So Genesis chapter 46, and we'll
read from verse one. And Israel took his journey with
all that he had, and came to Beersheba, and offered sacrifices
unto the God of his father Isaac. And God spake unto Israel in
the visions of the night, and said, Jacob, Jacob. And he said, Here am I. And he said, I am God, the God
of thy father. Fear not to go down into Egypt,
for I will there make of thee a great nation. I will go down
with thee into Egypt, and I will also surely bring thee up again,
and Joseph shall put his hand upon thine eyes. And Jacob rose
up from Beersheba, and the sons of Israel carried Jacob their
father and their little ones and their wives in the wagons
which Pharaoh had sent to carry them. And they took their cattle
and their goods, which they had gotten in the land of Canaan,
and came into Egypt, Jacob and all his seed with him, his sons
and his sons' sons with him, his daughters and his sons' daughters,
and all his seed brought he with him into Egypt. And then if you
go down to verse 28, we'll continue our reading there. And so this is Jacob, or Israel,
and we're told that he, Jacob, sent Judah before him unto Joseph
to direct his face unto Goshen. And they came into the land of
Goshen, and Joseph made ready his chariot and went up to meet
Israel his father, to Goshen, and presented himself unto him.
and he fell on his neck and wept on his neck a good while. And
Israel said unto Joseph, Now let me die, since I have seen
thy face, because thou art yet alive. And Joseph said unto his
brethren and unto his father's house, I will go up and show
Pharaoh and say unto him, My brethren and my father's house,
which were in the land of Canaan, are come unto me. And the men
are shepherds, for their trade hath been to feed cattle, and
they have brought their flocks and their herds and all that
they have. and it shall come to pass when
Pharaoh shall call you and shall say, what is your occupation? That ye shall say, thy servant's
trade hath been about cattle from our youth even until now,
both we and also our fathers, that ye may dwell in the land
of Goshen, for every shepherd is an abomination unto the Egyptians. Amen, may the Lord bless to us
this reading from his word. Jacob was now convinced that
Joseph, his beloved son, was alive. And seeing the wagons
that had been sent to convey him and his whole family to live
with Joseph in Egypt, Jacob agrees to travel south to the country
of Pharaoh and the Egyptians. But on the way, In fact, not
so very long after they started, perhaps just some 15 or 20 miles,
Jacob stops at Beersheba to worship God. And I want to just touch
upon that as we are opening up our thoughts today, because I
like this action of the old man Jacob. Everyone else was just
getting started on their long journey. They were thinking perhaps
of the excitement of going to live in a new place. And I can
imagine all the youngsters thinking to themselves, how long is this
going to take? Hurry, hurry, hurry. And then
Jacob stops. Jacob says, stop. We need to
get our priorities right. And as his family looked on,
Jacob paused, sacrificed to God and remembered the God of his
father Isaac. This is a lovely picture of Jacob
worshipping the Lord God and I think that it's important to
see what is described for us here because this little reference
to the God of his father Isaac shows us that the sacrifice that
Jacob made was to the God of the covenant, the covenant God. And whenever you see that little
phrase, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob,
it is reminding us that our God is a covenant God. and the importance
of understanding something about the covenants in scripture, which
all of course point to that one everlasting covenant, the great
covenant, the covenant of peace, the covenant of grace, the covenant
of mercy, which is our relationship with God through the Lord Jesus
Christ. And it shows us here that the
God who met with Abraham and with Isaac and with Jacob and
promised them his blessing, remember all those promises that they
would have a land of their own, that they would be a mighty nation,
but remember the important one. that there was this promise of
a saviour, a deliverer who would come, the Lord Jesus Christ,
the Lamb of God, prefigured in that sacrifice that took place
on the mountains of Moriah, when Abraham and Isaac went there
to the top of the mountain to worship God. And that was the
important picture here in the covenant view of God, that there
would be salvation brought by the death of a substitute. And Jacob was here telling his
children, we might be going to Egypt, but we will not forget
God's promises and we will not forget who we are and what we
are. and neither should we. we shouldn't
forget either. We might not be part of Jacob's
immediate family, but if we trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, if
we are followers of the one true God in the person of Jesus Christ,
then we are indeed in that family. We're in Jacob's family, and
Isaac's family, and Abraham's family, because we are bound
together in this covenant as those who have faith in the Lord
Jesus Christ. In the night we're told that
God spoke to Jacob and approved this journey to Egypt. And despite
any reservations that Jacob might have, of course he had a desire
to see his son Joseph. But he knew that there had been
trouble in Egypt for Abraham. He knew that Isaac had been forbidden
to go to Egypt. And he knew, because of the reservations
that he had about sending his sons there for food, that it
wasn't always going to be good to be in a place like Egypt.
But God encouraged him to go. And despite those reservations,
God said, I will go down with thee into Egypt. I will also
surely bring thee up again. and Joseph shall lay, or shall
put, his hand upon thine eyes. That's an interesting little
phrase, isn't it? He said, I'll go down with you, I'll bring
you up again, and Joseph shall put his hand upon your eyes. That was God's way of telling
Jacob something very important about Jacob's own life. Although
Jacob was free to go down to Egypt, God was telling him that
he would bring the nation back up again. But not Jacob, unless
we're thinking about Jacob coming back as he did in his coffin
for a burial, because Jacob would die in Egypt. And this little
reference to Joseph putting his hand upon Jacob's eyes is a reference
to the fact that Jacob would die in Egypt with Joseph by his
side, and his son would close his father's eyelids when the
old man died. And indeed, 17 years later, Jacob
did die with Joseph by his side, and the word of God was fulfilled. Here are three quick lessons
that I want to draw your attention to in this little passage and
then we'll be done for today. The first one is this, God spoke
to Jacob in the visions of the night. We might call that a dream
and that would be a good description. But that was one way that God
spoke in times past to his people and perhaps you can remember
with me some of the other people that the Lord spoke to in these
dreams or visions of the night. Samuel in the temple was spoken
to by God and Solomon was another who received a word from the
Lord, the angel of the Lord in the night time. And Hebrews chapter
1 and verse 1 tells us about these revelations. It says there
that God, who at sundry times and in divers manners, that means
long ago and in different ways, spake in time past unto the fathers
by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his
Son. whom he hath appointed heir of
all things, by whom also he made the worlds. We've referred to
this verse before. But that Son of God is the Lord
Jesus Christ. And this little verse in Hebrews
is telling us that the fullest revelation of God comes to us
in the Lord Jesus Christ. Maybe you would like to think
dreams would be an interesting way to get to know about God,
but that's not what God has done. We're told here that there will
be no more revelation beyond what the scriptures teach us
about the Lord Jesus Christ. And today, God speaks to us by
and in and through the Scriptures as they teach us about Jesus
Christ, His Son. And all we need to know for salvation
is found in Christ and in the Scriptures about Christ. And
all the Scriptures speak about the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's
not to say that there's no more to be found out. Indeed, we will
spend the whole of eternity learning new things about the Lord Jesus
Christ. And as we study the Bible and
as we deepen our relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ in
the Bible, there is lots for us to learn. I am ashamed about
how little I know of the Lord. though I am grateful that I know
anything at all. The Lord Jesus Christ told his
disciples, search the scriptures, for in them ye think ye have
eternal life, and they are they which testify of me. He was speaking as well to the
Pharisees and the people at the time, I think. Here's a second
point. Joseph's reunion with his father
was a joyful and an emotional time. Jacob thought that Joseph
was dead. But here was his beloved son
standing right in front of him. And he was a mighty man in Egypt. It had been 23 years since Jacob
and Joseph were last together. And there's a matter worth noting
here, I think. Jacob's joy was real. And it came after many years
of sadness. He had lost Rachel, the love
of his life. She had died in childbirth. And
he had lost Joseph, his firstborn, from Rachel. Perhaps Jacob, if
you had spoken to him, would say that he'd had a life that
was sad and difficult. And sometimes we might feel like
that. Even although we're young, we
might feel that life is difficult for us. And perhaps we have a
loved one that has died or we feel that we've been left alone
or that something has occurred in our life and maybe someone
gets ill and we need to care for them for many years or there's
lots of things that happen in this life that means that things
don't turn out as we might have hoped. And that was true for
Jacob. But as believers, we know that
our God will give us help along the way, along the path and the
road that is our life's journey. And we know that there will be
joy in the end, just as there was here for Jacob and Joseph,
because our God is good to his people. and he is wise about
the way he deals with us, and he is kind in the way he treats
us. So let us not be disappointed
or dissatisfied with our lives. Jacob had had extraordinary times
with God, and yet he knew sadness, and he knew shame, and he knew
loss, and he knew frustration. But God never left him, and the
covenant God kept his promises. though perhaps not as Jacob might
have hoped. The last point is this, and then
we're done. Joseph's brothers were shepherds, and the Egyptians
did not much like shepherds. I'm not sure why, but they didn't
like them. And we could speculate as to
what the reasons might be. But here's the point. The fact
that these Egyptians didn't like shepherds gave Joseph an opportunity
to keep his brothers close to him in the land of Goshen, that
they might be under his protection and his guidance there in this
new land. Goshen was a fertile place and
a grassy area that was very suitable for the animals that they had
brought down. And here we see God's hand again. I don't know why the Egyptians
didn't like shepherds, but the Lord used that fact, perhaps
even we could say instilled that attitude amongst them in order
to protect and hedge in his people because we are his people. You see, being the people of
God makes us different. The Lord's people are loved by
Christ, they're led by Christ, they're looked after by Christ. Yes, we like to be liked by others,
and we all do, but sometimes we must choose between being
liked by this world and being faithful to God. Paul tells us,
ye are bought with a price, be not ye the servants of men. That means don't go chasing after
the fancies and the fashions of this world. Don't think that
if you do what your friends want you to do, that that'll make
you one of them and make you liked. Because you're the Lord's,
you're different, and that means that you're not the same as the
other people in the world. And it might mean that we're
set apart, and it might mean that we're strangers in the land
that we live, that people think we're a bit odd, like they did
Joseph's family. But it's better to be a friend
of God than be a friend to this world. The Lord told Isaiah,
fear not, for I have redeemed thee. I have called thee by thy
name, thou art mine. And whatever our troubles, we
can take them to the Lord, who loves us, who leads us, and who
looks after us. Amen. May the Lord bless these
thoughts to us.