Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - What Defines Your Life? | Torah | Genesis 48

Episode Date: April 26, 2022

Is your success a result of talent, risk-taking or God? Could it be all three? What is your faith a result of? Tanya discusses God's role in both our faith and success in today's episode on Genesis 48. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Genesis 48 Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work. I'm Tanya Wilmeth. Right now, we're going through the first book of the Bible, Genesis. We had the chance to go on a trip over spring break, and it was one of those really good ones where you get to sit down and actually connect with people. And I was chatting with a good friend who just celebrated her 18th year as a business owner. 18 might not seem significant, but it corresponds with the timing of having her high school

senior because she left her corporate job when he was born to put her eggs in a different basket and start her own company. Now from my perspective, her business is wildly successful. She has a great reputation. She has top-notch clients. She does some really cool things in our community. But to hear her tell the story, she had no idea it would even work, that people would pay her, that she would need to hire more employees, that she would need to grow into not one, but two bigger office spaces. I said, how did you know you had something people wanted? And she said, I didn't.

It was just really neat to hear how everything had grown and developed, and I told her how cool I thought she was. Now I think she's even cooler because she said, I'm not really sure how it all happened. It was definitely God. Okay, so that might make you uncomfortable. Yes, sometimes you will misuse that and put everything on God and shirk all personal responsibility.

or sometimes people say that in false humility. But this wasn't where this conversation was going. This was basically someone saying, yes, I worked really hard and took on some risk. But really, this was luck or chance or to be more specific, it was God. What about you? Do you look at where you are today and attribute it to your resilience or your work ethic or your talent? Or do you attribute it to God? And what about your spiritual life?

Do you attribute your faith and your relationship with God to the hard work you put into it? Or do you see it as something given to you by God? We're going to look at those questions as we take a deep dive into Genesis 48, where Jacob's passing down the blessing to Joseph's two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh. And we're going to talk more about all that's going on, but here's the summary on how it went down from verse 14. And Israel, that's the new name for Jacob, stretched at his right hand and laid it on the head of Ephraim.

from, who was the younger, and his left hand on the head of Manasseh, crossing his hands, for Manassah was firstborn. And he blessed Joseph and said, the God before whom my father's Abraham and Isaac walked, the God, who has been my shepherd all my lifelong to this day, the angel, who has redeemed me from all evil, bless the boys. And in them, let my name be carried on, in the name of my father's Abraham and Isaac, and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth. There were a couple of controversial things happening with this blessing. First, Jacob was elevating his grandsons to the position of his own sons. Joseph's two oldest sons were essentially adopted by Jacob through this ceremony to be

equal with Joseph's brothers. Why would he do this? Well, from a human perspective, remember how much Jacob loved Rachel and how he worked 14 years to marry her. And Rachel had two sons, Joseph and Benjamin. And then she died while they were traveling, probably before her childbearing days were even over. Just before he passed down this blessing, Jacob was tearfully recalling her and how much he loved her. Scholars think Joseph resembled his mother, who was apparently really beautiful. And Joseph was probably something special to look at as well. Jacob had a special affection for his son. The other controversial part of this blessing is that

even though Joseph situated his sons in front of his father, said that Manasseh, the oldest was at the right hand, and Ephraim, the youngest was at the left. Jacob crossed his hands and placed his right hand on Ephraim and blessed the youngest over the oldest. Now, Joseph regained his speech after the blessing was over and said to his father, not this way, since 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 also shall become a people, and he also shall be great. Nevertheless, his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his offspring shall become a multitude of nations. Joseph was a son to be proud of, no doubt. But Ephraim and Manasta had no special talents or traits we know

to make them heirs of this blessing, other than being born into this family. There are times when it's easy to see the advantages of bloodlines or birth order or family ties or even genetics. I had a friend in college whose family was in the oil industry, and when a limo came to pick us up to take us to the airport for a trip back to her house, I was like, whoa, this is a different world. But hey, I have advantages too.

There was a picture circling around on Twitter a few weeks ago, and it said, if you can identify this, then you have the right to wear a car heart. It was a post hole digger. Basically, this thing with two handles that you use if you're putting in fence and you don't have to implement on your tractor to dig the hole for you. I can totally identify that picture, but I absolutely do not want the privilege of wearing a car heart, because now I don't have to. Anyway, you get my point.

There are parts of us, our families, our genetics, our pasts that offer advantages and disadvantages. For Joseph's sons, it was the best and worst of both. Let me explain. See, for Joseph to bring his sons out of Egypt and back to his dying father to receive this blessing, Joseph was deliberately choosing to identify them with a shepherd clan. instead of their Egyptian heritage. They had an Egyptian mother. They had a father in a high position. They were in a place to receive benefits that came with being an Egyptian. But when Joseph traveled back with them and placed them in front of his father for this blessing, Joseph knew they would have to give

that a way to identify fully with their father's family, this shepherding clan, and to identify ultimately with God's blessing to make them into a great nation. Joseph banked the future of his sons on something that probably didn't make sense to the culture. I wonder if it was time in the pit where his brothers cast him, if it was time in prison while he was in Egypt, while it was time rationing out food during a famine. What trial solidified Joseph's confidence in God's promises above all else. Now where Joseph had hope and confidence in God's promise, Jacob's vision for the future was even more clear.

Even though his eyesight was failing, he saw with eyes of faith, his people returning to Canaan in the land of his fathers. He put all his eggs, and even his own bones, in that basket. Jacob recalled and repeated the promises God had given him in Genesis 28 and 35, and he had a lot of power in the way he handed down this blessing. But he saw himself only a lot of the promises. is the messenger. This was not a blessing that originated with him, but of the Lord.

In Hebrews chapter 11, the one we affectionately call the Hall of Faith, 1st 21 says, By faith, Jacob, when dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, bowing in worship over the head of his staff. The Bible sums up the significance of Jacob's life in that verse. The sum of his life was his belief in God's word and a willingness to base his future and the future of his descendants upon that word. What is the sum of your life banking on? Are you defined by a self-driven path of upward mobility or the promises of the kingdom of God? Isaiah 51 verses 1 through 2 say, listen to me, you who pursue righteousness, you who seek the Lord, look to the rock from which you were hewn and to the quarry from which you were dug.

Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you, for he was but one when I called him that I might bless and multiply him. You are not more special than Abraham, who was just one when God called him and multiplied him. Nor are you less special than Abraham, who was cut from the rock of the Lord. Your beginnings are flawed and humbled. Yet you are exalted with your risen Lord. You are flawed and blessed. God's grace is not confined by anything, birth order, privilege, position, or even personal history. God humbles human elevation and human wisdom and human intention and exalts the unlikely, and this includes us. John 1, 11 through 13, he, being Jesus, came to his own and his people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name,

he gave the right to become children of God, who were born not of blood or the will of flesh, nor of the will of man, but God. Joseph's sons, the ones who just received the blessings, would not pattern their lives on the Egyptian culture they were leaving behind. They were to be solely defined by the promises of God. I think this can give us a lot of peace. Living today is one who is a chip off the old block, so to speak, hewn from the quarry that is the Lord. You might look around at families that have had more financial stability

and wish you had those advantages when you were a student, or when you started your career, or you might see families were good choices and a soft place, to land were just foundational to their existence, while you had to navigate pit problems on your own. You might wish you had the spiritual heritage of a legacy of prayer and wisdom passed down to you. But we can't help but learn from Genesis that while life is a daily battle, God's grace abounds, no matter where you came from or where you are, our confidence doesn't come from our bloodline or our own personal trophies. Jacob said it.

Our God who has been with our fathers is our lifelong shepherd. To this day, he has redeemed us from evil. He will carry forth his plans. Your life has been designed by God just as Jacobs was. We are just as lucky as Ephraim and Manasseh, if you're comfortable using that word. We are adopted and included as heirs of the promise. We are covenant sons and daughters of the Father of Grace, and we are saved by the Son. Before you forget, sign up for the brand new TMBT newsletter.

Hit the link in the show notes and you'll get an email every Wednesday that will help you beat the midweek slump and go deeper in your walk with Jesus. Thanks for listening.