A Faithful Steward

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I know that in the bulletin that it says Genesis 46, 31 through 47, 31 and that is the main text that we are going to study today.
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But for our opening text, I'd like for you to turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians chapter 4.
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This text I'm not going to exegete, but rather I'm going to use in a sense as a foundation to talk about Joseph as a faithful steward.
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Let us stand for the reading of God's word as we give due honor and reverence to this holy inspired and inerrant word.
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In 1 Corinthians chapter 4 verse 2, the Apostle Paul writes these words.
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Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful.
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Father God, I pray that you would keep me from error.
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I pray that you would open up the hearts of your people to hear the word.
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I pray for those who are believers, Lord, that they would be encouraged, challenged, Lord, even rebuked and reproved if necessary.
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But Lord, for those in this room who are unbelievers, whether they be young or old, Lord, as brother Andy has already prayed and I echo his prayer, Lord, that they would see Jesus Christ as glorious and that your gospel would be proclaimed to this message.
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In Jesus' name, amen.
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You may be seated.
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The title of today's message is A Faithful Steward and we began by reading in 1 Corinthians chapter 4 simply to look at what Paul tells us that a faithful steward is.
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Paul tells us that a faithful steward is marked by one very specific attribute and that is the attribute of faithfulness.
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He is to be a faithful steward.
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That is the one thing that is required of a steward, that he be found faithful.
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I'll never forget when I was in seminary, one of my favorite professors, Dr.
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Jerry Powers, and Dr.
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Powers would often reference this passage and he would say, men, understand this.
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In life, you will always wonder if you are successful.
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And he said, but the Bible doesn't say a faithful steward is, or excuse me, that a steward is required to be successful.
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It says a steward is required to be faithful.
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And if you are faithful, then you cannot help but be successful.
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And I always just love that reminder every time that my calling and our calling as men and women of God is to be faithful.
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And if we are faithful, then we are successful.
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No matter the numbers, no matter how many people we win to the Lord, no matter how many things we do or how many great things we do or don't do, it is required of a steward that he be found faithful.
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And that's always stuck in my heart and I've always been very thankful to Dr.
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Powers for reminding us that almost every time he taught, that it is required of a steward that he be found faithful.
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Well, the reason why I bring that passage up this morning is because we're going to be looking at a chapter of Genesis which really invokes the idea of stewardship in the life of Joseph.
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And one thing we need to notice is that ever since we first met Joseph, ever since we were first introduced to this character known as Joseph, he has shown himself to be a faithful steward.
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In his father's house, he was given a garment.
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That garment was meant to show that he was in a position of preeminence among his brothers.
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If you remember, he had actually come back from the field and he had told that his brothers were not doing what was right.
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And some of us might say, oh, what a tattletale, what an evil brother he is to tattle on his brothers.
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But what it was was he was faithful to his father and he was a faithful steward of what God had entrusted him with or rather what his father had entrusted him with and he wanted it done right.
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His brothers, of course, hated him.
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They sold him into slavery.
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He ends up in the house of Potiphar and what happens in the house of Potiphar? He again becomes a steward and he becomes the head steward of all the household because he was a faithful steward.
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And by the way, if you don't know this, the word steward simply means a manager, someone who's put in charge of something.
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And he's a manager.
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He's a faithful manager.
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Then of course, Potiphar's wife, she accuses him of attempted rape and he's put into the prison.
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But what happens when he goes to prison? He becomes the head of the prison.
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Why? Because he's a faithful, even in the worst of conditions, even in a dank Egyptian prison, he is put in position of leadership because he's a faithful steward.
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He's a faithful manager.
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Then finally he's brought before Pharaoh.
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He's given the opportunity to interpret Pharaoh's dreams and Pharaoh says that his dreams are of these, you remember the seven cows and the seven sheaves and he talks to him about those.
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And Joseph says to him, you need to choose a man to manage the largest food gathering and storage program in the history of the earth up until that point.
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You need to find a man who would be a manager for your storage, food storage program.
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And Pharaoh looked at all of his advisors and he said, what better man than this to be the steward of this program? What better man than this to manage this entire, which is going to save the lives of all of the known world at that time? Joseph has shown himself from the very beginning to be a faithful steward.
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Well today we're going to look at the end of chapter 46 and all of chapter 47.
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Now it's a lot of text guys and I understand, but you know we've been in Genesis for three years and it is my goal to try to end this before the baby comes.
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So just so you understand why I'm doing what I'm doing.
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You all know the baby's supposed to be here in September.
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Lord willing, he will make it to full term.
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And so I'm trying to make a little bit more leaps and bounds through.
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So we are going to look at all of chapter 47.
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We're going to read through it, but we're going to do it at a brisk pace.
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But I want to give you the outline of what we're going to look at.
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It'll be on the board, on the board, on the TV.
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This is the outline of chapter, the end of chapter 46 and chapter 47.
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We're going to see Joseph demonstrating himself as a manager or a steward in three ways.
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First he's going to be the steward or the manager of his family's needs.
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That's in chapter 46 verse 31 through 47, 12.
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Then we're going to see that he's the steward of his nation's needs and that's going to be 47, 13 through 26.
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And then we're going to see at the very end of chapter 47, he's going to manage his father's needs.
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And so we see Joseph in this chapter being a good steward to his family, to his nation, and to his father specifically.
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Now I do want to clarify something because I know many of you are good Bible students, all of you are good Bible students, but many of you do come to me after my sermons and bring good correction and sometimes that's very helpful.
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Notice I said sometimes.
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I know that when I say his nation's needs, some of you may come to me and say, his nation was Israel, Egypt was not his true home.
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That's right.
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But he is put in charge of the nation of Egypt.
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So in that context, that's the nation I'm talking about.
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Clear? Okay.
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Just in case anybody wanted to feel the need to correct me.
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All right.
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So let's do this.
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Let's read the end of chapter 46 beginning at verse 31.
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It's where we left off last week.
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Joseph said to his brothers and to his father's household, I will go up and tell Pharaoh and will say to him, my brothers and my father's household who were in the land of Canaan have come to me and the men are shepherds for they have been keepers of livestock and they have brought their flocks and herds and all that they have.
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When Pharaoh calls you and says, what is your occupation? You shall say your servants have been keepers of livestock from our youth, even until now, both we and our fathers and order that we may dwell in the land of Goshen for every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians.
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Now stop right there just for a moment.
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It's interesting because if you remember where we are in the narrative, Jacob is coming back with his sons to Joseph where Joseph had already promised him the best of the land.
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Remember he said, go and get my father.
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And Pharaoh even said, go and get his family and sent wagons to bring him back.
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So this was pretty much a done deal.
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But yet there was still a formality that needed to take place.
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Even though Joseph had already promised the land of Goshen, which we remember is in the Nile Delta.
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It's a very fertile area, but not at this time, of course, because it's during a famine, but it was a good area.
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It was a place that they wanted to be.
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And so he had already promised them this place.
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Pharaoh had already promised them this place.
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But when they come to town, before they're able to settle and take over this place, they have to go through this sort of, if you will, sort of ceremonial request where they go before the king of all the land and make the request that they would sojourn there.
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Basically, they have to go and pay homage to the king.
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And so Joseph goes to his brothers.
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This is why I say we're meeting his family's need.
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He goes to them and says, listen, guys, when you go to Pharaoh, there's a way to do it and there's a way not to do it.
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And I'm going to tell you the way to do it.
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When you go in there, you go in there and you speak to him and you tell him who you are.
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You answer his questions very specifically.
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Tell him that you are shepherds.
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You say, why is that such a big deal? What tells us in the text? The Egyptians didn't like shepherds.
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Something we may miss in all this, because you might say, why say they're shepherds if they don't like shepherds? Why not say we're, you know, something else? Joseph is actually making sure that there's going to remain a distinction between his family and his people and the people of Egypt.
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And so by announcing, and he's not telling a lie, he's telling a truth, but by announcing that they are shepherds, because it says Egyptians find that abominable, and actually there are some Egyptian relics from that time in history that actually have pictures of how they actually saw shepherds as just sort of the lower class.
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And so the idea was, tell them who you are and that's going to ensure that there's not going to be an attempt to try to bring together our family and the Egyptians and be an intermingling.
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We want to stay separate.
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We want to stay distinct.
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And this is why even 400 years later, when the people of Israel are there, they have not acclimated into Egyptian society, but they're still separate.
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They're still the people of Israel, even four centuries later.
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So Joseph says, when you go in, tell them you are shepherds.
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Make sure they know that, because they aren't going to like that, and they're going to make sure there's this separation.
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So we go into chapter 47 at verse 1.
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Now Joseph goes ahead, it says, so Joseph went in and told Pharaoh, my father and my brothers with their flocks and herds and all that they possess have come from the land of Canaan.
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They are now in the land of Goshen, and from among his brothers he took five men and presented them to Pharaoh.
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Pharaoh said to his brothers, what is your occupation? And they said to Pharaoh, your servants are shepherds, as our fathers were.
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They said to Pharaoh, we have come to sojourn in the land, for there is no pasture for your servants' flocks.
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For the famine is severe in the land of Canaan, and now please let your servants dwell in the land of Goshen.
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Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, your father and your brothers have come to you.
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The land of Egypt is before you.
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So settle your father and brothers in the best of the land.
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Let them settle in the land of Goshen, and if you know any able men among them, put them in charge of my livestock.
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So the text tells us, here beginning in chapter 47, that five of the brothers accompanied Joseph to go and meet Pharaoh.
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The text does not tell us why there are five.
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However, all of the commentators like to find creative reasons as to why there were five.
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And if you've never read Bible commentaries, they're very useful, and obviously they're the tools of the trade when you are studying the Bible.
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But at the same time, they can be wrong.
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Bible commentaries are not the Bible.
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And oftentimes Bible commentaries will come up with really creative reasons for things.
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Like one guy said, five is the number of grace.
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So this was a picture of Joseph being gracious to his brothers.
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I'm like, where did he get that? Another guy said, five was a very special number among the Egyptians.
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And so five represented to the Egyptians something important.
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And you'll remember if you notice, like when Benjamin sat with his brothers, he got five times the portion of the brothers.
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And so five had particularly significance among the Egyptians.
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Is that true? Possibly.
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I love, there was one rabbi, one Old Testament Jewish rabbi who said this.
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He said, Joseph took the five ugliest because he didn't want them to be intimidated by this family that was moving in.
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And I said, now that's pretty creative.
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Wrong, but probably very creative.
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One thing we can feel some confidence in is it's likely that Judah is among these five.
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And I say that based on the fact that at this point, Judah has taken a position of preeminence among his brothers.
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You'll remember it was Judah who actually confessed the sin before Joseph.
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It was Judah who had offered himself as a sacrifice for his brother Benjamin.
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And it was Judah who was taking the lead as the people of Israel came from Canaan into the land of Egypt.
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We read that last week.
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Judah took the lead in bringing them back to Egypt.
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So it's very likely that among these five, Judah is there.
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They all come to present themselves before Pharaoh.
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And Pharaoh is shown in this text to be a very magnanimous person.
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He is a very gracious host saying, yes, of course, we're going to give them the very best.
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Now why is he so magnanimous? Why is he so gracious? Because he loves Joseph.
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Remember what Joseph has done for him.
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Joseph has saved his life.
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Not only the life of his people, but the life of himself.
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He has saved them from starvation.
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He has saved them from national calamity.
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Joseph is a hero, second only to him.
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And so he sees the family of the hero and he says, yes, give them all the best of the land.
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And he even offers them government jobs.
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Notice the last thing he says, and hey man, if any of them are good at what they do, put them in charge of my livestock.
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That's a government job.
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You get a pension and everything.
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Yeah, but maybe all the government workers in here are groaning, sorry.
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When we get to verse seven though, things change a little bit.
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Because at verse seven, Israel, remember who is Jacob, also now called Israel, Israel is introduced to Pharaoh.
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He's brought in separately from the brothers and he has an audience with Pharaoh.
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And it doesn't say that it's just the two of them.
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And I doubt that it was just the two of them.
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I imagine the entourage was still there.
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But it's just the two of them speaking.
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And we get a glimpse into this very intimate moment between the man who is the king of the world and the man who is the patriarch of God.
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And we get this glimpse into that meeting.
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Beginning of verse seven, it says, then Joseph brought in Jacob, his father, and stood him before Pharaoh.
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Remember, he's 130 years old at this point, so he maybe had to help him a little.
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And Jacob blessed Pharaoh.
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That's hugely important.
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I want to read on, but I'm going to come back to that because Jacob blessing Pharaoh is actually a reversal of what we would expect.
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Because the Bible tells us the greater blesses the lesser.
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Bible says that in the book of Hebrews.
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It says the greater blesses the lesser.
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But Jacob, because he represents God, is in this sense greater even than the greatest king in all the world.
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And therefore, he blesses Pharaoh.
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And it goes on in verse eight, and it says, And Pharaoh said to Jacob, How many are the days and years of your life? And Jacob said to Pharaoh, The days of the years of my sojourning are 130 years.
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And then he says this phrase, and it's a little different in different translations.
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In the ESV, it says, Few and evil have been the days.
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I think it's that same in the King James.
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But there's some other translation that say, Few and difficult have been the days and the years of my life.
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And they have not attained to the days and years in the life of my fathers in the days of their sojourning.
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And Jacob blessed Pharaoh and went out from the presence of Pharaoh.
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Then Joseph settled his father and his brothers and gave them a possession in the land of Egypt and the best of land.
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Before I get to that, let me just go back to this conversation between Jacob and Pharaoh.
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So Jacob comes in, Israel, the patriarch of God.
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He offers a blessing to the Pharaoh, which again is an inversion of positions.
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In fact, John Gill says a lot about this in his commentary on this text.
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John Gill actually references a Targum, which is an ancient Jewish writing.
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And he actually says there's an account of the blessing.
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And this was the blessing that's written in the Targum of Jonathan, which gives us the prayer.
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And this was the words according to that Targum.
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It was, quote, May it pleasure God that the waters of the Nile may be full and that the famine may be removed from the world in thy days.
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So the idea was he came in and he blessed him with a word from God.
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May it be that the Nile be full and may it be that this famine end before your reign ends.
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And we know that's going to happen because it's only going to last a little while longer.
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So Jacob is before Pharaoh.
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Israel is before Pharaoh.
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And Pharaoh says, How old are you? And if you think about that, it's a very interesting question, first thing.
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And it seems like there's an intimacy here, an opportunity for two men, two men of stature, two men of prominence, two men that in their in their recommend or in their relative positions are men of authority.
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And they're speaking to one another.
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And the king says to the patriarch, How old are you? He says, I'm one hundred and thirty years.
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And few and evil have been those years.
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I thought about that a lot this week as I was rolling around this text in my head.
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And I was thinking, what does he mean by that? Well, we know what he means by few, because he's comparing that to Abraham and to Isaac.
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Abraham had lived one hundred and seventy five years.
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Isaac had lived one hundred and eighty years.
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But here he is at one hundred and thirty, and he thinks he's about to die.
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He's going to live seventeen more years, but he he feels like this is the end.
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When he saw Joseph and he kissed Joseph, he says, Now I can die and die a happy man.
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So he feels like this is the end of his life.
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And he says, Compared to my ancestors, compared to Abraham, compared to Isaac, I have I mean, my years are few.
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But also my years have been evil.
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What does he mean by that? I want you just for a moment, those of you who have been here throughout this study, think about how difficult were the years of Jacob compared to the years of his father.
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Isaac's life isn't really given a whole lot.
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I mean, there was a time his dad tried to, you know, kill him.
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But that was that was that was tough.
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But other than that, his life relatively was a life of blessing.
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But then along comes Jacob, his his first period of his life, his absolute battle against his brother.
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And there's that sibling rivalry.
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Then he has to escape the murderous hand of his brother.
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And he goes to his father in law, Laban, who mistreats him, gives him the wrong woman as a wife, has to work 14 years just to get the woman that he wants.
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Then come to find out she can't have children.
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So he gets two other women.
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He has children through all these women.
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She finally is able to give him children.
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And then she dies.
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The wife of his love, the wife he worked for 14 years, the one he loved so much, she dies.
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Then he's he had two sons through her.
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And one of them goes off one day to tell the brothers what they're supposed to do.
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And they bring back a bloody coat.
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Few and evil have been my days.
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I've done nothing but fight and grieve for 130 years.
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So this is an intimate moment.
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This is an intimate moment between two men of stature.
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And then we get again down to verse 11.
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It says, Joseph settled his father and his brothers and gave them possession in the land, in the land, the best of the land, in the land of Ramses.
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Now, very quickly, I don't want to get into the textual variant here.
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Some of the texts say the land of Goshen.
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Some say the text of Ramses.
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So your translation may be different there.
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And it's a difference between the Septuagint and the Masoretic text.
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And so just understand, if your translation says Goshen, there's a textual variant here.
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Ramses is actually probably not the name of the land at the time.
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Because Ramses was the name of a later king, the king that we likely believe was the king during the time of the Exodus.
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And so what it may be is that Moses is calling this the land of Ramses because that's what it would later be called.
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But it was called Goshen during the time of Joseph.
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So remember, we are reading what Moses wrote.
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So when he calls it the land of Ramses, he's writing it in his day like, for instance, Jacksonville used to be called Calford.
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Did you know that? That the original name of Jacksonville was Calford.
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Now, only a few of you knew that.
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But if you were to pick up a newspaper from that time and you said, oh, this is Calford, if you were to tell somebody about it, they wouldn't understand it was different.
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Well, it's likely that Goshen is the name and then Ramses is the name later.
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And so Moses is writing from his perspective and saying the land of Ramses.
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So just to be clear, I don't want to go too much into textual variation.
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There's another one later, but I thought just in case your text read differently.
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So we see Joseph managing his family's needs.
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He manages his brother's before Pharaoh.
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He manages the opportunity to get the audience before Pharaoh, getting them into the land.
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Joseph is being faithful to his family.
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And now, beginning in verse 13, it's like a new chapter begins.
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Because beginning in verse 13, between verses 13 and 23, it deals with how Joseph deals with the people of Egypt.
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And I want to tell you something about this part of the text.
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Before I studied it, when I just read it, it bothered me.
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Because between verses 13 and 26, it was like reading...
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And I don't want to offend anybody by saying it.
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It was like reading a tax plan that would make progressives drool.
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It really was.
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Because first, he takes all their money, and then they're still hungry.
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So he takes all their cattle, and they're still hungry.
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And he takes all their land, and they're still hungry.
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And he makes them slaves.
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Now, to Western ears, that sounds awful.
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Anybody here who holds the Bible in one hand and the Constitution in the other, which you shouldn't do, but I'm just saying to people who do, get very upset when they read this section.
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Because they say, how dare Joseph make slaves of these people? Let's read it.
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Let's just read the text.
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Now that I got you thinking about it, I want you to read it with me.
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It says, now there was no food in all the land, for the famine was very severe.
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So that in the land of Egypt and the land of Canaan, languished for reason of the famine.
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And Joseph gathered up all the money that was found in the land of Egypt and the land of Canaan in exchange for the grain that they bought.
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And Joseph brought the money into Pharaoh's house.
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And when the money was spent in the land of Egypt and the land of Canaan, all the Egyptians came to Joseph and said, give us food.
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Why should we die before your eyes? For our money is gone.
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So they brought their livestock to Joseph.
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And Joseph gave them food in exchange for the horses, flocks, herds, and donkeys.
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He supplied them with food in exchange for all the livestock.
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And when that year was ended, they came to him the following year and said, we will not hide from my lord that our money is all spent.
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The herds of livestock are my lord's.
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There is nothing left in the sight of my lord but our bodies and our land.
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Why should we die before your eyes, both we and our land, by us and our land for food? And we and our land will be servants to Pharaoh and give a seed that we may live and not die and that the land may not be desolate.
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So Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh.
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And all the Egyptians sold their field because the famine was severe on them.
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The land became Pharaoh's.
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As for the people, he made servants of them from one end of Egypt to the other.
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Only the land of the priests he did not buy for the priests had a fixed allowance from Pharaoh and lived on that allowance that Pharaoh gave them.
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Therefore, they did not sell their land.
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So here's what we have going on.
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Our Western ears only hear this.
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Hungry people got made slaves.
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That's wrong.
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That's all we tend to hear.
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And like I said, it was Brian Borgman actually who said it.
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He said, that's a tax plan that would make progressives drool.
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But what we need to understand is that to read this in our modern context is to do a disservice to this situation and to the text itself.
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We need to make sure that we read this through the eyes of the original author and through the eyes of the original people rather than trying to read in our 4,000 year removed situation that we are in in a much different culture and a much different place.
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Understand this.
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There is no such thing as a safety net for these people.
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There's no salvation army.
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There's no Red Cross.
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There's nothing.
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There's starvation and death.
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And so they come to the only guy who was wise enough to store food.
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You understand this? He's the only one that has taken the initiative under the plan of Almighty God to store enough food for all of these people.
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And he goes to them.
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Now, the progressive side of us says, hey, what a great tax plan.
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But you know why we say that? Because we think he should give it to them for free.
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Because we think the government should tax us to death and give us everything for free.
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But sometimes we're more liberal than we think.
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But actually, what he does is the right thing.
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He doesn't give it to them, he sells it to them.
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Because there's no such thing as a free lunch.
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All of this has been stored by people who have worked under the hand of Joseph.
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All of this has been stored under the authority of Pharaoh for seven years.
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This is a valuable commodity that now exists in only one place and under the authority of one man.
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And the people come to him and he says, yes, you may buy it.
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So they give him the money.
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Then they run out of money.
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What do you have? Cattle.
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Give me that.
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I'll give you food.
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What do you have left? And it's so funny, because at the end it's like, we don't have anything left.
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All we have is ourselves.
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Well, you now get to become serfs.
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And again, as Westerners, we hate that.
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But I want you to see what the text says.
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We didn't read it yet.
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I want you to notice what the text says.
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In verse 23.
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Then Joseph said to the people, Behold, I have this day bought you and your land for Pharaoh.
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Now here is seed for you, and you shall sow the land.
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And at the harvest you shall give a fifth to Pharaoh, and four fifths shall be your own as seed for the field, and as food for yourselves and for your households, and as food for your little ones.
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And they said, you have saved our lives.
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They didn't look at him as a despot.
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They didn't look at him as somebody who robbed them.
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They looked at him as a savior.
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Because Joseph had provided them a way to live.
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The only other option was starvation and death.
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But he gives them a way to live.
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And guess what? He gives them seeds for the future.
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And he gives them a reasonable tax plan.
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A flat tax of 20%.
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And all God's people said amen.
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I don't mean to get all political, but you understand.
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He's giving them a reasonable tax.
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And in fact, according to the day, this was actually a very low taxation plan.
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Because according to some of the writings from this period in time, some of the taxation was 30%, some was even 50%, up to even 60%.
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He gave them a tax plan of 20%.
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And even though they own the land, he said it's your land.
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Notice that in the text.
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He says you get to plant on your land.
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Even though it's owned by Pharaoh, you get to plant, you get to grow, and you get to keep surviving.
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And what you're going to give Pharaoh in exchange for that is 20%.
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And they said you are a savior.
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Not a despot, but a savior.
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Now it's hard for us to understand that.
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It's hard for us to wrap our minds around how that worked.
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But these people saw him, not as one who robbed them, but as one who saved them.
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They saw him as a faithful steward.
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Alright.
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Now we're going to finish the chapter by going to verse 27.
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It says in verse 27 that Joseph has an interaction with his father.
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It says, Thus Israel settled in the land of Egypt, and the land of Goshen, and they gained possessions in it, and were fruitful and multiplied greatly.
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And Jacob lived in the land of Egypt 17 years.
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So the days of Jacob, the years of his life, were 147 years.
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Remember what I said last week? Wonderful symmetry there.
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God is a God of symmetry.
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Jacob got to spend the first 17 years of Joseph's life with him.
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He was 17 when he was sold into slavery.
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Now Joseph gets to spend the last 17 years of his father's life with him in Egypt.
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So he got the first 17 years.
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He had 20 years where he was in slavery.
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And now he is, well, not 20 years in slavery, 20 years in Egypt.
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And now he gets 17 years with his father at the end.
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Wonderful symmetry there.
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Verse 29.
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And when the time drew near that Israel must die, he called his son Joseph and said to him, If now I have found favor in your sight, put your hand under my thigh.
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Which you may remember back during the time of Abraham, this was a customary thing.
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Abraham told his servant to put his hand under his thigh when he was going to get a wife for Isaac.
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It was a way of taking a vow.
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It was a way of making a promise.
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And he said, Come and put your hand under my thigh and promise to deal kindly and truly with me.
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Do not bury me in Egypt, but let me lie with my fathers, carry me out of Egypt, bury me in their burying place.
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And Joseph answered, I will do as you have said.
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And he, that is Israel, said, Swear to me.
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And he swore to him.
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Then Israel bowed himself upon the head of his bed.
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I said earlier there's another textual variant.
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There's another textual variant there.
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Some of you say the head of his staff.
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Some say the head of his bed.
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It doesn't really matter because it's a position of worship.
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He has received the promise of his son.
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He has received the vow.
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And he is worshiping God on the head of his bed.
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What's interesting about this is this is the end of Jacob's life.
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But it's not the end of his story because we have two more chapters of Jacob to go.
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Next week we're going to look at his blessing on Ephraim and Manasseh.
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That's a whole chapter.
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And then we're going to look at his prophecies over the twelve sons in which he talks about that prophecy of Judah being the lion and the scepter not leaving his house.
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There's still two whole chapters of Jacob left to go.
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But this is bringing his life to a close.
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This is bringing everything to an end.
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And what's happening here is he's asking Jacob I'm sorry he's asking Joseph to be faithful in one last request.
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And that last request is son don't let me be buried here.
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I want to say something.
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A lot of people ask me questions about funerals and burials because I do a lot of ministry with funeral homes.
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I've done it for years.
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I grew up working in a funeral home so I understand how to help people.
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And often times I hear people say this.
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I don't care it doesn't matter just do whatever you want to do.
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And I understand from one sense where people will say that because the idea is I don't care what happens just throw me in a box bury me whatever.
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I'm going to go be with Jesus.
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I get it.
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But understand that was not the attitude of our ancestors.
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That was not the attitude of Israel.
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Don't you leave my body here.
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But you take my body back to the promised land because that is our land.
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God told me that that was the land of our people not this land.
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So even though where we bury people and how we do that isn't going to change the condition of their soul doesn't mean it doesn't matter.
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And Joseph or rather Jacob was stating something about his faith in the promise of God.
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I believe in the promise of God.
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Therefore don't bury me here.
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Bury me with my ancestors.
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And we're going to see that in chapter 50 when they do take him to the cave of Machpelah which is where Abraham and Sarah and his other ancestors are buried.
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We began today by talking about Jacob as a steward.
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No we didn't.
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Joseph.
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In each step of today's text we have seen the faithfulness of Joseph on display.
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He's faithful to his family.
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He ensures their good audience with Pharaoh.
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He's faithful to Egypt.
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He provides them with food during the famine.
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And he's faithful to his father providing him with a promise wherein he could die in peace.
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And I want to say something.
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I didn't plan anything for Father's Day.
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We didn't do a Father's Day message.
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I rarely do a Hallmark Liturgy.
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But I am glad that we did this text today.
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Because Joseph is providing us a wonderful example of stewardship here.
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And brothers, men, fathers specifically, we can learn from this.
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A man of God has been made a steward of his family.
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And fathers, you are called to be the stewards of your home.
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The managers.
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The faithful steward of your home.
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You're called to be faithful in providing for your family.
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You're called to be faithful in your employment.
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To be a good worker.
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A faithful worker.
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You're called to be faithful in your marriage.
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One of my friends who's a pastor, Adam from Amelia Baptist, he said, brothers, please don't beat the husbands up tomorrow.
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He said, because almost every Father's Day, pastors will beat the fathers up and tell them how they need to be better.
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And I know that happens sometimes.
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So I want you to take this next word as not a word of striking, but a word of encouragement.
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Brothers, we are called to be faithful.
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First and foremost in our homes.
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Joseph is the example, but Christ is the greater example.
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What is Joseph? What have we learned so far about Joseph? He's a picture of who? Of Jesus.
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From the beginning to the end, Joseph is a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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And as much as we have learned about faithful stewardship from Joseph, there is someone even greater that we must look to when we consider the subject of faithfulness.
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See, Joseph loved and manifested his love through his stewardship.
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But Christ loves even greater and manifests his love to us in his stewardship of our lives.
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The Bible says that Christ came into this world as a servant.
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Remember what he said to his disciples? I didn't come into this world as one who serves, or rather to be served, but as one who serves.
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Christ came into this world as a servant.
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Brothers, if you want an example, if you're wondering today, what is it that I need to do as a father? What is it that I need to do as a husband? What is the example that the Bible has given to me? Well, we have men like Joseph that give us great examples.
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He met his family's need.
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He met his nation's need.
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He met his father's need.
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But we have a greater example in Jesus Christ who meets all of our needs.
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And you say, but I fail.
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That's right.
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We do fail.
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And that's where the faithfulness of Christ becomes even that much more sweet.
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Because in our failures, we have a steward who can't fail.
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I agree with Adam, my friend, when he said, don't beat the fathers up.
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There's a lot of times where we beat ourselves up.
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Instead of beating anyone up today, let me just say this.
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If you're struggling, run to Christ.
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If you're struggling with sin, take those sins to the foot of the cross and find there not only forgiveness, but the power to overcome those sins.
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The Bible says if we repent of our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us and do what? And cleanse us of all unrighteousness.
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If that's the struggle, take it to the cross.
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If you're struggling with fear that you're going to be able to provide for your family, take that to the cross.
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The Bible says that we are not to worry about tomorrow because tomorrow will have its own worries and sufficient for the day are its own worries and that whatever it is we're worried about.
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Are we going to have enough money next year? Are we going to have enough food next year? Am I going to be able to pay the house payment? Am I going to be able to pay the car payment? All of these things.
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Where are we failing to trust Christ? That doesn't mean that we don't stock our shelves.
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That doesn't mean we don't put away for a rainy day.
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I'm not saying any of that, but we do need to learn that being a faithful steward in a home first and foremost comes from being one who trusts Christ with everything.
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You understand your heart doesn't even beat in your chest outside of the command of Almighty God.
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We think we're in control of so much, especially men.
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Men love to think we're in control and not one of us is guaranteed we're going to be here tomorrow.
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Not one of us has the promise of another breath, but what we can do is place our faith in the faithful steward who is Jesus Christ who will not leave us in shame, but he will be with us no matter what.
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Brothers, I'm thankful to serve in a church with so many good fathers.
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I'm thankful to see men who love their children who come and sit next to their wives and worship.
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I'm thankful for that.
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I'm thankful for the example of stewardship and when you find yourself wanting to beat yourself up for your failure, take those failures to the cross and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.
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Ask him to give you the strength to move forward, to press on in this most holy faith.
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Do not succumb to failure, but trust in the Lord in whom if we are faithful we cannot help but be successful.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for the opportunity to talk about your word and Lord we looked at so much text today.
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I know probably much of it has been so it was like drinking from a fire hydrant.
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There was so much to take in but Lord those things that we need to hear, those things that are so desperate and important that we hear, I pray that we would not forget when we leave this place.
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Lord, I thank you for giving us examples of men like Joseph who were good stewards, but Lord we're thankful even more, even greater for the great steward the Lord Jesus Christ who came into this world, lived a perfect life, died a substitutionary death, gave himself for those who will believe and today I pray Lord for the believers, I pray that they would trust in him and for those who do not yet believe, I pray Lord that they would understand that there is no salvation in any other for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved than the Lord Jesus Christ and it's in his name we pray.
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Amen.