Tonight I want to speak to you and use verse 34 or verse 32 is our text. Judah says, Thy servant became surety for the lad unto my father. Have you ever been in a position in your life when you didn't know which way to turn? I ask that question knowing full well that you all have. I've seen you experience it since I've known you, and I know that you've had other experiences outside of our church relationship. Maybe you haven't. I think you have, but if you've not, then you ought to listen because there's something here you can really use. If you have been through those moments, then you ought to listen so you might be properly prepared Not if it happens again, but when it happens again. When those kind of occasions happen to us, whether it's our fault or not, it doesn't really matter. There's nowhere for you and me as God's children to rest but in God's sovereign hand. Last week we found the sons of Jacob in that kind of situation. They were desperate. They didn't know what to do. The monarch of Egypt's cup has been found in Benjamin's bag. All their money is in their grain sacks. Benjamin has been taken back as a captive. and the other brothers rushed back to intercede in his behalf. Tonight, it's a sad story, but it's a good story. It's a sad story because these brothers are in this situation, but it's a good story because we see Judah, above all the other brothers, standing up and standing out as a leader. in this situation before the Prime Minister of Egypt. A man who holds the life of Benjamin in his hand. This silver cup is special. I'll talk more about that in a few minutes. But because he stole it, or was accused of stealing it, appears to have stolen it, from the Prime Minister's hand, then it's a death penalty. But Judah had stood before Jacob and told him, said, I'll stand surety. He wasn't foolish like one of his brothers and say you can kill my children. He just said, I'll stand surety. And if something happens to Benjamin, you can hold me responsible for the rest of my life. You can blame me for every bit of it. And now he must address that commitment that he'd made to this Egyptian by the name of Zaphnath-Paneah. I want to speak to you tonight, if the Lord will help me, a message that I have entitled, The Appeal of Judah the Surety. Let's go back to verse 14, where we stopped last week. Here we find the hearing of these men before Zaphnath-Paneah, the Prime Minister. Egypt. And God Almighty, He says, give you mercy before the man that he may send away your other brother. And Benjamin, if I be bereaved of my children, I'm bereaved. It will help if I get the right chapter. And then Judah and his brethren came to Joseph's house, for he was yet there. And they fell before him on the ground. Joseph knows what he's doing. He maneuvers his brothers into a position where they must see clearly what they've done. Where they can't deny it. They can't ignore it. They can't pretend it didn't happen. You see, Joseph knew full well their guilt concerning himself. And he was trying to bring them to repentance for it. But 20 years have passed. 20 years and more than 20 years have gone by. Since the day that the Midianites came through and they said, ah, we don't have to kill him, we'll sell him. And they sold him into slavery. They have no idea what happened to him. They don't know if he's alive. They don't know if he's dead. They don't know if he's a slave in some foreign country. The only thing they know is they sold him. Their father Jacob has grieved and suffered much over his lost son. They've watched that. They've seen that. They've watched the old man sit and weep. They've seen Jacob's or Joseph's name be mentioned and suddenly he begins to shudder and he begins to become remorseful. These brothers have carried in their hearts the guilt for this terrible sin in every act of their life. There's been tribulation and triumph experienced by Joseph. Something these brothers don't know anything about. All they've done is tend sheep and be remorseful. Joseph's been a slave. He's been a servant of Pharaoh's guard. He's been betrayed. He's been put in prison and left there for a long time. And now, he's second in command of Pharaoh and the whole land of Egypt. And he's responsible for everybody in that part of the world, whether they get food or not. You see, God has exposed the iniquity of these servants in due time. In verse 16, Judah said, What shall we say unto my Lord? What shall we speak? Or how shall we clear ourselves? God hath found out the iniquity of thy servants. Behold, we are my Lord's servants, both we and he also with whom the cup is found. Judah felt strongly that the punishment of God upon these evil-hearted brothers was just. In Numbers 32, 23 it says, But if you will not do so, behold, you have sinned against the Lord, and be sure your sin will find you out. I've known people all my life. I've known religious people, non-religious people who spent their whole lives hiding from sin. And I'll tell you what, God always finds out. God always gets justice. God always brings it to an end. He brings it to an end in some men and women by bringing them to repentance and faith, and in others He brings it to them by death and by dismay and utter destruction. The confession that He makes here is a confession of guilt. But Jesus taught us in the words of John that there is a confession that wipes away sin. John said in 1 John 1.7, but if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin. I want you to know something if you don't know it. I hope you know it. I hope you understand it clearly. If you're here tonight, and you're trusting the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, you're as innocent as He is. I don't always feel that way, but it's the truth. That kind of repentance confesses our faith. God will accept this repentance. Judah pleads with Zaphnath Panezer. We're guilty. God sent justice on us, and we deserve it. We deserve it, and he deserves it. Stole what you could. As far as they know, Benjamin might have stole it. But Judah makes an ingenious and penitent acknowledgement of their guilt. It's a great thing when a man confesses guilt, if he confesses it to God. I remember years ago, I had a situation that came up here in the church, and something was missing. And I thought I knew who got it, but I wasn't sure. It was probably 20 years later that a man came to me and said, I don't know what to do. He said, God's about to kill me. And I said, over what? He said, I stole something from the church one time. I said, I knew you did. Every time I'd see you, I'd think about it. Well, he said, God didn't let me forget about it either. We had a good talk, and he had found Christ. Christ convinced him to confess his sins. Now Judah here in this passage speaks not only for himself but for all of his brothers. His compassion for Jacob evidences that his attitude has been drastically changed. And he said, God forbid that I should do so but the man in whose hand the cup is found he shall be my servant and as for you Get you up in peace unto your Father. You see, Joseph says to them, it's alright, you shouldn't worry about it too much. Whoever stole my cup, I'll keep him here and he'll be my servant or my slave. The rest of you can go on home. That wasn't working. Judah had been burdened too long with their guilt. And his comment applies to their present situation. But it also applies to the long season of guilt that they've endured for over 20 years. They had known for more than 20 years, almost 23 years, that they were guilty of a great evil. Before God saved me, I didn't believe in God. I wasn't worried about judgment. But there were things I'd done wrong, and they wouldn't go away. And they bothered me for years until God brought me to Christ and gave me peace, gave me the courage to go and rectify some of those things. They knew that they had done nothing that could correct for their sinfulness. They might have been honest shepherds. They might have been honest in dealing with their father. They might have been fair in dealing with one another, but still they've got that guilt. There's still that responsibility. They knew that they were accountable to Jacob for the loss of Joseph. And they were accountable to Joseph because of what they had done to him, but most of all, and here's something that people forget, and that's the reason, one of the major reasons that a lot of religious places, a lot of churches are walking in the wrong path. All sin is against God. You might think God didn't have anything to do with that. God wasn't involved with it. I just sinned against somebody else, you know. I did this, that, or the other. All sin is against God. Now Judah becomes the spokesman. He's a guilty man that's now coupled with a repentant heart. And when you take a guilty mind and a repentant heart, they can begin to express their guilt. And he saw their experience as God working in them. While Joseph charges them with theft, he said, you boys can go home to your daddy. But the one who stole my cup is going to stay here and be my servant. God charges these brothers with treachery. It charges them with betraying their own brother Joseph, which they've done. Now, Joseph there in verse 17 gives to them an opportunity, which a lot of people are looking for, to betray Benjamin as they had done with him. Twenty-three years ago, they had betrayed him, and they'd sold him to the slave traders. Now he gives them, with an open hand, an opportunity to do exactly the same thing to Benjamin. He said, you boys go home. You're free. Have supper. Fill your cups. Load your mules up. Head on back to where you came from. But this one is staying with me. This one is staying with me. Somebody once, I don't remember how the story went, but somebody told me this one time, said, nothing tests a dog's love for their master like a fork in the road. You come to a fork in the road, a good dog loves his master. If you go down the right way, he's going to go down the right way. If you go down the left way, he's going to go down the left way. You've got a bull-headed dog that doesn't love his master and he doesn't care and he's independent. He might go the way you go and he might go another way. Joseph said to these brothers, go home. Leave your brother here. Go home. This was a devastating word to them. These brothers all remember. Judah's not the only one. They all recall their father's grief at the loss of Joseph. When they took that old bloody multicolored coat home and they said, we don't know what happened. We found this coat. It must be some animal alien left his coat. They saw how broken hearted their father was. They're all of one opinion. It's better off to be a servant, a slave, than it is to go through that again. At least Judah was. And verses 18 through 23, Judah speaks to this man, this prime minister, this monarch of Egypt, and he tells him about what happened after their previous visit. He says, Judah came near unto him and said, O my Lord, let thy servant, I pray thee, speak a word in my Lord's ears, and let not thine anger burn against thy servant, For thou art even as Pharaoh." This is a high and mighty man. I read that a week or so ago and I thought about Esther. And she told Mordecai, she said, if I go in where the king is, he'll kill me. And he said, if you don't go in, you're going to die too. Don't think you're going to get out of it. And so he goes in, he walks up to This man, he says, you're second in command of Pharaoh, and I respect you and I appreciate you, but I've got to say something to you. He said, My Lord, ask his servants, saying, Have you a father or a brother? And we said unto my Lord, We have a father, an old man, and a child of his old age, a little one, and his brother is dead. He alone is left of his mother, and his father loveth him. And thou said unto thy servants, Bring him down unto me, that I may set mine eyes on him. We said unto my Lord, the lad cannot leave his father, for if he should leave his father, his father would die. And thou said unto thy servants, except your youngest brother come down with you, you shall see my face no more." Now, you boys remember that. We need to pay due attention to the circumstances of Judah's intercession because Joseph is a type of Christ our judge. He stands or sits on the throne of Egypt. If he says you can buy food, you buy food. If he says go home hungry, you go home hungry. If you starve to death, starve to death. The psalmist said in Psalm 75, too, when I shall receive the congregation, I will judge uprightly. The best of men and women who are in offices of positions of power and authority judge wrongly quite often. The Lord Jesus Christ always judges rightly. He is a type of Christ not only as our judge, but as our surety and our intercessor. Paul said in Philippians 3.20, for our conversation is in heaven, And whence also we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. That's our conversation. That's our hope. It's Him. Not us. Him. And Joseph appeals for his brothers in the same way Christ is for His redeemed. You boys go home. Leave Benjamin here. Go home. But Judah comes to Joseph He says, I've got to talk to you. He said, you ask about our father. We told you we've got a father. He's an old, old man. They told him about their family situation. He had a child. A child that he loved. And he died. He's got this child. The child of his old age. And he loves him in a special way. They're the only two children he had by their mother who Jacob loved. They reminded him of the difficulty of separating Benjamin from their troubled father. He had said to them, don't come back unless you bring Benjamin with you. And they said, we can't. We went home and we talked to our daddy. And our daddy said to us, that boy ain't going nowhere. If he leaves me, I'm going to die. You take him down there to Egypt and you lose him or something happens to him, I'm telling you, I won't survive it. I wonder how many parents feel that way about their children sometimes. I've been there once or twice. And I know what it means. I know what Jacob felt like. I remember once when David was a small child, one or two years old. He was born with a hole in his heart. And they didn't have all these sophisticated operations they got now. And they were telling us that we're going to try to keep him alive until he's five or six. That's the youngest we think we can try. God healed him. God healed and closed the hole up. But I tell you what, I walked out of that doctor's office, every time I'd take him over there, I'd be shaking. I didn't know God at the time. I just didn't know where to look. There was another time in his life when I thought we were going to lose him. I didn't know how to handle it. I didn't know how to deal with his mother. I didn't know how to deal with myself or anything else. Old Jacob said, if you take that boy away, I'm going to die. But Joseph had insisted that if you come back down here and want to buy more food, you better bring him with you. No Benjamin, no groceries. I think it's worth considering here The quiet, humble attitude of Judah. I don't know about you. I'd have been tore up. I'd have been crying and snorting and snotting and everything else and begging and doing anything. Judah seems to be... I tell you, Judah has changed. If you have not noticed it, in the last few weeks of our studies, Judah has changed greatly. And now he speaks to this great monarch of Egypt as a man of understanding. Again, in verse 24, he talks about Jacob's remorse. He says, it came to pass when we came up unto thy servant, my father, we told him the words of my Lord. We told him what you told us. We told him, Father, we can't go back down there unless Benjamin goes with us. He's already told us that if we come without Benjamin, we'll get no food. No Benjamin means no food. No matter how much money you got, no matter what your state is, no matter how hungry your family is, no matter how little food you've got, if you don't take Benjamin with you, there won't be any food available for you. And our father, he says in verse 25, said, Go again, buy us a little food. Jacob told his boys, Go back down to Egypt. And buy just a little food. Buy just a little bit. That's the way people think. They think that if they don't need much. It always has amused me. People have nothing to do with preachers, have nothing to do with the church, have nothing to do with religion. They can have everything from a hangnail to hemorrhoids and it's no big deal. But let a doctor tell them they've got type 4 cancer and before you know it, Overnight, they're calling every preacher in the country wanting to put them on a prayer list. Go buy a little food. Not much, just a little. But you know, the quantity was never an issue. Jacob's got warehouses in every city in Egypt. Remember, if you'll remember back a few chapters when we were talking about the seven good years, It said they had so much grain they quit counting it. It's not a matter of how much they wanted. It didn't matter whether they wanted a five pound sack or fifty mules load. But Joseph has absolute control over the abundance of Egypt. Now the brothers remind Jacob of the delicate dilemma that's been presented to them. Our father said, ìGo buy us a little food.î And we said, ìWe cannot go down if our youngest brother be with us, then we will go down.î But we may not see the manís face except our youngest brother be with us. See, Joseph had made this proclamation to them in public. They stood in his court. There were long lines of people waiting to buy food. They had to have his blessing to buy food. And Jacob had told these men in front of all that audience, all his secretaries and his recorders, don't come back without your brother. Without Benjamin's presence, there will be no audience with the Prime Minister. There will be no appointment with this Egyptian master to see about the purchase of grain. If you'll remember, Pharaoh, when he put Joseph in position, he said to him, you are in charge of everything. I rule the country. I'm the Pharaoh, but you're in charge of everything else. Absolutely everything else. You know what I wish people could see? I wish people could see Christ here. There can be no resolution of people's sins without the presence of Christ and His atonement. There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. No other name. No other name. I had a conversation with a fellow earlier this week. He said, somebody told me you were a preacher. I said, I am. They said, where do you preach? And I told him, and he said, well, I'll have to come hear you preach sometime. I said, come ahead, I'd love to have you come. I said, do you know the Lord? He said, well, I know God. I feel like I'm doing what I need to do. I said, if you don't know the Lord, you're not doing what you need to do. It makes no difference what you're doing. He said, oh, but I go to church, I read the Bible, I'm honest, good neighbor, good husband and wife. I said, sir, I don't mean to offend you or start an argument with you, but what you're doing is not enough. You must know Christ. Benjamin is Jacob's only remaining child by Rachel. And Christ is God's only son. And he's the only fit substitute for poor sinners. The only one. Now the father speaks to his sons about the importance of Benjamin as a preservation of his own life. Look at verse 27, And thy servant my father said unto us, You know that my wife bare me two sons. And the one went out from me, and I said, Surely he is torn in pieces, and I saw him not since. And if you take this also from me, and mischief befall him, you shall bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave." Without the breaking of our promises, And without exposure to risk, no person will ever come before God as they must be to be accepted. Everybody thinks they got it under control. Everybody thinks they can handle whatever life brings them. All God's got to do is send a little rain, He'll change it then. Send a little snow, He'll change it then. Send an ice storm. Change your tune. Send a heat storm. Change your tune. Send a robber. Doesn't know you. Doesn't know anything about you. Just decided he wanted to rob somebody. Change your tune. And verse 30 down through the end of the chapter. We hear Judah speak again. But this time, He speaks in a special way as the surety of Benjamin. You see, Judah understood his father's grief. He understood what Jacob was saying. Judah has at this time, I believe, come to the place where he is so weighted down with the selling of Joseph that he has begun to understand what his daddy feels like. And he gives himself up as a surety for his brother. He tells the monarch of Egypt, Now therefore, when I came to thy servant my father, and the lad be not with us, seeing that his life is bound up in the lad's life, it shall come to pass, when he seeth that the lad is not with us, that he will die. And thy servant shall bring down the gray hairs of thy servant our father with sorrow to the grave, For thy servant became surety for the lad unto my father, saying, If I bring him not unto thee, then I shall bear the blame to my father forever." You see, Judah, if he has no choice, Judah would rather never see Jacob again. than to have to look in his tear-stained face if Benjamin is lost and Jacob grieves himself to death. Now Judah has freely offered himself as Benjamin's substitute. Verse 33 says, ìNow therefore I pray thee, let thy servant abide Instead of the lad, a bondman to my Lord, let the lad go up with his brethren." He said, take me. Keep me. Let that boy go back. I'll never see my father again, but my father might live a few years longer seeing that boy. Just let me be the servant. In that confession, Judah aligns himself with one who is to be the believer, surely. I have a surety. I hope you do too. Here's what Isaiah the prophet said in Isaiah 53, verse 4. Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, afflicted, but he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He's our surety. That's the reason I'm not afraid to die. It's the reason I'm not afraid of the judgment. It's the reason I'm not afraid of this world. He's my surety. The Lord Jesus Christ became the surety for all of His elect people, just as Judah had done for Benjamin. In John 16.10, Jesus said of righteousness, because I go to my Father and you see me no more. He's my righteousness. He's my righteousness. Judah steps forward here and he makes a magnanimous appeal to the monarch of Egypt. He first of all reminds this Egyptian monarch how much Jacob loved Benjamin. He's the only son he's got of his favorite wife. He's a beloved son. My Father has already said that if we don't bring him back that he will die. He will die. He explains to Joseph his fear that Jacob will die in his grieving over this son if he doesn't come home. And he agrees to surrender himself. Take me. I didn't steal your cup. He didn't say that Benjamin didn't steal it, although he didn't think he did, and we all know that he didn't. But he said, I didn't steal your cup, but take me. Take me. My children, my wives, they'll get along without me. But if my father doesn't see Benjamin, You can't be satisfied. Judah's willingness to take Benjamin's place was quite significant. It was quite commendable. We say that's a big deal. Occasionally you hear or I may hear about somebody who in an accident or whatever actually loses her life. Well this hadn't been long ago. Last week I think somebody drowned on the lakes here in Kentucky. Some kids were swimming and a boy was going under and somebody dived in to try to save him and the boy was saved but the person who tried to save him drowned. We said he was a hero. Listen to me. No man, no woman who is a hero to men and women can be compared to the Lamb of God. Listen to what Paul said in Galatians 2.20. I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live. Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." Repentance must be genuinely expressed. And Jodah shows many of those necessary characteristics. He said, take me. Let the lad go up with his brethren. For how shall I go up to my Father? And the lad be not with me, lest peradventure I see the evil that shall come on my father." I want you to listen to what Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians chapter 7 verse 10. For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of, but the sorrow of the world worketh death. For behold, this selfsame thing, that you saw it after a godly sort, what carefulness it wrought in you, yea, what clearing of yourselves, yea, what indignation, yea, what fear, yea, what vehement desire, yea, what zeal, yea, what revenge, in all things you have approved yourselves to be clear in this matter." In Christ. In Christ. We have perfect righteousness. When Jacob offers himself for Benjamin, he finds strength that he, and probably a few weeks ago we, would not have recognized. His offer is an unexpected gesture. The wife says a word. None of the other brothers have said a word. It doesn't tell us that Jude had ever said anything to any of them. He just comes to this moment. And it's such a great step in Judah's personal journey of faith that he says to the monarch of Egypt, Take me! Let my brother go. Oh, how good it is to see love ascend. How shall I go up to my father and the lad be not with me? As per adventure I see the evil that shall come on my father. You see, Judah prefers his father's life to be more blessed than does he desire to have liberty. He could not bear to see Jacob die in remorse over these two beloved sons who have both been lost by deceit. Let me wrap this up I'll give you four or five things. First of all, Joseph here sees his brothers. He's put them in a position that they can't get out of. He's put them in a position where they can't win. And he finally sees them smitten. Smitten in their conscience, smitten in their hearts, and Judah at least is highly penitent. He's really sorry. Second thing I think is important to see is that Joseph had initially planned to keep Benjamin for himself. He said, I'll keep him. He was going home. The man in whose hand the cup is found, he shall be my servant as for you, get you up in peace to your father. But Judah's passionate appeal And I don't know about you, but when I read that, it touches my heart. It upset all of Joseph's plans. And Joseph was overjoyed. He had put the test out there. He put a fork in the road to see which trail the dog was going to go down. And he was glad to see Judah's love for Benjamin and Jacob. took him down the right road. Now, seeing this repentance and this love for Jacob, Joseph knows that it's nearing the time for him to reveal himself. We'll talk about that more next week. My friends, sacrificing worldly gain For a better relationship with God is a lifelong battle for every believer. I fight it every day. Now, you all might be more successful than I am, but I fight it every day. And it's only in the last two or three years that God's took me through some struggles and took me through some battles that have brought me to the place where I just really don't care about this world anymore. I just want to know, Father, you show me what you want me to do. And by your grace, I'll do it. A man said to me a couple weeks ago when I was down in Georgia, he said, are you still pastoring? I said, yes. And he said, how much longer are you going to keep that up? About time for you to retire, isn't it? And I said, I didn't know you could retire from a college. I said, I'm going to preach as long as God will give me a place to preach. If the folks that I preach to will listen to me, I'll keep preaching to them. When I get so I'm too sick, too feeble, too frail to preach to them regularly, I'll sit down with them and listen to somebody else. It's God's plan and God's purpose for us to live in that kind of relationship. But I'll tell you something. You can't do it without Him. These people wave their hands in front of the crowd and say, I'll do it. They don't know what they're talking about. These folks that proclaim that they'll always walk uprightly and they'll always do justly no matter what happens. They don't know what they're talking about. They just haven't been in the right scenario yet. For thy servant became surety for the lad unto my father, saying, If I bring him not unto thee, then I shall bear the blame to my father forever." I'll stop there tonight. Next week we'll go on to chapter 45, and we will see what happens when Jacob reveals himself to his brothers. Amen.