The Gospel in the Life of Jacob 8. Jacob's Wrestling

Jacob is calculating, self-reliant, and perpetually scheming, a man who spends most of his life trying to secure by cunning what God had already promised by grace. He has been called the "most un-heroic hero in the Bible," and the description fits. His failures are not minor or incidental; they are the very fabric of his story. And yet God will not let him go.Jacob's life is not a story about a man who finally got it together. It is a story about a sovereign God who chooses the undeserving, pursues the self-sufficient, and meets the wrestler in the dark, not to defeat him but to bless him. For those of us shaped by a culture that rewards performance and punishes weakness, Jacob's God is both a confrontation and an invitation. This is a series about the extravagance and power of grace, the kind that doesn't wait for us to deserve it.Genesis 32:22-32.