The scripture reading this morning is from the
48th chapter of the book of Genesis.
In our last study, the preceding chapter, the
47th, in which Jacob was presented to Pharaoh
by Joseph, then some words were given concerning
the way in which Joseph managed the famine,
and finally, near the end of the chapter,
some details concerning the last days of Jacob.
Three times in the last few chapters of
the book of Genesis, Joseph comes to the
bedside of Jacob, and we are looking now
at the second of these occurrences in chapter
48 of the book of Genesis.
Now it came about after these things that
Joseph was told, Behold, your father is sick.
So he took his two sons, Manasseh and
Ephraim, with him.
When it was told Jacob, Behold, your son
Joseph has come to you, Israel collected his
strength and sat up in the bed.
Then Jacob said to Joseph, God Almighty appeared
to me at Luz in the land of
Canaan and blessed me.
Luz is one of the other names for
Bethel.
And he said to me, Behold, I will
make you fruitful and numerous, and I will
make you a company of peoples, and will
give this land to your descendants after you
for an everlasting possession.
And now your two sons, who were born
to you in the land of Egypt before
I came to you in Egypt, are mine.
Ephraim and Manasseh shall be mine, as Reuben
and Simeon are.
And that verse incidentally is one that's very
important, and we will be looking at it
in a little more detail later.
I want you to notice particularly the statement
that your two sons are mine.
And then in the sixth verse, Jacob continues,
But your offspring that have been born after
them shall be yours.
They shall be called by the names of
their brothers in their inheritance.
Now as for me, when I came from
Paddan, Rachel died to my sorrow in the
land of Canaan on the journey, when there
was still some distance to go to Ephrath.
And I buried her there on the way
to Ephrath, that is, Bethlehem.
When Israel saw Joseph's sons, he said, Who
are these?
And Joseph said to his father, They are
my sons whom God has given me here.
So he said, Bring them to me, please,
that I may bless them.
Now the eyes of Israel were so dim
from age that he could not see.
Then Joseph brought them close to him, and
he kissed them and embraced them.
And Israel said to Joseph, I never expected
to see your face, and behold, God has
let me see your children as well.
Then Joseph took them from his knees and
bowed with his face to the ground.
So evidently Joseph, realizing this is an important
occasion and desirous of the blessing of the
two, takes Ephraim and Manasseh from between the
knees of Jacob and moves them back a
little bit.
And he himself bows down to the ground
before his father.
And then he takes the two boys and
moves them up in a very solemn, official
kind of arrangement, position, in order that the
elderly man may bless them.
The 13th verse reads, And Joseph took them
both, Ephraim with his right hand toward Israel's
left, and Manasseh with his left hand near
Israel's right, and brought them close to him.
And Israel stretched out his right hand and
laid it on the head of Ephraim, who
was the younger, and his left hand on
Manasseh's head, crossing his hands, or guiding his
hands knowingly, it has been translated.
Although Manasseh was the firstborn, I remember the
firstborn received certain blessings, usually a double inheritance,
a double share of the inheritance, and then
certain other blessings by which he became the
mediator of the divine knowledge.
So it was a rather important thing to
be the firstborn.
And we read in the 15th verse, And
he blessed Joseph, evidently in the person of
his two sons.
And he blessed Joseph and said, The God
before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked,
the God who has been my shepherd all
my life to this day, the angel who
has redeemed me from all evil, bless the
lads, and may my name live on in
them, and the names of my fathers Abraham
and Isaac, and may they grow into a
multitude in the midst of the earth.
When Joseph saw that his father laid his
right hand on Ephraim's head, it displeased him,
and he grasped his father's hand to remove
it from Ephraim's head to Manasseh's head.
And Joseph said to his father, Not so,
my father, for this one is the firstborn.
Place your right hand on his head.
But his father refused and said, I know,
my son, I know.
He shall become a people, and he also
shall be great.
However, his younger brother shall be greater than
he, and his descendants shall become a multitude
of nations.
And he blessed them that day, saying, By
you Israel shall pronounce blessing, saying, May God
make you like Ephraim and Manasseh.
Then he put Ephraim before Manasseh.
Then Israel said to Joseph, Behold, I am
about to die, but God will be with
you and bring you back to the land
of your fathers.
And I give you one portion more than
your brothers, which I took from the hand
of the Amorite with my sword and my
bow.
That last verse, by the way, is a
very difficult verse, and the commentators have discussed
it at great length.
It's not certain exactly what Jacob has in
mind in saying that.
I suggest sometime when you have a little
time, look up the parallel references and see
if they are the incident referred to here.
It may be that this is some incident
not referred to elsewhere in the word.
Well, may the Lord bless this reading of
the Bible.
The subject for this morning in the exposition
of the book of Genesis is Jacob blessing
Joseph's sons or Jacob's greatest act of faith.
What is the most remarkable act of faith,
according to the scriptures, that Joseph ever accomplished?
One looking over his life might say, well,
that's very simple.
It was the experience that he had at
Pinal when he wrestled with the angel who
turned out to be the Lord Jesus Christ.
And scripture said that he prevailed over the
Lord God.
Surely that would be the most remarkable act
of faith on the part of Jacob.
Well, evidently it is not.
It's not singled out by the writer of
the epistle of the Hebrews, at least.
Could it have been Bethel?
Bethel was the place where he saw that
remarkable vision of the ladder that reached from
earth to heaven, and the angels of God
were ascending and descending upon it.
And Bethel made a great impression upon him,
because even here late in life he recalls
again the thing that happened to him at
Bethel and the promises that God gave him
there.
But evidently that wasn't the most remarkable act
of faith.
Was it the incident when the angels appeared
to him at Mahanaim and strengthened him as
he was on the way to meet Esau?
No, that's not singled out for special mention.
Out of the long career of Jacob, the
event that is singled out by the writer
of the epistle to the Hebrews and set
down in Scripture as Jacob's act of faith
is this event of chapter 48, Jacob blessing
the sons of Joseph.
In the 21st verse of Hebrews chapter 11,
the writer of that epistle says, By faith
Jacob, as he was dying, blessed each of
the sons of Joseph, and worshipped, leaning on
the top of his staff.
So this is singled out as a special
manifestation of faith on the part of Jacob.
It's probably not the incident that we would
have thought would be the expression of faith
from the patriarch Jacob.
But in a sense, it is one of
the great incidents in Jacob's life in which
the nature of faith shines forth very plainly.
The writer of that epistle had said, Faith
is the assurance of things hoped for, the
conviction of things not seen.
And the characteristic of faith, that conviction of
things that are not yet seen, the conviction
that the really important things are the invisible
things, the immaterial things, the future things, that
characteristic shines out in this experience of Jacob.
It's very much like the experience of Noah.
By faith, Noah prepared an ark for the
salvation of his household.
It was the conviction of things not seen
that led him to do that.
By faith, Abraham, when he was called, obeyed
by going out to a place of which
he knew nothing practically.
That wasn't, too, an expression of faith as
the conviction of things not seen.
When Abraham offered up Isaac, he considered that
God was able to raise men even from
the dead, from which he also received him
back as a type.
And so in Abraham's life, there was manifested
faith as hope or conviction of things not
seen.
And Moses, Moses was an individual of whom
the writer to the epistle to the Hebrews
comments that he looked to the reward, that
he endured as seeing him who is unseen.
And that he also, by, in speaking of
Moses' faith, he speaks also of the fact
that, what was it I was looking for
here?
He was looking for the reward.
And so in Moses' life, there also was
that conviction of things that are not seen.
In the remainder of the instances of faith
in Hebrews chapter 11, that characteristic of faith
shines forth, the conviction of things not seen.
It may well be that this is the
thing that the writer of the epistle of
the Hebrews thinks is the important thing in
the life of Jacob, the conviction of things
that are not seen.
One interesting thing about this incident is that
it is the blessing of Manasseh and Ephraim.
And Jacob has already been an important character
in a previous blessing.
But in this blessing, it was a stolen
blessing or the blessing that he received from
Isaac instead of Esau.
And he manifested, as you know, a great
deal of guile in managing to be the
recipient of that blessing.
This time, however, there is no guile in
the blessing of Ephraim and Manasseh.
It's almost an object lesson for us in
the quiet responsiveness of faith.
And no doubt, the author of the epistle
of the Hebrews singles this out for that
reason.
We are brought here to an old man's
deathbed.
There are different ways in which you can
come to your deathbed.
You can come to your deathbed in faith,
and you can come to your deathbed in
unbelief.
And one sees the great benefit of coming
to one's deathbed in faith here.
Here is a man who is sick.
The scriptures say that he's sick here.
And that's a word that means something like
worn down or infirm by reason of age
and disease.
But even though he's sick and on his
deathbed, the Lord God is with him and
sustaining him.
And this elevated state of mind that comes
to Jacob as he blesses his sons or
grandsons is the product of the sustaining power
of truth.
And one sees that, you know, in the
experiences of life.
Those that come to their deathbed in faith
come to their deathbed with something to sustain
them.
And those who do not face death in
the fear that God implants in the heart
of all men.
You see Jacob here on his deathbed, but
he is the object of divine inspiration.
God speaks through him with reference to Ephraim
and Manasseh.
And he guides his hands over the heads
of those two boys knowingly.
That is by the Holy Spirit's direction and
is the means of the accomplishment of one
of the great acts that affects the history
of Israel down through the centuries.
In addition, he is the mediator of far
-reaching divine promises concerning these boys.
He says that they shall be fruitful, that
they shall be a great multitude.
He also says that Ephraim shall be greater
than Manasseh.
And that's what happened.
And he says that Israel in the future
shall reflect so upon the blessing of Ephraim
and Manasseh that that will be a standard
blessing.
And they will say, may God make you
like Ephraim and Manasseh.
So he's the mediator of far-reaching divine
promises.
And of course, he's a witness to the
divine faithfulness.
The same man who said, few and evil
are my days, says in the next chapter
that the angel has redeemed me from all
evil.
It does matter how we look at the
experiences of life.
I think, as far as I'm concerned, the
most striking thing about chapter 48 and the
thing that I most remember when I think
of Genesis 48 is this, that he is
the object and the subject of one of
the most revealing acts of scripture, the crossed
hands over the heads of those two boys,
Ephraim and Manasseh.
The first seven verses of the 48th chapter
record for us the adoption of Joseph's sons.
And here is a lesson for liberal theologians.
So if there is a liberal theologian lurking
in the audience, or if there is some
individual who's not a theologian but just liberal
and does not really think that it is
possible for God to look at an individual
and reckon him to be righteous even though
he is unrighteous in himself, then this is
the section for you.
We often read in theological literature, if we're
reading some of the liberal theologians, that the
idea that God may reckon a man righteous
by virtue of the merits of another person,
well, that's legal fiction.
It's not really true.
It's not really right for God to look
at an individual and reckon to him the
benefits of someone else when he admittedly is
a sinner.
Now the Bible makes a great deal of
this.
The Bible says that by virtue of the
merits of the Lord Jesus Christ, we are
justified.
But the Bible goes on to say that
we're still sinners.
In fact, James calls us just that.
He says that we are sinners.
So how is it possible for a sinner
to stand righteous before the Lord God?
Well, students of Scripture have pointed out that
it is by virtue of the merits of
the Lord Jesus Christ.
He has come as the representative man, and
he has died bearing the punishment of his
people, and by virtue of faith God reckons
to those who are his people the benefits
of the death of Christ, and they stand
righteous in the righteousness of the Son of
God.
And so the Bible says, among other things,
that we are accepted in the beloved one.
That is, when God looks down from heaven
and looks at a believing Christian, he does
not see him in his sins, though he
is a sinner.
He sees him clothed with the righteousness of
God.
He sees him in Christ.
He has been made a joint heir with
Jesus Christ.
He possesses the righteousness of God because he
has identified with him.
In his substitute he has already borne the
judgment for sin, and because he has borne
the judgment for sin in his substitute, even
heaven can bring no further charge against the
one for whom Jesus Christ died.
His penalty has been paid.
That is why we rejoice in the saving
death of the Lord Jesus Christ, because he
has borne all of our judgment, and therefore
even heaven cannot bring any charge against the
individual who is identified with his substitute.
So he has died for his people's sin,
and we stand in him.
So we have reckoned to us, the Bible
uses over and over again the term reckoned
righteous, to justify means to declare righteous individuals
who are not righteous in themselves, but stand
in righteousness because someone has borne their judgment.
Now call it legal fiction if you will,
but the Bible does not.
The Bible calls it a reality.
We do possess the righteousness of God in
Christ.
It's not legal fiction.
As a matter of fact, the Bible is
full of this idea, and we have it
again right here in the adoption of Joseph's
sons.
Now the occasion is described in the first
verse.
Word comes to Joseph that Jacob is sick,
and he's 147 years of age now, and
surely he does not have many days left.
And so Joseph gathers his two sons to
himself and says, we're going to visit your
grandfather.
And he takes off for Jacob's place, taking
his two sons with him.
Now word comes to Jacob that Joseph is
on the way, and he wants to see
you.
And so we read in the second verse
that Israel collected his strength and sat up
in bed.
The writer of the epistle of the Hebrews
adds, he worshiped leaning upon the top of
his staff.
Now that may be a reference to the
preceding chapter in the last verse of that,
but you can imagine that Joseph repeated something
of the same thing here because it says
here that he sat up in bed.
I can just imagine the other members of
the family gathered around the bed of the
ancient patriarch, and they're saying as he begins
to move in his bed, because he doesn't
see very well, and he's been sick lying
on the bed.
Now he's trying to get up.
He's raising himself up on his elbows, and
you can hear the voices from around the
bed.
Now Father, don't move.
Watch out.
Don't get up.
And finally, Jacob says, get me out of
this bed, because he's strengthened himself, the scripture
says.
He's strengthened himself, and this man who's 147
years of age and sick in his last
days has charge of his own destiny as
well as his own death.
But nevertheless, he's an old and sick man
in his dotage, and when Joseph comes, he
begins to look into the past like so
many of us who've become old men.
We look to the past.
And he says, God Almighty, Joseph appeared to
me at Luz, at Bethel in the land
of Canaan, and he blessed me.
And he said to me, behold, I will
make you fruitful and numerous, and I will
make you a company of peoples and will
give this land to your descendants after you
for an everlasting possession.
And now your two sons who were born
to you in the land of Egypt before
I came to you in Egypt are mine.
Ephraim and Manasseh shall be mine, as Reuben
and Simeon are.
Now you know, this is a wonderful scene.
Here is an old man.
He's managed to get himself up.
He's collected himself for some last few words,
and there's the prime minister of Egypt before
him with his two young sons, Ephraim and
Manasseh, and the people are gathered around the
bed, and they're wondering what this old man
is going to do now.
They think that maybe he'll fall off the
bed or something like that, and he's going
to give some of the great words of
Holy Scripture.
One of the preachers on this text has
said, is this a scene that has been
invented?
Why, if this scene is invented, then Shakespeare
is just a scribbling copy boy.
What a legacy for a father to leave
to his children, a legacy of acquaintance with
the Lord God of heaven.
We think that a father has been good
when he leaves his children some real estate
and some securities, and if he does that,
then he's been a good father.
The greatest thing that a father can leave
his children is the heritage of the knowledge
of God.
The greatest thing that you can do for
your children is to bring them up in
the nurture and admonition of the Lord God.
You cannot give them any inheritance that is
greater than that, and if you give them
all of these other things and fail there,
you have failed as a father, and you
have failed as a The greatest thing that
you can do is just what Jacob leaves
for his children.
But now look at what he's saying.
He says, now Joseph, your two sons are
mine.
Now you might say, well, after all, he's
a grandfather.
He's just talking about his children.
They are his children.
Well, of course, in that sense, that's true,
but there is more to it than that.
Did you notice how he describes these two
boys?
He says they are mine, but he says
Ephraim and Manasseh shall be mine as Reuben
and Simeon are.
Now Reuben and Simeon are his real children.
So what he is saying is that I
am adopting Manasseh and Ephraim, and I am
making them my children just as Reuben and
Simeon are my children.
In other words, they are going to become
one of the leaders of the tribes of
Israel.
Now you may not know it, but there
were not 12 tribal figures in Israel.
There were 13, because Joseph is given two
places, Ephraim and Manasseh, and later there is
the tribe of Ephraim and there is the
tribe of Manasseh.
Now Levi was the tribe that belonged to
the Lord, for they ministered about the tabernacle.
And the 12 tribes among whom the land
was divided included the two sons of Joseph.
And so when he says they are mine,
he means just exactly that.
They are mine.
He has adopted them as his own children,
and they stand just like Reuben and Simeon
did as the sons of Jacob.
Now the interesting thing about this is that
they were introduced into the inheritance of Joseph.
Now Joseph is standing there.
He is the heir of Jacob.
But these two are introduced into the heirship
of someone who is living and is the
heir.
Now that is the precise way in which
we are introduced into heirship of our Lord
Jesus Christ.
The Bible says that we are joint heirs
with Jesus Christ.
He is the heir, and we are introduced
into the sharing of his heirship, so that
we share as the sons of God in
the firstborn's right and privileges of the Lord
Jesus Christ.
Now this is biblical adoption, and this is
also imputation, for these two sons are reckoned
from this time on to have been the
sons of Jacob.
Now they are not the sons of Jacob.
They are the sons of Joseph.
But they are reckoned by the Bible to
be the sons of Jacob.
That is precisely what happens when we who
are sinners are through faith reckoned righteous by
virtue of the merits of the Lord Jesus
Christ.
And so we have imputation.
Call it legal fiction if you wish, but
only liberal theologians call it legal fiction.
The Bible calls it imputation, and the imputation
of a position before the Lord God.
Now there is so much about this chapter
that is human.
He goes on to say that God has
been good to him.
He says, Your offspring that have been born
after them shall be yours.
They shall be called by the names of
their brothers in their inheritance.
And now, being an old man in his
dotage, his mind wanders off for a moment,
and he says, Now as for me, when
I came from Paton, Rachel died to my
sorrow in the land of Canaan.
Joseph is standing before him, and Joseph is
the firstborn of Rachel.
And Joseph standing before him now reminds him
of his beloved Rachel.
Now Jacob was a man who had children
by four wives, but Rachel was his beloved.
And he wanders back in this poignant glance
to his relationship with Rachel and to the
fact that she died on the way to
Bethlehem.
And you can just see this old man,
he's thinking about that, and it's hard for
him to come back to the present.
You know, like old men do, they tend
to want to dwell in the past, and
they tell their stories over and over and
over again.
You've heard them three and four and five
times, and one benefit of this is you
learn those stories real well.
You've heard them six or eight times.
It's characteristic of old people.
They don't remember that they've told you that
before.
Now I've said to you a number of
times, you know, I'm an old man, and
so when I start telling the same story
over in the same message, then of course
you will want to be worried and go
to one of the elders and say, well,
I think it's time to retire, Dr. Johnson.
Now that reminds me about old men.
They are always telling the same old stories
over and over again.
Well, I don't know whether you can, whether
you're, just wanted to see that you were
awake this morning.
Well, it's an effort for him to return
to the present, and so he looks out,
and he sees these figures before him, and
he says, who are these?
He's been talking about Ephraim and Manasseh, and
he says, who are these?
And so Joseph said, these are my sons
whom God has given me here.
Bring them to me here, please, that I
may bless them.
Now the eyes of Israel were so dim
from age that he couldn't see, and so
Joseph brought them very close to him, and
he kissed them and embraced them.
Now isn't it interesting?
These two boys, by the way, had been
brought up in Egypt so far as we
know, and Joseph was the prime minister, and
so they were trained to be aristocrats in
Egypt, which was the greatest kingdom of that
day.
And now in this act in which Jacob
blesses them, they are to be joined to
the despised people of Israel, because they were
shepherds, and shepherds are an abomination to the
Israelites.
So he brings them to him, and he
kisses them and embraces them, and this is
an affectionate preliminary to the blessing that follows.
The Bible, incidentally, speaks about individuals in the
last days as individuals who are without natural
affection.
You can see that Jacob does not qualify.
He may have been a trickster.
He may have been a supplanter.
He may have been crooked in his earlier
days, but this you can say about him,
he's a warm, humble trickster and supplanter and
crooked fellow.
I imagine that Jacob's the kind of man
who would have put on the back of
his wagon, ask me about my grandchildren, because
he brings them to himself and kisses them
and embraces them, and I like that because
I think that that's something that should be
manifested in the families of the saints, that
natural affection of the grandfather for the son
and for the grandchildren.
Well, they are brought before him, and Joseph's
very careful.
He realizes this is important.
He knows that the blessing conveyed by the
patriarch of the family, who is the priest
of the family, and that's what Jacob was
in those days, he realizes that this is
important, and so he takes the boys out
from the legs of Jacob and brings them
back just a little bit, and he himself
bows down to the ground, and then he
takes the boys and very carefully, seeing Jacob's
right hand and his left hand before him,
and knowing, of course, that Manasseh is the
firstborn, he arranges them so as he pushes
them forward with his left hand, he pushes
Manasseh over in front of Jacob's right hand,
and Ephraim with his right hand, he pushes
over in front of Jacob's left hand, so
it would be easy for Jacob just to
reach out the natural thing and put his
right hand on the top of the head
of Manasseh and his left hand on the
top of Ephraim.
That's what we read about here in verses
12 and 13, but he's horrified, upset, and
displeased to notice that as Jacob reaches out
his hands, he takes his right hand and
puts it over on the head of Ephraim,
and then his left hand he puts over
on the head of Manasseh, and so he
has the two boys before him just like
this, and he begins to speak in the
blessing.
Now, the Bible says that he laid his
hands crosswise.
That Hebrew verb used there, sika'el, in
that particular form is a form that most
of the lexicographers now think means something like
to lay crosswise.
The Authorized Version, because this word is related
to a word that has to do with
knowledge or wisdom, translated it guiding his hands
knowingly, reference to the Holy Spirit guiding Jacob.
Now, I'm not exactly sure really which one
of these translations is correct.
Both of them, of course, express truth.
He was guided surely by the Spirit of
God.
We'll say more about that later, but at
any rate, he puts his hand on one
and then the hand on the other, and
he expresses the blessing.
And it's not surprising, of course, Joseph doesn't
interrupt because this is very solemn.
He'll interrupt later on, but Jacob is now
speaking and he's giving the blessing, and it's
not surprising that he should begin by saying,
The God before whom my fathers Abraham and
Isaac walk.
Incidentally, when he said he blessed Joseph, he
means that he blesses Joseph's sons.
Joseph is blessed in his two sons' blessing.
It's a collective expression, therefore, the two sons.
They stand as Joseph before him because they
represent him.
So the blessing is the blessing of Joseph,
but it's particularly the blessing of Joseph's sons,
Ephraim and Manasseh.
And he begins by reminding them of the
God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac
walked.
It's great to have a family tradition of
piety.
And I said a moment ago that there
is nothing greater that you can leave your
children than this tradition for piety.
Nurture your children up in the admonition of
the Lord.
If you have not done that, you have
not given them the greatest thing you can
give them.
Give them all the stocks and bonds and
land and other things.
It will not compare with the riches of
the tradition for piety and truth that you
can convey to them as your parents, as
parents.
Some people are more interested in their girls
having grace in their feet than grace in
their heads.
And they're more interested in their sons being
successful in business or being able to hit
a home run than they are in having
them know the Lord God.
You have failed men and you have failed
women if you have not communicated this to
your children, the nurture and admonition of the
Lord.
Now this blessing is remarkable because it's a
kind of a triune blessing.
Did you notice it?
The God before whom my fathers Abraham and
Isaac walked.
The God who has been my shepherd all
my life to this day.
The angel who has redeemed me from all
evil.
Now you don't have to be a student
of Genesis too much to realize that when
he says the angel, his thoughts go back
no doubt to the angel of Jehovah with
whom he wrestled at Pinal.
And it was there that he came to
understand that he had seen the face of
God.
So the angel is a reference to our
Lord Jesus Christ in his pre-incarnate glory.
So here we have a three-fold paraphrasis
for the deity.
And it's interesting that if you look in
the 16th verse at the verb bless, it's
in the singular.
So we have the three persons referred to,
the God, the God, the angel, and then
we have bless.
Now of course this is not a revelation
of the Trinity, but it's in thorough accord
with the Trinity.
He speaks of a God who wills, who
works, and who protects his people.
Now the fact that he mentions the God
of Abraham and the God of Isaac is
natural and understandable because it is this covenant
God who has steadied the faith of Jacob
in so many circumstances in his life.
It would be interesting to go back right
at this point and to go back in
Jacob's life and to see the places where
the God of Abraham and the God of
Isaac steadied him and protected him and kept
him somewhere near the will of God for
him.
He also speaks about this God as being
his shepherd all his life to this day.
The authorized version renders it, who fed me
all my life to this day.
So the shepherding is a feeding.
Incidentally, this is probably the thing that ultimately
is expressed in Scripture by David when he
speaks about the Lord is my shepherd, I
shall not want.
It is Jacob who originates this idea of
the Lord being his shepherd, the one who
has fed him.
He does not say he has followed this
God, but he says this God has been
my shepherd.
Jacob has followed the Lord very much like
a dog follows his master.
He walks with him for a little while,
sees something and runs off and sniffs around
that.
And his father has to call him back.
And this is the story of Jacob's life.
He is not followed very well, but this
covenant keeping God has kept after him and
brought him to himself.
And now he's like an old dog that
just lies near his master.
And here he's like that.
He speaks about the angel and that's the
reference to Peniel.
And isn't it interesting too that here in
chapter 48, he has such a different viewpoint.
In chapter 47, when he appeared before Pharaoh
17 years before this, he said in the
ninth verse of that preceding chapter, the years
of my sojourning are 130.
Few and unpleasant have been the years of
my life, nor have they attained the years
that my fathers lived during the days of
their sojourning.
So his days have been few and evil.
But Jacob's speaking about Jacob there.
Here he speaks about the angel who has
redeemed me from all evil.
Their few and evil have been my days.
Here, the angel who has redeemed me from
all evil.
You see, it's possible to have two strangely
different views of the same life.
Jacob's life is described in the preceding chapter
like a cloudy day, but now it's described
like a sunny day.
For the sun, when it comes out, how
things blossom and begin to gleam and shine
in the sun.
And you see things you do not see
in a cloudy day.
In one, he says, few and evil have
been his days.
In the other, he says he's been redeemed
from all evil.
So the evils have stormed over Jacob, but
he's still there.
That's the important thing.
Now in the preceding chapter, everything is Jacob.
The years of my pilgrimage have been few
and the days have been few and evil.
It's my pilgrimage, it's me this, because he's
looking at things from his own standpoint.
But here he's looking at things from the
divine standpoint, and it's the angel who has
redeemed me from all evil.
Have you ever noticed that the mountains look
quite different when you're close to them from
the way they look in the distance?
Now why anyone would want to go to
Colorado and see those mountains up there, I
don't know.
If you've ever been over to the southeast
and looked at the Smoky Mountains, why you
would ever want to go out there and
look at those piles of rock and dirt,
I have no idea why you'd want to
do that.
Go over and get close to one of
those mountains in Colorado and travel up them
a little ways.
What do you see?
Just boulders lying around, dirt, mounds here and
there, there's just nothing there.
You wonder what in the world is this?
Is this the trash heap of God's creation
that he just piled up things over here
like this?
And so you wonder about those mountains, but
then if you'll get off five and ten
miles away, they become beautiful sights indeed.
I must confess, to see those snow-capped
peaks and then the various colors that play
over those piles of rock and dirt, it's
amazing.
They are beautiful.
When you're close, they don't look very pretty,
but when you get off, they really look
beautiful.
Now you can look at your life like
that.
In the midst of your trials and difficulties,
you may think that things are going very
bad, but if you'll get off and look
at your life from the distance, and look
at it in the light of the Lord
God, then things are different.
And that's what Jacob is doing, and he's
illustrating for us the wisdom of taking the
brighter view of life, looking at our life
from the standpoint of the distance, and look
back and see the way the Lord God
has fed you all the days of your
life.
Now Joseph's listening because of course his is
his father and he has great respect for
him.
It's said, you know, when displeasure enters a
person's life because God's will has crossed the
desire that we have.
Now he wanted Manasseh to have the blessing
of the firstborn because he was the firstborn,
and he wanted Ephraim to be blessed.
And so he's very displeased that Jacob has
blessed Ephraim and has given him the firstborn
rights.
And while he's blessed Manasseh, he's not given
him what Joseph thinks ought to be his.
So you see the law of primogeniture is
not being upheld again.
Now if Joseph had thought for a moment,
he might have realized that this is the
sovereign working of God through the patriarch Jacob
who had the rights of the firstborn himself.
He may have remembered that it was Ishmael
who was the firstborn, but it was Abraham,
or it was Isaac, in whom the seed
would be called.
He may have remembered that in the case
of Jacob and Esau, it was Esau who
was born first, but it was Jacob who
was blessed with the firstborn rights.
And so here again, Manasseh is the firstborn,
but Ephraim is given the rights of the
firstborn.
Reuben has lost them because of his great
sin, and Judah is the through whom the
seed shall come.
Ephraim has firstborn rights among the tribes of
Israel.
So all of this illustrates again the fact
that God wants to make very plain to
us that nature does not necessarily inherit the
things of God.
If he had always down the line had
the oldest inherit the blessing, we might have
gotten the idea that the natural man is
to be blessed by God, but he reverses
things over and over again to remind us
that if a man is going to be
blessed in his sin, it must be by
grace.
And so the first atom is rejected, and
the last atom is the one who has
firstborn rights by virtue of his saving work
on Calvary's cross.
It's a beautiful illustration of the fact that
we are not blessed because we do good
works or because we have a certain position
in society.
We are blessed in grace and in sovereign
grace.
It's one of those things that the Bible
makes so very plain that it is God
who is responsible for the blessing of men,
and he sovereignly blesses.
He does not ask us, do you think
it's fair for me to do this?
He does what his will determines should be
done.
And whatever his will determines should be done
is right.
That is the determination of what is right.
He does not do something because it's right.
He doesn't do his will because it's right.
Something is right because it is the expression
of his will.
That is the ultimate determinant of what is
right.
When I came home from Winona Lake where
I'm teaching a course at Grace Theological Seminary
for these two weeks, yesterday I was looking
over some of the mail that had been
put on my desk, and there is a
letter from a young boy from the state
of Mississippi.
Now that's the way these people in Mississippi
call their state.
They call it Mississippi.
And this young man is a person who
has listened to the tapes for a few
years because of someone else over there who
is a preacher, and evidently he's been listening
and learning and he's now preaching himself, though
he's only been saved about three years.
He's preaching in some of those Baptist churches
over there in Mississippi, and they really need
it over there too.
But in this letter, now he speaks and
he's saying, the reason I'm writing is to
express my appreciation to you in Believer's Chapel
for the work you are all doing for
our Lord.
Also, I'd like to ask your opinion.
My question is this, how is the best
way in which to present the sovereign grace
of God and not offend weaker believers in
the process?
Or is this an impossibility?
Now this is, I'm going to give him
a private word on this tape because he'll
probably be listening to it one of these
days.
Randy, it is an impossibility.
You cannot help but offend people.
You even offend theological students.
You offend theological faculty members.
You offend Christian institutions.
But that's all right.
It's in the Bible.
He says, I have seen in the short
time that the Lord has given me in
his work that the doctrines of election, predestination,
and effectual calling scare the life out of
most church members.
In our part of the country, northeast Mississippi,
church members are torn between hardshellism on the
one extreme and freewillism on the other.
Moreover, spiritual maturity is very low even among
faithful church members.
That's one of the reasons for the difficulty.
Well it's the sovereign blessing of God.
There is no other way to explain why
Jacob, guided by the Holy Spirit, took his
right hand and put it on the head
of Ephraim and his left hand on the
head of Manasseh.
So far as we know, it was the
sovereign direction of God.
Manasseh may have come out of that and
said, I don't like my grandfather.
He was not fair.
I'm the one who is the old one
and he gave my blessing to the younger
one.
I would not have wanted to have been
around to try to explain that to the
young man.
It's just in Scripture it was God's will
that that take place.
And of course he taught us some things
by that.
He teaches us that the blessing of God
comes through his sovereign grace.
That's how it comes to us.
The thing to do is to not object
but to bow to it and respond to
it in that way and then we'll receive
the blessing as well.
And when we get to heaven we'll find
out the reason.
Well now Joseph is upset and so he
says no, no, no.
Manasseh is the firstborn and he reaches out
and tries to take Joseph's hand and tries
to take his right hand and put it
on the head of Manasseh and his left
hand on Ephraim.
And the old man's got enough strength to
resist the prime minister of Egypt.
He says uh-uh.
I know my son.
I know.
He knows what he's doing.
He says I know.
He said he shall become a people and
he also shall be great.
However his younger brother shall be greater than
he and his descendants shall become a multitude
of nations.
You see that's why the writer of the
epistle of the part of Jacob.
He's heard the voice of God speaking in
his heart.
He's acted on the basis of it.
He's even rejected the counsel of the prime
minister of Egypt, a godly man himself, and
he's sticking to his guns.
He's got himself now anchored in the will
of God.
Jacob has finally become Israel and he's not
going to move from that.
So he finishes and he has a word
for Joseph at the end.
He says Joseph from the twenty-first verse,
I'm about to die but God will be
with you and bring you back to the
land of your fathers.
I'm going but God's going to be with
you.
Happy is the believer who looks beyond men
to the Lord God.
This is why this was such a great
act of faith.
Jacob recognized that his blessings have come from
this God, the God before whom his fathers
walked, the God who had fed him all
of his life, the angel who had redeemed
him from all evil.
He recognizes grace.
He sees the angel as his kinsman redeemer,
the one who has redeemed me from all
evils.
He has a new outlook.
He sees his redeemer in clear vision and
he worships as he stands by the side
of the bed.
Oh the perseverance of God who persevered with
this crooked supplanter and finally makes him truly
Israel, the prince or the fighter with God.
And of course this last picture of Jacob
with crossed hands, blessing one, the one that
surprisingly is not the firstborn, gives us a
vivid picture of the fact that there is
no blessing that comes to us apart from
the grace of God through the cross of
Jesus Christ.
So he crosses his hands in token of
the fact that it is by the cross
that nature is rejected and that grace comes
to those who bow before the Lord Jesus
Christ, acknowledge their sin and receive as a
free gift forgiveness, a righteous standing before the
Lord God that is not legal fiction but
is biblical divine truth.
If you are here in this audience and
you have never believed in the Lord Jesus
Christ, we remind you of your sin and
of the fact that the Son of God
has died for sinners and that you may
come as the Holy Spirit brings conviction to
him and receive as a free gift through
the cross the blessings of firstborn sons.
For that's what the Bible says that we
are since we share in the inheritance of
the firstborn son of God.
May God bring you to faith in Christ
and the possession of everlasting life.
When your deathbed comes, you'll face it in
the faith that glorifies God.
Let's stand for the benediction.
Father, we are so thankful to thee for
these wonderful pictures that are given to us
from the word of God and we confess
that is a picture that shall never leave
us.
The old man blessing those two boys with
crossed hands reminding us that nature because of
sin does not inherit the blessings of God.
It is by the grace of God that
we enter into any of the blessings of
our great triune God.
Oh God, speak to the hearts of all
present.
Show them their need.
Bring them to Christ.
May they enjoy that relationship of righteousness through
free grace.
May God's great mercy and grace go with
us for Jesus' sake.
Amen.