New Name

DEVOTION

GENESIS

NEW NAME

Gen 32:22-32

22 That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two maidservants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23 After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. 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.

NIV

The final touches of a regenerated life are at hand. Jacob has surely been a man who has relied on his abilities and his strength throughout his life. From outsmarting his brother of the birthright, deceiving, with the help of his mother, his father for the blessing, working diligently for fourteen years for his two wives, and then another six for all his flocks and herds and to now devising this plot to appease his brother, he has demonstrated a self-reliant man. Although he has prayed and has some sense of God, and his power, he has yet to completely affirm his total reliance on God. Now we come to the place where God shows him his need for this complete reliance. From the narrative we are left with none other than the belief Jacob wrestled with God himself who appeared to him in the form of man. This was no angel, but almighty God who took on the full force of Jacob’s strength in a wrestling match. It appears from the narrative that God could not overpower the strength of Jacob, so he merely touched him and dislocated his hip. This dislocation of Jacob’s hip hindered his strength as the thigh is the pillar of a man’s physical strength. Without the ability to use his leg he now had to cling onto God in order to even stand. The transition is complete. He knew with whom he had been wrestling with and he knew he cannot stand without him. He asks for a blessing, he does not want him to go without blessing him. He is asked his name, and of course he responds, “Jacob”. This carries all the significance of the deceiver, the supplanter, the self-reliant, the self- seeker, the former man. God informs him he has given him a new name, and it is Israel. When God does a work in a man and brings him to the place of total reliance on him, he is a new man with a new name, one that implies he is now with God. Jacob, Israel could not even walk with this dislocated hip, so in the blessing, God restores his ability to walk, but with a limp, to remind him, he is no longer able to rely on his own strength but must rely on God for all aspects of his life. Have we not had the same lesson? So often we hear the unsaved and even some believers claim that God has given us a brain and he intends for us to use it. We might also think God has given us a strong back to forge our way in life, with great abilities. But it is too easy to become self-reliant, to look to our humanist abilities leaving God to be this abstract uninvolved force,  who once created us, leaves us to fend for ourselves, with what we were created with. But this is not the case. God comes to us in many ways. In the past he walked with Adam in the garden. He visited with Abraham, speaking about what he was going to do. He took Lot by the hand to safety. He shows himself to men in various ways. He wrestled with Jacob. God wants to be personally involved in our lives. He reveals himself to us in different ways, so we can know without a doubt that we need to be completely reliant on him. When we think about the fact there is a new name written down in heaven, and it is mine, Oh yes, it is mine, is it the name we were born with? There is a new name, God has given us a new name which signifies we are with him. The past life still exists within us, but we live in the new life. Israel and Jacob are both the same man, and sometimes he is called by one name or the other. There still is the man Jacob within Israel, although the transformation from self-reliant to God-reliant should have been clear to him. We need to see we too can fall back to being that old nature if we are not careful to keep watch over ourselves and understand it is God who has given us this new name which we should be living up to.