8. The Future

Meditations on “Fear Not”:  8. The Future

Gen 46:1-4    So Israel took his journey with all that he had, and came to Beersheba, and offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac.  Then God spoke to Israel in the visions of the night, and said, “Jacob, Jacob!”   And he said, “Here I am.”  So He said, “I am God, the God of your father; do not fear to go down to Egypt, for I will make of you a great nation there. ⁴ I will go down with you to Egypt, and I will also surely bring you up again; and Joseph will put his hand on your eyes.” 

We move on from Isaac to his son, Jacob, now renamed Israel. Much has happened in his life. He has had a big family, apparently lost one of the younger sons, his favourite, Joseph, who now, it appears, has amazingly become the equivalent of Prime Minister of Egypt and who has been overseeing the handing out of food to avert the worst effects of a famine stretching across the whole of what we might call the Middle East.  Because the famine is still harsh, Joseph invites Israel to come with the whole family and settle in Egypt until it is all over.

Now those are the basics of the story, the facts of what had been happening, but there is always a spiritual dimension to every person’s life (even if it is just to reject God). Jacob was originally known as a twister, out for himself, planning and scheming and building his prosperity by devious means and had become a very wealthy patriarch over a big family. He is the boss of the family (almost a small tribe) there in Canaan, but now the circumstances and his very powerful son are encouraging him to leave all that and settle in this foreign country – where he will not be the boss.  It seems the sensible thing to do but he would naturally have qualms about it. His relationship with God so far has been a little tenuous, even though he had had a painful encounter with Him in the middle of the night and had had his name changed from Jacob to Israel. They had settled in or near Bethel in the middle of the country (see Gen 35) and so now set of southwards for Egypt.

When they come to Beersheba in the south, Israel presents sacrifices to the Lord. In return, it seems, the Lord appears to him at night in a vision and reassures him: ““I am God, the God of your father; do not fear to go down to Egypt, for I will make of you a great nation there.” (v.3) No doubt Jacob would have been told of God’s promises to his grandfather, Abraham, and his father, Isaac about becoming a nation, and now that is reiterated. But it doesn’t finish there: “So He said, I will go down with you to Egypt, and I will also surely bring you up again; and Joseph will put his hand on your eyes.”  (v.3,4) Whether he realises it or not, this is a subtle declaration that after his death Israel will be returned to Canaan, and that happened.

Now what we have here is the Lord reassuring Israel with another of our ‘fear not’s and the basis of it is that God knows the future and is in charge of it and so Israel can rest secure in that. He has started to make the move south to go to Egypt, he has committed his way to the Lord in a sense as he offers a sacrifice as he is about to leave Canaan and now the Lord reassures him that he has taking the right path.

When God speaks into our lives about the future, we too can rest assured it is all in His hands. He is for us (Rom 8:31) and will never leave us (Heb 13:5) and will always be working for our good (Rom 828).  With these truths firmly established in our hearts, we too need not fear the days ahead. It does not guarantee that they may not be tumultuous, but the above truths (and they are true) can reassure us. Hallelujah!