but if I am honest, I have to say that

I followed the format of prayer and miss the true nature. Like Jacob, I was a Smack

Down champion. Real and vital struggling with God was avoided in preference to the

calculated holds and throws of a professional. I wanted control, something diametrically

opposed to submission. To wrestle with God means that pray until something happens –

we continually submit ourselves to God’s will until he reveals his ways to us. Then,

knowing his ways, we follow him. It means that we latch on to God and refuse to let go

until he blesses us.

So, as I engaged myself in a study of how God wrestled with Jacob, I found

myself taken up by strong arms. And as I finished this sermon, I knew that in preaching

it I would be seeing the approaching dawn. My preaching this sermon is me saying to my

beloved opponent, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

In the next week, the church will celebrate Holy Week – the week of Christ's

passion. One of the significant moments of that passion is Christ in the Garden of

Gethsemene, wrestling in prayer – so strenuously that he sweats drops of blood. Many

theologians say that the real battle against sin and death ended when Christ said "Not my

will, but yours be done." The suffering at the hands of Pilate and the crucifixion come

because of Christ's prayer in the garden. The prayer paves the way for the resurrection.

In this next week, let us prepare ourselves for Easter – our celebration of Christ's

victory over death – by joining our Lord in Garden. Let us commit ourselves to being

Olympic-style wrestlers, putting aside pretense and offering ourselves daily to joining

Christ in the prayer "Not my will, but yours be done." People of God, our way is the way
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of struggle – of the Olympian. We may get lamed in the process, but through our struggle

the nations are blessed. Amen.