Gen 48:2, When it was told to Jacob, "Behold, your son Joseph has come to you," Israel collected his strength and sat up in the bed. 
This chapter details the interaction between Jacob and Joseph with respect to Jacob’s blessing of Joseph’s two sons. As we read, the younger son received the blessing of his grandfather. While this is not the blessing of the Promised One from God’s heart, being that the lineage of Christ would proceed from the line of Judah and not through the line of Joseph, it still serves to highlight a purpose in the overall plan of God. 
God’s blessing is not limited by human consideration of who should receive what. It is based on what is seen of the heart by God. As evidenced throughout scripture, frequently the younger son is the recipient of that which would traditionally belong to the first-born. God rules and overrules to show forth His divine order of who is to receive what blessing as He so determines in His heart. That is why we must never try to limit the grace of God and the blessing of God based on our ideas and our concepts. 
Mankind often mistakenly judges each other as worthy or unworthy of that which God has to offer in His mercy and grace and love. Nothing of any of God’s treasury is based on our worthiness or our traditional concepts or our thoughts of fairness or our history or our own effort. It is all set in the person of Jesus Christ as God so ordains within the totality of His creation. 
In this respect, the passage before us opens up a grand avenue of consideration with regard to what is involved in the entire process of having hearts that are ordered and kept by God. Jacob was a tired and sick man, on the deathbed of this human life. He was looking at the end of his sojourn throughout the numbered days of his walk on this earth. As we read earlier in his conversation with Pharaoh in chapter 47, he recognized that it had been a hard time on earth and that he had not attained to the length of years as his fathers. He was facing his mortality as we read in verse 9, So Jacob said to Pharaoh, "The years of my sojourning are one hundred and thirty; few and unpleasant have been the years of my life, nor have they attained the years that my fathers lived during the days of their sojourning." 
This is quite similar to the strain and stress that may be part of a number of our lives. There is that sense of finality on the horizon with those regrets for things left undone and unaccomplished as the days wane and our strength diminishes. Jacob was facing his earthly mortality and yet, when he was told that his son Joseph was coming to him, he …collected his strength and sat up in the bed. It took effort and energy, yet he wanted to bless his son and his grandchildren, so he encouraged himself to gather the necessary vigor to do so. 
This gathering together strength is not just physical power and ability; it is also an emotional and spiritual intensity and concentration to accomplish that which the Lord gives us to do as each day progresses. As the Lord directs our hearts in each daily duty and as we respond in obedience, so are we given the ability to follow through even in those tasks requiring the most difficult levels of energy, capacity, and capability. We are given the sufficient grace to meet each day’s tasks with hearts that want to honor and to please Our Lord and Savior, no matter how fatigued and exhausted and drained and mentally strained we might find ourselves. 
Despite the progressing deathly decay that was enveloping through Jacob’s body, he was enabled to offer upon his grandsons and his sons, as we will read in the next chapter, the blessing that God put upon his heart for each one. Through trial and torment and physical weakness, God is our every source of ability and might to do that which is His direction and pleasure in our lives. 
As we are so informed in 1 Kings 8:57-60, May the Lord our God be with us, as He was with our fathers; may He not leave us or forsake us, that He may incline our hearts to Himself, to walk in all His ways and to keep His commandments and His statutes and His ordinances, which He commanded our fathers. And may these words of mine, with which I have made supplication before the Lord, be near to the Lord our God day and night, that He may maintain the cause of His servant and the cause of His people Israel, as each day requires, so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the Lord is God; there is no one else.
	There is a reality in this course of life that should be part of our walk on this earth as Christians. As the Body of Christ, we are to count on Him to meet the every requirement of our daily course of honoring Him in all that we do. This most definitely includes our every interaction with those people with whom we have contact, whether they are our family, our friends, our enemies, our workmates, our schoolmates, our teachers, our customers, or our employees. Everything we do we are to do as unto the Lord by the enabling and all-sufficient and manifest power of God! 
	God so charged Moses to deal accordingly with Joshua as Moses was prevented from entering the Promised Land. The people needed someone to guide them into the land. God chose Joshua and instructed Moses as follows in Deut 3:28, 'But charge Joshua and encourage him and strengthen him; for he shall go across at the head of this people, and he shall give them as an inheritance the land which you will see.' 
This was not going to be an easy task. It had worn Moses out, dealing with the contentiousness of this stubborn and rebellious people who turned their backs on God at every opportunity. He had to deal with their incessant whining and their bitter complaining and several uprisings and rebellions as well as all their idolatrous ways. This constantly draining task was now ahead of Joshua in guiding their entry into the Promised Land with the added burden of conquering the Canaanites, city by city. Joshua needed to know that God was with him so Moses was told to … encourage him and strengthen him. 
	It is in the heart of God for His people to help one another in times of weakness and stress and strain. He does not expect us to face the challenges of life by ourselves. We can be encouraged and strengthened through the standing and the prayers and the help of one another. This is one effective means by which God makes known the fact that we are not alone in this realm and that He is with us. This is shown as His people respond and seek to encourage and to help one another in accordance to that which He puts upon the hearts of our fellow saints.
	Look at how Jonathan so offered David a bit of respite as David was being hunted by Saul. David had to hide and to find shelter in caves and in the wilderness in order to survive the man hunt that was being conducted. Yet, in spite of that horrible situation, the Lord led Jonathan to David for the expressed purpose of heartening him with his friendship. 1 Sam 23:15-18, Now David became aware that Saul had come out to seek his life while David was in the wilderness of Ziph at Horesh. And Jonathan, Saul's son, arose and went to David at Horesh, and encouraged him in God. Thus he said to him, "Do not be afraid, because the hand of Saul my father shall not find you, and you will be king over Israel and I will be next to you; and Saul my father knows that also." So the two of them made a covenant before the Lord; and David stayed at Horesh while Jonathan went to his house. 
	At one of the low points of young David’s life, God sent his friend to let him know that everything was going to be OK. For Jonathan to admit that David would be the king was monumental in the fact that, according to the heritage and the tradition of that day, Jonathan would be the next king. He knew, however, that David had been given that kingship. Jonathan was willing to forgo his own claim to that throne and stand with David’s right to rule. This must have been a tremendous relief and encouragement to David to not have his best friend contest that which the Lord had ordained.  
    	Another example of one who needed this strengthening in the Lord was Elisha’s servant when he was in utter distress about the King of Aram’s army that was surrounding the city in which he and Elisha were staying. His eyes could see only the vast number of chariots and horsemen that encircled that town. He was in utter despair and cried out in his grief. Elisha called upon the Lord to encourage his servant with the true length and breadth of the Hand of God that was encircling Elisha with God’s own protection and grace. 
2 Kings 6:15-17, Now when the attendant of the man of God had risen early and gone out, behold, an army with horses and chariots was circling the city. And his servant said to him, "Alas, my master! What shall we do?" So he answered, "Do not fear, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them." Then Elisha prayed and said, "O Lord, I pray, open his eyes that he may see." And the Lord opened the servant's eyes, and he saw; and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. 
	This is another example of how we are to encourage and to strengthen one another in the Lord. Notice that Elisha, first of all, prayed to the Lord to open the eyes of his servant. He did not try to do anything on his own initiative. He counted on the Lord to make evident that which was the reality of the situation. Second, Elisha declared simply that which the Lord directed in the fact that he knew that God was more powerful than any earthly army. He trusted that God was the One in control of the situation. While the servant saw only the vast army arrayed against Elisha, Elisha knew the truth that …those who are with us are more than those who are with them. 
	There are many times when we are unable to see past the circumstances and the dilemmas in which we find ourselves. In those times of utter despair and despondency, we find encouragement as the Lord opens our eyes through the comforting ministry of the Holy Spirit. He sends us those who can see the Hand of God in operation. When we are in the trenches, so to speak, we very often find it difficult to see beyond the muck and the mire. It is then that the Lord is most gracious in allowing us to see things through His eyes, being confident in His Sovereignty over all His creation. 
	This is not always done through fellow believers. The Lord can use anyone at anytime to do His bidding. One key example is found in the manner in which the exiles were allowed to return to the Holy Land as recorded in Ezra 6:20-22, For the priests and the Levites had purified themselves together; all of them were pure. Then they slaughtered the Passover lamb for all the exiles, both for their brothers the priests and for themselves. And the sons of Israel who returned from exile and all those who had separated themselves from the impurity of the nations of the land to join them, to seek the Lord God of Israel, ate the Passover. And they observed the Feast of Unleavened Bread seven days with joy, for the Lord had caused them to rejoice, and had turned the heart of the king of Assyria toward them to encourage them in the work of the house of God, the God of Israel. 
	Notice that it was the king of Assyria who encouraged them to return and to rebuild the temple of the Lord. They were there by the authority of that pagan king with the orders to rebuild the temple so that they could once again worship the Lord God Almighty. This was no small matter in the day of their captivity. It was a complete reversal of all that had taken place to that point. Yet God, in His Sovereignty, caused the very nation of their enslavement to help them rebuild that which had been so devastated and ruined in their captivity.  
	The Prophet Nehemiah, as well, recounts the fact that the very walls of Jerusalem were to be rebuilt in accordance with the dictates of the king. He used that as a means of encouraging those who were so downcast at the utter devastation to which they were witness as they returned to Jerusalem. Once again it was all counted as the work of God to see them through this so difficult time when even those around them jeered and mocked them at the seeming futility of what they were attempting to accomplish. 
Neh 2:17-20, Then I said to them, "You see the bad situation we are in, that Jerusalem is desolate and its gates burned by fire. Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem that we may no longer be a reproach." And I told them how the hand of my God had been favorable to me, and also about the king's words which he had spoken to me. Then they said, "Let us arise and build." So they put their hands to the good work. But when Sanballat the Horonite, and Tobiah the Ammonite official, and Geshem the Arab heard it, they mocked us and despised us and said, "What is this thing you are doing? Are you rebelling against the king?" So I answered them and said to them, "The God of heaven will give us success; therefore we His servants will arise and build, but you have no portion, right, or memorial in Jerusalem." 
	Notice how Nehemiah counted on the Lord not only in the description of the need of the accomplishment of the rebuilding work, but in the manner in which the seemingly impossible would be completed. …The God of heaven will give us success; therefore we His servants will arise and build…  It was not a matter of being defeated by the utterly colossal endeavor that was before them, but rather the truth that it was a work that God was going to do through the willing submission of those who would choose to honor Him in the labor at hand. 
	This is what links each of these scenarios together in unity this morning. The events and the circumstances were beyond the scope of those who were in the midst of the conflict. It was only the strength and the wisdom and the knowledge of God in the heart of each one that would see them through. 
God sent His encouragement by those who were able to declare the Sovereignty and the overruling power of God despite the earthly appearance of doom and gloom. Even facing death, as with Jacob, did not dissuade him from rising up in his bed and giving forth the blessing of God upon his family as ordained by the Lord. We must always set our hearts and our minds on Him, no matter how difficult our earthly position. He will do what He will do when He chooses to do it, even if that is at the end of our earthly days on this earth. So be it!
When it was told to Jacob, "Behold, your son Joseph has come to you," Israel collected his strength and sat up in the bed. Amen.

			

	This morning’s benediction is 1 Chron 16:25-28. For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; He also is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of the peoples are idols, But the Lord made the heavens. Splendor and majesty are before Him, Strength and joy are in His place. Ascribe to the Lord, O families of the peoples, Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Amen.