There is a lesson regarding character and mind-set in Rebekah’s history to which I would call your attention. Rebekah comes forth at the call of Abraham’s servant, but a character had previously been formed, as it is with us all, more or less, before we are converted. We may heed the separating call and power of the Lord, but the character and mind derived from nature, from education or from family habits we take with us after we have been born of the Spirit, and they may carry in us from Mesopotamia to the house of Abraham.
I need only briefly speak of what took place; Rebekah’s history sadly betrays what we may call the family character. Laban, her brother with whom she had grown up, was a subtle, knowing, worldly man, and the only great action in which Rebekah was called to take part gives occasion to her exercising the same principles. In the procuring of the blessing for her son Jacob, we see this Laban-leaven working mightily. Her mind was too little accustomed to repose in the sufficiency of God and too much addicted to calculate and to lean its hopes on its own inventions.
We too must watch against the peculiar tendency of our own mind and rebuke nature sharply, that we may be sound or morally healthful in the faith (Titus 1:1313This witness is true. Wherefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith; (Titus 1:13)). We must not excuse this tendency of our nature, but rather mortify it for His sake who has given us another nature.
These lessons we get from the story of this distinguished woman. Beyond this, her way is not much tracked by the Spirit. She reaps nothing but disappointment from the seed she had sown. She loses her favorite son Jacob and never sees him again after her own schemes and contrivances ended in his long exile.
Jacob’s Character
But there is more; Jacob got his mind formed by the same earliest influence. He was all his days a slow-hearted, calculating man. His plan in getting the birthright first and then the blessing, his confidence in his own arrangements rather than in the Lord’s promise when he met his brother Esau, and his lingering at Shechem and settling there instead of pursuing a pilgrim’s life in the land like his fathers — all this betrays the nature and the working of the old family character. How important to watch the early seed sown in the heart!
The birth of Esau and of Jacob is given us at the close of Genesis 25. As they grow up, occasion arises to let us look in at the family scene, which is truly humbling. This was one of the families of God then on the earth — the most distinguished, in which lay the hopes of all blessing to the whole earth and where the Lord had recorded His name. But what do we see? Isaac the father had sunk into the stream of human desires; he loved his son Esau because he ate of his venison! Esau, as a child of the family, was entitled to the care and provision of the house, but for Isaac to make him his favorite because he ate of his venison was sad indeed. Do we not see here some further illustration of our subject? Isaac had been reared tenderly. He had never been away from the side of his mother; he was the child of her old age. His education perhaps had relaxed him too much, and he appears before us as a soft, self-indulgent man.
What sad mischief opens to our view in this family scene! Are we saying too much to say that one parent was catering to nature in one of the sons, and the other parent to the other son? Isaac’s love of venison may have encouraged Esau in the chase, as Rebekah’s cleverness, brought from her brother’s house in Padan-aram, seems to have formed the mind and character of her favorite Jacob. What sorrow and cause of humiliation is here! Is this a household of faith? Is this a God-fearing family? Yes, Isaac, Rebekah and Jacob are children of promise and heirs of His kingdom, but they gave precedence to their own desires over acting in faith and obedience to God’s promises.
The Consequences
At another time and in other actions this family delights and edifies us. See Isaac in the greater part of chapter 26; his conduct is altogether worthy of a heavenly stranger on the earth. He suffers and takes it patiently, and his altar and his tent witness his holy, unearthly character. So with Rebekah in chapter 24; in faith she consents to cross the desert alone with a stranger because her heart was set upon the heir of the promises. But here in chapter 27, what shame fills the scene, and we blush and are confounded that heirs of promise and children of God could so behave!
But it remains for us to see grace assuming its high, triumphant place and attitude. Isaac loses his purpose touching Esau, Rebekah has to part with Jacob, and Jacob himself, instead of getting the birthright and the blessing in his own way, has to go forth a penniless exile from the place of his inheritance. The only wages of sin is death, but grace takes its high place and shines through Jehovah’s burning holiness.
Jacob, the son and heir, has to lie down alone, uncared for, unsheltered, the stones of the place his only pillow. But grace is preparing a glorious rest for him; he listens to the voice of wondrous love, and he is shown worlds of light in this place of solitude and darkness. He sees himself, though so erring, so poor and so vile, thus associated with an all-pervading glory full of present mercies and consolations. The holiness of grace still leaves him a wanderer, but the riches of grace will tell him of present consolation and of future sure glories.
There is then such a thing as family character, and the recollection of this, when we are dealing with ourselves, should make us watchful and jealous over all our peculiar habits and tendencies. When we are dealing with others, it should make us considerate and of an interceding spirit, remembering that there is a force of early habit and education working more or less in all of us. But let us not forget that if a certain family character clings to us or habits with which birth has connected us, so are we debtors to exhibit that character with which our birth and education in the heavenly family have since connected us.
J. G. Bellett (adapted)