By J.R. Miller
Genesis 28
Nothing is more beautiful than an ideal home. Love rules in all its life. The members are as one, in their fellowship and association. Each thinks of the comfort, the convenience, the happiness of the others. In the home of Isaac--all these conditions seem to have been reversed. The veil is lifted and the life of this chosen family is revealed as sadly divided, rent by strifes and jealousies. There is no semblance of love in the home association. There are no home ties binding the household together. The dove of peace does not nestle there. There is no common interest for which all strive. Instead, they are torn apart in bitter personal aims and struggles, plotting against each other in most unseemly way, deceiving one another. The story told in the twenty-seventh chapter is a pitiful one, and when we remember that it was in the family of sacred promise, that all these unseemly things occurred, it perplexes us. We would naturally expect beautiful and godly living--in this family which carried in it the holy seed.
First, we see Isaac planning to give the family blessing to Esau. Yet he knew well that the purpose of God was that Jacob should receive the blessing. Esau had sold his birthright and had also shown himself unfit to be the head of the family. Still his father clung to him and sought to have him receive the blessing of the firstborn.
Rebekah, ever on the alert, having learned of Isaac's arrangement to bestow the blessing on Esau, set about to defeat it. She would stop at nothing and accordingly devised a scheme to deceive her blind old husband. Jacob played his part well, under his mother's instructions, and won the blessing by fraud and falsehood. The result was the intensifying of Esau's hatred for Jacob, and a vow that he would kill him. So Jacob had to flee for his life. For many years he did not see his home again or the faces of his father and mother. His life, too, was full of trouble. He had sought to live by fraud--and fraud followed him into his old age!
The unveiling of the life of this home with its enmities, its strifes, its frauds, and deceptions--should teach us again, how unfit and unbeautiful is such a life in any home. Everything of happiness was wrecked. We cannot imagine anything gentle or kindly in the life Isaac and Rebekah lived together in their old age. After their striving and plotting so long--the one against the other--it is impossible to think of their coming together again in the confidence and mutual affection which ought to be realized in every marriage.
Then there grew a bitter feud between the brothers which was never really healed. All the hopes of marriage and home were negatived in this marriage and home. Out of this wreck and mockery of family life--comes an appeal for a home life which shall realize all the possibilities of love.
There are many homes in Christian lands, homes of wealth and of rank, in which the household life is no better than was that of this old patriarchal family. It is a shame, that this confession has to be made. Let us determine to make our homes places of peace, of unity, of purest unselfishness, a place where all the best and sweetest things of love shall be realized.
We take up now, the account of Jacob's flight from Beer-sheba. He was running away from home. It was his own fault, too--his and his mother's--that he had to flee. He had got a valuable thing--his blind father's blessing, which included the birthright with all its privileges. But he had sinned to get it--and sin always brings trouble. He had won by fraud and lying--what God would have given to him in His own time and way, without any stain or blot--if Jacob and his mother had only kept their hands off, and refrained from all plotting and scheming.
Success in life is a good thing--but we must not pay too much for it. Especially, we must not sin to attain it. It is inspiring to see men rise to high positions in life--but we want to know how they rise. Too many people get wealth and position--as Jacob got his blessing--at the cost of personal righteousness. Not every fine house in which people live, has a heavenly blessing upon it. Sometimes it has been built with the gains of dishonesty--and then a curse is written on the walls. An old man, about to die, called his sons to his bedside, and spoke to them of the money he had to leave them. "It is not much," he said, "but there is not a dishonest dime in the whole of it." A small amount of money, every honest penny of it, is better than millions stained in the getting.
We follow Jacob in his flight, and one evening, probably his second or third evening from home, we see him preparing for sleep. It was not a very cosy place to rest for the night. "He took one of the stones of the place, and put it under his head, and laid down in that place to sleep." The rough lots in life have their compensations. It seems hard for a boy to have to grow up in poverty--but it is in such a condition, if there is anything noble in the boy--that his life will be trained into strength.
Jacob's circumstances were not luxurious that night. He was tired and homesick. His pillow was hard, his bed was cold. Yet never before had he seen such glorious things as he saw then. Luxury is not necessary to heavenly visions. John saw the wonderful visions of the Apocalypse, while in exile on the rocky Isle of Patmos. Bunyan had his marvelous spiritual experiences, in Bedford Jail. Stephen saw into heaven and beheld the Divine glory and Jesus standing there, when he was being stoned to death by an angry mob. Paul got a glimpse of his crown of glory, from a Roman prison.
It was a wonderful vision that Jacob had that night. He had sinned and he must have been most unhappy. He was lonely, too, and home-sick. But he seems to have thought of God and prayed. God is always gracious. He had His watchful eye on Jacob, for the promise to Abraham was now his. "Behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven." This ladder may be viewed in several ways. Its immediate meaning to Jacob himself was very comforting. It told him of God's mercy, friendship, and care, and of a way of communication with heaven. Although he had sinned, God had not forsaken him. There was a way open to God with free communication.
But the ladder was not merely for Jacob. Centuries afterwards we stand at the Jordan, and hear Jesus say, "You shall see the heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man." The ladder is, therefore, a picture of the Incarnation. It shows Christ to us as the Mediator, coming down to earth's lowest depths--and making a way for us up to heaven's most glorious heights. The ladder is a way on which human feet may climb; Christ is the way to the Father and the Father's house. "I am the way ... no man comes unto the Father but by Me." The angels went up and came down on the ladder; through Christ there is communication with heaven.
The ladder is also an illustration of a true Christian life. At every young Christian's feet, springs such a ladder which stretches away through growing brightness until its top reaches the very glory of God.
The figure of a ladder is suggestive. A ladder is not easy to ascend--a true, earnest life is never easy. A ladder must be climbed step by step, and it is thus, if at all, that we must go up life's ladder.
We must rise by daily self-conquests in little things. Every fault we overcome, lifts us a step higher. Every unholy desire, every bad habit, all longings for base, ignoble things, all wrong feelings, that we conquer and trample down--become ladder rungs for our feet, on which we climb upward--out of groveling and sinfulness, into godly manhood and womanhood. And there is no other way by which we can rise heavenward. If we are not living victoriously these little common days, we are not making any progress in true living.
Only those who climb--are getting toward the stars. Heaven is for the overcomers. Not that the struggle is to be made in our own strength, or the victories won by our own hands: there is a mighty Helper always on life's ladder with us. He does not carry us up--we must do the climbing--but He helps and cheers us and ever puts new strength into the heart, and so aids every one who strives in His name to do his best, that he may become more than a conqueror, and may at last wear the victor's crown.
The ladder was not empty. "Behold, the angels of God ascending and descending on it." All along life's steep pathway, angels minister. They do not reveal themselves to us visibly--but they watch over us with loving faithfulness, guiding us, protecting us, helping us in temptation, whispering in our ears many a good suggestion, and ministering to us in countless ways.
The ladder did not stop half-way up--it reached all the way to God's very feet. "Behold, the Lord stood above it." No plan of life is complete, which does not take in heaven--and reach up to God Himself. A picture without sky in it lacks something. No matter how brilliant life's way is, if it does not bring us at last to God and to blessedness, it is a dreadful failure!
The gracious words which God spoke to Jacob, must have given him great comfort in his penitence and fear that night. "I am with you, and will keep you wherever you go." When the British mariner puts out to sea his prayer is, "Keep me, O my God; my boat is so small--and the ocean is so wide." The prayer suits everyone of us, especially the young as they step out into life. We are small and weak--and the world is wide and full of peril; we must have the mighty keeping of God--or we shall perish. This is assured in the word that God spoke to Jacob and speaks to us. Angel companionship is cheering--but here is something far better, "I am with you." God does not merely stand in heaven and look down on His children as they climb wearily up the steep ladder, waiting there to crown them with glory when they struggle to His feet. He comes down Himself and keeps close beside each one of them in all their conflicts and struggles.
Jacob was deeply impressed by the vision which came to him that night. Awaking out of his sleep, he said, "Surely the Lord is in this place--and I knew it not!" The Lord is everywhere. We talk about special providences--but why special? Every day is full of God; no event is independent of Him. He is in what we call the accidents of life. If we would remember this, it would make us reverent always, for any chance meeting or any smallest circumstance, may be God's hand laid on our shoulder.
There is another phase of the lesson. The Lord is in every place--but ofttimes we do not know it. There is no place where He is not. An atheist's child had learned something about God. One day the father, wishing to impress his own creed upon his child's heart, wrote on a piece of paper, "God is nowhere." He asked the child to read the sentence, and she spelled it out, startlingly though unconsciously, "God is now here."
There was still more of Jacob's thought. Not only was God in the place--but the place was near to heaven. "This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven!" He was right.
Wherever God reveals Himself--is God's house, and God's presence is there. It needs no fine building--to make a Bethel. There is no spot on earth which may not any moment become a real gate of heaven. Wherever a heart in penitence calls upon God, there is opened straightway a path of light which stretches away to God and makes a glorious ladder on which the soul may climb to eternal blessedness. Wherever a saint is dying, in palace or hovel, on battlefield, or in a wreck on the sea--there is a gate which opens into the brightness of celestial joy. This sad world would not be half so sad--if we had eyes to see all the heavenly glory that bursts into it!
Jacob promised God to begin a new life from that hour. "Jacob vowed a vow, saying, if God will be with me . . . this stone . . . shall be God's house; and ... I will surely give the tenth unto You." There are three things in this vow which we should notice:
Jacob gave himself to God. This must always be the first thing in a new life. God cares nothing for our formal worship or our gifts--so long as our heart is not made His.
Next, Jacob set up Divine worship on the spot where he had been blessed.
Then Jacob consecrated his substance and pledged himself to give to God the tenth of all that God gave to him. Christians should certainly not give less than the Old Testament believer gave.
