026. Jacob--Trip to Syria

Jacob--Trip to Syria

Gen 28:5;Gen 28:10. And Isaac sent away Jacob, and he went to Padan-aram, unto Laban, son of Bethuel the Syrian, the brother of Rebekah, Jacob’s and Esau’s mother. And Jacob went out from Beer-sheba, and went towards Haran. At what stage, or in what condition of human life, can a man say, Now my heart is at rest, now my wishes are accomplished, now my happiness is complete? By what unaccountable, untoward circumstances is the comfort of the worthiest, best ordered, most prosperous families, oft times marred and destroyed! Not through vice only do we suffer, but up to some piece of imprudence, or inadvertency; up to some trifling infirmity in our nature, or some petty fault in our conduct, our greatest calamities may easily be traced. One man has made his fortune, as it is called, but he has impaired his health in the acquisition of it, or made shipwreck of a good conscience. Another inherits a fine estate; but goes childless. There, we behold a numerous and promising family of children; but the wretched parents have hardly bread to give them: and here, both progeny and plenty; but hatred, and jealousy, and strife, banish tranquility and ease. The heart of this child is corrupted through indulgence; the spirit of that one is broken by severity.

Isaac is wealthy, but his eyes are dim that he cannot see. God has given him two sons at once, but they are the torment of his life. He is fondly partial to Esau; and Esau does every thing in his power to mortify and disoblige his kind and indulgent father. He is unwittingly drawn in to bless Jacob; and, the very next breath, feels himself constrained to pronounce sentence of dismission and banishment upon him. “The whole ordering of the lot is of the Lord,” but “men themselves cast it into the lap.” Providence only brings that out, which, with our own hands, we first put in.

Jacob has by skill and address pushed himself into the birthright, and by subtilty insinuated himself into the blessing. And how do they sit upon him? Very uneasily indeed. His father’s house is no longer a home for him. Grasping at more than his right, he loses what he already had. Eagerly hastening to preferment, without waiting for Providence, he puts himself just so much farther back. And, seeking rule and preeminence in his father’s family, he finds servitude and severity in the house of a stranger. If men will carve for themselves, they must not charge the consequences of their rashness and presumption upon God.

Behold the pilgrim then, on his way, pensive and solitary; without so much as a favorite, faithful dog, to accompany and to cheer his wanderings. His whole inheritance, the staff in his hand. Now, for the first time, he knows the heart of a stranger. Now he feels the bitter change from affluence to want, from society to solitude, from security and protection to anxiety and danger. More forlorn than Adam when expelled from paradise, than Abraham when exiled from his father’s house, he has no gentle mate to participate and to soothe his anxieties and cares. The Scripture assigns no reason, why Isaac’s heir, and Rebekah’s favorite son, the hope of a powerful and wealthy family, was dismissed with such slender provision, wholly unattended, and unprotected too, upon a journey, according to the best calculations, of about one hundred and fifty leagues, or four hundred and fifty miles, through a country in many places desert and savage, and in others no less dangerous, from the hostile tribes which inhabited and ranged through it. But the reason, though not directly assigned, is plainly hinted at in the sixth verse of this chapter, which informs us, that Esau knew of this journey, as well as of the cause and intention of it. Jacob therefore may be supposed to have stolen away secretly, and without any retinue, and to have shunned the beaten and frequented path to Padan-Aram, in order to elude the vigilance and resentment of his brother, who, he had reason to apprehend, would pursue him to take away his life. And besides this, we may justly consider both the errand on which he was sent, to take a wife from an allied and pious family, to propagate a holy and chosen seed; and the homely, solitary style of his traveling, as a very illustrious instance of faith in God, and obedience to his will, and that not in Jacob himself only, but in his parents also, who could thus trust the sole prop of their family hopes, and of the promise, to dangers so great, and distresses so certain, with no security but what arose from the truth, mercy, and faithfulness of God. The uneasy reflections arising from solitude, and inspired by a gradual removal from the scenes of his youthful and happy days must have been greatly embittered to Jacob, by the consciousness of his leaving brought all this upon himself; by the keenness of disappointment, in the very moment when the spirits were wound up to their highest tone through success; and by total darkness and uncertainty with respect to his future fortunes. However, the cheerfulness of light, the pleasing change and variety of natural objects as he journeyed on, the ardor and confidence of youthful blood and spirits, carry him with confidence and joy through the day. But ah! what is to become of him now that the sun declines, and the shadows of the evening begin to lengthen! Overtaken at once by hunger and fatigue, and darkness and apprehension, where shall he seek shelter, how find repose! Happily, calamity strengthens that soul which it is unable to subdue. The mind, forced back upon itself, finds in itself resources which it knew not of before, and the man who has learned to seek relief in religion, knows where to fly in every time of need. The strong hand of necessity is upon our patriarch; submit he must, and therefore he submits with alacrity. And now behold the heir of Abraham and of Isaac, without a place where to lay his head; that head which maternal tenderness had taken pleasure to pillow so softly, and to watch so affectionately. “He lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set: and he took of the stones of that place, and put them for his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep.”[*]Gen 28:11

------“Sweet are the uses of adversity;
Which like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.”

Jacob, removed from his earthly parents, is but the nearer to his heavenly Father; a stranger in the waste howling wilderness, he is at home with God. Cares perplex his waking thoughts, but angels in bands lull his perturbed breast to rest; they guard, and instruct, and bless his slumbering moments. Who does not pity Jacob, as the evening shades gather and close around his head?--Who does not envy his felicity when the morning light appears, and with it, the recollection of a night passed in communion with God? Jacob sleeps, but his heart wakes.--What had been most upon his mind through the day, continues to occupy and to impress his thoughts after his eyes are closed. Wonderful, awful, pleasing power of God! which in the city and in the field, at home and abroad, awake and asleep, moves, directs, governs our bodies and our spirits as it will. What lofty heights is the mind of man capable of attaining! What wonders of nature and of grace is the great God capable of unfolding to it, when delivered from the grossness of this clay tabernacle, or when joined to a spiritual body; when we consider the astonishing flights it is even now capable of taking, when the duller senses are laid to rest, and their influence suspended!

Dreams are generally frivolous, meaningless, or absurd. But here is a dream worth repeating, worth recording; whether we attend to what was seen or what was said.--What was seen? “Behold a ladder set upon the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.”[*]Gen 28:12 The circumstances of the dreamer, partly interpret the vision. Jacob’s holy desires, his faith and his prayers, had ascended, as on angel’s wings, up to the throne of God. Protection and favor, and comfort, descend from the eternal throne, as through the ministration of angels, on Jacob’s head. The top of the ladder reacheth unto heaven, but the Lord on high is above it. It standeth upon the earth, but the eye of Jehovah is at its foundation, and his almighty arm giveth it stability. The cherubim and the seraphim are not above his control and authority; a poor belighted pilgrim is not beneath his notice.

Thus, the great plan of the Divine Providence, upholding all things, observing all things, subduing all things to his will, was feelingly conveyed to Jacob’s mind, in this vision of the night. And in it, the world is instructed, that however great the distance between heaven and earth, however inaccessible that bright abode may be to flesh and blood, to celestial spirits it is but a few steps of a ladder; before an omnipresent God, intervening space is swallowed up and lost; and, condescending mercy! sovereign grace keeps that communication ever open, which the malice of hell and the apostasy of man had well nigh interrupted for ever. But I should have given you a very imperfect interpretation of this mysterious dream, did I stop short in it, as merely a symbolical representation of the plan of Providence. For in looking into another part of the sacred record, I find the same expressions and ideas applied to a subject of peculiar concernment to the Christian world. Christ, when entering on the discharge of his public ministry, having given Nathaniel a personal and convincing proof of his divine knowledge, adds,--“Thou shalt see greater things than these. Verily, verily, I say unto you, hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”[*]John 1:51 Here then is the true mystery of the ladder which unites heaven and earth. The Son of Man first descending to assume our nature, to achieve in it the work of man’s redemption; and then having finished the work given him to do, ascending triumphantly in glorified humanity, up to heaven again. And, behold here too, “The Lord standing above.” The plan of salvation, as of Providence, is the design of him “who worketh all things after the counsel of his will.”--“Who in Christ Jesus hath abounded towards us in all wisdom and prudence,” and who “in bringing many sons unto glory, bath made the Captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.”[*]Heb 2:10 And who are they that ascend and descend along this mysterious scale? “He maketh his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire.”[*]Heb 1:7 “Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them, who shall be heirs of salvation.”[*]Heb 1:14

If what by Jacob was seen in vision at Bethel be worthy our attention, no less memorable and important are the things which he heard. It was much to hear a repetition of the covenant of God with Abraham and Isaac, his fathers, ratified and confirmed to himself. It was much to hear the blessing lately pronounced over him by the prophetic lips of his earthly parent, conveyed to his ear by a voice infinitely more sacred. It was much to hear that the land which he then occupied with his weary limbs, as a wayfaring man who continueth but for a night, should afterwards be given to him and to his seed for a possession. It was much to hear, from the mouth of God himself, the blessed assurance of protection through his journey, of success in his undertaking, and of a safe return to his native home. It was much to hear of a posterity, innumerable as the sand upon the sea shore, and spreading to the four winds of heaven. But the essence of all these promises, the joy of all this joy, was to hear the renewed, the reiterated promise of a seed descending from him, in whom “all the families of the earth should be blessed.” What could Jacob ask? What had God to bestow, more than this?

Here then the vision ends, and Jacob awakes. After the obvious, natural, and we trust, scriptural view, which we have attempted to give you of the subject, I shall not use your patience so ungratefully as to trespass upon it by going into a detail of the wild waking dreams of paraphrasts, and Rabbis, and pretended interpreters, on this pas sage of the sacred history. It is of more importance to attend to our patriarch, restored, with the morning light, to the perfect use of his rational faculties, and making use of the admonitions and consolations of the night season, as a help to piety, and a spur to duty through the day. There was something so singular, both in the subject and external circumstances of his dream, that he immediately concluded, and justly, that it was from heaven. And is it not strange, that he who felt no horror at the thought of laying himself down to sleep in a desert place, under the cloud of night, and alone, is filled with a holy dread when morning arose, at the thought of being surrounded with God. “And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! This is none other but the house of God: and this is the gate of heaven.”[*]Gen 28:17 And, if the visits of the Almighty, as a father and a friend, be thus awful even to good men, what must be the visitation of his wrath to the ungodly and the sinner?

Jacob arises immediately, and erects a monument of such simple materials as the place afforded, to the memory of this heavenly vision, which he was desirous thus to impress for ever on his heart. The difference of the expression in the eleventh verse, “he took of the stones of the place, and put them for his pillows,” and in the eighteenth, “he took the stone that he had put for his pillow and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it,”[*]Gen 28:18 has given occasion to one of the Jewish Rabbis to attempt a reconciliation by a fiction of his own brain. Jacob, he says, having chosen out Just three stones over night, to support his head, found them all joined into one the next morning; which, he pretends to allege, was a signification of the strict and solid union which subsisted between God and Jacob. And some later interpreters, though aided by the superior light of the gospel dispensation, have been simple enough to adopt this fable, and to explain it, some, of the ineffable union of the three persons who are the object of our worship; others, of the conjunction of the soul, body, and deity in the person of Jesus Christ.

It appears that Jacob intended simply to record, in such characters as his situation afforded, that night’s important transaction. He sets up the stone, or stones, upon which his head had reposed when visited with the visions of the Almighty, in the form of a rustic pillar, and solemnly anoints, and thereby consecrates it, to the honor of God, by the name of Bethel, that is, “the house of God;” and over it, thus dedicated, he afresh and voluntarily enters into solemn covenant with God, obliging himself by a sacred vow, to acknowledge and worship none but him; committing himself with filial confidence to the protection of his gracious providence; trusting the time and manner of his return to the care of infinite wisdom; promising ever to consider this monumental pillar as an altar devoted to the service of God; and binding himself, by an explicit declaration, to devote to pious uses the tenth part of whatever lie should through the divine blessing acquire. By the way, the oil wherewith he consecrated his pillar was undoubtedly part of the slender provision made for his journey; and apparently a little bread and oil was all he could possibly carry with him. But of that little he cheerfully spares a portion for the purposes of religion; for the possession of a truly pious soul is small indeed, if it bestow nothing when charity, mercy, or devotion give the call. With what alacrity does he now prosecute his journey! What a change in his condition produced in one short night! When “the heart is established by grace,” difficult things become easy; the valley is exalted, and the hill laid low; the crooked becomes straight, and the rough places plain. Nothing that the sacred historian deemed worth recording, occurred during the remainder of this pilgrimage. Jacob at length arrived “in the land of the people of the east.” And now, no doubt, he flatters himself that all his troubles and mortifications are at an end. His grandfather’s servant, Eleazar, had been happy enough to finish a marriage treaty for his master’s son in a few hours conversation; surely then the heir of the same family may be equally successful when making personal application for himself. Ah blind to futurity! Strange, unaccountable difference in the divine conduct towards different persons! Jacob must earn that by long fourteen years servitude, which Abraham’s servant was so successful as to accomplish in the pronouncing of almost as many words. But here we must make another pause, and leave the next sweet scene of Jacob’s life, and the sequel of it, to another Lecture. But we must no longer defer, the beginning at least of that parallel which is one object among others, if not the chief, in these exercises.

Jacob was destined of Providence to power and presidency before he was born. Jesus is declared the Son of God, and the heir of all things, by the angel who announced his miraculous conception and birth to his virgin mother. Jacob, the last in order of nature, but first in the election of grace, prefigures him, who, appearing in the end of the world, is nevertheless “the first-born among many brethren.” Jacob, hated and persecuted of his brother, is an obvious type of him who was to come, “despised and rejected of men;” crucified and slain by the impious and unnatural hands of those who were his bone and his flesh. Jacob, dismissed with blessings by his father from Beer-Sheba, points out to us Jesus leaving heaven’s glory, and the bosom of the Father, in compliance with the eternal decree, to become a wanderer in our world; “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.” The object of Jacob’s journey and of Christ’s is one and the same. Jacob, to procure for himself a believing spouse, to become the fruitful mother of an elect offspring; Jesus, to purchase for himself, at the price of his own blood, “the church, which is his body, to espouse it to himself as a chaste bride,” united to him in everlasting bands of interest and affection. Jacob, deserted and solitary in the plain of Bethel, is a shadow of Christ forsaken of all in the wilderness of this world, yet not “alone, but his heavenly Father always with him.” The vision of the ladder has already spoken for itself. What then remains but to add, Jacob’s covenant, consecration, and vow, are so many different representations of Christ’s covenant of redemption: his unction by the Spirit to the execution of his high office; and not the tithe, but the whole of his vast and glorious acquisition rendered unto God even the Father: when the kingdom is finally delivered up to “him for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, that God may be all in all.”

I add no more but my most fervent prayers to Almighty God--That by night and by day, alone and in society, when you sleep and when you wake, in prosperity and in adversity, you may be still with God: and that “the Almighty may be your refuge, the Most High your habitation,” and “underneath” and around you “the everlasting arms.” Amen.