Answers in Genesis--Fall 2016--Lesson 4: Joseph in Egypt

Good morning. How's everybody doing? Did you guys have a good week? OK.

All right, we got coffee. I had a little bit of coffee last night when I was working. And normally coffee doesn't do anything to me, but I slept till about 2 o'clock this morning and then bing, I was up. And I tried to go back to sleep and finally I just said, what, I'm just gonna get up and do some work.

I'm just laying here. So I went I went to Denny's and And you got some work done, so. Let's, really excited about the lesson this morning. Let's go ahead and pray and then we're gonna jump into Genesis.

Lord, thank you so much for this time for us to be together as, as brothers and sisters in Christ on this Lord's Day. It's a great blessing to be in a country where we can freely study your word and, and, and worship openly. We ask you to continue to grant us that freedom. We pray for all of our teachers this morning.

They're teaching, both. Young people and also our adults. and, we thank you for this day that we get to partake of communion. Just ask that you prepare our hearts, Lord, as we get to share in the bread and in the cup a little bit later.

In Christ's name we pray. Amen. All right. We're going to be continuing on.

We're actually starting a new quarter today. The one of the main questions we're gonna deal with this morning is can God use evil to bring about good? I don't want to let the cat out of the bag, but the answer is yes. And so we're gonna be explaining why that is a little bit later.

Wanna give a little bit of an advertisement here down at Calvary Oceanside. They've got a conference October 7th to 9th, put on by ICR Institute for Creation Research called Back to Genesis, and, you can check out. just Google this and, what caught my attention is Doctor Jake Hebert is speaking on the mystery of the ice age. That was our topic last week and, he has expertise on that topic and, if you wanna go check it out or maybe later on, you can look around for the, for the audio.

I know I'll be checking it out. so this is our adult Sunday school class. We consider this a para-family ministry to come alongside of families. We're not trying to replace what you're doing with your, with kids and other people.

We're trying to come alongside the whole body of Christ. And, in this, what's turning out to be for us a 4-year curriculum, we're covering basically biblical history. We're doing a chronological study, again, seven seas of history, we've talked about in the past. this morning, we're actually starting in on our new quarter called God is in Control.

If you have children, they've already covered the 1st 3 lessons of this quarter, and we're actually gonna cheat and skip forward to, to lesson 4 so we can get caught up with the kids. If you want the material from lesson 12 or 3, just email me or respond to the emails that you're getting on CCC. And I will send you the, the student packets for those lessons, but we're gonna jump into lessons for Joseph, this morning. And and then later on we're gonna hit like the plagues, the Passover.

we'll basically get into all the way through the Torah and into part of Joshua by the end of this quarter. So today's lesson is gonna be on Joseph in Egypt. We're gonna be Learn some pretty neat stuff that I, I hope will be encouraging to you. we're gonna do our, basically today, we're gonna review a little bit of last week.

We're gonna study God's word and then end up with some applications. So, let's do, we, we do some review of the big idea every week. I'm not gonna take a lot of time on this, but the Bible's authoritative. that's one of the foundation marks of the course, being from God Himself.

The Bible's inerrant without error because it comes from a God who cannot lie. And then we've also argued that the Bible has been preserved. the Word of God stands forever, and so there's both a human and divine aspect of preservation, but we know that God preserves his word and the Bible is sufficient. That was one of the five solas during the Reformation was Sola cripura.

Only scripture is needed, for our faith and practice. And so sufficiency of scripture was a hallmark of the Reformation. When we study the Bible, we use a literal, historical, grammatical, hermeneutic. We've argued that we've presented that hermeneutic means just basically how you interpret the Bible.

We do a literal hermeneutic as opposed to spiritual meaning like origin did back in the, 4th century and historical rather than geshika, we're not just telling moral stories. When the Bible report, when the Bible says it's historical, we take that preceptpositionally that it's historical grammatical, not just the ideas are inspired, but the very words. Jesus actually argued from grammar and so we take it that way. Therefore, when we study the Bible, we wanna do ex Jesus, not what.

Eyes of Jesus, we're trying to get out of the text with the meaning that was put there by the Holy Spirit, not just insert our own meaning to drive our own points. So last week We, we did a lesson on the ice age and so I wanna do a couple of just review points on that. although the Bible does not directly speak about the ice age, the physical evidence on the Earth's surface supports a period of time when the ice covered a large part of, northern and southern hemisphere. And so, just from just basic observational science, we'd say yes, there has been an ice age.

if you search for the word ice in your concordance, you will find only 3 references, all of them in which, I just gave you guys the answer. my little, little thing didn't carry over. Anyway, what's the answer? Job.

So Job is where you guys see the word for ice. Job lived about 200 years after the flood. And the references to the freezing of broad waters could refer to the ice age. We're not saying that they do refer to the ice age.

In fact, in, in general, we wouldn't really expect to see a whole lot about ice, in the Bible because where most of the Bible is being written is in subtropical climate. So it's pretty far south. In fact, it's more further south than the ice age, would have reached or the ice would have reached during the ice age. let's see here.

The global flood of Noah's day would have created the proper conditions for an ice age. that's what, our professor was arguing last week. and so we can apply God-given reason to develop scientific explanations for how the evidence can be understood, just looking at theories. last week, we suggested that, to say that we believe in uniformity in God's creation does not mean that we believe in uniformitarianism.

Uniformitarianism is the idea that, the processes we see today have been constant in the past. So, uniformitarianism is we can basically look at all the processes today like the decay of, say, rocks over time from wind. And then you can extrapolate that back into the past and come up with a certain age of the earth or so on and so forth. So we would say there's uniformity, there's uniform weather, weather patterns that we see now, especially since the flood, but that doesn't mean that everything has always been the way it is now in the past because we know that there was a flood and we know there was a fall.

Those are two huge things. The fall had an incredible impact upon creation and the flood had an incredible impact on creation. And so those two historical events would definitely factor in to our interpretation. So we understand the flood was a global event.

We just said that, we must consider the flood and other factors described in scripture as we think about the ice age. Last week, we watched a couple of videos from Michael Ord. I'm not sure why he has michael Ords.net. His, his name is Michael Ord.

I don't know. But you guys could, you guys can see any of those videos that we looked at last week. You guys can check them out online. If you want to see him again.

All right. We are going to, I'd like to actually encourage you guys to open up. To Genesis 42. We just frankly, don't have time to hit all of the scripture passages.

That are in our lesson. And so I'm going to do a little bird's eye fly by. Of like the Genesis 39 texts. This is the, the narrative, what's happened up to this point.

With Joseph is you guys, most of you guys remember the story. Joseph goes out to check up on his brothers. The brothers are jealous of Jacob's love for him. And they take his robe, they throw him into a pit, they sell him into slavery, and then they tell dad that he died, right?

Real nice brothers. so these, these guys are, pretty bad dudes. And what's interesting though when you look at this, the way that Genesis telescopes. It's been said that creation like flies by like a rocket.

And then you've got like, Adam and Eve and the fall and the flood, that goes by like a jet plane. And then you've got Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and that goes by like a helicopter and we hover a few places, but then we move pretty quickly. And then you all of a sudden you get to this character named Joseph, and it's like a stroll through the park. There's just a lot of information.

About Joseph. And so that doesn't necessarily mean that Joseph is absolutely more important than anything that's come previous. But it does seem to indicate that the Holy Spirit through through Moses wanted to put some emphasis here, that there's something About the life of Joseph that was meant to be emphasized for that original audience that is Israel. And then it's been preserved for us today and so God has something particular for us today.

In the chapter 39 passage, this is where, Joseph has been bought by Potiphar. the, it says many different times, the Lord was with him, the Lord is with him, the Lord prospered him. You guys know the story. Potiphar's wife tries to tempt him, and he doesn't give in.

Day after day, he's being tempted, and yet he says, how shall I, how can I displease the Lord in, in this way? She ends up framing him. Potiphar buys it, and he gets thrown where? In a prison.

So very, be very easy for Joseph to be like, Man, my life seemed like it was going in, in a, in a good direction. I'm submitting to my father. I'm trying to serve the Lord. All of a sudden, my own brothers throw me in a pit, sell me into slavery.

Then I'm a slave working for a guy, things seem to be going good. All of a sudden, I'm framed and now I'm in prison. Forget the Lord. I'm not gonna serve this God anymore.

But you don't get that idea. You get the idea that the Lord continues to be with Joseph and continues to bless him. And so that takes us to, Genesis 41. And again, I'm just gonna do a flyby here so that we can settle in on the last two texts.

So, Joseph's, you guys know the story. Joseph's in prison and he gives the dreams for the, what is it the baker and then the cup holder, right? And they, even those guys forget about them, but eventually, Pharaoh finds out, Pharaoh has this dream. Joseph is called before Pharaoh.

He interprets the dream and then also gives counsel to Pharaoh. Pharaoh loves the council and then calls upon Joseph basically to be his right-hand man. Pretty amazing turn of events. And so that's where the story goes is you have this, a guy who seems to be doing well.

In life at 17 or so, then he just goes through the rags, he's in prison, all kinds of crazy stuff, and then he rises to power. reminds me of, Gosh, what's that movie, the Count of Monte Cristo? Yes, I've seen a couple of different versions of it. And then there's the book, so the, I forget the name of the character before he becomes the Count.

Does I remember Edmund? What is it? Dantes, OK. So he's, he's doing pretty well, right?

All of a sudden, all of his really close associates, turn on him, he gets thrown into prison, thing, but then he meets somebody who trains him and then he finds his big fortune, and now he's in great shape. That's where our stories diverge. is with Edmond Dantes, he takes this turn to fortune as an opportunity to execute his revenge. And with Joseph, he seems to just be Continuing to serve Pharaoh within the position that the Lord's put him in, you don't get a whole lot of indication that he's really even thinking about his past.

Although you would have to think that he still thinks about his mom, his dad, and his brothers and his family, but here he is just serving the Lord and then serving Pharaoh in the position that the Lord. has put him in. And so that's where we wanna, we wanna take it. I wanna have you guys turn to Genesis 42.

And we're gonna pick it up right there. Genesis 42. we're gonna read this section and then a little bit later in Genesis. And try to figure out.

A little bit of what's going on. There's some things that are, that go on in this narrative that to me, on a first read, they seem a little confusing and they don't always fit the end game that you hear. Like when I think of Joseph, and if I were to get up and just pick any passage I want to preach on Joseph, I'd probably jump straight to Genesis 50:20. And say, where Joseph says, what you meant for evil, God meant for good, but he is, he's been organizing all this, all this stuff behind the scenes in order to save many lives.

That's the end game. We all know that's coming if you've studied the text. But before we get there, there's this very interesting tug of war and play that's going on between Joseph and his brothers. And it's been somewhat confusing to me.

As to why we have this particular narrative and why does Joseph behave. The way he does. Joseph is probably about 39 years old now. we're talking about over 20 years have elapsed since his brothers threw him in a pit and sold him into slavery.

But let's start in verse 1 of chapter 42. I'm reading from a New King James. 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 10 brothers went down to buy grain in Egypt. So 10 go and as we find out later, 1 stays. But Jacob did not send Joseph's brother Benjamin with his brothers, for he said, lest some calamity befall him. And the sons of Israel went to buy grain.

Among those who journeyed for the famine was in the land of Canaan. Now Joseph was governor over the land and it was he who 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. I just, I don't know about you, but I just love the way Hebrew poetry or Hebrew, not, not Hebrew poetry, Hebrew literature does that. we would normally have a little summary statement like that, but Hebrew writing does all the time, says Stuff like.

Joseph recognized his brothers, but they didn't recognize him. Some more information. And by the way, Joseph recognized his brothers, but they didn't recognize him. I don't know, I just like it.

verse 9. Then Joseph remembered the dreams which he had about them and said to them, you are spies. this is interesting. He remembers the dreams, right?

And something about his memory of the dreams elicits this response. You are spies, you have come to see the nakedness of the land. And they said, no, my lord, but your servant has come to buy food. 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 12 brothers, the sons of 1 man in the land of Canaan. In fact, the youngest is with our father today, and one is no more. But Joseph said to them, 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, and 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 all of them together in prison for 3 days.

Then Joseph said to them, the 3rd day, do this and live, for I fear God. If you are honest men, Let one of your brothers be confined to your prison, 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, your words will be verified and you shall not die, and they did so. 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.

Very interesting that after all this happens to them, 20 years later, they're, they're still thinking of Joseph.

They have, from the text, they have no idea that this is Joseph. For all they know, Joseph is dead. But they're still thinking about him. Let's, let's ask a, a couple, make a couple of observations of this text and then we'll try to, draw out some truth from it.

why did Jacob send his sons to Egypt? Yeah, they're hungry. They want to get some food. The famine has come just as Joseph had foreseen.

Which particular brother stayed behind? Benjamin. obviously, the, did, did the brothers recognize Joseph? No, not at all.

Now, I don't know if you guys have seen either of the Count of Monte Cristo's, but to me, when he comes back and people just don't recognize him, it's not believable to me at all. Especially the new one. It looks exactly like, what's that actor's name? Jim Caviezel.

So, when Jim Caviezel comes back supposedly after so many years, he doesn't look any different, except he's got a beard. But you need to imagine, you need to realize in Joseph's situation, we're talking about 20 years of slavery-like conditions in Egypt. And now that he's the right-hand man of Pharaoh, he's been Egyptized, Egyptized. In other words, he's got the full garb on, he's probably got the makeup on.

he looks totally like an Egyptian. In fact, I'll bet you he's walking like an Egyptian. I don't know, maybe, we'll see. And, and so, and not only that, as we find out in other parts of the narrative, is he speaking Hebrew?

No, he's not. He's speaking through a translator as we see in other parts of the narrative. So, even when he's speaking to his brothers, he's speaking in a foreign language. He's, he's, he's 20 years different through slave-like conditions.

And so if I were trying to cast for this movie or trying to do the makeup or whatever, I'd really make him look just completely different to where you just wouldn't have any idea. that this is, Joseph's brothers. what did Joseph remember when he saw his brothers bowing down? Hey, remembers the dream.

So he had had this dream and here it is 20 years later, it's coming true. And then he accuses his brothers of what? Being spies. Obviously, He knows, or maybe he knows they're not spies.

We'll talk about that here in just a second. we have 10 brothers in the group, right? And according to verse 21, why did the brothers think they were facing this trouble? What was their reason?

Why, why do they think this is coming upon them? Yeah, so they're seeing this as God's punishing hand and God's providence, it's kinda like the law, the arm, long arm of the law has finally caught up with them. And now they're gonna face their doom. So, in summary here, Joseph's dreams are fulfilled.

His brothers are now bowing down before him. Their lives are totally in his hands. afterwards, we're gonna see that he's moved to tears after hearing their discussion. Joseph does send them back to Canaan.

And there's other things that occur in the narrative that we'll just summarize here. you guys probably remember that, he sends them back with grain and money in their sacks, keeping Simeon behind as surety, and, then they're freaking out when they find out that they've got the money in their sacks. They're like, what, what fate has happened to them? So, then eventually, does, if you guys remember the story, does Jacob allow them to return immediately back to get more grain?

No, he, he's like, Simeon's already lost. If you guys go and take Benjamin, he's gonna be lost too. But eventually, he consents when they run out of food. Joseph sent all 11 brothers away at that time with grain along with their money, and he also hid a cup, his silver cup in Benjamin's sack to make it look like he had stolen it from Joseph.

not far along in their journey, the brothers were brought back. Benjamin was sentenced to become Joseph's slave. Judah intercedes on behalf of Benjamin, having sworn to Israel that he would be surety for Benjamin's safety. At this point, finally, Joseph breaks down and he reveals himself to his brothers.

And and then calls for his father to come back with 66 people and eventually they settle in Goshen. So, so a lot happens in this narrative. One of the, one of the questions I want to propose or ask you. Why doesn't Joseph As soon as he sees his brothers, why doesn't he just say, hey guys, it's me.

don't, don't worry. You guys have come to get food. God's forgiven you. I've forgiven you, and I wanna take care of you.

for But He was just testing them to. OK. OK, so perhaps he hadn't forgiven them yet. Perhaps he's just testing them to see where they're at spiritually, emotionally, Dan?

His last Encounter So he doesn't. Larry What they had done He's got to know Has a high position of responsible. And so he's gonna go through this. Not only for his own personal satisfaction, but also as a man of responsibility.

OK, good. Yeah, so Dan's sharing that basically the last interactions that Joseph had with his brothers is them trying to kill him. These guys, as far as he knows, they're still criminals. and he has not only personal reasons for wanting to see where they really stand, but also now he has, he's a man of responsibility and so he's got to look out for the welfare of what's been entrusted to him by Pharaoh.

Yeah, Gary. OK. Yeah, so Gary's saying maybe this may just be a human reaction that he's actually starting in on the revenge side and really causing his father some grief, but this is just Joseph being human. Yeah, Allison.

Yeah, so Alice is saying, is saying, perhaps Joseph is, is wanting to see how, how they're treating Benjamin. Benjamin is his, closest blood brother, and have, are they really telling the truth? Have they also sold Benjamin into slavery or have they killed Benjamin? and so he's trying to test to see where they, where they lie.

Yeah, Dan. I think is that And now it's Judah that's willing to give up. That's what Joseph sees, like that's where Joseph. Yeah.

He So Joseph, Judah is the one that's interceding in both cases, both when he sells them into slavery and then right here as well. Yeah, Barbara. OK, OK, so perhaps it's just wisdom that he's just, he's just using biblical wisdom or even being biblically shrewd. Or prudent, and as, as he's testing his, his brothers.

Hey, you guys have given some really good responses there. The truth is, is the text really doesn't tell us why he behaves that way. The text just reports it. And so this is one of the challenges of narrative text, sometimes biblical narrative, is sometimes the biblical narrative just gives you the newspaper clipping and doesn't always tell you exactly why somebody behaves the way they do or whether it's necessarily right or wrong.

Right? When Abraham goes into a couple of different places and tells her, hey, tell them, you're my half-sister cause, whatever. We see that in the narrative, but the narrative doesn't tell us directly. how that's to be viewed.

And so we're left to, to, to look for implications and things like that. You guys hit basically, I think all the main views. Let's see if I can, let's see if I can remember the main views off the top of my head. I tried to do an acrostic last night.

So one of the main, one of the views is, he is, what's the I word. Yeah, I can't remember. When to cheat. He's looking, he's trying to discern their intentions.

so one view says that Joseph really has no idea whether they're coming to kill him or not. They tried to kill him 20 years ago, maybe they found out that he's still alive, he's now in Egypt, and they're coming in with bad intentions. so, that could be one thing. Another viewpoint which actually could be fairly compelling, at least the way maybe Joseph is reading it from the front end.

Joseph is viewing this as God has delivered my enemies into my hand. That Joseph is in a position of power and just like David at times would pray for God's enemies to be put underneath his feet, that perhaps Joseph is seeing this is, this is God's sovereignty for me to put my feet on their necks, and God is gonna use me to bring judgment upon these brothers. Maybe, maybe that's going through his mind at first. and maybe that's his read.

another viewpoint, I think Barbara, or somebody mentioned this, or maybe it was Gary, is that this is like all in the family, there's this, this trait of trickery going all the way back to Jacob, even you can go back to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob's even worse, and then the brothers trick their father by selling Joseph, and then Joseph's just like turning it back on them, and this is just the, it's like a family trait. And, and if anybody's the most justified, so to speak, in pulling a fast one, it would be Joseph.

You guys did this to me, now, I'm gonna kinda mess with you a little bit. So, it could be viewed as just a family trait.

Let's see. most negatively, some people have viewed this as like, I'm God's chosen one, I can do what I want and get away with it. I don't necessarily buy that position. But another position, Is that, that Joseph is just using what you would call Like proverbs at times, the same word that is translated prudent is also translated shrewd.

And a person can be shrewd in a good way or shrewd in a bad way. The same Hebrew term can be used both positively and negatively. And so some people have suggested that basically what all Joseph is doing is he's just behaving like a detective and he's being shrewd to figure out where things really lie before he shows his cards and he's, he's trying to not let the cat out of the bag too early. I don't know if any of you guys have ever read Cold Case Christianity by Wallace.

Raise your hand if you ever read, read that. That's a really good apologetics book and it comes from, the detective, he is a former LA detective, on murder cases. In fact, he had a TV show. What's his first name?

Remember his first name? He had a, a TV show on cold cases, and then he, he eventually became a Christian and then wrote his book called Cold Case Christianity. Anyway, he was speaking at a conference recently and he talks about how that if you get two people that have connived together on a murder and you're not really sure what's going on, you immediately separate them, put them in two different rooms, and then he lets them sweat it out for a little bit, a couple, let's a couple of hours go by and he goes over to person A and he says, I've been talking to your buddy for 2 hours and he's ratted you out.

And he's told us everything that's going on.

And then. And then, so more often than not, person A confesses. And then he goes out of the room and he waits for another hour and he goes over to person B and he says, Your buddy over here is, for the last 3 hours, we've been talking to him. He's told us everything.

He's ratted you out. He says, in fact, he says, you're the one that had the plan. You're the one that pulled, pulled the trigger. And so they, they do this little back and forth thing and as a detective, which technically you might view it as he's lying or you might say he's using trickery, but ultimately, the, the detective is trying to be shrewd to try to discover the truth in a similar way that, that Solomon brought the baby and said slice the baby in half and give each half to both mothers, right?

Do you think Solomon was really gonna do that? I don't really think so, but he was proposing to slice the baby in half to try to figure out who is the real mother, right? And so, while we don't know exactly, my, my, my leaning is, there could be a little bit of a mixture of a couple of things, but my leaning is, is that Joseph is using His, his biblical, shrewd wisdom. In the position that he's in to try to figure out what's really going on.

why are these guys here? Do they, have they changed? Do they have good motives? Has the Lord brought any humility?

And it seems like by that point, who knows? Maybe, maybe Joseph was developing, maybe at first, there were some sour motives in some of what he was doing, but then the Lord was working on his heart. By the time we get to chapter 50, definitely there has been a move. Any, any other thoughts you guys have on that?

That's just always been a One of those things where you read through that, that text and to me, it's just been Why are you doing that? Oh, it is true. I would argue that, that we can make the argument that Joseph is a type of Christ. But do all types of Christ always exude 100% sinlessness?

No. Is David a type of Christ? Yes, was David sinless? No, so Joseph can be a type of Christ and still have sinful behavior.

I would argue, yeah. Names of his sons. Yeah, Already Yep He's Mhm. To me, ISIS Yeah, Manasseh and Ephraim, I can't remember what, what do they mean again or NASA is God has made me forget all my troubles.

my father's God OK, so Vanessa means God has Made me made me forget my troubles. In my father's household and Ephraim is God has made me fruitful. Yeah, and actually I, I remember reading that a little bit this week. That's a good point.

So, in naming his children those two names, and it, back then, especially naming, it's kinda like when Pastor Carlos was doing the thing on Ruth and calling me Mara, his naming has something, a lot of times, something to do with the actual Something that's going on in life, right? Whereas I was named Michael and, and you were named Michelle, and then it was Melissa, and I don't think it was any more than it was the fact that it was 3 M's, right? Michael, Michelle, and Melissa, but a little different.

You guys got time for like a 3-minute joke real quick, just on the whole name thing?

Sometimes listeners need a little break. It's a good, is that OK? So my, my father-in-law, Ken, he tells the grandkids this joke over and over and over again, and they laugh every time. And, there was a, a young Native American that went into the teepee to talk to his, his grandfather and said, grandfather, how is it that everybody in our village gets their names?

I noticed that my sister over here is called Running Water and my brother is Leaping Deer and I just wanna know how everybody gets their names. And then grandfather says, well, What happens is, as soon as the, the child is born. The father opens up the door of the, or the, the teepee and the first thing he sees that becomes the name of the child. Why do you ask puking dog?

Anyway. My, my grandfather, my father-in-law, if you see him here today, You have to stop him and say, tell me that joke because he can tell it like nobody's business. It's just awesome. And the children, they, they know that when the punch line's coming and they just love it.

Anyway, that has nothing to do with what we're talking about, but it's a nice little break. OK. So, so yeah, so there's some indications of what Joseph is doing here. if you'd like to, one article you could check out online, it's called Joseph's Dealings with His Brothers.

Joseph's dealings. With his brothers. And. There really was no author listed, but it was a very good article.

It's called Produced by the TOW Project. I have no idea what that means. but it was a really, really good article. Another one that I got.

It's just called Ted's homepage. I don't know, just some guy named Ted and Ted's response, why did Joseph deceive and intimidate his brothers when they came to Egypt? It says Ted's response, and Ted is a pretty good writer, whoever he is. He had a really good response.

So you can check, check those out, if you're interested. Let's go ahead and open up to Genesis 45. And let's get to the The crux here, Genesis 45. We're gonna read 48.

And then we're gonna read 50 and the following. So when Joseph said to his brothers, please come near to me. So they came nearer and then he said, I am Joseph, your brother whom you sold into Egypt. But now do not therefore be grieved or angry with yourselves because you sold me here.

For God sent me before you to preserve life. For these 2 years, the famine has been in the land, and there are still 5 years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvesting, and God sent me before you to preserve a posterity for you in the earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. And so now it was. not you who sent me here, but God.

And he has made me a father to Pharaoh and a lord of all his house and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt. That is a pretty crazy verse, verse verse 8, particularly. imagine the Count of Monte Cristo, him coming up to his 3 guys that he's gonna take revenge on and he walks up to me and he says, don't worry, guys. It wasn't you that threw me to the, what's the big prison called?

Chateau d'If. That was God, and God sent me there so that I can help you out today. Completely, yeah, completely different. Somehow it just doesn't seem to work in Count of Monte Cristo.

What really cracks me up about the whole Count of Monte Cristo thing is he goes through, he carries out his revenge to everybody, and at least in the movie, the last movie, he's looking over the cliff and he says, you were right, priest. I shouldn't have done it. The end. After he's gotten all of his revenge.

It's much better. OK. I'll have to read the book. Does he still carry out his revenge on everybody?

Differently, OK. OK, OK. Here you've got Joseph who's basically, I, it's just amazing to me, he says, It was not you who sent me here. I, I, I have conversations with friends of mine.

We get in these little debates about God's sovereignty and human responsibility. And if I were to take, if I were to just say this argument. If I were to say Hey, what? Don't worry about it.

God's the one that sent Joseph into prison, not his brothers. I have friends that would have a heart attack and fall over on the floor. And say that's That can't be But that's exactly what Joseph is saying in his own words. He believes in God's control so strongly.

That he's saying, God is ultimately the one that sent me here. I feel like I need to, I want to qualify Joseph's words, and there is some qualification a little bit later, but Joseph seems to give no qualification. to the Lord's control. Over this situation.

Let's turn to 50. chapter 50, verses 15 and following. To see where it's reiterated. everything's good until Jacob dies and then Jacob dies.

It's almost like, the Godfather, OK, he's dead, now we're all gonna die. so here we go, 50 verse 15. When Joseph's brother saw that their father was dead, they said, perhaps Joseph will hate us. He may actually repay us for all the evil which we did to him.

Can't you see why they would think that? He's just been nice to us while dad's alive. But now that dad's dead and he can't cause dad any grief, he's gonna take us out. Verse 16, so they sent messengers to Joseph saying, before your father died, he commanded, saying, Thus you shall say to Joseph, I beg you, please forgive the trespass of your brothers and their sin, for they did evil to you.

Now please forgive the trespass of the servants of the God of your father, and Joseph wept when he spoke to them. So not only is Joseph not waiting for his dad to die so he can kill him, when he, when he realizes that his brothers still have this fear, he weeps. Verse 18, then his brothers also went and fell down before his face and they said, behold, we are your servants. Joseph said to them, do not be afraid, for am I in the place of God?

But as for you, you meant evil against me. But God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day to save many people alive. Now, therefore, do not be afraid. I will provide for you and your little ones, and he comforted them and spoke kindly to them.

We just see an amazing. example of compassion, mercy. And I think as Brian said earlier, you really see a, a portrait of Christ, an Old Testament portrait of Christ here is, is Joseph is not only is he gonna, Do Joseph's brothers deserve to be punished? No doubt And yet Joseph is bringing mercy.

Upon them and he has compassion. for them. And even says, who am I? Am I, am I in the place of God?

Open up to Romans 12:19 real quick. Yeah Mhm. Yes. Yes, Yes.

Yeah, thanks for bringing up that point. It's, it's great, cause this is a really good hermeneutical principle. When you have two terms in the exact same context, you can't make them mean completely different things. So when, when Joseph says what you meant, intended, willed, right?

You used your volition for evil, God meant will use his volition for good. You can't make those two terms mean completely different things. And so you willed something for evil, God willed it. He meant it.

In other words, he decreed it for good. And we just have to stop our mouths and say, how does God do that? We could not do that. We're creatures.

If I tried to make something evil happen, and then if I, if I decreed something evil, you would call me a mafia boss. But God is the creator. He's in charge of everything, and he can, he can control all things. And yet human beings are completely responsible for their actions.

And God can still get good things out of bad intentions. And not just because it happened to happen, but because he meant it to happen. What, what being can do that? It's just amazing, Romans 12.

Verse 19, beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath, for it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. And when I read that verse for the first time, it was like the Charles Bronson movies had to go in the trash and. it's like how many movies are there that's the whole plot is somebody gets their wife and their children get killed at the beginning and then you're just rooting for them for the next like, 115 minutes for them to get the bad guy and then finally, they just take him out with extreme prejudice.

Right?

But in this story The ending is Joseph showing kindness to his brothers who don't deserve it. And God through those circumstances, humbling his brothers and bringing about in, in, in his sovereignty, moving the people of God forward, just, just amazing, amazing stuff. Let's, let's talk about, Well, one thing, and then we're gonna get to some apologetic applications. How can this apply to you and I personally?

what things have happened to you in your life? That By Every perspective would be unjust. would be terrible. people have terrible things that happen to them in this life.

I remember when I was working at a boys camp. When I was out of high school, there's a guy who was a director named Rock or his camp name was Rocky, and he's really godly man, really godly Christian. I remember staying up real late at night, just talk with him and getting to know him. And he had just had his, he, I think his daughter was at that time less than a year old.

And I remember one night him telling me, Mike, before I had a child, I never thought I could kill anybody. But now when I think about somebody harming my daughter, I know I could kill. I could kill somebody. And People have had things happen to them and their family members that would, that elicit those kinds of responses.

You, you look at families in Uganda who have war tribes that will attack their tribe, take their children away to be soldiers in their army, cut off the hands of the men and cut off all the breasts of the women and leave the village like that. And you can understand why people would say, we want revenge. And you would understand totally why they would even pray, some of these Christian villages pray the imprecatory Psalms and say, oh Lord, how long until you bring your wrath and justice upon our enemies.

And yet God, God doesn't tell us that we should never look for judgment or wrath, but that we should look to Him for judgment and wrath.

That we're not called upon it to execute it ourselves, especially in this New Testament era, but we're called to look to God. There are many times where God calls us to a position of mercy and compassion. There's other times we're called to just wait for his judgment to come. The revelation saints are waiting for judgment to come, right?

2 Thessalonians, one of the comforts that Paul gives to his people who are being persecuted, many of them had no doubt lost loved ones. And Paul says to them, be comforted because Jesus Christ will come back with flaming fire, taking vengeance upon his enemies and all those who do not obey the gospel. And this is just for God to do this because of how you've been harmed. The big idea there is that people have messed with his kids, so he will mess with them.

And so we can, judgment is not something that we just set aside and we say, oh, we're never supposed to think about it. But judgment is something that we give to God, and God will execute judgment according to His wisdom. But according to his wisdom, he will also many times like here in Joseph's narrative, exercise mercy and compassion upon people who deserve actual judgment. So let's just be praying for each other today, is there something that you're dealing with right now where you recognize that this is unjust?

And how will the Lord call you to bear up underneath that injustice, either to show mercy and compassion to the person who's mistreated you, or to just call and wait upon the Lord to see what the Lord is going to do. Let's talk about one final apologetic application here and then we'll pray. Many scholars have rejected the fact that there was a seven-year famine in the Middle East. it's very common for people to point out something in the Bible and say there's no archaeological evidence for that, therefore, it's not true.

Well, let's deal with it first by looking at some of the new archaeological evidence that has come up, supporting this. I gave you guys a handout that was on the back page. Did you guys get this? So, this is just a, a little bit of information that's come out more recently.

in one of the tombs, in Egypt, there's a translated quote, from one of the governors. That basically, I'll just read a part of it, where he says, this is a typical, what do you call it, like on tombstones today, people, yeah, like an epi epitaph, you go and you read somebody's tombstone, and they might say at peace with Jesus, another person will say, rocking with my homeboys in hell or whatever. I've seen all kinds of crazy things on tombstones. And, so anyway, this is like an epitaph.

No child of the poor did I afflict, no widow did I oppress, no landowner did I displace, no herdsman did I drive away. From, from no small farmer did I take away his men for my works. no one was unhappy in my days, not even in the years of famine, for I had tilled all the fields of the gnome of Ma up to its southern and northern frontiers. Thus I prolonged the life of its inhabitants and preserved the food which I, which it produced.

No hungry man was in it. I distributed equally to the widow as to the married woman. I did not prefer the great to the humble and all that I gave away. So this would have been about the same time of Joseph, at least an indicator of a long famine.

And so there's a couple, there's 4 aspects that are pointed out that could mean a correlation is the approximate date corresponds with Joseph. The famine lasted for several years, preparations were made in advance. And the food was distributed during the years of famine. Also, there's a canal that runs from the River Nile to bring water to the Fayoum oasis, and it is known as Joseph's Canal.

It was dug during the 12th dynasty, possibly at Joseph's orders in preparation for the expected famine. So, those are a couple like extra biblical ideas that have come out in archaeology, not that you need those in order to establish the authority of scripture. But we believe that the Bible is true, and when you, it's not uncommon to find things outside of the Bible that would corroborate what the Bible is saying. However, I wanna just give this final caution.

There's an archaeologist named Doctor Edwin Yamauuchi, who's done a lot of work in archaeology, and he frequently, when he speaks, gives out this caution about archaeology cause you hear it all the time. back in the day, there's, there's nothing outside of the Bible that indicates anybody named King David, and then we find some piece of archaeology. There's no Pilate, the idea of Christ talking to Pilate, we have nothing in archaeology that proves Pilate ever existed, and then we find Pilate.

it used to be years ago.

There's no such thing as the Hittites. Now you can go study Hittite culture at secular universities. We've never found Nineveh, and then we find Nineveh. here's what Doctor Irwin Yamauuchi says we need to be careful of is only a fraction of the world's archaeological evidence still survives in the ground.

Only a fraction of the possible archaeological sites have been discovered. Only a fraction have been excavated and those only partially. only a fraction of those partial excavations have been thoroughly examined and published. And only a fraction of what has been examined and published has anything to do with the claims of the Bible.

So the next time somebody says there's no archaeological evidence for this claim in the Bible, Duh, that's true of, of most historical claims is to find archaeological evidence for anything is a fairly small percentage of things that we see in history books and, and in the Bible. And so the fact is, is that we do find the fact that we do have a lot of archaeological evidence that establishes various things in scripture is pretty amazing, and we're not waiting for every single claim in Scripture to find archaeological evidence.

That would be ridiculous. I'll tell you what would be very frustrating today is I've, I have a lot of Mormon friends, but it'd be just very, very frustrating to be a Mormon and waiting for the first archaeological find that supports anything in the Book of Mormon.

There, it just doesn't exist. But yet, you can go study biblical archaeology at secular universities. You can be a total pagan and get a PhD in biblical archaeology because there's stuff all over the place. All right, we are out of time.

I will be up here if you guys have questions or what have you. next week, we are going to continue on. I, I do wanna encourage you guys, your homework. See if I can get this here.

The homework is to memorize. Genesis 50. 19 and 20, if you've never done that before. And let me see if I can go back on my slides fast enough.

To get you guys to next week's lesson. So next week. We will be in lesson 5, bondage in Egypt. I'll try to send you guys the student notes out earlier this week.

If you guys want to start reading around in that area in Exodus. But I'll try to send you guys those pages. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you so much for just encouragement that we find from your word as we look and see how that you orchestrated the intimate details of Joseph's life and while we know that he was integral to, the plan of redemption and, and we see, a prophetic element in his life.

We know that you're also involved in the details of our lives. And so we thank you, Lord, for your kindness and the, and the way that you guide us. Help us, Lord, to To lay, aside vengeance and leave it to you. That doesn't mean that we never look for justice, but it means that we see you as the ultimate judge.

We look to you, Lord, who are also a God of mercy and compassion. And so we pray, Father, that You would give us wisdom as we deal with our friends and family and people in this world. give us biblical prudence, help us to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. We pray this in Christ's name.

Amen.