GENESIS 46 - A Promise Kept

Introduction

So, what did you want to be when you grew up? Most little kids go through that phase when they want to be a cowboy or an astronaut or a firefighter or a doctor or a nurse or a train engineer—that sort of thing. And we can look back with affection on our five-year-old selves and all the dreams they had about what they would be like when they were grown up.

It’s sweet to look back on what you thought your life would be like when you were five. But that all changes when you look back on what you thought your life would look like when you were twenty-five—back when you were bulletproof and healthy and full of confidence and bravado. All the grand plans you had for your career, your marriage, your family, your ministry stretched out before you into a bright and hopeful future.

Because then life happened to you. You took all of those hopes dreams and aspirations out into a fallen world. And the career doesn’t look like you thought. Those marriage vows got broken (or dented); that adorable little baby you taught to walk and talk used those skills to walk out of your life with spiteful and malicious words. the weight of all of those grand promises to God about how you were going to serve Him and honor Him and love Him and go where He called you now settle down on your chest as you lay in the dark in your bed at night and wonder, “What happened?”

Consider all of these things as we find them in the life of Jacob the patriarch. Descended from the great Abraham, Father of Nations, and his son Isaac, the Son of the Promise. How often as he was growing up did Jacob listen to the stories of his grandfather leading his troops into war against King Chedorlaomer and his allies in order to rescue his great-uncle Lot (Gen 14). Or listening to his father tell of the time that his father loaded him with firewood and took him to the top of a mountain and laid him on the altar to sacrifice him (Gen. 22)? Or listened to his mother describe the moment when she met the love of her life as he meditated in the fields on the evening she arrived in the Negev (Gen 24:62).

Jacob had a lot to live up to—he lived in the shadow of giants of the Covenant. And he started off in a promising way—his older brother Esau turned his back on the Covenant and broke his parents’ hearts (Gen. 26:35). In his feud with his apostate brother, Jacob flees to his uncle Laban’s house, and on the way has an overwhelmingly glorious encounter with YHWH Himself in a dream, seeing mighty angelic beings rising and descending on a ladder reaching to Heaven.

And right then and there, Jacob swears to be faithful to YHWH!

Genesis 28:20–22 LSB

Then Jacob made a vow, saying, “If God will be with me and will keep me on this journey on which I am going, and will give me food to eat and garments to wear, and I return to my father’s house in peace, then Yahweh will be my God. Now this stone, which I have set up as a pillar, will be God’s house, and of all that You give me I will surely give a tenth to You.”

“Oh YHWH, You are my God; here I build my testament with this rock that I will give my life to you!”

That was fifty years ago. A lifetime ago. And now, what does Jacob have to show for all of his promises that YHWH would be His God? His seed were murderous, treacherous men who hated each other and lied to him--they couldn’t even bless each other, much less all the families of the earth. The land that his family was promised was dying; he could hear the crying of his hungry grandchildren through the walls of his tent every night. He was no hero like his grandfather or great man of faith like his father. His wives were dead, his favorite son was dead--the great covenant promises that YHWH had made to his family looked like they would die with him. The famine outside his tent was matched by the deadness of the dry despair inside his own heart--a broken, weary old man.

Have you been down in that pit with Jacob? All the promises you made to God about how you were going to serve Him and be faithful--and now here you are, worn out and feeling like you haven’t kept any of your promises to God?

Take heart--because God’s Word shows you here that

God’s PROMISES aren’t KEPT by you; God’s PROMISES KEEP you.

This is what I want you to feed on this morning; it is not your ability to keep your promises to God that matters; it is His promises to keep you that matter. Look with me on the ways that YHWH acted to keep Jacob in His promises in these verses.

First of all, in the first two verses of our chapter, see how

I. God renews His PRESENCE to Jacob (Genesis 46:1-2)

At the end of Chapter 45, Jacob is finally convinced that his sons aren’t lying to him; his lost son Joseph is alive, and calling for him to come to Egypt. He makes up his mind in Verse 28:

Genesis 45:28 LSB

And Israel said, “It is enough! My son Joseph is still alive. I will go and see him before I die.”

That’s all it was—this was no great move of remarkable faith; this was an old man taking his last trip to see his long-lost son. It’s hard to say whether there were any other motivation that would have compelled this 130-year-old man to leave his tents in Hebron and make a journey of hundreds of miles to a foreign land. Mind you, Jacob was not going to Egypt to “save the Covenant” or because he was acting out of a desire to obey YHWH—he is going for one reason and one reason only: “To see my son before I die.”

But look at the kind providence of God right here! There was no other way Jacob would have been willing to leave Hebron, so God used that small, selfish, single-minded purpose in Jacob’s heart to get him to where God would meet him!

Genesis 46:1 LSB

So Israel set out with all that he had and came to Beersheba and offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac.

After 50 years, he comes back to the spot where he made his great vow--to the pillar he set up the morning after he saw the splendor of YHWH in the night and the angels rising and descending. And there, after a lifetime of scheming, plotting, struggling, wrestling and suffering,

Jacob can finally FULFILL his VOW (cp. Gen. 28:20-21)

Jacob comes back and offers the tithe that he had promised a half-century earlier: Not because he was strong to keep his promise to YHWH, but because YHWH was strong to keep Jacob in His promises!

And then something even more glorious happens—for the first time since that night decades ago when Jacob got that limp, that night when he was named Israel— “He who struggles with God”—for the first time in decades, Jacob hears the voice of YHWH!

Genesis 46:2 LSB

And God spoke to Israel in visions of the night and said, “Jacob, Jacob.” And he said, “Here I am.”

Beloved, do you see the transformation? God speaks to Israel, “the one who struggles with God”—but Jacob’s struggles are over! No more “I won’t let you go until you bless me”, no more “I will follow you if you give me food and shelter”, no more anxiety or fear over losing his son. Here in this place where he first saw YHWH’s glory,

Jacob can fully SUBMIT himself to GOD (v. 2; cp. Gen 26:1-5)

When YHWH speaks to him, his answer is a simple and humble “Here I am...” “Do with me what You will; I place myself at Your feet. Whatever You ask, whatever You give, whatever You take away from me, Lord, here I am!”

Now, at first we might not understand the magnitude of Jacob’s submission to God’s will here in this place. We need to think carefully about where Jacob is right now, and what he is planning to do.

First, consider that Jacob was in Beersheba—the well that marked the southern border of Canaan on the way to Egypt. Jacob is preparing to leave the Land of Promise—turn his back on the covenant land—and go to Egypt to escape the famine.

But Jacob remembers his father’s stories about the famine in his day. When Isaac was younger there was an earlier famine in the land of Canaan. We read about it in Genesis 26:1-5:

Genesis 26:1–3 LSB

Now there was a famine in the land, besides the previous famine that had occurred in the days of Abraham. So Isaac went to Gerar, to Abimelech king of the Philistines. And Yahweh appeared to him and said, “Do not go down to Egypt; dwell in the land of which I shall tell you. “Sojourn in this land, and I will be with you and bless you, for to you and to your seed I will give all these lands, and I will establish the oath which I swore to your father Abraham.

Can you begin to understand what is at stake in those three little words “Here I am?” Jacob knows full well that YHWH may tell him like he told his father that he must not leave the Promised Land to go to Egypt during the famine—he would not get to go see Joseph after all.

And yet even with that on the line—even though it was possible that he would have to choose between obeying YHWH and seeing his son alive again, Jacob still chose to obey God! “Here I am… Even if it means turning around and dying without seeing my by. Here I am... Even if it means starving to death in Canaan… Here I am… I will commit myself and my family to YHWH!”

When you see this remarkable transformation in Jacob’s life it is clear that this wasn’t because Jacob suddenly started to keep all his promises to God—YHWH’s promises were keeping Jacob! After a lifetime of regret and abdication and loss, God was pleased to renew His presence with Jacob; to bring him back to Himself and restore him to fellowship with Him.

And in the next two verses,

II. God renews His PURPOSE for Jacob (Genesis 46:3-4)

In Verse 3, God says to Jacob “I am God, the God of your father...” (The man I told to stay put in Canaan during his famine)…

And the next words had to come to Jacob like fresh air to a drowning man: “...do not be afraid to go down to Egypt!” This time God blessed the plan of the patriarch to go to Egypt—Jacob would see Joseph again!—because going to Egypt would fulfill God’s purposes:

“...for I will make you a great nation there!”

The great promise from YHWH that Israel hears in this verse is that

Jacob may leave the LAND, but GOD will never leave HIM (v. 4)

To leave the land of Canaan was to leave the land of the Covenant; the land that YHWH had sworn to give Abraham and his descendants. But God assures Jacob here that it is His purposes that are taking them to Egypt; this is all His providential hand at work to transform Jacob’s clan into a great and mighty people. And Jacob has the assurance that God was not going to turn His back on him!

Once again—how many times did Jacob and his family seem to turn their back on YHWH’s covenants? Simeon and Levi despising the mark of the covenant in order to use it as a murder weapon; Judah turning his back on the covenant to marry Canaanite women; the brothers hating God’s decree through Joseph’s dreams that he would one day be in a position to save them—over and over again Jacob and his family broke every promise they might have ever made to God—but all the while they were held by God’s unbreakable promises!

In Verse 4, God tells Jacob that not even death will break His promises to him—

Israel will DIE in Egypt, but Israel will SURVIVE (v. 4)

Genesis 46:4 LSB

“I Myself will go down with you to Egypt, and I Myself will also bring you up again; and Joseph will close your eyes with his hand.”

Remember the three elements of YHWH’s covenant with Abraham: Land, Seed and Blessing. God would give the land to Abraham’s seed, and through that seed all the nations would be blessed. Well, Jacob’s seed have all left the Land, which is dying. And when Jacob leaves Beersheba and crosses into Egypt it will represent the first time in over two hundred years that there were no descendents of Abraham living in the Promised Land! Jacob had to realize how momentous this was; the grandson of Father Abraham abandoning the Land to go die in Egypt!

But God Himself assures Jacob that though he—Israel—will die in Egypt, He will in fact bring Israel—the nation—back to the Land to take possession of it someday. And Jacob himself will return to Canaan when he dies, as we will see in a few chapters. When he dies, his stewardship of the Covenant will pass out of his hands; but that Covenant will never pass out of YHWH’s hands!

Jacob is completely assured that the Covenant of his fathers is certain—he can rest in knowing that God’s faithfulness to his family will continue after his death. He has not been a failure; his abdication and his sin and his failure as a father have not ruined the purposes of God—God’s promises were not kept by Jacob: Jacob is being kept by God’s promises!

God renews His presence with Jacob, He renews his purpose for Jacob, and as we look toward the end of the chapter we see that

III. God renews His PROVISION for Jacob (Gen. 46:28-34)

In the following verses we read that

Genesis 46:5–7 LSB

Then Jacob arose from Beersheba; and the sons of Israel carried their father Jacob and their little ones and their wives in the wagons which Pharaoh had sent to carry him. And they took their livestock and their possessions, which they had accumulated in the land of Canaan, and they came to Egypt, Jacob and all his seed with him: his sons and his grandsons with him, his daughters and his granddaughters, and all his seed he brought with him to Egypt.

In Verses 8-27 we are given a complete roster of every individual who went down to Egypt with Israel—his sons and their wives, his grandchildren—seventy people in all. And when they returned four hundred years later, they would number in the hundreds of thousands because of the way that God was going to provide for them in Egypt.

God’s first provision in Verses 28-29 isn’t for the prosperity of Israel the nation though; it is for Israel the man—

He provides a REUNION with Joseph (v2. 28-30)

Genesis 46:28–30 LSB

Now he sent Judah before him to Joseph, to point out the way before him to Goshen; and they came into the land of Goshen. And Joseph harnessed his chariot and went up to Goshen to meet his father Israel; as soon as he appeared before him, he fell on his neck and wept on his neck a long time. Then Israel said to Joseph, “Now I can die, since I have seen your face, that you are still alive.”

Once again—see the kindness of God to this old scoundrel. God certainly could have carried out His rescue of Abraham’s seed from the famine and their transformation into a mighty nation without Jacob ever meeting Joseph! It would not have set YHWH’s plans back one bit—and yet out of His sheer kindness and unmerited grace to Jacob that he lets him have the desire of his heart here as he is coming to the end of his days. Verse 29 says that Israel “wept on Joseph’s neck a long time”—all of those years apart, convinced that he was dead but never having any closure or any healing for that heartbreak. God’s gracious provision of that reunion with his long lost son is a sign of the greater healing and reconciliation that is taking place in the whole family.

In His faithfulness God provided a reunion with Joseph, and in the closing verses of the chapter

He provides PROTECTION for Israel (vv. 31-34)

Genesis 46:31–34 LSB

And Joseph said to his brothers and to his father’s household, “I will go up and tell Pharaoh and say to him, ‘My brothers and my father’s household, who were in the land of Canaan, have come to me; and the men are shepherds, for they have been keepers of livestock; and they have brought their flocks and their herds and all that they have.’ “And it will be when Pharaoh calls you and says, ‘What is your occupation?’ then you shall say, ‘Your servants have been keepers of livestock from our youth and until now, both we and our fathers,’ that you may live in the land of Goshen; for every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians.”

This kind of seems like an odd way to end the chapter—if they are so welcome in Goshen, if Pharoah has opened wide all of his considerable wealth, power and hospitality for Joseph’s clan, why does Moses add in the detail that their occupation as shepherds and herdsman is an “abomination” to the Egyptians?? (We saw this earlier, in Chapter 43 when Joseph’s table was set separately from his brothers). What’s going on here?

When you take a few moments to consider the history of Jacob’s family, it becomes pretty clear: What is the one besetting sin that we see in Jacob’s generation and Joseph’s generation—the one thing that Abraham made his servant solemnly swear against in Genesis 24:3-4?

Genesis 24:3–4 LSB

and I will make you swear by Yahweh, the God of heaven and the God of earth, that you shall not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I live, but you will go to my land and to my kin, and take a wife for my son Isaac.”

The greatest danger that the clan of Jacob faced as they moved into Egypt wasn’t dying of starvation in the famine—it was that they would intermarry with the Egyptians and die out as a people. Jacob’s brother Esau broke his parents’ hearts by marrying Canaanite women; Judah went down and married Canaanites and had children through them—it would have been almost inevitable that the clan of Jacob that moved to Goshen would have vanished from the face of the earth within a generation or two—let alone survive four centuries as a distinct people!—except for the fact that they were abominable to the Egyptians! You can’t flirt and fool around and marry a pretty Egyptian girl if the sight of you turns her stomach!

Once again—the clan of Jacob that came down into Egypt didn’t have to spend four centuries doggedly keeping their promise not to marry Egyptians; YHWH kept them in His promises that they would survive as a people and become a mighty nation! God even saw to it that the old family sins of Jacob and his family would not derail His promises! When you are kept by God’s promises, His kind providence even extends to putting our besetting sins out of our reach!

At every turn in this chapter, it is never Jacob who rehabilitated his own character or rekindled his relationship with YHWH or provided for the continuing of the line of Abraham’s seed. Jacob didn’t spend this whole chapter keeping all of his promises to God—God spent this whole chapter keeping His promises to Jacob, and keeping Jacob in His promises!

So what does God’s Word show you about your life this morning? There is a tendency for us to have the attitude that our Christian walk will get easier over time: “I’ll be more mature… when I’m older.” “I’ll be more stable… when I’m older.” “When I get older I will have learned all the faith lessons I need; I will be able to fight sin and pursue holiness and enjoy the fruits of a faithful home and life… Someday when I am older.”

But look at Jacob—well into his second century of life, but he never came to a place in his faith in YHWH where he could just “coast”, where following God was easy or cost him nothing. How easy it is to think that all of the big acts of faith and all of the great sacrifices for God are “a young man’s game”—that at a certain age the senior saints can just sit back and remember all the good old days.

But Jacob’s final days were the days of his greatest trust in YHWH; they were the days in which he did more to preserve the covenant people of YHWH than he had ever done—and it was all because of God’s faithful promises to him! Christian, look at how God used that old man in all his weakness and frailty—of faith and body both—and realize that there is no expiration date on your faith! You may not be as strong or healthy as you were in your younger days, but that doesn’t mean you get to sit on the sidelines. As long as there is breath in our lungs and blood pumping through our veins, we must be ready—as Jesus says in John 9:4

John 9:4 LSB

“We must work the works of Him who sent Me as long as it is day; night is coming when no one can work.

(Baucham, V., Jr. (2013). Joseph and the Gospel of Many Colors: Reading an Old Story in a New Way. Crossway.)

In Genesis 47, Jacob actually has an audience with Pharoah after he settled in Goshen—Pharoah asked how old he was, and Israel answered

Genesis 47:9 LSB

“...The days of the years of my sojourning are 130; few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not attained to the days of the years that my fathers lived during the days of their sojourning.”

He knew that he had wasted his life; he realized that his life and all his great promises and pledges of how YHWH was going to be his God had been crushed and trampled, that he had not measured up to the great heritage of faith that his father and grandfather had.

To you who are young and strong and confident in your walk before God, see what His Word tells you—there are many who begin this race well; there are many who make great promises to God about the solidity of their faith and their unwavering commitment to follow Him anywhere.

But see here that your only hope to finish this race well; your only hope to avoid the heartbreak and disappointment and sorrow of wasting those promises comes as you place all of your trust not in your ability to keep all your promises to God, but that He will keep you by His great and precious promises! Every promise that you make is mortgaged not against your own strength of will or integrity of character, but on His!

Jeremiah 9:23–24 LSB

Thus says Yahweh, “Let not a wise man boast in his wisdom, and let not the mighty man boast in his might; let not a rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am Yahweh who shows lovingkindness, justice, and righteousness on earth; for I delight in these things,” declares Yahweh.

And to you who are broken down and weary, who look back at everything you thought your life would be, everything you promised God you would do in your pursuit of Him, the vows you made to Him for your marriage, the commitment you made before Him for raising your children, the integrity you promised for your vocation and your friendships—the only thing worse than all of those sins of treachery and abdications, and hypocrisies and arrogance and self-righteousness—the only sin worse than all the sins of your past failures is the sin of turning away from God’s free and open offer of repentance and restoration!

When God called Jacob away from Hebron and into Egypt, He called him first to meet with Him at Beersheba. God called Jacob to come back to that spot where He had appeared to him with such glory, where He had solemnly sworn to fulfill all of His covenant promises to Jacob. He knew that Jacob had not kept his promises, but God was determined to keep HIS promises to Jacob!

Genesis 28:15 LSB

“Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go. And I will bring you back to this land; for I will not forsake you until I have done what I have promised you.”

Have you broken your promises to God? Have you responded to His promise to keep you and be with you and bless you through Christ by treating your salvation with contempt? See here in Jacob’s story that whether or not you keep your promises to God, what matters is that He will always keep His promises to you!

And just like Jacob, God has brought you here to Bethel—He has brought you here so that you may meet Him here in His Word, hear His call and answer as Jacob did: “Here I am”. In all your failure, in all your broken promises, in all your wasted years and shattered dreams—laying all of it before Him, confessing all of it to Him and holding nothing back. He offers you a fresh start with Him; He offers you forgiveness and restoration, He offers you His presence, He offers you His provision, He offers you a closer walk with him in your latter days than you ever had before. Not because you have kept all your promises to Him, but because He has kept all His promises to you through His Son—your Savior, Jesus Christ!

BENEDICTION

1 Thessalonians 5:23–24 LSB

Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely, and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is He who calls you, who also will do it… The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

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