The fact that Joseph’s brothers guiltily looked at one another instead of taking decisive steps when the family heard that grain was in Egypt showed that their consciences were not entirely dead, only asleep—and that fitfully. But if nothing more had happened in this story than the mere mention of Egypt, these men would doubtless have continued on in their own guilty way and have died unrepentant.
This was their way, but it was not God’s way. God now moved to awaken them and lead them to repentance.
The first weapon God used was the famine. He brought the pinch of material want into their lives so that they could no longer remain outwardly content in Canaan, but were forced out of their peaceful backyard pond into new waters. Egypt? That was the last place on earth these brothers would have chosen to go. What if they should meet Joseph? How would they be able to endure the reproachful hatred of that innocent but physically broken slave? Still, there was famine in Canaan, as well as in Egypt. Crops had failed. The livestock were dying. People would die eventually. What should they do? If there was corn in Egypt, they would have to go there or perish, as much as they dreaded the very thought of doing so.
There is a saying: “Needs must when the devil drives.” It would be better to say, “Needs must when the sovereign God determines.” God was determining, and the famine was his first weapon to awaken conscience in these lives. Has God done that in your life? Has He dispatched the specter of deprivation, the pinch of want, to bring you back to Him?
Perhaps the famine you are feeling is a famine for the living Word of God. Amos prophesied of famine graphically. He quoted God as saying,
I gave you empty stomachs in every city
and lack of bread in every town,
yet you have not returned to me.
I also withheld rain from you
when the harvest was still three months away.
Many times I struck your gardens and vineyards,
I struck them with blight and mildew. Locusts devoured your fig and olive trees,
yet you have not returned to me. . . .
I sent plagues among you
as I did to Egypt (Amos 4:6, 7, 9, 10).
None of these devices worked. So, says God,
The days are coming…
when I will send [another] famine through the land—
not a famine of food or a thirst for water,
but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD.
Men will stagger from sea to sea
and wander from north to east,
searching for the word of the LORD,
but they will not find it (Amos 8:11-12).
When God is telling one of His children something the person does not want to hear, he or she often wishes that God would stop talking. But what if God actually does stop talking? Ah, that is much, much worse. Without physical bread a man or woman may die, but live forever. We can live eternally without bread. But what if we are deprived of God’s Word? We cannot live without that. Jesus said, “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4; cf. Deut. 8:3). To be deprived of that spoken bread is disastrous.
