Any dream will do?

A multi-coloured robe. Some strange dreams. Jealous brethren. A young man sold into slavery. Genesis 37 - what is it all about?

The key is to remember that Genesis 37-47 (at least) is all part of the same narrative. Genesis 45.5-8 tells us the answer. God in his sovereignty is sending Joseph to Egypt for the purpose of preserving a remnant for the people of Israel. God has made Joseph a mighty ruler in doing this. So really, this is showing us the “shape” of God’s salvation which he brings about through his Christ, isn’t it?

We have a person who starts off with much honour (v. 3). The Son had glory with the Father from before the foundation of the world (John 17.5). Joseph is marked out by special revelation from God to be a great ruler, one to whom Jacob and his brothers will bow down (vv.5-11). Jesus was marked out in Gabriel’s visit to Mary to reign over the house of Jacob, only it will be forever (Luke 1.33). Joseph’s brothers conspire to kill him (vv. 12-20). The Jews plotted to kill Jesus (John 11.53). Joseph is humiliated and becomes a slave. Jesus is humiliated and takes on the nature of a slave (Matthew 27.27-31 - he is even stripped of a robe; Philippians 2.7). Doesn’t this narrative now start to teach us about God’s ultimate salvation in Christ? It is a salvation through humiliation and weakness, with the Saviour’s own people rejecting him and being the agents of his humiliation.

“God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are.” - 1 Corinthians 1.28

And the implications? Well isn’t this going to be the lot of we who are in Christ, his people? We will ultimately reign in him (Revelation 2.26) but the way to exaltation is through humiliation. We will be hated and despised. We will be humiliated. We may even be put to death. We can certainly expect “schemes of man”. This is the nature of the Christian life.

“We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.” - 2 Corinthians 4.8-10

Jacob’s Ladder

The antitype of Jacob’s ladder in Genesis 28.10-22 is probably well-known to most. In John 1.51, Jesus declares to Nathanael:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”

Jacob saw a ladder bridging heaven and earth, upon which angels were ascending and descending, with the Yahweh at the top declaring his covenant promises to Jacob. Jesus is the one who truly bridges heaven and earth, making atonement for sins by his death on the cross and thus enabling access to heaven and God.

But what does Jesus call Nathanael? “An Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit” (v. 47). What does “Jacob” mean? “He deceives“. The links between Genesis 28 and the opening chapters of John’s gospel go further. In response to the vision, Jacob declares that the place is “none other than the house of God” (v. 17). Only a short while after the encounter between Jesus and Nathanael, Jesus identifies himself as the true temple (v. 19-21) i.e. the true house of God, the place where God dwells and meets with his people.

Would it be going too far to interpret this encounter in John’s gospel as teaching us that in Jesus, the one who make access possible to heaven from earth, the one in whom the fullness of deity dwells and who is the meeting place between God and man, God is calling a new Jacob (with Nathanael as the representative disciple who believes in Jesus), the people to whom God is making his covenant promises of salvation, the people who are the fulfilment of what Israel (Jacob’s descendants) in the Old Testament?

Chiasm!

Genesis 26.34-28.9

A Esau marries Hittites (26.34-5)
B Isaac sends Esau and promises blessing (27.1-4)
C Rebekah overhears Isaac and Esau and tells Jacob how to get the blessing (27.5-17)
D Isaac blesses Jacob (27.18-29)
E Esau asks for Isaac’s blessing (27.30-31)
F Isaac declares that Jacob has been blessed (27.32-33)
G Esau asks for Isaac’s blessing (27.34)
H Isaac says that Jacob has come deceitfully and taken away the blessing (27.35)
G’ Esau asks for Isaac’s blessing (27.36)
F’ Isaac declares how Jacob has been blessed (27.37)
E’ Esau asks for Isaac’s blessing (27.3
D’ Isaac blesses Esau (27.39-40)
C’ Rebekah hears of Esau’s hatred and tells Jacob how to save his life (27.41-46)
B’ Isaac sends Jacob and blesses him (28.1-5)
A’ Esau marries an Ishmaelite (28.6-9)

Genesis 27.35 would therefore seem to be the key verse, with the narrator (and thus God) making the point that it is the deceiver who inherits the blessing. Salvation is entirely apart from merit, or the will of man. God’s electing purposes (cf. Genesis 25.23) prevail.

That’s a start, anyway, but clearly there’s much more in the text than that: God sovereignly overruling sinful human behaviour to achieve his purposes, for instance. Considering the details of the blessing in light of redemptive history, the promises of the dew of heaven, the fatness of the earth and plenty of grain and wine, although immediately fulfilled in Canaan, ultimately look forward to the restored creation in the new heavens and the new earth. Peoples and nations serving and bowing down before Jacob sees its climax in the nations coming to Christ, who is his descendant. I’ve already commented on Jacob’s lordship over his brothers in a previous post. And do we not see in Genesis 28.6-9 a typical human response when we learn that we’re outside of God’s blessing? We try and make amends ourselves to somehow merit his favour. But this clearly doesn’t work: it all rests on God’s election and promise (Genesis 28.13).

Jacob and Esau

Two children breaking and bruising each other (as the Hebrew signifies) in their mother’s womb. One child emerging from the womb clutching to the heel of his brother. Well might we ask, with Rebekah in Genesis 25.22, “Why is this happening?”

Clearly, this passage teaches us about election. God chooses Jacob before the children have been born, declaring that “the older shall serve the younger” (v. 23), so that salvation is all of grace and nothing of works or merit (see also Romans 9.11-13). Jacob doesn’t deserve this privilege: Esau is the firstborn and Jacob himself is a cheater (not a cheetah).

But I wonder if there is more to it than that, from the perspective of redemptive history. According to Yahweh, two nations are in Rebekah’s womb and two peoples from within her shall be divided (v. 23). We can see in the struggling of the two unborn children within her womb the shape of the conflict that will subsequently exist throughout the ages between God’s nation - his elect, his kingdom, the church - and the kingdom of the world, a conflict which will ultimately result in God’s people triumphing over the world: “The one shall be stronger than the other, // the older shall serve the younger.” This conflict and triumph is writ large in the book of Obadiah (see particularly vv. 18ff) and will finally be fulfilled when the Lord Jesus Christ - the descendant of Jacob who was broken, bruised and crushed on the cross but is now risen, ascended and exalted - returns in judgement and himself breaks the nations with a rod of iron and dashes them in pieces like a potter’s vessel (Psalm 2.9), as will we, his people, in him (Rev. 2.26-27).

Lot

What is Genesis 18.16-19.29 all about? Is Abraham giving us a model for intercessory prayer? Is this a warning about living too closely with the world? Is it an exhortation to flee from ungodliness. There must be some merit in those ideas. Often Abraham is the typical believer, who is in covenant with God, heir of the promises, doubting, but finding that God is faithful to his word. We are very quick to try and identify ourselves in the Bible, though, and if we take Luke 24.27 seriously, we should be first of all seeking to learn about the Lord Jesus. I wonder if Abraham is here typifying Christ with the main thrust actually being this: in response to the intercession of his chosen one, God will deliver his people when he judges the ungodly.

I think the key in the narrator’s comment in Genesis 19:29:

“So it was that, when God destroyed the cities of the valley, God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow when he overthrew the cities in which Lot had lived.” (ESV)

There’s another comment from the narrator a little earlier in the story, which goes to show this is not so much about the problems of being friends with the world and how we should respond (i.e. flee) but about the mercy of God:

“But he lingered. So the men seized him and his wife and his two daughters by the hand, the Lord being merciful to him, and they brought him out and set him outside the city.” (Genesis 19.16, ESV)

Is not this the shape of things in the gospel? We have an Intercessor, who is at the Father’s right hand, ever pleading his sacrifice for his people, saying, “Spare them, they are righteous. I have paid for their sin and my righteousness has been counted to them.”

“We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins.” (1 John 2.1-2, ESV)

As Christians looking back through the lenses of the death, resurrection and ascension of the Lord Jesus, then, this narrative gives us confidence that if we’re truly one of God’s people, that is, if we’ve repented and believed the gospel, when God judges this sinful world, we can be absolutely certain that we will be vindicated in the judgment. Even if we do “linger”, if we fall short from time to time, we don’t forfeit our salvation. What an assuring passage this is!

This seems to be consonant with the way the New Testament writers view the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah as an example of the Final Judgement of the world (Luke 17.28-30, 2 Peter 2.6-9). Believers inhabit a world that will be judged. This inhabitation is through no fault of our own. We can’t do anything about it, unless we fly off in a rocket and start a religious community on the Moon! (What would that be called, I wonder? The Lunatic Order?) Likewise, Sodom was just where Lot happened to live. The writer of Genesis doesn’t really see living there as a stain on Lot’s character, and the New Testament tells us that he was a righteous man. Rather than simply being a lesson in morality, teaching us the perils of too close an association with the world, it appears that the emphasis is really on God’s faithfulness to those who live in the world and who are being saved from it.

Once we have this foundation in place, we are then in a position to learn all sorts of things from this passage that the believer will experience living in a world heading for judgment (and what a similar world Genesis 19 is to the gospel is to the present age - see Genesis 19.5 cf. Romans 1.24-27) - for example, the hatred and accusations of those whose sin has been exposed (Genesis 19.9), and the lack of response to the preaching of the gospel, even among one’s own family members (Genesis 19.14). There is, of course, the sobering lesson of the one who looks as though they are safe, but who seeks to preserve their life and thus perishes (Genesis 19.26 cf. Luke 17.32-33).

Hopefully these ideas would yield an Old Testament sermon that is a Christocentric message, but which nonetheless preserves the details of the narrative and would thus be quite exciting, rather than one that races through five chapters at once and extracts doctrinal points, which not only makes for quite dull listening, but can also be very, very confusing.