Genesis 32:1-32

Genesis 32

I. God selects men for His work on earth, not because of their personal agreeableness, but because of their adaptation to the work they have to perform.

II. There is something affecting in the way in which guilty persons invoke the God of their fathers. Conscious that they deserve nothing at the hands of God, they seek to bring down on themselves the blessing of the God of their father and mother.

III. When a man is overtaken in his transgression, and all his wickedness seems to come down upon him, how true it is that then there rises up before him the concurrent suffering of all his household! It takes hold on him through his wife and his children and all that he loves.

IV. Men's sins carry with them a punishment in this life. Different sins are differently punished.

V. Nothing but a change of heart will put a man right with himself, right with society, and right with God.

VI. No man who is in earnest need ever despair because of past misdoing.

H. W. Beecher, Sermons,2nd series, p. 106.

References: Genesis 32:24. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. x., p. 88; Congregationalist,vol. xi., p. 6; W. M. Taylor, Limitation of Life,p. 30; Bishop Ewing, Revelation Considered as Light,p. 1; A. P. Stanley, Good Words(1874), p. 63; W. J. Keay, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xv., p. 277; F. Langbridge, Sunday Magazine(1885), p. 675; Parker, Pulpit Notes,p. 15; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. ii., p. 118, and vol. iii., pp. 531, 541, 558. Genesis 32:24. Expositor,1st series, vol. x., p. 241.Genesis 32:24. R. S. Candlish, Book of Genesis,vol. ii., p. 74.