FBC Daily Devotional – Feb. 12, 2021

Well, a good Friday to you. Coming to the end of the week and looking forward to the weekend, looking forward to the Lord's Day and the trust we can gather together as God's people and worship Him on the Lord's Day.

If you're not able to join in person, then I encourage you to watch the live stream of the Sunday morning service at 1030 and you can catch that on Facebook Live or YouTube or the church website faithbaptiststerling .com.

Joseph’s Long Separation and the Return of His Brothers

Any of these venues you can watch the live stream. So hope you'll do that. I hope most of all that you can attend church in person. But anyway, 22 years, that's a long time for Joseph to have been separated from his family, assuming that his family really didn't want to have anything to do with him anymore, except for his father, of course, but his brothers, they had sold him into slavery and Joseph had pretty much gotten kind of forgotten about it.

I mean, not forgotten, but he put it all behind him and moved on, if you will. And we know that because of the names that he gave his two children that were born to him in Egypt. He basically expressed through the names of those children.

All right. I'm I'm done with Canaan. I'm done with my family. I've got family here. I'm moving on. But then these brothers show up because they're hungry. They need food and all the past comes back to him, the dreams that he had as a teenager.

22 years earlier, those dreams of his brothers bowing down before him, and here they are in front of him, bowing down before him. There's got to be a great deal of perplexity within Joseph. How do I handle this situation?

What these brothers did to him was horrific. It was horrible. Have they changed? Joseph had a younger brother, Benjamin. Have they treated him the same way? Because Benjamin became Dad's favorite when Joseph was gone, and the youngest child already was experiencing Jacob's favor, even when Joseph was still there as a teenager.

Have they changed any? Have they treated Benjamin the same way that they treated him? Do they despise him? Do they despise their father? Have these boys, these brothers of mine, or grown men, of course by now, have they changed at all?

Are they still so malicious? So what may seem to be a cruel series of events that Joseph put his brothers through is actually a very reasonable thing for him to do. He, on the one hand, showed them great grace.

He showed them kindness. He put their money back in the sack, and when they came back the second time to buy more grain, they tried to give the money again, and they said, no, I mean, God put that money in your sack.

It's not ours. And, you know, Joseph didn't have to do that, but he did. But what he was doing was putting these brothers through a time of testing to discover. Have they repented of the sin that they committed against him?

There's no way that they could confess that sin to him. They didn't think he was even alive. So they couldn't have repented and sought him out. But have they had a change of heart? You remember back in Genesis 38 and Judah's sin with Tamar and how out of place that seemed to be?

But in the end of that scenario, Judah with Tamar, Judah came to the end of himself. He expressed a broken heart of repentance, declaring that Tamar was more righteous than he was. And that heart is what we needed to see in Genesis 38 because it sets up the stage for what's coming in the rest of this story.

Judah’s Admission of Guilt and the Test of Benjamin

Back in chapter 42, verse 21, at the first visit that the brothers had when they came to Joseph looking for grain, and they were being accused of spies, it was Judah who spoke up for, he spoke up to his brothers and says, you know, this conflict, this accusation that we're receiving as being spies, this is retribution.

This is God judging us for our sin against our brother. Joseph heard that. He heard what Judah had said, but were they really repentant? Do they really have a change of heart? So now the brothers have come back for the second time, they've gotten more grain, they brought Benjamin, the brother Simeon that was left in Egypt until they came back, he's been released, and now they all have their, they've experienced this, you know, they've experienced this great grace again of having the money put back in their sacks, but this time Joseph puts the silver cup in their sack as well and uses that to become the next test.

Off the brothers go, then they get chased by the officials, the sack is taken down, sacks are taken down off of the animals, and each one is searched, looking for that cup of Joseph's, and it's found with Benjamin.

The penalty for that is Benjamin is to become a slave for the rest of his life, a slave to Joseph in Egypt. That's the stated penalty. All again, all of this is set up, is a set up to get these brothers to come back so Joseph can see what's really in their heart.

Will they come to defend Benjamin? Or will they just say, okay, you know, that's the way it is. Sorry, Ben, see you later. I mean, after all, he's the favored son. Remember what they did to the favored son 22 years ago?

Will they treat the newly favored son the same way? Well, they all head back to Joseph's house, and they come before Joseph, and it is Judah that is, again, the spokesperson. And Judah, in verse 16, is admitting guilt.

Listen to what he says. He says, what shall we say to my Lord, speaking to Joseph? What shall we speak, or how can we clear ourselves? God has found out the guilt of your servants, plural. What's he talking about there?

What's he referring to? Not the silver cup in Benjamin's sack, but to their treatment of Joseph 22 years earlier. And they were convinced that they had sentenced him to death. And then he goes on to say, behold, we are my Lord's servants, both we and he also, in whose hand the cup has been found.

What Judah is expressing here is the guilt that he's been carrying with him for these 22 years, and that, okay, our guilt has been found out, our sin's been found out, God's judging us for this sin. All right, we're going to submit to a life of servitude.

Joseph says, not so fast, not so fast. You all can go, just Benjamin's going to stay here. But then Judah expresses something else that is really kind of remarkable. Remember the hypocrisy after the brothers went back to dad with Joseph's coat stained in blood?

The brothers all set this up to give the illusion that Joseph had been killed by a wild animal. They present the coat to Jacob, and Jacob is overwhelmed with remorse and grief, and they pretend to be consoling him.

You remember that? Well now, Judah has a radically different attitude toward his father. Listen to what he says. He says, oh Lord, my Lord Joseph, please let your servant speak a word in your ears. Let not your anger burn against your servant, for you are like Pharaoh himself.

And then he goes on to say, you asked us about our father, and we told you we have a father. He's an old man, and we have a younger brother, this child of his old age. His brother is dead. Speaking of Joseph, he thinks he's dead.

His brother is dead, and he alone is left of his mother's children, Benjamin, and his father loves him. But now listen to what he says. 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. And then you said to your servants, unless your younger brother comes, and so forth. And what Jude is expressing here now is, if we leave Benjamin here, this will bring dad's head down to death.

We can't do this. This would bring tremendous grief upon him. Do you see the flip? Do you see the repentance, the change of mind, the change of heart? This is what repentance and conversion looks like.

Repentance, Substitution, and Restored Relationship

So it's finally expressed in verse 34 of chapter 44, when Judah says, 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. Oh, please don't let this happen.

And now, Judah does one other thing that expresses tremendous heart of repentance. He substitutes himself. He says, let me stay in the place of Benjamin. I'll stay. Send Benjamin on home. And finally, after all of this, Joseph is satisfied.

Joseph, hearing all this, will reveal himself to his brothers, satisfied that they have changed. You see, the point of all this is, a real heart of repentance will demonstrate a changed life, as is the case with Judah.

And it is not, it is not unchristian to expect that someone who has wronged you greatly, if there is to be any reconciliation and restoration of the relationship, it is not at all wrong to expect that that person who has wronged you truly repents before the relationship can be restored.

Well, I trust the Lord will use this and be a blessing in your life today. Our Father and our God, help us to see in the life of Judah a picture of what repentance really looks like, and true conversion, a change of heart, a change of mind, a change of life.

And I pray that we would exhibit that same spirit, that same heart in our lives, we pray in Jesus' name and for his sake. Amen. All right. Well, have a good rest of your Friday and have a wonderful weekend.

I trust the Lord will bless you in it, and you will be able to worship together with God's people on the Lord's day. Have a good day. God bless.