This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Welcome to Genesis chapter 45, our fifth day of our ninth week of looking
through this great, great book. Chapter 45 verse 1, here it is. This is the
reveal.

This is the verse that we've been waiting for. Joseph and his brothers have been
meeting. They don't know each other.

Joseph hasn't told them who he is. They've been talking about forgiveness and
family and working towards restoration. Then in chapter 45 verse 1, listen,
"Then Joseph could no longer control himself before all his attendants, and he
cried out, 'Have everyone leave my presence.

' So there was no one with Joseph when he made himself known to his brothers. "
Just imagine with me in these scripture verse, just imagine this moment.
Everything changes.

They certainly all thought that their brother was dead. When they went down to
Egypt to get food, they probably thought he'd been killed as a slave. They never
had any thought that they would see him.

But even if they thought they would see him on the street, they never thought
they would see him at this place of leadership. Everything changes in this
family, in this moment. As you walk through chapter 45, it's a chapter about
what to do when restoration happens.

What do you do at the point of change? At the point of change, sometimes we
retreat, sometimes we move forward. What do you do to move forward at an
exciting point of change in your life, in your family, in any place in your life
like this?

What do you do at the point of change? Here's what you do. Number one, you
express your emotions.

Change is an emotional thing, so you express your emotions. And for them, their
emotions were expressed through weeping. In chapter 45 verse 2, the Bible says,
"Joseph wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard him, and Pharaoh's household
heard about it.

" Down in verse 14, "Then Joseph threw his arms around his brother Benjamin and
wept. And Benjamin embraced him weeping, and he kissed all his brothers and wept
over them. Afterwards, his brothers talked with him.

" I can just imagine this picture of what happened. They didn't treat this as an
unemotional event. Well, Joseph, good to meet you.

We wondered what happened to you. We are so pleased that you are still alive.
No, they embraced each other weeping, weeping so loudly that people outside of
the room heard this.

When God does something in your life, in your family, one of the most
appropriate first things to do is to express your emotions. There are some
people who think that the life of faith is a life without emotion. Exact
opposite.

Look at the life of Jesus Christ. He expresses emotions openly, broadly, for all
to see. The life of faith is expressing your emotions when God works at change.

For the positive, for the negative, God hears my emotions about it. You express
your emotions. That's what you do at the point of change.

The only thing you do at the point of change is you deal with your fear because
change always brings fear. We fear the unknown and change always brings the
unknown, so we have fear. Listen to what happened in verses three to eight.

"Joseph said to his brothers, 'I am Joseph. Is my father still living? ' But his
brothers were not able to answer him because they were terrified at his
presence.

Then Joseph said to his brothers, 'Come close to me. ' When they'd done so, he
said, 'I am your brother Joseph. ' The one you sold into Egypt.

And now do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me
here because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. For two years
now there has been a famine in the land and for the next five years there will
not be plowing and reaping. But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a
remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance.

So then it was not you who sent me here, but God. He made me father to Pharaoh,
Lord of his entire household and ruler of all Egypt. " They were afraid.

The brothers were afraid. Here is Joseph, the one they've sold to slavery, the
one they've been afraid of for decades now. Joseph does two things to help to
deal with their fear.

He does something physical and he does something spiritual. Physically, he says,
"Come close to me. " Distance always creates fear.

And when you're facing a change and you feel afraid in a family, in a
relationship, one of the things you do is you come close physically. You get
closer to the person. Instead of sitting across the room and talking about it,
you sit in the next chair and talk about it.

If it's your husband or it's your wife, you put your arm around them and you
talk about it. If it's a child who's afraid, you don't talk to them about their
fear standing above them in their bed. No, you get in the bed with them.

You get close. That's how you deal with fear. The second thing that he did was
spiritual.

He looked at things from God's perspective. He said to them, "You think it's me
and you, but it's not. It's me and you and God above it all.

And it wasn't you who sent me here. It was God who sent me here. " Look at
things from God's perspective.

That's what helps to deal with fear. I've seen this a thousand times in my life.
When I'm feeling anxious or nervous about a situation, what's God going to do?

I get up in the morning. I have a quiet time and I think, "What is God's
perspective on this? " The perspective of eternity, the perspective of God will
never fail me.

The perspective of God always has a plan. You look at things from God's
perspective. What do you do at the point of change?

You express your emotions. You deal with your fear. The third thing you do in
this chapter is you plan for the future.

Listen to verses 9 to 13. "Now hurry back to my father and say to him, 'This is
what your son Joseph says. God has made me Lord of all Egypt.

Come down to me. You shall live in the region of Goshen and be near me, you and
your children and grandchildren, your flocks and herds and all that you have. I
will provide for you there because five years of famine are still to come.

Otherwise, you and your household and all who belong to you will become
destitute. You can see for yourselves, and so can my brother Benjamin, that it
is really I who am speaking to you. Tell my father about all the honor accorded
to me in Egypt and about everything that you've seen and bring my father down
here quickly.

" Joseph had a plan. He made a plan about what to do at the point of change.
Things happen in every family where you realize everything has changed.

A job is lost or a new job is gained. An opportunity comes into the family or an
opportunity goes out of the family. A graduation occurs.

Kids leave to go off to college or kids come into the nursery of your family.
Things change. When that happens, you plan for the future.

You don't just say, "Wow, everything changed, but I'm going to keep planning the
same. " No, you plan for the future. You realize God brought that change for a
purpose, for a reason.

And based on that change that he brought into your life, you begin to see the
new future that he has. That's the kind of faith that Joseph had, that he
teaches us in these verses. You plan for the future.

There's a fourth thing that you and I need to do when change walks in the front
door of our lives. The fourth thing to do is to be honest about your temptations
and your family tendencies. Be honest about what happens when your life gets a
little unsettled and change always unsettles us.

Joseph was honest with his brothers when he sent them off. In verse 24, the
Bible says, "He sent his brothers away, and as they were leaving, he said to
them, 'Don't quarrel on the way. '" Now, that is honest.

He knew his family. He'd heard them argue when they thought that he couldn't
understand their language. He knew they might argue on the way.

It's good to know yourself. Change can be exhausting, even though it's exciting,
and it does unsettle you. And so you might have a tendency in the change to
follow a temptation, a temptation to feel sorry for yourself, a temptation to go
after this pleasure, a temptation to let the irritation towards somebody in your
family become bitterness towards that person in your family, a temptation to go
back to the past rather than look towards the future.

It always happens in the midst of change. So be honest about your tendencies and
your temptations with one another. And as you do that, you strengthen yourself
for the change.

What do you do when change happens? You express your emotions, you deal with
your fear, plan for the future. Be honest about your tendencies and temptations.

But then there's a fifth and final thing you do. You revive your belief. Listen
to what happened in verses 25 to 28.

So they went up out of Egypt, and they came to their father Jacob in the land of
Canaan. And they told him, "Joseph is still alive. In fact, he is ruler of all
Egypt.

" Jacob was stunned. He did not believe them. But when they told him everything
Joseph had said to them, and when he saw the carts Joseph had sent to carry him
back, the spirit of their father Jacob revived.

And Israel said, "I'm convinced. My son Joseph is still alive. I will go and see
him before I die.

" When change happens, when change happens in your life, you have an opportunity
for doubt or for belief. You can cling to doubt, or you can revive your trust in
God. This always happens.

Remember when Jesus was resurrected, there was one disciple, Thomas, who clung
to doubt before he chose to believe. And then there came that moment in his life
when he revived his belief. It is tempting to doubt at the point of change, to
think this couldn't be happening.

This shouldn't be happening. Whether it's good or bad, it's tempting to doubt.
But the change has happened.

And in the midst of that change, you revive your belief. You revive your trust
in God, that God is a part of that change, that God is at work even in that
change. It's amazing to me that even in positive changes, we become afraid and
we want to cling to doubt.

This couldn't be happening. "I don't deserve this," we say to ourselves. Revive
your belief.

God is at work in your life. God's at work in your life through this change
that's happening in your life. Right now, as we pray together, let's talk to the
God who works changes for His glory.

Lord Jesus, we realize that when things change, we get unsettled. Positive or
negative, we get unsettled. So right now, we ask that you would help us to
revive our belief and trust in you.

To do all these other things, to express our emotions and deal with the fear,
plan for the future, be honest about the temptations that come along with
change. Lord, help us not to miss the last one. Help us to revive our belief and
trust in you.

And to go into this change, this new plan, this new place that you have in our
lives, whether it comes and we welcome it or it comes and we wish it hadn't
happened, help us to walk into this change recognizing Jesus Christ. We can
trust you. Jesus Christ, I can know that you were there before I was there.

I can know that you are going ahead of me, and so I revive my belief. I revive
my trust in you in this moment. In your name, Jesus, I pray, amen.

And join us next week, our last week together of looking through the book of
Genesis. We're going to continue to learn from Joseph how to live out a
God-given dream.