WHEN GOD MESSES WITH YOU: Genesis 42-44
I never served in the military, so I never experienced boot camp. From what I hear, boot camp is stressful, by design. The physical and mental demands on new recruits are intended to force them to confront their weaknesses, build their character, and learn new ways of dealing with life. Everyone, especially the sergeant in charge of the recruits, is messing with them, to force them to grow stronger and better.
Does God mess with people?
When Moses led the people out of Egypt they wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. Why did God have them do that? Moses said,
Deuteronomy 8:2-3 Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.
Much later, when God’s people sinned, and God allowed them to be taken into exile in Babylon, Jeremiah said,
Jeremiah 9:7 “Therefore this is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘See, I will refine and test them, for what else can I do because of the sin of my people?’”
In the New Testament,
Hebrews 12:7 says, “Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father?”
In his providence, God sometimes allows us to be stressed, so that we can confront our weaknesses or failures, and grow. God messes with us, in a good way.
We are going to be reading a rather long story today, about how God messed with Joseph and his brothers. As we read, we want to relate their story to our life story.
Like them, we might recognize that we have been formed (and perhaps deformed) by our past. We might look back at our immaturity, and wish we could do some things differently. There may be relationships that blew up, because we blew our chance. There may be sins, forgiven, but leaving toxic fallout behind. There may be people and places we want to forget, with scars and guilt and hurts we can’t forget. There may be weaknesses we learned to accept, but dislike. These things may be recent, or long ago, but their impact endures.
Every once in a while, something happens that forces us to confront the rough edges in our lives. How we deal with them determines whether we grow or remain stuck. How we deal with them also impacts others: our family, our church family, and all of the people we deal with.
As we read story from Genesis 42-44, we will focus on two brothers: Reuben, the firstborn of Jacob’s 12 sons, and Judah, the fourth son. Both had flaws in character, shown by glaring mistakes:
Reuben was engaged in a power struggle with his father and brothers, and he did a despicable thing. Genesis 35:22 “While Israel was living in that region, Reuben went in and slept with his father's concubine Bilhah, and Israel heard of it.”
Judah, as told in Genesis 38, left the family to take a pagan wife, and after refusing to fulfill family responsibilities, slept with his daughter-in law, Tamar, who was posing as a shrine prostitute.
Two sons of Jacob. In today’s story, one finds redemption, while the other flounders in a sea of good intentions.
The background is this: Joseph’s brothers were jealous of him, and they sold him as a slave. Joseph struggled for 13 years in Egypt, but after he interpreted Pharaoh’s dreams of a coming drought and famine, he became the second in command to Pharaoh. After seven years of accumulating food for the years of famine, Joseph had control over massive amounts of grain.
Read Genesis 42:1-17. That was a cruel thing to do his brothers, don’t you think? Yet God used it to mess with Joseph and his brothers and their father Jacob.
Can you relate to what God was doing? Have you ever been forced to spend time with people who remind you of awkward or painful events in your past? Joseph’s scars were being ripped open, and Joseph wasn’t dealing with it too well. Yet God was not done with Joseph or his brothers. The scars needed to be exposed, so that healing could come.
Read Genesis 42:18-22. It has been over 20 years since the brothers sent Joseph into slavery, but it is still on their conscience. By a strange twist of God’s providence, they are now forced to deal with their guilt. Is God punishing them, or is God helping them to get past the mistakes of their past?
The first step in dealing with guilt is admitting it. Reuben is not ready to that. He says, “Didn’t I tell you not to sin against the boy? But you wouldn’t listen.” That was not entirely true. While it was true that Reuben did not want to kill Joseph or sell him into slavery, he did not stand up to his brothers, and he had them put Joseph into a dry well. He was trying to shift the blame to his brothers, instead of facing his own guilt.
Read Genesis 42:23-28. Great question! They recognize that God is involved, but they don’t know what God is doing with them. Is this a test of character? Is it punishment for their sin? Or—Is it an opportunity to move beyond the past that they can’t leave behind?
Read Genesis 42:29, and skip to 35-38. Here is Reuben again, trying to look good. (Am I being too hard on him?) What is he really doing? Can he guarantee the return of Benjamin? If not, does he have right to risk the life of his two sons? He knows he won’t be held to this rash promise, for Jacob would never kill his own grandsons. So why does he say this?
Reuben reminds me of the kind of man who talks big, but doesn’t do much. He might say, “Everything is going to be different at our house from now on,” but when it comes to actually cleaning up after himself, or putting away his cell phone to listen to his wife, that is too much to ask. He wants his kids to behave better, but he doesn’t take responsibility for helping them succeed.
Reuben is the firstborn son, who should be the leader of the brothers. Yet Judah is the one who steps up to the plate, to take real responsibility.
Read Genesis 43:1-10. Judah recognizes his father’s concern for Benjamin, which was not easy to do, since his father showed favoritism. Judah shows that he really cares, taking responsibility for the devastating effect that losing Benjamin would have on his father. In doing so, Judah accepts responsibility for how the loss of Joseph had affected his father in the past.
In family systems, there is often one person who becomes the focus of the dynamics of the family. There may be favoritism, deceit, addiction, abuse, or power struggles. No one is healthy, and everyone is hurting, but one person becomes the pawn in the struggles they all share.
In this family, Benjamin is that pawn. He represents the favoritism that has plagued the family, ever since the time of Joseph. He represents the distrust, caused by sin and betrayal. No one talks about those problems, but Benjamin symbolizes the dysfunction.
Because of the famine, and the demand of Joseph that the brothers bring Benjamin with them when they come for food, the equilibrium of the family is being disrupted. Joseph is messing with the family, and it could be that God is messing with the family. The family dynamics will become worse or better, but they will not be the same.
Read Genesis 43:11-34. What is God doing?
For Joseph, God is putting Joseph in touch with the family he has lost. He invites his brothers to feast with him. He inquires about his father, whom he has not seen for 20 years. He weeps at the sight of his only full brother. Perhaps he begins the process of forgiving his brothers, although he is not there yet.
At the same time, Joseph (and maybe God too) is messing with his brothers. They bow in humility before the foreign ruler, setting themselves up for the big reveal. The foreigner, Joseph, gives Benjamin five times as much food. (Who can eat that much?) God is humbling them, and they don’t yet know how much they are being humbling in bowing to their brother.
And Joseph is not done messing with them. Read Genesis 44:1-34.
Notice who is identified as the leader of the family in verse 34: “Judah and his brothers came in.” Reuben talked a big game, but Judah steps up as the leader of the family. God has been messing with Judah (and all of the brothers), and through it all, Judah has been growing.
Growth is the goal, when God messes with us.
Hebrews 12:11-13 “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. "Make level paths for your feet," so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed.”
Judah demonstrates what God intends for all of us. In all of our struggles, God wants us to be healed, to do what is right, and to become stronger. God wants to bless us, even when he allows us to face difficult challenges.
We could end there, except that there is a later twist to the story of Joseph’s brothers. It is not just Judah who benefits from his growth.
When it is finally time for Jacob to die, he gathers his sons for a final blessing. The blessing not only looks to the future, but reflects the reality of who they are, and the impact they will have on generations to come.
Read 49:3-4. Reuben is stuck in past, never rising above his flawed character
Read 49:8-10. Judah is recognized as the leader of the family. His tribe, the tribe of Judah, will be the greatest in Israel, and he will be the ancestor of King David. He will be the ancestor of the true King, Jesus Christ, the Savior of world.
Well, what about you? Is God messing with you? That’s a holy thing!
You can get past your guilt. You can forgive the people who have hurt you. You can grow in character. You can be a leader in your family and your church. You can succeed in ways that you can’t yet imagine.
God is messing with you. If you grow through that, it can have an impact for generations!
