On the other hand, may we as steadfastly refuse the flesh in all its affections and lusts, and mortify our “members which are upon the earth,” as did the children of Israel by their affinity with Jacob their progenitor. In acknowledgment of the day of his wrestling, and their identification with him as “Israel,” they eat not of the sinew which shrank, which is upon the hollow of the thigh “unto this day.” Do we perpetuate this refusal of the flesh as they did? Are we faithful according to the judgment of God upon the flesh, which He condemned on the cross? Do we bear about in the body “the dying of the Lord Jesus,” that the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our body? As a consequence of this “suffering in the flesh,” do we no longer live the rest of our time in the flesh, to the lusts of men, but to the will of God? (See 1 Peter 4:1-21Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind: for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin; 2That he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God. (1 Peter 4:1‑2)). The Spirit says of us, “They that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its affections and lusts” (Gal. 5:2424And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. (Galatians 5:24)). Neither Israel nor we eat of the sinew that shrank.
In Genesis 35 the ladder is gone, and with it Jacob in his original character of supplanter and bargainer is gone too; nor do we find any more the activity and strength of the flesh, which lasted up to the break of day in its determination and will. God Himself can come in and take His own place now that the wrestling is over, and has perfected its work. Refreshing it is to the heart that knows anything of itself and of the ways of God to find Him take all out of our meddlesome hands into His own. It is in this way our chapter begins: “God said unto Jacob, Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwell there: and make there an altar unto God, that appeared unto thee when thou fleddest from the face of Esau thy brother.” Quite in character with this gracious direction are Jacob’s own proceedings; for it is not only himself who is once more in the presence of God, but, like Abraham, he commands “his household after him” to judge themselves according to what becomes the face of God, whom he saw at Penuel. “Then Jacob said to his household, and to all that were with him, Put away the strange gods that are among you, and be clean, and change your garments; and let us arise, and go up to Bethel.”
He gives God the right place now; for even the altar is no longer to be commemorative of Jacob and Bethel, but it is henceforth to bear the name of El-bethel, or the God of Bethel, as its great and distinguishing character. This entire change from the garments they wore, to the altar of their worship, and the stripping themselves of their ornaments, as well as the denial of the strange gods that were in their hands, and their burial “under the oak, which was by Shechem,” stamp another pattern upon Jacob. “Be clean” is now his word, as indeed it was afterward by the priests, and then again by the prophets whom God sent into the midst of His people, until Christ came forth, and did the work which enables God Himself to testify that “the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.”
So “God appeared to Jacob again, when he came out of Padan-aram, and blessed him; and said, Thy name shall not be called any more Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name.” Thus the whole circle widens, and is filled with the light of God’s own presence; and in grace Jacob, and all that his name implied, is buried at Shechem too. The same grace that refused to call him any more Jacob declares henceforth his name to be Israel; and He who loves to roll away every reproach from off His people writes upon Him this new name, sealing it as His own act, for “He called his name Israel.” Here too we may remark that the reserve which was maintained on God’s part whilst the wrestling with the flesh was going on, so that He said to Jacob, “Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after My name?” and declined to give it, has no place or occasion longer. “And God said unto him, I am God Almighty: be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings ... and the land which I gave Abraham and Isaac, to thee I will give it, and to thy seed after thee.” All is now as it should be, without let or hindrance; “and God went up from him in the place where He talked with him,” without ladder or angels on His part, and in the absence of all terror and fear about person or the place on Jacob’s, for the distance that produced both is gone. There is an advance also in the character of the faith that followed, now that Jacob is no longer a wrestler, but in the peace and communion of a worshipper and a prince with God. Thus the pillar and the oil poured on its top, which was in keeping with “the vision” of the house of God, and the gate of heaven at the outset, must here, in the reality and enjoyment of “the presence,” have its drink-offering superadded. Jacob can no longer say, “The Lord is in this place, and I knew it not;” for God had come down to him, and changed him into a prevailer “with God and with men.” Moreover, he now stands identified under the name of Israel with all God’s purposes and promises to patriarchs or tribes, and to peoples and nations, whether for their own covenanted blessing or for the glory of all the kingdoms of the world. What could Jacob do in the presence of such grace? He “set up a pillar in the place where God talked with him... and he poured a drink-offering thereon, and he poured oil thereon. And Jacob called the name of the place where God spake with him Bethel.” There is remarkable progress and advancement here, as amongst any in our day, when there is growing “in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” Without these elements our worship will be impoverished, and the worshipper be feeble.
When this is not the stand-point of faith before God through Christ, and communion is not maintained upon the fact that we are “clean every whit, and made nigh,” there must be again the ladder, or may be the gate of heaven. Perhaps, too, “how dreadful is this place,” if conscience be not purged and ruled by the blood of Christ, but is only quick in a deepening sense of what God is in His own holiness, and what Jacob, the supplanter, is likewise in the flesh as in His presence. Nor will any escape out of this moral distance by doing as Jacob did, and taking a part with him as a bargainer with God, or a vow-maker. We must be receivers, and not givers, and abide under the new name of Israel (after the wrestling is finished), for we are dead. Then “the fruit of the Spirit” takes the character which David gave to his offerings and the offerings of the princes, “Of thine own have we given Thee;” for whatever comes from God goes back to Him in the sweet savor of Christ, by whom it is produced in us. This intermediate process must be gone through with Jacob, and the flesh withered in the sinew, where its strength dwells, by taking part, and reckoning by faith that God has entirely done with it by death at the cross. This is indispensable now before the nearness and intimacy of the soul is established with God in unclouded confidence at Bethel, or with El-bethel and its drink-offering. Here it is that Jacob comes out from under the cloud of his crooked policy, and follows on in the pathway of God’s own footsteps. And we never walk so securely as then, though it will surely be with sorrow and yet with rejoicings. “They journeyed from Bethel; and there was but a little way to come to Ephrath: and Rachel travailed” in birth with her son. In the depth of her trouble, and the hour of her death, “she called his name Ben-oni,” (or, the son of my sorrow); “but his father called him Benjamin,” (or, the son of my right hand), giving forth the double titles, which by birth belong to Jesus alone as “the Man of sorrows,” and yet on the other side of the cross and His sufferings the Son of the Father’s right hand, exalted to be “a Prince and a Savior, to give repentance” (in a yet future day) “to Israel, and remission of sins.” How blessed thus to have been a link in the chain of God’s purposes, quietly and happily following Him in the path by which He accomplishes “the birthright and the blessing” for His own glory and the glory of His “Ben-oni-Benjamin” in that day. Far better, as now, in the perfect revelation He has made of Himself, as “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” and our God and Father in the Son of His love, by death and resurrection, to wait for His shout, and the church’s rapture!
In conclusion, we may notice how “wittingly” Jacob acts in his last days in full accordance with the mind and ways of God, instead of continuing crafty and cunning in his own as at the first. The instance which is narrated in chapter 48 gives us, I think, this proof. “It came to pass... that one told Joseph, Behold, thy father is sick: and he took with him his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim,” whom Jacob claimed as his own, saying, “as Reuben and Simeon, they shall be mine.” In the bestowment of the blessing Israel guided his hands wittingly, though Joseph was displeased, putting his right upon Ephraim’s head, and his left upon Manasseh. The sovereignty of God “according to election” had been established in the birth of Jacob and Esau; and now the firstborn is to be set aside in the divine order of blessing. So he set Ephraim before Manasseh, saying, “His younger brother shall be greater than he, and his seed shall become a multitude of nations.” All the lessons which Jacob had to learn touching “the birthright,” as well as the order of “the blessing” (apart from the venison and the mess of pottage), are now well gone over with God, and learned. He has but to gather all his sons around him, and, as a prophet of the Lord, “tell them all that shall befall them in the last days.” He charges them further to bury him with his fathers in Machpelah, in the land of Canaan, that he may stand in his own lot in the resurrection, and be found in the right place till then, in the cave where Abraham buried Sarah, and where they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife, and where Jacob said, “I buried Leah.”
In the bright record of those “who obtained a good report through faith,” this last act of the order of the birthright, and of the blessing upon Ephraim and Manasseh, stands out as sufficiently remarkable to memorialize Israel. “By faith Jacob, when dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph” (in the unclouded certainty of the promises of El-elohe-Israel); “and worshipped on the top of his staff.” He thus passes away from us as “the heir of promise,” and content to be only “a pilgrim and stranger on the earth”—a true worshipper leaning on the top of his staff—till “Ben-oni-Benjamin” comes a second time in His own glory, and the glory of His Father, and the glory of the holy angels. The staff will then give place to the throne and the scepter and the royalties of the kingdom promised to him by the “I am” at Bethel. And many “shall come from the east, and the west, and sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob,” and drink wine new with their Messiah, and great shall be the peace of His people.
How happy to accept all our blessings, whether now or hereafter, on our birthright title, and hold them in undisturbed communion with “the Father and the Son,” under the anointing and witness of the Holy Ghost that dwelleth in us, till the day of our translation and of the church’s rapture comes Rebekah’s counsel at the first, and the clever contrivances of Jacob, have been made foolish and contemptible, as all ours will surely be too; for God catcheth the wise in their own craftiness. His new order is, “If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise.”
“The birthright” and “the blessing” are ordained of God to us in the Son of His love. May we value them so highly as to walk in true character with Him May we be regardless of the venison in the hunting-field, and Rebekah’s savory meat, but keep close to the appointed Heir of all things till He comes to claim possession and take us in as joint-heirs with Himself.
(Continued from page 237)
J. E. B.