Some of us, myself included, grew up as part of the MTV
generation. If you did, not only will these words be familiar to you, but you
will also be able to envision a very specific visual in your mind as I read
these words:
And you may find yourself
Living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself
In another part of the world
And you may find yourself
Behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house
With a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself, well
How did I get here?
Living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself
In another part of the world
And you may find yourself
Behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house
With a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself, well
How did I get here?
Whether or not you are familiar with those lines from the
Talking Heads, you may be able to identify with the sentiment. How did I get
here? And what does this have to do with Genesis? Quite a lot, actually. The
book of Genesis was written by Moses around the time when he led the nation of Israel out of Egypt 430 years after the events we
just read about. Egypt
was the only home they’d ever had. Though they had been slaves there for
several generations, those alive at the time of Moses had never known any other
way of life. Moses was a man they hardly knew, and he was telling them they had
to pack up and leave for a place they’d never been. Through this writing, they
would learn of how the world came into existence, and how from the human race,
God chose a particular family to be His people in the world. They would learn
how they got to Egypt
in the first place, and why God never intended for it to be home. Through the
stories of their patriarchs, they would discover how God works in, through, and
on behalf of, the people He has chosen and called to be His own.
Like the Israelites in the days of Moses, we too were born
in slavery, but we didn’t realize it. We were not slaves to a foreign power but
to a spiritual power – to sin and Satan. This fallen world, filled with evil
and suffering has not always been happy but it has always been the only home we
have ever known. And along comes Jesus, telling us how He is going to prepare a
place for us, and the only way to get to that place is to follow Him. He
introduces us to the God who has chosen and called us to be His own people,
that He may be our God, and that we may dwell with Him forever. So the Gospel
of Jesus Christ does for us what these words of Moses did for Israel in Egypt . It tells us how we got here,
it helps us make sense of the world in which we find ourselves, and how God has
been working in, through, and on behalf of His people.
So with a view toward the Gospel, let us consider how the
first audience of these inspired words of Scripture would have come to
understand these theological principles concerning God and His people.
I. God is sovereign over the sins and sufferings of His
people (45:1-11).
There are two universal and unavoidable realities in the
course of human existence: sin and suffering. Everyone sins, and everyone
suffers. There are no exceptions. Sometimes suffering is a result of one’s own
sin, or the sin of others. Sometimes suffering happens simply because our bodies
and this world have been corrupted by sin. It has been my observation over the
course of nearly twenty years of pastoral ministry that almost every case of pastoral counseling comes down to the issue of
sin. A person may be seeking counsel because they have sinned, and their sin
has produced a burden of guilt and remorse, or unpleasant consequences in his
or her life. Or a person may be seeking counsel because they have been sinned
against, and the actions of others have victimized them and brought harm upon
them. In both cases, it is of great importance that the individual comes to see
that his or her life does not consist of the sum total of their sins and
sufferings, but rather of what the God who is sovereign over the sins and
sufferings of His people is able to do by His grace and for His glory.
We see a picture of this in the encounter between Joseph and
his brothers. They have sinned against him. He has been victimized by them. But
they both have to realize that neither of these conditions has to be terminal.
By looking to God, they can see Him work powerfully in and through their
circumstances to bring about good for them and for others. In the previous
passage, we saw how Judah
spoke for the brothers in repentance of their sin. He said to Joseph, “What can
we say to my lord? What can we speak? And how can we justify ourselves? God has
found out the iniquity of your servants” (44:16). Having heard a genuine
confession and received repentance from the contrite hearts of his brothers,
Joseph was able to reveal himself to them. Prior to this point, he had kept his
identity hidden in order to test their character. They have now passed the
test, not by insisting upon their own goodness, but by owning up to their own
badness.
It was only after this repentance that Joseph could give
them words of comfort. Until sin is confessed and repented of, there is no
comfort to be found. But at this point Joseph could speak of how God was at
work in their sin and in his suffering to bring about His good purposes. Notice
in verse 5: “Do not be grieved or angry with yourselves because you sold me
here.” That was probably not what they expected to hear. Grief and anger are
appropriate responses to sin, but once the Lord wipes those sins away by His
forgiving grace, we can move beyond the grief and anger over it. They sold
Joseph into slavery in Egypt ,
yes, but over and above this, God was doing something different. Joseph says,
“God sent me before you to preserve life.” In verse 7, he says it again, “God
sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant in the earth, and to keep you
alive by a great deliverance.” Therefore, he can say with all confidence in
verse 8, “it was not you who sent me here, but God.” And in verses 8 and 9,
Joseph sees how God has transformed, not only the sinful act of his brothers,
but his own suffering as well. He says that God “has made me a father to
Pharaoh and lord of all his household and ruler over all the land of Egypt
Now, we need to be clear about something. What God can do
in, with, through, or in spite of our sins and sufferings is not the same thing
as why God allowed it to happen. There
are mysteries of providence which are known only to God. There is also such a
thing as gratuitous evil and suffering in the world. It is not what God
intended or purposed for us. It carries with it severe consequences and we bear
full responsibility for it. Never once did Joseph minimize either the evil of
his brothers’ actions or the severity of his own suffering. But while he did
not minimize those things, he maximized God’s sovereignty over them by showing
that none of it was beyond His ability to transform into an occasion for the
furthering of His purposes.
Long ago Marcus Dods wrote these profound words:
God does not need our sins to work
out His good intentions, but we give Him little other material; and the
discovery that through our evil purposes and injurious deeds God has worked out
His beneficent will, is certainly not calculated to make us think more lightly
of sin or more highly of ourselves…. The knowledge that God has prevented our
sin from doing the harm it might have done, does relieve the bitterness and
despair with which we view our life, but at the same time it strengthens the
most effectual bulwark between us and sin – love to a holy, overruling God.[1]
Putting it more succinctly, William Taylor says, “It is a
comforting thought, that while we cannot undo the sin, God has kept it from
undoing us, and has overruled it for greater good in ourselves and greater
blessing to others than, perhaps, might otherwise have been attained.”[2]
In this, we see a wonderful picture of the Gospel of Jesus
Christ. The cross represents the most heinous sin ever committed in the history
of the world, and the most horrific suffering ever experienced by anyone. God
had come into the world in human flesh to rescue humanity from
self-destruction, and what did mankind do to Him? We murdered him. And I say
“we,” because it was not merely the betrayal of Judas, or the denouncement of
the Sanhedrin, the decree of Pilate, or the hammers of the soldiers which
nailed Jesus to the cross. The Bible is clear that Jesus’ death was the
necessary atonement for all of our sins. The punishment inflicted upon Him was
for the sins that you and I have committed. The cross was what we deserved. And
the agony of it was not merely the physical pain of torture, but the unbearable
weight of being separated from God the Father, as Jesus cried out, “My God, My
God, why have You forsaken Me?” That is the cry of the damned, and those words
deserve to come out of our mouths, not His. But God has taken the most heinous
sin of history, and indeed all the sins of humanity, and the most indescribable
suffering ever inflicted upon a living being, and transformed for good and for
glory by His grace. The cross is God’s way of saying to us, “I know everything
you have ever said, thought, or done, and I love you anyway and will save you
if you turn to Me in repentance and faith.” As Peter said on the day of
Pentecost, “you nailed (Jesus) to a cross by the hands of godless men and put
him to death.” Nothing changes the weight of human responsibility for this sin
and suffering. But, he also says, “this Man (Jesus, was) delivered over to you
by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God” (Ac 2:23). Again in Acts 4,
the church prayed, saying, “there were gathered together against Your holy
servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the
Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose
predestined to occur” (Ac 4:27-28). What Joseph said in Genesis 50:20 can be
said with even greater truth by Jesus, “You meant evil against me, but God
meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many
people alive.”
Has the grief and anguish for sin driven you to repentance?
Are you looking God-ward in the midst of your suffering? Because of God’s
sovereignty over the sin and suffering of His people, it does not matter what
you have done, or what has been done to you. Nothing is beyond His ability to
transform it into something good for His own purposes and for blessing to us
and to others. He can save you from it, and change you in it, and change it to
bring about good according to His will and for His glory. Just as God is
willing to forgive you of unspeakable sin, He is also able to supply you with
the grace to forgive those who have sinned against you, and from both your sin
and suffering and theirs, He is able to bring about good if we will turn it all
over to Him and look to Him in the midst of it. If we are to understand how God
works in, with, and on behalf of His people, we are going to have to recognize
His sovereignty over our sin and suffering, because we give Him precious little
else to work with.
II. God is patient in the fulfillment of His promises
(45:24-46:7).
Some of you know what it is like to pull up stakes and move
far away from home. While the excitement and adventure of a new life in a new
place provide a strong allure, there is a sense of fear and uncertainty as we
leave the comforts of a familiar place and familiar people behind. No matter
how difficult any of the moves we have made in our lifetimes may be, nothing
could compare to the move that Jacob had to consider. Oh, to be sure, the
excitement of seeing his beloved son Joseph once more before he died was almost
too much to consider. We read in 45:26 that “he was stunned and did not
believe” his sons when they told him about the prospects. A son that he had
long since considered dead was still alive. Moreover, he had arisen to the
second most powerful position in Egypt and was extending an
invitation for his father to come and join him there. Concerns about the famine
would be alleviated by Joseph’s promise to provide for the family. He had a
guarantee of safe passage and the best part of the land to live in, offered not
only by Joseph but by Pharaoh himself, most powerful ruler in the world at that
time. Who wouldn’t jump at the chance to launch into this opportunity?
Well, there is a factor in Jacob’s situation that is quite
unparalleled, and made this appealing offer very difficult to consider. The
land in which he was now living, Canaan , had
been deeded to him by God Himself. God had sovereignly deeded this land to
Jacob’s grandfather Abraham, and to his father Isaac, and to Jacob. We sing,
“This land is your land, this land is my land,” but no one could sing that like
Jacob could of Canaan . Now his sons, even
Joseph, and the Pharaoh of Egypt were all beckoning him to walk away from it.
Because of his desire to see Joseph, he went, but he went
with much fear in his heart. How do we know that? Because in Chapter 46, as he
is on the way to Egypt , God
spoke to him “in visions of the night,” saying, “Do not be afraid to go down to
Egypt .”
The only reason you ever tell someone not to be afraid is if they are. Perhaps
Jacob felt like he was abandoning God’s purpose for his life and his family by
fleeing Canaan . Maybe he feared that his faith
had faltered in not trusting God to provide through the famine. Maybe he feared
that this was all some sort of elaborate trap that had been set for him. But
God reassured him, saying, “I am God, the God of your father; do not be afraid
to go down to Egypt ,
for I will make you a great nation there. I will go down with you to Egypt , and I
will also surely bring you up again.” This was the language of God’s original
promise to Abraham, to be with him, to make him into a great nation and to
bring him into the land of promise. God had ever been with His people. As yet,
they had not become a great nation, but they would. And as for the possession
of the land of Canaan
In Canaan , the family of
the patriarchs numbered around 70 people. In Egypt , they would grow to millions
in number, just as God had promised. They would be given a vast area of land to
spread out and grow in, and because they were shepherds and the Egyptians found
them detestable, there would be no intermarrying to dilute the lineage of God’s
promise of innumerable descendants. The land of Canaan land of Canaan Israel
to bring about His divine judgment on the Amorites and other pagan peoples of
the land as they took conquest of it in the days of Joshua.
God has made equally spectacular promises to all who are in
Christ. Jesus said He is coming again to take us to the place He has prepared
for us. He has promised us a new heaven and a new earth. He says that we shall
inherit the earth and judge the angels. He says He will crush Satan under our
feet. He has promised us new bodies that will no longer be subject to the
limitations, ailments, and injuries that we experience here and now. He says we
will dwell in His presence forever, and there will be no more crying or
mourning or pain, because there will be no sin there – not in heaven, and not
in us. That all sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? No, it sounds AMAZING! But, we
do not have it yet. We have the promise, and we have the Spirit of the Risen
Christ as the guarantee of the promise, but we do not have the actual things
themselves. What we have is what the Israelites had in Egypt . We live
as strangers in a world that is not our home. We are enslaved and oppressed.
But on this foreign, enemy-occupied soil, we have the opportunity to grow into
a vast nation by sharing the good news of Jesus with others. In the midst of
the famine, we have the bread of life in God’s word to feast upon. He is
preparing heaven for us (Jn 14:1-6) and us for heaven. But we wait patiently
for the fulfillment of the fullness of His promises, because He is patient in
fulfilling them. Some might say that He is slow about it. But there is a
difference between slow and patient. Second Peter 3:9 says, “The Lord is not
slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not
wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.” Just as God gave
the Amorites centuries to repent and be saved from judgment, He tarries in the
fulfillment of His promises to allow all people the opportunity to hear and
believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved lest they perish in sin. Rather
than growing impatient in our longing for all that has been promised to us, we
should occupy ourselves in the business of heaven here and now, serving the
Lord Jesus and serving others in His name.
If God seems to be taking His time in fulfilling His
promises in your life – promises to provide, to protect, to prevail – it is
because His timing is perfect and we must wait for it with patience, because He
is working with patience to fulfill those promises.
How does God work in, with, and on behalf of His people? He
is sovereign over the sins and sufferings of His people. He is patient in the
fulfillment of His promises. And thirdly …
III. God is faithful in the upholding of His purposes (Chs
47-50).
When Adam and Eve fell into sin in the Garden of Eden, God
promised a Redeemer who would come into the world as the Seed of Woman. Over
the ensuing generations, He clarified that promise, revealing to Abraham that
it would be through His seed that all nations of the earth would be blessed.
That promise was passed down to Isaac and to Jacob. Through this family, God
was working to bring the blessing of redemption from sin to all the peoples of
the world. But the outworking of these eternal, divine purposes was confronted
by many dangers, toils, and snares. God’s people were faced with one trial
after another, some of which threatened to terminate the line of promise and
undo God’s purposes completely, if it were possible. But it is not possible.
The upholding of God’s purposes is not contingent on the faith or faults of His
people. Neither is conditioned by the fires of oppression and persecution. The
upholding of God’s purposes rests squarely and securely on His own unfailing
faithfulness.
Lest God’s people starve to death in a famine and bring His
purposes to naught, God established Joseph as Prime Minister in Egypt . He was
God’s man, and he was used for God’s plan by advising Pharaoh on the storage of
grain to provide for the people during the famine. He came in as an indentured
servant and died as an empowered ruler. He brought the blessing of God into the
land of Egypt
Lest Israel
remain a nation no larger than an NFL football roster, embattled on all sides
by pagan people, God gave Joseph favor with Pharaoh to secure a broad place for
Israel to dwell and grow in Egypt . And lest
they forget that it was not their true home, Jacob gave orders that his corpse
be taken up and buried back in the land God had promised them. Joseph gave the
same orders concerning his bones. These men knew that God’s purposes would not
fail, and that the Israelites would return again to that land one day.
And lest the sons of Israel think that they had out-sinned
the grace of God and become entirely useless to Him; lest they forget God’s
promise to bring that Seed of Woman into the world through the seed of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob; dying Jacob gathered his sons to his side and began to
prophesy over them. Coming to Judah, the one whose idea it was to sell Joseph
into slavery, the one who violated God’s will in egregious ways in his own
family life, old Jacob said in 49:8-11, “Judah, your brothers shall praise you.
Your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies; Your father’s sons shall bow
down to you. Judah
is a lion’s whelp; From the prey, my son, you have gone up.
He couches, he lies down as a lion, And as a lion, who dares rouse him up?
The scepter shall not depart from Judah
Centuries would pass until a silent night in a cattle cave
in Bethlehem , when a young virgin who was a
descendant of Judah
would give birth to a Son. He would be the One to whom every tribe of Israel and
every nation of earth will bow and confess as Lord. Judah will hold the scepter of
authority, and in his descendant David and his lineage, this was fulfilled in
part. But when Jesus Christ was born, the Seed of Woman, the Seed of Abraham,
Isaac, Jacob , Judah Shiloh who had the right to hold that
scepter forever. The word Shiloh is variously
interpreted by scholars, but the consensus is that it means “the one to whom it
rightly belongs.” The scepter of Judah and the throne of David
rightly belong to Christ. But He did not come to establish that throne in His
first coming. He will do so in the second coming one day. But in the first
coming, He came in humility, riding not the white stallion of the conqueror,
but the donkey’s foal of a servant. He has tread the vineyard of God’s wrath on
our behalf, and the blood that stained His robes served to make our own robes
clean. So, when the Apostle John was shown a vision of heaven and the throne of
God, he saw One standing between himself and the throne who appeared as a lamb
that had been slain. But this Lamb of God was called the Lion from the tribe of
Judah ,
and He has overcome.
When that Lamb who is the Lion is revealed, heaven erupts in
a song of worship, proclaiming, “Worthy are You to take the
book and to break its seals; for You were slain, and purchased for God with
Your blood men from every tribe
and tongue and people and nation” (Rev 5:9). In that moment, John was able to
see the consummation of it all – how God had faithfully upheld His divine
eternal purpose, from the Seed of Woman to the Lion of Judah, in the person of
Jesus Christ. In this descendant of Abraham, God has blessed all the nations of
the earth. And in Him, all of God’s promises and purposes are yes and amen to
the glory of God. Because He is faithful, nothing which He has purposed for you
or the world will fail.
How does God work in, with, and on
behalf of His people? He is sovereign over our sins and suffering. He is
patient in the fulfillment of His promises. And He is faithful in the upholding
of His purposes. Moses wanted the Israelites in Egypt
No comments:
Post a Comment