Right now, if you would, open
your Bibles with me to Genesis chapter 49. As you're turning, I want to
make a comment to you. I find it always to be a great
encouragement when I haven't said anything about what's been
on my mind, but the Lord leads me and Sean in the same direction. This first song we sung this
evening, Almost from the time I got up, Sean, that's been my
prayer. I thought about this song and
making it my prayer. Lord, don't let me just preach
about grace and not let me have it, not let
me believe Christ. Don't let me spend my whole life
around the gospel and you don't do something for me. Don't pass
me by. It's no accident he sung that
song tonight. You think about that and apply
it to yourselves. Take it to yourselves as you like, but I
thought that more common. All right, Genesis chapter 49. We'll begin our reading in verse
13. Read down through verse 19. Zebulun shall dwell at the haven
of the sea, and he shall be for an haven of ships, and his borders
shall be undecided. Issachar is a strong ass, crouching
down between two burdens. And he saw that rest was good,
and that the land it was pleasant, and he bowed his shoulder to
bear, and became a servant unto tribute. Dan shall judge his
people as one of the tribes of Israel. Dan shall be a serpent
by the way, and adder in the path, that biteth the horse heels,
so that his rider shall fall backwards. I have waited for
thy salvation, O Lord. God of troops shall overcome
him, but he shall overcome at the last. We'll end our reading
there. Let's bow before our Lord together. Our Father, we come into your
courts this evening a grateful and a thankful people. How thankful
we are that we can come before your throne of grace, that we
can come into your courts accepted in the beloved. Accepted because
of who the Lord Jesus Christ is and what he has accomplished
for his people. Father, how we thank you. And
how we thank you for this time of refreshing that you've given
to us in the middle of the week where we can come together, hear
one more time that old, old story of Christ and him crucified.
what he has accomplished for his people, that one more time
we can come and hear what a Savior that we have. And Father, I pray
you'd bless us. Bless us as we look into your
word. Father, enable us to truly worship thee. And Father, as
we've just sung, how we beg that you don't pass us by. Father,
you said, where two or three are gathered together in your
name, there you are in the midst of them. And while you're here,
Father, I beg of you that you don't pass us by, but that you
apply this gospel to our hearts, that you give us faith to believe,
to cling to and rest in our Lord Jesus Christ. Let all of us leave
here tonight rejoicing in Christ our Savior and everything that
he is to all of his people. Father, I thank you for this
congregation. I thank you for each one, for each home, And
Father, I pray you'd bless. I pray you'd bless us as a congregation
and that you'd bless individually, that you'd bless each home with
your leadership and your presence. Father, give us a heart for the
gospel, a heart that cares for one another and acts in love
one for another, that you'd not allow us to be a stumbling block
to our brethren, but that we'd always make the way plain and
clear to Christ our Savior. Father, we pray for our country
at this time, that you'd be with us, that you'd bless this country
in spite of ourselves, that you'd bless for the sake of your people,
Father, that you'd continue to allow us to have a country we
can have the freedom to worship without fear of reprisal or what
men might do. And Father, we also pray a blessing
Sick and afflicted of our number, those of other places who are
in deep, deep trouble, deep waters. Father, we pray you'd be with
them. We know that you've sent them into those deep waters,
and Father, we pray you'd be with them. That you'd comfort
their hearts, that you'd give them grace for the hour. Father,
that you'd deliver as soon as it could be thy will. All these
things we ask in that great name, the name of Christ our Savior.
It's for his sake we pray and give thanks. I've titled the message this
evening, The True Blessing is in Christ. Now we began looking
at this scene last week where Jacob has called his sons to
his deathbed so he can bless them before he dies. And these
blessings that Jacob is giving, they're a prophecy of what's
to come to the descendants of his sons. And Jacob, he's prophesying
that this is what's gonna happen to the 12 tribes of Israel. But we always have to remember
this. The subject of the scriptures is Christ. Now, Jacob is giving
a blessing to his sons, to their descendants, but the subject
of the passage is Christ. You know, our text is a very,
very good example of what we've been told so many times that
the scriptures are bifocal. You know, it means one thing
here, then you look down here, I mean, there's two things that it can
mean at the same time. Jacob does tell us what will
happen to the 12 tribes of Israel But more importantly, at the
same time, he gives a prophecy of the blessings that God's elect
have in Christ. And if we're gonna have them,
they're all gonna be in Christ. This is our inheritance. So the
first thing I want us to look at tonight is the blessing to
Zebulun, which pictures Christ, our haven of rest. Verse 13,
Genesis 49. Zebulun shall dwell at the haven
of the sea, and he shall be for an haven of ships, and his border
shall be undesigned Now when Israel finally comes to the promised
land, you know how Joshua did, he divided a section of land,
each one of the tribes. The tribe of Zebulun, the land
that they will be given is gonna have access to good ports. It's
got a good deep port for ships. The ports of Zebulun were known
for their safety. Even though there's a storm raging
out in the sea, those ports of Zebulun were calm. It's a place
that a ship could dwell in safety when there's storms out on the
sea. Zebulun was a place of rest for weary sailors. They could
come there and they just know they always have a pleasant place
to be. And that prophecy came true,
sure enough, Zebulun had those ports. But Jacob is giving us
a much better prophecy here. It's a prophecy of Christ. Spiritual Israel has rest in
the Lord Jesus Christ. Not will have, does have. We have rest. In Christ, we have
rest from all of the works of the law. All those works that
you read about, all those commandments of the law, you can rest from
them because Christ already obeyed them all for us. In Christ, we
have rest from condemnation of the law. You have rest from fearing
and worrying that you'll be condemned if Christ was condemned for you
as your substitute. When you find yourself fearing,
God's going to damn you for your sin. Tell you what to do. Hide in Christ. He's the haven
of rest. He's the place of safety for
his people. And then Zebulun's ports, they
were also good places for trade. All the big ships, you know,
they come into Zebulun and that made Zebulun a very prosperous
place because all the trading, the business trading that went
on in that place. Sure enough, Jacob's prophecy came true. Zebulun
was a very prosperous tribe. But Jacob's giving us a much
better, much more glorious picture. It's the prosperity that we have
in Christ. In Christ, we have everything. Period. Everything. We have everything
that our souls need. There's nothing lacking. There's nothing lacking to stand
before God and accept it. Nothing. In Christ, we're perfectly
righteous. In Christ, we have life and it's
eternal. Eternal life. In Christ, we have
the forgiveness of sin. In Christ, we have peace with
God. And it's all perfect. It's all
perfect. Can't get any better. You can't
get any more prosperous than that, can you? Now, if you're
spiritually bankrupt, if you find you don't have anything,
tell you what to do. Come to Christ for everything.
Come to him for everything that your soul needs. The Lord Jesus
Christ is the prosperous king. He has all of the riches of God's
grace and mercy in him. And he gives them to his people
freely. Zebulun was prosperous because they worked hard in trade,
you know, trading the goods and unloading the ships. That's how
they became prosperous. God's people become prosperous
without doing a single work. They have it all freely. And then these ports also produced
hardworking people. If you're gonna have the ports
like that and all these big ships coming in, somebody's gonna have
to work hard to load those ships and unload those ships and take
those goods, you know, all these different places and sell them
and make money from them. Zebulun was known for people
that were hardworking people. Do you know who came from a town
in Zebulun? Jesus of Nazareth. Galilee was
a city in Zebulun and you've never heard of a harder working
man than our Savior. He worked hard to save his people
from their sins. He never took a day off. He never
took a moment off. He was always watchful to do
the perfect work of redemption for his people. And when our
Lord called the first preachers of the gospel, he called hardworking
men, hardworking men. God's preachers are hardworking
men. They work hard in the ministry.
I didn't know this until I was studying this this week. Did
you know 11 of the 12 original apostles were from Galilee? Hardworking men. You know the
only exception? Judas Iscariot. How about that? So Jacob's prophecy came true,
both physically and in a spiritual sense, and all of Israel is blessed
in having that Christ, our rest, on it. All right, number two. The blessing to Issachar pictures
Christ who bore our burdens. Verse 14, Issachar is a strong
ass couching down between two burdens. And he saw that rest
was good and the land that it was pleasant. And he bowed his
shoulder to bear and became a servant under tribute. Now, when you
first read this, it kind of sounds like that Jacob is prophesying
that the tribe of Issachar It's going to be a bunch of lowlifes.
You know, I mean, that's kind of what it sounds like. He said,
you're going to be like an ass. And, you know, to us, that would
be an insult, wouldn't it? It sounds like Jacob is saying
the tribe of Issachar, all they're going to be good for is these
big dumb guys. That's who you call to move furniture
and stuff. You know, they got all this brute force and no smarts,
you know. And that's not what he's saying
at all. To the Jews, an ass was an honorable
animal. An ass was very useful to a farmer
with all the work it could do and the heavy loads that it could
pull and so forth. An ass to a farmer was valuable.
And the Jewish kings and nobles, they didn't ride horses. They
rode asses. That was a symbol of honor to
them. And the tribe of Issachar became
very strong. They became very strong in numbers.
Their population just grew. They became very strong physically
and spiritually. The tribe of Issachar saw when
they got to the promised land, they saw this land is good. And
they didn't say, well, we just got to sit around and do nothing.
They saw this land was good and they got to work farming it.
I mean, they got busy, they got to work. And Issachar also produced
a large number of warriors for the army, mighty men of strength
and valor. And at the same time, the tribe
of Issachar produced many men who are considered mighty in
the scriptures. So they were great in number, they were great
in strength, and they're mighty in the scriptures. All of Jacob's
prophecy came true for Issachar. But again, Jacob's given us a
much better picture than that. He's giving us a picture of Christ,
the servant of God, who came and did all of the work that
was necessary to save God's elect from their sin. The Lord Jesus
Christ is the son of God. Yet he became a real man. The
son of man and the son of God. And as a man, he had all of the
strength of almighty God. And he saw the salvation of his
people. He saw the people that the father
gave him to save. He saw their salvation. He saw
that it was good. And he immediately got to work
saving them. The Lord Jesus crouched down
like a power lifter. You ever seen those power lifters
in the Olympics? They get up under that big old weight, you
know? That's what Christ did. He bowed down and got that weight
on his shoulders and he lifted that enormous weight by himself. He bowed his shoulder and he
lifted the entire weight of the salvation of his people. And
he didn't stumble. He didn't drop it. It never became
too much of a burden for him. He carried it. He bore the burden
of the law. All those just commandments,
they seem like they're innumerable. He bore all that burden and obeyed
every last one of them. And he never dropped it once.
He never dropped and slipped and didn't obey one law. He bore
it all perfectly. He went to Calvary and he bore
the burden of the sin of his people. All of the sin of all
of his people was laid on him at one time. The Father made
him sin for his people. Now my sin alone is infinite.
You got all of us up together, you had a number no man could
number together, and Christ the Savior bore the burden of all
that sin in his body on the tree and didn't miss one. He didn't
miss paying for one of us. Nobody else could have carried
that burden. He bore the burden of God's justice. He suffered
and died for the sin of his people. He suffered until the burden
of God's justice was gone. Justice was gone, the wrath of
justice, the burden of justice was gone because sin was gone
under his precious blood. I don't think it's a coincidence
that Jacob put Zebulun and Issachar together in this blessing. God's
people have rest, don't we? Because Christ bore all of our
burdens. That's why we have rest. We don't have to carry anything.
Christ bore it all. All right, thirdly, the blessing to Dan
pictures Christ the judge. Verse 16, Jacob says, Dan shall
judge his people as one of the tribes of Israel. Dan shall be
a serpent by the way, an adder in the path that biteth the horse
heels so that his rider shall fall backward. Now Dan's going
to be a tribe of the judges. Samson, one of the judges, Samson
was from the tribe of Dan. And Samson is known for his great
strength. As soon as I said Samson's name,
everybody thought of the man that just the strength. Remember
how he just, he picked up the gates of the city one time and
just carried them off, you know, they had his head hair tied to
a beam and he just, you know, took off with it, run his strength.
But you know Samson destroyed the Philistines more with his
subtlety than he did his strength. Samson stumped the Philistines
with his riddles. He didn't just go in there with
his bare hands and whip them while he stumped them with his riddles.
They couldn't answer his riddle. One time they made him mad. He
tied 300 foxes together. He tied them tail to tail and
tied a torch and lit it, you know, and set them off. And they
went running every which way and burned up all the crops of
the philistines. That's pretty smart. He didn't
go do that with his brute strength. That was just smarts he did that
with. And at the end, when Samson died, he killed that whole host
of philistines by tricking them into putting them between those
two pillars that held up the whole building. Now, they didn't
realize his hair had grown back, and now he had his strength back,
but it was his subtlety that got them to put him between those
two posts, and in his death, he killed more Philistines than
he had in all of his life. He did it with subtlety. He did
that as a picture of Christ, didn't he? And he killed more
people with his subtlety, more the Philistines, more the enemy
with his subtlety. Now, sure enough, Jacob's prophecy
came true, you know, for Dan. They were a tribe of judges.
But Jacob's giving us something a whole lot better here than
Samson, the judge. He's giving us a picture of Christ.
Christ, our judge. Now, you gotta remember, in the
Old Testament, in the time of the judges before the kings came,
judges weren't judges like our judges today. You know, they
sit and hear the arguments of both sides and they decide, you
know, a legal case. The Old Testament judges were
deliverers. They all delivered Israel from
someone, bondage to someone, from one of the nations around
them. For the Lord Jesus Christ is the deliverer of his people. He came and he delivered his
people from every enemy. And he did it with such wisdom
that once he shows it to us, once he shows us his wisdom,
in redeeming his people. Once he shows us his wisdom and
how he can be both just and justifier, we just stand amazed. Our Savior
is as wise as a serpent. He had a deal with a serpent.
You know what I'm saying? He had a deal with a serpent.
He's as wise as a serpent when he deals with our enemies. Now,
I'll give you a few examples. When Christ delivered his people
from their sin, I mean, he's God. I reckon he could do whatever
he wanted But you know one thing he couldn't do? He couldn't say,
let's just forget about this sin. Let's just ignore this sin,
we'll sweep it under the rug and it'll all be okay. He couldn't
do that because he's holy. He didn't wipe that sin out by
brute force or by some sort of royal decree. Instead, God's
son came in the flesh and he delivered his people from their
sin by being made sin for them. putting their sin away by his
sacrifice. So their sin is no more. Just like a serpent, the kind
of adder that Jacob's talking about here, this is what I read,
that's very well camouflaged and, you know, it just sneaks
up on people and they never see it coming. Well, human wisdom
never saw that coming, did they? That Christ would put sin away
by being made sin himself. by the blood of His sacrifice.
Nobody saw that coming. And then when Christ came to
deal with the law. You know, the law is against us because
we can't keep it. The law is against us because
it condemns us because of our disobedience. Well, when Christ
dealt with the law, He didn't just come and issue a royal decree
and say, well, the law is repealed. The law is repealed. I read a
story a couple weeks ago, they said it's National Beer Day.
And you know why it was National Beer Day? Because that's the
day prohibition was repealed. They said, well, we just don't
like this law anymore, so we're repealing it. God didn't repeal
his law. He didn't take the law out of
its full effect. Instead, God the Son was made flesh so that
he would keep the law for his people as their representative. Christ saved his people, not
by going around the law, not by pushing the law aside, but
by going through the law, through the law. Our Savior is so wise
that when he says, my people are justified, the law says,
amen. The law says, you're right, because
Christ justified them. Human wisdom never saw that coming,
did it? That's how wise our Savior dealt
with this thing. And then when our savior dealt
with death, he didn't use the power of God to say, well, the
bodies of my people, they'll never die. They'll just live
forever. He didn't say that. Instead, the way Christ defeated
death for his people is by dying for them. He was made flesh,
so he had a body that could die. So he could die as a substitute
for his people. Now our bodies will die, but
we will never die. We'll never die. Death can't
sting or hurt a believer because Christ took the stinger away.
When he died in our place, he took the sting away. Death can't
hurt you. Death cannot hurt a believer
because Christ has already died for you. Death will never bring
you into condemnation. Now you believe Christ and listen
to him. Death will never condemn you. Death, you know what it'll
do for you? It'll bring you into eternal
glory. The death of these bodies, you know what that'll do for
a believer? It'll take us out of this world of sin and corruption
and darkness and let us see Christ the Savior face to face. Now
that can happen, that will happen for God's people because Christ
died in our place. That's how he defeated death,
by dying to be raised again. I'm telling you, human wisdom
never saw that coming. Just utterly snuck up on everybody,
didn't it? And then when it came time for
Christ to deal with Satan, just like God promised Adam and Eve
in the garden. He dealt with Satan in such wisdom. The creation
is astounded. I venture to say Satan is even
astounded. Now when the Lord Jesus was born,
baby, Mary's baby, she held in her hand. Satan knew exactly
who that was. He knew that was God's son. He'd
been trying to get him from eternity, trying to take his throne from
eternity. And now he'd become a baby. Satan had to think, this
is easy pickings. Destroy this baby. And boy, he
tried. Couldn't do it, could he? Satan
did everything in his power all throughout our Lord's earthly
ministry to get men to put the Lord to death. I mean, I just
would imagine Satan had to be frantic, just working in the
hearts of the scribes and the Pharisees, working in the hearts
of the religious people, working in the hearts of maybe the not
religious people so that they'd all cry, give us Brabus and crucify
Jesus. He even worked in the heart of
Judas Iscariot, one of the 12. You know, the apostles, when
they wrote about that, You just read as they wrote about Judas,
they're always amazed. They were still shocked on the
day they died how he betrayed the Lord. He betrayed the Savior.
This is one of the 12. Satan worked and moved all those
people to work together to put the Lord Jesus to death. And many times he tried and failed,
and finally he got his way. It finally looked like Satan
was going to win the whole shootout. If he can just kill the Son of
God, he can take his place. If he can just kill the Son of
God, he'll win it all. Satan figured if Christ dies,
that's the end of him and I'll have the victory. And you know,
normally speaking, in a war, how do you win? You kill your
enemy. Well, Satan says, I'm gonna kill my enemy and I'm gonna
win. But in his wisdom, the Lord allowed himself to be crucified. so that he could win the victory.
He allowed Satan, he used Satan as his pawn to move into the
hearts of men to make them want to crucify the Lord of Glory
just exactly like the Father purposed before the foundation
of the world. And when the Savior died and Satan thought he'd won
the victory, he was actually defeated. Satan was defeated
and Christ won the victory because his death put away all the sin
of all of his people. the Lord moved in such wisdom.
Don't we just stand amazed at his wisdom? Nobody could have seen that coming.
Nobody else could have come up with a plan that brilliant. Oh,
how the Lord deals with things in wisdom. We might do well to
remember that the next time we wonder, well, why is the Lord
doing this? Or why is the Lord doing that? I don't see why the
Lord's doing this. Why don't the Lord do this? You
know, he's still moving and acting as much wisdom today as he did
then. He's always acting such wisdom. Jacob says here, Daniel
will be like that snake that sneaks up. Nobody can see him
coming and bite the heel of the horse. That horse never saw that
snake coming. He's just going to make him rear
up and dump his rider off the back and I reckon die. But isn't
that a mighty wise way for a snake to try to take down a giant horse?
You gotta do it in wisdom. In his wisdom, the son of God
allowed Satan the serpent to bite his heel. And for a moment,
Satan thought he'd won the victory. But instead, Satan's head was
the one that was crushed. He was eternally defeated and
put out of business by our wise deliverer. Aren't we thankful? Aren't we thankful that our Savior
is so wise? He's too wise to make a mistake.
He's too wise to do something wrong. Oh, that's who I want
to be delivering me, and it's you. Jacob's pen given this prophecy. In a way, I kind of look at it
almost like preaching. You know, he is definitely under
inspiration of the Holy Spirit as he speaks these things. And
you can't understand the physical tiredness that you get from preaching.
I just kind of wonder if Jacob gets to this point and he pauses
because he's tired. You got to remember, this man's
on his deathbed. I mean, he's going to finish his prophecy,
pull his legs up and die. I mean, this man's about ready
to die. And maybe he's just pausing here to pray. He's pausing to
pray for the strength to go on. He's pausing for a minute to
praise the Lord. Just like we do now. How many times do you
pray in the day that the Lord gives you strength, you know,
to do what you got to do? It could be, this is what John
Gill thinks, that Jacob mentioning that serpent reminded Jacob about
Satan, the serpent, reminded him about the promise of God,
how the Son of Man, the Son of God is going to come into flesh
and defeat that serpent. And all this is in Jacob's mind,
and he stops to praise the Lord. Now, it's always a good time
to stop and praise the Lord. But your deathbed's a mighty
good place, isn't it? Jacob says, let's just stop right here and
praise the Lord. And Jacob then gives us the cry
of every believer. Look what he says in verse 18. I have waited for thy salvation,
O Lord. I bet he sighed, oh, I have waited. for thy salvation, oh Lord. All of us here this evening are
dying men and women. Whether we're on our deathbed
or not, we're dying men and women. And believers often find themselves
so weary in this world. We just sigh with longing, we
sigh with expectation of a better day that our Lord promised is
coming. And we long for it. We long for
the salvation of both body and soul. It's something we've been
expecting because God promised it. You think about, remember
how we dealt with this last week, Jacob, he's been talking about
the line of the tribe of Judah. The scepter should not depart
from Judah until Shiloh comes. He's been talking about spiritual
rest and spiritual safety. He's been talking about the prosperity
of God's elect in Christ. He's been talking about how Christ
will deliver all of his people from all of their enemies. And
it just seems like Jacob is just overcome with emotion and praise. And he said, oh, I've waited
for thy salvation, O God. He knows that the moment of his
death, the moment of his passing into eternity is very close. It's like he's praising God himself,
but this is also something his sons can hear. I'm real close. I'm real close to obtaining everything
I've expected. I've longed for this for so long,
and now I'm about ready to have possession of everything God's
promised me. He just stops it and prays to
the Lord. And I tell you, that's my hope. Right now, even when
I'm not on my deathbed, this is my hope. I've waited for thy
salvation. I've longed for it. I've expected
it because God promised it. It's my heart's desire, it endures.
I've longed for God's salvation. This gospel of Christ that declares
God's salvation, it's the only gospel I want to live by. I just
don't have time for any of this other junk. This is the only
gospel I want to live by. And I tell you this, it's the
only gospel I want to die trusting to. That's what Jacob's doing. So he stops there for a minute
and he praises the Lord. And maybe that's real good instruction
for you and me too. Next time we think, I mean, I
just can't go on. I just can't keep doing this.
This is such a, just seems like futility, an exercise in futility. We do well to stop and praise
the Lord. That put everything in perspective on it. That's
what Jacob did. We did that, now he's got the
spirit to go on. And here's the last thing we'll
look at this evening. The blessing to Gad pictures Christ, our resurrected
Savior. Verse 19. He says, Gad, a troop
shall overcome him, but he shall overcome at the last. Now the
land that Gad was given was on the very outer border of Israel. And since they're on the outer
border, Gad, bless their hearts, they were always the one getting
attacked first, because they were out there on the border.
Every time an enemy wanted to come, boy, the first place they
attack is Gad. And time and time and time again,
Gad would defeat those invaders before they had a chance to get
to the rest of Israel. Now, that enemy might attack.
They did. They made some headway through
Gad many times. They made some headway, but ultimately,
Gad thrust them all out. They never had a complete victory. It never lasted. And you read
through the history of Israel, you'll find that Jacob's prophecy
came true about Gad, about that tribe. But Jacob is giving us
a whole lot better, a whole much more great prophecy of the believer's
victory in Christ. All during his earthly ministry,
and especially at Calvary, A host of enemies came up against our
Savior. I mean, you think, spiritually
speaking, Satan and all his minions, the Romans, the Jews, everybody,
just a host of enemies came up against him. Even during his
earthly ministry, when his hour was not yet come, how many people
came up against him? It was just one after another,
after another, after another, after another. The moment the
Lord began his earthly ministry, Satan took him into the wilderness
and tempted him, even though after 40 days of not eating and
drinking. But at Calvary, how that host came against him. That
day, the host of the sins of his people came against him.
That day, his father came against him in justice. In Psalm 22,
the Savior said, many strong bulls, have set me round about. The dogs have compassed me. The
whole assembly of the wicked have enclosed me. They've pierced
my hands and my feet. And how our Savior suffered.
I'm not even talking about His soul now, just His body. You
think the cruelty, the inhumanity,
what word can you... To make a man suffer like He
suffered. And as he hung on the cross with
his hands and his feet nailed to a hunk of wood, a crown of
thorns crushed down on his scalp. His back had been lacerated with
a cat of nine tails 39 times. He'd been punched and beaten.
And there he hung on the cross. He didn't even look like a man. That sure looks like defeat to
me, doesn't it, Jude? when you look at it with the
human eye, that host appeared to have defeated the Savior.
And he cried and he gave up the ghost. And Joseph of Arimathea
had to come and beg the body of Christ from Pilate. Him and Nicodemus took him down.
They took a dead body down from a tree. Wrapped him in some spices
and some linen. They didn't have a place to put
him, so they put him in Joseph Arimathea's tomb, the tomb of
a rich man. He had a bar he wanted. And they rolled the stone in
front of the door, in front of that tomb, and went home for
the Sabbath day. In three days, there the Savior
lay. Sure looks like he's defeated
it. Peter gave up and said, boys, I'm going fishing. And Wayne,
he wasn't taking a fishing trip. He was a commercial fisherman.
He's going back to make his living as a fisherman. Those dear brothers on the road
to Emmaus said, we thought this was the consolation of history.
We thought this was the Messiah. We thought they felt defeated.
That host appeared to have gotten the victory for a while. But
when our Savior rose from the grave, he overcame them all. And not one of those enemies
can ever touch him again and none of those enemies can ever
harm his people ever again. Now, they can roar and scare
you half to death right now, but one day soon, our Savior's
gonna cast all those enemies into hell, where God's people
never even gonna hear from them again. Now, we didn't defeat
any of our enemies on our own, did we? No, we don't defeat our
sin, because we start sinning less, and suddenly we're a holy,
righteous person. That's absurd. We're not gonna
defeat death because we're not gonna die. We're not, you know,
gonna stand up and say, you know, I rebuke thee, Satan, you know,
just I rebuke thee in the name of Jesus. I rebuke you, Satan.
That's absurd. We didn't defeat any of those
enemies. But we sure can enjoy the victory of Christ, our mighty
conqueror. We can enjoy the victory that
he won for us. Now that's a promise Jacob gave
to his sons on his deathbed how many thousand years ago. And
that's the promise God's people have today. Tonight, you go home
and you lay down in bed and think about those promises. Sean, they're
yours. You think about that. Lay hold
on. Isn't that a blessing? Lord willing, we'll look at more
of these blessings to the last sons, last three sons. next time,
but that's I felt like that's all we had time for tonight,
but that's a pretty good amount take home chew on and What a
blessing we have in Christ. Let's bow together Our father I thank you for this
time that you've given us together a time of refreshing to look
into your word and To one more time see Christ our Savior Father,
how we thank you. How we thank you for him. How
we thank you for your purpose of redemption, righteousness,
and life all in him that you've given to your people freely.
Father, how we thank you. Father, I beg of you that you
take your word as it's been preached to cause it to go forth in the
hearts of your people that we might see the glory of Christ
our Savior and stand in awe, in utter awe of him. Father,
it's in His name, for His sake and His glory, we pray. Amen. All right, Sean.