He Who is Forgiven Much
The last act of Father Jacob was to bless his twelve sons, and you can read his blessing/prophecies in Genesis 49. Though all of the sons are important in the history of the foundation of Israel, the lion’s share of the blessings go to Judah and Joseph. Judah is the lion of the tribes and Jesus is the lion of the tribe of Judah, the King of kings. But Joseph was Jacob’s favorite son as a child, and clearly Joseph lived in such a way to increase favor with his father. Charles Spurgeon said, “The main point in Joseph’s character was that he was in clear and constant fellowship with God, and therefore God blessed him greatly. He lived to God, and was God’s servant; he lived with God, and was God’s child.”
Jacob gives God five titles as he uses the word “blessings” five times. Jacob says God is: The Mighty One of Jacob. The Shepherd. The Stone of Israel. (The Shepherd leads and the Stone is stable, unchanging.) The God of your father. The Almighty. What a great word of God to pray back to God! “Oh God of my father, you will help me! Almighty God, you will bless me and have blessed me with blessings from heaven!” He helped Joseph and heaped blessings on his head and those who came after him, as his father says here. And the same is true for all who follow Christ and are co-heirs with him.
Jacob says to Joseph, “The blessings of your father are mighty beyond the blessings of my parents.” I love this new Jacob. I don’t think Jacob is saying he has been blessed so much because he is better than his father Isaac or his grandfather Abraham. I think the opposite! I believe he is acknowledging that God’s grace to him is amazing beyond anything he could imagine because he deserved none of it. He may be saying something like this: You have blessed me beyond anything I can imagine, God, because I know I was selfish, deceitful, a bad father, and a lousy patriarch. And yet you forgave me and turned my heart towards you.
When I think of Jacob at the end of his life, I think of the woman “of the city, who was a sinner,” who kissed Jesus’ feet and anointed them with ointment. Jesus was rebuked by the host, a Pharisee named Simon, who thought to himself that if Jesus were really a prophet, he would know who this woman was! Jesus knew Simon’s thoughts so he told him a story of someone who owed a lot of money and was forgiven the debt and as a result loved the one very much who had forgiven him. Then he said of the woman, “Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.”
I think Jacob knows best at the end of his life how much God had carried him and loved him and forgiven him. He loves much because he has been forgiven much. Finally, at the age of 147!
Why wait until the end of life to know that truth and walk in the love that flows from a heart that has been “forgiven much”?