Dreams Fulfilled Nightmares Begun

Genesis 42–43: Joseph’s Brothers Come to Egypt

Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

And now here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg. A reading from.

Genesis chapters 42 and 43. When Jacob learned that there was grain for sale in Egypt, he said to his sons, Why do you look at one another? And he said, Behold, I have heard that there is grain for sale in Egypt.

Go down and buy grain for us there, that we may live and not die. So ten of Joseph's brothers went down to buy grain in Egypt. But Jacob did not send Benjamin, Joseph's brother, with his brothers, for he feared that harm might happen to him.

Thus the sons of Israel came to buy among the others who came, for the famine was in the land of Canaan. Now Joseph was governor over the land. He was the one who sold to all the people of the land. And Joseph's brothers came and bowed themselves before him with their faces to the ground.

Joseph saw his brothers and recognized them. But he treated them like strangers, and he spoke roughly to them. Where do you come from? He said. They said, from the land of Canaan to buy food. And Joseph recognized his brothers, but they did not recognize him.

And Joseph remembered the dreams that he had dreamed of them. And he said to them, You are spies. You have come to see the nakedness of the land. They said to him, No, my lord, your servants have come to buy food.

We are all sons of one man. We are honest men. Your servants have never been spies. He said to them, No, it is the nakedness of the land that you have come to see. And they said, We, your servants, are twelve brothers, the sons of one man in the land of Canaan.

And behold, the youngest is this day with our father, and one is no more. But Joseph said to them, It is as I said to you. You are spies. By this you shall be tested. By the life of Pharaoh you shall not go from this place unless your youngest brother comes here.

Send one of you and let him bring your brother. While you remain confined, that your words may be tested, whether there is truth in you. Or else, by the life of Pharaoh, surely you are spies. And he put them all together in custody for three days.

On the third day, Joseph said to them, Do this and you will live, for I fear God. If you are honest men, let one of your brothers remain confined where you are in custody, and let the rest go and carry grain for the famine of your households.

And bring your youngest brother to me, so your words will be verified, and you shall not die. And they did so. Then they said to one another, In truth we are guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the distress of his soul when he begged us, and we did not listen.

That is why this distress has come upon us. And Reuben answered them, Did I not tell you not to sin against the boy? But you did not listen. So now there comes a reckoning for his blood. And they did not know that Joseph understood them, for there was an interpreter between them.

Then he turned away from them, and he wept. And he turned to them and spoke to them. And he took Simeon from them and bound him before their eyes. And Joseph gave orders to fill their bags with grain, and to replace every man's money in his sack, and to give them provisions for the journey.

This was done for them. Then they loaded their donkeys with their grain and departed. And as one of them opened his sack to give his donkey fodder at the lodging place, he saw his money in the mouth of his sack.

And he said to his brothers, My money has been put back. Here it is in the mouth of my sack. At this their hearts failed them. And they turned, trembling to one another, saying, What is this that God has done to us?

When they came to Jacob their father in the land of Canaan, they told him all that had happened to them, saying, The man, the lord of the land, spoke roughly to us and took us to be spies of the land.

But we said to him, We are honest men. We have never been spies. We are twelve brothers, sons of our father. One is no more, and the youngest is this day with our father in the land of Canaan. Then the man, the lord of the land, said to us, By this I shall know that you are honest men.

Leave one of your brothers with me. Take grain for the famine of your households and go your way. Bring your youngest brother to me. Then I shall know that you are not spies, but honest men, and I will deliver your brother to you, and you shall trade in the land.

As they emptied their sacks, behold, every man's bundle of money was in his sack. And when they and their father saw their bundles of money, they were afraid. And Jacob their father said to them, You have bereaved me of my children.

Joseph is no more. Simeon is no more. And now you would take Benjamin? All this has come against me. Then Reuben said to his father, Kill my two sons if I do not bring him back to you. Put him in my hands.

I will bring him back to you. But he said, My son shall not go down with you. For his brother is dead, and he is the only one left. If harm should happen to him on the journey that you are to make, you would bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to Sheol.

Now the famine was severe in the land. And when they had eaten the grain that they had brought from Egypt, their father said to them, Go again and buy us a little food. But Judah said to him, The man solemnly warned us, saying, You shall not see my face unless your brother is with you.

If you will not send our brother with us, we will go down and buy you food. But if you will not send him, we will not go down. For the man said to us, You shall not see my face unless your brother is with you.

Israel said, Why did you treat me so badly as to tell the man that you had another brother? They replied, The man questioned us carefully about ourselves and our kindred, saying, Is your father still alive?

Do you have another brother? What we told him was an answer to these questions. Could we in any way know that he would say, Bring your brother down? And Judah said to Israel his father, Send the boy with me, and we will rise and go, that we may live and not die, both we and you and also our little ones.

And I will be a pledge of his safety. From my hand you shall require him. If I do not bring him back to you and set him before you, then let me bear the blame forever. If we had not delayed, we would have now returned twice.

Then their father Israel said to them, If it must be so, then do this. Take some of the choice fruits of the land in your bags, and carry a present down to the man. A little balm, a little honey, gum, myrrh, pistachio nuts, and almonds.

Take double the money with you. Carry back with you the money that was returned in the mouth of your sacks. Perhaps it was an oversight. Take also your brother and arise and go again to the man. May God Almighty grant you mercy before the man.

And may he send back your brother and Benjamin. And as for me, if I am bereaved of my children, I am bereaved. So the men took this present, and they took double the money with them and Benjamin. They arose and went down to Egypt and they stood before Joseph.

When Joseph saw Benjamin with them, he said to the steward of his house, Bring the men into the house, slaughter an animal, make ready, for the men are to dine with me at noon. The man did as Joseph told him, and brought the men to Joseph's house.

And the men were afraid, because they were brought to Joseph's house. And they said, It is because of the money which was replaced in our sacks the first time that we are brought in, so that he may assault us, and fall upon us, and make us servants, and seize our donkeys.

So they went up to the steward of Joseph's house, and spoke with him at the door of the house. And they said, O my Lord, we came down the first time to buy food, and when we came to the lodging place we opened our sacks, and there was each man's money in the mouth of his sack, our money in full weight.

So we have brought it again with us, and we have brought other money down with us to buy food. We do not know who put our money in our sacks. He replied, Peace to you. Do not be afraid. Your God and the God of your father has put treasure in your sacks for you.

I received your money. Then he brought Simeon out to them, and when the man had brought the men into Joseph's house, and given them water, and they had washed their feet, and when he had given their donkeys fodder, they prepared the present for Joseph's coming at noon, for they heard that they should eat bread there.

When Joseph came home, they brought into the house to him the present that they had with them, and bowed down to him to the ground. And he inquired about their welfare, and said, Is your father well, the old man of whom you spoke?

Is he still alive? And they said, Your servant, our father, is well. He is still alive. And they bowed their heads, and they prostrated themselves, and he lifted up his eyes, and saw his brother Benjamin, his mother's son.

And he said, Is this your youngest brother of whom you spoke to me? May God be gracious to you, my son. Then Joseph hurried out, for his compassion grew warm for his brother, and he sought a place to weep.

And he entered his chamber, and he wept there, and then he washed his face, and came out. And controlling himself, he said, Serve the food. They served him by himself, and them by themselves, and the Egyptians who ate with him by themselves, because the Egyptians could not eat with the Hebrews, for that is an abomination to the Egyptians.

And they sat before him, the firstborn according to his birthright, and the youngest according to his youth. And the men looked at one another in amazement. Portions were taken to them from Joseph's table, but Benjamin's portion was five times as much as any of theirs.

And they drank, and they were merry with him. O Lord, have mercy upon us. In the name of Jesus. Amen. Alright, do you remember Joseph had some dreams? Remember that? That was kind of like the inciting incident.

There's Joseph, his father's favorite. He even has the coat to prove it. And he has a dream. And in his dream, you know, his, they were bundling sheaves, and all of his brother's sheaves got up and bowed down to his sheave.

And his brothers hated him for this. They hated him for lots of things, but that just made things worse. And then he had a dream about the sun, the moon, and the stars, and all them bowing down before him.

And even his father was a wee bit annoyed by that. But these dreams were dreams from God. They were prophetic. And you're going to note in our text tonight, Joseph's dreams came true. Because God never says something's going to happen and then it doesn't happen.

God doesn't lie. The only time when God says something's going to happen and he relents is when he promises disaster for people's sin and impenitence and if they repent, Scripture says he relents. That is the only time we see God not following through on his word.

But all of that being said, you'll note then here, Joseph's dreams have come true, and well, his brother's nightmares have just begun. And you're going to note here, this is not Joseph being cruel to his brothers just to get vengeance.

This is not Alexander Dumas' Count of Monte Cristo. You know, I enjoyed that movie, I enjoyed that book, but here's the issue. The Count of Monte Cristo has a similar theme. A fellow who's really truly innocent, who ends up in the worst prison in all of France, the Chateau d 'Ivoire.

It's not a place you want to go as a restaurant, you don't want to visit there any time. And what happens is that through these machinations with another character, he's able to free himself and upon freeing himself, he gets a treasure that was stolen from Napoleon.

It's a great story. And then 600 pages of working out his revenge on those who put him into prison. That's not what's going on here. In fact, you're going to note, it's quite the opposite. Joseph isn't being mean for means sake.

Instead, he's got real reasons to distrust his brothers. The thing that they shouldn't have said is, we, your servants, are honest men. No, they're not. And Joseph knows that. They are far from honest.

These are men who plotted to murder him, decided, no, we're going to sell you into slavery instead, and then concocted a horrible story about him being eaten by beasts and have allowed his father to believe that's the truth for how long now?

Well, let's do a little bit of math. I hate math. It's from the devil. But just a little bit here, just for the sake of the sermon. 13 years Joseph was either as a slave and a prisoner, a combination of both.

And then there were seven years of plenty. Those are in the rear view mirror. And now what are we at? Year one or two into the famine? So we're looking at 22-ish years. And you're going to note, Benjamin is not a baby.

He's a man. He's in his 20s. And well, Jacob's not keen on letting him out of his sight, all because of the anxiety, the horrible mourning that he went through. Day after day, believing that his son, Joseph, his favorite son, his beloved son, had died.

But God was up to something. God was not working their judgment. And oh, they should be judged for this, don't you think? Don't you think we should all be judged for our sins? But if we are, it's not going to go well for us.

God isn't working their judgment. He's working their salvation. That's the whole point. And so here Joseph, hearing his brothers attest to their honesty, has to now test a few things because, well, the question that is now before him, if they did this to me, did they also do in Benjamin?

And since Benjamin is not with them, he's got to kind of sort that out. And so he's rough with them, accuses them of being spies, even puts money back into their sacks. And interesting to note that as soon as these fellows hit the wall, so to speak, that rather than receive kindness and just go to the grocery store and purchase the grain and head back home, now the manager of the whole country is on them, bad, and accusing them of being spies.

They said to one another, in truth, we're guilty concerning our brother in that we saw the distress of his soul when he begged us and we did not listen. Oh, that's merciless right there. That is why this distress is coming upon us.

And of course Reuben here doesn't really help. And Reuben answered, did I not tell you? I told you so. I told you. Did I not tell you not to sin against the boy? But you didn't listen to me. No. So now there comes a reckoning for his blood.

Do you think these men could legitimately pay for the blood of their brother? If there was truly a reckoning, do you think they'd be able to square that debt? How about you? If there was a reckoning for all of your sin, would you be able to square that debt?

Be able to walk away and go, well God, we're fair and square. Now we're even. No way. That's not how this works. And so yeah, there's going to be a reckoning, but the reckoning comes a little bit later.

And so these fellows are kind of thinking in terms of karma, right? Oh, this has happened to us. Oh, our karma has gone really bad. And these terrible circumstances are because God is judging us. But that's not true.

God is not judging them. God is now walking them down the path of repentance. They've sat silently keeping their evil secret for more than 20 years. And God is now going to take them down the road of repentance.

He's recalled their sin to their mind. They are confessing their guilt. What should they receive at the end of this? The same thing we all get because of Jesus. Forgiveness. It's one of the best stories ever.

And so we'll note here that these fellows are kind of a lot like King David. If you think of King David, there he sexually assaults Bathsheba, impregnates her, murders her husband, and then after her husband is gone and she's mourned for him and she's finished her mourning period, he marries Bathsheba.

And if you think about it, I mean, what a kind loving, pious thing for King David to do, to marry this obscure woman who has no royalty in her at all. And oh, and she's the widow of a war hero. Way to go, David.

Yeah, you gotta watch out for those sins that are covered up in pious pretenses. They're the worst. But you'll note that God wasn't pleased with what David did, nor was He pleased with the fact that David didn't confess his sin, but instead he hid it.

These fellows didn't confess their sin and they let their dad believe that Joseph has been dead for all these years, and God isn't pleased with that either. He's going to walk them down the road of repentance the same way He walked David down the road of repentance, and we should pay attention to this.

Over and again I've noticed that some churches and some theologians and some church groups really go bad and become super toxic when they forget how God deals with sin. They think sin is something that you've got to paper over, that you've got to somehow bury in the backyard.

Make sure that you hide it away. Don't let anyone see it, because you can't, now that you've made the decision for Jesus, let on that you sin and as a result of it, sin festers in the darkness. You know, you think of the person who has a stressful life, and what do they do?

They push the stress down and they keep it down, or maybe they, well, they medicate with booze and things just go wrong. We also hide our sin in the similar way, and we ought not to do that. What does Scripture say?

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we say we have no sin, you know what that is? That's an example of somebody who's hiding their sin. Well, I haven't got any sin.

Nothing, no sin here to talk about here. Everything's looking clean as a whistle, right? I always remember the time the Jehovah's Witness ladies came to our house, like 15 minutes before we needed to head off to church.

And of course, I can never pass up an opportunity to talk to the Jehovah's Witnesses, because once I talk to them, they'll never come back, okay? So what happened? There I am. I'm talking with this Jehovah's Witness lady, and the one thing I can tell you about Jehovah's Witnesses, this is a religion that's all about saving yourself by your works.

There's no grace in there at all. So I took her to some passages in Galatians and talked about how by works of the law will nobody be saved and how none is righteous, no, not one, to which this Jehovah's Witness lady, while my wife is putting the kids in the minivan, by the way, worst vehicle ever, most emasculating vehicle in the world is a minivan.

I'm so glad they have crossovers now so that men don't have to drive these things. Anyway, that's a little aside. I won't charge extra for that one. But all of that being said, while I'm talking to this lady, my wife comes in from the garage, and she hears these words from this Jehovah's Witness lady, who I've shown from the Scripture that none is righteous, that all sin.

She says, well, I haven't sinned in a really long time. So my wife storms, storms from the kitchen to the front door. And this is not something that happens silently. If you've ever heard my wife storm, you need to get out of the way.

You don't make eye contact. You're in a lot of trouble. Okay, she storms from the kitchen all the way to the front door. She gets right in that lady's face and goes, you are such a liar. You are a sinner just like I'm a sinner.

They never came back after that. We were on the blacklist. But you know what? Barb was right. She was lying. But how many of us lie the same lie? How many of us are just so comfortable with our sin? If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.

The truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all, all unrighteousness. We come to church as penitent sinners, speaking the truth about ourselves, speaking the truth of our sin, the things that we do, we don't do, the things we've done, left undone, all the mess that, well, we've created by our disobedience to God.

And rather than get the left foot of fellowship, rather than being flicked like a bug into the fires of hell, we receive from Christ the forgiveness of our sins, full pardon, full grace. That's what's going on in this text.

And so now they can feel the guilt of their sin and they're thinking, oh no, God is up to no good. He's finally decided. He's done with us. He's through with us. But we know that's not the truth. It's in this regard we consider just one other detail.

So they head back. Poor Simeon, he's cooling his heels in prison. And they are not coming back any time soon. I'm sure that was just a real joy. But it's just a little bit of a taste of what Joseph went through.

But we'll note this here. When they were deliberating to send the boys back to get food. Jacob is not keen on this idea, but who is it that stands up and says.

I will be.

A surety for him? It's Judah. And here in the story we begin to see a little bit of a shifting in the types and shadows. And the way I like to think of it is this. There's Jacob absolutely mourning, still lamenting, still in pain and agony over the loss of his son, Joseph.

And I think Jacob here in the types and shadows begins to give us just a little bit of a picture of what God the Father feels in losing us. Each and every one of us because of the deceit of the devil.

And who is it that promises to bring Benjamin back? It's Judah. And so I think a good way to think of this is this. Is that Judah promises what Christ really promises. Christ says to the Father, I will go, Father.

And I will bring back your lost children. I, my life, will be the surety that I will bring them back. And that's exactly what Christ did. He humbled himself, taking on the form of a servant, becoming obedient, even to the point of death on the cross in order that you and I can be forgiven and pardoned and that God the Father can experience the joy of having his children returned by none other than the Lion of the tribe of Judah.

And so as we consider this text in our Lenten series, let's consider our secret sins. The ones that we've even been terrified to confess to God. He knows them already. And if he brings us to the painful experience of bringing them to mind or even making us feel guilty for them, then know this.

God isn't against you in doing so. This is the path of repentance. This is the path that we all travel so that we can finally be forgiven and pardoned and that we can be reunited properly with God whom we have been estranged from because of our sin.

It's a beautiful picture if you think about it. In the name of Jesus, Amen.

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