Scripture: Genesis 32:3-8, 22-30; Luke 18:1-8

From Last Lesson: Jacob, no doubt, believed that God had brought all of this to him and that God was possibly trying to tell him something through this encounter.

We are not surprised, then, to learn that Jacob takes the one with whom he wrestles in the night to be none other than God. Now, don’t write off Jacob as a crackpot, because isn’t that precisely our conclusion much of the time? Alone and in the darkness, facing crisis of some sort, don’t we come to think that God is behind it all? That in the struggle, God Himself is combating us? Haven’t many of us been convinced, at one time or another, that God has it in for us, that He’s punishing us for past mistakes? Or at least that God could prevent our pain if God only cared enough about us? Our perceptions are distorted. God is the Advocate for the suffering and downtrodden in our world.

Do you remember Jesus’ parable about the widow who kept demanding justice from a callous judge? Time after time he put her off, but she kept appealing; and finally the judge “said within himself, ‘Though I do not fear God nor regard man, yet because this widow troubles me I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me’ ” (Luke 18:4-5). Remember Jesus’ comment on this story was: “And shall God not avenge His own elect who cry out day and night to Him, though He bears long with them?” (Luke 18:7-8). There is a kind of divine justice in having good come out of evil. The parable says that those who seek justice of whatever sort will, ultimately, experience it.

Jacob was seeking justice; he wanted the just opportunity of seeing things in his life made as right as he could make them. The mysterious antagonist who represented for him both his enemies and his God might very well end Jacob’s life in a cul-de-sac in which he did not want to end it. Jacob was determined to fight for all he was worth to prevent that; he would fight his crisis and demand a blessing of it. He would demand a blessing even from what caused his pain. Add to all the pain Jacob had already known in his life, all the rejection, all the fear, all the guilt, then add to these the pain of the struggle itself. When the one with whom Jacob wrestled “saw that He did not prevail against him, He touched the socket of his hip; and the socket of Jacob’s hip was out of joint as He wrestled with him” (Genesis 32:25). This was no dream. Jacob would limp the rest of his life.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
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