house, separating him to Himself and to His promises. But Isaac was
already as one chosen and called and sanctified, while in the house of
his father. He was at home from his birth, and he was there with God,
having been born according to promise, and through an energy that
quickened the dead; and in all these things he represented _sonship_, as
Abraham had represented _election_. In Isaac we see that family that is
"born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of
man, but of God," and who stand in liberty; as the apostle says, "Now
we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise." We are
Abraham's seed, so many Isaacs, children of the freewoman, or in the
adoption, if we be Christ's.
Now this mystery of sonship or adoption represented in Isaac, as the
mystery of election had been made known in Abraham, is in divine order.
For _the election of God is unto adoption_, as we read, "Having
predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ unto
Himself;" and this being so, this high, personal prerogative being
represented in Isaac, in the course of his history we get the mystery of
the son of the freewoman very blessedly, largely exhibited.
For we get both the _birth_ and the _weaning_. And each of these events
was the occasion of joy in the house of the father. The child born was
called "laughter," the child weaned was celebrated by a feast.
Wondrous and gracious secrets these are. It is the father's joy to _have
children_, it is his further joy that his children should _know
themselves to be children_. This was the birth and the weaning of Isaac
in the Book of Genesis. And all this, after so long a time, is revived
in the Epistle to the Galatians. For what was represented in Isaac is
realized in us through the Spirit. In that epistle we learn that we are
children by faith in Christ Jesus. And there we learn also that, being
children, we receive the spirit of children. We are _weaned_ as well as
_born_. Paul travailed in birth for them again, as he says: "My little
children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in
you." The Christ of this passage is Christ _the Son_; and Paul longed
and laboured that they might be brought into the Isaac-state, the
liberty of conscious adoption. They were under temptation to feed again
upon the ordinances which gendered bondage, and which the tutors and
governors of an earlier dispensation had enjoined. But opposed to this,
the apostle would draw them again into liberty, as he himself had proved
the virtue of it in his own soul. It had pleased God, as he says, to
reveal the Son in him. The life he lived in the flesh he lived by the
faith of _the Son_, who loved him. He could, therefore, go down to
Arabia, where he had no flesh and blood to confer with, no Jerusalem or
city of solemnities, no apostles or ordinances, no priesthood after a
carnal order, no worldly sanctuary, to countenance, to seal, or to
perfect him. He did not want what any or all could give him, for he had
_the Son revealed in him_. He was a weaned Isaac; and he would fain have
the Galatians to be such likewise; and to hear the word which of old had
been heard in the house of Abraham over Isaac, "Cast out the bondwoman
and her son; for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son
of the freewoman."
All this is given us, mystically, in Isaac, the child of the freewoman,
whose birth caused laughter, and whose weaning was celebrated with a
feast. And this mystery is, we thus see, largely and expressly revived
and opened, in its full character, in the Epistle to the Galatians.
It is not of _glories_ only that we must be thinking, when thinking of
predestination. God's purposes concerning us are still richer. We are
predestinated to a state of _gratified affections_, as well as to a
place of _displayed glories_--to "the adoption of children," and to be
"before Him in love," as well as to the inheritance of all things.
Ephesians i. And the Spirit already given is as surely in us the power
to cry, "Abba, Father," as He is the seal of the title of the coming
redemption.
We are apt to forget this. We think of calling and of predestination, in
connection with glory, rather than in connection with love, and
relationship, and home, and a Father's house.
And yet it is relationship that will give even the inheritance or the
glory its richest joy. The youngest child in the family has another kind
of enjoyment of the palace of the king, than the highest estate and
dignitary of his realm. The child is there _without state_, for its
title is in relationship--the lords of the land may be there, but they
are there as at court, by title of their dignity or office. And the
child's enjoyment of the palace is not only, as I said, of _another_
kind, it is of a higher kind--it is personal and not official--the
palace is _a home_ to it, and not merely _the court of royalty_.
Now it is the son, the child at home, the child in the privileges of
relationship, that we get in Isaac. It is such an one that he
represents--this is what Isaac, mystically, is. Isaac was kept at home,
waited on by the household, nourished and endowed; and the wealth as
well as the comfort of his father's house was his; as we read, "And
Abraham gave all that he had unto Isaac. But unto the sons of the
concubines which Abraham had, Abraham gave gifts, and sent them away
from Isaac his son, while he yet lived, eastward, unto the east
country."
Mystically looked at, Isaac is thus before us, a son, born of the free
woman, born of promise, born of God, as it is said, "I will come and
Sarah shall have a son." Isaac represents that adopted family who are
made "accepted in the Beloved," who have put on Christ, who stand in His
joy, and breathe His spirit.
We have, however, to consider him _morally_ as well as _mystically_;
that is, in his _character_, as well as in his _person_. The elements,
however, are but few. There is but little history connected with him.
There are but few incidents in his life, and but little disclosure of
character. And this is to our comfort. At times we find among the elect
of God very fine natural materials, a noble bearing of soul, or a
delicate, attractive form of human virtue; and again, at other times,
either poor, or even very bad, human materials. And this becomes a
relief to our poor hearts. _Because_ we find it (from a better
acquaintance with ourselves than with others) easy to own the poor and
wretched materials that go to make up what we ourselves are; and then it
is our comfort (comfort of a certain sort) to find like samples of
nature in others of God's people.
Isaac was _wanting_ in character. He was neither of fine nor of bad
natural materials. There was much in him that, as we say, was amiable,
and which, after a human estimate, would have been attractive. But he
was wanting in character. The style of his education may go far to
account for this. He had been reared tenderly. He had never been away
from the side of his mother, the child of whose old age he was--her only
child; and these habits had relaxed him, and kept a naturally amiable
temper in its common softness. Quietness and retirement, the temper that
rather submits than resents, and this allied to the relaxing indulgence
of domestic, if not animal, life, appear in him. He was blameless, we
may quite assume, pious and strict in the observance of relative duties,
as a child and as a husband, and would have engaged the good-will and
good wishes of his neighbours; but he was wanting in that energy which
would have made him a witness among them, at least, beyond the
separation which attended his circumcision, his altar, and his tent. And
such a life is always a poor one. To his tent and his altar he was true,
to a common measure; but he pitched the one and raised the other with
too feeble a hand.
Isaac was forty years old when he received Rebecca to wife. For twenty
years they were childless; but under this trial they behaved themselves
even better than Abraham and Sarah had done. Abraham and Sarah had no
child, and Sarah gave her bondmaid to her husband. Isaac and Rebecca had
no child; but they entreated the Lord, and waited for His mercy. This
was a difference, and for a moment, the last are first, and the first
are last; and such moral variety do we find among the people of God to
this day. But the two sets of children suggest different divine
mysteries, as the way of the parents of each thus afford different moral
teaching.
There were the two sons of Abraham--Isaac and Ishmael; but they were by
two wives: there are now the two sons of Isaac--Jacob and Esau; but they
are by the same wife.
The enmity between the sons of Abraham began when Ishmael, a lad of
fourteen years of age, mocked the weaned Isaac. But the struggle between
the sons of Isaac was in the womb. Two nations were there, as the Lord
had told Rebecca, "Two manner of people shall be separated from thy
bowels." And so it came to pass. The man of God was found in Jacob, the
man of the world in Esau; the principle of _faith_ was in the one, the
principle of _nature_ in the other. Two manner of people were indeed
separated from her bowels, and had struggled in her womb. "The
friendship of the world is enmity against God." And this was Esau.
Accordingly, Esau made the earth the scene of his energies, of his
enjoyments, and of his expectations. He was "a man of the field," and "a
cunning hunter." He prospered in his generation. He loved the field, and
he knew how to use the field. He set his heart on the present life, and
knew how to turn its capabilities to the account of his enjoyments. His
sons quickly became dukes, nay kings, and had their cities; as Ishmael's
children had become princes, and had their castles. Their dignity and
their greatness proceeded from themselves; and the world witnessed them
in their magnificence.
But Jacob was "a plain man," a man of the tent. He took after his
fathers. Like Abraham and Isaac, he was a stranger here, sojourning as
on the surface of the earth for a season, with his eye upon the promise.
His children--while Esau's were dukes, settled in their domains, in the
sunshine of their dignities and wealth--had to wander from one nation to
another people, to suffer the hardships and wrongs of injurious Egypt,
or to traverse, as pilgrims, the trackless, wasted desert.
Esau was the "profane" one. His hope and his heart were linked with life
in this world, and with that only; for he would say, "I am at the point
to die, and what profit shall this birthright do to me?" Like the
Gadarenes, and like Judas, Esau would sell his title to Christ. But
Jacob had faith, and was ready to buy what Esau was ready to sell.
Two manner of people were, after this manner, separated from Rebecca's
bowels, as all this tells us. They are no sooner brought forth than this
is seen; and their earliest habits, their first activities, are
characteristic. It was not merely the bondwoman and the free, or the
children of the two covenants, as Ishmael and Isaac had been; in Esau
and Jacob we get a _fuller_ expression of the same natures; the one,
that reprobate thing, had from Adam, profane or worldly, which takes a
portion in the earth and not in God; the other, that divine thing, had
from Christ, which is believing, hopeful, looking to God's provisions,
and waiting for the kingdom.
All this survives to the present day, and flourishes abundantly in
different samples in the midst of us, or around us. I might say the
Cain, the Nimrod, the Ishmael, and the Esau are still abroad on the
earth, and these tales and illustrations have their lessons for our
souls. They are wonderful in their simplicity; but they are too deep for
the wisdom of the world, and too pure for the love of it.
These things I have gathered for the sake of the moral and the mystery
which so abound in them. But my immediate business is with Isaac.
Isaac, as I have already noticed, was brought up in his mother's tent.
He was, as I may say, rather the child of his mother than of his
father--the common case of all of us in our earliest days. But with
Isaac, this was so till his mother died; and then he must have been much
beyond thirty years of age.
He knew more of Sarah's tent, than of the busier haunts and occupations
of men. Her tent had been his _teacher_, as well as his _nurse_, and
this education left impressions on his character which were never
effaced. We have a passing or incidental, but still, a very sure,
witness of the strength of maternal influence over him, in chap. xxiv.
67. "And Isaac brought her [Rebecca] into his mother's tent, _and Isaac
was comforted after his mother's death_."
This strongly intimates the tendencies of his early life. And thus was
character formed in him. He was the easy, gentle, unresisting Isaac,
pious, as we speak, and, as I have said of him, blameless and amicable.
But with all this, and while this I doubt not is surely so, I ask, Was
it merely nature or character that bore him unresistingly along the road
to Mount Moriah? See chap. xxii. Was it merely filial piety which then
disposed him to be bound as a lamb for the slaughter, without opening
his mouth? Can we assume this? Was this the force of character merely? I
say not so. This was too much for human gentleness and submission, even
such as might have been found in an Isaac, or in a Jephthah's daughter.
I must rather say, the hand of the Lord was over him on that occasion,
just as, long afterwards, it was over the owner of the ass that was
needed to bear the King on to the city, and then over the multitude that
accompanied and hailed Him on the road; or, as it was over the man
bearing the pitcher of water, who prepared the guest-chamber for the
last passover. On these occasions, the hand of the Lord was strong to
force the material to comply, and take the impression of the moment. As
also in the earlier days of Samuel, when the kine carried the ark of God
right on the way homeward, though nature resisted it, their young being
left behind them. For the divine power was upon the kine then. And
Isaac, in like manner, was under divine power, under the hand of God, on
this occasion; willingly, I fully grant, but made willing as in a day of
power; for he was to be the type or foreshadowing of a greater than he.
The seal was in a strong hand, and the impression must be taken, clear,
deep, and legible. "Lo, I come to do thy will, O God," is the writing on
the seal. "As a lamb before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his
mouth."
That was a great moment in the life of Isaac, an occasion of great
meaning. So in his acceptance of Rebecca. See chap. xxiv. In his taking
a wife, not of all whom he chose, but of his father's providing, we may
trace the same strong hand over him. There might easily have been more
of human submissiveness and filial piety in this, than in the case of
the sacrifice on Mount Moriah, we may surely allow; but still this was a
_sealing_ time as well as the other. This marriage was a type or
mystery, as well as that sacrifice. The wife brought home to the son and
heir of the father, by the servant who was in the full confidence and
secret of the father, this was a mystery; and the material must comply
again, and take the impression from the hand that was using it. The
potter was making vessels for the use of the household, and the clay
must yield. The prophet's children, ages afterwards, had names given
them, as the Lord pleased, and the prophet had to say of them, Behold, I
and the children whom the Lord hath given me are for signs and for
wonders. Isa. viii. And so, Isaac and Rebecca, in the day and
circumstances of their marriage, were a type, "for a sign and a wonder."
This was their chief dignity; _they tell the mysteries of God_. They are
parables as well as mysteries. They were events set in time or in the
progress of the earth's history, as the sun and moon and stars are set
in the heavens, _for signs_. Each of them has a writing on it under the
hand of God. "I will engrave the graving thereof, saith the Lord of
hosts;" for on these events He has impressed the image of some of His
everlasting counsels.
But though this gentle and submissive nature that was in our Isaac was
not equal to such sacrifices and surrenders as these, yet gentle,
submissive nature is the quality which gives him his character. At times
it acts amiably and attractively; at times it sadly betrays him. But at
all times, under all circumstances, amid the few incidents that are
recorded of him, it is the easy, gentle, yielding Isaac that we see. And
the presence of one and the same virtue on every occasion is, I need not
say, but poor in point of character. It is _combination_ that bespeaks
character and divine workmanship. "The kingdom of God is righteousness
and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost." It is firm as well as gracious and
joyous. And this is moral glory; as many coloured rays give us the one
unsullied result in the light we enjoy and admire. But this does not
shine in Isaac. In none, surely, in its full beauty, save in Him in whom
all glories, in their different generations, meet and shine.
Jeremiah, I might here take liberty to say, appears to me to have been a
man of one passion, as Isaac was a man of one virtue. I mean, of course,
characteristically as to each of them, Isaac and Jeremiah. A godly
passion indeed it was, grief over the moral wastes of Zion, which
characterized Jeremiah. But being thus his _one_ affection, the passion
or sentiment, which, after this manner, possessed his soul, it makes him
generally very engaging and attractive to the heart; but at times it
allies his spirit with that which defiles him. He is angry with the
people who were stirring the sorrows of his heart. And he murmurs
against God Himself. I speak, of course, of Jeremiah's character, as we
get it exhibited in his ministry. I know, surely, in that ministry,
looked at in itself, he was the prophet of God and delivered the
inspirations of the Holy Ghost. But as a man I speak of him; as a man,
he was a man of one passion; as I have said of Isaac that he was a man
of one virtue. But it is those in whom there is _assemblage_ of virtues,
that tell us more assuredly of divine workmanship, of trees planted by
the rivers of waters, that bring forth fruit _in season_. Psalm i. For
it is this seasonableness that is the real beauty. Everything is
beautiful in its season, and only then. Gentleness loses its beauty,
when zeal and indignation are called for. The first Psalm is too high a
description for a man of one virtue; it implies character, and decision,
and individuality; it shows a soul drawing its virtue from God. "He
shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth
its fruit in its season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever
he doeth shall prosper." This is of divine husbandry; but such we do not
see in our Isaac. In his measure, and certainly in contrast with Isaac,
this combination or assemblage of virtues, of which I have already
spoken, appears in Abraham; and this difference in the two may be seen
in their acting under similar circumstances. Abraham in chap. xxi. and
Isaac in this chapter xxvi.[17]
[17] As to the common sin of Abraham and Isaac touching the denial of
their wives, calling them their sisters, see "Abraham," p. 122.
Isaac had been very badly treated by the Philistines. One well after
another of his own digging was violently taken away from him, as the
wells which his father had dug had been filled up. He had yielded to
this wrong with a gentle, gracious spirit, in a spirit that well became
one of God's strangers and pilgrims here, who look for citizenship in
another world. He went from place to place, as the Philistines again and
again strove with him and urged him. This was according to the mind
which marks him, as we said, in every incident of his life. Suffering,
he threatens not--doing well and suffering for it, he takes it
patiently; and this we know is acceptable with God. 1 Peter ii. 20. And
so God here attests this; for He owns His servant in this thing, and
comes to him by night as He had comforted Abraham. But when, in season,
the Philistines are brought to a better mind, and Abimelech the king,
with his friend Ahuzzath, and Phichol his chief captain, seek Isaac and
alliance with him, I ask, Does not his character, in its way, betray
him?
Of course it was right in Isaac to receive them, and plight them his
friendship, and to exchange the good offices and pledges and securities
of neighbourliness which they sought. For we ought to forgive, if it be
seventy times seven a day. But with that there is to be faithfulness in
its season--faithfulness as well as forgiveness. "If thy brother
trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him." But
Isaac was not quite up to this sturdier virtue. He complains to
Abimelech, but it is in such soft and easy terms, that it seems to carry
no authority to the conscience with it. Not so his entering into
covenant with him. He strikes hands readily, and, I may say, heartily.
He makes a feast for the king of Gerar, and sends him away as his ally,
without his being brought to any acknowledgment of the wrong which his
people had done to the man whose friendship he was now seeking and
getting. Nor is there on the lips of Isaac any gainsaying of Abimelech's
assertion, that he had done nothing but good to Isaac all the time he
had been in his country. As far as this intercourse went, and as far as
we can discover the mind of the king of Gerar, he was not convicted by
Isaac, but returned home with his friends at peace with himself as well
as with Isaac. Isaac had not made good to Abimelech's conscience the
complaint he had made to his ear--there was want of character and force
in it--it partook of Isaac's own nature.
This was but poor virtue in Isaac. It is but poor virtue in ourselves,
when it appears--and some of us have to treat it as such, and confess it
as such, at times. It is agreeable in a certain form of amiable human
nature; but it is not service to God. We are humbled by reason of that
in our own ways. It is poor, and our Isaac here gives us, in measure at
least, a sample of this.
It was, however, otherwise with Abraham. The king of Gerar had sought
Abraham in his day, and sought him for a like reason, and with a like
desire. Abraham meets him in as noble a spirit of forgiveness as Isaac
would have done, with an equal readiness of heart and hand to accept
him, and to pledge him. But with all this, he rebukes him and makes him
feel the rebukes. "Abraham _reproved_ Abimelech," as we read, but as we
do not read in the case of Isaac. Abraham will not send him away
satisfied with himself, as Isaac did, with an unanswered boast in his
mouth of his and his people's virtues. He will assure him, as fully as
Isaac could have done, of his full forgiveness and reconciliation; but
he will not hide it from him, that his conscience may have a question
with him, though his neighbour may accept him and pardon him; that there
are matters (as between him and the Lord) which Abraham's feast and
Abraham's friendship could never settle.
This was _real_, real before God, where _reality_, beloved, ever puts
us. May we know that secret better, and be upright before Him! This was
beautiful--and by this Abraham was _blessing_ Abimelech, and not _merely
gratifying_ him. But this was not so with Isaac; and we may leave him on
this occasion, in chap. xxvi., with something of this inquiry in our
hearts, Was it mere nature, or the renewed mind in the saint, that acted
thus?--a question which still occurs.
Isaac was an elect one, as surely as Abraham; a stranger with God in the
earth; one who _used_ his altar as well as _carried_ it. He was
meditating in the field when he got his Rebecca, and he had prayed for
the mercy, when Esau and Jacob were given to him. We speak of
_character_ in him only, when we thus contrast him with another. We
speak of the living, practical ways of a saint; and we see in him what
was below a witness for God abroad, though amiable and devout at home.
This is found in Isaac; and kindred things are still found, again I may
say, as many of us know to our humbling. As one once said to me, "There
is much that goes with others for being _spiritual_, because it is done
for the eye and taste of our fellow-Christians, and not, as in God's
presence, with a single heart to Him."