1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:06,166 Receive the blessing of our Lord, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of 2 00:00:06,166 --> 00:00:11,633 God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you always. 3 00:00:11,633 --> 00:00:12,633 Amen. 4 00:00:12,633 --> 00:00:22,066 Many of you know that I do stair climbing for exercise, and I also play some tennis. 5 00:00:22,066 --> 00:00:27,666 I coached the tennis team here for nine years and was moderately successful as a college 6 00:00:27,666 --> 00:00:33,233 player, which means I won about 50% of my matches and lost about 50%. 7 00:00:33,233 --> 00:00:38,333 But I don't think that many of you, if any of you, know that earlier in life my first 8 00:00:38,333 --> 00:00:41,133 sport was wrestling. 9 00:00:41,133 --> 00:00:45,966 My parents got me started in wrestling when I was 10 years old, and by the time I was 10 00:00:45,966 --> 00:00:47,733 12, I was pretty good. 11 00:00:47,733 --> 00:00:55,000 I had a 14-1 record that year, and the one loss was to a kid named Darren Dalton. 12 00:00:55,000 --> 00:00:59,400 Most of you don't know him because 30 years ago he was an all-star catcher for the Philadelphia 13 00:00:59,400 --> 00:01:02,033 Phillies. 14 00:01:02,033 --> 00:01:07,066 I thought I had some wrestling skills, but to be honest, my high school wrestling career 15 00:01:07,066 --> 00:01:10,933 was kind of JV, mediocre. 16 00:01:10,933 --> 00:01:16,533 I wrestled one year in college because the lightweight wrestler who had been recruited 17 00:01:16,533 --> 00:01:21,733 by the coach got injured halfway through the season, and the coach had seen me win intramural 18 00:01:21,733 --> 00:01:25,366 wrestling and said, hey, why don't you come in and replace him for the last half of the 19 00:01:25,366 --> 00:01:26,366 season? 20 00:01:26,366 --> 00:01:27,366 And I did. 21 00:01:27,366 --> 00:01:33,933 I finished that season with a 2-5 record, but full disclosure, the two wins were because 22 00:01:33,933 --> 00:01:41,066 the other guy's, the other team's guy didn't make weight, so I got a forfeit. 23 00:01:41,066 --> 00:01:46,466 But in college, I had some skills and thought of myself as a decent wrestler, and sometimes 24 00:01:46,466 --> 00:01:51,500 my college friends who were bigger than me would ask how good I was, and I would sometimes 25 00:01:51,500 --> 00:01:55,533 do the comebacks and say, well, why don't we just go over the mats and I'll show you? 26 00:01:55,533 --> 00:02:01,466 I had fun outmaneuvering friends of mine that were 30 to 50 pounds heavier than me and surprising 27 00:02:01,466 --> 00:02:05,733 them by either beating them or at least wrestling them to a draw. 28 00:02:05,733 --> 00:02:10,466 But one day I tried something I shouldn't have. 29 00:02:10,466 --> 00:02:13,233 Jim was a good friend of mine. 30 00:02:13,233 --> 00:02:16,966 Jim and I had dorm rooms that were adjacent to each other. 31 00:02:16,966 --> 00:02:24,633 He and I would talk trash to each other throughout the day, but Jim was a 6-foot, 4-inch, 245-pound 32 00:02:24,633 --> 00:02:29,400 offensive lineman on the football team. 33 00:02:29,400 --> 00:02:32,266 And these were 245 pounds of muscle. 34 00:02:32,266 --> 00:02:38,633 Jim was probably the closest we had to an Adonis or a Mr. Universe at Concordia River 35 00:02:38,633 --> 00:02:40,566 Forest at the time. 36 00:02:40,566 --> 00:02:46,566 Jim was talking trash out in the Triangle, the main area, kind of like our quad here 37 00:02:46,566 --> 00:02:47,666 at the seminary. 38 00:02:47,666 --> 00:02:54,566 But he was sitting on a low, slung concrete bench talking trash, and I went, Jim, stop 39 00:02:54,566 --> 00:02:56,133 talking that trash or else. 40 00:02:56,133 --> 00:02:57,266 What are you going to do? 41 00:02:57,266 --> 00:03:00,933 Jim, stop talking that trash or I'm going to just pin you to the ground here in the 42 00:03:00,933 --> 00:03:03,966 grass in front of everybody else. 43 00:03:03,966 --> 00:03:04,966 And he had scoffed. 44 00:03:04,966 --> 00:03:05,966 No, you're not. 45 00:03:05,966 --> 00:03:11,166 I weighed exactly half of what Jim did at the time. 46 00:03:11,166 --> 00:03:15,733 But he kept talking trash, so I made a quick move on him he wasn't expecting. 47 00:03:15,733 --> 00:03:20,600 I grabbed him by the chin, pulled him over, laid him gently on his back because this chair 48 00:03:20,600 --> 00:03:25,233 was only about 10 inches off the ground, gently on his back, put him in a half Nelson, held 49 00:03:25,233 --> 00:03:28,566 him down, and he tried to get up. 50 00:03:28,566 --> 00:03:30,166 And he couldn't get up. 51 00:03:30,166 --> 00:03:37,333 And our friends were laughing at him because here was this 245-pound guy holding him down, 52 00:03:37,333 --> 00:03:43,333 and I had bested big Jim, at least for a few moments. 53 00:03:43,333 --> 00:03:48,033 And then I started to realize I'm in a predicament here. 54 00:03:48,033 --> 00:03:52,000 I will eventually have to let him up. 55 00:03:52,000 --> 00:03:54,533 We'll come back to that. 56 00:03:54,533 --> 00:03:59,066 Jacob was in more of a predicament than I was. 57 00:03:59,066 --> 00:04:02,333 He was in a truly huge predicament. 58 00:04:02,333 --> 00:04:09,133 Jacob's name means trickster, supplanter, heel grabber because as he came out of his 59 00:04:09,133 --> 00:04:14,000 mother's womb he was grabbing at the heel of his twin brother. 60 00:04:14,000 --> 00:04:22,000 Jacob had tricked his twin brother into giving up his firstborn blessing, not once, but twice 61 00:04:22,000 --> 00:04:24,266 in their lives. 62 00:04:24,266 --> 00:04:32,066 Jacob had fled from Esau 15, 20 years before because Esau had threatened to kill him for 63 00:04:32,066 --> 00:04:35,066 stealing their father's blessing. 64 00:04:35,066 --> 00:04:40,600 Jacob had gone to live in the north with other family, but he wasn't always successful in 65 00:04:40,600 --> 00:04:44,033 his earthly cleverness. 66 00:04:44,033 --> 00:04:49,266 Jacob was tricked by his father-in-law into marrying an extra wife that he didn't really 67 00:04:49,266 --> 00:04:51,600 want to have. 68 00:04:51,600 --> 00:04:58,800 But now, years later, he's traveling back to the land that the Lord had promised to 69 00:04:58,800 --> 00:05:04,766 his grandfather Abraham and to his father Isaac, and that the Lord had promised to him 70 00:05:04,766 --> 00:05:11,133 too in a vision years before that this would be his land. 71 00:05:11,133 --> 00:05:14,000 But he was worried, anxious. 72 00:05:14,000 --> 00:05:16,600 Would Esau still be angry at him? 73 00:05:16,600 --> 00:05:18,633 Would Esau still want to kill him? 74 00:05:18,633 --> 00:05:24,033 Might his brother even consider killing not just him, but his entire young family of now 75 00:05:24,033 --> 00:05:28,566 four wives and eleven sons? 76 00:05:28,566 --> 00:05:34,000 He tried to be a trickster and sent gifts on ahead. 77 00:05:34,000 --> 00:05:38,533 Would Esau accept Jacob's gifts and welcome him into the land? 78 00:05:38,533 --> 00:05:44,000 Would the Lord's promises still hold? 79 00:05:44,000 --> 00:05:50,533 That night before he meets his brother, he arranges to be alone by himself. 80 00:05:50,533 --> 00:05:56,933 Perhaps Jacob was wanting a special time to pray to the Lord, to remind the Lord of his 81 00:05:56,933 --> 00:06:02,966 promises, but Jacob got more than he planned for. 82 00:06:02,966 --> 00:06:08,200 A man shows up in the night and starts wrestling with Jacob and did so for hours through the 83 00:06:08,200 --> 00:06:09,333 night. 84 00:06:09,333 --> 00:06:13,333 For those of you who have ever wrestled before, you can't imagine wrestling for hours. 85 00:06:13,333 --> 00:06:17,666 There's a reason why wrestling matches are six to seven minutes long because you're totally 86 00:06:17,666 --> 00:06:21,366 exhausted at the end of seven minutes. 87 00:06:21,366 --> 00:06:24,666 But he wrestled throughout the night. 88 00:06:24,666 --> 00:06:29,000 Some commentators conjecture that Jacob may have first thought that he was wrestling with 89 00:06:29,000 --> 00:06:38,266 his brother Esau, but then realized he had a very supernatural opponent. 90 00:06:38,266 --> 00:06:41,033 Back to my predicament with Big Jim. 91 00:06:41,033 --> 00:06:43,433 I knew I could hold him down there indefinitely. 92 00:06:43,433 --> 00:06:49,166 I had the right hold, right half Nelson on, and he was just struggling, but I was eventually 93 00:06:49,166 --> 00:06:50,933 going to have to let him up. 94 00:06:50,933 --> 00:06:54,466 I could lay there all night long and wait until he fell asleep, but that didn't seem 95 00:06:54,466 --> 00:06:57,100 practical. 96 00:06:57,100 --> 00:07:00,266 It would look a little funny to hold him down that long. 97 00:07:00,266 --> 00:07:04,633 But if I let him up, I knew that his strong hands could grab me and do whatever he wanted 98 00:07:04,633 --> 00:07:06,633 to with me at that point. 99 00:07:06,633 --> 00:07:08,333 I would be at his mercy. 100 00:07:08,333 --> 00:07:10,066 So I started negotiating with him. 101 00:07:10,066 --> 00:07:15,733 Now, Jim, if you promise, I'll let you up if you promise not to grab me, not to hurt 102 00:07:15,733 --> 00:07:18,600 me, not to do anything. 103 00:07:18,600 --> 00:07:22,366 No repercussions, and Jim promised. 104 00:07:22,366 --> 00:07:26,533 I knew I couldn't really trust that promise. 105 00:07:26,533 --> 00:07:30,366 But sure enough, as soon as I let him up, he grabs me with those big hands, turns me 106 00:07:30,366 --> 00:07:37,266 upside down, shakes me by the ankles for a little while until his big man on campus pride 107 00:07:37,266 --> 00:07:40,366 had been assuaged in front of our friends. 108 00:07:40,366 --> 00:07:41,566 I knew Jim was a friend. 109 00:07:41,566 --> 00:07:48,866 I knew he wasn't going to hurt me, but I also knew his promise wasn't worthy of my trust. 110 00:07:48,866 --> 00:07:52,800 Jacob's opponent was even bigger. 111 00:07:52,800 --> 00:07:59,333 His opponent tried to get free, but Jacob would not let go of him even after his opponent 112 00:07:59,333 --> 00:08:06,766 with his supernatural strength had touched Jacob's hip and dislocated it. 113 00:08:06,766 --> 00:08:14,700 Jacob would not let his opponent go until he had got a blessing out of him. 114 00:08:14,700 --> 00:08:20,333 He wanted to know what his opponent's name was, who he was, and his opponent, who Jacob 115 00:08:20,333 --> 00:08:27,000 now knew was God, blessed Jacob with a new name. 116 00:08:27,000 --> 00:08:33,266 He would no longer be known as Jacob, the trickster, the one who got by with his cleverness 117 00:08:33,266 --> 00:08:35,033 in this earthly life. 118 00:08:35,033 --> 00:08:42,766 Instead, he would be known as Israel, one who wrestled with God, who struggles with 119 00:08:42,766 --> 00:08:50,133 God, and who clings to God's promises and blessings. 120 00:08:50,133 --> 00:08:59,233 Jacob would go on to have 12 sons and bless all of his 12 sons, including Judah. 121 00:08:59,233 --> 00:09:08,000 Jacob's descendants would literally be named Israel and struggle with God for centuries, 122 00:09:08,000 --> 00:09:15,466 but a remnant would always cling to his promises and blessings for those centuries. 123 00:09:15,466 --> 00:09:21,300 From Romans 15:4, for what was written in former days was written for our instruction, 124 00:09:21,300 --> 00:09:26,866 that through endurance and through the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope. 125 00:09:26,866 --> 00:09:37,400 Eventually, that same God appeared in human form again, a descendant of Jacob and Judah 126 00:09:37,400 --> 00:09:38,400 and David. 127 00:09:38,400 --> 00:09:47,766 And he came not just for an overnight wrestling match this time, he came as the ultimate Israel. 128 00:09:47,766 --> 00:09:55,733 He came to wrestle with the powers of darkness, with death and sin and the power of the devil, 129 00:09:55,733 --> 00:10:03,800 and conquer them not with brute strength, but with the mystery of his love shown in 130 00:10:03,800 --> 00:10:09,666 his suffering, his death, and his resurrection. 131 00:10:09,666 --> 00:10:17,333 You and I are that new Israel, the Church, who will continue to struggle and wrestle 132 00:10:17,333 --> 00:10:25,233 with God and with ourselves until Jesus, our ultimate champion, returns. 133 00:10:25,233 --> 00:10:34,933 May we continue to cling to His promises as Jacob did and receive His blessings as Israel 134 00:10:34,933 --> 00:10:37,366 did. 135 00:10:37,366 --> 00:10:41,300 And again, receive this blessing from Him. 136 00:10:41,300 --> 00:10:47,200 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy 137 00:10:47,200 --> 00:10:50,200 Spirit be with you always. 138 00:10:50,200 --> 00:10:51,200 Amen. 139 00:10:51,200 --> 00:10:56,200 We stand.