I feel like I’m being a bit bi-polar in my last three sermons. I’m moving from one extreme to the other. Two weeks ago I spent time talking about finding God in the bad times. I talked about how sometimes bad things happen to good people and this can help us to grow closer to God. And then last week we looked at the importance of being thankful for all that God has given us. And now this week I’m looking again at struggling with God as we read about Jacob as he wrestled with God and the woman who pestered the judge until she received what she wanted.
I must explain that the reason I’m going from one extreme to the other has nothing to do with me. Rather, I have been following the church lectionary and preaching on passages that are suggested to preach on each Sunday. And so, it is not necessarily my fault that we are going from extreme to extreme. And yet, it is not the lectionary that tells me what to preach out of the scripture, it just suggests what scripture to preach from. So it is partially me who is seeing such divergent things in the scriptures week to week.
But I like to believe that I am not writing my sermons by myself, but am speaking words that the Holy Spirit has given me. I believe that as the Holy Spirit convicts me and helps me to see God’s Holy Word in new light, I can share this with you.
And when I look at these diverse scriptures I see that though I am talking one week about what to do when bad things happen, the next week about thanking God for his gifts and provisions, and then the third week talking about struggling with God; in the midst of all this, God’s word does not contradict itself. Instead, we see God at work in different ways at different times. We see that God reaches out to his people in a way that they can understand and he meets them where their needs are. And so, today, let us pray that God meets us wherever we are and whatever our needs are.
Let us open in prayer
I. Fighting God
Have you ever felt that life was really a struggle? Have you felt that you were fighting an uphill battle and the world around you seemed set to keep you from succeeding?
What do you do when you find yourself in this kind of situation? Do you give up and stop struggling and let the forces around you decide your fate? Or do you fight on and attempt to overcome?
Often, when I find myself in this sort of situation; when ends aren’t meeting and everything seems to be set against me; I turn to God and ask for his help. Often it is when I am struggling against the impossible that I realize that it is God that I need to rely on, not myself.
But there are times where this is not possible. These are the times where my struggle isn’t against the world, but rather is against God himself. Now you can look at me and say that I’m a pastor so I don’t struggle against God. But this is not true. I think we all, at times, find ourselves in a struggle against God. We all, at times, find ourselves seeking our own desires and our own wants instead of truly trying to live as God has called us. We all find ourselves desiring control over our own lives instead of allowing God to be our pilot. We want Jesus sitting next to us in our car as our co-pilot, telling us where to turn, but we have the choice whether to turn where he tells us. But God doesn’t want to be our co-pilot, he wants us to hand the keys over to him so that we are allowing him to take us where he wants.
There’s something about the way we are as humans. Some might like to call it a part of human nature. I think a better description is that it is a part of our sin nature. But in the end, we like to be in charge. This gives us strength. It allows us to do things and go places that we wouldn’t necessarily be able to do if we just went with the flow. But when we are constantly trying to be in charge we forget that Christ is not only our Savior but also our Lord and King. And when we spend our whole life struggling, we will find ourselves growing weary, much like Jacob.
II. Being in Charge
Jacob, in today’s first scripture, was someone who liked to be in charge. He spent his whole life fighting with people. He spent his whole life scheming against those around him. He didn’t necessarily do this because he wanted to fight with people, though sometimes it might feel that way. No, he struggled because it was the only way he was going to make it in the world. The world is a difficult place and if you aren’t looking out for yourself, no-one will. This is what he believed and this is how he lived. He was the second born of two brothers and so the inheritance and the blessing that his father had to share was destined to go to his older twin brother, leaving him with nothing. And so he schemed and plotted and made sure that his father blessed him and his brother sold him his inheritance rights.
His father-in-law tricked him by having him marry the wrong daughter after seven years of work so that he could marry the love of his life. Jacob had to deal with the fact that his father-in-law was scheming to get the best of him and so he had to always be one step ahead of him to make sure that he wouldn’t be taken advantage of again.
Jacob’s second wife, the one he loved, schemed to steal idols from her father as Jacob and his family left to head back to his homeland, putting Jacob and his family at serious risk of dangerous retribution from her father. Life was not easy for Jacob and he had to struggle just to make it.
And so, one night, Jacob was by himself, having sent his family ahead to meet his brother from whom he had stolen his birthright. And that night was spent wrestling with God. And most people might go ahead and give up and stop wrestling. But not Jacob. He wrestled through the night and would not yield. And as daylight came, God, or an angel of God, the Bible isn’t clear, cheated in the way that only God can. He caused Jacob’s hip to be wrenched as he fought. But still Jacob fought on. He didn’t know how to do anything else. And in a way, Jacob won the fight. For God, or the angel, or whatever it was, wanted Jacob to let him go, but Jacob refused unless he received a blessing. And God blessed Jacob with a new name, Israel.
In hearing this story from the Old Testament, my first thought is to belittle Jacob for continuing to fight with God, for continuing to wrestle. Couldn’t life have been so much easier for him if he had just let God win on that night in the desert? But he is blessed and God seems to think that the struggle is worthwhile.
Is the struggle worthwhile? Is it okay to fight with God? To better understand the answer to this question we need to turn to the next scripture that we read this morning, Luke 18. This parable by Jesus tells of a woman, a widow, who kept pestering a judge who was not just that she might receive justice. And because she does not give up, because she continues the good fight, the struggle, the judge hears her and gives her what she asks. And Jesus tells us that here is an example of a corrupt judge doing what is right because she continued to struggle with him, how much more will a just God do what is right if we are persistent?
What we discover when we look at this scripture and others that tell of people struggling against God is that God actually does want us to struggle in certain instances. When what we are standing for is just and merciful, he wants us to stand up to everybody, even him. And therefore you have Moses talking God out of destroying the people of Israel, reminding God of his mercy. And here you have the widow asking for justice. Perhaps God wants us to own the issues of justice and mercy more than we do, and so he causes us to have to fight for these things in our world and in our lives.
III. Stop Struggling
But when we are struggling because we want to be in control, then the struggle is not a healthy one. When we are struggling against God because we don’t like where he is taking us or what he is calling us to do, then our struggle is a sin. When we find ourselves struggling with God for control of our lives, we need to turn away from this. This isn’t always easy to do. Sometimes you have to be somewhat creative in finding a way to do this.
A Christian singer knew how much he wanted to have control over his own life and how much he wanted to be in control. He also knew that God was calling him to turn his whole life over to him. And so he did something drastic. He was making good money as a Christian singer and he knew that if he received his paychecks, he would end up using them in an unhealthy way. But if he put himself on an allowance and had a board of trustees decide what to do with the rest of his money, where to donate it, then he wouldn’t find himself struggling with God over his finances. Instead he would be able to obey God and allow God to guide him completely. By taking the opportunity to rebel away from himself, he was able to do what he felt God was calling him to do.
This is just one example of someone making sure that they don’t spend their lives fighting God in areas where they shouldn’t. There are others. Maybe giving God control means removing temptations from your life. Maybe it means giving up things in your life that distract you from your relationship with him. Maybe it just means that you need to lay down your arms and surrender to him. Surrender is never easy. It doesn’t feel very right. When you surrender it feels like you have lost. And yet, when you surrender to God you aren’t losing at all. Instead you will discover that by surrendering to him you will win something greater than the control that you lost. You will win peace of mind and strength to get you through.
In what areas of your life are you fighting God? What parts of your life have you not let go of? Where do you need to invite God in and allow him to have control? Life is so much more work when you spend it fighting God. It is much easier once you give in and allow him control. Ask God for help. Ask him to be more than your co-pilot. Allow him to be your Lord and King. With God in charge you will discover that you don’t need to fight quite so hard. And you will discover that life without the fighting is much simpler. So give over control to him. It is well worth it.
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