We hear another word of the Lord from Genesis 43.
43 Now the famine was severe in the land. 2 And when they had eaten the grain that they had brought from Egypt, their father said to them, “Go again, buy us a little food.” 3 But Judah said to him, “The man solemnly warned us, saying, ‘You shall not see my face unless your brother is with you.’ 4 If you will send our brother with us, we will go down and buy you food. 5 But if you will not send him, we will not go down, for the man said to us, ‘You shall not see my face, unless your brother is with you.’” 6 Israel said, “Why did you treat me so badly as to tell the man that you had another brother?” 7 They replied, “The man questioned us carefully about ourselves and our kindred, saying, ‘Is your father still alive? Do you have another brother?’ What we told him was in answer to these questions. Could we in any way know that he would say, ‘Bring your brother down’?” 8 And Judah said to Israel his father, “Send the boy with me, and we will arise and go, that we may live and not die, both we and you and also our little ones. 9 I will be a pledge of his safety. From my hand you shall require him. If I do not bring him back to you and set him before you, then let me bear the blame forever. 10 If we had not delayed, we would now have returned twice.”
11 Then their father Israel said to them, “If it must be so, then do this: take some of the choice fruits of the land in your bags, and carry a present down to the man, a little balm and a little honey, gum, myrrh, pistachio nuts, and almonds. 12 Take double the money with you. Carry back with you the money that was returned in the mouth of your sacks. Perhaps it was an oversight. 13 Take also your brother, and arise, go again to the man. 14 May God Almighty grant you mercy before the man, and may he send back your other brother and Benjamin. And as for me, if I am bereaved of my children, I am bereaved.”
15 So the men took this present, and they took double the money with them, and Benjamin. They arose and went down to Egypt and stood before Joseph.
16 When Joseph saw Benjamin with them, he said to the steward of his house, “Bring the men into the house, and slaughter an animal and make ready, for the men are to dine with me at noon.” 17 The man did as Joseph told him and brought the men to Joseph’s house. 18 And the men were afraid because they were brought to Joseph’s house, and they said, “It is because of the money, which was replaced in our sacks the first time, that we are brought in, so that he may assault us and fall upon us to make us servants and seize our donkeys.” 19 So they went up to the steward of Joseph’s house and spoke with him at the door of the house, 20 and said, “Oh, my lord, we came down the first time to buy food. 21 And when we came to the lodging place we opened our sacks, and there was each man’s money in the mouth of his sack, our money in full weight. So we have brought it again with us, 22 and we have brought other money down with us to buy food. We do not know who put our money in our sacks.” 23 He replied, “Peace to you, do not be afraid. Your God and the God of your father has put treasure in your sacks for you. I received your money.” Then he brought Simeon out to them. 24 And when the man had brought the men into Joseph’s house and given them water, and they had washed their feet, and when he had given their donkeys fodder, 25 they prepared the present for Joseph’s coming at noon, for they heard that they should eat bread there.
26 When Joseph came home, they brought into the house to him the present that they had with them and bowed down to him to the ground. 27 And he inquired about their welfare and said, “Is your father well, the old man of whom you spoke? Is he still alive?” 28 They said, “Your servant our father is well; he is still alive.” And they bowed their heads and prostrated themselves. 29 And he lifted up his eyes and saw his brother Benjamin, his mother’s son, and said, “Is this your youngest brother, of whom you spoke to me? God be gracious to you, my son!” 30 Then Joseph hurried out, for his compassion grew warm for his brother, and he sought a place to weep. And he entered his chamber and wept there. 31 Then he washed his face and came out. And controlling himself he said, “Serve the food.” 32 They served him by himself, and them by themselves, and the Egyptians who ate with him by themselves, because the Egyptians could not eat with the Hebrews, for that is an abomination to the Egyptians. 33 And they sat before him, the firstborn according to his birthright and the youngest according to his youth. And the men looked at one another in amazement. 34 Portions were taken to them from Joseph’s table, but Benjamin’s portion was five times as much as any of theirs. And they drank and were merry with him.
Genesis 43:1-34, ESV
This is the word of the Lord. If I had unlimited time, unlimited time to work on puzzles, the puzzle that I have always wanted the ability to solve is the Rubik’s Cube. The Rubik’s Cube, you probably know is a cube and it’s sort of three by three and there are different colors, red, orange, yellow, white, and blue. The goal of the Rubik’s Cube is that it’s all scrambled and twisted in different ways and your goal is to try to put all the colors back on their respective sides so they’re together.

Now every time I come across one, and they’re sort of scattered everywhere you can still find them, I’ve never been able to come close to sort of cracking it or solving it. I know however that some people can solve the Rubik’s Cube. In fact I talked with someone after the first service who informed me that he has solved the Rubik’s Cube in less than one minute. The world record however is 4.22 seconds, it’s incredible, you can watch it on YouTube.

Now as I understand it, and I did get a gracious offer after the first service to learn how to do this, but as I understand the reason I haven’t been able to solve the Rubik’s Cube so far is that I focus on one color at a time. Apparently you’re not supposed to do that. I focus on one color and I’m doing whatever I can to to turn, or I was informed it’s to spin the Rubik’s Cube, that’s the right terminology. To spin it in such a way where I’m trying to get all of the color that I’m fixated on onto the right place.

Now real Rubik’s Cube players know that what you’re actually supposed to do is think about the whole cube all at once and not get fixated on one color, but to sort of work from the whole cube and to look at the patterns. Then the patterns tell you which way to to make your next spin.

If you watch a skilled Rubik’s Cube player, or at least when I watch a skilled Rubik’s player, their moves don’t make sense to me, their moves seem purposeless and counterproductive because they are working and operating on a level that I just don’t understand. Then all of a sudden, faster than I think it’ll happen, all of a sudden everything comes together. I have no idea how they’ve done it, I can’t replicate it, but the effect is stunning.

Well God’s work of providence is his holy, wise, and powerful preserving and governing of all his creatures and all their actions. So God’s work of providence, where he orders all things that come to pass in this life is something like a Rubik’s Cube at an infinitely higher degree of complexity. In our lives, as we look around in the world, many things seem to us purposeless, they seem counterproductive. Yet what the Bible tells us at every point in time is that none of the moves that God is making, none of what God is ordaining in this world, is so because God never wastes a spin.

Instead God wants us to know that in everything he does, God is setting right all that has gone wrong in the world. That’s our big idea for today, that God is setting right all that has gone wrong with the world.

We see here in Genesis 43 a prime example of God’s providence. We are dealing with a great deal of suffering that Joseph has undergone for decades in his life. Now he is faced with his brothers and he’s trying to figure out how to work with them and interact with them. We’re seeing that as God is working through the details of this story, that God is setting everything right. Not just for Joseph, but for Joseph’s brothers and their father Jacob as well.

So three parts to this sermon this morning.
Trusting Through Fear
Treasure in Uncertainty
Testing for Sin
Trusting Through Fear
We start here with the theme of fear. We read in verse 1 that the famine was severe in the land. Joseph, many years before, had interpreted the dream that God had given to Pharaoh. The dream foretold that there would be seven years of great prosperity in the land, that would be followed after by seven years of deep hardship, of a severe famine in the land. We read that this famine is dragging on, so that Jacob’s family has run out of food.

Now this isn’t the first time that Jacob’s family has run out of food. We know that in the last chapter, in chapter 42, Jacob’s family had once run out of food. So much so that Jacob sent his sons down to Egypt to buy food. That was when they met Joseph, although they didn’t know that it was Joseph. Joseph interrogated them and they told him that they had a brother at home.

So Joseph said I believe you were spies, but to prove that you are not spies, bring back your youngest brother to prove that your story is true and until you do I am going to keep one of your brothers as a guarantee that you will come back. So, Simeon, one of their brothers, has been in prison this whole time as Jacob’s family have been eating this food that they brought down to Egypt.

Well, now this food has run out again and so Jacob, very casually, at the end of verse 2 says go again and buy us a little food. Now Jacob is here in the middle of denial about the situation that his family is facing. He does not want to release his beloved son Benjamin to go back down to Egypt because he is worried for the welfare of his son. So he is trying to ignore this problem and he’s treating this, as one commentator puts, as though it were just a simple trip to the market to pick up some food.

Jacob’s other sons, especially Judah who comes to the forefront to speak on behalf of his brothers, haven’t forgotten the stern man that they spoke with in Egypt. Again it was Joseph but they didn’t recognize him as such. So they remind him that this man insisted that you shall not see my face unless your brother is with you.

So, Jacob is trying to ignore the problem but Judah reminds him that they must send Benjamin if they’re going to have any chance of getting this extra grain that they need now. Jacob, as we saw in the last chapter and still see now, Jacob is in the bondage of fear. He is completely in the hold of fear and he doesn’t know what to do with it. In the last chapter he tried something of an ultimatum, at the very end he said essentially in verse 38 of chapter 42, over my dead body will Benjamin go down with you. He said in verse 38,
38 But he said, “My son shall not go down with you, for his brother is dead, and he is the only one left. If harm should happen to him on the journey that you are to make, you would bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to Sheol.”
Genesis 42:38, ESV
Now Jacob is trying to deny it. He’s just saying why don’t you just go buy food? Don’t worry about those problems that you have. Then when Judah reminds him of the problem, Jacob tries a third tactic that is of a counter-attack. He strikes back at his sons and so in verse 6 we read that Israel, now remember Israel is just another name for Jacob
6 Israel said, “Why did you treat me so badly as to tell the man that you had another brother?”
Genesis 43:6, ESV
Very literally this is, “why did you do this evil to me, as to tell him that you had another brother?” Now what’s happening here with this word evil, and we’re going to see this throughout this chapter, is that this word evil is bringing us back to the very beginning of this story. Right from the beginning in Genesis 37 and 38, when the trains started running off the rails, when everything started to go wrong, this word evil is echoing us back to the beginning of this story to show us that God has not forgotten anything that has happened. He has the whole picture in mind, he’s not fixated on one problem or another but he is at work putting everything right. He is especially at work to set right all that has gone wrong in the nation of Israel, with Israel or Jacob and his sons.

We are seeing here with these echoes back to the beginning of this story, the hand of God’s providence at work. This word evil, again, is the first echo we hear back to the beginning of this story, because this word for evil is the same word that was used by Joseph about his own brothers. We read in Genesis 37 verse 2 that Joseph brought an evil report about his brothers to their father.

We see Joseph bringing an evil report to his father in the beginning. Then knowing that in Genesis 37 the brothers truly were evil, later they will attack Joseph and sell him into slavery, now Jacob or Israel is the one accusing them of evil. The question is, have they changed at all? Are they saying they are still the same evil brothers or have they transformed in this time?

The first part of the answer that we get is in verses 8 through 10 with the soft answer that Judah gives to his father’s harsh words. Judah tries to coax Israel, his father, to try to say I will take Benjamin under my wing, I will personally extend to him protection. Then in verse 9 we get another word that echoes us back to the beginning of this story, in verse 9 Judah says I will be a pledge of his safety.

Now this same word pledge occurred earlier in Genesis 38, it’s the same word that described the pledge that Judah gave to his daughter-in-law Tamar. Now she was his daughter-in-law, but he didn’t recognize her to be his daughter-in-law, in the same way that Joseph’s brothers don’t recognize that he is Joseph. So Judah did not recognize Tamar and he gave her a pledge of his signet, his cords, and his staff. That is the ancient equivalent of all your credit cards and your driver’s license. He gave them to Tamar as a pledge, a down payment, to secure her immediate services as a prostitute, with the promise that he would then send a goat as the payment for these services.

So when Judah was first making a pledge, he was doing so for very selfish sinful reasons. Then here you can see a dramatic reversal; Judah is not making a pledge for sinful, selfish gain, he is offering to make a pledge on behalf of his brother Benjamin to take sacrificial responsibility.

Now Reuben, you may remember the firstborn of Jacob, had also tried to coax his father to send Benjamin with them, back in Genesis 42:37. He had done so by offering his sons as collateral, if anything happens to Benjamin you can kill my sons. What grandfather would be satisfied to avenge the death of one of his sons by putting two of his grandsons to death? He doesn’t want this at all. So Jacob rejects that.

Where Reuben had offered his sons in chapter 42 reuben, Judah here in 43 is offering himself. By offering himself as a pledge, Judah persuades their father Jacob. When Jacob finally agrees to send Benjamin to Egypt, he offers a suggestion, or he says if you’re going to do it, this is the way you must do it. So in verses 11-13 Jacob insists that they take down a present to this man.

Jacob, you may remember, had to smooth things over with his own brother Esau. They had been estranged for many many years and when Jacob came back to the land of Canaan, he sent a present ahead to his brother Esau to try to smooth things over. Well Jacob is now doing the same thing with all of the the choice fruits of the land of Canaan; a little balm, a little honey, gum, myrrh, pistachio nuts, and almonds. He wants these gifts, these fruits, to help curry favor with this man in Egypt.

Now what’s interesting about this list is that three of these elements, the gum, the balm, and the myrrh echo us back to Genesis chapter 37. In Genesis 37:25, we read that the Ishmaelite traitors who bought Joseph from his brothers and who carried Joseph down to Egypt, were taking with them gum, balm, and myrrh to trade down in Egypt.

So, in the first trip down to Egypt one of Jacob’s beloved sons, Joseph, is going down with the traitors who have gum, balm and myrrh, as Joseph is being brought down to Egypt. On the second trip, it will be Jacob’s beloved son Benjamin who’s making this trip down to Egypt, again with gum, and balm, and myrrh. Jacob also knows that this present is only going to go so far. Ultimately he knows that God alone will determine the fate and the outcome of the safety of his beloved son Benjamin and of all his children.

So, in verse 14 Jacob prays,
14 May God Almighty grant you mercy before the man, and may he send back your other brother and Benjamin. And as for me, if I am bereaved of my children, I am bereaved.”
Genesis 43:14, ESV
Now there’s probably a reason that Jacob prays to God Almighty, El Shaddai is the Hebrew phrase here. It’s probably because when God established his covenant with Abraham back in Genesis 17, God presented himself and said, “I am God Almighty”, and as a part of that covenant God promised that he would multiply the offspring of Abraham.

Well the offspring of Abraham is to be multiplied through Jacob, through Israel, that is the nation of Israel would be the multiplied offspring of Abraham. There’s the fulfillment of the promises of God Almighty. So Jacob is then praying that God would, at this fragile delicate moment, do exactly what he has promised to do, to preserve his children, especially his child Benjamin as they go back down to Egypt.

Notice that Jacob also prays specifically for mercy, “may God Almighty grant you mercy before the man.” Now I want to make note of that because that word will become important later but then finally Jacob recognizes if I am bereaved of my children I am bereaved. He is entrusting himself to God Almighty.

Now maybe you are someone who spends a lot of your time and your energy trying to set right the fearful blue side of the Rubik’s Cube of your life. As you spin and try to work through all the details of your life, you’re trying desperately just to get the blue side of your life to match up, to work for you. If so, you’re probably using one of two strategies; either you’re trying to find some way to eliminate the object of your fear or you are trying to do some kind of personal development to help you rise above your fears.

If this was the tactic that God was taking, sort of a fixated direct strategy on that problem alone, then God’s moves in this world would often seem purposeless and counterintuitive. God, in his providence, does not always answer our prayers by eliminating the objects of our fear. He doesn’t certainly give us a bolster of courage in the moment.

Sometimes God, in his providence, organizes and orders the circumstances of our lives to push us into situations where the only option we have is to trust him, to entrust ourselves to God Almighty. He forces us to deal with our fears by putting us in something that we would never choose for ourselves, because God is not just trying to align one side of the cube. God is working to address all the issues in our lives and all the issues and all of creation, as he works all things together for the good of those who love him and who are called according to his purpose.

Jacob here then has been forced into a situation where he has had to do the thing that he fears most by sending Benjamin to Egypt. The brothers in verse 15, as they head down to Egypt, are just beginning in their fears they have to be asking on their journey down to Egypt. What will happen to them? How will they be treated? It’s in the midst of this deep uncertainty where they don’t know what’s going to happen that God provides them with the treasure of his mercy and his grace.
Treasure in Uncertainty
So this brings us to the second section treasure in uncertainty in verses 16 through 25. Look at verse 16 where we read,
16 When Joseph saw Benjamin with them, he said to the steward of his house, “Bring the men into the house, and slaughter an animal and make ready, for the men are to dine with me at noon.”
Genesis 43:16, ESV
Now Joseph gave a stern outward appearance to his brothers back in Genesis 42. He treated them roughly, he spoke to them roughly, but the narrator wants us to know right at the beginning of this scene where they’re going to be interacting with Joseph, the narrator wants us to know Joseph’s heart in all of this. He’s not trying to be cruel to his brothers, he loves them. He is trying by whatever means necessary to find true reconciliation with his brothers.

The brothers however do not know this. They’re not told the orders that Joseph had been given. We read simply that a steward does exactly what Joseph has told him to do and brings the men into Joseph’s house. Now they’re already worried about this man, but they’re hoping to sort of get their grain and go back as quickly as they possibly can, hopefully with Simeon with them. Now they’re brought into this ruler’s house and they’re totally disoriented and they’re freaking out and they can’t stop talking about this money. Twice they say, “we’ve got the money, we don’t know how it got back to us, but we’ve got the money, take the money, we brought more money in fact to buy more grain.” They’re really worried about this money.

Now again this is an echo back to the beginning of this story. God is working all of these details together as he’s bringing the brothers back to a previous financial indiscretion, a financial sin that they had made earlier back in Genesis 37. The only reason they didn’t kill Joseph was because they realized that they could make profit from him. That’s actually Judah’s brainstorm in Genesis 37:26. He said, “Hey we can make profit if we sell him to these Ishmaelite traders.”

Now, even though they’re talking about this money that they think that they got back and they’re not sure how they got it, they were innocent in all of this. They want more than anything to be honest and open about their finances and try to make financial amends. Whereas earlier they would have had to hide the profit they made from selling Joseph from their father, whom they lied about the situation.

What must have surprised them then is in response to this Joseph’s servant gives a response they could have never expected. In verse 23 he says, “Peace to you.” Now again, this word peace is a dramatic echo that brings us back to a reversal of what happened in Genesis 37. In Genesis 37:4 the brothers could not speak peace to their brother Joseph, they hated their brother so much that they could not speak peace to Joseph. Nevertheless later, in Genesis 37:14, Jacob sent Joseph to seek the peace, or to seek the welfare of his brothers. The word there is literally peace.

Even though Joseph knew how much his brothers hated him, he obediently and willingly went to seek their peace. When he did so they captured him and attacked him and threw him into a pit and eventually sold him into slavery. In spite of all of that, Joseph does not respond with violence against the violence that’s been perpetrated against him. Instead he instructs his servant to speak peace to them, a word of peace to them. Why would the servant do this? Why would Joseph instruct his servant to do this?

Well, the clue comes at the end of verse 23 when the servant says, “Do not be afraid. Your God and the God of your father has put treasure in your sacks for you.” Now this idea of do not be afraid and then the reference to their God and the God of their father echoes something that Joseph said just in the last chapter.

When Joseph was talking to them about how they’re going to get out of this mess where they’re captured in Egypt and Joseph isn’t trusting them yet. Joseph says, “Okay do this and you will live for I fear God.” Joseph’s servant says, “Do not be afraid for your God has given you treasure.” Jacob says, “You’re going to do this and live because I fear God.” The idea being that because Joseph fears God, Joseph’s brothers have nothing to fear. That in spite of all that they deserve because of their great sins, God is giving them this treasure, not just of their money but of the grace and mercy that they are receiving from God and from Joseph.

Well maybe fear isn’t your thing, but maybe you spend a lot of your time in your soul, in your heart working on the dark sinful red side of the Rubik’s Cube of your life. Maybe because of your guilt and your shame, every move that you make, every spin of your Rubik’s Cube is designed to set right that dark red splotch in your life. Either you are trying to fix what has gone wrong, in whatever way is possible. Or you are trying to do enough good to offset and make up for the evil of your past. That’s the way that people try to handle their sin. That’s what the brothers are trying to do. They’re trying to offer this money back so that they can gain forgiveness for whatever financial thing they may have done, but they’re not sure how they got the money back.

The gospel tells us something different. The gospel tells us a paradox, a paradox is something that does not seem to be true but yet is true. At a very deep way the paradox of the gospel is that the only people who find true atonement for their sins, the only people who can secure real lasting forgiveness for their sins, and the only people who can be made truly righteous before God himself are the ones who acknowledge they cannot set their sin right. They cannot make enough twists and spins of their life in order to set their sin right. In fact they need nothing more than grace and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. What’s the word that we begin every service with here, because the New Testament announces that great gospel hope that we have. That through nothing we have done, but only because of what God has done for us, through Jesus Christ we have grace and peace from God our Father in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Joseph, because he fears God, he has graciously extended peace to his brothers in the midst of their fear. Rather than returning violence for violence, God has enriched them with the treasure of his mercy and grace. We might ask, well does this mean that God is going to let these scoundrels off the hook? The answer is no. The final section shows us an opportunity to test the depth of their transformation from their former sin.
Testing for Sin
So, in the third section we see testing for sin, in verses 26 through 34. In verse 26 we read about when Joseph finally comes home and they bring this present to him that they had brought. We read in verse 26 that they bowed down to him to the ground, and again in verse 28 they will bow down to him and prostrate themselves.

Now to see the brothers bowing down to Joseph again echoes and brings us back to Genesis 37. In Genesis 37, when we first met Joseph, Joseph had these dreams where he dreamed that his brothers would come and bow down to him. Now his brothers hated these dreams, this is why they hated him for his dreams and for his words. This is what led directly to their violence against Joseph, to sell him into slavery in the first place. Yet here they are doing exactly what was foretold, them bowing down to Joseph.

Joseph for his part doesn’t take advantage of this, but the first words out of his mouth are words of peace. In verse 27 we read,
27 And he inquired about their welfare and said, “Is your father well, the old man of whom you spoke? Is he still alive?”
Genesis 43:27, ESV
Again, the brothers could not speak peace to Joseph, but the only word that Joseph is speaking to his brothers is a word of peace to them and to their father.

Well, after answering about their father Joseph, in verse 29, he lifts his eyes and he sees his younger brother Benjamin. Now seeing the younger brother also echoes back to a particularly dark moment of Genesis 37, when the brothers saw Joseph coming and again Joseph was coming to seek their peace, but when they saw him coming that was when they plotted to kill him, in Genesis 37:18.

The exact opposite happens with Joseph. When Joseph sees his brother Benjamin, compassion overwhelms him. Now earlier I talked about the importance of that word in verse 14, the word mercy. It’s translated differently in the English Standard Version, but this is the exact same word in both places. The same mercy that Jacob had prayed for is the mercy, or the compassion, that overwhelms Joseph so much that he has to leave the room in order to find a place to weep. Jacob’s prayer is absolutely answered.

After Joseph composed himself in verse 32, he commands the food be served and Joseph eats with his brothers. The text is very clear that they were separated one from another. It’s kind of a strange story to hear about these Egyptians being separated from the Hebrews. Why is this here? Well in part this is foreshadowing the hatred of the Egyptians against the Hebrews. They found the Hebrews to be an abomination and that hatred is only going to grow, especially at the beginning of the next book of the Bible, Exodus. That will lead directly into the Israelites enslavement and their eventual delivery from God from the Egyptians, who hated them.

In part, again, this also brings us back to Genesis 37:25. After Joseph was captured by his brothers, after they attacked him and threw him into a pit, after stripping off his clothes, we read that then the brothers sat down and ate a meal in Joseph’s presence. We’re getting an echo of this story here, but it’s very much a reversal. Joseph is eating, but yet separated, with his brothers. Victor Hamilton wrote about this that last time Joseph was the helpless victim, but here he is the victor.

He does not however deprive his brothers of food, as they had done to him. This moment, even though they are eating together and they’re drinking and they’re merry together, this isn’t just a kumbaya moment where everyone just forgets that anything has gone wrong in the world. Joseph is using this moment to set up a test. He’s setting up a test where he seats the brothers according to their birth order, in verse 33, and the brothers are amazed by this. Then he gives his youngest brother Benjamin five times the portion that any of the others of them had.

Now what Joseph is doing here is he’s saying okay, in the past when our father lavished extra grace extra favor on me, you hated me and sought to kill me. What will happen now when you have this other beloved son of our father, Benjamin, and he once again receives more favor than you according to the portions given. Will that cause you to slip back into your old ways of sibling rivalry? The text is raising this cliffhanger we’re left at will Judah follow through with his pledge? He’s promised to be a pledge for his brother Benjamin.

Now maybe for you guilt or fear are not your main focus, but maybe you spend most of your time like Joseph, on the high alert yellow side of the Rubik’s Cube of your life. Maybe you’re someone who has been hurt in deep ways and because of that hurt you are constantly vigilant, ever distrusting, ever willing to read the worst possible motives into other people. To continue to push people away.

Now to be clear, this test Joseph designs here isn’t giving us a model for how we can sort of put our loved ones through trials to test whether we can trust them again. That’s not to follow Joseph’s test here on the whole. Rather what Joseph is doing is showing us his heart, the heart that we should follow. A heart that is seeking true reconciliation. A heart that on the one hand does not want to cast people away, that if at all possible wants to bring people back into reconciled fellowship with them. But a heart that on the other hand also doesn’t dismiss or overlook sin. A heart that recognizes that real sin has to be dealt with in real ways.

So in terms of this test itself, we don’t find this kind of test really anywhere in the rest of the Bible, but we do see this heart for true reconciliation all over the place. We see this heart for reconciliation when Jesus speaks to Peter after Peter denied him three times. He deals with the problem asking three times, do you love me, a time for each time that Peter had denied him. He’s dealing with the situation, but he is welcoming Peter back into fellowship with him and commissioning him to his work as a shepherd, feeding Christ’s lambs.

We see this also with Paul at the very end of his ministry where he seeks out to bring John Mark back to him. He insists that John Mark must come because he is useful to me for ministry, even though John Mark had abandoned Paul on the mission field. Paul wants to deal with this. For a time he would not allow John Mark to come, but now that that has been settled and resolved he wants John Mark back in the fold.

We, like Joseph, should seek true reconciliation, even though his test isn’t a pattern for us to copy. If we spend all of our life working on just a high alert yellow side trying to make sure that we are perfectly protected we will never enter into this pattern of seeking true reconciliation, which God wants to bring us into.
Application
Well from this text let’s take a few minutes to apply to our lives this morning. I have essentially one application from this passage, but again following our theme like a Rubik’s Cube, it has or it has multiple sides and we’ll look at three of those sides.

So, the application to take from this text is that we must trust the Lord to set right what has gone wrong in our lives.

1. The first side of what this looks like is that we must trust the Lord to set right our fears. Maybe this week you had to face deep fear. Well we see all of the strategies, Jacob unloads all the strategies possible for how to deal with fear. He tries giving an ultimatum, he tries ignoring the problem, he tries a counter attack of defensiveness, but ultimately the Lord providentially puts him in circumstances that press him into a choice that he is terrified to make.

God is here giving us this story to teach us how to trust God, just as Jacob was led in how to trust the Lord. Jacob is something of a guinea pig who has to go through this clinical divine trial in order that we can look at the results of this research and gain confidence in our fears, when we must learn to trust the Lord. So we see here the two things that Jacob does.

Number one he entrusts himself to God Almighty. Whatever you fear in this world, your fear is not greater than God the Father Almighty who created heaven and earth. You see when there’s nothing to fear in our lives, God’s almightiness can seem fairly small. How almighty does God need to be when my life is easy? When we are in the midst of our fears and God puts us in these places, these are the context in which our view of God Almighty is stretched and expanded as we are led to entrust ourselves to him. So entrust yourself to God Almighty.

Second, pray for mercy. Remember Jacob’s prayer here was directly answered. He prayed for mercy and Joseph was overwhelmed with mercy or compassion for his brothers. Because God answers prayer, to entrust ourselves to the Lord means that we are actively entrusting ourselves to him in prayer, especially for prayers for mercy, to be treated far better than we deserve. Trust the Lord to set right your fears.

2. Well the second side of this application is to trust the Lord to set right what has gone in our life that has to do with our sins. Trust the Lord to set right your sins. We’re seeing in this story a number of providential details that God is working together to force Joseph’s brothers to face the sin that they had perpetrated against their brother decades earlier. We see so many echoes here from Genesis 37 and 38, but we also see that in the midst of their sin God is ever speaking a word of grace and mercy to them. He is giving them unexpected treasure when they are only expecting to be dealt with harshly.

Maybe this week you were faced with the brunt and the full reality of your sin and maybe you’re scrambling to figure out how do I set this right? The Bible calls us to trust the Lord to set right our sins. Remember the paradox of the gospel, it doesn’t seem true, but it is we cannot fix our sin by trying to fix our sin. We can only fix our sin by recognizing that God has done for us what we cannot do for ourselves. The promise of the gospel is that God has set right the sins of all those who trust in Jesus Christ.

In Christ God judged and punished your sin on the cross. He died in your place. Because Christ has endured the fullness of God’s wrath against you, God can now speak a word of peace to you. That’s why all of Paul’s letters and all of our worship services begin with, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father in the Lord Jesus Christ.” It’s not because we deserve it, it’s because God has made peace through his grace by the spilled blood of Jesus Christ.

Don’t try to ignore your sin, don’t try to just excuse it or sweep it under the rug or explain it away, don’t try to pile up good deeds that you think will offset your sin. Instead go to God and entrust yourself to the shed blood of Jesus and the broken body of Jesus Christ who was crucified for you.

3. Well the third side of this application is to trust the Lord to set right the wrongs done to you. Maybe this week you had to face people who have hurt you. Trust the Lord to set right the wrong done to you. The Lord knows your pain, furthermore the Lord promises that he will by no means clear the guilty. If we understand the weight of our sin, we can understand that justice cannot be fully executed in this life. Yet the Lord, the just and righteous one, will bring all things wrong to a righteous conclusion at the judgment at the end of the world.

We see here the heart of God. That in the midst of this, even though he is the righteous God who must punish sin, who can by no means clear the guilty, but nevertheless he is slow to anger and he is abounding in steadfast love. He is a God who does not wish that any should perish, but that all should come to salvation through repentance and faith in Christ.

Joseph here is then showing us the heart of someone who knows how to love his enemies. He’s not extending them blind trust, but he’s extending them a readiness to forgive. He’s not dealing with them in a vindictive way, but he is guided at every turn by a desire to extend peace.

How does Joseph do this? Well, as we will see in the chapters to come, Joseph understands what his brothers meant for evil God meant for good. Joseph understands what God is doing is to providentially set right all that has gone wrong in the world, including his story, including the famine in Egypt, and every detail that leads all the way even into our own lives and until Jesus returns.

Joseph doesn’t understand all of this, we don’t understand all of this. The moves of God’s providence in this world seem purposeless and counterintuitive and yet when it happens God will bring everything right in a moment and we’ll see it in great glory and splendor. In the meantime trust the Lord to set right all that is wrong in the world.

Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, we pray that you would teach us to trust you. That you would, by the power of your Spirit, give us faith in God Almighty. That we would entrust ourselves to him as we look in faith to Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior through faith. It’s in Christ’s name we pray. Amen.