For our scripture reading this morning, please take your Bibles, and if you are able, stand with us as we read Genesis chapter 45, Genesis 45, beginning in verse 1. Then Joseph could not control himself before all those who stood by him. He cried, make every gone go out from me. So no one stayed with him when Joseph made himself known to his brothers. And he wept aloud so that the Egyptians heard it and the household of Pharaoh heard it. And Joseph said to his brothers, I am Joseph. Is my father still alive? Brothers could not answer him, for they were dismayed at his presence. So Joseph said to his brothers, come near to me, please. And they came near. And he said, I'm your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here. For God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there are yet five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God. He has made me a father to Pharaoh and Lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt. Hurry and go up to my father and say to him, Thus says your son Joseph, God has made me Lord of all Egypt. Come down to me, do not tarry. You shall dwell in the land of Goshen, and you shall be near me, you and your children, and your children's children, and your flocks, your herds, and all that you have. There I will provide for you, for there are yet five years of famine to come, so that you and your household and all that you have do not come to poverty. And now your eyes see, and the eyes of my brother see, that it is my mouth that speaks to you. You must tell my father of all my honor in Egypt and of all that you have seen. Hurry and bring my father down here.' Then he fell upon his brother Benjamin's neck and wept, and Benjamin wept upon his neck. And he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them. After that, his brothers talked with him." When the report was heard in Pharaoh's house, Joseph's brothers have come. It pleased Pharaoh and his servants. And Pharaoh said to Joseph, say to your brothers, do this, load your beasts and go back to the land of Canaan and take your father and your households and come to me and I will give you the best of the land of Egypt and you shall eat the fat of the land. And you, Joseph, are commanded to say, do this, take wagons from the land of Egypt for your little ones and for your wives and bring your father and come. Have no concern for your goods for the best of all of the land of Egypt is yours. The sons of Israel did so, and Joseph gave them wagons according to the command of Pharaoh, and gave them provisions for the journey. To each and all of them he gave a change of clothes, but to Benjamin he gave three hundred shekels of silver and five changes of clothes. To his father he sent as follows, ten donkeys loaded with the good things of Egypt, and ten female donkeys loaded with grain, bread, and provision for his father on the journey. Then he sent his brothers away, and as they departed, he said to them, do not quarrel on the way. So they went up out of Egypt and came to the land of Canaan to their father Jacob. And they told him, Joseph is alive, and he is ruler over all the land of Egypt. And his heart became numb, for he did not believe them. But when they told him all the words of Joseph, which he had said to them, and when he saw the wagons that Joseph had sent to carry him, the spirit of their father Jacob revived. And Israel said, it is enough. Joseph, my son, is still alive. I will go and see him before I die. Amen. May God bless the reading of his holy word to our hearts and minds this morning. Please be seated. Before we get to the preaching of the Lord, let's go ahead and ask the Lord for his hand in all of this. Heavenly Father, we thank you. We thank you that you have given us your word, you've revealed it, you've had it written down by the men you would have write it down, Father. It is carried down from generation to generation, and we get to feast on the truth because of its goodness that stands before us. Father, we pray that you would use the truth to convict our hearts, to change our hearts, to make us, conform us more into the image of your Son. It's in Christ's name we pray, amen. Well, this morning's title to the message is When God Reveals His Sovereignty in Our Rebellion. And as I like to do, I'd like to pose a question to you, just get you thinking through this, what we're about to engage in. Have you ever had a surprise birthday party thrown for you? Maybe some of you, maybe you were part of it, maybe you were the object of it, however it may be. Get that idea in your mind. If you were the object of that party, if you were the one that it was thrown for, did you ever later on have kind of that unreal experience where you started to process through the previously veiled activities and you started thinking, well, wow, this is not what I thought it was. I mean, maybe it was a situation where you realized that as you look back, when you came into a room, the conversation stopped. And at the time, you thought that was odd, but that was all the more you thought of it. Or maybe on the day of the surprise birthday party, this friend that you had particularly wanted to bless you by taking you away from the home. And at the time, you didn't connect. The awayness was important. And so you're left trying to understand, oh, I see what's going on here. My choice of the word veiled is because there was actually two purposes going on there. Certainly, it was a real experience. It wasn't an unreal. It was a real experience in understanding that you got to participate. If your friend took you out on your birthday and it was away from the house, you got to experience the joy of whatever it is that the two of you did. But at the same time, There was a different purpose there that was occurring, and both are just as real. There was somebody behind the scenes orchestrating that day. You entered in freely, but there was somebody else orchestrating in completeness, or at least ultimately, what was going on. Well, that's what we're gonna see today. We're gonna experience this. Only the brothers, Joseph's brothers, are going to walk through this in more of a a disturbing way. What they are going to realize is the rebellion of their sin is known, and then they will come to the place where they realize that God has even used it, and we'll see what he has used it for. In fact, we'll see that it's ultimately used for the advancement of his plan of salvation. So our takeaway, and if you've got a bulletin, I've got this on the back and you can follow along on the outline. This is the, if you leave here and you don't grasp this, then I failed and I don't want to fail. I want to be a preacher that preaches the truth of Christ and gives you an eye, what we need to move forward and be more and more conformed to the image of God. So the takeaway is God's revealing of the overarching goodness of his sovereignty. Remember we said we were going to be talking about sovereignty. despite our sin. So although we're going to be looking at the brother's sin, we're also going to be dealing with our own sinfulness. Despite our sin should drive us towards forgiveness and ultimately reconciliation with others, and in particular, other brothers and sisters. That's what we need to grasp as we walk through this passage today. So we need a little backstory. Pastor Pete preached through October, and it's been a while since we've been in the book of Genesis. When we were last in Genesis, we were in chapter 44. And in that particular chapter, we saw Judah stand up, so to speak, as the representative of the family, and make a confession to the number two. All he knows this person is the number two in command of Egypt. And he makes this confession of sin. And it almost looks like, if you read it too quickly, like he's making a confession. Yeah, I know you caught Benjamin with your silver cup. but I'm confessing for me and all the brothers." Well, it doesn't make sense if you read it like that. The confession he's actually confessing to is, 20 years ago plus, we did our brother wrong. We sold him into slavery, and now we are receiving the fruit of our rebellion in the form of this action before us. So he's actually making a confession of what took place before, and we see it all in the plural, as if the brothers, he's standing up for the brothers, and so they're all confessing to this number two in power and authority in Egypt, who they don't know his unveiled identity. So now let's take a look at this as we walk through. Let's look at verses 1 through 3. We're going to look at fear is a proper response to the unveiling of God's sovereignty. And let me first note that we're going to take a look at the fear as it relates to the consequence of sin. But fear is also a proper response when sin is not there, and God allows his sovereignty in our lives to be revealed, that we reflect back over our lives. For those of you who are married, or those of you who have different relationships, or those of you, even if you think back on your salvation, and you start to connect things together, and you go, wow. It brings us to a place of reverential fear, awe of God, and orchestrating all this. but there's also a healthy fear of consequences when you realize that God knows your sin. God knows our rebellion. So, in this particular, in these particular verses, verses one through three, this is the third time we see Joseph unable to control himself. And we see him, his compassion, warm his heart, and he gets emotional, and in the other two occurrences, what happened was he ended up leaving the room. This is not going to be the case this time. This time he sends his attendants, his servants, out of the room. So they depart and he's going to let the full weight of his emotion be seen. Now think of this, you're the brothers and you're watching Pharaoh, the Egyptians, you think the Germans in our culture don't show emotion? Some of my line comes from Germany, not the emotional people. Italian side of mind, those are the emotional people. The Egyptians, they don't show emotion, that shows weakness. So now they hear, all of a sudden, they're looking, these Hebrew brothers are looking at the second in command, weeping. and they don't know what to do. They're confused by all this. Now let's make sure we understand this to where we picked up from chapter 44. The brothers had passed both of Joseph's tests successfully. Joseph now realized that these brothers were not the same men that betrayed him and sold him into slavery in Egypt. They are not the same men. And thank God that you and I, as we reflect on our lives and we look back and we go, oh, thank you, God. I'm not that same person. Joseph has, by way of these tests, been made known that these, his brothers, are not the same brothers. Their characters have been changed. It's time to reveal his identity. And that's exactly what he does. Remember, every time he talks to them, he talks through an interpreter. He just sent the interpreter out of the room. So when he says, I am Joseph, he says it in Hebrew. That would be stunning. That would be confusing. That would be paralyzing with fear. What did we say in his presence that he knew? All of a sudden, all this is racing to their minds as they try and understand, how do I make this work in my mind? The second in command just spoke in Hebrew, the second in command of Egypt, and he said, I am Joseph. In other words, I'm your brother. How do I process this? How could this be? And then the second part of that is, wow, I'm in the hands of the second in command. of Egypt, and I sold this man, my brother, into slavery. Is he going to take revenge? Is he going to be vengeful on me? Am I going to get the weight of his righteous wrath he could bring upon me for my sinful actions? So, let's bring it in a little bit of context. Let's bring it to the place where I think everybody will be able to relate with this. I know, unfortunately, I can relate with this. Have you ever privately said something hurtful? Privately mean, you know, just a few of your closest friends. Only one friend wasn't there. Have you ever privately said something hurtful about someone thinking that they'll never find out? It started off harmless enough. We're talking about different friends. It turns into a little bit of gossip, and all of a sudden, you chuck out something that is hurtful about the friend that isn't there. And you're thinking, These are close friends. They're never going to know about it. I wish I didn't do that, whatever it is. But it's out. You've slandered your friend. And then that friend comes, because they love you, and finds you personally. Hopefully they don't do it publicly. Hopefully they didn't do it, because I think we've all experienced this. And now they confront you. And there's that moment where you're kind of like, what? What's wrong? Tell me what's wrong. Well, did you say? And all of a sudden, the rock in your gut, the pit that's there, and your mind starts to race and think, what else did I say? Did I say anything else to harm this person? And all of a sudden, it's almost like the blood in your extremities leaves because you're now weak and you're paralyzed. And there's that moment where you're just, you feel paralyzed. The fear of the consequence of our sins is actually good in its moment. It shocks us. It causes us to feel the weight of our sin. That's like the rock in your gut. That's the shock feeling. All of a sudden, you having to deal with your sin like you didn't think you'd have to. It was supposed to be private. It was going to be secret. They would never find anything out about it. For a moment in time, you're undone. Sometimes our problem is we don't get to the end of ourselves with our sin. And so we repeat it, and we repeat it, and we repeat it. And when that loving person comes up to us and approaches us to us, God can use that fear to convict us. He uses that fear to humiliate us. We will either humble ourselves before the Lord, or he will lovingly bring someone into our life to humiliate us, to lower ourselves, so that we stop our sinful patterns. And we see that all of a sudden, let's say we're going back to the picture of the person you slandered. All of a sudden, you're under the mercy of the one you offended. You need to ask them for forgiveness, to forgive you of the offense that you brought unto them. Well, let's see what Joseph does with this. Is Joseph the vengeful one? Remember, he did a lot of time in prison. He did a lot of time underneath the weight of living under conditions that were, he was oppressed. He understands suffering. He hasn't been in the promised land. He's one of the covenant people. He has been removed from the promised land, away from his people all this time. What's he gonna do? Well, what we see him do in verses four through seven, as we watch God's sovereignty advance his salvation despite our sin, we see Joseph draw his brothers. He compassionately draws them near him. And it doesn't say this. I can't help but think they've been looking at this man. It's twice they've been in his presence and have come back the second time. It's almost like he's drawing them to him to say, it's me. Look, it's me. It's Joseph. Have you ever met somebody that you, a friend, that you haven't seen in a while? I'm starting to experience this at my age. I've said to my wife before, you know, that someone would say, hey, Nick. And I, you know, you do one of those, like, you're another Nick. I don't recognize this person. And all of a sudden, you're kind of staring at them, and they go, ah, and they tell you something else about them, and you start to realize. And then as we're walking away, I'll say to my wife, am I that old? I didn't recognize them. And we kind of look at ourselves as young people or whatever as we get as we get aged. Well, all of a sudden, the shapes aren't the same, and the hair color is not the same, and the voice maybe, the tone isn't the same. And all of a sudden, you realize you don't recognize them. I think Joseph is pulling them in to say, it's me. It's me. Then he stuns them again. He stuns them again by telling them something about their dirty little secret that they thought was only with, and they rightly thought, it was only with their brothers. Only the brothers know what they did with Joseph. The only way Joseph could tell them about their betrayal of him is if he is Joseph. Whatever doubt they had when he said, I'm Joseph, and hey, by the way, how's dad? They don't have that doubt anymore. He knows the inside story. He knows the truth here. And rather than, this is the point where it's the tipping point, what's he going to do now? He's stunned him again. You know, is this a right uppercut or what is he going to do? No, no, no. He races in. We see the very next wording, what takes place. He races in to head off their distress and self-anger. And it's interesting. I don't know if you guys do this, but I do this when I sin. When my wife graciously points it out or when I discover it or I, you know, the context is there that I'm it, I'm the knucklehead, I say to myself, and I've got to be careful that I don't turn into pity, self-pity, where all of a sudden I'm a victim and I'm not taking care of my sin. But if you were close enough, I think you could almost hear my words or read my lips, you idiot. What were you thinking? Self-anger is so natural to me that when I look at this, I sit there and I say, man, I would do the same thing. Look what Joseph does. He cuts off his brothers. He says, no, no, no, no. He wants to interject before they end up in distress, which, by the way, the distress there is intense grief. That's what the Hebrew word means there. He wants, before they get into the self-condemnation, you idiot, what did you do? He cuts them off at the pass. And he tells them, hey, hey, hey, yeah, you got this wrong. You got this wrong in a sense that you don't understand God's involved in this. You got it right from the standpoint of you did wrong. Hope I'm not confusing you with this right and wrong. You're right in that what you did was wrong, but you're wrong in thinking that God can't use what you did to advance his salvation. Three times in that paragraph, Joseph makes sure. He keeps saying, God sent. God sent. God sent. And he keeps making sure that he reinforces, he sent to save lives. He sent me. Well, wait a second. Joseph and his brothers, they were the ones that sold Joseph Joseph's brothers sold Joseph into slavery, so they're at fault, right? They're responsible. What's God taking the hit on this for? Because just like the surprise birthday party where there was an orchestrator over it all, that's God's role here. God orchestrates. Even they made the choice, God didn't send, but he uses their choice to bring about good still. It's amazing. God, the master orchestrator, is the only one capable of sinlessly taking sin to advance his purposes. He's it. There's one. He's the only one. And thank God that he does that, because each of us have rebellious hearts. Each of us have fallen. Think of this. When I say the word flood, and you think of either positive or negative, I'm guessing everyone thinks negative, flood. And when we think about in our country, we have rains going on. We just got done with the rainy season and we're kind of towards the tail end of the hurricane season as we get into the colder weather. Hurricanes means flooding. And we think of that part of the country where there's devastation. They show us the pictures on the news and it's everywhere, devastation. We go flood, evil, God. takes flood and he wipes out the biggest flood there ever was. All of mankind save one family. And yet it was good because he used that flood to remove the evil from this world and to bring forth a family he would save. The creator of all that is creative can take whatever we deem as evil and use it for his good. It's amazing. Think of this. Let's take that. I mean, you take the level of the physical world and you take the flood and you go, well, that's the whole earth. How do you top that with an example, Nick? How about taking the murder of his own and only begotten son? Dare I say, Scripture says, he ordained that murder. He didn't partake in it. He knows the evilness of men, and he uses that evilness to bring about, ultimately, the plan, interestingly enough, that would defeat Satan. Satan would never have guessed, you're gonna use the death of your child to defeat me? And that's exactly what he did. God is an amazing God. He is in the business of taking that which is evil, and repurposing it for our good. So let's look at this. Your past evil. Let me get a little personal with you. Everyone in here, me included, has partaken in past evil. Okay? How did you use it for good? I don't know it specifically in your life, but I can tell you this. I can tell you without doubt that from the point of, and my wife likes to say this, I've heard other Christians say this, God's working on a testimony on that person, In other words, God uses the totality of our mistakes, whether we're before we're saved, or even our failings as Christians, as a testimony of his incredible mercy. Would you stick around with you? Seriously? You would have kicked you out a long time ago and said, hey, I've put up with you and my plan a long time. God doesn't do that. It's a beautiful picture. Our past can be used. What about our future? We're gonna sin again. I hope we don't do it this same afternoon, but we're gonna sin again and probably quickly because that's the nature of human beings. What about that? Well, if you'll stop and to study your sin and look, how did I get there? What was I thinking, believing, feeling, wanting when I got there? If you'll look back on that, you can look at it to the degree that you can say, God, I now understand it. I was being prideful. Well, you changed my pride plus whatever I did to demonstrate that pride in my life. Let's look at it. Use the sin that was evil and is the sin you're going to use to get rid of those sin patterns you currently have, I currently have. We can use by God's glory, by God's grace, We can use that which we have evil in our past, come alongside what God is doing, and turn it for good. Well, let's turn to verses nine through 15. We see that God's teaching us the overarching goodness of God's sovereignty, and that it should drive us to forgiveness. We're back to the Joseph story. We want to get back to that narrative. Joseph commanded his brothers to inform their father about his position. about his authority and about the abundance of prosperity that is waiting for him in Egypt. He's trying to draw his father out of this land that is dying of starvation. If his father stays there with his family, his family will die. And Joseph is saying, look, this is God's sovereignty in my life. He has brought me here. He has put me in the position of authority. I can tell you that you can come and you will be well cared for. Praise God. Praise God for that truth. And yet, we see Joseph's brothers are already there. They're already in his presence. They're not gonna have to go back and get him, but they're in his immediate presence. Joseph has given them instructions. They understand what they need to do, and now it's time to deal with the brothers and their relationship. And what do we see Joseph do? You know, he doesn't look back on his life and go, You guys got it coming to you. No, he doesn't do that at all. First he goes to Benjamin. Benjamin was too young. Benjamin was not in the picture of the betrayal. Benjamin's not there in that sense. He's innocent. He's also the brother from the same mother, Rachel. He's the brother that is so dear to him. He's missed him these many, many years, these 20 plus years. He turns to him and he weeps, tears, we have to to imply here, we have to read into the scriptures, but we know that there's no violation on his part, so these are tears of joy. He's reunited with Benjamin. What about the other brothers in the room? Well, there's a metaphorical pivot, and the passage tells us that he weeps, he weeps on the neck of, that's the picture of deep, personal, true, genuine weeping. He weeps with each of his brothers as an act of clearly demonstrating forgiveness. I forgive you. He could have brought vengeance. He could have brought mere justice, and he doesn't. How many times do we want justice? and our God gives us, meaning we want justice from others, and yet we see God continuing to bring mercy into our lives. Joseph demonstrates mercy. He is looking at the sovereignty of God. He's allowing the sovereignty of God to drive him to a place of forgiveness. Have you ever experienced God's sovereign goodness, or let me say it this way, the goodness of God's sovereignty is another way of saying it, in your life as the motivating agent of forgiveness? I mean, we forgive people all the time for different things, different motivating, initial or underlying motivating factors. It depends on the person and the situation. Think about this. Have you ever forgiven somebody with the particular agent, the underlying agent of that motivation, actually being God's sovereignty. Think about this. The more you focus on your life and how sinful you are and I am and how much God has forgiven you, the less you want to withhold unforgiveness, or withhold forgiveness, I should say it that way. You want to withhold it. You don't want to withhold it. You look at this and you're going, yeah, I'm doing the list thing, and yeah, I got a super long list, you got this one, yeah, it hurt, yeah, it was real, but I keep writing on my list and all the ways I've sinned against God, and I could just keep going, and all of a sudden you realize there's no comparison. In fact, think about what his forgiveness means. Your forgiveness of the other person means you're reconciled back in a human relationship, human to human. His forgiveness is immensely greater because his forgiveness means you're no longer on a trajectory damned to hell. God's forgiveness of us took us off that trajectory so that now we, forever, For eternity stand with Him saying, I'll never leave you, I'll never forsake you, you are my precious. You are the one that I love and I will stand with you and by you and do what's necessary to draw you out of your rebellion every time. And every time you come to me, according to 1 John 1, 9 and ask me for forgiveness, I don't run out of forgiveness. I will forgive you and I will cleanse you from all unrighteousness, so you don't take all that weight of that sin on with you to wherever it is in life your journey is taking you. No, when he says he'll cleanse you of all unrighteousness, all of that is gone. You start over clean, you start over fresh. If you are struggling to forgive somebody, ponder the sovereignty of God. It may be just what you need to realize, I've been looking at this as a one for one. I have been comparing what they have done to what my loyalty to them is, or in comparison to what I may have done as minor compared to what they did as major. Let's put this in the right realm, what God has done and what, therefore, you and I should do in bringing about forgiveness of our dear brothers and sisters in Christ. Well, lastly. As we turn to verses 16 to 28, we look at the revealing of God's sovereignty that should drive us, not just to forgiveness, but reconciliation. Forgiveness is a stop along the way to reconciliation. If you forget and harbor hardness in your heart towards that person, or you don't re-engage with that person, A, it's really not forgiveness, and B, you're not making it to reconciliation, and God is the God of reconciliation, that's his big, plan of salvation. So we can't stop short. We've got to take this train down the tracks and take it to reconciliation. We see here at the beginning of this particular area of the passage that God first was directing the heart of Pharaoh. And I love that because that shows, wait, wait, wait, you've been dealing with number two. Let's go ahead and make sure all the players, top player, is dealt with here. God deals with Pharaoh's heart and Pharaoh tells, he didn't tell, let me say it stronger. He commands his number two, Joseph, to do what God has already intended Joseph to do. Joseph's already explained this is what I'm gonna do. Tell dad I'm gonna do this. And then Pharaoh shows up and Pharaoh says, Joseph, you gotta do this. And you're standing there kind of laughing going, yeah. I could already see God's sovereignty in this whole thing. This was going this way. But it's the king. It's the king of Egypt, a.k.a. Pharaoh. We're reminded of Proverbs 21.1, where it tells us that the king's heart is like a stream of water. And I liken it to my, when I'm washing dishes, occasionally washing dishes by hand, when I'm washing dishes and I have that stream of water coming down, And as it hits my hand, I can move that stream any way I want it. Do I want it to go to that sink where I've got the rinse water? Do I want it over here? Whatever it is, I control that. That's the imagery of our God. The heart of the king is like a stream of water in the heart of our Lord, and he takes it wherever he will. He has that level of sovereignty. He has it over all of creation. He has it over all of man, bar no position of authority. There is no position of authority that he can't take that heart of that person and use it for his good. So we see an intriguing gesture that comes along next. First we see him dealing with Pharaoh, and all of a sudden we see Joseph doing something intriguing. And that is, he gives his brothers, all of his brothers, a change of clothes. And you might say, what's the big deal? What's the significance of that? Well, it's interesting. This whole story close have been this little thread that's popped itself up every once in a while. This account of Joseph started off when he was 17 years old, and our Bible is chapter 37, and we're in chapter 45 now, so it's been a while ago. He's 17 years old, and dad, Jacob, his father, gives him a coat of many colors. We talked about how it was a royal coat that set him apart from his brothers. Unfortunately, it did just that. It separated himself from his brothers. And we saw all sorts of envy from the brothers. We see this where they, where we are now is the product of that envy that they had when they sold him into slavery. Now, it's not Jacob, Joseph's father, that's in the picture that has all the authority. It's Joseph, number two in command. He's in the presence of his brothers, and he, with authority, gives them the most personal, the most meaningful gift of reconciliation he could give. The clothes that once separated us, I give you a new set of clothes. And these clothes are the same. The word in Hebrew is the same of what the clothing that Joseph was given in order to come into the presence of Pharaoh when he was going to interpret his dream. This is the picture of the clothes. The clothes have to be nice enough, stand out enough that you could come into the king's presence. Joseph is making such a statement of the reconciliation and the depth of the reconciliation something tangible. Think about that. Think about the clothes you're wearing. I wore this jacket today because we bought it a couple weeks ago. I've been waiting for it to get cold. It's a nice jacket. I wanted to look nice. To me, it says, hey, God's important to me. I want to look nice in front of everybody. Well, guess what? Clothes sometimes have that purpose, or we use them in that way. These clothes would say to them, not only have I been reconciled, these clothes allow me entrance into the immediacy of the king. That's a statement. That's a big statement of what Joseph has done here. We need to remember, we need to hold on to things such as that as far as the tangible ways of reconciliation. We're going to see that in a minute. We're going to end there in a minute on that. But first, let's take a look at, did you notice that somebody got more clothes than another person? Yeah. And somebody got money out of it. And that would be Benjamin, Benjamin the brother that that is the brother that wasn't any part of this. He's the innocent brother. He gets the 300 shekels, 500, I'm not sure which it was. He gets the money, plus he gets five sets of clothes. I think it's 300 shekels and five sets of clothes. My point, excuse me, I think what Moses' point, what God's point is, is what is the brother's reaction? Did the brothers demonstrate envy? Did they question? There's nothing of that. This is an indication of this is absolute reconciliation. There's no question of it. These brothers are finally at peace with one another. So let me ask you this question. Why do you suppose reconciliation is so important to God? Why does this transaction of these clothes take place? Why is it put here as it signifies this reconciliation? Certainly it's important to God, but why? Well, think about this. God creates image bearers so that these image bearers will rule over all that he has done and promote his image to all that he has created. He is an invisible God who creates a visible image, and that image is called to image it to all of creation. But it goes a step further. When we see the garden scene, God is in the garden. with Adam and Eve. God is a God of communion, a God who wants to engage with intentional relationship. We see that God is referred to as a father, and we all understand the intimacy of that, that goes into that relationship. But we also see, that's on an individual level, but when you think about, look at us here, as a body of Christ, we are the church. We are corporate right now, as a group, and yet, we see this beautiful picture of intimacy come back in again. God the Father refers to this, to us, his church, as the bride. Christ, the bride of his son, the bridegroom. And we see there's that personal intimacy again. We will forever be married to Jesus in that understanding of intimacy. That's what that picture, don't get into all the other ideas of the relationship, it's the picture of the oneness that is brought about in the relationship of marriage. What a beautiful picture of Our God is a personal, intimate God. So as this relates to other Christians, where do we stand as far as reconciliation? If we are part of the covenant family, we need to be reconciled to our brothers and sisters in Christ. It may not come immediately. Sometimes we have to rely on Romans 12, 18, be at peace with one another as much as is up to you. Sometimes people aren't ready, but we need to not give up. We need to be persistent. If we are the ones that are hindering that reconciliation, church, Christian, brother, sister, we need to stop the hindrance. We need to engage in reconciliation that starts with forgiveness. Let me leave you with this as we conclude. There was another greater change of clothes, symbolizing our reconciliation with another greater individual, and that is Jesus Christ. Listen to this from Isaiah 61 10. I will greatly rejoice in the Lord. My soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation. He has covered me with the robe of righteousness." Me? Me? Robe of righteousness? You? You're not worthy. I'm not worthy. This is what our God has done through the person and work of Jesus Christ. You may not be able to have it like this coat in front of you right now, where you can actually see it, but you know the truth. And you should never forget that truth. Jesus Christ's death paid so that you, the sins that you and I committed would be paid for, that we would stand clothed in righteousness, able to come into the presence of the King wearing the robes that the one in authority has given us. It is his righteousness that makes us able to come into his place and to his presence. So if we have been reconciled back to God, if he has done this work by the power and work of Jesus Christ, if we have accepted this, we have repented of our sins, and now we stand in union with Christ, then think back on what I asked you to think about was the takeaway of this whole sermon. then God's revealing of the overarching goodness of his sovereignty, despite our sinfulness, should drive us to forgiveness and reconciliation with others. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Oh, Heavenly Father, what a beautiful picture. Remind us, remind us when we're overwhelmed with sin, when we realize, gosh, I'm doing this again. Take us out of that victim mentality. Take us out of that self-condemnation. Remind us of your goodness, the goodness of your sovereignty, that you could repurpose this. Convict us to look at our sin, to examine it so we don't do it again. By the power of your grace, we don't do it again. As we call out and beg and we cry and we weep over our sinfulness and we ask you to please change our hearts so we don't want to do that again. Father, remind us of that. Remind us that you have closed us. in the garments of salvation, in the garment of your righteousness. In Christ's name we pray, amen.