praying that God would prevent us from being a lukewarm church, that's one of the things we have to guard against. And one of the primary ways I guard against it is by fighting fighting the routine. You know, every Sunday morning you get up, get the kids ready, you go to church, and you know, after a while it turns into routine. I always remind myself of how absolutely extraordinary it is that instead of a smoldering mountain where we meet God as Israel did, we come and the Word of God is open. and we are not struck dead when the Word of God is open. We can read it and live and derive life from it as God actually speaks to us. And as the people of God come together, we see in Revelation God joins in our worship service And it happens every single Sunday. I don't think anybody in heaven falls to sleep when the angels start shouting, holy, holy, holy. So just reminding you of the absolutely spectacular privilege it is to worship God as a local congregation. Well, speaking of the Word and how we derive life from it, I just wanted to give you a bit of a preview. We're getting ready to end Genesis, and I know quite some time ago when I started Genesis, I said my goal is to actually do an overview of the Pentateuch. But turns out Genesis was pretty dense and I slowed way down so we can get the good stuff out of Genesis. And obviously if we went through the first five books of the Bible, we would be here for a long time. So I think I'm just gonna keep it with Genesis. And then after we end Genesis, I'm gonna spend a little time in the life of Christ. I'm not gonna exposit any of the gospels chronologically, because that would take another couple years. And we've done Mark a few, well, quite a few years ago now. But I just wanna exposit some passages of the high points of the life of Christ. So maybe we'll spend a couple months doing that. I think it's good as a congregation to just get re-saturated in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. We should always be going back to that pool and being cleansed by his life. And then after that, after spending some time there, we'll get into the book of Galatians. And I'm gonna go through the book of Galatians verse by verse. And I'm very excited about that because Galatians is a lightning bolt of the gospel that jolted the Galatian church that was actually flirting with the idea of abandoning the gospel or modifying the gospel. And it is just an absolutely powerful, jolting book that really puts everything in perspective, puts the church's priorities, what the church is about, what the Christian is about, an incredible book. So we'll eventually be getting into that. And starting the Sunday evening services in July, we're going to take an in-depth look in the doctrines of grace. So if you've grappled with total depravity and sovereign election of God and limited atonement and maybe terms like that and what it means, we're really gonna do an in-depth study on the doctrines of grace, historically, theologically, going through the scriptures, So, I would encourage you to not sit on the fence in these issues. Sometimes we hear one side, we hear the other, and we just say, well, it's all a big mystery. Well, most of it's not a mystery. It's just very clearly explained in Scripture. So, I would encourage you, even if you're not regularly going to the evening service, to think about attending the evening service, beginning of July, as we just kind of patiently move through and examine the doctrines of grace. And just this week as I was sort of re-immersing myself in these rich and majestic truths about God and salvation, it brought me to a place, to an awareness of my sins and the grace of God that I haven't been at in a while. And that's the nature of the doctrines of grace. It takes you deep into your own depravity, and then it takes you high into the sovereign grace of God that we don't deserve. Just so powerful. And I wanna give that gift to you. I want you to be impacted by that. So we're gonna start that in the evening service in July. We'll turn, if you would, to Genesis chapter 45. Last time we looked at Joseph's disclosing of his identity to his brothers, and we saw that perfect agreement between the doctrine of the sovereignty of God that Joseph held, this robust theology that God had ordained all these events that had taken place in the last 32 years of his life, both evil and good, And because of that, because of the doctrine of God's sovereignty, Joseph was gracious and merciful, and he could not fathom not being merciful to his brothers. I mean, he couldn't say, you know, there was a 15-year period of my life, starting when you sold me to the Ishmaelites, and I was charged with a sex crime, and then I was thrown into prison unjustly. This 15-year period, you ruined 15 years of my life. You stole 15 years. We would expect someone to say that. who had been through what Joseph had been through. But instead, you meant it for evil, God meant it for good. He's ordained this whole thing. And we see this very gracious spirit in the life of Joseph. And we observed that we cannot appreciate and say amen at the life of Joseph and then turn around and grumble and groan at our own difficulties and the trials and troubles in our life as though God did not also ordain the same things that take place in our life just as he did with Joseph. And because the theme of God's sovereignty is especially heavy and dense during this segment in the book of Genesis, I want to just carry it a little further on this morning, still examining the sovereignty of God. If God is sovereign, and he is our good shepherd, then it necessarily means that whatever he brings to pass into our life, whether we're walking through the valley of the shadow of death, or whether he's preparing a feast before us in the presence of our enemies, it is both, they are both from the good shepherd. So whether God is leading us beside quiet waters, Or as a shepherd, he's breaking our leg, as shepherds do, when the sheep wander too much, breaks the leg, so they have to relearn to depend and trust on God, on their shepherd, as they are healed. Both come from God. Whether God is tenderly taking the crook of His staff and just kind of gingerly steering us away from the cliff's edge, or whether He takes the rod, right? Because Psalm 23 says He has both a rod and a staff. He takes His rod and He strikes the sheep. so they stop lagging behind and exposing themselves to the enemies. So whatever we receive from the hand of the Lord, we believe it's from the hand of the Good Shepherd. It is always for our infinite good. What's the good? It's Romans 8. It's being conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. There's no greater good. I don't even want a greater good than that, to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. That is what it means that these things are for our good, and it dovetails perfectly with the glory of God. It all glorifies God, no matter what He brings us through. So, no matter what you experience in your life, we have to surrender ourselves to the fact, the biblical axiom, that it has come from the sovereign hand of God, from our Good Shepherd who feeds us, who sustains us, and He also knows what difficulties and evils to permit into our life for our sanctification and for our good. So, if you find yourself with a spouse who has some immaturities that just drive you up the wall, maybe God thinks that you need to learn supernatural long-suffering, and that's why He's permitted that event. Maybe if you find yourself a very self-confident parent, you know, I'm very organized, I know how to do this thing, we're going to produce the godliest children on the planet. and you become a little too self-reliant on your own abilities and so God and His sovereignty permits one of your children to walk away from the Lord. And so all you can do as a parent is fall down before God and say, I can't do anything else. You have to rescue my child. He brings you to that point. Or maybe we've just become too independent and too self-reliant and we have too many of our own man-made crutches and so God either gradually or through tragedy kind of kicks the crutches out from under us, takes away our health, takes away that one person in our life that we leaned on for support and they're gone. Maybe there's a relational strain that's there. And when the Christian treats those things as sort of, oh, that's my life, that's how it goes, Murphy's Law, it's the luck of the draw, can't believe it's turned out this way, this person seems to be doing fine, but this is the way it happens with me, we are actually acting with an atheistic spirit. as though God either is a cheerleader on the side, kind of wishing things didn't go that way, but they have. but we are not behaving as though God is sovereign, and in His own way, He has ordained these things because He's our good shepherd. And we exhaust ourselves pushing against this, and that's what we're gonna see in the life of Jacob, just exhausting himself, pushing against what God had sovereignly ordained for him. I think I had mentioned this sometime before, but years ago when I was down in Florida, I was on this big ranch doing this men's study, and men's retreat, and part of this ranch, they had walled off this section, several acres, and they had put these prize-winning buck, and hunters would pay high dollar to go into this area and shoot these prize-winning buck and mount the head on the wall, and I don't know what story they would tell their wife when they got home, because that seems like shooting fish in a barrel, but, Nevertheless, they would go there, and this is what they did. So one morning I woke up early, I was just kind of taking a walk around the premises, and I came face to face with one of these huge deer. This heavy head just weighed down with these antlers, and to the right is a wall, and to the left is just nothing but vast acreage, and of course the thing runs to the right instead of the left and smashes into the wall. And then it kind of does a circle and smashes into the wall again. And it does it three times, and I'm thinking, you could go that way. Keeps smashing into the wall. So, not too smart. But finally it figured itself out and went the right direction. And I was thinking this week, I think that's how I act in my life sometimes. Where God sovereignly ordains plans, and I know these are the plans of God, and I exhaust myself thinking, God, these plans you have for me are too heavy. and we resist it and we smash against the wall of God's plans and we exhaust ourself and we think the exhaustion is because of the plans of God and it's really because of our resistance to the plans of God. If we would surrender to what God has for us, if we would surrender to the reality that he believes this is good and right for us in our life, for this time in our life, it'd be a lot less exhausting than being like that buck and just turning around and smashing into what God has ordained for us. I recently heard of a very famous ministry leader who knew thousands of people, and his child was diagnosed with a terminal illness. So he did the right thing. He contacted all the people that he knew, thousands of people, and he set them in motion praying for his child. And as the months went on, his child grew worse and worse, closer to death's door. And so he just got even more desperate, kind of panicked. We gotta get more people praying, more people praying. And he kept trying to broaden the circle of all the people praying, just bring more and more into praying. We gotta turn this bus around, we gotta save my child. And a man that he greatly respected picked up the phone and called him. Said, are you sure you're not telling God what to do? Are you sure you're not, through all your requests, through your desperation, in the end, you're not telling God what He needs to do in your life? And he said, that moment was a moment of clarity and the first time that I really had peace in the situation. Not that he gave up praying for the healing of his child, he continued to do that, but this time his prayers had, thy will be done. Whatever God you choose is going to be good and is going to be right for me." And his child ended up passing away. And he said, if I had not come to terms with whatever God's sovereign plan is, it is good and right, then I would have had no peace in that situation. Thomas Brooks, famous Puritan, says that afflictions are but the dark entrance into the Father's house. And I love that quote, the first time I read it, it was just seared into my memory. Afflictions are but the dark entrance into the Father's house. Some people take the brighter entrance with all the lamps and the lights and it looks great, but God has assigned us to take the dark entrance into the Father's house. But what I love about that quote is it's still an entrance to the Father's house. We can't behave as though, again, this is the luck of the draw, my unfortunate life. It just kind of turns out this way. But this is God leading me to his house. It's just a darker path. It's just the valley of the shadow of death. It's just a little more potentially despairing than some of these other entrances to the Father's house. And Jacob, the patriarch that we've been looking at in Genesis, this is something he was grappling with. And Joseph actually came to terms much more quickly about the sovereignty of God in his life than Jacob did. Joseph was able to say, hey, you meant it for evil, God meant it for good. Joseph said that. Jacob, as we'll soon read, would say, short and evil have been my days. That's how he'll describe his life. But in the end, on his deathbed, he'll say that God is his Redeemer and God is his Shepherd. The first mention of Shepherd in the Bible is by Jacob on his deathbed, of God as Shepherd. He's shepherded my life. He's sovereign, he's good, and he bestows that upon his children. Well, picking up with this story, after Joseph reveals his identity, what we see towards the middle part of Genesis 45 is that the camera of focus turns away from Joseph and it turns back to Jacob. And really, that's been the focus. Joseph, the Joseph story, him being sold into Egypt and everything, was really just a larger chapter in the bigger book of the life of Jacob. This is really about the life of Jacob. And so, we're going to look at chapter 45 through 48 this morning, kind of a bigger chunk of Scripture. And in the last part of chapter 45, Pharaoh finds out that his right-hand man Joseph has been reunited with his long-lost family, and Pharaoh is thrilled. He's absolutely elated. And so what he does, he just goes over the top, he says, here's some empty wagons, here's some extra supplies, go back and get your father and bring him back and bring the family back and bring your estate back from Canaan to Egypt and you guys can live here and it's gonna be great. So he gives him all the supplies. And Jacob, formerly, before he knew that his long-lost son Joseph was still alive, had said that his gray head is going to go down to the grave in sorrow. Oh, what a tragic life. And then he saw Benjamin being taken, his sort of replacement favorite son, and now he's going to die. And so Jacob's kind of despairing. But in Genesis 45, 27, Jacob finds out that Joseph is still alive. And it says, And when they had 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 revived. And if you look at that, it's kind of like saying he was on hospice and they took him off of hospice. He was getting ready to die. Part of his problem was physical, the other part was just depressed and discouraged with life. I mean, he's losing his family, he's losing everything. He finds out that Joseph is alive, he revives, he lives 17 more years. And verse 28, then Israel, by the way, Jacob is called Israel now, don't let that throw you. Then Israel said, it is enough, my son Joseph is still alive, I will go and see him before I die. Imagine thinking 32 years ago, if you have a favorite child, which I hope you don't, your favorite child died savagely of a wild animal and all of a sudden he's alive. And not just he's alive, he's the second in command of the greatest nation in the world. I mean, that's some pretty spectacular news. So he's happy, he gets his gear together, and by the way, he's so old they actually have to carry him, he can't walk anymore, they have to carry him back to Egypt. And look at chapter 46 in the opening four chapters here. Very, very important to the theology of Genesis. They're headed back to Egypt, but they make a pit stop. So Israel sent out with all that he had and came to Beersheba. And Beersheba, of course, is still in Canaan. And he offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac. Now why does he stop at Beersheba before he gets along with his journey to go to Egypt and throws a little worship service there? Well, Beersheba was the place where Abraham made his covenant with Abimelech and dug a well. Beersheba's the place where Jacob deceived Esau and ran away from his family. Beersheba was the last place Jacob actually saw his mother, last time he ever saw her. There were so many precious memories here, there were bitter memories here, and so as God is sort of bringing resolution to the life of Jacob, he just kind of stops in Beersheba. and worships God. It's like returning to your hometown, and the memories flood, and you remember the good times, you remember the bad times, but here you are, and you're in Christ, and you just want to praise and thank God, and that's what Jacob does. And God talks back in verse 2. God spoke to Israel in visions of the night and said, Jacob, Jacob, and he said, here I am. It's been a long time since God's spoken to Jacob. And 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. Now this is new information. At strategic points in the patriarch's lives, God would reiterate the Abrahamic covenant, reminding them he had made a promise to Abraham to make them a great nation, to give them land, to have the gospel go forth from that nation, to be a blessing to the entire world. You know, every once in a while, we've been seeing it in Genesis, God reminds him of that. And every once in a while, God will give some new information. And here with Jacob, he gives him new information. He tells him, I will make of you a great nation there. This is the first time Jacob has ever heard, anybody's ever heard of this. That Egypt is actually going to be the womb in which Israel develops into a massive nation to come back to the promised land. This is new information, Egypt is gonna be that place. And so God is giving him special permission to go to Egypt. Verse four, I will go down with you to Egypt and I will also surely bring you up again and Joseph will close your eyes. Joseph is going to be the one when you pass away to close your eyes with his tender hand. This is really going to happen, Jacob. So, God gives him special permission because you remember with Abraham and Isaac when they went to Egypt it was actually an act of doubt, but this is not an act of doubt, it's part of the plan of God. The year is 1876 B.C., and you can begin your stopwatch. 430 years later, exactly to the year, this little family of 70 that entered Egypt would be what historians think, two million strong. 430 years later, they would go back to the land of Israel, just as God has promised. Now, at this point in Genesis 46, Moses stops and he gives us a little headcount of all the ones, including Joseph, that are coming out of the promised land, or Canaan, into the land of Egypt. And I'm not going to read the whole thing, all these names, but let me read the first verse in verse 8 and then the last two verses to kind of give you a flavor of this headcount that Moses is giving as Israel goes to Egypt. Verse 8, now these are the names of the sons of Israel, Jacob and his sons who went to Egypt, Reuben, Jacob's firstborn, and so on. Gives all these names. And then skip down to verse 26. And all the persons belonging to Jacob who came to Egypt, his direct descendants, not including the wives of Jacob's sons, because they only counted heads of household, that's why they didn't count the wives, were 66 persons in all. And the sons of Joseph who were born to him in Egypt were two, all the persons of the house of Jacob who came to Egypt were 70. So 11 sons of Jacob, and their grandsons were 66, he adds Jacob, Joseph, and Joseph's two sons, and he gets this figure 70. That's a pretty significant number, isn't it? We take it literally, we understand there's literally 70 people moving into Egypt, but if you begin to look at the number 7 and look at the number 70 in the Scriptures, it's always associated or very often associated with completeness or blessing, or fullness, or if something is 70, this is exactly the way God wants it. There's 70 weeks, there's forgiving your neighbor 70 times seven. There's Jesus sending out the 70 disciples. There's all kinds of seven and 70s in the Bible. And so this is God's way of saying that the little nation of Israel, 70 people total, back in those days that was actually small for a tribe or a family. It was the exact number that God wanted it to be. This is the exact number. And we could flip back to Genesis 39.9 and we would remember the genealogy of Esau and the Edomites. Remember how quickly they took off. I mean, you read this genealogy, and they are producing, they're not the blessed line. In fact, they're giving an anti-blessing, or they're giving a curse, actually. Things are going to be difficult, they're going to be a troubled people. But they move into the land of Edom, they defeat the Edomites, and they produce princes and kings, and they're powerful. In fact, the Edomites, who are not the blessed people of God, are numerically surpassing, and financially, in every conceivable way, surpassing Jacob and his family. as actually they eventually start to transition into slavery in Egypt. But God likes the fact that Jacob's family is only 70. He doesn't care that Esau's family is thriving because God has never been the one to despise the day of small things, right? God's never been the one to say, oh, I only have 12 disciples. I wish I had a lot more than 12 disciples. Oh, that church over there, there's only 50 people that go to that church. I wish there was more, I can't really do much. God's never been the one to be thrown off with numbers. This is exactly the size that He wants Jacob's family to be. He has made them 70. Now as a side note, if you get on these atheist websites, these infidelguys.com or whatever, which I'm not encouraging you to do, but if you read skeptical books concerning the Scripture, they will direct you to Genesis chapter 46. It's one of the passages they like to attack because there's a very clear seeming contradiction in Genesis 46. Genesis 46 tells us, and we just saw it, that there's 70 that come out of Canaan, but then if you were to go ahead to Acts chapter seven and verse 14, when Stephen preaches his sermon, Stephen says there's actually 75 that come out of Canaan. So you say, all right, Moses is saying 70, Stephen is saying 75, can't both be right, they're different figures, it's a different head count, so oh look, the Bible can't be trusted, reject the gospel. It's kind of the logic that goes on. But actually, there's a very simple solution. Stephen's reference was based off the Septuagint, which is an ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. And the Septuagint has a later tabulation. The Septuagint counts the grandsons and great-grandsons of Joseph. which Moses did not count because he had an earlier tabulation. So this is somebody simply doing a family count a little later on down the timeline, okay? That's a really easy solution. But again, you can tell that to a skeptic. And even if it makes sense to them, they're not gonna accept it because these are all just excuses to reject Christ. That's the ultimate issue, is not wanting to surrender to Christ. So just in case you see that discrepancy. Well, after this headcount is given by Moses, what we see in verse 28, look at verse 28, this is a picture of restoration. I mean, if I could take a painting of this and put it on my wall, I would. This is marvelous reconciliation after all the infighting and all the wickedness that has taken place in Jacob's family. Verse 28 says, Now he, Jacob, sent Judah, notice this is Judah, whose idea it was to sell Joseph into slavery in the first place, sent Judah before him to Joseph to point out the way before him to Goshen, and they came into the land of Goshen. This is Judah leading the way. This is a man who was an enslaver, a prostitute visiting, selfish man who repented, who then sacrificed his life for the sake of Benjamin, if that's what needed to happen. And you have this wonderful picture of now Judah leading the way. And Jacob's totally fine with this. And Joseph is restored to Judah. I mean, what rich restoration. And that's what the Bible promises, doesn't it? If there's authentic repentance and authentic forgiveness, there's full restoration. That has happened in the dysfunctional family of Jacob. In verse 29, Joseph prepared his chariot. He hears they're coming. He fires up his engine and he went up to Goshen to meet his father Israel. As soon as he appeared before him, he fell on his neck and he wept a long time. I mean they just fell on each other and they wept and they sobbed for 32 years. I thought my son had been torn apart and devoured by a wild beast and here you are and they just weep. Then Israel said to Joseph, now let me die since I've seen your face that you are still alive. I can die a happy man now. You're alive. God's preserved your life. Well, now that they have had this glorious reunion, now it's time to get down to business. They've got to visit Pharaoh. They've got to have an official meeting with Pharaoh. Joseph is not Pharaoh. Joseph is a powerful man, but the buck still stops with Pharaoh. So, Joseph actually, in verses 31 through 34, coaches his brothers. on how to talk to Pharaoh. He kind of says two things. Number one, he says be honest. You're shepherds and Egyptians hate shepherds, so don't leave that out of your conversation. Don't be unethical here and just kind of conceal that. You tell them who you are. You're shepherds. And then request a Goshen. requests the best in the land. Yeah, that's right. Tell them we're people you don't like and we want the best of your land. Doesn't seem to make too much sense, but Joseph knows Pharaoh and so they go in and that's exactly what they do. Now Goshen was so ideal because it was the best of land. It was near the delta of the Nile River, very, very plush. I don't know what its condition was now in the famine years, but outside of famine, the best of the land. It was perfect for their livestock. It was far enough away from the capital so they could maintain their distance from the Egyptians, which is good for a variety of reasons, but close enough to the capital so Joseph could visit his family frequently, wouldn't have to travel entirely across the country to do that. And so they go in, in chapter 47, one through six, they have this wonderful conversation with Pharaoh. God just softens Pharaoh's heart. He is so blessed to meet Jacob and his sons. And he actually goes above and beyond what they expect. In verse six, he says, the land of Egypt is at your disposal. "'Settle your father and your brothers "'in the best of the land. "'Let them live in the land of Goshen, "'and if you know any capable men among them, "'put them in charge of my livestock.'" So Joseph, you are apparently blessed by God with wisdom. You've been used by God to save the life of the entire nation of Egypt. If any of this wisdom is sort of rubbed off on your brothers, well, I got some employment positions for them. I would like to put them in charge of the royal livestock. And one commentator says this, Ramsey III, a pharaoh in Egypt, is said to have employed 3,264 men, mostly foreigners, to take care of his herds. Foreigners, because they didn't like him as much. The appointment of some of Joseph's brothers to supervise the king's cattle means that they are to be officers of the crown and thus will enjoy legal protection, not usually accorded aliens or foreigners. In other words, they're going to be treated like citizens of Egypt. even though they're Bedouins, they're sojourners, they're Jews, they're from Canaan, they're going to be treated as citizens because of this special employment. So, this is phase one. It goes really well. They get these great jobs. And phase two is now Jacob, the father of the family. needs to have a meeting with Pharaoh. And we see that in verse 7. And this is absolutely amazing. If an Egyptian was reading this verse, he would be stunned. Verse 7, Anything strike you as odd about that? Jacob blessed Pharaoh. It is always the greater who blesses the lesser. It's always the patriarchs who bless the sons. It's always God who blesses His children, God who blesses creation. It's Melchizedek, the greater type of Christ, that blesses the lesser, Abraham. And here Jacob strolls in to meet Pharaoh, the leader of the greatest nation in the world, instead of being a nervous wreck and, man, I hope I don't make an idiot of myself in front of Pharaoh, he acts like he's greater than Pharaoh and he blesses Pharaoh. Now why? Because Jacob had a big head? He was just arrogant? No, because Jacob knew who he was. He knew that he served the one true God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He knew he was a patriarch of the Abrahamic covenant through which God would bless the world with the gospel. He knew the gods that Pharaoh served were no gods at all, they're pagan gods. And so he knew exactly who he was. He knew that he was the only one in the room in the position to bless anybody else. Pharaoh can bless as far as a nice greeting, give him some money, whatever earthly thing, but Jacob is the only one who's in that position. But I tell you, when I read that, I thought, Nate, is that the way you see yourself? When you go into the world, when you begin to work with people, You know, we assess people based on how much money they make or how high they are up in a corporation or how successful they've been in sort of an earthly way, and we sort of find ourselves intimidated based on those sort of gradations of importance when we serve the King of Kings, when we're ambassadors of Jesus Christ, when we're citizens of the kingdom of God. And if there's anyone who can share eternal life, it is the Christian, it is the believer. And so, we conduct ourselves in this way in the world, not because we in and of ourselves are better, but because we're a part of the kingdom of God that is eternal and everything else is absolutely temporary. You know, talk about the importance of the missions conference. Talk about the importance of the gospel and the heart of Christ, I think, expressed in the missions conference. You compare that to all the meetings and all the busyness of the United Nations. They do some good temporary things, but missions about eternal things. If they had the mind of Christ and they knew what we were about in this conference or what we were about as individual Christians at all, they'd be lining the door to get in. Because we represent the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. I don't think Jacob here is in some sort of unique position where you can do that, Jacob, but I can't. As long as we are citizens of the kingdom of God, we have this important position, and we need to conduct ourself in it. And look at verse eight. Pharaoh said to Jacob, how many years have you lived? Egyptians were fascinated with death and embalming. They thought 110 was the perfect age to live to, so this is the first question Pharaoh has. And Jacob said to Pharaoh, the years of my sojourning are 130 years. Hey, that's better than the ideal 110. And then look at what he says. Few and unpleasant have been the years of my life. King James says, few and evil. Now what if you greeted somebody Sunday morning like that? How you doing? Days of my life are few and evil, how are you? It's kind of depressing, I'll talk to somebody else. Nor have they attained the years that my fathers lived during the days of their sojourning. I haven't lived as long as my fathers have. I mean, it's depressing, and I kind of look at that, is that what you should say to Pharaoh, the only chance you get to talk to him? But you think about Jacob's life. I mean, as a boy, he had to run away for his life and never saw his mother again. Went to Uncle Laban, who ripped him off. He was deceived into marrying the wrong person, which created all sorts of infighting, not only in the marriage, but in the children that they had. His daughter endured a violent sexual assault. His beloved wife Rachel died relatively young for 32 years. He thought his favorite son was dead. In the last couple of years, everything he owned has been ravaged by a famine. Yeah, few and evil. That might be a good way to describe his life. But we're gonna see at the end of his life on his deathbed when Jacob speaks in a spirit of prophecy. He says that God's my shepherd. Yeah, I know it's been few and evil, but God's been my shepherd. I can't deny that. You want him on your side. Well, the meeting ends in verse 10. Jacob blessed Pharaoh, there he goes, blessing him again, and he went out from his presence. So Joseph settled his father and his brothers and gave them the possession in the land of Egypt, in the best of the land, in the land of Ramses, which is the same as the land of Goshen, as Pharaoh had ordered. And now we start to see the famine begins to increase, or at least the famine really begins to take its toll on the land of Egypt, just ravaging the land of all greenery and all life. And the blessing that Jacob had wished upon Pharaoh, I think God honors and it overflows in Pharaoh and it blesses Joseph and God gives Joseph the wisdom that he needs to be especially wise in the final five years of this famine, which is going to be the hardest of years. In verse 14, we see that the Egyptians spend every last penny on food until they run out of money. And what happens when you run out of money? You go to a bartering system. Imagine that. Instead of opening your wallet at Walmart, now you bring two chickens in exchange for two gallons of milk. It's a trading, it's a bartering system. That's what has happened to the greatest nation in the world. That's what their economy has come to. And then when they run out of money, they start trading livestock. And when they start trading livestock, they run out of that, and they start trading land. And when they give up all their land for food, well, then they have only one thing left, and that's their bodies. And they actually sell themselves into indentured servitude. The Bible calls it slavery. We should understand it as more of sort of contractual employment. If any of you are employees under contract with your boss, you understand there's certain things you can and certain things you cannot do. And so when that takes place, Egypt becomes sort of a serfdom state where the citizens of Egypt have to do exactly what Joseph tells them to do. They have to live where Joseph tells them to live. They have to work the lands as much as they can get from the lands exactly where Joseph tells them to work. They are essentially possessions of Joseph and Pharaoh. In fact, in verse 21, Joseph tells them to move from their homes and to move in local cities so they all live close together in order to simplify the distribution process. When it comes time for needing grain, he doesn't want to send it miles out in the countryside where these people are living. He doesn't want them, I mean, they've sold their horses anyways, they have nothing to ride into town. He doesn't want them taking the long walk and just expending more energy and needing more food. So he wants them consolidated around cities to simplify it. So Joseph is running a very, very tight shift. But unlike, I mean, when you think of serfdom, you think of the Middle Ages, the Dark Ages, and the rich sort of abusing the poor, and sort of getting rich off the backs of the poor, and that's not at all what's happening here. Joseph is keeping these people alive by his plan. And you see that in Genesis 45, 25, the people know that. It says, they said, you have saved our lives. Let us find favor in the sight of my Lord, and we will be Pharaoh's slaves. I mean, we'll give ourselves to you, whatever you want, because you're saving our lives. It's because of you that we have lived this far in this horrendous famine. Now, in contrast, I mean, the citizens of Egypt, they're in hard times. In contrast, how's the family of Jacob doing? Are they having to give up Goshen? Are they being relocated? Look at verse 27. Now Israel lived in the land of Egypt and Goshen, and they acquired property in it. What? Everybody else has given up their property, and Jacob's family is getting property. And they were fruitful, and they were becoming very numerous. See, God is already using Egypt as the womb to cultivate the nation of Israel. Even during the famine, Israel is already thriving. Jacob's family is already thriving. Verse 28. Jacob lived in the land of the Egyptians 17 years. By the way, the same amount of time that he had with Joseph was 17 years at the beginning of his life, and now he has 17 years at the end of his life to be with Joseph again. So the length of Joseph's life was 147 years. As the rest of Egypt was scraping by, I mean, God is restoring to Jacob the years the locusts have eaten. If the first 130 years of his life was just short and evil has been my days, he said, and the last 17 years is just blessing, profuse blessing by God. Now if you're paying attention and you're sort of feeling the warp and woof of the unfolding of this narrative, you very quickly begin to sense a danger. You begin to sense the danger. If I was in their positions, if I was walking around in their sandals, I have the best of the land, my brother is second in command, we are upper echelons of aristocracy, I can get used to that. And then if I think about returning, I mean, all Canaan had, all Canaan had was enemies and sojourning, and the only property we owned there was a graveyard. It's kind of nice in Egypt. You remember when Israel was taken in captivity, 70 years of Babylonian captivity? And then when God said to Daniel, okay, now's the time, bring them back from captivity. You can rebuild the walls, rebuild the temple, reinstitute the worship system. You remember just a fraction of the Jews returned from the 70-year captivity? You know why? Because the rest said, it's kind of nice living in Babylon. It's kind of cushy. It's like the United States. It's pretty convenient up here. Why would we want to go back? There's only trouble. That's a whole lot more difficult to have to trust God on a daily basis than just to be in this comfortable environment. And this is the real and present danger that Jacob senses will happen after he dies. He does not want his family just sort of infiltrating and assimilating into the Egyptian culture. so there's only one thing for us today to keep us from growing spiritually soft in a comfortable nation like the United States, and that is by fixing our gaze on the city whose builder and maker is God, which is exactly what Hebrews 11 says that the patriarchs did. They never looked so much at the physical circumstances. They looked at the city whose builder and maker is God. They kept their focus on heaven. They kept their focus on the kingdom of God that he wanted to mediate through Israel. And when you keep your focus on the second coming and the eternality of heaven and its coming state, it enables you to see through all the glitter of this world and see that it's just fool's gold. It's just a waste of time and it causes you to prioritize the things of God. And for all the faults that Jacob had, he is prioritizing the things of God. And so look at 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. So this is a deathbed vow that was common amongst the patriarchs. Please do not bury me in Egypt. It's a nice land, this Egypt. Pharaoh's been great to us. Please, I don't want this to be my home. I don't want this to be your home. When I lie down with my fathers and you carry me out of Egypt and bury me in their burial place. And he said, I will do as you have said. And he said, swear to me. So he swore to him. Then Israel bowed and worshiped at the head of the bed. The land that you are buried in is the land that you want your children and your grandchildren and your great-grandchildren to inhabit. And by saying, please don't bury me in Egypt, he is saying, I want you to again possess the land of Canaan. I don't want you to get comfortable here. This is not the Abrahamic covenant in Egypt. I want you to go there. That's where the promises of God are going to be fulfilled. And it's amazing to me how, again, for all the flaws of the patriarchs, this is on the forefront of their minds. You have the same thing with Abraham in chapter 47 and verse 31. I might have the wrong chapter there. But with Abraham on his deathbed, he makes Eleazar swear to him that Isaac is not gonna marry anyone from the land of Canaan, but go back home, find someone there, because he knows if Isaac marries someone from the land of Canaan, from a human perspective, the Abrahamic covenant is in jeopardy. Because you'll just adapt their culture and their religion, and that was the weak spot of the Israelites anyways. That's the weak spot of us in America today, is just growing too comfortable with the culture. And so he makes Eleazar swear on his deathbed that he will not do that. So this becomes their deathbed wish. For all the things they've done wrong, they want the Abrahamic covenant protected. That's what Jacob says, take my bones back to Canaan, because that's where God is gonna take you. Don't get comfortable here. Well, a short time later, Jacob really knows he's gonna die. I think before he thought he was. Now he really knows, so he again sends for Joseph, again sends word, he's on his deathbed, and he summons Joseph. And look at 48 and verse 5, chapter 48 and verse 5. He has a great blessing in store for Joseph. Now your two sons," says Jacob, who were born to you in the land of Egypt before I came to you in Egypt, are mine. Ephraim and Manasseh shall be mine, as Reuben and Simeon are. What's going on here? This is your typical deathbed blessing of the eldest. The eldest son received the double blessing. Joseph was the eldest son of Rachel, so he's gonna receive a double blessing, double than all the other brothers will receive, but look how he gives him the double blessing. He gives him the double blessing by taking his two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, and adopting them as his immediate sons, as Jacob's immediate sons. These are Jacob's grandsons, but he adopts them as his immediate sons and gives them both a blessing. So, there's your double blessing. Joseph is replaced, in essence, by Ephraim and by Manasseh. So, that means that there are technically 13 tribes of Israel. not twelve. It's still divided up into twelve sections because the Levites didn't have land because God was their possession, but you count off the names, there's technically thirteen tribes because Joseph received this double blessing. And this is a massive blessing. You can flip to, even to Revelation chapter 21 and you can see that the twelve tribes' names are etched in the New Jerusalem. The tribe of Dan is left out for some reason, but the two sons of Joseph are going to be etched for all of eternity in the very foundation of the new Jerusalem. I mean, this is a massive blessing, and Joseph knows that. This has to be so exciting for him. His sons are going to become immediate sons of his father. But the next thing that Jacob does is not nearly as exciting to Joseph. It's actually kind of troubling. Look at verse 13. Joseph took them both, Ephraim with his right hand towards Israel's left, and Manasseh with his left hand toward Israel's right, and brought them close to him. Okay, so he's got it right, left on the correct one, right on the correct one, but Israel stretched out his right hand and laid it on the head of Ephraim. who was the younger, and his left hand on Manasseh's head, crossing his hands, although Manasseh was the firstborn." So the sons approach, and Jacob puts his hands on them, and then he does something like this. He's going to switch the blessing. The right hand is where the blessing goes, and he puts it on the wrong head. And look at Joseph, ever the traditionalist. Verse 17, When Joseph saw that his father laid his right hand on Ephraim's head, it displeased him, and he grasped his father's hand to remove it. He actually lays hands on his father before he dares utter the blessing. And he removes it from Ephraim's head to Manasseh's head, and Joseph said to his father, not so, my father, for this one is the firstborn. Place your right hand on his head. I mean, you get how radical this is. You don't disrupt ancient tradition and stop blessing the eldest, stop blessing the firstborn. What are you doing, Jacob? Are you blind? Have you lost your sight? You're crossing your arms, you're blessing the wrong one, you're going to get this wrong and this is going to determine the rest of their lives or at least be a massive influence on the rest of their lives. But verse 19, but his father Jacob refused and said, I know my son, I know. He also will become a people, and he also will be great, that is Manasseh. However, his younger brother Ephraim shall be greater than he, and his descendants shall become a multitude of nations." He says, I know the problem you're having. but this has to be done." See, Joseph must have thought that dad was just kind of being arbitrarily confusing and sort of reinventing tradition, but he wasn't. Jacob was acting in the place of God. We don't have time because time is already up, but I could take you to so many passages in the Old Testament where the laying on of hands signify that the person doing that is acting as a prophet. He's acting, God is working through him. So whoever you lay your hands on, that's who God wants you to lay your hands on. This isn't arbitrary, this isn't Jacob just trying to be weird or funny. This is God telling him, you put your hand on the secondborn, your right hand on the secondborn, and you bless him. Why is God doing this? Now you remember when Isaac was deceived by Jacob to give the blessing to Jacob instead of Esau, remember Esau shows up and finds out that Jacob had taken his blessing and he begins to weep and cry, don't you have a blessing for me, Isaac? And what does Isaac say? Yes, poof. No, Isaac says, I can't, I already gave it. In other words, it was outside of his control. It's God's sovereignty who ordained who he was going to bless. There's nothing he can do about it. So this begs the question, why in the world is God doing this? I mean, even in the Mosaic law, the firstborn son, it's written right in the laws, the son of blessing. And here God makes an exception to the rule. By the way, didn't he make the exception to the rule with Jacob himself? Remember when Jacob and Esau were in the womb of their mother and God said, the older shall serve the younger? I mean, it happened to Jacob. And look at what it did to Jacob's family. I shouldn't say what it did, their response to that, but it was a curveball, wasn't it? I mean, the mother resisted it, the father resisted it. Jacob felt he had to deceive to get it back. Esau thought it rightfully belonged to his. I mean, when you start to bless the second instead of the first, it's just a big curveball in the family. And now Jacob knows what God's asked him to do. I want you to do it again with Joseph's family. Why does God do this? He tells us exactly why he does this in Romans chapter nine. when it happened to Jacob and Esau. Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated, why Paul? So that the purpose of election might stand. It doesn't get any simpler than that. So that the purpose of election might stand. So God can show that his actions are not connected or dependent in any shape or form upon The good of man, the response of man, the position of man, the birth order of man, the tradition of man. It is not contingent in any way. It is purely the sovereign fiat of God to choose whom He desires to choose. So that Ephraim will grow up just as Jacob grew up and said, I have been blessed by God, no thanks to anything that I've done. I have been chosen and blessed by God, purely by God's sovereignty. I mean, who blesses the second born? God blesses the psychic, He blesses whoever He wants because He's not constrained by human tradition. You know, that is such an important lesson that we see it again and again and again and again in the scriptures. God does what He wants. Psalm, listen to this Psalm as we wind down to a close. Psalm 135, six, whatever the Lord pleases He does in the heavens and in the earth and the sea and in all the deeps, God does what He wants. If you fear putting God in a box, then ascribe to God absolute sovereignty. He can do what He wants with whomever He wants. That's not putting God in a box. That's letting God be God, His absolute sovereignty, and that's what He does right here. And that ultimately is the lesson, isn't it? No matter what He ordains in salvation, no matter what He ordains in our life, valley of the shadow of death, blessing, it's a part of the ordinance of God. It's a part of the good shepherding of God. Well, in closing, let me read Jacob's deathbed prayer. And again, Jacob is praying this with a spirit of prophecy. This is just him talking, so to speak. This is a spirit of prophecy, God speaking through him. Genesis 48, 15. He blessed Joseph and said, the God before whom my father Abraham and Isaac walked, The God who has been my shepherd all my day to this day. He's been my shepherd. I know I said my days have been short and evil, but He's been my shepherd. The angel, and we've seen this before, angel literally just means messenger. This is a Christophany. Jacob wrestled with the angel of the Lord. He wrestled actually with Christophany, with the physical manifestation of the Son of God that always appeared to the patriarchs in their time of crisis, in their time of need. The angel who has redeemed me from all evil, that's an important statement. Bless these lads, and may my name live on in them, and the names of my fathers, Abraham and Isaac, and may they grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth." May God just richly bless them, and God does. But notice how he says, that I have been redeemed from all evil. This is like when David says that. David says that in the Psalms, and you look at David's life, and you look at Jacob's life, and you say, what are you talking about? You just said your life was evil, and we can easily see how much evil happened to you in your life, but now you're saying in your deathbed, I've been redeemed from all evil. You know what that means? It doesn't mean that evil won't touch you. It means that evil doesn't have the final word. If you know God, evil does not have the final say in your life. Death is swallowed up in victory. God shows up in the end and he rights all the wrongs. And he does away with all the scars and the devastation and the emotional attachments that go along with evil that has been done to us or self-inflicted evil. He does away with all of it. He redeems us from all evil. And every Christian should be able to say that, especially on their deathbed. You know what? I'm about to see God. None of this is gonna matter anymore. And he's redeemed me from all my troubles. Not a single ounce of evil is gonna have a final say in my life. He's just totally redeemed me. And if you don't know Jesus Christ this morning, then you can't say that. Even as you descend into hell, the evil will follow you. The emptiness, the scars, the bitterness, the cynical nature, whatever it might be, it's going to remain with you. But if you know God, if you know Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, Not only will this be mitigated in the here and now through a relationship with Jesus Christ, but you have the guarantee that it will be finally done away with when He returns. Heavenly Father, we thank You, God. just for the rich descriptions here of these prayers and these blessings in the life of the patriarchs. These are real men, real people, Lord. We will shake their hands one day. We will sit down with them in that celestial city and we will talk and converse and reflect. I pray, Lord, that we would learn the lessons, the powerful lessons of these men. I pray most specifically, God, that we would be able to say with Jacob, that you are our shepherd and you have redeemed us from all evil. In your name, amen.