Faithful Then, Faithful Now | How Do I Change? - Genesis 42-43(Aug 6) Myles Holmes

Hello and welcome to the Redemption Church Podcast.

We're a church in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada that exists to glorify God through the fulfillment of the Great Commission.

The spirit of the Great Commandment.

Thanks for joining us today.

Father, it's because of your great worth.

It's because of your endless holiness, unfathomable holiness, Lord, that for all of eternity, for all of time, all of people could sing your praise and never begin to even scratch the surface of your infinite worth.

And God, we declare that to be true of you now, Lord, that in your beauty, in your glory, and your strength, and your honor and your might, there is no match.

And there is no way we can even be come to begin to understand it in its fullness, Lord.

Its effect on our life cannot even begin to have its way.

And so, God, we humble ourselves in your presence, knowing who you are, knowing how great your name is, Lord, greatly to be praised by all your saints.

We humble ourselves in your presence and ask that you would do a mighty work in us.

God, you're so able.

You're so able because despite your great holiness and separation from us as sinners, Lord, you choose to make your dwelling among us.

And God, you've given us your Holy Spirit here this morning because you have a word for us.

And so, God, we bow before you.

And we pray these words, Lord, change us.

Change us.

Show us your glory that we might know you more, that our lives might be lived to your praise.

God, we're so thankful for this time to lift your name high.

God, so thankful for this time to submit ourselves to your word.

And we pray, Lord, in every way that you would bless it.

Pray this in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Amen.

Let's get to worship with you all this morning and lift the name of the Lord up high.

He's so worthy of our worship and everything we could give him, and even more than that.

If you have your Bibles, and I hope that you do, you can open them up to Genesis chapter 42.

Genesis 42 · chapter mention

And we're going to be working our way together this morning through Genesis 42 and 43.

Now, as many of you know, uh, my wife and I, a few months ago now, it's hard to believe, we moved.

We made the finally made the move after a year of being your pastor, we moved to your land.

And there's a big transition for us in that move, not only in the fact that every time you move, it's kind of a life-changing moment, but there was an identity transition.

We became dwellers of the suburbs, which I'm sure many of you are.

I don't know what they call those, suburbanites, maybe.

And we became country hillbillies.

We moved out to the country, and with moving out to the country, a lot of things change.

Two of the things that change are your utilities, where once your water and your sewage were provided by the town.

Now in the country, you kind of have to provide that yourself through a well and through a septic system.

Now, I want to let you know this morning, give you this warning, I want to talk to you about the well, not the septic system.

Some of you guys are really thankful for that this morning that we're not starting our Sunday morning off on a septic system.

Also, want to let you know that I am your pastor, and there's a lot to talk about if you're speaking every Sunday.

So someday we will get to the septic system.

So just prepare for yourself for that.

But for now, I was thinking about my well this week, and really I know nothing about a well.

And I, you know, I can take the lid off and I can look down and I can see that from when we moved there, the water is drastically lower.

Now, when that's your only source of water, that can kind of cause some concern in you.

And so I started thinking, like, how do wells even get filled up?

I wondered, like, do I need to, when it's raining, go outside and stick a big funnel over this thing?

Is that how it works?

I had no idea.

And so I Googled it, and now I'm gonna talk to you as though I'm an expert on how wells fill up.

That's how it works, right?

Well, this is how it works.

When it rains, the the water from the rain needs to press deeply down into the ground through all of those hard layers of dirt and sand and clay.

And eventually the water gets deep enough that it gets to what's called an aquifer, kind of like a pool of water, and the well fills up by being drilled into this aquifer, and that's how you are provided water.

Now, it's really interesting as you think about it, isn't it?

See, whenever it rained, I would get really excited.

Oh, the well's gonna fill up.

But it doesn't matter how much it rains, what really matters is how deep that rain gets through all of that hard, thick dirt, sand, clay, mud.

It needs to get deep down into the source of water in order to fill up the well.

Now, I think what that well illustrates is a perfect example of what the Lord is going to teach us this morning.

That it does not matter how much the gospel reigns over your life.

It does not matter how much gospel knowledge you have.

What matters is that the reign of the gospel, so to say, pushes deeply, it saturates deeply into your life, pushing through all of that hard dirt, mud, clay deeply into your heart, so that there it can affect change.

This is what makes the difference between a Christian who is filled with the Spirit, who has vibrant life, versus a Christian whose life is dull and unaffected by the gospel truth.

This is why two people can do the same amount of scripture reading, can attend the same church, can sing the same worship songs, can have the same gospel influence in your life, and in one person it fires them up for the gospel with a bold gospel courage, and in the other person it just kind of creates this apathy.

Because what's necessary is not only that you just hear the gospel, not only that you're just around the gospel, what's necessary is that these gospel truths that are found in God's word, what's necessary is that these gospel promises that they drive deeply down into your heart.

What's necessary then is gospel saturation, isn't it?

It's necessary that the water of God's living word presses deeply down into our heart.

Only then will we be changed.

Now, as we've been walking through Genesis, we've been walking with Joseph, and we've seen the dramatic rise of Joseph, haven't we?

From prisoner to prime minister over all of Egypt.

And in chapter 41, where we left off, while the world was experiencing famine, Egypt was experiencing God's blessing, a blessing that Egypt never really experienced before, and I don't think they'd ever experience again, a blessing because Joseph had listened to the God the word of God, shared that with Pharaoh, and Pharaoh had applied God's word.

And so Egypt is now in a place in chapter 42 where if anyone, picture this, in the whole entire world wants to live, they need to come to Egypt.

Everywhere is affected by the famine.

We can't really fathom this in our day and age.

A day where the world is so mobile and so much of our food is from different areas of the world, we can't fathom what it would be like for a worldwide famine to come and there to only be one place in which we can find food.

And God's gonna use this famine to set the scene for the next several chapters in Genesis and the next several weeks for us to set the scene of Joseph reuniting with his brothers.

With all 12 of Jacob's sons having a family reunion, so to say.

Now, this morning, for the first time since Genesis 37, we're gonna meet again Joseph's 11 other brothers.

And we're gonna notice something drastically different about Joseph when you compare Joseph's life to his brother's life.

What we're gonna notice that is that over the 11 years, everything's changed for Joseph.

Everything.

Joseph has risen from the ashes.

Joseph has gone from prisoner to prime minister, but when we meet his brothers again, 11 years later, nothing is gonna be different.

Nothing will have changed.

Something happened in Joseph's life, by which he experienced this massive, mind-blowing transformation that didn't happen in his brothers' lives.

It didn't happen in his father's life either.

I wonder this morning who you find maybe more sympathy with in this story so far.

You know, I think often you and I, as we seek to follow Christ, don't we kind of feel like Joseph's brother?

We look at our life and we think, man, I just I just thought I would be so much farther at this point.

I I kind of thought that the sin that I'm struggling with today, like it's it's kind of immature.

I thought I'd be over it by now.

And yet here I am so many years later, I'm still struggling with the same old sin.

I'm still struggling with the same old temptation.

I feel like I haven't changed at all.

I look at other people who are around me, if they've changed so much, and yet here I am not changing.

My spiritual disciplines are dry.

I just can't get myself into God's word in a way that it speaks life into me.

I feel like I'm stuck in a routine and rhythm that just feels dead and empty.

Struggling with the very same thing that we did weeks or months or years ago.

And really, if we're honest, if if we're pursuing Christ's likeness, this is what life is gonna feel like at times.

It makes sense, doesn't it?

Like in your heart, if if you're a Christ follower, you have such a great love for God, you have such a great awe of God's holiness, how great and high he is, that you want to be like him.

And the more that you know God, the more that you realize that there's a great separation between who God is and who you are.

And so there becomes like this kind of like holy yearning of I'm just not where I need to be, I want to be changed.

And so my question this morning is this what is it that Joseph has, which his brothers lack, which created such a massive change for Joseph?

And this is what we're gonna see this morning.

We're gonna see that the key difference between Joseph and his brothers is that Joseph's life and Joseph's worldview, the way in which he views everything that happens to him, has been deeply saturated with gospel theology.

In other words, the gospel has pressed deeply into Joseph's life so that he can't live life without interpreting it through the lens of the gospel.

And this is what we need.

We need to be so deeply saturated with gospel theology that we can't help but face radically different difficult circumstances and believe that God is still good, that God is still in control, that God is still wise.

See, it's not just that we have the gospel, it's not just that we know the gospel, it's not just that we read God's word or that we just know God's word.

What's important is that these things press deeply into our lives.

And so we're gonna walk through this text this morning together, and I want us to see what it looks like to have a life that's that's deeply saturated by the gospel.

When the gospel presses deeply into our heart, what does that mean for us?

Well, the first thing I want you to see then is that if the gospel saturated us deeply, we have a gospel honesty.

If you're taking notes, you can write that down.

That when the gospel saturates me, I'll have gospel honesty.

Now, notice in in verse one, we meet Jacob and his sons, and nothing's changed for them.

We last saw them in chapter 37, and yet here in verse 1, we're told they're experiencing the same worldwide famine, but their reaction shows that their life is still the same, their theology is still the same, their problems are still the same.

In fact, it's kind of ironic that you see there in the second half of verse 1, Jacob looks at his sons and he's looking at the pantry, he's opened up the cupboard, there's no food, and it's like Jacob's looking at his sons and he's saying, Why are you looking at each other?

Go and do something.

Remember, Jacob is like the ultimate achiever.

You ever have that in your life?

Like you're around an achiever and the achiever is like, they just can't sit on the couch.

You're like, hey, let's just sit on the couch.

You know, this guy's got to be up, gardening, they got to do everything.

And you're like, just chill out.

And that's Jacob.

He's looking at her sons and going, What are you doing?

Get to Egypt.

There's food in Egypt.

Now it's ironic because at the end of this story, we're going to be told that Joseph is actually blind.

Or at least growing very near to being fully blind.

And this is like kind of incredibly offensive.

Like Jacob, the blind man, is looking at his sons and saying, Are you blind?

Don't you see what I see?

Can't you see that you need to go to Egypt?

And it reveals this heart problem that Joseph's brothers have, the same problem they had that caused them to sell Joseph into slavery.

You see, Jacob's sons, they have no insight.

They have no insight, they have no wisdom, they have no care for God's word.

And here, 11 years later, they still have no care.

Well, Jacob's not any different.

Jacob hasn't changed.

And so Jacob tells them to go down to Egypt, but look at in verse 4, it says, But Jacob did not send Benjamin, Joseph's brother, for he feared with his broth with his brothers, for he feared that harm might happen to him.

See, sorry, Jacob's problem was always favoritism, wasn't it?

Remember when Jacob married Leah and Rachel?

The problem was that Jacob chose the wrong wife.

Jacob had a favorite.

Instead of wedding himself to Leah, he he chose to give his love solely to Rachel.

And then again, when Jacob had children, out of the 12 children that God had blessed him with that were a fulfillment of God's promise to be fruitful and multiply, Jacob chose one.

He chose Joseph.

And now we see Jacob, and nothing's changed for him.

He's still favoriting one of his children.

Now there are some kids in here who need to arm yourself with a little gospel argument, okay?

Hey mom, hey dad, if you are choosing favorites, you're just like Jacob.

You need to repent.

And yet it's an honest temptation, isn't it?

In fact, Jacob's favoritism gets so bad that at the end of this chapter, it's pretty hard to fathom.

He's gonna look at his other ten sons and say in their presence, to their face, I only have one son.

He's gonna look at Benjamin and say, This is my only son, and the other ten brothers are there, and they say, Hey, mom, dad, what about me?

What about me?

Like I'm a son too.

And yet Jacob's favoritism has grown its roots so deeply into his heart that as he views these eleven children, he only considers one of them to be his son.

See, the problem is that Jacob and his sons have not changed at all.

The problem is that they are unwilling to see their problems.

And you need to know that this is your problem and this is my problem.

Our problem, it's really a theological problem.

We have a personal spiritual blindness.

When it comes to seeing ourselves as who we really are, it's as though we are in a dark room.

And it does not matter how many mirrors are in that room, you cannot see yourself.

Unless the Holy Spirit moves in your life, unless God does a work to show you your sinfulness, you'll never see yourself as you're as you truly are.

This is why for some of you the gospel really isn't good news, because you don't need to talk, you don't need a savior if you're not in need of salvation.

And you're in this dark room and maybe it's filled with mirrors, but the light's not on, and so someone preaches Christ to you, and you say, Well, that's good for other people, but I'm fine.

See, what we need is this gospel honesty because we have this condition of spiritual blindness that unless the Holy Spirit does a work of regeneration, turning on the lights of our heart, so that we can see the ugliness of what is there will never change.

And this is really the beginning of change, isn't it?

In the believer's life.

The beginning of change is when the Holy Spirit pricks your heart, all of a sudden you're aware and convicted of this area in your life that needs to change.

This is the amazing work of the Holy Spirit in the believer's life.

You know, it's interesting.

When you came to Christ, it wasn't like going to the mechanic.

You ever go to the mechanic, they give you that sheet of paper and it's got like everything wrong with your car.

Like they gotta roll it out like a scroll, a red carpet.

It's like this is everything wrong.

You're like, I can't.

If I drive this thing out of the shop, all the wheels are gonna fly off on the 400.

Now, some of you guys don't drive a 2004 Toyota Corolla, so that application or illustration just went right over your head.

You're like, actually, my car is kind of fine.

But that's what happens when I go with my old car, okay?

There's this laundry list of everything you need to do.

God knew all those things in your life, but isn't it interesting?

He wasn't like, hey, here's everything you're gonna need to change over the next 50 years.

Instead, what the Holy Spirit does is in his wisdom, he slowly, he slowly reveals these things to you.

And I remember this happened to me one time.

I was sitting in a in a uh at a conference in a session, a breakout session, and so you choose this, and so I chose the one on biblical counseling.

I was interested in how to biblically counsel other people, and what happened there was like the equivalent of going to spectate a boxing match and then getting getting punched by the boxer.

I thought I was going to learn how to biblically counsel other people, but the Holy Spirit was gonna do some work in me.

And the speaker started to share some questions.

Hey, here's some ways that you can expose the idols, big emphasis on the people that you're working with.

And yet, as he asked those questions, what the Holy Spirit started to do was expose these idols that were in my life, and I left that room realizing that there was a major heart idol in my life that I did not even know about walking into that room.

And all of a sudden, the Holy Spirit had done his work to show where I needed to change.

And you see, what the gospel provides you with when you're saturated deeply by it is a gospel honesty that you're able to have.

See, Joseph is able to be honest with himself because Joseph has been deeply saturated by this gospel, and the way that we know that is actually in chapter 41.

Look at chapter 41 in verse 51.

When Joseph has children, he names them from some pretty significant things.

His firstborn, it says in 51, he named Manasseh, for he said, God has made me forget all my hardship in all my father's house.

He names him Manasseh because Joseph looks back on his life and he realizes all the hardship that he's gone through because of what God has promised him and because of what God has accomplished through redeeming him out of prison and into this position in Egypt, he can forget it all.

And in one sense, it's like he can forget all his physical suffering.

But I truly believe that as Joseph names his firstborn Manasseh, he's also talking about his own sinful hardship, the hardship that he had cast upon the Lord.

See what Joseph, in naming his son Manasseh, had truly experienced as salvation.

Joseph had come to believe the gospel truth that the prophet Isaiah speaks of in Isaiah 43, 25.

Isaiah says this, he says, I, the God speaking, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake.

And we gotta stop there because there's a whole nother sermon that needs to be preached to some of the people in here who are unwilling to even forgive them of their own themselves of their own sin.

And God looks at you and he says, I blot your transgressions out not for your sake, not because I love you so much, I blot your transgressions out for my own name's sake, for my glory.

But it doesn't stop there because God also says this, and I will not remember your sins.

This is the gospel on display in such a jaw-dropping way.

See, our sins are so forgiven of us that God will not remember them.

That's astounding.

You know, when when you walked for the first time and your parents saw you walk, you know what they did?

They threw both arms in the air.

They couldn't believe it.

They they were so amazed.

And if we were to look back on a video of that walking, uh, probably none of us would say it was very good.

It was pretty bad walking, right?

Like your first steps, it's like step, step, then fall.

You fall on your face.

It's pretty pitiful if you want to compare it to really what walking really is.

And let yet there are your parents after your first steps, their arms are in the air, they're so excited for this work that you've done, they're so excited for the progress that you've done, that they pick up the phone, they call aunties and uncles, they call grandma and grandpa, that they're saying, He walked.

She walked.

There's nothing about the fall.

It's not like they've forgotten the fall, it's not like they couldn't remember it, but but they're choosing not to remember it.

What they celebrate is the walking.

And this is what God does over.

You.

He celebrates your righteousness.

He celebrates your holiness.

And because of the gospel of what Jesus Christ has done for you, he doesn't remember your sin.

And this is the gospel that Joseph has experienced.

His sin will not be remembered.

I love that what he names the second son.

He calls him Ephraim.

Here Manasseh signifies Joseph's salvation, but Ephraim signifies his sanctification.

God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.

See, not only has God saved me in a way that I can forget all of my hardships, but he's also made me fruitful.

This is the gospel honesty that we have when the gospel saturates us deeply.

But I want you to see this secondly.

That when we're saturated with the gospel, we have a gospel identity.

We have a gospel honesty that leads to us having a gospel identity.

Now it's kind of surprising as we read through this text, it's it's shocking.

If you don't know the story, it's shocking how Joseph responds to his brothers.

How might Joseph respond?

Well, you could imagine, like, if your siblings left you in a pit for dead, you could imagine that maybe your arms would be crossed, you know, you meet them many years later, and you're like, hey, what the heck?

Remember the pit?

What was that all about?

There could be some real shame dumped on his brothers here.

Well, maybe the gospel has has so affected Joseph that instead his response will just be like, hey, it's like it never happened.

And I'm gonna welcome you into my family.

But he actually doesn't respond like either of those ways.

Instead, look at what it says in verse 7.

It says, Joseph saw his brothers and recognized them.

And his brothers look at Joseph, and the interesting part of the story is that they don't recognize Joseph.

Only Joseph knows that he's in the presence of his brothers.

But look at what Joseph did.

He treated them like strangers and spoke roughly to them.

See, Joseph in this moment, it's got to be a mind-blowing moment because we're told in verse 6 that his brothers came and bowed themselves before him with their faces to the ground.

And in verse 9, we're told, and Joseph remembered the dreams that he had dreamed of them.

Do you remember the dream that Joseph had that led him to be sold into slavery in the first place?

It was that all of his brothers would come, and that all of his brothers would bow before him.

And then it would be through him that he would bring blessing to both his brothers, but ultimately through his brothers to the nations.

And Joseph, with his very own eyes, is having that dream come to life.

Like, if there's ever an I told you so moment in history, this is it.

But that's not the way Joseph responds.

What Joseph does, I think probably none of us would have the wisdom to do.

Instead, look at what Joseph does in verse 10.

He said to them, sorry, at the end of verse 9, he said, You are spies.

You've come to see the nakedness of the land.

Well, Joseph, of course, knows that this is not true, and yet what we're going to find is that the context of the story is that Joseph is going to put them in a test.

Now, this will be the test.

The test will be if Joseph's brothers are given the opportunity again to do exactly what they did with Joseph, will they do it?

In other words, what Joseph wants to know is have these guys changed at all?

I know how the gospel has deeply affected and changed me, but have these guys changed?

If they have the opportunity to sell their brother Benjamin for profit, are they going to do it again?

Now, it's interesting, though, how his brothers respond because it reveals to us that their identity isn't rooted in the gospel.

Look how they respond in verse 10.

They say, No, no, my lord, your servants have come to buy food.

We're all sons of one man, we're all honest men.

Your servants have never been spies.

It's like his brothers don't really know what to say.

This is like the equivalent of when you're on the uh the playground.

You remember you're on the playground and someone comes up and they call you a nose picker, and you're like, No, I'm not, and that's all you have to say?

That's kind of like what Joseph's brothers are saying here.

They're like, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, I'm like on the back of their feet, uh, uh, no.

Take that back.

Well, Joseph doubles down.

He says in verse 12, it's the nakedness of the land you've come to see.

And this time they're able to respond with maybe a few more facts, but they don't have a full picture.

He says, We your servants are twelve brothers, the sons of one man in the land of Canaan, and behold, the youngest this day is with our father, and one is no more.

Now, this is really significant because as much as what they say is true, none of it is grounded with a gospel theology.

Think about it for a moment.

Who are they really?

Like if we can stand back as observers of this whole story and ask this question: Who are the brothers of Joseph?

Well, we have a lot more information than they provide.

These brothers are the children of Abraham.

These brothers are the ones through whom the God of the universe promised them that through their family would come blessing to the whole entire nations, that they would be given land which would someday cover the whole earth, and that they would be given a family so big that the stars in the sky couldn't even compare to it.

This is who his brothers are.

In fact, God had already told them who they were.

And so the way that they could have reacted, when when Joseph says you're a spy, you know what they could have said?

Hey, actually, stop right there for a second.

You know what's interesting?

The God of the universe, someone who's way more authoritative than you, has actually told me who I am.

And here it is, Joseph.

I'm a child of Abraham.

And if you believe in my father, if you come into our family, you're actually going to receive blessing that God has promised to pour out through our family.

That's who they are.

That's their identity in Christ.

Sorry, in God.

That's the gospel according to Genesis.

That they are children of Abraham.

And yet they don't share that.

Instead, what they're willing to do is accept Joseph's identity and fight on a surface level with that.

Listen, if you uh are in the NHL, the biggest, you know, highest hockey league in all the world, if you're a player for the NHL and an OHL coach, you know, a league lower than the NHL, an OHL coach comes and says, Hey, this is who you are.

You're a defense player, but you're really a center.

Well, you don't really care what that coach has to say because you have a much higher authority in your coach.

And this is what has happened for you, Christian.

Do you know that God has told you exactly who you are in your in his word?

And the challenge then for every believer then is to believe what God says about who we are rather than to believe what the world says or what our sinful flesh says or what Satan might be whispering in our ear.

This is a challenge.

You and I are in an identity battle.

I shared earlier about that conference that I was sitting in when God revealed to the Holy Spirit my sin, and part of what he revealed, I think many of us are going to be able to share in this, is that I was a people pleaser.

This was an identity thing.

I rooted myself in the identity of being able to please people around me.

So that because my identity was that of being a people pleaser, whenever people thought well of me, my life was great.

Everything was good.

But the moment I started to sense that someone was displeased with me, that someone was unhappy with my performance, that someone didn't think what I wanted them to think about me, my life would be crushed.

It's because my identity was in pleasing the people around me.

And as much as God could tell me that I have his full pleasure, I didn't care.

Because ultimately I feared man more than I feared God.

And you start to see that you and I, maybe it's a different identity that you cling to, maybe it's like you're a striver, you get things done.

Maybe your identity is like tied up in your physique, that in your beauty or your body, maybe your identity is tied up in your possessions or your position, but nonetheless, all of us are in this identity battle where the world is telling us one thing, maybe our flesh is telling us one thing, Satan's telling us one thing, and we need to respond with God's word about who we really are.

We find ourselves in this battle, and we need to ask this question: whose view are we going to root ourselves in when it comes to our identity?

God's or the world?

And we look at God's word and we see things like this that as children of God, we are redeemed.

So we're redeemed.

We love that word at this church.

That's why we named our whole church Redemption.

Because there's nothing more beautiful than redemption.

The fact that you're redeemed means that everything that you have done wrong, God is going to use for good.

Everything that you've done that's ugly, God is going to paint a beautiful picture out of it.

You're redeemed.

What about this truth?

That you're loved.

That you are loved by a God and He says there is nothing that can separate you from His love.

You're so deeply loved and cherished by Him.

That this is who we are in Christ.

The battle is to root ourselves in that identity.

But I also want you to see that when we're saturated with the gospel, what happens in us is that we have a gospel righteousness.

Not only do we have a gospel identity, but we have a gospel righteousness.

And so Joseph goes back and forth with his brothers and calling them spies, and the test ultimately comes in in verse 16 where he says, Send one of you and let him bring your brother while you remain confined, that your words may be tested, whether there is truth in you.

And then it's interesting in verse 17, he says, He put them all together in custody.

Now, we already know from the text in Genesis that this is gonna be a big problem for Jacob.

Jacob has got a favorite son, and that son is Benjamin.

And so Joseph here is pushing the pressure point.

This is like, you know, you know, your muscles ever been sore, and someone figures it out.

My uh wife, she loves to do this.

If she figures out one of my muscles are sore, they just constantly punch it.

I mean, she's doing it out of fun, she's not really that mean, but she just loves to see me in pain.

And this is what Joseph is doing with Jacob.

Are you willing to let go of your favorite son?

This is gonna be a real challenge for Joseph.

Not only will it be a sorry for Jacob, not only will it be a challenge for Jacob, but it'll also be a challenge for his brothers, who are then given the money back that they would have needed to pay for the grain.

We're told that in verse 25.

Joseph gave or gave orders to fill their bags with grain and to replace every man's money in his sack and to give them provisions for the journey.

And the question is this will they try to make a gain out of this situation?

Will they use their brother like they did for Joseph?

Will they use Benjamin to try to make money?

You say, Who could do that?

Well, they had already done it for much less with Joseph.

Now it's interesting, though, that in verse 17, when his brothers are put in custody, there's something really significant here for the keen reader of Genesis and of Scripture as a whole.

It says that they were put in custody for three days, and then in verse 18, on the third day, Joseph said to them, Do this and you will live.

There is a massive clue for Joseph's brothers here.

Already at this point in redemptive history, the divine author is building a theology of the third day.

God's people find deliverance on the third day.

You remember singing it?

We just sang in a moment.

Then on the third, at break of dawn, this was when Christ was resurrected.

He was dead, and on the third day, he rose again.

Well, that picture of salvation on the third day, it actually goes all the way back to the beginning of Genesis 1, where the world is created in six days, but that creation is split into two units of three.

And it is again reminded, Joseph's brothers would have known of this, of Abraham when he goes up Mount Moriah.

You remember he's he's bringing Isaac to sacrifice Isaac.

And on the third day they make it to the top.

And what does Isaac find at the top of Mount Moriah on the third day?

He finds life in the sacrificial substitute of a ram that God had given.

Joseph had experienced the third day salvation too, when he interpreted the dreams of the prisoners.

And on the third day, those dreams came to their realization, ultimately the dreams that would lead to Joseph's salvation.

See, the divine author of Scripture, God Himself, is building this case that will ultimately culminate on the cross, where Christ is laid in the tomb and three days later would rise again.

Third day should be significant, but if that's not significant enough, look at what Joseph says.

He says, Do this and you'll live, you'll find salvation.

But look what he says, for I fear God.

Now, that should have been like a big deal to Joseph's brothers.

They should have been like, wait a minute, we left home where the God fearers are, and we came to Egypt, and now there's a God fearer in Egypt.

Who is this guy?

And yet it goes completely over their head.

And what Joseph is doing is exactly what Jesus does for us.

He's showing us the way to salvation.

He's showing his brothers what they must do in order to be saved, what salvation for them will look like.

All they need to do is return with Benjamin, and they will receive food, they will receive pardon.

In verses 21 to 25, we see God beginning to work through the test.

He's growing a conviction in his Joseph's brothers about the best way to act.

And so even in verse 21, look what they say to each other.

They say, in truth, we're guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the distress of his soul when he begged us and we did not listen.

And this is why this distress has come upon us.

God's starting to kind of grow this conviction in them that the way that they have lived was not the right way.

But this test is going to test whether that conviction is really true or not.

And so Joseph fills their sacks with grain and money.

The brothers return to Canaan and they tell their father of everything that just happened, everything that we just read about.

And you can imagine how that goes.

We're told in verse 36.

Look at verse 36 with me.

After being told that Joseph had asked for Benjamin, Jacob, their father, said to them in verse 36, You have bereaved me of my children.

Joseph's no more, Simeon is no more, and now you would take Benjamin.

All this has come against me.

See, it's going to take significant work in order to sway Jacob's mind to a point where he's ready to let go of Benjamin.

Jacob's unwilling to release Benjamin to them.

And you can imagine for right reasons.

Like, remember the last time Jacob released a brother to these men?

It was Joseph.

And things did not go so well.

Jacob looks at these brothers again, like, you're asking for another son?

It didn't go so well when I gave you Joseph.

What's going to be better about Benjamin?

And it's going to take the offerings of two of his sons in order to sway his opinion, to sway his mind.

First, Reuben will step up, and you'll remember from Genesis that Reuben is like, he's the kind of guy that you don't want to be around.

Remember when Reuben slept with Jacob's servant wife, Bilhah, thinking that as the firstborn son, he could like fast track the blessings that would have already come to him, anyways.

Reuben saw an opportunity to cut off his whole family and try to gain blessing for himself, and he took it.

And we read of that horrible moment where Reuben slept with Bilhah, thinking that he could earn honor and power.

Instead, what we find is that everything was taken away from Reuben.

And in chapter 49, when Jacob dishes out the blessings to the family, we're told that Reuben will be given nothing.

See, everything that Reuben did, trying to gain honor, trying to gain favor for himself, it always failed so that he ended up with nothing.

He was already in a position of blessing.

He was already in a position of receiving the reward, but instead, because of his actions, he loses it all.

Now Reuben is going to step up at the end of 39, and look what he says.

Having to sway Jacob's mind, it's verse 37, it says, Then Reuben said to his father, Kill my two sons if I don't bring him back to you.

Kill my two sons.

We look at that, and I hope in this moment you're able to see how cowardly that is.

Of course, Jacob's not going to take that offer.

What Jacob wants is all of his sons back.

What Jacob especially wants is Benjamin back.

And Reuben stands up as though he's some hero and he says, Hey, you can kill my sons.

It's cowardly.

It's set against the backdrop of what we're about to read in verse in chapter 43, where Judah stands up and he says, I pledge myself.

Well, this is all that Reuben has to offer.

See, here's the gospel truth Reuben needs.

The truth is he needs is this his position that he wants, the position of honor and power and reward, it had already been given to him.

There was nothing that he needed to do in order to gain it.

So that everything that Reuben would do from that point forward would only take away from it.

And again, we find Reuben trying to set himself up as the hero of the family.

But he can only harm him, his position.

See, Reuben spent his life trying to labor for a position that he had already been given in God.

And there are so many of us that do that very same thing.

Where God says that our salvation is by grace, through faith, that is a free gift that is given to us, that everything you need to have your debt paid and to be given eternal life has been given to you in the gospel.

There are so many of us that are trying to add our righteous works to it as though we could really add something in the first place.

So many of us believe that we need more, and so we start laboring.

We start believing that our righteousness can add to our salvation.

And it's interesting that what Reuben does in trying to use his sons to earn favor with his father is really all that we're able to do if we're trying to earn righteousness apart from works.

Do you know that if you think that it's your morality that saves you, all you can really do is use other people.

You can't really love other people, you can only really use them.

Isn't that true?

Like if you have this theology that it's your morality that saves you, then all of a sudden people lose their value and significance as people and they become objects of your morality.

Well, I'll be nice to this person so I can earn favor with God.

That's not love.

Love's sacrificial.

And here's Reuben doing that very thing, using his sons, thinking he can get a better position because of his sons.

Here's what Reuben needs to understand.

It's the equation of the gospel.

It's something we talk about often, isn't it?

That Jesus plus nothing equals everything.

That's the gospel.

When you come to Jesus, you bring none of your righteous works, you bring none of your so-called identity, all you bring is your sin, and what you receive then is everything.

Gospel reward.

Well, the same equation means that Jesus plus something equals nothing.

See, if Jesus plus nothing equals everything, Jesus plus something equals nothing.

And if you think you can contribute to your own salvation, you will come to a day where you realize that you fall short every time.

Isaiah says your righteousness is like a filthy rag.

You need the riches of Christ's righteousness.

And the astounding truth that we're shown next in this is that we have it through a gospel sacrifice.

And that's the fourth thing I want you to see about a life that's saturated with the gospel.

It's a life that emboldens gospel sacrifice.

See, it's going to be a different offering to Jacob that sways his mind.

And at the beginning of chapter 43, Judah steps up.

Reuben's offering fails, but Judah steps up and again explains the situation.

But then something amazing in verse 9 happens.

Judah says to his father, listen to these words, I will be a pledge of his safety.

I'll be a pledge of his safety.

He says, If I do not bring him back to you and set him before you, then let me bear the blame forever.

Now two things need to be said of this.

The first thing is this how would the rest of Joseph's brothers now find salvation?

Jacob's going to release Benjamin to them because of what Judah said.

And what the rest of the brothers now needed to do is hide behind Judah's pledge.

Judah stood up and said, I'll bear the sacrifice.

If this doesn't go right, I pledge my own life.

You can take it.

And so now his brothers need to stand in line, stand behind Judah, and say, Because of Judah's sacrifice, we will live.

And it's exactly what we need to do.

See, Judah as the spiritual Son who would carry on the blessings of Abraham that ultimately would lead to Christ fulfills exactly what Christ would come to do.

Christ would come to do exactly what Judah did.

Christ would stand before the Father in the presence of all of God's children.

And Christ would look to the Father and say, I'll bear the pledge.

I'll be the pledge.

I'll bear the penalty myself for these people's sin.

I'll do it myself.

And so then, therefore, do you know what you need to do?

You know what the application for you is?

Every time you're confronted with your sin, every time you're confronted with your shortcoming, the application for you then is to get behind Christ.

And say, I don't need to pledge myself.

I don't need to earn my own righteousness.

I don't need to be like Reuben and try to offer whatever I can as kind of an offering to God.

What you do is you stand behind Judah, you stand behind Jesus, and you say, the pledge has already been made.

In fact, Jesus would go a step farther.

As Judah would pledge his life, he ultimately would not need to give it.

But Jesus, he would.

Jesus would be sacrificed on the cross and he would be resurrected three days later in order to pay for your penalty.

Do you understand this?

Do you understand that this is the gospel?

You, because of your sin, you deserve death.

You deserve a penalty.

This is the problem with sin.

See, sin isn't just that you're not gonna be happy if you sin.

It's really gonna ruin your life.

It's a foolish way to live.

That's true.

Sin isn't just like, well, you know, you're really gonna offend other people and you can't love other people if you're sinning.

That's true too.

But you know what the biggest problem with your sin is?

It's that because of your sin, you need to make a payment for that.

And when you've sinned against an infinite God, the payment for that sin is infinite.

It's eternal destruction.

Some of you are on that path right now.

And in this very moment, it has eternal consequence for you.

Because if you will believe the message of the gospel, your eternity will be changed.

Because there is one who has come, and he's telling you right now, stand behind me, and you'll be given life.

And if you'll believe the message, you'll be given eternal life.

This is what we need to do.

We need to stand behind Jesus, who is the gospel sacrifice for our salvation.

But a second thing is being revealed to us through this, and that's that we need to also stand with Judah.

We not only stand behind Judah, but we stand with Judah.

See, when the gospel begins to transform us, what happens is that we take up Jesus' words, and where he said to his disciples, if you want to be my follower, you need to take up your cross and follow me.

That the life of following is a life of sacrifice.

And we believe Jesus' words that it's more blessed to give than it is to receive.

And we model our life after the one who is Jesus, who had said, for the joy set before him, he endured the cross.

That becomes the believer's life.

And so listen, I want you very practically, you can look around this room, and you know what you're gonna find?

The people in this room who are sacrificing the most for Christ, and I praise God, there are so many who are doing it so fervently, sacrificing their life in order that they can serve Christ, in order that they can serve the body of Christ.

The people who are doing that are the most joyful.

It's the ones who have let go of the most that receive the most blessing.

And I need to say this this morning because I need you to know that as your pastor, I'm so, I'm so concerned because everything in our culture preaches the opposite.

Everything in our culture preaches that it's all about how you're served.

The thing you need to find in a church is a church that serves your family, it's a church that serves you, it's a church that delivers exactly what you want.

And I just need you to know that the gospel is so opposite, that your greatest blessing, yes, all that's important, but your greatest blessing is in your sacrifice, in the way that you sacrifice yourself for others.

That is the way that God is gonna funnel joy into your life.

That is the way that God is gonna funnel growth into your life.

All that you're looking for is found through gospel sacrifice, in the sacrifice that Jesus made for you and in the sacrifice that you make for him.

Lastly, I want you to see this that when we're saturated with the gospel, we have gospel reward.

And so Jacob is persuaded, and he sends Benjamin with his brothers, and it's amazing how they're received.

You know what awaits them when they get back to Egypt for the second time?

Undeserved reward.

They come back with the money in their bags and they tell Joseph's servant, and Joseph's servant says this, it's for you.

It's a gift.

And Joseph invites them into his own personal dining room and prepares a feast for them.

And to Benjamin, he gives multiple servings.

He heaps blessing on his brothers.

What did his brothers deserve?

Because of the way that they had treated Joseph, they deserved his punishment.

They deserved his scorn.

Instead, you know what they show up to?

Undeserved reward.

Undeserved blessing.

And each of you, you and I, are gonna experience the same thing.

If we're in Christ, you realize you're gonna experience the same thing.

You will make it to heaven.

You've been given assurance of this, and you will spend eternity with Jesus, being given eternal life.

You ever thought about that?

Isn't it funny that it's eternal life?

Like, what's eternal life?

Is that just like living forever in the clouds?

You know, you're singing with Jesus.

It's like a 24-7 worship service.

Some of us have that kind of interpretation of heaven, and we're like, oh man, it's gonna be kind of boring after a while.

And yet that's just what it is, isn't it?

It's eternal life.

What's life?

You think about the moments in your life where there's such immense joy.

You ever you're you're with your friends, and you're you're laughing to such a degree that it's like you can't think of anything else in that moment.

Your sides hurt.

There's so much joy in the community of people that you're around.

You think about the joy of your family, the joy of watching each person in your family grow.

You think about the joy of achievement, all these joys in life.

This is eternal, this is life.

And in heaven, you're given eternal life.

You don't deserve it at all.

And yet Jesus gives an eternal life to you, eternal reward.

There is a table that is set up for you that each of us will make it to, so long as our life is saturated deeply with the good news of the gospel.

Let's pray, Father.

We thank you, God.

Or we set our hearts on it.

There's nothing that is so important as it.

Nothing that we've earned.

And yet, Lord, I'm so convicted because I spend my time, my days laboring for such a lesser reward.

And Lord, the truth is that all that I have I need in you.

And I need I have in you.

God, you've given us everything we need in Christ.

And so, Lord, we take this time now to respond to you in song and to declare that, Lord, that in a world where there are so many different things we can turn to, so many different pursuits, Lord, our pursuit is you.

Lord, it's your name that we call upon.

And so, God, we sing this as an offering to you, to praise your name.

Say that you are our pursuit, God.

We pray this all in the name of your Son.

Amen.