From the Pastor's Study
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This week, we have looked at a number of places that people place their hope. We can hope in politics rather than worship, riches rather than sacrifice, even sin rather than holiness. Today we are going to look a one more, extremely common place people put their hope: a new day. We have come up with a lot of ways to cope with the busyness of modern life, and one of the most popular is the line, “things will slow down in a couple weeks.” Things then don’t, in fact, slow down in two weeks, so we repeat the lie again, hoping this time, it is in fact true. Now, that is meant to be funny because this is something that we do all the time, but many of us cope with much more serious things this way and use it as an excuse to view pieces of our lives as meaningless and without a job. We look at our lives as a series of “just gotta get through this” moments. We turn our lives as always just two weeks away from fulfilling. Or turning just after potty training as when life really begins, or just after the kids are married, or just after this medical scan, or just after this wedding. Do you see what that does to your life? Raising children in the fear and admonition of the Lord turns into something you just gotta get through, which means, really, it is a waste of time. Fulfilling your marriage vows before God and caring for a spouse as a picture of the gospel as you await medical results becomes a chore-filled, meaningless, busy work. Joy is always somewhere over there. This passage, however, should change literally everything, and in fact, it did. Even secular life, non-Christian people have reoriented the calendar around this. It is the year 2025, because it has been (more or less) 2025 years since Jesus was born. For the Christian, however, this passage should change every single part of your life, including those parts that you say, “I just gotta get through this, and then things will be better.” How? Well, before I answer that, I need to clear up a few things first. Number one, I’m not saying that the resurrection makes life easy. It doesn’t (yet). It’s still a fallen world (for now). I’m not saying that the resurrection turns waiting on a cancer diagnosis fun. I’m not even saying that we can’t grieve when sad things happen in our lives, and we look forward to the pain fading. What I am saying is that the Resurrection gives us the hope, the full assurance, mind you, of THE New day when all things are made new, when all things are resurrected from their dying state. On that day, all of these things that are unpleasant and sad and terrible will be redefined as the very things that lead us to the joy of heaven (Romans 8:28). We will see, with redeemed minds with the greatest hindsight capability possible, will look back over our lives from the heavenly point of view, and see that every single struggle eventually led us to this moment. So again, I am not saying that it makes life fun, but it will make life understandable. Number two, I’m not just giving you a longer time to wait. In other words, you might be saying, “Ok, so you’re just telling us to stop putting hope in two weeks from now but rather 100 years from now when I’m dead? Aren’t you just telling us to do the same thing, hoping for the future, but make it longer?” That’s an insightful question, but no. Putting your ultimate hope in eternity is very different because, number one, that future is actually guaranteed to you if you are in Christ. Two weeks from now being better isn’t it. In fact, it almost certainly will be the opposite. And number two, life slowing down in two weeks doesn’t change anything about today. Knowing that we will know whether or not it is cancer in a month does nothing for today except remind us of how much we don’t know. Jesus rising from the dead actually changes everything about today, because it proves that there is a new King Who rules the world, and He has something for us to do during the waiting times. Not only that, but He is also the God of the universe, who brings all things into our lives for a specific, and good—in all meanings of that term—reason. Let’s walk through this passage to see what this means. Jesus Really Rose from the Dead This is important for us to realize and remember. Jesus’ rising from the dead was not some sort of imaginative or metaphorical thing. If Jesus doesn’t physically rise from the dead, then we are just following a dead person who said they could give us life. We would be, as Paul said, a people most to be pitied. The world is over if Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, because that means that the Father’s wrath consumed even the best sacrifice possible and still isn’t finished. The whole world would be going to hell, and not even God the Son could stop it! It is only by having Jesus come back to life again shows that He was able to provide more grace than there was sin to pay for. By dying, he paid the penalty for sin, and by rising showed the He served the full sentence. Now I know for this audience, we all believe that the Bible means what it says. The Bible is a real historical account of things as they were, but too often, Christians who do believe the Bible forget about this fact. Let’s put it this way. Let’s imagine that at the Sunrise Service this morning at Evergreen cemetery, someone dug their way back to the surface after being undeniably dead for 3 days. What else would you be talking about this week? Imagine if that guy then wrote a book. How many of you would be reading that? We would be thinking to ourselves, “Who is this who can defeat death?” You’d line up to talk to him. We would get up as early as we needed to to meet with him. We’ve gotten too used to the fact that Jesus did exactly this and what that means. It means that death isn’t the end. Yes, we all have things we want to do in this life, but we know we aren’t going to be able to do all of them before we die. And that’s ok, because we are going to live again in heaven. And if that sounds like a cheap cliche it is simply because we have gotten to used to hearing that without really thinking about it. Spend some time this afternoon really thinking about that. The pain you walk with will one day be over, and not just over but will start again, but I mean really over. And it won’t just be the end of pain, but the beginning of strength the likes of which you have never yet experienced. Those of you who know what it is like to be imprisoned by anxiety or feelings of regret from the past need to remember that you won’t feel that way forever. It will transform into the greatest sense of peace that you simply haven’t experienced yet. Heaven isn’t just the absence of negative experiences but the overflowing positive that is so hard to put into words, people who saw Jesus Himself (Paul, John) saw it and couldn’t do it. And the only reason why that is true is because Jesus rose from the dead. Life isn’t just “life is hard and then you die.” It is life is hard, but it is preparing you for an eternal experience of glory. That is what this really means. And one day, you sitting here, will experience it. And that makes a difference for you today So what does this mean for us this afternoon? What does this mean for the two weeks until things slow down? The answer comes in Jesus’ words at the end of this passage. The actual word of command here is “make disciples.” In other words, create other followers of Jesus. Of all the things that Jesus could tell us to do as the final command, that was the one. Teach others to follow after Christ. And that following after Christ isn’t all contained on Sunday morning. It affects every aspect of our lives. There is a distinctly Christian way to parent. There is a distinctly Christian way to be married, to go to a job, to suffer, to die, and more than likely it isn’t the way you intuitively think. It likely is different than how you were raised. And it works best in the places where you think it doesn’t need to be. For our purposes today, it has meaning for those waiting times, those times where you are just hanging on. What’s amazing about this command, like all of God’s commands, He helps you keep it. One of the hardest parts about making disciples is being discipled yourself. Sure, we need to be taught how to read our Bibles, pray, be a part of the church, but the concept of those things I can teach you in an afternoon. It is teaching others how to apply this reality of the resurrection to everyday life that is the real challenge. And it is exactly in those moments that you wish you could skep is exactly where those are taught. So when you are waiting on that diagnosis, that is a great prompting for additional discipleship on prayer. Nothing teaches you to pray quite like being brought to the end of your strength and finding that God was offering you His all along. The best way to learn to pray is to pray, and nothing prompts prayer quite like the unknown. Waiting isn’t wasted in this way. Or when you are waiting during those times of parenting where they have soiled the bed for the third time that day. You didn’t even know that was possible. This is a great discipleship moment of building patience and love for another while being reminded how much patience and love is being showed you. These are the moments where character is formed, where living for Christ matters, and where the Bible says there will be rewards. Matt 6:19–21“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Col 3:23–24 Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. Matt 25:21 His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ What will that look like exactly? Scripture doesn’t really say. But if God is the kind of God who sends His own Son to die for you promises wonderful gifts, I think we can trust that they will be unbelievable. Bring the hope of that day coming into the present moment. Dealing with hour two of toddlers is fraught with eternal significance. Dealing with year 24 of marriage is ripe with opportunity for serving God. Dealing with year ten of pain grants an opportunity to trust in God that will be rewarded. English Standard Version Chapter 8“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” That’s where you place your hope. Christ has bought it for you with his resurrection and it brings with it a holiness to every moment.
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We find ourselves once again at Palm Sunday and the entrance to the city of Jerusalem. This is a significant moment in Jesus’ ministry not just because it begins the road to the cross but because this scene has much to teach us today. So much is happening in this moment that if we don’t stop to look at the details we can miss what Jesus is saying and not saying about His ministry and its startling relevance to 21st century American politics. Jesus is here to set the record straight in the two areas of life that we supposedly can’t bring up in polite conversation: worship and politics. These are sensitive issues because we tend to wrap our identity both personally and as a group around them. Both are actually important. Jesus has a role to fill in both of them, but we will be able to see which one Jesus prioritizes and will guide our thoughts for the rest of this week. This week we are going to look at hope and where it is found. We will look at one area that we tend to find hope because that is our cultural default, and see how Christ offers the better alternative. Today, we are going to see that our hope is not in politics but in worship. Hope not in Politics Our passage begins with Jesus fresh off of raising Lazarus from the dead, and now He is heading into Jerusalem, the holy city during the holy celebration of Passover. All of this is a calculated move by Jesus. He isn’t getting swept up in a frothy enthusiasm, but He is executing on ancient prophecies in a very precise way. The people had an expectation of a coming King during Passover. In fact, the Roman authorities would increase security around these things because of it (Keener, 492) While certainly there will be those who are brand new to seeing Jesus as a king, those who are shouting “hosanna” and “Son of David” leads one scholar to say that these people are effectively saying, “God save the King” (Keener, 494). I can imagine what it must have been like in that moment when Jesus rides into Jerusalem. The timing of everything couldn’t be more perfect. Jesus has just raised a four-day-dead man, one of the most impressive miracles in His ministry, and is now actively fulfilling prophecy of a coming king as the Son of David. He is doing so at Passover, a festival celebrating the first time Israel had been delivered from an ancient super power, Egypt. Could this be the deliverance from the last super power, Rome? If so, this means that Israel is about to become the final—eternal—super power. The Messiah is, after all, supposed to live forever. His rule is from sea to sea. It will be marked by unparalleled wealth and prosperity. And seeing Jesus’ ministry unfold, He would be able to do this in literally miraculous ways. Food shortages are a thing of the past now that He can just multiply food. Sickness is a non-issue as a simple touch of his garment, or even a word spoken by Him can heal from a distance. Even death, as Lazarus has just demonstrated, is now on notice. There is a level of excitement that I don’t think we who live in modernity and thus used to antibiotics and superstores of food can even understand. So why does Jesus do this? Why does it look like Jesus is teasing them with this idea? Well, for one, He’s not. He pretty quickly explains to them in John that He is going to be lifted up, and it looks like the people understand that he is speaking of death. Their question, “I thought the Christ lasted forever” points towards their understanding. The donkey riding should have also clued them in that Jesus isn’t a political revolutionary (you’d be riding a mighty steed for that message) but rather one humble, riding on a donkey. Second, Jesus really is a king. The prophets weren’t kidding that this is the triumphal entry. This isn’t named this way to be ironic. Jesus really is ascending a throne by first filling a cross and tomb. Only after that does He ascend to heaven and rule from His Father’s right hand. It is a real rulership, just not the way people are expecting it to be. Political revolution is on its way, but that is for the second advent. That is for Christ’s return. But that doesn’t mean Jesus isn’t busy building the kingdom. Where does He start the building? Worship. Fellowship with His people. That is where they find their chief joy and purpose. But where is the people’s focus? They want the Romans out of here! They want the state cleaned up, for dang’s sake! Are we not the same? We often have a lot of opinions on how politics should be conducted, but very little daily reflection is spent on worship. You can see which Jesus prioritizes. It’s not that politics isn’t important. It isn’t that Jesus is and will be King in immensely practical ways, but where is your focus in your day to day life? What is the thing you should be most concerned about? Worship! Why? Because worship is the foundation for everything else. If you worship wrongly, anything else you do correctly in life will be despite you. What I worship, anyway? Living a sacrificial life that is fundamentally oriented towards another. If you live this way towards anything or anyone but God, you will spend your life on something that can’t hold that kind of pressure and will fail on you. You need something to worship because that is what you’ve been created to do. 1 Cor 10:31 1 Corinthians 10:31 ESVSo, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. Romans 11:36 ESVFor from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen. Psalm 73:25–28 ESVWhom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. For behold, those who are far from you shall perish; you put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you. But for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord God my refuge, that I may tell of all your works. So how do we worship incorrectly? Hope is Found in Worship Look at what was happening here. Worship in the Temple was starting to be done based on convenience. Why do I say that? After all, there are those who say that the main problem was that the money changers were cheating people, hence the description that the Temple was being turned into a “den of robbers”! Well, look carefully at verse 12. One scholar points out that Jesus drives out both the sellers AND buyers (RT France, cite in Keener, 497). And while this seems to be happening in the court of the Gentiles (where the nations could come and pray but now have to do so being bumped into by animals), Matthew doesn’t seem to emphasize that point (Keener, 500-1). There is evidence to suggest that this practice of buying animals used to take place outside the Temple in the mount of Olives, a few miles away. But there was risk in this. Remember, an animal to be sacrificed has to be unblemished, and while you’re walking down the road with thousands of other people and animals, there is a real risk your animal gets damaged along the way, meaning you spent all that money for nothing (Keener, 497). That is an understandable hardship that you would want to offload. But note how we are trying to minimize sacrifice as much as possible in this approach. The people want it easy, and the leaders of the Temple are more than happy to accommodate, even if that means turning the Temple into a place of commerce. This is something that Jesus opposes in quite strong terms. American Christians are unfortunately susceptible to this as well. If we are honest, worship is something that we try to fit into the rest of our lives rather than something we build our lives around. We look at worship as something that we need to do rather than something we need. We assume worship is one of our purposes and not the main purpose. We assume that we can get by with once a month worship at the church. We assume that we don’t need to worship as a family. We assume that as long as we get to our Bibles occasionally as individuals it’ll all sort out in the end. And then we wonder why we are so anxious about the coming week and confused about how to live life generally. Even if we have the basic answers to life’s questions we lose the reminders, the motivations for why we do them. Perhaps this is why we have so many joyless Christians. We do understand what we have to do, but it just feels like a thing we have to do because we have to do it. There’s no grander vision to it. We approach the work of participating in the rescue of our neighbor’s eternal souls, an activity done hand in hand with God like we approach filing our taxes. It’s just something we have to do, like it or not. We approach family formation, the most critical sphere of society both for Church, State, and eternal Kingdom, the most profound discipleship in all our lives with the same amount of thought as grocery shopping after a long week. We wake up profoundly concerned at the direction of the American empire as if we aren’t citizens of an eternal kingdom with God Himself on the throne. Why? Because we’ve lost worship! We aren’t a house of prayer. We don’t look at God’s face unless we can fit it in, unless it is conveinent. Now, I get it. Life is busy. Modern life has you running in 10,000 directions at once. Your calendar is full! But if you want to live the way Jesus wants you to, you might have to take a meat cleaver to the calendar. Guys, Jesus rose from the dead. He is actively building His Kingdom right now, you’ve been invited to help build it. Don’t miss that! I’m not asking you to withdraw from society to become a monk or a nun. I’m not saying you have to quit every activity that isn’t church (In fact, quite the opposite; you’ve got some souls to minister to at T-Ball), but don’t forget what you are a part of here on Earth. Don’t forget what Jesus has done. Don’t look at your life like it is your empire that you are building with Jesus along for the ride. No, JESUS is building His Kingdom and it is you along for the ride. By all means build your small business, but never forget that you aren’t working for yourself. By all means raise and enjoy your children, but never forget whose they really are. And do you know how to not forget? At least once a week, you stop everything you are doing and set aside time to come together and worship. Stop and rest. You need to stop long enough to remember what you are really doing, and you rest because you need it. You know what, your children need reminding every day. Dinner is a great time to read something, pray something, and sing something. Boom! Family Worship. The time invested is dependent on how old they are. Mine are good for a verse or two, a prayer, and a quick Psalm we are learning to sing. We’ve been singing the same one for weeks, and we’ve finally got the first verse memorized. You need reminding every day, too. “Oh, I don’t have time for all that!” you may say. You’re telling me you are facing physical exhaustion of parenting, the soul drain of a florescent-lit cubicle, and the mental strain of a schizophrenic American economy without reminding yourself and your family that King Jesus is coming to redeem and recreate all things in splendor? How are you doing that? I’d be impressed if it wasn’t sinful. I’m not saying these things to make you feel guilty. I’m not even thinking that we will be able to do this perfectly every day; I don’t. But I am publicly asking all of us why we would deny ourselves this? We’ve tricked ourselves to think that we can slack our thirst with ocean water, that our souls will do just fine without worship. That doesn’t seem to be Jesus’ opinion. He walks in to see what worship has become, worship of Him, and starts flipping tables over. Jesus, meek, mild, humble, gentle, lowly, all until worship is threatened. If that’s Jesus’ opinion, then that should be ours as well. I encourage you this week, as we all are attending more services, going through devotionals, and generally thinking about this more, see that you do have time. If you are taking some time this week to stop, reflect, and pray more than you might otherwise, just notice the difference it makes. You need worship. You need the reminder that you aren’t the end all, be all of the universe. You need to stop and rest. Don’t think of Sunday as a day of restriction full of a ton of “don’ts” and “wasted time.” Look at it as the Divinely given opportunity to do the things that we say we wish we could do more of, prayer, singing, and physical rest. How much more productive might you be if you took time once a week to stop, reflect, and be reminded that whatever your job is you will return to on Monday is filled with eternal possibility. That you are an immortal soul with a one day eternal body on your way to heaven guided by the Good Shepherd. Do that for a few weeks, and I defy you not to want to share that with your children around the dinner table. Do that for a few months and see if your soul is still disturbed by the news on TV. Do that for a few years and see if you don’t become a joyful soul that attracts others to Christ. Do that for a lifetime, and on your deathbed tell me that it was wasted time and that it hasn’t given you the deepest hope, the only hope, you could have ever imagined. I want that for you. Jesus wants that for you, too. Your King commands it. Your Father gifts it. You enjoy it. 
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We have before us a very unique passage in a couple respects. We’ve never seen God, before or since, physically wrestle a man! Usually God is in the business of revealing Himself rather than hiding Himself. There are a lot of parts to this story that seem strange and confusing. Yet for those who have known God for a while, there is actually something strangely familiar about this text. It isn’t just because you’ve probably read it before, but because you’ve probably experienced it before, albeit in a more spiritual sense, less dramatic. Today we are going to unfold what this text is getting at by looking, as we usually do, at two points today. God changes your identity and God changes your behavior. God Changes Your Identity As this text begins, we will keep in mind where Jacob is and what he is about to face. Jacob is on his way back to the promised land, but before he can enter in it, he is going to have to face his brother (and potential murderer) Esau. This is a pretty dark, sleepless night for Jacob, but there is one more surprise for him. Suddenly, in the middle of the night, a man (we aren’t told who yet) begins wrestling with Jacob. Depending on weather conditions, this could have happened in the pitch dark, so Jacob suddenly is potentially fighting for his life! This was also a long term fight, because apparently this goes until the sun starts rising. If you’ve ever done any sort of fighting, this is quite impressive. Modern professionals really get tired out after just a few rounds, so wrestling all night after a pretty stressful day shows that Jacob has some incredible strength at his disposal (Matthews). However, all things come to an end eventually, so Jacob’s mysterious opponent touches Jacob’s hip and puts it out of joint, a devastating injury for wrestling performance. A single touch to make this kind of injury begins to pull back the curtain on who this strange fighter is. He seems intent on hiding his identity, because it is the rising dawn that causes him to call the fight over. Jacob recognizes that he has been wrestling with someone important, and asks for a blessing. The man responds with what at first sounds like a strange question, “What is your name?” Names are important in the Old Testament, as they often have something to do with reputation. This is why when places in the Psalms talk about declaring God’s name to the nations, they don’t mean just shouting the word, “God” but they mean telling the world about God’s acts, His faithful reputation. Jacob’s name doesn’t have a lot of honor to it. If you remember way back at the start if his story, he is named Jacob because he came out of the womb grabbing Esau’s heel. This name “heel grabber” also has the connotation of being a trickster, a “wrastler” if you will. For Jacob to say his name is to admit of this sort of character background. This is why Jacob’s new name is so significant. The man says that Jacob will no longer be called “Jacob” but will instead be called “Israel.” Jacob is no longer going to be referred to with reference to what happened with Esau, but it is going to be in reference to what happened with God, and yes, this is God, I think. We’ll say more about it below, but I think the very fact that Jacob is being renamed is also significant for the identity of the man. To name something is to have authority over it. This is why Adam was naming all the animals, because he had been given authority over them. When kings would conquer nations, they would take in the people and give them new names to show their authority. If I were to suddenly start calling you by a different name and you just accept that, that would be an incredible power move. And I think that is what is going on here. I join with other commentators who think that this isn’t Jacob’s conversion moment, but it does parallel what our conversions look like. We can be known by several different identities. We can think of ourselves in relation to what we do. I am a preacher, a doctor, a farmer, an AC guy. In other words, you are defined by your career. For other people, they are defined by their role in their family. Maybe that is a obvious as mom or dad, but people can be known as the glue that holds a family together, the peacemaker, the executive. Sometimes people even define themselves by the worst thing they’ve ever done. I say all of this to point out that people, even Christians, can and often do make an identity on nearly anything except Jesus. Here, Jacob is being redefined away from the reputation of trickster, into the one who has wrestled with God and recieved a blessing. Once someone has wrestled with God, everything else just really doesn’t look all that significant. I remember hearing a comedian talk about the astronauts who went to the moon. He joked that those guys would be able to one up anyone at any dinner party. No matter what you’ve accomplished here on earth, the thought goes, pretty much no one else (so far) can really top walking through the Sea of Tranquility. Except Jacob. Jacob here can look at these astronauts and say, “I wrestled with the God who made the moon. And He blessed me.” Now, you might be thinking, “Wait a minute. I thought that this fighting partner was just a man. Now, you’re telling me He’s God, and Jacob OUTWRESTLED God? Heresy!” Well, that’s not exactly right. I do think that this is God here, because Jacob names the place of the wrestling “Face to face with God.” He’s really the only one able to present a blessing to Jacob as well, so I think, along with many others, that this is a pre-incarnate Christ (Phillips, 252). So how does Jacob beat Him? Well, did Jacob? Yes, it was clear that God didn’t make progress in the wrestling, but it isn’t like Jacob actually won. Any opponent who can just put your hip out of joint by touching it is in a class all their own. God could have ended the fight at any time He wanted. In fact, part of the reason why Jacob names the place what he does is because he is marveling that he survived being face to face with God. If your opponent is so strong that looking at them can kill you, the fact that the fight lasted at all was just God’s mercy in the moment. I think this is also why God doesn’t give His name here. To have a name is to have some sort of power, as we mentioned earlier, and Jacob isn’t getting that. I agree with another scholar who also thinks that this is God’s way of saying, “Come on, you really need to know my name? Isn’t it perfectly obvious as to who I am?” (Waltke, 447). This is why Jacob calls for this blessing. But why ask for a blessing from God? Had not Jacob recieved this already? He had, but under some dubious circumstances. That didn’t make it any less legitimate (God had said before Jacob was born the blessing was his), but getting this blessing straight from God once again shows beyond any doubt the blessing is fully his (Matthews). God changes your behavior Jacob carries with him one more thing from his fight with God, a limp. Getting your hip popped out is not simple, walk-it-off kinda injury. It would appear that this is something he had to deal with for the rest of his life. He literally has a new walk with God. He is a changed man, a blessed man, but a man with a limp, a weak man, a dependent man (Ross). This would be quite a change for Jacob. As one commentator put it: Genesis 11:27–50:26 Wrestling with the “Man” (32:24–25 [25–26])"Physical strength characterized Jacob’s life: at birth grasping the heel of Esau (25:26[27]), moving the stone to water Rachel’s sheep (29:10), and working Laban’s herds for twenty years in difficult conditions (31:38–40)." (Matthews). No more. Something that Jacob probably took pride in and relied on is gone. However, that made him stronger than anything his muscles could move. He was finally beginning to depend on God. One scholar put it this way, “The limp is the posture of the saint, walking not in physical strength but in spiritual strength” (Waltke, 448). That is hard for us to do. Many times we will be challenged precisely where we feel the strongest. We suddenly can’t do what we used to be able to do, physically. Things hurt, they break, they wear out. Suddenly, money that used to be such a faithful presence and comfort, one day begins its drip out. It never feels like a mercy when God rips a comfort away, but it is. God is kind enough to His people to not let them depend on things that will ultimately vanish. But we wrestle against God all the same! What God calls us to do is to submit. He will wrestle as long as it takes, and sometimes there will be hip popping involved. But as one scholar said, “When they stop wrestling with God and start clinging to him, they discover that he has been there for their good, to bless them.” (Waltke, 448). There is a little note at the end of the passage that mentions the Israelites (the descendants of Jacob) wouldn’t eat the equivalent section of hip in the animals that they would eat to commemorate this incident, and I can’t help but wonder if there is something a little more there. I don’t often do this, but I can’t help going out on a bit of limb here. When it comes to eating or in this case not eating something, there were really only two reasons the Israelites wouldn’t eat something. It was either disallowed by God because it was unclean, or it was disallowed by God because it was meant to be sacrificed. For instance, the Israelites weren’t allowed to eat the blood of the animal because that was meant for atonement for their sin. In the same way, they weren’t allowed to eat the fat of the animal because that was meant for sacrifice as well. While this particular custom wasn’t required in the law, I think they were motivated in a similar way. That was the area that God touched, and in a way, it becomes holy. Jacob had an unfixable hip because that is where God had touched Him. What if we were to think about our unfixable problems in a similar way? If it is clear that you are going through something that God is not delivering you from, I think that is your limp. Paul went through something similar with his “thorn in the flesh.” He had something really hard going on in his body that he prayed three times to get rid of, but God said no and answered that He was provided Paul with enough grace to do what He needed him to do. Paul later mentions that this thorn was given to keep him humble. Maybe that’s how you need to view your limp. Do you have something in your life that you wish wasn’t there? A physical limitation, a hard family relationship? Assuming that you aren’t actively sinning in that area, and have prayed for a deliverance that hasn’t come, look at that affliction as a holy thing from God. He doesn’t do this to torture you, but to bring you to the end of your strength. It is mean to bring you to submission and say, “Your will be done.” What are you refusing to give in with God? What is in your life that you say, “God can’t have this?” Just go ahead and give it up now. God has been patiently wrestling you, and at some point, God will make His point. Remember that you have someone Who laid down His will for you, in a garden, sweating blood, Jesus Himself is wrestling in a way, but He prevails, not by beating His Father, but by submitting to His father (Phillips, 258). You have a Champion and an example. So if you are wrestling with God, stop, and instead cling to Him (Waltke, 448). If God has given you a limp that He just isn’t delivering you from despite all good-faith efforts and prayers, then see that as a holy blessing that will keep you dependent on Him. Anything that does that is worth it. I think we will see that Jacob, I mean Israel, agrees. |
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