Faithful Then, Faithful Now | The Pursuit of Happiness - Genesis 48-49(Aug 27) Myles Holmes

Hello and welcome to the Redemption Church Podcast.

We're a church in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada that exists to glorify God through the fulfillment of the Great Commission and the Spirit of the Great Commandment.

Thanks for joining us today.

Father, truly, there's one hope for our souls.

Lord, there is one hope for peace.

For those who long for joy, there is one hope for joy.

For those who long for fulfillment and purpose, Lord, there is one hope.

And it is in Jesus Christ.

And so truly, Lord, our hearts declare hallelujah.

Praise the Lord.

For Lord, you have shown us through the cross, you have spoken to us so clearly where our one source for hope can be found, and it is in Jesus Christ.

And God, thank you that your desire this morning is that I would stand here as a preacher of your word and proclaim nothing but Christ crucified.

And proclaim nothing but the cross.

And so, God, this morning we cut out all the fluff, we cut out all the distraction to set our minds, to set our hopes on the one thing that can truly satisfy.

On your Son Jesus Christ.

God, it's a work we all need to do, Lord.

We all need to labor this morning to hear what you would have to say to us, knowing, Lord, that when we hear you, Lord, when you speak, you move powerfully in our hearts.

And so, God, move powerfully, change us, Lord.

Change our desires, change us at a heart level, Lord, the place where we just we can't reach.

We can't change our own hearts, Lord, but you can, and your Holy Spirit is here to do just that.

So we submit ourselves to you, Lord.

I come to you in humility.

I cannot do this, Lord.

What a work to preach your word.

And it's so far beyond me.

And so, God, I rest in your hands.

We all rest in your hands and ask that you'd accomplish your work in our midst.

We're the same power that raised Jesus from the grave, Lord.

The power is here.

And so work in us, we pray.

God, we pray this in the name of your son.

Amen.

Amen.

Can you grab a seat?

Grab a seat.

You can take your copy of God's Word and open it up to Genesis chapter 48 and 49.

Genesis 48 · chapter mention

If you're new with us, my name's Miles Holmes.

I'm the lead pastor of this church, incredibly thankful that you are here.

And you're going to notice a lot of people, uh, or at least the sound of a lot of people opening up their Bible or people, you know, unlocking their phone to get to their Bible.

That's because we love God's word.

And just like we just sang, anytime God speaks, he moves and he changes us.

And I hope that you are here this morning, eager for that change.

Have you ever noticed?

Well, I want to do a little bit of science with you, okay?

Now I'll warn you, this is pretty preliminary science.

I got a 50 in science once.

I wasn't the greatest student, so don't trust anything I say that gets too deep, but this is pretty preliminary.

Let's do some science, some observation.

Have you ever noticed that everyone that you know, person on your left, person on your right, everyone who's in the kids' ministry right now, everybody is seeking happiness.

That's just true of us all, isn't it?

Like no matter how old you are, no matter how young you are, no matter what your hobbies are, no matter what your profession is, everybody is after happiness.

We're seeking really blessing, is another way you could say it.

Fulfillment, purpose.

You ever notice that?

Have you ever observed that?

That to be human is to really be obsessed with seeking this thing that is called happiness.

And you can observe this in everybody, that everybody's after happiness.

I was reading a book with my children, a children's book, and I gotta admit, as I read so many of these things, they're all incredibly boring.

But I was reading this book, and one of the things that it was talking about was it was a story about this family, and everyone in the family got angry for a different reason.

And at the end, one of the kids looks and he says, Hey, you know what's funny?

All of us are angry, but we just want different things.

Everyone wants different things.

Isn't it true?

We you know, we have a nursery and it's filled with babies right now.

You know, if if you feel like this is pretty peaceful right now, that room is probably super chaotic with like babies crawling over everything, and my little two-year-old is in there and we call her destructo, and so it's chaos in there.

And yet every one of those babies, as little as they can do, you know, as little blobs of babies that they are, they're after happiness.

Everyone is.

Maybe you're here this morning, you're like, who is this guy with his weird haircut?

And I don't like this guy.

I'm gonna show him.

I'm I'm not after happiness.

You know, I I can be unhappy.

I'm gonna go home and brush my teeth and drink some orange juice just to show this guy that I can be unhappy.

And to that I say, if that makes you happy, go and do it.

See, even in trying to kind of disprove what we're scientifically claiming here, you have to, you you kind of prove it.

We're all after happiness.

In fact, the the framers of the American Constitution understood this.

Isn't that why in the American Constitution they they added that that really freedom was defined as the pursuit of happiness?

To be free was to pursue happiness in the way that you saw fit.

So it's interesting, as human beings, each of us, everybody on planet Earth is obsessed with this pursuit of happiness.

But isn't it interesting that that something else that we could probably all agree on is that as obsessed we are as we are with happiness and as much of the resources we have to pursue what we think will make us happy, we're actually incredibly unhappy, aren't we?

Doesn't it seem like in our day and age we are less and less happy?

In fact, I looked up the statistics and recent polls indicate that 14% of us are really happy.

And that that number has been trending downward and downward over the last decade.

And even more depressing than this is if you start thinking about some of the statistics around suicide.

It's concerning and it's something that requires the focus of the church and definitely the prayers of our hearts.

11%, 11.8% of Canadians have reportedly thought about suicide, and even worse is than this is when you consider our youth.

I would say that there is a crisis in our youth, especially among teenage girls, as high as 30% of teenage girls at some point in their life have contemplated suicide.

And so here's my question.

We are obsessed with happiness.

We we can do nothing but to seek happiness and joy and fulfillment, and yet we're clearly doing something wrong.

We're clearly doing something wrong.

And my question this morning really is this where where are we going wrong?

As a culture, as a human being, where are we going wrong in this thing that all of us want, but it seems like fewer and fewer of us are really getting.

Well, in Genesis 48 and 49, it's really a story of happiness.

And what's what God is doing here is building a theology of happiness and fulfillment and purpose and how we as human beings can really have it.

We know this because as we work through this text, something we're gonna read again and again and again.

This word's gonna come up again and again and again.

In fact, if you were to circle it every time, your page would be brightly colored with this word.

This word blessing is gonna come up.

The main theme of these two chapters really is blessing.

And one of the ways that you can translate blessing is happy.

To be blessed is to be happy.

It's this sense of fulfillment, it's a sense of I hope you are fulfilled in all of your purposes and your deepest purpose.

I hope you live a satisfied life.

I hope that you truly find happiness.

That's what it means to be blessed.

We understand this.

We use this language often, don't we?

That's talking about our blessings.

We go on Instagram and we hashtag a picture by the boat.

We say hashtag blessed life.

Like this is life.

This is what it's all about.

This is what makes me happy.

We're blessed.

Now, if you've been with us for a while and you've been walking through Genesis with us, you know that one of the major themes of Genesis is blessing.

We were first introduced to it in Genesis 1.

You remember that when God created Adam and Eve, and He did something significant for humanity that He didn't do for your puppy at home.

Especially He didn't do for your cat at home if you have a cat at home.

He blessed Adam and Eve.

He blessed them and he told them in Genesis 1.28 to be fruitful and multiply.

And one of the purposes of Genesis has been really to track that blessing.

This blessing has come up time and time again.

And one of the themes that we could track through the whole book is that humanity is blessed as they find their purposes in God's purposes.

That's the life that God has blessed.

Now Adam and Eve sinned and they pursued blessing outside of relationship with God, and all that they got was death.

And yet we find that God's desire to bless humanity, God's desire to satisfy us, didn't end with sin, but instead it was primarily taken up by a man named Abraham, who was then told that he would be a blessing to all the nations.

God had a plan to redeem humanity, God had a plan to deliver blessing into our lives.

And at this pinnacle point in Genesis, we're told that it's going to happen through this man, Abraham.

And here's what's happening this morning for you.

This morning, God is inviting you into his plan for the happiness of humanity.

God has a plan for the satisfaction of the creatures that He has created.

It was a plan that He created us in fulfillment of in Genesis 1, but as soon as we lost, all of Scripture became about redeeming this plan in your life.

And what God is doing this morning is inviting you into this.

He's inviting you into this blessing.

He's asking you to stop for a moment, stop for a moment, think about the way that you've been living, and ask yourself, maybe something is actually wrong with the way that I've been pursuing this satisfaction.

Maybe happiness, maybe joy, maybe fulfillment isn't actually around the corner.

Maybe it's not, it isn't actually after I, you know, I finally get that vacation.

It isn't after I finally get that new house.

It isn't after my family finally starts listening to me.

Maybe it's in a totally different way that I need to find happiness.

God's inviting you to his plan this morning.

He's inviting us to happiness.

And so as that blessing is promised through Abraham, it carries through his children, and we find ourselves in a really transitional point in the history of God's people in Genesis 48 and 49, where Jacob now, at the end of his life, will look to his twelve sons and pass that blessing on to them.

And here we're going to learn a lot about the fulfillment of living a life of fulfillment and about pursuing happiness.

And I and I want to this morning ask ourselves, kind of frame our time together, by asking three questions.

I want to ask ourselves three questions.

The first question I'll ask is this where is happiness found?

Where is happiness found?

Well, look at Genesis 48 with me, and we can do some quick math at this point.

And at this point, Jacob has been in Egypt with Joseph, uh, delivered from the famine for about 17 years, and we read these words in Genesis 48, verse 1.

Genesis 48:1

After this, Joseph was told, Behold, your father is ill.

So he took with him his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim.

Now, this is a pretty important point at the end of a patriarch's life where you'll remember this happened with Isaac.

He would look to his future generation and pass on the blessing that God had given to him.

He would pass it on to the future generation.

And so you remember, it's a pretty important moment in Jacob's life where Jacob steals the blessing from his brother Esau.

You remember that?

There's two sons, and Isaac thinks he's blessing Esau, but it's like this gasped moment in scripture where instead of blessing Esau, he's blind and he blesses Jacob by accident.

And so now this point has come to Jacob's life, and something significant is happening here.

Notice in verse 2, we've been told that Jacob is sick, and it says in verse 2, and it was told to Jacob, your son Joseph has come to you.

Then Israel summoned his strength and sat up in bed.

You notice a shift there?

You remember Jacob has two names, doesn't he?

His name Jacob, that was given to him at birth, which is like it's like to have the name Jacob is like to have the name, you know, stone cold stunner.

Any of you wrestling fans there, like you know what a stone cold stunner is.

It's a wrestling move.

Well, Jacob, it meant heel grabber.

And it was like this wrestling move that Jacob did on his way out of the womb, where he was grabbing Esau's heel, and it's like all of Jacob's life he's been this wrestler.

But but he was also given this new name, Israel, because God had a plan to make a nation out of him, and the nation would be called Israel.

So in verse 2, it's really interesting that first he's called Jacob, and then Moses is drawing our attention to something important here by calling him Israel.

So here, Jacob falls ill, but Israel summons himself with all his strength to sit up in bed.

Well, what's happening here?

Here's what God's doing: God's transitioning the blessings that he's gonna work through his people from one person, Jacob, to a nation, Israel, and eventually as we track out that blessing to the New Testament and to our age, it's gonna go to a people.

That's people who have faith.

And so it's significant here that Israel sits up because God wants to do a work in this nation.

I want to really quickly kind of recap this where we are at this point in redemptive history.

Like, so so you know, humanity sinned.

We've sought blessing outside of God.

And the question I want to ask is like, what's God's what's God doing?

Right?

All of scripture is about redemption.

Well, up until this point, what is God doing to redeem his people?

You remember that God blessed humanity in the garden.

They were in the garden of Eden, which literally means garden of delight.

In this garden, they were told, you can eat of any tree that you want, except for one tree.

But humanity, specifically Adam and Eve, they chose to pursue happiness and idolatry outside of God, and all they invited into their life was death.

But you'll remember that God could have abandoned Adam and Eve at that point.

He could have left, but instead he launched on this mission that really is all that Scripture tells us about from Genesis 3 to the end of the book of Revelation.

He launched on this redemptive mission to restore that original blessing to his children.

So you remember the redemptive plan.

How's God going to do this?

One day he calls Abraham and he blesses Abraham and he promises Abraham that through his children, through his seed, which would become as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sand in the at the ocean, his children would enter into a promised land, and the plan there was that in that promised land, Israel, the nation of God, would be able to bless the nations.

So that at this point in time, if you wanted to live a blessed life, you know what you had to do at the point in time of Genesis 48?

You had to get to Israel.

Like if I was preaching this sermon in the ancient Near East, and I was saying, hey, you want to be happy?

You know what the application would be?

Get to Israel.

Like get involved with this family, get invited to Abraham's family potluck.

Then you're gonna be happy.

That's God's redemptive plan.

Through a family that's gonna turn into a nation, he's gonna bless the world.

And so, you know, it's interesting.

Throughout Genesis and throughout scripture, we see people finding this blessing.

You remember Melchizedek?

You remember Melchizedek found this blessing?

Wasn't it he?

He was the king of Salem, he's a Canaanite king, and yet he finds Abraham.

Because he finds Abraham, he finds blessing.

You remember we read about Pharaoh and Joseph, and Pharaoh believes Joseph's word, and because he believes Joseph's words and puts his uh, you know, applies God's word through Joseph, Pharaoh finds blessing.

He becomes the most powerful man in Egypt.

I was reading just this morning in 1 Kings, where Solomon builds this amazing temple, and this temple's like crazy.

It's like you know, kind of modern day renovations.

Everything's made out of gold.

Everything's gold.

You read through this temple, it's like there's nothing that's not gold.

This temple is insane.

And then it says after he finishes building his temple, which takes years and years, and he builds his house, which takes years and years, the queen of Sheba comes and sees it and says, Solomon, this is this is amazing.

She finds blessing.

She finds the source of all blessing, the very temple where God's presence is.

And so if you wanted to find blessing, you wanted to find happiness, what you had to do was get to this family.

And so it's significant here that what Joseph is doing here is passing the blessing on, because if you want to find blessing in this world, you've got to find these people that hold this blessing.

Well, what's so special about the blessing?

Look at verse 3 with me.

Look in your copy of God's word, Genesis 48, verse 3.

Genesis 48:3

And Jacob said to Joseph, God Almighty appeared to me at the at Laz in the land of Canaan and blessed me.

Listen, listen, Joseph, this isn't like any blessing.

There's a lot of blessings in life, isn't there?

Well, this isn't like any blessing.

This was given by God Almighty.

This is like, in a world full of like, you know, little blessings and little joys, little satisfactions, little fulfillments.

This is like the thing.

This is from God Almighty.

This is this is from the God who He spoke and the world came into existence.

Listen, some of you here are like looking for happiness in the things of this world, and you gotta realize that like the God of this universe, who is powerful to speak the world into existence, wants to speak joy into your life.

Do you believe he's able to do it right now?

Heart check time, heart check time, because some of us, a lot of us, all of us, live like he's not able to do it.

God could never make me happy.

There's no way I'm being like I'm becoming some sort of fanatical Christian.

There's no joy in that life.

This is God all almighty.

And this is the God who revealed himself to Abraham.

Jacob goes on to say in verse 4.

He says, And this God said to me, Behold, I'll make you fruitful and multiply you.

Now you remember that from Genesis 1.

This is the original purpose of Adam and Eve.

And then he brings up Abraham's promise.

This actually wasn't said to Jacob, but it's been passed on to Jacob through Abraham and Isaac.

He says, I will make you a company of peoples, again told to Abraham, and will give you the land of your offspring after you, an everlasting possession.

These are the blessings that are given to Abraham, and Jacob is looking at Joseph and saying, Listen, there's something significant about the blessing that God has given to me, and I am now passing on to you.

Now by linking this blessing to God and specifically to what God had promised through Abraham, Jacob's showing us this reality that our blessing in life, that our happiness, your fulfillment, my fulfillment, your satisfaction, my satisfaction, it's ultimately can only come from God.

Here's our question.

Okay, where's happiness found?

Where is true, lasting, everlasting happiness that will not leave you empty, that will not ever fade away?

Where is this happiness found?

The answer, it can only come from God.

There's only one source that can truly satisfy you, and it is not within you, it's not in another person, it's not in another thing.

The only thing that can satisfy you is vertical.

It's a vertical joy, it's a vertical happiness.

It's the only source that listen, listen, you need to hear this.

That it's the only source as a human being that can truly, truly satisfy you is this vertical external source that is God Himself.

Now, listen, some of you like this is all you need to hear this morning.

This is all you need to hear.

You don't need to hear all the other stuff because you just need to believe this.

You just you just will not believe this.

You will not believe that there's only one thing that can truly satisfy you, and that it can't be found inwardly, it can't be found outwardly, it has to be found vertically.

True blessing, true fulfillment, true happiness cannot be found anywhere else.

But part of what God is doing this morning, I'm praying by the power of his Holy Spirit, part of what like God has been doing in me as I've been studying his word this week is he's pulling the rug out from underneath your feet of any other satisfaction that you stand on.

It's almost like God's playing this game.

You guys ever played that game with the cups?

You know, you get like the five cups and you put a ball underneath one and you shake them all up, and you feel like you're a magician of some sort, and you try to like you know be all satisfied.

Sneaky and you shake it up and then you ask someone, you say, Hey, try to find the cup with the ball in it.

And maybe they got like three options and they pick one and you pick it up and it's empty.

That's not it.

Well, you know what God is doing with all the things in our life that we think will bring us happiness?

He's doing just this.

He's lined them all up as though they were cups to sort of sort of say, and he's labeling one cup God, G-O-D.

And he's saying, every time you pick up that cup, you know what you're gonna find?

Happiness.

Let me shake it up again for you.

Every time you pick up that cup, you know what you're gonna find?

Joy, fulfillment.

Everything else is empty.

There's one source.

Where does happiness come from?

It can only come vertically from God.

Now, this has so many implications, but but God is continuing to drive this answer home, and so it's important that we continue to seek to understand it.

Now notice then in verse 5 that Abraham has brought his two sons, and so it says, 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 shall be mine, as Reuben and Simeon are.

This is a really weird thing to say, isn't it?

If you had children and you went to your grandparents and they looked at you and they said, Hey, these two children you had, they're mine.

I've adopted them.

You would look at your grandparents and say, Hey, you don't understand what grandparenting is.

Like when you are a grandparent, that's the best because you have all the pros of having children without all the cons of having children.

Isn't that true?

Like being a grandparent is like, I mean, you've paid your dues, but you are living in the gravy.

It's amazing because you can just load these kids up with sugar, you can have all the fun you want with them, then you just bring them back to mom and dad, there you go.

And yet Jacob wants to adopt these sons.

And so you and I might look at Jacob and say, What are you doing?

And yet what Joseph does is he says, Okay, here you go.

Why does Joseph do that?

Because Joseph understands that if Jacob is going to bless his sons as though they were his own, they ultimately are gonna be in the position of blessing directly from God.

And so Joseph's eager to do this.

So then in verses 6 and verses 8 to 10, Joseph brings them to Jacob for blessing.

Now this is, I think, really significant for us.

How does Joseph serve his children the best?

In other words, what as a father or as a mother, what is the best thing that you can do for your children?

You know, as a friend, as a brother or sister in Christ, what is the best thing that you can do for your friend?

The best thing that you can do.

This is why Joseph's so willing to let go of his children.

The best thing you can do is put them in a place where they will experience God's blessing.

This is so significant for parenting.

It really is.

It's it's so significant.

You know what the best thing that you can give to your kids is?

An understanding that your life displays that the most important thing to you is God.

If your children leave your home as adults and they say there is nothing so important to mom and dad as the word of God and living according to it, I can tell you there is no youth program, there is no book they can read, there is no thing that anyone other uh other person can say that will be so powerful as a testimony, not of your perfection, but of your desire to live your life according to God's word.

If you live your life and and your life is a constant declaration that says, the only place that I'll ever find joy is on the path that God has given me to walk, then your kids will see that testimony for years.

And it's so significant.

Joseph wants his kids to experience God's blessing, so he's willing to give them up to for adoption.

Now, in verse 10, we're told that Jacob is blind, and there's a really interesting scene here that I think if we use our biblical imagination to understand it, it's it's rather absurd.

Jacob's blind, and he's about to bless two children.

Now, when you bless people in the ancient Near East, your right hand is the primary blessing.

And so you, if you're gonna bless two people, you place your right hand on the forehead of the one that you're gonna give the primary blessing to, and your left hand on the forehead of the one that you're gonna give the lesser blessing to.

And so as Joseph lines up his children, he brings them so that Manasseh, who we are told is the older, the firstborn in 14, is on Jacob's right hand, and Ephraim is on his left.

This is the way that, according to culture, according to custom, it should go.

But Jacob does something kind of interesting.

When he goes to bless him, he does this old switcheroo.

He blesses him like this.

And Moses makes it really clear to kind of like paint this picture of our mind that Jacob crosses his hands, so then his right hand is on Ephraim, and his left hand is on Manasseh, the opposite way.

And in verses 15 and 16, God is, or Jacob is blessing Joseph, so Joseph's okay with it, but then in verse 17, Joseph kind of like freaks out.

Look what happens in verse 17.

Joseph saw that his father laid his hand on the head of Ephraim, and it displeased him, and he took his father's hand to move it to Ephraim's head, from Ephraim's head to Manasseh's head.

Have you ever wondered what it would look like for like a really young guy who's in the prime of his life to wrestle like a really old person who couldn't can hardly even sit up and is blind?

Have any of you ever wondered that?

Put your hand up really high in the air.

Okay, no one willing to admit it.

Okay, that's fine.

But here we have this scene.

It's kind of absurd, isn't it?

Like, remember that that Jacob at the beginning of chapter 48, he couldn't even sit up.

He was so sick.

And he had to like summon all the strength within him just to like sit up out of that bed.

And here is Joseph, and he's wrestling his father's hand.

You get that hand off of Manasseh.

It's the wrong hand.

But, okay, well, if you weren't interested in the old man, you know, versus the guy in the prime of his life wrestling match, you're gonna be interested in it now because Jacob's like a professional wrestler.

Jacob's been wrestling his whole life.

He came out of the womb wrestling, he wrestled for blessing with the angel, and now here he is.

He's wrestling with his son Joseph, and yet for the final wrestling match of his life, he will be wrestling on God's behalf.

Because what we come to understand is that this is the way that God would have it.

And so in verse 18, Joseph says, Jacob, the wrong wrong hand.

But his father refused verse 19.

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 him, and his offspring shall be a multitude of nations.

You know what this is telling us.

God chooses who to bless.

God chooses who to bless.

Where is happiness found?

God chooses.

God chooses whose life he will bless.

Your happiness is entirely dependent on vertical blessing.

That's humbling, isn't it?

For the North American, that's that's really humbling.

Your happiness is dependent on something that's outside of you, on God's blessing.

He chooses who to bless.

This is where fulfillment is found.

This is where satisfaction is found.

That means that that the only place for happiness, for human happiness, is in the place of seeking and panting after God.

It puts you in this like mindset, this heart of humility.

If I'm gonna have satisfaction, if I'm gonna have happiness, I am entirely dependent on your blessing.

I'm entirely dependent on you choosing whom you will bless.

I love how the psalmist says it.

This is gonna come up on the screen.

The psalmist says in verse 42, chapter 42, verse 1 of Psalm.

So he says, As a deer plant pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, oh God.

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.

And this is what I want you to understand, that whether or not you know that to be true, like sometimes don't we live like like this verse is that this is us.

I know that there's one place where happiness can be found.

It's vertically with God.

And yet other times, isn't it like we just don't know it?

If someone were to say, hey, you know, catch us in the middle of the tracks of what we're pursuing, they would they would just realize we're after other things.

And yet this verse is true, no matter where you are this morning, it is true that your soul is panting for something that can only be satisfied in God.

In other words, it's humanly impossible to find joy any other way than vertically, because your soul wasn't created for it.

To find joy in things that are not God, it's like imagine that you had a Tesla for a moment.

Again, we're getting into our imagination here.

You know, I drive a 2004 Toyota Corolla, so so sometimes I actually do imagine this.

You know, imagine you're driving a Tesla and you pull up to a gas station, you know, you're at the Costco gas bar, and you're sort of you're just trying to jam this thing, archaic thing called a gas nozzle, at this archaic thing called a gas tank, which is under a gas station.

Just trying to jam it into your Tesla.

Where does the gas go?

Well, it doesn't go anywhere because it the Tesla just doesn't take gas.

It's electric.

And same if a Tesla owner were to, or you know, an owner of a gas-powered vehicle were to go to an electric charging booth, well, there's nowhere to put that.

It just doesn't go.

That's the wrong source.

And this is so often what our life is.

There's one source for fulfillment, there's one source for happiness, and it is a vertical source in God.

This leads to our next question.

How do we lose happiness?

Here's how happiness, where happiness is found, but how do we lose it?

Well, we've come to understand this that it's a theological truth that happiness can only be found vertically.

But as we enter into Genesis 49, we get a bit of a manifesto, so to say, on how we lose happiness.

Now, in 49, Jacob gathers all of his children to himself, and in prophesying their future, he's going to give them their blessing.

Look what he says first to Reuben.

He says, Reuben, you are my firstborn, my might, the firstfruits of my strength, preeminent in dignity and preeminent in power.

Really significant that Reuben is firstborn.

Remember, culturally, the firstborn gets the primary blessing.

But look what he says in verse 4.

Unstable as water, you shall not have preeminence, because you went up to your father's bed, then you defiled it.

He went up onto my couch.

Jacob is disgusted with Reuben, and so Reuben will lose his preeminent spot of blessing.

All because of what Reuben did in Genesis 35, where in verse 22, in the span of a single verse, Reuben went into Bilha and slept with her.

And Bilhah was Jacob's wife.

Now, some of you guys, you haven't been with us through the whole book of Genesis.

So what I'm saying to you right now about Reuben, you're like, what kind of weird stuff does this church talk about on a regular basis?

But that's not where the weirdness stops, okay?

There's more to weirdness to be discovered beyond Reuben losing his blessing because he slept with his mother-in-law.

We see the same thing happen with Simeon and Levi.

See, Reuben had sought blessing outside of the vertical relationship with God he he actually already had, and because he did that, he lost it.

But the same thing happens with Simeon and Levi in verses 5 to 7.

It says, Simeon and Levi are brothers, weapons of violence are their swords.

Let my soul come not into their counsel, O my glory, be not joined to their company, for in their anger they killed men, and in their willfulness 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.

See, Simeon and Levi lose out on their blessing, and because similarly to Reuben, they sought blessing outside of God.

When their sister, Dinah, was defiled, they took matters into their own hands.

And it was this very action that led to their loss of blessing.

Now listen, here's the reality for you and me this morning.

Anytime you and I try to find happiness outside of this vertical source where happiness can be found, we lose it.

Every time.

We were doing science at the beginning, this is math now.

100% of the time, you seek happiness outside of this vertical source for which you were created to find fulfillment and happiness and joy, you lose it.

This is why when Jesus was asked how to follow him in Matthew 16, 25, these words are gonna come up on the screen.

He said this: Whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will, for my sake, will find it.

This is what Jesus is saying.

Listen, if you try to save your life, if you try to save your life, you're actually gonna lose it.

What does it mean to save your life?

Well, this is what uh the best way that I can kind of illustrate what it means to save your life.

You know those moments in life where you just want to say, and sometimes you actually do say it, you want to say, This is the life.

You know, you're you're um at the cottage and the sun is setting, and we're with a family, your family, it's been an awesome vacation, and you look to your wife, you say, This, this is the life.

That's what it means to try to save your life.

You're like you're trying to gather as many of those moments as possible.

It's the pursuit of the things that you think will make you say, This is your life.

Well, Jesus is saying that's a surefire way to lose your life, to lose joy, because those things may give fleeting pleasure, but their happiness is always lost.

Isn't that true?

This week I was running, and as I was running, the sun was rising, and I'm just telling you this for no other reason just to brag about how early I was running one day this week.

I'm just kidding, I do have a purpose in this.

But the sun was rising, it was this glorious moment, like there's farmers' fields on either side of me, and the mist is coming up off the off the ground, and I'm in I'm on like mile 27 of my run.

No, I'm just kidding, I didn't run that far.

But the mist is coming off the ground, and the sun is rising, and there's geese flying over, and I just had to stop and I had to take a picture.

But the moment I hit that shutter button, this overwhelming feeling sunk into my heart that winter's coming.

We kind of have that feeling right now, don't we?

Like it was a lot colder this morning.

These teachers that are among us, they got one week of freedom left, and then they're going back into the classroom, which by the way has become one of my favorite hobbies in the summer.

Always tell the teacher how much time remains until they go back to school.

The best is at the beginning of summer.

You say, nine weeks left, nine weeks left.

And teachers love that, okay?

Let me just tell you that.

Teachers love when you do that.

It's a greater joy for you, though.

And isn't that that true of everything in our life that makes us happy in this earth?

Like it's it's kind of got an expiry date on it, doesn't it?

It's always gonna come to an end.

You know, you go on that vacation and you kind of experience heaven on earth, but then like it's day two and you're like, oh man, only five days left.

This is this is coming to an end.

This this happiness is kind of fleeting, isn't it?

And this is exactly what Jesus is talking about.

Every time we try to seek to save life, we lose it.

Anytime we turn away from the vertical source to a horizontal source or near an inward source for happiness, we always lose it.

And you know what the problem is?

The problem for you and I, it's a really big problem.

The problem is that we live in a society that is constantly pushing us inward for happiness.

Isn't that interesting?

Where is happiness found?

Well, it's found vertically, and you lose it anytime you look anywhere else.

But our society is constantly pushing us inward to find happiness.

That's why if you were to ask, you know, that someone walking on the street, where do you find happiness?

What would they say?

Happiness is found.

This is kind of like a mantra in our society.

Happiness is found within.

Happiness is found within.

This is a modern view of happiness that if you want to be happy, you've got to like cut yourself off from any kind of like external source of happiness, and you've got to find it within yourself.

Look at what one psychiatrist says, Brian Weiss.

He says this.

This is gonna come up on the screen.

He says, Happiness comes from within.

It's not dependent on external things or on other people.

You become vulnerable and easily hurt when your feelings of security and happiness depend on behavior and actions of other people.

Never give your power to anyone else.

Part of like we can look at that, you know, that verse and say, that's true.

Like if your happiness is on external things, whether it's like people or it's things, well, you're never actually gonna be happy.

Circumstances will never make you happy.

And our world really understands that.

So then the problem is though, it responds the wrong way.

It says that then therefore you cannot find happiness in external in an external source, so you gotta go inward.

You know what the problem is?

The problem is that whenever we go inward, what we find there is kind of horrific, isn't it?

We say, okay, well then I'm not gonna go externally, I'm gonna find happiness within, but then we go into internally, and we're kind of horrified.

It's like being invited to come into like the haunted horror house on Halloween.

Because the Bible says that our heart is deceitful and wicked above all things.

And so you go inside of yourself and you realize that the things inside of you are kind of depressing.

And you find anxiety, and you find, I'm I'm actually not really that happy.

And and you know, you start to think about your self-esteem and it's pretty low, and you keep going in, and it's like I just, you know, there are moments where I feel good, but then there's days where I just feel like horrible.

I'm trying to find happiness within.

And so you look inward, try to find happiness, you try to base it off your feelings, but the charade can't last for long.

Now, listen, there's some of us who who right now are kind of saying, like, yeah, some of those people trying to find happiness inside, but I just want you to know, like, as a culture, everybody thinks like this.

This is the way our culture thinks.

Let me illustrate this for you, okay?

If you were to ask your grandpa, if you were to ask him, hey, were you satisfied in your work?

I would think that they they would be kind of confused by that question.

You fulfilled in your work?

Like, did you did you have like job satisfaction?

That's like a modern day kind of thing.

You know, for the most of the history of humanity, you've done what you need to do to put food on the table.

And so if they could kind of get past the question, I'm sure that they would kind of answer it like this.

Well, yeah, I was, you know, I was happy.

You know, I had a business and I contributed to society and put food on the table.

And they had this kind of understanding of fulfillment and satisfaction that was like, if they could provide for their family and provide to the work for the world and culture and economy in a way that was significant, then yeah, of course I was satisfied.

It doesn't matter what I'm doing, so long as I can do those things.

You and I, though, if if we were to ask each other, you know, if you were to ask me, you know, where do you find your job satisfaction?

I would go inward.

I would go internally.

In fact, I think all of us would.

We say, you know, I I love it when I've asked a ton of people this question, and you and you get the same inward feeling, the same inward answer every time, and it's an okay answer, but I would say, you know, it's it's something that makes me feel amazing when I see a person's life changed and transformed.

It's it's this incredible feeling, again, inward, that I have to see someone's life transformed.

And I might share with you, you know, the difficulty of, you know, like when I'm preaching and someone's fallen asleep, that doesn't feel so great.

And so I go inward to explain to you how I'm fulfilled.

And so listen, I just want you to know that these are the waters we swim in.

It's not a negative thing or a positive thing, but we swim in these waters that tell us that fulfillment is found inward, no matter who you are.

And yet the inward quest for happiness cannot last for long.

It kind of reminds me of garage sailing.

I don't know if any of you guys are interested in garage sailing.

I went through a season in my life where I was like very interested in garage sailing.

You know, I kind of thought you can find some real treasure, but then I realized that I'm just not overly interested in buying other people's garbage.

Isn't that kind of what like garage sailing is?

Like someone looks in their basement, they're like, oh man, I got all this stuff down here.

It's been here for 30 years, I haven't touched it.

And then their husband stops and wait, listen, what if we put it on the driveway and put price tags on it?

Then maybe some chump will come by and buy it.

And thus a garage sale is born.

I went saw a guy, one of my best friends, buy a golf cart pulley thing in a garage sale, and as soon as he got on the golf course, it would only pull left, which is a real problem.

And I think that's kind of like what garage sailing always is.

Now I can tell some of you are squirming in your seats, you really wish this was a dialogue so that you could tell me about the latest, you know, thing that you found at a garage sale, and I'm happy that it's a monologue so that I can just tell you right now, garage sailing will never, it's always a waste of time.

But uh the inward pursuit of happiness is kind of like that, isn't it?

We always think that we found treasure.

We always think that we found something that will make us happy, this feeling, and yet then it disappears.

It's revealed to not be what it really was.

It's because we were created for so much more.

That's what I want you to see.

That just like Reuben, Simeon, and Levi lost blessing because they constantly turned to other places for blessing, so you and I, when we turn inwardly or we turn horizontally for happiness, we lose happiness.

Because there's only one place you can find it, vertically with God.

Now, I want you to see something really amazing.

I want I want to just for a moment expose you to the grace of God here.

Because even though you and I have done this, and even though Reuben and Simeon and Levi did this, they do not lose out on the blessing.

The amazing thing is that, like Jacob, he's like so disgusted with Reuben, you defiled my bed, but then he goes on to bless him.

And listen, this is this is the people that God blessed.

God blesses people who do not deserve it.

God blesses people who keep going to the wrong source.

The prodigal children who they keep running away from the Father's love.

They keep running away from the one source of fulfillment and satisfaction.

But as soon as they return, God blesses them.

And maybe that's you this morning.

You've spent your whole life running away from God, trying to seek joy and happiness and the things of this world.

And you just be like, why would God ever bring me back?

I know he created me for such a deeper purpose than this partying, for such a deeper purpose than these material things.

Why would he bless me?

Because that's who God is.

That's who God is.

And so this is my third question.

How do we gain happiness?

In coming to Judah in verse eight, we come to the primary one whom Jacob will bless.

And we know that because it's one of the longest blessings that he gives to any of his children.

And it's very significant what Judah's blessing points us to this morning.

Look what he says in verse 8 as he blesses Judah.

Judah, your brother shall praise you, your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies, your father's son shall bow down before you.

What Jacob is blessing Judah with here is really significant.

For him to say, Your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies, he's saying, Listen, ultimate victory is gonna come through you.

Listen, Judah, remember that we are in cosmic warfare right now.

Since Genesis 3, God promised to crush the head of the serpent.

And Judah, I'm gonna be victorious through you.

He even says to Judah that his brothers are gonna come to bow down before him, which, as we've gone through Genesis, that's really significant.

Remember Joseph's dream?

Joseph's dream was that blessing would come when his brothers came to bow down before him.

But here is God saying that the spiritual blessing that was given to Joseph will happen through Judah.

Look what happens in verse 9.

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?

This is like if you're in the ancient Near East and you hear someone talking with this like lion metaphor language, you know they're talking about a king.

This is kingly language, but it doesn't stop there with the kingly language because then he talks about the king's scepter in verse 10.

He says, The scepter 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.

What Jacob's saying to Judah is that there is one coming to you who will be given the king's scepter, and it will never depart from him.

There's one coming, he says, that he's gonna have the scepter until tribute comes to him.

Now you see a little note there that says the number two, right, in your script, in your Bible, copy of God's word.

And if you look down at number two, it said there's a different translation there, and it's really interesting that as they kind of collected all the writings of the Hebrew Bible, they have multiple different uh copies that various scribes have made throughout history.

And as they compare these, they they take all of them to make sense of what was actually said in the original copy that was written by Moses.

And here, it's pretty rare that this happens, but they find all these kind of different um phrases here.

And I think it's significant that one of the phrases says, until he comes to whom it belongs.

And it's interesting because in Ezekiel 21, verse 27, Ezekiel's gonna look forward to the day that the Messiah comes, who we know is Jesus Christ, and he's gonna use that very same phrase, until he comes to whom it belongs.

Ezekiel 21:27

And I think what Jacob is saying here to Judah is that Judah is going to have the line of kingly priests until someone comes who it's their kingdom.

And we know that David, who's like the primary king in Israel, comes from the line of Judah, but Jacob here is looking beyond David to one whose kingdom it actually is.

Imagine for a moment, you and I had a friend who had like a classic car, and you know, you and I are hanging out, and we could drive that classic car around.

Like it's great.

You can drive it and have as much fun as you want in that classic car until the owner comes.

That's his classic car, and he gets to decide when he drives it.

And Jacob's looking at Judah and saying, This, listen, kings are gonna come from you.

That's the fulfillment of the promise given to Abraham.

Kings are gonna come from you until one comes whose the kingdom really is.

That's significant.

Judah's prophecy is saying this there's gonna be rulers in Judah, but there's one coming whose kingdom it really is.

Verses 11 and 12 tell us the nature of this king in kind of funny little language.

It says binding his foal to the vine and his donkey's cult to the choice of the vine, which is significant that in the prophecy Jesus fulfills that in riding into Jerusalem on a donkey.

If someone told you, hey, I just gotta go do some laundry, I got my laundry tub filled with wine, and I'm just gonna soak all my clothes in it, you'd be like, that's the opposite of laundry.

You're going you're going backwards there, buddy.

In fact, I read a story this week about a basketball player who had made it in the NBA, and what he would do for recovery.

Like you probably heard some crazy kind of recovery stories out there.

He would fill his hot tub with wine and soak in it, like run it so the wine would run through the pumps, and he'd soak in it, and that was recovery, which I think is kind of incredibly gross, and I don't ever want to go into his hot tub.

But it's also kind of like that's really expensive, isn't it?

Like, how much is a bottle of wine?

It's like 20 bucks, and you've got to fill that thing, and it's like probably hundreds of thousands of bottles.

And this guy's so rich, it's like, I don't even care.

I'm gonna fill my hot tub with wine and sit in it.

That's rich.

And that's kind of what Moses is getting at here.

This guy, like, he washes his garments and vine.

It's like like wine, this expensive, hard thing to get in the ancient Near East, doesn't matter for him.

He'll he'll even just use it as like bath water.

This is the kingdom who the king who owns everything, coming to take a kingdom that is rightfully his.

And here's what God's showing you and me.

If if we want to find blessing, we need to find it through the one that Judah is talking about here.

This is what the psalmist says in verse 2 when talking about the messianic king, for and sorry, in all of chapter 2, he's talking about the messianic king, the king who's gonna come.

And then at the end he says this kiss the son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled.

But listen to these words.

Blessed are all who take refuge in him.

There's a king coming, Jacob says to Judah, and in him, if you take refuge in him, you will find blessing.

Now, you and I, I haven't said the name, but we know exactly who this king is, right?

If you are a Christian, if you're a believer in the gospel, you know who the king is.

It's Jesus who was crucified with a plaque that was meant to mock him, but but in one of the greatest ironies of human history, actually declared who he was.

It said, the king of the Jews, the king of God's people.

It was this king.

And it's only when you come to take refuge in this king, the one that God sent to the world, that you truly find joy, that you truly find happiness.

He is the source.

He is the source of the greatest happiness.

I want to share this quote from Jonathan Edwards with you.

It's been such a blessing to me, and I've probably shared it before, but I just come back to it time and time again.

It says, God's the highest good of the reasonable creature.

The enjoyment of Him is our proper and is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied.

To go to heaven, fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here, better than fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, or children, or the company of any or all earthly friends.

Listen to this.

These are but shadows, but the enjoyment of God is the substance.

These are but scattered beams, but God is the sun.

These are but streams, but God is the fountain.

Here's the illustration that all these things that you've found in life that make you happy, but then fleet, the re are fleeting.

The reason for that is that it's just a stream, and you have not yet found the source.

But once you find the source, all those things that once you were pursuing happiness, they truly can make you happy.

They can truly can make you joyful because you look up the stream to the source, and there you see where true fulfillment is found in Jesus Christ alone.

All these other things they point back to Him.

All those things that make you say, like, this is the life.

They actually elevate this worship and praise in your life because it's been given to you by God, who is the giver of every good and perfect gift.

You find the source of true happiness.

I want to give you some really practical things here.

Because this is so important that we leave this place with true happiness.

Let me give you this really quickly.

The first is that if you want to be happy, you need to repent.

You know what's interesting, Judah's not perfect either.

You know, Reuben, Simeon, and Levi, they lost their blessing.

Well, Judah did something just as horrible.

And yet here he's the first and primary blessed one of Jacob's children.

Why is that?

It's because when we read of the story of Judah and Joseph, we realized that Judah had found true repentance.

And you need to know that there is no path to joy apart from repentance.

We talked about this a few weeks ago.

Repentance is a short-term sorrow that leads to everlasting joy.

And if you do not get serious about repentance in your life, if you do not get serious about confessing the things that you have thought would make you happy but didn't, you will never find joy.

You need to lose your life to save it.

And so, church, get to the work of losing your life, of repenting so that you can truly find joy.

Who's the person who found the treasure in the field?

You remember this parable?

What did they have to do?

They had to go and sell everything to get that treasure.

And until you sell everything in your life, until you repent of the things that you have loved too greatly, you will never find joy.

Judah repents, and so he finds blessing and fulfillment.

Next thing I want you to encourage you to is first repentance, but secondly, push into community.

It's so significant.

In our individualistic society, we cannot understand this.

It's so significant that the blessing God wants to give, He is giving to a nation, to a group of people.

Too many of us have been caught up in the individualism of our day to say that God will bless me by myself and I don't need to be involved in the life of other people.

I can just be blessed alone.

And it is impossible.

It's impossible to experience God's blessing on an island.

You do it in the context of the building that He is creating that is the church.

God chooses to bless his family, one family, the family of Abraham, which in the New Testament we come to understand that we are a part of by faith.

This is where God is blessing.

And some of the application here is like you need to press into community.

And you need to start weaving yourself into the lives of other people.

Because this is the place where blessing is found.

God's pouring his blessing out onto a group of people that he is then working and fulfilling his mission through the church.

It is so important, and none of us value it enough in this individual day and age that we live in.

This is why I'm so excited that in two weeks we're gonna finish Genesis next week.

Isn't that crazy?

Some of you guys thought, you're never gonna do it, Pastor Miles, you're never gonna finish Genesis.

Next week, Lord willing, unless according to the humor of God, I like, you know, get hit on it by a bus on my way out of this building.

We're gonna finish Genesis.

I'm glad that no one gave like a hallelujah or hearty amen there.

We're gonna finish it next week and start a certain series on the church.

And can I just encourage you and maybe press into you here?

Can you make every effort to be here for every one of those messages?

Because I just can I just like implore you as a pastor, I don't think that there is anything in our day and age that is robbing us of more blessing than our wrong views of the church.

We have this individual we can be so easily influenced by this individualism that runs so rampant in our society that we lose out on the blessing that God wants to do through community.

Repent, push into community.

Last thing I want you to see is in Joseph's blessing in verse 22.

It says Joseph's a fruitful bow.

Joseph has the longest blessing of all, and as you read through that, you just read it time and time again.

Blessing, blessing, blessing, blessing, blessing.

Joseph lived a life of blessing, and he was cut off from any external source of blessing.

How did he do this?

It says, Joseph is a fruitful bough, a fruitful bough by a spring.

His branches run over the wall.

And I think what happens here is in Psalm 1, the psalmist takes up this language and says this Blessed is the man who walks not in the council of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.

And then listen to this.

This is Joseph's language.

He's like a tree planted by streams of water, that it yields its fruit in season.

And its leaf does not wither.

In all that he does, he prospers.

You want to know the way to blessing?

It's every day, every hour, every minute of your life, you meditate deeply on the riches of who God is.

And what we're gonna do now is the worship team comes up, and as we sing is do that together and really declare to the world that there is one place to find a blessing.

So would you stand and sing as we declare that God is the only source of our blessing?

Let's stand together.

I'm gonna pray for us as we respond to God's word.

God, thank you for your word.

Thank you that you speak to us.

And you have such an important message for us, Lord, that the pursuits we've been on to find happiness and joy and fulfillment are so empty and cannot last.

And yet there's one source that we can find, and it is in your Son, Jesus Christ.

And so we respond to you now, Lord, to say that there is one place.

Or to declare that there is one joy.

To declare that to that as we know you, what we find is infinite riches.

An infinite source of fulfillment, satisfaction, and pleasure.

That is you.

And so we declare this truth, to respond to your word together, declare, Lord, you are the one joy of our lives.

It's in the name of your son we pray.

Amen.