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This Podcast is Episode 5, available in Audio Only.
Episode Five of Radio Antioch is a sermon by David Cranfill entitled Wrestling With God, recorded at the first Live Radio Antioch meeting on October 18, 2008.
Jacob had a promise from God concerning his life. But his character was at times a contradiction with the destiny he had in God. During his many years, Jacob slowly came to align his will with the Lord, and became Israel the Patriarch.
0:00 Intro
0:33 Opening of the first Live Radio Antioch meeting
10:08 The Inheritance of God
16:59 The Promise and the Contradiction
28:22 The Teachable Moment
34:41 Wrestling With God
43:30 Credits
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David
Just listened to your Wrestling with God message. Excellent! I found the idea of the Wrestling match being a moment of transition for Jacob enlightening. The name “heel catcher,” was he given this name because he literally caught on to Esau’s heel or did Issac and Rebekah think that he was trying to cheat his brother by holding him back?
Perhaps, the conotation of cheater that the term “heel catcher” held, eluded them at the naming. But as you pointed out, it did’t elude others. Even Esau said it, “Is he not rightly call Jacob(cheater)” Can you imagine growing up with a name like that? Call a man less than a man, the old chinese proverb says, and eventually, even the man will believe it. Fathers tend to favor the stronger child , the athelete, the outgoing one, where mothers tend to want to defend the weaker. I think Rebekah was what is known today as an enabler. None the less, Jacob became what was spoken over him.
I imagine that, for many myself included, it wouldn’t take much to come up with some condemning words spoken over them. And yet, Jacob was the heir to the promise. God was with him. What made the sons of Laban angry was that God was blessing Jacob so! I find it unimaginable that he should wrestle so hard to be blessed. He was already blessed!!!
Unfortunately, all Jacob saw of himself was “cheater.”
“Thy name shall no longer be called Jacob (Cheater) but Israel (Prince of God)”
That was cool but not nearly as good as being “a new creature: old things are passed away: behold, all things are become new.”
Yes, we’ve had things spoken over us, and maybe we even grew into them, but we are now “IN CHRIST!” We don’t just get a new name, we get to be a whole new person.
Unfortunately, like Jacob, we don’t necessarily get it. And unlike Jacob, it probably won’t happen in a single defining moment, but in a lot of teachable moments that God will use to demonstrate that we too are overcomers, “Princes of God” and more.
In the mean while,by faith, we have to keep proclaiming God’s truth of who we really are.