Look now at Joseph's brothers - their guilt and how they lived with it.
It is worth noting first a remarkable feature of the Biblical narrative - it does not moralise. It simply tells the tale - holds a mirror up to life. The narrator is concerned with life as it is, leaving the reader or the preacher to draw their own conclusions.
v. 18 - 19 The Breeding Power of Sin
Note the progression: jealousy, hatred, the urge to kill. It illustrates exactly the comment made by James (1:14-15): "Each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire; then desire, when it is conceived gives birth to sin; and sin when it is full-grown brings forth death." The early jealousy of Joseph' brothers, unchecked, led to this evil conspiracy. Beware the tiger in your tank! Prayed Spurgeon, "Lord, preserve me from sinful beginnings lest they bring me to sorrowful endings."
Our Need of a Cover for our Sin
Note what they said: "Let us kill him and cast him into a pit; then we shall say, 'A wild beast devoured him.'" How true to life that was. It is a universal instinct that we have to seek a cover for our wrongdoing. How to find a cover for our sins, indeed, is the whole point of the Joseph story. How can they be hidden ... really put away as though they had not been? It is a need of which we are all aware. These brothers are not more hypocritical than the rest of us when they live a lie for 25 years, and then protest, "We be honest men, my Lord."
The narrative focuses attention on the two brothers Reuben and Judah.
v. 21 Reuben's Motives
It is interesting that Reuben should have been the one to raise his voice in protest; he was the eldest son. He had the most cause to be jealous of Joseph. That coat with long sleeves suggested that old Jacob planned to bestow on Joseph the birthright that should have been Reuben's. (He was to lose it anyway ... by his own fault and folly.)
Was he a good man? Chapter 35:22 records that he had played about with one of his father's concubines. That was a gross insult to his father. "Israel heard of it," our narrator laconically observes. So Reuben - out of favour - may have been scheming to get himself back in favour by being the one to protect his father's favourite son. But whatever his reason, Reuben does not attempt to do right because it is right, but for some advantage to himself. The evidence for that will duly appear. Because his motive is not pure, he does not even do the right thing right. He strikes a moral pose, to be sure: "Let's not take his life." But his appeal to the brothers is not to morality so much as to self-interest. "Don't have his blood on your conscience. Have your way, but don't kill him." He did not challenge the wretched end they had in view, but only the means to achieve it. "Glut your passion on him, but watch your own interests." He should have made a full-blooded protest: "Don't wrong the lad at all." But because he wants an evil avoided for unworthy reasons, his protest is not clean. He tried to mitigate evil by compliance.
The temptation is always strong, when we feel a need to protest, to moderate our protest so we do not turn against us those to whom we make it.
In my College days, Harold MacMillan introduced what were known as Premium bonds in the U.K. The idea was that instead of these Government bonds bearing interest in the normal way to those who purchased them, the accumulated interest from them all was pooled, and a draw held for prizes from it. If you were lucky in the draw, you did well; otherwise you got nothing. It was a thinly disguised gambling scheme. A group of us students lobbied our Croydon M.P. to protest against them. "It is a government sanction for gambling," we said. His reply was to agree; but then he said, "Let it go through, then when it has grown an evil head, you can knock it off." But he never did so. Was it political ambition made him duck a moral issue?
How often do men compromise themselves to get into a position of power, sincerely believing they then can use that power to influence things for good. But if they succeed, they arrive already corrupted by those compromises, and their compliance is used as a lever with which to manipulate them when they get there.
Reuben was motivated more by selfish expediency than by moral conviction. He was not a committed man.
So he went missing in the crisis! Where was he when the brothers decided to sell Joseph to the Ishmaelite caravan? Why was he not around? The narrative makes it clear that a very short interval indeed had passed. Having made his protest, he did not stand by to see it through. Reuben was not hanging about to get involved any further. It is my opinion that he made some excuse to himself to avoid it ... "I have a duty to the sheep." So off he went to look after them. Very noble of him! But who mattered most that morning? Animals or people, the sheep or Joseph? He made his mild protest, but he would not stand up and be counted. Where was Reuben when Judah pressed his scheme to sell Joseph to the Midianites? Where was Joseph of Arimathea when the Sanhedrin met to condemn Jesus?
The uncommitted man always fails in the crisis.
Jesus calls for committed men, not for men like Reuben who want to be clever before they want to be good.
v. 30 Reuben Unmasked
Reuben's secret weakness is soon exposed. When he finally does return, thinking to lift Joseph out of the pit, and finds him gone, what is his reaction? Is it concern for Joseph? Dear me, no. He cries, "The lad is gone - and I, where shall I go?"
"What'll become of me?" is all Reuben's concern.
I cannot remember where I first read it, but it made a profound impression on me when I did, "You cannot be good unless you value goodness above your own life." That is the truth. What is it the Bible says of those who overcome evil? "They conquered by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death." (Revelation 12:11)
ch. 42:22 The moral deterioration sin brings on
"Sow a thought and reap a deed; sow a deed and reap a character; sow a character and reap a destiny." Twenty-five years on, Reuben is whining, "Didn't I tell you not to sin against the lad?" But that is not what he said. All he said was, "Don't kill him." He did not say, "Don't wrong him." All those years he deceived himself about what he said. Reuben, a grown man, is still pretending to a virtue he never possessed. He still cannot admit the truth, even to himself.
"You can only be good if you value goodness above life." If we do not, we stand to lose our life anyway.
Reuben, in the end, is a hollow man; not a good man, but a whiner.
v. 25 Sin hardens us
"They sat down to eat" ... with Joseph in full view down the pit!
Marvellous! How callous can you get? They had consciously to harden their hearts to do that, for twenty-five years on, they will say to one another: "In truth we are guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the distress of his soul when he besought us and we would not listen." (42:21)
This is the first result, and the longest-lasting, of conscious wrong. "It petrifies the feeling and hardens all within," as Robbie Burns put it. We do ourself a lasting mischief which nothing in after-years can undo ... except a miracle of grace. It is often a puzzle to folk: "How can a man be so ruthless and yet be so carefree?" A man, having chosen to do evil, can be happy. That is his tragedy - and it is a fearful thing. His soul at the end is utterly impervious to goodness. He is irredeemably lost. Daring sinners fancy themselves secure - but they are sitting on a time bomb. Only the miracle of God's grace in a man's heart can undo that (as we shall see).
Judah, too, wants to have his cake and eat it. He is an opportunist, where Reuben was a coward. He sees a way to turn an unexpected event, the passing of a Gipsy caravan, to selfish advantage. "Let's turn the whole episode to everyone's advantage, ours and Joseph's." (Very moral of him!) "We'll gain the same end with less guilt and more profit. We can made a bit on the side here."
When we have seriously contemplated a great sin, a lesser one looks by contrast like a virtue!
But see what is happening: when once we have yielded inward consent to sin, our moral vision becomes clouded. Why, the chance arrival of the Midianite caravan looked like a positive providence! ... smiling on their avoidance of the greater sin while they commit a lesser one. Adolf Hitler, when an assassination attempt on his life had failed, proclaimed it a providence; "Proof of divine protection," he said. In a way that Hitler, to his dying day, never understood, it was of course. He was an instrument of wrath in God's hands, and his life was safe until God was finished with him ... but not because he was obedient from the heart. That Midianite caravan was a providence too, but a providence interpreted falsely by the brothers. It was a providence designed by God for Joseph's welfare, not for the prospering of the brothers' evil designs.
Beware of seeking guidance from events alone. "Opportunity does not imply consent (God's)," said F. B. Meyer. Our own twisted vision may be a deceiving factor. That is why Scripture, not circumstance alone, is a vital check when we are seeking guidance.
But back to Judah. We have here, not merely a crime of passion, but cold-blooded calculation. "Let us not kill him, he is our brother - let us sell him"
Incredible! It is not OK to kill brothers, but it is OK to sell them, right? Here we see what is happening to a man while he is not resisting evil - the whole framework of his inner being, even his power to think straight, is crumbling to pieces.
Chapter 38 is a cautionary tale about Judah. Its point is simple. Events showed Judah that the evil consequences of careless sin can only be stopped by frank confession of them, braving the shame. But the lesson was lost on him. Then was a time to confess that other old sin, too, to Jacob. But no. Judah is unable to profit from life's discipline.
It is a sad observation of another of sin's consequences: it stops us growing. At the end, Judah speaks for the rest, pleading with Joseph whom he has not recognised, thinking him to be Egypt's Prime Minister; he tells the whole family history to reinforce his plea. He was under real pressure then to tell the truth. But still he must conceal it. He represents Jacob as saying "You know that my wife bore me two sons. One left me and I said, 'Surely he has been torn to pieces.'"
"One left me ..."? Those are words no-one ever heard old Jacob say.
Even when he is pressured yet further into saying, "My life for my brother Benjamin's," he still cannot tell the truth.
How ironic that life should in the end force him to say what all those years ago he could have freely said, "My life for my brother's."
So it will be for all of us. One day we shall be forced to acknowledge Christ as Lord, with no remedy for our defiance to follow. Now we may do it freely - and be healed. And one way God's Spirit may be telling us to do it is to own up to some concealed sin we think need never now be resurrected. Confess it.
Finally ...
v. 31-36 The ploy to cover sin
The brothers concocted a ruse to deceive old Jacob. They did not actually lie to the old man. What they did instead was, if anything, worse. They faked the evidence and let him draw his own conclusion. What they contrived to protect their own sore consciences worked for the old man's steady deterioration. And it snow-balled; he grieved ... inordinately, foolishly.
"They comforted him." What a hollow mockery! The deceit with which they tried to cover their guilt bred more deceit, more cruelty. For 25 years they lie ... and lie ... and lie ... and watch the whole fabric of their father's person and their father's house fall apart, and are powerless to prevent it.
This permissive age is sowing an appalling harvest. Our national family life will suffer its repercussions for generations to come. Let us be resolved to be no part of it.
Later we shall see how this tide of evil was checked. For now, note that it was checked only when the sin was confessed - and forgiven.
There is no release from the law of retribution that governs life except the forgiveness of God. All our attempts to cover our sins are futile and only compound them. Only if God covers sins are they put away - and this He cannot do till we uncover them before His face. "He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy." (Proverbs 28:13) We have to face the music - whether to have sentence pronounced on us or to receive forgiveness. From discovery there is no escape; from guilt there is. For when God puts our sin away, there is no tribunal left anywhere that can call us to account for them. But until He does it, we are never safe from the discovery of them that will bring condemnation upon us.
"Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. When I declared not my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. (Conscience distress) Then I acknowledged my sin to thee, and did not hide my iniquity; I said, 'I will confess my transgressions to the LORD; ' then thou didst forgive the guilt of my sin." (Psalm 34)
Selah ... Pause and ponder!
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