Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2739
“Esau said, I have enough. Jacob said, I have enough.” Genesis 33:9,11.
IT is a very rare thing to meet with people who say that they have enough, for those who have most generally desire more, and those who have little feel that contentment is a thing which cannot reasonably be expected from them. For any person honestly and truthfully to say, “I have enough,” is so unusual a circumstance that I do not remember having heard it often. I have done so a few times, at long intervals. This being the case as a rule, it is very remarkable that there should be, in this chapter, a record of two persons who each said, “I have enough.” It is specially noteworthy that this was said by two brothers, for, generally, if one of two brothers is contented, the other is of quite a different disposition. One may be of a very happy and easy-going spirit, but the other possesses enough worry and care to have stocked the two. But here are two brothers, twins, yet each one says, “I have enough.”
It will appear to you as a still more singular fact if you remember that these brothers differed so greatly from one another in other respects. The one was described by the Apostle Paul as a “profane person, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright.” Yet he says, “I have enough.” The other was a man who had wrestled with God and who had power with God and with men as a prince! He also says, “I have enough.” It seems to me as if, on that occasion, the blessing of their father Isaac rested upon them both, for you remember that, although Esau did not receive the great blessing—the Covenant blessing—that having gone to Jacob who secured it by deception, yet Esau did receive a great blessing of a temporal kind which Isaac pronounced upon him with all the fervor of a father who loved his son most ardently. Esau thus received what he most wanted, for he cared very little for the spiritual blessing—not being a spiritual man—and when he obtained the temporal’blessing, that satisfied his heart and he said, “It is enough.” The blessing of a gracious father is, indeed, a blessing and though it may not always come as we could wish, in the spiritualfashion, for all sons are not Jacobs, yet, nevertheless, it does come in some fashion or other. And, thus, upon Esau there fell the blessing which his father Isaac pronounced upon him when he said, “Behold, your dwelling shall be the fatness of the earth, and of the dew of Heaven from above.”
I am going to try to show you that although these two different people did each say, “I have enough,” and although the meaning of their words was in some sense, alike, yet there were great differences as to the innermost meaning of the very same words when they came out of different mouths.
I. My first observation is that HERE IS AN UNGODLY MAN WHO SAYS THAT HE HAS ENOUGH.
There are some unconverted men who are content with their present possessions—it is not always or often the case, but it is so sometimes. Contentment is not altogether a spiritual gift. It is possessed by some men who make no pretense to spiritual attainments. You must admit that it is so and it is always unfair and unjust, because it is false, to say that merely moral men have no moral virtues, for they sometimes have excellences which, for what they are, shine very brightly and put to shame the defects of professing Christians! A Bristol stone is not a diamond and it is not worth anything like the price of a diamond, but if you were to say that it was not like a diamond, and that it did not shine, you would do it a gross injustice. Paste gems are not real jewels, but they are made so remarkably like the genuine article that if you were to say that they have no brilliance, you would be denying that which is a matter of fact. And, in like manner,
there are unconverted men whose natural excellences are bright and shining and ought not to be denied. And, though they are not the people of God and in the day when God shall make up His jewels they will not be numbered with them, for they are mere counterfeits and imitations, yet there is much to be seen in them which we should admire and of which we ought to confess the excellence.
There are some men who have not the Grace of God in their hearts, who, nevertheless, are not always fretting and worrying, as certain other people are. It is a comfort for their families that they are contented and it is well that even an Esau should say, “I have enough.” It is good for Jacob that Esau should say it and it is good for Esau, himself. It is well for a man’s wife and his family that he should be of a happy temperament and of a contented spirit, instead of being, as some are, perpetually grasping, grinding, scraping and doing everything they can to get more to add to what they already possess. Well, then, if even unconverted men sometimes say, “We have enough”—and we do occasionally meet with such persons—what a shame it will be if those who have the Grace of God within them should fall short of even that contentment which worldly men have attained—and should need such persons as these to set them an example in such a matter as this!