And so it is with us, beloved. It is not a question between heaven and nothing, but between heaven and the world, between our taking the happiness which the Lord in His promises, or which human present circumstances, have for us. Are we desirous of divine joy and of heavenly riches? Can we say to the Lord Jesus, Thou shalt "choose our inheritance for us?" Is the distant land, of which we have received a report, our object? This was Rebecca; she could answer these questions. We should wrong her if we judged that with her it was Abraham's wealth and Isaac's hand or nothing. It was not so. As we said before, and surely the story warrants it, she had large expectations of every kind, if she remained at home. She need not take a long, untried journey with a stranger and to a strange people. But all became nothing to her, when in faith she received the report. She comes forth at the call of God.
Rebecca was a genuine daughter of Abraham. Abraham had crossed the desert at the call of the God of glory, and Rebecca now crosses the same desert at the report of what the God of glory had done for Abraham. They had the like "spirit of faith." The stronger expression of it we may find in Abraham, but it was the like "spirit of faith." Abraham had gone forth in the faith of an unattested call; Rebecca now goes forth on an accredited report. There was no Eshcol brought out of Canaan to Ur to embolden Abraham to take the journey; but "this is the fruit of it" was said to Rebecca in the servants and camels and gold and jewels--a branch with a cluster rich and abundant indeed. The report is now sealed to Rebecca, as it had not been to Abraham. Abraham tried an untried path; Rebecca did but walk in the footsteps of the flock. But they were on the same road, and reached the same place.
This is simple and beautiful in Rebecca, and the way of faith to this hour. But, beloved, there is more, and that, too, of another kind. Rebecca's character had been already formed--as, I may say, it is with all of us, before we are quickened of God. The moment of His power arrives--we are made alive with divine life then--the separating call is also answered; but it finds us of a certain character, a certain shape and complexion of mind. It finds us, it may be, Cretans (Titus i.), or brothers and sisters of Laban, or something that wears the strong stamp of a peculiar pravity of nature. And then character and mind, derived from nature or from family or from education and the like, we take with us after we have been born of the Spirit, and carry it in us across the desert from Padan-aram to the house of Abraham.
This is serious. It is serious, that with the quickening of the Spirit, nature or the force of early habits and education, or of family character, will cling to us still. "The Cretans are always liars."
Laban, with whom Rebecca had grown up, was a crafty, knowing, worldly man. It is plain that, on the occasion of Eliezer's visit, he had been moved only by the gifts. They made a ready way for Abraham's servant; as we read, A man's gift maketh room for him. Proverbs xviii. 16. Laban was evidently the stirring, active, important one in his father Bethuel's house. He had a taste for occasions which called for management. And all this is a very bad symptom. It is a bad symptom when one carries the bag. It is bad to find one prematurely managing and clever, or, at any period, fond of occasions where skill of that kind is to be exercised, having an aptness in conducting either state affairs or family interests. And just such an one was Laban; and Laban was the brother of Rebecca; and Rebecca had passed all her life, till her marriage, with him; and the family character, in this only great action in which she is called to take a part, sadly betrays itself.
If Abraham and Sarah had brought the foul, unclean compact between them, as they left their father's house to walk with God, so did Rebecca bring this family character, this Laban-leaven, with her. We have nature in its pravity with us after our conversion; and we have our own fleshly characteristics also, as well as the common pravity of nature. And we have to rebuke them sharply, that we may be sound, that is, morally healthful, in the faith. Tit. i. 13. And this lesson is afresh pressed upon us, from the story of this distinguished woman in this chapter.
But there is more of the same kind. Jacob, as well as his mother, Rebecca, got his mind formed by this same earliest influence. He was all his days--I mean, all his practical, active days--a slow-hearted, calculating man; and in this family scene, in chap. xxvii., we find him to be such an one--a ready, intelligent pupil of his mother, Laban's sister, and whose favourite child he had been from his birth. So that as Laban had been corrupting his sister Rebecca, Rebecca had been corrupting her son Jacob.
And further still, as this same chapter tells us, Isaac, whose mind and character, as we have seen, had been so remarkably formed by his early life in Sarah's tent, had sunk into the indulgence of some of the low desires of nature. He loved his son Esau, because he ate of his venison. This was poor indeed, and something worse than poor. And this love of venison, we may surely suggest, must have encouraged Esau in the chase; just as Rebecca's cleverness, got and brought from her brother's house in Padan, formed the mind and character of her favourite Jacob. And thus one parent was helping to corrupt one of the children, and the other the other.
What mischief, what sad defilement, is disclosed here, in all this family scene! But we may go on to expose it even more; for the heart is not only capable of such defilement, but it is daring enough, at times, to take its naughtiness into the sanctuary. "I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly." Proverbs v.
The word to Aaron, long after this, was, Do not drink wine nor strong drink, thou, nor thy son with thee, when ye go into the tabernacle of the congregation. Lev. x. Nature is not to be animated in order to wait on the service of God; it is not to be set in action by its provisions, for the discharge of the duties of the sanctuary. Strong drink may exhilarate, and give ebullition to animal spirits, but this is no qualification for a priest of the house of God.