THE JOURNEY TO EGYPT
by Steve Zeisler
This year marks the two hundredth anniversary of the Constitution which
has guided and framed our nation. We ought to be grateful to God for the
many ways in which he has blessed this country. As it is the weekend of
July 4th, and because of the nature of the passage we will be looking at
this morning, I want to ask you to think about what it means to be a citizen
of the United States; and what it means to you as Christians to be citizens
of heaven. So what does it mean to us to be part of this nation at this
particular time in history, and how does that fit in with the fact that
we also are citizens of heaven, and as such know from Scripture the eventual
outcome of all things?
Jacob and Joseph, with whom we have been spending a lot of time lately,
will help us here. Joseph was a man of great power. He was second only to
the Pharaoh in the nation of Egypt. As such, he was capable of doing good
for all the peoples of the earth, for it was God who had granted to him
all the power and influence which he possessed. He was an influential participant
in the life of his adopted nation, administering the affairs of Egypt during
seven years of plenty and seven years of famine. Thus, Joseph was God's
handpicked man whom he chose for the purpose of orchestrating and moving
world events for righteous results. What a good example he is for us to
focus on, particularly on this weekend as we contemplate our role as citizens
of the United States, and as we think of what role we might play in its
history.
The second figure we will look at, Jacob, was very different than his son
Joseph. He had reached the end of his days on earth. He was without any
standing in his own country. He was a wanderer and a sojourner, having been
forced by circumstances to leave the land in which he had any inheritance
at all. Jacob never really became a citizen of any country. He spent his
days serving God in a land which his family would one day control. He arrived
as a beggar in Egypt, seeking food. Even his wealth could not deliver him
from the terrible famine which had come upon the earth. Jacob thus had no
earthly platform from which to influence the course of history either for
good or bad.
Jacob was concerned, rather, with what his life had amounted to now that
he was in his declining days. What had he become? What did he hope for in
eternity? What was the quality of his worship and prayers? We will see that
when he has opportunity to speak, Jacob does not comment on the economy,
the military situation, or any other pressing issue. He speaks about God,
about worship and eternity; about what people will become if they listen
to the word of God. For him the critical issue in life is not what becomes
of nations, but what becomes of people. Hopefully we will end up strong
in both areas; strong enough to take the oportunities God gives to change
this world for good, but also certain that those things will pass away,
and that the most important things in life, as Jacob modeled so faithfully,
are worship and faith.
I will read two passages concerning Jacob that illustrate his spiritual
perspective. The first is found in the beginning of chapter 46 of Genesis.
Joseph's brothers have returned to Canaan, laden with gifts, carrying orders
from Joseph to return to Egypt with his father. The brothers comply with
this request, and we pick up the story again in Genesis 46:
So Israel set out with all that he had, and came to Beersheba,
and offered sacrifices to the God of his father isaac. And God spoke to
Israel in visions of the night and said, "Jacob, Jacob." And he
said, "Here I am." And He said, "I am God, the God of your
father; do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for I will make you a great
nation there. I will go down with you to Egypt, and I will surely bring
you up again; and Joseph will close your eyes."
The second illustration is found in the closing verses of chapter 47:
When the time for Israel to die drew near, he called his son
Joseph and said to him, "Please, if I have found favor in your sight,
place now your hand under my thigh and deal with me in kindness and faithfulness.
Please do not bury me in Egypt, but when I lie down with my fathers, you
shall carry me out of Egypt and bury me in their burial place." And
he said, "I will do as you have said." And he said, "Swear
to me." So he swore to him. Then Israel bowed in worship at the head
of the bed.
In both of these situations Jacob worships God. First, before he sets foot
in Egypt, he worships at the altar in Beersheba which his father Isaac had
built. And then, second, in a very solemn moment, Jacob has Joseph swear
to him that he will not bury him in Egypt but will return his bones to Canaan.
Then, following Joseph's promise to do as he had requested, again Jacob
worships God. As we have pointed out, worship and faith were the two things
that mattered most to Jacob as he faced critical times near the end of his
days.
Joseph meanwhile was second in command of the whole known world. He was
God's servant, and as such was faithfully carrying out his duties in the
temporal world. We find our reference to him in 46:28-47:26.
Now he sent Judah before him to Joseph, to point out the way
before him to Goshen, and they came into the land of Goshen. And Joseph
prepared his chariot and went up to Goshen to meet his father Israel, as
soon as he appeared before him, he fell on his neck and wept on his neck
for a long time. Then Israel said to Joseph, "Now let me die, since
I have seen your face, that you are still alive." And Joseph said to
his brothers and to his father's household, "I will go up and tell
Pharaoh, and will say to him, 'My brothers and my father's household, who
were in the land of Canaan, have come to me; and the men are shepherds,
for they have been keepers of livestock; and they have brought their flocks
and their herds and all that they have.' And it shall come about when Pharaoh
calls you and says, 'What is your occupation?' that you shall say, 'Your
servants have been keepers of livestock from our youth even until now, both
we and our fathers, that you may live in the land of Goshen; for every shepherd
is loathsome to the Egyptians."
Then Joseph went in and told Pharaoh, and said, "My father
and my brothers and their flocks and their herds and all that they have,
have come out of the land of Canaan; and behold, they are in the land of
Goshen." And he took five men from among his brothers, and presented
them to Pharaoh. Then Pharaoh said to his brothers, "What is your occupation?"
So they said to Pharaoh, "Your servants are shepherds, both we and
our fathers." And they said to Pharaoh, "We have come to sojourn
in the land, for there is no pasture for your servants' flocks, for the
famine is severe in the land of Canaan. Now, therefore, please let your
servants live in the land of Goshen."
Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, "Your father and your brothers have come
to you. The land of Egypt is at your disposal; settle your father and your
brothers in the best of the land, let them live in the land of Goshen; and
if you know any capable men among them, then put them in charge of my livestock."
Then Joseph brought his father Jacob and presented him to Pharaoh; and Jacob
blessed Pharaoh. And Pharaoh said to Jacob, "How many years have you
lived?" So Jacob said to Pharaoh, "The years of my sojourning
are one hundred and thirty; few and unpleasant have been the years of my
life, nor have they attained the years that my fathers lived during the
days of their sojourning." And Jacob blessed Pharaoh, and went out
from his presence. So Joseph settled his father and his brothers, and gave
them a possession in the land of Egypt, in the best of the land, in the
land of Rameses, as Pharaoh had ordered. And Joseph provided his father
and his brothers and all his father's household with food, according to
their little ones. Now there was no food in all the land, because the famine
was very severe, so that the land of Egypt and the land of Canaan languished
because of the famine. And Joseph gathered all the money that was found
in the land of Egypt and in the land of Canaan for the grain which they
bought, and Joseph brought the money into Pharaoh's house. And when the
money was all spent in the land of Egypt and in the land of Canaan, all
the Egyptians came to Joseph and said, "Give us food, for why should
we die in your presence? For our money is gone." Then Joseph said,
"Give up your livestock, and I will give you food for your livestock,
since your money is gone." So they brought their livestock to Joseph,
and Joseph gave them food in exchange for the horses and the flocks and
the herds and the donkeys; and he fed them with food in exchange for all
their livestock that year. And when that year was ended, they came to him
the next year and said to him, "We will not hide from my lord that
all our money is spent, and the cattle are my lord's. There is nothing left
for my lord except our bodies and our lands. Why should we die before your
eyes, both we and our land? Buy us and our land for food, and we and our
land will be slaves to Pharaoh. So give us seed, that we may live and not
die, and that the land may not be desolate."
So Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh, for every Egyptian sold
his field, because the famine was severe upon them. Thus the land became
Pharaoh's. And as for the people, he removed them to the cities from one
end of Egypt's border to the other. Only the land of the priests he did
not buy, for the priests had an allotment from Pharaoh, and they lived off
the allotment which Pharaoh gave them. Therefore, they did not sell their
land. Then Joseph said to the people, "Behold I have today bought you
and your land for Pharaoh; now here is seed for you, and you may sow the
land. And at the harvest you shall give a fifth to Pharaoh, and four-fifths
shall be your own for seed of the field and for your food and for those
of your households and as food for your little ones." So they said,
"You have saved our lives! Let us find favor in the sight of my lord,
and we will be Pharaoh's slaves." And Joseph made it a statute concerning
the land of Egypt valid to this day, that Pharaoh should have the fifth;
only the land of the priests did not become Pharaoh's.
We are citizens of the United States, the most powerful nation on earth.
Joseph was second only to Pharaoh in Egypt, the leading nation of the world
of his day, during a state of extreme emergency for that nation. Perhaps
we will face an emergency of some sort during our lifetime. God uses governments
to do good, Scripture declares. He binds human beings together to form nations,
to be led by individuals, in good times and bad, in times of blessing and
times of judgment.
Let us try to learn some things from Joseph as he is revealed in this passage.
Joseph was in a position to benefit the people of God and the cause of God.
The Lord gifted him and placed him to do good for the fragile clan of seventy
members, the family of Jacob, who went down to Egypt to escape the famine
in Canaan. Joseph chose five of them, no doubt the most civilized and well
spoken among them, and presented them before Pharaoh. He coached them on
what to say, being well aware that Egyptians hated shepherds and thus they
would leave the family alone in Goshen, a fertile but unused part of Egypt.
There they would not be in danger of being coopted by the Egyptians, as
they were so endangered in Canaan, but would be allowed to thrive, away
from the Egyptian centers of power. Thus Joseph used the means at his disposal
to do good for his family and, by extension, the nation of Israel. Pharaoh
even asked them to care for his flocks as well. Joseph therefore placed
his family in Egypt in a way that maximized the benefit to the nation.
We too should be on the alert to do good wherever God places us. Notice
that Joseph did whatever he could do for his family with impartiality and
honestly. He was universally praised for his fairness. He ruled with wisdom
and good judgment. We too should be willing to think God's thoughts after
him, to seek out those who are genuinely good and maximize opportunities
for the cause of Christ. It is not wrong for people to be organized in companies
and governments. Neither is it wrong to use whatever positions God has blessed
us with to use our influence for good. The apostle Paul was never shy about
using his Roman citizenship to gain a hearing for the gospel. Joseph knew
the psychology, the sociology and the politics of Egypt. He used his position
in a righteous manner to save his family, the bearers of God's message of
salvation to the world.
Let us look at the political maelstrom in which Joseph ruled and see if
anything looks familiar. There was a tremendous movement of people from
the countryside to the cities (Gen.47:21) because that was where the food
was stored. The same phenomenon is occurring in our own day as millions
of people in countries throughout the world are fleeing from the countryside
to the cities. Many of the cities of the world are swollen beyond capacity
by this movement of people, and governments must come up with plans to deal
with that. Joseph presided over a government that was growing increasingly
centralized, so much so that Pharaoh gradually became the owner of all the
land of Egypt. At a time when there is much debate in our government about
fair taxation, we read here that Joseph came up with an equitable tax package
for Pharaoh. We can even see here that there was a church and state issue
operating during Joseph's rule. The priests were tax exempt, it seems; they
did not have to give up their land. Pharaoh, history records, expected the
priests to support his reign, to even worship and deify him. This should
give us cause to wonder about the intermingling of church and state in our
own day. At what point can we bring our influence to bear and when should
we step back and retain our prophetic role, refusing to say, "Caesar
is lord"?
These are just some of the issues which Joseph had to deal with during his
time as governor of Egypt. Yet he had the acclaim and approval of everyone
for his wise leadership. The Pharaoh praised him for putting in place an
economic revolution in Egypt, and the people likewise praised him for his
wisdom in planning for the seven-year famine so that they had food in times
of scarcity. And amidst all of these pressures, Joseph still was wise enough
to take advantage of the Egyptians' prejudice to protect his own family.
Joseph is a model of how to live wisely and righteously in pressure-filled
times. God may present us with similar opportunities. The company you work
for may be facing reorganization and you may be the one who will act wisely
and righteously to save jobs, to perhaps even put bread on peoples' tables.
Joseph was a most effective citizen of Egypt in his day. We too may be given
opportunity to be effective citizens of our nation. We should be ready to
enter open doors of opportunity, eager to use our influence when the right
circumstances arise.
Jacob, unlike Joseph, was a citizen of nowhere. He was without power to
influence even the minutest of events. All he possessed was the appeal of
his godly character. He was a beggar who had come to Egypt seeking food.
But Jacob also was called to minister. C.S. Lewis says in his essay The
Weight of Glory,
You and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us
from the evil enchantment of worldliness which has been laid upon us for
nearly a hundred years. Almost our whole education has been directed to
silencing this shy, persistent inner voice. Almost all our modern philosophies
have been devised to convince us that the good of man is to be found on
this earth.
Jacob too would say that the good of man was not to be found on earth. And
we too should remember that no matter how important it is that we use our
influence in the power structures of this world to do good, the ultimate
good of man is not be to be found on this earth.
On entering and leaving the presence of Pharaoh, Jacob blessed him. Hebrews
says that it is always the greater person who blesses the lesser. Because
he knew God, Jacob was well aware that Pharaoh was merely a man, and that
he needed to know about eternal things. Jacob stopped on his journey to
Egypt at the altar which his father had built at Beersheba to ask God's
blessing on his trek. He remembers the promise which God had made to his
father and grandfather. He knows that he and his sons possess truth about
God and God's plan for mankind that no one else is aware of.
Jacob is concerned with the eternal, not the temporal. He does not bother
with giving advice to Pharaoh about anything that concerned the world. When
Pharaoh comments on Jacob's great age and certain distinguishing qualities
which he possessed, Jacob's responds by saying that he has not lived very
long at all compared with his father and grandfather. Even the years that
he had attained had been somewhat difficult and unpleasant as he had created
many serious problems for himself. He is telling Pharaoh, in effect, that
the Egyptian was focusing on the wrong issues; that reaching a great age
is not that impressive a thing. Jacob by implication is appealing to Pharaoh
to think beyond this life and what it offers.
God had reiterated his promise to Jacob at Beersheba. Although he was now
sending them down to Egypt, they would yet become a great nation there and
he would rescue them again. Every promise God had made to them would be
realized. When Jacob sees Joseph for the first time after all the years
of separation, he exclaims, "I can die now!" He is expressing
his gratitude to God for all he had been given. God had not denied him anything.
Jacob's awareness of human mortality culminates with his making Joseph promise
to not bury his body in Egypt but to return his bones to Canaan. He believed
God that a great nation would spring from his family and that one day they
would return to the promised land. That was where he wanted to be buried.
Thus he exacts a solemn promise from Joseph to bury him in Egypt. That was
Jacob's way of expressing his belief in what God had promised. He had no
doubt that the future of the people of God would not be realized in Egypt
but in Canaan.
We should ask ourselves whether our conversations reflect the same things
that concerned Jacob. Or are we so caught up in worldly affairs that we
overlook eternal things? Do we base our decisions on values which will still
be valuable in eternity, or are we more concerned with our bank accounts
and with how we impress others? Referring to the fact that human beings
will live for eternity, C.S. Lewis continues in the essay I quoted from
earlier,
We could be left utterly and absolutely outside, repelled, exiled, estranged,
finally and unspeakably ignored. On the other hand we could be called in,
welcomed, received, acknowledged. We walk every day on the razor's edge
between these two incredible possibilities. Apparently then, our lifelong
nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from
which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have
always seen from the outside, is not mere neurotic fancy, but the truest
index of our real situation.
Jacob had no real power or influence over worldly matters, but he did have
quite an influence in Joseph's life. Joseph had been at the heartbeat of
Egypt for years. He spoke the language of that country; he thought like
an Egyptian. He actually spent in total almost 100 years there. But at the
end of his life Joseph insisted that his remains also be taken from Egypt
and buried in Canaan. He had heard from his father about God's promises,
and he had seen his father worship God. Thus he began to see, at the height
of his power, that there were more important things in life than exercising
power over people. That is why he had his body sent back to Canaan--to make
the statement that he too trusted God. The Egyptians built monuments all
across their land, both to the living and the dead. But Joseph, who had
adopted that country and spent his life there, wanted to be remembered as
one of the sons of Abraham, one who had the same faith as Abraham. Jacob,
his faithful father, in exerting the vow from his son to not bury his remains
in Egypt, had the effect of influencing his son to ask to be returned to
Canaan also following his death.
No matter what position you hold in life you have the ear of people around
you; you may even have authority even over some of them. Do not be afraid
to use your position. God is not antagonistic towards nations, cultures
or people who gather together in any kind of grouping. Therefore be a life-giver
as Joseph was. But never forget that the eternal issues are the most important
things. Do not leave behind monuments to your culture. This nation is not
going to last forever, despite our many freedoms and privileges. We need
to align ourselves with Jacob, to become utterly certain of the promises
of God to us as Christians. At the end of your life , if you are godly,
you will not be intensely interested in who has just been nominated to the
Supreme Court, or who will win the next Presidential campaign, important
as those things are now and will be then. As you look back on your life
then, the most important thing will be your worship and praise to God, as
they were with Jacob in this Genesis story.
I will close by quoting again from the C.S. Lewis essay,
It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods
and goddesses; to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person
you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would
be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as
you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are in some
degree helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in
the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the
circumspection proper to them that we should conduct all our dealings with
one another. All friendships, all loves, all play, all politics; there are
no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nation, culture,
arts, civilization--these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life
of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub
and exploit; immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.
Both Joseph and Jacob glorified God. Joseph served by using his God-given
position and authority at the head of the leading nation of his day. He
oversaw an economic revolution in Egypt, the mass migration of people to
the cities, and the salvation of his generation from the famine. Yet none
of those accomplishments influence the lives of people today. Jacob prayed
and worshiped his God in gratitude because he lived to see his son once
more. We today are encouraged in our worship by the prayers and insight
of that great man of God. I pray that God will grant us values that arise
from his Scriptures; that he will use our place in the world we live in
now, and grant us enthusiasm for the things that will last forever.
Catalog No. 4048
Genesis 46:8-47:31
Tenth Message
Steve Zeisler
July 5, 1987
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