SPEAKER_00: This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
SPEAKER_01: This morning I am bound to have some slip of the tongue.
SPEAKER_01: I'm just preparing you in advance because we're talking about a man named Jacob who has a son named Joseph and Judah.
SPEAKER_01: But I'm gonna start with another guy named John.
SPEAKER_01: So I'm gonna make a mistake there, just preparing you.
SPEAKER_01: The guy named John is a guy that you all know, although you've never met him.
SPEAKER_01: You know him because you sing his song.
SPEAKER_01: Often you sing his song.
SPEAKER_01: In early 1748, a 22-year-old sailor named John Newton was on a ship in the Atlantic Ocean.
SPEAKER_01: He was headed home to England from the African coast where he'd been working for a slave trader.
SPEAKER_01: They ran into a storm that was so severe that a man who had been standing virtually in the same spot as John Newton moments before had been swept overboard and was never seen again.
SPEAKER_01: One night in that storm, Newton was so afraid that he was on his knees and he cried out to God for mercy.
SPEAKER_01: God rescued John Newton from that storm.
SPEAKER_01: But for many years he continued to work in the slave trade, even captaining slave ships for six more years.
SPEAKER_01: But that night in the storm, something happened to John Newton.
SPEAKER_01: Something in his conscience had been awakened, had been turned on.
SPEAKER_01: But an awakened conscience is not exactly the same as repentance.
SPEAKER_01: It took thirty-four more years, long after he left the sea, and after he had been serving as a pastor for many, many years, John Newton finally published a pamphlet confessing his role in the slave trade, calling it a business at which his heart now shuddered.
SPEAKER_01: And that confession cost him dearly.
SPEAKER_01: He put his name and his pulpit behind that confession as he supported the abolition movement in England.
SPEAKER_01: It was sometime around that time that he also wrote the words to amazing grace.
SPEAKER_01: That is what repentance looks like when it finally becomes real, we might say.
SPEAKER_01: And that's the story we find in Genesis 44.
SPEAKER_01: In Genesis 44, more than twenty years have passed since Judah and his brothers stood in a field in Canaan near Dothan and said of their own brother, it's not worth it to kill him.
SPEAKER_01: We can get more money out of him by selling him.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, it was Joseph's brother, Judah, who made that recommendation.
SPEAKER_01: So they sold him to a passing caravan of traders for 20 pieces of silver.
SPEAKER_01: And now in Genesis 44, the men who did that are sitting in Joseph's house in Egypt, eating at his table, and they have no idea who he is.
SPEAKER_01: Now it's Joseph in the position of authority.
SPEAKER_01: And he's not finished with his brothers.
SPEAKER_01: He still doesn't know whether these men, now there are 11 of them, the ten who sold him and his youngest brother Benjamin.
SPEAKER_01: And he does not know if the ten men who sold him into slavery are the same men who could abandon their father's favorite son and walk away.
SPEAKER_01: So Joseph designs a last test.
SPEAKER_01: And it's specifically designed to place those ten brothers in the exact situation that tore their family apart in the first place.
SPEAKER_01: And Joseph's testing mirrors the way God sometimes tests us.
SPEAKER_01: Because God tests his people to bring their repentance to light.
SPEAKER_01: And the repentance that he's looking for is the kind that proves itself in costly sacrificial love.
SPEAKER_01: Watch how that unfolds this morning.
SPEAKER_01: Because the grace that changed Judah is the same grace that is at work in God's people today.
SPEAKER_01: But before we can understand that grace, we need to see how God sometimes uses our sin to show us our hearts.
SPEAKER_01: Joseph here at the beginning has had a meal with his brothers, and he's sending them back home with their sacks full of grain to feed their families.
SPEAKER_01: With a test.
SPEAKER_01: He places a silver cup in the sack of the youngest brother's grain.
SPEAKER_01: Joseph gives his steward a set of instructions that sounds almost cruel until you understand what he's after.
SPEAKER_01: He says in verses 1 and 2, fill each man's sack with food, as much as they can carry, and put each man's money in the mouth of his sack, and put my cup, the silver cup, in the mouth of the sack of the youngest with his money for the grain.
SPEAKER_01: So there's building going on here, building of intensity.
SPEAKER_01: You remember that they came the first time with money to buy grain.
SPEAKER_01: Joseph sent them home with grain and the money that they brought.
SPEAKER_01: They've now brought back that money with more money to buy grain because they have a debt to pay, they think, and they have money to buy new grain, and Joseph is sending that all back with all of them, plus his cup.
SPEAKER_01: A silver cup.
SPEAKER_01: The word translated in some of your Bibles as money in verse 2 with his money for the grain is the Hebrew word for silver.
SPEAKER_01: So silver is repeated over and over and over again in this story.
SPEAKER_01: Twenty years earlier, ten brothers had received 20 pieces of silver in exchange for a brother.
SPEAKER_01: And now Joseph is putting silver back into their hands another time, and he's testing whether they are going to make the trade again.
SPEAKER_01: Once they're on the road, Joseph sends his steward out after them to accuse them of theft.
SPEAKER_01: Sounds like unkind manipulation.
SPEAKER_01: Sounds mean.
SPEAKER_01: But you need to understand that Joseph is performing a kind of exploratory surgery.
SPEAKER_01: Because the only way to see the condition of a heart is to put it under pressure.
SPEAKER_01: To strain it, to test it, to try it, to see what it's like.
SPEAKER_01: And that pressure comes when the steward overtakes the brothers, has them all stop, they unload their sacks of grain, eleven of them at least, and they start going through the grain one by one.
SPEAKER_01: And the brothers are so certain of their innocence that they blurt out a terribly reckless promise.
SPEAKER_01: And verse 9 whichever of your servants is found with the cup shall die.
SPEAKER_01: Speak for yourself, brother.
SPEAKER_01: But they're all so convinced that they're innocent, that they're willing to put their lives on the line.
SPEAKER_01: So whichever one in whose hands the cup is found, in whose grain the cup is found, that person is going to be put to death, and the rest of the brothers are going to become slaves forever.
SPEAKER_01: But the steward refuses to accept their offer.
SPEAKER_01: He softens it instead.
SPEAKER_01: He says in verse 10 the one who's found with the cup is going to be my slave.
SPEAKER_01: And the rest of you are innocent.
SPEAKER_01: That's justice, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: That is doing what's right.
SPEAKER_01: The guilty one pays, the rest are innocent.
SPEAKER_01: And that is the test.
SPEAKER_01: The steward has just handed these ten men the same situation that occurred 20 years earlier.
SPEAKER_01: There are eleven brothers.
SPEAKER_01: A son of Rachel, this time the youngest son, Benjamin, is about to be lost.
SPEAKER_01: And all they have to do to save themselves is to pack up their grain with their silver and head home.
SPEAKER_01: Benjamin will be lost forever.
SPEAKER_01: They go home.
SPEAKER_01: The favorite son is left behind.
SPEAKER_01: They tell their father another story.
SPEAKER_01: They've done it before, they can do it again.
SPEAKER_01: So, what are these men like 20 years later?
SPEAKER_01: And our author here does a wonderful job of telling the story.
SPEAKER_01: He stretches the tension out by lengthening the story.
SPEAKER_01: Look at verse 11.
SPEAKER_01: Each man quickly lowers his sack to the ground.
SPEAKER_01: There's 11 of them.
SPEAKER_01: They're doing this as fast as they can.
SPEAKER_01: You can imagine a hundred-pound burlap sack on the back of a donkey.
SPEAKER_01: They're unstrapping it as fast as they can and they're lowering it to the ground.
SPEAKER_01: And each man opens his sack.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 12 the steward searches beginning.
SPEAKER_01: Meaning he's going from one to the next to the next to the next.
SPEAKER_01: And there's eleven of them.
SPEAKER_01: This isn't a quick search, it's a deliberate, methodical search.
SPEAKER_01: One after another after another, beginning with the oldest, Reuben, and ending with the youngest, Benjamin.
SPEAKER_01: And the cup is found in Benjamin's sack.
SPEAKER_01: And then comes the sentence that answers the test.
SPEAKER_01: It's in verse 13.
SPEAKER_01: They tore their clothes, and every man loaded his donkey again, and they returned to the city.
SPEAKER_01: Which ones returned?
SPEAKER_01: All of them.
SPEAKER_01: What happened twenty years ago?
SPEAKER_01: One didn't.
SPEAKER_01: They left Joseph and they all went, the rest went home.
SPEAKER_01: Every man returns, not one of them takes the road home.
SPEAKER_01: The brothers who once let a son of Rachel disappear and never looked back.
SPEAKER_01: Now all of them together turn around and walk straight back into danger for the sake of their youngest brother.
SPEAKER_01: Do you see what God has done?
SPEAKER_01: He's brought these men full circle.
SPEAKER_01: He's given them the same choice that once exposed the worst in them, and this time they chose differently.
SPEAKER_01: He did that to show Joseph and to show us that something's genuinely changed.
SPEAKER_01: And God may do something similar in your life.
SPEAKER_01: He may bring you around to the very same situations where you have failed before.
SPEAKER_01: And when he does, the temptation that we feel is to ask, why is this happening to me again?
SPEAKER_01: I won't ask you to raise your hand if you've been in that place.
SPEAKER_01: You don't have to live very long till you are.
SPEAKER_01: But friends, that's the wrong question.
SPEAKER_01: The better question is, what is God showing me?
SPEAKER_01: Not why is this happening to me, but what is God showing me about my heart by bringing me back here?
SPEAKER_01: What is God wanting me to see about myself by facing this familiar temptation again?
SPEAKER_01: Resist the urge to brace for punishment.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, ask the Lord, what are you trying to expose in me?
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you could ask, what would it look like for me to choose differently this time?
SPEAKER_01: Because in those moments when we sense that we're back in that same place facing that same decision, we we sometimes can feel like we're the hunted.
SPEAKER_01: And it's the temptation that's hunting us.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, search your heart.
SPEAKER_01: Because it's the heart issue where everything begins to turn in this chapter.
SPEAKER_01: We see that beginning in verse 14, where in Joseph's brothers were told that genuine repentance owns the guilt that God exposes.
SPEAKER_01: These brothers in verse 14 come back to Joseph's house.
SPEAKER_01: And he was still there.
SPEAKER_01: A little detail that's important.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe that's on purpose.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe Joseph was waiting until they come back, but the narrator wants us to know they didn't get far enough away before they turned around and came back, and Joseph is still there.
SPEAKER_01: And they all come a second time and fall on the ground before him.
SPEAKER_01: And who speaks?
SPEAKER_01: Verse 16, it's Judah who speaks.
SPEAKER_01: Judah was the one who suggested selling Joseph 20 years earlier.
SPEAKER_01: Now watch what Judah does this time.
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't argue that Benjamin is innocent.
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't say, hey, I know that my brother didn't take your cup.
SPEAKER_01: I can vouch for him.
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't do that.
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't dispute the charge of theft.
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't try to cut a deal.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, he says something that has nothing to do with the silver cup at all.
SPEAKER_01: He says in verse 16, what can we say?
SPEAKER_01: There's no way for us to clear ourselves of this guilt.
SPEAKER_01: God has found out the guilt of your servants.
SPEAKER_01: Notice what Judah actually says.
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't say the guilt of your servant Benjamin.
SPEAKER_01: Singular.
SPEAKER_01: He says the guilt of your servants, plural.
SPEAKER_01: Now nobody in that room thinks that all ten men's or all eleven men stole the cup.
SPEAKER_01: It was in one man's sack, not all of them.
SPEAKER_01: The cup was found in one.
SPEAKER_01: So when Judah confesses a guilt that belongs to all of them together, he's not really confessing a theft at all.
SPEAKER_01: And there's only one thing in this whole story that fits the guilt of all of these men that they admitted to back in chapter 42 when the first ten brothers were in a cell together in Egypt.
SPEAKER_01: And they muttered behind Joseph's back, in truth, God is exposing the guilt concerning our brother.
SPEAKER_01: Friends, the conscience that first cracked open in that cell their first time in Egypt has finally worked its way all the way to the surface.
SPEAKER_01: And Judah says out loud in front of everybody, what's been building inside of them for two decades.
SPEAKER_01: What are they going to do with the guilt that's now out in the open?
SPEAKER_01: That God has brought out in the open.
SPEAKER_01: What we see is really pretty incredible.
SPEAKER_01: Judah refuses to do what they did before.
SPEAKER_01: Joseph offers him an easy way out.
SPEAKER_01: He says, verse 17, only the man in whose cup it was found shall be my slave.
SPEAKER_01: But the rest of you go up in peace to your father.
SPEAKER_01: There it is.
SPEAKER_01: Here's your chance, brothers, to go home.
SPEAKER_01: Leave one brother in slavery in Egypt, and the rest of you can go home.
SPEAKER_01: Are you going to choose it again?
SPEAKER_01: Now the second time, they had it somewhere out in the desert with the steward.
SPEAKER_01: Now it's here again.
SPEAKER_01: The opportunity to take what they have, the freedom that they're given, and turn around and go home.
SPEAKER_01: They'll have to come up with a new story for dad, because this time they can't have the old story.
SPEAKER_01: That's already used.
SPEAKER_01: They already burned that bridge.
SPEAKER_01: They have an opportunity.
SPEAKER_01: But Judah refuses to take it.
SPEAKER_01: Friends, this is the mark of real repentance, and we counterfeit it all the time.
SPEAKER_01: Our guilt makes excuses, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_01: When we're guilty, we we feel this need to manage our sin, to kind of control our guilt, to keep it to a size that is manageable, that we can live with.
SPEAKER_01: We can explain it away.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it spreads the blame around a little bit instead of taking full responsibility.
SPEAKER_01: But repentance stops running.
SPEAKER_01: It stops negotiating.
SPEAKER_01: It agrees with God about sin.
SPEAKER_01: And maybe there's some sin that you're trying to manage instead of fully confessing.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's a resentment that you decided at one point was justified.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's a sinful habit that you've conveniently renamed so that you feel more comfortable with it.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's a wrong that you did to someone and you've filed it away under the file heading.
SPEAKER_01: It was complicated.
SPEAKER_01: Judah spent 20 years with guilt filed away, and it took a famine and a foreign ruler and an embarrassing test before he would admit it.
SPEAKER_01: Friends, don't wait for the crisis.
SPEAKER_01: It's not worth it.
SPEAKER_01: Bring it up into the open.
SPEAKER_01: Call it what it is.
SPEAKER_01: Use the words that God would use for it, not the softened words that you've been using.
SPEAKER_01: And if it involves another person, and it usually does, then owning it will cost you something.
SPEAKER_01: It may mean an apology that you've been avoiding or a conversation you've been dreading.
SPEAKER_01: But genuine repentance most often costs something.
SPEAKER_01: Now notice the second half of what Judah does.
SPEAKER_01: He's not going to purchase or buy his own peace at Benjamin's expense.
SPEAKER_01: Because real repentance never protects our own comfort and leaves someone else to pay the bill.
SPEAKER_01: If your repentance costs you nothing and costs someone else everything, it's not yet the real thing.
SPEAKER_01: Which leads us to verses 18 through 34 in our text, where genuine repentance is willing to consider others more significant.
SPEAKER_01: We've heard that before, right?
SPEAKER_01: In the book of Philippians.
SPEAKER_01: Philippians, where the Lord Jesus Himself left the glories of heaven because he considered others more significant.
SPEAKER_01: Judah steps forward.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 18.
SPEAKER_01: We're told that specifically.
SPEAKER_01: Judah goes up.
SPEAKER_01: He leaves the group of brothers and he goes forward to speak to Joseph man to man, one-to-one.
SPEAKER_01: And what follows this is pretty amazing in the book of Genesis.
SPEAKER_01: It's the second longest speech in Genesis.
SPEAKER_01: 17 verses of one man pouring out his heart.
SPEAKER_01: And it's all about their father.
SPEAKER_01: It's not about himself.
SPEAKER_01: It's not about his brothers.
SPEAKER_01: It's not about Benjamin.
SPEAKER_01: It's not about Joseph.
SPEAKER_01: It's about Jacob.
SPEAKER_01: Did I get that right?
SPEAKER_01: I think I got that right.
SPEAKER_01: It's about Jacob.
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't mention the silver cup once.
SPEAKER_01: It's not there.
SPEAKER_01: He talks about an old man back home in Canaan whose whole life is bound up in this young boy, Benjamin.
SPEAKER_01: He calls Benjamin the child of his father's old age, which is almost word for word what was said once about Joseph.
SPEAKER_01: We're being led to believe that Joseph and Benjamin are considered similarly, with the same terms, the same feelings, the same bond to their father.
SPEAKER_01: He even quotes, Judah quotes his father's grief.
SPEAKER_01: He says, My father said, My wife bore me two sons, and one of them went out from me.
SPEAKER_01: And I said, Surely he's been torn to pieces, and I've never seen him since.
SPEAKER_01: Torn to pieces.
SPEAKER_01: Those are the words that Jacob spoke when his sons dipped Joseph's robe in goat's blood and let the old man assume the worst.
SPEAKER_01: Here, Judah, his son, is now quoting the lie he helped tell.
SPEAKER_01: He's no longer protecting himself.
SPEAKER_01: He's putting it all out there.
SPEAKER_01: He's trying to save his father's heart.
SPEAKER_01: And then Judah does the thing that ends the testing.
SPEAKER_01: In verse 33, he tells Joseph that he, Judah, has personally guaranteed the boy's safety back to his father.
SPEAKER_01: And then he says this in verse 33.
SPEAKER_01: Now therefore, let your servant remain instead of the boy.
SPEAKER_01: As a slave to my Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And let the boy go up with his brother.
SPEAKER_01: Instead of the boy.
SPEAKER_01: That's the language of substitution.
SPEAKER_01: Let me take his place.
SPEAKER_01: Let me stay, I'll be the slave.
SPEAKER_01: Let him go.
SPEAKER_01: Put the chains on me and let the favorite son go home.
SPEAKER_01: The same Judah, who once suggested that they sell the favorite brother and take the silver and go home, now offers himself.
SPEAKER_01: He gives up his freedom and the rest of his life to keep another favorite son, another son of Rachel, from being lost.
SPEAKER_01: That's the evidence Joseph is looking for.
SPEAKER_01: That's what repentance looks like when it's real.
SPEAKER_01: It's not a feeling that you work up, it's not a good speech.
SPEAKER_01: It's a heart that has become willing to be spent for the very people it once wronged.
SPEAKER_01: Judah puts himself between his brother and the cost.
SPEAKER_01: He says, I will bear the cost.
SPEAKER_01: It's a different Judah.
SPEAKER_01: It's a different Judah than the one that sold Joseph.
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's possible to feel bad about your sin for years and even decades and never move once toward the ones that hurt.
SPEAKER_01: The brothers proved that, didn't they?
SPEAKER_01: For at least two decades.
SPEAKER_01: Real change doesn't show up in how you feel, but in what you're willing to sacrifice.
SPEAKER_01: So think of think of the person that your sin has cost the most.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's a Maybe it's a spouse who's who's absorbed your anger for years and years and years.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's a child who just got the worst of you.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's a friend that you backstabbed.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's a parent that you've hated for most of your life and you've written them off.
SPEAKER_01: Genuine repentance doesn't wait for them to come to you.
SPEAKER_01: It moves toward them, and it's willing to bear the cost of putting things right, even a cost that seems unfair.
SPEAKER_01: Even the part that wasn't yours to fix.
SPEAKER_01: Judah didn't need to do this.
SPEAKER_01: Benjamin had the cup.
SPEAKER_01: But he was willing to bear the cost for somebody else.
SPEAKER_01: And what Moses, our author, is doing is tying this all together with the original sin that sold Joseph into slavery in the first place.
SPEAKER_01: And he's saying that's the guilt that's being brought to the surface.
SPEAKER_01: That's the guilt that is motivating Judah to act differently.
SPEAKER_01: But we can't leave Judah there as merely a good example.
SPEAKER_01: Because this chapter will crush you if all you take home is a message about trying harder to be like Judah.
SPEAKER_01: Don't try harder to be like Judah.
SPEAKER_01: You'll fail.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, God is using Judah to show us a greater son of Judah.
SPEAKER_01: Friends, you can't manufacture the kind of heart that we see in Judah.
SPEAKER_01: You can't do it.
SPEAKER_01: It took 20 years and the kind, patient, painful providence of God to turn Judah from a man who took a few pieces of silver to sell his brother into a man who would turn away from silver and sell himself into slavery so that a brother could go free.
SPEAKER_01: So where does a heart like that come from?
SPEAKER_01: How do we go from a heart, heartless guy who sells his brother to a soft heart who takes the place of a brother?
SPEAKER_01: Well, it comes, I would suggest to you, in the full scope of Scripture, from trusting a greater son of Judah.
SPEAKER_01: Just a few chapters from here.
SPEAKER_01: The dying father Jacob will bless this same son, Judah.
SPEAKER_01: He will call him a lion's cub from whom the scepter will not depart.
SPEAKER_01: Meaning, there's going to be a king that's going to come from Judah's line.
SPEAKER_01: Rulership is going to be in Judah's line.
SPEAKER_01: And centuries later, the last book of the Bible announces that the lion of the tribe of Judah has triumphed.
SPEAKER_01: That lion is the crucified, buried, and risen Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Now look at what Judah offered, and then at what Jesus did.
SPEAKER_01: We're comparing Judah and the Lion of Judah.
SPEAKER_01: Judah offered to take the place of a little brother who was innocent of theft.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus actually took the place of people who were guilty of everything.
SPEAKER_01: Judah was willing to become a slave so that the beloved son could go free.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus, the beloved son, became a curse so that we, the guilty ones, could be brought home.
SPEAKER_01: Joseph never accepted Judah's offer.
SPEAKER_01: So Judah never actually wore the chains of slavery.
SPEAKER_01: But Judah's greater son left the glory of the Father's side, took on flesh, took on the form of a slave, and became your substitute on the cross, the innocent for the guilty.
SPEAKER_01: Everything that Judah was willing to do, Jesus did.
SPEAKER_01: And he did it for the people who had earned death.
SPEAKER_01: Friends, a repentant heart like Judah's does not come from gritting your teeth and trying to feel worse about your sin.
SPEAKER_01: It comes from standing in the shadow of the cross, where someone took your place to pay for your guilt.
SPEAKER_01: And when you really see that Christ went instead of you, he begins to do a work in you that softens your heart.
SPEAKER_01: So come and trust in him.
SPEAKER_01: When he brings you back around to your old sin, to your old temptations, to your old habits, what's actually in your heart?
SPEAKER_01: When you're put in the same place, what will God find?
SPEAKER_01: Now maybe you already know the answer.
SPEAKER_01: And it's not what you wish it were.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you've been managing a guilt instead of confessing it.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you've been protecting your own comfort while someone else keeps paying for it.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you felt sorry for years about how you hurt somebody and yet you've never once moved toward that person you hurt.
SPEAKER_01: If that's you, friend, you need to hear this.
SPEAKER_01: God has not brought your sin to the surface to leave you standing there exposed.
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't bring you to embarrassing situations about your own heart just to make you feel embarrassed.
SPEAKER_01: He brings you there and he exposes your guilt and your sin so that he can draw you to the foot of the cross and to show you the one who hung there in your place to pay for that sin and to remove the guilt.
SPEAKER_01: He gave himself so that you could go free.
SPEAKER_01: He nailed your guilt and your condemnation to the tree, Scripture says.
SPEAKER_01: So trust him and leave your burden there.
SPEAKER_01: And then turn and treat people righteously.
SPEAKER_01: Confess the sin to the one who gave himself for you today before you talk yourself out of it.
SPEAKER_01: Here's a man named Judah who walked into Egypt as a man who once traded a brother away for a few pieces of silver.
SPEAKER_01: And now he's standing in a room offering his life for another brother.
SPEAKER_01: Friends, nothing but God's grace makes that kind of change in a person.
SPEAKER_01: And it's the very same grace that's held out to every single person today at the foot of the cross from the Lion of the tribe of Judah.
SPEAKER_01: Would you pray with me?
SPEAKER_01: Lord, I pray that you would make this image of you real, not just in our minds but in our hearts.
SPEAKER_01: That each of us today would be brought to a realization, a recognizing of our sin.
SPEAKER_01: And that we would come willingly to the foot of the cross and to see you.
SPEAKER_01: To turn our eyes to you.
SPEAKER_01: To trust in you for the payment of our sin, that you have taken our place.
SPEAKER_01: So that we might walk away with our guilt paid.
SPEAKER_01: Not just like Judah, but like you, the greater son of Judah.
SPEAKER_01: May you imprint this into our hearts and minds that we might go from this place today, changed people, Christ-like people, who consider others more significant than ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.
SPEAKER_00: Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.