When Esau returned he
had to flee for his life. Then God met him at Bethel. "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 unto this land, for I
will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to
thee of."

Men will read that far in the life of Jacob and say, "I don't want
anything more to do with a God who will deal in grace with a man who
had done so mean a thing." My friend, hold on. Follow him to
Padanaram. He was there twenty years, and during that time his wages
were changed ten times. He worked seven years for the lovely Rachel,
and then had another woman put upon him. Jacob had by deception
obtained the blessing of the first-born son, but Laban sarcastically
reminded him, "It must not be so done in my country to give the
younger before the first-born." He found that Laban could drive as
sharp a bargain as he. Wherever you find a sharp, shrewd man, you
will always find that he draws just such men around him, and that he
who cheats will himself be cheated. "Birds of a feather flock
together"; blasphemers get together, and sharp, shrewd men get
together. Jacob found in Laban just such a man as himself. It was
"diamond cut diamond."

Look a little further. Jacob had twelve sons, but he loved Joseph
and Benjamin more than the others because they were the sons of his
beloved Rachel. He was partial to Joseph, and had a coat made of
many colors for him. Partiality will raise the old Adam in any
family.

One morning Joseph, in the innocence of his heart, tells a dream in
which his father and all his brothers had bowed down to him. Then
his brothers began to plan to get him out of the way, and when his
father sent him to find them when they were tending the flocks, they
said:

"Now we have him; let us slay him and cast him into a pit, and say
that some beast has devoured him."

Later they sold him, and took his coat of many colors and dipped it
in the blood of a kid, and, taking it to their father, said: "This
have we found; know now whether it b