Joseph No.17 Change but not decay

So, Genesis chapter 45, verse 25. So they went up out of Egypt and came to their father Jacob in the land of Canaan. They told him, Joseph is still alive, in fact he is ruler of all Egypt.

Jacob was stunned, he did not believe them. But when they told him everything Joseph had said to them, and when he saw the carts Joseph had sent to carry him back, the spirit of their father Jacob revived. And Israel said, I am convinced my son Joseph is still alive, I will go and see him before I die.

So Israel set out with all that was his. And when he reached Beersheba, he offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac. And God spoke to Israel in a vision at night and said, Jacob, Jacob, here I am, he replied.

I am God, the God of your father, he said. Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for I will make you into a great nation there. I will go down to Egypt with you, and I will surely bring you back again.

And Joseph's own hand will close your eyes. Then Jacob left Beersheba, and Israel's sons took their father Jacob, and their children, and their wives in the carts that Pharaoh had sent to transport him. They also took with them their livestock, and the possessions they had acquired in Canaan.

And Jacob and all his offspring went to Egypt. He took with him to Egypt his sons and grandsons, and his daughters and granddaughters, all his offspring. May God bless to us a public reading of his word.

Please have your Bibles open at that passage to which we've already been referred, Genesis in Chapter 45. And the verse that I really want you to look at actually bridges both chapters. The sentence starts right at the end of the 45th chapter of Genesis, and it goes on to the 46th.

I will go and see him before I die. So Israel set out with all that was his, and when he reached Beersheba, he offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac. There are a couple of challenges that especially meet you as the years go by.

There is the challenge of change. One of the hardest things for an older person to do is to cope with and accept change. I say that very feelingfully, recognizing that along and according to the youth fellowship I've already arrived, I will be in that category of being described old.

Coping with change, we're conservative by nature. The second challenge is this, as you move into your even tide of life, maintaining your spiritual glow. There's a hymn that we're going to sing in a little while.

It's a favorite of mine. We don't often have it in one sense. It's a sad hymn, but it's also a beautiful hymn.

Abide with me. And it has as one of its stanzas, change and decay in all around I see. Sometimes it seems to me that that not only describes the physical world, but might alas be descriptive of the spiritual condition of people who've moved on with the Lord down the years.

Changes have come and also decay. And thus my address heading this morning is once again, we look into these grand narratives surrounding the person of Joseph. And as we spotlight his father, Jacob, my title is change, but not decay.

It's not necessary having coped with the changes that advancing years brings. It's not a necessary corollary therefore that you decay spiritually. I think it might well have been said of Isaac, the father of Jacob, that he did not so much wear out as rust out.

He started out so well spiritually, but by the end of his life, you've got someone who's rusting, not wearing out in the service of God. And it seems to me that his son, Jacob, was faced with the same particular challenge as the decades had been burnt into history, as he'd advanced to seniority, as he realized that the Jordan River, I speak proverbially, was just in front of him. How would he be able to retain or regain the spiritual vigor that once he had? For Jacob was a man of great God-consciousness, who on one occasion saw a stairway stretching from earth to heaven, an indication that communion with God was permissible in the early days of biblical characters.

And on another occasion, he wrestled with the Lord and had a most remarkable experience of God and His grace as a result. But now he's towards the end. He's talked twice, at least in the last couple of chapters, about the moment of his departure, and actually when he projects the point of his death, he does so with a great deal of sadness, a great deal of despair.

If I am bereaved, I am bereaved. He anticipates dying as a broken-hearted man, and thus I put my challenge to Jacob before he dies. Man, you're facing change, but does it necessarily mean that spiritually you have to decay? And those of you here not necessarily in a senior category, you've known some changes in your life.

You've got married. Certain things have broken out on your pathway. You've moved successfully into your profession.

Do these turning points in your life necessarily mean, for they do for some, believe me, that you have to decay? Can it not be that you can retain or regain the spiritual vigor that once was yours? The reason for the change in this old man's circumstances are easy to sketch out. You'll recall them, those of you who have been with me during these past months, that we've looked at these fascinating narratives in the Old Testament. Israel or Jacob now has knowledge that his son Joseph, whom he had reckoned to be dead, is actually still alive.

At first, the news was so wonderful, he disbelieved it. He was stunned, but there was evidence to bear out that what his sons were saying was accurate. There were these wagons that they brought from Egypt.

There were these goodies that had been brought along in the wagons, indicating the benevolence and the charity of the now living Joseph, as far as Jacob's estimate is concerned, the now living Joseph, and the love that he has for his father. There was this grand invitation brought by the brothers that Jacob should accompany them and go back to Egypt for the duration of a famine, for things were at a critical level, you remember, in Palestine and in all the surrounding area in those days. There was only food in Egypt.

Life was only sustainable in Egypt. And so the request comes from Joseph, now discovered by Jacob to be alive, come to Egypt and spend the last days of your life with me. Exhilarating news in one sense, the best that Jacob could ever have wished for.

But listen, it means change. I've got two folk that I live, that I love, in South Africa, my wife's mum and dad. I'd love them to come to England, spend the remaining years, if years there'd be, that they have of their lives with their daughter and myself.

But, and I admire them for it, I sympathise with them. They find it difficult to up-anchor from the life and the country that they've known for decades and seek fresh pasture, so to speak, in England. Those of you who are elderly, you'll appreciate their problems.

You'll empathise with them. Now this man Jacob, he was as human as you and me. There was warm blood that flowed through his veins, these characters of the Old Testament, whose stories we often look into.

They are folk like ourselves, with the same weaknesses and the temptations and the same potential for greatness. That's why those of us who love the Bible often have recourse to Genesis and the story of the Patriarchs, because we can identify with them. Joseph's alive, but to go to Egypt, that's difficult.

When you're old and your memories are in Palestine, when you think that Abraham, your illustrious forebear, that his remains are in the cave of Mekelpah, along with the bones of your father Isaac. When you recall that your beloved wife was buried just a mile or so out of Bethlehem. When you recall that the earlier years of your life, you had to be away from Palestine, and it wasn't such an easy 17 years or so that Jacob spent away from the land of promise.

And now to leave Palestine again, with the thought of never being able to return, that's difficult. To cope with change, even change that might be within the purposes of God. Not easy to cope with that, is it? Not easy to give up your home, or going to a nursing home, even though you know the years have gone by, and you no longer can really look after yourself.

I empathize with a person who struggles to keep going. I too love my independence, and to surrender that must be incredibly difficult. So here is Jacob, you see, and he sets up immediately a situation with which many of us here can identify, and ultimately all of us will.

How do you cope with change in the purposes of God? And in the very coping, as cope you're bound to try to do, can you maintain? Or could you reacquire the spiritual vigor that maybe has gone in the passing of the years? My son Joseph is still alive. I will go and see him before I die. So Israel set out with all that was his, and when he reached Beersheba, he offered sacrifices to the God of his father, Isaac.

You say, why the intonation in my voice just at that point? Well, for this reason. Beersheba, you see, was the southernmost part of the land of promise. When you went beyond Beersheba, as far as Jacob was concerned, he went out of the known into the unknown.

When he left Beersheba, his face is set towards Egypt, and there's no turning back. It's the point of total commitment, and it's not easy. C. H. Spurgeon sees him limping along towards Beersheba with a trembling heart, wondering whether he can really cope with the challenge of the final moments of departure.

Now, Beersheba is an interesting spot historically. You will recall, those of you who are familiar with the Bible, that it was there that Abraham, the forebearer of Jacob, on one occasion had a experience of the Lord's grace. And you read in the 33rd verse of Genesis 21, Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba, and there he called upon the name of the Lord, the Eternal God.

It was at Beersheba that Isaac, Jacob's father, had spent quite some time. It was at Beersheba that probably the words had come to Abraham, take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, and offer him as a sacrifice to me. Beersheba, the southernmost point in the land of promise, which brought the very mention of its name, so many memories back to Jacob.

For 22 years, Jacob's life had been built upon a misconception. You remember I said earlier that he was a man with an incredible God-consciousness. This is true, isn't it? I mean, these visions of the stairway to the skies, this encounter with God over the night watches as he wrestled with him, God giving him a name which was different from the name that he was born with.

All these things are most, if not unique, unusual. Now there are experiences that are available to you, and some of you have probably gone through them. You've known a great overwhelming of God's power in your life.

You knew times when it was almost spiritual ecstasy, when to have stepped from earth to heaven would have been so very easy, times when God in a sort of naked way came upon you. But if you were to select from our hymns a particular song that was descriptive of your spiritual experience now, it might be that you'd opt for the hymn, Where is the Blessedness I Knew, When First I Saw the Lord. You see, you can be an outstanding preacher.

You can have swayed a multitude. You can have been with the spiritual greats. You can have known personal revival that lasted for a year or several years, and then you can slip back, not out of the providential care of God, because he'll never let you go, but you can deteriorate into perhaps what some of you are now that you weren't then.

It may be certain things crept into your experience that you didn't like. Maybe certain providences that God allowed to fall on your pathway, and you're grieved, and you have a grudge against him. Maybe you rushed to a conclusion that really wasn't accurate, but you built the whole of your life from that point on that conclusion.

You say, what's this to do with Jacob? Well, it's a great deal. 22 years ago, they brought him those wicked sons, a long flowing coat drenched with the blood of an animal, and the misapprehension was this. Jacob said, it's the coat of my beloved son, and as he signaled in his convictions the death of Joseph, so I argue, if I feel the pulse of God's word aright, he started to die spiritually.

Joseph died, and something of Jacob died, and for 22 years you don't find one little instance, one snippet of evidence in these verses that are compressed with information, that he ever sought the counsel of God. 22 years without having a holy encounter, 22 years never denying, but never seeking out the person of the Lord. God, where is the blessedness I knew when first I sought the Lord? The premise was faulty.

He came to a conclusion, subtly led that way by his malevolent children, but it was wrong. Maybe all these years he'd been blaming God. Maybe all these years he hadn't been able to cope with this particular pressure and problem, and now, now he hears that his beloved Joseph is alive, and Jacob gets up and he moves towards Egypt, but moving towards Egypt brings its own particular challenge and difficulty, and the specific challenge that he has to attend to is this God who revealed himself at Peniel, this God who'd been with him in more early years of his life.

He had to come and seek him at a place where Abraham had sought him, and where Isaac had sought him. He had to come again to offer sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac. What sort of sacrifices? Those days, of course, it was before they fully understood, though they had some shadowy information as to how God would make it possible for sins to be atoned for.

The sacrifices that they offered, they anticipated calvary, and so Jacob sacrifices before the Lord for the forgiveness of his own sins. Maybe for the… to ask for forgiveness of the sins of his sons, who at times had made their… this household reputation to stink in the area. Maybe they're also sacrifices of thanksgiving for all that God was now allowing to fall out on the path of Jacob as he moved towards Egypt.

He had to seek the Lord. As my spirit tells me that there are people here who desperately need to hear this message, and I don't often say it quite like that from the tab pulpit, do I? You need to offer the sacrifices again of contrition and apology and thanksgiving and worship. And if you're faced with great change, you need to relate that change to this great God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who will never let you down because he is the changeless one.

Are you hearing? Will you speak to me again, Lord, like you spoke of Peniel? Will you make up for those wasted years of me being incommunicado as far as you're concerned? And God spoke to Israel, verse 2, in a vision at night and said, Jacob, Jacob. This patriarch had two names. There was the name with which he was born, Jacob.

There was the name with which he was reborn, born again. The one referred to his weakness, and his nature which was naturally one of a twister. The other name referred to the way that God had ennobled him, the potential for spiritually climbing high.

And at this particular point, as God has an encounter with his servant who is seeking his face, he uses the name Jacob. Significant, that. Jacob, Jacob, yes, I know.

I know what your experiences have been like. I know the misapprehension that you have been under. I know the fears that you now have.

Jacob, Jacob, I am God, the God of your father. So many years have elapsed, but God, who is ever faithful, who has amongst his many attributes, utter consistency and fidelity, he remembered his servant, his limping servant. Because listen, he remembers you.

That's why I stopped our first hymn, not to make some emotional, sentimental point. Each child is special. You, special.

Did you hear that? Not because the parson says so, but because the word of God makes it clear. God speaks to you personally. Jacob, Jacob, I remember you.

Remember all you were. Remember all that you have been. Remember all that you can be.

I remember you, Jacob. I am God. The Hebrew would give the rendering, I am the true God, the God of your father, the God of the covenant.

Don't be afraid. You see, God always identifies that point of weakness that is crippling us. As far as Jacob here was concerned, it's his fear.

So God speaks to that fear. Don't be afraid. Afraid to go down to Egypt.

You see, Egypt for Jacob was utterly unacceptable, even though Joseph was there. And he's caught really in a confluence of two streams. He wants to stay in Palestine.

It's a land of promise. It's a land where he feels secure. Some of you want to stay just where you are and won't give up or find it hard to give up your homes or to make decisions which will move you from one category of life into another category.

God understands that. You see, Egypt was a different scene for Joseph, for Jacob. Egypt was a land where they worshipped crocodiles and cats.

Egypt was a land of learning. There were the great centres where men were sort of bearing their mind to the mysteries of the universe, where there was a merge between astronomy and astrology, where there were great libraries at Alexandria. The lifestyle was so different.

And here is this unsophisticated patriarch, and Egypt is there in front of him, and he's wondering, Lord, shall I go down to Egypt? I need assurance from you. So God speaks and says, don't, don't be afraid. Don't be afraid of Egypt, as well he might have been.

Egypt was the place where Abraham got himself into enormous trouble. Egypt was the place where he and Sarah rented, if you like, or brought into their entourage, Hagar, the Egyptian au pair, and all the problems that that brought, some of which we're still living with, even to this day. Those of you who know history will know what I mean.

Egypt. Abraham once had a dream. It was a horrible dream.

It was a dream of his descendants moving from the land of promise for some 400 years, ultimately becoming slaves. The identity of the land to which they would go was not disclosed to Abraham, but here is Jacob, who has spiritual perception, even though he's somewhat dull on what he used to be spiritually. Maybe there's a horror of this.

Could this be the occasion that leads into what my great-grandparent experienced in terms of a vision? God speaks, speaks to Jacob, Israel, and says, don't be afraid. I'll make you a great nation. Your posterity, all that Abraham believed in, all that was passed on to Isaac, all that I've repeated on occasions before you, I will keep my word.

Go to Egypt and you'll get Canaan as well. I'll make you a great nation. Verse four, I will go down to Egypt with you.

Game, set, and match. That's what he wanted. You'd be a fool to go into tomorrow without him, but that's not on the table.

I will go down to Egypt with you and I will surely bring you back again. Jacob, I see your descendants. I see the posterity that will be yours.

I see this great nation. Jacob, you can have it from me that I will bring them back again, all those who are still in the loins of your children. And what's more, Joseph's own hand will close your eyes.

Isn't that lovely? Pardon again what might seem pulpit sentimentality, but isn't there something in the Bible that just makes you love God? I will surely bring you back and Joseph's own hand will close your eyes. You see, Jacob had a fear, not of death itself, the mode of dying. Go down to Egypt.

Joseph will be there. And Jacob, you who have twice predicted your death in most heartbreaking circumstances, you have this bonus that the warm hand of Joseph will be on your forehead. And the soft fingers of Joseph will ultimately close your eyelids, and one day your posterity and your remains will be brought back to the land of promise.

You see what's happened? He's gone to Beersheba, the place where he'd been to before, and God has rebuilt the stamina that Jacob Israel used to have so that now he can go to Egypt and he can cope, change, but not decay. Go down to Egypt, says God, perhaps to some of you, the Egypt of new circumstances, the Egypt of a new way of life, the Egypt which will one day be the context in which you will die. But remember that in that Egypt to which I direct you, there's Jesus Joseph.

He's not only father to Pharaoh, he's king of kings. And from his girdle there hang the keys of death and of hell and eternal life. Jesus, my son, will never leave you, will never forsake you, take you into Egypt, and one day his nail-pierced hand will be put upon your brow, and those fingers which once touched the skins of lepers will close your eyes, and he'll send you to sleep with a promise that you'll awake in his likeness.

You can cope with Egypt, can't you? You can cope with change when you've got all these promises of God boxed in and addressed to you. And that's precisely what I believe, because I think that God speaks through his Word and the exposition of his Word. That's what he's saying right now.

Change, yes, life is rarely at a fixed point for a long time. Change, it hits us in our youth, it hits us in our middle years, it hits us at the end. But change does not necessarily mean decay.

It does not necessarily mean going back on the promises that you made. It does not necessarily mean that you must wither spiritually as your body grows old and shows greater marks of infirmity. The spirit can get stronger and stronger, renewed each day to quote Paul in the inner man, even though your outer garment, your physical frame starts to wilt.

Change, but not decay. My friends, I speak to you, some of you who I've loved for years, married you here at the tab, dedicated your kids, you're doing well now, you're getting on in the service of your company or whatever it may be, but does that change, does that success mean, hear me in the name of God, does it mean that you have to decay spiritually? The years have gone by since you said goodbye to your family and you're now on the verge of maybe an eventide home or maybe you're in some nursing home as you listen to my voice on tape. May God grant to you the experience of Jacob.

He knows you by name, he speaks his word, I'll not leave you. You're in your Egypt, but Cain and I promise you as well, heaven will ultimately be yours and my son's there to usher you from the threshold of this life to the next. A final reinforcement, some of you, you've had a grudge for years against this God, utter misconception.

For years you've not sought his company, come into his word, spent time with him in prayer. He still waits for you at Beersheba, not to criticize nor condemn, but to accept your sacrifice and to reveal himself again in a marvelous way. Change, yes my friends, at the tab there must be, but not necessarily decay.

Let's pray. Father, as the majority of us wait to come to our Beersheba and take bread and wine again and enter into the great sacrifice of our Lord Jesus, grant that we might continue to respond to change, but grant that we might never know decay. Bless us, Lord, whether we stay or go at this juncture in our worship, for Jesus' sake, amen.