Forest Park Church Sermons

Jacob’s final request was to be buried in the ancestral burial plot of Machpelah, in Canaan. This request is honored, despite the great inconvenience and traveling required to fulfill it. By insisting on being buried in Canaan, Jacob communicated to his sons his unyielding faith in God’s promise for the future. Revealing God’s future for His people lies in Canaan, not Egypt. For Jacob, the future...

As Jacob’s life is coming to an end, he is looking both backward, reflecting on God’s promises and faithfulness in his life. He also looks forward to how God will fulfill his promises to his sons, turning them into a great nation and giving them the land God has promised him and his fathers. In an act of faith, he adopts Ephraim and Manasseh as his own, giving Joseph a double portion. Believing th...

After Israel settled in Goshen, the narrative returns to the famine in the land. Our passage contrasts the people of Egypt and the people of God (Israel). The people of Egypt struggled to survive the famine and sold their livestock, land, and themselves. In contrast, the people of God are acquiring land and becoming fruitful and multiplying. The people of Egypt come to Joseph to save them from dea...

The momentous reunion of Joseph and Jacob that has been long anticipated in the story is all but swallowed up in the larger context of the nation of Israel’s descent into Egypt. Through Joseph’s wisdom, God preserved Israel physically and spiritually in Goshen, where they lived in Egypt and remained distinct. Under Joseph’s administrative wisdom, and Jacob’s blessing of Pharaoh and Pharaoh’s honor...

Jacob, named “Israel,” is marked by prevailing in the struggle of life. Leaves Canaan to be reunited with his son, knowing the dangers and challenges ahead. Stops at Beersheba to remember the Lord and offers a sacrifice of worship and reliance on the Lord. In the middle of the night, the Lord reveals and reassures Jacob that the Lord is the “I will God”. Just like Jacob, the Christian life is mark...

After his brothers respond to his test in Genesis 44, Joseph is overcome with emotion and finally reveals himself. Shocked and scared, the brothers sit in dismay as Joseph reassures them that God is ultimately in control and used their sinful actions to bring about His will for His glory and their good. He further urges them to bring this good news and testimony to their father Jacob so God can op...

Joseph puts the brothers through the final test. If the first test was designed to retrieve Benjamin, the second test is designed to expose their genuine attitude towards their youngest brother, Benjamin. In this final test, we continue to see evidence of the Lord’s restoring work.

All the brothers, including Benjamin, are returning to Egypt on their second journey. As the Lord is restoring this broken family, we begin to see the Lord’s transforming grace in their lives. Where their hearts are changing, they are concerned for one another and are willing to lay down their lives for one another, and they are slowly turning from fear to trusting the Lord.

In our text today, the Lord, through Joseph, will put his brothers to the test. He will put them in the same situation where they failed and decided to sell their brother into slavery for personal gain, and lied about it. Will they do the same again? We will learn that through the testing of our faith, the Lord continues his restoration work.

Easter Sunday is one of the biggest highlights in the life of the church as we celebrate the resurrection. But after all the excitement dies down, we are often left with the question in our lives of what happens next? How do we handle the magnificent news of the Gospel now that we have received it and responded to it? How do we truly live for Christ and cling to Him? To find these answers, we’ll t...

Our world has been experiencing a growing crisis of hope. The future seems uncertain and the present volatile. When you feel hopeless and beaten down by life, Peter reminds us that we have a God who is merciful and sees our helpless state, who has made us alive and has given us a living hope that is anchored in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Through Christ, our eternal future is secured in the...

Palm Sunday is the first day of holy week or the first day of the final week before Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. It is the day we traditionally celebrate Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem. As we take a closer look at Jesus’ triumphal entry, what was Jesus declaring about himself in this triumphal entry? Did the disciples and the crowds really understand what they were saying? What dif...

Starting with chapter forty-two, the author will draw our attention to the condition of Jacob and his sons. What we will immediately discover is that this is still a very broken family. Over the course of their journey to Egypt, the Lord will begin his restoration work on this broken family. We will learn this restoration work occurs in the middle of a famine, it is a deep and slow work, whereby t...

If the Lord was with Joseph, and if Joseph remained faithful and persevered, why does it seem like things went from bad to worse in his life? Throughout the Bible there is a paradoxical principle, before exaltation comes humiliation. As we take a closer look at Joseph’s exaltation and Pharaoh’s humiliation, we will see that the Lord is the one who exalts the humble and humbles the exalted.

As our story continues in Genesis 41, we find that despair sets in for Joseph whose been left in jail for years, and Pharoah who receives multiple disturbing dreams. But their desperate paths will soon collide as Pharoah is recommended to find the meaning of his dreams from Joseph, who is pulled from prison to sit before the king. After only a short time, Joseph points Pharoah to see how only God...

Joseph has descended from being thrown into a desolate pit, to being sold as a slave, to being thrown into prison, and forgotten. Joseph was a victim of his brother’s hatred, of the false accusations of Potiphar’s wife, and now the forgetfulness of a cupbearer. It is easy to rush through the story where Joseph exchanged his prison clothes for the crown of Egypt. But what we must understand is that...

In our text today, we are going to see Joseph confronted by temptation. Unlike his brother Judah who gave into temptation, Joseph resisted temptation and overcame temptation. How did Joseph overcome the temptation? The Lord’s presence.

In the highs and lows of Joseph’s life in Egypt, the key point hammered home repeatedly is God’s presence with Joseph. This was the reason for his endurance and diligence as a slave in Egypt, the success in his work and being a blessing to others, and how he could have victory over the temptation of sin. Christians can take heart, for like Joseph in the highs and lows of life, the Lord is with us.

We come to an obscure story that seems like an interruption from Joseph in Egypt. Yet this interruption is important, because through the evil actions of Judah, his two sons (Er & Onan), and Tamar, the Lord, executes his divine judgment, shows mercy to Judah, and redeems the broken situation by providing the continuation of the promised seed.

As we are introduced to the sons of Jacob, it becomes very evident of the dysfunction of their family. Jacob loved Joseph, while his brothers hated him more and more. This familial relationship breeds destruction and death. Yet the Lord is working in the destruction of their sin, accomplishing his purposes of salvation. That means our only hope when we find ourselves entangled with sin, is the wor...

Encountering God Almighty changes everything. God – through His calling, revelation, and promises – is the source of transforming grace and sustaining grace. We'll see how that is true in Jacob's life as his story in Genesis comes to a close, and we'll see how we must live our lives in light of God’s transforming grace, by the power of his sustaining grace.

God has come through marvelously for Jacob – restoring his relationship to his estranged brother and restoring him to the land of promise. But as soon as he found himself settling in, disaster strikes. Things quickly escalade from bad to worse. When the story seems to end with only tragedy, God speaks.

As the night had passed and the day had begun, Jacob emerged as a transformed man. When he faces his brother Esau, he is a completely different man. As we look at the evidence of Jacob’s transformation, we will learn how God can transform us.

In the tense anxiety of the night, Jacob is waiting to see if his plan will succeed and if his brother will accept him. While waiting all alone in the night, God appeared in human form and wrestled Jacob throughout the night. Depriving Jacob of his natural strength, making him weak and yet declaring him the victor. What was the purpose of this wrestling, what did it mean for Jacob and what does it...

Jacob is on the doorstep of the greatest trial of his life. He has an angry brother ahead of him and an angry father-in-law behind him, and all his family and accumulated wealth is at stake. His conniving has cornered him into imminent disaster. His only hope is divine deliverance and out of fear and desperation he turns the Lord in prayer.