I Wait for Your Salvation, O Lord

When Jacob called his sons and said, "Gather yourselves together that I may tell you what shall happen to you in the days to come. Assemble and listen, O sons of Jacob. Listen to Israel, your father. Reuben, you are my firstborn, my might and the first fruits of my strength, preeminent in dignity and preeminent in power. Unstable as water, you shall not have pre-eminence because you went up on your father's bed, then you defiled it.

He went up to my couch. Simeon and Levi are brothers. Weapons of violence are their swords. Let my soul come not into their council. O my glory, be not joined to their company, for in their anger they killed men, and in their willingness they hamstrung oxen.

Cursed be their anger for it is fierce and their wrath for it is cruel. I will divide them in Jacob and scatter them in Israel. Judah, your brothers shall praise you. Your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies. Your father's sons shall bow down before you.

Judah is a lion's cub. From the prey, my son, you have gone up. He stooped down. He crouched as a lion and as a lioness, who dares rouse him?

The sceptre shall not depart from Judah nor the ruler's staff from between his feet until tribute comes to him, and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples. Binding his foal to the vine and his donkey's colt to the choice vine, he has washed his garments in wine and his vesture in the blood of grapes. His eyes are darker than wine. His teeth whiter than milk. Zebulun shall dwell at the shore of the sea.

He shall become a haven for ships, and his border shall be at Sidon. Issachar is a strong donkey crouching between the sheepfolds. He saw that a resting place was good and that the land was pleasant, so he bowed his shoulder to bear and became a servant at forced labour. Dan shall judge his people as one of the tribes of Israel. Dan shall be a serpent in the way, a viper by the path that bites the horse's heels so that his rider falls backwards.

I wait for your salvation, O Lord. Something very prophetic in that last statement. That was Jacob's dream and him prophesying to his sons before he left this earth. But I'm not preaching today. The sky is.

You know, a text this morning, friends, both here in church and on live streaming, our text is verse 18. Just seven words, but it's the first advent prayer in the Bible and we're going to see this morning that those seven words will take us all the way from Genesis right through to the book of Revelation. So again, if you could keep your Bibles handy because I'm going to ask you to look up some other scriptures as we proceed this morning to unpack what this is all about. Words of the text: I will wait for your salvation, O Lord. Brothers and sisters in our Lord Jesus Christ, Jacob is addressing his sons and then suddenly we get this interjection, this interruption.

Okay, we generally make allowances for elderly people, don't we? Short-term memory loss. And so is Jacob having a senior moment and he's forgotten what he's going to say, and so he does, as it were, clear his mind by calling on the name of the Lord. Is that what he's doing? Because these words of verse 18 are actually a prayer but they seem so frightfully disconnected with everything that's gone before and that comes afterwards.

The speech comes from a man on his deathbed and let me point out to you that he's doing some very straight talking. Much of it is not all that encouraging. I mean, he tells his oldest son Reuben that he's lost the right to be the firstborn for committing incest in the family. He rebukes his next two sons, Simeon and Levi, for being a couple of hotheads. And then, okay, for Judah we get some wonderful promises about the coming of Messiah, but now he gets to Dan, his fifth son, and he calls Dan a snake in the grass. It's a bit different from the way in which most deathbeds go these days, congregation, isn't it?

Don't want to create waves and so we mustn't upset people in those moments of grief. So we keep it nice and low key, okay? Lots of sentimental niceties. And the tough things often just don't get said.

I mean, where's the man who has the courage to say, "Fred, my son, you've lived without God and I'm sorry that I'm not going to see you in heaven." Would we dare to say that? In contrast, Jacob doesn't beat around the bush. Dan is a snake in the grass. And having said that, we then get this cry to God that Jacob is waiting for God's salvation.

But let's unpack that this morning, congregation, and see if we can understand why it is that Jacob spits out, as it were, this advent longing, this advent prayer. As Jacob speaks to each of his sons, I imagine he must have been acutely aware of his own story. In fact, isn't one of the sobering things, congregation, the fact that we so often see ourselves in our children? And if we don't see ourselves in our children, other people often see in us in our children. So how can Jacob compare his son Dan to a snake in the grass and not think of himself?

I mean, Jacob had also been a sly, scheming snake in the grass. Just think of some of the events for a moment in Jacob's life. Do you remember his story from Genesis? I'm sure most of us this morning are familiar with it. He was the youngest of a twin.

Esau, his twin brother, was born just moments before Jacob and Jacob was jealous of Esau's position as the firstborn in the family. And so one day Esau comes home. He's been out in the fields and he's been working and he's starving. And Jacob, he's just been cooking up a storm in the kitchen and Esau pleads with Jacob for some of that wonderful food in that cooking pot. And then Jacob says, "Sure thing, Esau," he says, "just sell me your birthright for a meal of this stuff in the pot."

What a snake in the grass, taking advantage of his brother's hunger. And by that devious means, he gains his brother's birthright. As if that isn't bad enough, congregation, he then deceives a little later his elderly father Isaac. Now, okay, his scheming mother put him up to it. The idea was to receive from Isaac the blessing of the firstborn that Isaac would have given to Esau.

And so he disguises himself as his brother Esau and he tricks Isaac into giving him that very special firstborn blessing. What a snake in the grass to play a cruel trick like that on a blind, elderly father. And we wonder, does Jacob see himself in Dan? Is that why he cries out for God's salvation? This morning we could also think, congregation, of the way in which Dan came into the world.

Do you remember the story of the battle between Jacob's two wives, Leah and Rachel? Read it and you find it's a real soap opera. Make for a real television show or for a Mills and Boon book. Story of jealousy and intrigue. Please turn a moment to Genesis 30.

I want to show you what happens in that chapter. In Genesis 29, Leah, who is the less favoured of the two wives, has four children: Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah. They've all been mentioned so far in Jacob's last words to his sons and Rachel is beside herself. Leah's got four children and she's got none. And every month again, there's that reminder: no, I'm not pregnant.

And then notice what she says to Jacob, verse 2 of chapter 30. "Jacob, give me children or I shall die." As if Jacob can play God and make it happen. No way. And he tells her so.

In verse 3, she then hits on a solution. She offers Jacob a servant girl, Bilhah, as a concubine. Let me read with you from verse 3. "Then she said to Jacob, 'Here is my servant Bilhah. Go into her so that she may give birth on my behalf, that even I may have children through her.'"

Amazing, congregation, because Bilhah was the servant girl of Leah. Any child she had would belong to Rachel. And then Jacob thinks to himself, "Well, why not? It's a fairly common practice in our world, everyone else is doing it. Even Abraham did it with Hagar, remember? And he gained an extra son called Ishmael and it works."

Bilhah falls pregnant almost immediately and Rachel, please notice in verse 6 if you've got your Bible open there, it's not Bilhah, it's Rachel who names the child and she calls him Dan. Almost with a note of triumph, she declares, "God has judged in my favour and given me a son." Your Bible will have a footnote at verse 6 explaining that the name Dan means "he has judged." God judged in the sense of vindicating Rachel in her contest for children with her sister Leah. Now, congregation, I want to ask you: was Rachel right about that?

I want to say absolutely not. It was bad enough that Jacob had married two wives. Nowhere does the Bible approve that. But to attempt now to have children through a servant girl, that's just the ways of the world. And yet she piously attributes the birth of Dan to God's justice to justify her behaviour.

I'm convinced, congregation, that something of that background now haunts Jacob on his deathbed. He's spoken his final words to a number of his other sons and then he gets to Dan and it must have all come flooding back to him. The rivalry of those jealous two sisters who were his wives, giving in to the pressure to find a worldly solution to Rachel's problems when really he should have counselled Rachel to wait for God's timing. God wanted to give her two sons, Joseph and Benjamin, in His good time. Okay, they didn't know that at that stage, but what they did was so wrong.

Jacob forgot back then how foolish it had been for Abraham to do the same thing. He hadn't learned the lesson about Hagar. He conveniently forgot the misery that Hagar and Ishmael brought to Abraham and Sarah. When I think of that, congregation, then I can understand why Jacob interrupts his words to his sons at this point. Looking at his son Dan, and he sees himself in his son and he sees that whole sordid story of him going to bed with Bilhah and he cries out for God's salvation.

I wait for your salvation, O Lord. It's interesting, by the way, that this is the first time in the Bible that the word salvation is ever used. Salvation, it's a cry for God to do His saving work. Actually, it's really a cry for the coming of Jesus. It's an advent prayer: come, Lord Jesus.

It's what it boils down to. And that becomes clear when we listen carefully to the word salvation in the Hebrew language. It's Yeshua. The name Joshua comes from that word, and that's simply the Old Testament equivalent of the New Testament Jesus. And here that cry for Jesus comes in the context of human beings who have totally messed up, messed up so badly.

And isn't that just when you and I too want to cry out, "Come again, Lord Jesus." We want Him to return. When we think at times of the mess we make out of life, we cry out, "Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly." At the same time, our text is not just about Dan, congregation, it's also about Dan's descendants. You see, this is not only a prayer.

This is also a prophecy. A prophecy that gives us insight into the future of the tribe of Dan. And that future has some very, very positive things going for it. I mean, Jacob predicts that Dan will provide justice for his people. Literally, Jacob says, "Dan shall judge his people," but there are some things that I need to explain about that this morning.

First of all, it's a play on the name Dan. Do you remember that footnote I drew your attention to, that it means to judge? The name that Rachel gave him? It was because she piously believed that God had judged between her and her sister. God had judged in the sense of vindicating her arrangement with Bilhah and so she names him Dan, which means "he has judged." And now Jacob plays on the meaning of that name Dan. And by the way, he did that for most of his sons.

Each of the prophecies basically plays on the meaning of the son's name. So here with Dan, Jacob is saying, "Dan shall judge his people." Now the second thing we need to understand about that is that this is predicting orderliness. He's about to call Dan a snake in the grass. Well, in spite of Dan being a snake in the grass, his will also be a tribe where people live orderly lives under judges because the full sentence of what Jacob says, "Dan shall judge his people as one of the tribes of Israel."

And that brings us to a third thing, congregation. What is an Old Testament concept of a judge? I wonder if I was to do, you know, one of these word association tests this morning, what would you immediately think of? Now I say judge and you say courtroom or I say judge and you say jury. But in the Old Testament, a judge was not first of all a man dressed in black sitting in a courtroom.

Rather, a judge was someone who worked to set things right again. In a sense, they reflected the character of God in serving the good, the well-being of the people. But you see, this prediction that Dan shall judge the people came through in a very special and a very spectacular way. Probably the most famous of all the judges in the book of Judges was from the tribe of Dan. That ring any bells for anyone?

There are four whole chapters devoted to him. He was that man of superhuman strength and his name was Samson, a Nazarite, someone who'd been set apart, dedicated, devoted to God from birth. And his strength, friends, didn't lie in his biceps and triceps. He may have been a very ordinary kind of bloke, but God's Spirit at times gave him superhuman strength and for twenty years he judged Israel. But you know, brothers and sisters, Samson was another one of those people who was just a bit of a snake in the grass.

Personal vindictiveness often got the better of him, didn't it? Remember the occasion when he caught 300 foxes? I wonder how he did that. 300 foxes and he tied them together tail by tail and tied a burning torch to their tails and then let them loose in the standing grain of the Philistines. But you know, more seriously, we find in him the same tendency to compromise.

I mean, Jacob and Rachel had compromised by adopting a worldly solution to Rachel's childlessness. What does Samson do? He compromises by messing around with Philistine women. Most notorious being Delilah, who was the ruin of his life. So here is this great judge in Israel, but at the same time a deeply flawed character.

A fallen human being who toys with the holy things of God. He lets Delilah weave his hair, which is the secret of his strength, into a loom. And with sightless eyes, he finishes up sitting in a Philistine prison grinding corn. It's as if in the vision, Jacob already sees this deeply flawed judge in Israel, and it makes him cry out for the coming of Jesus. I wait for your salvation, Lord.

Congregation, there's another way in which the tribe of Dan features prominently in the book of Judges. And it's possible, I don't know, but it's possible that Jacob already sees that too in his vision. Remember, it's prophetic. Jacob is speaking about this snake in the grass that bites the horse's heels and makes the riders tumble backwards and that may just be a kind of symbolic way of picturing the part that Dan played in the conquest of Canaan. You can read the story at home today in Judges 18.

There's your homework for you. Judges 18 tells the story. It's a horrible story. The tribe of Dan has been unable to take the territory that had been allocated to them. I mean, it was hard work, very difficult work driving the Canaanites out of their territory. And so instead they send out spies to check out some other possibilities.

And way up in the North, the spies find this peaceful town of Laish. On the way north, they come across a man by the name of Micah and Micah has some idols in his home. He also has a Levite whom he employs as his own priest, the grandson of Moses, to look after his idols. And when they asked Jonathan, this Levite, to inquire of God about their journey, this Levite reassures them. He tells them what they want to hear.

God is going to bless their plans, of course. And so at the end of the story, the men of the tribe of Dan massacre the inhabitants of Laish. The snake in the grass is doing its dirty work. The viper along the pathway has bitten the heels of the horses and the riders have tumbled. It's a story, congregation, that when you read it at home, it's going to leave a foul taste in your mouth.

You see, it's one thing for Israelites to wipe out the wicked, evil Canaanites as God had ordered them to. It's another thing to wipe out a peaceful, unsuspecting city. Again, there is the matter of compromise, isn't there? They don't want to do the hard yards of trusting in God to help them take their allocated territory. No, instead they compromise and take over a city that is a pushover for them.

Doesn't that again help us understand this morning Jacob's cry, "O Lord, I wait for your salvation." It's painful seeing spiritual laziness among God's people. It's disappointing to see others compromising on what God expects from us. And in those moments we just want to cry out with Jacob, "Lord, we wait for your salvation. Jesus, please come and sort things out."

All of this, friends, takes us to a somewhat deeper issue this morning and those deeper issues take us right from the first book of the Bible right to the very last book of the Bible. In other words, there are issues here that cover the whole story of mankind from beginning to end. Let's start with the very beginning of the Bible. I cannot read about the words that are being spoken to Dan about being a snake in the grass without thinking of Genesis chapter 3. Jacob doesn't just mention the snake in the grass, he's also mentioned the viper that bites the horse's heels.

He speaks of Dan literally as a serpent, a serpent by the roadside and that takes my thoughts back to the serpent who tempted Adam and Eve. And Jacob uses the symbol of the serpent as if he sees all the garbage in his family life and in his own life and in Dan's life in terms of Genesis 3. It's part of the terrible damage that the enemy has done in our world because that ancient serpent is always out to destroy God's good work and God's people. It's the serpent who was behind Jacob's deception of his own father. It was the serpent who was behind Rachel's proposal for Jacob to bed Bilhah.

It's the primal enemy who's behind the shenanigans of Samson and it was that same enemy that enticed Dan to take the easy way out and just wipe out Laish and settle there. And we could apply, congregation, that all that garbage that's there in your life and mine has the same root cause at the end of the day. The garbage that I have to cope with, that you have to cope with. The serpent is busy undermining God's work and ruining our lives and it makes us want to cry out, "Come, Lord Jesus, and fix this sorry mess that we so often make of things." But we haven't yet spelled out the most serious way in which Dan was a snake in the grass.

I mentioned to you earlier that in Judges 18, the five spies came across the house of Micah and that in Micah's house they found some idols and Micah's private priest and so when the whole tribe of Dan moves north passing Micah's house, they persuade the priest to come with them and they steal Micah's idols. And at the end of Judges 18, there is this very telling statement. Let me read it to you. "The Danites rebuilt the city and settled there. They named it Dan after their forefather Dan, who was born to Israel, though the city used to be called Laish.

There the Danites set up for themselves the idols and Jonathan son of Gershom son of Moses and his sons were priests for the tribe of Dan until the captivity of the land. They continued to use the idols that Micah had made all the time the house of God was in Shiloh." Do you see the deadly work that the serpent does through the tribe of Dan? This is not just Dan being a snake in the grass, being a little bit devious like Jacob. This is nothing less than the enemy of God using Dan and the tribe of Dan to destroy Israel.

These Danites had moved as far away as possible from where the tabernacle of the Lord was, and there in the city of Dan, idolatry became deeply entrenched. If you like, Dan became the centre of state-sanctioned idolatry in Israel and that prevailed right through until the time of the captivity of Israel. We say, "How terrible is that?" Here were people who began with compromise, with people who took the easy road instead of the hard road of faith and obedience, but it led them into an idolatry that took them away from the Lord for generations and generations to come. It's our own brokenness, congregation, the flaws in our own character that make us long for the return of Jesus.

The garbage in our lives and in our own family drives us to cry for Him to come and fix the mess, but it's especially the evil of false religion, idolatry, the lies, the heresy that drive us to pray for Jesus' return. I want to say this morning in closing that all the idolatry of Dan climaxed many years later under King Jeroboam. You remember King Jeroboam was the guy who put the golden calves in Dan and Bethel but I find it interesting when I read through Kings and Chronicles that Jeroboam didn't worry too much about Dan because idolatry was already entrenched there so he concentrates on Bethel. And all of this shows us this morning where compromise leads us. Jacob and Rachel made some concessions to the ways of the world.

Samson did that too, to his everlasting regret, and the Danites did it when they took the easy option but all played into the hands of that old serpent from Genesis chapter 3 and where that leads us today, congregation, is to the other end of the Bible because in a sense the end of the story of the tribe of Dan is found in Revelation 7. You might like to turn to that a moment. Revelation 7. It's a listing of the tribes, the 12 tribes of Jacob, the 12 tribes of Israel. It's a figurative and symbolic way of Revelation telling us that all God's people, all His elect will be gathered in.

Let me read from Revelation 7 from verse 4. Verse 4: "And I heard the number of those sealed, remember the figures are symbolic, I heard the number of those sealed, a 144,000 sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel. 12,000 from the tribe of Judah were sealed. 12,000 from the tribe of Reuben were sealed. 12,000 from the tribe of Gad.

12,000 from the tribe of Asher. 12,000 from the tribe of Naphtali. 12,000 from the tribe of Manasseh. 12,000 from the tribe of Simeon. 12,000 from the tribe of Levi.

12,000 from the tribe of Issachar. 12,000 from the tribe of Zebulun. 12,000 from the tribe of Joseph. 12,000 from the tribe of Benjamin" and we ask: Where is Dan?

What's happened to him? He's not in the list. Makes you wonder, congregation. The point is that at the end of the Bible, the tribe of Dan is missing from God's list and that's the sad result, the end result of persistent compromise with the ways of the world. What a warning that is to us this morning.

That's where the old enemy, the serpent of Genesis 3, would have all of us end up if he had his way, missing from the roll call of the saints in glory. And that's where compromise will inevitably lead us if we don't deal with it. It makes Jacob's cry this morning more relevant than ever. I wait for your salvation, O Lord. Because if we truly wait for God's salvation, we'll end up with the next group in Revelation 7, verse 9: the great multitude that no one can number.

It's my prayer, brothers and sisters, that we as a congregation, each one of us, may in this Advent season as we move on towards Christmas, renew it within ourselves by the grace of God, that resolve to wait for God's salvation, to keep our focus on Jesus and His coming. Let me lead us in prayer. Dear Father, we acknowledge this morning that compromise comes so easily, so readily to us as Christians. We do it in very small ways, Lord, to begin with and then it begins to catch up with us and we have to compromise a little more to cover up our previous mistakes. And Father, this morning You've shown us that in the case of Dan, it leads to an eternity without You and Father, we would loathe that to happen to any one of us here this morning.

Father, we want to keep our eyes focused on Jesus this morning and help us to do that, not just as we sit here in church but also, Lord, as we go back into this new week that lies ahead of us. Keep our eyes focused on Him so that we may live to His glory and that we may live by the standards that You have set for us in Scripture. Help us to avoid compromise, Father, because it's hurtful to You and for Your glory but it's hurtful to our eternal well-being and so we pray for You to fill us with Your love and with Your Holy Spirit to walk with You through life until Jesus returns or until we depart to be with Him. Please hear our prayers in His name. Amen.