[Anglican Communion 13 November 2020] Topic: The Evil Of Guilty Conscience
Topic: The Evil Of Guilty Conscience
Read: Genesis 44:18-34 (NKJV)
Then Judah came near to him and said: “O my lord, please let your servant speak a word in my lord’s hearing, and do not let your anger burn against your servant; for you [are] even like Pharaoh.
“My lord asked his servants, saying, ‘Have you a father or a brother?’
“And we said to my lord, ‘We have a father, an old man, and a child of [his] old age, [who is] young; his brother is dead, and he alone is left of his mother’s children, and his father loves him.’
“Then you said to your servants, ‘Bring him down to me, that I may set my eyes on him.’
“And we said to my lord, ‘The lad cannot leave his father, for [if] he should leave his father, [his father] would die.’
“But you said to your servants, ‘Unless your youngest brother comes down with you, you shall see my face no more.’
“So it was, when we went up to your servant my father, that we told him the words of my lord.
“And our father said, ‘Go back [and] buy us a little food.’
“But we said, ‘We cannot go down; if our youngest brother is with us, then we will go down; for we may not see the man’s face unless our youngest brother [is] with us.’
“Then your servant my father said to us, ‘You know that my wife bore me two sons;
‘and the one went out from me, and I said, “Surely he is torn to pieces”; and I have not seen him since.
‘But if you take this one also from me, and calamity befalls him, you shall bring down my gray hair with sorrow to the grave.’
“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,
“it will happen, when he sees that the lad [is] not [with us,] that he will die. So your servants will bring down the gray hair of your servant our father with sorrow to the grave.
“For your servant became surety for the lad to my father, saying, ‘If I do not bring him [back] to you, then I shall bear the blame before my father forever.’
“Now therefore, please let your servant remain instead of the lad as a slave to my lord, and let the lad go up with his brothers.
“For how shall I go up to my father if the lad [is] not with me, lest perhaps I see the evil that would come upon my father?”
THE MESSAGE:
Recall it was Judah and Reuben who provided alternative means of disposing off of Joseph instead of killing him as previously planned, just to arrest his dreams (Genesis 37:21, 22; 26-27). Now, imagine the same Judah, unknowingly announcing Joseph’s supposed ‘obituary’ directly to him (verses 20, 28). The lie they told their father long ago had since become and has remained their reality! And Joseph must have wondered where they saw him being ‘torn to pieces…’! Guilty conscience is a deadly evil. Judah was still able to recall the sequence of events with vivid clarity! How they must have been tormented for 22 years, especially as they saw their father mourn day after day! Evil never pays. Wicked people often make the mistake of thinking that the pain associated with their evil deeds will somehow, soon be forgotten, but how wrong they can be!
Can you count the number of times the phrases “… my lord,” or “…your servants…” appeared in this passage out of cringing fear of “this ruler”? This was the very thing they wanted to prevent based on the dreams Joseph had long ago. What the Lord has decreed concerning our lives, no one can thwart. He is able to accomplish His plans for our lives.
PRAYER: Lord keep me from a lying tongue and uproot every seed of wickedness in me.
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