If you will take your Bibles and turn with me to Genesis chapter 48. The study of Genesis is beginning to wind down to a close. It's been a joy to navigate it. I always want to begin preaching through a book. I think this is a good idea. And then as we begin preaching through it, I think this is a great idea because it's just amazing to see the things that God shows us through his word. As I've told you before, once we complete Genesis, we'll be working through the book of Philippians. And then once that is done, probably by the early part of next year, we want to begin working through the book of John. Looking forward to preaching on the life of Christ together from that book. You're in Genesis chapter 48. Let's begin the reading in verse 1 and we'll go all the way through to verse 22. Now it came to pass after these things that Joseph was told, Indeed, your father is sick. And he took with him his two sons Manasseh and Ephraim. And Jacob was told, Look, your son Joseph is coming to you. And Israel strengthened himself and sat up on the bed. And Jacob said to Joseph, God Almighty appeared to me at Luz, in the land of Canaan, and blessed me, and said to me, Behold, I will make you fruitful and multiply you, and I will make you a multitude of people, and give you this land to your descendants after you as an everlasting possession. And now your two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, who were born to you in the land of Egypt before I came to you in Egypt, are mine. As Reuben and Simeon, they shall be mine. Your offspring, whom you beget after them, shall be yours. They will be called by the name of their brothers in their inheritance. But as for me, when I came from Badan, Rachel died beside me in the land of Canaan on the way, when there was but a little distance to go to Ephrath, and I buried there on the way to Ephrath, that is, Bethlehem. Then Israel saw Joseph's sons and said, Who are these? And Joseph said to his father, They are my sons, whom God has given me in this place. And he said, Please bring them to me, and I will bless them. Now the eyes of Israel were dim with age, so that he could not see. Then Joseph brought them near him, and he kissed them and embraced them. And Israel said to Joseph, I had not thought to see your face, but in fact God has also shown me your offspring. So Joseph brought them from beside his knees, and he bowed down with his face to the earth. And Joseph took them both, Ephraim with his right hand toward Israel's left hand, and Manasseh with his left hand toward Israel's right hand, and brought them near him. Then Israel stretched out his right hand and laid it on Ephraim's head, who was the younger, and his left hand on Manasseh's head, guiding his hands knowingly, for Manasseh was the firstborn. And he blessed Joseph and said, God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has fed me all my life long to this day, the angel who has redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads. Let my name be named upon them. in the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac, and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth. Now when Joseph saw that his father laid his right hand on the head of Ephraim, it displeased him. So he took hold of 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. Put your right hand on his head. But his father refused and said, I know, my son, I know. he also shall become a people, and he also shall be great. But truly his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his descendants shall become a multitude of nations.' So he blessed them that day, saying, By you Israel will bless, saying, May God make you as Ephraim and as Manasseh. And thus he set Ephraim before Manasseh. Then Israel said to Joseph, Behold, I am dying. but God will be with you and bring you back to the land of your fathers. Moreover, I have given to you one portion above your brothers, which I took from the hand of the Amorite with my sword and my bow." Let's pray. Our Father, we would pray for the outpouring of your Holy Spirit. We pray you'll take the seed of the Word and water it with the dew of the Spirit in every heart. For those who are in you, Lord, who are in Christ, strengthen us, encourage us, convict us, comfort us as we need it. For those who are outside of Christ, awaken them to the danger that their souls are in, that they are facing a day of judgment, and are not prepared, and are not dressed in the righteousness of Christ, and are not forgiven, and they need you. Father, thank you that there is a great Savior who is sufficient for our need, and I pray you'll open the eyes of those who are lost to see it, and that they would flee to Christ and find him welcoming them into his arms, that they might be saved. We ask these things in Jesus' name, amen. The 2008 film, Prince Caspian, was anything but a faithful adaptation of the source material. The source material, of course, was from the second book in the Chronicles of Narnia, written by C.S. Lewis. And yet, for all of its faults, there were moments of brilliance in the film, moments that were pregnant with symbolic meaning. And of those, my very favorite takes place at the climax of the film. The evil Telmarine army is plundering the hillside of Narnia, and they come to a bridge where they're going to cross a river to go to the other side to conquer that land. They're armed to the teeth. They're covered over with impenetrable armor. swords and bows and lances and spears, a very formidable host made up literally of hundreds and even thousands of people. And there's no one to resist them, no one standing on the other side of the bridge to stop them, except for one person. Lucy Pavinci, the little teenage girl, walks out of the woods, stands on the other end of the bridge, And with a very calm, defiant look upon her face, she pulls out the knife that Father Christmas had given to her a thousand years earlier and holds it up in the air. And you're thinking to yourself, has she gone mad? Does she think that she really can withstand the entire army of the Telmarines? Or is she so arrogant and proud that she really thinks she can defeat them? And the camera pans over to the commander of the Telmarines, and you can see the puzzled look on his face, like what in the world is this? Does this one girl, inexperienced in combat, hope to hold us off by herself, holding just a simple dagger, when we have an entire army? But then the camera goes back to look at Lucy. And in a moment, you suddenly realize why she's standing there so bold and so confident. Because someone else emerges from the woods, a lion. The lion Aslan, who, as you know, in the Chronicles of Narnia, is the metaphorical representation of Jesus Christ. He comes behind and stands behind her and stands beside her. And suddenly you understand why she's so confident. Because it doesn't matter if 40,000 people are against you, and have their bows bent and straining, and all their arrows are aimed at your heart. If God is on your side, or to put it more precisely, if you are on God's side, then you have God and His promises with you, and it doesn't matter how many people or how mighty an army raise themselves against you, you are on the winning side. Period. In other words, Lucy was able to look, as it were, and say, I can call those things that don't exist as if they did. I can be confident, despite what my reason tells me, my faith tells me, I am the winner in this particular situation. And I will submit to you that that's what's going on in our chapter as well. Jacob is dying, and he is putting his affairs in order as it were, and the things that he says are remarkable, because over and over again we've had this told to us, that God made a covenant with Abraham, and then Isaac his son became the heir of that covenant, and then Jacob became the heir of the covenant as well. But do you realize it's a four-fold promise that these three men really didn't see being fulfilled in their own generation? It's a four-fold promise. The first promise is this, you're going to have descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sands on the seashore. And yes, Isaac was born to baron Abraham and Sarah. And yes, Jacob and Esau were born. And yes, there were 70 people who came into Israel. But still, when you think about it, 70 people isn't exactly as numerous as the stars in the sky, is it? It's not as numerous as the sands on the seashore. Yes, the seed is multiplying. But in their lifetime, they're not seeing the fulfillment of that promise. Another promise was, I'll give you the land of Canaan for your possession. Go and live there, dwell there. And yet, it's interesting that the text of Scripture tells us something very significant about that. When Stephen was preaching in Acts chapter 7, he said of Abraham, in verse 5 of Acts 7, he says this, God gave him no inheritance in it, not even enough to set his foot on. But even when Abraham had no child, he promised to give it to him for a possession and to his descendants after him. But do you realize the entire time that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were wandering through the land of Canaan, first of all, the land constantly failed to support them. Every last one of them had to go through seasons of famine. You're thinking, we're supposed to stay here when the land cannot support our family? And yet they also did not receive the inheritance promised to them. They had to believe that God was being true when He said, generations hence will receive that land. He also promised to make them into a nation, which, of course, He did. But if memory serves, from the time God made the promise to Abraham until God actually ratified Israel as a nation, which was, by the way, after the Exodus, at the foot of Mount Sinai, when God made the Mosaic Covenant, the old covenant with His people, that was the constitution, the national constitution of Israel. That took place 645 years after the promise, when Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and even Joseph were all dead and gone. And then there was this promise that there will be your seed, in your seed all nations will be blessed, but the Messiah didn't come for like 1400 years. So my point is, here is Jacob, and what he's doing in our text is a couple of things. One, he's beginning to identify who the 12 tribes of Israel are going to be. He does that in this chapter and in the next, and he makes sure that Joseph understands his two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, will serve as two half-tribes. But they're going to receive an inheritance. He's naming and says, this is who the nation is going to be, even though the nation doesn't exist yet. And then he says, I'm going to give Ephraim and Manasseh a bigger portion of the land that, by the way, I don't own yet, and that hasn't been given to me yet. He's going ahead and deeding land to them that he doesn't even have. And my point is, the only way he can do that is by faith. He can't do it by reason. He has to believe that even though he's about to die, God will fulfill in future generations the very things he's promised he's going to do. We've read the book of Hebrews repeatedly throughout this because Hebrews makes reference constantly to the patriarchs. It says this in Hebrews 11 verse 13, These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, were assured of them, embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. In other words, they saw that because God cannot lie, He's always true to His word. What He has promised to do, He will always perform, and what He's prophesied will always come to pass. And they had to live upon that even though with the eye of reason they could not see it, but with the eye of faith they could. And surely that is the message being driven home to you and I from their example and why this is set forth in Scripture. Well, as we consider this this morning, I want to preach our text under three headings. First of all, I want to consider the adoption of sons. Secondly, we see the blessing of Israel. And third, we see this pleasure of Joseph. First, the adoption of sons. We come to verses 1 and 2. It's obvious that Jacob was sick. By this time, he was 147 years old. and this sickness was the sickness that would lead to his death. Joseph is notified that he's dying, and so he gathers up his sons Manasseh and Ephraim. Manasseh is the firstborn, Ephraim is the secondborn. And he rushes over to where Jacob is because obviously he wants Jacob to bless his sons before he dies. And so in verses 3 to 4, We find Jacob sitting up in bed despite his sickness. He strengthens himself to sit up in bed so he can deliver the speech to his son and to his grandsons. And it's a remarkable thing that he says. There's more going on here than meets the eye. One of the things we have to realize about the Old Testament is that you have to interpret the Old Testament in the clear light of the New Testament. You must look backwards and magnify and look at it through the lens of the New Covenant and what the New Testament says, because the New Testament has clearer light. It's the fulfillment of the Old Testament, and you can't really see the things that are there as clearly until you look back at it with the clear light of the New. Notice what he says in verse 3. Jacob said to Joseph, God Almighty appeared to me at Luz, in the land of Canaan, and blessed me. Now, it's interesting that he brings up this particular event. Remember that Jacob was fleeing from his parents' home because Esau wanted to kill him. And he had come on his way to his future father-in-law, Laban. And as he's going there, he stops at Luz and he spends the night. And as he's spending the night, he has a dream, he has a vision. And do you remember what the vision was? He saw a ladder. A ladder that touched the earth on one end, and it touched heaven on the other. And there were angels ascending and descending upon it. And God appeared to him and spoke to him, and made him aware that you are the heir of the blessings of the Abrahamic covenant. And we saw together, again, looking to the New Testament, that over a thousand years later, Jesus himself would interpret what that dream meant. What he was saying is, Jacob's ladder is none other than Jesus Christ Himself. Nathanael looks at him and declares, You are the King of Israel. You are the Son of God, your deity. And Jesus says, Because I told you, I saw you under the fig tree, have you marveled? You'll see greater things than these. You will see angels ascending and descending upon the Son of Man. And by that, He's identified Himself as the latter. But notice, Nathanael confessed He was the Son of God. But then Jesus confesses He's the Son of Man. What's He telling us? He's telling us, I have two natures. I am God and I am man. And therefore, I'm the only mediator between God and man. I'm the bridge. I'm the stairway between heaven and earth. Because I can touch the Almighty, and I can touch humanity, and I can reconcile them together. So, from the very beginning, of his speech, you need to recognize Jacob is pointing to the Messiah. In other words, you might say it this way, his entire benediction, his entire blessing of Ephraim and Manasseh, is a thoroughly Christ-centered speech. He's saying, this is the God who appeared to be there, and remember, he changed the name of Luz to Bethel. Well then, he says, verse 4, this is what God said to me, Behold, I will make you fruitful and multiply you. I will make you a multitude of people and give this land to your descendants after you as an everlasting possession. In other words, he's reiterating once again the promises made to Abraham and saying, God made it obvious that I am the heir of that covenant, that Messianic seed is continuing through me. And then verse 5, he says, And now your two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, do you notice something about what he says there? He says their names in reverse order. He's hinting at something that's about to happen. Remember that Jacob himself was a twin. He was the secondborn of Isaac. And while he was still in his mother's womb, God gave a prophecy and said, There are two nations in your womb, and the older shall serve the younger. I'm going to give preference to the secondborn over the firstborn. Esau will not be the one who receives the firstborn inheritance. Rather, Jacob will. And I'm going to give my blessing to him. By speaking their names in reverse order, Jacob already knows what he's about to do. Just as he, the secondborn, had been put in priority over the firstborn, so he's going to do with his two grandchildren. And Joseph doesn't know it yet, but he's planning, he's plotting to do this very thing. As we'll see in just a moment, he did so by divine direction. This wasn't just him thinking, well, because I was the second born and won the first place, now I'll make the same happen with my grandsons. No, there was divine direction behind it, as we will see. But notice what he says, verse 5. He's basically saying to Joseph, I'm going to take possession of your two sons and I'm going to adopt them as my own, so that they will be numbered among the names of the twelve tribes of Israel." He says, these who were born to you in the land of Egypt before I came to you in Egypt are mine. Just as Reuben and Simeon, who were his first and second born children, they shall be mine, your offspring, whom you beget after them." In other words, if you have more kids, they'll be yours. They will be called by the name of their brothers and their inheritance. But he's saying, I'm adopting them as if they were my own sons. So that they themselves will be heirs of the blessings that God has promised. That's a remarkable thing when you think about it. Because think about it, Ephraim and Manasseh were half-breeds. They had a Jewish father, but they had an Egyptian mother. So they had Gentile blood mixed in their veins, and yet here is Jacob saying, they're going to be heirs of my covenant just as my own sons are. And he's naming them out. I'm adopting them as my own. Then in verse 7, He reminds Joseph that he had buried his mother several decades before. As for me, when I came from Adon, Rachel died beside me in the land of Canaan on the way, when there was but a little distance to go to Ephrath, and I buried her there on the way to Ephrath, that is, Bethlehem. Why does he mention this? Well, because it was still with him. I'm convinced that when someone dies that's close to us, there is a sense in which we never get over it in this life. Granted, we go on and life continues, and some of the pain begins to subside, and we're able to continue to function. But the reality is there's something of a hole in our heart from that point on, isn't there? A hole that we're going to take with us to our grave. Not out of bitterness, but the reality, it's almost a way of honoring the person. It meant something that they were there at any given time. And we profoundly feel their loss. You know, we meet in the chapel of a funeral home. Death is all around us. We're always hearing about someone else we know who has died, passed away, whether it's here or in some other place. This is always going on. Death is normal. But I think instinctively we always know death is not natural. It was not meant to be. That is, sin entered the world and made a whole new situation. But we seem to understand instinctively we were meant for better things. And so that stays with us. Matthew Henry says this about Rachel and about Jacob making this comment. Quote, the removal of dear relations from us is an affliction, the remembrance of which cannot but abide with us for a great while. And then he says this, strong affections in the enjoyment cause long afflictions in the loss. In other words, the more we love them, the more keenly we feel their loss. So what's he spoken of here but the adoption of sons, taking Ephraim and Manasseh and adopting them as his own? Well, then in the second place, we read of the blessing of Israel. Notice verse 8. Israel asks a question of Joseph's sons. Who are these? He knows who they are, just so you know. He's been living in Egypt now for 17 years. Ephraim and Manasseh would now be in their late teens or early twenties by this point. He knows exactly who they are, but what he's doing is he's about to give a form of blessing. So he's invoking the question, who are these? Name their names. And so you see that Joseph responds to his father, and he says, Notice whom he attributes this to. No one is an accident. God Himself formed them in the womb, and that's where they came from. God gave them to me in this place. And he says, and I'll bless them." And so, it tells us verse 10, "...his eyes were dim..." He's grown old, can't see much of anything, "...but he comes near to them, and like any good grandfather does, he kisses them and he embraces them and hugs his two grandsons." I've noticed over the years that when you start having children, your parents' personalities completely change. When I was a child, I was depraved. My children, who are the grandchildren of my parents, they're just deprived. And so they get the spoiled treatment. But that's a part of what grandparents do, right? So here's Jacob embracing his two grandsons, thrilled to see them. And then look at what he says in verse 11, it's very sweet. Israel said to Joseph, I had not thought to see your face. For twenty-two years I thought you were dead. And I thought I would never see your face again in this present age. And not only has God let me see you, He's let me see your sons after you. In other words, He's done exceedingly, abundantly, above all that I could have asked or thought. Which is still what He does to this day, isn't it? We've talked about this before, that we talk about the prophecies of the Old Testament, the prophecies concerning the Messiah. And as wonderful and as glorious as they are, the fulfillment's even better than the promise. It's like when you really see the reality, it's like far greater than you ever could have expected. And haven't you found that sometimes God does far beyond what you ask or think? As a matter of fact, isn't it interesting, that verse tells us in Philippians, that he's able to do exceedingly abundantly above all we ask or think, or excuse me, I believe that's Ephesians. But when he says that, it tells us something. God is not limited to your prayer life. Sometimes people say, God does nothing except by prayer. Ha! If God is limited and tied down to my measly little prayer life, we're in trouble. And if He's limited to your prayer life, we're in trouble. Thank God He does a whole lot of things, an infinite number of things, bigger, that we never ask Him to do, that we don't even know we're supposed to ask Him to do. And as much as we think about it, as great as the things we ask Him to do are, He's able to do exceedingly, abundantly, above all that you ask, or even that you think, even that you could come up with in your imagination. In other words, God is far greater than our prayer life could ever be. And He's able to bless us far beyond anything we could imagine. And that's what He did here for Israel. Israel never thought He would see His Son again, but not only has He seen His Son, He's seen His grandsons as well. So in verse 12, They come close to be blessed, and you have to remember that you put the greater blessing with your right hand. You took the older son, the firstborn son, you put your right hand on him, and you put your left hand upon the secondborn son, which meant that he received a slightly lesser blessing, both were blessed, but there was a double portion of blessing if you were the firstborn. And so Joseph brings him forward on purpose. He has Manasseh on his left, but on Jacob's right. And then he has Ephraim, his second-born, on his right, but on Jacob's left, so that he can put his right hand on the first-born Manasseh, his left hand on Ephraim. But then, as Israel stretches out his hands, he does this. He does a swap right at the last minute. And he puts his right hand on the second-born Ephraim, and his left hand upon the other son, Manasseh. And then he begins, and it says he does it so knowingly. Now, Joseph doesn't know it's knowingly. So we're going to see in just a moment, he's like, okay, Dad can't see real well. That's the problem. But no, he knows what he's doing. He's doing it deliberately. And then he begins to bless Joseph, and by extension to bless the two sons. There's some things that are pretty incredible here, because first of all, he clearly identifies which God it is he's invoking. And he has three descriptors of who God is. God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked. Not any god. Not Ra, the sun god of the Egyptians. Not the gods of the Canaanites or anyone else, but the specific god who appeared to Abraham and Isaac. I have found it helpful sometimes in prayer, that when I begin my prayer, to enumerate the names of God and who God is, to clearly identify who it is I'm praying to. And I take my cue from A. W. Tozer, one of his opening prayers in one of his chapters in his book, The Knowledge of the Holy. He says, God, not the God of the philosophers and of the wise, but the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of the Old Testament prophets, and the God of the New Testament apostles, and very best of all, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. That's who I'm summoning, and that's who I'm talking to. And I would submit to you that's exactly what Jacob is doing here. I'm invoking the blessing of a very specific God, the only true and living God, the God with whom my fathers walked. Then he says this, it's a sweet thing, "...the God who has fed me all my life long until this day." He doesn't say, "...the God who has taken care of me and been faithful to me since I was converted." From the time I was born. Until the present day, this God has provided everything I've needed." Now, think about this, because remember 17 years earlier, what he had said to Pharaoh? He said to Pharaoh, "'Few and evil have been the days of my life, and I have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage.'" Pharaoh, I've had a hard life. I've been hunted down. I've had people who wanted to kill me. I've seen all kinds of hardships. My father-in-law, Laban, was a deceitful man and changed my wages ten times. I've gone through hardship. My sons caused things to be hard for me when they slaughtered an entire city. They then deceived me to tell me that my son was dead for 22 years when they knew the whole time he was alive. I've had a hard life, but he doesn't express any bitterness. Oh, God didn't treat me fairly. There's none of that here. And furthermore, he said, I have not attained to the life of my father's. I have so much in my life to be ashamed of. The way I treated my wife Leah. The way I deceived my father Isaac. The way I treacherously dealt with my brother Esau. All the horrible things I've done, and yet, what's he say here? I have not been the man I should be, but here is my God, and He has always treated me kindly. He treated me kindly, and was faithful to me even when I was faithless. When I was unfaithful, He's always been good to me. Andrew Fuller pointed out that there's a similarity here between what Jacob says and what Polycarp said. I don't know if you know who Polycarp was. Polycarp, besides having an unfortunate name, was an early church father and he probably met the Apostle John face-to-face and was discipled by him. He became the Bishop of Smyrna, that is the pastor of the church in Smyrna. He was martyred when he was about 84 years old. He was thrown to the lions and ultimately killed in a stadium. And when he was brought before the men, and they saw he was an old man, they wanted to have pity upon him, and they said to him, confess that you're an atheist. And you think, why would a Christian be called an atheist? Well, because he rejected all the polytheistic gods of Rome, and therefore they were called atheists. So he said, confess that you're an atheist. He pointed to the crowds that had gathered to watch him get killed, and he says, I confess it all, you're all atheists. And they said, we're going to sin for the animals, and they're going to gouge you and maul you. He said, sin for them. They said, we're going to burn you at the stake. Go ahead. You won't have to tie my hands there. I'll stand there and won't move. And finally they said, renounce Christ. Polycarp Boley said to them, He has been faithful to me for 84 years. How can I now renounce the One who has loved me so? And that's what Jacob's saying here. I've had a hard life, my circumstances have not been easy, and I have not always been the kind of man God would have me to be. But despite that, God has been good to me. He's been faithful to me. He was faithful to me before I knew Him, and He's been faithful to me ever since I came to know Him. He is good to His people. He's made His sun to shine on the just and the unjust, and I've been both on different days. And he's been kind and loving and gracious to me. But then notice the third thing he says, verse 16, the angel who has redeemed me from all evil. He's already mentioned the appearance of God to him that took place in Bethel. Now he's talking about something else that happened 20 years later. When did he see someone who he could call an angel? And the text is referring to the time when he was in the place called Peniel. The very next day Esau was coming to meet him with 400 armed troops. And what happens? Suddenly he's wrestling for his life with a man all night long. And as the sun begins to rise, he's about to overcome this man, and suddenly he touches his hip and puts it out of his socket. He says, let go of me, because the sun is rising. And you remember what Jacob did? He grabbed a hold of him even harder and says, I will not let go of you until you bless me. Tell me your name. And he doesn't tell him his name, but he blesses him. And then he realizes, when the sun comes up, exactly who this was. Because he names the place Peniel, which means Face of God. Because I've looked at the face of God and I haven't died. In other words, he had an encounter with God incarnate. The very Messiah who was prophesied and whom he saw in a vision as Jacob's ladder, he's now wrestled with all night. And here's the thing, even though he seemed to prevail, it was God allowing him to prevail. And God not only touched his hip and got rid of his sock, He touched his heart and made him a different man. I told you way back when we were preaching on those things, that I believe that his encounter at Bethel was not his conversion. I believe that was the time where God was beginning to reveal Himself to him and beginning to illuminate him and drawing him for the next 20 years. But I believe at Pineal that you find the definitive break, where suddenly this man is a different man. Because Jacob limps away and he's never the same again. But notice what he says, "...the angel who has redeemed me from all evil, the redemption applied to my soul." There's a little hint, isn't there, of the coming cross. The fact that this one whom I wrestled with is going to die for me someday and redeem my soul, but that redemption has already been applied to me because through faith in the coming Messiah, I have salvation. So once again, notice the Messiah has already been alluded to twice in our text. It's a thoroughly Christ-centered speech in blessing and benediction. And then he says, Here's what he has to say. Bless the lads. Who's to bless the lads? It's not just me blessing the lads. I'm invoking the God of heaven to bless the lads. Let my name be named upon them. and the names of my fathers, Abraham and Isaac." In other words, he's saying, let them be the heirs of the covenant, let them be named among the tribes of Israel, let them be my children, and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth. God is being faithful to multiply the descendants, and a large number of those are going to be from Ephraim and Manasseh. What have we seen? We've seen the adoption of sons. We've seen the blessing of Israel. Third, we see the displeasure of Joseph. Now, when Joseph saw that his father laid his right hand on the head of Ephraim, verse 17, he displeased him. So he took a hold of it. He grabs a hold of his dad's hands. They're like this. Dad, you need to put your glasses on. And you've got to put your hands on the right people. Your right hand on Manasseh, your left hand on Ephraim, not the other way around. He says, "'Not so, my father, for this one is the firstborn. Put your right hand on his head.'" And he says, verse 19, he refuses. I'll keep my hands just like they are. I know, son. I know. And yes, Manasseh is going to be blessed, but Ephraim is the one who receives the blessing, the double portion of blessing. Now, we may look at this and think, okay, this is just Jacob being stubborn. He was the second born and so he has this favoritism he's showing to Ephraim because he's the second born, right? That's what's going on here, right? No, that's not what's going on here. And I'll tell you why I say that. Hebrews 11.21 says this, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, and worshipped, leaning on the top of his staff. He did this by faith, which hints at the belief that the Spirit of God himself had directed him to do what he did. In fact, Jeremiah chapter 31, verse 9, God himself says, quote, Ephraim is my firstborn. Ephraim is my firstborn, God himself giving his divine blessing of this. Listen to what two commentators say. Derek Kidner says this, quote, Jacob had already named the younger before the elder in verse five. in the ensuing history of Israel would show that God's hand was behind the hands now laid upon them." John Calvin says this, "...we gather that the Holy Spirit was the director of this act, who irradiated the mind of the holy man and caused him to see more clearly than those who were the most clear-sighted into the nature of this symbolic act." In other words, despite the fact that outwardly he could not see, inwardly he saw a lot clearer than anyone around him could. So that he was doing this on purpose. Now, notice what he says then on verse 21. Behold, I am dying. I have just a few more days to live. Fewer days ahead than behind. I know it. I'm no longer going to be sojourning on this earth. You won't be able to visit me anymore. But notice what he says. But God will be with you. Despite the fact that I'm not going to continue, God will still remain with you. He's not gonna abandon you when I die. We're gonna come back to that in just a moment. God will still be with you. He's still gonna fulfill his promises with or without me. God's gonna continue with you. And then he says, God will be with you and bring you back to the land of your fathers. Now, interestingly enough, the word you or your, when it appears here, it's always you, plural, in this verse. It's the only place in the entire chapter where it's you, plural. So he's not just saying you, Joseph. Your descendants, the descendants of your sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, they're going to be brought back to the land. Several things to note about that. First of all, you're going to inherit the land. That's part of the promise God made you, right? But he's also giving a message to Joseph. I know you're rich and I know you're powerful, but don't get comfortable here because Egypt's not your home. Remember, you're a stranger and a pilgrim and a sojourner. Remember that. Don't get too comfortable here. Don't get enticed by the riches and the power that you have in Egypt. Remember that you have another place that you belong to. And then in verse 22, he makes a remarkable statement. Moreover, I have given you one portion above your brothers." In other words, your two sons get two pieces of land. If you want to, you can look in the back of your Bible. You know, we almost never use the maps in the back. You actually can use them. And there's probably a map in the back of your Bible that shows the outline of the tribes of Judah. or of the tribes of Israel. And it's interesting, you'll find that Ephraim and Manasseh occupy more territory than anybody else. They were given a greater portion. But here is Jacob, whom God has not yet given him land, and yet he's saying that you're going to have the largest portion of the land of anybody. Now, he says that hundreds of years before they ever received it. And yet, it would prove to be true. And as a matter of fact, when you go through numbers, you'll find out that Ephraim was one of the largest tribes in terms of numerical count of anybody. So the very things he's prophesying here came to pass, just as he said. And then he does give them a portion of land. He says, there was a portion of land that I give you above your brothers, which I took from the hand of the Amorite with my sword and my bow. Do remember, there was a parcel of land he had bought in Shechem. He had bought the land in Shechem and apparently, while we're gathering here, there were Amorites who came and tried to steal the land from him. And so he had to go back by force with a sword and a bow and a spear and take it back from them. But there is a portion he owns and he says, I'm giving it to you. What's significant about that is that about 1400-1500 years later, there was a Jewish rabbi. who went and sat down in the parcel of land, the Bible says, that was given by Jacob to his son Joseph. And he sat by the well that was there in the middle of the day while his disciples went into the town of Sychar to buy food. And a woman comes out to draw water from the well and sits down beside him. And this man tells her everything she's ever done. And she forgets about her purpose, leaves her picture by the well, goes back into Sychar and tells the men, come see a man who told me everything I've ever done. Could this be the Messiah? And here we find out exactly when that land was given to Joseph. That's what it's referring to. Christ and the woman at the well would be in this very plot of land that he gave right here. There are four applications I want to make this morning, and I trust God has made applications beyond anything I could imagine. There's four things that I want to give you. The first is extremely encouraging, and I really mean that. You're not going to think so when I first say it, but it really is. God is self-sufficient, and therefore He does not need you. That's really encouraging. It really, really is. Yes, God certainly is pleased to use you, He's pleased to use me. I marvel that He can use a filthy, sinful man like me to accomplish His purposes. And you should marvel the same thing at yourself. That God can use sinners like us to advance His kingdom and edify His people, to lead people to Christ, and all this kind of thing. But it's one thing to say God's pleased to use you. It's another thing to say He needs you. Or He needs volunteers. You know, we actually convey this sometimes in our modern hymnody, which some of our modern hymnody just absolutely stinks. There's a hymn written in the 1970s that said, it's as if God the Father is this frustrated old man who's pleading. He says, My children don't want to sit at my table, but none want to work at my fields. Please help me. That is not how God is. He doesn't need you and He doesn't need me. You say, now, where did you see this in the text? I see it when Jacob looks at Joseph and says, I'm dying. But you know what? With or without me, God's going to be true to His promises, and He's going to stay with you, and He's going to keep being true to His covenant, and He doesn't need me to help that. He'll be with you even when I'm gone. And the point I derive from that is, you know, God was building His church and His kingdom long before you and I came along, and He's still going to be building His church when we die, because His kingdom cannot fail. And doesn't that give us comfort? We look around at the chaos in our culture right now. Our culture has just gone insane. And yet, we can despair and get frustrated and go, how's it going to turn out? Ultimately, we know how it's going to turn out. God wins. His kingdom is going to prevail. His kingdom cannot fail. He's going to build His church, and nothing's going to stop that. That's the point of saying the gates of hell will not prevail against it. We win, brothers. We win, sisters. Read the Revelation. I don't understand most of it. I don't get it. But I do know this much. We win. That's the overarching theme of that book. We win. Because God is upon our side. Andrew Fuller makes a comment about this very thing. He says, How satisfactory it is to a dying saint to consider that God lives, and will carry on his cause without him as well as with him. The great John Owen, two days before he died, which was in 1683, a time when potpourri and arbitrary power threatened to overspread the land, wrote in a letter to a friend, two days before he died, he says this, I am leaving the ship of the church in a storm. But while the great pilot is in it, the loss of a poor under-rower will be inconsiderable." In other words, I'm leaving the church in good hands. I'm just one of the menial servants that's rowing as a galley slave. When I'm gone, God is still piloting the ship. It's going to be okay. Everything's safe in His hands. And that's what Jacob was saying to Joseph. Second, The faithfulness of the saints of old encourages you and me to be faithful in the present." Did you notice that when Jacob was referring to his God, he said, God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked. By doing that, he's pointing to the past. And he's reminding Joseph, these men by grace were faithful to the end and they finished well. which should be a comfort and encouragement to you to run and to finish well." I told you that Hebrews 11 keeps pointing back. You go through Hebrews 11, it talks about Abraham, it talks about Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, how they did all these things by faith. And it goes on through the rest of Old Testament history to tell you, by faith they did this, and by faith they did that, and faith they did this, and faith they quenched fire, by faith they stopped the mouth of lions, by faith they got their heads cut off, by faith they... On and on it goes. And you ask yourself, what's the point? What is the point of this great hall of faith? Well, the reality is, don't stop reading Hebrews 11, you've got to go on into chapter 12, because verse 1 and 2 makes the application. Therefore, in light of everything I've just written in chapter 11, therefore, since we're surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, those who've gone before, and we can add to that the last 2,000 years of church history. Since we're surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us run it with endurance. the race that is set before us, setting aside every weight and the sin which so easily besets, fixing our eyes upon Jesus, who for the joy before Him endured the cross, despising its shame." In other words, these men, these women, they had feet of clay just like you and me. Man, have we not seen that in Genesis? Abraham blew it. Jacob blew it. Isaac blew it. They made many sins, and they didn't sin small, they sinned big. Kind of feels familiar. I see it in my own life. And yet, despite the fact that they were sinners, with feet of clay, by grace they got their eyes off themselves and got them on the Lord. And therefore were able to do great exploits, and the Bible specifically tells us to look at their faith and imitate it. If they were able, sinful as they were, by God's grace to endure, so you and I, by God's grace, need to endure. I've used this illustration before. It's not original with me. It's a man named Joe Novosin that used it, but I love his illustration because he encapsulates exactly what Hebrews 12, 1 and 2 is saying. He said, imagine you're in the relay race. And you're standing there with your generation waiting to receive the baton, which is symbolic of the meaning of life. And you're waiting to receive that baton, and beside you are all the philosophers and the scientists of the day, Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre and all these other philosophers and bigwigs and smart guys and have initials after the name longer than the length of your arm. All these big guys, and you're just nobody from nowhere, and you're just standing there. And all of a sudden, You feel the baton in your hand. You look down, you look at these guys, and they're looking at you because you've got it and they don't. And you look behind you, and there's the person that led you to Christ. And you look behind them, and there's the person that led them to Christ. And you keep going back a few generations, and you go, hey, that's Charles Spurgeon. And you look behind him, and there's George Whitefield. And there's Jonathan Edwards. That's Martin Luther! They keep going back. Hi, Paul! And he says, and then there's this rabbi, standing there looking at you, and his name is Jesus. And he says, run. But I'm not gifted in speech. He's got a PhD. But they just don't know what to... Run! Joe Novosin says that's what Hebrews 12 is saying. He said, if you're here and you don't doubt me and you're a cynic, you're stupid, you're a fool. Because as Christians, we haven't been carrying the baton so well. And he held up his Bible and said, this is the baton which we have received and we haven't been carrying it so well in our generation. And we've got to stop compromising it. We've got to stop diluting it. We've got to be faithful. We've got to carry it to this and the next generation without diluting it, because that's what our forefathers did. And he says, this book has blood on it. The blood of men and women who were not ashamed of the gospel, and who spilled their blood so that you and I could receive it undiluted. And he says, and we've got to be faithful to the next generation. I think in some ways that's what Jacob is doing with Joseph, my God, before whom my father Abraham and my father Isaac walked. Remember Joseph, let their example influence you, that you have to carry a walk in your generation following God. And here we are thousands of years later, brothers and sisters, how many are really representing the gospel in our own culture. You and I have to carry it well. We have to be faithful unto death to say we're not going to dilute God's truth. We're going to look at our forefathers and remember the things that they died to give us, we're going to give to our own generation and the next. Third, faith calls those things which do not exist as though they did. I know you trust you recognize, I'm quoting directly from Romans chapter 4, verse 17. Jacob told Joseph that Ephraim and Manasseh were going to have a big portion of the land, even though there was no land for them to inherit at the time. He didn't really own the land, except for that little portion in Shechem. But God had not given him the inheritance. But God said He's going to give you the inheritance. And so you're going to have this big portion. He can go ahead and tell them about things that he did not have. You can say, in a way, Jacob's writing out checks that his body can't cash. But he knows it's not his job to cash those checks. It's what God himself said. My God is going to give this to you because that's what he's promised to do. He was able, with the eyes of faith, not with the eyes of reason, to say this is going to happen just as it said. So with you and I, I've told you repeatedly that the two legs we walk on as we walk this pilgrimage of faith are called trust and obey. You can't obey if you don't trust that His Word is true. If you're not obeying, then you won't really trust Him. Right? Trust and obey. There's no other way to be happy in Jesus than to trust and obey. Faith looks and says, this is what God has promised, and despite the fact that everything around me says it can't be true, for example, how does everything work together for my good when everything's not going so hot right now? But faith dares to say, but God said it. And if He said it, I'm going to live like it's true, because He can't lie. An old song that says, Faith, glad faith, the promise sees and looks to God alone. Laughs at impossibilities and cries, it shall be done. And cries, it shall, it shall be done. And cries, it shall, it shall be done. Laughs at impossibilities and cries, it shall be done. That's what faith does. It sees the promise and says, I know who promised it. It's a little like Lucy Pavinci looking at the army of the Telmarines and saying, man, I'm overwhelmed, but you know what? God's with me. And if God is with me, all is well. I can trust that I'm on the winning side. The fourth and final thing I would set before you is this. What a difference God incarnate makes to the life of every single person whom he touches. We've seen it all throughout the Scriptures. This morning we've seen it referred to twice. The God who showed me in Bethel, in Luz, He showed me this ladder that touched God and man. This God who wrestled with me as God incarnate all through the night and changed my heart and redeemed me from all evil. He's referring us, pointing us over and over again to the Messiah. He's saying, here's what Jesus Christ and Him crucified does. And again, have we not seen it all throughout Genesis? He takes an old man named Abram, who's an idol worshipper. You realize he was an idol worshipper when he was 75, because the great god of the Chaldeans was the moon. So here's a moon worshipper, and God suddenly appears to him and says, get out of your country, get out of your land to the place I'll show you. I'm going to be your god from now on. He takes an idol worshipper and makes him into something else. He takes a deceiver like Jacob, and makes him his own. He takes a man like Judah, a skirt chaser, a whoremonger, a man who was not a godly man, and changes his heart, gives him a new heart, so that later he's saying, I will give up my life to be surety from my brother whom I years ago betrayed. He says, God says to him, I will now make you the great ancestor, the great forefather of the Messiah himself. The lion of the tribe of Judah. And God even takes a child born of incestuous union to do that. The point we should come away with is this. God is obviously merciful to people who are very wicked sinners. He shows mercy to those people and He's full of pity for them. He's able to transform them from what they were to something else. And He's full of pity for them. And you're sitting there thinking to yourself, well, I'm a sinner, and you just don't know the things I've done, the debauchery I've been involved in, the pornography, the immorality, I've aborted my own child, I've done this, I've done that. If you knew the things that I've done, you wouldn't even talk to me. Well, frankly, if you knew the things I've done, you wouldn't talk to me either. The reality is, that is exactly whom Jesus came to save. He sent His own Son, to save rebels, to save people who, by their actions, show repeatedly they hate the Lord. That's exactly whom God came, it's in His Son Jesus, to save. And so if you're here and you're outside of Christ, Jesus promises that if you'll come to Him, He will in no wise cast you out, that if you'll call upon His name for the salvation only He can give, He is rich in mercy to all who call upon Him. Flee to this Messiah who made such a difference in the lives of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, and of Joseph, and of Judah. This One who saved the apostles. This One who saved so many wretched people. Who could take a terrorist like Paul and make him to the world's greatest church planter. This is the Christ who saves sinners. And He is able, He is willing to save anyone and everyone who comes to God through Him. So flee to Christ that you might be saved. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for being our God. We praise you for your love for us. We praise you, Lord Jesus, that you are a sufficient Savior for sinners. We pray, O Lord, that you will draw many to yourself, comfort us, and encourage us in the things of God, we pray. In Jesus' name, amen.