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Guest (Male): God has made many incredible promises to His people. Will He keep them? Can He keep them? Find out next right here on Study the Word.

Ever been disappointed by a promise made? I think we all have and it can affect us. We can become jaded. We can think that God's promises are no better than man's. But God can and does keep His promises. As we'll learn on today's Study the Word with Thom Keller, we're nearing the end of the book of Genesis and we pick up in chapter 48, which records the beginning history of God's people along with foundational promises made to them. Pastor Thom gets us started with an illustration reminding us of a different time and a different kind of promise.

Pastor Thom Keller: A science teacher who, if you were caught chewing gum—can you chew gum now in class in school? You can. These are bad days. If you were caught chewing gum, he would take the waste can and put it over in the corner. Then he'd pull you back ten or fifteen feet. He'd do it based on your bone structure and your height. Then he'd take the paddle. He'd make you put the gum in the tip of your tongue and then he'd hit you. The game was to try to get the gum from the tip of your tongue into the waste can. Now, I'm not kidding. You know what his name was? Mr. Nicely. That was his name. Mr. Nicely. Don't you regret not living through these days? Yeah, I don't think so.

We're in Genesis chapter 48, 49, and 50 today. Chapter 48, the background out of 47 is that Jacob calls in his son Joseph and says, "Don't bury me here." He says, "Promise that you'll bury me at the home of my ancestors where Abraham and Isaac were buried. Please promise me that you'll bury me at that place." And it says at verse 30 of chapter 47, so Joseph promised that he would. "Swear that you will do it," Jacob insisted. So Joseph gave his oath.

It says in chapter 48, one day not long after that, word came to Joseph that his father's health was failing rapidly. Now right now, Jacob is 147 years old here and Joseph is 57. To give you an idea of how old they are, 147 and 57. Joseph went to visit him and he took with him his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. So Jacob is dying and he calls for Joseph, and Joseph takes his two sons in with him.

When Jacob heard that Joseph had arrived, he gathered his strength and sat up in bed to greet him. Jacob said to Joseph, "God Almighty appeared to me at Luz," that's another name for Bethel, "in the land of Canaan and blessed me. He said to me, 'I will make you a multitude of nations and I will give this land of Canaan to you and your descendants as an everlasting possession.'

Now, I am adopting as my own sons these two boys of yours, Ephraim and Manasseh, who were born here in the land of Egypt before I arrived. They will inherit from me just as Reuben and Simeon will. They will inherit from me just as Reuben and Simeon will, but the children born to you in the future will be your own. The land they inherit will be within the territories of Ephraim and Manasseh. As I was returning from Paddan, Rachel died in the land of Canaan. We were still on the way, just a short distance from Ephrath, that is Bethlehem. So with great sorrow, I buried her there beside the road to Ephrath."

A couple of things: Jacob was going back to the first time he encountered God at Bethel, and he recounts almost word for word the promise that God gave him back in that time, that "I will make of you a great nation," that he remembers God's promise. There's a lesson here that God wants us to remind Him of His promises as well. Your Bible is filled with promises, and God wants us to remind Him of His promises. It's not that He forgot them. It's not that He needs to be reminded. He wants us to be reminded of the fact that He made those promises and they are still true to us.

This is before the law, this is before the written word. All Jacob had were those few words that God spoke to him. And so he reminded them, he would take them back and remind God of that promise even these many, many years later. We should do the same with the word of God. God isn't up in heaven biting his fingernails, afraid that you're going to remind him of a promise that he somehow can't figure out how to make to you, how to keep to you. Up until this time in the history of mankind, he's been able to keep it to every other person, but for some reason, you're the first person that he can't. He's not nervous in heaven. He wants us to claim those promises.

And he says, "Just as my other sons, they will inherit a portion." So Joseph really forfeits his portion and instead it goes to his two sons. There were 12 sons. Joseph is out, there are 11. Two of his sons come in, now there are 13. And it's interesting, but throughout the Bible from this point forward, when they talk about the 12 tribes of Israel—because they always continue to call them the 12 tribes—there are 20 different combinations of those 12. One has to be deleted to come up with 12. So sometimes Dan is missing and sometimes another one is missing, but if you go through and study it, there are 20 different combinations of these 12.

It's also interesting that the number of 12 denotes government. It's a number that continually comes up in the Bible dealing with government or administration. There are 12 tribes, there were 12 apostles, there were 12 princes of Ishmael, there were 12 pillars on Moses's altar, 12 stones in the high priest's breastplate, 12 cakes of showbread, 12 spies to search out the land, 12 governors under Solomon, 12 hours in a day, 12 months in a year, 12,000 from the 12 tribes are sealed and preserved during the great tribulation. Heaven has 12 gates of 12 pearls, and there are 12 angels at those 12 gates. So again, the number 12 is a number that continually comes up over and over in the Bible and it's almost always in reference to administration of some sort, which is really what's taking place here. God through Jacob is putting in place 12 different tribes that will continue on in place and in fact, even are in the book of Revelation where the 144,000 coming out of 12 tribes.

It's also interesting he says in verse 6, Jacob says to Joseph, "The children born to you in the future will be your own." Now, it says that Jacob was given the wife of an Egyptian priest. Pharaoh gave him the wife of an Egyptian priest when he was 30 years old. And sometime in that first seven years, he had two boys. And this passage right here is probably the clearest passage to make the point that he only ever had two boys up until this point. So from the age of 30 to 57, he had two children, which is just interesting that that's all that he had.

Let's go on. Verse 8. Then Jacob looked over his two boys. Again, he's on his deathbed, he calls in Joseph, he brings in Joseph's two sons, his only two sons, and he looks at the two boys and says, "Are these your sons?" he asked. "Yes," Joseph told him. "These are the sons God has given me here in Egypt." And Jacob said, "Bring them over to me and I will bless them."

Now Jacob was half-blind because of his age. Interesting again, the same was true of his father Isaac. Remember when Isaac, Jacob, and Esau came in before them and they played that ruse on them, that trick? It was because he couldn't see. Felt the arm, it was hairy, and he smelled them, and based upon that, he was convinced that it was true because he was blind. Again now his son, same setting, very similar. Esau with his two sons, Jacob with his two grandsons. Both blind, very similar setting. Let's see how it plays out.

So Joseph brought the boys close to him and Jacob kissed them and embraced them. Then Jacob said to Joseph, "I never thought I would see you again, but now God has let me see your children too." Joseph took the boys from their grandfather's knees and he bowed low to him. Then he positioned the boys so that Ephraim was at Jacob's left hand and Joseph does this. Joseph puts Ephraim at Jacob's left hand and Manasseh at his right hand.

But Jacob crossed his arms as he reached out to lay his hands on the boys' heads. So his right hand was on the head of Ephraim, and his left hand was on the head of Manasseh, the older. Then he blessed Joseph and said—so now he has his hands on the grandsons' heads, but he's blessing Joseph. He says, then he blessed Joseph and said, "May God, the God before whom my grandfather Abraham and my father Isaac walked, the God who has been my shepherd all my life, and the angel who has kept me from all harm, may he bless these boys. May they preserve my name and the names of my grandfather Abraham and my father Isaac, and may they become a mighty nation."

But Joseph was upset when he saw that his father had laid his right hand on Ephraim's head. So he lifted it—Joseph sees the mistake, he lifts his father's hand off the one son and puts it on the other. So he lifted it and placed it on Manasseh's head instead. "No, father," he said. "This one over here is the older. Put your right hand on his head." But his father refused. "I know what I am doing, my son. Manasseh too will become a great people, but his younger brother will become even greater. His descendants will become a multitude of nations."

So Jacob blessed the boys that day with blessings. The people of Israel will use your names to bless each other. They will say, "May God make you as prosperous as Ephraim and Manasseh." Read that again. Jacob blessed the boys that day with this blessing: the people of Israel will use your names to bless each other. They will say, "May God make you as prosperous as Ephraim and Manasseh." In this way, Jacob put Ephraim ahead of Manasseh. Does this sound familiar to you? Does it ring a bell? Something similar happened.

Go back and look at a couple of the pieces in this. It says that he took the boys from their grandfather's knees. These boys are somewhere between 20 years old and 26 years old. So if you picture this scene being little boys on his knees, they're not. Because again, Jacob has lived in the land for 17 years and they were born before he ever got there, probably year two of the famine. So it could have been earlier than that. It could have been from the beginning of the famine all the way to between 20 and 27 years old, no doubt.

Also, he says in verse 15, "The God of my father Abraham, Isaac, who has been my shepherd all my life." This is the first reference in the Bible to God being a shepherd. The first reference. Also, the right hand was always the favored hand. The right hand was the hand of blessing. Again, if you look through Psalms and the Old Testament, you know God will favor me with His strong right hand. He will protect me with His strong right arm. It's imagery that's used over and over.

If you remember back during Carter's administration where they took some Americans captive in Iran, remember that? Did you remember they showed pictures of the prisoners? They were sitting there blindfolded and the captors had masks on and they had their left hand over their heads. Do you remember that? You probably don't remember if you don't know why they did it. But they had their left hand over their heads, not the right hand, their left hand. And the reason is because in Middle East culture, that is a tremendous slam. To another person from the Middle East, that would be a tremendous put-down. And the reason is because the right hand is a hand of favor, and the left hand they use for some other things that aren't so really nice. And that's why in that culture, everybody knows that. And so to extend your left hand to somebody would be an insult. To put your hand over their head was the ultimate insult. Here again, the right hand means an extra blessing.

Remember, this is exactly what happened to Jacob. Jacob is now in a room, nearly blind. He calls two in, two brothers in, and he goes to give a blessing, and he pulls a switcheroo. This is the story of Jacob's life. Do you remember this happened in the beginning? He pulled about the switcheroo with his mother's help. He went in, put the hairy garment on his arm, and convinced his father. He did a switcheroo. And then he goes to live with Laban and he wants to marry Rachel, and he ends up that night in his wedding night in bed with who? Leah. What a surprise. Switcheroo number two. And now the thing starts and continues all the way into the end of his life where he does the same thing that he did to his father. He does a switch.

And yet God was in all of this where he says that the people of Israel will use your names to bless each other. They will say, "May God make you as prosperous as Ephraim and Manasseh." Even today in modern Jewish culture, on many Shabbats, which is the Sabbath service for the Jews, they will have the parents will bring their children forward to receive a special blessing. The rabbi will call the children of the congregation forward to receive a blessing on behalf of the congregation. The rabbi will lay his hands on the heads of the children and say, even today, these words: "May God bless you and make you as Ephraim and Manasseh." So the words that were prophesied is still true and it's still being done in Jewish services. "May God bless you and make you as Ephraim and Manasseh."

Family blessing is still an important part in Jewish culture. This is still practiced by Jewish families in their home, the father giving a blessing to the children. The idea is to communicate an idea of identity, of meaning, of love, of worth and acceptance. It's done weekly. It's a weekly part of Jewish life to place a blessing on the children.

You know, I always liked the story of the Jewish mom walking down with two baby carriages, twins, and somebody leaned over and said, "Oh, they're so cute. What are their names?" And she said, "This is Bernie the lawyer and Hiram the doctor." And you know, we laugh at that and it's funny, but you know there's something in their culture where they project a special future for their child. And there's a tremendous value in that to you as parents, to us as individuals in the lives of others, when we see giftings, when we see abilities, call them out in your children. "You know, I see that you have a compassion that is just extraordinary. You know, I see you have the ability to handle money in ways that, I mean, you're saving money that other children wouldn't." Call them out. The Jewish blessing: calling out all that God has in mind for them.

You know, it's been said that the mother and the father have different roles, obviously, in raising children. The role of the mother is to hold the child close and tight, to allow it to feel secure and safe. And that's why it's so hard for mothers to let go of a child. The role of the father is to hold the child out to the world and say, "Son, daughter, this world has tremendous possibilities for you." The mother's trying to hold it tight and the father's trying to—not really, not really. But you know, he holds it out and says the world has tremendous possibilities. "Go for it. You can do this." The blessing, the family blessing includes meaningful touch, a spoken message, attaching high value to the one being blessed, picturing a special future for them, and an active commitment to fulfill the blessing.

Let's go on. Verse 21. Then Jacob says to Joseph, "I am about to die, but God will be with you and bring you again to Canaan, the land of your ancestors. Then I will give you an extra portion beyond what I have given your brothers, the portion that I took from the Amorites with my sword and bow."

Chapter 49. Then Jacob called together all his sons and said, "Gather around me and I will tell you what is going to happen in the days to come. Come and listen, O sons of Jacob. Listen to Israel, your father." You know, you can glide right past that and miss what he just said. But what he said is, "I'm the father, I am the father Jacob of all of you. I'm the father Israel of all of you." Jacob is the man of flesh, Israel denotes the man of spirit. And what he says is, "You are sons of mine from my flesh, the Jacob in me, the grabber, and you are also sons of me from the Israel, and I understand that you got from me both sides of who I am."

He goes on. Verse one, he starts taking them in age and then he gets off of that. "Reuben, you are my oldest son, the child of my vigorous youth. You are first on the list in rank and honor, but you are as unruly as the waves of the sea, and you will no longer be first, for you slept with one of my wives. You dishonored me in my own bed." And again, he's talking about when Reuben slept with Bilhah, which was the mother of Dan and Naphtali. He says, "You will be first no longer." It's interesting that there are no kings, there are no judges, no prophets that ever came out of the tribe of Reuben. No kings, no judges, no prophets.

He goes on. "Simeon and Levi are two of a kind, men of violence. O my soul, stay away from them. May I never be a party to their wicked plans, for in their anger they murdered men and they crippled oxen just for sport." You know, Proverbs says you can tell a lot about a man by the way he treats his animals. It's interesting. "Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce. Cursed be their wrath, for it is cruel. Therefore, I will scatter their descendants throughout the nation of Israel." And again, remember the story? Simeon and Levi, they went in Shechem, took their daughter Dinah, and they went back into the city and they killed every male. And when Israel, when Jacob heard about it, he was furious. Did nothing about it, but he was furious. And on the basis of that, they now lose their blessings.

You know, Proverbs talks a lot about violence and just one passage from Proverbs: it says, "Do not envy violent people. Don't copy their ways. Such people are an abomination to the Lord." It says they eat wickedness and drink violence. As I read that, I thought about television today, movies. They eat wickedness and drink violence. They eat wickedness and drink violence. What comes out of the TV? If you could describe eating what comes off of the box, what are most people eating today? Violence, right? Isn't it true? Wickedness. Violence is an abomination to man. It says we should make no plans to partake in evil and violence just shouldn't be a part of our daily intake. It's not on the pyramid of food. Su's pyramid starts with chocolate.

Let's go on to Judah. "Judah, your brothers will praise you. You will defeat your enemies. All your relatives will bow low before you. Judah is as a young lion that has finished eating its prey. Like a lion he crouches and lies down, like a lioness, who will dare to rouse him? The scepter will not depart from Judah nor the ruler's staff from his descendants until the coming of the one to whom it belongs," or some of your Bibles say "until Shiloh comes," the one to whom all nations will obey. Shiloh is a reference to Jesus. "Until Shiloh comes, the one whom all nations will obey. He ties his foal to the grapevine, his colt to his donkey to a choice vine. He washes his clothes in wine because his harvest is so plentiful. His eyes are darker than wine and his teeth are whiter than milk."

Now, a couple of things about Judah. Judah wasn't a man without faults. If you remember, he had a profit motive. He's the one that said, "Instead of killing him, let's sell him, let's sell Joseph to the Egyptians." He's the one that suggested getting some money back. He also had sex with his daughter-in-law where his sons had died and she took up as a prostitute and he solicited her and had sex with her. So he is not without fault.

Jewish tradition says that—again, picture the scene: Jacob's on his deathbed, all 13 involved are standing there listening to this. And so Judah hears the curse, almost, that's put on the two oldest. Jewish tradition says that after Judah heard what Jacob had to say to Simeon and Levi, he was afraid because of the evil he had done. Makes sense, doesn't it? You'd kind of gulp after the first one, gulp after the second one, and I'm third. And yet he received a tremendous blessing. It says "As a lion, the scepter shall not depart from Judah until Shiloh comes." In Revelation 5, Jesus is called the Lion of Judah.

It took 640 years to fulfill in part this prophecy when David became ruler. It then took another 1,600 years for it to be fulfilled in Jesus's coming. And yet, through that entire time, Judah was always a ruler of Israel. From David's time until Herod, a prince of Judah was head over Israel even during the time of Daniel's captivity. Even under their time where the Romans and others occupied their land, they still were allowed self-rule under the rule of the conquering power, but they were still allowed self-rule. That ended in 7 AD under Herod with the Romans. For the first time, they were not allowed to carry out capital punishment. Remember how Jesus—why did the scribes and Pharisees take Jesus before Pilate? Do you remember? That's right. They couldn't sentence him to death because they did not have complete self-rule. That happened in 7 AD.

Guest (Male): Yes, God is able to keep His promises. We're studying Genesis right now with Pastor Thom Keller on Study the Word. You can hear this message again by going to ccleb.com. Again, we're at ccleb.com. There are many other messages for your growth and edification there too. Or call and request a CD copy at 717-507-7862. That's 717-507-7862. Thanks for remembering that Study the Word is a listener-supported ministry. We look to listeners like you to help us provide these Bible studies on your station every day. Here's where to write: Study the Word, 740 Willow Street, Lebanon, Pennsylvania, 17046. Or call 717-507-7862. Thom Keller is a senior pastor of Calvary Chapel Lebanon and if you're in the area, we hope you'll come by for a visit. For directions and service times, go to ccleb.com. When you get a chance, download our free Android app. Search Calvary Chapel Lebanon in the Google Play store. Thanks for studying the word with Pastor Thom Keller. We'll get back into Genesis with Pastor Thom next time. We hope you can join us.