But oh! how well one knows the opposition of the human heart to all this! Any attitude for it save that of patient waiting upon God. It is almost enough to drive nature to distraction to find itself bereft of all resource but God. This tells us in language not to be misunderstood the true character of human nature. In order to know what nature is, I need not travel into those scenes of vice and crime which justly shock all refined moral sense. No: all that is needful is just to try it for a moment in the place of dependence, and see how it will carry itself there. It really knows nothing of God, and therefore cannot trust him; and herein lies the secret of all its misery and moral degradation. It is totally ignorant of the true God, and can therefore be naught else but a ruined and worthless thing. The knowledge of God is the source of life,--yea, is itself life; and until a man has life, what is he, or what can he be?
Now, in Rebekah and Jacob, we see nature taking advantage of nature in Isaac and Esau. It was really this. There was no waiting upon God whatever. Isaac's eyes were dim: he could therefore be imposed upon, and they set about doing so, instead of looking to God, who would have entirely frustrated Isaac's purpose to bless the one whom God would not bless,--a purpose founded in nature, and most unlovely nature, for "Isaac loved Esau," not because he was the first-born, but "because he did eat of his venison." How humiliating!
But we are sure to bring unmixed sorrow upon ourselves when we take ourselves, our circumstances, or our destinies, out of the hands of God.[17] Thus it was with Jacob, as we shall see in the sequel. It has been observed by another, that "whoever observes Jacob's life, after he had surreptitiously obtained his father's blessing, will perceive that he enjoyed very little worldly felicity. His brother purposed to murder him, to avoid which he was forced to flee from his father's house; his uncle Laban deceived him, as he had deceived his father, and treated him with great rigor; after a servitude of twenty-one years, he was obliged to leave him in a clandestine manner, and not without danger of being brought back or murdered by his enraged brother; no sooner were these fears over, than he experienced the baseness of his son Reuben, in defiling his bed; he had next to bewail the treachery and cruelty of Simeon and Levi towards the Shechemites; then he had to feel the loss of his beloved wife; he was next imposed upon by his own sons, and had to lament the supposed untimely end of Joseph; and, to complete all, lie was forced by famine to go into Egypt, and there died in a strange land. So just, wonderful, and instructive are all the ways of providence."
This is a true picture, so far as Jacob was concerned; but it only gives us one side, and that the gloomy side. Blessed be God, there is a bright side likewise; for God had to do with Jacob; and in every scene of his life, when Jacob was called to reap the fruits of his own plotting and crookedness, the God of Jacob brought good out of evil, and caused his grace to abound over all the sin and folly of his poor servant. This we shall see as we proceed with his history.
I shall just offer a remark here upon Isaac, Rebekah, and Esau. It is very interesting to observe how, notwithstanding the exhibition of nature's excessive weakness, in the opening of this 27th chapter, Isaac maintains by faith the dignity which God had conferred upon him. He blesses with all the consciousness of being endowed with power to bless. He says, "I have blessed him; yea, and he shall be blessed.... Behold, I have made him thy lord, and all his brethren have I given to him for servants; and with corn and wine have I sustained him; and what shall I do now unto thee, my son?" He speaks as one who by faith, had at his disposal all the treasures of earth. There is no false humility, no taking a low ground by reason of the manifestation of nature. True, he was on the eve of making a grievous mistake,--even of moving right athwart the counsel of God; still he knew God, and took his place accordingly, dispensing blessings in all the dignity and power of faith. "I have blessed him; yea, and he shall be blessed." "With corn and wine have I sustained him." It is the proper province of faith to rise above all one's own failure, and the consequences thereof, into the place where God's grace has set us.