Latest / Reformed Thinking / God Goes Down with His People: Divine Presence and Covenant Promise (Genesis 46:1-4)

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God Goes Down with His People: Divine Presence and Covenant Promise (Genesis 46:1-4) · Reformed Thinking

• 0:00
  Welcome to reformed thinking. So I want you to put yourself in
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  a very specific situation for a minute.
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  Just imagine you are standing at the absolute physical boundary
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  of the known world. Right, the edge of everything,
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  you know, Yeah. And behind you lies a lamb that
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  is utterly devastated by a severe, life threatening famine.
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  The ground is totally cracked, the crops have turned to dust,
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  and starvation is a daily terrifying reality for you and
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  your family. It's a totally desperate
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  situation. It really is.
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  Now ahead of you lies a vast foreign Pagan empire.
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  It is a place of strange gods, immense wealth and terrifying
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  military might. And you know you are not a young
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  man in this scenario. Exactly.
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  I mean, add this to the picture. You are 130 years old.
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  You are battered by a lifetime of grief, deceit and crushing
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  sorrow. But then you get this news.
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  Yeah, you received the most staggering news imaginable.
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  Your favorite son, well, the boy you thought was ripped to shreds
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  by wild animals decades ago is alive.
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  And not just alive, but he is ruling that foreign empire.
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  It would just break your brain. Truly.
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  And wagons loaded with provisions paid for by your son
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  are waiting right there to cure you across the border.
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  So do you rush across that line to get food and throw your arms
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  around your boy? Human nature says yes.
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  But do you stop? Today we are doing a rigorous
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  deep dive into the source material covering Genesis
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  chapter 46 verses one through 4. And our mission for this deep
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  dive is to understand precisely how the Almighty directs the
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  steps of His people. We want to see what happens when
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  His meticulous Providence seems to conflict violently with His
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  prior promises. Right, because this text
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  operates as an absolute corrective for you, the
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  listener, especially if you are currently facing terrifying
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  transitions or if you find yourself relying on modern
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  pragmatism to make your daily decisions.
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  I mean, the scene you just painted captures the agonizing
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  tension resting on the patriarch's shoulders.
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  Jacob, whom God has renamed Israel, has packed up his entire
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  household. We are talking about 70 souls,
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  right? Yeah, 70 souls, along with all
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  their livestock and earthly possessions.
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  They're entirely mobilized. The famine is quite literally
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  starving Canaan to death. And those wagons sent from Egypt
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  by Joseph stand in the dust as visible, undeniable proof of
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  physical deliverance. They do, yet Jacob brings this
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  entire massive caravan to a grinding halt at Beersheba.
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  Let's talk about Beersheba for a second.
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  That is the southernmost outpost, correct?
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  Right. It is the final sliver of
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  habitable land before the legal, unforgiving Negeb Desert.
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  And beyond that desert is the heavily fortified Egyptian
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  border. So he stops there, and he waits.
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  He does, and to understand the massive theological weight
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  crushing down on Jacob in this moment, well, we have to look at
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  the historical precedent of his own family.
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  This goes back to his grandfather, right?
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  Yes, in Genesis chapter 12, his grandfather Abraham faced a very
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  similar famine in this exact same geographical region.
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  Abraham, relying strictly on human reasoning and physical
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  sight, fled to Egypt to find food.
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  And that unauthorized migration resulted in a total moral
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  catastrophe. It absolutely did.
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  Abraham lied about his wife Sarah, a plague struck Pharaoh's
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  house, and Abraham acquired an Egyptian servant named Hagar.
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  That single decision birthed centuries of agonizing conflict.
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  Wow. And then it happened again with
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  his father. Didn't.
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  It right later in Genesis chapter 26, Jacob's own father,
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  Isaac faced another severe famine.
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  Isaac was tempted to go to Egypt, but God explicitly,
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  categorically prohibited him from crossing that border.
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  God actually commanded him to stay in the land of Canaan.
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  Yes, he did, and Jacob knows this history.
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  The weight of these prior commands is just paralyzing him
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  at Beersheba. I think anyone listening and put
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  themselves in those shoes though.
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  I mean, if you have a starving family and someone offers you a
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  massive job with unlimited resources in another city,
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  fleshly logic says you pack the moving truck immediately.
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  You do not hesitate. Right.
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  You look at the starving children, you look at the
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  guaranteed food supply, and you conclude that the visible
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  circumstances are screaming at you to go.
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  It seems so obvious. So Jacob pausing here is
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  actually wild. Why would he hesitate when the
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  physical reality of his situation is so undeniably
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  desperate? Because it defies all natural
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  earthly reasoning to just park the wagons at the border and sit
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  there. It totally defies earthly
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  reasoning, but that is because Jacob is operating under a
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  different jurisdiction. Let's unpack that In the Ancient
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  Near East, there was an intense, crippling terror associated with
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  leaving the geographical territory of your local deities.
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  Right, because to cross a national border was to place
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  yourself under the jurisdiction of foreign hostile gods.
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  But for Jacob, the issue is vastly more severe than cultural
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  superstition. His hesitation is rooted in the
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  fear of abandoning the Abrahamic covenant.
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  Because God had promised the specific dirt of Canaan to
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  Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Spot on.
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  Egypt was an idol worshipping polytheistic culture that was
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  completely antithetical to the worship of Jehovah.
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  Moving an entire covenant community into a Pagan empire
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  without explicit declarative divine authorization is the sin
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  of dangerous presumption. He knows he cannot just presume
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  God is OK with it. Right.
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  Jacob recognizes that his intense emotional desire to see
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  his son and his desperate physical need for food while
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  they must bow entirely to divine revelation.
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  He cannot rely on assumptions. He cannot read the tea leaves of
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  favorable circumstances and conclude that God is blessing
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  the move. Because the wagons are not the
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  voice of God. The famine is not the voice of
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  God. Wow, he must have the spoken
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  word of the Creator before he takes a single step outside the
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  borders of the promised inheritance.
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  Exactly. Or I should say that is it
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  precisely. So Jacob draws this line in the
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  sand and says I am not moving without a word.
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  That is a massive gamble. It really is.
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  What if God just stays silent? But that agonizing hesitation,
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  that strict refusal to move on assumption alone, leads directly
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  to his physical actions at the border.
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  The text says that Israel packed up all he had and went to
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  Beersheba and offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac.
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  The text deliberately points out that he offered sacrifices.
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  He is not just pausing to think, he's instituting formal worship.
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  And the Hebrew text here is intensely revealing, isn't it
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  it? Is the phrase used Is Yezbach
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  zebekim? This is not a silent wish
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  whispered into the wind. What does it literally translate
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  to? It denotes the strict
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  slaughtering of animals. It is formal, bloody
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  substitutionary worship. Wait, hold on, let us breakdown
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  substitutionary for someone who might not be familiar with the
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  theological jargon. You mean the animal is taking
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  the place of the worshipper? Yes.
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  The core concept of substitutionary worship is that
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  the Sinner deserves death, but God provides an instant victim
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  to take that penalty. So blood is being spilled on the
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  altar at the border of the promised land.
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  Right. The animal dies so the
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  worshipper can approach a holy God, and Jacob is approaching
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  the specific divine tribunal that forbade his father Isaac
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  from entering Egypt. By invoking the God of his
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  father Isaac, he is legally and theologically referencing that
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  prior prohibition. He is.
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  Furthermore, the text identifies him as Israel.
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  In this verse, he's acting not as a lone, frightened
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  individual, but as the federal head of the Covenant people.
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  Let us clarify federal head as well.
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  When you say federal head, you mean Jacob isn't just making a
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  career choice for himself? Right, He is acting like a
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  president or a monarch signing a treaty that binds millions of
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  his descendants. If he messes this up, the whole
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  nation pays for. It that is the perfect way to
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  phrase it. The entire future of the chosen
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  nation rests on the outcome of this sacrificial worship.
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  So he brings the bloody sacrifice to acknowledge that
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  his life, his family and his future belong entirely to the
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  Sovereign Lord. He is seeking a new decree for a
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  new historical epoch, but he approaches the throne through
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  the required substitutionary means.
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  You know, think about how drastically this rebukes modern
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  culture. In our current era, and
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  particularly within the seeker sensitive movement, decisions
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  are evaluated almost exclusively by numerical growth.
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  Or ease of execution Or financial prosperity.
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  Yeah, if a church or an individual sees an open door
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  that leads to more resources, bigger crowds or less friction,
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  the immediate assumption is that the Almighty has ordained it.
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  We look at the wagons from Egypt.
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  We see the grain and we declare it a blessing.
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  But we never stopped at Beersheba to slaughter the
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  animal. We never pause to ask if the
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  visible prosperity is actually a test of our obedience to the
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  prior written commands of Scripture.
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  You are hitting on a massive theological critique of the
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  doctrine of human autonomy and free will theology.
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  True biblical faith does not Sprint ahead of the sovereign.
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  True faith waits for the decree. Right.
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  Jacob demonstrates the lost doctrine of holy restraint.
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  He brings his intense, burning desires to the altar.
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  The desire to survive, the desire to embrace his long lost
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  son. Yes, and he subjugates them
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  entirely to the Creator. Human autonomy demands the right
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  to define its own path based on perceived advantages.
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  It looks at the famine and says I must survive, therefore I am
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  justified in doing whatever it takes.
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  But the Patriarch operates differently.
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  He recognizes that survival and rebellion is infinitely worse
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  than starvation and obedience. Wow, that is a heavy reality.
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  The sacrifices at Beersheba declare that God retains
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  absolute ownership over the geography, the timing, and the
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  physical survival of His elect. Jacob effectively says, if you
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  do not command me to go, I will sit here in the dirt of Canaan
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  and starve with my family, because your word is of greater
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  value than Egyptian grain. And because Jacob assumes this
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  posture of total submission at the altar, the heavens do not
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  remain silent. Because he waits, the Almighty
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  speaks. The text tells us that God spoke
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  to Israel in visions of the night and called out his name.
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  Jacob, Jacob and Jacob responds. Here I am.
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  The text specifies that God spoke in visions of the night,
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  which in the Hebrew is Merillo. What is happening in this
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  specific midnight encounter? Well, the staggering weight of
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  this encounter is locked within that double vocative.
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  You mean saying his name twice? Jacob.
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  Jacob. Yes, in the original Hebrew,
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  Jacob. Jacob Throughout the entirety of
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  biblical history, a repeated name from the Almighty always
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  signals an urgent, redemptive historical intervention.
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  Oh, like when God calls out Abraham?
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  Abraham at Mount Moriah. Right to stop the knife from
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  falling on Isaac. We also see it at the burning
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  Bush when he calls Moses, Moses. And on the Damascus Rd. with
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  Saul. Saul.
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  Spot on. The creator of the cosmos is
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  arresting the attention of his finite creature, but notice the
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  specific name used. The narrator just called him
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  Israel in verse one, his exalted covenant name, but God calls in
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  Jacob. That is fascinating, isn't it?
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  God changed his name to Israel years before this.
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  Calling him Jacob almost feels like a step backward.
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  Because Jacob literally means deceiver or supplanter.
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  Why would God use the old name? It highlights unmerited,
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  sovereign grace. God is meeting the frail,
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  sinful, fearful man precisely where he is.
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  He does not demand that Jacob summon up heroic courage before
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  he speaks to him, no. He addresses the man in his
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  weakness, and Jacob's immediate response is Hainini, which
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  translates to Here I am, or behold me.
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  This is the syntax of absolute unconditional surrender.
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  It is the language of a servant presenting himself for duty,
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  offering no conditions, no negotiations and no demands for
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  a sign. OK, let us bring this into the
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  modern day. Since God spoke through visions
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  in the night here, shouldn't believers today be looking for
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  dreams? You mean waiting for whispers in
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  the dark when making big life altering decisions?
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  Yeah, like if I am standing at a crossroads in my career or
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  facing a terrifying medical transition, should I expect the
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  Almighty to wake me up in the middle of the night with a
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  vision to tell me which way to go?
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  That is a critical question, and it requires A rigorous
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  cessationist argument, which the sources layout clearly.
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  Let us breakdown cessationist for the listener.
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  What does that mean in plain English?
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  Cessationism is the theological understanding that certain
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  miraculous gifts and direct spoken revelations ceased after
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  the foundation of the early church and the completion of the
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  Bible. So this specific historical
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  epoch, the patriarchal era, required direct visionary
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  revelation because the written Canon of Scripture did not yet
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  exist. Right.
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  God was managing the affairs of redemptive history through these
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  localized specific interventions, but today
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  believers possess the completed sufficient 66 books of
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  Scripture. Relying on subjective mysticism,
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  waiting for an inner voice, or following claimed extra biblical
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  prophecies is a dangerous rejection of sola scriptura.
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  It abandons the objective rock of the written word for the
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  shifting sands of human imagination and neurological
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  misfirings. We find our declarative
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  directions strictly in the written word.
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  So when you face a terrifying transition today, you do not
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  search the shadows of your bedroom for a vision.
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  You open the pages of your Bible.
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  Yes, the Spirit illuminates the objective text to guide your
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  conscience. Seeking novel revelation today
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  is not a sign of advanced spirituality.
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  It is actually an insult to the sufficiency of the revelation
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  already provided. Yeah.
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  It's completely correct. That makes total sense, and
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  having arrested Jacob's attention and secured his total
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  submission through the Word, God immediately addresses the
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  crippling emotion that is threatening to paralyze the
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  patriarch. God says I am God, the God of
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  your father. Do not be afraid to go down to
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  Egypt, for there I will make you into a great nation.
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  God introduces himself first, the Mighty One, the God of your
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  father, and then he issues a strict negative imperative.
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  Altira, do not fear. That sequence is absolutely
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  crucial. Before God issues the command,
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  He establishes his identity. The command to not fear is
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  logically grounded in God's immutable identity.
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  Right. God does not tell Jacob.
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  Do not fear because the Egyptian economy is booming, or do not
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  fear because Joseph has a lot of political capital.
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  He says do not fear because I am the mighty one.
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  Fear in this context is exposed as a wicked failure to trust the
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  sovereign decree. It is a failure of theology.
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  Wow. When we succumb to paralyzing
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  fear about our circumstances, we are functionally denying the
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  omnipotence and the faithfulness of the guy who governs those
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  circumstances. Jacob is terrified of Egypt, and
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  rightly so from a human perspective, but the Almighty
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  overrules that human terror with a declaration of his own
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  character. And then God introduces the
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  Crucible, he declares, For there I will make you into a great
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  nation. In the Hebrew that is GAOI gadal
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  asim kasham. The nation will not be built in
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  the safety of Canaan, it is going to be built in the
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  oppressive grip of Egypt. Think about the modern
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  prosperity gospel for a second. It tells us that God's will
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  always leads to comfort, to safety, to flourishing bank
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  accounts, and to geographical stability.
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  But right here, God is explicitly ordering his covenant
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  people to March directly into a Pagan empire that will
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  eventually enslave them, whip them, and murder their infants
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  for 400 years. How on earth is that a blessing?
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  Yeah, how can we reconcile the goodness of God with a command
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  to walk into a 400 year furnace of affliction?
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  This text entirely dismantles prosperity theology.
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  God operates on a macro level of meticulous Providence that
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  defies human categories of comfort.
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  God uses Egypt as a massive sociological incubator.
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  A sociological incubator. That is an incredible phrase
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  from the sources. Walk us through how that
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  actually functioned on the ground.
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  Well, why Egypt? Because the text later reveals
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  in verse 34 that Egyptians fiercely loathed shepherds.
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  It was an abomination to them, yes.
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  Because of this cultural prejudice, the Israelites were
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  strictly isolated in the land of Goshen.
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  And this isolation was a severe mercy.
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  It prevented the disastrous moral intermingling that was
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  already destroying the covenant family in Canaan.
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  If you look back at Genesis 38, Judah is intermarrying with
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  Canaanites, visiting prostitutes, and adopting the
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  wicked practices of the land. The holy seed was on the verge
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  of being completely assimilated and eradicated by Canaanite
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  culture. That is wild to think about.
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  So the very thing that made the Egyptians despise them, their
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  job as shepherds was actually God's invisible force field
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  protecting them from assimilation.
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  Absolutely. God meticulously orchestrates a
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  global devastating famine, and he raises up a Pagan Egyptian
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  empire strictly for the purity and preservation of his elect.
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  He drives them into Egypt to build a wall of cultural hatred
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  around them, ensuring they multiply into a distinct nation
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  of 1,000,000 without blending into the Pagan world.
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  The affliction of Egypt was the precise instrument God used to
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  forge the nation. True blessing is not the absence
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  of suffering. True blessing is the sovereign
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  preservation of the soul, even if it requires 4 centuries of
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  physical bondage. You know, a command to walk into
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  a dark, terrifying future knowing that it will lead to
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  bondage would be completely unbearable on its own.
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  It would crush the human spirit. So God immediately follows this
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  terrifying directive with an unbreakable oath.
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  He says I myself will go down with you to Egypt, and I will
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  also bring you up again, and Joseph's hand shall close your
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  eyes. The syntactical weight of this
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  verse is staggering. The Hebrew phrase is enoki
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  aired. I myself will go down.
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  The Almighty uses the independent pronoun enoki
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  alongside the verb. This guarantees unmediated
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  personal divine accompaniment. The transcendent Creator of the
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  universe is binding himself to the dirt, the dust, and the
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  agonizing travels of a frail old man.
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  God stacks three specific future indicative promises here to
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  shield Jacob's mind from despair. 1st His absolute
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  personal presence in the foreign land. 2nd The far future
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  resurrection and return of the nation encapsulated in the
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  phrase Gamelo, which means surely bring you up.
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  And 3rd, the highly specific, tender, intimate promise that
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  Joseph's own hands will physically close Jacob's eyes on
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  his deathbed. I want to connect this directly
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  to your own fears of death and suffering.
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  Addressing the listener right now.
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  Notice carefully what God does not promise here.
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  All right, the guarantee is not an escape from hardship.
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  Jacob will physically die in Egypt.
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  He will never see the land of Canaan again.
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  While drawing breath, his descendants will become
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  brutalized slaves. The true comfort of the
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  Christian faith is not that you get a free pass from the agony
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  of a fallen world. The true comfort is that the
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  creator of the universe walks directly into the blazing
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  furnace alongside you. When you lie on your own
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  deathbed, the promise is not that the cancer will vanish.
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  The promise is that Enoki aired. He himself goes down into the
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  valley of the shadow of death with you.
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  That contrasts violently with liberal theology and secular
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  philosophies that try to solve the problem of human suffering
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  through sociological frameworks. Or political action or
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  psychological coping mechanisms. Secularism views history as a
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  series of random, chaotic tragedies.
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  Liberal theology views God as a sympathetic bystander who wishes
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  things were better but cannot intervene.
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  But this text proves that history is a meticulously
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  managed theater where the Almighty enacts His decrees with
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  surgical precision. God is not reacting to the
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  famine. He decreed the famine.
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  God is not surprised by Egypt. He prepared Egypt.
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  And death itself cannot annul the promise Jacob will die.
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  But God states I will surely bring you up again.
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  The decree outlives the patriarch.
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  The bones of Jacob will be carried out, and the millions of
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  his descendants will March out in the exodus.
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  This specific pattern of descending into a dark place to
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  escape death, only to be gloriously brought up later is
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  not just a historical anomaly terminating with Jacob.
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  It points directly, undeniably, to the absolute center of all
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  human history. Let us draw the redemptive
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  historical lines from Genesis 46 straight into the New Testament.
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  If Jacob dies in the desert, what happens to the rest of the
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  biblical timeline? Does the story just end there?
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  Because if Jacob stays in Canaan and starves to death, the tribe
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  of Judah is entirely eradicated from the face of the earth.
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  If Judah dies, the Messiah cannot be born.
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  The lineage of David is wiped out.
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  This passage is not just a heartwarming story about a
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  family reunion. It documents the fierce,
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  sovereign, militaristic protection of the promised seed
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  from Genesis chapter 3, verse 15.
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  The Almighty is moving global empires to ensure that the
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  Virgin Mary will one day hold the Savior of the world in
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  Bethlehem. The typological pattern here is
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  undeniable and rigorously defended by the sources.
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  Let us define typological pattern really quickly.
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  That is, when a historical event in the Old Testament acts as a
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  shadow or a preview of what Christ will do in the New
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  Testament. Correct.
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  It is history operating as prophecy.
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  We must look at the prophet Hosea Chapter 11 verse one,
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  where God declares out of Egypt I called my son.
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  Historically, that referred to the nation of Israel coming out
• 20:59
  of bondage. But in Matthew chapter 2, verse
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  15, the Gospel writer, under divine inspiration, applies that
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  exact text to Jesus Christ. When King Herod unleashes the
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  slaughter on the infants of Bethlehem, Joseph is warned in a
• 21:11
  dream to take Mary and the Christ child and flee and.
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  Where do they go? To Egypt.
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  Christ is taken down to Egypt to escape the sword, just as Jacob
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  went down to Egypt to escape the famine.
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  Jesus is the true and perfect Israel.
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  Where the national Israel murmured, rebelled, and
• 21:26
  worshipped golden calves in the wilderness, Christ obeyed the
• 21:30
  Father. Florida State.
• 21:31
  He completely fulfilled the law. The descent into Egypt and the
• 21:36
  subsequent calling out of Egypt is a divinely ordained pattern
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  stamped onto the fabric of redemptive history, culminating
• 21:44
  in the Incarnate Sun. The parallels with Joseph
• 21:47
  himself are also staggering. Think about Joseph as a type of
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  Christ. Joseph was the beloved son of
• 21:53
  his father. He was rejected by his own
• 21:55
  brothers. He was sold for pieces of
• 21:57
  silver. He descended into the dark pit
• 21:59
  of the earth. And then he was raised up to the
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  right hand of the supreme ruler of the empire, where he was
• 22:04
  given all authority to dispense the bread of life to starving
• 22:08
  nations. The brothers who betrayed him
• 22:09
  had to come and bow the knee to him to receive unmerited grace
• 22:13
  in order to survive. If Joseph is the historical
• 22:15
  picture of Christ providing the bread of life, does that make us
• 22:19
  Jacob and his sons in this scenario?
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  Are we the ones completely destitute, starving in the
• 22:23
  famine of our own sin, relying strictly on unmerited grace to
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  survive the wrath to come? That is precisely the
• 22:30
  theological reality. It highlights the absolute total
• 22:33
  human inability of the Sinner. Jacob could not farm his way out
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  of the famine. He could not buy his way out.
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  He was completely destitute. Just as Jacob relied wholly and
• 22:43
  exclusively on Joseph's unmerited grace and abundant
• 22:46
  provision to survive physical death, sinners rely strictly on
• 22:50
  the imputed righteousness and the substitutionary atonement of
• 22:53
  Christ to survive eternal death. We bring nothing to the table
• 22:57
  but our starvation. Christ himself made the ultimate
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  terrifying descent. He did not simply go down into a
• 23:03
  geographical Egypt, He went down into the infinite, crushing holy
• 23:07
  wrath of God on the cross. He bore the penalty for our
• 23:11
  rebellion. He died, was buried, and
• 23:13
  descended into the grave so that he could brought his elect up in
• 23:16
  a triumphant physical resurrection.
• 23:18
  The guarantee to Genesis 46 I will surely bring you up again
• 23:21
  finds its final absolute consummation when the trumpet
• 23:25
  sounds and the dead in Christ are raised and perishable.
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  Let us concisely recap the massive progression we have
• 23:31
  unpacked today. We started with the reverent
• 23:33
  pause at the border of Beersheba.
• 23:35
  The refusal to move based on physical circumstances alone.
• 23:38
  We saw the bloody sacrifice of submission.
• 23:41
  We witnessed the Patriarch bowing entirely to the
• 23:44
  declarative word of the Almighty.
• 23:46
  We examine the stripped rejection of fear grounded
• 23:49
  entirely in the immutable identity of the Creator.
• 23:52
  And we beheld the staggering, ironclad reality of divine
• 23:55
  presence in the darkest, most oppressive places imaginable.
• 23:59
  The challenge for you today is to aggressively abandoned
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  fleshly pragmatism. Do not evaluate your life, your
• 24:07
  decisions, or your spiritual health by visible earthly
• 24:10
  metrics. The presence of wagons and grain
• 24:13
  does not mean God is blessing a decision.
• 24:15
  And the presence of a severe famine does not mean God has
• 24:18
  abandoned you. You must trust the meticulous,
• 24:20
  granular Providence of the Creator, who sovereignly rules
• 24:24
  over every famine, every disease, every financial
• 24:26
  collapse, and every Pagan empire.
• 24:28
  Submit your desires to the written Word of God and know
• 24:31
  that if you are in Christ, the Almighty Himself goes down into
• 24:34
  the furnace with you. I want to leave you with a
• 24:36
  final, lingering question to ponder long after this audio
• 24:39
  finishes. Consider the borders in your own
• 24:41
  life right now. The terrifying transitions, the
• 24:44
  medical diagnosis, the financial ruins, or the impossible
• 24:47
  relational trials that paralyze you with dread.
• 24:50
  What if the very location or circumstance you are desperately
• 24:52
  trying to avoid, the very Egypt you are praying for God to
• 24:55
  deliver you from, is the precise, sovereignly decreed
• 24:58
  incubator where the Almighty intends to multiply your faith,
• 25:02
  burn away your idolatry, and display His highest eternal
• 25:05
  glory?