You have probably heard someone say that God works in mysterious ways. That’s true enough, and sometimes the mystery doesn’t become clear until the story has completely played out. But that’s just like any good Agatha Christie mystery. Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple always got everyone together to explain the mystery and expose the murderer. But that little meeting at the end of the story is a very uncomfortable affair for the guilty.
So it must have been for the brothers of Joseph. Joseph’s brothers, all heirs of a wealthy and powerful dynasty are jealous of him and plot to
The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.
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You have probably heard someone say that God works in mysterious ways. That’s true enough. And sometimes the mystery doesn’t become clear until a story has played completely out. But you know, that’s like any good Agatha Christie mystery. Hercule Poirot, or Miss Marple, always gets everyone together at the end and explains the mystery and exposes the murderer. And Poirot is fond of saying, very soon now, all will become clear. But that little meeting at the end of the mystery is probably a very uncomfortable affair for the guilty party, don’t you imagine? So it must have been for the brothers of Joseph, the son of Jacob. There’s a delicious irony in the Bible story in Genesis, and it plays out like the best mysteries. I still can’t figure out why no one’s made a movie of this. It’s a lot bigger story than any of the television series you’ve watched, although I think some have borrowed from the Bible for their plots. Joseph’s brothers, all heirs of a wealthy and powerful dynasty, are jealous of him, and they plot to murder him. Reuben, the eldest brother, tries to save him and return him home, but while he is off the screen, the other ten brothers, led by Judah, sell him into Egypt as a slave. And after a time in prison, Joseph rises to great power in Egypt and rescues the whole nation and the whole region from a time of famine. It’s great stuff. Great stuff. The famine, then, drives the guilty brothers into Egypt for food, and guess what happens? Joseph recognizes them, but they don’t recognize him, which allows Joseph to play a deep game and ultimately to get the whole family into Egypt while he holds one brother hostage until the last brother is brought down to verify that they’re not spies. And when they finally show up with the youngest brother, Joseph plays out his game, allowing the brothers to be tormented by their own fear and guilt. And he allows it to grow while he invites them to dinner in his own home. And then all becomes clear. At long last, Joseph makes himself known to his brothers. He couldn’t control himself as he began his speech. And he cried out, let every man get out of here. And he got rid of all of his servants, all the Egyptians left, and there was nobody left in the room when Joseph decided to make himself known to his brothers. And he wept aloud. This must have been a terribly emotional experience because the Egyptians and the whole house of Pharaoh could hear him crying. And Joseph said to his brethren, I am Joseph. Is my father still alive? And his brothers were dumbfounded, I guess. They couldn’t answer him. Those three words, coupled by looking at the man and then all of a sudden realizing what he was saying was true, those three words, I am Joseph, must have been like a thunderclap in the room for them. And they didn’t know what to say. They stood there for a moment, dumbfounded. Joseph says, come over here. Come to me. And they walked over close tentatively. And he said, I am Joseph, your brother, whom you sold into Egypt. Now, therefore, don’t be grieved. Don’t be angry with yourselves that you sold me here. For God sent me ahead of you to preserve life. Joseph has played his little game. And now he’s beginning to feel sorry for them because after all, they are his own flesh and blood. And Joseph feels it’s time to let him go. For these two years, he said, the famine has been in the land. Two long years. And there are still five years for the famine to go in which there’s not going to be any earring and not going to be any harvest. There’s going to be a lot of very hungry people. And God sent me down here ahead of you to preserve for you a posterity in the earth and to save your lives by great deliverance. So you can stop feeling bad about the fact that you sold me into Egypt. I mean, there may have been better ways of doing this, but nevertheless, God sent me down here. You didn’t. Now, the question arises as you read this, just how far in the future was God working? We ask the question repeatedly in this series, what in the world is God doing? Where is he looking? Where is he going with all this? Well, we know God saw a great famine in the future. And he used the venality of Jacob’s brothers to set Joseph in a position to save all of their lives. And he did something more here that is very easy to overlook. His original promise to Abraham was that in Abraham’s seed, the whole world would be blessed. This is a part of the original covenant, which somehow or other I don’t hear a lot about from people who talk about this sort of thing. The fact is that God made promises to Abraham. He promised him the land. He promised him greatness. He promised him wealth. He promised him that his seed would be like the sand of the seashore by multitude or the stars in the heavens, that there would be a huge dynasty that would flow out of him, but that the dynasty was not for his own sake. God made him wealthy not for himself because he goes on to say, In your seed shall all the world be blessed. In other words, the family of this one man, Abraham, was to actually be in the earth a source of blessing from God for the entirety of the world. Now think about this case. Egypt was blessed by the presence of Joseph at a time of approaching famine. And not only was Jacob’s family preserved, Egypt was preserved and the whole region around Egypt was preserved. How was it done? It was done through the seed of Abraham. The whole world at that time was blessed. Joseph continues his speech to his brothers. He says, so now it was not you that sent me down here. It was God. And he has made me a father to Pharaoh and the Lord of all his house and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt. Brothers, I’m the man down here. Now, I want you to hurry and get back up to my father and tell him this. Thus saith your son Joseph, God has made me lord of all Egypt. Come down to me and don’t delay. You can dwell in the land of Goshen. You’ll be near me, you, your children, your children’s children, and your flocks and your herd. Just bring it all and come on down there. And there, I’ll take care of you. For you should know, there are still five years of this famine to go. So come on down, lest you and your household and everything you have come to poverty. Then he turned to his brothers and he says, Look, your eyes see, and the eyes of my brother Benjamin see, that it’s my mouth that speaks to you. And I want you to tell my father of all my glory in Egypt and of all you have seen. And I want you to get busy, hurry, and bring him down here. And he fell upon his brother Benjamin’s neck and wept. And Benjamin wept upon his neck. And he kissed all of his brethren and wept upon them. And after that, his brethren could talk to him. What a reunion that must have been. This Bible expression of falling upon one another’s neck is really pretty descriptive because when you see somebody you haven’t seen in a long time, The hug follows, you know, you go neck to neck as it were, and a lot of times the tears fall upon your brother’s neck, and that’s what’s going on here. They were very emotional people, but they had a lot to cry about. And after they got through this bad moment, they had a lot to talk about. There are two human reactions that seem to be built in and beyond our conscious control, laughter and weeping. They are the two infallible indicators of the condition of the human heart.
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Listen to this message and I’ll be right back. What in the world is God doing? Does he have something in mind or is life just a grand soap opera and God a spectator? For a free introductory CD in the series titled, What is God Doing? Write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. Or call toll free 1-888-BIBLE44. And tell us the call letters of this radio station.
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Well, this is a great story. And as I said, better than most soap operas would ever be. And this was heard all over Pharaoh’s household. They all heard the story. And it was told and told and told. Joseph’s brothers are here. And it pleased Pharaoh well and his servants. They really enjoyed the whole story. And so Pharaoh said to Joseph, Tell your brethren, do this. Load up your animals, go get home, and bring your father and all of his households, and come on down here. And I’ll give you the good of the land of Egypt, and you’ll eat the fat of the land. This was a good-hearted man, this Pharaoh was. And of course, he was grateful. Joseph had saved all their lives, and he was in the process of making this Pharaoh richer beyond anybody’s dreams. Now you are commanded to do this. Take wagons out of the land of Egypt for your little ones, for your wives, bring your father, and come down here. Don’t worry about your stuff, because the good of the whole land of Egypt is yours. And the children of Israel did it. And Joseph gave them wagons, according to what Pharaoh said, and gave them provisions for the way. Gave everybody a change of clothes. It may sound kind of simple to you, but clothing in the ancient world was all handmade and all extremely expensive. A lot of people had one change of clothes, the one they had on. But to Benjamin, he gave 300 pieces of silver and five changes of garments. To his father, he said after this manner, Ten asses laden with the good things of Egypt. I bet they had some of those great dates. Ten she-asses laden with corn and bread and meat for his father along the way. Plenty of food. And he sent his brethren on the road, and as they were getting ready to leave, he put the spur in just a little bit. He says, oh, boys, see you don’t have any fallings out on the way home. He knew his brothers and knew how easily they fell into bickering. So they went up out of Egypt and came home to Jacob, their father. And can you imagine the drama of the moment when these boys who had sold him into Egypt knew what they had done, knew what had happened, knew how it all fell out, knew how cruelly they had withheld information of Joseph from his dad all these years. Now they have to tell him Joseph’s alive. He’s a governor over all the land of Egypt. And, as you would expect, Joseph nearly fainted, and he didn’t believe them. And they told him all the words of Joseph, told him everything he had said. And then he looked at the wagons that had been sent to bring him back, and he began to feel better. And he said, It’s okay. Joseph, my son, is still alive. I want to go see him before I die. So they loaded up everything they had in the wagons, and they got ready to set out for Egypt. But Jacob had one thing he had to do before he left home. He went up to Beersheba, where he had called it the house of God, and he offered a sacrifice to the God of his father Isaac. And that night God spoke to him in visions of the night and said, Jacob, Jacob. And he said, I’m here. And God said, I am God, the God of your father. Don’t be afraid to go down into Egypt because I’m going to make of you down there a great nation. I’m going to turn you into a huge people, a powerful people. I’ll go down there with you and I will surely bring you up again. And Joseph shall put his hand upon your eyes. By that he means he will close your dying eyes. So Jacob rose up from his worship, and the sons of Israel took him, their father, their little ones, their wives, in wagons that Pharaoh had sent them. And they took their cattle and all their goods. They had everything loaded up, and down to Egypt they went. All of his sons, all of his grandchildren, his daughters and granddaughters, and all his seed he brought with him into Egypt. And all the souls that came into Egypt with Jacob were threescore and six. That’s all. Sixty-six people went down into Egypt. And when they come up, wow. Have you seen the movie The Ten Commandments? Down into Egypt they went, guided by Judah, who took them into the land of Goshen. And meanwhile Joseph made ready his chariot and went up to meet Israel his father, to Goshen, and presented himself to his dad. And he fell on his neck and wept on his neck for a good while. Yeah, I suppose he would. Because you have to remember that Joseph was always Jacob’s favorite son. And he had mourned so deeply and so profoundly for this boy, it just absolutely had broken his heart that he had lost him. His son that was lost not only is found again, he is the ruler of all of Egypt. And Israel, whose name is now Israel from Jacob, said to Joseph, Now let me die. I’ve seen your face. You’re still alive. And Joseph said to all of his brothers in his father’s house, I’m going to go up now. I want to show Pharaoh and I want to introduce to him my brothers and my father’s house who have come to me. Now, you need to understand this. All the men are shepherds. Their trade has been to feed cattle. They have brought their flocks, their herds, and all they have. And when we get in there, Pharaoh is going to call you and he’s going to say, what’s your occupation? What do you do? And I want you to say to him, Your servant’s trade has been about cattle from our youth even till now, we and our fathers. Now the reason I want you to tell him this is so that you can dwell in the land of Goshen. It’s apart from the Egyptians. Every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians, so what they’re going to do is push you off into Goshen in order to keep you separate from the Egyptians. Then Joseph came and told Pharaoh, My brethren, my father, all their flocks, their herds, everything they have have now come out of Canaan, and they’re in the land of Goshen. And he took five of his brothers and presented them to Pharaoh and introduced them. And Pharaoh said to his brothers, What’s your occupation? Just like Joseph knew that he would. And they said to Pharaoh, Your servants are shepherds, both we and our fathers. And they said to Pharaoh, We’ve come to sojourn in the land, for your servants have no pasture for our flocks. The famine is sore in the land of Canaan. So we pray, let us dwell in the land of Goshen. Now Pharaoh saw an opportunity here. And he told them, The whole land of Egypt is in front of you. Take what you want. Now, by the way, if you know any men of activity, really good people, like Joseph here, among all these of your brothers, would you make them rulers over my cattle? Because you people have obviously done well. I’d like for them to manage my flocks for a while. And then he brought his father to meet Pharaoh. And interestingly enough, Jacob blessed Pharaoh. Now, this is interesting because in the Bible, basically the theme goes that the lesser is always blessed by the better. And I think that’s probably true in this case enough. But what’s really interesting about it is I have little doubt that Jacob pronounced a blessing verbally in front of Pharaoh at this point. And most people look upon those blessings as so many words. But the truth is Jacob had enormously blessed Pharaoh by his son’s presence in Pharaoh’s court. And Pharaoh said to Jacob, How old are you? I gather by this time Jacob must have been looking pretty old. And he said to Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage are a hundred and thirty years. Few and evil have the days of my life been, and I have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage. And Jacob blessed Pharaoh and went out from before him. Few and evil have the days of my life been. What a tragic epitaph, you know, to have to write on someone’s tombstone. Few and evil have been the days of my life. Few. 130 years. But to him, that seemed short because his father lived longer and his grandfather lived longer than that. And they were accustomed to men living to be quite old in their tradition. And so 130 years and his feebleness at that age had been pretty tough. And then, of course, the battles among his sons and the loss of his favorite son, all these things made the days of his life hard. But still, he was able to bless Pharaoh and go out to his family.
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Listen to this message and I’ll be right back with the rest of the story. If you would like to share this program with friends and others, write or call this week only and request your free copy of What Is God Doing? No.
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23.
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Write to Born to Win, P.O. Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. or call toll-free 1-888-BIBLE-44. And please tell us the call letters of this radio station.
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There was an important economic result of this famine and the way that Joseph handled it. The fact is it got to the place to where there was no bread in all the land. The famine was very sore. So the land of Egypt and all the land of Canaan and the whole region was fainting by reason of the famine. And Joseph gathered up all the money that was found in the land of Egypt and the land of Canaan because the corn they were coming in was corn they were buying. So they had to bring money into it. And so Joseph wound up gathering every bit of money in the land of Egypt and also in the land of Canaan into Pharaoh’s house. No one had any money left. The medium of exchange was basically disappearing throughout the whole region. And when the money failed in the land of Egypt, they had an abject total currency failure. And in the land of Canaan, the Egyptians came to Joseph and saying, Look, please, give us bread. We’re going to just die in your presence if you don’t, because we don’t have any money. The money has collapsed. And Joseph said, Okay, give me your cattle. I will give you for your cattle if you don’t have money. And so they brought their cattle to Joseph. And Joseph gave them bread in exchange for horses, and for flocks of sheep, and cattle of the herds, and for the asses. And he fed them with bread for their cattle for a solid year. Their cattle, their cows, every piece of livestock they owned, they had to spend up in the course of a year for food for themselves and for their children. And when the year was over, they came to him again and said, We’re not going to hide it from you. Our money is gone. Our cattle are gone. There is nothing left in your sight except our bodies and our land. Why should we die before you? Buy us. Buy our land for bread. And we’ll be servants to Pharaoh and give us seed so we can live and not die and that the land be not desolate. And then comes this chilling statement. Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh. For the Egyptians sold every man his field because the famine prevailed over them. And of course, what good is dirt when your children are starving to death? And as for the people, he removed them to cities from one end of the borders of Egypt to the other. All the farms were centralized and all the people were moved into cities. Does this sound at all familiar to you? The government taxed the people in the good times. They took 20% of everything they had throughout all the good years. And then when the hard times came, they made them pay for their own grain back. Sooner or later, in whatever time and whatever place, it seems the government is bound and determined to own us all. And it isn’t just that there are bad people in government, it is the way government is. It’s a system, and the system takes on a life of its own. And it takes our money from us, it takes our food from us, it takes our land from us, and then charges us to get it back. The lesson? If the people of Egypt had the discipline to save for themselves, they wouldn’t have needed the government in times of famine. Yeah, the government can provide you with a safety net. But in the end, they will own you. The only thing that Joseph didn’t own was the land of the priests. Because the priests, well, they had a food allotment from the government. So they didn’t have to buy bread. They still had their money. They still had their land. And Joseph said to the people, I have bought you this day and your land for Pharaoh. Here is some seed for you. Go out and sow the land. So the famine time, the time of no crops is over. Now they’re going to have seed to go out and sow the land and everything can be built back, right? Well, not quite, because they don’t own the land anymore. It shall come to pass that of the increase you shall give the fifth part to Pharaoh, and four parts shall be your own for seed of the field, for your food, and for them of your households, and food for your little ones. He turned a whole nation into sharecroppers. And the next verse is perhaps the most heartbreaking one in the entire passage. He had turned these people into sharecroppers. and they were grateful for it. They said, You’ve saved our lives. Let us find grace in the sight of my Lord, and we will be Pharaoh’s servants. And down through history, men have again and again and again given up their freedoms for bread. Joseph made it a law over the land of Egypt until this day that Pharaoh should have the fifth part, except for the land of the priests. That never belonged to Pharaoh. And so it was. He owned everything, and the people owned nothing. Israel dwelt in the land of Egypt in the country of Goshen, and they had possessions, and they grew. They multiplied exceedingly. And Jacob lived in the land of Egypt for seventeen years. And the whole age of Jacob was 147 years. And then came the time that he had to die. And he called his son Joseph and he said to him, I’m going to ask you if I found grace in your sight. I want you to swear to me, don’t bury me in Egypt. I want to lie with my fathers. I want you to carry me out of Egypt and bury me in their burying place. And Joseph said, I’ll do what you said. And he said, Swear it to me. And he swore it to him. And he bowed himself over the bedstead. And it came to pass after these things, the time came for him to die. But before he went, he had some unfinished business he had to take care of. Because you see, Jacob was a prophet. And he had to make some prophecies and pass on some blessings to his children. And so he calls Joseph to him, and Joseph came. And he said, God Almighty appeared to me and loves in the land of Canaan, and he blessed me. And he said, I’m going to make you fruitful and multiply you. I’m going to make a multitude of people out of you, and I’m going to give this land to your seed for an everlasting possession. And now your two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, Those two sons that were born to you in the land of Egypt before I came to you are mine. As Reuben and Simeon, they shall be mine. Well, now you might say, what do you mean, mine? Aren’t they his grandsons? Of course they’re his. Oh, no. He’s going much beyond that. He is elevating Ephraim and Manasseh to the position not of grandsons, but of sons. Now, this had enormous implications for inheritance law, for the passing on of property, for the passing on of blessings. But there are prophetic implications as well. Those, unfortunately, will have to wait until next time. Until then…
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