Wrestling The Old Man
by Kevin Allen
June 19, 2022 · Centerpointe Apostolic Church (Murfreesboro, TN)
Kind: sermon
Scripture: Genesis 32:24-30, Genesis 25:24-26, Genesis 25:27, Genesis 25:28, Genesis 25:27, Job 1:1, Genesis 27, Hosea 12, Genesis 32:25, Genesis 32:26-28, Genesis 32:31

Source: https://acts238.life/repository/sermons/kevin-allen--wrestling-the-old-man
Published by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon transcript on that page.
Free to copy and share with attribution.

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Today, got an interesting title on my sermon, is Wrestling the Old Man. Now I gotta tell you that I, I was born and raised in Wilson County. And here's the deal. There are some times that my country just takes over, and the word wrestling is one of those words that I wrestle with. It comes out as wrestling, especially if I'm around good southern folk. So if, if in this message today I go from saying wrestling to wrestling, just go with it. It's okay. I'm aware. I'm working through it. I'm in therapy. We'll get there one day. So, Wrestling the Old Man.

Genesis 32 is where I want to start. This message actually started last Sunday at lunch. Um, I was, I was eating lunch, and, and we were talking there at the table about a certain character in the Bible. And from that, a few days later, I just went back to revisit the story, just to freshen my mind up again, because it had just been rolling around — Hank, thank you — it was rolling around in my brain. And it was through me reading a very familiar story again that I noticed a very interesting footnote on the bottom page of my Bible. And it's from the footnote that we have the message today, Wrestling With the Old Man.

Genesis 32, most of you are going to be very familiar with this story, says: Then Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him unto the breaking of day. Now when he saw that he did not prevail against him, he touched the socket of his hip, and the socket of Jacob's hip was out of joint, as he wrestled with him. And he said, Let me go, for the day breaks. But he said, I will not let you go unless you bless me. So he said to him, What is your name? And he said, Jacob. And he said, Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel, for you have struggled with God and with men and have prevailed. Then Jacob asked him, saying, Tell me Your name, I pray. And he said, Why is it that they asked me about my name? And he blessed him there. So Jacob called the name of the place Pinell, for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.

You know, it's Father's Day, and sometimes you come off with a message that's going to be inspiring to fathers. What I feel like the Lord has laid on my heart in these last three or four days, as I began to dig down into the Word of God and as I was allowing His Spirit to guide me and direct me, it's for everyone here today. So I don't want you to say, well, I'm just going to go under cruise control because I'm not a father, because if you do, you may miss a word that's directly for you today. This word is for everyone. Again my title, my message: Wrestling the Old Man.

Jacob is one of the most famous and colorful of all characters that you'll read about in the Scriptures. His story is one that has twists and turns and ups and downs. There's drama, there's joy, there's sorrow and pain, and everything in between. He was one of the twin sons of Isaac and Rebecca. And his brother Esau and, and himself could not be more polar opposite as they — I mean, they just, everything about them was just completely contrast, different. So I'm going to take you back to Genesis 25 and read with you a little bit, so that you, you have a, an accurate account of the differences between these two guys, and, and how this story is really getting set up. So Genesis 25, verse 24, says: So when the days were fulfilled for her to give birth, indeed there were two twins in her womb. And the first came out red, and he was like a hairy garment all over. In my mind, every time I read this, I think of an Ewok. I don't know why, but it's just, it just does. I just know that pastor's imagination is always going crazy when he's reading Scriptures. They called him Esau. And afterwards his brother came out, and his hand took a hold of Esau's heel. So his name was called Jacob. Isaac was 60 years old when she bore them.

So from the very start of their life, we see, even at birth, these two were different. The very next verse, verse number 27, says: So the boys grew. Now here's what's interesting, is in Scripture, a lot of times from one verse to the next, it's not something that just happened five minutes later. A lot of times, as the story's been written, there's, there's, there's a amount of time that passes from one to the other, because from verse 26 to verse 27, the boys have grown. We know that because it starts out and it says: So the boys grew, and Esau was a skillful hunter, a man of the field, but Jacob was a mild man who dwelled in tents.

From the very beginning, this family had a lot of dysfunction in it. They were things that had been done, and things that were set in motion, that Jacob had nothing to do with. And you get a very powerful picture of the dysfunction in this family from the very next verse, for verse 28 says: And Isaac loved Esau because he ate of his game, but Rebecca loved Jacob. So from the, from the start of their story, from the very beginning, we see where there's already favoritism being played out in these boys' lives. And just so you know, that never works well, because kids always know.

So here we are, the beginning of this, this story. And life does this to you and I sometimes. It, it, it happens in it. And I believe that for many in the room here today, there have been things that have happened to you that were simply beyond your control. You didn't ask for it. You were not even responsible for it. But yet you winded up having to be one who ended up suffering because of something that was beyond your control. You, you — and here's what I know is a truth for all of us today. Everybody in this room today, you did not pick your birth parents. You were not given an option in that. It just happened to you. For everybody in the room, you didn't pick your name. Now you may have changed your name, but you didn't pick your name that was there. You didn't pick your siblings. You didn't pick your family. Your entrance into this world, it was picked for you. All those things, that was beyond your control. We all share that. We all have that common bond. Life brings with its circumstances that we have absolutely no control over. But life's all — life also brings with it things that we are responsible for. And oftentimes the problem comes in between you and I deciding what I am responsible for and what I'm not responsible for, what happened to me and I had no control over it, and what has happened to me because I made the decision.

Going back to something that I've read already about Jacob, his name was given to him at his birth simply based on the fact that he was grabbing his brother's heel. I don't know about you, but that's, that's interesting, that it wasn't a family name that was given. You know, so much, uh, fault is given into names typically in our world today. In our culture, there's, there's books of baby names, and, and people get very territorial about names, and, and, and there's interesting spellings of names, and, and, and all that goes on, is there's a lot there. But in this moment, it seems like nobody was thinking about the name, because the first one come out like an Ewok, they named him Red. The next one comes out, and he's got a hold of his brother's heel. Hey, he'll grab her, let's name him that. Because that's what Jacob's name meant, was sir planter. Every day of his life, he was reminded of something he did in a moment when he was really not in control. I mean, think about it. It didn't birth, you would almost say this was an involuntary response to stimulus. In this moment, he reaches out and
Grabs a hold of his brother's heel. And because of one, one move, one, one moment of innocence, he's labeled from that day forward, that he's a surplant. Or maybe you don't understand that word. It's not something that we use every day in our world. We don't go around using the word supplanter typically. So let me give you the definition of it. According to dictionary.com, sir planters: someone — listen to this — or something, taking the place of another, as through force, scheming, strategy, or the like. From the very beginning of his life, he was called a schemer, a deceiver, someone who's always trying to take the place of someone else. And this was the label that was placed on him because of, of a moment in time, an action that he took when he was being born. He was labeled this way: you're deceitful, you're a schemer, you're always trying to work things out in your best interest. He had been given this less than desirable name. He had been labeled trouble, and not trustworthy, and a replacement.

But in the beginning, I want you to know — and I'm going a little bit slow, because you need to get this picture painted, because this is something I picked up on in this footnote right here. This was interesting for me. I don't know how many times I've read this story in my life. I don't know how many times I've heard messages preached out of the same chapter, how many times I've had somebody else talk about this moment. But I've never picked up on something so interesting, and I didn't catch it, except it was in the footnote of my Bible. In the beginning, Jacob's temperament was not this way. This was not his personality. Though everywhere he went, when they called his name, he was called a supplanter. He was called deceitful. He was called a, a schemer. But I tell you, I was looking in Genesis chapter 25, and I will take you back to verse number 27. It says: So the boys grew, and Esau was a skillful hunter and man of the field, but Jacob was a mild man. If you read in the King James — that's the New King James he's reading, the King James — it says he was a plain man. And we've always, at least everything I've been around, I've talked about how he already was, was, was, was working in the background of working everything out from, for what was going to be the best benefit for Jacob. But I want you to know, in this moment right here — and again I tell you, there's so much that can pass between one verse to the next, we don't know exactly how old he is, we just know that he's old enough that he's able to cook, and his brother's old enough that he's able to hunt — but in this moment, in this moment, something was different.

If you put that verse back up there for me one second. Looking at this, I need to unpack it a little bit more, because upon digging deeper, I discovered there's one Hebrew word there that is translated mild. It is the Hebrew word tom, T-A-W-M, pronounced tom. This word is used 13 times in the Bible. Now listen to stay with me, because you Bible scholars are going to love this one. I never studied this word out. I never noticed it. I wouldn't have noticed it, except for the footnote. But I begin to dig down. 13 times. 9 of the 13 times is translated perfect. Two times it's translated undefiled. One time is translated upright. And one time is translated plain. And then it tells me that this same word is used to describe Job. In Job chapter one, verse number one: There was a man in the land of Us, whose name was Job, and this man was blameless and upright. The exact same way that Job is being described, as a guy who was doing things the right way, is how Jacob is being described in this chapter. How many times have I been led to believe that he was less than that? Why? Because of his name. Because of an involuntary action, his name was called sir planter. But yet I read right here — and every word in the Bible is important for a reason — and I stopped for a minute, because of a footnote, I have misunderstood Jacob. Jacob in this moment was living right. Jacob was doing right. Jacob was, was mislabeled by his name, but he had not lived up to his name. He was upright and perfect in this moment.

Well, all of a sudden the story's changed. It takes on new life in this moment, because I just was led to believe, from the moment he come out of his mother's womb, he was deceitful, he was scheming, he was strategizing how he could always benefit and make life work towards him. But what I've realized in this moment, in just a few short verses, is that he was actually a good boy. He had a good temperament about himself. But yet, over and over again, life was pressing him and pushing him into a mold because of a label that was placed on him. And there came a time, as Solomon says, time and chance happened to all men. There came a time, just a little bit later, a few verses, where his brother comes in from hunting. Jacob's just simply making lunch. Evidently he was a pretty good cook. His brother comes in. He's, he's, he's frustrated, and he's upset, because he's went out to hunt, he's come back empty, there's nothing there. Through the process, he's become unbelievably hungry. And as he shows up in the house, boy, he's smelling something good. What is that? Maybe mom's been cooking. He comes around the corner. Mom's nowhere to be found, but his brother's there, and his brother's got this pot of stew. And the aroma is just causing everything. He is, he is the, the personification of hangry. And he says, give me some of that stew, lest I die.

I don't know what happened in this moment. I don't know that I have the ability to accurately describe what took place. But maybe, just maybe, in this moment, something clicked inside of Jacob's mind. He, up into this point, we have no record that he was anything less than upright. That's what the Word of God says, and I have to take the Word of God at what it says. It says he was upright. But for some reason, something clicked in his mind, and he looked at his brother and said, why don't you sell me your birthright? Now, there's so much to unpacking this, I don't have enough time today, because many of you would end up checking out. But if you do a deep dive into this, there's so much depth in this story. And I know a lot of you have struggled — in fact, this was the lunch conversation, of how we struggle sometimes. Because last Sunday, my message, I talked about a passage of Scripture that I struggle with. There are a few of them in the Bible that I struggle getting my head around them, from a human perspective, because I'm looking at it with human eyes and human reasoning. But some people got brought up and said, I always, they've struggled with that, the Jacob have I loved, he saw have I hated. And I had actually taught on that process. It wasn't the fact that he hated Esau. He hated Esau's approach to the covenant relationship, which goes directly back to this story right here in chapter 25 of Genesis, when Esau thought so little of the covenant. It wasn't about — and what's interesting here is, Esau didn't have the right to sell it, and Jacob didn't have the right to purchase it. Neither one of them said they even been involved in the equation. They misunderstood their relationship. But that's another message for somebody else to preach on another day. But getting back to where I am right now, I need you to know that Esau come in, and he was so hungry in the moment that he thought himself was just going to die. So he's thinking, what good is this covenant anyway? I'm not going to be around to enjoy it. Sure, I'll sell you my birthright for a bowl of beans. And something happened in Jacob that moment. Maybe it was out of innocence. Maybe the
Thought just come randomly, and he said, I don't know. I don't know how to explain it. All I know is that from that moment forward, things changed in Jacob's life. It could have been just a simple innocent thought, or maybe there was a little bit went behind it. But all I know, in that moment, he stepped out into being a surplanter. And from that moment forward, that young man's life took a turn.

And I feel like I'm speaking to some individuals in the day, who you remember doing something way back in your early years, and your teenagers, before your frontal lobe fully developed, that has set you on a course that you wrestle with things still today in your life. Before that, it could be said of you, as it was said of Jacob, that you were upright. You were perfect. You were, you were good in what you did. But, but either whether it was innocence, or maybe it was curiosity, or maybe it was some other form of something that wasn't all that big a deal, that moment, it's, it changed the trajectory of your life from that moment forward. That's what's happened to Jacob here, is from selling a pot of stew, his life took a turn. And in the Scriptures, from that moment forward, everything about him lived up to the name that he was given at birth. I don't know what made him do it. But all I know is that it ended up moving forward, and it allowed him to, to do things easier the next time. Because that's the way sin usually happens, is it feels good at first, but it's a slippery slope. And when you start enjoying the ride, then — and here's the deal — the devil's no go, never going to show you the end picture. You're never going to show you what's, what the final outlook for your life's going to be. But something happened. He set something in motion. He lived up to the manner of his name. And maybe it was an adrenaline rush, or maybe he just felt good in the moment. But something was set in motion that changed, and he began to slide down that slope.

And as life always happened, time marches on, and another opportunity presents itself again for Jacob to act like Jacob. Chapter 27 begins with Jacob's father getting older and nearing death. And he calls his son Esau, his favorite boy, in and tells him, look, I'm, I'm blind. I can't see anymore. And I feel like my, my days are drawing real, real close to being over. And what I'd love for you to do is, I'd love for you to go out and, and for you to, for you to kill me some, some good venison to eat, and bring it in here. Make it that special recipe, the one you know I like, and bring it in here, and I'm going to put a blessing on you. But in the course of this dysfunctional family, mom's listening around the corner, and she hears what dad is saying. And she goes to her favorite son, Jacob, and she begins to tell in the story. Now Jacob has an opportunity here. He can look at his mom and say, mom, this isn't right. That's stealing. That blessing's not supposed to be me. It's supposed to belong to my brother Esau. But instead of doing that — once you've started down the slope, it's easier to just write it out than to climb back up to where you're supposed to be — and instead of pointing out what was wrong, instead of saying, mom, this isn't right, instead he comes up with reasons why there may be a problem with the plan. Like, my brother's hairy and I'm smooth-skinned, how's this going to work out? And then together they come up with this entire plan on how they can put together the process. And again, Jacob is living up to his name. He's fitted into the mold that was constantly placed on him. And what we begin to see here is, once you open the box, it's usually more difficult to close it than you can ever imagine. And starting down that path, it feels good, and it's just tough to stop. David, he never says he's wrong. He never, he never stops the process. Instead, he starts running. And when he starts running, he has to keep running, and running, and running, and running.

And I'm speaking to somebody today in this room. You know exactly what I'm talking about. There were things set in motion long ago, and you have, you've been having to run in your life, and stay ahead of every lie, every deceit, every bad decision. And it is wearing you down. It is starting to come up on you. And you feel exactly the way Jacob was feeling, that I'm never going to be able to live down my past. And at this moment, he's truly embraced his name, but has come at a very high price. Because his father does bless him. Jacob pulls off the deception, and everything gets set in motion. And when Esau finds out, he comes in, begs his dad for a blessing. But there's very little to be left, because Esau has all set this in motion — or Jacob's already said all this in motion. But Esau, he realizes what's going on, and he says he hates his brother. He's going to kill, once his dad has died and the morning period is over, he's going to kill his brother. And now, because of decisions that Jacob has made, he's got to spend his life on the run. He can't stay there anymore, not if he's going to live. So here he is. He sets in motion. Mom helps him again, because she's enabling him, because it's a dysfunctional family. He runs. He runs to his uncle's house. He runs to Laban's house. There he finds one of Laban's daughters and falls heads over heel in love with her, and begins to make the beginning process of trying to arrange for a marriage. But what happens to the double crossers? The double crosser gets double crossed. And when it comes to wedding time, he wakes up the next morning. Instead of getting the girl he thought he was getting, he got her sister. Goes back and realizes what happened. And dad said, well, it was, it wasn't right for me to marry off the younger before the older. So he got her. But if you want to work another seven years, I'll give you the younger one too. I know it's dysfunctional. This is, this is crazy stuff, but it's in the Scriptures. It's how things went down. But, and you see this, and it's a constant, a deception game, and it's a constant doing this and trying to get ahead. He's trying to outdo his father-in-law, and his father — and I was trying to outdo him. And then they're trying to divide up their livestock, and, and, and all of a sudden Jacob's trying to get the best deal that's here. And he ends up scheming his father-in-law, and then all this crazy stuff. And before you know it, 20 years have passed, and he's always having to stay one step ahead, one step ahead, one step ahead. It's always on his mind. He's never peaceful. He's never restful. It's never just enough. He's always having to continue to work harder and harder, because that's what happens when you don't live upright. Life is always trying to overtake you. It's always trying to run you down, when you're not doing the things the way you're supposed to be doing it. There's always something gnawing at you in the back of your mind. There's never just a time of peace and rest, because you're not living the way you're supposed to be living.

And I feel so strongly in my spirit, I'm speaking to some people today, that long ago you set some things in motion. And you've had some good days, and you've had some moments where, where the sunshine popped through for a little while. But there was always that little annoyance that was there, because you never stopped long enough to truly deal with the real issue at heart. And this is where Jacob is. It was all set in motion by decision Jacob made when he was younger. But he was dealing with the consequences of his decisions that he was made in youth. And he was still doing it some
20 years later. He is still living with a life that's less than it could be, because of something he refuses to deal with. He didn't try. He'd been running. How many of you in the room today are dealing with the consequences of decisions you made long ago? You tried something, seen something, tasted something. Maybe it was done in an instance. Maybe it was set in motion. But it's been chasing you for years. You've been running, looking, tracking, scheming. But you're getting tired, and it doesn't seem like anything you do is making it any better. It's only growing worse. Maybe you finally kicked it, but you turn a corner one day, it just slaps you in the face again. And all of a sudden it's been decades of dysfunction in your life, and it's, and it's starting to spill over into another generation. My God, let something get ahold of you today. Stop running. I feel so strong to tell somebody to stop running. It's time to stop running from what has tainted your decisions and led you off course many years ago.

Jacob was doing this. He was dealing with the same. He's getting older and getting older, and it's harder to run. I'll tell you, at 46 it's getting harder to run. Got all these gazelles around here now. I remember when I was running. I remember when I could run sub nines. Now if I get close to 10, I'm happy. Age catches up with us all. And the spiritual age was catching up to him. He wasn't able to do the things he was able to do 10 years ago, 20 years ago.

Jacob leaves Laban, takes his family, and in the crazy escape plan and secret with his wives. But word gets back to Laban, and they have their final goodbyes. And now Jacob's finally heading home, and he's trying to deal with the reality that when I go back, my brother's waiting for me. And as a schemer, as a conniver, as a manipulator, he does what he does best. He decides, look, I'm going to divide my family up. I mean, think about what he's doing. He starts dividing up his family, because he — look, look, I'm going to get overrun. It's going to catch up with me. So he divides his family up. And then we find him at the point in our story where he is by himself. Because I'm going to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that's what happens when you live a life as a schemer, as a conniver, as a manipulator, as a surplanter: you'll always end up by yourself. Here he is. He's by himself. Begins to process everything that he has set in motion. Genesis 32 and 24, my opening verse, said: Then Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until the breaking today. At Jabock, Esau was coming to meet him. Jacob knew his time was running out. He was having a this is it moment. Anybody know what I'm talking about? This is it. I'm at the bottom. I'm at the bottom. There's nothing. There's, there's no more scheme left in me. Every lie that I've had has come unfolded. I, I'm too tired. I'm too weary. I'm, I'm, I'm just, I'm just — I, I can't deal with it. I can't deal with it anymore. This is the moment here at Jaybach where he's at.

What's funny is, is the word Jaybach, literally the translation of Jaybach is pouring out. He's at a place of pouring out in this moment right here. And he's all by himself. There's nobody around him. There's no family, and there's no friends, because of his decisions, because of his lack of dealing with the real issue at hand. He's found himself, some 20 years later, and he's all alone. But it's in this moment he begins to understand where the real problem lies. It was here at Jabock, in this lonely place, all by himself, that Jacob wrestled. He wrestled with himself. He wrestled with his situation. He wrestled with 20-plus years of mess, mostly created by himself. And here, alone, he wrestled not just with his situation, but he also wrestled with God. Because here's what I need you to know: that when you find yourself wrestling through a situation, God won't leave you by yourself. And even though everybody else had abandoned him, and nobody else was around, and he's there with his own thoughts, dealing with his own circumstances in his own situation — and the way I see it unfold — and he was there finally saying, I'm tired of being this way. I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired of being sick and tired. And there's nowhere else for me to go, and I got to do something. And he starts wrestling with himself. And in the middle of wrestling with himself, God shows up. And he begins to grab a hold and cling on to God, and starts wrestling with God in this moment. And the Bible tells us he wrestled with God. In Hosea chapter 12, that confirms it. God's purpose, God's plan, and God's calling, we're now all coming to the surface. And things that he didn't want to deal with, stuff that he had buried long ago, he had put in a closet, that he had, he had tried to paint over, all of a sudden God begins to bring those things back. For you, Jacob, you didn't have to buy that covenant. That covenant was promised. Your dad Isaac was known, that it was his descendants that covenant would pass on to. You didn't have to deceive your brother. It belonged to you the entire time. Quit living up to your name, Jacob. And he wrestles the entirety of the night.

But I tell you, he was wrestling himself, who he had become after all these years. Jacob was wrestling with every bad decision, with every lie, with all the deceit and the schemes and the deceptions of the past. And there he wrestled with the old man. He wrestled with the old man that was there. He was, he was tired of how things have turned out. It had not gone according to the plan. It not went the way that it should have went. He was there wrestling. He was sick of his past. He was desperate for a fresh start. Jacob wrestled throughout the night.

And I wonder, is there anybody in this room who's desperate for a fresh start? I know it's Father's Day Sunday, but is there anybody desperate in this place? Anybody tired of hiding? Anybody tired of covering this stuff up? Anybody tired of living a facade, living in a fake way, just trying to act like everything's all right in your life, when inside you know you're dying? You're so desperate to be different. It's been decades that you've dealt with stuff, that it was set in motion in your youth. Anybody asking themselves, how in the world did I get here? I wasn't always this way. At one time I was good. What time I was upright. I've come to realize that when you come to Jaybach, a place of pouring out, you only have two options. You can run, or you can wrestle. You can run, or you can wrestle. Jacob showed up, and he was tired. There wasn't any more run left in him. He didn't have anything left there to run away, because he knew, I can't escape this thing. So I, I like the fact — I envisioned in my mind that he kicks his shoes off, he loosens himself up a little bit, and says, you know what, I'm about ready to fight. Because I'm tired of running. Running hasn't gotten me anywhere. Running hasn't done anything that made the matters worse. If I would have dealt with this long ago, I probably could have overcome the situation. But I've come too far, and I've ran too hard, and my only option is to wrestle, until something changes inside of me, until that old man dies off. I'm not willing to pick him back up anymore. I've decided I need a fresh start. Something has to change. And when he had that attitude, God met him with Jabot. God met him there. And he grabbed a hold of Him, and he knew, this was my moment for something to change. It was Jacob's moment to wrestle down the old man and make a permanent change in his life. And as I was working on this message, I
Began to think of the reasons why people run. Some run because there's uncertainty of what they're going to face when they stop, how bad it's going to be when it all comes out. Some just start with the excuses. It was not my fault. Others are worse than I am. Let me tell you what. If you're looking, you can always find someone worse. But that doesn't take or negate where you are. You can put makeup on a honey, but it's still a pig. You got an issue, and that issue will take you down if you don't deal with it. At some point you have to stop and wrestle.

Jacob realized the best way to deal with it was to face it head-on and wrestle it down. And Jacob was wrestling down that old man that had been destroying his entire life. He wrestled down an old man that had caused division in his family. He wrestled down the old man who was taking what wasn't rightfully his. And he knew he had to do something about it. It wasn't somebody else's fault. Jacob knew, it's my fault. I wonder what it is that some of you need to change, some of you need to wrestle today.

Let's start to close this message. I want you know that when Jacob grabbed onto that angel, he was determined that he had to hang on until he no longer walked the same. God knew He had to make a change in Jacob too. So we read in verse 25 of chapter 32: When he saw that he did not prevail against them, he touched the socket of his hip, and the socket of Jacob's hip was put out a joint, and he wrestled with him. And Jacob knew something had changed in him, because God took away his ability to run. I'm talking about getting a hold of God until something changes in you. Jacob had reached the end of his rope. He was there, and he knew, this is either — I can't run anymore. Running is not getting me anywhere. God, and I refuse to let You go until You make some change in me. And God knew, in His divine wisdom, that the only way I can make the change that needs to be changed is, you have to have the ability to run removed from you. That's what took place. Someone here today needs to wrestle with some things until you lose the ability to run, because you've been running too long. It's time to wrestle the old man.

Jacob never walked the same. Verse 31, that chapter, says, as he crossed over, and the sun rose, that he limped on his hip. From that day to this, he, he drew his last breath, he never was able to run again. He had a limp in his walk, but he was a changed man. He was not going to take the old way anymore. He knew that man had to die. But there's something better than that that took place in this moment, because verse 26 says: And he said, Let me go, for the day breaks. But he said, I will not let you go until you bless me. So he said to him, What is your name? And he said, Jacob. And he said, Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have struggled with God and with men, and you have prevailed. I know your name has been Jacob your entire life, but I'm tired of you being identified while being deceitful and being a surplanter. And I'm here not just to change your walk, but to change your name. No longer are you supplanter, but now you are prince of God. Somebody needs to have a Jayboc moment in this place. Stop running from what's trying to take you over. Allow God to change your name.

Jacob wrestled and asked for a blessing, but what he got was a name change. He already had the promise, but what he needed was a change of perspective in his life. Somebody needs a change of perspective in your life today. I know what you did long ago was done in innocence. Maybe you didn't meet him. Maybe you had no idea what you were setting in motion. But for years, for decades, you have dealt with the repercussions of something that was done in innocence or lacking of knowledge. But I'm here to tell you that as long as you run, you're never going to become what you could be. But it's time to stop and start wrestling that old man down to the ground. It's time for that old man to die, and it's time for your name to change.

He was known as a surplanter, but he became a prince of God. As the musicians come, listen to me. Jacob was not a bad man. Please hang on. Give me, give me just two minutes of your time before we lend. He was not a bad man. He had a personality that caused him to do some things. And I believe that someone in this room has been dealing with that same thing. Sometimes our desires and our temperament do not bring us into the place where we need to be, so you have to wrestle some things over through obedience. That's what Jacob did. And when he did, God blessed him. And God wants to bless somebody here today. I love that it was declared in that moment: You have struggled with God and man and have prevailed. It was a life-changing moment at Jabock. He was tired of running. It had gotten him nowhere. It had not gotten him anywhere where he was supposed to be. But he wrestled that old man down, until that old man died. And when he died, God declared, you've been wrestling with Me, and you've been wrestling with yourself, but you have prevailed. You're not going to be Jacob anymore. Your name is Israel.

I love to tell you that Jacob's life was perfect from that moment forward, and he never faced any opposition, he never had any heartache, and never had any pain. But that would be an absolute lie. But I will tell you this: from that day until he drew his last breath, he walked different. He walked with a daily reminder of that old man died. And he got to the point to where he was able to put his hands on his grandkids' heads, to see two more generations, and allow that covenant that was his the entire time to pass on. And I don't believe he would have ever been there, had he not killed that old man at J Buck. J Buck is right down here. A place of pouring out is in this altar today. I know it's Father's Day, and we've got lots of good things planned this afternoon. But I'm gonna tell you right now, there's some men and women who need to wrestle and kill some stuff today. And if you'll come down here, there's a God who will meet you, and there can be life-changing interaction happen today. Will you by your heads with me? God, on this Father's Day, I'm thankful for our fathers, but I'm so thankful for You. I pray, Lord, that that Spirit that draws all men right now would move so strong in this place. For I know, Lord, there are men and women here who have been wrestling with things so long, running, God, running away where it is they need to be. Weary and tired and broken, frustrated. I pray, Lord, that they would take advantage of this moment and pour out. That they would take advantage in this moment to wrestle down the old man. For I know if they will, God, You will meet them here, in Jesus' name.

If you don't mind just keeping your eyes closed, that's — you know, this altar is open. Just because you come to the altar doesn't admit you're some kind of center. It just emits you're wanting to get closer to God. And I wonder if there's anybody, anybody wanting to come to Jay Brock today, to wrestle down an old man, to wrestle down an old woman, looking for a change, sick and tired of being sick and tired. Oh, thank you for coming. God's going to do something here. They're going to sing. We're going to pray for those that are coming right now.