Sunday Night, March 8, 2020 PM

Jacob's sons. We just finished looking at the moment where Joseph has arranged matters for his brothers to come to grips with what they had done to him and the very one who had engineered selling

Joseph to the Egyptians, Judah, is himself the one now offering his own person in place of Benjamin so that Benjamin will not have the same outcome as Joseph.

So there has been a clear 180 degree turn in Judah's life.

We can see that. It is evident Judah's concern is not only for Benjamin but also for his father.

The very things that they had no concern for in the previous situation, 22 years prior, they had no concern for Joseph and no concern for their father's heart, but now we see the vast difference in their life and Judah has concluded the longest speech in the book of Genesis.

So before we start looking at the next section, let me pray for us.

Father, I thank you for tonight. I thank you for those who are here, and I thank you for the clarity, the power of your

Word. We thank you that you have breathed it out, that you have given it to us by holy men moved by the

Holy Spirit, that these words testify of your Son Jesus Christ in whom is all our hope.

So we pray that you would give us understanding of your Word, that you would shape us in accordance with your will.

We pray these things for Christ's sake. Amen. Genesis chapter 45.

We are reminded in this chapter of the goodness of God, we are reminded that despite what

Joseph's brothers had done, despite the situation that they were in, even with the famine wasting the lands away around them, despite all these things, in this chapter we are reminded,

Joseph reminds us of the goodness of God. This is something that is important for us to remember.

The story begins this way. Then Joseph could not control himself before all those who stood by him.

And he cried, have everyone go out for me. So there was no man with him when

Joseph made himself known to his brothers. He wept so loudly that the

Egyptians heard it, and the household of Pharaoh heard of it. Then Joseph said to his brothers,

I am Joseph. Is my father still alive? But his brothers could not answer him, for they were dismayed at his presence.

So we think about Joseph's revelation. How long had he desired to do this from the moment that he saw his brothers having come down to Egypt to buy grain?

How long he desired to make himself known to them?

But he wanted more than simply revelation as we've talked about. He wanted reconciliation. He wanted more than just saying,

I am Joseph. Who knows how they would have responded? Who knows how they would have processed that information?

As it stands, they are speechless, and who wouldn't be? But at this moment,

Joseph has led them to the point in time which his revelation would be most advantageous for them, the greatest blessing for them.

He is clearly just a man. He is unable to contain himself.

He is no myth. He is a genuine human being. He could not control himself any longer.

He had something to say, but before he could say it, he just wept.

He had all the Egyptians leave. This was a private moment. He wanted to talk to his brothers, and even though the servants left, they of course could hear him clearly, and word was sent to Pharaoh about the great distress that the

Prime Minister was under. I mean, this is the guy that so much in Egypt was depending on.

He was...so much of the the pressures of the Empire were squarely upon the shoulders of Joseph, as he had been put in charge of the survival of all the citizens of Egypt, and those who were coming from afar.

And so, if something was wrong with him, something was of great danger for the

Empire. And so Joseph's strange behavior, and having everyone leave, and his weeping and wailing behind these closed doors, was of interest to everybody in charge, including

Pharaoh. And so they sent word to Pharaoh of this. And Joseph reveals himself to his brothers,

I am Joseph, which it would be...it's

hard for any of us to even begin to fathom the stunning force of this revelation, the

Joseph that they had believed was dead. In fact, they had told that to their father, and actually just showed him a bloody cloak that they had engineered, and let him make that decision.

But it was easier for them, I think, to have lived these couple of decades thinking that indeed he had died somewhere on the way to Egypt, or down in Egypt, and better to think of him as dead than as something worse, in a living hell.

And so when he says that he's alive, and you can imagine that as he had been talking with them through a translator this entire time, he has told all of the servants to leave.

It's just him and his brothers. So he returns to his native tongue here, and the man that they understood as the great prince of Egypt is now speaking their language, and it's

Joseph himself. And no wonder they could not answer him. It says they were dismayed at his presence.

Oh, a wonderful understatement. Their whole world just implodes here in this moment.

Joseph knew his brothers before they knew him.

Joseph knew Benjamin when he first saw him. He knew Judah, and Reuben, and Simeon, and Levi when he first saw them.

But on their part, the brothers did not know him. He was someone of great power, someone of great importance, but he remained a mystery to them.

Yet he knew exactly who they were, and at the moment for their great good, he reveals himself to them.

And in this, I think we are reminded of the grace of God and the way that God deals with us.

It is a strange and sad thing due to sin that those of us who are creatures would not know our

Creator, that those of us who have been made in God's image would not know our

Master Jesus Christ. The Bible says in Isaiah 1 3, an ox knows its owner, and a donkey its master's manger, but Israel does not know, my people do not understand.

Why would that be? The people that God called up out of Egypt, the people that God covenanted with at Sinai, the

God who revealed himself to these people by miracles on a daily basis, the pillar of cloud by the day and the pillar of fire by night, and how he revealed himself to them and was faithful to them in every generation, giving them his word, and yet they would not know him.

Why would that be? It would have to be because of sin. When Jesus, the Son of God, appeared on earth that first Christmas, the same was true.

John 1 10 through 11, he was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world did not know him.

He came to his own, and those who were his own did not receive him.

But God knows who we are. God knows who we are before we know who he is.

He knows us before we are born, before we are even made. He knows exactly who we are.

And it is a reminder of God's grace, I think, in this situation.

God reveals himself to us at the time for our good. And he says, now they are just made in his presence, they may be wondering what he's going to do next.

Once they get past the staggering difficulty of believing that this is, in fact,

Joseph, who else could it be after he has put them in birth order and showed such favoritism to Benjamin, and is speaking to them in their own language now, and everything else, it all suddenly horrifyingly fits.

But now what is he going to do with his position of power and authority, and they're just made in his presence? But see how he says this critical word.

Verse 4, then Joseph said to his brothers, please come closer to me.

And they came closer. And he said, I am your brother Joseph whom you sold into Egypt.

You know, it would make perfect sense if this was in the reverse.

Depart from me. Go away from me. I am your brother

Joseph whom you sold to Egypt. Wouldn't that make sense? Wouldn't that fit?

But here he is saying, I'm the one you betrayed. I am the one that you had plotted to murder.

I am the one who threw into the dried -up well and wouldn't listen to my crying for help.

I'm the one you plotted about and sold for 20 pieces of silver so that you could have two shekels of silver each.

I'm the one you forgot about and told father that I was dead. I'm the one you sold down to Egypt.

But he says, come near. Come close to me. So we can see

Joseph's love for them. It's a stunning thing to call them to himself.

So Joseph knew his brothers and he loved them even though they didn't know who he was. All this time he had known who they were and he had loved them.

And we see how he loved them because he had arranged things for them to come to grips with their own sins so that they would be able to be reconciled.

And they couldn't love him because they didn't know who he was. They could hardly love a person they had hated 22 years earlier and had sold into slavery and supposed to be dead.

They couldn't love him at all, but he loved them. He was acting toward them in love before they ever knew it.

This weeping that we read about is testament to that. Now we see what a great love

Joseph had for his brothers, but what is that compared to the love that God has shown to us in Christ?

As marvelous as it is to read this story and the way in which

Joseph engineered matters for the good of his brothers when he could have easily engineered revenge at a very elaborate level, yet he engineers at an elaborate level something for their good and stays with them and is patient and long -suffering through their faltering and through the process.

It took him so long to come back down to Egypt. We see that love, but that is nothing in compared to the love that God has shown us in Christ.

Romans chapter 5 verse 6, for while we were still helpless at the right time,

Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man, though perhaps for the good man someone would even dare to die.

But God demonstrates his own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners,

Christ died for us. That word sinners, we just read a...

we just heard a passage read by James and 1st Samuel about how the sinners, the

Amalekites, were slated for judgment. Every last one of them was to be killed, and even the one that had been left alive,

Agag, was hacked to pieces before the Lord by Samuel. This is the fate of sinners, but what do we see here?

God demonstrates his own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Christ died for us.

Much more than having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him.

Whatever punishment Joseph's brothers would have faced at Joseph's own engineering, the worst that Egypt could have could have offered in terms of dungeons and tortures and execution has nothing in comparison to the severity of the judgment of God.

Verse 10, for if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of the

Son, much more having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.

So anytime we see an exquisite expression of love in the scriptures, it's just helpful to remember that that's the lesser to the greater love that God has shown to us in Christ.

And notice how Joseph properly places what has occurred into God's sovereign context.

He does not allow them to think that, to interpret the situation in any other way other than the sovereignty of God.

So verse 5, now he says to them, do not be grieved or angry with yourselves because you sold me here.

For God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine that has been in the land these two years, and there are still five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvesting,

God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant in the earth, and to keep you alive by a great deliverance.

Now therefore it was not you who sent me here, but God. And he has made me a father to Pharaoh, and Lord of all his household, and a ruler over all the land of Egypt.

Hurry and go up to my father, and say to him, thus says your son

Joseph, God has made me Lord of all Egypt. Come down to me and do not delay. So we hear the way in which

Joseph has come to grips with what happened. It was God, it was

God, it was God, it was God. Yes, of course, his brothers are responsible for what they did.

Yes, of course, they sinned, and they did so freely. They freely conspired against Joseph and did him great evil, and yet Joseph, as he calls them to come to him, on what basis should they expect anything good from Joseph?

Joseph is saying, the reason why you should come to me, come near to me, the reason why we should be on good terms is we should recognize how

God has worked all of this for good. I mean, you did these things, but it really wasn't you.

I mean, God had the greater hand in the matter. Do not be angry and beat yourselves up.

What was the first thing that they would have done? Part of the overwhelming sense of realizing this was Joseph would be a sense of horrendous guilt, horrendous shame.

Of course, they would immediately begin internally punishing themselves and berating themselves for what they had done, and Joseph doesn't want that to be their interpretation of the facts.

He said, you sold me here for God sent me before you to preserve life.

There is an... there's a confluence of God accomplishing good through evil that we cannot fully unravel, and we're not allowed to fully unravel it.

In fact, there are places in the Bible where people come up against that, and God says, okay, no further, right?

And the point of it is is that God is the one who planned it, he's the one who shepherded it, otherwise it would not have happened.

While the brothers are morally responsible for their evil against Joseph, and that is what

Joseph helped them see through his testing of them, yet at the same time, God, as all -powerful and all -good, gets the credit for all of the historical benefits which arose out of the situation.

It was his plan to preserve the infant nation of Israel and her remnant with a great deliverance from a monster famine.

This is how he ordained it. So this is a remarkable passage in which we are taught that the right course of events is never so disturbed by the depravity and wickedness of men, but that God can direct them to a good end.

God sent me before you, God sent me before you. It was not you who sent me here, but God, and God has made me ruler over all the land of Egypt.

A recognition of the sovereignty of God. So in this, as Israel is listening to the

Word of God written by Moses and read to them by the Levites, they are instructed that God can use evil human deeds to accomplish salvation, which is essential for us to understand when we come to the gospel itself, the historical gospel.

Jesus said in Luke 22 22, for indeed the Son of Man is going as it has been determined.

It was determined that the man would have to suffer and die, be betrayed, suffer and die, but woe to that man by whom he is betrayed.

So the one who betrayed him, Judas Iscariot, bore full responsibility, and yet that was predetermined in the way in which

Jesus would be betrayed. Peter was preaching at Pentecost in Acts 2 36, and he said, therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made him both

Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified. God was at work as evil was at work, but God does not do evil, but he uses evil to bring about good.

And if he can't, then his sovereignty is worthless. But of course he can, and he has done that over and over, and the gospel, the person and work of Jesus Christ is the supreme example.

There was no greater evil than to hate, beat, slander, and kill Jesus Christ. No greater evil than the murder of God the

Son. But what they meant for evil, God meant for good.

And this is what Joseph tells his brothers.

How are they going to find any kind of subtleness in their own soul about what happened?

Well, they have to recognize that, yes, they are responsible for what they did, but they're not inconsolable.

Look how God turns the worst things that they have done into something that actually turns out for the good.

And what are they left with but to give praise to God in their newfound humility?

Well, he tells them to go tell his father. He says, hurry up and go to my father and say to him, thus says your son Joseph, God has made me

Lord of all Egypt. Come down to me, do not delay. You shall live in the land of Goshen, and you shall be near me, you and your children, and your children's children, and your flocks, and your herds, and all that you have.

There I will also provide for you, for there are still five years of famine to come, and you and your household and all that you have would be impoverished.

Behold, your eyes see, and the eyes of my brother Benjamin see, that it is my mouth which is speaking to you.

And you must tell my father of all my splendor in Egypt and all that you have seen, and you must hurry and bring my father down here.

And he fell on his brother Benjamin's neck and wept, and Benjamin wept on his neck. He kissed all his brothers and wept on them, and afterward his brothers talked with him."

What a beautiful scene. They're living in land of Canaan.

The famine is growing worse, and worse prospects of their survival are becoming grim, but they encounter their elder brother

Joseph, who has all the glory of Egypt at his disposal, and he gives them the land of Goshen in which to live, and assures them that all their needs will be taken care of, and welcomes them to his realm.

What a beautiful scene of grace at this moment.

The land of Goshen, which Joseph offers to his father, is the land on the eastern side of the Nile Delta, near the coast of the

Mediterranean, to the west of the Sinai Desert. That's where the Israelites would live for 400 years, and from that place they would leave.

They would take an exodus to their promised land. And he tells them to go, and they go with the king's favor.

Verse 16. Now when the news was heard in Pharaoh's house that Joseph's brothers had come, it pleased Pharaoh and his servants.

Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, say to your brothers, do this, load your beasts and go to the land of Canaan, and take your father and your households and come to me.

I will give you the best of the land of Egypt, and you will eat the fat of the land. Now you are ordered, do this, take wagons from the land of Egypt for your little ones, and for your wives, and bring your father and come.

Do not concern yourselves with your goods, for all the best of the land of Egypt is yours. Now at this point some

Israelites are chuckling. Do you know why? Because when they left

Egypt, all the best of the Egypt was theirs. They came on Egypt's dime, and they left on Egypt's dime.

That's the kind of God that they served. Egypt paid for their move down there, and Egypt paid for their move out.

That's worth chuckling at. Verse 21. Then the sons of Israel did so, and Joseph gave them wagons according to the command of Pharaoh, and gave them provisions for the journey.

To each of them he gave changes of garment, but to Benjamin he gave three hundred pieces of silver and five changes of garments.

To his father he sent as follows. Ten donkeys loaded with the best things of Egypt, and ten female donkeys loaded with grain and bread and sustenance for his father on the journey.

Remember that little gift that Jacob sent down to the prince of Egypt? A little aromatic gum, a little bit of honey, some dates, and some nuts, and then this gets sent back.

Oh, it is...when we see God at work, we can see that our little acts of faith, in the midst of tragedy and confusion and everything else,

God turns around into massive amounts of blessing that we can't give an account for.

We just can't give an account for it, and this reminds us of the goodness, the goodness of God.

His goodness is proven in how he regularly takes up the things of men that are evil, and turns it for good, and regularly takes up our weaknesses and our limitations, and turns it for good.

So, we'll pick up things later on. I want to spend a little bit of time on the encounter of Joseph and Jacob and their journey to Egypt.