“The scepter will not depart from Judah or the staff from between his feet until he whose right it is comes.” (Genesis 49:10)
Your life is not only about you. God has designed your life’s purpose to be much bigger. In Jacob’s final days, God gave him prophetic insight “of the days to come” (49:1). And when Jacob called his twelve knuckle headed sons together, as he was looking at them, God gave him a glimpse of the great nation they would become (Gen. 12:2). Now this greatness would have little to do with them, and everything to do with God’s spectacular performance on their behalf. The reason for this is because God’s plans for these twelve sons were much bigger and better than what they had planned.
It’s in this poetic chapter that both the Jew and Christian have learned that through the tribe of Judah “he whose right it is comes” (49:10). The “he“ in this verse has been understood for thousands of years as a messianic reference. It’s a prophecy of the Lion of Judah and the true king who would rule with a scepter (49:10). Writing on this Charles Spurgeon commented, “The dying patriarch [Jacob] was speaking of his own son Judah; but while speaking of Judah he had a special eye to our Lord, who sprang from the tribe of Judah. Everything therefore which he says of Judah, the type, he means with regard to our greater Judah, the antitype, our Lord Jesus Christ.” This is the bigger purpose of Judah’s life, and also Israel. God handpicked Israel, so that all the families of the earth would be blessed through them by the arrival of the Messiah (“the Christ”).
And so, as good as it is for you to graduate college, get that dream job, raise that family, own those three cars, buy your own home with a white picket fence, travel on bi-yearly vacations, make wise decision on your 401k— your life’s purpose is much bigger and better than that. You’ve got an eternal purpose during your temporary lifespan. Your life’s aim is to ultimately point a broken world to the one and only solution, “the Lion from the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, who has conquered” (Rev. 5:5). The Lion of Judah has come and is coming again. So will you let your life’s purpose be more than the norm of our day? Will you point others to the Christ (he whose right it is) when he comes again?