Genesis 44 Paying the Price

Welcome to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan, where you can grow in faith, community, and service.

This message is by Lead Pastor Don Filsack and is a part of the series Beginning with God, Walking Through the

Book of Genesis. If you would like to contact us, please visit us on the web at recastchurch .com.

Here's Pastor Don. Well, good morning. Welcome to Recast Church.

We're going to go ahead and get started, so if you can find your seats, that would be great. Just a couple of announcements, though, before we get started.

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And then any offerings that are marked expansion fund go to a specific fund, specifically designated in the direction of building an expansion for our ministries here.

And as many of you know, we've already purchased property out on East McGillan. We own 12 acres out there, and it's our goal to eventually build a building on that property out there.

So that is what's going on. How many of you had a good holiday weekend last week? Did you have a good time?

How many of you that seems like it was a long time ago? I find that the week before a vacation or holiday and the week after a holiday or vacation can tend to be some of the most stressful weeks.

Can you relate to that? It's like, okay, I've got to get back in the swing of things and stuff. So hopefully as we gather together in worship this morning that you're able to kind of shift gears and really get your focus and attention towards God.

That's our goal, and that stems from everything. And I want to point out that when we talk about worship in America, oftentimes we are thinking songs.

But our lives are to be worship. And so worship is something that extends so much further than just singing a song on Sunday morning together with God's people.

But worship is something that extends to the work that we do for our employer throughout the week, raising kids, the way we drive our car.

There's all different kinds of aspects and elements to worship that is living a life unto God, and that's our goal here.

And so it's not just that when we strictly focus together. So when I say worshiping

God this morning, I'm thinking of the conversations that happened during the connection time that we're about to have. I'm thinking about singing the songs.

I'm thinking about hearing from God's word and then going out and applying that in our lives. And so we're going to start off by explaining, by thinking, getting our minds thinking about God through his word in this next text that we're going to look at,

Genesis 44. We're walking again, you know, through the book of Genesis. We're making a mad dash for the finish line here with 50 chapters and we're on chapter 44 right now.

And it's been about a two -year process with some other books of the Bible interspersed in there and a couple of breaks over the holidays and stuff, but we're on our way to the end here.

I want to start off by saying this, making a statement, that humanity is capable of the heights of glory and self -sacrifice.

Humanity, and when I say that, I'm not talking about just Christians, but humanity is capable of some amazing acts of self -sacrifice.

We have examples of people who have laid down their lives for others.

And Jesus said, greater love has no man than this, that he lays down his life for another.

An example like Corporal Kyle Carpenter who was on a rooftop position with his platoon in Afghanistan on November 21st of 2010.

When an enemy combatant threw a grenade up on that roof, Kyle Carpenter moved to the grenade where most of us, most of us would run the other way.

We would tuck our head, we would kiss our tail goodbye. He moved to the grenade, shielded the other

Marines on that rooftop, and took the full force of that grenade and saved his fellow

Marines. He survived. He survived that blast.

He is missing an eye. He has a glass eye. He has some mechanical parts to his body now.

And just a few weeks ago, actually in June, he received the Congressional Medal of Honor. So we know that people are capable of amazing acts of kindness, right?

Some of us have been the recipients of amazing acts of kindness. Some of us have given amazing acts of kindness, certainly not to the level of jumping on a grenade for people that we know.

But I think what we struggle with most, what is most confusing to the human experience, what is difficult for me to wrap my mind around, is that those people who are capable of great glory are also capable of great evil.

And we don't need to turn further than our own chest and our own mind to go into our own heart and recognize that we are simultaneously a conundrum of possibilities.

We know it in our own heart where we are capable of being moved to great love. I mean, you don't need to move outside of your closest intimate relationships.

Think of those of you who are married, how you have at times shown love and deep commitment to your spouse and at times have lashed out at them in anger and hostility.

If you're married, you know what I'm talking about. How you're capable of these two opposite responses, sometimes within minutes of each other.

Or seconds of each other. And so it gets confusing. We see that conundrum on the faces of neighbors when they're interviewed on the news after finding out that it was a monster that lived next door.

And he just mowed his lawn like normal people. I mean, he was just out there. I mean, we get to know him. We talked over the fence. And he did these things.

And we see it, as I said, in our own hearts when we recognize our own issues and problems and we recognize our own depravity.

I think the fact of the matter is we like to think of ourselves as primarily good people. And when it comes to Judah, in the text that we're looking at,

Genesis chapter 44, we know that he is not a role model. I must remind you as we dive into chapter 44, it's very easy for us if we're reading through the

Bible in a year, we read isolated chapters or it's very easy to just grab something or we teach in Sunday school an isolated story and it's like, oh, that's awesome.

It's kind of like teaching Noah and the ark without teaching what he did after he got off the boat, right?

We can listen to just a part of the story. So just a few weeks ago, I had to put a PG disclaimer out on my sermon because I was going to be talking about some of the behavior of Judah, this guy, because of his actions.

In that text, in chapters 37 and 38, we saw him as a highly sexualized character.

And aside from that, he also eventually hatched a plan, his idea to sell his brother into slavery, to get rid of his younger brother.

And so as I read this text this morning, I want you to pay special attention to Judah. I know that our minds are naturally gravitating towards Joseph at the end of the book of Genesis.

The story, Joseph is like the main character, but in this text, I want you to pay attention to what

Judah does. Think about him in this text. Consider who is this guy that was capable of horrible things, and now, here in our text, shines out as an illustration for Jesus Christ himself.

How can a person have these kinds of highs and these kinds of lows wrapped up in one's soul?

I think we have some indication of that by looking at our own lives. I want you to open to Genesis chapter 44.

Again, paying attention to Joseph. Obviously, if you have a Bible app, you can open up to that, turn on and navigate over there.

If you don't have a Bible with you, can you just raise your hand, and somebody's going to just bring around Bibles. There's a couple people here.

And remember that if you don't own a copy of the Bible, if you raise your hand and you just don't have one to bring with you, please take that one with you.

We want everybody to have a copy of the Word of God they can read. But follow along as I read Genesis chapter 44 in its entirety for us here at Recast Church.

Then he commanded the steward of his house, he being Joseph, fill the men's sacks with food, as much as they can carry, and put each man's money in the mouth of his sack.

And put my cup, the silver cup, in the mouth of the sack of the youngest with his money for the grain. And he did as Joseph told him.

As soon as the morning was light, the men were sent away with their donkeys. They had gone only a short distance from the city.

Now Joseph said to his steward, Up, follow after the men. And when you overtake them, say to them,

Why have you repaid evil for good? Is it not from this that my Lord drinks, and by this that he practices divination?

You have done evil in doing this. When he overtook them, he spoke to them these words. They said to him,

Why does my Lord speak such words as these? Far be it from your servants to do such a thing. Behold, the money that we found in the mouths of our sacks we brought back to you from the land of Canaan.

How then could we steal silver or gold from your Lord's house? Whichever of your servants is found with it shall die, and we also will be my

Lord's servants. He said, Let it be as you say. He who is found with it shall be my servant, and the rest of you shall be innocent.

Then each man quickly lowered his sack to the ground, and each man opened his sack. And he searched, beginning with the eldest and ending with the youngest, and the cup was found in Benjamin's sack.

Then they tore their clothes, and every man loaded his donkey, and they returned to the city.

When Judah and his brothers came to Joseph's house, he was still there. They fell before him to the ground. Joseph said to them,

What deed is this you have done? Do you not know that a man like me can indeed practice divination?

And Judah said, What shall we say to my Lord? What shall we speak? Or how can we clear ourselves?

God has found out the guilt of your servants. Behold, we are my Lord's servants, both we and he also in whose hand the cup has been found.

But he said, Far be it from me that I should do so. Only the man in whose hand the cup was found shall be my servant.

But as for you, go up in peace to your father. Then Judah went up to him and said,

O my Lord, please let your servant speak a word in my Lord's ear, and let not your anger burn against your servant, for you are like Pharaoh himself.

My Lord asked his servants, saying, Have you father or a brother? And we said to my Lord, We have a father, an old man, and a young brother, the child of his old age.

His brother is dead, and he alone is left of his mother's children, and his father loves him. Then you said to your servants,

Bring him down to me, that I may set my eyes on him. We said to my Lord, The boy cannot leave his father, for if he should leave his father, his father would die.

Then you said to your servants, Unless your youngest brother comes down with you, you shall not see my face again.

When we went back to your servant, my father, we told him the words of my Lord. And when our father said, Go again, buy us a little food, we said,

We cannot go down if our youngest brother goes with us. Then we will go down, for we cannot see the man's face unless our youngest brother is with us.

Then your servant, my father, said to us, You know that my wife bore me two sons. One left me, and I said,

Surely he has been torn to pieces, and I have never seen him since. If you take this one also from me, and harm happens to him, you will bring down my gray hairs in evil to shale.

Now therefore, as soon as I come to your servant, my father, and the boy is not with us, then as his life is bound up in the boy's life, as soon as he sees that the boy is not with us, he will die.

And your servants will bring down the gray hairs of your servant, our father, with sorrow to shale. For your servant became a pledge of safety for the boy to my father, saying,

If I do not bring him back to you, then I shall bear the blame before my father all my life.

Now therefore, now therefore, please let your servant remain instead of the boy as a servant to my

Lord. And let the boy go back with his brothers.

For how can I go back to my father if the boy is not with me? I fear to see the evil that would find my father.

Let's pray. Father, as we have an opportunity to sing praises to you and worship you in that way, corporately gathered together,

I pray that we would see you as you are. Not see you as some figment of our imagination who is just the big guy in the sky, or just like us.

But Father, you are holy, you are righteous, you are worthy. And we recognize that humanity is capable, because we're bearers of your image, we are capable of these awesome acts of self -sacrifice.

But no act of self -sacrifice is enough. Because when we die, when we sacrifice ourselves, it is just the right judgment on us.

Death is what we deserve. And so we rejoice as a people who recognize that there is one who did not deserve death, that paid that price for us, that he himself bore your wrath on the cross in our place.

And so I praise you for Jesus this morning. I praise you for substitution, for the instead that we see in this text that reflects

Jesus Christ. That one is willing to step up and die in our place.

And he did so for us. So I pray that you would loosen us in our hearts and in our spirits this morning, and in our emotions to worship you with joy and with enthusiasm, because you are the one who has saved us.

In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Thanks a lot for the band leading us this morning.

Very grateful for them helping us to come before the throne and worship. Be sure to make yourself comfortable.

I'd encourage you to have your Bibles open to Genesis 44, as that's the text we're going to walk through. And that's my outline, and it's helpful for you to just kind of be able to keep your focus there.

If you need to get up and get more coffee or juice or donuts at any time, you can feel free to do so, or get up and stand in the back if you need to stretch out or whatever it is.

And then restrooms, we ask that you use the restrooms out the hall and at the end of the hallway going this way.

There are some restrooms down here, those of you that are familiar with the building, but we reserve those restrooms for the children's ministry. So we do want you to make sure that you use the bathrooms that are labeled on this end, men's upstairs, women's downstairs.

So we left off a couple of weeks ago, and where we left off, there was a worldwide famine mentioned in the book of Genesis.

Joseph, remember, had been raised up to second in command over all of Egypt, and that was ultimately through God -given wisdom in the form of a prophetic dream in which

Joseph helped to prepare the land of Egypt for this famine that we find in our text they are currently experiencing.

And ultimately through Joseph being able to interpret Pharaoh's dream, the ruler of all

Egypt, Egypt ends up during the famine being the only nation that not only has grain for their own people, but grain to sell to other nations.

So they become a significant player on the world scene during this era and during this time. We know how

Joseph got to Egypt. His brothers were going to kill him. They beat him up, they threw him in a pit, and then they were debating back and forth on whether to take his life or not.

And Judah steps up and says, why should we let his blood be on our hands? Why don't we make some money off of him?

So the next group of traders that comes through riding camels, they see them off in the distance, they wait for them to arrive, and they sell their brother for 20 pieces of silver to this wandering group.

As of this point, it's important for us to understand that Joseph's brothers have sold him into slavery, and they have no reason to believe that he's still alive.

They have every reason to believe that he's gone the way of most slaves. Most slaves do not last long in this era and during this time.

And so when you see the brothers say things like, we think that he's dead, or he is no more, or whatever, it's not that they're just trying to pull a fast one, it's that they probably literally believe that he is no more.

They literally believe that he has gone. But last week we saw, or a couple of weeks ago, we saw all 11 of Joseph's brothers came down to Egypt to buy grain.

They all bowed down before him as had been revealed to him in a dream in his childhood, that his brothers, all 11 of them, would bow.

And at the end of last week, Joseph had them all over for a feast in the middle of the famine. And the brothers still do not know, as of the start of our text this week, that the man in Egypt that they've been interacting with is none other than the brother that they betrayed, is

Joseph. So this whole section of Scripture, several chapters of just deep, dripping irony, that they are interacting with the brother that they betrayed and they don't even know that that's the case.

But Joseph has been toying with his brothers. We've seen that for a couple of chapters now. He's been stringing them along.

He has been testing them to find out if the past 20 years has transformed their character at all.

Are they still those kind of guys who could beat their brother up, throw him in a pit, and while they're debating whether to kill him or not, sit down for their packed lunches.

And it says in the text earlier in the book of Genesis that they literally sat on the edge of the pit and ate lunch while he's down there weeping, saying, please don't sell me, while they're awaiting the caravan to arrive to sell him off into slavery.

And right away in verse 1, we see that Joseph continues the test that he began a while ago.

Joseph orders his steward, one of his servants, the chief steward of his house, who we've seen interact with the brothers a little bit here and there, he orders his steward to fill their grain sacks with as much grain as possible, not with just as much as they bought.

They brought in an amount of silver, and they deserve a certain amount of grain for what they brought. But he says, fill it to the brim.

Max it out in regard to what they're able to carry.

Is that going to keep doing that, or are we all set? We're good? Okay. It sounded like I was in a bottle there for just a second.

So fill the sack with as much grain as they can carry. Max it out. And then also he goes a step further and says, give them their money back.

Put the money that they bought the grain for and put it back in the mouth of the sack. This is the second time he's done this, by the way.

This is not just a repeat of last week or another telling of the same event, but this is with different intention.

And lastly, he says, take the youngest man's grain sack, and he doesn't mention him by name, but he says, take the youngest one and put my silver cup, my special cup, put it in the mouth of his sack, and then send them off.

At the break of day, this must have happened in the night, at the break of day, the brothers saddle up their donkeys, load up the grain, and take off for home.

The author doesn't give us the freedom to feel the relief that the brothers would have felt during this time, but I hope you can understand that just because the author clues us into the events that we know that Joseph is plotting, that doesn't remove the fact that the brothers would have felt an intense level of relief as they load up their donkeys and head out of town.

How many of you know that the moment that they are free of the gates, they're thinking, whew, we're out.

And not only are we out, but think about from their perspective, they just got to go over to the highest dignitary's house in Egypt, aside from Pharaoh himself, and have a feast.

How many of you think that they're like on cloud nine? They're thinking this trip has been a success.

Are you getting what I'm saying in that? Does that make sense to you? I mean, if you're in their shoes, how many of you are thinking this has been a success?

They are now free and clear. They've got grain to last them a long time. They have their youngest brother,

Benjamin, who they were terrified something was going to happen to, and he's with them. And not only that, but Simeon, remember,

Simeon had been imprisoned there. Simeon is now returning with them. So all 11 brothers are together.

They have huge bags of grain to go sustain their family, and they are on their way.

The fact that they have Benjamin with them is important. Remember that their father didn't want Benjamin to go with them at all because of his deep favoritism.

Benjamin was his favorite and youngest son, born of his favorite wife, Rachel, who died in childbirth, giving birth to Benjamin.

But on this morning, things are looking up. Everything is upbeat in their departure. But verse 4 comes in quickly to shatter their false peace.

They don't get very far away from the city. And Joseph commands his stewards to pursue the brothers, overtake them, and accuse them of evil, of theft.

Now what Joseph does here is not justifiable. I want to make sure that you are clear that there are descriptive things in Scripture telling us what happened, and then there are prescriptive things in Scripture telling us what to do.

And this is not one of those cases where this text is telling you to act like Joseph. Do you understand the difference in that?

That Scripture records actual historical events that are not good. They are not, you know, you can't read

Scripture just with a mind that I just will do whatever Noah does, I will do whatever Joseph does,

I will do whatever Judah does. But you need to have your thinking cap on and recognize when Scripture is telling you to do something versus when it's describing what actually took place.

We know that his motivation is to test his brothers, but I want to suggest to you that just simply because we know his motivation doesn't make it justifiable, doesn't make it right what he does in this case.

Just because you're doing it as a test, doesn't mean that you are doing okay.

He has in this text already, we're only a couple verses in, he has planted evidence.

He has framed his brothers. He will bear false witness as to their guilt.

How many of you know that there might be a couple of passages throughout Scripture that condemn bearing false witness?

There are a few? We tend to think, oh, what Joseph's doing here is just a trivial minor thing, let's just, you know, he's just toying with his brothers a little bit, but it's all going to end up okay, because you know the ending and all of that, but this is not good.

He knows, this is very important, Joseph knows that they have not done anything wrong here at all, but he's going to accuse them anyways.

And no amount of trying to explain this makes it okay. Don't do what Joseph does in this text.

But Joseph even takes it a step further and he feeds verbatim to his servant what he is to say when he confronts his brothers.

Now think about this text from the perspective of the steward, the guy who is told to return their money.

He is told to frame the brothers, and then he is supposed to go and accuse them of stealing the thing that he placed in the mouth of the sack of Benjamin's grain sack.

Would you be a little confused if you were that steward? But you just do what he says, because this is the second most powerful man on the face of the planet that's commanding you.

You're his servant, yours is just to do what he tells you to. So the steward is told verbatim what he is to do.

He is to go pursue them, to confront them. And he is to accuse the brothers of stealing the silver cup of Joseph.

And two times in the text it's stated that this is the cup that Joseph used for divination.

There was a process used throughout the Middle East in which oil and water were poured into a cup.

Have you ever seen oil and water poured together? Do you see how there's like a pattern and swirls that happen and stuff like that?

And a magician, a paid magician would actually read the patterns in that and be able to tell or supposedly tell things from the future or tell things that are true or tell the reality of things as a result of seeing the way that that would separate out.

And so that was pretty common in the Middle East during this ancient time and even in Egypt. But it's unclear in the text,

I'm going to point this out, it's unclear in the text whether Joseph actually practiced this divination or not.

It seems to indicate later, as we'll see in the text, that Joseph wanted his brothers to think he was more powerful than he actually was.

And he doesn't even, he's never once recorded as using divination, but he says that he can.

It's almost like he wants to say, I know your every move. I know what you're doing and I know what you do and all of that kind of stuff.

And so from that perspective, either way, whether he practices the divination or not, it's a blight on Joseph again because either he used superstitious magic that is condemned in the

Old Testament, or he lied about using superstitious magic which is condemned in the Old Testament.

So either way, I just want to point out, Joseph is not held up as the perfect model and the perfect example.

And the fact of the matter is, as you go through the pages of Scripture, you're going to find that these heroes of the faith are made out of the same stuff as us.

There is only one hero of the faith and we're going to talk about him a little bit later. But when the servant accuses the brothers, he catches up with them.

The brothers are so sure, there is such assurance in their hearts that none of them,

I mean they're speaking on behalf of one another, there's no way any of us would steal the silver cup, and in that they pledge death to the one who is found to have the silver cup in his possession.

They are so sure that none of them have done this that they say that. And this is not the only rash oath ever taken in Scripture.

You could actually thematically pursue the concept of rash oaths throughout the pages of the text of Scripture.

And there are many of them to recount where somebody says something just on the cuff.

And it's a caution about our words, isn't it? How we can quickly state something and need to backtrack on it pretty quickly.

We know that as they lower their grain sacks to the ground, they're on the donkeys. And as they lower them to the ground to submit to being searched, we know, because the narrator has told us, that the silver cup is going to be found in the grain sack of their father's favorite son.

So there's drama in this. He starts with the oldest. He starts down with Reuben and he moves on to Simeon and he opens the grain.

And what does he find, by the way, when he opens Reuben's grain sack? He finds grain.

Does he find anything else? He finds the money. Now it doesn't say it in the text because he is on pursuit of one thing, this cup.

And they've talked about this cup and that's the big thing that Joseph told him to pursue. And so he's looking for the cup.

He's doing what his master has told him. But you've got to recognize that every time he opens a grain sack, the money is right there for him to see that they have the money returned to.

He already knew that. So is his job to act surprised? He's the one who put them in there.

Remember that. But he goes down and he goes from Reuben to Simeon to Levi, opens the grain sack of Judah.

The suspense builds until he finally opens the very last one, Benjamin. I assume that everybody's already feeling uncomfortable in this situation.

You know, the brothers are sitting there and they're recognizing, how did the money get there? I'm sure there's confusion in the moment.

But as the steward opens the grain sack of Benjamin, boom, reaches in and holds up the silver cup.

And what do you think the brother's response would be at that time? Benjamin, what did you do?

What have you done to us? What have you done to our father? What are you thinking? Do you imagine that for a second they thought that he wasn't guilty?

The silver cup is right there. I mean, come on, what is happening here? They tear their robes in mourning, a sign of mourning.

He's counted dead now, right? What did they pledge to the one who was found with the cup? They said death.

He's at least a slave, according to verse 10. So they immediately move to a sign of mourning and they tear their cloaks and then they pack up and they head back to the presence of Joseph.

It's pretty amazing that they return, by the way. That in itself should be shocking to those of us who know these brothers, who have gotten to know them throughout this text.

It demonstrates a significant shift and change in their hearts that they return to Egypt with Benjamin.

In verse 10, they were offered a free pass. They were actually declared innocent. Only the one with the cup

I will take as a servant and the rest of you are declared innocent, free to go.

You're not bound to anything. But they willingly return to face

Benjamin's fate together. And now in Joseph's presence they do not just merely bow in deference like they did last week, or a couple weeks ago.

They bowed in deference, but they fall on their faces in terror and fear, groveling, terrified.

There's a different word for bowing. One was just a polite way of entering the presence of a ruler or a dignitary.

This is abject terror. You own us. We are yours. You can do whatever you want with us now.

And they fall in terror before who? Who are they talking with? Their brother.

The brother that they betrayed. So Joseph moved to compassion for his brothers.

They're there on the floor, groveling in his presence. He's like, get up, guys. Just a joke. Just kidding.

I mean, come on. I'm your brother. It's all good. Is that what the text says? At this point he shows no compassion on them.

He asks, what have you done? Who do you think you are? Stealing my cup.

Do you not know who you're dealing with here? The irony is, of course they don't.

But do you not know the power and the authority that I possess? Do you not know that I have the power of knowledge?

I have the power of divination. Joseph's being a tool, okay? If I could just say that.

He is like just pouring it on thick to them. We know that he has orchestrated these events.

We know that he has used no divination to uncover who had the silver cup because he planted the silver cup.

So at least in this situation, he's faking it. He's acting as though. And I wonder if not in one way,

God, through orchestrating these events, isn't making somewhat of a mockery of divination in the way that this is unfolding.

In the time of Moses, remember, this is an ancient document that was written to a time and an era, and it's kind of poking fun at divination to some degree here.

Kind of like, well, yeah, he planted this stuff and then took credit for it by mysterious supernatural powers, but we know how that really works.

People fake it and act like they're magicians, and they're really not. Judah steps forward.

In a powerful moment, he steps forward as the spokesman for his brothers. And what he begins with is extremely interesting to me.

It's even strange to me. If you're anything like me and somebody accuses you of something that you haven't done, what is your first response?

Anybody quick to self -defense? How many of you, if you're just being honest, even when you've done it, you're quick to self -defense?

You're justifying yourself. You know, whatever. But in this context, they have done nothing wrong.

They haven't stolen the cup. So my response to him, I didn't steal your cup.

That might be the first thing that I say. But Judah, Judah, who knows nothing about how this cup has come into his brother's grain sack, confesses guilt.

The Lord, God Almighty, has uncovered our guilt.

Not the guilt of Benjamin. How many of you think that we might be dealing with, psychologically speaking, some brothers who have some baggage?

Who have, boiling just beneath the surface, some sense of guilt?

Before the accusation is barely off of Joseph's lips, he says, we're guilty, we did it. It was us, we did it.

Be merciful. Are you getting what I'm saying in that? And they say,

God has uncovered our guilt. They see whatever punishment they have coming as something that they deserve.

For over 20 years, these men have lived with heavily weighed consciences.

They have lived a lie. They sold their brother and let their father believe that he was torn by wild animals.

And they have kept that locked tight. There's no indication that any of them ever leaked that.

They kept that bottled up for all of these years. How many of you think that that can make a mess of a human heart?

It does. Some of us know firsthand how that kind of guilt can weigh us down.

And Judah admits guilt to something they haven't even stolen. Whatever God brings our way, we deserve.

If enslavement, that's what we deserve. That's great, because that's what we did to our brother. Perfect. That matches.

Consider for yourself what secrets you are harboring in your heart.

The fact of the matter is that lies, secrets, and double lives consume people.

Freedom is only found in confession. That is, admitting that whatever it is that we're harboring is sin.

Freedom is found then in the next step of repentance. That is, turning away from our sin, dealing with it decisively, and rejecting it, and walking the other way, and asking for forgiveness.

Those three steps, confession, repentance, and asking for forgiveness. Asking for forgiveness to God, yes.

But there are some times when that next step, we justify it away, but I don't need to confess it.

I've already dealt with God on that one, so I don't need to tell my wife. I don't need to talk with... There's a really good blog post about that this week.

Maybe I'll put that on the website or something. Just about confessing to those that we actually have hurt in life.

It's not enough just strictly to... How many of you have ever had that, where God wouldn't let you go on something? Like, you lied to somebody, you said something that was wrong, and you actually confessed it to God, and you said,

I know that was wrong, I'm sorry God, I'm going to work on this, I'm going to do better next time. And God was like, uh -uh.

Because you didn't just lie to me. You need to go tell your spouse that you lied.

Any of you ever been there before? And it's like, God just keeps knocking on your heart, saying, have you dealt with that yet?

Until you finally get broken down and you've got to go and make that right. And sometimes those are both the most awkward conversations and the most freeing conversations.

Have you ever identified that in your life? Where it's like, oh, they are going to judge me so bad for this, this is going to be so horrible, and you go and you find grace and forgiveness and mercy.

Let me encourage you that if you have those things in your heart that you're harboring, I'd be willing,

Kyle would be willing, the elders would be willing to help you walk through that. I know that some things are just...

Maybe God right now is pricking your heart on some pretty minor things that you could go and just make right with your spouse on the drive home or whatever, but there might be some serious things that you're dealing with.

Some things that you're kind of like, I don't even know where to start on that. Let's talk.

Let's work through that together. Don't go it alone. Don't let that fester and eat you up inside to the point where you're just like guilty at every turn and you're just feeling weighted down and burdened.

And believe me, I look at this group and I recognize that just numbers and statistics tell me that some of us in here are just being consumed.

Some of us in here are completely guilty. There is no joy in your life.

It is frustrating to get up out of bed. It is frustrating to go to bed at night. And every moment in between, you're weighed down and feeling guilty.

God does not want that for you. That's what the cross is about, is setting us free from those things and confession and repentance and forgiveness are available to anyone who would take that next step.

All of this, by the way, this confession, repentance, asking for forgiveness, and the pain that these brothers are going through is setting us up for a beautiful reconciliation next

Sunday. The text next Sunday in the next chapter is going to be an amazing reconciliation. But Judah offers himself and his brothers as servants.

They're groveling in his speech. He says, we're guilty. We have indeed sinned.

God has uncovered our sin. But Joseph takes the test up a notch.

Now, the steward let them go. He said, you're innocent. But now Joseph himself is going to declare the rest of them innocent.

He says, all of you except for Benjamin are free to go. I just want to enslave your youngest brother. If I can just have him, you guys can go off scot -free, and I will just keep him.

I want to point out he has set up almost identical conditions in which his brother betrayed him here in this context.

So he set it up. He's done a good job. He set up a pretty good test here, and he's orchestrated events in a way that have brought to this point of poignant irony that he's saying, you guys can go.

You can go do whatever you want. All you have to do is betray your younger brother. And, of course, not finishing the sentence, just like you betrayed me.

Have you changed at all? Or will you just walk away just like you did over 20 years ago?

He set the bait, and the question in our text is, will they bite?

But from verses 18 through 29 in our text, you can just peruse that, glance over that. 18 to 29, a pretty big chunk of scripture.

Judah requests the ear of Joseph. He says, can we talk privately for a minute? Judah enters into a private discussion with his younger brother,

Joseph. The one who betrayed is entering into a discussion with the one that he did betray.

This is actually the longest speech monologue, the longest monologue recorded for us in the entire book of Genesis, showing its gravity, its importance.

And we might not think so because, you know, we're used to thinking all the Sunday school classes follow

Joseph and all that. But remember that Judah is the one through whom the promise is going to come. And we see somewhat of a transformation in Judah here.

Judah is extremely diplomatic. He is deferential. He is respectful during this dialogue. He frequently calls

Joseph, Lord. He refers to himself as a servant of Joseph. He refers to his father as a servant of Joseph.

He uses the word father a crazy number of times in this text, showing how important his father has become to him.

Judah is actually concerned for Jacob, his dad. Which might come as a surprise to some of us, but he's actually grown in his concern.

It's interesting to note, as a matter of fact, that when the brothers betrayed Joseph, there was no consideration about how this was going to affect dad in that context.

When they beat him up, they threw him in a pit, they sold him off to slavery, and no mention in that text about their dad's feelings or thoughts.

It's as if when they were beating him up and throwing him in a pit, oh well, you know, dad will get over it.

But now, having gone down this road with their father, Judah doesn't want to do it again. He doesn't want to see this pain replicated.

He has seen 20 years of pain on the face of his father. He says, I don't want that anymore. I can't do that.

Judah explains to Joseph the family dynamic in this speech, which is ironic because he's talking to his brother, who is well aware of the family dynamic.

He says, my father's already lost one son. Well, not quite. And he only has one more son from that wife,

Rachel. If he loses this youngest son, it will likely take his life from him. He will die if he loses

Benjamin. It's said in so many multiple ways that it's very clear that the life of Jacob and his son

Benjamin are bound together, at least in Judah's eyes. And Judah is clear that the only reason they even brought

Benjamin in the first place is because Joseph commanded it. He says, if you hadn't commanded it, Benjamin wouldn't even be here in this situation.

But the point of everything, the point of this entire chapter, the point of this entire text, comes to a point in verses 32 and 33.

Here we're reminded that Judah has put up his own life as a pledge for the life of Benjamin.

He told his father, if I don't return with Benjamin, you can hold it against me for the rest of my life.

You can hate me, you can despise me, you can demand anything you want of me for the rest of my life. Only send

Benjamin with us. And in verse 33,

Judah. Judah, the one who is overly sexualized.

Judah, the one who betrayed his brother and actually was the one who came up with the idea to sell him.

That Judah falls on the grenade. He says, please let your servant remain instead of the boy.

Instead of the boy. Instead of Benjamin.

I will be a servant to my Lord. And let the boy go back to his father with his brothers.

Judah. Anybody surprised? Is anybody surprised at Judah?

I am. This is Judah. This is that Judah. That Judah that we had to put a

PG statement on a little note and pass it out because we were concerned that it was going to be too graphic for your kids.

That Judah. And here he is sacrificing himself instead of Benjamin.

Judah is willing to be a substitute whipping boy for his youngest brother Benjamin. The word instead, by the way,

I emphasize that when I was reading it, is a word conveying substitution. Someone standing instead of someone else.

Someone taking the punishment that someone else deserved. Anybody know where that's going? I think you might have some ideas.

Judah, who suggested selling Joseph, is now willing to be sold in the place of Benjamin.

Judah has changed. In the final verse, he cannot bear to see the pain that returning without Benjamin would cause to his father.

He actually loves his father more than he used to. And here in verse 33 is a complete reversal.

Judah is in the act of sacrifice, making restitution for the wrong he committed against Joseph.

He is actually trying to make it right. Which is one of those steps, really, in repentance as much as possible, when you confess and when you've done wrong, and when you go to that person and ask for their forgiveness, it's a thoroughly great thing for you to say, is there anything

I can do to make this right? And sometimes it means giving money back. Sometimes it means serving that person.

There's all different kinds of things, and it's not to be punished, but it's to say,

I really am sorry. If there's anything I can do to make this right, I'm willing. And in a sense, that's what he is doing here.

He is willing to take the punishment on himself to set his youngest brother free. It's as if in the middle of Judah's life, a grenade fell right there amongst his brothers.

And there's the grenade on the floor, and he's in a split second trying to decide what to do. But the question that I want to pose to all of you is to think this through carefully.

Judah being kind of a picture, an image of Jesus Christ in this, who dropped that grenade amongst his brothers?

Judah. It's like he pulled the grenade out of his satchel, pulled the pin, and dropped it there.

And now he's willing to fall on it. You see the strangeness in the situation, and yet that's our lives.

Often it is we who cause the problems, and then we want to pat ourselves on the back when we solve it, when we fix it, when we try to make it right, and we try to restore it.

But we're destructive. Are you getting what I'm saying? And so what good does it do for the person who...

Is it a good thing to try to restore that? Is it a good thing to try to make it right? Is it a good thing for Judah to fall? It seems to make logical sense.

Who should be the one who suffers as a result of this grenade in the midst of his brothers?

Does it make sense for Judah to fall on it? This seems fair. Are you getting what

I'm saying in that? It seems fair that he is the one. He's just showing a willingness to take care of the mess that he has made.

We saw Judah in the depths of evil in chapters 37 and 38, where he sells his brother, he gets with a prostitute, he makes a mess of his family, and now at some level he has matured into a man who is capable of reflecting

Christ -like sacrifice. And this is where everything's driving for me this morning.

We must fight the tendency that we have in our hearts to only focus on the good in some of these stories and think that Judah is chosen because he does well here, without recognizing the mess that is

Judah. Judah is a real integrated human, sinful, fallen, broken.

Does this event where he is willing to sacrifice himself for his brothers, does that mean he never sins again?

Does that mean he goes forward in perfection and boy, God has taken care of him because he has made the ultimate sacrifice and been willing to take the fall for his brothers.

His story is like yours and mine. It's willy -nilly, it's here and there. We all, if we're honest and we look in our own hearts, we recognize we have moments of brilliance mixed in with times living in the shadows.

We have times of hiding from God and times of basking in His glory. We have times of obedience and times of transgression.

This doesn't... If I ever say anything up front that makes you think that I'm excusing sin or kid -gloving sin or making it like sin is not a big deal, then you've misunderstood me or I've miscommunicated and I want you to come and talk with me if you feel like I've communicated that at any time during a message.

It is not my opinion that we say something like, well, sinners just gonna sin.

That's what sinners do. They just sin and we're okay with that. And boy, you know, I mean, Judah does good things and Judah does bad things and okay, well, we're just integrated humans and we're...

We fight sin. We war against sin. We repent of our sin. We confess our sin.

We work to make restitution where we have sinned. But honesty, honesty should drive us to have a legitimate, true assessment of ourselves and recognizing that we are broken, busted, fallen humans.

And honesty requires that we look past people, we look past ourselves for a Savior because we know we can't save ourselves.

We must look past Judah and his sacrifice in this text to the perfect one.

We cannot hope in Judah because he's just as jacked up as the rest of us. Judah deserves whatever is coming for him.

We must look past the example of Judah and not think of these Old Testament stories like, act like Judah stories, act like Noah stories, act like Moses stories.

But we need more than one to show us the way. We needed someone to be the way.

We needed someone without sin who could be the perfect sacrifice for us. If Judah sacrifices himself for Benjamin, that's just.

That's right. He deserves to be enslaved for what he has done to Joseph. But Jesus didn't deserve any of what he received.

And that is what qualifies him to die for our sins. The one who never dropped a grenade.

The one who never dropped a bomb in the middle of a family. The one who never dropped a bomb in the middle of his, you know, amongst his coworkers in his place of employment.

The one who never wronged others. And that's what qualifies him to fall on your grenade and mine.

So we take in a piece of history this morning, but let's not allow it to just remain history for us.

Because the only reason really to ever study history is to learn from the past in the present so that we can better approach the future.

And in this one interaction on one morning, many, many centuries ago, we find an example of reconciliation.

These brothers who had sinned against their brother paid the price in heavy guilt over the 20 years of their lives.

The lies they lived with weighed them down. Does anybody want to live that way?

We don't want to live that way. And yet, maybe for some of you, the thought of coming out with your struggles and problems seems scarier than keeping them hidden.

But let me encourage you again to bring out the lies. Confess the crud. There is freedom available for anyone who would come to God and ask him for forgiveness and healing.

But that healing and forgiveness is not cheap. It was very expensive. It was costly.

Just like Judah, his distant relative Jesus was willing to sacrifice himself instead of you and I.

We deserved eternal punishment. We deserved eternal separation from God. But Jesus took that hell on himself so that anyone who trusts in his sacrifice on the cross might be saved.

Judah offered to sacrifice himself. He offered that. But Jesus went further and actually became the sacrifice for us.

And that is what we're remembering every week when we come to communion. It's my goal to be sure that every service at Recast comes back to the cross because the cross is the only place where true hope is found.

Every single one of us is capable of amazing acts of self -sacrifice. But equally, we recognize that we are, at any given point, just a couple of decisions away from destroying everything that we love in life, destroying everyone we love in life.

Far too many people have their faith placed in themselves. And as we come to communion, I want us all to consider where is your hope?

Where is my hope? Where is your faith? If your faith is placed firmly on Jesus Christ, then please come to one of the tables that are set up in the four corners of the room while the song plays.

If your trust is placed somewhere other than Christ, then just please sit back and take in this song.

I want you to think about where... I want everyone. I mean, I don't want anybody just kind of passively on this one.

I want everybody thinking it through. Where is my hope? Where is my trust?

Because it's very easy for us to think we can just take care of the grenades on our own. We can just take care of this.

We'll solve all of our problems. We'll fix all of this and we'll just make it all good. And we've got a few years to take care of it.

And we don't know that. There's only one place where all of our crud can be taken care of at once and it's through Jesus Christ on the cross.

So if you're here and you're thinking and you think through that and you do that exercise and you work through it and you're sitting here and the song is playing and you're thinking about communion and you say, you know what?

I don't think my faith and trust is placed in Jesus Christ. I think I'm hoping in a lot of other things. I'm hoping that in my intellect,

I'm hoping in my ability to solve these problems, I'm hoping in my ability to persuade others or to pay my way out of it or whatever.

Consider what is holding you back from trusting Jesus Christ this morning to be your Savior, to be the one who takes the explosive power of sin away from your life.

Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for the work of Jesus Christ and I thank you for even just the models and examples of that through the

Old Testament that wherever we turn, it seems like Christ is there, just the imagery of self -sacrifice and Judah who is willing to take that punishment from Benjamin and that radical change in his heart that can only be really accounted for by you.

Father, I pray that you would help us to be a people who are willing to deal with our sin. Father, I recognize that some of us just have naturally guilty consciences, some of us have reasonable the level of guilt that we experience because we have not reconciled, we have not asked for forgiveness, we have not confessed, we have not repented.

And so, Father, I pray that you would do a work in our hearts to bring us to a place of repentance, that you would help us to keep short accounts of our sin before you, that we would not allow things to string on and on and on, but that we would be quick to come before you and apologize and to go to others and make it right.

I thank you for the cross, I thank you for the opportunity to celebrate what Jesus did for us here in communion as we take the cracker and remember his body that was broken for us instead of us, his blood that was poured out instead of us.

And yet, what we celebrate here is so much more than someone physically dying on a cross, a

Roman cross 2 ,000 years ago, but it is that he took your wrath that is the real amazing thing, that ultimately we deserved punishment from you because we have broken your laws and we have gone against you.

So, Father, I pray that you would help us to rejoice in that amazing freedom that we now have through Jesus Christ.

And if there's any here who have not experienced that freedom, who are still trusting in themselves for salvation, or trusting in other things, or trusting in their church attendance, or trusting in giving to the poor, or trusting in reading the

Bible every morning, or whatever kinds of things that can grab our attention, Father, I pray that you would turn our trust to Jesus Christ in him alone, and it's in his name that I pray.