How do you like to be alone with God, dear reader? No doubt if you are unsaved, it would make you very afraid, and Satan, the enemy of our souls, will do all he can to keep you from it. He will try to keep you so busy with other things such as school, work, or pleasure, that you will not have any time to think about eternity. Your sins make you fear the presence of God, and Satan knows that if you feel how awful they are in God’s sight, you will never rest until you know that they are gone. In spite of your busy life, we would ask you, dear unsaved reader, to get quietly before God on your knees right now. You will find that although He hates your sins, He loves you, and in love He has provided salvation for lost sinners. His Word declares that “The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1:77The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe. (John 1:7)). When you have received Him as your Saviour, then you will know that your sins are gone, and you will be able to rejoice in His presence and feel at home on your knees before Him.
Wrestling With the Lord
In our chapter we find that after Jacob had sent his wives and all that he had over the brook Jabbok, he himself was left alone, and yet he was not alone, for “there wrestled a man with him until the break of day.” An unsaved person, as we have remarked, is afraid of the presence of God, but it is also sadly true that even a believer, if careless in his ways, will feel uneasy when alone with God. Sin always makes cowards of us, and Jacob, though a man of faith, had unconfessed sin in his life which made him very unhappy.
Perhaps some of our readers may be wondering why the Lord wrestled with Jacob. Now Jacob had been away from the Lord in his soul for twenty years, and God was working in His own way to bring him back. God’s way of restoring him was not an easy one, for often the Lord has to deal very sternly with His own in order to bring them back to Himself, but it is always in love. It is “whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth” (Hebrews 12:66For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. (Hebrews 12:6)). He loves His children too well to allow them to go on in their own ways, and if the Lord is allowing trouble in your life, dear reader, it is because He loves you just as He loved Jacob through all those twenty years of failure. He was wrestling with Jacob in order to bring the “break of day” into his life. Long before this the sun had set upon him and he had laid down to sleep, but here at last the sun arose, and the day broke upon him.
The Full Joy of Salvation
If the one who reads these lines is away from the Lord, there is a message for you in our chapter. Do not go on one moment longer without getting alone in your room with God. He wants to wrestle with you, and bring “the break of day” into your life. Will you, too, be in earnest and “wrestle in prayer” with God, admitting all that has come in? Hide nothing, for He knows it all. He loves you and wants you to have the joy of His salvation. He wants your joy to be full, and it cannot be while you are going after the empty and sinful pleasures of this poor world. One who is saved is spoiled for this world, because he has changed his citizenship. He belongs to Heaven, and his home is there.
Further Meditation
1. What happened to Jacob after he sent his wives and all that he had over the brook Jabbok?
2. The king Manasseh had a very wicked life. However, the Lord used some extreme circumstances in his life to eventually bring him to repentance. What did the Lord use to restore Manasseh?
3. The simple pamphlet Repentance by H. P. Barker is a wonderul introduction to that vital subject.