Total Commitment - Genesis 47:13-31 Series

Today what I want to do is we're going to look at Genesis 47 from two different perspectives. If you're a young person here today, you should have a clipboard. Ten to fourteen years old, there's going to be a slide that will show up and when it does you're going to go out with Joan Rose. Where's Joan? You guys are going to talk about it. So anyway, you're going that way or that way. You're going to go out with your leader and you're going to talk about the sermon. So jot down some notes, some things that you hear that I'm saying.

Now we're going to look at this passage in Genesis 47 from two completely different perspectives. So you got to walk with me here. You're going to have to focus a little bit because otherwise you'll get distracted and you might not get it all. So Genesis 47. We're going to start by looking at this story of Joseph managing Egypt as a type of Christ. Then we're going to look at it in its cultural dynamic as it normally would be read.

Now we have license to look at the Bible as a type like this because the New Testament gives us this model for looking at types. In 1 Peter, Peter looks at the story of Noah and the ark as a picture of salvation and how we can get into the ark, so to speak.

Jesus Himself looked at the Old Testament story in the wilderness when the pole was lifted up. He says in the same way the pole was lifted up and people saw the pole and got saved, when I'm lifted up on the cross, people will see me and they'll get saved. When they trust me as their Lord and Savior. That's what He's saying in that story.

When Jesus was walking on the road with Cleopas and the other disciple on the way to Emmaus do you remember, they didn't understand who He was, but He was explaining to them from Moses and the prophets, everything that had to do about Jesus. I'm sure that Jesus was talking about the sacrificial system and how He fulfills the sacrificial system, all those sacrifices. I'm sure that He told them about the priesthood and how He is the high priest before the Father. I'm sure He told them all the stories that existed and how they are foreshadows of Jesus Christ. I wonder if He told them the story of Joseph and said there's some stories in this in the life of Joseph that are just so Godlike, they're just so representative of Jesus Christ and us. I wonder if He told that story.

That gives us license to look at the story itself from this perspective of Jesus reigning over His kingdom, and how we come to Him in the same way that Joseph is reigning over the kingdom and people are coming to him. You see, what's going to happen is the people are going to give of themselves. They're going to give more and more and more of themselves. And then Joseph is going to take care of them in the same way that God does in our lives.

Let's look at the passage. Let me show you what I'm talking about with Joseph as a type of Christ. It says in verse 13 – There was no food, however, in the whole region because the famine was severe; both Egypt and Canaan wasted away because of the famine. So there’s this big famine that's taking place in the whole region, not enough food. It's a physical famine.

Do you know that in our world today, there's a spiritual famine? In fact, let me just take you to another slide real quick because in this next slide we see Amos talking about a spiritual famine. Look at what he says. He says – I will send a famine through the land -- not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the word of the Lord. People will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, searching for the word of the Lord, but they will not find it. He's saying, there is going to come a time when there's not going to be the prophet speaking the words from the Lord.

Now in our world today, we have God's word; we can look at it, but there's still a spiritual famine because so few people look at it. I'm not talking about you. I know that you study God's word, you're trying to understand it, and you're fed by God's word. But I'm talking about so many people who are spiritually malnourished because they don't eat from the word of God. Oh they've got the fast food of the podcast with self-help ideas, or the books that give you remedies for helping you feel joy in the moment. There's all kinds of short-term things that take place in our world that say here, I can pump you up a little bit, I can make you feel better. But that's like eating at McDonald's all the time. Okay, there's just not enough sustenance to feed your soul.