Clough Genesis Lesson 96

Death and dying – Genesis 48

As we’ve gone through the Genesis series for the past two years we have noticed that the book lives up to its name because it’s the book of the origins; it’s the origins of the universe, the origins of evil, the origin of sorrow, the origin of God’s saving gracious work and the origin of the elect instruments that God uses in His saving gracious work. One of the features, of course, of the creation narrative that I did not bring when I exegeted the passage originally was what some of you were treated to Wednesday night, and again as I say without putting my label of approval on all that was discussed, I simply point out to you that it’s a symptom of our generation not to carefully examine its presuppositions and I know many of you were thoroughly amazed that a man with erudition and scientific experience could stand up in front of you and tell you that the earth had never moved, that the universe is rotating around the earth once every 24 hours, and that the earth was indeed the center of the universe, and to defend that on physics grounds, that this was startling. And people commented afterwards at what a startling thing it was to discuss with a man who knew thoroughly relativity and could hold to these kinds of opinions.

One of my reasons for exposing you to that kind of a thinker was because it should warn you against the edifice of human thought that is so built up and everybody assumes that the earth revolves around the sun, but as I warned you several Sunday’s ago, how many of you are prepared to stand up and give three reasons to show that, in fact, the earth revolves around the sun. Well, that is an example of something that we have to look forward to; it is conceivable that western intellectual thought, since Copernicus is indeed on a wrong foundation. As he pointed out, the entire proof for heliocentricity depends on experiments done as late as the 1800s and that for years the Copernican idea was accepted purely on ascetic grounds, not science grounds, ascetic grounds, it just looked prettier. And for that reason that’s a very weak reason but it is used oftentimes to undercut people’s confidence in the Word of God. And so hopefully that was an exercise in re-examining what you really believe and why you believe what you believe.

Genesis challenges us in every area and these last few chapters don’t leave us disappointed. In chapter 48, 49 and 50 we deal with death and dying. And these chapters give us some good wisdom principles on death and dying. One of the problems, of course, today is that we live in a society that wants to avoid death, the mention of death, preparation of death at all costs and the result is that people simply don’t make adequate preparation for death. I’ve noticed this as pastor watching and asking myself, how do you give help to people that involved in a dying situation, either they are dying or a loved one is dying, and you go and you study what has been written so far in the journals and the Christian popular literature and they give you some good things, some promises and so forth. But when it comes down to giving concrete advice, there’s a lot less unwritten. And so I decided I’d start working through a check list that we’ll develop here at Lubbock Bible Church that will be available to members on how to prepare for death and the process of dying, because after all, if the rapture doesn’t happen it will happen to all of us; it’s one of the certain things, along with taxes, in the world. And so therefore we want to give Scriptural principles for this.

This morning’s study will begin a three-part series on death and dying and the principles that God wants us to know and as pastor I want you to know. Each year in our country two million Americans die. This means that about every two minutes three Americans die. And the question is, such this is such a popular process, what things are done to prepare for it. One of the things I ran across in preparation for death and dying that came to my attention as I was preparing for the series was the preparation that Charles Lindbergh made for his death; maybe some of you remember, he died four or five years ago, August 26, and the man who made such great preparations as a young man to fly across the Atlantic with next to no navigation, on really a breathtaking feat, and one of the great heroes of the 20^th century, as a non-Christian, and Charles Lindbergh as far as we know was a non-Christian, made some very interesting preparations for his death. For example to start things off, which is not true of many who die, he was told by an honest medical staff that, in fact, he was dying. At New York City Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center the doctors said Mr. Lindbergh, you are about to die; death is imminent as far as we know as medical professionals. Lindbergh then had himself flown back to Hawaii where his home was, he had a coffin made by Hawaiians from eucalyptus wood, he had instructions left for his corpse to be dressed in ordinary work clothes, and the pallbearers in ordinary work clothes. He composed his own prayer and designed his own funeral.

Now there’s an example of a man who prepares; prepares for what is the greatest challenge of life. Now there are lots of ways of preparing; traditionally the only time we usually think of preparation is on the financial end. Just to start off matters and put it in perspective for Genesis 48 I went back and looked at a survey that was done in Washington DC in 1973; this is how much it costs to die, you can’t even die without inflation grabbing you. So we have this; this is probably outmoded now but in 1973 in Washington DC a so-called complete adult funeral, which left out all of these items, but nevertheless was advertised as complete, cost $1137. The vault and grave liner cost $136; the newspaper death notice, $20; the clergyman’s honorarium $15; transcripts of the death certificate; $5; the flower wagon $25; the organist $15; the single graveside $160; the opening and closing of the grave, $150; the marker and monument, $178; and last but not least, the sales tax was $45. So this is the cost of American dying. I told you, death and taxes always go together.

But when we look at it from the Scriptural point of view it’s a little bit more involved than just the cost economically. Involved in death is a mysterious something that always has kept people from really wanting to talk too much about death and dying, particularly their own. We want to look at three New Testament passages in preparation for Genesis 48 today, that talk about this problem of dying.

The first one is found in 1 Corinthians 15. In 1 Corinthians 15 we have a passage that most clergy read at the graveside ceremony. If you’ve been in attendance at funerals you will often hear the clergyman read either this passage or 1 Thessalonians 4. I have recently become aware, since as a minister I see death probably more than the average person other than the medical people and since I’m involved in funerals a lot I forget that a lot of people aren’t. And at several recent funerals some of the younger people came to me and said this is the first funeral I’ve ever seen, and it kind of intrigued me, as you’ll see in the position of Genesis, apparently no one ever in their family has died or if someone in their family has died they haven’t been around at the point of death, and there’s this shielding of people from death.

Let’s look at some of the problems spiritually because dying is an intensively spiritual act, it’s one of the most spiritual acts that you’ll ever perform in your life. 1 Corinthians 15:55, this is part of a song in the Old Testament that is cited by the apostle Paul. “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? [56] The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.” Now quite obviously the grave has a victory and death has a sting or the lyrics to the hymn wouldn’t be that way. What is the sting? Well, in verse 56 it says the sting of death, that which is so painful about death, isn’t the cost or the $45 sales tax; the real sting of death, it says, is sin. Now how does sin become that which is stinging and painful? It’s because sin causes judgment and when we say death, what we’re really saying when all is erased, we’re saying that we face judgment, and we’re saying that no matter what we are, who we are, what we’ve done, this is an unavoidable confrontation that’s just about to take place. Hence, death has a sting to it.

Now the New Testament goes on and comments further on the nature of this sting or this pain and this second passage is found in Hebrews 2:15. The author passes by death quickly but in so doing adds one other little feature. It says Christ was manifested to “deliver them who, through fear of death, were all their lifetime subject to bondage.” Now notice this, in verse 15 the sting is amplified, basically as a fear, a fear that strikes terror deep in the human heart, whether it’s man, woman, child, or old person, fear… fear of death. In fact, verse 15 goes on to say that not only is this fear a great fear, but it’s so great a fear that it can tend to influence the way you live all your lifetime, that people for years and years can be subject to the fear of death and therefore in bondage. Now what does it mean to be in bondage? It means that you fear death, you fear the judgment and so you try to generate good works, hoping for that day. The bondage in the book of Hebrews is a bondage to a works system; a system that denies atoning grace. And so therefore we have this fear of death leading to bondage.

But probably the most insightful passage in the New Testament that talks about this fear of this sting that’s in death that we all try to avoid is Romans 1:32. That’s the last verse in that very famous chapter that deals with God-consciousness and how all men are God-conscious. Even your local atheist is basically God-conscious, for he can’t deny God unless he knows God it is whom he’s supposed to deny and so therefore to deny God presupposes God. As Van Til has said, the child can’t slap his father’s face without sitting on his father’s knee. And so the atheist cannot deny God’s existence without presupposing the God of Scripture.

In Romans 1:32 we have this person who professes no knowledge of the Scripture; this chapter shows how deep indeed is his knowledge of God. It says not only do they know God but they know the judgment of God. Who is this? People who have not the Bible. Romans 1 is a man without the Bible, and he, “knowing the judgment of God, that they who commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same but have pleasure in them that do them.” Now we normally concentrate on the last half of verse 32 but this morning let’s look at the first part of verse 32. Here in the God-consciousness of man is not only an awareness of God but an awareness that God is angry, that there is a judgment to be faced and not only is the judgment a judgment but it’s a death sentence, notice, “worthy of death.” So the implications of verse 32 are quite strong. What verse 32 is teaching is that the person who hasn’t even touched the Bible has the ability to discern that the God of Scripture exists and has the ability to know very well the moral requirements of the God of the Scriptures. And not only that, but has the ability that he himself falls short of the moral requirements of the God of the Bible. And not only that, but that he not only falls short of the moral requirements of the God of the Bible but that he falls so far short that he merits a death sentence.

How’s that for knowledge among the (quote) “innocently ignorant.” You see, there’s no innocent ignorance at all in the world; all men know this. The problem isn’t that there are some men in the world out of touch with God; the problem is that all men are so greatly in touch with God that they spend most of their psychic and psychological energies trying to suppress the knowledge of God. That’s the problem; no man, no man ever is remote from God. He’s either bowing his knee or he’s rebelling but he’s always in contact with God. One can no more deny his God-consciousness than you can hold your breath for more than five minutes; it’s impossible. You’re built that way. And so we find people, Christian and non-Christian alike, aware that death is a big thing and it’s not just a sweet little transition into a reincarnation into something else, it’s a major judgment that we face.

Now this causes interesting problems. There was a doctor in a hospital in Framingham, Massachusetts, several years back, Dr. Robert J. Kastenbaum, who performed the following experiment to show, though not as a Christian, but to show that there was this problem of facing death. He took 21 mature young women and divided them into three groups of seven. The third group was a control group that he used to gauge his experiment with. Then he hired an actor to pose as a patient in a hospital and he had each of the three groups, group one group two, and group three interview this (quote) “patient.” They didn’t know that he was an actor; he only knew that he was an actor. And on the first pass all three groups were invited in to speak to this man in the hospital, this so-called patient. On the first pass each of the seven women in each of the three groups was informed that the man’s prognosis was not clear, that a diagnosis had not yet come back, it could be serious or it could be trivial. And then Dr. Kastenbaum sat back and he watched the eye contact, and he watched the content of the communication between those who walked in as they talked to the man and then as they left; all this was tape recorded and filmed.

And then he said to the women in group one and two on the second pass, but not in group three, the women in group three were told on the second visit that the patient, no change, the prognosis is not known because the diagnosis is not clear. But on group one and two Dr. Kastenbaum informed them that the diagnosis was that this man was terminal and therefore he had but a few weeks to live, suffering from a very severe illness. Then Dr. Kastenbaum tape recorded the conversations and filmed eye contact of each of these two groups and he discovered an amazing thing. Eye contact was lost; the women who had first had no problem at all talking with him under condition A, that is he was all right, had extreme difficulty in trying to communicate under situation B because now they knew that he was dying; they did not know whether he knew that he was dying but they just knew that he was dying themselves. So the conversation was very poor, eye contact was almost nonexistent in both groups one and two.

Well, surely this experiment demonstrates the tremendous effect that the presence of death and dying has on certain people. Now in Genesis 48 we’re going to begin a study of some of the principles of death and dying. It may not be pleasant for some of you but it’s part of my job as pastor-teacher, if you are in my flock, for me to train you in these areas. And so this is part of my Christian responsibility, to provide information for you when you face these kinds of trials.

Genesis 48:1, “And it came to pass after these things, that one told Joseph, Behold, thy father is sick: and he took with him his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. [2] And one told Jacob, and said, Behold, thy son Joseph comes unto thee….” Now here we have one of the first principles of death and dying; it is an extremely important principle. It is one that is violated in almost every hospital in the city of Lubbock at the present time, not always by any means, but is violated far too often. It’s violated far too often in families of the dying, by the doctors they have hired to take care of the patient, and this is the principle: The dying have a right to know they are dying. Again: The dying have a right to know they are dying.

Here in verse 1, obviously the family is told, quite frankly, that this person is dying. In verse 2 Jacob is well aware why Joseph is coming and he’s aware of his own imminent death. Now why are we so strong on this point? Because there floats around in the land this notion that to tell a dying person that they are dying causes such great psychological grief that you ruin the last days of their life so why not just keep them happy and dumb, and why not create this tremendous fabrication around their death bed so everybody trips in and walks silently and whispers in the house, but never tells quite frankly face to face that the person is dying. Now if you’ve been around dying people, generally speaking a person who is dying has pretty strong intuitions they are dying.

So now look what we have produced. In the name of trying to save someone from a few psychological griefs by not telling them frankly they have cancer, for example, and are dying, we say oh you just have an illness and the doctors are struggling, it’ll be all right, you just have to go through a little period of suffering. Now look what we do; we create an entire fake atmosphere of fabrication based on lie and as I’m going to show you in a few moments we are thieves that have stolen things from the person who is dying and from their family.

Here are some of the specifics. The dying person has a right to make reconciliation with surviving people. If there’s a personal relationship that’s wrong between the person who is dying and some of the survivors, why not give the dying person the right in the last years of their life, the last moments of their life, a chance to make these things right. You know what happens when you don’t? The person dies, the people who are living around them see the person die, they no longer can have reconciliation with them because they’re dead, so now added to the grief problem that you had to start with now add on top of that guilt problems. So now we afflict the whole surviving generation because we failed to communicate truthfully at those last few hours. So I insist that denying the dying person the right to know deprives him of the right to make reconciliation.

Another thing that it denies him is what Jacob is doing in this very passage. It denies the dying person the right to make provisions for his survivors, particularly if it’s the man of the home. He has a wife and he has children, now what happens. Does the wife know about the life insurance; does she know that it’s in the bank in the vault; does she know all the money’s down there and the moment her husband dies it’s going to be locked up and she’s going to be without a dime, because the bank seals the vault. Does she know that, or does she get it out of the vault before the person dies, practical things like this. And so here is the person who is supposedly responsible spiritual leader of the family deliberately isolated so he can’t give instructions on how this family is to survive the death process.

And then if that isn’t bad enough, that he can’t make reconciliation to those who are yet living, and he can’t direct the survivors of his own home, if that isn’t bad enough he can’t even carry on an honest relationship with God because he isn’t sure. Now if you’re dying don’t you have the right to go to the Scriptures and read the Bible in the context of your own death? Don’t you have the right to pray to God knowing that you’re going to die shortly? In other words, you’ve stolen from the heart of the whole person’s relationship with God. So let’s get away from this attitude we have that the dying don’t have a right to know they’re dying; that’s baloney. It’s paganism, it’s heathenism, and if you’re a Christian in a family situation you’d better be sure, when you commit somebody you love to medical authorities and you suspect it may be a terminal situation, you make it clear from the very start to that doctor or whoever it is that’s in charge, in our home this is the way we run the show and we expect you to be both forthright and honest with both us and with the patient. Just make it clear, give the doctor a cue because sometimes it’s hard for medical people to understand; some people go to pieces in this situation.

The problem that we have here that has got to be resolved and we Christian families have to resolve it because it’s not going to be resolved for us, is the sphere problem, the sphere between the pastor and the doctor. That is a boundary that is becoming increasingly vague. I’ll give you an example of it and someday I swear, it’s going to lead to a lawsuit. If someone in my flock goes out here and flips out or something and comes down to the emergency room feigning a suicide attempt, for example, immediately they’re placed in the funny farm. The doctor in charge, I have watched, will prohibit the Scriptures from being given to that person. Now I come to visit; that person is in my flock, under my spiritual care. The doctor, however, says no Bible and I say Bible. You see the collision. How are you going to resolve that one? And this is just one of about a dozen that I can tell you is being discussed very seriously in the journals of the clergy today. The boundary is very fuzzy, largely because Christian families have let the doctor have the final say.

And oftentimes tragically, from my observation, these people who are in the dying process, another reason for the smeared authority problem, is because oftentimes the dying person isn’t a member of a particular church so the pastor has no cue as to whether he’s supposed to be taking care of this or not. And in our day we’ve very sloppy over this problem of membership, and it’s very confusing to a pastor. How is he supposed to know who he’s supposed to take care of? The person never identifies with him, well, then what’s his thing. And yet in many churches people expect the pastor to suddenly come in on the scene and he’s usually glad to do so but it puts the pastor in a very ambiguous position because he’s scratching his head trying to figure out where do I stand in this; if I get in a confrontation with the doctor, what card do I play in my hand. I don’t know, because it’s so screwed up in this place of the pastor’s relationship to the patient. Now these are the things, the serious things that you ought to consider in your home and do your best to clarify these before the situation arises.

Let’s look at Genesis 48 for some more principles. You notice that Joseph here is “coming to thee,” Joseph comes to him. That means this family is honestly aware of the presence of death and is now taking steps to cope with it. Yeah, there’s grief, but they’re not paralyzed, as I have seen some, by the specter of death; they see it and they make plans. But now in the end of verse 2 there’s something else you want to notice; it says “Israel,” notice the shifting of nouns, from Jacob to Israel, remember the author of Genesis does this whenever he wants to emphasize an important spiritual point that has ramifications to the future, he will usually shift from the name Jacob over to the name Israel because Israel is his given name from God. So he says: “Israel strengthened himself, and sat upon the bed.” Notice what it doesn’t say; it doesn’t say that the attendants by his dying bedside lifted him up. Here is the picture of an old man who’s dying and he uses his last strength to get his body up to sit.

This introduces a second vital principle in this matter of death and dying, and one that is also being violated all across the boards. And that is the dying have a right to be coherent as long as they can; that means the ability to communicate and not be drugged into a stupor so that what usually happens by the time the pastor arrives on the scene and is supposed to minister to this person, how can you minister to the person when he’s got three times the legal dose or morphine in his veins. You can’t because he’s been drugged into a stupor under the axiom that pain is man’s worst enemy. Pain is not man’s worst enemy, particularly in the dying moments of life. I’ll never forget a situation that came out of my wife’s practice as a nurse where at one particular hospital, not here, she took care of a woman whose husband didn’t want to talk to his wife about this death problem; the woman was dying. And this psychologist, it’s always interesting to watch who these characters are, this psychologist was so unable to cope with the situation of his wife, do you know what he did? He had the doctors super dope her up with morphine so she couldn’t talk; only one problem. This woman wanted to talk so badly that she had over the lethal dose of morphine in her veins and broke through the morphine to try to talk to her husband. Then he walked out of the room. Now there’s an extreme case of the use of drugs to avoid a spiritual confrontation. There’s no medical reason for that and there’s no medical excuse for that; that is simply a spiritual problem that that woman and that man have and they refuse to deal with it so they bring the doctors in as a medical cop out to drug the problem away.

Now here is Jacob strengthening himself and he sits upon the bed. He hasn’t been drugged into a stupor before arrangements are complete. I want to emphasize this point so I’m going to take you to some other verses in the Scripture. Turn to Proverbs 31:6 because I know this can be used against what I just said. So I want to deal with this first. What we’re talking about is the use of anesthetic in the death and dying. In Proverbs 31:6 it says, “Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto those that be of heavy heart.” People can look at verse 6 and say aha, there’s an excuse for drugging people into a stupor at the point of death. Well now just a minute; what verse 6 is saying is that at the point they are ready to “perish,” deal with the pain problem; maybe at the moment of death, yes; incidentally, we’re not against anesthesia and anesthetic, we’re not against that; we’re just saying choose them somehow so you can maintain coherency as long as possible, that’s what we’re saying.

Now how I know that must be the interpretation of verse 6 is because of the best model we have on death and dying in all of God’s Word, the Lord Jesus Christ. Turn to Matthew 27 and watch how Jesus died. Two little incidents happened at the foot of the cross and it tells us a profile of death. Matthew 27:34 and verse 48. Here Christ is dying; He’s bearing the sins of the world. You can tell from verse 29-30 that He’s in pain. The people around Him know that He’s in pain and “They gave him vinegar to drink, mingled with gall; and when he had tasted thereof, He would not drink.” But then you skip down to verse 48 and you find him drinking. “And straightway one of them ran, and took a sponge, and filled it with vinegar, and put it on a reed, and gave Him to drink” and He did. Why did Jesus refuse to drink first and accept it the second time? The tip is found in what happens between the two verses. Between the two verses the Lord Jesus Christ completes His atonement. Notice verse 46, here while Christ hangs in pain on the cross for our sins, he says, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani,” which is the Aramaic rendition of Psalm 22:1. What this means in verse 46 is not that Jesus just said “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani,” but rather it says that Jesus apparently recited all of Psalm 22.

For those not familiar with Psalm 22, turn back to 22 and I want to show you what kind of excruciating pain the Lord Jesus Christ was in before He took that medication. Psalm 22:14, He says, “I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like was; it is melted in the midst of my bowels. [15] My strength is dried up like a potsherd [and my tongue cleaves to m jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death.]” Verse 16, “…they pierced my hands and my feet.” He’s in pain, but He refuses to take the medication at that point. And the reason is he is undertaking a spiritual work that requires concentration, and He’s got to be able to concentrate to finish the Father’s work. In spite of the pain He must continue to concentrate, and so He rejects the drink at that point.

Now turning back to Matthew 27, when He finishes, after He finishes that, then it says in verse 48, He “took the sponge,” then he drank it. And there is the Proverbs 31:6 taking over, just prior to death, “them that are ready to perish, give them strong drink.” But you see, Christ maintained His coherency long enough to deal with what had to be dealt with.

So again, the first principle of death and dying is that the dying have a right to know they are dying in order to make preparations and so on. Two, the dying have a right to be left coherent as long as possible.

Back to Genesis 48 and this deathbed scene of Jacob. It’s significant that when the old man pulls himself up with his last strength into the upright position on his bed, he doesn’t talk the way he did elsewhere in the book of Genesis, because usually when you see these speeches they’re introduced with niceties; they’re introduced with greetings and so on. Here on his deathbed there isn’t time for that and he doesn’t talk about the weather, or who won the last Cowboy game, or some other triviality of life; he discusses the major issue which is his relationship to God and particularly his family’s relationship with God.

And so he says, [3] “And Jacob said unto Joseph, God Almighty” and he uses the name El Shaddai, which means the nourishing God; Shaddai is related to the Hebrew word for breast and it means nourishment, “El Shaddai appeared unto me at Luz in the land of Canaan, and blessed me,” and one doesn’t have to be a Bible student of much erudition when he reads verse 4 to recognize therein the Abrahamic Covenant, the great promise of the Word of God was what dominated his conversation at the point of his death. That was more important than anything else in his life, was the promises of the Word of God. [4, “And said unto me, Behold, I will make thee fruitful, and multiply thee, and I will make of thee a multitude of people; and will give this land to thy seed after thee for an everlasting possession.”] See, when a person dies, when you finally death you get real; then all the excuses and all the wasted time and I can’t do this and I don’t like that and blah, blah, blah, blah, all of that is just bulldozed off to the side and you come right down to where the rubber meets the road and that is all of a sudden now this God-consciousness come crashing in, yeah, I’m a creature and yeah, I’ve got to face God and yeah, I’m a sinner; right down to the basics. No façades now because no façade is going to impress God; that’s why people tend to be quite honest in their dying moments. And so here the honesty of his dying moments reflects his great sanctification, that the Scriptures mean more to him than anything else and so that’s exactly why he trusts the Scripture at that point.

But then he does something significant and this shows you why he must be coherent in order to do what he’s about to do. In verse 5 and verse 6 he makes a division in the family of Joseph. Now the only way I know to do this is to do a chart, diagram it, because it’s a little tricky when you read it. Here’s Jacob and you would normally expect the father to bless his son, that’s normally the way the blessing is transmitted. In this case that is not so; he blesses Joseph by blessing two of Joseph’s sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, so the blessing sort of bypasses Joseph and goes to his two sons. Then, theoretically, Joseph could have other sons. Now if you’ll note this verse carefully, the old man divides the sons, because look what he says in verse 5. He says, to “thy two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, which were born unto thee in the land of Egypt before I came [unto thee into Egypt,] those are mine [as are Reuben and Simeon, they shall be mine];” see what he’s claiming. In other words instead of them being his grandsons he’s claiming them as his own. Jacob claims Ephraim and Manasseh and that is the origin of the two tribes of Israel of the northern kingdom: Ephraim and Manasseh. That’s historically how they came into existence; that’s why there’s not a tribe called Joseph. There is no tribe in the Bible called Joseph. Joseph disappears in history and he reappears in his two sons. And they become two of the twelve Jewish tribes. At this point, theoretically you’ve got 13 tribes; one, Levi, will not have an inheritance because of their service. So 13 minus 1, it goes back to twelve and you preserve the twelve nature of the tribe.

Notice in verse 6, however, “And thy issue, which you beget after them,” that’s other children that Joseph may have, history doesn’t record he did have any, but if he did, these would be Joseph’s inheritance and whatever inheritance they got would have to be underneath these two boys. Those two boys carried the family inheritance with them. [“… shall be thine, and shall be called after the name of their brethren in their inheritance.”] So the old man in his dying days completes his life, and verse 7 is the key, by relating them to his favorite wife, Rachel. “And as for me, when I came from Padan, Rachel died by me in the land of Canaan in the way, [when yet there was but a little way to come unto Ephrath: and I buried her there in the way of Ephrath; the same is Bethlehem.]” see, it’s still on his mind, and I’ve tried to make you aware of this all through these Jacob stories that Jacob never forgot Rachel; it seems like he forgot the other women but he never forgot Rachel and that’s why he was so possessive of Benjamin, because Benjamin was his only son, he thought, left of Rachel, but when he saw Joseph, now he’s got three, he’s got Manasseh, Ephraim and then Benjamin is also a son of Rachel, and now he’s satisfied and so he ponders in verse 7 Rachel’s death. Her death now isn’t despair for him because he’s seen that she has had her lineage extended in history, so that’s why there’s this reflection. It does seem out of place when you look at it in verse 7, why does Rachel suddenly get in the text here.

Now the scene shifts to the actual blessing, Genesis 48:8-14. Now when this scene takes place the author of the text is very careful to give us at the beginning important details so you can picture this in your mind. That’s what the author wants; use the imagination that God has given you to picture this. So in verse 8, 9 and 10, background is given on the old man; he’s old, and he has failing eyesight; maybe he has cataracts, maybe he’s got very nearsighted or something. So he asks, “Who are these? [8. “And Israel beheld Joseph’s sons, and said, Who are these?” Now that’s important because he can’t see what he’s doing and that’s important for what’s going to follow. These are my sons says Joseph, and he said okay, bring them and I’ll bless them. [9, “And Joseph said unto his father, They are my sons, whom God hath given me in this place. And he said, Bring them, I pray thee, unto me, and I will bless them.”]

Verse 10, “Now the eyes of Israel were dim for age, so that he could not see. And he brought them near unto him; and he kissed them, and embraced them. [11] And Israel said unto Joseph, I had not thought to see thy face: and, lo, God hath showed me also thy seed.” [12, “And Joseph brought them out from between his knees, and he bowed himself with his face to the earth.”]

So he brings the two children and in verse 13 and 14 an interesting thing happens. “And Joseph took them both, Ephraim in his right hand toward Israel’s left hand,” so if this is Jacob and this is Joseph, Joseph puts Ephraim here, on Joseph’s right, to Jacob’s left, “and Manasseh in his left hand toward Israel’s right hand, and brought them near unto him.” The reason he does that is because of the twins Manasseh is the firstborn and usually the firstborn will obtain the inheritance. People often have asked me is it that in the Bible, why does the Bible favor the firstborn son with twice the inheritance of all the other children in the family. The answer is that the firstborn son was the designatee of the estate, he was the executor, and he had the responsibility to care for any surviving parents, so since the added responsibility went on the firstborn’s shoulders, therefore he had twice the assets of any of the other children in the home.

So that’s why Manasseh, you would think would be, “And Israel stretched out his right hand,” now remember, here’s the old man stretching out, he can’t see what he’s doing, but it’s as though God just moves his hand over so when he lifts they’re crossed, like this, and he blesses the wrong boy, Joseph thinks, and he blesses Manasseh; he guides his hands knowingly, [“and laid it upon Ephraim’s head, who was the younger, and his left hand upon Manasseh’s head, guiding his hands wittingly; for Manasseh was the firstborn”] he guides his hands knowingly; see the word in the King James says wittingly, but “knowingly; for Manasseh was the firstborn.” He laid it upon Ephraim’s head… Israel stretched out his right hand and laid it on Ephraim’s head, so you see here’s his right hand it’s crossing over here, his left hand is going over here, that’s the crisscross, it’s a major shift. Let’s see why. [17] And when Joseph saw that his father laid his right hand upon the head of Ephraim, it displeased him: and he held up his father’s hand, to remove it from Ephraim’s head unto Manasseh’s head. [18] And Joseph said unto his father, Not so, my father: for this is the firstborn; put thy right hand upon his head.”

And then he gets down in verse 19, when Joseph, watching this take place, starts to intercept the old man’s wrist, because he remembers, he grew up remembering how…Jacob must have told him how it was when he was a boy and his dad died and Isaac reached out and Jacob cheated and he got the blessing, that story was well known, so this is why you see in verse 19, Joseph is very fatherly over his two children and he doesn’t one of them to get ripped off. “And his father refused, and said, I know it, my son, I know it: he” that is Manasseh, “also shall become a people, and he also shall be great: but truly his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his seed shall become a multitude of nations.” Historically this came to pass with the northern kingdom. The northern kingdom was known as Ephraim. Ephraim lived in this part of the area; Manasseh was a Transjordanian tribe. And so historically that’s exactly what the blessing of the old man was and it turned out this way.

This is the third principle of death and dying. Not only does the dying person have a right to know he’s dying, not only does he have a right to be coherent as long as he possibly can, but the third thing is he has a right to rule his posterity, and that’s what’s happening with these patriarchal narratives in the end; the dying person has a right to rule their posterity. Now this is hard in our day because we have socialists, many of whom are Christians who don’t know any better and vote ignorantly but we have socialists who have argued that we have to fracture family wealth. And one of the ways, practically speaking, you rule your posterity is by the way you allocate your wealth to your children. The government today, unfortunately, makes that as difficult as possible because they don’t recognize the principle I’m teaching you here today, that the dying have a right to rule their posterity. Jacob is ruling his posterity in a very strange way. Somehow, and this is another question that was asked after the morning service today, how did he know what the destiny of his children were. I think he had prophetically heightened illumination. I also said that I think these fathers simply knew their sons that well; it’ll become obvious, for example, in the next chapter. They knew their children so well they could predict what their children would do in the future. All right, he blesses, then, Ephraim over Manasseh.

Let’s back up a minute to verses 15-16 to learn something about the old man himself. As he rules his posterity, you see where he gets his spiritual power from? [15 “And he blessed Joseph, and said, God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk, the God which fed me all my life long unto this day,” and so on, [16, “The angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads; and let my name be named on them, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac; and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth.”] Where he gets his spiritual power is his deepened relationship personally to God. In verses 15-16 that deepened relationship is shown by two titles; unfortunately the King James misses it, where it says “the God who shepherds me,” and “the angel who redeems me.” Now here’s the first occurrence in the Bible; that is the first time in the Bible the idea of a shepherd is married to God. It’s the first time those two ideas coalesce in the Scripture.

That is a good illustration because anyone who’s studied here over the past Sunday mornings, when you see this word in the Bible, “shepherd” or “pastor,” you know what it means. At one point God was wrestling with Jacob. Now you have namby-pambies in the evangelical church that think the pastor is some sort of a Johnny-come-lately glad hand artist and that’s all he’s supposed to do is run a P.R. agency or something. That’s not the role of the pastor. Do you know what the other picture of pastor is in the Scriptures? It’s the word, “you shall rule them with a rod of iron.” That’s also a function of the pastor. Now I dare you to put gentleness to that one. You see it just doesn’t follow and the reason is this hatred for that kind of a role, that visual of a shepherd because all during our lives we grew up in Sunday School where somebody showed us that Sunday School picture of Jesus holding the lamb and this is our picture of a shepherd, instead of the picture of the shepherd hitting them with a stick because they’re so stupid they get into these ditches, or the slides I’ve shown you where they flip into the food trough, big long thing 40 feet long so where do all the dumb sheep congregate, one place, butting each other out of the way when they’ve got all this other place to eat. This is what sheep do, so the role of the shepherd, and you can prove it, you don’t have to take my word for it, I challenge you to prove it yourself by going through the events in Jacob’s life, some were gentle and some were not gentle, but both the gentle and the non-gentle are included in this title shepherd.

Let’s go to “angel” now, “the angel who redeems me,” this is a first. You see, there’s a progress of doctrine that’s occurring here at this point in history. The old man, prior to his death substantiates which member of the Trinity… just look at those two titles of God and think of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and think which one of the Trinity does that most clearly show? It’s God the Son, the role of the Lord Jesus Christ. Who is the angel of God in the Old Testament? It’s the Lord Jesus Christ. So this old man speaks in his dying days of his personal relationship with Jesus Christ, in preincarnate form of course, but nevertheless with God the Word, God the Son. Now it also goes on to say, “An angel who redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads; and let my name be name don them,” in other words, here’s the historical continuity, “and they will “grow into a multitude in the middle of the earth.”

Now skip back down to Genesis 48:20 and watch how it ends. It ends with his summary blessing; now this passage in verse 20 is a little hard and there were some people that had problems with it in the early service, so let me try to run through it and make it clearer this time. “And he blessed them that day,” who’s blessing them? That’s Jacob. “And he blessed them,” that’s Joseph and his two sons, and then he announces, “[saying,] In thee shall Israel bless, saying,” now after the word “saying” there ought to be a quotation mark because that is a saying or a proverb, “God make thee as Ephraim and as Manasseh:” and then end the quotation mark after “Manasseh.” Everything between “God” and “Manasseh” is a proverb and what he’s arguing there is, and he’s prophesying, is that God is going to so bless Ephraim and Manasseh, and by the way, why is that such a big deal? Because these kids are half Gentile, remember. Joseph married a Gentile woman; these are not all Jewish kids. But God is going to so bless them any way that they’ll be a proverb saying may God bless you as He has done Ephraim and Manasseh and that will become a Jewish proverb in the centuries to come. So it’s his way of saying you’ll really be blessed, so much so it will be proverbial. [21, “And Israel said unto Joseph, Behold, I die: but God shall be with you, and bring you again unto the land of your fathers.”]

One other prophecy that is a twist and a pun, kind of, in verse 22. “Moreover I have given to thee one portion above thy brethren, which I took out of the hand of the Amorite with my sword and with my bow.” Now the one portion in the Hebrew is the word Shechem, however, we’ve got a problem here. The word Shechem can mean three things; it can mean place, it can mean shoulder, or the word Shechem can mean high ground, or a ridge. Now I think we can satisfactorily eliminate shoulder from the text; now we’ve got to ask ourselves, is he talking about what it would literally read, “I have given to you a Shechem above your brethren that I took out of the hand of the Amorite,” now it’s true that back at Shechem, remember what happened earlier in Genesis? One of Jacob’s daughters was raped and so the brothers decided they’d take care of the rapist and they went out and they massacred all the men in the city of Shechem. Well, that was a massacre but the old man cursed them for doing that, so he didn’t approve of it. So it’s highly unlikely he has that event in view.

Well then what event does he have in view? We take it to mean he’s making a pun on the name, they associate with a place what he mean is the high ground of Ephraim in the days of the conquest and settlement that are yet to come. Now it says, past tense, “I took it out of the hand of the Amorite,” but there is a prophetic perfect and there’s this corporate personality I’ve been telling you about the last three or four weeks, once again reflected in the text. Jacob is looking forward, not literally to himself, but he’s looking forward to his progeny and he calls his progeny by his name. Just imagine if you close your eyes as a moment and think of yourself at the top of a tree, of a family tree and it bridges out with time, now think, visualize the sons and daughters in your family tree, for generation after generation after generation. Now if you can think of that tree that comes out from you, call it by your name and there you will reproduce in your own mind the theme of corporate personality in the Bible.

Maybe another example; every one of us here today has two names; at least we all have one name and hopefully most of us have the second name. The first name is Adam; Adam, you think is just an individual; wrong! In the Scripture Adam is also the name for all mankind, so this is Adam; we, today, this morning, right here, this is Adam, part of him. And that gives you the sense of corporate personality. For those who are who have personally trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ, we are Christ’s. Now Christ is the individual, but also Christ is the corporate personality. You see how that works. All right, that’s apparently what is in here, he’s talking about himself through is progeny becoming the great nation that will successfully conquer and begin the kingdom of God.

Chapter 48 introduces us to death and dying; we want to turn to one last passage to apply this, the last book of the Bible, Revelation 1, because the challenge is whether you personally can apply this truth. Remember the three principles we’ve talked about this morning. The dying have a right to know they’re dying; the dying have a right to be left coherent as long as possible, and (3) the dying have a right to rule and subdue as long as they can their posterity.

Revelation 1:17-18, we bring the doctrine of death up to date dispensationally; we bring it up to date to the church age, and here Jesus Christ appears, after He rose from the dead, after He ascended to heaven, in the book of Revelation He appears to the aged apostle John, “[And when I saw Him, I fell at His feed as dead.] And He laid His right hand upon me,” the apostle writes, “saying unto me, Fear not: I am the first and the last. [18] I am He that lives, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive forevermore, Amen, and have the keys of hell and of death.” The word “keys” means the authority. And what this means is that the Lord Jesus Christ at the Father’s right hand this hour has the keys of hell and death. Now He hasn’t effected total control because Satan is still loose in the world, but the keys are in His hand; Christ has the final say in who dies and when they die, and what this means very practically to you and me is that you can’t avoid the Lord. It’s not Buddha, it’s not Bahaullah, it’s not the oriental religious teachings that the physics department and the psychology department at Tech are now promoting. It’s not that kind of thing; it is the literal Lord Jesus Christ, and He is there and He stands in your path, and He holds the keys of death, your death, in His hand. And so the issue that each one of us has to answer this morning is what is my relationship to this One who holds the keys to my own death in His hand? For those who have a justified position before Christ, we can experience the peace that is spoken in our closing hymn….