Let's see what God has for us in his word today. We're going back to the book of Genesis. And if you have a way of getting to the scriptures by your phone or by a copy of the Bible, I hope you'll turn with me to Genesis chapter 44. As with the last few weeks, we're going to be looking at lessons from the life of Joseph. And as with the last few weeks, we've got a healthy portion to read. We're going to read together chapters 44 and 45. Don't fret, it won't eat into the length of the sermon at all. Let's listen to God's Word together, Genesis 44, 1. 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 Judah said, what shall we say to my Lord? What shall we speak? Or how should 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, Oh 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 brother? And we said to my Lord, we have a father, an old man and a child of his old age who was 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 youngest 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 for me, and I said, surely he's 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 for 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. Then Joseph could not restrain himself before all those who stood by him. And he cried out, make everyone go out from me. So no one stood with him while Joseph made himself known to his brothers. And he wept aloud and the Egyptians in the house of Pharaoh heard it. Then Joseph said to his brothers, I'm Joseph, does my father still live? But his brothers could not answer him for they were dismayed in his presence. And Joseph said to his brothers, please come near to me. So they came near. Then he said, I'm Joseph, your brother, whom you sold into Egypt. But now do not therefore be grieved or angry with yourselves because you sold me here for God sent me before you to preserve life. For these two years the famine has been in the land, and there are still five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvesting. And God sent me before you to preserve a posterity for you in the earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So now it was not you who sent me here, but God. And he has made me a father to Pharaoh and Lord of all his house and a ruler throughout 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 to me, you and your children, your children's children, your flocks and your herds, and all that you have. There I will provide for you, lest you and your household and all that you have come to poverty, for there are still five years of famine. And behold, your eyes and the eyes of my brother Benjamin see that it is my mouth that speaks to you. So you shall tell my father of all my glory in Egypt and of all that you've seen, and you shall hurry and bring my father down here.' Then he fell on his brother Benjamin's neck and wept, and Benjamin wept on his neck. Moreover, he kissed all his brothers and wept over them. And after that, his brothers talked with him. Now the report of it was heard in Pharaoh's house, saying, Joseph's brothers have come. So it pleased Pharaoh and his servants well. And Pharaoh said to Joseph, say to your brothers, do this, load your animals and depart, go to the land of Canaan, bring your father and your households and come to me. I will give you the best of the land of Egypt and you will eat the fat of the land. Now you're commanded, do this, take carts out of the land of Egypt for your little ones and your wives, bring your father and come. Also do not be concerned about your goods for the best of all the land of Egypt is yours. And the sons of Israel did so. And Joseph gave them carts according to the command of Pharaoh, and he gave them provisions for the journey. He gave to all of them, to each man, changes of garments. But to Benjamin he gave 300 pieces of silver and five changes of garments. And he sent to his father these things, 10 donkeys loaded with the good things of Egypt and 10 female donkeys loaded with grain, bread and food for his father for the journey. So he sent his brothers away and they departed. And he said to them, see that you do not become troubled along the way. Then they went up out of Egypt and came to the land of Canaan, to Jacob their father. And they told him, saying, Joseph is still alive, and he's governor over all the land of Egypt. And Jacob's heart stood still, because he did not believe them. But when they told him all the words which Joseph had said to them, and when he saw the carts, which Joseph had sent to carry him, the spirit of Jacob their father revived. Then Israel said, it is enough. Joseph, my son, is still alive. I will go and see him before I die. This is God's word read to us. Don't you wonder how many times through the course of this story, through the course of these events, the brothers looked at each other and said, all we wanted to do was to get some bread. This story that for them must have been an ordeal to top all ordeals, the way they were challenged again and again, the way God was squeezing them, these are all things that we know something about as Christians and as those coming to Christ. how God squeezes us, how God sometimes lets the wheels fall off so that we have to face up to the facts of life. And what began as a very ordinary story, a very Ordinary day quickly became anything but, didn't it? Way back when Joseph is sold into slavery and the brothers lied to their father and those years of grief, those years of trouble, Joseph troubled in Egypt, Joseph's brothers and father troubled back in the land of Canaan. And 22 years later, here we are. And if you were to look at this story from sort of a limited point of view, you might say to yourself that this is a story about disruption. This is a story about a family for whom things were going along pretty ordinarily and pretty dullly, and suddenly everything falls apart for them. And from a sort of human point of view, you could say, yeah, that's exactly right. And some people, when the wheels fall off for them in life, that's how they approach the whole situation. Boy, I don't know what's going on, but suddenly everything's going wrong for me. But the question that the believer asks is what's God doing? What's God doing? And that's what we're going to look at today from these two chapters. And we're going to see three big things that God is doing in these men's lives. First thing we see is they're repenting. They're repenting, and you can look at all of chapter 44, and really, if you were to read chapter 44 and were looking for an anatomy of repentance, you could look at this chapter as one of those kinds of textbooks on what repentance looks like. And we begin the chapter, Joseph's ruse is not quite over, of course. He's already accused them of being spies. He's accused them of lying to him. And he's then sent them away with their grain, but also put their money back in their sacks. And then that's another part of the test. And so they come back, they run out of grain, and they come back to get more. And now the ruse continues, doesn't it? Joseph realizes that the work isn't done yet. And so now he sends them away a second time. And again, they have their silver put back into their sacks. In other words, all of this grain is free. And then there is a special silver cup. And of course, Joseph, part of the ruse, says it's a divining cup, and of course, that's part of the game that he's playing with them, that this is how I know things about you, it's because of this cup of divination. And they discover that the cup is in the sack of their youngest, the sack of their brother, Benjamin. And you see how the Lord sort of drops these little seeds along the way in their lives and confronts them with these questions. The question that comes to them as they're stopped along the way in verse four, for instance, why have you repaid evil for good? That's exactly what they had done to Joseph, isn't it? Joseph had been a good brother. He had been a conscientious brother. From all accounts of the scriptures, he seemed to be one concerned for their well-being. And yet they had repaid evil for good. And you see how the brothers respond eventually in verse seven. Far be it from us. to do such a thing. Now, of course, they're talking immediately, aren't they, about this stealing of the cup, but what they're being confronted with is really something bigger, isn't it? And then when the cup is actually found, all of the excuses are gone, and they're confronted with their sin in verse 16, aren't they? God has found out the iniquity of your servants. This whole path toward repentance is something that we're familiar with, isn't it? As God first begins to work in our lives and to speak to us about a sinful situation, maybe at first the voice is quiet and we find ways of drowning it, we find ways of avoiding it or ignoring it. But as the Lord pursues us, and pursues us and cuts away the excuses and cuts away all of the escape routes. We're finally left with this, aren't we? And what appears to be an awful thing actually is the way forward, isn't it? It's the joyful way forward. Repentance never feels good, does it? And yet the path forward through repentance is one of joy and one of peace, as we're going to find out in this story. And so these brothers are forced to say, God has found us out. And of course, they're not talking about the cup, are they? In the matter of the cup, they're innocent, but they've come to realize, haven't they? Yes, God has found us out regarding our sin. God has found us out regarding our brother Joseph and what we did to him 22 years ago. 22 years ago, isn't it? It's an incredible thing to think. how slowly God sometimes works, how long He pursues us in His grace. And He pursues these brothers year after year after year, and 22 years after the fact, they come to this place of repentance. And what happens with them is what happens with all of us who experience real repentance, isn't it? We're confronted with God's measure. We're confronted with God's measure. And of course, there are plenty of times along the way where we realize we've done something wrong. We've hurt someone and we say, hey, my bad. Or we say, I'm sorry, I've messed up. But repentance means that we see that we've sinned against God. and that God is the measure of right and wrong, and that we're weighed in the balances of his scales. God has found out the iniquity of your servants. That's always the case in true repentance. We're brought face to face with God. God has found us out. But then you notice how there's fruit of this repentance. And this fruit is visible, isn't it? And there are a number of indicators along the way that something very different is afoot for these brothers than 22 years earlier. Just a few little examples, again, part of the genius of this story that's told to us. Verse 13, for instance, they tear their clothes. Well, who tore their clothes when Joseph went missing that day? Only Jacob, not the brothers. But here the brothers are grieving and they tear their clothes. And then later on in the same verse, they return to the city, don't they? Do you see the test that Joseph has created for them? It's a perfect test, isn't it? Because what's the question? Well, if you give up Benjamin to slavery, you can go free. You can go back to living your ordinary life, right? Look, you don't have to return to the city, the guilty one, and this is what the steward says, and this is what Joseph says. He says, look, the guilty one has been found out. Benjamin is clearly the guilty party. He's the one that we're gonna have dealings with. He's the one that's gonna be enslaved. The rest of you may go on about your business. And you see, that's just where they had been 22 years earlier. If we put Joseph into slavery, we can go about our life and we'll be rid of his pesky ways. And then we hear them speaking, don't we? And Judah is the one who speaks for them. And this is the longest actual, the longest continual speech in the whole book of Genesis, this speech in the second half of chapter 44. And Judah is speaking, isn't he? And he's pleading, really. He's opening his heart to Joseph and trying to bring about a change to Joseph's thinking. What he's saying is, let me take the place of my brother. Now, when you think back to who Judah was before, this is really an extraordinary thing, isn't it? We've already heard cold calculating Judah, haven't we? Remember cold calculating Judah? He's the one that said, look, look, look, we don't need to put our hands, we don't need to lay our hands on Joseph at all here. We can sell him to these slave traders here. We'll be done with him. We don't have to lay hands on him ourselves. and we get some pocket money. Cold calculating Judah. But now 22 years later, we hear compassionate Judah, don't we? A man who cares about his father, he quotes his father. You can tell that there's genuine concern about the father's well-being and the pain that this would cause if Benjamin doesn't return with them. There's concern for his brother and really the proof of the change is in the pronouns, isn't it? Twice in verse 26, he says, he calls Benjamin our youngest brother. Do you remember how they referred to Joseph when they brought back the shredded, bloody robe of Joseph to have Jacob inspect it? Does this look like your son's? Now Benjamin is our youngest brother and how he refers to his father six times in the course of his speech. He says, my father, my father. I wonder if you found it to be true that God does some of his best work in our family, in our families. Doesn't he? Those places where there can be so much hurt and heartache is the same place that God comes near to us and brings the best healing and the deepest healing, the kind of healing that only He can bring to broken people and broken dysfunctional families. And it's true, isn't it? It's true that that's one of the first places you see proof that people have really changed. It's how they treat each other in the family. Right? How children interact with their parents, and how parents interact with their children, and how husbands and wives interact, and how brothers and sisters interact. Like I said, repentance is always visible. It's always fruitful, isn't it? I wonder if I ask you the question, maybe some of you are raised in a Christian home, do you remember which of your siblings was the first one to be, from all appearances, to be the first real Christian? I can answer that question. We were four, four siblings, and I know which one of my siblings, it was my sister Elizabeth, who was the first one to become a real Christian, because you could tell. And believe me, I didn't want to notice, but I noticed. a new patience and a new kindness and a new goodness. God does his best work often in our families, and it's there that we see some of the best fruit of what God is doing in our lives. And here he is at work, right? And it all starts with God has found out the iniquity of our hearts. God has found us out. That's a scary place to be, isn't it? But the path forward is through that repentance to a place of peace and joy and comfort. And the Lord brings that about. Our mouths are stopped, right? They get to the point where they say, what else can we say? And that's where we each need to be, isn't it, before God? What else can we say? And so we see these brothers repenting, don't we? And then it was we turn over to chapter 45. We see them reconciling. They're reconciling to their brother, Joseph, aren't they? And Joseph is reconciling himself to them. And as we turn to chapter 45, we see that Joseph can't hold himself back any longer. Up until this point, he's been pretending to be simply the second in command in Egypt and to not know them and to not be their brother. And now finally, he dismisses all the servants and he speaks to his brothers and he says, I'm Joseph. They don't believe him, of course, do they? And then once it sets in that this could actually be Joseph, they realize what trouble they're in. Because this man has all the power in Egypt, and if he wants to disappear these brothers, he can disappear them. There are no limits to his power and to what he can do with these 10 foreigners. But again, do you see how central God is in thinking about the Lord is to these brothers and to Joseph and to the way he thinks about the situation? And he introduces them, doesn't he? He comforts them with the reality of God. Verses five and seven and eight and nine, he mentions the Lord again and again, doesn't it? God did this, God did this, God did this. It's absolutely essential, isn't it? The Lord's presence, the Lord is there and he's being gracious to Joseph and he's being gracious to these brothers. And these brothers realize that they're in the hands, not of a tyrant, but they're in the hands of a merciful man. A man who has learned mercy from his God. And this is incredibly important as we think about reconciling. Many of us, I'm sure, have situations where reconciliation is needed. And what Joseph is really coming to grips with is this. God is in control of my hurts and heartaches. God sent me here. He says it three times, doesn't he? God sent me. And then a third time, no, you didn't send me, God did. Why does he make that such a point? Now, all of this plays out on a bigger stage too. and hopefully we'll come back and put a bow on this story. If you can ever put a bow on the story of Joseph, we'll try to do that next week. But for now, just looking at it at a personal level, this is what Joseph is coming to see. He's able to leave his pain with God. He's gonna leave it in God's hands to do with it as he pleases, and that frees him To initiate, that frees him to go to his brothers and to initiate reconciliation. Now, let's bring this down close. Let's bring this down into our own lives for a minute. How often have we who have been hurt been the one to go and to make peace with the one who hurt us? That's not easy, is it? In fact, that's impossibly hard, right? We're the aggrieved party. And what do we do? We think our job is to make sure, to make it known, to make it very clear, I'm not a happy camper. I'm not happy with you.