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V.
THE LOST BIRTHRIGHT

"Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright. For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears." – Heb. xii. 16, 17.

These words have always seemed to be among the very saddest in the book of God. No place of repentance, though sought carefully with tears! It is a very terrible picture, and seems to describe the experience of what must have been a very wretched and blighted life. It is possible that if we study the matter closely some of the tones of sadness may be lightened; but still Esau and his sad history will remain one of the dark perplexities of Scripture, just as the acts and the fate of men like Esau are among the most inscrutable mysteries of life. There are men like Esau cropping up everywhere; men who seem born to lose their birthright, to be befooled by the keen and subtle Jacobs, to be seeking ever places of repentance, and to find Fate inexorable to their tears. Men born under the dark doom of the rejected, we are tempted to say – so inevitable their destiny appears from the first. In this case, "the elder shall serve the younger," was written of the twin brethren in the womb, and Jacob was the successful supplanter from his birth. There are many sad mysteries in life, and the history of such natures and their destiny are among the saddest. We cannot hope to fathom it on earth; but blessed be God for the assurance which we are not only permitted but bound to cherish, that all which is inscrutable here and dark with shadows will unfold a divine order and beauty in the long bright day of eternity.

Esau and Jacob, both in their personal character and their relations with each other, are representative men, and foreshow in brief the essential character of large phases and long periods of human development. They place before us, as we read the record of their personal history, the great twin brethren, the Gentile and the Jewish, perhaps even more widely the Christian and the heathen, sections of mankind. The earlier records of the book of God are full of such typical characters and lives. In truth, in the earliest time life was typical; men lived in large and free intercourse with Nature and with their fellow-men. The conventional swathing-bands with which modern society has bound itself were unknown. Men lived boldly from within, and what they said and did had broad human significance, and forecast naturally what men would say and do under the same conditions to the end of time. Hence, we imagine, the exceeding fulness of the book of Genesis in its painting of character and life. Nowhere have we anything like such large and graphic portraiture as here. The reason is surely that in those ages life was richly doctrinal, and that the God who caused all Holy Scripture to be written for our learning saw that the history of such lives as those of Abraham, Isaac, Esau, Jacob, and Joseph, would be the most precious legacy which could be handed down from the age of the patriarchs to all time.

The contrast of these two men is peculiarly rich and instructive. Esau is the lusty, genial, jovial pagan; impulsive, impetuous, frank, and generous, but sensual and self-willed. A man keenly alive to the claims and experiences of the moment; slow to believe in unseen realities and the harvest which could only be reaped beyond long years of patience and pain. Jacob, on the other hand, led from the first a meditative and interior life. What may be meant by the description, "a plain man, dwelling in tents," is not very apparent. It certainly does not simply describe a fact in his history, but rather a feature of his character. He loved the home life; while the burly Esau was abroad in the field, he loved to sit at home, meditating on many things, and amongst them the highest – a plain man, sound, pure, pious, as some commentators have it. The meaning of the word is certainly moral; "integer vitæ," may perhaps express it. The pilgrim Abraham was reproduced in Jacob in some of the main features of his character. He could understand, at any rate, what Esau apparently could never understand – the sacredness of a Divine vocation, the value of a birthright which carried with it a Divine benediction, and which was freighted with the Divine promise to the world. The grand distinction between the two men from the first was, that Jacob had faith, while Esau had none. Jacob had the heart of a pilgrim, Esau the heart of a "prince of this world." Jacob saw something behind the veil, which filled his soul with awe and made his life a constant aspiration; Esau saw that on this side the veil which filled him with the only pleasure which he cared to grasp at, and which taught him to look upon his brother's pilgrim lot and halting step as the sign of a broken and wasted life. Esau had his grand success in the princedom which he founded. You may read the list of the "dukes of Edom, who sprang from him," in the chapters which record his history. The sad and weary Jacob, standing before Pharaoh when his race was well nigh run, witnessed this confession, "Few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage." His success lay beyond generations and ages, beyond the rising of the "Star that should come out of" his house, beyond the resurrection day. Jacob's life won no success but such as he shares with humanity in time and in eternity. His success is our success; in his blessing we are blessed. He stands forth in the early twilight of history as the typical child of the kingdom, the Prince of God, having power with two worlds. He is the representative of the elect men and races. This election is a broad, plain, principle of God's government. In all ages God is wont to call men, races, nations, out of the commonwealth of humanity, and to bring them near unto Himself. Their election is to service – high service, hard battle, stern endurance. First in honour, they must be first in perils, pains, temptations, and toils. Privilege is a word of abundant meaning in the book of God's dispensations; but it means privilege to be first – to lead the van, to clear the way, to open new paths for progress through the jungle of ignorance and night. Privilege to belong to a privileged class, to special advantage and certain success; privilege to run the race of life, light and trim against weighted competitors, is part of the devil's gospel, not of God's. Of this royal class, who are God's elect ministers to mankind in all their generations, Jacob is a typical representative. We learn from his character and history what God means by callings, birthrights, and blessings, and how much those whom He places in the front rank have to toil and suffer for the world. There is something in Jacob's character and in the development of his life which is significant for all time, which forecasts the course of Jewish and Christian ages, and prophesies in broad outline the method of God's universal culture of our race.

At the same time the patriarch of Israel presents to us a wonderfully complete image of the race which sprang from him. We speak of Jacob rather than Abraham, as the founder of the people to which he gave his name; Abraham, the father of the faithful, is the founder of a yet richer and mightier line. But Jacob is the typical Jew. His life, like the life of his people, is simply incomprehensible to those who cannot realize a Divine vocation, who cannot cling to a Divine promise, who cannot struggle and suffer in faith for the sake of far-off divine results, whereby humanity at large would be blessed. Jacob's life was made what it was by the commerce which he held with the unseen God of his fathers. They have but a dim eye for the meaning of history who cannot see that, under all this man's questionable deeds and chequered experience, this faith in God was the deepest and strongest element in his nature. It ruled the critical moments of his life, it sustained him through all the stormiest scenes of his pilgrimage, and it shone out clearest and strongest in death. Scarcely had he gone forth an exile from the house of his fathers, when this fruitful commerce with God and the spiritual world was established. The beautiful narrative in Genesis casts a flood of light on his life. "And Jacob went out from Beersheba, and went toward Haran. And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set; and he took of the stones of that place and put them for his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed, and behold, a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and, behold, the angels of God ascending and descending on it. And, behold, the Lord stood above it, and said, I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God 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 into this land: for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of. And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not. And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven." (Gen. xxviii. 10-17.)

Precisely the same influence was formative of the character and destinies of his race. This high and grand quality, this openness to the influence of the "powers of the world to come," which is surely the grandest of all qualities, renders the highest Divine culture possible, with eternally blessed and glorious results. But it was marred and debased both in Jacob and in his people by the alloy of selfish, base, and carnal elements, of the earth earthy, which it was the great aim of all the Divine discipline under which he and his people suffered so sharply, to purge away and to destroy. And herein he represents a wider family than Israel. This Divine tincture, in a measure, is in all of us, mixed with the baser earthy matter. God's chosen ones, the subjects of His highest culture in all ages, have mostly the earthy element in full force, struggling with the Divine. No model men were the chosen people of ancient times, nor the saints of apostolic days. The one question is, Hast thou faith? "Lord, I believe, help Thou mine unbelief," is substantially the confession of Jacob, of Israel, and of all who in any age form part of the Church of the living God. When Jacob, when the Jews, suffered themselves to forget the Divinity which was with them, which was in them, their superior power revealed itself as simply masterly craft. Jacob, viewed in one light, is just the most accomplished and successful schemer of his times; in another light, he is the grandest spiritual prince. His people repeat the anomaly. The race of the grandest spiritual power, of the most intense religious belief, have earned the character of the most accomplished hucksters and tricksters of the world. The power capable of the one, under the true inspiration, without it sank easily to the level of the other. There is a modern instance remarkably in point. In many respects the Scotch have succeeded to the character and position which the Jews occupied in ancient society. In both people there is the same grand spiritual power, the same prophetic spirit – Edward Irving was more after the fashion of an old Jewish prophet than any man, except perhaps Savonarola, whom we have had among us in these modern days – the same intense religious zeal, the same heroism in fighting and suffering for their faith, mixed up with the same worldly ambition, the same cautious and canny temper, the same facility of dispersion, and the same power of getting on and winning wealth and influence wherever God might cast their lot. Is there not a manifestation of the same law in the history of the universal Church? As with Jacob, as in Judaism, so in Christendom, the leading spiritual magnates, the prominent Churchmen of all ages, forsaking their true strength, divesting themselves of their true power as Christ's priests and kings, have sunk to the level of the most selfish schemers, and have won the reputation of the cleverest and wiliest statesmen of the world. Churchcraft in all ages has been held to be a shade more worldly, more subtle, more ruthless, than statecraft. The old proverb, "the corruption of the best is the worst" partly accounts for it; but something is due also to the principle whose workings we trace through Jacob's history, that the power which, inspired of God, is capable of Godlike activity, when the world or the devil get hold of it, is capable of all manner of worldly and devilish work with fell energy and success.

But Jacob's life was purified and elevated as it passed through its tremendous discipline. The aged pilgrim, having won the title of Prince of God, stood before Pharaoh clothed with a dignity and power which made the world's mightiest monarch bend eagerly under the blessing of his hand. "The Angel which redeemed me from all evil," he spake of, when his eyes were growing dim in death. The history of his life is the history of that redemption, and this is its rich meaning for us. He sinned basely and shamefully, he suffered as few have suffered, and wrestled as few have strength to wrestle for the blessing which purified and redeemed his life. A sad, stricken, broken man, halting painfully on his thigh, he went on his way, but ennobled, purified, and saved. His life is a revelation of the way of God in the discipline of our spirits; how power gets educated and purified, and made meet at last for the work and the joy of eternity. So Judaism, as it struggled on and suffered, lost some of its baser elements, and came forth, developed, into a higher region of experience and power, in the life of the Christian Church.

The study of the character of these two men is full of the richest interest and instruction; but our present purpose is with the elder, and this profoundly sad passage of his history. There is much, in the matter of both the birthright and the repentance of which our text speaks, which is frequently very grievously and even disastrously misunderstood, which is supposed to present ideas of the dealings of God with man which contradict the fundamental principles of the gospel, and casts no trifling stumbling-blocks before the steps of faith. That we may understand it truly let us consider —

I. That the rejection of the elder, and the election of the younger to honour and power – to all that the election of God could bring – by no means stands by itself in the history of the Divine dispensations; and it illustrates an important principle on which we will dwell for a moment before we pass on.

We are tempted to think that, on the whole, Esau was a hardly used man, and that we have here an instance of the exercise of the Divine sovereignty which is harsh, arbitrary, and unjust. In the natural course of things, Esau would have had the birthright and all that it was worth. It is made to appear that by a purely arbitrary act Esau was robbed of it, while Jacob was endowed with it, having no sort of superior claim. Paul, in Romans ix. 10-13, is careful to insist that whatever the principle may be which is at work here, at any rate it is not merit, for the decree was pronounced long before any questions of merit could have force. The sovereignty of God is here the keystone of his argument: it is worth our while to discern, as far as we may, the reason on which this act of sovereignty rests. Of course the sympathy which we extend to Esau is based upon some idea of the rights of the elder born which seems to be instinctive in the human heart. This opens a wide question into which we have no need in this place to enter. The principle is recognised plainly enough in the word of God. In Deuteronomy xxi. 15-17, there is explicit legislation on the subject. "If a man have two wives, one beloved, and another hated, and they have born him children, both the beloved and the hated; and if the firstborn son be her's that was hated: then it shall be, when he maketh his sons to inherit that which he hath, that he may not make the son of the beloved firstborn before the son of the hated, which is indeed the firstborn: but he shall acknowledge the son of the hated for the firstborn, by giving him a double portion of all that he hath: for he is the beginning of his strength; the right of the firstborn is his." Joseph was evidently grieved when Jacob blessed the younger with the blessing of the firstborn, as though some sacred order had been violated: and the very word "firstborn" is employed as a term of dignity and pre-eminence both in the Old and the New Testament scriptures. I believe it to be for the good of society that this order should exist; that the eldest son should be looked upon as the representative of the family, while the younger sons should regard it as their lot – and not the worse lot in the sight of God and the angels – to carve out a new fortune for themselves. I believe this to be a Divine institution, and that God contemplated it when he established the family life as the basis of human society. But just because it is an order ordained of God, man shall not make an idol of it. A certain free play in the working of an order or an institution is essential to the well-being and progress of society. If God had so ordered all the dispensations, that the elder son was constituted invariably the organ of His communication with the household, the tribe, the race, it would have instituted a caste instead of a principle of order, and the great majority of our race would, in that case, be outcast from their birth. That this rule of the elder might not become a tyrannous thing, that the younger sons of the house might feel that they too had a man's part to play on the theatre of life, a part which might easily become grander and more glorious than that of the firstborn, God, at great critical moments, seems to have broken through the order, and made the younger the heir of the promises and the organ of His revelation to mankind. Jacob is a notable, a typical instance. The case of David is hardly less remarkable, 1 Sam. xvi. 6-13. And Paul in the spiritual family illustrates the same principle; the youngest born of the apostles, one in his own estimation hardly meet to be called an apostle, laboured more abundantly than they all, and was crowned with the most glorious success. But these arbitrary selections, as they appear at first sight, in reality, when we look more closely, are found to deliver the institution of primogeniture from arbitrariness; and they show to us that the Will which rules the world maintains its freedom under the guidance of its wisdom, and remits to no institution, however useful or honourable, the supreme power in the conduct of human affairs. It seems as though, knowing man's inherent propensity to formalism, the Lord had visibly broken through, from time to time, the very forms which He had Himself established, that He might show decisively that forms can have noble use alone in the hands of the free. Two singular instances of this, closely parallel to each other, are to be found in the numbers of the tribes of Israel and of the apostles of Christ. We talk familiarly of twelve tribes and of twelve apostles. But were there truly twelve or thirteen in each case? The question is by no means easy to answer. The tribe of Joseph was split into two. Theoretically, it is easy to regard the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh as forming together the one tribe of Joseph. But, practically, we must remember that the tribe of Ephraim was the most powerful and masterful of the tribes until the rise of the house of David. If any tribe might be looked upon as complete, certainly it would be the tribe of Ephraim. So that, looking at it in the light of actual history, we should be compelled to reckon thirteen, but for the fact that the separation of the tribe of Levi for the priesthood reduced to twelve the number of tribes claiming tribal settlement in Canaan, and active in the spheres of industry, politics, and war. Similarly, it is an open question how far the place of Judas among the Twelve was lawfully filled up by the election of Matthias. It is far from clear that Peter and the infant Church were not acting hastily in this election and ordination of a successor to the apostate. We hear the name of Matthias only, and then he disappears from history. While we soon meet with an apostle of the Lord's election, who, if Matthias was duly called, raises the number of the apostles to thirteen. Is not this uncertainty, this fringe of doubt, left hanging around the numbers in these important and critical instances with a set purpose, that men might not make an idol of the number? That men might not think in the one case that the firstborn were the world's sole masters, nor dream in the other that a college of twelve was essential to the conduct of all the great spiritual movements of mankind.

II. The question of the birthright seems to us to be one on which there is, popularly at any rate, a good deal of misunderstanding. We will look at it a little more closely, before we proceed to consider the unavailing repentance which will form the topic of a second discourse.

There is something which reaches beyond the merely historico-representative character, in the history of these twain. Most of the earnest and generous students of the Old Testament would, we imagine, if they were to make frank confession, sympathise with Esau as a wronged and ill-used man. A sentiment of pity for the big, burly hunter, so helpless in the hands of the subtle and masterly Jacob, takes possession of us as we read the history. It seems a hard penalty to pay for a moment's weakness under the pressure of the pangs of hunger; while the crafty treacherous falsehood by which the blessing as well as the birthright was won from him enlists us wholly as to that transaction on his side. This sentiment of compassion is much strengthened by the vague impression that, through the craft of Jacob, Esau suffered a terrible and irreparable loss. And younger sons, as they see the paternal acres, the family mansion, and the dignity of the family name, passing to the elder, are prone to make the same moan, and to reckon themselves the predestined victims of the social order of the world. Learn from this history how the matter really stands. Esau had all the birthright which he honestly cared for; while Jacob had simply that birthright which, blessed be Christ, is within reach of every child of every household upon earth. Do not waste your pity upon Esau, on the ground of what he lost. Pity him rather on the score of what he did not care to win. It would be a great mistake to suppose that Jacob's treachery left the elder brother a broken and ruined man; on the contrary, the ruin in the worldly sense fell on the man who won the birthright; and though the blessing was added, he went a broken and halting man to the end of his days. That exceeding great and bitter cry, which was wrung from the disinherited when he saw the paternal blessing following the birthright, did not continue to wail through his life. He was a warmhearted, loving, and generous man, though of fiery passion. The loss of the good old Isaac's benediction struck him to the heart; but we are wrong in supposing that it remained a burden on his life. Nothing of the kind; it had been better for him if it had been so. But the fury seems soon to have passed away, probably too his regrets. He became a chieftain of wealth and renown, rich, strong, illustrious. We meet with him again, and there is no trace of a shadow over his life. "And Jacob lifted up his eyes, and looked, and, behold, Esau came, and with him four hundred men. And he divided the children unto Leah, and unto Rachel, and unto the two handmaids. And he put the handmaids and their children foremost, and Leah and her children after, and Rachel and Joseph hindermost. And he passed over before them, and bowed himself to the ground seven times, until he came near to his brother. And Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck, and kissed him: and they wept. And he lifted up his eyes, and saw the women and the children; and said, Who are those with thee? And he said, The children which God hath graciously given thy servant. Then the handmaidens came near, they and their children, and they bowed themselves. And Leah also with her children came near, and bowed themselves: and after came Joseph near and Rachel, and they bowed themselves. And he said, What meanest thou by all this drove which I met? And he said, These are to find grace in the sight of my lord. And Esau said, I have enough, my brother; keep that thou hast unto thyself." (Gen. xxxiii. 1-9.) "And Esau took his wives, and his sons, and his daughters, and all the persons of his house, and his cattle, and all his beasts, and all his substance, which he had got in the land of Canaan; and went into the country from the face of his brother Jacob. For their riches were more than that they might dwell together; and the land wherein they were strangers could not bear them, because of their cattle. Thus dwelt Esau in mount Seir. Esau is Edom." (Gen. xxxvi. 6-8.) Read the catalogue of his princely descendants, and remember that Edom played a splendid part in the political, and especially the commercial, history of the oriental world. Esau lost that, and that alone, which his soul had no love for, and no power to use to honour. But he won that in which his soul delighted; he passed a lifetime of splendid and careless prosperity, and in a good old age went down to his grave in peace.

And what did Jacob win by his birthright – his rights of the firstborn? Simply the power to become God's pilgrim, the power to win a lofty height of honour and renown by life-long patience, by heroic struggle, by wearing, wasting toils. What good shall this birthright do to me, said the hungry hunter, mad for the mess of pottage which the thrifty Jacob sold. But what good did the birthright do to the supplanter who bought it, and filched the blessing with it? None, absolutely none, in the sense in which they talk of "good" who are reckoning gains. It drove him forth from the very hour when he stole his father's blessing, an exile to a distant land. It made him for long years, his best years, a hireling in his kinsman's house. It exposed him to precisely the kind of trick which he himself had practised, in a matter of yet deeper moment to his affection; for it imperilled the winning of the woman whom he tenderly loved. After he had served for long years as a hireling for a hireling's wage, it brought him back at length to the threshold of the promised Canaan. Rich in the wealth of the East, he drew near the borders. His soul was filled with perturbation when he heard that Esau was coming to meet him. The wrong which his brother had suffered rose up freshly before him in all its disgraceful features, and he could hardly believe in the hunter's generous forgiveness as he cowered a suppliant at his feet. Entered at length on the land of his inheritance, discord breaks out in his home and embitters his life. He is struck to the heart through his dearest affections. "There I buried Rachel" is the epitaph of a great agony; and when Joseph was not, he felt that he should go down mourning to the grave. At length the land of his inheritance refused to sustain him; and the weary old pilgrim, with one foot in the grave, goes forth once more an exile – the second and final exile – into a land where the sons for whom he won and held the birthright were destined for centuries to writhe and moan as slaves. What good did the birthright do to him?

If you look at the things which are seen, which are mostly in view when birthrights are in question, Esau, the hardly used man, the victim, had most unquestionably the preferable lot. The time came when he stood as a prince before Jacob, and Jacob bowed himself at his feet. There was no malignant spirit at work here, as we are sometimes tempted to conceive of it, making Esau's life wretched and broken, while Jacob's was heaped high with all which could gladden a grasping and sensual heart; on the contrary, the chosen son won only that which Esau would not have cared to lift if it had been laid at his very feet. Esau lost only that which would have been life-long a torment to his easy, jovial, sensual nature, which he would have prayed to get rid of, which he would in some way have got rid of, if it had clung to him, no matter at what cost. There were some, remember, who, finding their herds of swine in peril, prayed even the merciful Saviour "to depart out of their coasts." Jacob seized a bitter inheritance as far as this world was concerned, by his clever impersonation; while Rebekah, who prompted and managed it, paid a yet heavier price for it; in this world she never saw her darling more.

What he won was power with God and with man as a spiritual prince; power to pray, and to conquer by prayer; power to trust and to hope in God's mercy through stern struggles and bitter miseries; and power to reach a hand through death and lay up the hope of his soul with God on high. The heart which could crave for a spiritual thing, which pined to be a child of promise, which clung to the traditions of his fathers and the hope of his house, all which Esau scorned, God trained by suffering to aim continually at higher and yet higher things. He won, in a word, a high place in God's high school of discipline, and a name of renown as a spiritual hero in time and in eternity. This was practically his gain; and it is precisely this which God places fairly within your reach. You too may be the sons of promise; "power to become the sons of God" is the birthright which in Christ is yours. Jacob, no doubt, and most justly, seems to you the grander man as compared with Esau, and his life the nobler and more glorious life. Then live it. All that he won you may win. Make yourself a prince of God by wrestling prayer. The birthright of broad acres and family honours may pass to your elder. The birthright of hard work, stern struggle, strong effort, high aspiration, disciplined power, victorious faith, eternal renown and joy, is yours. Christ has won it, and freely bestows it – no younger son's portion, but the birthright of the eldest, the only-begotten son, glorious through time and eternity. It may be that many a younger son may read these words; many a one who may be tempted to bemoan himself that the younger son's portion, the lot of toil and struggle, has fallen to him in life. Well! if it be so, bless God for it. If the lot of the younger be toil and struggle, if it falls to them mainly to open new paths, not without peril and pain, to win by earnest and patient effort strength and wisdom, and to take the leader's place in the battle-field of life, don't moan over it if it has fallen to you, but again I say bless God for it. The nobler, the richer, the lordlier inheritance, is yours. Pity, do not despise, but pity the elders who sit clothed in purple and fine linen, faring sumptuously every day. It would be a strange history if it were fairly written out, the history of younger sons, with a just estimate of what they have done in comparison with the elder for the service and progress of mankind. The eldest born, the heirs, with the inheritance which the past has lazily left to them; the younger sons, with the domain of wisdom, strength, and influence, which their own right hand, God helping them, has won. If Jacob seems to you the petted child of fortune, the chosen favourite of heaven, and Esau the wretched reprobate outcast, spurned alike of man and of God, then take Jacob's inheritance; take it, it is fairly yours. Spurn Esau's, which the devil is putting into your hand. Be your choice the pilgrim's toils and struggles, the name of renown, the everlasting portion; and with the words of the pilgrim's hymn upon your lips pass on your way.