Good morning. This morning we’re going to be continuing on in our sermon series looking at the next episode in the life of Joseph. Our text comes from the 42nd and 43rd chapters of Genesis. Again, it’s a very long text and so, rather than read it to you, I’m going to tell you the story.

Let me remind you of where we’ve come from. Remember that the story of Joseph begins when he’s 17.

• He’s betrayed by his brothers
• He’s sold into slavery
• He’s taken off into Egypt
• He’s falsely accused of attempting to seduce his
  master’s wife.
• He’s thrown into prison
• He’s forgotten.

And then Joseph has a really marvelous and somewhat miraculous turn-around in fortunes. He seemingly overnight is elevated from the status of prisoner to 2nd in command, subject only to Pharaoh over all of Egypt. And he is charged with the duty of collecting the exceness grain and filling up the storeshouses during 7 years of plenty, so that in the 7 years of famine that follow there will be sufficient grain for Egypt to eat.

And he does that, and at the end of chapter 41, we find that the famine has started, but the storehouses are full and there’s plenty of food to feed Egypt. And indeed, because the famine is broader than Egypt, people are coming from other lands and asking if they can buy grain from Joseph. And that’s where chapter 41 ends. And that’s where we’ve come so far.

Now if you want to think about what is the connection between that and where we go in chapter 42, you might think of this phrase. It’s not actually in the Bible, but it’s a sense of what’s happening, “Meanwhile, back in Canaan…”

You remember that Joseph starts with his family in Canaan and we have now been following for a number of weeks. At the beginning of chapter 42 the camera swings back and says, “Meanwhile, what’s been going on in Canaan.”

Well, in Canaan there’s been a famine. The same famine. It’s a severe famine. And Jacob, the father, says to his boys, “I hear that you can buy grain down in Egypt. Why don’t you go buy some?”

And he sends his sons to Egypt. Actually, he sends all but one of his sons. His youngest son, Benjamin, whom the text suggests might be quite a bit younger than his brothers, is Jacob’s last son. He’s what Jacob thinks at this time is the only living son of his favorite wife, Rachel. Rachel actually died giving birth to Benjamin. And so he’s young and very precious, clearly Jacob’s favorite, and he doesn’t get sent to Egypt. But the rest of the brothers get sent to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph.

They come, like pretty much everybody else does – supplicants – they come into his court, they bow down before him. And the text tells us they don’t recognize Joseph. And indeed there’s no reason to think that they would. He looks like an Egyptian, he speaks like an Egyptian, he’s dressed like an Egyptian. And who would have thought that 20 years earlier, when they sold their younger brother off into slavery, he would now emerge 2nd in command in the largest super-power of the day. It was just beyond their imagination. They don’t recognize him.

But we’re told that Joseph immediately recognizes them. And he remembers that dream he had way back at the beginning...the dream of his brothers coming to bow down before him. And here they are bowing down before him. And there must have been some sense of vindication. But we’re told with no more explanation than this, he recognizes them and he speaks harshly to them. We’re not told why.

The conversation with them goes something like this. Joseph says,

"You’re spies."

"No. No we’re not spies. We’re just here to buy food."

“No. You’re spies. You’re here to check out the vulnerability of my land.”

“No, sir. We’re just 10 brothers. We’re brothers all of one father. There used to be 12. One is dead. There’s a younger one at home. We’re not spies. We just want to buy food.”

“You’re spies. But I’ll tell you what. You say you have this younger brother at home. One of you go fetch him and bring him here that I might test your story.”

And then he throws them all into jail.

Now you have a sense that Joseph is kind of making this up as he goes along. He’s startled to find his brothers in front of him. This is his first reaction.

But now he has a little time to think about it. And you also get the sense that maybe God is prodding him a little bit, because 3 days later he brings them out of jail and has them stand before him. And he says, “Do this, and you will live, for I fear God.”

And he says, “I’m changing my plan. My original plan was to hold 9 of you and send one of you back. I’ve changed it around. I’m going to send 9 of you back. That will allow you to carry the grain that you came to buy. That will allow you to feed your families and protect them from starving. But I am going to keep one of you here, and you must bring your younger brother back for him to be released. Indeed if you don’t bring your younger brother back, you will all die.” And then, in their very midst he calls out the 2nd oldest, Simeon, and he has Simeon tied up in front of them and taken off to prison.

It doesn’t tell us exactly, but you can imagine the anguish and pleading of the brothers, “Please don’t do this.” But what this does is have the effect of bringing to their minds exactly what they did to Joseph 20 years earlier. And they say to themselves, “Alas, this is because of what we did to Joseph when he was pleading in anguish with us and we didn’t listen to him, and he was bound and sent off into slavery."

And so they say this to each other, using their own language. And they think, because they’re in Egypt, there’s no one that can understand them. But Joseph, listening, understands what they’re saying and he’s filled with emotion. And it’s like he can’t contain himself so he has to slip away into a back room and he weeps.

He gathers himself together, he comes back out, and he says then, “Okay. I’ve told you what to do.” He says to his servants, “Fill their sacks with grain.” And then out of the earshot of his brothers he says, “Put the silver that they brought to pay for the grain back in the bags of the grain.” So in effect, they’re going home with the grain for free.

The brothers take off heading home. One of them along the way (and then all of them when they get there), open the bags of grain and discover that the silver is in it. Now you might think that getting the grain for free would be a source of great joy and celebration for them, but in fact it works just the opposite. They’re scared to death. It says they tremble. They say to each other, “What has God done to us?”

Now it’s easy to imagine what is making them frightened. They left Egypt under the label of potentially being spies. They have to come back to get Simeon out. But now they know that when they come back not only might they be suspected of being spies, but they may be suspected of being thieves as well. It’s a dark moment for them. They get home and tell their father Jacob everything that’s happened. And then they say, “You know, we have to take Benjamin back to get Simeon out.”

We see now in this story Jacob at his whiniest worst. This is Jacob at one of his low points. Jacob says, “Oh, I’ve lost Joseph. I’ve lost Simeon. I’m not going to lose Benjamin. No way are you going to take Benjamin back.” And he just flat out refuses. So they live for probably a matter of weeks or months eating the grain that they had purchased from Egypt and staying alive, all the while Simeon is rotting away in an Egyptian jail.

They come to the end of the grain. And Jacob says to his boys, “Well, we’re all out of grain. Go back and buy some more.” And the boys say to him in effect, “Dad, I don’t know if you were listening. But the man said, "Don’t come back without Benjamin." We won’t get an audience. We might get worse. We’re not going back. If you had let us go with Benjamin, we could have been down and back twice by now. But if we can’t go without Benjamin, we’re not going.”

And so Jacob, out of options, says “Alright.” And then Jacob prays. He says, “May Almighty God grant you mercy that the man may show favor to you and release Simeon and let Benjamin come back.” And after praying, he does a very characteristic Jacob thing. He whines. He says, “Oh, if I am to be bereaved, I am bereaved.” And then he does an even more characteristic thing. Having prayed for God’s mercy, he schemes.

He says, “Alright. Here’s what we’re gonna do.

First, let’s gather up a whole bunch of things from our community that are special and we’ll take them as gifts to this man. Then I want you to take the silver that was in your sacks and take it back because, you know, maybe that was just a mistake. And then take some additional silver so you can pay for the next load of grain.”

And so they set out, 10 brothers, including Benjamin now with a double load of silver and all these gifts for Joseph. As they approach, Joseph sees them coming. And he sees that they have Benjamin with them.

Now, interestingly, if you read Genesis very carefully you can’t quite tell whether Joseph has ever met Benjamin before. It may be that Benjamin was actually born after Joseph was sent off into slavery. It may be the first time that he’s ever seen Benjamin. We don’t know that for sure.

But in any event he sees that this younger brother is with them and so he turns to his steward and he says, “I want you to go kill one of our animals and set up this huge feast back in my palace so that these 10, plus their brother Simeon (the 11th), may dine with me at noon today.”

And so he leaves, and the steward communicates this to the brothers. Now you see the brothers are being given an incredible opportunity. This is to have dinner with essentially one of the heads of state of the most powerful country in the world. Even if they’re not thieves, even if they’re not spies, at best they’re customers. And now they’re being treated as these tremendously honored guests.

This is a huge honor that’s being bestowed on them but they don’t receive it that way at all. In fact, it scares them to death. They say, “Oh, this is a trap. We’re going to be taken to the palace and then they’re gonna fall on us. And worse yet, they’re going to sell us into slavery. And worse yet, they’re gonna take our donkeys.” Yech.

So, filled with this fear, and then they say to themselves, “It’s all because of that silver.” And so they run ahead and they catch up with the steward and they say, “Look. You know, when we left last time we had this – we don’t know how it happened – but we found this silver in our packs and we brought it back. And we brought more silver.” As if to say in effect, “We’re not thieves, really. We’ve come to buy the grain.”

And in one of the most beautiful verses of this whole episode – verse 23 from chapter 43 – the steward looks at them and says, “Don’t be afraid. Your God, the God of your father, must have put treasure in your sacks. I received your money.” In other words, “You paid for the grain. I got it. If it turns out you had a bunch of money in your sacks, your God must have given you a gift.”

Now perhaps that makes them feel a little better. They go into Joseph’s dining salon. And they set out all of their gifts for him. And Joseph shows up. They all bow. And they present their gifts to him.

There’s no indication in the text that Joseph cares a whit about their gifts. And in a minute, instantly, Joseph begins to talk to them relationally. It says he inquires about their welfare. It says, “How’s your dad? Is your dad still alive? Is he doing well? Is this your younger brother?” And then he looks at Benjamin and he says, “May God be gracious to you, son.”

And then he is overwhelmed with emotion and again, because he doesn’t want to be crying in front of them, he slips out the back and goes into a private room where he weeps. And then when he’s done weeping he washes his face so they can’t tell that he was crying. And then he comes back out and dinner is served.

And we’re told that the dinner is taken – the food is taken - from Joseph’s table to them. And they are aligned in birth order. And typically what one would do would give a little bigger portion to the oldest. But Joseph turns this upside-down and he gives 5 times as much to Benjamin.

This doesn’t seem to disturb the experience that’s going on. It’s a very festive experience. In fact, chapter 43 ends with, “They feasted and drank freely together.” Actually, the technical literal translation of that in Hebrew is, “They got drunk together.” The story, chapter 43, ends in a party. And that’s our episode for today.

So, as I was thinking about how to preach on this, it occurred to me that as we have worked through Genesis, most of the time we have approached our text looking through a kind of telephoto lens. We have zoomed in on the particular text and said, “In the context of this little story, what do we learn about God and what might that tell us about our God?”

But we could also, it seems to me, look at these texts through what we might think of as a wide angle lens. And by that I mean we could say, “How is it that this little text fits into the grand story of Scripture?”

You see, all of Scripture tells in one sense one huge story. Fundamentally it’s a story of reconciliation. Right at the beginning of the story there’s a break in relationship between God and His children. And really the whole rest of the Bible all the way to the very last chapters of Revelation is building up to that great moment when these relationships are restored and everything is reconciled. And that’s the big story of Scripture. So we could ask, “What does this little episode about Joseph say in the context of that big story?”

Well, to answer that question we have to at least in part talk about foreshadowing. Foreshadowing is a literary technique that is used a lot of times in novels and stories where the author at the beginning, or near the beginning of the story, gives you a hint – a little suggestion – about what will become much more fully known at the end.

In fact, an English professor would probably tell you that the best foreshadowing is something that happens at the front end that is oblique enough that it doesn’t give away the surprise at the end. However, once you’ve seen the end you can look back and say, “Oh, yes. I see how it was all leading to that.” It’s a kind of hint that foreshadows, or points to, the bigger story.

And I think to some extent the right way to look at this passage, or at least a right way to look at this passage, is to see Joseph as foreshadowing Jesus. Or Joseph’s activities pointing to the activities of Jesus and later God the Father.

Let me tell you just a little bit more about foreshadowing. You can see foreshadowing in a lot of different contexts.

1) You can see it in music. Sometimes if you listen to a symphony, symphonies will have multiple movements. Sometimes in the first movement there’s a dominant theme, but then introduced a little minor theme that barely gets any play. It’s just stuck in there so that, in fact, when you get to the 4th and final movement it turns out that that little minor theme becomes recapitulated to be the big theme of the whole symphony. It’s just hinted at at the beginning.

Some people think that, in Beethoven’s 9th symphony, the first 3 movements of his great 9th sympthony just introduce little hints of themes until you get to the 4th grand movement...the great Ode to Joy, where all of those themes are put back together and recapitulated in a grand, grand way.

2) You can see it in stories. Sometimes foreshadowing is put in the mouth of a narrator. Let’s take a simple example. Supposing an old kid’s story, the Three Little Pigs. What if you heard the story this way? Once upon a time there were 3 little pigs and a hungry wolf. And then you go on and you talk about how the pigs build their houses with the straw and sticks and brick. But just by saying and a hungry wolf at the beginning, you have hinted, you have highlighted, you have foreshadowed what is going to come – a big conflict between a hungry wolf and pigs.

3) Sometimes foreshadowing is put in the mouth of characters. In Romeo and Juliet, for example. Both Romeo and Juliet early in the play say, Í would rather die than be separated from you,” or words to that effect; hinting at the tragic conclusion to that play.

4) Sometimes it’s in inanimate objects. We have a great example here a couple of weeks ago when Dan preached. Remember that Dan was preaching on how Joseph in prison interacted with the chief baker and chief steward. And when he talked about the chief baker, he came over here and he set down on the communion table a loaf of bread. And then when he talked about the chief steward he came over here and he set down on the communion table a chalice.

Now, as I recall, Dan never did or said anything about connecting the communion table to the story that he was telling. He just put the objects on the table. And that was enough to hint at something more. To hint at something that was to come.

5) Another way that foreshadowing is done – a kind of common way – is to have a minor character in the big story near the beginning have some set of circumstances that he or she has to navigate where those circumstances in a little twisted way parallel what the main character is going to do in the big story later. And it’s in that sense that I think Joseph foreshadows Jesus. And that the activities that Joseph does hint at, point to, what is to come.

Let me just highlight a couple of the ways that I see this foreshadowing work in here.

For one thing, remember that Joseph recognizes his brothers even though they don’t recognize him. He is able to understand them when they are speaking words in their own tongue of grief and despair. He is able to understand them when they don’t think he can understand them. He recognizes them before they recognize him. And in that way he foreshadows:

• Jesus, the good shepherd who knows his sheep.
• The father who is waiting for the prodigal son, who is standing on tiptoes and looking at the horizon, who recognizes the son coming back a long time before the son recognizes him.
• A God who says, “I know your name. I’ve given you a new name.”

You know, I suspect that there are some of you here today who would say, “I don’t recognize this Jesus that you talk about. I don’t recognize this God that you are talking about.”

There may be some of you that say, “You know, a long long time ago I might have had some interactions or thought I had some interactions with this Jesus or this God, but I’ve gone a different way and I don’t recognize him.”

One of the things that the Joseph story hints at is this truth – that reconciliation does not start with you and I recognizing God. It starts with God recognizing us. You may not know Him, you may not believe in Him, but He knows you. He believes in you. And He calls you by name. And that’s where reconciliation starts.

A second foreshadowing that happens here is that Joseph foreshadows the work of Christ by calling and giving his brothers an opportunity to repent.

Now one of the intriguing things about this episode is that we don’t really know what’s motivating Joseph to treat his brothers this way, to play these kinds of games with his brothers. One thing is that Joseph is Jacob’s son, and Jacob as you know is the master trickster and so perhaps he’s just living a little bit of his heritage out. He’s having some fun with his brothers. But probably more than that, there’s probably also some element of revenge.

When I saw the Broadway production Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat which basically tells this story, at this point in the story Joseph begins to poke at his brothers and the narrator comes over to Joseph and says, “That’s no way to treat your brothers.” And Joseph turns on the narrator and says, “These brothers were willing to commit fratricide. They were willing to kill their brother,” suggesting they deserve this. I can do this.

Now in those senses, it seems that this story is twisted. It’s not foreshadowing God. But in the midst of all those mixed motives, it turns out that Joseph:

• gives them an opportunity to repent. In their first visit as he binds Simeon right in front of them and takes him off to prison he recalls to their minds the fact that this is exactly what they did to Joseph.
  
• gives them an opportunity to express sorrow over their actions. Somewhat more subtlely later on during the second visit, when he piles up the extra portion on Benjamin’s plate, what’s he doing?

Well one thing that he’s doing is he’s giving his brothers an opportunity for a do-over. Remember that his brothers sent him off into slavery because they were so unhappy that he was the favorite, and he was always treated as the favorite.

Now Benjamin, clearly the favorite of Jacob, is going to be shown to be the favorite of the Egyptian court. And I’m stealing ahead a little bit into next week’s text, but next week we’ll see that these brothers are given the opportunity to do the same thing to Benjamin that they did to Joseph – to abandon him.

But they’re also given the opportunity not to do the same thing. They’re given a chance to do over, to repent in the sense of turning away from what they once did and turning toward what is right.

Joseph gives them an opportunity to repent, and in that way he foreshadows Jesus who says, “Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand.” Jesus, if you remember, when he deals with Peter who denies him three times, gives him three opportunities to say, “I love you. I love you. I love you.” as a way to repent of his previous denials. Joseph foreshadows that call and opportunity to repent.

Joseph also foreshadows, in this story, the very gracious character of God. He gives his brothers these incredible gifts. He gives them all the grain for free. He gives them all the opportunity to have this high state dinner. And that’s very much the character of our God. He gives us things that we don’t deserve. It’s what we call “grace.”

The story also reveals, though, how often it is almost impossible for us to receive grace – how it scares us. How these brothers were scared to death at these gifts that Joseph was giving them. Frankly many of us are scared of grace because grace is out of our control. We would rather buy or earn or at least repay anything that we get, cause it leaves us in control. And that’s not the way God works. A piece in the step toward reconciliation is this enormous gifting of God.

This story also foreshadows the heart of God. It foreshadows Jesus weeping over Jerusalem. Twice in this story Joseph can’t contain himself and he weeps. He has to sneak off to the back room so no one will see him crying. He weeps. We can imagine all the emotions. He weeps for the lost years. He weeps out of the longing for reconciliation. He weeps, we’re told in chapter 43 most profoundly, he weeps just out of affection. And Jesus too weeps over Jerusalem. He looks at it and he says, “Oh, like a hen I wish I could gather my chicks under my arms, but you won’t let me.”

When I was growing up I was worshipping at a church very much like University Pres. And at that time the very constant message from the pulpit was that in the notion of Christian love, love is a decision. Love is a choice. Love is a commitment.

This I absolutely believe to be true. And it was at a critical time for this message, because all the culture (this was late 60’s, early 70’s) was “do what you feel like.” “You are how you feel.” “If you are truly yourself you’ll live to your feelings.” “Love is a feeling.” “I love you because I feel love. When I stop feeling love, I split, because love is a feeling.” And into that milieu, and frankly I’m not sure how different today is from then, but into that milieu was this consistent message that “no, fundamentally, for Christians, love is a decision, a commitment, to put someone else’s welfare ahead of mine.”

That’s what love is. And so while I absolutely believe the truth of that message, in my case it had some unintended negative consequences. Because as I kept hearing that message, it began to shape the way I thought God loved me. That for some reason that I couldn’t quite figure out, God had chosen to love me. He had sort of committed to it, and out of a kind of stoic commitment, God was going to love me – no particular energy around it, but that’s what He was saying He would do. He’d made the choice and he was going to see it through.

And that was my picture of God – a kind of cold love. Well, that’s not the picture that emerges from Scripture. When Joseph weeps, and Jesus weeps, they point us to the heart of God whose heart is so filled with longing and love and affection for us that our God in heaven weeps just because He loves us that much. That’s the picture of the love of God. It stems, sure it’s a choice, a decision, but it’s animated by this deep emotion. Our God loves us with that kind of passion.

Lastly, the story of Joseph foreshadows another banquet. He has a banquet and the story ends with a table. Remember we’re told that the food that he feeds these brothers is taken from his table to their table. That’s how they’re fed. In doing that he foreshadows a couple of additional tables. First he foreshadows Christ, who will sit at table with his disciples and will feed them to fullness. But now it’s not because somebody has gone out and killed an animal. Now it is Christ who is saying, “This is my body which is broken for you. This is my blood which is shed for you. Eat. Drink.”

And even that is foreshadowing a final banquet table, a table that you and I will gather around, where you and I will gather in unity, where there will be plenty to eat, where the mood the spirit will be feasting or celebrating, where we will be united because reconciliation will be complete. We will be united with each other. We will be united with God. The final picture of reconciliation is a banquet, is a celebration. It’s a party. And Joseph’s little dinner foreshadows that great dinner that is to come.

By the end of the 43rd chapter, in a way, not much has happened. Joseph isn’t restored, reconciled with his brothers. Certainly the grand narrative of Scripture isn’t over. But Joseph’s story hints at a God who knows us, who calls us to repent, and who gives us an opportunity to do so. He hints at a God whose character is gracious, who loves to give gifts, who loves us deeply from the bottom of His heart. And he hints at a God who is preparing a table for us where we will be able to enjoy him and enjoy each other forever. It’s not there. It’s just hinted at. But it’s coming, and it will find its fulfillment in Jesus Christ.

Let us pray.