Confession: brotherly concern displayed: Surety

1/23/2008 6:23 AM

SPIRITUAL DIARY

My Worship Time      Focus:  Confession:  brotherly concern displayed:  Surety

Bible Reading & Meditation             Reference: Genesis 44:18-34

            Message of the verses:  “18 ¶  Then Judah approached him, and said, "Oh my lord, may your servant please speak a word in my lord’s ears, and do not be angry with your servant; for you are equal to Pharaoh.  19  "My lord asked his servants, saying, ‘Have you a father or a brother?’  20  "We said to my lord, ‘We have an old father and a little child of his old age. Now his brother is dead, so he alone is left of his mother, and his father loves him.’  21  "Then you said to your servants, ‘Bring him down to me that I may set my eyes on him.’  22  "But we said to my lord, ‘The lad cannot leave his father, for if he should leave his father, his father would die.’  23  "You said to your servants, however, ‘Unless your youngest brother comes down with you, you will not see my face again.’  24  "Thus it came about when we went up to your servant my father, we told him the words of my lord.  25  "Our father said, ‘Go back, buy us a little food.’  26  "But we said, ‘We cannot go down. If our youngest brother is with us, then we will go down; for we cannot see the man’s face unless our youngest brother is with us.’  27  "Your servant my father said to us, ‘You know that my wife bore me two sons; 28  and the one went out from me, and I said, "Surely he is torn in pieces," and I have not seen him since.

29  ‘If you take this one also from me, and harm befalls him, you will bring my gray hair down to Sheol in sorrow.’ 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, 31  when he sees that the lad is not with us, he will die. Thus your servants will bring the gray hair of your servant our father down to Sheol in sorrow. 32  "For your servant became surety for the lad to my father, saying, ‘If I do not bring him back to you, then let me bear the blame before my father forever.’  33  "Now, therefore, please let your servant remain instead of the lad a slave to my lord, and let the lad go up with his brothers.  34  "For how shall I go up to my father if the lad is not with me—for fear that I see the evil that would overtake my father?’”

            The OT is full of stories which are glimpses of the Lord Jesus Christ and this is one of them told by a very old relative of Jesus.  Jesus spoke to two of His disciples in Luke twenty-four about some of these stories as they walked along the road to Emmaus.  Judah offered to become surety for his brother Benjamin so that he would not have to live as a slave for the rest of his life, likewise Jesus did the same thing on the cross, offering Himself as surety for all mankind so that those who accepted His work on the cross would not have to live as slaves to sin, and would someday be with Him for all eternity.  The Bible says in Hebrews 7:22, “so much the more also Jesus has become the guarantee of a better covenant.”  Judah was offering himself as a guarantee to his father that Benjamin would return to him and by doing so Joseph now realizes that Judah has changed and is sorrowful for his sin against Joseph and his father and is now willing to show himself to his brothers.  The task of bringing his brothers to confession and repentant is now complete as Joseph had desired in the first place was now complete.

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  As I was listening to our lesson in “The Purpose Driven Life,” book last night Rick Warren, the author was telling the story of what it took for me to become a child of God, by reminding me of what it cost the Lord Jesus Christ as He took on my sin, how he was beaten and spit upon, have his hair pulled out and his beard pulled out, and having the nails driven into His hands and feet and then being separated from His Father while taking on all of my sin so that He could give me His righteousness that I would be able to become a child of God.  God accepted His Son’s sacrifice on my behalf and then it was said in the book that familiarity breeds complacency, and this is surely true in my case.  This story in Genesis again reminds me of the old, old story of Jesus and His love as He died on the cross to save a sinner such as me, and I am thankful for this and even though I do not understand it all, and because of that I sometimes just block the details out of my mind, I am so very thankful for Jesus becoming surety for me.

My Steps of Faith for Today:  I want to think about Jesus dying on the cross for me as I go throughout my day.

Memory verses for today:  Philippians 1:9-11

9. And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real love and all discernment,
10. so that you may approve the things that are excellent, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ;
11. having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.