We will now turn to another great crisis in Jacob's history. Will our reader study the thirty-second chapter of Genesis, giving special attention to the exercises of Jacob's soul there recorded. God would bring Jacob back to Bethel. The house of God and the gate of heaven should have been his dwelling-place, even as to-day our spiritual dwelling-place should be the heavenly places where Christ is. "Nye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above." (Col. 3:1, 21If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. 2Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. (Colossians 3:1‑2).) True, Jacob, as the record of this chapter is given, does not return so far as to Bethel, but we know he is on the journey there.
Now God has His wonderful ways, which He carries out with each one of His people. God was about to give Jacob power with Himself and with men. The believer needs power to overcome for God. But this power is never vested in a believer as of right: he is but a vessel to contain it, and does so according to his daily dependence on God. “We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us" (2 Cor. 4:77But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us. (2 Corinthians 4:7)); and when we are weak, then are we strong.
If God opens the heavens to us, we know that what is our portion there is also that of “all saints." “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ." (Eph. 1:33Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: (Ephesians 1:3).) The greatest, the highest, the most marvelous blessing-s, are as much for the weakest of all saints as for even Paul the apostle. But when we come to such a question as power, we have that which is distinctly personal and individual. God deals with the individual believer, working in him to will and to do of His good pleasure. Each and all of God's people will have the same heavenly home, but there is a vast difference between saint and saint on earth. Some are the prey of every passer-by; others are strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.
Now when Jacob, as we read in our chapter, had planned and arranged, according to the subtle wisdom of his soul, he still had, even as have all saints in the great crises of their lives, to deal with God alone. “And Jacob was left alone." (Gen. 32:2424And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. (Genesis 32:24).) At what we may call the hour of his conversion Jacob was alone: then God spoke to him. Nov, in the hour of this great crisis of his life, God allowed Jacob so to arrange his plans that when all his skill had exhausted itself, Jacob was again found alone, and once more it was night.
It is well to revive in our souls the memory of God's dealings with us. “Whoso is wise, and will observe these things, even they shall understand the loving-kindness of the Lord." (Ps. 107:43.) To go through this life without deeply pondering over the ways of God with us individually, shows a want of wisdom which tends toward spiritual insensibility. Nay, we would venture to say, in the light of such a psalm as that from which we have just quoted, that God expects His children to observe His dealings with them in their path on this earth.
Alone and in the darkness, then, was Jacob. "And there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day." Do we not see in this that God had a controversy with Jacob? The heaven-sent messenger was wrestling with the pilgrim on earth! Solemn consideration for our hearts.
He was in great straits of soul as to his circumstances, in deep exercise concerning his possessions and his family, yea, as to his own life's security, for Esau and his four hundred men were marching to meet him.
“For I fear him" (Gen. 32:1111Deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau: for I fear him, lest he will come and smite me, and the mother with the children. (Genesis 32:11)), he had prayed to the Lord. But, notwithstanding his trial, no comfort was as yet poured into his spirit, but instead “there wrestled a man with him." Perhaps our reader knows experimentally, in degree at least, what this means.
God was dealing with Jacob directly and personally. God was not going to allow His servant to cross the river in his own strength and wisdom: He had a deep purpose of blessing for Jacob, which He was working out by passing him through an exercise of heart so that he should be prepared for God to work in him. Jacob did not, at the moment, apprehend God's ways with him. We know well what this is by studying our own histories. Hence Jacob went on wrestling till the breaking of the day. He struggled on. He would not give up. He put all his strength and vigor into the conflict. Yield he would not. But go forward on his own way and in his own strength he could not.
Then, "when he saw that he prevailed not against him," that is, when the heavenly messenger saw, He put Jacob into the pace of power— `"he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob's thigh was out of joint, as he wrestled with him." Then the "man," was, as it were, for leaving. "Let me go, for the day breaketh," but that touching of Jacob's thigh had given Jacob the secret of prevailing power; for, clinging to the mighty One for support, he cried, "I will not let thee go except thou bless me."
This is what, would be called now-a-days the second conversion, or the entering of the Christian into the secret of power. Behold that wrestler, now clinging to him with whom he had struggled through the night! A lame man cannot wrestle, but he can clasp and pray. And thus it was that power entered for Jacob. So, when in this clinging posture, while in faith saying, “I will not let thee go except thou bless me,' He said unto him, What is thy name? And he said, Jacob." Supplanter—the old name indicative of the natural, unlovely character. The truth about ourselves does not come out anywhere so clearly as when, in our helplessness, we are clinging to Christ for strength, for then we dare tell the truth about ourselves.
Now, that natural strength is relied on no longer, and the truth about self is told, the visitor says, " Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel; for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed." Jacob, yet no longer Jacob, but Israel, the prince with God, is strong in the Lord and in the power of His might, “and He blessed him there."
May we not say that the way by which, God brings His people individually to dwell in Bethel—the house of God and the gate of heaven—is by the deep exercises of some Peniel, where they see God face to face, and where He deals with them in such a way as to take away hope in self strength, teaching them Himself as their All?