Preservation and Perseverance

Preservation Through Reconciliation and Pharaoh’s Provision

These, the work of God in these brothers lives has been so profound. They're now actually eager to return and share the glory of Joseph when 20 years prior the glory of Joseph was the very thing that caused them such hatred and cruelty.

So this is a picture of complete transformation. They hop back down toward Canaan and of course they're excited to tell their father of all the glory that God has granted to Joseph. Now we begin in verse 16 with this report entering the ears of Pharaoh.

Joseph's brothers have come and it pleased Pharaoh and his servants well. And Pharaoh said to Joseph, say to your brothers, do this, load your animals and depart. Go to the land of Canaan. Bring your father and your households and come to me.

A repetition of what we saw last week, come to me. I will give you the best of the land of Egypt and you will eat the fat of the land. Now you are commanded, do this, take carts out of the land of Egypt for your little ones and your wives.

Bring your father and come. Also do not be concerned about your goods for the best of all the land of Egypt is yours. We have here in these verses evidence of just how highly admired Joseph is to Pharaoh.

Pharaoh so loves and enjoys and respects Joseph that he wants to be abundantly lavish toward all that belong to Joseph. And so even though it's thick in times of famine, he promises the very best, over the top embrace of hospitality.

And that's because he knows Joseph's desire to be reunited with his father and also Joseph's desire to preserve and protect his family through the famine. Look at this language, the best of all of the land is yours.

Just complete blank check, whatever we have that's great now belongs to you. Come to me, me personally. This is sort of an all-access VIP pass and you have this very graphic language, the fat of the land, come and eat the fat of the land.

Remember this is a time of famine, this is a time of dry soil, this is a time of burnt and crumbling crops and yet he says there's the fat of the land. It's an interesting expression, isn't it? How do you picture that?

Globules of fat mixed into the soil? It's saying the cream of the crop, the very best, the excess of the land, all of the best things now belong to you. Carts are sent. Pharaoh also has a mind to the aged father and the little ones that it would be hard for them to make this difficult journey.

And so the command is given, take carts out of the land of Egypt for your little ones and your wives, bring your father and come. Perhaps there's some exaggeration here but I love what James Boyce says, to return to Canaan with carts from Egypt was the cultural equivalent of landing a jumbo jet among a tribe of isolated savages.

This is the stuff legends are made of. Do you remember when those carts came from Egypt? Now I don't think carts were all that revolutionary, I don't think they rival a 747 but the point is made in times of famine, the last thing you'd expect to see journeying into the backwaters of Canaan would be carts loaded with food and all sorts of provisions.

Verse 21, the sons of Israel did so and Joseph gave them carts according to the command of Pharaoh and he gave them provisions for the journey. He gave to all of them, to each man, changes of garments but to Benjamin he gave 300 pieces of silver and five changes of garments.

So Joseph now gives them carts and gives them all the provisions they need for their journey back to Canaan and very significant, and it's significant just in the way it's written, is the change of garments.

Notice how it's emphasized, we have it even in the translation, he gave to all of them, again to each man, changes of garments. And so this is standing out now, what's the significance of this? Victor Matthews in a wonderful commentary on Genesis says, once they've been convinced of his true identity, Joseph gives each of his brothers gifts of new garments as evidence of his forgiveness and favor toward them.

Now if we take a step back from that and just think through the logic of garments in Scripture, this becomes a very rich symbol, a very deep symbol. Clothing from the very beginning of the Bible is a metaphor of one standing before God.

Fig leaves become the covering of guilt, but they're stripped clean and God makes garments for Adam and Eve. Think of that now being converted toward white robes in the vision of Revelation. Think of Ephesians and the wrinkles and the stains that Christ's blood purges from his bride.

Think of Colossians and the putting on and the putting off of our sinful desires. So you see this language of garments is rich with symbolism and here we have this beautiful picture of reconciliation reinforced with the idea of a change of clothes, a change of garments.

These brothers had come a very long way in a time of famine and great need to stand before Joseph. They probably had all sorts of nasty smells and stains on the garments they were wearing. They were unfit to go now as emissaries and ambassadors of Joseph back to their father.

They must have a change of clothes. They must now show forth the acceptance and the favor and the forgiveness, in short, the reconciliation they have with their brother. Remember that it was Joseph's garment, the multicolored robe that marked Jacob's special love for his son, and for that reason that robe was to these brothers the very symbol of hatred, of rage, and so they stripped it from him.

Joseph had come in this garment and they tore it from him as they threw him into the pit, and then of course Joseph, when he began to be exalted in the household of Potiphar, he again experienced being humiliated.

His clothing was stripped from him by Potiphar's Gentile wife, but here when Joseph is exalted, notice that he gives new clothing in the same way that when he had been exalted by Pharaoh, Pharaoh gave him new clothing.

It's marking a change of stature, a change of relationship. Now you are in a position of honor and acceptance and authority, and so Joseph is giving his brothers a change of clothes to show that they truly have been reconciled.

These are changed men, inwardly and therefore outwardly, and as a result of this, these brothers would be reminded almost sacramentally of the fact that our brother has accepted us, our brother has forgiven us, our brother has shown favor toward us, our brother desires to bless us.

Look at the evidence in our very clothing. That's the idea. 23, he sent to his father these things. We have this nice little itemized list. Ten donkeys loaded with the good things of Egypt. Don't you wonder what the good things of Egypt are?

Probably leeks and cucumbers and everything that the Israelites go on to crave from the wilderness. Ten female donkeys loaded with grain, bread, food for his father for the journey. So not only do they have provisions to get back, they're doubled with provisions to make the return trip.

And so Joseph sent his brothers away and they departed and he said to them, see that you do not become troubled along the way. Joseph is a very wise man. That's been an emphasis, the wisdom of Joseph.

The narrative begins to intersect with wisdom literature. Joseph's life is imbued with proverbial wisdom. And Joseph, as this wise man of God, gives his brothers a very sharp warning. See that you do not become troubled along the way.

Now he doesn't mean by that. See that you choose the best route and you don't become irritated with your GPS. See that you're very mindful of the footwear because you don't want to have sores on your heels.

He's not talking about troubles, little irritations. He's talking about conflict between them. The difficulty of returning home is they have to face Jacob with the truth. Joseph is alive. What do you mean?

How could that have been? If they've confessed this much to Joseph and Joseph is going to be reunited with Jacob, there's a lot of questions to be asked and there's a lot of answers to be given. They know that they have to give a confession when they stand before their father.

And the pressure of that and the accuser in their midst, accusing them, accusing their forgiven consciences. They've been reconciled but as they begin to make this long journey back, that prowling line will come in and accuse them.

Do you know what Jacob will think of you? Do you know that once Joseph sees Jacob, he's going to be in rage against you? Do you know that they're gonna team up against you? And this isn't even really my fault.

I was just going along with the flow. It's really, it's really Simeon's fault and Levi's fault. It's where you go, they're the murderers anyway. There's going to be trouble brewing up as blame-shifting and guilt begins to work its way into their conscience, excited by the accuser, whoever stands against the brethren.

And the joy of forgiveness and reconciliation will soon fade and become something irritable and accusatory and temptations will begin to arise in their midst. And Joseph says, sin is crouching at the door, its desire is for you, but you must resist it.

You must anticipate and stand against it. Let nothing trouble you along the way. How you're feeling right now, that streamlined desire to go to your father, confess all, and bring him to me. Let nothing dissuade you or discourage you from that.

And that's very wise advice. Because what happens often in these trials and vicissitudes of life is we seek to extend forgiveness, maybe even we're working toward reconciliation, and the enemy comes and all that good seed that's been sown, he snatches it up.

He seeks to break and destroy this work of grace. He seeks to kill it in its youth. He seeks to stall and to paralyze all that God would seek to do through mercy and forgiveness. Let nothing trouble you along the way.

This is a warning we need to hear, brothers and sisters. We talked last week about how we all have the ministry of reconciliation. This is the ministry we've been given. See that nothing troubles you along the way.

See that old charges and old accusations and old wounds don't crop up in your mind again and cause you to tumble backward from what God has been patiently moving you toward. Let nothing trouble you along the way.

I love what John Calvin says on this passage. We ought to imitate this kindness of Joseph, that we may prevent as much as possible quarrels and strifes, for Christ requires of His disciples not only that they should be lovers of peace, but also that they should be peacemakers.

Blessed are the peacemakers, not just people who happen to enjoy peace when it can be found, but blessed are those who actually undertake the work of making peace. Blessed are those fully engaged in the ministry of reconciliation.

Wherefore, Calvin says, it is our duty to remove in time, there's some wisdom, it's our duty to remove in time all matter and occasion of strife. It's not going to be instantaneous, it's not going to be easy, but it's our duty if we're followers of Jesus to be making peace and removing all matter and occasion of strife.

Besides, we must know, he says, what Joseph taught his brothers is actually the command of the Spirit of God to us all, namely this, that we should not be angry with one another. Very simple, simple to say.

Brethren, be not angry against one another. So simple and yet so difficult, so easy to state, so hard to live out. See that nothing troubles you along the way. Verse 25, then they went up out of Egypt and came to the land of Canaan to Jacob their father and they told him saying, Joseph is still alive and he is governor over all the land of Egypt.

And Jacob's heart stood still, his heart fainted, his heart stalled, his heart gave out because he did not believe them. But when they told him all the words which Joseph had said to them and when he finally saw the carts which Joseph had sent to carry him, the spirit of Jacob their father revived and then Israel said, it is enough.

Joseph, my son, is still alive. I will go and see him before I die. You wonder what was going through Jacob's mind when he first saw the caravan of the brothers begin to approach. The first thought is, poor Jacob, whenever these brothers have returned from afar it's always been bad news, it's always been a bad turn of events, and he must have been just saying, oh no, I can't even bear to hear it, what am I gonna have to face now?

He's probably looking to count, is Benjamin among them? Were they actually able to release Reuben? What he must have thought when he finally saw them come back again. He had grown so accustomed to bad news and yet they come with such good news that he could have never dreamt.

Good news that not only have they secured the missing brethren but the long-lost son now lives and now has all authority over the land of Egypt. And so we understand, you remember I think two or three weeks ago at SLBC we talked about the attributes of God and how we read Scripture and part of our reading of Scripture is to say, what does this tell us of God?

What do I know of God's character, of God's dealings as I'm reading this passage? Well that's a good question to ask of this. Here's Jacob and the brothers have come, it's been a series of bad news, a series of unfortunate events, and they finally come with the most unimaginable news.

Joseph lives, Joseph has all authority, Joseph is now in a position to save all of us. What does that say of the character of God? Certainly a God of providence, that He could orchestrate all of these things for such a time like this.

More than that I think it's a God of mercy. Remember in chapter 43, Jacob himself had been fearing the worst, clutching to Benjamin, refusing to let the youngest of his beloved Rachel go, but Judah threw himself on the line willing to sacrifice his own future, his own inheritance, his own household if he could not return Benjamin, and that sacrifice, that act of faith sparked something in Jacob, that he then turned to God by faith, but he only did so crying out to Him as one undone.

May God Almighty give you mercy from that man. That was his prayer. May the Almighty God, the God who can work this kind of providence that we see in chapter 45, may that God give you mercy so that He sends you back with Benjamin and your other brother.

Well God not only heard that desperate prayer, He answered it beyond Jacob's wildest thought. God was merciful. Merciful not only to the brothers on their return trip to Egypt, but merciful to Jacob himself.

Merciful beyond anything he could possibly have asked for in that prayer. He was praying for something and God gave him a deeper answer. And so now as a result of that, the brothers are in this position to proclaim the resurrection.

The one that you thought was dead now lives and He is the exalted Lord. He is the one who will preserve us. He will bring us into our inheritance. Come and see Him. And it's like, where are we? Are we in Genesis or are we in one of the Gospels?

The one that we thought was dead now lives. And much like the original resurrection pronouncement in the Gospels, the good news seems too good to be true. So Jacob doubts. I'm not going to believe it until I see him.

What's this? What did he say? What are these carts? What are these provisions? It's until he sees the evidence that he can believe. And as Jesus says, blessed are those who believe yet do not see. Jacob is doubting Thomas to this resurrection episode.

Jacob sees the evidence. His mind begins to work. How else could the brothers have maneuvered all of this? How could they have Benjamin? How could they have returned with such provision unless what they say is true?

I love what Ligon Duncan was talking about this episode of Jacob seeing the carts and the provisions, eating, literally eating out of the carts as sort of a foretaste or almost a down payment of what would happen if he continues to walk and make his journey to Egypt to be in front of the Lord of the land.

So it's like here in Canaan in the midst of despair and famine, here comes these carts full of provisions and he can eat and feast and be satisfied and yet it's just meant to draw him and coax him to take that long difficult journey to be standing in front of the Lord of the land where there is vast untold resources at his disposal.

And Ligon Duncan says that's what we do whenever we partake of the sacrament. We have a physical reminder, a physical symbol, and it's a down payment, a foretaste. It's meant to coax us along this difficult journey until we stand before the Lord of glory.

Now one thing we can say, we don't know how these brothers confessed to Jacob. We don't have those details. Perhaps it was between him believing and him saying, it's enough. They must have been rattling on and on and on and on and on about everything that happened and how they felt about it, but what God did and how they've been brought to conviction and he finally must have said, it's enough, it's enough.

My son lives. Joseph, my son, is alive. I will go and see him before I die. This is an incredible event in Jacob's life. Glorious news that will cause him to leave everything he's known behind to go on this difficult journey in his weakness to go stand before the beloved Son.

That's much like a Christian. This glorious call, we see the sheer abundance, the goodness. We know that the Lord of glory is awaiting us. We leave behind everything that's familiar to us. Take nothing.

Israel’s Journey to Egypt and God’s Covenant Guidance

I have everything you need. Just trust me and come to me. That's the Christian life. Chapter 46, beginning in verse 1. Israel, interesting that it's Israel here, right? We're used to seeing Jacob. Of course, Israel is another name for Jacob and of course we're reminded that we're moving into the larger pattern of what God's doing as Israel moves into Egypt.

It's very significant for moving from Genesis into Exodus. This is now Israel settling into Egypt. All of Israel, all 12 tribes of Israel will become a mighty nation in the land of Egypt. That's setting up everything that God will do in the next stage of this unfolding drama of redemption where he's carrying forth the Abrahamic promise and now it's involving a liberation from the evil empire in Exodus.

Israel took his journey with all that he had and came to Beersheba. Can you imagine what it was like to put bungee cords over those carts? Did you get that? Leave the IKEA desk. That thing's falling apart anyway.

Make sure you get that. That was my grandmother's clock. Did we forget the coffee maker? You're loading up the carts with all that he had, bungeeing it, securing it, and beginning this journey down toward Egypt.

The effect of this is that it leads Jacob to worship. He came to Beersheba, we read, and offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac. So he's aware that God and his providence has preserved the life of his beloved son Joseph.

He must have immediately gone back to chapter 37 and thought of the dream. The dream that he incredulously went to his own son, a lot like his other sons, and said, do you really think I'm gonna come and bow before you?

He must have been struck like I'm literally on a cart about to bow before him. This is how God has moved in his providence. Joseph, my son, is still alive and so as he makes his journey southward through the land of Canaan, he comes to the very extreme edge of the land to Beersheba and he offers sacrifices, and the language here is so significant, he offers sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac.

It's a way of saying he knows that God is moving forward in this covenantal promise and so he comes to God as the God of Isaac and Abraham, the God who made a covenant and has a purpose, and he's really feeling the weight and the pressure of that.

Part of God's promise was this land, Canaan, and in chapter 26 it was God himself who told his father Isaac, do not go into Egypt. So he brings that all to worship and to sacrifice, to seek God's will, but notice before we even get into that, the effect of this good news, your son is alive, the beloved son is risen and exalted, the response to that is worship, worship and sacrifice.

It is no different for you and I here this morning, that's what we're doing, we're here to worship because the risen Son, the one who was slain, now lives and has been given all authority under earth and on the earth and in heaven.

And we get some insight into Jacob's mindset here. He doesn't rush down into Egypt, though he's surrounded by famine, he doesn't say, well the most important thing is that we get to the place where the getting's good.

You know, I just want, I can't wait to try some of these new recipes. He's more concerned about God's will, God's worship, is this the right move spiritually? He's cognizant of the fact that God has moved in this way, but he's unsure, is this a test?

Does God really want me to go down into Egypt? This is the land of inheritance. And so he worships because he's concerned about God's will. He worships the God of his fathers because he wants to understand the promise that God made to his fathers and what he's to do now in this moment.

He perseveres, but it's in fear and in reverence, and he sacrifices. Remember, this is a time of famine. He takes some of these provisions and he sacrifices them. That's a way that you know you're seeking God's will.

The times are tough, you're feeling the pressure, you're in a trial, you're torn between two forks in the road, but you sacrificed in order to better understand God's will. John Calvin says here we see how deeply he was rooted in true piety.

By offering a sacrifice, he increases his own strength and also makes a profession of his faith. It's not Pharaoh, Lord, it's you. It's not Egypt that provides for me, Lord, it's you. I sacrifice to you, I honor you because you are the one who cares for me and you are the one who must guide me.

Beersheba is a place so rich with history for Jacob and Isaac and Abraham. It's where Abraham first called upon the name of the Lord in chapter 21 and settled in that place and offered up Isaac on Mount Moriah.

Isaac there was visited by God, the covenant was renewed with him, and it would seem that Jacob lived at Beersheba when he was on the run in chapter 27. It seemed like it was a familiar place to him as a boy and so he went there initially when he was fleeing from Esau.

As he's leaving this land of promise, we're also reminded this is the last time that Israel offers worship in the land. Normative worship of Yahweh in the land of promise for almost half a millennium.

They will not come back to worship the Lord as Israel for almost 500 years. Imagine if the last normative worship service of God was done in Martin Luther's day and we're just now re-entering into that.

That's the prospect of what they're looking at. It was dramatic for them to leave the land, but as a result of worshiping and sacrificing and seeking God's will, God speaks, God guides. Verse 2, then God spoke to Israel in the visions of the night and said, Jacob, Jacob, and he said, here I am.

So he said, I am God, the God of your father. Do not fear to go down to Egypt, for I will make of you a great nation there. I will go down with you to Egypt. And I will also surely bring you up again.

And Joseph will put his hands upon your eyes. So notice first that in response to worship, God calls Jacob to give Jacob guidance, to reveal his will to Jacob. When we come in worship and sacrifice to God, we can expect, not as though it's an immediate cause and effect, but we can anticipate that God desires us to understand his leading in our lives.

So he calls Jacob, Jacob, Jacob, as he must call any of us. We call upon the Lord, but it's his prerogative to answer. He's the one here that takes up that prerogative and calls out, Jacob, Jacob, Jacob must be like me.

I sleep and it's very hard to wake me up. A car could go through our house and I wouldn't wake up. He has to keep on, Jacob, Jacob, Jacob, here I am, Lord. That's what happens with the night vision. But he reveals himself.

I am God. That's the first thing. I am God. Yahweh. I am God. But the same way that Moses narrates, you know, he came to worship the God of his father Isaac, that's how God reveals himself. I am the God of your father.

So you're right to say and right to think in this way, I am doing something with my promise, with my covenant. You're keyed in, you're thinking in the right way, and that's why you're afraid to go down to Egypt.

You know the covenant is about the land, but don't be afraid to go into Egypt. Go to Egypt and know that I'm going with you and I will bring you up again. Now, of course, when he says I will bring you up again, there's sort of a double entendre here.

In one sense, Jacob will be brought up again, but it will be in his coffin to be buried in the land. And that's why we begin with Israel, but when God calls out, Jacob, he says, Jacob, Jacob. It's a way that Moses is saying, this is speaking also of Israel.

Israel has a corporate identity. I will bring you, Israel, up out of Egypt again. I will deliver you. So here we have Exodus theme breaking into the narrative. And Joseph will put his hand on your eyes, probably referring to the way Jacob would die.

He would be reunited with his son, and so he could die in peace, as it were. The son that he so dearly loved that he thought was gone would now be the very one by his side to the very end. Remember in chapter 44 when he said in frustration, in despair, he said, my gray head is going to go down to the grave in sorrow.

And what does God say? Your own beloved son is going to close your eyes in peace. I said in my haste, the psalmist says, Psalm 31, I'm cut off before your eyes, but you heard the voice of my supplication, and when I cried out to you, you listened.

The Seed, the Land, and God’s Preservation of Jacob

Oh, love the Lord, all you His saints. The Lord preserves the faithful. Verse 5, we read, Jacob arose from Beersheba and the sons of Israel carried their father Jacob, their little ones, and their wives in the carts which Pharaoh had sent.

They took their livestock and their goods which they had acquired in Canaan and went to Egypt. Jacob and all of his descendants with him, his sons and his sons' sons, his daughters and his sons' daughters, and all his descendants he brought with him to Egypt.

Now do you get a sense of what's important there? He keeps on repeating it. You could just say Jacob and all his descendants went with him, but he keeps on stretching it out. His sons, his sons' sons, his daughters, his sons' daughters, all of his descendants, all of the seed he brings out of Canaan into the land of Egypt.

So think again this emphasis. All of Israel is now heading down into Egypt. Think of what Egypt is in the mind of Scripture, in the mind of God. Egypt is symbolic for the kingdom of sinful domination, of bondage and tyranny.

It's evil empire. It's that which becomes Babylon and Rome and the sort of anti-Christic vision. And yet it's this place, this fallen kingdom where God is calling His people to go. So Israel must go into, as it were, the very place of tyranny and bondage and persecution.

Will they be as a result of being Israelites isolated? They'll be eventually oppressed by Egypt and this will keep their identity, their ethnicity, their spirituality pure. And that's often how God will move among His people.

Of course the ethnic thing's a little bit different because we go from ethnic Israel, which is commanded not to intermarry, to then a bride of every tribe and tongue, a glorious turn of events after Pentecost.

We see here Jacob's great faith. He knows that God has promised him what He had promised Isaac, what He had promised Abraham, descendants in the land, seed in the land. He takes all of His seed down to Egypt.

If ever there was walking by faith and not by sight, it was this. How is God going to protect and preserve all of the seed and somehow restore us out of our Egyptian dependence into the land of His own choosing?

And so again, we move this emphasis. We have it in verse 7 and here it's just in verses 8 and following, we have it in front of us. For concerns about time, I'm not going to read through the names. I'm tempted to have Tony read through the names because he does so well with Hebrew.

But we're just going to pass by the names for now. I'll simply put this. These names are listed because of this emphasis on having seed in the land. When you get to Deuteronomy 7, part of the contrast that's established is when I first brought you into Egypt, you were barely a people.

You were a large extended family. You were not a nation to rival nations, but behold, I have made you a great nation. And God says in Deuteronomy 7, it was not because you were some mighty people, so numerous and mighty like the Egyptians that I called you.

It was because you weren't that. It's because you were a weak and feeble and needy family depending on the scraps from the Gentiles' tables just to get along. I called you by my grace for that reason.

The concern for the seed and the land has been in front of us, whether we realize it or not, from the very beginning of Genesis. It's been the land that Adam and Eve were torn from, the land of God's dwelling, the land where God would be with His people and there'd be no curse, no effects of the fall.

So God in Genesis 3 promises a seed, a seed that will come and crush the serpent and undo the effects of sin and rebellion in fallen man. And that promise is then taken up to the next level with the covenant God makes with Abraham.

It's a covenant of seed and of land, of an inheritance that will protect and bring forth the Messiah, the promised serpent crusher. And so this dual focus on the seed and the land we see from the very call of Abraham, to your offspring, to your seed I will give this land, the land of promise, the land of Canaan.

God had promised Abraham a seed. And here in chapter 46 the same great subjects that we've been tracking through Genesis reemerge, the seed of the patriarchs leading forward to the Messiah and the land in which God would dwell with His covenantal people.

In verse 3, the Lord promised to make of Jacob a great nation, the same way that He promised Isaac and Abraham that He would make of them a great nation. Mighty will be your descendants. Go look at the stars, count the sand on the seashore.

That's what I'm going to do for you. I don't know if many of you ever listened to classical music. I was thinking, is this something like an overture? An overture which sort of samples different pieces of a larger work, like an opera.

And you have it all compressed at the very beginning and you get a sense of some of the larger, more elaborated piece that you're about to hear over the next hour or two. I don't think it's an overture because it's not a sampling.

It's more like a symphony. And often a symphony is in several movements, three or four movements. And in those movements you have such variation that they really are distinct and of themselves and yet sometimes you don't recognize that there's themes, there's notes or phrases that are woven through and they variate.

It might be a key change, it might be the tempo, it might come to a crescendo. And when you get to that final movement, often the things that you've been hearing in some somewhat familiar way come in full force, full clarity.

It's like going from VHS to IMAX when you get to that last movement. And that's essentially, we're looking at the first movement of the symphony of scripture here in Genesis, where there's something familiar that's going to carry us all the way to the climax of Christ and his coming.

And when that comes, it will be in full effect. And though it will be distinct here, Jews to this day read the Hebrew Bible as a distinct narrative and they view it religiously. And it's completely cut off from Christ and we're saying, you're only listening to the first movement of the symphony.

You don't see how this has been composed and where this is all going. When we look at these themes like seed and land, that is the case. All of this is moving toward the fulfillment that comes through the promised seed who takes us into the land.

The one who, as Stephen says in Acts 7, is like the greater Joshua leading us in conquest into the land. This is a turning point for that very reason. We're reminded that Israel is now being brought into Egypt.

God will soon make a great nation. And as we begin Exodus, we'll see just how off the rails the Egyptian domination has become from Pharaoh showing lavish favor to Joseph and his family, to a different Pharaoh now binding them, torturing them with toil and labor, calling them to cry out to the God of their fathers.

Taking a step back as we think about this passage, what seems clear to me is how God has preserved all of Israel. Years of famine have come, and they've devastated the land, and they've put Jacob and his family into dire straits.

Please go to Egypt and bring back some food. The famine, the judgment has come, and out of desperation, God's providence has brought these 10 brothers back down to Egypt, and He's worked by His grace this miracle of reconciliation between Joseph and his brothers.

And now God's purposes begin to move forward, and He shows how He's preserving not only physically the lives of Jacob and Israel, but how He's preserving spiritually all of the promises He's made by way of covenant.

God is faithful to His promise as He is faithful to His people. He's faithful for the meal that sits in front of these brothers night by night, even as He is faithful to preserve the covenant He made with Abraham so many hundreds of years earlier.

This is the great summary of Jacob's perseverance by faith, but more than that, it's a summary of God's preservation of Jacob, God's preservation of Israel, God's preservation of the covenant, so that they can persevere by faith.

And that's really the focus I want us to have in three points of application. First, God preserves us. God preserves us. From the beginning of the story, we've recognized this. Jacob, when his hip was put out of joint, and he recognized who he was wrestling with, and he said, bless me.

Do you remember the response? Genesis 32, verse 30, Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved. God has preserved my life. He recognizes that God has brought him to a place to do deeper work, to bring forward his purposes, but behind all of that has been God preserving him, sustaining him, providing for him.