Not Together, But Getting There

Good morning! My name is Matt Martinez, and I am the pastor here at Renovation Church Shoreview.

A number of years ago, I had the opportunity to see Michelangelo's David in person in Florence, Italy.

It was amazing to see in person, and it lived up to the hype. But what makes this piece even more inspiring is the story of how it was created.

David came from a chunk of marble that looked a little like this, and it sat in the Duomo Cathedral in Florence for years. Two artists had previously worked on it, but they found all these flaws in the marble and eventually abandoned it. Then Michelangelo came along, and where others saw flaws, he saw potential. For four years, he chipped away, sculpted, and formed that rejected piece of marble until it became one of the most recognizable pieces of art in the world.

In our summer series, we've been reading about a flawed, partially formed man getting slowly and faithfully sculpted by God. Jacob had deceived people, manipulated situations, and often tried to make God's promises happen through his own strength. And yet God hasn't given up on him. God wants to move Jacob away from self-reliance and toward dependence on Him. God wants that for us, too. The question is: Do we want it for ourselves? Because God is willing to go to great lengths to form us.

Let's read about how far God will go.

Turn in your Bibles to Genesis 32:22–32, on page 24 of the Renovation Church Bibles.

Jacob had some really good things promised to him by God. He would be blessed. He would have a big family and a legacy. His family would bless other nations and be an example of God to them.

These are great things. The problem was that Jacob kept trying to get God's promises through his own strength. He deceived and manipulated, and it hurt almost every relationship around him. It eventually got him relocated to a new country. And now he's scared that he's going to lose his family to his brother Esau, and perhaps lose his own life. And if you don't remember why Jacob is in this situation, it's because of all the scheming, instead of trusting God, he did years earlier.

Jacob has a lot of family and a lot of stuff. But now his life is threatened, and none of it can save him. His possessions can't make up for what he's done. His reputation can't protect him. That is a lonely spot to be, but God is ready to take a moment like this and shape it into an opportunity to form Jacob.

And so Jacob is alone, and he and God have a reckoning. Let's read our passage, starting at verse 22.

Genesis 32:22–32

22 That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two female servants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23 After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. 24 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.”

27 The man asked him, “What is your name?”

“Jacob,” he answered.

28 Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”

29 Jacob said, “Please tell me your name.”

But he replied, “Why do you ask my name?” Then he blessed him there.

30 So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.”

31 The sun rose above him as he passed Peniel, and he was limping because of his hip. 32 Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the tendon attached to the socket of the hip, because the socket of Jacob’s hip was touched near the tendon.

As a pastor, I’m always interested in how people grow in their faith in God. That’s why we’ve created ways here for people to be discipled and grow. But I also know that life isn’t always easy. The difficult moments, the walls we hit, and even the places where we question our faith can become opportunities God uses to form us… or we can become de-formed by those moments. The life of Jacob has given us a framework to see how we can trust in God to form us into mature followers of Jesus who look and love like him.

Whether you have been with us throughout this series or not, there is a great graphic created in the book The Critical Journey that gives us a good image of how we are shaped and formed by God.

(Stages of Faith graphic)

Today, I want to walk through this graphic and these stages with you. So that we can better understand what God may be up to in our lives, and how we can better position ourselves to be formed by God to trust in Him rather than on anything else.

Stage one is an initial awareness of God and a desire for meaning. Jacob had a moment like this in this life years ago when he encountered God at Bethel.

Stage two is belonging to a community pursuing God together. Jacob built a family and a life with his uncle Laban.

Stage three is responsibility and productivity—serving, working, building, doing.

The first three stages of faith actually describe a lot of Christians. Followers of Jesus in these stages say, “I love God. I go to church. I serve. I give. I work hard.” All of that is valuable and necessary. But that isn't the end of the faith journey. And often those things in the first stages are not enough when we encounter the hard stuff in life.

There is more spiritual maturity God wants to form in us. And sometimes, before God can take us deeper, He has to get us alone.

Remember, Jacob has sent his family and possessions across the river, and he's left alone. Sometimes God has to get us alone before He can get our attention. Because there are things we can't see while we're constantly moving. We fill our lives with activity because slowing down forces us to look at things we'd rather avoid: Our fears, our mistakes, our shame. And if we never let God into those places, we'll never experience the healing and deeper formation He wants to bring.

And that's where Jacob's (and our) journey inward begins.

(Stages of faith graphic)

The journey inward means we have to get honest and wrestle with things in ourselves.

Jacob has spent his entire life looking outward. Who can I manipulate? How can I get what I want? How can I make this situation work for me? How can I control what happens next? But now God is bringing Jacob face-to-face with Jacob. Look at what happens in Genesis 32:25–28.

God asks Jacob, "What is your name?" God isn't asking because He doesn't know Jacob's name. He's asking Jacob to acknowledge who he really is. Jacob means deceiver.

This is confession- You must honestly stand before God with nothing to hide and face the reality of who you are.

Jacob has spent his life covering, pretending, deceiving, and running. But on this night, God asks him to stop and tell the truth about himself. That's what the journey inward does. It forces us to stop pretending. It helps us recognize that we are sinners saved by grace. We cannot achieve our way into acceptance. We cannot earn our way into peace. We cannot save ourselves. Humility leads to confession, and confession leads to healing.

This moment doesn’t just happen once and we are done. The journey inward is a regular process we must do. Getting alone with God and going inward.

Jacob doesn't become Israel because he finally figures himself out. He becomes Israel because he finally stops pretending he can do life without God.

Knowing who you are isn't enough. Confession has to lead somewhere.

For Jacob, it leads to the wall.

(stages of faith graphic)

In verses 24–26, God brings Jacob to the wall with a single touch to the hip.

The hip is the source of a wrestler's strength, and God is after the thing Jacob relies on most—the very thing he's depended on his entire life: himself.

In an instant, Jacob's strength, skill, ability to make things happen, and self-confidence are all gone. This is the wall. The place where you come to the end of yourself. The place where you realize you're not in control of life. When the unexpected happens. When the unthinkable happens. When the unfair happens. When you come to the place where you finally realize: I can't do this on my own.

And when we come to the wall, we have a choice. We can try to go around it. We can try and avoid it. Or, we can let God take us through it.

AA has an incredible saying: "The only way out is through."

That's exactly what Jacob does. It is what we must do if we are to let God form us into a deeper, more mature relationship with God.

Earlier in his life, Jacob fought to get the blessing by deceiving his father and manipulating his brother. He spent his life making sure he got what he thought he deserved. But now, stripped of the strength he always relied on, he doesn't fight for the blessing. He grabs on to God and asks for it. He's not holding on like a confident fighter who thinks he can win. He's holding on like a man who knows he'd be lost without God. This is surrender, dependence, trust in God.

God is always working to move us away from self-reliance and toward dependence on Him.

Because dependence on God isn't something we learn when everything is going well. We learn dependence when we realize the reality that we are not in control and all the things we built will one day go away. And that's what Jacob is learning. No matter how much we have, how much we have achieved, how curated our perfect image is… one day it will all go away and we will be left with ourselves. That could happen if we let God help come to that understanding or we will be brought there when our time here on earth comes to an end.

God says: "Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel." Israel means one who struggles with God. The man who spent his life trying to control everything is now marked by his dependence on God. His identity is changing. And that's what happens when God takes us through the wall. He doesn't just get us through a difficult circumstance. He changes us.

We may have the same responsibilities. The same family. The same job. The same circumstances. But we're a different person. We see things differently. We value different things. We pray differently. We depend on God differently. And that's where the journey outward begins.

(stages of faith graphic)

The blessing Jacob is seeking—and the one God gives him—is another confirmation of the promise God gave him years earlier. God will bless him. He will make him into a great nation. His family will be a picture of who God is to the world.

But if you've been with us throughout this series, you've probably noticed something changing in Jacob. The first blessing Jacob received, he stole through trickery and deception. This time, he asks for it. The old Jacob took. The new Jacob receives.

Same responsibilities. Same productivity. But on the inside, something has shifted. You don't need success or achievement to prove something anymore. It still feels good to succeed. But you begin to realize after the wall and in the journey outward that success can't make you a better spouse, parent, friend, or leader.

The journey outward is marked by a shift: From proving yourself to loving others. And eventually, the journey leads to the final stage: a life of love.

You can recognize people who have reached this place. Being around them makes you more humble. More compassionate. More loving. Not because they're trying to teach you to be that way, but because the love of God is so evident in them that it simply draws people in. My friend Bette was one of those people.

Conclusion

This week, I attended the funeral of an old family friend, and I was reminded again of how much a life surrendered to Jesus makes a difference.

For much of her life, Bette followed God. She served. She worked hard. She worshiped Jesus. But along the way, she encountered walls. Walls of suffering. Pain. Challenge. Confusion. Some of them even made her question her faith.

We all have our own version of walls throughout our lives. And what we do with those walls shapes who we are and where we put our faith.

The final wall in Bette's life was cancer. And instead of trying to go around it or avoid it by becoming angry or bitter, she went through it with God. And at the end of her life, something had transformed. She wasn't simply living for what she could accomplish anymore. She had tried the striving and grinding, but there was always more. At the end, those accomplishments, cares, and worries had lost a lot of their power. Her self-sufficiency wasn't worth much anymore. But because she had held onto Jesus through the walls, she had become the kind of person who could rest in God's love. She was living from a place of surrender. God had formed her.

Some of Bette's final words were: "Rest in God's love." Rest. That flies in the face of almost everything our culture tells us is valuable.

We aren't worth anything unless we gain followers. Information. Influence. Efficiency. Power. Pleasure. Wins. But at the end of her life, Bette didn't have any of that. What she did have was love. Love from the people around her, and love from God. She had surrendered her life to God and allowed Him to shape her. Whether she was working and productive or lying in a hospital bed, God was forming her.

And that's what God wants to do in us. Not simply make us more productive. Not simply make us better Christians. Not simply help us accomplish more for Him. He wants to form us into people who know His love, live in His love, and love others with His love.

Jacob wasn't together, but God wasn't finished with him. You not together either. But that's not the end of the story. God is inviting you to stop depending on yourselves and start depending on Him. When you come to the end of yourself, you have a choice. You can try to go around the wall. You can avoid it. Or you can surrender all that you are to God and let Him take you through it. Because God will use whatever it takes to form you into people who depend on Him. And people who depend on Him become people of love.

So will you surrender to God today?

Gospel Invitation