Gen. 32:22-32 ; 33:18-20; 35:1-15.

I realize, beloved brethren, I might have taken something less familiar than what I have read, but we must be led of God; and when I come to speak I feel as if the whole Bible were shut up to me, but this one portion.

The lesson of Jacob's history must be a very remarkable one, when we see how God has emphasized it. Out of fifty chapters in Genesis, Jacob's life stretches over twenty-five. Though not always in the front, yet he is noticed within these chapters. God calls Himself the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob,- three names with which He is pleased to identify Himself. This is His memorial, and it is as such He speaks to Moses afterward. He has identified Himself with them, just as in the New Testament He has identified Himself with one blessed name; and He is now the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now there is no other name but that. In Abraham we have, in a way, given us the Father. In Isaac we have the Son. We need one more to complete the series, and in that one more (Jacob) we have the Spirit.

Jacob is his natural name – the Supplanter, but really the heel-catcher, – the one always grasping, grasping,- always ready with his hand. Spiritually he is Israel,- a prince with God. Before he comes to be this, however, there is a long discipline,- the work of the Holy Ghost in him,- and then he comes out as silver tried in the furnace – bright for God. The worse the material, the more intractable, the better it shows the workman; and this is just what we have here. It is from a Jacob, by God's grace, an Israel is formed. This is the Holy Ghost's work low.

I want to look at these passages which are marked by two altars:the one – El-elohe Israel, God the God of Israel; and El Bethel, God the God of His own House. These two things speak of turning-points in Jacob's history. The apostle tells us that before the children were born God made His choice (Rom. 9:), laying, "the elder shall serve the younger." All that ve are, and all that we ever shall be, comes out of what God has wrought, out of what is His choice; hat is, out of His heart, and not our own. We need not wonder at this, for out of the heart of man come – what? Evil thoughts, etc.,-evil, and only evil. Out of the heart of God what comes ? Rather, may we not say, what does not come that is blessed ?

In God's will it is the energy of love always,-love hat masters, love that makes us His, and that makes is followers of Him. He is the God of judgment too, as we fully see in Jacob's case; but, beloved, judgment is his strange work.

But Jacob is born in divine favor. What has he to do but just to be in the hand of Him who would hold him ? What, but just to be quiet in the hand of God? But at the end of his life he has to say "few and evil have the days of the years of my life been." A long life, we should say ; and yet, after all, the years that count, so to speak (there are many years of ours, as well as his, that may not count, are there not ?) are few and evil. This Jacob's hand,-how many things I will lay hold of, always filling itself and never full, and so God has to let the days and months and years pass on, until at last he has to give up, and meet God face to face, and then get relief.

Let us see about this catching hand of Jacob. God had said "The elder shall serve the younger." Yet in nature Esau compares favorably with Jacob:indeed, his noble bearing stands in contrast with the supplanter,- the heel-catcher. But all comes out when Esau comes in from the chase, hungry and weary. Recklessly he would barter away his birthright, for he did not value it, which Jacob takes advantage of, and buys it for a mess of pottage. Esau is stamped as a profane man:Jacob, after all, is not a profane person. He covets a right thing. His heart is set upon what is good and what is of God; but he is mean and grasping, instead of waiting upon God.

Again, God speaks of multiplying his seed like the dust of the earth. Now the dust has to be ground up beneath your feet, and that is the way he is to be multiplied,- all this suggesting the low and groveling spirit that characterized him naturally.

Another thing:Isaac gets old, and wants to bless his sons before he dies. Without right estimate of the divine judgment, naturally he likes Esau. He is not enough with God to see what He is about, and thus he would bless Esau. That is all changed; and Jacob,-how simply he might have rested in God just now, and as surely have got the blessing. What a strange thing a man should think he can wrest from God the blessing He has to give,-is ready to give! But alas, we must pay our toll,- our tribute to Satan. Men do it, Christians do it, we do it. Don't you think we do ? Not openly, perhaps, so as to realize what we are doing; but it is done. We want His blessing, but how often, like Jacob (for we are Jacobs), we take underhand means to get it. Look at all that weary way of his. Let us take God's word for it:let us trust Him, and let Him work things Himself. He will soon carry you-just as soon as He is able-into the blessing he has for you, into the contemplation of Himself,- only lie in His hand.

But Jacob's hand is again upon his brother's heel, and the result is, he is cast out of his father's family for many years. He is cast out into a world where others do with him just what he has been doing with his brother. What you sow you shall reap, says God; but in that way you learn exactly what it is you have been sowing :you learn the evil of your own way.

Oh, beloved, that we might submit to God, and learn His way of blessing, without the long journey so often trod.

Bethel he comes to. It is the house of God. His father's house lost,- a beggarly wanderer,- God opens another home. He doesn't exactly let him in, but He lets him look in; and when His government has done its work He will let him in. When he is homeless and houseless, his head upon a stone for a pillow, then he finds what he himself calls "the house of God and the gate of heaven." And then come those tender assurances, finishing with the words, "And behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whithersoever thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of." The Lord refers to this when speaking to Nathaniel in John 1:Men have their ladders, but they are all too short. Christ is the ladder that reaches to heaven itself. Jacob doesn't see all this, but he sees God at the top, who makes him those exceeding great and precious promises:"And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, . . . and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed." (Gen. 28:)

Do you ask, What has Jacob done to deserve that ? Nothing whatever. He deserved much else that follows, but he certainly hadn't deserved this. How good God is, and how good to see God saying he must not be discouraged or cast down, or let his knees knock together. But how do we account for this?

In Psalm 73:the psalmist was envious of the foolish when he saw the prosperity of the wicked. He sees how many of the good things of this world men have. It was too much for him. All the day long he was plagued, and chastened every morning; but at length he went into the sanctuary, and then understood he their end. He finds out then that all these good things that men get do not bring them nearer God, but that God insists we must be ground down to the dust, and then he blesses, and there.

I don't go round the street to take up every child to chasten him, but I chasten my own. This is what God does. But, beloved, God doesn't want to do this with His children. He wants them so near Himself He will not need to do it.

So in Padan, Jacob must toil double. He reaps away at what he had sown, and all those years would seem as if they had no effect upon him at all. Had they none ?

Now when he again gets back to the border of the land, to Mahanaim, he seems to have not learned any lesson. The word Mahanaim speaks of "two hosts," – the Lord's host and his own. He sees God, but he sees Jacob also has something pretty big; but this, beloved, is never a sign of being with God. On the contrary, to be so will manifest him as a man broken to pieces. A broken and contrite heart He will not despise. Though high and lofty, and inhabiting eternity, He will dwell with such. We would rise up and be something, as Christians be something, and God must beat us down, beat us down, beat us down, until we lie down and let Him have His way; and until He lifts us up in His way and His due season. But now he is to meet his brother, and he begins to plan and plot as the Jacob of old.

At the place '' Penuel" God meets him as a stranger, – as one hostile to Him. Jacob has all this heavy load of meeting Esau, whom he had so wronged, as an enemy. He has this additional load laid upon his shoulders,- He meets God, and He is against him, and wrestles with him. Don't mistake, beloved, if circumstances are against you. It is God. Take it from His hand. Jacob's will has not been God's will, and there must be conflict; and even when right things were in question, he could not wait to get them in God's way. Do you know, the more you believe in yourself the less you believe in God, and the measure in which you fail to trust God is the measure in which you trust in yourself. You see people who have no ability to meet anything. They wrestle with God, and wrestle and gain nothing, just as Jacob wrestled and got nothing, for indeed he got nothing by the wrestling.

But how much can a man wrestle when his thigh is out of joint ? Jacob will wrestle! Very well:God will show His strength. He must break him down, and He breaks him down. The angel says-strangely says-"Now let me go." And Jacob, in another voice – no more a wrestling man, but with a dislocated thigh – says "I will not let thee go, except thou bless me." What is he doing? Clinging – not wrestling now, but clinging! Our weakness clings to God, and from that weakness God cannot drag Himself away. Oh, how blessed this ! We look at ourselves, and we force God to come in; and, at all cost, break us down. Then, and not till the wrestler is changed to a clinger,- then he prevails.

Put your arms, in ever so much weakness, around Him, and do you think He will turn away? Will the Almighty God tear Himself away from the weakness of His creature ? Oh, no! Oh, no! Let us, beloved brethren, appropriate all this, and enjoy the blessedness of such an one. The angel now says, "What is thy name?" And he replies, "Jacob. " (Supplanter.) Do you say now, " I am a poor worm, wriggling and trying to make my way along the earth." Then God says, "Now"-not till now-"thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel; for as a Prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed." Oh, beloved, cling – don't wrestle. Wrestle, and He is strong against you; but cling, and He is not strong at all against you, but strong for you.

Jacob now says "Tell me, I pray thee, Thy name. " But He will not. Do you want to know ? Well, Jacob didn't find out. He learned one lesson:he learned himself, in some way; but he goes on into the land when he gets through with Esau, and has escaped the wrath he so much dreaded, and at Shalem, a city of Shechem, he builds there an altar, and calls it El-Elohe-Israel, "God the God of Israel." But if we only learn God as one who shelters and cares and keeps,-that is not enough. Do you rest satisfied with knowing that God belongs to you, or have you gone on to this – that you belong to God ? How easily the child of God sets aside the word of God, and resting satisfied with getting to heaven! Getting salvation, they are indifferent as to how far they obey His word. That is making use of God,- your interests are in question. But has God no interests? Jacob has no thought beyond this – that God is something" very good for Jacob, as he says just here, I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved,- although he had only met God in the dark night, and didn't see His face at all,- asked His name and didn't get it. So, after all, Jacob remains Jacob; and after God had said "Thy name shall no more be Jacob," He has afterward to call him Jacob again. The higher critics-those very wise men-do not see that these things agree, but I tell you they do agree, and it is well if we find it out. Again, Jacob has "power with men, and shall prevail," but in the next chapter he does not prevail. Instead, he and his family are in clanger of being exterminated. At least, he expects or fears this. We shall not go over that sorrowful history, but the lesson for us is plain. We may have power in a certain sense, and not have it. An engine filled with steam might do great damage if it had not rails to run upon; and God's will is the track upon which we are to run, in the power of the Spirit of God.

And now (chap. 35:), "God said unto Jacob, Arise, go up to Bethel, and make there an altar unto God." He had made it in the wrong place. Bethel is the house of God, and he is going there. See the effect:"put away the strange gods," etc. Now he is going to see God,- see Him in the light, and not in the darkness. God is to be the only God now,- only His will must be owned. Jacob will be Jacob so long as he doesn't own that. Oh, when the sense of that grace of God has come into his soul, how it beats him down, and what a past he had!

But he goes up to Bethel. He comes to Luz (separation). The break with his past is now complete for himself and all his, and he builds his altar. He calls it El-Bethel, – God the God of His own house. What a change! Long ago that house had opened its door; and Jacob remembered that; and now it is "God appeared unto Jacob again, when he came out of Padan-aram," and blessed him. But what about the long intervening time ? Ah, all that long time had been wasted and lost. Now God reminds him his name is Jacob sure enough, but it is to be no more practically that:"Israel shall be thy name."

Now, beloved, I want to urge that God has a house of His own, and He wants not that He should be conformed to our house, but that we should be conformed to His. Do we need power ? Then it must be power to do His will, – to serve Him. Which is best, God or we ? His will or ours ? God's will or Jacob's ? Oh, if we claim a right to our own way we may get it, but we shall prove it a bitter misery. If we know God, we shall cry night and day to Him "Don't give me ray will, give me Thine." If you have met God face to face, He will be all glorious to you, and you'll be in the dust forever:you'll be like Job, when he met God face to face, and he says "I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee, wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." That was the repentance of a saint, but one learning to see himself in the light of God. This is the very secret of holiness. He abhorred himself and his ways, and now he says, like Jacob:"God is to be the God of His own house, the house that opened its doors for me when I was a poor homeless wrecked sinner, and at last brought me in there to enjoy all its blessedness."

The power of that name of Israel will never be known by you till your whole soul bows in reverence before His face. Have you really looked God in the face, and don't care how much you obey Him or do His will? There is but one place for us,- down, down in the dust, in the presence of God,-the God of His own house,-in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ.

If you want to know what power is, remember that, if you want to glorify Christ, you'll never lack power, – the power of the Holy Ghost; but if you want to glorify yourself, like the engine off the track and full of steam, you can't have power but to do evil,-evil to yourself and others.