There are four stages in the journey of the life of Jacob (see Gen. 25-49): his residence at home in Canaan; his sojourn in Padan-aram; his second residence in Canaan; his sojourn and death in Egypt.
Between these four stages there are three links or times of transition, which we may call Bethel, Peniel, and Beersheba.
Bethel, or the scene there, happens as he journeys from Canaan to Padan-aram.
Peniel, or the scene there, happens as he journeys back from Padan-aram to Canaan.
Beersheba, or the scene there, happens as he journeys from Canaan down to Egypt.
These are the eras in the life of Jacob, and the transitions from one to the other. I would now meditate on these transition scenes, or on Bethel, Peniel, and Beersheba.
Jacob had offended the Lord, having taken the way of nature, in listening to the counsels of unbelief touching the blessing. He is therefore put under discipline, that he may learn the bitterness of his own way. His place of stones, the very night on which he left his father's house, witnessed this. It was the fruit of his transgression, but it told that God was his God still. It is the place of discipline, however, and not of sin. God can therefore own it and visit it. Had it been the tent where he and his mother had dressed the kids for Isaac's feast, God could not have owned it, for iniquity was practiced there: but Luz, or the place of discipline, the Lord can visit with His presence.
He does accordingly come, and He comes to make glory a great reality to His servant. He does not come to soften his pillow, or to change his condition, sending him back to enjoy the home of his father and the care of his mother. He leaves Jacob still to taste the bitterness of departure from God, but comes to make glory and heaven great realities to him. Onwards, therefore, this chastened child of God goes, and for twenty years knows the bonds of an injurious taskmaster in Padan-aram.
In due season he is on his way back: But it is a different Jacob we now see, as well as a different journey. He was an empty Jacob at Bethel, he is now a full Jacob at Peniel. He has become two bands. Flocks and herds, and servants and wives and children, tell of his prosperity. He has become a rich man. He has a stake in the world. He has something to lose, something which may make him an object and a prey.
He bears of Esau coming with four hundred men. He trembles. He manages as well as he can, religiously committing all to God. But still, unbelief has mastered his heart, and he is in fear of his revengeful brother.
The Lord comes to him; but He comes in a new character altogether. He had been a child under discipline at Bethel, he is an unbelieving child now; and the Lord comes not to comfort him as then, but to rebuke and restore him. “There wrestled a man with him till the breaking of the day.” This was the Lord in controversy with Jacob's unbelief touching Esau. But what is the issue of this controversy? Grace is made a great reality to Jacob now, as glory had been before. The wrestling Stranger in abounding grace allows himself to be prevailed over by the weak and timid Jacob, and the spirit of faith revives in the soul of Jacob. Very blessed this is. He comes “boldly to the throne of grace.” He says, “I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.” And Jacob becomes Israel. The unbelieving Jacob is restored now, as the chastened Jacob had been comforted before. Grace is made a great reality to him now, as glory had been to him then. At Bethel he walked at the gate of heaven, here he walks in the presence of God. Christ was giving him promises at Bethel; He is giving him embraces at Peniel. He was opening His house to him there; He is opening His heart to him here.
Such was Bethel, and such was Peniel to Jacob: such is God to him in his various need. Heaven was shown to him in the day of his sorrow; restoring grace in its exhaustless treasures in the day of his failure.
But Beersheba is still to be visited, and it has its peculiar character also. Nature had spoken very quickly in Jacob, when on hearing that Joseph was alive and governor of Egypt, and seeing the wagons which he had sent to take him to that country, he said, “It is enough; Joseph my son is yet alive, I will go down and see him before I die.” This was just nature; and though nature may speak rightly in a saint, yet its voice ought always to be challenged, for it may be wrong as well as right. In a calmer moment of his soul, this decision, this unchallenged decision of nature, becomes the occasion of uneasiness to Jacob; and it is this uneasiness, as I surely judge, that gives us Beersheba. For, I may ask, Why the sacrifices there? “And Israel took his journey with all that he had, and came to Beersheba, and offered sacrifices unto the God of his father Isaac.”
This is remarkable. And why all this? I ask. There had been no altar at Mamre before he had set out. Why this delay at Beersheba on the road? The spiritual sense has now been awakened, and the saint feels reserve where the father had felt none. Very common this is with the people of God. Nature had acted at Mamre, but now that the mind of Christ awakes to take the lead, the judgment of nature is reviewed.
Many years before this the Lord had said to Isaac, “go not down into Egypt,” and had said this to him in a day of famine in Canaan, as was the present. (See chap. 26:1, 2.) Faith reviving in the soul of Jacob at Beersheba (lying on the southernmost border as you go to Egypt), this is remembered, and Jacob pauses. Uneasiness is felt when faith thus challenges the verdict of nature. And God is sought, the God of Isaac. Most fitly so; for it was the word of the God of Isaac which had awakened this conflict and uneasiness. The word of the Lord, as we have now seen, had raised a wall or dug a gulf between Isaac and Egypt. So that this delay at Beersheba, and these sacrifices, tell the secret of Jacob's soul, that faith, and not nature, was now taking, the lead of the motives that were stirring there.
Very lovely this is, and very precious with God, as the sequel of this perfect little story of other days at Beersheba tells us. God comes to Jacob, and comes at once upon the raising up of the altar at Beersheba. He had been with him before, as we saw, on his way from Canaan to Padan-aram, and again on his way back from Padan-aram to Canaan; and now is He with him on his way from Canaan to Egypt. At Bethel, as we also saw, He had made glory or heaven a great reality to the chastened sorrowing Jacob. At Peniel He had made grace, in its restoring virtue, a great reality to the timid and fainting Jacob, and now at Beersheba He makes divine sympathy a great reality to the tender self-judging Jacob.
The communion between the Lord and His elect one here is full of the witness of this. The Lord lets him know that He was acquainted with all the workings, both of nature and of the spiritual mind in him, that He had marked the path of his soul from Mamre to Beersheba. “I am God,” said the Lord in a vision of the night to him, “I am God, the God of thy father: fear not to go down into Egypt I will go down with thee and Joseph shall put his hands upon thine eyes.”
What a communication this was! How thoroughly did it disclose this most comforting truth, that the Lord had read all his heart, his present fears, his earlier affections, the mind of the father and the mind of the saint in him, the desire of nature and the sensibility and suggestion of grace. “Fear not to go down to Egypt” calmed his present saintly apprehensions; “Joseph shall put his hands upon thine eyes” gratified the earlier motions of a father's heart. How full and perfect all this was! What a reality it proved communion or the sympathy of Christ to be!
“When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, thou knewest my path.” The groan that cannot be uttered has entered, with exactest meaning, the ear of Him who searches the heart. All this is now made a great reality to Jacob, and in the joy of this he goes onward. How could he any longer fear Egypt? How could he question any longer the desire of indulging his fatherly affections? All was answered and satisfied, and Jacob resumed his journey, and accomplished it. “And Jacob rose up from Beersheba.... and they took their cattle, and their goods, which they had gotten in the land of Canaan, and came into Egypt, Jacob, and all his seed with him.”
Rich and wondrous instructions! Glory is made a reality to Jacob at Bethel, grace is made a reality to him at Peniel, and divine sympathy is made a reality to him at Beersheba.
I might add “Shechem” to these cases. Correction is made a great reality to Jacob's conscience there. The Lord told him to go from it to Bethel, for his way there was evil; and he sets himself on the journey, not only at once, but under a purifying of his whole house, showing how his spirit had received correction. (See chap. 35:1, 2.)