The Patriarchs Part 12

This is serious. It is serious, that with the quickening of the Spirit, nature or the force of early habits and education, or of family character, will cling to us still. "The Cretans are always liars."

Laban, with whom Rebecca had grown up, was a crafty, knowing, worldly man. It is plain that, on the occasion of Eliezer's visit, he had been moved only by the _gifts_. They made a ready way for Abraham's servant; as we read, A man's gift maketh room for him. Proverbs xviii. 16. Laban was evidently the stirring, active, important one in his father Bethuel's house. He had a taste for occasions which called for management. And all this is a very bad symptom. It is a bad symptom when one carries the bag. It is bad to find one prematurely managing and clever, or, at any period, fond of occasions where skill of that kind is to be exercised, having an aptness in conducting either state affairs or family interests. And just such an one was Laban; and Laban was the brother of Rebecca; and Rebecca had pa.s.sed all her life, till her marriage, with him; and the family character, in this only great action in which she is called to take a part, sadly betrays itself.

If Abraham and Sarah had brought the foul, unclean compact between them, as they left their father's house to walk with G.o.d, so did Rebecca bring this family character, this Laban-leaven, with her. We have _nature_ in its pravity with us after our conversion; and we have our own _fleshly characteristics_ also, as well as the common pravity of nature. And we have to rebuke them sharply, that we may be sound, that is, morally healthful, in the faith. t.i.t. i. 13. And this lesson is afresh pressed upon us, from the story of this distinguished woman in this chapter.

But there is more of the same kind. Jacob, as well as his mother, Rebecca, got his mind formed by this same earliest influence. He was all his days--I mean, all his practical, active days--a slow-hearted, calculating man; and in this family scene, in chap. xxvii., we find him to be such an one--a ready, intelligent pupil of his mother, Laban's sister, and whose favourite child he had been from his birth. So that as Laban had been corrupting his sister Rebecca, Rebecca had been corrupting her son Jacob.

And further still, as this same chapter tells us, Isaac, whose mind and character, as we have seen, had been so remarkably formed by his early life in Sarah's tent, had sunk into the indulgence of some of the low desires of nature. He loved his son Esau, because he ate of his venison.

This was poor indeed, and something worse than poor. And this love of venison, we may surely suggest, must have encouraged Esau in the chase; just as Rebecca's cleverness, got and brought from her brother's house in Padan, formed the mind and character of her favourite Jacob. And thus one parent was helping to corrupt one of the children, and the other the other.

What mischief, what sad defilement, is disclosed here, in all this family scene! But we may go on to expose it even more; for the heart is not only capable of such defilement, but it is daring enough, at times, to take its naughtiness _into the sanctuary_. "I was almost in all evil in the _midst of the congregation and a.s.sembly_." Proverbs v.

The word to Aaron, long after this, was, Do not drink wine nor strong drink, thou, nor thy son with thee, when ye go into the tabernacle of the congregation. Lev. x. Nature is not to be animated in order to wait on the service of G.o.d; it is not to be set in action by its provisions, for the discharge of the duties of the sanctuary. Strong drink may exhilarate, and give ebullition to animal spirits, but this is no qualification for a priest of the house of G.o.d.

But even into pollution such as this Isaac seems to have been betrayed.

"Take, I pray thee," says he to Esau, "thy weapons, thy quiver and thy bow, and go to the field, and take me some venison: and make me savoury meat, such as I love, and bring it to me, that I may eat; that my soul may bless thee before I die." He was going to do the last religious act of a patriarchal priest, and he calls as for wine and strong drink, the food of mere animal life, to raise and endow him for the service!

This was sad indeed, thus to deliberate on the venison at such a moment.

We may all be conscious how much of nature soils our holy things, how much of the mere animation of the flesh may be mistaken for the easy and strong current of the Spirit. We may be aware of this, in the place of communion. And this is to be our sorrow and our humbling--we are to confess it as evil, or at least as weakness, and to watch against it.

But to prepare for it, carefully to mix the wine and strong drink, to take a full draught, after this manner, this exceeds in defilement.

And nothing comes of all this but dishonour and loss. The whole of this family pollution is judged in the holiness of G.o.d, because this was a family of G.o.d in the earth. "You only have I known of all the families of the earth, therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities."

Isaac is laid aside, Rebecca never sees Jacob again, and the calculating supplanter finds himself in the midst of toils and wrongs and hards.h.i.+ps, supplanted and deceived himself again and again; for twenty long years an alien from the house of his father. Nothing comes of all this, whether we look at the crooked policy of the one party, or at the fleshly favouritism of the other; all is disappointment and shame, under the rebuke of the holiness of the Lord.

There is, however, one relief, and it is a very important one, in the midst of this otherwise foul and gloomy scene. "By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning things to come." This is the Holy Ghost's own reference to this chapter in Hebrews xi.

But ere I speak of the relief or comfort which this has for us when thinking of Isaac, I take occasion to inquire, What was the nature or character of this blessing by the patriarchs upon their children, which we find again and again in the Book of Genesis?

A blessing was in the hand of Melchizedek in chap. xiv.; as again, long after, there was a blessing in the hand of Aaron in Num. vi. These instances we may easily understand--these blessings were conferred or p.r.o.nounced by reason of _office_. They were delivered through priesthood ordained of G.o.d. There was nothing prophetic or oracular in them. The words which these priests used were rather _prepared_ than _inspired_; words already prescribed by divine provision, rather than communicated at the moment by divine illumination, at least in the case of Aaron.

With the patriarchal blessing, however, it was as clearly otherwise.

There was a prophecy or an oracle in Isaac's words on Esau and Jacob here in chap. xxvii.; and so was there afterwards in Jacob's words on his children in chap. xlix., and in his words on Joseph's children in chap. xlviii.; and so was there before, in Noah's words, in chap. ix., on Shem, Ham, and j.a.pheth.

But why, I inquire, was this great matter thus committed to the patriarchs?

If I mistake not, some of the secrets of patriarchal religion, patriarchal wors.h.i.+p and ministry, are involved in the answer to this.

Religion had, in these earliest days, the same great truths which it still has for its spirit and principle. The Fall and Recovery of man, or Ruin and Redemption, were then made known, and they were received by faith. The altars of the fathers, and the ordinance of clean and unclean, tell us of faith and of the apprehensions of faith in those days. The tent of the living patriarchs, and the Machpelah of the departed patriarchs, tell us that they understood the stranger's calling, and a coming resurrection; and Abraham's grove at Beersheba (chap. xxi.), and his alliance with the Gentile at the well of the oath, tell us likewise, in clear though symbolic language, that they understood some of the bright and happy secrets of the millennial age, or of "the world to come."

And wors.h.i.+p and ministry, in those infant days, were in their simplest forms. I may say, _nature_ suggested that the father or head of the house should be the prophet, priest, and king, there. In after times, when the condition of things spread out, and when, with enlargement and age, corruption came in, _the holiness of G.o.d_ demanded a separated or circ.u.mcised people; and, connected with such, a separated or anointed priesthood. Now, in our day, in the day of the kingdom of G.o.d, which is, as we know, "not in word, but in power," it is required that ministry should be something more than nature would suggest, or than holiness would demand; there must be _power_, such as the Spirit Himself prepares and imparts. But in the early days of Genesis, those _family_ days--those infant, earliest days--the voice of _nature_ was listened to, and duly and seasonably so; and accordingly, the head of the family was the minister of G.o.d to the family, and both the dignities and the services of prophets, priests, and kings, within the range of the homestead, or in the family temple, centred in the father.

The blessing of the children seems to flow from this. It was an act performed in the combined virtues of a prophet and a priest, which, as we see, the fathers of the families carried in their own persons. They received a communication of the divine mind, and then uttered it, as "oracles of G.o.d;" and, being separated or priestly representatives of G.o.d to their children, they p.r.o.nounced His blessing, G.o.d's blessing, upon them.

They seem to sustain this character through the Book of Genesis.

In our Isaac it is sad indeed to see how this character was exercised, or rather abused--as such like high endowments have constantly been, the priestly dignity, for instance, in the person of Eli (G.o.dly old man as he was), and the kingly authority, in one tremendous instance, even by such an one as the deeply-loved and honoured son of Jesse.

So Isaac would have made his office serve, not only his private partialities, but his very appet.i.tes. And this, too, in the face of solemn, divine warning. The word had gone before, upon Isaac's children (Esau the elder and Jacob the younger), "the elder shall serve the younger." But Isaac's fleshly favouritism and appet.i.tes had made him careless and forgetful of this, and he would fain have made the elder, Esau, the heir of the promise.

And here we may call to mind, that Caiaphas, in his day, was such an one 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 l.u.s.ts. G.o.d, 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d; and at last he fell, as Balaam, with the uncirc.u.mcised, slain with the sword, like those that go down to the pit. But Isaac repented with G.o.dly 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 G.o.d, 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 nouris.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.s fell under him, there was none of this G.o.dly sorrow working repentance. But our Isaac is restored. He seeks another way, and takes up and follows after G.o.d'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 fellows.h.i.+p with the mind of G.o.d, 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 G.o.d_, though this was _contrary to nature_. Isaac would have preferred Esau, and Jacob would have preferred Mana.s.seh; 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 pa.s.s when thou shalt have the dominion, thou shalt break his yoke from off thy neck." _vv._ 39, 40.

All this comes to pa.s.s. 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 G.o.d and the gift by grace had never designed, and such as Jacob had never pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d 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.8

8 Jeroboam in his day took his own way to reach the promise of G.o.d 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 x.x.xv. 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 a.s.surance, 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 s.h.i.+ft and contrive and play false with G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation; and hast made them unto our G.o.d kings and priests: and they shall reign over the earth."