It is very beneficial for us
to look, especially at this beginning of the chapter tonight, because
the Spirit of God inspired Moses to write this, and we are escorted,
as it were, right into the bedroom of a believer who is dying. Jacob. Israel. who is a prince with God. In his weakness, he lay there
upon his bed. A messenger sends word to Joseph,
your dad's not doing well. His health is fading. You need
to come see him. And so Joseph leaves his palace
and all the responsibilities and duties that he had as the
governor of the nation And he and his two sons come with him
to see Jacob. This is the farewell scene, this chapter
and the next chapter of Jacob's life. The psalmist said in Psalm 37,
37, I was reading this today, Mark the perfect man and behold
the upright, because the end of that man is peace. Jacob is
in his last days, and yet he's in peace. And you know, as you
look through the Word of God and you see the the death scenes
of many of the children of God, they always seem to be peaceful.
I think of the words of David there in 2 Samuel 23, as he speaks
about how dear and precious the covenant of God is to him. And
he said, this is all my salvation. This is all my desire. It's all
I want. That's what he said. And blessed
are the saints of God when they come down to the end of life,
and if the Lord is pleased to still have them with a good attention
span and may be physically weak, but still very much aware of
their circumstances and how things are in life and how things are
between them and God. What a blessing it is to read
these men and their words on their dying bed concerning the
relationship that they have with God. You don't find them being
fearful? And I'll bet that you who are
the people of God I bet you've often at least paused to think
of, I wonder how I'll do when I die. When, you know, we talk
about, and Jeremiah talks about the waters of the Jordan. When I put my feet in the waters
of Jordan and I'm passing through the very river of death, I wonder
how I will do. Well, may God give us mercy and
grace in that day to die a death with dignity and to be willing
to face all of eternity with boldness and with joy. Listen,
we're the children of God. Nothing stands between us and
the Lord. The sins of Israel and Judah
shall be sought for in that day. They won't be found. God's not
angry with His children. God sees us and He receives us
in Christ Jesus. There's nothing for us to fear.
David said, yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow
of death, I will fear no evil, and he doesn't stop there, but
I will fear no evil for thou art with me. Thou art with me. And Jacob was, he was very cognizant
of the presence of the Lord with him. And so here he is on his
deathbed, and he speaks these words of encouragement to Joseph. He speaks words of blessings.
He speaks about it, and I'm going to show you here in just a couple
of minutes how that the Lord had blessed him all through his
life. And may it be so, if it be pleasing
to the Lord. When it comes down time for us
to die, And as we look back upon our lives, and I know we think,
well, I have so many regrets. So many regrets. Remember this. Every step of your way, every
step of your journey has been marked out for you and predestinated
by your Lord. Even your missteps. and all of
the things that you have gone through, your blunders, your
sins, all of those things, they have made you, they have fashioned
you into exactly what you are today. You know that in yourself,
in your flesh dwelleth no good thing. You know that. So don't be fearful, but look
back upon, look how God has provided for me. Lord, you've been so
good to me during my life. And that's the way Jacob does
in this passage of Scripture. And I love to read his words
in this chapter and in the following chapter because these are his
dying words. The dying words of a child of
God are very precious to us. There's much for us to take to
heart and learn. I was reading a sermon today
by an old preacher who's been dead many, many years, but he
was talking about the dying words of many of the saints of God,
but he left out the most vital dying words that man ever spoke,
and that's the dying words of our Savior. Oh, how encouraged
we are as we listen to what the Savior had to say in his last
breaths. He said, Father, forgive them.
They know not what they do. There's our Mediator. There He
is praying for us when He was dying. He said to the thief,
Verily, today thou shalt be with Me in paradise. There's the King
giving peace, speaking peace to the heart of a sinner saved
by grace. Woman, behold thy Son. Behold
thy mother, he said to John. See our compassionate example. My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me? Oh, let me dwell upon the subject
of substitution. He took my place. He was forsaken
that I would never be forsaken by God. And to hear him hear
Him in the weakness of His physical
body say, I thirst. And that reminds us He was a
man. This is a real man dying upon
the cross of Calvary. And then His words, it is finished.
There's our surety. He who took responsibility for
saving us has saved us. We're justified. It is finished.
We're made righteous. It is finished. Our sins have
been put away. It is finished. Law has been
honored. It is finished. Justice has been
satisfied. It is finished, He said. That's
our surety. And then He said, Father, into
Thy hands I commend My Spirit. And He bowed His head and gave
up the ghost. You know what that speaks to
me of? Christ is our Sabbath. He is our rest. Oh, the dying words of our Savior. So as we go through this, and
of course we'll be dealing with chapter 48 tonight and then chapter
49 next week, the Lord willing. It may take me two weeks to get
through chapter 49, always remembered that this is
a child of God on his deathbed. And he's not kicking and screaming
and saying, I don't want to die, I don't want to die. He's a man
very much at peace. You say, well, yeah. Well, his life was such a godly
lived life. Hang on a minute. We're talking
about the same fellow here. This is Jacob. There's nothing
exceptional about him except that he was a trophy of God's
grace. The Lord chose him. The Lord
redeemed him. The Lord called him. The Lord
kept him. The Lord preserved him. And the
Lord's going to take him to glory very, very soon in this context. And throughout this chapter,
Jacob, he thinks about the great triumphs of grace in his life. So I'll give you several things
here. Number one, a glorious survey.
First of all, look at verse 3. He said to Joseph, God Almighty
appeared to me at Luz in the land of Canaan and blessed me. God Almighty blessed me. Boy,
you could camp out there for a long time. God has blessed
me. Those of you who are the children
of God, as you reflect back upon the days of your years, do you
not see the manifold blessings of God to you? In fact, your heart builds in
gratitude just reflecting upon the fact God has been so good
to me and blessed me with the knowledge of the Gospel. He has
put me in a position where I can hear the pure truth of salvation
by grace alone, through Christ alone, set forth in the Word
of God alone, to the glory of God alone. Oh, how blessed we
are. He said, God bless me. God bless
me. That's what he says to Joseph. That's what he says to his two
grandsons. What are you going to say when
your son, your daughter, your grandchildren gather around your
bed? Boy, this would be a good way
to start. Let me tell you something. God sure has blessed me. God
has blessed me. And you and I, we're blessed
with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ
Jesus. God has blessed me. And then
secondly, he says, God Almighty appeared unto me. Again in verse
three, El Shaddai. God the most powerful appeared
to me, and the word appeared means he considered me, he regarded
me, he presented himself to me, and he enabled me to see his
face. That's what the Lord did for
me. You remember in Genesis chapter
28, he went to a place called Luz, And he changed it to Bethel,
the house of God. And there he saw a ladder in
a dream stretched from earth to heaven. Up the top of the
ladder he saw the Lord. And he was terrified. And then
he was in awe of being in that place. And he said, this is surely
the house of God. This is the tabernacle of God. He said, I've seen the Lord face
to face. Who did he see? He saw Christ,
the Son of God. Every appearance, every visible
appearance of God in the Old Testament or the New Testament
is the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity. Every
time God speaks, it's the Son of God speaking. And Jacob says,
the Lord, the Lord, God Almighty. He did not hesitate to address
the second person of the Trinity, our Lord Jesus Christ, as being
God Almighty. That's who He is. Isaiah speaks
of Him and says His name is Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the
Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. And then he says this in verse
16, verse 16, the angel which redeemed me from all evil. I've been redeemed. I was blessed
with all blessings in heavenly places in Christ before the world
began. God chose me unto salvation. Continually through the book
of Isaiah, the Lord talks about Jacob whom I have chosen. And
the Lord appeared to him just like the Lord came to you in
sovereign effectual grace. He considered you. He regarded
you. Didn't have to. You weren't worthy
of any regard. But He came and visited you in
your spiritual deadness. And He made you alive. And He taught you the subject
and the truth of redemption by blood. Redemption by blood. Redeemed how I love to proclaim
it. Redeemed by the blood of the
Lamb. Redeemed through His infinite mercy is taught and forever I
am. Redeemed is akin to the word
Job used when he said, I know that my Redeemer liveth. There's also in that word redeemed
the idea of a near kinsman. as Boaz was the near kinsman
who redeemed Naomi and Ruth. Our Lord Jesus is our near kinsman. He redeemed us. He bought us
from the curse of the law. So you see, Jacob is not only
saying that the Lord protected him and preserved him from physical
evils, but he says here in verse 16, the Lord redeemed me from
all evil, from the evil of my sins, the guilt of my sins, transgressions
and iniquities. The Lord redeemed me from all
evil, from all the powers of Satan that were against me. And then in verse 15, look at
this. I hope you noticed it when I
read this. The last statement of verse 15. The God which fed
me all my life long unto this day. He didn't say the God who
fed me ever since He came to me in Bethel. He didn't say that. He said, the God who fed me all
the days of my life. All the way. I'll tell you, here's what the
providence of God is. It's God governing all things
in order to bring His purpose to pass regarding His children.
And I'll tell you, in His wisdom and in His providence, He was
even watching over you and providing for you when you, in your own
heart, were at enmity with God. When you had no interest in the
Lord, you had no interest in the gospel, didn't even know
about the Bible. Didn't even know how God saved sinners by
His sovereign grace through the redemption that is in Christ
Jesus. You didn't know. But you know
who's been feeding you all along? You know who's been nourishing
you all along? The Lord has. And in that word,
fed, this is interesting. I love word studies. There is
in this little three-letter word, fed, the idea of shepherding. The Lord has shepherded me. That's what He's saying. The
God which shepherded me all my life long right up to this day,
You see, David could say with very great confidence in Psalm
23, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. But he couldn't
say that with any degree of confidence before he was converted. But
you know what? The Lord was his shepherd then.
And he was your shepherd. He's always been your shepherd.
And you have always been His sheep. Listen. Sheep were not
goats at one point, and then suddenly, miraculously, changed
from being a goat into a sheep. That's not right. We were His
sheep. We were lost sheep. We were wandering
sheep. And you could say we were black
sheep. That is, defiled by sin. but we were his sheep. And little
did you know it, he was shepherding you right from the beginning. When you were in your mother's
womb, when you were conceived, yea, even before the foundation
of the world, you have always had the shepherd looking after
you and providing for you. and caring for you, and loving
you, and preserving you. I love the way the Lord, the
Holy Spirit led Jacob to speak of this, the God which fed me,
who shepherded me all my life long up until this day. It didn't
start at conversion. Oh, His providence has always
been directing your life. And you think back, perhaps in
your wilder times, when you were sowing your oats perhaps in the
world, your wild oats in the world, or perhaps you were in
false religion or no religion at all. I don't know. But I do
know this. Little did you know it. Little
did I know it. He's been shepherding me from
all eternity. I love this. He fed me all my
life long until this day. And as you take a survey of your
life, you who are believers, the children of Jacob, surely you have to acknowledge
the grace of God in every area of your life. You say, God blessed me, Jim,
before the world was made. He appeared unto me by His effectual
grace and revealed the Gospel of Christ to me. And I saw by
faith the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. I
wasn't looking for Him. He found me. He found me. And the Lord redeemed you. He
bought you. He bought you with His precious
blood. And His special providence has
directed your paths all the days of your life. So that's kind
of a survey of how Jacob speaks of the goodness of God to him
throughout his life. Here's the second thing. Joseph,
a caring son, and a wise father. A messenger came to Joseph and
told him of the sickness, the physical weakness, and frailty,
and apparently the ending of the life of his father. Upon
hearing the news, Joseph brings his two sons to Jacob. And though Jacob was so weak
in his body, Notice the second verse, the last statement. Israel,
he strengthened himself. See, as Jacob, he's weak. His body's wore out. But as Israel, he still has that
spiritual youth. And that's the way it is with
the people of God. We grow in the grace and in the
knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. What can we learn here? Visit
the elderly. Don't forget them. I've talked
to many people at nursing homes and those who care for them. A lot of people are forgotten. Don't forget the elderly. It's
a sad thing. Sad thing. And remember this,
Joseph, he took his son to their grandfather, who was also a believer. I'll tell you this, it's very
wise to take your grandchildren to an old believer who knows
the Gospel, Let your sons and your daughters and your grandchildren
hear from the lips of a seasoned veteran of God of how good the
Lord is. These are Jacob's grandsons.
You know, Solomon says in Proverbs 17.6, children's children are
the crown of old men. There's something about grandchildren. Don't you find that to be true?
There's something about grandchildren. No offense, I've got one of my
children here tonight. No offense to children, but you
know, often grandparents say, you know, if I knew being a grandparent
was so great. I've had them first. I've just
skipped right over the children part. Well, just joking of course. But this is an honorable thing
for the grandchildren of Joseph, of Jacob, to appear before him. And it would seem, by the way,
that, and I don't know how long they have now been in Egypt,
but it would seem like this is the first time that Jacob has
seen them. And here they are presented to him. And I'll tell
you something else. Joseph is very wise in this. He takes his sons to a sin of
weakness and oncoming death. He's wise to do that. I've talked
to a lot of parents. They don't ever want their children
at any age to ever go to a funeral. Well, I want to keep them away
from that. Well, Joseph didn't look at things that way. Solomon
says it's better to go to the house of mourning than it is
to the house of feasting. You can learn a whole lot more
in a funeral home than you can in a party. Learn of the brevity
of life, the certainty of death. Solomon says, it's the end of
all men. This is what everybody is coming
to, is death. And then here third is a gracious
adoption. Jacob says to Joseph concerning
his two sons, consider them to be my sons now. I'm adopting them into my family. And we read that, of course,
it's verse 5. your two sons which were born unto thee, they shall
be mine." Just like Reuben and Simeon and all the rest of my
sons, I'm adopting them into my family. Therefore, they're
going to have in their name tribes unto themselves. This is a gracious
adoption. But notice this. Jacob adopted
them, though he did not recognize them when he saw them. He adopted
them kind of sight unseen. But I'll tell you, we were adopted
into the family of God. And God did see us. He recognized us. He's always
known us. and we were predestinated in
Christ unto the adoption of children to God. But let me get to this
quickly. A sovereign distinction. And
I stopped and kind of labored the point here as these two young
men stood before Jacob. And Ephraim He's the youngest. And so Joseph,
believing that Manasseh, who is the older, will get the blessing,
Manasseh is right across from the right hand of Jacob. The
right hand being the right hand of power, the right hand of prestige,
the right hand of honor, the right hand of blessing. Joseph, he just kind of makes
an assumption that this is going to go to Manasseh. The great blessing of the family
will go to Manasseh. But as we read, Jacob crossed
his hands. I call this a cross-handed blessing. This is a cross-handed blessing.
The one you thought would get the blessing doesn't get it. And the one that you would think
he's not going to get the blessing is the one who gets it. And I
see here a sovereign distinction. And you can see this all the
way through the Scriptures. In the book of Genesis, chapter
4, Cain is the elder, Abel is the younger. Cain is rejected. God chose Abel. Go a little further into the
book of Genesis, there's Abraham. God chose Abraham, not Nahor,
his brother. his older brother. God chose Isaac, not Ishmael. Ishmael was
the elder, firstborn. No, that's not what God did.
God blessed Isaac. And of course, Jacob, he's very
much aware of this cross-handed blessing, because he got the
blessing from Isaac, though Esau was the elder. And in a sense, you can say the
same thing about Moses and Aaron. Who's the elder? Aaron was the
elder. And though he was blessed, it
was Moses that God designed and chose to lead the children of
Israel. David. King David. He had older
brothers. In fact, when Samuel went to
anoint a new king in the house of Jesse, nobody, nobody thought
David would be the one. So Jesse said, listen, your brothers
are here for a very important meeting with God's preacher. Son, why don't you go look after
the sheep today? Yes, Dad. So the unlikeliest
of all is out yonder in the pasture. And Samuel starts to anoint the
oldest, and then the next oldest, and then the next oldest. And
the Lord says, no, no, no, no. Samuel says to Jesse, got any
more sons? Well, yeah, I got one. He's a
shepherd boy. Bring him to me. Here came David
and God, the Spirit said, that's the one right there. Let me tell you something. Our Lord sovereignly blesses
and gives grace to whom He will. And I call this a cross-handed
blessing. Because the ones that you think
that's the one God's going to save, not many wise men are called. Not many influential men are
called. A few, but not many. You know
what the Scripture says? God's chosen the foolish things
of the world. And that just confounds the wise. Because you see, God blesses
with cross hands. Not the way that we think that
He will. And so our Lord Jesus says, Thou
hast hidden these things from the wise and the prudent. You
see, we think this way. I tell you, if one of these men
who is brilliant, just got an IQ that's right up there with
Einstein, If God was to save one of those, wow, look how he
could be used in the church and used in evangelism. Oh, what
an impact he would have. No. God doesn't do things the
way you think would be the right way to do it. He blesses with
cross hands. And He takes an unknown, untaught,
A person makes a preacher out of them. Our Lord chose His disciples. Where did they come from? He
said, well, I bet they came from the Sanhedrin. And them priests
and all them scribes, boy, they really knew the Bible. No. No. Didn't choose any of those. Fishermen. And He'll teach them. The Lord Jesus will teach them. Our Lord blesses with cross hands. And then, of course, Jacob, you
know, he prays for covenant blessings upon these two adopted sons. He finally finds out who they
are. Look at verse 8, "...and these will be held Joseph's sons."
He kind of makes out the figure. There's one on one side and one
on the other. He says, who are these? Your
eyesight's getting pretty bad when you can't see them, can't
recognize them. Who are these? And Joseph said
to him, these are my sons. These are my sons. Jacob blesses them as the Lord
led him to do so. But notice this in verses 15
and 16, and I hope that you paid attention to this. First of all,
in verse 15, and he blessed Joseph. You see, the blessings of our
God are given to Christ Jesus, and in Him we're blessed. These
two sons are blessed through Joseph. And that's how God's
blessed you. Because remember that passage
in Ephesians 1. Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with all spiritual
blessings in heavenly places in Christ. In Christ. So really, Ephraim and Manasseh
are blessed in Joseph. In Joseph. And so Joseph receives
a double blessing. He receives a double blessing
because both of his sons will be heads
of tribes. In fact, Ephraim, in time to
come, when the kingdom is divided after the reign of King Solomon,
when the kingdom is divided into the northern kingdom and the
southern kingdom, the great multitude of the people In the northern
kingdom, 10 tribes, what were they called? Ephraim. Ephraim. And they were not without great
leaders, by the way, the tribe of Ephraim. Joshua. Joshua came out of the tribe
of Ephraim. Well, here's the last thing.
Here's a man ready to die. Verse 21, And Israel said unto Joseph,
Behold, I die, but God shall be with you, and bring you again
into the land of our fathers. I die, but the Lord's going to
be with you. And Jacob, he speaks of death,
and seems to do so without fear or dread. Nowhere in the book of God can
I think of where any child of God dreaded to die and go see
the Lord. Let the reward mongers go on
and on about if you're not doing enough, then you're going to
lose out in heaven. Let me tell you something. There
are no losers in heaven. Remember that. Bless with all
spiritual blessings. It doesn't matter whether you're
an Apostle Paul who wrote perhaps over half of the New Testament,
or whether you're the dying thief who never had an opportunity
to confess his faith in believers' baptism. all spiritual blessings in heavenly
places in Christ. One of these days we will see
the Lord, and may God give us grace to die in confidence, having
been washed in the sin-atoning blood of the Lord Jesus, and
robed in the garments of salvation. Why should I fear when God Himself
has washed me And God Himself has clothed me in the very righteousness
of His Son. What have I to fear? I will be
as welcome before the very throne of God as the Son of God Himself. Jacob said, I die, but I like
this. But the cause of God is not going
to die with me. God will be with you. That's
what he says to Joseph. I'm going to die, but God will
be with you. I read many years ago something
that Spurgeon, he read on a tombstone while walking through a cemetery
outside of London. And it said, God buries His workmen,
but the work goes on. God buries His workmen, but the
work goes on. One of the old Puritan writers
was John Owen, and I know some of you have read some of the
writings of John Owen. Especially the Death of Death
and the Death of Christ is a great work. You have to work yourself
through it. He's not the easiest guy in the world to read. He's
actually one of the more difficult guys in the world to read, but
you'll be blessed if you stick with him. Two days before he
died. He died in 1683. That was a time
when potpourri and false religions seemed to threaten the very truth
of the gospel of God's grace. He wrote this in a letter to
a dear friend. Quote, I'm leaving the ship of
the church in the midst of a great storm. But while the great pilot, capital
P, while the great pilot is in it, the loss of a poor under-rower,
such as myself, will be inconsiderable. You see, preachers come and we're
thankful that God sends them. And preachers go. And we bow
to the will of God when He takes them. But never imagine that
any man is irreplaceable. You see, the Lord and His eternal
purpose of grace got along just fine before I came here, before
I came into this world. It would get along just fine
when I leave this world. His purpose will never miss a
beat. Nobody is irreplaceable. Nobody. So God buries His workman. He's
going to bury Jacob. But the work will go on. And
He says to Joseph, but I'm going to give you a special parcel
of ground in Shechem. And as you go to the end of the
book of Joshua, In fact, you want to look at this, I'll just
show it to you. Joshua chapter 24. I'll give
you this and I'll quit. Joshua chapter 24 and verse 32. Joshua chapter 24 and verse 32. And the bones of Joseph, and
we're going to see when we get to Genesis chapter 50, that Joseph
told his family, don't you bury my bones in Egypt. Take them
with you into the promised land. I'm not going to be buried with
the mummies of Egypt. Take my bones with you. So now
we're in the last chapter of Joshua, next to the last verse. And the bones of Joseph, which
the children of Israel brought up out of Egypt, buried they
in Shechem, in a parcel of ground which Jacob bought of the sons
of Hamor, the father of Shechem, for a hundred pieces of silver,
and it became the inheritance of the children of Joseph." God
said, I'm going to give you that parcel of land. The Lord takes
care of His children. He's always fed us. He's always
shepherded us. And He's not going to stop now.
And in the midst of all this, what looks to us to be chaos
in this world, remember this, that one who is the pilot, He
has not left the ship. And He's guiding His church,
His people. to a glorious end. Be at peace.