Yesterday, we ended by wondering how the brothers might respond to the silver cup being found with Benjamin. How might they try to save themselves? What story would they perhaps make up to tell their father? Thanks to the work of God, none of these thoughts was now in the brothers’ minds. Years before they had willingly sold Joseph. Now there is not one of them who did not wish that the cup had been found in his sack rather than in Benjamin’s. And they did not abandon him! When Benjamin was taken back to Egypt, they all returned to Egypt. They were ready to offer themselves as Joseph’s slaves. Most impressive of all, when Joseph declared that only the one who had stolen the cup should be retained as a slave, it was Judah—Judah, who twenty years earlier had counseled the sale of Joseph to the Midianites—who offered to remain as a slave in Benjamin’s place: “Now then, please let your servant remain here as my lord’s slave in place of the boy, and let the boy return with his brothers. How can I go back to my father if the boy is not with me?” (vv. 33-34).
Oh, glorious transformation! Glorious God, who alone is able to bring life out of death and righteousness to a sin-scarred conscience. If you are still trying to run from God and turn aside His gracious intervention in your life, learn these two lessons. First, God will always uncover your iniquity. Usually He discloses iniquity in this life. But even if He does not do so here, He will certainly do it in the life to come. The Bible says, “Your sin will find you out” (Num. 32:23). The secrets of all hearts will be disclosed. All hidden things will be brought into the light from darkness. As F. B. Meyer says, “There is absolutely no chance of escape for a man, save in the wounds of Jesus: these are the city of refuge into which the pursuer cannot enter, and in which the fugitive is safe.”1 If you have not entered into that city and been cleansed by that blood, do so now while there is yet hope. Jesus stands ready not only to expose but to forgive, not only to condemn but to cleanse and restore to useful service.
Finally, learn that it is not what you achieve in this world that matters but rather what God in righteousness chooses to do through you. I began by an illustration of the purging of self-confidence from the life of Charles Colson. I close with a quotation from this same source. “It is not what we do that matters, but what a sovereign God chooses to do through us. God doesn’t want our success; he wants us. He doesn’t demand our achievements; he demands our obedience. The kingdom of God is a kingdom of paradox, where through the ugly defeat of a cross, a holy God is utterly glorified. Victory comes through defeat; healing through brokenness; finding through losing self.”2
May God show you that defeat, that brokenness, that loss of self, so that you may enter into that glorious victory through which others are blessed and He alone is glorified.
1 F. B. Meyer, Joseph: Beloved-Hated-Exalted (Fort Washington, PA: Christian Literature Crusade, 1982), 91-92.
2 Charles W. Colson, Loving God (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1983), 25.
