(Genesis) Genesis 41:46-49

Now, we're told in verse 46, "...and Joseph was thirty years old when he stood before Pharaoh king of Egypt." Now, mark that down. He began his ministry when he was thirty years old. And I'm of the opinion, you've already thought of the parallel to the Lord Jesus.

He began his ministry when he was thirty years of age. And so Joseph took up his work yonder in Egypt. And Joseph went out from the presence of Pharaoh and went throughout all the land of Egypt.

Now, what is he doing? Well, during these seven years of plenty, why, he's gathering the grain in, gathering all the produce of the land, because these are years of great abundance. And in the seven plenteous years, the earth brought forth by handfuls. In other words, there was a great harvest, a great abundance during those years.

You'll recall that after World War II, we began to accumulate in this country a great surplus that created a real farm problem. If you rode the trains in those days, especially through Kansas and Missouri, Iowa, you'd pass bin after bin, silo after silo, literally hundreds, thousands of them, filled with grain that the government had stored. A great many people said, it was rather foolish to store that up.

Now, if you go through that country today, you don't see that. You know why this happened? We've been sending it to the needy countries. And right now, we don't have enough to feed the starving millions of the world.

Someone has said that a hundred million people are going to starve. And somebody says, well, why not send them something? Well, the reason is, we don't have enough now. That surplus is pretty much used up.

And so a hundred million are going to starve. Our problem is, which hundred million is it going to be that we'll let starve in the next decade? Well, I don't know. But the important thing for us to note here is, during these seven years of plenty, and this seems to be the way the earth produces, especially since the curse of sin is upon it, seven years of plenty, and then there are seven years of famine that came.

Now, he's gathering together the grain. Notice verse 48, he gathered up all the food of the seven years, which were in the land of Egypt, and laid up the food in the cities. You see a good distribution, by the way.

During the Depression, there were lines to soup kitchens in Chicago and New York. You are old enough to remember. I know as a boy, I was in Chicago, and those lines, block long, fellas, young men in those lines.

And they wanted something, some selling apples out yonder, stored up. There was an abundance even then, but the problem was distribution. That is, that's what they said, problem of distributing it.

Well, what you have here is Joseph doing a very practical thing, that he's laying up the food in the cities. The food of the field, which was round about every city, laid he up it the same. In other words, he's not only gathering together all this surplus, but he's putting it in areas for ready distribution.

And Joseph gathered corn as the sand of the sea, very much, until he left numbering, for it was without number. In other words, I tell you, Egypt was the breadbasket of the world, it's been called that, but under Joseph's management, it seemed to be two or three breadbaskets.