SIN & GRACE: A ONE-SIDED CONTEST
GRACE SENDS SUFFERING
Genesis 32: 22-32
INTRODUCTION
There are so many shocking statements in the Bible. Among the most shocking
are those that talk about God’s relationship to the suffering that Christians
endure. Consider Phil. 1: 29, "For it has been granted to you not
only to believe on Christ but also to suffer for him." The word for
grant is actually the word for being gracious to another. God graciously
gives Christians the gift of faith and the gift of suffering. Or consider
Hebrews 12: 5-7, "And you have forgotten that word of encouragement
that addresses you as sons: ‘My son do not make light of the Lord’s discipline,
and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines
those he loves and he flogs everyone he accepts as a son.’ Endure hardship
as discipline; God is treating you as sons." Or consider 1 Peter
4: 19, "So then, those who suffer according to God’s will
should commit themselves to their faithful creator and continue to do
good." It is stated everywhere in the Bible, God loves you and so
sends you suffering.
As a pastor, I weekly encounter all manner of suffering. I have witnessed
the suffering of cancer and unbelieving spouses and wayward children and
unemployment and the illness of children and conflict between spouses
and depression, to name a few. It is because of the clear teaching of
the Scriptures that I have begun asking those who are suffering, "what
are God’s good purposes for you in this suffering?" I am persuaded
that you will not make progress as a Christian until you acknowledge and
live according to this reality. Our great and gracious heavenly Father
who gives you life and breath and everything else and who killed his son
for your sins and gave you his Holy Spirit so that you might repent of
sin and love his Son is sending to you the exact amount of suffering that
you need in order to grow in your love for him and his ways. So, we need
to regularly ask ourselves, "What are God’s good purposes in this
suffering that I am enduring?"
We have here in the strange story of God’s wrestling with Jacob an answer
to that question. Jacob is living in obedience to God at the moment. God
told him to return to Canaan and he is doing that. He left behind his
uncle Laban and is venturing into a future that is filled with risk and
uncertainty from the human point of view. He will meet his brother Esau
and 400 of his men on the following day. This is the brother who declared
his intention to murder Jacob some 20 years previous. However, God has
promised to protect him and give him the land of Canaan. In faith he has
prayed and prepared to meet his brother Esau. He is a Christian, trusting
God and obeying God, though not perfectly. We are going to discover God’s
purposes in all the suffering that he brings to us as we examine what
happens to Jacob on the night before he enters the land of promise and
meets his brother Esau.
I. God sends suffering that cripples us (vv. 22-25)
This is one of the strangest stories in the Bible. The beginning is as
strange as what happens in the middle. Jacob and his family go to bed
in their tents after he has sent his ½ million-dollar gift of livestock
on ahead to his brother. Everything is prepared for the climactic meeting
that will take place the next day. But then, in the middle of the night,
he gets his entire family and all his servants out of bed. He makes them
pack up all their belongings, in the pitch dark of the desert night. He
has his shepherds drive his considerable herds and flocks across the Jabbok
River and leads his 4 wives and 11 sons, through the dark, rushing water
and puts them on the other side where they try to find whatever nooks
and crannies they can to spend the rest of the night. Then he goes back
across the river to be alone. Why does Jacob do this? The answer is we
don’t know why he did this. At least we are not told what motivated Jacob
to act like this. We don’t know if he did this out of fear or out of faith.
However, what we do discover is that as soon as Jacob is alone, out of
the darkness of the desert night a man jumps Jacob and he finds himself
engaged in hand to hand combat, fighting for his life.
Neither we, nor Jacob know who this man is or where he comes from or
why he is attacking Jacob. All is mystery. It is dark and while Jacob
can see the vague outline of a man and feel the flesh of a man as he fights
with him, he has no idea who it is. Is this an assassin sent by Esau?
Is he a common thief, intent on robbing Jacob? Is he a demon or some other
evil creature that has come to oppose God’s man? Neither Jacob, nor we
know who or what this man is or why he is attacking. Jacob fights as a
man who knows that the safety of his family depends upon his overcoming
his adversary. Make no mistake, this man is his adversary.
Isn’t this how it is with the suffering in our lives? One day you wake
up and there is a lump where there was no lump the day before. The phone
rings and you’re told that your mother was just admitted to the hospital.
You come in the door from work and your spouse tells you that your son
has been lying to you. You’re ready to go to church and you can’t find
the keys. Suddenly, you’re in a fight for your life. Your gut churns and
your emotions take you on a roller coaster ride. All is darkness and mystery.
Why am I being attacked? Who is attacking me? What can I do to defend
myself and escape from the fight? And you know that you are alone in the
fight. Others may sympathize and listen to you, but you know that you
are alone in the fight against an unseen and unnamed opponent and if you
don’t win you will die.
But then notice what happens to Jacob. This unknown assailant discovers
that he cannot overcome Jacob and so he touches his hip and dislocates
it. Immediately two things happen to Jacob. First, he is permanently crippled.
It is painful this wound. He is wounded so severely that he never recovers
from it. He is no longer the man he was when the fight began. Second,
he knows whom he is fighting. He knows that only one being can wound like
this, God.
The point is that God attacks his people. It was he who orchestrated
the events that put Jacob in the desert, alone. Jacob didn’t put his family
and possession on the other side of the river and then cross back over
the river by accident. He didn’t do it in order to wrestle with God. God
brought him here so that he could attack him and cripple him. But
it is not apparent that God is the one doing it at first. For Jacob it
looks like a man. For us, it looks like cancer or your wife or your boss
or unemployment or a tornado or another driver. It feels like you are
going to die and all that is important to you is going to be taken away.
It feels like you are in a fight for your life. There appears to be no
meaning to it all, no purpose. All is darkness and mystery but then, when
you are finally crippled, permanently disabled, you realize that God is
the one who is in the attack and behind the attack. You can’t and won’t
know that God is the one attacking until you are disabled. Until your
confidence in yourself is gone, until your fear that you are going to
lose everything is conquered, you won’t know that God is in this and so
you’ll keep fighting, trying to hang on to your precious life.
Do you see what God is saying to Jacob by his attack? "Your 20 years
of struggle with Laban was not with Laban, it was with me. The chaos of
your family life with all these wives and these children, this is sent
by me. Your struggle now with your brother is not with Esau, but with
me. My first goal in your suffering is to disable you, to make you into
an invalid, a man of weakness." Isn’t that what we just read in 2
Cor. 12? Listen again to what Paul says about his life, "To keep
me from becoming conceited…there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger
of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it
away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for
my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the
more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.
That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in
hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then
I am strong." Paul’s physical ailment was sent by Satan to
torment him but by God to humble him and display his power in him.
So Paul was delighted with the suffering put on him by others because
he knew these sufferings were God’s instrument to give him what he really
wanted, a humble dependence upon God for all things.
II. God sends suffering that cripples us so that we will cling to
him, (v. 26)
So what does wounded Jacob do? He clings to the one who wounded him and
pleads with him to bless him. He lies in the dust, his body wracked with
pain and clings to the legs of this man who attacked him with no provocation.
He begs the person who permanently disabled him to bless him. This is
God’s first goal in wounding us.
You see, all of us, no matter if we’ve been a Christian a long time or
short time, are clinging to other "gods" and seeking to be blessed
by them. It is the nature of our hearts to be seeking our happiness in
created things. God has us in a process that is aimed at changing us into
people who long for one thing, the blessing of his presence in our lives.
Our problem is that we continue to believe that we need created things
to be happy and that we cannot be happy in God alone. So God sends us
suffering that cripples so that we will stop fighting to be blessed by
created things and cling to him alone.
Jonah is a classic example of this process. God told him to go to Ninevah,
the great capital of Assyria, and announce to them God’s plan to destroy
them. God’s intention was that the Ninevites would repent of their sin
and so escape his judgment. Well Jonah was a racist. The Ninevites were
a brutal people bent on conquering the Middle East. He knew, from other
prophets that God’s plan was to have the Ninevites destroy Israel for
their wickedness. Jonah loved his nation more than he loved God. He couldn’t
be happy if Ninevah was saved and his nation destroyed. There was no way
he was going to have any part in rescuing wicked, Gentile Ninevah. So,
he got on a ship and fled in the opposite direction from Ninevah. You
all know the story. God sent a great storm so that the ship was in danger
of sinking. The sailors eventually figured out that God, because of Jonah,
sent the storm. When they asked him why he plainly told them because he
was running away from the Lord. When they asked him what they could do
to stop the storm Jonah said they should throw him in the sea. They wouldn’t
do that and tried everything they could think of to save the ship but
all of it failed and so finally, they threw Jonah overboard. Immediately
the storm stopped and God sent a huge fish to swallow Jonah. Jonah’s prayer
from the belly of the fish is a marvelous example of what God aims to
do in the life of his people by sending suffering that cripples. Jonah,
like Jacob, clings to God and begs God to bless him. One of the lines
of his prayer reads like this, "Those who cling to worthless idols,
forfeit the grace that could be theirs." Jonah learns that the only
grace filled life is a life that clings to God, not to the things God
made.
In the same way, crippled Jacob no longer fights for his life but clings
to the only one who can give him life.
III. God sends suffering that cripples us so that we will cling to
him, confess our sins, (v. 27)
In v. 27, the man, who is far more than a man, asks Jacob what his name
is. Now, how can God not know Jacob’s name? We know that God is not asking
Jacob this question because he doesn’t know the answer. He is asking the
question because he wants Jacob to acknowledge who he truly is. Do you
remember why Jacob was named Jacob? In 25: 26, at his birth he is named
Jacob because he comes out of the womb grasping the heel of Esau. In other
words, at birth he is seen to be a person who is set on taking what rightfully
belongs to another. Then in 27: 36 Esau, after he discovers that Jacob
has taken his blessing, says, "Isn’t he rightly named Jacob? He has
deceived me these two times." The idea behind his name is that he
is a person who gets what he wants by whatever means it takes. He is a
person who will lie in order to get what he loves.
So, as Jacob clings to God in order to get God’s blessing, God confronts
him with his sin. There will be no blessing given without repentance.
God doesn’t ask him to tell him about how badly Laban treated him. He
doesn’t ask him to tell him why he is so afraid of bad Esau. He asks him
one thing. What’s your name? It’s the same with us. When God sends suffering
he is asking you to tell him about your sin, not the sins of others. Can’t
you just feel Jacob’s shame and guilt as he announces his name in the
presence of this great God? "I’m a deceiver. I have lived my whole
life seeking to get what I want by using and manipulating others. I have
stolen from others, especially from my brother, what was not rightfully
mine. I do not deserve any kindness from you. I have not lived in faith
and obedience as I ought. I humble myself before you and repent in dust
and ashes. Have mercy on me for I am a sinful man."
You can know that God is having his way in your life when your own sins
seem like a mountain that threatens to fall on you and destroy you but
the sins of others against you seem small and quite understandable. God
is aiming to make you a person who is more offended by your wickedness,
than by the wickedness of others towards you. When Jared, our oldest was
born, he had all sorts of medical problems and we went through about two
weeks of great uncertainty about his survival and health. After we were
safely home and he was doing well I began meditating on Hebrews 12: 5-14
where we are told that all hardship is God’s discipline in our lives so
that we will love holiness. I meditated on that passage and thought about
what we had just been through and asked what was God’s purpose in this
suffering? One of the first things that came to my mind was how I was
sinning against the man who was my supervisor with Campus Crusade. His
behavior towards me had been a source of great offense to me and I had
not been submissive to his leadership. I was insubordinate in many ways.
I confessed my sins to God and then went and apologized to him and remarkably,
was joyfully submissive to his leadership.
If the sins of others against you seem large but your sins against God
seem small, then you can be sure that you are not learning what God intends
for you to learn in your suffering. When he sends suffering so that we
cling to him and plead for his blessing the first thing he wants us to
do is tell him about our sin.
IV. God sends suffering that cripples us so that we will cling to
him, confess our sins, receive his blessing (vv. 28-30)
What is the blessing that God gives to Jacob in response to his clinging
to him and begging to be blessed? First, he changes his name from Jacob
to Israel. In Hebrew, Jacob is the verb "He deceives" or "He
supplants" turned into a proper noun. In Hebrew, Israel is the verb
"to contend or fight" combined with the noun, "God".
If you were reading the Hebrew text and read this verb and noun as two
words, you would read, "God fights or contends". That is what
the name means. How is this change of name a blessing? No longer will
Jacob be known as the one who deceives but he will instead be known as
God fights. This was the meaning of his first vision at Bethel, 20 years
ago. The angels ascending and descending the ladder to heaven along with
God’s promise to watch over him assured Jacob that God was fighting for
him. In chapter 31, Jacob knew that the reason his flocks increased even
though Laban changed his wages numerous times was because God fought for
him. Only a few days prior to this he had a vision of God’s army of angels
camped around him. So, Israel is a reminder of God’s promise to always
watch over him and fight for him. As he enters the land of Canaan and
especially as he meets Esau, he needs to know that God fights for him.
However, the name has another meaning as well that Jacob has learned
about through this long night of fighting with God. The name also means
that God fights against him. It is a reminder that he should not expect
arrival in the land of promise to be a vacation. God aims to keep him
dependent and loving him. He aims to keep Israel from depending on created
things and from loving created things. He tells him by this name that
God fights against him in the sufferings he sends so that he will cling
to him and seek his blessing, not the blessings of the world. This is
such a word of hope for Israel. He can be sure that all the suffering
that comes to him comes directly from the hand of his loving Father to
keep him clinging to him as the source of all his happiness. And he can
be confident that this same God who fights against him is fighting for
him. John Calvin in his comments on this passage says, "We do not
fight against him except by his own power and with his own weapons; for
he, having challenged us to this contest, at the same time furnishes us
with the means of resistance so that he both fights against us and for
us…. He supplies us with more strength to resist than he employs in opposing
us…he fights against us with his left hand and for us with his
right hand." Or as the apostle Peter says about how we should
respond to suffering, "Humble yourselves therefore under God’s mighty
hand that he may lift you up in due time." It is his hand which brings
the suffering that we are to submit to and his hand which lifts us out
of the suffering in due time, that is at his time.
I know this sounds weird and almost shocking. But it is what the Scriptures
teach. We can see it even at the end of v. 28. Notice that the reason
God says he is named "God fights" is because Jacob fought
with God and man and he overcame. How did Jacob overcome God and man?
He overcame because "God fights". Then look at v. 30, he names
the location of this wrestling match Peniel, which means "the face
of God", because he saw God face to face and he was rescued. He didn’t
say he rescued himself. He said he was rescued. Who rescued him?
God rescued him from being destroyed by God. Yet, look back up at v. 25.
God "saw that he could not overcome" Jacob. How can God not
overcome Jacob? How is it possible that the God who made the world and
everything in it could not overcome Jacob? It’s because God fights for
Jacob, because as Jacob says, he was rescued. He didn’t rescue himself
from God. God rescued him from God.
Don’t you hear the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ in what this is saying?
All of us stand as guilty sinners before the God who made us and who is
our judge. We are the objects of his just anger. How do we escape his
just punishment of our sins? He substitutes himself in our place. How
does he do this? By the eternal Son of God becoming a man and fighting
against sin for 33 years and then against death by the cross and in the
resurrection. God fights for us in Christ in order to overcome God’s judgment
of us for our sins. God is against us as our judge and for us in Christ
as our Savior from his justice.
The blessing ultimately is God himself. Jacob, or rather Israel, knows
this. In v. 29 he asks God to tell him his name. God says, "Why do
you want to know my name?" God doesn’t tell him his name but he does
bless him. Why did Jacob want to know God’s name? Because he knows the
best and greatest joy in the entire universe is to know and be known by
God. Jacob is not content with a slight knowledge of God, he wants to
know God more and better. The blessing that God gives to Jacob is but
a taste of that eternal blessing of being with God, in his very presence
forever. It is through the suffering, the crippling, the clinging, the
confessing that Jacob, now Israel, learns that the goal of life, what
he was made for, was to know God. God gives him a taste of it now so that
he will yearn for that eternal pleasure of knowing God. The taste now
serves to keep him and us trusting to the end, yearning for our heavenly
home, not a home of ease and comfort here on planet earth.
V. God sends suffering that cripples us so that we will cling to him,
confess our sins, receive his blessing
and so live in his grace (vv. 30-32)
Israel goes to face his brother, limping. God’s attack has permanently
disabled him. He will have to the end of his life his name and his injury
to remind him of his need for God. They are a reminder that the suffering
he will yet encounter comes from God and is intended for his good. They
are a reminder that God fights for him and so he need not fear when the
suffering comes. Then the final verse tells us that the descendants of
Israel carry the same two reminders with them throughout the course of
their existence. They bear the name of their father, Israel. They do not
eat the tendon attached to the socket of the hip. In other words, every
Israelite ought to daily remember that God fights. He fights against
them and for them so that they will learn to want only him. Now the
coolest thing in the world is that, according to Romans 4 and Romans 9,
everyone who trusts in Christ is a member of Israel. We too are to remember
and live in the grace of God to us. God fights against us and for us so
that we will need only him.
Read story of Samuel Rutherford, p. 288, "A Godward Life".
While in prison he wrote, "If God had told me some time ago that
He was about to make me as happy as I could be in this world, and then
had told me that He should begin by crippling me in all my limbs, and
removing me from all my usual sources of enjoyment, I should have thought
it a very strange mode of accomplishing His purpose. And yet, how is His
wisdom manifest even in this! For if you should see a man shut up in a
close room, idolizing a set of lamps and rejoicing in their light, and
you wished to make him truly happy, you would begin by blowing out all
his lamps; and then throw open the shutters to let in the light of heaven."
God wants you to live in the joy and happiness of his gracious love.
But you and I will not enjoy him while we are enjoying the lights of this
world’s lamps. So, he, in his infinite love, sends suffering to blow out
these lamps so that we will live in the joy of his grace.
God sends suffering that cripples us so that we will cling to him, confess
our sins, receive his blessing and so live in his grace.
© Copyright
2001 John Swanson.
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