<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Three Angels Fellowship SDA Church

Wrestling with God

Garhett Morgan

01 Wrestling with God

Father in heaven, Lord, we thank you for your goodness.

You are the only 1 that we truly can call good.

And Lord, as we look around us and we see what's going on in this world, what happens here, what's happening overseas, we see a lot of things that are opposite of good.

And Lord, here today as we focus on your goodness and what you do with our stubbornness, we thank you for your patience with us.

I'm going to take you on a journey starting today and we're going to do things a little bit differently.

We're going to start by looking at the end chapters of someone's life in scripture and then we're going to rewind back to the beginning.

We're going to see how the story kind of ends, and then we're gonna go to the beginning and follow his life.

We're gonna be looking at the story of Jacob.

Not just today, but for the next few times that I speak, we're gonna be looking at the story of Jacob, 1 of the founding fathers of the nation of Israel, in fact, whose name became Israel, like we'll see today.

It's a really interesting story, and it's 1 of the stories if you had to kind of put Jacob's life into 1 word, There's a lot of different words you could use.

We see a lot of deception in the story of Jacob's life.

But there's another word that I would use that I think would accurately describe Jacob's life, and that would be stubbornness.

I don't know if any of you deal with stubbornness in your walk, maybe in your Christian walk.

You can ask my wife and she'll tell you that I am a stubborn person.

But I never knew I was that stubborn until, well, my son came around.

And he's getting to the age where he's getting close to 2 years old.

And he's developed something called a will.

I don't know if you're familiar with that term either, a will.

And it's quite interesting to see you come out of a little 1.

And I'm repeating to myself over and over, there's a quote in Spirit of Prophecy that says that a child's will should not be broken, but it should be molded.

You need to be stubborn a little bit in life to get things done, don't you?

You have to be able to get to work every day, to stand up for what's right, All those things.

Well, it doesn't work out so well, and that's going to be looking at here at the story of Jacob.

If you go with me to Genesis chapter 32, we're going to look at the kind of the end of this story, kind of the climax of the story of Jacob.

We're going to read it now and take a couple things from it, and then we're going to rewind and we're going to go back to Jacob and his beginning.

So Genesis chapter 32, and we'll start here in verse 22.

Jacob is in an interesting point of his life.

We'll get into why that is in just a few weeks.

And his brother is super angry at him, and logically so, and we'll see why again in a little while.

Jacob here, just to give yourself a little bit of context, you'll never guess how old Jacob is.

Jacob is about 97 at this point in scripture.

And Jacob in his walk with God, pretty much his entire life, has never fully surrendered.

He's never completely followed the leading that God has had for his life.

Now Jacob has always communicated with God and we'll see that here in a few minutes.

Jacob has had some amazing instances with God, but Jacob, and we'll see this the next few weeks, has never completely and fully surrendered his life to Jesus, 100%.

And towards the end of his life, we see Jesus step in with him at a time that Jacob is scared to death of what's happening next.

Genesis chapter 32, starting here in verse 24, and Jacob was left alone.

I just want to pause there for just a moment.

Jacob had many things at this point in his life.

He had people on his payroll that were warriors that would fight for him.

He had many servants and he had many people and many different animals in his flock.

And yet in this instance, he has diverted all of his wealth and all of his employees and all of his children and his wives, and he sent them on beyond him.

And Jacob is suddenly standing alone in a very vulnerable position.

The verse continues, and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day.

Now you've probably heard this story many times.

It's a very interesting story in scripture, because we literally have a human being, Jacob, wrestling with God.

I mean, a human being wrestling with God himself.

We'll see why a little bit later that we know that this is God, but this is Jesus here that Jacob is wrestling with.

I know that age is a little bit different in the Old Testament, but imagine a 97-year-old man wrestling.

All right, let's think about that for just a moment.

And now let's talk about a human being wrestling with God himself.

There's not much of a wrestling match there, is there?

Like God doesn't need to struggle with Jacob.

God doesn't need to wrestle all night with Jacob.

But the way that this verse is constructed is not that Jacob wrestled with this man, whoever this man is, because he doesn't know immediately, but this man wrestles with Jacob.

So Jacob doesn't enter into the wrestling match.

The angel, or Jesus as we'll see in a few weeks, Jesus enters into the match with Jacob.

Jacob doesn't originate the fight, but this mysterious being does.

Now again, this is no match between God and human being.

But the Bible tells us, and we'll see this in just a second, that all night long that Jacob wrestles with this man who he doesn't recognize who it is.

But as the night goes on and it gets to get a little bit lighter, he begins to recognize, wait a minute, this isn't just any old person.

Verse 25, and when he saw that he prevailed not against him.

Now notice this, this is from the angel or Jesus perspective, right?

When it says that Jesus saw that he prevailed not against Jacob.

He touched the hollow of his thigh or his hip bone, Right?

And the hollow of Jacob's thigh was out of joint as he wrestled with him.

I've never had hip pain before, but I've heard it's pretty rough, right?

So all night long, Jesus and Jacob are wrestling.

Now, some Bible scholars say, well, this was probably just symbolism for Jacob doing, but this was an actual wrestling match.

This was something that physically took place.

Yes, there was probably some mental games that were happening here too.

There may have even been some conversation, but Jesus and Jacob are physically locked together.

Back to Menu

Series

Wrestling with God

01 Wrestling with God

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

In the Spirit and Power

1h 22m

Don’t Miss Your Flight

45m

The Adventist Atheist

1h 1m

The Science of Surrender

52m

GYC 2013 Morning Devotions

03-The Sabbath Principle

43m

A Concise Guide to Primitive Godliness

03 - A Concise Guide to Surrender

40m

My Story

41m

Three Strikes

40m

Out of the Dark Ages: Escaping Righteousness by Works

10. Relying Wholly Upon Our Savior

41m

Morning Devotional

Sexual Purity: Lost and Found

46m

The Little Things

1h 8m

Relating to God While Sharing the 3 Angels' Messages

Wake Up!

1h 18m

Sound Doctrine