Sermon preview, week of August 1, 2023
Wrestling With God
This Sunday’s order
- Sunday
- Reading
- Genesis 32:22-31
- Series
- Promise & Threat
- Preaching
- Jonathan Balmer
This is a sermon preview for the ninth sermon in the “Promise & Threat” sermon series.To watch the recording of any of the sermons in this sermon series, visit our website.
The readingGenesis 32:22-31
Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.” from Genesis 32:22-31
Read Genesis 32:22-31
22During the night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two maidservants, and his eleven sons, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23He took them and sent them across the stream, along with all his possessions. 24So Jacob was left all alone, and there a man wrestled with him until daybreak. 25When the man saw that he could not overpower Jacob, he struck the socket of Jacob’s hip and dislocated it as they wrestled. 26Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”
But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” 27“What is your name?” the man asked.
“Jacob,” he replied. 28Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men, and you have prevailed.” 29And Jacob requested, “Please tell me your name.”
But he replied, “Why do you ask my name?” Then he blessed Jacob there. 30So Jacob named the place Peniel, saying, “Indeed, I have seen God face to face, and yet my life was spared.” 31The sun rose above him as he passed by Penuel, and he was limping because of his hip.
Berean Standard Bible, public domain
Come, O thou Traveler unknown, Whom still I hold but cannot see! My company before is gone, And I am left alone with Thee; With Thee all night I mean to stay, And wrestle till the break of day… Wilt Thou not yet to me reveal Thy new, unutterable Name? Tell me, I still beseech Thee, tell; To know it now resolved I am; Wrestling, I will not let Thee go, Till I Thy Name, Thy nature know.”
This Song “Wrestling Jacob,” or “Come, O Thou Traveler Unknown” originally comes from the pen of Charles Wesley, from way back in 1742. Wesley relates Jacob’s wrestling with God with his own spiritual journey.
Perhaps that’s why this story has captured so many. The idea that when we are overcome, when we’re wrestling, when we’re in our “Dark Night of the Soul,” it might be in that moment that Christ is closest. It might be in that moment where God is a breath away. It might be then that God blesses us. Cling to the promise. Wrestle with God.
Clif, our Worship Arts Pastor here at FBCM sent me this reflection on Jacob Wrestling with a man, or with the angel, or with God from Art & Theology. (It definitely says something important that we have these multiple ways to talk about this episode in scripture).
Join us this Sunday as we see how wrestling with God is not a refusal to trust God.
It might just be what clinging to the promises of God looks like.
