The Privileges of Grace

Introduction: Jacob, a Pattern of Salvation by Grace

0:02 This message was delivered at the 1991 Northeastern Reformed Baptist Family Conference. Now we come this evening to our fourth and our final study in the life of the patriarch Jacob. I hope it has whetted your appetite to study the life of Jacob in more detail in your own devotional reading or perhaps to obtain one of the several biographies of Jacob, biblical biographies, and to delve more deeply into other aspects of the life of this ancient patriarch. I've attempted to set before you some of the events in the life of Jacob under the organizing principle, Jacob, a pattern of salvation by grace. We've considered together the psalms. The sovereignty of grace in its subjects, Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated. The operations of grace in its application, and we saw Jacob's preparation for grace, the revelation of grace, and then the transformation by grace.

1:18 Now tonight we consider in this final message the privileges of grace in their outworking. When God is pleased to save sinners by his grace and give them any length of time to enjoy the privileges of grace before he takes them to heaven, those privileges are manifold. And because Jacob did live to a very ripe old age and lived many years under the canopy of grace, his life forms a marvelous display of the privileges, his life forms a marvelous display of the privileges of grace in their outworking. Some of the most fundamental privileges of the grace of God at work in the life of a child of God are vividly displayed and strikingly illustrated in the life of Jacob. And I wish to trace out with you four categories of these privileges, which were not only Jacob's portion, but which according to what we call the analogy of Scripture, that is, the overall teaching of the Bible, are the portion of every true child of God. Privileges which in a real sense ought not only to make the heart of every Christian in this place glad,

Immutable Promises to Sustain Our Earthly Pilgrimage

2:45 but I hope it will make every person who is not a Christian envious and stir you to jealousy with the privileges we have, and you'll get jealous enough to seek them. And I'll read you these two, and I'll make you happy, and I'll make you happy, for they are the privileges of the grace of God. Well, after God was pleased to lay hold of Jacob in His grace, so that he no longer had the second-hand religion of the God of his mother and father, but he had first-hand heart dealings with God from Bethel onward, what were the privileges that marked his life all of his days? Well, first of all, we see what I am calling immutable promises are given to sustain us in our earthly pilgrimage. And in each of the headings, I'll be using the terminology of our earthly pilgrimage, taking that language directly from the words of Jacob. When he was asked by Pharaoh how old he was, Jacob answered in Genesis 47 in verse 9, Jacob said unto Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage are a hundred and thirty years.

4:11 Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of my life. So I'm using that biblical terminology. And the first of these four categories of the privileges of grace to which I direct your attention is what I am calling the immutable promises given to sustain us in our earthly pilgrimage. One of the major ways in which God discloses the promises given to us in our earthly pilgrimage is that he has given us the promises given to us in our earthly pilgrimage.

4:52 He gives his heart to his people and then binds himself to give to his people what his heart discloses is to couch the intentions of his heart in the form of promises. And the scripture makes much of this unique way in which God both discloses his heart and then binds himself to give to his people and then commits to his people what he purposes in the form of promises. From the first intimation of God's restorative grace in Genesis 3.15 all the way to the final declaration of the consummation of grace in Revelation 22 and verse 20, the promises of God are the depository of God's heart towards his people. And his will with respect to his people. Now some of the promises are made to specific individuals with exclusive application to their unique position and circumstances in the history of redemption. And we cannot take those promises and quote claim them one for one.

6:18 This is to mishandle the word of God. However, many other promises are promises made to individuals not because of their unique position or responsibility in the history of redemption but simply because they are the subjects of God's free and sovereign grace. And such promises according to Paul in 2 Corinthians are promises that are yes and amen to us in Christ. For they are promises that have a unique reference to the blessings of the gospel conferred in the Lord Jesus Christ. Peter says whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises that by these we might be partakers of the divine nature. And in the life of Jacob we find two major categories of these promises which are indeed ours in Christ. And they are immutable promises given to sustain us in our earthly pilgrimage.

7:41 And those two categories of promises are these. Number one, the promise of God's unfailing presence and the pledge of God's unfailing purpose. Note with me several times when God came to Jacob and promised his unfailing presence. We start with Genesis chapter 28.

8:11 In that initial revelation of the grace of God to Jacob, God said in verse 15, And behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee with us whoever thou goest, and will bring thee again unto this land, for I will not leave thee. You see, it's one thing to have God say there will be protection, there will be provision, but for the person who has come into personal service, spiritual communion with God, none of those things could meet the deepest yearning of his heart if God himself were not with him in the enjoyment of those promises. So the crown jewel among all the promises of God is the promise of his unfailing presence. And there at Bethel, God said, I am with thee. I will not leave thee.

9:20 The very same promise he had given to his father, Isaac in chapter 26 and verse 3, God had come to his father Isaac and said, I, 26, 3, I will be with thee and bless thee for unto thee and unto thy seed will I give these lands. In the midst of that series of promises, promises, at the head of them is God's word, I will be with thee. Well, we turn again to chapter 31 in verse 3, and God comes again to Jacob. And the Lord said unto Jacob, Return unto the land of thy fathers and to thy kindred, and I will be with thee. So that this promise of God's unfailing presence was one of the promises God fulfilled again and again in Jacob's various times of need and in the great crises in his life. For example, in the land of Israel, in the land of Israel, in the land of Israel, in the land of Israel,

10:35 In chapter 31 and verse 42, when he is speaking to Laban, he says that except the God of my father, the God of Abraham and the fear of Isaac, had been with me, surely you had sent me away empty. Chapter 32, verses 1 and 2, and Jacob went up on his way and the angels of God met him. And Jacob said when he saw them, this is God's hosts. And he called the name of that place Mahanehim.

11:16 God here, as it were, vouchsafed his own presence by sending his hosts to protect and accompany his sons. And what a wonderful thing to know that when God in grace lays hold of us, cleanses and pardons us of all of our sins, that he commits himself to us in promise that he will give himself to us with his unfailing presence. And then the second category of promise is the pledge. The pledge of God's unfailing purpose. Chapter 25 and verse 23. In chapter 25 of Genesis and verse 23, we read this initial announcement of the Lord. And the Lord said unto her, that is unto Rebecca, two nations are in thy womb. Two people shall be separated from thy bowels.

12:27 The one people shall be strong. The one people shall be stronger than the other. And the elder shall serve the younger. When we come to chapter 27 and verse 29, we find that this initial word of promise, that God's purpose was that Jacob the younger should be found in the place of lordship over Esau the elder.

12:55 Now when the actual blessing of God is pronounced by... By his father Isaac, notice how that promise comes to the fore again. Verse 29.

13:05 Let peoples serve thee, and nations bow down to thee. Be lord over thy brethren, and let thy mother's sons bow down to thee. And here was the pledge of God's unfailing purpose. And as we trace it out, we see that indeed, nothing can frustrate it.

13:31 Chapter 28, verses 13 and 14.

13:36 And the Lord said, I am Jehovah the God of Abraham, thy father, the God of Isaac, the land wherein thou liest. To thee will I give it, and to thy seed. And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the four points of the compass. And in thee and thy seed shall all the families of the earth.

14:00 And in thee and thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. God is underscoring again the certainty of his purpose. Chapter 35, verses 11 and 12. Chapter 35, verses 11 and 12.

14:15 And God said unto him, the Lord appearing unto Jacob again, I am God Almighty, be fruitful and multiply. A nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come out of thy...

14:30 And the land which I gave unto Abraham and Isaac, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed after thee. And when we come all the way over to chapter 46, what do we find? Chapter 46, verses 1 and 2. And Israel took his journey with all that he had, and came to bear Sheba, and offered sacrifices unto the God of his father Isaac.

14:58 And God spoke unto Israel, Israel in the visions of the night, and said, Jacob, and he said, here am I. And he said, I am God, the God of thy father. Fear not to go down into Egypt, for I will there make of thee a great nation. I will go down with thee into Egypt.

15:23 And in that final pronouncement of the promises, God brings those two strands together. My purpose to make of you a great nation, my purpose to give you a land, my purpose that through you the nations of the earth will be blessed, is an unfailing purpose, and it is joined to the promise of God's unfailing presence. And dear children of God, what two greater promises can God give to us throughout our lives? A more earthly pilgrimage than those two promises.

16:04 His own unfailing presence, and his own unfailing purpose. What were the last words of the Lord Jesus to his own? As he commissioned them to their task that would extend through the church to the ends of the age, he lays upon them the outworking of this very promise to Jacob. How will all the families of the earth, be blessed through the Abrahamic covenant that passed through Isaac and on to Jacob and on to his sons?

16:38 Jesus tells us make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them, teaching them to observe whatsoever I have commanded you. And lo, behold, fix your eye on this. And what's the great pearl of promise that he holds up? I am with you literally each and every one of the days, even to the consummation of the age.

17:04 Of all the things the Lord could have said, of all the pledges he could have made to his people, he takes this pledge which was given to Jacob centuries before, and he underscores it again to the spiritual sons of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and he pledges his unfailing presence with his own. And we find this throughout the New Testament. Another very wonderful example is in Hebrews 13, where that promise which is found several times in the Old Testament, the writer of the Hebrews says, so that we may with courage say, and take strength from the fact that God has said to us, I will never leave thee, nor fail or forsake thee. And then what about God's unfailing purpose? Well, what is his purpose for us? Whom he did foreknow, he did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son.

18:12 His purpose in committing himself to our salvation is so to work in us and upon us by his grace that when he is done, the Scripture says Jesus will be the firstborn, the one of prominence, of supreme lordship and devotion, among many brethren. When God is done with us, the family likeness will be so pervasive that the Lord Jesus' family of grace gathered about him will all bear the family likeness. And God has pledged that with an unfailing purpose. It is for that that he marked us out in Christ, before the foundation of the world. He is even now continuing working in us. And John says we know that we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. And one of the most wonderful privileges of grace of grace in our earthly pilgrimage is to have these immutable promises is to have these immutable promises to sustain us and children of God to sustain us and children of God God, you must begin to regard the promises with the same importance with which God regards

19:37 them. He has made His promises the great reservoirs, the great deposit of His own purposes, of His own plans of grace, and He has made them that you and I might know them and then believingly plead them and joyfully expect their fulfillment, for God, who cannot lie, has promised. And if He has promised His unfailing presence, He has promised His unfailing purpose, then as men and women of faith, we are to believe that promise. We are to lay hold of it when sight and sense and feeling all tell us it is. The promise says, and if we do not learn to rise above the tyranny of what we feel or don't feel, we'll make precious little progress in the Christian life. To question the promises or to leave them unclaimed and to leave them as something other than that upon which the mouth of faith feeds and finds great delight. You never find any place in Scripture where God says, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it.

21:03 I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it.

Jacob's Prayer: Pleading God's Promises

21:04 God was insulted or told one of His children they were cheeky when they reminded Him of what He had pledged to do. Let me give you just one illustration from the life of Jacob. Turn to chapter 32. And remember now, he had not yet been made Israel, prince with God.

21:25 He had yet some vital lessons to learn in that night time wrestling with the angel of Jehovah. But he had enough sense. to do this. Though scared stiff and using some good sense in splitting up his extended family into two groups, so if Esau wiped out the one, the other would be spared, he does pray. And notice as he prays in Genesis 32, verse 9, Jacob said, O God of my father Abraham, God of my father Isaac, O Jehovah who said unto me, Return to thy country and to thy kindred, and I will do thee good. I am not worthy of the least of all thy lovingkindnesses and of all the truth which you showed unto thy servant. For with my staff I passed over this Jordan. Now I am become two companies. Deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand of

22:22 my brother, from the hand of Esau. For I fear him, lest he come in spite of me. And thou smite me, the mother with the children. And thou saidst, Lord, you gave me a promise.

22:36 I will surely do you good, and make your seed as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude. O God, you've taken me from a solitary sojourner with nothing but a staff in his hand, and now there's seventy, but seventy in like the sand of the sea. Now God, you've taken me from a solitary sojourner with nothing but a staff in his hand, and Now God, you've taken me from a solitary sojourner with nothing but a staff in his hand, and you said it. You said it. As far as I know, Esau's coming armed to the teeth, and I'm no match for him, but Lord, it is what you said. And God didn't say, who are you claiming the promises, you old heel snatcher, you old schemer, you old deceiver, you who with your mother plotted the very mess that has Esau breathing down your neck. God didn't throw it back in his face, and God never throws the promises back in the face of his children. God loves it when he has his people say in essence, you are a God who cannot lie. And

Fatherly Discipline to Mold Us in Our Earthly Pilgrimage

23:36 what you've pledged in your promise, I plead before you as the basis of my expectation and my desire. What a wonderful companion in our earthly pilgrimage. One of the highest privileges of grace is to have immutable promises to sustain us in our pilgrimage, especially the promise of God's unfailing presence and the pledge of his unfailing purpose. But then secondly, there is another marvelous privilege of grace vividly illustrated in the life of Jacob, and it's what I'm describing as a fatherly discipline is exercised to mold us in our earthly pilgrimage. A fatherly discipline is exercised to mold us in our earthly pilgrimage. Now the words of Hebrews 12, 6 to 11 are familiar to most of us. What son is there of you whom a father does not chastise? And he goes on to say, if we as the professed children of God are

24:52 without chastisement, then are we illegitimate children and not true sons, for God has no sons. Who are without the need of chastisement and training in righteousness, and whom he does not love enough to bring the necessary chastisement upon them. And he does so in the language of that passage that we might be partakers of his holiness. Well, surely in the life of Jacob we see a vivid manifestation of this fatherly discipline exercised continually to mold him in his earthly pilgrimage. He was supplanter and heel snatcher by name and by action from his birth. Heel snatcher and supplanter was his name, and it was reflected in his natural character. By scheming, by plotting, deceiving, and manipulating, he sought to realize the fulfillment of God's promises which could have been fulfilled.

26:00 However, God was determined that Jacob the supplanter would become Israel, prince with God. So what does he do? From the glorious heights of divine disclosure that we looked at last night and the night before in Genesis 28, God takes him to the household of Laban his uncle. From the voice of God and a ladder of the Holy Spirit, Jacob is taken to the household of Laban his uncle.

26:29 And Jacob is taken to the house of Laban his uncle. And Jacob is taken to the house of Laban his uncle. And Jacob is taken to the house of Laban his uncle. And Jacob is taken to the house of Laban his uncle. And Jacob is taken to the house of Laban his uncle.

26:33 And Jacob is taken to the house of Laban his uncle. And Jacob is taken to the house of Laban his uncle. And Jacob is taken to the house of Laban his uncle. And Jacob is taken to the house of Laban his uncle. And Jacob is taken to the house of Laban his uncle.

26:36 And Jacob is taken to the house of Laban his uncle. And Jacob is taken to the house of Laban his uncle. And Jacob is taken to the house of Laban his uncle. And Jacob is taken to the house of Laban his uncle. And Jacob is taken to the house of Laban his uncle. And Jacob is taken to the house of Laban his uncle. And Jacob is taken to the house of Laban his in the gate of heaven, he enters through the gate of his uncle Laban's household. And Alexander White has captured so powerfully that I don't want you to be robbed of his ability to express it which is better than my own. What a come down it was from the covenant heights of Bethel to the cattle troughs of Aram.

27:05 What a cruel fall from the company of ascending and descending angels into the clutches of a finished rogue like Laban. Jacob had been all but carried up of angels from Bethel and taken into an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled. But instead of that, he's taken down to Paddan Aram where he is cheated out of his wages, cheated out of his wife, and cheated, and cheated, and cheated. Cheated again, ten times cheated, and that too by his own mother's brother, till cheating came out of Jacob's nostrils and stank in his eyes and became hateful as hell to Jacob's heart.

27:49 We say that Greek sometimes meets Greek with all due respects to a Greek among us. We say that diamond sometimes cuts diamond. We calculate the length of handle his spoon would need. To have who sucks with the devil.

28:07 We speak about the cellar being sold and we quote David to the effect that to the froward God will show himself froward and Paul's words that as a man so, so shall he reap. Yes, other people have been cheating their fathers and their brothers all these years as well as Rebecca and Jacob. Other little boys have been taking prizes in the devil's sly school besides Rebecca's favorite son. Laban, Rebecca's brother and bone of her bone had been making his pious speeches at Bethuel's blind bedside as ever Jacob made at Isaac's.

28:46 And now that the actors are all ready and the stages are built and the scenery is hung up, all the world is invited to see the serial comedy of the Syrian bitter bit or Rebecca's poor lost sheep. So Jacob was born to the bone by the steely shears of shy locker brother, and he went to work on him. And what was God doing? What was God doing in those years when Jacob labors for seven years and thinks that his wedding night finds his beloved in his bosom only to discover in the morning that he'd been. She then he works for another seven years. And then he works for another seven years. The same night Jacob was extremely happy.

29:35 He was in a hurry. He was really in a hurry. and he's cheated and deceived, and that skinflint of a man, Laban, is allowed to vent all of his cunning and all of his wicked guile upon Jacob. What is God doing?

29:50 This is a fatherly discipline being exercised to mold Jacob into prince with God. Then in the strange all-night wrestling match recorded in Genesis chapter 32, he is further disciplined to learn the great lesson that covenant promises are fulfilled when the God of the covenant is engaged by earnest prevailing prayer. The night begins with Jacob resisting the angel and fighting the angel. The night ends with the angel conferring blessings.

30:31 To the one who said, I will not let thee go except thou bless me. And how was he prepared for such a lesson? He was prepared by the desperate situation of Esau's approach and no way out. His back was against the wall.

30:49 And the only way out was to have new levels of dealings with God. And then there was the fatherly chastisement of the apparent. The fatherly chastisement of death of his beloved son, Joseph. And as I've read and then listened on tape on the way up in preparation for these messages again to that moving story, the horrible grief and pain and sense of loss that came to old Jacob.

31:23 We read in chapter 37 of Genesis verses 34 and 35 these words. When he saw that...

31:33 When he saw that blood-soaked coat of many colors, Jacob rent his garments, put sackcloth upon his loins, and mourned for his son many days. And all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him. But he refused to be comforted and he said, I will go down to Sheol to my son mourning. And his father wept for him.

32:01 Here the darling of his heart, he thinks, has been taken from him. Why did God allow all of this? Well, among the many reasons, it was a fatherly discipline to teach him the peculiar lessons of the broken heart. No man is fit to be in a place of any spiritual influence with others who has not known the discipline of a broken heart.

32:29 And while God had not taken away Joseph, And I can imagine if we can do this without being irreverent, how God must have smiled, as God saw the day, when old Jacob, down in Egypt, would say, This is my son Joseph! He is my son Joseph. When God saw him weeping bitter tears, refusing to be comforted, I wonder if God didn't have a wry smile upon his face. But he said, My son Joseph, melo니 Scuola değiş carro.

33:05 son, right now the classroom that I've marked out for you is the classroom of bitter suffering, the classroom of the broken heart, and it is in my love that I'm disciplining you to mold you into the man that I want you to be. So there was all of the chicanery and deception of Laban. There was the further lesson of that midnight wrestling match, the broken heart over the apparent death of his beloved Joseph. There was the grievous situation recorded in Genesis 34 with the matter of Dinah's defilement and seeing two of his own sons in cold blood plot the horrible death of those men of that city. And then in all of the incidents connected with the famine which drove his sons into Egypt, he's put in the place now where no human schemes, no clever ploys can win the day. God must intervene or we've had it. And so all the way down to the end where we see him as the man of faith, pronouncing blessings and making prophetic announcements over his sons.

34:27 We see him as a man who has known the fruit of the fatherly discipline of God, molding his child and his servant. And by way of application, surely it is right for us to say as with Jacob, as with Israel, so with all the true Israel of God, God is committed to make us like his son, and he doesn't do it in a sterile vacuum tube. He has, the whole moral and physical world at his disposal to order and arrange the big and the small, the seemingly insignificant and the apparently great and important events all to one end that he might so discipline us as to make us partakers of his holiness. He brings upon us the discipline of unjust treatment at the hands of the wicked, the hands of men, Laban. He brings the discipline of circumstances which drive us to wrestle in ways because of our native indifference to close and heart-wrenching dealings with God we would never have. And he allows a strange sickness to come into the family that presses

35:52 us to our knees and keeps us before God and sends us with a frequency we've never known before. And he's allowed some of us the pain of the living death of the child that for a while turns away from the things of God. When we go to our knees and say, oh God, I'd rather die than live another day knowing that the child conceived in answer to prayer, received with thanksgiving as an answer to prayer, and nurtured and nursed in prayer and in Destruction is openly, blatantly, unashamedly serving the devil. Oh God, I cannot abide the thought of living another day knowing that that's reality. And God says, yes you can. And in the crucible of suffering and the heart-wrenching experience of the living death of a wayward son or daughter, we learn some of the lessons that Jacob learned when he said, I go down to my grave mourning, thinking that Joseph was dead. And so by disciplining circumstances, God strips us of all creature confidence.

37:14 He strips us of that cursed leaning upon the arm of the flesh. And by events which break up our hard hearts, and then by marvelous surprises of his goodness, by which he humbles us and leads us to fresh repentance and renewed appreciation of his grace. Oh my brothers and sisters, where would we be without God's fatherly discipline to mold us?

37:45 An old hymn writer whose name is not even attached to the hymn captured it in these words. Glory to thee, thou righteous God, righteous yet kind to me. For under thy paternal rod, paternal love, I see. Though humbled in the lowest deep, thy gracious hand I bless.

38:12 And thinking of thy love, I weep for my unfaithfulness. Thou dost in tenderness chastise and graciously reprove. My father, all within me cries. Thy ways are truth.

Wise but Inscrutable Providence to Guide and Protect Us

38:31 What a privilege of grace. Not only to have immutable promises to sustain us in our earthly pilgrimage, but to have a fatherly discipline to mold us in our earthly pilgrimage. But then thirdly, one of the great privileges of grace is that we have a wise but instructive, inscrutable providence at work to guide and protect us in our earthly pilgrimage. A wise but inscrutable providence to guide and protect us in our earthly pilgrimage.

39:20 What is God's providence? You shorter catechism children, you should be able to answer. God's providence are, God's works of providence are his most holy, wise, and powerful, preserving and governing all his creatures and all their actions. That's what providence is.

39:42 That's God controlling everything he has made in every part of his world at all times and in all circumstances. There's not one grain of sand that is washed three feet further out into the ocean on the Jersey Shore right now. That's a wave break. But God's providence.

40:04 That's what the hand and providence of God is there ordering the exact placement of that grain of sand. There is not the movement of a heavenly body in the farthest galaxy thousands of light-years away, but what its slightest movement is under the all-controlling providential hand of God. Now that providence has a unique focus upon the people of God. And this providence is the only one that can be controlled by God.

40:35 And this providence is the only one that can be controlled by God. And this providence operates by infinite wisdom and power. And because it is God's providence, operative in the totality of all that God has made, it is beyond our finite minds to comprehend. That's why I've called it inscrutable.

40:58 We can't figure it out. But when we are most baffled by God's feelings, we can be assured that there is God. We can be assured that there is God. We can be assured that there is God.

41:06 As in the life of Jacob, an inscrutable and wise providence at work to protect and guide us in our earthly pilgrimage. Think of some of the incidents in the life of Jacob. From that uterine wrestling match when poor Rebecca says, If it's thus with me, why should I even go on?!

41:31 She felt this torturous experience of the twins wrestling in her womb. It was God's providence stirring up those boys to wrestle in her room and that caused Esau to be the firstborn. And for those things that would have given such coordination to the hand of the not yet born Jacob to grab upon the heel of his brother, God's providence ordering and directing all of those events within and in the very process of the exit from the womb. From the intrigue and sin of paternal and maternal favoritism, Isaac having an inordinate love to Esau and Rebekah having an inordinate love to Jacob through calculated lies and deceptions in the manner of obtaining the blessing of the Father, in the midst of ill treatment, in the house of Laban by means of family, families, that makes him send his sons down into Egypt and think that he's losing not only his beloved Joseph but Benjamin as well until the old man says that everything's against me. Everything's against me. Everything's against me.

42:58 There was a wise but inscrutable providence ordering and directing all of the affairs of his life. Blakey in his caravan, his classic work Heroes of Israel, very strikingly writes as follows. In the incident of obtaining the blessing, all of the parties were to blame. Isaac and Esau were to blame for attempting to reverse the divine decree that the elder shall serve the younger.

43:28 Rebekah and Jacob were to blame for using the devil's instruments in attempting to accomplish God's plan. And yet, by a wise, and inscrutable providence that can take the threads of such morally wrong actions and weave them into the fabric of his own purpose, God never stains his own holy hands.

43:54 Who can figure out a God like that? We're not to figure him out. But we are to know that as with Jacob, so with us, there is a wise and an inscrutable providence that is in control of all things, protecting and guiding us in our earthly pilgrimage. Turn to Genesis 42 and verse 36.

44:24 Genesis 42 and verse 36. Jacob their father said unto them, Me ye have bereaved of my children. Joseph is not, and Simeon is not. And will you take Benjamin away?

44:40 Or will you take Jacob? All these things are against me. When he tried to read providence, he came up absolutely dead wrong. At this very point, God was about to unveil that all things were for him.

44:56 Joseph was alive. And the reason Benjamin was to be taken and the others were sent back into Egypt was not that God was out to crush his child and his servant, but he was taking him down into Egypt to preserve him and through him to fulfill the covenant promise. But at this point, the covenant promise seemed to be far from his mind. And when he looked at his circumstances and tried to interpret them, he said, everything's against me.

45:30 Surely God doesn't love me. God somehow has lost control. All these things are against me. But if anyone could have echoed his son Joseph's words, you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good, it would have been old Jacob.

45:50 The hand of God was upon him, guiding and protecting him until all that God had purposed was accomplished in his life. And isn't this why William Cowper wrote, God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform? He plants his footsteps in the sea and rides upon the storm. Blind unbelief is sure to err and scan his work in vain.

46:22 God is his own interpreter and he will make it plain. Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take. The clouds ye so much dread are big with blessing and shall break in mercy. On your head, whate'er my God ordains is right.

46:46 Holy His will abideth. And in that confidence, child of God, embodied in one of the most well-known verses that so seldom do we take from the plaque in the living room and have it alive in our breasts, all together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. Even when all things by human sight seem to be against me, God says they are for me. Working together for my God. The sins of our youth, the heartbreak of parental experience, the blasting of our plans, the withering of our dreams. If we are sons and daughters of grace, one of the glorious experiences of heaven is when we have God exegete and open up to us how every single thread woven into the fabric that is your life and mine was woven by infinite love

48:10 joined to infinite wisdom, driven through that fabric by infinite power and absolute control of all things, seen and unseen. And if there's anything to be experienced in heaven akin to a sense of shock and shame, it will be how little we believed that a gracious, a wise, though inscrutable providence was indeed guiding and guarding us throughout our entire earthly pilgrimage. Edersheim commenting on this fact in the life of Jacob says, this is one of the most remarkable complications of life showing in the clearest manner that a higher hand guides the threads of history so that neither sin, nor error, can ultimately entangle them. Each one weaves the threads that are committed to him according to his own views and desires. But at last, when the texture is complete, we behold in it the pattern which the master had long devised

49:38 and towards which each laborer had contributed, one or another feature. And in trying to illustrate this, I came up with this silly, silly scenario, but it may help to illustrate it. If we were to take 15 people at random from this conference and say, now we want you all to volunteer for a project. We want you to come forward.

50:03 You don't need any special skill or strength. We want you to come forward. All right, they all come forward. We say, now we have here in the box, we have a whole bunch of different colored pieces of paper which stick among them.

50:17 You reach in, take any color you want, any shape you want, and then there will be one place. We take this curtain away, and there's an easel. And on that easel is a blank sheet of paper, but it's all covered except for the spot where you can put your piece. And we say, all right, now you volunteer, okay, you slap a piece on it.

50:38 So you reach in and say, oh, I like that color, I'll put that there. And then we cover up everything but another little place. And we do this until everyone has put his piece on. What if when we took all the covering away, we saw a beautifully shaped, impeccably colored rose?

50:59 We'd say, wait a minute, either they rehearsed that and there were little secret numbers on what they chose. I mean, you just don't have 15 people come up at random and take something in plastic and end up with a beautifully symmetrical, beautifully textured rose. No. Not unless some power is secretly guiding each hand that goes into the box and the inclination to choose one shape as opposed to another and one color in contrast to another.

51:27 And that's what God's providence is. Men are acting, as far as they're concerned, freely, uncoerced, according to their own native desires and inclinations. But behind it, Almighty God is so working that when we see the whole picture, it will all be beautiful. And that brings us to our fourth and final point, the great privileges of grace.

A Glorious Home-Going Awaits Us

51:54 Not only do we, as the heirs of God's grace, know something I trust of what it is to be sustained by God's immutable promises, we know what it is to be under His fatherly discipline, have confidence in His providence. But in the fourth place, the great privilege of grace is a glorious home-going awaits us at the end of our pilgrimage. A glorious home-going awaits us at the end of our pilgrimage. Turn to Genesis 49, if you will, please.

52:37 A glorious home-going awaits us at the end of our pilgrimage. You remember, when asked how old he was, he said, I'm 137, but few and evil have been the days of my life. That was a rather lopsided description of reality. But now that God has wonderfully put all the pieces together, and Jacob has lived to have the vigor and the foresight and the faith to pronounce blessings upon all of his sons, and he makes prophecies concerning their future place and destiny in the history of redemption, moving ever onward to the coming of Messiah. Follow as I read now Genesis 49, starting with verse 28. And these are the twelve tribes of Israel, and this is that their father spake unto them and blessed them. Everyone according to his blessing he blessed them.

53:43 And he charged them and said unto them, I am to be gathered unto my people. Bury me with my fathers in the cave that is in the field of Ephron the Hittite, in the cave that is in the field of Machpelah, which is before Mamre in the land of Canaan, which Abraham bought with the field from Ephron the Hittite for a possession of a burying place. There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife, there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife, and there I buried Leah. The field and the cave that is therein which was purchased from the children of Heth.

54:19 And when Jacob made an end of charging his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed and yielded up his spirit and was gathered unto his people. I believe that is one of the most touching deathbed accounts to be found in any literature anywhere. Hear the man who a short time before is carrying this lead weight of grief that his favorite son Jacob was dead, and he felt he would go to his grave mourning his death. He has now seen Jacob. He has seen all of his sons wonderfully provided for there in Egypt as God in his inscrutable providence used the evil intention of his jealous brothers to get him down into Egypt and exalt him to that place wherein the wisdom God gave him grain was stored and he becomes second only to Pharaoh in the land. And he has witnessed all of this.

55:38 Now his sons have been gathered about him and he has prophesied concerning their future destiny, pronounced blessings upon them. And when he is done with all of this he says, now I want to give you my funeral plans and directives. This is where I am to be buried. And when there was nothing else to do, when he had made an end of charging his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed.

56:05 Isn't that a beautiful little Dutch? He wasn't so feeble that they had to pick his feet up. He apparently had been sitting on his bed. And probably when he blessed them he stretched out his hands and laid them upon them.

56:18 And when he was done charging them he said, I've nothing more to do. It's time to go home. And so he picks up his old wrinkled feet and he puts them into that where the next time we see him is in the words of Jesus. They shall come from the east and from the west and the north and the south and shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the...

56:48 His feet were on the bed and moments later his spirit made its way to his father. His fathers who had gone before him who liked him saw beyond the promise of an earthly land and according to Hebrews chapter 11 saw that in the promise of God God was promising the city which doth have foundations whose builder and maker is God. And when his spirit left that body it went into the immediate presence of the triune God. And he experienced what the old writers called the beatific vision.

57:32 He gazed upon the God of Bethel face to face. The God of gracious promises. The God of fatherly discipline. And the God of this constant and inscrutable providence that had led him all his ways.

57:53 Now he looked upon his face and in his spirit bowed before his throne and worshipped and that's where he's been ever since. And will be to the day of resurrection when his body with the bodies of all the saints shall be raised up and we who are raised up with him shall together be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air and so shall we ever be with the Lord. What a home going. And I won't weary you with the debate about this terminology about being gathered to his people or his fathers but I'm convinced with the Lutheran commentator Leupold and you preachers that want to look it up it's in his commentary on Genesis the parallel passage in Genesis 25 pages 694 and 695 of volume 2. The only way he could be gathered to his people while his body is embalmed is that there were two parts of him. You see that? He was gathered to his people and Joseph fell upon his face.

59:04 Well if he's gathered unto his people how could he be there for Joseph to fall on his face and kiss him? Joseph commanded that he be embalmed. There were two parts to Joseph. Now up until this moment they'd both been together.

59:19 Now they were separated and his spirit was gathered to his fathers absent from the body present with the Lord. His body was kissed and then gently and lovingly embalmed in Egyptian fashion showing the dignity of that body that would one day be raised up at the last day. Now dear people I want to say by way of application hear me very carefully now. The greatest and most glorious privilege of grace is the glorious home going which certainly awaits us.

60:00 That's why Paul could say I'm torn with two desires. One to depart and to be with Christ. If we gave it a little rendering it'd be poor English but it's good Greek which is very much far more better. And we live in a day when it's not popular to speak of Christianity as the religion that fixes men's hearts upon the age to come.

60:36 But the more earthly minded the church has become the less useful she's become in fitting men for heaven. And the church is never more powerful in her witness than when her heart is more fixed on her inheritance. And that's why the scripture tells us that the mark of the truly converted at Thessalonica was that they not only turned from their idols to the living and true God to serve Him but to wait for His Son out of the heavens whom He raised from the dead even Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come. And when our Lord is telling His own that He must leave them He says let not your heart be troubled you believe in God believe also in Me in my Father's house or many dwelling places if it were not so I would have told you I go not only to sit down and send the Spirit but I go and then He sets before them their glorious home going I go to prepare a place for you and if I go I will come again and receive you unto Myself that where I am there ye may be also. And what a marvelous privilege of grace to know that a glorious home going certainly awaits us at the end of our pilgrimage. What a way to die gathered up His feet

Application: Living in Light of Our Home-Going

62:03 yielded up His Spirit gathered unto His people and every one of us and I close on this note is going to have a glorious home going or a gruesome banishment one or the other one or the other a glorious home going the Lord Jesus as He stood to receive Stephen standing to receive us or a gruesome banishment depart from me ye cursed Oh dear young men and women you adults with children and careers and all the other issues that constantly are pressuring you to make decisions bring near that day as did Moses when he was come to years he made a decision why? he had respect to the recompense of the reward he looked down the end and I find it so salutary the older I get to bring near my home going make life's decisions in the light of how it will look if I am privileged to sit upon my bed and gather up my feet and go home how important is that thing when you put it on your death bed

63:31 what will that thing mean on your death bed it's a good way to weigh your ethical and moral decisions because come to your death bed you must for it's appointed unto men once to die and God grant that we shall have nothing that means we must seek to have a flurry of fruitless activity on a death bed what a horrible place to try to settle such things as forgiveness of sins and the destiny of my eternal never dying soul what a horrible place to settle such things of what value shall I leave to my children what legacy shall I leave to my children settle those issues now that whatever else I leave them I'll leave them but Isaac left Jacob the fear of my father Isaac and what Jacob in spite of all of his failures left for his twelve sons the legacy of a man who became prince with God is that the legacy you're leaving to your children that's the note I want to sound as I close my part of this family conference will you leave that legacy how I thank God my father is leaving it for me

65:00 wrote a letter to us recently the last time the extended family could well be gathered together before his funeral though if he follows the pattern of his mother and other relatives he may though he's eighty-four and healthy as a horse may still live another ten years I don't know but he has a sense and I can't help but believe that God is giving him that sense that maybe his earthly pilgrimage will not be much longer and in this letter sent to each one of the ten siblings he said your mother and I married as two high school dropouts we didn't have one bit of premarital counseling attended no seminars on how to have a successful marriage a couple of inexperienced kids but none of you was regarded as a burden we accepted you as a gift of God our treasure was not things but you and we sought to leave you the legacy of a consistent stable home a vital walk with God and several other things he mentioned and I thank God I can rise up and call them blessed what they're leaving in a material inheritance divided among ten will barely pay my taxes for a year do you think I feel cheated do you think I feel resentful no he left the legacy of a man

66:29 who out of commitment to God increased his giving to God by a certain percentile and I saw him as a leading executive in the company not having enough pin money in his pocket to buy his lunch in the cafeteria the last couple of days before from the next paycheck because God always got his portion off the top I thank God for that legacy I could care less if after it's divided up there isn't enough for a shoestring because I have in my breath the legacy of a man who walked in principle obedience to God will your son rise up and call you blessed you earn that right now in the choices you make now it's too late on your deathbed to talk piously oh to have a home going in which our consciences are at rest and we can gather our children around us and pronounce the blessing of God over them you see if you're not a Christian you may pity us oh you people are so narrow and you don't do this and you can't do that

Conclusion: Envy the Privileges of Grace

67:57 I tell you we're a happy bunch we're a blessed bunch because we have promises the likes of which there is no government on the face of the earth could give to you and make them good the unfailing presence of God and the pledge of his unfailing purposes we have that great privilege of grace of knowing that a wise loving fatherly discipline is molding us to be like Christ and a wise and an inscrutable providence is guiding us and protecting us so that all that God has purposed will be done in us and we're invincible until our work is done and then the end of all that we don't have a terrifying horrible gut wrenching dread and a hell of a defingered angel of death go away go away we can gather up our feet on the bed and say welcome death all you can do is land me in the bosom of Jesus oh my unconverted friend I hope you envy the privileges of grace they can be yours

69:21 if you'll go to the one in whom God has stored them all up the Lord Jesus who is full of grace and truth go to him and in him all of these things can be yours let us pray our father how we thank you and praise you when you give us to see but the edges of your ways surely our hearts are overwhelmed and we cry out in your presence that we are unworthy of the least of your mercy and your loving kindness we thank you for the privilege of being your children and for all of these privileges of grace that are ours in our earthly pilgrimage give us oh to live that men may see us as wealthy in Christ and may ask a reason of the hope that is within us Lord make some jealous tonight jealous with a jealousy that will cause them to seek in Christ these glorious privileges that are the portion of all who are in him seal your word to our hearts and receive our thanks for your presence in Jesus name

70:50 Amen