Jacob: Faith to Worship While Dying (Hebrews 11:21)

Hebrews 11 and the Faith of the Patriarchs

Turning to Hebrews chapter 11, we're gonna read together verses 11, sorry, verse 17 through verse 22. Hebrews chapter 11. Beginning at verse 17, by faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was offering up his only begotten son.

It was he to whom it was said, in Isaac your descendants shall be called. He considered that God is able to raise people even from the dead, from which also he received him back as a type. By faith, Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau, even regarding things to come.

By faith, Jacob, as he was dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph and worshiped, leaning on the top of his staff. By faith, Joseph, when he was dying, made mention of the exodus of the sons of Israel and gave orders concerning his bones.

Let's pray together.

The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob

Our Father, it is our desire that you would be honored and glorified in your word and our understanding of your word. We pray that you would give to us the insight that we need and that your spirit would be our teacher and our guide today.

Help us to understand what the intention of the spirit of God is in pointing these things out to us, that we may give honor and glory to you in obedience to your word and that you would increase our faith and our confidence in your word and our trust, not only in Christ, but in the truth of your word and in the glories that are to come.

We ask this in Christ's name, amen. Well, Abraham, Isaac, and now Jacob, this is the third of these three patriarchs. These are the three founding patriarchs of the nation of Israel. These are three men to whom God attaches his own name in scripture.

You see it when you read through scripture and you read of the God of Jacob or the God of Isaac or the God of Abraham, or when they're all three put together, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and sometimes just in a shortened form, the God of our fathers.

And by fathers, usually the author means the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob being the fathers. God attaches his own name to these men's name throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament.

So, for instance, when Moses was commanded to lead the children of Israel up out of Egypt in the Exodus, we read in Exodus 33, verse 16, "'Go and gather the elders of Israel together "'and say to them, the Lord, the God of your fathers, "'the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, "'has appeared to me saying, I am indeed concerned "'about you and what has been done to you in Egypt.'".

That is a passage that is quoted by Jesus in the New Testament, Matthew 22, 32. I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. Stephen, during his trial and his testimony prior to his martyrdom in Acts chapter seven, says the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus, the one whom you delivered and disowned in the presence of Pilate when he decided to release him.

Sorry, that wasn't Stephen, that was Peter in Acts chapter three. So that description, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is connected to God because of, or those names are connected to God's name because of the covenant that God made with those three men.

Or actually, he made it with Abraham and then reconfirmed and reiterated the promises of that covenant to Isaac and then confirmed and reiterated the promises again to Isaac's son, Jacob. So as we study the Old Testament plan of salvation, we goes all the way back to Abraham and we cannot divorce God's plan of salvation from the Abrahamic covenant.

It is only inside of the Abrahamic covenant that salvation is offered to or provided to Gentiles. Outside of that, there is no salvation promised to Gentiles but because of God's work through and in the Abrahamic covenant and in time, the study of the doctrine of salvation, God's plan of salvation through history, is rooted and grounded in the promises that God made to Abraham.

And that name is attached to those men, God's name is attached to those men because those men and the promises that God made to Abraham specifically, those men determine, how we understand the Abrahamic covenant, it determines what it is that's gonna happen in the future.

Our understanding of future events comes back to the promises that God made to those three men. So our study of faith and what it means, the working of God, the providence of God, the promises of God, God's plan of salvation, the future, the history of the world, all of it comes down to, it's rooted in this Abrahamic covenant.

These three men, our God is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and these are imperfect men but they still left us a legacy of faith and we're seeing that even in the midst of their imperfections and their idiosyncrasies and their sin and their blatant failures, God still used these men and he still worked through these men.

And our next example now is in verse 21 in Hebrews 11 and it is Jacob. We've looked at Abraham in verse 17, Isaac in verse 20 and now we turn our attention to Jacob. And our pattern here is gonna be the same that we've done in the last couple of weeks and we have to jump right into the story of Jacob because last week I ran up against the clock in our study of Isaac and I could have divided that into two messages.

Mercifully for you, I didn't. It was only one message but I have even more material to go through with Jacob because scripture says so much more about Jacob than it does about Isaac. So our pattern is gonna be the same.

We're going to in a moment go back to the book of Genesis but I want you to just observe the details of chapter 11, Hebrews verse 21. Observe the things that are mentioned here so that when we go back to Genesis then we will see how it is that the author makes mention or what it is that the author is referring to here in Hebrews 11.

Verse 21, by faith Jacob as he was dying blessed each of the sons of Joseph and worshiped leaning on the top of his staff. I want you to notice three things. First, the instance that is chosen here to highlight Jacob's faith is something that was done in his dying moments and as it turns out, it is much closer to his dying moments than Isaac's blessing of his two sons.

Isaac thought he was dying. Jacob actually was dying when he blessed both the sons of Joseph. And this is something that we highlighted last week that for Isaac and Jacob and Joseph, these three men, the example of faith is given in Hebrews 11, 20, 21, and 22.

These are all things that came from their dying moments or something that was happened at the end of their life where at least in Isaac's case, he thought he was dying and we would have to observe that and ask why is it that the author chooses instances from the lives of these three men that pertain to moments when they were dying?

Why does he do that? Certainly, there are other examples from the lives of those men that the author could have cited. For instance, he could have said concerning Isaac, by faith, Isaac prayed and Rebekah, his wife, conceived after 20 years of barrenness.

He could have done that. For Jacob, he could have said, by faith, Jacob returned to the land of Israel with his four wives and all of his children and was reconciled to his brother Esau. Or by faith, Jacob wrestled with God and asked for God's blessing and would not let God go until God blessed him.

For Joseph, he could have said, by faith, Joseph rebuffed the advances of Pharaoh's, I don't know if you use the word rebuffed, but avoided the advances of Pharaoh's wife in faithfulness to God because he didn't want to sin against God.

There are examples of faith from all three of these men that he could have cited, but instead, the author zeroes in on these examples of faith in their dying moments. And I think that the reason for that is to show how their faith was present and preserve them all the way to the end of their lives.

So it's not just a faith that they had in the beginning that petered out over time. It's not a faith that waxed and waned and grew strong and grew weak and then was absent from their lives in their dying moments.

No, these men were as strong in faith at the end of their life when they're lying on death's bed and the specter of death hung over their head like dark, foreboding clouds. Their faith was strong in those moments and in those moments, they're still expressing their confidence in God and what God had promised to give them.

And second, I think the reason that these examples are cited from the moments of their death is to show us that really, their faith was in a resurrection. Their faith was in what God was going to give them in the resurrection.

These promises would be fulfilled, not in this life, but in the life that is to come. And these men would enjoy the full reception of and the full benefit of all of these blessings, not in this life but in the resurrection.

Second, I want you to notice that the act of faith is in blessing his descendants just as with Isaac in verse 20. By faith, Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau. Well, verse 21, by faith, Jacob, as he was dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph.

So this is an act of faith that is conferring upon Joseph's sons blessings that Jacob himself had received from Isaac. And third, I want you to notice in Hebrews 11, 21, that it is in faith while he was dying, he worshiped.

His dying moments were worshipful moments. It is in his death, it is in faith, that he is not only blessing Joseph's sons, but he is also leaning on the top of his staff and worshiping God as he is dying.

So faith of Jacob is active in dying, in blessing, and in worshiping. And that would be our three-point outline if we were sticking here, but we're not. We're going back to Genesis. So turn back now to Genesis 28.

And we're going to notice Jacob dying and blessing and worshiping in Genesis 28. Now, when we last left Jacob, he had just robbed the blessing from Esau. And so the Jacob that we're talking about here is the same Jacob who finagled his way into the birthright and then into the blessings.

It's the same Jacob whose ignoble shenanigans we looked at last week. And we're going to fast forward through Genesis from chapter 28. We're gonna go all the way to chapter 48 today. So we're gonna be giving an overview of 20 chapters.

I know.

And so I need to set a little bit of a context for this. And some of this, some of what I'm about to say here is gonna be of trivial interest to you. But I wanna do some math and overlap some lives here.

So we have some idea of the order of these events and the ages of what's unfolding for us in the lives of these patriarchs. So you are welcome to check my math for two reasons. Number one, I am the product of the public school system.

And number two, I did not pay attention when I was in the public school system. So I have two strikes against me already. So feel free to examine this as I go through it. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Abraham was 100 years old when Isaac was born.

Abraham was 175 years old when he died, which means that when Abraham died, Isaac was how old? 75 years. Yep, you're all with me to this point, right? Because we're not all public school students here.

You're all with me to this point. So Abraham was 100 years old when Isaac was born. Abraham dies at 175. Isaac, when he married Rebekah, was 40 years old, Genesis chapter 25. She was barren for 20 years.

And when Isaac and Rebekah conceived, and the twins, Jacob and Esau, were born, Isaac was 60 years old. Now, if Isaac was 75 years old when Abraham died, and Jacob was born when Isaac was 60 years old, that means that Jacob was how old when Abraham died?

15.

Which means that Esau was how old when Abraham died? Carry the one. Also 15, because Jacob and Esau were twins. I know some of you are like, okay, I missed the math somewhere. That's it, they were twins, so he was also 15 years old.

Now, Esau married at the age of 40. Esau married at the age of 40, which means Jacob was how old when Esau married? Keep testing it, 40 years old, right? Now, as soon as Jacob had stolen the birthright blessing from Esau, it says that Jacob was commanded by Isaac and Rebekah to go to another land outside of there, and to not take a wife from the sons of the Canaanites, but instead to go back to Rebekah's family and take a wife from there.

And at that time when Esau heard what Jacob was commanded, he went and took another wife and added them to the wives that he already had, which means that when Jacob stole the blessing from Esau, he was how old?

At least 40.

Now, in your mind, how old did you picture Jacob being when he and Rebekah finagled that whole thing and worked together to take that from him? What were you thinking, 18, 20, 22, 15 years old, maybe something like that?

He was minimum 40 years old when he stole the blessing from Esau. Then Jacob departed from the land of Canaan, and he was gone for at least 15 years. He worked seven years for Leah, and he worked seven years for Rachel, and by the time he comes back into the land, he has four wives, the handmaids or the maids of both of those two women, plus 11 of his 12 sons are born, and he's had daughters who have been born in the meantime as well.

So if Jacob was 40 years old when he stole the blessing from Esau, and then he fled the land for at least 15 years, we could probably estimate, we know that when he came back to the land, that he reconciled with Esau, and then at some point buried Isaac, who died at the age of 180, and Jacob then was 120 when he and Esau buried Isaac.

He would have been 120 years old, and then Jacob is 130 by the time he gets down into the land of Egypt. Now, why do I go through all of that? To simply say that the age of Jacob and Esau, when Jacob stole the blessing from him, Jacob would have had to have been minimum 40 years old.

He could have been older than that because there's a large window in which those events could have happened. We know that by the time he comes back to the land of Canaan, which is the land of Israel that was promised to him, the promised land, by the time he comes back there, he had to have been old enough to have conceived 11 of his 12 children.

So he's an older man, which would put him probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 75 or 80 years old, I'm guessing. Scripture doesn't nail that down unless there's some detail that I'm unaware of. So these are old men to whom these events are happening in Genesis as we read them.

Jacob's Return, Wrestling with God, and Reconciliation with Esau

Now, let's fast forward through the life of Jacob. First, Isaac, after Jacob steals the blessing from Esau, Isaac sends him away to get a wife. And when he does so, he reaffirms the covenant that God made with Abraham and confers these blessings upon Jacob.

Now, not just a second time, but also recognizing the providence of God, that God was involved in orchestrating the events that happened as they unfolded in his providence. He used the deception of Jacob in deceiving Esau to get the blessing upon Jacob, which is where God had intended it to go from the beginning.

So in chapter 28, verse three, Isaac, as he's sending Jacob away, reconfirms the blessing that God would give to him. May God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you that you may become a company of peoples.

May he also give you the blessing of Abraham to you and to your descendants with you that you may possess the land of your sojournings, which God gave to Abraham. So there, Isaac is simply recognizing that God's hand has been involved in this and I'm sending you away.

But even though you're going outside of the land that God has promised to Abraham and to me and now to you, God is going to give to you everything that he has promised to Abraham. So Jacob is now the promised seed.

Chapter 28, verse 10, then Jacob departed and here's where God reconfirms the blessings to Jacob. Jacob departed from Beersheba and went toward Haran. He came to a certain place and spent the night there because the sun had set and he took one of the stones of the place and put it under his head and laid down in that place.

He had a dream and behold, a ladder was set on the earth and its top reaching to heaven. And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it and behold, the Lord stood above it and said, I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham, the God of Isaac, the land on which you lie, I will give it to you and to your descendants.

Your descendants will also be like the dust of the earth and you will spread out to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south and in you and your descendants shall all the families of the earth be blessed.

Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you. Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, surely the Lord is in this place and I did not know it.

He was afraid and said, how awesome is this place. This is none other than the house of God and this is the gate of heaven. So Jacob at that moment got a vision, a glimpse into heaven and in that moment, God took the opportunity to reconfirm the blessings and to remind Jacob that what was promised to Abraham was not the heaven into which Jacob was looking and was nothing that was going to be given to him when he died and went to heaven.

Again, the promise has to do with the land. Verse 13, the land on which you lie, I will give to you and to your descendants and your descendants will be like the dust of the earth. And this is confirmed to Jacob before he has a wife or any children.

He is single, he has no descendants and God has reiterated to him, though you're going out of the land, I'm gonna bring you back here, I'm gonna fulfill all of my word just as I promised to Abraham and to your father Isaac.

Verse, in chapter 29, sorry, chapter 29, Jacob meets Rachel and then he is tricked into taking a woman that he did not love. There's a little bit of poetic justice in that, is there not? You kind of read that and you have a hard time feeling sorry for Jacob when he gets sort of tricked into that.

He wakes up with a wife that he didn't bargain for after working seven years for her and then he has to work another seven years for Rachel. And she bears children to him, chapter 30. Kids are born to him, maids bear children.

You can just look through the narrative as I'm fast forwarding here. Jacob actually ended up with four wives and a whole bunch of children and it's very difficult at this point not to hear the lyrics of a 1990s Rich Mullins song echoing around in your head, right?

Jacob, he loved Rachel and Rachel, she loved him and Leah was just there for dramatic effect. Am I the only one that knows that song? Couple others? Yeah, the world is best as I can remember it. It's this whole story that we're hearing here.

If you've listened to the song, then you know where this is going. In chapter 31, Jacob ends up leaving Laban and tricks Laban out of some of his herd after Laban had taken advantage of him on numerous occasions.

In chapter 32, he prepares to meet Esau. Now the last time he saw his brother Esau was right after he had tricked him out of the blessing and Esau was in a murderous rage waiting for his father Isaac to die so then he could kill Jacob.

So Jacob was fearful and in chapter 32, verse 11, he in praying, prays for deliverance from his brother Esau but he reminds God of the promises that God had made to him. Verse 11, deliver me, I pray, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I fear him that he will come and attack me and the mothers with the children.

And now he's speaking to the Lord and he reminds the Lord, for you said, I will surely prosper you and make your descendants as the sand of the sea, which is too great to be numbered. Now Jacob is terrified at the prospect of meeting his brother because the last time he saw Esau, Esau was kind of giving him one of those nods like, yeah, our paths are gonna cross again and when it does, it's not gonna be good for you.

Dad will be dead and we will reconcile all of this at some point. You can run away now but our eyes will meet again. That was the last Jacob saw of Esau and now he is about to meet Esau, be reconciled, approach Esau and he is fearful that Esau has not had any of his anger assuaged and he is going to be equally as angry as he was when he left him and of course he has every reason then to fear for his life.

So he reminds God, look, you said, all of my descendants and here I have them, four wives and all these kids. These are the ones to whom you have promised this land. So I'm just reminding you, Lord, before I go meet my brother, these are the ones, you have to keep them alive, them and me, just remember that tomorrow when we meet.

And then Jacob wrestled with God, chapter 32, verse 24. Then Jacob was left alone and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. This is the angel of the Lord, a pre-incarnate appearance of the Christ and when he saw that he had not prevailed against him, he touched the socket of his thigh so the socket of Jacob's thigh was dislocated while he wrestled with him.

Then he said, let me go for the dawn is breaking but he said, I will not let you go unless you bless me. So he said to him, what's your name? And he said, Jacob. And he said, your name shall no longer be called Jacob but Israel for you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed.

Then Jacob asked him and said, please tell me your name. But he said, what is it that you ask my name or why is it that you ask my name? And he blessed him there. So Jacob named the place Peniel for he said, I have seen God face to face yet my life has been preserved.

He understood that he was wrestling with somebody who was in physical appearance, in physical form, God in the flesh or some sort of a physical, some sort of physical manifestation of God, Yahweh. Now the sun rose upon him just as he crossed over Penuel and he was limping on his thigh.

This is what most commentators believe is the conversion experience for Jacob. Now it's hard to know for certain but it seems as if Jacob's demeanor changes from this point forward. From this point forward, he has been now physically handicapped.

He is limping after the socket of his thigh has been put out of socket. His thigh has been put out of socket. So now he's having a hard time walking and what is he about to do? He's about to meet his brother Esau.

And he might wish at that moment that he at least had the ability to run from Esau if things kind of soured. But now he doesn't have the ability to run from Esau. Now he is really dependent upon the Lord.

And his demeanor and his attitude from this point forward change. Notice that he is, his name has changed to Israel and I'm not gonna refer to him as Israel but just as Jacob. I'm having a hard enough time keeping Abraham, Isaac and Jacob separate in my mind as I'm rattling off names.

I'm not gonna add Israel to the mix. But Jacob's name, Jacob, the name Jacob meant heel grabber. The name Israel means God's fighter or he who strives with God. And that's truly just as good of a description of him as was the name Jacob because he ends up in the course of his life fighting with his brother, his father, his father-in-law, his wives and now he's wrestled with God.

And he's physically handicapped and must now rely upon God for protection. Genesis chapter 33, here's where he meets Esau. Then Jacob lifted his eyes and looked and behold Esau was coming and 400 men with him.

That would just strike terror into your heart. So he divided the children among Leah and Rachel and the two maids. He put the maids and their children in front and Leah and her children next and Rachel and Joseph last.

Now here's a man who grew up in a home where daddy played favorites and didn't even try hiding it from him and he has done the same thing. Now he has put the wives, the maids and the children that he has with them out in front and then Leah in the middle and then Rachel and Joseph very last.

Rachel was the woman that he loved in the beginning. It was his favorite wife and now he has a favorite son and it's Joseph. If you're one of those kids and you're up at the front of that line, what are you thinking?

You're thinking, oh, I get to ride in the front caravan now, finally. I get the front seat up here with the adults and then your dad says to you now, you hear over him saying to the wives, we just hope that if Esau goes on a murderous rampage that he's sick of killing women and children by the time he gets back to Joseph so we're putting all the rest of you up front and if you were Reuben or Simeon or Levi, any one of the first four or five firstborn sons, what would you be thinking?

Pardon me? You're putting me up here, why? He's obviously showing favorites here. In chapter 35, Jacob moves to Bethel where God appears and confirms the promises again, chapter 35, verse nine. Then God appeared to Jacob again.

We had come from Padan Aram and he blessed him. God said to him, your name is Jacob. You shall no longer be called Jacob but Israel shall be your name. Thus he called him Israel. God also said to him, I'm God Almighty.

Be fruitful and multiply. A nation and a company of nations shall come from you and kings shall come from you. The land which I gave to Abraham and Isaac, I will give to you and I will give the land to your descendants after you.

In verses 26 and 21, Rachel dies while giving birth to Benjamin. In chapter 36, Esau's children and the details, Esau's children and the chiefs that came from him. Chapter 37 picks up the story of Joseph who takes the stage of the narrative really from this point forward with the exception of chapter 38.

And from this point forward, really it's Joseph's story which intersects later on with Jacob. And we'll come back to Joseph next week. Joseph's story intersects with Jacob because Jacob sends Joseph off to visit his brothers.

And you remember that they plot his murder and then Reuben rescues him from the hands of his brother. And instead they come up, concoct this story, sell him into slavery. He goes down into Egypt. And then his brothers lie to their father, Jacob, telling Jacob that he was attacked on the way and they found his coat covered with blood.

And so yeah, Joseph must be dead. And they kept this a secret from Jacob all of these years until finally we get to chapter 45 after Joseph who has become now a prince in the land of Egypt and has stored up all of the grain in the land of Egypt and is providing to others during the midst of a famine.

He reveals himself to his brothers, verse 24 of chapter 45. So he sent his brothers away and as they departed, he said to them, do not quarrel on the journey. Then they went up from Egypt and came to the land of Canaan to their father, Jacob.

They told him saying, Joseph is still alive and indeed he is ruler over all the land of Egypt. And he was stunned. He did not believe them. When they told him all the words of Joseph that he had spoken to them and when he saw the wagons that Joseph had sent to carry him, the spirit of their father Jacob revived.

He's 130 at this point, close to it. And Israel said, it is enough. My son Joseph is still alive. I will go and see him before I die. Now this puts a little bit of a pep in his step. He kind of has a reason to live after this and it revives him.

He gets into the caravan that Joseph has sent to take him back to the land of Egypt and goes down to the land of Egypt. By this point, Jacob had been in the land for a number of years, probably some decades.

He has lived in tents like Isaac and Abraham and he knows the land is his and he expected at this point to die in that land just as Abraham had and just as his son Isaac had. But circumstances now seem to be driving Jacob out of the land of Israel and into the land of Egypt.

He was going down to Egypt and leaving the land and God had promised to bring him back to the land and to give him that land and now it seems that the famine and the circumstances are driving him and all of his descendants out of the land that God had promised and down into the land of Egypt.

Chapter 46, verse one, so Israel set out with all that he had and came to Beersheba and offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac. And God spoke to Israel in visions of the night and said, Jacob, Jacob, and he said, here I am.

He said, I am God, the God of your father. Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt for I will make you a great nation there. I will go down with you to Egypt and I will also surely bring you up again and Joseph will close your eyes.

So the famine, notwithstanding all of them, every descendant was to go down to the land of Egypt and to leave the land that God had promised them and it seems as if now the providence of God was taking away from them what had already been promised to them.

Jacob is gonna die down in the land of Egypt and Joseph is gonna close his eyes as the text says. Chapter 47, verse seven, then Joseph brought his father, so now Jacob has arrived in the land of Egypt.

Joseph has already intended to give them the best of the land, the land of Goshen. Verse seven, Joseph brought his father Jacob and presented him to Pharaoh and Jacob blessed Pharaoh. Pharaoh said to Jacob, how many years have you lived?

So Jacob said to Pharaoh, the years of my sojourning, notice that word, the years of my sojourning, he still views himself as an alien and an exile, a stranger in the land. 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 father's during the days of their sojourning. And Jacob blessed Pharaoh and went out from his presence. So Joseph settled his father and his brothers and gave them a possession in the land of Egypt in the best of the land, in the land of Ramses as Pharaoh had ordered.

Joseph provided his father and his brothers and all his father's household with food according to their little ones. So you notice his perspective that he is a sojourner. So like Abraham and like Isaac, he viewed himself as one who lived in the land of Canaan but never possessed it.

But he is waiting on the promises to be fulfilled. But now there's been this turn of events where Jacob has been taken down into Egypt out of the land that he has promised and all his descendants are down there.

And now we come to the point where Jacob blesses the descendants of Joseph. We've reached now the end of Jacob's life. He comes into the land of Egypt at 130. Chapter 47, verse 27, now Israel lived in the land of Egypt in Goshen and they acquired property in it and were fruitful and became very numerous.

I want you to notice that, that's very significant. Children of Israel are there, they have acquired property, they have prospered in the land, they've become very numerous. Verse 28, Jacob lived in the land of Egypt 17 years so the length of Jacob's life was 147 years.

Those last few years of his life were the most comfortable years that he had ever spent anywhere. It's not intense, it's in the land of Goshen. Every need he has ever had has been provided, every want he, he's got the prince of Egypt as his son.

Do you think he wanted for anything for 17 years? Do you think there's any comfort, any convenience, any modern technology, anything at all that Jacob lacked during the closing 17 years of his life? Not a one.

I think it's Spurgeon who said, not a dog in the land of Egypt would have barked toward Jacob without Joseph taking action to defend him and move on his behalf. Everything Jacob could have wanted, he had.

He's in the best of the land of Egypt and his son controls the treasury and all of the food in the land for all of that time. Verse 47, chapter 47, verse 29, 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.

This was an ancient way of swearing from one person to another. 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've said.

He said, swear to me.

So he swore to him.

Then Israel bowed in worship at the head of the bed. That's the phrase that's quoted in Hebrews chapter 11. I'll just read to you Hebrews 11 again. By faith, Jacob, as he was dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, so this is the occasion of it, and worshiped, leaning on the top of his staff.