Joseph - the Gift for a Guilty Conscience

 

And Joseph gave orders to fill their bags with grain, and to replace every man’s money in his sack, and to give them provisions for the journey. This was done for them. Then they loaded their donkeys with their grain and departed. And as one of them opened his sack to give his donkey fodder at the lodging place, he saw his money in the mouth of his sack. He said to his brothers, “My money has been put back; here it is in the mouth of my sack!” At this their hearts failed them, and they turned trembling to one another, saying, “What is this that God has done to us?” When they came to Jacob their father in the land of Canaan, they told him all that had happened to them, saying, “The man, the lord of the land, spoke roughly to us and took us to be spies of the land. But we said to him, ‘We are honest men; we have never been spies. We are twelve brothers, sons of our father. One is no more, and the youngest is this day with our father in the land of Canaan.’ Then the man, the lord of the land, said to us, ‘By this I shall know that you are honest men: leave one of your brothers with me, and take grain for the famine of your households, and go your way. Bring your youngest brother to me. Then I shall know that you are not spies but honest men, and I will deliver your brother to you, and you shall trade in the land.’” As they emptied their sacks, behold, every man’s bundle of money was in his sack. And when they and their father saw their bundles of money, they were afraid. (Genesis 42:25–35 ESV).

 

Guilt. What a gift for a seared conscience! For 20 years these men had been slinking along through life, hoping their dirty secret would never be exposed. But now, as they stopped to rest for the night, one of them opened his grain sack to feed a donkey and got the shock of his life. There lay his silver, staring him in the face. Later, back in Canaan, the jolt reverberated as each brother opened his sack with their father, Jacob, watching. Each one saw their own silver—“evidence” that could be used against them to show that they were not “honest men”!

 

When a truly guilty person wonders if some serious adversity may be a sign of God’s prodding them to repent, they may very well be on the right track. When we are truly guilty but our hearts are still hardened against coming clean, then God, who sees all we have done, may roar at us through some adversity so unnerving that we cannot help trembling. If something like that happens to us, it is a sign of God’s grace, a gift leading us back to God. It is God working good in our lives.

 

Each one of us will do well to ask ourselves honestly today, “Is there something I need to confess to God?”