Transcript

Let’s wait for the PowerPoint to appear on the screen. Great, there it goes. So we’re
continuing with Genesis and continuing really where we were a fortnight ago with the move
of Joseph and his family, or Joseph’s already there, the move of Jacob and the family into
Egypt. So a few things I want to do today. I’m going to kind of walk us through the chapter
and bring a few things out, and then at the end I’m going to kind of identify, I think,
four things that I think we can particularly take away from this chapter. And after I finish
speaking, we’re also going to have an opportunity for people who want to be prayed for to come
forward and be prayed. I’m not going to make a big deal of that, but we do believe in the
work of the Holy Spirit, and if you’ve come and you would like prayer, then we’d be more
than delighted to pray for you and pray that you will encounter God. But before I get into
the chapter, I just want to go on to the next slide, because that’s quite important, isn’t
it? We’ve been spending all this time studying this chapter, and Genesis is set, and nobody’s
exactly sure when, but probably 16 to 18 centuries before Jesus was born. And it’s set in a very
different culture and part of the world. So how can that be relevant to us living in the
UK in 2025? So that is a very important question. And I think that the start of the answer to
that question comes from our understanding of what the Bible is, and that is that we
believe that the Bible is inspired by God. Paul actually used the phrase, God breathes—that
the Bible is God breathed. And that God speaks through his Bible to us, and he actually continues
to speak today through his Bible to us. And that if we approach it with the right attitude,
if we come to it humbly and respectfully, not looking to pick arguments with it, but
open to any nourishment going, then God will meet us and speak to us through the Bible.
And so that’s why Genesis is relevant. We also say that the Bible has unique authority.
If I as a preacher, or indeed any other preacher here or anywhere else, says something to you
that is not in agreement with the Bible, then feel free. In fact, definitely ignore what is
being said by me or any other preacher. The Bible has the final authority on difficult points.
But there’s also something, I think, when we’re looking at these Old Testament stories,
about recognizing that these were written to inspire us in our Christian walk. Romans 15,
verse 4 says something like, the Scriptures were written so that for our encouragement and hope,
and to encourage us to persevere in the Christian life. Today is the London Marathon Day, isn’t it?
And over the past 20 years or so, I spent quite a few times at the finishing line,
not of marathons, I will admit, but the finishing line of Iron Man races,
and waiting for family members and friends to run the race. And you always stop by,
you know, runners, some of them looking completely done in, would kind of turn the corner and see the
finishing line ahead of them, and also hear the crowd at that point all clapping and cheering and
shouting. And they would kind of brighten and pick up pace and cross the line. And that’s kind
of the image that the writer to the Hebrews has. In Hebrews 11, there’s a long list of Old Testament
heroes of faith. And Jacob, who we’re particularly thinking about today, is on that list. And at the
end of it, the writer goes on, he says, Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great crowd of
witnesses, let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. And it’s almost like these
Old Testament heroes, with all their difficulties in their lives, are part of the crowd that is
cheering you and I on in our race. And so we do say that Genesis is very relevant. Let’s just
pray briefly. Father, we do just pray, Father, that the goodness that you’ve got for us in your
Word, Lord, that we would receive that today, Lord. We don’t want to miss out on any good thing that
you’ve got for us in your Word for us today, and in fact, every day. Amen. Next slide. So, Genesis
46 and 47 are really part of one story. And you can remember about a fortnight ago, Andy took us
through Genesis 46. I kind of divided it up into what I’m calling episodes, probably more like
scenes, really. But episodes one, God appears to Jacob and says to him, I want you to go to Egypt.
And that must have felt really odd, because he called to the Promised Land, and God is saying,
No, I want you to go to Egypt. But nevertheless, God speaks to him. So that’s episode one. Episode
two is he journeys to Egypt. And episode three, he’s reunited with a son he had long believed
dead. He’s reunited with Joseph. And then today we have episode four, a meeting with Pharaoh of the
brothers, a delegation of brothers meet Pharaoh. Episode five, Jacob then himself meets Pharaoh.
Episode six, quite a longer section, all about Joseph’s leadership during the famine that is
affecting Egypt at this time. And in the final episode there, Jacob prepares to die. So let me
read the chapter. It’s been, I think, necessary but still a shame as we’ve been going through
Genesis. Time has just been a pressure to read the whole chapter, but we go off to a good start
today, and I want to read it to us, because this is God’s Word. This is God-breathed.
Then Joseph went to see Pharaoh and told him, My father and my brothers have arrived from the land
of Canaan. They have come with all their flocks and herds and possessions, and they are now in
the region of Goshen. Joseph took five of his brothers with him and presented them to Pharaoh.
And Pharaoh asked the brothers, What is your occupation? They replied, We your servants
are shepherds, just like our ancestors. We have come to live here in Egypt for a while,
for there is no pasture for our flocks in Canaan. The famine is very severe there,
so please, we request permission to live in the land of Goshen. Then Pharaoh said to Joseph,
Now that your father and brothers have joined you here, choose any place in the entire land of
Egypt for them to live. Give them the best land of Egypt. Let them live in the region of Goshen,
and if any of them have special skills, put them in charge of my livestock too.
Then Joseph brought in his father Jacob and presented him to Pharaoh,
and Jacob blessed Pharaoh. How old are you? Pharaoh asked him. Jacob replied,
I have traveled this earth for 130 hard years, but my life has been short compared to the lives
of my ancestors. Then Jacob blessed Pharaoh again before leaving his court.
So Joseph assigned the best land of Egypt, the land of Ramesses, to his father and brothers,
and he settled them there just as Pharaoh had commanded. And Joseph provided food for his
father and his brother in amounts appropriate to the number of their dependents, including the
smallest children. Meanwhile, the famine became so severe that all the food was used up and people
were starving throughout the lands of Egypt and Canaan. By selling grain to the people,
Joseph eventually collected all the money in Egypt and Canaan, and he put the money in
Pharaoh’s treasury. And when the people of Egypt and Canaan ran out of money, all the Egyptians
came to Joseph. Our money is gone, they cried, but please give us food or we will die before
your very eyes. Joseph replied, since your money is gone, bring me livestock. I will give you food
in exchange for your livestock. So they brought their livestock to Joseph in exchange for food,
in exchange for their horses, flocks of sheep and goats, herds of cattle and donkeys. Joseph
provided them with food for another year. But that year ended and the next year they came again
and they said, we cannot hide the truth from you, our Lord. Our money is gone and all our livestock
and cattle are yours. We have nothing left to give you but our bodies and our land. Why should we die
before your very eyes? Buy us and our land in exchange for food. We offer our land and ourselves
as slaves to Pharaoh. Please give us grain so we may live and not die so the land does not become
empty and desolate. So Joseph brought all the land, bought all the land of Pharaoh for Egypt
and all the Egyptians sold in their fields because the famine was so severe and soon all the land
belonged to Pharaoh. As for the people, he made them all slaves from one end of Egypt to the other.
The only land he did not buy was the land belonging to the priests. They received an
allotment of food directly from Pharaoh so they didn’t need to sell their land.
Then Joseph said to the people, look today I have bought you and your land for Pharaoh.
I will provide you with seed so you can plant the fields. Then when you harvest it,
one fifth of your crop will belong to Pharaoh. You may keep the remaining four-fifths of seed
for your fields and it’s food for you, your households and your little ones.
You have saved our lives, they exclaimed. May it please you my Lord to let us be Pharaoh’s servants.
Joseph then issued a decree still in effect in the land of Egypt that Pharaoh should receive
one-fifth of all the crops grown on this land. Only land belonging to the priests was not given
to Pharaoh. Meanwhile the people of Israel settled in the land of Goshen in Egypt. There they
acquired property, they were fruitful and their population grew rapidly. Jacob lived for 17 years
after his arrival in Egypt so he lived 147 years in all. As the time of his death drew near,
Jacob called for his son Joseph and said to him, please do me this favor. Put your hand under my
thigh and swear that you will treat me with unfailing love by honoring this last request.
Do not bury me in Egypt. When I die, please take my body out of Egypt and bury me with my
ancestors. So Joseph promised, I will do as you ask. Swear that you will do it, Jacob insisted.
So Joseph gave his oath and Jacob bowed humbly at the head of his bed. Amen.
So yes, if we can have that slide.
Oh, can we go back to, can we go back a few slides to nearly the beginning?
I think it’s going to be the first couple of hours. Let’s keep it back.
That’s it. So here we are in what I was calling episode four, and Joseph’s taken a delegation
of the brothers to meet Pharaoh. And we can probably picture the scene about, I mean,
Pharaoh is the leader of a superpower. And they’re really quite a small tribe from Canaan.
And they are looking to be economic migrants. That’s definitely what we call them today.
They’ve come because there’s no food left in their land, so they’re coming as economic migrants.
So it’s kind of a subservient tone to it, isn’t it? We’re your servants, Pharaoh. But also kind
of stressing things that they want. You know, we’re shepherds. By the way, we’ve got flocks,
but if you would let us stay for a while. And actually, at the end of the previous chapter,
we see that actually Joseph had coached them to say this. Joseph was good at managing his boss,
and he’s prepared this. So this speech is important. Because, you know, this is a
difficult moment. Pharaoh could have sent them away. So that’s the first of the episodes.
And you see that they’re coming to live in Egypt for a while. So they’re not
saying, we’re coming here to settle permanently. We’re coming for a while.
I’ll mention that briefly, because that kind of phrase, for a while, or other versions of it,
are quite important to this whole chapter. So I’m just picking out the first time it appears.
Next slide. And this is interesting, actually, because you remember the brothers were speaking
to Pharaoh. But Pharaoh’s reply is addressed to Joseph. Now, you know, there’s a couple of
possibilities. One, of course, it’s simply that Joseph is kind of the head of the delegation,
isn’t it? He’s still the important guy. And so Pharaoh speaks to somebody of,
you know, Joseph’s number two in the land. So Pharaoh naturally speaks to him,
not to the brothers. But it’s also possible it might just be a side meeting. You know,
in my career, I saw things like that. You know, somebody very senior would listen to what people
had to say, and then have a kind of separate meeting with their inner group of most senior
people and make a decision. And that’s what kind of is happening here. Pharaoh is sitting down with
his number two, and he’s making a decision. And he’s choosing to let them stay. And there’s quite
a mention of the word Goshen. I don’t know if you picked that up as I was reading it,
but Goshen, I think if you take the end of 46 and 47, it gets mentioned something like eight times,
something like a lot of times. And Goshen is the place that Joseph has definitely engineered for
them to be. So he’s told them to go in Joseph. He’s mentioned it to Pharaoh himself that they’re
already there. And then they’ve asked if they can stay in Goshen. So they definitely are after
Goshen. And why is that? Well, I think at least three possibilities, or some mixture of them. One
is simply that Joseph just thinks it’s going to be a really good place for them and their flocks.
So it can be as simple as that. The second possibility, though, is that Joseph is doing
this in some ways to protect them. Because at this time, the kind of main center, the kind of
equivalent of London, Egypt at that time, a place called Memphis. So Memphis is a big urban center
with all the, so that’s where the main stuff is happening. So Joseph doesn’t want them in Memphis.
He wants them kind of on the edge of the territory, and up in the kind of northeast
corner of the Nile Delta is Goshen. And is he wanting them to protect them from the Egyptians
to some extent? There have been hints, more than hints, actually, of prejudice of Egyptians towards
Canaanites through the last couple of chapters. Egyptians didn’t eat with Canaanites. Even Joseph
didn’t eat with them. And apparently they regard shepherds as pretty abominable. So they don’t want
to kind of mix with shepherds, because they’re kind of sophisticated urban people. So is Joseph
protecting them in that sense? And if that was right, he probably had seen something that is
definitely there, because the whole book of Exodus is based on the fact that these Israelites end up
getting very badly treated in Egypt. So, you know, racial prejudice is alive in this situation.
I guess a third possibility is one that actually he wants to protect them from the Egyptians, but
in a different sense. Does Joseph see that there’s a risk of assimilation, that if they’re just
mingling in with all the Egyptians, that they will pick up Egyptian ways of life and Egyptian habits
and start to live like Egyptians? They assimilate, and then they start worshiping Egyptian gods,
and suddenly they’re distinctive as the people of God has gone altogether. So it may be some mix of
those factors. I’m not going to be too definite about it, because the Bible doesn’t tell us.
So it’s conjecture to an extent, so I don’t want to lay too much weight on that. But nevertheless,
it’s something like that that is going on. Next slide.
And then we have Joseph brought in his father to see Pharaoh. And it’s only because the tone of
this one is slightly different, whereas the brothers were deeply respectful, kind of,
you know, bowing and like that before Pharaoh. Jacob seems to carry a lot more authority in that
situation. And that may be because he’s given the respect due to an older man. It may be that,
actually, Jacob carries some moral authority that somehow he’s just present in the room when this is
going on. There’s also—not so much in this translation, but in some of the original
language—that Jacob by this time has got some mobility issues, because it talks about Joseph
bringing him in to see Pharaoh and then making him stand before Pharaoh. Now, you know,
it might simply be that he’s presenting him, but kind of sometimes I’ve seen in that that maybe
actually Jacob had to be helped into the room and then helped to stand before Pharaoh. And then he
has this conversation with Pharaoh, and Pharaoh says, How old are you? Again, the literal question
that Pharaoh asked him is quite—Pharaoh says, How many are the days of the years of your life?
How many are the days of the years of your life? And Jacob replies, The days of the years of my
life—no, the days of the years of my temporary residence are few and hard.
The days of the years of my life are 130 years, but they’ve been few and hard.
And it’s interesting that having been just asked, in a sense, for a number, he’s introduced this
phrase, temporary residence. And in some translations, you’ll get that translated as
sojourner. That’s a kind of less common word these days, but it means temporary residence.
And, you know, again, we heard that earlier, and one of the features of this chapter is that
this thought of temporary residence is quite important to what this whole chapter is about.
But Jacob blesses Pharaoh—in fact, he blesses Pharaoh twice.
So he’s not, in a sense, in a cringing situation. He’s actually
taking authority in the situation, and Pharaoh almost seems respectful of Jacob.
You might think it odd to hear somebody who’s 130 and whose son has become the number two in Egypt
describe his days as being few and hard, but that is the expression that Jacob uses.
And there’s a lot in that, because if you think about Jacob’s life, he undoubtedly had had a hard
life. You know, he’s had to run away from home while still quite a young man, immediately after
his father’s death, because otherwise he’s at risk of being killed by his own brother.
He had been particularly close to his mother, Rebekah, and he never sees her again.
He gets tricked into an arranged marriage that proves unhappy, and he becomes the head of quite
a dysfunctional family. The wife he deeply loved dies early in childbirth, and then the son that
he’s particularly close to he believes has been died, and he’s lived with that belief for many
years. So Jacob has had a hard life, but nevertheless there is something very beautiful,
which I’ll come back to, I think, about the Jacob we now see before us. Next slide.
So, with the authority of Pharaoh, Joseph gives them the land in the region of Ramesses.
Apparently that’s just another word for Goshen, so it’s the same place. And Joseph provides food
for his father and his brother. Again, we see that Joseph is continuing to behave graciously
in all this that he’s had. He’s been through very difficult episodes in his life directly at the
hands of his brothers, but he’s been continuing to behave graciously in this situation and providing
for them all. Next one. And then the next section, which is actually the longest in the chapter, and
you had me read it, really running from 13 to 26, is about the famine and what happens with
the Egyptians during the famine. And that can strike us as a bit hard, because it’s quite clear
in all this, Pharaoh is getting very much wealthier. And so we can think, well, it’s kind
of not sure how I feel about that section. However, people who have kind of studied this
deeply said, you know, first of all, you can see that the Egyptians are asking for this,
and they seem very grateful. So what they’re asking for is what Joseph gives them.
He undoubtedly is responsible for saving perhaps even millions of lives, certainly many,
many lives who are starving to death, and Joseph is instrumental in their being saved.
And the end result for people who are being described as slaves doesn’t sound much like
slavery as we would understand it, because they’re still living on their own farms, and they get to
keep 80 percent of all that they grow and produce. So there’s a kind of 20 percent flat rate tax and
everything else is yours. Well, that’s kind of probably not would have been your mind idea of
what slavery would ordinarily look like. I mean, in this country today, I think the burden of
taxation on people of average income is about 30 to 35 percent. So, you know, they’re facing
a much lower rate. Comparisons, of course. I don’t suppose the NHS was up to much in Egypt.
I don’t suppose there was a state pension, so all the rest. But anything, just it’s a little bit of
an aside, but I think this kind of passage is helpful. I meant every word of what I said about
the Bible being God’s word and God speaking to us through it and about the authority of that word
absolutely mean every word of that. But it doesn’t mean that we lift and drop everything in the Old
Testament and just say we take that on board. It doesn’t mean that, say, the way in which Joseph
managed that famine is instructive for us in how we might manage a situation today. There’s another
odd detail about a vow later in this chapter that you might have picked up about putting your hand
under somebody’s thigh while making a promise. We don’t do that. There’s a good reason. You know,
it’s not, so it’s not lift and drop, but it is kind of hearing the voice of God and dealing
with the passage respectfully. So that was a bit of an aside. Next slide.
And the people of Israel settled in the land of Goshen, and there they acquired property and were
fruitful and their population grew rapidly. And you remember what I said at the beginning about
the previous chapter and about what Andy preached about was it must have felt very, very strange,
particularly to Jacob, when having been called to the Promised Land and believed that that’s
where they belonged to be told to go to Egypt. But in that, God had promised, and it’s in chapter 46,
I think it’s verse 3, he said, I am calling you to Egypt and you will be prosperous there.
And this is God keeping this promise, and that is a promise that we’ve seen
at earlier points in Genesis. So this has all been part of God’s plan. God’s timing in the way
that he works can frequently be deeply puzzling to us, because to an extent his ways are not our
ways, but God is keeping his promises, and that’s what this verse is about. Next.
The time of his death do near, Jacob called for his son Joseph and said,
please do me this favor, put your hand under my thigh and swear that you will treat me,
and don’t bury me in Egypt. Take me home and bury me with my ancestors. And
it almost seems quite a formal little thing for a father and son discussion,
but you sense behind it all that Jacob, this is very, very important to Jacob,
so he’s very insistent about it. He doesn’t want there to be any misunderstanding. He doesn’t want
there to be any wriggle room that would mean that after his death something different would happen.
He wants Joseph to understand very definitely that he intends to be buried with his ancestors
in Egypt, in Canaan. Actually, if you know this, there’s a memorial today in Hebron in the West
Bank, which is honored by Jews, Christians, and Muslims, which is the family grave so
people believe of Abraham and Isaac and Sarah and Rebekah and Jacob. So this is very important to
him, and in this reference to putting your hand under his thigh, he’s recalling a bit of family
history because his grandfather Abraham had used that same particular formula when sending a
servant out to find a wife for who’s to be Jacob’s father. So he is, and he’s thinking about the
promised land is what Jacob’s thinking about. And as we think about the application of this
to us today, we’ll definitely come back to that thought. Let’s have the next slide.
So the first thing I think that we learn from Jacob is about depending on God. I do find
Jacob in these last chapters to be a deeply appealing and beautiful character. You know,
there are plenty of examples in the Bible, and indeed in church life, of people who
have a good start or a good middle with God but finish badly. Solomon would be an example of that.
You read the early years of Solomon and how he gets made king, and he says some glorious things,
and you think it’s absolutely wonderful. But by the time of his death, he was a shadow of the
man of faith he’d been when he was younger. Jacob is finishing well. Yes, he’s had some bad days.
Yes, some of the problems of his dysfunctional family have been of his own making. Yes, he had
often been deceitful. Yes, he did days when he felt completely hopeless and sometimes strikes us
as being quite self-pitying. What does that tell you? It tells you he’s like you and I.
But he’s finishing well. He’s finishing well, and that’s about depending on God. Of course,
we depend on God. We hold on to God because God is holding on to us.
But there is something beautiful. By the way, I love that. If you’re familiar with the song
Hold On To Me that Lauren Daigle thought, beautiful lyrics. Anyway, that’s again an aside.
Next slide. I don’t think I’ve warned you this. There’s going to be some C.S. Lewis.
I think Jacob would have loved this. No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep picking
ourselves up each time. We shall, of course, be very muddy and tattered children by the time we
reach home. But the bathrooms are ready, the towels put out, and the clean clothes are in
the earring cupboard. It’s a magnificent quote. But you get the sense of that’s the kind of thing
that Jacob’s thinking. And it’s beautiful, and it’s about holding on to God. And I do hope you
put that in your heart, the desire to finish well. There’s plenty around of us who are not finishing
well. Make that your life’s work to finish well. Next one. Do to others as you would like them to
do to you. That’s, of course, the golden rule. That’s Jesus. But we see in this chapter a kind
of cycle of blessing. Jacob is blessing Pharaoh. And through Joseph, the Egyptians and Jacob are
being blessed through the famine, through the work of Joseph. And the people of God are also
being blessed, you know, treating others as you would like them to do. And I think it’s great that
we as a church, I hope that the things that we are doing as a church are a blessing to the community
around us. You know, whether it’s the library, the drop-in, the hub, whatever it is, I hope that we’re
a blessing to the community around us. I hope you’re a blessing in your family and in your
workplace and amongst your neighbors, called to be a blessing. But in this particular context,
we can see actually that the Israelites did get this message. Let’s look at the next verse, which
is not one of the best known. You must not mistreat or oppress foreigners in any way.
Remember, you yourselves were once foreigners in the land of Egypt. I think quite a few political
parties, that’s never going to get on the manifesto, is it? But you know, it’s important
to treat others as you’d have them treat you.
Next slide.
Dear friends, I warn you as temporary residents and foreigners to keep away from worldly desires
that wage war against your very soul. Here we see Peter, and he’s not the only one of these,
Peter picking up on this temporary resident thing. And it becomes quite important in the
New Testament, and both Peter and the book of Hebrews definitely on it big time. And you get
something of what was possibly in Joseph’s mind about the choice of Goshen. He’s protecting them
from this deeply idolatrous culture of the Egyptians. But you see, identity is important
to that. You know, if you’re living in a country, but you’re not pretending to be there forever,
there’s some stuff you wouldn’t get involved in, because actually that’s not your long-term home.
Some stuff you’re not going to do. And there’s something about who we are, who do we, if I really
believe myself, I am, in Bob Dylan’s words, the property of Jesus. If I belong to God, and if my
future is with him, then there are some things that are dangerous to me that I ought to be avoiding.
You know, Jesus prayed, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,
because temptation and evil are very real things.
But identity is one of the tools that we use that protect us from temptation and evil.
Next one. Where is your true country?
There’s a concept in law, not only actually in English law, but it’s in a number of other
countries as well, including Nigeria, I believe, called domicile. And domicile means permanent
home. And it’s distinguished from, say, residence. Residence is the place you happen to be living. So
if you’re in the UK for more than six months, you’re regarded as resident here.
And citizenship is usually about, well, who gives you your passport? So it’s about, you know,
kind of legal status. But domicile meant something more like permanent home. It’s actually probably
the deeper of the concepts. And permanent home is something that also kind of sticks to you.
So you could go and live abroad for 25 years and come back to the UK, and the UK would say,
your domicile was always in this country because your strongest roots and who you felt yourself
to be belong to this country. So domicile is about true home. And the very real sense in which,
as Christians, we’re saying, so where is my true home? Where do I truly belong? Do I understand
and see myself to be in this world, as Jacob put it, as a temporary resident? But my true home
is with God in hand. There’s that difference from temporary residence today,
true home and sense of belonging. And the writer of Hebrews says precisely that.
Hebrews 13, verse 14-ish. Your permanent home is not in this life.
Our permanent home is with God. And we’ll have another C.S. Lewis quote.
The last battle, I still think the last battle, although it’s in a sense a children’s book,
it’s still one of the best things written about the life everlasting. And I commend it to you.
But this is a phrase when they’ve kind of got into heaven effectively, and someone says,
I have come home at last. This is my real country. I belong here. This is the land I
have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. And it’s that sense of
belonging to our true country. We are temporary residents here. We belong to Jesus. We belong to
God’s people. And our true country is yet to be. And actually, Karen read this at Anne’s funeral,
and I hope someone will read it at my funeral. So let’s pray, and then I’ll hand back to Steve,
and we’ll give an opportunity if you’d like to be prayed for.
Father, we thank you for your great mercy and love, Lord, for all our feelings and shortcomings,
for all our messed up-ness, for all the mistakes that we’ve made in our life. You are faithful,
and we can depend on you because you are holding on to us. But Lord, we do want to understand the
truth about things, Lord. We do want to receive your truth into our lives, Lord. We do want to
know in our hearts where our true home is. Lord, we thank you for Jesus, and we thank you for all
that lies ahead of us. The best is yet to be. We thank you for Jesus. Amen.