All this is the spirit of Jacob as long as he is Jacob. Human power must be supplemented by human artifice, where it is found, as it is soon found, so greatly wanting. When in the presence of God we have measured ourselves, and have learned the secret of strength in Him, of necessity all these things drop off. Does God need man to sin for Him ? Can He not afford to be open and honest? So as we wait upon God, our hearts are purified by the faith that is in Him, for faith is at once the worker and the purifier. How good, then, is it to wait upon Him ! It is just one thing that the flesh can never do. Work, it can; plan, it can; but wait upon God, it cannot. What wonder, then, that God should send trouble to loosen our hold of other things, that we may lay hold of Him with both our hands, and lean upon Him with all our weight, and in result, find His strength made perfect in our human weakness?

This is what makes us Israels; and yet there is something more to be considered. For it is to be well understood that Peniel is not the place where Jacob becomes fully what his name is. As I have said before, he receives it, but is not confirmed in it. Nor only so:Peniel is not in the full sense what Jacob calls it. God is not yet seen face to face, although he says so. Could he, had he really met God so, add to them what he does, as if it were the great thing to rejoice in, " I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved"! Could he say to his brother Esau directly after, "I have seen thy face, as if I had seen the face of God, and thou wast pleased with me " ? Who that had seen the glorious face of God could compare it with Esau's ?

Nay, it is in the darkness he meets God here, and not in the light. When the dawn breaks, He departs. Nor does He answer the request to know His name. "And Jacob asked him, and said, ' Tell me, I pray thee, thy name.' And he said, 'Wherefore dost thou ask after my name?' And he blessed him there."

So that though he does indeed get blessing, it is not yet full blessing. And indeed how little like Israel is he in the scene that immediately follows with his brother! God has indeed Esau in hand; but Jacob, fawning in the dust, seems still the same Jacob. He does not go "after my lord, to Seir." He goes to Succoth, and builds him a house there. Then he buys a portion of a field before the Hivite city of Shechem; Dinah going out to see the Canaanitish women of the land, falls and is defiled; Simeon and Levi, with a craft and rage that the Spirit of God pronounces accursed, destroy the whole city. Jacob, through all, shows only utter weakness. His crippled thigh may be plain, but not his power with God, nor yet with men.

Striking contrast with his claim of the name and of the power ! For on that " parcel of a field " which he buys, he erects an altar which he consecrates to the name of El-elohe-Israel-"God"-or the Mighty One,-"Israel's God." Plainly, he is not disposed to think lightly of his divinely given name; nor lightly to estimate the "power" ascribed to him in it. "God is Israel's God," he says; "God belongs to Israel." And then, as in defiance of the assertion, the blast of ruin comes. The miserable man shrinking with horror from the bloody swords of his sons, shrinks yet more as he realizes the condition into which he is brought with the Canaanites around:"Ye have troubled me to make me to stink among the inhabitants of the land, among the Canaanites and the Perizzites; and I being few in number, they shall gather themselves together and slay me; and I shall be destroyed, I and my house."
Why, then, is this? What is the secret of this collapse on the part of Jacob, so immediately following what is manifestly signal and divine blessing? The following chapter shows Israel is not yet properly Israel. He has to be confirmed in the possession of his name, as he there is And yet of course the fault is entirely his, and must be his Let us proceed, and this will explain itself. Jacob has forgotten Bethel, that place so eventful in his history already, to be so still more in the time to come. God must recall him to it.

"And God said unto Jacob, 'Arise, and go up to Bethel and dwell there; and make there an altar unto God, who appeared unto thee when thou fleddest from the face of Esau thy brother.'"

At once a change takes place, and it is apparent that there is indeed a cause of weakness such as that we no longer wonder at what has occurred, but only at the grace which can deal so mercifully with those who have dishonored Him "Then Jacob said unto his household, and to all that were with him, 'Put away the strange gods that are among you, and be clean, and change your garments; and let us arise, and go up to Bethel.' …. And they gave unto Jacob all the strange gods that were in their hands and the earrings that were in their ears, and Jacob hid them under the oak which was by Shechem."

And immediately the power of God manifests itself. "And they journeyed:and the terror of God was upon the cities that were round about them, and they did not pursue after the sons of Jacob. So Jacob came to Luz, which is in the land of Canaan-that is, Bethel, he and all the people that were with him. And he built there an altar, and called the place El-Beth-el."

How marked is the difference now ! El-Bethel stands in manifest opposition to the forsaken altar of El-elohe-Israel God is no longer for him the God of Israel simply He is now "God of His own house," a house which speaks necessarily of something which belongs to God and must be kept in the holiness which becomes His dwelling-place. The sanctuary is the only place of strength and refuge for man, for it is the only place in which He dwells, in whom is our hiding-place. And from this, in absolute holiness, He governs every thing. It is clear that His power cannot be used against Himself; that man cannot be the Master, but only God ; that we belong to Him, not He to us; and thus is Jacob's great mistake revealed. Was the power of God to be associated with the false gods in Jacob's tents? Was it to be used in behalf of a house built where Jacob was to be a pilgrim and a stranger? or a piece of ground bought in close association with a heathen city? This could not be. Jacob must learn that it is not God who belongs to him, but he to God. In this way, and in this way only, can the power he has learnt be used.

And so "God appeared unto Jacob again, when he came out of Padan Aram, and blessed him."-How his wanderings since at Succoth and at Shechem are passed over here as so much lost time!-"And God said unto him, 'Thy name is Jacob:thy name shall not be called any more Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name.' And He called his name 'Israel.' "

Now he has got it, then, in full possession :- divine strength to do the divine will, and to walk in divine ways. No other way, surely, could the gift be given or enjoyed. Would we have power to work disaster with our own wills ? Would we have power without the guard of holiness? Would this be a greater gift, or no gift? a blessing, or in fact a dreadful curse?

No one, of course, could hesitate a moment how to answer a question put in that way. And yet in secret, and under the most plausible pretexts, do we not desire and expect what is indeed forever impossible ? Was not Jacob doing just this at Succoth ? was he not at Shechem ?

Has he no imitators in these Christian days? Alas! it is what is being attempted every where-to
be Israel’s, while forgetting Bethel,-to find the power of God in the path of self-will. Ah, on the other hand, would we only have the gift with the necessary conditions of it, how would the power of God indeed be realized!

For here at Bethel God proclaims Himself, what He did before to Abraham and to Isaac, the Almighty God, and bids him be fruitful and multiply, and assures to him afresh all the promises to his fathers. Surely for us, no less than for him, is all this:it is written, not for his sake, but for ours. We need but to give up to Him what is His,-to be, without reserve, surrendered to Him, to know how His strength is made perfect in weakness-how all-sufficient His grace is.

Oh, to be perfectly surrendered! Why should our own wills be so dear to us? Why should we prefer our ways to His only wise and holy ones ? why choose certain disaster, instead of pleasantness and peace ? Surely, there is no infatuation like that of unbelief; for unbelief it is, and only that which can refuse entire submission to Him who is at once our God and our Father.

Only let us remember that it is in our weakness that His strength is perfected. Our weakness remains still weakness. The strength is His, though continually put forth for us. It is our infirmities in which we glory, that the power of Christ may rest upon us. Doubly blessed is it to be thus continually made aware of the love that is set upon us, of the arm that shields us, of the might that works through us. Through all, God accomplishes in us a weaning from ourselves which is our only security. "We are the circumcision who worship God in the Spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh " (Phil. 3:3). At the end, as at the beginning, in saint or in sinner, confidence in one's self is confidence in the flesh.