THE LESSONS OF JACOB’S LIFE
Genesis 25: 27; 28: 16-22; 32: 24-32; 35: 9-12; 45: 26-28
The Holy Spirit seems to take a particular delight in the Scriptures in showing us the lives of certain persons, to bring home to us the character of the life of Jesus. Before He came there was exemplified in men a life here that was different. For example, the Spirit goes over long chapters to give us the life of David, a man who lived under hardships and afflictions, but who portrayed another spirit. He also takes up extensively the life of Jacob, not so much to bring before us a type of Christ, but to show us, I think, a pattern of ourselves, how God would bring us through. He was a man who, outstandingly, finished well. You might say a lot about Jacob, but his last words are very fine. It says, “By faith Jacob when dying blessed each of the sons of Joseph”, Heb 11: 21. He was a man who went out with a blessing. Maybe you have another impression of Jacob, but he was a man who finished blessing the greatest monarch of his time. He fulfilled the course and we would all like to finish well.
Each of us here would have some link with Christ, with God, even if we could not define it very well. The first scripture we read speaks of two boys who grew. Both had the same advantages and both had the same position. I think it brings out the sovereignty of the God who is calling. I think we should appreciate this, that God has taken you up. God in His infinite love has chosen you. Jacob came to appreciate that. Maybe had you looked on those two boys Esau would have appealed to you better. He was a man of the world. He was a man who appealed to other persons in his circle of friends as he went the social round. But there was another man in that same household whom God had chosen. Maybe you feel at a disadvantage in many ways, especially the younger ones here. We feel we are not part of this group or the other group. Maybe you feel shut out from one thing or another. Let it come home to our souls today—God in His own sovereignty has called you. What a privilege!—the privilege of coming into this family that is called of God. In His own sovereign ways He has taken you up. You could not explain it. It was not because of any advantage about you. Paul says, “O depth of riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!” Let us appreciate it that He has taken us up. Having taken you up He will never let you go.
I will tell you something else too. You are spoiled for the world. If God has put in His claim, if God has chosen you in His own sovereign way, you will never, as I hope to show in Jacob, find happiness until you know the place where God is. You may spend years seeking your own advantages and your own way, but you will come to it, God will see to it that His end is reached in you, as it was with Jacob. Jacob very early had an impression of God. He was brought up in a godly home, and as he went out from that home, he carried with him several impressions of God, certain right sensibilities. Maybe he had been trying to get away from home, I do not know. In any case, he is away from home here. The psalmist says—
If I take the wings of the dawn and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
Even there shall thy hand lead me, Ps 139: 9, 10
Beloved, let it come into your heart today that God has set Himself upon having you, and have you He will. He will have you for His system. Man may be trying to have you for his system, but God in His love has chosen you to have part in His system, and I believe He would use the time today to help you, to help us all, to encourage us all, that we may find our happiness in being where He would have us.
So Jacob went on his way. No doubt thoughts were in his mind as to leaving home and seeking out a new career. God interrupts all this. He comes to this night when he was asleep. Maybe there had not been much time earlier to think about God. I am sure he was very much taken up with anxiety about his own affairs. So when he was asleep God comes in and shows him that he belongs to Him. Jacob was full at this moment of what he was going to do. God interrupts him and says what He is going to do. He says, “I am with thee”. Now Jacob had his career before him. Was he not a man who could make his own way? Maybe he envied Esau in his prosperity. Maybe we see around us others who can carve their way in the world better than we can. We think that belonging to the pathway of God may be a disadvantage. If we look back on our lives we may see the material disadvantage of belonging to the pathway of God. We could possibly have used our abilities better, have made a way for ourselves, made a career for ourselves, in a different way. Now Jacob, I think, had some of these thoughts in his mind. He says, ‘This is a dreadful place’, and yet he did not give up God.
God’s name was there. Jacob set up a stone for a pillar before God. He fell back on his beginnings; I think, using Christian language, he had been converted; he knew the Lord as his Saviour. He said, ‘Well, if God brings me back, I will commit myself to the Supper’. That is really what he was saying. ‘If God looks after me, if He comes in and helps me, then I will think about being with God’.
Well, God in grace comes down. Wonderful grace! The God who took you up, you know, the God who chose you when there was nothing lovable in you. He comes down to these very reasonings, and the great thing is, that God is faithful. Jacob took a long, long time to come back to Bethel, but God’s eye was over him. He had been through severe exercises on the road, but God remained faithful and that is the last impression that Jacob would have, as looking back on this incident, that He abides faithful. I think in our own soul history we have all made these bargains. They were not the height of intelligence exactly, but I think most of us have made them, and God has been faithful. He virtually said to Jacob, ‘I have better things in mind for you, but if that is the way you are thinking at the moment, I will take you up. I will be with you’. Jeremiah 48: 11 speaks of being emptied from vessel to vessel. That was going on with Jacob. All the time there was a weakening of the line of the flesh, and a strengthening of the line of the Spirit.
What I want to speak of in this history is the change taking place in this beloved man Jacob. Whereas at this juncture he was all set to make his own way, God interrupts. Then Jacob goes on his way. He spends a long time in his own circumstances, making money and raising a family. These cares, you know, they are all in God’s ways, and they may overwhelm us. They may hinder us from being in the place where God would have us. A good deal of sorrow and disappointment comes into Jacob’s way, but God is faithful. The sovereignty of God is still there, and the faithfulness of God, and God keeps him in movement. I am sure Jacob thought he had found his place as he settled down with Rachel. There was disappointment in his family life. Certain disappointments come in but God remains faithful, and in these very disappointments He would teach us the God He is. He would teach us that this is not our home, that He has far better things in mind for us than ever we could envisage for ourselves. So in His ways He stirred Jacob up and He sets him in movement again. Jacob comes back to Bethel. He is on the way there when God again meets him.
An exercise comes into his mind in Genesis 32 as to how he is going to meet his brother Esau. Well, Jacob proposes to meet him in his own fleshly reasoning. Jacob thinks that as he has acquired some substance, he can meet his brother on his own ground. But God is going to teach him something different; He will teach him dependence. Not only is God faithful but He would have us be dependent on Him. Jacob thought he could appease Esau while certain questions remained unsettled; Jacob thought he would gloss it over. God teaches him something else, that if Jacob is going to be in power it is going to be in the Spirit and not in the flesh. God teaches him here that, however much he thought he could do in his own strength, he is powerless. But he acquired power by depending on the God who had promised. He falls back on God. Oh what a God to fall back on, beloved! He did not take us up to leave us in confusion or disappointment, but He took us up that, as depending on Him, we might be here in power.
When Jacob arises here—one of the highlights of his life—it says, “The sun rose upon him; and he limped upon his hip”. It was not very attractive to the world; Esau might not find much in him, but he was an object of heaven’s attention, “The sun rose upon him”. God shows His interest in a man who is learning to limp. Jacob proceeds in some power from this point. He gets distracted again, but you can see that some power was in him. I think that God in His ways with us, through the disappointments of life, perhaps through seeing that we are not able to do what we intended to do, would teach us to be dependent. That is something that Jesus never needed to learn. He was the perfect Man in dependence. Psalm 22: 10 says He was cast upon God from the womb—the dependence of Jesus. How beautiful! How attractive He was as Man here. Tempted of the devil, He showed the beauty of a dependent Man. In those temptations in the gospels He showed the beauty of dependence. Now Jacob, in principle, is learning to be a dependent man. He does not give up. He has this impediment—‘Well, I am not the man I thought I was’. Is it all finished? No! He went on his way, limping as he went, but he is treading now in a path of faith, a path of dependence.
Under these ways he moves in Genesis 35 to Bethel, the house of God. Certain exercises have to be faced about his associations, and about the company that he is in. But he is helped to face these things. God says in Genesis 32 that Israel will be his name, but not until chapter 35 does God really reach His end. Jacob had to learn that whatever his standard of things might be, what must govern him is God’s standards. God had His eye on having Jacob as a prince in the house of God. That is where God wants you. Have you found your place there? He has found you a place amongst those who call upon the name of God. Have you found your place in the service of God? Jacob is coming home here, coming home to find his place in the service of God. But there was need of certain exercises. He may have thought that everything was right in his house, but there were certain things there that were not in keeping with the house of God. So he had to adjust his standards, he had to adjust his way of doing things. God brings him to this place, Bethel. It says, “God went up from him in the place where he had talked with him”, Gen 35: 13.
The next verse speaks of Jacob putting up a pillar again. It says this time that he poured on it a drink offering, and poured oil on it. He has some appreciation of God, the God who had called him sovereignly, the God who had been faithful to him all the way that he had gone, the God upon whom he had learnt to depend. He comes to find his place where God’s name is honoured—Bethel. God calls him. It says, “He called his name Israel”. God shows him how much He would do for him as He has him in this place. We need to encourage our hearts that we might be led on, that we may be helped to be where God would have us, finding our place in His house, where everything speaks of His glory, where everything is arranged in accordance with His mind.
Now this exercise comes in again. Jacob thinks he has reached the end. You know, beloved, there will be exercises as long as we are here. God will keep us in movement all the time we are here. We may think we have reached the end of these things and settle down. God brings in exercises again to stir him up. What finally happens with Jacob is that he comes to see that Joseph is alive. What a day in his life! a time of reviving. This is something that we all need, to be revived. We have found our place in the house of God. We have come, through wonderful grace, into the light of the assembly. Who of us has not needed to be revived as to it? And the revival was typically that Christ was enthroned in glory. What a revival! There is a change here, you might almost say a final change in Jacob, a change from glory to glory. He says, “Joseph my son is yet alive; I will go and see him”. What a revival comes into his life; what a change of view, beloved!—from looking at our own part in the breakdown to seeing that God’s thoughts are centred in Christ in glory. All the time, you know, that Jacob had been bemoaning and looking back mournfully on his life, Joseph was reigning in glory.
Perhaps we have been missing something. Maybe we have been moping; maybe we have had the light of the assembly, but little of the enjoyment. But all the time, you know, God has been going on with His thoughts. It says, “The spirit of Jacob ... revived”. What a revival God would bring into our hearts today, to see that things are not centred in you or in me, but that everything centres in Christ glorified, Christ in glory. It may take us a long time to come to it; we tend so much to think of ourselves; but we have to come to see that the centre of everything from God’s point of view is Christ, crowned with glory and honour. That, beloved, can never break down. It is a fine thing to be settled in our lives, a fine thing to be settled in our affections, that things no longer depend on me, but depend on Christ enthroned in glory. How worthy He is to be crowned in glory! As we remarked in the reading, there is One upon whom everything hangs, and it is not you or me; it is Christ in glory. Things hang upon Him, and as hanging upon Him they must go through, beloved.
What reviving this brings to Jacob! An old man, crippled, near the end of his days, what does he say? “I will go and see him”. Take a journey, beloved; rise from those circumstances and take the journey. Jacob would tell you, when he had done it, that it was well worthwhile. There are many in the pathway would tell you the same—that the journey was well worth it. Exercise was needed. He was a crippled man, quite aged, very difficult to be uprooted from those surroundings, but he would tell you it was well worth it. Who would have thought he was crippled as he left Pharaoh? Who would have thought he had had these exercises as he blessed the sons of Joseph, as he speaks there of “the God that shepherded me all my life long”? Can you look back like that, beloved? After you went away in early life, perhaps, can you look back and say, ‘The God that shepherded me all my life long’—a God who is well known? I raise these matters as to these experiences that they may issue in some substance. Think of that time when he went away from home; that time when he was with Laban, making his money; that time when he came back to face Esau: now he says, “The God that shepherded me all my life long”. I believe it brings out to us the value of being dependent. It brings out, too, the value of trusting in the God who has taken us up in His own sovereign ways, and that He will see us through.
Genesis 46 begins, “And Israel took his journey with all that he had”. Pharaoh says to him, “Let not your eye regret your stuff”. Maybe it matters to me, but God says, ‘I will make it well worth your while’. What a company to live in! Typically it is the life of Christ. What a way to go up! What a way for Jacob to finish his pathway here—in type he saw Christ enthroned in glory, a Sun that can never be dimmed, a path that is going on and brightening until the day be fully come, Prov 4: 18. So at the end it says that Jacob worshipped—still dependent—on the top of his staff, Heb 11: 21. He had to be strengthened to the end of his days, but he went on worshipping the God who shepherded him all his life long. So may we be encouraged to go through, and to see that the God who has taken us up, despite our histories, in spite of our waywardness, is going to see us through. I believe we can help things along here. Jacob took a long time; he held things up. But God has no intention that things should be held up; He would have us early to commit ourselves to Himself, and thus He will bring us into this area where Christ is in His glory. May it be so.
CARDIFF
24th February 1979