Genesis 45:16-47:26 - When God Is With You
Main Idea: God’s active presence in your life will make a drastic difference in your inner person and outward actions.
(Gen. 45:16-46:30) Pharaoh has Joseph send his brothers to bring all of Joseph’s family to live in Egypt. Jacob is told by God to go and that He would be with him.
(Genesis 46:31-47:12) Joseph instructs his family to tell Pharaoh about their shepherding and livestock so they’ll be placed in the most fertile portion of Egypt (Goshen).
(Genesis 47:13-26) The Egyptians give all their money, livestock, land, and even freedom to Pharaoh for food, but they survive the famine and end up subject to lower taxation than other nations.
God being with you will change…
Your relationships with others.
Your purpose in your life.
Your persistent emotional state.
Your priorities in life.
Your story about yourself.
Your treatment of others.
SERMON TRANSCRIPT (AUTO-TRANSCRIBED BY APPLE PODCASTS)
We're going to be in Genesis chapter 45 today. We are in our very last series through the Book of Genesis. And we're going through chapters 42 through 50.
This is the end of both Jacob's story and Joseph's story. Both the end of Jacob's and the end of Joseph's story. I'm going to make sure I drink water.
That way I don't have a near-death experience like I did a couple of weeks ago.
What we're going to see today in this passage of scripture, it's something that as you're reading through the Bible, you might not immediately go, man, I can learn some great things from this, because you know what you really need in your day-to-day
life? You need a list of 70 people that went from the land of Canaan down to the land of Egypt. And man, that'll just bless your blesser.
People, when they interact with some various portions of God's word, they might go, what does this have to do with me? Like, how is this going to help my life?
But hopefully, as we dive into the passage today, we will see the truth that the Apostle Paul wrote to his disciple, his son in the faith, Timothy, where he said, all scripture is given by inspiration of God.
It's breathed out by God, and it is profitable for doctrine. That's what's right. For reproof, that's what's wrong.
For correction, how to get it right. And for instruction in righteousness, and that is how to keep it right. Let's do this first.
Let's pray. We'll dive into the passage. We'll see what God has for us.
Lord, we come to you today, and we recognize that across this room, there are so many hurts, Lord. There are deep griefs and fears that people travel with. As we come to your word today, may we be reminded of the fact that you are with us.
Lord, your Holy Spirit has set up a home in our lives, Lord, as we have called on you for salvation. So because of that, we are never alone. And when you are with us, you make a difference.
God, we pray that you would be glorified in us. Give us ears to hear and hearts to listen. We pray all of this in the precious name of Jesus.
Amen. The main thought that we are going to see from this passage today is that God's active presence in your life will make a drastic difference in your inner person and outward actions.
God's active presence in your life will make a drastic difference in your inner person and outward actions. When you really, really love someone or some thing, it just bubbles over out of you.
I think I've probably had a good five or six different conversations with Myron about Buc-ee's, because Buc-ee's is awesome. And because Myron has been to Buc-ee's, he's going to talk about Buc-ee's sometimes.
When I've talked with Joe, Joe knows a lot about maps, and he knows a lot about the geography of our area and different neighborhoods.
And because I'm not from here, whenever I hear Joe talk, because he knows some geography things and he knows the neighborhoods, he can tell me, oh yeah, it's on this street and that street, or you drive about 15 minutes if you're going this route, or
25 minutes if you're going that other route. And I love being able to hear about things that he loves.
What we're going to talk about today is when God is with us, and for every person that has placed their faith and trust in Jesus Christ as their Lord, as their Savior, Scripture says that the Holy Spirit of God took up residence in your life.
Now, you can't have heart surgery and find the Holy Spirit just like hiding in there. You're not going to find him in your brain. It's in the immaterial part of you.
But when God is truly with us, as he was with Joseph, as we saw over and over again, and as here in this passage, he promises to be with Jacob, God's presence with us makes a difference.
Not just in who we are in our inner person, our troubled minds, maybe our emotional state, our purpose, our self-identity, but he will also make a difference in the way that we interact with other people.
And so that's what we're going to see in the passage today. You have some summaries there on your handout of this passage. This, what we're going to go over today, goes all the way from chapter 45 and verse 16 over to chapter 47 and verse 26.
I strongly encourage you to read that whole passage, maybe even later today or this week. We're going to kind of hit some highlight spots of this passage.
First, in chapter 45 and verse number 16, we saw last week that Joseph's brothers, the ones that had sold them into slavery about 25 or so years beforehand, they came to Egypt.
They didn't realize that this guy that was in charge of food distribution for Pharaoh during a time of incredible famine, they didn't realize that this guy was actually the brother that they had sold into slavery so many years before.
And so we learned last week all of the various things that Joseph did, culminating in him telling his brothers, it's me.
He tells them that he forgives them, and that actually, though they had sold him into slavery, God was the one that had sent Joseph along the path to Egypt so that that way, he would be able to save many people alive.
So, beginning now in chapter 45, verse number 16, when the news reached Pharaoh's palace, Joseph's brothers have come, Pharaoh and his servants were pleased.
Pharaoh said to Joseph, Tell your brothers, do this, load your animals, and go on back to the land of Canaan. Get your father and your families and come back to me.
I will give you the best of the land of Egypt, and you can eat from the richness of the land. What we see here is that Pharaoh tells Joseph to have his brothers bring his family to live in Egypt.
What I love here is that when God has blessed you, it is so that you are able to bless others.
God blessed Joseph, so Joseph blessed his brothers, and when Joseph blessed his brothers, God used that to bless the entire family, so that the families were alive, the brothers were alive, Joseph was alive, and all of it was through God's goodness.
Can I ask you today, what has God blessed you with in your life? As I look across the room today, God has given different types of blessings to the people in this room.
Some of you guys, you have bigger houses, and you might be able to be hospitable, and have people over and into your home. Some of you have maybe more money than other people, and you're able to be generous with your finances.
Other people, God has blessed you in being uniquely just kind and uplifting and building in your words, and God can use you to help encourage other people.
Some of you guys are really diligent and hard workers, and the Lord, I've seen the Lord, use that over and over and over again to help others out, either here at the church or at people's homes or people in the community that you interact with.
However God has blessed you, whatever you're good at, whatever you have skill at, God wants you to use it to assist others.
And don't feel like, because you might not have every gift, or you might not have all the gifts that someone else has, that that means you can't bless others in some way. At the very least, all of us can pray for other people.
But I would encourage you, realize even as Joseph was blessed to be a blessing, when God has blessed us, it is so that we are able to bless others. How can you use your blessings in your life to bless someone else this week?
So Joseph then, he loads the brothers with clothing, with provisions, and then because his little baby brother, Benjamin, was his favorite, he gave Benjamin 300 pieces of silver and five changes of clothing.
So he's not really doing well on the whole don't show favoritism thing, but he's like, listen, you guys sold me into slavery, Benjamin didn't, and so I'm gonna be a little bit nicer to Benjamin than I am to you guys.
What I love here as Joseph, he gives this lavish love onto Benjamin, his brother.
I think about the fact that God calls us co-heirs with Christ, joint heirs, and all of the lavish love and favoritism that God the Father has for God the Son is also given to those who have been united with Christ through faith.
All of the love that the Father has for the Son, that perfect, unending, extravagant, overabounding love that God has, that God the Father has for God the Son, is the same love that he has for you today.
The blessings that are in Christ go to you as well. Christ will experience the Father's pleasure forever, as will we. We are told in scripture that we will rule and reign with Christ on the earth.
My brain cannot comprehend all of that, but God says, what is coming for Jesus is in part coming for you and I. We have the favoritism of God the Father and God the Son on our lives. Can I ask you, do you value what God has given you, his spirit?
Are you walking in the fruit of the spirit, obeying his promptings in your life? Do you value God's word? Are you reading it, memorizing it, sharing it?
Do you value Jesus' body, the church? Are you spending time with other Christians and caring for them each week? So, Jacob sends the brothers.
Brothers, come back. I want you to think about the awkwardness of this situation. 23 years ago, the brothers had told a lie to their father.
They brought Jacob Joseph's coat of many colors. It was torn and covered in blood. And they went, we don't know what happened.
An animal must have got him. 23 years later, in the words of Deuteronomy, or my son mentioned this verse earlier, be sure your sin will find you out.
For you and I, there will absolutely come a day where every one of our sins are laid out before the Lord. We'll give an account for the words that we've said.
Just so happened that this day for the brothers came during their lifetime, and dad found out 23 years ago, they lied and they had actually sold Joseph into slavery.
But bad news, good news, bad news, we lied to you and you thought your son was dead for 23 years. Good news, he's alive and he's second in charge of Egypt. So, you know, how mad can you really be at us, dad?
So Jacob is stunned to learn that Joseph is alive. I love the word in the passage, chapter 45, verse number 26. It is literally like Jacob's heart was numb, that he just he couldn't believe it.
But when Jacob saw all of the wagons that the brothers had brought from Egypt by request of Pharaoh, because he was like, hey, go get your families, go get all your stuff.
You don't even have to, you know, you don't have to bring your stuff with you because I love Joseph. So I'm going to load you guys up with everything that you need here in Egypt.
And so as Jacob sees all of the wagons, he goes, OK, well, I remember Simeon had been in jail the last time that I sent the brothers down, and they went down with Benjamin so that Simeon could be released. Simeon's back. Benjamin's back.
They have all the wagons. They must be telling the truth. And so then when he sees that, it says the spirit of their father Jacob revived.
Have you ever had that moment? Maybe it's a really, really hot day. I think we're supposed to be in the 90s most of the days of this week, where you're just like sweating, you're pouring, and you're just like, oh, I'm so, so out of it.
And then you have like a slushy from 7-Eleven. You just have a really cool, refreshing drink, and you're like, oh, my goodness.
Or you've been working hard all day, haven't eaten anything, and you're just ready to collapse, and you bite into, you know, some good food, and then all of a sudden you're like, oh, man, I could go forever now.
Here's this picture of Jacob Goh's man. My spirit is revived. So he then began the journey with about 70 to 75 members of his household, all going down to the land of Egypt.
I love that one day, just like with Jacob, all of our greatest sorrows will come untrue. Every sad goodbye will turn into a wonderful reunion. Every regret will turn into a reason to personally thank Jesus.
The life we thought we lost out on will turn into a never-ending life of joy and purpose. Are you living your life now in reflection of that day of happy reunion? No goodbye on this earth is a forever goodbye.
There is coming that moment of reunion. So then in chapter 46, Jacob stops off at a place called Beer Sheba. Everyone say Beer Sheba.
And despite its name, there's not actually beer there, but there are seven wells that are there. And we learned about that many, many months ago. Abraham was the guy that had initially dug these wells.
It's the well of the seven. Beer is well and then Sheba, seven. Well of the seven.
And so, Jacob stops off at this place and he offers sacrifices. It says, to the god of his father, Isaac. Now, we know by this point, Jacob has also personally called on God.
He is his god. But as he came to that moment of fear, of going, what in the world is going to happen? If you remember, in Abraham's story, when he went down to Egypt, did good things happen or did bad things happen?
Bad things happened. And if you'll recall, Abraham was actually kicked out of Egypt as a result of the lies that he had told to Pharaoh. So that was several, about 100, 150 years prior to where Jacob is now.
But what Abraham had done actually resulted in, when there was a famine during the time of Isaac, God told Isaac, don't go down to Egypt, stay there in the land of Canaan, and I will take care of you.
Now Jacob, there is a famine, he's been invited down to Egypt, and he goes, okay, God, my grandpa did this, and it didn't turn out well. You told my dad not to do this. Is this what you want me to do?
I want you to think about in your life, there may be decisions that your grandparents made, or that a loved one has made, that you should not make.
There might have been patterns in your parents' lives, or in lives of those people around you, that you would go, okay, well, I know some of the paths not to go. But when God has your life, he has a unique path for your life.
It will always be in obedience to his will. He's not gonna be like, okay, Roger, it's fine if you kill people. Thou shalt not murder doesn't apply to you.
No, in God's perfect will, as you obey him, he will have different routes for each of us. He might have some of you to never touch a drop of alcohol in your life. Others, Jesus might have turned the water into wine.
Just kidding. You're not turning the water into wine. Don't do that.
For some of you, you might be prohibited in your spirit from going to some specific places because of sinful memories that it brings up for you. And as you are in that place, you're reminiscing about all of the sin that you used to participate in.
Other people might be able to go to that same spot and be totally fine. And they can use that place as a place where they're worshiping and enjoying the good things that God has given them within their life.
But I want you to realize that your walk with God is personal. Your walk with God is personal. Now, whatever you do, obey the Lord, obey the promptings of the Holy Spirit.
Jacob was commanded by God to do something that God forbade Isaac from doing. Just because it's right for someone else doesn't mean that it's right for you. And just because it's wrong for someone else doesn't mean that it's wrong for you.
Now, again, that doesn't count for the clear things that God has said. No murdering. That's absolutely off the table.
And you can have any of the other commandments that God has for you. But realize that God will want to speak personally into your life. So Jacob goes, and God then appears to Jacob in a dream and tells him not to be afraid to go down to Egypt.
As Joseph will close Jacob's eyes when he dies, and then God will bring Jacob back to the land of promise. I love there that his realization for Jacob is, God, you still care about me. And I have failed.
I've been the trickster. I've been the liar all my life. But God, you still know me.
You care about me, and you have a purpose for me. It doesn't matter what your failures have been. Our God is endlessly good, kind, generous, and forgiving.
So Jacob and Joseph reunite. They hug, and Jacob says, Okay, I'm ready to die now because my sorrow over your loss has come untrue. So Jacob goes, Okay, I can die now.
I've seen Joseph again. And then God has him live for 17 more years. I love Proverbs 17 22.
It says this, A joyful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit dries up the bones. The joy that Jacob experienced and the provision of God in his life meant he was living 17 more years after this.
Can I ask you, can you think of some people this week that you might be able to bring joy to? And how will you bring those people joy? Will you give them a kind word?
Will you share a meal with them? Will you give them a card? Will you give them a hug?
Can you think of some ways that you can bring joy about in people's lives? Then, kind of till end of chapter 46, Joseph tells his family to highlight for Pharaoh their occupation as shepherds slash livestock owners.
Now, I want you guys to think, if I'm reading through this and I go, okay, why is Joseph telling his brothers, okay, I need you guys, I know we do lots of stuff in the family of Jacob. We have many different entrepreneurial pursuits.
But he's like, I want you guys to highlight that you are shepherds and that you work with livestock. What we're told is the Egyptians hated shepherds.
Like, they just thought, oh, that's disgusting, it's dirty, stinky work, and so we want nothing to do with that.
So what happened then is that as the brothers told Pharaoh, which was truthful, it was one of the things that they did, hey, we're shepherds, we work with livestock.
He's like, okay, we're going to make sure we have all of Joseph's family way far away from the cities. They can be out in the country where there's like, you know, plains and lots of grasses and things to eat.
And so God used even the Egyptians' revulsion of shepherds in order to give Israel the best land, the land of Goshen, that was there in the country of Egypt.
I want you to think, if God can use someone's like prejudice and hatred of a job, a particular line of work, to give his people blessings, what might God be able to do even in your life when you're not beloved and accepted by other people?
God, through even rejection from others or dislike by others, might be using it in order to bless you. Now, sometimes we're just jerks and people might not like us because we are unkind and cruel in our words. We got to deal with that on our end.
But it might be if as we are walking in the Spirit, just as Jesus wasn't universally beloved by everyone, so us regular people won't always be beloved by everyone. But that doesn't mean that God isn't still looking out for us.
Sorry, Joseph also introduces Jacob to Pharaoh, and Jacob blesses Pharaoh. What I love in this is that Jacob fulfills his purpose from God.
If you remember, as God is talking to Abraham, he says, I'm going to bless you, and in you, all the nations of the world will be blessed.
But if you remember what happened when Abraham went to Jacob, many decades before this, what happened to Egypt when Abraham was there? Was there blessing, or were there plagues? Was there judgment?
As Pharaoh saw Abraham's wife, Sarah, Abraham lied and said, oh, this is my sister, this is my wife, because he was scared of the Egyptians killing him for his wife.
And so then God was bringing some judgment, some plagues, some illnesses onto the land of Egypt. It's kind of a picture of the plagues that would come on Egypt later, as Egypt wouldn't let God's bride go, the children of Israel go.
And so there's these plagues, these illnesses that come on Egypt, and Egypt experiences not blessing through Abraham, but curse. Now, Jacob, decades later, does what Abraham should have been doing.
He blesses Pharaoh, and as God blesses Jacob, he reunites him with his son, he gives him and his family food to be able to survive. He gives them a good home and good grazing land, then he is able to bless others.
You can bring blessings into the lives of those around you through telling them about the God who desires to know them, to be known by them, and to live his life through them.
Then in chapter 47 in verses 13 through 26, it's everyone's favorite topic, taxes. Can everyone say taxes? So Joseph, he is still in charge of the food distribution.
If you'll recall, during the seven years of Plenty, they had one-fifth of all the crops were stockpiled within Pharaoh's kind of warehouses, how we'll term it. And so then when the seven years of famine came along, people were purchasing grain.
They were purchasing food from Pharaoh. But eventually, they ran out of money. Can everyone say, uh-oh?
Then they were like, okay, well, we don't have any more money. We will sell you our livestock, our cattle, you know, the sheep, that kind of stuff. But eventually, they ran out of livestock to sell.
Everyone say, uh-oh. Then they said, okay, well, we have no more money. We have no more land, or sorry, we have no more livestock.
All we have left is the land that we're working and like our labor, our freedom. And so then the people sold their land and even their freedom into Pharaoh's custody. And so Pharaoh ends up owning everything within Egypt.
Now, I want you guys to think if you owned everyone in a country and you could exact whatever amount of taxes from them that you wanted, because you owned everything, everything was due to you, I wonder what tax rate we would put on people.
Pardon me, I still am trying to get over that thing that I had like a month ago. As you think about your tax rate, you know, we have some people that lean more libertarian in the room and they're like a zero percent tax rate. That's what I do.
We have some people that are like, no, let's do like 50-50, you know, they get lots of stuff, I get lots of stuff.
What Joseph ends up orchestrating is that as the people worked to the lands, they gave 20% of all of the proceeds of the land to Pharaoh and to the government, and then they kept 80% of everything that they worked for.
For some people today in the US., they're like, man, I wish I only had 20% tax rate. For other people, they're like, man, if Uncle Sam was taking 20% of all my stuff, I don't know what I'd do.
But here, at the opportunity to take everything from these people, to deeply impoverish them, Joseph actually exacts a tax that is less, even than the nations around. Babylon had about 30% to 33% tax rate.
And so here, Joseph, even in these circumstances, is exercising wisdom, caution, and graciousness towards other people.
How gracious is God that in his perfect government, in the law, with God owning all of the land of Israel, he asked his people to give, not 20% or 40%, but 10%. In each week, he commanded only 14%, one day, to be wholly dedicated to him.
How gracious is God. He's not indifferent to us, commanding nothing, but neither is he harsh with us, commanding 100% giving, and 100% wholly dedicated time. God is gracious and giving to us.
What I want us to see as we close out today, is that God being with us will change these aspects of our life. First, our relationships with others, as with Joseph and his brothers.
When God is with you, you are not in relationships for survival, for simply friendship, or good times, or out of necessity.
When God is with you, you are meant to show others around you what God is like, and how he would talk to, treat, and react to the other person.
When God is with you, your marriage is no longer about what you can get from your spouse, or how they can meet your needs. Your marriage is about treating your spouse how Jesus would, and pointing them to Jesus.
When God is with you, your job is no longer just about your ambitions or your pay. It's about working as hard as you would if Jesus was your boss, and treating co-workers and customers with the respect and dignity that Jesus would.
If you've been loved by God, you will choose to love others. Being with God or God being with us will change our purpose in our life. God gave Joseph a totally different purpose than he thought that he was going to have at 17.
God gave the brothers a new purpose and eventually brought them to Egypt. God gave Jacob a new purpose time and time again. When God is with you, you have a new purpose in your life.
You have a God-ordained mission to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, who makes new disciples of Jesus Christ, and comes alongside other disciples to encourage them to keep being disciples.
You are given daily and weekly rhythms to help shape you into the kind of person that you were created to be.
You have been dropped behind enemy lines in your neighborhood, your family, and your job, in order to show people the kind of life that God made them for. You are on a holy, heavenly rescue mission. You have a new purpose.
God being with us will also change our persistent emotional state. Jacob here had experienced deep grief for 23 years, but God being with him meant that then his perpetual emotional state changed.
When God is with us, He doesn't eradicate our emotions, but He also doesn't leave us captive to obey every chemical swing that we experience. God allows us to feel our emotions of grief, joy, anger, and compassion, just as Jesus did.
But He lets us feel our emotions with a center of certainty. We can be angry while understanding that God is just, and He will bring justice to every wrong that we're mad about.
We can be sad while understanding that God is good and will make all things right. We can feel fear while understanding that God is sovereign, and He will do everything so we can glorify Him and experience good from Him.
Do you feel as though your emotions are running or ruining your life? I encourage you to talk about that with your spouse, with a pastor, with a friend that you know genuinely walks with Jesus.
One aspect of the fruit of the spirit is self-control, an ability to navigate through emotions and choices in a way that is measured and healthy for you and for others.
I'd also encourage you to read through the book of Proverbs as it highlights healthy emotional choices time and time again. God being with us will also change our priorities in our life. When God is with you, your priorities in life change.
Life is no longer about the money, the status, the fun, though God may certainly give you some or all of those things. Life is about your relationship with God that then flows out to your relationship with people.
Frankly, with our church family, I don't have to encourage you guys very much to spend meaningful time with your family or with your friends. I wholeheartedly believe that you guys do a wonderful job with that.
If I could encourage you in any area, I'd encourage you to make a priority of three areas at Tabernacle, of our church together. First, I want to encourage you to prioritize regular worship and attendance here.
Hebrews 10, 24, and 25 says that we are to consider one another in order to provoke, to love, and to good works. It says not neglecting to gather together as some are in the habit of doing, but meeting so much the more as you see the day approaching.
What I love in that passage is coming to church is not about what you receive at church. It's about considering others and the encouragement and the love that they need from you.
When God thinks about your church attendance, certainly He wants you to worship Him, to praise Him, all of that, but He also has some people that He wants you to make a difference in every time that you come.
Even when we do greeting time, when there's before the service or after the service, I want to encourage you, God might have you to speak a word of encouragement to someone else and it might be the very reason that God had you come that day.
Not for what you can get, but for what you can give to someone else. I'd also love to encourage you to make a priority of participating in small groups and Bible studies. Every Sunday at 9:30 a.m., we have our small group that meets downstairs.
Right now, we're going through the Ten Commandments. On Wednesdays at 6, over in the education building, Pastor Ron has his class. Right now, they're going over the names of God.
We have our monthly book study that we're going through right now. The last Saturday of every month. And we're praying about considering having a Friday night, like Bible study, a Friday night service beginning in September.
Or maybe it might just be that you invite some friends over, and you have a Bible study in your life. You do not know God, His Word, yourself, or others at Tabernacle yet, as well as God wants you to. So, learn how to pray for others.
Learn how to love and encourage them. Learn God's Word, and learn how it needs to change you through personal time with other people, where you can be taking prayer requests and learning from one another and encouraging each other.
I also want to encourage you, if this is something that the Lord has for you to be able to do, to give to God's work at Tabernacle.
As I was thinking and praying over the work that God does here, every dollar that's given at Tabernacle helps to fund ministry work every day.
Every dollar provides for us being able to make disciples of Jesus through prayer, through time together, through resources to learn, and constant access to spiritual guidance and support.
Our giving provides for local individuals in need to receive food from a food pantry. It provides for international missionaries to be able to preach the gospel in nations with under 300 Christians.
It provides for the air-conditioned room that we're sitting in, under a roof that doesn't leak. Our giving helps make biblically faithful seminary education affordable for tens of thousands of students each year.
Every dollar helps start new churches like Canvas Church down in Princess Anne that starts in two months, but someone who started coming to their interest meetings got saved and was baptized this week.
Our giving allowed us to preach the gospel of Jesus to over one hundred thousand people on YouTube last year. Some people in our church can only give two nickels since there's no more pennies, and that's quite all right.
God and Tabernacle will be absolutely fine without you destituting yourself. For the poor, the church is called to help give you a hand up as we are able.
And please let us know if that's a situation that you find yourself in, and we can talk about what we're able to do.
But for many in this room and maybe some of those online, I want to encourage you to make regularly giving to Tabernacle or wherever your home church is a priority in your life.
Every week on Friday, after I get my paycheck, the very first thing that comes out of my paycheck is giving to Tabernacle.
Now, I don't have anyone that's ready to like bonk me over the head if I don't do that, but I genuinely believe in the work that the Lord is doing here in this place and with these people. I want to encourage you, God's not strictly after your money.
He is after your heart. And as Christ taught us in the Sermon on the Mount, where your treasure is, that's where your heart will be also. Those are some areas in which we can have priorities in our life.
If that's something that you already participate in, praise the Lord. If that's something that maybe as you pray over, God, what would you have me to do? I want to encourage you.
I could have like a list of 70 things that I'm like, yeah, if you love Jesus, you can do all these 70 things. Listen to the voice of the Spirit. Be sensitive to what he would have for you and I to do.
God being with us will also change our story about ourself. When God is with you, you won't view your life as a story of your triumph, but a story of God's goodness.
And if that's what's true, if God is truly the hero in your life and in mine, then we need to realize that sometimes we've been the villain.
That there are ways that you and I are cruel, discouraging, hurtful, and arrogant in our dealings with others. Sometimes that's unintended, and sometimes it's not.
But if we're going to look at our story honestly, we need to see God as the main character and not us.
I want to ask you, when was the last time that you did a spiritual checkup in your life, where you talked to someone you trust about your life and let them speak honestly into what they see?
I promise you that will be one of the most beneficial things that you can do in any given week. I love something that I heard a pastor say recently.
In his marriage, he asks his wife, and his wife asks him every week, can you tell me two times that I made you feel loved this week and one way that I can love you better this coming week?
And with that kind of that sandwich of two good things, and maybe one thing that I need to work on, it helps their marriage to grow. Can I tell you the same thing will be true for your spiritual life? What's the story that you tell about yourself?
And then lastly, today, God being with us will change our treatment of others. When God is with you, you don't bring the hammer down on people when you have the opportunity.
When God is with you, you don't spend your time trashing the person who's not in the room. When God is with you, the hurting, the failures, the broken people, they're the ones that you're looking out for.
You're looking for their best interests, not yours. Jesus gives the story of a man that owed the king 20 million dollars, and the man was going to be thrown into prison until he could pay off the debt. And the man begged the Lord to forgive him.
And the Lord touched at the man's repentance, his sorrow. He forgave him the debt. Then the man walked outside, saw a guy that owed him 20 bucks and started strangling him.
And he was like, listen, you're going into jail until you can pay every last penny. Everyone hearing this story goes, man, how dumb is that guy? Like you were forgiven 20 million dollars.
Surely you can forgive a 20 dollar debt. But for each of us, we have been greatly forgiven by God. We have been greatly blessed by God.
Who are we wishing harm on? Who do we wish that we could just really give it to them in our life? We are the forgiven.
May we forgive others. You have the opportunity to be forgiven. To experience this kind of new life in Jesus.
If what I've been talking about today isn't something that you have experienced in your life, maybe you need to take the first step of faith and turn your life over to Jesus as your Lord and Savior.
Just because you've been in church, you know Bible facts, you're nice, that doesn't mean that you have received the new life of Jesus through the Holy Spirit.
If you have any questions about that, I'd love to talk with you today or sometime this week about it. I heard a friend mention in the illustration earlier, just because you're in a garage doesn't make you a car.
Just because you're in a church or just because you read a Bible does not mean that you are a Christian. Today, if you truly are a Christian and you have experienced this new life, what area has God spoken to you about today?
How are you doing in your relationships with others, especially those you don't get along with? What's your purpose in your life? How are you navigating your emotions?
Are God's priorities your priorities? How are you thinking about your life's story? And how are you treating others?
Today, when God is with you, as he was with Joseph and the brothers and Jacob and then Egypt, it makes a change, a meaningful change on the inside that results in how we treat others on the outside.
Today, however God has spoken to you, I want to encourage you to respond in faith to him.
