Rescue & Restoration in the Old & New Testaments

Genesis 45:1-15 and Matthew 15:10-20

One of the worst parts of my job is to see the effects of sin in the lives of people. We pastors get to hear and see the harm people do to each other through deceit and infidelity. Or as Jesus describes it: for out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These sins cause havoc, injury, distress, and shame. But we also, over time, get to witness how God heals, rescues, redeems, and restores his people. We witness reconciliation, transformation, and redemption. And that is sweet. The story of Joseph and his brothers is such a story of redemption, transformation, and sweet reconciliation.

Joseph is the star of the fourth generation of God’s family of the promise. He is the great-grandson of Abraham, the grandson of Isaac, and favored son of Jacob. Jacob, as you may recall, had marriage problems—he had four wives, three wives too many. Joseph was his first son from his favorite wife, Rachael. In this multiple-mother family, Joseph was raised in a confused and hostile home of competitive half-brothers who resented their father’s favor toward him. So, they cooked up a scheme to murder their cocky sixteen-year-old brother, but changed their minds when they realized they could sell him into slavery and make some money on the side.
Joseph reluctantly ends up in Egypt, a pagan country south of his family homeland back in Canaan, the area God promised to his great-grandfather Abraham. In Egypt, Joseph serves an influential man named Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh. Potiphar realizes that the Lord is with Joseph and makes him the master of his household affairs. Potiphar’s wife also realizes something special about Joseph and tries to seduce him when he’s about 19 or 20. He turns her down because he loves God and does not want to sin against God. (BTW, sex outside of marriage is a sin against God. As Joseph understood, God created sex for marriage, and each time anyone has sex outside of marriage, that person is trying to recreate a world where human sexuality is different from how God created it to be. That is why it is a sin again God that needs to be repented.)

Insulted by Joseph’s rejection of her, Potiphar’s wife retaliates with a trumped up rape charge. He is thrown into prison. Joseph spends all of his twenties and his early thirties in prison—a horrible injustice—yet it is a time and a place the Lord will redeem.

Eventually Joseph gets out of prison because Pharaoh has a dream from God that no one can interpret except for Joseph. The dream was about seven fat cows that were eaten by seven gaunt cows. Joseph says this means there will be seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine, which is exactly what happened. Impressed with his dream interpreter, Pharaoh promotes Joseph to be his number one, making him the second most powerful man in his powerful nation. As he had been favored by Jacob, now Joseph is favored by Pharaoh.

Now in his late 30s, Joseph marries an Egyptian and has two sons. He names them Manasseh, which means God has made me forget all my hardship and all my father’s house and Ephraim, which means God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction. He gives them Hebrew names because he will raise them to worship the true God and not become pagan Egyptians.
Joseph has been away from his father and brothers for about 25 years or so. He does not know if they are dead or alive. During the years of the famine, Jacob, who is very much alive, sends ten of his remaining sons to Egypt to buy grain. Benjamin, Joseph’s brother of the same mother, stays at home. The ten brothers come face to face with Joseph, the brother they sold into slavery 25 some years ago. They do not recognize him because he looks like and speaks like an Egyptian. Joseph uses the opportunity to test his brothers. And here’s the point for us. Christians should be quick to forgive but slow to trust. Jesus entrusted himself to no man because he knew the heart of every human and how we are inclined to evil and to our own self-interests. We Christians are to forgive so that bitterness does not take root. But we should take our time reestablishing trust with people who have deliberately sinned against us.
Let’s say one spouse cheats on the other. We are to forgive them immediately when they repent. But when they say, “I’ve repented of my sin, you can trust me now,” the wise Christians says, “I forgive you. Now show me why I should trust you.” This is exactly what Joseph is doing. He puts his brothers through two years of tests to help determine what’s in their hearts.

Too many people rush into trusting people they should not. Too many people rush into marriage. Too many churches put people in leadership positions without testing them. Paul says we are to test leaders in the church. And we should test people in business as well. My father hired an escaped convict because he failed to call his references. I test people who come to me looking for assistance because I have been burned. Where our money or reputation or even God’s reputation is at stake, we need to test. I was tested when I came to SJD 9 ½ years ago.
In the midst of this testing, Joseph, I believe, wants to look into his brother Judah’s heart. If you know your Joseph and the Technicolor Dream Coat story well, then you know that it was Judah who came up with the idea to sell Joseph into slavery. It was his idea to cover the dream coat with goat’s blood. He brought that coat to his dad, to Jacob, and described him saying, “Animals ate him alive. Joseph is dead.”

Perhaps Judah had stood next to his father at the funeral saying, “Dad, I’m so sorry,” and then kept up the lie for 25 years. Perhaps he told his younger brothers, “Don’t say a word to dad. It will be too hard for him to take. Listen to me, I’m older and wiser.”
Judah got so messed up in his lies and his deceit, that he left his father’s house and married godless women and fathered godless children and in a godless act slept with his deceased son’s wife, Tamar, thinking she was a prostitute. And he fathered a son with her. Sounds like a twisted Jerry Springer episode where one horrific sin leads to more. Do you see why Joseph needs to do some testing? He is part of one messed up family.

In Genesis chapter 44, right before our reading, Joseph presses his brothers with the last test by placing his silver chalice in Benjamin’s bag of grain. Upon discovering it, he holds him prisoner. The godless Judah stands up for the first time in his life and says to Joseph: “Please take me as your prisoner and let the boy Benjamin go back with his brothers. How can I go back to my father if the boy is not with me? I fear to see the misery that would come upon my father.”
We have just witnessed transformation in the life of Judah. And it’s about time. The line that leads from Abraham to Isaac to Jacob and down to Jesus passes through Judah, not Joseph as you might expect. (Remember Jesus is the Lion of the tribe of Judah.) All we’ve seen up until this point is a complete looser, evil scheming, self-centered jerk of a man. The moral of this story: This is what God does. He changes people. He changes lives for the sake of his Son, Jesus.

Judah wanted to feel good his whole life but he didn’t want to be good. Judah wanted the world to change around him but he didn’t want to change himself. Sound familiar? Is this not the world we live in today? Too many people learn to be comfortable living in their sins. Too many people get comfortable sinning against others. Too many people learn to love and accept themselves as fallen, sinful people. They succumb to these contemporary lies: You need to be comfortable in your own skin. You need to love yourself for who you are. You need to think positively. You need to find yourself. You need to be who you were created to be. You need to live your own life.

What we need is to be changed by God. And that is exactly what happens to Judah. Seeing this happen to people in ministry, seeing these Judah-esque moments are the mountain-top experiences of pastoral ministry. Frankly, the best Christians are these kinds of people who are mightily transformed by the power of God through the Holy Spirit. The Apostle Paul is the first who comes to mind in a list of godly transformation that is continuing today. These people were scoundrels, now they are saints. They worked for Satan, now they work for Jesus.

So, Judah steps forward as a substitute for Benjamin. He will bear the punishment for his father Jacob’s beloved son. Do you see how Judah is a forefather to Jesus? Jesus, who stepped forward as a substitute for you and for me? Jesus who volunteered to take the punishment for us? Judah acts like Jesus. Who would have ever thought? It is possible to become Christlike. But now, how will Joseph respond? Is the testing over? 

Joseph couldn't hold himself in any longer, keeping up a front before all his attendants. He cried out, "Everyone leave!" So there was no one with Joseph when he identified himself to his brothers. But his sobbing was so violent that the Egyptians couldn't help but hear him. Joseph spoke to his brothers: "I am Joseph. Is my father really still alive?"

But his brothers couldn't say a word. They were speechless—they couldn't believe what they were hearing and seeing.

"Come closer to me," Joseph said to his brothers. "I am Joseph your brother whom you sold into Egypt. But don't feel badly, don't blame yourselves for selling me. God was behind it. God sent me here ahead of you to save lives. There has been a famine in the land now for two years; the famine will continue for five more years. God sent me on ahead to pave the way and make sure there was a remnant in the land, to save your lives in an amazing act of deliverance. So you see, it wasn't you who sent me here but God. He set me in place as a father to Pharaoh. He put me in charge of his personal affairs, and made me ruler of all Egypt.

"Hurry back to my father. Tell him, 'Your son Joseph says: I'm master of all of Egypt. Come as fast as you can and join me here. I'll give you a place to live where you'll be close to me—you, your children, your grandchildren, your flocks, your herds, and anything else you can think of. I'll make sure all your needs are taken care of, you and everyone connected with you—you won't want for a thing.'

"Look at me. You can see for yourselves, and my brother Benjamin can see for himself, that it's me, my own mouth, telling you all this.” Joseph threw himself on his brother Benjamin's neck and wept, and Benjamin wept on his neck. He then kissed all his brothers and wept over them. Only then were his brothers able to talk with him.

Are you not moved by this passage, are you not close to tears, is your heart not stirred? You have just heard the gospel in the Old Testament. You have just heard grace. You have heard of undeserved redemption and reconciliation. You and I are the sinful brothers. We are the ones who have offended against the favored Son of the Father. It was our sins that sent Jesus to the cross like the sins of the brothers who sent Joseph into Egypt. It is our pride and self-centeredness that tries to cover up our sins and hide them from the Father as Joseph’s brothers did for years. It is God, through his Spirit who changes our hearts of stone into hearts of flesh so that we admit we are sinners, that we admit we have a heart condition from which proceeds all kinds of evil.
Then we repent, asking God to forgive us, accepting not only what Jesus did for us on the cross but recognizing that nothing but the cross can help us, seeing that on the cross Jesus substituted himself for us, paying the penalty that we could not pay, dying the death that we deserved.

Joseph’s words are Jesus’ words prefigured in the Old Testament. Listen to them again, putting yourself in the place of his sinful brothers and hearing Jesus speaking to you: Don't feel bad for selling me. God was behind it. God sent me to save lives. There has been a famine of death and destruction in the land for years. God sent me to pave the way and make sure to save your lives in an amazing act of deliverance. So you see, it wasn't you who sent me to [the cross] but God.

The God of the OT is the same God of the NT. He is a God whose plan has been, is now, and every shall be to rescue his people, his beloved, and reconcile them to himself. Praise be to God our Father and our rescuer, Jesus Christ. If you have yet to be reconciled to God, I pray that you are today and that you have heard the gospel: that Jesus Christ came into the world to rescue sinners—sinners like you and me.