Sunday, October 19, 2025, Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost
“Wrestling with God”
Psalm 121; Genesis 32:22-30; 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5; Luke 18:1-8
Divine Service IV with Holy Communion
Hymns: #668 “Rise! To Arms! With Prayer Employ You”; #664 “Fight the Good Fight”; #685 “Let Us Ever Walk with Jesus”
Dear Friends in Christ,
Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Jacob, in our Old Testament reading, had the extraordinary privilege of wrestling with Almighty God Himself. He lost, of course (and carried a limp for the rest of his life to keep him mindful of the experience) - but he gave it a good try, didn’t he? St. Paul in our epistle reading calls his young protégé Timothy to wrestle with God and to fight the good fight for faith. And our Lord Jesus calls us in our Gospel reading to “pray and never give up.” Lord, help us to do this! Amen.
Have you ever had a little kid having a temper tantrum come at you with fists a-flying? And you reach out and put a hand on top of his head, and let him flail away at the air until he punches himself out? That’s you and me when we wrestle with God.
Jacob and Esau were the twin boys of Isaac and Rebekah. The account in Genesis says they were already wrestling with each other in their mother’s womb. Esau was the firstborn of the two, with all the rights of inheritance that came along with it. Jacob emerged after him, holding on tightly to his brother’s heel. Jacon and Esau were a different as twin boys can be. Esau was the mighty hunter, a man of the woods and open country. Jacob was more of a mama’s boy, “staying among the tents.”
Now, the story goes, Jacob (whose name means liar or deceiver) convinced his brother Esau to sell him his birthright as firstborn son, for nothing but a pot of stew. And then, when the time came when Father Isaac was old and blind and about to die, he called for his eldest son Esau, to give him his blessing and his rightful inheritance. And Jacob snuck in ahead of him, disguised himself as his brother, fooled his father into thinking he was Esau, and stole his brother’s blessing. Esau swore he’d kill his brother for that, so Jacob had to run for his life. Jacob, the account goes on, went to live with his uncle Laban in the land of Haran. And there he took a wife named Leah, and another wife named Rachel; and he did well for himself and prospered, and was blessed with flocks and herds and sons and daughters. He was so blessed, in fact, that Uncle Laban became jealous and turned against him, and the land wasn’t big enough for the both of them.
In our story in Genesis, Jacob is returning home, with his wives and children and flocks and herds and everything has. And he’s afraid. He doesn’t know if he’ll be greeted with peace and forgiveness, or if Esau is still angry with him after all these years and still wants him dead. Jacob hears that Esau is coming out to meet him, with an army of four hundred men; so he sends his wives and children and all his possessions on ahead across the river, and he stays behind all alone to pray.
And then, the story says, a “man” came to wrestle with him. Who was the man? Not an ordinary man, certainly. Some say it was an angel or a messenger of God -- but the man had to be more than that. Jacob says himself at the end of the story that it was Almighty God that he wrestled with. And if the man was God, then it had to be God taken on human flesh or human form, because Jacob clearly wrestled with Him in the flesh. I’d go so far as to say it was the pre-incarnate Christ, the eternal Son of God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, that Jacob wrestled with that night.
You’ll find the pre-incarnate Son of God all over in the Old Testament, by the way, if you look for Him. That was Christ in the burning bush, talking to Moses. Christ was the man walking in the thorn trees in the book of Zechariah. Christ was the man who stopped to visit Abraham, to see if Sodom was as bad as he’d heard. Christ was the man with the measuring line in the book of Ezekiel. Christ was the fourth man in the fire with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And here He’d come to wrestle with Jacob.
Can we say it was Jesus that Jacob wrestled with? Maybe we should be careful about saying that, since He wasn’t named Jesus until after He was conceived and born. But it was certainly the Christ, the pre-incarnate Savior. It was certainly no spirit or ghost, since this wrestling match was real. The Hebrew word for ‘wrestle’ is anak, which means ‘dust.’ That gives us a picture of two men struggling and rolling around in a cloud of dirt. Perfect!
So why was this man, if He was truly God, not able to overpower Jacob, who was only a human being like us? Back to the little boy throwing a tantrum. The man, being God as He was, could have easily beaten Jacob and put him down any time He so chose. (The same would happen if you or I tried to take on God). But He held him at arm’s length and let little Jacob swing away. Jacob was a stubborn man.
My Grandma told me once, “Oh, you are a stubborn little boy. But, you use can use that stubborn any way you choose. You can have the kind of stubborn that says, ‘You can’t tell me what to do!’ or you can have the kind of stubborn that says, ‘I can do all things through Him who gives me strength.’ How you use it is up to you.”
So Jacob fought and fought and fought and kicked against God, until God finally had to put him down in the dust, with his hip out of joint and not a leg left to stand on. God had to bring that man Jacob to the end of himself -- because that was the point where God could at last make use of him for the greater purpose He had in mind.
And Jacob, at the end of his strength, and finally realizing who it was he’d spent the night wrestling with, refused to let go of God until God blessed him. And could the blessing God had in mind have ever been given, so long as Jacob continued to kick and struggle and fight? The blessing God had in mind for Jacob was bigger than anything he could ever have imagined or asked for. His little family was destined to become a great nation. His twelve sons would become the patriarchs of Israel -- Reuben and Ephraim and Dan and Simeon and Gad and all the rest. And from one of his sons, Judah, would come the Messiah, the Christ, the Chosen One, the Savior -- the One who’d come down from heaven in the flesh to take away the sin of the world.
But right now it was just… Jacob… alone and exhausted and crippled and afraid, not knowing what his brother would decide to do or if he’d even live through the next day. God asked him, “What is your name?” And he answered “Jacob,” the only name he’d ever known. Now again, the name Jacob means liar, deceiver, or literally “holder of the heel,” from the way he’d held his brother by the heel on the day he was born. That he’d deceived his brother and his father, and that he’d been “Jacob the Liar” all his life, is the reason he was in this mess he was in in the first place.
And God came along and changed it all with a word; God even changed his name. God told him, "Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome." His new name Israel meant “He who struggles with God.” Not in a negative way this time, but in a positive one. Jacob would no longer be a man who was selfish and self-serving and out for himself, but a man who’d struggle as best he could to put God first and obey him. Changing Jacob’s name didn’t make him perfect; far from it; but it gave him a new perspective and a new outlook on life. It took that stubborn streak of his and turned it to a useful purpose, and into something God could use. And that’s all God is really asking of us.
Jacob named the place where he’d wrestled with God “Peniel.” (Peniel means “The Face of God”). Jacob – now Israel – praised God, because he’d seen God face to face and was blessed to live to tell about it. God could have struck him down at any time for being the sinner and liar that he was, and been justified in doing it; but He spared him for a greater purpose. You and I can say the same.
How’s your wrestling match with God going? Are you, like Saul the Pharisee, still kicking against the goads, still swinging away at the air, while God waits for you to wear yourself out and sit still and listen? Are you still fighting the good fight between “Thy will be done,” and “No, I want MY will done instead?” In which direction are the blessings? Which way holds God’s purpose for you? This wrestling with God and arguing with Him and questioning Him at every turn is just exhausting. When is it time to “let go and let God” and just give in?
Jesus Christ was willing to get down in the dust with us. He came to Jacob as the Son of God, but also as a man as real as real can be. And He came here to earth as a real man - born of a virgin, suffered under Pontius Pilate, crucified, died, and buried. He made Himself a God of love and grace and mercy that we can look upon and not die, sinners though we may be. And He was raised from the dead as a real man, with flesh-and-blood hands and feet that the disciples could touch and see. In that glorious, holy, amazing Easter Sunday Resurrection, God has given us all the greatest blessing of all – the grace to be forgiven and made brand new. We’ve been “baptized into the death of Christ and raised up with Him;” and, like Jacob, given a new name and a new nature and a new life – thanks be to God!
We’ll all still have to struggle against sin and do our best to overcome it; that we’ll have to deal with ‘til our dying day. But now we know forgiveness, and now we know grace, and now we know we have a Savior who’ll never give up on us and never let us go, stubborn and sinful though we may sometimes be. Now we know a real flesh-and-blood Savior, who’s come again today to feed us with His own precious body and blood to give us strength for the fight. Jesus says in our Gospel, “Always pray and never give up.” Now there’s something to be stubborn about! Never give up, never give up, never give up. Lord, I will not let You go until you bless me. In Jesus’ name; Amen.
Rev. Larry Sheppard, M.Div
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Oxford, WI, LCMS Trinity Lutheran Church, Packwaukee, WI, LCMS
pastorshepp@gmail.com