SHAPING YOUR LEGACY—Genesis 49
Have you thought about what kind of legacy you will leave for your descendants? I’m not talking about wealth or property, but about the impact we have on the lives of others.
We have all inherited a legacy. (Note to preacher: Personalize this!) I am a cheap Dutchman. (I think of it as knowing value.) I am stubborn, in good ways and bad. I enjoy work, partly because my parents taught me how to work, and some of my best memories of my dad are of working alongside him. I deal with life like my mother did, in some ways. I have inherited a legacy from my parents.
We also pass on a legacy to others in our family, our church family, and other people in our lives.
I once served a country church, which had an attractive brick building. The building was laid out like a T, with a bell tower in an inside corner of the T. From the beginning, the bell tower leaked. The roofers had been called every few years to stop the leak, with no success. They had rebuilt the roof to channel the water around the bell tower, but water still got in whenever it rained.
The building committee had been advised that a bell tower attached to a brick church would leak, and they had decided not to build it. A church member named Henry did not agree, however, and Henry was the wealthiest and most powerful man in the church. Henry usually got what he wanted, and when he threatened not to contribute anything toward the building project, the bell tower was built.
After several decades, the church board finally decided to tear down the bell tower. The tower was built around four pillars of reinforced concrete, and it took days of work with a jackhammer to bring it down. Part of Henry’s legacy had come down.
Unfortunately, another part of Henry’s legacy remained. Henry had three daughters, and they were not on speaking terms. It seemed that they inherited Henry’s obstinacy. And where did Henry’s obstinacy come from? Well, some people from the church took a trip to Germany, where they met some of Henry’s relatives. It seemed that they were the same way! It was a family legacy.
We all inherit a family legacy, and we will all leave a legacy behind. The question is whether the legacy we inherit will control us, and whether we can control the legacy we leave to others.
Jacob, also known as Israel, had taken his family to Egypt, to escape a famine in Canaan. In the providence of God, his son Joseph had gone ahead, to save many from starvation. Jacob was old when he went into Egypt, and now, he is near death. He gathers his sons to speak to them one last time, and to bless them.
Read Genesis 49:1-7.
WE BUILD OUR LEGACY BY OUR CHOICES.
Jacob reminded Reuben, his firstborn, of a defining moral failure. Reuben had violated his stepmother, in an attempt to take control of the family from his father. He lost the place of honor and power as the firstborn son, and the impact of that mistake would haunt him and his family for many generations.
Jacob reminded Simeon and Levi of how violent they were. Genesis 34 tells how their sister Dinah was raped by a man named Shechem. To make peace, Jacob’s sons tricked the men of the entire city where he lived to submit to circumcision. While they were incapacitated in their recovery, Simeon and Levi killed them all. The violence was out of proportion to the crime. Jacob looked into the future, and he prophesied that the descendants of those two men would be dispersed when the Israelites settled in Canaan.
Yet the prophecy about Levi demonstrates how choices can shape history. In Exodus, when the people built an idolatrous golden calf, the descendants of Levi took up their swords to protect God’s honor. Because of that, God entrusted the care of the tabernacle and offerings to them. When the time came to assign territories in Canaan, the Levites were scattered in 48 cities—not as punishment, but to represent God among the various tribes. The curse of being scattered was turned to good!
BY THE GRACE OF GOD, WE ARE NOT CONTROLLED BY OUR LEGACY.
Read Genesis 49:8-12.
Like Simeon, Judah was haunted by shameful moral failure. Genesis 38 tells the story of how Judah, living among the Canaanites, had sex with a cult prostitute, who turned out to be his widowed daughter-in-law. The sordid tale led to pregnancy and twin sons, Perez and Zerah.
Judah lived with his guilt, but he stepped up to take responsibility in the family. He was the one who represented the family when they went to Egypt to meet with Joseph, and he was the one who took responsibility for the safety of his half-brother, Benjamin.
Judah was able to turn around his legacy! Read Genesis 49:8.
Yet it was not just the actions of Judah that changed his legacy; God, in his providence, had plans for Judah’s descendants.
Read Genesis 49:10. What is that about?
By the providence of God, Judah became the ancestor of King David. By the providence of God, David was the ancestor of Jesus, the eternal king. The providence of God turned the biggest failure of Judah’s life into a legacy of hope, for in the Matthew’s family tree of Joseph, Jesus’ stepfather, we find the unexpected inclusion of a woman: “Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar.” Judah’s biggest mistake became a way for God to demonstrate his gracious providence.
God already had a plan to transform the legacy of Judah, and it would lead to a legacy beyond what Jacob could see. Jesus would be the King over all, forever. Yet Jesus would become King through a way that no one could have imagined. The words that Jacob said in verses 11 and 12 must have seems strange, even cryptic, to his sons and their descendants: Read Genesis 49:11-12.
The fulfillment would come about 1900 years later, when Jesus would ride a donkey into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. Later in the week, he would drink the wine of the Passover, saying, “This is my blood, shed for you.” He would be stripped of his garments, and whipped until the blood flowed, and then crucified. Yet on the third day, he would see the light of life, and ascend into heaven, to take up the scepter of the King. All nations will bow before him, as Jacob prophesied on that day!
MUST THE LEGACY OF OUR FAMILY CONTROL US?
Are we doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past? Does God allow us, somehow, to change the trajectory of our lives, so that our descendants can rise above our weaknesses and failures?
Thankfully, it is not all up to us! God provides a new legacy for us.
There was an old proverb in Israel, “The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” Perhaps we have experienced that: The character flaws and mistakes of our parents have an impact on us. We may be like our parents, in ways that we wish we were not. For some of us, the legacy spans generations: poverty, poor life-skills, low expectations, or lack of opportunity. “The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”
More than 1000 years after Jacob’s prophecies for his sons, Jeremiah turned that proverb around: “The days are coming…when people will no longer say, the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” How could that be true? Jeremiah looked ahead to the New Testament:
Read Jeremiah 31:31-34.
The new covenant Jeremiah was talking about was the covenant revealed in Jesus Christ. Through Jesus, our sins are forgiven, and they do not control our destiny. God puts his Spirit in us, so that we can know him, and we are motivated to obey him. We have a new relationship with God, through Jesus Christ. In fact, we are children of God!
John 1:12-13 “Yet to all who did receive [Jesus], to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.”
What does that mean for us?
The apostle Paul says. 2 Corinthians 5:16-17 “So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view….if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”
We are not controlled simply by the legacy of our natural birth. We are born anew, into the legacy of Jesus, the Son of God. We can rise above the legacy of the past, and we can leave a new legacy for the future.
When I think about Herman and the bell tower, it is almost like a parable for me. The irony was that the largest contributions toward removal of the bell tower were from Henry’s descendants! That is symbolic for me, for I knew Henry’s grandsons as gracious, generous men of God. They rose above the legacy of their natural family, to embrace the legacy of the Son of God, Jesus Christ. Even better, they are passing on that legacy to their descendants.
2 Corinthians 5:16-17 “So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view….if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”
