Gooding, David: 7 - The Book of Genesis

It may not be for many this evening, but it is an encouragement to me that there's anyone here at all after the unorthodox answers I gave to your orthodox questions last week. Thank you for the way you have been willing to work in these past weeks, therefore make my task the easier. No complaints have reached my ears. Perhaps there have been many about the length of the session, but, uh, I do admire your ability, uh, and capacity for hard work and hard sitting. Shall we read tonight from the book of Genesis and chapter ten? Chapter ten and verse one. um Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and unto them were sons born after the flood. The sons of Japheth. Verse 6, and the sons of Ham. Verse eight. and Cush begat Nimrod. He began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord, wherefore it is said, like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the Lord. In the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Achad, and Kalne in the land of Shinar. And out of that land he went forth into Assyria and builded Nineveh, and Rehoboth Ir, and Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah, the same is a great city. Chapter 11 and verse 1. The whole earth was of one language and of one speech. It came to pass as they journeyed east that they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, go to, let us make brick and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. And they said, go to, let us build us a city and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven, and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men built. And the Lord said, Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is what they begin to do. Now nothing will be withholden from them which they purpose to do. Go to, let us go down and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth, and they left off to build the city. Therefore was the name of it called Baaveh, because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth, and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth. God help us in our study of his word this evening. Now we have just this one session left together in this current series on the book of Genesis, and therefore it seems to me better if instead of concentrating on one passage, I attempt rather to give a bird's eye view of the rest of the book, so that instead of preaching at you or to you this evening, I might rather put into the pool of your thinking some ideas. Most of them will be old, a few of them perhaps new, that may provoke your interest, eh, as you study this book subsequently on some other occasion. The third creation story, as we saw on the last two occasions, tells us of the flood in which God destroyed mankind, through which he saved Noah and his family, and brought them out into a cleansed and a new world. The rest of the book of Genesis tells us of God's program for that new world. As I have said before, these histories of the book of Genesis record things that actually happened. Therefore, when I say Genesis, for the rest of it, is God's record of his program for the new world, I refer in the first place to what actually happened in those far off ancient days, in the literal land of Canaan, to a literal empire called Egypt. But at the same time, we shall see tonight that that ancient program that God had for that, uh, new world then was a kind of a prototype of God's far greater program for a new world that shall yet be. So we shall be studying the rest of the book of Genesis at eve- as this evening at several levels. We shall be studying it for its history. But yet again, in its history, we shall see prophecy very thinly veiled, as the prototype points on to the final product. And of course, we shall find in both history and prophecy many a practical lesson. One way to look at the rest of the book then is as follows. You will remember in the story of man's fall, man lost two things, among others. He lost life. It was said him, in the day that thou shalt eat of the tree, thou shalt surely die. He lost his life spiritually, and in the end he lost his life physically. But not only did he lose life, he lost his dominion. Or at least the original dominion given him of God was very seriously curtailed after the fall. Now, in the rest of the book of Genesis, you read the happy program of redemption, the steps by which man regains life, new life, the steps by which he comes at last to dominion. There are four great patriarchs central to the remainder of Genesis. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. In Abraham and Isaac, we are chiefly concerned with the story of the birth of a new life. The birth of Isaac. The great miracle of those chapters, which is central to all their themes, is the birth of Isaac to parents who were as good as dead. The fact that they were as good as dead points to his birth, Isaac's birth, as being something miraculously remarkable. It's not just one other birth amongst the thousands of births that took place in those far-off days. It was a special birth. When man had experience of God as a God who raises the very dead. Or, as Paul comments in Romans chapter four, Abraham was no fool, neither was Sarah. They considered, not please, as the authorized has it, rather foolishly, they considered not, they weren't simpletons. They considered their bodies as good as dead. But they were strong in faith, giving glory to God, and therefore there sprang of one, and he is good as dead, as the stars of the heavens are multitude. We are concerned then in Abraham and Isaac with the birth of new life, a virtual resurrection from the dead. And that is the great crux, the birth to Abram of a son, that is the great crux over which Genesis preaches its fundamental lesson of justification by faith. We can put those two things together. We saw in the story of the fall in chapter three of Genesis that man fell when he grasped at independence of God. You shall be as God, said the serpent, knowing good and evil. Hence that by that date, man grasps at being as God, independent of God. And he fell. Now, in the chapters that succeed, God begins to lay down the program of redemption. Of course, there is mention here and there in Genesis of sacrifice. But compared to the book like Leviticus, Genesis doesn't, uh, go into many details about sacrifice. There is as yet no temple. There is as yet no, um, highly organized priesthood. There is as yet no Decalogue, no law from Sinai. Here at this early stage, though sacrifice of course is present, necessarily present, God begins to preach his gospel, and the emphasis it has is this, that Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness. Justification by faith. And if you ask what faith means in this context, when it says a man is justified by faith, what does faith mean? Well, then Abraham's example is quoted to us. Faith is not work. Faith is not effort. When the Bible says we are justified by faith, it is not thinking of some meritorious attitude of soul, wherein we are required to come up to a certain standard before we qualify. No. Faith is the opposite of work. Look at Abraham and Sarah, says God, as good as dead. If ever they were to have a child, all they can hope to do is to trust God, who calls the things that are not as though they were, but calls the dead as though they were alive. It is life. How can be a gift? It is simple rest in God and God's superhuman power. So then in the first half of the rest of Genesis, these two ideas are got across, man having new life on the principle of faith, and man, because he believes the promise, justified by faith. And then, following hard after the birth of Isaac, or at least the promise of that birth of Isaac, comes God's great covenant with Abraham, giving him not only an heir to succeed him in Isaac, but a vast inheritance for that heir to inherit. And that inheritance likewise given on the basis of faith. But then come the other two great figures, Jacob and Joseph. And with them we are not thinking so much of life as we are thinking of dominion. It is clear, isn't it, that Joseph had the greatest dominion of anybody in the whole of the book of Genesis, except Pharaoh. By the time Genesis finishes, we reach a man who is head over all the vast empire of Egypt, and particularly over all its civil service, its ministry of agriculture and fisheries, its, its, uh, food policy. He has the key to all the granaries, and in fact, he, by his administration, saved Egypt and the then known world from utter disaster through famine. He was not a king, he was not a political ruler in that sense. He was an administrator, what the Hebrew calls, uh, uh, Mosheil, Masha. But then, that is the very word that was used by God on Adam. Adam was to have dominion over the world. He was to order it, to organize it, to to uh make something of it, to to do it. He fell. Couldn't even run Eden for God. And disobeying God had to have the ground cursed so that now it brought forth thorns and thistles. Hereafter his agriculture was to be not a gentleman's occupation, but hard labor and toil. Yes, but when you come to the end of Genesis, and not only thorns and thistles, but a, a worldwide famine. Man is finding this business of, of, of organizing earth and making it produce for God utterly impossible. But in man's extremity, God has his administrator prepared, and Joseph comes out of the dungeon to take over control. And at last we see the Egyptians coming to him and saying, we can't make a go of our land, give us seed. We can't even make a go of planting the seed and getting the produce. Take us and our everything we've got as your slaves. Take our land as your possession. You run it. Joseph is seen as a great administrator who takes over earth and runs it as it should be run. Man restored to dominion. But of course, that is but the end of a process that begins earlier. So on this question of man getting back his dominion, you must start with Jacob and Esau. You must start, in fact, with, uh, Jacob and Esau, as yet unborn, as they struggle together in the womb, struggling for power. And it was said to the mother before the children were born, the elder shall serve the younger. So God starts with Jacob, the old supplanter, takes him through his lessons that will prepare him and his twelve sons to be the administrators of the great empire of Egypt on its agricultural side. So it was Jacob that had a vision of the house of God, is it not? He fell asleep one night and he saw a ladder set up on earth and the angels ascending and descending. And he saw God standing beside the ladder, not at the top of it, of course. As Jacob remarked when he woke up that morning, he said, surely God is not in heaven. He, he knew God was in heaven, he's known that a long while. He said, surely God is in this place, and I knew it not. This is the gate of heaven. Again, we must understand the term in its ancient Eastern meaning, not merely the way into the city or the way out of the city. It was that, of course, but the gate of an ancient city is the place where the elders sat to administer the city and to govern the city. And what Jacob had seen is not merely a way into heaven, what he had seen was the whole civil service of heaven. God and his ladder, with the vast hordes of angels ascending and descending, going out from the divine presence to do the will of God, and coming back, their errands done, back to rest in the presence of God. To Jacob was that vision given. To Jacob was to be the man whose sons were to rule, and whose son Joseph was to be the administrator, you see. The New Testament comments on this. It tells us, on the one hand, that Abraham looked for the city that hath the foundations, whose builder and maker is God. That great heavenly city that shall yet be. The New Jerusalem, pride of the land. When John the seer was taken to look at that heavenly city, two things struck him. He had pointed out to him the foundations of the city. And then there were pointed out to him the gates of the city. We are told that Abram was particularly interested in the foundations of that city. He looked for the city that has the foundations whose builder and maker is God. Jacob, of course, was interested in its gates, wasn't he? Of course he was. When John saw that city at last, he saw twelve gates, and on each gate was a name of the children of Israel. Genesis will tell you how those boys got those names. And what Genesis is pointing to is this, that when at last that great city comes down from heaven as a bride adorned for her husband, to be the great administrative center of the universe in that coming day, God shall have prepared its administrators. And if you want to know how, in what sort of way they're prepared, well, look at the story of Genesis. Those names record the experiences of their mothers as they lived in their tents, as they took daily life to God with all its trials and joys and tribulations and challenges, and knew what it was to pray about life with God and to experience God's hand in the ordinary affairs of running a home and raising a family. In all those day-to-day experiences, God was preparing them for their great task in the years to come. So shall it be with us. We may follow in the steps of Abraham. We may be his spiritual children and learn what it is to be justified by faith and to receive new life, to be built into the foundation, so to speak, and on the foundation of that great holy city, that new Jerusalem which is above, which is the mother of us all. Yes, but more than that. Not only are we built upon that foundation of that holy city through faith in Christ, but we are being trained of God in the ordinary affairs of daily life, to be God's administrators in the age yet to come. But now, let's look more deeply at what the book has got to say as to the path by which these great programs are fulfilled. I have just observed that there are four major figures: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph. But if you look at the record that follows now from chapter ten in Genesis onwards, you will find that there are not four but three major literary divisions in the book. I pointed them out on an earlier occasion, so I didn't start to make you turn the pages now. There are three major sections. There are the generations of Terah, that is Abram, and they fill the book from chapter eleven onwards, chapter twelve, right up to chapter twenty five. The next great section are the generations of Abraham, that is, the life of Isaac. And the final great section of the book are the generations of Jacob, particularly concentrating on Joseph. Three major sections fill the remainder of Genesis. And between them, they spell out the road by which God's program traveled down history. Let's, uh, briefly look at them. After the flood, God started up the world again with the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. But a very few verses suffices to show how the Gentile nations, as we call them, went wrong once more, ending up their emptiest ways in Babylon, in defiance of God. And therefore, God's program for a new heavens and a new earth didn't follow the line of the Gentiles. Instead, God called out of the Gentiles a man called Abraham, and from him he started a brand new race, the Hebrews. And therefore, Genesis very soon forgets the Gentile nations. They are not important, not significant. Of course, they had their lives. Of course, God did not leave them without witness and record. But the great program for redemption wasn't to follow the line of the Gentiles, it was to follow this new line Abram called out of the Gentiles, and his seed developed. And herein, I ask you to notice it, the Bible and the Old Testament in particular is an extraordinarily interesting book. There is no other history book in all the world like this book. It dares to say that after the flood, history had a purpose. It dares to maintain that God was interfering in the events of this world and deliberately picking out a particular man and nation to be the bearers of his purpose of blessing for men. And it begins to trace their history, and as it traces their history in that far off day, you begin to see, yes, that this history actually happening then is also a prophecy of what will happen yet in a bigger scale. I say there is no other history known to me that dares have a, uh, advertise a program like that. It's a thing to be got hold of, particularly by our younger Christian folks. When they meet people who stand by and pour scorn on the inspiration of Holy Scripture. If such folks point out to them, please. That whereas history, apart from God, is like all other forms of human activity driving itself into the ground because it now says there is no purpose in history, no plan in history. There is no ultimate message in history, no lessons have been learned from history, except people learn nothing from history. History apart from God is an exceedingly melancholy thing. It is but the story of man going round in circles and getting nowhere. History in this Old Testament is a marvelously joyous and wonderful thing. It says there is reason in history, there is purpose in history. History is going somewhere. And though man sinned and has ruined himself, God has a program of redemption that will end in glory. Yeah. If the pollutionists and everybody else like that, uh, are right, the world is in for a major famine. We are beginning to be told, aren't we, that we must conserve water, we must conserve, we must try to keep the population down. If it goes on like this, there won't be enough food. Yes, that's true. For just as in Egypt's day, there came a great famine that puzzled their wits, and they knew not which way to turn. So they will yet come. Oh, but thank God. Genesis is not gloomy. When man gets to his extremity, God will have had ready his great administrator prepared for the time. He shall take over and make Earth do what originally God intended it to do. Well, let's look again, as I say, at these three uh, major portions. The first of them, the generations of Terah, that is the story of Abraham. And in Abraham, we may sum it up this way, God called Abraham out of the nation, and he made the Hebrews. Hitherto they were Gentiles. Abraham was a Gentile, wasn't he? He was called out, and from him was formed the nation of the Hebrews. And God promised Abraham that through Abraham there would come the promised seed. Abraham, uh, was built up on this, old man that he was, that he and his wife Sarah should have a child. In Abraham and in his seed should all the nations of the earth be blessed. In Abraham, therefore, there is the formation of the Hebrew nation and the expectation ra- raised that through that nation there would come the promised seed. The great deliverer. And as we're told, the promised seed came. Not, of course, by Hagar and Ishmael, but through Sarah and Isaac. The raising up of the promised seed. In the, the next great part, what happens there? These are the generations of Abraham, namely Jacob in particular. What was God doing there? Well, now he was taking those same Hebrews and turning them into Israelites. You say, what do you mean? Well, this, that Jacob was born a Hebrew. His father Abraham was a Hebrew. Jacob came of the line of the promised seed. But when he was born, he was not an Israelite, was he? He's just a Hebrew. But in the course of Jacob's life and experience, God did a something that turned Jacob into Israel. And therefore Hebrews into Israelites. You say, yes, but what is the difference between a Hebrew and an Israelite? Oh well, Israel is the princely name of the nation. Thou hast had power with God and men. He was the man that wrestled with God, the man that had the vision of God and the angels ascending and descending the great administration of heaven. The man who wrestled with God as God wrestled with him. The man who became the father of the twelve boys, the twelve tribes. As I said earlier, the twelve tribes whose names will go on the twelve gates of the city. The pilgrim Abraham and Isaac were now being turned into the princely sons of Israel, destined to rule and administer. And finally... when God had the promised seed, and when he had turned the Hebrews into Israelites, now you had to engineer it, didn't you, so that these Hebrews and Israelites became the saviors of the whole world. Abraham had been born out of the Gentiles in order that God might work with him and his descendants. But of course, that wasn't going to be the end. Abram was never chosen so that his nation could live an exclusive life and end up in a little peculiar heaven all walled around by themselves to forget the world forever. Of course not. Abram was born out of the Gentiles that in the end God might send him back into the Gentiles and make him and his seed and his nation a blessing to all men. And the third bit of Genesis is concerned with the question of how did you get these men now prepared for their task back among the Gentiles? You will know the answer. We'll come back to it in a moment. The third section, briefly then, is the production of the savior of the world, the turning of the Israelites to be a blessing to all the Gentiles. Now let's go back over those three sections and have a look at them a bit more in detail. The first great section is the call of Abraham and the production of the promised seed. That is what the chapters are about, are they not? It starts there in those early verses. Abraham is called, chapter eleven and twelve. He is promised a child and a son. He is promised seed. And many long chapters go by, and weary years of testing go by, and not until chapter twenty one does the promised seed arrive. What's left after that? Well, very little, just the climax of the story. Once the promised seed arrives, then you've got chapter twenty two, which is Mount Moriah and the sacrifice of Isaac, chapter twenty three, which is the death of Sarah, chapter twenty four, which is a bride for Isaac, then Abraham dies. The section then is about the call of Abraham, formation of the Hebrew nation, and the coming of the promised seed. Oh, how lovely a prophetic picture that is, is it not? It happened in real life. It's true, it's factual, it's historical. But oh, how gloriously prophetic. Abram's seed. After the long centuries, he came. What is the very first thing that Genesis is concerned to tell you about the seed when he did come? Well, you say the first thing is that when the true seed came, Ishmael got turned on. Ah, precisely so. So we better go back a moment, haven't we, and think about Ishmael. Because it, uh, began to appear as though the whole scheme would go wrong very early on. When Abraham in a moment of weakness and Sarah in a moment of weakness conspire together. And Abraham took Hagar, and Ishmael was born. Galatians says that that whole business was a picture of the law. The introduction of the law into the Jewish nation under Moses from the Mount Sinai. But that when the true seed came, Ishmael had to be cast out. Cast out the bondwoman and her son. So Genesis tells us of the story of the birth of Ishmael and his being put into Abram's home and all those long, long, long, long years waiting for the coming of the true seed. The true seed arrives in chapter twenty one, and forthwith Ishmael's eyes. That's the very first thing. Next, nothing's told us of Isaac's boyhood or what he did as a youngster or where he went to school or anything like that. What's the next thing Genesis is interested in, Isaac? Why he was offered on an altar by Abraham, his father. Oh, how true the prototype rights to the, runs to the reality, doesn't it? When the promised seed came among the Hebrew nations, the long years of their subjection to law were finished. For the law came in until the promised beast had come. When he came, the law was cast out. And now see, when Jesus was born in Nazareth, what's the next beast in? My Father and Son. Ascend the mountain. The Son, in willing obedience to the father, is prepared to yield himself after death. Coming of the promised seed. It answers various problems, doesn't it? Mount Moriah stands as a climax of this great period of Genesis. It answers various things raised in the story of the fall. The serpent, for instance, had suggested to Eve that God didn't really care for them and love them. God hadn't provided all he could provide. Listen to the old serpent. He says, you know, you mustn't eat of any of these trees, will you? Oh, he says, yes, we may, but except this one. Ah, yes, there is one, isn't there? You see, that's God all over, says the serpent to Eve. He loves to keep you down. He could do better for you if he likes. Look at that now, a beautiful tree there, good to look at and good for food and good to make one wise, but you see, he keeps it back from you. All the very best things of life he keeps back from you. The very pinnacle of life he keeps back. God could do better for you than this. And man listened to the slander and he fell. And God done. See, when at last the promised seed came, oh dear, well, isn't that what God said to Eve? Seed of the woman should bruise a certain way. What happened when the seed came? Well, you'll have to, to see it, you'll have to go up the mountain, for in the mountain of the Lord it shall be seen. Jehovah Yireh. God will see. God will provide. On that occasion, God provided a ram. We shall use the language of the New Testament, shall we not? He that spared not his own son, but freely gave him up for us all, how shall he not with him freely also give us all things. So it's the answer to the idea that God doesn't provide. It's more, isn't it? The whole of the human race was bound up in Adam, and when Adam sinned, the race was ruined. By one man's disobedience, sin entered into the world, and death by sin. So death passed upon all men. We are born sinners because of what somebody else did. Oh, but look when the promisee came. Father, son, grown son, grown up to manhood, but willingly obedient to the Father, and yielding himself intelligently to be bound and sacrificed to do the will of God. This also is what happened when the Promised Sea came. For if by one man's disobedience sin entered into the world and death by sin, so by the obedience of one will the many be made rightful. Now what happened after Mount Moriah, when the promised seed came? We've seen that Ishmael was cast out, that is the law went. And the great sacrifice of Christ was enacted. And what then? Well, poor Sarah died, and she had to be buried. And a great fuss is made about the burying of her. Dear soul, she died in faith, not having received the promise. She seen the promises afar off and embraced them and confessed she was a stranger and a pilgrim on earth. She, with Abraham, was looking for that eternal city. But though her son Isaac had been offered on an altar, there was no atonement in his sacrifice, but waited for the great coming steed, our Lord himself. And Sarah, dear old girl, she died in faith and was buried far back. Though Abraham was a pilgrim and a stranger and didn't own any ground, he paid out silver for that ground, didn't he? And as her body was laid in the dust, the bit of ground was bought by the silver. Ah, you see, because that bit of ground was precious for God. All those centuries ago, one of the great faithful died and was buried and was looking for the coming of that great city. One day, from that very dust, Sarah shall rise. For if the ground be bought by silver, Sarah herself is bought by something more precious than silver. Even the precious blood of Christ, her very body will be redeemed. But with Sarah gone and, um, Abram getting old, one day there came into Abram's head a thought, you know, it does come into some parents' head sometimes. They said, they said he to himself, he said, you know, it's getting quite a man now. I can't be here forever. You know, I think it's time the laddie, wonder why they didn't take any notice of this, uh, of the, of the fair lady at that time. Better do something about it myself. Uh, the man ought to be getting married, really. Yeah. So what's to be done? Well, he said, I couldn't put up with it that Isaac should marry one of the folks around here. They've had no experience of God as I have had. Says he to himself, I wonder, you know, whether God will do again what he did for me. He found me an old Gentile down there in Mesopotamia, and he appeared to me and he brought me out of the Gentiles to make a Jewish nation. I wonder if God would do it all again. And if I sent a servant back like that to the Gentiles, whether God would once more bring out of the Gentiles a girl for Isaac that would have had a similar experience to him, you know, know what it was all about living by faith crossing the desert. Well, he said, we can only have a go, can't we? What? So he sent his servant right back to Egypt, and the whole process was repeated, and out from the Gentiles came a Gentile bride for Isaac. Lovely he was. What happened when the promised seed came? According to Genesis, Ishmael was cast out. Law finished. And the great sacrifice of Christ. And the Jewish nation, all terror, laid to rest. Now, another move, and once more out of the Gentiles. And bride queen, Paul Isaac, the promised king. I don't need to interpret it to you, do I? Of course not. And now I want of you to point, uh, point out to you another literary thing about Genesis. We read tonight at the beginning of this section the story of the cities, the very big cities of the ancient world, Tan- Parnay and Ninibi and Erahavoth and various other tremendous big Gentile cities. Marvelous civilizations they were. And then we read of Babylon. Babel, if you like. Remembered chiefly by people because of its tower, but please notice that Genesis talks more of the city. The city and the tower, and God came down to see the city and the tower. For Babel, Babylon, as it's later called, was a vast city, and well as having a tower. And that city became the foul den of the most abominable idolatry and independence and defiance of God. Therefore becomes, as the centuries rolled by in the Old Testament, as the city par excellence. Where I want, when the New Testament is coming to its close? Well, there she is again. Not now, perhaps, the little city Babylon, but all that Babylon has ever stood for. For all down the centuries, Babylon has been opposed to true faith. Idolatry is distinct from faith. It was so, wasn't it, uh, when the Israelites sinned and Judah was carted off to Babylon. At the book of the Revelation at the end, there's old Babylon again, filthy, dirty old woman, compromising her position, politics all mixed up with religion and religion with politics, trying to control the very beast that will fight against the land, Babylon the Great. Ah, but you see, in those final days, when Babylon is judged, the very angel that judged Bab- helped to judge Babylon takes John by the elbow and escorts him round to show him that lovely sight, the bride of the Lamb, the new Jerusalem, the holy city. Yeah. Well, good, that's prophecy, but see it in Genesis, please. God's program for a new world, it starts out here in these big old Gentile cities. Their ever increasing wickedness, their defiance and independence of God, and their idolatry. Ba- Babylon is the chief of them in all its confusion, and out of them God brings his pilgrim Abram to form the Hebrew nation. Putting that nation under the law until the Promised Sea came. Yeah. And then Ishmael cast out from the sacrifice made on Mount Moriah, and then a true bride for Isaac, the Promised Sea, she too drawn out of the Gentile. Oh, it happened. Please, I'm not preaching you an allegory. Don't let anybody please go away from here tonight and said he preached allegories. I'm not preaching allegories, I'm preaching history. I'm telling you things that actually happened once. I'm telling you of a history that was so controlled and planned of God that the actual happenings become vivid prophecies of what is now happening and what yet shall happen. But as I say, that isn't the end of the story. There is a second, and I will do this very briefly. The third I shall scarcely mention because you know it all. But, uh, the, there is a second section in this part of Genesis. It is technically called the Generations of Abraham, for the generations of Abraham are concerned with Esau and Jacob, and very little with Esau, and mostly with Jacob. And as I said, this bit of the story in the program is not now the question of the coming of the promised seed, or the great sacrifice on Mount Moriah, or the bride for the promised seed. This great section is a further stage in the process. It is the turning of the Hebrews into Israelites. The training of pilgrims to be administrators and governors. And we start with the little Jews, of course, the little Hebrews. If you read that section, it goes from, uh, chapter twenty five and verse twelve right on to chapter uh thirty, um, uh, five and the end of that chapter. You will find it is in three parts. There is a brief period when Isaac and his sons Esau and Jacob are in the land. Then there is a long, long period, or at least the stories are very long, when Jacob is out of the land among the Gentiles. And at the end of that period, oh hey, presto, here comes Jacob back into the land, now with the stage set for him to become Israel. Interesting, isn't it? First in the land, and doing his best to maintain the traditions of Abram, but then Jacob, the carrier of the promise, out of the land for many years, working for a living down in Syria with old uncle Laban. But then in the end, having to come back into the land. You say, what made him go out of the land? Well, rather questionable business dealings, I'm afraid. He was a good fellow, was Jacob, in a way. He had the faith to grasp the promises of God. But he thought that those promises were to be understood simply in materialistic terminology, and got his nose very much into resource porridge. Or his own porridge, and Esau's nose into his porridge, and... then he got himself involved in stealing a blessing. By all sorts of trickery, he thought he would fulfill God's promise to lift himself to be the chief man. He got himself so heartily disliked that in the end they had to run away, and old Esau booted him out, so to speak, and he had to run off as hard as he could go, down among the Gentiles. You know, that happened, hasn't it? The promised seed came, and a Gentile bride was sought for Isaac, yes. What happened next to the Jewish nation? Well, as you say, after a, after a while, they, they got thrown out of their land. Precisely so. And all for many centuries were out of their land among the Gentiles, earning their living. They were pretty good at it, weren't they? Some of them by good methods, but in the end, these methods that old Jacob used with his trade secrets and his, um, manipulations of the flocks and goodness knows what else. In the end, they amassed him enormous amount of wealth, but then the old Gentile Laban and his sons got jealous, didn't they? And it got so bad that in the end, Jacob had to clear out for his life and go back to the land. Can you not see in that a very vivid, uh, picture of what's been happening these centuries? Jacob turned out of his land among the Gentiles, earning a living and very successful too on times, getting so successful that, uh, some- suddenly the nation looks around, whether it be Hitler's Germany or medieval Spain or Russia or, or even England. And presto, the big banks are all in the hands of Jews, and begins an industry is in the hand of Jews. And then the old nationalistic spirit of the Gentiles begins to rise, doesn't it, what, and there come these terrible purges and pogroms and persecutions, and the Jews have to get out as hard as they can. Yeah. In the end, using partly Jacob's own sinning and partly the Gentiles' envy and jealousy, God brought Jacob back. Do you know when he brought him back? God said, now you'll have to meet Esau after all, won't you? The man you robbed. You stole his blessing, didn't you? Right, Jacob, give it all back. And there is that glorious scene. One evening time when Jacob got all his hard-earned wealth, and he heard that Esau was coming, and he said to himself, whatever shall I do? So he made up a very big present and gave that, sent that on in front for Esau, and God whispered in his ear, oh, that's not enough. Give him the, give him the rest. So he made up another big parcel, and that went over to Esau, yeah. And God says, you better give back some more as well. Poor man. Three mighty great herds of flocks and cattle and what have you all went back to Esau, you see. Jake had made tricks and amassed himself great wealth to try and make himself the head of the nations, but God won't accept those methods. Oh, God is going to make him head of the nations, yeah, but not by those methods. God made him give it all back again. And Jacob got back in the land, and his sons executed what they were pleased to call judgment on the city of Shechem. It was such a travesty of judgment that he made his name to stink in all the Gentile nations. Yeah. They weren't yet utter saints, were they, when they got back into the land, not in those days. But back in the land they had. I was talking to the believers in Nazareth a year or so ago when I was there. They're mostly Arabs. They say, you know, sometimes we get some starry-eyed Christians come out from Europe or the United States to preach in our assembly here, and they say, isn't it marvelous, isn't it marvelous how the prophecy is being fulfilled and the Jews are back in their land, isn't it stupendous? And they say, yes, well, we try to take it with grace, you know, but, uh, look at our businesses that they've stolen from us, and our houses they've taken. Do you mean to say that's a fulfillment of prophecy too? Well, they're back in unbelief, aren't they? And as far as the Arab nations are going, are doing just like Jacob's sons did, they're making their name to stink. But there goes the program. In the land, and out of it for a long, long while, until they are forced to come back because they cannot find any shelter anywhere else among the Gentile nations, forced back into the land. What's the final stage? Well, the final stage is how do you get that nation and make it a blessing to the whole earth? There is coming a famine. Man's sinfulness, man's greed, coupled with God's judgments, are going to make Egypt barren, famine-stricken. Men are going to be at their wits end to make, uh, to know how to make earth produce enough food to sustain people. But when that day comes, God will have a savior prepared. By what method? Oh, Genesis takes a bit of a flashback, so to speak. There was a son born among the twelve, destined to be ruler, but his brethren hated him and envied him. They put him down the pit, and they sold him to the Gentiles. And the Gentiles falsely accused him, and they put him down in the dungeon. But instead of that being the end of God's purpose for him, that was the very road by which the purpose should be. Joseph came forth out of the dungeon to be made second only to Pharaoh in the whole land, and he solved their economic problem. They called him something like the savior of the world. And then here come his brethren, toddling down the road to come and get supplies. And in those memorable scenes, his brethren were reconciled to Joseph. Just that by that time, Joseph had a bride. She was a Gentile. So an arrangement was come to. And had you looked at the power structure of the civil service under Joseph, you know, you can go into various factories these days. If you go into the manager's director's office, you will see on the wall a chart of how this firm is run. And there's the factory here, and there's the suppliers here, and there's the dispatch there, and there's the office group here, and there's the engineer somewhere else, and then there are all lines going here, but after you come to the chief top chief men, uh, the whole lot, you see. If you had looked at that similar chart in Joseph's office, you would have seen Pharaoh at the top, Joseph the sole, uh, power holder under Pharaoh, and then the thing would have branched. There would have been Joseph over all the Gentiles, but, uh, then over this side, Joseph over the Jews, that is the Hebrews. Because when they were coming into to Egypt, uh, Joseph said to his brethren, now tell Pharaoh that you're keepers of cattle, because the Egyptians don't like keepers of cattle, so he'll give you a special bit of the land all by yourself. And so it came to pass. They were given the job of looking after he- uh, Pharaoh's cattle, and uh, Joseph kept them separate from the Egyptians. But so it came to pass in that third section, that the nation that had been taken, the man that had been taken out of the Gentiles and formed into a Hebrew nation until the seed came, eventually produced the very savior of the world by this method, producing a man who was rejected by his brethren, rejected by the Gentiles, but eventually came to the throne and ruled. Now I got myself so muddled up, I don't know when I've been talking history and when I've been talking prophecy. And perhaps you have a wiser head than I have, and you can discern which is which. But I have dared to spend your time this evening giving that a bird's eye view. Of course, there's much more detail to it, many more enjoyable things. But I should be content if I have made my point. We have not followed cunningly devised fables. I have not even been preaching to you tonight parables. I have been preaching to you history. It happened. I've been preaching you history as God has designed it, his deliberate program for the coming redemption of the whole world and its blessing. And the history that actually hasn't been Genesis-ified is a history that has been repeated at higher stages all the way down the centuries and is still being fulfilled, and shall surely one day, uh, uh, em- uh, result in the coming and the enthronement of our blessed Lord. The Lord help our hearts to understand it and our faith to grasp it. Help us to enjoy it and to preach it to a world that is lost and in spite of all its civilization cannot find its way to final prosperity. Shall we pray? Oh now, Lord, we thank thee for thy word, and we thank thee for the wonder of it. We praise thee that from thee and through thee and to thee are all things. We bless thee as we look back into the past to see thy counsels already, uh, made known. We praise thee for living in an age when so many of thy purposes have already been fulfilled. We thank thee for every indication we see around us of thy purposes going on and being fulfilled in remarkable fashion. For all the certain hope that this gives us, that the final stages in thy program shall yet be fulfilled, we do give thee heartfelt and grateful praise. Bless thy word to our hearts, we beseech thee. Cause us to understand it in its broad outline and in its detail, and then give us the grace, as we enjoy it ourselves, to go out and preach it to our fellow men, that they may have something for faith to get hold of, that they may be reconciled to thee and made ready for the coming of the Savior. We ask it through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Just two verses.