FBC Daily Devotional – Feb. 16, 2021

Faith Baptist Church

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Well, a good Tuesday to you. I hope your week is getting off to a good start and you found that Monday was productive and here we are the second day of the week.

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And in our reading today, we're in Genesis 48 and 49, and this is really a very, very touching scene, isn't it?

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Jacob is an old man and he's approaching his dying day.

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And his death, as it approaches, Joseph hears about it and hears that his dad is not doing well.

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So he takes his two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, to see his father. And in this very touching scene, as the grandfather wants to be a blessing to his grandsons, he tells

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Joseph, and of course Jacob can't see these boys. We read in the

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Bible that his eyes have grown dim because of age, and we understand today that's probably a matter of cataracts have formed over his eyes, and they didn't have such thing as cataract surgery, obviously.

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And so, you know, everything was a blur to him and all he could see was, I mean, he recognized

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Joseph's voice as they talked and he could see the blur of these other two with Joseph and he asked who they are.

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These are my sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, and dad's grandpa says, bring them near, let me bless them.

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And so Joseph brings them to him and he puts the elder son on his dad's right hand,

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Manasseh, his dad's right hand, and Ephraim at his left hand. And there's a symbolism in that, in that culture, and the symbolism is that the right hand was the hand of strength, and so you might you might hear the phrase, he's the son of my right hand, he's the son of my strength, and so the presupposition is that the stronger or the greater blessing is going to come to the firstborn, to the elder.

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But we've seen this over and over again in Scripture, haven't we? Where the

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Lord expresses his sovereignty in whom he chooses to bless. We saw it first in his sovereign choice of Abraham, Abram, out of all the family members of Abram, he chose

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Abram, Abraham, to leave Ur of the Chaldees and chose Abram to be the father of many nations and the one who would have this land of promise,

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Canaan. He chose Abram, out of all his family. And then he chose Abram's second son,

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Isaac, over the firstborn son, Ishmael. And of course, there's a whole story behind that, but the point is that Ishmael was

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Abraham's firstborn son, and the Lord said, no, I'm going to bless Isaac, and the blessing is going to come through Isaac.

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And then Isaac had two sons, Jacob and Esau. Esau was the firstborn, but whom did

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God choose in his sovereignty to bless, to rule over the other?

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He chose Jacob, the younger, to rule over Esau, the elder. And by the way, none of this had to do with any merit on the part of those individuals.

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I mean, Jacob was a schemer, and you know, Isaac, you know, what about Abraham?

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Abraham, in Ur of the Chaldees, he worshipped other gods like everybody else did.

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It was God's sovereign, gracious choice. And then Joseph. Joseph had 11, had 10 brothers until, you know,

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Benjamin was born, but had 10 brothers, and they were all older than he, and out of all of the older brothers, the

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Lord chose to use Joseph to save the family. And then here we come to this scene, where grandpa is ready to bless his grandchildren,

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Ephraim and Manasseh, and the elder, the firstborn son of Joseph, is on Jacob's right hand, expecting that the greater blessing, greater prosperity, and so forth, greater usefulness, is going to be

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Manasseh's privilege. But Jacob does a strange thing to Joseph, an unexpected thing.

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He crosses his arms, and he puts his right hand on Ephraim's head, his left hand on Manasseh's head, and he pronounces the blessing.

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Joseph is, whoa, he's stunned. He said, dad, no, no, no, you got this mixed up.

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You need to put your right hand on Manasseh's head, on the right. And Jacob says, no.

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Manasseh's going to be blessed, but Ephraim, Ephraim is going to have the greater power.

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Ephraim is going to have the greater influence. Ephraim is going to have greater prosperity. And he, in the sovereignty of God, expresses this blessing on the younger over the elder.

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And as time would play out, if you know your history of Israel, that's exactly what ended up happening.

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When Israel eventually splits and divides as a nation, and you have

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Judah as south, and then you have the rest of the tribes, ten tribes, other tribes of Israel, in the north, they are called

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Ephraim. The ten tribes are summarized under the tribe

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Ephraim. Again, in fulfillment of this blessing of Jacob.

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Well, then this scene, it changes, but again, Jacob is about to die.

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He's on his deathbed. And he calls his sons to come to him, and he wants to put a, he wants to pronounce a blessing on each of those sons.

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And as he does so, we see an interesting and stark contrast.

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Two individuals stand out that I want to mention. One is the firstborn son,

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Reuben, and the other is Judah. Both of these sons were less than perfect, as you know, if you know your history of what we've read in Genesis.

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Reuben, he committed a serious breach, a serious trespass. He apparently took one of Jacob's concubines and had sex with her.

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He committed fornication with her, and tried to cover it up and so forth.

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Word got out, got back to Jacob, and Jacob didn't really do much about it at the time, but now on his deathbed, he essentially pronounces a curse on Reuben as his firstborn.

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It would have been expected that the firstborn would receive the greater blessing, as we mentioned already, and receive the greater inheritance.

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Hmm, not Reuben. No, not in this case. From this example, we need to learn and realize that one serious, sinful breach can impact the rest of our life, the consequences of that sin and its severity.

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It may be lessened in intensity, but nevertheless permanent, and this is the case.

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You can read about it in Genesis 49, verses 3 and 4, how this sin is going to have a consequence on Reuben's descendants.

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But in contrast, there's Judah. There's Judah. You remember the story of Judah, what

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Judah did in chapter 38, and I won't go into that. If you don't remember, then take a few minutes and look back at Genesis 38 and read about Judah and his sin, especially, you know, what he did with Tamar and so on.

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It's just a pretty bad stuff. And yet, in verses 8 through 12,

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Judah is blessed abundantly. Jacob says of Judah that from him is going to come the one upon whose shoulders the government will rest.

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And he's talking about the Lord Jesus Christ. Through Judah would come the

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Messiah. Well, here again, we see the sovereign grace of God choosing to use a man in spite of his folly and his sin.

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And so, even though Judah sinned egregiously in chapter 38, he ends up becoming the preeminent brother.

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And I think perhaps the repeated expressions of repentance and self -sacrifice on Judah's part, it reflects the heart that God sees and he chooses to bless.

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So, let's learn from this, that on the part of Reuben, he sinned egregiously.

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He tried to cover it up. He tried to pretend it didn't happen and thought he got away with it, but no, not at all. Judah, on the other hand, yeah, he sinned.

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He sinned terribly, he sinned egregiously, but he repeatedly expressed a heart of repentance.

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And may we do so as well. So, our Father and our God, we are challenged this day about these two individuals.

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Father, deliver us. Deliver us from temptation, even as Jesus encouraged us to pray in the

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Lord's Prayer. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

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Oh Lord, our sinful heart often leads us to sinful action. May we repent.

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May we have repentant hearts that are tender and sensitive to your

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Spirit's working. And Lord, I pray that we would repent quickly and fully.

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And we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. Well, may the Lord bless you with a good rest of your

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Tuesday, and I trust we'll see you again tomorrow even. So have a good day.