(Gen. 28)
THIS chapter of Genesis brings before us the first stage in Jacob’s flight from Beersheba, in the Land of Promise, to Padanaram in the land of Mesopotamia.
The previous chapter had presented a sorrowful picture of the household of the patriarch Isaac. Failure marks every member of the family. Isaac is seen as a feeble old man, governed by his appetites; Rebekah, plotting behind her husband’s back, instructs her son Jacob to wrong his brother and deceive his father. Jacob, listening to his mother’s evil advice, deliberately lies to his father, and supplants his brother; and Esau, discovering Jacob’s treachery, plots to murder his brother at the first opportune moment.
As a result of all this corruption and deceit, Isaac has to dismiss Jacob from the home; Rebekah loses her favorite son never to see him again; Esau becomes a sorrow to his parents, and Jacob, for twenty years, becomes a wanderer in a strange land, banished from the home of his father and the Land of Promise.
In the first stage of his journey, Jacob lights upon a certain place where he tarries for the night. There we see him a lonely man with a stone for his pillow, only the sky above him, and darkness closing around him. Yet, strangely enough as we might think, it is in this lonely place, when lying on the stony bed his sin had made, that the Lord meets him. The Lord had nothing to say to him by his father’s bedside, in the place of his sinning; but in the dreary spot where his sin had cast him, the Lord draws near, and turns his comfortless bed into a place of correction and consolation.
In spite of Jacob’s many failures he was a man of faith, and blessed by God. His failures, indeed, obtain for him only trial and sorrow; his faith obtains for him a good report and a place amongst God’s Old Testament worthies (Heb. 11:9, 219By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: (Hebrews 11:9)
21By faith Jacob, when he was a dying, blessed both the sons of Joseph; and worshipped, leaning upon the top of his staff. (Hebrews 11:21)). Nor is it otherwise with the believer today. On the one hand, God is not indifferent to our failures, and the fleshly way we may speak and act; for these things we have to suffer under His government. On the other hand, God is not indifferent to what is of Himself in each believer, according to that word in Hebrews 6:10-12,10For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labor of love, which ye have showed toward his name, in that ye have ministered to the saints, and do minister. 11And we desire that every one of you do show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the end: 12That ye be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises. (Hebrews 6:10‑12) “God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labor of love.” We alas! are sometimes over righteous in taking account of one another’s failures, and unrighteous in forgetting what is of God in one another.
There are thus two things Jacob has to learn on this memorable occasion. First, for his consolation, he will learn that all his failures will not alter God’s purpose to bless him in sovereign grace. Second, for his correction, he will learn that God’s sovereign grace will not stay God’s chastening hand on account of his failures. The sovereign grace of the Lord will not set aside the faithful government of the Lord. Jacob’s circumstances are not altered; he still has to pursue his lonely way as a wanderer, and spend long years in toil and bondage, in the house of the stranger, as the result of his sin against his father and brother. He has to reap what he has sown. If Jacob deceives his father with the skins of goats, so, in the years to come he will be deceived by his own sons with the blood of a goat. The sovereign grace by which we are blessed, does not alter that memorable law, “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Gal. 6:77Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. (Galatians 6:7)).
However, the very sin for which Jacob had to suffer became the occasion of displaying the grace and mercy of God to the sufferer. To make known this grace the Lord appears to him in a dream. Jacob sees a, ladder set up on earth whose top reaches the heavens. He sees the angels of God ascending and descending on the ladder. More wonderful still, he sees that, “The Lord stood above it.” At the top of the ladder is the Lord of glory, at the bottom of the ladder is a failing, lonely man. Between the Lord at the top and Jacob at the bottom there are heavenly messengers from the Lord, and heavenly guardians for the saints, ascending and descending.
Then, most wonderful of all, to this feeble failing man below, the Lord of glory reveals Himself in sovereign grace as a Giver.
First, the Lord unconditionally secures the promised Land to Jacob and his heirs. He says, “The land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it and to thy seed.”
Second, not only shall Jacob have the promise of the Land, but he shall have the presence of the Lord; not only the gift but the Giver, for, says the Lord, “I am with thee.”
Third, not only would he have the presence of the Lord, but he would have the support of the Lord, for the Lord can say, “I will keep thee in all places whither thou goest.” If the Lord was with him He would be with him to preserve him.
Fourth, when his wandering days are done the Lord will bring Jacob back to the Land that He has given him, for the Lord says, “I will bring thee again into this land.”
Jacob’s sin may drive him from home; the Lord’s grace will bring him home. Says Naomi, after ten years of wandering, “The Lord hath brought me home again.” Every sheep He picks up He brings home, and nothing but His home will do for His sheep.
We may wander, we may break down, we may fail most grievously, but at last He brings us home.
Finally, Jacob can depend upon the faithfulness of the Lord to His own word, for the Lord says, “I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.” Whatever Jacob may be or do, and whatever we may be or do, He remains the same. Even if we are unfaithful, “He abideth faithful: He cannot deny Himself” (2 Tim. 2:1313If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself. (2 Timothy 2:13).)
Hamilton Smith.