Transcript
Well, I'm really excited to be teaching this weekend. So why don't you go and take your Bible and turn to Genesis chapter 42. While you're turning there, I just want to draw your attention to something that we have coming up entitled "A Night of Stories." So, a number of years ago, we're getting older, I don't remember how many, but we got clear that... And I think Matt was one of the people who really charged us as a congregation first, Matt Williams, is that we need to embrace the cause of the orphan. That's obvious from scripture, but we began to take some concrete steps. Part of that began by adding staff. We shared staff initially with Miracle Hill, which is a Christian, among other things, they have a Christian adoption division Dr. Brenda Parks led for years. And one of our members, Beth Drake, felt God calling her back into that space. And so we paid half of Beth's salary, and part of it was her leading for us internally, and then for another part of that time, we were sharing her with one of our partners in ministry in the upstate Miracle Hill. It was a cool partnership. As it grew in our church, Beth came full-time on our staff and has been for a number of years now. She's given much of her midlife to a second career that she didn't have to have to own the cause of the orphan in the upstate and to equip us as a church and create pathways into our church, for us out of our church and to our church, for the orphan in, and for us to get out into that pool of need. And so that's been a really fruitful and productive ministry for many of us, and we've served in a number of different ways. But on October 15th, Will Plonk, who was one of our campus pastors, and we helped him plant a church in northern Charleston in the West Ashley area. And Will himself was adopted as a child, and Will is an adoptive parent, and Beth and Will have been working on. Will's going to come up, and we're going to take some time to explore this issue again. Because let me just give you a few things, and I'll try to make sure I say it right. The need is real that right now in South Carolina, there are 1,000 more children in foster care than there are available foster homes. Just let that number rest on you. So in this state of plenty, with a population that identifies with Jesus in many ways, now they identify with all kinds of other things, we have 1,000 children who are in foster care, and there are more children in need than that, obviously. That number is huge. But 1,000 that are in our system, there are 1,000 more than there are available homes. And DSS in particular is seeking families who are willing to care for teens, sibling groups, and children with complex needs. And we as a church are positioned with the resources that we have to support and minister to families in those areas. Through the Mosaic ministry, which we've talked about recently, through our partnerships with people like David's Table, we are resourced with talent, and so families in our church have access to those kinds of resources. And so here's what I want to encourage you. I want to encourage you, number one, we need to be equipped in how to engage in this space. This is not a romantic idea. People who are living on the edge of survival, they cannot afford romance. So our bougie middle-class romance cannot bleed into our approach to that. We've got to be grounded in truth and reality, and we got to be willing to count the cost, and it takes a community of people to bring children in, to then resource and support those families, and to care for the complex needs of that population. And so this is an opportunity for us to have our hearts stirred and to be inspired. It is an opportunity for you to consider whether you might step into that as a foster parent or as an adoptive parent. Not because you want children, but because children need families. And I think that's something Beth really wanted me to make clear, is that this is a call for us. This is not a way for us to self-actualize. This is a way for us to serve. This is not a way for us to draw some significance out of meeting a need. This is a way for us to deplete ourselves so that Jesus might one day reward us and fill us up, while someone else is being filled by our depletion now. And so we want to invite you to consider that. It's going to be a good time. I'm going to be there. Will is coming in. A number of our staff people have been praying over this and putting work to it. There is an obvious need. So for us, and because of your faithfulness and your giving, a lot has happened in this space, and we get to share the gospel because of the faithfulness of many of you to give and to serve in this space. And we want to continue to do that, and we want to ask God to give us more capacity. So consider it, think about it, pray about it. All right. To Joseph, chapter 42. In this story, we're really going to look at three primary characters, and it breaks down that way. And it's challenging to get your brain wrapped around all of it, so I'm just going to give you a few hooks. First of all, there is Jacob. This branch of the story kicks off with Jacob. And Jacob is a man whose life is dominated by the trauma of what he has lost and by the fear of future loss, and he is paralyzed by it. And there's some irony in how he's going to express that. Then the other character, and they're kind of a monolithic lump, Reuben kind of pops his head out, but for the most part, he's just part of the whole. He's like a meerkat. So think about a bunch of meerkats. All right? Reuben's going to pop his head up like one of the meerkats does. You don't know what a meerkat is, go watch YouTube. They're the cutest little crazy animals. All right? And so the 10 are like meerkats. They're just like a little indistinguishable herd that all kind of look alike, and one of them pops his head up every once in a while. So you have the 10, and this is who they are. They are carrying, it really is a kind of trauma. I'm not making this whole thing about trauma. But they have committed egregious sins, and they have buried them, and that has been gnawing at them now for 20 years. They're 20 years away from this betrayal and this lie, and every day they have confronted it as they have watched their father grieve over his loss for two decades, and they know that they are the cause of it, and that guilt is weighing on them. And they're in a moment where they're going to be confronted with all of that. And then the third one is Joseph, and he's the one who has some trauma from wounds received. And you're going, "Why are you making it all just about trauma?" Okay, when you name your child, your firstborn child, Manasseh, because the joy of him being born has helped you to forget your father and his family and all the suffering associated with that, guess what you are. You're a child who's defined by trauma. That's who you are. So we have these three people or groups who all have a very limited perspective based on their experience, and that is true for all of us as people. I just met with our residents this past week, and one of the things that Davis Craig, who oversees that division, our leadership division, he has me do this thing every year, and I hate it every year, and he makes me do it every year, so I just obey him. And where I walk through this complicated idea of what it means for us to be creatures. We can never fully know the truth. We can't, because we're not God. Only God fully knows the truth. And we have a very limited perspective based on our existential reality, how we're made, what our personality is, and the things that have happened to us and how they have been integrated into who we are, our personality, our gifts, our weaknesses, all of that. And we can't get away from it. And on the one hand, it illuminates us and helps us see things that other people don't see, but on the other hand, it obscures things. And so what's going to be really clear as we go through this is how limited these people's perspective are. Some of it's weakness, a big part of it is unbelief, and we're going to look at some of what that means for us. So as we go through it, I just want you to think about what do you see And you can think about whoever the character is, what do they see? What is hidden from them? And then how do they respond? And then the question I'm going to bring us back to is how do you respond? Because I want you to find yourself in this narrative. And I identify with, if we're all honest, we all identify with all three of these characters. But they're going to help us see some things. All right? So that said, let's go to verse one. "Now, when Jacob heard that grain was available in Egypt, he said to his sons," meaning the 10, " 'Why are you standing around looking at each other? I've heard there's grain in Egypt. Go down there and buy enough grain to keep us alive. Otherwise, we're going to die.' So Joseph's 10 older brothers went down to Egypt to buy grain, but Jacob would not allow Joseph's younger brother," notice how he's called Joseph's younger brother here, because they have the same mom, which is the only wife he really wanted. If you just think about how fractured this family is. He wanted one woman. He got fooled and got her sister, who was less desirable. So it was a two-for-one deal. All these other boys are born from women that he never wanted. He only got two from the woman he really wanted. Let's just say it like it is. So trauma is not too strong a word to use when we're describing this family system. So he sends the 10, but the one, Joseph's younger brother, he didn't let him go with them. Why? Look in verse four, "For fear that some harm might come to him. So Jacob's sons arrived in Egypt with the others to buy food, for the famine was in Canaan as well." Now, there are a handful of things. We're getting clear. This famine that Joseph told Pharaoh about that led to him being made the vizier or the chief official, whatever his title was, underneath Pharaoh, number two in command, really. He's the COO of Egypt, the great empire in that part of the world. The way he became the chief operating officer of all that is through this famine. And this famine was not just in Egypt, but it was everywhere else. And so God's people are suffering under this famine that God created in order to elevate one of his people. So you just see God is behind the scenes pulling all these strings. Joseph has some sense of that, but he only knows in part. And so what we're dealing with here is a third-person omniscient narrator. It's a great way to tell a story. I just watched one of my favorite movies not that long ago. It's called "Stranger than Fiction." It's a Will Ferrell flick, not what you normally think of with Will Ferrell. And the whole movie is about a guy who's living his life, and one day as he's living his life, he starts hearing a narrator in his head of everything that he's doing. And it's amazing. I don't know how it didn't win best picture or best screenplay, but it didn't. One of the great injustices of modern American history, as far as I'm concerned. It's amazing. And that sets in motion this idea. He's like, "What is going on?" And he begins to realize that his life is a part of a larger story, but he only knows what the narrator is telling him, and it starts really, really freaking him out, as you can imagine. And it goes on from there. That's a little bit of what we get right here. We don't know everything that the narrator knows, but the narrator is rolling this out to us, and it is unnerving. But you do get this idea there is a story that is going somewhere, and it's being driven along. All these things are connected. And so if you just look at that first little bit, you can see Jacob's fear of loss, the division that that's bringing into his family, his unbelief. He can't trust God with Benjamin. He's like, "If I couldn't trust God with Jacob, I definitely can't trust him with Benjamin, so I got to protect what I value the most." His willingness to be frustrated with his sons. His sons, this can be translated as standing around. Some translators will say, "Why are you afraid?" The idea is that these guys are paralyzed, and Jacob is saying, "Stop being paralyzed. Go do something, or we're all going to die." But in another sense, Jacob is paralyzed. That's why he's holding Benjamin back. He can't let him go. So he's hanging on. Now, just so you get an idea of what's going on, we don't know exactly what happened, but this is where we believe Jacob and his clan is, and they are a big clan now. These are wealthy people. They have resource. They are flourishing. They dominate the environment that they are in among these other tribespeople, from what we can tell, if you just do the numbers. Now, he sends his boys on this long journey. Now, these are all places where they could have gone. I think this is probably where they went is down to Memphis. But we're talking somewhere between 250 and 340 miles with donkeys. If they go this way, it's pretty resource-rich. If they go this way, they're skirting the edge of the wilderness and coming down. We don't know which way they went. This is a long and perilous journey. That's what I want you to get. He is not asking for a small thing from them. So when they get there, "Since Joseph," verse six, "was governor of all Egypt and in charge of selling grain to all the people, it was to him that the brothers came." You can see what's happening now. "When they arrived, they bowed before him with their faces to the ground." And this is where Joseph comes in the story. Now, Joseph recognized his brothers instantaneously. He knows who they are. Hasn't seen them in 20 years. But when they come in, it all hits him and rolls over him. And when they arrive, they bow before him with their faces to the ground. He recognizes them, but he pretended to be a stranger. The translation, I've been reading another translation all along, it reads a little more like a novel. It says, "He played the stranger to them." So even though he knows them, he doesn't allow them, he doesn't reveal himself. In fact, he speaks harshly to them. " 'Where are you from?' he demanded. 'From the land of Canaan,' they replied. 'We've come to buy food.' " And he says, again, this theme of recognition is very important in this story. And just let me pause here and just say, I want to encourage you. I got it in an audiobook format and translation that is easy to listen to. I would encourage you to be listening once a week to this entire cycle of narratives. I mentioned this on the front end, but these stories all fit together. The themes will arise. It's like if you watch a really good movie, the more you watch it, or a really good story. As I get older, I read very few new books. I read really good books older and older. Maybe it's because I know I have less time. I don't want to risk it. If I start reading a book and it ain't good, I chuck it. Matt Williams, he's got a finished book. I don't know what that is. But if I start reading a book and I don't like it, I'm like, "This is a waste of my time. I'm over it. I don't care. Sunk cost. Let the book go. Don't read it." So I find myself going back to big books that I can trust and rely on, been proven over and over again. You got to read them. Every time I read them, there's one book, every time I read it, I do it in a different color ink. So I want to encourage you to do that with this because some things will emerge. And one of the things that will emerge for you is this idea of seeing in the way that we use the word see. They say recognize, but what we're talking about is I see you. I see you. I recognize what is going on. It's all about seeing and not seeing. What is seen and what is obscured. What is hidden from sight and what is revealed. And the idea here is they want you to see, the writer wants you to see, is that Joseph is holding all the cards All the cards. He sees everything and they see nothing of any real consequence. They have no idea what's going on. He totally knows what's going on. Furthermore, he recognizes at that moment that this is the fulfillment of the dreams he'd had that got him in trouble in the first place. Look at verse nine. He remembered the dreams he'd had about them many years before as he sees them bowed down. And when he sees them bowed before him and he realizes that his dreams have come true, that God is with him, he is in charge, and they are not. Look at what he says in verse nine, "You are spies. You have come to see how vulnerable our land has become." Look what he does. Now for years, I read all of this like Joseph was a puppet master. I don't read it that way anymore. And I think some of that is my situation has changed, and I have aged, and I understand something about how longstanding wounds work. I just believe that was me reading into and flattening out the text and over-spiritualizing it. Here is a man who has all power. He has power of life and death. He can just say, "Hey, be done," and they're done. That's who he is. And these men come before him and he sees their injustice. And I know this has happened to you, where you've seen someone that you gave offense to, and that's really not what this text is about. Or you see someone who gave you an offense, and they're put into your hands and you get to decide. It could be in private, you find out something that they have done, and someone brings it to you, and they're vulnerable and naked and exposed, and you have an opportunity to either double down and get vindication by running them down and telling the truth to somebody who doesn't need to know the truth, or you have an opportunity to cover them. That's where Joseph is on steroids. And you know what it feels like when that kind of thing happens to you, the endorphin rush that happens, the reliving of the wound. So Joseph names his son Manasseh because he's forgotten all his grief. But let me tell you what's happened. All that grief that the joy of Manasseh obscured for him partially, Manasseh can't cover all this up. This wound is free-flowing again, and he has power to take comfort in bringing justice. He could reveal himself in his glory and say, "Ha ha, boys, I tried to tell y'all this. You didn't like it then. Let me explain it to you. You really ain't going to like it now." And he would've been well within his rights, and he would've gotten some comfort. It's funny to me when people say there's no comfort in revenge. Of course, there's comfort in revenge. That's why we take it. It's always funny to me when people say, "It's just sin. The pleasures of God are better." Well, yeah, ultimately, but in the moment you know what feels better? Sin. In the moment, sin feels better. That's why we commit sin. It's not because we say, "Oh, here's this great thing that's easily attainable from God, and here's this thing that's really going to wreck my life. I'm going to do the thing that's going to wreck my life." It's because it's obvious the immediate hit that sin gives you, the immediate comfort that it gives you, the immediate comfort that revenge and taking the place of God gives you. And Joseph, that wells up within him. And you can feel things are fragile. That's part of what the text wants you to feel here, is that things are fragile in this moment. You don't really know where the story is going to go. And when Joseph says this idea about, "You're spies," this is a very legitimate concern because-- And Joseph knows it's not true, but the threats to Egypt all came from the west. Not anymore from the south or from the east. I mean, came all from the east, not from the west. So, they're in charge in that part of Africa. All their threats come from further east, from West Asia, and so what he's saying is totally reasonable and plausible. Look at verse 10. "No, my lord," they exclaimed, "Your servants have simply come to buy food. We are all brothers, members of the same family." Get this. "We are honest men, sir. We are not spies." Now, whether that's true, I mean, it is true. They're telling the truth. They're not spies. That is true. But the text wants you to feel the hypocrisy in that. They don't even see it. Joseph sees it. They don't see it. The narrator wants you to see it. These are men who have been hiding the truth. They are making this statement about who they are, which from one, from their point of view in that moment is true, but in an ultimate sense, it is not true. They have been pretending to be somebody else for the last two decades. And they're so blinded by their pretense that they're in front of the person who has suffered the most, and they can't even see him. They can't even recognize him. It's all hidden from them. Joseph says, "Yes you are. You've come to see how vulnerable our land has become." The image there is you've come to see the nakedness of our land. You thought we were going to be in shame, is what he's saying, and uncovered, and you want to find out the truth about us. You want to see us, not for the greatness of our empire. "Sir," they said, "There are actually 12 of us." So they're like, "We're going to tell you more of the story. There are actually 12 of us." Now we're getting a little closer to the truth. "And we're all the sons of one man living in the land of Canaan. Our youngest brother is back there with our father right now, and one of our brothers is no longer with us," or is no more. So it's kind of ambiguous. He's passed on. He's dead. In a sense, again, they're telling a part of the truth, but the irony here is that brother is with them right now in space. They can't see. But Joseph insisted, "As I said, you are spies. This is how I'll test your story. I swear by the life of Pharaoh. I swear by Pharaoh that you will never leave Egypt unless your youngest brother comes here." He wants to know that Benjamin is still alive. It's a real reasonable concern for him because, again, his mom's the only woman their father ever wanted, and so after they did what they did to him, the idea that Benjamin may not even exist anymore, that's probably the first thing that he thought that came to his mind. He's like, "Nope, got to see my brother." And so he said, "You'll never leave unless your younger brother comes here. One of you must go and get your brother, and I'll keep the rest of you here in prison. And then we'll find out whether or not your story is true. By the life of Pharaoh, if it turns out that you don't have a younger brother, then I'll know you're spies." So Joseph put them all in prison for three days, and on the third day, Joseph said to them, "I'm a God-fearing man. If you do as I say, you will live." Now I want to stop right there. Here's the idea, and I believe this is the way the story wants us to read it, is in the moment, Joseph is called up. He's worried about his brother. All those wounds have come back to life. All that Manasseh helped him forget, he can't forget anymore. It's all actual. He's overwhelmed. He puts them all in jail for three days. That buys him time to think, to pray, and at the end of three days, he has his feet a little bit more under him. And I just want to say to you, understanding that even as good people, how fragile we are, understanding that as good as we are, we're still creatures, we're frail children of dust. On our best day, we are weak, and on our worst day, we are dominated by sin. That is who we are. We should not trust ourselves. And I don't think this is the main point of the story, but I believe it is a legitimate application, is Joseph needs a minute. And I want to encourage us as a group of people who don't trust ourselves. Just because we have our feet under us, just because we're in a situation where we have more information than anybody else, and we're confident in that, our perspective is still severely limited. And our reactions and our insight are conditioned by our brokenness as human beings, and our limitedness on a great day as human beings. And so we need a minute to seek the Lord. And the more influence and the more imbalanced the relationship is with someone, the more you need that. So the more you are in a position of power with someone, the greater the need is for you to hit pause and seek the Lord and to not trust yourself. And that's just a way of living your life. And Joseph here, I believe, is intentionally held out as a model of that. So after three days, he asserts, "I'm a God-fearing man." Meaning, I know I'm not ultimately in charge. Even though I am in charge of this empire that you fear, that has resource that you can only not begin to fathom even what I'm in charge of, he's like, "I recognize, I fear God. This is not just what I can do, I fear God. If you do as I say, you'll live." He's giving them an opportunity. "If you really are honest men, choose one of your brothers to remain in prison." Now look at what he's making them do. This is wisdom. He is making them choose a brother to leave in prison. They've already done this once to him. So he is making them relive what they did to him. You can say, well, this is sadistic. He should just make himself vulnerable. I'm going to tell you, that is not how this story wants to be interpreted. So if you want to lay that on it, then you can lay that on it, but this is not the point. I'm telling you right now from the literature, that the literature shows this to be very wise. It shows Joseph to be working with God in this, not against God. He is creating an opportunity for them. And look at what happens. You got to choose one of them, and then the rest of you can go with grain for your starving families. I'll be a savior for you. But you must bring your youngest brother back to me, and this will prove that you are telling the truth, and you will not die. And to this, they agreed. Now, here's what he's doing. He's going to find out, have they changed at all? Will they pick one and abandon him because it suits their purposes and profit by that? Or are they a new kind of person yet? Have they gotten the lesson of what they did to him? And then you know it's working because look in verse 21. "Speaking among themselves, they said, 'Clearly we are being punished for what we did to Joseph long ago. We saw his anguish when he pleaded for his life, but we wouldn't listen, and that's why we're in trouble.'" And then Reuben, meerkat, pops his head up. "Didn't I tell you not to sin against the boy?" Reuben can't get out of his own way. "But you wouldn't listen, and now we have to answer for his blood." This is how you know they've been in dialogue about this. They know that Joseph's blood cries from the ground. They're assuming he's dead. Of course, verse 23, of course, they didn't know that Joseph understood them, for they had been speaking through an interpreter. But now, look in verse 24, Joseph turned away from them and began to weep. Now, this is what I want you to see. Joseph is in this. He's a real person. The story wants you-- he's feeling all of this. It's getting on him. He is seeing the inner conflict that they have been carrying for the last 20 years, and it breaks his heart. He is having to show restraint in this moment. He has to step away and regain his composure. He feels his alienation from them. They don't get around to this, and Joseph chooses Simeon from among them, and he ties him up right before their eyes. And so he's playing out before them what happened 20 years ago, and they've made the connection. Now, here's what I want you to see. Is this regret or repentance? And I want you to get two categories in your head. We talked about this, but is it regret or repentance? And I would say to you, clearly this is regret here. And that Joseph is wise not to trust them. Track record matters. Regret may lead to repentance, but I'm going to tell you the truth. Most of the time, it just leads to more sin. And I haven't done a study on that. I've just been working and trying to help people repent, including myself, for the last 40 years, getting a paycheck to do it. And I can tell you, most of the time, regret does not lead to repentance. And repentance is obvious. And we're going to see repentance later on. Judah's going to become... The shift is going to go from Reuben to Judah. And when that happens, you're going to see what real repentance looks like, and you don't have to wonder if somebody is repentant. I've said this before. Repentance is obvious to all. And then the burden is on restoration according to the proper degree, and forgiveness, and then working towards restoration. We are not there yet. They are full of regret. They are full of fear. And I just want to highlight this idea for a couple of minutes. John the Baptist in Matthew 3 says this, speaking to the religious leaders who he won't have anything to do with, and he ain't going to baptize them. He calls them a brood of vipers. He has all kinds of bad things to say about them. He says, "I'll tell you what you need to do. You need to not come out here and try to look good by getting up next to me. What you need to do is bring forth fruits in keeping with repentance." Repentance issues forth in fruit. That is obvious. Jesus, in John 2, did not entrust himself to the people who were following him after he did miracles because he knew what was in the heart of a man. He knew that just because somebody is coming along and outwardly looks like they're with us, it does not mean that they're with us. Repentance is an entirely different thing. Paul says to the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians 13:5, "Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not know that Christ is in you? Unless indeed you fail to meet the test." This idea that you can be going along and be self-deceived. These men are filled with regret, but they are not yet repentant. They are submitting to this difficult providence that is being laid on them, but they really don't have a choice. They are bickering with one another over who's responsible, and they know they're guilty, but they're just angry and sad and full of recrimination, but they don't have hope. So then, look in verse 25, Joseph orders the men, orders this service to fill their rucksacks with grain, and then he gave secret instructions to take all the money they paid for the grain and put it back in the bags. And he gave them supplies for their long journey home. Now I want you to see. They've done him wrong, but he is doing good to them. Remember where Paul talks about in Romans 12, someone's done you evil, then you return what? For their evil. Good. In so doing, what will happen? You will heap burning coals on their head. It would not surprise me if Paul had not had this story in his mind when he was writing that, because you're going to see what happens. So he does good to them. He sends them away with their money, with actually provender, extra food, provender they call it, for their donkeys. So he pays their travel expenses, he gives them back their money, and he gives them the grain that they asked for So while they've done him wrong, he does all of that good for them. So they stop for the night, and one of them opens his sack, look in verse 28, and he exclaimed to his brothers "Look." He calls them all over. They all gather around. "My money's been returned. It's here in my sack." And you would think, like you ever found 20 bucks in your pocket that you've forgotten and it's been washed, and you find that money, and you immediately go spend it, like right then. Ice cream for everywhere, for everyone. Round on me. They don't feel that way. They realize how much they've been blessed, and then their hearts sank. Trembling, they say to each other, "What has God done to us?" They're making progress. We're waking up. We know what we deserve. They get a blessing, they know they don't deserve it. It terrifies them because now their guilt is beating them down. Now they get back to their dad, they get him up to speed, they tell it all to him, and then after they tell him the whole story, they empty out all their sacks, and everybody had money that they paid for the grain. And the brothers and their father were terrified when they saw bags of money. Isn't that funny? Just bags of money, everything we need, and we're terrified. Jacob exclaimed, "You are robbing me of my children." Now the irony is intentional. We have money piled up one after the other and all Jacob can think about and he can blame his children for is that, "You're robbing me of my children. Joseph is gone. Simeon is gone. And now you want to take Benjamin too to go back. Everything is going against me." Just want you to see that. I want you to see how blind Jacob is in this moment. The reality is, yes, Joseph is gone. But Joseph is gone to be in charge of the wealthiest nation in the earth. Joseph is sending for Benjamin. Joseph is caring for Simeon. Joseph is providing for them. He is their salvation in a very real sense. He's giving them what they need without money, without cost. He is providing for their every need, and yet Jacob thinks, "Everything is against me." Their perspective is terror. Everything is against us. The truth is salvation is at hand, more than we could ask or imagine. Egypt has opened up to us. We're actually in charge of Egypt now. Jacob's favorite son is alive and essentially enthroned, and everything is going their way because God is for them, and yet they can't see any of that. And the reason they can't see any of that is because of this. They don't have faith. They are trapped in their own perspective, a perspective of loss and grief, a perspective of guilt and shame, and so they can't see it. They're blind to what's going on, and they don't have confidence that God is unyielding in the commitment that He made to save all the nations of the earth through them. And right now, God is fulfilling that through Joseph. The entire Ancient Near East is being saved by Joseph in a very literal sense. And they are prospering and enthroned in a sense in Egypt. That's how much progress has been made in this one generation, and yet they know none of the joy of that because they don't have faith that gives them assurance. Something can be true, and you not have assurance of this. This is why when we wonder whether or not we're Christians because we've neglected our souls for so long, and we hear the promises of scripture, and they run hollow on us because we've been sinning against our consciences, and we're numb, and we wonder, "Am I even a Christian?" If you know God, you know God, but you don't have the assurance of that in that moment because you don't have faith in that moment. So you're empty and you're hollow. And that's where they are. They don't have a conviction of things not seen. Now Jacob makes this statement. Reuben pops off. Reuben just wants to be seen by the narrator as powerless. And then Jacob digs in and he says, "My son will not go down with you." And so this is what I want us to see, is I want us just to think about, what do you see when you look at your life? What's dominating your perspective right now? The wounds done to you that you have to release and do good? The wounds that you've committed against somebody else, and so you have a sense of guilt and shame that forces you to not be able to see God working for you? These brothers were all on the inside. These brothers were the ones through whom the whole earth is going to be blessed, and they can't see that God is for them because all they can see is their own guilt and shame. Or the cumulative effects of disappointment and loss in this world, which I identify with more now, be honest with you. The older you get, the more you identify with this. The more you see how Jacob could get to where he is. And yet Jacob is literally the means through which the entire world will be reconciled to God, and in that, he believes God is against him because he cannot square his loss with God's promise. All because he doesn't have faith. And this is what I want to encourage you to think about, is that the only thing that can reorient you to the truth is a thorough faith that lays hold of what you can't see. You have to believe and be anchored in a reality that has been revealed through the incarnation, the obedience, the passion, the resurrection, the ascension of Christ, His seating on a throne until His enemies are made a footstool, until death itself is completely swallowed up in victory, and we see it with new, imperishable eyes. That is the only thing. That is the only thing that can free you, that can free me, from our very limited perspective that is conditioned by all of these things. And there is work that we have to do in order to lay hold of that and to believe, and I want to call us to that. Let me pray. Father in heaven, we ask you, be gracious to us for your name's sake. Somehow you have tied your glory to our glory, where you will only glorify yourself in and through us. That we all must give you glory, whether it's in our judgment for rejecting you and demonstrating what happens when you reject the glory of God, or through our participation in your glory as you exalt us and you seat us on the throne with Jesus before all the heavenly beings and everything that has ever been created and all of the universe is made new as we, as the king and queen of this creation, are elevated to the status that you intended for us from the beginning of time. Before time, immemorial, when you purposed to do it. That's the only way your glory gets revealed. And so Father, I pray that you would help us to see you and that we would be the people who have faith and receive the assurance of what we have hoped for and who live with a conviction of what we now cannot see, but yet one day will. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
