last week with a covenant made one with the other. It was actually a covenant of distrust. It was a covenant calling upon God to serve as a witness to watch over them while they are apart, that they would not, either of them, cross this place to do harm one to another. And God called to be a witness in chapter 31, verse 50. God is witness between you and me. A covenant made at Mitzpah. We also noted last week as we considered Jacob's departure from the household of Laban, that there were, in fact, two obstacles to his safe return to the land of promise. The first, of course, was Laban. Being able to leave Laban's household with his wives, with his children, and with his possessions that he had gained, the possessions in particular at Laban's expense. And the other obstacle was, of course, his brother Esau. Going back to the homeland Esau, not there, Esau's move we find to the land of Edom, but still that's in his mind an issue to be addressed, certainly an obstacle to be overcome. So he safely departed now from Laban's household and Laban's homeland. With God's help, God has again intervened on his behalf to protect him, to provide safety for him, And now the attention turns in chapter 32 here today to his actual return to the land of Canaan and to face Esau. Chapter 32 is a record for us of Jacob's careful planning and his acts to meet Esau. He's got to be ready. And he becomes obsessed, and we see the things that he does as we read this chapter, doing all that he can to make sure things are good and right, or as good as they possibly can be as far as his part is concerned with his brother Esau. More importantly, What we find here in chapter 32 is a record of God's final preparations of Jacob. God's preparing him, but not just preparing him for an encounter with Esau, although that is accomplished, but also preparing him for the ultimate role that he has in continuing God's storyline in redemptive history, assuming the role as the next great patriarch in the line of Abraham, the line of his father Isaac, and now Jacob to be the third named among those. So follow with me as I read Genesis chapter 32, and we will be again dealing with the entirety of this chapter today. Now as Jacob went on his way, the angels of God met him. Jacob said when he saw them, this is God's camp. So he named that place Mahanaim. Then Jacob sent messengers before him to his brother Esau in the land of Seir, the country of Edom. He also commanded them, saying, Thus you shall say to my lord Esau, Thus says your servant Jacob, I have sojourned with Laban and stayed unto now. I have oxen and donkeys and flocks and male and female servants, and I have sent to tell my lord that I might find favor in your sight. The messengers returned to Jacob, saying, We came to your brother Esau, and furthermore he is coming to meet you, and four hundred men are with him. So the tension mounts, doesn't it? Verse 7, Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed, and he divided the people who were with him, and the flocks, and the herds, and the camels into two companies. For he said, If Esau comes to the one company and attacks it, then the company which is left will escape. Jacob said, O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, O Lord who said to me, return to your country and to your relatives and I will prosper you. I'm unworthy of all the loving kindness and of all the faithfulness which you have shown to your servant. For with my staff only I crossed this Jordan 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, that he will come and attack me and the mothers with the children. For you said, I will surely prosper you and make your descendants as the sand of the sea, which is too great to be numbered. So he spent the night there. Then he selected from what he had with him a present for his brother Esau, 200 female goats and 20 male goats, 200 ewes and 20 rams, 30 milking camels and their colts, 40 cows and 10 bulls, 20 female donkeys and 10 male donkeys. He delivered them into the hand of his servants, every drove by itself and said to his servants, pass on before me and put a space between droves. He commanded the one in front, saying, When my brother Esau meets you and asks you, saying, To whom do you belong and where are you going? And to whom do these animals in front of you belong? Then you shall say, These belong to your servant Jacob. It is a present sent to my lord Esau. And behold, he also is behind us. Then he commanded also the second and the third and all those who followed the drove, saying, After this manner you shall speak to Esau when you find him. And you shall say, Behold, your servant Jacob also is behind us. For he said, I will appease him with the present that goes before me. Then afterward I will see his face. Perhaps he will accept me. So the president passed on before him while he himself spent that night in the camp. Now he arose that same night and took his two wives and two maids and his 11 children and crossed the fort of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream and he sent across whatever he had. Then Jacob was left alone and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When he saw that he had not prevailed against him, he touched the socket of his thigh. So the socket of Jacob's thigh was dislocated while he wrestled with him. Then he said, let me go for the dawn is breaking. 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. He said, your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed. Then Jacob asked him and said, please tell me your name. But he said, why is it that you ask my name? And he blessed him there. So Jacob named the place Peniel, for he said, I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been preserved. Now the sun rose up over him just as he crossed over Penuel, and he was limping on his thigh. Therefore, to this day, the sons of Israel do not eat the sinew of the hip, which is on the socket of the thigh, because he touched the socket of Jacob's thigh in the sinew of the hip. Common question we hear many times. Are you ready? How many times have you been asked that question? Are you ready? How many times have you asked that question of someone? Are you ready? And depending on the context, of course, the answers will vary. If it's a fun activity, we get into our van, we go to a family that we've been looking forward to. Are you ready? Yeah, we're ready. Yes. Looking forward to it. Perhaps it's something that was a bit more frightening, a bit more alarming, a bit more troubling. Possibly the thought of going under the surgeon's blade, for example. And there that anesthetist, are you ready? Well, you know the answer there is, I'm as ready as I'm ever going to be. And the reality is, ready or not, under you go. Well, Jacob's situation heading to encounter his brother Esau is something along those lines. You might ask him, well, Jacob, are you ready for this? The answer is, one of those ready or not, it's coming. Well, there's a bigger picture here though than Jacob, and Jacob readying himself and becoming ready, prepared to meet his brother. And the bigger picture here, as I've already mentioned, is that God is involved. God is involved in getting Jacob ready. And getting Jacob ready only as God can. Only God could prepare Jacob as Jacob really needed to be prepared. And again, not just to face his brother, but preparing him for that greater place of one of the patriarchs of the Old Testament story of redemptive history. So we find here in our text here three encounters. Three encounters that God initiates as a final preparation for Jacob and the role God has for him. And how Jacob needs to see the Lord. How Jacob needs to learn of His ways. How Jacob needs to grow in grace. The Lord prepares Jacob. The Lord prepares us too, doesn't He? Because we're like Jacob and many times we don't know what tomorrow holds. And even as we find out here, what Jacob fears in regard to encountering his brother Esau never even becomes a reality. But he doesn't know that. But the Lord prepares. The Lord prepares His people. The Lord prepares His people as only He can do it. And whatever situations we may face, and even if it's just the uncertainties of living the day-to-day mundane activities, the Lord prepares us for those things. He prepares us to live even day-to-day. I want us to hear considered from our text in these three encounters. of God's initiation, what Jacob learns, what he sees the Lord, what God uses to prepare him so that in fact he indeed might be ready. The first thing that we see here is God gives him an assurance of continuing his presence. He gives to him an assurance of continuing his presence. We might assume here as Jacob advances forward, moving somewhat tentatively toward Canaan, he's in something of a no-man's land here, isn't he? He's between Haran, which is where Laban has been, and Canaan, which is the promised land, the homeland, and eventually there he knows he's going to have to face his brother Esau. So the options that he has here are limited. He can't go back. That doesn't work. God's given him the command already to go forward, but he's afraid to do that. But here we have him, here I am, slowly, tentatively going on. What happens here? There is an unexpected divine intervention. As it says here in our text, verse 1, As Jacob went on his way. Just note the simplicity of that phrase there. As Jacob went on his way. There is no as Jacob prayed to the Lord. There is no as Jacob besought the Lord for his continued mercies. Here, Jacob is just going. He's just going on His way. And as He went on His way, the angels of God met Him. Slowly traveling forward, certainly we can expect He was contemplating His past, fearful of His future. And God in His kindness meets Him with His angels. The angels of God met Him. What a gracious encounter. Now, you might would have asked Jacob, and Jacob might have thought, well, I really don't need that. I don't need to be reminded again of God's continued presence because God's assured me of His presence with me. But you know what? God knows us better than we know ourselves. And God is willing to go above and beyond. God is willing to bless abundantly. And so God sends this unexpected, this unsought group of angels to meet him. You remember, as Jacob was leaving Canaan, fleeing there for his life after he had deceived his father and received the blessing from his father, that God met him. God met him at a place that Jacob named Bethel. And there you remember the stairwell to heaven. And there on that stairwell were these angels ascending and descending to and from heaven. And so there's something of a parallel here as he returns, that there's this visitation, there's this vision of these angels again, not the stairwell, but here there seems to be simply an encampment of these angels. And Jacob's response to this visitation we see in verse 2. He said when he saw this, this is God's camp. This is God's camp. This is God's protective presence that is represented by these angelic hosts. God is here, is the message that's conveyed there. And it says that He named that place Mahanaim, which is plural for camp, so it's literally He named the place two camps. two camps. Now the significance of that, to be honest with you, is much debated. Why did he give it the name Mahanaim, two camps? Was it that he saw here there was not only the human camp of he and his family and those that were with him, as well as a angelic or a heavenly camp? Or perhaps even that there were such a great number of angels and that even these angels were in two camps. It certainly gives us a little bit of a different picture than those who had advanced the idea of we have one guardian angel. God sends a host. He sends a host to his people and he sends these angels here And what's communicated here by these words that this is God's camp, that Jacob recognizes not that he has come to a place where God is encamped. Rather, it's where he is, God is encamped there, wherever it may be. In other words, God is here with us. If it had been five miles down the road, that would have been God's camp. where He is, God is there with Him. God's camp. Possibly, even by those words affirming that God's superior role, that this is not merely the camp of men. This is not merely me and my people and my family. Rather, this is God's place, God's camp, God in control here. What a gift of mercy to God to assure of His continuing presence with him. And you know, if there's one truth that God is pleased to deeply impress upon Jacob's mind, It is his continuing presence with him. Back in chapter 28, when he met him on his way out, going to Laban's house. Chapter 28, verse 15. Again, we looked at this several times. The words he said there, Behold, I am with you. I'm with you. and 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 promised you." I'm with you. I will not leave you. I will not abandon you. It's a truth that even Jacob affirms as he's building his case to Leah and to Rachel as desiring to leave Laban's household because of the way he's been treated in chapter 31. Chapter 31, verse 5, when Jacob sent, verse 4, he sent and called Rachel and Leah to his flock in the field and said to them, I see your father's attitude that it is not friendly toward me as formerly. But what's his confession here? But the God of my father has been with me. Why does God give this assurance of His continuing presence to Jacob? Because Jacob needs to be reminded of it. Even though Jacob might think it's not necessary. Jacob might think, and certainly again there's no record here of him asking for it, but God gives it. to assure Him of His presence there with Him. And what is this testimony of His presence? It is a testimony by His presence that He will protect him, He will protect him from harm, and He will provide for him what he needs. And it's an assurance that God desires for all of us. All of us as His people to have, to hold to, that God is with us. God is always with us. His presence is here with us. And we certainly need to think a bit beyond, oh, I know God is with me because He is in every place. That's not what's being conveyed here. It's not talking about the omnipresence of God. It's talking about His presence with you in a personal, in a protective way. a caring manner. How is God revealed to us in the Scriptures? The pictures that are given to us in the Old Testament Scriptures are the pictures of protection and provision as a father protects and provides for his children. And another analogy that's revealed in the Scripture is a picture of the protection and the provision of a shepherd for his sheep. He is the shepherd and we are his sheep. And so the Lord would have us to be reminded He's with us. He's with us. Because if we won't go far, we won't go long until we need to be reminded of that reality. And how many times the fear and the panic strikes our heart in any given situation because we forget that reality. It's a fundamental truth, isn't it? God's with you. I am with you. That's the comfort, that's the assurance that Jacob draws from this encounter. God has chosen, chosen us as His that we might walk with Him, that we might commune with Him. And we keep in mind that even as Jacob here, what's at stake here? What is at stake here is the very reputation of God and the glory of His name. He's promised to be with you. Is He able to keep you? Is He able to protect you? How many times are those words spoken to those who are called to serve God? You remember the words to Joshua when he was commissioned to replace Moses in Joshua chapter 1? How many times in those brief few words, the Lord's instruction includes the words, I will be with you. It's fundamental. of the Christian experience of the people of God to know, to rest assured that God is with us. And that His angelic hosts are at His disposal and that they are described in the book of Hebrews as ministering spirits for our aid, for our help. God is with us. And He will send His angelic host as He wills to assist, to minister to His people. So Jacob is reminded of that reality. He's assured of the continuing presence of God. The second thing we see here that he notes is that God is an assistance for confidence in prayer. An assistance for confidence in prayer. Jacob sends his messengers to Esau. Of course, again, Esau is not in Canaan providentially. He is relocated into the land of Seir of Edom, according to verse 3, which is actually a bit of distance from where he was going, but again, he knew he was going to have to deal with it. He was going to have to deal with this issue with his brother. There was not simply a quiet walking back in. And so he sees the need to address the problems with his brother, and so he does so. But note, as he sends this message, the words of humility that are expressed in verse 4 and 5. He commanded them, saying, This is what you shall say to my lord Esau. Thus says your servant Jacob. I've sojourned with laboring and stayed until now. I have oxen and donkeys and flocks and male and female servants I've sent to tell my Lord that I might find favor in Your sight." These words of humility. He is my Lord. I am His servant. May I find favor with Him. And I've got all these animals. In other words, I'm coming here not to stake my claim. I'm not coming here with the spirit of arrogance and saying, alright, the promise has been made to me. I'm coming. I'm making claims here of what's rightfully mine. He's not doing that. Rather, he's coming in a spirit of humility and he's not coming to be a freeloader easy. I've got my own animals. God's blessed. I'm not coming to see if I can take more from my brother Esau. God has provided for me. And then Esau's response, the messages they returned, yeah, we've met your brother and we gave him the message and this is what your brother's doing. He's coming and he's got 400 people with him. Well, now we get an idea of why Jacob needed to be reminded of God's presence, don't we? We see the previousness of God, don't we? God knew before Jacob did, you're going to need to be reminded of this. This is my camp. I'm with you. And your brother's coming with 400 people. Well, Jacob has seen this angelic host. He has seen the host of heaven and it was a glorious sight, no doubt. But now he has heard of Esau's coming and what begins to dominate his thinking. The heavenly host. Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed. He's forgotten about all those angels. All he can think about is Esau and 400 people coming with him. This can't be good. He's greatly distressed, according to verse 7, and he divides the people who were with him, the flocks and the herds, the camels, into two companies. So there's his first response in verses 7 and 8. He divides all that he has there into two groups. We assume enough distance between the two that if Esau hits one, the other one escapes. So at least half would be able to survive an onslaught from Esau. But then we see a second response, at least as recorded here in verse 9, where he is wisely, perhaps desperately, like us, right? He prays. Got to do something here and really can't do much. But he prays to the Lord. You say, well, how? I thought this was God's initiative. This isn't God initiating. This is Jacob. initiating. He's coming to the Lord in prayer. And I would say that there's God's initiative here because what is God doing? God is using what we know to be unwarranted fear. Right? He is using unwarranted fear to drive Jacob to Him in prayer. See, we know the story. We've read it, right? We know what's going to happen. We know Esau's happy to see him. He's not coming to attack him. He's coming to give him a formal greeting and to welcome him. We know that. We've read the story. God knows that. But he's not telling Jacob, is he? So I would take Jacob. I have abated the hatred and the anger of your brother towards you. I've blessed him. No need to be afraid." But the Lord doesn't do that, does He? The Lord lets these fears continue to arise and work through in the heart of Jacob to one end that it drives them to prayer. But note his prayer, how God assists him in giving him confidence in this prayer. Two things to note. First of all, in his prayer, the witness with Abraham and Isaac. Verse 9, O God of my father, Abraham, and God of my father, Isaac. You know, just waiting until he's ever going to say, my God, my father. But God of my father, Abraham, and God of my father, Isaac. The same God. I'm praying to the God who I know is faithful. I'm praying to the God of the covenant. I'm praying to the God who has said that He would prosper Abraham. He would prosper Isaac. He would prosper me. I'm next in line. He's done well with Abraham. Done pretty good with Dad. Now what? There's the God to whom He prays. And note here, just in His prayer, In v. 9, O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, O Lord who said to me, You said in return, right? And he notes here in v. 10, I'm unworthy of all the love and kindness and all the faithfulness which You've shown. I don't deserve any of this. He becomes keenly aware by His confession here of grace. God's grace to bless. God's grace to protect. God's grace to prosper. He acknowledges God's blessing to prosper iniquity. He says, I am unworthy of all the unkindness and all the faithfulness that you've shown to your servant, for with My staff only I crossed this Jordan. Do you remember when He came? This is what he had. I had a stick. I had a staff. It's all I came with. And now look as I return wives, children, possessions, servants. So God assists him in his prayer by bringing to his mind the history of his witness with Abraham and his father Isaac. The second thing we note here that God uses as an assistance for confidence in his prayer is his own words, Jacob. What does he say in verse 9? O God of my father Isaac, O Lord, who said to me? Who said to me? In other words, Lord, I'm only doing this because you said do it. It's in obedience to your command. And then in verse 12, for you said, you said on that night as you met me on the way to Laban's, you said I will surely prosper you and make your descendants as the sand of the sea which is too great to be numbered. He recites God's promise of prosperity back to God, rehearsing in his mind, here's the hope, here's the confidence that he has. in his prayer. That he's not merely praying vain and empty words, but he's praying to the God of his father's Abraham and his father's Isaac. And he knows that that God is a faithful God and he's praying to God on the basis of his own word. You said, I've done. With all hope, of deliverance from Esau, whom he fears, is that God would help him. That's his only hope. So what's at stake here? He's appealing to and he's reciting the promises of God. What's at stake here is God's power to accomplish and God's truthfulness. Are you going to do what you said you would do? Are you able to do what you said you would do? That's what's at stake. What a model, I think, for us in prayer as we pray at times of need. Pray knowing that we need confidence and that we need assurance in our prayers. Folks, let us do this as we see modeled for us here. Let us pray based upon the certainties of God's Word. Pray with assurance. Pray with confidence because it's grounded firmly in the Word of God, based upon His precepts, based upon His promises. What the Word of God shows us is true. So what did he pray? He prayed what he knew to be true about God. He knew the God of Abraham. He knew the God of Isaac, that he was faithful. So he prays to him, remember your promise to Abraham. Remember your promise to Isaac. Remember your promise to me. Simply taking God once again at His word. Confident. God's abundant mercies and His grace, confident of His faithfulness to His promises. So the expressions that are given here in his prayer, the expressions are confessions of the character of God. And he recites God's promises. How good of the Lord. How good of the Lord to assist us in prayer. When we pray, we need assurance. We need confidence. Here's the basis for that confidence. Base your prayers in God's Word. Lord, we know these things to be true. You've revealed this of Yourself. You've promised that You would do this, that You would act in this way. We hold You to that, Lord. We have nothing else. And let the Lord show Himself, prove Himself to be true to His promises, to be consistent as He has revealed Himself throughout redemptive history and as recorded in the Holy Scriptures. And assistance for confidence in prayer. We need that, don't we? I mean, are there not those times that our prayers that we pray and we question? Lord, I want assurance. I want confidence in my prayer. And that confidence is found when we pray according to His Word. And the third thing we see here, this third encounter, God is an ally in conflict to prevail. God has an ally in conflict to prevail. Well, Jacob has prayed, and then after he has prayed with whatever motives may be, he makes preparation to meet Esau. He sends He has sent the gift, the droves of animals, verses 13 and following, according to his own words, to appease Esau, verse 20. And then, there's this notable encounter, beginning in verse 24. A story that we are very familiar with, if we are familiar with much of the life of Jacob. It's an encounter with a messenger of God in the night, verse 24. And the significance of this encounter that he has here is noted in two things. First thing, it's noted by the fact that because of what takes place here, that there is a dietary practice established among the Israelites in verse 32. Therefore, to this day, the sons of Israel do not eat the sinew of the hip which is on the socket of the thigh, because he, this person, touched the socket of Jacob's thigh and the sinew of his hip. So, it's a dietary practice that's not in the law. It's not governed by Old Testament law. Rather, it is a memorial practice established by among the Israelites. The second thing that we would note about this event, signifying something of the importance of it, is in this encounter that Jacob is given a new name in verse 28. He said, Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and you have prevailed. Now, there is a more formal sense in chapter 35, verse 10, where this renaming of Jacob is stated again at Bethel, but it's mentioned initially here and then more formally established later in chapter 35 of no longer being called Jacob, but Israel. So there's a couple of things that, one, just from the dietary practice adopted from this encounter, but also Jacob receiving a new name that tells us this is a significant event. But what is the meaning, what is the lesson of this wrestling and this prevailing of Jacob with this person in the night. Well, we need to keep in mind that Jacob is a man who had been striving with men all of his life. That was his history. From very early on, he was striving with his brother Esau, striving to receive the birthright, and he secures that, striving to receive the blessing from Isaac. And so, he strives with Isaac, his own father, who favors Esau. Everything is against him. His birth order is against him. His father is against him. And then he flees to Haran, to the household of Laban. And there he encounters Laban. And they're going back and forth at it. So he's striving again and again. Everybody, everything, every circumstance seems to be against him. How could he hope to be the blessed of God when he's the younger brother? How could he hope to receive the blessing that should be rightfully his when his father favors the older brother? So instead of waiting to see how the Lord might bring these things about, he busies himself securing them as best he can. So in this striving with men all of his life, striving with Esau, striving with Isaac, striving with Laban, from all appearances, He has prevailed over them by his cunning, by his wit, by his deceit. He's come out on top. He beat his brother out of the blessing, he fooled his father, and he came out of Laban's household a wealthy man at Laban's expense. So again, from all appearance. He's prevailed over them by his cunning, by his wit, by his deceit. For this night here, verse 24, Jacob was left alone. And note how this, note the initial identity here. A man, a man wrestled with him. There's the first, the first revelation of this individual and he's described as a man. And in this wrestling match that begins to take place, Jacob seems to be up to the task. He seems to be equal to this man. They're wrestling, they're going at it, and Jacob's holding his own. You have to wonder what's going through his mind. It's in the night, this guy has apparently jumped him. Who is it? Is it Esau? Is it somebody Esau assent? What is going on here? But Jacob's up for the task. And so they're in this wrestling match going on until in verse 25. He saw that he not, this is he, the man, saw that he had not prevailed against Jacob. He, the man, touched Jacob's socket of his thigh, so the socket of Jacob's thigh was dislocated while he wrestled with him. So this man, he touches, and the word could be strikes, it doesn't necessarily mean he just put out his hand and touched, but it could be a firm striking. of his thigh. And when he did that, it knocks it out of joint. He cripples him. And from that, Jacob begins to realize something. He's wrestling with a man that's far superior. You know, it's kind of like my two boys wrestling, right? You know, Alex can toy with Camden, and even sometimes Camden and I will be playing around, it's like Camden's got me down, you know, he's got the advantage on me, but it doesn't take much, all of a sudden it's very clear who's in charge, right? So there's this toying, almost, of Jacob by this individual. But what is the picture here that slowly unfolds? This one who is identified in verse 24 as a man, and it becomes increasingly clear that this individual is God Himself. Verse 28, He said, Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with man and have prevailed. You've been striving right here with God. Verse 29, Jacob asked him, he said, please tell me your name. But he said, why is it you ask my name? And he blessed him. He blessed him. Of course, Scripture is clear that the greater always blesses the lesser. Then verse 30, Jacob named the place Peniel, for he said, I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been preserved. So what's the message here? I think it's this. Jacob in all of his striving with men has been striving with God. That when he was striving with Esau, he was striving with God. That when he was striving with Isaac, he was striving with God. When he was striving with Laban, he was striving with God. These were the individuals that God providentially put in his life to accomplish his purposes in his heart. And rather than see them as God's agents to accomplish what God desires, He saw them in an adversarial role and He gave Himself to conquering them. So He strove with them, strove against them, and again, it looks like He won. But how did He do it? If these were God's agents, How could he possibly strive and prevail against them? There's only one answer to that. It's only by God's grace. How is it that he prevailed so well against Esau? The grace of God. The kindness of God. How is it he prevailed? He succeeded against his own father. The grace of God. How is it he prevailed against Laban? The grace of God. See, His only ability to prevail against men as God's agents was God's blessing upon Him. That was the only way that He would prevail against these. John Calvin assesses this and makes this comment, some of the fact that God acts in the character of the antagonist. And you think about the antagonist in the life of Jacob, who they've been. God acts in the character of the antagonist. But notice he says appearing, appearing to be weak against us. Appearing to be weak against us so that he might conquer in and through us. So, God brings, providentially, these antagonists into the life of Jacob. And these antagonists appear to be weak, because Jacob wins out, right? He wins out, because the God who set up those antagonists The God who, if you hear it, the God who opposed him enabled him against them. That's the reason. So that God is his ally in the conflict in order that he might prevail. So the comfort for us is that when God comes, and hear me carefully and put it in quotation marks, when God comes against us, haven't you ever felt that way? God's against me. Alright, just a minute. Yes, yes I have. Okay? You got it out of your system. Okay. I have felt that way. I felt like God's against me. I felt God's against me because I looked at particular people, I looked at particular circumstances, I looked at particular providences that are in my life and I say, how can God be for me? He said all this stuff in my life if I believe in the sovereignty of God. The comfort for us that when God seems against us with the people, with the providences of His choice, here is what He does. He comes in much greater power to strengthen us. So it's Calvin, he really does a good job of just explaining that God comes as the antagonist, but He appears to weak, but so He can come with greater power in us and we might prevail. What's the lesson here? It's this. God is for us. And we hold to, as reformed people, we ought to hold to the sovereignty of God and in every providence, in every individual, every crisis in our life, that we need to look at that. You know what we need to see? You know what we need to see in the antagonist that stands before us? We need to see the face of God. God has put this person here. It is God's agent. And what is my hope? That I might prevail against such an agent that God's put there. And the answer is the power of God within us. He's for us that we might prevail. If God is for us, who can be against us? Jacob received a new name, one who strives with God, Israel. And he asked this person, tell me your name. And he said, why is it that you ask my name? And he doesn't answer him. He just simply blesses him. What is his name? His name is whatever He chooses it to be to accomplish whatever He wills in the lives of His people. You know, many have identified the name, of course, from Exodus 6 where God reveals Himself as Yahweh, I am that I am, that He is what I need, right? Whatever you need me to be, I'm that. More importantly than that, He is whatever He chooses to be to accomplish what He will in our hearts and our lives. So, He doesn't get a name here. Jacob doesn't. He doesn't receive that information. It's above and it's beyond all that he could comprehend. But he comes away with this understanding that The only hope of prevailing in any conflict is that God is my ally. And all the striving, all the prevailing He's done, it was God after all. It was God. What do we need to see of God? Are you ready? Are you ready for the battles and struggles of this week, next month? Are you ready? See, the Lord knows what we need. He knows that we need to be continually reminded of His presence, of His continual presence with us. We need that. We need to be reminded of that because we so quickly forget it. He knows that we need assistance, that we might pray with confidence. And so He gives to us a history, a revelation of how He deals and how He acts with His people through the Scriptures He reveals to us His ways. He gives to us His promises so that we can pray with confidence based upon His Word. And He knows that we need the assurance that He is our ally in whatever conflict may come. And His purposes are that we prevail. You've striven with God and men and you've prevailed. Has it happened? God and His people. The power of God. The power of His Spirit. He is our ally. He is for us. He is with us. He is in us. Let's confess Him as such. Let's pray. Father, how could we begin to think we could ready ourselves for the things that we know nothing of? Thank you how you prepare us. Thank you for how many times that you have given to us that timely word before an encounter in which that word proved to be a sustaining truth in life to us. We thank you for what you've revealed to us here. You are with us. That You desire for us to have confidence in our prayer, not to pray as though it's mere wishful thinking, but with certainty that God hears, God answers. And to rest assured that You are our ally. And to accomplish that work, I bring this to eternal glory. Lord, work in us as You would be pleased. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.