If you have your copy of Scripture, go ahead and turn to Genesis 32 this morning. We are picking up where we left off in our reading earlier this morning, Genesis chapter 32. And we are looking together at verses 22 to 32 now, and yet we'll be looking at the entire chapter as we consider it together this morning. Genesis 32, beginning in verse 22. You'll find that on page 27 if you're using a copy of the church Bible. And now we read these words. The same night he, that is Jacob, arose, and took his two wives and his two female servants and his eleven children and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream and everything else that he had, and Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, And Jacob's hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, let me go, for the day has broken. But Jacob said, I will not let you go unless you bless me. Then he said to him, what is your name? And he said, Jacob. Then he said, your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel. For you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed. Then Jacob asked him, please tell me your name. But he said, why is it that you ask my name? And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, saying, for I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered. The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip. Therefore, to this day, the people of Israel do not eat the sinew of the thigh. that is on the hip socket, because he touched the socket of Jacob's hip on the sinew of the thigh. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of God endures forever. Well, if you grew up reading the Chronicles of Narnia, or like me, began reading C.S. Lewis as an adult, you no doubt have your favorite scenes in your favorite books. I think for me, one of the greatest scenes is that which we find in the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, where Eustace, the sinful little boy who's become a dragon by putting himself too close to the dragon as the dragon dies and he is now covered with scales and is dragon-like in his appearance has been healed of the disease that he's contracted and he has met back up in his journey with his friends. And as he recounts what happened to him, he tells the story about how he was unscaled, as it were. He says, I started scratching myself, and my scales began coming off all over the place. I scratched a little deeper. Instead of just scales coming off here and there, my whole skin started peeling off beautifully. He says, in a minute or two, I stepped out, and he went over to the well that the lion had brought him to. And he looked at himself, and he was no better. He had tried to scrape the scales off, and yet he, recounting this story, says that he was still covered with scars and scales and bumps and wounds. And so he scratched more, and he went back, and the same thing happened again. And then finally, he says, the lion came to me and said, I have to undress you. And then Eustace says the lion takes his paws and his claws and he begins to dig deep. And he says, that first dig penetrated deep even unto my heart, but I knew it was good because the scales were falling off. And he's healed once Aslan does what only Aslan can do for him. And it's a beautiful picture of how the Lord Jesus deals with us in transforming us. It's often through a long and painful process that God does his best work in his people. It's often when we come to a place where we realize we're undone on our own, and we end up realizing that we need the Lord to do what only he can do, even if it's going to hurt us in the process of him doing it. And that serves as a beautiful picture of what we have here in the account of Jacob wrestling with the Lord himself at Penuel. We have been tracing this narrative, this historical narrative for many, many weeks now, and we've seen Jacob twisting and turning and deceiving, and we've seen how conniving he is from birth, from before birth. His very nature, he has a proclivity to deceive and supplant and swindle. He's done it to his brother. He's done it to his father. He's done it even, we might say, to Laban, who in turn was deceiving Jacob. And God has been dealing with Jacob. Now 20 years he has been in Laban's house, 20 years in a foreign land away from his family, away from everything he had known and his mother that he loved. And now we're at the point in the narrative where God is calling Jacob to go back, to return home. We're going to see three things this morning as we consider this passage together in Genesis 32. First, we're going to consider Jacob fearing. Secondly, we're going to consider Jacob wrestling. And then finally, Jacob limping. Jacob fearing, Jacob wrestling, and Jacob limping. Well, notice there at the beginning of the chapter that Moses tells us, Jacob went on his way and the angels of God met him. Now, it's almost a throwaway verse, isn't it? Jacob went on his way and the angels of God met him. It's sort of akin to the throwaway verse at the beginning of this book after Moses recounts how God created the heavens and the earth. He says, oh yeah, he also made the stars. All the stars. He also made the stars. The angels of God met Jacob. And what's the point of this? Well, God is confirming to Jacob that he is his protector. God has protected Jacob from Laban. He sends a delegation of an army of the angels to affirm to Jacob, I am your protector. He had told Abraham, I will be your shield, your exceeding great reward. And he is unpacking that promise in his dealings with Jacob. And he is also affirming to Jacob that Jacob ought not fear Esau. He is giving him a confirmation that the armies of heaven are with his camp, and so Jacob calls that place Mahanaim, two camps, the dance of two camps. Here, as it were, heaven and earth are coming together in the purposes of God in the life of Jacob. God is saying, I am doing a heavenly work in your life, Jacob. And yet Jacob is afraid, isn't he? And we see this one who was not afraid to swindle his brother so early in his life, so many years before. He was not afraid to deceive his father. He was not afraid to manipulate the system and take as many of the speckled and spotted sheep as he could from Laban. He never really seemed afraid of anything or anyone, and now he's afraid because God is breaking him down. He's feeling the scales. his conscience is convicting him. Remember, the Lord had already begun work in Jacob's life at Bethel when he appeared to him and showed him that vision of the ladder with the angels of God ascending and descending, and had met him and said, I'm going to do for you all that I've said I'm going to do, and I'm going to bring you back to this land after I've done what I said I'm going to do. And now he's at that point And you get the sense that Jacob thinks there is unfinished business I have to take care of, and that is my relationship with Esau. There's a really beautiful picture here for us that when God begins to break us down, convict us of our sin, transform us, even if it's over many years after an initial work of grace, we begin to worry about Have we made everything we can make right if we know we should? That's a part of the Christian life and repentance. And here, Jacob wants to make right what he can. We don't know that he has to meet Esau. Some commentators have said he has to go through the land, that this is inevitable. You almost get the sense from the passage that Jacob is going out of his way. Notice verse three, Jacob sent messengers before him to Esau's brother in the land of Seirah in the country of Edom, instructing them, thus you shall say to my lord Esau, Jacob is taking the initiative. in this and yet Jacob is extremely afraid because notice the messengers come back in verse six and they say, we saw your brother Esau, he's coming to meet you and there are 400 men with you. This is not a welcoming party. That's an army. He's ready for battle, and Jacob is exceedingly afraid. Notice verse seven, Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed. And he begins to scheme a bit, doesn't he? He divides up his camp, and he starts to scheme, and then it's as if something happens to Jacob. Jacob begins to deal with his fears in a way that Jacob never dealt with anything previously in his life. For the first time in his life, he begins to pray. very interesting. We've never seen Jacob pray 20 years since Bethel. This is the first time we hear him and see the exhibition of what a man or woman of God is when they are in a situation in which they're at an end of themselves, and they recognize that, and so they turn to the Lord. By the way, so much of the Christian life is coming to an end of yourself and turning to the Lord and crying out to him. So much of the Christian life is saying, I can't do this without you. Now, his prayer is instructive. It's the longest prayer in Genesis. It's not that long a prayer. We see that in verses nine through 11, 12, notice Jacob does several things in this prayer. He is, in the words of Edmund Clowney, he is no longer the independent manager of his destiny. Tuck that phrase away. Jacob is no longer the independent manager of his destiny. That's what he had been the whole time, taking his life into his hands, taking the blessing into his hands on his own, taking Laban's flocks into his hands, taking Laban's daughters into his hands, and now he recognizes that his destiny is entirely out of his hands. God is stripping things out of Jacob's hands. And notice the first thing he does is he prays according to the covenant promises of God. That's where every real and true and right and God-honoring prayer starts, is to say, Lord, you are the God of Abraham and Isaac. And we can say Jacob, and we can say the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And you have promised, in blessing I will bless you, you have promised to be a God to me. You have promised to forgive my sins and transgressions. You have promised to be the God of steadfast love and mercy. And God is honored when we acknowledge the covenant promises, because any other prayer is lacking the foundation. Jacob here knows what the foundation is. He says, 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 kindred that I may do you good. I am not worthy of the least of the deeds of steadfast love, covenant mercy, and all the faithfulness that you have shown your servant. Now notice, secondly in this prayer, he acknowledges that he had done what God had asked of him in departing from Laban's land. He's now saying, Lord, I want to be an obedient servant. I want to do what you want me to do, and I want to be who you want me to be. Now, next, he prays with honest spiritual humility. He says, I'm not worthy of the least of your mercies. There's nothing about me or anything that I'm asking for or anything you have done for me that merits or deserves any of it. He acknowledges. That is crucial to praying prayers that are glorifying to God. Lord, I am not worthy of the least of your mercies or of the kindness you have shown your servant. And then notice he prays confessing his guilt and admitting his fear. He says, I'm not worthy, because he knows what he is. He knows the scales that he bears on his body. And then he confesses his fear. Notice verse 11, please deliver me from the hand of my brother, for I fear him. Jacob has learned to do what all of us need to learn to do in those situations in which God places us, where he is dealing with us. and we don't have the resources in ourselves to do what he wants us to do. And then Jacob ends that prayer with, again, a reiteration of the covenant promises. He says, you said, I will surely do you good and make your offspring as the sand of the sea which cannot be numbered for multitude. Now, no sooner does this prayer end that Jacob rises and some of the scales have fallen off. He sends an enormous, enormous amount of livestock to Esau, a whole ranch. He sends a whole ranch. Remember, he stole the blessing from Esau. Now he is, and there's a mixture here. Part of it is self-preservation. Some of it is Jacob just saying, well, maybe I can appease him. That's clear. But there's also a heart that's being freed from greed and the love of possessions. His heart is being freed. The scales are falling off. He's willing to give back. Part of that inheritance, as it were. Part of the blessing God had blessed him with to give back to the one he had stolen that blessing from. It's an incredible picture that when God begins to change us, he begins to free our hearts from those things that once held them so tightly. I get the sense when I read this that Jacob is starting to sense relief and freedom. that he is able to give to one he's afraid of so freely to be a blessing to him. The freedom he's experiencing and the freedom from the fear as he goes forward. Remember, he sent everybody out ahead, but then we'll see he goes out, he faces Esau. He faces his fears because he's gone to the God of heaven and earth and has committed himself to the Lord and has asked the Lord to do what only the covenant Lord can do. Again, that's how we press through fear. Sinclair Ferguson says God doesn't take away our fear by removing all possible circumstances in which we would be afraid, but he removes fear by giving us more reasons not to fear than we have to fear. He doesn't take away all the circumstances of which we could be afraid, but he gives us more reasons not to fear than he gives us to fear. And Jacob has learned that, and is learning that now. Secondly, I want us to consider Jacob wrestling. There is this strange transition here, and now as the evening falls, Jacob finds himself alone, notice verse 24, Jacob was left alone and it was at that moment where he is alone and let me say this this morning, God often only deals with us in the way in which we need him to when we are left alone. So that we can be alone with him. I hate being alone. Some of you love being alone. And that's not the being alone I'm speaking of. It's a spiritual being away from others so that you realize it is you and the Lord. When God deals with a man or woman, a boy or girl, he makes him or her feel like it is only him and that individual wherever he is dealing with them. God comes in the form of a man. Now, clearly this is a theophany. It's a pre-incarnate manifestation of the second person of the Godhead. This is God. Jacob will say, I have seen God face to face. Why does he come as a man? Well, he comes as a man because Jacob had been afraid of a man, Esau. And the Lord is coming and he's saying, there is somebody that you should fear more than Esau. There is someone with whom you have to do that is more important than the one that you've been consumed with. the Lord initiates the wrestling. I'd never noticed this before. Notice that it says Jacob was alone and a man wrestled with him. Not he wrestled with a man, the Lord began to wrestle with him. And in the course of that wrestling, Jacob is wounded and yet he fights and he presses on and he realizes that this is the angel of the Lord. This is God himself coming and This is the God of the covenant. This is the God of blessing. If you want to have a life of blessing, this is the one with whom you have to wrestle. Because there is no true blessing without wrestling with the God of heaven and earth. Doesn't matter how well you do in business, doesn't matter how much money you make, doesn't matter how well-behaved your children are, how much they excel in music and sports, none of it, none of the successes matter. If you want blessing, you've got to wrestle with the God of heaven, spiritually, in your soul, and Jacob does that. We read this morning, and Pastor Brian mentioned the Syrophoenician woman, and it's very interesting there in Matthew 15, she's coming to Jesus for the blessing. She's coming to the man Jacob's wrestling with. And she's saying, Lord, please heal my daughter. And Jesus throws up every obstacle. And it seems uncharacteristic. This is not the Jesus of American culture. He doesn't answer her. He's not a sort of a weak, moralistic philosopher, Jesus. He doesn't answer her. He doesn't do what she wants, and then she cries out all the more, and then Jesus says it's not good to give the children's bread, the miracles. to the little dogs, the Gentiles. My miracles are for Israel at that point in redemptive history, as was noted. And yet she continues to crowd, and then she says, yes, Lord, but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master's table. What's she saying? She's saying, for you to heal my daughter is just crumbs. She's wrestling. Jacob wrestles with the Lord until the breaking of the day. The Lord is pulling the scales off of Jacob. Good illustration, I heard about this, the wrestling of the Lord, because there's the question, well, how could the Lord not just crush Jacob? It's probably akin to a father wrestling with his children and exerting just enough energy so as not to let them win completely, but not to destroy them. My children hate when I wrestle with them. And the heavier you are, the worse it is for them. The Lord is doing this for the benefit of Jacob. And notice that there is that interesting statement in verse 26, Jacob says, I will not let you go unless you bless me. I will not let you go until you bless me. Whatever you have to do to get to Jesus Christ, do it. That's not Arminian. I mean, you're not going to come to Jesus unless God draws you. God is the divine initiator. He has initiated all of this. He is giving Jacob the grace. But Jacob is responding, and whatever you have to do, if God is working in you to get to Christ, then you do it. And you get to him. And it doesn't matter how abandoned you feel, it doesn't matter how much you feel wounded or hurt or afraid, you get to him. And you say, I will not let you go until you bless me. Bartimaeus did that. Blind Bartimaeus. The people told him to be quiet. Obstacles. Go away. Leave him alone. And he cried out all the more. Son of David, have mercy on me. Son of David, have mercy on me. He was saying, I will not let you go unless you bless me. Now notice the Lord does something marvelous. He says to Jacob, what is your name, Jacob? In verse 28, he said, your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel. So much of American theology is misplaced with ideas of the state of Israel, and how do we juxtapose everything, and what's God's plan for the state of Israel, and what about this? But before there was ever a state of Israel, before there was ever a nation of Israel, before there was ever a theocracy, there was an individual, Jacob. And God named him Israel. And he had prevailed with God. He had wrestled and he had overcome and he had gained the blessing. He had been vigilant and he is a type of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus is the true Israel of God. He fulfills all that Israel should have done. He's the greater Jacob. He wrestles with God at Calvary. He cries out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And where Jacob saw the face of God, Jesus, the true Israel of God, had God's face hidden from him, so that in him we also become the Israel of God. The ones who have been blessed by God, who have prevailed in laying hold of him and his blessings. Ian Duguid, puts this so well. He says, in the garden saying, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. He wrestled with God on the cross in that awful moment when he cried out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? The outcome of his wrestling was not merely that he was crippled in the hip, he was wounded and flogged and crucified and burdened down with the whole weight of our transgressions, but Jesus clung to God and would not let him go until he received a blessing, not a blessing for himself, but a blessing for us. That is awesome, and that is biblical, and that is what we latch on to when God takes everything else out of our hands. It's interesting, Sinclair Ferguson's noted that there's almost a play off of what's in Jacob's hands, right? When he's a baby, his brother is in his hands and he's supplanting him, and then the birthright is in his hands. His father, in a sense, is in his hands. Laban's daughters are in his hands. Laban's possessions are in his hands. And God takes it all out, and now Jacob is holding on to the Lord. It's an awesome picture, holding on to the Lord. Now, what do we do? What do we do with Jacob limping, finally? Notice. He's been wounded, he's had the hip put out of socket, and he's limping. When God deals with us, with anyone, there are visible and tangible marks that God has dealt with that person. I think that's what we're to make of this. The rest of his life, Jacob would have to remember this encounter as he limped every step he took to heaven. He would remember this encounter and the importance of it. It's a kindness from the Lord to wound Jacob. And when the Lord deals with us, it's a kindness when we're left wounded. I have met Christians in my life, I think of one in particular who lost her son, and she walks with a limp, but you know God has dealt with her, and that the pain she's experienced is a mark of His grace in dealing with her. You know, as I noted already, and I'll note this again, God himself is wounded at the cross. So if at any point I don't like what he's doing to change me and descale me, I have to remember that the sinless one was wounded for our transgressions. He still has the marks. for all eternity. Someone was pointing that out again to me. I recently just meditated on that afresh, that for all eternity, Jesus has the wounds from wrestling with God for us, so that whatever we go through that's painful, he's gone through it first. He's the captain of our salvation. He's the one with whom we wrestle, and yet he has wrestled for us. He has been wounded for us. Isn't that awesome? I hope that as you assess your life, wherever you are, and you take an inventory of what's going on both within and then externally, that you'll consider these things and that you'll come to a place where you realize that more than fearing anything else, there is one you need to fear, the Lord himself. There is one you need to press on to lay hold of and to say, I will not let you go until you bless me. That's what saving faith is, and that's what the whole of the Christian life is. And then once we've done that, and as we do that, and we end up walking with a limp, we remember how graciously God has dealt with us. so that when times get really terribly hard, we don't question, does he love me? We remember how he has already dealt with us in that love and mercy. Let him who has ears to hear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the church this morning. Let me pray for us. Father in heaven, we recognize this morning how much we need to wrestle with you, how much we need you to wrestle with us, and how much we need your grace to press on so that we too, like Jacob, would be a people who say constantly, I will not let you go unless you bless me. We thank you, Lord Jesus, that you wrestled with God as God in the flesh for us. We thank you that you were wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities, that the chastisement that brings us peace was upon you, and by your stripes we are healed. We pray, Lord Jesus, that you would draw near to us, that you would remind us of the gracious ways that you have worked in us, and that you would strengthen us, that we might go forward, even limping, all the way into your presence and glory. Have mercy on us, Lord. We pray that you would work in the hearts and lives of each one present here, and we pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.