Gen 46:3+4, And He said, "I am God, the God of your father; do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for I will make you a great nation there. I will go down with you to Egypt, and I will also surely bring you up again; and Joseph will close your eyes." 
	When Joseph’s brothers came back to Canaan to bring Israel and the rest of the family into safety in Egypt, Israel did not immediately head away from the Promised Land. Rather, he made a stop at Beersheba where he offered sacrifices to God. It was apparently not his first choice to leave the land that had been given to him and to his fathers by God. He needed the encouragement of God to indicate that this was the correct course of action to take. That is what he received in the night visions as God told him that he was to leave the Promised Land for a period of time, but that God would still carry forth His blessing of the lineage of Abraham through the family of Israel. 
    	This is reminiscent of when the Promise was first given to Abram in Gen 12:1-3. Now the Lord said to Abram, "Go forth from your country, And from your relatives And from your father's house, To the land which I will show you; And I will make you a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great; And so you shall be a blessing; And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." 
	Both Abraham and Israel were obeying the Lord in the travel to that foreign land, away from the country of their birth. Both where caused to leave behind all that they knew. They were to trust the Lord to guide and to protect and to establish the fulfillment of His covenant promise with them in the manner in which He so chose to do it. 
	In this line, God was very careful to bring forth His Promise to Abraham on a continual basis. At every turn or decision to be made, God again reiterated all that He was going to do in order that Abraham would not forget or think that God had forgotten. 
	We find this again at the point at which Abraham and Lot separated ways because their flocks and herds had become too large for both of them to remain together. Lot turned east and Abraham remained in the west. Again, he was visited with the reassurance of all that God was planning to do. Gen 13:14-16, And the Lord said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, "Now lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward; for all the land which you see, I will give it to you and to your descendants forever. And I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth; so that if anyone can number the dust of the earth, then your descendants can also be numbered. 
	Then, after the obedience of Abraham with the near sacrifice of Isaac, his beloved son, God reaffirmed His faithful promise of blessing through the lineage of Abraham to be the blessing of all the nations. Gen 22:16-18, …"By Myself I have sworn, declares the Lord, because you have done this thing, and have not withheld your son, your only son, indeed I will greatly bless you, and I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens, and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your seed shall possess the gate of their enemies. And in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice." 
	In our present reading, Israel now had to obey God in the leaving of that land that had been given to him and to Isaac and to Abraham. It was not an easy choice to make. In an earlier famine, in which Isaac had been tempted to run to Egypt for food and shelter, God had been very specific in telling Isaac not to go there. Gen 26:1-5, Now there was a famine in the land, besides the previous famine that had occurred in the days of Abraham. So Isaac went to Gerar, to Abimelech king of the Philistines. And the Lord appeared to him and said, "Do not go down to Egypt; stay in the land of which I shall tell you. Sojourn in this land and I will be with you and bless you, for to you and to your descendants I will give all these lands, and I will establish the oath which I swore to your father Abraham. And I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven, and will give your descendants all these lands; and by your descendants all the nations of the earth shall be blessed; because Abraham obeyed Me and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes and My laws." 
Since his father had been forbidden to do such a thing, Israel had to be absolutely certain that he was not losing the blessing of God by this journey into the land of Egypt. What if he went and lost all that God had been so adamant about providing for his father and his father’s father? 
	It was not until he received the assurance from God that this was the proper thing to do that Israel was ready to push on with this travel out of the Promised Land. After all, it had been God, Himself, Who had borne witness to Jacob that this was the land and the promise of God’s blessing to him and to his family. It was not just a tradition handed down from father to son. It had been from the very mouth of God that Jacob had been so blessed. 
Gen 28:13-15, And behold, the Lord stood above it and said, "I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie, I will give it to you and to your descendants. Your descendants shall also be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread out to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and in you and in your descendants shall all the families of the earth be blessed. And behold, I am with you, and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you." 
	That is why it wasn’t until Israel had the assurance of God going before him and his family into Egypt that he was willing to depart the land of his heritage. With the declaration that this was what God had ordained for his family, Jacob then went from Beersheba into Egypt. 
	This was a necessary journey in the plan of God as had been earlier detailed to Abraham. Gen 15:13+14, And God said to Abram, "Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed four hundred years. But I will also judge the nation whom they will serve; and afterward they will come out with many possessions. This was the plan that God had ordained from the beginning of the eternal ages in order to show forth His Divine power in the delivery of the Children of Israel from slavery in the foreign land of Egypt. 
This is of utmost importance because it is the type that God instituted in order to show how much more marvelous and miraculous is our delivery from sin and death through the true Passover Lamb of God, Jesus Christ. That connotation would not be in place until after God had physically and miraculously removed His people from the yoke of bondage that would be thrust upon them by the Egyptian people. 
	It was God Who put all the pieces together for the family of Jacob to become the nation that would be called the Children of Israel. That would take place in Egypt after God had installed Joseph into the place where his entire family could be safe and securely thrive and grow into a nation of people. 
When they entered the land of Egypt, they were only a family unit. God had made an oath with Abraham and with Isaac and with Jacob that the family would become a great nation under God’s divine providence. 
As we read in Gen 35:10-12, And God said to him, "Your name is Jacob; You shall no longer be called Jacob, But Israel shall be your name." Thus He called him Israel. God also said to him, "I am God Almighty; Be fruitful and multiply; A nation and a company of nations shall come from you, And kings shall come forth from you. "And the land which I gave to Abraham and Isaac, I will give it to you, And I will give the land to your descendants after you." 
	When Israel journeyed forth into Egypt, his was a mere company as we are told in Gen 46:26+27. All the persons belonging to Jacob, who came to Egypt, his direct descendants, not including the wives of Jacob's sons, were sixty-six persons in all, and the sons of Joseph, who were born to him in Egypt were two; all the persons of the house of Jacob, who came to Egypt, were seventy. 
	Under the provision of God in their time within the borders of Egypt, that seventy people prospered as we find in Gen 47:27. Now Israel lived in the land of Egypt, in Goshen, and they acquired property in it and were fruitful and became very numerous. They were so prosperous that they became a threat to their very hosts within that good land as God supplied from the bounty of that country. Rather than wear out the Land of Promise, God chose for them to grow and to multiply and to live off the land of Egypt for the time in which they developed into a nation. 
This course of expansion and burgeoning in number and strength from a family of seventy into the nation of Israel was so phenomenal that the new Pharaoh, to protect his own people, dealt with them in the manner in which God had foretold to Abraham. Please turn to Ex 1:5-12 and follow along with me. Ex 1:5-12, And all the persons who came from the loins of Jacob were seventy in number, but Joseph was already in Egypt. And Joseph died, and all his brothers and all that generation. But the sons of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly, and multiplied, and became exceedingly mighty, so that the land was filled with them. Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. And he said to his people, "Behold, the people of the sons of Israel are more and mightier than we. Come, let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply and in the event of war, they also join themselves to those who hate us, and fight against us, and depart from the land." So they appointed taskmasters over them to afflict them with hard labor. And they built for Pharaoh storage cities, Pithom and Raamses. But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and the more they spread out, so that they were in dread of the sons of Israel. 
As the nation of Israel, when they were brought by the Hand of God out of Egypt, they returned to the Promised Land as per the assurance of God to Jacob in this morning’s passage. God went before the Israelites and continued to bless their growth and development. There was the further oath of God that His people would multiply by the thousand fold. Deut 1:10+11, 'The Lord your God has multiplied you, and behold, you are this day as the stars of heaven for multitude. 'May the Lord, the God of your fathers, increase you a thousand-fold more than you are, and bless you, just as He has promised you! 
	That growth was manifested through the inclusion of the Gentiles into the family of God by the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. In Him, all the nations of the world have been blessed, as per the oath of God. In Christ Jesus, the family of God has been opened fully to all who will but call upon His name. 
As we are so encouraged by the Apostle Paul in Rom 8:14-17, For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, "Abba! Father!" The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him in order that we may also be glorified with Him. 
	The great growth of the People of God, prophesied and promised all those centuries ago has been fulfilled in the perfect sacrifice of the Lamb of God at Calvary. We have all been released from our slavery to the old nature of our birth and have been brought into the spiritual Promised Land of milk and honey in the presence of God through Our Savior, His Only Begotten Son. 
	We rejoice fully as we read the description of what is now true in Jesus Christ in Eph 3:1-7. Follow along with all rejoicing and praise to God in our hearts, Eph 3:1-7. For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles —  if indeed you have heard of the stewardship of God's grace which was given to me for you; that by revelation there was made known to me the mystery, as I wrote before in brief. And by referring to this, when you read you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit; to be specific, that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel, of which I was made a minister, according to the gift of God's grace which was given to me according to the working of His power. 
	That gift of God’s grace in ours in Christ! It is by the Love and the mercy and the boundless grace of God that we are now made fully partakers of the very divine nature of Christ as our life. We are not made into little gods unto ourselves. We are incorporated into the very life of Christ as He lives forth from us unto all those who are part of our walk on this earth. This is the promise which has been so absolutely brought into fruition in our lives, as was given to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob all those centuries upon centuries ago. So be it and Amen!

	This morning’s benediction is Ps 106:1. Praise the Lord! Oh give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; For His lovingkindness is everlasting. Amen.