Genesis 49.10 10 “The scepter shall not depart from
Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until Shiloh comes, and to
him shall be the obedience of the peoples. (NASB)
In ancient days there was a thing called the birthright. The birthright was normally
given to the eldest son in the family. Through the birthright the family name
and heritage was primarily passed, and the firstborn son could be thought of as
the next-in-line to be the continuing patriarch of the family.
Jacob had twelve sons and the eldest was Reuben. Reuben
was to be the successor to all of Jacob’s fortune and power but Reuben broke
the cardinal rule of a son: he had sexual relations with one of Jacob’s wives.
A son was never to mess around with dad’s herd (Jacob had his sons by four
different women). And so Reuben broke faith with his dad and lost his
birthright as a consequence. The one who inherited the birthright was Judah:
the fourth-born.
What makes the story even twistier is that Joseph, the
eleventh-born, was Jacob’s favorite; and he is the one who should have inherited
the birthright through affection and because he ‘saved’ the family during their
time in Egypt. And his blessing was
more beautiful and promising than any of the others in Genesis 49 – except:
Judah’s was the promise of ruler-ship and Joseph’s wasn’t.
God isn’t consulted in the birthright and birth order
doesn’t seem to matter all that much to Him; God sets the birthright. Esau (Jacob’s
brother) was Isaac’s favorite but Esau despised his birthright: he sold it for a bowl of stew. Esau should
have obtained Isaac’s blessing but he cursed it and lost it to Jacob.
Long before Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob God had planned the
salvation of men and the redemption of the world He’d created for them. God
overcame all of the cultural obstacles of men and their customs by using the faults
and mistakes of the patriarchs to allow the river of His will to flow exactly
where He wanted it to be. And that happened all the way down – some nineteen
hundred years later – to a little town called Bethlehem where the Ruler of God’s
people, and the Savior of the world, came from through the very bloodline that
God had arranged. We men wrangle over birthright; God accomplishes His will
through: birthwrong; His will versus the culture and customs of men. God’s plan
was for Judah to inherit the ruler-ship of His people and from that tribe of the kings for His Son to be born…nearly
two thousand years later.
And what does it matter? It matters because God made sure
(for us) that His Son was the One;
and human history bears that out. There is no human argument as to who the Son
of God is, or Who the Savior of the world is – or where His ancestral roots
were. Jesus Christ was the Savior from the beginning to this day; and will be
to the end. And that is why we celebrate Advent: it is the remembrance of God’s
glorious planning and perfect provision with the help of fallen creatures so
that His redemption would save them and restore them to the place He originally
intended they be: the pinnacle of His creation throughout all the universe! That’s
happy. That’s Christmas! God did it, the Bible says it, and that’s good enough
for me…
No comments:
Post a Comment