GOD MUST BREAK US OF OUR SELF-DEPENDENCE SO THAT HE CAN BLESS US AS WE CLING TO HIM IN OUR BROKENNESS.
“And He said, “Let Me go, for the day breaks. But Jacob said, ‘I will not let You go unless You bless me!’” (Genesis 32:24).
"Is life a struggle? Is it really, really difficult? Have you been thrown to the mat more than once? Have you heard the hand coming down counting and you’ve gotten up just in time before you lost that wrestling match? Have you come away from all those struggles with a limp because you’ve been wrestled to the ground? God wrestles with men to bring them to the end of themselves until they are broken and can’t do anything more except simply to cling to Him. If you are struggling with God, struggling with life and you’ve hung on, well done. You just keep hanging on because God has a blessing for those who hang on, who struggle and don’t let go, who don’t just give up, flop over on the mat and say, “Okay, you’ve got me. It’s over.” God has a blessing for those who believe Him and hold on with all that tenacity.
Jacob struggled from the womb. He was a man who ended up limping for the rest of his life but he was used by God. His name does not disappear but stays throughout all the Scriptures because God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And God wants to be your God to bring you, in that struggle; to the fullness and blessing that He alone can give” (thoughts by K. Arthur).
Whatever the problem is you may be facing right now, you need to know that God is never more than a breath away. In Genesis 32, Jacob faced that kind of crisis. He was returning to Canaan in obedience to God, but that meant he would have to face his brother, Esau, whom he had cheated 20 years before. Jacob didn’t know how Esau would receive him. When Jacob’s messengers came back and said that Esau was coming to meet him with 400 men, Jacob froze with fear. Esau could easily wipe out everything that was of value to Jacob, including Jacob! And so he prayed, “Oh, God, deliver me from Esau!” (32:9-12).
What Jacob didn’t know, and what we often don’t realize in situations like that, is how God goes about helping us. What we have in mind is that God would somehow remove our problem or make our enemy go away. But God doesn’t do it that way. God answered Jacob’s prayer for protection from Esau by wrestling with Jacob until He left him limping as he approached his brother. His plan had been that if Esau attacked one camp, Jacob (in the 2 other camps) could escape. But now he couldn’t run from Esau if he tried! He was totally dependent on the Lord. The way God helps us is by breaking us of our inherent self dependence so that we lean totally on Him. In that context, we can properly receive His blessings. Our problem, like Jacob’s, is that all too often we want to use God and His blessings to further our own ends. All his life Jacob had been using God and people to get what he wanted for himself. But now God brings Jacob to see that you don’t use God—you submit to Him. When we submit to God, He blesses us.
Brokenness is the path to blessing. Before God can use a man greatly, He must break him, because we all have a built-in propensity to trust in ourselves. God’s wrestling match with Jacob was not a dream or vision--dreams and visions don’t leave a man with a wrenched hip. Jacob’s opponent was the angel of the Lord, Jesus Christ in a preincarnate form. It was a physical fight with physical injury inflicted on Jacob, and yet there were obvious spiritual lessons impressed on him through this unforgettable experience. It must have been terrifying for Jacob. He was already nervous about Esau’s approach. He had sent ahead his elaborate gift of hundreds of animals. Then he tried to bed down for the night. But he couldn’t sleep, so he woke up his family and moved them across the ford of the Jabbok. Then Jacob went back alone for a final check, to make sure nothing had been left behind. It’s dark and spooky on the desert at night. Suddenly, out of the dark, a hand grabbed Jacob. Jacob must have just about had a heart attack! Who was this? Maybe a bandit, trying to rob him?—an assassin, sent by Esau? Instinctively, Jacob began to wrestle with this mysterious assailant, struggling for his very life.
We need to be clear that God was the aggressor here. Jacob was defending himself. God was laying hold of Jacob to gain something from him, namely, to bring Jacob to the end of his self-dependence. God had to wrestle him into submission to reveal this to him. We’re all like Jacob. We think that the enemy, the problem, is out there. “The problem is my wife ... my husband ... my parents ... my boss ... my poor circumstances. God, please take care of the problem for me.” But the enemy or problem isn’t primarily out there. The problem is in me, my flesh, and my sinful, selfish nature that dominates my life. So God has to reveal to me the power of my flesh before I can be delivered from it.
God’s breaking process reveals to us the power of our flesh. Obviously, God could have crippled Jacob in the first minute of this contest. When He finally wanted to, He just touched Jacob’s hip and Jacob felt excruciating pain as his hip was wrenched. So why didn’t God do it sooner? Why did He allow the match to go on all night long? God wanted to show Jacob the power of his self-will. If you’ve ever wrestled, you know how exhausting it is to grapple with an opponent of equal or greater strength. A few minutes is enough. But Jacob kept at it all night! The Lord kept waiting to see if Jacob would surrender, but he kept fighting.
At what point do you suppose Jacob recognized that his opponent was not a mere man? Later (32:30) he acknowledged that it was God. The text doesn’t tell us, but I’m sure that if he didn’t know before, Jacob knew as soon as the Lord crippled him. But the Lord didn’t use that power until He saw that Jacob would not yield (32:25). The flesh dies hard! Only God can tame it. Until God crippled him, Jacob wouldn’t give in. God let him wrestle all night so that Jacob could see how strong his self-will really was. To make sure that Jacob has learned the lesson, the Lord asks him a question which, at first, doesn’t seem to fit the context. Jacob is finally subdued, and he clings to the Lord and says, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” The Lord responds, “What is your name?” (32:27). Remember, the Lord never asks questions to gain information. He knew the answer. He wanted Jacob to confess not just his name, but his character. He had to say, “My name is Jacob--the supplanter, the conniver, the schemer.” Only after Jacob acknowledged that could the Lord bless him. Part of the process of knowing God involves knowing ourselves.
Until God reveals the power of our sinful nature to us, we tend to think that we’re not so bad. Paul said, that “Nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh” (Rom. 7:18). Until the Lord reveals that to us (and He often has to do it through an all-night wrestling match!) we depend more on ourselves than on Him. God’s breaking process reveals to us the power of our flesh. Before the Lord touched Jacob and crippled him, Jacob probably thought that the fight was pretty evenly matched. But then in one light touch, the Lord wiped Jacob out. Until God breaks us, so that we walk with a limp, we have a tendency to view Him as a benign old grandfather, nice to have around, but not very strong. Until that time, we view obedience to God as an option available to us. But we’re in control, directing things as we think best. We choose our careers, our lifestyles, and our schedules, all centered on what will make us happy. Then the lion roars and in one easy swipe, He cripples us. We learn His awesome power. We learn that obedience is not an option; it’s our only reasonable course of action. The frailty of our bodies should make us aware of our weakness and of our need to submit to God. Every time we’re sick or get injured, or when we feel the aches and pains of older age, we should acknowledge, “I am not God. I am weak and frail. Only God is God and I must depend totally on Him and live in submission to Him.” If He touches your body, you had better acknowledge your weakness and depend on His strength! You can either submit to Him and be blessed or fight Him and suffer the consequences. But you will never win if you wrestle with God.
God blesses us as we cling to Him in our brokenness. Often our greatest victories come out of the ashes of our greatest defeats. As soon as Jacob was crippled, he was able to hang onto the Lord for dear life. He knew now that if God did not bless him, he had no hope. He could not trust in himself any longer, because he was crippled. He had to cling to the Lord, and in clinging to the Lord in his brokenness, Jacob received the blessing he had been scheming to get all his life. We won’t cling to the Lord until we are broken.
Take time to get alone with God. It was when Jacob was left alone that the Lord came to wrestle with Him (32:24). When you get alone with the Lord, ask Him to break you of your sinful self-dependence, and then cling to Him in your brokenness until He blesses you. When He breaks us and prevails over us, then He will allow us to prevail over our problems. Use your victories which come out of God’s breaking you, to teach others. When Jacob’s family asked him why he was limping, he could have concealed the lesson to save face: “Just a little arthritis, I guess.” But he was willing to let us in on what he learned. In verse 32, Moses explains a Hebrew custom which even continues to this day among orthodox Jews. They do not eat the sinew of the hip of animals because that is where God touched Jacob. That custom should serve as an object lesson to God’s people of the truth Jacob learned, that God breaks us of our self-dependence so that He can bless us. As the Lord teaches that to you, pass it on to others. Your greatest problems can become your greatest victories if, when God breaks you, you cling to Him.
