Episode 038 || Redeemed, Not Wasted

Well, hey there, Pando family, welcome to the SE Online exclusive Pando podcast. We are so glad to have you with us today as we continue our journey through scripture. And my name is Brandon. I'm part of the SE Online team, and we just want to let you know, as we do every week, that no matter where you're joining us from, we are so glad you're here. We're so glad to have you as a part of our Pando family. So thank you again for joining in with us today. As always, I am not alone today. I have a couple of special guests with me. I have Carissa and Christy joining me today as we kind of continue through or actually wrap up our journey through the book of Genesis, which we'll talk about here in just a minute. But Carissa, Christy, I'll give you guys, I know Christy, you've been on the Pando podcast before, but I'll let you guys introduce yourselves, what you do here at Southeast, let everybody kind of know who you are and what you're up to around here. Okay, I'll go first. Pando, it's good to be back. My name is Carissa, and I work on our SE Recovery team here. So I also am a person in long-term recovery. I've been sober about nine years. So I'm just really grateful to be back here and to be able to work on the team, just, you know, sitting with the broken and the lost, which is what I once was. So it's good to be back. Yeah, we're glad to have you. And I always do a plug when we have SE Recovery with us, is the Pathways Study is out on Pando. And I know that that has been so life-changing for so many people as you guys have taken it out. Yes. Yeah. So if you haven't checked that out, be sure to look on our SE Online Pando channel. You'll find all the content there, the study, the videos, we'd love to have you join in

on that. And so Christy, you're a first time Pando guest joining us. So why don't you introduce yourself as well? So I'm Christy Weaver, and I have the joy of leading the women's team here at Southeast. I love, love, love being in God's Word, love unpacking it with other people, love that I get this sweet opportunity to be with y'all today as we do that. Well, very cool. Well, thank you for joining us. This is going to be exciting because we're actually doing something a little bit different than what we normally do for our Pando crew. So normally when we do this, we walk through the sermon after it's been preached. And we kind of talk about some of the points that have has been made by the speaker. And this past weekend, we had a Tripoli with us wrapping up our journey through Genesis. This week, though, we are filming before the sermon has been preached. So we're just kind of talking our way through the story, wrapping up the text. You all know we've been in this 21 week journey, I think, through the book of Genesis. And we're wrapping up Joseph's story this week. And so what we want to do is just walk through these last kind of five chapters of Genesis, talk through some of the points and see some of what's hiding there, I guess, in the text, some of the neat things that are tucked away in God's Word there for us. And we'll start there in Genesis chapter 46, where Joseph has been reconciled with his brothers. He's revealed himself to them. And we're coming to this place where now his father Jacob is coming in to Egypt. And this is going to be a real turning point in the history of Israel as a nation. So the beginning of Genesis 46 says that Jacob set out for Egypt with all his possessions, and he came to Beersheba. He offered sacrifices to the God of his father, Isaac. During the night, God spoke to him in a vision, Jacob, Jacob, he called. Here I am, Jacob replied.

I am God, the God of your father, the voice said. Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt. Over there, I will make your family into a great nation. I will go with you down to Egypt, and I will bring you back again. You will die in Egypt, but Joseph will be with you to close your eyes. And I think there's such an amount of grace there towards Jacob in that passage that God is showing to him. But I think there's also just a neat overlap with something earlier in Abraham's story. This call narrative is very similar, not only to something that'll happen later with Samuel, but when Abraham was called to offer Isaac, it's almost the exact language that's used here. God is saying like, Jacob, this is okay, this is fine to go into Egypt, to go and be reconciled, and to see Joseph again. It's been 22 years, I think, since he saw his son. So as you all read that, how does that strike you as you think about Jacob making this journey out of the promised land into Egypt? Well, as I read this, I think about the kindness of the Lord, that he would know that Jacob, even in his stature and all that the Lord has done in his life, that he's afraid. I mean, even as an elderly man who's been through all the things, he's afraid to leave his home and go somewhere new. And I love the kindness. of the Lord, that he knows what's important to Jacob. And so he says, and Joseph's own hand will close your eyes. And to know that the Lord understands the sweet longings of our hearts. And here he knows this sweet longing of Jacob's heart to be reunited with his son, that the Lord knew exactly what to say that would calm the fear. He didn't shame him for being afraid.

He didn't say, oh, because you're scared, you gotta stay back. He assured him and really comforted him and gave him a reason to go. I loved that so much. Yeah, I love that you brought that out, that he speaks into not only this idea that I'm gonna go with you, like I'll be there with you, but also that Joseph is there, right? Like this reminder like, hey, this son that you love so much, the son that you lost, like he is going to meet you there. And you think about, we'll see maybe a little bit later that Jacob has been almost haunted by the loss of Rebecca, by the loss of Joseph's mom. There's so many names, I'm trying to keep everybody straight. He's been haunted by that loss and to think that he's getting his son back is really a pretty emotional thing. So whenever I was reading through this, I was thinking about my story and my past and how in this scripture, sometimes God's path to healing doesn't look like freedom at first. And so when I was thinking about my past and God often leads us somewhere where we never thought we've never chosen to go or we never would choose to go. And so for me and my story, that was jail. And I spent several, several months in jail

and that is where God chose to start rebuilding me. That is what it took for God to sit me down. He sat me down, sat me real still and he started rebuilding my life there. So that was kind of like my relation to this is Jacob was fearful to go and he didn't know it was land that he wasn't sure about. That's not where he wanted to go, but there were promises in that from God and he delivered. That's so interesting because even as you're speaking, I'm thinking about how we often feel that those kinds of places that we're wasting time. Like when you were in jail, like all the things that your flesh was telling you or your mind was telling you, I'm missing out on. I'm never gonna get those things back and to hear that that was such a growing phase for you and to hear, to know, to read in God's word that he is a God of redemption and that even in the places where the Lord, even our own behavior, our own choices places us somewhere that the Lord redeems while we're in there. Sometimes sets us apart in what you're saying is jail to do that work in us and this is such a reminder of God's that he redeems, not wasting, not missing out. Absolutely, yeah. Our pain is not wasted. The things that we went through in life is not wasted and I have seen that time and time by my, what I came to realize that through my story

and all the struggles in my past, it brought on compassion in me that I didn't have before for others, humility also, and just my testimony that now for my job, I get to go share my testimony and help bring others to God. So it's just like the full circle, so yeah, so good. Yeah, and I think that's such a recurring element in Joseph's story, right? He's already said it, I think back in Genesis 45, he'll say it again in Genesis 50, where he's like, oh, these things that were intended for evil, like God has used them for good. He's done something through them that we couldn't have imagined, that we couldn't have expected, that he is working through the mess, in spite of the mess to do what he wants to do. So good. So I think we get a very powerful reminder of that here in Genesis at the very end of it. So we get into 46, as Jacob is going into Egypt, it begins to tell us all the people who go with him and his family members. Yeah, and it's the part of the, I don't know how you all feel about this, maybe some of you all feel the same, is that there are times when I go through the genealogies where your eyes just start to glaze over.

You're like, I don't know these names, like some of these, they haven't just caught on anymore, like Sered and Elan and Shel Hill. And it's like, nobody has that name anymore. But I do think, and Christy, I'm sure you feel this way too. I think there is some. significance in the genealogies. They're there for a reason, because I think it helps us remember that these are real things that happen to real people, that God has been working through families, that God has been working through people, that this isn't just... These aren't stories. These are things that actually happen along the way. And I think anytime we look at a genealogy, I think it gives us some amount of confidence to know like, hey, all God has ever had to work through are ordinary people and ordinary lives, and He's been doing something through it. That's so good. And as a woman reading God's Word, even to see that a son of a Canaanite woman, in these genealogies when women are included, their sister was Sarah, I think, oh my goodness, sometimes no matter what you're walking through, sometimes you can feel invisible. And I can only imagine that many of the people in this list felt invisible from time to time, and that the Lord puts their name in here. I just imagine, my goodness, where is my name in the genealogy? What is He doing to redo my family tree? Or what might that look like if my name were in here? And so it's just a sweet reminder that the Lord is intentional, that He uses regular, old, broken, messy people, and I'm thankful. I used to just glaze over, because what you're saying, Brandon, sometimes the names are hard to pronounce, and you're like, why does this make sense? But there's so many poignant things throughout Scripture, particularly in the lineage of Jesus. We want to know that stuff. And sometimes it's fun just to read it and ask the Lord, what do you want me to pay attention to here? Yeah. So in chapter 47, we start to move towards the end of the book of Genesis. And in many ways, it's interesting, and hopefully we'll get to talk about this a little more, that the last few chapters of Genesis do a great job of tying up some of the threads that started in Genesis, and then setting up the rest of the story, not only of just the Old Testament, but the Bible.

There are things that the last few chapters of Genesis really hone in on that help us understand where this story is gonna go from here on out. So we'll start with setting up the story from here on out, because chapter 47 talks about not only Jacob and his family coming into the land of Egypt, but the land that they're given as their allotment, that when they come in, Joseph tells them, hey, if you introduce yourself as shepherds, like Pharaoh and his court, they don't care for shepherds. So they'll send you to whatever land you want, and tell them you want to live in the land of Goshen. And so that happens, that Jacob goes, they present themselves in this way, they're given the land of Goshen, which is the land that they'll be in 400 years later, at the beginning of the book of Exodus. But not only that, chapter 47, the end of the chapter talks about how Egypt begins to consolidate power during the famine, is that as other nations are coming to their from grain, that Joseph is getting their allegiance, he's getting them as servants for the nation, the empire of Egypt, and God is setting up Egypt as this world power that is eventually, as we'll see at the book of Exodus, gonna turn crooked, I guess, and begin doing some very incredibly terrible things to the nation of Israel. So as you start to see some of these threads come together, these pieces come together, what do we learn about how God works through situations and circumstances, how he works through some of those people that we see in these genealogies? You know what, I think it's interesting to see, like you said, how God works through just the ordinary people. And for me, always growing up feeling unworthy, feeling my family wasn't a part of the church. And so I would never have dreamed that God would have redeemed me, or he would have sought me. And so it just reminds me that we are the ones, like we are the ordinary, the broken, the lost, we are the ones that he seeks. And so yeah, it was interesting when you were talking about all the names a while ago, because I was kind of with you, like whenever I was, being someone who's fairly new to the Bible, I would just skip over it, because I'm like, what's the point? But I love to learn other people's point of view also, because then it kind of opens my head to see that, yeah, there is meaning behind every name. Sweet meaning. When you were pointing out how Joseph makes... sure that his brothers and his father get just the right land for them, even in his deep hurt and all that betrayal that his brothers put him through, that his love for the Lord and the Lord's love for him allowed him to be so gracious and generous. He didn't say, oh, that's fine, y'all are gonna be here, but you're gonna be over in

this little, tiny little place, and the things, like being a shepherd, the things that have given your life breath are no longer going to take place, no, abundantly, they are placed in the best kind of land, and he set them up for doing that. And even later on, when there is this power shift and he's still serving Pharaoh so faithfully, and he's taking the people's land back and their livestock back, he makes provision for them, he cares for them and says, hey, as you are farming this land and you're giving this much to Pharaoh, keep this amount for yourself. And so even though there's this power shift, the way of the Lord is kind and generous and gives provision through his children to other people. And I'm just so thankful, I can hold a grudge, y'all, I can remember something that somebody said to me or something that happened, and here, Joseph is doing this beautiful illustration of that's not the way to joy, the way to joy is generosity and kindness. Yeah, I really think it's a testament. So many passages in these last few chapters of Genesis speak to the character of Joseph. He's just an incredible example in so many ways, because you think about... We talked a couple of weeks ago on the podcast with Potiphar's wife. He could have gotten himself into a situation where he thought, hey, times have been tough, this is what I deserve, and given into that temptation. He could have gotten into prison and gotten depressed and thought, well, God has no meaning for my life when the cupbearer came to him with a dream. He could have been called before Pharaoh to interpret a dream and been like, well, I'm not telling you anything. He could have seen his brothers and said, well, you're not getting anything from me now that I have power. But time and time again, Joseph is always... He's living like someone who knows God is with him, who's like, I can trust in God to bring me justice, I can trust in God to make the story right, because I can rely on him, I don't have to do it myself. That's so good. And there's a hint here in the contrast between Joseph and his father, Jacob.

I was looking this up earlier in a Hebrew translation of the Old Testament. In 47.9, Jacob is talking to Pharaoh. And Jacob says, it's in the NLT, I've traveled this earth for 130 hard years, but my life has been short compared to the lives of my ancestors. In the Hebrew that it reads, though, few and evil have been the days of the years of my life. Goodness. And it's interesting to hear that kind of bitterness out of Jacob, because he's become a great family. He's very wealthy. And he looks back and he sees all these ways I tried to manipulate the story, all the ways I tried to control my way into this world, it's made my days few and evil. As opposed to Joseph, who looks at all these evil things that have happened, God is used for good. And I think there's such a contrast there about how we take control of our stories and sometimes ruin them, as opposed to letting God have the story and letting him kind of push it forward and trusting in him to give us what we want. So as you guys think about that, as you think about how Jacob contrasts with his father, how do you see that playing out in our lives? How does taking control for ourselves sometimes backfire? You know, in recovery, they often say, you know, self will run riot. And so that's a popular thing. And it's so true whenever we, and it's shown up time and time again, in a lot of our lives, when we try to run on self will, or when we try to control things, it always ends up bad, you know, or just recently, you know, we've had to put, me and my husband, we have just had to really sit down and trust God fully in some of aspects of our lives, you know, and without even knowing what it looks like, putting our trust in God and just knowing that he knows what it's going to look like is such a freeing feeling, you know, like I don't have control of this, I'm giving it to God. And that's something that we've not been used to, you know, running on self.

will in our past, so, and it looks beautiful when you allow God to take over and, you know, just stop trying to, you know, run the show by yourself. I think it's interesting because, you know, there have been, before I knew Jesus on my way to knowing Jesus, I didn't know to trust Him. I didn't know to do that, and at some point you just have to take a step out. I love how David in scripture says when he's getting ready to fight Goliath the giant, and he says, the God who saved me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will save me today, and that's because David had some experience with God showing up, and so sometimes before we know the faithfulness of God, we have to give Him some opportunities to show up and pray that our eyes would be open, like Joseph's eyes were open at every turn to the faithfulness of the Lord, and Jacob just didn't peel his eyes there, and so Jacob hadn't been storing up all this stuff that would make him trust the Lord that way where Joseph just kept in his little bag, just kept putting more things where the Lord had shown up, and so sometimes we just got to give Him opportunities to show up. And I think a lot of those opportunities are in hardships, right, you know, and it's just like there were times in my life where I'll tell you I should not be alive right now, you know, and the one thing whenever I give my testimony that I really say because I didn't know it then, but looking back, that's exactly what was happening, I was alone in a hotel room one night, and I had just done whatever to get money in that moment, you know, and I was by myself, and I was starting to overdose, and I just remember to myself, this is it, you know, this is it, this is how I'm going out, and obviously I survived, but the one thing that I didn't know then that I can look back now is that God was with me in this moment, you know, and that was right whenever He was like, okay, we're sending you on this path, I immediately got up, ended up going to detox the very next day, and I turned myself in to my probation officer, and that, you know, started my jail time where He started to rebuild my life, so it was like, man, He found me there in that bathtub whenever I was alone by myself, you know, and if it wasn't for those hardships, man, I just don't know where I would be today, you know, in my relationship with God, so. You know, I think you can meet people who have had a very easy life, and they can be some of the most bitter people because of that issue of control, they think about all the things they couldn't get, and then you meet people who have gone through

some of the hardest things life has to throw at you, and there's some of those grateful people because they've recognized like, hey, God met me in the middle of this, like God was there, He was taking care of me, and it's hard for us to, I think, sometimes develop that perspective, but I think you're right, Christy, is that there comes an element where, you know, sometimes it's in the middle of those situations or putting ourselves in places where we have to trust God, that we start to realize like, oh, like I can trust Him because He's proven Himself trustworthy here. So good. So chapters 47, or we did 47, 48 and 49, they are, we're gonna kind of lump them together because they are chapters of blessing. Like Jacob, as an old man, does a couple of things. First of all, he brings Joseph's sons who were born in Egypt, their names are Ephraim and Manasseh, and he brings them in to bless them as though they were his own sons. Yes, it's so interesting. It's an odd sort of thing, but it sets up later, Manasseh and Ephraim are counted among the tribes of Israel. So just kind of explaining that, but as he blesses them, again, Genesis tying together some of the threads we've seen before, he blesses them in a backwards way. He was supposed to bless the oldest son with his right hand and the youngest son with his left, and he inverts that, again, calling back to what Jacob himself did by taking the birthright. And I think there's a good reminder there. So kind of what we've been hinting at and talking about a little bit today is we've seen throughout Genesis, God does not work in the way the world often does. The world expects, hey, the firstborn is gonna get the blessing, the firstborn is gonna be who this is all gonna happen through. And Jacob, at the very end of his life, understands still, God doesn't work that way. He chooses the secondborn, and we'll see in a little bit, he chooses the fourthborn. He's gonna work through. So we've talked about this with God using ordinary broken people. How have we seen that in Genesis? How do we see that throughout Scripture, where He is grabbing hold of people and just using them where they're at? I'm so thankful that He does. I mean, I'm so thankful, particularly as a woman, when I read through God's Word and there's a woman I pay closer attention, not closer attention, but it gets my attention. And I'm fascinated. And so Mary that carried Jesus in her womb was a young teenager, unmarried. And I think, my goodness, what culture thought of her and that the Lord, because of her faith, picked her. I think about

Samuel picking David to fight Goliath and to be the future king that he was, Scripture says he was not the best looking, the most muscular, the most prepared, and that that's that awesome Scripture that says the Lord doesn't look at the outward, He looks at the heart. And I think over and over, even around the disciples, how they're described as unschooled, unschooled, inexperienced individuals, but it says, but they have been spending time with Jesus. And I think, oh my gosh, how on purpose, intentionally, the Lord picks the least of these and uses us. My goodness, y'all, I couldn't read till the third grade. It all sucked my thumb till I was 12. And that the Lord would allow me to understand His Word, that His Holy Spirit in me lets me understand His Word, let alone teach it, is crazy town. But so the way that the Lord... So the way that the Lord works. I think it's such a beautiful and special thing that He does that, that He just pays attention to the ones who society would shun away or would look over or not even turn an eye to. And so that's one thing growing up, maybe a lot of us have heard. When I did go to church, it was a Baptist church whenever I was little, and we had to show up in our best dress. We had to act correctly. If there were anything in our family that was going on, we couldn't show up to church. We were not welcome. Definitely in my addiction, I wouldn't have been welcome. And so I think a lot of us think that we have to show up to God when we have it all together. And that's just not what Scripture reflects. And I love that so much about it because for broken and lost people, and just all of us are broken our own ways, we can relate so much to so many very important people in the Bible. And that their heart for the Lord is what He noticed and what qualified them. Their humanness did not disqualify them from the way that the Lord was going to use them for His kingdom and for their good. It was their faithfulness, their faithfulness in Him. I love how God continually rejects that idea of our worldly systems of power, to think like, oh, this is not how the kingdom is gonna operate. We were talking about something before we started where the first will be last and the last will be first, kind of joking about that. But that's exactly how Jesus says the kingdom works, is it's not the way we think it's gonna be. It's not according to the structures that we see in this world, that God has something different planned. And I think that's good news for us. It's great news. Yes, it is. It's good news for me.

So after pronouncing the blessings on Manasseh and Ephraim, Jacob does his last blessings to his sons, which is a very ancient Israelite custom, actually Middle Eastern custom to bless your children as you're on your deathbed. And so he blesses and goes through each of his children, and we don't have time to talk about all of them. There's some really interesting things in there. Yeah, he's so honest. Yeah, like he is... Like some sons, he's like, you are awesome. And others, he's like, I don't even know what to do with you, Reuben. Yeah, there's no hope for you. Yeah, like what is wrong? I do wanna hone in on one though, because it has one of my favorite titles of Jesus. We've been hinting at since Genesis 3.15, there's a deliverer coming. And Jacob has an idea of that and calls that promise back at the end of Genesis. Genesis 49, when he's giving his promise to Judah, he is proclaiming this blessing over Judah. And here's what he says, Judah, your brothers will praise you. You will grasp your enemies by the neck. All of your relatives will bow before you. Judah, my son, is a young lion that has finished eating its prey. Like a lion, he crouches and lies down. Like a lioness, who dares around him. And this is where we really get blatantly messianic, is where he says, the scepter, a symbol of kingship, the scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from his descendants until the coming of the one to whom it belongs, the one whom all nations will honor. And I love that the Hebrew word that's used there is Shiloh, that the scepter will not depart until it comes to Shiloh. And it's hard for us to translate, but the NLT, I think, catches it right there, where it says, until it comes to the one to whom it belongs. And I love thinking of Jesus like that. He is the one to whom everything belongs, all power, all glory, all majesty, all everything. And Jacob is saying over Judah, this deliverer, this king, this one to whom everything belongs, is gonna come from your lineage. And I think, again, it's such an amazing promise to think through the whole thread of Scripture, is that we get this honed in time and time again, that we start with, hey, a deliverer is coming in Genesis 3. In Genesis 12, it shrinks down to, hey, it's gonna come through the family of Abraham, and it's gonna come through the family of Jacob. And now we see, okay, Judah, we are waiting for the lion of the tribe of Judah. But one of the titles, Shiloh, I love, just because I love that imagery of Jesus as the one to whom all things belong, the one to whom it

belongs. And I think that that doesn't just apply to his royal kingship, it applies to us, to think of ourselves in terms of, I am the one to whom he belongs. I belong to Jesus, that this is my ultimate allegiance. And as you all think about that, as you think about this idea of everything belonging to him, these promises that we see of Jesus, even in Genesis, how does that give us a better identity? How do we rely more on that? I'm thinking like, no, I'm the one who belongs to Jesus. I love how John, there's a book in the New Testament entitled John, which he describes himself as the disciple that Jesus loved. His very identity is in being loved by Jesus. And I love that so much because in my own life, there are huge seasons, and if I'm honest, most days where I feel unseen or unknown, or I'm always longing for somebody to truly understand me, and this is how much that I love the Lord, that I know that I belong to Jesus, that I am his and he is mine. And so on the loneliest of days or on the days when I'm feeling misunderstood or I can't see forward, but to know that he sees me, that Scripture says he knows every hair on my head. Scripture says that he carefully knitted me together in my mother's womb. He knows me. And so even as Carissa was sharing about needing to be cleaned up to go before the Lord, he already knows. He already knows every thought that I have. He already knows every struggle I have. He already knows the places where sin is crouching for me, the places where I have stepped into it. And so for me to be seen and known by the Savior of the world takes my breath away and leaves me with the sweetest joy and causes me to want to be in his Word, causes me to want to spend time with him. And through that, then I'm able to love and see and know other people as he works through me. Yeah. Whenever I first started coming to church about three years ago, I was discipled here by a wonderful, wonderful woman who I worked with. And what I saw in her, I couldn't explain. She had been through some similar things, you know, in my past. And just the freedom that she felt and just the love and how beautiful her heart was, you know, those were things that I was after. And so being someone who is fairly still new in my walk with Jesus, I would say sometimes I still don't quite understand what my identity is in Christ. You know, I'm still learning what that looks like for me. I'm still learning. You know, it's just kind of like a far out thought to really accept that he does know every hair on our head, every thought we've ever thought, you know, that he still loves us through our sin, you know. all that was just so profound to me. And it's just such a beautiful thing to still be in the midst of learning our identities and just fully trusting that Jesus loves us no matter what,

which for so long, for me, it was just... It was unbelievable that that was true. You know, it can be so hard, I think, in our culture to grasp the idea of what our identity is, because we're so discipled, I guess, by individualism that we feel like we have to make our own identity, that we have to make our own worth, we have to make our own significance. And we just get reminder after reminder here in Genesis or even... You were saying, John's title that I love, The Disciple Jesus Loved. I've always wondered how the other disciples felt about that. For sure. That guy, who do you think he is? But you know... They could have said it too. Yeah, maybe they just... But like Paul's opening chapters of Ephesians where he just talks again and again about who we are in Jesus. I think there's an identity there that if we really understood it, if we really rooted ourselves in it, we would be the most secure people in the world. We wouldn't feel like, oh, I gotta prove myself because now I belong to him. Yeah. Yeah. And he redeems... I'm just thinking about anybody who's listening that you may not have had a mother or a father or a caregiver who listened to you, who provided for you, or who loved you generously. And so I just know for me, he is those things and it lets me let go of and forgive. And as you're talking about, in my flesh, I could let go and forget and become this independent, relying on myself, making my own way, and I've done that. But relying on and knowing the love of the Lord is the sweetest redemption for whatever life on this earth has thrown you, has thrown me. And so knowing that he... I love that he is described as the perfect father who gives good gifts and that we would know his voice and know his love is crazy good. So Genesis chapter 50, the very last chapter of the book, it begins with Jacob dying. They take him, his body back and buried in the cave where his family, the rest of his family, his parents, and Rachel... I think I said Rebecca earlier, where Rachel, his wife, was buried. His ward, yeah. And then at the death of Jacob, Joseph's brothers start to freak out and they think, oh, well, now that our dad's dead, he's gonna get his revenge. He's gonna go after us. And again, Joseph has to reassure them. There in 50 verse 19, he says, don't be afraid of me. Am I God that I can punish you? Again, there's that reliance on God. You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good. He brought me to this position so I could save the lives of many people. So don't be

afraid. I'll continue to take care of you and your children. So we get this final kind of emphasis of Joseph's character of his reliance on God. Like, hey, you don't have to worry about me, I'm relying on God in this. But we end with the death of Joseph. He lives to 110. He dies and he makes the people promise, like, when you leave Egypt, take my bones out of here. Like, I don't wanna be buried here. I wanna be buried in the land of my forefathers. And what's interesting about Joseph's story is that in a story that's been like a roller coaster of highs and lows, it kind of ends here on a low, because he dies outside of the promised land. He's waiting for his body to go back. And the Bible tells he'll wait 400 years for that to happen. This promise, he has no idea of knowing if and when it's ever gonna happen. But the writer of Hebrews tells us something interesting a little bit later on. In Hebrews chapter 11 in the New Testament, 11.22, he says that it was by faith that Joseph, when he was about to die, said confidently that the people of Israel would leave Egypt. He even commanded them to take his bones with them when they left. That this is an act of faith of Joseph. Like, no, I know God's gonna deliver. I know he's gonna bring us back to the land he promised us. So take me with you when you go. And Exodus 13.19 tells us Moses does that when they leave Egypt. He takes the bones of Joseph with him. So I guess my final question as we kind of wrap up Genesis is, Christy, I think you hinted at this in what you just talked about, but how do we trust in God when we don't always see the outcome or the results we think we wanna see? When the ending is unsure, how do we rely on him? How do we have faith in that, even when we're not sure what the ending's gonna be? So, yeah, for me, over and over in His Word and over and over in my life, I know that He is good. I know that He is good, and I know that I am not, like I know that I'm not. And so even my thoughts and my plans are not always pure and not always kingdom-minded and not, honestly, not always even best for me. And so growing to a place where I trust and I want whatever He has, whatever He has, because I know that it's more than we are saying around here, more than I can think and more than I can imagine. And so I think, though, it goes back to storing up the ways that He has done that, the ways through His Word, the promises that He has given, and the ways in my life where things I have been sick over, worrying, and how He just made a way, or my worst nightmare.

And then that comes to fruition, and He sustains and sees me through it, that I'm able to breathe, that it's not just, it's for sure, not that I've gotten my way or He's answered prayers the way that I have asked. I'm so thankful He hasn't. Oh my gosh, I'm so thankful that He hasn't. And so I think it's experience, but also, so many times I have said, I just want to know what you want, Lord. And He's like, well, just read my word. And the more I am in His Word, the more that I'm reading it, and I know His language, after professing that Jesus is my Savior, that I believe that God's Word is true and the Holy Spirit dwelling in me, I'm able to hear and understand what He has for me, one step at a time, because He's faithful, and He's faithful and true, and He can be nothing but good. Yeah. Faithfulness. I love that word. So I think it's just surrendering, and it just means trusting God before we see His plan or understand His plan. It's just like a full surrendering, which was so free when I finally decided to surrender, you know, like finally. And just knowing that He's faithful and trusting Him before I can see the outcome, and it's been easy to do that, you know, since I've surrendered, but also just seeing the blessings that He has done in my life, the blessings that I do not deserve, you know, and that He has just the miracles that He's worked in my children's lives and in reuniting us and even my children who were adopted, and He paved a way for me to one day be able to have a relationship with them again. And that has come into fruition in the last year that I had prayed about that for eight years straight, you know? And so it's just like seeing those blessings and seeing those miracles and just knowing, like I witnessed that, and I know He can do whatever He says He's gonna do, so. Which is such a testament to His generosity that He knew that He was going to do that,

that He was gonna redeem your children to you, and He tucks that in your heart and gave you this, that He gave you that desire for you to consistently come to Him in that prayer, that He knew He was going to generously and extraordinarily, makes no sense, love you that way is precious. Yes, it is. Well, you know, the book of Genesis ends in kind of a depressing manner when you think about it from beginning to end, because we started with the creation of all life, and we end here with the death of Joseph. We began with this quest to the promised land, and we end outside of the promised land with them living in Egypt. But even at the end, there's an odd kind of hint of what's about to come and what the rest of the story is gonna be. At the end of chapter 50, the very last line of Genesis, we're told that Joseph was buried, the Egyptians embalmed him, and his body was placed in a coffin in Egypt. And it's interesting, because the Hebrew language doesn't often use the word coffin. It doesn't normally describe someone being buried in a box like that. But what's interesting is the very next book of the Bible will also open with someone in a box, is when Moses' parents have him or trying to save him from the Egypt of Pharaoh, they will set him in a little basket and set him onto the Nile River. As God begins this quest of deliverance to bring his people... out of Egypt and back into the promised land. And I think it's such a testament to the story of God, to the way the Bible is put together, that we end with this very depressing note, but then Exodus is gonna pick up 400 years later with the same kind of image and say, no, God has still got this. He's still in control. He's still working, even when we don't always understand it. That's so good. So good. Carissa, Christy, thank you guys so much for joining us here on the Pando Podcast. Thank you for joining us as we continue, or conclude rather, our journey through the book of Genesis. Appreciate you all stepping into that. Pando family, next week we'll be starting a new series called An Unexpected Leader, where we're gonna talk through the story of Moses and go into the beginning of Exodus and talk about how that all ties into how God is bringing them out of Egypt

and back into the promised land. So we hope you'll be able to join us next time and we'll see you then.