"Then Jacob went on his journey, and came into the land of the people of the east." As we have just seen, in Chap. xxviii., Jacob utterly fails in the apprehension of God's real character, and meets all the rich grace of Bethel with an "if," and a miserable bargain about food and raiment. We now follow him into a scene of thorough bargain-making. "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." There is no possibility of escaping from this. Jacob had not yet found his true level in the presence of God; and therefore God uses circumstances to chasten and break him down.
This is the real secret of much, very much, of our sorrow and trial in the world. Our hearts have never been really broken before the Lord; we have never been self-judged and self-emptied; and hence, again and again, we, as it were, knock our heads against the wall. No one can really enjoy God until he has got to the bottom of self, and for this plain reason, that God has begun the display of himself at the very point at which the end of flesh is seen. If, therefore, I have not reached the end of my flesh, in the deep and positive experience of my soul, it is morally impossible that I can have any thing like a just apprehension of God's character. But I must, in some way or other, be conducted to the true measure of nature. To accomplish this end, the Lord makes use of various agencies which, no matter what they are, are only effectual when used by him for the purpose of disclosing, in our view, the true character of all that is in our hearts. How often do we find, as in Jacob's case, that even although the Lord may come near to us and speak in our ears, yet we do not understand his voice or take our true place in his presence. "The Lord is in this place, and I knew it not.... How dreadful is this place!" Jacob learnt nothing by all this, and it therefore needed twenty years of terrible schooling, and that, too, in a school marvellously adapted to his flesh; and even that, as we shall see, was not sufficient to break him down.
However, it is remarkable to see how he gets back into an atmosphere so entirely suited to his moral constitution. The bargain-making Jacob meets with the bargain-making Laban, and they are both seen as it were, straining every nerve to outwit each other. Nor can we wonder at Laban, for he had never been at Bethel: he had seen no open heaven with a ladder reaching from thence to earth; he had heard no magnificent promises from the lips of Jehovah, securing to him all the land of Canaan, with a countless seed: no marvel, therefore, that he should exhibit a grasping, grovelling spirit; he had no other resource. It is useless to expect from worldly men aught but a worldly spirit and worldly principles and ways; they have gotten naught superior; and you cannot bring a clean thing out of an unclean. But to find Jacob, after all he had seen and heard at Bethel, struggling with a man of the world, and endeavoring by such means to accumulate property, is peculiarly humbling.
And yet, alas! it is no uncommon thing to find the children of God thus forgetting their high destinies and heavenly inheritance, and descending into the arena with the children of this world, to struggle there for the riches and honors of a perishing, sin-stricken earth. Indeed, to such an extent is this true, in many instances, that it is often hard to trace a single evidence of that principle which St. John tells us "overcometh the world." Looking at Jacob and Laban, and judging of them upon natural principles, it would be hard to trace any difference. One should get behind the scenes, and enter into God's thoughts about both, in order to see how widely they differed. But it was God that had made them to differ, not Jacob; and so it is now. Difficult as it may be to trace any difference between the children of light and the children of darkness, there is nevertheless a very wide difference indeed,--a difference founded on the solemn fact that the former are "the vessels of mercy, which God has afore prepared unto glory," while the latter are "the vessels of wrath, fitted (not by God, but by sin) to destruction."[18] (Rom. ix. 22, 23.) This makes a very serious difference. The Jacobs and the Labans differ materially, and have differed, and will differ forever, though the former may so sadly fail in the realization and practical exhibition of their true character and dignity.