Description
Wrestling with God
Three Falls, a Submission and a Knock-Out!
Wrestling Jacob gets a new name: ‘Identity Thief’ becomes ‘God’s Wrestler’
We read that Esau was born moments before his twin brother Jacob who was found to have been grasping his brother’s heel in their mother’s womb (pity poor Rebekah!). So they named him Jacob, meaning ‘grasper’ or ‘supplanter’. As they grow up, Jacob ‘lives down’ to his name and gets the better of his brother. At the climax (Genesis 32.28), Jacob gets a new name: Isra-el, meaning ‘wrestler’ or ‘contender’ and ‘God’.
But does Israel wrestle with God or for God? In the unfolding history, it varies…
In his hymn ‘Come O thou traveller unknown’, Charles Wesley combines Jacob’s struggle at the River Jabbok with that of someone struggling to become a Christian.
Who is God and does God really love me?
Three Falls
1) Genesis 3 Adam and Eve are only given one rule… and still they break it! The Twister Snake questions God’s love; does God really want the best for you or just want to keep you down? Eve sees the practicality: they need food (though there’s plenty more) and wisdom sounds good. But how can you gain the knowledge of good and evil without doing evil? When God confronts them, they pass the buck: Adam blames Eve, Eve blames the snake and the snake just doesn’t have a leg to stand on!
2) Matthew 4.9 The Twister tries again. When Jesus was baptised in the Jordan, God declared ‘This is my Son.’ The temptations are alternative ways of working out what that means in practice. Does it mean being the ultimate Good King? Caesar Augustus was the most powerful world ruler; does being God’s Son mean taking over from him, adding the rest of the world to the empire and running it really well? That’s what many expected of the Messiah. It’s an attractive option but the price would be another fall; to acknowledge that the Twister had the power to fix the politics would mean denying that the ‘Earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.’ Jesus doesn’t fall for it because he knows that his heavenly Father really does love him.
Continues…