The Jacob Temperament

There are times when he just overloads us with goodness. In fact, Chapter 43, the last part, these brothers have been brought to repentance as we'll discover even more specifically in the next chapter. Not by Joseph throwing them in prison, not for three days, but for the rest of their lives and then sending them a note.

They get it in prison. It says, by the way, I happen to be Joseph your brother. And as soon as you repent, I'll let you out. Like Christ, He sets a table. He offers fellowship. Today on Wisdom for the Heart, Stephen Davey continues his series, Through the Life of Joseph called, God Meant it for Good. Joseph's brothers sold him into slavery and through a long series of events, God raised Joseph to power. Now, after many years, the brothers will come face to face with Joseph. The father of these men, a man named Jacob, is also a key player in today's section of God's Word.

You may know how this story ends, but stay with us as we take a fresh look at it again today. If you're able, open your Bible to Genesis 42 as we get started with today's Bible message. Genesis Chapter 42.

Let's pick up where we left off. Verse 29. When they came to their father, that is when Joseph let the nine brothers go and kept Simeon, when they came to their father Jacob in the land of Canaan, they told him all that had happened to them, saying, The man, the lord of the land, spoke harshly with us and took us for spies of the country. But we said to him, We are honest men.

We are not spies. We are twelve brothers, sons of our father. One is no more. The youngest is with our father today in the land of Canaan. And the man, the lord of the land, said to us, By this I shall know that you are honest men. Leave one of your brothers with me and take grain for the famine of your households and go.

But bring your youngest brother to me, that I may know that you are not spies, but honest men, and I will give your brother to you, and you may trade in the land. Now it came about as they were emptying their sacks, that behold, every man's bundle of money was in the sack. And when they and their father saw their bundles of money, they were dismayed. And their father Jacob said to them, and the first thing that I want to relate to you, what I am calling the Jacob temperament, is his fourfold wrong conclusion. He says, First of all, you have bereaved me of my children. Joseph is dead. That's the first wrong conclusion. Joseph is dead. The second wrong conclusion, Simeon is dead. No, he's not. He's just jumping to the conclusion that the Pharaoh has put him to death.

And you would take Benjamin, that is Benjamin will die. And his last one, we could rephrase, everything's going wrong. That is, all these things are against me. As I studied this passage of scripture and reread this chapter, it was interesting how much we are seen in the response of Jacob, how much we are like this man in the flesh, whenever the Spirit of God does not control us. And we so often, like Jacob, jump to wrong conclusions based on circumstances, based on the facts that we think we have.

We come to some conclusions and so often they're wrong. He says, Joseph is dead. He doesn't know it, of course. He doesn't read with us chapter 43. But he is also stating that Simeon is dead and he isn't. Benjamin will die if you take him back there.

And then he some totals it up. All these things are against me. Poor me.

Woe is me. You must understand that by now, Jacob is an old and I think, bitter man. He has had flashes of faith. He has had elements of true trust in Elohim.

But we see him here in this chapter finally exercising in his flesh the statement that could characterize his entire life, God has dealt me a bad hand. He's fed me sour grapes. This kind of attitude crops up, perhaps in your life or in mine, when we make statements like, why does God always bless that other person? Why is it that other family? It just seems that their kids, they just obey better than mine.

Why is it that they make better grades? Why is it that he's promoted and I'm not? And we go on and on and on. Ultimately we are saying God has really messed my life up.

F.B. Meyer, whom I often quote from the pulpit, a tremendous expositor of scripture, wrote, why is it that God's hand is always on the other man? You know, I've read and it's true, it's clinically proven, not that clinics are that impressive, but I think the interesting thing is that secularists now agree that one of the chief causes of depression is self-pity.

It is the attitude that Jacob expresses here. Life is terrible and look at all of these things that are happening to me. Woe is me. And they put a banner out that reads, pity party here.

Anybody want to join me? And you will find people, they'll collect, that only helps our misery. Ladies and gentlemen, I really believe that one of the mistakes we see in Jacob we make in our own lives and that is misinterpreting the events in our life apart from the grace of God. I want you to notice what happens in chapter 43 and you'll see his response. Now the famine was severe in the land. Between verse 38 at the end, you want to just put in parentheses a period of time, just write in the words a period of time, because between that time and verse 1 of chapter 43 their food runs out. Now the famine was severe in the land so it came about when they had finished eating the grain which they had brought from Egypt that their father said to them, go back and buy us a little food.

Now the first element here is initial denial. Jacob has been told that we cannot go back to Egypt unless we bring Benjamin with us. Jacob refuses to respond. He clams up, he goes into hiding and finally they get hungry, the food's gone and he comes back and he, denying what he knows to be true, says, go back to Egypt and buy us more food. His sons now will counsel him. Judas spoke, verse 3, saying, the man solemnly warned us, you shall not see my face unless your brother is with you. If you send our brother with us, we will go down and buy food, but if you do not send him, we will not go down. For the man said to us, you shall not see my face unless your brother is with you. Now isn't this interesting how the son is counseling dad? The son is pulling the patriarch aside and saying, dad, did you forget that we can't go back until we have Benjamin with us? Open your ears.

Listen to me. The second phase of his response we could call suggestive deceit. Look at verse 6. Then Israel said, here's his response, why did you treat me so badly by telling the man whether you still had another brother? In other words, here's the great man of God, the patriarch, the man of faith, saying to his boy, it would have been better to have lied.

Why didn't you lie? Why did you tell him you had a brother? And he said, in answering that question, verse 7, the man questioned particularly or literally specifically about us and our relatives saying, is your father still alive? Have you another brother?

So we answered truthfully. Could we possibly know that he would say, bring your brother down? And Judah said to his father, send the lad with me and we will arise and go that we may live and not die, we as well as you and our little ones. I myself, I'll be surety for Benjamin. In other words, if Joseph does something to Benjamin, it'll be guilt on my life.

I'll take the responsibility. We're really not going to focus too much on this, but don't overlook as we go through this chapter, the development of the lives of the brothers. They have already admitted guilt and that's most of the cure is confession. Now you see Judah taking responsibility where earlier, 25 years ago, they would have thrown their brother away, but now it's a different story. Verse 10, for if we had not delayed, surely by now we could have returned twice.

Jacob still has not broken. Notice the next phrase. We could call this attempted manipulation and this is classic Jacob stuff here.

Then their father Israel said to them, if it must be so, then here's the plan. Take some of the best products of the land in your bags and carry down to this man as a present, you know, just like I did to Esau. Let's butter him up. Let's manipulate him. Let's get on his good side. Bring with him things that they don't have much in Egypt, such as balm, honey, aromatic gum and myrrh and pistachio nuts and almonds. Take double the money in your hand and take back in your hand the money that was returned in the mouth of your sacks.

Perhaps it was a mistake. In other words, let's not trust God yet. Let's come up with our own plan. I've got a good one because as far as I can remember, half a century ago, I think it worked on my brother Esau. Because remember if you study with us, he took the ewes and the rams and the camels and he sent them ahead to meet Esau before Esau would come to him, hoping to butter them up and get them all, you know, melted down. Here's old Jacob. Old, manipulating, deceptive Jacob. Taking the place of God.

Imagine his sons right now and what they see in him. Still not much of a change, but I think there is. In fact, I really believe that in the process of these verses, there's really time involved because of the great change. And I think the change occurs in verse 14, which we could call final trust.

Note verse 14. And may God Almighty, El Shaddai, the great provider, may God Almighty grant you compassion. In other words, it is ultimately up to God, compassion in the sight of the man that he may release to you, your other brother and Benjamin. And as for me, note this phrase, if I am bereaved of my children, I am bereaved. Trust. In other words, when all of the smoke settled and I think Jacob perhaps was reminded of the sovereign God that had in fact been part of his life, he finally came to the conclusion where he said if my children die, then they die.

In other words, El Shaddai is one I will trust. We really can't understand his heart because we've probably never been there. But some of you perhaps have faced great trial. Perhaps some of you have lost loved ones in death. You can understand better than we the anguish of his heart. Thinking that when he said goodbye to his sons, he was saying goodbye forever. What a difficult place to trust God in. One of the men that I respect highly who used to pastor 100 or so years ago is George Matheson.

His hymns are rather antiquated and we don't sing them much anymore. But George Matheson was a blind man. He lived with his two sisters. His two sisters learned Latin, Greek and Hebrew. And they would study for him and they would give him the results.

They would look up words and they would read the text. And George Matheson would in his blind state formulate all of the facts and he would come up with a sermon and he would preach. He was known as the beloved pastor and pastored interestingly enough in that day a rather large church of 2,000 people. One by one his two sisters eventually married and with their marriage came great loss because when they married they moved away and George Matheson was finally alone. Completely alone. Able to care for himself but yet now struggling with all that he had learned.

He was older in fact his sisters married at an older age. And there in the struggle of trusting a God who seemingly no longer would provide. George Matheson wrote this, it's not even in our hymnal. I had to go back to find it. He wrote these words. Oh love that will not let me go.

He writes this after his second sister left. I rest my weary soul in thee. I give thee back the life I owe that in thine ocean depths its flow may richer fuller be.

Now he'll refer to his eyesight in reference to light. He says, oh light that followest all my way I yield my flickering torch to thee. My heart restores its borrowed ray that in thy sun shines blaze its day may brighter fair be. Oh joy that seekest me through pain I cannot close my heart to thee. I trace the rainbow through the rain and feel the promise is not vain. That morning shall tearless be. I cannot understand what he went through but I stand in awe and I stand in awe of you.

For what God is doing in your life through difficulty. He is making and through this he is making Jacob. So verse 15 the men took this present and they took double the money and Benjamin and then they arose and went down to Egypt and stood before Joseph. Now it swings back to Egypt and Joseph will now bring his brothers I think finally to the end of their test. And I think he gives them a threefold test. You'll notice that the first one is a test of honor and that was really studied where he is wondering in his mind do my brothers really care about one another? Will they let Simeon rot in this prison and never come back and I imagine he had his doubts and I wonder if they had not gotten hungry if they would have come back but they did. I imagine Joseph is watching how do they treat one another?

How do they speak? He's constantly asking about their father. How is your father wondering if they would respond oh that old man why we leave him alone.

He's so wrapped up in Benjamin we never see him. You see that would have been their response 25 years ago but now every time they respond they respond with politeness and respect. I think that was the test of honor and they passed it. It was a test of family identity. That second test you should jot in is the test of honesty and I think this had to do with the money because these men were very dishonest at least when Joseph remembered living with them. So the man did as Joseph said back to verse 16 when Joseph saw Benjamin with them he said to his house steward bring the men into the house and slay an animal and make ready for the men are to dine with me at noon. Now Hebrew people didn't dine with Egyptians. Later on it even makes that almost comical statement and you'll note that it's never changed. Still Egyptians don't eat meals of peace with the Jews and even back then it was a loathsome thing and so this steward probably scratched his head and he said I wonder why the prime minister is having dinner with 10 Jews but he obeyed and so the men when they got the invitation were not overjoyed they were afraid because they were brought to Joseph's house and they said ah it's because of the money that was returned in our sacks the first time that we were being brought in that he may seek occasion against us and fall upon us and take us for slaves with our donkeys so they came near to Joseph's house steward this is hilarious here they are talking to the slave verse 20 oh my lord note oh my lord we indeed came down the first time to buy food and it came about when we came in the lodging place that we opened our sacks and behold each man's money was in the mouth of the sack our money in full so we brought it back now note they're walking to Joseph's house and they're giving it to this poor slave they said we indeed intended to buy food let's look at the last part of verse 21 so we brought it back in our hand we've also brought down other money in our hand to buy food we don't know who put our money in the sacks they are really nervous they're thinking Joseph's called him into the house to call them into account and they're explaining to the steward who has nothing to do with the solution or the problem but he evidently had been instructed by Joseph and I love his response here's an unbelieving Egyptian who's been trained how to respond Joseph said by the way if they say this you say that but do you notice what he says verse 23 your God and the God of your father has given you treasure in your sacks in other words I've been told that your God is Elohim that's the word used here Elohim's done this for you and I can't help but put myself in the place of those brothers have you ever been taken into account by an unbeliever have you ever been pulled in on the carpet and somebody says something about trusting God well we'll just have to trust God and you've been biting your nails they come before a slave who doesn't care about their God and they're frantic and they're explaining look we're not dishonest and here's the plan this is what we did and the steward says relax you've got a God he must be in control so what happens next verse 24 then the man brought the men into Joseph's house and gave him water and they washed their feet and he gave their donkeys food or fodder so they prepared the present for Joseph's coming they got the pistachio and that's all ready to go for Joseph's coming at noon for they had heard that they were to eat a meal there when Joseph came home they brought into the house the present which was in their hand and they bowed to the ground before him and then he asked them again about their welfare which is really interesting because here they think he's the prime minister but he says how was your trip man how are you feeling and they probably wondered is he setting us up for the axe he asked how they doing they said well we're fine and he said is your old father well of whom you spoke and they said yeah he is we'd love to see him again is he still alive and they are probably so confused at what he's doing and then they said that your servant our father's well he's alive and they bowed down in homage these guys just keep bowing down to the carpet and he lifted his eyes Joseph did and he saw his brother Benjamin man what a sight this is his kid brother this is his little brother he hadn't seen him for 25 years because he's got to act ignorant he said is this your youngest brother of whom you spoke to me they probably said yeah and I just imagined Joseph going over to him may Elohim be gracious to you my son and about that time I think I would have lost it if I'd been a bug on a wall watching this whole thing and Joseph did exactly that the next phrase and Joseph hurried out he literally ran out of the room he said oh god bless you my son Elohim bless you and his brothers are really looking now and he he takes off and runs out what's he looking for verse 30 he's looking for a place to weep and he entered his bedchamber he threw himself across the bed and he wept why was he weeping it doesn't tell us why but I would assume that when he saw his brother he was overwhelmed with 25 years of loss verse 31 then he washed his face and he came out and he controlled himself and he said serve the meal so they served him by himself and this is kind of funny them by themselves in other words they got a little table over here and he's got a little table over here and the Egyptians who ate with him by themselves because the Egyptians could not eat bread with the Hebrews for that's a loathsome thing to the Egyptians now note this they were seated before him the firstborn according to his birthright and the youngest according to his youth in other words they didn't say anything but Joseph comes along and he says okay you sit right here and Simeon you sit right here and Judah you sit right here and he seats them all over according to their age and Benjamin you're right here at the head and these brothers now have lost it I'm sure they're nudging each other thinking how do you figure this out he's not finished they were seated before him the youngest according to his youth and the men looked at one another in astonishment and I think this is the third test if you're taking notes it's the test of humility and he took portions to them from his own table but Benjamin's portion was five times as much as any of theirs now if you come to my house if you came last night you would have literally gotten if you were Benjamin five portions you know what I had for supper sure you do my wife's a great cook you would have had five plates of tuna casserole you would have had five rolls you would have had five glasses of sweetened iced tea if you come to our house it's sweet we don't put sweetener in it it's already sweetened it wouldn't be for you to eat this is what they would give the Pharaoh every time he sat to eat it was a symbol of honor it was a symbol of great respect now catch this before Joseph was the favored son he was the one who wore the tunic to his wrists and to his ankles and what did the brothers do they hated him and now he puts before Benjamin his only real blooded brother and he puts before him five portions and then he probably watches how do they respond he's not only favored back home but he's going to get the best deal here I think that there wasn't even a sliver of jealousy because it says they feasted and they drank freely with him let me try to tie this up here for you by application by giving you a couple of thoughts because we're really dealing with two different people so if you're taking those get your pen ready let me give you a couple things the first thing deals with Jacob and that is what we're calling tonight the Jacob temperament let me characterize that for you with two thoughts and I want us to look in the mirror of scripture tonight all right first of all the Jacob temperament is seen in a person who constantly reiterates life's disappointments now don't get me wrong it isn't wrong to share with your brothers and sisters in Christ pain and trial that's what we're here for but I'm talking about an individual who's like a broken record and you bump them and they spill it all and they constantly do it they're not looking for solution they're not asking for prayer they're not even seeking encouragement they just want to dump I think we all do that from time to time don't we next time your wife or husband or child does that this we call them Jacob okay little exercise it'll be convicting secondly the Jacob temperament is seen in a person who stubbornly refuses divine perspective Chuck Swindoll preaches a message from this text and he basically preaches it around that thought and I like that thought he talks about an individual who refuses until the last moment to finally look up and that's where Jacob was because he tried everything possible but he never caught on until the very end like you and me struggling we don't think that God's involved that God's putting this together Jacob says all these things are against me and if only he had chapter 43 he'd know that God was designing it had to be this way to get them all back to Egypt I think of the brothers and how God worked in their lives and I want to give you two ways to recognize the hand of God upon you first repentance is often brought about by God's goodness the goodness of God leads to repentance there are times when he just overloads us with goodness in fact chapter 43 the last part these brothers have been brought to repentance as we'll discover even more specifically in the next chapter not by Joseph throwing them in prison for not for three days but for the rest of their lives and then sending them a note they get it in prison it says by the way I happen to be Joseph your brother and as soon as you repent I'll let you out like Christ he sets a table he offers fellowship God does the same in our lives second behind the harshness of discipline is God's heart of love they didn't know that Joseph was running to his bedroom to weep they didn't know in the earlier chapter that he couldn't control himself that he had to turn away and weep I think he wanted to embrace them that is the way that God so often deals with us in fact I think obviously we could say he always does even though discipline may be harsh behind it is a heart of incredible love the question is will we throw in the towel will we say I'm starving in Canaan and I'll starve and die or do we persist and ultimately trust George Matheson who I referred to earlier wrote these words and with these I close my God I have never thanked thee for my thorns I've thanked thee a thousand times for my roses but not once for my thorns I have been looking forward to a world where I shall get compensation for my cross but I've never thought of my cross as itself a present glory teach me the glory of my cross teach me the value of my thorn show me that I have climbed to thee by the path of pain show me that my tears have made a rainbow with that we bring today's lesson to a close you're listening to wisdom for the heart the Bible teaching ministry of Stephen Davey Stevens called today's lesson the Jacob temperament and it comes from the series God meant it for good a series in the life of Joseph Stephen often reminds us that our ministry is empowered by your prayer and enabled by your support your partnership is vital to us and we're thankful for it and thanks for joining us today we're so glad you are with us and I hope you'll be with us for our next Bible lesson tomorrow right here on wisdom for the heart