Genesis 32:10

Genesis 32:10

I. The contrast here presented between the early loneliness and poverty of life and its growing riches is universal. (1) What is life but a constant gathering of riches? Compare the man and the woman of forty with their childhood. They have made themselves a name and a place in life; they are centres of attraction to troops of friends. How rich has life become to them! how full its storehouses of knowledge, power, and love! (2) That which is stored in the mind, that which is stored in the heart, is the true treasure; the rest is mere surplusage. To know and to love: these are the directions in which to seek our riches. (3) There is no other way to make life a progress, but to root it in God.

II. Consider the higher development of the law of increase, the deeper and more solemn sense in which, through the ministry of the angel of death, we become "two bands." (1) Through death there has been a constant progress in the forms and aspects of creation. The huge, coarse, unwieldy types which ruled of old in both the animal and vegetable worlds have vanished, and out of their ashes the young phoenix of creation has sprung which is the meet satellite of man. (2) This is the counsel of God: to make the darkness of death beautiful for us; to make it the one way home; to show us that the progress is not rounded, but prolonged and completed, and that the increase is not gathered, but consecrated by death as the possession of eternity. To bring heaven easily within our reach God separates the bands, part have crossed the flood, part are on the hither side, and the instinct of both tells them that they are one. At the last great day of God they shall be one band once more, met again and met for ever.

J. Baldwin Brown, Aids to the Development of the Divine Life,No. VII.

"I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies, and of all the truth, which Thou hast shewed unto Thy servant"

Thankfulness is eminently a Christian grace, and is enjoined on us in the New Testament. Jacob knew not of those great and wonderful acts of love with which God has visited the race of men since his day. But he knew that Almighty God had shown him great mercies and great truth.

I. Jacob's distinguishing grace was a habit of affectionate musing upon God's providence towards him in times past and of overflowing thankfulness for it. Abraham appears ever to have been looking forward in hope Jacob looking back in memory; the one rejoicing in the future, the other in the past; the one making his way towards the promises, the other musing over their fulfilment. Abraham was a hero; Jacob was a plain man, dwelling in tents.

II. It would be well for us if we had the character of mind instanced in Jacob and enjoined on his descendants, the temper of dependence on God's providence and thankfulness under it and careful memory of all He has done for us. We are not our own, any more than what we possess is our own. We are God's property by creation, by redemption, by regeneration. It is our happiness thus to view the matter. We are creatures, and being such, we have two duties: to be resigned, and to be thankful.

III. Let us view God's providence towards us more religiously than we have hitherto done. Let us humbly and reverently attempt to trace His guiding hand in the years which we have already lived. He has not made us for nought; He has brought us thus far in order to bring us farther, in order to bring us on to the end. We may cast all our care upon Him who careth for us.

J. H. Newman, Selection from Parochial and Plain Sermons,p. 52; also vol. v., p. 72.

References: Genesis 32:10. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxx., No. 1787 Genesis 32:12. Spurgeon, Evening by Evening,p. 109.