Title: Jacob, Jacob (Genesis 46:1-7)
Content When someone calls me unexpectedly one day, when the caller is a person of honor and popularity in the world, or a person with authority, it will be a great joy for an individual.
If the other person knew me clearly and received a call saying, “I have appointed you as the Prime Minister, please accept it.” It would be great joy. Whether you accept it or not, you will be moved by the fact that the President recognized me and recognized me.
The joy is great when someone in the world recognizes me, but when the person who recognizes me is God, when God calls me by name, just as God calls me, Jacob! Jacob, the joy is indescribable.
At this time, God called ‘Jacob! I want to receive grace by examining the words ‘O Jacob.
When you call me Jacob! Jacob!
1. This is the time when we made sacrifices to God.
The text reads, “Israel brought all that he had and brought them out to Beersheba, and offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac. Jacob! You are doing it,' he says.
Jacob encountered a famine in the land of Canaan. So he sent his sons to Egypt to buy grain.
But I heard from the son who went to eat grain that the son he had lost long ago, Joseph, whom he had obtained from his beloved wife Rachel, who he believed had been cruelly torn by beasts, is still alive in Egypt and is sitting in a high position of prime minister.
Not only that, but when I saw the beautiful cart that my son had sent me to ride, I felt refreshed. It was because he had been wasting his old age in sorrow, suffering, and self-blame for the past 13 years because he lost his son.
Jacob is the land of blessing that he gave to his grandfather Abraham. It was the land where my body and my parents, Isaac and Rebekah were buried, and it was inevitable that I would not hesitate to leave my hometown to be buried. However, before he died, Jacob decided to emigrate to Egypt because he wanted to see the lost Joseph.
He brought all his possessions and came to Beersheba to offer sacrifices to God. It is the gateway to the wrath of wrath, whether it is truly pleasing to God to go to Egypt to meet Josem.
It was a place where grandfather Abraham had gone down to Egypt and Isaac tried to go down to Egypt, but God refused.
Not only that, it is because it symbolizes a place where God is not pleased and a place where sin is rampant.
When the sacrifice was made, God appeared to Israel.
Here, we can see how much better it would have been if Jacob had made a sacrifice to God before he decided to go down to Egypt, listened to God's word, made a decision, and put it into practice.
However, Jacob first decided to go to Egypt and went to Beersheba, so he asked God's will with anxiety. On the night of the sacrifice, God said, Jacob! Jacob! and called.
We wonder why God appeared here before Jacob left for Egypt, but only after he had made a sacrifice to Beersheba.
God always comes to you when life needs you.
‘Ask, seek, knock, and you will receive. you will find The word ‘will be opened’ is a promise that God will help us when we ask for God’s help in need.
These are the words that apply without exception to those who know and believe in who God is.
When those who know God's power and His help and love do not ask God for help, God does not meet Him.
It was no exception for prophets like Jacob.
Jacob! Why is God calling Jacob!
2. It is to promise blessings.
1. He tells us not to be afraid to go down to Egypt.
In verse 3, God said, “I am God, the God of your father. Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt.”
Going down to Egypt is not pleasant.
It is an act of turning your back on the Promised Land of Canaan, an act of going to the world in faith, and not only because life must go up to Jerusalem, not to go down to Egypt (the world).
Here, 'Egypt' can be spiritually 'the seat of failure', 'the seat of suffering', and 'the seat of pain'.
I don't want life, but there are times when I go down to Sylpin's place.
Life is not wanted, but there are times when we go down to the place of suffering.
Life is not wanted, but there are times when it descends into a place of sorrow.
Life is not wanted, but there are times when it comes down to disease.
At that time, life is frustrated, troubled, surprised, and perplexed.
How can God be chosen and meet the famine in Canaan that God has promised?
But God gives his children troubled by unwanted suffering, Jacob! Jacob! ‘Do not be afraid that you are going where you do not want to go, I am God. I am Jeonneah, I am a person with the ability to combine the hardships you have encountered and transform them into good things. Even when he was troubled by a famine in the days of his father Isaac (Gen. 26:), did I not give him a 100-fold blessing by staying in Gerar?
Fear is the first state of mind we feel when we encounter a problem. It is a mind related to ‘faith’ Faith is shaken.
To us, faith is a gift from God. It is the most precious element.
Satan is well aware of that, so he tries to shake that element anyway. As Job confessed, we were born into the world with red rods.
Nevertheless, even a slight damage to any one part of our possessions immediately strikes us in our faith and manifests as unbelief toward God.
Fear is a mask that obscures God. Because he was disabled, God told Jacob not to be afraid.
The word not to be afraid in the face of failure also has the meaning of warning not to be conceited in the face of success. Life is infinitely afraid in the face of small failures, but in the face of success, we are arrogant and arrogant. This is a bigger trap of Satan than fear in the face of failure.
The history of the Bible teaches that there were far more people who failed because of the school gate than those who failed because of fear.
2. He says he will bless you there.
Verse 3 says, “I will make you there with great satisfaction.”
Regionally, it is Egypt. Early on, when his father Isaac was about to go down due to a famine, God forbade him not to go down (Gen. 26:2).
‘There’ refers to Egypt locally, and refers to the site of spiritual ‘failure’.
It is a place where we met pain and suffering, a place of hardship, and a place where we experienced failure in life. There, it is a promise that God will bless you on the spot. The best things can happen in the worst circumstances.
Emerson said, "A man sleeps while he sits on the comfortable cushion of advantage. But when he is coerced, tortured and defeated, he has a chance to learn something.”
3. He said he would do it together.
Verse 4 says, “I will go down with you into Egypt.”
People only want to be with and close when an individual is successful, when things are going well, and when they have power in their hands. However, when they fail or become unhappy, or when they lose their authority, they turn away from it.
But God is with His children, whether they fail or succeed.
The God who walks with you doesn't feel close when you succeed, but when you fail or suffer, you feel closely.
The reason is that God is more merciful when your children are suffering.
The promise to be with you at the end of Matthew 28:20, “Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” is not a promise to accompany you as a bystander, but a promise to accompany you as a helper. The place where God walks, that place is heaven. However, the place where God does not walk with us is the seat of death.
4. He said that he would come up again.
Verse 4 says, “Surely I will bring you up again…”
He promised to bring them up out of Egypt. I will stand up from failure. I will rise from the seat of despair. It means to rise from the place of sorrow All things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28). Therefore, just because a believer is thrown into a place of failure does not mean that the spirit has failed.
Even if a believer fails and falls to the bottom, God is the one who always makes the believer come up from that place.
Job was force majeure and fell into the Valley of Despair. However, he waited for God to lead him up from there. Then God brought him up.
What is the 'peak' that brought you back up again?
Jesus Christ. He died on the cross and went down to the tomb, but God also brought him back to life and made him the ruler of all things.
5. He said that he would make a peaceful life.
Verse 4 says, “Josem will close your eyes with his hand.”
He said that he would have him put to death by the son he longed to see so much, the son he thought was lost, who is now the prime minister of Egypt and is revealing the glory of God. In other words, it is a promise to bring peace and happiness to Jacob's old age.
Now Jacob was emigrating to Egypt. It was an immigrant who was unwilling to emigrate because it was an immigrant that conveyed the need to return to the land of Canaan. If the situation hadn't met with a drought, if the brothers had not sold Yosem, there would have been no need to emigrate, which God was not pleased with.
Like Jacob, who must be hesitant to go, we too may face unwanted suffering and failure in the world. Even if a righteous man falls seven times, he rises eight times (Proverbs 24:16). This verse says that even the righteous can face failure and despair.
However, believers do not despair even in front of them when they go down to Egypt. The reason is that the Lord has promised to accompany him on the road down to Egypt. It is because he said that he would bless him even in the place of failure, and he promised that he would surely bring him back from that place. God provides for our failure and despair so that we can become joy.
Dear saints,
Do any of you think that I am going down to Egypt now?
Please never despair. Because God is the one who will bring you up. At times like this, Satan makes the image of me going down appear larger, and makes me despair and frustrated. But God has promised that I will go with you and will bless you there. Then there will be a place of blessing. One saint said: “Jesus never fails or makes mistakes.” That's right. In any case, I pray in the name of the Lord that you will become victorious by holding on to the word of God's promise.
-Amen-