Genesis 28

Genesis 28:1-22

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!

Genesis 28:20-22

JACOB—OR A MODEL VOW FOR A YOUNG MANGen_28:20-22THOSE of you who have been in attendance upon our Sunday morning services, have recently had your memory of Jacob’s life freshened by a special study of the chapters containing his personal history. It is the history of one who began life dominated by one evil passion, namely, that of taking advantage of his fellows. It came to him as an inheritance from his mother’s nature; it manifested itself in the natal hour and gave rise to the name of “Jacob” or “Supplanter”. It led him to wrong his brother Esau. It incited him to deceive his old father Isaac. It made him more than a match for his shrewd father-in-law Laban, and it proved that Jacob was possessed of abilities which, when he was converted, would make him a man of power.

The text of this evening found occasion when Jacob was on his way to the home of his forefathers in search of a wife. Dwelling as he had been in the midst of an idolatrous people he must, like Esau, bring sorrow to the heart of his father and weariness to his mother by wedding one of the daughters of Heth, or else thread his way from southern Palestine to Padanaram and take a wife from the daughters of Laban, his mother’s brother.Now Jacob was a man who, while dominated by the passion for gain, nevertheless kept in high regard the religious convictions of his fathers, and was ready at once to act upon the suggestion of visiting the house of Betheul in search of a wife.

It was while on this journey of many days that, being weary, he lay down to sleep and rested his head upon a stone. It is no wonder that he dreamed; the marvel is that his dream was so blessed, bringing to him the vision of a ladder reaching from earth to heaven, with the angels of God ascending and descending upon it. And behold the Lord stood above it and said, “I am the Lord God of Abraham, thy father, and the God of Isaac”. And it was upon waking to this sense of the Divine Presence, and to the realization of God’s beneficent will that Jacob called the place “Bethel” and took the vow of this night’s text.It occurred to me, therefore, that these words contained a model vow for every young man, for the time comes when one is leaving his father’s house and is going forth in search of station and success, purposing to establish himself and build up a house of his own. It would seem indeed that God would be interested in us at that particular juncture of life, and would reveal Himself to us as a beneficent friend, and would be ready to form with us a covenant just such as that which he made with the young man Jacob.I am quite confident also that the wise young man will never launch out into that wider and more responsible life which comes when we leave home and begin our careers upon a more independent basis, without realizing his need of God. It is a good time then to commune with Him, to enter into covenant with Him, and take upon one’s self vows unto Him, and I hold this pledge of Jacob’s, aside from its selfishness, to be a model one in many respects.“And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I 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: and this stone which I have set for a pillar, shall be God’s house, and of all that Thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto Thee”.Jacob regarded God asTHE ALL- GUIDE.He recognized his need of God’s presence.“And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God will be with me”.Perhaps no one has better expressed the thought of benefit from a holy presence than Drummond does in “The Changed Life”.

You remember he says, “There are some men, and some women, in whose company we are always at our best. While with them we cannot think mean thoughts or speak ungenerous words, their mere presence is elevation, purification, sanctity.

All the best stops in our nature are drawn out by their intercourse and we find music in our souls that was never there before”. Now if it be true that the friendship of a good man tends to godly living, how much more the fellowship of the Father Himself? I don’t wonder that Enoch was a good man—“Enoch walked with God”. I don’t wonder that Moses was a good man, God walked with him. And I don’t wonder that Jacob came to be a good man, for in our text Jacob pleads with God to become his companion. It is not when God is with us that we go wrong, it is only when we have turned our backs upon Him.There are some sons who don’t want the father with them when they go into the streets at even time because his presence would prevent their evil practices.

And any man who goes his way though this world without God gives a practical testimony to the fact that he prefers sin to sacred communion. And every man who begins his day by pleading with God to come and walk with him evidences in that fact his sense of need and his disposition to do right and to be right.Jacob’s vow also presents another thought, namely, his conscious need of God’s preserving power.“Jacob vowed a vow saying, If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go”.No man ever outgrows his nursery rhyme, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep”.

In fact the older one grows the greater his need of being kept. The increase in his temptations necessitates the constant presence of a preserving God. Especially when one has come away from home, away from father’s counsel, away from the holy atmosphere of a mother’s love, away from all the restraining influences felt in every well-regulated house; then it is indeed he needs to be preserved by an infinite power. When one is thrown into society where invitations to break his total abstinence habits, to begin gambling on the small scale of the social game, to go into theaters where the whole atmosphere tends to take away the enamel of high moral living; then one needs to be preserved by a higher power. If he doesn’t have God to keep him at this time of life, and under these circumstances of temptation, he will soon be the subject of angels’ pity.There are some men that never see this necessity. They hold themselves and their own abilities in such esteem that they half scorn the suggestion of help from a higher power.

They have no vows to make to God and no favors to ask from God. All the pet vices of society find in them defenders.

They hold in contempt the young churchmen who frankly confess their fear of the tempter and who rejoice that in the hour of trial they can turn for help to Him who holdeth the worlds in His hands.If Jacob had belonged to the company of those who bent not the knee to God, nor made any appeal to His preserving power, he would never have been heard from. Or, if his memory had remained, it would have been like Esau’s, stained by a cheap selling-out of material and spiritual interests. But Jacob was wise. He plead with God to keep him in the way, and every man who does that ought to remember the Psalmist’s words and be comforted, “He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep”.Mr. Moody once said, “I suppose if Queen Victoria had to take care of the crown of England, some thief might attempt to get access to it, but it is put away in the tower of London and guarded night and day by soldiers. The whole English army would, if necessary, be called out to protect it”.

But every man who will have it so has better protection still in the infinite power of Jacob’s preserving God. Despite Satan’s cunning and his superhuman ability, God encourages His own by speaking through Isaiah, “Fear not for I am with thee.

Be not dismayed for I am thy God, I will strengthen thee, I will help thee, yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness” (Genesis 41:10).Paul also says, “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him”. While Jude, out of a rich experience of fellowship with the Father, makes Him to say, “I am able to keep you from falling”.Jacob also realized his need of Divine guidance.“And will keep me in the way that I go”.Jacob was not one of those men who believed that he could choose the path of life for himself. He had seen many another, apparently as wise as he, make shipwreck of it and he didn’t propose to follow in the wake of their folly by disregarding God.I had in one of my meetings a young man who spent the entire time smirking at his comrades and at some silly girls, and it was evident that nothing said was having the least effect upon him. So soon as the after-meeting was begun I went down and asked him if he wouldn’t like to be a Christian, and he answered me, “Well, we don’t all believe alike, you know”. Then I inquired, “What do you believe?”. He hesitated, as if it was difficult to formulate his faith, and I asked, “Do you believe the Bible?”.

He answered that he didn’t know that he did. Then I inquired, “When did you read it last?”.

After some confusion he confessed he hadn’t seen one for years. No guidance for him from God. He didn’t think he needed any. It would be difficult for one to be more certain of making failure and shipwreck of life than that young man is certain of making. The man who doesn’t see his need of Divine guidance is extremely short-sighted, is indeed blind to all of the most serious facts of life.A visitor at the White House during the days of the Civil War said, “I had been spending three weeks in the White House with Mr. Lincoln as his guest. One night—it was just after the battle of Bull Run—I was restless and could not sleep. It was coming near to the dawn when I heard low tones proceeding from a private room where the President slept.

The door was partly open. I instinctively walked in and there I saw a sight which I shall never forget. It was the President kneeling before an open Bible. The light was turned low in the room. His back was turned toward me. I shall never forget his tones, so pitiful and so sorrowful, ‘Oh, Thou God that heard Solomon in the night when he prayed for wisdom, hear me! I cannot lead this people, I cannot guide the affairs of this nation without help. I am poor and weak and sinful.

Oh, God, Thou who didst hear Solomon when he cried for wisdom, hear me and save this nation!” It is an indication of Lincoln’s greatness that he realized so deeply his need of Divine guidance. Who doubts that God heard and answered that agonizing cry and gave the president wisdom? “If any man lack wisdom let him ask of God, who giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him”.Jacob also regarded God asTHE GIVER OF ALL GOOD.He appeals to Him for food and raiment.“If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on”.The Lord’s prayer contains no more important petition than this, “Give us this day our daily bread”, and no man has realized his true dependence upon God’s bounty until he can pray that prayer, knowing that it must be answered or he will go hungry. No matter how shrewd he may be, nor how full of energy, it is not within the power of man to make bread or to create raiment. “Every good and every perfect gift cometh down from the Father of lights”. When one realizes that fact he is likely to follow Jacob’s example and ask only for the necessities of life, not its luxuries. It has long been a matter of interest to me to see how the man of Jacobic spirit, the man who is content with and even grateful for the common blessings, comes often into possession of the greatest means or reaches unto the highest attainments. Jacob now asks only for bread and raiment, but follow him and you find that God gives him great riches.

I have been interested in seeing how George Mueller, when he began his great work for orphans, did not think of a tremendous enterprise, but only of a modest one. His first prayer was for “a thousand pounds and some suitable persons to take care of children”.

The first answer to that petition was in the form of a single shilling from a poor missionary and a sister who offered her services for the work. By and by Mueller rented a house and arranged for the reception of thirty orphan girls. At the time that seemed to him a great beginning. A few years, and lo, God had put into his hands six magnificent institutions, a hundred and eighty-nine missionaries, about a hundred schools, with nine thousand scholars in them, and a large tract society to be supported in addition to the hundreds of little ones who looked to him for every crumb that satisfied their hunger. And lo, God raised up contributors to keep all this wonderful work going. He asked for food and raiment for a few waifs.

God answered with such grace as to make him a father to thousands and the founder of one of the most wonderful institutions of the century.Jacob also depended upon God for a successful journey. He wanted to go to the house of Bethuel in Padan-aram, and bring back a wife to the house of Isaac and Rebecca.

His heart was set on the round trip. He seems to have appreciated his father’s house and to have felt that true prosperity would mean his being returned to that place, there to live and die.Few young men feel so when first they are quitting the house of youth. Many entertain the opinion that almost any place is preferable to that of their childish experiences. But the rule is as men grow older their hearts turn again to the home of childhood and many a man has an abiding ambition to go back to the scenes of childhood and there spend his last days. The longer one remains away from the home of his youth the more blessed and beautiful that home seems to him, and the more he marvels at the poor appreciation he had of it when, in the early time, all of its attractions entered into his experience. Goldsmith has beautifully expressed this thought in his poem, “The Deserted Village” by saying, “In all my wand’rings round this world of care,In all my griefs—and God has given my share—I still had hopes, my latest hours to crown,Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down;To husband out life’s taper at the close,And keep the flame from wasting, by repose;I still had hopes—for pride attends us still—Amidst the swains to show my book-learn’d skill, Around my fire an evening group to draw,And tell of all I felt and all I saw;And as a hare, whom hounds and horns pursue,Pants to the place from whence at first she flew,I still had hopes, my long vexations past,Here to return—and die at home at last”.It was that desire that Jacob voiced in his prayer, and no man can read this petition without realizing that in a few sentences Jacob laid before God the essential blessings and begged them.But to his pleading Jacob added his pledge. He promised GodA .“If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I 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, and this stone which I have set for a pillar shall be God’s house, and of all that Thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto Thee”.Here is a definite pledge to three things.First of all he promised himself. “Then shall the Lord be my God”. Jacob meant by that sentence that out of all the gods that are asking for worshippers in this idol-ridden land I give myself to Jehovah. That is the gift that God desires above all others. Christ didn’t die for our possessions, He died for us, and God’s first requirement from man is not a contribution of his means but an offer of his being upon the altar of love. Oh, that men might realize this!

There are those who imagine that to make a great money offering to some righteous cause would be most acceptable to the Lord. But those who have money to offer realize that with God their gifts of silver and gold are of secondary moment.

Helen Gould Shepherd, that Christian woman who is making a name to be universally loved and honored, is reported to have said recently that those who give their lives to bless their needy fellows made an offering far more acceptable to God than any mere contribution of money can be, and she was right.Wendell Phillips was brought up in a wealthy house and had he desired to do so might have satisfied a sort of conscience by contributing silver and gold to good causes, while keeping himself from the altar. But one day he heard Lyman Beecher preach and when the sermon was over he went to his room and threw himself upon the floor and cried, “Oh, God, I belong to Thee, take what is Thine!”. That was the best contribution he ever made to God’s cause—himself.Do you remember Mr. Moody’s story of the man who went to California in the early fifties, and who, by gold-digging, was rapidly making a fortune, and every month or so sent back to his wife an increasing amount of money? When this had been going on for a good while she grew sick of it all and sent him a letter saying, “Husband, come home, it is not money that we want, we want you!”. That is what God wants, first and foremost, you and me.

Jacob pleased him best when he promised his personal allegiance.Jacob pledged him worship.“This stone which 1 have set up for a pillar shall be God’s house”.There are so many people nowadays who seem to think that Christianity consists in making such a credible confession of faith as will secure one’s admission into the church. Once in they are at ease in Zion and troubled by no convictions of duty.

Religion with them is like the old woman’s umbrella. Charles Spurgeon says, “A youth was leaving his aunt’s house and as he stepped from the door he found the rain falling. Turning back into the hall he caught up an umbrella which was snugly standing in a corner and was proceeding to open it when the old lady took note of his purpose and springing toward him, said, “No, No! that you never shall, I have had that umbrella twenty-three years and it has never been wetted yet, and I am sure it shan’t be wetted now”. Then Mr. Spurgeon moralizes, saying that it is so with some folk’s religion, it is none the worse for wear!But when Jacob gave himself to God, he deliberately planned to worship God. He proposed to erect an altar to God and there bow the knee until the very place had become one of God’s habitation.

Oh, I think I see in this pledge one of the most important promises a man can make. Few things are more difficult than to give God His rightful place in the family; few things more difficult than to keep the altar fires burning; few things more difficult than so to conduct yourself at your own home, daily, as to make it a fit habitation for the Holy One; few things more difficult than to keep in that close communion with Him that leaves one’s soul without self-condemnation; few things so difficult as to live our lives in whatsoever place, and under whatsoever circumstances we may have to live it, in such a way that God can approve of it, and God can employ it to His praise.

The man or the woman who does that has accomplished the mightiest triumph, has achieved the most marvelous victory! He who pleases God need not care whether he win the applause of men; he who pleases God can be alike indifferent to the commendation of friends or the defamation of foes. Truly, as Henry Van Dyke says, “There is One that seeth in secret, and followeth the soul in all its struggles, the great King—whose approval is honor, whose love is happiness. To please Him is success and victory and peace!”.Then Jacob proposed a tithe.“And, of all that Thou shall give me I will surely give the tenth unto Thee”.Unconverted Jacob was a better Christian in behavior than many a modern who is a church-member. There is no truer test of a man’s religion than is found in his disposition of his means. This test applies not alone to those who are millionaires but to the humblest among us as well.

Do you remember how Dwight Hillis in his book, “The Investment of Influence”, says, “Working among the poor of London, an English author searched out the life career of an apple-woman. Her story makes the history of kings and queens contemptible!

Events had appointed her to poverty, hunger, cold and two rooms in a tenement. But there were three orphan boys sleeping in an ashbox whose lot was harder. She dedicated her heart and life to the little waifs. During two and forty years she mothered and reared some twenty orphans, gave them home and bed and food, taught them all she knew, helped some to obtain a scant knowledge of the trades, helped others off to Canada and America”. The author says, “She had misshapen features, but that an exquisite smile was on the dead face. It must have been so, she had a beautiful soul, as Emerson said of Longfellow.

Poverty disfigured the apple-woman’s garret, and want made it wretched, nevertheless God’s most beautiful angels hovered over her humble home. Like a broken vase the perfume of her being will sweeten literature and society a thousand years after we are gone”.That is what God wants, your soul first of all, an altar kindled with the flame of your affections, and a sense of stewardship which shall make it a privilege to share prosperity with its Author.