Sunday Night, June 14, 2020 PM

Open our Bibles to Genesis chapter 49. Genesis chapter 49, we'll be reading verses 22 through 33 in a moment. Genesis chapter 49, verses 22 through 33. Let's start with a word of prayer. Father, I thank you for gathering us together tonight.

I thank you for the eternal truths of your Word. Thank you that we may study and know your glories as you have revealed them, and that we know that this Word is unchanging, and it is sufficient for all of our faith and our practice.

And we thank you that you have so graced us in this way. We may know that we have your words breathed out by your Holy Spirit through the men of your choosing to speak to us of your Son. So we give you the glory, and we pray all these things in the name of Jesus Christ.

Amen. Now, Genesis 49, we have the last words of Israel, the last words of Jacob. We have the first time that these personages and their posterity are actually called the Twelve Tribes of Israel. Here at the end of the record of the generations of Jacob, we have all these different sons being spoken of as to not only how they have lived, but what will become of their name.

Many of the nuances that we have in the blessings of Jacob have to deal with how these brothers related to each other, how they related to their father, how they related to the world around them. But they also are vital for telling us the story of the nation of Israel, and they tell us a lot.

These words tell us a lot about the faith of Jacob, the way that Jacob saw the world and the things that he held dear, and what he truly believed. Last words. Before we read the text, it's a good reminder that when we're looking at someone's last words or even their, as they say, their resting place, we can learn a lot.

J .C. Ryle said that a young man can get a good education by walking slowly through a cemetery and reading the dates and the words on the tombstones, to think soberly about the reality of the shortness of life, and to make the most of what we have while we.

Have it.

And we have that sense now as we think about Jacob as he is giving his last words. Let me read the word for us, Genesis chapter 49, beginning in verse 22. Joseph. Joseph is a fruitful bough, a fruitful bough by a spring, his branches run over a wall.

The archers bitterly attacked him and shot at him and harassed him, but his bow remained firm and his arms were agile. From the hands of the mighty one of Jacob, from there is the shepherd, the stone of Israel.

From the God of your father who helps you, and by the Almighty who blesses you with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that lie beneath, blessing of the breasts and of.

The womb.

The blessings of your father have surpassed the blessings of my ancestors up to the utmost bound of the everlasting hills. May they be on the head of Joseph and on the crown of the head of the one distinguished among his brothers.

Benjamin is a ravenous wolf. In the morning he devours the prey, and in the evening he divides the spoil. All these are the 12 tribes of Israel, and this is what their father said to them when he blessed them.

He blessed them, every one with the blessing appropriate to him. Then he charged them and said to them, I am about 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 of Machpelah, which is before Mamre in the land of Canaan, which Abraham bought along with a field from Ephron the Hittite for a burial site.

There they buried Abraham and his wife Sarah. There they buried Isaac and his wife Rebecca. And there I buried Leah, the field and the cave that is in it, purchased from the sons.

Of Heth.

When Jacob finished charging his sons, he drew his feet into the bed, breathed his last, and was gathered to his people. So we've come down to the last two sons. The sons of Jacob's favored wife. Here are Rachel's children, Joseph and Benjamin.

We consider the last words he has for them, and these are the last words to his last sons. We've talked about the disgraced tribes. Reuben, Simeon, and Levi were all disgraced for their father and their brothers.

The dominant tribe, Judah, received a very prominent blessing and prophecies concerning the Messiah. We've spent our last two sessions thinking about the diverse tribes, the variety we see in Zebulun and Issachar, Dan, Gad, Asher, and Naphtali.

And we've seen definitely a variety of different blessings. We've seen a lot of contrasts, especially the last six tribes. They've all been put into pairs, and they've all contrasted one with the other.

We may see something of that with Joseph and Benjamin here. But Joseph, remember, represents two tribes. Joseph represents both Ephraim and Manasseh. Together, they are the double portion according to Israel's chosen firstborn.

His real firstborn was, of course, Reuben, but Joseph was the firstborn of his favorite wife, Rachel, and thus he gives the double portion to Joseph, meaning Joseph's two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, have a full share in the Promised Land as a full tribe in and of themselves, each one.

And so these are the distinguished tribes. They're being set apart and highlighted, being blessed by Jacob. Joseph, of course, himself was quite distinguished. He was used of God despite his suffering, and through his suffering, brought up to the second in command of all of Egypt.

Joseph was a very distinguished, very powerful man, and God used him for the survival of his brothers and their posterity. And so, also, Joseph is distinguished and important in the biblical story as he lives out a clear type of Christ.

And so you see how long Jacob belabors his point with Joseph. It's just about the same bulk of material that he had for Judah. He says he has a lot to say about Joseph. He takes his time in considering the past of Joseph, but also his future, and he wants to show how distinguished and how honored Joseph is.

So he begins with the ways in which Joseph had to come up through difficulty. So he says in verse 22, Joseph is a fruitful bow by a spring, its branches run over a wall. The archers bitterly attacked him and shot at him and harassed him, but his bow remained firm and his arms were agile.

So what is the poetic image that Jacob has in mind? Like a tree planted by rivers of water, Joseph was like a tree that grew out of his original boundaries. His reach and his influence, his fruitfulness was such that it went over the wall, it went across the boundaries that had originally been envisioned, and he was bitterly attacked.

What is Jacob reflecting on other than that here is his son born of Rachel, very late in the lineage of all the other sons, and yet he was greatly favored. God certainly had blessed him with a spirit of wisdom, and he had proven himself so able and worthy of his father's trust that his father had given him this coat of many colors, a very colored tunic, and had called him to basically be the supervisor, help run the family business, and be in charge of his brothers, and in that you can sense he was not the son that kept his place.

He was really out of the original boundaries that anyone would expect of him, and he did encounter great resistance from his brothers who hated him, who opposed him, who kidnapped him and sold him as a slave to Egypt.

And Jacob is telling this poem, he is using this poetry to kind of talk about what happened, and he's envisioning the beginning crucible of Joseph's life, and even though they had tried to put him back in his place, Joseph remained firm in his faith.

He kept working. He didn't give up, even though he was shot at, he remained firm. His arms remained agile, which means he did not drop his bow, right? The idea is now he moves from looking at a tree that is kind of bursting out of its boundaries and therefore garners negative attention, and he moves from that to talking about that negative attention in terms of warfare, like, you know, they were shooting arrows at him because they bitterly hated him.

So what is Joseph going to do about that, right? I mean, so does he give up? Does he turn tail? Does he run? Think about all those times that he was thrown in a dry cistern by his brothers. He pleaded that they would let him go.

They didn't listen to his cries. They sold him as a slave. He was carried down to Egypt. He was sold as a slave to Potiphar, and at some point, you know, you just give up, right?

Not Joseph.

He didn't give up. You see, it says his bow remained firm, his arms were agile, even the trouble he had with Potiphar's wife and being thrown into prison. At some point, right, you just got to give up and, you know, and get it over with.

He never surrendered. He stayed ready. His bow was firm. His arms were agile. He was ready to respond when he was supposed to respond. And so Jacob is reflecting upon the character of Joseph, that he was not one who surrendered, even though he was shot at and he was beaten down and beaten back, but that he responded.

Well.

So these words certainly depict Joseph's past, but this can also envision the future of his descendants, as we consider different descendants from Joseph who were under pressure and who lived during difficult times but didn't give up and were courageous.

People like Samuel, who was born of Ephraim, and Gideon, who was born from Manasseh. These were men from Joseph, right, and we can think of their courage and so on. So now Israel moves past verses 22 to 24, and he moves past that to consider the blessed condition of Joseph, not only, you know, now, but also of his descendants.

And Jacob gives the praise and gives the glory for Joseph's present blessed condition and what was to come for Joseph's sons and their tribes. He gives all that glory to God. So at verse 24, it says, From the hands of the mighty one of Jacob, from the hands of the mighty one of Jacob, from there is the shepherd, the stone of Israel.

From the God of your father who helps you and by the Almighty who blesses you with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that lie beneath, blessings of the breasts and of the womb. So, he's pointing at the, he says, the hands and the help of God here.

He's saying, look at how God has blessed you. This is the same God from whom the shepherd of Israel comes, right? We're coming back to a prophecy of the Messiah. He's not saying that the shepherd comes from Joseph, but he's reminding Joseph that the blessings that he has, the blessings that he has are coming from the God who also gives the shepherd who is called the stone of Israel.

So we begin with the title, the mighty one of Israel, the mighty one of Jacob. So after he says that Joseph's bow remained firm and his arms were agile, he says, from the hands of the mighty one of Jacob.

Now this expression, the mighty one of Jacob, is not just an expression that belongs to Joseph alone. It wasn't just the mighty one of Joseph, it's the mighty one of Jacob. So all of Jacob's sons then are called to consider who is our God, who is the one who is powerful for us.

And so they must think who is their strong deliverer, who is their mighty savior. This is a phrase, this is an expression of God that we find time and again that describes him as the champion of his own cause, the champion of his own cause.

It was his great cause to glorify himself through justice and righteousness. And in Isaiah, for instance, Isaiah chapter 1, verses 24 and 25, we have the same title. It says, therefore, the Lord God of hosts, the mighty one of Israel, declares, ah, I will be relieved of my adversaries and avenge myself on my foes.

I will also turn my hand against you and will smelt away your draughts as with lye and will remove all of your alloy. In other words, the defeat of God's enemies and the purification of his people both serve that same cause, which is the magnification of God's fame in all of the earth.

The title envisions ultimate victory. It envisions absolute salvation. Isaiah 49, 26, I will feed your oppressors with their own flesh and they will become drunk with their own blood as with sweet wine and all flesh will know that I the Lord am your savior and your redeemer, the mighty one of Jacob.

We think about that phrase, the mighty one of Jacob. It is, I think, a good word, a good title of God that you would hope that the descendants of Jacob, the descendants of his descendants of his descendants would recall this phrase, the mighty one of Jacob, especially as the new Pharaoh would arise who didn't know Joseph.

As the subsequent generations of Jacob living there in Goshen in Egypt fell under the sway of new leaders who would enslave them and oppress them, would they remember the mighty one of Jacob? Would they remember the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?

And we read in Exodus that indeed they did remember and they cried out to the Lord and the Lord says, I remembered and I heard them and then he acted to deliver them as their mighty one. But he also, Israel seems to interrupt himself as he's speaking here.

He says, from the hands of the mighty one of Jacob, and then he has a little thought.

Here.

From there is the shepherd, the stone of Israel. So he gets even more specific then on how the mighty one of Jacob will achieve his ends. How will it be that this glorious God will accomplish his agenda?

It is from there, from the hands of the mighty one of Jacob, from there is the shepherd, the stone of Israel. The shepherd of Israel, the stone of Israel. Well, who is this? Israel had already, Jacob had already described God as his shepherd.

He had already begun to use that language back in chapter 48, but here he's talking of a shepherd yet to come. And he says, this shepherd comes from the mighty one of Jacob. Later on, we read in history that King David, King David was described as a shepherd of God's people in 2 Samuel chapter 5 and verse 2.

But that royal description, is it not, expanded greatly in the descendant of both Israel and King David, who is Jesus Christ. As he comes as the son of David, as he comes as the seed of Abraham, he comes as the shepherd of God's people.

From the mighty one of Jacob, from there is the shepherd. He's called the shepherd, and is he not also called the stone? Is he not called the rock? These are the language, these are images that we find later on in Scripture.

We find these very images used not only just in the New Testament, but also in the Old Testament in descriptions of the deliverer of God's people. But we find them being used in some of their very first forms here, as Jacob is prophesying these blessings concerning his son.

So he is turning their attention to the hope, to the Savior who is yet to come. And he says, from the God of your father who helps you. All these blessings are coming from this God, from the God of your father who helps you.

When you think about, when he says the God of your father, we are reminded in this, as Jacob would have been reminded in the God of his father, Isaac, and the God of his father, Abraham, how God is faithful from generation to generation, and that God has been keeping his promises, and he has been revealing his covenant promises in every single generation.

And Jacob wants this faith to continue in his sons and in his grandsons. He says that the blessings from the God of your father who helps you, and he'll later on talk about the blessings of your father.

What I have known, may they be even more for you. Isn't that what we want for the next generation, whoever we are discipling and investing in? Now, he says, from the God of your father who helps you, talked about Ebenezer this morning, but this is the word Azar in the Hebrew.

He just talked about a stone, now he's talking about Azar. Where did Samuel get the idea of the stone of help? Well, he got it from Jacob, who talked about the stone of Israel and talked about the God of your father who helps you, and he combines these and says, Ebenezer, the stone of help.

God is our rock of help. The thing about the rock is that it outlasts you. It was there before you got there, and it'll be there after you leave. That's the idea of the rock, and that's the idea of more than one generation.

So, it's the image that does well in communicating that. So, he says, from the God of your father who helps you, and by the Almighty who blesses you. Well, obviously, Almighty and the Mighty One of Jacob go together well.

This is, I don't know if some of the children learned this in Tag, but this is the word El Shaddai, the name for God, El Shaddai, which means that God is all-sufficient, that he is self-existent, he doesn't need anyone or anything out of all of his creation, has the idea that God is complete and satisfied and joyful in and of himself, and doesn't need anything or anyone.

So, why did he make anything, and why does he relate to us? That's why we call it grace, and his grace is for his glory. So, this amazing God, this Mighty One of Jacob, this shepherd, the stone of Israel, the God of your father who helps you, the Almighty, well, what Jacob is saying is he is the source of all of your distinguished blessings.

This is so important for the children of Israel to remember. As we've been listening in Deuteronomy, the call time and again was, don't forget why you are so blessed, don't forget how it is that you've come to have all these blessings in your life, don't forget who gave them to you.

And the blessings being mentioned here, the blessings of the heavens above, the blessings of the deep that lie beneath, the blessing of the breast and the womb, what is he saying? Well, think of the future of Joseph's descendants in an agricultural society in the ancient.

Near East.

Well, the blessings from above and blessings from below, the rains from above and the springs from beneath, and many, many descendants. So these are some of the most basic considerations for a patriarch of the ancient Near East, the rains from above, the springs from beneath, and many, many descendants, a fruitful lineage of descendants, and he's saying these blessings come from this amazing God.

And then he says, he speaks of a crown for Joseph, verse 26, the blessings of your father have surpassed the blessings of my ancestors up to the utmost bound of the everlasting.

Hills.

May they be on the head of Joseph and on the crown of the head of the one distinguished among his brothers. It's a beautiful poetry. The idea here is that Joseph's incredible blessed future has the same source as Jacob's incredible blessed past, is the idea.

Israel's ever-increasing blessings, he says, they are passed on to Joseph and to his sons.

Why?

Because of who God is. So if we're seeing anything, it's that, and we remember that Joseph, his sons Ephraim and Manasseh were very prominent, especially Ephraim, who was identified as the firstborn of Joseph, he got the firstborn blessing even though he was secondborn.

Ephraim was incredibly wealthy, incredibly abundant, he had, that tribe had great political power and sway in the northern kingdom. In fact, sometimes the northern kingdom was just called Ephraim because of the influence that they had over all of the other tribes.

And the point is that from the very beginning, Joseph and his sons were charged to remember who it was who gave them those blessings. And if they did not remember that, then what would happen? And of course, we can see that later on in the history of Israel.

The God, we need to remember when God gives us our blessings, how are we to respond and why does God bless us? Is it only for us or is there some other cause and some other reason? Psalm 67 verses 1 through 2 says, God be gracious to us and bless us and cause his face to shine upon us that your way, here's the reason why, for the blessings, that your way may be known on the earth, your salvation among all nations.

So here's the cry of a true Israelite. Here's the cry of a true Jew, right? There's blessings and cursings laid out in Deuteronomy. Live this way for blessing, if you want curses, well then, disobey and go this way.

But here's the cry of a true Jew, a true Israelite. Bless us, bless us graciously, treat us, cause your face to shine upon us. Well, what's the right desire? Why would God so highlight and bless and exalt his people that your way may be known on the earth, your salvation among all nations, right?

That was the goal. You see a glimpse of it in the early days of Solomon when all the nations were coming to deal with the glory of God revealed in the reign of Solomon. Psalm 67, verse 7, gives the amen to this, God blesses us that all the ends of the earth may fear him.

Now, of course, if the blessings come and the joys that are abundant in Christ come and we don't ever give credit to where credit is due, honor to whom honor is due, then we're not, we're more like the kind of, we're like the Dead Sea with no outlet.

Everything comes in but nothing goes out. That's not what we're supposed to be like. What comes in has a purpose and that purpose is to give attention to the graciousness and the goodness of our creator and of our provider, God.

So whatever blessings we have, whatever, shall I dare say, privilege we have, let's just be open and honest about it. It's not because of some system of injustice that you think that I have privilege.

It's God. God blessed me with this and God blessed me with that and God blessed me with this and look, and oh, you notice that I have this? Yes, God blessed me with that too. It's God. God is gracious and God is kind and God is merciful.

I don't deserve any of it but praise God. Isn't he a good God? Let me tell you what else I don't deserve. I don't deserve forgiveness of my sins. I don't deserve going to heaven when I die. I don't deserve a resurrected body and a new creation.

I don't deserve my church family where I know the love of walking in the spirit. I don't deserve any of this, right? And the nations are in need of seeing the glory of God and they will see it as we give thanksgiving for all the blessings that he has poured out into our lives.

Well, I hope that's encouraging to you. More to see on the last bit here in Genesis 49 but we'll leave it to another time. Let's go ahead and close by singing the doxology together.