“‘Whereas, thou camest but yesterday, should I this day make thee go up and down with us? Seeing I go whither I may, return thou, and take back thy brethren. Mercy and truth be with thee.’”
Here was a man who was attached to a person. That was the point I wanted to call your attention to. We are living, I think, in the day of shams. There are a good many people who are attached to creeds, denominations and churches. They are attached to this and to that, instead of a person. Creeds and churches are all right in their places, but if a man puts them in the place of the Savior and the personal Christ, then they are but snares. He would be willing to give up every thing but Christ in the hour of trouble, and if he is attached to Christ he will be able to say: “Wherever Thou goest I go.” David had nothing to offer this man. There he was—barefooted and leaving the throne. Ittai was attached to the man.
David was every thing to Ittai, and life was nothing. No man had better friends than David had in his day. What we want is to be attached to the Lord Jesus Christ as Ittai was attached to David.
JACOB.
The key to all Jacob’s difficulties will be found in the twentieth chapter of Matthew. It is the story of the laborers in the vineyard. The thought is in the second verse. The first men hired agreed to the bargain. The men would not go until the owner of the vineyard had made a bargain with them. He told them that he would pay them what was right. They got a penny. He gave them the lawful wages. They probably asked: “And is this all you are going to give us?”
Jacob was all the time making bargains.
The Christians who are making bargains with the Lord do not get as much as those who trust Him. It does not pay to make bargains with the Lord.
Jacob is a twin brother of most of us. Where you find one Joseph or one Daniel you will find a hundred Jacobs. We are not willing, all of us, to take God at His word and trust Him. There is a strong contrast between the character of Joseph and Jacob. The one trusted God implicitly, but Jacob wanted to trust Him no farther than he could see God. There would have been a great deal of murmuring if Jacob had been thrown into jail in Egypt.
No doubt Jacob got much of his weakness from his mother. There was a division in that home. Isaac favored Esau, and Rebekah favored Jacob. Such dissensions are just the thing to stir up the old Adam in the man. A mother and a father have no right to take this course. Rebekah plans continually to keep Jacob at home. The very thing that Rebekah tries to achieve, in that she fails. By nature Esau was the better of the two. If such a mean and contemptible nature as Jacob’s can be saved, then there is hope for all of us.
The Lord promised to Jacob from the bottom of the ladder what he should have. Jacob gets up and says: “If God will be with me and keep and clothe me, then shall the Lord be my God.” What a low and contemptible idea he had! God had promised him all from Dan to Beersheba.