The Lion of Judah Genesis 49

A number of years back, Time Magazine did an article on the 100 most influential people in world history.

There were many different people from different backgrounds on this list. There were scientists, philosophers, political figures like kings and presidents, and activists like Gandhi.

But the number one person on this list was none of these. The number one person was the son of a carpenter, and presumably a carpenter himself.

He was from a no -name town in Israel called Nazareth. He was not formally educated, and he would not light up a room by his physical appearance.

But no one was like this man. No one was able to connect with the downtrodden of society like him.

No one was able to make prideful and powerful people feel so small with his piercing words.

He did so many wonderful things during his 30 -plus years on earth that one of his followers said that there were so many incredible works that he did that wherever one of them were written, the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.

Even the secular world that is not biased toward him, and in fact is more biased in opposition to him, had to say that this man is the most influential person in the history of the world.

So who is this man? You know. The most influential person ever is

Jesus Christ. Jesus is not just a historical figure.

He's a present figure, and he's a future one. 2 ,000 years ago,

Jesus lived, died, and rose again. Right now, he's on the throne at the right hand of the

Father in heaven. In the future, he's coming again to establish his forever kingdom.

Jesus is the only man in history that is relevant to every person.

What I mean by that is you cannot be indifferent toward him. Jesus is the only savior of a world full of people estranged from God because of their sin.

Acts 4 .12 says that there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.

What you do with Jesus determines where you will spend forever. One cannot overstate his importance.

Now this morning, as we continue our sermon series through Genesis, and we're very close to wrapping it up here, we are going to see a prophecy concerning this

Messiah and his forever kingdom as we look at Jacob's prophecy of the 12 tribes of Israel.

From one of these tribes, this Messiah, this savior of the world will come. So I encourage you to turn with me to Genesis 49.

And if you're using the Red Bible in the pews, it's on pages 50 and 51. This sermon is titled, as you can see in your bulletins,

The Lion of Judah. And our big idea, our proposition is this.

As Jacob blesses the 12 tribes of Israel, one tribe is far and away the most significant.

And there's one reason why. I have one point here. The reason why is this. The most important figure in world history comes from one of these tribes.

And we will see this in this chapter in verses 1 through 27 specifically. But before we jump into our text this morning, let me give you a little recap of last week's sermon.

We looked at Genesis 48 where Jacob blessed Joseph's two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh.

As we've seen throughout the Joseph narrative, Jacob had a special love for Joseph. Jacob would bless

Joseph twice as much by passing along his blessing to these two sons, his grandchildren.

As Jacob was blessing Joseph's sons, he described the character of God to them. He wanted them to know how wonderful the

Lord was throughout his life. And he wanted them to know that the Lord's goodness would shower over them also.

We saw Jacob describe three manifestations of God's goodness in Genesis 48. He told his grandsons that the

Lord is a promise -keeping God. The Lord had proven trustworthy to Jacob, and he would do the same for Ephraim and Manasseh.

Jacob also wanted his grandsons to know that God is a bestower of earthly blessings. Jacob told

Joseph and his grandsons that God was kind to keep him around to see them.

The Lord not only blesses his people spiritually, he also blesses them with the blessings of life. And you experience this, the blessings of family, friends, food and drink, the beauty of creation, so on and so forth.

The Lord shows his wonderful character through these gifts. Jacob knew this, and we should praise and thank the

Lord also. The third and final manifestation of God's goodness that Jacob shared is the

Lord's shepherding care over his people. Jacob told them the Lord looked after him, and he was confident the

Lord would do the same for Ephraim and Manasseh in their journey through the life of faith.

The Lord is the chief shepherd of all of our lives. We don't go through this journey alone.

He guides us through the life of faith. He will successfully lead all of his sheep to their heavenly home.

Now this leads us to our text this morning. As I already mentioned, we are going to see Jacob bless his 11 other sons.

He already blessed Joseph when he blessed Ephraim and Manasseh. And now it's time for the others. As we begin, let me read the first two verses of this chapter and explain what we are about to see.

So verses one and two of chapter 49. Then Jacob called his sons and said, gather yourselves together that I may tell you what shall happen to you in days to come.

Assemble and listen, O sons of Jacob. Listen to Israel, your father.

What I mentioned last Sunday is that these blessings were prophecies. The Lord made it so that when the patriarchs passed on these blessings to their children, these were prophecies.

These things would come to pass at a later point in history to the future descendants.

Now all of these tribes will be blessed in some way as they are brought into the land of Canaan.

But some of this prophecy from Jacob, as we will see, is best described not as a blessing, but really more of an anti -blessing or a curse.

Their descendants will suffer because of the sins of the head of their tribe. We are going to take these one at a time and understand what

Jacob is communicating about the future of each of these tribes. And one, as I mentioned in the introduction, we will take a special look at.

But let's begin by looking at the firstborn biological son, Reuben, in verses three and four.

So Jacob's talking here and he says, Reuben, you are my firstborn, my might and the firstfruits of my strength, preeminent in dignity and preeminent in power.

Unstable as water, you shall not have preeminence because you went up to your father's bed.

Then you defiled it. He went up to my couch. As we saw last

Sunday, Joseph's children received the blessing of the firstborn because Reuben forfeited the blessing.

He was the first biological son. And he forfeited it because in chapter 35, verses 22 and 23,

Reuben slept with his father's concubine or wife, Bilhah, and therefore forfeited the blessing of the firstborn.

So that's why Reuben is getting a big rebuke from his father in this prophecy.

There are consequences for your actions. What verse three says is that he should be preeminent, but he won't be because of his transgression against his father.

His descendants would not be. So what we see here is that this is not truly a blessing for Reuben, but a declaration of what he lost.

Now we get to Simeon and Levi, and we get a similar declaration in verses five through seven.

Jacob says, Simeon and Levi are brothers. Weapons of violence are their swords.

Let my soul come not into their counsel, O my glory, be not joined to their company.

For in their anger they killed men, and in their willfulness they hamstrung oxen.

Curse be their anger, for it is fierce, and their wrath, for it is cruel. I will divide them in Jacob and scatter them in Israel.

What Jacob describes here is the violence of these two sons and how their descendants will be violent also.

The violence that Jacob is referring to is the slaughter they performed in the infamous, the

Men of Shechem of chapter 34. This prophecy that Jacob makes is that these two tribes will be strategically divided among the rest.

This is wise here. What we learn about the Levites is that the priesthood would come from them and they wouldn't have any land themselves, but certain cities would be assigned to them.

48 cities would be assigned to them. And what we learn about Simeon is that their land would be surrounded by the tribe of Judah, so that they would kind of contain them from their violence getting too far, and Joshua 19 details that.

So Jacob wisely divides them so that they would not lead this nation to self -destruction.

So we breeze through those three tribes, but now we're really gonna slow down here. We come to the most important tribe here, the tribe of Judah, and its importance comes, of course, from who comes from it.

So let's look at verses 8 through 12. I'm gonna read these, and then we're gonna take these verses apart carefully.

So Jacob says to Judah here, he says, "'Judah, your brothers shall praise you. "'Your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies.

"'Your father's son shall bow down before you. "'Judah is a lion's cub. "'From the prey, my son, you have gone up.

"'He stooped down, he crouched as a lion, "'and as a lioness who dares rouse him.

"'The scepter shall not depart from Judah, "'nor the ruler's staff from between his feet "'until tribute comes to him.

"'And to him shall be the obedience of the peoples, "'binding his foal to the vine "'and his donkey's colt to the choice vine.

"'He has washed his garments in wine "'and his vesture in the blood of grapes. "'His eyes are darker than wine "'and his teeth whiter than milk.'"

Let's stop right there. So the previous two blessings, the first three tribes that we looked at was more of an anti -blessing than a blessing.

But here we see an enormous blessing for the tribe of Judah.

The first pronouncements we saw from Jacob described the descendants reflecting their ancestors.

We just saw the violence with the head of the tribe and then the violence would come later.

And we're gonna see the same thing here with Judah. Specifically, the leadership role in Israel is gonna reflect

Judah's leadership qualities. And you may wonder, does Judah deserve this? We know that it was

Judah's idea to sell Joseph into slavery in Genesis 37. We also know that the

Judah and Tamar story and how this showed his great foolishness. So does

Judah really deserve such a positive blessing? A blessing showing that the leader of Israel would come from his tribe since he himself was supposedly a strong leader.

As we stop here, we need to remember that Judah later redeemed himself. In chapter 43,

Judah told his father Jacob that if Benjamin did not return to Canaan safely, that he would bear all the blame.

Of all the brothers, Judah, he wasn't even the oldest brother, but Judah was the only brother to stick his neck out and put himself on the line.

He showed tremendous leadership by doing this. We see here in our text that Jacob rewards him for that and his future descendants are blessed.

Royalty would come from Judah. We read in verse eight that this tribe would be over the other tribes and their hands shall have power over their enemies.

In verse nine, he's compared to a lion. Why a lion? Well, it's obvious, right?

You've seen Lion King, right? In the animal kingdom, lions are the mighty ones who are in charge.

We know that Jesus is called the Lion of Judah. I gotta tell this funny story here.

So Rob, at one of his old churches, one of the ladies painted a lion in the kids' room, thinking, oh, this is a great idea.

It was a bad idea because it was this ferocious lion that the children were afraid of and so they had to paint over it later on.

So as we're thinking about painting some of the kids' rooms here, and we might not go that route. But the title

Lion here is applied to Jesus. And this is the title of our sermon here.

He is the Lion of Judah. Now I mentioned in our main point for this whole chapter that one of the tribes would have the most important figure in world history come from it.

We see his importance in verse 10 and his significance literally cannot be overstated.

So we are going to look at verse 10 extra close here. In verse 10, we read that the scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet until tribute comes to him and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.

What the text says in Hebrew here, it says until tribute comes to him.

This is the hardest part to understand. In this clause, the Hebrew word that shows up here is the word

Shiloh. The word Shiloh shows up twice, back to back.

So what the author of Moses wants to communicate by putting these two words back to back has been very hard for many to understand.

This is why there are two different interpretations. And honestly, the difference in interpretation isn't really that huge, but it's worth wrestling with.

Some think that this is referring to the point in history when the transfer of power went from the tribe of Ephraim to Judah.

When Ephraim was the most powerful tribe, Shiloh, the town

Shiloh, was the central place of worship, not Jerusalem. Jerusalem was not at that important place yet until the

Davidic line was established. And so the power was transferred from Ephraim to the tribe of Judah when

David came into power. And this happened in 1 Samuel 4, when the

Ark of the Covenant left Shiloh as the Philistines took it away.

And so there's this power transfer from Shiloh into the north, to the south, to Jerusalem, where King David and the monarchy started right around that time.

And specifically, obviously Saul was before David, but specifically this was the start of the

Davidic dynasty, which starts with David. The great promises that the Lord made to David that this messianic line would come through him and all these kings would come through him.

However, I don't think that this is what this clause is getting at here. Now, this interpretation looks back, describing the

Davidic dynasty as a whole that includes the Messiah, but he is not specifically referred to.

And I don't think this is what is gonna for, let me explain why, to say that the scepter will not depart until the king comes to Shiloh doesn't make very good sense.

First Samuel four describes the Ark of the Covenant leaving Shiloh when the Philistines took it away. But that passage says nothing of David, the first of the

Davidic dynasty coming to Shiloh. David came from Bethlehem, which was much further to the south in Israel.

But here is what I think this clause means. And this will help us understand what the author of Moses is saying.

This is much easier to understand. The word Shiloh is very close to the word

Shalom, which means peace and prosperity in Hebrew. And I think that's what the author

Moses means by putting this word together twice. Because the word looks like this town from Shiloh, but he might just be saying peace, prosperity, until peace and prosperity come.

The Messiah is going to bring in a time of unprecedented peace and prosperity.

So I believe the best way to translate this clause then is the scepter shall not depart from Judah until the

Messiah brings in peace. Until the Messiah brings in peace. This prophecy is pointing ahead specifically to the

Messiah in a future glorious time. Now, when the text says that the peoples shall obey him, the

Hebrew word for peoples means nations. The nations of the world will submit to the

Messiah. Revelation 5 .5 says the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, has conquered.

A few verses down in verses 9 through 10 in Revelation 5, we read, for you were slain.

This is referring to Jesus. For you were slain and by your blood, you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.

And you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God and they shall reign on the earth.

This is a kingdom that will rule over the whole world. This verse is a messianic prophecy.

I mentioned the first messianic prophecy is Genesis 3 .15. This is the second one, the second predictive prophecy concerning Jesus Christ in scripture.

Messianic prophecies typically have a closer event in mind as a partial fulfillment, along with an end times event as a final fulfillment.

And that's what we see here. We saw this when the Lord made the Davidic covenant with David later on in the

Old Testament. In 2 Samuel 7, verse 16, the Lord promises David an everlasting kingdom that would come from his line.

And we know that every king historically that came from the line of Judah died. But this prophecy would ultimately be fulfilled through the final

Davidic king, the Messiah, Jesus Christ. He would rule over the nations. That's the only way that this prophecy could be fulfilled, that there's gonna be a forever kingdom.

And that's the Davidic covenant in 2 Samuel 7. When Jesus came the first time, he came to save sinners.

And when he comes again, he's gonna come to reign. And his reign will not be a regional reign like every

Davidic king before him. Some of them had a pretty far reign like Solomon, but at the end of the day, all their ruling was pretty much regional.

But his reign will be a global reign as this text tells us. The end of verse 10 tells us, to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.

To him shall be the obedience of the nations. This was the anticipation throughout the

Old Testament that the Messiah would save not only Israel, but also the

Gentiles and rule over them. And when Jesus was presented at the temple shortly after he was born, a man named

Simeon said this concerning Jesus. He says, my eyes have seen your salvation, that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples a light for revelation to the

Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel. This prophecy from Jacob almost 4 ,000 years ago has been fulfilled in segments throughout history, and we're still waiting for some of its fulfillment.

It was first fulfilled with the establishment of the Davidic throne through David that comes through the tribe of Judah.

And the mention of the nations points ahead to Christ's work at the cross where salvation would be offered to the world.

And then in the future, it can be truly said that this messianic king from the tribe of Judah has the obedience of the peoples.

Now what we see in verse 11 and 12 are agricultural descriptions from the tribe of Judah.

The foal and donkey will be tied to the vine. This is describing the great agricultural success of the future messianic kingdom.

An excellent description of his future reign from Jerusalem is given in Amos 9, 11 through 15.

I'm not gonna read that right now, but you can write that down. It's worth reading that. So we just covered much ground here as we focused on this all important tribe,

Judah. Judah is the most significant tribe since the God -man Jesus Christ, the

Messiah, came from this tribe. We are, of course, describing the other tribes here, but those pale in comparison to Judah.

And I will explain the tribe of Judah's application to you here in a little bit, but let's get to the other tribes before we do that.

The others we're gonna look at very briefly. This is a quick flyover. So let's look at what

Jacob says to Zebulun and then the other tribes in the remainder of this chapter. Let's look at verse 13 first.

Jacob says to Zebulun, he says, Zebulun shall dwell at the shore of the sea. He shall become a haven for ships and his border shall be at Sidon.

Okay, so we can see that this is gonna be an important trading tribe as their proximity to the sea will be close.

This would be their industry as is described here. Then Jacob goes on to Issachar in verses 14 and 15.

He says, Issachar is a strong donkey crouching between the sheepfolds.

He saw that a resting place was good and that the land was pleasant. So he bowed his shoulder to bear and became a servant at forced labor.

So what Jacob tells Issachar is that his descendants will be strong as they are referred to as a strong donkey.

However, at the end of verse 15, he says you will do forced labor. So this prophecy for them is a mixed bag.

Now let's look at Dan in verses 16 and 17. He says, Dan shall judge his people as one of the tribes of Israel.

Dan shall be a serpent in the way, a viper by the path that bites the horse's heels so that his rider falls backward.

So Jacob sees Dan's descendants in both a positive and negative light. Let's start with the negative. It's never good to be described as having snake -like behavior, right?

Even in our day. But they get that description. And one example of this was in Judges 18 when they surprised the inhabitants of Laish by attacking them.

And it was a ruthless thing that they did. Now on the positive side, it says that they will judge and specifically maybe the most well -known judge comes from this tribe.

And that is Samson. Judges 13 too refers to Samson as coming from the

Danites. Now in verse 18, we see something very interesting. Jacob stops as he's doing all these prophecies and all of them are negative and really all of them have negativity in them except for one,

Judah. He has to stop and pause and pray. He says, I wait for your salvation,

O Lord. And so as he thinks about all the trouble that awaits some of his descendants, he just has to stop and pray.

That's a good application for us, right? Do we stop and pray? We talked about that in Sunday school this morning. Do we stop and pray when we think about the future?

And honestly, we don't know what's gonna happen in the future, but we know that trouble probably awaits. And so we need to pray.

And can you imagine if the Lord showed you your future as is being done right here?

It's a blessing that we don't know the future because we would see the trouble that awaits and that would be all we would think about.

Instead, the Lord does not tell us about the future details of our lives, but rather Jesus in the

Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6, 25 through 34, he says, don't worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will worry about itself.

Every day has enough trouble of its own. And that's wise instruction. And the Lord gives us the grace to get through every single day, not to worry about tomorrow's problems.

Now we come to three tribes in a row here where Jacob mentioned something very brief about them.

So let's read these three together. This is a really quick fly through here. Verses 19 through 21.

Jacob says, raiders shall raid Gad, but he shall raid at their heels. Asher's food shall be rich and he shall yield royal delicacies.

Naphtali is a dough let loose that bears beautiful fonts. And they may have wondered, that's it?

That's all we got? You spent all that time on Judah and that's all you have to say about our descendants? Yes, that's it.

Now what we read about Gad is that they will be raided. So they will be forced to become skilled fighters.

In the land they were given east of the Jordan, there would have been a lot of attacks there. So they needed to have this ability to fight off foes and they did.

Now Asher's descendants would be given a nice piece of land where they would enjoy future prosperity.

That's why Jacob tells them their food shall be rich and shall yield royal delicacies.

Then Jacob describes Naphtali in verse 21 as a dough let loose that bears beautiful fonts.

So life is going to be good for Naphtali. They're gonna have all these rich natural resources.

So if you notice here, these three blessings here, they are really a blessing, unlike some of the future recent ones we just saw.

So we just saw these three brief blessings. The longest blessing came before this was to Judah.

But you may be able to guess who's going to get the longest blessing of all, right? Let's take a guess here. Who do you think it is?

Who's his beloved son? Joseph, there we go. You might think, did we cover him last week? We did, but he's gonna do it again here in chapter 49.

So his beloved son, Joseph, gets the longest blessing of the chapter. But as we have seen up to this point, there's a correlation between the quality of character of the sons and what kind of future their descendants would have.

Even though Joseph has been the favored son, we have to remember he was the godliest of all the sons of Jacob.

So he would deservedly receive a good blessing. And you may wonder, wasn't Joseph already blessed in the last chapter, as I already mentioned?

Yes, he was, but now we're gonna see him take a little bit of a different focus here and even repeat what he already said.

In verse 22, we read that Joseph is a fruitful bull. This may be referring to his son Ephraim, who received the blessing of the firstborn.

And Ephraim's name means twice fruitful. Verses 23 and 24 describe

Joseph's life. He was attacked by his brothers, yet he survived. And Joseph says this was done by the hands of the mighty one of Jacob.

So Jacob recognizes the Lord protected Joseph from his brothers. Now in verses 25 and 26,

Jacob prays that Joseph's descendants, Ephraim and Manasseh, would receive blessing greater than their ancestors,

Abraham and Isaac. Some of this blessing would be seen by who came from Joseph's tribe.

Joshua and Deborah, the judge Deborah, came from the tribe of Ephraim, while Gideon and Jephthah came from the tribe of Manasseh.

Then what Jacob says at the end of verse 26 is that he would receive this blessing as one set apart from his brothers.

And we know from last week that Joseph received the blessing of the firstborn, even though he wasn't.

So we see a long blessing here that Joseph receives through Ephraim and Manasseh, right?

They're the recipients of this blessing. Those two tribes. So we see that spoken again here by Jacob.

Now finally, we get to the last son, Benjamin. Benjamin is the youngest son he had.

Verse 27, this is what he says to Benjamin. Benjamin is a ravenous wolf, in the morning devouring the prey and at evening dividing the spoil.

We've already seen men of war mentioned from the other tribes. And when we see the description of a ravenous wolf devouring the prey, that's what this has in mind for Benjamin, the tribe of Benjamin also.

They would be warriors in the future. So this concludes Jacob's prophecy over each of his 12 sons.

I mean, we could spend more time on this, but it's probably not worth our time to really dig too deep into this.

And we wanna see the big points here. What does the author want us to see in this passage most of all?

And that's verses eight through 12, describing the Messiah and his glorious reign over all the nations of the earth.

And this comes, of course, from the tribe of Judah. And of course, this is very relevant to us because when

God willed Jacob to make this prophecy almost 4 ,000 years ago, he was thinking of the whole world, including us.

We are the nations. We are Gentiles saved by one from the tribe of Judah.

Think about 4 ,000 years ago. This was just an empty land. St. Croix Falls area, probably.

Nobody probably lived here during that time. And yet God knew we would be here right now in 2019, reading this passage.

And here we are. And he's saying, this is for you. In the future, when

Christ reigns and this kingdom is established on the earth, we will reign with him forever as Scripture has predicted.

I hope and pray that you can see that the Bible is a supernatural book. We should be worshiping him right now as we see this.

Some of this has already played out historically and some of it still awaits in the future.

The Old Testament said that the Messiah was coming and he came the first time. It said that he was gonna ride on the donkey through the streets of Jerusalem.

It said that he was gonna be born in Bethlehem. Isaiah 53 said that he was gonna die on the cross.

Psalm 16 said that he was gonna be raised from the dead. I mean, all these prophecies, hundreds and some thousands of years before.

And it said he was gonna reign. And some of his reign has started as he's in heaven, but his full reign is still yet in the future.

And that will come when God's plan is done with the earth. Matthew 24, 14 says, and this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations.

And then the end will come. Jesus is coming back. And if you belong to him, you will reign with him.

So as we saw here, as Jacob blesses the 12 tribes of Israel, one tribe is far and away the most significant.

And the reason why this is, is the most important figure in world history comes from one of these tribes. And we saw in this text today that he comes from the tribe of Judah.

And this man is so important that no one on planet earth can be indifferent to the

Messiah, Jesus Christ. What one does with Jesus, the lion and the lamb.

He's described as the lamb in the gospel of John. He's the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

This lion and the lamb will determine, what one does with him will determine where everybody spends eternity.

And we see this prophecy right here today from Genesis 49. So if you belong to him today, be encouraged about your future.

And if you haven't believed in the Messiah, Jesus Christ today, believe in the Lord Jesus. Acts 1631 says, believe in the

Lord Jesus and you will be saved. Okay, thank you for sticking with me so far. This is a little bit longer sermon today, but we're gonna conclude with Jacob's life here.

So verses 28 through 33, and then we will be done. So stick with me here, but let's read verses 28 through 33.

The author Moses writes, all these are the 12 tribes of Israel. This is what their father said to them as he blessed them, blessing each with the blessing suitable to him.

Then he commanded them and said to them, I am to be gathered to my people. Bury me with my fathers in the cave that is in the field of Ephron the

Hittite. In the cave that is in the field at Machpelah to the east of Mamre in the land of Canaan, which

Abraham bought with the field from Ephron the Hittite to possess as a burying place. There they buried

Abraham and Sarah his wife. There they buried Isaac and Rebecca his wife. And there I buried

Leah. The field and the cave that is in it were brought from the Hittites.

When Jacob finished commanding his sons, he drew up his feet into the bed and breathed his last and was gathered to his people.

We already saw Jacob make Joseph swear that he would bury his body in the land of Canaan east of Mamre.

And he's saying it here again. And all the brothers are getting this command here in verses 29 through 32.

Then in verse 33, we get to the sentimental moment of our passage. Once he's done giving all this instruction to his children, first the blessings and then where he wants to be buried, we get the phrase, was gathered to his people, which we've already seen in Genesis.

We've seen this phrase described of Abraham when he died and Isaac when he died.

And now it's described of Jacob. And when the author Moses writes this, it's his way of saying these people of faith went on to the place of blessedness after they died.

They went to heaven and they joined the array of people waiting for them there.

And I get a little tear in my eye right now because I think about my friend back home who just passed away.

And Doug Jefferson was gathered to his people last night. And Psalm 116 .15

says, precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of one of his saints. Now we know that Jacob was a very flawed man, but he loved the

Lord and walked with him. And he was gathered to him. And we see that right here.

And we've spent 25 chapters with Jacob. Think about that. And today is the conclusion of his life, finally.

And we have another conclusion coming next Sunday. Next Sunday is the last sermon on the book of Genesis, a book we've spent two years in.

So do not miss it as we see the grand finale in chapter 50. Let's pray together.

Let's be close. Father in heaven, you're a wonderful God.

Lord, you give life and you take life. And you're the ruler of all of history,

Lord. Oh, we're like a flower. We're here one moment and then we're gone the next.

We're just like the flowers of the field. And yet, Lord, you reign forever.

And the beauty though, Lord, is that since we are your people, and I pray,

Lord, if anyone here today is not yours, that that person would become yours. Since we are your people,

Lord, we will go on forever too. And what a promise that is. As Jesus said in John 11 about his friend

Lazarus, he said, whoever lives and believes in me will never die.

Do you believe this? And amen, Lord. Those of us who know you, we believe this.

And what a promise that is. And thank you, Lord, for your supernatural knowledge of the future as we see today.

And this has played out in history. And the long -awaited Messiah, Lord, came and we long for his return.

But in the meantime, Lord, may we live as citizens of that kingdom. And it's in his name we pray, amen.