"The Exodus Starts in Genesis" - Genesis 50

Somebody tell me of a time when a wise person gave you good advice. The best advice my dad ever gave me was, “Just act like you know what you’re doing.” I’m pretty sure that’s what I’m doing right now. It has been good advice.

The Apostle Paul was one of the wisest men who ever lived and he gave us some great advice in the book of Philippians. We have finished up our sermon series on Philippians and I learned a lot from Paul but I think if Paul were to give us just one piece of advice it would be to get closer to God. Get to know Him better.

He said in Philippians 3:10, “I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.” He wanted more than anything in the world to know Jesus better and more intimately because he knew that everything in this life and the next was better the more you know Jesus. And we know that Jesus is God. We know the Holy Spirit is God and we know the Father is God. But who is God?

Have you ever really thought about it? Who is God? What is He really like? If God handed you His business card, how would the card read? I want to pursue that thought for a while and one of the best places to see who God really is is in the book of Exodus. We have been studying Jesus for a while now in several places in the New Testament. We have seen what Jesus has done for us and His sacrifice but Paul encouraged us to get to know Him better and that means to be able to appreciate Him just for who He is, not just for what He has done and is going to do for us.

Jesus taught the disciples – and us – to pray by starting out acknowledging God just for who He is. “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.” (Matthew 6:9) So, let’s spend some time getting to know God better and, like I said, one of the best places to do that is in Exodus. In Genesis, we see Him as the Creator but as we go through Exodus for the next few weeks, I want you to start to look for the attributes of God and one of the most amazing attributes of God is His sovereignty.

What does it mean to be sovereign? The dictionary says it means “possessing supreme or ultimate power.” To me it means that God doesn’t have to ask anybody’s permission to do anything. He does everything and anything He wants. His overall will is always going to be done. Sometimes it doesn’t look like it. When people sin, we think, “Well, there goes God’s plan. It’s all messed up now.” Right? But because God is sovereign, He can factor in our sin and our stupidity and our stubbornness and still get His will done, like only He can.

Now, if we are going to fully appreciate God’s sovereignty in Exodus, we need to be reminded how and why the exodus came about. Exodus just means to leave. It means to depart from a place and go somewhere else. But how did the Hebrew people get to a place they needed to leave? What were those circumstances? Well, we are going to get there but we have to start at the end of Genesis. The exodus of the Hebrew people started in Genesis so let’s read part of the last chapter of Genesis before we get to Exodus.

As you turn to Genesis 50, I want to remind you of how this story got to where it is very quickly. You know the story, so I’ll put it in a nutshell. The old patriarch Jacob had twelve sons but he doted on Joseph. You remember he gave Joseph the fancy schmancy coat of many colors and Joseph was kind of cocky about it and made his brothers mad so they threw him in a well, then sold him into slavery hoping to never see him again.

And they wouldn’t have ever seen him again if God was not sovereign but God arranged for them to meet again when there was a horrible famine in Israel. Because there was no food in Israel, they went to Egypt to buy some only to find dear old brother Joe was the big king kahuna there in Egypt. It’s a fascinating story and if you haven’t read it lately, go back and read chapters 37-50 of Genesis. Yes, it is that long. Joseph’s story is fascinating for several reasons. It is fascinating just for the fact that it takes up so much room in scripture. God uses less than one chapter to describe the creation of the entire universe but for the story of Joseph, he uses fourteen chapters! But it’s a good, entertaining read but we also learn a lot about God, which is our goal.

So, let’s start this journey of knowing God better by reading Genesis 50, verses 15-21. 15When Joseph's brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, "What if Joseph holds a grudge against us and pays us back for all the wrongs we did to him?" 16So they sent word to Joseph, saying, "Your father left these instructions before he died: 17'This is what you are to say to Joseph: I ask you to forgive your brothers the sins and the wrongs they committed in treating you so badly.' Now please forgive the sins of the servants of the God of your father." When their message came to him, Joseph wept. 18His brothers then came and threw themselves down before him. "We are your slaves," they said. 19But Joseph said to them, "Don't be afraid. Am I in the place of God? 20You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. 21So then, don't be afraid. I will provide for you and your children." And he reassured them and spoke kindly to them.

I know that almost every week I say, “Oh, that’s one of the most beautiful passages in all of scripture” but it sure is true of this one! It puts the difference between us and God in such sharp contrast. What I mean is, have you ever watched an old western movie and the good guy and the bad guy have a shootout with their six-shooters? So many times you see the bad guy finally get shot and wounded pretty bad and as he lay in the dirt of the street dying, you see the good guy come over and stand over him with his gun cocked and pointed right at him. The bad guy has shot the other man’s mom. He stole his woman. He kicked his dog! Then they have this long, stupid conversation about what is right and what is wrong and finally the good guy drops his gun into his gun belt. And the whole time, what are you screaming at the TV? If you are like me you are screaming, “Shoot him. Shoot him! Just do it and quit talking!” Right?

That’s sort of the situation we are in with Joseph and his brothers. He has them dead to rights and has the gun pointed at them with his finger on the trigger and then puts it away. How is he able to do that? Because Joseph knew God. Joseph knew God was sovereign and he knew God was good!

Oh, I have a lot of questions. Why did God create a world He knew would start being evil? Why did God allow that ol’ serpent into the garden? Why did He allow sin to keep going? Why does God allow sin and suffering? I don’t know but what we learn in Genesis 50 about God is that what we intend for evil, God uses for good.

So, here we have Joseph, in control of all Egypt, with his family in front of him, with the promise of Almighty God upon him, with the hand of All-Knowing God guiding him, the sovereignty of God paving his way, the presence of God giving him peace and the provision of God making it possible. With all that we see Joseph make a choice to forgive and to protect and provide for his family.

Now I want to ask, “Why?” Why would Joseph forgive them? They had done nothing to deserve it. They had done nothing in the past to deserve it for sure but look what they did even now. It says that they sent a note to Joseph that was supposedly from their father asking him to forgive the brothers. All of you that believe this was really a note from dad, please stand on your head. They were trying to deceive him even now to save their own hides. Joseph knew and I think that is why he cried. He was disappointed in them even at this point.

A friend of mine posted on Facebook the other day that he got a call from his son’s school. His son is in the third or fourth grade or so. He got the call and he knew it wasn’t going to be good. It never is from the school. But the nice teacher that called said she assumed that the father had not received his son’s latest report card. The man said he had not. How did you know? The teacher said the little boy brought the report card back and it was signed, “Daddy.”

That’s kind of what we see with Joseph’s brothers right here. But none of that mattered to Joseph. He was determined to forgive them. Why do you think he forgave them if they didn’t deserve it? What was in it for Joseph? They had no money and besides Joseph was rich beyond all they could have imagined. They had no power especially to the second most powerful man in the land. They had proven they didn’t deserve it. Was it just because they were family?

Family Schmamily! They never wanted Joseph to be part of their family. They had not treated him like family. They treated him like their worst enemy. Besides they hadn’t even seen each other in decades. But look at what Joseph tells them. This is one of the most beautiful and powerful verses in all of scripture. If we could wrap our minds around this, it would change everything about us.

He tells them in verses 19-20. "Don't be afraid. Am I in the place of God? 20You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done.” At some point in Joseph’s life, and we are not told where, but at some point, he came to have a life-changing relationship with God. He knew God. He had an experience with God, probably somewhere between slavery and imprisonment, he had come to understand that God had a plan for him, a plan as God said in Jeremiah 29:11 to prosper him and not harm him and because he had been forgiven by God and could see that God had allowed or even caused all this to happen for his good and the good of his family, he could forgive his brothers that had once tried to kill him.

This is sort of the Old Testament version of Romans 8:28 that says, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” This does not mean that bad things won’t happen. God may allow or even cause you to go through great poverty or sickness or extremely unfair situations. Yes, you are loved and highly favored but you will often go through great difficulties in this life that you won’t understand.

Joseph was blessed to be able to see in his lifetime how all the horrible things that happened to him was not the world falling apart but God’s plan falling into place. You may or may not be blessed like that to be able to see it but whether or not you can see it or not, it is still true. Yes, it takes faith to be able to see it in the midst of your tragedy but without faith it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6).

Notice that Joseph never downplayed his pain or what happened to him. He never said, “Oh, don’t worry about it. It didn’t bother me. It didn’t hurt. It’s okay.” No. In fact, I think that is why he said in verse 19, "Don't be afraid. Am I in the place of God?” Because if he was in the place of God, he probably would have thumped them off the planet and straight into the pits of hell. They had tried to ruin his whole life and Joseph was aware of that but he was also aware that God was and is in control and had used even their wickedness and meanness to bring about a promise He had made hundreds of years ago to Joseph’s great grandfather, Abraham.

They had intended to harm Joseph but God used that situation for Joseph’s good and for the good of their whole family and, more than that, to bring about and continue and fulfill His promise to Abraham. It was just going to take a while to see it.

On May 11, 1996, Demingo Pacheco had a major problem. He was on a tight schedule to catch his plane out of Miami when the left rear tire of his Cadillac blew out on the Palmetto Expressway. For more than hour he sweated under that broiling Florida sun changing that tire. Just as he finished changing the tire, he got a call on his portable phone. It was his mother. She said, "Where are you?" He said, "I’m stuck on the freeway, having just changed a flat tire, and I have missed my flight." She shouted, "Turn on your radio and thank God. The plane you were supposed to be on just crashed!” (sermoncentral.com)

In stories like that it is easy to see that God provides and protects and sometimes allows us to go through difficulties for our own good. But sometimes it takes a little longer than the hour that Pacheco spent changing his tire. Sometimes it takes years and the circumstances are much worse than a flat tire and a messed-up schedule. Sometimes we never see how any good comes out of it at all and we won’t see it until we see Jesus face to face in Heaven.

Why do some people have to spend their lives in a wheelchair? Why do some people get cancer or lose a child or come down with the virus? You know what I would like to ask God when I see Him? I would like to ask what good came out of the Holocaust? God allowed millions of His special, chosen people, the Jews, to be tortured and murdered and I don’t get it. I really don’t. I don’t understand. But I don’t have to understand!

Am I in the place of God? Thank God I am not and since I am not, I don’t have to understand His ways. I don’t have to know His thoughts. I don’t have to even believe it is true that all things work together for the good of those who know God. All I have to do is know God!  The whole point of this sermon series is for us to know God better and all I have to know is that God is sovereign. He is just. He is creative. He is faithful to provide. He wants to reveal Himself to you and to me and His presence is enough.

When I know God, I don’t have to understand everything He does or causes or allows. All I have to do is believe it. All I have to do is believe His Word and either God’s Word is true when it says “all things” or it’s not true and if it is true then it is true in the darkest days. It is true when I have a flat. It is true when the doctor gives me a bad report. It is true in death, in hardship, in sickness and in divorce and if you can’t believe it when those times come, and they will come, then keep your mouth shut in the good times because you don’t really believe it.

Let me close by saying that one of the things I love about the story of Joseph is that he is a type or a picture of Jesus. I’m not saying he is God or that we should worship him or anything like that. It’s just that there are a lot of parallels between Joseph and Jesus. Both were loved by their fathers. Both were rejected by their brothers. Both were tempted. Both suffered innocently. Both forgave those who hurt them and both were put in glorified positions. There may be more parallels but that’s enough for now.

Why did Joseph forgive his brothers when they did not deserve it? Why didn’t he kill them? Why did he protect them and provide for them and their families? It’s the same reason that God forgives us and protects and provides for us and our families. He loves us. Romans 5:8 says, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

We don’t deserve it. We have all proven over and over again that we don’t deserve His grace or His mercy or His forgiveness, let alone His generosity and favor. But He loves us and that is how people will know that we are followers of Jesus when we act like Him and love others.  Jesus said Himself in John 13:35, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." How do you prove you love somebody? Is it love when you love the folks that are lovely? No. You prove your love by loving and forgiving and protecting and providing for them when they are the most unlovely. We know that’s what God does and we know God and are His followers so now we have to act like Him.

For those of you that are true Christians, who is God calling you to love today? Who is He telling you to forgive or protect or provide for? Now, for those of you that are not true believers, don’t worry. God doesn’t expect you to love like that. You can’t. That is only done through the power of God living inside of you through the Holy Spirit.

Maybe you aren’t a Christian today but you want to be. Maybe you want to be able to love like that. Maybe you want the kind of peace that scripture says is beyond all of our understanding (Philippians 4:7). Maybe you want to know God and live forever with Him in Heaven for eternity instead being alone in Hell. All you have to do is go to Him and honestly say just what Joseph’s brothers said to Him. They said, “We are your slaves.”

Now, let me just tell you that if being a slave to God doesn’t sound like what you want, I understand. But you are going to be a slave to something. That’s just how we were created. You will either be a slave to God or a slave to sin. There are no other choices. Some people think they want just part of God. They want just enough to keep from going to Hell but they don’t really want to give everything they have. They think of Christianity as a nice buffet where they can pick and choose. They want peace here and provision over there and maybe throw in a little worship when it’s convenient but that whole being a slave to God thing is a hard pass.

But it doesn’t work that way. Choose you this day whom you will serve. As for me and my house we will serve the Lord (Joshua 24:15). Give it all to God today. Admit you are a sinner. Ask Him to forgive you and He will. Then allow Him to change your life. It is a process that will take all of your life in every way. Do it right now as the music plays.