Nahor was part of the family of Terah, the father of Abram, but when Terah and Abram obeyed God’s call and left Ur, he and his wife continued in Mesopotamia. They evidently thrived there, children were born to them, and their goods and property increased. They pursued an easy and respectable journey across the world, but they did not grow in the knowledge of God and bore little or no testimony to His name. The character of Nahor’s family was thus formed. They were not in gross darkness like the people of Canaan. They had a measure of light derived from their connection with Terah and Abram, and as descendants of Shem, but all that was sadly dimmed by the cherished principles of the world from which they had refused to separate themselves. And a family character and standing were thus formed.
Bethuel
Bethuel, the son of Nahor, flourished in the world, and he, in turn, had a son named Laban, who evidently knew how to manage his affairs well and to advance himself in life. With the arrival of Abraham’s servant, however, a fresh energy of the Spirit visited this family. They were not in the total darkness of the heathen, and as the call of the God of glory had before disturbed the state of things in Terah’s house, so now the mission of Eliezer disturbed the state of things in Bethuel’s house. Eliezer, God’s servant as well as Abram’s, came to Bethuel’s house to draw Rebecca out of it and to lead her on that very journey which, two generations before, the call of the God of glory had led Abram. In this way, a fresh act of separation was produced in this family.
Rebecca
Rebecca, we know, came forth at this call. But her character had been already formed, as it is with us all, more or less, before we are converted. The moment of quickening arrives, and the separating call of the Lord is answered. But it finds us of a certain character, derived from nature, from education, or from family habits, that we take with us across the desert from Mesopotamia to the house of Abram. This is serious, and the story of Rebecca teaches these serious lessons to us. The well-known 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 later we find Rebecca exercising the same principles. In procuring the blessing for her son Jacob, we see this Laban-style leaven working mightily. She had a mind too little accustomed to repose in the sufficiency of God and too much addicted to leaning on its own inventions.
We have to watch against the peculiar tendency of our own mind —to rebuke nature sharply, that we may be sound in the faith (Titus 1:3) — not to excuse it because it is nature, but rather the more to mortify it for His sake, who has given us another nature.
Jacob
Jacob got his mind formed by the same earliest influence. All his days he was a shrewd, calculating man. His plan in getting the birthright first and then the blessing, his scheming while working for Laban, 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 through the land like his fathers—all this betrays nature and the working of the old family character. How much we need to watch the early seed sown in the heart and to watch the seed which we are helping to sow in the hearts of others!
We know full well the guile that Rebecca and Jacob practiced with Isaac, but the holiness of the Lord consumed every bit of it. Nothing came of this subtlety and fleshliness. Isaac lost his Esau, Rebecca never saw Jacob again, and the calculating Jacob found himself in the midst of toils, an alien from his father’s house for many years. No blessing came of all this; all was disappointment and rebuked by the holiness of the Lord.
The Work of Grace
But it remains for us to see grace assuming its high, triumphant place and attitude. Its holiness is established thus by the Lord with great decision, setting aside all advantages which sin had promised itself, and then grace reigns. Even the misery to which his sin had reduced Jacob only sets off the glory of the grace. Jacob had to lie down alone, friendless, uncared-for, unsheltered, the stones of the place his only pillow. But grace, which turns the shadow of death into the morning, was preparing a glorious rest for him; he listened to the voice of wondrous love, and he was shown worlds of light in this place of solitude and darkness. He dreamed, and saw the high heavens linked with that very dark and barren spot on which he then lay. He heard the Lord of heaven Himself speaking to him in words of promise. He saw himself, though so erring, so poor, and so vile, thus associated with an all-pervading glory. The holiness of grace still left him a wanderer, but the riches of grace told him of present consolation and of future glories.
The New Family Character
There is then such a thing as family character, and the recollection of this should make us watchful and jealous over all our peculiar habits and tendencies. When we are dealing with others, the memory should make us considerate and of an interceding spirit, disposing us to plead this fact that there is family character or force of early habit and education working more or less in all of us. Let us also remember that if we must lay aside a character and certain habits with which birth and upbringing have already connected us, so are we debtors to exhibit that character with which our birth and education in the heavenly family have since connected us. Let the old man go down in us and the new man rise and assert his place in us! Let the character which we have gathered from natural ties or natural habits be watched against, and the character of our heavenly birth be cherished and expressed to His praise, who has begotten us again as alive to and with Himself from the death in which we lay.
J. G. Bellett, adapted