Peter Barnes: Genesis 46:1-47:12
SERMON NOTES: LIFE’S JOYS AND TRIALS (Genesis 46:1-47:12)
After more than twenty years, Jacob is to make his way to Egypt to gather enough provisions to survive the seven year famine, and, more vitally, for the reunion with his long-lost son, Joseph.
- God reassures Jacob with His promises.
– 46:1-4. God who cannot lie came to Jacob with reassuring promises:
(a) Israel would become a great nation. Hence 46:8-27.
(b) God will be with His people.
(c) God will bring them back out of Egypt. God has already told Abram about this – Gen.15:13.
(d) The family reunion will last till death – contrary to what Jacob thought in 37:35.
- The joy of reunion.
– 46:28-30. How could anyone describe it? Note 1 Thess.4:13-18; Isa.61:3.
– Joseph is shrewd in the right way – 46:31-34; 47:1-6. God uses the Egyptians’ prejudice against shepherds to set the Israelites up in the north-eastern region of Goshen which will make the exodus easier.
- The despised sojourner blesses Pharaoh.
– 47:7-12. Jacob before Pharaoh must have seemed like a hillbilly in Buckingham Palace. Yet Jacob blesses Pharaoh twice (47:7, 10). Remember the biblical principle – Heb.7:7.
– 47:9. Here is this ‘glass half-empty’ character again! Jacob feels like he has just about had it at 130 but he survives for another seventeen years (Gen.47:28).
– he is prone to whinge, but he is a sojourner, a pilgrim in a strange land on his way to a better place – Heb.11:13-16.