Reckoning // Genesis 42 // Jeff Myers

Let us ask the Holy Spirit's grace on the reading of God's word.

Lord, open our hearts and minds by the power of your Holy Spirit, that as the scriptures are read and your word is

proclaimed, we may hear you with with joy what you say to us today.

Amen.

A reading from Genesis 42.

When Jacob learned that there was grain in Egypt, he said to his sons, 'Why do you just keep looking at each other?'

He continued, 'I have heard that there is grain in Egypt.

Go down there and buy some for us so that we may live and not die.'

Then 10 of Joseph's Joseph's brothers went down to buy grain from Egypt.

But Jacob did not send Benjamin, Joseph's brother, with the others because he was afraid that harm might come to him.

So Israel's sons were among those who went to buy grain, for there was famine in the land of Canaan also.

Now Joseph was the governor of the land, the person who sold grain to all its people.

So when Joseph's brothers

As soon as Joseph saw his brothers, he recognized them, but he pretended to be a

stranger and spoke harshly to them.

Where do you come from?

he asked.

From the land of Canaan, they replied, to buy food.

Although Joseph recognized his brothers, they did not recognize him.

Then he remembered his dreams about them and said to them, You are spies!

You have come to see where our land is unprotected.'

'No, my lord,' they answered, 'your servants have come to buy food.

We are all sons of one man.

Your servants are honest men, not spies.'

'No,' he said to them, 'you have come to see where our land is unprotected.'

But they replied, 'Your servants were 12 brothers, the sons of one man, who lives in the land

of Canaan.

The youngest is now with our father, and one is no more.'

Joseph said to them, 'It is just as I told you.

You are spies, and this is how you will be tested.

As surely as Pharaoh lives, you will not leave this place unless your youngest brother comes here.

Send one of your number to get your brother.

The rest of you will be kept in prison so that your words may 'be tested to see if you are telling the truth.

If you are not, then as surely as Pharaoh lives, you are spies.'

And he put them all in custody for 3 days.

On the third day, Joseph said to them, 'Do this and you will live, for I fear God.

If you are honest men, let one of your brothers stay in here in prison while the rest of you go and take the grain back for your starving house.'

But you must bring your youngest brother to me so that your words may be verified and that you may not die.'

This they proceeded to do.

They said to one another, 'Surely we are being punished because of our brother.

We saw how distressed he was when he pleaded with us for his life, but we would not listen.

That's why this distress has come on us.'

Reuben replied, 'Didn't I tell you not to sin against the boy, but you wouldn't listen.

Now he must give an accounting of his blood.'

They did not realize that Joseph could understand them since he was using an interpreter.

He turned away from them and began to weep, but then he came back and spoke to them again.

He had Simeon taken from them and bound before their eyes.

Joseph gave orders to fill their bags with grain, to put each man's silver back in his sack and to give them provisions for their journey.

After this was done for them, they loaded their grain on their donkeys and left.

At the place where they stopped for night— for the night, one of them opened his sack to get feed for his donkey, and he saw his

silver in the mouth of his sack.

My silver has been returned, he said to his brothers.

Here it is in my sack.

Their hearts sank, and they They turned to each other trembling and said, 'What is this that God has done to us?'

When they came to their father Jacob in the land of Canaan, they told him all that happened to them.

They said, 'The man who is lord over the land spoke harshly to us and treated us as though we were spies.

But we said to him, "We are honest men; we are not spies.

We were 12 brothers, sons of sons of one father.

One is no more, and the youngest is now with our father in Canaan.

Then the man who is lord over the land said to us, 'This is how I will know whether you are honest men: leave one of

your brothers here with me and take food for your starving households and go, but bring your youngest brother to me, and I will

know that you are not spies but honest men.

Then I will give your brother' 'back to you, and you can trade in the land.'

As they were emptying their sacks, there in each man's sack was his pouch of silver.

When they and their father saw the money pouches, they were frightened.

Their father Jacob said to them, 'You have deprived me of my children.

Joseph is no more, and Simeon is no more, and now you want to take Benjamin?

Everything is against me.'

Then Reuben Jacob said to his father, 'You may put both of my sons to death if I do not bring them back to you.

Entrust him to my care, and I will bring him back.'

But Jacob said, 'My son will not go down there with you.

His brother is dead, and he is the only one left.

If harm comes to him on the journey you are taking, you will bring my gray head down to the grave in sorrow.'

This is the word of the Lord.

Begotten.

Life gives us many chances to show that we're changed people.

One day, a mother had been baking cookies for her book group that evening.

She made exactly a dozen, one for each one of her friends and herself, and she set them on a cooling rack on the counter of

of her kitchen, leaves the room.

When her 5-year-old son comes in to find a divine aroma and 12 welcoming chocolate chip cookies sitting

on a cooling rack on the counter of the kitchen.

And without hesitation, the 5-year-old relieves the cooling rack of one of the cookies, devours it, and leaves.

Later, the mother takes her 5-year-old son aside aside and talks to him about asking permission next time.

A month passes.

It's time for her to host book group again, and she makes the same 12 chocolate chip cookies, sets them on the

same cooling rack in the same kitchen,

and she waits to see what her son will do.

Not because she's a vindictive— because she's a vindictive, vengeful mother and wants to catch her son in the act, but simply because she will

not know if her son has learned this lesson until the exact same circumstances are

recreated and he's able to make a choice.

By the way, you can do the same hypothetical situation with a wife and a husband.

She doesn't know that her son or her husband is changed until the same circumstances are recreated.

We would call that a test.

Have you ever been the cookie thief in this situation?

Have you ever messed up in a big way and you had to be corrected?

Have you ever disappointed someone else or disappointed your God.

And that grief of disappointment led you to true repentance.

And you came to the Lord and you said, "I'm a changed person now.

I'm so sorry for what I've done."

You come to your family, you come to your friends, and you say, "I've reformed.

I'm different than I once was."

That is all good.

But friends, you don't really know you've changed.

And those friends and family members of yours certainly don't know that you've really changed until you approach the cooling rack

again.

Others will not witness your change until they see you in the same circumstances, the same environment as you had before.

Several years ago, I was speaking to the chaplain of the San Diego Rescue Mission, and I was asking about him, or

I was asking him I asked him about what recovery from addiction really looks like and what are the great milestones in someone's path

toward addiction recovery.

And I was surprised to hear him say, "Relapse.

Relapse is one of the important milestones on the path toward recovery."

And of course, he saw my— he saw my—

the expression on my face.

And he said, "Here's the thing, Jeff.

People can sit in a classroom with other students in the program and they can make all of the resolutions they want and they can talk about their transformation.

Sincerely, they really can.

But not until they go back into the streets of San Diego and they walk the same sidewalks and they see the same friends and they're offered the same

stuff as when they had blown up their lives before will you really see whether that person is a new creation."

creation.

So when they come back in for the second time to the rescue mission, my friend said, "Ah, that's when they've learned something.

What stone have you overturned here?"

That is when the rubber really hits the road.

The test has been set and you've learned something about yourself.

You really don't know what's on the inside of you until it's acted on on the outside.

This moment of the Joseph story marks a test.

Joseph recreates the situation that he was in with his brothers 22

years before when he was left abandoned by his brothers while they filled themselves with bread

and counted out their silver.

Now And now Simeon has been taken captive and he is going to be potentially abandoned by his brothers while

they leave with what?

Plenty of bread and all of their silver.

Joseph is now 39 years old.

He was a 17-year-old when he perhaps rather foolishly was telling his brothers about the two dreams that he's had, the dreams where all

of his brothers would bow down to him and he would rule over them.

"Are you really to rule over us?"

they mocked him.

"Good luck ruling over us when we stick you in the ground."

And they put him in a cistern underground.

"Let's kill him and see what becomes of his dreams," they say to each other.

And Joseph's 10 brothers end up selling Joseph to slave traders and abandoning him and disowning him.

And the scene ends with his

See, here Joseph recreates the same circumstances.

He is making a test.

If you are honest men, he says, let one of your brothers remain confined where you are in custody.

Let the rest of you go, carry grain for the famine to all of your households, and bring your youngest brother— that would be

Benjamin— So that I know that your words are true, and you shall not die.

How did his brothers make sense of this?

Well, remember that they don't recognize their brother Joseph while he recognizes all of them.

Interestingly, we hear the same verb that was used by the brothers: Father, examine this cloak and see if it is your

sons.

See if it is revealed to you as your sons.

It's the same verb that Tamar uses when she brings out the cloak and the staff and the cord and says, examine these, let

them reveal themselves to you and see whose they belong to.

And now Joseph examines his brothers.

He knows who they are, but they are unable to tell who he is.

And yet, even though he's dressed up with makeup, he's got his Egyptian regalia on, and they don't recognize him in the place of

ruling, even though they've bowed down to him, essentially fulfilling the dream that he's had, they still recognize

Joseph in the circumstances because they start talking to each other in their own language.

In truth, we are guilty concerning our brothers.

Our brother, in that we saw his distress when he begged us and we did not listen.

That is why this distress has come upon us.

So now there comes a reckoning for his blood.

A reckoning.

The brothers recognized the situation 22 years after the In fact, this is the same thing we were in before.

But they don't recognize Joseph.

And he hears them while they begin to talk about the distress of their brother Joseph, how he begged for his life

and we didn't listen.

Still so vivid in their memory.

For years as I read this story, I have to admit that I saw Joseph Joseph as being really harsh and cruel toward his brothers.

He speaks harshly toward them.

He seems to be moving them around cruelly as pawns in a manipulative game.

But after looking at this text, I'm coming to understand the patience and the kindness that Joseph shows toward his brothers.

He is certainly testing them And you can't blame him after all that they've done to him.

But he's second to Pharaoh in Egypt.

After all, only with regard to Pharaoh's throne is he inferior to Pharaoh at all.

Joseph could instantaneously annihilate his brothers if he wants to.

He could parade them through the streets of Egypt, exposing their crimes before locking locking them up and throwing away the key.

But what do we see?

As Joseph hears his brothers recount the guilty conscience that they have, the weight of

shame that they bear from hearing their brother beg for his life and ignoring him, the shame that they still have for their

merciless crime, what does Joseph do?

He begins to weep.

Weep.

He has to turn aside to hide his tears.

He will maintain a strict and terrifying demeanor publicly before his brothers for the next few

chapters.

He will show himself to be a heartless and cruel judge in public.

Why?

Because it would be too easy for his brothers to confess their their crimes knowing that they would be exonerated.

Joseph must be sure of their transformation before he reveals himself.

And so we see Joseph laying the test, and as he does it, what does he desire for his brothers?

I believe he desires them to be successful.

To be successful this time, to be successful in this test, to see the cookie rack and to have learned the lesson.

Joseph was not a manipulative and vengeful brother.

He is a patient and hopeful reconciler.

And this begins to sound a lot like the God of the Bible.

If you ever go see a musical or you see an opera, you listen to the overture, you listen to the introit, and all of the themes of

the piece of music that's about to come are there in the overture.

In the same way, the book of Genesis presents all of the major themes that we're going to read in the Bible.

And just as ancient readers would when they read these stories of Genesis here at the end of the book, They are seeing all of

the hyperlinks back to the beginning of the book.

And one of those themes that appears over and over in the Bible and in the book of Genesis is that of testing, testing.

And think about the earliest test that we have in the Bible.

Think hard.

The earliest test, ah, back in the garden, of course.

He places the man in the garden to work it and to keep it, and then God makes a covenant.

It's actually a covenant a covenant of works with Adam.

He says, "If you obey me in all of the things, eating of all of these trees except for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, there's

life.

Ah, but on the day that you eat of the fruit of this tree, you will surely die."

Now Adam agrees to it, we would assume.

But how will he know

And how will he display that he's actually going to trust God's word, that he actually trusts what God says is true and good?

He's given a choice between life by trusting God's word and death by acting in doubt.

And now we have to think about this.

What would happen if the garden didn't have a tree of the knowledge of good and evil?

Well, there wouldn't be an opportunity to sin, we would say, "Yeah, that sounds good."

But would we ever know if we truly trusted God?

Trust must be tested, otherwise it may not be trust at all.

So when we read this chapter, do we see any similarities to the Garden of Eden?

Well, of course we do.

Joseph tells his brothers twice, Do this and you will live.

Do this and you will live.

This testing is a matter of choosing between life and death, just as it was in the garden.

And there's another famous test that we know of, Abraham and Isaac.

In Genesis 12 through 17, God makes a covenant with Abraham that all of his children are going to be a blessing to all

of the families of the earth.

And when God promises this, the Bible tells us that Abraham believed God.

He believed that God was going to give him, a 90-year-old, and his wife Sarah, who was also elderly and barren, a child.

The child of the promise.

He believes God.

And finally, when the baby miraculously comes, Isaac, God tells Abraham, Abraham to offer the child

back to him as an act of sacrifice.

Why?

Is this a punishment because Abraham doesn't believe God?

No, indeed, we've been told that Abraham does believe.

It's just the opposite.

It is because Abraham does believe God, but he has not yet had the opportunity to show it, to demonstrate his faith.

And therefore God puts Abraham to the test.

He is not a vengeful God.

He is a hopeful God who desires his son Abraham to display his faith in a way

that all the generations of believers like us would hear that story and we would see faith put on display.

James in the New Testament, Jesus's brother, he talks Jesus talks about Abraham and the fact that you can talk about being a

changed person all you want, but until that change is tested,

that change really can't be trusted.

Show me your faith apart from works, he says.

Good luck.

Show me your faith without showing it.

Good luck with that.

But I will show my faith by what I do.

Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.

But that belief wasn't shown until he offered up his son on the altar.

So effectively, faith without being demonstrated and confirmed by testing is dead, is what James tells us.

Here in the Joseph story, we have another son of Abraham, Simeon.

Being bound and effectively left for dead like Isaac.

Ah, and a little preview of a few chapters in the future.

I wonder if there will be a substitute the way that there was for Abraham and Isaac.

Brothers and sisters, our story is the Israelite story.

When we read the scriptures, we see ourselves in it.

Through Jesus Christ, In Christ, God has delivered us from slavery, the slavery of sin and the misery of death, just as God

delivered his Israelites from the slavery of Egypt.

He's called us to be his people, and now we've made promises to change.

In being called his sons and daughters, we make vows to the Lord.

I will follow you, Jesus.

All our old ways are set beside us, behind us.

And we live into the new creation of Jesus Christ.

Friends, we talk about the faith that we have and our resolutions of trusting God, but unless we're

put to the test, that faith is never really actually exercised, and we won't know whether that faith is genuine or

not.

What tests has God used in your life to expose the fact that maybe Maybe you are weak in some areas

and his Holy Spirit has to strengthen and encourage you.

Those tests are a good gift from God.

In fact, they're called God's discipline, as a wise father disciplining his children.

After the Israelites were in the desert for 40 years, Moses was about to usher them into the Promised Land.

He preaches a famous sermon that we call the book of Deuteronomy.

And Moses says this: Remember the whole story of the Lord, the whole story of the Lord God, and how he's

led you these 40 years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what

is in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not.

He humbled He humbled you and he let you hunger, and then he fed you with manna, which you didn't even know about, nor did your fathers know,

that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that

comes from the mouth of the Lord.

Your clothing, it didn't wear out for 40 years in the wilderness, nor did your feet swell after all of

that walking around.

Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his child, the Lord your God disciplines you.

And if you've read the whole story,

you know how often the Israelites fail these tests.

You know how often they grumble in the desert, even though they've been fed with manna, even though a spring shoots up from the middle of

a rock, they continue to grumble.

And so God gives us another man who was tested in the wilderness like them, this time for 40 days.

He was tempted by Satan.

He was tested by God.

Not a vengeful God, but a loving Father who was waiting for his son to show true faith.

Joseph to show success when the cookie rack was laid out on the counter.

And every failure of nerve on the part of God's people was a success for that one man.

Through Jesus' perfect record, we have a God who does not hold our failures against us.

Like Joseph, God is patient.

He is hopeful.

He's pleased with every small effort to trust and obey him.

It is kindness that is meant to lead us toward repentance.

What failures, friends, have you been afraid to acknowledge to God?

What guilt have you lived with in secret?

See what patience and kindness, what sure and steady confidence God shows toward his children.

His testing of your faith is meant to show the thoroughness of his love.

He does not abandon us with that anger of ours.

He does not leave us bound as a criminal with that worldliness of ours.

He does not leave us lost in that distraction that intractability of ours.

He does not disown us in that disbelief of ours.

As one pastor of this church was fond of saying, God is a better teacher than we are poor students.

And as Charles Spurgeon said, once we get to heaven, friends, we shall see that we had not one

test, too many.

Amen.

Let's pray.

Thank you, Lord, for how you show yourself in the stories of scripture.

And Lord, we thank you and praise you that you are a God who is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and mercy,

forgiving thousands of generations.

We thank you for Jesus, whose perfect faithfulness, perfect righteousness, perfect track record

substitutes for our own failures.

And now what that means for us is a true embrace, that you have reconciled us to yourself.

Lord, as we live and are tested by your hand, will you keep us from dismay and despair, to remember

in those times how wise a God, how good a Father we have, and to explore and learn and know and trust

the thoroughness of your love.

In Jesus' name, amen.