Jacob's Fear and Faith
(No. 2817)
A SERMON INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S-DAY, FEBRUARY 8, 1903.
DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON THURSDAY EVENING, JUNE
21, 1877.
"Deliver me, Ipray, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau:
for I fear him, lest he will come and smite me, and the mother with the
children. And You said, I will surely do you good, and make your seedas
the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude." Genesis
32:11,12.
JACOB is the type of a Believer who has too much planning and scheming
about him. He is a wise man according to the judgment of the world. Put
him down by the side of Laban and if his relative tries to stint him in
his wages and to cheat him in all manner of ways, you will see that
Jacob, in the long run, will get even with Laban. He seems to have been
able to deal, even with that con-man, quite as sharply and not to come
off second best in the bargain! Abraham never descended to any of the
tricks by which Jacob sought to increase his flocks. He lived like a
princely man in simple, childlike confidence in God, willing to be
injured rather than to seek his own interests, letting Lot, though a
younger man, choose the best part of the land and being quite content
to take whatever remained. Because God was with him as his portion, he
had no hunger after anything else. He was worth fifty thousand of such
kings as the king of Sodom and though he had a right to the spoils of
war, he waived them, saying, "I will not take from a thread even to a
shoelace. I will not take anything that is yours lest you should say,
'I have made Abram rich.'"
Jacob, if he had been in such a case, would have looked very closely
after all the threads, the shoelaces and all the other things that he
had captured in the war. He would have said that God gave them into his
hands and he would take good care to preserve them. Among worldlings,
Jacob would be regarded as a much more sensible man than either his
grandfather Abraham, or his father Isaac. But when you come to weigh
him in the balances of the sanctuary, although he was a great and good
man, and a man of such force of character that he is reproduced in his
descendants, even to the present generation, yet, for all that, the
weakness of his character lay in the human strength of that
character–his power to plot and plan makes him appear as a much
smaller and feebler man in the eyes of those who can judge spiritually,
than Abraham, his forefather was.
I suppose Jacob's bargaining faculty came from his mother and she got
it from her brother, Laban, and Laban, with his niggardly ways, was
enough to infect the whole family. Rebekah, in that artful plot by
which she deceived her blind old husband and taught her son to rob his
elder brother of his father's blessing, showed that the same vein was
in her– and that she belonged to that plotting, scheming stock. And
the mother's character was strongly manifested in her son Jacob. Hence
it is that you find him getting into all manner of trouble. Abraham had
his trials and one great supreme trial, but, as a summary of his life,
it is written, "The Lord had blessed Abraham in all things." And
everybody feels that Abraham's life was a most desirable one. It is
such a life as we might, any of us, wish to live. But Jacob's life is
not a desirable one. At one time he is bargaining with his famished
brother about a mess of red pottage–a transaction which we cannot
approve. Then, afterwards, we find him joining with his mother in
deceiving his poor old father. It is noteworthy that he who had
deceived his father, Isaac, was himself deceived by his uncle, Laban!
Such conduct is generally repaid into our own bosoms–our chickens come
home to roost and we get back for ourselves what we thought we had
given away to others. Jacob's own summary of his life, as he gave it to
Pharaoh, was, "Few and evil have the days of the years of my life
been," so full were they of sorrow and trial. I may say of him as was
said of many of David's mighty men, "Nev-
ertheless, he attained not unto the first three." There he stands,
accepted and blest, for he was a man of faith, but the very strength of
his character, as I have already reminded you, was the proof of its
weakness and caused him many sorrows.
Our text introduces Jacob to us just before that memorable night by the
brook Jabbok. He was expecting his brother Esau to come with a troop of
400 men, perhaps to slaughter the whole company. The Patriarch's state
of mind is a mixture of fear and faith. He doubts, yet he believes! He
has much distrust, yet he does confide in God, at least to some extent.
As two hosts met him, so he, himself, was the representative of two
hosts. Solomon says in the Canticles, "What will you see in the
Shulamite? As it were the company of two armies." So was it with Jacob.
There were both nature and Grace, belief and unbelief, fear and faith
battling together in his soul. What a picture he is of many of us in
whom a perpetual warfare is being waged between the Law of Grace and
the Law that is by nature in our members–between the heavenly
principle that cannot die, and cannot sin–and the old nature which is
always struggling for the mastery and making us often cry out, "O
wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this
death?"
I. I am going, first, to speak about JACOB' S FEAR as we have it
mentioned in our text–"I fear him, lest he will come and smite me, and
the mother with the children."
My first observation is that Jacob, in his fear, is not to be held up
as an example to us. He is not to be commended for thus fearing Esau
and neither are we to imitate him in this respect. My next remark will,
perhaps, seem strange to you, but I ask you to weigh it well and
consider it carefully. There is a great deal that Christians feel which
they never ought to feel. There are a great many things that Christians
do which they never ought to do and there are many places into which
Christians go into which they never ought to go. It was so with the
ancient Believers and especially with Jacob. His experience is the
experience of a good man, but it is not, in all respects, the
experience that a good man ought to have. Why should he have been
filled with fear at the prospect of meeting his brother? There was no
reason for it–his grandfather Abraham would not have had any such
fear–and if Jacob had possessed more Divine Grace, he would not have
said, concerning Esau, "I fear him." He knew that God had given him the
blessing which Esau despised–again and again had the Lord appeared to
him–and he must have known that he was blessed in a way that Esau was
not. Why, then, should he fear his brother?
Should the elect of God be afraid of one who has neither part nor lot
in the matter? Should he not rather feel that the son of the King of
kings must not fear the child of Satan, the heir of wrath? The friends
of the wicked Haman said to him, "If Mordecai is of the seed of the
Jews, before whom you have begun to fall, you shall not prevail against
him, but shall surely fall before him." And well may Mordecai stand
upright in the king's gate and never bow his head before Haman! Why
should he fear and tremble even though Haman has the ear of the king?
Mordecai has the ear of the King of kings, so he need not be afraid of
anything Haman could do!
Jacob's fear was wrong, first, because it followed immediately after a
great deliverance. He had left his father-in-law, Laban, in haste. He
had stolen away by night and Laban had hurried after him. Encumbered as
Jacob was with so numerous a company which included so many young
children and so much cattle, he had to move very slowly–and Laban soon
overtook him. He was boiling over with rage when he started and meant
to do desperate things, but God interposed and made him put the sword
into the scabbard, so that, instead of there being any slaughter, there
was as kindly a state of feeling between the two as could be expected
under the circumstances. After God had preserved His servant Jacob from
the wrath of Laban, it is strange that he should have been afraid of
Esau. He has been delivered once, cannot he expect to be delivered
again? He has just been rescued from one peril, yet he trembles in the
prospect of another!
Do you know anybody who ever acted in that way? If you do not, I do. I
know where he lives. I will not say that I live with him, but I will
confess, with sorrow, that I have sometimes been that very person. Have
you also been one of the same sort of persons? If so, I will not say
what I think of you, but I will say of myself, "How foolish I am to act
thus! How basely am I acting towards my Lord!" He who has been with us,
never changes–what He has done once, He will do again. Is His arm
shortened, or His eye blinded, or His heart turned to stone? No! Then
surely we ought to have learned by experience to trust in God, even as
Jacob ought to have learned from his experience so fresh in his memory
and trusted the Lord concerning Esau as He had delivered him from the
wrath of Laban!
Another thing that tended to make Jacob's fear inexcusable was that the
angels of God had met him just before. The chapter from which our text
is taken, tells us, in its opening verse, that, "Jacob went on his way,
and the angels of God met him." Messengers from the eternal Throne of
God came to salute God's favorite! And, I suppose, to escort him back
to the land that was given to his fathers by a Covenant that could not
be broken. The Patriarch was attended, before and behind, or on the
right hand and on the left, by two companies of angels, yet he says, "I
fear Esau." Even in the society of those who must have borne a perfume
of Heaven upon their wings, standing in the midst of immortal spirits
whose faces must have reflected the Glory of their Lord and Master,
Jacob says, "I fear Esau." Again I ask, Did you ever know anybody act
in such a fashion as this? Perhaps you say, "I never saw any angels."
No, but you have, by faith, seen the great Angel of the Covenant, the
Lord Jesus Christ, and you have had most intimate communion with Him.
At His Table, how often has He revealed Himself to us in the breaking
of bread? And in the reading or hearing of His Word, how often has He
been set forth before us as our Heavenly Bridegroom, the Beloved of our
soul? And, sometimes when we have been quite alone, the bright light of
His Presence has surprised us and our hearts have burned within us
while He has communed with us. Well, then, it has been very shameful on
our part if, afterwards, we have feared Esau, or have been afraid of
some anticipated trouble, or fearful because of bodily pain, or,
perhaps, put out of temper by some trifling matter in the household
which should have been altogether beneath our notice as companions of
the Lord of the angels! The Lord have mercy upon His servants and
forgive our unbelieving fear, for which we will not pretend to make any
excuse!
Note, concerning Jacob's fear, that it probably arose out of the
recollection of his old sins. Old sins, like old sores, are very apt to
break out again. The very mention of the name of Esau brought up before
his mind the day when his mother cooked the "two good kids of the
goats," and took his brother's goodly raiment, put it on Jacob and put
the skins of the kids upon his hands and his neck, that he might
deceive his father into the belief that he was his "very son Esau."
Jacob remembered all that and felt that Esau had good reason to be
angry, for he had supplanted him twice, and done him grievous wrong. He
was afraid of Esau on the principle that "conscience makes cowards of
us all." A sin may be forgiven by God, yet, for all that, its sting may
be felt by you 50 years afterwards, just as, perhaps, some of you may
have had a bone broken in your boyhood and had it very well set, yet,
sometimes, before bad weather, you feel a twinge that reminds you that
bone was once broken. Thus it was with Jacob–that old bone began to
creak and to threaten that bad weather was coming. If he had dealt
fairly and justly with Esau–and left the Lord to settle that matter of
the birthright as He had always intended to give it. If he had left God
to arrange everything in His own way, and had not been so wise, in his
own estimation, like his clever, scheming mother, he would not have
been afraid to meet Esau as he now was!
Well, dear Friends, perhaps some old sin is the cause of your fear. If
so, I pray you to remember that one sin ought not to lead you to commit
another, or to be an excuse for committing another. Suppose that, in
your early days, you did sin in a certain fashion, or that, in your
later days, you have transgressed in some other way? Should you,
therefore, doubt your God? You should be humble in the remembrance of
your sin, but you should not, therefore, mistrust the Most High! He is
always faithful, whatever we may have been. He did not, at the first,
receive us as innocent, but as guilty–yet He saved us. As we look back
upon the past, we may well mourn our guiltiness, but let us not doubt
our salvation if we have believed in Jesus! Even when God's people get
themselves into trouble, it is very remarkable how He delivers them.
They ought to be careful as to how they walk before Him, but even when
they are not, and their folly brings them into a net, yet does He come
and tear the net in pieces–and the poor captive bird escapes out of
the snare of the fowler. Even when we willfully wander from Him, the
Lord graciously restores our souls, blessed be His name! Do not,
therefore, let the remembrance of our past guilt lead us into any doubt
concerning the fidelity of Him who has cast all our sins into the
depths of the sea and who will never allow them to be again laid to our
charge.
There is this which is commendable to be said about Jacob's fear–it
led him to prayer. What was he doing when he said of his brother Esau,
"I fear him"? O Brothers and Sisters, if you ever say the same thing,
mind that you get to the same place where Jacob was and say it, as he
said it, to his God! It is ill to say it at all, but if it is said, it
is well to say it to the Lord. Go to Him with whatever troubles you
have and unburden your souls at the Mercy Seat. If there is any
suspicion or mistrust in your mind or heart–dark and black though the
thought may be–yet go and tell Him all! He knows all about it, for He
reads your heart, yet go to Him and lay it all before Him and ask Him
to cleanse it all away. To go and tell our doubts to our fellow
creatures is like spreading an infectious disease–it does not often
bring us any comfort–and it frequently causes others to have more
distrust who had quite enough of their own before. We ought not to be
slack in prayer, for we are ready enough to tell our neighbors all
about our trials and troubles, though they cannot help us!
Note, also, that Jacob's fear led him to take a review of his life.
That was a good thing. "I am not worthy," he said to the Lord, "of the
least of all the mercies and of all the truth which You have showed
unto Your servant; for with my staff I passed over this Jordan and now
I am become two bands." It is a blessed thing, sometimes, to look back
upon our past history in order to revive our confidence in God at the
present time. It never does to rely only upon the past and to say, "God
favored me at such-and-such a time and, therefore, I am His." No, you
need present mercy–as you cannot live on the meat you ate long ago–so
you cannot exist on only past mercy. Yet, as I have reminded you, you
may have seen how the bargemen on the canal push backward to send the
boat forward–and you may push backward with your experience in order
to send the boat of your life forward in new confidence in God.
I do not speak only for myself when I say that if we will review our
lives from the first day until now, we shall be again surprised at the
wonderful loving kindness of the Lord towards us. Jacob speaks to the
Lord, "of all the mercies, and all the truth, which You have showed
unto Your servant." Now, if anybody could have foretold, 20 years ago,
to some of you, that you would be in such a good position as you are
now in, you would have been filled with delight at the prospect, yet,
perhaps, you are not now happy in the possession of it. And if you
could have foreseen all the mercy which God has strewn in your pathway,
you would have jumped for joy! Yet you do not jump for joy now as you
look back upon it. Is not that wrong? Oh, when I think of what the Lord
has done for me, personally, I reckon that I would be the very chief of
sinners if I should ever mistrust Him again! I can say, and so can you,
my Brothers and Sisters in Jesus–
" When trouble, like a gloomy cloud,
Has gathered thick and thundered loud,
He near my soul has always stood,
His loving kindness, oh, how good!" Then, why should any of us ever
say, in unbelief–
"He'll leave me at last in trouble to sink"? Beloved Friends, think of
the places from which the Lord brought some of you. It is not so very
long ago since you were living in sin–perhaps in the worst forms of
sin–without hope and without God in the world. Had you died as you
were then, where would you have been? Yet now you are numbered among
the Lord's children and you have enjoyed much of His love and been
highly favored by Him! I charge you by the abounding mercy which you
have received–let these present fears that now molest you, be driven
from your bosom!
Furthermore, Jacob was also led to seek out the promise that was most
suitable to his case, for he said, "I fear Esau, that he will come and
smite me, and the mother with the children." Now notice how appropriate
was the promise that he quoted to meet the case–"And You said, I will
surely do you good, and make your seed as the sand of the sea, which
cannot be numbered for multitude." Now, if the father is killed and the
mother and the children are killed, how can Jacob's seed be as the
grains of sand upon the seashore which cannot be counted? He had a good
hold upon his God when he quoted that promise and, Beloved, it may be
the same in your experience. You never know the preciousness of the
promises till you realize your need of them. You may not know what keys
the locksmith has in his possession. Possibly he does not know,
himself, how many he has. But if you lose the key to your door, you
send for him and he comes with a great bunch of keys–and he tries one,
and another, and another, and another till, at last, he finds one that
will fit. God's promises are often so little studied by His people that
they are like a great bunch of rusty keys till we really need them! And
then we turn them over and we say, of some particular promise, "That
just meets my case. Blessed be the name of the Lord, it must have been
made on purpose for me! That key fits all the wards of this lock." And
then you begin to prize the promise.
It is, I think, worthy of note that God had notsaid to Jacob, in so
many words, "I will surely do you good." At least, as far as the
Scriptures are concerned, there is no record of any such promise. But
He had said to the Patriarch, "I am with you," and, "I will not leave
there." So, this is Jacob's version of the promise and it is a true
one, too, because if God says, "I am with you," he means, "I will do
you good." Have you ever heard Brothers pray, in the Prayer Meeting,
"Lord, You have promised that where two or three are gathered together
in Your name, You will be in the midst of them and that to bless them
and do them good"? Well now, that last part is what they have tagged on
to our Savior's words. He did not say, "and that to bless them and do
them good," because it was not necessary to say that. If the Lord is in
the midst of them, He must bless them and do them good! So Jacob felt
that if the Lord had not put it in just those words, He
implied it when He said, "I am with you." How could the Lord be with
him except to do him good? That was his translation of the original
text which came out of God's lips–and that is what the Lord really
meant by it. Jacob had gone below the surface and spied out the hidden
meaning–and if you should ever be able to see more in a promise than
is in it, it is in it! I seem to contradict myself by that paradox, yet
it is true. If the Word of the Lord should, in its literal
construction, not actually contain all that your faith can see in it,
yet over every promise there is this Law of God written, "According to
your faith, be it unto you." And you may rest assured that your faith
will never outrun the promise of God! He will keep His promise, not
only to the letter, but to the fullest possible meaning that you can
impart to it!
II. But I must not say any more about Jacob's fear, or I shall have no
time for speaking about HIS FAITH. Yet I have been speaking about it
while I have been talking concerning his fear.
First, Jacob's faith was based upon God's promise. He mentioned his
fear of Esau and then he turned to the Lord, saying, "You said, I will
surely do you good." Oh, what a hold he had of God! "'You said.' You
cannot lie and You said, 'I will surely do you good.' You cannot go
back from Your word and, 'You said, I will surely do you good.'" He
seems to hold God to it as men hold their fellow men to a promise which
they have given. There is nothing that he can see in which he can
trust. God seems to be doing nothing, to be quite still–yet Jacob
reminds Him of His promise, "You said." The promise is sufficient for
Jacob without any act or deed as yet. "You said, You said, I will
surely do you good."
I must also remind you that this was what Jacob said when he began to
pray. If you turn to his prayer, you will see that he began by saying,
"O God of my father Abraham, and God of my father Isaac, the Lord which
said unto me," and so on. That is the beginning of his prayer and the
end of it is, "And You said." That should always be both the beginning
and the ending of prayer. You must never go beyond God's promises. If
He has said anything, that is enough for you, but do not expect that
your whims and fancies will be indulged. You must begin your prayer by
saying to God, "You said," and when you do that, the weakest saint or
sinner may plead so as to prevail. You can never get a stronger plea
than the Lord's own promise! You can never strike a blow that will more
effectually clinch the nail than this, "You said. You said."
O Brothers and Sisters, I scarcely know how to put this matter before
you as I ought, because if God says a thing, who is there among us who
shall dare to give Him the lie? If it was years ago that He said it. If
it is an old promise, even in the oldest book of the Old Testament, yet
there is no such thing as time with God–one day is with him as a
thousand years, and a thousand years as one day–and the promise is
just as good as if He had made it at this very moment! If you could
hear God speak now, you would not doubt Him, would you? Well, but did
He at any time utter this promise? Then it stands fast forever, for He
has never spoken in secret so as to change what He has said in public!
Every promise of God is sure to all those who put their trust in Him.
Jacob's faith rested, in its beginning and its end, upon the promise of
God–this was the basis of it, and this alone. Can you say that this is
the foundation of all your confidence for time and for eternity? If you
can, is it not a basis worth resting upon, a foundation fit to build
upon? Is there any supposable weight which this Rock cannot sustain? Is
there any imaginable trouble which may not be endured while God's great
solemn promise stands forever fast?
Yet Jacob's faith, while it was resting upon the promise of God, was,
nevertheless, a struggling faith. It was a mixture of, "I fear Esau"
and, "You said." Beloved, have you only a struggling faith? Then,
struggle on! Never give up struggling. If your faith is only like
Jacob's wrestling, wrestle on, for, notice that Jacob, when he had said
to the Lord, "You said," and quoted the promise, stopped praying, for
he was satisfied to leave the case there. So, Brothers and Sisters, if
your faith begins only as struggling faith, it is the nature of it to
increase and grow till, at last, it comes to be victorious faith! Pray
for victorious faith. Ask the Lord to give you the confidence that will
not be daunted, the unstagger-ing faith of Abraham, who, though he was
as one dead and his wife far advanced in years, yet knew that God had
promised him a son and, therefore, believed that he would have a
son–and looked for him without a doubt! And then, when God bade him
take Isaac and slay him, he believed that God would even raise him up
from the dead, but, somehow or other, He would keep His promise.
Beloved, believe anything except that God can lie. Believe any miracle,
any impossibility, or that which ungodly men tell you is an inability.
Take it all in, but never let the thought come into your mind that God
can be false to you! Oh, if we only believed God as He deserves to be
believed, we should be able to move mountains and cast them into the
sea! Nothing is impossible to the man to whom it is impossible to doubt
his God. A mighty faith, though it is not, in itself,
omnipotent, yet lays hold upon the Omnipotence of God and girds itself
with Divine strength. Does not the Lord deserve such a faith from us?
Yet we shall never have it unless He gives it to us! Oh, that the Holy
Spirit would work it in us, preserve it in us and perfect it in us till
faith is lost in sight–and hope is changed to full fruition! Never let
us doubt the living God for a single moment.
The Lord bless you, dear Friends, and especially bless any of you who
have not yet believed in His Son, Jesus Christ! Oh, that they could see
the sinfulness of doubting the great God and Jesus Christ, His Son! Oh,
that they would but trust Him and confide in Him just as they are! They
would never have to lament doing so, but, throughout eternity they
would have to bless the Lord who taught them this sweet way of life and
peace, namely, the way of simple dependence upon the blood and
righteousness of Jesus Christ!
EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: GENESIS32.
Verse 1. And Jacob went on his way, and the angels of God met him. When
he left the promised land, he had a vision of angels, ascending and
descending upon the ladder, as if to bid him farewell. Now that he is
going back, the angels are there again to speed him on his way home to
the land of the Covenant, the land which the Lord had promised to give
to Abraham and his seed.
2. And when Jacob saw them, he said, This is Gods host andhe called the
name ofthatplace Mahanaim. The marginal reading is, "Two hosts, or,
camps." The angels of the Lord were encamping round about the man who
feared Him, though there had been much in his character and conduct
which the Lord could not approve.
3. And Jacob sent messengers before him to Esau his brother into the
land of Seir, the country of Edom. After a visit from angels,
afflictions and trials often come. John Bunyan wrote, as I have often
reminded you–
"The Christian man is seldom long at ease,
When one trouble's gone, another does him seize," and though the rhyme
is rather rough, the statement is perfectly true! Full often we are
hardly out of one trial before we are into another.
4. 5. Andhe commanded them, saying, Thus shall you speak unto my lord
Esau; your servant Jacob says thus, I have sojourned with Laban, and
stayed there until now. And I have oxen, and asses, flocks, and
menservants, and women servants: and I have sent to tell my lord, that
I may find grace in your sight It is very proper, when we have offended
other people, and especially if we feel that we have done them wrong,
as Jacob had done to Esau, that we should use the humblest terms
concerning ourselves and the best terms we can about those whom we have
offended. Yet I must say that I do not like these terms that Jacob
uses–they do not seem to me to be the right sort of language for a man
of faith–"My lord Esau, your servant Jacob says thus." What business
had God's favored one to speak "thus" to such a profane person, as
Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright? Surely, there was
more of the Jacob policy than there was of the Israel faith in this
form of speech.
6, 7. And the messengers returned to Jacob, saying, We came to your
brother Esau, and alas he comes to meet you, and four hundred men with
him. Then Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed.' 'Four hundred men
with him"! "That must mean mischief to me and my company. Surely, he is
coming thus to avenge himself for the wrong I did him, long ago. My
brother's heart is still hot with anger against me." So, "Jacob was
greatly afraid and distressed."
7, 8. And he divided the people that were with him, and the flocks, and
herds, and the camels, into two bands; and said, If Esau comes to the
one company, and smites it, then the other company which is left shall
escape. This man Jacob was always planning and scheming. He was the
great progenitor of the Jews who are still pre-eminent in bargaining.
See how he plots and arranges everything to the best advantage. I blame
him not for this, yet, I think he is to be blamed that he did not first
pray. Surely, it would have been the proper order of things if the
prayer had preceded the planning–but Jacob planned, first, and prayed
afterwards. Well, even that was better than planning and not praying at
all! So there is something commendable in his actions, though not
without considerable qualification.
9. And Jacob said, O God of my father Abraham, and God of my father
Isaac, the LORD. Jacob uses that august name, "Jehovah"–"the LORD."
9, 10. Who said unto me, Return unto your country, and to your kindred
and I will deal well with you. I am not worthy of the least of all the
mercies, and of all the truth which You have showed unto Your servant;
for with my staff I passed over this Jordan; and now I am become two
bands. Not even one servant had he with him when he fled away across
the river! He was alone and unattended, but now he was coming back at
the head of a great family, with troops of servants and an abundance of
cattle, sheep and all things that men think worth having! How greatly
God had increased him, and blessed him! He remembers that lonely
departure from the home country and he cannot help contrasting it with
his present prosperity.
11-13. Deliver me, Ipray You, from the hand ofmy brother, from the hand
ofEsau: for I fear him, lest he will come and smite me, and the mother
with the children. And You said, I will surely do you good, and make
your seed as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for
multitude. And he lodged there that same night; and took of that which
came to his hand a present for Esau his brother There he is, planning
again! And this time, perhaps, since he has prayed over the matter, he
is planning more wisely than he did before–intending now to try to
appease his brother's anger by a munificent "present for Esau his
brother."
14-16. Two hundred she goats, and twenty he goats, two hundred ewes,
and twenty rams. Thirty milch camels with their colts, forty kine, and
ten bulls, twenty she asses, and ten foals. Andhe delivered them into
the hands of his servants, every drove by themselves; and said unto his
servants, Pass over before me, and put a apace between drove and drove.
In order that there might be time for his brother to look at the
present in detail–and see it piece by piece–and so be the more struck
with the size of it. This was true Oriental policy and crafty Jacob
always had more than enough of something and planning even when it was
not done with wisdom! But, in this case I think it was a wise
arrangement, for which he is to be commended.
17-19. And he commanded the foremost, saying, When Esau my brother
meets you, and asks you, saying, Whose are you? And where go you? And
whose are these before you? Then you shall say, They are your servant
Jacobs, it is a present sent unto my lord Esau: and, behold, also he is
behind us. And so commanded he the second, and the third, and all that
followed the droves, saying, On this manner shall you speak unto Esau,
when you find him. What care he takes about the whole affair! We cannot
blame him, under the circumstances, yet how much grander is the quiet,
noble demeanor of Abraham who trusts in God and leaves matters more in
His hands! Yet, alas, even Abraham tried plotting and scheming more
than once–and failed every time he did so!
20-24. And say you moreover, Behold your servant Jacob is behind us.
For he said, I will appease him with the present that goes before me,
and afterward I will see his face; perhaps he will accept of me. So
went the present over before him: and himself lodged that night in the
company. And he rose up that night, and took his two wives, and his
eleven sons, and passed over the ford Jabbok. And he took them and sent
them over the brook, and sent over that he had. And Jacob was left
alone. This was a very anxious time for him, the heaviest trial of his
life seemed impending. He was dreading it more than he need have done,
for God never meant the trouble he feared to come upon him at all. He
was trembling under a dark cloud that was to pass over his head without
bursting. No tempest of wrath was to break out of it upon him. However,
we must admire Jacob in this one respect, that, with all his thought,
and care, and planning, and plotting, he did not neglect prayer. He
felt that nothing he could do would be effectual without God's
blessing. He had not reached the highest point of faith, though he had
gone in the right direction–a great deal further than many Christians.
He now resolved to have a night of prayer, that he might win
deliverance. "Jacob was left alone."
24. And there wrestled a Man with him until the breaking of the day. I
suppose our Lord Jesus Christ did here, as on many other occasions
preparatory to His full Incarnation, assume a human form and came thus
to wrestle with the Patriarch.
25. And when He saw that He prevailed not against him, He touched the
hollow of his thigh. Where the column of the leg supports the body. And
if that is disjointed, a man has lost all his strength. It was brave of
Jacob thus to wrestle, but there was too much of self about it all. It
was his own sufficiency that was wrestling with the God-Man, Christ
Jesus. Now comes the crisis which will make a change in the whole of
Jacob's future life–"He touched the hollow of his thigh."
25. And the hollow of Jacob's thigh was out of joint as he wrestled
with Him. What can Jacob do, now that the main bone of his leg is put
out of joint? He cannot even stand up any logger in the great wrestling
match. What can he do?
26. And He said, Let Me go, for the day breaks. And he said, I will not
let You go, except You bless me. It is evident that as soon as he felt
that he must fall, he grasped the other "Man" with a kind of death-grip
and would not let Him go. Now, in his weakness, he will prevail! While
he was so strong, he won not the blessing–but when he became utter
weakness, then did he conquer!
27. And He said unto him, What is your name? And he said, Jacob. That
is, a Supplanter, as poor Esau well knew.
28. And He said, Your name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel
That is, A Prince of God.
28. For as a prince have you power with God and with men and have
prevailed. Jacob was the prince with the disjointed limb–and that is
exactly what a Christian is. He wins, he conquers when his weakness
becomes supreme and he is conscious of it!
29. And Jacob askedHim, andsaid, Tellme, Ipray You, Your name. AndHe
said, Why is it thatyou ask My name? And He blessed him there. There
are limits to all human communion with God. We must not go where vain
curiosity would lead us, otherwise will He have to say to us, as He did
to Jacob, "Why is it that you ask My name?"
30. And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God
face to face, and my life is preserved. How he must have trembled to
think that he had the daring–perhaps his fears made him call it
presumption–to actually wrestle with God, Himself, for he was now
conscious that it was no mere angel, but, "the Angel of the Covenant,"
the Lord, Himself, with whom he had wrestled!
31. And as he passed over Peniel the sun rose upon him, and he limped
upon his thigh. The memorial of his weakness was to be with him as long
as he lived. People would ask, "How came the halting gait of that
princely man?" And the answer would be, "It was by his weakness that he
won his princedom–he became Israel, A Prince of God, when his thigh
was put out ofjoint." How pleased would you and I be to go limping all
our days with such weakness as Jacob had, if we might also have the
blessing that he thus won!
32. Therefore the children ofIsrael eat not ofthe sinew which shrank,
which is upon the hollow ofthe thigh, unto this day: because He touched
the hollo w of Jacob's thigh in the sinew that shrank.