ht unto Jacob.
Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentiles; and he did eat
and drink, and rose up, and went his way: thus Esau despised his
birthright.

I have been telling you of late that the Bible is the revelation of
God. But how does the story of Jacob and Esau reveal God to us?
What further lesson concerning God do we learn therefrom?

I think that if we will take the story simply as it stands we shall
see easily enough. For it is all simple and natural enough. Jacob
and Esau, we shall see, were men of like passions with ourselves;
men as we are, mixed up of good and evil, sometimes right and
sometimes wrong: and God rewarded them when they did right, and
punished them when they did wrong, just as he does with us now.

They were men, though, of very different characters: we may see men
like them now every day round us. Esau, we read, was a hunter--a
man of the field; a bold, fierce, active man; generous, brave, and
kind-hearted, as the end of his story shows: but with just the
faults which such a man would have. He was hasty, reckless, and
fond of pleasure; passionate too, and violent. Have we not seen
just such men again and again, and liked them for what was good in
them, and been sorry too that they were not more sober and
reasonable, and true to themselves?

Jacob was the very opposite kind of man. He was a plain man--what
we call a still, solid, prudent, quiet man--and a dweller in tents:
he lived peaceably, looking after his father's flocks and herds;
while Esau liked better the sport and danger of hunting wild beasts,
and bringing home venison to his father.

Now Jacob, we see, was of course a more thoughtful man than Esau.
He kept more quiet, and so had more time to think: and he had
plainly thought a great deal over God's promise to his grandfather
Abraham. He believed that God had promised Abraham that he would
make his seed as the sand of the sea for multitude, and give them
that fair land of Canaan, and that in his seed all the families of
the earth should be blessed; and that seemed to him, and rightly, a
very grand and noble thing. And he set his heart on getting that
blessing for himself, and supplanting his elder brother Esau, and
being the heir of the promises in his stead. Well--that was mean
and base and selfish perhaps: but there is somewhat of an excuse
for Jacob's conduct, in the fact that he and Esau were twins; that
in one sense neither of them was older than t