Latest / Reformed Thinking / Providence, Testing, and the Awakening of Guilty Consciences (Genesis 42:8-17)

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Providence, Testing, and the Awakening of Guilty Consciences (Genesis 42:8-17) · Reformed Thinking

• 0:00
  You know, there's a there's this distinct psychological
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  phenomenon that happens when you bury something you're ashamed
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  of. Oh yeah, like the raw panic of
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  just hiding the evidence. Right.
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  Do you smooth over the dirt? You walk away and you're just
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  constantly looking over your shoulder.
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  Terrified that someone saw you? Yeah, but then, you know, the
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  days turn into months and months stretch into years.
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  A terrifying kind of comfort sets in.
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  Precisely. You start to believe the dirt is
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  permanent. You know, like the weather will
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  never change, the ground's never going to wash away.
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  You think the thing you buried is just gone forever.
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  It's a universal human delusion, really.
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  It totally is. We mistake the passage of time
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  for divine amnesty. We assume that well, because the
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  skies have remained silent for a decade or two.
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  The judge has closed the case. We think the statute of
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  limitations just sort of expired on our guilt, right?
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  But then a storm comes. The topsoil washes away, and
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  suddenly you're staring right at the very thing you thought was
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  erased. It's a terrifying moment.
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  Welcome to Reformed Thinking. I am so thrilled to have you,
• 1:03
  our listener, joining us today for this deep dive.
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  We're so glad you're here. Today, we're looking at what
• 1:08
  happens when that topsoil washes away our grounding.
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  Source material is an extensive theological examination of
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  Genesis Chapter 42. Specifically verses 8 through
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  17. Right.
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  We're dropping right into one of the most dramatic, tension
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  filled reunions in all of recorded history.
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  Oh, without a doubt. We're looking at Joseph, who is
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  now this exalted Egyptian ruler coming face to face with the 10
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  brothers who sold him into slavery 20 long years prior.
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  And they have absolutely no idea who he is.
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  None staring at the very storm that's about to wash away their
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  20 years of carefully manicured topsoil.
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  I mean, they think they're just dealing with an agricultural
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  crisis. Right, but they're actually
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  walking into a divine ambush. So the mission for today's deep
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  dive is pretty specific. We're going to investigate how
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  sovereign Providence uses severe ordinary circumstances.
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  Things like a regional famine. Yeah, a famine, A harsh
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  accusation, a locked door. How God uses those things to
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  awaken dead consciences and bring hidden sins screaming into
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  the light. It's a heavy topic.
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  It really is. OK, let's unpack this.
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  Before we get into the heavy theology of guilt and grace, I
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  want to hand the floor over to establish the historical
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  baseline of this text. Yeah, it's crucial.
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  Because to really grasp what's happening here, we have to
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  understand the literal dirt they were walking on and the
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  geopolitical reality of the ancient Near East well.
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  To interpret this historical moment with any precision, we've
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  got to set the scene properly. It's been over 2 decades since
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  the brothers grabbed Joseph. I mean, think about what
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  happened that day. It was.
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  Brutal. They completely ignored his
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  desperate cries for mercy, stripped him of his coat, threw
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  him into a dry, terrifying pit. And then literally sat down to
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  eat a meal while he screamed for help.
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  Yeah, then they sold him to Midianite traders for 20 pieces
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  of silver. Which was the going rate for a
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  young male slave in that era, Yeah.
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  Spot on. It was just a business
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  transaction to them. And for 20 years, they've
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  watched their father Jacob mourn inconsolably over a blood
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  stained tunic. The tunic that they themselves
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  dipped in goat's blood. Right.
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  So for 20 years they've lived a calculated lie.
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  Every single family dinner, every holiday, every time Jacob
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  wept, they had to just look at each other and keep the secret.
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  They ate, they drank, they marry, they raised children, all
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  with this fratricidal secret locked in their chests.
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  Suffocating to even think about. It is.
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  And before we discuss the theological weight of their
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  guilt, we've got to acknowledge the psychological reality of
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  this. Yeah, let's talk about that.
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  I was looking through the sources, and they cite the
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  Cornell Family Reconciliation Project.
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  The data there is staggering. It reveals that over 27% of
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  adult Americans report being actively estranged from a family
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  member. Over 1/4 of the population,
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  yeah, that's as a massive statistic.
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  I mean, it makes you think about how common this kind of fracture
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  actually is today. It really highlights a
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  sociological epidemic, the human element of this biblical text
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  family betrayal, the silent treatment, the festering wounds
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  of estrangement. And that illusion that time
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  heals all things. Right.
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  It's a universal reality. People cut off their siblings,
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  they ignore their parents, and they convince themselves that
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  they can just move on and live a healthy life.
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  But in the economy of a holy God, geography and decades do
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  not outlast divine justice. Absolutely not.
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  God initiates the confrontation. He doesn't let them sleep
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  forever in their dysfunction. And he initiates this
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  confrontation through a catastrophic 7 year global
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  famine. Which is huge.
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  Yeah, we hear the word famine and we tend to think of maybe a
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  recession or supply chain issues at the grocery store.
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  The bad Arvest season, right? But we have to scale this up.
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  Way up. This was not a minor economic
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  downturn in the ancient world. A famine of this magnitude was
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  an apocalyptic event. Wow.
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  Canaan, where the brothers lived, was entirely dependent on
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  seasonal rains. If you look at Deuteronomy 11,
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  the text describes the land of Canaan as a place that drinks
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  water from the rain of heaven. So it's totally reliant on the
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  early and latter rains. Right when those rains failed,
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  the pastoral and agricultural life of the patriarchs faced
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  immediate catastrophic starvation.
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  Their herds would die. Their children would starve.
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  I mean absolutely, but Egypt was a completely different.
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  Story Yeah, Egypt didn't rely on rain in the same way, did it?
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  No, Egypt relied on the predictable annual inundation of
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  the Nile River. Every year the river would flood
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  its banks, depositing nutrient dense silt across the
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  floodplains. Which made Egypt the bread
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  basket of the ancient world. Precisely even when the region
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  experienced drought, the Nile usually provided.
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  But in this specific historical instance, the famine was so
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  severe that even the Nile's normal patterns were disrupted.
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  Which is why Joseph had to stir grain for seven years prior,
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  right? Right.
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  But the surrounding nations knew that if there was food anywhere,
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  it was in the storehouses of Egypt.
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  So the brothers are essentially forced by physical starvation to
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  travel to Egypt to buy grain. Yeah, but crossing that border
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  wasn't like driving across state lines today.
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  Not at all. What was the historical reality
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  of the Egyptian border that made this trip so terrifying for a
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  group of men from Canaan? Well, Egypt's eastern border
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  touching the Sinai Peninsula was highly vulnerable to nomadic
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  invasions and Asiatic incursions.
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  OK. So they were defensive.
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  Very To defend themselves, the Egyptians built a massive,
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  highly militarized network of fortresses.
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  Wow. Historically, this was known as
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  the Walls of the Ruler or the Way of Horus.
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  That sounds intimidating. It was a string of military
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  garrisons, watchtowers and checkpoints.
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  So when Joseph, acting as the supreme governor, accuses them
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  of being spies who have come to see the exposed weaknesses of
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  the land. He is not throwing out a random
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  petty insult. This was a deadly legal threat.
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  He's hitting them with the Patriot Act of the ancient
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  world. Spot on.
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  Crossing that border as a group of foreign men brought intense
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  military scrutiny. I can imagine.
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  Espionage in that context carried the penalty of immediate
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  execution or lifelong enslavement in the Egyptian
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  mines. OK, so to put this into a modern
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  perspective for you listening, imagine you've committed a
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  terrible crime in your youth, right?
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  You rob a bank or hurt someone and you think you got away with
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  it. You're in the clear.
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  Decades later, your hometown dries up, the economy collapses.
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  You lose everything. You are forced to cross the
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  border into a highly aggressive foreign superpower just to get
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  food for your kids. Yeah, you walk into the highest
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  security border checkpoint in the world.
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  You hand your passports to the lead military interrogator.
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  A man with absolute authority to execute you on the spot without
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  a trial. Yes, and you're totally unaware
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  that the man holding your passports, the man scrutinizing
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  your faces, is the very person you victimized 20 years ago.
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  The psychological tension is suffocating.
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  It really is. It's a sovereign trap.
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  God built the trap. Wow.
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  And this brings us to a crucial theological extrapolation from
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  the sources. God affirmatively decreed this
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  famine. OK, let's unpack that.
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  He orchestrated the international geopolitics, the
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  shifting weather patterns and the rise of the Egyptian
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  agricultural administration. He didn't just passively foresee
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  that a famine might happen and react to it.
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  No, he caused it. Hold on, I want to clarify this
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  because it the sources bring up some heavy theological terms
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  here, right? They mentioned that this
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  completely rejects systems of thought like open theism and
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  Arminianism. It does for anyone who hasn't
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  been in a seminary class from recently.
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  What are those systems and why does this story dismantle them?
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  Well, open theism is a theological view which claims
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  God does not know the future free acts of men.
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  It paints God as a cosmic chess player who is really smart and
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  anticipating moves, but who is genuinely reacting in real time
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  to what humans decide to do. So he learns as history unfolds.
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  Right. And Arminianism is a broader
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  system which, while affirming God's foreknowledge, suggests
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  God's sovereign decrees are somehow conditioned or
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  restricted by human free will. Interesting.
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  It suggests God looks down the corridor of time, sees what
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  humans will choose and then bases his plans on their
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  choices. So those views make God out to
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  be a cosmic spectator or a really good contingency planner.
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  Just hoping things work out for the best.
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  But the text of Genesis destroys that notion.
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  Also, God meticulously decreed the drought in Canaan, the exact
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  administrative rise of Joseph in Egypt, and the political border
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  security policies, All of it. All of it to drive this chosen
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  family out of Canaan. History isn't a series of random
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  accidents that God frantically tries to redeem.
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  History is the unfolding script of His eternal decree.
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  But why use a massive famine to move them?
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  I mean, why not just tell Jacob in a dream to pack up and move
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  to Egypt? That's a great question.
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  It was to get them away from the corrupting cultural influences
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  of the Canaanites. Oh, I see.
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  If you read the preceding chapters, specifically Genesis
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  38, you see the life of Judah. Right, that's a rough chapter.
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  Very he's intermarrying with Canaanites, engaging with temple
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  prostitutes, and his family line is being utterly corrupted.
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  The chosen family was on the brink of complete assimilation
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  into the Pagan culture around them.
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  Yes, God used the famine to surgically extract them from
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  Canaan and bring them into the isolated incubator of Egypt.
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  Because the Egyptians despise shepherds.
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  Right. Precisely so they would give the
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  Israelites the land of Goshen, keeping them segregated and
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  allowing them to multiply into a nation without losing their
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  distinct identity. Every single detail was managed
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  from eternity past to preserve the messianic line.
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  That is incredible. The famine was a severe mercy on
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  a national scale. It really was.
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  So with that geopolitical trap firmly established, the
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  narrative zooms in. Right into the room.
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  Yeah, we move from the macro level of global weather patterns
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  down into the micro level of this intense courtroom
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  interrogation. And the entire scene hinges on a
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  massive asymmetry of knowledge. Genesis 42 verse 8 states it
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  plainly. Joseph recognizes his brothers,
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  but they do not recognize him. The Hebrew linguistics operating
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  behind the scenes here are breathtaking.
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  Oh, do tell. The text says Joseph recognized
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  them. The root verb used is nakar.
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  OK, Nakar. But in the verse right before
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  this verse 7, the text uses the hit pale stem of that exact same
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  root, Yitnaker. OK, stop right there.
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  What is a hip pale stem? And why should a modern reader
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  care about ancient Hebrew grammar?
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  Fair question. In Hebrew, verbs have different
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  stems that change their function.
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  Active, passive, intensive, reflexive, and so on, right?
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  The hip pale stem often conveys A reflexive or a pretending
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  action. Oh, so yet Necker means Joseph
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  deliberately made himself unrecognizable or treated them
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  like strangers? So he recognized them intimately
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  with the root verb knacker, but he consciously, reflexively
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  chose to veil his identity from them with the hip pale stem.
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  Yes, he had to work at it. I mean, he could have easily
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  slept and spoken Hebrew to them. He could have reacted
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  emotionally when he saw Benjamin wasn't there.
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  But he doesn't. No, He uses an interpreter.
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  He wears the Egyptian regalia. He acts the part of the harsh
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  foreign governor Florida State. And the theological reality
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  embedded in that linguistic choice is staggering.
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  What's the take away there? The Lord knows His own perfectly
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  and intimately. He knows our names, our CIS, our
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  past and our future, right? Yet there are seasons where He
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  sovereignly hides His face from us for the purpose of
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  discipline. The brothers are oblivious to
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  who they're talking to, but they're fully known by the
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  judge, yes. Then verse 9 tells us that
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  Joseph remembers the dreams he had about them 20 years prior.
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  These are the dreams from back in Genesis 37.
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  Right, that's the one. The ones where their sheaves of
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  grain bowed down to his sheaf, and the sun, moon and stars
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  bowed down to him. The dreams that made them so
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  angry they wanted to murder him. Yeah, and the Hebrew word for a
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  remember here is Zakhar. We have to be very careful not
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  to read our modern Western definition of memory into this
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  ancient text. Right, because when we say we
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  remember something, it's usually just cognitive recall.
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  Yeah, casually saying oh right, I had a weird dream about wheat
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  once. Right, like remembering where
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  you left your keys. Precisely.
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  But in the biblical framework, Zakhar signifies much more than
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  until activity. What does it mean?
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  It means acting upon a prior covenant or upon infallible
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  divine revelation. When God remembers Noah in the
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  ark, he isn't suddenly recalling that he left a boat on the
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  water. No, he's moving to fulfill his
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  promise, Yes. When Joseph experiences Zakhar,
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  he recognizes that the Providence of God has brought
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  the infallible Word of God to life right in front of his eyes.
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  The dreams of Genesis 37 were the very word of.
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  God and the physical reality of His brothers bowing before Him
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  is the undeniable validation of that word.
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  Here's where it gets really interesting.
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  If Joseph recognizes them, and if he realizes God is actively
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  fulfilling those prophetic dreams in real time, why the
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  mask? Yeah, what's Hitch's question?
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  Why the harsh just got? Why doesn't he just burst into
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  tears right then drop the Egyptian act and say, guys, look
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  at what God did. The dreams were true.
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  I forgive you. Let's go get Dad.
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  Right, it would be the easy way out.
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  Instead, he levels this terrifying accusation at them.
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  He calls them spies. He says they are looking for the
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  nakedness of the land. The Hebrew word there is
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  airwatt. Why use that specific aggressive
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  charge? What's fascinating here is that
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  Joseph's accusation operates on 2 completely different levels
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  simultaneously. OK, break that down.
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  On the administrative level, as we discussed with the border
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  security, it's a standard national security concern.
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  It's plausible. But on the spiritual level, the
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  word erawa implies shameful illicit exposure.
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  It's the same word used extensively in Leviticus 18
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  regarding shameful sexual uncovering.
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  It denotes vulnerability and moral shame.
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  So Joseph is acting as the governor, guarding the physical
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  borders of Egypt, but providentially he's actually
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  targeting the exposed, vulnerable, saintful places in
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  their souls. He is forcing them onto the
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  defense and. He's cornering them, yes.
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  He's backing them into a wall where they have to account for
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  themselves. He's cornering them because the
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  unregenerate human is totally blind to their impending doom.
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  Look at the brothers. They're breeding God's air,
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  eating the food God grew, and standing absolutely oblivious
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  before the very one they wronged.
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  They think their biggest problem in life is a lack of wheat.
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  They think if they just get some grain everything will be fine.
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  They do not realize their biggest problem is the wrath of
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  God against their hidden sin. Wow.
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  I love how Charles Spurgeon summarized this dynamic.
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  He said the conscience of man is the detective of the Almighty.
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  That is a phenomenal quote. God is using Joseph's disguised
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  harshness to turn the detective of their own conscience loose
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  upon their souls. God will use the external
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  pressures of life to force us to look inward at the rock we've
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  ignored. Yes, the detective of the
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  Almighty. So, pressed by this terrifying
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  threat of execution for espionage, the brothers panic.
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  Understandably. The detective is knocking on the
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  door. They mount a frantic defense in
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  verses 10 through 13. They use their family history as
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  their alibi. Right, they say to the governor,
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  we are 12 brothers, the sons of one man in the land of Canaan,
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  and behold, the youngest is this day with our father, and one is
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  no more. And the absolute climax of their
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  defense, the banner they wave to prove they aren't foreign spies,
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  is this phrase. We are honest men.
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  I have to laugh at the absolute nerve of these guys I know.
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  Just honest, upright guys. Model citizens, right?
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  Aside from the whole throwing our brother in a pit, faking his
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  death, covering a coat in animal blood and lying to our grieving
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  father for two solid decades thing.
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  Other than that, totally upright.
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  Let the sheer audacity of that statement settle over you for a
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  moment. They claim to be honest men.
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  The Hebrew word they use is kenem, which translates to
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  upright, true, righteous, or reliable.
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  It's the absolute pinnacle of human self deception.
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  It is sinners will commit the most heinous atrocities, bury
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  the evidence, wipe their mouths, and then confidently stand
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  before the bar of justice, look the judge in the eye and declare
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  we are upright men. It reveals how much sin blinds
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  us to our own condition. We judge ourselves by our
• 17:49
  current respectable appearance, completely ignoring the
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  skeletons in our closets. It's incredible how fallen
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  people constantly hide behind partial truths.
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  Look at how they phrase the reality of Joseph's absence to
• 18:00
  this governor. They don't say what happened.
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  No, they say 1 is no more. It is such a calculated,
• 18:06
  sterilized string of words. It is technically accurate, but
• 18:09
  it is morally hollow. Right.
• 18:12
  It states the objective fact of his absence, but it completely
• 18:16
  omits their culpability. Yeah, I think about this like a
• 18:19
  modern corporate executive who gets caught cooking the books
• 18:22
  for millions of dollars. Oh, that's a good analogy.
• 18:24
  The auditors come in, the board of directors demands answers,
• 18:28
  and the executive sits there in a nice suit and says, well,
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  mistakes were made in the accounting department, funds
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  were misallocated. Using the passive voice.
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  Exactly. They don't say I embezzled the
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  funds. I stole the money to buy a boat.
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  They confess the circumstance while completely concealing
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  their actual guilty. We do this all the time.
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  This raises an important question about the nature of
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  true repentance. How so?
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  Well, the brothers constructed an evasive monument over an
• 18:54
  unconfessed grave. They said he is no more.
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  Instead of saying we sold him into slavery, they.
• 19:00
  Spoke of the consequence of their sin while hiding the cause
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  of it. And we have to understand
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  something fundamental about human psychology and theology.
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  Unconfessed sin doesn't rot quietly in a sealed room of your
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  mind. No, it leaks.
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  It leaks poison into your entire life, it poisons your
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  relationships, it corrupts your worship, it deadens your soul,
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  and it makes you paranoid. True repentance requires naming
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  the sin the way God names it. You cannot use passive language.
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  You cannot take a defensive posture.
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  You cannot build evasive monuments.
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  Until you drop the facade of being an honest man, the
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  detective of the Almighty will continue to hunt you down.
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  It will. And because their words are
• 19:41
  evasive, because they're still clinging to this false narrative
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  of their own integrity and hiding behind he is no more,
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  Joseph realizes a simple conversation is not going to
• 19:51
  break them. The topsoil is still too thick.
• 19:53
  The pressure has to escalate. Severe action is required.
• 19:57
  We see this escalation in verses 14 through 17.
• 20:00
  Joseph rejects their flimsy defense outright.
• 20:03
  He swears by the life of Pharaoh, leaning fully into his
• 20:06
  concealed Egyptian identity to terrify them.
• 20:09
  And he demands they bring their youngest brother, Benjamin down
• 20:11
  to Egypt to prove their words. And then he takes physical
• 20:15
  action. He throws all of them into the
• 20:17
  Egyptian guard house, the Mishmar, for three days.
• 20:21
  This specific action is a magnificent display of lex
• 20:25
  talionis. OK, Lex Talionis.
• 20:27
  The biblical law of retaliation. An eye for an eye, A tooth for a
• 20:31
  tooth, right? This is a recurring theme in
• 20:33
  biblical justice, where the punishment mirrors the crime.
• 20:37
  Think about what happened 20 years ago.
• 20:38
  They overpowered Joseph. Stripped him of his autonomy.
• 20:42
  And threw him into a helpless pit where he couldn't escape.
• 20:45
  Now the Providence of God strips them of their autonomy and
• 20:49
  throws them into a helpless pit where they cannot escape.
• 20:52
  Wow. The men who ruthlessly
• 20:54
  controlled Jason's fate suddenly find their own fate controlled
• 20:57
  by a power they cannot comprehend or negotiate with.
• 21:01
  They can't buy grain, they can't go home to their families, they
• 21:03
  can't explain themselves out of it.
• 21:05
  They are forced to sit in the dark, cold cell of a foreign
• 21:09
  prison and look at their own souls.
• 21:11
  That three day confinement must have been agonizing, just
• 21:14
  sitting in the dark wondering which one he's going to be
• 21:16
  executed. Absolutely.
• 21:18
  And you know, I was looking at the notes on the section and
• 21:20
  there is a really strong critique of modern sentimental
• 21:23
  theology here. Yeah, let's talk about that.
• 21:26
  The kind of seeker sensitive mindset that looks at this text
• 21:29
  and thinks, wow, Joseph is being incredibly vindictive.
• 21:32
  He's being mean. He should take the High Road
• 21:36
  immediately, reveal himself, give them a tearful hug, and
• 21:39
  just let bygones be bygones. God is love, right?
• 21:42
  Right, that's a common modern reaction.
• 21:44
  But wait, isn't 3 days in solitary confinement just cruel
• 21:47
  trauma? I mean, if someone did that to
• 21:50
  me to test me, I wouldn't call it severe mercy, I'd call it
• 21:53
  abuse. Sure.
• 21:55
  How do we justify Joseph's actions here?
• 21:58
  Is biblical love really this harsh?
• 22:01
  We'd justify it by understanding that biblical love is not a
• 22:04
  soft, squishy sentimentality. OK, if Joseph had immediately
• 22:08
  revealed himself when they walked in, what would have
• 22:10
  happened? Well, they probably would have
• 22:12
  freaked out. Their fear of his authority
• 22:14
  would have produced flattery, not truth.
• 22:17
  Oh, that makes. Sense they would have groveled
• 22:19
  at his feet to save their own lives.
• 22:20
  They would have said whatever he wanted to hear, but their hearts
• 22:22
  wouldn't have changed. It would still be the same men
• 22:24
  who sold their brother. Yes, Joseph wounds them in order
• 22:29
  to heal them. He demands Benjamin because he
• 22:31
  must test them. He needs to know if they've
• 22:34
  changed. He needs to know, are these the
• 22:36
  same ruthless, jealous men who will sacrifice Rachel's other
• 22:40
  favorite son to save their own skin, just like they sacrificed
• 22:44
  me? He doesn't accept a cheap,
• 22:45
  superficial grace. True reconciliation requires a
• 22:49
  foundation of truth. So what does this all mean for
• 22:52
  us today? It clarifies that forgiveness in
• 22:54
  the heart does not eliminate the need for truth, prudence,
• 22:58
  accountability, and evidence of genuine repentance.
• 23:01
  That's vital. Joseph has clearly forgiven them
• 23:03
  in his heart. He's isn't seeking petty
• 23:05
  revenge. He weeps privately later in the
• 23:07
  story, but he still requires A reckoning with the truth before
• 23:11
  he can restore the relationship, right?
• 23:12
  How should a listener apply this when they are dealing with
• 23:15
  severe trials in their own life? It's a good question.
• 23:18
  How do we differentiate between just a random frustrating
• 23:21
  hardship like getting a flat tire and the severe mercy of God
• 23:25
  pressing on our conscience? The believer must understand
• 23:27
  that God actively orchestrates the circumstances of our lives
• 23:31
  for sanctification. OK, when you face sudden
• 23:35
  crushing financial pressure, a sudden relational breakdown, a
• 23:39
  locked door that you desperately want open, or a confinement you
• 23:43
  cannot escape like the brothers in the Mishmar.
• 23:45
  You have to pay attention. You must first ask if the Lord
• 23:48
  is cornering you. He orchestrates these trials to
• 23:51
  force us to to deal with the sins we sweep under the rug.
• 23:54
  He brings the famine to awaken the lethargic conscience.
• 23:57
  Yes, when the pressure mounts, the worst thing you can do is
• 24:02
  harden your heart and claim you're an honest person.
• 24:04
  You must let the pressure do its divine work.
• 24:07
  You must let it break your pride.
• 24:09
  God will lock you in a room of circumstances until you are
• 24:12
  ready to tell the truth. Taking a step back from the
• 24:14
  immediate narrative of this Egyptian courtroom, we really
• 24:17
  have to look at the original target audience of this book.
• 24:20
  Context is everything. We're reading it thousands of
• 24:22
  years later, but how did the original recipients of this text
• 24:26
  hear this terrifying account? Moses penned this narrative for
• 24:31
  the Israelites who were wandering in the desolate
• 24:33
  wilderness of the Sinai Peninsula.
• 24:35
  Yes, and I think it is vital we explicitly reject the liberal
• 24:39
  documentary hypothesis here. I need you to pause.
• 24:42
  Yeah, we mentioned the JEDP theory or the documentary
• 24:45
  hypothesis in the prep for this, right?
• 24:47
  For anyone not familiar with critical Old Testament
• 24:50
  scholarship, what is the GEDP theory and why does it try to
• 24:54
  chop up the book of Genesis? Well, the JEDP theory was
• 24:57
  popularized by critical scholars like Julius Welhausen in the
• 25:01
  19th century. OK, it argues that Moses did not
• 25:04
  write the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible.
• 25:06
  So who do they think wrote it? Instead, it claims these books
• 25:10
  are a patchwork quilt of different, often contradictory,
• 25:13
  source documents written centuries later by various
• 25:16
  authors. Identified by letters, right?
• 25:18
  Yeah, J for the Yahweh source, E for Elohist, D for
• 25:21
  Deuteronomist, and P for Priestly.
• 25:24
  So it attempts to strip the text of its divine inspiration and
• 25:27
  reduce it to a chaotic human anthology.
• 25:30
  It basically says the Bible is just a messy compilation of
• 25:33
  ancient folklore edited together by a committee.
• 25:36
  But we vehemently reject that. Absolutely.
• 25:39
  The internal evidence, Jesus's own words in the New Testament
• 25:43
  and historic Orthodox Christian affirm Moses as the author
• 25:47
  writing under the direct, infallible inspiration of the
• 25:50
  Holy Spirit. And his authorial intent for
• 25:53
  this specific audience, the Israelites in the wilderness,
• 25:56
  was incredibly pointed. He intended to humble the pride
• 25:59
  of the Israelite nation and strike a holy terror into them
• 26:03
  regarding hidden sin. How does this story of Joseph
• 26:05
  and his brothers humble the pride of the Israelites reading
• 26:08
  it in the desert? Well.
• 26:09
  Think about who the Israelites in the wilderness were.
• 26:12
  They were tribes who derived their entire identity from the
• 26:15
  patriarchs. They probably called themselves
• 26:17
  the Tribe of Reuben, the tribe of Simeon, the tribe of Judah.
• 26:20
  Moses systematically dismantles any notion of inherent Jewish
• 26:24
  righteousness by exposing opposing their literal founders
• 26:27
  not as noble, heroic, flawless patriarchs, but as deceitful,
• 26:32
  murderous, callous brothers who sold their own blood for cash.
• 26:35
  Wow, that's heavy. He forces the wilderness
• 26:38
  generation to look in the mirror and realize that their existence
• 26:40
  as a nation rests entirely on sovereign electing grace.
• 26:44
  God didn't choose them because they were morally superior.
• 26:47
  No, he chose them despite their wicked actions.
• 26:50
  It's like Moses is holding up a giant warning sign in the
• 26:53
  desert. We see this exact dynamic play
• 26:56
  out later in Israel's history with the hidden sin of HN in
• 27:00
  Joshua Chapter 7. Oh, perfect example.
• 27:02
  HN stole forbidden items from Jericho, buried them under the
• 27:05
  dirt in his tent, smoothed over the top soil, and acted like
• 27:09
  everything was fine. He went to worship with everyone
• 27:12
  else. But his secret sin brought
• 27:14
  military disaster on the whole camp until the sin was dragged
• 27:18
  into the light and dealt with. Moses is telling the people in
• 27:21
  the wilderness be sure your sin will find you out.
• 27:24
  Cannot bury things in the sand and expect God to look away.
• 27:28
  Precisely, you cannot hide your rebellion from the God who
• 27:31
  dwells in the pillar of cloud and fire right above your camp.
• 27:34
  But alongside that holy terror, the author intended to bring
• 27:38
  immense comfort to the faithful remnant in the wilderness.
• 27:41
  Oh yes, they. Were surrounded by barren
• 27:43
  desert. They faced hostile enemies.
• 27:45
  They had scarce resources. By looking back at Genesis 42,
• 27:49
  they learned a vital lesson about Providence.
• 27:51
  If God could utilize the massive Pagan political machinery of an
• 27:56
  Egyptian pharaoh and a catastrophic global famine to
• 28:00
  perfectly preserve the seed of Abraham.
• 28:03
  He could certainly sustain them in the dry wilderness.
• 28:05
  It shifted their perspective from panic to unshakable trust.
• 28:09
  God is not intimidated by geopolitics or weather, He uses
• 28:13
  them as his tools. The preservation of this
• 28:15
  covenant family in Egypt is incredible, but it doesn't stop
• 28:19
  there. The entire Old Testament is a
• 28:21
  forward pointing arrow. We have to look at the
• 28:23
  Christological fulfillment. Joseph is a staggering
• 28:26
  historical type of Jesus Christ. The historical parallels are
• 28:29
  undeniable, and they're intentionally designed by the
• 28:32
  author of history. Both Joseph and Jesus were the
• 28:34
  beloved sons of their fathers. Both were rejected by their
• 28:37
  brethren. Both were stripped of their
• 28:39
  garments, Joseph of his colorful tunic, Christ of his seamless
• 28:43
  robe at the cross. Both were betrayed for pieces of
• 28:45
  silver by a man named Judah, which translates to Judas in the
• 28:49
  Greek. Both descended into the depths,
• 28:52
  Joseph into the pit and the prison, Christ into the grave.
• 28:57
  And both were miraculously exalted, from the ducks to the
• 29:01
  right hand of supreme authority to dispense the bread of life to
• 29:05
  a starving world. It's just phenomenal.
• 29:07
  And there is a really striking eschatological perspective here
• 29:11
  regarding verse 8, where Joseph recognizes his brothers but they
• 29:15
  do not recognize him. Yeah, we discussed a
• 29:18
  dispensational view on this. What does that mean for how we
• 29:20
  read prophecy? Maintaining A biblical
• 29:23
  distinction between the church and national Israel, we see a
• 29:26
  prophetic pattern in this text. OK, let's look into that.
• 29:29
  Currently, during this age, the Gentile world represented by the
• 29:32
  Egyptians is gladly receiving the Bread of Life from the
• 29:35
  exalted Sun, right? Meanwhile, the natural branches
• 29:38
  national Israel are temporarily blinded to the identity of their
• 29:42
  true Messiah, just as the brothers were blind to Joseph's
• 29:45
  identity. They look right at him and do
• 29:46
  not recognize him. However, the Scripture promises
• 29:49
  a future period of severe spiritual and physical famine,
• 29:52
  known as the Tribulation, which will draw them to the end of
• 29:55
  themselves. This will culminate in the
• 29:57
  fulfillment of Zechariah 12.10, where God says they will look on
• 30:02
  me, on him who they have pierced, they shall mourn for
• 30:06
  him. Just as the brothers eventually
• 30:08
  realize who Joseph is and weep, Israel will finally recognize
• 30:12
  the one they sold and pierced. That is a beautiful connection.
• 30:16
  It shows the incredible symmetry of biblical history, but there
• 30:19
  is a massive contrast between Joseph and Christ that I think
• 30:23
  we need to point out so we don't stretch the metaphor too far.
• 30:27
  Joseph's brothers had to travel to Egypt with pouches full of
• 30:30
  silver to buy the grain. Right, they brought money.
• 30:32
  They had to purchase their physical salvation.
• 30:35
  They had to prove they were honest men.
• 30:37
  But sinners can never purchase spiritual salvation.
• 30:40
  We can't buy our way out of hell, no.
• 30:42
  How does Christ provide the bread of life freely to those
• 30:46
  who are completely dead in their sin?
• 30:48
  If we connect this to the bigger picture of the gospel, we see
• 30:51
  that Christ does not reconcile us by pretending our sin is
• 30:54
  small or sweeping it under the rug.
• 30:55
  He doesn't just give us a pass. At the cross, the horrifying
• 30:59
  reality of sin is fully exposed. It is shown to be so wicked, so
• 31:04
  offensive to a holy God, that nothing less than the blood of
• 31:07
  the Incarnate Son could atone for it.
• 31:10
  Christ did what Joseph could not do.
• 31:12
  Christ entered the ultimate confinement of the grave for his
• 31:15
  people. He took the punishment that the
• 31:18
  guilty brothers of humanity deserved.
• 31:20
  He bore the wrath of the detective of the Almighty.
• 31:22
  He rose in victory, and because the price has been fully paid by
• 31:26
  His perfect obedience and blood, He now receives all who come to
• 31:30
  Him. You don't bring your silver.
• 31:31
  You don't bring your resume of being an honest person you.
• 31:34
  Come empty handed, bankrupt and starving, and he freely gives
• 31:38
  you the bread of life. It's an amazing truth.
• 31:40
  So to synthesize all of this Providence is not some cold,
• 31:43
  impersonal machinery. It's not karma.
• 31:45
  No, it is the living active rule of a holy God who refuses to let
• 31:49
  his people sleep forever in their guilt.
• 31:51
  He loves his elect too much to leave them in the dark, hiding
• 31:54
  behind partial truths. He will tear down your defenses
• 31:57
  to save your soul. He will use a famine to bring
• 31:59
  you to the feast. And so I want to challenge you,
• 32:03
  the listener. We all have that tendency to
• 32:06
  hope time acts as a statute of limitations on our guilt.
• 32:10
  We all have things we hope stay buried.
• 32:12
  But drop the illusion right now that the passage of time erases
• 32:15
  anything before God. Time does not erase sin, only
• 32:19
  the blood of Christ does. Stop defending your hiding
• 32:21
  places. Stop.
• 32:22
  Acting like the corporate executive saying mistakes were
• 32:24
  made and start confessing the truth to the God who already
• 32:27
  knows everything you've done. Flee from the wrath to come and
• 32:30
  cast yourself entirely on the mercy of the true and better
• 32:33
  Joseph. Let the topsoil wash away.
• 32:36
  I leave you with this final, lingering thought.
• 32:39
  Consider the specific circumstances of your life right
• 32:41
  now. That confinement you feel, that
• 32:44
  frustration at work, that severe trial or relational breakdown
• 32:47
  you were desperately trying to escape.
• 32:50
  You might be viewing it as a sign of God's absence or
• 32:52
  cruelty. You might be asking why this
• 32:54
  famine has hit your life. But what if it is the exact
• 32:57
  mechanism of his severe mercy? What if that trial is a divine
• 33:00
  trap meticulously designed by a God who loves you to break your
• 33:04
  pride, expose your hidden wounds and in the end, save your life?