The Patriarchs Part 16

For faith likes to read its t.i.tle clear, full, and indefeasible. Abraham would have the inheritance by _covenant_, as well as by _word_. Chap.

xv. Jacob now will have the burial, such a burial as is worthy of the hopes of a child of Abraham, by _oath_, as well as by _promise_.

All this shows us another Jacob than what we once knew him to be. He is now partaker of G.o.d's holiness; his mind and character are in consistency with the call of G.o.d. He is a stranger with G.o.d in the earth, but in sure and certain hope of promised inheritance. This is fruitfulness; I say not that it is service; but it is beautiful fruitfulness in the inner man.

In chapter xlviii. which follows, we get that one act in his life which is signalized by the Spirit as the act of faith. See Heb. xi. 21. But the whole chapter is beautiful. All is _grace_ on G.o.d's part, and all is _faith_ in the heart of Jacob. For it is the proper business and duty of _faith_ to accept the decisions of grace, and that is just what grace is doing here. Grace adopts the sons of Joseph, who had no t.i.tle in the flesh, and takes them into the family of Abraham. Grace gives the place and portion of the firstborn, the double portion, as though they were Reuben and Simeon. Grace sets the younger of them above the elder. And grace gives Joseph, or the adopted firstborn, an earnest of his coming inheritance. To all this Jacob bows and is obedient. In faith he accepts the decisions of grace. Nature may resent this; but Jacob is true to the word of grace committed to him. Joseph was moved when Jacob was setting Ephraim above Mana.s.seh. Jacob feels for him; but he fulfils the word of G.o.d committed to him, let nature be surprised or wounded as it may. He does not listen to nature in his son Joseph, as he had listened to it on a like occasion, years and years ago, in his mother Rebecca.

In Joseph obtaining the rights of the firstborn, there is something besides grace; but I do not notice it here.

Surely this is beautiful: faith thus accepting the decisions of grace.

But in this, Jacob was also G.o.d's oracle. He was not only in faith obedient to the purpose or counsel of grace, but he was used of G.o.d as a vessel of His house, used to declare His mind, to represent and act His purposes in these mysteries of grace, the _adoption_, and the _inheritance_, and the _earnest_.

And as this vessel was thus so fully approving itself fit for the Master's use, it is still used. We still see him and hear him as G.o.d's oracle, as we enter chapter xlix. He calls his twelve sons, and blesses them. He delivers, under the Spirit, the words and judgments of G.o.d touching them. But this was a very trying moment to him. It exceeds all in what it cost him. In preferring Ephraim to Mana.s.seh, he suffered something. But he, who did not then attend to nature in his son, will not now attend to it in himself. He goes through this sorrowful, humbling scene, feeling it bitterly at certain stages of it; but he still goes on with it and through it. He had now to retrace, under the Spirit, and as the oracle of G.o.d, and in their presence, the ways of his sons in past days, and the fruit of these ways in days still to come. He had to do much of this with a wounded heart, and with recollections that might well be deeply humbling. For these words upon his sons were a kind of judgment upon himself for his past carelessness about his children.

But still he does go on and finishes his service, as the oracle of G.o.d, and that too with such sympathies and affections as give us some further beautiful witnesses of his purified state of soul.

Levi's and Simeon's iniquity has to come before him. But he resents this now in a way, no trace of which we find in him in the day when that iniquity was perpetrated. It troubled him then because of the mischief which it might work for him among his neighbours. "Ye have troubled me,"

said he, "to make me stink among the inhabitants of the land, among the Canaanites and the Perizzites: and I being few in number, they shall gather themselves together against me, and slay me; and I shall be destroyed, I and my house." Chap. x.x.xiv. 30. This was the mind he was in when he was a citizen in Shechem. But now it is on other ground altogether, higher and purer ground, that his soul refuses this iniquity. It was iniquity; that is enough; and he will not let his honour be united with it. Then he opens his eyes on the uncleanness of Reuben, just to be shocked by it. And then, as the backsliding of Dan is summoned up before him, his whole soul is moved, and he is cast on the hope of G.o.d's salvation, his only escape, the only escape which he would own, from all that was around him, behind him, or before him. "Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse's heels, so that his rider shall fall backward. I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord."

What affections and energies are here! How finely this vessel did its service in the house of G.o.d! Poor David knew more than sorrow for the loss of Absalom in the day of Absalom's fall. That slaying of his son brought sin to remembrance. And here Jacob entered, with full personal sympathies, into the counsels of G.o.d, and had his own part and share in recollections that must have stirred the conscience.

He not only announced these judgments of G.o.d, but felt them. He was not a _mere_ vessel, but a _living_ vessel. And he was faithful to Him that appointed him, though the service was, after this manner, full of humbling and bitterness.

We saw Jacob "dumb for a season." This we noticed as the character of many years of our Patriarch's closing life. But his mouth had now been opened by faith; and once opened, G.o.d uses him abundantly as His oracle.

This is like Zacharias, the Zacharias of Luke i. He also, as we know, had been dumb for a season; but in faith he wrote his child's name upon a writing-table, and then the Lord used him as His prophet.

Here the story ends; but I believe we have gathered the moral of it. The Lord's hand with Jacob tells us how unwearied He is with His foolish and wayward ones. It is _variety_, too, as well as _patience_, that we see in this constant moral culture. Jacob had to learn different lessons; and He, with whom he had to do, set Himself in patient grace to teach them all to him. Bethel, Peniel, Bethel again, and Beersheba, witness this, as we have seen. And then, throughout a changeful course, at home and abroad, in youth and in manhood, among strangers or at the side of his father and his mother, Jacob betrayed much that needed chastening, and the lesson was taught him again and again.

He reminds us of the disciples in the days of the Lord. In how many ways had the Lord to correct and instruct them! And it was the same to the end; and the patience of their divine Teacher was the same to the end.

The ignorance, the selfishness, the constant moral mistakes they made and betrayed, the different ways in which they crossed the mind of their Master, all glorify the goodness that waited on them. And it may remind us also of Him who bore with Israel's manners in the wilderness for forty years. And it may be also a remembrancer to ourselves of much of that patience and grace which we are daily experiencing at the same hand.

Discipline, the discipline of a child, is ill.u.s.trated in Jacob, as we observed at the beginning, ere we began to consider his story, and as we now have seen it to be. And discipline is healthful, and does good like a medicine. If we need it, it is the _only_ thing for us. When in the days of Samuel, Israel asked for a king, would it have been well for them, if the Lord had given them David? The Lord had David in reserve for them; but would it have been seasonable, would it have been healthful for them, if David had been given to them at once, when with a rebellious will they were asking for a king? Surely, they must first be made to know the bitterness of their own way. A Saul must be given when Israel asks a king. This was discipline, and this was the only thing that would have been healthful for them. But when they have tasted the bitterness of their own way, in pity of their misery, the Lord will bring out that which He has in reserve for them, the man after His own heart that shall fulfil all His pleasure.

How perfect was all this! Had David been given to Israel in the day of 1 Sam. xi. the whole moral of the story would have been lost to us. But the love is the same, whether it be discipline or consolation, medicine or food.

This is the characteristic lesson we learn from the story of our patriarch.

With Machpelah and his burial, Jacob then _ends_ these dying intercourses with his sons, as he had _begun_ them. xlvii. 29, xlix. 29.

He had Joseph's word and oath already on this matter, and now he must put all of them under the same engagements to him about it. Death was more important to him than life. Life kept him in Egypt, death would restore him to Canaan. Death linked him with the G.o.d and the promise of his fathers. The hopes of faith lay beyond life, and outside Egypt. In spirit he was saying, Absent from the body, present with the Lord; "Confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord." As far as patriarchal faith could utter this, Jacob was uttering it. And at the very last we read, "When Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed, and yielded up the ghost, and was gathered unto his people."

It was surely no barren or unfruitful time he had spent in Egypt. Though to him and to his hands the business of life was all over, he was not _rusting_ out, as we had to say of Isaac. Jacob's silence was husbandry.

We rejoice in these last days as his best days. We rejoice still more in the grace which provided this pause for him at the end of his journey, that, in the language of the Psalmist, he might recover strength before he went hence, and was no more seen.

Gracious indeed is it towards all of us His elect ones, to have such a sight as this, such a specimen (may I so call it?) of divine patience, wisdom, and goodness, as this. It is peculiar indeed, having its own place amid the infinite forms and characters which grace a.s.sumes in relation to the need of the saints. Jacob's last days were his golden days. To others, to their flocks and herds, Egypt was a land of Goshen; but it was not to Jacob's flocks and herds, for we do not read that he had any; but it was to Jacob's _soul_ that Egypt was a Goshen, the very richest, fairest, best-watered land his spirit had ever enjoyed. It was more really the gate of heaven to him than Bethel had been. It was more the face of G.o.d to him than Peniel had been. He had the Lord in secret and in silence with him there, but in real, living power. With all that would naturally have kept him at home on the earth he was a stranger. In Egypt Jacob was a delivered, extricated man, as from the beginning and all through he had been a chosen and a called one.

Are we learning that which G.o.d was teaching him there? Are we seeking, with more single heart, the portion of G.o.d's strangers and pilgrims, thinking rather of Machpelah than of Egypt, of the rapture that links us with the promise, than of all the daily growing prosperity of this present evil world?

JOSEPH.

GENESIS x.x.xVII.-L.

Joseph becomes princ.i.p.al in the narratives of the Book of Genesis as soon as we reach chap. x.x.xvii., and so continues, I may say, to the end.

So that I now propose to close with this paper on "Joseph," referring to the others, ent.i.tled "Enoch," "Noah," "Abraham," "Isaac," "Jacob," as if they had been already read.

Joseph's story has its peculiarity in the midst of the things of Genesis--its own mystery, and its characteristic moral; as the others have. _Election_, as we have seen, was ill.u.s.trated in Abraham; _sons.h.i.+p_, or the adoption of the elect one, in Isaac; _discipline_ of the adopted one in Jacob; and now in Joseph, _heirs.h.i.+p_ is to be.

All this is a divine order.

And, consistently with this, in Joseph we get sufferings before glories, or before the inheritance of the kingdom; all this realizing that word of the apostle, "If children, then heirs ... if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together."

For while discipline attaches to us as children, sufferings go before us as heirs; and this gives us the distinction between Jacob and Joseph. It is discipline we see in Jacob, discipline leading him as a child, under the hand of the Father of his spirit, to a partic.i.p.ation of G.o.d's holiness. It is sufferings, martyr-sufferings, sufferings for righteousness, we see in Joseph, marking his path to glories.

And this is the crowning thing; and thus it comes as the closing thing, in this wondrous Book of Genesis--after this manner perfect in its structure, as it is truthful in its records. One moral after another is studied, one secret after another is revealed, in the artless family scenes which const.i.tute its materials; and in them we learn our calling, the sources and the issues of our history, from our election to our inheritance.

Thus is it for our learning in this Book of Genesis.

But as yet, while we are in this Book, there is no _law_. We are taught that this was so in Romans v. 13, 14. But we might have perceived it for ourselves. Because, in dispensational age, so to speak, the time of this Book was the time of _infancy_. The elect were as children who had never left home, never as yet been under a schoolmaster.

Neither is there any _miracle_. I mean no miracle by the hand of man.

For power would no more have suited such hands, than law or a schoolmaster would have suited such an age. And, besides, there was no mission or apostles.h.i.+p to seal. Miracles or "signs following" were not demanded as credentials of a mission. But as soon as we leave this Book, and enter Exodus, we get a mission or an apostles.h.i.+p, and then we get miracles, as seals, to accredit it.

So that what we do not get is just as fitting, from its absence, as what we do get. Neither power nor law would have been in season, and accordingly neither power nor law do we get.

But I will now pa.s.s on to Joseph, or to chapters x.x.xvii.-l.

The materials which we find in these chapters, and which form the history of Joseph, may be separated into four parts:

1. His early times at home in his father's house, in the land of Canaan.

2. His life, as a separated man, in Egypt.

3. His recovery of his kindred, his father and his brethren, and the results of such recovery.

4. His latter times in the land of Egypt till the day of his death.

This may be received as the contents of this wondrous story. The way in which it is told has been witnessed to by the sympathies and sensibilities of thousands of hearts in every generation.

_Part I._ (x.x.xvii. x.x.xviii.)--As soon as we enter on the history, the heir is at once and immediately seen in Joseph. His dreams are dreams of _glory_. But _sufferings_ as quickly form his present reality.

The story begins by Joseph being a witness both _to_ and _against_ his brethren. He tells his father of their evil deeds, and he tells themselves of his dreams. I cannot blame him in either. I say not how far nature may have soiled him in the doing of these things; but the testimonies themselves were, I believe, under divine authority. There was One who was all perfection, as I need not say, in everything He did or said, and He bore witness against the world, and to His own glories.

A want of season and of measure may have soiled these services in Joseph; for a thing out of season and beyond its measure, though right in itself, has contracted defilement. A vessel in the master's house, at times, has to _hide_, as well as to _hold_, the treasure that is in it, and should know where, and when, and how, to use it. David had the oil of Samuel, the anointing of the Lord, upon him, and he knew that the kingdom was to be his, but he veiled his glory till Abigail, by faith, owned it. And in this David may have surpa.s.sed Joseph. I say not that it was not so. But to tell of what his dreams or his visions in the Spirit had communicated to him, was of G.o.d.

And hence his sufferings. The Lord marks him as the heir of glory; he speaks of the goodness he had found, and of the high purpose of G.o.d concerning him, and his brethren hate him. They envy him; and who can stand before envy? They had already begrudged him his father's favour, and now they hate him for G.o.d's. They hate him for his words and for his dreams; and when in the field together (as of old, it had been with Cain and Abel), they take counsel whether to slay him, to cast him into a pit, or to sell him to strangers.

And this was at a time when he was serving them. He had come a long way to inquire after their welfare, and take their pledge, and to carry them blessings from their father's house with their father's love. Such a moment was their opportunity. It was not as the bearer of good tidings that they received him; but "Behold, this dreamer cometh," they say.

"This is the heir" (Matt. xxi. 38); that was the spirit of their words.