Genesis 25

Genesis 25:1-10

ABRAHAM—THE FRIEND OF GODGen_11:10 to Genesis 25:10.ONE week ago we gave this hour to a study in Genesis, our subject being, “The Beginnings”. The bird’s-eye view of ten chapters and ten verses brought us to Babel, and impressed upon us the many profitable lessons that come between the record of creation and the report of confusion.Beginning with the 10th verse of the 11th chapter of Genesis (Genesis 11:10), and concluding with the 10th verse of the 25th chapter (Genesis 25:10), we have the whole history of Abraham, the friend of God; and while other important persons, such as Sarai, Hagar, Lot, Pharaoh, Abimelech, Isaac, Rebecca and even Melchisedec appear in these chapters, Abraham plays altogether the prominent part, and aside from Melchisedec, the High Priest, is easily the most important person, and the most interesting subject presented in this inspired panorama. It may be of interest to say that Abraham lived midway between Adam and Jesus, and such was his greatness that the Chaldeans, East Indians, Sabeans and Mohammedans all join with the Jew in claiming to be the offspring of Abraham; while it is the Christian’s proud boast that he is Abraham’s spiritual descendant.It is little wonder that all these contend for a kinship with him whom God deigns to call His “friend”. The man who is a friend of God is entitled to a large place in history. Fourteen chapters are none too many for his record; and hours spent in analyzing his character and searching for the secrets of his success are hours so employed as to meet the Divine approval.The problem is how to so set Abraham’s history before you as to make it at once easy of comprehension, and yet thoroughly impress its lessons. In trying to solve that question it has seemed best to call attention toTHE CALL AND THE .“Now the Lord had said unto Abraham, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will show thee, and I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great, and thou shalt be a blessing; and I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee, and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed” (Genesis 12:1-3).Did you ever stop to think of the separations involved in this call?It meant a separation from home. “From thy father’s house”.

How painful that call is, those of us who have passed through it perfectly understand; and yet many of us have gone so short a distance from home, or else have made the greater journey with such extended stops, that we know but little how to sympathize with Abraham’s more effective separation from that dear spot. To go from Chaldea to Canaan in that day, from a country with which he was familiar to one he had never seen; and from a people who were his own, to sojourn among strangers, was every whit equal to William Carey’s departure from England for India.

But as plants and flowers have to be taken from the hot-bed into the broad garden that they may best bring forth, so God lifts the subject of His affection from the warm atmosphere of home-life and sets him down in the far field that he may bring forth fruit unto Him; hence, as is written in Hebrews, Abraham had to go out, “not knowing whither he went”.This call also involves separation from kindred. “And from thy kindred”. In Chaldea, Abram had a multitude of relatives, as the 11th chapter fully shows. Upon all of these, save the members of his own house, and Lot, his brother’s son, Abram must turn his back. In the process of time the irreligion of Lot will necessitate also a separation from him. In this respect, Abraham’s call is in no whit different from that which God is giving the men and women today. You cannot respond to the call of God without separating yourself from all kin who worship at false shrines; and you cannot make the progress you ought and live in intimate relation with so worldly a professor of religion as was Lot.We may have marvelled at times that Abraham so soon separated himself from Lot, but the real wonder is that the man of God so long retained his hold upon him.

No more difficult task was ever undertaken than that of keeping in the line of service a man who, in the lust of his eyes and the purpose of his heart, has “pitched his tent toward Sodom”. It is worthy of note that so soon as Abraham was separated from Lot, the Lord said unto him,“Lift up now thine eyes and look from the place that thou art, northward and southward, and eastward and westward, for all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it and to thy seed forever” (Genesis 13:14-15).The men of the broadest view in spiritual things, the men upon whom God has put His choicest blessing, have been from time immemorial men who have separated themselves from idolaters and pretenders that they might be the more free to respond to the call of God, and upon such, God has rested His richest favors.This call also involves separation from the Gentiles.

The Gentiles of Chaldea and the Gentiles of Canaan; from the first he was separated by distance and from the second by circumcision. God’s appeal has been and is for a peculiar people, not that they might be queer, but that He might keep them separated—unspotted from the world. God knows, O so well, how few souls there are that can mingle with the unregenerate crowd without losing their testimony and learning to speak the shibboleth of sinners. Peter was a good man; in some respects greater than Abraham; but Peter in that porch-company was a poor witness for Jesus Christ, while his profanity proved the baneful effect of fellowship with God’s enemies. The call to separation, therefore, is none other than the call to salvation, for “if any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him, for all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world”.But God’s calls are always attended byGOD’S .As this call required three separations with their sacrifices, so its attendant covenant contained three promised blessings. God never empties the heart without filling it again, and with better things.

God never detaches the affections from lower objects without at once attaching them to subjects that are higher; consequently call and covenant must go together.“I will make of thee a great nation”. That was the first article in His covenant.

To the Jew, that was one of the most precious promises. This ancient people delighted in progeny. The Psalmist wrote, “As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man, so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them. They shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate”. If our Puritan fathers, few in number and feeble as they were, could have imagined the might and multitude of their offspring, they would have found in the prospect an unspeakable pride, and a source of mighty pleasure.

It was because those fathers did, in some measure, imagine the America to come, that they were willing to endure the privations and dangers of their day; but the honor of being fathers of a nation, shared in by a half hundred of them, was an honor on which Abraham had a close corporation, for to him God said,“I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth; so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall also thy seed be numbered”.If the heart, parting from parents and home, is empty, the arms into which children have been placed are full; and homesickness, the pain of separation, is overcome when, through the grace of God, one sits down in the midst of his own.This covenant contained a further promise. “I will . . . make thy name great”. We may believe that the word “great” here refers not so much to empty honors as to merited praise.

The Jewish conception of such a promise was expressed by Solomon when he said, “A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches”. And, notwithstanding the fact that our age is guilty of over-estimating the value of riches, men find it difficult to underrate the value of a good name.Years ago, Jonas Chickering decided to make a better piano than had ever appeared on the market. He spared neither time nor labor in this attempt. His endeavor was rewarded in purity and truthfulness of tone as well as in simplicity of plan, and there came to him the ever-attendant result of success. His name on a piano was that instrument’s best salesman.A Massachusetts man, seeing this, went to the Massachusetts legislature and succeeded in getting them to change his name to Chickering, that he might put it upon his own instruments.As Marden said when referring to this incident, “Character has a commercial value”.And, when God promised Abraham to make his name great, He bestowed the very honor which men most covet to this hour.But the climax of His covenant is contained in this last sentence, “In thee shall all the families of the earth be blest”. That is the honor of honors!

That is the success of all successes! That is the privilege of all privileges!When Mr.

Moody died some man said, “Every one of us has lost a friend”, and that speaker was right, for there is not a man in America who has not enjoyed at least an opportunity to be better because Moody lived. No matter whether the individual had ever seen him or no; had ever read one of his sermons or no; yet the tidal waves of Moody’s work have rolled over the entire land, over many lands for that matter, and even the most ignorant and debased have breathed the better atmosphere on account of him. George Davis claims that Moody traveled a million miles, and addressed a hundred million people, and dealt personally with 750,000 individuals! I think Davis’ claim is an overstatement, and yet these whom he touched personally are only a tithe of the multitudes blessed indirectly by that evangelism for which Moody stood for forty years. If today I could be privileged to make my choice of the articles of this covenant, rather than be the father of a great nation, rather than enjoy the power of a great name, I would say, “Give me the covenant that through me all the nations of the earth should be blessed”. Such would indeed be the crowning glory of a life, and such ought to be the crowning joy of a true man’s heart.In the next place, I call your attention toABRAHAM’S AND .His obedience was prompt No sooner are the call and covenant spoken than we read,“So Abraham departed as the Lord had spoken unto him” (Genesis 12:4).In that his conduct favorably contrasted with the behavior of some other of the Old Testament’s most prominent men.

Moses was in many respects a model, but he gave himself to an eloquent endeavor to show God that He was making a mistake in appointing him Israel’s deliverer. Elijah at times indulged in the same unprofitable controversy, and the story of Jonah’s criticism of the Divine appointment will be among our later studies.

I am confident that Abraham brings before every generation a much needed example in this matter. In these days, men are tempted to live too much in mathematics and to regard too lightly God’s revelations of duty. That is one of the reasons why many pulpits are empty. That is one of the reasons why many a Sunday School class is without a teacher. That is the only reason why any man in this country can say with any show of truthfulness, “No man careth for my soul”. If the congregations assembled in God’s sanctuary should go out of them, as Abram departed from his home in Haran, to fulfil all that the Lord had spoken unto them, the world would be turned upside down in a fortnight, and Christ would quickly come.In his obedience Abraham was steadfast also.

There are many men who respond to the calls of God; there are only a few who remain faithful to those calls through a long and busy life. There were battles ahead for Abram.

There were blunders in store for Abram. There were bereavements and disappointments to come. But, in spite of them all, he marched on until God gathered him to his people. I thank God that such stedfastness is not wholly strange at the present time. When we see professors of religion proving themselves shallow and playing truant before the smaller trials, and we are thereby tempted to join in Solomon’s dyspeptic lament, “All is vanity and vexation of spirit”, it heartens one to remember the history that some have made and others are making. Think of Carey and Judson, Jewett and Livingstone, Goddard and Morrison, Clough and Ashmore—men who, through long years, deprivations and persecutions, proved as faithful as was ever Abraham; and so, long as the world shall stand, stedfastness in obedience to the commands of God will be regarded highly in Heaven.

Why is it that we so much admire the company of the apostles, and why is it that we sing the praises of martyrs? “They withstood in the evil day, and having done all, stood”.Again, Abram’s obedience was inspired by faith.When he went out from Chaldea to come into Canaan, he was not yielding to reason but walking according to revelation. His action was explained in the sentence, “He believed in the Lord”.

Joseph Parker commenting on the world “believed” as here employed says, “This is the first time the word ‘believed’ occurs in the Bible. * * * * What history opens in this one word. Abram nourished and nurtured himself in God. * * * * He took the promise as a fulfilment. The word was to him a fact. The stars had new meanings to him, as, long before, the rainbow had to Noah. Abram drew himself upward by the stars. Every night they spoke to him of his posterity and of his greatness.

They were henceforward not stars only but promises and oaths and blessings”.One great need of the present-day church is a truer trust in God. Oh, for men who like Columbus can let the craft of life float out on the seas of thought and action, and look to the starry heavens for the guidance that shall land them upon newer and richer shores!

Oh, for men that will turn their ears heavenward to hear what God will say, and even though His commissions contain sacrifice will go about exercising it! Such men are never forgotten by the Father. We are not surprised to hear Him break forth in praise of Abraham, saying,“Because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, m blessing 1 will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the seashore; and thy seed shall possess the gates of the enemy, and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because thou hast obeyed my voice”.No sacrifice made in faith is ever forgotten, and when God’s rewards for service are spoken, good men always regard them more than sufficient. If you could call up today the souls of Carey, Judson, Livingstone and Morrison, and assemble Clough, Ashmore, Taylor, Powell, Clark, Richards and a hundred others worthy to stand with them, and ask them the question “Has God failed in any particular to keep with you any article of His covenant?” they would answer in a chorus, “No”. “And has God more than met the expectations of your faith?” they would reply without dissent, “Yes”. As He was faithful to our father Abraham, so He is faithful to the present-day servant.And yet Abraham, the obedient, wasGUILTY OF .Twice he lied, and the third time he approached the utmost limits of truth. He told Sarai to say she was his sister.

She was his half-sister, and so he thought to excuse himself by dissembling and keeping back a part. But a lie is not a question of words and phrases!

It may be acted as easily as spoken! When God comes to make a report upon your conduct and mine, dissembling will be labeled “falsehood”, for God does not cover up the sins of men. Somebody has asked, “Do you suppose, if the Bible had been written by some learned Doctor, revised by a committee of some eminent scholars, and published by some great ecclesiastical society, we would ever have heard of Noah’s drunkenness, of Abram’s deception, of Lot’s disgrace, of Jacob’s rascality, of the quarrel between Paul and Barnabas, or of Peter’s conduct on the porch? Not at all. But when the Almighty writes a man’s life, He tells the truth about him”.I heard a colored preacher at Cincinnati say, “The most of us would not care for a biography of ourselves, if God was to be the Author of it”. Yet the work of the Recording Angel goes on, and as surely as we read today the report of Abram’s blunders, we will be compelled to confront our own.

Let us cease, therefore, from sin.But Abram’s few blunders cannot blacken his beautiful record. The luster of his life is too positive to be easily dimmed; and like the sun, will continue to shine despite the spots.

Run through these chapters, and in every one of the fourteen you will find some touch of his true life. It was Abraham whose heart beat in sweetest sympathy with the sufferings of Hagar. It was Abraham who showed the most unselfish spirit in separating from Lot and dividing the estate. It was Abraham who opened his door to strangers in a hospitality of which this age knows all too little. It was Abram who overcame the forces of the combined kings and snatched Lot out of their hands. It was Abraham whose prayers prevailed with God in saving this same weakkneed professor out of Sodom. It was Abraham who trusted God for a child when Nature said the faith was foolish. It was Abraham who offered that same child in sacrifice at the word, not halting because of his own heart-sufferings.

It was Abraham who mourned Sarah’s death as deeply as ever any bereft bride felt her loss.The more I search these chapters, the more I feel that she was right who wrote, “A holy life has a voice. It speaks when the tongue is silent and is either a constant attraction or a continued reproof”. Put your ear close to these pages of Genesis, and if Abraham does not whisper good to your heart, then be sure that your soul is dead and you are yet in your sins.There remains time for but a brief review of these fourteen chapters in search ofTHEIR TYPES AND SYMBOLSAbram’s call is a type of the Church of Christ. The Greek word for Church means “the called-out”. Separation from the Chaldeans was essential to Abram’s access to the Father, and separation from the world is essential to the Church’s access to God and also essential to its exertion of an influence for righteousness. I believe Dr.

Gordon was right when, in “The Two-Fold Life” he said, “The truest remedy for the present-day naturalized Christianity and worldly consecration is to be found in a strenuous and stubborn non-conformity to the world on the part of Christians. With the most unshaken conviction, we believe that the Church can only make headway, in this world, by being loyal to her heavenly calling.

Towards Ritualism her cry must be ‘not a rag of popery’; towards Rationalism, ‘not a vestige of whatsoever is not of faith’; and towardsSecularism, ‘not a shred of the garment spotted by the flesh’. The Bride of Christ can only give a true and powerful testimony in this world as she is found clothed with her own proper vesture even the ‘fine linen clean and white, which is the righteousness of the saints’”.Isaac’s offering is a type of God’s gift of Jesus. He was an only son and Abraham laid him upon the altar of sacrifice. And, if one say that he fails as a type because he passed not through the experience of death, let us remember what is written into Hebrews 11:17 following,“By faith Abraham when he was tried, offered up Isaac; and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, *** accounting that God was able to raise him up even from the dead, from whence also he received him, in a figure”.It might be written in Scripture, “Abraham so believed God that he gave his only begotten son, for God’s sake”. It is written in Scripture, “God so loved the world that He gave His only Begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life”.Melchisedec is a type of our High Priest, Jesus Christ. His record in Genesis 14:18-20 is brief, but the interpretation of his character in Hebrews 7 presents him as either identical with the Lord Himself, or else as one whose priesthood is the most perfect type of that which Jesus Christ has performed, and performs today for the sons of men.In Sodom, we find the type of the days of the Son of Man.

Of it the Lord said,“Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous, I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto Me”.Jesus Christ referred to that city and likened its condition to that which should obtain upon the earth at the coming of the Son of Man, saying, “As it was in the days of Lot, they did eat; they drank; they bought; they sold; they planted; they builded; but the same day that Lot went out of Sodom, it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all, even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed”.The newspapers some time ago reported great religious excitement in a Southern city through the work of two evangelists. Doctors said, “We will prescribe no more liquor for patients”, druggists said, “We will sell no more liquor as a beverage”; gamblers gave up their gambling; those called the “toughs of the town” turned to the Lord; the people of means put off their jewels, changed their frivolous clothes to plainer style; and wherever one went he heard either the singing of hymns or the utterance of prayers, and a great newspaper said this had all come about because the people in that little college town expected the speedy return of Christ.

You may call it fanaticism, if you will, and doubtless there would be some occasion, and yet call it what you may, this sentence will remain in the Scriptures, “Therefore, be ye also ready, for in such an hour as ye think not, the Son of Man cometh”.

Genesis 25:11-34

ISAAC. JACOB AND ESAUGen_25:10 to Genesis 35:1-29 where we left off in our last study of Genesis, Isaac is the subject of next concern, for “it came to pass after the death of Abraham that God blessed his son Isaac, and Isaac dwelt by the well Lahai-roi”. But we are not inclined to spend much time in the study of Isaac’s life and labors. Unquestionably Isaac holds his place in the Old Testament record through force of circumstances rather than by virtue of character. His history is uninteresting, and were it not that he is Abraham’s son and Jacob’s father, the connecting link between the federal head of the Jews, and father of the patriarchs, he would long since have been forgotten.Three sentences tell his whole history, and prove him to be a most representative Jew. He was obedient to his father; he was greedy of gain, and he was a gormand!

He resisted not when Abraham bound him and laid him upon the altar. Such was his filial submission.

At money-making he was a success, “for he had possession of flocks and possession of herd, and great store of servants, and the Philistines envied him”. His gluttony was great enough to be made a matter of inspired record, for it is written, “Isaac loved Esau because he did eat of his venison”, and when he was old and his eyes were dim, and he thought the day of his death was at hand, he called Esau and said,“My son**** take, I pray thee, thy weapons, thy quiver and thy bow, and go out to the field and take me some venison and make me savory meat, such as I love, and bring it to me that I may eat, that my soul may bless thee before I die”.Think of a man preparing to sweep into eternity, and yet spending what he supposed to be his last moments in feasting his flesh!I have no prejudice against the Jew. I believe him to be the chosen of the Lord. My study of the Scriptures has compelled me to look for the restoration of Israel, and yet I say that Isaac, in his filial obedience, his greed of gain and his gluttony of the flesh, was a type. And to this hour the majority of his offspring present kindred traits of character.Yet Isaac’s life was not in vain. We saw in our second study in Genesis that the man who became the father of a great people, who, through his offspring was made a nation, was fortune-favored of God.

The greatest event in Isaac’s history was the birth of his twin children, Esau and Jacob. It was through their behavior that his own name would be immortalized and through their offspring that his personality would be multiplied into a mighty people.

I propose, therefore, this morning to give the greater attention to his younger son, Jacob, God’s chosen one, and yet not to neglect Esau whom the sacred narrative assigns to a place of secondary consideration. For the sake of simplicity in study, let us reduce the whole of Jacob’s long and eventful life to three statements, namely, “Jacob’s shrewdness”, “Jacob’s Sorrows”, and “Jacob’s Salvation”.JACOB’S .In their very birth, Jacob’s hand was upon Esau’s heel, earnest of his character. From his childhood he tripped whom he could.His deceptions began in the home. This same twin brother Esau, upon whose heel he laid his hand in the hour of birth, becomes the first victim of his machinations. He takes advantage of Esau’s hunger and weariness to buy out his birthright, and pays for it the miserable price of “bread and pottage”. The child is the prophecy of the man.

The treatment one accords his brothers and sisters, while yet the family are around the old hearthstone, gives promise of the character to come. The reason why sensible parents show such solicitude over the small sins of their children is found just here.

They are not distressed because the transgressions are great in themselves, but rather because those transgressions tell of “things to come”. In the peevishness of a child they see the promise of a man, mastered by his temper; in the white lies of youth, an earnest of the dangerous falsehoods that may curse maturer years; in the little deceptions of the nursery, a prophecy of the accomplished and conscienceless embezzler.There comes from England the story of a farmer who, finding himself at the hour of midnight approaching the end of life, sent hastily for a lawyer, and ordered him to quickly write his will. The attorney asked for pen, ink and paper, but none could be found. Then he inquired for a lead pencil, but a thorough search of the house revealed that no such thing existed in it. The lawyer saw that the farmer was sinking fast, and something must be done, and so casting about he came upon a piece of chalk; and taking that he sat down upon the hearthstone and wrote out on its smooth surface the last will and testament of the dying man. When the court came to the settlement of the estate, that hearthstone was taken up and carried into the presence of the judge, and there its record was read, and the will written upon it was executed.

And I tell you that before we leave the old home place, and while we sit around the old hearthstone, we write there a record in our behavior toward father and mother, in our dealings with brother and sister, and servant, that is a prophecy of what we ourselves will be and of the end to which we shall eventually come, for “the child is father to the man”.Jacob showed this same character to society. The thirtieth chapter of Genesis records his conduct in the house of Laban.

It is of a perfect piece with that which characterized him in his father’s house. A change of location does not altar character. Sometime ago a young man who had had trouble in his own home, and had come into ill-repute in the society in which he had moved, came and told me that he was going off to another city, and when I asked “Why?” he said, “Well, I want to get away from the old associations and I want to put distance between me and the reputation I have made”. But when he went he carried his own character with him, and the consequence was a new set of associates worse than those from whom he fled, and a new reputation that for badness exceeded the old. It does not make any difference in what house the deceiver lodges, nor yet with what society he associates himself—the result is always the same.Parker, who was the real father of the Prohibition movement of Maine, testified that he had traveled into every state of the Union in an endeavor to overcome his drinking habits, and free himself of evil associates, and that in every state of the Union he failed. But, when God by His grace converted him and changed his character, he went back to his old home and settled down with the old associates and friends and not only showed them how to live an upright life, but inaugurated a movement for the utter abolition of his old enemy.

If there is any man who is thinking of leaving his city for another because here he has been “unfortunate”, as he puts it, or “has been taken advantage of by evil company”, and has made for himself a bad reputation, let him know that removal to a new place will accomplish no profit whatever. As Beecher once said, “Men do not leave their misdeeds behind them when they travel away from home.

A man who commits a mean and wicked action carries that sin in himself and with himself. He may go around the world but it goes around with him. He does not shake it off by changing his position”.The Jacob who deceived Esau and had to flee in consequence, twenty years later, for cheating Laban and by his dishonest dealings, divorced himself from his father-in-law.Jacob’s piety was a pure hypocrisy. Now some may be ready to protest against this charge, but I ground it in the plain statements of the Word. In all his early years this supplanter seldom employed the name of God, except for personal profit. When his old father Isaac inquired concerning that mutton, Jacob was palming off on him for venison, “How is it that thou hast found it so quickly, my son”? the impious rascal replied, “Because the Lord thy God brought it to me”.

Think of voicing such hypocrisy! The next time Jacob employed God’s name it was at Bethel.“And Jacob vowed a vow saying, If God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I shall go and will give me bread to eat and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father’s house in peace, then shall the Lord be my God”.Satan’s charge against Job would have had occasion had he hurled it against this supplanter instead, “Doth Jacob fear God for naught?” When the frauds of this man had taken from Laban the greater part of his flocks and herds, and Laban’s sons had uttered their complaint of robbery, Jacob replied,“Ye know that with all my power I have served your father, and your father hath deceived me, and changed my wages ten times.

But God suffered him not to hurt me”.If he said, thus, “the speckled shall be thy wages”, then all the cattle bare speckled; and if he said thus, “the ring straked shall be thy hire”, then bare all the cattle ringstraked; thus God hath taken away the cattle of your father and given them to me”. What hypocrisy! God had done nothing of the kind. This supplanter, by his knowledge of physiological laws, had enriched himself and robbed Laban, and when charged with his conduct, defended his fortune by the impious claim that God had given it all. I doubt if a man ever descends to greater depths of infamy than he reaches who cloaks bad conduct with pious phrases.In a certain city a gentleman moved in and started up in business. He dressed elegantly, dwelt in a splendid house, drew the reins over a magnificent span, but his piety was the most marked thing about him.

Morning and evening on the Sabbath day he went into the house of God to worship, and in the prayer meeting his testimonies and prayers were delivered with promptness and apparent sincerity. A few short months and he used the cover of night under which to make his exit, and left behind him a victimized host.

Some time since our newspapers reported a Jew, who by the same hypocrisy had enriched himself and robbed many of his well-to-do brethren in Minneapolis. We have more respect for the worldling who is a gambler, a drunkard or an adulterer, than for the churchman who makes his church-membership serve purely commercial ends, and whose pious phrases are used as free passes into the confidence of the unsuspecting. It is a remarkable fact that when Jesus Christ was in the world He used His power to dispossess the raving Gadarene; He showed His mercy toward the scarlet woman; He viewed with pathetic silence the gamblers who cast dice for His own coat, but He assailed hypocrisy with the strongest clean invectives of which human language was capable, naming the hypocrites of His time “whited sepulchers”, “a generation of vipers”, “children of Satan”, and charged them with “‘foolishness, blindness and murder”. If Christ were here today, hypocrisy would fare no better at His lips, and when He was crucified again, as He surely would be, this class would lead the crowd that cried, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him”!But enough regarding Jacob’s shrewdness; let us look intoJACOB’S SORROWS.He is separated from his childhood’s home. Scarcely had he and his doting mother carried out their deception of Isaac when sorrow smites both of them and the mother who loved him so much is compelled to say, “My son, obey my voice and arise; flee thou to Laban, my brother, to Haran”; and this mother and son were destined never to see each other’s face again.

One of the ways of God’s judgment is to leave men to the ‘fruits of their own devices. He does not rise up to personally punish those who transgress, but permits them to suffer the punishment which is self-inflicted.

The law is “Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap”. It is a law that approves every righteous act, and bestows great blessings upon every good man, but it is also a law that has its whip of scorpions for every soul that lives in sin. It is on account of this law that you cannot be a cheat in your home and be comfortable there. You simply cannot deceive and defraud your fellows and escape the consequences.What was $25,000 worth to Patrick Crowe when every policeman in America and a thousand private detectives were in search of him? How fitful must have been his sleep when he lay down at night, knowing that ere the morning dawned the law was likely to lay its hand upon him, and how anxious his days when every man he met and every step heard behind him suggested probable arrest. What had he done that he was so hunted?

He had done what Jacob did; he had come into possession of blessings which did not belong to him, and as Jacob took advantage of his brother’s weariness and hunger and of his father’s blindness to carry out his plot, so this child-kidnapper took advantage of the weakness of youth, the affection of paternity, to spoil his fellow of riches. It is not likely that either Jacob of old or the kidnapper of yesterday looked to the end of their deception.

Greed in each case blinded them, to the sorrows to come, as it is doing to hundreds of thousands of others today. But just as sure as Jacob’s deception effected Jacob’s separation from mother and father and home, similar conduct on your part or mine will plunge us into sorrows, for “he that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption”.In His adopted house Jacob encounters new difficulties. It is no more easy to run away from sorrow than it is to escape from sin. The man who proved himself a rascal in Minneapolis may remove to Milwaukee, but the troubles he had here will be duplicated in his new home. The shrewd man of Gerar, when he comes to Haran, is cheated himself. Seven hard years of service for Rachel, and lo, Leah is given instead.

At Haran his wages “were changed ten times”, so he says. I have no doubt that every change was effected by some new rascality in his conduct.

At Haran he was openly charged with deception and greed by the sons of Laban, and at Haran also he witnessed the jealousy that was growing up between Rachel, his best beloved, and Leah, the favored of God. So sorrows ever attend the sinner.The man who comes to you in a time when you are tempted, to plead with you to deal honestly, to do nothing that would not have the Divine approval, no matter how great the loss in an upright course, is a friend and is pleading for your good. His counsel is not against success, but against sorrow instead. He is as certainly trying to save you from agonizing experiences as he would be if pleading with you not to drink, not to gamble, or even not to commit murder, “for better is a little with righteousness than great revenues without right”.It is at the point of his family he suffers most. We have already referred to the estrangement that grew up between Rachel and Leah. That was only the beginning.

The baseness of Reuben, the cruelty of Simeon and Levi toward the Shechemites, the spirit of fratricide that sold Joseph into slavery; all of these and more had to be met by this unhappy man. A man never suffers so much as when he sees that his family, his wife and his children, are necessarily involved.

Jacob expressed this thought when he prayed to God,“Deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I fear him lest he will come and smite me and the mother with the children”.Ah, there is the quick of human life—“the mother with the children”.I know a man who has recently been proven a defaulter. His embezzlements amount to many thousands of dollars, so it is said, and they run back through a course of twenty years. In a somewhat intimate association with him I never dreamed such a thing possible. He was a sweet-spirited man, an affectionate father, a kind husband, a good neighbor, outwardly a loyal citizen and apparently an upright Christian. I do not believe at heart he was dishonest, and I know that he was not selfish. Since the press published his disgrace, I have been pondering over what it all meant and have an idea that he simply lacked the courage to go home and tell his wife and children that he was financially bankrupt, and that they must move into a plainer house, subsist upon the simplest food, and be looked upon as belonging to the poverty stricken; so he went on, keeping up outward appearances, possibly for the wife’s sake and for the children’s sake, hoping against hope that the tide would turn and he would recover himself and injure none, until one day he saw the end was near, and the sin long concealed was burning to the surface, and society would understand.

It plunged him into temporary insanity.Young men who sin are likely to forget the fact that when they come to face the consequences of their behavior they will not be alone, and their sufferings will be increased by just so much as the wife and children are compelled to suffer.Some time ago I read a story of a young man who had committed a crime and fled to the West. In the course of time he met a young woman in his new home and wooed and won her.

When a little child came into his home, his heart turned back to his mother, and he longed to go back and visit her and let her meet his wife and enjoy the grandchild; and yielding to this natural desire, he went back. But ere a week had passed, officers of the law walked in and arrested him on the old charge. Alone he had sinned, but now his sufferings are accentuated a thousand-fold because his innocent wife must share them, and even the bewildered babe must untwine her arms from about his neck and be torn from her best-loved bed, his breast. “The mother with the children”! Ah, Jacob, you may sin by yourself, but when you come to suffer, you will feel the pain of many lives.But, thank God, there came a change in Jacob. In finishing this talk I want to give the remaining space toJACOB’S .I believe it occurred at Peniel. Twice before God had manifested Himself to Jacob.

But Jacob had received little profit from those revelations. On his way to Haran, God gave him a vision in the night —a ladder set up on the earth the top of which reached up to heaven, and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.

When Jacob awakened out of his sleep he said, “This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven”. But not all who come into the House of God, not all before whom Heaven’s gate opens; not all to whom the way of salvation is revealed are converted. That night’s vision did not result in Jacob’s salvation. After that he was the same deceiver.Twenty-one years sweep by and Jacob is on his way back to the old place, and the angels of God met him. And when Jacob saw them he said, “This is God’s host”. But not every man who meets the hosts of God is saved.

Jacob is not saved. But when he came to Peniel and there in the night a Man wrestled with him, it was none other than God’s third appearance, and the Jacob who had gone from the House of God unsaved, who had met the hosts of God to receive from them little profit, seeing now the face of God, surrendered once for all.

From that night until the hour when he breathed his last, Jacob the politician, Jacob the deceiver, Jacob the defrauder, was Israel—the Prince of God, whose conduct became the child of the Most High!His repentance was genuine. Read the record of Gen 32:24-30, and you will be convinced that Jacob truly repented. In that wonderful night he ceased from his selfishness. He said never a word that looked like a bargain with God. He did not even plead for personal safety against angered Esau. He did not even beseech God to save the mother with the children, but he begged for a blessing.

He had passed the Pharisaical point where his prayer breathed his self-esteem. He had come to the point of the truly penitent, and doubtless prayed over and over again as the publican, “God be merciful to me a sinner”.

And when God was about to go from him he said, “I will not let thee go except thou bless me”. That is the best sign of genuine repentance.In Chicago I baptized a young man who for years had been a victim of drink. For years also he had gone to the gambling house. Often he abused his wife and sometimes he beat the half-clad children. One day in his wretchedness he purchased a pistol and went into his own home, purposing to destroy the lives of wife and children and then commit suicide; but while he waited for the wife to turn her head that he might execute his will without her having suspected it, God’s Spirit came upon him in conviction and he told me afterwards that his sense of sin was such that in his back yard, with his face buried in the earth, he cried for God’s blessing. “And I found that I was not so much convicted of drunkenness, or of gambling, or of cruelty, or even of the purpose of murder and suicide, as I was convicted of sin. I did not plead for pardon from any of these acts but for God’s mercy that should cover all and make me a man”.Read the 51st Psalm and see how David passed through a similar experience.

His cry was, “Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity and cleanse me from my sin”. And Jacob’s cry was “Bless me”.

It means the same.His offer to Esau was in restitution. Two hundred she goats, and 20 he goats, 200 ewes and 20 rams; 30 milk camels with their colts; 40 kine and 10 bulls; 20 she asses and 10 foals; all of these he sent to Esau his brother, as a present. Present, did I say? No, Jacob meant it in payment. Twenty-one years before he had taken from Esau what was not his own and now that God had blessed him, he wanted to return to Esau with usury. It is the story of Zacchaeus—restoring four-fold.

And the church of God has never received a better evidence of conversion than is given when a man makes restitution.Some years ago at Cleveland a great revival was on, into which meeting an unhappy man strayed. The evangelist was talking that night of the children of Israel coming up to Kadesh-Barnea but turning back unblessed.

This listener, an attorney, had in his pocket seven hundred dollars which he had received for pleading a case which he knew to be false, won only by perjured testimony, and the promise of $12,000 more should he win the case in the highest court. As the minister talked, God’s Spirit convicted him and for some days he wrestled with the question as to what to do. Then he counselled with the evangelist and eventually he restored the $700, told his client to keep the $12,000 and went his way into the church of God. I have not followed his course but you do not doubt his conversion. Ah, Jacob is saved now, else he would never have paid the old debt at such a price.Thank God, also, that his reformation was permanent. You can follow this life now through all its vicissitudes to the hour of which it is written,“And when Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed, and yielded up the ghost and was gathered unto his people”.You will never find him a deceiver again; you will never find him defrauding again.

The righteousness of his character waxes unto the end, and Pharaoh never entertained a more honorable man than when he welcomed this hoary pilgrim to his palace. The forenoon of his life was filled with clouds and storms, but the evening knew only sunshine and shadow, and the shadow was not in consequence of sins continued but sorrows super induced by the sins of others.It is related that when Napoleon came upon the battlefield of Marengo, he found his forces in confusion and flying before the face of the enemy.

Calling to a superior officer he asked what it meant. The answer was, “We are defeated”. The great General took out his watch, looked at the sinking sun a moment and said, “There is just time enough left to regain the day”. At his command the forces faced about, fought under the inspiration of his presence, and just as the sun went down, they silenced the opposing guns.Suppose we grant that one has wasted his early years, has so misspent them as to bring great sorrow. Shall such despair? No, Jacob’s life illustrates the better way.

His youth was all gone when he came to Peniel. But there he learned how to redeem the remaining days.I saw by a magazine to which I subscribe that in Albemarle and surrounding counties of Virginia there are many farms that were once regarded as worn out, and their owners questioned what they could do with them, when somebody suggested that they sow them to violets.

The violets perfumed the air, enriched the owner, and recovered the land. It is not too late to turn to God!