Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Tonight we are going continuing our series through Genesis and we’ll be in Genesis chapter 42.

What we are going to notice tonight is that contains what I’m going to call the three G’s that every man and woman that lives long enough will encounter.

Grief, Guilt, and Grudges.

And G

Recap 41 - Joseph interprets Pharoahs dream 7 years of plenty - 7 years of famine.

We noticed how Joseph has matured and how he doesn’t demand repayment of the wrongs done to him, but he humbly accepts the Pharoahs promotion to oversee the collection and distribution of Grain over the next 14 years.

He has two children - Manasseh and Ephraim and remembers that it was God who watched over him for the past 20 years or so years since he was sold into slavery by his brothers.

and Now Joseph, or Zaphenath-Paneah (savior of the world) is in charge of saving the world around him by having grain when the world in is a famine.

Grief

We start off chapter 42 with Jacob, a character that we haven’t heard from since the end of chapter 37 when he is depicted as grieving for Joseph who he believes to have been killed by a fierce animal and the text tells us

Gen 37:

It’s an unfortunate fact of life that if we live long enough on this Earth, we will encounter grief.

We will eventually lose someone we love, witness evil at work in our world around us, or be stricken with personal illness that robs our happiness and causes us to mourn.

Grief is a part of life, and I believe we continue to see Jacobs grief here in chapter 42 and 43 causing him to make additional mistakes in his relationships with is children.

20 years have passed from the close of and the start of .

and we see that not much has changed with the behavior of Jacob.

He’s still allowing himself to blatantly display favoritism to Benjamin, Joseph’s brother as he sends off the 10 sons of Leah, Bilhah, and Zilpah as if he cares less for them.

20 years have passed from the close of and the start of .

and we

Grief can be a hard thing to cope with.

And it’s even harder to dole advice out to someone who is grieving.

As we always say, Job’s friends were excellent friends until the moment they decided to open their mouths.

So it’s important I think for us to decide how we are going to react in moments of grief ahead of time.

Because honestly, in moments of grief, you know who people listen to?

No one.

Is that not what we see from Jacob in ?

He shut down, and instead of reevaluating his relationship with his children, he instead chose to cling even tighter to Benjamin and set up the same kind of family trouble that existed with Joseph.

We’ll see his grief continue to cause problems at the end of the chapter and into chapter 43, so for now just remember that we need to have a plan for how we will handle grief in a Godly way before it comes upon us.

Grudge

Gen 42:6-

Now before we continue into the story, we need to stop and try to read this text as if we are reading it for the first time.

We often times read this section of scripture as if we understand the motives of Joseph while he is treating his brothers roughly and calling them spies because we know his motives later in the story.

But if we were reading this for the first time, what would we be thinking about from the beginning of chapter 42 to verse 20?

This is a really suspenseful 20 verses is it not?

I mean we start with Jacob and his sons being impacted by the famine, which in our day in time we are blessed to not really understand how deadly famines can be.

You remember the man made “famine” that the soviet union imposed on Ukraine that Ben Mereness told us about?

That man made famine killed over 5 million people.

Now imagine a natural famine that has spread over the entire earth and how devestating that would be!

So this is a serious, deadly serious situation, when Jacob says in v. 2 “Go down and buy grain for us there that we may live and not die” that was not an exaggeration.

Then among that serious situation, Joseph recognizes his brothers and Joseph’s motives are not immediately made known.

In v. 7 he recognizes them, and immediately we are told that he spoke roughly to them and treated them as foreigners.

Then, he recalls the dream he had of them bowing before him and instead of relenting what do we see Joseph do?

He doubles down and calls them the worst thing you could call someone, A crime punishable by death!

Spies....

Now to the reader reading this for the first time, what would we be thinking is in the mind of Joseph in this moment?

Well let me ask this, when we watch movies what do we want to happen to the bad guy?

We want justice to be served don’t we!?

We would hate a movie that ended with the thief getting away, or the murderer not getting caught.

We want them to pay, we have a grudge to setting and justice demands payback!

And so at first glance it seems as though Josephs motives might be just that.

It’s time to return the favor for years of slave labor, for imprisonment, for removing him from his home.

They are spies, and they will pay.

You know, what’s true about grief is also true about grudges.

If we live long enough, someone is going to wrong us.

They are going to sin against us and we are going to feel completely within our rights to repay evil for evil.

It seems so far in our story that is exactly what Joseph is going to do, but eventually the admission of guilt by the brothers and their understanding of their wrongdoing either changes Josephs heart, or it exposes his motivations.

Guilt

:21-

I want you to notice that the Joseph’s brothers have been carrying around this guilt for this wrong doing, and continually having to see their father’s grief for 20 years and day after day they have been waiting on a reckoning for their wrongdoing.

Remember, that back in v. 13 as they tried to convince Joseph that they were honest men, they lied to Joseph saying

Gen 42:

You have to think that Joseph is thinking “Really, one is no more?”

They had told that lie for so long to their father that they had possibly come to believe it themselves.

But here they seem to be speaking from the heart to one another.

It’s not clear to me exactly what is happening with verses 23-24, either Joseph had forgotten how to speak their native language and they knew how to speak Egyptian and spoke in their native tongue here thinking he wouldn’t understand.

Either way, it appears they said this in front of him as he was forced to turn away to hide his tears from them after the interpreter told him what they said.

Joseph mourns at the knowledge that they regret what they have done.

He also hears, perhaps for the first time, that it was Reuben who pleaded for them not to do what they had done.

The notice in v. 28 who they attribute the reckoning of their guilt to?

God.

Guilt is the same as grief and grudges in that if we stay alive long enough on this earth, we will sin against God and against our fellow man.

I remember in grade school sticker board.....

Gen 42:29

Grief, Grudges, Guilt

All are best handled and lifted off of our shoulders when we give them over to the biggest G word of them all, GOD.

We are going to see later in the story how Joseph was able to see a bigger picture than his personal loss.

And how that led to forgiveness for his brothers and a release from their guilt, and by the grace of God Jacob was able to be relieved of his crippling grief.

All three of these, Grief, Grudges, and Guilt can at times cause incredible heartbreak, but as

If we can pray for you, or help you in any way, you can come know as we stand and sing.