This week, in our preaching series ‘The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob’ we are looking at yet another story that by the time you’ve reached the end you’re left wondering what it's all about and how it applies to me today. In Genesis 32:22-32 we read that Jacob is left alone and spends the whole night wrestling with ‘a man’. It turns out as we read on that this individual may be God or an angel (see for example Hosea 12:3-4). But then we are left with the question, ‘how can a 97 year old guy wrestle with God and seem to be an equal match?’ If ‘the man’ could dislocate Jacob’s hip with a simple touch, would it really be beyond him to overcome Jacob?
And yet, if we’re honest, many of us wrestle with God and God does not overcome us. What do I mean? God has given us free-will. God will never force you to do anything. Even when God commands us to do something we are free to disobey – but we must then live with the immediate and the eternal consequences of our actions. Let’s take baptism as an example, as we’re having a baptism service this week. Many of the people I speak to about baptism have known for a while, in some cases years, that they should get baptised. They know that baptism is a command of God for all those who believe and are seeking to live as disciples. Yet for one reason or another (sometimes fear of others, sometimes it is a sense of not feeling spiritual enough…) that decision to get baptised is put off and put off and put off. And they struggle with God. Yet God won’t make them get baptised. It has to be their own free-will choice – to reach the point where they submit themselves to God.
In the story of Jacob we see that submission in the willingness to declare his name (Jacob – deceiver) to God, and the willingness to take on the new name (Israel – he struggles with God) given to him by God. Names were very important in the OT days. To know someone’s name was to know something about them. To take on a new name was to take on a whole new character.
And when we submit to God we become an ‘overcomer’. As long as we hold on to our own will and plans God will not force Himself on to us. But when we submit to God we become those who will overcome the world (e.g. 1 John 5:4-5). But what does it look like to be an overcomer? In some churches you will hear that an overcomer is someone who has a good job, a nice home, a good family life, they have good health… This is what it means to be an overcomer from the world’s perspective not from God’s perspective! What is important in the world? Worldly things. But often in the Bible those who have overcome the world are those who are experiencing hardship and persecution for the sake of the name of Jesus. Think of Jesus and the apostles. Look at the letter to the seven churches in Revelation 2-3. Here we read the promises to those who overcome (2:7, 11, 17, 26; 3:5, 12, 21). The word ‘overcomes’ (Gk: nikao) might also be translated conquers, overpowers, prevails, triumphs, victorious. Revelation was written to persecuted and soon to be persecuted Christians as an encouragement to stand firm to the end and to stand firm even to the point of death. There is not the promise of worldly comfort in Revelation. There is not the reassurance that the Christian will find a home amongst the world. But there is the promise that for the one who overcomes, for the one who does the will of God, for the one who submits to God, there is an eternal future awaiting in the presence of God. And whatever hardships we might be experiencing now they pale into insignificance when compared with that future (Romans 8:18).
Being victorious in this life is all about dying to self (no longer doing what I want to do) and living for God (doing what God wants). Mark 8:34-38.
Listen to this message from Pastor Keith from 25 November 2007.
