The Setup: Genesis 44:1-13
God wants all our relationships to be restored, not just our relationship with Him. Our sin comes from our incredible ability to focus on ourselves and overlook others. When we impose our will over the needs of others, we sin. This breaks relationship. It causes friction in life. Left untended, this friction causes rifts to form and allows grievances to fester. This is not how God wants us to live.
God has given Joseph one more hurdle to give to his brothers. Joseph tells his steward to fill the brothers’ bags with grain, to return their money to them, and to put his own personal silver cup into the bag of Benjamin. This is done, and the brothers head back to Canaan.
Imagine the emotional rollercoaster ride the brothers experienced. They started this episode at the breaking point in Canaan. They convinced their father to let Benjamin come, but only after Judah made extravagant promises for Benjamin’s safety. Worried, they come to Egypt and quickly confess their money was mistakenly returned. They discover the Egyptians were not mad at them because money had been added to the Egyptian treasury for their grain. The brothers have a huge feast with the Egyptians, Benjamin is strangely honored, and finally they are headed home. Everyone is safe, they have food to save their family, and all seems well.
Suddenly, the steward appears and makes a strange accusation of someone stealing Joseph’s silver cup. The brothers defend themselves aggressively. They are so sure of their innocence they volunteer to enslave themselves and let the guilty party die.
This is how we know this scene is arranged by God and not Joseph playing a cruel game with his brothers. In a single event, the brothers embrace consequences on their own accord. Decades earlier, they wanted to kill Joseph. Now, they embrace death for the guilty brother. Instead of killing Joseph, they sold him into slavery. Now, they offer themselves as slaves. They haven’t connected the pieces of God’s action, but they have come to a kind of restitution. They embrace consequences. What remains is confession. Then, God will demonstrate His glory.
This story mirrors what God did with Jacob in Canaan before the brothers came. God allowed Jacob to trap himself in a situation where the only way out was letting go. God wanted him to relinquish control of Benjamin’s safety. Here, God allows the brothers to also make their own trap. God is working them to a point of confession so the brothers are set up to see God’s power in restitution.
Joseph struggled to prosper in a foreign land over the course of decades. During that time, back in Canaan, the brother’s unconfessed sin drove a wedge through the whole family. God is helping the brothers fix that mistake – a mistake they were unwilling to fix themselves. God wants all our relationships to be restored, not just our relationship with Him.
