Prepared For A Sinful World--Secure In God's Promise Series

Prepared for a Sinful World

Resting Secure in God’s Promise

Remembered in Trials

DBF 3/10/02

Boy, when you live in a small community like Dillingham or Bristol Bay you can’t afford to lose any friends.

What do you think you should do to keep your friends and family happy with you.

*Keep secrets about the lives of the people you know.

*Keep secrets about the illegal things friends or family might do.

*Make sure that you don’t say anything that could be taken as offensive to any of your friends and family.

*Don’t tell them the truth if you don’t think they will like it.

*Don’t give them the word or pray for them.

You know that God calls us to a higher calling as His people who are set apart, not because of anything we have ever done, but because of His grace and mercy.

Are you today resting in God’s promises for you and your family, friends, communities, and your nation.

Let’s walk with Jacob’s family and Joseph today and hopefully we will learn some things relative to the walk of Jacob and Joseph after God.

Resting Secure in God’s Promise

Genesis 37:1-8 (ESV)

Jacob lived in the land of his father’s sojournings, in the land of Canaan.

[2] These are the generations of Jacob.

Joseph, being seventeen years old, was pasturing the flock with his brothers. He was a boy with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father’s wives. And Joseph brought a bad report of them to their father. [3] Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his sons, because he was the son of his old age. And he made him a robe of many colors. [4] But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peacefully to him.

[5] Now Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers they hated him even more. [6] He said to them, "Hear this dream that I have dreamed: [7] Behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and behold, my sheaf arose and stood upright. And behold, your sheaves gathered around it and bowed down to my sheaf." [8] His brothers said to him, "Are you indeed to reign over us? Or are you indeed to rule over us?" So they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words. 9 Then he dreamed another dream and told it to his brothers and said, "Behold, I have dreamed another dream. Behold, the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me." 10 But when he told it to his father and to his brothers, his father rebuked him and said to him, "What is this dream that you have dreamed? Shall I and your mother and your brothers indeed come to bow ourselves to the ground before you?" [11] And his brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the saying in mind.

In dramatic contrast with the expanding, powerful Esau, Jacob was dwelling in the land of the sojournings of his father… the land of Canaan.

You see Jacob was content with the promise that was given unto him as Abraham was. We are the heirs also of this wonderful promise. Genesis 15 tells us, “After these things the word of the Lord came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward.”

Do you claim this reward? Do you understand that the God that promised Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, is our gracious God this day and to the end of time. The promise that was fulfilled in the birth, life, ministry, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Unlike Esau, Jacob had no “chiefs” or kings (35:11) yet, no lands to govern, and no full tribes. He was a sojourner. Delitzsch pertinently remarked that secular, worldly greatness comes swifter than spiritual greatness (A New Commentary on Genesis, 2:238). If this is what you seek you need to reinterpret the true goals and purposes of your life.

A promised spiritual blessing demands patience and faith. Waiting while others prosper is a test of one’s faithfulness and perseverance. After all what does it matter if you gain the world and lose your life.

Abram believed ( “believed in”) the LORD and He credited… to him … righteousness. This foundational truth is repeated three times in the New Testament (Rom. 4:3; Gal. 3:6; James 2:23) to show that righteousness is reckoned in return for faith.

Romans 4:3, For what does the Scripture say? "Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness."

Galatians 3:6, Just as Abraham "believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness"?

After the heading introduces this section as the last tÔoòledÔoòtÔ, the account of Jacob,