Live by the Word that Promises....

AELW 8:199-200

Genesis Chapter Forty-nine

1. Then Jacob called his sons, and said: Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you what shall befall you in days to come.

2. Assemble and hear, O sons of Jacob,
and hearken to Israel your father.

This chapter is somewhat obscure and difficult, especially because it has many teachers and interpreters with completely divergent views. Therefore we must make the crooked and curved road we are following smooth and straight. But we shall do what we can.

Jacob arouses his sons and gets their attention. He is about to speak on a great and memorable matter, namely, on the promise and the threat. And it is truly a great and difficult thing to speak beforehand about future matters with such certainty.

But we know from Holy Scripture and from actual experience that when God’s promises and threats are being fulfilled and taking their course, as it were, they seem to be altogether contradictory. For although the people of Israel had excellent promises, yet if you look at their history and at matters as they stand at present, they seem to be very miserable people and forsaken. It seems that God is either untruthful when He makes promises or is negligent, as we have had several examples above with respect to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The histories of these men seem to show nothing else than that they were without God or that God forgot them or had ceased completely to take care of them and had permitted their adversaries to reign and triumph over and to rage against the godly and innocent people with impunity.

In the same manner the people of Israel were harassed by hostile neighbors, the Philistines, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Idumaeans, the Egyptians, etc. Therefore nothing seemed less likely than that they had the promise. And what could be mentioned or thought of that would be more wretched than the history of the patriarch Jacob, which is full to overflowing of troubles and disasters of every kind? This is not a promise or a blessing, is it? This is not what it means to have God, life, and eternal bliss and happiness, is it? Surely the godly have the very opposite in sight, and, as it seems, what they experience is, in effect, completely different from what is offered in the promises, which reason declares to be false and, as the saying goes: “The good fare badly; the bad fare well.”

Accordingly, faith, which should rely on and live by the Word that promises, pertains to the promise. For if it is not present to cling to the promise and live by it, things certainly seem to conflict with the promise, in such a way that men are driven to despair."