Introduction

We have a longer text to go through today, so I’m just going to read it and then we’ll dive in.

The Hourglass

I have an hourglass here that is going to represent our life. When a man or woman is born, that moment when that baby slips out of the shoot and takes it’s first breath represents the turning of the glass and the sand begins to fall. With every minute of your life, a grain falls through that tiny crack. You can see the pile accumulating at the bottom of the jar. But here’s the thing about life. Nobody knows how much sand is in the glass. You don’t know how much is left. It could be 30 seconds, 30 minutes, 30 years, or more. But the rate at which that remaining sand empties is fixed. Minute by minute, hour by hour, that sand empties. The pile grows at a fixed rate.

And then one day, time runs out. All of those things we worked so hard for, the years and years of education, the work projects that you were so proud of, the years of paying down that mortgage, the years of investing, the gadgets and trinkets aquired, the trading up of furniture, cars, houses, it’s all reduced to a pile of sand at the bottom of an hour glass.

And interestingly, most of what we spent time doing in life does very little to prepare us for what we will experience in that moment. There is coming a day when we will realize that the end is drawing near and for most this will summon up feelings of tremendous fear. Here’s the question we are dealing with this morning: How will you deal with that fear? How will you deal with the knowledge that the end is coming soon? When you hear the death chains rattling, how will you find peace and security when all the things that normally stabilize you are cut away?

Today in our text we find Jacob in his final days. And he speaks with lucidity. His life has taught him lessons that he’s ready to impart. Jacob is prepared to die in peace. Jacob

Now to really appreciate his peaceful deathbed condition we have to remember how little peace Jacob experienced in his life. Seeing Jacob trusting God with total security upon his deathbed is certainly not what we would have expected.

Just spend a couple minutes with me in your mind thinking about the life of Jacob. Jacob is one of those guys, that if you met him when he was 20 years old, I don’t think you would have liked him. He wore his insecurity on his sleeve. You can’t understand Jacob until you realize that his entire life was a quest for security and peace. Jacob was absolutely ruled by the fear of being unaccepted. He was so needy. He just longed for acceptance and approval, and this longing for acceptance created great unrest and shaped every aspect of his life.

Some people, when they feel rejected or insecure, they recoil in hurt and shrink back. Others do the opposite. Other people fight. Jacob was a fighter. He responded to insecurity by quarreling with everyone he met. He was always in conflict with people. Always. Think about Jacob’s life. Jacob came out of the womb fighting. He came out clutching his twin brother’s heel. And that would become a metaphor for his entire life, clutching at the heel but never quite obtaining. He wrestles away his brother’s birthright for a pot of soup. Then when his father dies, he cons away his brother’s blessing. He had to fight with Esau to get his father’s love and he never got it. He’s got this wily scheme where he struggles to get the wife he wanted. He’s got this gimmicky strategy where he deceives with goats and herds and struggles and wrestles to get the career he wanted.

And by the time you get to the Joseph narrative you see all this unresolved insecurity expressing itself in relationships inside the home. The love-starved wives are in conflict with him and each other. The love-starved brothers fight and wrestle with one another, a mirror image of their love-starved father who wrestles with himself and God. Jacob scratched, bit, and clawed to find security, grasping at the heel. And he suffered.

By the time we get to the end of Jacob’s life, which is the passage we read today, we see that all that suffering softened him. We see a portrait of a softer Jacob whose body is old and crippled and brittle but his heart is supple and fleshy; we see sheets of scales flaking off and falling to the ground. He has finally stopped trying to manipulate and blame others and instead he simply trusts the Lord and in so doing experiences incredible peace.

So today we are going to learn from Jacob three lessons of a man whose life had been changed by the peace of God. We will learn from Jacob how to finish life with security.

How do we die of cancer without fear? It’s not easy. If ever there is a time when the security anchors of your life are cut away, it’s when you hear the death chains rattling. What can you cling to in moments like these?

As humans, when we sense instability, we reach for what we know. It’s no time to experiment with new centers of security. Dangerous times, unfamiliar times. These are not times for risk. It’s time to go with what you know works. In moments like these we return to time- tested strongholds.

Jacob’s hourglass was nearly empty. He’s got just a pinch of sand left in the top of the glass. What time-tested stronghold does he shelter beneath? What security blankets does Jacob reach for?

This first point is an observation of what he does not reach for. He does not reach for Egypt. And just that is absolutely shocking, because so much good had come from Egypt. Egypt had been very kind to Jacob. Egypt had literally saved his life. The food, the land, and the bounty in times of famine. Keep in mind the geography of the narrative. Jacob is coming down from the hill country of Judea in Israel. Here’s a picture of what the area around Shechem looks like today. I mean this is rocky, thorny, hard land. Not a lot of water. You have to scratch out a living up here. As a shepherd you have to live a nomadic life moving from hill to hill. You have to move your flocks around according to the season. In the best of years it’s arid. And when the drought hits, you can imagine whatever little vegetation exists here is just baked and scorched into carbon gravel. So they are starving to death in this hot desert. And you remember the narrative. Joseph’s brother’s go to get Jacob, and bring him where? To Egypt! Here come the carts so full, you could imagine the grain spilling over the side rails and the axles bending. Joseph’s family comes down they are given the best of the land. The well-watered plains of goshen. So here’s a picture of modern day goshen. Would you rather live in Shechem or Goshen? The Nile Delta is flat and you have rich, thick grass in loamy soil totally free of rocks. I mean, in a time when most of Jacob’s buddies back in Canaan are starving to death, his tribe is living off the fat of the land.

I mean what’s working here. What’s the time-tested stronghold here? Is Canaan working or is Egypt working? “Everyone in Egypt is being so kind to me. We were welcomed in a royal parade. I mean, I know the whole promises of God thing, but man this is nice.”

Do events like these not condition a man to think, “When in crisis, flee to Egypt for safety?” Of course! There would have been a huge temptations here for Jacob in these moments of crisis to reach for Egypt.

But here’s our point: Jacob finished the race of life, Distrusting Egypt’s Generosity. Here’s where we see this in the text. Jacob sees his son Joseph and you have this strange custom where he takes Joseph’s hand and places it on his thigh and he makes his son Joseph swear, “Don’t bury me here in Egypt.” He’s so deadly serious. You could imagine Joseph saying, “Dad, is Egypt so bad? I mean look at all Egypt has done for you? Is it so bad? Why do you feel the need to be carried clear back to that desert?”

Here’s the thing that Jacob got right. Yes, it was Egypt’s grain that saved his family’s life. Yes, it was Egypt’s soil that grew the crops they needed to live. Yes, it was the water that came out of Egypt’s Nile that quenched their thirsty mouths. But it was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that made Egypt and conscripted its resources to save his chosen people. You see, he recognized that the blessings of this world are owned by God. When we are given gifts from the world, we are not to thank the world, we are to thank God. The checks of blessing we receive are signed by men, but the banker is God.

And the application for us is a good one. Your paycheck has your company’s name on it, but the giver is God. The inheritance comes from your parents or grandparents, but the giver is God. You get a tax return from the IRS, but the giver is God. It’s a fundamental way in which you view blessing. This becomes even more obvious as we drill into the details of what Jacob says next. Not only does he say, “Bury me in Egypt,” he goes further. Then Israel said to Joseph, I’m not sure how this would have been heard by Joseph but it sure feels strange to my ear. Joseph is the sovereign of Egypt. Joseph without question lives in a palace of kings. One of the suggested locations where Joseph lived is in the goverenor’s palace discovered in the city of Avaris. Here’s a rendering of that palace based on the archaeological evidence. If it’s not this, is certainly something like this. I mean, Joseph is living in straight up luxury. Joseph is living in opulence like you couldn’t believe. “Why is dad bringing up this tiny little plot of land?” This has got to feel to Joseph like dad is giving him a coin collection he won in an arm wrestling match. Yippidy do.

But what’s going on here? Yes, Jacob is distrusting the generosity of Egypt. That’s the negative. But here’s the positive. Why would Jacob think that Joseph would be even remotely interested in his piggy bank, in this little piece of rocky land a hundred miles away? Does Jacob really expect Joseph to trade Egypt for a rocky hillside that daddy captured with a handmade bow and arrow?

Here’s the answer. Yes, he does. Why? Not because there is value in this one little plot of earth. Because the maker of the actual earth has promised to bless his people here. This is the seed of blessing promised to generations previous. If you remember clear back in Genesis 35, God appeared to Jacob in a dream and said to him: So now Jacob, these many years later, believes this promise. Jacob is re-ratifying a promise made to his father and grandfather about this land. Now we get way more insight into the psychological framework of Jacob and how he thought about this promise if we read Hebrews chapter 11. It’s such a perfect complimentary text to where we are today. Jacob believes that one day, the land given to him will be the soil upon which a tremendous kingdom is built. He believes this in a way that alters his perspective of reality and every aspect of his decision making. Look at how this faith in the promises of God is articulated in Hebrews chapter 11. Now it starts out with Abraham. So here these patriarchs are, living in tents, they are in a ghetto. They are homeless in a foreign land. But they believe God. They believe that this land is given to them. The text goes on to say:

Do you see what’s happening here? Jacob is looking at the hill he captured with the bow and he says, “This is the foundation of a great city.” You can imagine Joseph and Jacob sitting there. The great building projects of Egypt spread out before them. The great pyramids, the testament to the power of Egypt rising out of the desert sand and Jacob whispers in Joseph’s ear, “You see these pyramids? They ain’t nothing compared to what God is going to do. Do you remember that rocky slope I told you about, the one I captured with my bow? One day, that’s going to make Egypt look like a lego city. I’m trusting in the promise that God gave to me. Give me all of Egypt or this rocky slope. I’ll take the slope.”

And perhaps he looks at Joseph with hope. “Joseph, maybe that’s where you build your palace. Joseph, perhaps God is raising you up to move my people back and establish the kingdom promised.” Now that wasn’t God’s plan but you can hear in Jacob’s voice the hope. “Joseph, I’m going to die, but the promise of God will live on through you.”

He wants Joseph to carry his body back so he can see the land for himself. He wants to make an impression on his son. We are exiles and foreigners. This is not our home. We belong elsewhere. Jacob said we are strangers and exiles here in Egypt. Bury me in Cannan. This is not about geography. This is about theology. The Hebrews passage goes on to say: Jacob wasn’t ashamed of his puny little coin collection because he knew the value. This was amazon.com at 25cents a share. The promise of God was behind it. It would develop into a great nation not because the land itself was anything. The land was nothing. It was because the God of the land. Jacob died with a gleam in his eye. He believed the promise. The blessing to his sons had this promise in mind. This same promise Joseph would pass on to his children.

And his children to their children. And 400 years later a man named Moses would make the same decision based on the same promise. Hebrews goes on to say:

You don’t give up Egypt for nothing. You cannot yearn for another land while holding onto Egypt. You give up Egypt for something greater! Choosing God means abandoning Egypt. That’s what Moses did. He chose a life in the desert with grumblers because that was a greater reward than Egypt. He was looking forward. He was looking to the reward.

Abraham trusted the promises of God, Isaac did it and now Jacob did. And now the question turns to us. Jacob was an outsider. He was an exile in Egypt who knew that as good as it was, Egypt was not the home God promised to him. The gods of Egypt were not his gods.

We too are exiles in a land that is not our home. For us it’s not Egypt with the leeks and garlic and Nile Delta, it’s Idaho with potatoes and Panda Express and the Sawtooths. Some of you have fled here as exiles from a foreign land. I know from experience, Idaho has been nice to me. I had a wonderful childhood in Eagle working on farms. I get to hike the Sawtooths every summer. I love breathing clean air. I get to replinished my soul in Cascade and McCall. I love watersports and snow sking. We start to love Idaho, don’t we?

And it’s easy to make Idaho our home to grow our roots deep into Idaho. The longer you live, the more you adopt the values of the place. It just kind of soaks into you. But Idaho is not our home. Why? Here’s the simplest reason. When we die, we no longer live in Idaho. You don’t call a motel your home because you are only there for a moment. Home is the place you live forever. Heaven is our home.

Jacob dies with security because he is anchored to the promises of God, truths which are not cut away in death. He’s able to trust in the promises of God. This promise of God that one day a nation will rise up in this land is binding him to this moment. He can die in peace knowing that God will carry out his promise to generations yet unborn. Why does he want to be buried in Canaan? It’s his statement of faith that I want my bones to be in the physical location where God has promised to one day establish his people for an eternal kingdom.

The other thing we see Jacob doing as he prepares to die is bless his children. We see it here as he blesses Joseph’s two sons and then all of chapter 49 is Jacob blessing his other sons as he prepares to die. In these chapters, don’t forget Jacob is very old. His body is riddled with pain. We see him groaning just to sit up. We see him leaning heavy on his staff. His body is broken. We see in the text here that he is blind. The man is about to die. He’s not buying green bananas if you know what I mean. He knows he’s only got a pinch of sand in that hourglass.

But in those last weeks of his life, his perspective is marvelous. For Jacob, as he faces into the reality of his uncooperative body, the frailty he is forced to confront is not something to be fought off. It is something to be understood. It is a reminder for him that it is time to prepare to die. And what comes to mind at that point? I must bless my children.

Now, I’m not sure many in Jacob’s shoes would have said that. I think many who had lived Jacob’s life would have said, “I’m about to die. It’s time to curse my children.” Think about what Jacob had been put through as a father. Let’s just rewind the tape a bit. Let’s rewind for just a moment to that great reveal where Joseph declares who he is. Remember back with me. They are in the palace. The golden cup had just been discovered in Benjamin’s sack. And for that reason, Benjamin has a noose around his neck, so to speak. Joseph is pretending to be all stern and he’s ready to administer the royal sentence but he can’t bear it any more. He breaks down, takes off his head dress and speaks in perfect Hebrew, “Guys, it’s me! It’s your brother Joseph!”

Here’s an honest question: is this a good day for the brothers? You can imagine the choking stares, the blinking disbelief, the silence. You can imagine the horrifying realization that this thing you thought you had completely covered up, is now staring you in the face. It’s so unexpected. You had zero time to prepare. You haven’t even had one second to prepare an I’m sorry speech. You are just caught naked.

This represents a day of reckoning. They have to swallow hard. The tables are totally turned and they have to realize they are at Joseph’s mercy. That’s bad enough. But think about what’s coming next. Think about part two. I think part two is much worse. After they hash this out at some level, they are now commissioned to go back and tell their father that Joseph is still alive. Now that news has some implications if you know what I mean.

You couldn’t say, “Dad, guess what, Joseph’s still alive. I thought he was eaten by a wild animal, but we found him and he must have escaped. He’s alive!” That story doesn’t work because Joseph knows the truth. So it’s got to be more like this, “Hey Dad, Remember when you were mourning and we had that whole funeral for Joseph? Well, I kind of knew he was still alive. In fact, we all knew. We just let you cry your guts out for weeks on end. I mean, I know it sounds awful, but we were going to slit his throat with a knife and kill him but we decided instead to sell him for cash. Well, we got that money from selling Joseph to the Ishmaelite traders. And truth be told, every year when we had that little memorial service, and you cried your guts out. But, we all smiled behind your back because we knew he was still alive. And you know how you haven’t seen your son for a couple decades and how you can never get that time back and how you’ve had no relationship with him. Well, that’s kind of our fault. And we knew it and did nothing about it.”

Like, whose gets the short straw to communicate that one?

And the text says Joseph sent them off with the instructions, “Don’t quarrel along the way.” Now why do you suppose he said this? We don’t have to even wonder. There’s not even a hint of a question. To tell Dad that Joseph is still alive means also telling him that there has been a family wide conspiracy against him for the past 20 years. He’s been the target of a giant cover-up where he’s the fool. He’s the last to know. Of course they are going to quarrel. Of course they are going to blame one another. “I told you it was a bad idea. I told you not sell him.”

And can you imagine how badly Jacob was hurt by that deception? How much anger must he have felt? He must have had to fight not to hold in bitterness and resentment. There is some serious soul work that needs to be done on Jacob’s part! But now here he is at the end of his life, ready to bless his children. He doesn’t breath a word of it. Not one word of it comes up. It’s actually quite impressive. The reason is, once again, he’s looking to the promises of God.

Here’s what the old Jacob has learned. He’s now completely convinced that no matter what something looks like on the surface, God will turn it into good. Earlier in his life he was completely convinced that the worst thing that could have happened to him, did happen to him. His son Joseph was taken from him. But now he sees how this terrible evil was redeemed for his great good. And the lesson. Whatever you see in front of you today is no indication of what is coming tomorrow. He knows that God will make a great nation out of these failures.

There there’s this strange scene where the hand of blessing goes onto the younger instead of the older. Certainly not according to custom! But this just once again reaffirms that you can’t trust how things appear.

Sometimes it looks like something it is so bad, it could never be redeemed for good. But other times it looks so good, so certain, it looks like it could never fail you and then at the very last moment the hands of blessing are crossed and the weak are made strong and the strong serve the weak.

Jacob totally distrusts what his physical eyes see and he totally trusts what he has been told to believe by his faithful God. In his final moments, he has the least amount of physical sight but the greatest spiritual sight. He sees more clearly in those final moments than he has ever seen. And he wants to pass that clarity onto his children. “It’s not what it appears to be children. Egypt will go down. Things are not what they appear to be. We don’t trust what we can see. We trust what we know, what we have been told.” He is trusting in the great God of all glory. And you hear that trust coming out in the way he blesses his sons.

So practically for us what does this mean? It means using your death as the platform upon which you preach a sermon of everlasting life. You have a unique message to speak before you die. As a pastor, I’ve been at the bedside of many people before they’ve died. And I remember just weeping at the beauty of what some of these saints said as they faced death. If those same words were said in a church foyer, that’s one thing. If they’re said sitting at death’s door, it’s quite another.

Man, let me just get real for a moment. It may be that if I outlive you, I’ll be doing your funeral. And if not me, then one of the other pastors or elders or some minister of the gospel. Make our job easy!

Do you have a will? I hope so, it’s an important thing to have. And if you have one, it likely contains information regarding the functional financial elements of your estate. Good. But that stuff doesn’t really matter. I hope your will also contains letters, notes, what you want to tell people. Do you have letters you want opened? Don’t you want to be like Jacob here and encourage your children and grandchildren to stay faithful to Jesus Christ? Don’t you want to extol how faithful he has been to you and how wonderful it is to be his child? Don’t you want to publicly marvel at the blessings of the covenant keeping God?

I love how Jacob blesses his children, “The God who has been my shepherd all my life long to this day.” What can you communicate to the next generation about the faithfulness of God? You can write this letter at any time. We do not when exactly we will die, but we do know that we will die, so either way we can prepare.

Can you paint a portrait of the faithfulness of God such that others can look to the God you trusted in and be strengthened? You see all through the Bible we read of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jacob gets the title “Patriarch” and because of that we tend to view him as this great man. But he was not great. God did something great to Jacob. So when we say, “God of Jacob” we mean God of the insecure. God of those who are craving for men’s approval. God of those who time and time and time again repeat their failures. God of people who need to be rescued from finding their hope in this world.

We will come to the end of our life. The sands of time will run out. In those dying moments God may give you some unique opportunity to pass on your experience of how God has been faithful to you to the next generation so that when people say, “God of Jason” they think, “Man, if God can redeem that train wreck, he can redeem anything.” Let’s trust in that God. Let’s run to that God.