How Gratitude Governs Hope

Genesis 48, please turn in the Word of God to Genesis 48. I fell upon these verses in the past week in such a way as others have described in the past—verses sometimes will communicate more to the preacher than just the words on the page. They’ll also add in, “preach me.” And so that was the case with what we’re looking at this morning. It just was saying, “preach me.” So we’ll set aside Hebrews today and look at the verses that the Lord I trust has for this occasion.

What we’re going to learn here is how God uses the believer’s testimony to make it the highest prayer that they can pray for those they care about. He uses the testimony of the believer and makes that the highest prayer that they will offer for those they love and care about.

We’re going to read again. Time is fleeting, so let’s look at verse 15. Jacob is an old man. His days very much are coming near to a close. And Joseph brings his two sons into the presence of their grandfather. Verse 15, “And he blessed Joseph, and said, God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk, the God which fed me all my life long unto this day, the Angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads; and let my name be named on them, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac; and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth.”

This, beloved, is the word of the eternal God, which you are to receive, believe, and obey. The people of God said, amen.

Let’s pray. Lord, bless us here in thy word. Set us up that we might be helped in musing upon aright what our Savior has accomplished for us. We pray that thou wilt give wings to thy Word, that whatever the weariness and frailty and tiredness of the body, that thou wilt powerfully work despite the weakness of the preacher—powerfully work. We pray, O God, please, please reveal thyself in Jesus’ name. Amen.

What do you want most for your children? Some of you do not have children or do not have children yet, but many of you do. And the question for you this morning is what do you want for your children? Do you wish them success? Do you wish them wealth? Do you wish them happiness? What do you desire for your children?

Many of these things that we elevate, we learn through the experience of life, come and go like a morning fog. They’re there for a time, and as Solomon puts it, “riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven.” And he tells us later about what the reason for that is—that they can take wings and fly away.

You come to this portion of God’s Word in Genesis 48, Jacob is aged and weak. And yet, though that may seem like a deficiency, and it is in a certain sense, it also gives to this dear man of God a perspective, a perspective that until you’re at such a season of life, you’re unlikely to fully understand. Age is its own teacher. The experiences of life add their own layers of knowledge into the heart of man. And this is where Jacob is. He knows. By this stage he knows what really matters in life.

This is the first recorded meeting of Jacob with his grandsons, Joseph’s sons. They no doubt met before, but this is the time when we’re introduced—that Jacob here has before him Joseph’s sons. And when he brings his sons to the bedside, the old patriarch rallies himself in order that he might confer blessing upon them. His eyes were failing, his body failing, but that didn’t mean he could not see what mattered. Jacob could see what mattered.

And so he stretched out his arms, he communicates to them a desire that they might be blessed, that Ephraim and Manasseh are going to be taken as his own, making it clear that despite the Egyptian background of their mother, these boys are in the covenant line.

We can see in Jacob a reflection of Christ. As He draws near to death, yet still He is not so much thinking about Himself as He is interceding for others. Our Lord Jesus did the same. Dying on the cross, when you think all the mind can be focused upon is the agony and suffering of one’s own body, yet the heart extends to intercede for others. So it is here with Jacob.

Similarly, our greater patriarch, our Lord Jesus, adopts a people to Himself. Hebrews 2:13 has a lovely line, quoting from the Old Testament, “Behold I and the children which God hath given me.” Christ takes a people to Himself, just as Jacob takes Ephraim and Manasseh.

But in this moment, the old saint looks back with gratitude. And it’s out of that gratitude that he possesses a meaningful hope for his grandsons. That’s what faith does. Look at the language. “He blessed Joseph, and said, God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk, the God which fed me all my life long unto this day, the Angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads.”

He looks back, he sees what God has done for him, and in light of that, he has hope for the future of his grandsons. This is what faith does. It recollects, it brings into focus the blessings of the past, the grace that has been experienced, and determines, when rightly considered, that I cannot wish for greater for those I care about than what God has done for me.

Oh, you may have your own sins and discouragements about your own life and wayward seasons of backsliding and rebellion and hardness of heart and bitterness, but you’re not going to ascribe that to God. But as you look at what you have received from the hand of God, you’re going to say, I could not wish for more for those I care about.

I titled the message this morning, “How Gratitude Governs Hope.” How gratitude governs hope. “The God which fed me all my life long unto this day, the Angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads.”

Note first with me, gratitude for a godly heritage. Jacob reflects gratitude for a godly heritage. In the opening part of verse 15, he said, “God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk.” He looks and sees it didn’t begin with him. It began with, as far as his direct family line, his own father and his grandfather, Isaac and Abraham.

And he notes a couple of things here, or we consider at least a couple of things from what he says. First, they had a conscious presence of God. They had a conscious awareness of the presence of God. “God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk.” Jacob knows that his father and grandfather did not walk through life blindly doing that which mattered merely to them, that they were taken up with the motivation just to do their own thing. He knows that they walked through their life conscious of God.

Abraham, of course, was confronted by God, heard from God. Stephen summarizes it in Acts 7: “The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charran.” He calls him to leave. Up then, Abraham gets and leaves at the command and direction of God.

Isaac also continued in that pattern, listening to God, obeying God. His father had made a few missteps along the way. The famine came, for example, in Genesis 12, we’re told about, and he heads down to Egypt, and that caused its own series of problems. Whenever Isaac comes to the same experience, when famine strikes in Isaac’s life, he listens to God. He stays right where God tells him to be, knowing that he would provide.

So these men walked before God. They were conscious of God, conscious of His presence, and they walked in this perpetual sense. It wasn’t a one-time thing. They walked. Every day they were walking in the presence of God before God. Yes, they stumbled. You see it in their lives. They faltered at times, but they had this general consistency about walking before God. It marked them.

The Latin term we might use to describe what is said here about them is coram Deo. They’re before the face of God. They know they are before God. And all their life then is governed by this knowledge.

So Jacob, when he says, “God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk,” he’s not boasting in lineage. He’s recognizing the consistency of what guided them and was matter to them. Their faith governed. They walked according to their faith. Their faith could be seen by their works because they knew that the God they believed in watched them and watched over them and had a will for them.

And Jacob, of course, wants this for his posterity, to come into that same line, “bless the lads.” In what way bless the lads? In the way he blessed my grandfather Abraham, my father Isaac, and me. Oh, bless them in that way.

New Testament describes the line that believers come into as being in the line of Abraham. In Romans 4, Paul refers to Abraham as being the father of all them that believe. So we all, in one sense, come into the line of Abraham. We may not be of his literal, physical descent, but by faith in the Messiah, by being governed by this God who has redeemed us and trusting in the Son whom He sent to be Savior, and living in that light, then we also follow the same pattern as Abraham. He functioned then as the father of us all. We believe in the same way Abraham believed, though we look back as he looked forward.

So the question for you is, do you fall into this line? I’m not asking do you have a Jewish lineage, I’m asking you do you have the faith that is in Christ that brings you into this lineage of faith? And that lineage of faith then can be seen in the walk. And you can say this is what makes him of Abraham. Not his physical descent, not where he comes from in terms of lineage, but he is marked—it’s coming from Abraham by possessing the faith that walks before God, lives before God.

You parents and grandparents, this is what your children are to see. They are to see in you a walk governed by a conscious awareness of God’s presence. There’s to be something about the way the home is run, the way the life is walked that communicates from the earliest days that there is a God and this God matters.

Before they read the scriptures for themselves, they can see in you the reality of a living God. It’s not just to be a life of religious habits and patterns, but everything—decisions, the whole spirit of the being, the priorities—shaped by the fact that we walk before God, we’re conscious of His presence, that whatever man says is irrelevant if it’s opposed to what God has said. That even in the circumstances of life where it seems like in the midst of a famine, it would be a good idea to go to a place that is unaffected by the famine. That’s what Abraham concluded and he learned the lesson. And Isaac would have been tempted to do the same thing, only God came mercifully and he listened.

So again, you reason, you look at things and you make decisions and it appears to be the right thing, but the person who walks first before God’s presence sees beyond what is physically perceivable.

I don’t know if you’ve ever had a time in your life when a decision that you’re making, some may look at it and say, that doesn’t make any sense. That doesn’t make any sense to me. But you know this is what God wants.

Oh, how our Savior lived this way. Oh, how He lived, always doing what pleased the Father, establishing righteousness on our behalf, also showing and revealing to us what it means to walk before God. So they had a conscious awareness of the presence of God.

They also had an intentional walk with God. Just building on that idea, it was intentional. It’s not just that, oh yeah, God exists. There are many believers, or let me rephrase that, there are many professed believers who say they’re Christian, who use language that is religious, who express in terms as if they believe God is there, but there’s no intentionality about the way that they live, as if truly they are walking first before God. And you’ll not be long in their presence before you see it.

Walking in God’s presence is not automatic. It’s not done simply with an acknowledgment of belief. It is followed through with commitment and conviction concerning the will of this God, and that’s a priority.

So at times you’ll be afraid. “What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.” What time I’m afraid, I’ll cower and do my own thing and respond to the fear. No. “What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.” And sometimes that means going step by step right into the lion’s den, putting ourselves right in the midst of the place of danger and the place we fear. But what time we’re afraid we will trust.

So these men lived this way. They trusted God’s Word. They followed through, their life exhibited an intentionality in the way that they walk. And the danger for Ephraim and Manasseh is that as Jacob looks back over his long life and makes reference to these other individuals whom Ephraim and Manasseh never met, that they could say to them, that was such a long time ago. The old man, he doesn’t get it. Things are different now. He’s referring there to Abraham and Isaac and they—they walked, they had this nomadic lifestyle. It’s just, it’s different. Life’s different today. We’re in Egypt. We’re settled here. Mother’s Egyptian. What does the old man know about how we are to live?

And they could dismiss it. They could dismiss out of hand the things that are being communicated by Jacob. But what Jacob refers to is relevant to them. It matters. The circumstances may be different. The peculiar aspects of their existence may be different. What Abraham’s doing and where he is and what Isaac’s doing and where he is and what Jacob had to do and where he was at various times was different. Their story does not read identically. But there is an overarching, there is an undergirding, there is a prevailing truth that these men walked before God. And that’s what Jacob wants for his grandsons. Oh, that you would be blessed with this, doing the same thing, walking before God.

It’s a great weakness in the church, a great weakness in families, when another generation rises up and does, to use the language of Judges, that which is right in their own eyes. We need to figure out things for ourselves. The old man doesn’t know. The parents are out of touch.

Well, there may be some areas we’re out of touch. I’ll grant you that. Already, I’m at the stage where my children are aware of things and doing things, and they do it with the speed that I’m looking at and going, how? How does this happen? How do I feel like I’ve been overtaken already? That doesn’t mean to say that there’s nothing relevant for the older to pass on. When it comes to the things that matter, they have something to say.

The way that Abraham and Isaac lived, the way that Jacob had learned to live was not about convenience, it was about covenant faithfulness. Living faithfully as those in covenant with God, and generations that rise up imagining that they should just do that which is right in their own eyes are going to fail. They may succeed materially, but they will fail at covenant succession, at that which matters from generation to generation. Because the circumstances change, the world changes, the technology changes, many things change, but sin is real and God is real and we need the same thing. Every generation needs the same God to pardon through Christ their sin.

You young people need to recognize this. Living in South Carolina, living in Greenville, there’s a kind of Christian atmosphere, especially when you’re homeschooled and you go to Christian school and you end up at Bob Jones or wherever, and you feel like this is the world. It’s not. And you’re surrounded by those who made a decision in their teens, and you say, I made a decision. I prayed a prayer in my teens when I was young.

And I’m telling you, I’m not dismissive of that. I’m not telling you to be doubting. That mere fact in and of itself, all I’m saying, that mere fact, that mere prayer, that thing you did in all sincerity isn’t enough if it does not translate to an intentional walk before God.

You have to live intentionally. You must live intentionally. You’re not going to succeed just drifting every day’s intention. That’s what a walk is. It’s one step, one foot in front of the other. Every day is seen as another step. That’s what you’re doing. And every day matters. It only takes one day, yea, one moment to shipwreck everything.

So you have to be intentional every single day. Don’t rest in a past prayer. Rest in Christ daily. Seek Christ daily. Walk before Him daily. I beg of you in God’s name. I know that Christ demands your life. He calls you to deny yourself, not once, but daily. To take up your cross, daily. To flee youthful lusts, daily. He calls you to serve a cause higher than yourself.

Jacob’s testimony, that’s his privilege. Looking back to a father and grandfather who had done this very thing, they had walked before the living God. That’s what you’re to do, not half-heartedly, all in. Be all in. Be all in. Be a second-mile Christian. Go above and beyond. Don’t make it as easy as possible. Listen, what’s His will? How can I please Him? How can I show my love? How can I render to Him a life of continual gratitude?

Imagine Jesus Christ was not intentional. Imagine He had not walked before His Father intentionally obeying. You would perish. I would perish. We all are lost.

So there’s gratitude for a godly heritage. There’s also gratitude for a gracious providence. A gracious providence. “The God which fed me all my life long unto this day.” A gracious providence.

In this gracious providence, Jacob notes, first, God providing for needs consistently. God providing for needs consistently. “The God which fed me all my life long.” He fed me. He fed me. And we read that word fed and we, you know, you think of it, well, it’s just, it’s, you know, God put bread before him. Gave him the meat that he needed.

But the word fed, it’s interesting, as I looked at it. Of the hundred odd times that it occurs in the Hebrew scriptures, 75 times it’s translated as feed. 63 times it’s translated as shepherd. And I see no reason why you cannot read it that way. “The God which shepherded me all my life long unto this day.”

We sang Psalm 23 this morning. “The LORD is my shepherd.” But that did not begin with David. It wasn’t first David who was able to think and ponder over this God who is his shepherd and is with him through the valley of the shadow of death and continually with him through all the seasons of life. It wasn’t first David. Jacob had that thought. Jacob saw God in that way. Oh, in all his own times of shepherding, at some point it became clear to him, there’s a shepherd greater than me. He is my God. And so he shepherded, he fed, he led, he provided.

Now this is the same man. Back in chapter 42 said, “all these things are against me.” It’s good to grow on, to age, to mature, to move past the tragedies and to look back and say, you know what? Even at the time when it looked like everything was against me, this God was shepherding me all the way through.

Some of you here this morning know that. You’ve had seasons in your life in which, in that moment, it feels like everything is against you, that God has a grudge, that he has taken out his rod of discipline, he is applying it in a way that is far more keenly felt than you have ever experienced, and you’re left wondering, am I even a child of God? Does he love me at all? To what purpose is this experience? These things are against me.

But this morning, you have come to a point where you can say no. No, he has been shepherding me, not in fits and starts, all my life long unto this day. What a word. As you sit at the table this morning, especially you older ones, more mature, I want you to reflect. I want you to reflect upon your past. I want you to think upon those string of incidents that have occurred. I want you to remember the grievances you’ve once felt towards God, and sit at the table, reflect more fully, and hear your shepherd say, I never left you. I have been with you every day unto this day.

But also providing for needs consistently but also extensively, “which fed me.” Do you think Jacob is only thinking about himself? There’s no way. There is no way. When he says, “me,” he knows he’s responsible for his wives and the children and his servants. A great significant host of people are depending on Jacob. And so God provided not only for Jacob but for all his household. The beginning of a promised nation was beginning to bloom under him and God had fed them all.

It’s good to be reminded of that when the material abundance is diminished. And you husbands and fathers have gone through the stress of lean times. And you wives have had to go to the store and know that you’ve had to walk past certain things. It’s too expensive. You know that God has fed, He has shepherded, He has provided all your life long unto this day.

It’s a word also for the widow, the divorced, the single, those who are left isolated and abandoned. “God fed me all my life long unto this day.” Psalmist, you know it well in Psalm 27, “When my father and my mother forsake me, then the LORD will take me up.” When the ordinary means that are used to provide for me are gone, the Lord will do what needs to be done because He’s a shepherd.

This, of course, does not remove responsibility for those who are in the place of caring and providing. It doesn’t. It doesn’t. There’s a need to work. When you go back over Jacob’s life, you see a hard-working man. You see a man who slogged, a man who was cheated many times, and a man who continually sought to live and labor hard before God. Though he wasn’t built like his brother, that didn’t mean he didn’t work hard. And in all that labor, God blessed the work of his hands.

Finally, gratitude for a glorious deliverance. For a glorious deliverance. “The Angel which redeemed me from all evil,” he goes on to say. “The Angel which redeemed me from all evil.” He redeemed me. That’s how he describes it. This angel redeemed him.

The language of redeem has the idea of the kinsman redeemers. If you’ve ever studied Ruth and you’ve considered Boaz coming in in that place and position, willing to step in to pay the price for the helpless, to restore the inheritance, then that’s the idea that is involved in this word. And Jacob describes his experience as one of redemption. “The Angel which redeemed me from all evil.” He bought me. He took me to himself.

This is not a New Testament term merely. This is Old Testament language. A truth revealed from Genesis through Revelation. He redeemed me. I needed to be redeemed. Oh, he did. We know him. Jacob the Twister. He had his moments. Certainly you watch on and you don’t have a whole lot of respect for him at times.

It’s a bit like, I don’t know if you saw the news the other day where that woman came, I think it was a Phillies supporter, I don’t watch baseball so I don’t know, but you couldn’t miss, this woman came and demanded the guy who had gotten the ball, he lifted it up, he hadn’t fought for it, it was there, he picked it up, went over and gave it to his son, and this woman came and she thought she should have it, that she was closer in proximity to it, and she came and gave him grief, pushing this matter and forcing until he finally relented and just gave the ball to her. And we look at that and we think, what kind of a person is this? What a twisted individual. The poor boy there, turned out it was his birthday. He gets game ball on his birthday and some crazy woman comes demanding it. And you think, what kind of a person? Of course the whole country now is going after this woman. It’s the worst act. You talk about ruining your life in one moment. She’s gonna be looking over her shoulder for a long time.

And sometimes we read, we look at Jacob’s life and we see it like, there’s no redeeming this action. What kind of a man is this? But God redeemed him. Maybe you’re that kind of a person. You have a past you’re not proud of. God redeems. He redeems.

This redemption, of course, first is mediated by the angel of the covenant. “The Angel which redeemed me from all evil.” Oh, what truth is here? I do not have time to deal with this, extrapolate this, but this angel of the covenant keeps appearing. He appeared there at Mount Moriah, met with Abraham. He appears later before Moses at the burning bush. The angel appears before him. And Jacob says, I’ve met with this angel too. And he had. Hosea makes it clear that that which he wrestled with, the one he wrestled with was that angel of the covenant.

And this angel then is the one who does the redeeming. The angel redeems. He doesn’t just come in a theophany to reveal God. He is the Redeemer of His people. And in the fullness of time was come, God sent forth this angel of the covenant. He took our nature. He was born of the Virgin Mary without any sin, either in his conception or in his life, he went to the cross to redeem.

That’s the whole message. Preacher, what’s the Bible about? It’s about God redeeming lost and fallen sinners and restoring what was lost in their cataclysmic fall and disobedience. Redeeming. “Redeemed, I love to proclaim it. Redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. Redeemed and so happy in Jesus, his child, and forever I am.” Redeemed. “The Angel which redeemed me.” Oh, he needed to be redeemed. So do you.

And we come this morning to sit at this table and we think of his great redemption. We have emblems that point right to the fact that he came into this world, took our flesh, shed his blood to redeem us. It’s the message, a message of redemption.

But also, as we see this gratitude for a glorious deliverance is not only mediated by the angel of the covenant, it is measureless in its extent. “The Angel which redeemed me from all evil.” Oh, everything, everything. I don’t know all that he had in his mind. Maybe he thought of Esau’s wrath. It was evil that was coming at him. Laban’s deception. The other experiences of shame concerning Dinah, the sorrow of Rachel’s death, the grief of Joseph’s over two decades disappearance. That was an evil. And yet at the end of it all, he says, “The Angel which redeemed me from all evil.” Oh, it covers everything. The moral, the circumstantial, the hostility of others towards him is measureless. He’s redeeming us from all evil.

Now, the one that we need to be most concerned about, of course, is our own evil. And Jacob was redeemed from that. His sins were washed away. They were delivered. He looked and he believed. As his grandfather rejoiced to see Christ’s day and saw and was glad, so did Jacob.

And so he desires, he desires that these grandsons of his would know, experience the blessing of his own testimony. Paul would write near the end of his death in 2 Timothy 4, “The Lord shall deliver me from every evil work, and will preserve me unto his heavenly kingdom.” That’s not New Testament, that’s exactly what Jacob was describing as well. He will preserve me. He will deliver me from every evil work and preserve me unto his heavenly kingdom. That’s what he does. He saves, he keeps.

We talk about the preservation of the saints. Sometimes it’s referred to as the perseverance of the saints. The saints persevere. Yes, they persevere because they’re preserved. And Jacob knew it. He redeemed me from all evil. All of it, all that past, all that guilt, all that shame.

Christian, Christian, I don’t care what it is that Satan brings into view, I’m telling you today, oh listen, how stained your life may be, the blood of Jesus is the great stain remover. You name it. You relive it, you lament over it, and then you carry it into the arms of your Redeemer, that it might be expunged by His precious blood. “He hath blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions.” “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.”

So you put your arms around them all, all those sins, all that evil, all that evil, and you dump them there at the cross and see the power of Jesus Christ to pardon and forgive. That’s great. There’s no greater message than this. This is a message for every season of life. That is why Jacob can summarize his whole testimony in this language and communicate it as the very blessing, his desire toward his grandsons. “The God which fed me all my life long unto this day, the Angel which redeemed me from all evil.”

You see it? He fed me, he redeemed me. That’s it. He shepherded me, he redeemed me, what great gospel themes they are. Christ the shepherd, Christ the Redeemer. Here Jacob, all these millennia back, pondering and delighting and rejoicing and here we are singing about it and reveling in it and pondering over the same thing.

So believer, you look back over your life and you see, just whittle it all down. What has God done for you? What has He done for you? He has shepherded you every step of the way, making provision. And He’s redeemed you from all evil. Oh, even when you thought you were over that sin, you thought that was now historic, that was in your past, I’ve gotten deliverance over that. And then it goes and raises its head up into your life again, and you yield to temptation and you think to yourself, how, how, how? And Satan comes and says to you, oh yes, you thought you had victory over that. You thought it was gone, it would never come again. But ah, you see, you’ve given in to it, and doesn’t that show you that maybe you were never saved at all?

You know what you do right there in the end? You do exactly what you did the first time. You do the same thing. You come to the blood of Jesus. You run, you run into that fountain filled with blood, drawn from Emmanuel’s veins. And you experience that sinners plunge beneath that flood, lose all their guilty stains.

And that’s then what we want for our children and our grandchildren, isn’t it? Oh, you older ones, you know it. Oh, that he would be their shepherd. And oh, that he would be their redeemer. That’s all I ask, what I want for my children.

So you take your own history and testimony. Summarize it like Jacob. And you see that this is the blessing. Bless the lads. This God who I know feeds and redeems. Bless these whom I love. That’s how gratitude governs hope. There’s no sinner worse that you know well than yourself. And yet he shepherded you and he redeemed you. And so you look at them and you say, if he can do it for me, he can do it for them. May the Lord answer our prayers for our children.

Let’s bow together in prayer. Seek the Lord.

As we come to the table, I want you to know that a greater than Jacob is reaching out His arm, placing His hand upon you to bless you this morning. He will bless you. Here at this table, He will bless you.

Lord, we ask, help us to reflect upon our lives and to see how faithful a shepherd thou hast been, and how wonderful a Redeemer thou hast been. We thank thee for thy Son, our Lord Jesus. We pray that thou wilt help us to behold him now, to sit at his feet, to worship him in the beauty of holiness, and see the great plan of redemption weaved and planned by thee. Worked out by Christ, applied by the Spirit, encourage us around this table, we ask in Jesus’ name, amen.