THROUGH THE BIBLE - Genesis..

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com. That's cornerstonerbc.com. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to church. Would you please open up your Bible to the Book of Genesis, Chapter 46.

By the extended grace of our God, we come once again on this Lord's Day to celebrate our King, Jesus Christ. And now as his church, as his saints, we're going to be reading together this chapter, Chapter 46 in the Book of Genesis. And we're going to be given a brief explanation of what the chapter says to us, the church, the saints. Chapter 46 of the Book of Genesis. Beloved brethren, let's read carefully, paying attention with reverent hearts to each one of the words of the infallible, all sufficient, mighty, perfect, inerrant Word of God.

Chapter 46. So Israel took his journey with all that he had and came to Beersheba and offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac. And God spoke to Israel in visions of the night and said, Jacob, Jacob. And he said, Here I am. Then he said, I am God, the God of your father.

Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for there I will make you into a great nation. I myself will go down with you to Egypt. I will also bring you up again, and Joseph's hand shall close your eyes." Then Jacob set out from Beersheba. The sons of Israel carried Jacob, their father, their little ones, and their wives in their wagons that Pharaoh had sent to carry him.

They also took their livestock and their goods, which they had gained in the land of Canaan, and came into Egypt. Jacob and all his offspring with him, his sons and his sons' sons with him, his daughters and his sons' daughters, all his offspring he brought with him into Egypt. Now, these are the names of the descendants of Israel. He came into Egypt, Jacob and his sons, Reuben, Jacob's firstborn, and the sons of Reuben, Hanak, Palu, Hezron, and Karmai, the sons of Simeon, Jemuel, Jamein, Ohad, Hakim, Zohar, and Shaul, the sons of Achanani woman, the sons of Levi, Gershon, Kohath, and Merari, the sons of Judah, Er, Onan, Shelah, Pires, and Sirah, but Er and Onan died in the land of Canaan. And the sons of Perez were Hezron and Hamul, the sons of Issachar, Tola, Buvah, Job, and Shimron, the sons of Zebulun, Siret, Elan, and Jalil.

These are the sons of Leah, whom she bore to Jacob in Paranaram, together with his daughter Dina, or Dinah, all together his sons and his daughters number 33. The sons of God, Zephion, Haggai, Shunni, Ezban, Eri, Adodi, and Areli, the sons of Asher, Imnah, Ishva, Ishvi, Beriah with Zerah, their sister, and the sons of Beriah, Heber, and Malkiel. These are the sons of Silpah, whom Laban gave to Leah, his daughter, and these she bore to Jacob." Sixteen persons. The sons of Rachel, Jacob's wife, Joseph, and Benjamin.

And to Joseph in the land of Egypt were born Manasseh, or Manasseh, and Ephraim, whom Asenad, the daughter of Potiphar, the priest of On, bore to him. And the sons of Benjamin, Bilah, Beker, Ashbel, Jirah, Naaman, Eiei, Rosh, Mupim, Hupim, and Art. These are the sons of Rachel who were born to Jacob. 14 persons in all. The sons of Dan, Hushim, the sons of Naphtali, Jasiel, Guni, Jezer, and Shilem.

These are the sons of Bila, whom Laban gave to Rachel, his daughter. And these she bore to Jacob, seven persons in all. All the persons belonging to Jacob who came into Egypt, who were his own descendants, not including Jacob's sons, wives, were 66 persons in all. And the sons of Joseph who were born to him in Egypt were two. All the persons of the house of Jacob who came into Egypt were 70.

He had sent Judah ahead of him to Joseph to show the way before him in Goshen. And they came into the land of Goshen. Then Joseph prepared his chariot and went up to meet Israel, his father in Goshen. He presented himself to him and fell on his neck and wept on his neck a good while. Israel said to Joseph, Now let me die, since I have seen your face and know that you are still alive.

Joseph said to his brothers and to his father's household, I will go up and tell Pharaoh and will say to him, My brothers and my father's household, who were in the land of Canaan, have come to me. And the men are shepherds, for they have been keepers of livestock, and they have brought their flocks and their herds and all that they have. When Pharaoh calls you and says, What is your occupation? You shall say, Your servants have been keepers of livestock from your youth, even until now, both we and our fathers, in order that you may dwell in the land of Goshen. For every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians."

Amen, brothers and sisters. This is the Word of God. If we were going to summarize the contents of this chapter, I would say that we should see it in at least three different sections. You know, we've been reading so much in Genesis, and there's so much information. We are arriving to the end of this book.

And every time that I come here, I try to summarize each chapter in a short sentence or in sections or in categories. But sometimes I don't even remember the things that I said weeks and weeks ago. So I hope that it is not only not abiding in our minds, the things that we said from this pulpit, but in our hearts, through the power of the Spirit, not only in our heads, but in our hearts. So what I want us to do for the sake of the weaknesses of our minds, to divide this chapter into three sections. The first section is the covenant people of God.

journeying or migrating or traveling from Canaan into Egypt. So that is the migration or the trip or the journey of the covenant people of God. That is the first section. The second section, when we have this genealogy and these difficult names to pronounce in our language, this will be the fullness of the covenant people of God. And pay attention that I'm using covenant people of God as a common denominator between these three categories.

that I'm going to give you. The first one, the journey from Canaan to Egypt of the covenant people of God. The second one, the fullness or the completeness, all the members of the covenant people of God that are given to us in this genealogy and the people that went with Jacob into Egypt. And the third section is the provision of God for His covenant people. Once the covenant people had made it into Egypt, then God is going to provide for them a land.

That is the provision of God for His covenant people. Now, beloved brethren, the reason why I'm emphasizing these covenant people is because, hey, just think about this. God had given a promise of a covenant to Abraham, and then to Isaac, and then to Jacob. Just leave this land, I'm going to send you to that land. And that particular land was Canaan.

Canaan was the covenant land. Now we have here Jacob, who is already in Canaan, who is already in the covenant land, in the promised land, if you want. Now he has decided to go down to Egypt. He has decided to go down to Egypt. And the reason why he's going down to Egypt is because his son, whom he thought that he was dead, he's been told that he's alive and his heart has been filled with love and with this strong desire to come and see his son.

But the promise that God had given him is that the promised land is not Egypt, but it's Canaan, and he was already there. So in the going from Canaan to Egypt, there is somehow in the mind of Jacob a sense in which he is going backwards in the fulfillment of the covenantal promises that God had given him. We are privileged, and also the immediate audience of this book, the people of Israel, we are and they are privileged in the sense that we already know what's going to happen in the end of the story, or at least the story with Israel. But he did not know what was going to happen in Egypt. He had no idea what was going to happen in Egypt, yet he decides to move himself and the covenant people of God to this land that was not the promised land that God had promised to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob.

For that reason, I think there must have been a little bit of fear in Jacob in the things that he was doing, because the Lord, in His grace and in His mercy, He is now going to appear to him in a vision, and he's going to say precisely that. Do not be afraid. God would not say, do not be afraid, if there was some type of fear within Jacob in this movement, taking covenant people from this land of Canaan, which was the promised land, into Egypt. But God, who is so good, is going to appear to him, and he's going to say, do not be afraid. and He's going to give him four reasons for which Jacob should not be afraid of going from Egypt or from Canaan into this land of Egypt, which is contrary to the land that will represent the fulfillment of the covenantal promises given to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Put your eyes in the text and see those four things that the Lord is going to say to Jacob. so that he may not be afraid. In verse 3, chapter 46, he says, then he says, I am God, the God of your father, a covenant to a presentation of God to Jacob. Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt. Why?

For there in Egypt, I will make you, and that is speaking in singular, I will make thee into a great nation first thing i will make you jacob into a great nation second thing i myself will go down with you to egypt i will we i will be with you as you go down to egypt i will be with you and then also he says i will also bring you up again I will also bring you up again. And the fourth thing is that Joseph's hand shall close your eyes. That fourth promise is the reason why Jacob had gone to Egypt in the first place. And I imagine that in Jacob's mind, he was going to this land just because he loved his son so much, but he was actually going against the promise that God had given because this was not the covenantal land. But then God, in his mercy, he will appear and he will say, you are doing right.

Keep going to the land of Egypt, because you will not only die in the presence of your beloved son, whom you thought that was dead. but also the promise that I gave to Abraham in Genesis 15, that I will make a great nation out of him, and that I gave to Isaac, and that I have given you, I will fulfill that covenantal promise in you in the land of Egypt. But not only that, I will go with you in all the journey, and I will be with you. What a peace and what a rest would Jacob receive from the mouth of God himself, that not only his life was going to be nourished and taken care of by seeing his son whom he loved, but that the covenantal people of God and that the covenantal promise given to Israel was going to be preserved. Now, I don't know if this is the case, but Jacob knew of the promise that God had given to Abraham in chapter 15.

Because to Abraham in chapter 15, not only the promise of a great nation was made, but also that they were going to be sojourners in a foreign land, and in that land they were going to be slaves, and then they were going to suffer, and they were going to spend there for a hundred years. But then the Lord says to Abraham in Genesis 15, but I will bring them down back, or I will bring them back to the promised land. I don't know if everything made sense in the mind of Jacob there in this very moment. But what we know is that he actually obeyed. He knew the promises that were given to his father Abraham.

And now God is saying that the covenantal people of God, by going to Egypt, by going there, that he is going to be made a great nation. But there is a very interesting promise here that is given to him that God says to Jacob, that he is going to bring him back to the land of Canaan. However, something happens with Jacob. Jacob actually dies in Egypt. He dies in Egypt and he never makes it back to the land of Canaan.

But we know that the Lord has fulfilled that promise because before dying, He's going to request and He's going to give the commandment to His sons, please take my body to the land of Canaan. But the promise that is given here, brothers and sisters, is not only given to Jacob, but is given to Jacob as the head of the covenant people of God. Because what we have here, beloved brethren, is the end of the patriarchal era or time in which the sons of Jacob now will become a multitude of people and the fullness of the covenant people of God, Israel, The fullness of the covenant people of Israel is now going to be named and given to us. That the whole house of Jacob is coming down to Egypt, to this land, which is not the promised land that God had promised for His people. all of these people is coming down here.

The Bible says here, after giving so many names, that 70 persons, and we know that another 5 persons will be added, that probably they are born in Egypt, because when we're reading Exodus and when we're reading Acts chapter 7, Stephen will say that there were 75 people that were the ones that were brought from Canaan into the land of Egypt, the fullness of the covenant people of Israel. Now, as a nation, not as a family, is taken from this land to this Gentile land. But brothers and sisters, what is glorious here, It is that in the taking of His covenant people from the covenant land into a Gentile land, into a foreign land, that God is going to give the means for the preservation of that people. is not only Joseph and the preservation of the life of Joseph and everything that happens to Joseph, that is worked out by the hands of God to preserve the people of Israel. But now when these people arrive to the land of Egypt, just because by virtue of what they are, shepherds and people that look after the flock, they are going to be given this land, which is Goshen.

Goshen, this was the initial plan in chapter 45. Joseph was planning already to take his family and to put them into this land, which was rich. And there was many things for provision for the family. And God, in His looking after His people, is going to take them and is going to place them in that particular land. But brothers and sisters, there's a deeper reason Why the people of Israel would go to this, or the family or the household of Jacob would go to this land of Goshen.

Not only because it was rich and they would have everything that they needed. But because they, being shepherds of the flock, would be an abomination to all other shepherds of people who keep the livestock in the land of Egypt, and by going to that land Goshen, they will be set apart, even within Egypt, of the practices of the Egyptians. We will see that then in Exodus. But the people of Israel then will be preserved within this land of Egypt, of all the practices that will be against the covenantal God who was keeping them, protecting them, and keeping them, and taking them back to the promised land, our beloved brothers and sisters. We have to fill our hearts with joy when we read these types of stories, because Israel The covenant people of Israel is, as Joseph is, a type and a shadow of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The prophet, I don't know what you call him, Hosea? Hosea? Hosea, in chapter 11, he speaks of the abundant love of God towards his son, Israel, in taking him to Israel and then bringing Israel out of the land of Egypt back into Canaan, exactly the same promise, exactly the same prophecy that is fulfilled by our Lord Jesus Christ in Matthew chapter 2, when the Lord Jesus Christ, or better, when His Father in the flesh, or His Father according to human perception, let's say it better, Joseph receives a dream and a revelation that he should go down to Egypt to avoid the threats of Herod. They are taken back to Egypt so that the Scripture might be fulfilled, that out of the land of Egypt I called my son. But brothers, something precious happens in the end of this chapter, because the covenant people of God, the covenant people of God, Israel, is going to find favor in the eyes of Pharaoh only.

And because, Joseph, the Bible says that shepherds and the people who looked after livestock, that they were an abomination to the Egyptians. Why would the Egyptians receive into their land, into their kingdom, into their place, people who are an abomination to them? Just when their people are in need, they are going to provide everything that they have. Why would the Egyptians or why would Pharaoh provide these benefits to these people? There is no reason.

The only reason why he did it, it is because these covenant people of God found favor in the eyes of Pharaoh because of Joseph. And this speaks exactly of the relationship of the covenant people of Christ in the eyes, not of a pharaoh of this world, not of a king of this world, but the king of this universe. Because the king of this universe only gives us blessings and favors as insofar as they are found in the person of Jesus Christ. It is in Jesus Christ that we found the blessings, the provisions from a King that should not give us any blessing, a King that should not give us any favor, that actually we are an abomination before that King. But that King can say, come and you are welcome into my kingdom, not because of who you are, but because...

My beloved Son has paid for you and has made a way for you to come into this land. Amen.