Part 4 (2/2)

There were two prominent citizens of the town in the room, on whose faces I noticed a peculiar expression as the man was talking. After he left, one of them said:

”Do you know, Mr. Moody, that man's own brother was a drunkard and committed suicide a few weeks ago and left a widow with seven children; they are under his roof now! He was a terrible drunkard himself until the shock of his brother's suicide cured him.”

I don't know how you can account for it unless he thought his brother wasn't a relative. Perhaps he was a sort of a Cainite, saying, ”Am I my brother's keeper?”

When I was a pastor of a church in Chicago we were trying to get hold of the working-men. They used to say:

”Come down to the factory at dinner-time and we will give you a chance to speak.”

I would ask them, ”Why won't you come to the church?”

”Oh,” they would say, ”you have it all your own way there, and we can't answer back; but come to the factory and we will put a few questions to you.”

So I went down, and they made it pretty hot for me sometimes. One of the favorite characters that they brought up was Jacob. Many a time I have had men say, ”You think Jacob was a saint, don't you? He was a big rascal.” Many have said they thought Jacob wasn't as good as Esau. Notice this fact. You read in the Bible, ”I will punish Jacob according to his doings.” This law of retribution runs through his Life; although he was a friend of G.o.d, a kinsman of Abraham, and was third in the line of the covenant, yet G.o.d made Jacob reap the same kind of seed he sowed. Some one has said that ”Jacob's misfortunes were uniformly calculated to bring back to his recollection the picture as well as the punishment of his faults.”

When Isaac in his old age wanted some venison, and sent Esau out to get it, Jacob slipped out and took a kid from his father's flock, and Rebekah, his mother, cooked it; he brought it to his old blind father and said he was Esau. The old man recognized his voice, but he had very cunningly put the skin of the kid on his hands and neck; so that the old man felt him and said;

”The voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau.”

By this lie he got his brother's birthright blessing, but he paid ten thousand times more for it than it was worth. ”Who steals my purse steals trash.” A man who steals my pocketbook is the chief sufferer, not I. When Jacob had grown to be an old man, he lived in continual suspicion that his sons were deceiving him. The sin of deceiving his own father bore fruit.

Jacob was the great loser in this transaction. When Esau returned he had to flee for his life. Then G.o.d met him at Bethel. ”And behold, the Lord stood above it and said, I am the Lord G.o.d of Abraham thy father, and the G.o.d of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed: and thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth: and thou shalt spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.

”And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again unto this land, for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.”

Men will read that far in the life of Jacob and say, ”I don't want anything more to do with a G.o.d who will deal in grace with a man who had done so mean a thing.” My friend, hold on. Follow him to Padanaram. He was there twenty years, and during that time his wages were changed ten times. He worked seven years for the lovely Rachel, and then had another woman put upon him. Jacob had by deception obtained the blessing of the first-born son, but Laban sarcastically reminded him, ”It must not be so done in my country to give the younger before the first-born.” He found that Laban could drive as sharp a bargain as he. Wherever you find a sharp, shrewd man, you will always find that he draws just such men around him, and that he who cheats will himself be cheated. ”Birds of a feather flock together”; blasphemers get together, and sharp, shrewd men get together. Jacob found in Laban just such a man as himself. It was ”diamond cut diamond.”

Look a little further. Jacob had twelve sons, but he loved Joseph and Benjamin more than the others because they were the sons of his beloved Rachel. He was partial to Joseph, and had a coat made of many colors for him. Partiality will raise the old Adam in any family.

One morning Joseph, in the innocence of his heart, tells a dream in which his father and all his brothers had bowed down to him. Then his brothers began to plan to get him out of the way, and when his father sent him to find them when they were tending the flocks, they said:

”Now we have him; let us slay him and cast him into a pit, and say that some beast has devoured him.”

Later they sold him, and took his coat of many colors and dipped it in the blood of a kid, and, taking it to their father, said: ”This have we found; know now whether it be thy son's coat or no.” And he knew it and said, ”It is my son's coat; an evil beast hath devoured him.”

Now notice: Jacob deceived his father with the skin of a kid, and his sons deceived him with the blood of a kid. Jacob lied to his father, and his sons lied to him. The lie came home. Every lie is bound to come back to you. You cannot dig a grave so deep but that it will have a resurrection. Tramp, tramp, your sins will all come back.

”Be sure your sin will find you out.” You may think you are very shrewd and far-sighted, and can plan and cover up, but it is the decree of high heaven that no sin shall be covered; G.o.d will uncover it. You cannot deceive the Almighty. Jacob found that out. He had to reap what he sowed.

Again, look at David. A man said to me some years ago:

”Don't you think David fell as low as Saul?”

Yes, he fell lower, because G.o.d had lifted him higher. The difference is that when Saul fell there was no sign of repentance, but when David fell, a wail went up from his broken heart; there was true repentance. No man in all the Scripture record rose so high and fell so low as David. G.o.d took him from the sheepfold and placed him on the throne. He gave him riches and lands in abundance. He was on a pinnacle of glory, and was loved and honored among men. But one day, you remember, David was walking upon the roof of the king's house, and he saw Bathsheba, and l.u.s.ted after her, and committed the awful sin of adultery; and then, to cover up that sin, he made Bathsheba's husband drunk, and had him murdered. The decree came: ”I will raise up evil in thy family and the sword shall never leave thy house.” Amnon, David's son, commits adultery with David's own daughter. Absalom makes a feast for Amnon and has him murdered. Not long after he comes with an army to drive David, his father, from the throne, and publicly commits adultery with David's concubines on the roof of the king's house; if G.o.d had not been overruling, he would have killed his father.

David sowed adultery and reaped it in his own family. He sowed murder and reaped it in his own family. I believe that what brought the bitter wail from that father's heart when he said, ”Oh, my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would G.o.d I had died for thee,” was the fact that these were the wages of his own sin. From the time he fell into that sin with Uriah's wife until he went down to his grave, it was one billow after another rolling over him.

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