Joseph No.16 Reacting to Good News

Hello, welcome to my lecture, I hope you're having a good time. A chapter that's become well known to us over the past few weeks, we're going to read it again and that's no hardship, it's a very beautiful and very poignant chapter as Joseph's brothers stand before him in his palace, his governor's residence there in Egypt and as yet they don't know who he is. Genesis chapter 45, then Joseph could no longer control himself before all his attendants and he cried out, make everyone leave my presence.

So there was no one with Joseph when he made himself known to his brothers and he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard him and Pharaoh's household heard about it. Joseph said to his brothers, I am Joseph, is my father still living? But his brothers were not able to answer him because they were terrified at his presence. Then Joseph said to his brothers, come close to me.

When they had done so he said, I am your brother, Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt and now do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. For two years now there has been famine in the land and for the next five years there will not be ploughing and reaping but God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So then it was not you who sent me here but God.

He made me father to Pharaoh, Lord of his entire household and ruler of all Egypt. Now hurry back to my father and say to him, this is what your son Joseph says, God has made me Lord of all Egypt. Come down to me, don't delay.

You shall live in the region of Goshen and be near me, you, your children and grandchildren you have. I will provide for you there because five years of famine are still to come. Otherwise you and your household and all who belong to you will become destitute.

You can see for yourselves and so can my brother Benjamin that it is really I who am speaking to you. Tell my father about all the honor accorded me in Egypt and about everything you have seen and bring my father down here quickly. Then he threw his arms around his brother Benjamin and wept and Benjamin embraced him weeping and he kissed all his brothers and wept over them.

Afterwards his brothers talked with him. When the news reached Pharaoh's palace that Joseph's brothers had come, Pharaoh and all his officials were pleased. Pharaoh said to Joseph, tell your brothers, do this, load your animals and return to the land of Canaan and bring your father and your families back to me.

I will give you the best of the land of Egypt and you can enjoy the fat of the land. You are also directed to tell them, do this, take some carts from Egypt for your children and your wives and get your father and come. Never mind about your belongings because the best of all Egypt will be yours.

So the sons of Israel did this. Joseph gave them carts as Pharaoh had commanded and he also gave them provisions for their journey. To each of them he gave new clothing but to Benjamin he gave 300 shekels of silver and five sets of clothes.

And this is what he sent to his father, 10 donkeys loaded with the best things of Egypt and 10 female donkeys loaded with grain and bread and other provisions for his journey. Then he sent his brothers away and as they were leaving he said to them, don't quarrel on the way. So they went up out of Egypt and came to their father Jacob in the land of Canaan.

They told him, Joseph is still alive, in fact he is ruler of all Egypt. Jacob was stunned, he did not believe them. But when they told him everything Joseph had said to them and when he saw the carts Joseph had sent to carry him back, the spirit of their father Jacob revived and Israel said, I am convinced my son Joseph is still alive.

I will go and see him before I die. So we come once again to this well-worn passage of scripture. I've just baptized my foot in the drinking water but it should dry out as the address goes by.

That's a good start for the new year isn't it? The 28th verse of Genesis 45 and Israel said, I'm convinced my son Joseph is still alive. I will go and see him before I die. Another paper that I'm very interested in and I'm always delighted to recommend is printed by and produced by our friends next door at the Christian Literature Mission and they have a paper called Challenge the Good Newspaper.

And one of the things that makes it outstanding is that it's full of good news. Most of you there are modern tabloids, they hold their circulation simply because of the rubbish that they put in or the way that they focus upon that which is unpleasant, unseemly and sometimes downright sordid. It seems to me that in the 20th century we need a good newspaper.

In the 20th century we need to tell people good news. So get a copy of this paper, it's produced monthly and it will give you an account in readable fashion and comprehensible fashion for your neighbors of the gospel and the effects of the gospel of Jesus. Now one of the problems of being so saturated in bad news is that very often we don't know how to react to good news when it comes.

And that's really the subject matter for our consideration this morning, for we're looking at Israel, an old man who is brought into contact with, who has been given good news by his sons and at first he doesn't really believe it. And then because they are able to speak persuasively about what they have to say, then he comes to an appreciation that what they're telling him is true. Let's give the back cloth just for a moment for those who've forgotten where we got to in this series of studies from the Word of God.

Jacob's an old man and his his sons have gone down into Egypt. They've been forced there because there's been a great famine. The only place where food is available is in the granaries of Egypt, you recall.

And his sons have rather strangely treated by someone who is in effect Premier, Prime Minister of Egypt. And they come incredibly to a realization that this strange authoritative figure is none other than their younger brother Joseph. And ultimately they have the responsibility of conveying what they now know about the identity of the Egyptian premier to their own father.

And so they come back to the land of Palestine and they endeavor to persuade him that it's true what they have to say, that their younger brother is one of the most influential people in the whole of the world. Now if you'd have asked the old Jacob what perhaps were the substance or was the substance of his dreams in terms of his fancies, he might have said many things. He might have said well as I go to my grave I would like to think that all of my sons are living harmoniously.

I'd like to think that there's a spiritual maturity that's not always been present amongst my family, amongst my household. I'd like at least to see the end of this dreadful famine. But one of the things that I dare to suggest to you that never even entered his mind was that Joseph, his younger son, actually was still alive and he, Jacob, would see him again before the old man went to his father's, went his eternal rest.

You see there are certain things that are beyond your wildest dreams and it's difficult to believe that sort of news. Now I wonder if you focus your attention not so much on Jacob at the moment but upon yourself. I wonder what is the most astonishing news that could be given you for you to accept and glory in.

Maybe there was a time in your own infancy when your Sunday school teacher or your mum and dad taught you about God and said that God is real and that God loves you, that God has a purpose for your life and yet you sort of push that away as you matured, you outpaced your parents or so you thought and you grew up without an acknowledgement of the truth that they had taught you. And yet perhaps like Clive James, the American who sometimes you see on British television, but perhaps you regret that the things that you've been brought up to believe you now no longer find it possible to believe but you wish that they were true. And the bottom line of your wildest dreams is this, that it might be the case that God is and that God has a remedy for the problems of your life.

Don't you know that's the essence of the gospel? It's what people who occupy this pulpit often spend their lives in telling others here and elsewhere. That which is exceedingly abundant, beyond our own ability to think, beyond our own ability to reason through, is actually essentially the truth of God's message to the world. I love you.

I sent Jesus my son into the world to die for you and he's been raised from the dead to guarantee the fact that the pardon that I offer is indeed a valid one. It's the greatest news in all the world and to me the eighth wonder of the planet Earth is this, that people in their millions do not respond. You see I think I can understand the psychology of Jacob's sons as they go back to Palestine to tell their father with hearts overflowing, with an uncommon unity binding them together, for Joseph has told them not to disagree anymore, not to be short-tempered, not to divide into little schisms within the family, but in unity to go and declare the message as God wants us, my brothers and sisters, in unity to tell of his son.

I can understand the sense of frustration that Reuben and Benjamin and Simeon and Dan and Asher might well have felt as the old man remains obdurate, hard, unresponsive. You see I've met that attitude too many weeks, too many months, too many years in this pulpit. You come down from the study and your heart is warm with the glow of the gospel and you want to communicate what you believe is the most astonishing news in the whole of the world and you know the bottom line is this, it's true, but not everyone who hears, believes.

In our Bible studies on Wednesdays, if you're prepared to spend the time and come along, you'll discover how the Apostle Paul has the same sort of experience when he tells us in the ninth and the tenth chapter that his heart's desire is for Israel, his own people, that they may be saved, but he goes on to say hardness, hardness has fallen upon them and by and large with some illustrious exceptions the Jews have not responded to the good news of the gospel. And it seems to me that encapsuled in this story of Jacob's sons coming back and declaring that Joseph is alive, his very reaction to the news is illustrative of the problems that confront us today when people with hardness listen to the grandest news in the whole world, that Jesus God's Son is alive, that he loves them, that he wants people to be with him spiritually and ultimately to be with him in a very real and full sense in the eternity that is yet to be. It's not easy to receive good news, is it? I once heard, though I can't vouch for the accuracy of the story, the man who was not distributing tracts but five pound notes on Westminster Bridge and nobody would receive them.

There obviously wasn't a Scot in London at that time. Nobody would take the money that he was offering because, well, it's not the thing, people don't stand around giving five pound notes, do they? Not in Westminster, not, alas, on Montague Street, but some of us who are Yorkshire and perhaps in advance of the Scots in taking up bargains would be there. But seriously, not easy always to respond to a free offer of forgiveness and information that God loves you and wants to have dealings with you.

So these brothers, verse 25, went up out of Egypt and came to their father Jacob in the land of Canaan. They told him, Joseph is still alive. In fact, he's ruler of all Egypt.

Jacob was stunned. Jacob was stunned. The authorised version puts it, Jacob's heart fainted.

Literally, the Hebrew has it, he became numb. You see, you couldn't shift him, not immediately, from this mindset. He's an old person.

You don't shift old people easily, do you? I don't say that rudely. It's a fact of psychology. If someone's going to be converted, by and large, not always, thank God, there are great exceptions, but by and large, it's in the infancy of their lives.

The young sapin sways to the breeze as it blows, but the old oak tree will not. It's become solid, it's become secure as the years have gone by. It doesn't bend.

No, the people tend not to bend to the truths of the gospel, unless, of course, they have made their commitment in earlier years. 22 years have gone by, and Jacob has lived with the news that Joseph was dead. This was a conclusion that he himself had brought in.

Do you remember how the sons of his produced a blood-stained coat that was the remnant, the tatters of the long-flowing robe that he had given to his favourite son? And he brought in the conclusion, it's my son's coat. He's been gored by some wild animal. And they gave him no evidence to the contrary.

He'd lived for 22 years with the thought that Joseph was dead. And you don't shift a conviction of 22 years easily, do you? And maybe it was, perhaps, when you were a teenager at school that some teacher came along and started to take apart what you had learned from your Sunday school teacher. Somebody who started to bring in the whole doctrine of evolution and how Genesis is really just a compilation of legends and stories and so forth.

And gradually, as with Clive James, your commitment to the gospel, to the veracity of Scripture, was eaten away until you were left with nothing. A faint recollection of what it was like as a child to believe, but now as an adult you have no beliefs whatsoever. Difficult for you, I say, to respond to the best news in all the world, that Jesus is alive, that God loves you, and he has a plan for your life.

And so, these brothers who are the most ill-equipped evangelists of all time, ill-equipped because, well, they have lived for years deceiving their old father, they have the challenge of telling this hard man with the obdurate heart that that which is unbelievable is actually true. Joseph is still alive. So what do they do? I put the question up because it's going to be helpful for us in our own evangelism.

Verse 27, they started to tell him everything that Joseph had said to them. You see, Joseph has communicated a great deal in the visits that these brothers have made to him. At first they didn't know his identity, but now with the knowledge that they have, all that he had said before, and that which he repeats in the earlier verses of this chapter, becomes so very significant.

They not only give an account of what Joseph has said and his experiences, but also Joseph's own theological evaluation. Verse 7, God sent me ahead of you to preserve you for a remnant on earth. Verse 8, God was involved in my life.

Verse 9, God has made me Lord of all Egypt. They rehearsed clearly, concisely, and as honestly as they could, each speaking from his different understanding of what had happened, and it all dovetailed to indicate that they were telling the truth. And there occurs what I would call the resurrection of long lost hopes in the mind of the old man.

There is that in the earlier chapters dealing with the story of Joseph that reminds you of Mary. Remember that magnificent Hebrew lady who, when she goes to her sister Elizabeth, her cousin Elizabeth, she recognizes that that which is born or going to be born within Mary is more than just a human being. And twice we're told in Luke's gospel that she pondered these things in her heart.

You recall? And when Joseph in his teenage days comes along and he describes the dreams that he has had, you remember the stars, the sun and the moon bowing down to him, and the brothers as sheaves bowing down to his sheaf, we're told that Jacob actually treasured these things, pondered these things in his heart. There was the first intimation given by God that this man, this son of his, Joseph, was going to be used in a spectacular fashion for the retention and the outworking of the promises that God had given to Abraham and to Isaac and ultimately to Jacob. The old man had believed this years ago, but then that blood-stained coat had not only caused part of his own heart to die when he concludes that Joseph is no longer, but the hopes that he has for the purposes of God, they too have gone.

They've been erased by the events of that particular tragic day. But now as these boys come along and they tell the story of Joseph and the theological evaluation as to what happened to him in Egypt, it all begins to make sense again. You see, here is an older person who has had to review convictions that they had years ago that they pushed on one side and counted to be utterly invalid.

And it may well be that in a congregation like this in Worthingtown Centre that there are older friends who find themselves right now in the same situation as Jacob. Things that you believed years ago, you are being primed by the preacher, persuaded by the preacher to have a new look at. But one of the things that encourages me and encourages anyone in evangelism about the story of Joseph is how that when this man speaks, what he has to say and the integrity of his life seems to bring with his testimony a most unusual conviction on the part of the hearers.

You recall another illustration of this. When Joseph, unknown, is sprung from jail and stands in front of Pharaoh and he interprets the dreams that Pharaoh has had and he gives some advice to Pharaoh as to what to do in the seven years of famine and the seven years of good crops. He can't prove what he's going to say.

Only the passing of the years will demonstrate the truthfulness, the accuracy of Joseph's interpretation. But there is that in this incredible young man that impresses the mind of a pagan emperor and he responds to what Joseph has to say. You know in the very telling of the word of God there is a veracity, there is a truthfulness, there's what the old Puritans used to call the internal witness of the spirit.

You know, you know it's true. You don't need some scientific laboratory experiment. That may be all very well in certain aspects of knowledge of checking propositions and reformulating laws or unknown laws and so on and so forth, modifying them, modifying conclusions.

But there is the area of the realm of the spirit where you know full well God has spoken. He's spoken by that man. He speaks through this book and what he has to say is true.

Jacob listens as from different perspectives his sons tell him all about Egypt and Joseph and those buried hopes of yesteryear are brought back to the forefront of his mind and his spirit is revived. When they told him everything Joseph had said to them and when he saw the carts Joseph had sent to carry him back, the spirit of their father Jacob revived. He heard what they had to say.

He saw evidence of the truth, the chariots that had come with them from Egypt with perhaps the Egyptian hieroglyphics adorning the sides. He saw the canopy, typically Egyptian, to keep out the hot rays of the sun as you travel during the noon day. There were the words that the brothers spoke.

There were the works in terms of what they brought out of Egypt and Jacob believes his spirit revives as happens a thousand times in evangelical churches around the globe when the gospel is preached and men know their spirits reviving. They know what it is to be quickened for that's conversion. It's the bringing back into your mind a real hope that God is God and that he loves you.

It's the implanting of his spirit into your own personality so that though once you were dead in trespasses and sins now you're alive to him and you're set on a route that ultimately leads you not to Egypt but to heaven. There is truth that Jesus is alive, that Jesus has a concern for you and that to me is essentially what these verses of scripture are bespeaking as you listen to God talking to us through this incident of yesteryear and bringing it into contemporary context. The spirit of their father Jacob revised.

Have you noticed how sometimes you get a different name applied to the father as you read through these narratives on the story of Joseph? Sometimes he's Jacob. Jacob is the name that really befitted his old character before God put his finger upon it. Literally it means twister, supplanter, gives a crook, not the sort of man you'd like living next door to you, rather a nasty individual.

But in God's grace he calls Jacob to belong to him and you know those of you who feel that somehow God can have no dealings with you, I love the fact that God associates his name with Jacob more than with any other person in the old testament. He's the God of Jacob. If he can be the God of Jacob he can be your God.

There is no sin so damnable that he cannot forgive. There's no personality so nasty and unwholesome that he doesn't want to draw alongside and change. The day came in Jacob's life you recall when God renamed him no longer Jacob, Israel, Prince with God.

Now that new nature didn't completely snuff out the old. It didn't for Jacob but it hasn't for you. It hasn't for the preacher here.

That's why we're still difficult at times to get alongside with, have we not? The work of sanctification has not been completely achieved. But hear me for this is my point in telling you this. There are moments in the narrative when Jacob rises to a pinnacle of faith and at that point it's most interesting how the chronicler moves from the name that he was born with to the name that God gave him.

Verse 28 and Israel said, I'm convinced. It's enough as the authorized version puts it. I don't need any further evidence.

You have no need to wax lyrical anymore. What I heard and what I've seen it convinces me Joseph is. Jacob reaches out for faith and faith is granted to him, an abundant faith.

God dispenses faith. He does it as generously as his son turned water into wine. He's concerned that every man and woman in the worthy tabernacle sanctuary has faith to be able to believe that Jesus is alive.

And not only that Jesus is alive but Jesus has a concern for the hearts of all interested in the warp and woof of your pilgrimage through this world. So Jacob will tell you more. He's not just convinced that Joseph is alive.

He wants to go and see him. You see the plague on Great Britain is this. It's not total unbelief.

The majority of people still believe in Jesus. They still believe in some way that Jesus is God's son and that he was raised from the dead. But it was not sufficient for Israel to believe that Joseph was alive and well in Egypt.

He had to make what was that belief personal to him as far as its benefits was concerned. I'm a man of faith. I must go and see Joseph.

I must get up and move from where I am at this moment and spend time with Joseph because he has told my sons to hurry to their father and to tell them that Joseph is alive and well and wants his old father with him in Goshen in Egypt. I don't understand this but I swear before Almighty God it's true. God wants your company.

Jesus's reason for being on earth could be summed up in words that fell from his lips in Matthew's gospels recorded in Matthew's gospel. Come unto me all you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. He wants your company.

God wants you to want him. That's an astonishing point that A. W. Tozer makes in one of his brilliant perceptive prophetical writings. God wants you to want him.

Israel says I'm convinced. Joseph is alive and I'll go to him. Ah but Jacob Israel you're an old man.

Let not the passing of the decades and the fact that I'm in the category of pensioners prevent me from going to my son. Let not the stretches of the desert and the miles that I'll have to cover prevent me from getting to Joseph. The thing that was attractive to Israel was not that Egypt was where Joseph was but rather that Joseph himself wanted to have dealings with his old father and in one sense it's not heaven that I want.

I remember an old Scottish preacher and the Scots always created always produced the best preachers. I remember him so often preaching in his pulpit to the extent that one of his congregation wrote a hymn on his convictions. The bride eyes not her bridegroom but her dear bridegroom's face.

I shall not gaze at glory but at my king of grace rather for the preacher was so concerned that when he went to heaven he would be preoccupied with Jesus. Not the glories of heaven, not the glories of Egypt, not the riches of heaven and fellowship with other people however precious and legitimate that might be but to be in the presence of the Lord Jesus. The bride eyes not her garments but her dear bridegroom's face.

I shall not gaze at glory but at my king of grace. I'm going to him. I'm going to Joseph whatever it costs.

I'm going to appropriate and make personal the news that you my sons have brought to me. My good friend, you're intelligent people. Do I need to continue any longer? Here is an example of responding to the most incredible news.

Not just that Joseph is but even greater. Jesus is and he wants you as his child, as his son, as his daughter. He bled and died to prove it and there is a testimony of brothers and sisters here on what stands if you like for the wagons or for the carts, for the evidence of the means of grace in the lives of many people.

What we declare is true. Respond in the name of God to the offer of the gospel whether you're 18 or 80. Let's pray.

Father we thank you. That caught up in the last few verses of that great chapter is a marvellous illustration of redeeming grace and its effects. An honest picture of a man confronted with an unbelievable story and how ultimately he was able not only to accept it academically but respond to it practically.

Father may your word have its own inherent authoritative quality and authority and may people respond to the message of the evangel right now throughout this sanctuary confessing that Jesus is Lord and wanting spiritually to be with him and ultimately to know him in a fuller way in heaven and in the eternity yet to be. Amen. Amen.