When Faith Sees

Visit Jacob again this morning and come to a passage that talks about his preparations for his own passing, for his own death. Just in order to get the context and before I invite Tom to come up and read the passage to us, remember who Jacob's father is and then who his grandfather is, and you only have to be thinking of Abraham and Isaac and then Jacob. And remember the promise that God gave to Abraham, first of all, that is Jacob's grandfather. God came and said to him, basically, I'm gonna save the world through your family. That is to say, one of your descendants will be, will come the promised Messiah, the one who's gonna come into this world and deal with sin and death.

That's quite a promise. But the implication of that means that every generation that follows in Abraham's family, there would be one child set aside to be the bearer of the messianic seed. One child was to be in the messianic line. One child that God walks with and blesses, who passes on the faith to the next generation. And those of you who know a little bit about the story of Jacob's life will know that his life was characterised by tremendous mistakes and huge failures.

Even after Jacob gets that special blessing from his own father, Isaac, his life is characterised by deceit. We might even identify him as a loser, a con man, a womaniser, basically a walking disaster. But Jacob is God's man, and it's not till we get to this point at the end of his life that we see not a story of disaster or pain or some family upset or a business deal gone wrong. We're not going to read this morning about Jacob making any mistakes at all. Here is Jacob right at the end of his life, and he makes preparations for his death.

As we're going to see, God is at work preparing a way forward for His descendants and the ongoing story of redemption. Let's have a look at it. The reading today is Genesis 48. We're going to read the whole chapter. So Genesis 48 starting from verse one.

After this, Joseph was told, behold, your father is ill. So he took with him his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. And it was told to Jacob, your son Joseph has come to you. Then Israel summoned his strength and sat up in bed. And Jacob said to Joseph, God Almighty appeared to me at Luz in the land of Canaan and blessed me.

And said to me, behold, I will make you fruitful and multiply you. And I will make of you a company of peoples and will give this land to your offspring after you for an everlasting possession. 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 will be mine as Reuben and Simeon are. And the children that you fathered after them shall be yours.

They shall be called by the name of their brothers in their inheritance. As for me, when I came from Padan 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. When Israel saw Joseph's sons, he said, who are these? Joseph said to his father, they are my sons whom God has given me here.

And he said, bring them to me please, that I may bless them. Now the eyes of Israel were dim with age, so he could not see. So Joseph brought them near him, and he kissed them and embraced them. And Israel said to Joseph, I never expected to see your face, and behold, God has let me see your offspring also. Then Joseph removed them from his knees and he bowed himself with his face to the earth.

And Joseph led them, both Ephraim in his right hand towards Israel's left hand and Manasseh in his left hand towards Israel's right hand. And he brought them near him. And Israel stretched out his right hand and laid it on the head of Ephraim, who was the younger, and his left hand on the head of Manasseh, crossing his hands, for Manasseh was the firstborn. And he blessed Joseph and said, the God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has been my shepherd all my life long to this day. The angel who has redeemed me from all evil.

Bless the boys and in them, let my name be carried on, in the name of my fathers, Abraham and Isaac, and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth. When Joseph saw that his father laid his right hand on the head of Ephraim, it displeased him. And he took his father's hand and moved it from Ephraim's head to Manasseh's head. And Joseph said to his father, not this way, my father. Since this one is the firstborn, you put your right hand on his head.

But his father refused and said, I know, my son. I know. He also shall become a people and he also shall be great. Nevertheless, his younger brother shall be greater than he and his offspring shall become a multitude of nations. So he blessed them that day saying, by you, Israel will pronounce blessings saying, God make you as Ephraim and as Manasseh.

Then he put Ephraim before Manasseh. Then Israel said to Joseph, behold, I'm about to die, but God will be with you and will bring you again to the land of your fathers. Moreover, I have given to you rather than to your brothers one mountain slope that I took from the land from the hand of the Amorites with my sword and with my bow. Well, as we've been mentioning, we're looking at the life of Jacob, one of the great patriarchs of the Bible. An ancient figure, but in so many ways, a very modern, contemporary, and very relevant figure.

He, at best, we could say that Jacob is uncomfortably close to where a lot of us are at. He reminds me of the guy on Gumtree that tried to sell me something but conned me out of it. Or the person who drives a car into the shopping centre car park, puts a dent in your car but never leaves a note, never leaves any way to identify himself. They're the nature of the sorts of things that Jacob was guilty of in his day. And I wanna suggest that that just helps keep him real and this story before us in the Bible this morning real.

This is relevant. Jacob grows up, as we all know, and he is someone whose upbringing has really alienated him from his own father, Isaac. His lifelong ambition is to receive blessing, affirmation, a blessing from his own father. As a result, he is a man who grows up with an incredibly large inner emptiness, a real emptiness inside because he's so desperate for other people's affirmation. But the real irony is that ever since he was born, he was the chosen one.

He was the one to receive the blessing. And yet, as a youth, he grew up empty on the inside, not knowing his father's blessing. And in this scene, out of the life of Jacob, right at the end of his life, he passes on a blessing, having been blessed himself, once the same blessing given to his grandfather and father. And of all the scenes that we've looked at in his life, this is probably one of the most boring. I mean, the other scenes are full of intrigue, are they not?

They're really very interesting. In fact, I've enjoyed preaching on them. There was the wrestling match at night with the angel of the Lord. Maybe you can recall the vision that Jacob had, the stairway reaching between heaven and earth. And, who of us can forget the story of Rachel and Jacob?

And the line that has resonated with many of us, in the morning it was Leah. But now we get to the last scene of Jacob's life, and we fast forward right to the end. This is the moment of his death, essentially, and on his deathbed, he brings his children in, and in this case, two grandchildren and their dad, Ephraim and Manasseh, the sons of Joseph. And we see Jacob giving a blessing, which, of course, is very significant in the life of the family in those days. So, why focus on this text?

What's appealing for us this morning? Well, one of the things I've been wrestling with, and it was a real problem for me, is the commentary you get from the book of Hebrews on this very same incident. It's there in Hebrews chapter 11, that famous chapter in the Bible that catalogues all the heroes of faith. It kinda gives a survey of the great ancient men and women of faith like Moses and Abraham, Joseph, David, Enoch, Noah, and so on. Jacob's name is there as well.

And it gives a little summary of everything they did, but what's intriguing here is that when the writer of the book of Hebrews gets to Jacob, of all the incidents that happen in Jacob's life, this is the only one that gets a mention. In Hebrews 11 verse 21, we're told, by faith, Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of Joseph's sons and worshipped as he leaned on the top of his staff. Now, what do you make of that? I mean, it's kind of weird, really. The writer to the book of Hebrews chose this particular incident, the passage that we just read, as the defining moment of Jacob's life, as the ultimate expression of his faith.

It's not the wrestling match at midnight or the dream at Bethel or none of the other things that we've talked about, but this is it, the blessing that he gives to Ephraim and Manasseh. And we've got to ask the question, why? Why is this so important? Why is this so significant? Obviously, it's going to tell us something about Jacob's faith, but as we shall see, this event more than any other draws together the basic theme of his life.

The basic theme of his life was his struggle for blessing. He wants to know God. He wants to have the blessing of God's grace in his life. And what we get to see here is a reflection or the memories of an older man now getting ready to die. It's only now that Jacob can look over his life and see the God of his fathers, Abraham and Isaac, and recognise that God has been at work in his life.

He makes this amazing comment in verse 15, chapter 48. The God who has been my shepherd all my life to this day. This is the very first time that God has been identified as a shepherd in the Bible. And it's a theme that other biblical writers will develop more and more so, culminating in the good shepherd, Jesus Christ Himself. But this is a way of Jacob making a statement about himself. He can reflect back over his life, and he's beginning to make sense of it because he's understood, finally, that God has been a shepherd for him.

Now, if God is a shepherd, what does that make Jacob? Clearly, Jacob identifies himself as a sheep. And if God is your shepherd, you have to identify yourself as a sheep too. We are sheep. There's a great commentary on the relationship that the shepherd has with the sheep in Psalm 23.

A Scottish pastor writing about that particular psalm says this, what do you think happens to sheep the moment the shepherd is not there for them? If the shepherd is absent or turns a blind eye towards them, the sheep keep grazing. They continue to eat, but they never really see past their own nose, and it's like they are lost. They get lost. And eventually, they get lost, and so they become easy prey.

They're easily attacked, and they die. Essentially, sheep die without a shepherd. And of all livestock, sheep might be regarded as the most helpless, the most stupid. On their own, they cannot find food. They're helpless against parasites and against predators.

Sheep need comprehensive care twenty-four hours a day. So the first thing that Jacob is saying here is simply this, I consider myself weak. I need a shepherd. I want to be one of His sheep. Now consider your own weaknesses this morning, your own vulnerabilities.

The last thing we need is a god like the gods of other religions in the world today. Gods who say, here it is. You must do this or that, embark on a pilgrimage or a lifelong quest. This is how you do it. You come seeking me.

You find me. You live your life by my rules and my law. Jacob knows, at least, that he needs so much more. He's thinking, I'm a sheep, and sheep need a shepherd. One who's there for us twenty-four seven, who's prepared to deal with us by grace, a god who's patient for us, a god who will beat it into our head again and again, over and over, what he's done for us.

So the first thing Jacob's doing here is giving us an image or a picture, if you like. He's making a radical statement about the God who's intervened in his life. He's alluding to his absolute need for the mercy and for the grace of this God to be active in his life. And he begins to understand that God is not like the pagan gods of the religions of the nations around Him. God is not remote or far away, but He's as close to us as a shepherd, one who wants to bless, the one who came down on the stairway from heaven, the one who's been coming after him, wrestling with him at midnight, the one who will hurt him only to wake him up.

That's what it means to experience God's grace throughout a lifetime. God whispers to us in the good times, but He shouts aloud in the bad. The deeper our experience of lostness, seeing that we really are more broken than we thought we were, that we are more alienated from God than we thought possible, that leads to a deeper understanding of His care for us as our shepherd. We get to see that He is more committed to you, more in love with you, more patient with you, more of a shepherd than you ever dared believe. And it's not till the end of his life that Jacob actually sees this.

But now we get into something that gets us to why the book of Hebrews records this about Jacob's faith. Because Jacob does something here that shows that he's way beyond where even his own son, Joseph, is at, who, by the way, was no spiritual couch potato either. As a man, Joseph was spiritually aware. But at this point in his life, Jacob is way beyond Joseph, way beyond any place or position Joseph has ever had, spiritually speaking. Jacob is beginning to show, he's demonstrating that all of life looks different now because of God's grace.

It's like putting on a new set of glasses with different kinds of lenses, and he begins to look at the world through the eyes of grace. We might say the gospel of grace has become Jacob's way of interpreting this world. It is his worldview. You might remember during term one in 2021, this church hosted the Reformatio workshops, a series of lectures, and one of those lectures involved a professor, retired now from the Reformed Theological College, professor Bill Behrens, and he talked to us about worldview. It's the same thing here.

It's what I'm driving at this morning. The Bible gives anyone who's a Christian a distinctive way to interpret this world, to look at this world through the lenses of the gospel. Jacob's worldview has changed. It's illustrated in this famous incident of the crossing of the hands, the hands of blessing. Now look at it.

Consider it with me this morning. It's almost comical. Here is old Jacob, and in verse 10, the narrator of this particular passage says, Jacob's eyes were weak. That is to say, he's losing his eyesight. Remember, he's at the very end of his life.

And Joseph comes and he leads his two young boys to their grandfather, Jacob. He does that very carefully, very cautiously because, you know, old father Jacob is quite old now. He's somewhat frail. He's quite aged at this point in his life, and besides, he can hardly see. So what Joseph does is very careful and very cautious.

He takes Manasseh, his older son, the son who's entitled to an inheritance in all those ancient cultures. He's the son who's supposed to get the lion's share of the inheritance, the one who's become, who will be destined to be the leader of his clan. He's the one that's entitled to receive all power to ensure his destiny. So he brings Manasseh and places him at Jacob's right hand, positions him there carefully because the right hand, of course, is the position of power. It's where the prime minister sat.

It's where Joseph sat next to Pharaoh, the king. Joseph, you remember, is familiar with that kind of protocol. He knows what's involved. He recognises what's at stake here.

So he positions little Ephraim, the second son, on the left side under Jacob's left hand. And there he is, old father Jacob, with failing eyesight. And here we are, father. I have my sons before you. Let the blessing proceed.

And Jacob goes, okay. His hands are stretched out, and the moment comes when he crosses those hands. Now, I wish there were two little kids in church this morning and we could actually demonstrate what happened. But clearly, his right hand leaves Manasseh and moves over towards Ephraim. You can see what's happening.

And Joseph is very upset. We read in verses seventeen and eighteen, when Joseph saw that his father laid his right hand on the head of Ephraim, it displeased him. So he took hold of his father's hand and moved it from Ephraim's head to Manasseh's head. You can imagine Joseph, the dad, being somewhat anxious, literally gripping his father by the wrist on his hands and moving it back to where he believes it does belong, on the head of the older boy, Manasseh. He takes his father's hand and then you hear Joseph says, no, my father.

This one is the firstborn. Put your right hand on his head. Why? He must have been very agitated. He figured Jacob's eyes must have been that bad that he couldn't tell the difference between the two boys in front of him.

But what does Jacob say? Jacob says, I know, my son. I know. It's Jacob's way of saying, I know exactly what I'm doing. And what the narrator is showing us here is that for the first time in his life, Jacob is beginning to see things clearly as God intends them.

He's looking at this situation through the lens of grace. The lens of grace essentially means he sees two things very differently than the way Joseph sees them. He sees the world's values very differently, and he sees his personal life very differently. In Jacob's day, and in many cultures, even today, there is privilege and status afforded to your birthplace. And if you're the firstborn, well, you're way ahead of your siblings.

You are privileged. The first will be first, and the last will be last. We see that even today playing out in celebrity culture. If he or she has the right looks, or got the right figure, or the right skin colour, or the right eyes, then automatically that person is ahead of everybody else. They're honoured.

They're blessed. Jacob refuses to go that way. He deliberately senses the grace of God prevailing in this situation. He deliberately draws the two boys closer to him and he wants to bless the younger one first, not the older. So his right hand goes to Ephraim, not Manasseh.

Now, this begs a bigger question. Why is it that in the Bible over and over again? Why is it that when God works in the world, He deliberately chooses the one that the world says, this is not the way that things get done. This is not the way we do things. In the book of Genesis, this is almost ridiculous.

God chooses the younger son over the older son every time. It's a real slap in the face for the cultures of the day. God chooses Abel and not Cain. He chooses Isaac and not Ishmael. He chooses the sneaky, conniving Jacob and not the manly outdoor Esau.

Who does He bring salvation into the world through? Fertile, beautiful Hagar or barren old Sarah? Beauty queen Rachel or unattractive Leah? Do you realise how pervasive this is? This is right throughout the Bible.

It's everywhere. Goliath, the giant man in the Philistine army, God chooses a boy, a young youth, a shepherd boy. He calls on David to go and fight him. And in the gospels, you see the same thing. Jesus always works with the outsider, the prostitute, the tax collector, and as we saw earlier, not the self-righteous Pharisee or the religious ruler of his day.

The bogans, no offence to anyone here this morning, the most unlikely converts. We see Jesus working with them. God works through people that the world thinks are failures, really, because the ultimate expression of that, God founded Christianity on someone who was a disgrace, someone abandoned by everybody, even His own disciples. Even His own Father rejected Him when the Father turned His face away, and God sees to it that Christianity is based on His sacrifice and what He accomplished. Jacob's worldview had changed.

It's radically altered because he identifies God as his shepherd. Now it took a long time. Jacob has experienced the grace of God many times over throughout his long life. He still liked Rachel over Leah. He liked the children of Rachel over Leah.

Joseph is the son of Rachel, and these are the grandchildren born through Rachel. But Leah's boys will receive the blessing too. The blessing will flow through just one of them, and God chooses that generations of people would be born through him with a view to the kingly Messiah coming from him. In fact, you can read about those blessings in the next chapter, chapter 49. We see the kingly blessing being given to Judah, and there, the line of Jesus is identified as the line of the coming Messiah King.

It took years and years for Jacob to realise this. Over and over again, God has been a patient, caring, loving shepherd. But it's not till here, right at the end of his life, that it starts to dawn on him. If I am a sheep and God is my shepherd, if I am a sinner saved by God's grace, if I am saved, then by God's grace, things will be different. Things will be different to what the world thinks and does.

Things will be different even to the way I relate to my own children and my own grandchildren. The blessing is going to the younger, Ephraim. I don't know about you, but when you walk on the footpath or when you're busy in the shopping centres, out in the supermarkets, when you walk through the streets of Surfers Paradise, who do you see there? Do you ever ask yourself the question, how will I ever get involved in the lives of people there? People who need to hear the good news of the gospel of grace.

And especially after midnight, when the nightclubs close, and the footpaths are full of all kind of people. I know unless I don't look at them through the lens of God's grace, with the glasses of the gospel on, so to speak, I go as a cultural and a social outsider because I don't have any tattoos. I don't dye my hair and sometimes I can't even speak the same language. Clearly, my culture and my ways as a somewhat older, middle-aged Australian white male, don't help. And the question for you and the challenge for us this morning is, has the gospel of grace really changed your view of social reality around you?

Who is your neighbour? Who can you see? What are you looking for? Think grace. Think God's grace, and gospel-centred grace doesn't come naturally.

It takes time. And in Jacob's case, it took a lifetime. And Joseph, with all his life's experience, well, not even Joseph is thinking the same way his dad is thinking. You see, it's one thing to have an open house Christian Reformed Church experience the gospel of God's grace, but it's another thing to take the gospel of God's grace and take it to a world that is totally alien to your own experience of life, to get along with people who are so different to you and to me. Clearly, the gospel of grace has to do something to your own heart individually, personally.

We need to recognise the great hand of the shepherd at work in our own lives, first of all. We see that happening in a fantastic way with Jacob. He sees his own reality so differently. Secondly, God's grace allows him to work with that changed reality, and Jacob makes that amazing statement, the one that I hope you can walk away with this morning and apply personally, the God who has been my shepherd all my life, all my life. And I think you know enough about Jacob to know the kind of life that he's really had.

In chapters 25 through to 49 in the book of Genesis, the author there devotes more space to Jacob than any other biblical character. He has a life of more downs and ups, more spiritual lows than highs. For years, whilst Joseph was still alive in Egypt, even at Pharaoh's right hand, Jacob was depressed. He was filled with grief. He thought Joseph was dead.

But now, at the end, he's able to say, at every spot, at every turn in his life, I've been under the loving care of a shepherd. Now remember, Jacob himself was a professional shepherd. Jacob knows what he's talking about. Jacob knows shepherds are always doing the best for the sheep even when the sheep don't realise it. How do you save a sheep?

A sheep never feels safe when it's being made safe. A shepherd has to literally wrestle the sheep, even use the crook on the end of his staff to bring it back into the fold to ward off any potential attackers. Jacob knows all that. He's a professional shepherd. For years and years, he looked after Laban's sheep.

What I like so much about Jacob is that he's the one, the very first one, to teach us some good theology. Not just God is our shepherd, but also, He's my shepherd. He's your shepherd. And we can start to see our own reality the way my shepherd sees it. And finally, Jacob can admit that all along, he's been in the complete and comprehensive care of the shepherd.

And all those times and places when I thought God had abandoned me, when I wanted to manipulate the situation to get the blessing, when I resorted to lying or cheating or conning someone, and even deception with my own family members to gain the blessing, I realise now I was wrong. I was wrong, and God has blessed me even despite my sins. I acknowledge now He is my loving shepherd, but I just never saw it. I just never understood it. I never quite really got it.

God has always been my loving shepherd. But sometimes, the sheep don't even know it. They're never feeling loved when they are loved. And Jacob says, now I see. Now my faith sees. Now I get it.

And you get the sense, don't you, that there's an overwhelming peace that floods into Jacob's life. He's no longer struggling. Look at how gently he corrects Joseph. I know, my son. I know.

I know. And it's true to say when you use the gospel of grace as the lens to look at your life circumstance, then you will see that God is your shepherd, accomplishing His saving work through you even through your own defeat, your own casualties, your own suffering, and your own pain. And true to form, sometimes sheep don't feel the loving care of a shepherd when the shepherd resorts to being tough with the sheep. We saw this morning, this is how we grow, how we learn to love and adore God all the more. God will use those confusing, inexplicable, tragic, difficult situations to show you and me that He is our great shepherd.

And if God has worked throughout history like that, if God has worked salvation in Jesus Christ like that, wouldn't it make sense to at least admit that sometimes, in your own life, God works like that? The challenge this morning is this, are you able to put the lens of God's grace on your life? When you look at your life through the eyes of faith, what will you see? Jacob is the first biblical character to identify God as a shepherd. He can only say that because of what his life circumstance had brought upon him.

That's the reason why this particular incident is recorded in the book of Hebrews chapter 11. Jacob gets it. Do you? Do you see the world through the gospel of grace? I hope it doesn't take any one of us to age 147 before you do it.

That, by the way, is how old Jacob was when he died. 147. It doesn't have to take all that time, but it does take time. It is a learning experience. But see, God is a good shepherd, and ultimately, He wants to bring all His sheep safely to be home with Him forever and ever.

Amen. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for the riches of the gospel. We've come to know and understand the gospel as our salvation, as our forgiveness from sin, of our deep, inner cleansing, and of our new position, our righteousness before you. But we pray this morning that the gospel will also change the way we look at everything, certainly the way the world looks at things.

Help us to have an understanding of your grace so much so that our worldview will be one which is different and gives us an upside-down view of the world's values, gives us a peace that passes all understanding. And when it comes to looking at our own lives and the things that are going on in our own lives, we pray that we can always identify you as our shepherd. We ask therefore, Lord God, that you would teach us how to see with the eyes of grace. No matter where our physical eyes are focused, we pray that by your spirit, you will give us spiritual eyes to really see what you are doing in this world and what you are doing with us as well. Help us, Lord, to encourage one another in this, to work together as a community, to understand more of your grace so that it impacts our lives, so much so that we will see things differently and see people differently, certainly to the way the world sees them.

We could think of no greater way of you blessing us this morning than adorning us with your grace and reminding us how rich your grace is and how much we are loved through Jesus. And in His name, we give you thanks and all the glory when we pray together saying, Amen.