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Full Episode
Hey Bible Readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for the Bible Recap. Yesterday was an emotional rollercoaster. Mystery, intrigue, theft, reunions, and all in three chapters. We wrapped up with Jacob agreeing to move his family to Egypt on the king's tab to ride out the last five years of the famine.
When we open today, Jacob is packing up all his stuff, even though Pharaoh told him not to, to start out their 450-mile journey. But I suppose I wouldn't want to leave my goats to starve in the famine either, so whatever. Their first stop for his massive caravan is in Beersheba, where he offers a sacrifice to God.
Both his father Isaac and his grandfather Abraham lived in Beersheba at one point in their lives, so this may have been some kind of nostalgic final farewell to his homeland, especially since he expects to die in Egypt. While he's in Beersheba, he makes a sacrifice to God. And he has a vision where God tells him to go to Egypt.
This is noteworthy because Egypt is generally regarded as a terrible place for Hebrews to go. The Egyptians were enemies of God's people. They were racist and they enslaved them. So it could be really terrifying. But God comforts Jacob and promises to be with him.
This is a good place for me to mention the difference between God's general presence everywhere, which is called omnipresence, and his special presence, which is called manifest presence. Saying God is everywhere is different than saying God is here. Even if God hadn't made this promise to Jacob, since he's omnipresent, we could easily conclude that God is in Egypt regardless.
But when God promises to be with Jacob in Egypt, that's a nod to his manifest presence. Here's how I like to think of it. Have you ever used the filters on Instagram where you can increase the saturation? You didn't invent the red in your picture. It was already there. But when you dial up that saturation, it sure does make that red pop. It's far more noticeable, more manifest.
That's one way we can think of God's promise to be with Jacob, just like he was with Joseph in prison. And it was obvious to Joseph. And also, its effects were obvious to everyone around him. He seemed to have a wisdom and a peace that indicated he knew something they didn't know.
Skip ahead a few thousand years, and we now have access to God the Spirit, who dwells in all believers, and we carry him with us wherever we go. But this was not the case back then. God's special presence was a unique thing. That's why in the Psalms, David could pray a prayer saying, "'Do not take your Holy Spirit from me,' and have that be a real thing he was actually concerned about."
But today, for those of us who have His Spirit, which is all of God's adopted children, that prayer is a moot point. He has filled and sealed us with His Spirit and promises to stay with us for good. So God promises that His presence will go with Jacob, and He promises to make him into a great nation while they're in Egypt, the land of their enemies.
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