(Genesis) Genesis 48:14

And I read verse 14 now, "...and Israel stretched out his right hand, and laid it upon Ephraim's head, who was the younger, and his left hand upon Manasseh's head, guiding his hands wittingly, for Manasseh was his firstborn." Now, Ephraim, you remember, becomes the leader above Manasseh. Joshua came out of the tribe of Ephraim, by the way. And you will find that out of that tribe there were many great men.

We'll have occasion to call attention to that. It became the tribe with priority, no question about it. Now, what happened was, when these two boys were moved up to old Jacob, although he couldn't see too well, he could see what his son Joseph was doing.

He was pushing the older one, where he could put his right hand on him, and the next one, where he put his left hand on him. And what did old Jacob do here? Well, he just switched hands. He just crossed his hands, and that meant the right hand went on the younger.

Now, why do you suppose he did that? Well, I have several suggestions to make to you of why he would do that sort of thing. Well, I think the reason is, he was the younger, was he not? And the blessing was his. And so he passes the blessing on to the younger here.

You find this running all the way through in the choice, for instance, of a king for Israel. God never did choose old Saul. That was the people's choice.

They voted for him, and people get what they vote for, of course, and they got Saul. But God's choice was David, and David was not the oldest son of Jesse at all. He was the youngest one.

Now, why does God do that? God is illustrating for you and me a great spiritual truth. God does not accept primogeniture, that is, natural birth. Never will he accept it.

There must be the new birth. Therefore, God does not pay attention to what we would pay attention to. We'd say, well, he's the oldest boy.

He has the responsibility. We can depend on the oldest boy. Well, the oldest boy is not the one God always chooses.

That is, he doesn't choose the natural man. And he chooses no man because of his natural ability. Oh, that's a truth that we need to learn today.

We feel like, now, don't misunderstand. God can use talent, but you better be dead sure it's dedicated to him. Because if it took talent to bring revival, we'd have had revival in Southern California years ago.

We have got Christian talent that's running out our ears out here, but we don't have revival. And you know why? It's not dedicated to him. I tell you, my friend, it has to be yielded to him, to be used of him.