Jacob

Part of series on life of Joseph
Gen 45:25-47:10

Preached at Chew Magna Baptist Church 16/Nov/08


It all began, a long, long time ago, with a man and his wife, and her father in-law. They were living in a large city, the largest city of the world at that time. However, for some reasons that are unclear to us they had to up-roots and leave that place, that centre of the universe with all its great culture, commerce and pagan religious practices. They had to move hundreds of miles away into the desert regions. They exchanged the certainty of city life with all its settled and secure customs, with the uncertain life of a wandering nomad.

They lived the wandering life, moving from place to place to find enough grazing for their flocks and food for their family. This is the way for newcomers and strangers; the best parts of the land were already occupied by both farmers and city dwellers. So they were forced to continually move. Conflicts drove them a very long way from their original home.

At times, they were driven by conflict and at times by hunger and need. But they were also called. They were called by an unknown God; a God who they were to discover was the creator God, the one and only, the true God. God gave them many promises, the greatest one is this

“17I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, 18and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me." [1].

This man and wife had a child. They told him and taught him about God. It due season this son believed and trusting in this same God. The family religion, for this is what it was, was passed on from father to son, son to grandson, grandson to great-grandson.


Have you guessed who these people are yet?

Now did you know that this happened over 4000 year ago! This story of Abraham and his family has been told generation after generation after generation. This great city Ur, the centre of the greatest civilisation of the world at the time, where is it now? Almost nobody remembers its name, it’s dust and ruins.

But the story of Abraham and the promise made by the living God remain. For God, our God, has a plan for all nations, a plan to call people out of every tribe and tongue, a plan to chose a people who will accept His call with a believing heart, to make them one family; His blessed family. Even though God has great and glorious plans for the whole world, He is happy, He is always happy to start with something very small in the world’s eyes; a single man and his wife.

You have been looking at the life of Joseph over the past weeks and this is a very exciting story but our passage today is mainly about Joseph’s family, his brothers and particularly His father, Jacob. To understand Jacob we need to understand his beginnings.

Jacob, himself, was born into this family, the family that God had chosen to reveal His plans and purposes. God planned to bless the whole world. Into this holy family our Lord Jesus was born, and by faith we ourselves have been adopted into this family. And our adoption is with all the rights of natural children, this is the promise of the word of God.

Today, people are very interested in family trees; well, by faith in the Jesus Christ, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are in our family tree, although they are a rather long way up, near the begining. Our adoption into God’s family, along with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, is through faith.

Jacob was born a twin but he was not the first born son, His brother Esau was. So his struggle with Esau began at birth. Esau and Jacob were quite different, Esau was not interested in God, for he despised his heritage, the family customs, the handed down experiences of God. He did not care for these things nor did he value them.
You can be born of spiritual parents and still not know God for yourself; its not a given that you will follow the paths of your parents.

Esau unwisely married two Hittite women and probably followed their pagan customs. The nomadic life-style and shepherding was not appealing to him. This caused Isaac and Rebekah a lot of grief.

So incredibly, unwisely, Rebekah and Jacob came up with a plan to dupe, the elderly and partially sighted, Isaac into blessing Jacob rather than Esau. This blessing was supposed to signify the passing on of all the rights, religious and non-religious to his first born son.

It’s a bit of a mad tale if you want to read it for yourself in Genesis 27. Amazingly, Jacob dresses up in Esau’s cloths. He covers his hands with goat skins to appear more hairy because Esau was hairy. He hoped that his father Isaac will be too blind to notice and be fooled by goat’s hair if touched.

Well, without going into the details, Jacob gets Isaac’s blessing. But what a great deception! He acted without considering the consequences. What do you think Esau did? Well when Esau finds out what has happened he is so angry that he wants to kill Jacob. So Jacob has to leave his home, he has to leave his family and his mother whom he will never see alive again. He moves over 400 miles away to visit distant relatives. In fact, it is one of the places where Abraham stayed after leaving the great city Ur.

This one event shaped the entire life of Jacob. This one foolish, sinful act marked the next 20 plus years of his life. You see Jacob, looked for the blessing from his father and from God but did not understand the first thing about the blessing of God. At this point in his life, he thought the blessing of God was a kind of superstitious magic.

Can you receive the blessing of God through deception?

He did not understand how blessing follows a humble and a contrite heart, a heart that wants to do God’s will. He did not understand that it was God who was guiding his family, and that it was God who had a hand on his life. Jacob chose the path of deception and this is never the path to God. But God remains faithful to those whom He has chosen. The Lord God had not finished His work with Jacob.

In the next part of Jacob’s life he spend seven year serving a distant relative Laban. He did this in order to obtain Laban’s daughter Rachel as a wife. However the tables are now turned, it is Jacob that is deceived.

On the wedding evening, in front of all the guests and family, Laban brings out his older daughter Leah, and tells Jacob he must marry Leah first, and then in return for another seven years of service he may marry Rachel.

Jacob’s past constrained him for he couldn’t go home and Jacob’s love for Rachel bound him for he had already served seven years for her. So, in the end, Jacob agreed to the stitch-up. Jacob didn’t initially love Leah but was forcing into marriage by the customs of the day and He did marry Rachel later.

After over twenty years of struggle and service, and at times hard service, to Laban, Jacob hears from the Lord. God tells Jacob to return to land of his fathers, the land of Abraham and Isaac. God tell Jacob to return and promised to go with him.

You see, God knows when the time is right to begin to heal old wounds. The wiser and older Jacob returns, in fear and trepidation. After all these years will his brother Esau still want blood? Even, with all Jacob’s personal knowledge of God, he still feared Esau.

The night before the fateful reunion, Jacob struggled with God. Physically wrestling with an angel as he spiritually wrestled with God. Fear and faith, worry and trust, doubt and hope are bound together in this struggle. He wept, he pleaded, he fought, but he would not give in. What was to become of him? What was to become of his family, his children? What had his life come to? Will God do what he has promised?

This faithful man of God, Jacob, will not release God until he received a blessing. If only we were more like Jacob in our dealings with God.

God says “Your name will no longer be Jacob (which means deceiver) but Israel (which means he who struggles with God)”. So God blessed him. The cycle was almost complete, Jacob had finally returned to God.

God’s blessing to Jacob also took care of Esau. For Esau no longer wanted to kill him. Esau had prospered greatly in the intervening years and was happy to receive Jacob home.

The prophet Hosea put it like this.

“He is about to punish Jacob‍‍ for all his deceitful ways, and pay him back for all he has done. 3 Even in the womb, Jacob struggled with his brother; when he became a man, he even fought with God. 4 Yes, he wrestled with the angel and won. He wept and pleaded for a blessing from him. There at Bethel he met God face to face, and God spoke to him‍‍— 5 the Lord God of Heaven’s Armies, the Lord is his name!
6 So now, come back to your God. Act with love and justice, and always depend on him”.[2]

This finally brings us to the passage today. Unfortunately, Rachel had died while given birth to Benjamin. Jacob loved Joseph more than the sons of his other wives probably because Joseph reminded him of his beloved Rachel. He was grief stricken at the loss of Joseph. He was greatly shaken at having to part with Benjamin. Was all contact with his beloved Rachel to be lost?

But he trusted God, and hoped that Benjamin and all his other sons would return from Egypt.

So can you understand the relief when news must have been passed to Jacob that his sons had returned from Egypt? God had remained faithful.

Imagine the scene, the elderly Jacob, in his tent waiting for his sons to enter. He wanted to hear the whole story. What had happen, was Benjamin with them, did they get the food they needed?

So the sons, lead by Judah, entered the tent; they bowed and greeted their father. But before Jacob could ask his many questions, they blurted out, “he’s alive.” … who’s alive? … “Joseph is still alive”. What? Can this be true, my son who was dead is alive, my lovely son, the son of my beloved Rachel, is alive. Jacob was shocked.

Then they said “Not only is he alive, Joseph is a prince and ruler of all Egypt” The elderly Jacob was stunned and amazed.

The brothers go on to tell their father of all that had happened. I’m sure they must have been weeping all around. They recounted the story of what happen in Egypt. They finally confessed to him their part in Joseph’s disappearance. Their great secret, their sin of hate was finally laid bare. Now their deception of their father Jacob was finally at an end.

Does Jacob berate them? No. Does Jacob refuse to forgive them? No. Jacob says not one word about it. Jacob understood what it took to deceive a father. Jacob understood that we sometimes do the wrong thing and find it very hard to find a way back. Jacob understood from first hand experience.

This reconciliation with his sons, and the news that Joseph was still alive revived Jacob. “Praise the Lord, God is faithful, God is faithful, God is faithful” he must have thought.

Jacob sets out to Egypt, with his whole family, to see his beloved Joseph. As before God spoke to him in a vision,

“and said, "Jacob! Jacob!", "Here I am," he replied. 3"I am God, the God of your father," he said. "Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for I will make you into a great nation there. 4 I will go down to Egypt with you, and I will surely bring you back again. And Joseph's own hand will close your eyes."”[3]

Again the Lord had spoken, again the Lord had promised to be with Jacob in a foreign land, again God had promised to bless Jacob and his descendents.

"28Now Jacob sent Judah ahead of him to Joseph to get directions to Goshen. When they arrived in the region of Goshen, 29Joseph had his chariot made ready and went to Goshen to meet his father Israel. As soon as Joseph appeared before him, he threw his arms around his father and wept for a long time. 30Israel said to Joseph, "Now I am ready to die, since I have seen for myself that you are still alive."[4]

The land of Goshen was a good place; it was a very fertile place on the eastern part of the Nile delta. It was a place with plenty of food, for the family and their flocks, a place were the nomadic children of Israel could grow and prosper. God had brought them to a safe harbour, for now. It wasn’t the Promised Land, but it was a place of blessing in the here and now.

For Jacob it was his final stop before the Promised Land. But there is one final event in Jacobs’s life I would like to mention. Jacob gets to meet Pharaoh, the king of Egypt.

7Then Joseph brought his father Jacob in and presented him before Pharaoh. After Jacob blessed Pharaoh, 8Pharaoh asked him, "How old are you?" 9And Jacob said to Pharaoh, "The years of my pilgrimage are a hundred and thirty. My years have been few and difficult, and they do not equal the years of the pilgrimage of my fathers." 10Then Jacob blessed Pharaoh and went out from his presence. [5]

With the gravity of old age, the holiness of true faith, and the authority of a patriarch and a prophet, Jacob asked the Lord to bless Pharaoh[6] . He did not act as a man ashamed of his faith; nor is he ashamed of his experiences of God. Even in the presence of the king of the most powerful nation in the world. Jacob blesses Pharaoh, not once but twice, because he reckons that God has a plan for all nations and all people, even Egypt. Remember God’s promise to Abraham was “through you all nations will be blessed”. So Jacob blesses Pharaoh.




What have we learned from Jacob’s story?

We are part of the great story of the people of God. We too are called by name. We too are chosen by God to work together with Him to bless the world. We too are small and weak and insignificant, but God delights to begin with the small and the weak and the insignificant. We too make mistakes, we too are not perfect.

But God is forgiving and faithful. He is always faithful. Our God has begun a good work in us and He will carry it through to completion.

God has promised to bless us and He will bless us. He shall not leave us. We should not be afraid of what this life may bring. Like Jacob, we are on a journey; we are wandering strangers in a foreign land. Jacob knew, as all the people of God know, we are not at home upon this earth; our home, our inheritance, our treasures lie in heaven, with our Lord and Saviour Jesus.

Amen


[1] Gen 22:17-18 (NKJV)
[2] Ho 12:2-6 (NLT)
[3] Gen 46: 2-3 (NIV)
[4] Gen 46: 28-30 (NIV)
[5] Gen 47: 7- 10 (NIV)
[6] Matthew Henry Commentary, Genesis