Byfield Parish
Church

Devotional Guide

For the week of February 14, 2010

Jesus Foreshadowed in Genesis.

Prepared by:
Dr. William Boylan
Box 335, Georgetown, MA 01833
This devotional guide is designed to help you walk by faith. Faith comes by hearing. Hearing is the key to a living faith. When we come to worship prepared to hear from the Lord and primed to listen to scripture, our faith is strengthened.

Copies of this devotional are available for the asking. If you know someone who could benefit, we would be pleased to send them a copy. Please include a self-addressed envelope with your request.
 
Monday
To Read: Genesis 46
To Know:
“And God spoke to Israel in a vision at night and said, ‘Jacob! Jacob!’ ‘Here I am,’ he replied. I am God, the God of your father.’ He said, ‘Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for I will make you into a great nation there. I will go down to Egypt with you, and I will surely bring you back again. And Joseph’s own hand will close your eyes.’” (Gen. 46:2-4) 

When the God of Isaac spoke to his son Jacob who was also the grandson of Abraham, he revealed more than Jacob could have asked or even thought. Three promises were made to Jacob at Beersheba. Those promises constituted the plan of God for the ages. First, it was destined that Jacob would become a great nation. We who live on the far side of the cross can now see for ourselves that the promise meant great in number. Everyone everywhere on earth who, by faith, is in Jesus Christ is reckoned as a descendant of Abraham and an heir of the promise made to him and repeated to Isaac and Jacob.  The apostle Paul wrote, “You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” (Gal. 3:26-29) 

Second, God promises to go down to Egypt with Jacob. Jesus was Jacob’s God as will later be confirmed in the book of Exodus. It is that same God who became man in Jesus Christ who says to us, “For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.” (Matt. 18:20)  Finally, God promised to bring Jacob home at the end even though the man would die in Egypt. Jesus, in the days of his flesh, confirmed this promise for all who would trust themselves to his care. At the grave of his friend Lazarus Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live , even though he dies: and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” (Jn. 11:25,26) The Old Testament begins to unfold this great mystery,  “that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ. ( Cor. 5:19)
Tuesday
To Read: Genesis 47
To Know:
“So Joseph bought all the land in Egypt for Pharaoh. The Egyptians, one and all, sold their fields, because the famine was too severe for them. The land became Pharaoh’s and Joseph reduced the people to servitude, from one end of Egypt to the other.” (Gen. 47:20,21) 

Joseph did not let the crisis that befell Egypt go to waste. We have heard such counsel in our own times. Joseph, who thought it wise to consolidate power in the hands of Pharaoh, planted the seed of the great catastrophe that afflicted the Israelites in Egypt. Famine struck fear in the hearts of the Egyptians and step-by-step they sold their souls to the king. At the first, the Egyptians spent their money. When money was gone they sold their livestock. When Pharaoh owned all their sheep and goats, they sold him their land. In this way, Egypt became serfdom. The government of Egypt established itself as the savior of the people. The Egyptians confessed, “You have saved our lives…may we find favor in the eyes of our lord; we will be in bondage to Pharaoh.” (Gen. 47:25) 

It was the intent of the founders of our governmental system, that our leaders be held in check. The United States Constitution is our agreement to curb ourselves by checking one branch of government by the other two. Because the Bible was so widely believed in 1776, the framers of the Constitution understood that unchecked human nature when given an inch would take a mile. The story of the 20th century is a tale of ever increasing federal intrusion into the lives of our citizens. Men like Theophilus Parsons, John Adams and James Madison worked to keep what Joseph did to the Egyptians from happening to Americans. These men and the others of the revolutionary generation, succeeded so completely that the one nation on earth in which the poor and oppressed around the world saw hope was the U.S.A. We are a nation worth saving.

Wednesday
To Read: Genesis 48
To Know:

 “When Joseph saw his father placing his right hand on Ephraim’s head he was displeased; so he took hold of his father’s hand to move it from Ephraim’s head to Manasseh’s head. Joseph said to him, ‘No, my father, this one is the firstborn; put your right hand on his head.’ But his father refused and said, ‘I know my son, I know. He too will become a people, and his descendants will become a group of nations.’” (Gen. 48:17,18)

When George Washington defeated Cornwallis at ? the Red Coats retreated to the tune of “The World Turned up side Down.” For the British regulars to suffer defeat at the hands of their own colonists was inconceivable.  Continental armies like those of the Hapsburgs and the king of France would think long and hard before challenging the military might of Great Britian. For the almost rag tag army under Washington, victory over the super power of the day was a new lease on life. The euphoria that weld up in the American soul carried the new nation forward for an entire generation. It was as if the American experiment’ begun with the arrival of the English Puritans, was reborn.

God plans to use Israel. Throughout the Bible we read that the first will pass away and the second will be forever. The first creation will perish and the new creation will be eternal. The kingdom was taken from the first Israel and given to a nation producing the fruits of it. When the apostle Paul wrote to Gentile believers in Galatia he closed his letter asking that peace and mercy be theirs as God’s true Israel. Jesus told Nicodemus that a man or woman not born a second time cannot see the kingdom of God. When Jacob crossed his hands to bless the second son with the blessing that by nature belonged to the older boy, he was doing what God continually does by granting sinners a second chance.

To do:

Whoever eventually perishes will have only him or herself to blame. Jesus gave an astounding command to world. “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.,,” (Matt. 11:28,29) To not come to Christ is to disobey the Lord.
Thursday

To Read: Genesis 49

To Know:
“Judah, your brothers will praise you; your hand will be on the neck of your enemies; your father’s sons will bow down to you. You are a lion’s cub, O Judah; you return from the prey, my son. Like a lion he crouches and lies down, like a lioness – who dares to rouse him? The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until he comes to whom it belongs and the obedience of the nations is his.” (Gen. 49:8-10) 

Genesis chapter 49 predicts the coming of a conquering king. This king will not conquer territory; he will triumph over the spirit of self-will. This king will be a member of the tribe of Judah. He will be among men like a lion among beasts. The lion of the tribe of Judah will be the King of kings and Lord of lords. Twenty centuries passed after Jacob uttered his prophecy before the king was born. Seven centuries before the birth of Christ Micah prophesied, “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from old, from ancient times.” (5:2) By listing Jesus genealogy, Matthew confirms that the Lord was descended from Judah. When the apostolic era neared its close, the Holy Spirit opened heaven and granted John a vision in order to see what Jesus accomplished on the cross. A sealed scroll in the hand of God the Father symbolized the plight of the human race. Human destiny was in the hand of God but no one was worthy to break the seals, open the scroll and make it happen. John dissolved in tears. “Then one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep! See, the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and break its seven seals.” (Rev. 5:5) Jesus Christ is the lion who was predicted to come from the line of Judah and has been invested with “all authority in heaven and on earth…” (Matt. 28:18)

To Do:
Be thoughtful and contemplate the wonder that an expectation like the one spoken by Jacob should be fulfilled precisely after two thousand years. It is a great piece of evidence that the Bible is, indeed, divinely inspired.
Friday
To Read: Genesis 50
To Know:
“But Joseph said to them, Don’t be afraid, Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. So then, don’t be afraid, I will provide for you and your children.’ And he reassured them and spoke kindly to them.”             (Gen. 50:19-21)

 

Distributed throughout the Scriptures are statements that the love of God passes knowledge. Can anyone plumb the depths of love in the heart of a God who brings good out of evil because in that way evil is abolished? Joseph was a sign of things to come. Like him, someone was to step onto the stage of human history who would receive evil at the hands of his brethren and return the greatest good imaginable. In fact, this man who would return the greatest for the worst evil imaginable would be God. Who would have imagined that the God who really is there would enter a world entirely populated by his rebellious creatures to bear their sins and carry away their sorrows as a free gift of his love? That is what the Bible discloses and Joseph displays. 

All sin is ultimately against Jesus Christ. King David, inspired by the Holy Spirit said to the Lord, “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight…” (Ps. 51:4) David had committed adultery with Bathsheba and manipulated events to insure the death of her husband.  Even so, David says of that sin that it ultimately was against God himself. The grand miracle is that God humbled himself in Christ and became obedient to the death of the cross in order to do good to those whose sin crucified him.

To Read:

Saturday:  Exodus 1 

Sunday:  Exodus 2



 
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