Beyond The Basics

Transcript:

Welcome to the Beyond the Basics Bible Study Podcast. My name is Dan Snyder and I am your host. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of Beyond the Basics where we are exploring the Bible from Genesis to Revelation one chapter at a time.

What do you think of when you hear the word substitute? That word can be a positive or a negative word in our culture, right? But in Genesis 44, we’re going to find out how the Bible views a substitute when Judah is going to show the ultimate fruit of his repentance by offering himself as a substitute for his brother.

So getting into the chapter, in verse 1, it says, then he commanded the steward of his house. So this was after lunch, after Joseph had eaten lunch with his brothers in the previous chapter, and after he saw the brothers celebrate without acknowledging their past sin, now he’s going to begin a third test to bring them to repentance. The first test was when he had replaced their money in their sacks with new money. Second test was when he gave Benjamin five times more food than the rest of the brothers during lunch in the previous chapter. Now we’re going to see a third test.

So Joseph gives a three-fold command to the steward in verses one through two. First, he’s going to say, fill the men’s sack with food as much as they can carry in verse one. And he’s going to say, put each man’s money in the mouth of his sack. And then in verse two, he says, put my cup in the mouth of the sack of the youngest. So this threefold command indicates a test. Remember that number three can indicate that we’re seeing a test take place. So that’s how we know that Joseph is trying to test his brothers here. And ultimately, God is testing Joseph’s brothers here to see if they will show the fruit of repentance this time.

And as a recap, what are they repenting of? God is trying to bring them to a place where they are repenting of selling their brother Joseph into slavery and really only as an alternative to murdering him.

Let’s get into those three commands that Joseph gave his steward briefly. First, in verse 1, it says, Fill the men’s sacks with food as much as they can carry. So Joseph is showing his generosity again. He not only gave them the food that they bought, but he also gave them food for the journey home.

And then he says, put each man’s money in the mouth of his sack. So, the brother’s money is being returned for the second time. Remember that anytime we see anything doubled in this story, that shows that God is working. So, God is working through Joseph’s plan here. This isn’t just Joseph trying to bring his brothers to repentance. It’s God working through Joseph to bring his brothers to repentance.

So then in verse 2, he says, put my cup, the silver cup in the mouth of the sack of the youngest. So this is now part two of Joseph’s plan. The first part was to get Benjamin to come to Egypt because Benjamin needed to be away from his father, just like Joseph was away from his father when he was sold into slavery. Now Benjamin is away from his father and he can begin part two of this plan.

So in verse 3, it says, as soon as the morning was light the men were sent away with their donkeys. They probably were sent away in very high spirits. They had gotten more grain. They weren’t arrested for stealing money. They had proven they weren’t spies. Remember, Joseph had accused them of being spies earlier. Now, they proved they weren’t spies by bringing Benjamin with them. They had regained Simeon, who had been held in prison while Joseph waited for them to return with Benjamin. Benjamin was safe, if you remember that Jacob was concerned about Benjamin’s safety. Well, Benjamin was safe. He’s going to return to his father now. And they had lunch with the most important man in the world. So they’re probably in very high spirits as they leave here.

But there’s going to be a twist. In verse 4, it says, they had gone only a short distance from the city. Now Joseph said to his steward, “Up, follow after the men. And when you overtake them, say to them, why have you repaid evil for good?”

Now, this is a false accusation. Of course, they hadn’t repaid evil for good. They hadn’t done anything evil in this story. So some will say that this shows that Joseph was tormenting his brothers out of revenge for what they had done to him when he was younger. But I believe that the result is going to show that he was guided by God to bring his brothers to repentance.

This question, why have you repaid evil for good? The general terms of this question leave it very open-ended so that it could include what his brothers did to Joseph when he was a teenager.

So, moving on in verse 5, he says, “Is it not from this that my Lord drinks? And by this he practices divination?”

Joseph says, “Is it not from this that my Lord drinks and by this that he practices divination?”

Now this is an intentionally misleading statement because Joseph likely did not practice divination. In verse 2, he only calls it a silver cup, but he’s able to appear as one who is able to obtain divine knowledge. He’s able to appear as someone who can practice divination because he’s shown the ability to interpret dreams. He knew the order of his brother’s birth when he sat them at the table. Remember at this time, his brothers did not know that this was Joseph, but Joseph knew that these were his brothers, and so he knew the order they were born. So he doesn’t come right out and say that he practices divination, but he says, “Don’t you know that this is the cup that I would use to practice divination?”

So he’s being intentionally misleading, and he’s trying to scare them, to basically say, “I know what you’re up to. I know all these things because I can find them out with this cup and I can find you out.”

Now, what this shows is that Joseph isn’t perfect. Even though he’s got good intentions, even though he’s trying to get them to a place where they have no other options, it’s still not right for Joseph to lie to his brothers.

So moving on, verse 6 says, when he overtook them, he spoke to them these words. So the brothers were probably still inside the city limits. Otherwise, remember there were 11 of them and this was one steward. So 11 men could have easily overpowered the steward if they had left the city and there were less people around to see what exactly was happening. There’s no way the steward would have been able to get away with this. If they had left the city, the only way he can do this is by catching them before they leave the city so that there’s still a lot of people around. And if 11 men try to start beating up one guy, people step in.

So the servant spoke to them these words, the words that Joseph had told him to say. And in verse eight, they say, “‘Behold, the money that we found in the mouths of our sacks we brought back to you from the land of Canaan. How then could we steal silver or gold from your Lord’s house?”

And they got a solid case. I mean, it wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense for them to bring back 20 sacks of money, double what the food costs that they were trying to buy, just to then steal a silver cup. That makes no sense. And that’s what they’re saying here to the steward. They’re saying, “Hey, why would we do this? We could have just kept that money. That’s worth a lot more than a silver cup.”

And so they’re so confident that none of them had the silver cup that in verse nine, they say, whichever of your servants is found with it shall die and we also will be my Lord’s servants. So they’re so quick to offer up somebody’s life for a wrong done, but that’s how confident they were that none of them had the cup.

And the steward comes back with a counter offer in verse 10. He says, “Let it be as you say. He who is found with it shall be my servant, and the rest of you shall be innocent.”

This is a little bit confusing. Look at the wording there. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense the way he says it. He says, “Let it be as you say.”

Well, what did the brothers say? They said, “Whichever of your servants is found with it shall die, and we also will be my Lord’s servants.”

So the steward seems to be agreeing with that by saying, “Yes. If I find this cup with one of you, that person will die, and the rest of you will become my servants.”

But then he says, “He who is found with it shall be my servant, and the rest of you shall be innocent.”

Well, that’s not what the brothers had offered. So the steward is agreeing with the brothers’ offer, but then saying something completely different. What is going on here? It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Essentially what the steward is saying, and really what the author is trying to tell us is that being the steward’s servant is being compared to death. So for one of the brothers to become the steward’s servant is for that brother to essentially die. Not physically, but die because that brother would be separated from his father.

So you remember how Jacob compared the loss of Joseph and Simeon to them being dead. Simeon wasn’t dead. But Jacob used the same language about Simeon being gone as he did to Joseph, and he believed Joseph was dead. He said, “Joseph’s no more and Simeon is no more.”

Being separated from their father was the same thing as being dead. In Jacob’s eyes and in their own eyes, they might as well be dead if they’re going to be separated from their father. What an interesting turn of phrase that the author would include here. That in a chapter that’s all about repentance and the restoration of a family, that the author would include this phrase that indicated that the brother who was guilty would be separated from his father and that that separation from his father would equal death. Even though that brother hasn’t physically died yet, it would be the same as being dead.

And yet as we go on, we’re going to see that repentance leads to the restoration of a family. The restoration of all the sons back to their father.

So, moving on in verse 11, it says, Then each man quickly lowered his sack to the ground, and each man opened his sack. So, each man quickly lowered his sack because they were so confident they were innocent, but they had forgotten that last time they left Egypt, someone had put money in their sacks before they left, and they were terrified when they discovered it. They had already forgotten this, and now they’re confident in their own innocence, and so they quickly lowered their sack.

And in verse 12, beginning with the eldest and ending with the youngest, the cup was found in Benjamin’s sack. So he began with the eldest because he didn’t want the brothers to know that he knew where the cup was. The steward knew where the cup was. He was the one who put it in Benjamin’s sack, but he started with the eldest. This is the second reference to the birth order of the brothers. The previous one was in Genesis in the previous chapter, Genesis 43 verse 33, when they had been seated at the table.

So it was found in Benjamin’s sack, and now we come to the fork in the road. Now we come to a situation that could potentially become very explosive because the hatred that they had for Joseph is now at risk of being put on display for Benjamin. They could have blamed him for stealing and getting them in all this trouble. They could have been glad at an opportunity to get rid of another of Jacob’s favorite sons.

But instead, look what they do. In verse 13, then they tore their clothes, and every man loaded his donkey, and they returned to the city. They tore their clothes, just like Jacob tore his clothes when he heard about Joseph in Genesis 37. Joseph’s brothers told their father Jacob about what had allegedly happened to him, and Jacob tore his garments in verse 34 of chapter 37, and put sackcloth on his loins and mourned his son for many days. Now, Jacob’s sons are tearing his clothes at the potential loss of Benjamin. So the sorrow that they had caused for Jacob is now being returned to them.

They returned to the city with Benjamin. Now they could have returned home and left Benjamin to slavery. But instead, look, notice what they do. They return to the city to face their brother’s fate with them. They didn’t need to do this. The steward had said, he who was found with it shall be my servant and the rest of you shall be innocent. They could have left. They could have left Benjamin all alone. This is showing now their change of heart. This is showing their true repentance. We’re going to see Judah take the lead in this in a little bit here, but what’s really happening is all of the brothers have now shown their repentance for what they’ve done to Joseph because instead of leaving Benjamin to be enslaved, they’re now returning to the city to go with him to be enslaved alongside with him or to share in his fate.

So in verse 14, when Judah and his brothers came to Joseph’s house, he was still there, and they fell before him to the ground. Now, this is the third time that they had bowed before Joseph. Remember that number three indicates a test or potential test. So, this indicates that their test is nearly over because we’ve now reached the third time that they’ve bowed before Joseph. And what’s interesting here is that they’re not going to insist on their innocence and stand for justice. Instead, they came with humility and they bowed down. They didn’t return to the city in order to stand and shake their fist at Joseph and scream and yell about how unjust and oppressive he is. Instead they came and bowed before him in humility. And I believe that they recognized that whether they were guilty in this moment or not, they knew that they deserved this.

So in verse 15, Joseph said to them, “What deed is this that you have done? Do you not know that a man like me can indeed practice divination?”

Now, he says, “A man like me.”

He chooses his words very carefully. Again, he doesn’t specifically say that he practices divination, but he implies that he does. And the purpose of this is because it gives his brothers the impression that they can’t hide anything from him. Now, he’s being intentionally deceptive, which is not a good thing. So, we need to keep that in mind. We need to notice that Joseph isn’t perfect either.

So, in verse 16, Judah speaks up and he says, “What shall we say to my Lord?”

Judah’s got no defense. He says, “What shall we say to my Lord,? What shall we speak or how can we clear ourselves? God has found out the guilt of your servants.”

Look what Judah is saying. “God has found out the guilt of your servants.” Why would he say that? They weren’t guilty of stealing the cup. It’s clear that Judah is talking about something else. He’s acknowledging here the guilt of their hidden sin, of what they did to Joseph. Now, they still don’t know that they’re talking to Joseph himself, but he’s confessing the sin and the sin of his brothers to this man. They know they’re guilty. They may not be guilty of this one thing, but they know they’re guilty. And they know that God has found them out. They’ve been running from God for a long time. They’ve been running from the consequences of their sin for a long time, but they’ve realized now they can’t run any longer.

Look, if you’re in that place right now, if you’ve been running from your sin for a long time, if you’ve done bad things in your past, and you’ve been running from it, you’ve been trying to escape the consequences and you’ve realized that God has found out your sin and God is bringing you to a place where you can no longer deny your guilt. I encourage you, confess your sin. Confess it to the Lord, confess it to somebody you trust. And turn, repent, and trust in the Lord. Place your trust in Him, place your faith in Him, place your hope in Him.

You may still need to deal with the consequences. We all deal with consequences of our sin. Whether we follow the Lord or not, we all have to deal with it. But if we repent from that sin, we can deal with the consequences knowing that there’s a great reward on the other side. So I encourage you, turn now. Don’t wait. Turn to the Lord, confess your sin, repent. Go make it right to who you need to make it right to. If that’s something that you need to do, place your trust in Jesus right now. Don’t wait.

So he goes on to say, “We are my Lord’s servants, both we and he also in whose hand the cup has been found.”

Again, all the brothers except for Benjamin could have left, but they chose to stay with him in slavery. They’re not even trying to negotiate for Benjamin’s freedom. They’re just saying, “Look, we’re guilty. We’ll stay. We’ll serve you.”

This reveals their changed hearts. They were a wealthy and privileged family. They had money, flocks, they had land, they had everything. They could have gone back to that, but instead they chose slavery. Judah might be the one who’s speaking here, but they’re all there together. Any one of them could have left at any time, but they all stayed. This is a powerful, powerful picture of repentance. If you’re not paying attention to what the author is showing us here, start paying attention. This is a very powerful picture of what repentance looks like.

In verse 17 Joseph said to them, “Far be it for me that I should do so. Only the man in whose hand the cup was found shall be my servant. But as for you, go up in peace to your father.”

Joseph was testing them to give them one more chance to see if they would leave Benjamin behind. He’s saying, “No, you don’t have to stay. You can go. I’ll just keep the one. I’ll just keep Benjamin.”

So now Judah is gonna give a speech to Joseph and he’s gonna start it off. He’s gonna say, “Give me permission to speak.”

So, breaking down the speech that Judah gives a little bit here, in verse 18 he says, “Let your servant speak a word in my Lord’s ears, and let not your anger burn against your servant.”

So, Judah here is speaking to Joseph the same way that Abraham spoke to God about Sodom. In Genesis 18.30, Abraham said, “Oh, let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak. Suppose thirty are found there.”

Abraham went on to intercede for the city of Sodom. And so, this phrase is giving us clue that Judah is about to intercede for his brother Benjamin. It’s a very similar introduction to intercession.

In verse 19, Judah said, “My Lord asked his servant, saying, Have you a father or a brother?”

So, Judah wasn’t trying to blame Joseph here by saying, “Hey, you asked us this the first time.”

But he’s trying to point out that their intention was never to bring Benjamin here in the first place. And if Benjamin was the one who stole, it was never their intention to bring him in order for him to steal anything. And if you notice, as you read through the speech, that the tenor of Judas’ speech gives the impression that they feel cornered into this situation, that it’s completely spiraled out of their control. And that’s why I read through the back and forth of this conversation that he’s retelling, when you break it down to these simple conversations that he’s retelling, it gives the impression that it’s all these things that Joseph and Jacob are saying to them and forcing them into, and they are losing control more and more as these conversations progress, and it’s completely spiraled out of their control, which, by the way, is exactly what has happened and that is exactly what God intended.

So, in verse 20, Judah says, “His brother is dead.”

Now, this reveals their intent with Joseph rather than their actions. They didn’t know for sure that he is dead because all they did was sell him into slavery. They never saw him die. But previously they described him as being no more, which could mean any number of things. But now very clearly he’s saying his brother’s dead because they may not have known that for sure, but that was certainly what they intended when they sold him into slavery. They just wanted to profit from it.

So now for the first time, Judah’s being honest, even though all the way back in their first encounter with Joseph in Egypt, they said, “We’re honest men. We promise we’re honest.”

But they couldn’t even tell the truth about their past with their brother.

And then he’s going to go on and say a couple of things that were never recorded in previous conversations, especially in Genesis 42. In verse 22, he says, “We said to my Lord, the boy cannot leave his father, for if he should leave his father, his father would die.”

That response to Joseph was not recorded in Genesis 42. And then in verse 23, “Then you said to your servants, unless your youngest brother comes down with you, you shall not see my face again.”

So moving on in verse 27, Judah says, “Then your servant, my father, said to us, ‘You know that my wife bore me two sons. One left me and I said, “Surely he has been torn to pieces,” and I have never seen him since. If you take this one also from me, and harm happens to him, you will bring down my gray hairs in evil to Sheol.’”

Now Jacob may have blamed himself for losing Joseph because he was the one who sent Joseph to find his brothers. He didn’t want to place more blame on himself for losing Benjamin. And that’s why he didn’t allow his sons to take Benjamin down to Egypt. Because if he would allow it, and Benjamin were to be lost, Jacob would be able to blame himself again and say if I had just told them they’re not allowed to go with Benjamin, he would still be here with me.

So moving on, verse 30. “Now therefore, as soon as I come to your servant, my father, and the boy is not with us, then as his life is bound up in the boy’s life, as soon as he sees that the boy is not with us, he will die.”

Now, Judah is showing that he cares about what happens to his father, unlike when they had sold Joseph into slavery. So, when they sold Joseph into slavery, they lied to their father, they manipulated him, they tricked him, they put him through all sorts of torture, and Jacob said the same thing. Then he said, “No, I shall go down to Sheol to my son, mourning.”

Thus his father wept for him. In verse 35 of Genesis 37, they showed no regard for how their father felt. They intentionally put him through massive, massive suffering. But now Judah is showing that he cares about his father.

So he says in verse 32, “For your servant became a pledge of safety for the boy to my father, saying, ‘If I do not bring him back to you, then I shall bear the blame before my father all my life.’”

Now, if you remember from the last chapter we talked about that phrase, bear the blame, it also means miss the mark, which is another word for sin. So, Judah is saying, “I’m going to bear the sin of losing Benjamin for the rest of my life.”

And so he says to Joseph in verse 33, “Now, therefore, please let your servant remain instead of the boy as a servant to my Lord and let the boy go back with his brothers here.”

Now we finally see true repentance. Because if you haven’t noticed, Jacob is still playing favorites with the youngest brother. The conditions are just the same as when Joseph was young. They have an opportunity to give up their father’s favorite to save themselves, but instead Judah offers up his own life for Benjamin’s life.

Now notice that they don’t apologize to Joseph for what they did to him. To be sure, they still don’t realize that they’re actually talking to Joseph, but they’re not saying, “We’re so sorry for what we did to our brother Joseph and we don’t want to do this to Benjamin. We don’t want to do the same thing.”

They’re not apologizing for what they did to Joseph because that’s not what repentance is. Apologies are a good first step. It is taking ownership and taking responsibility for your actions. But apologies are not true repentance. Repentance is taking a different action or a different path.

So in this case, the brothers don’t have to say that they repented because they showed it. They showed repentance. We need to do the same. When we need to repent to others, it means nothing if we apologize and then go back and do the same thing. It means far more if we never say a word of apology but go and do something different and make right the previous offense. And that’s what’s happening here. That’s what Joseph’s brothers are doing.

So, notice what else Judah is doing here. So, he’s saying, “Please let your servant remain instead of the boy as a servant to my Lord.”

So, he is lowering himself as a servant. Previously, in Genesis 38, Judah went down from his brothers. Do you remember? In verse 1 of Genesis 38, it says, it happened at that time that Judah went down from his brothers and turned aside. So, that symbolized his moral descent. And that whole chapter was describing the moral descent and compromise that Judah got into and just, and his entire family and it was an absolute disaster and it required an act of God to be able to prevent Judah from doing something completely destructive to the Messianic line.

So previously Judah had went down from his brothers morally into deep, deep descsent, but now Judah is lowering himself as a servant for his brothers or in place of his brothers. You see the contrast there, what Judah is doing here? Again, we can learn so much from what Judah is modeling here in his act of repentance.

In Philippians 2 verses 3 through 10, I told you this is one of my favorite sections of scripture before, and then I would reference it a lot. I’m going to reference it again. It says, do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

This is what Judah is doing here, and this is what we’re called to. We are called to take the form of a servant, to have the mind of Christ, and take the form of a servant, humble ourselves, bring ourselves lower, bring ourselves down, so that others may be elevated.

And in verse 34, Judah says, “For how can I go back to my father if the boy is not with me? I fear to see the evil that would find my father.”

That never stopped Judah before. That shows a true change of heart. And he’s realizing that Jacob has seen enough evil in his life. Later on in Genesis 47 verses eight through nine, Pharaoh’s gonna ask Jacob, “How many are the days of the years of your life?”

And Jacob said to Pharaoh, “The days of the years of my sojourning are 130 years. Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers and the days of their sojourning.”

He’s obviously talking about both literally, he has not lived as long as his fathers, Isaac and Abraham. But also Jacob went through far more suffering than Abraham and Isaac did. He did not attain to the blessing and the provision and wealth that his father and grandfather did. His life has been marked by evil from beginning to end. And Judah here recognizes, “Jacob’s seen enough. My father’s seen enough. He doesn’t need to see more evil.”

So he gives himself up in exchange for his brother. What a beautiful, glorious picture of repentance that this chapter provides us.

That’s how this chapter points to Jesus. Not just repentance, but as a substitute. See, Judah was willing to become a substitute for his brother. And we’ve been looking for someone like him throughout the entire book of Genesis. All the heroes of the faith that we hold up, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, none of them were willing to become a substitute for another until we come to Judah.

Maybe this is why Judah was chosen to be the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather of Jesus? Maybe it’s not. I don’t know. But I think it’s interesting that ever since Adam, we’ve been trying to find somebody who would become a substitute for us. Somebody who would be willing to become a substitute for sin, for brokenness, for pain, and for death. Judah here is willing to become a substitute and take the punishment for something that he did not commit. And later, Jesus would be born from the line of Judah and he would become the perfect substitute. Jesus would be the substitute that we have been waiting for and looking for through the entire story of the Bible.

Romans 4 22 through 25 it says, that is why his faith was counted to him as righteousness, referring to Abraham. But the words, it was counted to him were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him, who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.

Jesus did this for us. If you’re listening and if you’re one of those that I talked about earlier that has committed sin in the past and you’ve realized that God has found you out, that your past is coming back to haunt you, listen to these words in scripture. There is a substitute. There’s one who was willing to take your sin upon himself and that sin was nailed to the cross along with Him. It was Jesus. He took it all. If you confess your sin, surrender your life to Him, put your trust in Him, He will cleanse you. You will receive His righteousness. You will receive His life. And on the last day, you can be raised to eternal life with Him, live forever and ever, free of sin, free of pain, free of guilt, forever. It’s good news.

So this week the question I want to ask you for you to meditate on and try to find ways to implement this specific ways. The question is, what are some ways in which you can show this same self-sacrificial love to others that we saw in this chapter? The way that Judah sacrificed himself for the sake of his brother, what are some ways that you can do this in your own life? How can you lay your own life down for somebody else? Try to think even in real practical terms. Something that you can do this week. Pray about that. Let’s pray.

Lord, thank you so much for this glorious, beautiful picture of repentance, self-sacrifice, and ultimately a picture of your son and what he did for us on the cross. Pray that you would speak to our hearts, draw us to repentance if we have unrepentant sin in our lives, draw us to the cross. Draw us to you, Jesus. Help us to come to you in humility and bow low before you. And as we receive your forgiveness and your cleansing touch, I pray that we would then go to others and lower ourselves before them. We would take the mind of Christ and become like servants. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Thank you once again for listening to this episode. I apologize, we had to skip a week, but we’re back on track now. And if you would like to leave any feedback, feel free to leave a comment on social media or on the website. I always love hearing from you guys. Don’t forget to give the show a five star rating, click like, click subscribe, go subscribe on Patreon. You get a lot more content over there. Thanks for listening.

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