Hebrews Lesson 186 February 11, 2010

^NKJ Isaiah 26:3 You will keep him in perfect peace, Whose mind is stayed on You, Because he trusts in You.

We'll start in Hebrews 11 just to make sure we understand what we're doing here because the 11^th chapter is a long chapter (40 verses) with many different examples. It's easy sometimes to kind of get lost in the high weeds here and forget the main teaching point (the main doctrine), which is to challenge the readers to stick with the Word of God even though they may not see immediate changes and an immediate value in their own life. They're going through suffering, adversity, persecution, and sometimes when we go through difficult times we don't see why. We don't understand why. We don't understand how God is using this to mature us, to teach us and to train us to rely upon Him and His Word and to rely upon and to learn and train ourselves to constantly look to Him and constantly rely upon Him.

The focal point in this chapter can really be found not as much in the word “faith” which is the word that is repeated again and again and again and again; but it is faith in a promise. Faith in the Bible always has a clear object. It is the Word of God, the promise of God.

If we were to go back and remind ourselves of the very opening paragraph in Hebrews 1, we read:

^NKJ Hebrews 1:1 God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets,

So that takes us back to the very progress of revelation. The one main idea that we see all the way through this book of Hebrews is the progress of revelation, how God increasingly revealed Himself, His plans and His purposes to man. In each generation, generation after generation, it was the responsibility of each believer at that particular time to respond in faith to the revelation that was given to them.

Gosh, how dispensational! That’s of the very essence of dispensational theology, that in progressive revelation God continuously builds on and develops the understanding or develops certain themes and in each generation you respond to the revelation that is given to you. Sometimes this shifts according to dispensation.

In verse 1 of Hebrews 1 God spoke in the past, but in these last days He has spoken, indicating a completed action there. In these last days He has spoken to us by His son whom He has appointed heir to all things.

Now that brings in the idea of inheritance. We have the idea of God speaking, and God’s inheritance. These are major themes within the development of Hebrews. In this last section as we have gone through a warning section at the end of chapter 10, there is an emphasis on or it sort of builds to a crescendo here at the end of chapter 10 so that in verse 23 there is the exhortation:

^NKJ Hebrews 10:23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.

So we see this connection. The promise is future fulfillment. Hope is a future certain expectation. Our faith is in the certainty of the promise and that is our hope, our confident expectation.

^NKJ Hebrews 10:23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.

Chapter 11 is going to give us example after example after example of these great Old Testament heroes who didn't waver at key points. They wavered at other times. They were human and had sin natures just like the rest of us. Sometimes we look at their lives if we are really honest and they were pretty messed up, a lot worse that some of us, or so we would like to think. But they didn't waver at key points. They really truly understood God was in control. God's promise was certain and they focused on that at the important key turning points in their lives.

^NKJ Hebrews 10:23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.

The promise always takes us back to the character of God that what He reveals, what He promises He does not go back on.

Again in Hebrews 10:36 we have another reference to promise:

^NKJ Hebrews 10:36 For you have need of endurance,

That means hanging in there.

so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise:

It’s again that future expectation. It is not fulfilled now. It is something we have to look forward to. It’s the carrot that’s way out there in front of us, which seems to indicate a positive turning at the end. There's a movement there, but again I believe that issue of cryptic I'm not sure exactly what the long-term application of that is.

It’s not an immediate positive feedback or immediate gratification. We have to look to an uncertain undetermined future. It's an uncertain promise, but the timing is far off in the future.

Then this gets focused even more in these examples in Hebrews 11, especially in relation to the patriarchs of Israel: Abraham: Isaac, and Jacob. Abraham - the statement by Abraham is:

^NKJ Hebrews 11:9 By faith he dwelt in the land

That focuses on the land. This is important for tonight’s lesson. The key element is the land of promise. He never owned it, but it is the land God promised him. He focuses on that.

of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise;

Then we come to verse 13.

^NKJ Hebrews 11:13 These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.

So even though they didn’t receive it in their lifetime; nevertheless they were faithful in their walk with the Lord not to waver knowing that eventually that promise would be fulfilled. That is an argument the Lord Jesus Christ in fact used for resurrection: that God promised and He will fulfill it. That means that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob must come back from the dead in order for God to be true.

^NKJ Hebrews 11:13 These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.

Then that brings us down to the verse we’re in which is verse 21.

^NKJ Hebrews 11:21 By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, and worshiped, leaning on the top of his staff.

So we looked at the prophecy in relationship to the sons (the other sons) that he had.

Now tonight what I want to do is wrap up with the last part of this, which deals with the thing that we didn’t look at last time, which is Benjamin. The last part deals with Benjamin.

Back to Genesis 49 and we’ll look at Benjamin.

^NKJ Genesis 49:27 "Benjamin is a ravenous wolf; In the morning he shall devour the prey, And at night he shall divide the spoil."

This is a prophecy that relates to the tribe of Benjamin in terms of their violence and their activities in terms of war. That is seen as a characteristic of Benjamin during the horrible time of the period of the judges. There's a time in there when the tribe of Benjamin is almost completely wiped out. This happens in a time after one of the most bizarre, perverted episodes that occurs during the period of judges, in Judges 19. Again there is an emphasis on the reality (the spiritual reality) of the time – verse 1 of that chapter.

^NKJ Judges 19:1 And it came to pass in those days, when there was no king in Israel, that there was a certain Levite staying in the remote mountains of Ephraim. He took for himself a concubine from Bethlehem in Judah.

Now that’s sort of a double entendre because there's no king in terms of the monarch, but God was supposed to be the king. The nation as a whole had rejected God’s authority; it had rejected Him as the king. Once you take God and Scripture (His revelation) out of the picture, then you no longer have a solid reference point for morals, for truth, for absolutes. So everything becomes relative.

All cultures that have divorced themselves from God as an absolute reference point end up in various kinds of moral relativism and spiritual relativism. That was just as true in the ancient world at that time period judges as it is today. There are many parallels between the time of the judges and the time today. These episodes that are given in sort of an appendix (epilogue if you will) to the book of Judges in chapter 18 dealing with the tribe of Dan and Micah’s and the idolatry there with the setting up of the false priesthood under this character Micah and that involves the migration of the tribe of Dan up into the north to taking over (capturing) the Canaanite city of Laish and establishing the city of Dan. Later that becomes an alternate worship site under the idolatry and the paganism of Jeroboam I.

Well, the second episode involves this Levite who has a concubine, and he takes his concubine from Bethlehem in Judah. She is unfaithful to him and leaves him and departs from him for a period of 4 months. Then he goes after her trying to track her down. We're told in verse 3 that she brought him into her father's house and when the father of the young woman saw him, he was glad to meet him.

^NKJ Judges 19:4 Now his father-in-law, the young woman's father, detained him; and he stayed with him three days. So they ate and drank and lodged there.

They had a huge party. After this they got ready to leave; but the father goes on to tell him, “No, just keep staying; just keep eating and drinking; let’s keep the party going.” So they did for a little while. Finally the young man leaves – eventually on the next morning down in verse 8. Again there's the encouragement to stay and keep going. So the father-in-law keeps encouraging him to stay. Finally he leaves, but he leaves late. When he finally departs in verse 10 it’s late at night and he goes to a town opposite Jerusalem. As he nears there, he's trying to find a place to stay. He won't go there because he's afraid of the Jebusites so he goes a city of Israel called Gibeah down in verse 12. Gibeah is in the tribe of Benjamin.

Now the tribal allotment for Benjamin was just north of Jerusalem. In fact Jerusalem was almost on the border, the northern border of the tribal boundary of Judah and Benjamin. That’s why the tribes really come to merge together a little bit later on.

So they go in to Gibeah because it is a town of Benjamin and he thinks that they're going to be safe there. They meet this old man, and he takes them into the house. There are a lot of parallels with the situation that occurred in Sodom with Lot and his daughters. This Levite takes his concubine into the house.

In verse 22 we’re told that as night fell there were certain perverts (perverted men) in the city, surrounded the house, started beating on the door. They're demanding that they bring the man out so that they can have homosexual relations with him. They're going to have a gang rape of this man basically. This tells the degradation and the perversion that’s occurred within Israel. See, the irony of this is that the Levite is afraid for his safety and the safety of his concubine to go to this Canaanite city because the Jebusites are there near what is Jerusalem and still dominated controlled by the Jebusites. They’re the evil, wicked perverse Canaanites.

So he says, “We’re going to be safer in a city of that’s dominated by the Israelites so we're going to go there.”

But by this stage Israel has become so perverted because of their moral relativism and their rejection of the Truth that what the writer Hebrews is showing is that now they have become no different from the Canaanites. In fact, they’re worse than the Canaanites.

So the people of God have now become so infected by moral relativism that not only do they not act and look any different from the pagans; they’re out paganizing the pagans as it were. They are in even worse shape.

The man who owns the house goes out very similar to the episode in Genesis 19. In fact there’s a lot of vocabulary that’s the same, a lot of parallel here, which I covered when we did the study in Judges. He pleads with them and begs with them not to do this. Eventually what they do is they take the Levite’s concubine and just throw her to the wolves. It shows a complete lack of concern for women.

Another big theme in Judges is that the more pagan the culture became the less value they put on the women and the more the women were abused and maltreated. This comes right after the episode with Solomon. Solomon is covered and then you have the episode with the Danites and the tribe of Dan and Micah and then this episode with Sampson. He’s just a womanizer. He mistreats all the women in his life. Women are not valued. This is what happens in pagan culture. It completely wipes out any redemptive value that’s occurred in the culture towards the role of men and women.

You see the same kind of thing that’s happened in our culture. I think today you’ll hear people say, “Well, we just hear more about abuse than we did before.”

I don't think that's true. You didn't have it before. You had isolated incidents and in some areas maybe there might have been a little more rather than less because we have sin natures. But back in the early years of this nation up through at least the midpoint of the 19^th century you did not have the kind of abuse of women and children that you do starting in the early to mid 19^th century when you begin to shift more and more into a secular culture. The more we’ve shifted to a secular culture and rejected what the Bible says about the role of men and women and treating men and women as both equally created in the image of God, the more this breaks down.

That's an example here. They just take this guy's virgin daughter and the concubine and they just throw them out there to these perverts to rape them as they will. The next morning the Levite gets up, and he goes out and discovers that his concubine has collapsed and died on the front door of the house. When they open the door they discover her and of course they’re somewhat incensed about this.

What the Levite does is he takes her and he cuts up her body into 12 pieces to send it around to the tribes in order to get them incensed and upset about what these people in Gibeah have done to her and to get them incited about this horrible act that is taking place in Israel. And so they do. He achieves his result. The rest of the tribes are all up in arms against the Benjamites. They raise up an army and they come down to Benjamin and call upon the Benjamites to do something about these people in Gibeah. They don't. They view it as a battle between the Benjamites who sort of close ranks developing a civil war between Benjamin versus the rest of the nation. We discover that Benjamin has quite a military skill. There's the call for them to deliver up these guilty men, but they won't do it. So they gathered all the men together in verse 14 for battle.

^NKJ Judges 20:15 And from their cities at that time the children of Benjamin numbered twenty-six thousand men who drew the sword, besides the inhabitants of Gibeah, who numbered seven hundred select men.

That tells us there are 26,700 men in this army that Benjamin puts together. That’s an important number to remember because of what happens after that. Besides Benjamin the men of Israel numbered 400,000. You have 400,000 against 26,700, so they’re a little out numbered. But the Benjamites are quite skillful, and they are quite destructive in the battle. They go out to the first stage of the battle, which is described in verses 20 and 21. In the first stage of the battle the Benjamites are victorious; and they kill 22,000 Israelites. The people go home. The rest of people go home and they recover their wounded and they reorganize and they come before the Lord. They weep before the Lord. It shows that they are still going to the Lord for aid. They come before the Lord in verse 23.

^NKJ Judges 20:23 Then the children of Israel went up and wept before the LORD until evening, and asked counsel of the LORD, saying, "Shall I again draw near for battle against the children of my brother Benjamin?" And the LORD said, "Go up against him."

They go up again the second time. The second time they get beat again. Now when you get beaten when the odds are this much in your favor the tendency is to quit.

“Why should I keep doing this?”

It shows that in the rest of Israel there is some level of endurance in the midst of battle. Again they are defeated. They lose 18,000. Now they've lost 40,000. They’ve lost 10% of their army going against these Benjamites who are, you know, quite successful. This shows they’re ravenous wolves. This is a fulfillment or an indication of a trend in the tribe of Benjamin.

So now all the rest of the children of Israel go to the house of God. They go to the Tabernacle. They weep before the Lord. They fast; they pray; they offer burnt offerings and peace offerings. They come before the Lord and before the Ark of the Covenant and before the High Priest Phinehas the son of Eleazar and they inquire of God. Again he says:

^NAS Judges 20:28 and Phinehas the son of Eleazar, Aaron's son, stood before it to minister in those days), saying, "Shall I yet again go out to battle against the sons of my brother Benjamin, or shall I cease?" And the LORD said, "Go up, ^afor tomorrow I will deliver them into your hand."

So they set up an ambush for the men of Gibeah and the ambush is successful and they draw out the Benjamites on the third day and they hit them again. At first the Benjamites are successful. They begin to strike down and kill some of the people as at other times. Then they fade back in this ambush. The trap is sprung. When they spring the trap, they kill 25,100 (verse 35) Benjamites,

Now how many did they have to start with? They had 26,700. So in this battle they start off; they kill 25,100. That only leaves 1600. They just about wipe out all of the men in the tribe of Benjamin. The tribe of Benjamin almost disappears at this point.

Then it goes on to describe more that takes place. When we come down they give another number a little further down; but it’s just a breakdown of the individual. You get the larger number earlier when it says 18,000 men of Benjamin fell in verse 44. That’s part of the larger number that was given earlier.

Again you get a summary of the total number in verse 46.

^NKJ Judges 20:46 So all who fell of Benjamin that day were twenty-five thousand men who drew the sword; all these were men of valor.

^NKJ Judges 20:47 But six hundred men turned and fled toward the wilderness to the rock of Rimmon, and they stayed at the rock of Rimmon for four months.

^NKJ Judges 20:48 And the men of Israel turned back against the children of Benjamin, and struck them down with the edge of the sword -- from every city, men and beasts, all who were found. They also set fire to all the cities they came to.

Then in chapter 21 there is a recovery. Wives are provided for the surviving men in Benjamin so that the tribe can replenish itself, which it does eventually. That’s the tribe from which Saul came. It’s the tribe from which Saul of Tarsus came, the Apostle Paul. Then it does become reconstituted. That is the fulfillment of what happens to the tribe of Benjamin. They had this reputation of being very strong, powerful, valiant warriors. That's one example when it was turned to something that was quite terrible and quite dark.

Now, that covers the prophecies of 12 tribes that we've had related to the sons. Specifically, when we look at verse 21 of Hebrews 11, Jacob is focusing on two other sons, the sons of Joseph that he adopts directly as his heirs. This is the double portion blessing that will go to Joseph. His two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, will become part of the inheritance, the tribal inheritance of Israel. There’s no tribe of Joseph in the land. You have the tribe of Ephraim and the tribe of Manasseh; but you do not have a tribe of Joseph. Sometimes for example in the list of Revelation 7 the 12,000 from each of the twelve tribes, you do have Joseph mentioned in that list. When you read the 12 tribe lists through a lot of different areas of Scripture there are differences and each case has to be looked at on its own as to why there is one group listed one way or one group is listed another way.

Let’s turn back one chapter from chapter 50 to chapter 48. Basically this is divided into two sections. The first 12 verses focus on the adoption of Joseph's two sons as the full heirs in line with the other sons, heirs of Jacob. This shows why each becomes the head of his own tribe in the house in Israel. Then in verses 13 to 20, Jacob is going to give a blessing to the sons, which follows the principle of the elder serving the younger. There's a reversal that takes place there. In verses 21 to 22 in the conclusion, there is a prophetic statement there that they will return to the land and they will prosper in the land.

^NKJ Genesis 48:1 Now it came to pass after these things that Joseph was told, "Indeed your father is sick"; and he took with him his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim.

^NKJ Genesis 48:2 And Jacob was told, "Look, your son Joseph is coming to you"; and Israel strengthened himself and sat up on the bed.

This is a very formal meeting because this where the blessing will be passed on. In that culture this would be as formal as when we are going to have the signing of a will or a reading of the will where the heirs are designated. You’d have a lawyer present and all of these things.

We've lost a lot of the sense of formality in this culture that we once had. It’s interesting. Every now and then when you're watching something on the History Channel and Discovery Channel dealing with the 20^th century and you get into the early part of the 20^th century and you see people like President Taft or President Roosevelt or you see other diplomats. You'll see the men wearing a top hat and tails and striped pants. This was protocol dress for anyone who was involved in any kind of diplomacy or any kind of meeting in a high level of state. What shocks you is to see President John Kennedy dressed that way in 1960. Things shifted during that administration. By the time you get to Lyndon Johnson, you don't see diplomats dressing in that traditional formal garb.

So you see a shift that takes place in terms of how Americans treat formality and authority from the mid 60’s to the beginning of the 21^st century. By the time you get to the 21^st century, you see Presidents and world leaders and ambassadors getting together. Often they just may have on a sport coat and an open collar shirt or they may not even have on a sport coat at all. They may have on a golf shirt or something else; very informal. That's a huge, huge cultural earthquake shift that takes place in less than 40 years. That is a reflection of an underlying worldview and view of society and culture and authority that has taken place that shifts everything. It's not that it is in and of itself wrong, but it shows that there is something incredible has taken place the way people look at authority and look at relationships during that time. I think it leads itself to a lot of mental sloppiness myself. We can also see that.

I had an interesting comment made to me today by another pastor who is one of the few teaching pastors in this city. I won’t mention his name. You can probably guess it. But he was telling me about a son of an individual in his church who I have known of or known of them somewhat for probably twenty years now. This woman’s son has come back to his church. He had left for several years. This son was quite Calvinistic in his views, so he did not agree with the views of his pastor. So the son had decided to leave the church some years ago and for the last 2 or 3 years has been looking for another church to call his home church. He's gone from this church to that church, looked at Baptist churches and independent Presbyterian churches and Bible churches; all kinds of different churches all over the city of Houston.

Last week he came back and he said, “Even though there are other things in this area that I disagree with” – and trust me there are a certain number of people who are so committed to certain aspects of a Calvinistic theology that if you're not genuflecting towards Geneva at least once a week, which is where Calvin lived and had his ministry, then they won’t darken the door of your church. But this young man said, “Trust me. I have been to 80 or 100 different churches around Houston in the last 2 or 3 years.” He said, “Trust me. You are a dinosaur. No one else in the city is teaching the Bible verse by verse in terms of a historical grammatical interpretation; no one.”

He said, “There is such a vast difference between what you're doing and everybody else is doing that even though I don't agree with you in a number of these areas, dealing with those areas of disagreement is nothing compared to the rank paganism and entertainment that dominates all of the other churches in the city of Houston.”

So you know we live in a culture today that has become very sloppy in its theological thinking as well as in the way it conducts church.

I remember some years ago my friend Tommy Ice was still living in the Dallas area and he went to church that his mother attended. It was a Baptist church. I'm not saying this was the right idea, but the pastor always on Sunday morning never wore a coat and tie. He just had on a sport shirt and a pair of slacks, very informal.

Tommy said, “I just sit on the front row in my three piece suit and tie on and glare at him.”

We feel that way sometimes because this shift has taken place and just as a sloppiness in our approach to authority and formality has occurred, so sloppiness has occurred in the way we think and people don't want to think in a rigorous disciplined theological manner anymore. That is just part of the relativism of our culture. Sometimes it's a little difficult for us to see and understand the formality of these kinds of occasions and to understand how rigid the cultural standards were and the norms and standards were in this kind of a setting where the blessing is going to be passed on from Jacob to his grandsons and this is going to be preceded by this very formal adoption ceremony.

The circumstance begins and Jacob says in verse 3 and he begins by rehearsing what God has done in the past. See, this is all about God. It's not about Jacob and it’s not about Joseph. It is ultimately all about God and God's plans and purposes for those who are the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and those who are the intended heirs to the promise. There's that word I started off with. The focal point here is on the promise.

So Jacob begins by saying:

^NKJ Genesis 48:3 Then Jacob said to Joseph: "God Almighty appeared to me at Luz

That is the old Canaanite name for the city of Bethel that was renamed Bethel which means the house of God - renamed that by Jacob himself.

in the land of Canaan and blessed me,

There’s one other thing that I want you to note here as we kind of read through the passage: the shift in the name for Jacob. Notice in verse 2 it says:

^NKJ Genesis 48:2 And Jacob was told, "Look, your son Joseph is coming to you"; and Israel strengthened himself and sat up on the bed.

Israel was the name that God gave him when he returned to the land when he wrestled with the Angel at Peniel. Israel emphasizes his spiritual role within the flow, his new position – actually his new spiritual life after his time out of the land. So here's that important shift back and forth. You'll see this terminology that takes place there. Whenever Israel is used, it’s usually focusing on his role within the national flow and the flow of the Abraham promise.

^NKJ Genesis 48:3 Then Jacob said to Joseph: "God Almighty appeared to me at Luz in the land of Canaan and blessed me,

Now this refers back to the dream that Jacob had that’s recorded in Genesis 28:11ff. At that particular time Jacob had been living with his father Isaac and Rebekah and his twin brother Esau down in Beersheba, which is down in the lower part of the map there. This is when you've gone through his deception of his father in order to get both a blessing and a birthright that was due the elder brother Esau. He was tying to manipulate the blessing, to get it his own way rather than in God’s timing. God had already emphasized before his birth the principle that the elder Esau would serve the younger Jacob. Therefore Jacob was the one who stood in the path of blessing. But Jacob was trying to do it his way instead of God’s way and got everything muddied up.

So after his act of deception with Esau where he had dressed up as Esau and brought him the meal and fed it to Isaac to get the blessing from Isaac. When Esau found out he was breathing threats of murder, so Jacob needed to get out of town. His mother told him he needed to leave and to go live up to Aram which is even further north than what we see at the top of the map there; just to go live with relatives can get away from Esau. So he headed north. The first place he stopped was at Bethel.

Now the reason I have Shechem also circled there is because when Abraham came into the land, the first place that Abraham stopped was at Shechem. He stopped there at Shechem and the text in Genesis 12:6 says he stopped at the oak of Moreh. Now the oak of Moreh indicates that this was a known location and it was a particular oak tree or grove of oak trees that was owned by this individual Moreh that was probably a pagan worship site. That was typical among the Canaanites to have a grove of trees and in this grove of trees they would set up altars. This is where they would carry out their false worship.

Abraham stopped there. We’re told in the text that he built an altar there at Shechem. This was where God and in response to God's reiteration of the land promise that God was giving that land to Abraham. So in response Abraham built an altar; and he worshipped God there making a public proclamation of his God YHWH over against and in the face of the Canaanite worship there. This would be like going down to the neighborhood mosque and putting up a cross in front of the mosque and preaching a sermon and preaching the gospel. It was in your face. He was making a public proclamation of God. He does this again in the next verse. After the time at Shechem he moved further south to the area between Bethel and Ai and built an altar there where the text says he called upon the name of the Lord. Calling on the name of the Lord is an idiom used in a number of places and, as Al Ross notes in a number of different places in his commentaries, that act indicates a public proclamation of God.

He is entering the land. He’s not just sort of slinking through. He's not quiet in his process. He's building altars in these places to his God. He's marking out his territory in terms of the promise that God has given him. So the focal point here when we talk about the cities of Bethel and Shechem is to be reminded of their ultimate importance as a place where Abraham had first proclaimed the good news about his God. It is always a reminder of the land promise.

So Genesis 28:13 when Jacob was spending the night there, the Lord appeared to him in a dream. In verse 13 the Lord stood above it; that that is the ladder (the stairway) that he saw between the heaven and earth and saw the angels ascending and descending.

^NKJ Genesis 28:13 And behold, the LORD stood above it and said: "I am the LORD God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you.

This is the same promise that He stated to Abraham in Genesis 12:7. It's about the land. It is about the promise. Now Abraham didn't see it. Isaac didn't see it. Jacob didn't see it. But the promise is reiterated from generation to generation. So we have the land promise.

and your descendants

That is your seed.

^NKJ Genesis 28:14 "Also your descendants shall be as the dust of the earth; you shall spread abroad to the west and the east, to the north and the south; and in you and in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

So we have the reiteration of 3 basic elements of the Abraham Covenant (land, seed and blessing) all reiterated, reconfirmed to Jacob at Bethel on his way out of the land. That's important because eventually he's going to come back to the land and the promise is going to be reiterated both at Peniel on his way back in and then at Bethel.

In Genesis 35:10 God renames him.

^NKJ Genesis 35:10 And God said to him, "Your name is Jacob; your name shall not be called Jacob anymore, but Israel shall be your name." So He called his name Israel.

^NKJ Genesis 35:11 Also God said to him: "I am God Almighty. Be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall proceed from you, and kings shall come from your body.

Now where have you heard that before? That is the original mandate that God gave to man back in Genesis 21:26-7.

^NKJ Genesis 1:28 Then God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth."

It's reiterated in Genesis 9. In those first 9 verses of Genesis 9 are the Noahic Covenant. Around verse 2 or 3 I think is where we have a reiteration of the command to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. That hasn't stopped. God didn't come along somewhere in the book of Acts or in Revelation and say, “Stop! There’s going to be a problem with overpopulation.” That never occurred. Overpopulation fear mongers are operating on pure human viewpoint in their understanding of history. Population control is not a biblically consistent concept.

^NKJ Genesis 35:11 Also God said to him: "I am God Almighty. Be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall proceed from you, and kings shall come from your body.

^NKJ Genesis 35:12 "The land

Once again there’s that land promise.

which I gave Abraham and Isaac I give to you; and to your descendants after you I give this land."

Now that’s what Jacob is referring to when he begins to remind Joseph of the history. This is what he states in verse 4. He says:

^NKJ Genesis 48:4 "and said to me, 'Behold, I will make you fruitful and multiply you, and I will make of you a multitude of people, and give this land to your descendants after you as an everlasting possession.'

That is a reiteration of what had occurred in Genesis 35. It's interesting that the same terminology gets repeated in the first chapter of Exodus when we're told that after their 400 years or so of being in Egypt the children of Israel were fruitful and increased abundantly. They multiplied and grew exceedingly mighty and the land was filled with them. This is brought about while they are in the land of Goshen in Egypt.

In verse 5 Jacob continues to speak and he says to Joseph:

^NKJ Genesis 48:5 "And now your two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, who were born to you in the land of Egypt before I came to you in Egypt, are mine;

This is his adoption procedure, the formal announcement.

“These two sons are now my sons.”

as Reuben and Simeon, they shall be mine.

Now they're elevated to the same legal status as their uncles.

^NKJ Genesis 48:6 "Your offspring whom you beget after them shall be yours; they will be called by the name of their brothers in their inheritance.

So these two sons who historically are the sons of Joseph now will establish the inheritance of their father as equal tribes in the nation. So Joseph himself doesn't have a tribe but his inheritance is dual in that he's viewed as the firstborn son with the double blessing.

The rationale that he gives for this is related to the premature death of Rachel, the beloved wife of Jacob.

^NKJ Genesis 48:7 "But as for me, when I came from Padan, Rachel died beside me in the land of Canaan on the way, when there was but a little distance to go to Ephrath;

Now Ephrath is the ancient name of Bethlehem. So she died on the way to Bethlehem.

and I buried her there on the way to Ephrath (that is, Bethlehem)."

The picture that I have up there is a picture taken in the 1880’s. Recently this wonderful collection was made available of about two or three thousand pictures taken by a number of different people who were in Israel from the 1880’s through the 1940’s. It’s really interesting to look at these pictures, as they were taken before things became all urban and modernized. When we were in Bethlehem a few years ago, we couldn’t even see the tomb of Rachel because there's a huge wall now built around it. At that wall there is a really trashy gas station. It's in what is now on the Arab part of Bethlehem which, is just as trashy looking as it can possibly be. There’s been a huge shift in the population of Bethlehem in the last 5 or 6 years from a town that was 90% Christian Arab to a town that is now 90% Muslim Arab. Consequently the neighborhood has deteriorated quite a bit. But you can't even see this anymore. So this is a wonderful shot taken in the 1880’s. You have a camel caravan going in front. I can imagine that this is pretty much how it looked 500 years ago or a 1000 years ago or 2000 years ago. This is the tomb of Rachel right outside Bethlehem. Today it’s right almost in the heart of the city of Bethlehem.

So the rationale that Jacob gives is that Rachel died prematurely. She could have had more sons and because she did not have more sons, I'm going to adopt your two sons as my own and make them equal heirs in the inheritance with your brothers.

So he looks then at the two sons and he calls for their identification in verse 8.

^NKJ Genesis 48:8 Then Israel saw Joseph's sons, and said, "Who are these?"

^NKJ Genesis 48:9 And Joseph said to his father, "They are my sons, whom God has given me in this place." And he said, "Please bring them to me, and I will bless them."

This begins the next section, which is the blessing itself. Joseph brings them before Jacob who, notice, starting in verse 48 is referred to as Israel indicating the national significance of what he is doing.

Verse 10 (and 11) is a transition stage here.

^NKJ Genesis 48:10 Now the eyes of Israel were dim with age, so that he could not see. Then Joseph brought them near him, and he kissed them and embraced them.

^NKJ Genesis 48:11 And Israel said to Joseph, "I had not thought to see your face; but in fact, God has also shown me your offspring!"

…referring back to the fact that he thought at one time Joseph was dead. So Joseph brought them from beside his knees. They're young. They bowed down with his face to the earth.

^NKJ Genesis 48:13 And Joseph took them both, Ephraim with his right hand toward Israel's left hand, and Manasseh with his left hand toward Israel's right hand, and brought them near him.

So he’s standing here like this. Ephraim would be with his right hand; my right here and is pushing Ephraim with his right hand toward Jacob’s left hand. So this would be Jacob. If you were facing me this would be his left side. This would be his right side. So he's pushing Ephraim toward Jacob’s left hand and Manasseh toward Israel’s right hand so that Manasseh would be the one then to get the blessing.

^NKJ Genesis 48:14 Then Israel stretched out his right hand and laid it on Ephraim's head, who was the younger, and his left hand on Manasseh's head, guiding his hands knowingly, for Manasseh was the firstborn.

Even though Joseph is pushing Manasseh to be on Jacobs right hand side to receive the first born blessing, Jacob is going to cross his hands so that his right hand goes onto Ephraim’s head who's the younger and has left hand goes on Manasseh’s head. Manasseh is the firstborn. What this means is that the younger is going to receive the firstborn blessing.

^NKJ Genesis 48:15 And he blessed Joseph, and said: "God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, The God who has fed me all my life long to this day,

Notice, he recognizes God is the source of everything that he’s had.

^NKJ Genesis 48:16 The Angel who has redeemed me

Purchased me.

from all evil,

… Indicating the Angel of the Lord who delivered him and the Angel of the Lord is the Redeemer.

Bless the lads;

He blesses the young men.

Let my name be named upon them, And the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac; And let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth."

^NKJ Genesis 48:17 Now when Joseph saw that his father laid his right hand on the head of Ephraim, it displeased him; so he took hold of his father's hand to remove it from Ephraim's head to Manasseh's head.

“Hey, Dad! You got it wrong. We’ve got to get the prime blessing to the older son.”

So he tries to remove it and switch things back. In verse 18 we read:

^NKJ Genesis 48:18 And Joseph said to his father, "Not so, my father, for this one is the firstborn; put your right hand on his head."

^NKJ Genesis 48:19 But his father refused and said, "I know, my son, I know. He also shall become a people, and he also shall be great; but truly his younger brother

And the Northern Kingdom is often referred to as Ephraim.

shall be greater than he, and his descendants shall become a multitude of nations."

So this prophecy is the prophecy related to the blessing that God would give to Ephraim as the receiver of the first born blessing of Joseph.

Then in Hebrews 11:22 we have a closely connected verse in terms of the historical situation.

^NKJ Hebrews 11:22 By faith Joseph, when he was dying, made mention of the departure of the children of Israel, and gave instructions concerning his bones.

Now the point that I want you to remember from this is the focal point of Genesis 48 is the blessing and the promise of the land; but Jacob didn't see it. Ephraim and Manasseh individually didn’t see it. But the tribes did later on when they entered the land and took it during the conquest but not the full extent of it.

Then in verse 22 of Hebrews 11 the focus again is all going to be on the land promise. It’s promise, promise, promise. That's what keeps getting emphasized here is that we have to have a long distance look at the promise. We're not going to see it fulfilled tomorrow in our lives or the next day. We don't necessarily have the kind of response from God that we think we ought to have in terms of some sort of immediate gratification. We have to wait on the Lord in terms of trusting in Him. Hebrews 11:22 is a reference to the last two verses in Genesis. Genesis 50 begins with the death of Jacob and his burial in the land. Then after they all go up to bury him they returned back to Egypt and starting in verse 15 we see the reiteration by Joseph of the forgiveness of his brothers for what they did.

Then we come to the death of Joseph in verse 22 and we read:

^NKJ Genesis 50:22 So Joseph dwelt in Egypt, he and his father's household. And Joseph lived one hundred and ten years.

^NKJ Genesis 50:23 Joseph saw Ephraim's children to the third generation. The children of Machir, the son of Manasseh, were also brought up on Joseph's knees.

^NKJ Genesis 50:24 And Joseph said to his brethren, "I am dying; but God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land to the land of which He swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob."

The promise again. It is the land.

^NKJ Genesis 50:25 Then Joseph took an oath from the children of Israel, saying, "God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here."

^NKJ Genesis 50:26 So Joseph died, being one hundred and ten years old; and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.

But when they leave Egypt, they took his coffin with them. Then when they came to the land they did bury him in the land. That is where he rested because the focal point is on the promise.

That is what the writer of Hebrews is reminding his readers of. It is that these men lived their entire lives on the basis of a promise they never saw fulfilled. They went through hardship. They went through adversity. They went through all kinds of personal challenges to their own faith and trust in the Lord and their growth. They didn't see the fulfillment of the promise. But each one was given more revelation and each one was faithful to the revelation that was given to them and so the application is going to be that just as they did we must also constantly walk by means of faith. The ultimate example that he’s headed to is of course example of Jesus who is faithful, goes to the cross where He died on the cross for our sins that we might have eternal life.

^NKJ Hebrews 12:1 Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,

Next time we get into something that we haven't studied a lot of and that is dealing with Moses and the Exodus event from Egypt. This is in verses 23 through 29. Then we get into the conquest some in verses 30ff. So we haven’t looked at that. We only hit these in summary as they relate to what is covered here in Hebrews 11. I’m not going to give a detailed study of the book of Exodus. We just hit the high points at it relates to this in terms of the challenge to press on.

So let’s bow our heads in prayer.

Illustrations