The Lord’s Discipline
Download MP3When Jacob learned that there was grain for sale in Egypt, he said to his sons, why do you look at one another? And he said, behold, I've heard that there is some grain for sale in Egypt. Go down and buy grain for us there, that we may live and not die. So ten of Joseph's brothers went down to buy grain in Egypt. But Jacob did not send Benjamin, Joseph's brother, with his brothers, for he feared that harm might happen to him.
Speaker 1:Thus, the sons of Israel came to buy among the others who came for the famine was in the land of Canaan. Now Joseph was governor over the land. He was the one who sold to all the people of the land, and Joseph's brothers came and bowed themselves before him with their faces on the ground. Joseph saw his brothers and recognized them, but he treated them like strangers and spoke roughly to them. Where do you come from?
Speaker 1:He said. They said from the land of Canaan to buy food. And Joseph recognized his brothers, but they did not recognize him. And Joseph remembered the dreams that he had dreamed of them. And he said to them, you were spies.
Speaker 1:You have come to see the nakedness of the land. Then Joseph could not control himself before all those who stood by him. He cried, make everyone go out for me. So no one stayed with him when Joseph made himself known to his brothers, And he wept aloud. So the Egyptians heard it and the household of pharaoh heard it.
Speaker 1:And Joseph said to his brothers, I am Joseph. Is my father still alive? But his brothers could not answer him for they were dismayed at his presence. So Joseph said to his brothers, come near to me please. And they came near.
Speaker 1:And he said, I am your brother Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for god sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has has been in the land these 2 years, and there are yet 5 years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. And god sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on the earth, to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God.
Speaker 1:He has made me a father to pharaoh and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt. This is the word of the Lord.
Joel Brooks:Thanks be to God. If you would, pray with me. Lord, right now I pray that you would give me clarity as I open up your word. And And I pray that you would open up our hearts and our ears to receive your truth. We long to hear from you.
Joel Brooks:We wanna be changed into your image. We want to look like you. Lord, in order for that to happen, your word needs to come alive in us. And so we pray that through the power of your spirit that that would take place, that no one here would leave the same. I pray that my words now would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore.
Joel Brooks:But lord, may your words remain and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. There have been times, just just a few times in which I have proven to be a horrible parent. It might come as a shock to you, but but there are those few moments.
Joel Brooks:And, I can remember Caroline, who's my oldest, when she was a baby. And, you know, you read how you have to have that tough love, you have to let your kids scream and cry through the night. And, and I remember Caroline was screaming and crying, and I just said, close the door. It's like, we are not going in there. And, after about 30 minutes of screaming and crying, Lauren softened and said, no, let me go in there.
Joel Brooks:And I said, no. I didn't say submit or anything like that. I said, no, we got to be strong about this. Alright? Let her cry.
Joel Brooks:So she kept crying and she kept crying and she kept crying until finally she went asleep. And when she was asleep I went to go check in on her and she was covered in her own vomit and her leg had been stuck painfully in the in the bars of the crib. And she was just crying out for help for hours, and I just kept saying no no no. Hopefully she has forgotten about that moment. I have since had many other bad things.
Joel Brooks:Those things you know, you you kind of cringe and you can forgive yourself, you know, in time over. The things that are really hard though is when you see your sins coming out in your children. You know, when, when I'm sitting across the dinner table table at Natalie, who refuses to eat her vegetables, and I can remember being in her shoes. And I won when I was a kid. And Natalie has broken me down.
Joel Brooks:And when she just says, I'm not eating, I'm not, there's nothing you could do to make me eat, and there's nothing forced unless I open her mouth and shove it down that I could do to get her to eat. And that stubbornness is what drives you crazy and you just think, gosh, she inherited my sin. We've seen that in Genesis. We have seen the father's sins being passed down to their children. I mean, we focused a lot on the blessing, the blessing that's been fought over.
Joel Brooks:The blessings that's gone down from from son to to to son. But also the sin has been passed on. Abraham, remember he twice lies about his wife Sarah and says, you know, she's just my sister. He lies to a pharaoh and he lies to King Abimelech. Well then later in life, Abraham's son Isaac is going to lie to the exact same king.
Joel Brooks:The king's gotta be thinking, you know, what what is it with this people who claim to know this God? Why do they keep lying to me? Jacob, Isaac has has Jacob and he has Esau, and he showers affection on 1. And as a result, Jacob and Esau hate one another. They they lie, or Jacob lies and he deceives his brother.
Joel Brooks:So of course, Jacob's gonna grow up. He's gonna create create the exact same environment. He's gonna dote and show all of his affection on one of his children, and it's gonna create all of this, sinful, dysfunctional family there in which they're gonna lie and they're gonna deceive. And it's the sins being passed from the fathers to the sons and then they grow up and then they pass the same sins further down. And up to this point in Genesis, I think you will agree we have seen some horrible parenting.
Joel Brooks:Horrible. There's been some good, but there's been a lot of horrible parent parenting. But behind this, behind these parenting skills that we have seen, if we look closely, we actually see God behind the scenes becoming the parent that each one of these people needs. He's becoming the daddy that they need behind the scenes. He doesn't come down and scold them like a lot of parents would.
Joel Brooks:Instead, he he seemingly is absent, but he arranges circumstances, he arranges trials, and he arranges all these things as a way of fashioning and disciplining his children. We don't have, Tim Keller loves to point this out. It's like, we're always waiting for these touched by an angel moments in scripture. You know, where where an angel would come down and be like, Jacob, you're being a horrible father. You know, quit doing that.
Joel Brooks:Can't you see you're creating the same environment that you grow up in? Stop that. Joseph, you're about to become an arrogant, evil brat. You need to quit that. And you kind of expect this angel to come and say all that and then it's, ah, okay.
Joel Brooks:But you don't get that. It seems like God is silent. There's there's no angels here. There's not God, you know, like speaking here. It's circumstances.
Joel Brooks:But God is moving and He's being the parent they need. God knows that Joseph is in danger of becoming an arrogant and cruel man and that the only way that he can cure Joseph of that is to rip him away from his family and to throw him into slavery, To humble him. He sees Joseph's brothers are full of envy and they are full of hate. And so God says, well the the way to cure that is to bring a famine and bring you groveling before your brother. He looks up Jacob and he says, why do you over and over again keep putting all of your hopes and all of your love in one thing and it's not me?
Joel Brooks:Solve that, I'm gonna take away the person you love. You're going to think he's dead for 20 years. And it's God disciplining his children to make them holy. He's being the dad they all needed. And we've got a lot of ground to cover, so let's just jump into the story.
Joel Brooks:And we can't go through the whole story of Joseph because I wanted to do this in more of a broad paintbrush here. When the famine hits, Joseph's brothers, they they head to Egypt to buy food because only food is there. They're getting desperate. 11 chapter 42, verses 2 and 3, Jacob goes to someone's like, are y'all just gonna sit there looking at one another? I mean, it's the same family dynamics.
Joel Brooks:It's like you're just bumps on a log. Do something. Go. So they go to get the grain, and it's here that you have Joseph's dreams coming true, finally coming true. The brothers come to him and they bow down before him, just like those dreams.
Joel Brooks:He was 17 at the time he had those dreams. Now he is 37. 20 years have gone by. He's 37, which is the same age as I am, so he's he's in his prime. He's in his prime here.
Joel Brooks:And finally, he's seeing God's fulfillment. And and I find it fascinating that, I don't know if 20 years is just the magical thing, but God promises Abraham a child he has to wait 20 years until he has Isaac. He promises Jacob that he's gonna return to the land, but he has to stay 20 years with Laban before he returns to the land. And here we have God telling Joseph that his brother is gonna bow down before him and he's got to wait 20 years. You know, we kind of, you know, have that mech god and like, you know, he makes a promise and it better be instant and we lose our patience.
Joel Brooks:20 years in each one of these people between promise and fulfillment. And we're thinking, man, I have prayed and prayed and prayed. Really for how long? Like, days. 20 years, which is a short time with God.
Joel Brooks:So don't, don't lose heart or patience when you don't see God at work. When you get to verse 5 in chapter 42, sorry, not 42, verse 5 of 45. There we go. Went to the wrong chapter. When you get to verse 5, you get to the main point of the narrative.
Joel Brooks:In which Joseph says this. He goes, you sold me but God sent me. You see that there? It says, you sold me, it says, and now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life. And that's a remarkable statement.
Joel Brooks:You should highlight it in your Bible because it's, it's here you see the the freedom of man and you see the sovereignty of God meeting, or you see the proverb, the heart of man plans his ways but the Lord directs his steps. In which they intended evil, but God intended good in this. This is an incredible insight that Joseph has here as to all that's happened because he understands that everything his brothers did was evil. It was wrong. It was evil, and it happened exactly as God planned it, in order to preserve their lives.
Joel Brooks:Everything went according to God's plan. For those of you who think, those of you who love God and you think that somehow you have messed up and and somehow God's plan for your life is ruined, Don't take this the wrong way, but quit being so arrogant. As if you could thwart God's plan for your life, that you had such power that you could do that. Here you see people doing evil things, Over and over evil things and it's happening exactly according to God's plan. His plan cannot be thwarted.
Joel Brooks:There's a verse that we quote a whole lot. Romans 828, probably most of you know it by heart. We know that for those who love God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose. You know, you see that on football players, the, you know, little smudge there, Romans 828. You see it on t shirts.
Joel Brooks:You see it on bumper stickers. I have heard that verse quoted over a zillion times, and and usually it's it's misunderstood what that verse is talking about. Usually it's something like, you know, I lost my job. Gosh, I got fired from my job, But God had a better job waiting for me, and so I got it. Or you're traveling someplace and you miss your flight, and you're like, ah, I missed my flight.
Joel Brooks:But on my next flight, I sat next to a really cute girl and there has got potential there, you know. God God God's working things for my good. And and not, those things aren't necessarily wrong, but it it kinda cheapens the verse. It kinda cheapens Paul's thrust. And if that's how you go through life thinking all things work together for good, you're really not gonna get the depths of it.
Joel Brooks:Usually, we always try to find, and we spend a lot of energy and time wasted on trying to find the external good that comes from our bad situation. We we need to find it. We need to find that one external good. But the problem with that is when you have things like a tsunami happen, or genocide, or the death of a loved one, something horrible happens, you're gonna spend all of this time, all of this energy trying to find that one external good. Alright.
Joel Brooks:God is doing this for well, I gotta look around. I gotta find the, you know, the silver lining in the cloud. He's he's doing it for that reason. And we spend all this time and energy trying to find that external reason. Likely, you will never know the external reason though.
Joel Brooks:And you're going to waste a whole lot of time and energy trying to find it. What you need to be doing is instead of looking at the external reasons, look inward. Tragedy, pain, it's happened. Why? Because God wants to do something in here.
Joel Brooks:And that you can see, and that you can work on and begin to understand. Joseph is very fortunate in that he got to see the external good. You know, God saving 100 of thousands of people from mass starvation. He got to see that 20 years later, not while it was happening. 20 years later, and and he was lucky that he got to see it.
Joel Brooks:Most of us will never see the outward reason, and so we need to concentrate on what is the inward reason. God, what are you teaching me through this pain? Not what is the silver cloud that I need to find. In this story that we just read, God could have kept people from starving a 1000000 different ways. For starters, he could have just not had a famine.
Joel Brooks:That would have, that would have done it. But instead, he's like, no, I want to help people in such a way that first it's gonna bring pain in your life. So I can teach you something in order to accomplish my purpose. I mean, he's gonna accomplish his purpose, but he's gonna do it in such a way to teach our hearts. That's what he does here.
Joel Brooks:Let me give an illustration. I hope this illustrates it. On October 29, 1929, it was known as Black Tuesday, right when the Great Depression hit. My granddad was living in California. The Great Depression hits, he loses his job.
Joel Brooks:He loses his job and he had to move to Georgia where he he got a little farm that he began to work. The the farm wasn't working out that well. It led to depression. He began to drink a whole lot, which made the farm do even worse, so he lost his farm. And because he lost his farm, he had to move to a little Podink house in, in Butts County, Georgia and the little town of Jenkinsburg that was right across the street from a little Methodist church.
Joel Brooks:But it was the only thing that he could afford. Never had indoor plumbing his entire life in that house. And he was there and he was an alcoholic, but he saw his uncle shoot his daddy over a card game when they were both drunk. And so he decided, I'm done with alcohol, we're going to church. They went across the street.
Joel Brooks:They went across the street, and that's where my dad became a believer. In that situation, and and I grew up in a completely different household. I grew up in this household in which we had family devotions every night. I thought that was the norm. And then, you know, I heard other kids talking about how they don't have it.
Joel Brooks:And I'm like, my parents make me have family devotions. You know, but I actually became out of family devotion with my mom praying on one side, my dad praying on the other side, with surrounded by my brother and my sister. And my dad was such an amazing man of faith. He'd get up at 4:30 every morning. He would read his Bible.
Joel Brooks:He'd pray for me. He knew I was going to be a pastor and he would pray just such great words of blessing and affirmation over me. A lot of who I am is because of him, which has led to this church here. And so if if I wanted to, I could go back to the Great Depression, the Black Tuesday, and I can make case that the Great Depression happened for us. Without the Great Depression, I wouldn't be here.
Joel Brooks:Without the Great Depression, you wouldn't be here. And if I did that, that would be such a self centered way of trying to apply Romans 828. God was doing millions of things through that, which I will never know. So you can't focus on trying to find all the external things that God is working, but you can look inward. Say, God, what are you trying to teach me?
Joel Brooks:How are you trying to change my heart? And so that's what God is doing here. He's trying to change their hearts. He's disciplining them. Hebrews 12:6 says, for the Lord disciplines the one He loves and He chastises every son whom He receives.
Joel Brooks:So because we are God's sons, He disciplines us. Now the word there for discipline, for dio, has got an edge to it. It's not a little slap on the wrist. That's not what it is. It's, it's not like God putting you in time out.
Joel Brooks:This is, this has teeth to it and it's actually matched with the word chastise, which is, which is used as a Greek word for flog actually. So you you can read it, God harshly disciplines the one he loves and he flogs every son whom he receives. I mean, this is punishment with or discipline with teeth to it. God brings in pain. He brings in pain because we are his children and he wants to correct us.
Joel Brooks:And only he knows the exact amount of pain to bring in because he's a good father. And he brings us right up to the very edge of all that we can handle, and he doesn't go anymore. He doesn't break us down completely. He knows exactly what we need, but it's gonna hurt. That's what he's doing in the life of Joseph.
Joel Brooks:Joseph is a spoiled brat. He, he's got some evilness growing in his heart. I mean, can you think of any 17 year old who, who was given everything they want, could do no wrong in their father's eyes, was completely doted on at the expense of all their brothers, never had to work a day in his life. Can you can you is that gonna end well? Not at all.
Joel Brooks:God's gotta step in. He's gotta step in and do something. And so he does. He could have just said, Joseph quit being a brat, but he doesn't. He's like, life experience is going to teach you this.
Joel Brooks:And so he takes Joseph down low and he's sold into slavery. Then he raises him up. He's like, becomes the head of the household. Then he throws him back down low into prison, and then becomes the head of the prisoners. And then he even gets to interpret somebody's dream and says, tell pharaoh about me.
Joel Brooks:And he's really high and happy, and the guy forgets about him. And so he goes crashing down low. And then God raises him up again. You see this consistently happening in his life. God raises up his hopes, God smashes his hopes.
Joel Brooks:God raises it up, smashes it over and over again. That's Pedial. That's discipline. He's teaching him humility. The end result will be Joseph is a man of integrity.
Joel Brooks:We know the story, so we don't have to go into all the little details. But remember how Joseph's brothers, they come to him? And they need grain, and so he's like, okay, I'll give you grain. He said, but you know what? You mentioned you had a brother, another brother named Benjamin.
Joel Brooks:I don't believe you. I'm keeping Simeon here as a I'm throwing him in jail, and don't ever come and see me again unless you bring Benjamin. So they go and you know, they wait a year, almost 2, and then they're starving like, we've got to go back. We're starving. Jacob's like, nuh-uh, I'm not sending you Benjamin.
Joel Brooks:But finally he has to. So they bring Benjamin and sure enough there's a big feast and they think everything's happy and then he sends them all away after he feeds them. But Joseph hides the cup in Benjamin's bag and accuses him of stealing. And so they have to all come back and appear before him. And and you you at first when you read this, you think that Joseph is just being revengeful.
Joel Brooks:He's just being vindictive here. Vindictive. But actually, he's burning hot with mercy. That's what's happening. You know, when when you look at chapter 43 verse 30, literally it says, his mercy burned hot.
Joel Brooks:And what he's doing with his brothers is the exact same thing that the Lord did in his life. He is raising them up, then he's crashing them down. Then he's raising them up, and then he's crashing them down. Then he's raising them up, and then he's crashing them down. He's breaking their hearts.
Joel Brooks:So what he's doing, he's teaching them. He's doing what I would call a severe mercy. And then finally, in this stroke of genius, he actually recreates the scene in which he was betrayed. That's what that final scene is. He says, okay, all of you can go free, if only you will abandon your father's favorite son.
Joel Brooks:That's all I have to do. Abandon Benjamin, and you can all go free. And it's a recreation of that scene after he's brought them up and down and up and down. And then Judah. Judah of all people gives the longest speech in Genesis, and he pleads, no.
Joel Brooks:Take my life instead of Benjamin's. Bruce Walkie, who's a great scholar, he says this is the first time we see in scripture the notion of substitutionary sacrifice, in which Judah says, no, take me instead of Benjamin. And it's at that point when it's substitutionary sacrifice, Joseph can hold himself together no more. And he breaks down, and he weeps, and he weeps. Judah, of all people.
Joel Brooks:It was Judah's idea to betray Joseph in the 1st place. Do you remember that? It's like, let's at least make some money for him. Let's sell him. It was Judah and Tamar.
Joel Brooks:How can you forget Genesis 38 and all the sin that was there? But the Lord brought him to such a point where Judah actually points forward to one of his descendants, Jesus, who offers the substitutionary sacrifice for us. Judah points to Jesus. Joseph points to Jesus, the one who will ultimately be betrayed and the one who will bring a ultimate salvation. It's because of Jesus and his sacrifice that we can actually be treated as blessed sons.
Joel Brooks:And we no longer get punishment when these things come into our lives, this pain comes into our life, it's no longer punishment because Christ has taken the punishment. It's now discipline. And there's a big difference. God is disciplining us. It's not he's not judging us for sins anymore because all of our judgment is going on Jesus.
Joel Brooks:Instead, he brings pain in simply to correct us and to make us more like him. And this is something that every believer should welcome when it comes because it makes us more like Jesus. Pray with me. Lord, there's so much here. I know we just flew through it, but Lord, I pray that you would take your truth and let it sink in.
Joel Brooks:Lord, I pray we would not walk out of here using Romans 828 so cheaply, but we would understand what you're doing there. Well, and I pray that when things happen in our life, that we would know that, you're working through that pain and we wouldn't waste all of our time and energy trying to find that one external good, but we would understand you've brought pain in our life to change my heart, To humble me. To make me repent of my sin. To teach me dependence upon you and that we would welcome that. Our end goal, Jesus, is to look more like you.
Joel Brooks:We thank you for the story for Judah and Joseph who point to you. And it's in you that we trust and we pray this in the strong name of Jesus.
