Clough Genesis Lesson 90

Joseph’s brothers come to Egypt for food; Simeon kept hostage – Genesis 42

 

Throughout the Joseph stories that we’ve been studying in the book of Genesis we’ve watched some very great, long-lasting Biblical themes.  Each individual story is like a bead on a necklace; it fits into the overall scheme of things.  And to show, particularly this story, the story of Genesis 42 and how that shows up on the general scheme of things we want to look at election up until this chapter and then we want to look at election after this chapter.  Before this chapter election has to do with a son; it’s an election of one of the Messianic sons over against that son who is reprobate, so therefore we have the stories of Abraham’s family and what are the stories of Abraham’s family but the story of the generation of the elect seed of Isaac over against the reprobate, Ishmael.  And we have the breaking out of those two sons, the elect and the reprobate.  And then out of Isaac you have the breaking out, once again, the reprobate son Esau and the elect son Jacob. 

 

And all the stories have that background going on, that’s the big picture.  What gets confusing when you come to the Joseph stories is that the story ultimately isn’t about Joseph. The stories of Joseph have to do with a different sort of election that’s happening.  Now we have the elect family of Israel over against the reprobate family of Egypt.  Now we have the election of a nation over against the election of sons and therefore the stories, while they show the same principles of the stories before, it’s not quite the same thing because the object of election has changed.  The principle holds true that God takes both Israel and Egypt and He presents the Word of God to both.  God has common grace and it’s undistinguished between elect and reprobate; it goes the same to both.  And so we have Noah in history and the whole human race comes out of Noah; one son of Noah is Ham and out of Ham comes Mizraim, which is the Hebrew word for the Egyptian.  The Egyptians get primitive revelation from Ham, from Noah.  The Egyptians had enough at the fountain and starting point of their culture, they had the Word of God, they were not lone, innocent people that had no bibles and were just solely, so to speak, spiritual wanderers and pilgrims.  They had adequate, sufficient revelation. 

 

We saw last Sunday how they cast this aside and began, as we saw through looking at Egyptian art forms, they began to develop what you and I see and recognize as uniquely Egyptian art, which isn’t wrong in itself, it’s just that the content of that art was very apostate.  For example, we showed you paintings or etchings of Pharaoh; we showed you how the height, the artist would draw the height of Pharaoh a little bit higher than the artist would draw the height of the gods depicted, showing very clearly that the artists were saying that Pharaoh is a god; he is part of that which is divine over against normal human beings.  And we saw through studying Egyptian art that there was a very definite doctrine that the state was the Messiah; just like the United States is moving today and where communism has already moved, this grand state from whom all blessings flow rather than Jesus Christ.  So we had a very antichrist movement in the concentration of power around Pharaoh.

 

And then we have the development of the Jewish group through Shem, through Abraham, through Isaac, through Jacob and now we’re down into Jacob’s family. The problem, however, with the elect family is that they are sinners like the non-elect and they are going to fall aside.  They haven’t proved, they haven’t really literally become the elect family yet, they don’t exist as the elect until they believe and when they believe, then they come into historic existence.  And so this family as a family has started to crater.  Isaac was not the spiritual giant his father was.  Jacob was not the spiritual giant that Isaac was, and by the time you get to the sons we have the sins of theft and murder, hatred, animosity and the family begins to disintegrate.  And so if God is to steer history the way God wants to steer history then He must reach down and do something about it.  And this is the story of Genesis 42.

 

However, we notice that when God began to work, to move as it were, the Egyptians off to one side so they, after Genesis 41 really don’t even become the issue.  Starting with Genesis 42 the emphasis of focus is on the Jewish family and what’s happening there, and as this shift of focus occurs we see the key actor, the key deliverer is Joseph.  And he is key because he is key over both sides.  He is the key judge of Egypt, he is the key savior of the Jew.  We saw how he was the judge of Egypt last week and we said this is an important point for those of us who are very sensitive politically and legally to the content of revelation. We’ve got to come to grips with the fact that Joseph was the author of one of the most centralized powers that the world has ever seen.

 

Remember that nowhere in history have we ever had a political regime that basically remained unchanged for 3,000 years.  We can’t conceive of that as Americans; our country hasn’t even been in existence 300 years.  We’re talking ten times beyond the life of the present United States, that far down the corridors of time.  Now the question is, how do you ever maintain political stability for 3,000 years?  The Egyptians pulled it off and they pulled it off in an amazing way and Joseph helped them do it.

 

Well if Joseph did this, then to defend the biblical principles of freedom and free enterprise we have to explain what took place, and so we said last time that what Joseph did is Joseph received input of the future from omniscience.  Because God was omniscient Joseph had a tap on omniscience, therefore when he got his financial newsletter planning for the next ten years of investment he had a perfect forecast of the future and therefore he was in a position to make centralized decisions.  We said economically if you do not have omniscience in your planning then you cannot make centralized decisions because what you will do is make centralized massive errors and this is the argument against a planned economy which most Americans seem to still like. 

 

And so therefore what we have said is that Joseph took omniscience, he applied it to the situation and in effect said to the Egyptians, look, you know your people in your mental attitude are basically slaves.  You people in your mental attitude just love to give up your liberty.  You people in your mental attitude don’t care about the future, you really never have, your wholly present centered so I’ll tell you what, I’ll do you a favor.  I’ll set you up with a perfect solution and when I get through you’re going to have a present-centered existence that will beat anything that history has ever seen.  So we might say that Joseph greased the slide on the defense of the Egyptians in servitude and he did so very freely; he didn’t coerce anyone, he just around with the assets that he had and he bought up grain when the price was next to zero. Then he kept it in storehouses and sold if.  Now nobody had to buy grain from Joseph, true, he was the only man that had grain, he had a monopoly, but nobody forced you, you could starve if you wanted.  You really didn’t have to come to Joseph; Joseph just had a total monopoly.

 

But nevertheless, why did he have a total monopoly?  Who was growing the grain?  Not Joseph, it was the Egyptians that grew the grain.  Now if the Egyptians are so stupid that they didn’t set anything aside by way of saving for the future, that’s not Joseph’s fault, is it?  Because they can’t plan, they don’t anticipate; whose fault is that.  It’s not Joseph’s.  So how can Joseph be accused that he somehow pulled a dirty stunt.  He didn’t pull a dirty stunt; he bought grain on the free market at low prices and he sold it at high prices, just a smart businessman. And as a result he bought, literally, the entire state of Egypt and gave it to Pharaoh.  Pharaoh’s money; you might say that Joseph was Pharaoh’s business manager and investment counselor and as a result Pharaoh broke the power of the nomarks, up to this time in Egyptian history Egypt was divided into states called nomes, n-o-m-e-s, and the men over those nomes were called nomarks, and they had tremendous counter balance to the power over centralized Pharaoh.  Pharaoh destroyed those states and those provinces and those nomes and brought totally, because he owned them.

 

So now we have Joseph taking advantage of the situation.  Now in Genesis 42 we have this peculiar story.  What is going on in this story?  First of all you’ve noticed that the story is less and less about Egyptians and more and more about the Jews, and that’s the trend we’ve observed.  The Word of God first deals with the people who have had a chance to hear the gospel and have rejected it, thereby declaring they’re reprobate-ness, and goes to those people who have positively responded to the Word of God, and therefore have shown their election.

 

So the story starts, and this is very significant, it does not state with Joseph; it starts with Jacob because when we come back to the Jewish side of the equation it still is not Joseph who is the prime actor; it is his father.  Remember, Jacob still reigns, and so in the first two verses we read Jacob’s rebuke to his son. 

 

Genesis 42:1, “Now when Jacob saw that there was grain in Egypt, Jacob said unto his sons,” and it’s a very sarcastic thing in the original text, it says well, what do you stand there looking at each other for, go down and get me some grain.  [“Why do ye look one upon another?”]  So you can tell things haven’t improved in the 13 years since Joseph left home; the sons are as big a spiritual clods as they ever were, they still can’t make decisions.  And you will see this in our program tonight, that one of the features of the non-Christian and the person who thinks in non-Christian ways is that when they’re faced with a crisis they can’t think, or they do think, they make snap foolish decisions.  There is absolutely no ability to cope with the general surroundings and this is what’s happening.  Here they are about ready to starve and they’re sitting on their hands looking at each other.  Well, now that’s a brilliant solution to starvation; this really solves the problem doesn’t it. And so here’s a man who ought to be taken care of by his sons, after all these little boys are now about 40 to 50.   You would think sometime, somewhere in the development of this family somebody would assume some responsibility.  But no, here’s 80 and 90 year old Jacob trying to still run the family because of these clucks that he’s raised. 

Verse 2, “And he said, Behold, I have heard that there is grain in Egypt: [get you down thither, and buy for us from thence; that we may live, and not die.]”  You go down and get some, we’re going to die boys, how long are you going to stand there looking at each other.  That’s the spirit of what he’s saying.

 

Now the scene shifts to the incident in Egypt.  Now let’s think about some of the processes that have gone on.  Jacob knows that he is… he has been given a plan by God, a plan that cannot fail.  Jacob realizes from his stone staircase dream of Genesis 28 that God is going to work through his home.  But notice, knowing that does not make Jacob a fatalist.  He doesn’t lie back and say well, whatever’s going to come to pass is going to come to pass, and this is often what people do when they get onto the sovereignty of God.  But Jacob knows he’s going to die if he doesn’t take action.  Now what does the doctrine of election do for him?  What it does for him is it gives him confidence that if he will just take the simple steps necessary he will be victorious, he will survive.  But he’s not going to survive if he doesn’t take steps. 

 

So he sends his brethren down Verse 3, “And Joseph’s ten brethren went down to buy corn in Egypt.”  Notice, “ten,” one is missing; twelve sons minus one, Joseph already in Egypt, that’s 11, he should have eleven sons going but you only have ten and the reason is given in verse 4, “But Benjamin, Joseph’s brother, Jacob sent not with his brethren; [for he said, Lest peradventure mischief befall him,]” because he was afraid that something would happen to him.  Well, he has good reason to be afraid that something would happen to them since something happened to Joseph.  Now why do these two names get tied together in the story?  Joseph and Benjamin.  The reason those two boys, they’re the two youngest boys in the family but that’s not the reason, those are the two boys of Jacob’s favorite wife, Rachel.  And you’re going to see in the story a breaking that God executes against Jacob.  Jacob loved Rachel more than his other wives and the handmaids and so on, and the whole company that he had.  And he singled her out; well she died in childbirth after Benjamin.  In this kind of a family situation Jacob emotionally feels closer to those two sons than he does any other of his sons because they are the last living remnants of the woman he so loved, therefore he’s going to cherish those two sons over his other sons. 

 

Now we’ve already seen him make foolish mistakes; we’ve already seen Jacob make one foolish mistake raising Joseph and the foolish mistake he made raising Joseph was that by favoring him he encouraged jealousy in the home.  And so all the sons say yeah, we know who our dad really loves in our family, he loves little brat. And what he’s doing by loving the little brat is making him into a big brat, and so this starts off a tremendous theme of discord in this chosen family and it eventually threatens to fracture the whole system.  Now the same stunt is being pulled here with Benjamin; he is still favoring the sons of Rachel and you’ll see where this gets him as we go on through the story.  God will deal with this.

 

So the ten sons, not the eleven, go down to Egypt, [5, “And the sons of Israel came to buy corn among those that came: for the famine was in the land of Canaan.”]  And there Joseph is called “the governor,” and this is a word that is used in the Hebrew text uniquely for Joseph; it comes from a broader verb and it means to have dominion or to have mastery over and I think it’s a compliment to Joseph’s sanctification.  Let’s watch a little principle here.  Before God physically does something he will generally move spiritually.  Joseph spends 13 years of his life getting sanctified so that he can take the pressure of prosperity.  Starting off at age 17 he was nothing more than a brat, a brilliant one but a brat.  And he has to take 13 years before he can get himself mentally in a position of authority where he won’t lord it over his family because that’s exactly where he is headed.  God is going to put him a position of deliverer of his family.  Now he physically has been promoted to Vice Regent of Egypt.  Now he physically has the power; he is ready for it.

 

To give you background, however, as the story unfolds, you have to go backwards to Genesis 37:5 and recall a few instances from his life.  It doesn’t make sense unless you remember this; back when he was 17 and God revealed his calling, and I remind you, particularly men, and I do not read one evangelical writer or teacher that agrees with me on this principle but I’ll go on teaching it anyway, and that is that when God works with a man He does not work coming to him saying that you can be a better husband and you can be a better father, divine institution two and divine institution three functions.  It’s very striking and I’ve often wondered why this is, and it really doesn’t get too far with men anyway because any man knows that he has areas of improvement in this area and he doesn’t have to be reminded of it. 

 

So all this Christian devotional stuff that is written supposedly to help the men doesn’t help the men at all; all it does is make the men feel more guilty and more frustrated and so therefore they won’t read and therefore it’s a waste of time, because they insist on approaching a man from the standpoint of his home and that is not the place to approach him.  God never approaches men in the Bible on the basis of their home; He approaches them on the basis of their calling, and yet we have evangelical book after evangelical book after evangelical book using the strategy, now the way we have to work with men to really mold them is to make them better husbands and make them better fathers.  Well obviously this is a good goal but is that where you start with a man.  No; because until a man is able to settle down in his calling and be confident that he’s doing something right and he is able to have some dominion in his calling, you can talk from now until hell freezes over about his home and it won’t get to first base.  And the reason is because the man has been called by God to go out there in the tough outside world and subdue it and if he’s having trouble subduing it out there, he’s going to be unstable and he’s going to have his mind on other things when it comes to home.  So until God can show a man how to be skillful in subduing the world outside of his home he is going to be perpetually upset and will not be in the mental attitude or the frame of reference to handle his home.  I know people don’t like to hear that, particularly the women, but this is just the way the Scriptures present; I challenge you to look at every dream we have looked at in the Genesis text. 

 

When this dream in Genesis 37 comes is it about the girls that he’s dating?  It’s about his calling, isn’t it?  It’s about his dominion.  When we have the dreams of the cupbearer and we have the dreams of the baker in the jail, is it about their home situation, about their family situation?  No, it’s about their calling.  When Pharaoh dreams a dream is it about the queen?  No, it’s about the economy of the nation.  Why is that? Strange, isn’t it?  Yes it is strange for 20th century ears who aren’t straightened out on the role, the man’s role is to subdue and what concerns him first is that.  After we will talk about the family, and this is the way it works here in Genesis 37:7.  Joseph dreams a dream, and the dream is about his calling in life.  And the interesting thing about this calling, far from saying he ought to be a better person in his family is his he’s subduing his family in almost an unbiblical way.  Look what it’s says, “For, behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and lo, my sheaf arose, and stood upright; and behold, your sheaves stood round about, and made obeisance to my sheaf,” they bowed down to my sheaf.  [8] “And his brethren said to him, Shall you indeed reign over us?” 

 

The calling of God was to be a deliverer of his home and his family but the call was to be executed by, in this case, a very intricate series of moves and this is why I’m spending time before we get in the details of the text, you are faced as you read Genesis 42 and I study it, we are faced with a chess game that is being played; it’s a very common principle, I’m going to show you the dream, I’m going to show you the principle, but then I’m going to show you the intricate series of maneuvers that goes on in this chapter to execute that principle.  It is not the straight­forward approach.  Joseph, here, is reversing roles because in verse 7 and 8 notice, it’s turning the family authority structure upside down, it looks like, doesn’t it.  If the father is to be head of the home and here we have the firstborn son and Joseph is way down here, he’s the last man on the totem pole, what’s this we read in verse 7 about this guy not only over the firstborn son but he comes up here and he’s over his own father and mother.  That’s what his calling is.  So you see, this isn’t telling him what a nice sweet family man he can be because of the total role reversal, it looks like.

 

Something else is going on here, Genesis 37:9, the second part of that dream.  And he dreamed yet another dream,” and he dreamed “the sun and the moon and the eleven stars bowed down to him.  [10] And he told it to his father … and his father rebuked him, [and said unto him], What is this that you have dreamed?  Shall I and your mother and your brothers bow down to you?”  It turns the whole family on its end; what’s going on with this.  That’s the dream that he dreamed.  What is the dream?  It’s a dream of his calling and his destiny. 

Now to return to Genesis 42:6, Joseph is now master and he has dominion; he is now exercising his managerial functions because he has been sanctified by God and now he plays his role, the key maneuver for which he will go down in history, he will be the deliverer and as the deliverer he is a Christ-type; he delivers his people.

 

Now I want to show you the maneuver that takes place in this chapter because you’ll lose the forest for the trees otherwise.  Here’s what’s happening.  You’ve got Jacob and you’ve got this family underneath Jacob and they’re in bad spiritual trouble; everything’s fragmented.  That family is coming apart at the seams and God can’t work with a family that’s coming apart at the seams.  And so therefore something has got to be done to rescue them because Jacob doesn’t seem to be doing too great a job.  Here he is 90 and he still has to tell his 40 year old sons how to eat.  So we’ve got some serious problems; we’ve got a murderous attitude in that family and we’ve got lots of other discordant themes going on.  Now we know the solution; what’s the solution to this situation?  Take God and His law and put it over that family and say I don’t care whether you like it or not, this is God and this is His law and this is the way it’s going to be, whether you like it or not, period.  Well, that’s got to take place.  Now, watch the finesse, particularly those of you who are younger members of your family; particularly those of you who are wives in a situation where you are not under God in total charge. 

 

How is this going to take place?  We’ve got to get God, and he’s going to use the youngest, most subordinate member of the family to get that whole family straightened out but God’s going to do it without twisting the family structure.  Here’s God over here, and here’s Joseph, and here’s the family.  They’re coming in like this, underneath Joseph.  But watch the maneuver; they’re coming under Joseph, not as their son, their youngest son, they’re coming under Joseph as officer of the fourth divine institution.  Joseph has two hats in this story; under the first maneuver they come under him wearing his Egyptian hat which is the hat of the fourth divine institution, divine institution four.  And under that first maneuver as the story gets halfway done, you will see now the family is brought under authority.  See, before they’re out in Canaan, doing their own thing, flying all over the place in four different directions, no compass, no direction, nothing guiding them.  At least the first step in getting this family straightened out is they are going to get under some authority.  So God has Joseph step over here, put on the hat of divine institution four and get the family under him and since he is functioning in divine institution four, who is he under?  God, Romans 13, “ministers of God to thee for good.”  So now at least we’ve got the family structured under God.  That’s the first set of maneuvers that will occur in these chapters.  Watch it as the story unfolds.

 

Then you’ll begin to notice something else.  The more this family gets under authority, Joseph steps out, so you have God and where you had Joseph, this is a gap, and you’ve got the family.  And that’s the story, the last part of Genesis.  First Joseph brings the family and gets him under him, as per dream, Genesis 37, they will all worship and bow down to him, not as a son but as divine institution four, official, he will rule over them because he has to because they’re so screwed up that God has to bring them underneath some authority to bring order out of chaos.  Then when we get that problem taken care of, then Joseph steps aside and lets the normal family structure and then he gets reintroduced back down here with his dad.  So this is the series of maneuver that takes place. 

 

Now for the principle that is the backbone of this maneuvering, turn to Matthew 18; a very common principle.  It’s a principle that many of you have learned from Bill Gothard and others, the principle of straightening a problem out when somebody else wrongs you and it becomes a major problem and you’ve got to deal with it.  In Matthew 18:15, many of you have memorized this or you know it very well, is the bare naked statement of the principle.  “If thy brother shall trespass against thee, go, tell him his fault between thee and him alone, and if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother.”  Now that looks very simple, except the Joseph story is going to give you some extra tips on how to apply that in tacky situations.  The Joseph story ultimately falls into the classification of wisdom literature.  And wisdom literature can be distinguished by these characteristics, you know, the book of Proverbs, Song of Songs, Psalms, Ecclesiastes, that’s wisdom literature.  And wisdom literature does several things.  One thing it always does, it downplays the directly miraculous and up plays normal everyday providential working of God.  That’s why the book of Esther, incidentally, is a very find example of wisdom       because the book of Esther never mentions the name God.  It’s very interesting, there’s not one miracle in the book of Esther.  And so we have wisdom. 

 

All right, if this is an wisdom section, what do you suppose it’s going to do?  It’s going to give us skills in taking the bare principle of verse 15, because remember, these boys that come down to Egypt had tried to murder Joseph, so we’ve got, “if your brother shall trespass against thee,” we have “if your ten brothers shall trespass against you.”  So this fits the situation, spiritually that’s the problem.  Now what Joseph is going to do, he’s going to secure repentance from his brothers, but because he’s the youngest one in the household and he’s low man on the totem pole, he can’t just waltz up to his brothers and say you’ve sinned against me, because if you try it, look what you do.  And this is what often happens in this, this is why it’s very difficult to apply, for example a wife with her husband, a child with their parents, employer with their employee and any of these authority type relationships you just don’t go waltzing in and apply it for this reason: here’s the authority and here’s the subordinate, let’s take in this case the husband and the wife.

 

The wife sees something about her husband that’s wrong, 90% of the time she’s right, it is wrong, and so she comes up to him, but, thou she’s right in what she says, she can come up to him with a commanding attitude—wrong, change it!  Well now look what happens; if that takes place look what the man is stuck with.  He’s stuck with two options and both of them are bad.  He can say okay, I’ll do it because it’s right, so the issue… she’s right on the issue, so he sees that she’s right on the issue, he does it but he’s doing it in response to an order.  Now we’ve got role reversal; so now we’ve got the right issue but we’ve got a wrong, we’ve got a role reversal.  So that’s one bad thing.  But then if he goes the other way and he says no, I’m not going to do it because he’s preserving his role, he’s not going to respond to orders from insubordinates, then he’s got the other problem… he’s got the role right but now he’s got the issue wrong because she was right.  So now he’s damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t.  And this is exactly the situation that a person in a business organization is often put into; many men are put into this position and so on, many times often unintentionally, often by people who are trying to take Matthew 18 and apply it, but the way it is applied short-circuits the system and then it craters, and oh, Matthew 18:15 doesn’t work, I tried it.  You tried it without skill.

 

So now let’s watch Joseph work; here he is and he can’t do that because he doesn’t want to come up to his dad and say dad, you’re a clod.  He doesn’t walk up to Reuben, Simeon, and say you were bad boys. What are they going to do? First of all, Reuben carries the firstborn stature in the Hebrew family and here’s this young kid telling him what to do, even though the kid is 30 now, still there is rank in the family and the Bible preserves that rank; if you don’t believe me read the Mosaic Law.  So he’s got to preserve this, yet he’s got to execute Matthew 18:15.  Now watch the chess player in action.  Turn back to Genesis 42. 

See, God gave us brains and the trouble is most of us use 5% of the material.  Joseph is going to figure out a way of producing repentance on the part of his brothers and his father without violating the family authority and he does it and executes it beautifully; it takes him a couple of chapters to do this but in the final analysis he does it and this is what you want to watch through all the cups and the grain, the jails and the bowing downs and the not understandings in this story, that’s the thing you want to keep your eyes on.  Now watch the story unfold.


Genesis 42:6, Joseph is master over the land; as master over the land when people come in from foreign countries he’s got to inspect them.  Why does he have to inspect them?  Because the only country in that area of the world, the only one with grain, is Egypt and Egypt isn’t going to allow, particularly in the very delicate area of the Nile, if you think of your map, and think of the Nile flowing north into the Mediterranean, that delta area is exposed to invasion from the northeast, and he’s certainly not, Pharaoh if he’s thinking and not disarming his people, like some leaders are, if he’s going to protect his people and provide for the common defense, then he is going to try to filter enemy agents that may be coming down to rip off the grain.  It’s a reason for invasion; if you want to read the history of the world and you chart the great wars of history, with the exception of the 20th century, but you back from the 19th century backwards in history and draw yourself a time line and put big dots where there’s been tremendous concentrations of battles and wars, do it in one color, and then go back with another color and put big dots where there’s been famine, pestilence and plagues and earthquakes and put another set of dots and you’ll notice a very strange correlation. They are related because anything that tears up human society creates chaos, which opens the way for invasion. 

 

So this is why Joseph is inspecting, and why that day, in verse 6, Joseph’s brothers come and what do they do, they do obeisance to him, they bow down.  [“And Joseph was the governor over the land, and he it was that sold to all the people of the land: and Joseph’s brethren came, and bowed down themselves before him with their faces to the earth.”]  And Joseph sees them, he personally inspects them, you can just see him standing there and he’s watched this, hundreds of people go by getting inspected, and all of a sudden he sees his brothers.  He knows what they are because they haven’t changed that much; it’s been 13 years but those boys were in their 20s and 30s thirteen hears ago and they haven’t changed that much but he was only a boy 17, now he’s changed quite a bit.  They don’t recognize him and psychologically sure aren’t expecting to see their brother, that boy that we threw in the cistern, underneath this Egyptian regalia with the rank of a Vice Regent of Pharaoh.  So their eyes just aren’t looking for this.

 

And so here Joseph is, and he looks down and he sees them, and you can imagine what goes through his mind because the author, in verse 6 take the word from Genesis 37 to describe the action of what those brothers are doing; they come before him and they bow down all the way to the earth.  What was the dream about?  My sheaves stand and yours bow down to me.  And so Joseph clicks, and the text even says a few verses later, if you look, it says “and he remembered the dream,” and so Joseph knows that dream and he knows that when everything’s finished he’s going to have eleven plus two, thirteen people bowing down to him; mother, father, and eleven brothers. But this day there’s ten, the ten brothers come down, so instead of 13 he only has 10; he knows what to do, make the other three come.  And so Joseph, the dream and My calling for you is not complete until all 13 of your family get under your authority and they can’t get under your authority in a familial way, they must be brought under your authority in a legal governmental way.  So Joseph begins to think.  [7, “And Joseph saw his brethren, and he knew them, but made himself strange unto them, and spoke roughly unto them; and he said unto them, Whence come ye? And they said, From the land of Canaan to buy food.”]
So in verse it’s clear that he knows his brothers but they don’t know him, [“And Joseph knew his brethren, but they knew not him.”]  And so he begins, in his office of inspector he’s looking for spies and infiltrates and so he begins to use this power that he has been given as a governmental inspector and he remembers the dreams, and he says you’re spies, so he launches an official political charge against them.  [9, “And Joseph remembered the dreams which he dreamed of them, and said unto them, Ye are spies; to see the nakedness of the land ye are come. [10] And they said unto him, Nay, my lord, but to buy food are thy servants come. [11] We are all one man’s sons; we are true men, thy servants are no spies. [12] And he said unto them, Nay, but to see the nakedness of the land ye are come. [13] And they said, Thy servants are twelve brethren, the sons of one man in the land of Canaan; and, behold, the youngest is this day with our father, and one is not. [14] And Joseph said unto them, That is it that I spoke unto you, saying, Ye are spies: [15] Hereby ye shall be proved: By the life of Pharaoh ye shall not go forth hence, except your youngest brother come hither.”]

 

“We are all one man’s sons,” and Joseph, in verse 114-15, you are spies and by the life of Pharaoh you will not go forth until you bring your younger brother, notice the charge in verse 15, till you bring your younger brother.  Who’s that?  The one that’s missing, Benjamin.  Do you know why Joseph picks Benjamin?  Because Joseph knew his father and he says I’ve got to get those other three down here to complete the prophecy of the dream and here’s what I’m going to do; I don’t have to call Jacob down, I just have to call the bait down; if I get Benjamin down here mom and dad will be down here because Jacob can’t stand to be separated from Benjamin. See, by this time Joseph’s got good perspective on his family and he exploits it, notice this.  You can call it manipulation, you can call it maneuvering, you can call it plotting, whatever you want to call it, and that’s what it is.  This is godly manipulation; he knows his family that well to pull off this stunt. 

 

So he brings down the bait and the bait is going to be Benjamin.  In verse 15 he says you send one of you guys and I’m going to keep nine of you in prison, so watch the progress now in this.  It’s nine to one, one is going to go pick up the other one and he’s going to be bait for the other two.  So we’ve got nine men in prison, one man released; one man released will go pick up Benjamin, but if Jacob comes down Jacob is going to come down with the remaining wife. 

 

But then, Joseph begins to back off; remember I said watch the strategy he’s pulling off here, he’s very harsh, sounding very authoritative.  In verse 17 he puts them in the cooler for three days.  Now why’s he doing that?  Not because he’s vengeful but he knows that his brothers are very tough nuts to crack; you’ve seen this, you’ve seen the rape of Shechem over the Dinah incident; you’ve seen the destruction of that situation, you know the rebelliousness that exists in this home.  That kind of rebelliousness is not going to be dealt with and their physical deliverance cannot occur until spiritually something just really yanks the leash, hard.  So he puts them in the cooler for three days so they’ll kind of think about the boy that they put in the cooler.  And this is going to give them time to think about what kind of a mess they’re in.  [16, “Send one of you, and let him fetch your brother, and ye shall be kept in prison, that your words may be proved, whether there be any truth in you: or else by the life of Pharaoh surely ye are spies. [17] And he put them all together into ward three days.”]

 

Then in verse 18 he comes, the third day, and he begins to witness to them.  Now here’s the power transfer that’s happening.  He starts on the third day, after they’ve had a chance to think about it, and here Joseph is, right now you’ve seen Joseph over his family; now beginning in verse 18 he puts God over himself, preparing eventually to step aside and let his family come under God.  So he says, “I fear God.”  [18, “And Joseph said unto them the third day, This do, and live; for I fear God.”]  Now that sounds like a sweet little phrase until you understand that the word “fear” in this context means I am under the authority of Elohim.  Now that is powerful stuff, because you know… think from the Jewish boy’s standpoint; here they are in a foreign land and this guy is Vice President, and he says I operate under the authority of Elohim and he uses the Jewish word for God.  Well you’d think if the guys were half thinking that this would have made some bells ring; how does this guy know about Elohim; what’s he using a Jewish name for God for, who is this guy.  But nah, it doesn’t dawn on them yet. 

 

So Joseph plays with them some more.  Verse 19, he says, “If ye be true men, let one of your brethren be bound in the house of your prison: go ye, carry corn for the famine of your houses;  [20] But bring your youngest brother unto me; so shall your words be verified, and ye shall not die. And they did so.”  Now look what he’s done; now he’s keeping one man in the prison, he’s sending nine home to get the one to get the family back down there.  What has he done?  He’s become progressively lenient.  You see, Joseph isn’t hostile, he isn’t vengeful, he’s just putting the heat on enough to set in motion the wheels of reconciliation, Matthew 18:15.  When he gets through, these people are going to see their sins, they’re going to identify it, and they’re going to confess it. 

 

The first step works, look at verse 21, “And they said one to another,” this is probably the first time this has happened in 13 years, “And they said one to another, We are verily guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul, when he besought us, and we would not hear; therefore is this distress come upon us.”  See, already there’s beginning to be a repentance over the sin of hatred, the sin of a murderous spirit in that home and that’s what’s got to take place. Joseph, as a godly deliverer isn’t going to just keep them physically delivered, he’s got to spiritually deliver them first. 

 

But they don’t understand something, and the author has this delightful dialogue that takes place; Reuben starts to talk to them and then he says didn’t I tell you it was a sin to kill this boy, and they begin to talk about this.  “[22, And Reuben answered them, saying, Spoke I not unto you, saying, Do not sin against the child; and ye would not hear?] therefore, behold, also his blood is required. [23] And they knew not that Joseph understood them; for he spoke unto them by an interpreter.”  So now we have a three way conversation going on.  We have Joseph sitting here, very tough looking, putting on a big act for them, speaking Egyptian to his official government interpreter, who speaks proto Hebrew, whatever it was, it was probably a proto Hebrew version, to these guys and they think that they are perfectly secure because they’re speaking Hebrew and this guy’s had to have an interpreter so he doesn’t understand what we’re talking about.  And then they begin to divulge inner details and Joseph is sitting there listening to it all; he knows Hebrew, he hasn’t forgotten it in 13 years and he hears every word they’re saying.

 

And the reaction in verse 24 is put in there so you can understand that this is not done out of vengeful tactics.  You see, to get to verse 24 took 13 years; can you imagine him with his attitude he had 13 years before being in this situation—oh boy, I’ve got you guys under my thumb and am I going to squash you good.  That would have been exactly the situation, but not now.  Now he realizes it’s a more sober situation, now higher stakes are being played for, namely the spiritual and physical survival of the chosen seed.  And so he turns and he weeps. One reason he weeps is because 22 is a revelation to Joseph, he didn’t know that before; apparently he wasn’t aware that it was Reuben who was the firstborn of the family that tried to take steps that fateful afternoon when he was thrown in the cistern.  [24, “And he turned himself about from them, and wept; and returned to them again, and communed with them, and took from them Simeon, and bound him before their eyes.”]

Turn back to Genesis 37:21, the day they grabbed Joseph and tore off his coat.  Reuben was the firstborn, therefore the son who was responsible.  “And Reuben heard it, and he delivered them out of their hands; and said, [Let us not kill him]” don’t let us kill his soul.  “[22, And Reuben said unto them,] Shed no blood, but cast him into this pit, lay no hand upon him,” and he said it “to deliver him to his father again.”  I said when I exegeted Genesis 37, do you remember he disappeared for some reason, the author doesn’t tell us, in the process of time Reuben apparently turned his back and went off to get something and by the time he came back the Ishmaelites had come by, Joseph got sold and was gone, and then in Genesis 37:29, “And Reuben returned unto the cistern; and, behold, Joseph was not in the cistern,” so Reuben was not involved in the plot to sell Joseph.  Reuben was trying to do his best to rule in a very chaotic situation. 

 

Now to show you that God recognizes just a little bit of obedience and blesses, turn back to Genesis 42:24, after Joseph weeps and he regains his composure, he comes back and he binds Simeon.  What’s the significance of that?  He’s second in command; he’s the second oldest son.  Do you see what Joseph’s doing?  He’s now picking out this number one guy that’s going to be arrested and it’s not going to be Reuben; apparently he thought of Reuben first but while he’s sitting there he’s listening to all this conversation go on and he hears, hey, Reuben tried to save my life; okay, I’ll recognize that and I’ll require less of Reuben because he was trying to be, at least, trying to be obedient to what he knew was right.  And so therefore I’ll take Simeon, he was a cluck, and so Simeon’s stuck and the nine run back to daddy. 

 

So now he pulls another thing.  See right now, by the end of verse 24 Joseph has secured one objective and that is the brothers now realize that a mental attitude sin of hatred was involved in this whole thing. For 13 years they’ve kept this and cherished it and avoided it but now they recognize that’s what the root of the problem was.  But they’ve got another sin, it’s the sin of theft, a disrespect of property, the idea they can do what they want where they want with whatever they want.  Oh no, respect for property; disrespect for property is theft and so Joseph is going to teach them a little lesson to quicken their conscience about that.  [25] “”Then Joseph commanded to fill their sacks with grain,” but then he takes the money they gave him, flips it and tells his officers as they fill up the grain sack, hey, when you fill up that guy’s sack, stick his money in a bag, put it inside the grain, put the grain on top of all that stuff, and so they do this to everyone’s bag, [“and to restore every man’s money into his sack, and to give them provision for the way: and thus did he unto them.”]  And so the brothers go on, [26, “And they laded their asses with the corn, and departed thence.”]

 

Verse 27, one of them happens to open his sack, and inside he finds his money.  [“And as one of them opened his sack to give his ass provender in the inn, he espied his money; for, behold, it was in his sack’s mouth.”]  Verse 28, “And he said unto his brethren, My money is restored; and, lo, it is even in my sack: and their heart failed them, and they were afraid, saying one to another, What is this that God hath done unto us?”  And they come back to dad and they give him the big report.  [29, “And they came unto Jacob their father unto the land of Canaan, and told him all that befell unto them; saying, [30] The man, who is the lord of the land, spoke roughly to us, and took us for spies of the country. [31] And we said unto him, We are true men; we are no spies.  [32] We be twelve brethren, sons of our father; one is not, and the youngest is this day with our father in the land of Canaan. [33] And the man, the lord of the country, said unto us, Hereby shall I know that ye are true men; leave one of your brethren here with me, and take food for the famine of your households, and be gone. [34] And bring your youngest brother unto me: then shall I know that ye are no spies, but that ye are true men: so will I deliver you your brother, and ye shall do business in the land.”]


Then by this time, verse 35, they all discover the money is in the sack.  “And it came to pass as they emptied their sacks, that, behold, every man’s bundle of money was in his sack: and when both they and their father saw the bundles of money, they were afraid.”  What are they afraid of?  Being charged with theft, you know, the first time they went down there what were they charged with?  Being spies, foreigners.  Now they come back, and they know this guy kept records, he’s going to say hey, how come our money disappeared after you guys left here last time?  How come the cash register receipt didn’t pan out, you’re the only foreigners that have been around here today.   So they’re going to be prime suspects for thievery and so what’s this going to make them sensitive to? What they’re doing with property that is not theirs; what they’re doing with property that is God’s.  So objective number 2 of a quickening of the conscience in this matter of theft and handling of property comes up to the fore.

 

However, the story in chapter 42 doesn’t end with a happy ending.  It ends, frankly, with a very sad ending because there’s still an impediment to Joseph’s chess playing game here and that is his own father.  Here is an attitude of an old man who has not responded biblically to the hurts of life.  And this is often true of older people because they can develop a very bitter spirit as a result of what they consider to be injustices done them. Watch the attitude. 

 

Verse 36, “And Jacob their father said unto them, you have betrayed me,” notice the emphasis, the King translated it correctly, “me  you have betrayed [of my children]; Joseph is not, and Simeon is not, and ye will take Benjamin away;” everything’s against me, [“all these things are against me.]”  Verse 37, “And Reuben spoke unto his father, saying, Slay my two sons, if I bring him not to thee; deliver him into my hand, and I will bring him to thee again. [38] And he said, my son shall not go down with you; for his brother is dead, and he is left alone; if mischief befall him by the way in the which ye go, then shall ye bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave.” 

 

What’s Jacob doing here?  Jacob doesn’t understand that he’s facing a little test from the Lord.  What’s the test?  The most cherished thing this old man has left in life, this old man, has had one heartache after another in life.  Many of these heartaches have been due to his own foolishness.  But one of the things that he can’t stand is he still loves Rachel, the wife that died, very much and here’s Joseph and here’s Benjamin, he’s already lost one last evidence of this woman and now he’s about to lose his last one so what he does is what most believers will do, when God wants to say that in your life Mister, Go!  No it won’t!  And we clutch, we hold on and so we have Jacob saying at the end of verse 36 the exact opposite the reverse of Romans 8:28.  Notice, “all these things are against me.” 

 

Let’s look at this.  Negative volition toward the Word of God, negative volition toward the Word of God is going to cause a response inside this old man.  What’s he going to do? What do you do whenever you respond negatively to the Word?  I know what I’d do?  You create an autonomous construct to give you security, to give you what the Word of God promises.  In other words, we construct our solutions.  And this old man says I don’t care, I’m going to die tomorrow, I am not going to die and watch my second son go to his death.  So the answer, boys, is no!  Jacob is going to persist in his own autonomous dreams; we’ll find out that God says to Jacob, Jacob, I’m sorry, the famine is going to go on six more years and sometime in the future the grain is going to give out once again and you can say no all you want to mister, but you’re going to be down here and you’re going to give up your sons and you’re going to trust Me with him.  Now God isn’t going to take away his son; God hasn’t taken away his first son, has He.  Jacob just thinks that.  But because he hasn’t learned to be thankful he’s learned to be bitter and he’s learned to say the opposite, that everything is against me.  We’ll see next week how God works with Jacob; when it’s all done Joseph will have executed one of the greatest applications of Matthew 18:15 in history, doing it in a very difficult situation and all the time the soul of this family is going to built up and edified and corrected. 

 

We’re going to conclude…