Genesis 47–48

Genesis chapter 47, open your Bible there, please. Here on Wednesday evening, we're getting close to finishing up the Book of Genesis and we're in the 47th chapter. What I want to start with tonight is giving you a bit of an outline of what we're going to be looking at. There are 4 chapters left in the Book of Genesis, so I'm going to put these up on the screen so we can kind of see them together. The Final Chapters of Genesis Chapter 47  Pharaoh meets Joseph’s brothers and father  Jacob blesses Pharaoh  The famine worsens  The people of Egypt sell everything to stay alive  Joseph promises to bury his father in the land of Canaan First tonight in chapter 47, we're going to be dealing with Pharaoh meeting some of the brothers of Joseph as well as his father, Jacob. Jacob will bless Pharaoh in that meeting. Also during that time, the famine is going to worsen. We know that they're only about 2 years into that 7 year famine, and the people of Egypt begin to really feel it as time goes on. And they begin to take action in order to stay alive, and through Joseph that happens. And at the very end of chapter 47, we have Joseph promising to bury his father after he passes in the land of Canaan. Chapter 48  Jacob falls ill  Joseph brings his sons to Jacob to receive a blessing  Jacob adopts Ephraim and Manasseh and his own sons

When we get into chapter 48, Jacob falls ill. Joseph uses that opportunity to bring his sons; meaning the 2 sons that were born to him in Egypt, Manasseh and Ephraim. And he brings them to his father to receive a blessing, and it's at that time that Jacob actually adopts Joseph's sons. And that's not a legal adoption from the standpoint of going to the courts and having a judge finalize that, but it is very much a spiritual adoption so that Manasseh and Ephraim become part of the tribes of Israel. And the whole reason for that we'll get into as we deal with that chapter tonight. Chapter 49  Jacob speaks a prophetic blessing over his sons  Jacob’s final words and death And then when we get into chapter 49, which we will not get into tonight, that'll be next week, Lord willing. Jacob is going to, before his death, speak a prophetic blessing over all of his sons. And then he will give his final words and then pass away at the ripe old age of 147. Chapter 50:  Joseph mourns his father  Joseph buries his father in Canaan  The sons of Jacob fear Joseph’s retribution  The death of Joseph And then finally in chapter 50, the final chapter of Genesis we will see how, Joseph mourns for his father, buries him, takes him to Canaan in keeping with the promise he made. How the sons of Jacob after the death of their father, fear that Joseph will now take retribution against them and how Joseph responds to that. And then ultimately the Book of Genesis ends with the death of Joseph. So let's pray as we get into tonight's chapter, shall we? Father, we thank you so much for the opportunity tonight to get into your Word, to open our hearts to all that it says, and all that you desire to speak to us through these chapters. We just pray, Father God, that you administer grace and understanding and help us, Lord, in all that we learn tonight, to weave the truths and the understanding of these things into the whole counsel of the revelation that you give us in the Scripture, Genesis to Revelation. ---

Because Father, we know that it all ties together and that everything that we learn in the Word connects itself to the ultimate and final revelation that you would desire to give to us. Lord, help us to be attentive, open our hearts, help us to be receptive. We pray for wisdom and grace, and we ask it in Jesus precious and powerful name, amen. Amen. Chapter 47 begins this way, saying that,

You can see that Pharaoh gives them a very gracious and open welcome into the land of Egypt. Let's stop there for just a second and let's talk for just a moment about the fact that Israel and his family are in Egypt. And we know that they went there because of the famine and we know that the famine was going to essentially last 7 years. There was 7 years of plenty, followed by 7 years of famine. And after 7 years, it's going to be over. And so the assumption is, well, they're going to stay there, throughout, and then when the land starts to kind of get back on course, they're going to be able to head back to Israel and start propagating the land and da, da, da, da. But that's not what happens. They end up staying in the land of Egypt for 400 years where they grow during that time into a nation, strong, and many. But they're also going to become heavily influenced by the paganistic ways of the Egyptians, even though they stayed separate from them, and they will ultimately be enslaved by the Egyptian people. And when you think about that in the timeline of God's program for the nation of Israel, you're left asking the question, why the deviation? I mean, God told Abraham, I'm giving you and your descendants this land. He reiterated that promise to Isaac, that again got passed along to Jacob. Here we are with Jacob and all of his sons who have been given the land Canaan, which of course will come to be known the land of Israel. But why 400 years in Egypt? Why the slavery? Why all the other things that go along with it? Those are important questions and there are answers. There are some pretty powerful answers, not the least of which is that the sins of the Canaanites had not yet reached their full measure. And what we mean by that, is that God gave, and I believe gives everyone, every people, every individual, every group, time to open their hearts and respond to Him by faith and to turn from their ways, their wicked ways, their carnal ways. God is so gracious, so long suffering. Even though he told Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, this is the land I'm giving you and your descendants, there would be a long time before they actually take the land. A long time, because God is long suffering. And I want you to really get that through your heart. We need to understand that. God is long suffering. God gives opportunities. But there's some other things that are going to take place through Israel staying in Egypt for so long and becoming enslaved and then being released. God is going to paint a picture through the lives of the people of Israel to you and to me and to understand better that journey from slavery to freedom and all that it involves related to our own lives of coming out of slavery to sin. Going through the whole issue of walking with God, learning to walk with God, understanding the ways of the Lord, and then ultimately coming into the land of promise. Because, once we get saved, there's all these pictures, in Israel, we'll get into this in the Book of Exodus, by the way. But there's all these pictures of our past life, and how we walked in slavery to the flesh, and how God came to us to free us from that slavery. And how we responded just like Israel ultimately responded, not necessarily right away, but responded to Moses who is a picture of Jesus. And bringing us out of that slavery and bringing us into a place of learning the early steps of understanding who God is, and what He is like, and how difficult it is for us as believers to put aside our old ways. There's this beautiful picture of all those years that the nation of Israel spent in the wilderness that brings to life this picture of the early Christian life of just really sand in our teeth and walking in a way that isn't always all that successful. But there's a point in our lives where we cross the Jordan and we begin to walk out the promises of God. We see that also in the nation of Israel when they finally went into the land of promise. That's a picture of you and me. How we can spend so many years after coming to Christ, wandering in the wilderness, until we finally make the decision, you know what, I'm just going to trust God I think from here on out, I'm going to start trusting God. I'm going to start putting my faith in Him and I'm tired of living in the desert, in the wilderness. And I'm finally going to step over the Jordan, and I'm going to go to where He wants me to go, and I'm going to live for Him. And what happened when the nation of Israel came into the land of promise? Was everything perfect from that point on? Heavens no. That's when the battles started. Right? And then you got Christians who make that decision. I'm going to start walking with God. I'm going to start really living by the promises of God. And then all the battles begin and they're like, what is this? I didn't expect this. All these battles, all the enemy coming at me, I had no idea. Yeah, that's what it's like and that's the picture God gave us. All of these things that happened to Israel happened as examples to you and me. And we look at these examples and we see this picture of what it is to be a Christian. To live for Him, to walk with Him, to stumble in our walk with Him. And to get up again and keep walking. And to learn, step by step, to trust Him and to hope in Him. There you go. We keep reading here beginning at verse 7, and it says,

And that's an important statement right there. One of the things we learn in the Bible is that the greater blesses the lesser, and so here's this humble shepherd who blesses the king of Egypt.

That's a long way to just say, how old are you there, pal?

10 And Jacob blessed Pharaoh and went out from the presence of Pharaoh.

--- 23 Then Joseph said to the people, “Behold, I have this day bought you and your land for Pharaoh. Now here is seed for you, and you shall sow the land. 24 And at the harvests you shall give a fifth to Pharaoh, and four fifths shall be your own, as seed for the field and as food for yourselves and your households, and as food for your little ones.” 25 And they said, “You have saved our lives; may it please my lord, we will be servants to Pharaoh.” 26 So Joseph made it a statute concerning the land of Egypt, and it stands to this day, that Pharaoh should have the fifth; the land of the priests alone did not become Pharaoh's.” Let me pause there for a moment and ask you. We know how the people responded to Joseph's plan. First, he sold them grain and then their money was gone. And then he took their livestock to give them grain. And then when their livestock and their money were all gone, they literally sold themselves. And that was it. And they worked for Pharaoh. He owned all the land, all the herds and yet they, they still were able to keep four fifths of the grain that they received or what they gained out of the field and so forth. But you can see from the passage that they were thrilled. They said, you saved us, you've saved us. You've saved our lives and they were grateful. Isn't that interesting? You might say, well, I don't know if it's interesting or not. It's not very modern thinking, I'll tell you that. I had an interesting guy write me a note recently. He had been talking with a woman. It wasn't the woman who wrote me, but he said a woman had been reading through this passage and she was a little taken aback by Joseph's plan. She thought it was unfair, she thought it was un-Christian. Which is an interesting phrase. But she said, if he was really going to be benevolent to the people, he would have just given them grain. Just given them for free. We're just going to take care of you guys for free. And, I got thinking about that, and I thought, that is a really modern sensibility. Because that's the world we live in, and we tend to think of those kinds of handouts as an act of compassion. But, biblically speaking, they did not consider handouts like that to be an act of compassion. They considered it a foolish act to simply give people things without some area or level of responsibility. Isn't that interesting? You can see how we, even as Christians today, we've been influenced by our culture, and we have adopted those cultural attitudes that if you're really going to be compassionate, you give things away to people. Well, the government started giving things away to people. Our government, we call it welfare. What has that done for our society? I ask you. What has it done for our society? Has it made us a better people? Or has it done the opposite? We've mentioned many times that in the early church, the first century church, they lived communally. And what that means is, in the Book of Acts, in fact, we're going to talk about this here very soon, in our study of Acts, how they actually brought all of their money and put it in a collective pot. And they just gave money to people as they needed it, they gave food to people as they needed it, and so forth. It was the very first hippie commune, by the way, in the history of the Bible. And so this was going on in the first century church, but you know what? They eventually ran into problems. There were all kinds of problems associated with it, not the least of which was racism. We're going to see this in the Book of Acts as we get into it. We find out that some of the widows who were being taken care of weren't getting their allotment of food and the reason was because of race. Oh, I thought that was a new thing. And then there were other problems. There were problems of lazy people who came into the commune and just thought, well, hey, it's a free meal. I'm going to be one of these Christians and we'll get, we get free food. We can just sit around all day and stuff. So you know what? They had to come up with the rules. Let me show you how Paul wrote to the church at Thessalonica. Here's what he said. He said, For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies. In other words, their time is their own, so they're using it in ungodly ways. Why? Because God never told them to start a commune, that's the interesting thing. They did it because they loved one another so it was great intentions. ---

They started this communal living arrangement but they found out that it started having problems. It started having issues. What do you think now of Joseph's plan? Joseph demanded them to take responsibility for the grain that they got. They started by paying with their money, then they paid with their livestock, then their land, and then their bodies. In the sense that they became servants then of Pharaoh. We're just going to serve Pharaoh but they stayed alive, and they maintained their integrity. And Joseph gave them grain and said, now go work the land. We're not going to sit around here. We're not just going to give freebies out to people and let you guys sit around and do nothing. The Bible is not afraid of talking about good hard work and I like that because it retains the integrity. I believe that when you start giving people free handouts, you take something away from the people. You take their integrity, you take their sense of self-worth. Yeah. Anyway, verse 27 to the end of the chapter says,

Thanks a long time.

Chapter 48. It says,

5 And now your two sons, who were born to you in the land of Egypt before I came to you in Egypt, are mine; Ephraim and Manasseh (I want you to notice there that Manasseh, by the way, is the oldest, but Jacob mentions Ephraim first, and that's significant. We'll talk about that. He says, Ephraim and Manasseh) shall be mine, as Reuben and Simeon are. 6 And the children that you fathered after them shall be yours. They shall be called by the name of their brothers in their inheritance. 7 As for me, when I came from Paddan, to my sorrow Rachel died in the land of Canaan on the way, when there was still some distance to go to Ephrath, and I buried her there on the way to Ephrath (that is, Bethlehem).” Let's pause for a moment there. There's two things that I want to bring out here. One we've already mentioned, and that's the issue with Ephraim and Manasseh, which we'll talk about. But I want you to also notice that as Jacob hears that Joseph has come to visit him, he begins to recount the promises of God and his own walk with the Lord related to those promises. He begins by saying, “God Almighty appeared to me at Luz in the land of Canaan and blessed me.” What is Jacob doing? He's passing along an inheritance of the Lord to his son simply by telling him, this is how God has dealt with me in my life. And I want to ask those of you here who are parents, have you done that? I find it very interesting that often people come to the Lord, and particularly when people come to the Lord as adults, they don't clue their kids in on what happened to them. They don't tell them what promises God gave They don't tell them how the Lord has worked in their life. They just start going to church and the kids kind of get drug along and their heads are swimming, they're not even sure what's going on. What are we doing in church? We used to hang out in other places, but now we're in church and I don't really even know why we're here. What's going on here anyway? It's like I know something happened to you, but you haven't explained it. You didn't really ever sit down and tell me what happened to you. We just started going to church. I knew something happened, but most kids are fairly oblivious. All they know is that now they're getting dragged to church and then they get old enough that they don't have to go to church anymore. In other words, we can't drag them anymore and we wonder why the kids don't want to go to church anymore. I don't know, I raised them in church, I don't know what's going on.

--- Well, did you ever sit them down and say, God Almighty appeared to me. And you'll change the place and the name and how and the what and all the stuff. But just to sit down and say, let me tell you what God did in my life. Let me tell you how he woke me up. Let me tell you how he rattled my cage and got my attention. And I was just going my own way, just breakneck speed toward destruction. And the Lord just upended me and revealed Himself to me and showed me His love and I was captivated. And I decided at that point I was going to serve Him for the rest of my life. And I hope that one day you will come to that same decision and not assume that your children are automatically going to make the same decisions. Don't assume. And we brought them to church. Well, we've seen a lot of kids get dragged to church over the years and not come back. I like what Jacob is doing here. He's reminding Joseph, this is what God did in my life. And this is now being passed on to you in a very real way. And he makes it real from the standpoint of the 2 sons that were born to Joseph there in Egypt. And notice that he says that these guys are going to be mine, they're going to be considered mine. They're going to be considered sons of Israel. And when we get to the point where we start talking about the tribes of Israel, you're going to notice that there's going to be a tribe called Ephraim, and there's going to be a tribe called Manasseh, and they're going to be right alongside the other sons of Jacob, even though Ephraim and Manasseh are technically sons of Joseph. What's behind that? I'll tell you what's behind it. A double portion for Joseph. Instead of a tribe of Joseph, a singular tribe, he gets two. A double portion goes to Joseph. And so that's what's really behind it. It's just the blessing of the Lord. So he goes on here now in verse 8 and following, and he says,

Now we’re told in verse 10.

What is Joseph doing? He's aligning his sons according to age because he wants his father to put his right hand on Manasseh because he's the oldest. And so he puts Manasseh in his own left so that he will be on his father's right. Okay. Because the right hand is placed upon the elder of the 2 sons because the birthright would go to him, would go to Manasseh. So Joseph is just simply arranging the boys according to their age. Look what it says, though. Verse 14,

Now, Joseph didn't like this. It says,

And, just as Jacob prophetically predicted here in this blessing upon the boys, Ephraim became the leading tribe in the northern kingdom and was much superior to that of his brother Manasseh in terms of size and influence and so forth. In fact, there are many places in the Bible that use Ephraim as the name for the northern kingdom. It will simply say Ephraim, and it will speak about the northern kingdom, which later became the northern kingdom of Israel. But it was referred many times prophetically as just simply Ephraim because Ephraim made up the largest portion of that group. And, when we refer to the boys today, we don't say Manasseh and Ephraim. We say Ephraim and Manasseh, we put Ephraim first.

Even in that blessing or what would be a blessing.

Now, he's speaking to Joseph, but he's not speaking about Joseph specifically because Joseph is also going to die in Egypt. Joseph only lived in the land of Canaan for 17 years and the rest of his life was spent in Egypt. But he is speaking now prophetically of the nation that comes from him and all of them will one day be brought back that land. He says,

Wow. That's interesting. You read that and you think, wow, where does the Bible talk about Jacob having a battle and winning a mountain slope? Well, it doesn't. It's not mentioned anywhere in the scripture. It obviously happened, but it simply isn't given to us in any of the chronicles that are written for us. But he reveals that he battled the Amorites at some particular point in time, and he gained for himself the slope of a mountain which he ended up calling his own. And you'll notice that he gives it to Joseph here. Now you'll notice he doesn't tell you where that mountain slope was. But we know where it was because it's mentioned in the Gospel of John in the New Testament. Let me put this on the screen. This is interesting. And [Jesus] had to pass through Samaria. So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour. And so this place, this plot of land that Jacob gave to his son, Joseph, became part of Samaria, ultimately. And that's where Jesus met the woman at the well and brought salvation to an entire Samaritan village. So interesting how these things all interconnect historically, isn't it? It’s so beautiful. I mean, Samaria is even just such an interesting historical, sort of a situation because as you know, Samaria wasn't always Samaria. Samaria was part of Israel, but then Israel had a split with David's grandson, who was a fool, and he split the kingdom in half. And so the northern…, there was the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom. And David's sons continued to rule over the southern kingdom, which took the name of Judah. And there was the northern kingdom, which was named Israel. But Israel fell into paganism before the southern kingdom of Judah and was conquered. And about that time, the capital city of the northern kingdom was Samaria, it was a city. Well, then they began to call the whole land after that name. And so that whole upper part of what used to be Israel is now Samaria. No longer Israel by the time Jesus came along. In fact, it was usually a place to be avoided by Jews. They wouldn't even walk through the land of Samaria. They hated the Samaritans so much. But Jesus walked through Samaria and brought salvation. But anyway, it's just, it's so interesting how all these things come together and the history of them and the background of them. And when you understand that history, things begin to make sense, like they may not have before. We're going to stop there. Kids are going to be done in about 15 minutes so those of you who have young ins over at Awana or in the junior high group spend a little time and just fellowship with your brothers and sisters here, and then get your kids around 8:15, all right. Let's pray. Father, thank you so much for giving us the time tonight to get into the Word. We thank you Lord for these 2 chapters. We thank you for the things we've learned from them, the history, the insights, and the understanding.

We thank you, Lord, for the exhortations and we thank you, Father, for allowing us to study the scriptures which you have retained for us, and kept for us, and preserved for us these many years. And we thank you for it, Father. For we grow in the grace and knowledge of who you are by digging into the Word of God. Be with us, we pray, Father, and speak to us through the rest of the week. We ask it in Jesus name, amen. God bless you. ---