MORNING MESSAGE: John Cline
Genesis 45, 46; Galatians 3:27-29
Reader: Ele Bender
There is an identity crisis in the church today. Many Christians do not understand who they are and why they are who they are. Think of your family heritage. Who are you? Where did you come from? I hope you know. As for us Christians, who are we? Where did Christianity come from? Where did we come from? We Christians have a great heritage that can be traced to ancient times, but most of us rarely – never? – think about it. Today’s sermon will conclude with a deep theological plunge into who we Christians are, but we will start with some biblical history.
Last Sunday in our continuing sermon series through Genesis, we landed at Genesis 45, finally coming to a scene that has been building since Genesis 37, the scene where Joseph and his brothers reconcile. For weeks as we’ve preached through Genesis, we waited for this scene, but we will see today that it was part of a much bigger story. 22 years earlier, Joseph’s brothers had horribly mistreated him. Due to a famine in Canaan, they had come to Egypt to beg for food but what they hadn’t known is that they would encounter Joseph, though they didn’t recognize the Egyptian-speaking ruler standing in front of them, wearing Egyptian royal robes and heavy Egyptian make-up, and speaking in Egyptian. He was their brother Joseph! They had assumed he had died but coming to Egypt dredged up their memories of selling him into Egyptian slavery. This Egyptian ruler in front of them was now demanding painful things of them, and they had failed the tests by being accused of thievery, though really, they had been set up and were simply being tested by Joseph. The brothers wondered out loud what they had done to deserve such harsh treatment and, speaking to one another in Hebrew – remember Joseph could understand them – concluded that it was God exacting just punishment on them for their sin many years before of selling Joseph into slavery. Hearing them,
Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph! Is my father still living?” But his brothers were not able to answer him, because they were terrified at his presence. Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come close to me.” When they had done so, he said, “I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt! And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. For two years now there has been famine in the land, and for the next five years there will be no plowing and reaping. But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God. He made me father to Pharaoh, lord of his entire household and ruler of all Egypt. Now hurry back to my father and say to him, ‘This is what your son Joseph says: God has made me lord of all Egypt. Come down to me; don’t delay. You shall live in the region of Goshen and be near me—you, your children and grandchildren, your flocks and herds, and all you have. I will provide for you there, because five years of famine are still to come. Otherwise, you and your household and all who belong to you will become destitute.” (Genesis 45:1-11)
“It was not you who sent me here, but God.” Can you imagine the brothers hearing those words from the brother they had so badly treated? They were stunned into silence. “It was not you who sent me here, but God.” How could that be true?
I once met a nurse who works in a burn unit in one of our local hospitals. She described to me how, in caring for a patient with the goal of making them well, the hospital staff must frequently cause the patient pain by drawing blood, inserting IV’s, scraping dead skin off the patient, etc. Horrific things the nurses must do but it is all done with the goal of getting the patient well and healing them. That is what Joseph – and God – were doing with the brothers. In causing them turmoil by setting them up to be thieves, imprisoning them, and threatening them, Joseph, with God behind him, was causing them pain in order to heal and save their family. “It was not you who sent me here, but God.” That possibility hadn’t crossed their minds, at all. In their minds, God was surely getting them! But God’s ways are above our ways. His understanding of what is happening is fully developed, with an end goal in sight, whereas our human understanding, when things are tough, is so limited that we tend to automatically blame God or castigate ourselves. Joseph, though, knew that everything that had happened to him had come from two sides – the brothers who had intended evil, and God, who had intended to save Joseph’s family.
When I was a boy living in Nelson, B.C., there were many nearby dams on the Kootenay and Columbia Rivers. Each spring, the rivers would overflow with high waters from the melting mountain snowpacks. Engineers of those river dams would open the gates on the dams, which sometimes caused minimal flooding, in an attempt to minimize widespread flooding and damage. The engineers hadn’t caused the problem of flooding. They were trying to mitigate the flooding damage. That’s how God deals with the problem of sin. Whenever there is sin and evil, God doesn’t stand back hoping it won’t cause too much damage. God works to govern the problem by doing a thing that will accomplish good in the midst of evil. “You may have caused damage”, Joseph told his brothers, “But God was in control all the time and it was Him who sent me to Egypt.” He said to his stunned brothers,
“You can see for yourselves, & so can my brother Benjamin, that it is really I who am speaking to you. Tell my father about all the honour accorded me in Egypt & about everything you have seen. And bring my father down here quickly.” Then he threw his arms around his brother Benjamin & wept, & Benjamin embraced him, weeping. And he kissed all his brothers & wept over them. Afterward his brothers talked with him. When the news reached Pharaoh’s palace that Joseph’s brothers had come, Pharaoh & all his officials were pleased. Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Tell your brothers, ‘Do this: Load your animals and return to the land of Canaan, and bring your father and your families back to me. I will give you the best of the land of Egypt and you can enjoy the fat of the land. You are also directed to tell them, ‘Do this: Take some carts from Egypt for your children and your wives, and get your father and come. Never mind about your belongings, because the best of all Egypt will be yours.’” (Genesis 45:12-20)
Pharaoh gave huge assurances to Jacob and family: that he would settle them in the “best of the land of Egypt” and that, “The best of all Egypt will be yours. So, leave your possessions behind.” By the way, let’s remember that God had given Jacob a new name: Israel. This would become an important fact in his family’s future storyline.
So, the sons of Israel did this. Joseph gave them carts, as Pharaoh had commanded, and he also gave them provisions for their journey. To each of them he gave new clothing, but to Benjamin he gave three hundred shekels of silver and five sets of clothes. And this is what he sent to his father: ten donkeys loaded with the best things of Egypt, and ten female donkeys loaded with grain and bread and other provisions for his journey. Then he sent his brothers away, and as they were leaving, he said to them, “Don’t quarrel on the way!” (G 45:21-24)
Their carts filled with clothing and money, and with ten male and ten female donkeys in tow behind them, the brothers thus left for Canaan, with Joseph’s cheeky words of farewell in their ears, “Don’t quarrel on the way.” They were family, once again. Joseph was enjoying the moment!
So, they went up out of Egypt and came to their father Jacob in the land of Canaan. They told him, “Joseph is still alive! In fact, he is ruler of all Egypt.” Jacob was stunned; he did not believe them. But when they told him everything Joseph had said to them, and when he saw the carts Joseph had sent to carry him back, the spirit of their father Jacob revived. And Israel said, “I’m convinced! My son Joseph is still alive. I will go and see him before I die.” (Genesis 45:25-28)
Jacob/Israel was overwhelmed with this news and agreed to move!
So, Israel set out with all that was his, and when he reached Beersheba, he offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac. And God spoke to Israel in a vision at night and said, “Jacob! Jacob!” “Here I am,” he replied. “I am God, the God of your father,” he said. “Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for I will make you into a great nation there. I will go down to Egypt with you, and I will surely bring you back again. And Joseph’s own hand will close your eyes.” (Genesis 46:1-4)
God’s original covenant with Abraham contained several key promises: that Abraham would become the father of a great nation, that the Promised Land of Canaan would be his, and that, through Abraham, all the peoples on earth would be blessed. In Genesis 15, we read how Abraham followed the covenant-making ritual of bringing and cutting animals (a heifer, goat, ram, dove, and pigeon) in half and arranging the pieces opposite each other to form a path of blood. But, in a vision, Abraham saw God as a “smoking firepan and blazing torch”. Contrary to what was normally done where both parties in an Ancient Near Eastern covenant walked between the dead carcasses on the symbolic “Blood Path” as a way of sealing the deal, in effect declaring, “May what was done to these animals be done to me if I break this covenant”, only God walked the “blood path” of this covenant. Abraham did not. God had made the covenant and Abraham’s part of the covenant was to accept its terms, which were: trust God and live faithfully.
In Genesis 46, Jacob was recommitting himself to, and re-enacting in his sacrifices, that original covenant ceremony with God, and God responded by reiterating the terms of the covenant Jacob needed to here: promising to make Jacob and his family into a great nation in Egypt, and reassuring Jacob that he would return to Canaan, the land promised by God in the covenant to Abraham and his descendants. The spot where Jacob stopped and offered sacrifices to God, Beersheba, was where Abraham went to after the birth of his son Isaac, whose birth had convinced him that God could be trusted and that, therefore, God’s covenant promises were true. At Beersheba, the southernmost point of Canaan, a town located in a desert area, Abraham declared to God that he now trusted him and believed in His word. He did so by planting a tamarisk tree. When you plant a tree, you declare that you believe in a future. As the ancient proverb says, “A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit”, as planting a tree is an act of belief and the leaving of a legacy. Tamarisk trees are slow-maturing trees that provide water and shade to travellers in the desert. By planting a tamarisk tree, one that he himself would never see mature or benefit from, Abraham was declaring to God, “I trust you, I believe in your covenant, I know that my family will have a future here.” When Jacob offered sacrifices to God in Beersheba it was a statement of faith affirming that he had the same kind of faith and trust as Abraham. God generously responded.
Then Jacob left Beersheba, and Israel’s sons took their father Jacob and their children and their wives in the carts that Pharaoh had sent to transport him. So, Jacob and all his offspring went to Egypt, taking with them their livestock and the possessions they had acquired in Canaan. Jacob brought with him to Egypt his sons and grandsons and his daughters and granddaughters—all his offspring. (Genesis 46:5-7)
Ok, that’s it for the history part of Genesis we will look at today, but we will return to it next Sunday. Now, we will do a deep theological dive. We can safely assume that not everyone in Jacob’s family would have understood that a covenant re-commitment ceremony had just taken place between Jacob and God, but did we? This leads me back to the statement we opened this sermon with: “Christians are facing an identity crisis”. Not enough of us know where we came from or who we are. Specifically, how does the covenant God made with Abraham, his son Isaac, and his grandson Jacob apply to us? The 12 sons of Jacob became known as the “Twelve sons of Israel” and over the 400-year period that they and their descendants were in Egypt, they became known as the “Twelve Tribes of Israel”, and later the “Nation of Israel”. They would escape from Egypt 400 years later, following Moses and then Joshua back into the Promised Land of Canaan. Many prophets warned the Israelites that arriving back into Canaan didn’t mean they had it “made in the shade”, that they could never lose their Promised Land, again, but that if they did not uphold their end of the covenant, they would lose their Promised Land, a thing that later would happen when 10 of the 12 tribes of Israel were taken away to Assyria, never to be heard from again. They became known as the “Ten Lost Tribes of Israel”. Sometime after that, for the other two tribes, named after the two faithful sons of Jacob, Judah and Benjamin, and known collectively as the nation of Judah, well, with them, when they sinned against God, they also lost the Promised Land and were exiled to Babylon. After a period of 70 years, exactly as the prophet Jeremiah had prophesied, the people, now known as “the Jews”, were allowed to return to their Promised Land because they had lived faithfully while in Babylon. In fact, the most faithful time in Jewish history was when they were in exile in Babylon. Sadly, despite new warnings from prophets, the Jewish people again eventually fell into sin, so much so that God lifted His hand of protection off them, honouring their desire to have to not listen to Him but to be left to their own devices. That culminated in the army of the Roman Empire kicking them out of the Promised Land in 73 A.D. In 1948 A.D., the modern nation of Israel was then established, a fact that most, though not all, Jewish people saw as God reaffirming His covenant promises of the land to them. So, with that bit of history in our brains, the question for us is, do we non-Jewish Christians, we Gentiles, have any role in the covenant God made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Simply put, the answer is, “yes”.
Let’s read the second verse of the hymn we opened today’s worship service with: “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name”. The verse says this: “Ye chosen seed of Israel’s race, Ye ransomed from the fall; Hail him who saves you by His grace.” Christians of old understood who we are in a way that most modern Christians don’t!
Jesus said about his sacrificial death on the cross, “This covenant is a new covenant made in my blood”, a statement echoing the sacrificial covenant of blood God had made with Abraham when He/God alone walked on the “Blood Path” between the carcasses of the sacrificed animals. That act of God’s was a foreshadowing of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross where God would ultimately take upon Himself the penalty for humans having broken covenant with Him. He did that through the death of His son, the perfect sacrifice, Jesus. So, how does all this fit in with us Gentile Christians? The apostle Paul tells us:
So, in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. (Galatians 3:27-29)
I love this scene: Male and female, old folks and children, rich and poor, red, brown, black, yellow, and white-skinned — there is no prejudice or difference between us. In God’s eyes we are all brothers and sisters in Christ. We are Abraham’s legacy, heirs of the promises in his covenant. As Paul writes in Romans 11, we Gentile Christians are as branches from a tree grafted into the life-giving tree that is Israel. On a spiritual level, not a physical level, we will inherit the Promised Land, that being heaven. As New Testament writers put it, we are, like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but sojourners on this earth, living here while awaiting entrance into the eternal Promised Land, heaven. While we wait and live here, though, we are to love God fully, and our neighbours as ourselves, serving both God and our fellow sojourners. All who believe in Jesus, whether Jewish or Gentiles, are thus the heirs of the covenant, the seed of Abraham. Jesus, who was the Messiah, had no human descendants, and thus he was the last physical seed of Abraham’s family line. It ended and culminated with him. His children are those who believe in him, and we are all Abraham’s children, whether Jewish or Gentile. Paul continues on,
It was not through the law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be heir of the world, but through the righteousness that comes by faith…Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring—not only to those who are of the law but also to those who have the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all. As it is written: “I have made you a father of many nations.” He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed—the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not. Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”…Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised. This is why “it was credited to him as righteousness.” The words “it was credited to him” were written not for him alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness—for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. (Romans 4:13-24)
In an encounter with some Jewish Pharisees, as recorded in John 8, Jesus tells them that being born Jewish does not make automatically make them “Abraham’s children”. In fact, Jesus told them that, because of their unbelief in him, they were “children of the devil”, a scandalous statement if there ever was one. No wonder they didn’t like him very much! About Jesus, Paul writes,
He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit. (Galatians 3:14)
So, who are we as Christians? There should be no identity crisis in us for we are heirs of the promises God made to Abraham and affirmed with Isaac and then Jacob/Israel all those centuries ago. Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection reversed the repeated land-exile-land-exile cycle by going, in his death, a type of exile on our behalf and then, in his resurrection, guaranteeing to us the Promised Land we will all inherit in heaven. In the Great Commission in Matthew 28, Jesus told his followers, and that includes us modern-day Christians, that all authority had been given to him, and that he would be sending us into all the earth with that authority to complete the original task given to Abraham and his descendants; to proclaim the Gospel and make disciples of all nations, thus extending to all people the blessings that God had first promised to Abraham and his descendants. This covenant community is a diverse, multi-ethnic people from every nation, tribe, and tongue. We eagerly await the final day of redemption when we will all enter the Promised Land of heaven and see Jesus face-to-face, just as those who have already gotten there are doing, having an unbroken intimacy with Jesus and all his people, Jewish or Gentile, in perfect covenantal faithfulness. Let’s pray…
