House Rules for God's Family Genesis 45:9-28

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It is common for families to have certain rules.
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These rules are put in place by the parents to establish order and morality in the household.
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And in a Christian household, godly behavior. The average household might have a rule that you can't leave the dinner table unless you are excused.
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Or you need to be in bed by a certain time. Or you have to read at certain times instead of watching television.
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And Christian households should be places where holy patterns are put in place.
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You pray together, read the Bible, and sing music together that is glorifying to God.
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These structures are put in place in homes. And we call them house rules.
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Or holy patterns for life. To help train a child in a way he or she should go.
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As Proverbs 22 .6 says. Now church is a home. Do you think of church as a home?
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As a family? Scripture calls us a family. It's funny, when
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I came in today, Elvin and Susan saw a picture of me in the paper.
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They were so excited to show me. I'm thinking, this is something that my parents would have done when I was younger. So it made me think of the family environment we have here.
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The Apostle John wrote, see what kind of love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God.
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1 John 3 .1 We are God's children and He is our Father. So everyone who has a relationship with Christ is a part of a tight -knit community.
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And that community is known as the church. As you might expect, this family has house rules.
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Just like any family. The Lord has told us in His Word how we should treat one another as members of the same family.
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The Apostle Paul gave a fellow pastor whom he was mentoring, Timothy, instructions for the church.
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And I read this earlier in the call to worship. He says, how one ought to behave in the household of God.
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And these are instructions Paul gave to Timothy and these are instructions throughout the New Testament of how people are to treat one another as a family in the household of God.
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Now this morning in Genesis 45, we are going to see house rules laid out for God's people.
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And the people specifically, we are going to see here today is Israel, the offspring of Abraham.
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Joseph will show us through example and instruction about how his brothers were to treat one another.
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And what we will see is the author Moses, who wrote this probably some 500 years after Joseph and his brothers, what we're gonna see is that he includes this instruction so that God's people would live this out.
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But not only them, but we also, as everything in the Old Testament has been written for our instruction.
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So I encourage you to turn in me with a Bible to Genesis 45. We're gonna be looking at verses nine through 28.
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Last Sunday, we looked at verses one through eight. If you're using a red Bible in the pews, it's on page 46.
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This sermon is titled House Rules for God's Family. And our big idea, our proposition is this.
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As Joseph sends his brothers to retrieve their father, we learn how to behave in the household of God.
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And we're gonna see two behaviors the Lord expects you to follow. The first behavior that you'll see in your bulletins is to show generous hospitality to one another.
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And we'll look at this in verses nine through 23. But as we always do, I'm gonna give you a little recap of last week's sermon.
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We looked at the first eight verses. And what we saw is Joseph finally revealed his identity to his brothers.
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Up to that point, his brothers thought he was merely the second most important man in Egypt who was giving them a very hard time.
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But what they found is he is the one they sold into slavery all those years before.
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And what we saw in the text as Joseph revealed his identity was that God's character and works were shown.
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We saw two important biblical truths in the first eight verses. The first is he expects you to forgive as you have been forgiven.
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What we saw is how forgiving Joseph was to his brothers. To see this is rare because this is not how the world operates.
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In the world, if someone wrongs someone, especially if one is wronged severely, he or she is never forgiven.
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In fact, people say, I will never forgive you. I remember watching a 48 hours mystery show on CBS and that shows about crimes.
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And the person was saying, I'm never gonna forgive this person. And I'm thinking, okay, this person doesn't know the gospel. If you say that, you don't understand the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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So when you hear this, we can understand that this is either an unbeliever who says that they can never forgive or a
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Christian who forgot that they have been forgiven. But what we've seen last week is that Joseph was a believer.
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He knew he was a sinner who had been forgiven. The same righteousness of God that was credited to his great grandfather,
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Abraham, as Genesis 15, six says was also credited to Joseph. So we should not be surprised that Joseph was so willing to be gracious by forgiving his brothers.
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As followers of Christ, we ought to be forgiving also because we have been forgiven so much in Christ.
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The second truth we saw in the first eight verses of chapter 45 is he uses human sin for his ultimate good purposes.
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Now this is a weighty biblical truth that we looked at, but scripture teaches it everywhere.
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And we saw it in the last three and a half verses last Sunday. Joseph told his brothers, it wasn't ultimately you who sent me here.
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Now Joseph did not excuse their sin, but he said, God's hand led me here to Egypt.
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And the reason he did it was so that I would be appointed the second most powerful man in Egypt and I would be used to be a savior to Egypt and the surrounding nations by providing food during the famine.
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And what Joseph explained is that God wills and allows evil for the greatest possible good to come from it.
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In Joseph's case, the evil of his brothers was led to Joseph being the man who would feed
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Egypt and the surrounding nations during the famine. But I explained last
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Sunday that the best example of scripture, in scripture, of God using human sin to accomplish his good purposes is the cross of Jesus Christ.
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What we saw in Acts 4 .27 and 28 is God used the sins of the
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Jewish leaders and the Roman soldiers to crucify Jesus. And it was his death on the cross that leads to salvation for anyone who would believe in him.
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So we need to trust God with this mysterious yet glorious truth. Now this leads us to our text today.
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Now that Joseph has peacefully revealed himself to his brothers, Joseph sends his family back to Canaan to bring their father
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Jacob to Egypt. So let's read this and let's read the way in which
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Joseph sends his brothers back in verses nine through 15. So I encourage you to look there with me.
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Joseph said this, hurry and go up to my father and say to him, thus says your son,
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Joseph, God has made me Lord of all Egypt. Come down to me and do not tarry.
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You shall dwell in the land of Goshen and you shall be near me. You and your children and your children's children and your flocks, your herds and all that you have, there
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I will provide for you. For there are yet five years of famine to come so that you and your household and all that you have do not come to poverty.
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And now your eyes see and the eyes of my brother Benjamin see that it is my mouth that speaks to you.
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You must tell my father of all my honor in Egypt and of all that you have seen.
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Hurry and bring my father down here. Then he fell upon his brother's Benjamin's neck and wept.
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And Benjamin wept upon his neck and he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them.
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After that, his brothers talked with him. Let's stop right there.
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What we see in verse nine is Joseph tells his brothers to return to Egypt so that they can tell his father that he is alive.
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And not only alive, but he is Lord over all the land of Egypt. We see once again what we saw last
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Sunday. Joseph knows that God is the one who wrote this story for him.
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He rose to this position of power in Egypt because this was God's will for his life. God is the author and Joseph is the actor of this story.
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The same is for us. God is the author and we are the actors or actresses of the story of our lives.
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And it's so helpful to read a story like this to be reminded of that. Joseph tells his brothers to retrieve their father from Canaan without delay.
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And he tells them the promising future he has planned for them. He tells them, you will dwell in Goshen, which was located in Egypt in the northeastern part.
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And he tells them in verse 10 that you and your family and all that you have will be near me.
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What we see in verse 11 is a shift in Joseph's behavior toward his brothers. Up to this point, as we've seen over the last several chapters, we've seen
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Joseph be rough with them. And of course, we know why that is. He was testing them in order to get them to the point where they would recognize their sin, to bring them to repentance.
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And we saw last Sunday that Joseph finally revealed himself because he started to see repentance in his brothers, specifically
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Judah. And what we see here and what we saw last
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Sunday is that Joseph is not holding their sin against them.
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One of the ways we know that forgiveness has taken place between one party with another is how do you treat the person after you tell that person,
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I forgive you? If you tell that person I forgive you and yet you still hold bitterness against the offender, then what we know is that forgiveness hasn't taken place because what must take place is a change of heart toward that person.
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It's not that you can erase what that person did from your mind, but you don't hold it against them.
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And we know that you don't hold it against that person because you don't hold bitterness against that person.
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You don't treat them as if they committed a great crime against you anymore.
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You have to move on and treat them well. And so we see
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Joseph moving on here because he's treating his brothers well. So the shift goes from testing them to providing for them.
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That's a big shift that Joseph is doing here. And what I want you to see in these verses is not merely
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Joseph's provision for biological family, as he provides for them in their journey from Egypt back to Canaan, but more importantly,
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Joseph is providing for God's people, the offspring of Abraham, the people whom the
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Lord has set apart for himself. Remember those yous in verse seven that we saw last
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Sunday? Joseph told his brothers, God sent me before you, which means
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Israel. God sent me before you to preserve for you, Israel, a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you,
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Israel, many survivors. So the yous are specifically referring to the people of God and not the nations.
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Now Joseph is going to provide for the people of God, his family, over the last five years of the famine so they won't live in poverty as verse 11 says.
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He realizes if they lived apart and kept coming back from Canaan to Egypt to buy food for five years, this would lead them to a life of poverty.
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And he doesn't want them to stay in poverty. He wants to provide for them abundantly. And so he tells them that I'm gonna give you part of my land.
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Remember, he's the second most powerful man in Egypt. He has the authority to do this. He says, I'm gonna bring you from Canaan and bring you to Egypt, and I'm gonna give you this land, and I'm going to provide for you.
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Egypt will be the new home for the people of God. And as you read the Old Testament, and what you will see is that this would be not just a temporary home for the people of God, but it would be their home until the exodus when
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Moses leads the people out of Egypt to the promised land.
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Now in verses 13 through 15, Joseph once again tells his brothers to retrieve their father from Canaan and not to delay.
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And then he weeps. We have to put ourselves in Joseph's shoes here. This would have been very emotional for him.
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He first weeps upon the neck of Benjamin and then weeps with all of his brothers.
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You can see the shift in relationship here. He's able to cry with his brothers. And we can see that Joseph loves them and he's moved on.
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He has a forgiving heart towards them and not a bitter one. But the main idea of these verses that we need to see is that Joseph provides generously for his family.
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As I already mentioned, this type of generosity is known as hospitality because he's opening up his land to his brothers.
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And what he tells them is, I am going to give you this land and provide for you so that you don't have to just scrape by.
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Joseph is showing hospitality to the people of God. The Bible stresses throughout that one of the ways you live out your love for God is by showing hospitality to fellow believers.
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Romans 12 .13 says, contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.
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Furthermore, 1 Peter 4 .9 tells us what kind of heart we should have in this practice. The Apostle Peter wrote, show hospitality to one another without grumbling.
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Imagine having someone over to your house and saying, you know what? I really don't want you to be here, but you know what?
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I know the Bible tells me I have to do this. Would you feel loved by that? No. So in other words, do it joyfully.
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The Bible teaches us that there is great joy in giving even more than receiving. Acts 20 .35,
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Jesus said, this is the only referenced quotation of Jesus outside of the Gospels. He said, it is more blessed to give than to receive.
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Blessed also means happy. It's more happy to give than to receive. So hospitality is a way of giving.
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You are giving what you own. You are giving of yourself. And it brings you much joy that you are helping a fellow believer.
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A couple of weeks back, we had that big storm that came through here. And as many of you know, our power was out and it was out for about 36 hours.
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And obviously when that happens, that's not a good thing. Your food starts to spoil, so on and so forth.
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And Hansie was so generous to open up her home to Brianna, me, and the kids.
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And that Saturday night, we spent the night at her house and she moved out of her own house to her parents' house and took the boys,
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Jackson and Mason, with her. And we felt so loved by her that she did this so generously and so joyfully to us.
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And when I look at our church and I see the hospitality like this take place, what we see is that we're becoming more like Christ.
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And how exciting is that? When one person goes out of their way for another and provides in different ways, what a blessing to serve one another as a church in that way.
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When someone in the congregation needs help, the instinct of our congregation should be to step up and help.
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Of course, we know about what happened to Jordan Braun. And Shayla doesn't know that I'm going to say this, but Shayla very generously, the day that the accident happened, she took meals to the house and made sure the kids were provided for.
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And so I know that the Braun family was very blessed by that. And so you can see our church stepping up for one another.
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And that's what the Lord calls us to do. Now, in this context, the hospitality is specifically generously providing for your possessions for those in need.
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As Joseph's brothers were in need. But hospitality is also generously opening up your home for others out of a desire for rich fellowship.
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As a church, we want to have this as a holy habit. And what I mean by this is that we enjoy the bond in Christ so much that seeing each other once or twice a week isn't enough.
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And so you open up your home to someone or you provide your possessions to someone to show love to a fellow believer.
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My prayer is that we would see more and more of this in our church in the days ahead. And it's exciting to see all that is taking place already.
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So what we see in this text is Joseph shows generous hospitality to his brothers, the people of God, in giving them a portion of his land and providing for them.
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And we should follow that example in whatever way the Lord has laid on our hearts with the people in this congregation.
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Now in our text here, Joseph is not the only one who is hospitable. What's interesting is that Pharaoh is going to show hospitality as well.
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And what we need to understand here is that Pharaoh and Joseph have a very good relationship. This is very contrary to what would happen several hundred years down the road when the new
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Pharaoh treated the Hebrew people very harshly. But here at this point in history, remember
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Pharaoh was the one who appointed Joseph. And so they have an excellent relationship. And let's see
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Pharaoh's hospitality. And Joseph's again in verses 16 through 23.
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When the report was heard in Pharaoh's house, Joseph's brothers have come, it pleased
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Pharaoh and his servants. And Pharaoh said to Joseph, say to your brothers, do this, load your beasts and go back to the land of Canaan and take your father and your households and come to me and I will give you the best of the land of Egypt and you shall eat the fat of the land.
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And you, Joseph, are commanded to say, do this, take wagons from the land of Egypt for your little ones and for your wives and bring your father and come.
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Have no concern for your goods, for the best of all the land of Egypt is yours. The sons of Israel did so.
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And Joseph gave them wagons according to the command of Pharaoh and gave them provisions for the journey.
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To each and all of them, he gave a change of clothes. But to Benjamin, he gave 300 shekels of silver and five changes of clothes.
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To his father, he sent as follows, 10 donkeys loaded with the good things of Egypt and 10 female donkeys loaded with grain, bread and provision for his father on the journey.
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Let's stop right there. So we see that Pharaoh is lock and step with Joseph in providing generous hospitality to the family as they travel and settle in Egypt.
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If you notice his words, he could not be more hospitable. He tells them in verses 18 and 20,
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I will give you the best of the land of Egypt. And so he agrees with Joseph. And he says, you will be well fed.
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And he also says, you are going to ride back to Egypt with your father Jacob in style as they are going to use wagons that Pharaoh gave.
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Imagine if you got an escort to the capital or it would be like that.
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You know, they send a limo to pick you up and they say, you're not just going to take your car to get to this place.
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You're going to take the best traveling, the best hospitality in travel.
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Now you might say, is this sermon not about believers providing hospitality to fellow believers?
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And so why are we talking about the pagan Pharaoh providing hospitality to the family of God?
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And the answer is, because as I already mentioned, Pharaoh has this good relationship with Joseph.
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And so he's following this man whom he respects, Joseph. He's following his lead and he's providing generously.
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And not only that, but even unbelievers through God's common grace can do things like this, right?
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They can be kind, they can be generous, they can be hospitable. So it might be that taking place here as well.
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But what we specifically need to focus on here is God's people providing hospitality to God's people.
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You'll notice in verse 22 that Joseph's favoritism towards Benjamin has not ended.
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He gives him 300 shekels of silver and five changes of clothes. We've seen much favoritism throughout the book of Genesis.
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And this is an area where we should not follow Joseph. We should follow him where he is faithful, but we shouldn't follow him where he is not.
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And he shows favoritism toward Benjamin. Now lastly, in verse 23,
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Joseph finishes his generosity by providing abundantly for his father. He sent him donkeys loaded with food for the journey.
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So Joseph is providing generous hospitality to his father and brothers.
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And what I've explained to you before is that whenever we read a passage of scripture, we need to ask the question, what is the original author trying to get across to his original audience?
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The point I've been driving home here is we see God's people, how they ought to treat one another.
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This section is not primarily about how to treat your biological family. Yes, of course, the
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Bible teaches us that as well, right? Fathers and children should have this excellent relationship.
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But this passage is specifically referring to the family of faith. Moses wants his 15th century
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BC audience to see how generous and hospitable one Israelite, Joseph, was to his
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Israelite kinsmen, his brothers. And Moses wants the people he's writing to to do the same in their context.
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And he wants us readers in the 21st century to do that in our context.
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We are not Israel, but we are the church. We are the people of God. And the Lord expects us to be generous to one another in hospitality.
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As the apostle Paul wrote to the church in Rome, contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.
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So the Lord is telling us to be generous with one another, to show hospitality. And we are instructed, as first Peter told us, to do it without grumbling, to do it with the right heart, to do it joyfully.
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Now, the question we need to ask is, how are we doing? I mentioned earlier that we're already seeing this taking place, but ask yourself this question.
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And as I asked myself this question as well, how are we doing at Eureka Baptist Church and showing generous hospitality to one another?
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So as Joseph sends his brothers to retrieve their father, we learn how to behave in the household of God. And the first behavior the
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Lord expects his people to follow is to show generous hospitality to one another. And thank you for staying with me here.
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We got one point to go. The second behavior the Lord expects his people to follow, and we will see in this text, is to have unity with one another.
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And we'll see this in verses 24 through 28. So let's read the last five verses here and see this expected behavior within God's household.
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Then he sent his brothers away, and as they departed, he said to them, do not quarrel on the way.
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So they went up out of Egypt and came to the land of Canaan to their father Jacob. And they told him,
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Joseph is still alive, and he is ruler over all the land of Egypt. And his heart became numb, for he did not believe them.
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But when they told him all the words of Joseph, which he had said to them, and when he saw the wagons that Joseph had sent to carry him, the spirit of their father
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Jacob revived. And Israel said, it is enough. Joseph, my son, is still alive.
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I will go and see him before I die. Now what we read in this last section is
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Joseph's brothers make it back to Canaan. This would have been a several hundred mile journey. And they tell their father the surprise of his lifetime.
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That surprise is Joseph is still alive. We need to put ourselves in Joseph's shoes here.
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Can you imagine this? For over 20 years, he has thought his son Joseph is dead, his beloved son
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Joseph. But now he hears the news that he is alive. And what the end of verse 26 says is that when he first heard it, he didn't believe it.
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It was too good to be true. But when he heard the words from Joseph's brothers that they relayed on behalf of their brother
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Joseph, and when he saw all the wagons that had come to pick him up, he knew it must be true.
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He knew how he sent his sons out. They didn't leave in wagons. This must be royalty.
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This must have come from powerful people in Egypt. And that's precisely what took place.
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So he not only believed that Joseph was still alive, but he also believed that Joseph rose to be this powerful man in Egypt.
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Can you imagine that? What is so incredible about this is joy comes back into Jacob's heart.
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The end of verse 27 tells us his spirit revived. It came alive.
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We've read throughout the narratives that Jacob was deeply grieved by the reported news that Joseph was shredded by a wild animal.
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And we would hope that in the midst of his sorrow, he still found joy in the Lord. We're instructed to do that in the
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Bible. Even in the midst of grief and tragedy and sorrow, the Lord tells us to rejoice.
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In fact, the Apostle Paul, who had a very hard life, he said in 2 Corinthians 6 10, that we should rejoice even when we are sorrowful.
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He says sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. But for Joseph here, or for Jacob here, his grief just disappears in a moment once he believes that Joseph is still alive.
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And now he's filled with only joy. But if we read this section too quickly, we will miss something very important.
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In verse 24, you may have wondered why did I not say anything about verse 24? That's because we're circling back here to make that the main focus of the second point.
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This verse, verse 24, is the key verse in this last section about how to behave in the household of God.
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Joseph tells them as they departed for Canaan, do not quarrel on the way.
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So you can underline that. Do not quarrel on the way. This is not a passing remark, but continues the theme about how to behave in God's household.
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And as Moses is writing this to his fellow Israelites, he would want them to see how the offspring of Abraham, God's people, should treat one another.
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To remind you, the nation of Israel originated with Abraham, starting in chapter 12 of Genesis.
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If you compare this with American history, Abraham would be like the first pilgrim who came to America.
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So that would have been the first American. Abraham is the first Israelite. And God chose this man to establish a nation through.
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It would be through this nation that God would display His glory to the whole world. And the way
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He would display His glory is through their holy character. So He called them to be holy as He is holy.
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That's what Leviticus 11, 45 says. Now, there are lots of ways to demonstrate holy character.
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The Lord gave His people 10 commandments and many more than that about how they were to behave toward Him and toward others.
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But one way that God desired for His people to be holy was by how they got along. They were not to quarrel with one another.
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And you may ask, what is quarreling? Maybe you have somewhat of an understanding of what this means.
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And a better question to ask is, what is quarreling according to Scripture? Whenever we have a definition, we want to get the definition from the
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Bible itself. And when we find this definition, the way that in my study this week, the way that I figured out what quarreling is according to Scripture is by looking at the lists.
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Because quarreling often shows up listed next to other words. So in other words, when quarreling takes place, these other things are also taking place.
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And in 2 Corinthians 12, 10, the Apostle Paul lists quarreling first, and then he lists many other things next to it.
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He says quarreling, jealousy, anger, hostility, slander, gossip, conceit, and disorder.
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Now, he was concerned that this was happening among the church in Corinth. And so in 2 Corinthians 12, 10, he says if there's quarreling among you, there's going to be all these things.