Genesis 27:5-6

A GAME OF CROSS-PURPOSES

‘And Rebekah heard … and Rebekah spake.’

Genesis 27:5

Isaac and Rebekah are not blameless in the matter of their children’s sins. If their home is religious, it is not thoroughly religious. The father is too easygoing, the mother too crafty. God is not ‘a Presence felt the livelong day, a wholesome Fear at night.’

I. Let me give my children a home frankly and avowedly Christian.

I owe it to the nation. The well-being of the commonwealth is broadbased on the love and the truthfulness and the purity of the family circle.

I owe it to the Church. Why is it that, with all her activities, the Church does not make the progress she should? One reason is that the life of her members in their own households is not always a godly life.

And I owe it to the children themselves. I give them strength for the conflict of faith, power over temptation, brightness and joy, an invigorating discipline preparing them for wider fields of action, when I teach them by my own example to find in God their Friend.

And certainly I owe it to Christ. Does He not want homes which will be a refuge to Him, like the home in Bethany, from the neglect of the world and from the contradiction of sinners? And shall I not provide Him with the quiet retreat He craves?

II. I would abhor Jacob’s sin of deceit. I would be true.

I would be true to myself. God in His grace has given me a great name, that of Christian, and I must not stain it by anything mean or unworthy.

I would be true to my friend. He expects it of me; this honesty, this honour, this conscience, lie at the basis of our relationship. He deserves it of me; he has treated me well, he has shown his love in a hundred ways, and I make a shameful return if I mislead him.

I would be true to my God. I would not bring Him any shows and semblances, any tinsel and fraud. I would not profess an affection for Him which I do not feel.

There is no name among Bunyan’s Pilgrims I desire more fervently to wear myself than that of Mr. Valiant-for-Truth.

Illustration

‘This is a very sad record of scheming and deceit. God had said clearly that the elder should serve the younger, and there was no doubt that it would be so. There was, therefore, no need for Rebekah and Jacob to resort to such unworthy methods as are here described. When God’s plan has been once revealed, we may await his own development of its details. And in this there was so much nobility in David, who, though he knew that he was to succeed Saul on the throne, refused to take advantage of the opportunities of taking his life which came within his reach, but quieted his soul as a weaned child, and waited till God’s set time arrived. To do other than this, to imitate this mother and son, is to sow the seeds of a bitter harvest. It is probable that Rebekah never saw her favourite son again.’