James Toney, the former World Champion middle-weight boxer
once said, “I fight with anger. My dad,
he did my mother wrong. He made my mom
work two jobs and he left his responsibilities behind and I can never forgive
him for that. I hope my father reads this
article because if he ever decided to come out of the woodwork, I’ll be ready
for him. Everything I do is about
that. I look at my opponent and I see in
his face my dad and I have to take him out.
I’ll do anything to get my dad out of him.”
Burt Reynolds once said in a Parade magazine interview, “My dad was Chief of Police and when he
came into a room all the oxygen went out of it.
There’s a saying in the south that no man is a man until his father
tells him he is. It means that someday
when you’re thirty or forty, this man who you respect and want to love you says
to you, ‘You’re a man now and I love you.’
But you know, my dad never said that to me. We never hugged, never kissed, never said, ‘I
love you.’ (Reynolds paused and said)
‘So what happened was that later I was desperately looking for someone who
would say, ‘You’re grown up, Burt, and I approve of you and I love you and you
don’t have to do those things anymore.’
I was lost inside. I couldn’t
connect with life. I was incomplete. I didn’t know what I needed to know.”
Last week we saw the Gospel in the story of David and
Goliath, because we saw Jesus in it. We
saw that it’s not so much what David does to Goliath, as what Jesus has done to
the greatest giant in our life – sin,
death, and judgment. Because of Jesus’
victory over our Goliath, we can thoroughly rely on Him to equip us to gain
victory over the lesser giants we may face.
But the truth is many of us still struggle. We are His.
He has purchased us with His blood.
He has raised us to new life. His
work is complete. He has gained absolute
victory, and yet, we live lives of attempted compensation. We live like Schwarzenegger, Toney, and
Reynolds, seeking to bury our sense of inadequacy and cover our weakness, when
in reality Jesus wants them to remain exposed.
And we see that in the story of Jacob at the Jabbok.
All his life Jacob has lived under a cloud of
conniving. In fact, his name means
conniver. The blessing he receives from
his father is the product of blackmail.
He blackmails his brother. He
blackmails his father. And the conniving
doesn’t end there. For twenty years he’s
locked in a family battle with an uncle who’s just as surreptitious as he is. And yet, twenty years earlier, at Bethel (Genesis
28), God confirms his love for him. God
confirms his election. God confirms his
future.
It isn’t until he comes to the River Jabbok (Genesis
32:22-22) that Jacob’s life is changed.
It isn’t until that point in his life that his walk is altered.
This week we will look at Jacob in light of the Jabbok. There we will see what God does for him and
for us. The picture of Jacob after
Jabbok is the picture of every Christian who wrestles with God and is
overwhelmed by His grace. There are
three marks of Jacob’s post-Jabbok walk that mirror the walk of everyone who’s
wrestled with God and discovered the depth of His grace.
In preparation for Sunday you may wish to consider the
following:
1. The
meaning of the name Jabbok.
2. Does
Jacob do anything to prompt this encounter with God?
3. What
is Jacob’s state of mind when he comes to the Jabbok?
4. Is
there any significance to the time of day in which the wrestling occurs? (Compare the Bethel encounter.)
5. Who
is wrestling with Jacob?
6. Why
does Jacob bow himself down seven times? (Genesis 33:5)
7. What
is the significance of Jacob’s answer in verse 5?
8. Why
does Jacob refuse his brother’s offer in verse 9?
9. What
noticeable changes are in evidence after the Jabbok?
10. What
could Jacob teach Arnold, James, and Burt about human weaknesses?
See you Sunday!
