There are some beautiful truths contained in the mystery of Jacob at Peniel. It is clear, I judge, that his faith had failed. Instead of remembering the promise, and passing on in the quietness of faith, his soul, through unbelief, gets into great exercise. Instead of looking at God's host, he looks at Esau's host; he fears, and prays, and calculates, and settles all according to man's best device. Here was exercise when all should have been stillness. "Stand still, and see the salvation of the LORD." And often it is unbelief that raises exercise of spirit. There is such a thing as religious unbelief, praying unbelief. We have an instance of it here. Jacob was in exercise of heart; he was praying when he should have been still as a stone, asleep in the promise; for so God gives His beloved sleep. With all this, of course, the Lord is at issue. He has a controversy with all this.
Accordingly, He comes out to wrestle with Jacob. But this wrestling and all that accompanies it has deep meaning for the soul. I might look at this in a few particulars.
The first thing learned is that which I have already noticed, that the Lord has a quarrel with Jacob. So has He with us all. His truth or word addresses us in the very first instance, as those who have departed from Him, and with whom He has a very serious question to settle. In His Word, He withstands us to our face; He convicts us; He tells us that all is far indeed from being peace between Him and us.
But in the wondrous management of this quarrel, the Lord allows Jacob to prevail; and He has to sue for, and even purchase deliverance from, his grasp. So with us.
If the Lord pleased, He could consume us. He could let out His righteous anger and destroy us. The mere touch of His hand withered Jacob's thigh, so one charge of ten thousand would undo us, and leave us in hopeless condemnation. But He did not deal according to His strength with Jacob; neither does He deal with us sinners according to His righteousness. He allows Himself to be prevailed over. It is all His grace, all His own counsel and doing; but so it is. He allows Himself to be prevailed over, He has committed Himself to a promise which ties up His strength. He has revealed a gospel in the blood of His dear Son which decides His way toward us in peace. He cannot deny Himself. He has put Himself in such an attitude before us, that faith must prevail and get the blessing. No victory is so sure as when a willingly emptied and unresisting enemy is against us.
If I were to fight with a Goliath, knowing that he meant to lay aside his arrows and his strength, my victory would be surer than if I were to meet the weakest boy in the camp. For in the latter conflict, I should still have to measure the strength and to think of the chances, though they might be never so much on my side; but in the former conflict, I need not count on chances at all—the victory was already and altogether sure. So here with Jacob; so in the gospels with us sinners. We have to do with One who has laid aside His strength and His weapons of war, who says, "My terror shall not make thee afraid, neither shall My hand be heavy upon thee." Job 33:77Behold, my terror shall not make thee afraid, neither shall my hand be heavy upon thee. (Job 33:7). He has provided a way whereby He may fold up all His instruments of death, lay aside His righteousness and fiery vengeance of law, which He might so justly have drawn out against us; and He has given the sinner, like Jacob, to prevail for a blessing through that promise by which He has put Himself before us in an attitude of gracious or voluntary impotency.
The gospel, when He has taken up His position, hides all that would destroy us. And such is the way of this divine Stranger with Jacob here.
3) We then see the nature of the blessing. His name is now Israel, for he has power with God; and this secures him power over man, and all beside. And so it is with the believer. He can say all is his; he has got, through grace, the key to divine fullness; all that God is and has is for him. And he can, in the sense of this, say (as Jacob, after he became Israel, might have said of Esau), "If God be for us, who can be against us?" He is conscious of this. The sense of it is attached to him. In spirit he has power with God and with man, and has prevailed. Faith prevails. It hushes Sinai, it answers the accuser, it pleads Christ to the demands of the law, and thus satisfies them; it meets the Father in the Beloved, and delights Him; it shouts a triumph over death, because of Christ's resurrection; it assures itself of all glory, because of Christ's oneness with His poor people. The believer thus prevails.
We see the natural slowness in understanding this-in apprehending God in the gospel of His grace. "Tell me... Thy name," says Israel to God. This is to be rebuked. "Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after My name?" "Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known Me, Philip?" But in no other way will God be known, save in the blessing of the gospel, in the revelation of His grace in Christ. As the Lord here blesses Jacob in answer to the inquiry, What is Thy name? we are now to turn from other witnesses, and to learn "the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Cor. 4:66For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Corinthians 4:6)). We may be slow, like Jacob, but God is sure.
After this we see the happy issue of it all. Jacob now learns that he has been with God, and yet, a wonder to himself, his life is preserved. His thigh may halt, but his life is preserved. And all this gives us a striking view of the issue of a poor sinner's faith in the gospel, now simple, full, and established. He knows that he has the face of God bright upon him, not to consume, but to cheer and bless him. That glory that would have been intolerable to man or to flesh is welcome to the believer. He knows God's righteousness remains unmitigated; but he knows that he has it in Him, and thus no glory is too bright for him. He can see God and live. He can stand in His presence, and rejoice instead of tremble. He bears in his spirit, it is true, the pledge of being but a saved sinner-one whom God might righteously and easily have consumed, but one whom grace has put in a place, not of defeat, but of victory—not of death, but of life. He is a halting conqueror. Such was Jacob. Such is every believer. And such will he be forever. Life and victory will be his, but he will never forget that he is debtor to grace for it all.