Genesis 32:22-26 Utter Weakness!

Jacob Wrestles with God

22During the night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two maidservants, and his eleven sons, and crossed the ford of Jabbok. 23He took them and sent them across the stream, along with all his possessions.

24So Jacob was left all alone, and there a man wrestled with him until daybreak. 25When the man saw that He could not overpower Jacob, He struck the socket of Jacob’s hip and dislocated it as they wrestled. 26Then the man said, “Let Me go, for it is daybreak.”

But Jacob replied, “I will not let You go unless You bless me.”

For protection, Jacob put his family across the river and returned to the other side by himself. It was here while alone God wrestled with him.

This is an image on how God wrestles with us, we must be alone and brought to our knees. 

“It does not say that he wrestled with the man, but ‘there wrestled a man with him.’ We call him ‘wrestling Jacob,’ and so he was; but we must not forget the wrestling man, — or, rather, the wrestling Christ, — the wrestling Angel of the covenant, who had come to wrestle out of him much of his own strength and wisdom.” (Spurgeon)

Christ wrestles with us for the same reasons, to wrestle out of us much of our own strength and wisdom.

“I suppose our Lord Jesus Christ did here, as on many other occasions preparatory to his full incarnation, assume a human form, and came thus to wrestle with the patriarch.” (Spurgeon)

He does that with us through our conscience! You cannot say you haven’t heard Him talk to you and tell you that you’re wrong, or don’t do that, or to do something....

“It was brave of Jacob thus to wrestle, but there was too much of self about it all. It was his own sufficiency that was wrestling with the God-man, Christ Jesus.” (Spurgeon)

When we wrestle against the Lord and His ways it is our self sufficiency fighting to keep our ways, not His!

“It is evident that, as soon as he felt that he must fall, he grasped the other ‘Man’ with a kind of death-grip, and would not let him go. Now, in his weakness, he will prevail. While he was so strong, he won not the blessing; but when he became utter weakness, then did he conquer” (Spurgeon).

Jacob lost, the Lord won. In our weakness we prevail in Christ, in salvation through Jesus, He blesses us.

Do you hang on with the death-grip of Jacob? 

“When you became utter weakness, then did you conquer”.

Blessings, David