There are arresting thoughts on "Bethel" and "Peniel." or the empty and the full Jacob—the Jacob of Gen. 28 and the Jacob of Gen. 32 The principles illustrated there and lessons taught there aw equally divine, I need not say; but they are strikingly different. Jacob has grieved the Spirit, he has offended the Lord, having taken the way of nature, listened to the counsels of unbelief, and separated from his call and his path as an elect one of God. He is therefore under discipline and he must know the bitterness of his departure from the ways of life. His place that night on which he left his father's house was therefore the place of the people of God. It was the witness of his shame and evil, I know, but it was the witness that God, as his God, had known him among the children of men, and would therefore visit him for his transgression. The place, therefore, is such a place as may count upon God's presence. It was not the place of sin, but of discipline. Had it been the tent where, in subtlety, he and his mother were preparing the calf for Isaac's feast, God could not have been there; but at Luz, the place of desert and stones, when Jacob is under discipline, there the Lord can be.
And then the Lord comes to make glory a great reality to this poor, solitary, disciplined saint. He does not come to change his present circumstances, to soften his pillow, or to turn him back to his father's house. He leaves the present fruit of Jacob's departure from the way of God just as bitter in itself as it was before. Exile and bondage were before him then, and they are before him still. But God comes to make glory a great reality to him! He comes to assure his heart afresh in the nearness and sufficiency of His own favor and strength, and to show him how the resources of heaven waited on him, though in circumstances so bitter and grievous, to which his own way had reduced him. Onward, accordingly, he goes, and for twenty years he proves the taskmaster in the land of
Padan-aram. But, his servitude over, he returns full of the blessing of the Lord, and He who had met the empty Jacob on his way from Canaan to Aram, now meets the full Jacob on his way back from Aram to Canaan.
It is, however, a different Jacob as well as a different journey. Jacob has now become two bands. Flocks and herds, servants and wives and children surround and accompany him who of old lay unfriended and alone amid the stones in the wilderness.
Then it was only discipline, but now it is unbelief which gives character to the scene under the eye of the Lord. Jacob trembles; he hears of Esau and his four hundred men. He fears for his cattle, for his children, and for his life. He has something to lose now. He has become a rich man. He has a stake in the world, and may well be an object for others, and easily, as he fears, a prey to them. He trembles; he manages as well as he can and religiously commits himself further to God. And the Lord came to him, came to him as surely as He had come to him at Bethel. But it is not to comfort, but to rebuke him. It is not to break open the heavens over his head and to speak in promises to him, but to rebuke him. "There wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day." This was the Lord in controversy with Jacob; his unbelief and slowness of heart had provoked the Lord to jealousy, and the Lord withstands him.
But what is the issue of it all? Grace is made a great reality to him here, as glory had been made a great reality to him at Bethel. The wrestling Stranger allows Himself to be prevailed over by Jacob. Faith revives in Jacob's soul. "I will not let Thee go, except Thou bless me." The decision of faith which will get a blessing quickens him; he comes "boldly to the throne of grace," his soul is restored, and the fears of unbelief touching Esau yield to the confidence and joy of faith in God. It is now the unbelieving Jacob restored, as at Bethel it had been the disciplined and chastened Jacob comforted. He had then walked close to the gate of heaven; now he walks under the sunshine of God's favor. The house of God was then his; the face of God is now his. Such was Bethel on his way out; such is Peniel on his way home. All is of God. Grace and glory are great realities—heaven and Christ are both ours. Heaven in its enriching glories is shown to us if in the sorrow of discipline. Christ in His restoring grace is given to us, if in the power of unbelief or the fears of nature.... To have glory made real to us in the day of
trouble and grace made real to us in the day of failure, we need to walk along by Bethels and Peniels; they sweetly vary the journey, but it is a journey with God still.
"Then gladly sing and sound abroad The great Redeemer's praise, The glories of the living God, The riches of His grace!"