Return & Revelation // Genesis 44:14-45:3 // Jeff Myers

Let us ask the Holy Spirit's grace on the reading of God's word.

God of mercy, you promised never to break your covenant with us.

Amid all the changing words of our generation, speak your eternal word that does not change.

Then may we respond to your gracious promises with faithful and obedient lives.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, amen.

A reading from Genesis 44, verse 14 through 45, verse 3.

Joseph was still in the house when Judah and his brothers came in, and they threw themselves to the ground before him.

Joseph said to them, 'What is this you have done?

Don't you know that a man like me can find things out by divination?'

'What can we say to my lord?'

Judah replied.

Replied, 'What can we say?

How can we prove our innocence?

God has uncovered your servant's guilt.

We are now your lord's slaves—we ourselves and the one who was found to have the cup.'

But Joseph said, 'Far be it from me to do such a thing!

Only the man who was found to have the cup will become my slave.

The rest of you, go back to your father in peace.

Then Judah went up to him and said, pardon your servant, my lord.

Let me speak a word to my lord.

Do not be angry with your servant, though you are equal to Pharaoh himself.

My lord asked his servants, do you have a father or a brother?

And we answered, we have an aged father, and there is a young son born to him in his old age.

His brother is dead, and he is the only one of his mother's sons left, and his father loves him.'

Then you said to your servants, 'Bring him down to me so I can see him for myself.'

And we said to my lord, 'The boy cannot leave his father.

If he leaves him, his father will die.'

But you told your servant, 'Unless your youngest brother comes down with you, you will not see my face again.'

When we went back to your servant my father, we told him what my lord had said.

Then our father said, go back and buy a little more food.

But we said, we cannot go down.

Only if our youngest brother is with us will we go.

We cannot see the man's face unless our youngest brother is with us.

Your servant, my father, said to us, you know that my wife bore me two sons.

One of them went away from me, and I said, he has surely been torn to pieces, and I have not seen him since.

If you take this one from me too and harm comes to him, you will bring my gray head down to grave and misery.

So now, if the boy is not with us when I go back to your servant my father, and if my father, whose life is

closely bound up with the boy's life, sees that the boy isn't there, he will die.

Your servants will bring the gray head of our father down to the grave in sorrow.

Your servant guaranteed the boy's safety to my father.

I said, if I do not bring him back to you, I will bear the blame before you, my father, all my life.

Now then, please let your servant remain here as my lord's slave in place of the boy, and let the boy return with his brothers.

How can I go back to my father if the boy is not with me?

me.

No, do not let me see the misery that would come on my father.'

Then Joseph could no longer control himself before all his attendants, and he cried out, 'Have everyone leave my presence.'

So there was no one with Joseph when he made himself known to his brothers.

And he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard him, and Pharaoh's household heard about it.

Joseph said to his brothers, 'Brothers, I am Joseph.

Is my father still living?'

But his brothers were not able to answer him because they were terrified at his presence.

This is the word of the Lord.

The test of Joseph's brothers continues.

Last week we considered how Joseph is like a master chess player, designing all of his schemes and

strategies for his brothers to be put in the same situation they were in before when they abandoned him

and sold him off as a slave.

And when they abandoned Joseph, they have now the opportunity to abandon another brother,

Simeon, who's been left in prison.

And just like when they abandoned Joseph 22 years before, they're given bread and silver and they go on their way.

They say they're honest men, Joseph had thought, but can they be trusted?

What you just heard Rebecca read is the climax of the entire Joseph story.

We sort of jumped right into the center of it, but connecting the dots from last week's text to this week's

text, we see that the testing continues all the way through.

Joseph's brothers come to their home in Canaan and they explain everything to their father Jacob.

They've left their brother Simeon in prison with the Pharaoh's servant Joseph.

The man, the lord of the land, they tell Jacob, spoke harshly with us.

He accused us of being spies.

'And we said, "No, we're honest men; we've never been spies.

We are 12 brothers, sons of one father.

One brother is no more."' They don't explain that part.

'And the youngest is at home with our father.

But then the Lord of the land said, "Here's how you will prove that you are honest men and not spies: when you go back to

Canaan, bring your youngest brother with you."' 'And then I will know that you're true to your word.'

And as they tell their story, each man opens his sack at home in Canaan, and they find that the silver that they thought they had left in

Egypt has been packed with them.

I like to imagine it was 20 pieces of silver, but we're not told how much.

And meanwhile, Jacob the father refuses to accept this news.

You have bereaved me of my children.

Joseph is no more.

I know that you guys have nothing to do with that.

Simeon is no more.

And now you want to take Benjamin?

All of this has come against me, Jacob says.

Reuben, the eldest brother, chimes in.

Remember that Reuben is on the outs with his father because he's slept with his father's concubine, Bilhah.

Gilgal.

We're not sure why, but since then we see that his leadership is ineffective and slipping through his fingers.

And here Reuben makes a terrible suggestion: "If I don't bring Benjamin back, you can kill both of my children."

More sons of Jacob to be killed?

Jacob doesn't even entertain the suggestion.

"My son will not go with you."

His brother is dead, and he is the only one I have left.

Here are 9 of Jacob's sons standing before him, and Jacob says Benjamin is the only one that really matters.

Benjamin is now the new favorite son, the only surviving son of Rachel.

The answer is no, according to Jacob.

But the famine gets worse.

They eat up all their bread.

And finally Jacob tells them, "You must go down to Egypt."

And now Judah enters the story once more.

Remember that every action we've seen from Judah up to this point in the story is selfishly motivated and

aggressive.

He has been the effective the protective brother in his leadership.

He's been the powerful brother in the story, but he's been the violent and selfish brother.

And every action he's had has led to devastating results.

Judah was the one who heartlessly suggests to his brothers, "Why don't we sell Joseph because there's no

profit in his death?"

And he puts it slightly different.

We can't kill him after all.

Our own flesh and blood.

Judah was the one who denied his daughter-in-law Tamar the right to have children after

her husband died.

And then, after mistaking her for a prostitute, he hypocritically condemns her to be burned to death

for being sexually immoral.

And when Tamar was brought out to be burned, do you remember what she was carrying with her?

with her.

3 objects that were given as a down payment, a pledge by Judah for her

services.

And when Judah sees this, the down payment, his heart breaks.

When he sees the pledge, he has a change of heart and realizes his guilt.

It's the turning point for Judah.

He realizes Tamar's righteousness, and since then Tamar has saved Judah's line

by bearing him two sons.

And that was the last thing we heard from Judah.

So what kind of man is he now?

We saw repentance in that episode, but will that repentance last, we ask?

Did he really have a change of heart when he was humbled?

All right, spoiler Spoiler alert: when we read the rest of the Bible, friends, we learn that it's Judah's family that is going to be the one through whom

the Messiah comes, the King.

We call this the Joseph story that we've been reading, but really it is as if the Joseph story is a vehicle

through which Judah's line comes to prominence.

Judah will become the centerpiece of this whole narrative.

Indeed, today we're coming to the very center of the book of Genesis.

of the Joseph story.

It's the pivotal moment and the point of tension, and all of it surrounds a long speech given by Judah

that we just heard in full.

One of the longest speeches in the entire Genesis scroll.

And now back to the story.

Jacob's sons and family, they're out of bread.

It's time to head to Egypt.

And now we hear from Judah.

Dad, just a reminder, can't go to Egypt without Benjamin.

Why did you tell that man that you had another brother?

Jacob asks.

Because the man asked all sorts of questions, the brothers chime in.

Is your father alive?

He asked us.

Do you have another brother?

In fact, Joseph asked no questions like this.

The brothers in their nervousness Reuben just overshared a little too much.

And then Judah says,

"Send the boy with me so that we will live and not die, both we and you

and our little ones."

Rather than Reuben's suggestion of killing the little ones, Judah is defending

this protection as bringing future life to their little ones and the next generation.

Now Jacob is in a familiar position.

He's seen it before in his own family.

Abraham,

he has already lost a son, the older of two.

As Abraham lost Ishmael, so Jacob lost Joseph.

And he was the youngest one who was left.

And now he's faced with the decision that will mean life or death, a willingness to let that son go.

As the brothers journey to Egypt, they are journeying to a new Mount Moriah.

They're taking the youngest beloved son with them, not knowing if he will return.

But we know what happens at Mount Moriah.

We've read that story of Abraham and Isaac.

Isaac is not sacrificed because there was a substitute instead.

Here Judah offers himself as a substitute.

I will be the down payment, the pledge for Benjamin's 'If I don't bring him back to you,

let me bear the blame forever.'

The down payment items that had been the point of change of heart for Judah has changed him so

much that now it's produced a willingness for him to become the down payment for his brother out of love for his family.

It's a substitutionary sacrifice.

When ancient Jewish readers meditated on the Genesis scroll for centuries, Judah was clearly the prominent line.

His family was going to be the line that the Messiah comes through.

The Lion of Judah, he was called.

The family of kings, the holder of the scepter, and the one who bears the throne.

The family of God's chosen and anointed Christ Messiah.

Messiah who would be called the Son of God.

They all knew the prophecies.

And there were some marvelous expectations attached to Judah that were more than enough for worshipers of the Lord to anticipate.

But the idea of a substitute, a pledge of a life for another, that

theme in the Bible seemed to have nothing to do with the Messiah

prophecies.

How could the strong lion of Judah become a substitute sacrifice and still be the strong lion?

But the Jewish men and women who lived in Galilee centuries later, they steeped

themselves in these Bible passages like Genesis about substitution.

And they saw these Bible passages vividly fulfilled in the life and death and teaching of a

local rabbi.

They believed that Jesus of Nazareth was the King and Messiah and the substitute,

just as Judah becomes the chosen line because he was willing to substitute himself as a loving sacrifice.

A man named Paul writes, For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin,

so that we might become the righteousness of God.

God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

A man named John Mark writes about the substitute when he quotes Jesus saying, for even the Son of Man came not to be served, but

to serve and give his life as ransom for many others.

A fisherman named Peter writes, Jesus himself bore our sins in his body on the tree so

that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.

And have we noticed how many popular stories we've read or seen or been raised in that have an

undeniable compelling element of substitutionary sacrifice.

When one character steps into the gap to give his or her life for another character, and we see that as praiseworthy.

From Terminator to Titanic.

From Hunger Games to Harry Potter.

From Star Wars to Seven Pounds.

And why are these stories so compelling to us?

Because they're pointing out to us the real story underneath every one of them.

C.S.

Lewis calls this the true myth of Christianity.

He recounts his own conversion to Christianity.

C.S.

Lewis had two friends named Hugo Dyson and J.R.R.

Tolkien that led him to Christ.

And one day recounting his conversion, Theology of Persuasion, he writes to a friend about a long afternoon where he sat with Dyson and Tolkien,

and they spoke for hours about the story of the Bible, comparing it to the stories that they love.

And here's what Lewis says:

Now, what Dyson and Tolkien showed me was this: that if I met the idea of sacrifice in a non-Christian

story, I didn't mind it at all.

Again, if I met the idea of a God sacrificing himself to himself, I liked it very much because it was mysteriously moving

to me.

The reason was that in non-Christian pagan stories, I was prepared to feel the myth as

profound and suggestive of meanings beyond my grasp, even though I could not say in

cold, told prose what it meant.

So Lewis is saying something happened inside of me that was compelling, but I couldn't put it into words why it was compelling.

Now, the story of Christ, he goes on, is simply a true myth, a myth

working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really

happened.

Friends, the idea that your guilt can be transferred onto someone else who loves you and is willing to pay for it

is a true myth.

The hope that perfect innocence can be yours without cost is the real story.

The fact that someone loves you enough to give their life for you is exactly what the events of history show.

This is how we know what love is.

Jesus Christ laid down his life for you, and now we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.

Here Judah is offering his life as a substitute for a brother, and it is this gesture of love

that causes his father Jacob to

agree.

Okay, he says.

So the brothers go down to Egypt with Benjamin and with a generous offering.

For some reason, we see the same items that the Ishmaelite slave traders were carrying with them— gum

and balm— being taken down as an offering to Joseph.

We've seen this before.

And they enter the house of Joseph.

Joseph receiving the brothers who betrayed him and sold him into slavery.

He washes their feet.

He feeds their animals and he serves them a meal.

But even though we, the readers, have a hint of Judah's selfless love toward his brothers, Joseph has not yet

seen this.

He's still testing them to see what is in their hearts.

Place cards.

So he sets the place cards out on the table and the brothers, to their amazement, see that the place cards are set in

perfect order of birth, descending from oldest to youngest.

Will Joseph see the same jealousy and rivalry and contention over who is the greatest and who gets the inheritance?

He tests them even more by giving the youngest greatest brother a portion 5 times larger than all the other brothers.

That doesn't seem to do anything.

So what's next?

They start drinking.

And they continue drinking.

You know how to really find out who a person is?

You get them talking without inhibition, and a little wine is the lubrication.

But nothing of the older brother's treachery seems to come out.

So it's time for a final test.

Joseph takes his servant aside.

"Send them away with as much food as they can carry and put their money back in the mouth of their sack.

But take my cup, the silver cup, and put it in the sack of the youngest one."

And the servant does exactly what he's told.

The next morning, he runs after the brothers and yells out, 'Why have you repaid evil for good?

Why have you stolen what my lord drinks from?

Don't you know that my lord practices divination?

He knows what you've done.'

'Absolutely not,' the brothers say.

'If someone has stolen my lord's cup, let him be killed, and the rest of us will become servants.'

'Good,' the servant says.

'The one who has the cup will become a servant, and the rest of you can go I'm free.

Did you notice that?

It's like, yes, exactly what you said, just not.

And then a search was made.

The tension in the passage shows the oldest brother opening his sack and then the second oldest, all the way down to the youngest.

And meanwhile, Joseph waits at home

asking the question, who's going to return to my house?

I've told my servant that only the one with the cup will be my slave.

The rest are free.

Will the servant only come back with Benjamin, or will the brothers stay loyal?

The text tells us that Judah and his brothers came to Joseph's house and fell on the ground.

This is now the third time Joseph's brothers The brothers have bowed down before him, the number of completion.

The brothers have proved their humility before Joseph, but Judah now needs to say something.

Having one of the longest speeches in the book of Genesis right here at the center of the story, he says, "What shall we say?

What shall we speak to my lord?

How can we clear our ourselves.

God has found our guilt.

Speaking to you is like speaking to Pharaoh himself.

You have complete power to do whatever you want to us.

But when we return home without our youngest brother, our father will die from sorrow because his

life is bound up in the boy's life.

I have become a down payment A pledge, a substitute for my brother.

I will bear the blame if I do not return him.

Now please let me remain here as your slave and let the boy return.

It is this moment where the story breaks.

It's this moment of substitutionary sacrifice where Joseph unmasks.

He's convinced finally, and he begins weeping and crying, "I am Joseph.

Is my father still alive?"

See, at this moment, Joseph's hidden hopes of peace with his brothers,

his exposure and a willingness to embrace them, his complete honesty before him, before them,

is now finally possible.

He surrenders all of his schemes, all of his chess playing, and he throws himself toward his mystified family.

Why?

Because he is convinced by a compelling substitute, a sacrificial love.

Brothers and sisters, our hopes of perfect peace with with one another.

Our hopes of total vulnerability with the God of the universe and one another, our hopes

of reconciliation with neighbor and enemy, our hopes of reunification are realized.

Why?

By the same mechanism, a substitutionary life.

loving sacrifice.

It is the story under the story.

It is the myth come true.

Amen.

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we praise you for Jesus.

And we thank you for how compelling

This story is.

Because it is unveiling the reality of Jesus Christ and what you've done all through the cosmos by his sacrifice.

We thank you for your willingness, O God who loves us, to step into the gap, to take the sacrifice that should have

been our death, our alienation from you.

But Lord, in your goodness, you wrote the end of the story before we even knew what kind of situation we were in.

So Lord, we marvel at this gracious gift, and we pray that just as every compelling story should be,

this story would be in our hearts and on our lips to declare it to a world that has not yet heard it.

And we give you praise in the name of Jesus our Savior.

Amen.