Genesis 42
Listen Now!
 

Our focus today is on the key verses, verses 21-22. In this passage, guilt is a tool in the hand of God to bring Joseph’s brothers into a place of restoration and blessing.

Throughout Joseph’s career we have seen him repeatedly turn attention to God and away from himself. This is the first time ever that Genesis records a reference to God on the part of Joseph’s brothers (28b).

He tries the reins of the heart to bring out what is there and to expose us to our need for Him.

I. God Uses Want (1-2).

Their survival was at stake, but not just physical survival. As we know from the rest of the Genesis account, God had sent Joseph to Egypt in order to preserve the children of Israel alive. Through them the promised Savior would one day come—the one in whom all the families of the earth would be blessed. 

The famine was serious, but the spiritual state of the sons of Israel and of the sons of Adam also hangs in the balance. God is going to weave both physical and spiritual together to accomplish His redemptive purpose.

God often uses physical want to awaken not just the will to survive physically, but the need to be rescued spiritually.

Psalmist: “Before I was afflicted, I went astray.”

Our business failures, our unexpected health setbacks, natural disasters, political and economic reversals that impact an entire nation or many nations: God uses these to channel us toward dealing with our sin and finding the Savior (Romans 8:20-21; Acts 17:26; Amos 4:6-9).

“Egypt”?!? The last place on earth Joseph’s brothers wanted to go (Jacob’s words, “why do you look at one another?”) They had sold their brother to merchants heading to Egypt. Very unpleasant memories of great sins they buried long ago—roughly 21 years before. (Jacob was 17 when they stripped off his coat of many colors, threw him into a pit, and sold him to Midianite traders. 13 years later he became prime minister of Egypt. Add 7 years of plenty and begin the years of famine. Joseph’s family would move to Egypt 2 years into the famine—45:6. These events would have probably been late in the 1 famine year, time enough to produce the crisis.)

Distance and the passage of time are no protection from the ravages of guilt.

II. God Uses Distrust (4).

Benjamin is the only other son of Jacob’s beloved wife Rachel. There’s no way Jacob is going to send him off with the very men he suspects are somehow responsible for Joseph’s disappearance. At the very least, he had no confidence in these men to keep the youngest son safe.

When we adopt sinful solutions to our frustration and anger, we continue to pay the price in terms of marred relationships.

Those strained relationships repeatedly remind us of sins we tried to forget but have never resolved.

III. God Uses Mistreatment (7-9).

Joseph’s treatment of his brothers may seem out of keeping with how we’ve seen Joseph treat other people. It is important to recognize that he is testing his brothers with harsh requirements to test their loyalty to their father and to their youngest brother, surviving son of Rachel.

Life in this world is full of unfair treatment. Most of us are very sensitive to be mistreated when we’ve done nothing wrong, but have no problem getting off scot free when we have done wrong. When we get a dose of harsh treatment, God reminds us of our own harsh treatment of others. Joseph’s actions parallel his brothers’ treatment of him over 20 years before.

Hamlet: “The play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.”
 

IV. God Uses Loss of Freedom (15-20, 24).

Joseph is the first one to mention God. Doing so in conjunction with imprisonment reminds them that they deserve prison or worse for what they did to Joseph (not to mention the slaughter of the people of Shechem, Reuben’s violation of his father’s concubine, and Judah’s incest with Tamar, his daughter-in-law). These are wicked men who need strong reminder of sin’s enslaving power. Joseph weeps in his execution of his strategy, just as Jesus wept over Jerusalem, and God takes no pleasure the death of the wicked.

Sin lures us with the promise of freedom. But when we run from God’s authority, we find ourselves enslaved. Our sins hem us in and bar the prison door. Time in prison has many times awakened the conscience of those who have made a life career of sinning against God and others.

V. God Uses Undeserved Kindness (27-28, 35).

In contrast to the harsh treatment, inexplicable good comes their way, only to tweak their guilty consciences yet further and to fill them with the fear that God is watching their every move and putting them into an impossible situation (Romans 2:4). Newton said, "Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved."

VI. God Uses Sorrow (36-38).

Jacob feels his losses keenly, and his sons must bear his grief, knowing they are to blame for it.

None of us live to ourselves or die to ourselves. When we do wrong we harm others and heap sorrow on their souls. Watching them suffer because of our sins is hard to bear.

Sin brought sorrow into the world, and it still does. That sorrow in God’s hand can turn us to seek the forgiveness we need (2 Corinthians 7:9-10; Matthew 5:4).

Remember “The Telltale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe? The man’s own heart and imagination drove him to confess.

You may be able to muzzle your conscience crying out against your sin, but no one escapes sin’s guilt. If you feel the guilt of it, God is being gracious to you. Don’t try to suppress it. Let it lead you to foot of the cross before it is too late. Turn. Repent. Find forgiveness. Be restored. Before your temporary feeling of guilt merges into bearing that guilt under God’s inescapable wrath against your sin in a burning hell for all eternity.

Share this post