Genesis 32:29

Genesis 32:29

This is the question of all questions. For the name of God denotes His nature and His essence, the sum of all His properties and attributes.

I. It is a question worth the asking. There is a despair of religious knowledge in the world, as though in God's rich universe, Theology, which is the science of God Himself, were the one field in which no harvest could be reaped, no service of sacred knowledge gained.

II. The knowledge of God is the one thing needful. He who seeks to do the work of a Paley in presenting Christian evidences in a sense conformable to the intellectual state of thoughtful men, as the shadows are folding themselves about this wearied century above all, he who cultivates and disciplines his spirituality until it has become the central fact of his being it is he who offers in a right and reverent spirit the prayer of Jacob at Peniel, "Tell me, I pray Thee, Thy name."

III. It is necessary not only to ask the great question of the Divine nature, but to ask it in a right spirit. Jacob acted as though there were no other way of asking the question aright than by prayer; he must also ask it at the cost of personal suffering.

IV. What is the answer when it comes? Jacob's question was asked, but was not answered; or, rather, it was answered not directly and in so many words, but effectually: "He blessed him there." It is not knowledge that God gives to striving souls, but blessing. He stills your doubtings; He helps you to trust Him. You go forth no longer as Jacob, the supplanter, mean, earthly, temporal, but in the power of a Divine enthusiasm, as an Israel, a prince with God.

J. E. C. Welldon, The Anglican Pulpit of To-day,p. 428.

Reference: A. Fletcher, Thursday Penny Pulpit,vol. xi., p. 413.

Genesis 32:29

God blessed Jacob at Peniel because he asked to be blessed, and his desire for it constituted at once his worthiness and his capacity. He began the blessing by the agony of prayer, and he completed it with the discipline of sorrow.

I. Life being itself a blessing, and to one who believes in God and hopes for Him the greatest of all blessings, God makes it a yet greater blessing by ordaining for it a fixed plan.

II. God does not expect perfect characters to fulfil His purpose. He chooses the fittest instruments He can find for His purest purposes, and trains them and bears with them until their work is done.

III. God uses circumstances as His angels and voices to us, and He has special epochs and crises in which He visits our souls and lives.

IV. The perfection of youth is eagerness without impetuosity; the perfection of old age is wisdom without cynicism, and a faith in the purpose of God which deepens and widens with the years.

Bishop Thorold, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxi., p. 145.