40 Minutes In The Old Testament - The God Fighter: Live from the Encountering Jesus Conference (Episode 433)

Episode Date: September 19, 2024

Enjoy this special live episode recorded at the Encountering Jesus Conference in Flower Mound Texas with guest host Erick Sorensen. Have a listen. Show Notes: ·       Support 1517 Podcast Network ·       1517 Podcasts ·       1517 on Youtube ·       1517 Podcast Network on Apple Podcasts ·       1517 Events Schedule ·       1517 Academy - Free Theological Education   What's New from 1517: ·       Junk Drawer Jesus By Matt Popovits ·       Listen to 1517 Executive Director Scott Keith and Magnus Persson on the latest Re:Formera podcast ·       Signup For Free Advent Church Resources for 2024 ·       The Inklings: Apostles and Apologists of the Imagination with Sam Schuldheisz ·       Hitchhiking with Prophets: A Ride Through the Salvation Story of the Old Testament by Chad Bird   More from the hosts: ·       Daniel Emery Price ·       Chad Bird

Hey friends, it's Matt Popovitz. For far too many, faith has become a burden, just another frustrating part of life filled with obligation and expectation. They're wondering, why am I holding on to it? In my new book, Junk Drawer Jesus, we examine the spiritual clutter we've collected that bogs us down and wears us out. It's a guide to making space again for grace, to tossing the clutter and keeping Christ. Order your copy of Junk Drawer Jesus today and join me in rejecting the mess

and rediscovering the simplicity of Christ for you. All right. Thanks for having us out. I'll start the way that, you know, we always start. Welcome to 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is, of course, a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast. Check it all out.

The other podcasts are over there. And while you're over there, you can check out everything else that 1517 is doing, which is, of course, a lot of stuff. the theme of this event uh which of course is you know encountering jesus and then we're going to do an old testament podcast how you may ask are we going to pull this off how are we going to find a story to talk about where someone encounters jesus but we're going to be in the old testament to do it well if you've listened to 40 minutes in the old testament at all you know that this actually wasn't that difficult of a task. It was actually a matter of which one of the

Christophanies are we going to decide to talk about. And so we decided to go with one that we wanted to make this easy for Chad. You know, he's got a lot going on. So we decided we would go with Jacob wrestling God, or as you might come to find out, wrestling Jesus, which Chad also wrote a book on. So he should know, just so you know, he should know something about this. And so we're going to find out. So we are going to be, if you want to follow along, or it's fine if you just want to listen, but we're going to be in Genesis 32. What's the background, Chad, before we get to Jacob actually having an all-night wrestling match with the creator of heaven and earth? Yeah, so this is, I like to describe this as the bookend to the first part of his exile. So

If you know Jacob's story, he has to leave when he steals his brother's birthright because his brother wants to kill him, and so he takes off into exile. But what's the first thing that happens to him as soon as he leaves? He has this vision, this dream vision, at night, when he's alone, where God appears to him. This is the whole stairway to heaven with angels ascending and descending. So that's how the exile starts. Jacob alone at night God appears to him speaks to him fast forward 20 years he's been in exile got married got married got married you get it so he's a busy guy worked out great for him

worked out great for him yeah yeah so got the two wives got the two co-wives got this growing family problems with his uncle, father-in-law, boss, wrapped in one person. Common experience for us all. That was a joke. So anyway, he's coming home, right? It's been 20 years. And so we're at the end of the exile. And once again, in Genesis 32, Jacob is alone.

It's at night. God is going to appear to him. but this time he's going to do more than simply speak to him, as we shall see. So I'd like to put those two together so you can see that when God appears to Jacob and talks to him or does something to him, it's not always the same. And this event in itself is not only not the same compared to what Jacob has experienced elsewhere, this never happens in the rest of the Scriptures. nothing like this ever occurs in the old testament or the new testament a very a very unique

experience somebody that kind of kind of sets the stage he's gonna he's already afraid of esau uh we've heard a little bit about that early in the chapter and he's going to encounter esau in the very next chapter but this is a little segue between those the fear and the actual encounter So to kind of set it up, I'll just read the first couple of verses here. So Genesis 32, beginning at verse 22. Now he, that is Jacob, arose that same night and took his two wives and his two maids and his 11 children and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. So they're almost in, Jabbok is on the east side of the Jordan River, so they're not quite over the Jordan River. And he took them, his family, and sent them across the stream, and he sent across whatever he had, and then Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.

So, you can jump in there, Eric. I have nothing to add here except I remember when I first started reading my Bible, like, for real. I was like, I'm going to do it. I'm going to read the whole thing. and coming to this passage and getting to that line and being like what what is happening here yeah that's all i have to add at this point no it really does yeah well it leads to all kinds of questions uh now this is probably not the question foremost in most people's minds but as as a father who raised a son who wrestled in high school one of the things that jumps out to me is

all night but if you've watched if you've wrestled or if you watch wrestling matches these kids are in the prime of their life they're full of energy and after three or four minutes they're done they're wiped out these guys are like going at it all night long so that struck me but the really the weird part of this is who's this guy right yeah a man now you might be thinking oh well the hebrew is going to solve this question right just look at the hebrew hebrew doesn't help here. The Hebrew is ish, which just means, guess what? A man. So he's a man. Now, I don't want to steal too much of my own thunder, but if you take this narrative and you compare it with Hosea 12, which also reflects upon this same incident, you figure out that this, what do you want to call it,

individual figure. It's called three things. Ish, a man. Later in Genesis 32, he's referred to as Elohim, which is the Hebrew word for God. Jacob will say, I have seen, he calls the place Peniel, which means the face of God. So El, I've seen God. So he's a man and he's God. And then Hosea adds that he is a messenger, which in Hebrew is malah, often translated angel, just means messenger so there you go he's a man he is god and he is evidently sent with a message from god he's all three of these hmm let's ponder who might that be let's see god and man yeah maybe we'll come to it all right just kind of sit there think about it as we as we work our way through the through the rest of this well i'll tell you what's weird is that he doesn't ever give him

this message like the message is just wrestling all night like the uh this is the part that's weird about it is you don't have you don't have any uh build up to this it's just jacob's alone and now he's going to wrestle this guy all night like you don't know did he sit what do you say did you say nothing did jacob yeah did jacob just lay his head down and next thing he knew like he got pounced and then like it's just wrestling all night long no words i mean the first words that you have spoken are not till when well god well jesus says hey uh it's about to be it's been all night man and then jacob's like yeah it's going to be all day too unless talking a little smack yeah that's it that's it but what is this message exactly and uh so

that part is pretty strange but it's not entirely weird i got jumped once and they didn't say any words before they did their jumping so uh like i've experienced you're just gonna tease us with that story okay that's that after you have to be like behind the paywall i guess to hear the rest of the story okay all right so uh so he jumps him and they wrestle until until daybreak so verse 25 let's figure out what else happens and when he saw and i'm just going to add the who the he is because hebrew is frustratingly ambiguous sometimes the pronouns and he did this to him and then he did this to them and then they like who are we talking about here so i'm going to add who these he's and him's are when i read it and when the man saw that jacob had not prevailed

against him the man touched the socket of jacob's thigh and so the socket of jacob's thigh was dislocated while he wrestled with him. Now, if there's one message that is abundantly clear in this verse, it's this. God doesn't fight fair. Now, we laugh until that like hits us where it hurts, right? Until it's like, until we're the one who's being attacked all night, and we realize God doesn't fight, he doesn't fight fair. He doesn't fight according to our rules. He doesn't play according to what people say you should and you shouldn't do. You know, we come up with a list of divine rules. This is what we think God should do and what God should not do. And God laughs because he doesn't play by our rules. And sometimes

when he doesn't play by our rules, we're like, yeah, love that. You know, sometimes we don't know what to do because we feel attacked and we don't know what in the world God might be doing, but we just know one thing, we don't like it because it hurts, because it's confusing, because nothing is happening according to the way that we think that it should happen. And also what this shows is that oftentimes God will let us wrestle with him for quite some time thinking that we actually may even have the advantage. Like he'll let it go for a while. He'll let us wrestle with him for a while. He'll let us run from him for a while. He might, but at any point at any moment he can and completely paralyzes in that moment

yeah yeah dislocate that that thigh which is which is another thing to bring out God wounds he heals but he also but he also wounds I mean that's straight from that's that's straight from the Bible straight from Deuteronomy that's job yeah that's job i wound and i heal i put to death and also bring to life so he does he does both of these things and it's great when he heals it's great it's great when he gives life but it's not so much fun when he wounds it's not so much fun when he puts to death but in order to achieve the healing sometimes he has to dislocate that thigh in order to bring us back to life again sometimes he has to put us in the grave this is the way that god works not just in

jacob's life but repeatedly in the scriptures he puts down in order to lift up he wounds in order that he might that he might heal which is one of the reasons that i love jacob's story because jacob is so much of a reflection of what it means to be a follower of christ i mean everything every All of his weaknesses and his foibles and his selfishness and his egotism, I mean, all of that's hard for us to identify with. Okay, there it came. Took a second. What do you got there?

Yeah, I mean, I see Jacob as I typically, when I'm covering his entire life, I'll point out that one of the reasons that I'm so attracted to Jacob is because he is so unlikable. and all those unlikable traits that i see in jacob i also see reflected in myself but the real beauty of jacob's life is that no matter where he's at or what he's doing god won't leave him alone he's always there just like he's always there he's always there for us and that's why i love him as an example of what it means to be a follower of christ because he exemplifies our worst qualities and he also his life also exemplifies god's gracious and merciful qualities

in forgiving him and blessing him and shepherding his life through all of its ups and ups and downs this is another example of why it's problematic to you know what we've talked oftentimes about that kind of sunday school material that presents old testament figures as sort of heroes to emulate and sometimes like there's people that do come off sort of more heroic and maybe worthy of emulation than others. Jacob just kind of puts that whole way of reading the Old Testament to bat. I mean, because he really, as you're saying,

is not the kind of guy you probably want to hang out with. Yeah, he's kind of a jerk. His name literally means deceiver. I mean, it's like... I definitely don't want to be related to him. Yeah, it's never worked out well. Don't want to be his brother, that's for sure. Don't want to be his brother.

yeah yeah that's uh that is our that's our friend jacob i think in in uh in 40 minutes what have we encountered like two people maybe three the entire time we're like yeah it seems like a pretty good person yeah that's only because they have so little to say about them yeah if you met if you met him in real life you'd be like i don't know about this person but at least in what we're told the Bible, they seem like they're, yeah, a pretty decent person. Okay, where are we at? 26. Then he said, this is Jacob speaking. No, this is the messenger speaking. Then the messenger said, or the man said, let me go, for the dawn is breaking. And Jacob said, I will not let you go unless you bless me. Now, doesn't that sound just like Jacob? Heel grabber. Yeah, he's the heel

grabber. He's not going to, he's not going to let him, you're not going to let him go. I mean, if there's one thing that you learn about Jacob right away in his life is that he is going to take advantage of every opportunity that's given to him. I mean, the very first encounter that we have where Jacob speaks is when he and his brother are growing up and Esau comes in from the field and he's famished he's kind of a you know he's kind of a drama queen oh i'm dying you know i've got to eat or i'm gonna die on the spot and then jacob takes immediate takes this opportunity and he's like okay sell me your birthright first thing right he knows what to do and then he makes him swear and of course the next chapter you have where he deceives his father and he knows exactly

what to say exactly what to do there with with mom's help so jacob definitely takes advantage of these opportunities that are presented to him. And here is no different. He doesn't say, okay, I see the sun's coming up. I'll let you go. Nope, not going to let you go unless you bless me. You don't want to wrestle all night for nothing. That's true, you got to get something out of it.

I'm getting something out of this. What Kelsey talked about earlier, you got a reward. Yeah. Some kind of reward. I could have let you go a long time ago. I'm trying to get something here. So 27. so the messenger says to him what is your name which i just love so like he didn't ask this out

of ignorance like he didn't really realize he was wrestling with all night who are you anyway i know we've been at this for quite a while but i forgot to introduce myself he wants jacob to say his name because as eric just pointed out jacob's name yaakov is formed from akav or akav which means your heel. But the verbal form means to grab something by the heel. An example I like to use is, anyone grow up steer roping? No, no steer ropers in the room. Well, I did. I was raised by a cowboy father, and so I could ride a horse before I could ride a bicycle. And my dad and I were steer ropers. We were headers. But you know, you have a header and you have a healer. Yeah. and the purpose of the header is to rope the horns and then you dial in you turn and you're pulling

steer along and the healer comes along and his purpose is to throw the rope so that he catches the heels of the steer with the result that he's caught right you're tripping up you're tripping up the steer that's jacobing healing is jacobing you're wanting to trip up something to grab it by the heels in order you can stop whatever you're pursuing and get ahead. And so, as I like to say, Jacob always lived down to his name. That's what he was doing. So, the brothers Harry and Heel, Jacob and Esau, Heel was always living down to exactly what his name meant. So, when the messenger says to him, what's your name? He wants Jacob to remember exactly the implications of that. And so he responds, Yaakov, Jacob.

Now verse 28. So he said, your name shall no longer be heel, but God-fighter. I'd say that's pretty good to prove it, right? Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Yisrael, for you have striven with God or fought with God and with men and have prevailed so if jacob needs healed then you have israel yes i'll in hebrew which is formed from two different words the el part at the end is god l which is shortened form you can have l you have elohim they both mean god and then the first part is from the verb sarah which means to

strive with to to fight with so israel i think is the coolest name ever i mean chad's a pretty a cool name. Dan's a cool name. Eric's a cool name. But Israel? I mean, Godfighter? No, but what's your name? Most folks call me Godfighter. Okay. And this, I mean, once again goes to show that as we continue on in the Old Testament, God never has sort of any illusions about what the broader people israel are going to be like this this striving and fighting and wrestling with god is laid out for us through all of his descendants i mean throughout all of the old testament you see the same thing yeah yeah so israel israel in that sense lives up to down to their name yeah yeah god is uh there's no insecurities with god like ego is all based

out of insecurity and he doesn't have any of that so like even god's saying to jacob i'm gonna change your name to to god fighter because you know you won it's like preposterous right well you won okay so i'm going to change your name god just doesn't have any it's not he doesn't feel like oh this threatens me in some way like i guess you're god now jacob since you know you beat me and everything it's gotta be said in the same way that i said it to my boys when they we used to wrestle when they're little yeah like oh you pinned me you know yeah it's i think it's exactly like that god's like well you you you win and so you see sort of this this way that god is wrestling all night with with jacob and obviously i mean he dislocates his hip with by any time he

wants to just by touching it and he can do far worse than this obviously if he wants to but mostly uh wants to endure endure to the end here to get to this place where he can change his name and going to change kind of everything about jacob in this moment and you're going to see too that jacob then tries to do the same thing with god like oh what's your name and god's you don't have a response other than god we're about to get there but other than God saying, why do you ask me that? Which is the same as, like, you know who it is. Like, I'm not going to tell you my name.

You know exactly what's going on here. Yeah, when I think about, well, there's many different thoughts about his name and kind of the history afterward. I mean, you can go to, like, the biblical history, like you were alluding to. What did Israel do constantly with God? Well, they fight, right? They fight with him in a negative sort of way. I mean, I suppose you could fight with God positively,

but israel is always fighting with god in a negative sort of way and the whole subsequent history of the old testament is full of examples of that now what i like to do with that name too is is kind of thinking in bigger terms think about the entire salvation story so you've got jacob wrestling with god here in a temporarily assumed human form okay now fast forward to the New Testament. I would argue that the entire ministry of Jesus could be summed up under that title of fighting with God. Because what finally happens, so this is kind of, this is my big theory about everything from Genesis to Revelation, that when people fight other people, say Cain fighting with his brother, with Abel, or other people fighting with other people, a lot of times what's

happening is the person that they are fighting against is God in effigy, because people are really mad at God, but they can't get their hands on God, so they get their hands on somebody else. I mean, we're all familiar with, you know, people lashing out at others because they're filled full of self-hatred, right? A lot of times you have kind of this God hatred, but here's the problem. you can't get your hands on God. Cain was not really mad at his brother. Cain was mad at God but he couldn't get his hands on God's throat to choke him out so instead he got his hands on his brother. So a lot of what we see in the world with regard to anger, violence, bloodshed is nothing more than people transforming their vertical hatred for God horizontally so they take it out

on the people who are around them. It's a theology problem in other words. Violence at its root is a theology problem. People are mad at gods that take out their anger on other people. That's what happened with Cain and Abel, and that ultimately takes us to the Gospels. So what happens there? Well, now it turns out God has flesh and blood. Turns out you can actually get your hands now on God. Well, just imagine what humanity is going to do when they can actually get their hands on God, what are they going to do? Kill him. Yeah, they're going to kill him. And that's exactly what you see prefigured all throughout the Old Testament. Now, this is the real beauty, though. I mean, that part's ugly. Humanity kills God. That part is certainly

ugly. But here's the real beauty. If you look at the ministry of Jesus, it's the ministry of people wrestling with him, his own people fighting him, wrestling with him, until finally they pin him quite literally to the cross and he lets them do it so that he can lose and in him losing we win that so the way I like to describe what's happening in this part of Genesis is that this is a keyhole and you're looking through it and what you see on the other side of that is the room of the crucifixion where finally humanity gets their hands on god they fight him they pin him he willingly loses in order that you might win and in winning god gets what he wants and he bestows on

us a new name as well we get to be called the beloved of god the forgiven of god the children of god part of the bride of christ so it's talking about god not having ego i mean it's amazing god is like oh yeah i'm i'm down for losing i am i'm all about that because i know that in losing my people will will win the first becoming last and last becoming first and this is like when jesus says this sort of stuff he's ultimately talking about himself so the last is everybody and the first is him and he's going to reverse this whole thing right so he was going to become last so that everybody else can become first because he's not afraid of losing yeah oh you and you see hints of that all throughout the old testament one of that one of those hints is how

often you see barren people suddenly be given the the gift of children how often you see the firstborn suddenly get reversed and the second born becomes the child of blessing so this this This picture is a theme all throughout the Scriptures where God is constantly reversing the natural order, the things that we assume are natural, in order to bless us in ways that we never really anticipated or even thought we needed. Yeah. So, we're at verse 29, then Jacob asked him and said, please tell me your name. And this is what Dan was alluding to earlier.

He responds, why do you want to know? Why is it that you ask my name? Which is a typical Jesus response, isn't it? You know, he never responds in the way that we expect him to. We've already seen that in a lot of the presentations, you know, where people will say something to Jesus or ask him something, and he never responds in the way that you think that a normal human being would respond. So here, too, why do you ask my name?

and that this actually fits with uh the account in the book of judges when he appears to the parents of samson and they want to know who this is too and his name is wonderful that is it's beyond comprehension so that's uh that's how he responds with regard to jacob's question okay verse 30 by the way his name is jesus the thing is is that like since like gabriel can come and like said hey you're going to name this He doesn't tell anyone in the Old Testament his name. That's reserved for the opening chapters of Matthew. So until then, he's just like, you don't need to know.

You'll find out. Yeah, you'll find out. Sooner or later. And he just blesses him. I mean, no more discussion. Yeah. There's no more dialogue. No more discussion.

You're done. Yeah. Speaking of that, something I forgot to mention. So this is kind of a, this is interesting about the name change. So who else, who other, what other names are changed before this? You remember? Abraham. Okay, so Abraham, when we meet him, he's Abram. And then he gets changed to Abraham. And his wife's named Sarai, but she gets changed to Sarah. Now, here's an interesting fact about these name changes. If you look at all the other subsequent occurrences of Abraham's name,

it's always Abraham. He's never called Abram again. Every time he's Abraham. You look at the occurrences of sarah after her name has changed she's never called sarai again she's always called sarah but if you began in genesis 33 and you keep reading the story of this guy whose name was just changed over half the time he's not referred to as israel he's still referred to as jacob so as here's the way i think about it he was he was given a new name to be sure but it's more like he was given a second name. So now you're no longer just Jacob, you're also Israel. And there's really no discernible difference between the usages. In fact, these would be like woven together, one verse he's Jacob and one verse he's Israel. Now this is, this is probably reading way too

much into this, but this is what I, the point I like to make with regard to this name change, and that is that jacob remained jacob even after he was israel just like all of us when we're brought to christ we're given a new name now you are christian now you are righteous now you are forgiven now you're a saint of god and you're also still a sinner you're also still unrighteous in and of yourself. You also still have sin. In and of yourself, you're still Jacob. You're still a heel. Sorry, but you're still a heel. But you're also, at the same time, Israel. You're also Christian. You're forgiven. You're a saint. And so even in that way, carrying these two names, both of which have a history, both of which have a meaning, both of which have an implication,

we also learn a little bit about ourselves as well verse 30 so jacob named the place pineal for he said i have seen god face to face which is what that name means the face of god yet my life has been preserved now why does he add that last little bit yet my life has been preserved because if you see god what's supposed to happen to you you die in fact even it says if you see my face then you will die and yet here he is still living and breathing and not only living and breathing but he's got a great new name too so what what gives here well what gives here is i mean we've been talking about this all through kind of between the lines that this is one more instance, where God places himself into a position where people can see him, he adapts himself to

their capability to see him so that they actually will not be destroyed when this happens. And the way that he does this in this narrative is not by appearing as a flaming fire inside a bush like he does in Exodus 3 or in any of the number of other ways that he does this. What he does here is he appears as an actual flesh and blood man. I mean, flesh and blood enough to where he's wrestling, and you can't get much more flesh and blood than that. So this is one more instance where, as Dan pointed out at the very beginning, you have a Christophany. That is the appearance of christ in the old testament so he is appearing here with this human form that's capable of you know brawn and sweat and wrestling and all this kind of stuff as a foreshadowing of what's going

to happen in his incarnation when he takes on our flesh and blood so that when you see god when you see Jesus, you can say, there's Peniel. There's the face of God right there. There's the fullness of God incarnate for us, so that when we see Jesus, we don't see most of God. When you see Jesus, you don't see 99% of God. There's no 1% of God that's hiding behind the back of Jesus. The fullness of God is in Him. So, if you want to know what Jesus, if you want to know what God is like, then you simply look at Jesus. That's the full disclosure. I'm just reminded

of, of course, that marvelous passage from John 1, John 1, 14, where, describing Jesus, he says, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen his glory, something that in the Old Testament was the force behind what

killed sinners. Glory as of the only Son from the Father, but what is he full of? Grace and truth. Yeah. Verse 31. Now the sun rose upon him just as he crossed over Penuel, and he was limping on his thigh. Therefore, to this day, the sons of Israel do not eat the sinew of the hip, which is on the socket of the thigh, because he touched the socket of Jacob's thigh in the sinew of the hip, which is something all of you are just fascinated by. Like, wow, an epiphany. Why was this included?

Right? This is, it's kind of a strange thing. You know, you're, you're going through the narrative. It's, it's, it's a very, it's very brief. It's packed with a lot of stuff. It's fascinating. And then you would think at the climax of this, you're going to get a like this, you know, it's good. It's going to be an awesome ending. And you're like, what? That's why you don't eat that part of the hip. That's really the way you're going to wrap up this fascinating story. Well, I think it is. So this is, this is why I think that this was actually a perfect ending to this story. Y'all ready? So let's say you're looking generations down the road. And a father and a son are, they're butchering a sheep or whatever they are. They're

dealing with cutting up the very parts of the animal. And the son says, what about this part, dad? And dad, oh no, no, we don't, we don't eat that, that part of the animal. And the son says, why is that? And dad says, let me tell you a story. And the story he tells is this one about Jacob wrestling and what God did to Jacob's hip that day. And in that way, the memory of this encounter and of Jacob's injury and probably his lifelong limp afterward becomes a living memory in the heart of God's people. Because, and this is my main takeaway from this part of it, Because God never wants us to forget our woundedness as a result of where he touched us that resulted in a limp that we still have to this day.

I think it's good for us to ever keep fresh in our minds our wounds and our scars and our limps because these become the way in which we remember our own weakness and our own woundedness and God's strength and his healing in our lives. See, there's a lot of bad things that have happened to us. What do we like to do with the bad things that have happened to us? Shove them deep inside. Keep it deep inside. Don't let anybody see it.

Don't let yourself see it, even though we all know that we see it, right? They like to keep that buried deep inside. This is the way I was taught. Yeah. That's the way I was taught. Like a real man. Real man. You keep it deep inside.

Well, this is not keeping it deep inside. This is stamping the memory of this occurrence upon every animal that is owned by an Israelite afterward. Don't eat that. Why not? Because of the limp. Because of the wound. Because of the divine encounter that Jacob had. So, we all have scars.

we all have wounds, we all have limps, and we have those for a reason. We have them, first of all, to remind ourselves of whatever encounter we had in life with God that left us that way. But it's not really for us.

The reason that we have these scars and wounds and limps is so that having been comforted by God and healed by God of what we went through, we can then turn around and we can say to our brother or to our sister.

I know what you're going through. And let me tell you about what God did for me when I went through that very same thing. And so it becomes an opportunity for us to be good stewards of our scars, good stewards of our lips, that we can show compassion, comfort, concern, and love to other people who are limping, who are wounded,

who are scarred. And that's why I think that narrative ends the way it does. Well, I'm sure. I mean, Jacob was walking around with a limp for the rest of his life. Who knows how many times he was asked by other people. What happened? Hey, how'd you get that limp? It's like you might imagine.

I've been asked a lot of times, what does that tattoo mean? What does that tattoo mean? And it's like right on your body. And some people, by the way, there's not that many interesting stories about any of these. So you don't need to ask me. It's not that interesting. But still, it gets asked a lot because it's right there and everyone can see it. And they're like, oh, what does that mean?

How did you get, why did you get that? And the same thing happens with the things we endure in life where someone may ask you then, how did you get that scar or how did you get that limp? Oh, well, and then, of course, I mean, can you imagine? Hey, where did you get that limp? Oh, I was wrestling with God one night. He jumped me out of nowhere, changed my name, gave me a blessing that is not in here. apparently that wasn't the important part and i've been limping ever since and then he would say yeah but seriously like how did you get it well really a great story but what actually happened

would you fall off of really though great story bro well this and to get back to your uh to both your guys's point i mean this is what the new testament also teaches i mean i've been the recipient of this i've been used in certain situations to share my own scars and my own pains to minister to people and this is the pattern that you see with god's church too if you go to second corinthians one right at the opening of that letter the apostle paul says blessed be the god and father of our lord jesus christ the father of mercies and god of all comfort who comforts us in all our affliction so that that's a purpose statement so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are

comforted by god so it's just part of the pattern yeah this is the way that this is the way that god works the way he worked in jacob's life that's the way that he works in our own lives and when you think about it who still had wounds even after his resurrection our lord and those wounds testify to not just his past but also to the life and the healing that we have in that past as well as our hope of full and complete resurrection healing in the life to come. Amen. That's it.

That's 40 minutes. That's a wrap. Guys, thanks for hanging out with us. We'll see you next week.