St Mary's

Today Talk from Andy

2nd August 2026

Jacob Wrestles with God

Good morning

If you look back over my St Mary’s talks during the past 7 years, I have always taken the gospel reading as my base text. I don’t think that it’s been a conscious decision, but it’s just happened that way.

When it came to preparing this morning’s talk, I had a moral dilemma. I spoke on the passage from John 3 in May 2021. Would anyone notice if I just did a quick update and delivered the same talk from five years ago again? Or should I prepare a new talk using completely new material? I’d forgotten I’d spoken on Jesus’ teaching to Nicodemus in 2021 and only realised when I looked back at my notes. If I’d forgotten, I reckon everyone here would have forgotten too.

Well, I didn’t take the easy option, so today’s talk is based on our Old Testament lesson from Genesis 32: Jacob Wrestles with God. However, Nicodemus may get a mention here and there.

Wrestling is considered one of the oldest competitive sports in human history. It can trace its origins back 15,000 to 20,000 years. Over the years, it has transitioned from prehistoric survival techniques into a major athletic discipline and, more recently, a form of live entertainment.

Who remembers Saturday afternoon TV in the 60s, with Grandstand on BBC1 and World of Sport on ITV? Back then, most of Rossendale only had two channels to choose from. Now we have thousands of channels, and we still complain there’s nothing worth watching. One of the mainstay segments I remember watching as a kid on World of Sport was professional wrestling. Some of the contenders became household names, such as Shirley Crabtree, better known as Big Daddy, Giant Haystacks, Mick McManus and the masked villain Kendo Nagasaki.

The bouts back then seemed to me to be staged: more acting for entertainment than mortal combat. This style of wrestling is a far cry from the earliest evidence of wrestling found in prehistoric cave drawings, which I have seen in Lascaux, France, depicting figures grappling with each other.

In our reading the text is cryptic, simply saying that “a man wrestled with Jacob till daybreak.” The passage doesn’t reveal the identity of the man.

Theologians have made various suggestions about the opponent over the centuries. Some say the man is Jacob’s greatest fear and rival, his brother Esau, who has come to him while he is alone in the dark, seeking vengeance. Others suggest he is an angel sent by God, or even Jacob’s own inner demons come calling. However, in verse 30, Jacob identifies this stranger as none other than God himself.

WRESTLING: PART OF CHRISTIAN LIVING

Is wrestling with God part of Christian living? I suspect that most Christians wrestle with God. There are very few of us who are completely content in our faith, who never have a doubt, or who fully understand what God’s plan is.

Many Christians have questions for God. It could be about wars, or all the suffering in the world, questions about how some Christians claim God healed their toothache, but he doesn’t seem to do anything about the droughts, wars and earthquakes around the world, despite all the millions of prayers.

Why does God not bless those he loves with health, wealth and happiness, and curse those who don’t love him with sickness, poverty and hardship?

It feels like we have so many questions, and no answers.

Sometimes I doubt. Is there really a supreme being out there, or is this life all there is? Then I see an unforgettable sunset, remember the vastness of space, or recollect an unbelievable fact about our human bodies, and realise all of this can’t be by chance; God has to be real.

Others wrestle. Nicodemus in our gospel reading wrestled. He opens a conversation by paying Jesus a compliment, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”

And Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.

Nicodemus continues to misunderstand Jesus because he takes his words literally. “How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”

Jesus was talking of heavenly things; Nicodemus was firmly on earth. And as Nicodemus disappears from the story, his interaction with Jesus doesn’t show any sign of a greater comprehension or faith.

However, later in the gospel he offers a defence of Jesus, in front of the chief priests and the Pharisees who had sent temple guards to arrest Jesus. And later after Jesus’s death he accompanies Joseph of Arimathea, with excessive amounts of spices, which he provided for Jesus’ burial.

The disciples wrestled: after they met the risen Christ, they worshipped him, but some doubted.

John Wesley wrestled: on his return from America, he seriously doubted his faith. This led him through a very dark time, but he eventually encountered God, and in his journals, he wrote, “I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation, and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”

Our passage tells us that the mysterious Man that Jacob wrestles with renames him “Israel.”

What does the name “Israel” mean? Israel means “wrestles with God”, because Jacob, the patriarch of the nation, wrestled with God and people and overcame.

Israel, what a brilliantly honest name the Jewish people were given for their nation. It wasn’t “The People Chosen by God”, or the boastful, “The People Favoured by God”, but rather the more embarrassingly honest, “Israel: The People Who Wrestle with God”!

We are fallible, fragile, mortal human beings, but we have astonishing potential. We live in the affluent West, in the 21^st century, so there will always be things to wrestle with. But when we wrestle with God, we’re simply being an Israelite. Wrestling with God is part of our Christian journey.

WRESTLING CAN HURT

Wrestling with God can hurt. It can feel like an ordeal, because it’s not an even fight. God is sovereign; we are mortal, so we can expect to take a knock or two.

Jacob was a horrible person who had to face up to who he was, and he was bruised on his hip.

What does the name, “Jacob” mean?  “Jacob” means “Deceiver”. In fact, it literally means “holding his heel”.

Jacob was a twin and his brother, Esau, was born first, with Jacob born “holding his heel”. In other words, Jacob was trying to be born first and therefore be the heir to the blessing both of his father, Isaac, and of God. But Esau was born first.

All his life Jacob was fighting his brother and trying to deceive him and steal his birthright, and the fight started in Rebekah’s womb!

Jacob was a deceiver right down to his bones. He tried to pressure Esau into giving up his birthright in exchange for a meal when Esau returned home hungry from hunting.

And later, when Isaac, was a frail, old, blind man, easily confused, Jacob was helped by his mother to deceive his father.

Jacob dressed in his brother’s clothes and deceived his father into giving him the irrevocable blessing of the firstborn, which meant Jacob effectively inherited everything and Esau got nothing. It’s not surprising that this act of ultimate deception destroyed the family. Esau had nothing and promised to kill Jacob. Jacob fled for his life, and it took him years of wrestling before he was mature enough to face up to just how horrible a person, he had been.

Eventually, he does. And this is the time, as described in our reading, when he crosses the river at night, facing his own demons as he crosses back into his homeland, back into the promised land, back to face his murderous, estranged brother.

Jacob wrestles with himself, and wrestles with God. Not surprisingly, this wrestling is bruising. It must be, if Jacob is to change and begin to be truly blessed by God.

We wrestle with all the questions we have before asking Jesus to accept us and following him and his way. This wrestling with God, and life, and all the rubbish that we find ourselves in is bruising.

There are not many easy answers, no magic wands, and the answers to prayer aren’t always what we want. Wrestling may seem like a curse. But wrestling may simply be a sign that God is calling us to himself in a way we haven’t been called by him before.

If you wrestle with God, you can expect your view on the situation to change. Don’t be surprised if you end up with a limp or a bruise.

Some Christians think that we shouldn’t wrestle, that wrestling is a sin, that it has nothing to do with our faith in God. But Jesus himself wrestled with God, most notably and profoundly in the Garden of Gethsemane.

ARE WE WRESTLING OR RUNNING AWAY?

Are we wrestling or running away? When we wrestle, we can just go around in circles. Instead of training our bodies, we can simply beat the air and shadow box. We can be like Jonah and pretend that we’re wrestling, when we’re actually disobeying God and running away.

Wrestling with God is not a play fight.

God is saying to us, “If you are serious about wrestling with me, where is your bruising, where is the change, where is the fruit? Where is the love, joy, peace, faithfulness, hope, patience, generosity, compassion, humility, and self-control?

We are not to look down on Christians who don’t wrestle, assuming that they have a simple, or simplistic, faith. John writes in his gospel in chapter 21: the risen Jesus says to Peter, “Follow me.” Peter turns and sees the disciple whom Jesus loved, and he asks, “Lord, what about him?” Jesus answers, “What I want for him, what [concern] is that to you? You must follow me.” Each Christian will follow Jesus in their own unique way.

WRESTLING CAN BE A BLESSING

Wrestling can be a blessing. It was a blessing for Jacob. He grapples with God until he realises he is wrestling not just with anyone, but with God himself.

Jacob risks holding onto God as day breaks. In the light of day, he would see God face to face, and if that were to happen all of Jacob’s lies, deceit and dishonesty would be overwhelmed by the awesome purity of God, and that would destroy Jacob. Instead, God playfully yields to him, effortlessly bruises him, and graciously blesses him.

 Part of that blessing is a new name, for he is a changed person and has a new identity. No longer Jacob, “the deceiver of others”, but Israel, the father of a nation whose name means “he wrestles with God”.

During our Christian conversion, which can be described as our ultimate wrestle with God, we are born again and Christ gives us a new identity. The bout is over when we submit to him and declare him King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He calls us to follow him and discover more and more of who he is.

As we are faithful and true, we might not get all the answers, but if we wrestle with God, we will be blessed with a better understanding of God’s plan and an overwhelming sense of love, joy, peace, faithfulness, hope, patience, generosity, compassion, humility and self-control.

So, let’s wrestle like Jacob and don’t stop until God blesses us.

Amen