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This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

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We are in Genesis chapter 46 and 47 this morning. They are too long to read all of it and too long to preach all of it. So we're going to do a quick survey of it this morning. If you have your Bible, I encourage you to open it to Genesis 46. Be reading portions of it along the way. But we need to sort of set the setting a little bit. We've been working our way through the story of Joseph together at the end of the book of Genesis, and we're nearing the end. Last week, Joseph told his brothers the truth of what they had done, that is, that they had sold him. And he told them the truth about what God had done. That God sent him. And then he told them to hurry home. Hurry home and move everybody, but especially their father, to Egypt. That process of moving now begins in chapter 46. They're all packed up, they're ready to go, they make the trip to Egypt, they get settled in, they talk to Pharaoh, they start laboring there in Egypt. Five more years of famine occur. And then Jacob dies. That all happens. It's about seventeen years worth of life in about two chapters. So it's all condensed together. But it all hinges on trusting God's promise. So when you think about trusting God's promise, think about some of the most well-known promises that are given to us in the New Testament. So for example, the Lord Jesus says, I will never leave you nor forsake you. Do you believe that? I hope so. If you do, then you can sing always. It is well with my soul. I will never leave you nor forsake you. Do we live out that the faith and that promise? Hopefully. Most of the time? I don't know that we can say we do that all of the time. Jesus said, I will leave you another comforter, speaking of the Holy Spirit, who will come to be with us, guide us into all truth. Do we rest in that promise? And so don't stress out about what comes. That's the sense of Genesis 46 and 47. Because God gives a promise, and we see his people in Genesis 46 and 47 trusting that promise. So it begins with going down to Egypt. Genesis has a history of going down to Egypt. Abraham went there during a famine, a different famine. And you know this story, I'm sure. He ended up telling a half-truth about his wife, that she was his sister, which was a half-truth, his sister by another mother. Years later, during a different famine, Isaac started south, and God stepped in and stopped him. God told Isaac, do not go down to Egypt. That's Genesis 26. So, in effect, God had closed the border to Egypt for Jacob's father. Now in Genesis 46, Jacob is 130 years old. His son Joseph is alive. Pharaoh's wagons are loaded, and Jacob is in one of them. And he he travels south as far as the community of Beersheba, where he stops and builds an altar to worship. And it's interesting here that Moses doesn't tell us in his recounting, he doesn't tell us what Jacob was feeling. Instead, he tells us what he did. Jacob stopped near the border of Canaan and worshiped. And God responded. God responded and he said, Do not be afraid. That sentence, that single sentence, opens a window of what is happening beneath the surface. It sort of indicates that part of Jacob is uncertain. Maybe a little bit nervous. Perhaps even afraid of going to Egypt. But God makes promises that Jacob can trust. And he's experienced this reality before when God has spoken to him. God spoke to him at Bethel. You remember that night, right? Where he put his, he slept with a stone pillow. And maybe because his head was all hurting from that stone, he had a dream that night of a staircase between heaven and earth. Once again, in dreams of the night, Jacob is reminded that when God makes promises to his people, he goes with them to fulfill those promises. This is a reality that's been true all of Jacob's life, and we see this especially in three different phases of Genesis 46 and 47. So if you have your Bible open, let's read the first three verses to kind of get the lay of the land here. Genesis 46, verse 1, it says, So Israel took his journey with all that he had, and he came to Beersheba, and he offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac. And God spoke to Israel in visions of the night and said, Jacob, Jacob. And he said, Here I am. And he said, I am God, the God of your father. Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for there I will make you into a great nation. Remember, there's seventy people right now. Seventy people anticipating becoming a great nation. I myself will go down with you to Egypt, and I will also bring you up again, and Joseph's hand shall close your eyes. Then Jacob set out from Beersheba. The sons of Israel carried Jacob, their father, their little ones, and their wives in the wagons that Pharaoh had sent to carry him. They also took their livestock and their goods, which they had gained in the land of Canaan, and they came into Egypt, Jacob and all his offspring with him, his sons and his sons' sons with him, his daughters and his sons' daughters, all his offspring he brought with him into Egypt. Now, what stands out the most from this introduction to chapters 46 and 47 is the very first part of the statement that you see in front of you on the screen. God goes with his people to fulfill his promises. Jacob packs up all of his possessions. Now, some of you have moved, changed physical locations after staying in one place for 10, 20, 30 years. You know what it's like to pack up all of your household, right? Jacob's 130. And he's got lots of family. This is not a small move. This is likely going to be quite substantial. He heads south and he stops to offer sacrifices. Beersheba is at the southern end of the promised land, the land of Canaan, on the edge of the desert. And it's a place with lots of memories for Jacob's family. It starts way back in Genesis 21, where Abraham lived there for quite some time. And that's it's there that Scripture tells us that Abraham called on the name of the everlasting God. It's also the place where Isaac built an altar to God the night that God appeared to him in Genesis 26. This has a long history. And now Jacob stops here with his whole family. He offers sacrifices to the God of his father, that same God who told his father, don't go to Egypt. That could hint to us that Jacob wonders whether God would approve of this move. And so we have then a significant statement in verse 2 that God said, Don't be afraid. Jacob. Starts out by saying, Israel took his journey, but when God shows up, it's Jacob. Jacob. We don't know. But it's significant that we're talking about Israel first, and now we go to Jacob. Jacob is often the name used when we refer to Jacob's humanity. Which gives us another indication that there's probably something going on underneath the surface here. There's questioning, there's uncertainty, there's anxiety, maybe there's fear. And God is speaking to the man who is in that place. And scripture sometimes shows God repeating a name when something significant is taking place. So, for example, it happened earlier in Genesis when Abraham was about to sacrifice Isaac. And God interrupted the act and said, Abraham, Abraham. Here God is getting Jacob's attention. And after this night in Beersheba, God's voice is not heard until Moses hears it from a burning bush 400 years later. So God says, I am God. Which one? The God of your father. Don't be afraid to go down into Egypt, for there I will make you into a great nation. Now we already know, right, that God told Abraham that his descendants would be slaves in another country for 400 years. So God isn't implying here that Egypt is going to be safe or that it's going to be comfortable or even enjoyable. He doesn't tell him to expect a short stay. But God does give a promise. He says, There I will make you into a great nation. He says in verse 4, I myself will go down with you. And I will also bring you up. And Joseph's hand shall close your eyes. So the promise God made inside of the promised land is going to be kept outside of the promised land. And he does this in a fabulous way that we can't really see in our English translations. The Hebrew emphasizes God's presence in two ways. First is by repeating a pronoun. He says, I, I myself. God's not sending Jacob to Egypt as if he were sending him off and not going with him. God is emphasizing your going and I'm going with you. Don't forget, I'm going with you. And in the second half of verse 4, Moses uses a unique verb doubling for emphasis. We really can't translate this well into our English language. If we did, it would be something like, and I, God speaking, I myself will bring you up, bringing you up. What? Doesn't really make sense, does it? But it's a Hebrew way of saying, I will absolutely, certainly go with you myself, and I myself will absolutely, certainly bring you up. And so Israel rides wagons into Egypt with God's promise that they, as a people, will one day come up out of Egypt. God promises his presence and a return, and then he promises Joseph's presence at the end of Jacob's life. This is a father who spent 22 years expecting to go to his grave mourning a son. He didn't know that Joseph was alive. And now God tells him that instead of that gloom, Joseph is alive, and he will still be living when Jacob dies. That's enough. That promise, that hope is enough to get Jacob back into the wagon, heading through the desert to Egypt with the entire family. Verses 5, 6, and 7 then tell us that sons, daughters, grandchildren, livestock, everything the family's gained in Canaan, head to Egypt. This won't be a quick trip. If you've ever taken a family vacation with all of your family and your family animals in the vehicle, you know that's not a short trip. And it's not quick. But if you look at that wagon train a little bit differently, you begin to see that it looks like faith in God's promise. Jacob believed God. And he got back into the wagons and he went to Egypt. Those loaded wagons and those flocks and those herds looked like faith. Now I will grant that it doesn't often happen to us the way it happened here. God doesn't often make our futures this clear. He doesn't tell us personally that everything's going to be okay. But there is a similarity between God's work with this family, with Jacob, and his work in us. And that similarity is in his promise to never leave us and to never forsake us. And in his promise that he has gone away to make a place for us, and he will come again to take us home. Wherever God takes us, whatever he takes us into, whatever future is ours to endure, God has promised to go with us. That's where the emphasis of these two chapters falls. Jacob isn't promised how everything will go. Instead, he is assured that whatever happens and however long it takes, his God is with him. He is assured that. This is the same kind of promise given to those who have trusted and followed Jesus. We don't know what life will bring. But we can promise, we can trust in his promise that he's going with us. And there's a second phase of these two chapters that begins in verse 8. And this is where we see that God not only goes with us, but that he also keeps his promise. And in this passage, he's keeping his promise by transforming this small 70 group of people into an entire nation. The story takes us along with the family into Egypt, and then it recounts everyone who came. These are the passages of scripture that we skip over, right? Sometimes they just get, why do I need to read all those names? Other times it's I can't pronounce that, so I'm not even going to try. That's when we make Stephen come up and read that text. But if we skip these texts of names, we miss the significance in them. There are 70 names that identify what becomes 70 groups of people. This one recounts the names of Jacob's 12 sons and his grandchildren. What makes this interesting is not just that these are the people going into Egypt. What makes this interesting is that these are the same groups of people that Moses recounts at the beginning of the book of Exodus, 400 years later. He begins with a shortened version, primarily the heads of household, which means Moses included this list to the people of Israel when they went down into Egypt, and he began the story of their coming up out of Egypt with a similar list to prove God keeps his promise. God kept the family intact in a foreign country for 400 years. So for the people of Israel standing on the shores of the Jordan River about to cross into the promised land 400 years later, this list instills confidence in what God has said. It provides evidence that God can keep his promise, and not only can he keep his promise, he will keep his promises. So verse 26, all the persons belonging to Jacob who came into Egypt, who were his own descendants, not including Jacob's sons, wives, were 66 persons in all, and the sons of Joseph who were born to him in Egypt were two. All the persons of the house of Jacob who came into Egypt were seventy. And now verse 28 shifts us back to the actual trip to Egypt. It says in verse 28 that Jacob sent Judah ahead of them to Joseph. Remember last week I said, I am going to get these J names mixed up. I can't even keep my own J name right, Jason. Jacob, Joseph, Judah. Jacob sends Judah to Joseph. Do you hear the irony in that? Judah is the man who suggested to his other nine brothers that they get rid of Joseph by selling him. So the man who suggested they sell Joseph now serves as his father's emissary to Joseph. That's a subtle indication that God has redeemed Judah and what Judah has done. Friends, never believe that you have done something beyond God's ability to redeem. And when they arrive, Joseph coaches the family, and the coaching sounds a little backward. For lack of a better word. Verse 31, Joseph says, I'm going to go and talk to Pharaoh. I'm going to tell him that you've come. Verse 32, he says, I'm going to tell them that you're shepherds and all this stuff. And when Pharaoh calls you and says, verse 33, what's your occupation? You tell him, we've been keepers of livestock all of our lives. And I want you to tell them that you've been keepers of livestock because keepers of livestock are an abomination to Egyptians. Wait, what? You want us to go and stand in front of Pharaoh and tell him we are abominations to him? Yeah, exactly. It's exactly what Joseph wants. Because he wants to set his family apart. And the plan works. Pharaoh then in chapter 47 hands them this territory called Goshen, which is in the Nile Delta region, a well-watered pasture area that is away from the center of Egyptian society. And that act is God's work to keep Israel separate. And that separation is the means God uses to keep them separate and distinct for 400 years. God still works in those kinds of ways. And it's not always comfortable. He calls his people to be separate, to be separate today from the world, to be distinct people, to live in ways that echo and reveal him. He says this to the people in Corinth, the writer to the healing. Hebrews says this. But friends, that's not always easy. We've pretty much all felt what it's like to feel on the outside, to feel alone. And from the inside of that feeling, it can feel like there's a fence that's around you. And that fence keeps you in and keeps others out, even though you might not want that fence to be there. But this account suggests to us that sometimes that distance is how God keeps his promises. That feeling becomes a reminder then to trust in how God is working in your life. God intended to take his people to a place where they were abominations so that they would distinctly remain separate and apart, so that four centuries later they would be separate and be separated to leave. Joseph eventually brings his father in to see Pharaoh in chapter 47. A hundred and thirty-year-old shepherd stands in front of the most powerful man on earth at the time who can't stand shepherds. Wise move, Joe. Wise move. And it is. But then there's an astonishing reversal. Verse 7 says that Jacob blessed Pharaoh. And then when he leaves Pharaoh's court, he blesses him again a second time. The New Testament book of Hebrews tells us what this means. And it tells us what it means by drawing on the experience of another man and another king. Specifically of Abraham visiting a king named Melchizedek. That happened in Genesis 14. And it says in Hebrews chapter 7, verse 7, that it is beyond dispute that the inferior is blessed by the superior. Who's Pharaoh? Well, we don't know exactly which Pharaoh is Pharaoh, but Pharaoh's Pharaoh. He's the king. He's the one sitting on the golden throne. Who's the abomination? Who's the shepherd? 130-year-old Jacob. Who walks with a limp? But who's doing the blessing? The limping, abominated shepherd. So if Jacob blesses Pharaoh, which man does Moses say is greater? The hundred and thirty-year-old limping shepherd. Because the superior blesses the inferior. Is Pharaoh the god of Egypt of the superior? No. It's Jacob, whose God is the everlasting God. It's the lowly, despised shepherd with no place to lay his head. Who is blessing the king of Egypt? Pharaoh asks his age, and Jacob says, few and evil have been the year, the days of the years of my life. The older you get, the more you understand that, I think. The younger we are, we count our our lives in years. The older you get, we count our lives in days. I've had lots of years, and there's been lots of days in those years. Few and bad. Ugly, hard, evil, difficult have been the days of the years of my life. I think Jacob's honestly reflecting on his life because he's been a rascal and he's lived a rascal's life. He's been on the run. He's been cheated and cheated others. He has wrestled with God in the night and now walks as a limp because of it. Yet he knows that God has been with him all the days of his life. He's honestly recounting what his life has been like. Then in verse 12, we see the description of Joseph keeping his word to his family. Joseph provides for his father and his brothers, and it says, according to the number of their dependents. I don't know what all the translations say. I didn't look at all of them. The Hebrew here is literally, he fed them according to the number of the mouths of the little ones. Joseph provided for everyone down to the smallest children in the family. That's an indicator that he's taking into consideration every individual in the family, and Joseph takes care of all of them. Now that detail stands out to us because of the shift that takes place in verse 13. Because in verse 13, almost everyone else in Egypt has to pay for their food. First, they pay with their livestock. They don't have money. That's all gone because they brought money the first time around when they needed grain from Joseph. So the next time they bring their livestock. Then when they need food again, they bring their deeds for their property, their land. They give that to Joseph. And then they come the last time in verse 18 and they say, There's nothing left, and you can see there's nothing left except for our bodies and our land. So take it all. We're your slaves now. So Joseph is providing for all of his family while everybody else has to give things up. While the family's over here in Goshen taken care of, the rest of Egypt is selling themselves to Pharaoh. Two different paths have unfolded in Egypt. First, God took care of his people in the midst of famine, and at the same time, Pharaoh becomes the ultimate sovereign over all of Egypt. Then in verse 27 of chapter 47, we read a report. It says, and they, Israel, was fruitful and multiplied greatly. Now, whatever you think about that statement, it's not a census report. It's not telling us they came in with 70 and now they've got 140. That's not what's going on there. Be fruitful and multiply is the first command given to human beings in the book of Genesis. That command was given to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. It was repeated to Noah and his family after the flood when the world started over. And now Moses shows us God's people fulfilling that command while they're in Egypt. But Moses does something else with that phrase. He shows us how it went from a positive blessing of God's presence among the people and the fulfillment of his promise to make them into a great nation. He shows us how it turned from positive to negative. Because if you turn over just a few pages to Exodus chapter 1, I didn't put this on the screen because I want you to see this in print. Exodus chapter 1, the phrase is repeated almost identically. Exodus 1, the people of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly. They multiplied and grew exceedingly strong so that the land was filled with them. There's the fulfillment of God's promise. He went with them to keep his promise and to turn them from what they were into something much, much greater. But then we read in verse 8 of Exodus 1. Now there was a new king over Egypt who did not know Joseph. And he said to his people, Behold, the people of Israel are too mighty for us. What God used to make them into a people, as obeying his command, now becomes something that the pagans of the world look at and say, Hey, we got a problem with that. They feel intimidated by it and so feel a need to push back. So God kept his blessing through his presence and through his promise. And God's promise to Jacob at Beersheba gets fulfilled over the next 400 years in Egypt as they became numerous. But we can't forget, as we read these first pages in Genesis of this story in Egypt, we can't forget that most of those 400 years were lived in slavery. That means, friends, that the season of life that you would most like to skip, the season of hardship, of pain, of sorrow, of agony, the season of life that you would most like to skip may be the one where God shapes you into something that you could not have been made into anywhere else. God used that land of Goshen, separate, distinct, to make his people into the group he wanted them to be. There are times, friends, when you don't want to endure what God has laid in front of you. But it may be the very place where God is keeping his promise to you. Israel may never have become the nation that they became back in the hill country of Canaan. But God used Egypt to keep them separate and distinct until the proper time, all while making them increase in number. Maybe in our difficult seasons of life, we should work not to demand answers from God as to why it's so hard, but to start trusting that he's with us even there. And to start asking and considering what he's doing in us because he's with us and because he keeps his promises. Quickly, there's a third phase that we find in these two chapters. It begins in chapter 47, verse 27. God goes with his people into difficult places, but he doesn't leave them there. Thus Israel settled in the land of Egypt, in the land of Goshen, and they gained possessions in it, and they were fruitful and multiplied greatly. And Jacob lived there seventeen years. So the days of Jacob, the years of his life, were a hundred and forty-seven years. And when the time drew near that Israel must die, he called his son Joseph and said, If I have now found favor in your sight, place your hand under my thigh and promise to deal kindly and truly with me. How do you do that? Do not bury me in Egypt. But let me lie with my fathers, carry me out of Egypt, and bury me in their burying place. Joseph said, I'll do that. And he swore to him, and then Israel bowed himself upon the head of his bed. On the surface, we hear, we hear blessing in this report from Moses. We sense the result of God's presence and provision. They've grown, they've multiplied. There were five years of famine left when they moved there. They've gone through the five years of famine. And they've been there an additional twelve years. But on closer read, we find hints of what's coming. We see that first in the word settled in verse 27. That's a change in this chapter. Because in verse 4, when Joseph took his brothers before Pharaoh, they asked for the right to sojourn. What does that mean? What means to live there for a time? Anticipating going home. But now they are settling. And so far in Genesis, the word possession in verse 27 is kind of a technical term for what God had promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the land of Canaan. God told Abraham in Genesis 17 that all the land of Canaan, wherever he walked, would be his for an everlasting possession. But now they're gaining possessions in Egypt. In Egypt. God provided for his people in the rich land of Goshen, but Goshen wasn't the possession. And Jacob knew it. When the time comes for Israel to die, he calls Joseph and says, do not bury me here. Whatever you do, don't build a pyramid for me. Take me home. I don't know if you remember. But Jacob was 17 years old when his brothers sold him into slavery. Jacob has now had 17 years at the end of his life with his son Joseph again. God restored what was taken. Yet Jacob knows that Egypt isn't home. It's not what God gave him. Jacob insists on going home, even if it's to be buried. Home is nowhere else but home, Canaan, the place of God's promise, and God has been with him through it all, and God will fulfill his promise and take him home. So the chapter begins in chapter 46 with Jacob worshiping God in Beersheba, and it seems to end with this bowing at his bed, with worshiping in Egypt, orienting his heart towards God's word, towards God's promise, knowing that he will not see the land of God's promise again, but he believes that God will keep his promise. And that ends the chapter. But 400 years later, God speaks again out of a burning bush to a man in the desert. The same God who spoke to Jacob in Genesis 46 says to that man, Moses, I've come down to deliver my people. God wasn't done with Israel when Jacob worshiped at the end of chapter 47. God wasn't done with them when Jacob died and was buried back in Canaan. He comes down to direct Moses to take the steps God would use to bring them home. And Jacob was promised that Joseph's hand would close his eyes. And he did. It's an incredible promise that God gave to Jacob and God kept. And that Jacob trusted. But friends, I would suggest to you that we've been promised more. We've been promised more. Christ came down from heaven to begin the work to take us home. He went down to the grave ahead of us. And he came up again, guaranteeing that we will come up as well. And the promise to bring up people from Egypt is similar to Jesus' promise to always be with us and to one day return to take us to our true home. That's why a Christian can hold things loosely in this world, our Goshen, even in unpleasant times of life, because this is not our true country. Jacob's insistence to be buried outside of Egypt and inside of Canaan is an act of trust in God's promise. Hebrews proves this to us. Hebrews tells us of Jacob and others like him, they desired a better country. That is ultimately a heavenly one. So if you have placed your trust in Jesus and you follow him, the New Testament calls you an exile, a sojourner, a temporary citizen, just like Jacob and Joseph and all of his brothers. No matter how long you've lived here, your address is temporary. So hear what God said to Jacob at Beersheba, but hear it now, spoken through the voice of Jesus. Don't be afraid. And I will bring you up again. And he has promised not to leave us, but to take us to our true home at the right time. Will you trust in his promise? No matter where he takes you. Let's pray together. Lord Jesus, thank you for your promises to us. Thank you that you are worthy of all of our trust, for you are the great and everlasting God. Thank you that you display through the scriptures that you are worthy of our trust, both now and forever. Amen.

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That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church. Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus. You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.