Joseph No.19 Two princes meet

After 47, beginning at verse 1, Genesis, the first book in the Bible, chapter 47. I'd just like to say how lovely it is for me to be back at the Tab. It's very much coming home, and although I'm only here for a weekend, it's just lovely to see so many people that I recognize.

And I'd like to thank you for your love and your prayers over the years for me. Genesis, chapter 47. Joseph went and told Pharaoh, My father and brothers, with their flocks and herds and everything they own, have come from the land of Canaan and are now in Goshen.

He chose five of his brothers and presented them before Pharaoh. Pharaoh asked the brothers, What is your occupation? Your servants are shepherds, they replied to Pharaoh, just as our fathers were. They also said to him, We have come to live here a while, because the famine is severe in Canaan, and your servants' flocks have no pasture.

So now, please, let your servants settle in Goshen. Joseph said to Pharaoh, Your father and your brothers have come to you, and the land of Egypt is before you. Settle your father and your brothers in the best part of the land.

Let them live in Goshen. And if you know of any among them with special ability, put them in charge of my own livestock. Then Joseph brought his father Jacob in and presented him before Pharaoh.

And Jacob blessed Pharaoh. Pharaoh asked him, How old are you? And Jacob said to Pharaoh, The years of my pilgrimage are a hundred and thirty. My years have been few and difficult, and they do not equal the years of the pilgrimage of my fathers.

Then Jacob blessed Pharaoh and went out from his presence. So Joseph settled his father and his brothers in Egypt and gave them property in the best part of the land, the district of Ramesses, as Pharaoh directed. Joseph also provided his father and his brothers and all his father's household with food, according to the number of their children.

The passage Margaret read to us. Those who've been coming some while, you'll be used to finding the book of Genesis on a Sunday morning. Those of you who are here for the first occasion, we're glad to see you.

What's kept you so long from coming before? We hope you'll come again if you're living locally. But it's our practice to let Scripture dictate our syllabus, especially on a Sunday morning as we make our way through either a historical book or a teaching book of the Old and New Testaments. And here we're into Genesis 45.

And we're not. We're into Genesis 47. And we've got the verse in our minds, the seventh in which Joseph is described introducing his father Jacob to Pharaoh.

Genesis 47, 7. Then Joseph brought his father Jacob in and presented him before Pharaoh. After Jacob blessed Pharaoh, Pharaoh asked him, How old are you? We already saw last time, you recall, the amazing way in which Joseph identified himself with those brothers who had grieved him so awfully and how he had introduced them to the monarch of Egypt and how he had used the favor that he had with Pharaoh so that the fallout in the lives of his brothers would be so profitable. Pharaoh, you remember, identifies Joseph in front of the brothers, those brothers who had found it hard twenty years or so before to acknowledge the truth of dreams that seemed to suggest that Joseph would become a mighty person to whom the brothers and their father would be indebted.

Now the word of God that Joseph believed those two decades or so before is fulfilled as Pharaoh identifies who Joseph is and affirms the power that he controls in the whole of Egypt. And Pharaoh tells Joseph to settle his brothers in the best part of the land and for them to live comfortably during the remaining years of famine. It reminds me of one greater than Joseph who introduces us not to Pharaoh but to God Almighty and how the Father receives us, you brothers and sisters here in the tab this morning, receives us not because of who we are but because of who our Lord Jesus is.

He not only receives us but he gives us the finest of blessings he bequeaths to us through our Lord Jesus all spiritual blessings in heavenly places the finest of the land we're directed to. And it's all as a result of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. But the scene changes for us to focus in on for the next moments.

No longer the brothers but Jacob and Pharaoh meeting. There are several incidents that I would love to have been present at in scripture. Dramatic occasions when to have been there would have been a great honor.

I think for example of our Lord when he's in front of Pontius Pilate and Pilate the Roman upstart who's so afraid for his own professional status and well-being says to our Lord Jesus, do you not know who I am? Do you not realize that I have power both to release you and to have you crucified? And Jesus fells him with just one swoop. You would have no power at all unless it had been given you from my Father who is above. I'd love to have been present on that occasion seen the dignity of Jesus illustrated the cringing way in which Pontius Pilate wasn't able to cope.

I'd like to have been there when Elijah meets up with Ahab and Ahab says to Elijah, are you the one that troubles Israel? And how Elijah turned the tails on his comment and showed the king that he was the one who was wreaking havoc in his country. And here's another special moment. Jacob and Pharaoh the king and the patriarch the regal man the rustic man so many contrasts and scripture shows us how they are brought together in such a remarkable, in such a wonderful fashion as their lives develop.

Joseph introduces them and there's not a tinge of embarrassment. Says Oswald Sanders Joseph might also have might almost have been ashamed of his aged father and left him in the background old, decrepit, lame He had spent his life in tents and as a sheep farmer and is totally ignorant of the manners of the Egyptian court. He was in exile, an immigrant a man who had failed and it is Pharaoh who kneels before his blessing he who at that moment has a massive pyramid in process of erection designed to preserve his body and outlast his race bows before an old Hebrew about to die whose remains are destined for a cave purchased by his grandfather two kings prince of Egypt, prince with God and the whole world is shown that the spiritual is greater than the material.

Pharaoh bows before Jacob and Jacob blesses him can you envisage it? That old, decrepit man with the stooping shoulders and the withered hands with the lines and the furrows across his face he moves towards Pharaoh and maybe his arms are trembling as he commits the king to the grace of God a marvelous scene if ever there was. There's a statement in Hebrew 7-7 which relates actually to Jacob's grandfather Abraham and it says of Abraham that when he was confronted in a similar fashion with a great man by the name of Melchizedek it is Abraham who blesses Melchizedek and the Hebrew writer says the greater was blessed by the lesser the greater was blessed by the lesser my dear friend what's your objective in life? it's good to have ambition ambition that is that glorifies God here is the most powerful man in the world at that time and such an impact has been made upon him by feeble old Jacob that Pharaoh asks for his blessing it's not political influence that you require though that may be honorable for some Christians to exercise and would God that there were more who had sway in the corridors of power in this town and in our country it's not the power that comes by the accumulation of wealth though thank God for rich Christians who offer their wealth in the service of the King of Kings but to go out of this world with people wanting to have your blessing wanting you to say as Aaron did on one occasion the Lord bless you and keep you the Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you the Lord allow the smile of his face to be upon you and give you peace oh to have such a personality such a sense of God such a consciousness of him that in circumstances equivalent to the monarch of Egypt being in your company he will want what you have now it seems to me that this is the challenge if you like of Jacob and yet and yet Jacob was the sort of man who as I've put before in worse moments you wouldn't have bought a second hand camel from him would you I emphasize that with a degree of with a degree of humor but I do so deliberately for what reason well for this you see there are those who think that the characters of the Old Testament are new for that matter and those who are the stars of Christian history are so different from them that it is impossible for them that is for you and for me ever to be like them how could we ever bless people like the king of Egypt how could it ever be the case that people might might seek our benediction before we leave this world and go to our heavenly home are there not these people who are special the ranks of which we can never penetrate is there not a sort of aristocracy of God that he allows some people into but excludes others from no there is not well there is an aristocracy but you're not necessarily excluded from it the only exclusive clause that is written is one that you actually pen you can be as holy as you want to be did you hear me when I said that you can be as spiritually powerful as you want to be you can make as great an impact upon men and women as you want to you don't necessarily need to have had a pedigree the like of Jacob who could trace his ancestry back to Abraham you can be one of the ordinary people so called who grace church sanctuaries like this one and I tell you on the authority of the word of God and in the name of Jesus your life can make an impact upon society so that in your reclining years and perhaps even before you reach that men and women will be seeking out and saying will you bless me will you pray for me Jacob was not a special in the sense that he never failed he failed so many many times in his life but ultimately God got him after breaking him he remade him and he became not only Jacob the twister but Israel prince of God who would have such spiritual authority that when the most important man in the world at that time comes into his company it's Pharaoh who will bow the knee and it's Jacob who will extend the trembling withered hands how old are you? it's not a rude question certainly not in a Semitic culture these were days when age carried with it a great premium when people respected the silver lock and the furrowed brow how old are you? Pharaoh asks Jacob after he's initially prayed for the monarch of Egypt he answers carefully the years of my pilgrimage are a hundred and thirty let me give that to you in a better more elaborate translation how many are the days of the years of thy life? you see as far as the Bible is concerned it's not just years that are used to tabulate the lifespan obviously that is part of the denominator in which we count the time as it goes by in our lives but the Bible seems to suggest that we should not compute our lives by years specifically but by days and Jacob is saying the days of my life in response to Pharaoh's question the days of my life have been few and difficult and they do not equal the years of the pilgrimage of my fathers Pharaoh you see standing in front of you someone who you want blessings from but let me tell you that it's not always been the case that I could have transmitted the blessing of the Lord because of the way that I have lived his honesty before the king of Egypt as you and I need to be honest before our fellow men he calls his life a pilgrimage and the word pilgrimage comes from a Hebrew noun which means to dwell as a stranger to dwell as a stranger you see Jacob inherited the promises of Abraham but when he died there were only two small parcels of land that he actually legally owned in Palestine and the writer for the Hebrews seems to suggest that Abraham and Isaac and Jacob especially the first and the latter conceived that although in one sense God had bequested to them that great land of Palestine in the Middle East that was not all of God's promise they were moving on to a different country to a heavenly country they had their eyes set upon this this world is not my home I'm just travelling through it's a pilgrimage through which I've gone during these hundred and thirty years Pharaoh the world is my inn it's not my home now tell me forget your wife, your husband for a moment or your close friend sitting alongside whether you come from the Sudan whether you come from Belfast whoever do you look upon your life like that? you're a pilgrim going through here you have no abiding city when you begin to appreciate that as ultimately Jacob did he didn't at the beginning he messed it up as you've messed it up on many an occasion but ultimately he came to a realisation that he was not just a man of time and space he was a man destined for eternity my pilgrimage has been but few years few days in this world and it seems to me that if you're going to make an impact if the lesser is going to be able to bless the greater then you've got to get the spiritual perspective that Jacob obviously had as Pharaoh bowed beneath him and as Jacob is in the company of his son Joseph my day is a few 130 years at this point well yes he anticipated that he would die before his fathers had died in terms of the length of life that they had lived Tira his great grandfather reached 205 Abraham 175 Isaac 180 my days are few none of us here will reach that time span we may be fortunate for 70 or 80 years maybe a few more maybe a few less but don't you see it's not the length of days that are important not the way you compute it on your calculating machine it's not how long you live but how you live not what you achieved on this earth but what you are living for ultimately this is not pie in the sky when you die philosophy that's coming from the pulpit right now what I'm saying is that when you've got your eyes fixed on the eternal then you will live more agreeably in the here and now and you will live in the honor and the glory of God and for the benefit of your fellow man it took Jacob a long time to appreciate that my days have been few don't make me a spiritual star Pharaoh I can pray to you in the name of Yahweh my God but there is not that in me which is basically honorable I have blown it many times in my life as far as failures are concerned my days are few they have been difficult or as the authorized version more bluntly puts it I believe they have been evil you recall something of his biography he was compelled to leave home because of his deceitfulness twister that he was he was brought up against a better twister Laban how often God if you're a difficult person will bring you up against someone who is even more difficult if you can believe it than you are like sandpaper twelve times that man changed my wages deceived me into marrying the wrong woman how Jacob made that mistake I don't know but he did eventually he escapes from Laban to encounter Esau then he meets with the angel wrestler who touched his thigh so that he limped for the rest of his life then he passed through scenes of family discord which bleached his hair and furrowed his cheeks and scarred his heart he'd gone through bereavement as he'd been present as the favorite servant Deborah had been buried at a place that he referred to as the Oaks of Weeping he knew what it was to put to rest on the slopes of Ephrater near Bethlehem his beloved Rachel he had previously entombed his old father Isaac he knew of the treachery and the duplicity of Judah and Reuben he knew what it was for his sons to become a stench as far as their names were concerned in the land where he was living he had lived for two days believing that his most favored son was dead gored to death by some animal my days have been difficult see if there be any trouble like unto my trouble vanity of vanities, all is vanity might Jacob have said as he gives testimony to Pharaoh about the way that he has taken situations that have opened up and has so often lost the potential for doing good my days, my years have been few and difficult and they do not equal the years of the pilgrimage of my fathers and yet, and yet despite that it's Jacob's trembling hands that bless Pharaoh you see why I rejoice in preaching this message I can identify with Jacob I'm not a spiritual star, I wish I was I don't say that with any sort of attempts at artificial piety holiness I find is a struggle to maintain spiritual disciplines I find hard I don't find it easy to be into the word of God I don't find it easy always to be at prayer there are seasons when it is there are times when it's a tremendous struggle and I relate to someone like Jacob and I see in some of his failings some of his flaws, my own and yet he gets towards the end of his life during those declining years and here he is blessing another and I say God, if you did that for Jacob you can do it for me you can let me regain the years that the locusts have eaten you can enable me to be like Jacob and not like Isaac because I think his father rusted out whereas Jacob ultimately came into spiritual experience and revival let me burn out for thee dear Lord burn right out for thee don't let me rot or my life be a failure dear God to thee use me in all I have dear Lord until I draw close to thee till I hear the sob of the great heart of God oh let me burn out for thee you see despite all the contradictions Jacob had had spiritual experiences which had broken in as a result of God's sovereign pleasure upon his life and eventually he lifts this man who is such an unlovely character and makes him ultimately what he became to the extent you recall that I say that God twins his name with that of Jacob more than anyone else in the Bible the God of Abraham you read of many times but the God of Jacob you read of more the God of Joseph as far as I know you never read of but the God of Jacob constantly you are informed about in the Old Testament if God will associate his name with a man like Jacob if he can spiritually cause Jacob to recover then is there anyone here who is in a hopeless condition why was Pharaoh attracted to Jacob? because Jacob had seen God and you can never see God and remain the same the difference is perhaps not something that is perceptive to you but others can see it there is in the character of this Pharaoh something that warms your heart you believe that if any of the Gentiles in the Old Testament knew spiritual illumination in other words are saved then surely this man will get in he had a concern did he not to be blessed by God through Jacob Jacob had seen God he had wrestled with God he had seen that stairway which led from earth to heaven and he knew in his better moments and he wanted in his best desires to scale that stairway and to have intercourse with the Lord and on his death bed he is reminding his children about the angel who accompanied him down the years of his life even times when Jacob was spiritually destitute the angel was still there Jacob had known what it was to agonize in prayer and if you my friend are going to make an impact upon society even though you have had many failings in your life then these are things that Jacob Israel will tell you to wait upon the Lord to ask God to make his presence felt to agonize in prayer before God and say I will not let you go unless you bless me I can't always balance scripture you know I believe absolutely in the sovereignty of God and yet I do believe absolutely in my human responsibility to come before the Lord and to ask him to take my life and to quicken me and this is what Jacob had been doing and as a result he makes an impression when he is in the presence of Pharaoh says Oswald Chambers there is an optimism in God he has a keen eye for latent elements of nobility and promise he is the God of the difficult temperament the God of the misfit the God of the warped personality he delights to begin where others have given up in despair he has a solution for every problem of personality or temperament if men will surrender their lives into his hands for drastic and radical treatment he will bring into play all his resources of love and grace only God saw the princely qualities in this unattractive man my dear friends those of you who are getting on see that your last days are your best days so that you may die in a good old age which may best be done when you die good in old age may God recover you the years if it be the case that the locusts have eaten may God return to you so that the potential and the quality of the weeks and the days which are ahead shall be such that your life will be a blessing to others as Jacob blessed Pharaoh for me it was not the truth you taught to you so clear to me so dim but when you came to me you brought a sense of him from your eyes he beckons me from your lips his truth is shed till I lose sight of you and see the Christ instead Jacob has an encounter with God and Pharaoh appreciates the godliness in the man as a result Pharaoh asks Jacob to bless him may God grant you in the tail end of your life or in its early years or in its middle may God grant that you the lesser might bless others who are perhaps the greater as far as this world is concerned now go through the words in your mind but just listen to the tune being played the hymn that fits in with that theme is 519 through the night of doubt and sorrow onward goes the pilgrim band singing songs of expectation marching to the promised land clear before us through the darkness gleams and burns the guiding light brother clasps the hand of brother stepping fearless through the light won the light of God's own presence or his ransom people shed chasing far the gloom and terror brightening all the path we tread here's Jacob's hymn let's sing it from the fourth verse ourselves 519 bless the people of the world in God the Father heaven and earth father again we see the picture of that old decrepit man full of faith and full of years blessing Pharaoh again and then going away to Goshen and then ultimately his remains carried back to the cave of Makalpah as Pharaoh's body is placed in the pyramid but we thank you that Jacob's cave and Jacob's hope spoke of a far greater future than Pharaoh realized at the moment of his first encounter with Jacob we thank you that ours too is a great hope and a great future help us to stay our minds upon it and live out the remainder of our lives as a result of our destination who we are going to see what we are going to do enable that to influence who we are now and what activities we engage in and this we ask for the blessing of almighty God Father, Son and Holy Spirit now and always Amen