04-02-08 #Disciple Bible Study with Special Speaker seekHm1st

[Disciple]

So in thinking about it, I decided to teach from where my personal studies have been lately.
I have been studying in Genesis, about Joseph and his brothers.
Tonight, we will be taking a look at repentance, and about the heart that Joseph had, not only toward His God, but toward his brothers as well.
We will look at the way Joseph sought for true repentance from his brothers.
Joseph’s heart toward his brothers is a great picture of the way God the Father’s heart is toward us.
Let me give you a little background information to put things into perspective.
I will be hopping around a bit here.
Joseph was the eleventh son of Jacob, and he was growing up in a family of shepherds.
Jacob loved Joseph so much that all of Joseph’s older brothers were very jealous of him, and they could not even be civil to him.
I know that Joseph, like the rest of us, was not perfect, but within the written record of his life, it’s hard to find fault with him.
He talked about his dreams with his brothers and with his father.
The dreams he had showed him having a superior position to that of not only his brothers, but his father as well.
His father merely rebuked him for this, but he kept the knowledge in mind. His brothers on the other hand, resented him. A lot.
After the gift of a colorful coat to Joseph from his father, Jacob, they couldn't stand him.
They were so angry with him that they tossed him down into a dry well.
Against the wishes of the oldest brother, Reuben, Judah led the rest of them to sell him into slavery, and tell their father Jacob that Joseph had been killed by a wild beast.
Through a series of events, Joseph ended up in a prison in Egypt.
In prison he demonstrated a unique ability to interpret dreams, and even in prison, he showed that he had other valuable skills.
When Pharaoh heard of this, Joseph was brought from prison and aided Pharaoh in interpreting his own dreams, warning Pharaoh of a seven-year time to come of great famine.
Pharaoh was so impressed with Joseph that he made him governor of Egypt, second in power only to Pharaoh himself.
Now, because there was this great time of famine, it was not only the country of Egypt that was being affected, but all of the surrounding nations too.
Actually, the Bible says the famine affected the "whole world."
I believe.
So let's pick up the account there.......
Enter......... Joseph’s brothers into the land of Egypt at the behest of their father Jacob, to find food so that they could stay alive.
Now Joseph was governor over the land; and it was he who sold to all the people of the land. And Joseph's brothers came and bowed down before him with their faces to the earth. Genesis 42:6
Joseph had demonstrated an unswerving ability to handle great adversity in a godly way, and show great wisdom and devotion to God whenever he acted.
Whatever Joseph did, God prospered him in it.
Twenty years had passed since Joseph had seen his brothers.
He had known great sorrow over the years past. He had been sold into slavery by brothers whom he had not injured.
He had been imprisoned in Egypt for a crime he did not commit.
Yet, he was a man with a huge heart. He had been blessed by God with great wisdom and discernment and amazing success in the face of huge obstacles.
God’s hand was at work in all of this.
But God did not ordain that Joseph’s brothers would throw him into a well and sell him into slavery, because what they did was sin.
God does not ordain sin, but what He does do often is take what we do and tweak it and used to do something awesome in either our lives or someone else’s life.
Joseph saw his brothers and recognized them, but he acted as a stranger to them and spoke roughly to them. Then he said to them, "Where do you come from?" And they said, "From the land of Canaan to buy food." Genesis 42:7
He spoke "roughly" to them, but yet he wanted them to be reconciled to him.
As a matter of fact, Joseph was no dummy, obviously, and I believe in my heart that he had already reasoned that, because of the famine, it was very likely that he would be seeing his brothers.
[23:38] <@seekHm1st> And here they were, right in front of him, and they didn't recognize him.
It had been twenty years since any of them had laid eyes upon one another.
Joseph had been about seventeen when they had last seen him. Now he was in his late thirties.
Now married to an Egyptian woman and with two young sons of his own, Joseph, attired in Egyptian finery no doubt bore little resemblance to his brothers.
Part of that had to do with the fact that the Egyptians shaved most of their bodies
That had probably to do with the bugs that were prominent in that area
They wore wigs.
Joseph may have been wearing one.
They had no clue it was him.
Then Joseph remembered the dreams which he had dreamed about them, and said to them, "You are spies! You have come to see the nakedness of the land!" Genesis 42:10
He accuses them of being spies. Can you imagine how the brothers felt?
Imagine this, you go into the grocery store to buy grain, and the manager goes off on you and tells you that you are spying on his store.
That's what it was like for them, except the consequences for them are much greater and more threatening.
And they said to him, "No, my lord, but your servants have come to buy food.
Gen 42:11
"We are all one man's sons; we are honest men; your servants are not spies."
Gen 42:12
But he said to them, "No, but you have come to see the nakedness of the land." Genesis 42:13
Then Joseph throws them all into prison for three days.
But what comes out of all of this, is that Joseph hears them talking, any they do not know that he understands their language.
Then they said to one another, "We are truly guilty concerning our brother, for we saw the anguish of his soul when he pleaded with us, and we would not hear; therefore this distress has come upon us." Genesis 42:21
And Reuben answered them, saying, "Did I not speak to you, saying, 'Do not sin against the boy'; and you would not listen? Therefore behold, his blood is now required of us." Genesis 42:22
But they did not know that Joseph understood them, for he spoke to them through an interpreter. Genesis 42:23
Joseph was so moved by what they said that he had to go away from them so that they could not see him weeping.
What happens next is that Joseph puts his brothers to the test
Actually a series of tests.
He engineers things so that they are forced not only to return to his father Jacob and tell him that they are being played by this mysterious and powerful Egyptian leader, but that they must return to that land with Jacob’s youngest son, Benjamin.
He does all of this because he wanted to see the conviction of God in the hearts of these men over the twenty years since they had treated him in such an evil way.
He had wept and pleaded from the bottom of that well, and they had still sold him into the hands of slave traders.
Now, he heard them talking about having to endure the consequences for the sin they had committed against him.
You see Joseph’s hand involved in this, but over all of it you see God’s hand involved in all of this, because God was doing bigger things.
Joseph heard Reuben complaining that his brothers had done this thing even though he had said not to. Reuben obviously had some level of remorse.
It comes to a point where Joseph sees his brother Judah in repentance.
Judah, the brother whose idea it originally was to sell him off into slavery.
Joseph can no longer contain his feelings, and he reveals his true identity to his brothers.
THEN Joseph could not restrain himself before all those who stood by him, and he cried out, "Make everyone go out from me!" So no one stood with him while Joseph made himself known to his brothers.
Genesis 45:2
And he wept aloud, and the Egyptians and the house of Pharaoh heard it.
Genesis 45:3
Then Joseph said to his brothers, "I am Joseph; does my father still live?" But his brothers could not answer him, for they were dismayed in his presence.
Genesis 45:4
And Joseph said to his brothers, "Please come near to me." So they came near. Then he said: "I am Joseph your brother, whom you sold into Egypt.
Genesis 45:5
"But now, do not therefore be grieved or angry with yourselves because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life.
Genesis 45:6
"For these two years the famine has been in the land, and there are still five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvesting.
Genesis 45:7
"And God sent me before you to preserve a posterity for you in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance.” Genesis 45:8
It is so hard to repent sometimes, and what happens is that God will put us into a situation where He shows us what our sin is like.
He turns our hearts around.
Joseph had been waiting to see true repentance from his brothers for what they had done. He wanted them to be truly reconciled to him.
He could have just given them food and told them from the very first, who he really was, but he didn’t want them to be reconciled to them because he gave them food.
He wanted them to be reconciled to them because they could say from their hearts that they had been wrong in what they had done, and that they would now turn away from such behavior.
Joseph’s brothers had been confronted by the most powerful man in Egypt under Pharaoh, and told that he was the brother that they had betrayed twenty years before.
But Joseph worked to calm them with his words.
Moreover he kissed all his brothers and wept over them, and after that his brothers talked with him. Genesis 45:16
I'm sure that more than one person cried tears of repentance and joy that day.
Joseph had room in his heart for his brothers. He had a place for them.
Is that not like Jesus?
Though He took every step willingly toward that hostile cross, we nailed Him to it because of our sins.
In our sinfulness we turned our backs on Him, and left Him there to die.
But those two-thousand years ago, He rose from that hand-hewn grave, and He offered us the most marvelous gift.
He made it possible for us to come to Him in heartfelt repentance, and told us that we could have forgiveness and rise from the grave that we had dug for ourselves with our own sin-filled hearts, to live with Him forever.