Genesis 32: 22 - 32

HOLD ON

Then the man said, let me go, for it is daybreak. But Jacob replied, 'I will not let you go unless you bless me." Genesis 32:26

Most of us will recall with vivid imagination the story of Jacob wrestling with the Angel all night. It is one of those familiar stories of the Bible which many of us learned in Sunday School. As we consider this text, permit me to give some background on this scene of Jacob wrestling with the Angel all night.

Jacob, you will recall, was the son of Isaac and Rebekah and the twin of Esau. The first child born was red and hairy, so they named him Esau. The second child came out grasping Esau's heel, so they named him Jacob. As these brothers grew up, Esau became the great hunter and a man of the country, his father's son. The one who by culture would inherit his father's blessing and thus become the family’s next leader and receive all his father's material wealth.

Jacob became a man of peace living in tents. He was Rebekah's favorite.

Genesis 25:28 says of these two brothers, Isaac loved Esau, but Rebekah loved Jacob. And so from the beginning there was a certain sibling rivalry between the two, which in some ways was nurtured by the parents showing favoritism towards one child above the other. Isaac favored Esau, while Rebekah favored Jacob. You will remember that there came a day when Jacob with the encouragement of his mother tricked his brother out of his birthright.

Later on in this same text, Jacob would trick his father into giving Him the blessing which should have been given to the elder son Esau. Jacob was learning how to get what he wanted, by plotting and planning, by scheming and conniving.

When Esau realized that his brother and mother had plotted and planned against him in stealing his birthright and his father's blessing, Esau vowed within himself that he would kill his brother when their father Isaac was dead. Rebekah, upon hearing of Esau's vow of vengeance, sent Jacob to live with her brother Laban in Haran -- where Jacob prospered, he married Rachel and Leah, and he became a man of great wealth and substance. That's the background.

It’s now twenty years later. The Lord has told Jacob in Genesis 31 "Go back to the land of your fathers, go back to your relatives, and I will be with you." It’s time, Jacob, to return to your homeland.

Yes, God is sending Jacob back home to bless Jacob. He's sending Jacob home because Jacob is to become the patriarch through whom the twelve tribes of Israel will originate. And even while Jacob is on his way home, he realizes that in going home he will have to face Esau.

Has God ever sent you back home somewhere to bless you, but before the blessing can be received, you knew you had to work some stuff out? That's what Jacob's wrestling with the Angel is all about. Jacob, I want to bless you, but first you must be reconciled with your brother Esau.

Twenty years is a long time to live with your misdoings. Sooner or later the chickens will come home to roost. Twenty years is a long time to live with the guilt that you cheated your own brother out of what was rightfully his. Twenty years is a long time to live with the fear that there may come a day when a vow of vengeance will come to pass.

As Jacob and his caravan draw nearer to Canaan, he becomes terrified. Old memories of his treatment of Esau begin to wreak havoc in his mind. And he ponders the question, "How do I make peace with Esau after all these years?" Jacob, however, got himself together enough to take time to pray. Amen. When we face difficult conflicts, when we see trouble coming, when we face problems that are too big for us to handle, we can run about in a panic and worry, or we can like Jacob take time to pray.

"O God of my father Abraham, God of my father Isaac, O Lord who said to me, ‘Go back to your country and your relatives, and I will make you prosper,’ I am unworthy of all the kindness and faithfulness you have shown your servant. I had only my staff when I crossed this Jordan, but now I have become two groups. Save me, I pray, from the hand of my brother Esau, for I am afraid he will come and attack me and also the mothers with their children. But you have said, ‘I will surely make you prosper and will make your descendents like the sand of the sea, which cannot be counted.’ " (vss. 9 -12)

When we are fearful of what lies ahead, we are encouraged to pray about it. And when you examine the content of Jacob's prayer here in Genesis ch. 32, it follows the outline for effective prayer given by

the Apostle Paul in Philippians 2: 4-6, "Be anxious for nothing, but by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God, and the peace of God which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

Yes, Jacob took his concerns to the Lord in prayer. After he prayed, Jacob then sent a series of gifts ahead of him to his brother Esau. The evening prior to meeting his brother, Jacob was visited by an angel. The Text says, "So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak."

In the stillness of the night, the grasp of an unknown presence seizes Jacob, God in the midst. The wrestling begins with this mysterious messenger from God, who seeks to overcome Jacob. In the beginning, it is not Jacob who seizes this 'man', but it is the 'man', an angel of God, who seizes Jacob. There beneath the deep heavens, under the luminous skies of the stars and the moon, in the solemn silence of the night, which hides earth and reveals heaven, Jacob struggles with an unknown presence.

God has come to speak to Jacob through this man. Now some suggest that this struggle was actually a struggle of Jacob wrestling with his own conscience. Amen. Wrestling with his lifestyle of scheming and conniving. Wrestling with the fact that he had taken from his own blood that which did not belong to him. Wrestling with his past.

But I just believe God did send this heavenly messenger, who laid hold of Jacob, for the purposes of helping Jacob to face his past. Amen. We can never live into God's future if we are not willing to learn from our mistakes of the past. We can never receive what God is waiting to give us in blessing, if we have not yet yielded him our past. The angel wrestled with Jacob: "Jacob, give up the conniving, give up the scheming, give up trying to manipulate people to get your blessing, but yield yourself to God's will."

That's the struggle we all face. Yielding to the will of God. "Not my will, but let Thy will be done, O God." Jacob would never have been ready for what God had in store for him when he got home if he had not been forced to confess his sins and yield his will to the Will of God.

There they are, Jacob and this unknown presence, wrestling til the break of dawn. Wrestling with the guilt. Wrestling with his unyielded will. Wrestling with his nature to manipulate. The wrestling gets so strenuous until the angel touches Jacob's hip, wrenching it out of the socket. Now notice that if this angel had the power to put a hip out of socket, he had the power to utterly defeat Jacob. But he did not come to defeat Jacob; he came to transform Jacob. And when God lays hold of us, when God comes to contend with us, he does so because he wants to ultimately bless us, but he cannot impart the blessing until we have become a changed person. He cannot impart the blessing until we have yielded our will to His will.

The work of his heavenly assignment now completed, the angel seeks to depart from Jacob. The man says, "Let me go, for it is daybreak."

The implication being, God will leave if we have no desire to keep him. God will give us up to the desires of an unyielded will if we have no desire to obey him. God will not have communion in a heart that does not welcome Him, has no desire for Him, does not honor Him.

But Jacob responds, “I will not let you go until you bless me." We've got to look at this text from other than just a physical point of view. In the realm of spiritual things, Jacob has been resisting God, indicated by the angel having seized Him. The angel has been wrestling with Jacob for submission of His will. The angel is not concerned about physically overpowering Jacob, but he's come for Jacob's will. And notice in the spiritual realm, submission to God gives Jacob a supernatural strength to hold on to God, so much so that when the angel desires to leave, Jacob will not let him go. "I will not let you go until you bless me."

The wrestling has caused Jacob to understand who it is he has been

resisting all these years. Keep in mind that even while God has blessed Jacob, the greatest of all blessings has not yet been given: That Jacob should become Israel. That out of the sons of Jacob the twelve tribes of Israel shall come. That out of Jacob shall rise a great nation and people of the Lord.

"I will not let you go until you bless me." What this means is that the yielded life becomes the blessed life. The yielded life becomes the life which is able to hold on until what is needed is supplied, until what has been asked for is received. The yielded life has strength to capture the presence of God. God delights in those who will not let Him go. God rejoices in those who find in Him their greatest heart’s desire. God shows favor with those who claim Him as their first love. "I will not let you go until you bless me."

And verse 31 says, "The sun rose above him as he passed Penuel, and he was limping because of his hip." Jacob left this encounter with a limp because his hip had been touched by the angel of God. God will leave us with a limp, if it will help to make us a better person. God will leave us with a limp, if it will cause us to yield our wills to His. Yes, God will leave us with a limp if it helps us to realize that the greatest blessing is having God in your life.

The word blessing is one of the most misused and misunderstood words in our language, especially in these days of materialism. Blessing is more than prosperity or possessions, success or achievement. The biblical meaning of blessing is to have the assurance that we belong to God; the blessing of God is to be in fellowship with God. The blessing of God is that he delights in us and that he has singled us out as the object of his love. The blessing is not in the getting but the blessing is in the being.

We're blessed not because of what we have, but we're blessed because we are His. He had struggled all night, until he was lame in one hip.

He had held on to this angel of blessing when the pain of a wrenched

hip was crying for him to let go. He would not let the experience go until he had wrung a blessing from it. "I will not let you go until you bless me."

Like Jacob, there are some experiences, no matter how difficult, we ought not let go of until we receive God's blessing. It may be illness, it may be job layoff, it may be loss, it may be a family problem, it may be a heartache or heartbreak. Whatever it is, refuse to let it go until God gives you the blessing he has for you out of that limp. The limp reminds us of the cost of holding on to God.

"Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome." The limp reminds us that we have overcome with God.

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