Genesis 42

We're going to be doing Genesis chapter 42. Genesis chapter 42. And before we get started, we'll go ahead and open up in prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for who you are, Lord. For the grace and mercy that you have for us, Lord. That your mercies are new every day. That your love is not even understandable or explainable, Lord. The best way to explain it is your son on the cross for us, Lord.

And we thank you for the work, the love, the grace that you have given us through your son. In Jesus' name, amen. So, the book of... Genesis from chapter 37, pretty much on, except for chapter 38, is all about Joseph. Joseph is a beautiful picture of Christ. When you see... I think he's the only one in the Old Testament who... There is no recorded mess up or sin in his lifetime.

And so, he represents Christ in a beautiful, pure... Spotless kind of way. And when we look at the Old Testament in light of what Jesus said to the Pharisees when he said to them, You search the scriptures, for in them you think that you have life. But they are that which testify of me. Basically, he's saying from Genesis to Malachi. Genesis to Malachi. It all speaks of him.

It's all pointing to the Messiah. And so, with that lens, I want to get into Genesis 42 with the lens of what this means and how it points to our Savior, Jesus Christ. First and foremost, Joseph is the second youngest in a family of 12 brothers. And he was sold into slavery at the age of 17. I don't know about you, but... That would be a lot to complain about.

That would be a lot to be upset and angry even at the Lord about. I grew up without my biological dad in the picture. And I was angry at God for a lot of years because of that. But I wasn't sold into slavery. And if I was sold into slavery, I'd be a lot more mad. And it goes to show... One, Joseph's godly upbringing. And two, Joseph's own personality. And three, Joseph's personal relationship with God.

That he knew God. That even when Potiphar's wife goes and tries to sleep with him again and again and again, he says, Why would I sin against my God? He had a real relationship with God. And although we don't see the intricacies or the intimate knowledge, have an intimate knowledge of what that relationship looked like, we see his character shows that he has a relationship with God.

And it is one that I aspire and hope to model. And I think that every believer should desire to model after Joseph. So he was sold into slavery at 17. And then he ended up in Potiphar's house. And Potiphar's wife tried to sleep with him. And he said, No, I don't want any of that. And then Potiphar was told by his wife. And he was ended up... And he was told by his wife.

Ended up put into prison. And from prison, he was there for a hot minute. And then the baker and the cupbearer came by. And he noticed that they were looking a little down and sad. And so he asked them what was wrong. And they told him their dreams. And Joseph told them the interpretation of the dreams by God. God gave him the interpretation. And so he gave the interpretation to these guys.

And hoping that... And hoping that when the baker would make it back to Pharaoh's court, that maybe he would let Pharaoh know that there's a dude that has no fault in him. He's not there for any other reason other than bad circumstances. That maybe he would get out. But two years passes by. Two years passes by. Shoot. Two weeks and I would have been hopeless.

But two years. He must have been heartbroken. And lost. First off, he was sold by his brothers. And now he's just in prison. And it's not... We got good prisons here in America, right? I mean, no prison's good. But at least they have food. Right? At least they have showers. They have a change of clothes. You might be wearing someone else's underwear. But at least they're clean-ish.

Right? You don't know... We don't know... I mean, maybe we do have an idea. But I don't have an idea of what that was like being in a prison. For Joseph. Joseph. But he's a young man in prison. For a crime he didn't commit. Waiting and waiting to be let out. And then, Pharaoh has a dream. And no one else can interpret it. And the baker was like, shoot. I remember there was a dude when I was in prison.

Do you remember that one time you were mad at me, Pharaoh? You sent me to prison. You cut off the head of the cupbearer. But you remember when you sent me to prison, there was a dude in there that basically told me I was going to get out. You were going to let me out. And so, they go get Joseph. And he comes back and gives Pharaoh the interpretation of the dream.

Basically, that there was going to be seven good years. And immediately after that, it was going to be seven years of famine. And Joseph told Pharaoh this. And then he said to Pharaoh, hey, you should get a guy who's really smart, really wise, and could store up 20% of all of the... the increase that you get in the seven good years. So that you can be prepared for the seven years of famine.

And Pharaoh was like, dude, there's none like you that has the spirit of the living God in him. And I want to give you this position. The only... You're going to be second in command. You're going to be the governor over all the land. You're going to be the guy in charge. And so, God prepared him and then gave him this position of power, which we see long term, how it ended up bringing his own family back to him.

The people that sold him into slavery. He was 30 years old when he became the governor of the land. And from there, we will go ahead and start in verse 1 of chapter 42. It says, When Jacob saw that there was grain in Egypt, Jacob said to his sons, Why do you look at one another? And he said, Indeed, I have heard that there is grain in Egypt. Go down to that place and buy for us there,

that we may live and not die. So Joseph's ten brothers went down to buy grain in Egypt. But Jacob did not send Joseph's brother Benjamin with his brothers. For he said, Lest some calamity fall upon him. And the sons of Israel went to buy grain among those who journeyed. For the famine was in the land. So, God had given Joseph the interpretation of the dream.

But he also gave him a plan to make it out of the famine. Or at least be in during the famine. He gave Joseph the wisdom to store up more than enough grain to not just sustain Egypt. But to sustain the people around them. And so, Jacob hears that, Yo, there's grain in Egypt. Okay, I'm going to send my boys over there. And we can survive. But all of this was part of God's ultimate plan.

Ultimate goal to bring the brothers back to Joseph. And to bring reconciliation into the family. And to ultimately save Jacob and his family from the famine. Because they were pretty well going to die. I've never been in a famine. But I'd assume that I wouldn't last very long. I'm not very good at hunting. Not very good at growing my own food. I'm not very good at...

I'm pretty dependent upon America. Just to be honest. Pretty dependent upon grocery stores. Pretty dependent upon... Pretty dependent upon my mom. Pretty dependent upon a lot of things. I wouldn't be able to survive. I'm not, you know, Bear Gryllis. And so, Jacob saw that there was one way for them to live. There was no other way. They had to go down to Joseph.

They had to make their way over to him in order to get the bread that was going to bring them to life. That was going to give them life for a little bit longer. And this is a picture of Christ. He says, I am the bread of life. He said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father except through me. The wages of sin is death. Sin brings death.

We are all born into sin. And the only way out of that is through the life-saving grace of Jesus Christ and his blood that was spilt on the cross. And just like Joseph was the only way to salvation for this family, Jesus is the only way to salvation in this world. Now, hopefully, each one of us are believers and saved. But do you know that you have the antidote

to the poison that death is, that sin is, rather? There's a whole community around us. That are marching their way to hell. There's an old quote that says, the way to hell is paved with good intentions. There's a lot of people doing what they think is good and may, you know, make them feel better and they think maybe they're going to go to heaven. But when we as believers, we actually have the real antidote

to where they're going to be or where they're going and the sin that they're going to go through. That is in their life. And it should push us to want to, one, love them and, like Jesus said, be his witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria. So, they had to go to Joseph. And it's crazy that it happened to be their youngest brother or their second youngest brother, right?

How awesome God is to be able to orchestrate all of that. And so, he sent the 10 brothers down there, but he didn't want to send Benjamin. Because the last time he sent one of their little brothers to come after them, he ended up dead or in slavery. And so, he still kind of held a little bit of a grudge against his own sons. A little, yeah, grudge. Verse 6, it says,

Now Joseph was governor over the land and it was he who said, You sold to all the people of the land. And Joseph's brothers came and bowed down before him with their faces to the earth. Joseph saw his brothers and recognized them, but he acted as a stranger to them and spoke roughly to them. Then he said to them, Where do you come from? And they said, From the land of Canaan to buy food.

So, Joseph recognized his brothers, but they did not recognize him. So, here, Joseph is being the governor of the land. He is the governor over all the land. He is the head honcho. Everyone has to come through him. He's like the Don in the mafia, right? No one gets killed without his say-so. He has absolute power and control. And as we capitalist Americans know, right,

the one who controls the supplies controls everything, right? If we have all of the control over all of the oil, we have control pretty much over the oil. We have control over the world. And so, Joseph has the power over the whole land, meaning that when he saw his brothers, I don't know about you guys, but when I would have seen my brothers who have sold me into slavery, it doesn't matter how long it would have been, I would have been like, as they're walking in, looking at the other servants like, Smoke them, kill them.

He had the authority. No one was going to tell him not to. But once again, he had a relationship with God. And just because he had the power to, didn't mean he was going to use it. So, he saw them and he recognized them and he acted like he didn't know them and he spoke roughly to them. And he wanted to see how they were going to react with him. He wanted to,

he just wanted to see if they were the same dudes that they were before. And then verse 9, it says, Then he, Joseph, remembered the dreams which he had dreamed about them. And said to them, You are spies. You have come to see the nakedness of the land. And they said to him, No, my lord, but your servants have come to buy food. We are all one man's sons. We are honest men.

Your servants are not spies. But he said to them, No, but you have come to see the nakedness of the land. And they said, Your servants are twelve brothers, the sons of one man in the land of Canaan. And in fact, the youngest is with our father today. And one is no more. But Joseph said to them, It is as I spoke to you, saying, You are spies. In this manner you shall be tested.

By the life of Pharaoh you shall not leave this place unless your youngest brother comes here. Send one of you and let him bring your brother, and you shall be kept in prison, that your words may be tested to see whether there is any truth in you, or else by the life of Pharaoh surely you are spies. So he put them all together in prison. Three days. So Joseph here clearly did not trust his brothers.

Didn't know if they changed. And probably didn't think that they changed. Makes you think what he would have done if Jacob would have allowed Benjamin to come. Because I think all of this was kind of Joseph wanting to see his brother to see if they killed his other brother or if they were going to let him live. He probably just wanted to see if they were, if there was anything in them that had changed.

If they were repentant upon the decision that they made to sold their own blood brother into slavery. So he tests them. And he puts them into prison for three days. It's a whole lot longer and less than he had to go through. But he gave them a little taste of what he had experienced over the last decade or so. In verse 18 it says, Then Joseph said to them the third day,

Do this and live, for I fear God. If you are honest men, let one of your brothers be confined to your prison house. But you go and carry grain for the famine of your houses, and bring your youngest brother to me, so your words will be verified, and you shall not die. And they did so. Here, after the three days in jail, in prison, Joseph said something very interesting to them.

He said, do this and live. But he told them, for I fear God. Now, for them who grew up in a, the family that came from Abraham, from Isaac, and their father Jacob, that should have been an encouraging thing. Because basically, this governor over the whole land of Egypt is saying to them, I'm accountable to the living God. I'm accountable to God. I'm not just accountable to my own conscience.

I don't make my own decisions. I don't just flippantly make impulsive decisions based on how I'm feeling in that moment. No, I'm accountable to God. To God, the creator of the heavens and the earth. And my question to you is, do you characterize your life in that manner? Are you accountable to God for how you live your life? How you talk to people? For how you treat people?

Whether you're in business or in the workplace, how do you treat your boss? Do you talk behind him? Talk about him behind, behind his or her back? How do you treat your family members? Do you talk about them behind their back? Or are you accountable to God for the words that come from your mouth and the actions that are done in your life? Flip with me to Luke 12,

verses 4 and 5. Jesus was talking to his disciples here, but he speaks to them about the fear of God and what it would look like, and what it means. And he said to them, And I say to you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will show you whom you should fear. Fear him who, after he has killed you,

has power to cast into hell. Yes, I say to you, fear him. He's the one that we should be worried about how he thinks about us. We should be, at least recognize that we're accountable to him at the end of our lives. For every word that comes from our mouth and every action that we take. He has the authority, the only one who has the authority to send us to heaven or to hell.

There's not a man on this earth or a woman on this earth that has the power to do that. Yeah, they could send us to prison. They could kill us. They could do a whole lot of things to us. They can make our life a living hell, but they can't send us to eternal hell. So once again, I'll ask you, who are you accountable to? Are you accountable to the living God?

Or are you accountable to your own emotions? Are you accountable to your own conscience? Are you accountable to your own morals and moral standards? And then, you guys can flip back to Genesis 42. I'm going to flip to Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes 12, 13, and 14 says this. It's basically the end of Ecclesiastes after Solomon basically says, nothing in this world matters.

Vanity is vanity. All is vanity. Nothing matters. He says, it doesn't matter if you make a lot of money or make a little money. Doesn't matter. He says this, let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is man's all. For God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil.

Once again, I'm going to ask, who are you accountable to? What is the great purpose behind your life? Why do you do the things that you do? Is it to actively show that you're fearing God and you're seeking to keep his commandments? Because this man Solomon had a lot of wisdom, right? He wrote the book of Proverbs. He's kind of a smart guy. People would come from all around the world to talk to him.

So he kind of knew what he was talking about. And he had experienced everything the world had to offer. And yet at the end of it all, he came to the conclusion that there's only one thing that matters, that you fear God and keep his commandments. And to remember that you're accountable for every work, every action that you take, including every secret thing, whether it's good or it's evil.

Once again, who are you accountable to? Joseph here says, I'm accountable to the living God. And he tells them, makes a promise to them. That if they were, they are honest men and to leave one of their brothers behind in the prison and go ahead and take grain home for your family now. So your family can survive. But remember to come back and bring your youngest brother

because I want to see if the words that you are saying match up with the actions of your life. He's testing their character. If you can see that here with me. He's testing their character. He wants to see if the words that they say match up with the actions of their life. One of the things that held me back from wanting to, when I turned 18, I chose to not be a Christian anymore

or pretend to be a Christian anymore, because I feel like I was pretending to be a Christian. I felt like I was pretending beforehand. And one of the things, and granted I'm an idiot, so take it with a grain of salt. But one of the things that held me back from wanting to join the church or accept Christ for real was the fact that I saw a lot of people whose words didn't match up with their actions in the church.

I saw a lot of people who called themselves Christians who would yell at their waiter, at brunch on a Sunday afternoon. I saw a lot of Christians who would just be jerks. Their words didn't match up with the actions of their life. And one of the things that I desire in my life and the lives of everyone that I'm, everyone in the body of Christ that I'm surrounded by is that our words ultimately, obviously we're going to screw up here and there, but ultimately our words would match up with the actions of our life.

That we who profess to be Christians, little Christs, people who follow Christ, that our actions would show that. And so Joseph here is testing their character. Verse 21 says, Then they said to one another, We are truly guilty concerning our brother, for we saw the anguish of his soul when he pleaded with us, and we would not hear. Therefore this distress has come upon us.

And Reuben said to them, saying, Did I not speak to you, saying, Do not sin against the boy, and you would not listen? Therefore behold, his blood is now required of us. But they did not know that Joseph understood them, for he spoke to them through an interpreter. And he turned himself away from them and wept. And he returned to them again and talked with them,

and he took Simeon from them and bound him before their eyes. Sorry, I have like a third grade reading level. I'll try to read a little bit more competently. But I get distracted too. Like, sorry. But anyways, after Joseph gives them their test, they begin to complain amongst each other. And they're still guilty for what they did to Joseph. That many years ago.

And my question to you is, is there anything in your life that you're holding on to that you're a little bit guilty of that you may or may not have done in the past? There's forgiveness in the name of Jesus Christ, and you can go to him, and he will forgive you. And I would encourage you to do so. And Joseph could hear them. He understood them. And from before that moment,

he was speaking through an interpreter. But you could see that it still affected him. That his brothers who sold him were still hurt because of him. And that hurt him. In verse 25 it says this, Then Joseph gave a command to fill their sacks with grain, to restore every man's money to his sack, and to give them provisions for their journey. Thus he did for them.

So they loaded their donkeys with the grain and departed from there. But as one of them opened his sack to give his donkey feed at the encampment, he saw his money, and there it was in the mouth of the sack. So he said to his brothers, My money has been restored, and there it is in my sack. Then their hearts failed them, and they were afraid, saying to one another, What is this that God has done to us?

So they're still guilty, and they think this is God punishing them. And they're crying out, What is this that God has done to us? A minor inconvenience, or it seems to be a minor inconvenience in their life, caused them to complain about what God was doing to them. And I know from experience that sometimes I can get this way when something just doesn't go my way.

I mean, getting your money back is kind of a good thing. I would be kind of hyped about that. But any sort of inconvenience in my life, I have the tendency to go and cry and say, Why God? Why me? Why would you do this to me? Why would you, you know, tell me to do this, and this is what happens? This is what I get for serving you? And you see the difference between their character and Joseph's.

Never once do we hear or see in Scripture Joseph going and crying out to the Lord saying, Why, why did you send me here? Why am I in prison? Although we know he probably felt that way. He's very similar to the man Job. I don't know if you guys know the story of Job, or read the book of Job. He kind of had a hard life. But God described him as a man who feared God

and shunned evil. That means he walked away from it. And when all of these things had happened to him, he said, Blessed be the name of God. He wouldn't curse God. His wife tried to get him to curse God. And he's like, What? What do you mean? He's God. Can he do good and evil? Can't he allow this and still be a good God? But here, at the most minor of inconveniences for them,

they're blaming God. So my question to you is, Have you blamed God for anything that's happened in your life? Or are you in a position where you're struggling with the idea of, Is God really good if he allowed this in my life? I would encourage you to take that to the Lord. Because a wise woman at my home church once told me that she used to go and scream at the Lord

when she was going through really hard times. And she would say, That God can handle my honesty. And I want to encourage you guys with that God can handle your honesty. In fact, that's what he wants. He doesn't want you to hide anything from him. And if you're struggling with anything that has to do with God or your belief in God or what it means to be a Christian,

take it to him. He can handle it. I don't know if Ryan can handle it. He probably could. Jared might be able to handle it. Maybe not. But God definitely can. Take it to the Lord. And let him deal with the issues of your heart. So, they're complaining, saying, and they're heartbroken, they're scared. What it should have done, rather than cause them to complain to one another,

or to be scared at one another, is cause them to go to the Lord in prayer. Cause them to go to the Lord and say, Hey, we messed up. We acknowledge the fact that we messed up. I'm sorry. Please help us out. Verse 29. Then they went to Jacob their father in the land of Canaan, and told him all that had happened to them, saying, The man who is Lord of the land spoke roughly to us,

and took us for spies of the country. But we said to him, We are honest men, we are not spies. We are twelve brothers, sons of our father, one is no more, and the youngest is with our father this day in the land of Canaan. Then the man, the Lord of the country, said to us, By this I will know that you are honest men. Leave one of your brothers here with me,

and take food for the famine of your households, and be gone. And bring your youngest brother to me, so I shall know that you are not spies, but that you are honest men. I will grant your brother to you, and you may trade in the land. So they told their daddy all that had happened in the land of Egypt. And they told him that they didn't hide anything from him.

They were completely honest. They told him that they had another brother back home. They told him that their dad was back home. Ultimately, if you are negotiating something, you never show everyone your deck. If you are playing Texas Hold'em, you don't turn your cards around and say, Hey, this is what's going on. You kind of got to hold back some information

so that you can negotiate. And they were very bad at negotiating because of the guilt that they had within. And so, verse 35, it says, Then it happened, as they emptied their sacks, that surprisingly each man's bundle of money was in his sack. And when they and their father saw the bundles of money, they were afraid. And Jacob their father said to them, You have bereaved me.

Joseph is no more, Simeon is no more, and you want to take Benjamin. All these things are against me. And Reuben spoke to his father, saying, Kill my two sons if I do not bring him back to you. Put him in my hands, and 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 left alone. If any calamity should befall him

along the way in which you go, then you would bring down my gray hair with the sorrow to the grave. So, in closing, Joseph is kind of sad and pissed at the same time. He just lost, a little over a decade before, he lost Joseph, his favorite son. And then, he just lost Simeon. And now they're trying to take Benjamin over there. And he's taking it very personal.

Now what he's not doing, and even to the end of the chapter, what he's not doing, is going to the Lord and saying, What's up? What do you need me to do in this moment? How do you want me to react? He's not being accountable to the Lord for his actions. He's not fearing God over man and his actions. And there's a very big danger in our lives when we make decisions based on our emotions,

based on our own intuition, based on our own wisdom, based on our own knowledge. When we make decisions based on what we think is best, from our experiences in life, right, trauma can really mess you up when trying to make good decisions. And I'm sure, in a room this size, amongst a group of people your age and all, that there's some trauma that has been in your life that has dictated the way that you make decisions. And I do want to say to you that those aren't the right way to make decisions.

Joseph, I mean, Jacob right here is making a... Granted, he changes, you'll see in the next chapter, plot twist, right? But in this moment, he's making a grave decision. Had he stayed in this decision, would have been the end of his family. So, my warning to you, rather, would be not to let your feelings, your emotions, your own wisdom, your own knowledge influence you

in the way that you live your life. Submit all of those things to the Lord. Give every single one of those things to the Lord. Whether you had a bad dad, you had a great dad, whether you had a everything that you wanted in life, or you had nothing that you wanted in life. Give it all to the Lord and surrender your own ideas of what you should be doing for Him,

to Him, so that He can do through you what He wants to do through you. And He can do whatever is in you that He wants to do in you. There's a whole process after getting saved called sanctification, and it sucks. Where God is continually pointing out, hey, hey, there's an area right here that needs to change. What are you going to do with it? I pointed it out to you.

I've known it's there from the beginning. What are you going to do with it? Are you going to give it to me, take it to me, or are you going to cry about it and run? So, take those things to the Lord. Don't hold on to them. And every decision that you make, every idea that you have, does everyone know Proverbs 3, verses 5 and 6? Trust in the Lord with all your heart.

Lean not on your own understanding. In all of your ways, acknowledge Him, and then He'll direct your path. It's taking every idea, thought, back to the Lord and saying, is this the right way to think? Yes or no? And God's like, neither. Do something else. Ultimately, what you're going to do is you're going to take every idea, thought, ultimately, it's giving Him

complete control and authority over your life. That is what we do as believers when we call Jesus Lord. We're saying, you're in control, I'm not. I'm just a lowly servant. I give you my life and allow you to do whatever it is that you want. So, here, Jacob is in control of his life because he's scared. He's choosing not to surrender to the Lord. He's choosing to surrender

to the fear that is ruling his life. And 2 Timothy 1.7 says, for God did not give us a spirit of fear but of power and of love and a sound mind. So, I leave you with this. First, I'll ask you again, who are you accountable to? Are you accountable to God for the way that you live your life? And two, how do you make your decisions? And I'll leave you with that.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word and we thank you for the love that you have for us, Father. The desire that you have to be a part of our lives. Lord, I pray that you would, Lord, reveal yourself to each one of us in a new way that would cause us to fear you, Lord, in a godly way, in a biblical way. Lord, I pray that you would help us to be aware of your, not just your presence, but of our accountability to you for the way that we live our lives, Lord, for the way that we represent you here on this earth for the short amount of time that you've given us.

I pray that by the power of your spirit, you would begin to sanctify and take out every part of our lives, of our minds, of our hearts, that look nothing like you. Lord, and that you would mold us into your image. Lord, that you would, Lord, whatever it takes, make us to look like you. In Jesus' name, amen.