Dr. Ron Sumners
November 13, 2005
I remember, as a young boy, coming to Birmingham to visit my Uncle Mack and Aunt Elaine, the parents of Buddy Wolfe. On one trip, Uncle Mack took dad and me to the wrestling match at Boutwell Auditorium. Chief Wahoo McDaniel was wrestling Tojo Yamamoto. My uncle Mack got so excited into the match that my dad had to stop him from climbing into the ring to help Chief Wahoo McDaniel when Tojo Yamamoto hit him with his Japanese, wooden shoe.
Wrestling, as a spectacle was in its infancy in those days. Vince McMahon, the force behind modern wrestling was only a teenager. With his climb to the wrestling ruling class, today's brand of wrestling has become a caricature of what professional wrestling was and poles apart from Olympic wrestling. Today, pro wrestling is a sub-culture all its own where the men in the ring are portrayed and perceived as superheroes or super-villains. To watch WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) is to watch a world all its own. The drama outside the ring is more important than the action inside the ring. If you want to watch wrestling today, you must sit through a parade of skits and endless banter offered by gravel-voiced behemoths. Oh, for the days of Wahoo and Tojo!
As I was flipping through the channels some time ago, I found a rerun of something called "Smack Down," a WWE event. After watching the absurdity of it, I thought about another wrestling match. In the Old Testament there is a story of Jacob wrestling with God. It wasn't a WWE "smack down" but an Olympic wrestling style encounter. Olympic wrestling is a true contest of athletic skill, strength, and heart. Do you remember Rulon Jones? He was the American heavyweight wrestler who defeated the highly favored Russian in the Olympics. This corn-fed Midwesterner became a true American hero. He was one man who made a name for himself wrestling. Today we are going to talk about another man wrestling with God. So, as they say in WWE "Let's get ready to rumble!"
Genesis 32:22-32 tells us of Jacob's bout with an opponent who is later revealed as God. How do we wrestle with God? What happens when we wrestle with God? To answer those questions, we must consider why Jacob got into the match and what the outcome was.
Jacob, through deceit, had stolen the blessing meant for his older brother Esau from their father Isaac. Esau was a bit upset and Jacob had to flee for his life. He ran to the house of Laban, his uncle. While there he prospered and married two wives, Leah, and Rachel. He only meant to marry Rachel, but just as he had cheated his brother, Laban cheated him. He wanted to marry Rachael but ended up with Leah. He had to work for Laban seven more years to get Rachel.
Jacob decided to go home, with prompting from God. As he approached the boundaries of his homeland in Beersheba, he becomes anxious. He gets word that Esau is headed toward him with a sizable army. He divides his entourage in hopes that some would survive Esau's wrath. He assumed that Esau was still angry with him. Jacob prays and reminds God of the promise He made Jacob twenty years earlier as he was fleeing Esau.
"O God of my father Abraham, 0 God of my father Isaac, 0 Lord who said to me, 'Go back to your relatives and your country and I will make you prosper.' I am unworthy of all the kindness and faithfulness you have shown your servant. But you have said, 'I will surely make you prosper and will make your descendants like the sand of the sea, which cannot be counted."'
Can you believe the gall of this man? He goes back home because God has told him to do so. Then the moment he hears that Esau is coming, he challenges God. He says, "OK God, remember what you promised. If you let Esau kill me, you'll be breaking your promise!"
After this prayer, he begins to plot a course of how to appease Esau. He lines up some of his livestock in five flocks as a gift for Esau. Then he sends them out toward the advancing army of Esau, one after the other so that as Esau closes in on him, he keeps running into these extravagant gifts. Jacob hopes that by doing so, Esau will be placated by the time they meet.
Jacob prays, "God, take care of it." Then he sets about to choreograph how God will take care of the problem with Esau. What Jacob gets is far different than what he planned.
Jacob has laid the groundwork for the meeting. In his mind, he has put the odds in his favor. But he is still not at ease. This speaks to Jacob's character. In Jacob's day, a name meant something. It reflected the character of the person. "Jacob" means "heel grabber," This is a euphemism for saying "deceiver." So, here is one who deceives, and he is still worried sick about Esau. He gets up in the middle of the night, moves his entourage across the river while he stays on the far side. He has already divided his group in two, now he divides them again and separates himself from them and then he prays, "God, you take care of it!" He was still the deceiver!
God had a lesson for Jacob that he would never forget. Jacob was alone and a man came and grabbed him, and they wrestled until the break of day. They grappled back and forth trying to get control of the other and finally the man knocked Jacob's hip out of joint. Then the man said, "Let me go, for it is daybreak.'' Jacob replied, "I will not let you go until you bless me." The man asked him, "What is your name?' "Jacob," he answered. Then the man said, ''Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome."
Picture this. Jacob is standing in the dark beside the river, intently watching the shadowy outlines of his entourage across the river for any signs of Esau attacking. His eyes and ears are piqued to maximum efficiency. Then, without warning, strong arms lock around him and the wrestling match is on. He was probably too terrified to scream. He must have thought that Esau had found him and attacked him. He fears for his life and begins to fight back.
When Moses wrote this story for the Children of Israel, they understood wrestling in a form much like Olympic wrestling not WWE. Wrestling consisted of grappling on your feet with the opponent, trying to win the battle of balance and throw the opponent to the ground. So, Jacob and this opponent are standing, locked in a vice-like embrace, each looking for the advantage. We do not know how long this battle lasted, or how late in the night it began. We do know they battled until daybreak.
As the two struggled, something odd happens. Jacob's opponent knocks his hip out of joint, laming him. For those of us who have played sports, we understand that when you sustain a sprain, or a tear to a leg muscle, it is virtually impossible to have enough leverage on just one leg to do more than just stand. It would be impossible to wrestle someone to the ground with an injured leg.
Jacob does the only thing that he can do - he latches on even tighter to his opponent, using him to maintain his balance. He is helpless to stand on his own two feet without the assistance of his attacker, so he holds on for dear life.
The opponent has Jacob at his mercy. Jacob is in a totally defensive posture - probably waiting for that dreaded touch of the other hip that would completely defeat him. Instead, the opponent simply says, "Dawn is here, let me go." Jacob is defeated, but he will not let go. "Not until you bless me." Then the blessing comes, and Jacob's name is changed from "the deceiver" to Israel, "One who strives with God." Why? Because he has struggled with God and man and has overcome. Jacob, now Israel, seems to have won.
What in the world is going on here? Why is this story in the Bible at all? Does it say anything that could be helpful for us today? If I did not think so I would not be preaching this sermon!
Let me explain by equating wrestling with prayer. Jacob, by nature was a WWE-type wrestler. He wants all the moves choreographed and the outcome to be known well in advance. He doesn't want the struggle; he doesn't want the fight. He has always taken the easy way. He puts on a good show in prayer, but there is no depth, no struggle, and no heart to his prayer. He doesn't really trust God to do what God has promised. He offers a caricature of prayer and then sets about in his own strength making his prayer come true.
God, on the other hand, wants to teach him how to be an Olympic style wrestler, to strain, to struggle, to put his heart into every syllable. God wants him to pray and then trust God to answer in His own time and way. God wants Jacob to know the nature of true prayer.
Notice what God does to Jacob. He takes his feet out from under him so that Jacob has no choice but to lean on God. Jacob is helpless. So how does he prevail? He wins by surrendering! He asks for a blessing. He admits that he is defeated. He acknowledges God's prerogative and submits his way to God.
Jacob was not wrestling to get a blessing from God; he was defending himself and refusing to yield to God. God wanted to break Jacob and bring him to a place where he would honestly say, ''Not me, but God!" All night long, Jacob defended himself and refused to surrender or admit that he had sinned. Then God weakened Jacob, and the wrestler could only cling! Now instead of scheming for a blessing as he had in the past, or bargaining for a blessing, he asked God for the blessing - and he received it.
The message in this strange little story is the same one we find in the Book of Revelation: God wins!
Prayer is not to sway God to our will; it is to mold our will to God's. When we pray, we acknowledge that our times and moments are in God's hands and that whatever the outcome we will say with Jesus, "Not my will but thine be done."
This was a difficult sermon to write and preach. It is true that the story is odd and a bit obscure and some of you may not agree with my interpretation. But those issues are not my most pressing problem. As I reflected on the nature of prayer and related it to wrestling, I became increasingly uneasy. Do you know why? Because the more I thought about it, the more convicted my heart became. The Holy Spirit wasn't going to let me get away with some antiseptic exegetical work - in other words, God wasn't going to let me just preach this word.
One of the dangers of preaching is that inevitably you are going to run into a message that wounds you - that touches your hip, so to speak. God wounds you through your own words. But it is always a blessed wound and those scars mark progress in the growth toward the mark of the high calling of God.
As I thought on the nature of wrestling in relation to prayer, I began to realize that my own prayer life is more like the WWE variety that of the Olympic - mostly for show! My prayers are choreographed, each movement calculated to say the right thing at the right time, in the right way for maximum efficiency and effect. I appeared to wrestle, but when I began to be honest, I realized that I had followed the format of prayer and missed the true nature all too often. Like Jacob, I was a "Smack Down" prayer. Real struggle with God was avoided because I did not want to lose control. And that attitude is diametrically opposed to submission.
So, as I began to examine myself, I found myself taken up by strong arms. As I finished this sermon, I knew that in preaching it I would see the approaching dawn. I knew that preaching this sermon is my saying to you and to my beloved opponent, "I will not let you go! I will not let you go! Bless me!"
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