PROTECTION
E. C. Burr
The history of Jacob is familiar to us all. We are, perhaps, as well acquainted with Jacob as we are with anybody in the Scriptures. We have recently in the sub-division taken account of the way in which God first lets him learn lessons in a hard school and then takes him in hand and refines and polishes him until at the end Jacob cannot help shining. This point of which we have read is a critical point in Jacob’s history; he is really on his way to returning, I suppose. He is met first of all by the angels of God and comes into Esau’s territory; he prepares a gift for Esau and then he has this crisis of the night and has to wrestle with God.
While it refers to the angel, he, says, “I have seen God face to face”.
So that the time here is one where Jacob is learning deep lessons and he is learning things as they are before God, a place where I think we learn our lessons best in relation to whatever sphere they apply to. In this chapter he sees Esau coming with four hundred men. What I am impressed by and what I wish to say a word about now—bearing on exercise and, I could even say, concern which I myself carry and I believe the brethren would—is what seems to be the instinctive way in which Jacob protects his wives and his children. I think that comes out here in a very distinctive way. He puts them in a certain order, the maidservants and their children,
and then Leah and her children, then Rachel and Joseph, and then he goes before them. I think that Jacob’s instinct is to protect his wives and the children. I venture to suggest, beloved, that that is a thing as to which exercise is needed in the present day, as to whether the saints generally, brothers generally, are concerned to protect their wives and their children.
I refer to this because of things to which I may refer, but Esau, on the one hand, represents Jacob’s brother whom years earlier Jacob had himself wronged, and therefore there was, to say the very least, an embarrassing situation to be faced in this chapter; that is one side of it.
But on the other hand Esau represents a profane person who for one meal despised his birthright. I think in that sense, beloved, he may for us represent the character of the world as profane, the character of the world—which has despised blessing which God had in view, despised it actually in Christ, in Christ rejected. The epistle to the Hebrews brings out the way in which Esau is to be viewed, not just in relation to the brotherly covenant on Jacob’s part, but in relation to the place that Esau stands in as representing the world in, really morally, one of its worst characters. We may be inclined to think that the moral character of the world is best illustrated in its lust and such things, but the real character of the world is that it is profane, that is, that it has not liked to retain God in its knowledge and it goes on with God in Christ rejected, God in Christ finding no place in the world. Jacob comes before us as one who would protect his wives and his children in relation to such as world as that.
I think, beloved, that is a needed exercise in the present day, and I relate it to a practical thing, the concern which I think would-be widespread
as to a tendency which is developing for married sisters to go to work. I speak quite plainly about this because this is what I have in mind. I think that the Lord might raise with us all the question whether there is that disposition amongst us generally which believes that our wives should be protected by not being exposed to the world in its profanity by being led or allowed or permitted— perhaps even of their own will—to go into the world when the place for the believer’s wife is in the house, which she is to rule. The Lord would revive some of these things with us. He would promote exercise with us.
I raise these things not conscious that they exist in this city, but as was prayed here last night, the Lord would be active in speaking in a place to speak in relation to things among the saints universally. And I believe that exercise needs to be promoted as to this tendency to which I refer and that if there was that state of exercise among the saints as to it and a disposition not to be neglectful of it, we would find that something was asserted among the saints which without any interdiction had the effect of preventing what I believe is not intended to be a thing which exists in a believer’s household. As the brethren know, or would realise, I do not here need to dwell on what I might speak of as legitimate exceptions to these things. If one begins to dwell on the exceptions one finds that one has constructed a wall made of loopholes; the exceptions speak for themselves, but the principle is what we would be concerned with.
Jacob here is concerned to protect his wives. He goes before them in the face of Esau, as I say Esau not merely representing a brother who might be resentful—we would need to be protective in that
regard—but Esau representing the world in its profanity. Therefore, beloved, would the Lord speak to us to stimulate us in exercise about this kind of thing?
Then he is not only careful to protect his wives, but he is careful to protect his children. In each case it says he put the maidservants and their children, and Leah and her children, and Rachel and Joseph—the only child that Rachel had at this time—hindmost. I do not dwell on the order in which he put them, that could be dwelt on at another time, but what Jacob does is to put himself in the exposed position. In a sense, beloved, the husband is the only one who needs to be in such an exposed position. Brothers have to go into the world in order to make a living and to earn what is righteously required according as the Lord may provide for them, but it is Jacob who has to go on before and the wives and the children are behind, but they are protected because Jacob has himself taken up the exposed position. Let us bear in mind that Jacob protects not only the wives, he protects the children. I suggest to the brethren that again it would be a matter of exercise whether we should expose our children to the world and in particular to its education until the age at which this is lawfully required in the country.
One views with concern the tendency, and an increasing tendency, for little children to be sent out to schools, nursery schools, day schools, play groups, whatever they may be called, at a time when one would expect that they would still be affectionately in the care of their mother. Why should it not be so, why should anything different be thought? If, as Jacob says later in the chapter, “My lord knows that the children are tender”, we took account of that, who would want to expose them into the
world before it was required? I can well remember in regard to my own children, when my older boy first went to school, having the impression that he would never to the same extent be in our care again as he had been up to that time. Would we not desire to keep our children within our own care for as long as we legally can? It may be said that they are lonely, or that they need company, or that it is an advantage to begin to read, and so on. But the christian household has resources for these things.
Jacob says, “My lord knows that the children are tender”. We know that the children are tender, we know it very well. If we thought we were sending a child at three or four out into the world, we would keep it at home—it is because they go into an environment which is legitimated even by a provision of the government and by the pattern of society in the present day. It does not make them right for the believer. I think we need to bear in mind that the children are tender. They are tender for a long time, certainly still tender when they are five, but they are at least beginning to be capable of moving in the sphere in which they then have to move.
Would we not desire that we should be like Jacob and be ourselves in the exposed position in order that the children and the wives may be protected? Jacob says, “My lord knows that the children are tender”. But he also says, “and the suckling sheep and kine are with me”. That is to say, he is really looking at the mothers again, that is what Jacob is looking at. He is still looking in the area of the wives and the children and wants to protect them, not now from exposure to the world in its profanity, as Esau represents it, but from the arduousness of the journey. He says, “Let my lord, I pray thee, pass on before his servant”. He says to Esau,
‘You go on at your own pace’. Let the world go on at
its own pace, and I will come, he says, “at my ease according to the pace of the cattle that is before me, and according to the pace of the children”. That is to say, Jacob is going to remain protective as long as protection is needed.
One is not surprised to find in David’s history that God took him “from following the suckling-ewes”, Psalm 78: 71. That is to say, David was like Jacob, he was in the area where he protected things and what is tender. Think of the word to Peter as to the sheep and the lambs. Jacob is a man in whom we find many elements of our own history and our own characteristics, but I suggest that we would do well to find this character of Jacob’s in ourselves, that is that we will protect the wives and the children. I express these things to the beloved brethren as having carried concern about them for quite a long time, but I sometimes feel that we hesitate too long to speak about matters which really have a certain gravity of their own. As we sat, and to be simple, no other brother spoke, I referred to the scripture which came to my mind as bearing on that exercise which I carry.
Word in meeting for ministry, London
16 May 1978