Turn in your Bibles to Genesis chapter 42. Genesis 42. This is a fairly long chapter, but we're going to read it all because it gives the necessary background for our text. Genesis 42 Now when Jacob saw that there was corn, or grain, in Egypt, Jacob said unto his sons, Why do ye look one upon another? And he said, Behold, I have heard that there is corn in Egypt. Get you down thither, and buy for us from thence, that we may live, and not die. And Joseph's ten brethren went down to buy corn in Egypt. But Benjamin, Joseph's brother, Jacob sent not with his brethren, for he said, lest peradventure mischief before him. The sons of Israel came to buy corn among those that came, for the famine was in the land of Canaan. And Joseph was the governor over the land, And he it was that sold to all the people of the land. And Joseph's brethren came and bowed down themselves before him with their faces to the earth. And Joseph saw his brethren, and he knew them, but made himself strange unto them, and spake roughly unto them. And he said unto them, Whence come ye? And they said, From the land of Canaan, to buy food. Joseph knew his brethren, but they knew not him. And Joseph remembered the dreams which he dreamed of them, and said unto them, Ye are spies, to see the nakedness of the land ye are come. They said unto him, Nay, my lord, but to buy food are thy servants come. We are all one man's sons. We are true men. Thy servants are no spies. And he said unto them, Nay, but to see the nakedness of the land ye are come. And they said, Thy servants are twelve brethren, the sons of one man in the land of Canaan. And behold, the youngest is this day with our father, and one is not. And Joseph said unto them, That is it that I speak unto you, saying, Ye are spies. Hereby ye shall be proved. by the life of Pharaoh, ye shall not go forth hence, except your youngest brother come hither. Send one of you, and let him fetch your brother, and ye shall be kept in prison, that your words may be proved, whether there be any truth in you. Or else, by the life of Pharaoh, surely ye are spies." He put them all together into ward, or custody, three days. And Joseph said unto them the third day, This do ye, and live, for I fear God. If ye be true men, let one of your brethren be bound in the house of your prison. Go ye, carry corn for the famine of your houses, but bring your youngest brother unto me, so shall your words be verified, and ye shall not die. And he did so. They said one to another, We are verily guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul when he besought us, and we would not hear. Therefore is this distress come upon us. And Reuben answered them, saying, Spake I not unto you, saying, Do not sin against the child, and ye would not hear? Therefore, behold, also his blood is required.' And they knew not that Joseph understood them, for he spake unto them by an interpreter. And he turned himself about from them, and wept, and returned to them again, and communed with them, and took from them Simeon, and bound him before their eyes. Then Joseph commanded to fill their sacks with corn, and to restore every man's money into his sack, and to give them provision for the way. And thus did he unto them. And they laded their asses with the corn, and departed thence. And as one of them opened his sack to give his ass provender in the inn, he espied his money. For behold, it was in his sack's mouth. And he said unto his brethren, My money is restored, and lo, it is even in my sack.' And their heart failed them, and they were afraid, saying one to another, What is this that God hath done unto us? And they came unto Jacob their father, unto the land of Canaan, and told him all that befell unto them, saying, The man who is the Lord of the land spake roughly to us, and took us for spies of the country. And we said unto him, We are true men, we are no spies. We be twelve brethren, sons of our father. One is not, and the youngest is this day with our father in the land of Canaan. And the man, the lord of the country, said unto us, Hereby shall I know that ye are true men. Leave one of your brethren here with me, and take food for the famine of your household, and be gone. and bring your youngest brother unto me. Then shall I know that ye are no spies, but that ye are true men. So will I deliver you your brother, and ye shall traffic or trade in the land.' And it came to pass, as they emptied their sacks, that, behold, every man's bundle of money was in his sack. And when both they and their father saw the bundles of money, they were afraid. And Jacob their father said unto them, Me have ye bereaved of my children. Joseph is not, and Simeon is not, and ye will take Benjamin away. All these things are against me. And Reuben spake unto his father, saying, slay my two sons, if I bring him not to thee, deliver him into my hand, and I will bring him to thee again.' And he said, My son shall not go down with you, for his brother is dead, and he is left alone. If mischief befall him by the way in which ye go, then shall ye bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave. Amen. Let us pray. Our Father in Heaven, we thank Thee for the public reading of Thy Word. We believe that Thou art one who has chosen to make not only the public reading of Scripture, but especially the preaching of the same, effectual for our salvation. Bless Thy Word to us. Give us hearing ears and help us to pay attention that we may learn and profit. For we ask in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Beloved, all of you are familiar with the main facts after Joseph was taken as a slave by the Midianites and Ishmaelites down into Egypt. how he became first Potiphar's servant and then a prisoner after being wrongly accused of seeking to seduce Potiphar's wife when the opposite was the case. And now finally, he became the Prime Minister of Egypt after interpreting Pharaoh's dreams. You could say Joseph's life in Egypt was summarized by three Ps. Potiphar's servant, prisoner, and prime minister. Now all of this, of course, was completely unknown to Jacob, Joseph's father, because Jacob thought that his favorite son was dead by being devoured by a wild beast years before. On the other hand, Joseph's ten older brethren knew fine well that they had sold him as a slave and that the slave traders were heading to Egypt to sell him on. But they didn't know about Joseph as part of her servant, and then a prisoner, and then the prime minister in Egypt. So let's briefly summarize Genesis 42. The first of the prophesied seven years of famine has struck the land, the land of Canaan, as well as Egypt. Its common knowledge in Canaan that somehow or other, the Egyptians have food. But Jacob's ten older brothers have an aversion to Egypt, because that was the place to which their brother was headed when they sold him into Throldom. So it is that at the start of the chapter, Jacob himself has to force the issue. That's in the first couple of verses. I've heard there's grain in Egypt. Why are you sitting here doing nothing? Saddle up your donkeys and head south." From the time that Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Dan, Naphtali, Gad and Asher left, to the time that nine of them, because Simeon didn't make it back, to the time that nine of them returned, Jacob heard precisely nothing about them. And when they came back, they told the unusual and disturbing tale, Dad, some very strange things befell us in Egypt. The Lord of the Egyptians spoke roughly to us. He accused us of being spies. What could we do but explain that we were honest men, twelve sons of one man, you dad, that one of our brothers was dead and the youngest was in your presence, and then the Lord of the Egyptians put Simeon in prison. And we know why Joseph put Simeon in prison. He was the second oldest son. And the first son, Reuben, had had some misgivings about the treatment of Joseph. So Simeon was the one most responsible for that foul deed. He put Simeon in prison, Dad, and then he sent the rest of us with the grain back to you in Canaan, and then How did we know he was going to say this? He told us that the only way in which Simeon would get out of that cell was that if next time we brought Benjamin with us. And Jacob must have stood there or probably sat there. He's an old man shaking his head in wonder. What in all the world is happening to my family? And when the nine brothers started to unload the grain, behold, says verse 35, every man's bundle of money was in his sack. And they and their father, when they saw this, were afraid. Doubtless, they had already told Jacob that one of them had found his money in his sack earlier when they were journeying north. This brings us to our text, Genesis 42 verse 36. Jacob their father said unto them, Me have ye bereaved of my children. Joseph is not, and Simeon is not, and ye will take Benjamin away. All these things are against me. And we're going to consider this Word of God under the theme, All these things are against me, the last few words of the verse. And here we have, first of all, the complaint of Jacob, which leads us to the problems with Jacob, which suggests the comparison with Joseph. All these things are against me. The complaint of Jacob, the problems with Jacob, and the comparison with Joseph. The mood of Jacob in our text is one of deep gloom and despondency. Me have ye bereaved of my children. Joseph is not. Simeon is not. You are going to take Benjamin away. All these things are against me." And he follows this up in verse 38 with these words, "'My son Benjamin shall not go down with you, for his brother is dead, and he is left alone. If mischief befall him by the way in which ye go, then shall ye bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave." And this, in turn, reminds us of the mood of Jacob upon hearing of the death of Joseph in chapter 37, verse 35. There, Jacob refuses to be comforted saying, I will go down into the grave unto my son mourning. Thus his father wept for him." There are various factors which we are going to consider in turn which led to and which reinforced Jacob's terrible despair. The first is, to use more contemporary language, that Jacob in our text exaggerated the negatives. That's what he's doing. Exaggerating the negatives. Joseph is not. Now the reader knows that Joseph is alive. We don't so much fault Jacob for believing that Joseph was dead. Then he adds Simeon is not. And that statement after Joseph is not is as much to say Simeon's as good as dead already. But he's not dead. He's in prison. And the promise regarding Simeon is that of a prompt release as soon as Benjamin is brought to Egypt. But then he adds Ye will take Benjamin away." And this statement, giving the two prior statements, is as much as to say, you're going to bring him away as if to kill him too. But all they were wanting to do was to bring him south to Egypt to effect the release of Simeon. One would think, from Jacob's words, that those three sons of his were practically dead already. But Simeon's in Egypt, and Benjamin's right beside him, and Joseph, unknown to Jacob, is actually prime minister in Egypt. And Jacob is not the only believer who exaggerates the dark, the gloomy and the negative things. We recognize this as a trait of other people, or maybe even ourselves at times, who are down, or who are headed down. They make every bad thing look worse than it really is. And I grant you, there are some bad things that really do look bad. And then they add together all the bad things, and maybe even they multiply the bad things. And we all know that this sort of behavior is not wise. And that it is not helpful. In this Word of God, this activity of Jacob didn't help him. And it won't help us. And it won't help either the loved ones who are close to us, and who are influenced by our speech and behaviour. Besides exaggerating the negatives, Jacob, in this word of God, ignored the positives. He said not only, Joseph is not, Simeon is not, and you're going to take Benjamin away, but he added, all these things are against me. All. All. prompts the question, did he mean all of these three things involving Joseph, Simeon, and Benjamin? And even then, he was dead wrong. Or is he suggesting here that absolutely all things in his life are against him? And then he's even more wrong. And we need to be careful, too, in our use of the word all. Now, in addressing Calvinists, you're aware of what the Arminians do theologically with the word all. But here, practically, we ourselves can go wrong in a different way with that word all. Are all things bad? Or many things? Or some things? Or few things? And are these things really bad? Or do they merely appear bad at the present? And are these things so bad that the infinitely wise God is unable to bring good out of them? Now there's a question. So listen now to what Jacob says in verse 38. My son Benjamin shall not go down with you For his brother is dead, and he is left alone." Now we move from the word all to the word alone. What does he mean by alone? Does he mean alone of his mother Rachel? That would be true. That would be true if Joseph was already dead, but he isn't. Or does he mean Benjamin is left alone out of my twelve sons. Because really, deep down, I don't think the other ten of you guys count for much. And I'm inclined to think he means a fair bit of that too. At which point you would nearly expect Levi or Gad or Asher to be considering chirping up and saying, Dad, what are we? Hired hands? Do we count for anything? The two things of which I've been speaking, exaggerating the negatives, ignoring the positives, these two things usually go hand in hand. We see it in ourselves when we're down. We see other people at it too. And sometimes we wonder if we're really trying to make ourselves miserable. And sometimes we wonder, too, about really bad instances of this, if there are some people who never seem to be happy unless they're miserable. And we ought not go that way at all. It's not wisdom. And there's something about sin, and in the descriptions and analysis of it, that somehow or other leads you back to Adam and Eve and the very first sin. What did the devil do there? He focused the mind of Eve upon the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and turned the wonderful paradisiacal world that God had created really into one big negative, because God is holding out on you You can't eat of that tree. And all the positive and wonderful things, this is a world without sin in which God walks with man. All of these things are ignored. Adam and Eve enjoyed fellowship with the living God. They had a clear conscience. They lived in a world whose beauty far surpasses the world in which we live. And all that Eve could think about was that tree. Isn't it awful? God won't let me eat that fruit. Boy, he's really holding out on me. That's very mean of him. The Christian must resist all forms of satanic temptation and lies, and we must not go around telling ourselves how bad we have it and ignoring all the mercies that we receive from the hand of God, because by ignoring the good things, so to speak, And exaggerating the negatives, we begin to lose our grip on reality and we bring ourselves down foolishly and unnecessarily. The third factor evident in our text is that Jacob here was self-centered. Verse 36 begins, Have ye bereaved of my children?" At the very start, in Hebrew and in English. And at the very end, all these things are against me. Jacob, as a father now, could have said a lot of other things. What about this? Poor Simeon is in prison. What sort of a prison Was it, boys? How is he being treated? How was he bearing up when you left? But instead, it's all about me. He could have turned then to his sons and said, and what about the nine of you? You had to leave your brother in jail. That must have been tough. You yourselves were in prison for three days. Nothing like that had ever happened to you before. It must have been awful for you to have been falsely accused of being spies in a foreign court before the ruler of Egypt. And this same self-pity is evident in Jacob's other statement in verse 38. My son shall not go down with you. And if you goof up, you will bring my gray hairs with sorrow down to the grave. And the Christian religion teaches that all Christians must seek first the Kingdom of God and all His righteousness. And all of these other things will be added to us. Seek first God and His Kingdom. We are to think about the Church of Jesus Christ and other people. And thinking about ourselves in this sort of way is only ever going to be destructive, because there is nothing in us, apart from the grace of God, but sin and depravity. Besides, playing up all the dark things and blotting out the good things and focusing on himself, Jacob also blamed other people. That's what he's doing in these words. He says, Me have ye bereaved of my children. It's all your fault. Joseph is not. In this context, he means, you're to blame for this. Simeon is not. But then how could the other brothers have understood or imagined even that Simeon was going to be put in jail? And you are now going to take Benjamin away. But all they were saying was that if Benjamin didn't come with them down into Egypt, they wouldn't get food and Simeon couldn't be sprung from his cell. And then Jacob adds, If mischief befall Benjamin by the way in which ye go, then shall you bring down my grey hairs with sorrow to the grave." Now Jacob's sons had done a lot of terrible things, but this wasn't fair on them. Jacob wasn't right in blaming them in this way. And again we think of the fall. Adam blamed Eve. Eve blamed the serpent, and so it ever is. Self-centeredness and blaming other people logically go together, because if I'm interested just in me and there's something else that's gone wrong, well, then it must be your fault. And once you analyze what Jacob said, you come to the conclusion that it's perfectly understandable why he was gloomy, despondent, and down. I defy any man to do what he did and not be down. If you paint the canvas black with all the bad things that you can heap up, and if all the chinks of light that God sprays into your life are blocked out, If you focus on yourself and your own feelings, and if you blame other people, well, life isn't going to look too good, is it? If we start doing one or two of these things, it's not going to help us. And if we do all four of these things, like Jacob in our text, we're going to be in big trouble. One could liken this to a cocktail with four main ingredients. exaggerating the negatives, ignoring the blessings of God, pitying ourselves and blaming other people, which will probably turn other people away. Then we drink such a cocktail it will put us on our back. And the wise thing here is not to even sip such a thing, to put it away from us and reject it And if we ask ourselves, how did Jacob come to be in such a condition? And if we ask that question with reflection upon the narrative in the latter chapters of the book of Genesis, we come up with some answers. There is nothing in the scripture to indicate that Jacob had bad genes. G-E-N-E-S. We do not see in the Word of God that Jacob inherited bad genes from Abraham and Sarah, his grandparents, or Isaac and Rebekah, his parents. There's no indication in the Word of God that Jacob had a chemical imbalance. If we ask about physical issues with Jacob, There are a couple of possibilities. Jacob had a hip problem. Christ, in that wrestling match at Peniel, touched him on his hip and put his hip out of joint. I'm no doctor, but I would imagine that that may have led to an early onset of arthritis. It's certainly a possibility. Jacob was also an old man, and I am told that old men can sometimes become grumpy. That's a possibility too. But within the whole framework of the life of Jacob, we are to understand Jacob's struggles here as the resurfacing of his old problem. Jacob was a believer, a godly man too. But he struggled to trust in the Lord. That's a recurring theme in the second half of the book of Genesis with Jacob. He struggled to believe that God was going to grant him the blessing. So he had to trick brother Esau with the bowl of soup in Genesis 25. Two chapters later, In order to inherit the birthright, he lied and pretended to be Esau. And if we turn to chapters 30 and 31 of the book of Genesis, we'll see the same trickery with Laban this time over the flock. And when we get to Genesis 42, unlike when Jacob was older, was younger rather, This time he cannot engineer a way out. Not that his engineering or finagling when he was younger really did him any good anyway. Again in this passage we see the old sinful partiality on Jacob's part. Joseph. Joseph gets the coat of many colors. And then number two son is Benjamin. We can understand why those two boys were favored by their father, but favoritism and partiality is not a good idea. It creates problems with your children. We should understand too, Jacob's despair at the end of Genesis 42, in connection with that earlier text, Genesis 37 verse 35, which I've already quoted. When he heard that Joseph was dead, he refused to be comforted and said, I will go down into the grave unto my son mourning. It's almost like a vow, a rash, foolish vow, resolving to mourn and grieve excessively and overlong for a much beloved son. It's a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy of doom. The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away. We don't sorrow as those without hope. We also need to move on. And so now, in the present, as it were, in Genesis 42, and especially now its last scene, these problems in Jacob, problems involving his family, come back to haunt him and to cripple him. He hears this disturbing report from Egypt. His sons have been accused of being lies, of spies. Simeon is now in prison. Benjamin has to go down to Egypt next time, and it all comes back. And all of this piles up on top of the death of the beloved son, Joseph. And then strikes him this sudden fear, with the bundles of money in the mouths of all the sacks, and fear Fear can cause us to lose our spiritual wits. And Jacob here goes to pieces. This has the effect of driving clean out of his mind all the glorious promises made to him personally by the God of heaven and earth. That same God who called Himself the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the one who was promised land, seed and blessing, all picturing salvation in the Messiah and the new world. The one who had the dream at Bethel with the ladder going up to heaven and the angels of God ascending and descending on that ladder. The one who had a camp of angels come to protect him at Mahanaim, the one who wrestled with the Son of God in a pre-incarnate form at Panaio, the one who had been delivered from the four hundred men of Egypt, the one to whom God appeared again at Bethel in Genesis 35. In fact, Jacob was the man on planet Earth with more blessings promised to him than anybody else. In this sad scene, he forgets them all. All these things are against me. This is what happens to us too when we are struck by heavy blows, and my point this evening is not to deny that we are hit at times with very heavy blows, sometimes heavy blows one after another. And then what we do as we stagger onto these blows is that we forget. We forget the mercy of God. Every sermon that we ever heard goes out the window. All the scriptures that we read and which have comforted us, we can't recall a single one of them. We become like Jacob who exaggerates all the bad things, forgets about even the things which are good and even appear to us to be good if we only think about them. We focus on ourselves. We blame other people. Me, have ye bereaved of my children?" Joseph is not. Simeon is not. You're going to take Benjamin away. All these things are against me. And then he gets stubborn. My son shall not go down with you. And later on, he had to eat that stubborn word. He had to eat that stubborn word because he had to eat. And he had to eat a lot of foolish. unbelieving words too. Now, if you think tonight that I'm very sore on Jacob, my defense is that this is what the Word of God requires of the minister who explains it. And secondly, my defense is that I'm not saying I would have done any better than Jacob. All of us are weak and sinful and foolish. It's our calling, though, in the cool light of day, and when we're seated in pews at church, to analyze the Scripture, to learn from the sins of our bettors that are recorded in the Word of God. So I repeat that Jacob was a godly man. He was a patriarch. He was a pillar of the faith. The church is even named after him. That's an honor. The church is called Jacob or Israel after him. That's an honor of him, I say, but it also is an indication to us that we're just like him. And then Jacob, though he's not a vindictive man, I'm sure, and certainly not now in heaven, well, when we sit down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, as Jesus said we will in Matthew 8, Or rather, just before that, on the last day, Jacob, and everybody else for that matter, will see our sins when the books are opened and how we behave like, Jacob, everything's bad, nothing's for me, it's all about me, you're to blame, all these things are against me. Well, Jacob may say, well, now it's come around to you too. And in closing now, I want to consider, because I think this would be helpful for us, how much better Joseph appears in the preceding three chapters, Genesis 39, 40, 41, than Jacob his father in chapter 42. Jacob is an old man here and he should have learned and known better. But think about Joseph and the wonder of grace in his life in this regard. He's just 17. Just 17. When he's sold as a slave down into Egypt. And he lives there as a young adult. How did Joseph react when nine of his brethren talked in his hearing about killing him? Imagine listening in to a conversation like that. And then in a fit of mercy, as it were, they decided not to kill him, but to sell him as a slave. And as verse 21 of our chapter says, they had no pity. Completely callous. They couldn't care less for him. And Joseph didn't sulk. He didn't even allow bitterness to reign in his heart with regard to his brothers. And he certainly wasn't bitter with God either. And then in Potiphar's house, that remarkable young man walked with the Lord in a pagan land with no fellowship at all and no church to go to. He worked hard and honestly and gained promotion. He resisted the repeated seduction of Potiphar's wife and then he was accused and convicted of a crime which he didn't commit and cast into prison on his own. Here was a young man who by the grace of the Holy Spirit kept his head. That is, he believed in God's Word. He behaved wisely in prison, and he was promoted to oversee some of the other inmates. And then we have the ungrateful butler, whose dream he had correctly and positively interpreted, and he forgot him. Joseph didn't get angry. and he wasn't bitter. Through all of these trials and testings in his family, in Potiphar's house and in prison, he was enabled to cope with the pride which especially would have assailed him, but for that testing, when he was then taken from jail and made the number two man in that wealthy kingdom on the Nile. And when Jacob had his ten brothers in his power, we read in verse 9 that Joseph remembered the dreams which he dreamed of them. It was that Word of God, the dreams which he had, that Word that had sustained him and kept him all those years, And now again, it's in the forefront of his mind. And Joseph doesn't seek the destruction of his brothers. He seeks their repentance. And that's what he's doing in the will of God and by the command of God, I believe, when he puts his brothers into this difficult position, accusing them of spies in order to bring them to repentance. And Joseph was able to do this Because the grace of God wrought powerfully in his heart. He believed. He endured. So we have two men here. Jacob, filled with despair. If we had a Jacob in Hudsonville Church, we would say, there's a man who needs some pastoral counseling. He's not dealing well with a difficult an extremely difficult circumstance in his life. And we have a Joseph, a very faithful young man. And if he was in Hudsonville Church, the elders would be thinking of having a word with him and telling him about the need for students in the seminary and the vacant pulpits, which will probably arise in the next few years. So there's Jacob. All these things are against me. And if there is one scripture in the New Testament which ought to come to mind at this point, it is Romans chapter 8. Verse 28 says, We know that all things work together for good for them that love God. That gives the lie to Jacob's idea, all these things are against me, and our own thinking. All things work together for good to them who are the called according to His purpose. Because God foreknew us, loved us before the foundation of the world, and has predestinated us to be conformed to the glorious image of His Son, Jesus Christ. That's what's happening in the passage. Because those who are predestinated, are called, are justified, and are glorified. And what is our conclusion that necessarily follows from this? If God be for us, who can be against us? Not all these things are against me, but nothing and no one can be against me. That's what Father Jacob ought to have been saying. And we too. And then the Apostle takes us right to the cross. The God who did not spare His Son, the God who delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not also with Him freely give us all things? No one can lay anything to the charge of God's elect. God's the one who justifies. No one can condemn us. Because Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins, He's risen from the dead, and He's seated at God's right hand, and He ever lives to make intercession for us. Think of the cross, and you can't think, all these things are against me. The atonement of our Savior puts that away. Jacob did not have the full New Testament revelation. We do. And we who understand the manifestation of God's great love for us in Calvary, and who have the wisdom of God in 66 books, ought to live by gratitude and not give way to despair and unbelief, no matter how it might seem that all things are against us. They're not. They can't be. Amen. Let us pray. Father in Heaven, bless to us Thy Word. Forgive us our sins, for Thy Word even calls them to our remembrance, our ingratitude, our bitterness against Thee, our unbelief of Thy promises. Wash them away and help us to remember Thy faithfulness and the promises that we may know that if Thou art for us, No one can be against us. For we pray in Jesus' name, Amen.