Oops, I need to turn this on. Before we get started, I should have included this in the announcements phase, but as you may have noticed in the mornings now, we are going through the Westminster Shorter Catechism. We're only up to question three. And if you have never memorized the Shorter Catechism and all of the questions in it, Now would be a wonderful time to take up that particular endeavor. I have, or we have as a church, picked up a number of the newer printings of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, this little green book, which holds together pretty well compared to the older versions that fell apart very easily. It has the scripture proofs and so on, but this is something that in your personal devotions and in your family devotions I would really recommend doing, just going through one question a week and gradually memorizing it. It is actually possible that it can be done. At one time when I was preparing for licensure examinations, and this is Oh boy, this is a long, long time ago now, well over 23 years, 24 years, 25 years maybe. I memorized all 107 questions and I am sad to say that I gradually forgot the latter ones, but I have determined that this year I'm going to set as a desire that I will memorize all of these. And if you can memorize all 107 of these questions, I will give you a copy of one of the best-selling books in America today, very difficult to find. And if you want to know what that book is, come and ask me afterwards and I will tell you. spend your time speculating on which book I'm referring to. It's newly published as well. I'll leave it at that. But let's now turn our attention to the Word of God again and away from the creeds and comments on the Word of God. I would invite you to turn with me in your Bibles to Genesis, the first book of the Bible, Genesis 35. And so we continue on in the book of Genesis, learning about Jacob and his family. And we've got some sad events that occur in this particular chapter, particularly in these ending few verses. We're gonna be taking a look at verses 21 through 29 this evening. But before we go to the word of the Lord, let's go to the Lord who gave us this word and let's ask him to bless it. God, our gracious Father, we thank you so much that you've given us a true account of the way that your church grew, how you started, oh Lord, after the world had fallen and our first parents, Adam and Eve, we read about how even after they had sinned against you and deserved nothing but death, and we their posterity, judgment in them, you endeavored to begin that wonderful work of redemption that you had determined to do from before even the creation. And we see how it progresses through Genesis, how you were gradually building to the point where the redeemed would come, safeguarding the seed that would come from the line of Abraham. And we are so thankful, Lord, that you have continued that work. and that you have accomplished all that you promised. Now, Lord, as we read about these things, may we learn from them, may we take them to heart, and may we apply them in our own lives. We pray this in Jesus' holy name, amen and amen. Genesis chapter 35, and I'm going to be reading starting at verse 21. I remind you, this is the word of the Lord. Then Israel journeyed and pitched his tent beyond the Tower of Edir, and it happened when Israel dwelt in that land that Reuben went and lay with Bilhah, his father's concubine, and Israel heard about it. Now the sons of Jacob were twelve. The sons of Leah were Reuben, Jacob's firstborn, and Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun. The sons of Rachel were Joseph and Benjamin. The sons of Bilhah, Rachel's maidservant, were Dan and Naphtali. And the sons of Zilpah, Leah's maidservant, were Gad and Asher. These were the sons of Jacob who were born to him in Padneram. Then Jacob came to his father Isaac at Mamre, or Kirgeth Arba, that is Hebron, where Abraham and Isaac had dwelt. Now the days of Isaac were 180 years. So Isaac breathed his last and died and was gathered to his people, being old and full of days. And his sons Esau and Jacob buried him. And the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. Well, this chapter obviously begins with a shocking account, not a shocking account. It begins with the news that, unfortunately, Reuben commits an act of incest. It starts off by telling us that Reuben, Jacob's firstborn, and he's referred to now as Israel, remarking on how he strove with the Lord His name was changed as one who strives for the Lord, who wrestled with God, and who wrestled with man as well. Reuben had sex with Bilhah, Rachel's maid, and the mother of his brothers, Dan and Naphtali. This was a shocking account. The very sin, of course, which the Apostle Paul condemns in 1 Corinthians 5, that a man would sleep with his father's wife, is the sin that Reuben committed here. Now, commentators have speculated wildly on why he did this. Many of them believe that it wasn't just, well, you know, he took a look at her and she took a look at him, and they determined that they were going to sin together. They feel that there was something behind it. Some have felt that Rubin was attempting to usurp his father's position. By sleeping with his father's concubine, he was asserting that he should succeed his father. as the firstborn rather than one of the sons whom his father favored and didn't take, you know, a great intellect to figure out that Jacob would want any of his inheritance to go to Joseph or Benjamin, the sons of Rachel, not Reuben, even though he was the firstborn because he was a son of Leah. But if it was his intention to usurp his father's position, ironically, the action of sleeping with Bilhah caused him to lose the blessing that he desired instead of gaining it. Secondly, the other thing that commentators have come up with is possibly Reuben was doing this on his mother's behalf. Now, bear with me. in order to understand this one. We know that Jacob had long favored Rachel for many years, and Leah had had to take a subordinate position to her as the favored wife, something that would have been galling to her, especially because she was the one who was married first. And so many commentators have speculated that it could be that Rubin feared that after years of favoring Rachel, the favored wife position on her death would not go to Leah, his mother, instead it would go to Rachel's maid. It would go to Bilhah. And certainly this action would have meant that Bilhah would never have that favored role. In fact, it was likely that she would be permanently disgraced. We don't read anything else about Bilhah because she was the father of sons, sorry, the mother of sons to Jacob. It's unlikely that she was abandoned entirely, but certain it was that their relationship was permanently damaged, to put it mildly, by these actions. So what was it all about? We don't know, unfortunately. We're not told. But it was a sin that was to have consequences that reverberated through time. Because of this action of his, Reuben, the firstborn of Jacob, falls into permanent disfavor. Many years later, in Genesis 49, when Jacob is now blessing his children, we read of Reuben in Genesis 49.3. Reuben, you are my firstborn, my might and the beginning of my strength, the excellency of dignity and the excellency of power. Unstable as water, you shall not excel because you went up to your father's bed "'Then you defiled it. "'He went up to my couch. "'I had such high hopes in you, Reuben, "'but you dashed them all by your sinful actions.'" Now, the next in line behind Reuben, in terms of birth order, would have been Simeon and Levi, but interestingly enough, when it comes to the blessing, or the time of blessing, when Jacob was bestowing his blessings prior to dying in Genesis 49, they too fall into disfavor because of the actions at Shechem. Their murder there, Jacob will say, Simeon and Levi are brothers. Instruments of cruelty are in their dwelling place. Let not my soul enter their council. Let not my honor be united to their assembly. For in their anger they slew a man, and in their self-will they hamstrung an ox. 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. So the sins of these young men had consequences. I was reading an article recently that was in City Journal, there was a scholastic, and you know, sometimes they do studies, and you're like, did you really need to study that? It's like, you know, they do a study and determine that eating too much makes you fat after all, and you're like, wow, really? How much did it cost to come to that conclusion? But this was a study that determined that people who begin poorly and do bad things, starting in their youth and then continue on with it, breaking the law of God and the civil magistrate and so on, that they come to bad ends. They tend to not do well economically. They tend to not do well in terms of their family and so on. They have much higher rates of going to prison. They have much higher rates of having children out of wedlock and so on. So bad actions result in bad consequences. You know, this was an academic study, and you want to stand back and say, well, duh. You know, the Bible has been telling us that from the very beginning, that we sin and it doesn't go well for us. When we abandon the right path, the path of wisdom that leads to heaven, and instead we determine to walk down the path of foolishness, It leads to disaster, inevitably. And unfortunately, Reuben and Simeon and Levi, they did things that permanently tainted their relationship with their father. Now, after this, in this chapter, we have this list of the 12 brothers who make up eventually the 12 tribes of Israel. 12 will become, because of these brothers, it will become the number symbolizing the whole of the Israel of God. So when we think about the church corporately, those who were called out of the world by God, called to be his people, 12 is going to be the symbolic number. So for instance, we have 12 tribes, and then in the New Testament, we are going to have 12 apostles. So 12 will become that number of the church. And also we see the commentary that all of them, that is except for Benjamin, were born in Paddan Aram in Syria, not in the Promised Land. They were born in the land of their father's uncle, Laban. They are listed here in the Word of God in this particular list, not also by birth order, but according to who gave birth, with Leah surprisingly listed first. Normally, of course, she follows up in a subordinate role, but here her children are listed first. Now we also discover in this chapter that Isaac is still alive when they get back to the promised land and we read that Jacob goes and visits him. He is very old, but you remember that Isaac had expected to die decades earlier. He had called his son Esau to him when he was at the spry age of 137. and he had tried to settle the inheritance on him in that. He had said, behold, now I am old. I do not know the day of my death. Now therefore, please take your weapons, your quiver, and your bow, and go out to the field and hunt game for me, and make me savory food such as I love, and bring it to me that I may eat, that my soul may bless you before I die. So he was expecting to die when he was 137, but The Lord does things we don't expect and he lived on to be 180 and now at the grand old age of 180 he breathes his last and he dies. He will end up having outlived Jacob who lives to die at 147 by almost 40 years. Now, here I want to stop at this point in time and ask this question, what are we to make of an age like 180? None of us, I dare say, know anybody who has lived to 180. None of us have any reason to believe that we will live, even with all of the medical improvements and advancements that we've seen in our own age, to 180. So what are we to think of this? And it is worthwhile at this point to step back and to consider the age of the patriarchs. Years from this point in time, Jacob will be asked by Pharaoh in Genesis 47, 8, how old are you? And Jacob will answer, and Jacob said to Pharaoh, the days of the years of my pilgrimage are 137 years. Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage. So he says, well, you know, I've lived 147, but I'm comparatively young compared to my ancestors, OK? I don't expect to live nearly as long as they lived, and that shows us a trend within the book of Genesis. One of the things that we see as we look through the ages of the patriarchs is that they start out very, very long, and then they gradually get shorter and shorter. Here's a list of some of the major ones. Adam lived to be 930. Seth lived to be 912. Enosh lived to be 905. Jared lived to be 962. Methuselah, who was the longest lived of the patriarchs, died at 969. Noah dies at 950. Now I want you to see a change that occurs. in the ages. After Noah, we see the ages rapidly dipping. Shem lives to be 600. Arphaxad lives to be 438. Eber lives to be 464. Peleg lives to be 239. Serug lives to be 230. Nahor lives to be 148. Terah lives to be 205. Abraham lives to be 175, Isaac lives to be 180, Jacob lives to be 147, Joseph lives to be 110, Moses lives to be 120, Joshua also lives to be 110, but then as we move into the promised land, the lifespan settles down so that David, for instance, lives to be 70 and we have what we would call the average lifespan and perhaps a little less. So, why the great difference in ages? Why do we see that? Well, an analysis of the lifespans of the patriarchs indicates that they follow what's called, and I was not aware of this, a sigmoid curve. Raul Orlando Lopez explains, the data points define very closely a sigmoid curve, typical of processes that are initially stable, go through a period of rapid monotonic change, and slowly stabilize again at a much different value. This orderly pattern and sharp regularity of the lifespan data with time does not support the contention that Old Testament longevity values are willfully assigned random figures or represent obscure mythological remnants of a dim past." In other words, the way that we see the pattern developing, it's a clear development rather than they simply made the ages up. They simply assigned ages to them randomly. It's not a mythological assignment of ages, brothers and sisters, and neither should we take it that way. We should accept the ages that they lived to, that they understood how age worked, they understood how long people normally lived, and they said, no, but these men lived much, much longer than that. Now, what we do see as we look at these ages is that the age of death was very high and fairly uniform for one and a half millennia during what they call the Antediluvian period, and the Antediluvian period was the period before the before the flood. Then it changes. After a major worldwide catastrophe, the flood, the previous period of longevity was rapidly and drastically reduced, about 80% during a relatively short period of time, only a couple of centuries. And the age of death slowly dropped to recent historical longevity values over a period of about 1,500 years. Now, one of the things that we need to remember is that man was not originally designed to die. All right? You and I, as we were designed by the Lord in the garden, were designed to live forever, believe it or not. Soul and body were not supposed to be parted. It was only the entrance of sin into the world that brought death into the picture. And so it should make sense to us that our ancestors would be very long-lived. Also, it was the ambition of the Lord, His desire and His design to fill the world. We were specifically commanded in Genesis 128 to multiply and be fruitful, to fill the world, and a long lifespan would be necessary for that to happen. If it was only one man and one woman to begin with, and they lived for, you know, only 70 years, multiplying and being fruitful would not, it would not simply have given them enough children to fill the world. We see what happened over time is that, as one commentator put it, progressive changes in the genetic control of aging. He comes up with two different things that he points to that would have shown a gradual drop-off in the ages that people lived to. First, the progressive changes in the genetic control of aging. These changes, he says, could relate to the cells' resistance to damage. their ability to repair damage, and in some types of cells, their ability to duplicate themselves and replace their damaged neighbors. And then secondly, progressive changes in environmental conditions that would accelerate cell environment, metabolic, genetic, and immunological deterioration, or conversely, gradual elimination of environmental conditions existing in pre-flood times that were favorable to healing, and repair of injuries and normal wear and tear. One of the things that a lot of creation scientists have speculated about was that there was a far more potent UV shield in the atmosphere prior to the fall. One of the things that unfortunately kills us, we may love the sun and want to soak it up, but it's gradually killing us. It breaks down our cells. And many of the things that we depend upon, oxygen itself gradually kills us. Free radicals in our system gradually kill us. All of these things gradually break down our ability to stay alive, our cells to replicate normally and so on. And then we get genetic mutations coming in and things like cancer, which is actually our body developing mutant cells that are going to cause us tremendous difficulties and or kill us eventually. All of these things, they speculate, came in as the world declined from its original pristine state and the fall had its negative consequences and that God had designed everything to run this way. So gradually the life expectancies ticked down. All that to say there are good reasons. We believe in a reasonable faith. We don't simply assert things and then say, That's it, no matter how unlikely it is, I believe it. And one of the things that I have discovered as I've become a Christian is that both science and archeology and all of those various disciplines have gradually proven the Bible to be more and more true, not less and less true. So, for instance, when I was a kid growing up, evolutionary science and many of the things that are positive were taken for granted. Now, gradually, our knowledge of science has increased to the point where we know that mathematically it is impossible for the system of biological descent to have happened, not only mathematically, but simply the very question of where does information come from? Darwin, when he posited the idea of the cells that make us up, he had very little knowledge of what those cells were. It was, you know, there was some form of plasma or something like that. But we know now that your cells are tiny little machines filled with all sorts of wonderful information, and chemicals do not create information. Information implies intelligence. Just as when you find a book, you don't say to yourself, wow, isn't it interesting how the inks came together to form these things that almost look like words, and so on. You immediately assume, if I'm reading a book, an intelligent mind designed it. Unless, of course, it was written by a politician, in which case... No, I shouldn't say that. I'll move aside from that line of speculation. But normally, information implies design. Design implies intelligence, absolutely. And when we see the infinite design that went into our universe, the idea that it all suddenly fell together by chance becomes impossible. That becomes more and more certain. And all of the archaeology that we dig up confirms what the Bible tells, not And it does not show that it did not happen. So there is good reason to believe that our ages started out very long in terms of humankind and then gradually declined to the point where they're at today, and that by God's determination. Well, in this chapter also, we have the final visit and burial, Jacob. We don't read that he visited his dad before he came to Mamre shortly before his death. We would hope that he did. We would hope that he was, you know, as soon as he got back to the promised land that he wanted to visit. But it wasn't until now that he actually moved his family close to where his father had been dwelling at Mamre. Now, Jacob comes to him, Jacob who is now identified as Israel, And then we read that Isaac dies, and the expression is that he is gathered to his people. Now, that seems like a very simple phrase, but it carries with it a great deal of weight. The idea that he is gathered to his people, not merely went down to the dust of the earth and so on, it implies a belief in the afterlife. And in the New Testament, we are going to hear Jesus proclaiming that God is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living, that all those who die in Christ are not just remembered by their posterity, but they are absolutely spiritually alive and waiting for the resurrection that will come. We have also here wonderful evidence of a permanent reconciliation between Esau and Jacob. They meet at Mamre to perform this last funeral rite, burying their father, we learn, in the cave of Machpelah. We learn that elsewhere in chapter 49 as Jacob is making his final speech that he And his brother Esau buried their father. Unfortunately, while they are reconciled as brothers, Esau is not reconciled to the God of his father. He remains in his stubborn determination to not serve the Lord. And unfortunately, his entire line and the nation that he forms, Edom, go on to paganism, godlessness. And eventually, they make shipwreck of their very existence, going down to the dust of the ages themselves. Now, the names of the 12 sons who become the 12 tribes of Israel, they are listed three times in the book of Genesis. And the most important thing in the blessings of Jacob in Genesis are the fact that Reuben and Simeon and Levi leave that ascendance. Now, let me ask you this question. Who is number four after Reuben and Simeon and Levi? Judah, we would not have expected the number four son to suddenly rise to the top, but by these events, he does. And we read in Genesis 49, eight, Judah, you are he whom your father, your brothers shall praise. Your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies. Your father's children shall bow down before you. Judah is a lion's whelp. From the prey, my son, you have gone up. He bows down, he lies down as a lion, and as a lion who shall rouse him? The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet until Shiloh comes, and to him shall be the obedience of the people. Binding his donkey to the vine, and his donkey's colt to the choice vine, he washes his garments in wine, and his clothes in the blood of grapes, his eyes are darker than wine. and his teeth whiter than milk. Here we see a prefiguring, a prophecy from the mouth of Jacob looking forward to the time when the Lion of Kings, David's Lion, would come from Judah, the fourthborn son, the son of Leah. We wouldn't have expected that if we were simply counting down progression in our birth order, but that is the way that the Lord designed it. It is from the Lion of Judah that the Lion of Judah comes, the Lord Jesus Christ, as he has spoken of in Revelation 5-5, great David's greater son. One of the things that I want you to understand is that everything in the book of Genesis is planned by God. Nothing happens by happenstance, and even the sins that men commit, things like Reuben's act of incest, his brother's acts of murder at Shechem and so on, the Lord incorporates them into his plan. Although he is not the author nor the approver of sin, yet sin is often the methodology by which the Lord brings about his great plan. So for instance, we look at the greatest sin that any man or mankind grouped communally has ever committed. And what sin was that? It was the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ, by which we took the Lord of glory, the only truly innocent man, our sustainer, the one who created the heavens and the earth, and we put him who came to do us good to death. That was the greatest evil possible, that act of judicial murder, and yet it was from that that salvation was given to mankind. The Lord uses even the evil that men plot and the prognostications and plottings of Satan. The world, the flesh, and the devil cannot thwart the Lord's ends. He overturns them and he has a way of turning even evil to good. So one of the things that we need to trust in is the sovereignty of God. And trust in the word of God. You can trust in it and everything that it says. There is no point at which we're reading through the word of God, you need feel embarrassed at anything that it teaches or tells us. Everything that it teaches is part of God's word. All of it is part of his plan and all of it ends up working towards his particular ends. All of his promises. are yea and amen. And as we look through Genesis, we should see the way that they all came to pass. And then continuing on in the Word of God, they all come to pass. One of the things that we discussed in the new members class today was the fact that all of the Word of God is a unity. Even though it was laid down over thousands of years, it tells the same story. We have many authors, each of them with different perspectives, different idioms and so on. And yet they're all telling the same story. They're all telling God's story under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Brothers and sisters, the Word is trustworthy. And it gives us an outline of God's plan of redemption. Isn't it wonderful that we know even where we sit what God ultimately is planning? Were it not for that, I gotta tell you, I would be crushed at the events that I see in the world. I would be despairing at the evil that I see in the world, not just in terrible events like, you know, the genocidal war going on in Ukraine and all the other wars that break out. constantly from time to time or they're just the terrible turning against common sense, the evil, the malignity that we see within our own nation or the slaughter of now what, 65 million plus innocent lives through abortion and so on. These things would be crushing. I would lose all hope and all confidence if I did not have sure knowledge of what's going to go on and the fact that God is in control of all things. that none of this escapes His command, that even the landing of a sparrow on the ground, the falling of all of the hairs from my head, all of these things were planned by God. He's in charge of these things. You have nothing to fear, brothers and sisters. Therefore, trust in Him. Trust in His Word. He's never been proven wrong yet, and He will not be. This Word is infallible in all that it teaches. and worthy of our trust. Would that it were trusted more by us and listened to and then put into order in our own lives. And I pray that that's something that we will endeavor to do in the coming year. Well, let's go before the Lord now who gives us this trustworthy testimony of his working. God, our gracious Father, we come before you tonight humbled by the knowledge that we are only finite individuals. The span of our years is seldom more than four score. We are a people who are here today, literally, and then we are gone like the mist that develops in the morning and then is burned away at midday. Yet, O Lord, in you we have eternal significance. You tell us in Daniel that those who were called by your name, those who were truly your people, they will twinkle like the stars in the firmament forever, and that they will be raised to a resurrection of honor, that it is your design that they would go on to glory, that we would spend eternity with you. I pray, Lord, that we would put our trust in that and that we would stop being turned astray by all of the enticements of the world, the flesh and the devil, those things that are only the things of time, the sandcastles and so on. We would never give up our eternity for a sandcastle if it was offered to us. And yet all of the things in the world, all of the nations that are offered to us, like the devil offered them to Jesus in the wilderness, that's ultimately all they are. The works of men are sandcastles here today and gone tomorrow when the tide of time comes in. Help us to remember that and help us to trust in that.