God’s Will > My Will

WELCOME
Pastor Chris Paavola:
So, there you go. Small groups are kicking off. We are kicking off in September and every group meets in its own timeframe and its own window and all that kind of stuff, and you figure it out just with what works. But we shuffle up our groups every fall because one of our values is a church to grow smaller as we grow larger. And we think it’s important for people to build relationships with one another and make new friendships like you heard about. And so if you are newer to St Mark in the last year, you’re not going to be thrown into a group where everybody knows everybody and has all their own inside jokes and inside language, everybody starts out from the same page and new groups and new groups are kicking off. So make sure you scan that QR code that’s on your screen right now if you’re watching online or on your bulletin that you received when you walked in, or you can just go to st mark.net/groups and get plugged into one of those groups.

I would love for every person in this room, everyone, I can hear the sound of my voice to be a part of small groups. We’re about to hear a message now, so let me pray for us and then we’ll get right into today’s topic. Heavenly Father, we confess that there’s a lot going on. We’re distracted with just schedules and things that need to happen before kids go back to school and all that kind of stuff. And so we ask right now and just this moment that you would capture our hearts and minds attention to help us focus on you and what you have to say. And Lord, I ask that you would speak through me, that you would give your word to your people and that Lord, just as you speak through me, that you would open the hearts of each person to hear what you have to say this day. In Jesus name. Amen.

GREATER THAN
So, we are in the middle of a series. We’re getting close to the end, but this series called Greater Than Where We Are Following along the life of this man 4,000 years ago named Jacob. And we are discovering as he does a life greater than we know with a God who’s greater than we know. And each week in this series, we don’t set the agenda, we don’t set the topic. So, whatever happens in the story, that’s what we end up talking about. And so today we end up talking about really this question that’s pushed on us during this text of what do you do?

WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN GOD WON’T DO WHAT YOU WANT HIM TO DO?
Oh, that’s not the question in the text there. What do you do when God won’t do what you want him to do? What do you do when God won’t do what you want him to do?

What do you do when God is good and loving? Okay, but why am I still single? God is good, but why do I have this diagnosis of this disease? What do you do when my kids aren’t acting the way I want him to act? My spouse isn’t acting the way I want him to act. My job is not going the way I want it to go. What do you do when God won’t do what you want him to do? And at first glance, it doesn’t seem like this question is in the story, and yet it is absolutely what’s going on. And when we look at it from the context of the story, it not only helps us ask this question, but it gives us a certain hope. If you are in a season right now where you’re asking that exact question, there’s hope in this story.

BACKSTORY OF JACOB AND ESAU
But to get it, we have to see what’s going on beyond the cursory surface level reading of this story. So to remind you or refresh your memory or to bring you up to speed, Jacob for 20 years was living with his uncle and God told him, I need you to go back to the land of your father. Go back to your brother. Esau. Problem being is Esau has vowed to take his life if he ever sees him again. And so, Jacob though, in spite of maybe what he wants to do is, and God didn’t give him an option of go live anywhere you want, he said, no, go back to that particular place. And so Jacob is kind of surrendering to God’s will at this and he’s walking and with every step of this hundreds of miles journey, he’s feeling more and more of the weight and pressure of what is at stake.

And he eventually arrives at this stream in modern day Jordan. It kind of runs east, west and modern-day Jordan just off of the border of Israel there. And it’s called the Jabbok River or the Jabbok Stream. And he comes to what’s called a Ford in the stream. This is not Ford building a battery plant in Marshall. This is Ford a low. So, what a Ford is, is a low spot of the stream where you can walk across it or Ford across the river or the stream or the creek. And so, as they come to this spot, and this is a low spot in the Jabbok River, this is actually a photo of it. And so, a good possibility, this is where this happened. He has to send and make sure that all of his flocks and all of his herds get across the stream and none of them are lost.

And he has to make sure that they all get across the river and his family and his goods and his possessions safely. And so, he is standing there in the back, just taking care of things, taking it all in, and they all cross and they crest over the hill and they go out of sight. And he has this poignant existential moment where he realizes here, he is all alone and everything that just crossed the river might be lost. And here he is all alone, right where he was 20 years ago when he left his father’s house with nothing and escaped as a refugee up to his uncle’s place hundreds of miles away. And here he is again 20 years later with nothing to show, for right back where he started. He’s feeling what many of you have felt if you’ve ever been widowed or if you’ve ever declared bankruptcy, or if you’ve ever had an empty nest all of a sudden, and you’re like right back where we started.

We’re starting all over. And that’s kind of the feeling he has. And it’s important to realize that one, he’s doing what God told him to do in spite of his protests, but he’s wrestling with God emotionally and mentally, and then he wrestles with God physically. It is a bizarre account, I get it. But it is like this landmark moment in the Old Testament, the story of Jacob wrestling with God. We read about it in Genesis 32.

4 So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. 25 When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. 26 Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”

But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

“Jacob was left alone and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.” So all night long, the wrestling, and “when the man saw that he could not overpower Jacob, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hips so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man.” Sounds like a dirty move.” And then the man said, ”Let me go for it is daybreak. We’ve been wrestling all night long.”
Genesis 32

THEOPHANY
This is ridiculous. Let me go. But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go and unless you bless me”, and then we get an insight into just how resilient and just no quit in him. Jacob is no bless me. And then after this moment, we see this whole encounter that you just heard from Grant in the reading that this is God, he’s wrestling with God and he renames this place from, it is kind of a word, play from pen to Peni-el in Hebrew. And Peni-el means face of God. And he says, I’ve seen God face to face and yet I lived. And this place becomes Peni-el, right there on the banks of the Jabbok river, Jacob and the Jabbok.

WRESTLING
And okay, so we hear that and there’s a lot to unpack there. The first being he wrestled with God and this was God face to face and the whole testament. But this is not the only time. And we’d also deduce that because this is not the only time in scripture where we see God in the flesh before Jesus. We see this with Abraham. Jacob’s grandfather sees God and interacts with him and then actually gives God a 10th of everything he owns and worships him. So, he gives a tithe a 10th to him and worships God for who he is. We also see it here with Jacob, but we also see it with people like Gideon. We see it in the book of Daniel. There’s another one in the fire. Maybe you’ve heard that song or read that story before in the fiery furnace that this is just God before in bodily form, before the incarnation of Christ, who is God in the flesh God with us.

And so it’s kind of just to recognize that this is God is important for us to be able to unpack everything else in the text. And then the next thing we just got to talk about is this whole thing wrestling. This is a famous wooden engraving of this account of the wrestling. And obviously he took with the phrase angel of the Lord, but there’s Jacob in a picturesque, serene setting with palm trees in the background. I think those are pyramids down there or something. I don’t know what’s going on. But then you got Jacob and he’s in this very picturesque pose. He’s got his gun show out, he’s flexing his biceps there and they’re all looking very statuesque and pretty. Have you guys ever wrestled?

My older brother growing up on a daily occurrence would go Hulk Hogan on me, right? And our living room would turn into a WE, right? And I received many a people’s elbow in my lifetime, and that is not what wrestling looks like. And by the way, he’s my older brother. When I turned like 16, 17, I was finally old enough and I finally beat him. And then we never wrestled again. Imagine that. So, the last wrestling match was the best wrestling match just for the record, Rick. Anyway, so that’s not when my brother is wrestling with me or when you’ve wrestled, you don’t look like that. You saw in fact what wrestling looks like two weeks ago in the Olympics. So, take a look. This is what wrestling looks like. You use your neck to try to overpower your opponents, and this is what wrestling looks like.

Go next slide please. You get to a point where you’re not sure whose body part is who, you’re so twisted and contorted up and you’re using your ear and you’re yelling and saliva and you’re fighting or take a look at this one. This feels inappropriate in church actually, I feel like, I dunno if this doesn’t feel appropriate or something, but this is what Jacob and God are doing all night long. They’re wrestling, and you find yourself in uncompromising positions for long periods of time that’s wrestling. And that’s important to keep in mind because this is not fighting. This is not a fight trying to hurt and harm one another. This is wrestling. What is wrestling? You’re trying to overpower one another, not necessarily harm one another, but to bring them to a point of submission. Subduing your enemy, overpowering them until they cry, uncle or tap, tap.

STRUGGLES WITH GOD
And then you have to say, mom, to get us really stopped. But to a point where you’re not trying to end the person. It’s not a fight, it’s is not boxing, it’s wrestling. And that kind of gets to how we can apply and find hope in the story because after they wrestle and Jacob refuses to quit, God renames him from Jacob to Israel. And Israel means Israel to struggle an L with God. Jacob is renamed Israel, and this is a name actually that Jewish people have held onto as an identity to help them understand tragedies like the exile or the Holocaust. We are people who struggles with God and Jacob is the forefather of our faith. He is Jacob who has 12 sons that become the 12 tribes of Israel and there’s 12 disciples. And Jacob is a patriarch. Jacob is a patriarch of the faith.

FAITH
And so it should not surprise us that also if you are in a season right now where you are having struggles with God, you are in good company because faith struggles with God. Yes, faith is sometimes an image of climbing a staircase and you can’t see the top step or sitting in a chair and trusting that it’s going to hold you up or faith is like a gift that you open. And all of those things are true. It’s absolutely true. Faith is being certain of what you hope for sure, of what you hope for and certain of what you do not see. All of those things are true. But faith sometimes is like being in a half Nelson. Faith is a wrestling match with God at times. Faith struggles with God. And if you’re going through that right now, what you’re going through is it’s not uncommon. There’s a poet from the 16 hundreds named John Dunn and he wrote this, I love this poem. It’s longer, but here’s how it starts out. And he gets to this struggling, this wrestling with God. He says:

Batter my heart, three-person’d God,

For you as yet, but knock, breathe, shine and seek to mend,

That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me and bend,

You are force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

FAITH WRESTLES WITH GOD

A FRIEND WRESTLES
A couple weeks ago I was talking to a friend who was going through some stuff and it was like a season where God wasn’t doing what he wanted him to do and God was doing what he didn’t want him to do and he was just struggling with it and kind of confessing it to me. And I said, kind of flippantly, but I said, sounds like you’re maturing. He was like, what do you mean? And I apologized. I’m like, I don’t mean to be insensitive or indifferent to what you’re going through, it’s just that sometimes faith isn’t mountaintop experiences and warm fuzzies and blessings on blessings over and over. Sometimes faith is wrestling with God. And I thought about that conversation as I was preparing this message that yeah, sometimes it’s wrestling with God because faith struggles with God. It’s a collision of your will and his will. And that’s why we pray thy will be done.

JESUS WRESTLES
And in fact, that’s why we see in Jesus. I mean, don’t you think he’s wrestling with God when he’s in the garden of Gethsemane, kneeling down, sweating, bleeding and exhausted saying, God, if there’s any other way to do this, take this cup from me. And he says, what? Yet? Not what

I will, but thy will be done. And he surrenders, tap, tap am out, and he goes to a cross to die for us and rises from the grave to live for us. It’s a wrestling match.

HOW ARE YOU WRESTLING WITH GOD RIGHT NOW?

And so I know in this room right now, there are people who are struggling with God. And so since we’re not yet in small groups and small groups, don’t start in September, this is exactly the kind of a question we would be asking in small groups as we sit with one another in a living room talking about this. Here’s the question that I think we need to process together. How are you wrestling with God right now? How are you wrestling with God right now? So here’s what I’d like you to do. We’re going to have a little small group moment. Turn to the people around you, the people sitting next to you, introduce yourselves and talk to your spouse or whatever, and just take a few moments and answer this question, how are you wrestling with God right now? Go ahead. So I see that there’s some people you’re like, I am kind of not really right now. And then there’s some of you that keep on talking and keep on going. And I know that this is not a wrestling is a season. If you are in season right now where you are struggling with God or wrestling with God right now,

REMINDER
There’s good news in this. This is what I think the story gives to us is hope while you wrestle. And here’s the good news. If God was angry at you or God hated you, he would avoid you altogether or he would assault you and end you. But your wrestling with God means he’s with you close enough that you can wrestle with one another and you wrestle not just because he’s with you, but he loves you. He loves you. And this is what happens with any relationship where you come together, you eventually have a collision of will like this. I mean, you don’t have a collision of will with most random people that you see on the street or strangers or whatever because you’re not close enough. It’s when you get into close relationship with people that you eventually have these points of conflict that you have to iron out. That means you’re growing in your relationship with each other and it’s because you love each other, but those points of conflict mean that you’re growing closer. If you don’t think that that’s the truth, then try to tell a toddler they can’t have Doritos for breakfast

Or a preteen that they can’t have a cell phone yet. Or tell your spouse that you don’t like that color of paint for your kitchen. That’s a knockdown drag out. And that means that you’re close enough to wrestle with one another, to struggle through something and that you’re with each other, but it also means that you love each other. What you’re trying to do is you’re trying to figure out what’s best for both of you. And that’s what it means when you and God are coming together. You’re trying to figure out what’s best for both of you, both you and him. And so if you’re wrestling with God right now, here’s the hope I want to give to you. Listen, he’s with you and he loves you. Let’s pray. 

PRAYER
Heavenly Father, I pray for any person right now who can hear the sound of my voice that is in a season right now where they are wrestling with you. They’re in a struggle, the back and forth of your will versus their will. And God, I don’t know how this situation will work itself out, but we know that you work all things for the good of those who love you, that you are stronger than us and we cannot overpower you. And yet you’re good and you’re kind, and you ask us to pray to you and to seek you out. And so God is, as they wrestle with you, just remind them that you are with them and that you love them.

And we pray now this prayer that your Son taught us to pray. Sometimes we don’t know what to pray. We can always pray this prayer. But even in this prayer, we submit and surrender to your will, trusting in into you, trusting in your mercy and in your goodness. And so we join our voices together saying, our Father, who arts in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come and thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.