SOVEREIGN GRACE PLANS THE FUTURE II

Genesis 49: 16-28

INTRODUCTION

Have you ever wanted to quit, to throw in the towel?   Have you ever been so discouraged or in so much pain that you just couldn’t see how in the world you could keep going?   There are many things we are tempted to quit.   Our jobs, our marriages, our friendships, our families, our diets, our exercise programs are all things that many of us have quit or been tempted to quit.   Many of us, while we rarely admit it, have been tempted to quit the Christian life.   We are so tired of not measuring up, of constantly failing that we can’t take it anymore.   Or we’re so tired of being disappointed by other Christians or by God himself that we want to quit.   In the course of my talking with people about their faith for the past thirty years I have often discovered that people’s disillusionment with the Christian life is due to a misunderstanding about the Christian life.   In other words, what they are disappointed with isn’t Christianity but a caricature of it.   People are disappointed by a gospel and a God that they have made up, not the true God or the salvation he promises.

In the second half of Genesis 49 Jacob, as he continues to tell his sons what is going to happen to them in “days to come” sets forth a realistic picture of what God has in store for his people.   In the middle of this passage he interrupts his prophetic words with this cry, “I wait for/hope in your salvation, O Lord.”   This is the first time in the Bible that the word “salvation” is used.   In the midst of describing God’s saving work, Jacob declares that he is going to wait for and hope in that coming salvation.   Do you see?   This is the point of his description of what will happen to God’s people “in days to come.”   The salvation that God promises is a promise, which means it is still in the future.   Jacob confesses what every true believer confesses, “I am going to wait for your salvation, no matter how long I must wait, for what you are offering is better than every other offer of happiness.”  

We discover in Jacob’s description of the ways in which God is going to save his sons reasons that we can live in hope.   Jacob gives us what we need in order to hold on, to not give up.   God knows that there are many reasons for us to feel discouraged and hopeless in this world.   However, in the midst of Jacob’s description of the future for God’s people we find reasons to hope in the midst of seemingly hopeless situations.   It is my ambition this morning to help you and I to be hope filled people.   This word can help us to live in a joyful confidence that good is coming if we will listen and believe.

MAIN POINT

We can live full of joyful confidence in the future because…

I.   God includes the outcasts in his promises (vv. 16-21)

One of the keys to understanding this chapter is to pay attention to chapters 28-30 that records the story of these sons’ births.   The 12 sons have one father, Jacob, but they have four mothers.   Two of the mothers are sisters, the daughters of Laban, Jacob’s second cousin.   Rachel was the younger sister who was beautiful and with whom Jacob was madly in love.   He worked seven years for Laban, in order to earn the right to marry Rachel.   However, on his wedding night, his future father-in-law tricked a drunk Jacob in a dark tent into welcoming Leah the ugly older sister into his bed.   He was furious in the morning at the deception but could do nothing about it.   He then married Rachel as well.   The family that came into being out of this unholy marriage was as dysfunctional and perverted as you could possibly imagine.   The sisters warred for the affections of Jacob and for the privilege of mothering his children.   Leah eventually had six sons and a daughter while Rachel had two sons, Joseph and Benjamin.   She died giving birth to her younger son Benjamin.   To make matters worse the two sisters in their furious jealousy actually gave their female servants to Jacob as surrogate mothers.   So Jacob fathered four sons from the two maidservants, Bilhah the servant of Rachel and Zilpah, the servant of Leah.   It is these four sons, Dan and Naphtali, born of Bilhah; Gad and Asher, born of Zilpah, who Jacob addresses in vv. 16-21.

Imagine the scene that is recorded for us here: dying Jacob, lying on his bed, surrounded by his twelve sons and two adopted grandsons.   He has just finished addressing the six sons of Leah.   We know that he is going to have good things to say to the two sons of Rachel, his favorite wife and therefore his favorite sons.   However, what will happen to these four boys, born of servants, born out of the raging jealousy of the two sisters?   It would not be hard to imagine these four men standing at the back of the crowd of sons with their arms folded, sullen looks on their faces, just waiting to see in what way they will be slighted again.   They have always been outcasts in the family; never fully accepted as sons.   They wait to see how they will be excluded again.

However, Jacob, speaking as God’s prophet, gives to these four sons a full inheritance in the family of God.   They will inherit 1/12 th of the land of Canaan.   The prophecies he makes concerning them while short compared to Judah and Joseph are basically positive, unlike the prophecies concerning the three oldest brothers, Reuben, Simeon and Levi.   If you’ll look at v. 16 you can see that Jacob makes a point of telling these sons that they are going to be treated just like the other brothers.   Dan will judge or vindicate his people, just like one of the tribes of Israel.   In other words, his birth from a servant woman will not impede his rights as a full heir of Jacob.   So it is with each of the four sons of the servant women.

It has been my experience in over thirty years of ministry among the people of God that one of the chief things that causes Christians to lose heart, grow despondent, and feel like quitting the church is the sense of not belonging.   When we become Christians and read the NT it seems clear that the church is supposed to be a place of warm acceptance and friendliness.   However, we often discover that like every human institution there appear to be levels of acceptance.   There appear to be insiders and outsiders.   It’s easy to be disappointed with the social structure of the church and so become resentful and bitter.   What God does in accepting these four men into the full rights of sonship is the only sure antidote I know to stave off the bitterness that comes knocking at your door when you feel like an outsider in the church.   Regardless of how other humans may treat you, you are a child of God, a joint heir with Christ of all the glories of heaven.   It didn’t matter how the rest of their brothers felt about them, Dan, Gad, Asher and Naphtali are sons of Israel and full heirs of all the promises of God.   There is a security and a joy that comes to everyone who feels the amazing reality that you have been fully accepted as a member of God’s family.   He has accepted you and welcomed you into his family.   You are free from the tyranny of needing to be accepted by people because God accepts you.   You are free to offer acceptance to others rather than to demand it for yourself.

 

We can live full of joyful confidence in the future because…

•  God includes the outcasts in his promises

•  And because…

II.   God has fulfilled his promises in the past (vv. 16-21 & 27)

One of the advantages we have over these sons of Jacob is the 4000 years of history that separate us from them.   We can see ways that God has fulfilled these promises to these men.   We don’t have time to investigate every one of these prophecies but I want to draw your attention to some of the ways God fulfilled these promises.   First, look at Dan.   God says that Dan will judge his people as one of the tribes of Israel.   430 years after this scene, God delivered Israel from Egypt and brought them to Mt. Sinai where he gave them the law and entered into a covenant with them.   He organized the nation into four units, comprised of three tribes each, for traveling in the desert.   Each of these units was led by one of the tribes.   Dan was one of the four tribes put in charge of these larger divisions within Israel.   During the first four hundred years that Israel occupied the land of Canaan they had no king but a succession of judges ruled over them and delivered them under God.   Probably the most famous of those judges was Samson.   Samson was a member of the Danites.   He judged Israel for 20 years.   But also notice that Dan is compared to a snake that sits along the path and strikes the heels of a horse, thus throwing off the rider.   In other words, Dan, while small will be able to attack and conquer larger opponents by ambushing them.   Again, if you will read the story of Samson you will see that this is an accurate, poetic description of how he, a single man, took on and overcame the armies of the Philistines.   He did so by cunning strength, often through ambushes.

Then if you’ll look down at v. 27 you will see God’s description of the future of Benjamin, the youngest of Jacob’s sons.   He is compared to a ferocious and successful wolf.   The least of Jacob’s sons will become one of the most powerful warriors in the nation of Israel.   History indeed bore out this prophecy.   The second judge after Israel occupied Canaan was Ehud, from the tribe of Benjamin.   Read his story in Judges 3 and see if the wolf is not a very good metaphor.   The first king of Israel was Saul, a Benjamite.   Saul’s son Jonathon was one of the most famous warriors in the history of Israel.   Mordecai and his niece, queen Esther were members of the tribe of Benjamin.   Again, if you will read their story you will see that they overcame their enemies much as a wolf overcomes his prey.   Even in the NT the wolf metaphor is born out in the life of one of the most famous Christians, the apostle Paul, whose given name was Saul.   He was from the tribe of Benjamin and was named for its most famous person, king Saul.   He definitely acted as a wolf in his zeal to destroy the church and then when converted he was equally zealous in proclaiming the gospel of Christ and destroying the enemies of the church by his prayers, his sufferings and his teaching.

One of the effects that reading the Bible ought to have on us is that we see the manifold ways that God has kept his word to his people through the centuries.   The Bible records the many promises of God and then shows many of the ways that he has kept his word.   When we see the faithfulness of God to his promises in history we ought to have confidence that God is going to fulfill all of his good promises.   Imagine that you are the parent of a ten-year-old child.   You are a good parent and have always provided everything your child has ever needed.   You have made many promises to her and always kept your word.   However, this child never trusts you.   You feed her breakfast and when you are not watching, she fills a sandwich bag with cereal and hides it in her bedroom.   She does this at every meal.   One day you discover her stash of food and when you ask her why she does this she says, “I just know that one day you’re not going to feed me and so I’m preparing for that day.”   You overhear her asking one of her friends if it would be OK if she came and lived at her house.   When you ask her why she wants to live at her friend’s house she says, “I know the day is coming when you will not provide me with a home and so I’m just getting ready for that.”   One day you promise her that tomorrow you are going to take her to a movie.   When it comes time to leave, she is nowhere to be found.   You begin calling her friends homes and discover that she talked one of her friends’ mothers to take her and her friend to the movie.   When she comes home and you ask her why she didn’t wait to go with you she says, “I didn’t think you would keep your promise so I made my own way to the movie.”   How would you feel if one of your children treated you like this?   Yet this is how we treat God by our worrying and hoarding and plotting ways to take care of ourselves.   God has given overwhelming evidence that he is trustworthy.   He has never broken his word.   Our lives and his word are filled with evidences of his faithfulness.   We can be joyfully confident because he has kept his promises.

 

We can live full of joyful confidence in the future because…

•  God includes the outcasts in his promises

•  God has fulfilled his promises in the past

•  And because…

III.   God tells us that we should not expect perfection now (vv. 16-21 & 27)

                         

One of the things that is true of every one of the prophecies to these sons is that while every one of the prophecies points ahead to a good future, yet most of them also have an indication of some kind of bad thing happening as well.   Issachar , in vv. 14-15, is going to find a place of rest, yet he is also going to be subjected to forced labor.   While Dan is going to be a judge and though small, he is going to overcome greater enemies, yet he is compared to a serpent that bites the heel of a horse.   The last time a serpent biting a heel was mentioned in Genesis was in chapter three where Satan’s warfare against the Messiah and the people of God is described.   The success of Dan is not an unqualified success.   There is something of evil in this tribe.   Again, if you read the story of Samson you will see that while he accomplished much good for Israel, yet he was a very unholy man who also caused much harm.   Gad , who ends up living on the eastern side of the Jordan River and on the eastern border where he is exposed to all the surrounding nations is continually subjected to being raided by those enemies.   He is able to successfully counterattack, yet he is exposed to constant warfare.   Then there is Joseph whose blessings are piled up in vv. 25-26 but who is not going to be the one to produce the king.   While Ephraim, Joseph’s oldest son, is one of the dominate players throughout the centuries of Israelite history, yet he is often on the wrong side of the fence, found fighting against God rather than for God.   Finally, consider Benjamin , the fierce wolf who overcomes all of his enemies.   It is his fierceness that is the occasion of probably the most perverted and gruesome story in the Bible.   In Judges 19-21 we have the story of the rape and murder of a Levite’s wife by Benjamites in the town of Gibeah and then the refusal of the Benjamites to turn over the guilty men for punishment.   They go to war against the other eleven tribes in a bloody civil war that ends with every member of the tribe of Benjamin destroyed except for 600 men.

The point I am trying to get you to see is so important.   While God through Jacob promises a glorious future for the people of God, yet it is in the future, not now.   This entire prophecy is laced with a serious dose of reality.   There is an amazing future in store for the people of God when the king to whom the scepter belongs finally comes, the Lord Jesus Christ.   However, until he comes we are going to experience only the partial fulfillment of the promises.   Christians who teach or believe that there is some way to guarantee a pain free, sin free, disappointment free life here and now are not paying attention to what the Bible actually says.   We are the heirs of all these promises through the work of Jesus and just as these sons can be sure that their ultimate destiny is glorious, yet it is just as certain that there is going to be much trouble along the way.

In so much of the counseling that I do this is the main culprit in the distress that people feel.   We are surprised that life goes so poorly when we are children of God.   We are surprised and disappointed by our sin and by the sins of others.   We are confounded by disease, accidents, financial loss and irritating spouses.   The kingdom of God has come to us in and through Jesus Christ but it is still coming in its fullness.   We have been saved and we are still waiting to be saved.   We are making progress but we are not perfect.   God’s descriptions of what will happen to these sons in days to come is awesome and awful at the same time.   We need to understand that while we now know who the king is, yet we are still waiting for him to come and take up his scepter and extend his rule permanently over all the peoples of the world.   It is a great help to our joy to know that God said it would be this way.   Jesus said at the end of his life, “In this world you will have trouble but take courage, I have overcome the world.”

 

We can live full of joyful confidence in the future because…

•  God includes the outcasts in his promises

•  God has fulfilled his promises in the past

•  God tells us we should not expect perfection now

•  And because…

IV. God strengthens us to endure in the present (vv. 22-25a)

Verses 22-25a are a description of what has happened to Joseph throughout his life.   Verse 22 contains a play on the name of Joseph’s firstborn son, Ephraim.   It literally says, “Joseph is a son of fruitfulness; a son of fruitfulness near a spring whose daughters climb over a wall.”   Here is a perfect summary of Joseph’s life.   While he has lived in the midst of adversity for most of his life, yet his life has born fruit in the salvation of millions of people beyond the wall of his own family.   He is the righteous man of Psalm 1 who is “like a tree planted by steams of water that yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither.   Whatever he does prospers.”   Then in v. 23 we are told about the adverse circumstances in which Joseph lived and yet flourished.   He was opposed by his brothers, by Potiphar’s wife, by Potiphar, and by the cupbearer for Pharaoh.   All of these individuals were like archers shooting at him, trying to destroy him.   Yet, as v. 24 says, he successfully defended himself from their arrows with his own bow.   He overcame all of his adversaries and became the ruler of all Egypt and the Savior of the world.

But now look at vv. 24b-25a.   Why was Joseph successful?   Why was he like a fruitful vine?   Why was he able to successfully defend himself?   The “secret” to Joseph’s success was that God helped him and blessed him.   Jacob doesn’t simply say that God helped him.   Notice how he piles up descriptions of God.   Here we have the fruit of 147 years of living with God.   Here is a man who knows God.   He seeks to fortify his sons and us with his knowledge, acquired through a lifetime, of the nature of God.   It is unfortunate that we do not have time to linger over each of these descriptions of the person of God.   Let me encourage you to take some time this week and to meditate upon each of these titles and what they tell us about this great, Triune God whom we know through our Lord Jesus Christ.   Let me give you a few thoughts to prime the pump.

The God who supported Joseph in his trouble is the Mighty One of Jacob.   Here is set forth God’s power.   It is his power to conquer his enemies and his power to rescue his people.   All other powers are as nothing before him.   If the Mighty One of Jacob exercises his power on your behalf, nothing and no one can resist him or bring harm to you.   Even though Joseph suffered much, nothing harmed him as the Mighty One of Jacob rescued him out of all his troubles.   Last week at one of the Bible studies I am in, we read Psalm 34:4 & 6, “I sought the Lord and he answered me, he delivered me from all my fears.   This poor man called, and the Lord heard him; he saved him out of all his troubles.”   Someone asked, “Is that really true?   Does God save us out of all our troubles?”   I didn’t say it at the time but the way to answer that question is to ask it about Jesus.   Did God save Jesus out of all his troubles?   The answer to that is yes.   The Mighty One of Jacob raised Jesus from the dead, out the worse trouble anyone can experience, death.   Did God saving Jesus out of all his trouble mean that he never experienced trouble?   No.   It is just like with Joseph.   The Mighty One of Jacob delivered Joseph out of his 20 years of suffering as an imprisoned slave.

Not only is this God our Mighty Warrior but he is also our Shepherd.   We are dumb, stubborn, defenseless, weak sheep.   He is our Shepherd who leads us beside quiet waters, who leads us in paths of righteousness.   He carries the sick and tends to the lambs of his flock as a faithful shepherd.   He is also our Rock.   He is the foundation of our lives.   He remains firm and stable even when the flood waters pound against it.   He cannot be moved or perturbed.   He is a sure defense.   We can run to him and find refuge there from the enemy and security from the storm.   For Joseph he is his father’s God.   What a powerful thing to be able to say to your children.   The God who will help you has been the God who has helped me.   Every parent in here ought to yearn to be able to say this to their child.   The only God who can help you has been the one who has helped me.   Finally, Joseph was supported by “Shaddai”.   Usually this is translated “Almighty” but the root from which the word is taken refers to the breast of a woman.   It seems to me, especially considering this context, that the reference has more to do with God’s nurturing and supplying Joseph with all that he needs to stand in the midst of his many trials.   God has been to him like a nursing mother in the midst of his difficulties, seeking to comfort him and sustain him.   He is the God of all comfort who comforts us in all our afflictions.

Joseph is a fruitful vine and his hand remained steady on the bow because this great God made him fruitful and he held his hands that held the bow.   There is nothing more necessary to make it through this life of trouble than to know this God and to know the reality of his hand on yours, enabling you to hold firm.   Here is the rock bottom of our security and the source of our joyful hope: the hand of the Mighty One of Jacob, the Shepherd, the Rock of Israel, your father’s God, the Almighty is helping you, he is blessing you.

 

We can live full of joyful confidence in the future because…

•  God includes the outcasts in his promises

•  God has fulfilled his promises in the past

•  God tells us we should not expect perfection now

•  God strengthens us to endure in the present

•  And because…

V.   God’s future for us is beyond our wildest imagination (vv. 25b-26)

There isn’t a day that goes by that you are not offered an alternative salvation from the one that God promises you in his word.   There isn’t a day that goes by that you are not faced with an opportunity to quit waiting for God’s salvation and take advantage of another, low cost, immediately gratifying salvation.   A happy life through possessions or spouses or children or vacations or healthy bodies or spiritual ecstasy now is daily offered to each of us.   Many of these offers for an alternative salvation come from religious people and are couched in religious and spiritual language.   What will enable us to refuse these offers and to wait for the only salvation that is a true salvation when there are so many offers of immediate gratification for which we do not need to wait?   The answer is given in the second half of v. 25 and the first half of v. 26.   The appeal of God to us is that the salvation he promises is infinitely greater than all the pleasures of this world.

The second half of v. 25 is a promise that the blessings of God for his people will be the reversal of his curse upon humanity.   In Genesis 3, as a result of their sin, God cursed the life of Adam and Eve, of humanity on this earth.   He cast them out of the Garden of Eden, the place of intimate fellowship with him in the enjoyment of his perfect creation.   The story of Genesis, indeed the story of the entire Bible, is that God is going to restore his people to the Garden and all of its pleasures.   The curse will be overcome.   In v. 25 we find that promise.   The curse had two dimensions.   For the woman the curse was trouble in the raising of children and in her relationship to her husband.   For the man the curse was trouble in the world of work, in the world of subduing the creation and making it serve his needs.   Here we see the reversal of the curse in the blessings of heaven and the deep upon the work of humanity and the blessing upon the breast and womb.   The promise of God is that we are going to return to the Garden of Eden.   If you want to see this even more clearly read Genesis 1& 2 and compare it to Revelation 21 &22.

Then in v. 26 you will note that the blessings that Jacob confers upon Joseph are greater than the blessings of the ancient mountains, than the bounty of the age-old hills.   Here is a clear comparison between the blessings of God and the blessings that this world and its gods offer.   In the arid climates of the Middle East, the tops of mountains and hills were always green and verdant whereas the lowlands were often withered and unproductive.   Additionally, it was on the tops of the mountains and hills that the false gods were worshipped.   The fertility gods and goddesses inhabited the tops of the mountains.   Therefore, God promises that the blessings he confers are greater than any of those that can be had through any of the false religious systems this world contains or through the best part of this creation.   While there are many pleasures to be had here, the pleasures that are coming for the people of God are infinitely greater.  

What God is saying here is similar to what your mother tells you on Thanksgiving Day when you open the refrigerator door at noon to get something to eat.   She tells you, “We are going to have our Thanksgiving meal at 3:00pm, why don’t you wait until then to eat?   Don’t ruin your appetite by eating something now.”   She tells you to endure the discomfort of your hunger now by refusing to eat a peanut butter sandwich in order to experience the superior pleasure that is coming in the Thanksgiving feast.   This is exactly how God argues with you.   Refuse the short term, inferior pleasures this world offers and wait for the eternal, infinitely satisfying pleasures of God’s salvation.

 

We can live full of joyful confidence in the future because…

•  God includes the outcasts in his promises

•  God has fulfilled his promises in the past

•  God tells us we should not expect perfection now

•  God strengthens us to endure in the present

•  God’s salvation is beyond our wildest imagination