Wrestling with God   Genesis 32:22 - 31

David McCullough, best selling author, in his book Mornings on Horseback tells this story about young Teddy Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States. "Mittie (his mother) had found he was so afraid of the Madison Square Church that he refused to set foot inside if alone. He was terrified, she discovered, of something called the 'zeal.' It was crouched in the dark corners of the church ready to jump at him, he said. When she asked what a zeal might be, he said he was not sure, but thought it was probably a large animal like an alligator or a dragon. He had heard the minister read about if from the Bible. Using a concordance, she read him those passages containing the word ZEAL until suddenly, very excited, he told her to stop. The line was from the Book of John, 2:17: 'And his disciples remembered that it was written, 'The ZEAL of thine house hath eaten me up"'"

People, whether they are Christians or pre-Christians, that is, they have not yet accepted Christ into their lives, like to see God as this kindly old grandfather who will just smile at their antics and pat them on the head with some kind words: "At heart, you are really a good little boy (or girl)." Somehow, many people believe that God doesn't take our actions and the way we live our lives very seriously. God is just patient and tolerant and will just wink at some little discretion that we don't even call a sin in our own minds.

And yet, if we know anything about God, if we have dared to read our scriptures and take seriously the words and actions of God, we should be afraid to come near the "zeal" of the Lord, for God could "eat us up." Our Lord is good, but God is not safe. Consider Jacob in this morning's scripture lesson.

Jacob was coming home. Only it was a home coming that he dreaded. 20 years before he had fled his home and family because of the dishonest things he had done to his brother and father. He was sure that his twin brother Esau would kill him. So he ran to the ancestral home hundreds of miles away, where he met and married two sisters, began raising a family, and established himself as a prosperous man. He comes to the point in his life where he wants to return home to his parents and brother, but once again Jacob has to run, this time
from his in-laws. Jacob has a reputation for being a con man, using whatever tricks he can to get his way. Only he finds his match in his father-in-law who is as unethical as Jacob. With his wife Rachel's help, he manages to get away safely having conned his father-in-law one last time. Yet as he approaches the boundary of the land where his birth family lives, he realizes that his day of reckoning has come. He will have to settle accounts for all of the bad things that he had done in the past. And what he doesn't know is if his brother will make him pay with his life.

So Jacob, being the con man that he is, sends word to his brother that he is coming home, a man of wealth and importance. He wants to impress his brother, but the word he receives is that his brother is coming to meet him. With 400 men. Now Jacob is terrified. He takes hundreds of livestock from his herds,
divides them up into smaller herds and sends them to his brother as gifts, so that at intervals on the journey, Esau will receive another herd of livestock, one gift after another. Jacob is hoping that this will appease his brother. But just to make sure, he divides his remaining herd in two and sends them in different directions so that at least half of his wealth will survive if Esau is bent on revenge. Then finally, the night before he is to meet his brother, he sends his family ahead of him leaving him all alone on the riverbank, alone with himself and with God. And Jacob is in torment.

It is here that Jacob must wrestle with his past, wrestle with who he is as a person, and wrestle with God. Previously, Jacob thought that he was the master of his fate, the captain of his destiny, a strong man who needed no one else and who could dictate terms even to Almighty God. But here on this riverbank
in the darkness of night, in the darkness of his own soul, he discovers that he is not that strong, invincible human being, that there is someone else stronger than him: the zeal of the Lord. And God is not safe. The biblical writer says that in the middle of the wrestling match, Jacob's hip was injured which indicated that his opponent, God, was the stronger of the two. And while Jacob was forced to give his name to God, a very important ritual in biblical times, God, being the stronger, refuses to reveal the name of the Almighty to Jacob.

But what Jacob does receive is a blessing and a new name. Why a new name? Because what has been happening in this titanic struggle, this championship wrestling match, between Jacob and God has been Jacob's conversion experience. In coming face to face with his past and his sins in the presence of God, Jacob
has had to surrender himself to the Lord. And in surrendering himself to God, he becomes a new person. In effect, the zeal of the Lord has "eaten him up." He has to become a new person since the old person no longer exists. Since names in biblical times defined who a person is, Jacob needed a new name since he had left his past behind and become a new person. He is now called Israel. He will be the father of nations. The promises of God to his grandparents, Abraham and Sarah, would be fulfilled through Jacob's sons. A mighty nation
would be created out of his son's descendants. And for all of this to happen, Jacob has to be converted into God's own man.

It's the same thing that must happen to each one of us. Each one of us must wrestle with God over who we are and who God wants us to be. We always think that we are okay just the way we are. But God is not safe; God has other ideas. God knows that this isn't who we were created to be. God wants somebody new, and will take each one of us and make us new so that we are all that we can be in God's eyes.

Now understand. This isn't just a remodeling job, or a complete make over. This is about making us brand new persons. I came across this illustration that might help to explain this transformation. Since many people go camping in the Summer, the question arises about what is different about camping as compared to the relative comfort of our homes. This storyteller puts it this way.

"The motor home has allowed us to put all the conveniences of home on wheels. A camper no longer needs to contend with sleeping in a sleeping bag, cooking over a fire, or hauling water from a stream. Now he can park a fully equipped home on a cement slab in the midst of a few pine trees and hook up to a water line,
a sewer line and electricity. Some motor homes now have a satellite dish attached on top. No more bother with dirt, no more smoke from the fire, no more drudgery of walking to the stream. Now it is possible to go camping and never have to go outside. We buy a motor home with the hope of seeing new places, of getting out into the world. Yet we deck it out with the same furnishings as in our living room. Thus nothing really changes. We may drive to a new place, set ourselves in new surrounding, but the newness goes unnoticed, for we've only
carried along our old setting."

Do we give our lives to Christ with the expectation that we can keep the same old furnishing and settings that we are used to? Do we think that surrendering our lives to Christ means that we go back to who we were before, doing the things that we did before, with the same personality and character as before? Do we really think that we don't have to change completely? When we accept Christ as Lord and Savior, the old us dies. Everything that we were and everything that we did are left behind. God will wrestle with us. God will make us face our sinful past. All so that we can become new persons in Christ.

Maybe you have wrestled with God already. Maybe you are in the midst of that titanic struggle. Maybe you are avoiding it. I encourage you to surrender to God, to receive the blessing and the new person God has waiting for you.

Jacob did. And not only was he reunited with his brother, but he was now free to carry on God's plans for his family so that they might be a blessing to the world and God's plan for salvation might claim more of the world. Through Christ, you and I are still a part of that blessing and plan. Don't be afraid of the zeal of the Lord. But grab hold of it and be resurrected. For while our God is not safe, our God loves us.