Judah's Sacrifice

Today's passage is Genesis forty-four, one through eighteen, and thirty through thirty-four.

Then he commanded the steward of his house, fill the men's sacks with food, as much as they can carry, and put each man's money in the mouth of his sack, and put my cup, the silver cup, in the mouth of the sack of the youngest, with his money for the grain.

And he did as Joseph told him.

As soon as the morning was light, the men were sent away with their donkeys.

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?

Is it not from this that my lord drinks, and by this that he practices divination?

You have done evil in doing this.

When he overtook them, he spoke to them these words.

They said to him, Why does my lord speak such words as these?

Far be it from your servant to do such a thing.

Behold, the money that we have found in the mouths of our sack we brought back to you from the land of Canaan.

How then could we steal silver or gold from your Lord's house?

Whichever of your servants is found with it shall die, and we also will be my lord's servants.

He said, Let it be as you said.

He who is found with it shall be my servant, and the rest of you shall be innocent.

Then each man quickly lowered his sack to the ground, and each man opened his sack, and he searched, and he searched, beginning with the eldest and ending with the youngest, and the cup was found in Benjamin's sack.

Then they tore their clothes, and every man loaded his donkey, and they returned to the city.

When Judah and his brothers came to Joseph's house, he was still there.

They fell before him to the ground.

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?

And Judah said, What shall we say to my lord?

What shall we speak, or how can we w clear ourselves?

God has found out the guilty of your servants.

Behold, we are my Lord's servants, both we and he also in whose hand the cup has been found.

But he said, Far be it from 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.

Then Judah went up to him and said, O my lord, please let your servant speak a word in my Lord's ear, and let not your anger burn against your servant, for you are like Pharaoh himself.

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, and your servant will bring down the gray hairs of your servant, our father, with sorrow to Sheol.

For your servant became a pledge of safety for the boy to my father, saying, If I do not bring him back to you, I shall bear the blame before my father all my life.

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.

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.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

Um today and and today only uh for the kids, uh, you can keep any moth you find.

They're here for you, and you can have them and bring them home and name them.

Um, yeah, we've got plenty to spare.

Thanks so much.

Uh I just wanted to say thanks so much to John for preaching last week.

Uh it was a wonderful sermon.

It was great to listen to earlier this week, and I think tease us up so well, captured so well the dynamic of these long stories that we're preaching through, which have long middle sections where things are not resolved.

And that can be a hard thing to preach because it's nice to be able to put a bow on a sermon, but life is full of these long middle sections where things are not resolved.

And being seen in that way in the scriptures, uh, I think it's so important for understanding how we are participating in the very same stories that the Bible is describing to us with the very same Lord uh in the very same promises.

So I found that encouraging and I'm excited to be back this week uh with you all and to not be in Texas, which is Texas is fine.

I really like it here.

Let's pray.

Lord, thank you for a Sabbath day to gather together with your people, to worship and and praise you, to uh uh just uh just hear one another's voices together again.

And uh Lord, I praise you for uh the gospel that's being proclaimed all around our city this morning and all around your world, uh that it is uh the same gospel that we'll see a picture of today in the life of Judah.

Lord, I pray that we might see it clearly and that it might transform our hearts more completely, uh and that we might see you as you've revealed yourself to us in your son.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So on Friday of this week, uh Tim Keller passed away.

And I just wanted to say something about that.

Um I uh I haven't cried for the death of somebody that I haven't known since I was uh 10 years old and Dale Earnhardt died.

Why are you laughing?

You all remember.

No, he and and and then this week I found myself crying uh for the death of Tim Keller, someone that I never knew, and I realized it was the same crying.

I lost a hero.

Uh so many of us did.

And and and I think that uh for my generation of preachers, uh he meant so much.

And the gospel that I I get to share today, uh I learned to love so much from his preaching.

Uh when I was uh a freshman at CU, getting eviscerated by my philosophy classes, uh, the reason for God was like armor for me.

Um later on, I read his book King's Cross and fell in love with the gospel, and and that just sort of stuck in my heart um until I finally got to, you know, get that fire out of my bones a little bit by preaching through Mark here with our church.

Um the uh the first sermon series that I preached was on um Jonah, and that was that was um because the the man who discipled me and introduced me to Keller, uh we did a Romans Bible study together, and then we did a Jonah Bible study right after that.

Uh and it was this breakthrough of like, this is the same gospel, the gospel that was described so wonderfully through the through Romans, this is the same one.

Uh this is the same, the heart of the same God that's taking place in Jonah, and that that love that's described by God, where he looks at that great city, Nineveh, and he says, They, should I not have mercy on these people who cannot tell their right hand from their left in that great city?

And you look at our city, and it's uh it's a world that cannot tell their right hand from their left.

And there's a way to look at that that says uh look at the absurdity of these fools.

Uh look at the the wicked the plain wickedness of our adversaries.

But by Keller's preaching, I learned to look at it.

Uh, and through his Jonah series that we listened to as part of that study, I learned to look at it and say, should we not have mercy on this great city?

So much of his heart had become my heart and the heart for our church.

I'm very thankful for his ministry.

And um uh I think it as a church, you know, uh to whatever degree you've appreciated mine, uh be thankful for his ministry as well.

It's so wonderful to see uh Christian hero finish well.

And how many stories we have that aren't like that, but many do.

Many do.

All right.

I was supposed to do a giving intro this morning.

If you're not giving 10% of whatever you make to the church, you need to be giving 10% of whatever you make to the church.

Because the Bible says so.

If you have any questions, then uh you can email Zach.

All right.

Now let's get into today's text after that.

Uh oh.

I I think it's just right to give to give gratitude.

Okay.

Here's the question that I want us to approach today's story with.

It's a it's a long story.

If you didn't get it on one reading while standing and have in you know, mods getting permission to buzz the tower, um then uh it's okay.

Well, I'll recap the story.

But the question that I want us to look at this story through is how can a family be restored?

How can a people be brought back together such that they have real unity together?

How can that happen?

Is there a more pressing question for our nation?

How can a people be restored to unity?

How does that happen?

Our culture does not have an understanding of the mechanisms of reconciliation.

They're completely unknown to us.

We don't know how to reconcile a people.

We don't know how to reconcile relationships, we don't know the mechanisms with which that takes place.

We understand clearly the mechanisms of division, and we've cultivated all kinds of language to avoid participating with the mechanisms of reconciliation, because the mechanisms of division allow us to preserve our clearest idols.

They allow us to preserve a sense of self-creation.

The mechanisms of division allow us to occupy a position in our life story in which all that is within me is pure, and all of the pain that I experience is just the oppression of that which is outside of me.

And therefore, I can make myself known to the world such as I describe myself.

And what that does is it creates a clear division between you and all the rest of the world, so that the picture of existence becomes individuals being separated more and more uh further and further from each other.

Uh about once a year, I read a really big old book.

And you guys all find out about it because I quote it for like the whole year.

That has been Moby Dick.

Congratulations, this year it's the brothers Karamazov.

And you're gonna hear a lot about it.

But there's this wonderful quote that one of the characters says, it's not a wonderful quote, he's kind of a terrible character.

And he says, I find in myself that the more that I love people generally, the less I am able to love anyone in particular.

The more that I have a general love for mankind, the less that I love any individual.

I love mankind so much that I could even see myself under the right conditions, and if it was really meaningful, perhaps even going to the cross for mankind.

But I can't share the same room with a m even the best man for two days because he'll take too long to finish his dinner or he'll be sick and he'll blow his nose too frequently.

And he says, and I find within myself that whenever I'm I get too close to anyone in particular, they offend my own self-confidence.

And so he is the type of man who, under the guise of a great love for mankind, finds himself more and more isolated, more and more completely separated from any real experience of a real person.

Is there a better picture of our culture?

We celebrate love, a general love, an in particular love.

There's uh like all of my neighbors have signs that say love is love.

So that means that love, no matter the object of its affection, even if it's a terrible thing which you love, it doesn't matter.

Love is love.

The Bible says, uh paints a very different picture of love.

And this may sound um naive or Pollyanish, which is a word I only find myself needing to use while preaching.

But the mechanism of reconciliation, the way that a family comes back together, the way that a people hold together is listen to this and do not turn on your naive ears.

It is love.

Love is the way that that happens.

So in this story, we see an incredible act of love in a family that has torn itself apart.

And this incredible act of love in this family is the thing that restores the family.

They become a family again.

Now we aren't going to see the restoration today, but it's beautiful, and we'll see it next week, but we will see the act that accomplishes the restoration.

And in that, we'll see what are the mechanisms of reconciliation.

How does that happen for a people?

So, what happens in the story is uh Joseph concocts a test.

And it comes right on the heels of this meal that the family was able to share together.

The family comes in, and as John preached last week, they they eat a meal and Joseph just blesses them incredibly and gives Benjamin five times the food as as everyone else, which is kind of funny.

And they're eating, but but they don't know that Joseph is Joseph yet.

They still think he's just the king of Egypt.

And they're not eating at the same table.

Joseph is eating at the king's table, and they're getting food from Joseph's table as the brothers eat separately.

So there's they're together in a sense, but they're at different tables still.

The family has not been brought together in truth.

And so here is the question of today's text.

Can this family eat together in truth?

I've been at uh we went, I haven't been to a megachurch in a long time, but we got to go when we visited my family in Texas.

It wasn't a megachurch by their standards, but it was by mine.

And that that preacher asked for a lot of congregational feedback.

So here goes.

Here is the question: can this family eat together in truth?

Now come on, how many of you how many of you think about your own families when I when I say that?

Come on.

Can this family eat together in truth?

I mean, that's what it means to be united as a family.

That's what it means to be a people.

We can eat together in truth.

So Joseph has to concoct this plan to discover, to find out that if we're brought together in truth, will it mean that they try and kill me again, like they did the first time?

Or can we perhaps be reconciled?

And so he crafts this test to discover.

He creates a critical moment, a crucial moment to discover if this family can eat together in truth.

And so here's the plan that he tells the steward.

All right, Genesis 44, 1 through 2.

Then he commanded the steward of his house, fill the men's sacks with food, as much as they can carry, and put each man's money in the mouth of his sack.

Now here's the here's the key detail.

And put my cup, the silver cup, in the mouth of the sack of the youngest with his money and his grain.

All right, the evidence is planted.

At this point, we see Joseph switching from the the bread maker, the baker.

Remember, Joseph interprets two dreams: the dreams of the cupbearer and the baker, which uh allows him to arrive at this incredible position as uh almost king of Egypt.

And then we see Joseph fulfill these roles as the true baker, the one who provides bread to the whole nation and then to the whole world.

And now we see him act as the true cupbearer, which is the one who pours out his justice.

That is the cup.

We see this theme of the cup throughout scripture.

The Lord pours out the cup of his wrath.

So 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?

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

You have done evil in doing this.

So do you get the plan?

Hide the cup in Benjamin's sack.

The steward goes, uh tracks them down before they're too far away from Egypt and says, The cup is missing, you guys stole the cup.

And then when you find the cup, accuse them of stealing of stealing the cup.

You have done evil in doing this.

So the plan goes through just precisely as it was described.

And when the steward accuses them of stealing the cup, they act obstinate.

They know among themselves they didn't steal anything.

In each of their own consciences, they didn't steal anything from Pharaoh.

You know, it's an interesting moment because it's almost exactly like: do you remember when Jacob was fleeing Laban?

And Jacob's wife steals Laban's household idols, and Jacob doesn't know that the household idols had been stolen.

And so when Laban comes and accuses Jacob of stealing the household idols, Jacob like loses his mind on Laban.

Like, I didn't steal anything, you've been a terrible father-in-law, and just completely takes out his week on him.

It's this same sort of dynamic where there's this accusation of theft.

They know in their hearts that they haven't stolen anything.

And so they're obstinate to the accusation.

So they make this claim to try and verify just how innocent they must be.

And together they say in verses 9 through 10, whichever of your servants is found with it shall die.

And we also will be my Lord's servants.

How confident are we that we didn't steal the cup?

Look, the person who f who you find the cup with, kill him.

He shall die because of stealing the king's cup.

And the rest of us will be your slaves forever.

The steward, he understands that his instructions are to bring the dynamic to a finer point.

We'll see clearly what that is soon.

But he says, he said, Let it be as you say, referring to their innocence.

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

See, the brothers offer these stakes of the game.

They say, If you find the cup, kill the man and take the rest of us as servants.

But the steward, he lowers the stakes.

He says, The one who is found with it will be a slave, but the rest of you will be counted innocent.

I'm not going to punish all of you for the sins of the one.

So they searched.

In verses 12 13 It says, And he searched, beginning with the eldest and ending with the youngest, and the cup was found in Benjamin's sack.

Then they tore their clothes, and every man loaded his donkey, and they returned to the city.

The cup is found in the sack of Benjamin.

Let's remember why this is important.

Benjamin is the youngest son of Jacob, the only full brother of Joseph.

Benjamin was held back by Jacob the first time that the brothers went to Egypt, because Jacob is so fearful of losing his son Benjamin.

But then, after much coaxing, particularly unaffectively by Reuben, and then effectively by Judah, they allow Benjamin to come to Egypt with them the next time, because Joseph had said, unless you bring your brother back to testify to the truth of the story that you've told, then I won't sell you any grain.

But if you bring your brother back, the one that you've said existed, I will sell you the grain.

So they bring Benjamin back into Egypt, the beloved son.

And here, in Benjamin's sack, is found the silver cup.

The one son that they had promised to return with is now the one who can never return.

They tear their clothes.

It is a horror which falls on them.

All is lost.

Now, when they return to Egypt, Judah makes this appeal to Joseph in verse 16.

Judah 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.

Behold, we are my Lord's servants, both we and he also in whose hand the cup has been found.

I think this is the central verse of this passage.

Listen to what he says.

This is the key verse.

He comes to Joseph and he just has questions.

His appeal begins with just these questions.

He's just sort of pouring out the station that he finds himself in.

What shall we say to my Lord?

You found the cup.

What shall we say?

What shall we speak?

How can I advocate for us?

How could I possibly gain back our freedom before you?

You found the cup.

How can we clear ourselves?

We're here at the benefit of just your generosity.

And now you find us having stolen from you right after receiving a greater generosity than we ever could have hoped for, eating among the highest tables in the kingdom of Egypt.

What can we say to clear ourselves?

What words could we possibly have?

And then listen to what Judah says to Joseph.

God has found out the guilt of your servants.

Now, what is the guilt of these servants?

Well, Joseph knows.

The one that he's talking to, appealing to, he knows the guilt of these servants.

In fact, he knows more the guilt of these servants than Judah is even letting on.

Isn't this what confession to God is like?

We confess of the guilt of the thing that we see, you know, the cup, the clear evidence that can't be denied.

And we're confessing it to God.

And what does God know of us?

Oh, I know your guilt.

I know all of your guilt.

It is the same pattern of this confession.

He's confessing to Joseph, the one who he had betrayed and sold into slavery, and saying, God has found out the guilt of us all.

And he thinks he's confessing about the cup.

Joseph knows their guilt.

He knows the confession that is taking place.

He says, We are my Lord's servants, both we and he also in whose hand the cup has been found.

This is what he's offering.

He's saying, take us all.

Now, why does it make sense for them all to be taken now?

Remember, when they sold Joseph into slavery, there was one brother who was not with them.

There's one brother who this whole time is not guilty.

That's Benjamin.

Now all the brothers stand together bound in guilt.

Because apparently Benjamin stole the cup.

And the rest of us were the brothers who sold Joseph into slavery.

They are now all bound up in this guilt, at least as far as they know.

And so Judah offers take us all.

We'll all be your servants.

We'll all stay, we'll all remain.

The Lord has found out our guilt.

What will happen to us when the Lord finds out our guilt?

It is over.

But Joseph is looking for something else.

Joseph is not looking to just discover whether or not they feel guilty.

Joseph is trying to see if these feelings of guilt and contrition have manifested in a new type of person.

If we ate together in truth, would we find peace?

Or would we once again just devour one another?

That's the question over all of this.

And so Joseph creates the perfect situation to discover if they could eat together in truth.

So rather than accepting Judah's offer, which is that he would take all of them and make all of them their servants, Joseph says this in verse 17: he says, Far be it from 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 brings it to the finest point.

Here is the offer that is on the table for the brothers.

If you sell this guilty brother into slavery in Egypt, all the rest of the brothers will get to go back in peace.

Once, thirteen years ago, this group of brothers made that deal.

Here comes that dreamer.

He's tormenting us all with the love that our father shows him, with these pesky dreams, with the reports that he sends back of what we're doing to our father.

If we sell him into Egypt, there will be peace for us all.

Do you see what Joseph is doing?

He's seeing, are these those same brothers?

Can we eat together in peace?

Or are they willing to devour each other for their own peace?

That's the offer.

You know.

As a culture secularizes, you see the religious underpinnings of secularism rise to the surface.

And you see that these patterns that scripture talks about are not options of a way that you might craft your life.

But they are descriptions of the way reality is.

And then we'll test it and we'll compare it to my own desires for how a rocket ought to be.

And then once it matches perfectly the rocket that I have in my mind, and that is manifested out in the world, then we will have the perfect rocket, and surely it will go to the moon.

No, that's not what they're testing against.

What they're testing against is uh the gravitational pool of Earth, which they nobody in the room, you know, all the Nazis we'd stole.

They weren't thinking what is the uh um the ideal world that we could create such that our rocket will work in it.

They're thinking the world is such as it is.

We have to craft our rocket according to those conditions.

That is the way the Bible is.

The Bible is a description of the way that the world is.

And so the long tangent, circled back to where we are in this, you what we see manifesting in our culture is a perpetual scapegoat pattern.

Why?

Because one of the ways that unity is brought to a people is by identifying from within your ranks the wickedness that is in it and then placing all of your wickedness upon it and scapegoating it.

And so we are in a perpetual hunt for the next best scapegoat.

I don't know if you guys have Twitters.

But a good name for Twitter would be perpetual hunt for the next best scapegoat.com.

Because that's the practice.

You know, we'll find the next best scapegoat, and then once we identify that person, then we'll be able to rally against them, and that will bring some sense of unity and stability to our own terrible relationships.

Now, the what the scapegoat, that scapegoat pattern in our culture, it's a satanic version of the gospel.

Because it's like the gospel, isn't it?

Don't you hear the symmetry?

But it's a satanic version.

Because here is the offer.

If you scapegoat him and you hate that one, then you will find peace with each other.

It's motivated by hatred.

It works in a culture that believes in self-preservation and self-creation above all else.

So we sacrifice on the idols, on the altars of those idols, uh, whoever fits best next.

Now, in the face of this scapegoat opportunity, Judah is the one who speaks.

Let's remember who Judah is.

Judah is the one who, when Joseph was in the pit, after they had eaten, while they listened to his cries for mercy, Judah is the one who, after seeing the Ishmaelites that they might sell him to, says, What profit is it to us to kill him when we could make money off of Joseph?

And so Judah is the one who has the idea to sell him to slavery in Egypt for 20 shekels 13 years ago.

Don't you wonder, where are those 20 shekels now?

Of what good did they do you in a famine?

You know, when they came back, they had evidence.

And the evidence that they had was the coat where they slaughtered a goat, scapegoat, to pour the blood on this coat and hold before their father and say, see, he was destroyed by uh some wolf or something.

You know how it can be out there.

That was their one piece of evidence.

But then there was only the only thing that they had to hide was 20 shekels.

20 shekels is the other piece of evidence that if it were discovered, there would be this question where did these 20 shekels come from?

So Judah lives with this tangible lie before Jacob at the cost of Joseph's life.

And then right before we see the incredible integrity of Joseph living in Potiphar's house, we see a story about Judah.

The story about Judah and Tamar, where he refuses to marry off one of his sons to Tamar, who he ought to have married his sons off to.

And then he visits a cult prostitute, who it turns out was his daughter-in-law, Tamar.

He gives her uh a staff and uh a pendant that he wore, and uh he says, I'll bring back a goat later to to uh cover up, to make right the sin that I committed with you.

I'll bring back a goat to cover this up.

He doesn't actually say it that way, but that's I'm just wanting to make plain the pattern of the goat.

The patternofthegoat.com.

That's definitely a satanic website.

Don't go there.

In his sexual immorality, which becomes exposed with Tamar, he says when they find out Tamar is pregnant, she should be stoned.

And then Tamar presents the evidence that it's by him that he was pregnant, and he says, She was more righteous than I.

Joseph, here's the point.

Judah, throughout this whole narrative, has been more than any other character presented to us as the anti-Joseph.

He is the perfect example of the unrighteous compared to Joseph the righteous throughout this whole story.

And now, but he's also the one, the only one of the brothers who has been brought face to face with his own sin.

None of the other brothers have experienced that.

Not even Reuben of Sandwich fame.

It's been a good run.

Judah speaks up.

He describes the negotiation that he had with his with his father.

Lord, let uh Lord, Jacob, we have to bring Benjamin, and I will take full responsibility for Benjamin when he comes with us.

Uh uh if we had left by now, we would have returned twice, Judah said.

And he explains all of this in the dynamic where Benjamin's heart is so uh is so uh knit together with Jacob's heart that if Benjamin were not brought back, Jacob would die.

And so he explains all of this to Joseph.

Joseph, of Joseph knows, but he explains it to him.

And then Judah says this 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.

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.

Judah, out of love for his father, substitutes himself for the place of Benjamin and says, Let his crime fall upon me.

And because the deal is that only one of us would be punished, and then the others would go free because this is the scapegoat opportunity that you've presented to us.

If I fill that role, the others will be able to go free.

Now, we have to see this in the context that Judah is the one who at one time had an opportunity to sell a brother into slavery so that him and his other brothers might go free, to just scapegoat him.

But this is a different Judah.

Because now Judah is the one who says, I will sell myself into this slavery, so that my brothers will be able to go free.

This is a new Judah.

Oh, how easily that could be mistaken for a scapegoat.

That cultural scapegoat pattern.

But what is the difference between what Judah did there and what Judah did before?

It's the same thing, right?

One brother is pushed away for the sake of the unity of the other brothers.

One is done by hatred.

One is done by love.

You know that look, the pattern is like the gravitational pull of the earth.

It is a fact of the world.

How is unity brought to a group of people?

Sacrifice.

That is how unity is brought to a group of people.

But there's one which causes a there's there's one mode of sacrifice which is insufficient.

It will just keep looking for more.

There's one mode of sacrifice that is an insatiable monster.

But then there's another.

One that is done in love, which brings the family back together.

Judah makes this sacrifice out of love.

And in the next chapter, we'll see Joseph's response to this, when he sees it happen, he bursts into tears.

And he tells all the Egyptians to get away from him because crying is embarrassing.

And he calls his brothers to himself.

We'll see, we'll explore this just in detail next week.

He calls his brothers to himself and he says, It's me.

I'm Joseph.

Why were they able to be brought back together?

Because he saw that now they were a people who could be held together in love.

You know, the strangest thing about the story of Joseph is it's the longest story in Genesis, and it's about, you know, Joseph.

He's we get all of these aspects of Joseph, his his emotional outburst, his calculation, his integrity, his we know so much about Joseph's character.

Perhaps the only other character that we know more about in scripture than Joseph is David.

Because we see a long stretch of his story and we see his internal life happening.

And then you would think, I know what's happening here.

This whole time in Genesis, we've been tracing the promise, the promise that is going through the being made more particular by the people in the family.

Certainly, we've spent all of this time to see that Joseph is the son of promise, through whom our Savior will come, and he's not.

Judah is.

It is the lion from the tribe of Judah.

Why is that?

And I had this question legitimately at the beginning of this sermon series.

Judah was this enigma to me, and now I get it.

Judah is the one who made the sacrifice.

And it was that sacrifice that united the family.

You can interpret this whole, all of Genesis, in this question: how can a family come back together?

After the first sin, God and Adam and Eve are disjointed from one another.

And in their own marriage, they are hiding from each other, ashamed of their own nakedness.

The family devolves within the next generation as Cain kills Abel.

And Abel's blood cries out in condemnation against Cain.

How can the family be brought back together?

We see that when they're finally left to their own devices in the promised land with twelve sons, they turn on each other and devour one another.

How can this family be brought back together?

This is the question of what it means to be a human.

How can I be brought back into the family of the Lord?

And what happens is we cry out in ourselves when we're honest.

We speak like Judah spoke before Joseph, where, and it's just questions, right?

He says, What shall we say to my Lord?

What shall we speak?

How can we clear ourselves?

God has found out the guilt of your servants.

Part of the reason that we've lost the mechanisms of reconciliation in our culture is because we've lost the category of guilt.

Our part of our city's inability running around, unable to tell their left hand from their right hand, is because they don't have a category of wrong, of sin, of rocket that does not conform to the patterns of the universe, therefore does not go where you want it to.

And because of that, there's no hope of reconciliation.

But we cry out before our Lord, Lord, you have found me in my guilt.

Now, what happens then?

There's one from the tribe of Judah, who because of his great love for his father, don't you see that's what Judah's doing?

He's saying he loves Jacob, and he can't imagine not coming home to Jacob with Benjamin.

And because of his great love for his father, he says, Count their guilt upon me.

Treat me as though I was the one who was guilty.

Jesus Christ is the Son who came down, who bore our guilt upon the cross.

The wrath of God is poured out on him.

He drank the cup of God's wrath.

Until you see that your sin, your guilt is absolutely 100% covered completely in the most absolute terms in Christ on the cross.

You cannot participate in reconciliation.

Because look, Judah is a good sacrifice that fits the terms of this.

But this is hardly an exchange of the innocent for the guilty.

Benjamin isn't really guilty.

Judah is really guilty, and he does the right thing here, but it's not sufficient.

You see, we need one who is truly innocent to identify with us, who are truly guilty, that we might be spared, and that the law might be accomplished on our behalf, so that we might say, sinners like us might say these absurd things, like, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

What happens when you face your sin before the Lord?

He covers you in the blood of his son.

He welcomes you, he brings you into his family, he draws you to feast with him, he shows himself to you in love.

We are absolutely free in the blood of the cross.

We are made new in this gospel.

It is the answer to the question: what brings the family back together?

It is Christ and Him crucified.

Now, was Christ scapegoated?

There's a sense in which, yes, Christ is the scapegoat.

You know, there's a goat that you slaughter and a goat that you pray and send away.

Jesus, good news, he's both goats.

He's both goats.

And so we are made a people.

This is how we are made a people.

Look to Christ crucified.

Why did he come?

Because the whole world got together and chose that we'll ostracize him?

No.

That did happen.

But he came out of love.

Because of the great love with which the Father loved us.

He sent his son that he might die on our behalf and we might be reconciled, brought back into his family.

The sons that rebelled against might be made whole again because of the loving sacrifice of the one son who came and said, Don't count it against them, count it against me.

And he could bear the sacrifice.

If you wonder what is God like, what is he like?

Who is the one I'm praying to?

What is his character like?

Here is his character.

He loves with such a deep love that he would send his own son, who is innocent and blameless, so that he might die on behalf of you, sinners, so that you might be brought in.

That's what he's like.

So pray.

Come to him.

Ask whatever you want and think is good.

Have you not heard how I just described his love towards you?

You'll probably get it.

That's what his love is like.

We see a picture of it in Judah.

But we see the reality in the one who came from the tribe of Judah.

Christ.

The one who brought the family back together.

Are there any questions, Matthew?

Okay.

Any questions in the room?

Means I've preached long.

Jesus is the cupbearer and the baker.

Jesus is the one who drank from the cat from the cup of God's wrath.

That way, when we drink from this cup, it is just for joy.

He is the baker.

He is the bread that came down from heaven and was broken so that we all might be fed.

He invites us to come and feast with him.

And you may wonder, why might I be invited to feast at the table of the Lord?

It's because of the depth of his love towards you.

It's because he accomplished your innocence and he has forgiven you.

It's because he has done what needed to be done, that you might eat together as a family in truth, without devouring one another.

So come to the table this morning.

In hope in Christ, what he has accomplished.

Holy Father, let me read this from 1 Corinthians 11.

For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread.

And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body, which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

Holy Father, I pray that you would make clear in our hearts the freedom of the gospel, the goodness of who you are, the one who saves sinners, that we might experience what it is to eat with you in truth and have no condemnation.

Lord, let us see a vision for how deep your love is towards us on the cross.

Lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.