Joseph-Reunion

Good morning.

Let's pray.

Jesus, you are beautiful.

Your love is beautiful.

Your grace for us is beautiful.

Your patience with us is beautiful.

And we just uh we just want to come before you this morning and tell you that we love you.

You're amazing, and we just want to hear from you.

Uh so speak through your word and just show us who you are, give us more of you, so that when we leave today, we are uh we are better than when we came.

We ask this all in your name.

Amen.

Well, I've got a few quick announcements before we we jump into what we're gonna talk about this morning.

First of all, happy daylight savings time.

Yes.

I have a feeling that in about 30 minutes we're gonna see a bunch of people show up and be like, what?

Oh no, it just happened.

Um but man, it's it's always good to lose an hour's sleep.

So, uh, a few things.

If it's your first time this morning, welcome to his hands.

We are really glad that you're here.

Um we love Jesus a lot and we love each other a lot, and we're just a we're just a place that's about connecting with him and getting rid of anything like religion that gets in the way.

And so if you want to know more about who we are and all the things that are going on here, we've got some brochures you can grab.

They're at the back four columns of the room.

There's also some at the info desk and where the kids are.

Please grab one of those because you'll get a lot of helpful information there so you can know more about what's going on here.

Another thing I want to mention real quick is something that we announced about a month ago.

Uh something kind of new that we have, and it's an app for smartphones that's that's free.

It's for Blackberry, iPhone, Android, all that kind of stuff.

And if you if you can download that, it is super helpful.

Um I've been using it the last month to listen to messages that I miss when I'm not in here, and so I'll go to the gym and just hit play on one of the messages and you can listen to it.

You can check out all the information on groups and classes that we have, events, all that stuff's on there.

And it even lets us update you with things going on.

So if you have the app, you probably got an update last night reminding you about daylight savings.

And I'm hoping there's at least one person that that helped, you know.

Uh, but we're not gonna we're not gonna overuse that.

I don't want you to think that your phone's gonna be getting constant, you know, updates and stuff like that.

We maybe send one every week and a half or two weeks.

So download that, it'll be something that'll really help you out.

Uh, a couple things coming up, a couple big things.

First off, Easter Sunday is three weeks from this morning.

It's in March this year.

Yes.

Yes, it's an exciting day.

And this is the first time we're ever having two Easter get-togethers.

We're doing an 8:30 in the morning service, and then we're gonna do one at 10 o'clock.

Uh, Steve shared a little bit about that last week.

We're we've never been in a place that wants to do two services just as like a strategy to grow.

Uh, but we're gonna need it this year because last year we were literally busting at the seams in our kids' area, the parking lot, uh, and and we're actually averaging quite a bit more people this year than we were last year.

So if if last year were to this is which is good, and if last year were to hold true to this year, we would uh it would just be it wouldn't be good if we had one service and you were sitting on each other's laps, it would be awkward and weird.

We don't want that.

So, two services, come to whichever one you want.

And actually, for those of you that help out on Teams, the great thing about that is that you have the ability to help and not miss you know the entire entire get together.

So we're excited about that.

This upcoming Saturday is a big day for us.

It's our spring spruce-up.

Uh, it's gonna be on Saturday.

We've got a sign-up table in the lobby, and we really want to just ask if if you can give us an hour, a couple hours on on Saturday, sign up and help us out.

We are blessed to have an incredible facility at this church.

And this may be something that not everybody knows, but we're a volunteer church.

There's only two people that are full-time on staff here, um, a very small handful of part-time people.

Everything else that's done is done through volunteers.

And so, just like our homes need a little extra care every year, um, we need the same thing around here.

We need some stuff repaired, we need things painted, we need some stuff organized, and we're gonna need a lot of hands to do it.

And so, if you can, it would be a huge blessing just to sign up and help us out for a little bit on Saturday.

We would really appreciate it.

Only other thing I want to say before we jump into what we're gonna talk about this morning is giving.

I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who gives financially.

Uh that's that's what God uses to uh to do all the things he's doing here.

Something new that we're doing this year is we're giving 15% of every dollar that's given to us back to the community through uh through three local charities.

There's Papa's Pantry, the Hope Center, and the Cherokee Family Violence Center.

And so every time any of us gives, 15% of that goes directly to those three groups.

We just divide it up between the three of them.

And that's actually really exciting.

My wife and I were going through finances this last week and just looking at what we give and trying to see what we want to give.

And it was just it was cool to be like, hey, not only are we are we supporting his hands, which is which is awesome because God's doing great things here, but but we knew too when we give here, it's gonna go out to the community.

That's just a really cool thing.

So I want to encourage you to do that.

You can do it at the at the back stations, um, online, on the app.

There's a lot of different ways.

And just know that God will bless it.

He honors generosity.

It's a promise that he makes us.

And sometimes it's the hardest thing to trust him with is our finances.

And and it's amazing the difference when we do.

I've experienced that in my life.

The more, the more I just let it go and give it to God, he actually gives me more wisdom, gives us more control.

It just puts everything in perspective.

And so just ask him what he wants you to give, and whatever he tells you, trust it.

Um, all right, let's let's jump into what we're gonna talk about this morning.

Steve's not here, obviously, um, but we're gonna we're gonna keep talking about Joseph.

If you've been here for the last month, we've been going through the life of Joseph.

And there might not be a person in the Bible that has a life that's as as interesting, as kind of you know, heart-wrenching in places, and just, I don't know, just cool as as Joseph.

To give a really quick recap, he was the 11th of 12 brothers, and his father, Jacob, honestly just loved him more than his other sons.

His dad showed him an incredible amount of favoritism, which is never a good thing.

And his ten older brothers resented him for it.

They resented it for him greatly.

By the time Joseph was 17 years old, his brothers resented him so much that they kind of hatched this plan to get rid of him, and they used an opportune moment when he was away from his father, they threw him into a well, they sold him as a slave to Egypt, and then they convinced their father Jacob that he had been killed by a wild animal.

So Jacob is sent into slavery in Egypt, and the rest of the story from there is kind of a roller coaster.

You know, he goes from being a slave to getting thrown in prison, and he's in prison for years and years, and then one day Pharaoh has a dream, and this dream really disturbs him.

He can't find anyone in Egypt to interpret the dream.

But Joseph, even though he's he's in prison, has a reputation for being able to interpret dreams, and so Pharaoh sends for Joseph.

He tells Joseph his dream, and Joseph nails it.

The dream's really important.

It basically means that Egypt is about to experience seven years of total prosperity, and that's gonna be followed by seven years of absolute famine.

And the good news is that God is giving Pharaoh a warning so that they can prepare for the famine.

And Joseph suggests to Pharaoh, he said, Hey, here's what the dream means.

You need to find a really wise person and put them in charge of Egypt to get them ready for this.

And Pharaoh says, I'm gonna do that and I'm gonna pick you.

And so Joseph goes from being a slave in prison to instantaneously being second in command of the entire empire of Egypt.

Only Pharaoh sitting on his throne is more powerful than Joseph.

He gets married, he has kids, and he spends seven years getting Egypt ready for this famine that's about to come.

And that's where we're gonna pick up the story this morning.

And what we're gonna talk about this morning is really interesting.

It's a really, it's just a really cool story, and it's filled with some things that are gonna give us hope and encouragement about our lives and the lives of people that we love, and it's also gonna give us some really challenging and inspirational, just practical advice.

Things that if we apply to our lives, we will see a difference in the kind of lives that we live.

We just should jump in there.

Everything plays out exactly as Joseph said it would.

Seven years, everything's great, everything's awesome.

He's collecting all this excess grain, he's overseeing this.

The Bible actually says that there was so much extra that he just stopped counting.

There wasn't even a way to keep track of it.

And then the famine hits, and it hits hard.

And it's not just hitting Egypt, it hits, it hits all over the place.

Egypt not only has enough food to feed its own people, they actually have enough to trade and sell with other nations and with people that live around that area.

One of the areas that was hit hard is Canaan.

And that's where Joseph's family still lives.

And we we get a little peek of that in Genesis 42, verses 1 through 4.

Genesis 42:1–4

It says, When Jacob heard that grain was available in Egypt, he said to his sons, Why are you standing around looking at one another?

I have heard there is grain in Egypt.

Go down there and buy enough grain to keep us alive, otherwise we'll die.

So Joseph's ten older brothers went down to Egypt to buy grain, but Jacob wouldn't let Joseph's younger brother Benjamin go with him for fear some harm might come to him.

This is really interesting.

Because Joseph's life in the last 20 years, since he was thrown in that well, had changed dramatically.

There is no way that 17-year-old Joseph could have imagined what his life was going to be 20 years later.

But when we get this little peek into Jacob's family, we see that things have not really changed at all.

The family dynamic is unchanged.

Jacob still plays favorites, it's just now it's it's Benjamin instead of Joseph.

His brothers are still the odd men out in that relationship, and it's really, it's really interesting to think about because you know that in their minds, getting rid of Joseph was going to change things for them.

It was gonna change their relationship with their father, and as we see, it hasn't changed anything at all.

In fact, it's even worse in a way because at least with Joseph, Jacob, you know, wasn't crazy protective of him.

He let Joseph go out and go do things.

That's kind of what got Joseph into trouble in the first place, and now you get this impression that he won't even let Benjamin out of his sight.

So things have not changed for Joseph's brothers really at all in the last 20 years.

But things are about to change in a big way.

We're about to get to witness and look at one of the most uh unique family reunions of all time.

It's Genesis 42, 6, when we first see this happen.

It says, Since Joseph was governor of all Egypt and in charge of selling grain to all the people, it was him that his brothers came.

It was to him that his brothers came.

When they arrived, they bowed before him with their faces to the ground.

This is amazing.

Bible says that Joseph's brothers did not recognize him, which makes sense.

It's been 20 years.

He's dressed as an Egyptian, he's in a place of honor.

He wasn't called Joseph.

They had another name in Egypt that they used for him.

He's speaking a different language.

I mean, the furthest thing in their minds is I wonder if we're gonna see, I wonder if we're gonna see Joseph.

In fact, it's it's it's pretty clear from other things that you'll read in Genesis that they assumed that Joseph was probably dead by now.

But he recognizes them instantly.

And what's amazing is that it's been 20 years since he's seen them.

The last time he saw them, you know, they were they were shrinking in the distance as he was being taken away as a slave.

He hasn't seen them one time since, and the first time he sees them in 20 years, they are bowing before him at his feet.

Twenty years earlier, Joseph had had a dream.

It's Genesis 37, 5 through 7.

It says, one night Joseph had a dream, and when he told his brothers about him, they hated him more than ever.

Listen to this dream, he said.

We're we were out in the field tying up bundles of grain.

Suddenly my bundle stood up, and your bundles all gathered around and bowed low before mine.

So here we have Joseph reunited with his brothers, surrounded by bundles of grain, which they're coming to buy to keep their families alive.

The first time he sees them in 20 years, they are fulfilling this dream that he had.

The Bible actually tells us that Joseph had forgotten about this dream.

It says that when he sees this happen, he remembers the dream.

His life was in such a different place that he had forgotten about this dream.

And it all comes rushing back to him.

And I have to imagine that this was this incredible display of God's providence and how God's plans and his will happen.

And people can make plans of their own and they can try to get in God's way, they can do their own thing.

But what God plans to happen happens.

Joseph had obviously never read the book of Romans because it hadn't been written yet, but it's this really great example of Romans 8.28.

It says, And we know that God causes everything to work together.

Not just the good and not just the bad, but all of it, everything, for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.

So now, Joseph, his mind is a little blown right now.

I mean, you can imagine what's going through it, and he is face to face with his brothers and he has to make a decision.

What is he going to do?

Does he let his brothers know it's him?

Does he reveal himself?

He's got to decide what to do.

Now, before we look into what he does, we've got to know a few things about Joseph right now.

Number one, you have to know that he's moved on.

That might seem hard to fathom, but he has.

He's moved on in his life.

He is not sitting around day by day, bitter about what's happened to him, and just waiting for a chance to get back at his brothers.

We we see that in Genesis 41 when he has his children.

It says, during that time, and this is before the famine hits, before the first famine years, the two sons were born to Joseph and his wife, Asenath, the daughter of Potiphar, the priestess of Anna.

I probably mispronounced all of those.

Joseph's Joseph named his older son Manasseh.

For he said, God has made me forget all my troubles and everyone in my father's family.

The word Manasseh, that name, it was kind of derivative of a Hebrew word that meant to forget.

And he said he named his second son Ephraim, for he said, God has made me fruitful in this land of my grief.

So these names are really symbolic of where Joseph's at in life.

He's forgotten.

He's put it in the past.

He's not dwelling on it every day, and in fact, he's now focused on the blessings in his life.

So this is not a bitter, angry man.

This is a man who's blessed.

The other thing we have to understand about Joseph before we look into what he does is that he is incredibly wise and he's an important person.

The decisions that Joseph makes affect the lives of thousands of people every single day.

His ruling of Egypt is what's going to keep people alive or what's going to put them in harm's way.

So he has to be careful.

He can't just let people into his life that are going to distract him for that, that are going to take away from that, that are going to cause trouble.

He is too important.

And his role that God has put him in is too important to allow that to happen.

So he's got to make a decision.

What's he going to do?

And what what Joseph decides to do is to test his brothers.

He's going to test him.

We're going to look into how he does that.

You know, for me, this approach that Joseph's going to take is actually really, it's it's challenging.

I am not a very detail-oriented person.

Anyone that's ever taken a ride in my car will let you know that.

It's usually this whole, if you want to sit here, let me move all the stuff out of the way.

I'm not proud of that, but that's just the way it is.

And God bless me.

He let me marry a really detail-oriented person that's helped me out a lot, but I am just not detail-oriented and left to my own.

If I didn't have systems in place or people in my life to help me, you know, check things, my life would be a mess.

It would.

And fortunately, God's at least allowed me to see that.

And so most of the time I'm able to operate and have other other people and help me out and just keep things organized for me.

But every once in a while, you know, I get into my old ways and I forget to check things.

And so I'm kind of the opposite of Joseph.

I just don't test things.

I don't double check.

I'll give you an example of that recently.

We uh we have a junior high group that meets during this time every single morning.

They're over there right now being incredibly well behaved and listening.

Um I know that, because that's you know, they're junior high students, that's what they do.

And something new that we added this year, which we're really excited about, is we have a live video feed of worship from this room that they get to participate with.

And so we have worship in there, and we can make it loud, and it's it's awesome.

And that's something brand new.

They're still getting used to it, and we know that God's gonna use it to kind of develop a passion for them in terms of worshiping him and connecting with him.

But for the first month we did it, we didn't have lyrics.

We didn't we didn't know how to put the lyrics on the screen.

It was kind of a lot of new technology we weren't used to working with with the cameras, and so it took some time to get to the point where we could have lyrics on the screen.

And we got that ability about a month ago, and I was so excited because I really want them to connect with God and worship, and so I was just jazzed that we were gonna have lyrics.

So that week I uh I put all the lyrics in myself.

I was so excited.

You know, I wanted it to be right.

And they're a little different in there because we we have a video of worship, so all the lyrics have to be kind of at the bottom of the screen, you know, unlike the middle, like we have in in here, otherwise you'd have words over people's faces, and so there's only enough room to put you know two or three lines uh of lyrics at a time.

And the set that first morning we were gonna have lyrics, it was really epic.

It had this song that I love called You'll Come, and we sing it in here every once in a while, and it has this incredibly epic, you know, moment where it says, Chains be broken, lives be healed, Christ is revealed.

So when it came to that part, I had it in there.

I had chains be broken, lives be healed as a line.

And then the next one, the Christ is revealed part, that was all by itself.

It was Christ is revealed, and it was gonna be this huge moment.

And when it comes on the screen as we're worshiping, my heart just sinks because it doesn't say Christ is revealed.

I forgot to put the T on Christ, and so what we have on giant letters is you know, chains be broken, lives be healed, Chris is revealed.

You know?

Everyone's who's Chris?

Why is you know, and parents, don't worry, your your children have not begun worshiping Chris.

We explain it to him, it's all it's all okay, but that morning, that morning Chris was revealed.

It was good.

Sometimes a little testing, a little double checking goes a long way.

Okay?

And in Joseph's case, it's gonna be a lot of testing.

Let's just get into what he does.

Here, here's the gist of it.

It's a long story, so I'm gonna try to summarize a lot of it, and then we can focus on a few parts in detail.

Joseph pretends not to recognize his brothers.

And there's probably a few reasons for this.

Number one, he doesn't see Benjamin there, and he knows his past and he knows what his brothers did to him, and Joseph's wise.

He can easily assume that his father would favor Benjamin now, because Joseph and Benjamin were the only two full brothers with each other, the rest were half-brothers, and they were the sons of Rachel, who was Jacob's love.

So he can figure out, okay, I'm sure my father favors Benjamin now.

He doesn't see Benjamin, so Jacob's thinking, or Joseph rather is thinking, okay, did they do something to Benjamin like they did to me?

Is he still alive?

Is my father still alive?

He doesn't know these things.

And so he just pretends that they are spies and they've come to Egypt to collect, you know, intel on what they've what they've got, how much grain they have for some type of attack, and he accuses them of that and they panic.

And they they freak out and they just start trying to persuade Joseph that they are who they say they are.

And so they they give him the family history.

They say, No, our father's name is Jacob.

We're we're you know, we're 12 sons that he has.

One of them stayed behind because you know our father didn't want him to come, the other one you know is no longer with us.

That's actually the words they use.

The other one is no longer with us, which is really ironic because for the first time in 22 years, he is with them.

The first time.

And so in this moment, Joseph learns, number one, his father is still alive.

He learns his brother is still alive, but he's still not sure.

And so he tells his brothers to prove it.

Go back to your home and bring Benjamin back to me, and if you do not, I will not deal with you anymore, which means no more grain, you'll be cut off.

And so Simeon, one of one of the older brothers, stays behind.

Jacob kind of keeps him, or Joseph rather, keeps him behind.

The other brothers go off, and when they when they get back to their father, they open up their bags of grain that they were given for their trip.

They notice that the money they took to buy the grain is still in their grain bags.

They had paid for the grain, but but Joseph had told people to put the money back in their in their grain sacks.

When they see this, they they flip out.

Because now they're like, oh no, he's gonna think that we stole this money.

But they're they're stuck.

I mean, they they need more to survive.

Their brother Simeon is in prison.

If they don't go back, he stays there.

So they go to Jacob about it.

And Jacob tells them, I'm not letting Benjamin go.

Think about this for a moment.

His son Simeon is in prison.

Who knows what's happening to him?

His family is starving.

They don't have enough grain with them to last for long, but still Jacob says no.

And in fact, what he tells his boys, he says, if something happens to Benjamin, it'll be the death of me.

I'll have nothing left.

You can imagine the hurt that would that would cause.

You know, they're like, what about us?

We're still here.

But he says, no, if something happens to Benjamin, I've got nothing, I'll go to my grave.

But this is a life and death situation, so the brothers step in and they they they try to persuade Jacob to change his mind.

And in this situation, it's Judah who steps up and kind of saves the day.

And in Genesis 43, 8 through 10, it says, Judah said to his father, send the boy with me and we will be on our way.

Otherwise, we will all die of starvation.

And not only we, but you and our little ones.

I personally guarantee his safety.

You may hold me responsible if I don't bring him back to you.

Then let me bear this blame forever.

If we hadn't wasted all this time, we could have gone and returned twice by now.

So Judah's begging him, let him come.

I will take personal responsibility.

This is one of the first glimpses that we see that things may have changed a little bit with Judah and his brothers.

Judah was the one, when Joseph was in the well, they said, Hey, let's not kill him.

Let's sell him into slavery.

And his thought process wasn't because I don't want him to die.

I love him.

That's not why he did it.

He said literally, if we kill him, what do we gain?

So let's sell him into slavery and we get some money.

That was Judah.

And now he's he's begging his father, he's saying, He's saying, Give Benjamin into my care.

I promise.

If something happens to him, you know, blame me.

I'll take the full brunt of the responsibility.

You know, Judah took no responsibility for what happened to Joseph.

20 years ago.

So maybe he's changed.

Or maybe he's just desperate because they're all starving to death, and people will do crazy things in those situations.

But Jacob relents and he allows Benjamin to go.

He's very reluctant about it, but he allows it to happen.

And he sends them with all these gifts to take to Joseph.

Obviously, he doesn't know it's Joseph, but he sends them on their way to Egypt.

And when they arrive, they are immediately taken back to Joseph's own home, which they they view as a very bad thing.

It says in Genesis 43, 18, the brothers were terrified when they saw that they were being taken into Joseph's house.

It's because of the money someone put in our sacks the last time we were here.

They said he plans to pretend that we stole it, and then he will seize us, make us slaves, and take our donkeys.

That's interesting, isn't it?

It's like if I'm seized and being taken into slavery, the last thing I'm going to be thinking about is my donkey.

But these men love their animals, and that is okay.

When they arrive, they quickly learn that they're not in trouble.

Simeon joins them.

Joseph comes out and greets them.

When he sees his younger brother Benjamin, his little brother, he is so overcome with emotion that he has to leave the room to collect himself.

And when he comes back, he sits his brothers down for a feast.

They don't know what's going on.

It says in Genesis 43, 32 through 34, the waiters served Joseph at his own table, and his brothers were served at a separate table.

The Egyptians who ate with Joseph sat at their own table because Egyptians despise Hebrews and refused to eat with them.

Joseph told each of his brothers where to sit, and to their amazement, he seated them according to age, from oldest to youngest.

And Joseph filled their plates with food from his own table, giving Benjamin five times as much as he gave the others.

So they feasted and they drank freely with him.

Okay, there's a lot happening here that's really interesting.

But what I want to focus on for just a minute is that he gives Benjamin five times the amount of food.

Now we don't know how large of a man Benjamin was, but we can assume that he was not five times the size of his brothers.

Why does he do that?

Well, I think we're gonna find out in the next part of this test that he's got his brothers in.

Says, when his brothers were ready to leave, Joseph gave these instructions to his palace manager.

Fill each of their sacks with as much grain as they can carry, and put each man's money back into his sack, then put my personal silver cup at the top of the youngest brother's sack, along with the money for his grain.

So the manager did just as Joseph had instructed him.

So after they're a little ways out, the manager catches up with the brothers and he accuses them of stealing from Joseph.

They have no idea what's going on, so they're they're insistent that they haven't done this.

And they willingly allow this manager to check each of their bags, and it finally gets down to Benjamin's bag, the last bag.

They open it up, and there is the silver cup.

Now, Benjamin is in serious trouble.

But think about what's happened here.

Now, Joseph is testing his brothers, and he knows their character, he knows their jealous nature from 20 years ago.

And so he brings them all to his home and he feeds them a meal, but he gives he gives Benjamin five times as much, and from their perspective, it's like, man, no matter where we go, our little brother.

At home, he's the favorite, even if miles from home.

He's stirring that jealousy inside of them to see if it still has a hold on them like it used to.

They watch their brother get five times as much, something that they could have easily related to, experience after experience in their life.

You know, think about Simeon, whose father was willing to let him stay in prison just to save Benjamin from some potential danger that may not even happen.

And here he is, and Benjamin's got five times as much.

So he stirs that in them, and then he presents them with the perfect opportunity to be done with Benjamin forever.

It's a golden opportunity.

Benjamin has been handed to them on a silver platter.

It is a golden opportunity on a silver platter.

It is that good.

Because this time they don't even have to lie about it.

They don't have to go to their father and make up a story like they did with Joseph.

They don't have to say, hey, look, I think he may have been killed.

We don't know what happened.

This time they could just go to their father and tell the truth and say, hey, we left and they searched Benjamin's bag and that silver cup was there, and they seized him and they took him.

I mean, the man is in charge of all of Egypt.

What are we supposed to do?

It's not our fault.

We're so sorry.

They can do that and be telling the complete truth from their perspective.

And feel no personal guilt at all for Benjamin being gone, but now Daddy's favorite's not there anymore.

And they finally have what they wanted to get when they got rid of Joseph.

I mean, he gives them this opportunity, but their response probably even surprised him.

They go back to Joseph.

And again, it's Judah who takes the lead.

He says to Joseph, and now, my Lord, I cannot go back to my father without the boy.

Our father's life is bound up in this boy's life.

If he sees that the boy is not with us, our father will die.

We, your servants, will indeed be responsible for sending that grieving, white-haired man to his grave.

My Lord, I guaranteed to my father that I would take care of the boy.

I told him, if I don't bring him back to you, I will bear the blame forever.

So please, my Lord, let me stay here as a slave instead of the boy, and let the boy return with his brothers, for how can I return to my father if the boy is not with me?

I couldn't bear to see the anguish this would cause my father.

I couldn't bear to see the anguish.

Rewind to 20 years ago.

Judah's interesting because we get a little bit more detail about his life than we do the other brothers in the time between Joseph being sold into slavery in this moment.

Shortly after returning from selling Joseph into slavery, Judah leaves.

He took his family, all his belongings, and he packed up and he went somewhere else.

You kind of get the impression that he couldn't bear living next to his father and near his father, seeing his father grieve for Joseph.

He couldn't take it.

But it's not that he couldn't take it and then it was hard to see his father grieve.

He didn't want to take the responsibility for it.

He wanted to forget about it.

Because he could have in any moment said, Hey, Dad, I'm really sorry we we lied.

Joseph's still alive.

Let's go to Egypt and find him and let's get him back.

But he didn't, he just left.

And he left his dad, you know, in misery.

And now he's taking responsibility.

He's actually saying, take me.

You know, I'm giving my whole life away to save this boy.

I couldn't stand to see what it would do to my father.

Praise God that people can change.

They can.

God changes people all the time.

And sometimes that's one of the hardest things for us to have hope in.

Is that the people in our lives that need to change, because all of us have people in our lives that we know that need to change.

And there's this thought, are they ever going to change?

All of us have people that in our minds are the least likely people to ever change.

And Judah definitely would have been on that list.

I mean, he's the one that said, let's sell Joseph, let's get some money from this.

And now he's begging to be to become a slave to save his brother?

Who is this man?

It's not the same man from 20 years ago.

He's been softened, he's been changed.

And that should give all of us hope that God can change anyone.

Maybe it's a spouse that we have that's just disconnected from us.

You know, that's that's angry.

Someone that doesn't have God's love in their life, and so that that's something that we experience as a result.

Maybe it's someone in our life that has an addiction, and they just they never get over it, and it keeps affecting our lives.

Maybe it's a maybe it's a friend, maybe it's a child, maybe it's a son or a daughter that's on the wrong path, and we have, we have tried to keep them from that path, we have tried to block that path, we've tried to drag them off that path, kicking and streaming, but it hasn't worked, and they're still on it, and to us they're just lost.

And we look at that and we say, God, are they ever going, are they ever gonna change?

Is there any hope for that?

And there is hope for that.

Because God changes people.

God changes us.

I mean, how many times is the person that we think needs to change the most, and the person that that we have no hope left for changing is ourselves.

One of the greatest promises that God makes to us is the promise to change us.

2 Corinthians 5.17 says, This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person.

The old life is gone, a new life has begun.

Ezekiel 36, 26, I will give you a new heart, I will put a new spirit in you, I will take out your stony, stubborn heart, and I will give you a tender, responsive heart.

God says, I will change you.

And we see that and we get so disheartened sometimes because we feel like it's gonna be this instantaneous change.

And he does that sometimes.

He's God, he can do what he wants.

Sometimes he does look at our lives and something changes in a heart.

We all know people that we've seen that just transform as soon as they come into a relationship with Jesus, but most of the time, that's not how it works.

And I don't know if it's how God wants it to work.

It's a process.

You know, Jesus said, Come and walk with me, come and follow me.

And it was a long-term thing, it was a day-by-day growth.

You know, you ever get disheartened with yourself, if you ever look at yourself and get discouraged that you don't feel like you're changing and growing in your relationship with God and who he wants you to be as fast as you think you should, just remember Judah.

Twenty years have gone by, twenty-two years actually.

Remember the disciples.

I mean, think about the disciples, think about Peter.

They had three years to be personally mentored every single day by God Himself in the flesh, every single day.

And yet, when Jesus goes to the cross, you know, they come off as weak, they come off as selfish.

You know, Peter was the one Jesus said as the strongest of the disciples.

He said, You're the rock I'm gonna build my church on.

And when that moment came, Peter looks Jesus in the face three times and says, I don't even know this guy.

So where was the growth for those three years?

Fast forward 20 years in Peter's life and the rest of the disciples, and they've they've taken Jesus' message, you know, as far as their feet will travel.

Churches are starting everywhere.

Thousands upon thousands of people have a relationship with Jesus.

They are writing books of the Bible.

You know, who are these men that deserted Jesus in his his darkest moment?

It's because they're changed.

God changes us.

And he'll change the people in your life that you think are the least likely to change.

He can do that.

So hold out hope for that.

Pray for that, ask for that.

Something kind of interesting you you might know about these brothers is that they're gonna go on to become the namesakes and the patriarchs of the tribes of Israel.

And you would think, looking at that, that that, you know, if the story ended when the story ended whenever Joseph gets, you know, the promotion in Egypt, that would be a great story.

You know, here's this man that's gone from being a son to a slave to a prisoner, and now he's in charge of Egypt.

If it ended there, it would be a great story.

We'd still talk about it.

But you would never believe if the story ended there that these brothers were gonna become the ones that God says, yes, I want them to be the ones that kind of start this tradition in these tribes of Israel, which was a big deal to the nation of Israel.

And even if that happened as some sign that God shows us he uses broken, messed up people to do cool things.

We would think, well, surely Jesus is gonna come from Joseph's lineage, right?

And Jesus doesn't.

Jesus comes from the tribe of Judah.

And it's not just that God took these messed up men and and you know still did things through them.

He changed them.

He really did.

They're different now.

And that should give us hope that we can change and the people in our in our lives can change.

Well, for Joseph, seeing this change in his brothers, it fills him with this deep love, and he reveals himself to them.

He says, I am Joseph.

Is my father still alive?

But his brothers were speechless.

They were stunned to realize that Joseph was standing there in front of them.

Please come closer, he said to them.

So they came closer and he said, I am Joseph, your brother, whom you sold into slavery.

Bible actually gives us this really cool picture that he takes off all of the things that you know make him foreign to them.

He takes off his Egyptian clothing.

It's just a cool picture.

This is an aside, it's just a cool picture of Jesus with us.

There's a lot of similarities in the story of Joseph and in Jesus.

You know, Jesus takes off all the divinity and everything that was so incredible about him and just becomes common so that we could see who he is.

You know, that's kind of like what happens here.

In Genesis 45, 14 through 15, it says, weeping with joy, he embraced Benjamin, and Benjamin did the same.

And then Joseph kissed each of his brothers and he wept over them, and after that they began talking freely with him.

I can't even imagine their conversation.

You know, but they're weeping and they're crying and they're holding each other.

This is awesome.

This is a total restoration.

You think about it from the brother's perspective.

They've lived with the regret and the pain of their greatest sin.

And right in front of them, that greatest sin is being wiped away.

And it's being wiped away because Joseph has grace for them, he forgives them.

For Joseph, he's getting a family back that was taken from him.

This is an incredible moment.

It's such a beautiful, happy ending.

And let's not forget, just for a second, that even though this moment is awesome and you have this total restoration happen, Joseph still tested his brothers.

It is okay to test things.

Sometimes, as Christians, filled with Jesus' love, we feel like the right thing to do all the time is just to blindly give people total access to our lives.

And there is a difference between forgiveness and trust.

You see that in this story.

Joseph did test his brothers.

He forgave them, but he tested them before he let them back into his life.

And that's something that I think is big for us because sometimes, you know, we well, all the time we're gonna have people that hurt us, we're gonna have people that that do things to us that they shouldn't do, and the question we have as followers of Jesus is, what am I gonna do about it?

And we know that, okay, I'm supposed to forgive, but sometimes we take that a step further and think, well, I guess I should just forgive and just you know let that person continue to do it over and over again.

And that's not necessarily true at all.

Joseph tested his brothers.

It's okay to test things.

I'm not suggesting you set up an elaborate scheme like Joseph did.

If you have the power to do that, I mean what I guess, but but but we can use things like God's word.

We can use things like the book of Proverbs, we can use things like prayer, the Holy Spirit, the advice of godly people.

Sometimes you have people in your life that are godly and wise, and you don't even have to talk to them.

I do this all the time where I have a decision to make and I'm stuck on what to do, and the thought I think through is I'm I think of someone in my life that I know and love and I trust, and I just go, what would they tell me to do?

And I know them well enough to know what they would say, and I just do that.

I don't even have to call them and ask them.

Test things.

Bible actually says test everything and hold on to what's good.

It's used in a different context there, but but testing things is okay.

Fortunately for us and for this family, they passed that test, and now they're they're reunited.

And this is amazing.

It's one of the most beautiful reunions in all of Scripture.

It's not quite as good as next week's, but it's really good.

I have one more thing I want us to focus on for just a second.

As great as this reunion is, it almost didn't happen.

And it almost didn't happen because of fear.

We started this morning, we read a verse that said Jacob was unwilling to let Benjamin go for fear of what might happen to him.

And whenever they came back and they they they told him that Simeon was in jail and this whole situation, the exact thing that Jacob said, I kind of referenced it earlier, it's in Genesis 42, 38.

He says, He says, My son will not go down with you.

His brother Joseph is dead, he is all I have left.

Keep in mind he's saying this to his other ten sons.

If anything should happen to him on your journey, you would send this grieving white-haired man to his grave.

He was afraid.

And had that decision stuck, he would have denied this reunion between the brothers, eventually a reunion with his own son.

He would have put his whole family in death's way.

I'm sure God would have worked it out a different way.

God does that.

But this decision based in fear almost, from our perspective at least, kept this from happening.

One of the most powerful pieces of advice I've ever been given, it was given to me by Susan about three years ago, was never make a decision based out of fear.

Never make a decision based out of fear.

And I know that's biblical advice.

You know, God says that love drives out all fear.

We're told things like that.

We're said that God is for us, so what do we have to fear?

But I'd never heard it phrased that way, directly connected to decisions that I make.

And it really struck me.

Because I started to think about myself and my experience, other people in my life, and times that I had seen decisions based out of fear, and how those situations worked out.

I have a friend that's been very blessed business-wise, very successful.

And this friend, every once in a while, gets nervous, just part of his nature, I guess, gets nervous that he's gonna lose his job or that his company's gonna go under.

And so in the last decade, he started two businesses on the side out of fear that he might lose his job.

And those businesses have been expensive and they didn't make money, and they put his family in really tough financial situations for a while, which which God blessed him, and he was able to get him out of that, but there was a lot of stress and a lot of strain on the relationships, and it was all out of fear.

He was afraid he was gonna lose his jobs, so he spent all this money to start these companies that would be like a fallback option.

And what's interesting is that he never lost his job once in that 10-year period of time.

It was all needless.

And now he's actually gotten another job and a big promotion and all these kinds of things.

He's been blessed, but those decisions he made to start those businesses, they were based out of fear and they didn't work out.

That's what that's what fear does to us.

Fear-based decisions don't work for a lot of reasons.

Number one, fear is rarely rational.

It's something I looked up this week.

A lot of people are afraid of spiders, and please know two things.

If you're afraid of spiders in this room right now, I'm not making fun of you.

Number two, we have a pesticide service that we we take very seriously here, so you're okay.

You don't have to look around, uh, you don't need to feel on your head.

I mean, we someone sprays, you're good.

But uh, but fear of spiders is a pretty common fear.

I got a good buddy that's afraid of spiders.

I'm looking at him right now.

Um do you know how many people have died from spider bites in the last decade in America?

Six.

And all of those deaths, every single one of them, was by was because of an allergic reaction.

Actually, it wasn't that the spider's venom was so strong, it was that person happened to be, you know, allergic to the spider venom that happened.

But think about how many people are afraid of spiders.

And yet, 0.2 people every year are killed by spiders.

In fact, the number of spider-related deaths in America is drastically less than the number of vending machine-based deaths in America.

Now, if I have just given you a fear of vending machines, I'm very sorry.

But you know, if if if we saw someone who walked up to a vending machine and they were like, like, kind of, they're putting that dollar in and they're like ready to run, you'd be like, what is wrong with you?

It's a it's a vending machine, and and and yet sometimes we'll see a spider and we'll be like, ah, we'll freak out and we'll we'll run away.

I don't know why that is.

But fear is rarely rational.

So when we make decisions based out of fear, they're just usually not good decisions.

And they affect us.

And sometimes what happens, and in counseling worlds, you'd hear this called an inner vow, where sometimes what happens is we have such fear about something that we make a promise to ourselves never to do something because of that fear.

And that affects us greatly.

I'll give you a personal one for my life.

Um I uh I'm kind of a people pleaser, and I don't like to make people mad.

And God, for some reason, God just wants to break me of that because he keeps putting me in positions the last three or four years where I have to have really awkward, difficult conversations with people.

And I've probably had six or seven in the last three years where I've had to just talk to someone and share something that I was nervous about sharing, and I've handled every single one of them pretty poorly.

Honestly, I really have.

I don't think any of them went well, and I look back at each of them, I'm like, man, I should, why did I do it that way?

I should have done it this way, it would have worked out.

That's part of life and growing.

Um one that went the worst was probably about three or four years ago.

I had a person in my life that I was very close to.

And it was a person that I was close to, but the relationship wasn't healthy.

There's a difference between being close with someone and being healthy in a relationship.

You can have a close relationship that's really unhealthy.

And this person I just felt like crossed a lot of boundaries in my life, and it put a strain on myself, it put a strain on my marriage.

And so eventually I knew I had to have a conversation with this person.

I had another person in my life encouraged me to do so, giving me great advice, and I was like, all right, I'm gonna do it, and I worked up the courage, and on the phone one day I said, Hey, here's some stuff, and this needs to change.

And keep in mind, I am terrified of you know these conversations, especially at this time.

This was one of the first I had to have.

Um God's helped me over the last few years get better at it, I guess, or at least less afraid of it.

But at this moment in time, I was terrified, I was so nervous, and it went terribly.

Like, wow, could not have gone worse.

The person just erupted.

There was there were all these other people in my life that I loved that were dragged into the situation.

It got blown out of proportion.

I mean, it was just a mess, and it took years to die down.

Well, because of because of that happening and because of it going so poorly, I kind of made an inner vow never to create conflict with that person again.

And so a few months later, after all this awkwardness and all this drama, I just kind of relented, and I actually ended up apologizing to this person.

And just giving them kind of a free pass to go right back to the way things were.

And that's what happened.

So another year goes by, and things all of a sudden are the exact same way, and I'm feeling just as much stress every time I talk to this person, and I'm feeling just as much anxiety, and it's just as bad as it was.

And what did I have to do at that point?

I had to have the same conversation again, and it went poorly again, and I just had to start the whole thing over.

And had I just stayed with that decision I made in the first place and not made that promise, not been afraid of conflict again and said, okay, I'm never doing that again.

If I just you know stuck to my guns or whatever you want to call it, it still would have been awkward, it still would have been hard, but it would have been over a lot faster.

I wish it would have done that.

We can do that in lots of situations in life.

You know, you have a spouse and you kind of open your heart up to them, and then they don't, they don't, you know, receive what you give them with tenderness and care.

So you're like, oh, never sharing that again.

You have a loved one that hurts you greatly, and you say, Oh, not letting that person in my life anymore, not talking to them again.

You make a business decision and it's risky and it doesn't work out.

And so you say, All right, never doing that again.

And there's a difference between wisdom and fear.

And when we make a promise to ourselves and never do something again because we're afraid, that's not from God.

It's just not how God wants us to work.

1 John 4, 16 through 18 says, God is love, and all who live in God in love live in God, and God lives in them.

And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect, so we will not be afraid on the day of judgment, but we can face him with confidence because we live like Jesus here in this world.

Such love has no fear because perfect love expels all fear.

If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his love.

Now it's talking specifically in this verse about our relationship with God and being afraid of judgment and how we shouldn't be, which is awesome.

But that phrase, perfect love expels all fear.

Decisions made out of fear cause you to miss out on life.

They cause you to miss the best things God has for you.

Because you'll always settle for where you're at versus where you could be.

You know, it's interesting.

The very first sin that ever happened, the first deception that Satan ever got away with with people, with Adam and Eve in the garden, was putting a fear in them that they were missing out on something they already had.

You know, he comes to them, he says, Hey, you're not allowed to eat the fruit.

We all know the story.

He says, Oh, if you eat that, you're not going to die.

You'll be like God.

And Adam and Eve go, well, we want to be like God.

Genesis 1.26 gives us the account of God deciding to make people.

And this is what he says.

It says, Then God said, Let us make human beings in our image to be like us.

Satan put a fear in Adam and Eve that they were going to miss out on having something that they already had.

They were already like God.

He made us in his image.

But Satan put a fear in them that they were missing out.

And so they made a decision based on that fear, and we all know how that worked out.

Decisions based on fear cause us to miss out on the beautiful parts of life.

Had Jacob stuck with his decision to not let Benjamin go, this incredible reunion wouldn't have happened.

So we're gonna we're gonna leave Joseph and his brothers where they're at this morning.

Reunited after 20 years.

This is a great place.

We're gonna get to an even better place next week.

The story's not over, so there's still more to come.

You'll definitely want to be here.

Um just to wrap things up, I as I say this, one of my one of my favorite things about the Bible is that is that it's our history.

Not necessarily in terms of our physical lineage, but our spiritual lineage.

These are our spiritual ancestors.

These are God's people, and we're now God's people through Jesus.

So when we read this stuff, we're reading the story of our family.

And one of the things we all do with our families is we look back at generations before us, and we're like, okay, I'm gonna learn from that and I'm gonna do it a little differently.

We have this incredible opportunity to look at these lives and to make adjustments and to make changes.

So this morning I want to ask that you just do a couple things.

And the first one I'd like you to do is this I'd like you to think of one person in your life that you believe is the least likely to change.

That person might be you.

And then I want you to remember Judah and how much he changed.

And then it took 20 years, and that God was obviously patient.

And then ultimately he was totally forgiven of everything, and he was given complete grace.

God can change anyone.

When you think of that person, and a lot of times it's a person that's hurt us, that's just kind of the way it goes.

Pray for that person.

Pray that God changes them.

And remember that you don't have to change him.

Joseph did not change his brothers, God did.

So pray for that person to change and trust God and give God space and time to operate.

You know, if that person is you, I'll just say this.

There is nothing that changes you like Jesus.

Because he is love, he is life itself.

And so if you've never had that experience with Jesus, if you've never encountered his love in your life, if you've never asked that, it's a great place to start.

It's the only place really to start.

So if that's you this morning, ask him.

Say, hey, Jesus, change me.

You know, make good on your promise.

I'm gonna trust you.

Invite him into your life and you will see that change happen, but it'll probably take time.

The second thing I want you to do is this: just make a decision in your mind and say to yourself, I do not make decisions out of fear.

I do not do it.

When you make hard decisions this week, which we all will, ask yourself, wait a minute, am I making this decision out of fear or out of faith?

And if it's out of fear, go, okay, wait, is this the right decision?

I do not make decisions out of fear.

You know, if we go back to 1 John 16, just kind of look at the last part.

It said, if we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows us that we have not fully experienced his love.

I love this about this verse, that the answer for fear is not courage in this verse.

The answer for fear is not, you know, just come on, toughen up.

The answer for fear is love.

So if fear is what we're struggling with at some point, at some level, it's because we have not, we've not really fully been convinced that we are that loved by God.

That he's really with us to the end, no matter what.

So if you're struggling with fear and if you're making decisions out of fear, you've got to know that you are loved by God Himself.

And you need to experience more of that love.

So, so ask for it.

Ask him to remind you of that love, to experience that love.

You know, just sit in his love, worship, and dwell on his love for you.

Because love is what drives out fear.

I don't have to make any decisions out of fear because I'm loved.

Let's pray together.

Daddy, thank you so much for uh thank you for loving us.

And thank you for for recording things like Joseph's story so that we can look at and we can have hope in our lives.

Hope that you can change the people that we love, hope that you can change us.

Give us patience to let you change people, change us at your pace.

And God help us uh help us be rid of our fear, help us keep a commitment never to make a decision out of fear, so that we don't miss out on what you have for us in this life.

Pray that you bless every single person here this week, that you bring us all back next week, ready to experience more of you.

We love you so much.

Amen.

All right, guys, we're not doing a last song this morning, so have a great Sunday.