In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Bible tells us that after the feeding of the 5000, the people from the crowd tried to take Jesus by force and make Him their King, but our Lord would not allow it. As we read in verse 15 of our Gospel lesson: “Perceiving then that they were about to come and take Him by force to make Him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by Himself.” 

Now, obviously, the reason why our Lord didn’t allow the people to make Him their king that day, wasn’t because He isn’t a true king or that He doesn’t really want to be known as one. On the contrary, the Scriptures repeatedly teach us that not only is Jesus a King, but He is the greatest King of all. As it says in 1 Timothy 6, “He who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords.” And remember what Jesus Himself once said to Pontus Pilate when he was asked whether or not He was a king at His trial? Our Lord did not deny it, but openly declared, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world – to bear witness to the truth.” And, of course, very importantly, Jesus also specified to Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world.” So, no, it’s not that Jesus isn’t a King all, it’s the kind of King that He is.

And the problem with the people in crowd who tried to make Jesus their king by force was that they didn’t recognize it. They wanted Him to be their king on their own terms. They didn’t want to receive Christ’s Kingdom for what it is, or have it in the way that He chooses to give it. Rather, they wanted Him to be a part of their Kingdom, and do their own bidding instead. Literally, they wanted Jesus around so that He could do more miracles, and give them more free food. But that’s not what His Kingdom is about! It’s a spiritual Kingdom where the main focus is the eternal salvation of our souls.

In the same way that the crowd at the feeding of the 5000 tried to make Jesus their king on their own terms, and for their own purposes, many people still try and do the same thing today. I’ll give you two different examples in this morning’s sermon. One of the ways this happens is when someone tries to claim a Christian identity, at the same time that they refuse to repent of their sins. They want to be known as member of Christ’s Kingdom to others, even though they aren’t actually interested in what His kingly reign is supposed to be for. They don’t want the forgiveness which Christ purchased for them on the cross, instead, they want God’s blessing and approval to keep on committing their sin instead.

The most obvious expression of what this looks like in our time comes from those who falsely assert that it’s okay for Christians to live as open homosexuals and adulterers, even though the Bible says otherwise. Recently, I listened to a sermon from an ELCA pastor who stated that his church affirms and accepts the whole LGBTQ community without exception. The basis for his argument was that each individual Christian has the “right of conscience” to interpret the Bible differently. But that makes each individual person, and their own personal opinion, the ultimate source of truth instead of God’s Word. It literally lets people ignore God’s Word, and be their own judge of it instead. It encourages them to try and take Jesus by force, and make Him the kind of king that they want Him to be. A king who apparently allows them to live in their sexual sin without repentance.

But, that, of course, isn’t the only instance where this sort of thing can happen. What about those who claim that they don’t have to go to church and worship with the rest of the Body of Christ because they can “do Christianity on their own?” Have you ever come across someone who thought that way before? I know I have. You tell them that they need to be in God’s house because that’s where God promises to be present to give us His Word and Sacraments, which strengthen our faith, and they respond by saying they already have a strong faith. In their mind, they’re still on good terms with God, even though they’re literally despising His means of grace. But it’s a lie! They aren’t on good terms with Him. In fact, they are doing exactly what the crowd did in our reading today, and trying to take Jesus by force and have Him on their own terms. But what did Jesus do in response? He slipped away from them and would not allow it to happen. So, those who will not have Christ in the ways that He chooses to give Himself, namely in His Word and Sacraments, will lose Him. Even if they think that they currently have Him, they will find out someday that they don’t.

And the same is true, by the way, for those who do come to church, but are secretively living a different life on the side. This is even more dangerous than the other situation because it’s easier to convince ourselves and those around us that we aren’t in danger. “I listen to the sermon. I sing the hymns. I take Communion.” Okay, but do you repent of your sins? Are you sorry for the ways that you offend God, and do you want the help of His Holy Spirit to do better in the future? Do you mourn your anger, lust, greed, and pride, and do you want to be rid of it? Why are you even here in Church today? Is it because your parents made you? Is it because you want other people to like you? It is just because that’s part of your Sunday morning routine? Or, is it to get the forgiveness of your sins from Jesus, and be strengthened to do God’s will? If it’s not that last one, you’re here for the wrong reasons, and you’re trying to take Jesus by force too.

Now, as I mentioned earlier on in the sermon, I said I was going to give two different examples of what it looks like to act like the crowd from the feeding of the 5000. One of them, again, is when people want to be known as a Christian, but refuse to repent of their sins. You can’t have Jesus that way. The other one, though, is when people try and turn the message of Christianity, or the focus of the Christian life in general, on temporal things instead of eternal ones.

The crowd in our reading today wanted to take Jesus by force and make Him their King because they liked getting free food from Him. They didn’t want to have to work for what they ate, and they thought that Jesus would be a kind of short cut to making their life easier here and now. They assumed that their greatest needs were physical ones, and so that’s all that they looked for when it came to Christ. But they completely missed the point of His ministry. As our Lord said to the same people later on when they followed Him all the way to the other side of the sea of Galilee, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you.”

The question is always, what do you want from God? Why do you want to be a Christian? And if the answer isn’t, first and foremost, “because I know that I need salvation for my soul, and its only Christ who has to power to give it to me,” then nothing else that you get from Him will make a difference. In fact, all the other stuff in your life might only get in the way of you entering into eternal life.  Remember what Jesus tells us in Mark chapter 8, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” And remember what He says in Matthew 6, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.”  No, it’s not that we Christians should completely ignore the needs of our bodies and neglect them. After all, the same Christ who told us to not worry about what we will eat, drink, and wear, also tells us that we can pray for those things. That’s what it means in the Lord’s Prayer when we say “give us this day our daily bread.” But the point is that there are more important things in life than food and clothing, and material possessions. What we need to get through this day is not as significant as what we need for the Last Day. And when the order of those two things gets mixed up, or reversed, we can end up missing out on the real treasure.

For instance, if the expectation is that when we become a Christian, Jesus will immediately take away all of our problems, and whatever struggles we’re going through will just disappear overnight, we’ll soon find out that that’s not how it works. That is a false version of Christianity. Sometimes being a Christian is hard. Sometimes we even end up suffering more in this life because of it. As the Bible tells in Acts chapter 14, “through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.” So, those who seek only good days in God’s Kingdom, and won’t receive from Him the bad one’s too, have it wrong. Their faith is a sham, and it won’t result in the blessing that they think it will. Eventually it will cause them to walk away from Jesus completely, and give up on His Kingdom entirely.

The fact of the matter is that regardless of how we try and do it we can’t take Jesus by force and make Him king on our own terms. Jesus will always slip out of our grasp, and so will our eternal life. Rather, God’s Word tells us that we need receive His Kingdom in another way. We don’t make Him our King at all. He already is the King. We don’t force our way into His Kingdom. His Kingdom comes to us by itself. As we learn in the Small Catechism, “God’s Kingdom comes when our Heavenly Father gives us His Holy Spirit, so that by grace we believe His holy Word and lead godly lives here in time and there in eternity.”

That’s how you enter into God’s Kingdom. That’s the right way to receive Jesus as your King. It happens through the power of the Holy Spirit who brings us to repentance and faith. What was the first message that Jesus ever preached in the New Testament? He said, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” When you listen to God’s Law, and turn away from your sins, and when you listen to His Gospel, and believe that for Jesus’ sake all of your sins truly have been forgiven, that’s when God’s Kingdom comes to you. That’s what makes you part of it. And that’s what His Kingdom is all about.

It isn’t about health, wealth, and prosperity. It’s about forgiveness, life, and salvation. Yes, Jesus fed the crowd in the wilderness with food for their bodies, and He promises to take care of your bodily needs too. But in His Church, He takes care of your greatest need. He saves your soul. Just like the baskets were overflowing with bread, in His Word and Sacraments, you have access to the Bread of Life. You have a never-ending supply of God’s grace and mercy. You have everything that you need to strengthen your faith so that one day you can make it to your heavenly home. God will heal you from your diseases. He will bless you with joy, happiness, and long life. But the place where that happens completely is not here in this life. It is only in the life of the world to come.

So, don’t try and take Jesus by force and make Him king on your own terms. That won’t work. Instead, listen to His decree. Repent of your sins, and trust in Him for forgiveness. Be content with what you have below, and set your minds on things above. Recognize that you already have everything that you could possibly need when you have the righteousness of Christ through faith. Because, in that case, even if you have nothing else, you still have a place in the Kingdom of God. In Jesus Name. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

One of the things that I think we’re very good at doing in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod is communicating to people the fact that we’re all sinners. From our confession of sin on Sunday mornings, to Catechism class with our youth, to the kinds of sermons that we usually hear preached from our pulpits, it’s more or less impossible to be a member of one of our congregations and not know that you’re a sinner. And that, of course, isn’t a bad thing at all. In fact, it’s a very good thing. The reality that we remain sinners until the day we die is a fundamental truth of the Scriptures that if rejected or denied, makes someone no true Christian at all. As Saint John says in his epistle, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”

The problem, though, and there is a potential problem here, is that if this is the only description of sin that we ever hear about, we aren’t getting the full picture from God’s Word. Let me explain. When all that people hear over and over again is that we remain sinners until the day we die, sometimes this can confuse them into not taking their sin seriously. Sometimes it can make them think that there’s no difference between repentant sin and unrepentant sin and that true believers, who have the Holy Spirit, continue to live in sin, without remorse, just like they did before. In the worst cases, it can even make people think that they are able to commit certain sins on purpose, and that this will have no effect on their faith, because after all, aren’t we all just sinners.

I want you to compare that, though, to what Saint Paul tells us about certain sins in our epistle lesson today from Ephesians chapter 5. He writes, “But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.” Now that is fuller depiction of sin and much more than the mere statement, “we’re all sinners.”

First off, these words clearly show us that some sins do have the ability to put us outside of a state of grace, and cause us to forfeit our salvation. That’s what Paul literally says in verse 5 of our text, “Everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.” This is very similar to what the Bible also says in 1 Corinthians 6 and Galatians 5. And to prove that point, and demonstrate that this is not an isolated teaching of the Scriptures, I’m going to read both of those passages too. Here’s the one from 1 Corinthians, “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” And this is the one from Galatians 5, “Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” 

But what do these verses mean? Certainly, they do not mean that if a person has committed one of the sins from these lists in the past, that it’s impossible for them to go to heaven no matter what they do. Saint Paul himself, at one time, was guilty of the sin of murder and persecuting the Church. We can also think of the example of king David who committed the sin of adultery with the wife of Uriah the Hittite, and then tried to cover it up by orchestrating his death. Those were terrible sins. They grieved the Holy Spirit, and put both men in a state of grave spiritual danger. In fact, if either of them would have died in that condition, there is no doubt that, according to the Bible, they would have been lost forever. But what happened was they repented. After Paul was confronted by Christ on the road to Damascus, he turned away from his former life, and stopped killing Christians. And after David was approached by the prophet Nathan, he confessed his sin too, and accepted the temporal consequences for what he’d done. That’s why their sins did not condemn them. That’s what made their sins different from other kinds of sins, even though they were on this same list. It’s because they turned away from them, instead of embracing them. They put those sins away, and looked to God for forgiveness.

The Bible doesn’t just teach us that true Christians shouldn’t be ruled by their sin, it tells us that they can’t be. As soon as someone accepts his sin, and doesn’t even want to be rid of it, he ceases to be a Christian at all. That’s what God’s Word means when it says in Romans 6, “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions… for sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.” To let your sin have dominion over you means that you to do it on purpose, without any intention of trying to stop. But those who have the Holy Spirit, however weak their faith might be, want to stop sinning. Even if they fall into sin sometimes, they are upset with themselves over it, and don’t excuse their bad behavior by simply saying, “we’re all sinners.” On the contrary, when they fall, they confess. When they sin, they repent.

To give an easy illustration of what this looks like so we can better understand it, think about a person whose traveling through some dangerous part of a big city. If that person gets attacked by a mugger, what are they going to do at the first opportunity to get away? They’re going to take it. We Christians are traveling through a dangerous world on our way to heaven. Sometimes we get attacked by the devil and succumb to his temptations. But that’s not because we want to. It’s because we’re weak. And when it happens, we quickly confess our sins to God, and He forgives us for Jesus’ sake. However, when a person doesn’t do that, and takes sides with his or her captor, then they prove that they are not on God’s side at all, and not a genuine Christian no matter how pious they might pretend to be.

Let’s apply this directly to some of the sins that Saint Paul mentions in our reading. He talks about sexual immorality, impurity, and idolatry. Obviously, there are very few of us, if any, who can honestly say that we’ve have never had an impure thought enter into our minds. As Jesus tells us in Matthew 5, “Everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” In that sense, then, we are indeed guilty of breaking the 6th commandment. No one should deny it. But the question is, what is your attitude toward that sin? Do you like it? Do you think that it’s an okay thing to do, and do you look for opportunities to keep on doing it more and more? Are you proud of the fact that you can’t always keep your mind clean and that sometimes you haven’t? I hope not! But there are some people who are. There is literally an entire month of the year in this country called, “Pride Month,” where individuals celebrate their sexual sins. That is not the same thing as the Christian who struggles against his sin and wants to be free of it. And that’s what Saint Paul is talking about in our text.

This, by the way, is the reason why in the Lutheran Church we have always treated things like moving in with your boyfriend or girlfriend, and sleeping together before marriage, differently. On several occasions when I have counseled couples to stop doing this, and even refused to give them Communion until they quit, I’ve been met with a similar excuse. “Pastor, don’t we all sin, so how is this sin any different? Why can’t I have Communion when there are other people in the Church who sin too, and you give them Communion anyway?” I always respond the same way, “The issue is not with your sin, per se, but with your unrepentance. Yes, we all sin. But that doesn’t mean that we’re all unrepentant. And you need to be repentant before you can take Communion. You need to want to be forgiven of your sin, and be willing to bear fruit in keeping with repentance over that sin, before you can receive the gift that’s intended to take it away. Because if I gave you Communion now, you would not learn to repent. You would become even more secure in the sinful thing that you’re doing, and have an even harder time giving it up.”

And again, this doesn’t just apply to willful sins against the 6th Commandment, it applies to willful sins against every other Commandment too. Paul mentions idolatry, which he says is a form of coveting. It’s bad to want things that don’t belong to you and to not be content with what you have. That shows a lack of trust in the Lord, and that you are worshiping a different god than Jesus. But is the Christian who mourns this reality, and recognizes their weakness, fighting against it daily with the strength of the Spirit and the aid of God’s Word, in the same category as those who literally worship at a Buddhist temple, or call Allah “god,” instead of Christ. Of course, not! They would be if they refused to admit the sin and plead with Jesus for forgiveness, but that’s exactly what we do, isn’t it? Every time that we sin, we come to church and ask God to have mercy on us. Even for the sins we are unaware of, we pray that for the sake of His only Begotten Son, He would not count any of them against us, and help us to resist them in the future. 

The danger in conflating repentant sin with unrepentant sin is that it deceives people. As Saint Paul says in our reading, “Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.” When we give the impression in the Church that you can live in your sin on purpose, without even trying to stop, and that all sins are the same regardless if a person is even sorry for it, we lead people astray. We cause true Christians to not take their sins seriously, and risk falling away from the faith, and we embolden false Christians to think that they are going to be saved even though they’re not. But they will soon find out when they die that they were lied to, and despite what they were led to believe, they cannot go into God’s Kingdom.

I hope you see by now just how important this distinction from God’s Word is, and why it’s insufficient to simply say, “we’re all sinners,” without any further explanation. The difference between repentant sin and unrepentant sin is all throughout the Bible. The Holy Spirit teaches us about it, first, so that those who are living in unrepentant sin would quickly turn away from it, and second, so that those who are sorry for their sins, and want to do better, would not despair of their salvation. In either case, the goal is always the same: that we would have the forgiveness of sins that comes from Jesus.

Are you doing something that God’s Word forbids? Have you committed one of those sins that the apostle Paul names in our reading, or are you committing one of them now? Then listen to what he says, and put it away. Don’t lie to yourself, and pretend that sin is no big deal. That won’t do you any good. It will harden your conscience, and may even lead to you going to hell. Rather, as often as sin should rear its ugly head in your life, no matter what that sin is, don’t coddle it, or feed it, but put it to death through contrition and repentance. Turn to Christ in heartfelt sorrow, and ask for His forgiveness. Remember your Baptism, which still has the power to give you cleansing, and come to the Lord’s table where God promises you His grace. “Walk as a child of light,” as Saint Paul says, and let Jesus, who is the Light of the world, not only expose the darkness of your heart, but cover it with His perfect righteousness. That’s the entire reason why He came into the world. He came to save sinners. And when you are repenting of your sins and looking to Him for salvation, you have nothing to fear, and don’t have to be in doubt at all about your place in God’s Kingdom. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In order to understand what was going in our Old Testament lesson where Jacob wrestled with God, and what it means for us as Christians today, we need to know the rest of Jacob’s story. If you remember, a few chapters earlier in Genesis, Jacob ran away from home because his brother Esau vowed to kill him after he found out how Jacob had tricked their father and stolen his blessing. While Jacob was running way, though, God appeared to him in a dream at night and made him a special promise. He said, “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring. Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

After that, God blessed Jacob and made him rich. He gave him eleven sons and a daughter, and a great number of flocks and herds. Then God appeared to Jacob again and this time told him to “Return to the land of your fathers and to your kindred, and I will be with you.” So, Jacob did what God said and took his family, and his livestock, and all that he had, and traveled back to the land that God had promised. On the way, Jacob was met once more by angels of the Lord who encouraged him yet another time that God would be with him and carry out what He had said. Everything seemed to be going according to plan.

But then all of a sudden, we learn that Jacob’s attitude changed. A report was brought to him that his brother Esau was on his way to meet him with a large host of four hundred men, more than enough to wipe out Jacob and his entire family. When Jacob received this news, he became afraid, and he sent massive gifts ahead of him in the hopes that it would appease his brother’s anger and maybe save the lives of himself and his children. Jacob even divided up his household into two different groups thinking that if of them got attacked the other might still be able to get away. 

But what was Jacob so afraid of? What had made Jacob doubt that God would keep His Word to him? Had God appeared to Jacob again and told him that He had changed His mind and that it was no longer His plan to multiply his family and give him the land of Canaan as a possession? Had God made it known to Jacob in another dream that it wasn’t His intention anymore to bless all nations of the earth through his offspring, or that He had now departed from Jacob’s side? No. The only thing that had changed was that Esau was on his way with an army, and God’s promise had become harder to believe. Jacob’s spirit was willing, but his flesh was weak.

And yet, in the midst of his doubt and weakness, Jacob did what every child of God should do. He turned to Lord in prayer. He said, “O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, O Lord who said to me, ‘Return to your country and to your kindred, that I may do you good,’ I am not worthy of the least of all the deeds of steadfast love and all the faithfulness that you have shown to your servant, for with only my staff I crossed this Jordan, and now I have become two camps. Please deliver me from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I fear him, that he may come and attack me, the mothers with the children. But you said, ‘I will surely do you good, and make your offspring as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude.’”

Here we see an example of a true Christian prayer. Jacob did not ask God for something on the basis of his own righteousness. He did not demand that the Lord help him and do what he wanted because he deserved it. On the contrary, Jacob admitted that he was a sinner, and that he wasn’t worthy of any of the things that he asked for. But still, Jacob clung to God’s promises. Jacob put everything back on what God had told him, and pleaded with the Lord to keep His own Word. For that’s what true Christian prayer is all about. It’s about faith in God’s promises. The Bible tells us that God only hears the prayers that we ask in faith. As Jesus says elsewhere, “Whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” This doesn’t mean that we can make God do whatever we want if we want it bad enough, like the prosperity preachers say, but rather that when we ask for the things which God has already promised, the Lord will surely give them. Jacob had a promise. And so, Jacob prayed to God on the basis of that promise alone. He petitioned to Lord to do what He said.

And yet, even after Jacob prayed that wonderful prayer, God did not immediately answer it. In fact, God made things harder on Jacob and appeared to Him in the form of Man and wrestled with him all throughout the night instead. After Jacob poured his heart out in prayer, and after he had physically drained himself by moving his entire household across a small river in the middle of the night, God pressed him even harder. God even knocked Jacob’s hip out of its socket so that the wrestling match would be that much more difficult for him. But again, what did Jacob do? He insisted that God keep His promises. When Jacob realized who it was that he was wrestling with, He said the Man those wonderful words that every Christian should learn by heart, “I will not let you go until you bless me.” That is to say, “I will not stop trusting in You, Lord, until you do as you have promised.” And God did. He answered Jacob’s prayer and did exactly what He said He would. The next morning, when Jacob arose and Esau came to meet him, the two of them embraced one another, and cried. Esau forgive Jacob for stealing his birthright, and Jacob’s family was no longer in danger.  God kept His promises, and Jacob’s faith was strengthened in the process. For just as Jacob had clung to the body of the Man he wrestled with, even as his hip was put out of joint, so his heart had clung to the words His Savior, even though it felt like it was going to break. Jacob may have been limping at the end of the match, but his faith in the Lord had never been stronger.

What we, of course, learn from this text is not only that God always keeps His promises to us, but also that even in the midst of our greatest trials and deepest suffering, even when it appears as if God Himself is the One who is attacking us, He does so only for the purpose of strengthening our faith in His Word. God knows that we are saved through faith alone. He knows that we’re not saved by our works, but solely through the redeeming work of Christ. God knows that we receive the benefits of that work, only through believing the promise of the Gospel, that for Christ’s sake our sins are truly forgiven.  And because, God knows that, and because He wants all people to be saved, sometimes God puts our faith to the test so that it does not grow weak and die, but stays alive and clings even more tightly to His Word.

That’s how it was for Jacob, who’s name got changed to Israel, and that’s how it is for us too, who the Bible says is the true Israel of God, all believers. At times our lives can be very difficult. At times it can feel not only like the world is out to get us, but that God is out to get us too. Sometimes it seems as if the Lord has left us completely, or that He is pushing us away from Him entirely. We suffer from sickness, the death of loved ones, and the certainty of our own death too. We deal with regret, temptation, and our own lack of faith. Day after day, month after month, year after year, one trial is replaced with another, and life never seems to get easier. But just like Jacob, God has made us very special promises.

Are you afraid like Jacob was that God has abandoned you and that you are all alone in this world. Then listen to the promise of Jesus from Matthew chapter 28, “And behold I am with you always even to the end of the age.” Are you confused like Jacob was about the things that are going in your life and nervous about what the future will hold. Then hear what God’s Word says in Romans chapter 8, “All things work together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.” Are you worried like Jacob was about the needs of your body and the safety of yourself and your family? Then listen to what Jesus tells us about the lilies of the valley in Matthew chapter 6, “They neither toil nor spin,” He says, “and yet I say to you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. If then God clothes the grass which today is in the field and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you.” Are you afraid of your enemies and what others who don’t like you or your faith might do to you like Jacob was? Then consider the words of Saint Paul in Romans 8 again, “If God is for us who can be against us. He who did not spare His own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” And do you have a guilty conscience like Jacob did? Have you done things that you are ashamed and wish that you could take them back? Then hear what God’s Word says to you in 1 John chapter 1, “If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” 

God’s Word is filled with promise after promise that assures you of the love the He has for you in Christ. God does not wrestle with you, and allow difficulty to befall you in order to be cruel to you or to punish you. If the Lord wanted to destroy you, and get revenge, He could do it at any moment, just like He could have pulverized Jacob whenever it pleased Him. But that’s not what God did. God wrestled with Jacob to help him. God struggled with Jacob so that Jacob would cling to Him all the more. God put Jacob to the test so that Jacob would learn to walk by faith and not by sight, and to believe even more firmly that His promises are true and cannot fail even if it seems it is impossible for them not to. That’s why God wrestled with Jacob. And that’s why He wrestles with you too. He does it because He loves you and He wants you to trust in Him. He wants you to hold Him to His Word, which He always promises to keep. He wants you to learn that man does not live by bread alone but by every Word that comes from the mouth of God. He wants you to know Him not by what you see with your eyes, or experience in the world around you, but by what He declares to you in the Scriptures. 

The Bible tells us elsewhere that every one of God’s promises are fulfilled in Christ. As Saint Paul writes in 2 Corinthians chapter 2, “For all of God’s promises find their ‘yes’ in Jesus.” The assurance of God’s love and mercy towards is forever bound up in the life, death, and resurrection of God’s Son. Nothing can undo what Jesus did for you when He suffered and died for your sins. And when you are clinging to Jesus as your Savior, when you are holding on to what He promises you in His Word, you can be certain of where those promises will lead you. Even if holding on to them results in you limping your way through life because of many great and difficult challenges, you are limping your way into the land that God has promised you, your heavenly home. So, may the Lord teach us to pray along with Jacob, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” In Jesus’ Name. Amen.