Podcast appearances and mentions of jacob israel

After the tragic events surrounding the assault of Dinah and the violent retaliation that followed, Jacob's life is once again turned upside down. In mercy and patience, God repeats His command for Jacob to go to Bethel, not just to visit, but to dwell there and build an altar. In obedience and perhaps an increase in faith and trust, Jacob purges his household of foreign gods and idols and takes responsibility for his family's spiritual welfare. At Bethel, God appears again, just as He had before, and reaffirms His covenant promises. God renames Jacob “Israel” again, a reminder not of God's forgetfulness, but of His persistent grace. Once more, we see that God's love and mercy far outweigh our sins. The Rev. Dr. John Rickert, retired pastor in South Carolina, joins the Rev. Dr. Phil Booe to study Genesis 35. Genesis isn't just the start of the Bible; it's the foundation of everything. Creation, sin, judgment, grace, covenant, and promise all take root in this remarkable book. The stories are ancient, but their truths are eternal. In this new series from Thy Strong Word, Pastor Phil Booe and his guests walk verse by verse through Genesis, exploring how God reveals Himself as Creator, Judge, and Redeemer. From the grandeur of the cosmos to the struggles of ordinary families, Genesis introduces us to a God who speaks, acts, and keeps His promises. So, whether you've read it a hundred times or are just now cracking it open for a serious look, this series will help you see Genesis with fresh eyes—and a deeper faith.

Dag studenten van de Nederlandse taal!In 1919 ging de Nederlandse schrijver Jacob Israel de Haan naar Palestina. Wat gebeurde daar? Luister en leer meer.Als je vragen hebt of opmerkingen, stuur me eenbericht via instagram en volg me ook op Youtube en Patreon. Deze podcast isbedoeld als ondersteuning van Nederlandse les.Word lid van de ⁠Patreon⁠ van de podcast voor 5 euro per maand, dan krijg je twee extrapodcasts en alle transcripties met extra oefeningen en woordenlijsten voor elkepodcast!Kom ook eens op ⁠YouTube⁠ kijken. Wil je met andere studenten praten?Dat kan op het forum.#dutch#dutchlanguage #nederlandsleren #nederlandsetaal #Nederlands #learndutch#studydutch #nt2 #docentnederlands #Holenderski #dutchteacher #dutchtoday#nederlands #inburgeren #Голландский #Flemenkçe #Holandés #荷蘭語 #オランダ語 #डच #голландська #هولندي

While Pope Francis simmers in the Ninth Circle with the Rev J. Iscariot (perhaps the first Evangelical Zionist), I thought it wise to warn Christians how to avoid becoming a Judeo-Christian.  And how to “come out of her,” as it is said. Consider this a cheat sheet rather than a treatise: 1) The state called Israel today, on the shore of the Mediterranean, is not the same as the ancient children of Israel. 2) Jesus Christ knew what the prophets said, His Spirit inspired the Prophets. So when Jesus Christ says that Jews are the devil's spawn He does not contradict Himself. 3) Modern Judeo-Christians reject Christ's statement that Jews are the devil's spawn and Satan's synagogue and replace Christ's Theology with a Jewish fable, which is that Jews are God's “chosen.” 4) Jews are liars (John 8:44, Rev 3:9). So why would a Christian ever adopt a Jewish interpretation of anything? 5) “Israel” (the dirt in the Middle-East) is not “Israel” the offspring of Jacob. 6) Living in the dirt called Israel (in the Middle East)   does not make anyone the offspring of Jacob/Israel. 7) Many different ethnicities converted to become Jew in the Bible, starting with Esther 8:17, proceeding to Matthew 23:15, and continuing in the Book of Acts. This continues today — Ivanka Trump became Jew recently. Centuries ago the wild tribe of Khazarians converted en-mass and became Jews and they make up about 80% of all Jews today, they call themselves Ashkenazi Jews. (Askenaz was a tribe for Japheth, not of Shem). The sons of of Esau (Edom) converted en-masse to become Jews about a century before the time of Christ; King Herod was an Edomite Jew — they make up a good portion of the “Sephardic” Jews. 8) What happened, then to the tribes of Israel? The Tribes of Israel dispersed to Europe and then converted to Jesus Christ as Europe became Christendom. What proof? a.  The Jews themselves testify that the the Dispora went to Europe: John 7:35 b.  When the Europeans came to see Jesus, Jesus said now was His own time for glory. John 12:23 c.  European man, Pontius Pilate, declared Jesus Christ innocent three times. d.  The Jews disowned Jesus Christ, demanded HIs crucifixion, and said they had “no King but Ceasar.” John 19:15 e.  Jesus Christ said that He came “only for the lost sheep of the House of Israel.” Jesus did not abandon Israel. f.  In order to reach Israel, He sends the Apostles away from Jerusalem in order to reach the Dispersion of Israel. g.  In order to reach the Dispersion of Israel, who went to Europe, every book of the New Testament is written in the premier European language (Greek). The New Testament is ONLY in that European language because that is where the Twelve Tribes disperse to. h.  There is NO epistle to a non-European place name; there is no Epistle to Africa or China or the New Word. i.  There is no epistle to Jerusalem or Judea or Samaria. j.  Every Epistle is written to European places (Rome, Corinth, Thessaloniki, Galatia, etc. or refers to European churches and Christians. k. Epistles written to individuals (like Timothy) refer to Europen places). Timothy Himself had a European father. Titus is a European name. l. All Seven of the Churches of the Revelation are European — they were cities founded and colonized by the Greeks and Romans. m. There is no prayer for the “Peace of Jerusalem” in the New Testament; rather, every Epistle has a prayer for the peace of the Church or individual Christians. Jerusalem, the dusty city, is desolate. n.  As the Twelve Tribes converted to Jesus Christ (which they have over the last two-thousand years) they ‘have already come” to Mount Zion and the heavenly Jerusalem. (Hebrew 12:22). They should look for no other home than that. o.  Romans 11: 25-26: A partial hardening of Israel (NOT the Jews) happened until the fullness of the the Gentiles come in and in that manner, or by this way, all Israel is saved: “And in this way all Israel will be saved” Romans 11:26 ESV p.  Jews are hostile to all nations and ethnic groups (1 Thes 2;15). Jews are not a blessing to the nations. It is the Christian European nations that brought the Blessing of Jesus Christ to the entire world: Africa, China, and the Western Hemisphere. This the Jews did not do; rather, the Jews prevent people from hearing the Gospel in order that they may be saved (1 Thes 2:16, and the entire book of Acts). q. Noahs' prophecy in Genesis 9:27 is linked to Romans 11:26.  The Europeans would dwell under the tent/cover/salvation brough via Shem's family. There is nothing that suggest that “Jews” are God's chosen people. Israel? Yes. But modern Jews are not “Israel,” rather they are liars, frauds and identity thieves (John 8:44, Rev 3:9). Christians are warned in Titus about Jewish myths (Titus 1:10-14). Claiming that “Jesus is a Jew” is one of them. Jesus is the Nazarene and a Galilean. The Father of Jesus Christ is not even remotely a Jew. Jesus Christ is the son of David and David's Lord at the same time. But reducing Jesus to a “Jew” is calling him a child of Satan (John 8:44) and a member of the synagogue of the devil (Rev 3:9, Rev 2:9). Jesus Christ is the Creator of all things. John 1 and Hebrews 1.  

Is it possible to correct your vision to a perfect state merely after meditating?Just the possibility of it sounds fantastic but very true, as Dr. Jacob Israel Liberman shares how a single session of meditation led to 20/20 vision and a far greater awareness of being able to see what's invisible to most people (due to their conditioning) this week on Spirit Gym.Learn more about Jacob's work and consulting services on his website. Find Jacob on social media via Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.Timestamps5:57 “Awareness is curative.”18:21 Despite machines telling Jacob that he had visual impairments, he could see without glasses.26:13 Thoughts, beliefs and ideas we identify as ours are reflected in our biology.29:44 Mindfulness or mindlessness?39:42 “Depth perception is about seeing deeply and that's what my life's work is all about.”48:53 People don't understand that belief means the opposite of truth.58:03 Humans are designed to see the invisible, yet the way we are conditioned blocks our sight.1:07:17 Can you hear well after taking your glasses off?1:20:00 “Knowing is different than thinking.”1:30:43 When the field of vision begins to collapse.1:35:22 “The answers come by themselves.”1:41:17 The power of experiencing something rather than reading about it.1:49:01 In an enlightened state, often, two is becoming one.2:03:39 Jacob's next book: A memoir.2:11:15 Desperation is the absence of inspiration.2:27:57 “What if our life is a prayer?”ResourcesWisdom From an Empty Mind by Jacob Liberman and Erik LibermanLuminous Life: How the Science of Light Unlocks the Art of Living by Jacob Isreal Liberman, with Gina and Erik LibermanTake Off Your Glasses and See: A Mind/Body Approach to Expanding Your Eyesight and Insight by Jacob LibermanLight: Medicine of the Future: How We Can Use It to Heal Ourselves Now by Jacob LibermanThe work of Candace Pert, Iain McGilchrist, Zhuang Zhou and Dr. Daniel SiegelFind more resources for this episode on our website.Music Credit: Meet Your Heroes (444Hz) by Brave as BearsAll Rights Reserved MusicFit Records 2024Thanks to our awesome sponsors:PaleovalleyBiOptimizers US and BiOptimizers UK PAUL10Organifi CHEK20Wild PasturesCHEK Institute HLC 1 LiveCreating and Living Your Myth online workshop We may earn commissions from qualifying purchases using affiliate links.

A Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent Galatians 4:21-31 by the Rev'd Dr. Matthew Colvin Our epistle lesson this morning comes from Galatians 4. I know that Pastor Bill preached on it just recently, but I would like to look at it too, from a different angle. It is one of the most controversial chapters in the NT, both for its view of Judaism and for its hermeneutical maneuvers. Paul is concerned for Christians in Galatia. The Judaizers were taunting Gentile Christians with the manifest visible superiority of Judaism: its splendid temple; its priesthood; its Torah; all the society's esteem and honor. And against this, what did Christians have to show? They were hiding for fear of the Jews; they were subjected to persecution and arrest; they had been kicked out of the synagogue and subjected to the ban, excommunication. Above all, there was the disgrace of worshipping a criminal who had been killed by the most shameful sort of execution, crucifixion by the Romans. All this was exploited by Paul's enemies in Galatia, the Judaizers or the circumcision party. Their strategy was to exalt themselves by trying to get the Gentiles to envy them - “They zealously court you, but for no good; yes, they want to exclude you, that you may be zealous for them.” – The verb zeloō means both to be zealous and to be jealous. Paul's enemies are behaving like spiteful middle school girls — not like the righteous women of this church, but like the ones I knew when I was in school — trying to exclude a hated rival by social shunning, in order to magnify their own status. To stop them and shut them down, Paul needs to do more than just answer their case logically. He also needs to undermine their ethos; he needs to subvert the system of value that makes their case so plausible at first glance. They are counting on Paul's readers sharing their value system. Paul wants to make sure his readers do not share it. It is a task that he undertakes in many of his letters. In Romans he addresses the Jews as those who “rest on the law, and make your boast in God, and know His will, and approve the things that are excellent, being instructed out of the law, and are confident that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, having the form of knowledge and truth in the law.” He is setting forth the Jewish system of value, the grounds of their boasting. And it was a very good grounds for boasting. The longest book in the Bible, Psalm 119, is one continuing paean of praise to the Law, the Torah. It is full of statements like, “I love thy commandments above gold and precious stones” and “The law of thy mouth is dearer unto me than thousands of gold and silver.” But Paul rips this point of boasting away by asking, “Yes, the Law is wonderful — but do you actually obey it?” In Philippians 3, Paul gathers together all the things that he could have been proud of as a Jew: “If anyone else thinks he may have confidence in the flesh, I more so: circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; concerning the law, a Pharisee; concerning zeal, persecuting the church; concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith;” That stuff that the Jews think is so valuable? Their circumcision, their membership in one of the two faithful tribes (Benjamin and Judah)? Their zeal, their lawkeeping? It's all worthless. In fact, it's so worthless that I threw it all away. I have something of real value that none of that stuff can give you. In the book of Hebrews, Paul or someone from his circles who thought an awful lot like him has the difficult task of undermining Jewish boasting about the Temple, the priesthood, and the sacrifices — a task that might seem impossible, since these things were instituted by God and everybody knew it. The temple was imposing, gleaming with gold. Paul calls it a “tent”, the sort of makeshift, flimsy structure that you go camping in, and you lie down in it, and there's nothing but a thin layer of cloth between you and the outside, and if it's too windy, the thing is in danger of collapsing; and anyway, it's that way because you're going to take it down and pack it up anyway. That's what he thinks of your fancy temple. Besides, the real temple is in heaven. Your tent is made by human hands; the only Temple worthy of the name is made by God. The priests' ministry was observable; they were dressed in robes; everyone could see their work, and that they had been instituted by God. Paul says, “They keep on dying, which is proof that their work isn't much good. And they have to offer sacrifices for their own sins, not just the people's.” The sacrifices were there for all to see: they had been commanded by God himself. The blood of the sacrifices flowed continually at the temple, on a daily basis. Paul says, “See how they have to do it over and over again? That's because it doesn't really work. They need Jesus. That's the only sacrifice that works, and that's why Jesus only needed to be sacrificed once.” Yes, Paul is a genius at overthrowing his opponents' strongest arguments. He loves to take their most powerful evidence and use it against them. He is a master of rhetorical jujitsu, throwing his opponents to the mat by using the momentum and force of their own attacks. He is like Elijah in the contest with the prophets of Baal, one man against 450, “And he put the wood in order, cut the bull in pieces, and laid it on the wood, and said, “Fill four waterpots with water, and pour it on the burnt sacrifice and on the wood.” Then he said, “Do it a second time,” and they did it a second time; and he said, “Do it a third time,” and they did it a third time. So the water ran all around the altar; and he also filled the trench with water.” In Galatians 4, it is a terribly difficult rhetorical task that Paul faces: his opponents appear to have the Torah, the OT, on their side. It does, after all, command circumcision; it does prohibit the eating of unclean foods; it does tell the stories of Ishmael, Moab, and Ben-Ammi, the ancestors of the rival nations surrounding Israel, all of whom are deprecated as the offspring of incest, slave marriage, or concubinage. These stories account for the origins of the Gentiles around Israel. Israel itself, however, was descended from Isaac, the legitimate son and heir of Abraham. These stories underscore the chosenness of Israel, and the fact that these other nations were not chosen. “Jacob have I loved, and Esau have I hated” was not just a statement about two sons. It was a statement about two nations: the Edomites and Israel. It says that Israel is the covenant people that God loves, and Edom is not. So it is Paul's opponents, not Paul, who have the easier case to make here: Jewish people are (most of them) descended from Jacob (Israel) and Gentiles are not. And they might have made this case most plainly from the story of Isaac, Abraham's son miraculously conceived by the power of God in Abraham's old age. This is strong rhetorical ground for the circumcision advocates in Galatia. Circumcision is commanded in the Torah for God's people. It is breathtakingly audacious for Paul to argue that a proper understanding of the Torah will lead you to the conclusion that circumcision doesn't matter. Paul calls the Torah a yoke of bondage. I'm not sure we appreciate how bold a move this is. The exodus was Israel's independence day. It's when they came out of slavery in Egypt and became a free nation. Paul says that the circumcizers advocating Torah-obedience in Galatia are like those who wanted to go back to Egypt. It would be like an American saying that the Declaration of Independence is the document in American history that made everyone slaves. But that is what Paul says about the Torah, given on Mount Sinai: that covenant has led to the present state of affairs: Jerusalem that now is, and is in bondage with her children. Now, we know from elsewhere in Paul's letters, especially Romans, that he considered the Law a good gift of God and the reason why the Law was now leading to slavery was because Israel was using it wrongly, not because the Law was bad. The slavery results from Israel's sinfulness, not something wrong with the Law. But here, he doesn't go into that, because he is focused not on the Law as it was given by God, but on the Law as it was used rhetorically by his opponents. You have heard the expression, “He is wrapping himself in the flag”? That is what the Judaizers in Galatia are doing with the Torah: using it as a uniform to distinguish true, Jewish Christians from second-rate, Gentile Christians. And Paul says: You think that you look cool with your bling; but it's really chains to keep you enslaved. Above all, Paul takes the bull by the horns and uses an audacious maneuver to deal with the Judaizers' most powerful weapon: the taunt of illegitimacy. That is the point of the Ishmael story as used by Jews: the Ishmaelites, the Arabs, are illegitimate offspring of Abraham, just as the Moabites and Ammonites were stigmatized as the offspring of Lot's daughters after the destruction of Sodom. Only Jews were the children of Isaac; they had been called into existence by the power of YHWH himself. They were not the product of an ill-conceived attempt at surrogate pregnancy, and with a slave wife. Be aware that the Judaizers have centuries and centuries of social and legal precedent for their view. That line that Paul quotes from Sarah — “Cast out the bondwoman and her son, for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman” — that was a line that Paul's opponents loved to quote. When Sarah said it to Abraham, she wasn't just being mean. The lawcodes of Ur-Nammu and Lipit-Ishtar, from around the same time as Abraham, contained rules about exactly this sort of situation, and they are formulated with exactly the same sort of phrasing: “If a man has a wife a free woman who has born children to him, and he takes a slave wife and she also bears children to him, the children of the slave wife shall not share in the inheritance with the children of the free wife.” Sarah is saying, “Husband, you know the law from when we lived in Ur. This is what we have to do.” And the heretics in Galatia were taking up this two-thousand year tradition of legal and social stigma against children of slavery, and applying it to Gentile Christians. It's a powerful tool of shaming and social marginalization, and it is based on a very foundational text of the covenant: the story of the birth of Isaac. Both the Judaizers and their Galatian Gentile victims believed this text was the word of God. Both believed that the Jews were descendants of Isaac. Paul knows all this. He has chosen to fight them on their strongest ground; he gives them home field advantage. He pours water so that it fills up the trench. And then he incinerates their whole argument like Elijah. The stigma of illegitimacy? He turns it back on the Judaizers. They are the bastards now, the “children of the flesh”; they are “in bondage” with their slave-mother. The Gentile Galatian Christians? They are “children of the promise.” And just as it was back then, the child of the slave woman is persecuting the child of the promise. The two sons are marked not by their circumcised or uncircumcised status but by the slave/free polarity that distinguishes their mothers. Paul has to reach a little bit here. The LXX Greek translation that Paul used here doesn't actually say, “persecuting”. What the LXX says is that Sarah “saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian who had been born to Abraham playing with her son Isaac (paizonta meta Isaac tou huiou autes).” That's the most straightforward way to take it. But the word “playing” can also mean “mocking”. And that's probably how Paul took it. And then he magnifies it into the sibling rivalry from hell by glossing “mocking” as “persecuting”. Where did he get this from? It is transferred from the situation between the Judaizers and the Gentile Christians in Galatia. By casting the rivalry as a conflict between the flesh and the promise, Paul undercuts the Judaizers' use of the Torah. That is why he says, “These are two covenants” — the boldest piece of clever interpretation in the Bible. It is all part of his rhetorical strategy concerning the Torah that he has laid in the previous chapter, Galatians 3. The two covenants are NOT the Old and the New. They are the Torah covenant and the covenant with Abraham (which turns out to find its fulfillment in Christ). And the covenant with Abraham is more original, more foundational, more important, more primary. The law was added 430 years later. The Torah was a stop-gap measure to keep things under control until the fulfillment of the covenant with Abraham. And for Paul, Gentile Christians are that fulfillment: “in you, all the nations — the ethnê — shall be blessed.” This aligns the Gentile Christians with the whole purpose of the Covenant with Abraham, and means that Paul can cast them as the true children of the promise. They are citizens of the only Jerusalem that counts, the “Jerusalem above”. And by citing the line of Sarah, “cast out the bondwoman and her son, for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the free woman”, Paul makes clear what the stakes are here: the Judaizers and those who trust in the Torah to be their badge of membership in the covenant are not merely mistaken. They are Ishmaels and they will not inherit. They will be cast out. The Gentile Christians — and faithful Jewish Christians who did not pressure them to get circumcized — will be counted as true members of the covenant with Abraham, and the Judaizing circumcision-pushers will not. Who are the bastards now? Paul revels in what God has done. It is perfectly in accordance with his way of working: "He catches the wise in their own craftiness, and the counsel of the cunning is brought to a quick end.” (Job 5). The Judaizers have fallen into the pit that they have dug: their taunts of illegitimacy rebound on their own heads; the glory of the title of “true children of Abraham” is wrapped around the Gentile believers whom they had stigmatized. Paul's jujitsu victory is complete and total, because it is the victory of Christ, who led captivity captive and triumphed by being crucified. In the end, Paul's fierce warfare over the Galatians has to do with vindicating the honor of Christ, with proving that He has really accomplished all that Paul says he has; with showing that the covenant with Abraham is truly fulfilled in Jesus, because he is the yes and amen. To go back to the Torah is to turn the clock back and engage in historical reenactment; to live a life of live-action-role-playing instead of reality. It is a costly and foolish attempt to gain privilege and honor by denying the completeness and finality of Jesus' work, and attempting to supplement it with another identity in terms of the Torah. The true Exodus is via Christ, not via the Torah. That is part of the meaning of our gospel lesson this morning from John 6. Here the true bread from heaven, Jesus, works a miraculous feeding like the manna of old. But he does it not in order to cause the crowd to envy his disciples; he has no desire for his followers to act like the Judaizers, zealous courting others to provoke them envy. No, his disciples are to be the means by which the bread of life is given to the multitudes — and the two small fish, symbol of Gentiles and of fishing for men, of the fulfillment of Jeremiah 16:16: “Behold, I am sending for many fishers, declares the Lord, and they shall catch them.” In the end, the nations are to be blessed through the disobedience of Israel. Our time is short, so I will not try to prove this exhaustively, but I want you to see the pattern: Joseph's brothers disobey and sell him into slavery, so that he is carried off to a Gentile land, Egypt, and becomes assimilated to Egyptian ways. But God works it all out so that Joseph's imprisonment in an Egyptian prison works out for the salvation of Joseph's brothers and all Egypt, “to save many alive.” When Jesus touches dead bodies, a woman with a 12 year flow of bleeding that made her unclean, or a leper, what happens? The usual laws of uncleanness work backward: rather than becoming unclean, Jesus makes these people clean. That is the way God has designed the exile of Israel to work: rather than the exiled members of Israel becoming lost and destroyed, they have mingled with the nations and thereby brought it about that in order to keep His promises to Israel, God will save the Gentiles as well. As a result, “In Abraham's seed, all the nations shall be blessed.” Isn't it funny how Satan's schemes always backfire? He is truly the Wile E. Coyote of the Bible. He will have his church be Israel for the sake of the world; thus we are to be true heirs of Abraham, fulfilling the purpose for which He was called. Amen.

Jacob's wrestling match; Jacob's sons' rebellion; Intermarriage?; Family lineage; Melchizedek? (Righteous king of Salem); Walking with many souls; Building altars; Binding together by love; Forgiveness; Wedding feast?; Birthright; Shem's long life; Jacob's sight; Jacob -> Israel, Abrahm -> Abraham; Joseph's path; Learning to be Israel; Bondage?; Human resources; Tax exemptions; Jesus' appointed 70; Sanhedrin; "Beersheba"; Corrupt judiciaries; are you in bondage?; Gen 49:1; Last days?; Ex 1:5; The way of Moses; Freewill offerings; Fair shares?; Problems exist over time; Bible about government; Ex 16:3; Fleshpots?; Civil government; Cities of blood; Jacob's warnings to his children; Ruben; Unstable water?; Leban's deals; resh-aleph-hey-beit; Treachery; Biela?; Envy of power; Cities of refuge; Simeon and Levi - instruments of cruelty (Hamas); mem-kuf-resh-resh-tav-hey-mem; Opposing faith; Oppression; Circumcision?; Socialism; "Instrument" - kuf-lamad - "vessel"; NGO?; Temples and daily bread; Oppression/Leaven; Judah - praise; No force allowed; Matt 20:25; Luke: 22:25; Covetous practices; Scattering; Zebulon; Issichar; Burying talent; Dan - judge; Gad; Asher; Naphtali; Joseph - blessed; Benjamin - wolf; Jacob's death and burial; The burial cave; Gen 13:2; Abraham's wealth; Sacrifice of the Red Heifer; Courage; Paying your way; Recompence; Ex 20:23; Ex 32:3 golden calf; What's God's plan for you?; Prov 1:10 One Purse; First fruits; Burning up for God; Levites = living stones of the altar; Social safety net; Charity alone; AOC Speech?; Ignorance; Foolishness; 1 Sam 8; John the Baptist; Exercising authority; Saul's folly; Useful idiots; Doing what Christ said; Bribery; Communist manifesto; False Christians and Jews; Learning righteousness; Seeing God's message; Power of choice; Honor the Lord.

Follow my new podcast here: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | All platforms  This month, come join me each morning in a daily morning prayer & activation, designed to align your soul, mind, and body with the Infinite Spirit.

Welcome back to Nephilim Death Squad! In this mind-bending episode, hosts David Lee Corbo (The Raven) and Top Lobster sit down with the one and only Jacob Israel—YouTube creator, former WWE head writer, and seeker of truth. From unraveling the simulation we might be living in to exposing the spiritual battles behind wrestling's biggest moments, Jacob drops bombshells you won't believe. Ever wonder how the "Right to Censor" shook up WWE or why politics feels like a scripted theater? We've got answers.We dive deep into Jacob's wild journey: writing for The Rock and Undertaker, selling mattresses, and decoding scripture to challenge everything you thought you knew about hell, Christ, and the matrix we call reality. Is Elon Musk setting up a prison planet? Are we on the event horizon of a black hole? And what's with that Jacob's Ladder escalator to the heavens? This convo goes full Nephilim—conspiracy, faith, and a sprinkle of chaos.JOIN THE PATREON FOR AD FREE EPISODES BEFORE THEY DROP AND BECOME PART OF THE GROWING COMMUNITY OF DANGEROUS RTRDs ON TELEGRAM:https://www.patreon.com/NephilimDeathSquadFIND US ON SOCIAL MEDIA:NEPHILIM DEATH SQUAD:Nephilim Death Squad | ALL LINKShttp://nephilimdeathsquad.comNephilimDSquad@Gmail.comX Community: Nephilim Watchhttps://twitter.com/i/communities/1725510634966560797TOPLOBSTA:(@TopLobsta) / Xhttps://x.com/TopLobsta(@TopLobsta) / Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/toplobsta/TopLobsta.com / Merchhttps://www.toplobsta.com/RAVEN: (@DavidLCorbo) / Xhttps://x.com/DavidLCorbo(@ravenofnds) / Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/ravenofnds/DANGEROUS RTRD'S: Dangerous RTRD Linkshttps://linktr.ee/DangerousRTRDsWEBSITES:Nephilim Death Squad | Merchhttps://www.toplobsta.com/pages/nephilim-death-squadnephilimdeathsquad.com OUR SPONSORS:15% OFFRife Technology – Real Rife Technologyhttps://realrifetechnology.com/PROMO CODE : NEPHILIM FOR 10% OFFParasiteMovie.com - Parasite Cleanse and Detox – Parasite Moviehttps://www.parasitemovie.com/PROMO CODE: NEPHILIM 10% OFFBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/nephilim-death-squad--6389018/support.

What Joseph was really up to; Understanding Israel; Peculiar people; Genesis 44 review; Inspiring humility; Confronting yourself; Family = building block of society; "Religion"; Abraham's faith; Tribute; Judah's pleas; Awakening from darkness?; Insurrectionist Jesus?; Welfare snares; Col 3:5 Covetousness is Idolatry; One purse?; Cities of blood?; Socialism; Conforming to Christ; Eph 5:5; Israel going into bondage; Bible connections; What made Jacob Israel?; Hearing the cries of our brothers; Sacrificing for our father; 1 Sam 8; Hebrew alphabet; Gen 45:1; Joseph revealing himself to his brothers; "behal" = Troubling; Harbingers; Advocating righteousness; Divine spark (yod); Being Israel; Famine; Knowing to whom to listen; Sitting in darkness; Corruption; Calling no man "father"; Social safety net; Generational kingdom; Mayfly example; Drawing near Joseph; Understanding inspired by God; "Goshen" = drawing near; God working through Joseph; Doing what Jesus said; Gift-giving; Chapter 46 - Tribes of Israel; Bondage of Egypt; Benjamin's bigger share; Your place in History; USAID; Follow the money; Offices of power; Seeking God's kingdom and righteousness; Deut 17:14; No king in Isreal; Freewill offerings only; Multiplying horses?; Returning to Egypt; Your choice for king; The solution; Melchizedek; Peace vs force; What to change to; Jeremiah 42:13; Social security; Unjust weights and measures; Golden calves; Acts 7:38; Gal 5:1; Civil cauldrons; Unrighteous mammon; Mt 20:25; Loving your neighbor; Mark 10:42; Blind leading the blind; Who is your father?; Lk 22:25; Sureties for debt; Be willing to sacrifice for others.

Understanding Numbers 1 – A Simple Explanation What is Numbers 1 about? Numbers 1 is the first chapter of the book of Numbers in the Bible. It tells the story of how God instructed Moses to take a census (a count) of the Israelites while they were in the wilderness. This happened after they had escaped from Egypt and were preparing to enter the land God had promised them. Key Points from Numbers 1: 1.God Commands a Census •God tells Moses to count all the men who are 20 years old or older and able to fight in the army. •The counting is done by tribes, which were named after the 12 sons of Jacob (Israel). 2.The Twelve Tribes are Counted •Each tribe had a leader who helped with the counting. •The tribes were: Reuben, Simeon, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Ephraim, Manasseh, Benjamin, Dan, Asher, Gad, and Naphtali. •The total number of fighting men counted was 603,550. 3.The Levites Were Not Counted •The tribe of Levi was not included in the census because God gave them a special job—to take care of the Tabernacle (a holy tent where God's presence was). •Instead of fighting in the army, the Levites were responsible for the worship and service of God. Why Is Numbers 1 Important? •It shows that God was organizing the Israelites before leading them into the Promised Land. •It teaches obedience—Moses and the leaders followed God's instructions exactly. •It reminds us that everyone has a specific role—some were warriors, while the Levites were caretakers of worship. How Does It Apply Today? •God is a God of order, and He prepares people for what is ahead. •Just like the Israelites had different roles, we all have unique purposes in life. •Following God's guidance leads to success and protection. Numbers 1 may seem like just a list of names and numbers, but it teaches us trust, organization, and obedience—things that are still important today!Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/sendme-radio--732966/support.

Sunday Morning Message - "Exodus: Setting the Stage"In this message from January 19, Pastor Kyle begins a series walking through the book of Exodus with a message titled, "Setting the Stage". Exodus is so essential to the story of God and the first place where some aspects of our faith come into clarity. Themes like….Redemption, Deliverance, Hope, Listening to God, Experiencing His Presence, Covenant Keeping… Moses inspired by the Holy Spirit intentionally starts with Jacob-Israel to remind the reader of the context of the story.

https://storage.googleapis.com/enduring-word-media/ewpodcast/genesis44.mp3 Welcome to part 48 in Pastor David Guzik's in-depth study of the book of Genesis, teaching here through chapter 44. Joseph, as an Egyptian official, puts his brothers to the test in order to determine their hearts and attitudes towards family, their youngest brother Benjamin, and their father Jacob/Israel. The post Genesis 44 – Joseph Tests His Brothers appeared first on Enduring Word.

Full Text of ReadingsFeast of the Holy Innocents, martyrs Lectionary: 698The Saint of the day is Holy InnocentsThe Story of the Holy Innocents Herod “the Great,” king of Judea, was unpopular with his people because of his connections with the Romans and his religious indifference. Hence he was insecure and fearful of any threat to his throne. He was a master politician and a tyrant capable of extreme brutality. He killed his wife, his brother, and his sister's two husbands, to name only a few. Matthew 2:1-18 tells this story: Herod was “greatly troubled” when astrologers from the east came asking the whereabouts of “the newborn king of the Jews,” whose star they had seen. They were told that the Jewish Scriptures named Bethlehem as the place where the Messiah would be born. Herod cunningly told them to report back to him so that he could also “do him homage.” They found Jesus, offered him their gifts, and warned by an angel, avoided Herod on their way home. Jesus escaped to Egypt. Herod became furious and “ordered the massacre of all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity two years old and under.” The horror of the massacre and the devastation of the mothers and fathers led Matthew to quote Jeremiah: “A voice was heard in Ramah, sobbing and loud lamentation; Rachel weeping for her children…” (Matthew 2:18). Rachel was the wife of Jacob (Israel). She is pictured as weeping at the place where the Israelites were herded together by the conquering Assyrians for their march into captivity. Reflection The Holy Innocents are few in comparison to the genocide and abortion of our day. But even if there had been only one, we recognize the greatest treasure God put on the earth—a human person, destined for eternity, and graced by Jesus' death and resurrection. The Holy Innocents are the Patron Saints of: Babies hbspt.cta.load(465210, 'd99a67d0-a0c4-4bd7-a44f-8222783cfe9f', {"useNewLoader":"true","region":"na1"}); Saint of the Day, Copyright Franciscan Media

Question: What can you tell us about a group who say they are Christians, but tell us that Paul's epistles should not be in the New Testament? Also, they say that we must learn the Scriptures through Hebrew eyes and culture. Finally, the names “Hebrews,” “Israel,” “Israelites,” and “Jews” have different meanings in today's context and that “Israel” and “Jews” don't mean the same people.Response: From what you have said, you very likely have met a cultist who is presenting himself as the authority when it comes to learning Scripture. The intent to help Christians understand better the Scriptures through Hebrew eyes and culture is not in itself “bad.” But, if any group places emphasis upon these aspects, such as how someone is saved, we're only seeing through their eyes and their assumed culture.To them the Bible “must” be in error, because it contradicts what they teach. Yet, if they won't include Paul as a part of the New Testament, consider what Peter said in 2 Peter 3:16: “As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they doalso the other scriptures, unto their own destruction” (emphasis added).Further, the Lord has promised to preserve His Word, as in Psalm 12:6-7: “The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation forever.”Regarding your question about the meaning of “Hebrews,” “Israel,” “Israelites,” and “Jews,” all speak of the descendants of Jacob (Israel). The Lord distinctly said that “...though I make a full end of all nations whither I have scattered thee, yet will I not make a full end of thee: but I will correct thee in measure, and will not leave thee altogether unpunished” (Jer 30:11).As to their importance as “signs of the times,” the prophet Joel recorded that “I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land” (Jl 3:2; see also Zechariah 7, 8, 12, 14, etc.). Finally, the apostle Paul also noted that God was far from finished with the nation of Israel (Rom 11:1-25).

Jacob Israel

If you practice this excerpt, you can expect a change in your life… Neville Goddard Lecture: February 12, 1963“But the prophecy is that the victory belongs to the younger; it belongs to Jacob, and Jacob is your ability, your skill, in rearranging things so as to determine or predetermine an outcome. ​ How would I feel tonight were I… and I name it?​ What would I see were it true? Well then, see it.​ How would I feel were it true? Well then, feel it.​ What would I say to my friends were it true? Well then, say it. Not audibly, for this being is a psychological being; you say it inwardly. So you talk to yourself inwardly as though you spoke outwardly.​ You carry on these inner mental conversations from premises of fulfilled desires. And you talk to all your friends from these premises. That is Jacob.”Join us:Mon-Fri 7am EST Morning INSPIRATION Mon-Fri 10pm EST Soothing Bedtime LectureSaturdays 3pm EST Traditional Chinese Medicine home remedies$60 One Time Fee***Exclusively On the FANBASE APP***https://linktr.ee/PositivelyAnge?utm_source=linktree_profile_share

Can I take a moment to testify? Dead Religion is the greatest threat to the soul. Rabbinical Judaism's master deception denies access to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Israel). They are forbidden from reading or discussing key scriptures like Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53. Yet, modern Zionists often try to bridge the gap between believers in Yeshua, the Messiah, and a false religious system designed to divert the nation from true repentance and forgiveness found only in Jesus (Yeshua). The death, burial, and resurrection of Yeshua, the Messiah 2,000 years ago, are undeniable in three ways: 1. Historically, 2. Through prophetic fulfillment in scripture, and 3. By the transformative life changes witnessed by every born-again believer whose sins are washed away. Christ's sacrifice was once and for all, and He loves every Jew as he calls the whole world to repentance.http://member.bulldozerfaith.com/givepaypal.me/bulldozerfaith https://cash.app/$bulldozerfaith Daily Devotional and teaching with Kenny Russell - Get connected with our Podcast Channelshttps://feeds.captivate.fm/what-then-shall-we-sayEmail kenny@bulldozerfaith.comNews Magazine - https://member.bulldozerfaith.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/BulldozerFaith-Monthly-Newsletter-SEPTEMBER-24.pdf

Today we'll see where Jacob Israel goes with his new limp. Israel (person aka Jacob) brings Israel the new nation (16 people) to Israel (place). All three of the promises to his grandfather Abraham are starting to come together.  There, he builds an altar.  It's a ME altar.  It is the altar OF ME, but it is not the altar FOR ME.  It is the altar FOR GOD, who has been so gracious TO ME. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNijvDWAn2Wv2KFun2AnvCA

Dr. Jacob Israel Liberman's discoveries in the fields of light, vision, and consciousness have been enthusiastically endorsed by luminaries in the fields of health, science, and spirituality from Deepak Chopra and Bruce Lipton to Eckhart Tolle. His newest book, Luminous Life: How the Science of Light Unlocks the Art of Living, reveals how light guides our every step, so we may fulfill our reason for being.    Website: https://www.jacobliberman.org/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrJacobLiberman  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drjacobliberman/  Contact: info@jacobliberman.org Books: Sold through Amazon Light: Medicine of The Future  Take Off Your Glasses  See Wisdom From An Empty Mind Luminous Life: How The Science Of Light Unlocks The Art Of Living   Our Sponsors: - Caldera Lab is the leader in men's skincare and is here to save the day. Use our exclusive code KKP at calderalab.com/KKP to enjoy 20% OFF their best products. - GO to MagicBag.co which is DOT CO, and use code: KKP at checkout! - Monetary Metals is providing a true alternative to saving and earning in dollars by making it possible to save AND EARN in gold and silver. Click the link below for a great discount! monetary-metals.com/kkp   This is your last chance to take a leap of transformation with Fit For Service. Our last Sedona summit is happening in September.  Would love to see you there!   Connect with Kyle: I'm back on Instagram, come say hey @kylekingsbu Twitter: @kingsbu  Fit For Service Academy App: Fit For Service App  Our Farm Initiative: @gardenersofeden.earth  Odysee: odysee.com/@KyleKingsburypod  Youtube: Kyle Kingbury Podcast  Kyle's Website: www.kingsbu.com - Gardeners of Eden site   If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe & leave a 5-star review with your thoughts!   We always love to hear feedback and are interested in what you want to learn. Reach out to us on social media!

Our chapter (30) in Jeremiah is intriguing. The last verse challenges our thinking, “The fierce anger of the LORD will not turn back until he has executed and accomplished the intentions of his mind.  In the latter days you will understand this.” In the chapter's opening verses Jeremiah is told, “Thus says the LORD … write in a book … behold the days are coming … when I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel … I will bring them back to the land that I gave to their fathers …” [v.2,3].  The verses in between challenge our understanding.  We wish some of them were at least a little clearer, but many are quite plain.  Israel is told, “Because your guilt is great, because your sins are flagrant, I have done these things to you.” [v.15]. Their ungodly ways were flagrant in the days of Jeremiah as they were also in the days of Jesus.  Then the prophet's vision changes “… all who prey on you I will make a prey.  For I will restore health to you, and your wounds I will heal, declares the LORD, because they have called you an outcast: ‘It is Zion, for whom no one cares' “ [v.16,17], and ultimately; “and you shall be my people and I will be your God.” [v.22] However, notice the indications that the climax will be traumatic!  “Alas!  That day is so great there is none like it! It is a time of distress for Jacob (Israel) yet he shall be saved out of it.” [v.7].  Are we about to see this happen now?  Only then does “the fierce anger of the LORD … turn back.” [v.31]  All this – and more – is remarkable in revealing “the intentions of his mind” that will be understood “in the latter days” by those who diligently read God's Word. But we must never miss the personal nature of the teaching of the Lord Jesus; yes, it is personal to each of us,  far more than these prophecies are, imploring us to enter into and maintain a personal relationship with him – and as a result, when “the storm of the LORD … will burst upon the head of the wicked” [v.23] those who “do his just commands, seek righteousness … may be hidden on the day of the anger of the LORD.” [Zeph.2 v.3] It is of no value to “understand” events in these “latter days” unless it has changed us personally so that we are responding to the call “Who is on the LORD's side? Come to me” [Exod. 32 v.26]. This is a cry that has been made to every generation since Moses originally uttered these words.  Follow this link and find more TFTD's at the bottom of the post. https://christadelphianvideo.org/tftd/todays-readings-and-thought-for-august-9th-in-the-latter-days-you-will-understand/ Subscribe to the newsletter on the homepage to receive the TFTD in your inbox each day.

An old friend sent me a note after my husband’s death: “[Alan] was . . . a grappler with God. He was a real Jacob/Israel and a strong reason why I am a Christian today.” I’d never thought to compare Alan’s struggles with the patriarch Jacob’s, but it fit. Throughout his life, Alan struggled with himself and wrestled with God for answers. He loved God but couldn’t always grasp the truths that God loved him, forgave him, and heard his prayers. Yet his life had its blessings, and he positively influenced many. Jacob’s life was characterized by struggle. He connived to get his brother Esau’s birthright. He fled home and struggled for years with his kinsman and father-in-law Laban. Then he fled Laban. He was alone and afraid to meet Esau. Yet he’d just had a heavenly encounter: “The angels of God met him” (32:1), perhaps a reminder of his earlier dream from God (28:10–22). Now Jacob had another encounter: all night he wrestled with a “man,” God in human form, who renamed him Israel, because he “struggled with God and with humans and [overcame]” (32:28). God was with and loved Jacob despite and through it all. All of us have struggles. But we’re not alone; God is with us in each one. Those who believe in God are loved, forgiven, and promised eternal life (John 3:16). We can hold fast to Him.

The Complete Works of Zacharias Tanee Fomum on Leadership (Volume 1) contains five titles. This volume undertakes a study of the leadership substance and styles of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob (Israel), and Joseph, son of Jacob. Abraham leads from a position of the Father, while Isaac leads from a position of the Son at rest and at peace. Jacob transforms from the worldly and carnal into Israel, the spiritual and divine. He signifies how a believer can go from carnal to spiritual.

The prophetic books in Scripture can be best read in context of whether they were written before, during, and/or after the Assyrian exile and the Babylonian captivity. Prophecy and promises were given to us in those moments on the historical timeline of the nation of Israel and Judah. The whole house of Israel had been divided into two kingdoms after King Solomon, and we saw how quickly both kingdoms fell into apostasy. The prophets were sent to bring awareness to the spiritual condition of the people and give warnings of repentance. There are three major words that Episode 5 is going to elaborate on. Those words are:Covenant, divorce, branches and covenant (again). Yahuah's people broke their covenant with Him, which were His commandments. He forgave them over and over, yet they kept committing spiritual adultery. Eventually, He divorced the northern Kingdom of Israel and cut off her branches. Restoration came through our Messiah, to bring us a new covenant, in which Yahuah would, through the power of the Set-Apart Spirit, write His commandments on our heart so that we would learn how love and obedience work together. There is a promise of restoration talked about in the Old Testament that points to the regathering of the nation of Israel and Judah back to the land Yahuah promised them through their ancestors. This is something that hasn't happened yet. For those who are “Israel,” we get to take part in those promises. This great restoration will happen when our Messiah returns. However, the majority of teachings today teach us that the church is separate from Israel, or that the church replaced Israel. The problem with that separation, is this:1.     That teaching is not found anywhere in Scripture2.    Believing this actually cuts ourselves off from the prophecies that have yet to be fulfilled. This regathering of Israel and Judah (all 12 tribes) marks the moment in time when Yahuah comes to make a full end of the nations and set His sanctuary in the midst of His people forever. He has only made this promise to the House of Jacob (Israel)—not to the Gentiles. How is one no longer a Gentile?The same way they did it in the “Old” Testament: By committing themselves to the same covenant terms and conditions as the Israelites did and becoming grafted in, as Paul beautifully confirmed in Romans 11. If you really want to believe that the Church is separate from Israel, and if you believe that the promises made to the House of Israel is entirely separate from the New Testament Church, then you have to exclude yourself from the prophecies and promises that were ONLY made to the whole House of Israel. We don't get to pick and choose what applies to us. The only choice we must make is whether or not we want to be a part of those promises. And if you want to be a part of those promises, you must understand what it means to be “Israel.”After all, when the New Jerusalem is brought down to earth, there will be 12 gates that allow entrance into the city (Revelation 21:12). Each of those 12 gates are named after the tribes of the children of Israel. If you aren't part of Israel, how will you enter? Let's clear up some confusion and take a deep dive into history and prophecy in Episode 5 of Season 4: Who is Israel? Supplemental Documents:Episode 5 TranscriptTimeline of the Prophets InfographicVersesContact me: stephanie@promise-perspective.comVisit my website: www.promise-perspective.comSupport the show

In this podcast I overviewed the amazing dating of the Hebrew Bible by the great scholar Edwin Thiele.  I mentioned in the podcast that how did I come up with the date of 1916 B.C. for the year Joseph entered Egypt at age 17.  So, as promised, this rest of this article is to give more detail on Edwin Thiele's work and how we get to these dates.  Again, this is not something I came up with.  I don't teach my opinion or my speculations as fact.    I have studied the great scholar Edwin Thiele's work on the dating in 1 Kings 6:1 …   Now it came about in the four hundred and eightieth year after the sons of Israel (Jacob's other name) came out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the month of Ziv which is the second month, that he began to build the house of the LORD Edwin Thiele's work and research is documented in his book, “The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings.” He shows that the 4th year of Solomon's reign is 966 B.C. which means the Hebrews left Egypt in 1446 B.C. (we get this by adding 966 and 480 or 966+480 = 1446 B.C. since we are going back in time).  But, how did Edwin Thiele come up with this date?  You'll hear many us this date but they will NOT know the source.  They will not be able to give you the historical research to show where this date came from its total reliability.  However, in Edwin's book this is shown.  Thiele is the one who gave us this date of 966 B.C.  Let's go see what Thiele discovered. Thiele was studying the ancient king lists of the ancient Assyrians.  In these lists, one called the Eponym Canon, references a solar eclipse in the reign of Assur-dan III in the month of Simanu.  Astronomers today easily found the date of this astronomical event as June 15, 763 B.C.  The Assyrians used this solar eclipse to give dates of the reigns of their kings dating from 892 to 648 B.C.  These king lists developed by the ancient Assyrians became their calendar.  Thiele saw that this seemed to be an accurate calendar and could be used to understand dates of events in other cultures and among other ancient peoples like the Hebrews in Israel.  But, was the Assyrian “calendar” correct?  Was it accurate?  Thiele needed to find another “calendar” that would support the dating in the Assyrian calendar. Thiele discovered another ancient writing, the CANON OF PTOLEMY, a Greek astronomer 70-161 A.D.  His writings relate to Middle Eastern history and include a very interesting event; it was a lunar eclipse that happened on March 19, 721 B.C. which was an easy date for our contemporary astronomers to determine.  This lunar eclipse and the dating used from this event in the Canon of Ptolemy result in another “calendar” if you will.  When one matches the Canon of Ptolemy with the Assyrian “calendar” one verifies the accuracy of the other.  Thiele discovered two amazing documents with two amazing astronomical events that resulted in precise dating of key events and reigns of kings in ancient time.  So, how does this help us in Bible dating? Since the Assyrian king list and its dates are now found by archaeology to be accurate we now know the exact dates of the reign of Shalmaneser III.  He reigned from 859-824 B.C.  Two of these years are critical for us.  The 6th year of Shalmaneser's reign and the 18th year.  First, let's focus on the 6th year of his reign. A tall rock with ancient writing was discovered in Turkey in 1851.  It is called the Kurkh Stele (image is public domain accessed at Wikimedia).  On this stele Shalmaneser write about the battle of Qarqar.  This battle occurred in the 6th year of his reign which now has easily been determined from the Assyrian king list as 853 B.C.  What is so awesome is on the stele the Assyrian king gives names of the kings he fought against in the battle.  Ready for this?  Here's our connected to the Bible.  Shalmaneser fought against Ahab who was married to Jezebel.  The Bible says that Ahab ruled for 22 years as we read in 1 Kings 16:29 … Now Ahab the son of Omri became king over Israel in the thirty-eighth year of Asa king of Judah, and Ahab the son of Omri reigned over Israel in Samaria twenty-two years. So, the next question is of the 22 years of Ahab's reign, when did he fight in the battle of Qarqar?  On top of that when did Ahab die?  If we knew that then we'd know then Ahab started to rule as king of Israel, the northern 10 tribes.  In the year 1846 another amazing stone was discovered.  It is now known as the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III (image is public domain accessed at Wikimedia).  On this stone pillar there is an amazing picture; the picture and description is of king Jehu kneeling and paying tribute to the Assyrian king, Shalmaneser III.  Jehu became the king in Israel 12 years after Ahad died.  Just consider 2Ki 10:35-36 … And Jehu slept with his fathers, and they buried him in Samaria. And Jehoahaz his son became king in his place. Now the time which Jehu reigned over Israel in Samaria was twenty-eight years. Jehu reigned as king for 28 years.  On the Black Obelisk Assyrian ancient records state that it was the 18th year of Shalmaneser III when Jehu paid homage to Shalmaneser.  But, the 18th year of Shalmaneser's reign from the ancient Assyrian king's list is 841 B.C.  But, Ahab fought the battle of Qarqar in 853 B.C. as we saw on the Kurkh Stele.  Subtracting 853 and 841 is 853-841=12.  There were 12 years between the battle of Qarqar and when Jehu offered tribute to Shalmaneser.  The Bible helps us with those 12 years.  First we read in 2 Kings 8:25-26 that Ahaziah the son of Ahab became king after Ahab and was king for one year.  Then in 2 Kngs 1:17 and 3:1 we find that Jehoram, the son of Ahab and Ahaziah's brother became king when Ahaziah died and was king for 12 years.  Thiele also discovered that the first year of Jehoram's reign was what is called an accession year.  He officially became king after the accession year so only served for 11 years.  So, let's put this all together.  In 841 B.C. Jehu offers tribute to Shalmaneser III as we just saw.  841 B.C. is 12 years after the battle of Qarqar in 853 B.C. in which Ahab fought.  But, Ahab is killed in another battle as one can read in 1 Kings 22:29-40.  And in the 12 years after Ahab's death his son Ahaziah reigns for 1 year and then his other son Jehoram reigns for 11 years (we're not counting the accession year).  But, Jehu becomes king after Jehoram. We know the year.  It is 12 years after the battle of Qarqar of 841 B.C.  Which means Ahab dies in 853 B.C. in the same year as the battle of Qarqar and shortly thereafter.  This is huge!!  We now have the date of Ahab's death.  Why is this so important? From this date of 853 B.C. based upon real archaeology and history and also supported by the Bible, we can now go backwards in time to Solomon.  For example, Ahab dies in 853 B.C. but reigned for 22 years.  Ahab's reign then starts in 874 B.C. when his dad, Omri dies.  But Omri was king for 12 years as we read in 1 Kings 16:23.  We go back and through other connections between the kings of Judah and the kings of Israel we come to the year when Solomon became king.  Solomon became king in 970 B.C.  Now we can take this to the verse that we first considered 1 Kings 6:1 … Now it came about in the four hundred and eightieth year after the sons of Israel (Jacob's other name) came out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign (966 B.C.) over Israel, in the month of Ziv which is the second month, that he began to build the house of the LORD If the 4th year of Solomon's reign is 966 B.C. then 480 years prior to this the sons of Jacob (Israel) left Egypt.  Moses led the Hebrews out of Egypt in 1446 B.C. that we get by adding 966+480=1446 B.C.  From the Assyrian King list that Thiele discovered we now have the precise year of the Exodus.  Once we have this date things get very interesting very fast. As an “fyi” you can study this in more depth at the following links.  These are scholarly sites that help us understand the amazing and awesome work of Edwin Thiele to gives us the dating in the Bible.  Here's the links to check out … Article 1 – great extensive summary of Thiele's work https://www.andrews.edu/library/car/cardigital/Periodicals/AUSS/1996-2/1996-2-12.pdf Article 2 – a second awesome scholarly article on the exactness of Thiele's Bible chronology and its almost universal acceptance https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1497&context=auss Let's continue and take these dates into the events of Exodus and the events in the life of Joseph.  Jacob is Israel in the phrase "the sons of Israel" so this can be understood to mean that the sons of Jacob left Egypt in 1446 B.C. and in Exo. 12:4-41 … Now the time that the sons of Israel (Jacob) lived in Egypt was four hundred and thirty years. And at the end of four hundred and thirty years, to the very day, all the hosts of the LORD went out from the land of Egypt This might be understood that Jacob (Israel) entered Egypt 430 years prior or in 1876 B.C.  All this from the dates Thiele came up with for the battle of Qarqar, Ahab's death, and the date of the 4th year of Solomon's reign. In 1446 B.C. Moses is 80 (Exo 7:6-7) and the likely Pharaoh at the time of the Exodus was Amenhotep II.  If Moses was 80 then Moses was born in 1526 B.C. and the Pharaoh then is probably Ahmoses I.  Ahmoses I defeated the Hyksos and could it be that Ahmoses enslaved the other Semites in the delta, the Hebrews, since Ahmoses needed to strengthen his northern border and stamp out the potential threat that could come from the Hebrews?  Ahmoses did build forts on his northern border.  This means he may have considered the Hebrews potential enemies since they we Semites just like the Hyksos. What better way to stamp out the threat then by enslaving the Hebrews.  Since Ahmoses I reign was probably 1570-1544 B.C. he could have put the clamps down on the Hebrews years before Moses' birth in 1526 B.C.   Returning back to 1446 B.C. and substituting the name Jacob for Israel one may conclude that Jacob (Israel and his sons) entered Egypt 430 years earlier or in the year 1876 B.C.  At this time Jacob (Israel) tells Pharaoh that he is 130 years old as found in Gen. 47:8-9.  He died 17 years later in 1859 B.C. as noted in Gen. 47:28.  Knowing Jacob's age upon entering Egypt and the year (thanks Edwin!!) we can then easily find the following ... * Jacob born in 2006 B.C. since he was 130 in 1876 * Isaac was born in 2066 B.C. since Isaac was 60 at Jacob and Esau's birth Gen. 25:26 * Since Abraham is 100 at the birth of Isaac in 2066 B.C. - as we find in Gen. 21:5 - then Abraham was born in 2166 B.C. * Abraham left Haran for Canaan when he was 75 years old or in the year 2091 B.C. as found in Gen. 12:4 Knowing the years of these events provides me with an interesting door that I have not entered yet.  If I go through the door I would be able to research what is going on in Egypt, the names of the pharaohs, and I could study the culture and history of Canaan and much more.  For example if I know the dating of when Abraham is in Canaan, might archaeology help me determine who Abimelech was that Abraham made a covenant with at Beer Sheba?  Could I determine using archaeology living conditions in the northern Negev and in ancient Hebron?   Once again taking Thiele's work and expanding its connection to the events prior to the Exodus, there is a very interesting result when this is applied to the life of Joseph.  See the chart below ... Since Jacob (Israel) was 130 when he entered Egypt in the year 1876 B.C. and died 17 year later in 1859 B.C. one can easily determine the connection between the ages of Joseph, the events in his life as found in Genesis, and the years these events would've occurred.  Use the chart above as a help as we go through the following.  Also, get your Bible handy and check the verses used. Starting in  Gen. 37:2 we find Joseph is 17 and he begins his work as 2nd in command of Egypt at age 30. He is 37 at the end of the 7 years of plenty in Gen. 41:53 and 39 or 40 in 2nd year of the famine when his brothers come to Egypt and later, probably the same year, Joseph meets his father Jacob again in Gen. 45:6, 47:9.   So, if Joseph is 39 or 40 when he meets his dad again and then Joseph is 56 or 57 when his dad dies 17 years later in 1859 B.C. we can now go back and assign years to the events in Joseph's life.  It is fascinating to consider that Joseph probably served under three pharaohs.  He started his work at age 30 in the year 1886/87 B.C. or the 12th Dynasty in Egypt.  The pharaoh in office at the time was Senusret II.  His reign ends in perhaps 1878 B.C. and Joseph would've been 38 years old and the seven years of famine would've ended.  The 7 years of famine would start 1879 or 1880 B.C. and continue into the reign of Senusret III.   See the chart below ... Above chart from Aidan Dodson, Dyan Hilton: The Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt. The American University in Cairo Press, London 2004 Joseph would serve under Senusret III (under this pharaoh all the Egyptians sold their land to the king and seemingly the government became centralized), Amenemhat III, and died in 1806 B.C. under Amenemhat IV.  Knowing the pharaohs is interesting that Senusret III took all the control away from the provincial governors in upper and lower Egypt that seems to relate to the events in Genesis where all Egyptians sold everything including their land (the possession that implies power) to Joseph (ala pharaoh).  Another fascinating thing to consider is the area of Faiyum - the amazing oasis west of the Nile.   Consider the following ... and and Accessed from the awesome and credible scholarly site on ancient Egypt -www.ancient.eu/Fayum/  It is interesting to assign actual years of the events in Joseph's life that are a result of Thiele's work as per the ancient Assyrian calendar.  When we do we see that the pharaohs connected to Joseph's reign were using the ancient area of Faiyum to irrigate and reclaim agricultural land.  Why?  What's the big deal?  Is there some reason to reclaim needed agricultural land and provide irrigation for other areas?  Perhaps this is connected to Joseph and 7 years of plenty and the 7 years of famine.  And when we assign years we find that the pharaoh who would've been the pharaoh in the 7 years of famine where the land all came under the control or the king is Senusret III.  And he historically did something similar as we find in the account in Genesis.  The last thing that was very exciting is extending the dating into the years before the Exodus and into the life of Joseph.  We find that Joseph died in 1806 B.C. (chart above) and this was 280 years before Moses was born in 1526 B.C.    However, Jacob and entered Egypt when he was 130 (1876 B.C.) , he died when he was 147 (1859 B.C.) when Joseph was 56/57 years old.  This means the "sons of Israel" or Jacob and his family lived for 17 years in Egypt until Jacob dies.  Joseph was 57 (I will use 57 for ease of calculation) when Jacob dies and lived another 53 years when he died at 110 as we read in Gen. 50:22.  That means the "sons of Israel" or the "sons of Jacob" lived another 53 years in Egypt until Joseph died for a total of 70 years.  But, Joseph died 280 years before Moses was born.  Finally, Moses and the Hebrews leave Egypt when Moses was 80.  So, the Hebrews lived 70 years in Egypt till Joseph died, another 280 years till Moses was born, and 80 more years till they left Egypt or a total of 430 years.  This is the exact number as found in Exod. 12:40.  I have always asked myself where did this number come from?  No one has explained it to me.  And then I extended Thiele's work into the Exodus and beyond.  I was "blown away" that Thiele's work verified Exod. 12:40 by me taking his work and assigning years to the Bible events.  This was so so exciting to say the least.  And we now read Gen. 39:1-4 knowing the year is actually happened, Joseph enters Egypt in 1916 B.C.   Rev. Ferret - who is this guy?  What's his background?  Why should I listen to him?  Check his background at this link - https://www.dropbox.com/s/ortnret3oxcicu4/BackgrndTeacher%20mar%2025%202020.pdf?dl=0  

Jacob Israel

Full Text of ReadingsFeast of the Holy Innocents, martyrs Lectionary: 698The Saint of the day is Holy InnocentsThe Story of the Holy Innocents Herod “the Great,” king of Judea, was unpopular with his people because of his connections with the Romans and his religious indifference. Hence he was insecure and fearful of any threat to his throne. He was a master politician and a tyrant capable of extreme brutality. He killed his wife, his brother, and his sister's two husbands, to name only a few. Matthew 2:1-18 tells this story: Herod was “greatly troubled” when astrologers from the east came asking the whereabouts of “the newborn king of the Jews,” whose star they had seen. They were told that the Jewish Scriptures named Bethlehem as the place where the Messiah would be born. Herod cunningly told them to report back to him so that he could also “do him homage.” They found Jesus, offered him their gifts, and warned by an angel, avoided Herod on their way home. Jesus escaped to Egypt. Herod became furious and “ordered the massacre of all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity two years old and under.” The horror of the massacre and the devastation of the mothers and fathers led Matthew to quote Jeremiah: “A voice was heard in Ramah, sobbing and loud lamentation; Rachel weeping for her children…” (Matthew 2:18). Rachel was the wife of Jacob (Israel). She is pictured as weeping at the place where the Israelites were herded together by the conquering Assyrians for their march into captivity. Reflection The Holy Innocents are few in comparison to the genocide and abortion of our day. But even if there had been only one, we recognize the greatest treasure God put on the earth—a human person, destined for eternity, and graced by Jesus' death and resurrection. The Holy Innocents are the Patron Saints of: Babies hbspt.cta.load(465210, 'd99a67d0-a0c4-4bd7-a44f-8222783cfe9f', {"useNewLoader":"true","region":"na1"}); Saint of the Day, Copyright Franciscan Media

Throughout the Old Testament, God made certain promises to the patriarchs (Abraham, Issac, and Jacob/Israel) that their descendants, the nation of Israel, longed to see fulfilled. These promises centred on having a holy Homeland and a Messiah. Over the centuries that followed their expulsion from their Land which sent them into exile into Babylon initially and then into Persia, the Israelites became known as Jews. Their expectations of how these divine promises would be fulfilled then became greatly embellished with the promise of a homeland being interpretted to mean that the Romans would be overthrown and expelled out of ‘their' land, by the promised messiah who would then have to be a powerful military commander. These embellished expectations then gave rise to the Jewish sect known as the Zealots; and, prior to the Zealots it led various other unsuccessful Jewish revolts. But when the messiah actually appeared, He was not the military commander that the Jews were expecting. How could this carpenter's son from Nazareth be the heir to King David's throne and the one who would ultimately fulfil the promises of God to Israel?

Jacob Israel

Jacob Israel

Jacob Israel

Refugees are in the news. I'm sure they wish they weren't. Around 35 million refugees exist today. That's the equivalent of the combined populations of Ireland, Costa Rica, New Zealand, Lebanon, Palestine and Liberia. Sadly, refugees are not a modern issue. What relevance does this have for our relationship with God? Israel was a refugee from the promised land In fact, the status of Israel as a refugee goes back all the way to Abraham. He was driven to Egypt by famine. It was move — or die. “Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe.” (Genesis 12:10 NIV11) The situation is repeated for his grandson Jacob (Israel). “We have come to live here for a while, because the famine is severe in Canaan and your servants' flocks have no pasture. So now, please let your servants settle in Goshen.”” (Genesis 47:3-4 NIV11) Israel — as Abraham's grandson and as the people of God — were shaped by movement, displacement and longing. Would they ever find a home? The promise of a land was made to Abraham and specifically reiterated to Jacob, “The land I gave to Abraham and Isaac I also give to you, and I will give this land to your descendants after you.”” (Genesis 35:12 NIV11) Yet they were denied settled, ongoing residence for hundreds of years. This was a people characterised by longing. We are refugees who long for a land We live in the already-but-not-yet land. We already have a taste of the eternal, but not yet the full meal. Perhaps thinking of ourselves as refugees rather than owners is a better place to be spiritually. A settled people are more likely to be a complacent people, a materialistic people, a distracted people. Refugees know they are not yet home, do not worry about permanence, and accept the temporary. Not to say this is easy. It is not.  “Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling,” (2 Corinthians 5:2 NIV11) “Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.” (Hebrews 11:16 NIV11) Why not spend some time contemplating what advantages your refugee status brings you?  Next time we will go on to talk about what can strengthen us in our flight from danger. Please add your comments on this week's topic. We learn best when we learn in community. Do you have a question about teaching the Bible? Is it theological, technical, practical? Send me your questions or suggestions. Here's the email: malcolm@malcolmcox.org. If you'd like a copy of my free eBook on spiritual disciplines, “How God grows His people”, sign up at my website: http://www.malcolmcox.org. Please pass the link on, subscribe, leave a review. “Worship the LORD with gladness; come before him with joyful songs.” (Psalms 100:2 NIV11) God bless, Malcolm

Jacob Israel

In this Podcast, we deal with the story whereby Jacob, who would be renamed subsequently Israel, acquired four wives from his mother's extended family in Mesopotamia. Ironically, Jacob only wanted, and loved, one wife. But because of his Uncle Laban's duplicity, he ended up not only with Rachel, but with her less attractive but elder sister, Leah. As wedding presents, both sisters were given maids: Bilhah and Zilpah. Jacob ended up with thirteen children by these four women, twelve sons and one daughter. The story itself revolves on the rivalry between Leah and Rachel to attract Jacob's attention, thinking that bearing children was the way to his heart. In a patriarchal culture, it is both ironic and humorous that both women orchestrate not only events but Jacob himself.

Romans 9:6 But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel; Apparently Paul knew some of his readers would conclude that the word of God to the Jews had failed if Paul's brethren were separated from God. This reminds us of what Paul wrote in 3:1-4. “Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the benefit of circumcision? Great in every respect. First of all, that they were entrusted with the oracles of God. What then? If some did not believe, their unbelief will not nullify the faithfulness of God, will it? May it never be!” No, God's word never fails, it endures forever, wrote Peter in 1 Pet. 2:5. And God's love never fails as Paul wrote in 1 Cor. 13:8. How is it that the word of God hasn't failed? It's because God's promise of salvation was broader than one nation, the nation of Israel. I'm sure this statement was puzzling to his readers then and it is to some today. The Israel of God isn't limited to the literal offspring of Israel. God's original plan was that there would be others who struggled with God and prevailed other than Jacob. Remember his wrestling match with the angel of the Lord when he received the name “Israel”? By the revelation of the Holy Spirit, Paul saw that God chose to wrestle with others throughout history who would prevail with Him by the same grace given to Jacob. Not everyone He chose to wrestle with were descendants of Abraham. Paul obviously understood that even though his beloved brethren were unbelieving and caused him much sorrow and grief, God's faithfulness to His Word had not failed to accomplish what it was sent for, namely, the salvation of all whom He foreknew, predestined, called, justified, and glorified. These are the true Israel that God had in mind when He chose Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Israel) to be heirs of the promise. As we live to love with Jesus, we can comfort ourselves as Paul did. God's faithfulness and word have not and will not fail. His hand is not so short that He cannot save all whom He has seen in Israel, both Jews and Gentiles. As we love in His name, we can be confident that God will be faithful. We can trust Him. We can trust His wisdom, will, power, and love. That's the encouragement we can draw from Paul revealed in Rom. 9:6. We can rest in God's purpose, word, and faithfulness as we love with Him everyone He puts in our paths. Acknowledgment: Music from “Carried by the Father” by Eric Terlizzi. www.ericterlizzi.com

On the first Shabbat of the month, Rabbi Steve Berkson opens the floor to the local congregants and those listening online to ask questions or comment about any aspect of our belief.Rabbi Berkson addresses topics concerning fundamental Torah-based practices and personal development, gives marital instruction, shares parental techniques, and more.Part 2:• Who were the Nicolaitans and what did they teach?• What is the “synagogue of satan”?• Are there oral laws that we should be aware of to obey?• You need a teacher• Did Abraham, Isaac and Jacob/Israel have the promise to live?Take advantage of new teachings every week. Please click the "LIKE" button if this podcast has been a blessing.To learn more about MTOI, visit our website, https://mtoi.org.Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mtoiworldwideFollow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mtoi_worldwideYou can contact MTOI by emailing us at admin@mtoi.org or calling 423-250-3020. Join us for Shabbat Services & Torah Study LIVE, streamed on our YouTube Channel every Saturday at 1:15 pm and every Friday for Torah Study Live Stream at 7:30 pm, eastern time.

Nuestro estudio de esta porción del libro de Génesis nos coloca en medio de esta importante parte del narrativo de la vida de Jacob. Después de haber recibido la bendición (derecho legal de herencia) de parte de su padre, 20 años después, el corazón de Jacob al fin está preparado para recibir la bendición de Dios. Contáctanos: Lamparaatuspies3@gmail.com

God Blesses Jacob (Israel) Donnie Denton

I. Israel Resides In Egypt (vv.27-28) II. Joseph Swears to Return Jacob (vv.29-31) III. Conclusion   I.               以色列人定居埃及（第 27-28 节） II.             约瑟許諾雅各（第 29-31 节） III.           结论

1 Chronicles - Genealogy from Adam. Descendants of Abraham. Genealogy of the 12 sons of Jacob (Israel). Genealogy of David. 1 Corinthians - Lawsuits discouraged. The body is holy.

Mamma mia! Jake and Trisha are back and ready to scare up a fun ole time while diving into the true story behind The Pope's Exorcist! Is Russell Crowe really a cool priest? Grab your crucifix, hit play, and find out! Music by Chad Fjerstad and Jacob Israel. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/basedonatruescary/support

In the second installment we concentrated on not only the denunciation of Edom/Esau but its impending destruction at the hand of Israel's deity. Of course, the punishment on Edom is intense because it was so closely related to Israel. After all, Esau/Edom was the twin brother of Jacob/Israel. This is fraternal hostility at its worst. But more than Edom is the target of God's wrath. A number of other countries are also targets of divine judgment. Eventually, Israel will be rulers of Edom. Since this has never happened, the theological import of a book like Obadiah has to be rethought.

This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston, or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com.Today, we are continuing in our series, Graduate Level Grace, and we are walking through chapter by chapter through Genesis 37-50. Today, we're in Genesis 43, and we are studying the life of Joseph. The constant theme that keeps coming up is that salvation is by grace. It's not something that we earn. It's not a process that we initiate by our good works, our own efforts to conjure up righteousness before God. It's something that God initiates, that God blesses us with. He bestows us with His grace to get us into right relationship with him. As we go forward in the Christian life, he continues to give us more and more of it to carry out his work faithfully. Today, we're going to keep in touch into the theme of grace again, and talk further how Joseph points us to Christ in his engagement with his brothers. Again, these are long chapters. I'm going to read Genesis 43, the whole chapter. It's verses one through 34.Pastor Jan has not been reading at the beginning and doing more longer quotations, walking through the text. I'm going to read it now, and just go in and out of the text quickly throughout the sermon. So if you do have a Bible, open up to Genesis 43:1-34 and follow along, and we'll have it on the screen as well. Furthermore, we are going to partake in communion today. This is something that we, as a church, practice the first Sunday of every month. I'll preach the word, we'll respond, and then we will partake in communion and I'll explain the steps along the way once we get there. I'm going to read Genesis 43 verses 1-34, and the sermons is about the mercy of God. Genesis 43:1-34. Now, the famine was severe in the land and when they had eaten the grain that they had brought from Egypt, their father said to them, "Go again, buy us a little food."But Judah said to him, "The man solemnly warned us, saying, 'You shall not see my face unless your brother is with you. 'If you'll send our brother with us, we will go down and buy you food. But if you'll not send him, we'll not go down, for the man said to us, 'You shall not see my face, unless your brother is with you.'" Israel said, "Why did you treat me so badly as to tell that man that you had another brother?" They replied, "The man questioned us carefully about ourselves and our kindred, saying, 'Is your father still alive? Do you have another brother?' What we told him was an answer to these questions. Could we in any way know that he would say, 'Bring your brother down'?"And Judah said to Israel his father "Send the boy with me, and we'll rise and go, that we may live and not die, both we and you and also our little ones. I will be a pledge of his safety. For my hand you shall require him. If I do not bring him back to you and set him before you, then let me bear the blame forever. If we had not delayed, we would now have returned twice." Then their father Israel said to them, "If it must be so, then do this: take some of the choice fruits of the land in your bags, and carry a present down to the man, a little balm and a little honey, gum, myrrh, pistachio nuts and almonds. Take back with you the money that was returned in the mouth of your sacks. Perhaps it wasn't oversight. Take also your brother and arise, go again to the man. May God Almighty grant you mercy before the man, and may he send back your other brother and Benjamin. And as for me, if I am bereaved of my children, I am bereaved."So the men took this present, and they took double the money with them, and Benjamin. They arose and went down to Egypt and stood before Joseph. When Joseph saw Benjamin with them, he said to the steward of his house, "Bring the men into the house and slaughter an animal and make ready for the men, for the men are to dine with me at noon." The man did as Joseph told him and brought the men to Joseph's house. And the men were afraid because they were brought to Joseph's house, and they said, "It is because of the money which was replaced in our sacks the first time, that we were brought in, so that he may assault us and fall upon us to make us servants and seize our donkeys."So they went up to the steward of Joseph's house and spoke with him at the door of the house, and said, "Oh, my Lord, we came down the first time to buy food. And when we came to the lodging place we opened our sacks, and there was each man's money in the mouth of his sack and money in full weight. So we have brought it again with us, and we have brought other money down with us to buy food. We do not know who put our money in our sacks." He replied, "Peace to you. Do not be afraid. Your God and the God of your father has put treasure in your sacks for you. I received your money." Then he brought Simeon out to them. And when the man had brought the men into Joseph's house and given them water, and they had washed their feet and when he had given their donkeys fodder, they prepared the present for Joseph coming at noon, for they heard that they should eat bread there.When Joseph came home, they brought into the house to him the present that they had with them and bowed down to him to the ground. And he inquired about their welfare and said, "Is your father well, the old man of whom you spoke? Is he still alive?" They said, "You're serving our father as well. He's still alive." And they bowed their heads and prostrated themselves and he lifted up his eyes and saw his brother Benjamin, his mother's son, and said, "Is this your youngest brother of whom you spoke to me? God be gracious to you, my son." Then Joseph hurried out, for his compassion grew warm for his brother, and he saw a place to weep. And he entered his chamber and wept there. Then he washed his face and came out.And controlling himself he said, "Serve the food." They served him by himself, and then by themselves, and the Egyptians who ate with him by themselves, because the Egyptians could not eat with the Hebrews, for that is an abomination to the Egyptians. And they sat before him, the firstborn according to his birthright and the youngest according to his youth. And the men looked at one another in amazement. Portions were taken to them from Joseph's table, but Benjamin's portion was five times as much as any of theirs. And they drank and were Mary with him. This is the word of the Lord. Let us pray.Heavenly Father, we praise you that your word says the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of the Lord remains forever. We thank you, Lord, for this ancient book that is so much more than a book. We thank you, Lord, for this story of the life of Jacob and his sons, Judah, Joseph. We thank you Lord that this story is not just a story, not just a piece of history. It's something that your spirit turn alive in our hearts that can use to sanctify us, to grow us, to mold us, to grow our dependence on you and see our need for you in greater forms. We pray, Lord, for the blessing of your word. Bless the word as I preach it, but it'd go out in power and force. Let each one of here convicted to trust you through the hardship of day-to-day life, convicted of their need to look for your work in their lives, more closely, convicted of their need to cling to your word in all trials and circumstances. Lord, I pray these things in Jesus' holy name. Amen.Well, today, we are talking about Genesis 43. And yesterday, I sent out an email. We sent out a weekly email before the sermons go out, and I ask you to think about if you were God, how would you tell him to work on you? And if you're a believer, I'm wanting you to think about how would you want God to grow you, to shape you. I know that for me, even though I know God, Christ calls us to take up our cross daily and follow in his footsteps. I think my plan for myself would involve lots of isolation. My wife would be there, my kids would be there, but sometimes I'd be able to escape and get full freedom from them. There'd be a babysitter for me and my wife when we want to spend time together. And then, there'd be a lot of opportunity to grow by watching soccer, to grow by exercising about three hours a day, to grow by just processing things, facts, knowledge, the word of God in isolation without really engaging other people.So, what is it for you? If you had the choice as a believer, how would you like God to grow you? What do you think is best? I think a lot of us, we don't really go, we know it's not really mature to think like that. But oftentimes, when God follows his classic means, shown to us in scripture, we resist and we think we could do it better. And if you're a nonbeliever, you say, "God, show me. Woo me. I want you to talk to me in this specific way." And what is that for you if you're a nonbeliever here today? Because this is a chapter where in Genesis 43, and God is dealing with Jacob and his sons... Who's Jacob? Jacob is the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham and God. This is the first book of the Bible, the book of the beginnings of the creation, the book of the beginnings of the family of God, and God's work in creation.God creates the world, all things are good. Adam and Eve walk in perfect unity and peace and perfect knowledge of him. There's no sin, there's no tension, there's no conflict, there's no brokenness in the world. And Genesis 2 comes, and Adam and Eve sinned. Genesis 3 talks about how there's going to be thorns and thistles to life. The creation is impacted by man's sin. And really, Genesis 3-12, it's a story of the spread of the sin of mankind, in the hearts of man and in relationships and in the creation. So God calls Abraham, and he says, "Abraham, I'm going to bless you. I'm going to make you into great people." He's a man. I think he's 75 years old when he calls him, and he doesn't have a child. He says, "I'm going to make you a great people, and I'm going to bless you. I'm going to make you the father of many kings, the father of many nations."So his son, Isaac, receives that promise. His son Jacob receives that promise. And what we're finding out in this series is that Jacob, though he had some good moments in his youth where he showed true faith in the Lord, he is a bit of a bonehead and his sons are worse than him. They are adulterers, his 12 sons. They've committed incest, they are prideful, they're slanderous. They're all fighting inwardly. They're competing with each other. And furthermore, at one point, 20 years ago, they put the Father Jacob's prize son, the son that he had with his favorite wife, they left him in a pit for dead. What they don't know is that God preserved his life, and put him through a process to bring him to the right hand of Pharaoh. So God's dealing with this broken family while the lingering promise that they're going to be a blessing to the earth stands, so God has to work.These people are not perfect. God's people are never perfect. But what we see is that these people probably aren't saved, these people probably don't know God, and it's kind of offensive that God would choose to work through these people. This is kind of a stance that, "God is doing something new. Why would he save the world from the slavery to sin through such a broken family?" It's a statement that religion that says, "I do right. I earn favor before God is wrong." It's a statement that salvation is initiated by God, not by any individual man as he tries to approach God. It's a statement that God uses broken people. And how can he use broken people? It's because he gives grace to them. We're talking about this family and their brokenness, but we're talking about how God is dealing with them.Again, think about how would you like God to deal with you? But in this chapter, compare that with how God is working on these people as a model of the family of faith. Last week, we discussed a lot of this already. In chapter 42, Genesis, we discussed how God has been working on them through the hardship of famine. When the famine hits the land for about a year, they're forced to look for a source of food. We discussed how God has been dealing with them through the hardship of sojourning, of temporarily turning to foreign land for help and relief. It's the hardship of being a refugee or a migrant worker looking for the best for their family. You're engaging with hard travel, engaging foreign officials, engaging with bureaucracy stacked against them. There's a language barrier and there's stereotypes that they're engaging with.We discussed how God has dealt with this family through the pain of unjust imprisonment. We saw that after three days in prison, they go to Egypt, there's the famine, you're one of the famine. They run out of food, they go to Egypt, and they approach the Egyptian ruler and they receive food, but he places them unjustly in a jail for three days. They don't know that it's their brother Joseph and he's trying to chip away, get a sense of have these men repented, "Are they right before God? Are their hearts still the same as when they put them in the pit?" And they go unjustly to prison, they're sent unjustly to prison, and in Genesis 42:21, they exclaim, "In truth, we are guilty concerning our brother." For them, this is the first time probably in 20 years since abandoning Joseph, leaving him for dead, telling their father that he is gone to the point that he thinks he's dead, this is the first time that their guilty conscience is probably coming alive.And furthermore or less, we talked about how actually the awakened conscience was actually a grace of God, a gift of God. As the men process all the hardship that happened to them in the chapter last week and the things that I just list listed out, they ask in verse 28, "What is this that God has done to us?" God is doing something. He's dealing with Jacob and his sons, but the process is slow. So in this chapter, God continues the work of bringing these men into his family. As we process how God chose to work on this family, we should ask him to show us how he is... If we're not walking with him calling us back, or those walking with him, we should be asking him to show us how he is continuing to stay near us, to refine us.What the New Testament shows us is that the Christian life is like that. We are a piece of gold in the refiner's fire. So we're saved, but then God is exposing us to trials to burn out the impurities that we... Until we grow to the fullness of Christ likeness, God is going to be refining us. So ask Lord, "How are you working in me to save me, to grow me?" And a key verse, "How does he do that?" The key verse in the chapter and one of the key verses in the book, all the Book of Genesis is verse 14. And this is Jacob saying, "May God Almighty grant you mercy before the man." This is the first occurrence of mercy in all of Genesis and all of the Bible. The chapter is all about God's mercy to guilty, fearful, hopeless, lost sinners.The condition of these men as they are contemplating having to go back to Egypt, when they approach Joseph at his house. This chapter is all about the mercy that God offers to guilty sinners like you and me. It's by the mercy of God that God is using life circumstances, and the Egyptian ruler, who Jacob and his sons don't know to be Joseph, to refine these men, to draw them into saving an intimate relationship. And what we see in this chapter is that God dispatches different kinds of mercy. You kind of see it. Last week we touched on it, and this week there's a little bit. Joseph to them, the Egyptian ruler, he deals with the brothers in kind of a bad cop, good cop method. At some moments, God, through Joseph, dishes out tender mercy to the men. And just through pure kindness, gentleness, there's some moments he dishes out severe mercy by inflicting tough circumstances upon them.We're going to learn about different kinds of mercy. How does God try to draw us in, draw non-believers in through mercy? How does God grow and refine Christians through mercy? I'm going to point out three different kinds of mercy. God calls his children home and grows them through severe mercy, common mercy, and tender mercy. And know, the term mercy and grace, and then how they relate to love as you grow in the faith, they're kind of hard terms used because you can't really use them by fully separating them from the other, particularly grace and mercy. Know that I use the term mercy in this outline because I think the key verse talks about God's mercy to the men in this process of going back to Egypt. But I could have equally used the term grace. So to say that God gives mercy to someone has a connotation that God gives leniency when it is not required of him.To say that God gives grace, it means that God gives favor when it is not merited by the recipient and that they're intertwined. Because when God is extending leniency, he is extending favor or grace. When God is extending grace or unmerited favor, he's extending leniency. But this, today, I want to step away from the title of the sermons here and talk about mercy as it relates to grace. God calls his children home and grows them through severe mercy. In verses 1-14, we see that God calls his children home, and I use the term, by extending severe mercy. This is a term that I first became acquainted with in the book, A Severe Mercy by an author Sheldon Vanauken. I probably butchered that. To say that God calls his children home and grows them through severe mercy, put most broadly, it's to say that God calls his children home and grows them by exposing them to severe situations.God purposes that his children face severe, hard, difficult, challenging situations in order to draw them in. In the book, Vanauken, he talks about how God used the death of his wife of a couple of decades. He thinks to actually save him, because ultimately he saw all of his engagement with Christianity was really tied to this desire to build this perfect marriage with his wife. He never really wanted God for God's sake. God had to strip, he says, and he talks about how his engagement through personal letters with CS Lewis helped him. He saw that through taking his wife, he could finally treasure a relationship with God. And that was a severe mercy. Because if that's what it took to get him into a right relationship with God, to see his need for God, to treasure relationship with God that's offered through Christ, then it's a mercy.It's a confusing term, a severe mercy. But when you chew on it, it can really help you understand how God works. To face the severe mercy is severe because it's hard and difficult to face such circumstances. To face the severe mercy is an experience of God's mercy. Because though the severe mercy may be severe and difficult to face or endure, the experience altogether is so much better than what a sinner deserves. So severe mercy, it leads to a person to have a greater understanding of who God is and it leads one to see their limitations of their own power. Furthermore, it leads one to see the boundless limits of God's infinite power, and it's hard to swallow. By exposing people as children to hardship, God is actually being very gentle or merciful to them. How is this true? The whole narrative of scripture says that God is a holy God, and that from the beginning, man was to walk in a holy manner before him.And if he did not, the penalty would be death. Eternal expulsion from the loving presence of God. For the just punishment of sin against an infinite holy God is infinite wrath and eternal punishment. Romans 3:23 says that all have fallen, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Because nobody has met the mark perfect holiness before God, any moment where God withholds or delays the carrying out of his wrath, it's a blessing, a severely merciful act where he is shown leniency. So even as Christians or people approaching the faith, when life is really difficult or hard for any person because it's not anything close to facing the just wrath of God, such a moment is an act of severe mercy extended to them by God. So in this, I'm going to step into the text verses 1-14. I'm going to talk about different forms of severe mercy that God extends, that he exposes his followers too.He uses it to save people, he uses it to grow people, and he is merciful in doing so again. Because the lessons that they learn are so much more important than the idols that they're clinging to, that he's stripping away. In this chapter, we find Jacob's brothers a long while after their initial experience of guilt in the last chapter. Remember, in verse 21, they said, "In truth, we are guilty concerning our brother, this is the last chapter, in that we saw the distress of his soul, they're talking about Joseph in the pit, when he begged us and we did not listen. That is why this distress has come upon us." They exclaimed this and felt their conscience stirred. But now that they're back home, away from Egypt, away from the tension of the moment, away from the threat of imprisonment, away from this man who has authority over them, things have gone back to normal.Maybe the famine will end, they think. Maybe they won't have to go back to Egypt, if that happens. Perhaps, they can forget their past sins. Maybe they can push those ideas of God that crept up in their mind and his authority over their lives, off their consciences forever. They've made an idol. They've gone back home and they've made an idol out of the facade of a peaceful status quo on the surface of their lives, while there's guilt for sin on their conscience they've not dealt with. If this is their thinking, whether the text shows us, is that God has another plan in mind. If you're wrestling with guilt or fighting to suppress guilt, God has another plan in mind for you. He's relentless in his pursuit of them. And in these verses, we see the three forms of severe mercy.First, he exposes them to famine. More broadly, he exposes them to the pressures of living in a fallen world. Genesis 43:1-2. Now, the famine was severe in the land. And when they had eaten the grain that they had bought brought from Egypt, their father said to them, "Go again, buy us a little food." So God exposes them to continued famine. This is probably close to the end of year two of famine based on what other chapters tell us. And famine, honestly, as a modern American, I can't fathom this. Apparently, 49 million people in 46 countries are experiencing severe food crisis or famine in the present day. And that's according to a quick Google search, an organization called Action Against Hunger. Famine occurs when drought and her infestation and her plant disease and her war continuously plague a huge region of land for months or years at a time.It's a severe hardship that, when faced, lingers on your mind all day every day until there is relief. Hardship that adds uncertainty to all matters of life, to every minute, every hour, every week. It kills you physically and it kills you psychologically, and there's nothing you can do to stop it. You're powerless to put an end to it. All you're left to do is know how to respond to it and engage with it and survive through it. Obviously, today, we praise God. We have a lot of knowledge, materials, technology, pesticides, and means of food preservation to try to confront famine, but it clearly arises in many lands today. But the point is, back then, they did not. Jacob and his family, this family called to bless the world and become numerous nation of people of kingdoms, they're facing famine. They are almost at the point of not surviving.So the famine, it exerts pressure on them, they have to deal with it and they're powerless. But famine, it's something that the greatest schemes of men, greatest schemes of America, of science and technology cannot control. There are other forms of natural disasters, severe forms of mercy that we face, drought, hurricanes, tsunamis, tornadoes, earthquakes, volcano eruptions, biological and airborne microorganisms. I was reminded of this while I'm reading this, studying this, writing this yesterday. I got multiple notifications on my phone and on my computer from Apple talking about the fine particulates that are floating around, the bad air quality because of the wildfires in Canada. We can't control the weather and the shifting of the earth and microorganisms and fine particulates. And our increased ability to track a lot of these things, it seems to cause more paranoia and anxiety than actually helps us at times.So God speaks to us again and again through pressures of famine still, but pressures of a fallen sin, fallen world through weather, through disease, through political, international turmoil that we cannot control. 9/11, floods, hurricane Katrina, hurricane Harvey in Houston several years back, COVID, heated elections, Russia-Ukraine, the threat of personal sickness and death at any minute, struggles with conception still plaguing the world. Miscarriage, race, gender, class battles, the Lord... These things have entered the world because of sin and we have to face them. What is God telling us in all of it? We are not in control. He is sovereign. He is in control to be brought to this knowledge, to love this knowledge, to find peace in this knowledge. It's a mercy, a grace of God. He's in control. He's in charge. We know he is good. Look at how he redeemed the travesty of the cross of Jesus Christ.So all of natural history, world history align with the words of St. Paul in Romans 8:18-22, I'm just going to read 22. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now, Jacob and his sons face it. We still face it. It impacts our lives and our decisions. So I ask you, what is God telling you through the Earth's groaning? It's going to keep happening until Jesus comes back to make all things new. Paul has to think about it. How has God used natural circumstances or pressures of a fallen world to make you think or act in life? What have you learned from them? What do you think you can learn right now? Second, God extends mercy to Jacob and his brothers to draw them into fellowship with him by exposing them to the pressure of broken people.Verse three. But Judah said to him, "The man, the Egyptian ruler, solemnly warned us saying, 'You shall not see my face unless your brother is with you.'" So the will of a relatively random governor in Egypt, according to the brothers as they don't know it is Joseph, he's forcing them in a certain direction. He's adding pressures and limitations to their freedom. They have to deal with the fact that one brother, Simeon, is still imprisoned by him there. And specifically in this chapter, they're pressured to send Benjamin to Egypt upon his command simply to have food for their families to survive. Like Jacob, we still face these unwanted pressures from other people and these are appointed by the severe mercy of God. We can try to create vacuums to avoid such people. We can seek out echo chambers of those who are like-minded. It's easier than ever.We can seek spouses with the exact same interests, companies and departments, literally through search algorithms on apps online. We can find neighbors, churches, work departments that are the perfect fit. But people are inevitable, they're broken, they're sinful. We can't escape them, we can't cancel them, and that's by God's design. The tendency when we engage people and they inflict their presence and authority on our lives, whether we seek it or not, is that we think we can change them. When we're first confronted with hard people, we say to ourselves, "That's okay. Give me a little time, I'll change you." But with time, we see that we can't. This is the husband and the wife almost on a day-to-day basis. This is parents trying to change their children, grow their children, save their children on their time. Children trying to change their parents.This is the boss trying to change the employee, the employee trying to change the boss. No matter how many phone apps, forms of counseling or technology we have that can teach us how to change people, we have to realize that we can't. Only God can. Only God can change someone from the inside out, change them at the heart level such that their behavior, their presence, their communication changes. We need to just approach these moments, this lack of power with humility. We can fight it, we can keep pressing on and nagging on the people of our lives to change them, or we can ask God what is he trying to do through this, the presence of these people.What is that you trying to do through the engagements of them? We have to allow our lives to be shaped by the necessity of engaging people. So ask God, how are you changing me? How are you calling me home to you to crave your presence, your sinless presence, your loving presence more? How are you refining me through other people? This is a severe mercy of God that we have to engage people. Third, God extends severe mercy to Jacob and his brothers to draw them into fellowship with him by exposing them to undesirable circumstances. Verse 6, Jacob says, "Why did you treat me so badly as to tell the man that you had another brother?" So Jacob, the neglectful father, comes off as an angry old curmudgeon, as a victim of the folly of his sons as he processes the situation. He's just whining. Honestly, my first engagement with this was laughing as I read it because I was just sitting and whining with my wife in the minutes before I'd started to study this.And I just want to say, "Men, we think that our wives and children are blessed when we sit down and tell them how we have it right, everyone else in our life has it wrong, and that we are victim of our circumstances." We need to stop. We need to be models of faith and steadfast faithfulness to God. There's no way to avoid difficult circumstances. Jacob and his sons had no control over the fact of the famine and the extension of the famine, and they had no control over the fact that Egypt had all the grain in that period. Similarly, in our lives, there's seasons, moments, trials that just fall into our lap. Things that we didn't invite into our households, our churches, our neighborhoods, our schools, our local state and national governments, financial downturns, wars that we have to engage, that we have no interest in engaging but we have to.We can get depressed, we can get paralyzed, we can busy ourselves to avoid the fact that these tensions and these situations exist. We can distract ourselves with relationships, devices, and shows, adrenaline rushes. We can try to ignore them by engaging in drink, smoke, other chemicals, or we can face the fact that circumstances are part of life. We're called to face them in faith, and find the faithful narrow way forward that brings glory to God. As we do that in the process, the Lord is teaching us, shaping us, saving many all along. These moments, these undesired circumstances shouldn't always be viewed as hindrances, but as opportunities for us to see God's wisdom at work in our lives, to see his power moving in our life. So in some, I've talked about the severe mercy of God as he exposes us to it through the effects of living in a sinful world through people, through random undesired circumstances.And know, the message that I want you to take is not just expect hardship to be a part of your life, but not become a stoic. It's not a, "Pick-up your bootstraps. This is life, just face it. Everybody has to deal with it. Find a way to cope." No, it's find a way to see God's hand through it all. Ask him to grow your wisdom, your insight to engage such moments in a way that pleases him. Ask him to show you what he's teaching you. Ask him how he wants you to respond, one day at a time, without getting overcome with anxiety, thinking about how hard it will be in the future. I like the framing of, "You need to see that as you think about severe mercies, a lot of these external circumstances forcing their pressure on onto your life. You need to see that what makes you you, and the Lord is not just the things that you have done but the things that also have happened to you.God's using it all in his grand plan and glorious plan to save you, to shape you, prepare you for his work. We've seen him do such work in the life of Joseph as we meditated upon his experience in the pit. We meditated upon facing false accusations of adultery. We meditated upon him being forced to be in an Egyptian jail for several years. We've seen how God prepared him to handle this moment with grace and mercy. So the same thing that he did with Joseph, the same thing he's doing with you and you need to trust him as he does it. See here, the text says that God is shaping these men through severe mercy. I just want to take time to look at Judah and Jacob to show you that transformation is actually happening. Let's look at Judah. Judah, who we know from our study in Genesis 38, was a very hard and stubborn man.He slept with his deceased son's wife when he thought she was a prostitute. This Judah is changing by God's severe mercy and becoming the family leader in this chapter. In the text, at the beginning when after Jacob resists sending the brothers back with Benjamin, Judah honestly, respectfully, directly speaks to his father. He still honors him, but he stands on truth before him. In verse 8, to convince his father, he takes a wise strategy. He repeats to his father, "Send the boy with me, and we will rise and go, that we may live and not die." Jacob said when he first sent the sons to Egypt, he said, "Go to Egypt to get grain, so that we may live and not die." He's using Jacob's words to convince him. And then he adds an element so that both we and you and also our little ones may be saved, may stay alive.Judah's not thinking of himself as we saw him do. Primarily, he's thinking of others. So further, Judah, the biggest thing that he does is he pledges his life to Jacob. He commits to taking personal responsibility if Benjamin does not return. This is in comparison to the author that Ruben makes in the last chapter in verse 7. Ruben says to Jacob, this harsh approach, "Kill my two sons if I go to Egypt with Benjamin and don't return with him." We see Jacob's wisdom. We see him taking responsibility. And this foreshadows, a little side note, the precedence that the tribe of Judah eventually takes among the other tribes of the nation of Israel. It points to the time that Jesus Christ, a descendant of Judah, the line of the tribe of Judah's scripture calls him, takes responsibility for the sins of the lost sons of God by going to the cross, offering himself in their place.Judah changes but we see an incredible change in Jacob through the severe mercy of God, through the providential appointment of hardship. Jacob, again, he is a whiny curmudgeon at the start of the chapter, blaming everyone else for the situation that they're in. He's still showing extreme preference for his son Benjamin over the other 10, but there's great change taking place as the chapter goes forward. This is noted most clearly by the fact that, for most of the story today, Jacob's story is that God does save him. Jacob does have faith in God. And God, at that point, he passes his promises of the covenant from Abraham and Isaac to him, and God gives him a covenant named Israel. But Jacob, even after a profound experience in earlier chapters of Genesis, he goes back to his old ways. So the story, the narrative throughout Genesis primarily calls him Jacob over and over again.In chapter 42, he's Jacob. In this chapter, he moves from the old angry man to the new man Israel. He starts off complaining, but then he takes charge as these situations force him to. He provides decisive and wise leadership in granting the brother's permission to bring Benjamin, and giving them instructions to pack gifts, local delicacies that they don't have in Egypt to earn the favor of the ruler, to double the money that they bring back after the Egyptians did not keep their money last time. He takes practical matters. He thinks responsibly. But the most notable change that we see in Jacob as he faces the severe mercy of God is that he has revival in his faith. In verse 14, he's brought to the point where he knows he's powerless to change the situation, and he says, "May God Almighty grant you mercy before the man, and may send back your other brother and Benjamin. And as for me, if I'm bereaved of my children, I'm bereaved."Jacob, now Israel, he appeals to the covenant name of God of Genesis, El Shaddai, Genesis 17 particularly, the mighty God. This God, he's trusted in before, he will trust in again. Furthermore, in this verse, he appeals to the mercy of God for the success of the journey for Egypt. He knows only God can give them favorable outcome here. Lastly, what's most profound, he entrusts Benjamin's safety and the desire for the return of Benjamin's brother Joseph to God, right? He's been grieving the loss of Joseph, basically not functioning, not engaging the other brothers for 20 years, all the while preserving Benjamin's life at all costs and just ignoring those other brothers. And Jacob relinquish his grip on the matter. He goes as far as showing peace over the fact that if it's the Lord's will to bereave him of his children, then so be it.You got to remember, he did not forget that God said that He's carrying this promise to be the father of many nations, like that was passed down from Abraham and Isaac. He says, "God, I trust you. You have the power to fulfill your promises even when there seems to be no hope." So I elaborate on Judas' transformation, Jacob's transformation to illustrate how God uses severe mercy, hard circumstances to change them, to save them, to grow them in the faith. We can spend all of our life begrudgingly facing the appointed personal, familial, cultural, global circumstances that we're born into or approach them with faith. We can see how they deepen our dependence on God, make us better men and women, grow our vision and appreciation for the daily mercies and graces of God, and increase the fruit of the spirit within us. We're becoming more like Christ as we engage them faithfully.Some may ask, why does God act like this? Why does he have a point to choose to use severe mercy? This is my second point, and it's really short. If God calls his children home and grows them through severe mercy, common mercy, why does he use severe mercy? Because he is offering common mercy constantly, and we don't receive it. Matthew 5:45 says, "For he makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust." God is actually trying to tell us through the basic mercies, basic graces of daily life that he is God and he is in control, and we owe him our worship and faithfulness. Through the rising of the sun, every day on all people, through the sending of rains, through daily health, through the beauty of nature, through the provision of daily bread, through the joyful spirit and faith that children have as they wake up and just expect God to provide through the majesty of just the creative world, he's talking to us and it's not enough for us.We are stubborn. We are selfish. We choose to say that that is not enough. We place ourselves in the position of God, and we don't accept his means of communicating that. That's the mistake that Adam and Eve made in the garden. They think that God is keeping something from them in just the basic provision of life in the garden. So we commit the same sin and we don't receive common mercy, which I'm also basically saying is the same thing, historically-referred to as common grace. But praise God, he doesn't stop at common mercy. He doesn't stop at severe mercy to draw us in. He gives us tender mercy, and this is my third point. God calls his children home through severe mercy, common mercy, tender mercy.The use of tender mercy, it's a little redundant. I could have just said mercy. But to drive home in the point and emphasize how good it is, I went forward with tender mercy. He said that he speaks to us through tender mercy, expose us to tender mercy. He treats us and speaks to us with very loving treatment. He engages our fears and guilt uniquely. He mercifully and graciously condescends to speak to us at a level that we understand, in his process of calling us to him and refining us once we're in the family. This is what verses 15-34 really show us. God calls the brothers back by tender mercy. Verse 18 says, "And the men were afraid because they were brought to Joseph's house." So they bring the goods, they bring the money, they bring Benjamin back to Egypt, and they're told by a servant to go to his house.Can you imagine these tent dwellers, these back country men when they're about to go to the house, the property of this powerful Egyptian ruler, essentially a billionaire of their day? They're rolling up on their donkeys, not even camels, to palace with dozens of camels. It's like driving a rusty old pickup truck to a mansion with multiple Teslas and model cars. And they're weary from facing God's severe mercy, the famine, the travel. The anxiety of how they will be received by the ruler after they return, as they know that the ruler did not receive the money the first time, it would've been paralyzing them. Just not knowing, "Is this ruler just going to come down and arrest us and make us his slave?" Their worst fear would probably be over the fact, "That as we engage this man, are we going to be brought to that point where we feel guilty again for throwing Joseph into the pit?"Again, they don't know that Joseph is the ruler. But they know that through engagement with this man, they were brought back to this thing that they just want to depress. But God brings these men back to Egypt as part of the process to draw him in. And how are they received? It's with kindness, with love. Remember, Jacob/Israel's prayer in verse 14, May God Almighty grant you mercy before him. Jacob's prayers come true. It's answered. The ruler and his servant receive them with tender mercy. They arise in Egypt, guilty, fearful. What does the servant say to them? He says, "Peace," shalom in Hebrew, "Peace to you. Do not be afraid. Your God and the God of your father has put treasure in your sacks for you." This is after they say hello and confess that they went home with the money. It says, "Don't worry about it."As the text continues, the servant brings him out, Simeon. He's released as promised, upon their return in their last chapter, and he's in good shape. Then though they're foreigners, they are brought into the private residence of a ruler. Further, the text says they're given water, their feet are washed, their donkeys aren't stolen but are given fodder from the royal feed, and they're invited to a feast. When they approach Joseph at the feast, they bow down to him. And what does he do? He inquires of their welfare, asks them how they are doing, and I'm sure it would've been a little bit of a sugarcoated answer of, "Oh, we're great." Like not acknowledging the fact that they're in turmoil for the months and weeks as this moment approached. But he inquires about their welfare, asks about their father. The ruler further goes to greet the younger brother that he didn't meet during the last visit, Benjamin, and blesses him saying, "God be gracious to you, my son."Altogether, God, after providentially offering common mercy throughout their lives, after offering a lot of severe mercy recently, God has arranged for them to taste his tender mercy as part of the process to draw him in, to fellowship with him. In a situation where Joseph, the ruler, could have brought down justice for the situation with the money as things appeared. For his sin, their sin against him 20 years ago, he treats him with mercy. He treats him with love and kindness. One of the most notable things about the merciful treatment that God has arranged for the brothers is that he goes above and beyond to show the brothers that he's speaking to them through these mercies in ways that are uniquely designed for them. Verse 33 says, And they sat before him, the firstborn according to his birthright and the youngest according to his youth. And the men looked at one another in amazement. God, through Joseph, announces this moment in such a way that the brothers should know that they're talking to him.Just think, there's 11 brothers sitting down. And in this moment, they're arranged from oldest to youngest. If you think about how many ways that the ruler could have arranged them, it's equal to 11 factorial. Yes, I'm making you think about middle school math right now. 11 factorial ways that he could have arranged these men. That's 39,916,800 ways that the ruler could have seeded them, and one of them is the perfect way and he does it. God is clearly speaking to them. And do they see it? Further, in verse 34, the text mentions that the ruler gives Benjamin, the brother of Joseph, five times the portion of food. God's trying to communicate to them that he is God. He knows what they did, and he is mercifully dealing with their sin toward Joseph right now by bringing attention to Benjamin. In this specific communication to the brothers, God is just calling them home.He wants them to cry out mercy as they see that he is God. And they need his mercy for their sin, for their rebellion against his authority over their life, for their specific sins, and particularly, the sin against Joseph. Through tender mercy and the generalness of the ruler's reception, through the specific details of the seating arrangement and serving, God's talking to them. He's trying to stir their minds to acknowledge him as God. But what is their response? Verse 33 says, They looked at one another in amazement. They looked around at each other as if the way they were seated was a coincidence. They looked at each other and said, "Well, forgot about it," and set their minds to the feast before them. Verse 34 says, after Benjamin was given a huge portion, they just enjoyed themselves and had a nice meal like at any other banquet. With their youngest brother, nobody would ever have given the youngest brother this kind of portion. He gets five times more than them in this patriarchal society.And furthermore, at the start of the next chapter, the brothers after this experience where God is just talking to them, offering them mercy, showing them gentleness, tender mercy, they're just content to wake up and go home. They're not inclined to think about everything that's happening. Their reception of the mercy of God, it's dull. They're not moved. It gives them no more than a smile and the satisfaction of a good day and full belly gives them. Isn't that very similar to the reaction that the world has toward God and his mercy? Isn't that very similar to the reaction that you have toward it, on some days? If you're a believer, you can't be a believer without truly cherishing this moment, at one point. But it grows dry and worn out. That's because we're not seeing how God is moving through everything to save us, grow us, shape us.You see, Joseph's brothers, they have an excuse. The ruler didn't reveal himself as Joseph. They don't know that's him, but we know who the ruler is. We know who the governor is. We know who the king of kings, the Lord of Lord is, over all of the earth and over us all as individuals. It's the Lord Jesus Christ. It's written on our heart, our conscience, and it's written in the creation. We long for God's perfect and just rule and reign and the comfort of his presence, when the storms and trials, the rulers and people and circumstances of the broken world impress their unjust influence on our lives and decision making. We long for his unique and tender love toward us as we face these hardships. We know that for all of history, all the time, God has supremely shown his love to man.He has communicated his desire to extend love and grace to each of us in a million unique different ways. Most clearly, he has mercifully and graciously shown his love for us. In coming to deal with our greatest need as parched, guilty, dead sinners. He took on flesh, went from heaven to earth and walked the earth. He came to deal with our greatest need, our thirst for him. God broke the barrier by sending a son to take on flesh, bear the hardship and temptations of this world perfectly as we could not, and to go to the cross in our place. We know that God chosen his love for us and, that while we are still sinners, Christ died for us. How much more clearly could God in all of his glory condescend to speak to us in our greatest need to communicate his love to us? And yet we're often reluctant to receive it.We're reluctant to see our need to entrust our lives to him. Joseph and his brothers had an excuse, but we don't. So Colossians 2:9-10, it says, we're in him the whole fullness of the deity dwells bodily. And you have been filled in him who is the head of all rule and authority. We have no excuse. God is showing his mercy, communicating his love and desire to be in relationship with us over and over again, and we need to receive it. Christ, he broke the divide between heaven and earth. His crowning act of glory with all of his authority was to lay side as glory and die for us. That's really what Joseph is doing. Joseph could be using his authority to squash these sinners to just pour out wrath, but he doesn't. God, Christ did all of this in order that we might live and dine at the same table with him, with a portion due to the firstborn and rule with him and his eternal kingdom.That's what Joseph was doing. That's what Christ offers to us. So I ask you today to close, how is God extending severe mercy to you? How is he extending common mercy? How can you see it better? How is he extending tender mercy, specifically speaking to you, in ways that speak to your greatest fears, your greatest sense, your areas of guilt, your questions of the truth? As you see that, just bow and humble submission to him. Genesis 43 says, you're doubtful, sinful, guilty people like Jacob's family and us with a bad record of bad conscience. There is one power. One of great power and great honor who loves you, who wants to bless you and deliver you from the guilt of your sin and circumstances. He's doing so much to get you to see that. Try to see it. Come into his family, his love, his grace, his mercy. It's sufficient. Let us pray.Heavenly Father, we praise you that Christ has come and he came out of love. He initiated the process that procured our salvation. It's not anything that we can do, but it's all that he has done. And Lord, we praise you that you do not leave us in the condition that we're in. When you save us, you give us your righteousness, but you appoint seasons and trials and circumstances and engagement with the fallen world to grow us. We get to see your hand of redemption at work in us and through us every day. Lord, we praise you that we know we have a savior who has lived perfectly, died in our place, roses from the dead, and ascended to your right hand of authority just like Joseph was at the right hand of Pharaoh. And he is working for our good, for our preservation, for our growth in the faith. We pray all these things in Jesus' name. Amen.Now, we're going to transition to a time in the service of communion. This is something that we do as believers to commemorate the fact that by offering his body, pouring out his blood for us on the cross, Jesus invites us to live and dine guilt free at his table. For whom is holy communion—it's for repentant Christians, repentant children of God. If you're not a Christian, not sure where you stand before God, we ask you to withhold from partaking and meditate on the gospel, meditate upon the sermon, the message of today. But if you have decided today to receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you're welcome to partake. And if are a Christian, we emphasize that this is for repentant believers. If you have unreconciled sin in your life that you have not brought to the Lord, if you have it on your conscience to approach other brothers and sisters where there is sin, we ask you to with withhold.So if you haven't received a cup with a little wafer and the elements, please raise your hand. As I pray, one of the ushers will give you one. Heavenly Father, we praise you for your grace and mercy. Jesus, we thank you for procuring salvation for us. You suffered, Lord, and triumphed for us. Today, we remember your suffering. Holy Spirit, I pray that you prepare our hearts now to focus on the attention of the cross of Jesus Christ dying for us, the primary act of showing your tender mercy toward us. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Take off the bottom layer. I think all of our cups now have the bread on the bottom. Take the bread out and follow along with me. On the night that Jesus was betrayed, he took the bread and after eating it, he said, "This is my body broken for you. Take, eat, and do this in remembrance of me."He then proceeded to take the cup, and he said, "This cup is the cup of the new covenant of my blood, which is poured out for the sins of many. Take, drink, and do this in remembrance of me." Let's pray. Lord God, we glorify you. We pray, Lord, Holy Spirit, help us in glorifying God as we meditate upon the wisdom of his ways, the ability to redeem and use the brokenness of this world, the broken moments of our life, the broken moments of our personality, and redeem them and use them to be a blessing to others. Help us, Lord, as we worship. Help us to cast off all of our burdens and anxieties and stresses for situations, relationships that we cannot control to you. Help us to focus on you on the greatness of your power, your majesty, holiness, righteousness, truth, perfect plans, and sovereignty. Help us to sing with all that we have because you are worthy of all worship and glory and honor in all seasons. We pray this all in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston, or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com.Today, we are continuing in our series, Graduate Level Grace, and we are walking through chapter by chapter through Genesis 37-50. Today, we're in Genesis 43, and we are studying the life of Joseph. The constant theme that keeps coming up is that salvation is by grace. It's not something that we earn. It's not a process that we initiate by our good works, our own efforts to conjure up righteousness before God. It's something that God initiates, that God blesses us with. He bestows us with His grace to get us into right relationship with him. As we go forward in the Christian life, he continues to give us more and more of it to carry out his work faithfully. Today, we're going to keep in touch into the theme of grace again, and talk further how Joseph points us to Christ in his engagement with his brothers. Again, these are long chapters. I'm going to read Genesis 43, the whole chapter. It's verses one through 34.Pastor Jan has not been reading at the beginning and doing more longer quotations, walking through the text. I'm going to read it now, and just go in and out of the text quickly throughout the sermon. So if you do have a Bible, open up to Genesis 43:1-34 and follow along, and we'll have it on the screen as well. Furthermore, we are going to partake in communion today. This is something that we, as a church, practice the first Sunday of every month. I'll preach the word, we'll respond, and then we will partake in communion and I'll explain the steps along the way once we get there. I'm going to read Genesis 43 verses 1-34, and the sermons is about the mercy of God. Genesis 43:1-34. Now, the famine was severe in the land and when they had eaten the grain that they had brought from Egypt, their father said to them, "Go again, buy us a little food."But Judah said to him, "The man solemnly warned us, saying, 'You shall not see my face unless your brother is with you. 'If you'll send our brother with us, we will go down and buy you food. But if you'll not send him, we'll not go down, for the man said to us, 'You shall not see my face, unless your brother is with you.'" Israel said, "Why did you treat me so badly as to tell that man that you had another brother?" They replied, "The man questioned us carefully about ourselves and our kindred, saying, 'Is your father still alive? Do you have another brother?' What we told him was an answer to these questions. Could we in any way know that he would say, 'Bring your brother down'?"And Judah said to Israel his father "Send the boy with me, and we'll rise and go, that we may live and not die, both we and you and also our little ones. I will be a pledge of his safety. For my hand you shall require him. If I do not bring him back to you and set him before you, then let me bear the blame forever. If we had not delayed, we would now have returned twice." Then their father Israel said to them, "If it must be so, then do this: take some of the choice fruits of the land in your bags, and carry a present down to the man, a little balm and a little honey, gum, myrrh, pistachio nuts and almonds. Take back with you the money that was returned in the mouth of your sacks. Perhaps it wasn't oversight. Take also your brother and arise, go again to the man. May God Almighty grant you mercy before the man, and may he send back your other brother and Benjamin. And as for me, if I am bereaved of my children, I am bereaved."So the men took this present, and they took double the money with them, and Benjamin. They arose and went down to Egypt and stood before Joseph. When Joseph saw Benjamin with them, he said to the steward of his house, "Bring the men into the house and slaughter an animal and make ready for the men, for the men are to dine with me at noon." The man did as Joseph told him and brought the men to Joseph's house. And the men were afraid because they were brought to Joseph's house, and they said, "It is because of the money which was replaced in our sacks the first time, that we were brought in, so that he may assault us and fall upon us to make us servants and seize our donkeys."So they went up to the steward of Joseph's house and spoke with him at the door of the house, and said, "Oh, my Lord, we came down the first time to buy food. And when we came to the lodging place we opened our sacks, and there was each man's money in the mouth of his sack and money in full weight. So we have brought it again with us, and we have brought other money down with us to buy food. We do not know who put our money in our sacks." He replied, "Peace to you. Do not be afraid. Your God and the God of your father has put treasure in your sacks for you. I received your money." Then he brought Simeon out to them. And when the man had brought the men into Joseph's house and given them water, and they had washed their feet and when he had given their donkeys fodder, they prepared the present for Joseph coming at noon, for they heard that they should eat bread there.When Joseph came home, they brought into the house to him the present that they had with them and bowed down to him to the ground. And he inquired about their welfare and said, "Is your father well, the old man of whom you spoke? Is he still alive?" They said, "You're serving our father as well. He's still alive." And they bowed their heads and prostrated themselves and he lifted up his eyes and saw his brother Benjamin, his mother's son, and said, "Is this your youngest brother of whom you spoke to me? God be gracious to you, my son." Then Joseph hurried out, for his compassion grew warm for his brother, and he saw a place to weep. And he entered his chamber and wept there. Then he washed his face and came out.And controlling himself he said, "Serve the food." They served him by himself, and then by themselves, and the Egyptians who ate with him by themselves, because the Egyptians could not eat with the Hebrews, for that is an abomination to the Egyptians. And they sat before him, the firstborn according to his birthright and the youngest according to his youth. And the men looked at one another in amazement. Portions were taken to them from Joseph's table, but Benjamin's portion was five times as much as any of theirs. And they drank and were Mary with him. This is the word of the Lord. Let us pray.Heavenly Father, we praise you that your word says the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of the Lord remains forever. We thank you, Lord, for this ancient book that is so much more than a book. We thank you, Lord, for this story of the life of Jacob and his sons, Judah, Joseph. We thank you Lord that this story is not just a story, not just a piece of history. It's something that your spirit turn alive in our hearts that can use to sanctify us, to grow us, to mold us, to grow our dependence on you and see our need for you in greater forms. We pray, Lord, for the blessing of your word. Bless the word as I preach it, but it'd go out in power and force. Let each one of here convicted to trust you through the hardship of day-to-day life, convicted of their need to look for your work in their lives, more closely, convicted of their need to cling to your word in all trials and circumstances. Lord, I pray these things in Jesus' holy name. Amen.Well, today, we are talking about Genesis 43. And yesterday, I sent out an email. We sent out a weekly email before the sermons go out, and I ask you to think about if you were God, how would you tell him to work on you? And if you're a believer, I'm wanting you to think about how would you want God to grow you, to shape you. I know that for me, even though I know God, Christ calls us to take up our cross daily and follow in his footsteps. I think my plan for myself would involve lots of isolation. My wife would be there, my kids would be there, but sometimes I'd be able to escape and get full freedom from them. There'd be a babysitter for me and my wife when we want to spend time together. And then, there'd be a lot of opportunity to grow by watching soccer, to grow by exercising about three hours a day, to grow by just processing things, facts, knowledge, the word of God in isolation without really engaging other people.So, what is it for you? If you had the choice as a believer, how would you like God to grow you? What do you think is best? I think a lot of us, we don't really go, we know it's not really mature to think like that. But oftentimes, when God follows his classic means, shown to us in scripture, we resist and we think we could do it better. And if you're a nonbeliever, you say, "God, show me. Woo me. I want you to talk to me in this specific way." And what is that for you if you're a nonbeliever here today? Because this is a chapter where in Genesis 43, and God is dealing with Jacob and his sons... Who's Jacob? Jacob is the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham and God. This is the first book of the Bible, the book of the beginnings of the creation, the book of the beginnings of the family of God, and God's work in creation.God creates the world, all things are good. Adam and Eve walk in perfect unity and peace and perfect knowledge of him. There's no sin, there's no tension, there's no conflict, there's no brokenness in the world. And Genesis 2 comes, and Adam and Eve sinned. Genesis 3 talks about how there's going to be thorns and thistles to life. The creation is impacted by man's sin. And really, Genesis 3-12, it's a story of the spread of the sin of mankind, in the hearts of man and in relationships and in the creation. So God calls Abraham, and he says, "Abraham, I'm going to bless you. I'm going to make you into great people." He's a man. I think he's 75 years old when he calls him, and he doesn't have a child. He says, "I'm going to make you a great people, and I'm going to bless you. I'm going to make you the father of many kings, the father of many nations."So his son, Isaac, receives that promise. His son Jacob receives that promise. And what we're finding out in this series is that Jacob, though he had some good moments in his youth where he showed true faith in the Lord, he is a bit of a bonehead and his sons are worse than him. They are adulterers, his 12 sons. They've committed incest, they are prideful, they're slanderous. They're all fighting inwardly. They're competing with each other. And furthermore, at one point, 20 years ago, they put the Father Jacob's prize son, the son that he had with his favorite wife, they left him in a pit for dead. What they don't know is that God preserved his life, and put him through a process to bring him to the right hand of Pharaoh. So God's dealing with this broken family while the lingering promise that they're going to be a blessing to the earth stands, so God has to work.These people are not perfect. God's people are never perfect. But what we see is that these people probably aren't saved, these people probably don't know God, and it's kind of offensive that God would choose to work through these people. This is kind of a stance that, "God is doing something new. Why would he save the world from the slavery to sin through such a broken family?" It's a statement that religion that says, "I do right. I earn favor before God is wrong." It's a statement that salvation is initiated by God, not by any individual man as he tries to approach God. It's a statement that God uses broken people. And how can he use broken people? It's because he gives grace to them. We're talking about this family and their brokenness, but we're talking about how God is dealing with them.Again, think about how would you like God to deal with you? But in this chapter, compare that with how God is working on these people as a model of the family of faith. Last week, we discussed a lot of this already. In chapter 42, Genesis, we discussed how God has been working on them through the hardship of famine. When the famine hits the land for about a year, they're forced to look for a source of food. We discussed how God has been dealing with them through the hardship of sojourning, of temporarily turning to foreign land for help and relief. It's the hardship of being a refugee or a migrant worker looking for the best for their family. You're engaging with hard travel, engaging foreign officials, engaging with bureaucracy stacked against them. There's a language barrier and there's stereotypes that they're engaging with.We discussed how God has dealt with this family through the pain of unjust imprisonment. We saw that after three days in prison, they go to Egypt, there's the famine, you're one of the famine. They run out of food, they go to Egypt, and they approach the Egyptian ruler and they receive food, but he places them unjustly in a jail for three days. They don't know that it's their brother Joseph and he's trying to chip away, get a sense of have these men repented, "Are they right before God? Are their hearts still the same as when they put them in the pit?" And they go unjustly to prison, they're sent unjustly to prison, and in Genesis 42:21, they exclaim, "In truth, we are guilty concerning our brother." For them, this is the first time probably in 20 years since abandoning Joseph, leaving him for dead, telling their father that he is gone to the point that he thinks he's dead, this is the first time that their guilty conscience is probably coming alive.And furthermore or less, we talked about how actually the awakened conscience was actually a grace of God, a gift of God. As the men process all the hardship that happened to them in the chapter last week and the things that I just list listed out, they ask in verse 28, "What is this that God has done to us?" God is doing something. He's dealing with Jacob and his sons, but the process is slow. So in this chapter, God continues the work of bringing these men into his family. As we process how God chose to work on this family, we should ask him to show us how he is... If we're not walking with him calling us back, or those walking with him, we should be asking him to show us how he is continuing to stay near us, to refine us.What the New Testament shows us is that the Christian life is like that. We are a piece of gold in the refiner's fire. So we're saved, but then God is exposing us to trials to burn out the impurities that we... Until we grow to the fullness of Christ likeness, God is going to be refining us. So ask Lord, "How are you working in me to save me, to grow me?" And a key verse, "How does he do that?" The key verse in the chapter and one of the key verses in the book, all the Book of Genesis is verse 14. And this is Jacob saying, "May God Almighty grant you mercy before the man." This is the first occurrence of mercy in all of Genesis and all of the Bible. The chapter is all about God's mercy to guilty, fearful, hopeless, lost sinners.The condition of these men as they are contemplating having to go back to Egypt, when they approach Joseph at his house. This chapter is all about the mercy that God offers to guilty sinners like you and me. It's by the mercy of God that God is using life circumstances, and the Egyptian ruler, who Jacob and his sons don't know to be Joseph, to refine these men, to draw them into saving an intimate relationship. And what we see in this chapter is that God dispatches different kinds of mercy. You kind of see it. Last week we touched on it, and this week there's a little bit. Joseph to them, the Egyptian ruler, he deals with the brothers in kind of a bad cop, good cop method. At some moments, God, through Joseph, dishes out tender mercy to the men. And just through pure kindness, gentleness, there's some moments he dishes out severe mercy by inflicting tough circumstances upon them.We're going to learn about different kinds of mercy. How does God try to draw us in, draw non-believers in through mercy? How does God grow and refine Christians through mercy? I'm going to point out three different kinds of mercy. God calls his children home and grows them through severe mercy, common mercy, and tender mercy. And know, the term mercy and grace, and then how they relate to love as you grow in the faith, they're kind of hard terms used because you can't really use them by fully separating them from the other, particularly grace and mercy. Know that I use the term mercy in this outline because I think the key verse talks about God's mercy to the men in this process of going back to Egypt. But I could have equally used the term grace. So to say that God gives mercy to someone has a connotation that God gives leniency when it is not required of him.To say that God gives grace, it means that God gives favor when it is not merited by the recipient and that they're intertwined. Because when God is extending leniency, he is extending favor or grace. When God is extending grace or unmerited favor, he's extending leniency. But this, today, I want to step away from the title of the sermons here and talk about mercy as it relates to grace. God calls his children home and grows them through severe mercy. In verses 1-14, we see that God calls his children home, and I use the term, by extending severe mercy. This is a term that I first became acquainted with in the book, A Severe Mercy by an author Sheldon Vanauken. I probably butchered that. To say that God calls his children home and grows them through severe mercy, put most broadly, it's to say that God calls his children home and grows them by exposing them to severe situations.God purposes that his children face severe, hard, difficult, challenging situations in order to draw them in. In the book, Vanauken, he talks about how God used the death of his wife of a couple of decades. He thinks to actually save him, because ultimately he saw all of his engagement with Christianity was really tied to this desire to build this perfect marriage with his wife. He never really wanted God for God's sake. God had to strip, he says, and he talks about how his engagement through personal letters with CS Lewis helped him. He saw that through taking his wife, he could finally treasure a relationship with God. And that was a severe mercy. Because if that's what it took to get him into a right relationship with God, to see his need for God, to treasure relationship with God that's offered through Christ, then it's a mercy.It's a confusing term, a severe mercy. But when you chew on it, it can really help you understand how God works. To face the severe mercy is severe because it's hard and difficult to face such circumstances. To face the severe mercy is an experience of God's mercy. Because though the severe mercy may be severe and difficult to face or endure, the experience altogether is so much better than what a sinner deserves. So severe mercy, it leads to a person to have a greater understanding of who God is and it leads one to see their limitations of their own power. Furthermore, it leads one to see the boundless limits of God's infinite power, and it's hard to swallow. By exposing people as children to hardship, God is actually being very gentle or merciful to them. How is this true? The whole narrative of scripture says that God is a holy God, and that from the beginning, man was to walk in a holy manner before him.And if he did not, the penalty would be death. Eternal expulsion from the loving presence of God. For the just punishment of sin against an infinite holy God is infinite wrath and eternal punishment. Romans 3:23 says that all have fallen, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Because nobody has met the mark perfect holiness before God, any moment where God withholds or delays the carrying out of his wrath, it's a blessing, a severely merciful act where he is shown leniency. So even as Christians or people approaching the faith, when life is really difficult or hard for any person because it's not anything close to facing the just wrath of God, such a moment is an act of severe mercy extended to them by God. So in this, I'm going to step into the text verses 1-14. I'm going to talk about different forms of severe mercy that God extends, that he exposes his followers too.He uses it to save people, he uses it to grow people, and he is merciful in doing so again. Because the lessons that they learn are so much more important than the idols that they're clinging to, that he's stripping away. In this chapter, we find Jacob's brothers a long while after their initial experience of guilt in the last chapter. Remember, in verse 21, they said, "In truth, we are guilty concerning our brother, this is the last chapter, in that we saw the distress of his soul, they're talking about Joseph in the pit, when he begged us and we did not listen. That is why this distress has come upon us." They exclaimed this and felt their conscience stirred. But now that they're back home, away from Egypt, away from the tension of the moment, away from the threat of imprisonment, away from this man who has authority over them, things have gone back to normal.Maybe the famine will end, they think. Maybe they won't have to go back to Egypt, if that happens. Perhaps, they can forget their past sins. Maybe they can push those ideas of God that crept up in their mind and his authority over their lives, off their consciences forever. They've made an idol. They've gone back home and they've made an idol out of the facade of a peaceful status quo on the surface of their lives, while there's guilt for sin on their conscience they've not dealt with. If this is their thinking, whether the text shows us, is that God has another plan in mind. If you're wrestling with guilt or fighting to suppress guilt, God has another plan in mind for you. He's relentless in his pursuit of them. And in these verses, we see the three forms of severe mercy.First, he exposes them to famine. More broadly, he exposes them to the pressures of living in a fallen world. Genesis 43:1-2. Now, the famine was severe in the land. And when they had eaten the grain that they had bought brought from Egypt, their father said to them, "Go again, buy us a little food." So God exposes them to continued famine. This is probably close to the end of year two of famine based on what other chapters tell us. And famine, honestly, as a modern American, I can't fathom this. Apparently, 49 million people in 46 countries are experiencing severe food crisis or famine in the present day. And that's according to a quick Google search, an organization called Action Against Hunger. Famine occurs when drought and her infestation and her plant disease and her war continuously plague a huge region of land for months or years at a time.It's a severe hardship that, when faced, lingers on your mind all day every day until there is relief. Hardship that adds uncertainty to all matters of life, to every minute, every hour, every week. It kills you physically and it kills you psychologically, and there's nothing you can do to stop it. You're powerless to put an end to it. All you're left to do is know how to respond to it and engage with it and survive through it. Obviously, today, we praise God. We have a lot of knowledge, materials, technology, pesticides, and means of food preservation to try to confront famine, but it clearly arises in many lands today. But the point is, back then, they did not. Jacob and his family, this family called to bless the world and become numerous nation of people of kingdoms, they're facing famine. They are almost at the point of not surviving.So the famine, it exerts pressure on them, they have to deal with it and they're powerless. But famine, it's something that the greatest schemes of men, greatest schemes of America, of science and technology cannot control. There are other forms of natural disasters, severe forms of mercy that we face, drought, hurricanes, tsunamis, tornadoes, earthquakes, volcano eruptions, biological and airborne microorganisms. I was reminded of this while I'm reading this, studying this, writing this yesterday. I got multiple notifications on my phone and on my computer from Apple talking about the fine particulates that are floating around, the bad air quality because of the wildfires in Canada. We can't control the weather and the shifting of the earth and microorganisms and fine particulates. And our increased ability to track a lot of these things, it seems to cause more paranoia and anxiety than actually helps us at times.So God speaks to us again and again through pressures of famine still, but pressures of a fallen sin, fallen world through weather, through disease, through political, international turmoil that we cannot control. 9/11, floods, hurricane Katrina, hurricane Harvey in Houston several years back, COVID, heated elections, Russia-Ukraine, the threat of personal sickness and death at any minute, struggles with conception still plaguing the world. Miscarriage, race, gender, class battles, the Lord... These things have entered the world because of sin and we have to face them. What is God telling us in all of it? We are not in control. He is sovereign. He is in control to be brought to this knowledge, to love this knowledge, to find peace in this knowledge. It's a mercy, a grace of God. He's in control. He's in charge. We know he is good. Look at how he redeemed the travesty of the cross of Jesus Christ.So all of natural history, world history align with the words of St. Paul in Romans 8:18-22, I'm just going to read 22. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now, Jacob and his sons face it. We still face it. It impacts our lives and our decisions. So I ask you, what is God telling you through the Earth's groaning? It's going to keep happening until Jesus comes back to make all things new. Paul has to think about it. How has God used natural circumstances or pressures of a fallen world to make you think or act in life? What have you learned from them? What do you think you can learn right now? Second, God extends mercy to Jacob and his brothers to draw them into fellowship with him by exposing them to the pressure of broken people.Verse three. But Judah said to him, "The man, the Egyptian ruler, solemnly warned us saying, 'You shall not see my face unless your brother is with you.'" So the will of a relatively random governor in Egypt, according to the brothers as they don't know it is Joseph, he's forcing them in a certain direction. He's adding pressures and limitations to their freedom. They have to deal with the fact that one brother, Simeon, is still imprisoned by him there. And specifically in this chapter, they're pressured to send Benjamin to Egypt upon his command simply to have food for their families to survive. Like Jacob, we still face these unwanted pressures from other people and these are appointed by the severe mercy of God. We can try to create vacuums to avoid such people. We can seek out echo chambers of those who are like-minded. It's easier than ever.We can seek spouses with the exact same interests, companies and departments, literally through search algorithms on apps online. We can find neighbors, churches, work departments that are the perfect fit. But people are inevitable, they're broken, they're sinful. We can't escape them, we can't cancel them, and that's by God's design. The tendency when we engage people and they inflict their presence and authority on our lives, whether we seek it or not, is that we think we can change them. When we're first confronted with hard people, we say to ourselves, "That's okay. Give me a little time, I'll change you." But with time, we see that we can't. This is the husband and the wife almost on a day-to-day basis. This is parents trying to change their children, grow their children, save their children on their time. Children trying to change their parents.This is the boss trying to change the employee, the employee trying to change the boss. No matter how many phone apps, forms of counseling or technology we have that can teach us how to change people, we have to realize that we can't. Only God can. Only God can change someone from the inside out, change them at the heart level such that their behavior, their presence, their communication changes. We need to just approach these moments, this lack of power with humility. We can fight it, we can keep pressing on and nagging on the people of our lives to change them, or we can ask God what is he trying to do through this, the presence of these people.What is that you trying to do through the engagements of them? We have to allow our lives to be shaped by the necessity of engaging people. So ask God, how are you changing me? How are you calling me home to you to crave your presence, your sinless presence, your loving presence more? How are you refining me through other people? This is a severe mercy of God that we have to engage people. Third, God extends severe mercy to Jacob and his brothers to draw them into fellowship with him by exposing them to undesirable circumstances. Verse 6, Jacob says, "Why did you treat me so badly as to tell the man that you had another brother?" So Jacob, the neglectful father, comes off as an angry old curmudgeon, as a victim of the folly of his sons as he processes the situation. He's just whining. Honestly, my first engagement with this was laughing as I read it because I was just sitting and whining with my wife in the minutes before I'd started to study this.And I just want to say, "Men, we think that our wives and children are blessed when we sit down and tell them how we have it right, everyone else in our life has it wrong, and that we are victim of our circumstances." We need to stop. We need to be models of faith and steadfast faithfulness to God. There's no way to avoid difficult circumstances. Jacob and his sons had no control over the fact of the famine and the extension of the famine, and they had no control over the fact that Egypt had all the grain in that period. Similarly, in our lives, there's seasons, moments, trials that just fall into our lap. Things that we didn't invite into our households, our churches, our neighborhoods, our schools, our local state and national governments, financial downturns, wars that we have to engage, that we have no interest in engaging but we have to.We can get depressed, we can get paralyzed, we can busy ourselves to avoid the fact that these tensions and these situations exist. We can distract ourselves with relationships, devices, and shows, adrenaline rushes. We can try to ignore them by engaging in drink, smoke, other chemicals, or we can face the fact that circumstances are part of life. We're called to face them in faith, and find the faithful narrow way forward that brings glory to God. As we do that in the process, the Lord is teaching us, shaping us, saving many all along. These moments, these undesired circumstances shouldn't always be viewed as hindrances, but as opportunities for us to see God's wisdom at work in our lives, to see his power moving in our life. So in some, I've talked about the severe mercy of God as he exposes us to it through the effects of living in a sinful world through people, through random undesired circumstances.And know, the message that I want you to take is not just expect hardship to be a part of your life, but not become a stoic. It's not a, "Pick-up your bootstraps. This is life, just face it. Everybody has to deal with it. Find a way to cope." No, it's find a way to see God's hand through it all. Ask him to grow your wisdom, your insight to engage such moments in a way that pleases him. Ask him to show you what he's teaching you. Ask him how he wants you to respond, one day at a time, without getting overcome with anxiety, thinking about how hard it will be in the future. I like the framing of, "You need to see that as you think about severe mercies, a lot of these external circumstances forcing their pressure on onto your life. You need to see that what makes you you, and the Lord is not just the things that you have done but the things that also have happened to you.God's using it all in his grand plan and glorious plan to save you, to shape you, prepare you for his work. We've seen him do such work in the life of Joseph as we meditated upon his experience in the pit. We meditated upon facing false accusations of adultery. We meditated upon him being forced to be in an Egyptian jail for several years. We've seen how God prepared him to handle this moment with grace and mercy. So the same thing that he did with Joseph, the same thing he's doing with you and you need to trust him as he does it. See here, the text says that God is shaping these men through severe mercy. I just want to take time to look at Judah and Jacob to show you that transformation is actually happening. Let's look at Judah. Judah, who we know from our study in Genesis 38, was a very hard and stubborn man.He slept with his deceased son's wife when he thought she was a prostitute. This Judah is changing by God's severe mercy and becoming the family leader in this chapter. In the text, at the beginning when after Jacob resists sending the brothers back with Benjamin, Judah honestly, respectfully, directly speaks to his father. He still honors him, but he stands on truth before him. In verse 8, to convince his father, he takes a wise strategy. He repeats to his father, "Send the boy with me, and we will rise and go, that we may live and not die." Jacob said when he first sent the sons to Egypt, he said, "Go to Egypt to get grain, so that we may live and not die." He's using Jacob's words to convince him. And then he adds an element so that both we and you and also our little ones may be saved, may stay alive.Judah's not thinking of himself as we saw him do. Primarily, he's thinking of others. So further, Judah, the biggest thing that he does is he pledges his life to Jacob. He commits to taking personal responsibility if Benjamin does not return. This is in comparison to the author that Ruben makes in the last chapter in verse 7. Ruben says to Jacob, this harsh approach, "Kill my two sons if I go to Egypt with Benjamin and don't return with him." We see Jacob's wisdom. We see him taking responsibility. And this foreshadows, a little side note, the precedence that the tribe of Judah eventually takes among the other tribes of the nation of Israel. It points to the time that Jesus Christ, a descendant of Judah, the line of the tribe of Judah's scripture calls him, takes responsibility for the sins of the lost sons of God by going to the cross, offering himself in their place.Judah changes but we see an incredible change in Jacob through the severe mercy of God, through the providential appointment of hardship. Jacob, again, he is a whiny curmudgeon at the start of the chapter, blaming everyone else for the situation that they're in. He's still showing extreme preference for his son Benjamin over the other 10, but there's great change taking place as the chapter goes forward. This is noted most clearly by the fact that, for most of the story today, Jacob's story is that God does save him. Jacob does have faith in God. And God, at that point, he passes his promises of the covenant from Abraham and Isaac to him, and God gives him a covenant named Israel. But Jacob, even after a profound experience in earlier chapters of Genesis, he goes back to his old ways. So the story, the narrative throughout Genesis primarily calls him Jacob over and over again.In chapter 42, he's Jacob. In this chapter, he moves from the old angry man to the new man Israel. He starts off complaining, but then he takes charge as these situations force him to. He provides decisive and wise leadership in granting the brother's permission to bring Benjamin, and giving them instructions to pack gifts, local delicacies that they don't have in Egypt to earn the favor of the ruler, to double the money that they bring back after the Egyptians did not keep their money last time. He takes practical matters. He thinks responsibly. But the most notable change that we see in Jacob as he faces the severe mercy of God is that he has revival in his faith. In verse 14, he's brought to the point where he knows he's powerless to change the situation, and he says, "May God Almighty grant you mercy before the man, and may send back your other brother and Benjamin. And as for me, if I'm bereaved of my children, I'm bereaved."Jacob, now Israel, he appeals to the covenant name of God of Genesis, El Shaddai, Genesis 17 particularly, the mighty God. This God, he's trusted in before, he will trust in again. Furthermore, in this verse, he appeals to the mercy of God for the success of the journey for Egypt. He knows only God can give them favorable outcome here. Lastly, what's most profound, he entrusts Benjamin's safety and the desire for the return of Benjamin's brother Joseph to God, right? He's been grieving the loss of Joseph, basically not functioning, not engaging the other brothers for 20 years, all the while preserving Benjamin's life at all costs and just ignoring those other brothers. And Jacob relinquish his grip on the matter. He goes as far as showing peace over the fact that if it's the Lord's will to bereave him of his children, then so be it.You got to remember, he did not forget that God said that He's carrying this promise to be the father of many nations, like that was passed down from Abraham and Isaac. He says, "God, I trust you. You have the power to fulfill your promises even when there seems to be no hope." So I elaborate on Judas' transformation, Jacob's transformation to illustrate how God uses severe mercy, hard circumstances to change them, to save them, to grow them in the faith. We can spend all of our life begrudgingly facing the appointed personal, familial, cultural, global circumstances that we're born into or approach them with faith. We can see how they deepen our dependence on God, make us better men and women, grow our vision and appreciation for the daily mercies and graces of God, and increase the fruit of the spirit within us. We're becoming more like Christ as we engage them faithfully.Some may ask, why does God act like this? Why does he have a point to choose to use severe mercy? This is my second point, and it's really short. If God calls his children home and grows them through severe mercy, common mercy, why does he use severe mercy? Because he is offering common mercy constantly, and we don't receive it. Matthew 5:45 says, "For he makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust." God is actually trying to tell us through the basic mercies, basic graces of daily life that he is God and he is in control, and we owe him our worship and faithfulness. Through the rising of the sun, every day on all people, through the sending of rains, through daily health, through the beauty of nature, through the provision of daily bread, through the joyful spirit and faith that children have as they wake up and just expect God to provide through the majesty of just the creative world, he's talking to us and it's not enough for us.We are stubborn. We are selfish. We choose to say that that is not enough. We place ourselves in the position of God, and we don't accept his means of communicating that. That's the mistake that Adam and Eve made in the garden. They think that God is keeping something from them in just the basic provision of life in the garden. So we commit the same sin and we don't receive common mercy, which I'm also basically saying is the same thing, historically-referred to as common grace. But praise God, he doesn't stop at common mercy. He doesn't stop at severe mercy to draw us in. He gives us tender mercy, and this is my third point. God calls his children home through severe mercy, common mercy, tender mercy.The use of tender mercy, it's a little redundant. I could have just said mercy. But to drive home in the point and emphasize how good it is, I went forward with tender mercy. He said that he speaks to us through tender mercy, expose us to tender mercy. He treats us and speaks to us with very loving treatment. He engages our fears and guilt uniquely. He mercifully and graciously condescends to speak to us at a level that we understand, in his process of calling us to him and refining us once we're in the family. This is what verses 15-34 really show us. God calls the brothers back by tender mercy. Verse 18 says, "And the men were afraid because they were brought to Joseph's house." So they bring the goods, they bring the money, they bring Benjamin back to Egypt, and they're told by a servant to go to his house.Can you imagine these tent dwellers, these back country men when they're about to go to the house, the property of this powerful Egyptian ruler, essentially a billionaire of their day? They're rolling up on their donkeys, not even camels, to palace with dozens of camels. It's like driving a rusty old pickup truck to a mansion with multiple Teslas and model cars. And they're weary from facing God's severe mercy, the famine, the travel. The anxiety of how they will be received by the ruler after they return, as they know that the ruler did not receive the money the first time, it would've been paralyzing them. Just not knowing, "Is this ruler just going to come down and arrest us and make us his slave?" Their worst fear would probably be over the fact, "That as we engage this man, are we going to be brought to that point where we feel guilty again for throwing Joseph into the pit?"Again, they don't know that Joseph is the ruler. But they know that through engagement with this man, they were brought back to this thing that they just want to depress. But God brings these men back to Egypt as part of the process to draw him in. And how are they received? It's with kindness, with love. Remember, Jacob/Israel's prayer in verse 14, May God Almighty grant you mercy before him. Jacob's prayers come true. It's answered. The ruler and his servant receive them with tender mercy. They arise in Egypt, guilty, fearful. What does the servant say to them? He says, "Peace," shalom in Hebrew, "Peace to you. Do not be afraid. Your God and the God of your father has put treasure in your sacks for you." This is after they say hello and confess that they went home with the money. It says, "Don't worry about it."As the text continues, the servant brings him out, Simeon. He's released as promised, upon their return in their last chapter, and he's in good shape. Then though they're foreigners, they are brought into the private residence of a ruler. Further, the text says they're given water, their feet are washed, their donkeys aren't stolen but are given fodder from the royal feed, and they're invited to a feast. When they approach Joseph at the feast, they bow down to him. And what does he do? He inquires of their welfare, asks them how they are doing, and I'm sure it would've been a little bit of a sugarcoated answer of, "Oh, we're great." Like not acknowledging the fact that they're in turmoil for the months and weeks as this moment approached. But he inquires about their welfare, asks about their father. The ruler further goes to greet the younger brother that he didn't meet during the last visit, Benjamin, and blesses him saying, "God be gracious to you, my son."Altogether, God, after providentially offering common mercy throughout their lives, after offering a lot of severe mercy recently, God has arranged for them to taste his tender mercy as part of the process to draw him in, to fellowship with him. In a situation where Joseph, the ruler, could have brought down justice for the situation with the money as things appeared. For his sin, their sin against him 20 years ago, he treats him with mercy. He treats him with love and kindness. One of the most notable things about the merciful treatment that God has arranged for the brothers is that he goes above and beyond to show the brothers that he's speaking to them through these mercies in ways that are uniquely designed for them. Verse 33 says, And they sat before him, the firstborn according to his birthright and the youngest according to his youth. And the men looked at one another in amazement. God, through Joseph, announces this moment in such a way that the brothers should know that they're talking to him.Just think, there's 11 brothers sitting down. And in this moment, they're arranged from oldest to youngest. If you think about how many ways that the ruler could have arranged them, it's equal to 11 factorial. Yes, I'm making you think about middle school math right now. 11 factorial ways that he could have arranged these men. That's 39,916,800 ways that the ruler could have seeded them, and one of them is the perfect way and he does it. God is clearly speaking to them. And do they see it? Further, in verse 34, the text mentions that the ruler gives Benjamin, the brother of Joseph, five times the portion of food. God's trying to communicate to them that he is God. He knows what they did, and he is mercifully dealing with their sin toward Joseph right now by bringing attention to Benjamin. In this specific communication to the brothers, God is just calling them home.He wants them to cry out mercy as they see that he is God. And they need his mercy for their sin, for their rebellion against his authority over their life, for their specific sins, and particularly, the sin against Joseph. Through tender mercy and the generalness of the ruler's reception, through the specific details of the seating arrangement and serving, God's talking to them. He's trying to stir their minds to acknowledge him as God. But what is their response? Verse 33 says, They looked at one another in amazement. They looked around at each other as if the way they were seated was a coincidence. They looked at each other and said, "Well, forgot about it," and set their minds to the feast before them. Verse 34 says, after Benjamin was given a huge portion, they just enjoyed themselves and had a nice meal like at any other banquet. With their youngest brother, nobody would ever have given the youngest brother this kind of portion. He gets five times more than them in this patriarchal society.And furthermore, at the start of the next chapter, the brothers after this experience where God is just talking to them, offering them mercy, showing them gentleness, tender mercy, they're just content to wake up and go home. They're not inclined to think about everything that's happening. Their reception of the mercy of God, it's dull. They're not moved. It gives them no more than a smile and the satisfaction of a good day and full belly gives them. Isn't that very similar to the reaction that the world has toward God and his mercy? Isn't that very similar to the reaction that you have toward it, on some days? If you're a believer, you can't be a believer without truly cherishing this moment, at one point. But it grows dry and worn out. That's because we're not seeing how God is moving through everything to save us, grow us, shape us.You see, Joseph's brothers, they have an excuse. The ruler didn't reveal himself as Joseph. They don't know that's him, but we know who the ruler is. We know who the governor is. We know who the king of kings, the Lord of Lord is, over all of the earth and over us all as individuals. It's the Lord Jesus Christ. It's written on our heart, our conscience, and it's written in the creation. We long for God's perfect and just rule and reign and the comfort of his presence, when the storms and trials, the rulers and people and circumstances of the broken world impress their unjust influence on our lives and decision making. We long for his unique and tender love toward us as we face these hardships. We know that for all of history, all the time, God has supremely shown his love to man.He has communicated his desire to extend love and grace to each of us in a million unique different ways. Most clearly, he has mercifully and graciously shown his love for us. In coming to deal with our greatest need as parched, guilty, dead sinners. He took on flesh, went from heaven to earth and walked the earth. He came to deal with our greatest need, our thirst for him. God broke the barrier by sending a son to take on flesh, bear the hardship and temptations of this world perfectly as we could not, and to go to the cross in our place. We know that God chosen his love for us and, that while we are still sinners, Christ died for us. How much more clearly could God in all of his glory condescend to speak to us in our greatest need to communicate his love to us? And yet we're often reluctant to receive it.We're reluctant to see our need to entrust our lives to him. Joseph and his brothers had an excuse, but we don't. So Colossians 2:9-10, it says, we're in him the whole fullness of the deity dwells bodily. And you have been filled in him who is the head of all rule and authority. We have no excuse. God is showing his mercy, communicating his love and desire to be in relationship with us over and over again, and we need to receive it. Christ, he broke the divide between heaven and earth. His crowning act of glory with all of his authority was to lay side as glory and die for us. That's really what Joseph is doing. Joseph could be using his authority to squash these sinners to just pour out wrath, but he doesn't. God, Christ did all of this in order that we might live and dine at the same table with him, with a portion due to the firstborn and rule with him and his eternal kingdom.That's what Joseph was doing. That's what Christ offers to us. So I ask you today to close, how is God extending severe mercy to you? How is he extending common mercy? How can you see it better? How is he extending tender mercy, specifically speaking to you, in ways that speak to your greatest fears, your greatest sense, your areas of guilt, your questions of the truth? As you see that, just bow and humble submission to him. Genesis 43 says, you're doubtful, sinful, guilty people like Jacob's family and us with a bad record of bad conscience. There is one power. One of great power and great honor who loves you, who wants to bless you and deliver you from the guilt of your sin and circumstances. He's doing so much to get you to see that. Try to see it. Come into his family, his love, his grace, his mercy. It's sufficient. Let us pray.Heavenly Father, we praise you that Christ has come and he came out of love. He initiated the process that procured our salvation. It's not anything that we can do, but it's all that he has done. And Lord, we praise you that you do not leave us in the condition that we're in. When you save us, you give us your righteousness, but you appoint seasons and trials and circumstances and engagement with the fallen world to grow us. We get to see your hand of redemption at work in us and through us every day. Lord, we praise you that we know we have a savior who has lived perfectly, died in our place, roses from the dead, and ascended to your right hand of authority just like Joseph was at the right hand of Pharaoh. And he is working for our good, for our preservation, for our growth in the faith. We pray all these things in Jesus' name. Amen.Now, we're going to transition to a time in the service of communion. This is something that we do as believers to commemorate the fact that by offering his body, pouring out his blood for us on the cross, Jesus invites us to live and dine guilt free at his table. For whom is holy communion—it's for repentant Christians, repentant children of God. If you're not a Christian, not sure where you stand before God, we ask you to withhold from partaking and meditate on the gospel, meditate upon the sermon, the message of today. But if you have decided today to receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you're welcome to partake. And if are a Christian, we emphasize that this is for repentant believers. If you have unreconciled sin in your life that you have not brought to the Lord, if you have it on your conscience to approach other brothers and sisters where there is sin, we ask you to with withhold.So if you haven't received a cup with a little wafer and the elements, please raise your hand. As I pray, one of the ushers will give you one. Heavenly Father, we praise you for your grace and mercy. Jesus, we thank you for procuring salvation for us. You suffered, Lord, and triumphed for us. Today, we remember your suffering. Holy Spirit, I pray that you prepare our hearts now to focus on the attention of the cross of Jesus Christ dying for us, the primary act of showing your tender mercy toward us. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Take off the bottom layer. I think all of our cups now have the bread on the bottom. Take the bread out and follow along with me. On the night that Jesus was betrayed, he took the bread and after eating it, he said, "This is my body broken for you. Take, eat, and do this in remembrance of me."He then proceeded to take the cup, and he said, "This cup is the cup of the new covenant of my blood, which is poured out for the sins of many. Take, drink, and do this in remembrance of me." Let's pray. Lord God, we glorify you. We pray, Lord, Holy Spirit, help us in glorifying God as we meditate upon the wisdom of his ways, the ability to redeem and use the brokenness of this world, the broken moments of our life, the broken moments of our personality, and redeem them and use them to be a blessing to others. Help us, Lord, as we worship. Help us to cast off all of our burdens and anxieties and stresses for situations, relationships that we cannot control to you. Help us to focus on you on the greatness of your power, your majesty, holiness, righteousness, truth, perfect plans, and sovereignty. Help us to sing with all that we have because you are worthy of all worship and glory and honor in all seasons. We pray this all in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

What does having a call on your life look like? The simple answer to this question is to follow the Biblical  discussion between Nic Silvanie and Adnie Gaudin, on Genesis 29:31-35; 30:4-13, 16-34; 35:16-18; 49:3-27Facts about Jacob's sonsGad the seventh born through Zilpah he is an overcomer Genesis 30:10-11; 49:19Asher the eighth born through Zilpah dealt in agriculture Genesis 30:12-13;  49:20Issachar the ninth born through Leah, had wisdom and understanding of the times  Genesis 30:17-18; 49:14-15Zebulun the tenth born through Leah, involved in trade Genesis 30:19-20; 49:13Joseph born through Rachel, sold in slavery by his brothers and became Governor of Egypt Genesis 30:22-24; 49:22-26Benjamin the twelfth born through Rachel, brave in battle Genesis 35:16-18; 49:27 The way to salvation:Hear: Romans 10:17Believe: Hebrews 11:6Repent: Acts 17:30-31Confess: Matthew 10:32Be Baptized: Mark 16:15-16Be faithful unto death: Revelation 2:10Support the showSocial Media/Follow Us: Website:https://www.calledbygodpodcast.com/IG: https://www.instagram.com/cbg.podcast/Twitter: https://twitter.com/CalledbyGodPodTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@calledbygodpodcast

What does having a call on your life look like? The simple answer to this question is to follow the Biblical  discussion between Nic Silvanie and Adnie Gaudin, on Genesis 29:31-35; 30:4-13, 16-34; 35:16-18; 49:3-27Facts about Jacob's sonsReuben the first born through Leah lost the birthright of the first born Genesis 29:32; 49:3-4Simeon  the second born  through Leah he had a temper on him Genesis 29:33; 49:5-7Levi the third born through Leah he is the father of the Levitical Priest also had a temper Genesis 29:34; 49:5-7Judah the  fourth born through Leah, the ancestor of Jesus Christ Genesis 29:35;  49:8-12Dan the fifth born through Bilhah, will judge his people Genesis 30:5-6; 49:16-18Naphtali the sixth born through Bilhah, warriors Genesis 30:7-8; 49:21The way to salvation:Hear: Romans 10:17Believe: Hebrews 11:6Repent: Acts 17:30-31Confess: Matthew 10:32Be Baptized: Mark 16:15-16Be faithful unto death: Revelation 2:10Support the showSocial Media/Follow Us: Website:https://www.calledbygodpodcast.com/IG: https://www.instagram.com/cbg.podcast/Twitter: https://twitter.com/CalledbyGodPodTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@calledbygodpodcast

When God said He would scatter the descendants of Jacob/Israel, and they would be as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sand of the sea, He wasn't kidding! Combining biblical and historical records, mythology and DNA, there are enough breadcrumbs to follow this tribe all over the globe; from Greece to Spain, on to Ireland, and all across Europe.  VF-2358 Watch, Listen and Learn 24x7 at PastorMelissaScott.com  Pastor Melissa Scott teaches from Faith Center in Glendale. Call 1-800-338-3030 24x7 to leave a message for Pastor Scott. You may make reservations to attend a live service, leave a prayer request or make a commitment. Pastor Scott appreciates messages and reads them often during live broadcasts. Follow @Pastor_Scott on Twitter and visit her official Facebook page @Pastor.M.Scott. Download Pastor Scott's "Understand the Bible" app for iPhone, iPad and iPod at the Apple App Store and for Android devices in the Google Store. Pastor Scott can also be seen 24x7 on Roku and Amazon Fire on the "Understand the Bible?" channel. ©2023 Pastor Melissa Scott, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved

God made an everlasting covenant with Abraham. He blessed him and gave him the promise of land and seed, which would go on to become a great nation. Abraham passes on his possessions and all of these promises as an inheritance to his son Isaac, and Isaac to his son Jacob/Israel. But after Jacob/Israel dies, people get confused about how this inheritance, which includes the promises of seed, land, and kings, is passed on. A careful study of the biblical record can clear up a lot of confusion, specifically regarding the land of Israel, and who should lay claim to it. VF-2351 Watch, Listen and Learn 24x7 at PastorMelissaScott.com  Pastor Melissa Scott teaches from Faith Center in Glendale. Call 1-800-338-3030 24x7 to leave a message for Pastor Scott. You may make reservations to attend a live service, leave a prayer request or make a commitment. Pastor Scott appreciates messages and reads them often during live broadcasts. Follow @Pastor_Scott on Twitter and visit her official Facebook page @Pastor.M.Scott. Download Pastor Scott's "Understand the Bible" app for iPhone, iPad and iPod at the Apple App Store and for Android devices in the Google Store. Pastor Scott can also be seen 24x7 on Roku and Amazon Fire on the "Understand the Bible?" channel. ©2023 Pastor Melissa Scott, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved

God said to the children of Israel that He would not utterly destroy them nor cut them off completely. There is prophetic significance in the blessings that were given to Jacob/ Israel's sons. As we trace the history of God's people, we find that God is faithful to His word. VF-2350 Watch, Listen and Learn 24x7 at PastorMelissaScott.com Pastor Melissa Scott teaches from Faith Center in Glendale. Call 1-800-338-3030 24x7 to leave a message for Pastor Scott. You may make reservations to attend a live service, leave a prayer request or make a commitment. Pastor Scott appreciates messages and reads them often during live broadcasts. Follow @Pastor_Scott on Twitter and visit her official Facebook page @Pastor.M.Scott. Download Pastor Scott's "Understand the Bible" app for iPhone, iPad and iPod at the Apple App Store and for Android devices in the Google Store. Pastor Scott can also be seen 24x7 on Roku and Amazon Fire on the "Understand the Bible?" channel. ©2023 Pastor Melissa Scott, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved

Recapitulamos la travesía de Jacob, ahora Israel. Se detalla la descendencia de Jacob (Israel) y de Esaú. Muere Isaac, padre de Jacob (Israel) y de Esaú. Se detalla el reinado edomita desde Edom Belá hasta Hadad y los jeques edomitas desde Timná hasta Irán. Job escucha a detalle del poder de Dios pero Job se mantiene necio a las palabras de Bildad... Hoy leemos Génesis 35-36; Job 25-26; Proverbios 3:19-24.A partir de enero del 2023, Fray Sergio Serrano, OP leerá toda la Biblia en 365 episodios. Además compartirá reflexiones y comentarios para ir conociendo más la Palabra de Dios al caminar por la Historia de la Salvación.Aquí puedes obtener más información y el plan de lectura.Un poco más de The Great Adventure Bible, la Biblia que seguirá el podcast de La Biblia en un Año:Codificación de colores para fácil referencia: Usa el famoso Sistema de Aprendizaje de la Cronología de la Biblia de The Great Adventure (“The Bible Timeline” ®️) creado por Jeff Cavins, experto en Sagradas Escrituras, y que es utilizado por cientos de miles de católicos para aprender a leer la Biblia.Artículos que te ayudan a comprender el panorama completo de la Historia de la Salvación.Recuadros con eventos clave que ayudan a identificar los puntos importantes en la Biblia.Cuadros detallados que ofrecen la visión panorámica de los personajes y eventos clave, las alianzas importantes, mapas y el contexto histórico.Mapas a todo color que ayudan a visualizar los lugares donde sucedieron las historias bíblicas.

Full Text of ReadingsFeast of the Holy Innocents, martyrs Lectionary: 698The Saint of the day is Holy InnocentsThe Story of the Holy Innocents Herod “the Great,” king of Judea, was unpopular with his people because of his connections with the Romans and his religious indifference. Hence he was insecure and fearful of any threat to his throne. He was a master politician and a tyrant capable of extreme brutality. He killed his wife, his brother, and his sister's two husbands, to name only a few. Matthew 2:1-18 tells this story: Herod was “greatly troubled” when astrologers from the east came asking the whereabouts of “the newborn king of the Jews,” whose star they had seen. They were told that the Jewish Scriptures named Bethlehem as the place where the Messiah would be born. Herod cunningly told them to report back to him so that he could also “do him homage.” They found Jesus, offered him their gifts, and warned by an angel, avoided Herod on their way home. Jesus escaped to Egypt. Herod became furious and “ordered the massacre of all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity two years old and under.” The horror of the massacre and the devastation of the mothers and fathers led Matthew to quote Jeremiah: “A voice was heard in Ramah, sobbing and loud lamentation; Rachel weeping for her children…” (Matthew 2:18). Rachel was the wife of Jacob (Israel). She is pictured as weeping at the place where the Israelites were herded together by the conquering Assyrians for their march into captivity. Reflection The Holy Innocents are few in comparison to the genocide and abortion of our day. But even if there had been only one, we recognize the greatest treasure God put on the earth—a human person, destined for eternity, and graced by Jesus' death and resurrection. The Holy Innocents are the Patron Saints of: Babies Saint of the Day, Copyright Franciscan Media