Genesis 186 – Prophecy and Inheritance

Genesis 186

Genesis 48:21-22

Prophecy and Inheritance

December 29, 2024

Dr. Andy Woods

Let’s take our Bibles this morning and open them to Genesis 48:21-22.  Hopefully we’ll be able to finish Genesis 48 this morning.  The title of our message this morning is “Prophecy and Inheritance.”  If you’ve been tracking with us in our verse-by-verse teaching through Genesis, we are in that section where Joseph is the main character.  We’re towards the end of that section where Jacob, Joseph’s father, is blessing Joseph’s sons—those would be Manasseh and Ephraim, born to Joseph in Egypt, that Jacob until now has never met.  So Jacob adopts them, Genesis 48:1-17.  He blesses them, Genesis 48:8-20.  And then Genesis 48 ends with a prediction.  There’s some short-term prediction here, and there’s a long-term prediction.  The long-term prediction pertains to something coming yet future: the Exodus.  So Genesis 48:21 is the Exodus prophecy that Jacob gives.

Then just before Jacob dies, he does one other thing for Joseph.  Jacob adds to Joseph’s inheritance above and beyond what the other brothers will receive.  And you’ll see that in Genesis 48:22.  But notice, first of all, this Exodus prophecy, Genesis 48:21-22.  There’s a short-term prophecy here—short run.  Jacob makes a prediction about his death; and then a long-term prophecy yet to be fulfilled, about 400 years into the future, in which he will predict a major event in Israel’s history called the Exodus.

Notice, first of all, this short-term prophecy, Genesis 48:21, “Then Israel said to Joseph, ‘Behold, I am about to die.’ “ Now these predictions that Jacob is making are going to fit really well, as you’ll see next week, because next week we start Jacob’s final words to his sons—the Twelve Tribes—just prior to his death.  The twelve sons will become the Twelve Tribes.  Genesis 49:1 (to be covered next week) says, “Then Jacob summoned his sons and said, ‘Assemble yourselves that I may tell you what will befall you in the days to come.’ “ So lots of predictions and prophecies are coming in Genesis 49.  So it’s not a big shock that we should find more predictions and prophecies, to introduce the subject, at the end of Genesis 48.

Jacob here makes a prediction.  He says, basically, “I’m going to die.”  We know that that prediction happened because over in Genesis 49:33, it says this: “When Jacob finished charging his sons, he drew his feet into the bed and breathed his last, and was gathered to his people.”  The fact that Jacob makes a prediction about his death that happened in a relatively short period of time, a short-term prophecy, certainly gives us confidence that the long-term prophecies that are recorded in Genesis 49 will come to pass as well.  This is how your Bible is set up.  Your Bible does not expect you to believe God’s long-term prophecies just because they’re in your Bible.  Now, if you believe them, then praise the Lord.  But the Bible has been written in such a way that it’s not a leap into a dark chasm, but gives us a prophetic track record.

In other words, if I’m standing at the free throw line and I make nine shots in a row—and my coaches would be shocked if that ever happened, but let’s just pretend—nine shots in a row, nothing but net; and then I say to you, “Can I make the tenth one?”  Well, you say, “Of course, because you’ve got a track record to look at.”  That’s essentially how your Bible is set up.  The short-term prediction in Genesis 48:21 is going to give us confidence that the long-term predictions at the end of Genesis 48 and in Genesis 49 will materialize as well.

Jesus did this kind of thing constantly with people.  In the Olivet Discourse given on the Mount of Olives, Jesus made some predictions about the temple that the disciples were impressed by.  It says in Matthew 24:1-2,

“Jesus came out from the temple and was going away when His disciples came up to point out the temple buildings to Him.  And He said to them, ‘Do you not see all these things?  Truly I say to you, not one stone here will be left upon another, which will not be torn down.’ “

The temple was going to be torn apart, brick by brick, stone by stone, which happened at the hands of the Romans about forty years after Jesus made that statement.  We know from extra biblical sources like the writings of Josephus, that when the Romans came in the horrific events of A.D. 70, the temple caught on fire.  The gold within the temple began to melt, and it oozed down between the stones and dried there.  And the Roman soldiers, to get their hands on the gold, took the temple apart stone by stone, exactly as Jesus said would happen.  You can visit Israel today and see the remains of that prediction.

So that is a prophecy in the short run that happened.  So when the Lord beginning in Matthew 24:3, all the way through the end of Matthew 25, starts making long-term predictions, we say to ourselves, “We had better pay attention to those, because what Jesus said in the short run happened, and His abilities to be a prophet did not switch horses in midstream.  He is one hundred percent accurate in everything that He says.”  This is why these verses are set up the way they are.  You have a short-term prediction of Jacob’s death, which is going to happen in Genesis 49:33.  Jacob at this time is 147 years old: Genesis 47:28 says that.  And when we see that short-term prophecy happening, we can say, “Well, everything that’s coming at the end of Genesis 48 and into Genesis 49, we had better pay attention to.”

You know, we’re all moving into this new year, New Year’s resolutions, new goals, new reading material.  I’m going to keep suggesting to you this book to work your way through in the new year.  It’s by Dr. John Walvoord.  It’s called Every Prophecy of the Bible, and it’s a tracking of all of the short-term prophecies that have happened in Scripture.  And you read through that book and you say, “Wow, God means what He says and says what He means; I had better pay attention to the long-term prophecies, because the short-term prophecies sure had a tendency to take place exactly, literally.  Can I use that word as God said?”

And so here is just a short-term prophecy.  “Then Israel said to Joseph, ‘Behold, I am about to die.’ “ Why is it that we keep going through the Book of Genesis and it keeps talking about people dying?  I mean, that’s kind of depressing, isn’t it?  You might recall that when we were back in Genesis 5, that pre-Flood generation, it just kept saying over and over again, “And he died,” “And he died,” “And he died,” “And he died,” “And he died.”

Well, the reason people keep dying is that that’s what God said would happen.  That’s another prediction in and of itself.  God is not the author of death.  Death is looked at in the Bible as an unwanted intruder into what God originally designed.  But God was very clear to our forebearers that if you eat from the forbidden Tree of Knowledge.  In other words, if you use your free will to rebel against me, death will envelop the human race.  That command was given in Genesis 2:16-17.

“The Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.’ “

Spiritual death, separation from God, happened at that point.  And that’s not the end product, because physical death quickly followed.  Genesis 3:19 says,

” ‘By the sweat of your face You will eat bread, Till you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return.’ “

And ever since that point in time, physical death has plagued the human race.  1 Corinthians 15:21-22 says,

“For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead.  For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.”

The reality in our world is constant death.  I mean, we do whatever we can to ignore this because it’s an uncomfortable subject for us.  You know, we can put our bodies through all kinds of programs to make us look better.  But the fact of the matter is, we’re all dying.  Even as I speak, we’re dying.  Why are we dying?  Because God said that would happen.  “Well, wait a minute, pastor, you know, I drink all that green stuff every morning.”  “Well, congratulations.  You’ve got a bunch of green stuff going through a dying body.”  Romans 5:12 says, “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.”  Romans 6:23 you know well, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

And consequently, every person within the sound of my voice is going to die.  The mortality rate is still one hundred percent.  Now, we may be fortunate, like Enoch in the Old Testament, who escaped death because he was taken to heaven in a personal Rapture (there is an event yet future that God promises called the Rapture.) I’m going to be trying to do a Rapture seminar on January 10, if you’re interested—it should be live streamed—for the 3DTC group, of which my daughter is part.  We’re going to be talking about the Rapture.  It’s kind of interesting that it’s going to take all day to talk about the Rapture, whereas the Rapture is going to take place in an instant.  What will take place in an instant requires an all-day discussion, right?

If we are the Rapture generation, we may well escape death.  I hope we’re the Rapture generation.  I have a tendency to think we are, but I can’t guarantee that, of course.  If we’re not the Rapture generation, then all of us will face physical death.  When the clock or the calendar changed last year, you know, my father was alive, my father-in-law was alive.  And here I am at the end of 2024 and both have passed on to be with the Lord.  I didn’t expect it nor anticipate it, but that’s what happened.  And given enough time, all of us will die.

Hebrews 9:27 says, “And inasmuch as it is appointed.”  Notice that it’s like going to the grocery store and you got a stamp on the carton that says, “Not good after such and such a date”—the expiration date.  All of us have been stamped with an expiration date.  “And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment.”

Now, the world out there has virtually no explanation for this, other than crazy ideas like survival of the fittest and Reincarnation—you know, if you die, you come back as some kind of prominent person if you were a good boy or girl in the first life.  I noticed that all these people that believe in Reincarnation always say that they were Cleopatra, or something like that, in the prior life.  Nobody says, “You know, I was a gas station attendant,” or anything.  They all talk about these prominent roles they once had in the prior life.

But the truth of the matter is, that’s just man’s folly—man’s finite philosophy—trying to get comfortable with an idea that the Bible says will be an absolute reality once sin enters the picture, which it did in Genesis 3.  It’s so heartening to discover that God has a plan and a program whereby death itself will exit the cosmos.  Revelation 21:4 says,

“and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.”

That’s speaking of the final two chapters in the Bible—Revelation 21-22—where death will be a thing of the past because of the work of Jesus Christ.  So what is happening today and what has been happening ever since the fall in Eden is an abnormality: things related to death are not God’s design.  We brought that upon ourselves through our own rebellion against God, and God said that would happen.  So Genesis 3 all the way through Revelation 20 is an abnormality.  If you want to understand what’s normal, read Genesis 1-2 and Revelation 21-22.  That’s normal.  And how different the perspective of the Bible is with the philosophies of the age which teach that destruction, war, death—all of these problems that we have—are normal.  The Bible is saying that they are not normal, they are abnormal.  And things are going to be set right in a city (called the New Jerusalem), as we rebelled against God in a garden.  That’s really the story of the Bible.  It’s from a garden to a city with a cross in between.  The garden is normal.  The New Jerusalem is normal.  Everything in between is abnormal.  And when you have that perspective, you realize that evil is limited—it’s finite, it’s bound.

I don’t know if you saw that terrible story that hit the news—I think that it was last week—of a person that was burned to death on a New York subway.  And you’re wondering, “What in the world is going on here?  How could such a thing happen?”  What is encouraging from the Biblical perspective, is that things like that are on their way out.  Because when God remakes our world and creates a new heavens and new earth, death and atrocities like that won’t happen anymore.  That’s what gives us hope in the present age: when we see all of these atrocities happen, we just say to ourselves, “These are abnormal.  This is not what God designed.  This is not what God intended.  We brought these consequences—sin and death—largely on ourselves, living in this fallen world.  But the day is going to come when those things will be a thing of the past.”

And so we can function with hope in a hopeless age when we have this perspective.  The world can’t function that way because they don’t have the right framework.  And if you don’t have the right framework, you don’t have any hope.  We would call this eschatological hope.  So the world tries to handle these kinds of things by trying to numb the pain.  You know, give me more parties, give me more alcohol, give me more drugs.  Give me anything to numb the reality that I’m seeing all around me.  But the Christian need not do that because Jesus is the ultimate Victor, and what is happening now is an abnormality.

So Jacob is ready to die because God said that all human beings—other than Enoch and the Rapture generation, etc.—will die.  And Jacob makes a prediction about his own death.  Then he moves more to a long-term prediction about the Exodus.  Also in Genesis 48:21 it says,

“Then Israel said to Joseph, ‘Behold, I am about to die, but God will be with you, and bring you back to the land of your fathers.’ “

Notice that Jacob emphasizes the fact that ” ‘God will be with you.’ “ That’s a wonderful thing as a Christian.  Once you are a Christian and have trusted in the work of the Savior, you can’t get rid of God if you want to—He is inside you forever.  Now, we can grieve Him when He’s inside us.  We can quench His power.  We can get out of fellowship with Him.  But we can’t get rid of Him, because “once saved, always saved.”

Jesus Himself talked about this in the Upper Room.  He said, ” ‘I will ask the Father’ “—to the disciples who were panicked about Jesus leaving—” ‘I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper,’ “—the Greek there is Paraclete [parakletos], the one who comes alongside to assist—” ‘that He’ “—that’s the Holy Spirit—” ‘may be with you for 24 hours’ “—it doesn’t say that—” ‘forever.’ “ Forever is the Greek word aionios, used to describe God Himself as the eternal God in Romans 16:26.

In other words, just as God Himself is eternal, once a person has trusted in Christ, their body becomes the temple of the Holy Spirit forever.  That is the basis of Paul’s treatment of morality in 1 Corinthians 6, where the Corinthians were suing each other.  They were going to the pagan temples to have these sexual experiences in the name of religion.  And Paul, when he deals with that moral problem, he doesn’t say, “You guys need to get saved,” because they were saved.  Their body was the temple of the Holy Spirit.  What he says is, “Do you not understand?”—meaning, “Do you not know that when you involve yourself in these things, you’re dragging Jesus and the Holy Spirit with you into those activities?  You’re grieving the Holy Spirit within you, because the Holy Spirit is within you forever.”

This is a different way of looking at morality, rather than constantly threatening people: “You’re going to hell.”  “You never were saved.”  “You lost your salvation.”—all these kinds of things that we hear about all the time from the world of religion.  Paul says, “You just dragged Jesus with you into that sin and you’re grieving his heart.  Don’t you know this?”  In other words, “You should have learned this a long time ago—this doctrine of eternal security.”

” ‘I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.’ “

Once a person gets saved, the Holy Spirit is with that person forever, and He’s inside of them, and their body becomes the temple of the Holy Spirit.  So no matter where you go or what you do, God is always with you.  That’s what I’m reminded of there, when Jacob says to Joseph, ” ‘God will be with you.’ “ You couldn’t lose God if you wanted to.  And what is this God going to do for you?  ” ‘God will be with you, and bring you back to the land of your fathers.’ “

What does it mean here when it says ” ‘the land of your fathers’ “?  It’s the real estate that God promised Abraham all the way back in Genesis 15—attractive real estate from modern day Egypt to modern day Iraq, from the Nile to the Euphrates.  God made this promise over and over again: “You’re going right back into Canaan.”  And at the time this prediction was made, they weren’t in Canaan.  They were in the land of Egypt.  And yet, Jacob says, “It’s just a matter of time before God brings you back into the land of your fathers, because you have that as the nation of Israel by way of covenant.”  He doesn’t say, “You might make it back in.”  or “You could make it back in.”  He says, “God‘will bring you back.’ “ ” ‘God will be with you, and bring you back to the land of your fathers.’ “ God has to keep this promise because that’s what He promised to do in the Abrahamic Covenant.  By the way, you’ll notice here that the land that is promised to them is not called Palestine: it’s called “the land of their fathers.”

The name Palestine is a word that was given to the Land of Israel after the Israelis were evicted from the land at the hands of the Romans.  That name was developed in the second century A.D., Palestine being a derivative of Philistine.  In other words, Hadrian, Emperor Hadrian, who came up with that term, used an anti-Semitic slur naming the land of promise after the Philistines to mock the Jewish people and pretend that there was never a Jewish presence in the land.  And yet your Bible never uses the word Palestine.  In fact, when we use the word Palestine, we’re actually using an anti-Semitic slur without fully understanding it.

That is why one of the things that has added to my gray hair (which is more frequent these days than it used to be, like when you look at some pictures of yourself a few years back) is seeing all of these study Bibles use the word Palestine, which is a non-biblical word.  It’s an anti-Semitic word.  Why would you even use that in a study Bible?  It’s not Palestine.  This is the Land of Israel.

And so the youth of America today, as they’re protesting on the campuses, think that it is the land of Palestine.  And they chant, “From the river to the sea.”  What river, what sea?  The Jordan to the Mediterranean.  “From the river to the sea, the land of Palestine will be free.”  And what they’re essentially arguing for is that the Jewish presence today in the land needs to be eradicated.  They don’t belong there.  And I say, “Nonsense.  God gave them that land.”  That’s why we came up with our own slogan.  I think we have some of these in the back.  You can put these on your car, by the way.  We’ve experimented.  Wouldn’t it be great if we drove in here next week and every car had this on it?  It says, “From the river to the sea, the Land of Israel will always be.”  That’s our counter to the idea, “From the river to the sea, the land of Palestine will be free.”

So the promise is that you’re going to come out of Egypt and you’re going to go right back, not into Palestine (which is a fictional name) but you’re going to go back to the land of your fathers.  You’re going to go back into the land that God specifically gave in the Abrahamic Covenant to the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  This is a promise that is featured over and over again, and it’s actually a prediction of the Exodus.  Genesis 46:4 says, ” ‘I will go down with you to Egypt, and I will also surely bring you up again; and Joseph will close your eyes.’ “ God told Jacob, “You’re going to go into Egypt.  It’s all right.  Your people aren’t going to stay there forever.  There’s going to be about a 400-year time period, and then you’re going to come out of Egypt, and you’re going to go right back into the land of Canaan that God granted to Abraham.”  And the process of them leaving Egypt and going back into Canaan is a very significant event called the Exodus.

The Exodus is the greatest redemptive event in human history other than the Cross of Christ.  Other than the Cross of Christ, there is no greater act of God involving redemption.  What does redemption mean?  Redemption means to release from bondage: in the Exodus, through the sacrificial blood of an innocent sacrifice—the Passover lamb.  The Passover lamb, as we will study in the Book of Exodus, is the blood that was spilled because it broke Pharaoh’s back ultimately, and allowed him, forced him, really—impelled him—to release the Jewish people.  The blood of the Passover lamb: plague number ten.  God said on Passover, “I’m going to kill all of your firstborn all over Egypt.  But the ones that I see that have the blood of the Passover lamb on the doorpost—they’ll be exempted from plague ten.”  And once God did that, Pharaoh said, “I quit, I give up.”  It broke his will.  And he released the nation of Israel from Egyptian bondage.  Now, he had a change of mind, of course.  God fixed that through the Red sea drowning.  But initially it broke his back.  It broke his will.  He released God’s people.  They were released from bondage en route to Canaan because of the blood of the innocent sacrifice, the Passover lamb.

That’s what redemption is.  You have no greater treatment of redemption than in the Book of Exodus, second only to the Cross of Christ.  The New Testament is going to come along, and it’s going to throw this word redemption at you, but it will not redefine it.  It’s expected that the reader already understands redemption by studying the Old Testament that we call Hebrew Bible.  God did the same exact thing in your life.  He released you from satanic bondage, and He transferred your citizenship into the kingdom of His beloved Son through the blood of an innocent sacrifice, Jesus Christ.  That has already been pictured or portrayed in the Book of Exodus, the Exodus event, which is the greatest redemptive event in history, second only to what Jesus did.

When you get to the New Testament, you should be able to say, “Oh, that’s what it’s all about, because I’ve already read the first book and I go to Sugar Land Bible Church, where the pastor spends five years in Genesis.  I get it, I understand it.”  This is how God desires to work.  And so all the way through the Book of Genesis, we’ve been seeing predictions and prophecies of this coming Exodus event.  We saw it as early as Genesis 15:13-16, which says,

“God said to Abram, ‘Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed four hundred years.  But I will also judge the nation whom they will serve, and afterward they will come out with many possessions.  As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you will be buried at a good old age.  Then in the fourth generation they will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete.’ “

“There’s going to be some squatters in the land.  And Joshua, you have permission to go into the land and execute every single one of them, but not yet, because I’m giving these people in the land an opportunity to repent 400 years.”  That’s what it means here when it says, ” ‘The iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete.’ “

“Oh, and by the way, these predictions are so specific that when you come out of the land of Egypt en route to Canaan, you’re going to come out with many possessions.  Here is the predicted route that would happen 400 years in advance.  You’re going to be released through plague number ten out of Egypt.  You’ll make your way to Mount Sinai to receive the law.  And then from there, you’ll make your way into Canaan.  And by the way, when you come out of Egypt, you’re going to come out loaded.  You’re not going to have to worry about finances or provision in this sense that the Egyptians are going to voluntarily give you their possessions as you leave.”

Isn’t that amazing?  I mean, who could orchestrate something like this other than God?  Look at the language of this prophecy again in Genesis 15.  ” ‘They will come out with many possessions.’ “ Guess what happened?  They came out with many possessions.  Exodus 12:35-36 records the fulfillment of this.  It says,

“Now the sons of Israel had done according to the word of Moses, for they had requested from the Egyptians articles of silver and articles of gold, and clothing; and the Lord had given the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they let them have their request.  Thus they plundered the Egyptians.”

They took their money, a big chunk of it, with them.  Now this plundering of the Egyptians is very misused today because people say, “Well, they took their philosophies with them.  They took their theology of the Egyptians with them.”  And that becomes the basis where people try to mix the Bible with worldly philosophy, humanistic psychology, Darwinism.  You know, let’s kind of mix it all together, you know, because after all, the Israelis plundered the Egyptians.  Well, that’s not what the Bible says.  The Bible says they didn’t take the philosophies with them.  They took the metal.  And even some of that wasn’t helpful to them because they used it to make a what, a golden calf.  That’s where the money came from to make this golden calf.

At this point, just recognize that this Exodus is a big deal because it foreshadows what Jesus would ultimately do.  And all the prophecies involving the Exodus, right down to the plundering of the Egyptians were fulfilled exactly like God said—the power of predictive prophecy.  So Genesis 48:21 is this Exodus prophecy.

Genesis 48:22 is something else Joseph got out of this walk with God.  He got an additional inheritance that his brothers did not get.  And so we read about that in Genesis 48:22, Jacob’s gift to Joseph, first part of Genesis 48:22.  And then how did Jacob get his hands on this thing that he gave to Joseph?  Second part of Genesis 48:22.  So notice, if you will, Genesis 48:22.  Notice what it says, Jacob now still speaking to Joseph prophetically.  In the midst of that he says this, ” ‘I give you one portion more than your brothers, which I took from the hand of the Amorite with my sword and my bow.’ “ “So you get something else.”  I’ll show you in a minute that it’s something called Jacob’s Well in the land of Canaan, given to Joseph.

Notice how the Joseph story starts all the way back in Genesis 37, and notice how the Joseph story ends all the way in Genesis 48.  I mean, what got Joseph in trouble with his brothers to begin with is that Jacob gave Joseph an extra gift.  Remember the coat of many colors?  Genesis 37:3 says, “Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his sons, because he was the son of his old age; and he made him a varicolored tunic.”  So because Joseph got something beyond the rest, that provoked jealousy on the part of Joseph’s brothers which led to Joseph’s sojourn in Egypt, which is what all these chapters are about.  And then notice how the story of Joseph is ending here, with Joseph getting more than the rest.

Why does Joseph keep getting more than the rest?  Because Jacob made a sovereign decision.  He loved Joseph perhaps a bit more than the others, Joseph being a very, very special son.  And that provided a lot of jealousy for the brothers.  So before the brothers figured out that Joseph was still alive in Egypt, when they didn’t really know Joseph’s identity, Joseph was constantly testing them in this regard and giving extra blessings to Benjamin, whom they thought was the youngest because they thought that Joseph had died.  Are these the same brothers that got jealous and betrayed me so many years ago?  Joseph is trying to figure out—that’s why these extra blessings from Joseph keep coming to Benjamin.  You might recall Genesis 43:34,

“He took portions to them from his own table, but Benjamin’s portion was five times as much as any of theirs.  So they feasted and drank freely with him.”

“Hey, why does Benjamin get five times the food we get?”  I don’t think Joseph did that because he wanted to put his brothers on a diet or something.  He just wanted to give an extra blessing to Benjamin to see if these are the same jealous brothers that betrayed him years back.  And you know what?  What’s interesting about this is that the brothers passed the test.  They weren’t going to let jealousy control them.  That’s why it says here, “So they feasted and drank freely with him.”  And you would think the brothers would rise up against this situation.  But they don’t, because they’ve grown.  They’ve matured.  This is not the same jealous, murderous crowd that they were years ago.  Their character has changed.  And isn’t that what it’s all about?  You know, “I’m not the man that I should be, but I thank God that I’m not the man I used to be.”

This is what I want the Lord to do in my life in the year 2025.  “Lord, take me to a different level of maturity.  Help me not to be dominated in 2025 by the exact same sins that controlled my life in the walk of sanctification that dominated my life last year.  You know I want to be different.  I want my character to be different.  I don’t want to be motivated by jealousy or whatever particular sin you find knocking at your door: bitterness—resentment—anger.  I don’t want to just keep going back to these same thought processes over and over again.  I want to mature.  I know, Lord, I won’t be sinless, but work in my heart in such a way that I will sin less.  Sinlessness probably isn’t going to happen this side of eternity, but I want to sin less.”

And that’s the type of growth that you see here in these brothers who would become the progenitors of Israel’s Twelve Tribes.  These guys were terrible to Joseph, but they weren’t the same later, as God was at work in their lives.  And this shows us that we can all grow as Christians.  This is one of the problems I have with these kind of personality profiles that you can take, you’re this personality, you’re that personality, and they put you in a box as if you’re in that box forever, as if God can’t change your personality—if you’re impatient, God can’t make you a patient person.  What’s interesting about the walk with God is that you’re not in a box.  I mean, how could you be in a box when you’re dealing with an all-powerful God, who has the ability to work in our lives and change us in such a way that our character is morphed and changed into the image of His Son.  That is not a justification issue or a birth issue—that’s a growth issue.  And what a great time to think about that as we contemplate the new year.

Joseph here got a portion.  In fact, if you look at Genesis 48:22, ” ‘I give you one portion more than your brothers.’ “ Actually, in Hebrew, from that word portion, you get the word Shechem.  Arnold Fruchtenbaum says this,

“In 48:22, Jacob gave a special inheritance to Joseph: Moreover I have given to you one portion above your brethren.  This may refer to the double portion given to the firstborn; and therefore, instead of being the father of one tribe, he became the father of two tribes.  The Hebrew text reads shechem, translated as portion, but it is also the name of the City of Shechem.  Therefore, this word might very well be a reference to the City of Shechem where Jacob bought a parcel of ground (Gen.  33:19).  Thus Jacob gave that parcel of ground that he bought by the City of Shechem to the ownership of Joseph.”

So for whatever reason, Genesis 33:19 records Jacob purchasing a tract of land in the land of Canaan: “He bought the piece of land where he had pitched his tent from the hand of the sons of Hamor, Shechem’s father, for one hundred pieces of money.”  In other words, “As you make your way back into the land, there’s something very special that you and your lineage receives, Joseph.  And that’s this portion of land that I purchased from the Shechemites going all the way back to Genesis 33:19.  In fact, that word portion there is actually the word for Shechem, where this transaction was made.  In other words, Joseph, you have an inheritance.  You have an inheritance above and beyond the rest.  And your inheritance is not just your nation going back into the land of Canaan, but it’s also a reception of a very special plot of real estate which will be owned by you, meaning you can give it to whomever you want.”

Is that not a beautiful picture of our inheritance?  Joseph and Israel, traveling back to Canaan to receive an inheritance given to them by God.  That’s exactly what you have as a Christian.  You’re passing through a foreign domain.  You’re passing through pagan domain.  We’re living in a world that, although God created it, is not functioning the way God ordained, because of original sin.  We’re passing through the devil’s world, but we’re headed to a better place.  And as you’re moving towards that better place, what the New Testament promises you is an inheritance that cannot be defiled.  Peter talks about this in 1 Peter 1:3-5.

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.”

What is an inheritance?  An inheritance is something that’s legally yours, but you have not yet entered into the enjoyment of it.  You will enter into enjoyment of it, but it’s legally yours.  “To obtain an inheritance.”  “Well, how do I know it’s not going to be stolen?  How do I know inflation won’t erode its value?”  Because it’s a heavenly inheritance that man can’t touch or distort or monkey with.  It’s “an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you.”

“I don’t know, Lord.  Things are pretty tough down here.  How do I really know I’m going to make it to heaven to get this inheritance?”  Glad you asked.  1 Peter 1:5, “who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.”  You will get your inheritance.  Your life will not run off the rails to such a degree that you’ll become disqualified for the inheritance.  Because currently you’re being protected not through the power of a church, not through the power of an elder board, not through the power of a pastor, not through the power of a parent, not through the power of a boss or of a mentor, but through the power of God, which you entered into by way of “faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.”—now, their salvation is being used in the future tense of our glorification.

Do you want something in your life that you can really feel good about?  We all want that.  Well, this would be it.  You’re on a fast track that’s unalterable to receive your heavenly inheritance.  And it can’t be derailed because God Himself is protecting you as you move into that wonderful time when we will arrive into heaven.  I think it’s amazing how the Bible, in typology, with Joseph receiving this inheritance in Shechem, is used as sort of a prefigurement, or a type, if you will, of our heavenly inheritance.

By the way, when Peter wrote these words, you know what this audience that Peter is dealing with here was about to suffer.  Flickering into existence was the Neronian persecution, A.D. 64.  (when this was written, it had most likely started), which was the first formal persecution of Rome against Christianity.  And there was a madman named Nero on the throne that burned Rome to the ground and blamed it on the Christians.  Christians were at fault for everything that went wrong in Rome, including Nero’s arson project.  And this is what launched this terrible wave of persecution against Christians: Nero in his chariot with his under-aged homosexual lover or lovers, would light Christians on fire and say things, as he’s moving through Rome on his chariot, like, “Ah, these Christians, they call themselves the light of the world.  Look at them now.  You want to be the light of the world?  I’ll make you the literal light of the world.  I’ll light you on fire.”

It was Nero who put together the whole concept of the Christian Colosseum, where Christians were thrown to these ravenous beasts and gored to death in front of the cheering masses as a sporting event.  That’s who Peter is talking to when these words are written.  And in that context, he reminds them that they’re destined for an inheritance that can’t be taken away.  Nero can’t take it away.  Persecution can’t take it away, because you’re being preserved for it by the power of God.

Think about that as you move into 2025—your inheritance.  Inflation can’t take it away.  Bad stock market can’t take it away.  Political events can’t take it away.  High gas prices can’t take it away.  Layoffs can’t take it away.  Personality conflict with someone higher than you in the corporate chain can’t take it away.  Because it’s not they that gave it to you.  It’s God Himself.  And this is the heart of Peter as he’s seeking to comfort his flock.

How did Jacob get his hands on this parcel of land, anyway?  We read a little bit about that earlier in Genesis 33:19, “He bought the piece of land where he had pitched his tent from the hand of the sons of Hamor, Shechem’s father, for one hundred pieces of money.”  So he had this piece of land, and it was in Shechem.  His acquisition of it is in Genesis 33.  And he bought it.  In fact, the word portion there is where we get the word Shechem.  And here, Jacob, at the end of his life, says to Joseph, “Here’s something you can have above and beyond your brothers.  You get this piece of land later called Jacob’s Well, because there was a well on that particular property.”  And it’s on that particular piece of property that Jesus met a woman from Samaria.  The New Testament records this exchange with the Samaritan woman.  John 4:5-6 says,

“So He came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph; and Jacob’s well was there.  So Jesus, being wearied from His journey, was sitting thus by the well.  It was about the sixth hour.”

When you study this in John, it’s very interesting.  Jesus went way out of his way to get to this well, because He knew that the Samaritan woman was going to be there—a woman that had all the strikes against her.  She wasn’t the right race because she wasn’t fully Hebrew.  She was part of this hybrid Samaritan race.  She was secondly, a woman.  Women in this culture were treated like dirt.  That’s why the disciples say, “What are you talking to her for?”  Beyond that, she was immoral, having had five husbands—and the one that she was currently shacking with, she wasn’t married to.  So you’re dealing with someone who is trying to fill the void in their life through promiscuity, which is what we do as human beings.  If I don’t have the living water of Jesus inside of me, I’ll try to fill that void with anything and everything.  And the two best artificial substitutes that people go for are power, and or pleasure.

Jesus heads to this well, because He knew that this woman was going to be there.  And He makes this statement, “If you drink from that water, you’ll be thirsty again.  If you drink from the water that I give, you’ll never thirst again.”  In other words, “All you’re doing in your life is you’re trying to fill your life with all of these artificial substitutes when you were actually made and born to have a relationship with God.  And it’s not until you live within your intended design that you’ll ever be fulfilled in this life.  And as long as you don’t have it, you’re going to spend the rest of your days trying to find meaning and significance in your life through artificial substitutes, power, pleasure, whatever it is.”

It’s just an amazing conversation that takes place.  The woman at the well gets saved.  She believes on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the living water enters her.  And the whole background for that conversation is this well that Jacob bought from the Shechemites and bequeathed legally to his son Joseph.

And as you read John 4, it’s not going to go back into the history and tell you where this well came from.  The Bible is not set up that way.  The Bible expects you to understand the stories of the New Testament because you’ve already read the Old Testament.  You see that?  Only in the Book of Genesis do you have any explanation as to where this well came from where this amazing conversation takes place between the incarnate Son of God and somebody that had multiple strikes against her.  We would expect that, wouldn’t we, in the Book of Genesis, to find the beginning point of that well?  After all, the Book of Genesis is the “Book of Beginnings”: beginning of the universe, beginning of life, beginning of man, of marriage, of evil, of clothing, of religion, of salvation, of language, of government, of nations, of Israel.  It all comes to us from the Book of Genesis.

This is why Satan himself has attacked the Book of Genesis like no other book in the Bible, because he knows if you can get the foundation, the rest of the Bible will collapse.  If you can obscure in the mind of the Christian what the Book of Genesis is saying, then you will steal from them the richness that they will read about in the New Testament.  After all, Psalm 11:3 says, “If the foundations are destroyed, What can the righteous do?”  There’s a reason that Satan attacks this book over and over again.  He wants to rob from you the joy of studying the rest of your Bible.

One interesting thing, by way of closing, happens here in Genesis 48:22 as Jacob bequeaths this to Joseph. It says this, ” ‘which I took from the hand of the Amorite with my sword and my bow.’ “ Now, who are the sword and the bow?  I think that they’re a reference to Simeon and Levi that went into Shechem, Genesis 34, to vindicate the rape of Dinah, their sister,—into the identical area where Jacob had purchased this piece of property.  And they killed everybody.  They wiped out the Shechemites.  The massacre was so strong that Jacob was displeased with it and said, “You have made me odious amongst the Canaanites.  They’re going to spend every single day of their lives trying to kill me.”  And that becomes part of the basis as to why Jacob finally saw the light and left the land of Canaan, and sojourned in the land of Egypt.

Simeon and Levi, as the Bible portrays it, did an admirable thing in vindicating their sister, but they went way overboard.  The punishment did not fit the crime.  And this is why Jacob says, “By the way, that whole area of Shechem has been cleared out”—I don’t think he’s proud of that—”and my sword and my bow did it.  Simeon and Levi took care of it.  That’s why there’s not going to be any encumbrances to you, Joseph, when you bequeath this piece of property and well to yours.”

What’s interesting is that when you go to Genesis 49:5-7, you will see that Simeon and Levi did not receive the privilege of being the ones who would bring forth the Messiah.  That privilege did not go to the firstborn, Reuben, because he messed up in Genesis 35.  And it did not go to Simeon and Levi because they messed up really badly in Genesis 34.  The privilege went to the fourth born, Judah, who would be the progenitor of the coming Messiah.  And the story of Simeon and Levi tells us that yes, they will be in the Millennial Kingdom, Simeon and Levi, but they lost something.  They lost their privilege.  They lost a privilege that they could have had, because of their overreaction in Genesis 34.  What a warning that is to us, because Paul frequently talks to us about the Bema Seat Judgment of Christ, not a judgment to determine heaven or hell, but a judgment of rewards.  And he says this to us,

“If any man’s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward.  If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.”

There are Christians that will arrive in heaven and smell the smoke on their garments—glad to be in heaven, but not fully rewarded the way God wanted because they caved in to the sinful flesh during this life.  In the same way, Simeon and Levi are part of that Millennial Kingdom.  They didn’t lose that, but they forfeited a privilege that they could have had.  Keep that in mind as you move into 2025.  “Lord, I don’t want to just make it into heaven.  That’s wonderful enough; I’m saved by grace.  But once I get into heaven, I want to be fully rewarded.  Help me not waste 2025 in fleshly, carnal pursuits.  But help me live for You in a sanctified way under Your power, so that when I arrive in heaven one day, I will be fully rewarded once I’m there.”

And Jacob makes this bold bequeathment—if that’s a word—of property at the end of his life to Joseph, because he knew that the Exodus would occur.  And he knew that his nation would go back into the land of Canaan.  And he’s walking here completely and totally by faith, trusting God’s promises, which is a good place to be.  Hebrews 11:6 says, “without faith it is impossible to please Him.”  “Lord, make me like Jacob in 2025.”

Of course, the greatest thing that you could do to rest on God’s promises is to receive the Savior.  The good news, called the gospel, in all of this is that Jesus stepped out of eternity into time 2,000 years ago and fixed a problem that we can’t fix.  That problem is that I’m separated from God because of my sin.  My sinfulness puts me at enmity with God, and Jesus says, “I’ll fix it.”  And He did that through His death, burial, resurrection, and ascension.  And what He asks us to do as lost human beings is to trust in His work.  And I hope and pray that as we close out 2024 and look at 2025, many, many people within the sound of my voice, either in the building, or after the fact on archive, would respond to that convicting ministry of the Holy Spirit and place their personal faith for their eternity, the forgiveness of their sins, into the completed transaction of Jesus Christ.