Blessing the Sons of Israel

Morning, church.

Reading from the book of Genesis, chapter forty-nine.

Then Jacob called to his sons and said, Gather yourselves together that I may tell you what shall happen to you in days to come.

Assemble and listen, O sons of Jacob.

Listen to Israel, your father.

Reuben, you are my firstborn, my might, and the first fruits of my strength, preeminent in dignity and preeminent in power.

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

He went up to my couch.

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

Let my soul come not into their council.

O my glory, be not joined to their company.

For in their anger they killed men, and in their 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.

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

Judah is a lion's cub, from the prey, my son, you have gone up.

He stooped down, he crouched as a lion and as a lioness.

Who dares rouse him?

The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff between his feet until tribute comes to him, and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.

Binding his foal to the vine, and the donkey's colt to the choice vine, he has washed his garments in wine, and his vet his vestiture in the blood of grapes.

His eyes are darker than wine, and his teeth whiter than milk.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church, and we are one chapter away from completing Genesis, which uh feels like the culmination of a very long journey, and I'm sure I'll talk about that next week.

But this week we haven't quite finished Genesis, and we are in these final moments of Jacob's life in our story this morning.

And Jacob gathers his 12 sons together and he offers them each a blessing over their lives.

So it 12 blessings is a lot to cover in a sermon.

Um, so we're covering five of them.

Uh we're going to look at uh five of the particular blessings, and then we're going to try and understand how is it that these blessings work together, and then who it is that each of the blessings point towards.

Spoiler alert, it's Jesus, and in him we find the fulfillment of all of these blessings.

So we're going to look through these towards the Christ who is to come and the one who we are able to be blessed by in the way that Jacob blesses these 12 sons.

So uh would you pray with me before we enter into our text?

Holy Father, we praise you for your loving kindness and that your steadfast love never ceases.

Lord, we praise you that even at the uh door of death, being brought to the very moment of death, we can look in faith towards your continued work and your continued faithfulness, that our lives take place in the context of your steadfast love towards us, and that you desire to speak incredible blessings over your children.

We praise you, Lord, that in Christ we are adopted into your family, and that with Christ as our Lord, we can call you Father as Jesus called you Father, and that we can look forward to a more incredible inheritance than uh even is is given in the beautiful words towards the twelve sons of Israel.

Lord, I pray that you would shape our eyes to look at that, and that we might receive you with the highest gratitude.

Lift us up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So last week we looked at uh the first blessing that Jacob gives, and that's to the sons of Joseph, Joseph's sons, Ephraim and Manasseh.

We saw a lot of parallels there between the blessing of Ephraim and Manasseh and the blessing that Jacob himself had received from his father Isaac.

In a sense, it was like the thing that should have happened in the blessing of Jacob from his father that didn't happen because of the selfishness of Isaac.

We see it it finally comes to fruition in the blessing of Jacob.

And it's even referred to in Hebrews as the highest moment of faith in Jacob's life, it's his blessing of Ephraim and Manasseh.

Here at death's door, it looks like the promises of God have not been true.

Because the promises of God to Abraham that are then given to Isaac, that are then given to Jacob, are a promise of a land for a people.

And at this moment, and it's still this moment that we're looking at in this text for today, as a people, they have been sold to Pharaoh, and so they do not belong to themselves, and they are outside of the land, fleeing from the famine that was in the promised land of Canaan.

And so Jacob, here at the end of his life, might consider the promises of God were simply not true, and to have pursued those with my life was fruitless.

But that's not the way he views things.

Instead, he looks at his twelve sons, and God, in his faithfulness towards him, and with the wisdom that uh Jacob had developed in over the course of a life of pursuing the Lord, he is able to look past his own death and through the lives of his sons, well beyond even just their own lifetimes, but hundreds of years into the future, and what he sees is the continued faithfulness of God.

Jacob's Jacob's hope had shifted from just what he could grasp in this lifetime.

Remember, Jacob's name means grabber of the heel.

He is a grasper.

He is one who seeks to take things now by any means necessary.

This is his nature.

But here, at the end of his life, he's not a grasper anymore.

If he holds fast to anything, it's to the promises of God.

And so that name we see a goodness in.

And we see it in the way that he blesses his twelve sons.

Now, standing at that moment of death, there's a clarity.

And we see that in the way that he blesses the sons.

Things are made plain.

And we see that as he looks forward in hope in this moment of death, we see the pattern of how we are to hold fast to the Lord.

Now, you all look great this morning, and it doesn't look like you're you're on your deathbed, dragged here.

Not one person in the room, in fact.

But you may be soon.

And you have a chance to practice this type of faithfulness all the time in your life.

Because all the time in your life, you come to moments where it seems like, why didn't God just follow through here?

Why wasn't the promise just realized here so that I could hold it now?

And in those moments of loss, of plans that seemed so good that you just don't get to experience now.

In those moments you get to practice what Jacob demonstrates here, which is a looking forward to God's unstoppable faithfulness.

It never ceases.

So let's be encouraged by that this morning as we look through.

I'm not going to go through all 12 sons' blessings.

Well, let's let's look at this first.

Let's let's just set the scene.

In uh uh chapter 49, verses 1 to 2.

I might say 1 to 12.

Yeah, that's on me.

Should say 1 to 2.

It says, Then Jacob called his sons and said, Gather yourselves together that I may tell you what shall happen to you in days to come.

Assemble and listen, O sons of Jacob.

Listen to Israel, your father.

At the beginning of this, it's described more as a prophecy than as blessings, but at the end, it says, Thus Jacob blessed his sons.

And so we're right to refer to them as blessings.

But I think you'll listen to some of these and you'll think, if that's a blessing, then you can keep it.

There's a when they're taken as a whole, we see that the 12 tribes are meant to interact in a way where they all receive all of the blessings.

But we see that there's a narrative that's built into these that shows us the peculiar nature of God's blessings, that they work in unexpected and just ways.

So we're not going to look at all 12 blessings, we're going to look at five.

We're going to look at the blessings of Reuben, Simeon, and Levi, which are the type of blessings that you'd say, I think you can keep those.

And then we'll look at the blessing of Judah, and we'll look at the blessing of Joseph.

Those are blessings you want to hang on to.

So let's begin with the oldest sons as Jacob gathered them together: Reuben, Simeon, and Levi.

First, Reuben.

In Genesis 49, verse 3, it says, Reuben, you are my firstborn, my might, and the first fruits of my strength, preeminent in dignity and preeminent in power.

Genesis 49:3

Reuben's the firstborn son of Israel.

And the firstborn has the right to leadership over the other sons, which for this family means they ought to be the king.

Because this family was promised that nations would come from them.

That's what it means to be a king.

And you would receive as the firstborn son a double portion as compared to all the other brothers.

You would get a double portion of your inheritance.

And Reuben has the right to all of this.

He is the firstborn.

He is my might, he is my strength, he's preeminent in dignity and preeminent in power.

This is the nature of Reuben.

This was what he was given as his birthright.

Now, 49, verse 4, it continues describing Reuben.

And Jacob says, unstable as water, you shall not have preeminence.

Because you went up to your father's bed, then you defiled it.

And then it switches to the third person, and he turns to the other brothers and says, He went up to my couch.

Reuben is the firstborn son.

He will not receive the blessing of the firstborn son.

Why is that?

Well, you may remember the story.

It's not so much a story as it is a couple of sentences that describe an event that took place.

It's not gone into in much detail.

But Reuben goes up to his father's bed and defiles it, which means that one of the concubines of Jacob, Reuben took for himself.

And then Reuben's life is this pattern of trying to make up for that.

When Joseph is in the pit, and all the brothers are conspiring for how to kill him, and then Judah comes up with the idea to sell him, Reuben is saying, I'll hide him in this pit, and then I'll come back and I'll get Joseph, my father's beloved Joseph.

And then I'll be able to present Joseph to my father, and then I'll be back in his good graces again.

Because my father knows this sin that I have committed against him.

If I'm able to present Joseph to him, surely I'll be freed.

Later, when Joseph is, you know, king of Egypt, and he requests that Benjamin be brought back with the brothers, otherwise he won't see the other brothers again.

Reuben says, We have to go back to Egypt.

If we uh go to Egypt and we lose Benjamin, you can kill both my sons, he says to Joseph.

Excuse me, to Jacob.

Wow, a lot of Jays.

He says to Jacob.

Now, this is another attempt of Reuben to say, look how much, look at this sacrifice that I will make in order to win back my father's favor, that I might receive the blessing that I was born into, but that I squandered by trying to seize what wasn't mine, and in a sense, make myself equal to my father while my father was still here.

So we see this pattern throughout Reuben's life of trying to take back and win back his position as the oldest son.

But Reuben, in all of this, in all of his trying to earn back the favor of his father, he never repents.

There's never an acknowledgement of his previous sin.

There's never a moment where we hear Judah say something like, I was unrighteous in my actions.

And so Reuben, in his unrepentant sin, although born the firstborn, receives none of the blessings of the firstborn.

So we've got to keep moving down the line.

Reuben was the firstborn.

Next is Simeon, and then Levi.

So if Reuben's out, let's go to Simeon.

Simeon and Levi.

Here are the blessings of Simeon and Levi.

Do you hear what we're doing?

We're hunting for a good older brother.

When you consider that Jesus is now our new older brother, don't you hear in the phrase, we're hunting for the true older brother?

That's like what it is to be a human.

So we're doing that now in the text.

Simeon and Levi are brothers, Jacob says.

He gathers them together.

Weapons of violence are their swords.

Let my soul come not into their counsel.

O my glory, be not joined to their company.

I'll continue.

In verse 49, 7, we'll skip to that one.

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.

Simeon and Levi will remember their story a bit that we covered.

And when their sister was taken by a man in Shechem, these brothers went to that town and they murdered everyone.

Men, women, children.

They destroyed the whole town.

And they the the wives that were left unmurdered, they took for themselves as captives.

And even in this, we we read a detail that we hadn't known, which actually I think I had left out, but that they hamstrung the oxen, it is told, of them.

And it's a strange phrase, but it's just a uh the point is that their violence was gratuitous.

It was this over-the-top violence that was well beyond the justice of God for the wrong that had been committed.

Now, when that story is told in Genesis, there's no commentary from the narrator.

There's no, it never says, they went and they destroyed this people.

Uh, and then it never says, and that was bad.

They shouldn't have done that.

It's just left open-ended.

But the judgment is here.

You know, keep reading.

The judgment is here, and the judgment is that he Jacob himself says, This violence means you will not be the true older brothers.

And in fact, you will not have a share or a portion in my inheritance.

You will be scattered.

And you know, this is true.

This comes to pass for the tribes of Simeon and the tribes of Levi.

Simeon is they they're such a small tribe that when the portions of the promised land are allotted to them, they are just scattered within Judah.

And so they're they're just sort of this scattered people, a city here, a city there, but they have no place.

Judah is such an expansive tribe with such a huge amount of people that they're this huge region, and the tribe of Simeon is just scattered throughout it.

So by their violence, by their seeking to grab beyond what was theirs, a whole town, you know, by taking Shechem before it belonged to them, they receive barely any, almost none of the promised land.

Now the Levites as well receive no portion or inheritance in the promised land.

Numbers 18, 20 through 21, while the land is being allotted, it said, And the Lord said to Aaron, You shall have no inheritance in their land, neither shall you have any portion among them.

I am your portion and your inheritance among the people of Israel.

Now, who are the Levites?

Why do they not have a portion or an inheritance?

It's different from Simeon.

Simeon is like, I'm telling you, you're never going to amount to anything, and then Simeon never amounts to anything.

With the Levites, it's different.

What who are the Levites?

The priests.

So they don't get a portion or or an inheritance.

They don't have a region, but they are in all the regions of Israel.

And a tenth of all of what the regions of Israel bring in belongs to the Levites.

And if God says something like, you don't get a portion or an inheritance here, we'd think, oh yeah, that's not good.

But then if he says something like, I am your portion and your inheritance, it's it's like, well, that's actually pretty good.

When God gives himself to you to be received by you, and you read something like that in the Bible, you should make a little note in the margin that says, good thing.

That's a good thing.

Receiving the Lord is good.

Now, what does this tell us about the shape of the curses that are being given by Jacob to these older sons?

Well, it shows us one thing.

The way that Jacob is is is cursing these sons is not something like a blind fate.

You know, this is not uh the the the blind man in the Oedipus story who who says you will kill your father and sleep with your mother, and then Oedipus does all everything he can do to make that not happen, and then it happens, not to give away the ending.

It's a very old story, so the spoilers are available.

This is not something like blind fate when God is pronouncing these things.

That's not the way, that's not the way this works.

So consider Jeremiah 18, 7 through 8.

Jeremiah says, If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy, and destroy it.

And if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it.

What are the curses of God?

It is not a blind fate that you may do every it where the trick is you could never avoid it.

There was no possible way to return to the Lord.

What God is saying to you here in this curse is that you're out and there's no returning to the Lord.

No, there is always a path of repentance.

Our Lord receives those who repent.

Now, what's the story of Levi then?

Well, Moses goes uh up the mountain and he comes back down, and Aaron, who's a Levite, had this great idea while Moses was gone to uh start a cult.

And he gathers all the gold and he uh makes an idol, an image of a golden calf.

The way he describes it to Moses is I put the gold in the fire and this calf came out.

To which Moses gives the the largest eye roll in redemptive history.

And what Moses did.

Does at that moment when he sees that all of the people's hearts had turned from God in a very short period of time, the God who saved them, to this idol and to idolatrous worship practices, he says, Whoever is with me and the Lord, come and stand with me.

And the only tribe that comes and stands with him is the Levites.

And then the Levites are commanded by Moses to go back into all who are continuing to worship Baal and slaughter them.

Take your swords and cleanse Egypt, excuse me, cleanse Israel from this wickedness.

And they do.

And that is how the Levites become the priests.

It's swords both times.

The sword is why they were cursed.

But the sword also becomes the picture of the Levites' zeal and faithfulness and desire to see Israel remain pure.

It is this, it's a perfect sort of repentance, something like on a national level, tribal level, for the Levites.

And in that, although they are given no portion or inheritance, as though God would be a liar, they are given a portion and inheritance that is redeemed.

And their lives will be spent with swords, you know, slaughtering animals, as priests, with the Lord as their portion and their inheritance.

Aesthetically, it's not the most, you know, our sensibilities are like, that's not the prettiest story.

But we see that the there's they're cursed by the sword, but the Lord takes that very same sword, which is a part of them, and he uses it for redemptive ends.

This is the nature of the curses that the Lord gives.

They are always calls towards repentance.

So Simeon and Levi, not true older brothers, too violent.

They take what doesn't belong to them.

Reuben, not a true older brother, because he is uh tried to seize this position before it would be given to him and betrays his father and the rest of his family.

Now we arrive at Judah, fourth in line.

Judah receives the promise.

Judah will be given what the older brother ought to be given, the role of king.

He won't be given the double portion.

That will go to Joseph, but he's given the role of king, which goes to Judah.

We'll look at some selections from this.

Judah, verse 8, Judah, your brothers shall praise you.

Your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies.

Your father's sons shall bow down before you.

You can't really hear it, you know, but Judah and praise sound just like each other.

So when you're saying like Judah, your brothers shall praise you, there's this poetry in it.

Because don't you hear it?

Judah and then praise.

How do those sound just the same?

That was a joke.

In Hebrew, they sound the same.

In English, of course, those words don't sound the same.

Your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies.

Hand also sounds just like Judah.

They're they're they're just uh vowels apart, and vowels in Hebrew are like, who cares?

Your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies.

Your father's sons shall bow down before you.

Does that remind you of anything?

Remember the book we're in, the story that we've been hearing.

It's Joseph's story.

What got Joseph in all that trouble?

His dream.

His dream.

And the dream is that your sons will bow down before you, where there's this similar glory of what happened to Joseph that's being given to Judah here.

We are seeing the true firstborn son.

He will be a son of praise, and he will have a glory that is like the glory that was shown to Joseph, is what's being pronounced over Judah.

Judah is a lion's cub, verses nine through ten.

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?

It would be better, he not is stooped kind of when you picture a lion stooping, it's like he's about to pounce.

That's not what's happening here.

What's happening here is the lion ate and is satisfied, and then uh like he goes up to the high place and sleeps.

You know, Pride Rock.

That's what it was based on this.

He goes up to the high place and then he sleeps, and you look at the lion and he's up there sleeping, and that's the king, you know.

He rules around this area.

Who dares rouse him?

You don't walk up to the sleeping lion unless you're Simba, which is probably a good image there, too, for us.

But you don't walk up to the sleeping lion and try and get him to wake up.

There's a power in the images that are given to Judah.

It 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.

There's so much in the blessing of Judah that we can see coming.

We know that it is the lion from the tribe of Judah, who we see in Revelation is the is the Christ.

Jesus is the lion from the tribe of Judah.

And what does the lion from the tribe of Judah look like?

It looks like a lamb that's been slaughtered, is what we'll see in the lion from the tribe of Judah.

The shoot from Jesse that comes up is this tribe of Judah.

We see the patterns of the life of Joseph that's been given to him in this blessing, but we also see the pattern of the life of David that's shown to us in this blessing.

He is raised up on prey like a lion.

And then he sits down, he lays down at the high place, like a throne, like a king.

This is David's life.

You know, he is out in the wilderness hunting and being hunted.

He is the defender of Israel, even before he is the king of Israel.

And then there comes a time where he sits above all his brothers.

David's life is shown to us in this in this section.

And then it says, the scepter shall not depart from Judah.

It means that the scepter, the the image of the king's power, will be with the tribe of Judah forever.

If you're doing our Bible reading plan, then we have just read the Davidic covenant that God gives to David.

And it is this promise that the throne will never depart from David's house.

It will be an everlasting throne.

And we can see that here in this promise.

Jacob is being given this vision of a future for Judah's kingdom, which will be an everlasting kingdom.

It says the ruler's staff will not depart from between his feet.

Between your feet is children.

Children are the things which come out between a mother's feet, and they are this is an image that children will his kingdom will be everlasting as his children will just go on and on forever.

And then this strange verse, which is very unsettled as to what it means, until tribute comes to him is one way to translate it.

Another way to translate it as until Shiloh comes to him.

Another way to translate it is until what he until what he is owed comes to him.

Or something like until he receives what he has coming.

It feels that way throughout church history.

But we can we can have this sense.

Shiloh is peace.

Shalom, you can hear that.

You know, that's the same root.

Solomon is the son of David.

And under the reign of Solomon, it is the, you know, we could say something like the, I don't know, the Pax Jerusalem Jerusalemana.

I guess that's why we don't say that.

But it's the time of peace that uh the nation experiences, and it's the height of the nation that's shown.

And so there's something like this is the, and it's when the temple is built.

This is the culmination.

So there's some promise of culmination here.

But there's also this idea of until what he is owed is brought to him.

And the that phrase, that phraseology is used for the Lord receiving the final offering that satisfies his judgment.

And so we see something like the final judgment that's coming that that will bring the peace, and that is shown to us in Christ.

And then especially we see in this last phrase, and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.

The peoples is uh, well, they're right there.

That's y'all's last name.

But the peoples, the peoples, it this includes you all, but it's not, you know, particularly about y'all.

Is about the Gentiles that are brought in.

Solomon brings in the Gentiles.

You know, the queen of Sheba comes in and gazes upon his glory, bringing in the thing that is the farthest out.

But of course, Christ is the one who brings in the Gentiles, so that this scepter that never leaves is not only unlimited in time, because it will go on and is as an everlasting kingdom, but the scepter that is promised to the offspring of Judah is also unlimited in scope of people, so that all will be brought in under this reign.

Now, these are unimaginably grand promises that are given here to the one who will be the true older brother from the tribe of Judah.

But I also want us to see something a bit smaller that we're uniquely equipped to see because we've been walking through the narrative of Genesis.

So we've seen Judah's story unfold.

Now it might have crossed your mind, and I I hope, I hope perhaps it did.

Reuben is left out.

He is not the true older brother because of his sexual immorality.

But Judah is brought in.

Judah's track record is not great.

Judah has, Judah raises three sons, two of which are so wicked that the Lord kills them.

That's bad.

If you're making notes in the margins of your Bible and you read, someone is so wicked that God kills them, then make a note that bad.

Those people were bad.

And then you can know later.

That's a sign of bad things.

The Bible's way of saying this was bad.

So Judah is living in this deep wickedness.

The sons of Judah are not going on forever, but they are destroyed.

Now, the last son of Judah, he refuses to marry this woman too, who he ought to have married, her off to.

And as things would have it, she ends up uh seeking his offspring, and so she poses as a prostitute, and Judah goes into her and he leaves with her this particular sign uh as like a you know, like a ticket at the laundromat so that you can get your laundry back.

And when he goes back and she reveals herself as pregnant, Judah says uh she should be killed because she's been sexually immoral, and then she reveals herself to be his daughter-in-law, and the one who actually does have the right to his heir.

And Judah says, spare her life.

She is more righteous than me.

We get a whole chapter about Judah's sexual immorality.

We get a couple of sentences about Reuben's sexual immorality.

Judah seems worse.

Now, what's the difference?

Judah repents.

And Judah, we get something like there's like young Judah and old Judah.

And old Judah is repentant.

And he makes a similar offering to Joseph, similar to Reuben's offering, when they're going back to Egypt and they have to bring Benjamin this time, and Jacob really doesn't want them to bring Benjamin, and all the brothers are trying to coax Jacob to say, How?

Judah, instead of saying, You can kill my sons, Judah says, the curse can fall upon me.

And that's the first time he does that.

And then when Benjamin is about to be left, he remembers that he had said that, and then he says to Joseph, Instead of taking the boy, take me instead.

Joseph, excuse me, Judah moves from the type of man who will sacrifice his own sons for himself to the type of man who will sacrifice himself for his brothers.

He is repentant and changed.

And now the promise that this man, who out of his own wickedness, was cutting off his line over and over again, so that his sons died, and then he would refuse to marry them off, in his repentance is given this promise that your sons will be everlasting, and they will sit on an eternal throne.

Repentance is something else, isn't it?

For those of you who feel bound by some sort of blind fate, for those of you who are living in sin and trying to make up for it, like Reuben, we offer the story of Judah.

Repent.

Lay down your attempts to make up for it.

Come to the gracious Lord who receives your repentance and then offers you something everlasting.

Everlasting.

The one that comes from Judah will be an everlasting king who dies on the cross, and in his death our sins are punished.

The offering is brought to Shiloh.

And we are forgiven.

God looks forward to that as he sees your repentance.

Now he looks back as he sees your repentance.

All right.

This will help us know what's going on.

The sons of Reuben, the firstborn of Israel.

Now, the chronicler, who's writing down huge lists of names, thinks, oh yeah, uh, people might not understand.

He's the firstborn of Israel, so they'll probably expect us to start talking about the enormity of his blessings and his reign as as king, because he was the firstborn of Israel.

A parentheses can clear this up.

For he was the firstborn, but because he defiled his father's couch, his birthright was given to the sons of Joseph, the son of Israel, so that he could not be enrolled as the oldest son.

Though Judah became strong among his brothers, and a chief came from him, yet the birthright belonged to Joseph.

See, I'm not just making this up.

What happens here is the birthright is given to Joseph, and the kingship is given to Judah.

Later there will come a son who fulfills both.

Jesus, it's always Jesus.

And uh, but for now, in the in the course of redemptive history, throughout the nations of Israel, we'll see the birthright going to Ephraim, who becomes the greatest of all the tribes, and the kings is is basically just a uh uh a chronicling of of their of their greatness and them being beyond all the other tribes.

And it's coupled with the chronicling of their wickedness, which we'll get to soon.

But what I just want you to I just want you to see the way that these are, the way that this interacts with all of the history of Israel.

That we're tracing these two sorts of things.

We're tracing the kingdom and we're tracing the birthright.

And the thought is, will these ever be brought back together?

You guys hear that, right?

Will these ever be brought back together?

Now, what happens right after the reign of Solomon?

The kingdom splits into Israel in the north, Ephraim, son of Joseph, Ephraim in the north, larger kingdom, and Judah in the south, the smaller kingdom.

And what's happening there?

It's the same question that's happening here.

Will the birthright and the kingdom ever be brought together so that the nation is able to participate in the blessings of God?

I just want you to see that, see that question.

Okay, let's move into the blessing of Joseph, the second to last blessing.

In 49, 22 through 23.

This is a good one.

Joseph is a fruitful bow, a fruitful bow by a spring.

His branches run over the wall.

A fruitful bow, by the way, it's probably better to translate as donkey.

Um, you just have to take my word for it.

Uh Joseph is a is he's like a, and donkey is good.

Okay, when we hear donkey, I know what else you hear.

That's not what's being said here.

It's a it's a royal thing.

It's a it's a good, fruitful thing, powerful thing.

His branches run over the wall.

The archers bitterly attacked him, shot at him, and harassed him severely.

You know, we're getting something like a biography of Joseph's life.

Joseph is this fruitful person, but his life was under constant attack, and that is the life of Joseph.

But what was the difference in Joseph's life?

Verse 24, yet his bow remained unmoved.

His arms were made agile by the hands of the mighty one of Jacob.

From there is the shepherd, the stone of Israel.

This is the difference in Joseph's life.

He is the most attacked, but the Lord was with him.

And here we get a list of names of God, like nothing else we've seen before in all of Genesis.

It's almost like a grand reveal at this part of the story.

From in the beginning, where this book begins, from in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth up till now.

We haven't gotten a list of names of God like we see here.

The reveal is something like: look at the one who has been doing this throughout the whole story.

You think this is the story of Joseph, but look, this is the story of God's faithfulness to Joseph, because it is the mighty one of Jacob who made his hands agile, that he was equipped to handle the kingly tasks of what were assigned to him for the saving of many people, including the remnant of Israel.

Because from there is the shepherd.

It is God who is the shepherd of Joseph's life.

Joseph's life could look like the most haphazard, the most unguided, because it's all strange happenstance, is one way to read Joseph's story.

You know, it's kind Of like like Forrest Gump, you know?

That's a movie about strange happenstance.

There's no reason that uh he happens to be in all of these places at all of the right times.

Uh it's just blind fate.

That's one way to read Joseph's story.

He literally finds his brothers in Shechem by overhearing a random unnamed desert wanderer.

Like if that guy wasn't there, there's no story.

Or we see this was shepherded by the shepherd of Israel.

Jacob offers this blessing by the God of your father who will help you, by the Almighty who will bless you, with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that crouches beneath, blessings of the breasts and of the womb.

Jacob offers this blessing to Joseph, which is a surrounding him with the blessing of the Lord.

May the Almighty bless you with blessings from heaven above, blessings of the deep that crouches beneath, that is above and below the life of Joseph.

Blessings of the breasts and of the womb.

This is fruitfulness and life that is that is here beside you.

This is the the blessing that this glorious blessing that is offered to Joseph is this.

The Lord will surround you.

He will care for you and shepherd you.

The Lord will provide you all that you need.

There is no depths that you can go to that the Lord will not be with you.

Depths, what would a depth look like?

Maybe the bottom of a pit where you're starving and your brothers are ignoring your cries while they eat.

What are the heights?

Maybe the greatest empire in the in world history to this point.

And you become in charge of all of it, making yourself as a father to the Pharaoh.

That's a good description of a height.

Where had the Lord been with Joseph?

Everywhere.

The whole place.

Keep it rolling.

These are the blessings of Joseph, and they're they're amazing.

Okay, I'm gonna try and move quickly.

He says before a long pause.

Is this just the coat again?

Is this just Jacob giving the coat of many colors to Joseph again?

And setting up the same disastrous outcome?

Do you do you see it?

How that could be?

Is this just okay, great?

The other brothers think after they leave, like, how was dad's funeral?

And it's like, oh, it's fine.

Oh it's once again, it was good if you're Joseph, they say as they walk back, slaves in Egypt, where Joseph is king.

But we have to understand that the nature of these blessings are to the one, but for all of them.

So where is it that they will find the blessing of Joseph?

Well, now Joseph is the king.

He is the leader of them all.

And so where is it that they find the blessing?

It is by submitting to the good blessing that Joseph has been given.

The blessing that was given to one of them, they find their blessing in.

So that they're meant to, you can see how this blessing of the one could be a process which just tears the family apart and at one point had tear the family apart.

But if they hold it properly and they honor the blessing that was given to the one, then it becomes the thing which brings unity to the family and by which they all experience the blessing.

Joseph will be rejected.

This glorious blessing that is given to Joseph and to Ephraim, his son.

Just as it was dropped by Reuben, it will be dropped by Joseph.

The promise that was given to the one that if they hold it, they might be a blessing to all the other tribes.

They aren't able to hold it.

Psalm 78, verses 67 through 68 says, He rejected the tent of Joseph.

Psalms 78:67–68

He did not choose the tribe of Ephraim, but he chose the tribe of Judah, Mount Zion, which he loves.

Judah will likewise go into exile, find itself, in a sense, unable to bear the blessing.

The blessing of the one is for all of them.

We're marching through this list.

And when we understand that pattern, the blessing of the one is when we submit to the one who's been given the blessing, we all get to participate in that blessing.

What are we hunting for?

Who's going to be the true older brother?

Does humanity ever get the true older brother that we submit to?

And in submitting to him, we receive the blessings that are given to him, that we can participate in them.

From the tribe of Judah comes one who will be called a Nazarene, which is an Ephraim.

There's one who is, in a strange way, both.

And this one who has the kingdom, who is the rightful king, and has the inheritance, will go down to the absolute depths, and he will take upon him the sins of all the nations, like the Levites turn the sword even on their own, so that the rest of Israel might be saved.

This high priest will turn the sword even on himself, so that the rest of Israel and those who are far off might be saved.

And he gathers from this the most glorious inheritance, that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him, and he ascends to the throne and he gives to us in the true older brother, the true son.

We are made those who share in these glorious blessings, who are forgiven by him so that we might never lose them.

We are the peoples who are brought to this everlasting scepter that never goes away, and he pours out upon us his very spirit as the glorious heights of our inheritance.

There is an older brother who can bear the blessing.

There is an older brother who can feel the curse and redeem it.

There is an older brother who allows all of us to look at the deaths that you're facing or experiencing in your life and to look at them with hope because he is the one who has conquered death.

Why is it that we who are no better than Reuben, no better than Simeon, no better than Levi?

Why is it that us who are not children of this promise can look at these promises and say, those belong to me?

I'll have a share and a portion and an inheritance from the Lord.

It is because there was an older brother.

His name was Jesus.

And our hope for these promises is in him.

Okay.

How should we consider and discuss blessing, both giving and receiving today?

Um I'll give a boring answer now, and then maybe I'll give a cool answer later.

A boring answer is look, you okay, maybe this will be a little cool.

We're really good at thinking of horizontal causality.

Okay, so we're good at we're good at thinking uh that, well, you know, they were uh you you're a parent, and so how do you bless your children?

Well, you you paid for their college and you gave them a house to be in, and you uh took looked after their education, and you and we can see how those things they cause, you know, in a clear way, like some sort of trajectory for a person to have a successful life and a stable life.

And we're good at thinking in those terms, but we're we're not as good of thinking in terms of like a like a vertical causality, which is like what God does, where he names things.

And part of what we're doing with blessing is we're we're naming goodness to be there.

And that feels like an unnecessary extra, but perhaps it's the most effective thing to say to your sons and your daughters, I have to tell them you are a child of God.

To you belong the promises.

You have this glorious inheritance.

This is all yours and all belongs to you.

You know, perhaps that that is actually the most effective way of creating success.

That that's that those words spoken over one another and the people who we are over, maybe that's actually the most effective thing.

So I think we should at least let the talk of blessings and curses shift us in that way.

Now let's take communion.

Paul writes, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night when he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you, do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

The older brother, who is true, calls us to the table, and he invites us and gives us this blessing, that we might have the Spirit and call his father Father.

Holy Father, I pray that you would bless this meal, that we would receive it at the hand of the one who purchased it for us, and that we might receive it freely.

That the blessings that have been given to Christ that we are able to participate in.

So let our hearts submit to him and come to him in repentance to receive the glory of his forgiveness and the steadfast love that you continue to pour out on us.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.