SERMON 2 Aug 2026  “Celebrating Our Dependence”

Over the past few weeks, we have been following the story of Jacob together. From the moment he was born, clutching his brother Esau’s heel, his life was one long series of twists and turns. He was clever and quick to seize an opportunity, yet even he was outwitted when he was tricked into marrying the wrong sister. He worked fourteen years for the woman he loved, Rachel, and all the while, he steadily built up his flocks and his wealth.

As we continue following Jacob’s story, one question keeps coming back. Why does God hold on to Jacob so firmly?

God met him in the wilderness at Bethel and spoke the promise to him again and again. Through all those long years in Laban’s house, God never left him. And in today’s passage, on the road home, God meets Jacob once more.

Jacob was finally heading home. He was travelling with a large family, many servants, and great wealth. Twenty years had passed. He was a man who always knew how to plan ahead. Whether he was buying servants or building up his flocks, he was always calculating his next move. But this time, there was one thing he could not calculate. Esau was waiting for him.

Twenty years earlier, Esau had sworn to kill him after Jacob stole his blessing. Now Jacob received news that his brother was coming to meet him with four hundred men.

That night Jacob came to the Jabbok River. He sent his wives, his children, and everything he owned across the river. It may be that he wanted one last moment alone before facing his brother the next day. Just as he had been at Bethel, he was alone once again.

Then a man appeared and wrestled with him until daybreak. Jacob did not know his name. He could not see his face. All his life Jacob had been good at reading people. He saw Esau’s hunger. He saw his father’s blindness. He saw Laban’s greed and knew how to use it to his advantage. But that night he could read nothing. He found himself wrestling with a man whose face he could not see, and from whom there was no escape.

When the man saw that he could not overpower Jacob, he struck his hip and put it out of joint. But Jacob would not let go. Jacob, who had always relied on his own cleverness, now clung on, even with a broken body. “Let me go, for the day is breaking,” the man said. “I will not let you go unless you bless me,” Jacob replied.

Something had changed. All his life, God had been holding on to Jacob. Now Jacob was holding on to God. God had not come to crush him in a single moment, but to wrestle with him through the whole night. That is how seriously God took him.

Then the man asked, “What is your name?” It is a strange question. They had been wrestling all night. Surely he knew Jacob’s name. But he asked because he wanted Jacob to say it himself.

“Jacob,” he said. The heel-grabber. The deceiver. The cheat. The runaway. He had lived with that name all his life. But that night, for the first time, he did not hide it. For the first time, he stood before God as he truly was.

“You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men, and have overcome,” the man said. Who Jacob had wrestled with was written into that name. Yet the man himself never revealed who he was. Jacob asked for his name. Instead, the man blessed him there.

Daybreak came. Jacob called that place Peniel. It meant he had seen the face of God and yet his life had been spared. The sun rose on him. Jacob had seen many mornings in his life, but never one like this. Words could not capture the glory of that sunrise. He walked with a limp. The greatest blessing and a wounded body belonged to him at the same time.

The next day, Jacob looked up and saw Esau approaching in the distance with four hundred men. Just as he had planned the night before, he bowed to the ground seven times. He counted his children as he walked, wondering who Esau would spare.

Then Esau ran. Not walked. Ran. He threw his arms around Jacob, embraced him, kissed him. And they both wept. Then Jacob said, “To see your face is like seeing the face of God.”

The nameless, faceless one he had wrestled with all night. And now, the face of the brother he had feared for twenty years. Jacob called them by the same words: the face of God.

Who the faceless one at the Jabbok really was, we are never told. But centuries later, Charles Wesley read this story and dared to give him a name.

“Come, O Thou Traveller Unknown, whom I still hold, but cannot see! Art thou the Man that died for me?” Wesley asks. At last, the answer comes. “Tis Love! Tis Love!”

But before he reaches that answer, Wesley sings, “Yield to me now, for I am weak but confident in self-despair.” Not confident because he had enough, but because he had nothing left to stand on. Jacob was the same. When his hip was broken and he could no longer stand on his own strength, he did not let go. And it was in that very helplessness that he received God’s blessing. His strongest moment was not when he fought the hardest. It was the moment he could no longer stand on his own.

We are closest to God not when we feel most capable but when we admit we can no longer stand alone. Scripture itself does not treat this wrestling as strange. Open the Psalms, and the most common prayer is not praise but lament.

Prayers asking why life is so hard, why things have not gotten better. These are the words of people wrestling with God. If our faith has never wrestled like that, it has never truly been tested. Jacob’s wrestling was not the exception. It was written into the very name of Israel.

The blessing did not come to Jacob at his best. It came when his life was in ruins, when he had nowhere to go, when he was left alone. The same is true for us. We do not seek salvation when everything is in order.  Rather, it is in our brokenness, our fear, and our uncertainty that God’s saving grace becomes most real.

Jacob’s limp was never a sign of weakness. What proved his new identity was not his strength, but the mark carved into his body. We have those marks too.  Marks we wanted to hide, marks we thought meant we had failed. But Jacob’s limp tells us they are not proof of failure, but proof of a struggle.

God is still holding on to us today, just as he held on to Jacob. So let us not let go of him. Hold on to him to the very end.