Sunday Night, April 19, 2020 PM

The Old, Old Story and Redemptive History

In your word and to think carefully what you have to say to us from these holy scriptures that you have breathed out through your Holy Spirit concerning your Son Jesus Christ. We thank you that these words are always profitable for doctrine and reproof, correction and training in righteousness, that we may be adequately equipped to be about your business and your way.

I pray that you would help us to do that. I pray that you would help us to hear carefully from your word tonight, that you would bless our time, time that is spent considering your truths. Help us to apply it carefully to our lives.

Lord, we thank you for providing for us in this way and every other way that you do. Help us always to remain aware, conscious and dependent upon you. I pray these things in Christ's name. Amen. Well, we're going to be in Genesis 47 tonight, the last few verses of chapter 47.

The other content of the end of chapter 46 and the bulk of chapter 47 sent out in a devotional, so you should have that in your email history if you have not had a chance to read through that, but it covers a lot of the sorting out of things after Jacob brings his family out of Canaan down into Egypt to escape the famine to be reunited with Joseph.

So we're going to specifically look at verses 28 through 31 of chapter 47, and the title of this series is going to be The Old Old Story. We certainly won't be only looking at these verses as part of this lesson, but we'll continue on as we have opportunity to do so.

So here is the text, chapter 47 of Genesis beginning in verse 28. Jacob lived in the land of Egypt 17 years. So the length of Jacob's life was 147 years. When the time for Israel to die drew near, he called his son Joseph and said to him, please, if I have found favor in your sight, place now your hand under my thigh and deal with me in kindness and faithfulness.

In the story of Jacob is a critical moment where we're considering the faith of Jacob, the faith of Israel, as we are reading about Jacob with his new name being interwoven with his old name. The faith of Israel, the faith of Jacob, was not altogether new.

He was not believing things that were unique to him and his lifetime. He was believing matters that God had promised to his father Isaac and to his father Abraham. Jacob operated with certain convictions and assumptions that even his ancestors beyond Abraham and Isaac believed, things God promised to Adam and to Noah.

And the things that Israel believes and acts upon here are the same matters entrusted, the same matters of faith entrusted to Moses, entrusted to the great nation of Israel, and all of their history down through the ages culminated in Christ.

God's Place in Eden, Noah, Abraham, and Israel

What we have here is an old, old story. The old, old story begins, of course, with the dawn of time when God made a place, Eden, for his people, Adam and Eve. And there they lovingly lived under his rule to his glory.

The old, old story, as we might sum it up, is God brings his people into his place under his rule through his Redeemer. Adam and Eve, you remember, sinned. By one sin, the whole world fell. God exiled Adam and Eve from Eden, but he promised a seed of the woman would come and defeat sin.

She gave birth to Cain, who then killed his younger brother Abel. And with Cain exiled and Abel dead, God gave Eve a third son, Seth. And through Seth came, eventually, Noah into a sin-soaked world, stinking to high heaven.

So God washed the earth off, making a fresh new place for his people, Noah and his family, that they may live under his rule to his glory. But sin, of course, did not disappear simply because God gave the whole earth a bath.

Noah got drunk. Ham committed lewdness. The following generations of mankind remained depraved and decided to make themselves God at a place called Babel. So God confused their language and scattered all these people to the four winds of the earth.

Where was God's place and where was God's people now? Who would live lovingly under God's rule to his glory now? Well, God came to Abram, a pagan in the land of Ur. He promised to take Abraham to a place and make him a great nation.

He compelled Abram to live lovingly under his rule to his glory. And God promised that the seed of the woman, which would come and destroy sin, would defeat the enemy, that this same seed would come through Abram and would bless all the nations of the earth.

And so Abraham, his new name was Abraham. Abram was renamed to Abraham. And he begot Isaac. And Isaac begot Jacob. And Jacob's name was changed to Israel. And God's place was Canaan. And God's people was Israel.

And they wandered about through that land, living somewhat lovingly under God's rule to his glory. And then, of course, famine struck. We're catching up to where we are in the story. And they had to go down to Egypt.

And there they stayed for 430 years, growing into a massive nation of slaves. And God's place was paganized. And God's people were in peril. And God's rule was not being seen clearly. God's glory was in question.

So God sends Moses to show Pharaoh God's glorious rule over all things. And to command Pharaoh to let God's people go into God's place to live under God's rule. And so God delivered them by plagues and wonders.

And then Moses, having led the people of Israel to the borders of the promised land, died. And Joshua led the way into God's place, leading God's people to follow God's rule and established a theocracy in the land of Canaan for God's glory.

And after Joshua and the judges came a man after God's own heart named David. David completed the conquering of all the land. And he was promised that one of his descendants would be that seed of the woman who would bless all the nations of the earth, defeating the enemy.

And this seed would reign upon an everlasting throne. God's people were living in God's place under God's rule, through God's King, to God's glory, with David in command. Then David's son Solomon, though at the height of his glory, truly spoke to the coming of Christ.

Yet in his folly he opened the floodgates of idolatry to the nation, which never fully recovered. It split and then ceased to exist 500 years later. God's people rebelled, and so as with Adam and Eve, God exiled His people from His place because they rejected His rule and profaned His glory.

And after it, and we've been thinking about that in our study in Jeremiah. But after a time, a handful of God's people returned to God's place to lovingly live under His rule, to His glory. But nothing was the same as it was before.

There was no Ark of the Covenant. There was no more place to sprinkle the blood of the sins of the people once per year. There was no king of the Jews to rule over God's people. They were but third-class citizens of a pagan empire.

And after the prophet Malachi, there was no more prophetic word for hundreds of years. No prophet, no priest, no king, no possession of a land. They were few in number. They were not blessing the nations.

So how does God fulfill all these promises He has made over all these generations? Well, God sends His only begotten Son as the Messiah, as the anointed prophet, priest, and king. That Christ came to be God's special place, to redeem God's people through His atonement upon the cross, to lead them to live lovingly under God's kingly rule, to God's glory.

So all the promises, all the patterns, all the structures that God had wrought throughout redemptive history are all culminated in Christ. When we talk about the old, old story, we're talking about the good news, the gospel.

The hymn says, I love to tell the story for those who know it best, seem hungering and thirsting to hear it like the rest. And when in scenes of glory, I sing the new, new song to be the old, old story that I have loved so long.

I love to tell the story to be my theme and glory, to tell the old, old story of Jesus and His love. Well, with all that context in mind, it helps us to think about the significance of what it is that happens here near the end of Jacob's life as he is concerned, rightly concerned, about how he will be buried, where he will be buried.

We hear the convictions of Jacob, the convictions of Israel about what will happen to him in death. And I think that's important for us to consider as we are reminded that God brings His people into His place under His rule through His Redeemer, and we are reminded that God has a place.

God has a place. There are three observations to be made about God's place for His people in this passage. And first of all, that God's place is an inheritance of faith, an inheritance of faith. And this we will spend our time thinking about tonight.

Burial in Canaan as a Testimony of Faith

The place is an inheritance of faith. Again, Jacob lived in the land of Egypt 17 years. So the length of Jacob's life was 147 years. When the time for Israel to die drew near, he called his son Joseph and said to him, Please, if I have found a favor in your sight, place now your hand under my thigh and deal with me in kindness and faithfulness.

Please do not bury me in Egypt. But when I lie down with my fathers, you shall carry me out of Egypt and bury me in their burial place. And he said, I will do as you have said. He said, Swear to me. So he swore to him that Israel bowed in worship at the head of the bed.

Well, right off the bat, we see clearly, plainly from the text, it matters a great deal to Jacob, to Israel, who is a man of faith. He has seen many hard things, many terrible things in his life. We have read about most of them up to this point in time.

We'll hear more in chapter 48 about some of his reflections about that hard road that he had to walk. We've already heard in the previous chapter, when Jacob comes in before Pharaoh, chapter 47 verse 8, Pharaoh said to Jacob, How many years have you lived?

So Jacob said to Pharaoh, The years of my sojourning are 130. Few and unpleasant have been the years of my life, nor have they attained the years that my fathers lived during the days of their sojourning.

This is Jacob's own assessment of his life. Few and unpleasant have been my years. But it matters, because he's a man of faith, it matters how he will be buried. It matters. I think it should matter to all Christians how we are buried.

I think it should matter to all believers how we are buried, that the way in which we have our bodies buried, that we are very careful and insistent to our loved ones how it is that we want our bodies to be buried, not because our salvation is staked upon the matter, but because we want to say something very clearly about what we believe.

What do we believe about the body? What do we believe about the resurrection? What do we believe about the end of all things? What do we believe about life after death? Jacob makes it very clear how he wants to be buried, and we see that he is emotionally prepared to die, and spiritually prepared to die, both of them.

Now, he's emotionally prepared to die in that he has been able to be reconciled, to be reunited with his son Joseph, whom he thought was dead, but behold, he was alive down in Egypt. And his other sons had brought him the news, and Joseph and Jacob had this reunion.

In Genesis 46, verses 29 through 30, Joseph prepared his chariot and went up to Goshen to meet his father Israel. As soon as he appeared before him, he fell on his neck and wept on his neck a long time.

Then Israel said to Joseph, Now let me die, since I have seen your face, that you are still alive. And so he is ready to die. Why? Because he has been reunited with Joseph. The one gaping wound that could have been resolved was.

He couldn't do anything about the death of his wives, he couldn't do anything about the other horrors that have been visited upon his family throughout the years, but at least he was able to be reunited with Joseph.

And he is emotionally prepared to die. He says, Now I can die, now that I have seen your face. And the time has come when Israel must die, as the King James translates. The time has come for Jacob where he must die, verse 29.

But as he has come to the end of all things, as he's come to the end of his life, what has, what is the record of the situation that he is in? Verse 27, Now Israel lived in the land of Egypt and Goshen, and they acquired property in it and were fruitful and became very numerous.

And so the family of Joseph was among the most privileged and prosperous in all the land, although they had only been there for 17 years. Having a son who was second in command of all Egypt, probably really, really helped the financial situation of Jacob, and all things were going well.

But just because Jacob had a lot of money, just because he had all his family gathered around, just because he had been reunited with his son Joseph, doesn't mean that he was actually ready to die. He may have been emotionally prepared to die, but was he spiritually prepared to die?

Hebrews 9 27 says, It is appointed a man once to die, and after this comes the judgment. Death is a sudden and soon certainty. The life of a man is but a vapor. We are compared in the scriptures to grass which fades away so very easily, a brief span of time.

So only the greatest of fools plan their lives and think about everything, what they're doing, without considering death. A fool will look at his produce and think to himself to build bigger and better barns, to increase his estate, to invest in his own personal kingdom.

Billions have thus died unprepared. Jesus says, Luke 13 verse 3, I tell you, unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. And what did he mean by that? Unless we repent, unless we turn away from our sins and our excuses and our self-righteousness to turn to Christ and Christ alone, we will die unprepared.

Jacob was emotionally prepared to die, but is he spiritually prepared to die? Yes, he is. Yes, he is. Now, notice his request. His request is an evidence of faith, what he truly believes. He says in verse 29, Please, if I have found favor in your sight.

He's speaking to his son. Jacob is speaking to his son. Israel is speaking to Joseph. Now, usually in a different type of conversation, the one saying, Please, if I have found favor in your sight, that would actually be the son speaking to the father, wouldn't it?

Because the father would have the authority over the son. The father would have more honor than the son. But as it is, Israel, Jacob is speaking to Joseph, and he's the one making the appeal to the one with more honor, the one with more authority.

Why is that? Because Joseph is second in command of all of Egypt, the land in which Jacob and his family lives. Jacob is subservient to his own son, even as Joseph's dreams from God foretold, that the 11 stars and the sun and the moon bow down to the one star in the middle being Joseph.

So, Jacob is appealing to Joseph. Jacob is passionate about this request. He asks Joseph to take a solemn oath, saying, You must bury my body in Canaan. That's a physical action which speaks of a spiritual condition of Jacob's heart because Jacob believes God.

Jacob believes that God has promised him the land. And Jacob means for his body to be sown in the soil of Canaan as a deposit of faith. There his remains would lie next to Abraham's remains and Isaac's remains.

And it accrued since their bodies, as dust, return to dust. But they did not decompose into just any land, but the land, the earth, the very soil promised them by God. And they took hold of that in faith and took hold of that in death.

Although their corpses are silent, their burial place cries aloud that death formed no obstacle to their entering in the possession of their inheritance. Although their corpses are silent, their burial place cries aloud that death formed no obstacle to their entering into the possession of their inheritance.

We are reminded of this in the book of Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 11. Hebrews 11 and verses 8 through 10, we read,. By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance.

And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise. For he was looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.

So, what do we learn from that theological reflection upon the life of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob by extension? Even though Jacob would die before he saw his physical descendants possessing a physical land, he did receive the larger, the better basis of the physical types.

What did he receive? He received the heavenly country, verse 16 of Hebrews 11. But as it is, they desire a better country. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob desire a better country. What kind of country? One that had better fertility than the land of Canaan.

One that had better trade routes than the land of Canaan, perhaps. One that had more topographical variety than the land of Canaan. More different types of animals and birds, a better location upon the planet.

No. What kind of better country was it that they desired? What kind of better country was it that God had promised them? What kind of better country was it that they received? Verse 17, verse 16, but as it was, they desire a better country that is a heavenly one, a heavenly one.

Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them. He has prepared a city for them. That was the city that Abraham was looking for, the city which has foundations, the city that was built by God.

And so, it is that God proves that He is a God who keeps His promises by giving the land to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They're burying their bodies in Canaan. Jacob's insistence that he be buried in Canaan was a statement of faith, him believing the promises of God.

Jacob was a fellow heir of the covenant promise God had made to Abraham. Jacob, as he prepared for death, set his eyes upon the spiritual promise of God. Jacob knew where he was going. He would be with his fathers long, he would be with his fathers long before his corpse would be laid beside their remains.

Look at the timing in verse 30. Pay close attention to the timing in verse 30. He says, but when I lie down with my fathers, you shall carry me out of Egypt and bury me in their burial place. Meaning, when I lie down with my fathers, when I rest with my fathers, it's time to cart my corpse out of Egypt into the land of Canaan to be laid into the field of Machpelah next to the remains of my ancestors.

He said, I'm already going to be lying down, I'm already going to be resting with my ancestors when you move my body physically. So, what did he understand? He knew, Jacob knew by faith that there was life after death, and it was a life with the righteous in the presence of God.

And God is, as Jesus says, the God of the living, not the dead. He says, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Proof of life after death. And Jacob knew this, as sure as Job knew it. Job 19, verses 25 through 27, as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last, He will take a stand on the earth, even after my skin is destroyed, yet from my flesh, I shall see God, whom I myself shall behold, and whom my eyes will see, and not another.

Psalm 73, 23 through 26, says, nevertheless, I am continually with you. You have taken hold of my right hand. With your counsel, you will guide me, and afterward, receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but you?

And besides you, I desire nothing on earth. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. The word portion is the very same word as inheritance, and that's the word used of the land promised to Abraham and to his descendants.

And this inheritance is given to Christ. He is the inheritant. He inherits everything, all of it. Everything that God promises is fulfilled in Christ, which is why our hope is in Christ to be co-heirs with Him.

As the other hymn says, my hope is built on nothing less than Jesus Christ and His righteousness. Though all around my soul gives way, Jesus is all my hope and stay. On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground, all other ground is sinking sand.

Jacob says, don't bury me in Egypt. Don't bury me in Egypt. Bury me in Canaan. Why? As a testimony of his faith in the promises of God. No other place for Jacob to be buried, no other Savior for us to be depending on other than Jesus Christ.

Paul writes to the Galatians in Galatians 1 verses 6 through 9, he says, I am amazed that you are so quickly, so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ for another gospel, a different gospel, which is not really another, only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.

But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed. As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you have received, he is to be accursed.

So what does that mean? Well, to be spiritually prepared for death is more than just being emotionally prepared to die. It's not just saying, well, I feel like everything has come to a nice kind of conclusion for my life.

I haven't had all my dreams come to pass, but I feel like things have gone pretty well for me. And I think that I'm on pretty good terms with everybody. So I think I'm prepared to die. That is not true preparation.

True preparation is a spiritual preparation, knowing on whom we depend, that we have an anchor for our soul that goes in beyond the veil to the true holy of holies so that our soul is anchored to Christ and Christ alone.

There is no other gospel. If someone tells you that you need something other than Christ, that you need baptism, or you need speaking in tongues, or you need circumcision, or you need wokeness, or you need a particular version of the Bible, or you need Mary, or you need communion to be saved, that person is anathema, accursed to be rejected.

Galatians 6, 13 through 15 says, for those who are circumcised do not even keep the law themselves, but they desire to have you circumcised so that they may boast in your flesh. But may it never be that I would boast except in the cross, but may it never be that I would boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ through which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world, for neither is circumcision anything or uncircumcision but a new creation.

So, whatever could be boasted in other than Christ for our salvation is to be rejected as having any agency in our deliverance. Neither is baptism, or tongues, or versions, or Mary, or communion, or anything else, but everything depends on being a new creation in Christ, born again by the work of the Holy Spirit, saved by God's grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.

And if we're there, if that's our true belief, if that's our condition, then that's how we're spiritually prepared to die. And so, the words of Jesus are the words that comfort us. John 14, one through four, do not let your heart be troubled.

Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many dwelling places. If it were not so, I would have told you. For I go to prepare a place, prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself that where I am, there you may be also.

And you know the way where I am going. And that, so, Jesus says, I've gone away. He says, He's gone away to prepare a place for us that we may receive through Him. And that is why when we say that God has a place, the very first thing we have to say about this place is that it is an inheritance of faith.

It's by faith. And this faith is not just faith in general, not just being a person of faith, but it is faith in Christ alone who is the supreme revelation of God to us. Well, let's close with a word of prayer.

Spiritual Preparation for Death and the Gospel of Christ

Father, I thank you for the time that you have given us in your Word. I pray that it has been an encouragement and clarifying. Lord, I know there are many people who have more carefully considered death in these past few weeks than they have perhaps in a long time.

And Lord, we know this is a grace from you. We know that this is an opportunity from you for us to truly consider whether we are prepared to die. It is not really a matter of just preparing emotionally to die, although that's wise and good, but really it's about preparing spiritually to make sure that we are right with you through Christ and that it matters what we believe.

And I pray that you would help us to make that clear in our hearts, that we may rest in great comfort and peace in our Deliverer, in our Savior who brings us into his Sabbath rest, but that also, Lord, you would give us opportunity to help others prepare spiritually for death.

As we are thinking about these things and concerned about these things, may it be in your grace that today is the day of salvation. Today is the day of salvation for those who must prepare spiritually for death, and I pray these things for Christ's sake.

Amen. Well, may the love of the Father and the grace of the Son and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all until next time.