God's kingdom is unshakable. We have an obligation, we have a duty to live in this world according to a Christian ethic, according to a biblical ethic. We're not called in any way to run from the world, we're called to run right into it and to live within it according to our Christian convictions. If you just simply live by a Christian ethic, you will stand out. You won't have to let people know that you're a Christian and figure out some sort of scheme to drop Christ into the conversation. If you live according to biblical ethics in a post-Christian culture, you are an apologetic, and you will be pointing folks to the gospel, and there'll be easy conversation starters. A Time for Confidence, a book by Dr. Stephen J. Nichols.
To reserve your copy, call 800-435-4343, or visit ReformationTrust.com today. One brother is in prison. The life of another brother hangs in the balance, and nine brothers feel the weight of a decades-old sin. The Life of Joseph, next on Renewing Your Mind. Everything was going wrong for Joseph's brothers. They were in Egypt to buy food for their families, but Simeon was arrested, and Benjamin was accused of stealing the governor's cup. Or did he?
Let's continue Dr. R.C. Sproul's look at the life of Joseph. As we continue now with the epic narrative of the life of the patriarch Joseph, we recall that we left off this narrative with the moment where Judah had pled with Joseph that he and his brothers would all assume responsibility for the missing cup that had been found in the sack of Benjamin. And Joseph said, no, no, no, no, no. I'm only going to make the one who is guilty my slave.
The rest of you go on home. But remember what Joseph said to them, Joseph said to them, you may go in peace to your father. I wonder how carefully Joseph chose those words. He didn't just say, you can go on home to your father. He said, go in peace to your father. There's kind of an underlying hint of irony there, isn't there, because Joseph knew that the last way they could ever approach their father in these circumstances was in peace. It would have been more accurate for Joseph to have said, go head home, go in anguish to your father. But instead, he acts as if, hey, they're completely innocent.
He continues this charade. Now what follows in verse 18 of chapter 44 of Genesis is the plea of Judah, who becomes the spokesman for the brothers, trying to intercede for the safety of Benjamin. And I would be tempted to just skirt over this portion of the text because so much of it is recapitulation of what's already gone before, where Judah is merely bringing the story up to date.
But there is an element contained within this recapitulation that I don't want us to miss, so let's look quickly at it. Judah came near to him and said, oh my Lord, please let your servant speak a word in my Lord's hearing, and do not let your anger burn against your servant, for you are even like Pharaoh. Please let me talk with you. Let me have your ear.
Let me make my case. And hear me out patiently, Judah is saying. And don't get mad at what I'm about to tell you, because I know it's like talking to Pharaoh, and I understand the power and authority that Pharaoh has invested in you, and if I provoke you to anger, I realize the depth of trouble I'm in.
But please hear me out. My Lord asked his servant, saying, have you a father or brother? And we said to my Lord, we have a father, an old man, and a child of his old age who is young.
His brother is dead, and he alone is left of his mother's children, and his father loves him. Now this is recapitulation, saying, do you remember you asked us when we were here before about who was left at home and whether our father was still alive? And I told you that we had a father and his youngest son who was the child of his old age whom our father loves.
But then you said to us, bring him down to me, that I may set my eyes on him. And we said to my Lord, the lad cannot leave his father, for if he should leave his father, his father would die. And you said to your servants, unless your youngest brother comes down with you, you shall not see my face any more. Now what's Judah doing here? He's pleading with Joseph. He's saying, don't you remember the circumstances that you set forth, the conditions that you gave us for this return to Egypt?
And now consider our fate. This isn't just about the younger brother that we've brought, but the father that you inquired about will surely die if we go home without our brother. And so it was that when we went up to your servant my father that we told him the words of my Lord, and our father said, go back and buy us a little food.
But we said, we cannot go down. If our youngest brother is with us, then we will go down, for we may not see the man's face unless our youngest brother is with us. And then your servant my father said to us, you know that my wife bore me two sons, and one went out for me, and I said, surely he is torn to pieces.
He is torn to pieces, and I have not seen him since. But if you take this one also from me, and calamity befalls him, you shall bring down my gray hair with sorrow to the grave." Judah is trying to explain to Joseph about the agony that their father has endured all these years. It's as if he's pleading with a complete stranger, saying to this imperial figure of authority in Egypt, sire, you don't understand. And there was no one in the world who understood more clearly what Judah was talking about than Joseph. This is irony, and that's God, God who brings His will to pass, His providence forth through the details, through the subtle nuances, the turns and the twists of seemingly minor events in history become major moments of importance in his hand. Now, here we see the irony in Judah's daring and presuming to inform Joseph about the concern that Jacob would have. Your servant, my father, said to us, you know that my wife bore me two sons, and the one went out for me, and I said, surely he is torn to pieces, and I have not seen him since. Verse 29 of chapter 44 of Genesis, but if you take this one also from me, and calamity befalls him, you shall bring down my gray hair with sorrow to the grave. Don't you see, Joseph, Judah is pleading, that if you punish the boy, you're not just punishing him.
I know that you don't want to punish the innocent with the guilty, but this will kill our father. He's pleading for mercy. He's saying, think of this old man who loves his youngest son. His other son from his wife Rachel was torn from his hands.
He doesn't volunteer that they did it, but he reminds Joseph that the double calamity would be more than Joseph could bear. Verse 30, now therefore, when I come to your servant, my father, and the lad is not with us, since his life is bound up in the lad's life, it will happen when he sees that the lad is not with us, that he will die. So, your servants will bring down the gray hair of your servant our father with sorrow to the grave. For your servant became surety for the lad to my father, saying, if I do not bring him back to you, then I shall bear the blame before my father forever. Now therefore, please let your servant remain instead of the lad as a slave to my lord, and let the lad go up with his brothers. For how so I go up to my father if the lad is not with me, lest perhaps I see the evil that would come upon my father."
What an enormous plea for clemency. Judah is not asking that Joseph overlook the transgression. He's not saying, listen, forget all of this for the sake of our aged father and let Benjamin go and forget about the incident.
But what he is saying in this recapitulation to Joseph is this, I had to beg my father to let this young one come with us. And the only way he would part with him was on the condition that one of us would be a surety for him. And I am the surety for my brother.
And so what Judah proposes here is an act of vicariously precarious punishment, an act of substitution. Let me take his place. Let me act as the surety for my brother. Let him go, Joseph, for the sake of our father, and take me in his place.
I will be your slave. Now keep in mind the original account of the treachery of the brothers against Joseph, how there were varying degrees of viciousness among the brothers in terms of their intentions and their hostilities against Joseph. And remember that Judah had proposed a lesser treatment than the brothers were wont to do originally. And remember that among the brothers of the sons of Jacob, the firstborn Reuben does not receive the patriarchal blessing.
The secondborn Simeon does not receive what's called the primogeniture, the patriarchal blessing of the inheritance, nor does Levi receive it. Now Judah doesn't receive it either. But what Judah is given is the scepter. When Jacob later blesses his sons, he says, the scepter shall not depart from Judah until Shiloh comes, for Judah is the lion's whelp. And so consequently and subsequently, the kings of Israel, particularly from the line of David, came from the tribe of Judah, to whom the kingdom was promised. And Judah's greater son, greater than David, was Jesus, who became the king of the kings. And Jesus, again, was from the tribe of Judah. Now that's very significant that he is called the lion of Judah. That is a title ascribed to Christ in the New Testament. Well here is one of those moments in Old Testament history where a forebear of the Messiah typologically foreshadows the work of the Messiah. It is Judah who offers himself as surety for his brother. Now what is this offer of surety?
It is the manifestation and the promise of being a guarantee to cover somebody else's debts. And the supreme surety that is provided for the people of God comes from the loins and the lineage of Judah. Jesus is our surety. Jesus is the one who takes upon himself the debts that we owe the king of the universe. Jesus is the one who stands in our place.
Jesus is the one who substitutes himself for us in bearing the just punishment of our sins. That's why when we speak of the atonement of Christ, we call it the vicarious substitutionary atonement. Vicarious means something that is done for us by someone else.
If I experience something vicariously, that means I do not experience it in and of myself, but I experience it through the experience of someone else. And that's what happens here. And the offer here is an offer to submit to slavery that the younger brother who is perceived at this point to be guilty of a crime is set free. Now that imagery is replete in the New Testament with respect to the work of Christ, who comes to set the captives free. He binds himself to the law and to the judgment of God that he may set at liberty those who have been held captive by their sin. Do you see in this brief recapitulation, do you see why I didn't want to just gloss over it?
Because do you see we have here the gospel in a nutshell, the gospel of vicarious sacrifice, the gospel of vicarious punishment. Many of you have read Charles Colson's book Born Again and recall that as part of the fallout of the Watergate affair, he was sent to prison not for his role in Watergate but for his role in the Pentagon Papers, the Ellsberg case. And when Charles Colson was sentenced to prison, his friend who became the governor of the state of Minnesota, Al Quie, went to the judge and asked the judge if he could take Colson's place in prison. The judge disallowed it, but that was Quie's action for a new convert.
He said, let me suffer in his place. I'll never forget that offer that was made by Governor Quie. But that's the offer that Judah makes to this prime minister of Egypt as he is keeping his vow to be a surety for his brother.
Amazing. And Judah's offer of self-sacrifice to Joseph is a powerful part of this story. Thanks for listening to Renewing Your Mind on this Saturday. We're working our way through Dr. R.C. Sproul's series, The Life of Joseph. As we heard today, it is an intriguing story, and we can learn a great deal from it. We'd like for you to have the complete series for your own library.
There are 20 messages in all. Part of a bundle of teaching series, in fact, we call the R.C. Sproul Teaching Collection. When you request it, you'll receive eight full teaching series, including the parables of Jesus, Knowing Scripture, Ecclesiastes, Galatians, and Knowing Christ. Request this bundled resource when you contact us today with a donation of any amount.
Our web address is renewingyourmind.org, and our phone number is 800-435-4343. Well, have you ever wished that someone would explain theology in a way that doesn't require a theology degree? Simply put, it's a short podcast about long words. Each week, my colleague Barry Cooper sheds light on a different biblical or theological term, using helpful illustrations to apply it to your life. He covers topics like the five solas of the Reformation, predestination, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and the fruit of the Spirit. I have a friend who told me just a couple of days ago that he used the episode on why Jesus is called the Christ in preparing his family for worship that day.
So let's listen to a portion of that podcast. In the Middle East 2,000 years ago, people didn't have last names, which meant, of course, that they needed a way to distinguish between people who shared the same name. One way to solve the problem was by using the name of your hometown, hence Jesus of Nazareth.
Other people were identified by adding titles that were specific to them. Given that there was no shortage at that time of men with the name Jesus, the subject of the Gospels is often identified by his given title. He is Jesus Christ.
And what a title that is. In the original New Testament Greek, it's Christos, which is a translation of the Hebrew word mashiah, from which we get our word, messiah. It's a word that means anointed one. So when we say Jesus Christ, what we're actually saying is Jesus, the Messiah, or Jesus, the anointed one.
Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Google Play, or go to SimplyPutPodcast.com. Well, we hope you'll make plans to join us next Sunday as Dr. Sproul continues his series on the life of Joseph. But before we go today, here's a final thought. Have you ever had to be a surety for somebody else? Have you ever had to co-sign a note? Have you ever had to assume the responsibility of someone else's debts? I think most of us have had to do that, particularly if we're parents, and if we try to help our children get started in life, you might help sign for a car or whatever. What we're doing on those occasions is acting as a guarantor, as a surety for our children. And we're willing to do that. In fact, this very day as I speak, as soon as this lecture is over, I'm going to write a check of earnest money for my son for the purchase of his new house. He's out of town. They need the check. I'm going to write it for him. We all do that sort of thing, and we're happy to do that sort of thing. But it's one thing for me to be surety for my son, for my loved ones, but don't ask me to be surety for my enemies, which is what Jesus did for us and which He has done for you if you place your trust in Him. Thank you.
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