Going & coming

Good morning. People have asked me, well, have you gotten back into sync with things here in America and all that? Well, there's two answers to that. The time change, 10 hours, believe it or not, was almost no problem at all. No problem at all. The problem is that every night since then, I keep dreaming about Africa. As a matter of fact, I told Nancy that Wednesday night I did not sleep well at all. It's not that the content of the dream was bad, I just couldn't stop dreaming it.

One of the things that happened, I was with the students, and a lot of what they're used to is songs that are sung substantially by people who can't read. But these students can. And so I had the song, How Deep the Father's Love for Us. Many of you are familiar with it. I just think it's a wonderful song.

I, during a break time, began singing that for some of the students, just a couple of them. And as I began doing so, I was intending to just kind of give them an idea of what it was like. The two or three students that were immediately behind me started joining in and they picked up the tune right away. And as soon as the others outside heard it, they all rushed in.

And by the time I got to the end of the second verse, they were all singing it. I stopped. I said, you guys had never heard this song before? No. But they were all singing it beautifully. It was a lovely, impromptu men's choir. Anyway, that's what I dreamt all night Wednesday night. So it took me a while to catch up with it. All right. Now, getting up to speed with our Genesis study. It's been some weeks since we've studied about it, so to kind of get into sync here.

Joseph now had been sold by his older brothers to slave traders. He'd been a slave after the experience there with Potiphar's wife and then he ended up in prison and now at this point has been made the second in command. We'll call him basically what the Egyptians called him and that's something equivalent to the Grand Vizier, the person who has second in charge over agriculture.

Because of Joseph having interpreted the dream of Pharaoh, they were now into the seven-year famine period. Remember the first seven years was seven years of plenty. Joseph had been put in charge of keeping a fifth of all the crops from that time to now be redistributed, essentially sold back to the people during this time of famine. And there was not only Egyptians coming for this, but also others from around the world.

And so Joseph, with the brothers' first visit, accused them of being spies, but he sent them home with food, plenty of it, but kept Simeon in Egypt as a sort of assurance that they would come back. But he also said, when you come back, for food and for Simeon. When you come back, you must, as Randy read for us, you must come back with Benjamin, the youngest of the twelve sons. Jacob and his sons, less Simeon here, and Joseph, and all the rest of the clan are now running low on food. As a matter of fact, the account has it they had eaten through all of the food that they had bought in Egypt. And Simeon is still in Egypt with Joseph, but Joseph had told his brothers they should not return to Egypt. The way he put it is, you shall not see my face without bringing your youngest brother Benjamin.

You must bring Benjamin. Benjamin the twelfth of the sons. Now Joseph knows who his brothers are. He's seen them all. He knows who they are. And he knows his father is still alive. But they don't recognize him. Now you might ask, why don't they recognize him?

Well, first of all, it was the custom of the Egyptians to shave the head. And then put on this false hair wig on top of it. Why shave the head? It keeps the lice down. So they do that. The other thing I would do is lots of makeup, especially around the eyes. And part of that was, of course, cosmetic. But the other was also skin protection because of the weather. So Joseph had a chance with that and all the other paraphernalia that went along with his being royalty to hide himself. So here's Joseph. He recognizes who they are. He's asking about his father and his youngest brother, who's not among them. But they don't recognize him.

Now we might wonder about some of the things that Joseph does and wonder whether that was a good idea, but certainly it is clear he does show them mercy and grace and he refrains from revenge. By the way, if you want to look up a New Testament passage, Romans chapter 12. Starts off with mercy, talks about grace twice, and at the end says revenge is not for the believer.

So Joseph is carrying these things out. And Joseph also maintains, however, another godly assumption. And that godly assumption is that God can change people's hearts. Isn't that really what he's looking for among his brothers? Joseph's brothers had been very fleshly men. There was no question about it. We've read through the prior chapters. They had done some awful things, including selling him.

But were they still fleshly now that all these years had passed, or had they changed? Now, a godly assumption is God can change a heart. So his question was, has God changed their hearts? Can I trust them? Are they still fleshly or has God changed them? He's looking to find that out. Well, the chapter starts off as Randy read for us. Here it's verse 1.

The famine was severe. It continued to be severe. Of course, to Joseph that was no surprise. He knew it would be severe for seven years, right? Verse 2 says that they had finished off the grain that they had bought from Egypt on their first trip. They'd run through it all. They had perhaps some local leftovers. As a matter of fact, we know they do because they took some of it down with them. But all the grain that they'd gotten from Egypt, gone by the time this conversation takes place here.

Jacob's initial direction to the nine older sons, remember, Simeon's down there, okay, and Joseph is down there, although Jacob doesn't know that, and so far as he's concerned, Benjamin isn't going. It's out of touch with reality after, here they are in the middle of a severe famine, all the food's gone that they bought before, he's wanting to go down and have them buy a little food.

Now you can understand what Jacob might be thinking. He's thinking, you know, I know we had this requirement about Benjamin, but maybe if we just buy a little food we can get by because he really has the soft place in his heart about Benjamin and doesn't want to send Benjamin down. So he's thinking we can just get by with a little food and maybe they won't ask about Benjamin. Well, what was he thinking?

So now we come along back in the real world. Judah. Judah, yeah, Judah. Reminds his father of the demand that the Grand Vizier, who was Joseph, had made to the brothers. And what was that? Only come back with your youngest brother. The way he put it was, you will only see my face again with Benjamin, not otherwise. You must come back with Benjamin.

The food quantity isn't the issue. Judah tells his father that they would only go back for food in any amount, because food quantity isn't the issue, if Benjamin is with them, just as the Grand Vizier, who is Joseph, had demanded of them, or not at all. Benjamin's the issue, not the quantity of food. You can't get by with, hey, we'll just buy a small amount and then he won't ask about Benjamin. No. Matter of fact, that's going to become abundantly clear pretty quickly here.

So Jacob begins this interaction. He's called Israel in the passage. He questions Judah as to why Judah had told the Grand Vizier, whom he doesn't realize is Joseph, that he had a younger brother. Why did you tell him? And he puts it in a, frankly, a rather selfish way. He says, why did you treat me so badly as to tell him that?

And he's not tuning up his voice, me, me, me, me, but he is talking about me. He's real me-centered, isn't he? Here the whole family, the whole clan has a food crisis. You've got one son stuck down there. The grand vizier, the guy who's second in command of all of Egypt says, alright, you've got to come back with this guy Benjamin. And Jacob is just thinking about me, himself.

Well, Judah responds, he says, look, all we did was answer his questions. We had no way of knowing that he would make this demand for Benjamin. We just gave him the truth. There was no way we could have predicted that he would have made the requirement, you must bring Benjamin with you.

Judah, however, is about to reveal a radical character change. Radical. Judah had just presented to his father, Jacob, who is also called Israel here, that they had to go down to Egypt with Benjamin. And he also told his father, and this is the part that's interesting, he says, you can hold me responsible, but we must take Benjamin down.

There is no choice. We must take him down. You may hold me responsible for the outcome of this, but we have to take him down with us. Judah also tells his father in this passage, don't procrastinate any longer. We must do this. We must do it now. We're out of food. We could have made two trips to Egypt by now with the delay here. We can't procrastinate any longer. This is reality. This is the truth. Hold me responsible if you want, but we've got to go down to Egypt now. We've got to get some food. And some small amount isn't going to do. Question for you.

Is this the same Judah that we saw before? Think of what this Judah guy was like. Judah was the one that proposed the sale of Joseph to the Midianites. Yeah, that Judah. The one who said, hey, let's sell our brother. Judah, as we studied chapter 38, was the one who separated himself from his family to live with the Canaanites, hung around with an ungodly man, married a Canaanite unbeliever. He was not a spiritual leader and, as a matter of fact, two of his sons were taken by the Lord because of it in judgment. He was sexually immoral. He, unbeknownst to him, joined himself to a supposed prostitute and ended up being daughter-in-law.

Yeah, that Judah. That one. That was the one who was now saying, we have to look at things realistically. This is the one who's now saying, we have to care about all of us. When previously, his only thought was me, me, me, me. This Judah was a changed man. This Judah had an entirely different perspective. So the question that Joseph had in his mind, had these guys really changed? Yes, they had. But Joseph needed to know that for himself. So on the basis of Judah laying these things out and persuading his father, his father Jacob, also called Israel, tells him, okay, if that must be so, if that's the way it has to be, three things I want you guys to take with you.

One, take from the best products of the land. We want to bring a gift that shows that we have good intent. The accusation, are we spies? No, definitely not. We have good intent and so we bring, not because we have to, but we bring a gift of the best of the land.

So that's number one. The next thing, take double the money. The money that was put back in your sacks for the trip that you made here, and then let's take that back just to show goodwill and good intent, and then take some more money to buy double. Why? To buy a lot, not just a little, as was his initial proposal. And finally, yes, take Benjamin. Take Benjamin. Now, here's the question. Would Jacob say, you can take Benjamin, but boy, if he doesn't come back, I'm going to nail you. Is that what he says? No. Instead, he says, take Benjamin and what does he do?

He looks to the Lord to grant compassion. He says, let's have the Lord have his part in this. Instead of my holding you, Judah, responsible and forever being regretful of your action, forever holding it against you, let's instead look to the Lord here. Do you see what happened even in Jacob's own thinking? Where he finally says, let's do all these things that are the right things to do, but let's also look for the Lord to act. Let's look for the Lord to work in hearts. Let's look for the Lord to bring compassion here. So here they come. Joseph sees his brothers coming with Benjamin.

Now, the fact that he does tells me a few things. Here's Joseph. He has been distributing food for some time, right? By this time? As a matter of fact, he's really good at it. My guess is that Joseph had figured out, okay, I've got this many people, and I've got this much food, and they're going to be back about this time. Okay? I think he had probably figured that out. And about that right time window when they would be back, because they were back right when the food was all gone, he probably had it all figured out.

They'll be about in this time window, and I'm going to be looking for them. The fact that he sees them from a distance before they come up to the front door, sees them with Benjamin, he's been looking. And he's been anticipating their coming. Lots to take care of when you're dealing with a nation, but he's been looking for his brothers. He's been watching out for them, and specifically recognizing, you know, one, two, three, four, doing the count, ah, Benjamin's with them. He has this household steward prepare lunch for all of them.

Joseph's brothers at first come up to the steward and they express concern. I can imagine them, and so here they are having this conversation with the steward saying, hey, you know, we got this money in our sacks and we really want to be honest about it. It wasn't our intent. So what's the response of the steward? Oh, you're in trouble? No. The steward comes and says, cool your jets, guys.

Don't be afraid. Your God and the God of your father has given the treasure into your sacks. He says, don't worry about it. Got you covered. Got you covered. No problem. So this thing that they had been anxious about from the time that they departed, not long after, until this very moment, it's not a problem. No biggie.

Then he brought Simeon out to them. Now the brothers were all gathered together there. All of them. They bring presents in Joseph's presence. And the older brothers present the gifts to Joseph that they had brought from their own land. They brought various kinds of food gifts. And then myrrh is that other item that you see there. And so they did that. And they all bowed deeply.

That's one thing that's interesting. Of course, here they're looking at Joseph, right? What had Joseph predicted in his dream when he was about 17 years old? You guys are all going to bow before me, right? Here it is. It's happening right now. Then Joseph asks about their father and about their brother Benjamin. Is this your brother Benjamin? Is this the one?

Then he says, May God be gracious to you, my son. As he receives his younger brother by Rachel. Then he is so gripped by seeing them all, including his younger brother. He scrambles from the room to weep. He has been gripped at heart by what's taken place here, this gathering of these brothers. Most of the brothers, except for Benjamin, had treated him horribly, some discussing whether to kill him. Judah coming up with the idea, hey, let's sell him his property.

Now they're all gathered together in this room. It's more than he can bear, so he runs from the room. As Joseph was able to compose himself, and the wording here, just so I can get the graphic in place, is a little different than what you have in your handout and configuration, but it's there. It's the same wording, just differently shaped.

He ordered the meal to be served and that the brothers all be seated in their exact birth order, which of course astonished them all. Now, exact birth order, you imagine what the odds are of that happening by chance. Of course, it should astonish them. Being a fellow who went through engineering school, I'll tell you, it was about one chance in 40 million of arranging them in that order by chance. And so they should have been astonished, right? So you can imagine these brothers as they're looking at each other having been seated intentionally in the sequence of their birth order.

Well, then they were served this meal. It was a quality that was just like Joseph's. Same quality that Joseph received. Everybody got the same amount except for Benjamin who got five times what the others received. I'm not sure he ate it all, but that's what he got. In high school I would have eaten that much.

So what was Joseph doing here? What's going on? We'll see in this chapter and the next couple of chapters, Joseph is certainly going to show mercy and grace to his brothers, at the same time trying to gather information. Information about his father, information then about his brothers while inquiring about his father and the rest of the extended family. He's going to be doing that.

And while trusting that God can truly change hearts, and he knows that God can, he also wanted to know if his brothers had truly changed themselves to the point, and the question he's asking, can I now trust these guys? It was clear at one point in time, no, they could not be trusted. These are the guys that would discuss killing me and then sell me. No, they could not be trusted. These are the guys that would go and tell a story to my father that I was dead. They could not be trusted.

But now, with the years that have passed, can they now be trusted? That's the question that he's asking. There's something else in here too, though. And why would he ask that question? Can I now trust them? He would like to be able to trust them. Yeah, he would like to be able to trust them.

Why? Because one of the principles that goes through Scripture, it's woven from this first book here all the way to the last, is God's first and primary intent is resolution and unity. Given a choice, the Lord's intent is, let's resolve this problem. Let's deal with things. Not talking about being unrealistic. It's not talking about unity at the expense of common sense, doctrine, morality. But ultimately resolving issues. Solving problems of disunity. where there has been separation, bringing it together.

That's God's intent. That's one of the reasons why he's asking that question right here. Can this be resolved? Can relationships be restored? That's why he's asking the question. That's why he would even bother. It's God's first and ultimate intent that relationships be restored, if at all possible. The other aspect here that comes out of this is that God doesn't want you and I to stay the same either.

Now, we had an election recently in which the word change was a very pivotal word, and you may be relieved to know I'm not going to talk about that election. But one of the things that was key here, Joseph was trusting that God could change hearts and change people. And in fact, Joseph was hoping that these brothers of his had changed. He was wanting that to be the case.

God also, however, intends to change each one of us. God has done things with us so that we, by His mercy and grace, can be radically changed. And He's partly done with that and partly not. God has done things in such a way that these changes take place in three distinct stages. First is phase one. The first change takes place when we believe the gospel. That's a rather instantaneous change, isn't it?

Here's the gospel. Christ, the Son of God, died for our sins and was buried and rose again. Do you believe it? You're saved. Change one. Change one. Phase one. Nothing else, nothing more, nothing less. The gospel is that simple. Oh yeah, we could spend more time explaining certain things, and a lot of times that's justified. But in the end, the gospel is really simple, isn't it? That's why we can talk to someone who may have been through all kinds of education and talk through all the details. That's also why when I was four and a half, I could understand it and believe it. Christ then took upon Himself the sins of the whole world, yours and mine.

1 John 2.2 there. Some key truths, as a matter of fact, we're spending an entire elective studying this. Are they God places each believer into Christ, places Christ into each believer, and each believer in the body of Christ?

That in and into idea is big there, isn't it? These are big changes that the Lord makes rather instantaneously. It happens quite suddenly. Now, I'm going to make a huge leap because I'm going to jump to phase three. When the Lord takes us, the ones who believe, home to be with Him, I hope it's today, every single one of us will be raptured, including our loved ones who have believed. Them too. Taken up to be with the Lord Jesus Christ forever.

1 Thessalonians 4, 13-18 spells that out. We will have new bodies like Christ, and we will be ultimately, totally, made fully into Christ's image. As 1 John 3, 2 puts it, we know that when He appears, we will be like Him. Made into His image, having a body like His, we will see Him just as He is.

That's phase three. Now I'm going to go to phase two, out of sequence here. This second part is the part that we're in right now. God intends most certainly to change us. We've been changed instantaneously once we believed. That's the phase one. We will be changed instantaneously when the Lord brings us home to be with Him.

But this process that's going on where we are here on this planet, that's phase two. We're living between these instantaneous change times, aren't we? We're living in this process that's taking place. This one change that takes place over time is the time that we spend here on planet Earth.

This change has a couple of primary aspects here and each one of those is intended to make us look like Christ. So you wonder about Some of the things that are going on in your life, some of the things we're doing together here, it's all intended to make you look like Christ. Yeah, that's why we're doing this. That's why things are happening in your life. Ever had somebody say, or maybe you've said it yourself, Lord, why me? And the reason? To make you like Christ. Yeah, that's why. The answer is simple.

It comes out this way in Romans 8, 28 and 29. We know that God causes all things to work together for good. To those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose, in verse 29, to become conformed to the image of His Son. These are the circumstances that the Lord brings about in our lives and the Lord allows. To be conformed to the image of His Son.

That's why the various things happen, including some of them we wouldn't necessarily sign up for. If someone were to say to you, rather, would you like to sign up to be conformed to the image of Christ? It might be easy to say, oh sure, I'll sign up for that. That's cool. Well, what's it going to take? Oh, well, we need to tell you about the circumstances the Lord's going to use. Oh, wow.

Conformed to the image of His Son. And the other part, and that's specifically why we're meeting here this morning, is transformed by God's Word. This is the other formed, but we all, with an unveiled face that is not subject to and looking to the law, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into that same image, the image of the Lord Jesus Christ, from glory to glory. That is, it's a growth process. It is from the Lord, from the Spirit. It is a work of the Spirit. We are gathering here this morning to be changed into His image. That's the transforming process. That's what's going on here.

We're not just trying to fill our heads full of information. We're not just trying to be smart. We're not just filling our heads with data or gathering together because God likes to check off that we've been at church. but rather so that the Lord can change us, transform us into the image of Christ. That's why we're gathering here. We're gathering around His Word for that purpose.

Something else, we have said that this phase two is a process, but I don't want us to think of that as being real, just sort of mechanical and material. Why? Because this process in the end is focused towards knowing Christ. It's focused towards faith in Him.

So it is not just a mechanical process, it's a personal process. We're not told all of what took place with Judah to turn him from this man that was only focused on self and was willing to sell his brother. to become a guy who would think of the entire group and persuade his father and even be willing to say, if you want to, you can blame me, but we need to do the right thing. We don't know what all the details are there that brought that about. However, we are told here What does this process consist of?

It's a personal process about knowing Him. Paul wrote in Philippians 3, 7-11, But whatever things were gained to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ my Lord. What's of value? Knowing Christ my Lord. That's of value. Everything else is a write-off. Everything else is a write-off. It's all loss. Zero. That's the surpassing value.

Knowing Christ my Lord. For whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish, so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being," here's this conformed word, conformed to his death, in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.

God is in the process of conforming us to Christ. He's going to use circumstances that He brings about. He's going to use this meeting that we're having here this morning to conform us to Christ. He's going to use the time that we have together and we share in the Lord. He's going to use our growing knowledge of Him to bring us to look more like Him. Until that day when we see Him face to face. Until that day when that third phase comes about. And that change has finally reached its end. We look like him. That's what God has in mind. That's exactly what God's doing. And guess what? It's a real, real value. That's what's valuable. That's what's precious.

Let's go to our Lord in prayer. Lord, as we look at this passage, we could say, oh, that happened almost 4,000 years ago. And yeah, that's true. And yet we see you really did make changes in the hearts and lives of these men. And we're not done looking at the evidence of those changes. But Lord, we also, as we look at this, reflect upon the fact that you are in the process of changing us and you've told us very clearly what that change consists of, being conformed, being transformed, and what the ultimate end is, that we know you, until the very day when we are like you, made to be like you. Thank you for that change. And we just pray that you would enlighten our hearts and minds along the way. In Jesus' name, Amen.