Title: Jacob and the 12 Tribes of Israel Text: Genesis 49:1-28 Turn with me to the Book of Genesis again this morning, -and this time to chapter 49 way at the end of Genesis. We are on a sort of adventure this year, seeking to discover the presence of Jesus in the Old Testament, -while at the same time seeking to discover the presence of Jesus in our own lives as well. So we started our discovery of Jesus in the Old Testament right back in Genesis, the first book of the Bible. -And we are sort of skipping our way through Genesis seeing the various places where Jesus shows up, -either by appearance in some way, -or by archetype or analogy, or by some prophecy. Today I want us to look at a word of prophecy that comes at the end of Genesis as the patriarch Jacob, -at the end of his life, pronounces blessings on each of his 12 sons. -Those 12 sons will be the heads of clans which will become the 12 tribes of Israel. Listen to what Jacob says about each of his sons and about the future that awaits their tribes in the days to come. So that s a whole variety of strange things for a father to speak to his sons on his deathbed, isn t it? -How many of you think Jacob must have been senile at this point in his life? Or maybe it s just that we are not very adept at reading poetry, -or understanding the imagery that Jacob was using all those 3500 years ago. But we understand enough to know that not all of those blessings sounded like blessings, right? -Some of those sons got the short end of the stick, -and sounded like they were being cursed rather than blessed by their Dad.
But families are like that, aren t they? -Family life is not all sweetness and light. -And families with 12 children have even more conflictual issues to deal with than families of 2 or 3 children. And some of you who have longer experience reading the Bible may be wondering, Hey, where is Dinah? Jacob s daughter? -He had 13 kids, and one of them was a girl. -Why isn t she at his bedside getting a blessing? Yeah, you think you have a dysfunctional family! Let me catch you up on a little of the history of this family, -the family of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. -It s the story of Genesis that we have skipped over in jumping ahead to chapter 49. Last week, we discovered Jesus in the Old Testament at that moment when Abraham was asked to sacrifice his son, Isaac. -And the story ended with Abraham and Isaac returning home together to Beersheba, where they lived. What we are not told is what that journey home was like for the two of them, -or what they told Sarah about where they had been or what they had experienced. I mean Abraham had come that close to killing his own son. -He had tied him up and laid him on the altar and raised a knife to kill him. -And the Angel of the Lord had stepped in to prevent that from happening, and had provided a substitute with the ram in the thicket..but still. How do you think Isaac felt lying there on the altar, seeing his father about to kill him? -And how did Abraham feel? -And what do you say to each other on the 3 day journey home?
Well, the Bible doesn t tell us, but what happens is that there are a host of dysfunctional family relationships that are carried down through the generations of Abraham s family. Isaac will go on to marry Rebekah, -and they will have twin sons, Esau and Jacob. -And Isaac will treat Esau as his favorite son, and Rebekah will pamper Jacob as her favorite son. -There will be lies, and deceptions, and manipulations of each other within this little family. -And then Jacob will run away from home so that his brother Esau won t murder him. And Jacob will be estranged from his family for years and years. And of the two twin sons, though Esau is the older brother, -Jacob is the son who will become the chosen son through whom the line of the blessing promised to Abraham will come. And so Jacob becomes the focus of the Bible story in Genesis. -And talk about dysfunction! -It s a wild and crazy ride with Jacob as he runs off to the home of his cousins in Paddan Aram. -And what he runs into is his uncle Laban, who it turns out is an even more experienced conniver and con-artist than Jacob is. -The lies and manipulations run in the family, you see? Jacob falls in love with his cousin Rachel and wants to marry her. -And Uncle Laban, Rachel s father, agrees to this as long as Jacob will work for him in the family shepherding business for 7 years. -Jacob thinks she is worth it, and agrees to the deal, -but when the wedding time arrives, he discovers it is not Rachel hidden behind the wedding veil, -but Rachel ls older sister, Leah! Jacob has been duped into marrying the older sister!
And Laban says, But I d be glad to throw in Rachel, too, if you work for me for another 7 years! -So out of love for Rachel, Jacob agrees to the deal. Now to make a long story short, Jacob s family life is no picnic. -The two sisters squabble with each other. -Leah starts producing sons for Jacob, -but Rachel seems to be barren for the longest time. -Jacob loves Rachel, but she is unhappy. -Leah knows she is not loved by Jacob, even though she is the one giving him sons, and she is unhappy. And then both Rachel and Leah give Jacob their maidservants as concubines to produce more children for the family, -and over the course of many years of dissension and frustration in the household, -Jacob ends up with these 12 sons and one daughter. But of all the sons and the one daughter, the first son who was finally born to Rachel, his beloved wife, after many years, -is Joseph. -And Joseph is Jacob s most favored son. Jacob dotes on him, and spoils him, and when he comes of age Jacob clothes him with a coat of many colors. -It s not just a nice gift for his birthday, it is the sign to all of the other older brothers, -that Joseph is their father s chosen heir. -Even though they were born first, Joseph as the first born of Rachel, is to be the son with all the blessings of the firstborn. We will tell the story of Joseph and his brothers next week, -but for today, you simply need to know that Joseph is Jacob s own chosen one. -As we read the blessings of Jacob a minute ago, -it is Joseph who gets the longest blessing and the most blessed of all the blessings of his father. And that favoritism of Jacob for Joseph caused no end of grief and dysfunction in the family for all their years.
So where is Jesus in all of this dysfunction? -Well it might surprise you to know, that Jesus is right smack in the middle of it. -Not causing the dysfunction, but somehow giving hope through it all that He is going to come to redeem it all. Next week we will look at how Jesus is in the midst of the life of Joseph, with all its ups and downs. But for today, I want us to look at the very middle of this poem of the blessings of Jacob upon his sons, -to discover a prophecy that is truly remarkable. It is the blessing that Jacob pronounces upon the 4 th son of his wife Leah, whose name was Judah. Though Joseph may have been Jacob s favorite son, -and the one that Jacob thought ought to carry the line of the blessing given to Abraham, -God had other ideas. Listen to what Jacob ends up speaking prophetically about Judah in vv. 8-12. Judah, your brothers will praise you. Do you hear that? -Some of the imagery might sound odd at first, -but there is no mistaking that Judah is being singled out as the one whose line of descendants will rule in Israel. -His brothers descendants will all bow down to him -The kingly scepter and ruler s staff will belong to him. But even more than that, it says that those kings of Israel from the tribe of Judah will rule over Israel in anticipation -of the One to come to whom the Kingship really belongs, and not only the obedience of Israel will belong to him, -but the obedience of all the nations will belong to him. That s an amazing statement. -And looking back, we know that a 1000 years after Jacob gave this blessing, -the 12 tribes of his 12 sons would finally become a nation.
And they would have a king. -And though the first King Saul would come from the line of Benjamin, it would not work out well at all. -And the true King would be King David, from the tribe of Judah. -It would be his line of Kings that would rule in Jerusalem for generations to come. And, it would be from his line of descent that ultimately Jesus would be born. And you might not have noticed it, but in that passage we read earlier from the Book of Revelation, -when Jesus first comes on the scene in heaven in the Book of Revelation, -He is called The lion of the tribe of Judah. Do you hear that language right from this passage in Genesis. Judah, you are a lion s cub, you return victorious from the prey. Like a lion he crouches and lies down, like a lioness, who dares to rouse him? And as the true Lion of the Tribe of Judah, Jesus is the One to whom the kingly scepter truly belongs, -the one who King David and all his descendants looked forward to in anticipation. -The one who would ultimately redeem all our brokenness and dysfunction. And now look at the imagery that Jacob uses to describe the Kingly reign of the Lion of the Tribe of Judah. He will tether his donkey to a vine, his colt to the choicest branch. -He will wash his garments in wine, his robes in the blood of grapes. First off, when you hear that as a Christian, it just evokes images of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a colt, the foal of a donkey, doesn t it.
And then secondly, the washing his garments in the wine and the blood of grapes just makes you think of communion, -and the being washed in the blood of the lamb, right? But at the time these images would have also meant a time of great prosperity during the reign of the coming King. Having choice vines in the vineyards and an abundance of wine was a symbol of great prosperity in Jacob s day. -And the thought of tethering a donkey to a choice vine was crazy, you would never do that. -Nor would anyone use wine to wash their clothes in. -The idea was absurd. But Jacob is saying to Judah, that under the rule of the coming King, that s how great the prosperity will be: -The vineyards will be so plentiful and the wine so abundant that it will be ordinary for people to treat the vines and the juice of the grapes like common trees and wash water. But for us all these years later, we see that Jesus fulfilled these images in a way that Jacob never imagined. -He road into Jerusalem as King on a common donkey, -And he was taken out of Jerusalem to be hung on a cross, where his blood would be shed to make the foulest clean. He would invite all of us to wash our garments in the wine of his blood, so that we might be made whiter than milk. My friends, in the midst of family dysfunction, -from the mouth of Jacob, who was a large part of that family dysfunction, -and concerning Judah, whose own story of dysfunction in Genesis chapter 38 is sordid all by itself, -comes this prophecy of hope. God is going to send to us the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, -the One to whom the true reign and rule of the Kingdom of God belong. -And He is going to bring redemption, washing his garments in wine, and his robes in the blood of grapes.
May that word of hope in the midst of dysfunction give you and me hope for our lives as well. In the midst of a dysfunctional election season, and in light of whatever the outcome on Tuesday will be. In the midst of whatever dysfunctions you are dealing with in your own lives and your own families, -or in your own schools or workplaces. We place our hope not in ourselves, not in our politicians, -not in our own ability to make the dysfunction functional. We place our hope in the One who has come to redeem it all, -and who calls us to wash our dirty garments in the wine of his blood. Let s come to the communion table to do just that. Let us pray.