The Story of Joseph - When God Provides the Place - Genesis 46–47

Well, good morning. Listen, many of you are watching the calendar and you know that we are just a few weeks away from the NFL season starting, right? And so I want you to do me a favor. Whether you're a fan of the NFL or not, I want you to pretend with me just for a second. I want you to pretend the NFL season starts and one particular team that has a star on their helmet, they actually like win the first three or four games. Okay? And the media I get some thumbs down up here on the front row. It's supposed to be an amen, not a thumbs down. Thank you very much. But as the season progresses, the Dallas Cowboys, they keep doing better and better and everybody's going, "Okay, the bottom's going to fall out. The bottom's going to fall out." But lo and behold, now I need you to pretend with me for a second, okay? They go through the playoffs and they make it to the Super Bowl. Now, I know this is a hard thing to pretend. It's way out there, right? And some of you are going, "Why are you talking about the Cowboys, Keith? I thought you went ahead and switched over and you're now for the blue and the orange team." I am, but I can pretend every once in a while. Okay? So we pretend and they make it to the Super Bowl. And so the week of the Super Bowl's coming up and my wife comes to me says, "Keith, you'll never guess. I have tickets to the Super Bowl. Somebody gave me tickets. Not only tickets to the Super Bowl, they gave me tickets to all the parties and all the events going on. So let's go." And so we take off and we go to LA. It is the day of the Super Bowl. Remember, you're still pretending. The Cowboys in the Super Bowl, if you really want to pretend, they're playing the Broncos on the other side over here. Okay? And so it's time for the Super Bowl. Denise says, "Let's get in the car. We got to go. It's all starting and as we driving to the Super Bowl, I'm like, "Well, hang on a second, babe. This is LA. Can we go by Man's Chinese Theater so I can see all the handprints and the footprints in the sidewalk?" And I said, "There's a couple of more things." And she's looking at me going, "We have been so excited about the Super Bowl. The Cowboys are in the Super Bowl. Why are we making some silly stop that we can make some other time? Our goal is to get to the Super Bowl." Like, "No, babe. I I want to stop and look at this. Now, some of you, this is such an exaggerated illustration. You can't follow me. Okay. But wouldn't it be kind of awkward to make a stop like that on an anticipated trip that you can't wait for something to happen, but you need to make some stop like that? Maybe here's a better illustration. Imagine you have a grown child that is pregnant and your do your daughter, your daughter-in-law, they've been waiting for a long time to get pregnant and just could not conceive, but finally they got pregnant and they called you and said, "You get to be the grandparent that holds the grandbaby for the first time." Now, they live a couple of states over and they said, "We'll call you. Nobody else but us will see the baby. You get to be the first one. So, as soon as we call you, you need to get in the car and go." And so, you get that call. The baby's been born. You got to get in the car and you got to head that way. And as you're driving to meet your brand new first ever grandbaby, one of the spouses, you or your spouse says, "Hey, can we stop over here for a second? There's this really neat little curio shop that I just want to go shopping over here and just check what's up." And you look at your spouse going, "No way. I mean, we've had this anticipated event that we have waited forever for, and you want to stop and do that when we can do it anytime." Wouldn't that be kind of awkward? Now, here's why I share those stories with you. We're wrapping up the story of Joseph today. If you're joining us for the first time, this whole entire summer, we've been looking Joseph, the Old Testament patriarch. And we've just been building up and building up. And we come to the final like chapters today. And here's what we're going to learn is that Joseph, he's met his brothers after these years, over 20 years of just unreconciled, just just hard difficulty in their relationship. They have met each other. They have reconciled. And where we left it last week, Joseph looked at his brothers going, "Hey, it's great to see you guys again, but I want to see my dad." His father Jacob was back home in Canaa and he said, "Go back, get dad, get the family, get every you guys move here because there was a big famine going on." He says, "Move everybody here. I will take care of you here in Egypt." He said, "But just go get dad. I can't wait to see him." And so what we learn in chapters 46 and chapter 47 of the book of Genesis, the brothers go home and said, "Dad, we've got some good news for you. You know, Joseph, the son that you thought was dead, he's alive. In fact, he's not just alive. He's like second control, second command of all of Egypt. He's taking care of everybody. And he's invited us to go live there. And he's going to see us through this famine. He's going to take care of our own family. You get to see your favorite son, Joseph, again. And so the Bible lets us know that in the book of or chapter 46 of Genesis that Joseph calling his family, Jacob loads all his family up and they take off and head to Egypt. Can you imagine anticipation that Jacob felt? First of all, he thought his son Joseph was dead, but he's alive. He hasn't seen him for over 20 years. And so he's on this journey to see a son. But what we're going to learn in today's scripture is he makes a stop. He makes an unexpected stop that seemed really awkward to the rest of the family because the first thing in the foremost on their mind was to see Joseph. But Jacob makes a stop. So if you have your Bibles, we'll be looking at chapter 46. It'll be up on the screen. If you don't have your Bible, it's there on the in in your in your handout for you, but it's chapter 46 verse one. And here's what it says. So, Jacob, now let me just give you a little parenthesis there. Jacob is 130 years old at this time. Okay? He's not a young fry dad. 130 years old. Sometimes at my age, I have a hard time thinking about driving eight hours. Can you imagine traveling 300 plus miles in a wagon? They they they would make about 10 miles a day. So, we're looking like a 30-day trip. But it says this. So Jacob being 130 years old set out on the journey with everything he owned. He arrived in Beerseba and he worshiped offering sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac. And during the night God spoke to him in a vision. Jacob, Jacob, he called. Here I am, Jacob replied. I am God, the God of your father, the voice said. And he said these great words, do not be afraid. So we know Jacob loads up all the family. Now let me make sure you understand what it meant. All the family. We know from scripture there were 75ish around sons and daughters and daughters-in-laws and grandsons. So there's about 75 in this moving party. You ever try to take a family of four across the country on a trip? Imagine loading up 75. They're on these old carts. They're traveling by by camels. They've got all these donkeys. Maybe they're riding some. They're doing a lot of walking on there. But it wasn't just the 75 of them. They would have had servants. They would have had helpers. So, they think the party might have been somewhere over a hundred, maybe even 200 people that are traveling by cart pulled by donkeys and horses and camels across the desert. But it wasn't just a hundred of them. They would have taken all of their flock. We do know this that that Jacob and his family, they were shepherds. And it's estimated, though we don't see it in scripture, it's estimated by historians, there might have been a thousand to 2,000 sheep they were hurting as they traveled. And so, can you imagine trying to get that group ready to go see your son you hadn't seen for 20 years? And so, they probably managed to go about 20 mile or about 10 miles, 10 to 15 miles a day. And [snorts] the Bible says they reached Beerseba. Beersa was a small like community. Not a city, not a town, but just a small community. And here's what the Bible says that Jacob told his family, "Stop." Now, think about this for a second. How do you communicate with a 100 plus people? It's not like they had walkietalkie cell phones. They couldn't text. It's just all word of mouth. A 100 plus people with thousands of animals all around you. And so probably they were traveling along, the kids are running alongside the the carts there. The dust is flying up. It's noisy because the wheels of the carts, the the sheep are banging, the camels are doing whatever came noises camels make. So it's kind of noisy. But all of a sudden, Jacob says, "Okay, let them know we're going to stop up here." And so they start sending the word through all the group. We're going to stop. We're going to stop. And I have to imagine that everybody's thinking, "Huh?" like we got a place to go. We have a destination and a person to go see. It is the for first and foremost thing on their mind. Why are we stopping in Beersa? And so as everything finally comes to a stop, they're all waiting around to see what the patriarch Jacob wanted to do here in this little community called Beersheba. And the Bible doesn't give us a lot of like description of what take place took place, but go with me for a second. Jacob, 130 years old, gets off his cart and he begins to walk over and he begins to pick up some stones. And what we're going to find out is he's picking up the stones to make an altar. This was the same place Beersa that his father and his grandfather had worshiped and made an altar. So maybe the stones were still kind of scattered and he could just kind of pile them up. Or maybe after a couple of generations they had just been dispersed everywhere, but Joseph begins to pick up stones and stack them up as an altar. Maybe one of the servants walked up to said, "Sir, sir, we'll do that for you, but maybe on this particular day, Jacob said, "No, I need to do this." So all the family is just watching and they're just standing around just kind of trying to understand what's about to take place. Now maybe some of the older members of the family as he stacks up three or four or five levels of the rocks, they recognize that he's making an altar. Maybe the older family members know the story of Jacob had worshiped in Beerseba years earlier. Maybe they know the stories that his father had worshiped that the grandfather. So, they're starting to kind of put some pieces of the puzzle together, but the younger ones, the kids are like, "What's grandpa doing?" After he gets the stones stacked up of an altar, he begins to walk around and pick up wood. Now, it's very obvious he's making an altar. He's getting the wood ready. And they're all just standing there. They didn't have watches, but if it was modern day, they'd be looking the watches going, "It's been an hour." Like, "We got to go. Joseph is We'll never make it to Egypt. We'll never get to our destination. We'll never get to what we're going where we're going if we don't get going." But he gets the wood. And then the Bible says this, that he went because we know he sacrificed. He went to this flock, flock of a thousand sheep. They're moving around bad. And everybody's still just kind of watching. And begins to pick through the sheep. No, not this sheep. No, not this one. Because the sacrifice required the very best. So, he wasn't trying to rush through something. He was doing exactly how God had led his generations of family to do it years and years and years before this. And he picks out the best, most beautiful, perfect sheep he could find. and he lays it on the altar. And the Bible says, if you look in some translations, he sacrificed. The translation we read here said he worshiped. And that would look like this. He would have taken a knife and as he killed the animal, the blood would have flown down because the blood from the beginning of time even through Jesus represents the cleansing, the purification for the people. And after the blood would have ran off that animal, he would have lit a match and he would lit the fire. And [snorts] the fire would have consumed the animal. And the smoke would rise up to heaven. And the smoke since the beginning of time in the Old Testament, it represent a beautiful fragrance up to God because of the sacrifice. And he worshiped. Now, we don't know exactly what his worship would have looked like. We don't know exactly what his worship would have sounded like. Maybe it was lifelong prayers that he recited and the family knew that had been passed down through generations. And as he began to recite those, maybe the rest of the family would have joined him in worship in reciting those prayers. Maybe he just simply voiced all these thank yous. God, thank you that my son is alive. Thank you that you're taking care of my family and we're not going to die of the famine in Canaan. Thank you that I have no idea what tomorrow holds, but you do. But maybe he gave up these words of thank you as a form of worship, as a form of sacrifice of his own self. Maybe he sang. Maybe he sang a song out of his heart. I love you, Lord.

But all this time the family is around him. And while they may at this point be engaging with him, they may be wondering why. I mean, we could have worshiped once we saw Joseph, right? I mean, you could have done this thing at another day. Remember, Jacob is 130 years old. He has not seen his son Joseph for 20 plus years. Couldn't have this have waited? Why did this need to be such a priority right now? This this act of worship, couldn't that happen at another day? [clears throat] More convenient, more just kind of fits the schedule in a more easy way. Why now worship? And here's what I want us to look at in this idea of worship and the why. For whatever reason, no matter the priority of seeing his son, Jacob knew worship was more important. And so, I think there's some things that you and I can learn about this idea of worship and the way that Jacob looked at it that we can apply to our lives today. And so, if you're taking notes, here's the first thing that I I recognize as we as we look at this idea of worship. Why did Joseph I'm sorry. Why did Jacob so prioritize worship at this moment? And here's one of the reasons why. Worship always realigns our perspective. Worship has this way of realigning our perspective of life. Worship has this way of putting things back in its proper place. You see, here's what we have to understand. as we've studied this whole summer, the story in Genesis, the story of Joseph, it included his jo his father Jacob, um it included all the brothers, like they have all these characters in the story, right? And there's this tendency as we read these chapters in Genesis to make the story the hero, Joseph. Remember, he's the one that was thrown in the pit. He was the one that was put in jail. He's the one that rose up to be the second command of all of all of Egypt. And he's the one rescuing his family. And there's this this this this tendency that we look at the story and we want to say, "Oh, there's the hero of the story." And we plug in Joseph as the hero of the story. We could even at this point plug in Jacob as the hero, a big character in the story. But here's what we have to remember. The story of Joseph is not about Joseph. The story of Joseph is about God. It is about what God is doing in the life not of just Joseph. It is a story of what God is doing in the life of a generations of people. The story of Joseph is about God. Not just what he's doing in Joseph's generation. It is about us because that is where our faith comes from. That is the beginning seed of one day then Jesus will be born in this whole lineage. It is the plan of God from the beginning for the salvation of us. And so when we worship, here's what it does. It puts everything in perspective and it places God in the proper place of our story. I want you to imagine for a second that you walk up to a wall, you're an inch away from a wall and when you open your eye, all you see is like a brown tile. Maybe the brown tile looks something like this. But you're so close to the wall, like an inch away from it, that is all you see. It's not a pretty thing you're looking at. is kind of like a a confusing thing you're looking at. You're not even sure what you're looking at, but that's all you see when you're an inch away from it. But you take a step back and then you take another step back and you take a third step back. You take a fourth step back and all of a sudden instead of seeing that one ugly brown tile, this is what you see. A beautiful mosaic piece of artwork that's made of broken tiles. You see, here's what happens when you take a step back and a step back and a step back. That is almost like what happens when you worship. Because when you worship, you take a step back from your circumstances. You take a circum a step back from your situation in life. You take a step back from your difficulties in life. You take a step back even from your joys in life. And as you take a step back and you worship, you recognize the beauty of the big piece that God is doing. It is not just about that point, that center that where I'm at. It is about a picture much bigger than that. And so worship in our lives puts things in perspective. It realignes our perspective. And on that day when Jacob said, "Stop the carts, hold the sheep, kids, gather around." And he said, "We will worship." Even though the purpose of where they're going is towards Joseph, he knew that they need to realign and understand the perspective of the story that was being taken place in being written right where they were. Here's the second thing. Worship. Why was it so important to worship at that moment? Worship prepares us for what comes next. See, so many times we play worship as the exclamation of what comes next. Oh God, look what you got did. Oh God, this is wonderful. You're so good. But really, worship lines us. It changes our perspective and it sets up us sets us up ready for whatever God has next going on in our lives. Look with me. We we we read it, but look back with me in verse two and three. After he worshiped, okay, he built the altar, he worshiped. Verse two, during the night, okay, everybody's gone to bed. The sheep are put down, the kids are put down, the fire has been extinguished from their worship time there on the altar. During the night, after all of that, during the night, God spoke to him in a vision. Jacob, Jacob, God called out and he said, "Here I am, Jacob replied." And I am God, the God of your fathers, the voice said. And do not be afraid.

Do not be afraid. Jacob never told God he was afraid. Yet God in his wisdom, God in his glory, God in his diviness knew this, that he addressed the very fear that Jacob was facing. You might ask the question, well, how do you know Jacob was afraid? I mean, Bible doesn't tell us. This is the part we can put ourselves in story, and here's why we know he was afraid. Would you be afraid? Have you ever moved from a lifelong home, a lifelong place, and you moved? Even though you're excited about the future, moving brings fear, doesn't it? He was not just moving away from his lifetime of of where he lived. He was 130 years old. Any kind of change when you're 130 years years old will bring you a little fear. Will I even make it the trip? I know Joseph is there, but 30 days in a wagon, 130 years old, will you even make it? That had to be fear he was going through. He had to worry about and have a fear. What would it do to all of his family? I mean, you got the little ones. You got a little six months old there carrying on this wagon. Will they make it? All these fears. There had to be fear going on because God recognized it and he looked at him and said, "Jacob, don't be afraid." You know what he's probably really afraid of? What was this doing to the story of God in his life? If you know much about Joseph and Jacob, they had a father named Isaac, had a father named Abraham. Abraham is the one that God gave the promise to and said, "This is who you're going to be. I will raise up a mighty people, a people called by my name, and I will raise them up out of you, Abraham." Remember this, the greatgrandfather of Joseph, the grandfather of of Jacob. He says, "I will raise them up and I will give you a place to live called your own." They were living in that place. That's where Jacob was living in Canaa. And all of a sudden now he's got to take his family 300 miles to another country. He's got to be thinking, "God, am I messing this thing up? You gave a promise. We're not taking one step back. We're taking hundreds of steps. We're taking hundreds of miles back." And so all this fear had to be going on inside of him. And here's what happens when we have fear in our life. The voices begin to speak. You've been there before making a life change, a job change, maybe health is going on, and all these voices begin to speak. Voices like, "What if this relationship doesn't work out?" Voices that say, "What if I make the wrong decision about my job?" Voices that say, "What if my health doesn't get better? What if does God doesn't come through? What if I just end up messed up through all of this?" You ever had those voices? And the louder they are, the more fearful we become. Or maybe you could say it the opposite way. The more fearful we are, the louder those voices become. And so God spoke into to to Jacob. And here's why. The worship allowed Jacob to hear the voice of God. You see, when we worship, it turns down all the volume of all the voices that we hear. Because when we begin to worship, whether we worship corporately, whether we worship personally and worship, whether it looks like you're singing, whether worship looks like you're praying, whether it just looks like you're praising, worship comes in many forms. Whatever goes on there, worship turns down the voices of fear around us and allows us to hear the voice of God clearer and louder because we're aligning with him and we're putting things in his perspective. And then worship prepares us for what comes next. I find it so interesting. You don't read there that God says, "Hey Jake, Jacob, I need you to pull over here and worship." You don't hear God talking to Jacob in the story until after he worships. It does make me wonder this. I wonder the reason we don't individually hear the word of God, the voice of God in our life more is because we don't spend enough time worshiping. We don't spend enough time putting God in the proper place in the perspective. So, we're so so overwhelmed with the voices in our head. We're so consumed with us trying to arrange all the pieces that we don't hear God because we never slow down enough to worship.

Worship turns down the volume on all those voices until God's voice becomes the loudest voice in the room. Let me give you the third one. Third and last one. Some of you are taking notes. Worship reminds us that God's presence [snorts] is greater than God's presence. Notice how we spell though. Spell those presence. God's presence. P rese.

Think about what Jacob had been waiting for. 22 years. He had missed his son. If you're just catching into the story, he had a bunch of other sons and his daughters as well, but he loved Joseph the most. Thought he was dead. Can you imagine someone that you have lost in your life and all of a sudden somebody comes up to you to to you and going, "They're not dead. They're alive." I mean, the excitement that he had for that, the greatest gift he'd probably ever given that at his that point in his life was your son is alive. Go get him. Go hold him. Go grab him. Go hug him. You get him. But here's what Jacob in his great wisdom knew. No matter how great a gift the life of his son was, the gift of God's presence was greater. And if he began loving his son more than he loved his God, life would have been turned upside down and not in the right order. And so that moment that he said, "Everybody stop the cars. Bring the sheep. Kids gather around your grandkids. Watch this. Let me show you who our God is. And we will stop and we will worship." The greatest thing that he had in his life that moment. The greatest thing that you and I can have in our lives at this moment is not anything that we can hold, not anything that we can touch, but is the very presence of God in our lives. Now listen to me. Watch this. His presence is with us, but too many times we're moving so fast to the things of life that we miss the very presence of the God in our lives. And worship has a way of slowing us down and just going, "God, it's you. It's you.

My health is important, but you're more important. My job is important, but you're important. More important. My family is important. Even my favorite son is important. But God, your presence is what I have to chase after. Now hear me. There's nothing wrong with the presence. P rese God gives us. He wants to bless us with things. There's nothing wrong with asking for those things. There's nothing wrong with pursuing those things. But when we pursue those presents over the presence of God, we have got it backwards. And so worship has a way of reminding us the priority of his presence.

Sometimes we become so focused on what God can give us that we stop pursuing the God who gives it. And worship does that. If I was to kind of in my mind, in your notes, in your mind, summarize this, there's two blanks there. Here, here's what I would just summarize and say. When worship is absent, our problems become bigger than God. But when worship is present, God becomes bigger than our problems.

God just makes it right. God just sets things in order. Whether it's the way we want or not, whether it's suffering or non-suffering, God's presence is what we're after. And so, as we close today, I began to think this week, I want to leave you with something because this this this preaches well, but Monday's coming, right? This preach is so good, but life gets busy on Monday. And so I want to share with you an app, not an app, but just a a a devotional online that I discovered a couple of weeks ago. Um, they're going to put the QR code up there. It's in your bulletin. But I know for me, Monday mornings can be so busy. This is an amazing like 11 minute devotional today that just leads you to worship. It's got singing in there. Um, it's got contemporary songs. They do some hymns. It's just a good mix. But you feel like you just get invited into somebody's living room and there's three or four people. I've started using it driving to work. I'm going no more texting, no more calling, no more just listening the radio like God, let me worship you. It has changed my days. I feel like and so let me just encourage you, give it a try. Um, it has just been for me just I don't want to say life-changing, it's been day changing. And it's allowed me on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday to place worship at a priority so everything else can follow behind. So that's just one gift I give you. But here's something else. I thought it would be wrong, it feels like, to talk about this worship and not step back into it. Remember I said when when Jacob was stood there, we don't know if he voiced prayers. We don't know if he he had just family prayers. They prayed over and everybody joined. Did he sing? Maybe song sang a song out of his heart. Maybe he sang the song I love you, Lord.

Wouldn't it be good to step into that moment? So, here's what happening. You're looking at your watch going, "It's 9:57. This thing's supposed to be over in 3 minutes."

That's what gets in our way of worship. our expectations, our anticipation rather than just going. And so I called Daniel this week and there's a song that it goes back years ago. Just I love you, Lord.

And I've asked Daniel, [music] just imagine yourself, if you will, close your eyes and the sheep are banging. The wagons are over here. There's an altar of incense with smoke bellowing and you're the moment with Jacob

and maybe he sang this song

and I love you Lord

and I lift my voice [music]

to worship [singing] you, oh my soul.

Rejoice.

Take joy our king [music]

in [singing] what you [music] hear.

Let it be a sweet sweet sound [music] in your ear.

And I love you, Lord. [music]

And I lift my voice [singing] [music] to worship [singing] [music] you, oh my soul. [music]

Rejoice

angel [singing] my king

in [singing] what you hear.

Let it be a sweet [music] [singing] sweet sound. Let it be a sweet, [singing and music] sweet sound. Let it be [music and singing] a sweet, sweet sound in your [singing] ear.