And I read verse 14 now, "...and Israel
stretched out his right hand, and laid it
upon Ephraim's head, who was the younger, and
his left hand upon Manasseh's head, guiding his
hands wittingly, for Manasseh was his firstborn."
Now, Ephraim, you remember, becomes the leader above
Manasseh.
Joshua came out of the tribe of Ephraim,
by the way.
And you will find that out of that
tribe there were many great men.
We'll have occasion to call attention to that.
It became the tribe with priority, no question
about it.
Now, what happened was, when these two boys
were moved up to old Jacob, although he
couldn't see too well, he could see what
his son Joseph was doing.
He was pushing the older one, where he
could put his right hand on him, and
the next one, where he put his left
hand on him.
And what did old Jacob do here?
Well, he just switched hands.
He just crossed his hands, and that meant
the right hand went on the younger.
Now, why do you suppose he did that?
Well, I have several suggestions to make to
you of why he would do that sort
of thing.
Well, I think the reason is, he was
the younger, was he not?
And the blessing was his.
And so he passes the blessing on to
the younger here.
You find this running all the way through
in the choice, for instance, of a king
for Israel.
God never did choose old Saul.
That was the people's choice.
They voted for him, and people get what
they vote for, of course, and they got
Saul.
But God's choice was David, and David was
not the oldest son of Jesse at all.
He was the youngest one.
Now, why does God do that?
God is illustrating for you and me a
great spiritual truth.
God does not accept primogeniture, that is, natural
birth.
Never will he accept it.
There must be the new birth.
Therefore, God does not pay attention to what
we would pay attention to.
We'd say, well, he's the oldest boy.
He has the responsibility.
We can depend on the oldest boy.
Well, the oldest boy is not the one
God always chooses.
That is, he doesn't choose the natural man.
And he chooses no man because of his
natural ability.
Oh, that's a truth that we need to
learn today.
We feel like, now, don't misunderstand.
God can use talent, but you better be
dead sure it's dedicated to him.
Because if it took talent to bring revival,
we'd have had revival in Southern California years
ago.
We have got Christian talent that's running out
our ears out here, but we don't have
revival.
And you know why?
It's not dedicated to him.
I tell you, my friend, it has to
be yielded to him, to be used of
him.