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Never too old to grow!
Sermon 16
February 28, 2010
When Bill Clinton was appointed Attorney General of Arkansas, he was just thirty years old. He was elected governor of Arkansas two years later, easily becoming the youngest person in the nation to hold that position. He was a youthful forty-four when he was elected President of the United States and still holds the distinction of being the youngest person ever to leave the office of President. In other words, the vast majority of Bill Clinton's life and accomplishments were characterized by youth. But in August of 2006, while enduring a 60th birthday celebration, a melancholy Bill Clinton reluctantly admitted that life had changed. No longer the youthful saxophonist wailing away on MTV, the white-haired former-President said: "For most of my working life, I was the youngest person doing what I was doing. Then one day I woke up, and I was the oldest person in every room. In just a few days, I will be 60 years old. I hate it, but it's true."
Though there are exceptions, the cantankerous senior citizen is too often the norm. Spend much time around most senior citizens and you’ll hear how good it used to be, how bad it is now, how their kids behaved, how tough they had it, how many aches and pains they have, how nothing is good enough, etc, etc, etc. Many times they seem very sweet yet as you spend more time with them; too often you discover that it’s a facade for a bitter, sour old man or woman.
What a joy and yet how unfortunately unusual it is to be around a growing graying gracious senior saint! Jacob has finally become that. That’s why throughout our passage today he’s not referred to as Jacob (which means deceiver) but as Israel (which means Prince with God). For most of his life Jacob has been a negative, critical, doubting, manipulative mean man. Remember when he first came to Egypt, just seventeen years earlier, and had described his life in the most negative terms, “The years of my pilgrimage are a hundred and thirty. My years have been few and difficult” (47:9). That was Jacob’s sour outlook as he stood before Pharaoh. Now, though, standing in the proverbial graveyard of his ancestors and facing imminent death, Jacob’s testimony is one of deep faith and joyful gratitude for God’s faithfulness and care through all the days of his life.
Typically, the older we get, the more rigid, the more inflexible and the more stuck in our ways. We’re poor testimonies for the cause of Christ and often don’t even know it. Do you want to know why? It’s the same truth that we tell teenagers, “birds of a feather flock together.” Our circle of friends is just as grumpy and gossipy and critical and cantankerous as we are. Change only occurs if we by God’s grace volitionally choose to change, or if God brings something traumatic in our life that either encourages or necessitates it.
Isn’t that true physically? Most of us only make lifestyle changes after we’ve faced a health crisis. I believe that for Jacob it was a combination of the two. He had a traumatic experience that was a wake-up call for him. He discovered that his son Joseph that he thought was dead, was alive and the Ruler of Egypt. All of his life Jacob thought that God had been giving him the short straw, and now he sees that God was working and providing for him behind the scenes all along. And when Jacob saw God’s grace and God’s love, like it was the first time, I believe that he chose to change.
What happens here is greater than Dicken’s tale of sour old Ebenezer Scrooge. This isn’t just a wonderful story, it’s Biblical history. Jacob finally chooses to stop being a Scrooge. He powerfully demonstrates that we’re Never too old to grow! Many of us need to make that same choice. The cost of not choosing to change is far too high, yet the rewards of choosing to grow are out of this world!
We do not need to be at death’s door to finally see life from God’s perspective as Jacob does here. It would be so much better to grasp the reasons for his changed outlook and apply them to our lives now rather than wait until we are at nearing the end of our lives. This morning then let us look very carefully at the final events of Jacob’s life as recorded by Moses in Genesis 47 and 48. If you’re taking notes…
1. Repentance and growth always brings addition, Genesis 47:27-31. If you were sharing with someone who wasn’t familiar with the Bible, and particularly Jacob and you shared just one noteworthy incident from Jacob’s life, what would you share? Would it be when he was born and grabbed Esau’s heel as he exited the womb? Would it be when he bartered with Esau for his birthright? Maybe when he deceived his father, Isaac, and stole Esau’s blessing? Would it be his dream with the angels ascending and descending from Heaven? What about when he worked seven years to marry Rachel and his father in-law, Laban, pulled the old switcharoo on him, giving him her older sister, Leah, instead? Or, maybe when he wrestled all night with the Angel of the Lord and had his name changed to Israel? Maybe, just maybe when he foolishly showed favoritism to Joseph and gave him the coat of many colors?
Want to know what God thought was noteworthy about Jacob’s life? This scene from Genesis 47:27-31. In the great Hall of Faith in Hebrews 11, verse 21 records for us “By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of Joseph’s sons, and worshiped as he leaned on the top of his staff.” Because so much of Jacob’s life was lived as a manipulator and schemer, much of it was what the Apostle Paul refers to as “wood, hay or straw” in 1 Corinthians 3:12.
Though Jacob lost Joseph when Joseph was seventeen, God gives him another wonderful seventeen years with Joseph. An often overlooked, yet wonderful Biblical blessing are the restorations and additions that come with repentance. One of my favorite verses is found in the tiny book of a minor prophet named Joel, 2:25 (p. 646), “I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten—the great locust and the young locust, the other locusts and the locust swarm—my great army that I sent among you.” What does that mean? When there is repentance and a turning back to God, God often brings restoration for the losses that were the result of past sin.
In our twilight years we often succumb to selfishness, pessimism and fatalism. Jacob had all three of those terrible maladies, yet he in the last lap of his life he matured more spiritually than he had in the entire one hundred and thirty previous years. How accurate are words of Alexander Whyte, “There was no Old Testament saint of them all who, first and last, saw more of the favour and forgiveness of God than Jacob.”
Jacob shouts this wonderful truth to us: “Keep growing spiritually! You can still change! While there is life, there’s hope!” Aeschylus, the Greek philosopher said, “It is always in season for old men to learn.” Prior to this Jacob had been doubtful and skeptical, trusting no one. Probably because he himself had been so deceptive and manipulative, he expected others to do the same to him. Now in his twilight years, he starts trusting.
a) He trusts his son. Previously, he’d spy on his sons, now he trusts Joseph with this important task of burying him in Canaan. Most of us don’t trust easily and people will fail us. We must learn though to trust those who have evidenced trustworthiness. A sure way to handicap your children, particularly during those formative years, is to fail to give them responsibility. It’s usually easier in the short term to do things yourself, yet to fail to trust your child and give them responsibility will inhibit them from reaching their full potential and becoming healthy adults.
b) He trusts God’s Word. Jacob’s request that he be buried in the land of Canaan demonstrates that though all of the evidence at the time was contrary, he still believed God would give his family and seed the land. Jacob’s final seventeen years were the best years of his life. His children have been restored to him. His extended family prospered. It would have been easy for him to think, “Egypt isn’t such a bad place. We’ve had a good life here. God has taken care of us. Let’s just settle in for the long haul.” Instead, as he came near to death, he calls Joseph, making him swear that he’d bury him in Canaan, not Egypt. He wanted his posterity to remember that God’s promise involved Canaan. He didn’t want them to settle indefinitely in Egypt.
This is an incredible step of faith on Jacob’s part. It’s been over 200 years since God promised Canaan to Abraham. Here his grandson, Jacob, is dying in Egypt with no tangible indication that God’s promise about Canaan would be fulfilled. It would have been so easy for him, especially in light of the hard times he’d experienced in Canaan and the good times he’d enjoyed in Egypt, to have set God’s promise for Canaan on the shelf. Yet, in spite of his prosperity in Egypt, Jacob kept his priorities straight. When Joseph agreed to Jacob’s request, the old patriarch bowed in worship. The author of Hebrews quotes this incident to make the point that Jacob did it by faith. He believes God will fulfill His promises concerning Canaan even though it would not belong to Jacob’s posterity for over four hundred more years. That faith led him to worship God.
The good life in Egypt can never compare to the blessings of God in the Promised Land, yet we all face the danger of becoming enamored with the goodies of Egypt, forgetting that we’re to be looking for that heavenly city to come. While God may graciously prosper us in this world, we must remember that our purpose for being here is not to accumulate the things “Egypt” has to offer. We’re here to further God’s purpose, to communicate the good news of Christ to every tribe, tongue and nation. As Jesus pointed out, the person who, by faith, lays up treasure in heaven is truly prosperous. That believer has something that this world cannot give or take away.
In James Dobson’s book Straight Talk to Men and Their Wives, Dr. Dobson tells about the epitaph he placed on his father’s tombstone. On that “footstone,” as he calls it, he had two simple but powerful words engraved, “He prayed.” On Jacob’s tombstone, Joseph could have placed the words: “He worshipped.” Years earlier, of course, “He deceived” might have been more apropos. But Jacob in his sunset years – grows! In these latter years of his life he jumps light years forward in his relationship with God. At the end of his life, one of his final acts was to worship the God he had both wrestled with and served. And one of his last acts is to urge Joseph to remember that Canaan – not Egypt – was the Promised Land, so he makes his son promise to make his final resting place there too.
2. The most important gift that we can leave our children is a godly inheritance. What are you going to leave your children and grandchildren? If Jacob had not repented, the only thing that he would have left would have just been “stuff.” Too many Christian parents are overly concerned about leaving money, land, education, being well-situated in life but all of those things are temporal and pass away. Jacob leaves a spiritual inheritance. His dialogue with Joseph begins and ends with God. Vs. 3 “Jacob said to Joseph, ‘God Almighty appeared to me’” and verse 21 “God will be with you.”
a) We share a godly heritage by having spiritual concern for both our children and also our grandchildren. Jacob adopts these two grandsons as his own sons and imparts his blessing to them. With Jacob, as well as with his father, Isaac, before him, the blessing was reserved for a special occasion. It was more than just a father's prayer for the well-being of his child. It was the actual imparting of well-being, based on special divine prophetic insight about the spiritual future of that son. Once given, it was irrevocable. That's why Esau was so upset when Jacob deceived their father into giving him the blessing.
Verse 15 says Jacob blessed Joseph, yet as we read the passage, we discover that Jacob blessed Joseph by blessing Joseph's sons. Parents are truly blessed when their parents take a concern for the spiritual well-being of the grandchildren. Since God's purpose spans the generations, our goal should be to raise up godly generations, not only through our children, but also through their children. Grandparents who love the Lord are a great gift to a child. Sometimes they can impart spiritual truth to our kids in a way that we can't, and they reinforce the spiritual values we're trying to impart.
Frank Cooper, a grandfather, shares a story that powerfully illustrates this. He writes: “When three of my grandchildren acquired a half-grown mongrel I agreed to help them build a dog house. As we began the project, I knew that keeping them involved was going to be a challenge. Much of my energy was spent calling them back to the job and finding parts of the project that could be handled by small children. I held to my initial determination that building this dog house was to be a group project. Early in the project I had promised the grandkids that we would roast wieners in the back yard as soon as we finished painting the canine residence. Selecting three of the largest house-painting brushes I could find, I supervised the painting of our homemade structure. Kids and paint. How could I have forgotten the potential mayhem that such a combination can create? After cleaning up the paint mess - kids, brushes, carport - I suggested that we would probably eat earlier if we just asked Gramma to heat the wieners in water on the gas range. A pain of guilt came over me as I realized I was trying to weasel out of an earlier promise. As Jamie, Jeffrey and Kimberley looked on, I built a first-class fire in our back yard pit, whittled some roasting sticks, and prepared for the outdoor cooking event. When we finished eating I leaned back on the cool grass and watched the last flickering remnants of our fire. Six-year-old Jeffrey was leaning back against my chest, and I began to think about what it meant to be a Grampa. The silence was broken when Jeffrey quietly reflected, "Know what Grampa?" And without breaking his gaze at the dying embers he continued, "This is the best day of my whole life." After a few moments of continued silence he glanced up and said, "Are you crying, Grampa? You’ve got a tear on your cheek." Clearing my throat I explained that it must be from the smoke.’” No wonder Lexie Saige said, “Sometimes our grandmas and grandpas are like grand-angels.” Or as someone else wisely observed, “A grandfather is someone with silver in his hair and gold in his heart.”
All Christians should be concerned for the spiritual well-being of their children and grandchildren, but they don't always communicate their concern properly. I've observed two opposite extremes. Some Christian parents err on the side of laying down rigid rules and correcting the slightest violation with severity. They lack grace, kindness, and patience.
Others go to the other extreme, letting their kids run wild, afraid that if they correct them they may damage their fragile self-esteem. They fail to impart any notion of God's standards for behavior or of consequences for disobedience. We must teach God's standards, but we must do it with tenderness and affection. People of any age, but especially children, learn best when they feel loved and when they hear kind and encouraging words.
That’s what Jacob does. He makes certain that these two grandsons know they’re loved. Friend, please take a deep spiritual concern, not only for your children, but also for your grandchildren, and wrap it in a love that they can feel.
b) We share a godly heritage by recounting to our children and grandchildren our own experiences with God. This demands, of course, that we are walking with God. Jacob went through his ups and downs, but through it all, he’d walked with God. When Joseph came to see him on his death bed, Jacob recalled how God had appeared to him at Luz (Bethel), and the promises God had made to him there.
Wonderfully, Jacob avoids two destructive errors that many entering the twilight years make. Either they think that they’re responsible for their own blessings and are always bragging about them, or they feel sorry for themselves for the problems that they’ve endured and are bitter at those people and events who they feel have wronged them.
When Jacob sees Joseph's two sons, he expresses his gratitude that God had allowed him to see not only Joseph, but also his children. Then, in blessing his grandsons, Jacob recounts God's faithfulness and goodness again. Even in his unexpected crossing of his hands, so that the blessing of the firstborn went to Ephraim instead of Manasseh, Jacob was recounting his own experience of God's grace. As Jacob nears the end, he begins to remember three particularly important events in his own walk with God that he’d experienced during his many years. These three events are the same spiritual truths each of us needs to share about our own experience with God that we need to impart to our children and grandchildren.
* Share with them God’s continued faithfulness to you. Jacob uses a powerful analogy of his relationship with God, “the God who has been my shepherd all my life to this day” (vs. 15). Jacob, having been a shepherd himself, fully understood the wonderful tender care God had poured out on him. God had been faithful in feeding, guiding and protecting him. God had been patient with him. Sure there had been tough times, there had been pain, there had been deep waters – much of it though he’d caused himself just like wandering sheep. Through it all though, God had been faithful.
* Share with them God’s great plan of salvation. Jacob continues with, “the Angel who has delivered me from all harm” (vs. 16). The NASV better translates it, “The angel who has redeemed me from all evil.” He’s remembering his experience when an Angel told him to leave his father in-law, Laban, and head home and then when the angel wrestled with him at Peniel just prior to his feared reunion with Esau. He here equates this angel with God. What we have here is what theologians call a Christophany, a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus in the Old Testament.
“Redeemed” is a special Hebrew word used for a near relative who had the means to help a poor relative out of bondage. If the poor relative had to sell part of his property or even sell himself into slavery in order to survive, the redeemer could buy back that relative's property or the relative himself, thus restoring his freedom. Take some time today and read the book of Ruth, and you’ll see a wonderful example of this “kinsman-redeemer.”
This, though, is a beautiful picture of what God did for us in Christ. You and I were enslaved to sin with no way to free ourselves. The price was more than we could ever afford. But God sent our Kinsman-Redeemer, the Lord Jesus, who loved us and paid the price with His own blood. It's a story you need to tell your children and grandchildren over and over again. They need to know that you once were lost in sin; that you were on your way to a Christless eternity, but that Christ has saved you. And they need to know that they need Christ as their Redeemer too.
* Share with them God’s amazing grace. In one Dennis the Menace cartoon there’s a vivid picture of grace. Dennis was shown walking away from the Wilson’s house with his friend Joey. Both boys have their hands full of cookies. Joey then asks, “I wonder what we did to deserve this?” Dennis delivered an answer packed with truth. He said, “Look Joey, Mrs. Wilson gives us cookies not because we’re nice, but because she’s nice.” My name could easily be replaced for Dennis, and God could be substituted for Mrs. Wilson. The good that comes my way is not because I’m good but because God is so good and demonstrates grace to us.
We see grace in Jacob’s blessing of his grandsons. Jacob deliberately crossed his hands, so that his right hand rests upon Ephraim, the youngest, instead of upon Manasseh, the oldest, as Joseph had planned. When Joseph tried to correct his father, the old man said, "I know, my son, I know."
Why did Jacob do that? Because God had revealed to Jacob that Ephraim would take prominence over Manasseh among the tribes of Israel. This didn't happen for hundreds of years. Even in Moses' day, Manasseh outnumbered Ephraim by more than 20,000 (Num. 26:34, 37). Moses shows his faith by recording this prophecy which still wasn't yet fulfilled in his day. But finally Ephraim did grow larger and more prominent than Manasseh, fulfilling Jacob's prophecy.
Please understand, there was no human reason that Jacob blessed Ephraim above his older brother. But in so doing, Jacob was illustrating a divine principle which he’d learned – that God blesses us apart from any merit on our part. The world would have picked the skillful archer, Ishmael; God picked quiet Isaac. The world would have picked the rugged outdoorsman, Esau; God picked conniving Jacob. The world would have picked the older, Manasseh; God picked the younger, Ephraim.
Why doesn't God operate on the merit system? Why doesn't He choose the most gifted, intelligent, upright, promising people for His church? Paul tells us that He does it to shame the wisdom of this world, so that no one can boast before God (1 Cor. 1:26-31).
Manasseh could have grumbled, "It's not fair that my younger brother gets first place ahead of me." But if he’d said that, he’d have missed God's grace. Grace doesn't operate on the basis of human merit. It operates on the basis of God's sovereign choice. The clay has no right to question the potter, “Why have you made me like this?" (Rom. 9:20). If God gave any of us what we deserve, we’d all go straight to hell. We must learn to humble ourselves before our Sovereign God and gratefully receive His grace, rather than grumble about why someone else seems to get better treatment than we do.
It’s vital that we impart a godly heritage to our children and grandchildren by having spiritual concern for them and recounting to them our own experiences with God: His faithfulness, His plan of salvation and His amazing grace.
c) We share a godly heritage by passing on to our children and grandchildren our hopes for their future in the Lord. Imagine for a moment that an elderly man immigrates from Haiti. He left that poverty stricken nation with barely the shirt on his back. He comes to America, the land of opportunity, but right before he dies – his grandchildren come to see him as he’s on his deathbed – and he tells them that his great desire for them is not to go to Harvard or Yale, not to be some business tycoon, not to have food and houses and plenty BUT to return to Haiti to live in his old dilapidated home in his old neighborhood. Verse 21-22, “Then Israel said to Joseph, ‘I am about to die, but God will be with you and take you back to the land of your fathers. And to you, as one who is over your brothers, I give the ridge of land I took from the Amorites with my sword and my bow.’”
Picture this for a moment. If you were a refugee shepherd and had two grandsons who’d been raised in the palace in the most advanced nation on earth, what kind of future would you hope for those boys? Wouldn’t it be very natural for Jacob to wish for them all the riches and privileges that the court of Egypt offered? They had all the comforts of wealth and opportunities for power and prestige.
I wonder if their mother, from a blue blood family in Egypt, would have been horrified to think of her sons being identified with these despised shepherds of Israel rather than with the high political circles of Egypt. "You're throwing away your career in Egypt for what?!!" But by faith Jacob pictured for these grandsons a future in which they were identified with the covenant people of God.
Jacob believed God for the fulfillment of things not yet seen. Then, Jacob by faith paints a picture of Joseph's future in the Lord by giving him an inheritance back in the Promised Land. It would have been very easy to say, "Son, I'm proud of your success in Egypt. You're a chip off the old block" and leave it at that. But Jacob helped Joseph to see what God wanted for his future, namely, to return to the Promised Land.
Jacob pictures a great future in the Lord for his children and grandchildren, a future that involved the fulfillment of God's promises. As God's people in our day, we need to picture for our children the great purpose of completing the task of world evangelization before the Lord's coming. We do not truly bless our children if we encourage them to seek after worldly success instead of success with God. By our example, through stories we read to them, through the values we live and teach, we need to give our children a vision for the coming eternal kingdom that God has promised for those who love Him.
Let me balance that out by saying that we need to be careful not to determine that our children must follow in a certain career path to please us. Joseph had an agenda for his sons in which Manasseh received the blessing of the firstborn. God's plan was different and Joseph had to bow before that plan. We need to encourage our kids to follow the Lord with all their heart, yet realize at the same time that the Lord may not want them to be what we want them to be. Our greatest hope for them must be that they will always live close to Jesus Christ and that they will have a heart for God! With those kind of encouraging words, written and spoken over and over, we paint for our children and grandchildren our hope for their future in the Lord. The most important heritage we can hand down to our children and grandchildren is faith in the promises of God. Friend, I encourage you to put aside everything that would hinder you and to work at giving your children that kind of godly heritage.
Conclusion: Jacob is tying up the loose ends of his life as he prepares to meet his God. Many of us will be in his position some day, perhaps sooner than we think. Some of us will have long lives, some will die unexpectedly. Probably, most of us will go Home to be with the Father only partially prepared. Oh, our last wills and testaments will be in order. Directions for the disposal of our property will be given. Guardians for our children will be named, but we still might just be leaving a whole lot of unfinished business behind anyway.
Paul Powell refers to this in his book, When the Hurt Won’t Go Away. Reflecting upon the inevitability of his own death, he writes: “Each time I think about my own death, I ask myself three kinds of questions to help me do that: * ‘Am I right in my relationship with God?’ * ‘Am I right in my relationship with my family, my friends, with my co-workers? Are there any relationships I need to reconcile? Are there words I need to say?’ * ‘Am I investing myself in things that will last for eternity?’” And then he says, “The more I look to the life to come, the more nobly it makes me want to live the life I now have.”
All of us need to answer those same questions like Jacob, before the Lord takes us Home: Are we going to wrap up the loose ends, speak to those we need to speak with, reconcile ourselves with our relatives, rebuild bridges, patch up quarrels, make apologies as necessary…and most important, call upon the God we know that we need as Savior? Or, are we going to wait until it’s too late?
Many people die unexpectedly. I’ve preached my share of funerals for those who sadly left behind a truckload of unresolved issues. A funeral offers cold comfort to the family and friends of a person who waited too long. Don’t let it be you! Jacob fixed things with his family. He was ready to meet His God. Have you fixed things with your family? And most importantly – Are you ready to meet God?
Jacob the sour dies as a sweet man of God. He chose to change. I doubt that his grandchildren remembered the mean man he’d been. They only remembered the saint that he grew into during those last twenty years.
So how will you be remembered? Do you need to choose to change? Will you be remembered as a sour senior or a sweet saint? That my friend is up to you!
