Let's stand up.
The
humble poor believe.
The
triumphs
of His grace.
The triumphs of His grace.
Let's come to our great God in prayer.
Lord, we have just been singing some of
the most choicest verses of praise ever written
in the history of hymns.
The honors of the name of your beloved
Son we would want to bring to you
as we link together in an anthem of
praise and holy worship.
Lord, we're a congregation of differing units.
Some have known you for many a long
year.
More qualified than the preacher to proclaim the
message.
Some are just at the beginnings of the
Christian faith.
Hardly able to walk, let alone run.
Some are inquirers into truth, having not yet
placed their hands in the nail-pierced hand
of the Lord Jesus.
Some are utterly cynical and skeptical.
Whatever category we find ourselves in this night,
we ask, Lord, that you will deal with
us according to our need.
Around your word, many of us gladly come.
But for others, the concentration count is a
difficult one to rise to when we pray
for help.
Many of us are convinced that it is
through preaching that you proclaim your word today.
We ask that the authority of your word
may come through and hold each one of
us spellbound.
Lord, we just offer this service and all
of us with all our great needs.
And we ask, O Lord, that you will
suit a blessing accordingly.
We thank you for one another.
We thank you for the privilege of gathering
together.
And now we pray for 94% and
probably more of worthy.
Lord, we thank you for a blessing that's
not in church this evening, that was not
in church during the Lord's day at all
today.
Lord, be with the church of the great
unchurched, those who have not rejected you and
yet have failed in the area of the
discipleship that you want from them.
And enable us to reach those who are
sensitive by the power of your spirit to
the claims of the gospel.
And may such be brought into a knowledge
of salvation through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
So hear us and do us good during
this next hour and a half or so.
In the name of the Savior, Amen.
Well, let me take you to Genesis.
Because there, tucked away in the 47th chapter,
are some interesting instructions.
And they're fleshed out further in other verses
in Genesis 49 and 50.
We've been making our way through the life
of Jacob.
He may not be meaningful to you, but
he was a great historical figure.
And you can actually, if you're prepared to
concentrate, see a great deal of yourself and
therefore a great deal of relevance in his
life as we look into it.
But I want to show you not only
about Jacob this evening, but also about one
who was greater than Jacob.
Jacob became a prince with God because, well,
God astonishingly decided that Jacob was a fit
companion for him.
But a more wonderful prince was our beloved
Lord Jesus.
And there is a sense in which Jacob
anticipates, prefigures our Lord.
Well, here is this aged man at the
end of his life, and he's in Egypt.
And we pick up the reading from the
47th chapter of Genesis and the 28th verse.
Jacob lived in Egypt 17 years, and the
years of his life were 147.
When the time drew near for Israel, that's
another name for Jacob.
Israel means prince with God.
And when the time drew near for Israel
to die, he called for his son Joseph
and said to him, If I have found
favor in your eyes, put your hand under
my thigh.
That's a euphemism.
To do what was being asked was actually
to put the hand on the reproductive organ,
which was a very solemn and a very
sensitive and a very intimate thing in which
to engage in the culture of that day.
If I have found favor in your eyes,
put your hand under my thigh and promise
that you will show me kindness and faithfulness.
Do not bury me in Egypt, but when
I rest with my fathers, carry me out
of Egypt and bury me where they are
buried.
I will do as you say, Joseph said.
Swear to me, Jacob said.
Then Joseph swore to him, and Israel, that
is Jacob, Israel worshipped as he leaned on
the top of his staff.
Now the 21st verse of the 48th chapter.
Same context.
Jacob, Israel, said to Joseph, I am about
to die, but God will be with you
and take you back to the land of
your fathers.
And to you, as one who is over
your brothers, I give the ridge of land
I took from the Amorites with my sword
and my bow.
The 49th chapter.
Jacob's now got all his sons together, and
he predicts the pilgrimage, the sort of career
that they will have.
We pick out one.
Verse 9.
He speaks to Judah.
You are a lion's cub, O Judah.
You return from the prey, my son.
Like a lion he crouches and lies down,
like a lioness who dares to rouse him.
The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor
the ruler's staff from between his feet, until
he comes to whom it belongs.
The authorized version puts it, until Shiloah comes.
And the obedience of the nation is his.
He will tether his donkey to a vine,
his colt to the choicest branches.
He will wash his garments in wine, his
robes in the blood of grapes.
His eyes will be darker than wine, his
teeth whiter than milk.
And now the 33rd verse.
When Jacob had finished giving instructions to his
sons, he drew his feet up into the
bed, breathed his last, and was gathered to
his people.
Then we read in the 50th chapter how
they set off.
They contacted tribes of Alexandria, or maybe it
was Dilestans, and they went off in a
party to the land from which Jacob had
come.
Verse 10.
When they reached the threshing-floor of Attad
near the Jordan, they lamented loudly and bitterly,
and there Joseph observed a seven-day period
of mourning for his father.
When the Canaanites who lived there saw the
mourning at the threshing-floor of Attad, they
said, The Egyptians are holding a solemn ceremony
of mourning.
That is why the place near the Jordan
is called Abel Mitzrayim.
So Jacob's sons did as he had commanded
them.
They carried Jacob to the land of Canaan
and buried him in the cave in the
field of Machpelah near Mamre, which Abraham had
bought as a burial place from Ephron the
Hittite, along with the field.
After burying his father, Joseph returned to Egypt
together with his brothers and all the others
who had gone with him to bury his
father.
Somebody has said, in fact, it was J
.I. Packer, a great Anglican theologian, that your
philosophy is not worth tuppence if it does
not teach you how to die.
I like the way the French say goodbye.
Au revoir.
I like the way the Germans say goodbye.
Auf Wiedersehen.
Because within those two terms is the idea
that your farewell is not final, that you
will actually come that way again and you
will continue the friendship that you have enjoyed.
C.S. Lewis, who was a great professor
at Oxford in the 1930s, he once said
to a student of whom he had grown
particularly fond, as the student left Oxford courtesy
of British Railways and pulled out of the
station, Christians do not say goodbye.
And Lewis meant that Christians invariably on this
earth or in heaven meet again.
Here we feature the story of Jacob saying
goodbye to his sons.
But there is a sense, as I've already
indicated, in which Jacob gives us some idea
about the character of our Lord Jesus Christ,
inasmuch as, par excellence, the Lord Jesus was
a prince with God.
In fact, he was the Prince of Peace.
And what I want to try and show
you, albeit with brevity as my goal, is
how Jacob and our Lord Jesus approached death.
So there is some correspondence between what I
was sharing with our congregation this morning and
also our subject matter this evening.
How did Jesus say farewell?
How did Jacob say farewell?
Well, if you die at 70 or 80,
or if you die, as some people do
prematurely, in your teens or in your 20s,
what would be the most ideal way of
saying au revoir?
Well, Jacob died in the company of his
family.
He brought together all his brothers, or rather
all his sons.
That's why I gave you just a little
selection of readings.
You see this old man, he is very
old, well beyond the age that most people
here live to, and doubtless there's an element
of senility as far as his body is
concerned, if not his mind.
And as his sons are around him, he
asks specifically Joseph to ensure that when he
passes away, he will not be buried in
Egypt, but he'll be buried in the land
of promise from which he came.
And most mysteriously, when Jacob died, not only
did he give a blessing to Joseph, but
he called one of his sons, in fact
all of his sons in front of him,
and he suggested to them the sort of
character that they would develop, and if you
like, the sort of things that they would
do.
Some of his anticipation was most unpleasant.
But the Bible is an honest book.
It'll paint its portraits, what and all.
It'll tell you the truth.
But it's especially when Jacob has Judah's ear
that things really become exciting on Jacob's deathbed,
because Jacob predicts that one day from Judah
will come someone who is quite unusual.
Here is a prophecy that is messianic.
It speaks of the coming into this world
of our Lord Jesus.
It talks about the authority of God being
located in the tribe of Judah, and from
the loins of Judah will come one who
according to the authorized version shall bear the
name of Shiloh.
Now, isn't it interesting, those of you who
know the New Testament, that our Lord came
from the tribe of Judah, our Lord Jesus
Christ, and in a very wonderful way, it
seems as though Jacob, even though his eyes
may have been dimmed with age, had spiritual
perception and realized that one day coming into
the world, not only for the benefit of
his descendants, of the nation that he and
Abraham have established, but for the benefit of
mankind totally, would come one who was called
Shiloh.
Do you remember Tim and I speaking on
one occasion about Jacob wrestling with God?
And during that encounter, Jacob says to his
divine assailant, What is your name?
Now, the Scripture doesn't say that the name
was not supplied, and it doesn't say that
it was.
And F.B. Meyer, a preacher in the
1930s, says, He wonders if God whispered into
the ear of Jacob, Shiloh.
One day, Jacob believes that coming into the
world will be someone who will bring a
great deliverance, not only for his descendants, but,
as I say, for all mankind.
Now, turn the pages of history over.
It's no longer Jacob on his deathbed with
the family.
It's the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, when he died, he had with him,
some days previously, his, quotes, family.
He had his disciples.
And around a table, like the one under
my pulpit here, they were gathered.
And Jesus took bread and wine.
They had a feast, far more sumptuous than
the small piece of bread that we'll offer
you and the small goblet of wine, for
that's just symbolic.
But when Jesus was speaking to the family
on that occasion, he, too, made a prediction.
Almost on the deathbed of Jesus, he says,
Look, I want you to get out your
diaries, because I want to write an appointment
in the diary because I am going to
see you again.
One day we will eat of bread and
we will drink of wine in my Father's
kingdom.
Now, it's not often that a man on
his deathbed makes an appointment to see somebody
else after he's died, assuming that his mentality
is intact.
But the Lord Jesus, you see, he never
spoke about his death without also speaking about
his resurrection.
The Lord Jesus dies, and just prior to
his death on the cross, he has spoken
to the family, as Jacob prior to his
death spoke to his family.
And what is more, they were both conscious
of some great inviolable promises.
Inviolable means something that cannot be broken.
We are told that when Israel Jacob died,
he was gathered to his people.
He did not believe, apparently, that death was
the end of his existence.
It's interesting in the Old Testament how although
you don't get the full realization as in
the New, nonetheless there is this indication that
when a man died physically, it was not
the end of him.
In other words, death is not like blowing
out the flame of a candle.
Jacob says that when he dies, he will
be gathered to his people.
When you go to the 11th chapter of
the book of Hebrews, which of course is
in the New Testament, you find a comment
made about Jacob and others who lived at
his time in history.
It says, all these people were still living
by faith when they died.
They did not receive the things promised.
They only saw them and welcomed them from
a distance.
But as the years went by, the promises
that God made to Abraham, the grandfather of
Jacob, became more and more precious to Jacob.
And he lived believing that those promises were
utterly inviolable.
And even though he did not himself live
to physically inhabit in terms of being an
owner of the promised land, he nonetheless believed
that his future and the future of the
nation that he would be the ancestor of
would be covered by the promises of God.
Our Lord Jesus, when he was on earth,
said this, speaking of God, I am the
God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Jacob.
He is not the God of the dead,
but of the living.
When Jesus comes on earth and he referred
to Jacob, he did not refer to Jacob
as though his total remains were a molding
in the grave in some cave in the
promised land.
Jesus spoke of Jacob as though he were
still alive.
When a man dies, it is his body
that dies.
It is not his spirit that is taken
into a state of annihilation.
The spirit goes on to the Lord who
gave it.
Jacob is gathered to his ancestors.
His ancestors, Isaac, Abraham, all the righteous dead
in the Old Testament, they did not lose
a consciousness in the sense that their souls
were held in some suspended state.
They went into the very presence of God.
And the New Testament describes them as being
the community of the redeemed, the community of
the firstborn who are in heaven.
Now, when our Lord Jesus faced death, how
did he face it?
Well, of course, he's immersed in the Old
Testament Scriptures.
He knows what is contained there.
He was the inspirer behind them.
And speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ, the
psalmist says, You will not leave my soul
in hell.
You will not allow Shiloh, your Holy One,
to see corruption.
Now, don't misunderstand me.
The threats upon Jesus' life were very real.
And the bloody sweat which you see on
his brow in the Garden of Gethsemane was
real sweat because our Lord Jesus was truly
human.
He's also truly divine.
And he knows full well that he is
not a pawn in the hands of Herod
and Caiaphas and all those who would deal
damnably with him.
He is part of the eternal purposes of
his Father.
He is Shiloh, who has come into the
world not only to bless the descendants of
Jacob, but I tell you again, to bless
all the descendants of Adam.
Our Lord Jesus dies conscious of the great,
inviolable promises of Scripture.
As Jonah was three days in the belly
of a fish, so shall the Son of
Man be three days in the heart of
the earth.
And then, then he will be raised from
the dead.
You see the point?
Jacob understands that the promises of God are
bound to remain intact.
They are inviolable.
A greater than Jacob remembers this.
And both, so to speak, on their deathbed,
slip into eternity with the promises of God
at the forefront of their mind.
What's more, Jacob, I put it to you,
dies with the utmost dignity.
Look at the 33rd chapter, sorry, the 33rd
verse of the 49th chapter.
When Jacob had finished giving instructions to his
sons, he drew his feet up into the
bed, breathed his last, and was gathered to
his people.
Here is not appalling fright.
He is not dragged away as a criminal.
He does not go struggling into that dark
night, swearing and blaspheming.
He goes quietly, calmly, manfully.
Can you see the scene?
Here is this wizened old Jew in some
Egyptian room adorned with its hieroglyphics, attended by
his sons and also by the Egyptian courtiers.
The latter have seen men die.
They know something of the stigma of death.
You may know very little about Egyptian history,
but you know about the pyramids.
What are the pyramids?
A glorified cemetery.
What was it that occupied the minds of
the pharaohs?
How they could continue after death.
Egypt was almost obsessed by this.
But here is a man, a man of
nobility.
Oh, yes, once he was Jacob the worm,
once he was like a corkscrew, once he
was the sort of Arthur Daly of the
Old Testament, but God in his grace lifts
him out of the shell in which he
was, and he breathes into him his spirit,
and Jacob has a nobility, which, incidentally, God
can give to you.
And on his deathbed, that nobility comes into
full play, as having done all, he brings
his legs up to his chin, almost in
the prenatal position, and he's called into eternity,
gathered to be with his people.
At a funeral, we bury something, not someone.
It is the house, not the tenant.
Tuesday, I will not be burying a person.
I will be officiating as the earthly remains
of a man who lived in Worthing are
dealt with respectfully and with dignity.
When the man dies, he leaves his body,
but he goes on.
Jacob recognized this.
And there is an even greater dignity that
you see in the person of our beloved
Lord.
The bloodiest death that man could ever have
invented is his, tormented to degrees that are
almost unimaginable.
The pain in the nervous system to describe
the punishment of our Lord is more than
my emotions would allow me to do, let
alone my vocabulary have words to accurately delineate.
But you don't find there the death of
a man who's crushed.
There are not the oaths and the obscenities
that often echoed around that part of Jerusalem
when Romans did criminals to death.
Why was the one alongside our Savior on
the cross so impressed?
Because of the dignity of Jesus at the
point of his greatest human need.
Why was the centurion so impressed to the
extent that he said, surely this is a
man like unto one of the gods?
Because our beloved Lord, when he died, he
died with dignity.
If anyone lost control, it was the priests,
especially the high priests.
But never, our beloved Lord, never once did
he renege upon his manhood, for he was
truly man, the perfect man.
Never once did he let the Father down.
He's in utter control, utter poise is his,
even on the cross.
What's more, Jacob and the greater than Jacob
died with an uncompromised citizenship.
Remember?
Jacob is in Egypt.
Alas, I am old enough to remember the
funeral service of Winston Churchill.
That doesn't make me too old.
It was only in the 1960s, which for
some of you is ancient history.
You know, Churchill was a remarkable man.
They gave to Churchill in England what they
have not given to anyone else outside of
royalty.
They gave him a funeral that was worthy
of a man who had roared like a
lion and brought courage to England and the
United Kingdom and terror into the hearts of
the Nazis.
And Churchill was buried with all the pomp
and the circumstance that he deserved.
There's a simple inscription on a flagstone in
Westminster Abbey, Remember Winston Churchill.
I tell you that there never was, up
to this point in biblical history, on the
part of a Hebrew, a funeral like that
of Jacob's.
All the courtiers of Egypt in attendance, the
chariots there, the wealth of Israel, the wealth
of Egypt, the authority of Pharaoh at the
disposal of Joseph.
Here was a man, Pharaoh, who spends time
constructing pyramids.
Here is Joseph, who has been the savior
of Egypt.
Do you think it is going beyond the
bounds of imagination, of reasonable imagination, to believe
that Pharaoh suggested to Joseph, your father, a
pyramid, say the day, choose the spot, and
it's yours?
But Joseph will not have Jacob in a
pyramid in Egypt.
Why?
Because Jacob is a Hebrew.
And Jacob may be in Egypt, but Egypt
was never in Jacob.
And though Joseph spent his professional life in
Egypt, Egypt never got into Joseph.
Joseph, like his father Jacob, was a child
of the promise, a descendant of Abraham, and
Abraham was promised the land, the land that
God had counted special in this world.
Theirs was a remarkable race.
Theirs was a unique nation.
Theirs were promises that were utterly inviolable.
So see this Egyptian retinue as it sets
off in the process of this cortege, as
it makes its way back to Palestine, and
see the Egyptian courtiers with eyes that are
wide open and jaws that are gape as
they witness a cave and the ledge of
a cave in which the body of Jacob
is placed.
For Jacob prefers to be in the sepulchral
vault which houses the remains of Isaac and
Abraham because this was Jacob in effect expressing
in his last wish his certainty, his belief
in the promises of God.
He dies with an uncompromised citizenship.
He is a Hebrew.
He is a Jew.
He is not of this world.
And see the beloved Christ on the cross.
If you be the Son of God, come
down, show yourself.
So often that thrust, that torment, that temptation
was dangled in front of him and so
often he refused it.
And when Jesus went to the cross and
died, he died offering an uncompromised life to
the Father.
For though he was in the world, he
was not of the world.
Though he is representative man, he does not
participate in the sinfulness of humankind like you
and me.
That's what makes his death so very special.
Three things.
Jacob died with his heart right with God,
with his affairs straightened out, with his sons
well warned and instructed.
Somebody has said, be sure that when you
come to die, that is all that you
need to do.
What do they mean?
That your house is in order, that you
have told people what you want done with
your remains, but even more importantly, that your
soul has been placed in the possession of
God the Heavenly Father, as you have committed
yourself to him and believe that the saving
death of Jesus Christ is the means whereby
your sins are forgiven and you are destined
for, not a city on this earth, but
rather that Jerusalem in heaven itself until heaven
and earth become one in the new era
when the new Jerusalem comes down from heaven
as a bride and when God is all
and in all.
Your future is dependent on your responding to
the inviolable promises of God which state this,
that if you confess Jesus Christ as your
Lord and Savior, you will be saved, that
commands you to live in the world, but
not of the world.
The possibilities of being a prince with God
are yours through the offer of salvation which
Jesus Christ makes to you on the cross
of Calvary.
Let us pray.
In a moment, Brother Tim takes over, leading
us in praise and in thoughtful meditation upon
the cross and the resurrection of our glorious
Lord.
But just a moment for your own silent
response to what you have heard and thank
you for listening so well.
As we have seen a greater than Jacob
and as we have had evidence brought to
us that both from Old Testament and New
Testament literature, God remains true to his promises,
will act on his word, and makes it
therefore possible for you and me to be
his children.
Lift up the throne of God above I
am a son of God to praise my
Creator He is
holy but what
can be bigger than
Satan's death be to despair and to see
all the guilt with him and see
him there He sinned because
the sinless they denied My sinful soul is
now set free For all the justice that
is right to the fallen and meek And
the church
by His blood my life is saved with
Christ on high with Christ my Saviour This
is what scripture says We lived in malice
and envy being hated and hating one another
but when the kindness and love of God
our Saviour appeared He saved us not because
of righteous things we had done but because
of His mercy He saved us through the
washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy
Spirit whom He poured out on us generously
through Jesus Christ our Saviour so that having
been justified by His grace we might become
heirs having the hope of eternal life Father
we want to thank you for those words
and for the reality that we have found
in them in our own lives kindness love
mercy and grace all poured out on us
through your dear Son Amen Faithful
Jesus on the abundance of your heart and
drink from your river of delight with
you is the fountain of life in your
life we love we
are the
shepherds of love with you is heaven
faithful in
your life