Turn with me in your Bibles to Genesis chapter 44. Subject of the text for the sermon is going to be verse 16 down to the end. We'll read the entire chapter though for the preparatory narrative that leads us to the great climax of our story. Genesis chapter 44, I'll read the entire chapter. And he commanded the steward of his house, saying, 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. Also put my cup, the silver cup, in the mouth of the sack of the youngest, and his grain money. So he did according to the word that Joseph had spoken. As soon as the morning dawned, the men were sent away, they and their donkeys. When they had gone out of the city and were not yet far off, Joseph said to his steward, Get up, follow the men, and when you overtake them, say to them, Why have you repaid evil for good? Is not this the one from which my Lord drinks, and with which he indeed practices divination? You have done evil in so doing. So he overtook them, and he spoke to them these same words. And they said to him, why does my Lord say these words? Far be it from us that your servants should do such a thing. Look, we brought back to you from the land of Canaan the money which we found in the mouth of our sacks. How then could we steal silver or gold from your Lord's house? With whomever of your servants it is found, let him die, and we also will be my Lord's slaves. And he said, now also let it be according to your words. He with whom it is found shall be my slave, and you shall be blameless. Then each man speedily let down his sack to the ground, and each opened his sack. So he searched. He began with the oldest and left off with the youngest, and the cup was found in Benjamin's sack. Then they tore their clothes, and each man loaded his donkey and returned to the city. So Judah and his brothers came to Joseph's house, and he was still there. And they fell before him on the ground. And Joseph said to them, what deed is this you have done? Did you not know that such a man as I can certainly practice divination? Then Judas said, What shall we say to my Lord? What shall we speak? Or how shall we clear ourselves? God has found out the iniquity of your servants. Here we are, my Lord's slaves, both we and he also with whom the cup was found. But he said, Far be it from me that I should do so. The man in whose hand the cup was found, he shall be my slave. And as for you, go up in peace to your father. Then Judah came near to him and said, O my Lord, please let your servant speak a word in my Lord's hearing, and do not let your anger burn against your servant, for you are even like Pharaoh. My Lord asked his servant, saying, Have you a father or a brother? And we said to my Lord, We have a father, an old man, and a child of his old age, who is young. 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. And we said to my lord, The lad cannot leave his father, for if he should leave his father, his father would die. But you said to your servants, Unless your younger brother comes down with you, you shall see my face no more. So it was when we went up to your servant, my father, that we told him the words of my Lord. And our father said, go back and buy us a little food. But we said, we cannot go down. If our youngest brother is with us, then we will go down. For we may not 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, and the one went out from me. And I said, Surely he is torn to pieces, and I have not seen him since. But if you take this one also from me, and calamity befalls him, you shall bring down my gray hair with sorrow to the grave. Now therefore, When I come to your servant, my father, and the lad is not with us, since his life is bound up in the lad's life, it will happen when he sees that the lad is not with us, that he will die. So your servants will bring down the gray hair of your servant, our father, with sorrow to the grave. For your servant became surety to the lad, to my father, saying, if I do not bring him back to you, then I shall bear the blame before my father forever. Now, therefore, please let your servant remain instead of the lad as a slave to my Lord and let the lad go up with his brothers. For how shall I go up to my father if the lad is not with me? Lest perhaps I see the evil that would come upon my father. Amen. So the plan now reaches its culmination. It's the climax of the story. He's engineered the circumstances perfectly. He's recreated the original temptation. Envy towards the son of Rachel. And the circumstances all there to see whether the brothers are still the wicked men that they were before. Now of course this is not simply a story of human ingenuity or of human moral development. It's a story of God's grace of redemption. It points, all of us as we'll see, it points, the whole story ultimately points us to the One. The One to whom all reality is an echo. All of the echoes of the Old Testament, all of these stories, all of these accounts, ultimately point us to Christ. As we'll see. But we start with Judah's statement in verse number 16. He says, God has found out the iniquity of your servants. That's an interesting statement. Is he talking about Benjamin? And the cup, the stolen cup, the so-called stolen cup. But he says, your servants. He says plural. It's clear he has more in mind. And as the story, of course, the original sin against Joseph has been in the background, and not very far in the background. It's been pretty quick to come into the foreground all through our story. The guilt, the weight of what they did is clearly hanging over them. It's interesting that Joseph particularly picks a silver cup. These would have been, of course, handcrafted. This was nothing you'd go down to Pier 1 Imports and buy. This was a beautiful, a symbol of his office, really. The silver cup, a unique cup that could only be Joseph's. He also says it was used for divination. Now there's no evidence in the story anywhere that Joseph actually practiced divination, and indeed why would he need to? He could interpret dreams. He received direct revelation from God. Divination, using a cup like that, using reading liquids, We even use the phrase today, the reading the tea leaves. That was an ancient practice where the leaves of the little crumbled leaves of tea or perhaps the swirling of wine or different things like that would be used to tell the future and lots of ancient practices. pagan practices. And Joseph says that this is a cup that he uses for divination. He refers to that again later on when the brothers come back. He says, don't you know that I'm one that can practice divination? So he picks that for a reason, even though that part of it is kind of a ruse. He doesn't practice divination in that way. And yet, It's as if the brothers in stealing the cup, the idea is you're trying to hide from the divine. You're trying to hide from the eye of God. And indeed, they didn't steal the cup, but they are guilty of having done that. They did try to hide what they did. They did lie to their father. They dipped the coat in the blood of an animal, trying to cover their sin, trying to hide from what they'd done. To close God's eyes. And that's what we do. That's what we all do. Try to hide our sin. Try to cover our tracks. Try to conceal, try to put up a front for the world. And to make everyone else think that we are a certain kind of person. Even though what we really are is something else. Why do we bother? If we really believed what we claim to believe about God, why would we do that? We can't hide from God. God sees everything. And God reveals whatever He chooses to reveal. We can't even hide from other people if God elects to reveal the truth about us. The only reason that your most deepest and shameful secrets aren't on the front page of tomorrow's newspaper is because God in His grace has not elected to put them there because of His forbearance. Yet we think we can hide. We can hide the evidence. We can blame others. We can make up excuses. All of the ways that we think that we're covering our tracks, that we're presenting ourselves and we're fooling people. And you can certainly fool people to a certain degree. People get very good at it. Learn from a young age. Blame your brother. Who broke the lamp? Oh, he did. How many cookies did you eat? Just one even as the cookie jar is empty and the crumbs are all down the front of your shirt. The phrase found out or its variations are used several times through the story. That's an emphasis. It shows us something important. Moses said to the tribes of Israel at one point, be sure your sins will find you out, because you can't hide from God. God is just. Sin will be exposed. Jesus said, the deeds that you do in the dark will be proclaimed in the light, and what you say in secret will be shouted from the rooftops. And that's an act of justice, of God's vengeance against the wicked. But it's also an act of grace for the believer. He exposes our sin as well, even if only sometimes just to us. Even in His grace and in His kindness, He exposes the truth of what we are, perhaps just to us. Shows us the truth of our sin, and often that is through experiencing the pain of our sin. As we feel the results of what it is that we did, then we see the real nature If you have seed and you don't know what the seed is, you don't know what kind of seed is, you lost a little packet and came from, well, one way to find out what kind of seed it is is to plant it and water it and see what grows. And we often do that. We engage in acts, we engage in sinfulness, not really understanding its true nature, not really understanding fully. How heinous a thing it is. And then the Lord lets it grow and shows us. Shows us the truth. Shows us the results. This is what He's done with the brothers. They may have felt like they have been under God's wrath. Certainly there are things they say throughout. It's like, why is God doing this to us? They feel under the wrath of God. They're not really. They're under His discipline, yeah. They're under His chastisement. And that hand of discipline can feel pretty heavy sometimes. But it's for their good. It's to teach them, to show them the nature of what they did. To show them the true nature of what was in their hearts. Repentance is always a process. It's a learning process. It takes time. You know, God could, God can do whatever he wants to do, of course. God could presumably just zap knowledge right into our heads, teaching us the full riches of his law, just like that, boom, you know, put it in our brains, and so it was all there. But that's not how God works. In his wisdom, according to his will, he works through the events of our lives. He teaches us as we see, as we learn, as we grow, through our successes and through our failures. He gives us wisdom. He shows us the real nature of things. Shows us the nature of the world He's created. Shows us our own nature. And He shows us who He is. Fully, it takes a lifetime. That's what our lives are for. He's taken over two decades for the brothers to get to this point. And that's because repentance is not just a matter of deciding not to do something. Superficially, that's how we think of it. I'm engaging in some behavior. I know that it's wrong. I yell too much at the kids. And so I'm going to state to myself, I'm going to stop yelling at the kids. And as we all know, anybody who's ever tried to do it that way, it doesn't work. You keep on doing the thing. And why is that? Because real repentance is Recognizing the patterns and habits of thought that underlie the behavior. Changing those patterns and habits of thought. And that's hard. Those patterns and habits are dug deep down inside of us. Come from the earliest times of our lives. We learn those patterns and habits when we're first being formed. Before we're even aware that we're learning things. And it wears deep grooves in us. And so it takes time. The psalmist prays to God to, he says, search me, O Lord. See if there be any hidden way in me. Send your spirit to me to show the truth. And that's what it takes. It takes time, and it takes effort, and it takes the revelation of God. It takes the power and grace of God to work repentance. And that's what our life is for, and it is not easy. It is hard work. The results are more than worth it. So pray. Brothers and sisters, pray that God would reveal the truth of you. Now that is a scary thing to pray, because He said that if we pray that prayer, He'll answer it. He'll do it and it won't be fun. But God is gracious. God is kind and gentle. He will never subject you to any unnecessary pain. He loves you, His child, and He'll always do good for you. So trust Him and pray for that illumination. Pray that God would find you out. He would reveal the truth so that you can learn and change. Judah could have dodged. He could have ducked it. He could have just gone back home. Joseph made it easy for him. Joseph kind of encouraged him to do that. The steward said there, he said, he said, he said, yeah, the one, the one who stole that, they said, they said at first, they said, the one who stole the cup will die and the rest of us will be slaves. And the steward said, the one who stole the cup will be our slave and the rest of you can go on home. But they don't. You see already there is that solidarity. They're sticking together as a family. And they go back to Egypt, tear their clothes and go back. You imagine that moment. You imagine the elation they must have had. You know, they've had this fear hanging over them. The whole dealings with Joseph have been fraught. They've been scary. You know, he's treated them harshly. He threatened them. He accused them of being spies. They go back down. They've got to take Benjamin. It's scary. They've lost Simeon. They're trying to get Simeon back. They go down there and everything goes well. Joseph throws them a big party, gives them gifts, gives them grain, as much as they can carry, gives them their money back again, sends them back. And they're like, everything's gone great. Everything succeeded. We got our food. We got our brother. We didn't lose Benjamin. Jacob's gonna be happy. Joseph was happy. Everything's great. And right outside of Egypt, here comes the bad news. You'd think of the crushing disappointment that they would have felt and how easy it would have been for them if they'd still been the kind of men that they were before. To just go on and say to Jacob, Al, I guess your son's a thief. If they'd still had resentment for him and resentment over Rachel and over the sons of Rachel. But they didn't. Turned around and they went back. You know, we have malice in our hearts towards people. We have evil in our hearts towards people. It's easy for us. We're quick to believe evil things. If they'd still had resentment and envy towards Benjamin, they would have been quick to believe that Benjamin really had stolen the cup. That's a good sign, by the way, that you do harbor malice and envy towards someone else. How quick are you to believe an evil report about them without any evidence? The brothers' sin against Joseph, when they were going to kill him, and then when they sold him into slavery, their sin against him was a response to real pain in their lives. As we said before, there's no evidence in the story that Jacob actively mistreated the brothers, that he abused them in some way. Nonetheless, the sin of the favoritism that he showed Rachel, we see hints of it even through here. Judah says, our father had a wife and his wife had two sons. No, Jacob had four wives and 12 sons. But in Jacob's eyes, there was really only one of them that really counted and they all knew it. So there was real pain there. This is a very common cause of our sin. In one way, I think we could think of it as the common cause of all of our sin. That our sin is our learned response to pain. Our sin is how we have learned to protect ourselves from the pain of life. To seek to remove the pain, hide from the pain, numb ourselves to the pain, or destroy the source of the pain. That's what the brothers did. And now faced with a repetition, and this is all that Joseph has done to deliberately recreate that pain, to recreate the pain of their father's favoritism, in order to spark that envy once again, to see what they would do. And they could simply sacrifice Benjamin, and they could walk away from it all, and think that the pain would go away. But Judah does not. And I think Judah's, it's clear, it's not just Judah. Judah speaks as a spokesman. Judah is the one that carries the voice of all of the brothers. They all went back to Egypt. There was no dissent, there was no arguing, but Judah speaks for them. He stands up and he bears his chest and he offers to take the hit himself. And we shouldn't downplay what it was that Judah was exposing himself to. You see a hint of it at the beginning of his speech. He says, oh my Lord, please let your servant speak a word and do not let your anger burn against your servant for you are even like Pharaoh. You did not speak to ancient rulers unless they invited you to do so. You remember that in the whole story of Esther. She risks going before the king when she hasn't been summoned. You know? Joseph has said, he's basically said, now we'll keep Benjamin, the rest of you may go in peace. That was a dismissal. He was telling them to leave. Go from my presence. I'm done talking to you. And Judah risks himself, risks the wrath of the ruler of Egypt to go and make his plea. And slavery, slavery for the rest of his life. Slavery under Joseph. He had no idea what that looked like, what that meant, what kind of torment and degradation and humiliation he was exposing himself to. Joseph had not shown himself to be a kind ruler to them so far. He'd been pretty harsh a lot of the time. But Judah offers and there's every indication that he is sincere. You know, this is Judah's speech at the end of chapter 44 is the longest speech in the book of Genesis. To save his brother for the sake of his father. And that is repentance. That is the turning. It's a big part of what Jesus means when He tells us to take up our cross and follow Him. To face what we fear, to accept the pain of life, indeed to endure that pain for others' sake. You remember the thieves on the cross? We preached on that a few months ago. The two thieves on the cross, as we said, no doubt had taken up the life of crime and banditry that they had in response to the pain that they had themselves suffered. They lived under a deeply wicked and unjust regime, the Roman Empire. And people who went into that life usually didn't come from the kindest family backgrounds. No doubt they would have been able to tell you stories about the horrific things that they had experienced in their lives. The oppression and the injustice and the abuse. And one of them chose to respond to that oppression and injustice by increasing it for others. Something he continued to do all the way to the end of his life while he's hanging on the cross. His response to the suffering and the horror of the cross is to inflict more pain on someone else by abusing and ridiculing Christ who had done no wrong to him at all. And the other thief, though he recognized, he accepted, he was suffering for his own sin and showed repentance by bearing what he had to bear. Guilt though, guilt robs us of courage. The Psalmist said that, or the Proverbs said, a wicked flee where no man pursues. It robs us of the ability to endure, it makes cowards out of us. And you see it before, Reuben and Judah, all of them. Reuben is a coward, Judah is a coward, all of them are cowards. all of them ganging up on this one young boy and attacking him and ambushing him, throwing him into the pit. Lying to their father, inflicting that pain on him rather than just owning up. If they were, it would have been a certain kind of courage at least to go back to their father and say, yeah, we killed that little brat because you'd been so evil to us. That is, yeah, it was wicked and we did it. No, they lied and covered and were hypocrites and tried to pretend they were good. And they've been bearing the pain of that for the last 22 years. And you see in the story how that guilt makes them cowards. How anytime anything goes wrong, they're like, God's against us. That's how the wicked man feels when we've got the guilt and the condemnation of our sin. We're terrified that our sin is going to be found out. A wicked plea where no man pursues. But now they've accepted their guilt. They've owned it. They say, yeah, we did it. They're acknowledging what they did was wrong and that actually emboldens them. It makes Judah courageous, makes him able to face to willing, makes him willing to endure suffering, Judah as their spokesman. And again, this great contrast that we still have with Reuben. Reuben has shown that coward is still kind of to be there. You remember a chapter before he'd said to his father, If I don't come back with Benjamin, then you can kill my two sons. It's a fake offer. Like, what's that gonna help? Is Jacob really gonna do that? Jacob's really gonna kill his own grandchildren to somehow make up for the loss of Benjamin? Judah doesn't do that, though. Judah takes it on himself. Judah says, if I don't come back with Benjamin, I will bear the guilt forever. And right here we see that that wasn't an empty offer. That that wasn't just words. And He offers Himself up as a substitute. And it all points us to Jesus, of course. Jesus, who exposes Himself to all the pain and suffering of the sinful world, all of the humiliation and degradation and sorrow that is the result of sin. And not His own sin, of course, but our sin. He who stood up and squared his chest and took the hit, the hit of God's wrath. I told you I was gonna do that again. Joseph's a Christ figure. the blood on the coat, you know, that he was betrayed by his brothers, he suffered the hatred of his own people, died in a sense, went down into the underworld, went down to Egypt, went down into the dungeon, and was revived by God, restored, resurrected to glory. And through that, death and resurrection, saves his people. Joseph is a Christ figure. Judah is also a Christ figure though. Judah who, to save his, on behalf of his father, for the love of his father, offers himself as a substitute to save his brother. It all points to Christ. It's all about Christ. Not just this story, but all of it. Every prophet, every priest, every king in the Old Testament, by their successes and their righteousness and their goodness, point forward to an even greater prophet, a greater priest, a greater king, and by their failures and their weakness and their shortcomings, point forward to the need for one who has no such failures or weaknesses or shortcomings. Sometimes people will say that we ought not preach moral examples. We ought not preach these characters of the Bible and say, well, this is an example of how we ought to be. It's just pointing us to Christ so that we'll trust Christ and believe in Him and be forgiven of our sins. But Jesus' death on our behalf isn't all of the gospel. Through His death and resurrection, He saves us from sin. He saves us not just from the consequences of sin, but He saves us from the sins themselves, and He grants us His Holy Spirit, and He works His life in us, and He calls us to be like Him. And so, one of the beautiful things about this story is how we have watched Judah become a Christ figure. Because he wasn't one to begin with. He was more like a Judas figure. He was an emblem of the opposites. One whose envy and resentment led him to betray his own brother. Now he does the opposite. Now he sacrifices himself to save his brother. And this is salvation, not just to be forgiven of our sins. We are forgiven so that the obstacle is cleared away so that we can become to be like Christ. That is our sanctification. As one writer puts it, us in Christ is our justification. Being in Christ by faith is our justification. Christ being in us by the power of the Spirit is our sanctification. What a wonderful destiny this gives us. This man, this one, whose life has inspired millions, the written accounts of this man's life, makes people worship, pledge their lives to him. He whose words and life simply stun us, shock us. The human authors are incapable of even making up something as inspiring as Him. He is the one that we will be like. The whole program is for us to be conformed to be like Him. That's what repentance is. And what a joy, then what an inspiration, what a gift. It's not some unpleasant chore that we have to do in order to prove to God that we really love Him. You know, our duty that we have to do to somehow repay God. No, it's a gift, it's a joy. Judah doesn't know the name, but we see Christ being formed in him. He's learning to walk in faith. Because Christ walked in faith. Christ trusted the word of His Father. Christ did the commandment of His Father in all things. He's learning to love His brother because Christ first loved Him. Again, even if Judah didn't know all the details, Judah knows the promise. Judah had apparently walked away from the promise for some time, as we read in the story of Tamar, that he left the house of his father and he went and lived with the Canaanites. But even there, God didn't leave him, even if he tried to leave God. And God chastised him, disciplined him, brought him back. Like a loving father would. Now Judah has, of course, a special place in the promise. Even more special than any of the other brothers. David came from the line of Judah. The royal line, the line of kings, came from Judah. And ultimately, the king of kings, Christ himself. In this act of sacrifice, this act of strength, Judah takes the lead of the brothers, the lead that should have gone to Reuben, the oldest, but Reuben's cowardice and inconstancy had proven him unfit for the job. Judah in his willingness to die for his brothers, Judah in his willingness to stand up and take the hit, to bear the suffering of life, even suffering that was not his, but was someone else's, to bear that suffering for someone else proves himself to be the leader of royal material. Christ is being formed in him. So many shadows, so many echoes of him in the Old Testament. Abraham, called to sacrifice his son. Isaac. Joseph, hated and betrayed by his brothers, dies and is reborn. Judah, for the sake of his father, is willing to take upon himself the sin of his brother. David, who fights Goliath and wins. Daniel, who enters the lion's den and escapes alive. There's shadows. And in all of these shadows, God holds back. God doesn't go all the way. Abraham doesn't really kill Isaac. He restrains Abraham's hand just before the knife falls, offers a substitute, the ram. Joseph didn't really die. He went down to Egypt and was a slave. And he didn't really come back to life. He just escaped the dungeon and became a king. Judah doesn't actually have to take the punishment. For Benjamin, Benjamin didn't actually sin. David killed Goliath, but the Philistines remained a problem for a lot of years after that. And there were always other enemies. But Christ really did die. Christ really did bear the pain, the suffering. He really did take all of the suffering that we deserved. He really did emerge alive and He really did defeat the enemies once for all. That's the nature of our repentance. It's not just an abstraction. It's not just do better, be better, try harder, be smarter, have more wisdom. That's not what repentance is. Repentance is a turning. It literally means to rethink. It literally means that you are going this way, and repentance means you turn around and you go the other way. And we see in all of these stories, we see in the Scriptures, that what we are turning to is not some abstract idea, not some principle, not some inspiring truth. What we are turning to is a man. We are turning to him. We are turning to Christ. We are turning away, Judah in his turning away from his bitterness and his self-serving and his envy, he is turning instead to Christ. And he becomes more like Christ in doing so. And that is what we are all called to, to turn away from the world, to turn away from self, to turn away from resentment and envy and pride and lust and wrath and all of those things. to turn away from our way and instead turn to Him who is the way. To Christ who calls us to come to Him and receive rest and peace. Amen. And let's pray. Gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord. We thank you, we praise you that you are a faithful father. You are a faithful father who teaches his children, who shows us the truth, even when that truth is so painful, even when that truth is so hard to see, the truth of what we really are, what we have become. Lord, we know that the road back to you leads through that self-awareness by becoming Opening our eyes to the truth of why we do what we do, of the habits and patterns, the sinful habits of thought. Lord, we pray that you would expose the envy, expose the pride, expose the resentment and bitterness and lust and self-serving that characterize all of us. Open our eyes to that truth, whatever it takes, Lord. You know, we know you are gracious, we know you are kind, we know you will not inflict any more pain on us than we need. So Lord, we pray, show us and form Christ in us through that. That we would become like Him, that we would turn from our sin and turn instead to Him, who is our salvation. He who always trusted you, He who always followed your will, He who was willing to bear the suffering of others, to do good for them, to glorify you. Lord, make us like Him. to trust your goodness, to know that we can endure whatever you have for us to endure when we do so in faith and in trust in your goodness and grace. We pray all these things in Jesus' precious name. Amen.