A Con Artist’s Struggle

How do we find God? We’re looking now to, I think, probably the strangest of all narrative accounts in the Bible of a human being encountering God.

It’s a long story. All of Jacob’s life, he’s been wrestling with his twin brother, Esau. He’s been away, but he decides to come back and finally have it out. He sends a bunch of gifts ahead of him, he divides his own family up, and he gets ready to meet Esau alone. And there in the dark when Jacob is alone, a mysterious man—not Esau—attacks him, and he wrestles him all night. Finally, as the day is about to break, Jacob realizes this is the Lord himself—that he’s wrestling with God.

Jacob meets God, and the encounter tells us how we can meet God and how we can check our own hearts to find out if we’ve met God. Four things: 1) an encounter with God is personal, 2) an encounter with God is personal wrestling, 3) an encounter with God is always losing, but 4) an encounter with God is winning through losing.

This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on September 21, 1997. Series: Pointers to Christ – Directional Signs in History. Scripture: Genesis 32:22-32.

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