IV
JACOB-WRESTLING
"Lord, teach us to pray."--Luke xi. 1.
"Jacob called the name of the place Peniel."--Gen. xxxii. 30.
ALL
the time that Jacob was in Padan-aram we
search in vain for prayer, for praise. or for piety
of any kind in Jacob's life. We read of his marriage,
and of his great prosperity, till the land could nnno
longer hold him. But that is all. It is not said in
so many words indeed that Jacob absolutely denied
and forsook the God of his fathers: it is not said
that he worshipped idols in Padan-aram: that is
not to be supposed--only, he wholly neglected,
avoided, and lived without God in that land. In
the days of his youth, and when he was on his
fugitive way from his father's house, Jacob had
passed through an experience that promised to us
that Jacob, surely above all men, would ever after
be a man of prayer, and a man of praise, and a man
of a close walk with God, a man who would always
pay his vow wherever he went. But Bethel--and
all that passed at Bethel--was clean forgotten in
Padan-aram; where Jacob increased exceedingly,
and had much cattle, and camels, and maid-servants,
and men-servants.
Time went on in this way till the Lord said unto
Jacob: "Return unto the land of thy fathers and
to thy kindred; and I will be with thee." And
Jacob rose up to go to Isaac his father in the
land of Canaan. But every step that Jacob took
brought him nearer to the land of Edom also:
where Esau dwelt with all his armed men about
him. And that brought back all Jacob's early
days to his mind, as they had not been in his mind
now for many years; till, by the time Jacob arrived at
the Jabbok, he was in absolute terror at the thought
of Esau. But Jacob never lacked resource: and
at the Jabbok he made a halt, and there he did this.
He took of that which came to his hand a present
for Esau his brother. For he said, "I will appease
him with the present that goeth before me, and
afterward I will see his face: peradventure he will
accept of me." But, to Jacob's great terror, Esau
never looked at Jacob's present, but put on his
armour in silence, and came posting northwards
at the head of four hundred Edomite men. Had
Jacob had nothing but his staff with which he
passed over Jordan, his mind would have been more
at rest. But with all these women and children
and cattle--was ever a man taken in such a cruel
trap ? And he took them and sent them over the
brook, and sent over all that he had. And when
the night fell, Jacob was left alone. Till every
plunge of the angry Jabbok, and every roar of the
midnight storm, made Jacob feel the smell of Esau's
hunting coat, and the blow of his heavy hand.
Whether in the body, or whether out of the body,
Jacob could never tell. It was Esau, and it was
not Esau. It was God Himself, and it was not
God. It was God
and Esau--both together. Till
Jacob to the day of his death never could tell
who that terrible wrestler really was. But as the
morning broke, and as he departed, the wrestler
from heaven said to Jacob, "Thy name shall be
called no more Jacob, but Israel." And he
blessed him there. And Jacob called the name of
the place Peniel: which by interpretation is The
face of God: for he said, "I have seen God face to
face, and my life is preserved."
"Lord, teach us to pray," petitioned the disciple
in the text. Well, we see here how the whole of
Jacob's life was laid out, and overruled, and visited
of God in order to teach Jacob to pray, in order to
make Jacob a prince in prayer. And all his long
and astonishing story, with all its ups and downs,
is preserved and is told to us, to teach us also how
to pray. Lord, teach us to pray!
1. Well, the first lesson we are taught out of Jacob
is this--that as long as all goes well with us, we,
too, are tempted to neglect God: we seldom, or
never pray--to be called prayer. As Huysman
says in
En route, "The rich, the healthy, the happy
seldom pray." You would have said that Jacob
had had such an upbringing and had fallen into
such transgressions, all followed by such mercies,
and by such manifestations of God, that he could
never again forget God. You would have said
that. But no sooner was Jacob safely out of Esau's
reach: no sooner had Jacob's affairs begun to
prosper in Padan-aram than Jacob's conscience
of sin fell asleep. And Jacob's conscience would
have slept on till the day of judgment had God and
Esau left Jacob alone. And that is our own case
exactly. "The heart is deceitful," says the prophet,
"who can know it?" Well, we know it so far.
We know it thus far, at any rate--that we easily
forgive ourselves the hurt we have done to other
men. We have short memories for our own sins,
and for other men's sufferings. Only once in a long
while do we remember, and take to heart what we
have done to other men. We have a long memory
for what other men have done to us: but all that
is changed when we are the wrong-doers. Let those,
who have suffered at our hands be long enough
out of our sight, and at a safe enough distance, and
we say, Soul, take thine ease. From the day of
the barter of the birthright, down to that arresting
night at the Jabbok, Jacob had seen himself, and
his share in all that bad business, with his own partial
and indulgent eyes. Whereas Esau had seen himself
with his own injured and angry eyes: and, for
once, God had seen all that evil transaction with
Esau's eyes also. Only, all the time that Jacob
prospered in Padan-aram, God was as if He had not
seen. God "winked," as we say, at Jacob's sin
till Jacob was at the top of his prosperity, and then
God opened His eyes on Jacob's sin, and He opened
Jacob's eyes also. If you will read Jacob's Padan-aram
life with attention--with your eye on the
object--you will see that Jacob had no time in
Padan-aram for prayer--to be called prayer. "Thus
I was," complains Jacob, "in the day the drought
consumed me, and the frost by night: and my
sleep departed from mine eyes: Thus have I been
twenty years." You know it yourselves, and you
complain about it. What with the pressure of
domestic duties: what with the tremendous and
cruel competition of modern business life: what
with the too late hours of the best society in the
city: what with the sports and games of your
holiday: and what with the multitude of books and
papers of all kinds that you must keep up with--sleep
even, not to speak of salvation, departs from your
eyes. "Thus was I," complained graceless Jacob.
2."So went the present over before Jacob: and
himself lodged that night in the company." But
Jacob could not sleep. He could not lie down even.
He was in a thousand minds. He was tossed with
tempest, and not comforted. And he rose up, and
sent over the brook all that he had. One thing
Jacob had quite determined on,--he would not return
to Padan-aram. At any risk, he would set his face
to go on to Canaan. And when he had taken the
decisive step of crossing the Jabbok, and when his
household had all laid them down to sleep--Jacob
was left alone, and Jacob set himself to "watch
and pray." Jacob, deliberately and of set purpose,
prepared himself for a whole night of prayer. "But
thou," said our Lord, "when thou prayest, enter
into thy closet, and shut thy door." Well, that
was just what Jacob did that night, and I suspect
Jacob, that he had not done so much as that for
the past twenty years. Leave me alone he said.
Lie you down and sleep in safety, and I will take a
lantern and a sword, and I will watch the sleeping
camp myself to-night. And he did so. And that
is the second lesson out of Jacob at the Jabbok.
This lesson, namely: that there are seasons in our
lives when true prayer demands tine, and place,
and preparation, and solitude. When we are full
of some great piece of business; when a lawyer is
at a dying man's bedside taking down his last testament;
when a minister is in the depths of the
preparation of his sermon, and when the spirit of
God is resting on him with power; when any really
serious business has hold of us, we have no scruple
in saying that we must be left alone. This, I say
is the second lesson here.
Let a long journey then--by land or sea--at one
time, be set apart for prayer. A whole day sometimes,
a birthday, the anniversary of our engagement
to be married, or of our marriage, or again an
anniversary of some such matter as Jacob's deception
of Esau, or of his flight, or what not. Every
man's life is full of "days to be remembered."
Then let them be remembered,--and with deliberation
and resolution and determination; and your
life will yet be as well worth writing, and as well
worth reading as Jacob's life is. Insist that you
are to be left alone sometimes in order that you
may take a review of your past life, and at the
same time a forecast of coming danger and death:
and that will turn all the evil of your past life into
positive good: that will take all the danger out of
coming danger, and death itself out of fast approaching
death. Make experiment: pray with deliberation,
and with all proper preparation-and see!
3: Jacob, we are delighted to see, deliberately
and resolutely set apart that whole night to prayer:
and his prayer took him that whole night, and
until the "breaking of the day." But, to do
what? Why did it take Jacob so long to offer
his prayer? Was God unwilling to hear Jacob?
No, that cannot be the true explanation. God was
neither absent nor was He unwilling. God had
come down to the Jabbok for this very purpose--
to hear and to answer Jacob's prayer, and to
serve Jacob's life from Esau's anger. God was
ready to hear and to answer: but Jacob was not
yet ready to ask aright. Jacob had twenty years
of unbelief and self-forgiveness, and forgetfulness
of Esau's injury, and total neglect and want of
practice in penitence, and humiliation, and sorrow
for sin. Jacob had all that, somehow or other,
to undo, and to get over, before his life could be
preserved: and the wonder to me is that Jacob
accomplished so much in such a short time. You
must all know how hard it is to put yourself into
your injured brother's place, and how long it takes
you to do it. It is very hard for you to see, and to
confess that God is no respecter of persons. It is
a terrible shock to you to be told--shall not the
judge of all the earth do right between you and
your injured brother? You know how hard, how
cruel, it is to see yourself as others see you, and
judge you: especially as those see you and judge
you who have been hurt by you. It is like death
and hell pulling your body and your soul to pieces
to take to heart all your sin against your neighbour,
as
he takes it to
his heart. And that is why Jacob
at the Jabbok has such a large place in your Bible:
because, what you have taken so many years to
do, Jacob did at the Jabbok in as many hours.
You surely all understand, and will not forget,
what exactly it was that Jacob did beside that
angry brook that night? The evening sun set on
Jacob sophisticating, and plotting, and planning
how he could soften and bribe back to silence, if
not to brotherly love, his powerful enemy, Esau;
but before the morning sun rose on Peniel, Jacob
was at God's feet--aye, and at Esau's feet also--a
broken-hearted, absolutely surrendered, absolutely
silent and submissive penitent. "In whose spirit
there is no guile . . . I acknowledged my sin unto
Thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. . . . For
this shall every one that is godly pray unto Thee
in a time when Thou mayest be found: surely in
the floods of great waters they shall not come nigh
unto him."
4. But Jacob at the Jabbok always calls up our
Lord in Gethsemane. Now, why did our Lord need
to spend so much of that Passover night alone in
prayer? and in such an agony of prayer, even unto
blood? He did not have the sins of His youth
coming back on Him in the garden: nor did He
have twenty years of neglect of God, and man, to
get over. No. It was not that. But it was this.
I speak it not of commandment, but by permission.
It may have been this. I believe it was this. This.
Human nature, at its best, in this life, is still so far
from God--even after it has been redeemed, and
renewed, and sanctified, and put under the power
of the Holy Ghost for a lifetime--that, to reduce
it absolutely down to its very last submission, and
its very last surrender, and its very last obedience,
the very Son of God, Himself, had to drag His
human heart to God's feet, with all His might, and
till His sweat was blood, with the awful agony of
it. "I have neglected Thee, O God, but I will
enter into my own heart," cries Lancelot Andrewes,
"I will come to Thee in the innermost marrow of
my soul." "It is true prayer, it is importunate,
persevering and agonising prayer that deciphers
the hypocrite," says Jonathan Edwards, repeating
Job. "My uncle," says Coleridge's nephew, "when
I was sitting by his bedside, very solemnly declared
to me his conviction on this subject. 'Prayer,' he
said, 'is the very highest energy of which the human
heart is capable': prayer, that is, with the total
concentration of all the faculties. And the great
mass of worldly men, and learned men, he pronounced
absolutely incapable of prayer. 'To
pray,' he said, 'to pray as God would have us
pray,--it is this that makes me to turn cold in
my soul. Believe me, to pray with all your heart,
and strength, that is the last, the greatest
achievement of the Christian's warfare on this earth.
Lord, teach us to pray!' And with that he
burst into a flood of tears and besought me to pray
for him! Oh, what a light was there!"
5. We understand now, and we willingly accept,
and we will not forget Jacob's new name of
"Israel." Yes: it was meet and he was worthy.
For he behaved himself like a prince of the Kingdom
of Heaven that night. Prayer, my brethren, is
princely work--prayer, that is, like Jacob's prayer
at the Jabbok. Prayer, at its best, is the noblest,
the sublimest, the most magnificent, and stupendous
act that any creature of God can perform on earth
or in heaven. Prayer is far too princely a life for
most men. It is high, and they are low, and they
cannot attain to it. True prayer is colossal work.
There were giants in those days. Would
you be
one of this royal race? Would
you stand in the
lot of God's princeliest elect at the end of your
days? And would you be numbered with His
Son and with His choicest saints? Then,
pray.
"Hitherto have ye asked nothing in My name:
ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full."
