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T h e
K i n g ’ s
B u s i n e s s
April 1932
J acob ’ s N ew N ature T he climax ^ of the life of Jacob was at the time when the “ supplanter” became the “ prince of God.” It was the proper zenith o f the scheming life. He was in the worst kind of difficulty because of his planning, yet he had other plans. How like Jacob most of us are! One plan falls, and we hasten to make another. One scheme;:Jails, and we hur riedly work out the next one. The time had come when God was going to bring Jacob to the end of himself. It was another night. Before him was a stream of water. Before him was also the neces sity of meeting his wronged brother, Esau. There was no way out of it. When Jacob was left alone, there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. The story of this trans formation of character is told in very few verses. The struggle that night continued until a weak voice pleadingly said, “ I will not let thee go except thou bless me.” It was not now the cry of persistence. It was not the determina tion of a strong man. It was the clinging of a ’weak man. It was not the shout of conquest; it was the wail o f sub mission. It was victory through surrender. Jacob’s own interpretation of the event was given in the closing days of his life, when he /Spoke of “ the angel which redeemed me from all evil.” The messenger which brought to him deliverance from himself and from his old nature, the thing which had meant constant defeat, also brought him a new nature. The impartation of the new nature was symbolized by a change of name; and the man who was Jacob, the supplanter, became Israel, a prince with God. We learn from Jacob that God takes very ordinary clay to make His heroes of faith. It is not a matter of what Jacob can do for God or what Jacob can do for Jacob, but of what God can do for Jacob. Grasping, bargaining, scheming, gaining, but never finding what he really want ed, until, at the end of his rope, he was willing to cast him self upon God, Jacob becomes the reflection of our own image in the mirror of God’s Word.
the man of immediacy, the man who saw only the value of the present moment, could not. The father and mother, of course, were fond of their children, but as is so often the case, both seemed to have a special fondness for the one unlike themselves. It is easy to see that Esau had much of his mother’s nature. Re- bekah was of the dashing, open-air family of her brother, Laban, and Esau was very much like her. Jacob, no doubt, was like Isaac, gentle and quiet, and a home body. Perhaps, the very dash which Isaac had admired in Rebekah carried his admiration to Esau. Rebekah, on the other hand, saw in Jacob some of the gentle, quiet qualities that she had admired in Isaac. Then, too, she had the mother love for the weaker o f the children. The partiality of the home may have helped to separate the brothers and to settle each in his own way of living. In our recognition of the weaknesses in character of Jacob, there must be an understanding of this home background and the realization that the parents made their contribution to Jacob’s moral defeat. It was Jacob’s mother who originated the idea of dis guising him as Esau, that he might steal the first blessing. She made the savory meat, she took the raiment of Esau and put it on Jacob, and she put the skins of the kids upon his hands and upon the smooth of his neck. Later, it was Jacob’s mother who sent him away to escape Esau. She was neither the first nor the last to have the idea that everything will be all right if only the sinner changes his location. What Jacob needed was not to es cape Esau, but to escape himself. Esau was not his worst enemy. Jacob was his worst enemy. Many think that a change of environment can change their characters. They have been defeated in this city; but, if they can get to another city, things will be all right. The trouble is that, when they reach the other city, their main source of defeat is still with them. J acob at B ethel In imagination, one may follow Jacob to Bethel. Here was the young man who was perhaps spending his first night away from home. Esau was a roamer, a man of ex perience. But Jacob was a home body, tied to his m o ther's apron strings. It was the first night there was not a mother to shake up his pillow; instead, there was a pil low of stone. One is not surprised that he dreamed, but one is sur prised at the character of his dream. In his dream, there was set beside him, not a pit into which he .might fall, but a ladder up which he might climb. Alone under the stars, a man has a chance to see things as they are. Civilization always carries its delusions. Buildings and other material things around him suggest values which are not real. Out under the stars, with face turned toward the sky, there is an opportunity to think of permanent things; and a man then whispers to himself, “ Consider Him which made the Pleiades and Orion.” This was an experience which never lost its effect upon Jacob. It is true that there was failure in his life after that. He still schemed and undertook to do for him self the thing which God wanted to do for him, but we read that, at the close of Jacob’s life, “Jacob said unto Jo seph, God Almighty appeared unto me at Luz in the land of Canaan, and blessed me, And said unto me, Behold, I will make thee fruitful, and multiply thee, and I will make o f thee a multitude of people; and will give this land to thy seed after thee for an everlasting possession.”
The Passing o f the O ld Guard
"For he was a good man, and full o f the Holy Ghost, and o f faith . .. A fter he had served his own gen eration by the will of God, he fell on sleep.”
H. G. D ean O n e w e e k after the death of Dr. T. C. Horton, Mr. Harry G. Dean, who for twenty years was the manager of the Biola Book Room, went to be with his Lord. Mr. Dean was sixty-five years o f age. He was an elder in the session o f the First United Presbyterian Church o f Los Angeles and a teacher o f a large Sunday-school class. He leaves a daughter, Mrs. Dorothy Beau mont, o f this city. The funeral services were held in the auditorium o f the Bible Institute. Mr. Dean’s pastor, Dr. W . E. McCulloch, was assisted in the services by Dr. George Davidson and by the President o f the Institute. The Old Guard is passing on—Lyman Stewart, Milton Stewart, Reuben A. Torrey, Thomas C. Horton, Harry G. Dean. Yet the One in whom we and they have trusted is “ the same yes terday, today and for ever.”
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