Skip to main content

When Money Means Nothing

Genesis 47:15 When the money of the people of Egypt and Canaan was gone, all Egypt came to Joseph and said, "Give us food. Why should we die before your eyes? Our money is all gone."


There are several events in the Bible where the money comes to mean nothing. This account in Genesis 47 is one of those. God sent Joseph on ahead of his family in a very unusual way so that he would be there for them in the future. He had to suffer for about 15 years to be in the right place at the right time. 


The Egyptians were so hungry that they had spent all of their money to buy the bare necessities. But the funds were gone! But, they knew that their money was worthless, and they were willing to do anything to get what they needed. So, they gave all of their animals to Joseph, Pharoah, to provide food for their families. But, did you ever wonder why they didn't eat the cows? They must have been sacred. 


I have never gone hungry in my 68 years that you can see by looking at my fat tummy. I have heard that hunger changes everything. You can come to the point of cannibalism if left too long. We see that in 2 Kings 6:28,29 where King Jehoram hears the pleas of a woman who had eaten her son just the day before in the sieged city. In that same account, dove's dung was sold to eat with donkey heads. Yummy.


Money means nothing when hunger hits. God brings hunger to punish a nation. How does one stop a famine? One doesn't. One can look to God and repent, or one can finger God and get hungry. We don't believe in famines, do we?


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Daughter and dog...

About six months ago we discovered that Ann was pregnant and were very excited for she and Jackson. We will have babies on this side and that of the Atlantic. We weren't prepared for that news and we we were even less prepared for the news that our little dog is pregnant. To date we have spent more on the dog than on Annie (don't tell her... Ann that is). Ann has yet to discover whether her baby is a boy or girl. Both ultrasound images were inconclusive. Though I did some further investigation of my own and was startled with what I found. to me it looks as if the baby is definitely a boy and has some resemblance from both sides of the family. Take a look for yourself and let me know what you think.
3 comments
Read more

Urgent Prayer (part 2)

Does God ever give you a gut punch? He did that just a few days ago when I watched a missionary story from the other side of the world. It was short but poignant, and it punched me in the belly button and brought a few tears too. One thing that shook me was the final statement that the missionary made. He was questioning himself and said, I wonder if what I have done will make a difference. This question comes to a missionary's mind now and again as they ponder how vast God's world is and how tiny one’s work is. As I thought, and identified, with his sentiment, the Lord brought a verse to mind that I had used recently in a youth talk. It was this one in John 12:24, “ Very truly, I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. ” When, in Matthew, the sower sowed his seed, it was the Word of God. Here in John, Jesus indicates that the seed is the life of the servant. Jesus talked of his comi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Entertaining Angels

Hebrews 13:1 Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters. 2 Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it. Hospitality is a gift. It can also be a learned trait. Some people seem as if having strangers in their homes is normal and natural. Others have to fight against themselves in order to have friends over for a meal.  The author of Hebrews says that some have entertained angels when they thought that they were helping a stranger. That's weird. This statement brings questions to mind. Do angels eat? Of course, silly, they eat angel food cake!  Seriously, who in the Bible entertained angels by accident? Well, how about Abraham, Lot or Jacob? Granted, Jacob's treatment of the Angel of the Lord was questionable. But he did wrestle the night away, when in fact that angel could have dislocated Jacob's hip early in the match.  Abraham, read Sarah, prepared a big meal and Lot had to offer ...
Post a Comment
Read more