Hank Smith: 00:00:01 Welcome to followHIM, a weekly podcast dedicated to helping individuals and families with their Come Follow Me study. I’m Hank Smith.

John Bytheway: 00:00:09 And I’m John Bytheway.

Hank Smith: 00:00:10 We love to learn.

John Bytheway: 00:00:11 We love to laugh.

Hank Smith: 00:00:13 We want to learn and laugh with you-

John Bytheway: 00:00:15 As together we followHIM.

Hank Smith: 00:00:20 Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of followHIM. My name is Hank Smith. I’m your host. I’m here with my dreamy co-host John Bytheway.

John Bytheway: 00:00:29 You saw me sleeping.

Hank Smith: 00:00:31 He sometimes nods off during our…

John Bytheway: 00:00:34 No, I’m agreeing. Yeah. Yeah.

Hank Smith: 00:00:36 Agreeing. Yeah. John, we’re talking someone very dreamy in the Old Testament, but before we get started, I want to do a little shout out. I met Mark and Ashley Lyons. They live out in North Carolina. Ran into them when I was out East and they listen every week to the podcast. So Mark and Ashley, just want to say thank you for listening. It was really good to meet you. John, we are talking about Joseph of Egypt this week, or continuing our discussion from last week of Joseph of Egypt. And we have a familiar face here. Who’s with us?

John Bytheway: 00:01:14 Oh, we’re so glad to have Dr. S. Michael Wilcox back with us. And this is the third time, Hank. But I loved listening to brother Wilcox. And I have been so grateful for his teachings over the years. That book Don’t Leap with the Sheep just gave me a new way to try to teach what the scriptures teach. Really grateful for that. So he has a new book out called Holding On, really a timely book in the back of here. This is probably our most recent bio. S. Michael Wilcox received his PhD from the University of Colorado and taught for many years at the Institute of Religion adjacent to the University of Utah.

John Bytheway: 00:01:56 He has spoken to packed crowds at BYU Education Week, hosted tours to the Holy Land to China. In fact, my brother and sister-in-law went with Mike to China, just loved it. And to church history sites and beyond. He’s also served in a variety of callings, including bishop and a counselor in a stake presidency, written many articles in books. He and his late wife Laurie are the parents of five children. And we’re just really glad to have you back. I’m so looking forward to this.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:02:21 Thank you. 14 grandchildren now. Maybe one more.

Hank Smith: 00:02:26 Congratulations.

John Bytheway: 00:02:27 That’s great.

Hank Smith: 00:02:29 Yeah, Grandpa. Is it Grandpa Wilcox? Is that what they call you? Grandpa Mike?

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:02:33 Well, some of them call me Grandpa Tall-

Hank Smith: 00:02:35 Grandpa Tall.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:02:36 … because the other grandpa isn’t as tall as I am.

John Bytheway: 00:02:40 It’s like, I’m the younger grandpa, the taller grandpa.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:02:44 That’s right. Yeah.

Hank Smith: 00:02:45 We’re very excited to have you. I’m sure everyone listening is as well. So, let’s take a look at Genesis and come into this the way you want to.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:02:54 Okay. You know, there’s just maybe two preliminary things. I hate to start with somebody that maybe nobody might be familiar with, but there’s an English Christian apologetics, I call him the C.S. Lewis of the previous generation in a lot of ways, G. K. Chesterton. And he wrote a lot of beautiful things. And he maybe hit the nail on the head about the problem with modern society. It’s interesting. It’s 1905. So, what he’s going to say in 1905 is probably even more critical in 2022.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:03:29 And he gives a description that I can’t think of anybody who nails Joseph and many other characters of the Old Testament down quite so beautifully, and why it’s worth the effort and time to study the Old Testament or any scripture. So this is what he says. “There is a great gap in modern ethics, the absence of vivid pictures of purity and spiritual triumph.” And I’m going to finish this quote just a second. But if I had to say, what does the story of Joseph teach us or Ruth or Jonathan or Gideon or dozens of other, is that you and I get vivid pictures of purity and spiritual triumph. Story of Joseph is a story of spiritual triumph.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:04:36 Now he goes on, he says, “This absence of an enduring and positive ideal, this absence of a permanent key to virtue, I venture to point out with increased firmness does leave us face to face with the problem of a human consciousness filled with very definitive images of evil and with no or very little definitive image of good.” People are pretty much aware of what is evil, but I’m not sure we discuss what is the good life, the true life, the right way to live, the best. I’m not sure people ask that question anymore. I’m not sure they think it has an answer.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:05:31 So you have in the Old Testament, these wonderful stories that fills in that absence. I understand what spiritual triumph is. I have a definitive view in a life of individuals of what goodness is, what true goodness is. I don’t have to have long discussions about it or ethical rules, I just say, “See Joseph. This is it.” So that’s one thing that I would commence with, but I always think about with Joseph spiritual triumph. And Genesis ends with maybe the greatest spiritual triumph in the Book of Genesis.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:06:15 The second thing I think we need to understand about Joseph and Genesis is, the very first book of scripture that God gives, the first book that anybody was going to read, the book that’s been around the longest, therefore we could assume has some of the most critical lessons for the human experience, is essentially a book about family. It’s really the story of family relationships as if God is saying, “This is what I want you to get right.” And so this is what we’re going to start with. We’re going to start with family.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:06:55 And I’m going to show you all the relationships and you’ll see successes at it and you’ll see failures at it and you’ll see how people interact. And so you pick the stories. I have husband and wife relationships, right after the creation. That’s the first thing we’re introduced to. I have Adam and Eve. I have Abraham and Sarah, Abraham and Hagar, I have Rebekah and Isaac, Jacob, Rachel, and Leah, all these husband and wife. And I watch how they operate. I have parent-child. One of the great themes of Genesis is a covenant wife is worth any effort to obtain. That’s kind of the first theme. But I also have parent and child relationships.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:07:42 And nowhere do you sense the importance of that as greatly as Rachel’s cry to Jacob, “Give me children or else I die. The blessing of children. And I watch Abraham and Isaac. I watch Jacob and Joseph, Jacob and his other children. I watch the parent-child interactions. Rebekah and Jacob. And then the last one is siblings. I have all the sibling relationships. Jacob and Esau, Isaac and Ishmael, Cain and Abel, and the greatest of all the sibling stories, Joseph and his brothers.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:08:22 And most of those sibling stories are stories of reconciliation. And they’re beautiful because of that. And we’ll talk about, I think, one of the two greatest messages of Joseph’s life that has to do certainly with that theme of family. And almost whatever situation you might find yourself in, you’ll probably find a family situation in Genesis. My mother raised me alone. She was a single mother raising children. Well, what story in Genesis is a single mother raising children, hoping God will help her?

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:09:02 And for me, Hagar and Ishmael is a profoundly beautiful story for all single mothers out there. There’s that wonderful story of a desperate mother, water spent in the bottle, puts Ishmael under the bush, but Ishmael’s name means God hears, and God hears them. And she takes care of him. And as a child, that story, and growing up, just the sentence “And God was with the lad” was a powerful story. Hope for my mother.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:09:40 So as you go through, and you probably talked about some of these things already with people, but I just like to highlight the importance of all those relationships that the Book of Genesis is trying to help us understand.

Hank Smith: 00:09:55 I remember you once talking about your dad even. The long time it took for you to understand your dad. It was years ago that you told that story, but it was…

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:10:06 I may reference that today because there is a principle in Joseph’s life that I learned in my relationship with my father.

Hank Smith: 00:10:14 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:10:15 That maybe will be helpful for people.

Hank Smith: 00:10:17 Okay. Yeah.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:10:17 So those are kind of the two, the family theme and spiritual triumph, our need to see. I break Joseph down when I teach it into seven or eight truths, principles, life applications, whatever you want to call them, the scriptures need to be relevant, so that I try and capture just in a phrase or a sentence. So maybe I just go through some of those and we’ll look at it. Most people know the story very well. So I don’t know that we need to go through it quite chronologically. But, when making decisions, think of their long term impact on others, even those not yet born.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:11:06 When does Joseph’s problem start? When does this family become, in a modern term, somewhat dysfunctional? Jacob’s family is a somewhat dysfunctional family. Who starts the problem with Joseph and his brothers? It has not started when he gets the coat of many colors. It started by Laban. Grandpa starts the problems. And how does grandpa start the problems? Grandpa sneaks Leah into the wedding bed when Jacob is expecting Rachel, and that sets up a conflict that Joseph and his brothers will grow up in this family tension.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:11:55 Names in Genesis are really critical. So you always look at the name. Often the name of the child carries the message of the story. We’ll look at that with Ephraim and Manasseh. So as Rachel, she is married to Jacob a week later. He works 14 years, but he doesn’t wait another seven years. Rachel is in childbearing years and no father and the culture of the time is going to say, “Well, let’s wait another seven years when you could be having children.”

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:12:26 So Rachel’s probably a young girl when Jacob meets her, maybe 10, 11. And they marry. And then we start, what I call, the baby derby. This competition. Again, it’s family. Okay? Competition between Rachel and Leah, who can produce the sons and the children for Jacob. And Leah, the score at the end of chapter 29 is four to nothing, Leah. But what is the critical part about that is the meaning of the names. So Reuben means ‘look, a son.’ Who is she saying that to? She’s saying that to Jacob, and in a sense, a little bit of in your face to Rachel.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:13:15 And then this poignant phrase, “Now, therefore, my husband will love me.” Well, you can’t help but feel that. Simeon means to hear. God heard I was hated. Levi means to join. And Leah says, “Now, will my husband be joined unto me?” Judah means praise. I will praise the Lord. Now those boys grow up with those names. What impact do you think that had, especially in a society where the meaning of the name was critical. And this is when Rachel says, “Give me children or else I die.” And she gives Bilhah and Dan comes, which means to judge. God has judged and also heard my voice.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:14:04 Naphtali is an interesting one. Naphtali means to wrestle. And Rachel says, “With great wrestlings have I wrestled with my sister.” Now, you’re a little boy growing up in this conflict, this tension that Jacob didn’t ask for, Rachel didn’t ask for, grandpa started it. I guess Leah could have whispered on the night, “Hey, Jacob, it’s me, Leah,” and stopped it. She could have stopped the consummation. She doesn’t.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:14:40 Leah counters the baby derby with Zilpah, giving her maid to Jacob. And now you have the first son. And what does Leah say? She calls his name Gad, which means a troop. Oh, this isn’t in your face name, because she says a troop coming. Okay. The score is four to two, Rachel, I have a troop coming. I’m going to have a whole football team when I’m done with this thing. Okay? Anyway, you get the picture. It continues that way.

Hank Smith: 00:15:10 Then Asher.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:15:11 Asher, which is happy. Asher got a good name.

Hank Smith: 00:15:16 Six to two.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:15:17 Yeah. Six to two. Okay? Then Leah… You have the little mandrake story. And again, this isn’t what we’re talking about, so we’ll pass it by. But Leah has another son called Issachar, which she kind of hired by giving her mandrakes to Rachel. And Issachar means there’s a recompense. Zebulun means to dwell. And Leah says, “Now, will my husband dwell with me?” And finally, Rachel has Joseph, and then Benjamin. And she dies.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:15:53 Now, in the legal understanding of the day, who is the first wife of Jacob? Legally, who’s the first wife? Leah. She’s married one week before Rachel. Therefore, legally, culturally, the accepted norms of their society, who’s the first-born son that carries the birthright, the double portion and the leadership when Jacob dies? Who would that be?

John Bytheway: 00:16:25 Reuben.

Hank Smith: 00:16:26 That’d be Reuben.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:16:27 That’d be Reuben. Leah’s first-born son. Joseph is number what?

Hank Smith: 00:16:32 He’s down the line.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:16:34 He’s 11. Even Dinah is older than Joseph. Okay? The daughter. But Jacob feels that is not fair to Rachel. So in Jacob’s mind, who is the first wife?

Hank Smith: 00:16:49 Rachel.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:16:49 Rachel is. Therefore in Jacob’s mind, who is the first born son that carries the birthright.

Hank Smith: 00:16:58 Joseph.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:16:59 Joseph. Yes. But that doesn’t go down good with the family. So Laban causes the problem. That’s where the conflict starts. And so I say the first great message of Joseph’s life is given before he is ever born. It’s a lesson for all of us who think, “I’m only hurting myself. It’s my life. I can do what I want with it.” Who’re thinking the more immediate nows instead of the long term. And so I say to all of us, to myself, when making decisions, think of a long term impact on others those decisions are going to have, especially even those not yet born. So that’s the first great takeaway.

Hank Smith: 00:17:45 Elder Holland gave a talk called A Prayer for the Children, in which he said, “Sometimes we write checks that come out of our grandchildren’s pockets in far greater ways than we ever intended.”

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:17:57 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 00:17:58 Wasn’t it you, Mike, that talked about the cattle that would push against the fence.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:18:03 Right. Yeah. Don’t lick grass. The cows that weakened the fence when I was a boy at the ranch, made holes in the fence, broke the post. The cows never strayed through the fence, but the calves did. The calves went through the holes that the cows made. That’s a critical thing to understand. There’s an Old Testament phrase that explains it really well. “The parents have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” So when you eat something sour, it makes your teeth tingle. And he’s saying the parents ate the grapes, but the kids pay the consequences.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:18:43 So I don’t blame totally Joseph. Joseph is a little tactless. Maybe he’s a kid. We go further into the story. I think he’s probably hoping that his dreams maybe would be helpful in cementing his position. Jacob doesn’t give him the coat of many colors because I love him better, he gives him the coat as an outward physical symbol that I consider Joseph the first-born son of the first wife. And we’re told that his brothers hated him. Couldn’t speak peaceably to him. This is, like I say, a dysfunctional family in many ways.

Hank Smith: 00:19:21 It’s a very real family. I can’t imagine any families today having problems like this. Right?

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:19:27 Yeah. And you have the simile relationships. Again, Genesis is to teach us about families and how to handle things. Sarah and Hagar have a little spat. Hagar is a little insensitive to Sarah’s longing for a child and she gets a little uppity, and Sarah doesn’t react too well to that. She deals hardly with her. I can remember saying a phrase to Laurie that we had in our relationship that could diffuse situations because there was a little humor to it. And I would say, “Laurie, I was insensitive, and you overreacted.” And that’s a very good description of a lot of relationships in families.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:20:11 We could say Hagar was insensitive and Sarah overreacted. So, they have to come to reconciliation and Hagar does, she goes back and the Lord asks her a question. “How did you get here? How did you get here?” Think of what caused the crisis and you’ll recognize it. It’s part of your fault.

Hank Smith: 00:20:33 I was insensitive, and you overreacted.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:20:36 That’s right. I was insensitive. And that’s a standard. You see it in a lot of stories. But you certainly see it in Sarah and Hagar, all these relationships in Genesis. Somebody asked me, “Could you recommend a good book on how to have good family relationships?” I’d say, “Oh, sure. Read Genesis with that question in mind and look at all the relationships, husband-wife, parent-child, siblings, Abraham and Lot. You even have an uncle-nephew. You’ve got all the relationships and you just look at them.”

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:21:09 This is God’s first message he really wants us to understand, how to operate in these families. And he doesn’t show us perfect families. These families have challenges as part of the beauty of it. But arising out of it, you get these spiritual triumphs, Esau and Jacob embracing, that’s as good as the prodigal son. And nothing is better than the prodigal son.

Hank Smith: 00:21:35 Yeah. I would say when I’ve read Joseph first as a kid, I thought, the things he says, he’s not making any friends by saying some of these things.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:21:42 Right. Yeah. He’s…

John Bytheway: 00:21:44 Can you keep your dreams to yourself?

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:21:47 Yeah. But he’s young. We don’t know, he’s 17 when he’s sold. And we don’t know when, was he 14 when he got a dream? How many 14-year-olds have a lot of discretion.

Hank Smith: 00:21:59 Right?

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:22:00 15-year-olds. Yeah. Maybe he wanted to help the matter. I don’t know. We’ll talk about how those dreams get fulfilled, certainly much different than I think any of them realized. It was not a negative fulfillment, but a very positive fulfillment. So, the second truth, we won’t spend much time on it because it really happens before chapter 42, which we’ll get into. And that is, if you find yourself living the unexpected life, make the best of it. And don’t get mad at God.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:22:33 Joseph really teaches that. He never expected to end up sold into slavery and then accused by Potiphar. You would’ve covered all that last week. This is an unexpected life that doesn’t turn out the way he dreamed it, if we can say it that way. And sometimes when the unexpected life hits us, we can get mad. Now Joseph never gets mad at God and God brings him through. He makes the best of that life. And eventually after 13 years of not so good, he’s age 30 when he stands before Pharaoh, we’re told that. So that’s 13 years. And then things change.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:23:21 But it’s so easy to get mad at God, to what I call, jump off the pinnacle. That’s that second temptation of Jesus that used to bewilder me. How in the world was that a temptation? I’m going to jump off a cliff or a high building? No way. What do you think, I’m stupid? But the temptation was, prove God cares for you and will protect you and shield you from stubbing your toe. And Jesus’s answer is I don’t need to prove that. I won’t tempt God.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:23:52 And that story, you get that story… well, that comes from in Exodus a little bit later. So, I think Joseph never jumps off the tower. He’s living an unexpected life, but he makes the best of it. And he doesn’t get mad at God.

Hank Smith: 00:24:07 Both of my sisters became single mothers. And that was never the expectation. That was never the hope. That was not the dream. They have done incredible things with their situation.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:24:19 Yeah. And they have Hagar and Ishmael as a beautiful example to say God will be with your children. God was with the lad. God was with me growing up.

Hank Smith: 00:24:31 I tell my sisters, they remind me of Joseph. They were handed a bad situation. Joseph to me is the epitome of keep at it.

John Bytheway: 00:24:39 Right.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:24:40 Right. Yeah.

Hank Smith: 00:24:41 Keep at it. Do what you can with what you’ve been given. And one day, your day will come.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:24:47 And the reason that we can believe that is the third principle, the one that is one of the two major, major truths that Joseph’s life teaches. And it’s such an important one that it’s taught in all scriptures, multiple times. And I would state it this way. “God can turn all negatives into positives.” Drawing on the meaning of Joseph’s two sons names. “God can turn all negatives into positives, and make us fruitful even in the land of our afflictions.”

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:25:28 So just before we get into 42 and everything’s reversed for Joseph. He interprets Pharaoh’s dreams. He marries Asenath and he has two sons. In Genesis 41, 51 and 52, he names the sons. And remember, names in Genesis are real important. They carry the message. Isaac means to laugh or rejoice. And the message of that story is, at the end of a long painful waiting for God to fulfill his promises to you, you get Isaac. You get laughter. You get rejoicing.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:26:08 Abraham had two tests, not one. He had a lot. I think the most difficult test of Abraham was waiting decades for God to fulfill his promises. If a sacrifice of Isaac was an intensity of tests, the other test was an enduring test. For decades, they waited for that promise to be fulfilled. But God finally does. So here’s Joseph in 51, he called the name of the firstborn Manasseh. Now what is the meaning of Manasseh? Manasseh means to forget. “For God,” said, “He has made me forget all my toil and all my father’s house.” I mean, he’s forgot them. He’s forgot the pain that happened there.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:26:54 And the name of the second called he Ephraim, “For God hath caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction.” Ephraim means fruitful or double fruit. So, the names of those boys, I can’t say it better. We’re going to look at how it’s repeated in the chapters that we’re going into. I can’t think of a better way of saying it than God will make you fruitful in the land of your afflictions. That’s the message with Joseph’s life. If life sends you a negative, which life does, God brings the vertical line down and gives you the positive to make the negative positive.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:27:36 And that is why life is fair. That is why we don’t complain. Because ultimately, it’s going to all be positive. Lehi says that to his son, Jacob, “You know the greatness of God. He will consecrate all thine afflictions for thy gain. God’s greatness is in his ability to turn negatives into positives.” Joseph and Liberty Jail is the ultimate one, that all these things will give the experience to be for thy good. Paul and Romans. We know that all things work together for good to those that love God.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:28:08 And in the Old Testament, it is Joseph. It is his story above all. And it’s stated in the naming of his children. Now, I’m going to just skip over to chapter 45, which is one of the high points in Genesis when Joseph tells his brothers who he is. And I’ll come back to that. But we go to chapter 45. Notice, because he understands that principle, Joseph through his life has been taught the principle, ‘God makes negatives positive,’ He can forgive his brothers and have reconciliation because he knows that I’ve been fruitful in the land of my afflictions. I forget the bad.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:28:55 Here in verse five, he says, “Now, therefore, be not grieved nor angry with yourselves that you sold me here; for God did send me before you to preserve life.” That’s very gracious of Joseph. Verse seven, “God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance.” Verse eight, “So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God.” Now that’s not quite true. Okay?

Hank Smith: 00:29:33 They’re like, “I was there. I remember.”

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:29:36 Yeah, because we also learned that Joseph begged his brothers not to do that. He hears them speaking about that. Let me give you one more place where that principle is taught. Jacob says it, “You want a life that faced a lot of adversity, you look at Jacob.” Alienated from his family. Cheated by Laban. Married to a woman that he never wanted to be married to. His beloved Rachel dies young. He thinks Joseph is dead. The behavior of some of his other sons in Genesis isn’t the most sterling. Levi and Simeon slaughter at town over Dinah’s rape, and Reuben defiles Bilhah. There’s an interesting, that’s a little off the subject, but again, about family and Laban’s influence in the Book of Jasher, which tells the Genesis stories. We’re given the reason why Reuben defiles Bilhah.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:30:33 In Genesis, Rachel dies. And the very next verse after her burial is Reuben goes into Bilhah and defiles her. And you say, “What? What is this all about?” But in Book of Jasher, Jacob removes his abode into Bilhah’s tent as the main place of his residence. And remember how bad Leah wanted Jacob to dwell with her, and to live with here and to love her. And these sons can see this. Jacob moves into Bilhah’s tent, which is an affront to Leah. And so Reuben defiles her to force his father into his mother’s tent.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:31:18 Boy, that’s a point. If that is true and there’s a certain legitimacy to that element of the story that fits, then that’s tragic for Reuben and that’s tragic for Leah and that’s tragic for Jacob and for everybody involved. When Reuben gets his patriarchal blessing at the end of Genesis, that episode is referred to by Jacob. So you come back to that, be careful that your decisions don’t impact really, really badly your children. Not that they don’t have agency and that they couldn’t handle things better, but a lot of pressure’s been placed on this family.

John Bytheway: 00:31:57 Can you tell our audience about the Book of Jasher and what that is?

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:32:01 Well, there’s a lot of apocrypha, you might call them. They’re called pseudepigrapha. Right? Pseude-pretended-pigrapha signature. So, you have both Old and New Testament. Other books never made the cannon. There’s some books in the Catholic Bible that made the cannon that didn’t make it in the Protestant Bible that we use. So, you read those books with the same spirit that Joseph Smith was told by God in section 91 of the Doctrine and Covenants to read the apocrypha when he asked, “Should I retranslate this?” And the Lord says, “No, you don’t need to. Let people read it with the spirit and they’ll benefit from it.”

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:32:39 So there’s all kinds of other gospels and other writings. And there’s other Old Testament books that, in order to give them authority, sometimes you gave them a name that made them sound more-

Hank Smith: 00:32:52 Not really the author.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:32:53 Yeah. Not really the author. Pseudepigrapha.

John Bytheway: 00:32:54 That’s a pseudo.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:32:55 A pretended pseudo. Okay. So the Book of Jasher has a lot of those stories. There are stories about one of the sons of Jacob picking up a one-ton rock and throwing it at his enemies. And you’re saying, “Ah, yeah, this is kind of a little bit of heroic exaggeration.” You’re going to get a little of that heroic exaggeration in stories like David and Goliath. Okay? It’s the way you tell stories in an ancient time.

Hank Smith: 00:33:23 That’d be a good title of my autobiography, I think. Heroic exaggeration.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:33:28 Heroic exaggeration. Yeah. But there’s also stories in those that, you read them and you say, there is some truth in this. I don’t have to say thus it was, but when I read that about Reuben, I say, “Boy, that really-

Hank Smith: 00:33:46 It rings true.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:33:48 … there’s something about that.” So anyway, we go to chapter 48. Jacob is going to bless Joseph’s children now. This is when he switches the hands, because he’s going to give Ephraim the blessing. But notice what Jacob says to continue to emphasize this theme that God turns negatives to positives and can make us forget our toil and make us fruitful in the land of our afflictions. Verse 15, he blessed Joseph and said, “God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk, the God which fed me all my life long unto this day.” I mean, he’s not feeling sorry for the tough life he’s lived. “The angel which redeemed me from all evil.”

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:34:43 And that’s the theme. There’s the theme again. You see the theme in the naming of the sons. You see it in Joseph’s words to his brothers. God sent me here, not you. And you see it in Jacob coming to the end of his life, looking back on his life and realizing, “God, redeem me from all the evil that came into my life. I have no complaints. Life has been fair and good to me in spite of the challenges that I lived.” So that’s a powerful truth of Genesis. It’s one of the major principles of truth that Joseph’s life is teaching us.

Hank Smith: 00:35:23 Reminds me of 1 Nephi 1:1. He starts right out with, “I’ve seen many afflictions, but I feel highly favored of the Lord.” Right?

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:35:34 I’m even grateful for my sins. And when I say that, people say, oh. And I always like to say, “Well, I didn’t do a lot of really big ones.” Okay? But none of us are going to get through life without making some mistakes and some things that cause often some real heart wrenching memory, that we could have handled things better. William Faulkner once said, “For those to whom sin is just a word, forgiveness is just a word also.”

John Bytheway: 00:36:02 Wow. That’s crazy.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:36:04 So even the mistakes I made in my life that caused me grief, God says, “We’ll bring good out of that. You’ll learn humility and empathy and compassion and mercy and understand, you’ll be less likely to judge and condemn and criticize other people. And that’s a good thing to come out of it.

John Bytheway: 00:36:24 I like that phrase in Moses 6, “They taste the bitter, that they may know to prize the good.” And oh, I don’t go there again. That was horrible. And in that way, you got a taste of opposition and all things and you know, I don’t want to go there again.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:36:41 Yeah. That’s true. Yeah.

Hank Smith: 00:36:43 “He fed me all my life,” Jacob says, “He shepherded me.”

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:36:48 Yeah, he did.

Hank Smith: 00:36:50 That’s a beautiful one.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:36:52 And it’s at the end of his life.

Hank Smith: 00:36:55 Yeah.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:36:55 He’s looking back. And you got to look at that statement in light of all that’s happened to Jacob, because Jacob did not have an easy life. He had a child… Now you’d say, “Well, some of them maybe came from himself.” Well, that’s true of all of us. So now that we’re on Jacob, let’s go back to chapter 42. There’s a kind of a corollary. This is my next truth from the life of Joseph and this last part of the Genesis. And I say it this way, “Things that appear to be against you, may in reality be blessings.” They may be for you. Just the opposite of what you perceive.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:37:45 42, there’s famine in the land now. It’s 20 years later since they sold him, because he’s 17 when they sell him, he’s 30 when he stands before Pharaoh, there are seven years of harvest. We’re in the famine years now. And so Jacob says… It’s a nice mini point. “Why do you stand here looking at each other?” Do something. Okay? Sometimes when problems come, we just stand around looking at each other.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:38:15 So that’s 42:1. That’s, “Why do you look one upon another?” In other words, everybody’s waiting for somebody else to solve the problem. And my mind reels with sarcastic comments about political institutions, et cetera, and so forth.

John Bytheway: 00:38:34 Don’t just stand there.

Hank Smith: 00:38:34 Everyone’s just standing.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:38:36 Everybody just stands around stares and nobody does anything. “So, we don’t want to stand around. So, there is a solution. Go down in Egypt and buy corn or grain.” So, they go down, and they don’t recognize Joseph, but he recognizes them. They bow down before him, which is a fulfillment of his dream, but it’s not the important fulfillment. The important fulfillment is not a groveling bowing. The important fulfillment is a gratitude bowing, which is the fulfillment of that.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:39:07 Verse 21. What is Joseph wondering? Who’s not there? Benjamin’s not there. Well, dear Joseph, the last you saw of your brothers, they were exchanging you for silver. Why? Because of this conflict in the family started all the way back with Laban. So Rachel has one last child. What is a natural assumption for Joseph to make when, here comes the 10 brothers and Benjamin’s not there? What’s his natural assumption.

John Bytheway: 00:39:39 Did you sell Benjamin too? Where is he?

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:39:41 Yeah. Where’s Benjamin? So, he wants to find that out. Now they tell him he is alive. He’s still up there with his father. And then you begin to see the spiritual triumph of Joseph in verse 21. He can hear them. Joseph says, “You go carry the corn back to fam- and save your families, but bring your younger brother next time you come,” because he knows this is going to last for seven years, six more years, and they’ll be back. Okay? They’ll be back. He knows that. He listens to them because he can understand their language. They said in verse 21, they said one to another, “We are very guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul when he besought us and we would not hear; therefore is this distress come upon us.” This is 20, 21, 22 years, they are still guilty.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:40:42 You want to see the power of guilt in a person’s life, you see it in what the brothers say. And now Joseph learned something about his brothers, about Reuben. Reuben answer them, “Spake I not unto you, saying, do not sin against the child; and you would not hear? Therefore, behold, also his blood is required.” They knew not that Joseph understood them. What does Joseph now know about his oldest brother? He wasn’t part of it. And that is why, which brother does he remain as a slave or in captivity in Egypt? The second oldest brother, Simeon. Okay?

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:41:22 He sends Reuben back. You get a lot of… This is human nature. He sends Reuben back with the others and keeps Simeon. But his attitude is already forgiveness. Verse 24. Joseph says, “Oh, I’m getting a little of my own, but I’m glad you guys are writhing in guilt all these 20 years.” No, it’s one of the many weepings of Joseph. Count the weepings of Joseph when you go through there. Turned himself about them and wept. It’s not, “Ah, I get a little of my own back.” He feels for them. And he can feel for them… We’re going to get to that principle about forgiveness. But I want to do this other one with Jacob.

Hank Smith: 00:42:13 Sometimes we think, “Oh, so and so got away with murder. They got away with it.” But 22 years of having that memory of your brother, what, in his anguish of his soul begging you not to do this, or remembering that.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:42:28 It’s not going to end here. They’re going to carry it right to Genesis 50. Right to the very end, they’re going to carry that guilt and that agony. They’re going to have that… We’ll talk about that when we get there too. Anyway, he takes Simeon and sends them back and he puts the money back. He doesn’t want lack of money to stop them from coming back. So they go back and now we get this principle, “Things that appear to be against you, may in reality be blessings.”

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:42:58 So look at 42:36. They come back to Jacob and they tell him what happened. That we don’t get to go back down without Benjamin. And Jacob, their father said under them, “Me have you bereaved of my children. Joseph is not.” Now pause. Is that true? Is Joseph not?

John Bytheway: 00:43:24 He’s still around.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:43:26 He’s still alive and in a good position. But Jacob doesn’t know that. “And Simeon is not.” Is that true?

John Bytheway: 00:43:36 No.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:43:38 No. Simeon’s still alive.

Hank Smith: 00:43:39 Simeon’s going to be fine. Yeah.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:43:41 “And you will take Benjamin away.”

John Bytheway: 00:43:43 Why did you mention that?

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:43:45 Is that true? No. He’s made three statements that appear to be true in his life situation, but none of them are. And then he says, as he thinks of being bereaved of his children, “All these things are against me.” Now, is that true? No. All of these things are working for him. He just doesn’t understand they’re working for him. And that’s one of the reasons, at the end, he can say, “God redeem me from all the evil of my life.”

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:44:20 He’s going to give them with the cup in Benjamin’s sack. The Benjamin Calypso from Joseph the Technicolor Dreamcoat. He’s going to give the brothers a gift. And it’s a gift of knowing I would not repeat the mistake of my youth. Given the opportunity to repeat the mistake, I would not do it again. And that’s a great gift he gives them.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:44:53 So they take Benjamin and they go back. And now we’re two… I think the second of the two big truths of Joseph’s life. One, God will make all negatives positive. The other is, deals with family, and this is such a hard one for people sometimes. And I say it this way, “When someone sins against you, or when someone hurts you, forgive them, especially if they are members of your family.” And that is a great theme through Genesis. If somebody hurts you or sins against you, forgive them, especially if they’re members of your family. And there’s a corollary-

Hank Smith: 00:45:43 That is so hard, Mike.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:45:44 Oh my gosh, that’s hard.

Hank Smith: 00:45:45 I can see right when you say, every time you bring it up, people probably think, “Ah.”

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:45:50 Well, every time I bring it up… When I do Israel and Egypt, I teach Joseph on the Nile. We’re floating down the Nile in Joseph’s world and I teach it. I have yet to do a trip where somebody on, out of those 85 or so people that are with me, after I’ve talked about that, comes up and they talk about family difficulties. Now, there’s always corollaries and exceptions, and I’m going to deal with that in, what I call, the coming near principle.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:46:22 That doesn’t always mean that you allow toxic relationships and harmful and hurtful relationships to continue in forgiveness. Okay? It is the beautiful element in this story. Families will need to forgive each other. And rarely do I hear a story from a family that I think is out of the range of the Joseph story, where I would say, “Yeah, I don’t know that you should continue that relationship.”

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:46:51 A lot of them are about money and inheritances and business divisions, and people put their grievances ahead of the relationship. And Joseph won’t do that. Well, they come again in 43 and we get our second weeping Joseph when he sees Benjamin. 43:36, “Joseph made haste; for his bowels did yearn upon his brother: and he sought where to weep; and he entered into his chamber and wept there, and washed his face and went out; and refrained himself and set on bread; and then he lines them all up in order of their birth, which makes them a little bit nervous.”

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:47:39 And now we get to 44 and they’re going to send them back with the food, and he puts the silver cup in Benjamin’s bag. Now, again, what’s the purpose of this. He wants to know if they really are true men. That’s what they said. They said, we’re true men. He’s going to give them a great opportunity to redeem themselves in their own eyes and in his, and in Jacobs. Or a great opportunity to get rid of the last of Rachel’s sons, the last obstacle.

Hank Smith: 00:48:20 Yeah. Have you changed? Are you still the same?

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:48:22 That’s what he’s going to give them the chance to do. And Judah gives that beautiful speech starting in verse 16, take the time to go through. It’s a beautiful speech where Judah acknowledges, painful maybe, “I gave assurances to my father I bring Benjamin back, because the life of my father is tied up in this youngest child. Take me instead.” That’s maybe a hard thing to say. “If I don’t go back, my father will be grieved. He was grieved when Simeon didn’t. But it won’t kill him. But if Benjamin doesn’t go, you’ll bring the gray hairs on my father down to the grave. He’ll never recover from it.”

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:49:11 So it’s such a beautiful pleading. And Joseph can’t help but respond to Judah. Judah’s different. They’ve changed. They’re different people. And so, 45, “Joseph could not refrain himself before all them that stood by him; and he cried, cause every man to go out from me.” “And there stood no man while Joseph made himself known unto his brethren, and he wept a lot.” Probably for the first time, he doesn’t have to go hide somewhere. He weeps in front of them. And you can imagine what they’re thinking. Here’s this brave man. Our lives are in his hand and he is weeping.

Hank Smith: 00:49:58 And he sent all the Egyptians away.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:49:59 Sends everybody away.

Hank Smith: 00:50:01 How are you going to talk to us? Yeah, the translators.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:50:03 It is always nice to put yourself in the position of everybody in a scriptural story. And verse three, Joseph said unto his brethren, “I am Joseph; does my father yet live?” He still isn’t sure they’ve really been talking true to him. “And his brethren could not answer him; for they were troubled at his presence.” I should think they would be.

John Bytheway: 00:50:26 Yeah. What just happened?

Hank Smith: 00:50:29 I always call that shut the front tent flap.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:50:31 Yeah. Wow. 

Hank Smith 00:50:35 That’s a wow moment in life.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:50:36 They weren’t expecting that. And Joseph said unto his brethren, I think, four of the most beautiful words in Genesis, “Come near to me, I pray you.” And they came near. And he said, “I am Joseph, your brother, whom you sold into Egypt.” And then those gracious words we looked at earlier, “Don’t be grieved or angry with yourselves. I know you are because I overheard you talking about it. But I don’t want you to. I want you to see God’s made it all good and there’s a purpose in it. And I’m okay. I’m fine.”

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:51:22 “My oldest granddaughter is adopted and she’s 22, married now. And she wanted to see her birth mother, a young woman who got pregnant and could have aborted my granddaughter, didn’t, and she’s born, and I have this beautiful, beautiful, lovely young woman in my family. And she wanted to tell her birth mother ‘thank you for giving me birth’ and to say to her ‘I’m okay. Everything turned out all right. I’m okay. I’m a strong member of the church. I’ve been married in the temple. I have a wonderful husband. I’m okay. Everything turned out all right.'” And that’s what Joseph was doing with his brothers.

John Bytheway: 00:52:20 The theme that the church has chosen for the youth this year is the Proverbs 3:5 Trust in the Lord with all thine heart. And I just love how this parallels that what you have been saying is that, with time, all these things… I mean, Joseph resists Potiphar’s wife and what does he get for that? More time in prison. And here’s another thing, what was the way, “Things that appear to be against you may be blessings.”

John Bytheway: 00:52:54 And those verses in 45:5, 6, and 7, God did this. And as you said, he turned a bad thing… Actually, they did it. Those brothers did it. But he turned that bad thing into something good. And Joseph continued to trust the Lord.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:53:10 Yeah. There is– I actually brought it– You can see how beat up my Great Divorce is by C.S. Lewis. People maybe don’t know who Chesterton was, but they certainly know who C.S. Lewis was. And in The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis’ mentor was a congregational minister named George McDonald. And he escorts Lewis on this trip in The Great Divorce.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:53:41 And he says, “Son, you cannot, in your presence state, understand eternity, but you can get some likeness of it if you say that both good and evil, when they are full grown, are retrospective. All this earthly past will have been heaven to those who are saved. All their life on earth too, will be seen by the damned to have been hell. That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering ‘no future bliss can make up for it,’ not knowing that heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. Or they say of some sinful pleasure, ‘Let me have but this, and I will take the consequences,’ little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of them. Both processes begin even before death.”

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:54:53 “The good man’s past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of heaven. And the bad man’s past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why at the end of all things, when the sun rises here in heaven and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the blessed will say, ‘We have never lived anywhere except in heaven.’ And the lost, ‘We were always in hell.’ And both will speak truth. And the saved, what happens to them is best described as the opposite of a mirage. What seemed, when they entered it, to be the vale of misery, turns out, when they look back, to have been a well; and where present experience saw only salt deserts, memory truthfully records that the pools were full of water.”

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:55:51 And that’s Joseph. He understands it. And because he understands it, he can forgive. He can forgive fully, and he can initiate, what I call, the coming near. And so as another principle, if you want, I say it this way, “If possible, invite or initiate the coming near.”

Hank Smith: 00:56:21 Reconciliation.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:56:22 It’s a reconciliation. It’s not just forgiveness, but it’s a restructuring of the relationship that has been damaged or wounded. And that’s why I like verse four, Joseph said to his brothers, “Come near to me, I pray you.” And they came near. We go to verse 10 of Genesis 45. He’s telling, “Thou shalt dwell in the land of Goshen, thou shalt be near unto me, thou, and thy children, and thy children’s children.”

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:56:59 You see that same thing if we go back to Jacob and Esau, the other really beautiful forgiveness story, when he comes back. Look at the wording in Genesis 33, as Jacob terrified that Esau is going to kill him and his family, still angry. But Esau, bless his heart. What a good example. He’s not coming to kill his race. He’s coming to greet him and welcome him because Esau is over it. Jacob doesn’t know that. He thinks things are going to turn out bad.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:57:41 So Genesis 33:3, “He passed over before them,” Jacob, “and bowed himself to the ground seven times until he came near to his brother.” And then he brings the family, verse 6. “Then the handmaids came near, they and their children, they bow themselves. And Leah also with her children came near and bowed themselves. And after came Joseph near and Rachel, and they bowed themselves.” Joseph has seen in his younger life, and all the brothers, a beautiful example of family reconciliation, sibling forgiveness and a coming near.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:58:28 What’s the most beautiful forgiveness story in all scripture? I think it’s the pinnacle of all stories, and it’s a fictional story. It’s told by Jesus.

Hank Smith: 00:58:38 The Prodigal Son.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:58:39 Yeah. The Prodigal Son. What’s the verse that initiates Luke chapter 15? Who is he telling that prodigal to? We get a little distracted in thinking Jesus is telling the Prodigal Son for the hearing of the Pharisees. He’s telling the Prodigal Son for the hearing of the prodigals. He’s telling the Prodigal Son for the hearing of the publicans and the sinners. So, Luke 15 verse one begins, “Then drew near all the publicans and sinners for to hear him.”

Hank Smith: 00:59:11 To hear.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 00:59:14 There is just something beautiful in the coming near if I can do it. You mentioned my father. My father left the family, if I can give an example of it. When I was a child, when I was a baby, there were problems in his life and challenges. My mother never really spoke negatively of my father, but he had nothing to do with my raising. Nothing. Now, when I was a little bit older, and as a student at BYU, I began to initiate a little bit of interaction with my father. My father was not a bad man, he was a weak man, in some ways. He had challenges in his life that he just couldn’t overcome, which led to his abandon in the family.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 01:00:00 So I’ve talked about forgiveness. You’re 14 and you want to forgive your father for this. You want to be at peace concerning it. And you pray for it and nothing comes. And there’s a principle in life, “Sometimes life has to create a holding place in your heart for God to put the answers.” So, I’m not getting answers. God’s not helping me reconcile with my father because I don’t have a holding place to put the answer that I need. Life will have to create it. And so, I’ve told the story a lot for people.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 01:00:40 18, 19, you’re praying, “Let me be at peace, concerning my relationship with my father and what happened in the past.” And no answer. Nothing. I go on a mission. I got married. I had two daughters. Finally, I had two boys. My two older sons, and one was six and one was two. And I was preparing to talk on families. And I was going to talk about my mother. My mother was my Hagar. Only worried about me. We were a Hagar Ishmael family.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 01:01:23 And I was going to talk about my mother. But the spirit said, “Talk about your father.” And I’m thinking, “What am I going to say about my father? My father was not a part of my life.”

Hank Smith: 01:01:35 I don’t even…

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 01:01:36 But it caused me to think about my father. And just then my two sons came into the room and my mind was just filled by the spirit of all the happy things I’d shared with those two boys. Simple things, piggyback rides and walks by the pond and blowing out birthday candles and carving Halloween pumpkins, trick or treat, and Christmas morning, their first talk, listening to their prayers, all those. And I love those boys. I looked at those two boys and I just thought what a wonderful thing it is to be a father and to have boys.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 01:02:09 I’m not trying to be a sexist. I loved my daughters. I had wonderful memories of my daughters. But for the answer to fit enough for forgiveness to come, I had to have sons and have memories with those sons. And now, I have a place for God to put the answer. Now, I get to forget all my toil and realize that I could be fruitful. And the Lord said, “Now that you are a father, now that you know a father’s love and a father’s joy, would you be the son who lost his father or the father who lost his son?”

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 01:02:49 And I wept, just like Joseph. I wept and wept and wept. Not for me. I wept for my father. I knew the tragedy of my father’s life. I knew what he missed. And the easiest thing in the world for me to forgive was my father. And I think when Joseph listens to his brothers and he understands, it is not hard for him to forgive them. But there’s more. Then the spirit begins to say, “Now, you need to initiate the coming near.”

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 01:03:28 My father could not be a father and have those joys, but he could be a grandfather, and know a grandfather’s joys. And so, my wife and I, we involved my father in everything we could. He blew out birthday candles with his grandchildren and went to Christmas mornings with his grandchildren and trick or treating with his grandchildren and listen to them pray and listen to their talk.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 01:04:00 We tried to say, “Come near to me.” And one of the best things I ever did in life was not just to forgive my father. That would’ve been enough, but God knew there was better and wonderful things coming. One of the best things I did in life was to say to my father, “Come near unto me. Come near unto me. Be near unto me.”

Hank Smith: 01:04:31 And you’re right, Mike, it’s not a reconciliation how things were, it’s a restructure-

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 01:04:36 It is. Yeah.

Hank Smith: 01:04:37 … after a wound.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 01:04:40 And I love Joseph for that. Now it’s not always possible to initiate the coming near. I think that God wants the forgiveness. And the forgiveness comes when we realize that he can make up for him. And notice that when he names Manasseh, the word is forget. There’s a power in God we see in his forgiveness. Jeremiah 31 speaks of it. The Doctrine and Covenants speaks of it, but we get it in Jeremiah 31 when the Lord says, “I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more.”

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 01:05:23 I think we need to take God at his word. We worship a forgiving god. We also worship a forgetting God. There is forgetting in the forgiveness. Now I know God’s omniscient. I don’t want to question his omniscience, but I can hear God say to me, “My omniscience, Mike, has no desire to remember every folly and every mistake and every sin that you ever made. I don’t want to remember those. Would you take me on my word, when I say I forget them, I forget them. I remember them no more.” And that’s a high-high level of forgiveness.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 01:06:07 I don’t know if Joseph gets there in life, but I like that Manasseh has caused me to forget all my toil. There comes a point when we need to forget, and God does. I truly believe his omniscience has no desire to remember the sins of men. And I need to get to where I can do that with others and myself.

Hank Smith: 01:06:37 Yeah. Is that what Jesus meant, maybe, with remember Lot’s wife. She just turned around, right? She’s looking backwards.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 01:06:44 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 01:06:44 Don’t look backwards. Look forwards. Forget.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 01:06:48 Yeah. If we can. Now, if I had thought my father would’ve been dangerous to my children, if there had been a toxic relationship or had been harmful, I could not have initiated or invited the coming near, but my father was not going to harm me. Or some people may be in abusive situations where you can’t invite the coming near. But as much as you can invite the coming near, I think that is a mature level of forgiveness that Joseph teaches us. I think Jesus exuded, radiated the invitation for publicans and sinners to come near.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 01:07:30 That’s why they came near to him. And he told the most beautiful story in all literature to publicans and sinners because they drew near. And they knew they could draw near, and that there was no condemnation in him, and he would forget their sins. Not just forgive their sins, but he would forget their sins.

Hank Smith: 01:07:55 He even uses that Jacob-Esau language, right? He fell on his neck and kissed him.

John Bytheway: 01:08:00 The Prodigal Son. Yeah.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 01:08:00 He does, and I get it here. We go back to Genesis 45. That’s a good take in. “You go get my father now,” he says, “and bring him down.” And then 14, he fell upon his brother Benjamin’s neck and wept. Joseph, he needed for Christmas a handkerchief, because he’s doing a lot of weeping here.

Hank Smith: 01:08:22 Yeah.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 01:08:23 And Benjamin wept upon his neck. Moreover, he kissed-

Hank Smith: 01:08:28 Dehydrated.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 01:08:28 … he kissed all his brethren and wept upon them. And after that, his brethren talked with him. That’s a beautiful…

Hank Smith: 01:08:40 45:15. Yeah.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 01:08:43 Sometimes, I think if God said, “Well, I’ll let you go back in time and you can witness some scriptural moments. I’ll give you four or five of them.” Whatever. I mean, I’d want a hundred of them. But if only got a few, this would certainly be one that would do good for all of us to witness. Some of the most beautiful scenes in all of Shakespeare’s plays are reconciliation scenes. He really believed in it. And he pens some for the theater designed for people to see. It’s more emotive. Beautiful reconciliation scenes. Beautiful, beautiful scenes in The Tempest, in King Lear, in Winter’s Tale, in Pericles. It was very, very important to him. And I think it’s important in the scriptures. And I visualize that, kissed all his brethren and wept upon them.

Hank Smith: 01:09:50 And then they tell Jacob. It’s always one of my favorite parts in scripture. Joseph is alive. And not only that, he runs Egypt.

John Bytheway: 01:09:59 Yeah.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 01:09:59 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 01:09:59 And wait for this part.

Hank Smith: 01:10:03 Jacob’s heart fainting.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 01:10:04 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 01:10:04 Yeah.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 01:10:05 And then he goes, and Jacob… Now you go to chapter 46, verse 29. I get another weeping when Jacob comes and Joseph made ready his chariot and went up to meet Israel, his father, to Goshen and presented himself and he fell on his neck and wept on his neck. I like the last three words, “A good while.” He wept on his father’s neck.

Hank Smith: 01:10:33 How many years are we talking about that they’ve been separated?

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 01:10:37 Well, there’s probably 22. I think he says… I probably can’t pinpoint that verse. I think he says… it’s the second… They’re into the second year by now. So that would be 22 years. 22 years.

John Bytheway: 01:10:58 If he was sold at 17, then he’s approximately 39.

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 01:11:03 Yeah, roughly. Yeah. At this time. So then they come down. Then you get the little thing. That’s another principle, you’ve probably talked about it earlier with Pharaoh’s dreams. But chapter 47 is, everybody coming and Joseph buying up, getting all their money and their land and their cattle. And one of the other great principles of the Joseph story is, “In times of feasting, prepare for times of famine, because the famine’s always going to come.”

Dr. S. Michael Wilcox: 01:11:32 For us, it came in 2008, 2009. It came with COVID. So feast, famine, feast, famine. So when things are good, you prepare for times when things are bad.

John Bytheway: 01:11:47 Please join us for part two of this podcast.