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THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JACOB
The Gospel According to Jacob, Part 9
John 10:11-18; Genesis 48:8-20
November 26, 2006 – Christ the King Sunday
Pastor Bob Sanders 
We’ve been looking at the life of Jacob over the past few weeks, and today we scroll forward to the end. Jacob (or Israel as he’s also known) is now an old man, and we join his son Joseph and his two grandsons, Manasseh and Ephraim, as they come to receive Jacob’s deathbed blessing. We pick up the story in Genesis 48 at verse 8:
Genesis 48:8-20 (The Message)
8 Just then Jacob noticed Joseph's sons and said, "Who are these?"
9-11 Joseph told his father, "They are my sons whom God gave to me in this place."
"Bring them to me," he said, "so I can bless them." Israel's eyesight was poor from old age; he was nearly blind. So Joseph brought them up close. Old Israel kissed and embraced them and then said to Joseph, "I never expected to see your face again, and now God has let me see your children as well!"
12-16 Joseph took them from Israel's knees and bowed respectfully, his face to the ground. Then Joseph took the two boys, Ephraim with his right hand setting him to Israel's left, and Manasseh with his left hand setting him to Israel's right, and stood them before him. But Israel crossed his arms and put his right hand on the head of Ephraim who was the younger and his left hand on the head of Manasseh, the firstborn. Then he blessed them:
The God before whom walked
my fathers Abraham and Isaac,
The God who has been my shepherd
all my life long to this very day,
The Angel who delivered me from every evil,
Bless the boys.
May my name be echoed in their lives,
and the names of Abraham and Isaac, my fathers,
And may they grow
covering the Earth with their children.
17-18 When Joseph saw that his father had placed his right hand on Ephraim's head, he thought he had made a mistake, so he took hold of his father's hand to move it from Ephraim's head to Manasseh's, saying, "That's the wrong head, Father; the other one is the firstborn; place your right hand on his head."
19-20 But his father wouldn't do it. He said, "I know, my son; but I know what I'm doing. He also will develop into a people, and he also will be great. But his younger brother will be even greater and his descendants will enrich nations." Then he blessed them both:
Israel will use your names to give blessings:
May God make you like Ephraim and Manasseh.
In that he made it explicit: he put Ephraim ahead of Manasseh.
There are three high points in Jacob’s story. The first was there at Bethel when he had the dream of the stairway to heaven, and heard God promise to be with him and bring him home. That was the point where he knew how desperately he needed God’s grace. The second was the night he wrestled with the angel of the Lord at Peniel and came away broken but blessed. That was the time he personally experienced God’s grace.
And while it may not seem like it, this story is the third high point in Jacob’s life. In the New Testament book of Hebrews there’s a famous chapter, Hebrews 11, that surveys the great figures of Genesis, and when it gets to Jacob, the only event of his life that’s mentioned is this one. In fact, Jacob only gets a single verse – 11:21 – and (as you can see on your bulletin cover) it says, “By faith Jacob, when dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph.”
The writer of Hebrews says this was the crowning expression of Jacob’s faith. Why? What is it about this blessing that makes it so significant? It’s because in this scene we see how the grace of God has transformed Jacob. He knew he needed God’s grace at Bethel. He finally experienced that grace at Peniel. And now, years later, we see how that grace has changed him – changed the way he looks at the world around him, and changed the way he looks at his own life. As Presbyterian preacher Tim Keller puts it, because of God’s grace Jacob now sees social reality differently and he sees his own personal reality differently.
Let me try to explain what that means.
Social Reality
In our story, Joseph brings his two sons to his aged father, leading them in carefully because Jacob is very frail and can barely see. The older boy is named Manasseh. As we’ve seen in previous weeks, in this culture the firstborn son gets the lion’s share of everything – his father’s love, the family estate, the right to lead the clan. The technical term is primogeniture – the right of the first born to the inheritance. Joseph takes Manasseh and positions him so that Jacob can put his right hand on him – the right hand is the hand of power. And he takes little Ephraim, the younger son, and puts him where Jacob can place his left hand on him. And when everybody’s in the proper place Joseph says, “Here we are, Father, ready to receive your blessing.”
But what does old Jacob do? He switches hands. He puts his right hand on the younger and his left hand on the older, and then begins the blessing. When Joseph sees it, he reacts. He thinks his father is getting so old and blind he can’t tell one grandson from the other. So Joseph takes his father’s hand and tries to move it back, and says, “Wrong one, Dad. Let’s get your right hand back here on the firstborn, where it belongs.”
But Jacob says, “I know, my son; I know what I’m doing.”
Jacob sees things differently than Joseph. When he switches hands, he’s showing us that the grace of God has changed the way he sees the world, the way he sees social reality. Why is Joseph so upset? It’s because Joseph is a man of his time. If you read the chapters leading up to this, you’ll learn Joseph is an important political figure in Egypt. He’s made it to the top. And Joseph knows that in the “real” world things get done through certain people: through boys (not girls), through the older boys (not the younger), through wealthy families (not poor ones). In the social reality of the world, there’s always a certain set of people through whom things finally get done.
Maybe you wonder what this has to do with us today. After all, we don’t believe in primogeniture. Nowadays it’s not important to be born first, or even male. Ah, but it’s still important to be born smart, isn’t it? Or rich. Or with the right cheekbone structure. This world still has its set of people who get things done. The savvy and well-educated, the rich and the strong, the tall and slender and beautiful. In the social reality of our world, the first will be first, and the last will be last.
But Jacob refuses to go that way. And when he puts his right hand on Ephraim’s head instead of firstborn Manasseh, he’s following the pattern of God’s grace found throughout the Bible. I don’t know if you’ve noticed it, but over and over in the Bible when God wants to get something done, he deliberately chooses someone whom the world says is NOT the way to get it done. Through the book of Genesis, for example, God repeatedly chooses the younger son over the older son, confounding the social reality structures of the day: Abel over Cain, Isaac over Ishmael, smarmy little Jacob over strapping, manly Esau, and now Ephraim over Manasseh.
The same preference for the weak and small continues throughout the Old Testament. Look at the story of Gideon in the book of Judges. Gideon raises up an army to throw off the Midianites. He’s got 10,000 men, and God says, “Your army is too big for Me to deliver Israel. I don’t save people through big groups. I don’t save people through human power. Knock it down to 300 men.” Or when Israel faces the giant Goliath – who does God choose to save them? A mighty warrior? No, a shepherd boy named David who hasn’t even made it through puberty yet.
Or look at the four Gospels. Every time you have a prostitute and a religious leader, a tax collector and a teacher of the law, a racial outsider and an insider – what happens? Jesus favors the outsider. Every time Jesus favors the racial outsider, the political outsider, the moral outsider over the insider. Jesus always works with outsiders.
By putting his right hand on Ephraim Jacob reminds us that’s how God works. God works through people the world sees as losers, as failures. And the ultimate example of that is Jesus Christ himself. Do you realize Jesus is the only founder of a major world religion who died in disgrace, not surrounded by devoted followers but abandoned by everybody he cared about (including his Father)? God does things exactly the opposite of the way the world does things. As Walter Brueggemann, the famous Old Testament scholar, puts it in the quote on your bulletin cover, “This God accompanies the crucified One who leads the band of the lame, blind, poor, and lepers…all those excluded by the claims of primogeniture, merit, and reason.”
Do you see it? Jacob has finally let the grace of God transform the way he sees social reality. It didn’t happen all at once. He’d experienced the grace of God years before, but it took a long time for it to change his worldview. During that time he still favored the beautiful over the homely, the children of Rachel over the children of Leah. It took him years. But one day it began to dawn on him: “If I’m saved, but I’m no better in any way than the people who are not saved, what then? If I’m a sinner saved by sheer, unearned grace, that’s got to change the way I look at other people – especially those the world considers unworthy and insignificant.”
Has it dawned on you yet? It’s one thing to sing about God’s grace, preach about God’s grace, even believe in and experience God’s grace. It’s another to let the grace of God change your social reality – how you see the poor, for example. The grace of God means instead of blaming the poor (as political conservatives do) or just pitying the poor (as liberals do), you begin to respect the poor and serve the poor. It means you don’t send mission teams to do stuff for the poor (as if they are too dumb or lazy to help themselves). It means listening to them and then coming alongside them as real partners, to receive from them as well as give.
The grace of God changes how we see things – how we relate to the poor, the illegal immigrant, the mentally ill, the imprisoned, the AIDS patient, to name just a few. The grace of God changes how we spend our money. The grace of God changes the way we vote and the issues we get passionate about. The world says the first will be first and the last will be last. But the Gospel According to Jacob says that in God’s economy the last will be first, and the first last.
Personal Reality
So Jacob sees social reality differently. But before we close, please notice he also sees his personal reality differently. Notice when Jacob gives his blessing, he speaks of “the God before whom walked my fathers Abraham and Isaac,” and then this amazing thing: “The God who has been my shepherd all my life long to this very day.”
“He’s been my Shepherd,” Jacob says, “my whole life long.”
Now, what kind of life did Jacob have? He was raised by a father who didn’t love him, and that warped his whole self-image. He had to flee for his life as a young man, leaving behind his mother who was the only person who’d ever loved him and whom he’d never see again. He was forced to work 20 years for his uncle, Laban, who exploited him and manipulated him and stole from him. He had to marry a woman he didn’t love, and then when he did marry the woman he loved, she died a few years later in childbirth. His children turned out to be disasters, all but one – the light of his eyes, Joseph – but in jealousy the other children sold him into slavery and told Jacob that he was dead. And Jacob spent the last 15 or 20 years of his life in a clinical depression over what he thought was the loss of this favorite child.
And now Jacob has the audacity to look back over his life and say, “At every point along the way, I was under the care of God, my loving shepherd.”
How can he say that? Maybe it was because Jacob was a professional shepherd, and he knew something we don’t. He knew that sheep never feel loved when they’re being loved. Sheep never feel safe when they’re being made safe. Most of us who grew up in Sunday School learned that Bible story about the shepherd who went out to find the lost sheep, and searched till he found it, and when he found it, the poor little sheepie jumped up into the shepherd’s arms who carried him home rejoicing.
Please wipe that image from your mind. I spent some time in Wales a couple years ago, where there are supposedly three sheep for every person. And I learned that of all livestock sheep are the most helpless and stupid. Really. In the words of one sheep expert:
They follow one another and lose their direction continually in a way that cats and dogs do not. Even when they’re found, sheep are never happy to be found. It is extremely difficult to round up a lost sheep and bring it home, unless you have a dog to scare it (a very big dog). The lost sheep rushes to and fro, so that even when you find it you must seize it, and cast it down, tie its forelegs together and its hind legs together, put it over your shoulder and carry it home while it struggles the whole way.
How do you love a sheep? How do you save it from death? Seize it and cast it on the ground, then tie it up and drag it home while it struggles the whole way. Jacob knew that. He knew that a sheep never feels loved when it’s being loved, never feels safe when it’s being made safe. Never.
And Jacob is saying here at the end of his life: “I see it now. No matter what happened, no matter how painful or unfair, I see that God has been my shepherd all my life to this very day.” He looks at his life through the lens of God’s grace, and instead of saying, “God, why did You let that happen?” he’s able to say, “You were there. You’re my Shepherd. The One who is committed to saving me and bringing me home, whatever it takes.
Thy Will Be Done
Some of you are saying, “I wish I could believe that.” Some of you feel like something has seized you and cast you to the ground and tied you up. But how can you know it’s a loving Shepherd, committed to your total good?
How did Jacob figure it out? I don’t know – this is the first time in the entire Bible anyone has ever called God a shepherd. But I do know how you can be sure of it. It’s because in John 10 Jesus says, “I am the Good Shepherd, the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep.” Jesus is the only shepherd who became a sacrificial lamb: the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.
Jesus says, “I am the Good Shepherd. I am all-loving and all-powerful, and I will do anything for you. How can you know that? You can know that because I already have done everything for you. I’ve laid down my glory for you, my life, my everything, so I wouldn’t lose you.”
It happens when you feel seized and thrown to the ground, and yet dare to say by God’s grace, “Thy will be done.” And no, that’s not easy. Jesus sweat blood as he said it. It took Jacob a lifetime to get there. “Thy will be done.” If you can find the grace to say it in whatever you’re facing, it will push you into an intimacy with God you’ve never had, because you’ll be relating to him as a shepherd.
If you’re wounded, if you’ve been praying, “Lord, heal me” and you’re not getting healed, the only way through it is to say, “Lord, evidently You want a wounded me in this world to do certain things and be certain things and get done certain things that I couldn’t be and do unless I was wounded. What are those things? Thy will be done.”
Do you see him as your Good Shepherd? It’s one thing to know you need God’s grace. It’s another to experience it personally. But the highest and hardest thing, the thing that takes all your life, is to learn to see everything in the light of that grace.
Let’s hope it doesn’t take us till we’re 147 (which is how old Jacob was when he figured it out). But it does take time, this transformation. So, begin the journey now. Give as much of yourself as you can to as much of this Good Shepherd as you now understand. Let his grace change the way you see everything. And trust him to get you safely home.
This is the Gospel According to Jacob. Thanks be to God.
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