A Beautiful Breaking

How does God work in our lives? What I have discovered more than anything else is that He works through our dark times, our hardships, struggles and reverses. This is a truth you can find through your own experience or through Scripture—both will lead you to the same place: that in the hard times, in the dark shadows—that’s where you meet God and that where real life transformation takes place.

We could illustrate that from many places in Scripture and from the lives of many people, but today I'm talking today the Old Testament patriarch Jacob. The story of Jacob’s all-night wrestling match is one of my favorite stories in the Old Testament. It reveals so much to us, and so much that speaks to all of us about God’s work in our lives.

The part I’m referring to in the story of Jacob is when he returns from his 20 years in Aram, where he had married Rachel and Leah and had his many children. That was 20 years away from home, 20 years gone because he’d deceived his brother Esau and he feared his reprisal; 20 years in exile from the land of promise. And now he returns, and now he’s afraid that Esau was going to clean his clock, to get his vengeance for what Jacob had done to him two decades before when he cheated Esau from both his inheritance and his blessing.

20 years away; 20 years in which his faith, which was so incomplete, so simple, so basic, so far from the faith of his grandfather Abraham. Jacob’s faith, compared to his grandfather Abraham was so unformed; it was like the faith of a child; a grown man with the faith of a child—not childlike faith, but childish faith.

If you know the story, you’ll recall that when Jacob was fleeing the land of Canaan, he slept one night and had a dream of angels ascending and descending on a staircase. Jacob says, ah this place is it, the place when heaven and earth touch, the house of God, Beth-el. And he wakes up and says, hey God, if you do all these nice things to me then I’ll let you be my God and I’ll even tithe to you. Isn’t that great of me? Such is the state of Jacob’s unformed, immature faith.

So he goes off to Aram. Now even his name, Jacob, means cheater. And to Esau, he’d been a cheater. So God puts and even bigger cheater in his way, this man named Laban. Laban was Jacob’s uncle, and he seems to have the same slick deal gene that Jacob had. Jacob wants Rachel for his wife; Laban manipulates Jacob into marrying both pretty Rachel and not so pretty Leah. Yeah, work seven years for the one, and seven for the other. Wake up the day after the wedding with the one you don’t want. Well, that’s often how it works—be a schemer and God sends an even bigger schemer into your life to straighten you out—you reap what you sow, right?

Yes, if we manipulate, we are manipulated; if we cheat, God sends us a cheater—maybe so then we can begin to understand what that sin does to someone else. God rebukes and corrects us with someone who is even better (or worse) at our vices than we are.

And Laban’s manipulation went on for two decades, and by the end, Laban’s own daughters have had it as well; they’re ready to run away. But to run away from Laban was to run toward Jacob’s brother Esau.

In the meantime, Esau had become a powerful man. He has 400 men who worked for him, his own little army. As Jacob’s caravan approached the home country, word gets to Jacob that his brother and the 400 are ahead of him; news of Jacob’s return travels fast. He doesn’t know if his brother was “over it” or if he was in a vengeful mood (evidently he’d never “friended” Esau on his Facebook account!).

And just as he’d seen a divine vision on his way out of the land (the staircase and the angels), he sees the divine presence on his way into the land. Genesis 32:1-2 says,

Jacob also went on his way, and the angels of God met him. ² When Jacob saw them, he said, “This is the camp of God!” So he named that place Mahanaim.

Isn’t Mahanaim a great word? It sounds so Middle Eastern! In Hebrew it means “two camps” and it seems that Jacob called the place “two camps” because to him it seemed that there were indeed two camps there—his own and God’s own. The earthly and the heavenly, just like that staircase that he’d seen 20 years before had its foot on earth and its top in heaven.

Jacob is dazzled by that vision, but I think he drew the wrong lesson from it. Read a little farther in Genesis 32, vs. 7-8:

⁷ In great fear and distress Jacob divided the people who were with him into two groups, and the flocks and herds and camels as well. ⁸ He thought, “If Esau comes and attacks one group, the group that is left may escape.”

Consciously or unconsciously, he attempts an earthly duplication of the divine pattern. I'll have two camps too, just like God does. I’ll divide the caravan in two sections—and he sends everyone else on ahead.

Then he further insulates himself. He stays behind both of the camps and he’s the last one left on the far side of the little brook called the Jabbok. And it's there that God meets him here and does more to change his life in one night than in the previous 20 years.

Now, as we read this story, and a lot of Bibles have a title over it saying something like, “Jacob wrestling with the angel.” We maybe have seen a Sunday school picture like this or an engraving like this [see powerpoint]. But is it wrestling with an angel? Take a look at the text closely. Who is this Being who wrestles with Jacob?

In Genesis 32, he’s simply called “a man.” But this is one unusual man. First of all, He can wrestle all night! But more important, if you look at the cues, He’s even more than just an angel.

There are places in the Bible that talk about “just” angels—lesser created beings that serve God. The word “angel” just means messenger. But here, the being he encounters is the Angel of the Lord—in Hebrew ha Malach-Yahweh. That means so much more. He is The Messenger of the Lord.

We think angel and we think of angels announcing the birth of Christ, or angels were present at the creation. But there are places in the Old Testament where “the angel of the Lord” is not just another angel. For example, in Genesis 19, there’s a place where Abraham has a conversation with God. It starts by saying that there were three angels, but one begins to speak as if He were the Lord Himself. Then only two angels go on from there to destroy Sodom. In the Book of Joshua, Joshua encounters an angel with a drawn sword who also speaks as if He were God Himself.

You have to get to the New Testament to really make sense of these strange Old Testament encounters. There we meet the One who is the ultimate Messenger of God, God with us, the Word made flesh. Yes, I think that the One Jacob wrestles with in Genesis 32 is the pre-incarnate Jesus Christ.

And when Jesus is present, He brings grace, and in His grace, He gives Jacob something precious: call it a beautiful breaking.

Let’s read Genesis 32:24-32:

²⁴ So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. ²⁵ When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. ²⁶ Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.” But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

²⁷ The man asked him, “What is your name?” “Jacob,” he answered.²⁸ Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome.”

²⁹ Jacob said, “Please tell me your name.” But he replied, “Why do you ask my name?” Then he blessed him there. ³⁰ So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.”

³¹ The sun rose above him as he passed Peniel, and he was limping because of his hip. ³² Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the tendon attached to the socket of the hip, because the socket of Jacob’s hip was touched near the tendon.

Remember that Jacob was prepared for a fight. The moment he was set on, he probably thought it was one of Esau’s men. But it was not; all night they wrestled and it was a dead even match. Then his opponent touched his hip and dislocated the hip—and yet Jacob fought on. You can almost smell the sweat and feel the dust being kicked up as they fought there by the stream, and you can hear the exhausted voice of Jacob. He’s come to realize this was no ordinary man; so he asks for his blessing. That’s an ironic request for someone who’d stolen Esau’s blessing, isn’t it?

He gives him that blessing, but in an unexpected way. What’s your name? Jacob? Not anymore. It’s Israel.

What does Israel mean? The simplest translation is “God fights.” This name will replace the name Jacob (“Cheater”); it’s both a promise from God—I’ll fight on your behalf--and a call for faith, for trust in the God who fights for you. In essence, the Lord was saying that Jacob would have victory and receive the promises because God would fight for him. Not because Jacob would have to fight and wrestle and scheme and cheat for them, but because God will fight on his behalf.

Jacob wasn’t complete; he still had some growing to do, but He gets it. He ends up naming the place where this grudge match happens Peniel, which means “Face of God.” “I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.” And Jacob limped away from Peniel a changed man.

It was a beautiful breaking; something changed that night for Jacob. God used this crisis to reach into his life and make a mark, an indelible mark on his life--not just his body, not just a dislocated hip, but a well dislocated ego. He began to learn that to be successful with God meant that he had to be crippled in his own self-sufficiency.

…Which brings this home for you and me. When we wrestle with God, when we hold on in the dark, God meets us there, shows us his face and touches us as well, to change us as much as He changed Jacob that night.

It’s significant that the wrestling match took place at night. In the night, you can’t see what’s going on. That’s also when many plants grow—not during the day, but at night. That’s where we grow too. When we hold on in the dark, in our pain to God and refuse to let go, that’s where we grow.

The thigh is perhaps the strongest part of the body. There must come a day when God dislocates that thigh, totally undermining and undoing our natural strength. Your strong point and mine may be quite different from Jacob's. Ambition, boasting, emotion, self-love—each of us has his own, but for each of us this dislocating work is a definite crisis of experience.

It is when our strongest part has been touched by God that we become what God truly wants us to be. Remember what Paul said—2 Corinthians 12. 10:

That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

In our natural strength we are useless to God. With no strength at all, we can hold on to Him. Then God could declare that Jacob had prevailed with God. This is what happens when we hold on and surrender, beaten, at God's feet.

Those touched by God do not know what has happened. When it really takes place, we don't know what it is. It’s difficult to define, but it’s sure real. Jacob only knew that somehow God had met him and that now he was crippled. The limp—the changed life—is the evidence, not merely the witness of the lips. We are to look to God to do the work in His own way and time. The result will be evident in us.

The question I pose to you today is—are you walking with a limp—with the evidence of a beautiful breaking? Or are you walking through life in your own Jacob-like strength, making your schemes and dealing your deal, trying to run life on your terms, not God’s?

The limp is good. This is a good weakness, a beautiful breaking.

Maybe if we fast forward to near the end of Jacob’s life we can see it best. After Joseph goes to Egypt, and after the time when the whole family comes into Egypt, Joseph introduces his aged father to Pharaoh. We read in Genesis 47:7-10:

⁷ Then Joseph brought his father Jacob in and presented him before Pharaoh. After Jacob blessed Pharaoh, ⁸ Pharaoh asked him, “How old are you?”

⁹ And Jacob said to Pharaoh, “The years of my pilgrimage are a hundred and thirty. My years have been few and difficult, and they do not equal the years of the pilgrimage of my fathers.” ¹⁰ Then Jacob blessed Pharaoh and went out from his presence.

Not once but twice Jacob blesses Pharaoh. This old scruffy herder of flocks blesses the most powerful man on earth. Jacob, hardly even realizing, stands as the voice and hands of God to the mightiest ruler on earth, and blesses him. This is a far different man than the one who divided his caravan and hid by the Jabbok. This is a man in whom the peace of God dwells.

Once there was a 10-year-old boy who decided to study judo despite the fact that he had lost his left arm in a car accident.

The boy began lessons with an old Japanese judo master. The boy was doing well, so he couldn't understand why, after three months of training, the master had taught him only one move.

"Sensei," the boy finally said, "Shouldn't I be learning more moves?"

"This is the only move you know, but this is the only move you'll ever need to know," the sensei replied. Not quite understanding, but believing in his teacher, the boy kept training.

Several months later, the sensei took the boy to his first tournament. Surprising himself, the boy easily won his first two matches. The third match proved to be more difficult, but after some time, his opponent became impatient and charged; the boy deftly used his one move to win the match. Still amazed by his success, the boy was now in the finals. This time, his opponent was bigger, stronger, and more experienced. For a while, the boy appeared to be overmatched. Concerned that the boy might get hurt, the referee called a time-out. He was about to stop the match when the sensei intervened. "No," the sensei insisted, "Let him continue."

Soon after the match resumed, his opponent made a critical mistake: he dropped his guard. Instantly, the boy used his move to pin him. The boy had won the match and the tournament. He was the champion.

On the way home, the boy and the sensei reviewed every move in each and every match. Then the boy summoned the courage to ask what was really on his mind: "Sensei, how did I win the tournament with only one move?"

"You won for two reasons," the sensei answered. "First, you've almost mastered one of the most difficult throws in all of judo. And second, the only known defense for that move is for your opponent to grab your left arm.

What had been his greatest weakness became the source of his greatest strength. Having conquered that, all else was conquered.

Let the Master train you as well. Let Him break the part of you that seeks self-exaltation, so that His glory can flow instead. For when you are weak in yourself, then you are strong in Him.

The Marks of Faithfulness

This is the message I preached yesterday at Light on the Corner Church in Montrose, CA.

The Marks of Faithfulness

Galatians 6:17

What does it mean to be faithful? God is faithful—that is, you can rely on Him to be there, to be consistent and to be true to His own character. And He calls us to be faithful to Him in return. He calls us to be reliable in our deeds and in our hearts to Him—to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.”[1]

“Faithful” is kind of a religious word. Here’s a word that means the same thing that we can all get: reliable. God wants us to be reliable.

Faithfulness in His people is a characteristic which God highly prizes and rewards. Jesus tells us that this is what He will say to His people—“Well done, good and faithful servant!” (Matthew 25:21) Faithfulness—that’s the standard, that’s our goal, that’s what cheers the heart of God. And I want us to think about an unusual passage about faithfulness today.

But first, I want to tell you a story, and it has to do with this passage of Scripture.

In the early 1900s, there was a wealthy financier named Sir Alfred Chester Beatty. He was an unusual man—born in the US, he made a fortune in Colorado mining before immigrating to Great Britain. He became a British citizen, and he kept making money and began to indulge in a new found interest in archaeology. He and his team made many great discoveries.

Among those discoveries are some of oldest copies we have of New Testament writings.

One of those writings, a manuscript which is labeled “P46” for “papyrus number 46”; it’s the oldest existing copy of any of the letters written by the Apostle Paul. That manuscript contains Galatians 6:12 on into Ephesians chapter 1.

This ancient copy of this portion of Paul’s letters demonstrates the reliability of the text of the New Testament. No, it hasn’t been messed with—your Bible is reliable—it’s faithful to what was penned by Paul and all the others, as moved by the Holy Spirit.

It is both fascinating and appropriate that the earliest writing that we have in existence of Paul contains the end of Galatians with chapter 6 verse 17.

In this verse, Paul tells us that he bears on his body the marks of the Lord Jesus Christ. Here it is:

Finally, let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.

Paul says, “My life—my very body—bears proof of the fact that I am a bona-fide servant of the Lord Jesus! Don’t you dare challenge my calling of service for the Lord!”

You see, a big issue in letter to the Galatians was that the Jesus-followers in the region called Galatian—in what’s now central Turkey—were being told by some that if you really want to serve God, you needed to follow all those Old Testament laws. This included Jewish ceremonial circumcision, which was held up as the “mark in the body” of faithfulness. This reliance on rules and rituals to make you right with God, to prove that you’re doing God’s will and pleasing God—well, this just made Paul angry.

In Galatians, he defends his credentials as a called apostle of Christ. And he can say, unlike the people trying to re-impose the Law of Moses on the people of God, he has the real marks of authenticity on his very body—the scars of his persecutions, the whippings and beatings he’s endured as he’s preached Christ.

The proof of your genuine commitment to Jesus Christ is the marks that you bear as a witness to your faithfulness.

What are the marks? How do the marks on your life give witness to your faithfulness for Christ? I want to suggest three aspects of these marks. First,

The marks hurt—the is a price to be paid for faithfulness

The word “mark” here in Galatians 6:17 is the word “stigmata” from which we get the words “stigma” and “astigmatism.”

Finally, let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks [stigmata] of Jesus.

Some goofy ideas have gotten out there in the culture about “stigmata.” What I mean is, there’s this whole thing—half from Hollywood and half from medieval mysticism—about “stigmata” being Christ-like wounds that appear on the bodies of really weird devout people.

What’s the truth? The idea behind the mark that Paul describes here is that it is a burden to carry. Paul says that he “bears” the marks of Jesus on his body. It’s weighty. It’s heavy. There is a price to be paid for bearing the marks of faithfulness.

Here’s one way that the word stigmata was used. In ancient times, slaves were often branded leaving a permanent mark proving who owned them.

Needless to say, receiving the mark must have been a painful experience. In that sense, the mark was a “burden.” Paul used the same word for “bearing” is the same word that was used for a woman who carries a baby in her womb.

Carrying the marks of faithfulness cost Paul in terms of real pain. There’s always a price to be paid for faithfulness. If you follow Jesus, then you’ve turned your back on some short-term payouts. The price may be in loss of reputation, loss of income, emotional pain or real physical pain. (Paul probably suffered all of these.) Know this: faithfulness will always cost you something.

But know this too: the Lord will more than make up for that loss. In Luke 19:29, Jesus says,

And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.

But for now, be sure that there is a price you must pay to be a faithful follower of Jesus.

Second,

The marks last—faithfulness is demonstrated over time

So, the marks of faithfulness are costly. Here’s something else—the marks last a long time. The marks on Paul’s body would be marks for life.

Back in 1980, Gene Peterson wrote a book on discipleship. The book’s title is A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. It’s a reminder to us that real discipleship isn’t about taking a class and being done with it; it’s about a lifelong pilgrimage toward God and His ways.

Discipleship is a lot like working out or losing weight: it involves the constant application of right choices to our lives to take us from where we are now to where we want to go. It is being reliable in the training of our souls, and being reliable when God directs us to obey Him in some particular way.

Paul’s scars were lifelong marks. Scars tend to fade; the marks of faithfulness actually become more vivid over time.

Let me tell you another story about long-term faithfulness. I read this in my devotional reading a few weeks ago, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it for days. Here’s the story:

There was an Egyptian monk named John. He went to live with another monk, an old Greek living out in the desert. The old man’s job was to train the younger, so one day he took a dry piece of wood, stuck it in the soil and said to John, “Water this every day with a full bottle of water until it bears fruit.”

I think I would have told the old guy he was crazy, but John obeyed. The well was so far away that John would leave after dark each night to draw water and returned at dawn with a full bottle for the stick of wood and another bottle for the two men. He did this every night for three years. No sign of life for three years! But then it began to bud! It turns out that that stick was from a fruit tree. And another year passed and it bore fruit. The story doesn’t say what kind, but let’s say that there were pomegranates. (It’s funny how this Biblical fruit is really ‘in’ right now.) John and the old Greek monk took the fruit from the tree to the nearest town where there was a church. They gathered the people there and the old monk said, “Come brothers—eat the fruit of obedience.”

Faithfulness is demonstrated over time. It is obeying God when you don’t feel like it and when it’s hard. But the beautiful thing is that the fruit of blessing comes over time—a blessing not just for you, but for the people around you.

OK, so we’ve seen that faithfulness equals reliability; that the marks of faithfulness are seen in the price we pay and in staying obedient—that faithfulness is demonstrated over time. There’s one more thing--

The marks show—there is a witness to Christ shown by the marks

Paul does not actually define what the physical marks of Jesus on his body are. It’s only by context and inference that we are able to figure out that he’s referring to the scars of his persecution. I think he wanted to leave something to the imagination of the people in the churches of Galatia.

The record of his persecution is rather amazing, though. In 2 Corinthians 11, Paul makes a major list of many of the sufferings he endured in service for the Lord.

Paul said he had received the 39 lashes 5 times, 3 times he had been beaten with rods, and once he had been stoned. Acts 14 tells that story—how he was stoned and left for dead when he was in Lystra.

There is no question that Paul would have had many scars on his body for the suffering he had done for Christ.

When I was a brand new believer, the church where I was first discipled, the First Baptist Church of Ironton, Ohio, had as a guest speaker Rev. Richard Wurmbrand. He was a Lutheran pastor from Romania, and from 1948 until his final release in 1964, he was repeatedly imprisoned and beaten by the communist authorities.

He appeared before a committee of the US Congress in 1966, and even took off his shirt to show his many scars. He did the same thing in the fellowship hall at the church—then a sixty-two year old man who’d spent the best part of twenty years imprisoned by for Christ. Seeing the scars of his persecution left an indelible memory on my 14 year old mind.

What about Paul’s scars? In the society of the time, the baths were an important institution. The workday was from dawn until about three in the afternoon, and then as many men as could went to the baths. You would soak, exercise and take a break. Paul no doubt participated in this afternoon ritual.

The baths were done naked. Any man would see the extensive scars on his body. No doubt many of the Galatians had seen these same scars. When he said the words, “I bear on my body the marks of Jesus” they knew exactly what he meant.

Can you imagine the looks Paul would get when he scar-filled back was exposed? Even better, can you imagine the questions he was asked. Can you imagine the grin on Paul’s face as he answered: “I bear these marks for the Lord Jesus Christ, my master, who bore even worse marks for me.”

The marks of your faithfulness give you the opening to bear witness to Jesus as well. And if there is no faithfulness, there are no marks, and no witness to speak of, either.

How did you endure that illness? That loss of someone you loved? Losing your job? You husband walking out on you? What do these scars I see mean?

It was so hard, but Jesus was with me; the marks I bear and nothing compared to His. He was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.[2] He was that Man so I could know His endless joy.

Faithfulness—your reliability to God—is revealed in these things: the pain of mark—the price paid; the endurance of the marks—the time involved, and in the visibility of the marks—the witness they offer.

Do not give up, and do not give in.

Near the end of Paul’s life journey, he wrote this to his friend Timothy (2 Timothy 4:6-8):

⁶ For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time for my departure is near. ⁷ I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. ⁸ Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.

“I have kept the faith”—that doesn’t just mean that Paul kept on believing; it means that God found him reliable. May we be found faithful as well, paying the price, enduring so that Jesus might receive the glory until that day we enter into the fullness of joy in His presence.

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[1] Mark 12:30.

[2] Isaiah 53:3 KJV.