Transcript
Dan Sanchez: Welcome back to another Grove Hill Church podcast. I'm Dan Sanchez, and I'm joined by Ridley, Kyle, and John for another, I don't know, another insight into all the different readings we've been doing throughout the week. And it just seems like it's going by so fast with the chronological Bible. By the time you're listening to this, we've finished the whole book of Genesis. And some of us are on into Job now, but we're going to, next week we'll cover Job. Today we're going to stick to mostly Genesis. And it's exciting. In these podcasts, we're going to be covering the whole Bible.
Dan Sanchez: And I'm hoping, hoping that I can find the questions that are less, less talked about.
Jon: Okay.
Dan Sanchez: So I'm trying to stick away, i stay away from the questions that most, I think, I think most people will be asking during Two Men in the Bible. And so I have some good questions here today, but first, Ridley, I wanted to kick this one off with Joseph.
Dan Sanchez: You did a series on Joseph, said a little over a year ago, and there was a nugget in one sermon. In just one sermon, you finished with the nugget, and I walked away. It's like, blew my molehole.
Dan Sanchez: It was like the cherry on top, the series for the life of Joseph.
Jon: hmm. All right.
Dan Sanchez: And now every time I read Joseph's story,
Ridley: Mm -hmm.
Dan Sanchez: I can't not see it like it's it's there. It's obvious. I'm like, oh, like the whole Joseph story makes so much more sense now.
Jon: Yeah.
Ridley: Yeah.
Dan Sanchez: So I thought we kick it off with this because there's people listening now that weren't there for that, probably for that one sermon if they missed it, or maybe weren't there for the series.
Ridley: Mm. you
Dan Sanchez: So I'd love it if you kick off this episode with that one nugget around Joseph and Judah and how their two roles are connected.
Ridley: Yeah. it's it's ah It's very interesting to me because, ah ah like you, when i when i when it hit me, when it was when i I think I saw it or read it somewhere and it was the first place I had seen it, it kind of blew me away. And it like you said, it shifted my perspective on the whole story. If you imagine that the whole book of the Bible is a play that's going on, and God is, of course, the director who's moving things, highlighting things, sometimes working behind the scenes, has the curtain drawn on certain parts. Then you you picture the story on Joseph and Judah and Jacob's whole family and what's going on with them. It's really easy to see the spotlight turn on Joseph because it's his story. For 13 chapters, it's his story with the exception of one little break there in the middle.
Ridley: And we see this emphasis on how he gets mistreated by his brothers. He has these dreams. He arrives and becomes second in command in Egypt and all that kind of stuff. But the whole thing behind that story is evidence that God's hand is working in Joseph's life to preserve Judah because Judah is the lineage through which Jesus will pass. So it really isn't so much about Joseph. It's more about how far God will go to protect the plan he has in place he will use whoever he needs to to do it. so in this case he takes Judah's little brother and lets that little brother be kind of the hero of the story for one segment while off screen he's working on Judah to get Judah ready for what's coming next.
Dan Sanchez: Now, Judah is not like, the the story makes Joseph the hero, right? It's about, it's mostly covering Joseph.
Jon: Bye.
Dan Sanchez: Joseph seems like a good guy. Like he's doing all the right stuff. And even when faced with adversity ends up doing the right thing, you're like, yeah, I want to be like Joseph.
Ridley: Right.
Dan Sanchez: Yet it's Judah that gets the one. He's the one, he's one of the brothers that threw Joseph in the pit.
Ridley: Right. Yeah. Yeah.
Dan Sanchez: It's not, he's not even Reuben, you know, the guy who was like, hey, like I'm going to go rescue him later.
Ridley: Nope.
Dan Sanchez: It's not Reuben, it's Judah, right? And he's also, you know, the thing with Tamar and that whole shindig. So why, why, why Judah?
Ridley: Yeah.
Dan Sanchez: Why was Judah, you think, the guy that ended up becoming the chosen one that Jesus's line came through?
Ridley: Wow, you're asking the million dollar question there. I think it's kind of like the same answer that like we give when people go, why did God go all the way to Ur to find Abram to be the guy that would be the beginning of his whole thing? Why that guy? And I think the only answer I can give you is just because God knows the people who respond to his leading. I loved what Kyle said this past week. Kyle did a fantastic job preaching the next sermon in this series. And one of his points was,
Ridley: God only uses broken people because that's the only kind there are. So while we sit there and go, oh, well, he's more broken than that person or less broken than that person, God's not looking at that. God's going, you're all broken. What I'm looking for is the person who's willing to let me put them right back together in the place that I need them. And so what's happening, again, while Joseph's got the spotlight on him and everything's going on in Egypt, we see character development going on in in Judah, where God is working in his life and his taking him from being this callous, brute, older brother to this beautiful picture at the very end of Joseph's story where he's willing to trade his life for his little brothers. I don't know if you remember that part where
Ridley: they're going to take Benjamin from him. And Judah steps up immediately and says, look, I will stay in my brother's place. And interestingly enough, that's a foreshadowing of how Jesus would step into our place.
Dan Sanchez: That's right.
Ridley: Judah is doing a very thing that Christ would later do. it's it's an interesting choice as to why God goes after Judah and says, you're going to be the one. But there's no doubt that that He is the one and God does a whole lot of classroom development with him while he's off stage and ju Joseph is the the focus of the conversation.
Dan Sanchez: John Kyle, any insights into Judah over Joseph as the chosen lineage?
Jon: I think God's always and an infinite amount of steps ahead of us. That hindsight is 20 -20. That's all the scripture that God keeps laying down the foundation. And we in our typical mindset, we think that, oh, this person gets this desired place of appointment because, you know, in our culture, they've reached these benchmarks to achieve this appointment.
Jon: Whereas God says, no, i'm I'm flipping the script. And in fact, I'm going to say this person, because of their inability, is going to be used versus their ability. So yeah, just that same thing of God using the what seems to be the unusable.
Kyle : I agree. Our thoughts are not his thoughts. Our ways are not his ways. They're higher than ours. And so you you look at this in in the majority of the Bible stories. We wouldn't have chose that person. We wouldn't have done it that way. And that's the whole idea is because we're not God. God does things in such a unique way that you can't you can't deny that it's can't be done by a human being.
Kyle : It has to be done done by so something supernatural.
Ridley: Right.
Kyle : And so it's just another picture that the God cares so much. He uses all these different people in different ways, but there is a structure to it and it's going to happen his way.
Kyle : so
Ridley: yeah And to give a little more context, just in case some of our listeners aren't as familiar with the story, the reason it's so shocking that Judah was used is because he was the fourth in line. There were three older brothers who, if we were writing the story, we would have been the one to pick those guys and say, well, they're the older brothers.
Ridley: but all three of them disqualified themselves. One of them slept with his father's concubine and then the other two committed this heinous crime by murdering an entire village to to get even with with them for what they did to their sister. So those are not three characters that probably would have performed what Judah did and and God knew that.
Dan Sanchez: there's this fun movie called the Adjustment Bureau, which I feel like is under a scene. But it's actually an interesting play on like, so like, like God's sovereignty, it ends up being like this like 1950s
Ridley: i Yeah.
Dan Sanchez: and Not to his modern day, but like it's like this government agency that like keeps things on track. Like there's a master plan and these guys are like manipulating important situations to go. So, so and then some guy fights against the system because he's supposed to be with the girl.
Dan Sanchez: He wasn't supposed to be with blah, blah, blah. And the story goes on, but I love watching that movie because it gave me a picture of like, God's got this master plan and no one, no matter how far you fight against it, you're not going to go against this plan.
Dan Sanchez: And if you do fight against the plan, then it was probably God's plan for you to fight against the plan. And that's just what it was kind of like Jonah, right?
Jon: Hmm.
Ridley: Yeah.
Dan Sanchez: but sometimes I look at like the situation with all these brothers and like, sure, like could it have, have come through another brother?
Jon: Hmm.
Dan Sanchez: What about Benjamin? Benjamin seems like a great guy.
Ridley: Yeah.
Dan Sanchez: You know, God often worked through the younger, how was kind of the play going on?
Ridley: Right.
Dan Sanchez: But God probably saw the generations of generations of generations down. He's looking at all the different possible situations, right? All the different timelines. And he's like, ah okay, Judah, I see Mary way down there and date and, uh, Joseph.
Dan Sanchez: And I'm like, that's the play. Like somehow he saw all the different possibilities.
Ridley: Yeah, yeah.
Jon: Yeah.
Ridley: know
Dan Sanchez: He's like, nope. Got it. That's the one.
Ridley: Well, it's it's very much like comparing a rookie to the game of chess versus a master. A rookie looks at the next move and goes, here, this is what I want to do.
Ridley: The master's already looked 10 moves ahead.
Dan Sanchez: Nope.
Ridley: He knows if you do this, I do this all the way down the line. and And it's amazing what those guys know. Well, multiply that times a billion. And this is God's ability to go, if I choose Ridley Barron right now to do this, and he says yes,
Ridley: Here's how this is going to unfold for generations to come.
Dan Sanchez: So the next topic I wanted to talk about is, I'm kind of jumping ahead a little bit. It's kind of this in -between stage. talks a little bit about it in Exodus as we pick up our story. But I sat there finishing this book of Genesis and was left to wondering, like, wow, how long are they in Egypt?
Dan Sanchez: And it kind of talks about a little bit of Exodus. You end up having to do a little bit of math, and no one knows for sure exactly how long they were between Joseph and Moses, but it's about 300 or 400 years, somewhere in there, maybe 350.
Ridley: Right.
Dan Sanchez: That is a long time. That was a really long time. I mean, that's like the whole length of the US. To get to put it into perspective, we're talking about like George Washington, all the way down to modern days, the length of time that they spent in Egypt, and probably mostly under, under slavery rule.
Ridley: Right.
Dan Sanchez: So I wanted to throw it to you guys, like,
Dan Sanchez: That was God's divine will for them to be in Egypt for that time, for them to get enslaved and to be treated unfairly, probably for multiple generations.
Dan Sanchez: You know, so there's whole generations that wept and cried out to God and the promise didn't go like the the recovery didn't didn't come to them, it didn't come to their time, it didn't come to their children's time. Maybe their children's children were the one that were finally rescued from the land. what is that What can we learn from that as as believers now? What can we take away?
Ridley: Go,
Ridley: I think sometimes we misinterpret what we see being played out in these stories. Human nature would tell us 430 years or whatever in slavery in Egypt, how horrible that's awful. Where was God? But I believe what happened, if you look at it closely, is that God took his family.
Ridley: the one that he had chosen, he put them in one of the richest territories in the entire world as far as the fertile nature of the land and all that kind of stuff. He put them under the protection of the world's strongest army at that time and put them under the education of the greatest education system at that time. So now he's got his people under protective care of Egypt and for 400 years, even though they would do slavery,
Ridley: It gave them the time to grow and to multiply and reproduce protected from the outside side threat of other nations. And so, yeah, they're probably not the ideal place. They would have preferred to do it at a resort in Jamaica or something. But the guy chose this place. He put them under god Egypt's care while God was looking over them. And then when the time was right, he brought them out.
Kyle : I would agree to that because one of the one of the reasons Pharaoh initially became oppressive of them was the growth of Israel at that time. He was concerned that, you know, Egypt was polytheistic at that time with lots of different gods. And then here's Israel who had one God and they were becoming larger and a majority or or whatever you want to say. But it was a threat to where he was at. And so that's why he put him into slavery. And so it did. It it gave Israel time to just grow to this unstoppable force so that when they encountered other enemies or other people that they had a stable backing of of people.
Dan Sanchez: It's a good point you made Ridley about like there's a divine setup right there just like they it would just went through a period of like seven years of famine but they were prepared for it.
Dan Sanchez: Everybody else is probably pretty demolished by it. Everybody else took a long time to recover yet they were smack dab in the middle of like some of the best land still had resources.
Ridley: Yeah. Yes.
Ridley: Right.
Dan Sanchez: And we're able to grow, probably prosper for decades and decades until who knows which how many pharaohs it took for them to be like, why why are these people here again?
Ridley: Yes.
Ridley: Right. Right.
Dan Sanchez: you know But eventually, they're like, see it as a problem rather than as as having them as guests.
Ridley: Yeah.
Ridley: And again.
Kyle : It.
Ridley: We have to be reminded that this story is about one little small part of the world. God had his hand and his eyes on the entire world. And so while the famine that occurred that you're talking about might have been put in place by God to take care of something else that was going on off stage, center to stage, we know that God guided those people there, that group of 70 people in Jacob's family so that they could be provided for and nourished and protected until they could become 2 million people 400 years later.
Dan Sanchez: And one of the reasons why I even wanted to bring up this this time passing is because there's so much time in between all the action often. I was just having a conversation with my brother and my sister -in -law because they were in Jerusalem and the war was going on.
Dan Sanchez: And they were talking about like how slow war is. He's like, you think it happens fast because we read the history books and this battle happens and this retaliation happens and this battle happens. And that's how it goes in all the movies.
Dan Sanchez: so They're always taking cutting out all the travel time or the waiting time.
Ridley: Right. Right.
Dan Sanchez: So we just feel like the action is supposed to always be happening. And in real life, like how long has the war in Ukraine been going on? years along to the Israel things finally shutting down now and it'll be considered a quick squirmish in the like squirmish and the history books, right?
Ridley: Yes, yeah.
Ridley: Yeah, absolutely.
Dan Sanchez: Even though it's like months, like Israel sends some missiles and then we're like, oh, they're going to fight back. Months go by. They finally retaliate with some other missiles. You're like, it just takes a long time in between the hot sections of our lives, right?
Dan Sanchez: So I like pointing out to these like in between ones where there's like this long passage of time and then more action happens again. Because it feels like like that life when you're waiting sometimes, that you feel like something should be going on when most of the time is not the action time, it's just waiting time.
Ridley: Yeah. and The same thing's true if you think about the book of Genesis in general. Fifty chapters. And while it's one of the bigger books in the Bible, fifty chapters is not a lot to cover a couple of thousand years of human history.
Jon: Mm -hm.
Kyle : Hmm.
Dan Sanchez: Yep.
Ridley: You know? So...
Kyle : those Those times become evident. I got a kick out of it reading through the the story of Noah. And it said he got off the boat and he was a man of the soil. And so he planted a vineyard and then he got drunk on wine.
Kyle : And I was like, man, within one verse, I don't know if you've ever grown a vineyard from a grape, but it's not going to be, it's not going to be next week that you get to make the wine.
Ridley: Yeah.
Dan Sanchez: seven years.
Kyle : And so it's just like so much could have happened.
Ridley: That's right.
Dan Sanchez: Yeah.
Kyle : And it was in one verse, you know? And so, uh, then you have these long periods of 400 years and you don't have much information on it, you know?
Ridley: Yeah, literally you flipped from Genesis 50 to Exodus 1 400 years of past.
Jon: Yeah.
Kyle : Yeah.
Dan Sanchez: And the last thing I wanted to talk about is this idea of wrestling with God.
Ridley: Mm.
Dan Sanchez: and It's what Jacob's known for. It's what Jacob's named for is this throw down he has with the divine, and you know he gets he gets you know her era gets the limp out of it, but he wrestles with him.
Ridley: Mm -hmm.
Dan Sanchez: And it seems like God blessed him, changes his name to God wrestler, And it made me think a lot about that. And I i think about this, maybe it's because I was i wrestled in high school. you know So I liked rolling around and throwing it down. So I'm like, yeah, like Jacob was wrestling with God.
Dan Sanchez: But you kind of see the same thing with Abraham, where he's, you know, kind of talking to God, kind of like, not wrestling, but like having this very respecting, respecting debate with God about not destroying Sodom and Gomorrah.
Ridley: Yep.
Dan Sanchez: So I wonder, like, what are your guys' takes on wrestling with God? Is it good? Should we all wrestle with God? Like, in a proper way, is there a way to do it? Does God like that? I want to hear your guys' take on it.
Kyle : My initial thought is that it honestly builds the relationship. you think about it in the sense of like when you you have a a debate or an argument with your wife or whatever, once you get to that conclusion, you're different. you're You're a different couple. You're a different stage. so whether someone's disagreeing with God and God is encouraging that conversation like, hey, I want you to express your your concerns with me or in in the event of Jacob and it goes physical. ah there's There's a little more there, but it almost like establishes some, I don't know, a deeper new relationship with that person. And so as you can see with Jacob, he was it he was a he was on a different level with God at that point after that that wrestle.
Kyle : You hear it a lot in ministry. I've heard it said a couple of times, like if God's calling you into a place of ministry, I've heard, don't I don't really like the advice, but people will say run as far away from you as you can and he'll get you and eventually tie you down and then realize that you're there.
Kyle : my I'm more along the lines of if I think God's calling me, I kind of want to obey. But kind of the same aspect is like, you're you're kind of you're kind of putting God to the challenge like, hey, is this truly what you want? And is this what you want for me? And just in Jacob's case, it got to the point of a physical wrestle.
Jon: Yeah, I feel like they that area of wrestling with God is just keeping the line of communication open a lot. many times we we think about this, know, the holiness of God. And I think that there's a place for that, that God desires for us to just shut up, to be quiet, to say, all right, God, I'm submitting unto your will, you know, the the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the guidance of scriptures. But there's other times as you seek out the will of your life, Ridley's talked about it a bunch, as you seek that out and you're trying to figure that out, as Jacob found out, even in his mistake after mistake,
Jon: wrestling with his brother, wrestling with the things that ran into his life. I look at it more in that positive light of he just kept that line of communication open and God heard him even through his a stubbornness, so to speak.
Ridley: I think the Bible is a record of all of human humanity struggling against God in different ways. I mean, you can go all the way back to starting with Cain and the offering he brought God and how he didn't understand why God didn't receive his offering so much so that he was willing to kill his brother over it. I think struggles typically go one of two ways. You either wind up very, very far removed from God because you refuse to to let him work in your life or your struggle comes out and takes you to a place where you are much stronger, much closer, much more intimate with God than you ever were before. And so every encounter in the Bible kind of does that for us. Again, Cain wound up far from God, removed from God. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, those are the stories of men and their wives even who struggled with God and God's will for their life. They wound up closer to him.
Ridley: Jonah, we're familiar with Jonah's story where he's called and eventually runs in the opposite direction from God. God refuses to let him get away and because he was listening enough, I wouldn't say he was intimate with God at that point, but he was listening enough, he realized that God had something he wanted him to do. And so just all the way through the story of scripture and and the truth be told, every one of us could bear the name Israel. Struggling and wrestling with God.
Ridley: learning to put down our will and pick up his will. And that's just a battle we're always going to fight. And if we fight it with a genuine heart, I think to to Kyle's point, you come out on the the good side of it, you come a little closer and stronger because of it.
Dan Sanchez: I find I have like these, it's funny as it is, because wrestling is like this form of fighting, but to me, I have very fond memories of wrestling, because that's what I did with my dad growing up. So wrestling was a relational thing, is a relational capital.
Ridley: Yeah.
Dan Sanchez: I do it with my kids all the time. It's just a physical touch thing where you're wrestling with them, and they're trying to overpower you, and sometimes you let them kind of take it, and then you dominate them, you know?
Ridley: Yep.
Ridley: yeah
Dan Sanchez: You're like, ah ah yeah I'm going to let you think, you know, and then you take them.
Ridley: Yep. Got to keep them humble.
Dan Sanchez: But I think but when I i don't wrestle with God, I often do it like when I'm running or something, and there's like some kind of physical activity. And I can, I don't know, it's my why way of like wrestling with God with all my heart in a way, because I like to do it with all my mind and thinking and contemplating and finding insights. But there's something about a physical nature of it, too, that where you're like,
Dan Sanchez: get to take the concepts I guess I've been chewing on and then push it down to a place where it becomes emotional. Not for the sake of emotions, but it's I'm really wrestling with it to the point of, I don't know, there's I guess just locking it into my memory in a different way because memories are so tied to emotion.
Dan Sanchez: But I've always really liked it.
Dan Sanchez: I thought it was significant that he named the whole nation after this one idea.
Ridley: Yeah. Yeah.
Kyle : I don't know if you've ever seen the ah ah the demonstrations they do with a horse or a wild mustang and the wild mustang will be in opposition to the trainer and they'll be in disobedience to the trainer and the trainer will work that mustang into a position of to submit to the authority and it's it's a really beautiful picture to see this thing that's once opposing the trainer then offer submission to the trainer and it's through work, it's through turmoil, it's through kind of the running of. And so this this relationship aspect of, a lot of times it gets us to a point of where we're like,
Kyle : I submit, right? like Like, this is my authority. This is my God. And it's it's ah it's a cool picture of how we are. wherere we're were rebel We're naturally rebellious against God. God is in a position of authority. And so we're we're going to have that struggle going, man, I don't want to give in. But through that wrestling, through that process, we end up in a place of of submission to Him and maybe a hip problem, you know?
Dan Sanchez: Yeah, the chokehold arm bar. You never know.
Ridley: some good star to carry down the road with a great story.
Dan Sanchez: Well, gentlemen, thank you so much for joining me this week. And I'm looking forward to continuing the conversation next week as we wrestle with Job. who That's going to be a fun one.
Ridley: Yeah.
Dan Sanchez: Here we go.
Ridley: Yep.
