ANGELS ON LIFE’S PATHWAY
‘Jacob went on his way, and the angels of God met him.’
Every man lives two lives—an outward and an inward. The one is that denoted in our present text: Jacob went on his way. The other is denoted in a later verse (24): Jacob was left alone. In either state God dealt with him.
I. The angels of God met him.—We do not know in what form they appeared, or by what sign Jacob recognised them. In its simplicity the angelic office is a doctrine of revelation. There exists even now a society and a fellowship between the sinless and the fallen. As man goes on his way, the angels of God meet him.
II. Are there any special ways in which we may recognise and use this sympathy? (1) The angelic office is sometimes discharged in human form. We may entertain angels unawares. Let us count common life a ministry; let us be on the look-out for angels. (2) We must exercise a vigorous self-control lest we harm or tempt. Our Saviour has warned us of the presence of the angels as a reason for not offending His little ones. Their angels He calls them, as though to express the closeness of the tie that binds together the unfallen and the struggling. We may gather from the story two practical lessons. (a) The day and the night mutually act and react. A day of meeting with angels may well be followed by a night of wrestling with God. (b) Earnestness is the condition of success. Jacob had to wrestle a whole night for his change of name, for his knowledge of God. Never will you say, from the world that shall be, that yon laboured here too long or too earnestly to win it.
—Dean Vaughan.
Illustration
(1) ‘I did not see, early in the morning, the flight of those birds that filled all the bushes and all the orchard trees, but they were there, though I did not see their coming, and I hear their songs afterwards. It does not matter whether you have ministered to you yet those perceptions by which you perceive angelic existence. The fact that we want to bear in mind is, that we are environed by them, that we move in their midst. How, where, what the philosophy is, whether it be spiritual philosophy, no man can tell, and they least that think they know most about it. The fact which we prize and lay hold of is this, that angelic ministration is a part, not of the heavenly state, but of the universal condition of men, and that as soon as we become Christ’s, we come not to the home of the living God, but to the “innumerable company of angels.” ’
(2) ‘There is a spirit world, and a world as full of spirits as this world is full of men. There is a connection between that world and this. The wanderer saw in his dream a ladder between earth and heaven, and troops of angels ascending and descending on it; and the vision has been the reality ever since. Angels are still “ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” They assume the human form—this is singular if you think on it—either because it is the fittest, or because there is no higher or diviner form. There would probably be the freshness, the openness, the transparency of beauty of a cherub’s face, and the combined majesty and glory of more than human intellect. If we could see an angel’s face, there would doubtless be a superhuman beauty and a Divine serenity.’
(3) ‘Though no vision is vouchsafed to our mortal eyes, yet angels of God are with us oftener than we know, and to the pure heart every home is a Bethel and every path of life a Penuel and a Mahanaim. In the outer world and the inner world do we see and meet continually these messengers of God. There are the angels of youth, and of innocence, and of opportunity; the angels of prayer, and of time, and of death.’
(4) ‘The angels of God come in the shape which we need. Jacob’s want was protection; therefore the angels appear in warlike guise, and present before the defenceless man another camp. God’s gifts to us change their character; as the Rabbis fabled that the manna tasted to each man what each most desired. In that great fulness each of us may have the thing we need.’