Truth For Life

Guest (Male): If we were given the choice, most of us would prefer to avoid suffering and hardship, wouldn't we? Today on Truth For Life, Alistair Begg examines three conversations that reveal how God works providentially through the trials of life, whether worldwide or in a personal way, to draw us closer to himself. Let's open our Bibles to Genesis chapter 42.

Alistair Begg: What we have recorded for us here by Moses is a narrative which builds itself around three separate conversations. The first is brief, between Jacob and his sons. The second is longer, involving Joseph and his brothers. And the third is again somewhat brief, which takes place between the brothers in isolation, at least physically it would appear, from Joseph himself. And so I want simply to draw our thinking in that way this morning, noticing first of all the conversation recorded for us there in the opening two verses, which is a dialogue involving Jacob and his sons.

Now, the context in which the conversation takes place we don't need to wonder at. We don't need to guess. We're told that the pressing urgency of this particular family, and indeed of their nation and beyond that the then-known world, was this matter of famine. Scenes that many of us have only observed from afar in the kindness and providence of God, and yet scenes which others throughout the world have in our lifetime faced with regularity, were the experience of these dwellers in Canaan. And this particular gentleman by the name of Jacob had now, along with others in his country, reached the point where the considerations of food were no longer a matter of passing indifference, but were a pressing urgency. If they got food, they would live. If they were unable to get food, then like others, they would die.

And so, in that framework, he addresses a question to his sons. And it's there for you in verse one. If you just look at your Bible, he says to them, "Why do you just keep looking at each other?" Now, he's addressing in part their striking lack of initiative. He's observing the fact that presumably they were all looking at one another, everybody realizing the predicament in which they find themselves, recognizing the condition was grave, and each one hoping that maybe the other one would actually suggest something or do something. And yet nobody says a word. They all just continue to sit around and look at each other.

And so he follows his question with a word of direction. Verse two: "I've heard that there is grain in Egypt. Go down to Egypt and buy some for us so that we might live and not die." Jacob was clearly a man who trusted in God. It is right for us to trust in God. If we're going to serve him, we must always trust him. But trust in the Bible is always accompanied by action. And Jacob's trust that God would provide did not cause he and his children simply to sit around and say, "Oh, I wonder how this will happen," but rather to take initiative in relationship to it and begin to open doors and pursue avenues which may well provide the answer to their question.

God's blessings are not the portion of the lazy. In the 37th Psalm, for example, the psalmist says, "Trust in the Lord and do good." And from time to time, you meet people who say, "All I do is trust," and then you meet other people and all they do is do. And the balance of scripture says we both trust and we do. And Jacob is an illustration of that. And so while he was clearly trusting that God would provide, he sends his boys to go and see what they can come up with in relationship to food. At least he sends ten of them.

But he's not going to send the eleventh. He provides protection for one in particular, for young Benjamin, now his youngest. For Benjamin was the son of Rachel. Benjamin came from the same mom as did Joseph. And Jacob had already some 20 years prior to this had this dreadful experience of having bad farewell to his son Joseph, believing that he was going away merely for a short time, a matter of days. And still the pain was deep in his heart because from the time that Joseph had walked down the dusty road away from his father to do his bidding, 20 long years had passed and he had never clapped eyes on him since. And so he is determined that he's not going to go through that pain again. And he is prepared to send the ten, but he is not prepared to send young Benjamin. That's the first conversation. That's all that's involved in it: a question, a word of direction, and an expression of his protection.

Now, the second conversation is the one that begins actually partway through verse seven. But the context of this conversation is again set up for us in the opening part of verse seven and also in verse six. Because there is a wealth contained in the phrase, "Now Joseph was the governor of the land." So it is as the governor of Egypt that his brothers now meet him. Now, just picture the scene with me for a moment. Here is a group of men who are now all middle-aged. They're in their 40s, early 50s. They are part of just a long line, a succession of folks coming to Egypt because Egypt had become the soup kitchen of the then-known world. People said, "If we're to live at all, we'll have to go to Egypt." And so the fact of the matter was there's just a succession of these people. Much as we see sometimes on our television screens, vast crowds of people making their way to the only source of life they could find. And in the middle of that sea of faces, largely unnoticed by most, were these ten characters. Just ten more gaunt faces facing the prospect of famine and death.

And now they look into the eyes of the governor of the land. And here's the thing on which this whole conversation turns. We're told, if your Bible is open at verse seven, that as soon as Joseph saw his brothers, he recognized them, but he made himself unrecognizable to them by pretending to be a stranger and speaking harshly to them and suggesting that he hadn't a clue what was going on by asking where did they come from, etc.

Now, at first we may think this strange. Oh, come on, he was their brother. They would instinctively know him. No, think about it. First of all, 20 years had passed. He was 17 the last time they saw him. Take your photograph from your junior year at high school when you go home and look at it, and then look at yourself in the mirror and determine just how much you look like that 17-year-old picture you have in your hands. You don't look too much like it. And even if you're only 37, it's staggering how much you don't look like it. And it's possible for people to walk past you in the streets even though they were friendly with you 20 years ago at school. 20 years had passed. His voice had changed. In fact, the language that he spoke had changed. He was speaking to them, Moses tells us, through an interpreter, and so they weren't expecting this. His appearance was striking. In all of the finery of his position and status now in the Egyptian culture, there was no sense in which they would be expecting this at all.

And so Joseph seizes the opportunity. As he looks on them, all kinds of dreams are flooding his mind. Indeed, the writer says that he remembered his dreams in verse nine. And now as they bow down before him, he needs to find out whether they still hated him, whether they felt any sorrow for their sins, any sense of guilt over their actions. And so he continues purposefully to conceal his identity by pretending to doubt their integrity. And so he says to them, "Oh, you've only just come up here because you're spies. You just came in to see if there's a place that is unprotected in the land where you can make a line into us and perhaps steal from us." "Oh no, my lord," they said in verse ten. "Your servants have come to buy food."

Now you've got to keep this in context. Remember, these chaps were rough. These weren't milk toast chaps. They had torn apart complete cities before this. They had murdered everybody in the whole area as a result of a violation to their sister. Remember that? They're not in the business of having some really dressed-up character that they don't even know or like tell them that they're spies. And you can imagine a couple of them in particular just reaching, reaching for their equipment. You know, "I'll give him spies. Who does this guy think he is saying we're spies?" But there was another emotion which obviously swallowed their anger. And the emotion must have been fear, for they were afraid of how this would come out.

And so they protest their innocence. And in verse 11, as an attempt to do so, they say, "We're all the sons of one man." Now, why did they say "we're all the sons of one man"? It's clearly not simply a point of information. The point that they're making is this: no sensible man, if he wanted to engage in spying, would run the risk of losing his complete family in the operation. I mean, you might send two, you might send three, but you're not sending the whole ten. Well, Joseph knew this, and he must have smiled to himself at their response.

And he pushes them again. "No," he says, "you've just come here as spies to see where the land is protected." And then look at verse 13. But they replied, "Your servants were twelve brothers, the sons of one man who lives in the land of Canaan." Now, remember, Joseph knows all this. They don't know that he is who he is, therefore they don't know that he knows. This is ironic. "The youngest," they say, "is now with our father." And get this line: "And one is no more." He must have smiled to himself at that point and covered it up pretty well. But he continues to apply his line of pressure.

Why does he do this? Why does he keep saying to them, "You're spies"? And why "spies"? Have you ever thought about that? I mean, of all the things he could have said, why did he keep accusing them of being spies? Well, it could simply be that spying was a large part of this peculiar famine time, and people were trying to find inroads into Egypt and find ways to take away the produce. And that may well be the case. But I think it's more than that. I think that what he's doing is he's holding up a mirror to his brothers. And he is actually holding up to them the scene which happened to him all these 20 years prior to this. Because what were the three things that annoyed them about Joseph? Well, it was his coat, and it was his dream, but it was that he brought a bad report to their father. In other words, that he acted like a spy when he was around his brothers. That's how they saw him. They didn't see him as part of the group. They saw him as an infiltrator, somebody who came alongside to get information and then to run away with it.

Now, there was no sense in which in Jacob's mind he was sending his son as a spy. There was no sense in which Joseph would go as a spy. But in the minds of these characters, whenever you're up to dirty business, whenever you don't have a clear conscience, whenever you're doing things you shouldn't be doing, then when people in the normal course of events just come and spend time with you, you will be on the defensive because you will regard them as seeking to take that from you which you don't wish to volunteer. And that's exactly how they saw it. And so he says, "I'm going to accuse you of the very thing that you held up to me." And if the conversation had gone like that at all, presumably he had protested that he was no spy, but he was only responded to with harsh words and imprisonment. And now they're protesting that they're not spies. And how does he respond to them? With harsh words and with imprisonment.

He holds up a mirror to them. He wants them to see what it feels like. Have you had that experience in your life? You find yourself responding to the offense that someone has caused against you, and suddenly it's like a mirror. It's like a light goes on and you see, "But that's exactly what I did to him. And I'd never thought about it before. That's exactly how I treated her. That's why I don't like this feeling," I say to myself. "I never considered it before because it's actually showing me up in a mirror. It's showing the horrendous nature of my own approach to things." And by taking this approach, Joseph was making a powerful appeal to their conscience and to their memory. And he puts them in the jail so they'll have three days to think about it. And three days they have to think about it.

And on the third day, our third conversation ensues. Conversation number one, which led to a journey to Egypt. Conversation number two, which confronted the brothers. Conversation number three, where the brothers talk to one another. Now, in verse 20, where he says to them, "Listen, I'm changing things around a little. I was previously going to keep nine of you here and send one back. What I've decided to do is I'm going to keep one of you here and send nine back. And then you can prove to me that you are honest men if you will arrive here with my brother Benjamin." And the way I read the text as it unfolds, it would seem to me that having said that, he then left them. Although Moses tells us at the end of verse 20 that this they proceeded to do, in verse 21 there is a conversation which ensues. So we know what the answer is before the conversation takes place, but the conversation is crucial because in this conversation, I put it to you more than any other conversation they ever had in their lives, they now give an explanation of their hearts.

"Surely," they said, "we are being punished because of our brother." Now, remember, they don't know that Joseph is their brother. It's not because he said, "Hey, I'm Joseph and you're in the jail," and they said, "Whoa, there's Joseph, there's the jail, we're being punished because of Joseph." They don't know it's Joseph. He says to them, "You're spies." They say, "We're not." He says, "You're going in the jail for three days." They go in the jail for three days. And somebody says, "Do you know why we're in the jail? Because of something that happened 20 years ago." Do you think there wasn't any other reason that they could think up why they were in the jail?

It's interesting, isn't it? Because you see, God uses these encounters to bring us back to the places of our disobedience and our rebellion. "Surely we are being punished because of our brother." Number one: "We saw how distressed he was. We saw when he pleaded with us for his life. But we would not listen when he cried." And verse 22: "We must give an account for his blood." This was a red-letter day in the lives of these fellows because for 20 years they had been living a lie. For 20 years they had kept up pretense with their father, making him assume again and again that Joseph was no more. All the time knowing that the deceit had laid hold of them deep. Because they're being honest now. But to this point, they were unprepared to get honest. They instead simply gathered, as it were, their cloaks around them. They furnished their lives with what they could find. They found here and there a basis for their excuse and a cause for their forgetfulness. But to this point, they had never acknowledged their guilt.

Listen very closely to this statement. This may be the most important statement that I make as I draw this to a close: The first signs of an awakened conscience is the admission of personal guilt. Some of us are here this morning and have lived as long as these brothers with things in our past about which we have never personally admitted our guilt. I have counseled with people, but I have two names in mind. And the character involved knows that this was wrong, knows that this chaos was caused, knows that this pain has followed. And he doesn't think that it was a good idea, but he has not as yet acknowledged his own personal guilt. And there is no future for him. There is no usefulness for him. There is no hope until the acknowledgment of personal guilt.

That's why some people think they're Christians and they're not. Because they've been prepared to acknowledge that this wasn't really that brilliant and that wasn't really so smart and really I ought to stop doing that and start doing this. So they said, "That wasn't brilliant. Why don't I stop this and start that?" Well, fine, that's okay. But that's not what the Bible calls conversion. What the Bible calls conversion is when a person says, "I'm absolutely flat-out guilty, and I deserve death for my crimes. And unless there is someone who can come and pay a price which I deserve to pay, then the price is going to have to be paid." And of course, that's the good news.

Do you see where this is going? Isn't the interesting thing, at least it is to me, the one for the brothers, the one against whom they had offended was the very one who held their lives in his hands? Does that make you think of anybody? Isn't that a picture of Christ? The one against whom I have offended is the one who holds my life in his hands. You review the story, and it is clear that they had no interest in Joseph. For 20 years they'd ignored him. They hated him before that. They didn't recognize Joseph. And verse 23 tells us that they did not know that he could understand them. Now, there's another whole sermon I feel coming on, but our time has gone. That is what is true of all of us by nature concerning Christ. We have no interest in him. We do not recognize him. And we do not know that he understands us.

And we actually have to wait until chapter 45 for this great, amazing scene which I can't imagine getting to, we're going so slowly, and you even worse, you're saying, "We'll never get to it this side of Christmas." But the amazing scene when they who do not recognize him have the veil taken away from their eyes, and they see him as he really is. And so you sit this morning and you say, "I wonder why these events in my life have unfolded as they have. I wonder why I've faced the famine of this experience or the dungeon or whatever else it is." God uses these famines to remove the customary supports. He uses the loss of loved ones and he uses the loss of jobs, and he loses all these customary things that make us think that we have the world by the tail in order that he might bring us where he brought these brothers: to an awareness of their great need and then in turning to the discovery of great provision.

What would they have cared if back home in Canaan they had all the fun and all the food they could ever want? They would never have made the journey. It is only when God shows to us that the cupboard of our own ingenuity is bare that we will then go humbly to he who is the bread of life. That's the story of Joseph. You and I have a story, too. What's yours?

Guest (Male): You're listening to Truth For Life with Alistair Begg. If what we've heard about today is something you'd like to teach your children or grandchildren about God's great provision, you'll want to request a copy of Alistair's brand-new book for children called "J is for Jesus: Enjoying Who Jesus Is from A to Z". In this book, Alistair teaches about Jesus' nature and character in a way that's easy for children ages six and up to understand. He uses each letter of the alphabet to highlight 26 words that explain how exciting it is to know Jesus as Lord, Savior, and friend.

Ask for your copy of "J is for Jesus" when you donate to Truth For Life today. You can give online at truthforlife.org/donate or call us at 888-588-7884. And if you'd like to purchase additional copies of "J is for Jesus" to give as gifts to children you know, they're available for purchase at our cost of just $5 while supplies last. Visit truthforlife.org/store. Thanks for listening today. Is remorse the same thing as repentance? Tomorrow we'll learn what is meant by genuine biblical repentance. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth For Life, where the learning is for living.