SERIES: CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH GOD
MESSAGE: JACOB ENCOUNTERED GOD AT JABBOK:
TEXT: GENESIS 32:1-32
Many times, life brings us to situations where we are pushed to the losing side. Some of you are here with regrets of the past and pain of failure. Some of you are in different cross roads in life. I am here to tell you that GOD is with you at such times and the way you surrender to God determines your blessings. Surrender to be blessed.
In Genesis 32, the life of Jacob came to a critical turning point. Up to this point Jacob had lived up to his name, taking every advantage he could find to get ahead in life. But that is about to change.
Jacob has left his domineering father-in-law’s home after 20 years in Haran. At last Jacob is now free in Laban. Laban is history, Jacob is now heading back home.
Jacob’s family is now camping on the bank of River Jabbok the border of the promised land. Although times were bad in Haran, Jacob had grown very rich and prosperous. There is only one niggling detail from his past that still haunts him, Esau! He wondered whether Esau still plans to kill him. Now that Jacob is heading home, he must face his brother.
Jacob is really worried about his brother. Earlier Jacob had sent some messengers to Esau with a message of peace and reconciliation-Gen. 32:6.
When the messengers returned to Jacob, they said “we went to Esau your brother and now he is coming to meet you with 400 men with him.”
May be Esau has decided to get even after 20 years. Maybe these 400 men are hired killers. Night has fallen on Jabbock and he is left to wonder what tomorrow will bring. In a few hours, he will come face to face with the brother he cheated many years ago but I want you to notice:-
- God is always just. Sooner or later everyone will have to go back and face our past. May be it is a broken relationship you thought time would heal, may be it is broken promise, a job unfinished, a task left incomplete or a lie you hoped would never catch up with you. You got to face the people you hurt, a time to own up to what you did. You can’t just go through life hurting people saying “it doesn’t work that way.” Please, understand that God is just. Every injustice and hurt your adversary will have to give an account and regret what has been done to you. Jacob that night met God in a wrestling match with no referee!!
- God is right in your circumstances.
God brings us again and again to crisis points where our self-sufficiency is shattered. There will be nights where we have no more strength and cannot take it anymore.
Your doctor gives up on you. Family leave you and you surrender them to fate or you stand on the ruins of a broken marriage that you thought would last forever, you cry out “Oh my God why is this happening to me?” I don’t have any more strength. God allows these things to happen so that like Jacob, we find our self-confidence shattered and we are forced to trust in God in new and deeper way.
Do not be stiff necked: why did God touch Jacob’s thigh? Because that is the strongest and largest muscle of the body. By touching his thigh, the man was literally crippling Jacob at the point of his greatest strength.
When you wrestle with God, you always lose. Do not be stiff-necked when God is dealing with you just surrender-Prov. 29:1 “Whoever remains stiff necked after many rebukes will suddenly be destroyed-without remedy”-2nd Chron. 30:8.
God does not go by our thinking-Prov. 19:21 “Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.”
- God does not go by our rules that is why sometimes we think God is unfair.
- But God is never unfair. In order to accomplish His greater purpose, He does things in your life that may appear to you to be unfair.
- God’s answer is always, “My child, I love you more than you know. I am not unfair.”
- Jacob clearly lost the battle here. He cannot walk, he is limping. On the other side the sun is rising.
- The mysterious visitor (wrestler) is about to leave.
- But before he goes, he and Jacob have a brief conversation; the first words exchange between them are words of surrender.
- Let us see how we win when we surrender to God in our defeats.
- There is new determination-Gen. 32:26.
“Then the man said, let me go for it is daybreak.” But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
- Up to this point in Jacob’s life, he used all his strength and ability to archive his own ends.
- Before this night, Jacob was running the show.
- Now he realized that without God, he is nothing.
- Before Jacob used his wits to deceive Esau and trick Isaac.
- Now, he is learning the great lesson of Zachariah 4:4 that it is “not by might nor by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord.”
- Jacob is determined that this man should bless him.
- You see, somewhere during the long hours of fruitless wrestling, Jacob realizes that this “Man” was not a mere man, he really was the “Angel of the Lord.”
- The “angel of the Lord” is another name for Jesus Christ.
- Jacob wrestled God Himself and prevailed.
- Now, Jacob is having a new passion, “I need the blessing of God.” Yes I am physically blessed with family, wealth and wits, but I really need true blessings. I need God to bless me.
- God has something greater to offer you.
- As you surrender fully your life, God is going to give you a new passion to succeed and a new passion to be used for His glory.
- We realize our own folly-Gen. 32:27.
“The man asked him, what is your name? Jacob, he answered.”
- This was the turning point of Jacob’s life. Why did the man ask his name?
- Did he not know who Jacob was? Yes he knew Jacob.
- The question was “Jacob do you know who you really are? The name Jacob meant “Heal-grabber,” “Cheater, deceiver” and supplanter.” That is who Jacob was.
- Sometime we must understand who we really are-Are you ready to confess the deep truth about the way we are.
- It is always said, “The truth will set you free.” But listen, if the truth about your own life and condition will hurt you first, then the truth of God can set you free.
- When we surrender to God, then we realize our own folly.
- When Isaac saw the Lord, high and lifted up, Isaiah said, “woe to me!! for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips and my eyes have seen the king, the Lord Almighty.
- So, when you surrender to God you understand your own folly.
- Unless you admit the truth about our condition, we will remain as we are.
- Unless you can say, “my name is bitterness” you cannot be healed.
- “My name is failure, my name is pride,” you cannot be blessed. Today come to God as you are.
- A new identity-Gen. 32:28.
“Then the man said, your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel because you struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”
- The real Hebrew version means “God who prevails with man”-it means God fought with Jacob and won.
- When you surrender yourself, God will give you a new identity-Jacob got a new name-Israel.
- One night is enough for God to change your identity.
- A new blessing-Gen. 32:29.
- Jacob said “please tell me your name” but He replied, “why do you ask my name?”
- Then he blessed him there. This blessing meant that from now on Jacob would be God’s man through and through. No longer Jacob but Israel.
- There is lasting effect-Gen. 32:30-32.
“So Jacob called the place PENIEL saying “it is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.” The sun rose above him as he passed Peniel and was limping because of his hip. Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the tendon attached to the socket of the hip, because the socket of Jacob’s hip was touched near the tendon.
- See the lasting effects when Jacob surrendered to God.
- The name of the place was changed to Peniel.
- The Israelites don’t eat the tendon attached to the hip socket.
- When you lose you really win.
- It was an encounter with the Living God.
CONCLUSION
- Who won the match that night? God. Who lost? Jacob. But who really won? Jacob. That is a paradox of life. When we wrestle with God, we always lose but when we surrender we win!!
- Jesus Christ said-Mark 8:35, whoever wants to save his life will lose it.
- Matthew 20:16, The last shall be first and the first shall be last.
- Today surrender to God, let God meet you at the point of anguish, fear and uncertainty.
- The dispute between Esau and Jacob ended through encounter.
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