Genesis 27
RileyGenesis 27:1-46
ISAAC. JACOB AND ESAUGen_25:10 to Genesis 35:1-29 where we left off in our last study of Genesis, Isaac is the subject of next concern, for “it came to pass after the death of Abraham that God blessed his son Isaac, and Isaac dwelt by the well Lahai-roi”. But we are not inclined to spend much time in the study of Isaac’s life and labors. Unquestionably Isaac holds his place in the Old Testament record through force of circumstances rather than by virtue of character. His history is uninteresting, and were it not that he is Abraham’s son and Jacob’s father, the connecting link between the federal head of the Jews, and father of the patriarchs, he would long since have been forgotten.Three sentences tell his whole history, and prove him to be a most representative Jew. He was obedient to his father; he was greedy of gain, and he was a gormand!
He resisted not when Abraham bound him and laid him upon the altar. Such was his filial submission.
At money-making he was a success, “for he had possession of flocks and possession of herd, and great store of servants, and the Philistines envied him”. His gluttony was great enough to be made a matter of inspired record, for it is written, “Isaac loved Esau because he did eat of his venison”, and when he was old and his eyes were dim, and he thought the day of his death was at hand, he called Esau and said,“My son**** take, I pray thee, thy weapons, thy quiver and thy bow, and go out to the field and take me some venison and make me savory meat, such as I love, and bring it to me that I may eat, that my soul may bless thee before I die”.Think of a man preparing to sweep into eternity, and yet spending what he supposed to be his last moments in feasting his flesh!I have no prejudice against the Jew. I believe him to be the chosen of the Lord. My study of the Scriptures has compelled me to look for the restoration of Israel, and yet I say that Isaac, in his filial obedience, his greed of gain and his gluttony of the flesh, was a type. And to this hour the majority of his offspring present kindred traits of character.Yet Isaac’s life was not in vain. We saw in our second study in Genesis that the man who became the father of a great people, who, through his offspring was made a nation, was fortune-favored of God.
The greatest event in Isaac’s history was the birth of his twin children, Esau and Jacob. It was through their behavior that his own name would be immortalized and through their offspring that his personality would be multiplied into a mighty people.
I propose, therefore, this morning to give the greater attention to his younger son, Jacob, God’s chosen one, and yet not to neglect Esau whom the sacred narrative assigns to a place of secondary consideration. For the sake of simplicity in study, let us reduce the whole of Jacob’s long and eventful life to three statements, namely, “Jacob’s shrewdness”, “Jacob’s Sorrows”, and “Jacob’s Salvation”.JACOB’S .In their very birth, Jacob’s hand was upon Esau’s heel, earnest of his character. From his childhood he tripped whom he could.His deceptions began in the home. This same twin brother Esau, upon whose heel he laid his hand in the hour of birth, becomes the first victim of his machinations. He takes advantage of Esau’s hunger and weariness to buy out his birthright, and pays for it the miserable price of “bread and pottage”. The child is the prophecy of the man.
The treatment one accords his brothers and sisters, while yet the family are around the old hearthstone, gives promise of the character to come. The reason why sensible parents show such solicitude over the small sins of their children is found just here.
They are not distressed because the transgressions are great in themselves, but rather because those transgressions tell of “things to come”. In the peevishness of a child they see the promise of a man, mastered by his temper; in the white lies of youth, an earnest of the dangerous falsehoods that may curse maturer years; in the little deceptions of the nursery, a prophecy of the accomplished and conscienceless embezzler.There comes from England the story of a farmer who, finding himself at the hour of midnight approaching the end of life, sent hastily for a lawyer, and ordered him to quickly write his will. The attorney asked for pen, ink and paper, but none could be found. Then he inquired for a lead pencil, but a thorough search of the house revealed that no such thing existed in it. The lawyer saw that the farmer was sinking fast, and something must be done, and so casting about he came upon a piece of chalk; and taking that he sat down upon the hearthstone and wrote out on its smooth surface the last will and testament of the dying man. When the court came to the settlement of the estate, that hearthstone was taken up and carried into the presence of the judge, and there its record was read, and the will written upon it was executed.
And I tell you that before we leave the old home place, and while we sit around the old hearthstone, we write there a record in our behavior toward father and mother, in our dealings with brother and sister, and servant, that is a prophecy of what we ourselves will be and of the end to which we shall eventually come, for “the child is father to the man”.Jacob showed this same character to society. The thirtieth chapter of Genesis records his conduct in the house of Laban.
It is of a perfect piece with that which characterized him in his father’s house. A change of location does not altar character. Sometime ago a young man who had had trouble in his own home, and had come into ill-repute in the society in which he had moved, came and told me that he was going off to another city, and when I asked “Why?” he said, “Well, I want to get away from the old associations and I want to put distance between me and the reputation I have made”. But when he went he carried his own character with him, and the consequence was a new set of associates worse than those from whom he fled, and a new reputation that for badness exceeded the old. It does not make any difference in what house the deceiver lodges, nor yet with what society he associates himself—the result is always the same.Parker, who was the real father of the Prohibition movement of Maine, testified that he had traveled into every state of the Union in an endeavor to overcome his drinking habits, and free himself of evil associates, and that in every state of the Union he failed. But, when God by His grace converted him and changed his character, he went back to his old home and settled down with the old associates and friends and not only showed them how to live an upright life, but inaugurated a movement for the utter abolition of his old enemy.
If there is any man who is thinking of leaving his city for another because here he has been “unfortunate”, as he puts it, or “has been taken advantage of by evil company”, and has made for himself a bad reputation, let him know that removal to a new place will accomplish no profit whatever. As Beecher once said, “Men do not leave their misdeeds behind them when they travel away from home.
A man who commits a mean and wicked action carries that sin in himself and with himself. He may go around the world but it goes around with him. He does not shake it off by changing his position”.The Jacob who deceived Esau and had to flee in consequence, twenty years later, for cheating Laban and by his dishonest dealings, divorced himself from his father-in-law.Jacob’s piety was a pure hypocrisy. Now some may be ready to protest against this charge, but I ground it in the plain statements of the Word. In all his early years this supplanter seldom employed the name of God, except for personal profit. When his old father Isaac inquired concerning that mutton, Jacob was palming off on him for venison, “How is it that thou hast found it so quickly, my son”? the impious rascal replied, “Because the Lord thy God brought it to me”.
Think of voicing such hypocrisy! The next time Jacob employed God’s name it was at Bethel.“And Jacob vowed a vow saying, If God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I shall go and will give me bread to eat and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father’s house in peace, then shall the Lord be my God”.Satan’s charge against Job would have had occasion had he hurled it against this supplanter instead, “Doth Jacob fear God for naught?” When the frauds of this man had taken from Laban the greater part of his flocks and herds, and Laban’s sons had uttered their complaint of robbery, Jacob replied,“Ye know that with all my power I have served your father, and your father hath deceived me, and changed my wages ten times.
But God suffered him not to hurt me”.If he said, thus, “the speckled shall be thy wages”, then all the cattle bare speckled; and if he said thus, “the ring straked shall be thy hire”, then bare all the cattle ringstraked; thus God hath taken away the cattle of your father and given them to me”. What hypocrisy! God had done nothing of the kind. This supplanter, by his knowledge of physiological laws, had enriched himself and robbed Laban, and when charged with his conduct, defended his fortune by the impious claim that God had given it all. I doubt if a man ever descends to greater depths of infamy than he reaches who cloaks bad conduct with pious phrases.In a certain city a gentleman moved in and started up in business. He dressed elegantly, dwelt in a splendid house, drew the reins over a magnificent span, but his piety was the most marked thing about him.
Morning and evening on the Sabbath day he went into the house of God to worship, and in the prayer meeting his testimonies and prayers were delivered with promptness and apparent sincerity. A few short months and he used the cover of night under which to make his exit, and left behind him a victimized host.
Some time since our newspapers reported a Jew, who by the same hypocrisy had enriched himself and robbed many of his well-to-do brethren in Minneapolis. We have more respect for the worldling who is a gambler, a drunkard or an adulterer, than for the churchman who makes his church-membership serve purely commercial ends, and whose pious phrases are used as free passes into the confidence of the unsuspecting. It is a remarkable fact that when Jesus Christ was in the world He used His power to dispossess the raving Gadarene; He showed His mercy toward the scarlet woman; He viewed with pathetic silence the gamblers who cast dice for His own coat, but He assailed hypocrisy with the strongest clean invectives of which human language was capable, naming the hypocrites of His time “whited sepulchers”, “a generation of vipers”, “children of Satan”, and charged them with “‘foolishness, blindness and murder”. If Christ were here today, hypocrisy would fare no better at His lips, and when He was crucified again, as He surely would be, this class would lead the crowd that cried, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him”!But enough regarding Jacob’s shrewdness; let us look intoJACOB’S SORROWS.He is separated from his childhood’s home. Scarcely had he and his doting mother carried out their deception of Isaac when sorrow smites both of them and the mother who loved him so much is compelled to say, “My son, obey my voice and arise; flee thou to Laban, my brother, to Haran”; and this mother and son were destined never to see each other’s face again.
One of the ways of God’s judgment is to leave men to the ‘fruits of their own devices. He does not rise up to personally punish those who transgress, but permits them to suffer the punishment which is self-inflicted.
The law is “Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap”. It is a law that approves every righteous act, and bestows great blessings upon every good man, but it is also a law that has its whip of scorpions for every soul that lives in sin. It is on account of this law that you cannot be a cheat in your home and be comfortable there. You simply cannot deceive and defraud your fellows and escape the consequences.What was $25,000 worth to Patrick Crowe when every policeman in America and a thousand private detectives were in search of him? How fitful must have been his sleep when he lay down at night, knowing that ere the morning dawned the law was likely to lay its hand upon him, and how anxious his days when every man he met and every step heard behind him suggested probable arrest. What had he done that he was so hunted?
He had done what Jacob did; he had come into possession of blessings which did not belong to him, and as Jacob took advantage of his brother’s weariness and hunger and of his father’s blindness to carry out his plot, so this child-kidnapper took advantage of the weakness of youth, the affection of paternity, to spoil his fellow of riches. It is not likely that either Jacob of old or the kidnapper of yesterday looked to the end of their deception.
Greed in each case blinded them, to the sorrows to come, as it is doing to hundreds of thousands of others today. But just as sure as Jacob’s deception effected Jacob’s separation from mother and father and home, similar conduct on your part or mine will plunge us into sorrows, for “he that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption”.In His adopted house Jacob encounters new difficulties. It is no more easy to run away from sorrow than it is to escape from sin. The man who proved himself a rascal in Minneapolis may remove to Milwaukee, but the troubles he had here will be duplicated in his new home. The shrewd man of Gerar, when he comes to Haran, is cheated himself. Seven hard years of service for Rachel, and lo, Leah is given instead.
At Haran his wages “were changed ten times”, so he says. I have no doubt that every change was effected by some new rascality in his conduct.
At Haran he was openly charged with deception and greed by the sons of Laban, and at Haran also he witnessed the jealousy that was growing up between Rachel, his best beloved, and Leah, the favored of God. So sorrows ever attend the sinner.The man who comes to you in a time when you are tempted, to plead with you to deal honestly, to do nothing that would not have the Divine approval, no matter how great the loss in an upright course, is a friend and is pleading for your good. His counsel is not against success, but against sorrow instead. He is as certainly trying to save you from agonizing experiences as he would be if pleading with you not to drink, not to gamble, or even not to commit murder, “for better is a little with righteousness than great revenues without right”.It is at the point of his family he suffers most. We have already referred to the estrangement that grew up between Rachel and Leah. That was only the beginning.
The baseness of Reuben, the cruelty of Simeon and Levi toward the Shechemites, the spirit of fratricide that sold Joseph into slavery; all of these and more had to be met by this unhappy man. A man never suffers so much as when he sees that his family, his wife and his children, are necessarily involved.
Jacob expressed this thought when he prayed to God,“Deliver me, I pray thee, 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”.Ah, there is the quick of human life—“the mother with the children”.I know a man who has recently been proven a defaulter. His embezzlements amount to many thousands of dollars, so it is said, and they run back through a course of twenty years. In a somewhat intimate association with him I never dreamed such a thing possible. He was a sweet-spirited man, an affectionate father, a kind husband, a good neighbor, outwardly a loyal citizen and apparently an upright Christian. I do not believe at heart he was dishonest, and I know that he was not selfish. Since the press published his disgrace, I have been pondering over what it all meant and have an idea that he simply lacked the courage to go home and tell his wife and children that he was financially bankrupt, and that they must move into a plainer house, subsist upon the simplest food, and be looked upon as belonging to the poverty stricken; so he went on, keeping up outward appearances, possibly for the wife’s sake and for the children’s sake, hoping against hope that the tide would turn and he would recover himself and injure none, until one day he saw the end was near, and the sin long concealed was burning to the surface, and society would understand.
It plunged him into temporary insanity.Young men who sin are likely to forget the fact that when they come to face the consequences of their behavior they will not be alone, and their sufferings will be increased by just so much as the wife and children are compelled to suffer.Some time ago I read a story of a young man who had committed a crime and fled to the West. In the course of time he met a young woman in his new home and wooed and won her.
When a little child came into his home, his heart turned back to his mother, and he longed to go back and visit her and let her meet his wife and enjoy the grandchild; and yielding to this natural desire, he went back. But ere a week had passed, officers of the law walked in and arrested him on the old charge. Alone he had sinned, but now his sufferings are accentuated a thousand-fold because his innocent wife must share them, and even the bewildered babe must untwine her arms from about his neck and be torn from her best-loved bed, his breast. “The mother with the children”! Ah, Jacob, you may sin by yourself, but when you come to suffer, you will feel the pain of many lives.But, thank God, there came a change in Jacob. In finishing this talk I want to give the remaining space toJACOB’S .I believe it occurred at Peniel. Twice before God had manifested Himself to Jacob.
But Jacob had received little profit from those revelations. On his way to Haran, God gave him a vision in the night —a ladder set up on the earth the top of which reached up to heaven, and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.
When Jacob awakened out of his sleep he said, “This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven”. But not all who come into the House of God, not all before whom Heaven’s gate opens; not all to whom the way of salvation is revealed are converted. That night’s vision did not result in Jacob’s salvation. After that he was the same deceiver.Twenty-one years sweep by and Jacob is on his way back to the old place, and the angels of God met him. And when Jacob saw them he said, “This is God’s host”. But not every man who meets the hosts of God is saved.
Jacob is not saved. But when he came to Peniel and there in the night a Man wrestled with him, it was none other than God’s third appearance, and the Jacob who had gone from the House of God unsaved, who had met the hosts of God to receive from them little profit, seeing now the face of God, surrendered once for all.
From that night until the hour when he breathed his last, Jacob the politician, Jacob the deceiver, Jacob the defrauder, was Israel—the Prince of God, whose conduct became the child of the Most High!His repentance was genuine. Read the record of Gen 32:24-30, and you will be convinced that Jacob truly repented. In that wonderful night he ceased from his selfishness. He said never a word that looked like a bargain with God. He did not even plead for personal safety against angered Esau. He did not even beseech God to save the mother with the children, but he begged for a blessing.
He had passed the Pharisaical point where his prayer breathed his self-esteem. He had come to the point of the truly penitent, and doubtless prayed over and over again as the publican, “God be merciful to me a sinner”.
And when God was about to go from him he said, “I will not let thee go except thou bless me”. That is the best sign of genuine repentance.In Chicago I baptized a young man who for years had been a victim of drink. For years also he had gone to the gambling house. Often he abused his wife and sometimes he beat the half-clad children. One day in his wretchedness he purchased a pistol and went into his own home, purposing to destroy the lives of wife and children and then commit suicide; but while he waited for the wife to turn her head that he might execute his will without her having suspected it, God’s Spirit came upon him in conviction and he told me afterwards that his sense of sin was such that in his back yard, with his face buried in the earth, he cried for God’s blessing. “And I found that I was not so much convicted of drunkenness, or of gambling, or of cruelty, or even of the purpose of murder and suicide, as I was convicted of sin. I did not plead for pardon from any of these acts but for God’s mercy that should cover all and make me a man”.Read the 51st Psalm and see how David passed through a similar experience.
His cry was, “Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity and cleanse me from my sin”. And Jacob’s cry was “Bless me”.
It means the same.His offer to Esau was in restitution. Two hundred she goats, and 20 he goats, 200 ewes and 20 rams; 30 milk camels with their colts; 40 kine and 10 bulls; 20 she asses and 10 foals; all of these he sent to Esau his brother, as a present. Present, did I say? No, Jacob meant it in payment. Twenty-one years before he had taken from Esau what was not his own and now that God had blessed him, he wanted to return to Esau with usury. It is the story of Zacchaeus—restoring four-fold.
And the church of God has never received a better evidence of conversion than is given when a man makes restitution.Some years ago at Cleveland a great revival was on, into which meeting an unhappy man strayed. The evangelist was talking that night of the children of Israel coming up to Kadesh-Barnea but turning back unblessed.
This listener, an attorney, had in his pocket seven hundred dollars which he had received for pleading a case which he knew to be false, won only by perjured testimony, and the promise of $12,000 more should he win the case in the highest court. As the minister talked, God’s Spirit convicted him and for some days he wrestled with the question as to what to do. Then he counselled with the evangelist and eventually he restored the $700, told his client to keep the $12,000 and went his way into the church of God. I have not followed his course but you do not doubt his conversion. Ah, Jacob is saved now, else he would never have paid the old debt at such a price.Thank God, also, that his reformation was permanent. You can follow this life now through all its vicissitudes to the hour of which it is written,“And 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”.You will never find him a deceiver again; you will never find him defrauding again.
The righteousness of his character waxes unto the end, and Pharaoh never entertained a more honorable man than when he welcomed this hoary pilgrim to his palace. The forenoon of his life was filled with clouds and storms, but the evening knew only sunshine and shadow, and the shadow was not in consequence of sins continued but sorrows super induced by the sins of others.It is related that when Napoleon came upon the battlefield of Marengo, he found his forces in confusion and flying before the face of the enemy.
Calling to a superior officer he asked what it meant. The answer was, “We are defeated”. The great General took out his watch, looked at the sinking sun a moment and said, “There is just time enough left to regain the day”. At his command the forces faced about, fought under the inspiration of his presence, and just as the sun went down, they silenced the opposing guns.Suppose we grant that one has wasted his early years, has so misspent them as to bring great sorrow. Shall such despair? No, Jacob’s life illustrates the better way.
His youth was all gone when he came to Peniel. But there he learned how to redeem the remaining days.I saw by a magazine to which I subscribe that in Albemarle and surrounding counties of Virginia there are many farms that were once regarded as worn out, and their owners questioned what they could do with them, when somebody suggested that they sow them to violets.
The violets perfumed the air, enriched the owner, and recovered the land. It is not too late to turn to God!