Joel Brooks: Lawrence, thank you again for allowing me to come to your workshop and to interview you. And if you're listening to this wondering what I am talking about, it's likely because you're only listening to our podcast and, which which I get. That means you don't have to look at my ugly mug every Sunday. But I also want you to know that you are missing out on some things, not just music, but you're missing out on some testimonies, some videos, some prayers. And so if you are a member of Redeemer, I really would encourage you to keep that time on Sunday mornings, to watch the service.
It's not perfect, but it is what we could do and I hope soon that we'll be able to meet again in person. If you do have a Bible, I invite you to turn to Genesis chapter 47 and 48. Chapters 4748 and I have been looking forward to teaching on these chapters, for a long time. Genesis 47 beginning in verse 7. Then Joseph brought in Jacob his father and stood him before Pharaoh and Jacob blessed Pharaoh.
And Pharaoh said to Jacob, how many are the days of the years of your life? And Jacob said to Pharaoh, the days of the years of my sojourning are a 130 years. Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their sojourning. And Jacob blessed Pharaoh and he went out from the presence of Pharaoh. Now turn to Genesis 48 beginning in verse 8.
When Israel remember Israel is Jacob. When Israel saw Joseph's sons, he said, who are these? And 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 that 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 bowed himself with his face to the earth. And Joseph took them both, Ephraim in his right hand toward Israel's left hand and Manasseh in his left hand toward Israel's right hand and 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 the days, all my life long to this day, The angel who has redeemed me from all evil, bless these boys. And in them let my name be carried on and 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 to move 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. Put your right hand on his head.
But his father refused and he said, I know my son. I know. He shall also become a people, and he shall also be great. Nevertheless, his younger brother shall be greater, and his offspring shall become a multitude of nations. This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God. Pray with me. Father, we ask that you would be with us in this moment, that through your spirit, you would open up your word to us. Pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and, Lord, your words would remain and change us. And we pray this in the strong name of Jesus, amen.
So let me ask you, how long is a season? How long is a season? I've noticed that we use that word season a lot to describe our lives, whatever period we are in. We don't say things like I am depressed. We say I am in a season of depression.
We don't say that we're looking for a job. We say we're in a season of looking for a new career or I am in a season of singleness, or I am in a season where my marriage is hard. We use this word season a lot and I understand why because it connotes movement, progression, that we're actually going someplace. When we say that we are in a season, it means that this is temporary, but things are going to get better for us. But let me once again ask the question, how long is a season?
A lot of us think, you know, we we understand that God teaches us things during season seasons. So we think, well, the key is we just need to learn whatever God teaching us, and once we learn that lesson, then we're pulled out of this season. So once I learn to be content in this season of singleness, then God will allow me to meet my spouse. Once I become content in learning to trust God with my finances, then God will move me out of the season into where I will find my new job and career. And that's how a lot of us think of our seasons.
And because of this, we expect our seasons are not going to be long because we're fast learners. At least, we think we are. I mean, we can learn how to be content in our singleness in just a couple of months, right? Or we can learn to to be patient, and practice patience in just a few months while we parent teenagers. Right?
The season's gonna be short lived. But what if our seasons were longer? Much longer. What if God wants to teach us something so deep, so life transforming that it can't be learned in just a few months or even a few years. Abraham and Sarah had to wait 25 years before they had Isaac.
Isaac and Rebekah, during their season of barrenness, they had to wait 20 years. Jacob, he had a season of 20 years where he was living in exile and could not return back home. Joseph, well, he had a season of 17 to 20 years in which he was a slave and a prisoner. Those are long seasons. A matter of fact, those are careers.
They're not seasons. Those are careers. But what we find is for the things that matter, really matter, God takes his time. And I wanna encourage you that no matter what season you find yourself in, don't give up after a few weeks or a few months or even a few years. God is working something deep, something glorious in you.
Trust Him in this. For Jacob, it took his entire life for God to work these things in him. I don't know about you, but I've been worried about Jacob. He's been a scoundrel, a liar, a terrible husband and father. He's always been driven by this huge hole in his heart in which he's he's tried to fill it with other people.
Anything but God. And over the last 35 years, he has talked about nothing but death. I thought about just going through all the different scriptural references for this, but but go back in Genesis and read through all the times when Jacob talks after Joseph was removed from him, every time he mentions his soul going down to Sheol. He can't wait for that day seemingly. And so, we can call this a season of rebellion or a season of depression or bitterness, but this season has really been Jacob's entire life.
But God has been so incredibly patient with him. So incredibly patient with him and has been lovingly carrying him behind the scenes working in him working in him the character and the faith he has wanted and needed all along. And we see it here finally at the end. Finally, Jacob becomes a man of faith. Finally, he becomes a man who delights in the sovereign grace of God.
And this should give hope to us. It gives hope to me and to all of the Jacobs in the world. So let's take time to to look to dig into these blessings of Jacob here. When we started Genesis, if you remember, I said you could actually understand all of Genesis in terms of a blessing or blessings. After creation, God blesses Adam and Eve.
He then blesses Noah. He then blesses Abraham and tells Abraham to go and to be a blessing. Jacob is always struggling for this blessing, and now finally, we see Jacob becomes the one who blesses. But you really can understand all of Genesis through that lens of blessing. And here Jacob spends 3 entire chapters blessing people.
The first person he's going to bless is Pharaoh himself. I love this scene when pharaoh finally gets to meet Jacob. You know when you normally meet somebody, you ask the basic questions, you know, what's your name? You know, where are you from? What do you do?
What's your Enneagram number? You know, you you ask you ask those basic questions, But when Pharaoh sees Jacob, it's almost like his jaw drops. The only thing he could say, the first thing that comes to his mind is, How old are you? Just how old are you? I mean, Jacob looked rough.
He's a 130 years old at this point. And these were not a 130 years spent at the spa or the golf course, these were a 130 long, hard years. I bet his skin was like leather from all of his sojourning and under the sun. Jacob answers Pharaoh, says, few and evil have been the days of my life. He he thinks his life has been few because really he hasn't had many good moments and he's right.
They have been evil, have been the days of his life. And then he goes on to bless pharaoh. He blesses the most powerful man in the world. Think of that. Think of the impression he must have made on pharaoh for pharaoh to allow himself to be blessed by who was essentially an old traveling gypsy.
But Pharaoh allowed himself to be blessed by this man. And thus, we see that Jacob is beginning beginning to fulfill God's promise that God's gonna use Abraham and his descendants to bless the world. Change is happening in Jacob here. After Jacob blesses pharaoh, we then read how he blesses Joseph's sons. The author of Hebrews, actually writes about this event in Hebrews Chapter 11.
We read these words in 11/21, by faith Jacob when dying blessed each one of the sons of Joseph, bowing in worship over the head of his staff. This blessing that we read about in Genesis, the author of Hebrews sees it as the pinnacle of Jacob's life. For those of you who are familiar with the 11th chapter of Hebrews, this might seem a little odd because we know this chapter as the Hall of Faith. It's about all the extraordinary great acts of faith. And so the author of Hebrews, he goes through, all these these saints and he mentions the great things they did.
How Abraham, out of faith, he set off and he went to a land he did not know. How Noah, out of faith, he walked in obedience and he built an ark even when it had not rained. Or how you have Abraham out of faith, he was willing to sacrifice his son, Isaac, or Moses out of faith. He refused to be known, as the, the son of pharaoh's household or to live in pharaoh's household, but he would rather be identified with the people of God. Out of faith, the people of God, they parted the Red Sea and crossed over in dry land.
Out of faith, the walls of Jericho came crumbling down. Daniel was in the lion's den and was left unharmed. By faith, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were thrown in the furnace and were yet preserved. And we keep reading about all of these enormous acts of faith. And so what does the author of Hebrews mention about Jacob?
I mean, does he mention, you know, the time that Jacob saw that, you know, the Jacob's ladder, the stairway to heaven, or the one I would have chosen, Jacob wrestling with God and prevailing? Seems like an obvious choice here, but the author of Hebrews doesn't go with that. Instead, he mentions this rather dull moment, a moment that's likely not in any of your picture Bibles. The moment where Jacob blesses his grandchildren. I gotta be honest, when when I read this for the first time and maybe you as well and you read what the author of Hebrews puts for Jacob, you're thinking, that's a swing and a miss right there.
That's a swing and a miss. But we'd be wrong. Because this is the moment it's the moment in which we finally see after a lifetime of disobedience, Jacob gets it. He gets it. He understands God's heart.
He understands grace and he wants to become a person or an instrument of grace. At the time of this blessing, Jacob is now a 147 years old. I looked it up, and, that's 33 years older than the oldest man alive today. He is a 147 years old. For the last 17 years, he's been reunited with his son Joseph whom he thought he had lost.
And now before he dies, he wants to bless Joseph's grand or Joseph's children. Remember this blessing is a huge deal in this culture. And Jacob, he puts these 2 kids, Ephraim and Manasseh. He puts them, on his knees which, I can't help it. Every time I I read that, I think of Elf and I just keep thinking of Will Ferrell or Buddy the Elf sitting on the knees of his elf dad.
It would have been a sight because these kids were 20 years old. They were 20 years old and they both come and they sit on this 147 year old man's knees and apparently they just sit there for a moment and then he says, okay. He pushes them aside and they kneel in front of him for the blessing. And as they're kneeling in front of him, Joseph, he's very careful to put Ephraim, the younger child, in front of Jacob's left hand. Manasseh, the older child, the firstborn, in front of Jacob's right hand.
And it's because who whoever gets the right hand blessing gets the main blessing. That's the blessing of the first born. That's the all important blessing, the blessing in which that person is gonna get the lion's share of all of the wealth and all of the honor. It goes to the right hand blessing reserved for the firstborn. And then Jacob in this dramatic fashion as he's about to bless the children, he switches hands.
He crosses them over and he blesses the younger. This ticks off Joseph, ticks him off. He actually he actually tries to physically change his father's hands back. I would have loved to also seen that, Joseph wrestling with a 147 year old man, but that man had also wrestled with God earlier in his life and he has old man strength and he's gonna win this one. He says, I know what I'm doing.
I know what I'm doing. And he keeps his hands crossed, and he reserves the blessing of the firstborn he gives to the younger. Now the reason that Joseph is so upset about this is because this is not how society works. It didn't work then that way and it doesn't work now this way. Certain people have certain privileges.
The wealthy get the power. The educated get the honor and the respect. Those who are good looking, they get the spouses. They get the promotions. And the firstborns, they get the blessing.
It's just the way things go. But here, Jacob finally gets it. He finally understands that God does not see people the way that the world sees people. God chooses the weak things of the world, the disadvantaged of the world, Those who don't grow up in privilege. Jacob's worldview here, we finally see it has been shattered.
It's been turned up side down and Joseph just doesn't get it at this point. And what Jacob understands is actually a common theme that we find all throughout the Bible and we've especially seen here in Genesis in which God chooses Abel over Cain. He chooses Sarah, barren Sarah over Hagar. Isaac over Ishmael. Deceitful and quiet Jacob over the, the likable and charismatic Esau.
The downcast and ugly Leah over the beautiful Rachel. And it's not just in Genesis. We we we see this all throughout scripture. We certainly see this in the life of Jesus. Jesus was not born to a wealthy, educated family of privilege.
He was born to a poor teenage girl who lived out in the sticks. She was a nobody. Joseph was a nobody. He was laid in a feeding trough. He wasn't born into a castle.
This is how God works in the world. He works through the nobodies. 1st Corinthians 1, Paul says this, but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring the things that are so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.
We see here that grace is not just some theological understanding of salvation. It's actually a lens we put on, glasses we put on in which we now understand the entire world. We see beauty. We see riches. We see education.
We see power all differently when we see them through the lens of God's grace. Because now we see people as God sees them. Remember when we were going through the Beatitudes? Remember those words when Jesus says blessed, that all important word blessing, blessed are the poor. Blessed are the meek.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst. Jesus flips it all upside down. Jesus does not see people the way that the world sees people. He doesn't bless the firstborns. So we see here that that Jacob, he doesn't choose the first born here because God doesn't choose the firstborn.
And if I could just do a little aside, can I just say that this isn't just true of, how God deals with people but it's also true of how God deals with our desires? The desires we have in our hearts. Maybe you have had a certain desire deep in your heart for a long time. It's actually one of the oldest things, the oldest things in your heart. You might call it a first born desire.
And you have brought this desire before God over and over again and have said, bless it. Bless this desire. It's the oldest desire in my heart. It's It's what I have always wanted, will you bless this desire? And God does this, He blesses something else that was an inferior desire or maybe something that wasn't even on your radar.
And like Joseph, you begin to get very angry And so you you start wrestling with God. No, God.
Jeffrey Heine: I don't want you to bless that.
Joel Brooks: I want you to bless this here. This is my first born, my oldest desire. But just like Joseph couldn't defeat Jacob in that, we certainly can't switch God's hands. God blesses the desires He wants to bless. And some of us need to quit trying to switch God's arms.
Most of you know that, Lauren and I, we were convinced that the Lord wanted us overseas. That was the desire of our hearts was to serve him overseas and we did everything to do that, but God wouldn't bless it. What He did bless was this small Sunday school class that we were teaching during what we thought was gonna be a really short season of our life like 2 months, and he blessed that Sunday School with some college students and grew that. And I didn't want him to grow that. I was like, no.
I want you to bless this over here. And God said, but I'm gonna bless this over here. And God grew that much lesser desire in me into what he wanted to use. And that's how University Christian Fellowship came to being and the Lord has used that, to change many, many lives. So God doesn't always, I might even say He rarely blesses our firstborn desires and we yield to that.
Alright. Let's look at the blessing we have here to the grandkids. There's so much here. I love that Jacob, he's blessing the grandkids, but he's looking at or he's looking at Joseph. This actually says he blesses Joseph, but then the blessing is for the grandkids.
In other words, as his hands are crossed, he's not looking at them, he's looking directly in Joseph's eyes while he blesses these grandchildren because he wants this blessing to shape his son Joseph. And he blesses this. Says we read in chapter 48 verse 15 and he blessed Joseph and he said, the God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has been my shepherd all my all my life long to this day. This is the first time we have in scripture that God is called shepherd. Some of your translations, there's a few out there that might just say, the God who feeds me, but it's the word the Hebrew word is shepherd there.
And when Jacob calls God his shepherd, his main point is that he views himself as a helpless sheep and that God has been the one who has been watching over him and caring for him. I've been to Ireland a number of times in my life, when I was doing college ministry. I think I went there 14 or 15 different times. There are more sheep than people in Ireland, and and so I I got to look at some sheep pretty up close. And I don't know if you've ever looked a sheep in the eyes, but there is nothing there.
There's absolutely nothing there. They are the dumbest animals on the planet. They are also the most defenseless. You could search the world over and you're going to find wild horses, wild dogs, wild cats, but you're not gonna find wild sheep. Never when you know, I'm hiking with my girls when we go to Montana, never am I like holding back saying, hey watch out for sheep.
You know, you you don't have to watch out for sheep. All they are is is is fluffy food for wolves. That's what Jacob says he is. He doesn't have a way to defend himself. Now Jacob, Jacob was the guy with street smarts.
He was the guy growing up in his whole life, if he wanted something, he just took it. If he had to lie to get it, he would lie to get it. He had street smarts there, and he just he fought to get everything that he had. But now as he's looking back, he says, I misinterpreted all that. I wasn't feeding myself.
God was feeding me. God was watching over me. God was caring for me all my life. All of it. He was watching over me when I sinned.
He was watching over me as I was being neglected by my father. He was watching over me as Esau my brother wanted to kill me. He was watching over me when I married the wrong woman. He was watching over me when when I lost a son I didn't love or a son I did love. He's been watching over me all my days.
Here at the end, he finally realizes that as painful as his life has been, God has been behind it all. God has used all of that pain in order to bring him to this moment of faith. The Lord has been his shepherd all his days. Here's another astounding thing about sheep. I actually spent some time this past week looking up on the Internet a number of things about sheep.
It'll be interesting to see what my Facebook advertisements are this week after having looked through all of that. But I did learn a lot, but but one of the things that kept coming up over and over in some articles was that, sheep often get lost and they're scared and because of this, they really don't like being rescued. When a shepherd actually goes and finds a lost sheep and tries to bring the sheep home, often they find that that sheep does not want to be rescued. The sheep is going to fight him. So they either send a dog to scare that sheep back or sometimes they have to pin that sheep down, tie them up and and physically carry them back home.
After a 147 years old, Jacob is looking back at all of the evil and all of the pain in his life, and now what he sees is a loving and caring shepherd who at times has had to pin him down. I mean, Genesis 32, when he wrestled with God, he literally was pinned down all in order to be rescued. When you look at some of the painful events in your past, maybe unloving parents, maybe hurtful words and actions from friends, major disappointments. You're tempted to think that God was not there, but God has been there watching and caring for you all the time. You might not see it now, but he has been your shepherd all of your days.
And sometimes a shepherd has to throw you down and tie you up because you really don't want to be rescued. So the Lord has been our shepherd all our days. What a comfort to know this that even in the darkest moments, even in the times of our most suffering and our most evil, God is shepherding us. Even in our times of rebellion, he's not leaving us. As Jacob looks back at his life, he gets it.
He finally gets it. He realizes that surely goodness and mercy have been following him all the days of his life and God has been shepherding him to the point where he can finally dwell in the house of the Lord forever and ever. Pray with me, church. Our father, we thank you that you have been our shepherd all our days, and sometimes we push against you, we kick, but, Lord, you pin us down for our own good. Thank you for the great lengths you have gone to to rescue us.
Thank you for the ways that you watch over and you care for us. And whatever season we are in, for however long it is, may we know that you are working in our lives something beautiful and glorious. Mercy and goodness are following us. We will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. We pray this all in the sweet name of Jesus, our Lord and savior.
Amen.