Unexpected Blessings and Family Drama: Joseph's Tale

Show Notes

Episode 439: 
In this episode, Jeff and Wesley dive into Genesis 42, reflecting on the themes of forgiveness, redemption, and divine providence in Joseph's story. They highlight Joseph's moral integrity and his unwavering faith in God despite the hardships he faced. Wesley draws a parallel between the returned money in the brothers' sacks and the concept of tithing, emphasizing that God seeks our hearts, not our material possessions.

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You're listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun, in practical ways. Wesley, we are back. Yes, and man, we are so excited to be here today for another episode of The Bible Guys. And so I'm Jeff Forster. I'm one of the co hosts, and this week as my guest co host, I have the formidable Wesley Wood. Yes, that's that's what I have with me. Almost sounded like an abominable snowman. Formidable, formidable. Yeah, the intellect of this man is beyond compare so very very excited about having you today, Wesley. Good to be here. And we have we always have an interesting segments. Yes, and so in this one. What is today's segment? I said, don't have it in front of you. This one is, Oh, this is good. What's the most embarrassing moment you've had while trying to adapt to local customs or traditions while traveling? Oh my goodness, Oh this is good. I have one of these too. Oh go ahead, do that. Well. The one that I can think of is in a couple of them. Because I didn't understand so when my wife and I first got married. We took a cruise. One of the stops in the on the Caribbean cruise was Cosamel. So we get to Cosamel, we get off the boat and there's a restroom. So I'm walking to the restroom, but there's a lady outside and she's holding out her hand for like money. So I'm like, Okay, what is happening right here? I don't understand what this is. And so but then later I realize they don't have kind of like a municipal department where people go out and clean up things. So it was this lady's responsibility to clean that restroom, so you would give her some change. But just with the culture, I just didn't understand, like why is she asking people for money outside the bathroom? This is seems a little shady. I don't know what this what this is. The other one would be in Africa when we went to Togo understanding how waving. So in America we wave a certain way, but depending on how you wave there it means come here. So we have to be told like, hey, watch how you wave, because if you people keep coming up to you, it's because you're telling them to come here. So the way that you're waving. Yeah, yeah, those are funny. The bathroom, the restroom attendants are always it's an odd thing, but they usually are responsible for cleaning. Usually the restrooms that have restroom attendants are cleaner. Yeah. The ones who don't are bombing. Yeah. So let me see so funny things. Because this whole today's talk, your discussion we're gonna have, is about how Joseph's brothers are traveling to Egypt, right, and so she's asking us traveling questions. So I've been in a lot of countries and I do a lot of cross cultural work. Maybe one of the most embarrassing things. I didn't know it at the time. It was afterwards I was really embarrassed about it. We had a meeting in Egypt with the Pope of the Coptic Church. So this is the very important meeting, right. This is the oldest existing church group or denomination in Christian history. So Saint Mark started the Coptic Church or planted the first church in Alexandria, Egypt, two thousand years ago, and so this is the oldest of all of the church denominations. And so here he is, I mean, Pope Tuadros took time to meet with us, and it was a big deal and we were talking about serving orphans and widows in Egypt, so it's an important meeting. I was traveling, thank god, I was traveling with a friend of mine who's the Egyptian, and he kept tapping my foot and just enough, like like forcefully enough that I'd put my foot back down to put my foot on my ankle, my ankle on my knee or something. He'd tapped my foot, I'd put it down, and I just thought it was in his way. He was afraid that I was going to get his pants dirty or something, Right, Yeah, it wasn't. It turns out it's incredibly offensive to show the bottom of your foot to a person like like vulgar, just like slipping the bird to him. Right, And so here I probably did it seven or eight times to the pope where I'm showing a bot put your foot down. So Pope Quadros was very very very gracious, never even acknowledged it, but my Egyptian friend kept saying. So he leave and he said, I'm sorry for hitting your foot, but that's really vulgar. You can't do that. So I was a little embarrassed about that one I've also had multiple times where I got in a situation I just couldn't get out of, where I had to eat some really horrible food. Yeah, and you know, I'm embarrassed because I just can't stop, I have to eat it. Yeah, and I can't figure out how to get out of it. And I know your favorite. Yeah. No, we're not gonna we are not gonna talk about Yeah, don't say those words. It turns my stomach to think about it. But yeah, So that there have been a lot of those kinds of moments. I would say, just about every time I'm overseas somewhere, I wind up stepping in it somewhere some moments. So it's funny. Well, good, Well, today we are continuing with the story of Joseph. And I was looking this up, by the way, So Joseph, I was just in Egypt about a month and a half ago, and I'll be back in Egypt again in just a couple of months, and so on. One of the things we took a day, we had a like a half a day, and we went to the Pyramids and Giza. Again. We were with a friend who had never seen the Pyramids before, and so that's like my third or fourth time to the pyramids, but we took the guy had never been there, and I was with a guide. And you can see from Giza there's a point where you can look down south to what is Sakara. Sakara is near Memphis area, and Sakara was where the original pyramids began to be built, so they were stepped pyramids. And there's a big cemetery there that's about like fifteen miles away, but you can see if it's clear, you can see it. And then there's some other towns that were really really important. And he pointed in a direction and he said, and you know, right over there is where the biblical character Joseph was and they found some storage and some things like that. And he said, I think it's so he's an archaeology expert, and he goes, I think there's a legitimate argument that this may be a part of the storage process for the pharaoh of that time. He said, this would have been probably the twelfth dynasty, very likely. And he said, perhaps the pharaoh Akanatan. There's a couple other Sosser, there's a couple of others that maybe they said, but in his opinion as a quasi archaeologist. He was saying, I think it's it's not far off to say this Twelfth dynasty may have been the time and that Joseph was a part of that famine, because there seemed to have been some kind of a famine during that time. So it was kind of interesting that, hey, a non Christian guy acknowledges this Joseph character. Now I don't know that we have really strong archaeology archaeological evidence of finding Joseph yet, but it was interesting that this guy hadn't had an openness to the idea that Joseph was there, and I hadn't articulated that I was a Christian pastor up until that point, So he wasn't doing it just for my entertainment. He was just mentioning, Hey, as you look that way, that's probably the change. So you know, there are historians that really believe that this is a true story and seems to be consistent with things that we know happened at different times throughout the Egyptian history. And perhaps there's one or two times Dear in Souccer's rain or Dear Knockadatten's rein very easily could have been either one of those so and it's consistent with this about eighteen hundred and eighty something years before Jesus came. So anyways, here we go. We're going to continue to read, and the passage we're reading today is Genesis forty two, and we're going to read one through thirty eight, so basically the whole chapter here. And it says when this famine does hit and then they're starving in Israel or Palestine at that time, and it says when Jacob heard that the grain was available in Egypt, he said to his sons, why are you standing around looking at one another. I've heard there's grain in Egypt. Go down there and buy enough grain to keep us alive, otherwise we'll die. So Joseph's ten older brothers went down to Egypt to buy grain, but Jacob wouldn't let Joseph's younger brother Benjamin go with them for fear some harm might come to him. So Jacob's sons arrived in Egypt along with the others to buy food for the famine was in Canaan as well. Since Joseph was governor of all of Egypt and in charge of selling grain to all the people, it was to him that his brothers came. When they arrived, they bowed before him with their faces to the ground. Joseph recognized his brothers instantly, but he pretended to be a stranger and spoke harshly to them. Where are you from, he demanded, From the land of Canaan. They replied, we have come to buy food. Although Joseph recognized his brothers, they didn't recognize him, and he remembered the dreams he'd had about them many years before. He said to them, you are spies. You've come to see how vulnerable our land has become. No, my lord, they exclaimed, your servants have simply come to buy food. We are all brothers, members of the same family. We're honest men, Sir, We're not spies. Yes you are. Joseph insisted, you've come to see how vulnerable our land has become. Sir, they said, there are actually twelve of us. We your servants, are all brothers, sons of a man living in the land of Canaan. Our youngest brother is back there with our father right now, and one of our brothers is no longer with us. But Joseph insisted, as I said, you are spies. This is how I will test your story. I swear by the life of Pharaoh that you will never leave Egypt unless your younger brother comes here. One of you must go and get your brother. I'll keep the rest of you here in prison, and then we'll find out whether or not your story is true by the life of Pharaoh. If it turns out that you don't have a younger brother, then I'll know your spies. So Joseph put them all in prison for three days. On the third day, Joseph said to them, I am a god fearing man. If you do as I say, you will live. If you really are honest, men, choose one of your brothers to remain in prison. The rest of you may go home with grain for your starving families, but you must bring your youngest brother back to me. This will prove that you are telling the truth, and you will not die. To this, they agreed. Speaking among themselves, they said, clearly, we're being punished because of what we did to Joseph long ago. We saw his anguish when he pleaded for his life, but we wouldn't listen, and that's why we're in this trouble. Didn't I tell you not? The sin against the boy asked, but you wouldn't listen. Then, now we've to answer for his blood. Of course, they didn't know that Joseph understood them, for he had been speaking to them through an interpreter. Now he turned away from them and began to weep, And when he regained his composure, he spoke to them again. And then he chose Simeon from among them and had him tied up right before their eyes. Joseph then ordered his service to fill the men's sacks with grain, but he also gave secret instructions to return each other's each brother's payment at the top of his stack his sack. He also gave them supplies for their journey home. So the brothers loaded their donkeys with the grain and headed for home. But when they stopped for the night, one of them opened his sack to get grain for his donkey. He found his money on the top of sack. Look, he exclaimed, his brothers, my money's been returned. It's here in my sack. And then their hearts sank trembling. They said to each other, what has God done to us? When the brothers came to their father Jacob and the land of Canaan, they told him everything that had happened to them. The man who is governor of the land spoke very harshly to us. They told him. He accused us of being spies scouted out the land. But we said, we're honest men, not spies. We're twelve brothers, sons of one father. One brother is no longer with us, and the youngest is at home with our father in land of Canaan. Then the man whose governor of the land, told us, this is how I will find out if you're honest men. Leave one of your brothers with me here and take grain for your starving families and go on home. But you must bring your youngest brother back to me, and then I will show you. Then I will know you are honest men and not spies, and then I will give you back your brother. You may trade freely in the land. As they emptied out their sacks there, and each man's sack was the bag of money he had paid for the grain. The brothers and their father were terrified when they saw the bags of money. Jacob explained, you are robbing me and my children. Joseph is gone, Simon is gone, and now you want to take Benjamin too. Everything is going against me. Then Reuben said to his father, you may kill my two sons if I don't bring Benjamin back to you. I'll be responsible for him, and I promise to bring him back. But Jacob replied, my son will not go down with you. His brother Joseph is dead and he is all I have left. Should happen to him on your journey, you would send this grieving, white haired man to his grave. So there we go. Yeah, I think it's hilarious how Joseph doesn't disclose who he is. I love that story. I realized that the brothers they immediately fell down to bow before him, so they didn't recognize and they haven't seen him in years, so they're certainly not expecting to see him in this situation. So it makes sense how they don't recognize initially that it is him, and then he's speaking through an interpreter also, so it all makes sense why they were a little confused. But how he kept stringing them along little by little, it was just hilarious to me. Well, the Bible had also shown earlier that the Pharaoh put fancy robes on him put gold on him. Very likely he adopted the image and the look of the House of Pharaoh, which would have been a painted face, it would have been fancy headgear. He would have looked very, very, very different. And then he's a full grown man at this point, right, so there's there's that element too, as opposed to being a teenage boy. And they just so he's speaking harshly through an interpreter because he ain't in their chain. They just don't know. But I think it's super interesting. This is his opportunity to punish his brothers, right, you know, he had the power hinge time. He could have been he could have killed all his brothers and gone and rescued his dad, right and the rest of the household, but he didn't. Instead, here he still is a guy who loves his family. He wants the all the children and the you know, the their extended family. He wants him to live. So he finds a solution and he sends them all back. Go back, take the food now. Don't wait, take the food now, save your families. Just bring my little brother back. It's interesting, you know, because he hadn't met Benjamin yet. Benjamin was born after he was sold into slavery, and so he wants to meet this brother of his. He's still a family guy. There's something ab yeah, in verse twenty seven when it says, but when they stopped for the night and one of them open his sack to get grain for his donkey, he found his money in the top of his sack. So essentially the money that they were using to buy the grain was given back to them. And when I first read that, Jeff, I thought about our interaction with God in the sense that God doesn't need our money. You know how sometimes people are hung up with giving tides and offerings and different things like that. God isn't after your money. God's after your heart. He has no need for God's a spirit. What does he need with your twenty dollars bill, You know what I mean? He he in his infinite wisdom in eternity. He doesn't need what you have here or earth. That's exactly correct. So I kind of looked at that with this, how what they were going to give was return back to them, because it was almost kind of like a heart issue. The same way, how when we give money to God, he really doesn't need our money. That's not why God is having you tied. Your tithe is to show that God ranks first place in your life. It's not about the money. So I just kind of thought about that. It's kind of like a comparison, a metaphor whatever you want to call that, and how God really doesn't need what we have, right, yeah, and it was given back to them. Yeah, so instead we have to think of when we bring our tithes and offerings to God. Partly the idea of a tithe is it's rent for living on the planet. That's really God said, Hey, I gave you one hundred percent, I want you to bring ten percent back. But Jesus said that where your treasure is, that's where your heart is. And so it's not about what God needs as far as money, it's about where the heart is. And you can kind of see the heart of Joseph in this time and the heart of his brothers. His brothers say, hey, we're trying to be good guys. We're not going to be bad guys. We want to be good guys now. And Reuben can't help but say, I told you so. Yeah, right, I'm the one who didn't want to do this. I told you so. And here they are. You know, this is somewhere between thirteen and fifteen years after. I think, you know, the belief is or maybe even the Bible states that Joseph was seventeen when he was sold away, But so this is like thirteen years later. Fourteen years later. Well he adds seven years to when he became the leader, right, so he'd be thirty seven, So this is more than thirteen years. But anyways, he Joseph is seeing this family issue and he's not exposing I think he hasn't even figured out what he's going to do yet. But he immediately dismisses, I'm not going to be violent against them, yeah, but I'm going to put the fear of God in on it. So he puts them in prison, he threatens to ruin their lives, and then finally he's like, okay, I'm just going to keep Simeon back and the rest of you guys have to go. And so Simeon stays in jail and the rest of them go home and get Dad and say, hey, you know what do we do? Yeah, there's the money is in the bag and the risk of that we're all dying. Now, Yeah, that's what's going to happen. The way that Joseph is kind of it's not revenge, I don't think, but there's definitely consequences yeah, to how they had treated him. I think it's kind of a funny, funny thing. And with the brothers, going back to verse twenty seven, I think about also the idea of when God blesses you when you don't deserve it. And I can think of times in my life where God blessed me and I clearly did not deserve it. Yeah, I think of one in particular. So no one judged me when I tell this story. But in high school I got into a fight in English class and it was a knockdown. Well I felt justified, Pastor Jeff, you probably were, well. He the guy wrote my name next to it was a picture in a National geographic book, and he wrote my mom's name next to it. Oh no, the fight for you, Leslie. The fight was on. Good for you. But here's the thing. So I went to a private high school, and you know they have zero tolerance for fighting. You get kicked out. My English teacher, I'll never forget her, suddenly got a lot of amnesia about because she knew what was going to happen, got amnesia about who threw the first punch and all of that stuff. So she saved us. Had she not gotten amnesia, so to speak, we would have probably been permanently kicked out, you know, would have changed the trajectya would have changed my trajectory of my life. So that was definitely a time where God bless me and I did not deserve it. Well, hey, you you were protecting your mother's integrity, So buddy, that's uh. My dad was not happy. It was like, that's the dumbest thing I've ever seen. You got into a fight over a picture. Yeah. Yeah, well so that night I would have paid money to see that fight show. That's a yeah. So then there's another one too. I think it's really phenomenal because the Bible highlights effect that he remembered the dreams that he had, right that God did fulfill after all that time. Yea, how hard it was, how all the struggles that he had. He was lonely in a land where he didn't speak the language, He was abused, he was a slave, He was then elevated, he had opportunity, and then he was lied about, and his reputation was you know, ruined, and then he's in prison and he doesn't give up he keeps serving, and then he's elevated inside the prison, and then he's forgotten. Somebody makes promises and they break their promises. It was years later that he finally gets an opportunity to get before the Pharaoh. And then at that point, all those times, he just kept serving God, he kept doing the right thing. He was moral and understanding. You know, I can't control the circumstances in my life, but I can control my responses to them, and I can control how I make my choices. I can't control what happens to me, but I can decide I'm going to be a great person anyways. And that's what happened, is that Joseph was ready when God gave him the opportunity. And a lot of people think, you know, oh, I'll be ready when gives an opportunity, but they're not doing anything to prepare. Joseph was leading, Joseph was walking with God. Joseph was doing, and he was developing his skills so that he really was ready when he led a household and the household thrived, preparing, storing up food, all those kinds of things. He led a prison situation and the prison thrived. He learned how to lead difficult people. And then now all these things he developed, all these skills, and so when God gave me up to and he was ready, and then God then has his brothers come and they do bout out the him. And maybe that's why certain things don't come into our lives because we're not ready. Yeah. Yeah, And then we're constantly asking God, God, why why why is it taking so long? And I could imagine the angel scratching their head, like you haven't done anything. I just had a young guy ask me recently, say, hey, I'm really praying about maybe ministry might be I feel like God's calling me to this. Yeh, I'm not sure what should I do? I said, prepare, just prepare. You know. Was it Yogi Barra that used to say, I find the more prepared I am, the luckier I get. Yeah, and there's something so just prepare, prepare, prepare, prepare, and it might take four years, it might take you know. I crammed four years into six and graduated in eight. That's what I did, right, And and so there's something too that just prepare, keep preparing, keep preparing, and then see if God doesn't open the doors at the right time. And God did fulfill the dream he placed in Joseph years and years and years later, certainly not on the path Joseph would have Joseph, but God did fulfill his promise and fulfill that dream. So don't give up and keep preparing. And well, tomorrow we're going to wrap up, I think, this story of Joseph, and we're going to get through a lot more of it anyway. So we look forward to joining you again on the Bible. Guys,