Peniel, he wrestled with God, walked away limping,
and that was mercy. Hey there, tonight we find
ourselves standing by a river at midnight. No
crowd, no music, no altar call. Warming up in
the background, just a man named Jacob. a long
memory, and a future he can't outrun anymore.
This is one of those Bible stories that refuses
to stay polite. It's dark. It's physical. It's
strange. A man wrestles God or an angel or maybe
the last honest version of himself, and nobody
walks away the same. Jacob doesn't get answers.
He gets touched. He gets renamed. He gets a limp
and a blessing at the same time. Now, if you're
tuning in and thinking this doesn't sound like
a normal Sunday, you're right. Most weeks, this
is our Wednesday night midweek fellowship Bible
study, or it's our Sunday sermon here at the
church. Oklahoma gave us a snowstorm. Roads still
say no thank you. And instead of the fellowship
hall, we're sitting here in the vestry recording
this so you can catch up with it later when it
gets uploaded. Same word, same honesty, just
a little quieter room. And I'll see you on the
other side. Friend, to understand what happens
at that river at midnight, you've got to remember,
Jacob didn't just wander into some spiritual,
mysterious moment like a man stumbling onto a
revival meeting by accident. Jacob is a thread
in a tapestry that started long before his own
feet ever touched that dirt. The story begins
with a voice calling Abram out of nowhere, out
of Ur, out of the known world, out of the predictable
life, and God making a promise big enough to
make an old man laugh and tremble at the same
time. I will bless you, and in you all the families
of the earth shall be blessed. The promise gets
carried around like a family heirloom. It's not
fragile, but it is contested. And it passes,
though a household with a line between faith
and fear keeps getting crossed up in both directions.
Abraham has Isaac. Isaac grows up, marries Rebekah,
and then they do what God's people always seem
to be doing in Genesis. They wait. They wait
until waiting turns into a spiritual ache. And
when the children finally come, they don't arrive
peacefully. They arrive like a wrestling match
in the womb. Rebecca feels it and asks the Lord
what's going on. And she's told something already
sounds like trouble. There are two nations in
her, two peoples. And the older will serve the
younger. So, Jacob is born into a story that
already has tension in its bones. And then comes
that famous scene you probably remember. Esau
comes in hungry from the field, red and rough
and immediate. And Jacob, quiet, calculating,
always looking for the leverage, trades some
stew for Esau's birthright. And later, with Rebecca's
help, Jacob steals that blessing. that Isaac
had meant to give Esau. Hey, that's no small
family squabble. In that world, blessing is a
future. Blessing is identity. Blessing is the
name of God spoken over your life like prophecy
with teeth. And Esau's rage is so hot, it becomes
a plan. When dad's gone, I'm going to kill him.
So Jacob runs. And if you want the honest Bible,
it gives you this. Jacob runs not as a hero on
a mission, but as a man escaping his own consequences.
That's how his story opens up into the long middle
chapters of Genesis. Wandering, working, negotiating,
getting tricked, getting married, getting tricked
again, building a household in exile. And Jacob
goes to Laban's land and finds out what it feels
like to be outplayed by somebody who's better
at the same sin. The deceiver gets deceived.
The manipulator gets manipulated. The heel grabber
meets a man who will grab back. And 20 years
pass just like that. Jacob becomes a wealthy
man, but wealth doesn't heal what guilt corrodes.
He becomes a husband, then two husbands worth
of a husband, then a father with more children
than he could count without sighing. But none
of that changed one thing. Esau still exists.
And home is still behind him. An unfinished business
has a smell, friends. It smells like fear at
bedtime. It smells like a name you don't want
spoken out loud. So when Genesis 32 opens, Jacob
is finally headed back. And you can feel the
old dread rise up like weather. He sends out
messengers and they come back with news. Oh,
it sounds like thunder. Esau is coming to meet
him and he has 400 men with him. That number
doesn't sound quite like family reunion. That
number sounds like a reckoning. And Jacob does
what he always does. He strategizes. He splits
the camp. He sends gifts ahead. He tries to manage
the future like a man trying to hold a river
in his hands. And then, right when he had pushed
all the pieces around the board as far as he
could push them, night falls. And Jacob ends
up alone by the river. And that's the moment
God chooses. Not when Jacob is surrounded by
people who love him. Not when he's in control.
Not when the path is clear. God chooses the hour
when Jacob can't hide behind anything. When he
can't hide behind his mother's plan, his own
schemes, or his job. Or even the noise of the
camp. Just Jacob. Just Ark. Just water moving
beside him like time. And here's what I want
to lay on the table tonight, plain as cornbread.
Most of us don't fear the devil half as much
as what we fear we can't outrun. There's a thing
behind you, maybe a person, a season. Maybe a
choice, maybe a version of yourself that you're
pretty sure is waiting on the other side of that
river. You've done your planning. You've done
your coping. You've done your, I'm fine. You've
sent the gifts. You've rehearsed the conversation.
You tried to buy peace with strategy and still
night comes. Genesis 32 is for the people who
are finally alone with what they've been carrying.
And what makes it holy is that God doesn't meet
Jacob with a lecture. God meets him with contact.
God meets him with a grip. So, my friend, attune
your ears to the reading of Holy Scripture. Tonight's
reading comes to us from the first book of the
Torah, Bereshit, in Hebrew, or in the beginning.
or as the Holy Bible calls it, Genesis. Chapter
32 of that book, I'll begin reading with verse
32. The same night he got up and he took his
two wives, his two maids, and his 11 children
and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them
and sent them across the stream, and likewise
everything that he had. And Jacob was left alone,
and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When
the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob,
he struck him on the hip socket and Jacob's hip
was put out of joint as he wrestled with him.
And then he said, let me go for the day is breaking.
But Jacob said, I will not let you go until you
bless me. So he said to him, what is your name?
And he said, Jacob. Then the man said, you will
no longer be called Jacob, but Israel. For you
have striven with God and with humans and have
prevailed. Jacob asked him, Please tell me your
name. But he said, Why is it that you ask for
my name? And then he blessed him. So Jacob called
the place Peniel, saying, For I have seen God
face to face, and yet my life is preserved. The
sun rose upon him as he passed Peniel, limping
because of his hip. Therefore, to this day, the
Israelites do not eat the thigh muscle that is
on the hip socket because he struck Jacob on
the hip socket at the thigh muscle. Lessons.
Reading of Scripture this evening. The text says,
A man wrestled with him until daybreak. And that
sentence should bother us in the best way. The
Bible is not embarrassed by how strange God can
be. rush to smooth out all of the what? It doesn't
say. Now, what this really means is Jacob had
a metaphorical struggle in his prayer journal.
No sir, no ma 'am. It says a man wrestled with
him. So, put yourself there. You're Jacob. You
send everybody across the Ford, wives, children,
servants, livestock, all the noise, the movement
of your complicated household on the other side.
You've pushed them toward tomorrow while you
stayed on this side of the river. Maybe you told
yourself you just needed a minute. Maybe you
told yourself you were guarding the rear. But
really, you're alone because you needed to be
alone. Because the thing coming tomorrow. It's
too big to face with an audience. And the night
is dark in the way that city people don't know
night can really be. When there's no streetlights,
no porch lights, no glow from distant highways
or shopping malls, just stars and water and the
kind of silence that makes your own breathing
sound loud. Moving beside you, not loud, just
persistent. The way time sounds when you're out
of ways to stall it. You can smell the mud and
the green rot of river stones. And somewhere
distant, smoke from your own camp drifting back
across the water. And then there's someone there.
Not walking up. Not announcing himself. Just
there. Close enough that you can feel displacement
of air. Close enough that your body knows before
your mind does. You are not alone anymore. And
he grabs you. No words, no introductions, no
thus saith the Lord. Just hands on you, pulling
you into motion, into struggle, into something
your body understands, even if your theology
doesn't. And you fight back because that's what
a man does when grabbing in the dark. You fight
back because you're Jacob and fighting is the
language you learn first. This isn't like fighting
Laban's shepherds over a well. This isn't negotiating
with the edge of threat. This is something entirely
different. This man is strong in a way that doesn't
make sense. Not overpowering. If he wanted to
overpower you, that would have been done in the
first 30 seconds. No, he's strong the way a foundation
is strong. The way bedrock is strong. You push
and he's... there. You pull and he's there. You
try to twist away and he moves with you like
he knows what you're doing even before you do
it. And it goes on and on and on. An hour, two,
and your muscles start to scream. Your lungs
are burning. Sweat is running into your eyes.
You can taste salt and fear and something else
you can't quite name. You've fought before. You
fought for Rachel, fought with Laban, fought
your way through 20 years of exile. But you've
never fought like this because every other fight
had an endgame. Every other fight had terms.
Every other fight you knew what you were fighting
for. But this, you don't even know what you're
fighting. You just know you can't stop. And the
river keeps moving beside you like a witness.
The stars wheel overhead. Your breath comes in
ragged gasps. And still this man holds you, matches
you, meets every desperate move with presence
that won't break or retreat. And somewhere in
the long, dark middle of it, you start to understand
this isn't a fight you're going to win. But it's
also not a fight you're going to survive by surrendering.
This is something else. This is endurance. This
is lasting. This is the kind of faith that doesn't
triumph. It just refuses to let go. And then
comes that detail that's both terrifying and
almost funny in its simplicity. When the man
sees he does not prevail against Jacob, he touches
Jacob's hip socket, and Jacob's hip is put out
of joint, a touch. Stay in that for a moment
because, pardon the pun, it's the hinge the whole
story swings on. You're Jacob. You're still in
it, still grinding through this impossible night,
still matching the stranger move for move, even
though your body is past the point where it should
have quit. You're running on something deeper
than strength now. You're running on stubbornness,
on the muscle memory of a lifetime spent grasping,
of the old Jacob logic that says if you just
hold on long enough, if you just find an angle,
if you find the leverage point, you will find
the way through. He has been letting you believe
you were his equal, letting you have the illusion
that you are matching his strength, but now you're
ready for the truth, and he touches your hip.
Not a blow. Not a strike, just a touch. Fingers
finding the joint where your thigh meets your
pelvis. That ball and socket architecture that's
held you up through every step of your very complicated
life. A touch that's almost gentle, almost curious,
like a carpenter checking the soundness of a
frame, and everything changes. And there's no
pain at first, just a sensation, like physics
for getting out of work. Like the grammar of
your own body suddenly speaking a language you
don't understand. You feel the joints slip, shift,
come apart in a way joints aren't supposed to
come apart. Not breaking exactly, but dislocating,
separating, failing. And then the pain hits.
Deep, radiating pain that spreads up your spine
and down your leg and into your belly. Your leg
won't hold weight anymore, so you do the only
thing left to do. You stop wrestling and you
cling. Your arms go around him, not in attack,
but in desperation. You're hanging on him, leaning
your weight against him because your leg won't
carry your weight anymore. You're no longer trying
to defeat him. You're trying not to fall. You're
trying not to be left alone in this darkness
with your failure and your fear and the dawn
coming whether you're ready or not. And here's
the holiest part. He doesn't pull away. He doesn't
shake you off, doesn't step back and let you
collapse, doesn't say, that's what you get for
thinking you could match me. He holds you up.
That shift from wrestling to clinging, that's
the whole gospel in body language. That's the
moment when Jacob stops trying to take the blessing
and starts asking for it. And when the grip changes
from grasping to receiving, When the striving
becomes surrender, and surrender becomes the
truest kind of strength you will ever know, some
of the holiest faith on earth is not triumphant.
It's just stubborn enough to stay close even
when the leg gives out. Then the man asked Jacob
a question. Question is not for God's information.
God is not taking notes. God is pulling a confession
out of a man's throat because in that world,
in Jacob's world, in the world of Genesis and
tent dwellers and altar builders, names aren't
just convenient labels your parents pick out
of a baby book. Names are prophecies. Names are
identities. Names are the sound your destiny
makes when it's spoken out loud. And when Abram
becomes Abraham, it's not a clerical update.
It's transformation. Father of one nation becoming
father of multitudes. The name itself carrying
the promise forward. When Sarai becomes Sarah.
When Simon becomes Peter. When Saul becomes Paul.
These aren't rebranding exercises. These are
theological events. New names for new realities.
New sounds. for new selves. And Jacob, Jacob
is a name with teeth. And names have a sound,
church. Jacob's name had been chasing him like
footsteps in the dark, like his brother's voice
20 years back saying, I am going to kill him.
Because it means heel grabber, supplanter, the
one who comes behind and takes what wasn't offered.
It's the name given to a baby boy clutching his
twin brother's heel like destiny was something
you could steal. It's the name that followed
him through every scheme, every manipulation,
every desperate grab at security. Jacob is the
man who traded stew for birthright. Jacob is
the man who wore his brother's clothes and fur
on his arms to trick a blind father into blessing
the wrong son. Jacob is the man who ran because
his brother's rage had teeth of its own. So when
this man asks, what is your name? When God asked
Jacob to say it out loud in the darkness beside
the river, that's not a simple question. It's
an invitation to confession. That's God saying,
tell me the truth about who you've been and say
it out loud. Admit the pattern. Name the thing
you've been carrying. And Jacob does when he
says, Jacob. One word, but it costs him everything
to say it. Because admitting your name when your
name is shame, when your name is the summary
of all your grasping and scheming and running,
it's the kind of honesty that feels like dying.
It's the kind of truth you can't dress up or
manage or spin into something more palatable.
Just Jacob. I'm a heel grabber. I'm the one who
takes. I'm the one who couldn't trust the blessing
would come for me, so I had to grab it. I'm the
one standing here because I have spent a lifetime
trying to outrun the consequences of who I am.
And here's the grace that will wreck you if you
let it, friend. He doesn't get destroyed by telling
the truth. He gets renamed. You shall no longer
be called Jacob, but Israel. Israel, the name
that will become a people, a nation, a covenant,
a whole multi -generational argument with God
that runs through the rest of Scripture. It starts
right here with one limping man beside a river
at dawn being given a new sound to carry into
the future. The text ties it to striving, for
you have striven with God and with humans and
prevailed. But don't hear prevail like a victory
lap. Jacob is wounded. Jacob is the one clinging.
Jacob is about to limp into the sunrise. This
isn't prevailing through dominance or superior
strategy. This is prevailing through endurance,
through lasting, through being stubborn enough
to hold on when every muscle said quit. Through
being honest enough to say his real name when
the lie would have just been easy enough. And
that's the kind of prevailing God honors. Not
strength that overpowers, strength that stays.
And that's the heart of it, friend. Not that
Jacob figured it out. Not that Jacob did better.
Not that Jacob suddenly matured into a wholesome
Sunday school mascot. God renames him while he
is still in the struggle. This is grace -first
theology in living color. Then Jacob asks the
man's name. He wants clarity. He wants to pin
this down. That's such a Jacob move. Names are
power. If you can name it, you can manage it.
But the man refuses. The man gives blessing instead.
Sometimes, God will not satisfy your curiosity
because curiosity can be a subtler form of control.
You want the label so you can put it on the shelf.
God wants you to live with the encounter. So,
the sun comes up. Don't rush past that. Don't
treat it like stage direction, like the lighting
guy finally showed up to work. You're still Jacob
or Israel now. Though the name is still too new
to you to feel like yours. You're still held
up by the presence you've been wrestling and
clinging to all night. And your hip, it's screaming.
Your body is past exhausted into that strange
country where exhaustion becomes something else.
Clarity, maybe. Or surrender. Or the beginning
of acceptance. And the darkness begins to thin.
And it doesn't happen all at once. It's gradual,
the way truth usually is. First, there's just
a sense that the black isn't quite as absolute
as it once was. Then you can start to make out
shapes, the line of the river, the rocks on the
far banks, the trees. Color starts to leap back
into the world. Sky goes from black to deep blue
to that particular shade of hope that lives right
before the sun shows itself. And you can see
his face now. This man you've been fighting.
This presence you've been held by. You can see
his eyes. And they're looking at you as something
that isn't anger and it isn't pity. Something
that knows you, really knows you. past the name
you just confessed, past the schemes, past the
running, all the way down to the thing God saw
when God first called your grandfather out of
Ur. You have been seen, not evaluated, not judged
and found wanting, seen, known, held in the gaze
of the Holy One, not destroyed by it. Jacob names
the place Pidiel because he says he has seen
God face to face and yet his life is preserved.
That line carries weight that should make most
of us stop and tremble. Because people in scripture
understand something we've forgotten in our modern
casual Christianity. You don't casually bump
into the Holy One like a lamp in the dark. God
is a presence. Jacob expected would kill him
for the schemes, for the lies, for saying his
real name out loud in the darkness. And Jacob,
limping, exhausted, honest for maybe the first
time in his whole life, Jacob has been face to
face with the presence all night. And he's alive.
The sun that's rising now isn't just marking
time, it's marking mercy. It's the visual proof
that the night didn't kill him, that the encounter
didn't consume him, that God can touch you in
your deepest truth and the morning still comes.
And that is no small thing, friend. That's the
kind of grace that doesn't flatter you into feeling
good about yourself. That's the kind of grace
that wounds you and holds you and renames you
and then, then lets the light come back. Because
here's what's also true. Sun is rising on a new
day. And that new day has Esau in it. 400 men.
The brother he wronged. The reckoning he's been
running from for 20 years. All of that is still
coming. The sunrise didn't erase the future.
It doesn't make tomorrow easy. Jacob crosses
into that sunrise as Israel now. Crosses. with
a limp that will never fully heal. He crosses
his man, been touched by God and survived it.
He crosses, knowing his real name and carrying
his new one. And that changes everything about
how he'll walk into what's coming next. Light
didn't remove the difficulty. Confirmed the blessing.
Confirmed that after a night like that, after
wrestling and breaking and clinging and confession
and renaming, The world doesn't end. No, but
it does begin again. And when God meets you in
the dark and does the hard work of making you
honest, mourning is still possible. The sun still
comes up, and Jacob, Israel, limps forward into
it. Limp is not a punishment. It's a testimony.
A reminder in the body that this blessing was
not a product. It was an encounter. So tonight,
I don't want anybody leaving with a tidy moral.
This story refuses tidy. This story is older
than our desire for clean conclusions. This is
not a lesson about how to try harder. This is
a revelation about what God does when the future
is closing in and you are straight out of tricks.
Some folks have been living as Jacob for a long
time. Not because you're evil. You've had to
survive. You've learned to read rooms. You've
learned to stay three moves ahead. You've learned
to grab when you couldn't trust what was going
to be offered. You learned how to protect yourself
with a smile. You learned how to make it through.
And the tragedy is survival skills can harden
into identities. Jacob's whole life had been
a long rehearsal of grasping. God beats him in
the moment when grasping is not going to work
anymore. Esau is coming. The river is now behind
him and tomorrow is unavoidable. And that's when
God puts hands on him. Not to break him for sport,
to stop him from crossing the river still pretending.
Because here's what's coming next in the narrative.
Jacob is about to meet Esau. He's about to face
the brother he's wronged, and that meeting is
not going to be managed by trickery. That meeting
is going to require a man who can bow, a man
who can speak honestly, a man who can receive
mercy without manipulating it. So God makes him
Israel before he meets Esau. God gives him a
new name before he walks into the old fear. And
that is the order of grace. And the limp? The
limp means Jacob is going to approach that reunion
not as a swaggering winner, but as a humbled
man. Can't run if things go bad. He can't fight
like he used to. He has to walk forward carefully,
dependent. aware, and honest. Sometimes the thing
God heals you in is not your circumstance. It's
the way you're entering the circumstance. That's
why this passage belongs in the bigger biblical
narrative too. Israel, the people, We'll spend
generations wrestling with God, wrestling with
neighbor nations, wrestling with their own idolatry,
wrestling with their own fear. Prophets will
look back at Jacob and say, there it is. There's
our origin story. We are the people who cling.
Jacob's midnight fight becomes a kind of spiritual
family photograph. It's not flattering, but it's
true. And if you're listening tonight and you've
been afraid that the faith you have isn't strong
enough, the text says something steady. God is
not looking for your polish. God is willing to
meet you in the dark and hold you until morning.
And that's not an excuse to stay the same. It's
the power to change without pretending. So maybe
the prayer tonight isn't fancy. Maybe it's just
this, Lord, I'm tired of being a type of Jacob.
And maybe the answer isn't immediate comfort.
Maybe it's a night where God insists you tell
the truth, gives you a new name to carry into
tomorrow. And may the God of Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob, yes, Jacob, the complicated one, meet
you where you're most honest. May the Lord meet
you at the river where all of your strategies
run out. May you have the courage to say your
real name without flinching. And... May the mercy
of God rename you, not as a reward for performance,
but as a gift for the weary. May you walk into
what's coming with a limp if you must, but with
a blessing you did not earn. And may you find
that the sunrise is still possible, even after
a night like that. Amen. As we come out of this
story, I don't want to rush you past what might
still be stirring. Jacob didn't leave the river
fixed, and he didn't leave it finished. But he
left it changed. And some of us tonight might
feel the comfort of knowing we're not abandoned
in the dark. God will meet us even when we're
exhausted, even when our best strategies have
failed. Some of us... might feel the quiet conviction
that there is a name we've been avoiding saying
out loud. Truth we've been circling for years.
Both of those responses belong here. Comfort
and conviction are not enemies. They're often
the same grace just coming at us from different
directions. So, if something in tonight's story
touched you, If you felt seen, unsettled, steadied,
or gently comforted, consider this your invitation
to respond. Not with performance, but with witness.
Drop that old like the way you might drop something
in the offering plate. Not to earn anything,
not to prove anything. Just to say, I was here.
I heard it, and it mattered. And... If you'd
like to keep walking with us into the new year,
go ahead and tithe your subscribe. That way,
when this snow finally clears and we're all back
in the sanctuary together, you'll know when church
is meeting again. Same people, same God, same
Honest Wrestling. Until then, friend, be blessed.