You know, this was Groundhog Day a couple days ago, and some of you saw the post on social media about, you know, the pastor comes out and sees his shadow, and that's six more weeks of this sermon series, which I thought was really apropos for this since, you know, I've talked about finishing up here several weeks in a row, and we're on, what, week 62 of what I believe will be a 63-part series I believe we'll be finishing up next week. So, praise the Lord. The passage today will be chapter 49 from the beginning of the chapter through verse 28. And I'll read that for us now. Then Jacob called his sons and said, gather yourselves together, that I may tell you what shall happen to you in days to come. Assemble and listen, O sons of Jacob, and listen to Israel, your father. and actually note there how he uses both of the names, the names he was given at his birth and the name that he was given by his God. Reuben, you are my firstborn, my might and the fruits of my strength, preeminent in dignity and preeminent in power. Unstable as water, you shall not have preeminence because you went up to your father's bed, then you defiled it. He went up to my couch, Simeon and Levi are brothers. Weapons of violence are their swords. Let my soul come not into their counsel. Oh my glory, be not joined to their company. For in their anger they killed men, and in their willfulness they hamstrung oxen. Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce, and their wrath, for it is cruel. I will divide them in Jacob and scatter them in Israel. Judah, your brothers shall praise you. Your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies. Your father's sons shall bow down before you. Judah is a lion's cub. From the prey, my son, you have gone up. He stooped down. He crouched as a lion and as a lioness. Who dares rouse him? The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet until tribute comes to him, and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples. Binding his foal to the vine and his donkey's colt to the choice vine, he has washed his garments in wine and his vesture in the blood of grapes. His eyes are darker than wine and his teeth whiter than milk. Zebulun shall dwell at the shore of the sea. He shall become a haven for ships and his border shall be at Sidon. Issachar is a strong donkey crouching between the sheep folds. He saw that a resting place was good and that the land was pleasant. So he bowed his shoulder to bear and became a servant at forced labor. Dan shall judge his people as one of the tribes of Israel. Dan shall be a serpent in the way, a viper by the path that bites the horse's heels so that his rider falls backward. I wait for your salvation, O Lord. Raiders shall raid Gad, but he shall raid at their heels. Asher's food shall be rich, and he shall yield royal delicacies. Naphtali is a doe let loose that bears beautiful fawns. Joseph is a fruitful bough, a fruitful bough by a spring. His branches run over the wall. The archers bitterly attacked him, shot at him, and harassed him severely. Yet his bough remained unmoved. His arms were made agile by the hands of the mighty one of Jacob. From there is the shepherd, the stone of Israel. by the God of your Father who will help you, by the Almighty who will bless you with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that crouches beneath, blessings of the breasts and of the womb. The blessings of your Father are mighty beyond the blessings of my parents, up to the bounties of the everlasting hills. May they be on the head of Joseph and on the brow of him who was set apart from his brothers. Benjamin is a ravenous wolf, in the morning devouring the prey and at evening dividing the spoil. All these are the 12 tribes of Israel. This is what their father said to them as he blessed them, blessing each with the blessing suitable to him. Father, may your word speak to us and work in us and through us today by your Holy Spirit. In Jesus' name, amen. I've mentioned a few times in recent weeks that I have been tempted to just finish up this book, taking huge chunks of text at once. I'm motivated somewhat by wanting to make sure that as we wrap up Genesis and the themes associated with this book, now that most of the drama of the Joseph story is over, I don't want to be just rehashing the same themes over and over in my last messages. If I were gonna do that, I might just as well wrap up the whole book and be done with it. But another general motivation of mine in preaching is that I usually try to make sure that each one of my messages contains some applicability to our lives, some way the meaning of this text is significant to you, some way of being not only informed by this passage of the word, but how to be transformed as well. That's more easily done in some passage than in others. And one of the reasons I had thought of finishing up these last two chapters all at once today is that it was difficult for me to come up with some way of helping you see this particular text, most of chapter 49 here, as transformative in our own lives. And so I was almost ready to move on right through to the end of the book, but it occurred to me that allowing chapter 49 to speak for itself really helps communicate the idea I've been communicating from the very beginning of this series in Genesis, that the big picture matters, that Genesis is the crucial foundation for us to understand all of the rest of the Bible and all of life as well. These last words of Jacob, what might be called the Testament of Jacob here in chapter 49, these words not only look back at where we've been in the book previously, but look ahead as well into much of the rest of the Torah, the early history of the nation of Israel, and also farther along into all the rest of Scripture as well. So even if this message is a bit different from my typical sermons, to be honest, it's okay if sometimes the application of a passage to your life is that it simply teaches you more about scripture, about how some passages relate to other passages, about how certain details fit into the big picture, and about how the entire Bible fits together. If that's the only application we draw to this passage today, that's okay. And so that's what I plan to do in this passage, demonstrate to you many of the ways in which this passage helps us connect with and understand other sections of scripture. And I pray that the Holy Spirit will make those connections fruitful in all our lives. Before I begin getting into the text itself, I should explain that this passage contains an unusually large number of phrases which are difficult to understand. In some places it may be that the underlying Hebrew is difficult or fairly unique. And so there are a few different translations that could all work. In other places, it could be that the most natural translation doesn't seem to make sense. And so additional possible translations are introduced to try to help make better sense of the passage. And so if you were following along in a version other than the one that I was reading, you may have noticed quite a few differences in this passage because of that reason. As I mentioned, this is perhaps best called the Testament of Jacob, although many people refer to it as the Blessing of Jacob. This is where Jacob calls all his sons around him to deliver his final words to all of them, now that he's already blessed Joseph and his two sons individually, as we saw in chapter 48. Calling all of them around at once is exactly the custom. And you remember, that's what Jacob's father Isaac didn't do when he intended to bless Esau, the incident which led to Rebekah and Jacob deceiving Isaac into blessing Jacob instead, which we saw back in chapter 27. Here, Jacob calls them all around. The reason Testament is a more appropriate description for this passage than blessing is that not every one of Jacob's sons receives a blessing here, as we're about to see. Now take the very first son, Reuben. There's no blessing for Reuben in what Jacob says here. And what's more, this is the first notice we've ever had that Jacob ever says anything to Reuben about what was recorded in chapter 35, verse 22, that after Jacob's wife, Rachel, died, Reuben actually slept with Bilhah, Jacob's concubine, who had been Rachel's servant. This incident had occurred decades prior to Jacob's dying words, and the lack of ever rebuking Reuben for this until now could be more evidence of what we've mentioned in the past, Jacob's passivity as a father. Now, some commentators have been troubled by the switch from the second person in verse three and the beginning of verse four, where Jacob addresses Reuben directly as you, to the third person at the end of verse four, when Jacob says, he went up to my couch. But we have to remember that even though some people believe this was originally many different tribal sayings stitched together later on by Moses into a poem and put into Jacob's mouth, And that even though there are clearly poetic elements in this passage, these words are first and foremost the words of a dying man to his sons. If you remember that, what's obviously happening here is that Reuben, who was the firstborn son, which Jacob announces and acknowledges, by custom should have received the blessing as firstborn and the double portion as his first right. Because of what we saw in chapter 48, we already saw that Joseph has received that double portion, but now Jacob has all his sons around him, and he's explaining to all of his sons why Reuben is not receiving the blessing and double portion as the firstborn. So first, he's addressing Reuben directly, perhaps for the very first time, about that incident with Bilhah. And then he turns to all the rest of them standing around his bed and in anguish explains to them that Reuben had defiled his bed and that's why he would not be receiving the rights as the firstborn. And the history of the Reubenites to come indicates that they would never provide anything much in the way of leadership among the tribes of Israel. No judge, prophet, or king would ever arise from the tribe of Reuben. Only the ill-advised rebellion against Moses' authority by Dathan and others that we see later on in Numbers 16. We also see here a few profound examples, first in Reuben, and then in Simeon and Levi following, of the principle of the sins of the fathers being visited on their children and further generations afterward. Well, that may be one of the easiest applications to our own lives today, to recognize that our own sinful lives, lifestyles, and choices may still indeed have a tremendous impact on those generations that follow after us. That is a sobering thought to know that the lives we are leading today and the choices we make now and in our past and in the future to come will influence generations of people that we will never meet or know anything about. That's sobering. And thank God for the gospel that at least allows that everyone can live and die in either their own sin or in their own faith in Christ. Praise the Lord for that gospel truth, that the gospel is held forth to everyone as the solution to their greatest problem in life. But that doesn't mean that everyone is going to benefit from the same ancestral lineage as everyone else. We have choices to make now in following Christ and in how we do so that can have a lasting impact, for good or for ill, on generations to come. And please notice that we must consider Jacob's words here prophetic. He's not just talking about his individual sons because of what he says at the end of today's passage, verse 28. All these are the 12 tribes of Israel. He's speaking prophetically about not only who they've been, but what they will become. Not necessarily as his individual sons, but as the 12 tribes of the nation. After Reuben, Jacob addresses Simeon and Levi together, and he says they are brothers, but of course all of them here are brothers, so he must mean something more. And he seems to indicate that they are brothers in their character, violent and angry. Of course, in verse 6, we know he must be at least referring back to their slaughter of Shechem from back in chapter 34. Nobody is really sure what's meant by the comment about hamstringing oxen. There's no record of such an incident. And so perhaps it's meant in a figurative sense in that their actions figuratively hamstrung Jacob himself and his ability to live among the prophets, excuse me, among the peoples of the land, which is how he reacted after that. But we must note that in verse seven, Jacob actually curses these two, Simeon and Levi. This is the first example of a father issuing a curse that we see since way back in chapter 9 verse 25 when Noah curses his grandson Canaan, one of the sons of his own son Ham, because of Ham's actions. Here Jacob curses Simeon and Levi because of their past actions. And this clearly had an impact on the succeeding generations of these tribes. He says they will be divided and scattered. That actually came to pass. They were divided from each other. and they were scattered among the other tribes. The tribe of Levi became the only tribe that would not have any kind of land inheritance of its own since it formed the tribe that was responsible for the upkeep of the tabernacle and temple and the associated sacrifices. They eventually were allotted 48 cities scattered throughout all the land of Israel. The tribe of Simeon was allotted cities within the portion allotted to the larger tribe of Judah and was more or less absorbed into the tribe of Judah, eventually losing its own identity as a tribe. And speaking of Judah, that's who Jacob addresses next in verses 8 through 12. Now from antiquity, these five verses have been seen as messianic, that is related to the forthcoming Messiah. And as I've mentioned in several previous sermons, here we find the answer to that question we've been asking ever since Genesis 3.15. Who will be the seed of the woman that continues the line of him who will eventually appear to crush the head of the seed of the serpent? That line began with Adam and continued with Seth. down to Noah, to Shem, and down through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And in verses three through seven, we find out why that will not fall to Reuben, Simeon, or Levi. And here we see that it will fall to Judah. There's significant imagery throughout these five verses that leads us to see these words as messianic prophecy. First of all, in the very first line of verse eight, Jacob says, your brothers shall praise you This word praise is almost always reserved for God. Rarely is praise given to another human in the Hebrew Bible. So there's already a hint of divine majesty here. Judah is also depicted as a lion's cub, a lion, and a lioness. This imagery of a lion not to be roused is used a couple times elsewhere in the Old Testament to refer to Israel as a whole, in Balaam's prophecy in Numbers 23, and to Yahweh himself in the prophet Isaiah. In the New Testament, in the book of Revelation, the imagery is extended to portray Jesus, the descendant of Judah, as the lion of the tribe of Judah, and as the one who is worthy to receive praise and worship as God. We also have the image of the scepter not departing from Judah. This is a ruler's scepter, the same kind of scepter you see in Psalm 2, verse 9, Psalm 23, verse 4 that we heard earlier, and Revelation 2, 27. The kings of Israel, after the first king Saul that would come, they all came from the tribe of Judah, beginning with King David. Now, this part of verse 10 where it says here in the ESV, until tribute comes to him, this is one of the most difficult verses to translate and understand in probably the whole book of Genesis. If you look in most of your common English versions besides the ESV, you may see this verse translated as many as four different ways. Every translation has some issues. The most familiar way that you may have heard this portion of the verse translated is, until Shiloh comes. If that translation is correct, which it may very well be, the question is, what does Shiloh actually refer to and why? At the time, Shiloh was merely the name of a town that ended up dying out as a town and having no more prominence in any way. So if Shiloh is some sort of personal reference to the Messiah, no one really knows why, unless it's some sort of imagery related to rest, and thus related to the word shalom. Any way you translate it, though, there does still seem to be some messianic force to it. Verse 11 actually contains yet another image of messianic royalty, and then also an image of the immense abundance of the prophesied messianic kingdom. The foal of a donkey is, of course, what Jesus rode into Jerusalem during his triumphal entrance. And that is prophesied for us more specifically in Zechariah 9, verse 9. So we see that hint of messianic royalty again right here. But also, the act of tying a donkey to the choice vine would be utter foolishness unless there's so much abundance around that it doesn't matter. Because what's a donkey going to do if you tie it to the choice vine? It's going to eat the grapes on the vine. You would never do that unless you were overflowing in abundance so much that it didn't matter if your donkey was eating the choice grapes. Today that would be like taking $100 bills and lighting them on fire to keep yourself warm. You would only do that if you had so much abundance it didn't matter to you. or unless inflation got so bad that your paper money was actually worth less than the fuel you could buy with it. So it would be wiser to burn it than to buy fuel with it. But I don't think inflation is the imagery here. You see the same kind of abundance indicated in washing his garments in wine and his vesture in the blood of grapes. Either there is so much juice in these grapes that those stomping them end up completely covered in juice, or there's so much wine available that you literally could use it to wash your clothes in and it wouldn't affect your abundance. This is the kind of abundance here prophesied about in the Messianic Kingdom. Then after Judah, we start getting into the rest of Jacob's sons. And for most of these, Jacob doesn't have a lot to say. It's understandable to a degree. We needed to see why none of the first three received the blessing of the firstborn. Judah does receive that blessing, and so we see a lot said about him. And we see a lot said about Joseph as well, Jacob's favorite and the other who played such a prominent role in saving the family. Zebulun is the first son addressed here out of birth order. And many reasons have been suggested for why this takes place, but honestly the one that makes the most sense to me is simply that Jacob was addressing his sons in the way they were gathered around him. And Zebulun happened to be the next one in line. And when it says that Zebulun would dwell at the shore of the sea, Many have been puzzled by this because in most maps of the territory that was eventually allotted to the tribe of Zebulun, it appears landlocked as far as its access to the Mediterranean Sea. But that may not have been entirely true, but even if it were true, the words here more likely refer to the Sea of Galilee. As we heard earlier, the gospel writer Matthew in chapter 4, verses 15 and 16 of his gospel quotes the prophet Isaiah regarding Jesus' ministry beginning in the land around Galilee, the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali. Speaking of Naphtali, Jacob's comment in verse 21 is extremely short, and again, it could be translated and understood several different ways, and the tribe didn't have an especially large impact on the history of the Israelites outside of having land in and around Galilee. Verses 14 and 15 refer to Issachar, the last of Leah's sons that Jacob hasn't mentioned yet, even though he was older than Zebulun. Again, the last comment about becoming a servant at forced labor in verse 15 is, again, hard to understand or translate. And though many take this statement to be a negative about Issachar, many others see no reason to do so since nothing negative is ever specifically noted about Issachar himself. It could simply be understood as became a laborer at work, which is what's depicted later on in Israel history when Issacharites seem to have provided much labor for public works projects during Israel's monarchy. Some of these are depicted in places like 2 Samuel 20 and in the early chapters of 1 Kings. In verses 16 and 17 here, Dan, the son of Jacob by Bilhah, surprisingly gets two specific mentions and two specifically different prophecies. First, that he would be a judge of his people. And second, that he would be like a viper biting at horse's heels. The fact that he received two statements is fitting, given that he's the seventh son mentioned here. And the number seven, as many of you know, was seen as a special number, the number of completeness. Dan was a very small tribe, but the most well-known and probably influential Danite in scriptural history was Samson, who despite some of his moral failings, indeed is considered one of the judges of Israel that we see in the book of Judges, and who acted on God's behalf for the people of Israel against the Philistines. Originally, Dan had been granted land in the south of the promised land, but eventually migrated northward, all the way northward, and attacked and took over the area of the land that had been known as Laish. And from that point on, that location of Dan became a permanent reference point for the geographic extent of Israel through the expression we so often see in scripture, from Dan to Beersheba. Amazingly, then, in verse 18, Jacob pauses and makes this unexpected comment, at least unexpected at this point, I wait for your salvation, Yahweh. Remember that use of Lord in all capital letters in English indicates the divine name, the covenant name of God, Yahweh. Jacob's comment comes immediately after the prophecy about Dan. And on behalf of all Israel, perhaps, attacking peoples larger than itself and still overcoming as a viper might overcome a horse by biting at its heels. Jacob, Israel, is looking forward to when Yahweh does that for his people, for the nation of Israel. This is the last time in the book of Genesis that the name Yahweh is used. And even more interesting, this is the first occurrence in the entire Bible of this word salvation. A close form of the word Yeshua, which many of you also realize was the Hebrew name of the person we know as Jesus. Jacob is prophesying about and waiting for the day when Israel's covenant God would overcome all their larger and seemingly stronger enemies and provide his people salvation. In 19, verse 19, the tribe of Gad would fulfill this prophecy because their territory was east of the Jordan River, making them especially vulnerable to raiders. But they would strike back at the heels of those raiders and eventually become well-known as warriors, as seen in places like 1 Chronicles 5 and chapter 12 as well. In verse 20, Asher is depicted as yielding royal delicacies and many understand this to mean that their tribes supplied food for the courts of their Canaanite and Phoenician neighbors. Judges 1 verse 32 does indicate that the tribe of Asher was unable to drive out the Canaanites from their territory. I've already mentioned Naphtali earlier, so we come to the other long blessing in this chapter, the one bestowed on Joseph. I preached last week about Joseph and about Jacob blessing him and his son separately in chapter 48, but we see here again that Jacob has bestowed on him the only other blessing that rivals the one bestowed on Judah. As you've heard for so many weeks now, Joseph has played a unique God-ordained role in the deliverance of Jacob and his family from the famine, in the deliverance of the nation of Egypt from that same famine, and in providing a place for the family of Israel to thrive and develop into the nation of Israel. I said last week that in claiming Joseph's sons as his own heirs, Jacob was giving Joseph, his firstborn son from his favored wife, Rachel, the double portion that would ordinarily have gone to his truly firstborn son, in this case, Reuben. We've spoken more than once now about how Reuben lost Jacob's trust and favor, but what I did not tell you last week is that what Jacob does here in giving Joseph the double portion eventually would be strictly forbidden in the Mosaic law that was later delivered to the nation of Israel. If you were to read Deuteronomy 21 verses 15 to 17, you would see that what Jacob does here and in chapter 48 later becomes a specifically prohibited practice in the nation of Israel. This is not the first time we've seen things that occur in the book of Genesis that are later on explicitly forbidden to Israel. How we view situations like this is significantly affected by how we see the whole of scripture put together. Many would say that the law given through Moses, or at least some aspects of it, represent the abiding moral law of God. And if that's true, then the patriarchs were often violating this abiding moral law of God. But as you may begin to understand as you've listened to these sermons throughout the book of Genesis, I don't believe that's the proper way of understanding these kinds of situations. As I mentioned in my Christmas message and in other messages, we must understand that God's revelation to mankind occurred progressively. That is to say, not all at once, but over a period of thousands of years. And it was revealed over these periods in the context of different covenants. The law of Moses was a covenant God made with the Israelites through Moses at a specific time for a specific era. Now I'm not talking about dispensations, please don't think that, but there were different covenants. And sometimes those covenants did not apply the same way to all people at all times, or even to all the people of God at all times. I think the right way of understanding this is not that the patriarchs were frequently breaking God's law and God just chose to overlook it all, although you certainly can make the case that at times they were not following God as closely as they ought to have been, and they often did suffer for their poor moral choices. In many of these cases, I believe the way of understanding this is that God knew that certain practices of the patriarchs would be used and abused by the Israelite nation to come, descended after them. And so he expressly prohibited them for the nation later in the Mosaic law, when he had not expressly forbidden such actions earlier. This situation of Jacob giving to Joseph instead of to Reuben a double portion is one such situation. But we've seen others as well. Think again of the idea of close intermarriage. In the beginning, when there were only sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, they would have needed to have had brother-sister marriage. In the case of Abraham, we know he married his half-sister. Many such situations like this were necessary at the time, and it was only later that God forbade the practice of such close intermarriage. And for sure, one reason he knew about was the difficulty the growing rate of genetic mutations would have on the already more or less reproductively isolated population that Israel was. We see it in that situation. We see it also in the situation of a man marrying two sisters, as Jacob did. That was later prohibited in the Mosaic Law. The practice of selling one's brother into slavery, as Judah advised regarding Joseph, was eventually forbidden on pain of death in the Mosaic law, the same death penalty as one who murdered another. We see numerous practices that Israel would likely have copied in their patriarchs because they were their patriarchs that God specifically enumerated as forbidden later on so that they wouldn't imitate the patriarchs in those matters. One more comment about Joseph's blessing here. Verse 24 is only the second time in the Bible that God is referred to as a shepherd. The first time we saw last week in chapter 48. And finally, Benjamin receives maybe even a surprisingly short blessing, given that he was one of the two sons of Jacob from Rachel. Eventually the tribe, which became surprisingly small, even though Benjamin himself had so many sons, would become known as warriors, and they were specifically known for their skill with their left hands, an irony given that the name Benjamin, you remember, means son of the right hand. I'll just point out that if you look for example, at this list of Jacob's 12 sons, considering also that Joseph's two sons were considered Jacob's own heirs as well, and that Levi was never assigned its own territory as a tribe. Then we understand why in Numbers chapter one, the 12 tribes are listed, but Moses in that case has left out Levi and has added in Ephraim and Manasseh as half tribes of Joseph. But when you look at Revelation chapter 7, where John refers to the 12,000 that will be saved out of each of the 12 tribes of Israel, they're listed a different way, a way that's never seen in that way any other time in the Bible. Levi's included again. Joseph is listed by name and his son Manasseh, but Ephraim is not. And Dan is missing altogether. There are some possibilities, some theories about why that is, but no one quite understands why John has listed those that way. But the differences do suggest that something specifically symbolic is going on in Revelation chapter 7. So, as I said at the beginning, I don't have much for you in the way of personal application to your life today. except to say that Jacob's words here represent the culmination, or at least one culmination, of many of the themes we've previously addressed as we've walked through the book of Genesis. And the significance of Jacob's words here can help us to understand much of the rest that occurs in Scripture, both coming before this and to come afterwards. I pray the Holy Spirit bless us all with wisdom and understanding that He may use this scriptural awareness to His fruitful benefit for our good and for His glory. Let's pray. Father, you have revealed so much to us and we know so much more than the patriarchs did at this time. And even though we don't experience your presence maybe as they did sometimes in their lives, we have your sure word written for us. And we have the experience of the presence of the son of God himself coming down from heaven and living in history. And we have, once he was taken to heaven, the Holy Spirit that he sent, living not only in each of us, Lord, but in each of us collectively as a body. Father, I don't know how you may use these scriptural truths to change our lives, to transform us, but I pray that you would do so. I pray that you would give us a hunger and a desire every day to be digging deeper into the Word, to be understanding how these fit together, to be understanding more about this history from thousands of years ago that in some ways still seems so foreign to us today. So Father, I pray you would do that for us. Do it in ways that we could never do ourselves. Guide us and lead us and train us by your spirit, I pray. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, let us take an opportunity to do something very concrete, an explicit command of Jesus Christ to his apostles that they practiced among themselves and taught the church to practice, the Lord's Supper. We share in the body of Christ broken for us. We share in the blood of the new covenant. His blood poured out like wine for us. Here at Grace Baptist Church, we don't limit communion to just members of the church, but we do encourage that the Lord's Supper is something that is for the body of believers. It's not for the outside world. It's for people that have professed faith in Christ and ideally been baptized upon that profession of faith. So I ask you to examine yourselves in that regard and for parents, as always, to you can make that decision regarding your children. And if you ever have any questions about that regarding your children, I encourage you, let's talk about that.