~~~~~Lesson: Genesis, Chapters 44 (part 2) & 45 (reading after lesson)

Note Judah's complete surrender and offer to save his brother Benjamin. What devotion! And how at odds with his behavior years earlier, especially since Benjamin is also Jacob's favorite- which was the situation that originally led to their betrayal of Joseph.

Question: Are there events in your life which have caused you to change your behavior, even if in a small way?

Joseph tests his brothers before trusting them again. But God forgives us without any test, and being all-knowing, knowing that we will make many more mistakes, and still loves us.

Question: In what ways can we attempt to imitate that love?

Joseph bluntly states that him being sold into Egypt was God's will and that he is now fulfilling God's will by being "ruler" over Egypt in Pharaoh's stead.
Questions: In what areas do you KNOW God is directing you? How do you feel when you do something you know God wants or would want you to do?

~Reading: Genesis: Chapters 44 (part 2) & 45

(44:17) "Far be it from me to act thus!" said Joseph. "Only the one in whose possession the goblet was found shall become my slave; the rest of you may go back safe and sound to your father."

(44:30-33) [Judah said] "If then the boy is not with us when I go back to your servant my father, whose very life is bound up with his, he will die as soon as he sees that the boy is missing; and your servants will thus send the white head of our father down to the nether world in grief. Besides, I, your servant, got the boy from his father by going surety for him, saying, 'If I fail to bring him back to you, father, you can hold it against me forever.' Let me, your servant, therefore, remain in place of the boy as the slave of my lord, and let the boy go back with his brothers."

(45:4-10) "Come closer to me," he [Joseph] told his brothers. When they had done so, he said: "I am your brother Joseph, whom you once sold into Egypt. But now do not be distressed, and do not reproach yourselves for having sold me here. It was really for the sake of saving lives that God sent me here ahead of you. For two years now the famine has been in the land, and for five more years tillage will yield no harvest. God, therefore, sent me on ahead of you to ensure for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives in an extraordinary deliverance. So it was not really you but God who had me come here; and he has made of me a father to

Pharaoh, lord of all his household, and ruler over the whole land of Egypt. "Hurry back, then, to my father and tell him: 'Thus says your son Joseph: God had made me lord of all Egypt; some to me without delay. You will settle in the region of Goshen, where you will be near me- you and your children and your grandchildren, your flocks and herds, and everything that you own.'"

(45:25-28)So they left Egypt and made their way to their father Jacob in the land of Canaan. When they told him, "Joseph is still alive- in fact, it is he who is ruler of all the land of Egypt," he was dumbfounded; he could not believe them. But when they recounted to him all that Joseph had told them, and when he saw the wagons that Joseph had sent for his transport, the spirit of their father Jacob revived. "It is enough," said Israel. "My son Joseph is alive! I must go and see him before I die."