Truth For Life

Guest (Male): Most of us would agree that our health is important. If we fail to take care of ourselves, our lifespan can decrease or our ability to enjoy it is diminished. As important as physical health is, today on Truth For Life, Alistair Begg points out why spiritual health is an even greater concern.

Alistair Begg: I invite you to turn with me to the book of Genesis and to chapter 45, 46. As you turn to that, let us just turn to the Lord and seek His help in prayer. Oh, God our Father, we do pray that You will now come and speak to us through Your Word, that beyond the printed page and the words of a mere man, that You will speak into our lives today in a way that is unmistakably clear.

So that unbelieving people may come to trust in You, that those who believe may be established in You, and that those who wander and waver may be called into the very pathway of Your plan and purpose for their lives, even as You called Your servant Jacob, in whose footsteps we follow and from whose story we seek to learn. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

The end of chapter 45 gives to us this amazing picture of the brothers heading back now to their father in Canaan with the carts and the clothes and the provisions and the donkeys and the prospect of having to greet their father and speak to him. They had been sent with a word of warning from their brother Joseph in verse 24 of chapter 45: "Don't," he said, "quarrel on the journey." He didn't want them to spend their time aggravating one another, and so they must have spent their time in some form of conversation.

Doubtless, there would have been somebody who said, "You know, the thing that struck me with such terror was when someone opened that bag of yours, Benjamin, and they pulled out the cup. I knew in that instant we were in trouble." "Yes," said another of the brothers, "but you know, it was amazing. I could never in my wildest dreams have imagined that the Egyptian official would stand up to us and say those incredible words: 'I am Joseph.'"

They must have looked at one another and said, "Yeah, wasn't it amazing when he took his headdress off and we began to identify him?" "Yeah," says someone, "you know when he said, 'Come close to me,' I noticed that nobody was actually stepping up to the front of the line. What did you think he was going to do when you got up there?" said another. "I don't know what I thought, but I can't believe how kind he was. I couldn't believe the compassion in his voice, especially when you think of all the things that we had done to him, all of the cruel ways in which we treated him, and then he spoke with such tenderness and such care."

"Yes," said someone, "but what are we going to tell our father? How are we going to tell him? How are we going to tell him in a way that preserves us and encourages him, because it's impossible for us to tell him that Joseph is alive without having to acknowledge the fact that we had lied and have lied over 20 years in an act of total deceit?"

Presumably, they worked out some form of plan, some way they could unfold the news to their dad that wouldn't find him dropping down dead. Now, as I read this section from the end of 45 all the way through to the end of actual chapter 47, and as I tried to wrestle with the broad sweep of time and personnel, I found myself thinking in terms of camera angles. I do this from time to time. I don't know why. I've never made a film. My home videos are horrible. But I suppose that somewhere in the back of my mind, I cherish the idea of being able to make a movie.

So, I think in terms of crucial scenes, and I always like when I see films, clever cuts and the way that it fades and moves and so on. As I thought about this, I thought of it in terms of four scenes that if you were directing this, either as a stage play or as a movie, then these are scenes that you would definitely not want to miss. These are occasions when the camera angles are crucial, when you're using lenses that you can take the people in very close. You're not shooting from up on the hills or from vast distances. You're not using wide angles. You are actually focused on these four dramatic encounters.

It is to these four dramatic encounters that we're going to give our time this morning. So, let me give them to you, and I'm going to summarize each scene under one word. The first word is stunned, stunned, because that is exactly what Jacob was at the end of chapter 45. Indeed, we're told that when they arrived and spoke to him in this way, Jacob was absolutely stunned.

Now, the brothers had been dispatched by Joseph with the directive in verse 9 of chapter 45: "Now hurry back to my father and say to him, 'This is what your son Joseph has said: God has made me lord of all Egypt.'" So, they were in no doubt as to what they were supposed to do. Go back, get their father, and tell them this: "Jacob, here's the deal. Joseph is alive and he is the lord of all Egypt."

Presumably, there was some kind of preamble which led up to this, which is not recorded for us in the Scripture. Presumably, they didn't blurt it out, although that is distinctly a possibility. But they got to it, and as they speak these words, two things to notice. Number one, Jacob was confused by what he heard. He was confused by what he heard because what he heard was "Joseph is alive."

If you had met Jacob in a bazaar somewhere and he was sitting there having coffee, and you said, "You're an old man. Tell me some of the things you've seen and tell me some of the joys and sorrows of your life," there is no question that he would have described with great passion and detail the day that he sent away his 17-year-old son to find his other sons in the region of Dothan.

He would have been able to describe with all the passion of a father's heart how when he said goodbye to Joseph, he anticipated that he would be back before too long. How in waving goodbye to him and recognizing the apparent dangers that were represented in his boy making a journey like this, he had watched him go off into the distance and perhaps had stood and waved, and his boy had turned back and waved.

Especially if there was a vast open terrain, they would have been able to wave to one another until just that point where you go over the horizon. If you ever have done it in a railway station, you know, for example, in British Rail many of the platforms are very long. The trains start off slowly, and you can wave and wave and wave until one of two things happens: either you get your head knocked off by a signal box, or the train track turns and you go around the corner.

As soon as you go around the corner, it's all over. You can stand and look if you wish, but you'll never see their face again, at least not now. Jacob had stood and watched his boy go there, and then he'd waited for him to come, and he had never come. Instead, what had happened was that his brothers had returned, and they had returned carrying the lovely coat that Jacob had given his boy, covered in blood and mangled, apparently as a result of the activities of a ferocious beast.

Jacob had been absolutely devastated as he fell on the ground, grabbed big clods of dust, threw them in his hair as a symbol of his absolute terror and tragedy at the loss of his prized boy. Now, these same characters who had brought to him some 22 years ago the bloodied coat are standing in front of him saying, "Your son, Joseph, he's alive."

He was confused by what he heard because 22 years of his absence had convinced him of one thing: Joseph was dead. Now into the mainframe of his computer is inserted the information from this disk, and it does not jibe. He cannot make sense of it. The images of Joseph's going are fixed in his mind, and as he tries to process this, it just does not make sense. It is total confusion.

If they had come to him and said, "Abraham has risen from the dead," or "Isaac is alive from the dead," it wouldn't have been any more stunning to him than this information. They add another unbelievable layer to the story. They said, "Not only is he alive, but he is the ruler of all Egypt. Your boy is alive and he's the Prime Minister of Egypt."

Just try and get under the story for a little minute. One you think your boy's dead. Then you find out he's alive. Then you find out that he's actually living in the big house and he's in charge of the whole operation. One minute you're picked up wanting to believe it on the wave of a great optimism, and the next minute you're caught in the undertow, you're dragged down. You say, "This can't possibly be true. I don't know what to believe from these kids anymore. I don't know when they're telling me the truth and when they're not. I don't know if they were lying then or they're lying now."

So, they tell him the story and as they tell him the story, presumably using the words of Joseph very much, how Joseph had been compassionate and forgiving in the hope that their father Jacob would follow suit, Jacob listens. What he hears is then combined with what he saw. If he was confused by what he heard, then secondly notice that he was convinced by what he saw because he saw the carts that Joseph had sent to carry him back.

You say, "Well, that's not much, is it? Seeing a few carts? What would that mean?" Well, he knew that they didn't have these carts. He knew they got them somewhere, and he then had to presumably determine that they had gathered up all these carts so that they could come up with this elaborate hoax. Why would they possibly do that?

Furthermore, these carts were not Canaanite carts. The steering wheels were on the wrong side, if you like. They weren't the usual thing. They were marked in a certain way or the wheel arches were different, or there was something that said, "These are not Canaanite carts." Suddenly he says, "You know what? I think they're telling me the truth. This is an elaborate story. My heart is absolutely breaking as I try and receive it. I can't hope to believe it all, and yet I must believe it all."

Then he says, "Okay then," he says, "I'm convinced. My son Joseph is alive. I'm going to go and see him. My son Joseph is alive." I want to just stop here for a moment and say that this ought to be the great longing of every father's heart in relationship to his boys and his girls. Because the real aliveness that we long for in our children is not the aliveness of physical life, for which we're thankful and which we enjoy in the interaction of our daily pilgrimage.

The great aliveness for which we long is the aliveness of spiritual life. You see, because Jacob and Joseph could hang out together for a while as they did, they could enjoy that, but both Jacob and Joseph were going to die. Fathers and sons and fathers and daughters can go to picnics and parties and stroll and talk and listen to music and read books and take trips and do everything, but father and daughter and father and son will all die.

Unless there is spiritual life in both father and children, then the prospect of life is so gloomy, so empty, and these transient elements of our days cannot begin to counterbalance the deadness of spiritual emptiness in the lives of those who are our own. You see, because when a sinner is brought back from his wanderings to God, then he or she is alive from the worst kind of death.

Last night on the Discovery Channel, there was a thing on cryonics, or whatever you call that, about freezing people and hoping that you can get them back out of their frozen state when you discover the answer to life and so on. It was a matter of some discussion between myself and my daughters. I was explaining to them this is an irrelevancy, you understand.

No one has spoken one word about a soul. No one has acknowledged the fact that God has placed within the framework of man this great issue. These poor, wretched people hoping that they might live forever, never giving a thought to the fact that the great death with which to deal is spiritual death. Men and women live dead in their trespasses and in their sins.

That spiritual death combined with physical death equals eternal death, which the Bible calls hell. Therefore, the great need for aliveness is to be made alive spiritually so that when we die physically, we may then live eternally. "I'm convinced my son is alive." That is the great longing of every Christian father's heart. There's not a business deal can compensate for that. There's not a vacation, there's not nothing can compensate for that.

Now let's move the trolleys, the wheels, the apparatus, and go on to scene two. Chapter 46, we stop at a place called Beersheba. I'm sure if we could hear them say it, they would say it a little better than this. I'm sure the Anglicized version of it just doesn't come out right, anyway. It was a significant place. It was a significant place in Jacob's family. If you go back to chapter 21 at your leisure, you'll find that Abraham had planted a tamarisk tree there and he'd called on the name of the Lord.

That was his grandfather. His father, Isaac, had also had his servants dig a well there. He'd pitched his tent there. He'd built an altar there, and he'd called on the name of the Lord. So, on his journey, Jacob stops purposefully at this point. This is a place of stopping. In stopping here, notice two things. One, the attitude that he revealed.

In offering sacrifices to God, he revealed the fact that he knew himself to be a sinner in need of pardon. Every time the patriarchs offer these sacrifices, they are acknowledging their sense of the demerit of their offenses, and they are acknowledging their hope of forgiveness through this better sacrifice which would one day come, which of course we know to be the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

So he stopped, and he'd look back down through the corridor of time. There was certainly much for which he needed to be forgiven. He offers sacrifice to God as an expression and a pledge of his obedience. His attitude is that of a sinner in need of pardon, a worshiper before the only true God, and a pilgrim in need of guidance.

"Why are you doing this?" the others must have asked. "Why are we stopping here? Don't you think we should hasten on? Aren't you excited to see your boy, Joseph?" Goodness gracious, of course he was. Why did he stop? Because he was a worshiper, and worshipers worship. They don't worship because the bell rings. They don't worship because the trumpet sounds. They don't worship because someone stands up in the prayer tower and says, "Now it's time to turn East."

The kind of worshipers the Father seeks are those who worship in spirit and in truth. Jacob worshiped. His attitude was that of a sinner in need of pardon, a worshiper before the only true God, and a pilgrim in need of guidance. What is all this business here where God comes and speaks to him to assure him? Well, you need to read back in the story and again at your leisure.

In Genesis 26, Isaac had had God appear to him in a vision, and God said, "Do not go down to Egypt and live in the land that I give you." So Jacob, in the awareness of that, was concerned lest his desire to be reunited with his boy should put him in a place of disobedience. Interesting concern, is it not? That his passion and his compassion in relationship to the concerns of family affection were to be in the life of Jacob subservient to the clear mandate of God.

Unless that's too much of a mouthful, let me pause and unpack it for you for just a moment. This is what Jacob is affirming here: that no matter how excited he was about seeing Joseph, no matter how much that meant to him in terms of his earthly pilgrimage, a good conscience towards God was ultimately more important to Jacob than ever seeing his son again.

In other words, you see, he allowed eternity so to fill his mind that time took its place where it should, rather than that he allowed time so to fill his perspective that eternity had to fight for a place. How does this come out in our time? It comes out in this way, at least: that when the call of God comes to us and says, "Now listen, we want you to take all that you have. We want to take your bachelor's degree at Case Western Reserve University and your master's degree from Chicago and your master's degree in theology from Columbia.

We want to take all your musical ability and all of your talent and all of your expertise as a couple, and we want you to go and bury yourself in Macedonia for the sake of the gospel." "But what about my mom and dad? What about my brothers and my sisters? What about this and what about that and what about the next?" Here's the issue: the issue of obedience to God takes precedence over the matters of family affection.

Obedience to God does not set family affection in opposition to His obedience. It simply puts it in its place. I believe in these days that God is speaking to people in our congregation, young individuals, people in their middle years saying, "You know what? You've done pretty well. You're set. Now I want you to get up from your settled position. You're financially secure. You're looking at the rest of your life. What are you planning on doing? Just kind of sitting around? Are you prepared to give up your small ambitions, and are you prepared to go for God wherever He says, whenever He tells you, to do whatever He wants in the cause of the gospel in the light of eternity?"

The response comes, "Well, you know, I got a lot of things here. Got my family, I've got this, I've got that." God understands all of that. He doesn't ask us to go in obedience to Him somehow to denigrate that, but in order to put it in its place. Jacob reveals that.

Guest (Male): You're listening to Alistair Begg on Truth For Life. He's titled today's message A Pilgrim's Progress. We'll hear the conclusion tomorrow. If you've been enjoying our study of Joseph's tumultuous life, I want to recommend you supplement that study with Alistair's book titled The Hand of God: Finding His Care in All Circumstances.

You've heard Romans 8:28, which says we know that for those who love God all things work together for good. Even those of us who know this verse well can still find it difficult to believe it's true when our circumstances seem hopeless, but Joseph's life embodies Romans 8:28. In the book The Hand of God, Alistair follows the evidence of God's sovereign power and providential care through the highs and lows of Joseph's life. It's a story of jealousy and deceit. There's slavery, redemption, ultimately forgiveness and reconciliation.

If you're ever tempted to think that God has forgotten about you, this book provides an in-depth look at the incredible truth that He rules and overrules in all circumstances. The book offers a great reminder that God's guiding hand is protecting and shaping your life from your deepest trials to your greatest triumphs. Ask for your copy of the book The Hand of God today when you donate to support the Bible teaching ministry of Truth For Life. You can give a one-time gift at truthforlife.org/donate, or you can arrange to set up an automatic monthly donation when you visit truthforlife.org/truthpartner, or call us at 888-588-7884.

We're glad that you have studied God's Word with us today. Are you satisfied with where things are in your life? Tomorrow we'll learn how having the right focus can help us find satisfaction not just in life, but in the prospect of death as well. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth For Life, where the learning is for living.