[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, good morning, church family.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is so good to be with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Happy Thanksgiving weekend.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope you had a wonderful time with your family.
[SPEAKER_00]: My name is Andrew.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you don't know me and I'm really excited to be with you and study God's Word together.
[SPEAKER_00]: What an amazing update from Matt, just to celebrate that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's incredible to see how God has moved in.
[SPEAKER_00]: And how much fun was it to have Dan back with us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Dan was a friend and a mentor to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: You guys all the way back when I was in high school.
[SPEAKER_00]: So a long time ago, he had the same amount of hair and I had more hair back then.
[SPEAKER_00]: is good to see a brother and a friend and ministry and his faithfulness over the years to serve God.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what a special morning to share those things together.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to be studying Genesis 48 in 49.
[SPEAKER_00]: This morning you can go ahead and turn there now and your Bible is you can open it up in physical physical Bible or in Uversion if you want to.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have been in walking through Genesis here for almost this entire year and what a journey it's been.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've been studying the story of Jacob and his family for about 25 chapters now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Almost 150 years of history.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you thought your family, thanksgiving, maybe had a little bit of drama or a little bit of struggle to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it's nothing compared to what we've seen Jacob and his family walk through her height.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because in Jacob and his family, we have seen envy, betrayal, deception, violence, broken relationships just to name a few.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yet in the midst of that, God has been so faithful to this family.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've seen growth.
[SPEAKER_00]: and character transformation and the power of God to bring about redemption in the midst of broken stories.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if there's anything that the story of Jacob has taught us, it's that family is so messy, but God works in the middle of that mess.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so as we come to these final two chapters here in the story of Jacob and we'll have one more week in Genesis next week, Genesis chapter 50.
[SPEAKER_00]: So be sure to be back for that and Adam's going to share a little bit about future indirection of
[SPEAKER_00]: of the church in the capital campaign, so we're so excited for next week, but here at the end of the story of Jacob, there's a struggle that this text is going to speak to, and I think it's one that we all share, a struggle of trusting God in our families, struggle of trusting God in the context of our families,
[SPEAKER_00]: Our families are the context where we experience life's greatest blessings and life's greatest challenges.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a beautiful and volatile mix of joy and grief, hope and disappointment, love and loss.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you may have experienced some of that this weekend.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know in our family, as we gathered around the Thanksgiving table, there was so much to be thankful for, and as I thought about the four families that were represented there, there were so many places over this last year where trust was needed, trust in each other and ultimately trust in God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm sure that was true for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's true for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now in your family, so many blessings, so many challenges, so many places to trust.
[SPEAKER_00]: So as we dive into this passage,
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me ask you, where do you need to trust God in the context of your family?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, it can be so difficult to trust God because we care so deeply about our families.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe for you, it is an unexpected health challenge.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe there's the uncertainty of a job loss and what comes next.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe there's the grief of a broken relationship, a parenting challenge, a financial struggle, or maybe there's a new blessing because even the good gifts of God present us with a new opportunity to trust him with something that we really care about.
[SPEAKER_00]: Family is such a place of experiencing grief and hope, and it's hard to hold on to both of those together and to walk that road well, we need faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: We need to trust God that he's working in the stories of our family.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what we're going to see today.
[SPEAKER_00]: So as we look at Genesis 48 and 49, I want us to focus on two questions.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why should we trust God in the midst of our families and all the struggles, the many deep struggles that we face?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why should we trust God there?
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to see two reasons.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then just as importantly, what happens when we do?
[SPEAKER_00]: When we put our faith in God and the context of our families, what's the result of that?
[SPEAKER_00]: So why should we trust God and what happens when we trust God and our families?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what we're going to look at today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's pray.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll dive into this passage together.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sovereign God, you are the one who directs and guides the stories of our families and Lord, it can be so, so difficult to trust you there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Would you open our eyes and our hearts to see truth from your word that will strengthen our faith in you and that will help us to love others deeply?
[SPEAKER_00]: Guide us now as we study this passage together, amen.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's dive in, get started in Genesis 48, verse 1.
[SPEAKER_00]: One day, not long after this, Jacob and his sons are in Egypt now, the word,
[SPEAKER_00]: word came to Joseph, your father is failing rapidly.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Joseph went to visit his father and he took with him his two sons, Manasa, and Ephraim.
[SPEAKER_00]: When Joseph arrived, Jacob was told your son Joseph has come to see you.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Jacob gathered his strength and sat up in his bed and he's at the very end of his life here.
[SPEAKER_00]: The very last bit of his strength.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jacob then said to Joseph,
[SPEAKER_00]: God Almighty appeared to me atlas in the land of Canaan and blessed me.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said to me, I will make you fruitful, I will multiply your descendants.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will make you a multitude of nations, and I will give this land of Canaan to your descendants after you as an everlasting possession.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is such an incredible callback to the promises of God that we've seen all throughout Genesis.
[SPEAKER_00]: All the way back to Genesis 12, where God gave the promise to Abraham of land and descendants and blessing to all peoples.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a callback to the promises that God gave to Jacob at the beginning of the journey.
[SPEAKER_00]: and the midpoint of His journey.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so what is Jacob focused on here?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is he's about to breathe his last?
[SPEAKER_00]: He's focused on God's promises and God's ability to fulfill those promises.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I love the name that he uses for God here.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's God Almighty or El Shadai, and so I think the first truth that we see about trusting God in our families, why should we trust God there?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because He is God Almighty.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is who He is.
[SPEAKER_00]: He is El Shadai.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the strong and mighty God.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a really important name for God, particularly in Genesis.
[SPEAKER_00]: God uses it when he makes a covenant with Abraham.
[SPEAKER_00]: Isaac uses it when he passes the blessing along to Jacob, and then God uses it when he confirms the blessing to Jacob, so all throughout the story, El Sudai.
[SPEAKER_00]: El Sudai.
[SPEAKER_00]: El Sudai, this name keeps coming up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even in Exodus 6 2, which looks back at Genesis,
[SPEAKER_00]: I appear to Abraham to Isaac and Jacob as El Shadai, God Almighty, but I did not review my name Yahweh to them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I reaffirmed my covenant with them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now the name Yahweh still shows up in Genesis, but even from God's own mouth, there's this emphasis on knowing Him as the Almighty God in Genesis.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why why this particular name of all the names that God could have chosen?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, think about all the Abraham and Isaac and Jacob walked through, all the challenges that they face.
[SPEAKER_00]: They left their homeland.
[SPEAKER_00]: They lived among hostile neighbors.
[SPEAKER_00]: They needed to trust God with sons and with future spouses and with their own brokenness and failings.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's so many situations where this family, the founding family of our faith, needed to trust
[SPEAKER_00]: God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so God wanted them to know that he would be there on mighty God.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was no situation that was beyond his saving power or control, no situation that he could not handle.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know there are times in my life where I have needed to be reminded that God would be God Almighty for me, specifically in times where I've struggled to trust that God would provide.
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember when I first went into a ministry, I wasn't sure how I would pay for seminary, and God provided in a really amazing way.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we had our first son, Caden, and the hospital bills came in for that, and we thought,
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's way more expensive than we thought it was going to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: We weren't sure how we were going to afford those, and God provided an amazing way, and not even financial things.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's times where I remember Amber and I were about to walk into a really significant season of trial and challenge, and we didn't know it, and God provided by getting us into a small group that would really help and care for us in the midst of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So financial or other ways, there's so many times.
[SPEAKER_00]: When God has provided and shown himself to be God Almighty.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let me ask, in your family, is there a place where you need to trust God to be God Almighty for you?
[SPEAKER_00]: He is able to do so.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's able to be that in your family.
[SPEAKER_00]: Remember the Lord asked Abraham, all the way back in Genesis 18, is anything too hard for the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: The answer to that is an emphatic, no.
[SPEAKER_00]: He is our almighty God, no situation in our families is too difficult or too broken for him to move.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't always mean that he will work or move in the way that we want him to.
[SPEAKER_00]: And how good of God to not do that because from our own limited vantage point, we don't know what is best for us, but it does mean that we can trust any in every situation into his hands.
[SPEAKER_00]: For the sake of time, let me summarize the next section, because we've got a lot that I want to get through here.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in the next verses, this is really cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jacob welcomes Joseph's two sons, Ephraim and Manassea, into his own family, and any blesses them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is a beautiful moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's this warm,
[SPEAKER_00]: Embrace, remember Jacob here is that the end of his life, and for Jacob, for Joseph, and for Manassin, Ephraim, this must have been such a special moment to share, really a memory, that they would carry with them.
[SPEAKER_00]: This moment becomes just as kind of a side note, historically significant in the Old Testament, where Ephraim and Manassin become tribes in the 12 tribes of Israel, going forward.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no tribe of Joseph.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's divided into two.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we'll see another reason that that's significant at the end of the message, but so a significant moment, even just historically in the Old Testament here, but back to the story and Jacob is on his deathbed at this point, the text says he is half blind.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Joseph brings the boys close.
[SPEAKER_00]: and he positions them so that Jacob can bless them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I wonder if this was a bit of a deja vu moment for Jacob, because remember how his own father Isaac was blind when Jacob deceived him and stole the blessing.
[SPEAKER_00]: There must have been a lot going on in Jacob's heart here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Joseph puts the older menasa at Jacob's right hand and the younger Ephraim at Jacob's left hand, but look at what happens next.
[SPEAKER_00]: Read with me in verse 14 here, but Jacob crossed his arms.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is he reached out to lay his hands on the boy's head?
[SPEAKER_00]: He put his right hand on the head of Ephraim, though he was younger and his left hand on the head of menasa, though he was the firstborn.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why does Jacob cross his hands?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why the younger before the older?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, this is a pattern that we have seen all throughout Genesis, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Time and time again, the older has been the younger.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sorry, rather, has been put in front of the older.
[SPEAKER_00]: The covenant blessing has gone to the younger.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so even with Adam and Eve, it went not to cane who murdered his brother, Abel, but to Seth.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then it went to,
[SPEAKER_00]: Not to Ishmael, rather, but to Isaac, not to Esau, but Jacob, and then here we see Ephraim before Manassa.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's the big deal about the blessing going to the younger, not to the older?
[SPEAKER_00]: Remember our theme today, it's all about trusting God in specifically.
[SPEAKER_00]: This was an amazing way that God helped every single one of these families grow in faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: Adam earlier in our series talked about how in that culture the older son received a double portion of the inheritance and also the responsibility of caring for the family if anything went wrong and so in that culture if you had a really good older son who did a great job taking care of the family and was stable.
[SPEAKER_00]: you as a family you essentially had it made it would be similar to an our culture just having an incredible 401k account and a family business that's thriving and prosperous.
[SPEAKER_00]: They are going to pass to the next generation and a family legacy.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you had a strong older son you were good.
[SPEAKER_00]: and in that culture, and for every single one of these families, this issue of an older son, it was a place where they needed to learn to trust God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was very difficult for them to do so, because sometimes this struggle of God, when you provide a son, when you provide someone to inherit the promise, it lasted for decades, but God was still working, and God was still moving.
[SPEAKER_00]: This was a way that God grew faith in these families.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so Jacob continues this legacy of faith, trusting in God's sovereignty and God's guidance.
[SPEAKER_00]: He indicates that Ephraim will be greater than Manassa.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't think this was a random moment of favoritism or anything like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jacob was really listening to God's guidance.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is he made this blessing?
[SPEAKER_00]: And the history of the Old Testament kind of bears this out.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Ephraim becomes a great, strong, influential tribe.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in the 12 tribes, really, one of the most influential and the northern kingdom.
[SPEAKER_00]: The book of Hebrews also gives us insight into this moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is really interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: In Hebrews 11, 21, it says this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was by faith that Jacob, when he was old and dying, blessed each of Joseph's sons, is not interesting that it mentions this particular moment in Hebrews 11, the Hall of Faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: There have been so many moments where Jacob showed faith in his story, and so many moments where he failed to show faith in his story, why this moment?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, again, I think it's that is he was making the blessing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jacob was trusting God's guidance.
[SPEAKER_00]: He wasn't placing his faith in the cultural convention in the strength of the firstborn, but rather in the one that God would raise up in shoes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And maybe there's an application for us here of there's so many things that were attempted to trust in, that can be cultural conventions, that can be good things, but ultimately they shouldn't be the final place that we should put our trust.
[SPEAKER_00]: That should rest in God alone.
[SPEAKER_00]: so Jacob does put the younger in front of the older and yet there's something new and different here as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's continuity with this pattern in an really interesting way.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's also some discontinuity because look at the blessing that Jacob gives to these boys.
[SPEAKER_00]: Both of them are actually included in it.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll pick it back up at verse 15.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then he blessed Joseph, he blessed Joseph's boys.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he said, may the God who my grandfather Abraham, and my father Isaac walks the God who has been my shepherd all my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: To this very day, the angel, no capital angel there, the angel of the Lord,
[SPEAKER_00]: who has redeemed me from all horn.
[SPEAKER_00]: May he bless, who?
[SPEAKER_00]: Ephraim or Minasa?
[SPEAKER_00]: May he bless these boys, both of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: May they preserve my name and the names of Abraham and Isaac and may their descendants multiply greatly throughout the earth.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think this is such a beautiful moment for Jacob.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, Ephraim has put first, but both sons are included in the family blessing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Both careously carry on the family legacy and there may have been a moment for you where you've wondered, am I, can I still be included in God's blessing based on what I've done?
[SPEAKER_00]: Friends, is blessing is inclusive because his grace is inclusive.
[SPEAKER_00]: His mercy is more in God's love to extend.
[SPEAKER_00]: grace and forgiveness to broken people.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've seen that time and time again in Genesis.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what a redemptive moment for Jacob, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Remember how he deceived his father and deceived his brother to get the blessing and how that led to so much envy and rivalry and separation and hatred in their family.
[SPEAKER_00]: here there's going to be the opportunity for a different and better story and in Jacob's place of his greatest pain and his greatest failure by trusting in God, he is actually able to share a blessing that will impact the future generation.
[SPEAKER_00]: What a reversal.
[SPEAKER_00]: What a moment of redemption for a man who has struggled so greatly to trust God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, the book of Hebrew says Jacob, Jacob acted in faith when he blessed these boys.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I see a component of that here as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: And faith, he included both boys in the family legacy and promise.
[SPEAKER_00]: Trust in that God would be faithful in their stories.
[SPEAKER_00]: What a moment of character transformation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Today, we're looking at why should we trust God?
[SPEAKER_00]: We've seen one of the reasons he's got Almighty.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're also looking at what happens when we trust God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think we see a really powerful truth here from Jacob's example.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we trust God, it allows us to share God's blessing.
[SPEAKER_00]: When in faith we trust God, there's something about God giving His blessings to us and then we are able to convey and share and give those to others and some beautiful ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: that this is something that we can do in our own families as we trust God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you want to explore this further, there's a book that I would recommend called the Blessing by John Trent.
[SPEAKER_00]: I came across this book at a family camp this summer and God has really used it to encourage me and teach me some things.
[SPEAKER_00]: They give great practical guidance in our modern context.
[SPEAKER_00]: For what does it look like to give a blessing to your kids, to your spouse, to your co-workers, to your parents and grandparents?
[SPEAKER_00]: How can families live out these truths?
[SPEAKER_00]: And the book is just full of practical ideas, where you can give a written or spoken message.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can attach high value, a genuine active commitment in their lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'd recommend going deeper if you want to into this book.
[SPEAKER_00]: This summer,
[SPEAKER_00]: Our family got to go to a family camp with an organization called Winshape.
[SPEAKER_00]: And on the very last night of the camp, after a week filled with fun, the camp did something that was really cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: They set up this experience called the blessing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was kind of simple.
[SPEAKER_00]: They just created a context where each family could hang out.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then they had some prompts where parents could give a blessing to their kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: And kids could actually share
[SPEAKER_00]: some words of blessing with their parents.
[SPEAKER_00]: And to be honest, I was not sure how this was going to go.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our kids tend to specialize in some distracting noises that tend to ruin family moments like that, if you know what I mean.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I didn't necessarily have the highest of expectations, but ended up being really special.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was really meaningful to speak words of blessing to our kids, and even for our kids to speak some encouragement to us.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we've had a lot of other family moments
[SPEAKER_00]: haven't gone quite that well and we had some of those this weekend as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what an opportunity right for us to give a blessing and we don't use that.
[SPEAKER_00]: word very often that kind of language, but it doesn't need to be complicated or fake.
[SPEAKER_00]: It can just be very real.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe as a family, you gather up before you leave at the end of the holidays and just speak a prayer of blessing over your family.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe before your kids go to sleep, you just lay your hand on their head and just say a simple prayer.
[SPEAKER_00]: for them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe a written word of encouragement, someone in your family that you haven't connected with for a long time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, I really appreciate this in you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I see this character trade in you and I believe that God is going to use that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our words when they're connected to God's heart have so much power to have impact in our families.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so maybe for you, there's a specific way that God is leading you to bless someone in your family.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me give you a few ideas.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe someone is stepping into something new and scary.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as they step into it, they may need you to give them your blessing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And say, hey, I believe that God is gonna provide for you in this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Step into it with faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe there's a hurt or a wound in your family from the past.
[SPEAKER_00]: And maybe you need to trust God by letting go of that hurt and speaking a word of forgiveness.
[SPEAKER_00]: That could be a really powerful word of blessing
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe as I'm talking about this, even there's a blessing that God has laid on your heart to give to someone in your family, but you feel scared or reluctant to give it because you're honestly not sure how it might be received, trust God in that place, trust God to give you courage so that you can share that with them and trust Him as well with how it hits home in the other person's heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: Man, it can be difficult and exciting to do this in our families, but God can use it so powerfully, so powerfully.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, before we move on, and I do want to move on soon to chapter 49, there's one other element I want us to see in Jacob's blessing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you catch the metaphor that Jacob uses for God in the preamble and the beginning of this blessing?
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, the God before whom my grandfather Abraham and my father Isaac walked, the God who has been read this with me here.
[SPEAKER_00]: The God who has been my shepherd, my shepherd, all my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: The second truth that we see that helps us trust God in our families.
[SPEAKER_00]: First, God is God Almighty.
[SPEAKER_00]: Second, He is God, our shepherd.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's your shepherd.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the first time that this metaphor is used for God.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the Bible, it gets introduced right here.
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, it is used many times going forward.
[SPEAKER_00]: Psalm 23, the Lord is my shepherd.
[SPEAKER_00]: John 10, that Jesus is the good shepherd.
[SPEAKER_00]: As metaphor of God is our shepherd really draws attention to his personal involvement and care and he's still got almighty there is a component of that strength in the shepherd metaphor because remember David fought off lions to protect his flocks of shepherds are not weak they are strong and shepherds are personally.
[SPEAKER_00]: even intimately involved with their sheep.
[SPEAKER_00]: They care for them.
[SPEAKER_00]: They lead them to save pastors.
[SPEAKER_00]: They provide food.
[SPEAKER_00]: They help the females to give birth.
[SPEAKER_00]: They care for the young.
[SPEAKER_00]: They go after sheep that are straying away.
[SPEAKER_00]: Shepherds know good shepherds know in love and care for their sheep and even sacrifice for them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's how God cares for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: He has got Almighty and he personally cares for our needs and our vulnerable places where we really need him to show up.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's a good shepherd.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can trust him to be that for you and for your family.
[SPEAKER_00]: And whatever you're walking through right now, he will guide you.
[SPEAKER_00]: He will be your shepherd.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's keep going into chapter 49, because there's more that I want us to see.
[SPEAKER_00]: This next chapter is so cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we've only got about 10 minutes to dive into a part of me wishes that we had a full half an hour for this chapter alone.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's Thanksgiving weekend.
[SPEAKER_00]: Who's got leftover turkey?
[SPEAKER_00]: Anybody leftover turkey in the oven?
[SPEAKER_00]: Football games to watch and some people have family that need to get on the road.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I promise we won't go.
[SPEAKER_00]: super, super long, but chapter 49 is fascinating.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jacob welcomes his 12 sons into the picture, and he's going to speak words of blessing, or even words of warning and correction to them, and these words are really powerful.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's look at verse 1.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jacob called together all his sons and said, gather around me, and I will tell you what will happen to each of you in the days to come.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a prophetic element to these last words.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to tell you what will happen to each of you in days to come.
[SPEAKER_00]: And one of the things that is so fascinating about studying this chapter is that some of these prophecies are fulfilled hundreds and hundreds of years later.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some looking for reasons to mistrust the Bible have said, oh, that's impossible.
[SPEAKER_00]: Someone else must have written this because his prophecies are so accurate.
[SPEAKER_00]: Someone else must have written this after the fact, but that's the wrong conclusion.
[SPEAKER_00]: We believe that God not only can inspire scripture, that it's God-breathed, but that God can speak prophetically, that there are times in the Bible where God gives insight.
[SPEAKER_00]: into what will happen in the future.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we see that here, God speaking through Jacob.
[SPEAKER_00]: And how powerful that He speaks through Jacob, a broken and flawed man, just like you and me.
[SPEAKER_00]: These aren't just words from Jacob.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're words inspired by God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there are words for the 12 sons and their immediate context, but also words that will be shared throughout the history of Israel to provide guidance.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's words of blessing
[SPEAKER_00]: Jacob and God speaking through him is trying to help the 12 tribes to follow certain behaviors, behaviors of trust and faith, and to avoid other behaviors.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so there's some warnings here as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we see that here right at the beginning.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at verse two, come and listen, you sons of Jacob.
[SPEAKER_00]: Listen to Israel, your father.
[SPEAKER_00]: Rubin, Rubin is the first son addressed.
[SPEAKER_00]: You were my first born, my strength, the child of my vigorous youth, you rank first and rank in first and power.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you are as unruly as a flood, and you will be first no longer.
[SPEAKER_00]: For you went to bed with my few defiled, my marriage couch.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jacob is referring back to what happened in Genesis 35, 22, Ruben slept with one of Jacob's cocky binds, and in doing this,
[SPEAKER_00]: Rubin was probably trying to assert his dominance over the family.
[SPEAKER_00]: David Sun Absalon did the same thing when he took the throne from his father.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so there's a sense in Rubin of I want to take control.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm going to do so in a public way of lustful and appropriate and controlling way.
[SPEAKER_00]: In Jacob is warning.
[SPEAKER_00]: his sons against this kind of behavior.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in these words, come with a punch.
[SPEAKER_00]: They must have been hard for Ruben to hear.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yet, I know there are times in my life when what I have most needed as a warning.
[SPEAKER_00]: And aren't there times in your life or that's been true as well?
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes a warning can actually be loving.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think that's part of what Jacob is trying to do here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't do these behaviors that trust in yourself and not God.
[SPEAKER_00]: We see more of that here in the next verses.
[SPEAKER_00]: Verse 5, Simian and Levi are two of a kind.
[SPEAKER_00]: Their weapons are instruments of violence.
[SPEAKER_00]: May I never join in their meetings.
[SPEAKER_00]: May I never be a party to their plans for in their anger?
[SPEAKER_00]: They murdered men.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they crippled oxen just for sport.
[SPEAKER_00]: The curse on their anger, for it is fierce, a curse on their wrath, for it is cruel.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will scatter them among the descendants of Jacob, I will disperse them throughout Israel.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you might be thinking, yeesh, isn't this supposed to be Jacob's blessings?
[SPEAKER_00]: He starts off with some warnings here.
[SPEAKER_00]: This calls back to what happened in Genesis 34.
[SPEAKER_00]: Simian and Levi took the lead and taken revenge on the men of Shekham for what they did to their sister, Dina.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so instead of trusting judgment to God, they took the matter into their own hands and took revenge.
[SPEAKER_00]: And for you and I, it may not be that dramatic, our failures may not be as gloriously absurd or bigger, crazy is what we read about here.
[SPEAKER_00]: But don't, at times, we all do that in smaller or bigger ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: We take matters into our own hands instead of trusting God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Jacob is warning against that kind of behavior.
[SPEAKER_00]: Earlier, we said that when we trust God, it allows us to share God's blessings with others.
[SPEAKER_00]: We also see the inverse here, that when we don't trust God, when we step into these behaviors that are not based on faith, it often brings chaos and pain.
[SPEAKER_00]: That happened in Ruben's story, and that happened in Simian and Levi.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, Jacob,
[SPEAKER_00]: tells it like it is, and love, they needed to hear this.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we don't know for sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope that for Rubin and Simi and Levi, there was this repentance.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe that there was this change in their heart posture.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can't be sure, but we know that God often works in that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we get to Judah next, there's a shift in tone that's really significant, and this is even more significant because of who Judah is, because like Ruben and Levi and Simian, Judah has had his fair share of mistakes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Back in Genesis 38, in one of the craziest stories in the entire book of Genesis,
[SPEAKER_00]: Judah fails to provide for his daughter-in-law, and then in an absolutely crazy twist of the story, ends up seeking out a prostitute, and the prostitute ends up being his own daughter-in-law.
[SPEAKER_00]: You just read it, and you're like, I can't even believe a story like this is in the Bible.
[SPEAKER_00]: This was Judah.
[SPEAKER_00]: His failures are just so clearly on display for us to see, and yet, in Judah,
[SPEAKER_00]: There's this repentance, he acknowledges his wrong in Genesis 38.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as the story goes on, Judah from a heart posture of humility begins to take the leadership that Ruben should have taken.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's Judah who convinces Jacob that they should go to Egypt to be provided for.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's Judah, who actually willingly offers himself as a sacrifice for Benjamin.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, take me and let Benjamin go.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's some real heart change.
[SPEAKER_00]: that we see in Judah's story and trajectory.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a story like so many in Genesis of transformation.
[SPEAKER_00]: and grace.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, yes, we see challenge and we see warnings, but we also see grace.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's true throughout the Bible.
[SPEAKER_00]: God has honest with us about our sin when we need him to be honest and he invites us to step into the goodness of his grace.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at what it says in Judah.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of symbolic language here.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a neat prophecy about the future too.
[SPEAKER_00]: Judah, your brothers will praise you.
[SPEAKER_00]: you will grasp your enemies by the neck, all your relatives will bow down before you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Due to my son as a young lion, lion being symbolic of strength and power, that has finished eating its prey, like a lion he crouches and mised down, like a lioness who dares to rouse him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't miss this.
[SPEAKER_00]: The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler staff from his descendants, until the coming of the one to whom it belongs, the one whom all nations will honor.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's going on there?
[SPEAKER_00]: The rulers scepter.
[SPEAKER_00]: The coming of the one tomb at Belongs, the one whom all nations will honor.
[SPEAKER_00]: And such a neat way, this is a prophecy that points us forward to Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Think about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Judah becomes the tribe of King David, who rules over Israel.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's a line of kings that follow, and the Psalms and the prophets look forward to a ruler in David's line who will one day bring God's kingdom.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then, as the kings, the story of the kings unfolds, they turn away from the Lord and they're sent into exile and Zetakaya, the final king in the line of Judah is imprisoned.
[SPEAKER_00]: and dies, and captivity with the Babylonians.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it seems like from an earthly perspective, the promise is failed.
[SPEAKER_00]: It seems like this doesn't come to fulfillment because this speaks of a ruler from the tribe of Judah, one whom all nations will honor.
[SPEAKER_00]: And for a few centuries, it's silent.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then, the young woman from the tribe of Judah has a son, a son who becomes a king.
[SPEAKER_00]: not just any king, but the book of revelations says the king of kings and the lord of lords, they call him the lion of the tribe of Judah that heir to David's throne.
[SPEAKER_00]: a king who will die on a cross and a king who will be exalted as a risen saver who one day all nations will worship and honor and glorify as they become disciples of him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we heard about that in such an exciting way earlier in the service.
[SPEAKER_00]: But do you see it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Verse 10 points us forward to Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: The one
[SPEAKER_00]: who will take authority in Judas Line, the one who all nations will worship.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so what we see here is that from Genesis to David through the exile to Bethlehem, to the cross, to the final consummation and revelation, that God is the author of the story of Scripture.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's the author of that entire story that empholds over hundreds and thousands of years.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if God can be trusted with the story that big,
[SPEAKER_00]: then it's also true that he can be trusted with the stories of our lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me say that again, if he can be trusted with the story that that big, he can also be trusted with my story and with your story and the struggles that you're walking through in your family.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of my favorite books is Le Mizz.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I love the way that Victor Hugo will introduce a small detail.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then like hundreds of pages later, you realize the significance of that detail.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just a master story teller.
[SPEAKER_00]: And everybody always thinks of the candlesticks in Le Mizz and the grace and John Veljon.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's so much more than just the candlesticks.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's just the very beginning and the story unfolds and just beautiful layer after layer after layer.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's really incredible when a human author can do that in a story.
[SPEAKER_00]: how much more incredible in the Bible, which is written by 40 different authors, approximately 40 different authors, over 1500 years, how incredible that the story fits together in such a cohesive way.
[SPEAKER_00]: It points us to God's sovereignty and to his love and his care for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's got all mighty over the whole story and he's got the shepherd walking through the details of each part of the story.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wish we had time to look at all the other blessings because there's some really interesting pieces, but I wanted to skip ahead and look to look at the blessing that's given to Joseph.
[SPEAKER_00]: So skip ahead with me to the verses 24 to 26.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because Joseph also points us to Jesus here.
[SPEAKER_00]: It says of Joseph, his arms were strengthened by the hands of the mighty one of Jacob, the shepherd, the rock of Israel.
[SPEAKER_00]: What incredible names for God there?
[SPEAKER_00]: Call back to our mighty God, our shepherd, the rock of Israel, the rock of our lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, may God, your father, help you, may the Almighty bless you with the blessings of the heavens above, the blessings of watery depths below, and blessings of the breast and womb, may my fatherly blessings on you surpass the blessings of my ancestors, reaching to the heights of the eternal hills, may these blessings rest on the head of Joseph, who is Prince among his brothers.
[SPEAKER_00]: What an incredible blessing, beautiful language here, just showers of blessing on Joseph.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I first read this, I wondered, do we see a bit of the old favoritism of Jacob to Joseph?
[SPEAKER_00]: They got the story, started off on the wrong foot.
[SPEAKER_00]: It seems like this blessing is out of proportion with the other ones in terms of what he receives.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's a much better way to look at it, think about it with me for a moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: Joseph is essentially made the first born in this blessing, because his son's Ephraim and Minas are adopted into the family and so Joseph gets a double share of the inheritance.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a cultural clue that he was places the first born.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Joseph would have needed to provide for his brothers in that new status as the first born.
[SPEAKER_00]: It says he's Prince among his brothers.
[SPEAKER_00]: He now is their caretaker, their provider.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so think about what we see in Joseph.
[SPEAKER_00]: We see a son who suffers, who becomes the first born, who provides for his brothers, and an act of forgiveness and grace.
[SPEAKER_00]: What do we see in the story of Jesus?
[SPEAKER_00]: A son, the son of God, who suffers and our place on the cross, who buy his resurrection, the Bible says becomes the firstborn of the dead, the firstborn of many brothers and sisters in the church, who provides forgiveness and an act of grace and extends the riches and fullness of God's blessing to us when we trust in them through faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so Joseph points us forward to Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Andy shows us another result of trusting in God.
[SPEAKER_00]: What happens when we trust God?
[SPEAKER_00]: We're able to share God's blessings, not only that, but when we trust God, it allows us to receive God's blessing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Joseph's brothers trusted God in the journey to Egypt and they receive the blessing of grace and provision from the hand of Joseph and the midst of this famine.
[SPEAKER_00]: And for you and I and a much greater in deeper way when we trust in Jesus by grace and faith, we can receive the blessing of His forgiveness for our sins.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there may be some of you who really need to hear that this morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe there's something that you've been carried at your past that is just so heavy, a failure, a mistake, a sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: His mercy is more.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you can step into that by trusting him through faith, by grace, through faith, and anyone on our prayer team would love to talk more about that with you after the service.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to take that step and kind of a humble moment of prayer and surrender to God.
[SPEAKER_00]: But for all of us, as we trust in God, we get to receive His blessings.
[SPEAKER_00]: We receive His Spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're adopted as sons and daughters, and God promises to guide and to lead us in the midst of our families.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what have we seen today?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why should we trust God?
[SPEAKER_00]: He's God Almighty and He's God, our shepherd.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what happens when we trust Him?
[SPEAKER_00]: We're able to share God's blessings, and we're able to receive God's blessings.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we truly and deeply know who God is, it helps us to trust Him in any of the challenges that we're walking through.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it truly helps us become people who can share God's blessings.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's someone in my family who has done this in a really neat way and I've been blessed to receive encouragement and blessing from a number of family members down in Florida, Amber's granddad lives and he is not particularly mobile right now and so when we go and hang out at family gatherings, I just spend a lot of time sitting right next to him and talking to him because there's not much else to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: At that point in our story, all of my grandparents had passed away, just various circumstances.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so at some point, Amber's granddad, he's just a fun guy and a great band.
[SPEAKER_00]: He reached over, he just said, Andrew, I'm adopting you as a grandson.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I thought, wow, like that, it meant a lot to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I really, I needed that actually in that moment in my story.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's not a perfect man by any means, but he's a man who has trusted in God throughout his whole life.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so for me and for others, God has used him to share and to give many blessings in the context of our family.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I hope and pray that that can be true for you as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope that as you trust God, as you put your faith in Him, that you will have a legacy of blessing and your family, a legacy that extends for generation and generation that's based on the gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's pray together.
[SPEAKER_00]: And let's tell God that we're gonna trust them with our stories.
[SPEAKER_00]: God, thank you that you are strong.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you that you are a shepherd.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks to all the twist and turns of our stories and our brokenness and our failures that you never let us go.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks to you, hold us fast and that your mercy is more.
[SPEAKER_00]: I pray that if there's anyone here today who needs to take a step of blessing someone and their family, would you give them the courage to do that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Through the Holy Spirit, would you unleash a movement of blessing, of forgiveness, of encouragement, of wise counsel, of affirmation, and God speak powerfully through those words in the context of our church, and through them, would you accomplish your purposes, your plan.
[SPEAKER_00]: God keep working in our lives, always remind us of how good you are and thank you so much for being our shepherd.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's in Jesus' name that we pray, everybody said.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amen.