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[Music] I may not be the best at anything, nor have the best of anything. Sometimes I feel like I'm the least of both. But I know someone who has everything.

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♪ Honey is my everything ♪ ♪ And I'm happy just to know ♪ ♪ That I'm his child ♪ ♪ Oh, his name is Jesus ♪

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♪ He's the son of God ♪ ♪ He'll lead us about him ♪ ♪ I am not in my home ♪ ♪ In the rain it keeps us warm ♪

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♪ And it's my every fear ♪ ♪ I'm not crying just to know that I'm a child ♪ ♪ I said I may not be the best at anything ♪ ♪ No hand is the faster than it is ♪

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♪ Sometimes I feel like I'm the least of all ♪ ♪ But I know someone who has everything ♪ ♪ And he is my everything ♪ ♪ And I'm happy just to know ♪

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♪ Said I'm his child ♪ ♪ Oh, his name is Jesus ♪ ♪ The Godless monarch ♪ ♪ The lady of the valley ♪

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♪ The ragman for his cause ♪ ♪ His name is Jesus ♪ ♪ He's my everything ♪ ♪ And I'm happy just to know ♪

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♪ That I am a child ♪ ♪ I may not be the best at anything ♪ ♪ I have the best of anything ♪ ♪ Sometimes I feel like I'm the least of all ♪

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But I know someone who has everything, and he is my everything, and I'm happy just to know that I'm his child. [Music] [music]

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And Jacob was left alone, and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day." The subject of the message, wrestling against odds, wrestling against odds. Life is a struggle. It is an encounter with odd circumstances.

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We need to know how to wrestle against odds. Wrestling is difficult. It is challenging. It calls for alertness, resourcefulness, skills, and strength.

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It's not always pleasant. In fact, wrestling may be a gruesome and painful experience. But in a way, life is characterized by wrestling. This is especially true of the life of Jacob.

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He wrestled against odds. He began wrestling in his mother's womb, trying to get ahead of his twin brother Esau. And then when he was born it is said that the hand of Jacob had hold of the heel of Esau.

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So he started his existence in this world wrestling against odds. It was a case of the younger against the older. In some way, each of us wrestles against odds, sometimes odds related to our physical existence, whether we are young or old, middle-aged or older citizens, tall, short, odds occasioned

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by geography or region, race or religion, class or caste. Odds due to poverty or affluence, but regardless of station or status, we wrestle against odds. The odds are against us, we say. If we wrestle at all we must wrestle against odds. Esau, the older brother, is entitled to the birthright. Jacob is shut out just because of the time of his

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birth. He is a victim of circumstances over which he has no control. Jacob wrestles with Esau in order to get the upper hand. He succeeds and Esau sells his birthright for a mess of pottage. But it doesn't stop there. The wrestling goes on. Sometimes the antagonist gets the upper hand and then the protagonist gets

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the upper hand. Nevertheless the wrestling continues. For in wrestling we seek to get the advantage of the opponent, to get him down and to keep him there for a time. So here we see two brothers, twin brothers they are, Jacob and Esau wrestling against each other. Not only do we see these brothers as

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they wrestle against each other, we see the use on the part of Jacob of deceit, the use of deception in order to get the blessing which his father intends to give to his brother Esau. But you see Esau is different. Esau is hairy in appearance, Jacob is smooth, and in the case of both of them we see a case of

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wrestling against odds. And we do wrestle against odds. That's the situation in our world today. The haves and the have-nots, the developing and the undeveloped nations, communism and the democracies, war and peace, the employed and the unemployed. We wrestle against odds. Light and darkness, truth and falsehood, justice and injustice, believers

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and unbelievers. The wrestling goes on and on. We begin wrestling before we are born. We enter this world wrestling, and it goes on and on, brother against brother. There are signs of discord in the family because family members are at odds. Jacob leaves home under a cloud. His life is threatened by Esau because he has robbed

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him of his birthright, and so he makes the journey away from home. He goes to the home of his uncle Laban. He continues to wrestle there against odds. Yes, he's Jacob the supplanter, the trickster, the deceiver, the wrestler. Jacob seems for a time to be on the losing end in this wrestling match which he has with his

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uncle Laban. Well, he bargains for a wife and he works seven years for Rachel, and after having worked those seven years, when the marriage ceremony is performed, he looks underneath the veil and discovers that he has been tricked. Instead of getting Rachel, he discovers after the marriage that he has her older sister Leah.

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And so he has to work seven more years in order to get the woman that he really wanted. Well, in a sense marriage is a wrestling match. It's wrestling against odds, trying to establish a holy union. It's wrestling in search of true love, wrestling in search of happiness. It's a

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venture in which two persons unite in wrestling against odds. Our economic well-being is determined by how we wrestle against odds. And Jacob really engaged in this kind of wrestling match. He made a business deal with his uncle and he was quite successful in being able to wrestle with his uncle and to come out

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on top. And you see making a living is hard in any day. It's wrestling. Somebody said we must learn to dance with the bear with the axe in our hand. So we do wrestle against odds, and after some 20 years, Jacob decides to leave Laban, his

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wife and his children, he gathers them all together. But he wants to leave when Laban is not there, and so not only does he leave, but he gathers up all of his possessions, the wife, the children, the wives rather than children, and the possessions. And then he takes in addition to all of that the household god.

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He steals Laban's household god because it was the practice that the one who possessed the household god could lay claim to the possessions of the family. And so he slips away, but Laban comes and discovers that he has left and he overtakes him.

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And he said to him as they finally parted, "May the Lord keep his eye on you when I'm not there to keep my eye on you." He still looked upon him as a trickster. Oh, how do we wrestle against odds?

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Jacob's life illustrates how it's done. Oh, so often we find ourselves wrestling against odds, but we wrestle with a sense of pride and selfishness. We wrestle in a manner of seeking to get the advantage

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of other people any way we can get the advantage. the old spiritual had the words, "hand me down, throw it down, any way you can get it down." Well, we want to get the advantage, get that other person down any way we can get that person down. So here he is on his way home, after 20 years, we see Jacob going

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to meet Esau. And on the way he passes the Jabbok River, and there as he comes to the Jabbok River, he pauses there and he camps on one side, puts his family on another, because he fears for their safety. He's afraid of what Esau may do. It's night now, and Jacob is left alone, all around is quiet, and inside Jacob there is unrest and fear. As he meditates,

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he takes examination of himself. He reviews his past life, his faults, his failures, and He thinks about how he has deceived others and how he has been deceived, how in this wrestling match that sometimes he's been up and sometimes he's been down. All the time Jacob has been wrestling with pride and selfishness, he has been wrestling

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against odds, struggling to get ahead, competing with others rather than helping them. And when he hurt some, he wasn't really concerned about that. He wasn't concerned about when he hurt people. He wasn't concerned about whether they received any healing or not. really is sort of lukewarm about God. Oh he has God sort of pushed off in some

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little corner of his life. He seems to have neglected teaching his family about God. He has no family altar, no prayer fellowship, but he's just out there trying to get ahead for himself. Now here we find him alone. There comes a man that wrestles with Jacob. All those years before Jacob has been wrestling with

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other people, he considered other people the enemy. The enemy was his father who had decided by custom of course to give the birthright blessing to his brother. The enemy was Esau, his twin brother. The enemy was Laman, his uncle, his father-in-law. law, the enemy was other people. But now where we find him alone, and he wrestles

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with himself in a sense, he is wrestling with the stranger, he is wrestling with his conscience. And Jacob is a stranger to himself, he wrestles against himself, he wrestles against deceit, he wrestles against treachery, he wrestles against pride, he wrestles against selfishness. Oh you see our pride and our selfishness

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keep us from humbling ourselves. Yes humbling ourselves before God and others. Our pride, our selfishness keep us from confessing our sins and making a complete surrender to God. But here Jacob wrestles in the night. Georgia Harkness talks about the dark night of the soul. And there comes a time when we find

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ourselves alone and we wrestle in the night. Wrestling in the night. Sigmund Freud said that no one like me conjures up the most evil of those half-tamed demons that inhabit the human breast and seeks to wrestle with them can expect to come through the struggle unscathed. There are certain demons, half-tamed demons in

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every one of us. And if we really wrestle with them, if we wrestle with that which is within us which is half-tamed, if we wrestle with that which is within us to which we are a complete stranger, nevertheless it is a part of us if we really wrestle with those half-tamed demons in our breast that we will not come out without being scathed.

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So here he is wrestling against odds, wrestling against difficulties, wrestling against dangers. He's wrestling in the night, he's wrestling with himself. He's wrestling against odds. And what really needs to happen here is in this wrestling match is for Jacob to let go

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of self. The saying we say, "Let go and let God." Let go and let God. To let go of time, let go of selfishness, and let God take over. So he really wrestles with a stranger in the night. For you see, my brothers and sisters, if we would wrestle successfully against odds, We must learn how to wrestle with God.

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You want to wrestle with those things that keep you from being the kind of person you ought to be? If you want to wrestle with those inconsistencies and incongruities in our lives, if we would wrestle with all of those things that somehow serve as back-dragging forces, that somehow

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we must learn to wrestle against these odds by learning how to wrestle with God. If we know how to wrestle with God, then we can wrestle with the odds. Why, you see, our God is the God of odds. No matter what may be the uncommon circumstances we face, whatever the temptations are, whatever the back-dragging forces are, that somehow if we wrestle with

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God, we have the power of the one who is able to overcome the odds. So in the course of the wrestling, as they are wrestling in the night, as Jacob wrestles with the stranger, the stranger says to him, "What is your name? What is your name?" Jacob answers, "My name is Jacob." "I'm a supplanter, I'm a trickster, I am a deceiver!

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My name is Jacob! I'm always trying to get the better of people. I'm always trying to take advantage of others. That's my name, the supplanter, Jacob. And the one who wrestles with him says to him, that you will be no longer Jacob, but Israel. No longer will you be called the supplanter, no longer will you be called

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the deceiver, but your name now is Israel, which means one who has power with God. You know what happens? When we wrestle with God, he always leaves his mark on us. When you wrestle with God, you get some scars.

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He leaves his mark on us. And so what really happened in the course of that wrestling is that Jacob's thigh was dislocated and he walked with a limb the rest of his life. Some of us have been wrestling with God. Some of us have been wrestling for five years, ten years, fifty

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years, 60 years, and longer and God has left his mark upon us. His mark is that those who see us know that we have been wrestling with the eternal. We walk a little differently Sometimes because we have wrestled with God, we walk with a limp. But all that limp is the journey toward the upward way.

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It's the journey not only onward and upward, it's the journey that is redemptive. God has made us new creatures, we're a new humanity, and so we can thank God that he comes to us in the darkness. Comes to us when we do not really understand, he comes to us when the odds are all against us, and God comes and he wrestles with us and leaves his mark upon us.

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And we can say in the language of faith, "If God be for us, who can be against us?" We don't have to worry about the odds. No matter how great they are, God specializes in things that are considered impossible. with God for you see we must all wrestle when I was a boy we called this

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wrestling and you'd wrestle and you try to get the other one down and you try to hold him down until he would say I give and that was a sign you'd won. When we wrestle with God he always wins. He always wins because you can say to him Lord I give, I give up. I know I don't have enough sense to chart my own life I

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give up, I give over to you. I know that I'm not smart enough to really make it, I give up to you and I surrender all to you and I'm glad to put everything in your hand. That's the way we do it, we wrestle in prayer, wrestle in faith, wrestle in love, We wrestle with God. So you see, we wrestle not against flesh and blood, not just flesh, not just blood, but

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we wrestle against principalities and powers. We wrestle against the rulers of darkness in this world. We wrestle against those forces that would keep us from being ourselves, for you see we wrestle against wickedness in high places.

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But thanks be to God that the one who wrestles with us is the one who comes to us as God's gift Jesus Christ the mighty wrestler you really want to know how to wrestle with your problems have Jesus with you. Have your gratitude in your heart. Have Jesus with you that's the way to wrestle with with your problem he's a mighty wrestler he came all the way from heaven to this

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earth to wrestle with us take upon himself our sins he wrestled you see him on Calvary he's wrestling for our salvation. And in the course of the wrestling match they thought they had him down when they crucified him, but he did not surrender to sin. In fact he said to the Father into your hands I commend

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my spirit. They put him in the tomb and they sealed it and they say we have him now, he'll have to give up the tomb is sealed. But early, early, early that Sunday morning he got up and he said, "All power is in my hand." And he walks about with his children.

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And whenever you got a problem, turn it over to him and let him handle it. He's a mighty wrestler. He's a mighty wrestler.

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So all you have to do is just have him with you. And to say this, Lord, I want you close to me. You know, whenever you wrestle, you have to be close. I want you close to me.

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I want you to walk with me all my life, pilgrim, dear to God. I want you, I want you to wrestle with the things I don't understand.

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I want you to take me hand by hand. I want you to walk with me. Why I sings now, close to thee, I'm supposed to be.

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Trickster, the invitation of the beast. That blessed opportunity. [Music] [Singing]

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♪ For the day of life to live ♪ ♪ All along my native land ♪ ♪ May the land belong to thee ♪ ♪ Close to thee, my home ♪

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[Music] [Music] ♪ Oh Lord, what is that burning ♪ ♪ Spend your rest with us, baby ♪

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♪ Not for me, a burning passion ♪ ♪ Not for me, my death to a man ♪ ♪ That he will, I know, and suffer ♪ ♪ Only then, he'll walk with me ♪

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♪ Walk with me, walk with me ♪ [Chorus singing] [BLANK_AUDIO]