He Wrestled Alone
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Genesis 32:24 And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day.
Intro: This morning we are going to talk about times in your life where you have to wrestle some opponents by yourself. We are grateful for all the times others can stand with us, but sometimes they cannot.
Today we will look at Jacob, Paul, David, and Jesus in moments they battled alone, and we will see that it is part of everyone's spiritual journey. We will also pick up a few clues to help in those moments, and trust your faith will strengthened.
We are going to look at passages where the bible talks about wrestling, but I would like also to quickly take an illustration from the boxing world. In both boxing and wrestling, you get in the ring with your opponent and you fight them. Your coach and friends, your pastor and mentors, will not be in the ring fighting with except for that which they have poured into your life. While they may not fight for you, they can call out encouragement from the sidelines, and when the bell rings between rounds they can rush to your aid to give you water, bind up wounds, and strengthen you for the next rounds. So while we can't be there with you, it doesn't mean you will be completely left alone.
The word wrestling is found 5 different times in 4 scriptures.
The most famous one is found in Ephesians 6.
Where Paul says we wrestle with spiritual wickedness in high places:
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Eph 6:12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
We wrestle with powers greater than our own. Does that describe you today? Yes it does, but the real question is do you have a handle on it? Don't quit, fight the good fight of faith. God will give you strength, call for backup in Jesus name!
Another place where the bible talks 2 times about wrestling is in the life story of Jacob's wife Rachel,
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Ge 30:8 And Rachel said, With great wrestlings have I wrestled with my sister, and I have prevailed: and she called his name Naphtali.
She had said to Jacob, "Give me children or I die." "Am I God?," was Jacob's response. Rachel wrestled alone with her inability to have a child, though Jacob loved her dearly that was her burden, her battle, her struggle.
Then she, in my opinion made matters worse. She gave her maiden Bilhah to be another wife to Jacob, saying I will have children through her. If she had just looked at her husbands family history, and what Jacob's grandmother Sarah brought on herself by doing a similar thing, she would have never done what she did.
Having a child, that someone else really had did not satisfy the itch she had, but God in His goodness did give her children at the proper time. Having the child was not an error, her forcing the time of it was. Additionally she brought another wife into a marriage that was already strained to dangerous levels.
Sometimes when we find ourselves in a wrestling situation we do stupid things out of fatigue or desperation. Learn from Rachel.
Don't act presumptively, it will come back to bite you.
This wrestling she speaks of has to do with her wrestling her own sister for her husbands love.
It is horribly truth that some people have to wrestle for love from others that rightfully
belongs to them and no other. This is one of the worst wrestling matches a spouse could
ever have. It was made doubly worse because it was her own sister she was battling.
Finally the last 2 uses of wrestling refer to Jacob wreslting with God. So between Jacob and his wife Rachel, 4 of the 5 times wrestling is mentioned in scripture has to do with their little family. Some families have more than what appears to be their fair share of things to have to wrestle with in life.
In fact if you follow Abraham's family tree it is a family that has known from earliest times 2 great truths that seem to be always in dynamic tension and polar opposites with each other. First they are highly blessed of God, and secondly they seem to have a disproportionate amount of suffering and being forced to wrestle for their very lives with the world around them. When you think of Jewish suffering you think of the Holocaust, while it is true that millions died but did you know that they suffer for 350 years under the Spanish inquisition? To this day the Jews are one of the most hated groups of people on the earth, and that is because they are the special objects of God's favor and all hell is stirred against them because of that.
What is true for Israel is true also for the church of Jesus Christ. We are in a struggle much larger than we can often imagine.
Though the word wrestling is not used here, it is perhaps the saddest example of it in scripture:
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Ge 25:21 And Isaac prayed to the LORD on behalf of his wife, because she was barren; and the LORD answered him and Rebekah his wife conceived.
Ge 25:22 But the children struggled together within her; and she said, "If it is so, why then am I this way?" So she went to inquire of the LORD.
Ge 25:23 And the LORD said to her, "Two nations are in your womb; And two peoples shall be separated from your body; And one people shall be stronger than the other; And the older shall serve the younger."
Family wrestling, that is the worst. Brother fighting against brother. Brother turning against brother. Of all the prophecies of horrible things in the last days I want to share with you what I think are the 2 worst, and of those the one that troubles me the most: The worst: depart from me. The most troubling:
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Mr 13:10 And the gospel must first be published among all nations.
Mr 13:11 But when they shall lead you, and deliver you up, take no thought beforehand what ye shall speak, neither do ye premeditate: but whatsoever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye: for it is not ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost.
Mr 13:12 Now the brother shall betray the brother to death, and the father the son; and children shall rise up against their parents, and shall cause them to be put to death.
Mr 13:13 And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake: but he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.
May God be merciful to every family here today, to not see this lived out in their family.
So Jacob's little family had much more than their fair share of suffering, but they also had a greater share in God's awesome plan of redemption. I need to point out something important because we have touched on the subject of infertility today. To any person or couple who is wrestling in that area, our heart goes out to you and we stand with you. As a way of encouragement I'd like to remind you that God promised Abraham:
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Genesis 22:17 I'll bless you—oh, how I'll bless you! And I'll make sure that your children flourish—like stars in the sky! like sand on the beaches! And your descendants will defeat their enemies. (MSG version)
It is a special irony of scripture that the family that was promised to multiply like sand on the beaches would also be one that struggled greatly with infertility! Sarah, Rachel, Hannah, Samson's mother, the Shunamite woman, and Elizabeth the mother of John the Baptist. Warfare and wrestling went along with all the births of these children, but in the end God always saw things through to completion. In due time they all brought forth their very special children. I pray the same for you.
Unknown to all these families at the time was that the reason for their suffering was not personal fault, but that they were at the epicenter of what God was doing in the world at that time. satan knew and he brought all the hell he could against them, yet he never prevailed. Because the one who had them wrestle so much is also the one who saw to it that the match was fixed so they would win in the end.
I have a few more thoughts about wrestling, wrestling alone, and loneliness, before we close and pray for one another.
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Ge 28:10 Then Jacob departed from Beersheba and went toward Haran.
I want to look at the time Jacob wrestled alone, but first we need to know the back story.
He had to leave home because he lied to his dad, stole a blessing from his brother, which he didn't have to steal, God already promised him it, and his brother was so enraged he was going to kill him. (Elaborate)
I am going to use Jacob's lonely journey away from home as one of my points, but that is only one example, I will share a few others and then offer limited help for those wrestling alone.
I can't end some wrestling matches, but we are not totally without resources, and we can offer encouragement and refreshment from the sidelines.
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PS 42:7 Deep calls out to deep.
You can look at this text as a double whammy, or a hole being filled by God. In context David is describing a situation where it seems heaven is attacking him, and he is also struggling with enemies on earth and deep inside himself.
The picture of the waterfall is the trouble from above, and the waterfall connects with the turbulent water below. That is the actual. But many have also taken this passage as a word picture of God's deep and abundant grace falling from heaven to touch troubles deep in our soul. I like that picture.
The deep grace of God, reaches the deep hurt in the human heart.
In both instances, the word "deep" is translated from the Hebrew noun "tehowm" which refers to a deep place, an abyss (an immeasurable deep chasm, depth, or void), as well as a surging mass of water that rises from some deep, subterranean place. So the text is saying:
The deep waters of God's Spirit are calling out to fill the deep places of need in your heart.
So it is that God has a deep and satisfying waterfall to plunge into the depths of the human heart that is struggling with loneliness and wrestling alone.
Everyone struggles with loneliness on their journey. 92% at a Christian conference admitted to struggling with loneliness.
We are lonely for deceased kin.
We are lonely for grown children.
We are lonely for a place we lived, a style of life we had.
We are lonely for people we went to school with, worked with, friends that have moved.
Today I have a better sense of what God is wanting to do than how to articulate it.
He is wanting to say, I know, I am with you. I have been there.
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Isa 53:3 He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were [our] faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Jesus was all alone in His greatest our of struggle.
In the garden of Gethsemanee he asked Peter and John to pray with Him, as He sweat drops of blood knowing what was ahead. He found them sleeping. He had wrestled alone in the most difficult time of His life. Wait, it gets worse. Remember at His arrest the apostles all ran off. Then Peter denied Him by cursing and swearing.. Jesus had to wrestle the death on the cross all by Himself.
In fact for Him it was harder than it will ever be for any of us. The Father even turned away from Him. Remember what He cried on the cross: "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" Jesus walked down a road no other believer ever has to. He walked and wrestled it completely alone. He promised us that even in the worst times of our life He will never leave nor forsake us. His personal suffering in this area has made Him the best possible source of comfort to have in your corner for those seasons you find yourself wrestling alone.
Heb 2:18 Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.
Tempted = tested
help = comfort.
So to those who are dealing with loneliness, let me just say God is here for you today.
Back to Jacob.
His departure was swift. It was painful. It was unannounced. It was unplanned.
The text informs of that upon leaving Beersheba on his way to Haran, he rests one night in a "certain place." The place was called Luz, a city that had existed long ago but was now abandoned. He sleeps on a rock then takes the rock anoints it with oil, makes a vow and request to God, and then renames the city Bethel. The beginning of the city of Bethel was a rock in an abandoned lonely stretch of road anointed with oil. Bethel would become a very important city in Israel. The prophet Samuel held court there, and the prophet Elijah had a school of the prophets located there.
Know this that places you wrestle alone can and will often become significant landmarks of the special working of God.
This is that first scary time in his life where he is on his own.
How many remember kindergarten? Or maybe it was the first day of middle school and your first locker combination. For me it was military boot camp the first time I felt really alone, I was the guy who never seemed to be able to figure out what he was doing. Folded things wrong, couldn't make my bed right. though I was in a crowd I felt like the odd bird out. Anybody relate?
Here are a couple different types of loneliness:
Relational loneliness.
It is not good for man to be alone. Everything God made was good, but everything was not good about everything God made. How come God didn't say to man, I am all you need? How long was Adam alone before Eve was made? She wasn't there when God explained about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. She wasn't there when he named all the animals. How long did that take? People need people. One last point, God did not say it is not good that man is not married, he said it is not good that he is alone. There is a difference.
Loneliness is no respecter of relationships. There are probably married people here, who struggle with feelings of loneliness.
Sometimes married people are lonely because their spouse seems to be more excited about being around others than them. So they struggle with feelings of being unloved and fear of being unwanted. That is our primary understanding of loneliness, but it is very incomplete. That is a wrestling most people suffer silently with and keep to themselves.
Situational loneliness.
We jump ahead in Jacob's story, many years have gone by. But now he is on his way back to the promised land. Thank God the wanderer was coming home.
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Ge 32:24 And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day.
Jacob wrestled alone. He had 4 wives and 12 children, and dozens of servants, but he wrestled alone.
Many things in life you wrestle alone. You wrestle with God alone, you wrestle with pain alone, you wrestle with certain trials alone. Here is the Apostle Paul telling us about wrestling alone.
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2Ti 4:16 At my first defense no one supported me, but all deserted me; may it not be counted against them.
2Ti 4:17 But the Lord stood with me, and strengthened me, in order that through me the proclamation might be fully accomplished, and that all the Gentiles might hear; and I was delivered out of the lion's mouth.
Prosperity has many friends trials have far fewer.
Here is David describing his time of wrestling alone:
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Ps 31:11 Because of all my adversaries, I have become a reproach, Especially to my neighbors, And an object of dread to my acquaintances; Those who see me in the street flee from me.
Ps 31:12 I am forgotten as a dead man, out of mind, I am like a broken vessel.
Let me ask you a question about Jacob. Did Jacob wrestle with God, or did God wrestle with Jacob?
God wrestled with Jacob. What is your name? Jacob? Cheat. Thief, robber. Not anymore buddy, your new name is Israel. When God wrestles with people He is wrestling the sin out of them. That is always a private wrestling match. God doesn't wrestle with you about someone else's sin, He wrestles with you about your anger, your misdeeds, your shortcomings. Thank God He doesn't leave you alone, but every now and then His spirit will pick a fight with us to free us from sin.
Jacob was on his way home, but God knew he needed to deal with the reason he left in the first place. God will always wrestle with you about your personal sin. He will always take you back to the place you left the road. When He asked Jacob his name, I think he was reminding him of how he cheated his brother to get the inheritance. He didn't have to do it that way, God had already prophesied the elder would serve the younger. He deceived his aged father and before he returned to the promised land God wanted to wrestle some repentance out of him. I can't prove it but I think when God asked him his name and he said Jacob (Cheater) that Jacob in his spirit groaned with consciousness of his sin and repented. I think that because the immediate responds of God is that he would no longer be called that, but He would be call, "Israel," a prince with God. When we give him our old tattered garments He gives us a robe of pure white.
Seasonal loneliness.
When Jacob left home years earlier he was soon to meet the girl of his dreams, but just before he had the worst nightmare situation of his life. Fleeing home and being on his own for the first time.
His last season lied to him about his next season. That is a word for someone today. Your last season is lying to you about your next season.
The cure for loneliness.
There is no permanent cure for several reasons:
1. Sometimes it is part of God's plan, so if you cured it you would be missing God, that would be an example when the cure is worse than the disease.
2ndly the fact is that many roads in life you must walk alone, even though you may be surrounded.
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Salvation Road.
Wrestle with God lane.
Kindergarten.
There may be no permanent cure, but that does not mean no help is available.
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Ps 27:10 When my father and my mother forsake me, then the LORD will take me up.
Close: I am wrestling and I could use a little time in the corner being refreshed.
