Part 5

No matter how small they may seem, God says He cares.

Let us take courage, then; and if God whispers to us when we are sorrowful (like He did to Hagar), "What aileth thee—what is the matter?" Let us listen for another whisper, for He will surely finish the sentence to us, as He did to Hagar, with the cheering words, "Fear not!"

XXXIV. The Offering of Isaac

So Abraham was given his dear little son Isaac, and he was the delight of Abraham's life, and of Sarah's too.

But by and by, God wished to try Abraham's faith more than even in that long waiting time for Isaac. God was going to ask him to do about the hardest thing that a man could be asked to do.

God told Abraham that he was to take his dear son whom he so fondly loved, and to go to a mountain a long way off, in the land of Moriah, and to offer him up to God as a sacrifice.

This was to try Abraham's obedience and faith.

Was he to take Isaac! On whom all his hopes rested, who was the joy of his life, and through whom all the world was to be blessed; was he to lay him upon the altar, and offer him up to God, as he did the lambs from his flock?

But Abraham did not hesitate. If God told him to do a thing, he obeyed. He knew that God could even raise Isaac from the dead, if He thought good. At any rate he had nothing to do, but to obey!

So he got up very early in the morning and saddled his ass, and took two young men with him, and his son, and the wood for the burnt offering, and set out on his journey to the place God had told him of.

The most precious thing Abraham had was that son who was walking beside him. And besides his love for his boy, God had promised that Isaac should live to have a son, and that by and by the Saviour should come into the world as one of Isaac's great-great-great-great-grandchildren!

Isaac was now grown into a strong young man, but he went with his father; and though he asked him on the way, Where was the lamb for the burnt offering? He was satisfied with his father's answer, "My son, God will provide Himself a lamb for a burnt offering."

When they reached the place which God had told him of, Abraham bound Isaac his son, and laid him upon the altar; and then he stretched out his hand with the knife in it, to offer up his son as God had told him.

But as quickly as the knife was raised, so quickly an angel of God called out of heaven, "Abraham, Abraham!"

Oh, how glad Abraham was to draw back that dreadful knife and answer, "Here am I!"

And God said, "Lay not thy hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything to him; for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from ME."

And when Abraham looked up, he saw a ram caught by his horns in a bush; and he took him and offered him up instead of his son.

So Isaac was given back to his loving father, and God was very pleased with Abraham's obedience, and He told him that in Isaac's children, by and by, all the nations of the world should be blessed.

For in about eighteen hundred years after this, the Lord Jesus Christ was coming to this earth to be "The Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world"; and I think that when Abraham said, "God Himself will provide a lamb," he was thinking, not only of the saving of Isaac's life, but of that far-off day when Jesus should bear our sins, instead of us, on the Cross of Calvary, that we may go free!

XXXV. A Bargain Between Two Brothers

By and by Isaac grew up to be a man.

Abraham and Sarah heard that in Abraham's old home in Mesopotamia, his brother Nahor had a family of sons and daughters, and they thought it would be very nice if Isaac could have one of these daughters for his wife. So Abraham called Eliezer, his chief servant, and told him to prepare for a long journey, as he wished him to bring back a wife for his son Isaac.

Eliezer was afraid that the maiden would not come so far, but Abraham told him that God would send His angel with him to prosper him on his way.

So Eliezer took some valuable presents, and set out with camels and servants to seek for a wife for his master's son.

He at length reached the city of Nahor, where Abraham used to live. It seems that Eliezer used to pray about everything! If he could not kneel down to pray, he prayed in his heart; and to those who tell God everything, God sends very quick answers.

In those hot countries, the caravans stop outside the city at the well, so that the thirsty men as well as the camels may drink.

Then Eliezer prayed, and asked God to send out the maiden to draw water, who was to be the wife of Isaac, and to point her out to him by her offering to draw water for the camels; and it all happened just as he had prayed.

Rebecca came out of the city with a pitcher upon her shoulder, which she carried to the well and filled with water.

When Eliezer ran to meet her, and asked her for a drink, she hastened to give him some, and offered at once to fill the trough and water all the thirsty camels. Then Eliezer asked her whose daughter she was, and when she told him, he knew at once that God had guided him to the very maiden whom Abraham wanted his son to marry!

Was not this a quick answer? And Eliezer not only asked, but he thanked God for the answer. "And the man bowed down his head and worshipped the Lord."

Then he gave Rebecca some beautiful presents; as well as many precious things for her mother and her brother.

And so Rebecca consented to go back with Eliezer and became Isaac's wife; and Isaac was very glad his father had sent for her all that long way, for he loved her very much.

By and by God sent Isaac and Rebecca two little twin sons, who grew up to be men.

Esau was the elder, and Jacob was the younger.

Esau was a very clever hunter, and lived an adventurous life among the mountains, and was often away for days in his hunting excursions.

Jacob, however, preferred staying quietly at home, living in the tents, and looking after the flocks and herds.

Isaac was now getting old, and he loved Esau the best of his two sons, because Esau often brought him a wild animal from his hunting, and would cook it for his father and make it into a savoury dish.

But Rebecca loved Jacob the best; and in after years, through her making him such a favourite, she had the greatest sorrow of her life.

One day Esau came in from a long journey, and though he had succeeded in catching and bringing home an animal, he had had nothing to eat for a long time and as he got near to the tents where they all lived, he saw his brother Jacob sitting eating a bowlful of red pottage, which he had just made for himself.

Esau was very faint and hungry, with such hunger as you and I, dear children, have probably never felt. Very likely he had tasted no food that day, and perhaps not the day before. The sight of the steaming bowl of pottage made him feel as if he would give anything he possessed for some of it to stop the pangs of hunger.

Now I am sorry to tell you that Jacob had a very mean character. Though he truly loved God and wished to please Him, his natural character was very shifty.

So when his brother Esau asked him eagerly to give him his bowl of pottage, Jacob did not jump up and press it upon his hungry brother, but he thought it was a good opportunity to make a bargain!

"If I do give it to you, sell me your birthright!" he exclaimed.

Now among the Jews, the birthright of being the eldest son, God had made a great honour. It was most jealously guarded and taken care of; and God gave great blessings with it.

But Esau did not love God truly in his heart, as Jacob did; he was busy with other things, and had never given it a thought that to love and serve God was more important than anything else.

So he said to Jacob, "I am so faint for food that I am ready to die! What good will this birthright do me?"

So Jacob answered, "You must give me your most sacred promise that you sell it to me for this pottage of lentils!"

And Esau promised most solemnly; and so he sold his birthright!

Then Jacob gave Esau some bread, and his pottage of lentils, and Esau ate and drank, and rose up and went away.

And thus, he despised the birthright which God had given him. He was very very sorry afterwards, but he could not undo what he had done.

I think this is a very sorrowful story, because there are so many people like Esau, who turn away from God's best gifts, and seek only the earthly things which will quickly pass away.

Let the lesson to us, dear children, be to love God first and best of all—before food or clothes, or toys, or happiness—to put God first; and when we have Him for our own, He will take care that we shall have all we need to make us happy; and at the end "a Right to the Tree of Life; and we shall enter in through the gates, into the Heavenly City."

XXXVI. The Ladder up to Heaven

Though Jacob loved God truly, he was not very truthful, and had many faults.

This is very sad, but I think knowing about it is a help to you and me, dear children, because we see that in spite of all, God loved him and forgave him, and taught him as He led him through his long life, to try more and more to please Him in everything.

Jacob had bargained with his hungry brother Esau for his Birthright, and had got it from him.

After a time when Isaac, his father, was very old and was soon going to die, Rebecca heard Isaac asking Esau to go out hunting and bring him home some savoury meat, for he wished to bless him before he died.

Directly Esau was gone, Rebecca called Jacob to her, and together they planned to deceive Isaac, who was nearly blind with age, by Jacob's dressing up in Esau's clothes and pretending to be his first-born son.

So Jacob got his father's blessing as well as the Birthright; and Esau was so terribly angry that he said he would kill his brother when his father was dead. When Rebecca heard of this, she begged Jacob to fly to Haran, where her brother Laban lived, and stay there until Esau was pacified.

Then she went to Isaac and told him that they would send Jacob to get a wife from her old home, and Isaac agreed, and Rebecca sent her son away and never saw his face again.

Oh, sad deception! What sorrow it brought on both Rebecca and Jacob!

So Jacob set out on his long journey and one night he came to a lonely places far from any village where people lived.

Jacob was tired and the sun had set, and he had no light to guide him, so he thought he would lie down where he was, and go to sleep till daylight.

Then he had a wonderful dream, and this is what he saw: Right in front of him was a ladder set up on the earth, and it went up till the top reached right to heaven. And he could see the angels of God going up and coming down upon it.

But beyond all, in the radiant glory, the Lord stood above the ladder and spoke to Jacob. He told him that He was the Lord God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and that by and by through his children's children should come the One who was to be the Blessing of the whole world.

We know the name of that Holy One Who is the world's blessing; it is Jesus Christ, Who came into the world to save sinners!

Then Jacob awoke from his dream and said, "Surely the Lord is in this place! . . . This is none other than the gate of heaven!"

So he took the stones on which he had been resting, and set them up for an altar to the Lord, and made a vow that he would serve God all his life, and would give to God the tenth part of everything that God gave to him.

Now it seems to me, children, that this Ladder up to heaven comes into our lives every day.

Jesus, our Saviour, is like the ladder which rested on the earth close to Jacob; and He is gone back to heaven now to be there to help us in every way: that is the top of the ladder which reached to heaven, where the Lord stood and spoke to Jacob.

So when you see this picture, say to yourselves, "Jesus is my ladder! He is close to me here, He is close to God there! He will never leave me nor forsake me; I can send messages and prayers every time I am lonely or in trouble, and He will send back answers if I wait for them."

So Jacob went on his journey over the desert and at length reached the country to the East, where he hoped he would find his mother's relations.

XXXVII. Jacob meets Rachel

One day Jacob sat down by a well, and looking about him he saw a number of flocks coming near and waiting by the mouth of the well, which had a large stone upon it. So he asked the shepherds whether they knew a man called Laban; and they told him that they did, and that his daughter Rachel was even now coming with her father's flock!

So Jacob was very glad to see Rachel, and went to the well and rolled the stone away, and watered the flock for her. And then he told Rachel that his mother was Rebecca, Laban's sister; and she ran and told her father.

Then there was great rejoicing, and Laban welcomed Jacob to his home, and he began to take care of the flocks.

When Jacob had been there a month, Laban asked him what wages he would have, and whether he would stay with him? And Jacob gladly consented, for he loved Rachel very much, and promised to serve Laban for seven years, if he would give him Rachel for his wife.

So at the end of the time, Rachel became his wife; and by and by, God sent her a little son called Joseph, who was going to be, many years afterwards, a great ruler in the land of Egypt!

XXXVIII. The Story of Joseph

You have often heard of Joseph's coat of many colours, and of his being sold by his brothers into Egypt.

So I am going to tell you a little about him, and then you will understand how he came to have that beautiful coat. I have read that generally the eldest son was given a bright coloured, beautifully-worked coat; but Joseph was the eleventh son, and Jacob, his father, gave him that pretty coat because he loved him so very much.

When his brothers saw it, they felt very jealous, and hated Joseph because his father made him such a favourite.

Now jealousy is a very wretched feeling. It is wrong as well as wretched. If boys and girls—or grown up people-give way to jealousy, they may by and by do very unkind and wicked things. The Bible says "Jealousy is cruel as the grave," and you will see as we go on with the story of Joseph, how very true it was in his case.

One day Joseph had a very wonderful dream, and he told his brothers about it.

He had dreamed that he and his brothers were binding sheaves of corn in a field, and that his sheaf stood upright, and that all the sheaves of his brothers bowed down to his sheaf.

This displeased his brothers very much, and they hated him more than they did before.

After a time, Jacob sent Joseph to some far-off fields to see how his brothers and the flocks were getting on, for Jacob and his sons were shepherds.

When the brothers saw him coming, they remembered about his dream, and they determined to kill him, and cast his body into a pit.

But Reuben, his eldest brother, wished to save him out of their hands, so he advised them to put him into the pit alive, intending to come presently and take him back to their father.

But while Reuben was away, some merchants came by on camels, on their way down to Egypt, and the brothers decided to sell Joseph to them.

Though the lad wept and besought them not to be so cruel, they would not hear. So the merchants gave them twenty pieces of silver for their brother, and put him on a camel, and took him a long way off to sell him for a slave.

Then the brothers took Joseph's coat of many colours, and dipped it in the blood of a little goat, and carried the coat back to Jacob, telling him they supposed Joseph must have been killed by a wild beast, as that was how they had found his coat!

But "God meant it for good" all the time, and afterwards we see how this was.

So the unkind brothers let their poor father grieve for Joseph for many many years.

Meanwhile Joseph was brought by the merchants down to Egypt, which is the country that joins on to the land of Canaan at the bottom—or south.

The master who bought him from the merchants treated him very kindly, and when he saw how God prospered all that Joseph did, he made him overseer of all his property.

But all at once another trouble came to Joseph! He was falsely accused to his master, and was cast into prison. Still God meant it for good, and Joseph behaved so well in the prison (for God was with him), that the keeper of the prison took the fetters off his feet, and gave him the charge of all the other prisoners.

See, children, what a nice thing it is to serve God in difficult circumstances!

By and by, after a very long time, Joseph was taken to Pharaoh, the great King of Egypt, to tell him the meaning of a wonderful dream, which had frightened him very much.

Thus step by step the slave-boy was being brought to the king's palace.

God gave Joseph wisdom and favour. He was not only able to tell Pharaoh the meaning of his dream, that there would be seven years of plentiful harvests and seven years of famine; but he gave the king such good advice that the Egyptians were delighted, and Pharaoh put Joseph at the head of everything to carry it out.

The advice was, to carefully store up the corn in the good years, so that there would be enough for the bad years.

And it was in those bad years of famine that old Jacob—Joseph's dear father—sent ten of his sons down to Egypt to buy corn.

They had no idea that the great ruler, who, they heard, was selling corn to the hungry people, was their own brother, whom they had sold for a slave thirteen years before!

So they came down to Egypt, and were taken into the presence of Joseph, though they did not recognize who that great prince was. Then they bowed themselves to the ground before him, and asked him if he would sell them some corn for their families!

Joseph knew his brothers at once. They were less changed than he was; but he did not make himself known to them at first.

He asked all about their father, and their youngest brother; and spoke roughly to them, telling them that if they wanted corn, they must go back to fetch their brother Benjamin, that he might see him, if they were true men!

Afterwards he told them that he served God himself, and as he knew their families were hungry, he would give them some corn, but they must go, all the same, and fetch their other brother back.

Oh! How sorry all those ten brothers were for their sin. They remembered now how cruel they had been. They said to each other, "We were verily guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul when he besought us, and we would not hear."

But they talked in their own language, and did not know that the great prince understood them; and Joseph hastened away from them and cried. For he was quite ready to forgive them, but he longed to see his brother Benjamin. So he sent nine of them back with the corn to fetch him, and kept one brother in ward till they should come again.

So they returned to Canaan, and poor old Jacob was obliged to spare his youngest boy to go down to Egypt, little thinking that Joseph was alive, and that by and by, in God's best time, he was to see his dear Joseph again, and clasp his son In his arms.

God watches over His people, and promises to make all things work together for good, because they love Him!

XXXIX. Jacob Comes into Egypt

When at last Benjamin reached Egypt, Joseph could hardly help telling his brothers the great secret, that he was alive! But still, he allowed them to set out with their sacks of corn on their homeward journey again; and told his servants to hide his drinking cup in Benjamin's sack. When the party had gone a little way, Joseph's servants were told to overtake them, and to charge them with having stolen his cup!

You can guess how terrified the brothers were at such a charge from the great prince!

They unloaded their asses, and told the Egyptian servants to look for themselves!

But when the cup was really found in Benjamin's sack, they had not a word to say; and as they returned sorrowfully to the house of the great prince, they confessed to each other that God was punishing them for their cruelty to their young brother long ago.

But God saw their sorrow for their sin, and He forgave them, and was going to bring good out of it all.

When they got back to Joseph, after hearing their sorrowful explanation, he could no longer keep in his loving wish to forgive them; and he told them not to grieve, for he was still alive. And then, he sent them all home again, giving his brothers a handsome set of clothes each, and with quantities of presents for his aged father, as well as sending some wagons to the land of Canaan, to fetch his father and all their families down to Egypt, that he might take care of them while the famine lasted.

Joseph sent his father a great many beautiful presents; and when the brothers got back, and told Jacob that Joseph was alive and was ruler over all the land of Egypt, and that he wished his father and all their families to come down to Egypt, the heart of Jacob fainted within him, for he did not believe them.

But when he saw the wagons which Joseph had sent to carry him down to Egypt, "the heart of Jacob their father revived, and Israel said, It is enough; Joseph my son is yet alive: I will go down and see him before I die!"

And children! These wagons of Joseph's have often been a lesson to me!

Like old Jacob, we see God's mercies surrounding us, and yet because we do not believe and trust Him enough, our hearts faint within us at some fresh difficulty that stands in our way, perhaps.

You ask, "What are the wagons, then?"

I think the wagons are a picture to us of the reality of God's promises, and of the reality of the living Jesus.

Jacob said, "Joseph my son is yet alive!"

We may say with tenderest reverence, "Jesus my Saviour is a living Saviour, I will trust myself to Him and follow Him, and one day I shall see Him face to face!"

XL. Moses and the Children of Israel

You often hear in the Bible about "The Children of Israel," and now I am going to tell you how it was they were called by that name.

Long before Jacob and his sons went down to Egypt to live near Joseph, God had met Jacob one night and had given him a new name. God loved Jacob very much, and He did not wish him to be called Jacob any more, because that name meant a Supplanter—one who had taken something away from another—and God forgave Jacob for his deceit, and called him henceforward, Israel.

So, when in after years, he went down to Egypt, he is often called Israel; and thus his twelve sons came to be called "The Children of Israel."

Well, the children of Israel settled down in Egypt, and Joseph was very kind to them, and they lived in the land of Goshen and were very happy.

But after a time another Pharaoh came to the throne, who did not remember Joseph, and all he had done for the Egyptians in that great famine; and this Pharaoh thought that these Jews or children of Israel should be made into slaves, and should build his great cities and pyramids; and he made their lives a terrible burden to them.

But God had not forgotten His great promise to Abraham that his children should live in the land of Canaan; and when the time that God had mentioned to Abraham drew near, He was preparing a great deliverance for them; to take them right out of Egypt back to their own land!

You will now hear how God brought this to pass. His ways are most wonderful!

The King of Egypt, called Pharaoh, was very surprised to find that in spite of all his unkindness, the children of Israel grew to be so many, that he feared they would fill up all the land of Egypt. So he sent out a cruel order that all the little baby boys should be killed as soon as they were born.

Some of the Jews who loved and feared God would not obey the wicked order, and among these was a mother called Jochebed who had a very beautiful baby called Moses.