[Machine transcription]
Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the text is from the Old Testament reading regarding the patriarch Jacob. Will you pray with me?
The Lord my life arranges. Who can his work destroy? In his good time he changes all sorrow into joy. So then let me be still. My body, soul, and spirit, his tender care, inherit according to his will. In the name of Jesus, amen. You may be seated.
So there stands Jacob. He sends across the Jabbok River all of his livestock. He sends across the Jabbok River all of his children and his two wives, Rebecca and Leah. And having sent them across, then he then is alone. And it’s nighttime. And he begins to think.
You know those times, don’t you? Jacob thought in his head he had done all that was necessary to kind of preemptively get his brother Esau to receive him in love. Because Esau hated his brother Jacob. But after sending everyone across and he was alone and it was night… Just like you, and you begin to think, and you can’t stop the thoughts from flowing into your head as you question, as you wonder, as you try to reason to why things have occurred.
And you know, as the text said, he was alone. And you know there’s nothing more alone than a sinner alone with his sin. Just like you, you think. And you can’t seem to stop the thoughts, can you? They keep coming.
Now, this is interesting because Jacob, as you know, God blessed him. God gave Jacob the privilege of being the one in that generation whose offspring would be a part of the lineage of Jesus Christ. But you also have to consider Jacob’s experiences. He was not the favored son in his house, was he? He had to leave his home because his brother Esau wanted to kill him. He left his home and went to his uncle Laban, where his uncle Laban tricked him into not marrying the woman that he desired, and he had to work seven more years to marry that woman.
While he was with Laban, his own uncle, his own flesh and blood uncle, tried to rob him of his livestock because his livestock wasn’t reproducing like Jacob’s livestock was. And now he sits on the banks of the Jabbok River, about to face his brother the next day. He was alone with his sin. He could say none of those things that occurred to him were possibly a result of his sin, but he could also think that they were, just like you do.
Whenever trial or tribulation comes upon you, you think in terms of, God must be getting back at me because of. God is showing me that I am not as faithful as I ought to, so I need to change. You can’t stop the thoughts, can you?
And here he sits, but he doesn’t realize or he does at the self-same time. Probably just like you. At one moment you realize and know that God’s will towards you is different. Gracious and loving because of Christ Jesus and not vindictive and wicked. But you struggle with that other side because of your reason, your senses.
In the writer to the Hebrews, he writes very clearly that God disciplines those whom he loves. He sends them struggles and trials because he loves them. Because just as we experience discipline from an earthly father and we love and respect him for it, so much more is the perfect discipline that our heavenly father gives us that we love and respect him. Because he does not give discipline to those whom he despises. He lets them go. Scary, isn’t it?
Our thoughts appeal to our reason, and Satan loves to utilize our thoughts that we can’t stop coming into our head to berate us. Because you and I exist in a world where we judge and assess and determine and discern all things according to our senses and our reason. All the while, in conflict to that, is your faith saying the opposite? Right?
Does God reveal to you in His promises the exact opposite of what your reason or senses determine or assess or discern? Your reason will lead you to two opposite extremes. Either your reason will drive you to despair of God’s love and forgiveness in Christ Jesus, or your reason will puff yourself up in self-righteousness to assume you’re different than all of those people. Those are the two extremes that reason does.
Now God’s promises lead you to repent and receive His forgiveness and His mercy and His grace. So as Jacob is by that river struggling with this in prayer, we’re also being warned by Paul’s letter to Timothy to stick with where truth is found and that is in his Scriptures. Why else would Paul have said, “the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching,” meaning true teaching from God’s Word, “but having itching ears,” meaning wanting to hear something that appeals to their reason, “they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth, and wander off into myths”?
Jacob is being tempted to wander off into the myths of his reason, just like you are tempted to wander off into the myths of your reason, and not God’s promises. But when Jacob prayed there, he did not pray with perfect faith. He prayed just like you, with an imperfect faith. He prayed with worry and anxiety. He prayed with great terrors, just like you pray.
Who among us can pray a perfect prayer? Who among us prays without worry, concern? Who among us can completely keep all of that out while we pray? Not one of us. Jacob didn’t either. The promises were there while the anxiety was there. And the promises that were there while all of that anxiety and terror was there… were statements about prayer and about his identity, just like for you.
When you pray and there’s anxiety and terror there, you are reminded of the promise, “If you ask anything in the Father’s name, ask the Father in my name, he will give it to you.” That’s his promise. It’s counter to your reason. It is not agreed to by your mind or your senses, but your faith is clinging to it.
What about your identity? “He who believes and is baptized shall be saved.” Your reason doesn’t get it. It argues with it, but your faith is clinging to it tenaciously. So Jacob, in that wrestling, had both inside of him, just like inside of you. Full of anxiety, yet still trusting that God will answer his prayer.
Was that woman in the Gospel reading, the widow, the parable of that widow? And what did Jesus say about her prayer? What does Jesus say about Jacob’s prayer? What does Jesus say about your prayer? He said thus, “Will not God give justice to his elect who cry to him day and night?” The answer is yes, of course he will. “Will he delay long over them?” No, of course not. “I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily.”
Now the justice of which he speaks first and foremost is your standing in God’s sight as a justified sinner. That justice comes speedily. Forgiveness does not wait or tarry. It comes immediately. His approval comes to you immediately. It does not tarry. What will happen in this world, how it will come about in this world, may never be seen in your and my lifetime.
But the speed of which he speaks here is of your standing in God’s sight as His child. And Jacob is struggling with that. And what he is struggling with is that his reason is screaming this, and his faith is clinging to this. And as he struggles with the second person of the Trinity, he does not ask for victory over him. That’s interesting, isn’t it? For if he would have asked for victory over this one, he would have really been setting himself up to be whom? God.
What does he ask God for in this wrestling match? Only for a blessing. The same blessing you first received this morning in the absolution. The same blessing you will receive at the end of the service. “The Lord bless you and keep you.” The same blessing you receive as you bring yourself to that table and He feeds you His flesh and blood with bread and wine. “Depart in peace according to His word.”
And those words, those blessings, you only get in this place. You don’t get them in the other six days of the week. You get everything else but these blessings because no one is speaking them to you. Here you are in the face of God. Jacob called that place Peniel, in the face of God. And here you come face to face with God. Though God is hidden, you come face to face with Him with those words.
You come face to face with Him in that baptism which calls you His child. And you definitely come face to face in him when you taste and see that the Lord is good when he feeds you his very flesh and blood with bread and wine. Do you know when God conquered you as he conquered Jacob beside the river Jabbok? He conquered Jacob when he put his hip out of socket, didn’t he? Made him remember he is but clay and flesh.
You were conquered when you were baptized. And ever since then, He has reminded you, you are His child, but you are His redeemed sinful child. You are His son or daughter, but you are His forgiven sinful son and forgiven sinful daughter. Every day, God is disciplining us so that we humble ourselves and repent and so that He can raise us up as He raised up Jacob.
The Lord kills and the Lord brings to life, just as He did in your baptism. He does that through His Word. Kills the flesh, raises up the spirit. Puts to death the sin, raises up the new man. And here’s the strange and most miraculous thing of all. God says His name is no longer Jacob. Jacob means this, He who cheats. What a great name to give your son, hmm? He who cheats or he who grasps at the heel.
But you know what? God changes his name and gives him the name Israel, which means he has striven with God and conquered God. Conquered. How can you or any human being conquer God? By the very thing that God gave you to trust him. Faith. It is by faith that God allows you to conquer Him. It pleases Him because you trust Him as loving and gracious, not as vindictive and wicked. God has blessed you with that faith that conquers Him.
Remember, he did not ask for victory over God. That would have been to make himself into God. He asked for blessing. You, though we are tempted to ask for victory… That victory will not be granted until our death, when we’re finally freed from this sinful flesh with which we struggle. The mind that can’t stop the thoughts, the body that turns in bed over and over trying to find sleep, the tears that flow when we wonder, does God count them?
Jacob prayed with anxiety and tears as well as faith, just like you. Now there was an interesting statement made by a man who prayed to Jesus while there was anxiety and terror in the same moment of prayer. This man had a demonic-possessed son, and he said, “If it’s possible, do something, O Lord!” Do you remember what Jesus said to him, which is a true statement of faith?
“It is true. All things are possible,” said Jesus, “to him who believes.” All things are possible to him who believes. That is a true statement. And this man answered in faith, “Lord, I believe. Help thou my unbelief.” And in the midst of a prayer of faith is there still doubting and fear, just like in you. Just like in this man Jacob.
And in spite of fear being there at the self-same time as faith, faith is what conquers all things. What did Paul say? “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” And what else did Paul say that God told him directly when he prayed for this thorn in his side to be taken from him? Paul responded and heard God say to him, “Paul, my power is made perfect in your weakness.”
Thanks be to God that we are put out of joint in the hip regularly by our God so that we don’t become self-righteous. And thanks be to God that He brings healing so that we don’t despair of His mercy. Just as He has made all things possible, He will continue to do so continually. In you, in spite of you, and in spite of me, by the power of His Holy Spirit.
Amen. The peace of God which passes all understanding. Keep your hearts and minds on Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.
