The key to all Jacob’s difficulties will be found in the twentieth
chapter of Matthew. It is the story of the laborers in the vineyard.
The thought is in the second verse. The first men hired agreed to the
bargain. The men would not go until the owner of the vineyard had made a
bargain with them. He told them that he would pay them what was right.
They got a penny. He gave them the lawful wages. They probably asked:
“And is this all you are going to give us?”
Jacob was all the time making bargains.
The Christians who are making bargains with the Lord do not get as much
as those who trust Him. It does not pay to make bargains with the Lord.
Jacob is a twin brother of most of us. Where you find one Joseph or one
Daniel you will find a hundred Jacobs. We are not willing, all of us, to
take God at His word and trust Him. There is a strong contrast between
the character of Joseph and Jacob. The one trusted God implicitly, but
Jacob wanted to trust Him no farther than he could see God. There would
have been a great deal of murmuring if Jacob had been thrown into jail in
Egypt.
No doubt Jacob got much of his weakness from his mother. There was a
division in that home. Isaac favored Esau, and Rebekah favored Jacob.
Such dissensions are just the thing to stir up the old Adam in the man.
A mother and a father have no right to take this course. Rebekah plans
continually to keep Jacob at home. The very thing that Rebekah tries to
achieve, in that she fails. By nature Esau was the better of the two. If
such a mean and contemptible nature as Jacob’s can be saved, then there
is hope for all of us.
The Lord promised to Jacob from the bottom of the ladder what he should
have. Jacob gets up and says: “If God will be with me and keep and
clothe me, then shall the Lord be my God.” What a low and contemptible
idea he had! God had promised him all from Dan to Beersheba.
That is the difficulty with the people at the present time. If God will
bless us in our basket and store, we shall have Him for our God. We find
Jacob after this in Haran, driving bargains all the time, and the worst
of it is he gets beat every time. He had to work seven years for his
wife, and then gets another woman in her place. He is paid back in his
own coin. We must not think that God will allow us to deceive without
punishing us for it. Jacob forgot all the vows which he made at Bethel,
but God did not forget His. Some of God’s promises are unconditional. The
promise which He made at Bethel was unconditional.
God chose Jacob rather than Esau. Some people say that God hated Esau
before he was born. This is not the teaching of Scripture, even though
one of the minor prophets long years after mentioned it. God says to
Jacob after he had been in Haran for so many years: “I am the God of
Bethel. Arise and dwell there.”
Jacob ought to have been proud, and should have left Haran like a prince,
but instead he steals away like a thief. He starts off, and his uncle and
father-in-law pursue. God took care of him. God was determined to keep
His vows, and there is no doubt that, had not God interfered, Jacob would
have been slain.
We find that Jacob stays behind, like a miserable coward, after he had
sent his effects away. A man out of communication with God is a coward
always.
There was a man who wrestled with Jacob. He was Christ. When did Jacob
prevail? When his thigh was out of joint all he could do was to hold on
and get the blessing. The man who is the lowest down is the man whom God
lifts up the highest. The man that has the greatest humility will be the
most exalted.
A great many say that Jacob was a different man. Would to God his thigh
had been left out of joint, so that there was no more of the flesh in
him. The next thing, we find Jacob and Esau embracing, and we would
suppose that he would be filled with gratitude. But no. He goes down to
Shechem and builds an altar and calls it by a high-sounding name. Jacob
in Shechem, with this altar with a high-sounding name, was no better than
he was in Haran without an altar. He built an altar, finally, at Bethel.
He said that he would go to Bethel and build an altar to his God, as if
the Shechem altar was no altar. He called it El-Bethel. Just the moment
he came to Bethel the Lord God met him.
The next thing we hear is the saddest episode in the career of Jacob--the
death of Rachel, his favorite wife. His sons go back to Shechem, and
hunt up the old idols. His sons bring him back news from there that his
most dearly loved son was dead. Do you see how Jacob begins to reap the
harvest of the sins of his early days? For twenty long years he mourned
that beloved boy. He deceived his own father, and his own sons, in turn,
deceived him.
What a bitter life! What was Jacob’s dying testimony to Pharaoh? It would
take ten thousand Jacobs to get one convert like Pharaoh. “Few and evil,”
said Jacob, “have my days been.” He started with a lie in his mouth. He
died in exile. He died in Egypt--not in the land which God had promised
him. He would not let God choose for him. He was saved by fire--or, as
Job said, by the skin of his teeth.