as Isaac, combining the prophet and the priest in his own person. And
Caiaphas would fain have abused his office and his gift to his own
wretched purposes and desires. He delivered a true prophecy with a
design on the life of the Lord Jesus. John xi. And in earlier days, the
prophet Balaam was of the same generation. He sought, all he could, to
use his gift in the service of his lusts. God, however, took him out of
his own hand, and forced his lips to utter the sentence of
righteousness, the judgment of truth. And, though it be sad to put such
men together, even in a single action, yet so it is; for such was Isaac
in Gen. xxvii. Though a sanctified and filled vessel, he would have
served the wish of his own fond heart, in the use of the treasure which
he carried; but God took him out of his own hand, and used him as the
oracle of His settled, sovereign purpose. Again I say, it is sad thus to
link such men as Isaac and Balaam in a common moral action. But we know
that "that which is born of the flesh is flesh." As an old writer says,
"The water that is foul in the well will not be clean in the bucket."
The flesh in an Isaac is as the flesh in a Balaam; and the world in the
heart of each of them is the same world.
But they are not one _to the end_. This is the comfort, the gracious
comfort, of which I spoke before. Balaam is Balaam still, the man who
loved the wages of unrighteousness, and ran greedily after his own error
for reward; he goes on as Balaam, giving counsel to Balak to cast a
stumbling-block before the people of God; and at last he fell, as
Balaam, with the uncircumcised, slain with the sword, like those that go
down to the pit. But Isaac repented with godly sorrow unto a repentance
not to be repented of. When his eye is opened, and he discovers what he
had been about, and how Jacob had got the blessing which he had prepared
for Esau--when it thus confronts him to the face, that he had been
withstanding God, but that he could not prevail, his soul seems to
awaken as from sleep, and to get alive to all this, for we read of him,
that he trembled with a great trembling greatly. v. 33. The sight, the
moral sense, of the place that he was filling, startles his soul. He
trembles in himself. The flesh which he had been nourishing could not
stand him in such a moment--and he seeks it not--it has been exposed to
him; and in the light and energy of the better life, he acts according
to faith, and says, speaking now of Jacob, and no longer of Esau, "I
have blessed him, yea, and he shall be blessed."
There was nothing of this in Balaam; Balaam was not turned back. When
the angel withstood him in the narrow way, and his ass fell under him,
there was none of this godly sorrow working repentance. But our Isaac is
restored. He seeks another way, and takes up and follows after God's
object from that moment. It is not "the _madness_ of the prophet" that
the Spirit records in Isaac, as He had to do in Balaam, but the _faith_
of the prophet. For in this hour of happy restored fellowship with the
mind of God, after his trembling, "with a great trembling greatly," the
way of Isaac is sealed and signalized by the Spirit. "By faith Isaac
blessed Esau and Jacob concerning things to come." And this is the only
matter in the life of Isaac which is noticed by the Spirit in that
chapter, Heb. xi.
But this had character in it, and the Spirit has distinguished it. The
victories of faith which Moses gained were very fine. He answered both
the _attractions_ and the _terrors_ of Egypt; refusing to be called the
son of the king's daughter, and forsaking the country, not fearing the
king's wrath. These were splendid victories; and are so to this day,
when achieved in the saint. But there are conquests much less
distinguished, which nevertheless are conquests, recorded in this
chapter which celebrates the deeds of faith. They may be seen in Isaac
and in Jacob. Each of these witnesses of faith, in his day, blessed the
children or the sons before him _according to God_, though this was
_contrary to nature_. Isaac would have preferred Esau, and Jacob would
have preferred Manasseh; but Isaac persisted in his blessing of Jacob,
and Jacob in his blessing of Ephraim, and in this, _nature_ was
conquered. It was not, we may allow, the _world_, in either its snares
or its dangers, that stood out to try the strength of faith in the
saint--but still it was an opposer. It was _nature_; the suggestions or
sympathies or partialities of nature--and while we may admire the
splendour of the victories of a Moses or an Abraham, let us remember and
look to it, that we fight the fight of faith with _nature_, and gain the
day in that field, with Isaac and Jacob.
As to Jacob's part in this family scene which we are looking at, we may
certainly say, had he but left his matters in the Lord's hand, where
they had been from the beginning, from before his birth, and not allowed
his mother to take them into hers, he would have fared far better. How
often has many and many a Jacob since the days of Gen. xxvii. proved the
same! The Lord had promised him the blessing without any condition. "The
elder shall serve the younger." But he could not, in the patience of
faith, wait the Lord's time and method to make good His own promise.
Therefore the promise gets laden with reserves and difficulties and
burthens. It shall surely be made good. The promise of the Lord is
certain, and "never was forfeited yet." He is able to make it stand. The
elder shall serve the younger--but now, by reason of Jacob's own
unbelief and policy, the elder shall give the younger some trouble:
because the younger thinks well to deal with the promise in his own
craft and skill, he shall be made to reach it after delay and sorrow and
shame.
Accordingly, Esau himself gets a promise from the Lord, through his
father Isaac, on this occasion, a promise which the divine purpose and
grace towards Jacob, at the first, had never contemplated. "And Isaac
his father answered and said unto him, Behold, thy dwelling shall be the
fatness of the earth, and of the dew of heaven from above; and by thy
sword shalt thou live, and shalt serve thy brother; and it shall come to
pass when thou shalt have the dominion, thou shalt break his yoke from
off thy neck." _vv._ 39, 40.
All this comes to pass. David, who came of Jacob, sets garrisons in
Edom, and the Edomites become his servants and bring gifts. Jehoram, who
also comes of Jacob, afterwards loses the Edomites as his servants and
tributaries; they revolt, and continue so to this day. 2 Sam. viii. 14;
2 Chron. xxi. 8.
Saviours by-and-by shall come to Zion and judge the mount of Esau.
Obadiah 21. The tabernacle of David which is now fallen shall be raised
up, and Israel shall possess Edom and the residue of the Gentiles. Amos
ix. This shall be made good in its season, for the elder shall serve the
younger--the promise is yea and amen. But now, and from the days of
Jehoram the son of Jehoshaphat of the house of David of the lineage of
Jacob, Esau or Edom has been in revolt; and the promise is thus delayed
and complicated and burthened in ways such as the grace of God and the
gift by grace had never designed, and such as Jacob had never passed
through, had his faith been more simple.
And there is much like this in Christian experience. See the disciples
on the sea of Galilee, in Mark iv. The Lord had said to them, "Let us go
unto the other side." This was a pledge to them that they were sure to
reach the other side. They need not fear. They may, if they please, lay
them down to sleep with their Master. But no--they fear, and consult
with flesh and blood. And therefore they reach the other side with
tremblings and amazement and shame. Their fears loaded their spirit with
these burdens, which, had they left the _fulfilling_ of the word to Him
who had _given_ the word, would have been saved them. And so, the
unbelief of Jacob in Gen. xxvii., his putting the promise of God into
his mother's hand, has loaded the history of his house with those
perplexities and contradictions and changes, which, as we have
mentioned, were all strangers to the promise, as the simple gift of
grace, at the beginning, had purposed it and made it.
Many like experiences the disciples had, through their unbelief, as they
companied with the Lord Jesus all the time He went in and out among
them--and many such are known to us His saints at this day. Our spirits
gather amazement and shame, when we might have known only the calm and
bright enjoyments of faith, looking, if it were so, at a sleeping Jesus,
and knowing His sufficiency for all promises, though winds and waves
oppose.
Thus was it with Jacob, according to the part he acted in this sad
family scene. Esau was not the _guilty_ one here. He was rather the
_injured_ party; and therefore, in the hand of Him by whom "actions are
weighed," Esau is the only one who is a gainer. All the rest have to
learn what the way of their own hearts shall end in. Isaac, Rebecca, and
Jacob alike prove this. It is Esau, so far the injured one, who gains,
as we have seen, anything by it all. By his sword he lives, and, in time
and for a time, breaks the yoke of his younger brother off his neck.[18]
[18] Jeroboam in his day took his own way to reach the promise of God
touching the kingdom of the ten tribes, by the prophet Ahijah--and
he delayed his own mercy; just as Jacob does in this chapter. Nay,
further. Jeroboam has to be an exile in Egypt till the death of
Solomon, because of this; as Jacob has for twenty years to be an
exile in Padan, for the same evil. See 1 Kings xi.
After all this, just at the end of his ways, though not of his days, at
the desire of the suspicious and terrified Rebecca, Isaac sends away
Jacob. And this action is done with an expression of sorrow and shame
and disappointment, the bitter fruit which their own way had prepared
for them. All would have been different indeed, had the spirit and
obedience of faith kept them in the way of the Lord. xxvii. 42; xxviii.
5.
And here we reach, as we said, the end, the practical end, of the life
of our patriarch. He lives, it is true, for forty years after this; it
may be more--but he is lost to us. He is as if he were not.
At the close of chapter xxxv. we read, "And Jacob came unto Isaac his
father unto Mamre, unto the city of Arbah, which is Hebron, where
Abraham and Isaac sojourned. And the days of Isaac were an hundred and
fourscore years. And Isaac gave up the ghost, and died, and was gathered
unto his people, old and full of days: and his sons Esau and Jacob
buried him."
Abraham had carefully possessed himself of Machpelah, on the occasion of
Sarah's death; and there he had buried Sarah, and there Isaac and
Ishmael had buried him; and there, at this time, Jacob and Esau bury
Isaac; and there afterwards his twelve sons bury Jacob.
The purchase of this parcel of ground, and the care the patriarchs
manifested in the matter of their burial there, tell us of their faith
in their own happy resurrection and its attendant inheritance of the
land. It tells us that _hope_ was in their souls as surely as
_faith_--that as they rested, without a doubt, in the certainty of their
call and adoption, so did they, with like assurance, in the life and
inheritance prepared for them in the world to come. They lived in faith,
and they died in faith. They were a people in whose souls the life of
faith and hope was known and enjoyed. They betray nature again and
again; they err, they shift and contrive and play false with God at
times through unbelief; they incur discipline and rebuke, and at times
are humbled before men; but they seem never to doubt the blessed facts,
that they were _adopted_ and _endowed_ by the God of glory. Faith and
hope lived in their souls. I say not that they had what we have. There
is now an unction, an earnest, and a witness, fruit of the given,
indwelling Spirit, imparting not only the power but the character of
this day of ours. But the patriarchs, in their infant age, seem _never
to doubt_. And this is precious--that God, even in the earliest
communications of Himself--communications of Himself to His elect even
in their childhood, or, in the infant days of Genesis--would be known by
them as One to be trusted both for the present and the future.
And again I say, this is precious. The Spirit forms _hope_ in the soul
of the elect, as surely as faith. Machpelah tells us this, as to the
patriarchs. But it was found before them, and it has been found ever
since. Adam was a hoping as well as a believing man. As soon as he had
faith, he had hope. He walked as a _stranger_ on earth, as well as in
_the consciousness of life_. And with him, and like him, the
antediluvian saints.
Israel afterwards celebrated the last night of their sojourn in Egypt
with the staff in their hand and the shoe on their foot, as simply and
as surely as they had put the blood on the lintel. They hoped for
something beyond Egypt, as certainly as they counted on security in
Egypt.
Moses witnessed this standing of Israel, this proper standing in the
camp of God in the power of faith and hope, when afterwards he said to
Hobab, "We are journeying to a place of which the Lord said, I will give
it you." And so Paul, in his words before King Agrippa, "Unto which
promise our twelve tribes instantly serving God day and night hope to
come."
The oil in the vessels of the wise virgins is the expression of the
power of hope. They provided against His delay for whose return alone
they looked and waited, be that return far off or nigh.
And to give hope its highest, brightest moral glory, we are given to
know, that the present heaven of Jesus is a heaven of hope. Though
seated at the right hand of the Majesty on high, He is, we know,
"expecting till His enemies be made His footstool." And the mind of the
glorified Church will, by-and-by, be kindred with this mind of her
glorified Lord; for the heaven of Rev. v. is also a heaven of hope.
"Thou art worthy," say the living creatures and enthroned elders of that
heaven, "to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast
slain, and hast redeemed to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and
tongue, and people, and nation; and hast made them unto our God kings
and priests: and they shall reign over the earth."
In this life of faith and hope, the fathers of the Book of Genesis are
seen to be one. Happy to know this. They illustrate different mysteries,
and read us different moral lessons; but in this life of faith and hope
they are _one_; and each in his day, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is alike
gathered to his people (chaps. xxv., xxxv., xlix.)--each is "a handful
of sacred dust" in the cave in the field of Ephron the Hittite, laid up
there in sure and certain hope of a resurrection unto life and to the
inheritance.
There is a common saying, "It is better to wear out than to rust out."
But this better thing was not Isaac's. He rusts out. And _such_ was the
natural close of _such_ a life.
Was Isaac, I ask, a vessel marred on the wheel? Was he a vessel laid
aside as not fit for the Master's use? or at least not fit for it any
longer? His history seems to tell us this. Abraham had not been such an
one. All the distinguishing features of "the stranger here," all the
proper fruits of that energy that quickened him at the outset, were
borne in him and by him to the very end. We have looked at this already
in the walk of Abraham. (See pp. 134-137.) Abraham's leaf did not
wither. He brought forth fruit in old age. So was it with Moses, with
David, and with Paul. They die with their harness on, at the plough or
in the battle. Mistakes and more than mistakes they made by the way, or
in their cause, or at their work; but they are never laid aside. Moses
is counselling the camp near the banks of the Jordan; David is ordering
the conditions of the kingdom, and putting it (in its beauty and
strength) into the hand of Solomon; Paul has his armour on, his loins
girded. When, as I may say, the time of their departure was at hand, the
Master, as we read in Luke xii., found them "so doing," as servants
should be found. But thus was it not with Isaac. Isaac is laid aside.
For forty long years we know nothing of him; he had been, as it were,
decaying away and wasting. The vessel was rusting till it rusted out.
There surely is meaning in all this, meaning for our admonition.
And yet--such is the fruitfulness and instruction of the testimonies of
God--there are others, in Scripture, of other generations, who have
still more solemn lessons and warnings for us. It is humbling to be
_laid aside_ as no longer fit for use; but it is sad to be left merely
to _recover ourselves_, and it is terrible to remain to _defile
ourselves_. And illustrations of all this moral variety we get in the
testimonies of God. _Jacob_, in his closing days in Egypt, is not as a
vessel laid aside, but he is there recovering himself. I know there are
some truly precious things connected with him during those seventeen
years that he spent in that land, and we could not spare the lesson
which the Spirit reads to us out of the life of Jacob in Egypt. But
still, the moral of it is this--a saint, who had been under holy
discipline, recovering himself, and yielding fruit meet for recovery.
And when we think of it a little, that is but a poor thing. But
_Solomon_ is a still worse case. He lives to defile himself; sad and
terrible to tell it. This was neither Isaac nor Jacob--it was not a
saint simply laid aside, nor a saint left to recover himself. Isaac was,
in the great moral sense, blameless to the end, and Jacob's last days
were his best days; but of Solomon we read, "It came to pass, _when
Solomon was old_, that his wives turned away his heart after other
gods," and this has made the writing over his name, the tablet to his
memory, equivocal, and hard to be deciphered to this day.
Such lessons do Isaac and Jacob and Solomon, in these ways, read for us,
beloved--such are the minute and various instructions left for our souls
in the fruitful and living pages of the oracles of God. They give us to
see, in the house of God, vessels fit for use and kept in use even to
the end--vessels laid aside, to rust out rather than to wear
out--vessels whose best service it is to get themselves clean again--and
vessels whose dishonour it is, at the end of their service, to contract
some fresh defilement.
Wondrous and various the lessons and the ways of grace, abounding grace!
Quickly indeed does the soul entertain thoughts of God according to the
suggestions of _nature_, instead of knowing Him according to _faith_.
Nature holds Him before the soul as a judge, or as a lawgiver, or an
exactor of righteousness, as One that carries balances in His hand to
try every thought and work--One that is sensitive and resentful of the
slightest touch of evil. But faith holds Him before a gazing,
worshipping eye and heart, as the One who always loves us, do what He
may, or speak as He will. For faith worketh by love (Gal. v. 6)--it
worketh towards God as Love, and therefore it is a spirit of confidence
and liberty. If we find our souls under pressure of the spirit of fear
or bondage or uncertainty, we may be sure that they have let go the
gentle hand of faith, and allowed themselves to be led by such tutors
and governors as nature provides. This ought not so to be. We are to
know that we have _ever_ to do with _love_! When we read, when we pray,
when we converse, when we confess, when we serve, when we sing, when we
look at His hand in providence, or think of His name in secret, may
faith's communion with God be ours! He loves us. The relationship in
which we stand, and of which our Isaac was the expression, makes this a
_necessary_ truth.
It is "to Himself" that God has brought us and adopted us--having
predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ _to
Himself_, according to the good pleasure of His will. Eph. i. 5. And
these words "to Himself" bespeak God's own joy in the _adoption_ of the
elect, in making them _children_; as was Abraham's joy at the weaning of
our Isaac. Christ presents the Church to _Himself_ (Eph. v. 27), and the
Father gathers the elect as children by adoption to _Himself_. Each has
personal interest and personal delight in the mysteries of grace. And
according to this, the Holy Ghost, in the Epistle to the Galatians, to
which the story of Isaac so refers, pleads the cause of the Father as
well as the cause of Christ with us. He teaches us that we are redeemed
by Christ from the _curse_ of the law, and, through the Spirit given to
us by the Father, from the _bondage_ of the law. All this is full of
blessing to us; and all this, the mystery of Isaac, the son of the
free-woman, suggests to us.
Faith is that principle in us which gives to the Lord Jesus the place or
privilege (such a place indeed as God alone can fill) of sustaining the
confidence of a sinner entirely by Himself, of being the immediate, the
only object of the sinner's trust. But faith, in this dispensation,
involves _relationship_. By faith we stand in the Person as well as _on_
the work of Christ--and Christ being the Son, we are children, as we are
saved sinners. We are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.
Gal. iii. 26. And Ishmael is not to share the house with Isaac. The
spirit of bondage gendered by the law or by the religion of ordinances,
is to be put out, and the spirit of liberty alone is to fill it. For the
house is now set in a child and not in a servant, in Isaac and not in
Eliezer--and _relationship_ is God's joy as it is ours. "The _Father
seeketh_ such to worship Him." Wondrous words of abounding grace,
beloved! and Sarah's joy in our Isaac pledged this in patriarchal days.
JACOB.
GENESIS XXVIII.-XXXVI.
I have already followed the course of the Book of Genesis to the close
of chapter xxvii. From that chapter to chapter xxxvi., Jacob is
principal; and it is that portion which I now purpose to consider.
There is a very important era in the life of Jacob afterwards--his
sojourn in Egypt for seventeen years, and his death there. But this is
found in that part of the book in which Joseph becomes principal, so
that I shall refer to it only so far as Jacob is concerned.
The life of Jacob is one of very large and varied action, quite of
another character from that of his father Isaac. The wisdom of God
readily accounts for this; because there is divine intention in the
construction of these histories, as there is divine truthfulness in the
record of them. By them we are instructed in mysteries, as surely as we
are made acquainted with circumstances. It has been my desire to notice
these mysteries, as well as to gather the moral of these earliest ages
of the human family, and these first fathers of the elect of God.
_Election_, and the call of God, in the sovereign exercise of His grace,
were exhibited in Abraham.
_Sonship_, to which election brings us, (for we are predestinated unto
the adoption of children,) was then shown in Isaac.
_Discipline_, as of a son, (for what son is he whom the father
chasteneth not?) is now, in its season, to be exhibited in Jacob.
And thus, after this manner, these successive histories not only
continue the orderly narrative of facts, but present us with a view of
that course or conduct which the grace and wisdom of God is taking with
His people.
Jacob was a son as well as Isaac. But he was a son at school, or under
correction; not a son, like Isaac, in the care and nurture of the home
of his father; not as one given to know the rights and dignities of son
and heir, but as one made to know the love, the practical love, that
chastens and corrects. This was the child Jacob. But we are never to
forget that we are never more distinctly children than when under such
discipline. Discipline assumes adoption. The exhortation or correction
speaks to us as _to children_. The discipline may occupy the foreground,
but the fatherly love is the secret.
But this notice of Jacob as a son under discipline I give here only as a
general characteristic. As to the materials of his history, various and
striking as they are, we may distinguish them into four eras:
1. His birth and early life in his father's house in the land of Canaan.
2. His journey to Padan-aram, and his residence there, in the house of
Laban the Syrian, for twenty years.
3. His journey back from Padan-aram, and his second residence in Canaan.
4. His journey from Canaan to Egypt, and his residence and death there.
This may be read as a simple, natural table of contents, so to call it,
and I would follow it out in its order.
_Part I._--This earliest portion of Jacob's history, his birth, and his
life in the house of his father in the land of Canaan till he was about
seventy years of age,[19] I have generally anticipated in the preceding
paper, entitled "Isaac." And I may be allowed to say, necessarily so;
because it is involved in those chapters of the Book of Genesis, where
Isaac is principal. I must therefore refer to it.
[19] It is said in the Jewish writings that he was seventy-seven.
_Part II._--Jacob begins to be seen under discipline in chap. xxviii.,
and there it is where this second part of his history opens, and where
also, in the Book of Genesis, he becomes the chief or leading character.