Transcript

It’s been good to already hear God, and I think some
of the things I say might tie in with some of the things God has already spoken about.
So that’s great, isn’t it? Rather than me just come up with a few thoughts of my own,
perhaps God has already been here before, which is great.
The church is working through Genesis at the moment, and today we’ve come to Genesis 42.
Once again, the title we’ve been given has absolutely no correlation with the message
that we have. I don’t know who thinks of these titles, but essentially this is a pivotal
point in this story. It’s the beginning of reconciliation of a family. And it’s interesting
to me that actually, you know, families, gosh, can’t live with them, can’t live without them.
And I think for so many of us in this room, and I know many of your stories, and some
of them I don’t know, there are issues in your family, sometimes way back, sometimes
even immediate now, ongoing things that have never been resolved that are there. It just
struck me, you know, that actually there is chapter after chapter after chapter at the
end of Genesis talking about Jacob’s family, this dysfunctional, messy family that we’ve
talked about for so long, until it comes to a place of reconciliation and wholeness
at the end of chapter 50. And Jacob, sorry, Joseph is able to announce that you might
have meant this for harm in my life, but God meant it for good. And the brothers have come
before him and actually asked for his forgiveness. There’s a real sense of the end of the story
is it’s a happy ending, but it’s a messy, painful, you know, sort of journey, really,
until then. Why is there so much given to this story? Well, I think actually there is
something that God wants to say to us all at a very, very simple level. God wants us
to get on with each other. And we call ourselves the family of God. And we all know that actually
to be in God’s family where there’s unity, there’s blessing. Where there is disunity,
where there is brokenness, where there is pain, where there is separation, disharmony,
then that is actually a dysfunctional church. And, you know, a lot of this story doesn’t
have, and God said, and then God appeared, and God did this, and God did the other. But
there is a real sense of God at work in this mess. And that gives me hope for me and my
family, and it should give you hope for you and your family and your situation, that actually
the end is not where we see it now. God is still at work, perhaps in the background,
perhaps not giving you a prophetic word or this, that, and the other, but this is a story
in this chapter, which has trigger points, which has trauma, but is actually, God uses
trauma and trigger points to actually bring about his purpose and his will in the lives
of this family. I think that’s really exciting because when we really have to, you know,
things resurface because of circumstances or because of words or because we’re facing,
again, something that we once tried to avoid or suppress, you know, we maybe moved churches
because of it, or we got in touch with our family because of it, or something’s happened
that we just have left there, we’ve moved on with our lives, we try to forget what’s
happened. And God sometimes puts his finger on us and takes us back to a place of pain.
It’s hard. But what Joseph came to learn and what he told his brothers was, God meant
it for good. God’s not here to try to harm you or hurt you. He’s here to help you and
to heal you. But we need to respond to a story of a family in struggle and in pain,
a family that actually we had that word about Ezekiel and the dead bones and we sang about
it. Family that thought actually, it was completely dead, literally, for whom God’s spirit breathed
into and brought hope and rescue to. It’s a passage where we see God’s grace, God’s
providence, God’s hand at work. So in this story, we start with a famine. Famine is always
a horrible thing. I’ve never been through it, but perhaps some of you have lived in
countries where there’s been famine. It’s not something you can escape from. Whether
you’re rich or poor, you know, if there’s no food, there’s no food. It’s a challenging
I guess the only good thing to come out of this famine was it was the means that God
used to bring about his purposes of reconciliation in this family situation. We read in the end
of chapter 41 that the famine was severe throughout the world. But God uses Joseph, as we heard
last week through Chris, to actually bring salvation, not just to his family. There’s
people coming from all over the known world to Egypt to collect grain. God by his grace
uses Joseph to save many, many, many people in this situation, not just in Egypt but in
the surrounding nations. That’s worthwhile reflecting on and thinking about. But Jacob
tells ten of his sons, the older brothers, to go and get out and buy some grain because
he says we’re going to die otherwise. He’s heard that there’s grain in Egypt. How did
they know they were going to encounter this man that they’d sold for 20 pieces of silver
20 years ago into slavery? Probably 20 years later you wouldn’t expect a slave to still
be alive at 37. Many of them, that’s a long, long edge for a slave. You know, how would
you expect this encounter to happen? But Jacob sends out the boys and there is a change
that’s occurred in Joseph’s life. He’s now in charge, we read last week in chapter 41
verse 45, of the entire land of Egypt. He’s set Pharaoh’s deputy. If you’re at that higher
position, what chance is there that ten nomadic people wandering into your land would meet
with you? It’s a bit like saying I’m going down to London, hope I bump into Keir Starmer,
you know. It’s that kind of feel. And this is the providence of God. Not everyone who
came to Egypt, because we read that many people came, not everyone that came to Egypt met
Joseph. But God had arranged it for these brothers to go there and they encountered
Joseph. It wasn’t a coincidence, but as Jim Wilkinson from Hollybush, my old pastor used
to say, it said, God incidents. It’s something that God designed. And what a shock it was
for Joseph. He’d gone through the trauma of being a slave, the trauma of being in prison.
He’d risen to the top in both those situations within the context of how far he could go.
He’s now at the top as far as he could go as a free man, rich, powerful, everything
going by this world sort of perspective. And there before him are his ten brothers, bowing
before him, we read in chapter 42 verse 6, with their faces to the ground. Now we’ve
read that at the end of chapter 41, that Joseph, through everything that God had done
in his life, had actually married an Egyptian. He got two kids, the first one. He called
Manasseh, which was saying that God has made me forget all my troubles and everyone in
my family’s house. Well, of course he hadn’t really forgotten. I think Chris covered this
last week, but it was no longer at the forefront of his mind. It was no longer the big issue
in his life. It was behind him. It was his past. It was the old life. Now his new life
was he was in charge, powerful, had everything he wanted until now. Suddenly he’s face to
face with his past and a trigger point in his life. He’d settled into a new role and
a new life. But we read that when he saw his brothers bowing before him, he remembered
his dreams. The dreams he’d had as a teenager, the dreams which had so antagonized his brothers
that stood up their hatred towards him that they wanted to kill him. Sometimes, you know,
we are faced with issues, issues that have remained resolved in our lives. We’ve learned
to move on. Life goes on. We move church. We get into another job. We move location.
We forget about those things that have happened. They don’t dominate our lives in the same
way until something triggers them. Something or someone. A chance meeting. Something someone
says. Something someone does. And we read that although Joseph recognized his brothers,
they didn’t recognize him. Well, it’s been a long time. Is it 20 years? Slaves don’t live
long, as I said. This guy’s speaking a different language. He’s dressed in rich clothes. Why
would they even imagine it would be Joseph? They never accepted Joseph’s dream in the
first place that one day they’d be bowing down before him. They just thought that was
the ramblings of an arrogant young man. And here they were. They didn’t really get the
context. Now, I’m rubbish with names at the best of times, unlike my dear friend Father
Jeffrey over here. But I mean, I once went to carcass on holiday with the kids and this
family came up to me. And they were all first name terms and chatting about life and what
was happening in the church and everything. I still don’t know who they were to this day.
And if you’re watching this video, I’m really sorry if you were that person. I pretended
I did. You smiled and everything. But I did that awkward thing where I couldn’t really
introduce them to Karen or to anyone else there because I couldn’t have a clue where
they were or where I’d even seen them before. But it gets worse than that with me. I was
once back in North Allerton in Tesco and I didn’t recognize my own sister coming down
there. So I’ve got a bit of sympathy for them not recognizing what was happening. But
they’d never really accepted that this would even be possible. Joseph’s response. There’s
a whole load of stuff comes to the surface here, a whole mix of emotions that are running
high. Out of sight might have been out of mind, but now he’s face to face with an issue
of his past. It was a lecturer who had a Bible college called Bob Gordon, who’s not with
us anymore, who said that the opposite of love is not hate, it’s apathy. Because love
and hate are these emotions, these deep emotions of passion that rise in us that say, you know,
that tell us that we actually care. We’re concerned about an issue. We’re involved in
this still. It’s not a dispassionate thing for us. And here we see this mix of stuff
happening in Joseph. There’s almost a longing and a yearning that you can read in this narrative
that he wants to be back with his family. He certainly wants to see his younger brother
Benjamin again. It’s absolutely clear from this. There’s tears because he understands
what the brothers are saying to each other. They don’t know that he can understand their
language. There’s tears when he hears them in turmoil thinking about what’s happened
and why they’ve done what they did to Joseph all those years ago. But there’s also anger
at this injustice that’s happened to him. We read time and again that he spoke harshly
to them. He threw them in prison for three days. It’s the injustice of it all, the anger
of this rejection is still really, still a bit there in him. It’s not been healed,
if you like, by anything. And we see that in his actions. He accuses them of spying.
Well, he knows they weren’t spies, but he’s really challenging their integrity. They said,
well, we’re honest men. What’s honest about never owning up to your dad what happened
to your brother, what you did? They’ve never once come face to face with the fact that
they were trying to murder their brother and then sold him into slavery and took the
money. We’re honest men, they say. He says, no, you’re not your spies. You’re not who
you say you are. He basically has this harshness in his tone. And as we know from chapter 42,
verse 17, he throws them into prison, all into prison for three days. But the key thing
here is he’s got all the power. All the cards are in Joseph’s hand. But he doesn’t choose
a path of retribution. He doesn’t choose a path of revenge. He doesn’t try to get his
own back on these people who had painfully abused him. He basically, ultimately, as we
know, releases nine of them, lets them return, puts money in their sacks, and just keeps
Simeon back. Simeon, the second oldest. He didn’t ask for Reuben, the oldest, because
Reuben was the one he’d heard, you know, kind of like almost saying, look, if you listen
to me, we wouldn’t be in this mess at the moment. We’d have done something different
than this. So he took the second oldest, Reuben was let to go back with the other eight. And
you see, the thing is, I think despite this emotional roller coaster that we can all go
through at times like this in pain, there’s a sense where Joseph knew God was also in
this. He says to the brothers, I am a God-fearing man. They say that we’re honest. He’s the
one who brings God into it. I’m a God-fearing man, he says. He’d remembered a dream that
God had given him that had destiny and purpose. And actually he’d seen that God was now
starting to fulfill stuff that had been promised to him or that he’d seen as a teenager.
And he chose not to go down the path of revenge or retribution, but actually he chose to set
off on a path of reconciliation, understanding God had a bigger picture in mind. Meanwhile,
the brothers, they’ve got no grasp of this bigger picture. As far as they’re concerned,
Joseph is gone. But I think the circumstances triggered them too. They had a guilty conscience.
There’s a real sense of remorse and regret that’s eventually going to lead to repentance
that you can read about in chapter 50. I think just going to Egypt themselves would have
reminded them of what had happened to Joseph. You know, they were going on a journey that
Joseph had gone as a slave. And once there, the treatment they’d received from Joseph,
who they thought was gone, triggered this sense of guilt and shame for their actions
that they’d covered up for so many years. And they also see God at work. But not in
terms of his purposes or his plan or in terms of reconciliation. They see it in terms of
punishment. God is punishing us for what we did to Joseph. Clearly, they say, we are being
punished because of what we did to Joseph long ago. We saw his anguish when he pleaded
for his life, but we wouldn’t listen. We were hard hearted. We were the ones who were harsh
there. This ruler might be harsh to us now. And Reuben even says, he calls it a sin that
they have to answer for in this passage. He says it’s payback time for the sin we have
committed. Now sin is an interesting word because sin is not wrongdoing. Sin is to do
with God. We don’t sin against each other in that sense. We sin against God. Sin is
disobedience to God, disobedience to God’s law, disobedience to God’s way, disobedience
to him. All have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory, the Bible says. We’ve all done
it. And Reuben is bringing God into this situation. We have sinned. This is not just about
Joseph and us. This is about us and God as well as Joseph. And I wonder what happened
again. Well, we know what happened because they said, what’s God done to us when they
discovered that the money has been returned to them. And again, they might be thinking
of these 20 pieces of silver that they had taken for the life of their own brother. What
has God done to us? They said, trembling with fear. But you see, the Bible says something
we don’t often talk about in these days because we’re too nice, that the fear of God is the
beginning of wisdom. Then unless we have a clear view of God’s holiness and righteousness,
you know, perhaps we don’t really understand how far short we are of him. And these guys
are now wrestling, not just with the shame of what they’ve done to their brother and
the covering up that they’ve committed, but also with a guilty conscience towards God.
They know their lives have been stained by an act of sin. And this fear of God is about
to lead them on a journey towards reconciliation too. So they’ve both got trigger points. Joseph
is meeting the brothers. The brothers is the result of what’s happened with this guy that
they don’t know is Joseph. Simeon, as we know, is kept in prison, tied up first, put in prison.
And Joseph basically sends them away on the basis that he will stay in prison unless they
bring Benjamin back to prove that they are who they say they are, that they’re true,
genuine, honest people. And until he comes back with Benjamin, then I’m afraid Simeon
is going to rot in jail. And they agree. They say we’ll do that. Benjamin, the other son
from Rachel, Joseph’s true brother, not the half brothers, the one who is closest to Jacob.
We’ve got a trigger point in Joseph, bringing back to the throne of what’s happened. We’ve
got a trigger point in the brothers where they’re now suddenly realizing the consequences
of their actions 20 years before. And we’ve actually got a bit of a trigger point in Jacob.
He’s still stuck. Stuck in a moment that he can’t get out of. Someone tell me which band
that is if you want to later. He hasn’t moved on. He’s still stuck in his grief, in his
bereavement. He’s still 20 years later mourning Joseph. He’s still blaming the other 10 sons.
He declares to them, fancy if you’re a son and you hear this from your dad, Benjamin
is all I have left. That’s the father coming from a painful life. And if anything would
happen to him, Jacob says, you would send this grieving white haired man to his grave.
He sounds like he’s very self-absorbed in his own grief. He’s a sad man. And relatively
he shows little outward concern, although he acknowledges that Simeon’s in prison, shows
little outward concern for his son that’s locked up in a foreign jail rather than actually
Benjamin going to rescue him. You know, he says, well, Benjamin can’t go. I don’t trust
you with Benjamin’s life. It reminds me of what happened to Joseph. I trusted you with
Joseph and look what happened with him. He was killed you say by wild animals. And rather
than helping the family, rather than restoring relationships of this dysfunctional family
between these 10 sons and a father who was deliberately showing love and affection to
his favorite wife’s kids, rather than Leah’s kids who he was conned into marrying. It’s
all going back, isn’t it? Into all mess that’s happened years and years before. It hasn’t
resolved anything. There’s still that sense of favoritism. There’s still that sense of
Benjamin matters more than you do. It’s hard for these guys to hear Pat and Reuben pleads
on the life of his own kids, try to get Simeon back. And as I say, in the midst of all this
drama, family drama, is God. God is at work. He’s at work in all the emotions. He’s at
work in all those feelings of shame and anguish and remorse. He’s at work in all those sense
of anger and pain and tears and longing and yearning. He’s at work even in the sadness
and the bereavement of Joseph. He is at work and his plan is for reconciliation, for restoration
and ultimate rescue of this family. But he works it out in the midst of trauma and painful
reminders. We heard today, didn’t we, about Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane and the
pain that he suffered and went through. God works at times in pain to bring us to a place
of restoration and healing. So I come to a close. It’s a bit of a long close, but we need to
apply this, don’t we? What do we learn about reconciliation from this passage? I think you
need to want it. And I think ultimately Joseph did rather than retribution. However painful it
was for him, he did not go for revenge. He had a dream that God had given him which was yet
unfulfilled because he saw all his family, including his mum and dad, bowing before him. And
that hadn’t happened at this point. And he knew that if God had been in the first bit with his
brothers, he was going to be in the second bit too. So he was still hanging on for something
bigger than was happening already. But also I think there needs to be a recognition of any pain
we’ve caused. You need to own your fault. And the brothers are beginning to do that. They’re
beginning to understand their part in this and what they’ve done. And I’d like to say also
about reconciliation. It’s rarely instant because you’re working through all those emotions.
You’re working through all that pain. You’re working through all those memories and all that
history. It’s a process. It’s a journey. But God wants to set you on it. The answer is not just to
suppress it and hide it if God brings it to the surface. And I think for some of us today,
whether you’ve been wrong badly by family or friends or even a church. I heard, yes, on Friday
night about a man who basically during the miners strike, he was a member of a church and during
the miners strike, he had passed the picket line. I’m not trying to make a political point here
either side. People in the church were putting dog poo through his letterbox and writing him nasty
letters. As a result, he’s never been to church again. Now, I’m not saying his attitudes right
either, but it just shows you pain. Because 30 years ago, I think now All Grief, they’re basically
bringing it back on the television now. I was with a guy the other day who was at that Battle of
All Grief and saw the police doing their bit and the miners doing their bit. And you know, forget
which side of the divide you’re on. There’s still a lot of pain going on. There’s still a lot of pain
going on. So whether you’ve been wrong badly or whether because of jealousy or anger or hatred,
you’ve said or done something to someone that you wished you hadn’t. It could be recently. It could
be a long time ago. God may be triggering something in you today, bringing you up to a place where
you’re face to face with a situation that you have never resolved. Because he wants to ultimately
bring reconciliation and restoration to you. Ultimately, his plan is to do something good in the
midst of harm that has happened to you or because of you. Out of what was broken, out of what was
dead, as we read in Ezekiel, the dead bones, or seems lost. God brings salvation and healing.
And I’m not suggesting this morning that that will be it. It might be for somebody. But acknowledging
that we’re on a process, that we will take time to run through some of this stuff that’s churning
inside us, that actually is a mixture of longing and yearning and loving to be restored. But also
there’s pain and there’s anger and there’s tears and there’s shame and there’s guilt and there’s
all this mess going on. But God never gave up on this family. And he doesn’t give up on you.
He doesn’t give up on anyone. We’ve heard that also today. But we’ve got to own our part in this
story. God is at work. He’s the ever-present one. He’s in and through all the circumstances at work
in you. What might have been meant for harm and did harm you? He wants by his grace to turn into
something good because he has something bigger and better for you than to always be a victim or
to always be known as the aggressor or the perpetrator of something. So if God’s speaking to
you today, please don’t ignore his voice because God has stirred you because he wants to do
something good for you. Amen. God bless you.