Genesis 44

¹ Then he commanded the steward of his house, “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, ² 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. ³ As soon as the morning was light, the men were sent away with their donkeys. ⁴ 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? ⁵ Is it not from this that my lord drinks, and by this that he practices divination? You have done evil in doing this.’” ⁶ When he overtook them, he spoke to them these words. ⁷ They said to him, “Why does my lord speak such words as these? Far be it from your servants to do such a thing! ⁸ 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? ⁹ Whichever of your servants is found with it shall die, and we also will be my lord’s servants.” ¹⁰ 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.” ¹¹ Then each man quickly lowered his sack to the ground, and each man opened his sack. ¹² And he searched, beginning with the eldest and ending with the youngest. And the cup was found in Benjamin’s sack. ¹³ Then they tore their clothes, and every man loaded his donkey, and they returned to the city. ¹⁴ When Judah and his brothers came to Joseph’s house, he was still there. They fell before him to the ground. ¹⁵ Joseph said to them, “What deed is this that you have done? Do you not know that a man like me can indeed practice divination?” ¹⁶ 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.” ¹⁷ 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.” ¹⁸ Then Judah went up to him and said, “Oh, my lord, please let your servant speak a word in my lord’s ears, and let not your anger burn against your servant, for you are like Pharaoh himself. ¹⁹ My lord asked his servants, saying, ‘Have you a father, or a brother?’ ²⁰ 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.’ ²¹ Then you said to your servants, ’Bring him down to me, that I may set my eyes on him.’ ²² We said to my lord, ‘The boy cannot leave his father, for if he should leave his father, his father would die.’ ²³ Then you said to your servants, ‘Unless your youngest brother comes down with you, you shall not see my face again.’ ²⁴ “When we went back to your servant my father, we told him the words of my lord. ²⁵ And when our father said, ‘Go again, buy us a little food,’ ²⁶ 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.’ ²⁷ Then your servant my father said to us, ‘You know that my wife bore me two sons. ²⁸ One left me, and I said, “Surely he has been torn to pieces,” and I have never seen him since. ²⁹ If you take this one also from me, and harm happens to him, you will bring down my gray hairs in evil to Sheol.’ ³⁰ “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, ³¹ 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 Sheol. ³² 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.’ ³³ 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. ³⁴ 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.”

Genesis 45

¹ Then Joseph could not control himself before all those who stood by him. He cried, “Make everyone go out from me.” So no one stayed with him when Joseph made himself known to his brothers. ² And he wept aloud, so that the Egyptians heard it, and the household of Pharaoh heard it. ³ And Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph! Is my father still alive?” But his brothers could not answer him, for they were dismayed at his presence.

In Harold Bender’s important little book, The Anabaptist Vision, he says of the early Anabaptist Christians that he “found them men who had surrendered themselves to the doctrine of Christ by ‘Bussfertigkeit.’” What in the world isBussfertigkeit? It is a German word that Fender defines like this: “repentance evidenced by fruit.”[1]

What a beautiful idea! Bussfertigkeit. Repentance evidenced by fruit. That is, lives so radically changed that repentance of all that we used to be is authenticated thereby. Bussfertigkeit.

This is the biblical ideal. Jesus said, “Bear fruit in keeping with repentance” (Matthew 3:8).

We should be a Bussfertigkeit people, a people of changed lives, a repentant people, a people bearing fruit. Our sins may always call out to us, but we must not return to them. They must remain in the past: repented of and covered by the blood of Jesus.

We can go one step further. We can say that we know we have truly repented when we use the occasion of our temptations to move closer to Jesus and to model His life more fully in and through our own lives. This is the fruit that repentance should bring. Our lives need not be one begrudging slog toward obedience after another. We can magnify Christ in our lives even and especially when we are tempted to turn from Him and return to our sin.

I would like, in fact, to offer this as my thesis this morning: We are truly freed from the tyranny of our sins when we not only resist but also use the occasion of temptation to magnify Jesus.

I would like to argue that we see this evidenced in the lives of Joseph’s brothers in Genesis 44-45. It is not just that they turn away from their sin. It is also that they show an awareness of the heart of the God in whom they professed to believe. Though these brothers did not know the name of Jesus yet, they will demonstrate the heart of Christ in this amazing chapter in how they respond to their brother Benjamin’s predicament.

The moment of crisis.

Once again, Joseph creates a moment of crisis for his brothers. Having completed their feast together and have reunited his eleven brothers with each other, Joseph, still unrecognized by the brothers, has one more lesson to teach them.

¹ Then he commanded the steward of his house, “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, ² 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. ³ As soon as the morning was light, the men were sent away with their donkeys. ⁴ 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? ⁵ Is it not from this that my lord drinks, and by this that he practices divination? You have done evil in doing this.’” ⁶ When he overtook them, he spoke to them these words. ⁷ They said to him, “Why does my lord speak such words as these? Far be it from your servants to do such a thing! ⁸ 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? ⁹ Whichever of your servants is found with it shall die, and we also will be my lord’s servants.” ¹⁰ 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.” ¹¹ Then each man quickly lowered his sack to the ground, and each man opened his sack. ¹² And he searched, beginning with the eldest and ending with the youngest. And the cup was found in Benjamin’s sack. ¹³ Then they tore their clothes, and every man loaded his donkey, and they returned to the city.

As the brothers prepare to leave, Joseph once again has money put in the men’s grain sacks. This time, he adds his own, personal, silver cup in Benjamin’s sack. He then sends a posse after them the next day to overtake them and accuse them of theft. Upon being overtaken, the brothers are utterly confused and launch their protest. They argue that they have already proved their honesty by returning the money that they first found in their sacks and that they therefore certainly would not steal the Egyptian lord’s silver cup. They then up the stakes by confidently asserting that “[w]hichever of your servants is found with it shall die, and we also will be my lord’s servants.” So they offer the death of the one who has the cup and they offer themselves for enslavement if they are found guilty of the charge. They are at this point, of course, unaware of what Joseph has done.

But then the moment of crisis comes into view. The sacks are searched and, behold, the cup is found in Benjamin’s sack! The brothers lament in despair and then return to Egypt.

Perhaps we are tempted to think of Joseph as cruel at this point. I want to show, however, that what Joseph is doing is creating crisis moments in order both to help and reveal the brothers’ return to God. We saw in chapter 43 that the brothers restrained themselves from lashing out at Benjamin when he was shown favoritism at the feast as Joseph had been shown favoritism as a boy. That was a positive sign! Now we will see that it is not just that they refrain from being jealous; it is also that they have genuinely come to care for their father and their younger brother. In other words, they have moved slowly through our story from a posture of selfishness to one of selflessness.

The evidence of true repentance and change.

Judah puts himself forward before Joseph as the spokesman of the group. What he says here really is quite remarkable and shows amazing evidence of a transformed heart.

¹⁴ When Judah and his brothers came to Joseph’s house, he was still there. They fell before him to the ground. ¹⁵ Joseph said to them, “What deed is this that you have done? Do you not know that a man like me can indeed practice divination?” ¹⁶ 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.”

This is a critically important statement! Judah admits their collective guilt. Robert Alter correctly sees in these words not an admission of guilt in stealing the cup (after all, they were innocent in that matter!) but rather an admission of their earlier sin against Joseph and Jacob. Alter writes:

On the surface, [Judah] is simply conceding guilt as his only recourse because one of his brothers had been caught with the evidence and he has no counterarguments to offer. But he speaks out of the consciousness of a real guilt incurred by him and his brothers more than two decades earlier…and thus expresses a real sense that God has at last exacted retribution for that act of fraternal betrayal.[2]

Back in chapter 42 they had begun to come to terms with their collective guilty, if you will recall:

²¹ Then they said to one another, “In truth we are guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the distress of his soul, when he begged us and we did not listen. That is why this distress has come upon us.” ²² And Reuben answered them, “Did I not tell you not to sin against the boy? But you did not listen. So now there comes a reckoning for his blood.”

Here the conviction seems to have grown in force and depth. They see now the devastating effects of their sin (i.e., “…how can we clear ourselves?”) and realize that their primary dilemma has less to do with this powerful Egyptian leader than with God Himself (i.e., “God has found out the guilt of your servants.”). And, interestingly, they do not try to avoid their punishment (i.e., “behold, we are my lord’s servants, both we and he also in whose hand the cup has been found.).

This is brokenness.

This is repentance.

Heinrich Arnold has written:

Repentance is not an easy thing: it demands hard struggle…

Which of us takes our struggles with sin so seriously that we fight with loud cries and tears?…

Repentance does not mean self-torment. It may turn our lives upside down—in fact, it must—and at times we will feel as if the entire foundation has been swept away from under our lives. But even then we must not see everything as hopeless or black. God’s judgment is God’s goodness, and it cannot be separated from his mercy and compassion. Our goal must be to remove everything that is opposed to God from our hearts, so he can cleanse us and bring us new life—that is, so he can fill us with Christ.  It is a wonderful gift when a person truly repents. A heart of stone becomes a heart of flesh, and every emotion, thought, and feeling changes. One’s entire outlook changes, because God comes so close to the soul.[3]

This is what is happening in our text. Their hearts have changed. They have laid down their arms. They are guilty. They are ripe for judgment. They throw themselves at the feet of Joseph, yes, but, more significantly, at the feet of God. Joseph, however, is not done with his test.

¹⁷ 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.”

The brothers, having embraced their guilt, called for a collective punishment. Joseph, answering from a human perspective, says instead that only the one guilty of the theft of the cup will pay. What Judah does next is beautiful to see.

¹⁸ Then Judah went up to him and said, “Oh, my lord, please let your servant speak a word in my lord’s ears, and let not your anger burn against your servant, for you are like Pharaoh himself. ¹⁹ My lord asked his servants, saying, ‘Have you a father, or a brother?’ ²⁰ 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.’ ²¹ Then you said to your servants, ‘Bring him down to me, that I may set my eyes on him.’ ²² We said to my lord, ‘The boy cannot leave his father, for if he should leave his father, his father would die.’ ²³ Then you said to your servants, ‘Unless your youngest brother comes down with you, you shall not see my face again.’ ²⁴ “When we went back to your servant my father, we told him the words of my lord. ²⁵ And when our father said, ‘Go again, buy us a little food,’ ²⁶ 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.’ ²⁷ Then your servant my father said to us, ‘You know that my wife bore me two sons. ²⁸ One left me, and I said, “Surely he has been torn to pieces,” and I have never seen him since. ²⁹ If you take this one also from me, and harm happens to him, you will bring down my gray hairs in evil to Sheol.’ ³⁰ “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, ³¹ 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 Sheol. ³² 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.’ ³³ 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. ³⁴ 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.”

Genesis 45

^1a-b Then Joseph could not control himself before all those who stood by him. He cried, “Make everyone go out from me.”

The heart breaks with pity and joy to see this! Pity at Judah’s utter sense of brokenness and guilt and shame and joy at what Judah does as a result: he offers himself as a substitute for Benjamin.

Judah, innocent in the affair of the silver cup, offers to take Benjamin’s punishment upon himself.

Judah is willing to suffer so that (a) Benjamin can be free and (b) his father Jacob can have joy before he dies.

Bussfertigkeit.

“Repentance evidenced by fruit.”

And Joseph breaks at the sight of it.

Judah brings their journey of repentance before their savior, Joseph, to completion. How? By finally—finally—reaching the end of himself and demonstrating the very love of God for others. That is, by demonstrating the very heart of the Jesus whose name Judah does not know but whose heart he here is magnifying.

We are truly freed from the tyranny of our sins when we not only resist but also use the occasion of temptation to magnify Jesus.

At this point, regardless of what happens to Judah, he is now free! He is free of his sins and of his shame and of guilt because he has repented with sincerity and brokenness and true contrition.

This, church, is what it means to repent. It is not merely to ask Jesus to forgive you for something you have done wrong. It is to show that you have so rejected your sin and given yourself to Christ that His life is now magnified in and through your redeemed and transformed heart.

Judah is willing to lay down his life for Benjamin.

Joseph, their lowercase “s” savior, decides the time to reveal himself has come.

The revelation of the savior.

Are you ready? Watch. This.

Genesis 45

¹ Then Joseph could not control himself before all those who stood by him. He cried, “Make everyone go out from me.” So no one stayed with him when Joseph made himself known to his brothers. ² And he wept aloud, so that the Egyptians heard it, and the household of Pharaoh heard it. ³ And Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph! Is my father still alive?” But his brothers could not answer him, for they were dismayed at his presence.

Ah! There it is. Joseph wails and then Joseph reveals. “I am Joseph!”

The brothers are utterly gobsmacked and stand in stunned amazement.

John Chrysostom, over 1600 years ago, marveled at these verses and said to his congregation:

I cannot but be amazed here at this blessed man’s remarkable fortitude in putting up with the strain of concealing his identity to this point and not letting on. And [I] am particularly surprised at the way they could stand there and gape without their soul parting company with their body, without their going out of their mind or hiding themselves in the ground.[4]

Indeed! Indeed! How on earth did they not all have heart attacks at this revelation! They seem to have come close: “But his brothers could not answer him, for they were dismayed at his presence.” Poor guys! How on earth could they be expected to process this?

But here it was: their savior was the one they had rejected. Their savior was the one they had wronged. Their savior was the one they had resented.

And this rejected, wronged, resented savior was now going to set them free. Why? Because they broke under the weight of their sin and guilt and finally showed that they were ready to acknowledge the Lord God.

This was when Joseph revealed himself.

He did not reveal himself when they were stupidly protesting some chapters back that they were honest men. Nor did he reveal himself when they glossed over their crimes by making some veiled allusion to having lost a brother some time back.

No, when they were playing games he remained concealed. But here, when they admitted their guilt and were willing to be slaves in a foreign land, their savior, Joseph, revealed himself!

Good news before the good news! The gospel before the gospel! Jesus demonstrated before Jesus incarnated! The story of the Savior (uppercase!) in types and shadows!

For so it is with Jesus. So long as we play games with our sins we miss His presence and His salvation. But when we truly repent, He comes to us with grace and mercy and revelation. We see Him as He is and begin a lifetime of seeing Him with more and more clarity!

What a Savior!

What a God we serve!

All hail the King of Kings, who gives deliverance to the captives, freedom to those in bondage, forgiveness to the guilty, and the greatest present—Himself!—to those who do not deserve Him—us!

If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:6-9)

Oh what a Savior we have!

 

[1] Bender, Harold. The Anabaptist Vision (p. 16). CrossReach Publishing. Kindle Edition.

[2] Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses. The Hebrew Bible. vol. 1 (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co., 2019), p.174n16.

[3] Arnold, J. Heinrich. Freedom from Sinful Thoughts (pp. 56-57). Plough Publishing House. Kindle Edition.

[4] Mark Sheridan, ed., Genesis 12-50. Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. Old Testament II. Gen. ed. Thomas C. Oden. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002), p.290.