Genesis 47:27-48:22 — What God’s Blessing Gives You

Main Idea: God’s blessing through Jesus Christ is abundant and ennobling.

IT GIVES YOU PROMISES BEYOND DEATH

• Have you ever asked Jesus to be your Savior from sin, and the Lord over your life?

IT GIVES YOU A NEW FAMILY

• What kind of family member are you to your Christian brothers and sisters & your spiritual fathers?

IT GIVES YOU A multi-GENERATIONAL HERITAGE

• Will you learn from someone older in their faith than you (living or dead) this week?

IT GIVES YOU UNIQUE IDENTITY & WORTH IN HIS WORK

• What has God enabled you to do this week that is unique to who you are and where God has placed you?

IT GIVES YOU A LASTING IMPACT

• Who will you choose to love and disciple in your life, and at Tabernacle this year?

SERMON TRANSCRIPT (AUTO-TRANSCRIBED BY APPLE PODCASTS)

Today, we are in our, I think we have two more sermons left in this series going through Genesis 42 through 50. And this series is called The End of the Beginning. The End of the Beginning.

We've seen in the Book of Genesis, the start of it all, how God created our world to work, the love that He had for creation, the one instruction that mankind had, how we disobeyed that, and how we went into sin and destruction and death and ill

treatment of one another, of ourselves, and of the world that God created. But we saw that God, even though humanity went off the rails, God still had love and a plan for them. And so He had Noah be one that would be kind of that new Adam.

He'd start over and God, through Noah and his descendants, would bring about the promised rescue. We saw that then God had Abraham and his descendants, that would be the descendant of Noah, that the Messiah would eventually come through.

And then we saw in the lives of Isaac and Jacob, that God had this messianic line, the family that Jesus would be born into, that God moved all throughout human history through these families.

Now we have seen the story of Joseph, and how Joseph was not beloved by his brothers. He was deeply loved by his father. This caused his brothers to be jealous.

They sold him into slavery. Joseph went down into Egypt, where he served as a slave, was falsely accused, imprisoned, still was faithful to the Lord and kind towards people all throughout his life, even in difficult circumstances.

And how God raised him up to be second in command in Egypt, that he oversaw food distribution during an incredible famine, and how God used Joseph and what Joseph did to be able to keep the family of Jacob alive.

And even while Joseph was in Egypt, he was able to have a family. Pharaoh gave to Joseph a wife, a daughter of one of the priests there in Egypt. And Joseph had, can anyone remember, how many kids did Joseph have?

All right, I'm hearing, I'm hearing soft twos, because you think you know it, but you're scared. Don't be scared. You are right.

It is two. Joseph had two sons. Now, in the storyline of Genesis, when there's only been two kids, has it ended up very well?

You know, Cain and Abel, did that story end well? All right. Isaac and Ishmael, did that end well?

Jacob and Esau, did that end well? No. So we're almost being set up at this portion to go, Oh no, I wonder what is going to go wrong in this sibling rivalry with the two kids of Joseph.

Now, this would be bonus points. You would probably need to be a little bit of a Bible nerd to know this. Can anyone tell me what the two sons of Joseph's names were?

One starts with an E. Ephraim would be one pronunciation I've heard in a thousand different ways. If I wanted to find out the true pronunciation, I'd probably go listen to the, what is it?

The Alexander Scorby. Is that right? Scorby, I forget if it's the King James or the New King James, the audio Bible version where he just has a beautiful voice.

James Earl Jones, you know, Darth Vader or Mufasa. He reads through the Bible where you could get that. So Ephraim is the name of one.

Does anyone remember what the other son of Joseph's name was? Manasseh. Yep.

Yep. Listen, John gets some gold stars today. Well done.

Well done. So you have Ephraim and Manasseh. And when Joseph named these boys, these names, it was forgetfulness and fruitfulness.

Because he said, God made me to forget my father's homeland and all the trouble that I encountered. And then he said, God has made me fruitful in the land that he's put me.

And so even the names Ephraim and Manasseh were a reminder of the fact that God could take what was broken and what was wrong and sinful on the part of others and turn it into something beautiful within the lives of God's people.

So today, what we're going to see is at the very end of Jacob's life, we're going to get next week to his final words that he says. But in today's passage, we're going to see Jacob blessing the sons of Joseph.

So it's his favorite son and the sons of his favorite son. And so we're going to see the blessing that Jacob gives to Joseph. When you think about the blessing throughout the family line, you remember that Jacob was a trickster.

He lied in order to get a blessing himself. But now he is freely giving it to these individuals. And so we see the trickster turned into someone who is straightforward and honest.

We'll see that especially next week. But what we're going to see today is what God's blessing gives you. None of you in this room are Ephraim and Manasseh.

I think as you look around the room, it makes sense we're in 21st century America and the greater Baltimore area. I don't know if I've met in Ephraim or Manasseh in my life. I'm sure they're out there somewhere.

People like their Bible names. And I'm sure there's maybe even some Jewish families that might name their kids that these days. But none of us are Ephraim and Manasseh.

And so the wrong question to look at when we come to here is, all right, I'm going to read this. Okay, there's going to be land that is given to Ephraim. Therefore, the Bible, this is the wrong way to say it, the Bible is written to me and for me.

So therefore, I'm going to go claim this particular plot of land in the Middle East right now. Don't do that, as you guys might have learned over time. Pretty volatile area right now.

But what we will see in this passage is that just as God blessed Ephraim and Manasseh, that God has blessing for you and me today. The blessing is something far greater than just a plot of land. It's far greater than just possessions or wealth.

And so that's what we're going to look at today. Would you pray with me? And we will dive into today's passage.

Dear Jesus, thank you for today. Lord, thank you for every person that is here. Lord, we pray for those that wish that they could be here, but we're not able to.

Lord, as we come to your word, we want to hear from you. Lord, if all we hear is our own thoughts, Lord, if all we hear is my words, it is going to be pointless. But God, if we hear from you, everything matters.

So Lord, give us a sensitivity to your Holy Spirit that we would hear what he has for us as he speaks through his word. We love you, Lord, and we pray all of this in your name. Amen.

We're going to read through the passage, see what God blessed Ephraim and Manasseh with, and then we're going to see what blessings there are for us as the children of God today.

So it says, Israel settled in the land of Egypt in the region of Goshen. They acquired property in it and became fruitful and very numerous. So this is continuing that story.

All of Joseph's family has now moved down to Egypt as a result of the famine. They are there. They are given good fertile land as a result of the fact that the Egyptians hate shepherds and they think that's dirty work.

And so because, you know, dealing with livestock and shepherding and sheep was what Joseph's family did, they were able to get really good land even in the middle of a famine.

It says, now, Jacob lived in the land of Egypt 17 years and his lifespan was 147 years. So this is one of the recurring things that's come up through Genesis.

That is, the closer you get to that creation moment, the longer the lifespans were and the further and further away you get from God's design, the shorter and shorter life becomes.

Until you even have the psalmist saying, you know, what is human life? 60 years, maybe 70 if the person's really strong.

I'm thankful that even today with the medical advances that we have, that we have many people in the room today that are older than 70 years old.

I don't know if any of you are like, yeah, I want to kick it till I'm 147, but if you do, we will be glad that the Lord has sustained you all that time.

It says, when the time approached for him to die, he called his son Joseph and said to him, if I have found favor with you, put your hand under my thigh and promise me that you will deal with me in kindness and faithfulness. Do not bury me in Egypt.

All right, quick notice. There's something really weird in the verse that we don't do today.

When you make a promise to someone today, like when you are going to have a legal agreement, what do you use in order to make that legal agreement like binding?

Yeah, you use your hand, you write with a pen on paper, or you click something on a computer. That's how you do it. That's not how they did it back then.

There was almost a kind of like, listen, I am so close to like just like gripping your leg, you know, making you fall over. It's a moment of trust and transparency. It's also just really weird because we don't do that nowadays.

We don't say, you are in physical danger as I am like grabbing your thigh, grabbing your leg. It's weird.

But here Jacob says, I remember what God told me in the, I forget if it was earlier in chapter 47 or the very, it was the beginning of 46, that God told Jacob, you're going to go down to Egypt, you're going to see Joseph, you're going to see his

kids, and then I'm going to bring you back to the land of promise. So here, Jacob, knowing what God had told him says, all right, Joseph, I've got a really, really important mission for you. Do not bury me in Egypt.

He wants to be buried where all of his ancestors have been buried. He says, when I rest with my ancestors, carry me away from Egypt and bury me in their burial place. Joseph answered, I will do what you have asked.

And Jacob said, swear to me. So Joseph swore to him. Then Israel bowed and thanks at the head of his bed.

Sometime after this, Joseph was told, your father is weaker. So he set out with his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. When Jacob was told, your son Joseph has come to you, Israel summoned his strength and sat up in bed.

Now, just in case you weren't here for our study in the life of Jacob, Israel is the name that God gave to Jacob after he wrestled with him at Peniel.

We are told in no uncertain terms that a messenger from God who spoke with the voice of God is told that, or is referred to by Jacob as, I have seen God and lived, that this person that we would see as the pre-incarnate Christ, if you will, is Jesus

before Jesus, that God the Son has always existed, even before he became human like us in the womb of the Virgin Mary, placed there by the Holy Spirit. And so Jesus, they're wrestling with Jacob all night before he knocks Jacob's hip out of socket

for the rest of his life. God says, you were Jacob the trickster, but now you are Israel. You are the one who has wrestled with God and lived. He says he is a prince with God.

That's what Israel means, prince with God. So here, this person that has been blessed by God, Israel, summons his strength and sits up in his bed.

Jacob said to Joseph, God Almighty, El Shaddai, if some of you know the old 90s song, I think it's by Amy Graham, appeared to me at Luz in the land of Canaan and blessed me. He said to me, I will make you fruitful and numerous.

I will make many nations come from you, and I will give this land as a permanent possession to your future descendants. Your two sons born to you in the land of Egypt before I came to you in Egypt are now mine.

Ephraim and Manasseh belong to me just as Ruben and Simeon do. I apologize, I should have made a greater note. You can see there in the verses, there's like the quotation marks that are there of how God blessed Jacob.

Now, Jacob is saying to Joseph, Manasseh and Ephraim, yes, they are Joseph's sons, but he basically says, I am adopting them into my family.

The blessings that come on the descendants of Jacob, Jacob says now Ephraim and Manasseh will receive that kind of blessing.

This is why when you hear about the 12 tribes of Israel, a couple of those tribes that are mentioned all throughout the rest of the Old Testament are Ephraim and Manasseh.

You will rarely ever read about the tribe of Joseph because Joseph was split into two tribes, the descendants of Ephraim and the descendants of Manasseh. He says, just as much as my first two boys, Reuben and Simeon, so are Ephraim and Manasseh.

He says, children born to you after them will be yours and will be recorded under the names of their brothers with regard to their inheritance.

He basically says, okay Joseph, if you have more sons or more daughters, those will all be, like those are your kids. But I am going to treat these two boys in a special, unique way.

He says, when I was returning from Padden to my sorrow, Rachel died along the way. Rachel is Joseph's mom. Some distance from Ephrath in the land of Canaan.

I buried her there along the way to Ephrath. And then the writer here in Genesis says, that is Bethlehem. Now, why would God highlight that for us?

Here there is this place of particular blessing and remembrance and special love that is placed on Bethlehem. There are two super important people in the Bible that are born in Bethlehem. Can you tell me number one from the Old Testament?

King David. Number two, the one that we all know we sing, Oh, little town of Bethlehem, about this one. Who's the other one that's born there?

Jesus.

So even though Jesus is from the tribe of Judah, not the tribe of Ephraim or the tribe of Manasseh, the place where there is a special, unique blessing on is the place that is given to, that is remembered from the line of Joseph, Ephraim and

Manasseh. And so the blessing that's there also blesses all the rest of Israel. The blessing on Ephraim and Manasseh spills over onto the tribe of Judah, King David, and eventually King Jesus.

Verse number eight says, When Israel saw Joseph's sons, he said, Who are these? Now, he's just been talking about Manasseh and Ephraim the entire time. Is he asking for information about who these kids are?

No. Here he is asking for identification. Basically, he's going to give them a new purpose, not in this passage, a new name, but it's a new identity, the unique blessing that he's going to give.

You can think back to when there was the question asked from Isaac to Jacob, when Isaac gave Jacob the blessing, when Jacob was disguised as Esau, remember with the hairy goat arms? And Isaac said, Who are you? And Jacob says, Ah, Esau.

And then the blessing is given. Here now in truth, in truthfulness, Jacob is going to bless Joseph's sons. Joseph said to his father, These are my sons God has given me here.

So Israel said, Bring them to me and I will bless them. Now, as I cite was poor because of old age, he could hardly see. Do you remember someone else who was just about blind when he was going to bless his son?

Shout it out, Isaac. So there's these recurring patterns all throughout the Bible. This will actually help you to memorize the truths of scripture, because scripture always talks in patterns.

And so what happened once, you can be pretty sure is either going to happen identically again or again with a little bit of a twist. So Joseph brought them to him and he kissed and embraced them.

Israel said to Joseph, I never expected to see your face again, but now God has even let me see your offspring. Then Joseph took them from his father's knees and bowed with his face to the ground.

Then Joseph took them both with his right hand, Ephraim, towards Israel's left, and with his left hand, Manasseh, toward Israel's right, and brought them to Israel. Okay, I'm going to be Jacob.

So Joseph says, my oldest, Manasseh, is going to go on Jacob's right hand. My younger, Ephraim, is going to go at dad's left hand.

The right hand is like, this is my preeminence, I'm stronger with this hand, and so there's special blessing for Manasseh as the oldest, the firstborn.

But Israel stretched out his right hand and put it on the head of Ephraim, the younger, and crossing his hands, put his left on Manasseh's head, although Manasseh was the firstborn.

Now, you guys remember, was Jacob the oldest son or was he the younger son? Okay. So even still, now all these decades later, we're still playing the firstborn, younger son game, and here's what Jacob does.

Then he blessed Joseph and said, The God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has been my shepherd all my life to this day, the angel who has redeemed me from all harm.

May he bless these boys, and may they be called by my name, and the names of my fathers Abraham and Isaac, and may they grow to be numerous within the land. I just have to stop you guys real quick.

Verse 15, I love, it's so picturesque, it's so beautiful. The God of previous generations is the God of my generation, and God is the one who has been the shepherd all of Jacob's life.

You can remember when Jacob had to, well, when he grew up in his father's house, Esau was the hunter, Jacob was the shepherd. When he went to his uncle Laban's farm, he was shepherding, and he had to deal with the sheep and with the goats.

When he came to Egypt, he was one who was a shepherd. If you will, he was the ruler of the shepherds. And he says, I know what it's like to guide people that sometimes do what's wrong.

They say what's wrong. The sheep wander away. It's the one that leaves the 99.

And he says, God has been my shepherd all my life to this day. Are you thankful that you have a faithful shepherd? That in the times where you were disobedient and you were far from him, he loved you and cared about you?

I just think that it's such a beautiful verse. Verse number 17, when Joseph saw that his father had placed his right hand on Ephraim's head, he thought it was a mistake and took his father's hand to move it from Ephraim's head to Manasseh's.

Joseph said to his father, not that way, 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 tribe and he too will be great. Nevertheless, his younger brother will be greater than he, and his offspring will become a populous nation.

So he blessed them that day, putting Ephraim before Manasseh when he said, the nation Israel will invoke blessings by you saying, may God make you like Ephraim and Manasseh.

Israel said to Joseph, look, I'm about to die, but God will be with you and will bring you back to the land of your fathers.

Over and above what I'm giving your brothers, I'm giving you the one mountain slope that I took from the Amorites with my sword and my bow.

That part's kind of fun because that particular account isn't mentioned in Genesis itself, and so it's almost like, wait a second, what's happening?

I didn't hear this story, and so you have to read the rest of scripture to be able to reflect back on that. But what I want us to see from this passage today is that God's blessing through Jesus Christ is abundant and ennobling.

That what God is giving you is over and above what you and I need, and God's blessing ennobles us. It says that there is a big purpose and importance in what God has given for you and for me to do. Let's look briefly at this.

What God's blessing gives us. It gives us promises beyond death. You can think even as Jacob is thinking about God's blessing, God had promised him in the chapter previous that he would be buried by Joseph in the land of Canaan.

And I'm thankful that God's promises to us are not just of where you will be buried, though burial plots are expensive these days, and so that could be nice. But God says there is hope for you and hope for me beyond death.

This was shown to us by Jesus Christ. I love one way that you can share the gospel with others.

This is what we're thinking about with hope beyond death is because of Jesus Christ and what he did for us on the cross, and what he proved in his resurrection is that every person that has faith in Jesus Christ, we will not forever be in the grave,

but instead we will experience new life and resurrection. One way to tell that story is with what's called the Three Circles. So I'm going to walk you guys through this. This is super, super simple.

I've actually done this a little bit with even our teen class a few months ago. But the Three Circles are this first, God's design. God made everything and he made it very good.

That's the story that we read in Genesis 1 and 2. God's design was for our flourishing, that each one of us would have importance in God's sight, importance to others around us, and importance in the world that God gave us.

However, sin entered into the world by our choice, not by God's choice. And so as we chose to rebel against God's design, it resulted in brokenness. You can think to your relationships and the people that you are always fighting with.

You can think about the fears and frustrations and addictions and harms that you have within your own life or that you have struggled with in the past.

As we look at the news, as we look at all the medications that we have to take in the world, as we see the state of our world, it is a state of brokenness. And that's because we are not in God's design.

Though God's design isn't completely gone, we experience brokenness. But that is why we have the gospel. The gospel is good news.

Can everyone say good news? The good news is that Jesus, recognizing our brokenness, our sin, and the fact that we were headed towards sin and death in hell, that He did not leave us in that state.

Instead, 2,000 years ago, He came down, became human, became one of us, entered into the brokenness, and He lived a perfect sinless life, living the life that we all should have lived.

He died the death that all of us deserved on the cross, taking all of the punishment for our sin on Himself.

He was buried, and then 3 days later, He rose again from the dead, and He calls on everyone to respond to the Gospel with repentance and belief. Repentance is saying, I was wrong in the way that I have lived in my life.

I've been wrong in the way that I've treated others. I've been wrong in the words that I've said, and I recognize I need to go God's way, not my way anymore. Jesus is going to be King.

Jesus is going to call the shots in my life now. I'm not calling the shots anymore. That's repentance.

And then belief is saying, Jesus, I believe that what you paid on the cross for me is sufficient. If I'm going to be right with God, it is only in believing what Jesus did, not believing in what I'm doing. And it's believing that Jesus truly did.

Come, live a perfect, sinless life, died in my place, and rose again in his King of Kings and Lord of Lords. As we repent and we believe the gospel, then we start going back to God's design that we recover and pursue.

We recognize who we were made to be in the image of God. Can I ask you today, have you ever asked Jesus to be your Savior from sin and the Lord over your life?

If that's not something that you have ever done in your life, you've never asked the question, where am I headed? Am I right with God? Do I have a relationship with Jesus?

If you have never asked that question, I would love to talk with you today or this week about that. But not only does God's blessing give us promises beyond death, God's blessing gives us a new family.

You can think here about Ephraim and Manasseh being adopted, not just as grandsons of Jacob, but as sons of Jacob with unique blessing.

When God gives us a new family, He has given us brothers and sisters who have been where we have been, and who have experienced even things we haven't experienced.

He gives us spiritual fathers who guide us in the right direction in our spiritual walk, and He gives us new family members all the time as our church family and other church families see God bring to fruition the gospel seeds that we plant.

As you look around this room, these are not just other people in your local community. These are your Christian brothers and sisters. The challenge then is to actually be a part of that new family.

All of us would recognize we don't want families that are absentee or hateful. No one wants the family that they go, oh, dad was never around, mom was never around. And once we graduated high school, I never saw my siblings again.

No one wants that kind of relationship with their family. And yet so often, we have that relationship within the family of God as brothers and sisters.

We want nothing to do with each other other than the one hour a week where maybe we're all gathered here. Can I encourage you, spend time with your brothers and sisters. There are times where we can do that in church and spend time together.

That's wonderful. But I will also want to encourage you to spend time with other believers in church outside of these four walls. Go share a meal together, go to Monster Mini Golf together like we did last month or two months ago.

Go spend some time wherever works for you. Go out boating, go gun shooting, be careful of your finger if you're cleaning your gun. But we ought to love one another and spend time with each other.

I also want to encourage you to serve together with other people in the body. Don't just come and sit and see other people serve you. Be a part of serving others.

Maybe that might be in greeting other people. Maybe you might be someone that would be good as an usher. Maybe you love kids and you would want to participate in the Tabernacle Kids Class as either a teacher or a helper or a nursery worker.

Maybe you have musical skill and you might be able to not forget your capo when you're starting off the first song. Maybe God might have you to help out in music. Maybe you might be a great slide clicker and God might have you to do that.

There are so, so, so many ways to serve the local body of believers. I'm thankful for all of the guys and gals that we have that regularly help to make sure that like this roof over our heads isn't leaking when it rains.

That they are fixing things constantly in ways that I could never do.

Whether you are hands on, if you're creative, if you're personable, if you're more reserved, there are places for you to serve with other people in the body and ways for you to serve the body at large. I want to encourage you to do that.

And then love as the family of God. Give to one another as you hear of needs that other people in the body have. Pray for one another.

Encourage them. Warn them when you see them going into bad circumstances or if they're making a bad choice. Love them like a family would.

Can I ask you what kind of family member are you to your Christian brothers and sisters and your spiritual fathers?

We talked about that a little bit today, even in our Ten Commandments Bible study downstairs with 1st Timothy 5, if you want to do some further reading on that. I also love that God's blessing gives us a multi-generational heritage.

As Jacob talked about, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and now Joseph and Ephraim and Manasseh, it's multi-generational. As Christians, we are not the first generation of believers in God. We're simply the newest.

Whether you've been following Jesus for three months or for 75 years, you are a baby Christian in the thousands of years of God followers.

This means that we are given the incredible privilege to hear from 2,000 years of Christian pastors, teachers, missionaries, believers, martyrs, and thousands of years of Jewish believers prior to that.

Some people get scared of learning from believers that are a bit different than them. But I'd encourage you that people can be brothers or sisters without being identical twins.

You can learn from Methodist John Wesley, Anglican John Stott, Presbyterian RC. Sproul, Early Church Father John Chrysostom, Lutheran Chad Bird, Pentecostal Gordon Fee, or Baptist Charles Spurgeon.

Even simply among our fellow Southern Baptists, we can be grateful for the legacies of men like Adrian Rogers and WA.

Criswell, who are fantastic preachers, Al Moller, who helped with the conservative resurgence that we were able to see our seminaries return to Bible-believing places, and great pastors of today like HB. Charles Jr.

These are all gifts from the Lord to their churches and to the rest of the body of Christ. Learn from others, love them, and welcome the new ways that they will teach you to study, worship, obey, and evangelize.

Can I ask you, will you learn from someone older in their faith than you, living or dead, this week? You don't just have to if you're going to learn from someone from a previous generation. You don't just have to talk to the dead people.

Don't talk to the dead people. You can read, you can listen. Don't talk to the dead people.

Help us. You can also talk to those who are older in their faith even in this room. I also love that God's blessing gives us unique identity and worth in His work.

God had a specific blessing for Ephraim and a specific blessing for Manasseh. God's larger blessing on Ephraim didn't take anything away from Manasseh's blessing.

Sometimes as people or as churches, we can begrudge God's greater blessings on the other person, the other ministry, the other pastor or church. But I want you to know that no one else's blessings take anything from you that God has for you.

He has a specific life and specific blessings for you. And your job and my job is to be grateful for what He has given us and to use it to the fullest. I love just a couple of examples of this that I've seen.

I've got some friends over at First Baptist Church of Berlin, over on the Eastern Shore, and Canvas Church. Both of these churches are reaching people through compassion ministries, but they are very different from one another.

First Baptist Berlin, they're able to help out with kids that have special needs in just a unique, incredible way through the ministry of their pastor and their pastor's wife.

And that's the specific area of ministry that they're able to do really, really well in. Canvas Church is able to reach those that are experiencing homelessness and addiction in an incredible way unlike anything that I've ever seen before in my life.

First Baptist Berlin doesn't have that same ministry that Canvas does. And Canvas doesn't have the same ministries towards those with special needs that First Baptist Berlin does.

But God isn't blessing one and the other isn't experiencing God's blessing. God is blessing both, but it's unique. And the blessing of one and the purpose of one isn't the blessing or purpose of another.

I love in our area that we have larger ministries like Rosedale Baptist, Mountain Christian or Bethlehem Church.

And I'm grateful for the ways that they can minister in incredibly specific ways to those navigating special needs, child care, and specialty small groups.

But I'm also thankful for Tabernacle, and that at least in this season, he has made this place small enough to where I know each of you by name, and that I can pray for you when I'm up at like 4 or 45 a.m. because of my daughter.

God has made that, that's the reality that we have right now. I want to encourage you, because of the number of people that we have right now, some of you that maybe have been here for a while, you need to get to know some more names.

You need to get to know some people in this room that you haven't gotten to know yet. I promise you, you will be richer and better for it. Not financially richer, by the way.

Don't go around asking people for money. Tabernacle is able to personally invest in some people in a way that is intimate, it's close, it's friendship, in a way that some larger ministries can't.

This doesn't mean that the bigger churches are better than us because they can have larger events or more specialty things. And it doesn't mean that we're better because we're close-knit or like a family.

God had a plan for Ephraim and a plan for Manasseh, both blessed, both receiving what God had for them. They were just different plans.

Can I ask you today, what has God enabled you to do this week that is unique to who you are and where God has placed you? You have a family that no one else has. I'm gonna ignore all the beans over here.

You guys do have the same family. And Wasmers, you guys have the same family, but that's not what I'm talking about.

Each of you have unique opportunities, unique people that you can reach, that you can talk to, that you can show God's love to, that no one else can. Then lastly, what God's blessing gives us is it gives us a lasting impact.

Here, the blessing that's given to these boys is in the future, when someone wants to say, I want God to just shower blessings on you, he says, God make you like Ephraim and Manasseh.

There is a lasting impact and remembrance of how God blessed these two. The most important impacts you can leave on people are your love and the gifting of your walk with the Lord to the next generation of disciples.

A story I know Pastor Ron has told many times is the story of Edward Kimball. In 1854, Kimball was a Sunday school teacher in Detroit.

And one day, he went to visit a 17-year-old boy who was in his Sunday school class who had little interest in God or religion. During his visit with this young man at his job in a shoe shop, he led the boy into a relationship with Christ.

That young man, that this Sunday school teacher had a conversation with a 17-year-old boy, the young man that he led to the Lord was DL.

Moody, who went on to become one of the greatest evangelists in the world, sharing the gospel with a hundred million people as well as founding Moody Bible Institute and the Moody Church in Chicago, which trained pastors for ministers even to this

day. Through his ministry, Moody was responsible for a London pastor named FB. Meyer coming to the faith. Meyer was responsible for J.

Wilbur Chapman coming to faith, and Chapman influenced Billy Sunday, another prominent evangelist of the 20th century.

Billy Sunday was integral in a man named Mordecai Hamm coming to faith, and Mordecai Hamm was responsible for leading a man named Billy Graham to Christ.

One Sunday school teacher talking to one 17-year-old, and 150 years later, hundreds of millions of people have heard the gospel. You have no idea what your impact can be on someone else as you love others and as you share the gospel with them.

Can I ask you, who will you choose to love and be a disciple in your life and at Tabernacle this year?

Who will be able to say in five or ten years, I'm so thankful that Mary or Larry or Gary or Sherry or Jerry took some time to invest in me, to tell me about how God made a difference in their life, and they showed me what it looked like to follow

Jesus. We expect the big bombastic things. We expect, oh, Billy Graham leading a crusade. That is what God's blessing looks like.

But God's blessing can look like one Sunday school teacher talking to one kid. How could God use you to make a lasting impact today? God's blessing to us is wonderful.

It is something that gives us hope beyond the grave. It is something that is personally ennobling, that there's a mission for you, that there is not for anyone else. There's a way that God wants you to make a lasting impact.

But all of this only comes as we know the Lord and walk with him. Can I ask you today, are you walking in God's blessing on your life? My parents would often tell me the phrase, obedience brings blessing.

Disobedience brings conflict. As we walk in the blessing of the Lord, as we say, God, you have called me to walk in the Spirit. So I'm going to walk in the Spirit.

God's blessing is there. God, you have told me to go into all the world and share the gospel with every creature. God, am I doing that?

As I do it, God's blessing is there. Are you walking in the blessing of God on your life today? If not, will you choose?

This week, I'm going to walk with God. I'm going to experience His blessing because it is all from His graciousness given to me through Jesus Christ alone.