The Brother's First Trip To Egypt

Hello, everyone.

Scripture reading today is from Genesis chapter 42, verses 1 through 17.

Genesis 42:1–17

When Jacob learned that there was grain for sale in Egypt, he said to his sons, Why do you look at one another?

And he said, Behold, I have heard that there is grain for sale in Egypt.

Go down and buy grain for us there, that we may live and not die.

So ten of Joseph's brothers went down to buy grain in Egypt.

But Jacob did not send Benjamin, Joseph's brother, with his brothers, for he feared that harm might happen to him.

Thus the sons of Israel came to buy among the others who came, for the famine was great in the land of Canaan.

Now Joseph was governor over the land.

He was the one who sold to all the people of the land.

And Joseph's brothers came and bowed themselves before him with their faces to the ground.

Joseph saw his brothers and recognized them, but he treated them like strangers and spoke roughly to them.

Where do you come from?

he said.

They said, From the land of Canaan to buy food.

And Joseph recognized his brothers, but they did not recognize him.

And Joseph remembered the dreams that he had dreamed of them, and he said to them, You are spies.

You have come to see the nakedness of the land.

They said to him, No, my lord, your servants have come to buy food.

We are all sons of one man, we are honest men.

Your servants have never been spies.

He said to them, No, it is the nakedness of the land that you have come to see.

And they said, We your servants, we are twelve brothers, the sons of one man in the land of Canaan, and behold, the youngest is this day with our father, and one is no more.

But Joseph said to them, It is as I said to you, you are spies.

By this by this you shall be tested, by the life of Pharaoh, you shall not go from this place unless your youngest brother comes here.

Send one of you and let him bring your brother while you remain confined, that your words may be tested, whether there is truth in you, or else by the life of Pharaoh, surely you are spies.

And you put them all together in custody for three days.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Welcome to Redemption Church Denver.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here, and we're continuing uh in the story of Joseph.

Uh this time the brothers finally visit Egypt uh for the first time.

And although we just read through verse 17 of chapter 42, we're I'm gonna preach on the whole of chapter 42.

It's just there's just a lot of it.

Uh, but don't worry, I'll I'll catch you up on what happens in the story.

Uh, it gets pretty, pretty intense for the brothers.

So before we move in uh to our text today, let's let's pray.

Father, we thank you for bringing us together to celebrate your word and what you have done for us on this Lord's day.

Father, we thank you that like the brothers who are sent to Egypt by the pressure of the famine, that it the pressure in our lives is often you pushing us towards the truth and towards the one who will rescue us.

Lord, I pray that we receive that as your mercy, and that you give us eyes to see that more clearly in our own lives.

Lord, we pray for your wisdom to understand what you are doing in the life of Joseph, and that we may we might better understand what you've done for us in Christ.

Lord, we lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Uh if you uh one of the things that we do as a church is we have a Bible reading plan, and you can find that by downloading the Redemption Church Denver app.

Uh, just search Redemption Church Denver, the whole thing, in your app store of choice.

If you just search Redemption Church, you won't find us because there's a lot of Redemption Churches.

And all churches use the same company to make our church apps, and so you won't find us.

But if you search Redemption Church Denver, we're in there.

And our reading for just this morning was Psalm 127, says, Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain.

Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.

One of my favorite parts is it is in vain that you wake up early or go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil.

This is one of my favorite verses in all of Scripture.

For he gives to his beloved sleep.

That's a great verse and a great reminder.

But it I wanted to just kind of bring that up as an encouragement.

If you're uh wondering how do I get in the Word more or what's a place to start, that's a great place to start.

Just jump in to where we are in the Bible reading plan right now.

Uh it's the by it goes through the whole Bible in two years, which is not very fast.

And so it allows you some time to just settle in and consider what we're reading, and we can move through the scriptures together as a church, and it's just a wonderful place to start.

So just wanted to offer that as a bit of an encouragement.

And I found it encouraging this morning because as we gather together each Sunday as the body, we're gathering to offer worship to the Lord, and then to receive the blessing of gathering together and the joy of worshiping him and being fed by his word.

And that's something that there's a sense in which we can't do that.

You know, even if we train together from nine to five for the whole rest of the week, we got together and be like, okay, now let's offer worship to the Lord.

Uh it's like, how would we make that happen?

But that psalm I found encouraging just this morning that unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain.

You know, the Lord promises to attend our worship, to attend our praise.

So that as we gather together this morning, we're doing something as a church that's made effective by the Holy Spirit attending to it.

That was a little pre-sermon, like the Pixar movie before the Pixar movie.

Yep.

Now for the show itself.

So as we're following the story of Joseph, we're tracing a promise.

And the promise that we're tracing is to one family, but it's for the whole world.

And this dynamic takes place throughout all of scripture that God makes a promise to Abraham, to his offspring, but the promise is for the blessing of all the families of the earth.

And we see this in Christ, where Jesus is the promised Messiah, but his blessing is for the redemption of the world.

Now, last week we saw this same pattern take place, and the uh Joseph being raised to power in Egypt, and then uh because of him being raised to power in Egypt, he organizes the nation under God's good principles, and because of that, the whole world is preserved from this famine.

All of Egypt and then the known world around are preserved during this great famine.

And so we saw that pattern of the blessing to Joseph, meaning a blessing to the whole world.

But finally, we see today there's a sort of return where we see the blessing is also for the family.

Because this broken family of promise we're going to see it starts to be brought back together.

It's been 13 years since the brothers had sold Joseph into slavery.

But as we re-encounter Joseph's other brothers, we see that the story of Joseph is still really central to their lives.

The fact that they together conspired against him, sought to murder him, but then sold him into slavery, and then live under this lie that they all work to preserve together for their father, or I don't know if you lie for someone.

What's the preposition there?

At you lie at people.

They all lied to Jacob, and they all are, their lives are formed by this lie.

And we see that this truth throughout throughout scripture that there are no family secrets.

There's no such thing as a family secret.

It manifests in some way.

And we see this take place.

Now, throughout this story, what takes place for the for the brothers is something like this.

They get pressured by death from this famine.

And that pressure is pushing them towards the one piece of evidence that exists in the world, which would uncover their lie.

And that's Joseph himself.

Joseph in this story is the truth.

If you uncover Joseph, you uncover the truth.

By the way, that's my son's donut.

I'll take that.

Could be a long sermon.

When they encounter Joseph, they uncover the truth.

But Joseph, as the one who manages the food of Egypt, is their only hope for survival, their only hope for salvation.

And he is the very one that they sinned against.

Do you see the pattern?

Israel is Israel.

They're just like us.

They are pushed towards the truth, the very one whom they offended.

And then they are dependent upon the mercy of the one that they offended, that they might be saved.

And so, as we're following their story today, we're really following what does it mean to be a person who is brought towards the truth of Christ?

And can we trust that even when the truth of ourselves is exposed, that there might be mercy there to meet us?

This is the pattern of the story we watched today.

Okay, so let's see how the famine, God uses this famine to push them into the light.

Genesis 42, 1 through 2.

When Jacob learned that there was grain for sale in Egypt, he said to his sons, Why do you look at one another?

And he said, Behold, I have heard that there is grain for sale in Egypt.

Go down and buy grain for us there, that we may live and not die.

Alright.

So there's pressure on the family.

The famine is not only in Egypt, but the famine is all the way up in the land of Canaan.

Now this is weird because they operate off of different weather patterns for their agriculture.

Canon, canon, Canaan, depends on where you're from.

South of the Mason Dixon, we uh say canon.

There's a uh uh they get water, like it says in Deuteronomy, they're giving you a place, it's it's hills and and it's watered from heaven.

You know, God Himself waters the land of Canaan.

But Egypt is watered from the grounds underneath, it w it's watered from the flooding of the Nile.

And so they operate off of these different weather patterns.

And so for there to be a famine in Egypt and in Canaan at the same time is like God is saying to them, I'm doing this.

You know, this is not a mere circumstance that's taking place here.

It's a it's a uh that God is making this explicit in creation.

So God is the one who is pressing this family by the famine into Egypt.

But it's not just the external pressure.

You know, the external pressure of the famine, it gets coupled with, throughout this whole story, the pressure of a family dynamic that is crafted around lies and secrecy for one another.

So we can look at this in just the in just the language that they use.

Jacob is the first one to speak, and the first thing that he says, as you might expect for this, would be something like, I'm hungry.

No.

He says, Why do you look at one another?

It's as harsh as it sounds.

You know, this is the dynamic between Jacob and his sons.

And he's right.

Throughout the whole story, Joseph's brothers, Jacob's other sons, are always just looking inward to each other.

They are always turning inward and consulting with one another.

And they're like a uh they're a person who is turned in on themselves because they live in a lie.

They're co-conspirators whose thoughts are so inwardly turned, and we'll notice that in their their almost constant introspection, they're they're wrong, fearful, or fruitless in almost all of their introspection.

So this is like a pattern of what a person is like when we're trapped in sin, or when we're trying to preserve a life that is trapped in sin.

We're constantly turned inward and introspecting.

This is when you find yourself you're you're just thinking about a problem and you're you're unwilling to pray about it, because prayer is this is this absurd thing where you start to pray and then it's like bam, your heart is exposed to the Lord.

And so you'll you'd rather just think, not turn to the Lord and pray for this.

Or where you find yourself instead of acting or moving towards obedience in a way that you know the Lord is calling you to, you're just processing.

You know, I just need to process this uh a bit more.

These are this is what the brothers look like in a life that is crafted around this, the maintaining of this deceit for what they had done to Joseph.

They are avoidant of the world, turned inward on themselves, because they are avoidant of the truth.

And so they maintain the lie together.

Okay, so Joseph then uh tells them, go down to Egypt.

There's grain for sale, that we may live and not die.

That is the stakes.

The famine is so great, they they have to have the food.

So the pressure from the famine is coupled with the internal family pressure as well.

So ten of Joseph's brothers went down to buy grain in Egypt, but Jacob did not send Benjamin, Joseph's brother, with his brothers, for he feared that harm might happen to him.

See, we're just getting a description of what is it like in this family.

Jacob had his twelve sons by four women, uh, two wives, two concubines.

Joseph and Benjamin were full, full brothers.

They were both the two sons of Rachel.

Rachel was Jacob's most beloved wife.

And Benjamin is the youngest son of Rachel.

Joseph was the older son who'd been done away with.

And we can see the way that this dynamic is repeating itself.

Benjamin has the same sort of favoritism from Jacob that Joseph had.

But it's also coupled with this deep fear now.

Because Joseph's favoritism was like, you're my favorite, you're the best, here's a coat.

Uh now go to your brothers.

And he would send him away and send them on trusted errands and things.

It's different for Benjamin.

Benjamin is the favorite, but it's a favoritism that's covered in fear since Joseph had been uh presumably to Jacob killed.

And so we'll see throughout the story, Jacob is absolutely gripped with regards to Benjamin.

Benjamin doesn't go anywhere.

That's the most important thing in Jacob's life is that Benjamin doesn't go anywhere.

This also shows us that although there's been no evidence, no smoking gun of what happened to Joseph, Jacob knows these other brothers are dangerous.

You know, their character has shined through in some way.

That's what family secrets are like.

You know, you you can there can be something beneath the surface that's difficult to uncover.

And it may not be able to be brought into, you know, a smoking gun reality, but its effects are there.

And what do its effects look like?

Dad is terrified of Benjamin going anywhere.

You know, the the family is splintered, and the patriarch lives in total gripped fear.

This is the manifestation of a family secret.

But the pressure comes.

They're forced out by the fear of death, and they are sent towards the lone evidence of their crimes, unbeknownst to them, which is Joseph himself.

Benjamin stays home, and the other brothers all go to Egypt together.

All right, now we're going to get our first encounter between the brothers and Joseph, since Joseph's glow up.

Genesis 42, 6.

Now Joseph was governor over the land.

He was the one who sold to all the people of the land, and Joseph's brothers came and bowed themselves before him with their faces to the ground.

All right.

Notice at their first meeting, the dream that Joseph had is fulfilled.

They come to Joseph and the brothers bow down.

Almost fulfilled.

Because it's not all the brothers.

And almost fulfilled, because there were two dreams.

The first dream was about the brothers bowing down.

The second dream, the father, mother, and brothers all bow down to Joseph.

So we're getting close, but there's some sort of almostness.

What's being shown to us here in the first interaction being the fulfillment of the dream is once again, this is no mere circumstance.

God is designing this process.

God is the one who is in charge of this movement of bringing the family back together.

Verse 7, Joseph saw his brothers and recognized him, recognized them, but he treated them like strangers and spoke roughly to him to them.

This is the emotion of this situation is hard to imagine.

But we'll notice that this is the first reunion of Joseph and his brothers.

There will be several more as the story continues.

And you may wonder why not just once we get him back together, why doesn't Joseph just say, It's great to see you and forgive them right away and bring them in and say, I've got all the grain in the world?

Because we know that's where the story's headed.

But we have to understand what's going on here.

Joseph understands these are dangerous men who have been living in a mode of self-deception that if it gets provoked, they could become even more dangerous and violent immediately.

And so that's one element.

There's just the safety element for Joseph of I need to handle this situation delicately with my brothers.

But then there's another element, which is one of the things that Joseph named his sons was I I have the Lord has made me forget my father's house.

Things are good for Joseph in Egypt.

He's got any anything that a full life you could possibly desire.

And best case scenario for Joseph, I never see those.

People again.

I just forget them.

And I think that there's a moment here where Joseph is sort of toying with this idea of they don't recognize me.

I'll just create some distance, and then maybe this could just go away.

And I'll say, yeah, I saw them once.

But then nothing came of it.

And I got back to Egypt and Egypt's business.

But there's a turn.

And the turn is this, and in verses eight and nine, it says again, and Joseph recognized his brothers, but they did not recognize him.

And then verse nine and Joseph remembered the dreams that he had dreamed of them.

And he said to them, You are spies, you have come to see the nakedness of the land.

Okay.

This is the hinge point for the narrative.

When Joseph looks at his brothers and he remembers the dreams that he had dreamed of them.

Now Joseph is switching.

He's no longer processing in terms of what do I want to get out of this interaction?

And what's just tactically the best way through where I can get away from these violent people and just get back to my own life.

He remembers he is not in his story.

He is in a story that the Lord is writing, that the Lord is in charge of.

And he remembers that by remembering the dreams.

And in remembering the dreams, he's brought into these, these boundaries are brought into his life.

He can't just ignore them because what's the dreams?

They're gathered around him.

The family is brought back together.

And it's not just some of the brothers, it's all of the brothers.

And it's not just all of the brothers, it's the brothers and Jacob and their mothers as well, gathered together all around.

And so Joseph is now brought in line with the Lord's designs, which are, as has been showed to him, this kingly responsibility for his family.

So the king cannot just ignore them because he's meant to gather them around.

He cannot neglect their needs because that's not what a true king does.

He is brought in line with the Lord's designs, and this shapes this strategy.

It's not that clean of a strategy, it's one which will develop throughout the course of the story, and it doesn't get rid of the danger of the people that he's dealing with.

And so he crafts this plan.

He accuses them of being spies that have come in just to see the nakedness of the land, which is a way of saying, like to get behind and to uncover Egypt's secrets.

Now, this accusation of spies serves these two purposes.

This is kind of the genius of starting with an accusation.

An accusation pushes someone away to something like a safe distance, but it also demands that they engage.

So it's like this this weird push-pull that an accusation does.

It's really shrewd on Joseph's part what he what he does with the brothers here.

He puts them in a situation where they must, he sort of buries them in a lie so that they must come through the truth in order to engage with them.

And the truth has to do with how many brothers there are.

The way that they advocate for themselves, the way that the brothers seek to legitimize who they are, is they tell a story that they can all corroborate.

There's 12 of us brothers, one is no more, and one was kept back with our father, the youngest one.

And they can all corroborate that story and sort of validate their identity together.

It's this truth that they're able to operate in together.

And so Joseph, he makes that the turning point.

If you go and bring back your youngest brother and bring him here, then I will know that you are telling the truth.

So they'll have to come through the truth of who they are, and it's a process which requires all of the brothers to be brought back together.

Because Joseph remembers the dreams.

He remembers that the purpose is that the family be brought back together.

So dream one would be fulfilled.

And Joseph says, okay, here's what I'm going, here's my offer.

We'll keep nine of you here, and we'll send back one to your father, and then he'll bring back Benjamin, and then we'll all be together.

So nine of you stay here in prison, and one goes back.

This is a pretty rough deal that Joseph offers.

Nine to one.

And then Joseph has this idea, and then he puts them in jail for three days.

You can see that Joseph is just working this out in real time, trying to figure out how do I navigate this situation.

After the three days, Joseph comes back and he has something, something like a change of heart.

Because the New Deal is this we'll keep one brother here, not nine, one.

And then the nine of you go back, and then you get Benjamin.

And if you all come back with all of the brothers intact, then I will know that you aren't spies, and then you'll be able to purchase food here in Egypt.

This deal is still devastating for the brothers.

They understand the stakes of returning without all of them intact, and that this might very well kill their father because they had lost one of their brothers.

But this is the only deal that's available, and so this is what they do.

Joseph takes Simeon, who is the second oldest.

He's Reuben's immediate younger brother.

Reuben is the oldest, so Reuben should stay with the group because he's the one that needs to advocate on behalf of the brothers to Jacob.

But Simeon, he can stay back and still be a valuable person to take.

You know, you have to leave your ID up here when you rent your bowling shoes.

That's the dynamic.

Simeon is the ID.

So the brothers, uh the brothers still feel the weight of this, of leaving without Simeon.

Now listen to this.

It's uh two slides worth of text I'm gonna put up, but this is this is really the heart of the interaction.

Genesis 42, 21 through 24, then they said to one another, you know, they're always turning inward to one another, in truth we are guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the distress of his soul when he begged us, and we did not listen.

That is why this distress has come upon us.

And Reuben answered them, Did I not tell you not to sin against the boy, but you did not listen, so now there comes a reckoning for his blood.

They did not know that Joseph understood them, for there was an interpreter between them.

Then he turned away from them and wept.

Now we get details on what took place that day that we haven't heard until this part of the story.

You know, we were never told that Joseph begged.

But Joseph was in the pit, begging for his life, and all of the brothers turned a deaf ear to him.

This comes flooding back.

Why?

Because they're in a pit, begging for their lives.

And they say, look, obviously this is a reckoning for the blood that we have shed.

They're coming in, they're coming into contact with this truth.

We cannot bend reality to our will.

It will come back upon us.

And so in that depth, we see the brokenness of the brothers with what they're encountering, but we also see in Joseph just the heart, that's something like the heart of our Lord.

Because he turns from them upon hearing this and he weeps.

What is that weeping?

I'm sure it's remembering crying out and not being heard.

I'm sure it's seeing their remorse and this reality that they've real they've legitimately been living with this since that day.

This is still the central fact of their lives that they're getting rid of Joseph.

There was no getting rid of Joseph.

And there's also this desire to reconcile, to bring these wicked men back in, back together.

This is the responsibility that Joseph has been shown in his dreams.

And so we see just something like the heart of our Lord towards us, the true depth of pain of what the offense is, what the broken what the wickedness of our sin towards him is, and then this this depth of love that seeks to reconcile even these most wicked people.

So weeping.

Weeping is the right response.

The brothers know that they're being pushed into some type of truth.

They know that their lie is being exposed in some way.

But their only sense of that is something like a karmic retribution.

They have no sense yet that while they're being painfully pushed into the truth, they're also being pushed towards the very source of mercy for them.

We can see that in the story.

But in their experience, and I know this is a relatable experience, when you're being pushed towards the truth, it is, it is, it feels like only death could come on the other side of this.

Because if we were really exposed for the truth of what we did to our brother, then it's certainly this man won't sell us any grain, and we will be destroyed.

And it looks like even when we're being pushed into the truth by God, it is only so that he can reveal us and then destroy us.

But do you see the kindness and goodness of the Lord?

He is pushing them into the truth, which is Joseph.

Joseph, you know, if you think of this narratively, and think of this like Jesus.

Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

Joseph just fits that pattern perfectly in this story.

You know, who is the truth to the brothers?

Joseph, the person, is the truth.

And when they're getting pushed into him, it feels like they're getting pushed towards death.

But it is the very source of mercy.

So Joseph offers this order.

Uh, he has their grain provided and uh gives them all that they need to journey back to Canaan.

And then he does this strange thing where he even gives the gold that they would have used to purchase the grain.

He puts it back in their bags.

Uh it is an act, as we see later, and Joseph will interpret it for us in the next couple of chapters.

It's this is just an act of grace.

Joseph was just giving abundantly to his brothers.

You know, what did Joseph pray in those three days that they were in jail?

Something that deeply softened his heart and brought him in line with the Lord's purposes.

Now, this act of grace, because of the state of the brothers' hearts, and they're so inward turned, and they have no concept that they're being pushed into the truth could possibly be the same thing as them being pushed towards grace, when they receive this mercy of the money that had been given back to him, back to them, they receive it just fearfully.

Listen to this.

In verse 28, he said to his brothers, one of them, it doesn't clarify who, My money has been put back.

Here it is in the mouth of my sack.

Instead of saying, Wow, that was nice, at this their hearts failed them, and they turned trembling to one another.

They're always turning in, saying, What is this that God has done to us?

You know, they're starting to, there's a bit of a shift, you know, they're starting to incorporate God into the story.

They're seeing God in the story, but it's just in terms of retribution.

This is the only way that they understand the Lord.

Just in terms of He will accomplish His justice upon us for the wickedness that we have done.

And so it just fills them with this fear.

And then when they get in, and look, it's not even a, it's not a look what God is doing to us, to us.

It's just a question.

There's some hopefulness in that.

It's just, what is God doing?

You know, that's that's not bad.

If you find yourself in a situation and you're like, what is God doing?

That's a good sign, probably something.

And if God is doing something and you don't know precisely what it is, then you've got to move, you've got to move down this next level to be able to live as a person, which is that it raises the question, okay, if I can't know exactly what he's doing, but I know he's doing something, what is God like?

What's he like?

What would it be like him to do?

To the brothers, if God is, if there's there's no mercy on the horizon because their lives have been so hardened by self-protection and self-deceit and lying, and they have no concept that their entering into the truth could be met with grace, then the way that they would answer that is what is God like?

He's vindictive.

So what is he doing?

He's seeking to destroy us.

So let us turn more inward, let us hide more completely.

This is so a picture of what it is like on the precipice of conversion, on the precipice of seeing Christ for who he is.

We have this question that the brothers are faced into.

If I face the truth of my sin, will I be cast out in shame or will I be brought in with mercy?

This is the question of what is the Lord like?

What is the Lord like?

When they return to Jacob, they discover that all of their money had been put back.

And instead of being like, oh great, must have been something nice, they they get even more terrified when they see that all their money had been put back, and they explain to Jacob what had happened.

And Jacob is like, why did you tell them about all the brothers that you had?

Are you what are you trying to kill me?

And remove remove any joy that I have in my life or any of the things that I love?

To have it taken once again?

Listen to Jacob's response.

Listen to how often he repeats the word me.

Verse 36.

And Jacob their father said to them, You have bereaved me of my children.

Joseph is no more, and Simeon is no more.

And now you would take Benjamin.

All this has come against me.

Do you see what the chosen family has become?

What their trust in the Lord is, what who what they think the Lord is like.

There's no concept that in their being pushed towards the truth, that they could also be being pushed towards the grace of the Lord.

They have no concept that those are the same thing.

That there is one who is both grace and truth.

So Benjamin, excuse me, Jacob says, you cannot take Benjamin, and uh there's we're not gonna go back to Egypt.

He basically just puts a hard stop on this, which is basically cursing the family to die.

Then Reuben has this opposite response of Jacob.

Jacob is, we're not gonna do anything, we're gonna grip down, we're gonna make sure that we don't lose any more, because it's too dangerous out there.

Reuben has the opposite response, which is I'm gonna take control of this by taking absurd action.

I'm gonna try and go so so outrageous in my action that I'll be certain to take control of the situation and find safety.

So Reuben says, if we come, if we go and we lose Benjamin or Simeon, then Jacob, I promise you, you can kill both my sons.

Jacob refuses to give what is his to let go of.

Reuben offers what is not his to give.

Both of these are ways of avoiding the grace and mercy of the Lord.

Because here's what's different than those.

These are our ordinary responses to a situation like this, where we try and hold by a death grip those things which we think are most important to us, or we try and take such absolute control that we'll get rid of anything that we feel like might be in our way.

Both of those are saying, I am self-sufficient, I am the one who can accomplish my salvation, I am the one who can bend reality to my own ends, and they ignore this deepest reality of what is taking place in this whole process, which is that when they're being pressed towards the truth, they're being pressed towards the mercy of God, that in truth the Lord meets us in his mercy, and they could know that because they had the promise.

Because God had promised to be with this family.

God had promised to bless them and to be a blessing to those that blessed them, to be a curse to those that cursed them.

God had shown his patience to this family over and over again, from Jacob's uh bartering with Laban to his betrayal of his brother and his deceit of his father, that the Lord had remained faithful to him through.

To uh to Isaac was was kind of fine, to be honest, to Abraham and this waffling, this faithless waffling back and forth for the promise of the son Isaac.

I just remembered, Isaac does the same sin of deceiving the kings around him by making his wife say that she is his sister.

They are always operating in this faithless way, and yet what they ought to be remembering is that God had been absolutely faithful to them in all of this.

And so they must think our being pressed into the truth is the same as our being pressed into the grace of God, because he is the one who is absolutely merciful.

This is the last word from Jacob.

He says in verse 38, but he said, My son shall not go down with you, for his brother is dead, and he is the only one left.

If harm should happen to him on the journey that you are to make, you would bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to Sheol.

We can understand this process, this moment that they are in, in the most complete and the most maximal terms, because we're able to see it in Jesus.

Jesus is the one that we have betrayed.

And when we come to him, we are being pushed into the truth of our lives.

Whatever that truth may be.

You know, I want you to consider what is that thing that you are so gripped on that you could never possibly let go?

Or what is that thing where you're betting so much that you're betting things that aren't even yours to give?

What's your family secret?

What's the thing that's that's just yours that you think you're holding on to?

That you know Christ to come to him, you know that when you come to him, that he will know.

It is a fearful thing to get pushed into that type of light.

It's just like Joseph.

Because Jesus on the cross becomes the evidence, the evidence of our sin.

But it's an evidence that does these two strange things.

One is it shows us we are guilty.

Guilty before the Lord, such that we must be atoned for.

And so if when we just get pressed into the truth of Christ and we see the Son of God up on a cross nailed for the atonement of the sins of the world, that we see, like we sing in that great hymn, it was my sin that held him there.

It is your secret.

But then it becomes evidence in another plane.

It becomes evidence when the Lord looks at Christ on the cross.

And he says, This is all the evidence that I need for your righteousness.

That in his death you are atoned for.

So as we are pressed, as they are pressed towards the one who is the truth, towards Joseph, who is the truth, the evidence of their sin, Joseph is also the one who will show them mercy, feed them, bring them into life.

So too we are pressed towards the evidence who is Jesus.

He is the evidence of our need, but then he is the one who brings us into life and feeds us.

Do you see in Christ who he is?

Here is the wonder of Christianity.

When you are pressed into the truth, even the most fearful truth of who you are in Christ, you're being pressed into the one who shows you mercy and grace in that very place.

This is the wonder that Christ is the evidence.

So consider what should the brothers have done when confronted with such a severe mercy?

They should have confessed and ran into it.

What should Jacob have let go of?

You should have trusted in the goodness of the Lord.

What are you holding on to?

Just on the other side of that truth which seems so scary, there is a grace for you.

You can see it.

It's on the cross.

The one who is full of grace and truth.

Are there any questions today, Carlos?

Great.

Anybody, how how may you be saved?

The dream evangelism question.

We come to the table because just like Joseph, Jesus is the one who feeds us.

He is the one who has the cup and the bread, the cupbearer and the baker.

Joseph is the true cupbearer and the true baker who gives to us his feast like we are royalty.

Oh, but Jesus is the true Joseph, the one who has given us all the bread, the one who has given us all the wine, the one who gives himself so that we might live and not die as we come into him in truth.

Come to me.

He will in no wise turn you away.