Jacob, A Young Working Man

Jacob, A Young Working Man

Jacob had been a shepherd, and therefore he knew what shepherding included: the figure is full of meaning. There had been a good deal of Jacob about Jacob, and he had tried to shepherd himself. Poor sheep that he was, while under his own guidance he had been caught in many thorns, and had wandered in many wildernesses. Because he would be so much a shepherd to himself, he had been hard put to it. But overall, despite his wilfulness, the shepherding of the covenant God had been exercised towards him, and he acknowledged it. Our Version rightly says that the Lord had fed Jacob all his life long. Take that sense of it, and you who have a daily struggle for subsistence will see much beauty in it. Jacob had a large family, and yet they were fed. Some of you say, "It is all very well of you to talk of Providence who have few to provide for." I answer, it is better still to talk of Providence where a large household requires large provision. Remember Jacob had thirteen children, yet his God provided them bread to eat and raiment to put on. None of that large company were left to starve. You think, perhaps, that Jacob was a man of large estate. He was not so when he began life. He was only a working man, a shepherd. When he left his father's house he had no attendants with camels and tents. I suppose he carried his little bit of provision in a handkerchief, and when he laid down that night to sleep, with a stone for his pillow, the hedges for curtains, the heavens for his canopy, and the earth for his bed, he had no fear of being robbed, God was with him; apart from this, he had nothing to begin life with but his own hands. Whatever he received from his father Isaac afterwards, he had at first to fight his own way; but he knew no lack either at the beginning or at the end, for he could speak of the great Elohim as "the God which fed me all my life long." Hundreds of us can say the same. I remember one who came to be wealthy who used to show me with great pleasure the axle-tree of the truck in which he used to wheel his goods through the streets when he began in business: I liked to see him mindful of his original. Mind you do not go and say, "See how I have got on by my own talents and industry!" Talk not so proudly, but say, "God hath fed me." Mercies are all the sweeter when seen to come from the hand of God. But besides being fed Jacob had been led, even as sheep are guided by the shepherd who goes before them. His journeys, for that period, had been unusually long, perilous, and frequent. He had fled from home to Padan-aram; after long years he had come back again to Canaan, and had met his brother Esau; and after that, in his old age, he had journeyed into Egypt. To go to California or New Zealand in these times is nothing at all compared to those journeys in Jacob's day. But he says, "God has shepherded me all my life long"; and he means that the great changes of life had been wisely ordered. At home and in exile, in Canaan and in Goshen, God had been a shepherd to him. He sees the good hand of God upon him in all his wanderings, until he now finds himself sitting up on his bed and blessing Joseph through his sons. I am glad that he went into detail with these young men, for they needed to be confirmed in their fidelity to God. They were in a perilous condition, for they had the entree of the rank and fashion of Egypt, and were tempted to forsake the poor family of the Hebrews. Some young fellows begin where their fathers left off, and having the means of self-indulgence, are apt to follow the fashions and frivolities of the period. Oh that the Holy Spirit may make you feel that you want God with wealth as much as your fathers needed God without wealth! You may come to beggary yet with all your inheritance, if you cast off the fear of the Lord and fall into sin. You who begin life with nothing but your own brains and hands, trusting in your father's God, shall yet have to sing as your fathers sang, "the God which fed me all my life long." Young men and young women beginning life, I charge you seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness! It is not life to live without God: you miss the kernel, the cream, the crown of life if you miss the presence of God. Life is but a bubble, blown up of toil and trouble, without God. Life ends in blighted hope if you have not hope in God. But with God you are as a sheep with a shepherd—cared for, guided, guarded, fed, and led, and your end shall be peace without end.

Bear with me while I follow Jacob in his word upon redeeming mercies. "The Angel which redeemed me from all evil." There was a mysterious Personage who was God, and yet the Angel or messenger of God. He puts this Angel in apposition with the Elohim: for this Angel was God. Yet was He his Redeemer. He saw Him doing the office of the next-of-kin: though God He was his goel, and as His kinsman, effected redemption for him. Jacob's faith enabled him, like Job, to know that his Redeemer liveth. He saw that this covenant messenger had redeemed him from all evil, and he magnified the name of the Lord who revealed Himself in this Angel. When he was in his sorest straits, this redeeming Angel always interposed. He fell into an evil state through the influence of his mother, and he did Esau serious wrong. He fled for his life, and at that time there was a great gulf between him and God. Then that Angel came in, and bridged the gulf with a ladder by which he might rise to God. The kinsman, God, came in, and showed him how the abyss might be crossed, so that he might return to his God. When he was away in Padan-aram he began to sink very low, while chaffering with churlish Laban. Then again the Angel came and said," Get thee out from this land, and return unto the land of thy kindred." The Redeeming Angel held back wrathful Laban, and when Esau came to meet him in hot anger the Angel specially appeared to Jacob. The Angel wrestled, as a Man, with Jacob to get Jacob out of Jacob, and raise him into Israel. How marvellous was the redemption which was wrought for him that night at Jabbok! Jacob came forth from the conflict halting, but he walked before the Lord far better than before. That same mysterious Person had bidden him go down into Egypt with the promise that He would go down with him. It was the Angel of God's presence who held His shield over Jacob, and preserved him from all evil.

Jacob has spoken of ancestral mercies, personal mercies and redeeming mercies, and now he deals with future mercies, as he cries, "Bless the lads." He began with blessing Joseph, and he finishes with blessing his lads. O dear friends, if God has blessed you, I know you will want Him to bless others. There is the stream of mercy, deep, broad, and clear; you have drunk of it, and are refreshed, but it is as full as ever. It will flow on, will it not? You do not suppose that you and I have dammed up the stream so as to keep it to ourselves? No, it is too strong, too full a stream for that. It will flow on from age to age. God will bless others as He has blessed us. Unbelief whispers that the true church will die out. Do not believe it. Christ will live, and His church will live with Him till the heavens be no more. Hath He not said, "Because I live, ye shall live also"? "Oh," you say, "but we shall not see such holy men in the next generation as in past ages." Why not? I hope the next age will see far better men than any of those who are with us at this time. Pray that it may be so. Instead of the fathers, may there be the children, and may these be princes before the Lord! The stream of Divine grace will flow on. Oh, that it may take sons and daughters in its course! "Bless the lads." Sunday-school teachers, is not that a good prayer for you? Pray the Lord to bless the lads and the lasses, because He hath blessed you.

We need not say in what precise form or way the blessing shall come: let us leave it in all its breadth of inconceivable benediction. May the Lord bless our youth as only He can do it; and if He causes them to fear and trust Him, He will be blessing all of us, and blessing ages to come. Upon these Ephraims and Manassehs will depend the work of the Lord in the years to come! Therefore, with emphasis we pray, "Bless the lads" As for us, we are content to work on, saying, "Let Thy work appear unto Thy servants"; but our anxious desire is that our children may reap the result of our labours, and therefore we add, "and Thy glory unto their children." In Essex, I took the opportunity to visit the place where my grandfather preached so long, and where I spent my earliest days. I walked like a man in a dream. Everybody seemed bound to recall some event or other of my childhood. What a story of Divine love and mercy did it bring before my mind! Among other things, I sat down in a place that must ever be sacred to me. There stood in my grandfather's manse garden two arbours made of yew trees, cut into sugar-loaf fashion. Though the old manse has given way to a new one, and the old chapel has gone also, yet the yew trees flourish as aforetime. I sat down in the right-hand arbour and bethought me of what had happened there many years ago. When I was staying with my grandfather, there came to preach in the village Mr. Knill, who had been a missionary at St. Petersburg, and a mighty preacher of the gospel. He came to preach for the London Missionary Society, and arrived on the Saturday at the manse. He was a great soul-winner, and he soon spied out the boy. He said to me, "Where do you sleep? for I want to call you up in the morning." I showed him my little room. At six o'clock he called me up, and we went into that arbour. There, in the sweetest way, he told me of the love of Jesus, and of the blessedness of trusting in Him and loving Him in our childhood. With many a story he preached Christ to me, and told me how good God had been to him, and then he prayed that I might know the Lord and serve Him. He knelt down in that arbour and prayed for me with his arms about my neck. He did not seem content unless I kept with him in the interval between the services, and he heard my childish talk with patient love. On Monday morning he did as on the Sabbath, and again on Tuesday. Three times he taught me and prayed with me, and before he had to leave, my grandfather had come back from the place where he had gone to preach, and all the family were gathered to morning prayer. Then, in the presence of them all, Mr. Knill took me on his knee, and said, "This child will one day preach the gospel, and he will preach it to great multitudes. I am persuaded that he will preach in the chapel of Rowland Hill, where (I think he said) I am now the minister." He spoke very solemnly, and called upon all present to witness what he said. Then he gave me sixpence as a reward if I would learn the hymn—

"God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform."

I was made to promise that when I preached in Rowland Hill's Chapel that hymn should be sung. Think of that as a promise from a child! Would it ever be other than an idle dream? Years flew by. After I had begun for some little time to preach in London, Dr. Alexander Fletcher had to give the annual sermon to children in Surrey Chapel, but as he was taken ill, I was asked in a hurry to preach to the children. "Yes," I said, "I will, if the children will sing 'God moves in a mysterious way.' I have made a promise long ago that so that should be sung." And so it was: I preached in Rowland Hill's Chapel, and the hymn was sung. My emotions on that occasion I cannot describe. Still, that was not the chapel which Mr. Knill intended. All unsought by me, the minister at Wotton-under-Edge, which was Mr. Hill's summer residence, invited me to preach there. I went on the condition that the congregation should sing, "God moves in a mysterious way"—which was also done. After that I went to preach for Mr. Knill himself, who was then at Chester. What a meeting we had! Mark this! he was preaching in a theatre! His preaching in a theatre took away from me all fear about preaching in secular buildings, and set me free for the campaigns in Exeter Hall and the Surrey Music Hall. How much this had to do with other theatre services you know.

"God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform."

After more than forty years of the Lord's lovingkindness, I sat again in that arbour! No doubt it is a mere trifle for outsiders to hear, but to me it was an overwhelming moment. The present minister of Stambourne Meeting-house, and the members of his family, including his son and his grandchildren, were in the garden, and I could not help calling them together around that arbour, while I praised the Lord for His goodness. One irresistible impulse was upon me: it was to pray God to bless those lads who stood around me. Do you not see how the memory begat the prayer? I wanted them to remember when they grew up my testimony of God's goodness to me; and for that same reason I tell it to young people. God has blessed me all my life long, and redeemed me from all evil, and I pray that He may be your God! You who have godly parents, I would specially address. I beseech you to follow in their footsteps, that you may one day speak of the Lord as they were able to do in their day. Remember that special promise, "I love them that love Me; and those that seek Me early shall find Me." May the Holy Spirit lead you to seek Him; and you shall live to praise His name as Jacob did!