Good Morning Sisters and Brothers in Christ,
It is wonderful each day to awake to our Father God and our King Jesus Christ. And I awake with an expectation of being blessed today by the Father. I John 4:8 tells us “God is love.” As I’ve mentioned in previous emails, love cannot be love unless it has an object or receiver just as sound is only a wave until it is picked up by a receiver and converted to sound. This is why God created man – to have an object or receiver of His love. Love only blesses, promotes, uplifts, encourages, rewards, protects, delivers, etc. It never harms, hurts, demotes, angers, puts down, condemns, etc. God is the purest form of love because He IS love.
I think we all know or remember the account of Joseph, the son of Jacob, from the Book of Genesis, the Book of Beginnings. You can read about Joseph in Genesis 37-50. Joseph is an Old Covenant type of Jesus Christ. There are a significant number of parallels between Joseph and Jesus. God meant for it to be this way. Joseph was Jacob’s favorite son and envied by his brothers to the point they wanted to kill him. However, Joseph ended up being sold to a traveling band of traders and ended up in Egypt as a slave to Potiphar, the Captain of the Pharoah’s Guard, in prison for allegedly attempting to sexually assault Potiphar’s wife, and then became second in command of all of Egypt to Pharoah. I always wondered why God would have Joseph go through what he went through to supply the world during the famine from Egypt. Why didn’t this happen in Canaan, and why wasn’t it the Children of Israel supplying the world during the famine? This was God’s chosen people. Why Egypt? Why promote and prosper an evil nation full of idolaters and terribly evil practices? Good question. The Holy Spirit, as always, answered it for me. It took several months of continued reading and study of God’s Word for the answer to become fully evident to me.
There could be a lot written about this, but for the sake of an email and time, I will keep it brief and to the point. You will need to study this further. The root of the problem was Jacob’s believing. Had Jacob responded differently to Joseph’s dreams, the following would have happened:
1.) Joseph would never have left Canaan.
2.) The world would have been fed, during the famine, from Canaan by the Children of Israel.
3.) The Children of Israel would never have gone into 430 years of captivity in Egypt.
4.) Jacob would have lived many more years on earth.
Joseph had two dreams, the first which he told his brothers and the second which he told his father and brothers. His brothers already didn’t like him because Joseph was their father’s favorite son. The first dream made them hate him even more. The second dream heightened their hate of Joseph and his words (this is a key) and drew a rebuke from his father, Jacob.
Genesis 37:9-11
9 And he dreamed yet another dream, and told it his brethren, and said, Behold, I have dreamed a dream more; and, behold, the sun and the moon and the eleven stars made obeisance to me.
10 And he told it to his father, and to his brethren: and his father rebuked him, and said unto him, What is this dream that thou hast dreamed? Shall I and thy mother and thy brethren indeed come to bow down ourselves to thee to the earth?
11 And his brethren envied him; but his father observed the saying.
Joseph’s two dreams were given him by God. They were prophetic visions. Rather than react in the Spiritual realm to the dreams told them, Jacob and his sons reacted in the natural realm through their emotions. Had Jacob and his sons reacted Spiritually, they would have meditated on the dreams and asked God The Father for an understanding. Instead, Jacob’s reaction according to Scripture was to rebuke Joseph and observe or remember Joseph’s saying. This reaction would literally change the course of God’s intended history, but God saw to it His plan was accomplished, even if it required a deviation into Egypt. When God calls you to do something, if you don’t accept it in God’s time, God will find some other person and/or place to accomplish His plan.
We can further see Jacob was not walking in The Blessing as his grandfather and father, Abraham and Isaac, had walked by his reaction to Joseph’s brother’s lies about Joseph’s death found in Genesis 37:31-34.
Genesis 37:31-34
31 And they took Joseph’s coat, and killed a kid of the goats, and dipped the coat in the blood;
32 And they sent the coat of many colours, and they brought it to their father; and said, This have we found: know now whether it be thy son’s coat or no.
33 And he knew it, and said, It is my son’s coat; an evil beast hath devoured him; Joseph is without doubt rent in pieces.
34 And Jacob rent his clothes, and put sackcloth upon his loins, and mourned for his son many days.
We can see from Scripture Jacob was not walking in the Spirit but was walking as a natural man. Had Jacob consulted God about Joseph’s dreams, He would have known at that moment the brothers were lying. In fact, it never would have gotten to this point. The dreams make it clear God, The Almighty, had plans for Joseph. Instead, Jacob reacted as any natural man.
Jacob finally comes to understand his failure to walk in The Blessing of the Lord. In fact, Jacob had grown up seeing The Blessing working for his grandfather, Abraham, and his father, Isaac. When do we see Jacob recognized he had failed to walk according to God’s Word?
Genesis 47:9
And Jacob said unto Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years: few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage.
Wow, what a testimony by Jacob to Pharoah. “I’ve lived 130 years, but it is few and evil compared to my fathers.” Abraham lived to be 175 years old and Isaac lived to be 180 years old. Jacob lived 17 more years after meeting Pharoah to 147 years of age, but he had a far shorter life span and was far less prosperous than Abraham or Isaac.
In closing, what is the moral of this message? We all, as Believers, have The Blessing upon us as the seed of Abraham through The Seed, Jesus Christ.
Galatians 3:14
That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.
The Blessing upon Abraham was a physical blessing. The Blessing we have through Jesus Christ is both the physical blessing given to Abraham and the spiritual blessing given to Jesus Christ.
Ephesians 1:3
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ:
We are partakers of The Blessing which is both physical and spiritual. We need to realize we have The Blessing, what it is, what we are able to do through The Blessing, and operate in it. Otherwise, we will have the testimony of Jacob to Pharoah. Pharoah symbolizes the men and government of the world. Instead, we want the testimony of Abraham and Isaac.
Notice the Scriptural testimony of Abraham, Isaac’s, and Jacob’s deaths:
Abraham
Genesis 25:8
Then Abraham gave up the ghost, and died in a good old age, an old man, and full of years; and was gathered to his people.
Isaac
Genesis 35:29
And Isaac gave up the ghost, and died, and was gathered unto his people, being old and full of days: and his sons Esau and Jacob buried him.
Jacob
Genesis 49:33
And when Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed, and yielded up the ghost, and was gathered unto his people.
Do you see the difference? Abraham and Isaac, “died in a good old age, full of years,” and “died, being old and full of days.” Jacob, “gathered up his feet into the bed and yielded up the ghost.”
What do you want your testimony to be: that of Abraham and Isaac or that of Jacob? All were Believers. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
In Christ,
Larry