The Gospel of the Pentateuch: A Set of Parish Sermons

I have been telling you of late that the Bible is the revelation of God.  But how does the story of Jacob and Esau reveal God to us?  What further lesson concerning God do we learn therefrom?

I think that if we will take the story simply as it stands we shall see easily enough.  For it is all simple and natural enough.  Jacob and Esau, we shall see, were men of like passions with ourselves; men as we are, mixed up of good and evil, sometimes right and sometimes wrong: and God rewarded them when they did right, and punished them when they did wrong, just as he does with us now.

They were men, though, of very different characters: we may see men like them now every day round us.  Esau, we read, was a hunter—a man of the field; a bold, fierce, active man; generous, brave, and kind-hearted, as the end of his story shows: but with just the faults which such a man would have.  He was hasty, reckless, and fond of pleasure; passionate too, and violent.  Have we not seen just such men again and again, and liked them for what was good in them, and been sorry too that they were not more sober and reasonable, and true to themselves?

Jacob was the very opposite kind of man.  He was a plain man—what we call a still, solid, prudent, quiet man—and a dweller in tents: he lived peaceably, looking after his father’s flocks and herds; while Esau liked better the sport and danger of hunting wild beasts, and bringing home venison to his father.

Now Jacob, we see, was of course a more thoughtful man than Esau.  He kept more quiet, and so had more time to think: and he had plainly thought a great deal over God’s promise to his grandfather Abraham.  He believed that God had promised Abraham that he would make his seed as the sand of the sea for multitude, and give them that fair land of Canaan, and that in his seed all the families of the earth should be blessed; and that seemed to him, and rightly, a very grand and noble thing.  And he set his heart on getting that blessing for himself, and supplanting his elder brother Esau, and being the heir of the promises in his stead.  Well—that was mean and base and selfish perhaps: but there is somewhat of an excuse for Jacob’s conduct, in the fact that he and Esau were twins; that in one sense neither of them was older than the other.  And you must recollect, that it was not at all a regular custom in the East for the eldest son to be his father’s heir, as it is in England.  You find that few or none of the great kings of the Jews were eldest sons.  The custom was not kept up as it is here.  So Jacob may have said to himself, and not have been very wrong in saying it:

‘I have as good a right to the birthright as Esau.  My father loves him best because he brings him in venison; but I know the value of the honour which is before my family.  Surely the one of us who cares most about the birthright will be most fit to have it, and ought to have it; and Esau cares nothing for it, while I do.’

So Jacob, in his cunning, bargaining way, took advantage of his brother’s weak, hasty temper, and bought his birthright of him, as the text tells.

That story shows us what sort of a man Esau was: hasty, careless, fond of the good things of this life.  He had no reason to complain if he lost his birthright.  He did not care for it, and so he had thrown it away.  Perhaps he forgot what he had done; but his sin found him out, as our sins are sure to find each of us out.  The day came when he wanted his birthright and could not have it, and found no place for repentance—that is, no chance of undoing what he had done—though he sought it carefully with tears.  He had sown, and he must reap; he had made his bed, and he must lie on it.  And so must Jacob in his turn.

Now this, I think, is just what the story teaches us concerning God.  God chooses Abraham’s family to grow into a great nation, and to be a peculiar people.  The next question will be: If God favours that family, will he do unjust things to help them?—will he let them do unjust things to help themselves?  The Bible answers positively, No.  God will not be unjust or arbitrary in choosing one man and rejecting another.  If he chooses Jacob, it is because Jacob is fit for the work which God wants done.  If he rejects Esau, it is because Esau is not fit.

It is natural, I know, to pity poor Esau; but one has no right to do more.  One has no right to fancy for a moment that God was arbitrary or hard upon him.  Esau is not the sort of man to be the father of a great nation, or of anything else great.  Greedy, passionate, reckless people like him, without due feeling of religion or of the unseen world, are not the men to govern the world, or help it forward, or be of use to mankind, or train up their families in justice and wisdom and piety.  If there had been no people in the world but people like Esau, we should be savages at this day, without religion or civilization of any kind.  They are of the earth, earthy; dust they are, and unto dust they will return.  It is men like Jacob whom God chooses—men who have a feeling of religion and the unseen world; men who can look forward, and live by faith, and form plans for the future—and carry them out too, against disappointment and difficulty, till they succeed.

Look at one side of Jacob’s character—his perseverance.  He serves seven years for Rachel, because he loves her.  Then when he is cheated, and Leah given him instead, he serves seven years more for Rachel—‘and they seemed to him a short time, for the love he bore to her;’ and then he serves seven years more for the flocks and herds.  A slave, or little better than a slave, of his own free will, for one-and-twenty years, to get what he wanted.  Those are the men whom God uses, and whom God prospers.  Men with deep hearts and strong wills, who set their minds on something which they cannot see, and work steadfastly for it, till they get it; for God gives it to them in good time—when patience has had her perfect work upon their characters, and made them fit for success.

Esau, we find, got some blessing—the sort of blessing he was fit for.  He loved his father, and he was rewarded.  ‘And Isaac his father answered and said unto him, Behold, thy dwelling shall be the fatness of the earth, and of the dew of heaven from above; and by thy sword shalt thou live, and shalt serve thy brother; and it shall come to pass when thou shalt have the dominion, that thou shalt break his yoke from off thy neck.’

He was a brave, generous-hearted man, in spite of his faults.  He was to live the free hunter’s life which he loved; and we find that he soon became the head of a wild powerful tribe, and his sons after him.  Dukes of Edom they were called for several generations; but they never rose to any solid and lasting power; they never became a great nation, as Jacob’s children did.  They were just what one would expect—wild, unruly, violent people.  They have long since perished utterly off the face of the earth.

And what did Jacob get, who so meanly bought the birthright, and cheated his father out of the blessing?  Trouble in the flesh; vanity and vexation of spirit.  He had to flee from his father’s house; never to see his mother again; to wander over the deserts to kinsmen who cheated him as he had cheated others; to serve Laban for twenty-one years; to crouch miserably in fear and trembling, as a petitioner for his life before Esau whom he had wronged, and to be made more ashamed than ever, by finding that generous Esau had forgiven and forgotten all.  Then to see his daughter brought to shame, his sons murderers, plotting against their own brother, his favourite son; to see his grey hairs going down with sorrow to the grave; to confess to Pharaoh, after one hundred and twenty years of life, that few and evil had been the days of his pilgrimage.

Then did his faith in God win no reward?  Not so.  That was his reward, to be chastened and punished, till his meanness was purged out of him.  He had taken God for his guide; and God did guide him accordingly; though along a very different path from what he expected.  God accepted his faith, delivered his soul, gave him rest and peace at last in his old age in Egypt, let him find his son Joseph again in power and honour: but all along God punished his own inventions—as he will punish yours and mine, my friends, all the while that he may be accepting our faith and delivering our souls, because we trust in him.  So God rewarded Jacob by giving him more light: by not leaving him to himself, and his own darkness and meanness, but opening his eyes to understand the wondrous things of God’s law, and showing him how God’s law is everlasting, righteous, not to be escaped by any man; how every action brings forth its appointed fruit; how those who sow the wind will reap the whirlwind.  Jacob’s first notion was like the notion of the heathen in all times, ‘My God has a special favour for me, therefore I may do what I like.  He will prosper me in doing wrong; he will help me to cheat my father.’  But God showed him that that was just not what he would do for him.  He would help and protect him; but only while he was doing RIGHT.  God would not alter his moral laws for him or any man.  God would be just and righteous; and Jacob must be so likewise, till he learnt to trust not merely in a God who happened to have a special favour to him, but in the righteous God who loves justice, and wishes to make men righteous even as he is righteous, and will make them righteous, if they trust in him.

That was the reward of Jacob’s faith—the best reward which any man can have.  He was taught to know God, whom truly to know is everlasting life.  And this, it seems to me, is the great revelation concerning God which we learn from the history of Jacob and Esau.  That God, how much soever favour he may show to certain persons, is still, essentially and always, a just God.

And now, my friends, if any of you are tempted to follow Jacob’s example, take warning betimes.  You will be tempted.  There are men among you—there are in every congregation—who are, like Jacob, sober, industrious, careful, prudent men, and fairly religious too; men who have the good sense to see that Solomon’s proverbs are true, and that the way to wealth and prosperity is to fear God, and keep his commandments.

May you prosper; may God’s blessing be upon your labour; may you succeed in life, and see your children well settled and thriving round you, and go down to the grave in peace.

But never forget, my good friends, that you will be tempted as Jacob was—to be dishonest.  I cannot tell why; but professedly religious men, in all countries, in all religions, are, and always have been, tempted in that way—to be mean and cunning and false at times.  It is so, and there is no denying it: when all other sins are shut out from them by their religious profession, and their care for their own character, and their fear of hell, the sin of lying, for some strange reason, is left open to them; and to it they are tempted to give way.  For God’s sake—for the sake of Christ, who was full of grace and truth—for your own sakes—struggle against that.  Unless you wish to say at last with poor old Jacob, ‘Few and evil have been the days of my pilgrimage;’ struggle against that.  If you fear God and believe that he is with you, God will prosper your plans and labour; but never make that an excuse for saying in your hearts, like Jacob, ‘God intends that I should have these good things; therefore I may take them for myself by unfair means.’  The birthright is yours.  It is you, the steady, prudent, God-fearing ones, who will prosper on the earth, and not poor wild, hot-headed Esau.  But do not make that an excuse for robbing and cheating Esau, because he is not as thoughtful as you are.  The Lord made him as well as you; and died for him as well as for you; and wills his salvation as well as yours; and if you cheat him the Lord will avenge him speedily.  If you give way to meanness, covetousness, falsehood, as Jacob did, you will rue it; the Lord will enter into judgment with you quickly, and all the more quickly because he loves you.  Because there is some right in you—because you are on the whole on the right road—the Lord will visit you with disappointment and affliction, and make your own sins your punishment.

If you deceive other people, other people shall deceive you, as they did Jacob.  If you lay traps, you shall fall into them yourselves, as Jacob did.  If you fancy that because you trust in God, God will overlook any sin in you, as Jacob did, you shall see, as Jacob did, that your sin shall surely find you out.  The Lord will be more sharp and severe with you than with Esau.  And why?  Because he has given you more, and requires more of you; and therefore he will chastise you, and sift you like wheat, till he has parted the wheat from the tares.  The wheat is your faith, your belief that if you trust in God he will prosper you, body and soul.  That is God’s good seed, which he has sown in you.  The tares are your fancies that you may do wrong and mean things to help yourselves, because God has an especial favour for you.  That is the devil’s sowing, which God will burn out of you by the fire of affliction, as he did out of Jacob, and keep your faith safe, as good seed in his garner, for the use of your children after you, that you may teach them to walk in God’s commandments and serve him in spirit and in truth.  For God is a God of truth, and no liar shall stand in his sight, let him be never so religious; he requires truth in the inward parts, and truth he will have; and whom he loves he will chasten, as he chastened Jacob of old, till he has made him understand that honesty is the best policy; and that whatever false prophets may tell you, there is not one law for the believer and another for the unbeliever; but whatsoever a man sows, that shall he reap, and receive the due reward of the deeds done in the body, whether they be good or evil.

SERMON VII.  JOSEPH

(Preached on the Sunday before the Wedding of the Prince of Wales.  March 8th, third Sunday in Lent.)

GENESIS xxxix. 9.  How can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?

The story of Joseph is one which will go home to all healthy hearts.  Every child can understand, every child can feel with it.  It is a story for all men and all times.  Even if it had not been true, and not real fact, but a romance of man’s invention, it would have been loved and admired by men; far more then, when we know that it is true, that it actually did so happen; that is part and parcel of the Holy Scriptures.

We all, surely, know the story—How Joseph’s brethren envy him and sell him for a slave into Egypt—how there for a while he prospers—how his master’s wife tempts him—how he is thrown into prison on her slander—how there again he prospers—how he explains the dreams of Pharaoh’s servants—how he lies long forgotten in the prison—how at last Pharaoh sends for him to interpret a dream for him, and how he rises to power and great glory—how his brothers come down to Egypt to buy corn, and how they find him lord of all the land—how subtilly he tries them to see if they have repented of their old sin—how his heart yearns over them in spite of all their wickedness to him—how at last he reveals himself, and forgives them utterly, and sends for his poor old father Jacob down into Egypt.  Whosoever does not delight in that story, simply as a story, whenever he hears it read, cannot have a wholesome human heart in him.

But why was this story of Joseph put into Holy Scripture, and at such length, too?  It seems, at first sight, to be simply a family history—the story of brothers and their father; it seems, at first sight, to teach us nothing concerning our redemption and salvation; it seems, at first sight, not to reveal anything fresh to us concerning God; it seems, at first sight, not to be needed for the general plan of the Bible history.  It tells us, of course, how the Israelites first came into Egypt; and that was necessary for us to know.  But the Bible might have told us that in ten verses.  Why has it spent upon the story of Joseph and his brethren, not ten verses, but ten chapters?

Now we have a right to ask such questions as these, if we do not ask them out of any carping, fault-finding spirit, trying to pick holes in the Bible, from which God defend us and all Christian men.  If we ask such questions in faith and reverence—that is, believing and taking for granted that the Bible is right, and respecting it, as the Book of books, in which our own forefathers and all Christian nations upon earth for many ages have found all things necessary for their salvation—if, I say, we question over the Bible in that child-like, simple, respectful spirit, which is the true spirit of wisdom and understanding, by which our eyes will be truly opened to see the wondrous things of God’s law: then we may not only seek as our Lord bade us, but we shall find, as our Lord prophesied that we should.  We shall find some good reason for this story of Joseph being so long, and find that the story of Joseph, like all the rest of the Bible, reveals a new lesson to us concerning God and the character of God.

I said that the story of Joseph looks, at first sight, to be merely a family history.  But suppose that that were the very reason why it is in the Bible, because it is a family history.  Suppose that families were very sacred things in the eyes of God.  That the ties of husband and wife, parent and child, brother and sister, were appointed, not by man, but by God.  Then would not Joseph’s story be worthy of being in the Bible?  Would it not, as I said it would, reveal something fresh to us concerning God and the character of God?

Consider now, my friends: Is it not one great difference—one of the very greatest—between men and beasts, that men live in families, and beasts do not?  That men have the sacred family feeling, and beasts have not?  They have the beginnings of it, no doubt.  The mother, among beasts, feels love to her children, but only for a while.  God has implanted in her something of that deepest, holiest, purest of all feelings—a mother’s love.  But as soon as her young ones are able to take care of themselves, they are nothing to her—among the lower animals, less than nothing.  The fish or the crocodile will take care of her eggs jealously, and as soon as they are hatched, turn round and devour her own young.

The feeling of a father to his child, again, you find is fainter still among beasts.  The father, as you all know, not only cares little for his offspring, even if he sometimes helps to feed them at first, but is often jealous of them, hates them, will try to kill them when they grow up.

Husband and wife, again: there is no sacredness between them among dumb animals.  A lasting and an unselfish attachment, not merely in youth, but through old age and beyond the grave—what is there like this among the animals, except in the case of certain birds, like the dove and the eagle, who keep the same mate year after year, and have been always looked on with a sort of affection and respect by men for that very reason?

But where, among beasts, do you ever find any trace of those two sacred human feelings—the love of brother to brother, or of child to father?  Where do you find the notion that the tie between husband and wife is a sacred thing, to be broken at no temptation, but in man?

These are the feelings which man has alone of all living animals.

These then, remember, are the very family feelings which come out in the story of Joseph.  He honours holy wedlock when he tells his master’s wife, ‘How can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?’  He honours his father, when he is not ashamed of him, wild shepherd out of the desert though he might be, and an abomination to the Egyptians, while he himself is now in power and wealth and glory, as a prince in a civilized country.  He honours the tie of brother to brother, by forgiving and weeping over the very brothers who have sold him into slavery.

But what has all this to do with God?

Now man, as we know, is an animal with an immortal spirit in him.  He has, as St. Paul so carefully explains to us, a flesh and a spirit—a flesh like the beasts which perish; a spirit which comes from God.

Now the Bible teaches us that man did not get these family feelings from his flesh, from the animal, brute part of him.  They are not carnal, but spiritual.  He gets them from his spirit, and they are inspired into him by the Spirit of God.  They come not from the earth below, but from the heaven above; from the image of God, in which man alone of all living things was made.

For if it were not so, we should surely see some family feeling in the beasts which are most like men.  But we do not.  In the apes, which are, in their shape and fleshly nature, so strangely and shockingly like human beings, there is not as much family feeling as there is in many birds, or even insects.  Nay, the wild negroes, among whom they live, hold them in abhorrence, and believe that they were once men like themselves, who were gradually changed into brute beasts, by giving way to detestable sins; while these very negroes themselves, heathens and savages as they are, have the family feeling—the feeling of husband for wife, father for child, brother for brother; not, indeed, as strongly and purely as we, or at least those of us who are really Christian and civilized, but still they have it; and that makes between the lowest man and the highest brute a difference which I hold is as wide as the space between heaven and earth.

It is man alone, I say, who has the idea of family; and who has, too, the strange, but most true belief that these family ties are appointed by God—that they are a part of his religion—that in breaking them, by being an unfaithful husband, a dishonest servant, an unnatural son, a selfish brother, he sins, not only against man, and man’s order and laws, but against God.

Parent and child, brother and sister—those ties are not of the earth earthy, but of the heaven of God, eternal.  They may begin in time; of what happened before we came into this world we know nought.  But having begun, they cannot end.  Of what will happen after we leave this world, that at least we know in part.

Parent and child; brother and sister; husband and wife likewise; these are no ties of man’s invention.  They are ties of God’s binding; they are patterns and likenesses of his substance, and of his being.  Of the eternal Father, who says for ever to the eternal Son, ‘This day have I begotten thee.’  Of the Son who says for ever to the Father, ‘I come to do thy will, O God.’  Of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who is not ashamed to call us his brethren; but like a greater Joseph, was sent before by God to save our lives with a great deliverance when our forefathers were but savages and heathens.  Husband and wife likewise—are not they two divine words—not human words at all?  Has not God consecrated the state of matrimony to such an excellent mystery, that in it is signified and represented the mystical union between Christ and his Church?  Are not husbands to love their wives, and give themselves for them as Christ loved the Church and gave himself for it?  That, indeed, was not revealed in the Old Testament, but it is revealed in the New; and marriage, like all other human ties, is holy and divine, and comes from God down to men.

Yes.  These family ties are of God.  It was to show us how sacred, how Godlike they are—how eternal and necessary for all mankind—that Joseph’s story was written in Holy Scripture.

They are of God, I say.  And he who despises them, despises not man but God; who hath also given us his Holy Spirit to make us know how sacred these bonds are.

He who looks lightly on the love of child to parent, or brother to brother, or husband to wife, and bids each man please himself, each man help himself, and shift for himself, would take away from men the very thing which raises them above the beasts which perish, and lower them again to the likeness of the flesh, that they may of the flesh reap corruption.

They who, under whatever pretence of religion part asunder families; or tell children, like the wicked Pharisees of old, that they may say to their parents, Corban—‘I have given to God the service and help which, as your child, I should have given to you’—shall be called, if not by men, at least by God himself, hypocrites, who draw near to God with their mouths, and honour him with their lips, while their heart is far from him.

I think now we may see that I was right when I said—Perhaps the history of Joseph is in the Bible because it is a family history.  For see, it is the history of a man who loved his family, who felt that family life was holy and God-appointed; whom God rewarded with honour and wealth, because he honoured family ties; because he refused his master’s wife; because he rewarded his brothers good for evil; because he was not ashamed of his father, but succoured him in his old age.