Old Testament: Gen 47.18–19

To read the Bible in a year, read Genesis 46–48 on January 20, In the year of our Lord Christ 2025

By Don Ruhl 

The seven years of famine had arrived in Egypt and the people were suffering badly. Their money was gone and the government owned their livestock. 

The Egyptians only had one option and that was to turn themselves over to the government: “When that year had ended, they came to him the next year and said to him, ‘We will not hide from my lord that our money is gone; my lord also has our herds of livestock. There is nothing left in the sight of my lord but our bodies and our lands. Why should we die before your eyes, both we and our land? Buy us and our land for bread, and we and our land will be servants of Pharaoh; give us seed, that we may live and not die, that the land may not be desolate” (Genesis 47.18–19). 

While that seems extreme to us, it only seems that way because we are not in their desperate situation. 

However, this is often how people save themselves, that is they give themselves up completely, perhaps not to the government as in this case, but they turn themselves over completely to the God of heaven, and then they see better days. 

Questions: 

• Have you turned yourself over to the Lord? 
• If not, what is holding you back? 

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Don preaches with the Savage Street Church of Christ in Grants Pass, Oregon. 

Listen to his sermons here: GrantsPassChurchOfChrist.com