When Joseph's brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, what if Joseph holds a grudge against us and pays us back for all the wrongs we did to him? So they sent word to Joseph saying, your father left these instructions before he died. This is what you are to say to Joseph. I ask you to forgive your brothers the sins and the wrongs they committed in treating you so badly. Now please forgive the sins of the servants of God and your father." When their message came to him, Joseph wept. His brothers then came and threw themselves down before him. We are your slaves, they said. But Joseph said to them, don't be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good, to accomplish what is now being done and saving of many lives. So then don't be afraid. I will provide for you and your children." And he reassured them and spoke kindly to them. Joseph stayed in Egypt along with all his father's family. He lived 110 years. and saw the third generation of Ephraim's children, and the children of Mekur, son of Manasseh, were placed at birth on Joseph's knees. Then Joseph said to his brothers, I am about to die, but God will surely come to your aid and take you up out of this land to the land he promised an oath to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And Joseph made the sons of Israel swear an oath. and said, God will surely come to your aid, and then you must carry my bones up from this place. So Joseph, at the age of 110, and after they embalmed him, he was placed in a coffin in Egypt. Thus, may God use the reading of his word today. Before we receive the message today, let us go to the Lord in prayer. O most gracious Heavenly Father, please take the words that you have given us in your written word, your written revelation, and impart them in our hearts in such a way that they are hidden there that they will not be removed, that they will be recalled in the midst of the trial, that we would be sanctified by them, changed, transformed, made more and more into the image of your Son, that you might receive more and more of the glory, do you, through our efforts, through our thoughts, through our love of others, and most particularly, through our love of you. It's in Christ's name we pray, amen. Well, today the message title is God's Salvation Despite My Corruption of Authority. Before we get started, it's probably a good idea that we have a baseline for understanding what is authority. So I'm using this from Miriam Webster's dictionary. It's the position and power to influence or command thought, opinion, or behavior. And there's actually two components to authority. There's inherent authority, that is authority that's tied to a position. The ultimate position is God, our creator over all. Because he created, he had the power to create over all, and nothing would be in existence without him. He is the ultimate authority over all. He is the most high God, he has ultimate authority. Well, there's also a second component, which is delegated authority. That authority, which is either delegated down by him, or we see it in different other institutions, such as our work areas and whatnot, we see authority delegated to various leaders. But as it relates to him, We have the institution of family, and we have parents that are the delegated authorities. We have the institution of the government, and we have government leaders. We have the institution of the church, and we know that they are referred to as elders. So we understand authority. We're accustomed to authority. But today, I would like to make sure we have an understanding of what corrupted or the corruption of authority that I'm speaking to because it can be corrupted in many ways. But the particular corruption that we'll be dealing with in the text deals when somebody takes authority that is not theirs. That's what I mean by corrupted authority. And that's what we'll see born out of the text today. And I would like to start with an innocent story. Hopefully, you guys will understand and it'll make connections. I know we can see it applied a little bit more particularly to our passage today. Those of you who are parents may have experienced something similar to this. Cindy and I had six boys, have six boys, and we had one particular son who, just as he was learning how to get the arms through the which holes in the shirt, he decided that he wanted to dress himself. So Cindy would place the clothes on the bed And the sons would come in, and they would grab the articles of clothing, and we would come by their side and help them get dressed. And that was typical how it went. Well, this son kind of got ahead, and he decided he wanted to do it, as he calls it, I want to do it, mine-self, M-I-N, self. Anything that starts off with mine is probably not a good trajectory. So we thought at first that this was cute. He was learning to be independent. He was learning. He must have been mimicking kind of what we were doing before. We're putting the arm in the right holes, making sure that the head came out of the top and didn't come out of a sleeve. And so it was fun. It was cute. And then there was a problem. He didn't want any help. He didn't want any help. his parents' instruction on what to do. In fact, pretty soon we started seeing articles of clothing that weren't laid out on the bed. These were his own articles of clothing that didn't match at all. Whether it's in size, or he'd come out with the numbers on front where the numbers were supposed to be on back, or the picture that was supposed to be on front was now on the back, and the tag messing him up in the neck. And all of this was going on, and all of a sudden we were having to wrestle with him. to try and get, and it was almost a point where we were like, no, no, no, I get this son, you get that son this morning. I don't want that son, that's gonna be a wrestling match. Well, what really was happening was that son was taking authority that was not his. He was taking that which was natural authority by position, delegated authority that God had given us as parents, and he was taking that upon himself. And we end up with almost a mantra of autonomy, I want to do it myself. The sinful self-reliance that we all can fall into, it ended up creating a world of chaos in the morning. Think about trying to get places, do things on time. Yeah, that kind of goes out the window when you got someone fighting with you at every step of the way. He was taking authority from his rightful place and attempting to wield that corrupted authority for his own good. Do you see what he did there? He took the authority, it was corrupted authority, and now he saw what was actually evil as good. And you might say, oh, come on now, Nick, evil is a little bit of a stretch. Try this every morning and see if it doesn't wear on you and you start to use words like evil. The importance here is to realize that it didn't actually start with my son or your children or whatever. This was all the way back to the garden. This was back to Adam and Eve, taking from the tree that they were forbidden to take from, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In taking from that tree that fruit, they were making the statement, I want to do it myself. I want to be like God. I want God's authority to determine good from evil. And that, unfortunately, is what was going to bear itself out in our passage today that we are going to read. We are going to see that much as this story started off with the brothers and their involvement with their brother, Joseph, that it started off with a corrupted state of authority, it's unfortunately going to end that way. It's not as clear in the English, but I hope by way of the Hebrew you will see what I mean. At the beginning of Joseph's life, his brothers seized their father's authority over the children, and they sold their brother, Joseph. into slavery for something that benefited themselves. He was a pain. He was a thorn in their side. He was dad's favorite. They wanted him removed. They removed him. They saw removing him and selling him to slavery was a good thing. It was no longer viewed as an evil thing. And today we'll see, even now, in our passage today, with the passing of their father, he is gone, and yet, they will take his authority and try and make it so that evil, that which they do which is evil is seen as good. Through the corrupted authority that the brothers had, they determined that what was evil is now good. If you will take your bulletins and turn to the back, I'd like to go over to make sure you follow because this is a little bit more involved than what we normally have with sermons. We try and make them very simple, meaning that for my own benefit, if I can't understand it, then certainly I can't be up here preaching it. But this one follows a little bit of a track, and there's an A and a B sub-points underneath some of these, and I just want to make sure we understand. First, the takeaway. The takeaway up above there says, when we put ourselves in the place of God, take upon ourselves a corrupted authority which will ultimately rationalize evil as good. And we're going to see that borne out in our first bullet point where we have man's corrupted authority and its attempt to determine good from evil, but the beauty of this is what we see in the second point. We see God's response to our corruption of good and evil, and we'll see how that plays out in God's faithfulness and God's love for us despite our corruption of authority. So with that in mind, let us take on first dealing with Genesis 50, verse 15, and Daryl, you were right, this is it. This is the end of Genesis. This is the end of the beginning, finally. and I appreciate how patient everyone has been. We will look at how fear can provoke our desire for corruption of authority. So look in verse 15 with me. When Joseph's brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, it may be that Joseph will hate. The word there is satam in the Hebrew. I heard Daryl read it from his Bible, and Daryl's version said, bear a grudge, or a grudge, that Joseph may have a grudge against us. The word satan means anywhere from bear a grudge, on the lesser end, all the way to take physical hostility towards, to bring violence against. So we have that range of meaning here. So I'm going to suggest to you that the context, that the word here actually holds to it, holds to the understanding more of a hostile violence against the brothers, that that is what they are afraid of, rather than it being a grudge. And let me see if we can't bear that out in the passage itself. It may be that Joseph will hate us and pay us back. Well, we know from the Hebrew, we've gone through this enough, that the word there is shuv, only it's shuv, shuv. We've learned that when Hebrew lines up two verbs next to each other, it has an emphasis of the surety of the occurrence or the surety of whatever the context is. So it would actually read this. It may be that Joseph will hate us and surely pay us back. Pay us back for what? Well, let's continue on with the text. For all the evil that we did to him. And then you have to realize, for us, we may have grown dull in our memory. The evil starts with them violently ripping off his coat of many colors. The coat that exalted him above his brothers, they take off of him. And what do they do with this exalted one? They throw him down into the pit. And it's into the pit that they had decided that they're going to leave him there, and he's going to die there. Oh, but Judah. This is the pre-repentance, the unrepentant Judah that has, it seems at first on the surface to be a better plan. Let us not kill him. Let us not shed his blood. What profit would it be for us? Let's allow us to sell him, sell him to these Midianite traders that are coming our way, and then we will make a profit. We will profit from his loss. And so we can see that whether it's the violent stripping of the coat off his back, him being placed in a pit with their desire to actually kill him, or it's the issue of them lessening that and saying, well, we'll just put him in a life of slavery. That's evil that they've done. And they know it. They are the ones that committed it. This is a situation where I believe the text is demonstrating that they are fearful. of their brother's vengeance upon them. Their father is not there. He is now going. The second in command has the authority to kill them and to take vengeance on them. And the Egyptians will find that he is right in doing so. But listen also for one more piece of evidence on why I believe this is hostility and not just bearing a grudge. This is from Genesis 27, 41. This is dealing with Esau and Jacob. This is when Jacob is young. This is Jacob interacting with his twin brother Esau. It says this, now Esau hated, he sataned him. Jacob, excuse me, now Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father had blessed him. He had tricked, Jacob had tricked Isaac, his father, their father, to bless Jacob. And Esau hates them. And what's Esau going to do? Listen to this. And Esau said to himself, the days of mourning for my father are approaching. Then I will kill my brother Jacob. Guess what's over right now? The days of mourning for Jacob over. The brothers know the story. The brothers are terrified that Joseph is going to follow in Esau's original thoughts of killing them. That would be taking the vengeance. The brothers' fear of death was provoking them to once again seized Jacob's authority over the family by putting words in the mouth of Jacob. I do not believe, I believe that the text indicates that these words were not spoken by Jacob. These are words produced by the brothers out of fear, out of fear of hazard to themselves. And so we see that Fear does, in fact, provoke us. We know that. We've done things while in a fearful state that we would never do, we would never take action on, that we would never go against God's word. But because of the fear, we have lost perception, we have rationalized, and we have done things that we go, that was so wrong. Let's continue on. Though he never spoke him, Though this is a situation of putting words in the mouth, we now take a look at our corrupted authority and how, what did it look like for them to rationalize evil. So let's continue on. In verses 50 to 60, 50 verses 16 through 17a, that's chapter 50. So it says here in the ESV, so they sent a message to Joseph. If you read it in the English, they've tamed it. It actually says this in the Hebrew. A message is implied. It's not actually in the text. It's okay. It doesn't change the meaning, but it does lessen what's actually going on here. It actually is a verb it uses. Listen to this. So they tessued. Well, tessue in Hebrew means either order, commanded, or instructed. But the idea is that, I do believe they instructed, they're instructing, the brothers are instructing Joseph, but it's from a position of authority, and we're going to see that borne out here. So they instructed Joseph saying, your father, notice the your, not our father, your father, the one who has authority over you. Can you hear the manipulation and using those pronouns instead or that pronoun? Your father to sued before he died. He commanded before he died. Hey, we're just the messengers. We're just bringing the command of dad. Dad's over us, Dad's got total authority. Hey, this is what Dad commanded of us. So now let's see what he says in verse 17. Say to Joseph, please forgive the transgression. Something interesting, something beautiful about this. We haven't really looked at this word. This word has only been in Genesis one other time. Transgression is a unique word. You think of iniquity, you think of sin, you think of transgression. Yes, they all kind of mean the same thing, but they're not synonyms. There are different ways of looking at doing wrong. A transgression is unique. It's a betrayal of a relationship. So now, listen to when he says this. This is Joseph. Please forgive the transgression. Please forgive the betrayal of your brother's relationship to you, in other words. And their sin, their moral failure, because they did evil to you. There's no making it sound like it's just something a little bad. They did evil to you. So although I believe that portion right there was not actually spoken by Jacob, this is being put in his mouth, you can appreciate the accuracy of how this is being described. The brothers at least know the difference between a transgression and that of sin. And then that's where the quote ends, and what happens now are the brothers now speaking. It's no longer dad speaking in place of dad, the brothers are now speaking, and it says this, and now please, forgive the transgression, in other words, the betrayal of the relationship, and then listen to this, what I believe is manipulation. Please forgive the transgression of the servants of God. Really, that's how we're referring to ourselves. I want you to do something, I'm just a humble servant of God. Oh, by the way, in case you didn't remember, God trumps even dad. God's the highest. They're pulling out all the stops to make sure we have the authority written here, of the servants of God, excuse me, of the servants of the God of your father. If you don't listen to your father, at least you should know that, you know, God's driving dad, and that's why dad did it. And so you have to understand, that's why God gave this commandment. So let's say you are a Burean, which I hope all of you are. I am suggesting something different than what was listed in some of the other versions where they used the word grudge instead of hated. So I'm glad to hear you're a Burean, but let me try and convince you further on what's going on here. Think about this. When Jacob arrived in Egypt, he had 17 years with his son Joseph. He had 17 years to watch the interaction between brothers and son. Jacob, excuse me, Joseph continues for 17 years to care for his brothers out of love for them. If there was any issue, it would have been dealt with by dad at that time. Furthermore, in chapter 49, we just got done with the final words of Jacob, the blessing, and we talked about how it was a blessing in totality, but you look at what he said, what Jacob's dad said to Reuben and to Simeon, that was no blessing. He's saying you guys did really wrong and you're going to receive the retribution of that really wrong. Your tribes will be lesser tribes. Their tribes ended up, particularly as it relates to Simeon, his tribe, had nowhere. They were parked in the land of Judah, just kind of floating around in cities. And so we see that Jacob's not afraid. Jacob doesn't hold back when he has hard things to say. Why would he hold back with this hard thing to say if he needed to command Joseph, who was his son, who had done everything? Think about this. Lastly, think about Jacob, the one who understands God's sovereignty in his life, the one that understands the sovereignty of having two wives when he intended to have one, and how he turned that into the 12 sons who made up the tribe. This is Jacob that understands the sovereignty of God. Why would Jacob not deal with this? Why would Jacob not have dealt with this issue before? No, I think the last thing that goes against this being anything other than a lie is, did you notice that when the sons, excuse me, when the brothers Say this, tell this manipulated command to their dad. Did you catch what Joseph does? He weeps. Why does Joseph weep when dad said what he said? That's where we turn next. We turn to God's response to our corruption of good versus evil. And I believe what we're seeing here is Joseph is a type. Joseph is acting in the place of God. It's a foreshadowing. It's a giving us an idea of who this God is. And we've seen Joseph in that capacity and we'll see Joseph also in the capacity of Savior in just a moment. Let me read to you this. It says in Genesis 50 verses 17B to 18, Joseph wept when they spoke. His brothers also came and fell down before him. That's in a position of being prostrate. Before, excuse me, behold, we are your servants. That word can either mean servants or like the NIV put it, in which I believe it should be, slaves. If my choice is death by retaliation or slave, I'll take slave, not so bad. I'll bow down before you. Okay, here we go. I'll take the slave, the living, over the dead status. And I think that's what we see the brothers doing. They're saying, look, we will be your slaves. But Joseph is weeping at this point. You see, they failed to see Joseph as a compassionate brother who actually loved them, who was being used as an instrument by God to save them. They failed to see that Joseph was a loving brother who was being used as a savior to save many lives, the text tells us. They failed to comprehend that Joseph's time of visitation, I'm connecting something to the New Testament by using that phraseology, time of visitation, his time in the land of Egypt was actually meant for their salvation. Why did you use, Nick, that terminology, that phraseology, time of visitation, because it refers forward to a greater Savior, to a greater Savior who stepped into a time in order to produce salvation that many would be saved. Look at Luke 19, 41 through 43. Luke 19, 41 through 43. If you don't want to turn, I'm certainly going to read it here. I hate to make you guys lose your place in the passage. But this is of importance. I truly believe that God is pointing this out, that not only is Joseph acting as one who exemplifies God's weeping over the fact that they don't get it. You still see me as this unloving brother? You still think I'm going to do something against you? to now we see him, Joseph, representing the Savior, Jesus Christ. Listen to this. And when he, Jesus, in other words, drew near and saw the city, he's drawing near, this is his last, he's in his final week, this is the triumphant entry into Jerusalem. Triumphant, what a play on words. He's coming to be executed. He's coming to be killed for the transgression of men. the betrayal of our relationship with God. It says, he wept over it, this is Jesus weeping, saying, would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace, in other words, his death that is coming forth. But now they are hidden from your eyes, for the days will come upon you when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side. This occurred in AD 70, 40 years from when Jesus is talking about this. In their lifespan, they would know the destruction of failing to see the visitation. Let's continue on. And tear you down to the ground. you and your children within you. He's speaking metaphorically of the city which represents all of the leadership of Israel that would not recognize him as Savior. And they will not leave one stone upon another because you did not know the time of your visitation, the time when your Savior came to you. The brothers don't understand the visitation That is the placing of Joseph in the land to make salvation possible. And now we see that the Jews didn't understand Jesus' time of visitation here on earth to the people, his own people, the Jews. And they also overlooked him as Savior. But let's take a look at God's correction. God's repurposing evil for good. Praise God that he does that. He doesn't leave us in this state of deception, self-deception. Look at Genesis 50, verses 19 to 21. But Joseph said to them, listen how compassionate this is. Is he not mimicking God? Is he not imitating God? Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? Do I take corrupted authority upon myself? I am in no place to do such a thing. I am not in the place of God, he is saying. As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive as they are today. So do not fear. I will provide for you and your little ones. Thus he comforted them and spoke kindly to them. I think it's particularly precious, meaningful. It actually doesn't say that in the Hebrew that he spoke kindly to them. This is what it says in the Hebrew. Thus he comforted them and spoke to their hearts. He hit right to the core. This is who I am. I love you, I will care for you. So what do we see here? Joseph will not become like God. Remember the garden scene? If you take from this fruit, the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you will become like God. You will take, you will usurp, you will corrupt the authority of God. You will be the ones left able to determine good from evil. Joseph, his wording is beautiful. We see that which was at the beginning of Genesis and our fall, you see Joseph getting it. I will not do that. It's hope. As we enter the next book of Exodus, looking forward, we have hope. Even in the midst of the brothers falling to the corruption, Joseph will not fall to it. Joseph will not even allow others to think that he is in the place of God. Joseph will not seek vengeance upon his brothers. Joseph has watched God use the evil directed towards him for good, but it's a qualified good. And the good is to save many people. The good is to bring about salvation. It's the same message we've heard all along that is intended. God would use the people, the Jews, to bring about the salvation of many. He has chosen, and as we see here, the family isn't doing it. He uses the one son to demonstrate that. And we can't help but look at this and see another illustration of Jesus in this picture. Think of it this way. Israel, Egypt, and the surrounding nations all received salvation because one man took upon his shoulders the evil that was intended to him by his brothers. He took it upon himself, God used that evil, he superimposed it, he superintended it, excuse me, not superimposed it, he superintended it, he orchestrated it so that it would bring about salvation unto those very people that betrayed him. But there is one greater, there is one greater who didn't deal with the physical salvation, taking them away from the situation of the famine and providing food for them. He dealt with a spiritual salvation, a salvation that made it possible for them to be saved from their state of damnation. This was Jesus. He takes upon himself, upon his shoulders, one man takes the evil attended by mankind, all of us in our evil hearts, He takes it upon his shoulder and he provides salvation for all who will repent and believe in that act that he did in paying for our sins. Listen to this, 2 Corinthians 5.21, for our sake he, speaking of God the Father, made him, speaking of Jesus, his son, to be sin. In other words, to bear the sin. Jesus did not become sin in a sense that he was sinful. He was never sinful. That's why he is the only one capable of being the lamb or the perfect sacrifice of God. But he takes on sin. So let me read this again. For our sake he, God the Father, made him, Jesus, to be sin, who knew no sin, so that in him, in Jesus, we might become the righteousness of God. And so we see this foreshadowed in the story of Joseph and what a beautiful picture this is. We have salvation because of what Christ was willing to take on. Joseph didn't know the evil that was coming his way. Jesus knew it and willingly faced it all the way to the cross. But finally, we end with this, God's continuation. In other words, he has faithfully covenanted to his people. And we read in Genesis 50, 22 to 26. Let me start actually in 24. Double verb. God will surely visit you and bring you up out of this land. the land that he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. Then Joseph made the sons of Israel swear, saying, God will piquad, piquad, God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here." The point being here is the emphasis placed on the sureness that God was going to bring about an exodus out of this land so that they could be brought back into the promised land. God has done that with us. We have received an exodus. It is an exodus not from the slavery of Egypt, not from the slavery that might be in our, the afflictions we might receive here in this world, though they may be difficult, No, it's a greater slavery. It's a slavery of sin. The exodus that Jesus freed us of is our slavery to sin that we might never be reconciled. Jesus, through his death, has reconciled us that we no longer are slaves to sin. Because we are no longer slaves to sin, we no longer, hopefully, I say this hopefully realizing, I just ask a prayer, oh God, get me to the end of the day. Make it so that by the end of the day, I haven't stepped in and corrupted the authority that you have taken it upon yourself, excuse me, the authority that you have taken it upon myself to take this word that tells me God so graciously revealed and wrote it down so that I could read it. I didn't have to rely on somebody else reading it to me. I could read this and know the truth of God's word. I could know what God through his authority has given me for instruction because he loves me. Oh God, help me not to fall to that because I know this is our takeaway today. If I corrupt your authority, oh God, it is not far behind it that I will rationalize my evil as good. Praise be to God that even when I do that, he is faithful to forgive us, to forgive me of all my unrighteousness, to forgive me because he is a just and loving God. Let us go to the Lord in prayer. Oh, Heavenly Father, you are amazing. This story is about you. All of Genesis has been about you. We've watched the patriarchs fall over and over again to their own suddenfulness. We are not surprised in the end that the brothers try once again to take the authority granted unto you only, that which you granted to the father, that is their father, their earthly father. They try to use that and manipulate it so that they might be saved rather than not fear. rather than trust in you and realize that you're going to work it out in your perfect will and your perfect way. Help that to be us, Father. Don't let us fall to fear. Don't let us fall to taking and corrupting your authority. Don't allow us to say that evil is good. We know that you are capable of that because you have given us, by way of your son's actions, your spirit to dwell in us. We rely on your spirit to guide us this day and these days forward. It's in Christ's name we pray, amen.