Healing. Joseph. Men's BS

Intro and Scripture

Today we bring this story to a close.

Notice some themes that jump out to you. What are things that give you pause or cause you to wonder?

Read Genesis 44.

Change in the brothers

Genesis 44:13 NIV

13 At this, they tore their clothes. Then they all loaded their donkeys and returned to the city.

notice the difference in response at the possibility of losing Benjamin. They are different than where they were before. They are a long ways from the brothers that got rid of their father’s favorite. Now they react in mourning at the possibility of losing their other father’s favorite! This is so huge...we spend so much time trying to change other people and pointing out what is wrong with other people and we spend 0 time asking about ourselves. This ties into the idea of victimhood from last week. This is what sanctification is all about!

Judah is significant: (chapter 38)

Already keep in mind what has happened with all the brothers and Joseph.

Chapter 38 adds even more layers to this family. There is a pause in the story to unpack a side narrative.

Judah has a wife and that wife brings a few sons into play. The first son marries a woman named Tamar. When Tamar’s husband, the oldest, dies…Tamar is in social trouble. She is left to her own. Except there are practices in place to uphold the patriarchal line. Tamar is given to the second son. He sleeps with her but makes sure she can’t be pregnant. Then Judah comes up with a plan to not deal with his obligation to Tamar....go back home and wait for the youngest to be old enough. This is just an excuse. He abandons her and his responsibility to her.

Then she comes up with a plan to trick him into sleeping with her....she is accused of prostitution and Judah wants to carry out the law even though he isnt following it himself.

More importantly in light of the whole context....Judah is ok abandoning one that is actually part of the family.

Now with the stakes even higher… he is willing to sacrifice it all to save Benjamin. He wants to defend his father who is likely not been great all along.

Genesis 44:30–34 NIV

30 “So now, if the boy is not with us when I go back to your servant my father, and if my father, whose life is closely bound up with the boy’s life, 31 sees that the boy isn’t there, he will die. Your servants will bring the gray head of our father down to the grave in sorrow. 32 Your servant guaranteed the boy’s safety to my father. I said, ‘If I do not bring him back to you, I will bear the blame before you, my father, all my life!’ 33 “Now then, please let your servant remain here as my lord’s slave in place of the boy, and let the boy return with his brothers. 34 How can I go back to my father if the boy is not with me? No! Do not let me see the misery that would come on my father.”

What is taking place?

Sanctification from Andrew Murray

Hebrews 12:10 NIV

10 They disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness.

2 Timothy 2:21 NIV

21 Those who cleanse themselves from the latter will be instruments for special purposes, made holy, useful to the Master and prepared to do any good work.

Sanctification is not something which you can accomplish yourself; it cannot even be produced by God in you as something which you can possess and contemplate in yourself. No, it is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of holiness alone who can communicate His holiness to you and renew it continually. Therefore it is by faith you can become “partakers of his holiness.” Having understood that Jesus has been made unto you of God sanctification (I Cor. 1:30), and that it is the Holy Spirit’s work to impart to you His holiness which was manifested in His life on earth, surrender yourself to Him by faith that He may enable you to live that life from hour to hour. Believe that the Lord will by His Spirit lead you into, and keep you in this life of holiness and of consecration to God’s service. Live thus in the obedience of faith, always attentive to His voice, and the guidance of His Spirit.

From the time that this Fatherly discipline has led the sick one to a life of holiness, God has attained His purpose, and He will heal him who asks it in faith. Our earthly parents “for a few days chastened us.... All chastening seemeth for the present to be not joyous, but grievous: yet afterward it yieldeth peaceable fruit unto them that have been exercised thereby, even the fruit of righteousness” (Heb. 12:10, 11, R.V.). Yes, it is when the believer realizes this peaceable fruit of righteousness that he is in a condition to be delivered from the chastisement.

Oh, it is because believers still understand so little that sanctification means an entire consecration to God that they cannot really believe that healing will quickly follow the sanctification of the sick one. Good health is too often for them only a matter of personal comfort and enjoyment which they may dispose of at their will, but God cannot thus minister to their selfishness. If they understood better that God requires of His children that they should be “sanctified and meet for the Master’s use,” they would not be surprised to see Him giving healing and renewed strength to those who have learned to place all their members at His disposal, willing to be sanctified and employed in His service by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of healing is also the Spirit of sanctification.

Sanctification is discipline of a loving Father

Revelation 3 and Laodicea, Hebrews. It is about love

Sanctification is healing

The product of this discipline is not trained minions, but wholeness and healed image bearers. He wants to correct your anger and pride for your good.

Sanctification is not about therapeutic progression (not at it’s foundation)

But it isn’t just to make you feel good. The story of Joseph is about their individual wholeness and God’s will. God heals out of love and heals to establish the kingdom

Sanctification is corporate AND individually specific

Sanctification is process and crisis