Oh! may not some of us lay this to heart while we may trace in our own histories the will and self-seeking that has driven us from the path of testimony to the distant land in which we have had to endure discipline for the carnality which proved our incompetence to be witnesses for Gad. Alas! the testimony has suffered. The witness is under discipline far off from his true place and under a cloud; but thy compassions, O God, fail not! Jacob is recalled. Gifted he is of God, but so little dependent on Him, that he can be no witness for the truth given of God until he has ceased to trust in his own plans, and rests simply on God. And thus it is with every saint now called of God to testify of Christ. There is neither power nor opportunity to do so, while he is seeking his own will and pleasure. Nay, before he can be used in his proper place he must be subjected to painful discipline, in order that he may seek Christ with a true heart, as one wearied with himself, and thankful that he is not debtor to the flesh, to live after the flesh; but that he is through God's eternal love in Christ Jesus a new creation of His Spirit and life.
It is evident, I think, that Jacob had not fallen into idolatry, though living with idolaters (even Rachael was one); nay, rather that Laban knew his faith, as we speak; for he says, " The God of your father spake to me yesternight." Thus, even in this very feeble way, the truth of the living God was again maintained in the land of Syria; and doubtless the interposition of God on Jacob's behalf, and the sequel of his sojourn there, must have had weight and testimony to many. Jacob returns to Galeed before Laban overtakes him, and without meeting with any reverse. There they both make a covenant in the name of the God of Abraham, and part company on good terms.
" And Jacob went on his way, and the angels of God met him." (Chapter 32:1.) God in this distinct manner guards and inaugurates his return to the land. Jacob is now at Jordan, at the ford of Jabbok, in order to pass over with his family and his possessions. But here, and ere he accomplishes the passage, must he learn in the spirit of his mind what real, simple dependence on God is. He is not fit or competent to be a witness of it until he knows in himself the spirit and power of it. How little he yet knew it! He is now 44 greatly afraid and distressed" because Esau and four hundred men with him are coming to meet him; and he says, " O God of my father Isaac, the Lord which saidst unto me, Return unto thy country, and to thy kindred, and I will deal well with thee. I am not worthy of all the mercies and of all the truth which thou hast shown unto thy servant, for with my staff I passed over this Jordan, and now I am become two bands; deliver me I pray thee from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau."
Jacob is now learning dependence upon God; but not as Abraham learned it. He " went out, not knowing whither he went." With Jacob it is quite different. As God's witness he has been subjected to discipline because of his willfulness, and now as restored of God to the path of testimony, his first lesson before he crosses the Jordan must be that only in God can he be preserved from that which his own evil had provoked-from Esau. Fine and wondrous is the character of the scene in which he learns this, portraying and presenting to us how God restores and replaces His servant in the true line of testimony.
" Jacob was left alone, and there wrestled a man with him till break of day." God contends with him, and in that unique and peculiar time he gets a double blessing. The marvel of grace is effected. Jacob is silenced; yet at the same moment he is conscious that as a prince he has power with God and with man. That which resisted God in him is overcome, and that of God, which "overcometh all things" is developed and displayed in him. Jacob's name is now Israel. Laban had owned that the hand of God was with him; Esau must own it too. Walking with God, dependent on Him was now the line of testimony, and one marked with distinct and open blessing. Men see the power and the greatness of God.
Jacob however, again ensnared, tarries at Shechem for seven years (chap. 33:18), nor does he truly resume the path of testimony until he reaches Bethel, and erects there an altar called El-Bethel (God of the house of God), and there the name Israel is confirmed to him. (Chapter 34:10); " And God said, Thy name is Jacob, thy name shall not any more be called Jacob, but Israel shall thy name be; and he called his name Israel."
Jacob is now witness for God in the land, and hence we read of the death of his father Isaac more than forty years subsequent to his flight from the land. " And Jacob came unto Isaac his father to Mamre unto the city of Arbah, which is Hebron, where Isaac and Jacob sojourned, and the days of Isaac were a hundred and eighty years." Consequently Jacob at that time was a hundred and twenty years old, and he dwells in the land in which his father was a stranger (chap. xxxvi. 1), in the land of Canaan.
From this time on, until Israel removes into Egypt, we have but one continued series of the evils of his children without any check of the grace of God in them, until at length on account of a famine they all desert the land, and go down to Egypt; a chapter in the history of God's testimony on earth which no one can read without seeing how sadly man fails in the place where God sets him, and how wondrous is the forbearance of God; how long-suffering and patient; not finally removing the people from the place of testimony until they had in every way and manner proved themselves not only incompetent, but, worse than all, indifferent both to His calling and His testimony.
(Concluded from page 128.)