Jacob

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info visit us at thrive-fl.org. And why are we looking at these stories of these individuals? Because they're kind of case studies. They show us how God's works with anyone and they're ordinary people which ordinary means flawed and broken like we all are. Okay, can you admit that? Today that you're a little flawed and broken and not everything quite works the way it should. And I'm not talking just physically, but kind of emotionally, psychologically, attitudinally, you know, socially. And Jacob was left alone and a man wrestled with him until the breaking of day. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket and Jacob's hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, let me go, for the day has broken. But Jacob said, I will not let you go unless you bless me. And he said to him, what is your name? And he said, Jacob. Then he said, your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men. Let's see, where am I? Okay, and prevailed. Then Jacob asked him, please tell me your name. But he said, why is it that you ask my name? And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, saying, for I have seen God face to face and yet my life has been delivered. The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip. Therefore, to this day, the people of Israel do not eat the sinew of the thigh that is on the hip socket because he touched the socket of Jacob's hip in the sinew of the thigh. I recall a few years ago, Kevin Wilder, he was one of our student leaders here at Thrive FGCU. He had world's religions at FGCU and I was not his teacher. It was another instructor who was religious, but not of the Judeo-Christian faith. And this story in particular, that Jacob wrestling with the angel of the Lord, or how it said with man and with God, well, this man said, what kind of a God is this who is so weak that a human being like Jacob could beat him? Now, that is a good question, actually. His conclusions were not necessarily good, but the question is very profound and we're going to get into that today. The Hebrew word, like this, the Hebrew Bible is something to really kind of meditate on. And the word for meditate really means like ruminate. Do you know how a cow ruminates on the cud? Now, I know that's kind of a gross illustration, but that's what the Hebrew word to meditate means. This text is sort of a puzzle. The whole life of Jacob is sort of a puzzle and it invites you in to think about it a lot and to work on it over and over again until you kind of go, ah, there. And to see the interconnections and the intertextuality, as it's called, between this text and other texts, and how Jacob's life then becomes truly a case study of how God works with all of us. So, the questions today are really going to be, the one is, so what kind of a God is this? But we've got to start first somewhere else. What kind of a man is Jacob? And then we finally will end with, what kind of a man does God call Jacob to be? What kind of a God is, or what kind of a man is Jacob? The story of Jacob, in Genesis 25, we see it starts as a problem. And I know there's a couple of twins here. I don't know if this is the case. I don't think, Victor, this is probably what your mom said. But Rebecca realized there was a problem because the two kids in her womb were fighting. Okay, I know of sibling rivalry. I've talked about that with Cain and Abel, and how I was pretty mean to my younger brother, Paul. But this starts pretty early, doesn't it? Yes, and this is, Rebecca's really puzzled, but also kind of scared about what this all means. The children struggled together within her and she said, if it is thus, why is this happening? So she went to inquire of the Lord and the Lord said, two nations are in your womb and two peoples from within you shall be divided. The one shall be stronger than the other. The older shall serve the younger. So the real question is, how's this wrestling match that's already begun in the womb going to end? Right? Who's going to win out? How's it going to work? Sibling rivalry, we already saw with Cain and Abel, how that went totally bad. But this one starts a lot earlier. This starts before they were born. What kind of a person is Jacob? So the twins are born, like we said, and the first one comes out nice and ruddy and red-haired, and so they name him Esau, which is about redness, okay? But the second, Jacob grabs on to the heel of his brother. He's still wrestling with him, even through labor, and he is pulled out of the womb, and he is named Jacob for heel grabber, supplanter, deceiver, trickster. Those are all in that word, and they are so about Jacob. That's who he is from birth, and that's the big problem. How is it? How is God going to work with somebody like this? Because God has promi...