Wrapping Up the Mummies

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Don Filcek; Genesis 50 Wrapping Up the Mummies

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Welcome to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan, where you can grow in faith, community, and service.
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This message is by Lead Pastor Don Filsack and is a part of the series Beginning with God, Walking Through the
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Book of Genesis. If you would like to contact us, please visit us on the web at recastchurch .com.
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Here's Pastor Don. Welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Filsack.
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I'm the Lead Pastor here, and I want to say thank you for coming out on this awesome
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Sunday morning to worship our great God. Be sure to check out the worship folder you received when you walked in.
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It's got all different kinds of activities and events, but that is not the sum total of what's going on here at Recast.
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In order to really get connected, you need to fill out one of those connection cards. If it's your first time with us, and you fill out one of those connection cards and turn it in in the black box back there, then we'd also like you to take a free coffee mug back there, just our way of saying thanks for joining with us on this
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Sunday morning. Also, you'll find that we put in that worship folder an offering envelope.
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Again, any offerings go in the black box. We don't pass an offering plate, primarily because we want your giving to be between you and God.
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We don't want anybody to feel pressure as that plate comes by to give, and so we want it to be an act of worship between you and your
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Lord. If you don't use that envelope this morning, then there's a place to recycle that, and we can reuse those next week if there's nothing in it.
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You can take advantage of that there. Then one quick announcement. This is the first week that we've come back to the set up and tear down of the church.
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For this fall, we do have a couple of needs for positions there. If you're interested, what we're trying to do is get a rotation of people together who are able to help out setting up and tearing down on a
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Sunday morning, maybe a couple times a month. If that's you, come and see me, or you can come and see
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Jeremy Thompson, who's standing back there. I'm just very grateful for what Jeremy has done for us in bringing us through this transition, but he's going to be stepping out of the position of directing the set up and tear down, and so we are actually looking for somebody who might be able to take that ministry on, and that's coordinating schedules and things like that.
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He's going to carry us through the end of September, and so we're looking for somebody. If that might be you, or you're thinking it might be you, come and see
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Jeremy or come and see me about that. So, introducing the message this morning, here we are.
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We've arrived. We made it. We are now at the end of the book of Genesis.
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Some of you, this is maybe your first Sunday here, and you're coming in at the tail end, and granted, I'm not going to be able to tell you everything that we've covered, but you probably have some understanding of the book of Genesis.
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But each one of these sermons is standalone, and at the same time it ties in with what God has done through all of these sermons, and I started this series back on January 6th of 2013, and so it's been a couple of years, a little less than two years, and going through this, and I want to tell you that I've grown in my understanding of who
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God is as a result of being able to dig in, and I've read the book of Genesis. How many of you have read the book of Genesis before?
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But I've seen it from a different light, and I've seen a different perspective on it as I've had a chance to dig in.
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I know God better. I know the way that he sets his plans in place, the way he works a little bit better as a result of this study.
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And this week hopefully is no different. In our text this morning, we see the funeral of Jacob, the death of his son
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Joseph, who has been a main character the last few chapters in the book of Genesis. And what we see is the only two mummies ever recorded in the pages of scripture are created in this text, but nestled in the middle of those two deaths is an amazing, amazing account of the way that Joseph interacted with his brothers.
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Now that Jacob is dead, after the first half of our text this morning, Joseph's brothers fear retribution.
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And can you imagine as much as he was abused by, Joseph was abused by his brothers, and so as soon as dad is out of the picture, they're afraid.
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They're like, well now maybe it was just dad. They have the unfounded thoughts that their father was the only thing holding
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Joseph back from killing them. And now that father is gone, they expect the hammer to fall and fall hard on them.
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But what we see in the text is an amazing, breathtaking, emotional view of forgiveness. The depth of the huge forgiveness of Joseph is truly a model and an example for all of us.
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But further, we get a very mysterious and difficult insight into the way that the sovereign
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God works in this text. The way that our sovereign God works sometimes is confusing to us, and the things that scripture says about him.
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But the question that we're always going to be left with is, are we going to take what we feel about God to be true? Or are we going to take what the text of scripture says about God to be true?
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Joseph's brothers did something that was motivated out of evil in this text, and it's very clear, and it's stated outright.
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But behind the scenes, God was doing that for good. It is not an accident that at the conclusion of this entire book, what we get is a naked claim to God's sovereign will.
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It's unmitigated. It's unexplained. It's unqualified. It is just straight in our face that God is indeed sovereign.
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God may just be in more control than some of us are comfortable with, but our lack of comfort doesn't change at all what
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Joseph openly declares to be true about our great God. So let's open up to Genesis chapter 50, and raise your hand if you need a
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Bible. Obviously, you can move over there. You can open up your Bible app and navigate over to Genesis 50.
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But if you don't have a Bible, raise your hand, and one of these guys will come by and give you a Bible. I want everybody to have a Bible in front of them as we read and are able to take this in and interact.
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And remember, if you don't own a copy of the Bible, then you can take that one with you. We want everybody to have a copy of the word of God to be able to read on their own.
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But follow along as I'm going to read Genesis chapter 50 in its entirety so that we can together read and understand the purpose of our great and awesome
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God. And when the days of weeping for him were passed,
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Joseph spoke to the household of Pharaoh saying, So Joseph went up to bury his father with him, went up all the servants of Pharaoh, the elders of his household, and all the elders of the land of Egypt, as well as all the household of Joseph, his brothers, and his father's household.
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Only their children, their flocks, and their herds were left in the land of Goshen. And there went up with him both chariots and horsemen.
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It was a very great company. When they came to the threshing floor of Atod, which is beyond the Jordan, they lamented there with a very great and grievous lamentation.
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And he made a mourning for his father seven days. When the inhabitants of the land, the
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Canaanites, saw the mourning on the threshing floor of Atod, they said, This is a grievous mourning by the
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Egyptians. Therefore the place was named Abel Mizraim. It is beyond the Jordan.
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Thus his sons did for him as he had commanded them. For his sons carried him to the land of Canaan and buried him in the cave of the field at Machpelah, to the east of Mamre, which
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Abraham bought with the field from Ephraim the Hittite to possess as a burying place. After he had buried his father,
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Joseph returned to Egypt with his brothers and all who had gone up with him to bury his father. When Joseph's brothers saw that their father was dead, they said,
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It may be that Joseph will hate us and pay us back for all the evil that we did to him.
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So they sent a message to Joseph saying, Your father gave this command before he died. Say to Joseph, Please forgive the transgression of your brothers and their sin because they did evil to you.
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And now please forgive the transgression of the servants of the God of your father.
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Joseph wept when they spoke to him. His brothers also came and fell down before him and said, Behold, we are your servants.
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But Joseph said to them, Do not fear, for am I in the place of God?
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As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.
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To bring it about that many people should be kept alive as they are today. So do not fear.
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I will provide for you and your little ones. Thus he comforted them and spoke kindly to them. So Joseph remained in Egypt, he and his father's house.
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Joseph lived 110 years. And Joseph saw Ephraim's children of the third generation.
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The children also of Makar, the son of Manasseh were counted as Joseph's own. And Joseph said to his brothers,
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I am about to die, but God will visit you and bring you up out of this land to the land that he swore to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob.
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Then Joseph made the sons of Israel swear saying, God will surely visit you and you shall carry up my bones from here.
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So Joseph died being 110 years old. They embalmed him and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.
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Appropriate tears upon a funeral, right? Let's pray as the band comes to lead us.
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Father, we need you. We need your presence with us. And I thank you that that we don't call down in this prayer time your presence.
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You came here with us. You were in our car on the way here. Father, everyone who is your child, every man and every woman and every child here who has given their lives to you and trusted in Jesus Christ has your spirit dwelling within them.
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And so Father, I ask that your spirit would have his way in our hearts as we come to these songs and that it would be so much more than an exercise of our bodies and our vocal cords and our and just just this exercise that we go through.
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But Father, that our spirits would engage with your spirit within us testifying of your goodness, your greatness, your power, your authority, your majesty, your worth.
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And that Father, as we come in contact with your word this morning, even as we've read it, Father, that you would have your way in our hearts that we might actually take a hold of the truth and that the truth might take a hold of us and transform us that we would see that this word is not up for grabs, but it is the truth of what you have declared for yourself and that we are not left groping in the dark to try to figure out who you are, but you have declared your awesomeness, your power, your sovereignty clearly in the pages of scripture.
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Father, I pray that you would make that come alive in our hearts, in our daily life, in the way that we live through the hearing of your word this morning in Jesus name.
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Amen. Amen. Well, big thanks to the band for leading us in worship this morning.
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I appreciate all the time and energy that they put in each week. So thank you guys for that. I encourage you to get comfortable.
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Remember that at any time during the message, if you feel like you need more caffeine, there's more coffee over there, there's juice, there's maybe donuts while supplies last.
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And then having your Bibles open to Genesis chapter 50 is probably going to be helpful to you, and it's helpful to me to just kind of see you digging around in your
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Bibles and recognizing that that is the structure of my message this morning, is to walk us through this chapter almost verse by verse and just kind of walk through the thoughts and figure out what this means to us here where we live today.
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I really want you to have your Bibles open, especially this morning, not that every morning I don't want you to, but to see that what
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I'm saying is coming from the text. I have a sense that we may be challenged this morning to wrap our minds around,
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I know I've been challenged this week, I can't quite get my mind around what the text is actually declaring to be true of our great and awesome
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God. I'm going to work hard to not overstate what the text says, and equally
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I'm going to work hard to not understate what the text says. And so that's always, I think the challenge and the burden on me each week is to make sure that I don't oversell what the text is saying or go beyond what it says, but that I also don't kid glove what the scripture says and just kind of like make it soft for you so that it doesn't challenge you.
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And I think that's what we're looking for this morning anyways, right? I hope that's why you're here, is to actually hear not from Don, but to hear from God.
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And so that's my hope. I count it a success just that we've already read scripture, right? So that's good.
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Anything else I see? Our text last week ended with the death of Jacob.
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We were introduced to Jacob. Think about this. Maybe some of you who have been here for a while, you don't realize how long we've been talking about Jacob.
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We were introduced to Jacob in chapter 25 of the book of Genesis. Did you guys realize that? All the way back in 25.
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Half of the book of Genesis has been talking about the life of Jacob and following the life of his offspring.
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Certainly Joseph has been there, but all the way right up here till the end, we're seeing Jacob still mentioned in chapter 50.
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His significance is heightened when you consider that his name was changed by God from Jacob to Israel.
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So throughout the latter half of Genesis, we've been seeing his name referred to as either Jacob or Israel and it's interchangeable and it's used multiple times even in the same text.
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But consider that he is considered to be the father of the nation of Israel even down to this day.
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So he is a character and a figure that actually has political meaning to even our world and where we live now.
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Even a person who has no real understanding of the Old Testament, has no real understanding of the people of God or the old covenant.
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Wouldn't you assume that most people have heard of Israel? They've heard the name Israel. They've heard his name.
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It's the name of a nation that actually exists today and certainly we're hearing it in the news often, right? So verse one picks up with all the sons gathered around Israel's bed, gathered around Jacob's bed.
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They heard the final words of their father in the text that we looked at last week and the last words to each one of them.
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And in that, Jacob sitting on the edge of his bed predicted the future, offered some blessings to some of his sons, talked about some of the past and the wicked things that they had done.
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And then at the end of that text last week, he pulled his feet up into the bed and laid down and breathed his last.
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And immediately, immediately, immediately in our text, Joseph falls on his father's face weeping.
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He is immediately moved and I think probably some of us could even be moved to think through circumstances and situations that we've gone through personally.
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But remember that it was predicted as a comfort to Jacob. Remember that Jacob had been estranged from his long -lost son
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Joseph for over 20 years and it was predicted in one night he was traveling. He found out his son is still alive.
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And so there was that anticipation of them getting reunited. But fear, I mean he's old and he might die before he gets to see his son
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Joseph. And that night God came to him in a vision and said, don't worry, you are indeed going to behold your son and he will be the one who in death closes your eyes.
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He will be there to the very end with you. And that was a comfort to Jacob. And now we're actually seeing that come to pass here that Joseph is the one of the sons who is most moved with the passing of his father is present there and falls weeping on his father in that last moment.
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Now I want to suggest to you that this text tells us something that we might have been curious about all along. It might have been, you know, naggling in the back of your mind somewhat is, what was the love of Joseph towards his father
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Jacob? Jacob gave his son good things, right? Jacob gave his son favoritism.
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He gave him a coat of many colors, the Technicolor Dreamcoat, and he gave him nice stuff. And so was that merely, but when a person dies their ability to give is gone.
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Did you notice that? Have you come to grips with that? And so he has no reason to put up any kind of a front here anymore.
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He has no reason to do so. And it demonstrates that Joseph's love for his father was not utilitarian.
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It was not just for what he could gain from dad. But there is a genuine heartfelt love that is between Joseph and his father.
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He shows an emotional response that is reasonable with the passing of one that is loved.
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I believe that Christians get a little off kilter when it comes to grieving and since we're talking about two funerals in the text, it's reasonable for us to just spend a moment on grieving.
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I do think that we don't allow the freedom of grieving that ought to be there for others and even for ourselves.
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Sometimes we feel like maybe we've got to soften that sense of grieving. We know the passage, some of you know the passage about not mourning like those who have no hope.
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How many of you have heard that passage before? We don't mourn like those who have no hope. And so what we take from that often is that our expectations for mourning over the loss of a loved one is somewhere between stoic callousness on the one hand and a brave hyper -spirituality on the other.
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Where the expectation is that the person who is grieving who is mourning is going to stand up in front of the church and just talk about the glory of God and how awesome
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God is. Right? And that we expect to be able to do that in those circumstances or that we just face it like a trooper.
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We just stiff up our lip and we've got this one. Is it okay for a believer in God to weep?
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Absolutely. Is it okay for a believer in God to hate death? To hate the departure of a loved one?
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Absolutely. Is it okay for a believer in God to lose their appetite? To be downcast?
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To have a difficult time with everyday functions in the passing of a loved one?
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Absolutely. Is it okay for a believer to lose all hope? No. No.
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No, that's a different question. But the way that we grieve is going to be different for each person and giving people the freedom to grieve, to question.
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David in the Psalms, how many times did he shake his fist at God and say, God, why? Where are you?
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Where are you? Come and defeat my enemies. I'm running for my life and everything is bad around me and difficulty surrounds me.
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And my enemies, it feels like they constantly have the upper hand. And so as we contemplate and consider the freedom that we have in grieving, obviously to lose all hope is not something that a child of God will do in the light of who
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Jesus Christ is. But man, there is a whole range of emotions, a whole range of behaviors, a whole range of experiences that come with grieving the loss of one that we love.
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And Joseph is going through it and modeling that to a short degree for us in the text. Joseph then, from his position of power, remember he was the ruler of the land.
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The right hand, the only person in the entire most powerful nation of Egypt that was over him was
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Pharaoh himself. And so from that position of power, he immediately makes preparations for the
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Egyptian physicians to care for the body of his father. And so they embalm Israel according to the social customs of the time and the place that they lived in.
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He's mummified in the text. It seems unlikely that all of the religious implications that came with mummification, all the pagan practices and the thoughts that it's obviously clear that Jacob is not going to be interred in a temple.
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He is not going to have all of his trinkets and his gadgets and his goodies there with him, with the thought of the
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Egyptians that they'll be there in the afterlife. If we, just to model this for you, for example, when the
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Egyptians mummified someone, they buried them with their iPad. They buried them with their car. They buried them with all of the gadgets and stuff around them so that they had something to play with and some funded, you know, to pass the time of eternity on the, you know, in the future, in the afterlife.
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And so, I mean, if you were to bring that into modern times, that's what a funeral would look like in our day and age. And we actually have encumbered mummies that have their chariot buried with them and their furniture and all kinds of things that they loved and the thought was.
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And so I don't believe for a second that that's the intention of the reason why he was mummified. As a matter of fact,
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I believe it was intended to just strictly preserve this body for the trip to Canaan that they are about to undertake.
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It's well documented, by the way, in Egyptian hieroglyphics. It's all over the place. The practice of mummification is well documented and the process took 40 days according to all kinds of secular research and all kinds of documentation from ancient times.
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And so it's very clear that whoever wrote, and I believe that it's Moses, but the author of the book of Genesis had an understanding of what mummification looked like.
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Moses being raised in Egypt makes sense that he got that practice down. Not only that, not only was he mummified, but then there were 70 days of mourning, a designated period of time for mourning the death of Jacob, which shows how high the standing was of Joseph because remember this is his father that has passed away and the entire nation is mourning for the death of one of their dignitaries' father.
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By the way, 30 days is the amount of days of mourning prescribed in the
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Old Testament for the Jews. And so this seven -day mourning period is significant.
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Okay, it's a massive mourning that has taken place. And near the end of that mourning period,
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Joseph was probably still in a state of mourning, probably still in like sackcloth and ashes or going about with his feet bare and not shaving and that kind of stuff and therefore he could not enter the presence of the king.
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You don't enter the presence, that's all throughout scripture, you don't enter the presence of a dignitary. Ancient times, that's a pretty common custom.
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If you are mourning or downcast, you don't go to see the king. Okay, and so Pharaoh, I mean
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Joseph has access to Pharaoh regularly throughout the pages of scripture, but here he sends a message to them and he communicates his wishes to go bury his father to the servants of Pharaoh and then they carry that message on to Pharaoh himself.
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It's obvious that despite Joseph's high standing, he's got this really elevated, lofty, powerful position in Egypt, but he was still not free to leave anytime he wanted.
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He has to go to Pharaoh and ask permission to go to Canaan. He's still in essence a servant even though he has so much power in the nation in which he's been raised up.
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But he asked Pharaoh's permission to go bury his father. Joseph makes a case for this trip by explaining that his father already has a pre -cut tomb.
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The tomb is already cut, it's prepared, it's ready, which would have spoke to Pharaoh. Pharaoh, who again was raised in this culture of Egypt where the preparation of a tomb was significant.
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So Joseph is speaking Pharaoh's terms, explaining this to him. And then he also talks about the sense of obligation that his father made him swear to take him to Canaan.
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And so that sense of obligation to the dead would also really help to guarantee Pharaoh's permission for them to go.
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But in verse 6, Pharaoh then allows Joseph, and the phrase appears very clearly in the text, a phrase that we hear later in the book of Exodus often, he allows
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Joseph to go up. If you're biblically informed, then you cannot read verse 6 without a sense of echoes of a
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Pharaoh who will later refuse to let the people of Israel go up.
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Moses's constant, we say let my people go, but it ought to be translated directly, let my people go up.
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Let my people go up to Canaan, let them leave, let them get out of Egypt. And that incessant request on Moses's part later to a different Pharaoh to let my people go will constantly and consistently be met time and time again, nine times with a hardness of heart on that future
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Pharaoh's part. There'll be an emphatic no. This Pharaoh during this time is quite different than the
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Pharaoh that is yet to come who has never met Joseph, who has never heard of Joseph, who does not know Joseph. 430 years difference between this
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Pharaoh who says sure, take your people and go up, I trust you, to 430 years later, the
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Pharaoh who says do not, you do not have permission to go, you cannot go. The honor afforded to Jacob in his burial has no parallel in scripture.
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There is no one who gets a funeral procession like Jacob does.
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This is, the text calls it a massive, very great company translated in the
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English standard version. It is great in size. There's a lot of people, but it is great in dignity.
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The royal courts of Pharaoh are emptied to take this trip to go bury the patriarch Jacob. His household leaders all are in attendance.
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Everybody basically, but Pharaoh himself is mentioned and the rulers under Joseph all make that several day trip to Canaan for this burial.
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There's a military procession with chariots and horsemen. This is a this is a massive undertaking for the people of Egypt and they all go in attendance showing how high
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Joseph's standing was. And all of Jacob's family except for the small children and presumably the mothers of those small children do attend, all of them except for those little kids.
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And they come to a place called the threshing floor of Atad, which from the perspective of the author,
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Moses writing on the east side of the Jordan says, the threshing floor of Atad that's on the other side of the Jordan.
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He gives us that perspective. And this at this place the whole entourage spends seven days in a very great and grievous lamentation.
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This is, they are mourning, they are weeping, it is loud. They are probably saying prayers and there's all kinds of things that are going on there.
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And you may ask, do these Egyptian officials know
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Jacob that well? They're mourning, they're grieving, there's this massive, massive mourning.
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How genuine is this funeral? How authentic are they being?
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But what is happening here, I think, is something worth commenting on in a church that values authenticity. The A in recast stands for our core value of authenticity.
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Authenticity and love often means mourning with those who are mourning. I say that often that in our small groups, in our community groups, our goal in growing in community is that we would be a people who recognize that even though right now you might not see a need for it, there's a time coming in your life where either you are going to want somebody to celebrate with you or you are going to want somebody to mourn with you.
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And we all need that. That's something that God has created in us. A very part of our nature is that we are relational by nature.
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Now certainly as Americans, we're trying to push that aside as much as possible. I don't need anybody.
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I'm independent. I can get this one. And that flies in the face of the way that God has created us. We need others in community.
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And so part of the authenticity that we desire here is that you're actually able to mourn with those who are mourning.
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And that doesn't mean that everybody all mourns together because what if somebody needs celebration at the same time somebody else needs mourning?
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But it's a question of do you have people in your life you can go to when things have hit hard and go to them and say, listen,
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I'm just down and things are just pushing me down. I can't hardly even look up right now.
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Do you have those people? Authenticity and love often means mourning with those who are mourning.
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Authenticity, by the way, doesn't look like saying to someone, yeah, I know your mom died, but I got a raise today. So I just can't be sad with you.
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Okay, you know, I got to be honest to who I am. I got to be authentic. I got to be real to my feelings and I'm I'm stoked.
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So, you know, I'm sorry about your mom. But I mean, hey, let's celebrate. You obviously know that that's sarcastic and that's not the way that it goes.
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Love for the grieving person often requires us to grieve with them and authenticity sometimes means setting aside our feelings to enter into the pain of others.
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And the more we love the individual, I would suggest to you, the more that we authentically and genuinely have love for the person who is mourning, the more natural and honest that mourning will become for us.
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It is likely that many of these Egyptian mourners knew very little of Jacob, the one who has passed. They're attending a funeral for someone they don't know super well.
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But their loving leader, Joseph, has mourned and is grieving and therefore they are moved to mourning and grieving as well.
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You see how that works? Their love and their connection with Joseph has moved them to mourn. The mourning was so great that the locals who saw it gave the place a brand new name.
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They called it Abel Mizraim, the mourning of Egypt. Like all of Egypt has come out to this place to mourn.
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Notice they don't even know what it's for. There's no designation among the locals that they actually get what's going on here.
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But they recognized that, hey, Egypt showed up and they were really sad. So they named it that. And so Joseph honored the request of his father to be buried in the land that God had promised to his descendants.
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And I want to suggest to you that this is a significant act of faith and trust in the promise of God to give his descendants this land.
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Jacob never saw these promises come to pass. So many of the people in the
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Old Testament did not see with their eyes the reality of the promise that was given to them.
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The promise that a great land would be given to their offspring, that they become a multitude of people for the purpose of protecting the people so that one day one from their line would come who would become a blessing to all nations.
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The Hall of Faith in Hebrews chapter 11 walks us through those who had faith in the
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Old Testament, but they had faith that was unrealized. They didn't get to see with their eyes the the reality of those things, but they trusted it anyways.
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They believed that God was sending one who would be the answer, who would crush the head of the serpent, who would bring about redemption for all of mankind and all of humanity.
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But Jacob didn't see it. But even in this final request to be buried in Canaan, he says,
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I trust God. I trust him. I believe that he is going to follow through on what he has said, bury me in the land that God has promised to us.
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In verse 14, the funeral procession returns to Egypt and immediately things take a turn in the family of Jacob.
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He's out of the picture now and everything shifts on a dime. Now that father has been removed from the picture,
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Joseph's brothers immediately turn to fear of retribution. Can you understand why that might be the case?
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Why they might have some fear? They think that dad's presence has been what is holding him back.
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And I want to suggest to you that there's other scripture, there's other places where this dynamic happens. I'm sure that these boys at one point had heard the story of uncle
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Esau, Jacob's twin brother, uncle Esau, who had comforted himself with thoughts that when my dad dies,
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I'll kill my twin brother. And he could fall asleep at night. He actually had peace in his heart knowing that he would exact revenge on his twin brother as soon as dad was gone.
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Do you guys remember that from earlier in the book of Genesis? And so I wonder if these guys didn't, they lived and they were steeped in this kind of culture.
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The notion of a man waiting until his father passes before doing evil would make complete sense in a shame -based society.
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We don't live in a shame -based society. There are still some shame -based societies out in the world today.
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Mostly they are in the Middle East and throughout Southeast Asia or Southern Asia and Southeast Asia. But a shame -based society, you don't do something that would shame your father or your mother.
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But man, once they're out of the picture, all the gloves come off, okay? So that's exactly the expectation is that Joseph has just been honoring his father by not getting back at his brothers.
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But now dad is gone. And so they fear and they think it's a reasonable fear.
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It seems to me to make sense that they believe that the hammer is going to fall. They are guilty, right?
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Are they guilty? Yeah, and not only are they guilty, but they've spent a huge chunk of their lives living under that guilt.
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They've had that weight on their shoulders for all of their lives. And even though we saw somewhat of a reconciliation, we saw
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Joseph forgive them earlier in the text. But that hasn't settled into their hearts quite yet.
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The brothers in their fear send word to Joseph with what I believe is a fabricated command from their father.
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I don't think their father actually said these words. I think they manufactured these words. I might be wrong on that, but that's after my study, that's where I lean towards is that they made this up.
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They said, hey Joseph, your dad in one of his dying breaths told us that you should forgive us.
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You see how maybe they might be abusing their father's speech there a little bit. He mentioned that you should forgive your brothers the transgressions and the evil that they did to you.
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Regardless of whether this is truly the speech of Jacob or not, certainly the brothers, as they say this, the words that the brothers put into the mouth of the messenger that they send to Joseph, they don't even have the guts to go to him first.
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They kind of send a messenger ahead to kind of soften him a little bit and say, hey, your dad wants you to forgive your brothers.
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They're on their way right now. But the words that they use show how acutely aware the brothers were of their sin.
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They got it. They knew clearly how bad what they did was.
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They call it evil, the Hebrew word ra. There's not a worse word in the Hebrew language as far as what can be evil or bad.
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This is like a word for Satan, okay. It's like a horrible thing. And they say, what we did to you was evil.
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They call it transgression, which is a word for sin that we probably don't use very often, but it is a very picturesque word.
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It's a word of a line drawn in the sand, and God says, don't cross this line.
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And you go, okay, now what? It's rebellion. It's an intentional,
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I know where the line is, and I'm going to step across it. And they say, we did that. We knew what we were doing to you,
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Joseph, and we did it anyways. We knew it was an affront to God. We knew it was sin towards you. We knew it was an evil act, and we did it in the rebellion of our hearts.
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Are you getting how strong that word transgression is? And probably you can look at your life and go, oh, I see where there have been lines in the sand that I have willfully transgressed.
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I have willfully crossed the line in rebellion against God, and we all have that.
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We all have transgression. That's why Jesus had to come and die on the cross for us, that transgression could be forgiven.
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Speaking of forgiveness in the text, they talk about their transgression. They talk about it being evil, and they say, your dad wants you to forgive us.
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And so twice they say, forgive, please forgive. And they're asking two times for something that has already been given.
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Not only that, but they actually then follow up that messenger by coming into the presence quickly, falling on their faces and saying, we will be your slave.
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We will be your slaves, just don't kill us. We'll do whatever it takes. We will earn your forgiveness.
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We will earn a forgiveness that's already been freely given.
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Does that sound familiar? Does that sound kind of familiar? They are like a person that needs constant reminders that they have indeed been forgiven, despite the way that they feel.
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How many of you have ever gone through a season of feeling like you weren't forgiven? Have you been there? Most of us raised our hand, and then those who didn't are probably just kind of trying to figure out what
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I just said. You were napping for a second, and you were like, what? Real? Am I supposed to really raise my hand? It sounds so familiar to me.
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I believe that many Christians live right in this place often. If we honestly recognize our sinfulness and our shame and our rebellion against God, we actually recognize those transgressions, those times we have in rebellion, knowingly crossed those lines, then we realize that we deserve the hammer of justice to fall.
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Every one of us bears some level of that recognition that we deserve the hammer to fall on our lives.
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But God, but God in Jesus Christ has forgiven those who have come to Him by faith.
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And if we're honest, we often think that too good to be true. It's like, did
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He really forgive me? Did He really let me go? Did He really release me? I mean, does He know how bad my transgression is?
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Does He know how much rebellion was in my heart? And we start to wrestle again and start to question and start to say, well, maybe circumstances have changed.
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For the brothers, it was the death of Jacob that set them in that motion. But it can be totally other things for us that set us in that motion of kind of going, ah,
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I'm back at it again, and I'm trying to kick this habit, and it's starting to own me again.
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And does He really forgive? Is He really going to let me go? And so we keep coming back to Him and saying, let me pay for it.
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I'll be your slave. I'll do whatever you ask. I'll do whatever you want me to. Just set me free.
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Just forgive me. I'll do it. You can't do it. We cannot do it.
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But one has done it for us, and His name is Jesus Christ. And He is the answer to this entire conundrum that we feel like we need a payment for our sins.
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It's been given. Jesus Christ has paid the price for you and me if we would just accept that by faith.
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Do you see how that's a healthy launching pad to say, I deserve the hammer to fall, but the hammer has fallen on my
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Savior so that I'm forgiven and can launch out into a ministry of life to others and giving to others out of a place of forgiveness and wholeness and completeness.
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Not because I'm all that and a bag of chips. Actually, quite the opposite, because I deserve the hammer, and God saw fit to put it on His Son instead.
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And that's the place of health for the Christian life. It's not going, I'm all that. It's, I'm forgiven.
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I've been set free from that. We deserve the hammer to fall, but the hammer fell on Jesus Christ at the cross.
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And whenever you have those feelings of shame, those feelings of guilt, that feeling of fear creep back in, and I know it's going to happen in our lives, but let me suggest that you consider the cross.
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I find that meditation and contemplation of the cross, when I wake up in the morning, when I go to bed at night, when
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I'm going to a tough meeting, when I'm having a disagreement with my wife, when things, and we do that once in a while, not often, but when things are not going well in life, to turn our attention back to the cross is the place where we find hope, where we find the opportunity to forgive others and to be forgiven and to recognize our own need for redemption.
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That is the place of forgiveness, the cross. Joseph, who had already forgiven these guys, is now once again moved to tears.
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This guy cries a lot. Have you guys seen that? He's emotional. But I think, in part, part of all the experience, and can you think about the experiences of life of Joseph?
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Being beaten and, I mean, favorite kid of your father, pampered, a little bit of a loud mouth, a little bit rambunctious, kind of always getting under your brother's feet, so they threaten to kill you, throw you in a pit, sell you into slavery.
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You're falsely accused. You end up doing prison time, okay? And then, through God, I mean, even just the wrenching him out of it, going from prison to second in command in Egypt, how many of you think that would do a mess in your mind?
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Would that mess with you a little bit? So he's had a lot to chew on in his life, and I think we can cut him a little bit of slack for being a bit of a crybaby.
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I shouldn't have said that because I actually said earlier, it's okay to weep. But by his response, it's clear that he is sad.
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What is he sad about? That they do not grasp the scope of his forgiveness. That they have assumed his animosity.
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They have assumed his anger. And I can't help but wonder, and I certainly don't want to speculate too much here, but I can't help but wonder somewhat about how
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God responds. When we have been purchased by the blood of Jesus Christ and set free to minister to the needs of others, when we come back to him and assume his animosity towards us, his wrath and his anger towards his children.
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Does he discipline those he loves? Absolutely. He will discipline those he loves, but he is no longer wrathful and vengeful towards those who are his children, towards those who are in his kingdom.
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And here Joseph launches into a final theology lesson of the book of Genesis, really telling us who
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God is from Joseph's perspective, and it's breathtaking. And where Joseph's theology starts is where a lot of humanity gets hung up right away.
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It's a very simple statement. It's a very simple theology. It's, I would say, the first thing that you ought to grasp in theology, and a lot of people can't get past this one point.
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The central, premier, first tenant of Joseph's theology is that he is not
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God. That's where he starts. I'm not in God's position.
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I am not God, he says to his brothers. How would we do just taking that statement home and living that statement out?
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He begins with the notion that there is a God and he is not it. And many of us, maybe we need to grab that and carry that with us throughout the week and remind ourselves of that when we are serving ourselves, when we are not taking care of the needs of others, but we are trying to amass our own kingdoms and our own wealth and trying to care for numero uno.
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We are not numero uno. We are down the list, and God is
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God. This is important to understand in the light of the context of what he is going to go on further to say.
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He says, I will not condemn them. I will not condemn my brothers. I will not condemn them for their actions because I am not
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God. Condemnation is not in my hands to dole out. They expect vengeance, but the
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Lord clearly states that vengeance belongs where? Vengeance is mine, saith the
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Lord. It's in my hands. Who gets retribution and who doesn't?
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And that's clearly stated in both the Old Testament and then carried forward into Romans, I think, chapter 11 as well.
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So maybe for some of us this morning, we need to be reminded that the basic tenet of theology is that we are not
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God. Joseph leads with this statement and dovetails that directly into one of the most stark comments in all of Scripture in his understanding of the way that God interfaces with his life.
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He brashly and openly declares their role. He says, I know what your role was in this and I also have been given insight into seeing what
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God's role is in the circumstances. He says, your part in this? What was your will?
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What was your desire? What did you do? Evil. That's when you exercise your will. When your will is enacted, evil.
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That's what your intention was towards me, says Joseph to his brothers. And none can contest the obvious reality of that statement.
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37 years prior to this account, they plotted to murder him. They tore his cloak from him. They beat him.
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They tossed him in a cistern and then had lunch while they discussed his fate. Should we kill him? How should we kill him?
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Maybe we should just leave him there to starve to death. No. Oh, here comes a caravan. Let's sell him. Which was basically a death sentence anyways under cruelty and hard labor.
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Their intentions were sinful, harmful, and outright evil. Hopefully, it's obvious that this behavior is the kind we would not struggle to prosecute in our day and age.
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I hope that if a situation, and this came to a court of law in America, I hope that the person, if found guilty, would actually be punished.
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This type of kidnapping, human trafficking, selling somebody, wrenching them away from their family, abusing them, beating them.
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How many agree on that? You hope our justice system would do something for them. And so, so far, so good.
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We've got him basically declaring what their part was, and that sounds great. They meant this for evil.
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The word meant is very important in this text. Extremely important. What does it mean that they meant this for evil?
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Was it just their intention? They intended it to be an evil thing? The word translated meant in this text means to plan, devise, and implement.
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It takes into account a behavior or an action that is plotted in advance and then carried forward to fruition.
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And actually, the same person plans it and accomplishes it. And so what it's saying here is, in essence, all of these events that harmed me, you planned and implemented in the cause of evil.
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You had a plan, you had an intention, you plotted it out, and you did it. And then this is where the text turns.
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But God meant, same word, meant it for good. What did
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I just say meant means? Planned, plotted, devised, and implemented.
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We have two that are credited with the same event. Two that are credited with the same will to accomplish something.
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Something that doesn't look very good. I'm going to be honest. What I want the text to say is that God turned it to good.
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You guys did this, but He turned it into good. Are you getting what I'm saying there? Do you hear how that's different? They meant it,
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He meant it. He turned this thing into good. God transformed it. Then I could say something like,
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God is taking our human crises, our human suffering, our human sin, our difficulties, and He creates silver linings in there.
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He turns these bad things that we do. He responds to us and then changes it so that it all works out in the end.
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Another way of saying this is, He takes ashes. What we do is we go around in our lives making a pile of ashes and He makes butterflies.
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Aww. I want to be able to stand up here and say that God doesn't ever cause bad things.
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Do you hear how that might be kind of softer for our ears? God never causes you to suffer.
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God never is in the hard things that happen to you. God is certainly never in the evil things that are perpetuated against you.
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He just uses those bad circumstances. But this would be understating what the text says.
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This would be understating what the Bible is telling us. Because the verb used in this text states that God planned, intended, and implemented it where it, in this context, is the sufferings, the pain, and ultimately the frustration of Joseph.
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The sovereignty of God over all purposes is simply asserted in the text, but not explained.
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The text leaves the reader with the assertion to wrestle with. The text doesn't give me the luxury of saying that God is completely removed or out of control when people are doing evil.
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He is not out of control when people are doing evil. But it also falls short of saying that God does evil.
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You seeing what I'm saying there? Understate it, overstate it, try to say what the text actually says.
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It's clear in this text. I hope it's clear to you. It's clear to me that Joseph's brothers did evil. I believe that they wanted to do evil.
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That they were not forced to abuse their brother as if they didn't want to, but oh my goodness, my hands are moving and I'm beating him and all of a sudden
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I'm throwing him in a pit and I don't know what's happening. God is moving my hands to abuse my brother.
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They were not forced into selling him as a slave. But here in this explanation at the end of Genesis, Joseph says, you willingly did this for evil brothers, but God was willingly doing this for good.
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The one who suffered years of imprisonment, it's important that it's him that comes to this conclusion. I believe that it's important that it's him who comes to this conclusion.
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He's the one who suffered the years of imprisonment and slavery and he's the one who has concluded that God was orchestrating these events for the glorious salvation of many people.
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Some of us as we think this through might wrestle and put ourselves in the shoes of Joseph and so then the wrestling can turn into a hang up in the notion that one man suffers for the sake of the deliverance of many.
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Why do I have to suffer so that so many people can be saved from this famine? Why do I have to suffer so that this all can come to pass here and ultimately you can preserve your people,
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God? How fair is that, that Joseph is the one who suffers and everybody else gets the benefit of living in Egypt during famine?
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But part of the key of the problem of suffering and evil and the goodness of God is that God has not remained untouched by this conflict.
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He came as one who would suffer for the deliverance of many and even in that circumstance, God was once again planning, devising, and implementing the sinful movements of humanity to bring about the salvation of his people through the cross of his son,
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Jesus Christ. Think about all that had to transpire in order for Jesus Christ to be hanging there on the cross for you and me.
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I recognize that this discussion could leave you unsatisfied. My goal in ending this part without landing, without giving you definitive resolution is that the text doesn't expound on this.
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The original reader would have been left with this hanging sense of God who is radically sovereign and my hope is that if you find yourself disagreeing with what
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I'm saying here, that you may have to also consider whether or not you're actually disagreeing with the text of Scripture.
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The more I say on this, the more I say on this, the more I risk diverging from what the text says and giving you room to disagree with me and I want to leave us all to wrestle with what
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God says about himself here. I really, I'm not going to give you a sales pitch for the sovereignty of God, but I do want to just explain it to you in a way that helps you to understand what it's done, what it does for people's lives.
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The sovereignty of God is a precious truth for those who have endured suffering. I spoke with a couple not too long ago who lost a child, lost a child years ago and it's been actually only in the process of grieving that and working through that that they were able to come to realize that it was the belief and the trust that God is sovereign that sustained them during those extremely dark days for them.
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It's practical. As much as it sounds theoretical to understand that God has a purpose and God is moving things towards his glorification and towards his ultimate purposes is comforting to those and the problem is when you're not going through suffering but you're observing someone else going through suffering, that's when it's hard to accept the doctrine of the sovereignty of God.
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When you have such a bleeding heart for others that you're like how could God do this to them? How could he allow this to happen?
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And so the Israelites stood on the east side of the Jordan about to take the promised land. This book was read to them.
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They are the original audience and it was likely a great reminder before the storm came in their lives that God was saying through the words of Joseph, I've got this.
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I'm in control. And no sin of humanity, nothing is going to thwart the promises and plans that I have set in place.
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Joseph in his amazing forgiveness pledges to continue to provide for their families and they all remain in Egypt for many years.
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Joseph lived 110 to 110 and he was blessed to see his grandchildren and his great grandchildren.
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I've actually prayed this before and I think it's a legitimate prayer. I mean I think God could see fit to honor this but I pray,
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God would you let me see my grandkids? I'd love that. I'd love that. See my grandkids, maybe my great grandkids. That would be pretty sweet.
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And it's interesting to note that that wasn't even considered a blessing in ancient times that it declares openly in the text. Joseph was blessed.
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How do you know he was blessed? He got to see his grandchildren and his great grandchildren. Awesome thing. Obviously some of his brothers outlived him because he gives his dying statements to some of his brothers in verses 24 and 26.
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Joseph requested that they take his body up to Canaan just like his dad's to be buried in the land that his fathers were promised.
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And out of all of Joseph's life, out of all the things that we see recorded in the book of Genesis on the life of Joseph, in Hebrews 11, this is the act of faith that is credited to him.
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This is the one that the author of Hebrews draws out for us and says this was his high point.
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Despite all the abundance of life in Egypt, despite the 93 years of his 110 spent in the realm of Egypt, he placed his trust in the
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God of his father who had promised them the land of Canaan and said, bury me there.
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Joseph was mummified and it's not until Exodus 13 that we find out that Joseph's coffin was carried up to Canaan during the
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Exodus when they're marching around the walls of Jericho. There's the coffin of Joseph in their midst when they're sitting at the base of Mount Sinai getting the law.
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Joseph's body is there waiting to be interred in the land of promise. For those of you who are curious about archeology, and I'm getting ready to wrap things up here, but there have been quite a few mummies found in the land of Israel and some of you are kind of curious about that.
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Part of it is that Egypt at one point occupied the land of Canaan and the current land of Israel and so they sent prefects there and all that and so some of those mummies are accredited to them but there's one really interesting find just in April of this year,
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April of 2014, they found a mummy in Egypt, I mean in Israel, and when opening it they found something really unique on the finger of this mummy.
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It's a signet ring of the pharaoh. Just April of this year they're getting ready to do
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DNA tests on this mummy with the intention of trying to find out is this an Egyptian or is this
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Semitic? Which if it's Semitic I think I have a pretty good clue who we found there.
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Someone who is buried in Israel with a signet ring of pharaoh on his finger. It would be pretty cool if that's him, right?
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Wouldn't that be awesome if we found Joseph? I've talked about a lot of things this morning. We talked about how to mourn, we talked about how to process guilt, we talked about the deep theological subject of God's sovereignty, we talked a bit about mummies but in my attempt to land everything at the cross each week
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I would like to land this series on the book of Genesis firmly on the shoulders of our sovereign
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God. It is not accidental that the concluding chapter includes Joseph's explanation that God is powerful to save even from within this broken system, this broken world.
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His hands are not tied by our decisions. He is mighty and powerful to accomplish His will for us and evil does not have the upper hand on God and evil will not win in the end.
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Evil never has the final word with our sovereign God and the cross is the place where the problem of evil comes together as I said with the goodness of God.
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He has not left us alone here to suffer our fate in silence but He entered into this broken world as one of us.
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He experienced pain, suffering, shame, exposure, betrayal, imprisonment, and ultimately crucifixion and even death and He did this to buy us back from the curse of this broken world.
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As the next song plays I would encourage anyone who has put their trust in Jesus for forgiveness to come to the table.
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There's four tables in each corner of the room. Come to the table and remember the great love of God shown towards us at the cross.
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Without the cross the world would seem cruel and to be quite honest without the cross I think
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God would seem cruel but at the cross He entered into the fray as our sovereign
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King laying down His life for anyone who would trust in Him for salvation.
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Let's pray. Father, I thank You so much for grace.
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I thank You for the book of Genesis that we've been able to walk through it and see Your hand in this old covenant way of working with humanity and we see so many reflections of the way that You have worked in our lives.
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Father, there's so many things that we could take away from this and I pray that You by the power of Your Spirit would press each person on what
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You desire of them. Some here it's just maybe a process of grieving for the loss of someone.
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For some of us it's reflecting and remembering that we are not God. For some of us it is going throughout this week recognizing that You have an ultimate plan for us and that even in the difficulties we need to draw close to You.
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In the good times we need to draw close to You because when difficult times come we will only be able to respond to what we know of You.
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So Fathers, we come to the communion help us to remember the cross and to reflect on what we know most of You, what
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You have revealed of Yourself and that is that You are Savior. You are God who is a rescuer and I thank