Everybody, welcome to Sunday School. This is going to be the third class of our survey through the Old Testament. So glad you're here. Chris, are these being recorded? Do you know? They are. So if you've missed the last two and want to get caught up, we'll find out where those are posted. And make sure you have those all posted. But like I say, today we're going to be working through Genesis 12 through 50. So this is part two of our overview of Genesis. And I hope everybody has a handout for notes. If you don't, Stephen has them. We're going to have a stack up here at the front. So grab those and take notes if you want to. But it pretty much will just kind of walk through what we're going to be looking at this morning. Let me begin with the word of prayer. Father, we thank you for this day. Thank you for the time for us to gather and to look at your word maybe a little bit differently than we're accustomed to, kind of these big pictures of what you're doing throughout redemptive history. And Father, as we cover a tremendous amount of text this morning, I pray that you would help us to think clearly about these things and rightly about them as we consider the ways that you have worked in your people. We pray these things in Christ's name, amen. Well, like I said, today we're gonna be studying Genesis chapter 12 through 50, and one verse that sticks out to me as I prepared for this is Genesis 18, 14, which says, is anything too hard for the Lord? Is anything too hard for the Lord? Now, if you know your Bible, you know that that's God speaking. Abraham, he was about 100 years old. His wife, Sarah, about 90. And God just told them that they were going to conceive a child. their first together after decades of barrenness and aging. And this would all happen within about a year's worth of time. And y'all remember what their response to this was? Y'all remember? What'd they do? They laughed, right? They laughed. They laughed at him. Abraham laughed out loud, and Sarah laughed to herself. What God promised was so ridiculous, so preposterous, so, you know, as the good the princess bride, inconceivable, right? This just couldn't happen. Their bodies were as good as dead. God must have been joking, or perhaps he was insincere, or maybe he was even mistaken, and so they laughed. God corrected them, and he asked them, is anything too hard for the Lord? At the appointed time, I will return to you about this time next year, and Sarah shall have a son. Now a year later, when a son was born to Sarah in her old age, God made sure that they remembered their faithlessness. He commanded to them that this child's name be Isaac. Do y'all know what Isaac means? He laughs, laughter, that's exactly right. It seems that the mocking laughter of their disbelief had been turned into a laughter of joy. Well, you found yourself in the Old Testament overview class. This is our second class on the book of Genesis, covering the bulk of the book. So this morning, we're gonna look at chapters 12 through 50. Last week, we looked at the first main event in the book of Genesis, which was the creation and the fall of Adam and Eve. This week, we're gonna look at the second main event, which I just described, the establishment of a special family through Abraham. and the establishment of the Abrahamic covenant. So what do all these 38 chapters in Genesis cover? Well, they give us a view into the lives and the families of Abraham, his son Isaac, and his son Jacob. These three, also just shorthand, known as the patriarchs. And understanding this family line is crucial to our understanding of the Bible. It's because through them, God continues to unfold his plan of redemption, which we can summarize like this. This is a little bit from last week, but also from the book that we're pulling some information from. God's kingdom is established through covenant for his glory. So there's three ideas, kingdom, covenant, and glory. So that's a way to summarize all of redemption history. If you wanna summarize this part of Genesis that we're gonna be looking at today, I think we can put something like this together. God is making a special people for himself, and he begins with one man. And from his descendants, he will bless the entire world. He does this by establishing a covenant with the one man, Abram, who, as we're gonna see, kind of serves as a federal head for Israel. in which he promises to be Abram's descendants' God. In the establishing of this covenant, we see a major progression in redemptive history. We see steps taken toward the establishment of God's kingdom through covenant for his glory. In the case of Abraham, We see that God promises that Abraham and his seed will be his special people, that they will live in the place of his choosing, and that they will enjoy a relationship with him under his rule. So for Liz and Jay Keith, who missed last week, we're going to recap Genesis 1 through 11. So before we jump into our review of Genesis 12-15, let's remind ourselves of Genesis 1-11. God made all that exists, including Adam and Eve. He gave them a special place to live in. That place was Eden, right? He commanded them to be fruitful and multiply into a global people. Okay, fill the earth, if y'all remember. And he set them under his benevolent and perfect kingdom rule. People, place, rule. We see the same themes in Genesis 1 and 2 and 3 that we see picked up in God's interactions with Abram and his family. In these patterns, people, place, rule will show up again and again as the biblical storyline continues to unfold. But we know what happens. Then they sinned. Adam and Eve sinned. Now just as God condemned Adam and Eve, he also set the first glimmer of hope in the promise of salvation. In cursing Eve, the mother of humankind, God also says in verse 15 of chapter three, I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers. He will crush your head and you will strike his heel. So recall that this enmity, Stephen said, is actually good news. Sometimes to be at war is better than to not be at war. That's maybe a hard thing to think about. But when you think about enmity, Stephen made the point that God could have just left us to ourself. There could have been no struggle. And we can all imagine how that outcome could have been. But the fact that there is enmity does remain, even to this day, really good news. It's evidence that a battle is actually raging. It means that the seed of the woman will war against the seed of the serpent, and that one day the seed of the woman would prevail. This promised one will restore God's people to God's place under God's rule. So now in the second part of Genesis we see this plan continue to play out. Now open your handouts, and this is the one, see if I can find mine, I'm using my Bible as a prop for my manuscript. So there we go. So Stephen has a few more of these. They're not here. We'll bring them next week. If you didn't get one of these booklets on the first day, there's a number of figures in here that we found helpful just to kind of frame us going through this series. But if you look at your handout, go ahead and look at the very front page. It's this figure here, 1.0. And let's remind ourselves where we are in the storyline of the Old Testament. Last week, we looked at Genesis 1 through 11, where Stephen took us through the kickoff in rebellion. So I think that K column right there, the creation of man, their fall. and banishment from paradise. We saw the judgment of God in the Tower of Babel and the destruction of human life in the waters of judgment with Noah. After the flood, we saw a covenant established between God and all mankind, which essentially would provide the worldwide context for the following stages in redemption of history to take place, since creation would not be destroyed again okay, by water, until it is de-created and re-created by fire on the last day. That's really what the Noahic Covenant pretty much established. Today, we're gonna move over to the eye, the instrument of blessing, and these instruments of blessing are none other than the patriarchs and the promises that they receive in Genesis 12 through 50. So if you look there at the eye, you see that first image there, that represents the patriarchs. And then, curiously, you see the three other images, and they're kind of dotted out. That's intentional. And that's to show that Abram received and promised for him something which would be fulfilled in its fullness later on. So pretty cool way to represent that, if you ask me. By way of historical overview, Moses is still the author of our book that hasn't changed since last week. Starting in chapter 12, we can begin to assign some dates to the different events. We'll pick up today with Abraham, whose story takes place around 2000 BC, maybe give or take about 100 years, and we'll cover through the life of Joseph, whose death we can date somewhere around 1800 BC. So to orient your time together this morning, after some background, I'm just gonna walk through three generations of Genesis, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and help you understand how God's plan of redemption unfolds through this family line. God's people and God's place under God's rule. I hope that you remember those three ideas, because they're just gonna keep coming up throughout this whole series. We'll start with a very brief summary of these chapters to give you some context. So first, Abraham. The life and times of Abraham are found in chapters 12 through 23. They detail God's calling of Abram out of Mesopotamia, and they reveal a progression of promises given to him. Then at the end of this section, God finally ratifies all that he has said to him with a covenant sign. Okay, what is that covenant sign? circumcision, that's right, and gives him a new name. What's his new name? Abraham. Changes his name, gives him a covenant sign. They also reveal a troubled family history for Abraham, both within his own marriage and his nephew Lot. Secondly, Isaac. The next section of Genesis covering the adult life of Isaac is found in chapters 24 through 28. Now famously, Isaac and his wife Rebecca had twin sons, right? Jacob and Esau were their names. And like Abraham's, Isaac's household was troubled with sin and faithlessness. It's a humbling reminder to us, their children in the faith of God's enduring mercy and his unshakeable love. He continued to bear with this dysfunctional family through many expressions of their dysfunction and sin. Thirdly, Jacob, the adult life and family life of Jacob occupies nearly the entire second half of the book. So Jacob really is kind of center stage in terms of girth of content. multiple marriages, and of course, because of that, a severely troubled family life. But Moses draws our attention once again to just one of the patriarch's sons. In this case, Joseph, right? This is the moving and extravagant story of the annoying favorite son, sold by his brothers into slavery in Egypt and then put into prison. For prison, God then vaults Joseph to the highest office in the land, and Joseph uses his position to bring a fulfillment in part to God's promises to his great-grandfather to be a blessing to the nations. He delivers the nations and even his own family from a devastating famine. Okay, so the promise that we're going to see given to Abraham in chapter 12, we see a partial fulfillment of that with Joseph, who essentially, because of his shrewdness, brings a kind of salvation to all the nations who are experiencing this devastating famine. Now, as you read through the book, you see the extravagance and unexpectedness of God's plan. Old women will give birth to sons. Young brothers will rule over the older. Arrogant men will be turned to humility. And slaves become rulers. The homeless will be given a home. God's storyline of promise and fulfillment is not a normal human story. At every turn, there is the unexpected and what would appear to be the impossible. Man's plans are constantly thwarted, and God's sovereignty reigns supreme. Now you see that God has arranged his plan of salvation to encourage our trust in him. If he could accomplish reversals like those in this book, he can accomplish just about anything, right? He can accomplish any change that's needed in our own life and time, and all for His own glory. So let's go ahead and begin, and this probably kicks off pretty close to where we've gone through the context. This is page two of your handout, God's Place. So God and Abraham. God and Abraham. All right, so with all that background in place, let's turn to our text. We're gonna start with the story of Abraham. Turn to chapter 12, and let's read verses one through three. I'm gonna ask someone to read real loud for us, just so that y'all aren't just hearing my voice all morning. 12 verses 1 through 3. Now before we read it, I just thought this was an interesting point that Darushi made in the textbook we're using. Genesis 12 through 1, here's what he says, Genesis 12, 1 through 3 is the hinge connecting the major units of text, given what came before in Genesis 1 through 11 and 12 through 50. And thus it has enormous significance. This is one of the most important texts in the entire Bible, for it outlines a divine plan for the world. So, I mean, it's pretty wild for someone to say this is one of the most important texts in the entire Bible, and I think that it is. So much finds its origin here. So much development in redemptive history happened here. Really remarkable, a remarkable section of scripture. So let's have someone read. I'm going to have Mr. J do it if he's willing. Genesis 12, 1 through 3. You always said to Abram, go forth from your land and from your kin and from your father's house to the land which I will show you. And I will make you a great nation. And I will bless you. and make your name great, and so you shall be a blessing. And I will bless those who bless you, and the ones who curse you, I will curse. And in you, all the families of the earth will be blessed. Thank you. So in these promises God given to Abraham, we see God's purposes in his kingdom, his people, and his place under his rule. Let's look at each of these components of this kingdom that's being promised here. Let's start with God's place, the land God promises to Abraham. Verse one, God promises Abraham a land, right? to the land that I will show you. This land is significant because you'll remember that with Adam and Eve's sin, they were driven out of the perfect land of Eden. The land promised here to Abraham, the land of creation, I'm sorry, the land of Canaan, it was a real historic location. But it also serves as a picture of a greater reality to come. Okay, that new creation at the end of time. Do you remember the term that Stephen mentioned last week? A picture, what's the kind of biblical term for that? Do you remember? Type, yeah, type, right? So there's a picture, a type, or a pattern of a greater reality which is to come. God is reversing the fall and reestablishing for himself a people who will live in a certain place under his rule, like Adam and Eve did. This is not the complete return to paradise, but is a foreshadowing of it. So Adam and his immediate descendants understood this. If you go to Hebrews chapter 11, you read this. This is an interesting text. Hebrews 11 verse 8. By faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith, he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, a land living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. Here's the key idea. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. So this text gives to us the true nature of the promised land. It is a heavenly city built by God and not by man. But Abraham's pilgrimage is also an encouragement to us. The record in Genesis is that Abraham wandered the whole rest of his days in the wilderness, right? That's what he did, he wandered. In fact, the only plot of land that Abraham officially owned during his lifetime was that of a grave plot where he would bury his wife, Sarah. Now, just like Abraham, if we share in his faith, we have been called out of our natural home in this world to God's heavenly country. We are pilgrims who await the fulfillment of God's promise. And if we hold to this faith as Abraham did, we will share in his same blessings. Okay, so that's the first part, the promise of land. Secondly, notice in verse two that God will make of Abraham a great nation. And understanding the development of the kingdom of God, the nation is God's people. From Abraham will descend that godly line which originated with the woman Eve, who will eventually give birth to the Savior of the world. This is clear from verse three. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse. And all the peoples of the earth will be blessed through you. Now while Abraham and his descendants make up one family, one nation, the blessing here is for all families. Through God's special relationship with Abraham's descendants, anyone anywhere can repent of their sins and put their trust in the Lord Jesus Christ for forgiveness, eternal life, and a relationship with God. Well, that's all well and good, but the text leads us to this point asking, how is that going to happen? How is this going to happen? And to get that answer, we have to turn to chapter 15 in Genesis. God has promised to Abram that he would make him a great nation. Then in verse 2, Ms. Denise, would you be willing to read verse 2 and 3 of chapter 15? So Abraham was 75 years old when the promises of chapter 12 were made. And his entire life with Sarah, this is what we mentioned at the first of our opening today, they had been barren. Now he's beginning to doubt if he'll ever have one son, right? Let alone an entire nation's worth of sons. So God reaffirms his promise to Abraham. Chapter 15, verse 6, God says this to reaffirm this promise. Well, Abraham's response. And he believed in the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness. So Abraham's response to this word from the Lord was that Abraham would believe him. And because of that, it is counted to him as righteousness. Now, I think it's appropriate to take a little bit of an aside here. There's really three asides in this lesson. And this one is the aside of faith. So let's call this the rabbit trail of faith, right? Abraham is counted righteous in God's sight because of his faith. This is good news for Abraham after we've seen how sinful mankind is. Abraham is a sinner just like everybody else, but he is counted righteous because of his faith in God. This is a doctrine that Paul will often stress in the New Testament. Romans 4, Galatians 3, Paul uses this very verse to prove that the only way anyone can be righteous in the sight of God is through faith and by faith alone. The Bible is clear that no one can ever, through their good behavior, their good deeds, their church attendance, their baptism, or anything else, they can never earn necessary righteousness. But it can only be given by faith. So we see something about God's promise of a people. And in the obstacle God has sovereignly laid, Sarah's barrenness in the way. And we see an important characteristic of this people in response, which is, in this case, faith and trust. So let's turn to the third idea, God's rule over his kingdom. Now, significantly, this aspect of God's plan is not clear in the story of Abraham, even though it is present. But this makes sense because it's the part that the people failed to live up to in the Garden of Eden, right? What happened in Eden? They disobeyed God's law. They didn't fulfill the, you know, if you want to call it the covenant of works or not, they did not uphold the command to obey that God gave them. And because of that, they were judged. They didn't live up to it. So God, at this point, simply re-imposing His rule, in that sense, doesn't make a lot of sense. Instead, God's rule will have to take a new form. And that's precisely what we see. So look again at chapter 15, where God makes a covenant with Abraham. A covenant in this context, just define it like this, is a solemn bond and agreement between two parties with terms and conditions that can only be broken upon the penalty of death. In verse 8, Abraham had to ask, and I think we can all certainly empathize with this, how can I know that these promises will come true? How will we know that these things will come to pass? After all, God's promises to Adam and Eve depended on their obedience, and so they failed. But what about these promises, right? God then quickly replies in verse 13, know for certain, know for certain. Now the ritual of animal sacrifice and mutilation that we find in the rest of the chapter is designed so that Abraham can know for certain that God will make good on his promises. Because when it comes time for God and Abraham to ratify the covenant together, God puts Abraham to sleep and he does it alone. In other words, this is a covenant that God will deliver on regardless of Abraham's obedience. In this way, it is a gracious covenant. Now we'll see, we'll visit this covenant many more times in our Old Testament overview because it is so central. But for now, we see that God is in covenant with Abraham, a covenant that will bless all the nations of the world as we read in Genesis 12. But unlike the rule of God that we saw in Genesis 2, where the covenant depended on Adam and Eve holding up their end of the bargain. This covenant, at least at this point, is unilateral. It's dependent only on God. In chapter 26, we read about how the covenant promises are passing along to Abraham's son Isaac, and then again passed on to his son Jacob in chapter 35. In all of this we see we have people, place, and though maybe a little less clearly, God's rule. God's people, His place, and with some clarification needed, His rule. So let's make some comments on this rule, because I think it is important that we don't miss this part of the agreement either. So relating to this rule, another important part of the Abrahamic covenant is that it is expanded in Genesis chapter 17. So 12, 15, and 17. And in 17 we see this expansion of the covenant. It's not a separate covenant. It's the same covenant that God made with Abraham, but in 17 it's expanded, and it does include some conditional elements in it. So as Adam and Eve were to keep the commands of God in Genesis 3 by working the garden and not eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, so too Abraham and his descendants were commanded to keep the conditions of the Abrahamic covenant. This Abrahamic covenant does not simply anticipate redemptive history by only looking forward, but it also echoes redemptive history by looking back. They were to keep the covenant by faithfully applying the sign of the covenant to mark out the people of the covenant with the sign of the covenant. Okay, what was the sign of the Abrahamic covenant? It was circumcision. That's exactly right. It was circumcision. Let me read Genesis chapter 17, 9 through 12, and then verse 14 to illustrate what I'm talking about. So when you read this, think about the Abrahamic covenant expanding to include this part. God further said to Abraham, now as for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you throughout their generations. This is my covenant, which you shall keep between me and you and your descendants after you. Every male among you shall be circumcised, and you shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskin, and it shall be a sign for the covenant between me and you. And every male among you who is eight days old shall be circumcised throughout your generations. A servant who is born in the house, who is brought in with money from any foreigner, who is not one of your descendants. And then let's jump down to 14. Here's the curse, right? But an uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that person shall be cut off from his people, for he has broken my covenant. Okay, so I hope that you feel the tension of what I'm describing right here. There's a measure of unconditionality that we saw in verses 12, I'm sorry, chapters 12 and 15, with some apparent conditionality introduced in chapter 17. Trying to reconcile this, I found a book called The Mystery of Christ helpful. It puts it like this. The apparent tension between God's guaranteed promises and the threats of expulsion from the kingdom for disobedience is resolved in that although the promises were nationally guaranteed, they were not individually guaranteed. So although the promises were nationally guaranteed, they were not individually guaranteed. God kept his promises. Abraham's descendants did multiply. They did inherit Canaan. The promised seed was born. But not every Israelite enjoyed the full benefits of God's blessing. As we know, they did not fulfill their commitments. The promises were nationally guaranteed, but not individually guaranteed. So in this expansion of the Abrahamic covenant, individuals could, and many would, be cut off from the covenant through their unfaithfulness. Now the covenant would be unconditionally fulfilled by God because this is where the covenant, because this was the covenant and the people associated with it, they would serve as the womb, right, where the promised seed would eventually emerge. God preserved this covenant so that the eventual seed, Jesus Christ, would eventually emerge from its womb. The Old Covenant, when you hear Old Covenant, I want you to think about three. Abrahamic, Mosaic, and Davidic. We haven't gotten to those yet, obviously, but when you hear the term Old Covenant, usually these things are spoken of together. The Old Covenant would, in this way, eventually give birth to the New Covenant in Christ. Now, just to take a moment, let's turn into your books again, and I'm going to show you a picture that illustrates this. This is 1.2, just to give you a visual of kind of what we're talking about. You see the Adamic and the Noahic, and these are universal. They apply to all of creation, all of humanity. And then you start to see a narrowing down from the Abrahamic, the Mosaic, and the Davidic, all leading to the introduction of Jesus Christ and the birth of the new covenant. So you can look at that a little more to kind of wrap your mind around it. And if you look at your Kingdom Figure on 1.0, okay, remember those dotted lines that I told you about under the eye? These are the realities that are both promised and would continue to prefigure the realities of the New Covenant and its final consummation. Okay, so you'll see the stars, okay, that represents much offspring, and you see a partial fulfillment of that under the end. And then you see an increasing fulfillment of that under the O. And then you see a final fulfillment of that under the M, which is the mission accomplished column. Similarly, you see the house or the little building. This represents land, home, rest, promised. You see that begin to be fulfillment under the G when they do enter into the promised land. Okay, you see that. You actually don't see that under the M, but it is there. If you look under the tree where it's like flat, there's actually a house down there. So if you have your picture, you can draw a little house below that tree. It got cut off in printing. So there is a future final land, home, rest, promise that is fulfilled in the new heavens and the new earth that that represents. So hopefully that's helpful just to orient you. So why are we picking our way so slowly through this? And for that matter, why does Moses suddenly focus in here? After all, chapters 1 through 11 of Genesis, they're cosmic in scope, global in scale, and then suddenly we focus on God's dealings with a single man, the man Abraham. Why? Because these promises we see the blueprint for God's plan of redemption. As he takes the pieces broken in Eden, God's people and God's place under God's rule, and begins to bring them back together, and that brings us to Isaac. Because these promises are given to Abraham are not fulfilled in Abraham's lifetime, but they're passed along to his son. And so this family line becomes a line of promise, just as we saw in Genesis chapter 3 verse 15. So let's go and look at God and Isaac. Abraham does finally have a son, and naturally the reader is wondering if this is the promised one. Is this the one that God has been speaking of throughout all of Genesis? And as we read on, we find out the answer to that is a resounding no. Isaac makes a lot of the same mistakes that his father made, and he dies without seeing the promises fulfilled. but he doesn't die without an heir through whom the promise can still continue. So is his son Esau the one who received the blessing and carried the kingdom of God forward? Is it Esau? After all, he is the firstborn, right? Surprisingly, the answer is no. It's the younger brother, Jacob. He's the heir of the covenant. God has, through his free choice, decided that it is through Jacob that his plan of redemption will continue. Now we don't have a lot of time, but the second aside I wanted to talk about was the doctrine of election, because this text again gets brought up in Romans to prove by Paul to his audience of the doctrine of election. Now this idea that God chooses who will be his is one of the more challenging doctrines in the Bible to many. It's the doctrine of election. It's the doctrine that some will be given grace, that some are chosen by God purely on the grounds of grace, not on the grounds of anything that they've done. We see that in the choosing of Jacob over Esau. By all natural measurements, it should have been Esau who was chosen. He was the firstborn, and he was his father's favorite in many, because he was a good hunter and knew how to cook. And he was the favorite, and yet God chose Jacob. What I want us to see is how critical the themes are that God is unveiling in this family. We saw faith, we saw election, we see people, place, rule, these things all passing down. We've learned another thing about God's people right there. They become part of God's people by being called by God into faith, not by being physically descended from Abraham. We have no rights over God. We are all rebels. If we get anything from God, it is by pure 100% vintage grace. And this grace is to God's glory. God's grace is meant to humble us, knowing that we have nothing to commend ourselves to God with, and it's intended to give glory to God for how kind he has been to us who know him through his son and are included in his gracious kingdom. So through the family of Isaac, we learn a bit more about God's plan of redemption. Now let's zero in on the son, Jacob, and see what we can learn from here, as the story of the seed of the woman continues. So God and Jacob. From Jacob will grow the great nation that God has promised to Abraham. Abraham had only one legitimate son, Isaac, He had two, but only one was included in the promise. Now, what do we see? Jacob has how many sons? How many sons does Jacob have? 12, says Corey. Okay, she's correct. And things really start to get moving, right? At least numerically. As Jacob's family, remember God named Jacob Israel, starts to grow into a great nation that God had promised. In particular, we want to focus on Joseph, one of Jacob's sons. So let's briefly go through Joseph's story, Genesis chapter 37, 9 through 11. Joseph, if you'll recall, has a dream that his mother and father and all his brothers would bow down to him. This dream is essentially a prophecy of Joseph's future role as a kind of a savior. but his brothers aren't exactly pleased with their uppity younger brother. Verse 11 says that they were even jealous of him. By the end of the chapter, they've sold Joseph into slavery in Egypt. There, he's able to work his way up into a high position. But when he's betrayed by his master's wife, he is brought back low and thrown into jail. Kind of a story of Israel's up and down, up and down, the pattern that you see throughout their history. After many years in jail, he's finally released. But this time, by an amazing work of God, he is serving as the prime minister of Egypt. The Pharaoh puts him in charge of the food supplies for the nation, and when a famine hits, it's Joseph's wisdom and foresight, which he credits to have come from God, that saves the Egyptians. And he saves many other nations around them, including his family back in Canaan. So we see this idea of blessing for the nations and partial fulfillment here. Now there are many things going on in this story that we could look at, but let's just look at one thing. Let's see Joseph's response when he encounters his brothers again after his troubles. The same brothers who sold him into his troubles all those years earlier. Go ahead and turn to chapter 45, and let's look at verses four through five. Chapter 45, verses four through five. And he said, I'm your brother Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here. For God sent me before you to preserve life. Or as it says later in chapter 50, verse 20, as for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good to bring about that many people would be kept alive as they are today. So isn't that interesting, right? Joseph says that they sold him into slavery, the brothers sold him into slavery. They cannot escape with the responsibility for their actions. They are responsible for what they did. But in the same breath, he says that God sent him before them. Why? Well, he says to preserve life from a famine, which at that time wasn't even going on, right? So this is that third aside. So faith, Oh my goodness, what was my second one? Faith, election, thank you. And the last one, we're just gonna call it sovereignty and responsibility, right? So what an astonishing reversal. What a demonstration of God's grace. We have here, we have real responsibility for what we do, whether it's good or bad. But finally and ultimately, God superintends everything. He is in complete and is in total control And what's more, he uses that total control both to uphold justice and to demonstrate his mercy, even as Joseph is doing here. Remember that from a theological perspective, there is more at stake here than just the people of Egypt. God had promised to Abraham, right, that he would use Abraham's seed to bless the world. A continuation of this promise, which was given to Adam and Eve, of an eventual savior. And the threat of starvation for Jacob and his family threatened the extinction of a line through which God promised to save the world. That was really what was at stake. So the impossible story of Joseph, who saved that family, really showcases the lengths that God will go to keep his promises. God really did intend these things for good. Now, admittedly, sometimes it's very hard to see how God is in control when so many tragic and disastrous things happen, and we make no claim that we can understand all of what God is doing. But we can be assured that the universe is not spinning out of control of its creator. He is doing good things in every situation, no matter how hard we see it. Even Joseph, I'm sure there are times in his prison cell he wondered what in the world God was up to. But nonetheless, here in the end, Joseph can see what God was doing. He was preparing to save many lives through Joseph. And yet, as satisfying as that may have been, Joseph would never comprehend in his lifetime the real good that was being accomplished. As we get a picture of the even greater goodness as we leave the book of Genesis, it turns out that Joseph isn't the one seed to come into the world. Rather, as the story continues, it will be through Judah, his brother. So this is the very end, so y'all hang with me. Chapter 49, verse 8, prophecy concerning Judah, one of Jacob's sons. Judah your brother shall praise you, and your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies. Your father's son shall bow down before you. So I hope in reading that you can hear the language, this allusion to Genesis 3.15. Putting down the neck of the enemies, right? Do you hear that similar use of language that we saw in Genesis chapter 3? Look at verse 10. 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 we have here is a prophecy that through Judah will come a ruler, a king, for the people. And that king will be one who triumphs over Satan, crushing his head. This is Jesus, of course. The words of this prophecy are a little vague, admittedly, but this concept will become ever clear as we continue throughout the Old Testament. So then, an amazing journey throughout three generations to see God's plan of redemption beginning to unfold. God's people, a people called by God through faith, God's place under God's rule. The rule of the promised Savior of the world. God's people in the line of promise. has come under great attack through these chapters, and yet God has saved them. God's people remain intact, but at what cost? Look at the very last verse of the book. Genesis 50, whatever the last verse is. So Joseph died at the age of 110. And after that they embalmed him, and he was placed in a coffin in Egypt. Are the people of God in God's place? No. Their head was buried in Egypt. placed in a coffin in Egypt. That's why God himself had to appear to Jacob in chapter 46 to convince him to go to Egypt at Joseph's invitation, because Joseph understood the theological consequences of leaving God's place. So as we see at the end of Genesis, we're beginning to see God's people created. They're still under God's rule, but they are out of God's place. We'll have to wait until next time to see how God takes action to bring his people back to their earthly home. Let's pray. If you have any questions, come find me afterwards. We're out of time. Thank you all for being such good students and bearing with a long lesson. Next week, we'll be doing the first half of the Book of Exodus. So if you want to read that, that would be good. We'll send on Slack what chapters that is, because I'm not sure off the top of my head. So let's pray. Father, we thank you for this morning. I know that we just covered a lot of content. We looked at 38 chapters in the book of Genesis, and I hope that we really caught a vision of the work that you're doing through this very special family. Thank you, Lord, that today our hope is found in the promised seed who would come forth from this line. And Father, we are so grateful for what you've done in this place. Christ, in we pray. Amen. Thank you all.