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Time will never heal a guilty conscience
Sermon 09
November 22nd, 2009
“The deadliest sin is the consciousness of no sin.” Over a hundred years ago Scottish writer, Thomas Carlyle made that powerful statement.
A popular new show this fall is The Good Wife. It’s a fictional story focusing on Alicia Florrick, wife of disgraced Illinois State’s Attorney Peter Florrick. Her husband has been jailed following a very public sex and corruption scandal. She returns to her old job as a defense attorney to rebuild her reputation and provide for her two children. But it’s a TV drama that rings too true in our day of countless moral and political scandals. In fact, the series was partly inspired by former Governor of New York, disgraced Eliot Spitzer’s, prostitution scandal.
The first episode opened with an all too familiar scene, a politician caught in a scandal with his faithful wife standing by his side, giving a press conference and publically apologizing for his moral failure to his wife and family. Like Mrs. Eliot Spitzer, Mrs. Mark Sanford, Mrs. John Edwards and even Mrs. Bill Clinton, Alicia Florrick has become a member of a club no woman wants to join—the wife of a public figure caught cheating. Maybe we’re jaundiced because there have been so many of them, but don’t you find yourself wondering as you watch one of those, “Are they really sorry…or are they just sorry that they got caught?”
Over the years I’ve worked with many individuals and couples who have sought to rebuild their lives or their marriages after a moral failure. Most were caught before they confessed. A few though stand out in my mind as being plagued by guilty consciences. One spouse came to me after being unfaithful and no one knew. I was able to help them as they confessed the betrayal of their vows to their spouse. It was very painful but I believe that because they initiated the confession, owning up to their own responsibility, there was solid marital ground to begin rebuilding on.
Genesis 42 begins a heartrending drama which doesn’t conclude until chapter 45. It’s easy to look at this through 2009 goggles and think, “Why all the drama? Why doesn’t Joseph just confront them as soon as he sees them? Why does he string them along?” Because God’s hand is in all of this.
Yes, Joseph could have immediately confronted them. In his position as second in all of Egypt, he could have incarcerated them for the remainder of their lives or even had them executed. Remember though that while during those twenty-two years in Egypt, things have drastically changed for Joseph, little has changed back home in Canaan. Other than some aging his brothers look basically the same which is why he immediately recognizes them.
Joseph wants to know, “Have they changed?” or “Is there any hope that they will change?” A frontal assault might have only brought about a cover story without a true heart change. If these are going to be God’s chosen people, there must be repentance from sin and true heart change.
God is wakening the sleeping consciences of his brothers. They’re a hard bunch. Years before, under the leadership of Simeon and Levi, they’d deceived a village, slaughtered the men, taking the women and children captive in retaliation for one man's violating their sister. Reuben, the oldest, slept with his father's concubine. Judah had two sons so wicked that the Lord killed them. He himself had slept with his daughter-in-law, Tamar, thinking her to be a prostitute. All the brothers, except Benjamin, conspired together, to sell Joseph into slavery, crushing their father's heart and deceiving him into thinking his son was dead.
Twenty-two years have passed. They've papered over their guilty consciences. Joseph was out of sight and out of mind. Life in Canaan was comfortable, although they were blending in with the paganism around them. To awaken the consciences of a tough bunch like this, God uses some rather severe measures.
The famine extends into Canaan. Slowly their grain supply dwindles to nothing. They're facing starvation. Jacob hears there is grain in Egypt, so he sends his ten sons (minus Benjamin) down to Egypt to buy grain. Their sleeping consciences begin to stir. This story illustrates how our loving Heavenly Father uses both severity and grace to stir our consciences and to bring us to repentance. God gets pretty tough with them, yet the process is permeated with His grace. Genesis 42 is about the resurrecting of a conscience because Time will never heal a guilty conscience, Gen. 42:1-28 (p. 32). If you’re taking notes…
1. God sometimes uses pressure to awaken our conscience. Some of you are members of my son, Ben’s NASCAR picks group. This afternoon they’re having a party to watch the last race of the season. If I came home one day though to find all of Ben’s NASCAR hats and memorabilia in the garbage, it would get my attention. It would be totally out of character. That’s what’s going on as this chapter opens (vss. 1-2); Jacob is perplexed by his sons’ inaction. The Hebrew suggests that he literally said, “Why do you look questioningly at each other?” They’re filled with indecision and Jacob can’t figure it out. They had a reputation for being men of action. Levi and Simeon hadn’t blinked an eye when they massacred Shechem. Reuben and Judah were well known for their immoral dalliances. Yet faced with their own starvation and the starvation of their families, they drag their feet…and everyone knows where food is to be found…Egypt!
Since we know the whole story, we know why they’re so indecisive. As Hamlet insightfully says, “conscience does make cowards of us all.” They’re more afraid of Egypt, than of starving. Talk about a negative anchor. Egypt is a word that’s barely been whispered for decades. It’s a place synonymous with guilt and regret. An old proverb says, “Never speak of a rope in the house of a hangman.”
Many of us have trigger points – where a mere word mentioned can fill us with emotion and regret. Great guilt is conjured up when we just think of a particular place or person. For Jacob, Egypt is a neutral word but for these ten brothers, Egypt goes off like a bomb in their consciences. And God orchestrates this famine to take these men where they would have never gone if necessity had not demanded it of them.
Did the Lord use pressure in your life to bring you to Himself? Is He doing that today? Is the current economic blip being used by God to motivate you to rearrange your priorities, to hold things a little more loosely, to force you to realize you’ve been worshiping God’s gifts instead of God and to not allow things to come between you and Him?
Their consciences were asleep but God is giving them a wake-up call. He sends them on a week long, 250 mile trek to do it. That’s because the greatest famine was the one in their souls. Thousands were affected by the famine, but its primary purpose was to get just one family to migrate to Egypt. God was working through something so simple but we easily take for granted – food and hunger.
The human conscience is a strange thing. Considering how evil men and women are, it’s surprising that we have a conscience at all…but we do. Here’s the problem. While it’s true we have something called a conscience which sometimes makes us feel guilty for past wrongdoing, the conscience is far from overwhelming in its effects. It’s sadly possible for us to neutralize it or kill it. One man who struggled to put his conscience to rest wrote the IRS saying, “I’ve cheated on my income tax. I can’t sleep. Here’s a check for $75. If I still can’t sleep, I’ll send you the balance.”
What is a conscience? Think of the conscience like a sundial. It’s able to give fairly accurate time when the sun is shining on it but is totally unable to give any kind of time at night. We also know that our consciences can be seared. There’s only one way then that our conscience can be a sure guide to right behavior. That’s when the light of God’s Word is shining on it. When the light of God shines on the sundial of your conscience, you get the right time every time. But apart from that the conscience is a bit like a trained circus dog. You whistle once, and it will stand up. You whistle twice, and it will roll over. The third time you whistle, it will play dead.
God applies the pressure of famine, coupled with Egypt to stir their consciences. Time won’t erase a guilty conscience. You can brush your sin under the rug and hope that enough years will take care of it. But one day, perhaps years later, God will apply some sort of pressure in your life and your conscience will stir. Maybe it will be a single word, spoken inadvertently by someone, like Egypt! Your sin flashes as vividly in your mind as if it was yesterday.
God lovingly put these brothers in the heat of a famine to draw them to Himself. You can't be treated for a disease until you’re aware that there is a problem. God is forcing them to see that they need to repent.
2. God sometimes uses the principle of reaping what we have sown to awaken our conscience. A six-year-old came crying to his mother because his little sister pulled his hair. "Don't be angry," the mother says, "Your little sister doesn't realize that pulling hair hurts." A short while later, there's more crying and the mother goes to investigate. This time the little sister is bawling and her brother says, "Now she knows!"
It is unfortunate that we often do not appreciate the effect of cruel words until we’ve felt their sting ourselves. We don’t comprehend the pain of indifference until others have ignored us. We don’t understand rejection until we’ve been rejected. And we don’t understand sin until we see the way it hurts God and destroys others.
In vss. 5-17 Joseph’s dreams are coming to fruition as they bow before him. But why does he react the way that he does? F.B. Meyer suggests that Joseph is reenacting the scene that took place so many years before. While we’re not given all of the details in Genesis 37, but since Joseph had previously brought back to his father their evil report, Joseph had been dubbed a “rat.” Three times Joseph calls them “spies.” It appears he’s driving the point home. Decades before they’d rushed at him, accusing him of coming to spy on them, as they ripped the coat of many colors off his back and threw him into a pit. Hadn’t he also protested that he was innocent, just as they are now protesting that they are innocent?
He rejects their claims of innocence, just as they’d rejected his. How dare they say that they are “honest men!” They’re anything but. Joseph is not just “no more.” Unbeknownst to them, they are telling the very one who is “no more” that he is “no more.” If only they knew who they were telling this whopper to…they are not honest men.
An Egyptian prison is little more than a pit that prisoners had to be lowered into. When Joseph had them thrown into this dungeon, they had no idea when they were going to get out – if ever. Joseph is repeating that horrible scene indelibly etched on his memory so that his brothers would begin to see what a cruel thing they’d done to their own flesh and blood. God is behind this, seeking to thaw their cold souls. He’s switched the roles so that the once oppressed becomes the oppressor.
I believe that Robert Candlish rightly suggests that if Joseph were left to himself, he’d have revealed his identity as soon as he recognized them. But he was restrained by God who was using him for the salvation of his brothers. Joseph realizes that this is not some coincidence that he’s at just the right place at just the right time when his brothers come to buy food. This is a divine appointment.
Joseph must know that Benjamin has not suffered a fate similar to his. Martin Luther’s famous observation is applicable here: “You must know God as an enemy before you can know Him as a friend.” When God begins treating us not as a friend but as an enemy, it’s a sign that He’s at work.
3. God sometimes uses time for reflection to awake our conscience, “And he put them all in custody for three days” (v. 17). A clear conscience wonderfully allows us to experience the calm of a holy life and to enjoy the satisfaction of a fruitful life even in the midst of adversity.
Think about this. As we compare Joseph’s path with that of his brothers, we’d expect to see an enormous difference in their psychological health. Joseph experienced tremendous trauma in his life, losing his mother at a young age, betrayed by his brothers as a teen, forced into slavery in a foreign country, imprisoned for something he didn’t do. Even his success produced great stress in his life. First, he’s the executive of Potiphar’s whole estate, then chief steward of the prison, and ultimately Prime Minister of Egypt during a great famine – all high stress jobs. His brothers, on the other hand, lived a pastoral life–out in the countryside, watching Jacob’s herds graze. I’ve spent enough time on the farm to know that while farming is not without its headaches, it’s usually a good life that lends itself to good psychological health.
Sure enough, there’s an enormous difference in the emotional health of Joseph and his brothers, but it’s just the opposite of what you’d expect. Despite all of his trials and headaches, Joseph never gives the impression of being stressed out, or struggling to cope with the cards life has dealt him. Why? Joseph has a clear conscience. He knows that he’s lived a life of integrity. He knows he didn’t betray Potiphar but was falsely accused. He knows his time in prison was undeserved. He knows God has been with him and is the One who elevated him at the age of 30 to the highest position possible for someone not born into the royal family. In chapter 41 we learned that when Joseph’s two sons were born, he named one Manasseh and the other Ephraim. Manasseh means, “It is because God has made me forget all my trouble and my father’s household.” Ephraim means, “It is because He has made me fruitful in the land of my suffering.” Both names demonstrate that Joseph is willing to give all the credit for his positive frame of mind and his position to God.
What a contrast to his brothers! They’re very unhealthy individuals when it comes to emotional health. God is resurrecting their cold consciences. He’s used the pain of material want to bring them to Egypt. He’s used Joseph’s harsh words and being thrown into the dungeon to prick their carefully constructed defenses. Now He uses the solitude of physical imprisonment to give them time to really think about what they have done.
A person with a guilty conscience resists solitude, but in solitude people meet God. It was in the belly of a large fish that God got Jonah’s attention. It’s frequently in the stillness of solitude that we hear that still but persistent small voice of God’s Spirit.
Three days in the dungeon were miserable. They were filled with fear and foreboding. Would they ever return to their father? Would they ever regain their freedom? And who would be the one who was released to return to Canaan while the others remained captive? For them, Joseph’s experience, which took years, was condensed to days.
4. God uses grace to temper the process and bring us to repentance. True confession is always backed up by repentance. Vss. 18-20, “On the third day, Joseph said to them, ‘Do this and you will live, for I fear God: If you are honest men, let one of your brothers stay here in prison, while the rest of you go and take grain back for your starving households. But you must bring your youngest brother to me, so that your words may be verified and that you may not die’.” The original plan was for them all to stay in prison while one went home to get Benjamin. Joseph had the right to do that, particularly after all they’ve done to him. It would have been more than just and quite merciful. It would have been just a matter of weeks compared to the thirteen years he’d been enslaved or incarcerated.
But Joseph demonstrates grace to them. His words must have been like the sunrise dispelling the darkness. They are filled with hope and encouragement, not fear and judgment. “Do this and live,” he urges them. Life, not death, joy not misery, was what Joseph desired for them. But certain changes had to occur before this could be their experience. The self-interest and cruelty which had caused them to sell him into slavery must be dealt with. That wouldn’t come easily or quickly, but it would come.
Joseph’s statement, “for I fear God” (v. 18) should have been the cause of much deliberation in the days and months to come. What could this “Egyptian” despot possibly have meant by these words? It’s a technical expression reserved for use only by those who had a genuine faith in the one true God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. As Abraham stood before Abimelech, trying to explain his deceit in passing off his wife as his sister, he said, “Because I thought, surely there is no fear of God in this place; and they will kill me because of my wife” (Genesis 20:11).
This expression “to fear God” today would be equivalent to our evangelical expression “born again.” It’s spoken by Joseph to inspire hope and to encourage contemplation of what’s taking place. But it’s only after Joseph had given expression to his faith that his brothers began to recognize the hand of God in their lives through these events.
Another cause for encouragement was the significant decrease in the demands made upon these foreigners. While they were initially told all would remain captives while just one would be allowed to return home for Benjamin, now all but one are allowed to return home. They’re allowed to take life-sustaining grain to their needy families, and then to return with their youngest brother. The words “this they proceeded to do” (vs. 20), indicates the ten agreed to the terms Joseph laid down and set out to do them, only to be resisted by their father Jacob upon their return.
Their conscience is starting to awaken but not quite, vss. 21-22. “They said to one another, ‘Surely we are being punished because of our brother. We saw how distressed he was when he pleaded with us for his life, but we would not listen; that’s why this distress has come upon us.’ Reuben replied, ‘Didn’t I tell you not to sin against the boy? But you wouldn’t listen! Now we must give an accounting for his blood’.” It’s the blame game. They start to take responsibility for their sin but Reuben shifts the blame off of himself. They still don’t get it!
Romans 2:4 says that God’s kindness leads us to repentance. Through Joseph's kindness, for the first time in their lives these sin hardened brothers see God’s hand. But their first response to his act of grace was fear, not joy. “Their hearts sank” (v. 28) and they trembled. It means to tremble with terror. When the brothers discover that each one has had his money returned, they’re petrified with fear. In John Newton's words, “Twas grace that caused my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved.”
Again, we see Joseph's gracious heart when he has to turn away from his brothers and weep (vs. 24). Joseph's actions toward his brothers parallel how God brings us to repentance. He could have forced the situation and sent an armed guard to bring his father and Benjamin back to Egypt. Instead he uses grace. Notice four ways in which grace shines through:
a) God's grace shines through when we are not treated as harshly as we deserve. While Joseph's treatment of his brothers paralleled their earlier treatment of him, it’s not nearly as harsh. They intended to kill him and did sell him into slavery, resulting in years of hardship. Joseph puts them in prison for just three days. While at first he threatened to keep nine of them in jail and send one back, he softened that to keeping one in jail and sending nine home so that they could carry back food for their households. While the brothers had been ruthless, ignoring Joseph's cries for help, Joseph was kind to help them. His motive is to see them broken before God, which he knew from experience to be the only place of blessing.
If you know the extent of your sin and have any inkling of the holiness of God, you'll exclaim with David in praising God, “He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities” (Ps. 103:10). Even when God's discipline seems harsh, it’s never anywhere close to what we deserve.
Recently, I experienced undeserved mercy. I was driving in Indiana and came up to a toll booth. I have an I-pass but forgot Indiana has gates on their toll booths even when you use an I-pass. Jane screamed but I still knocked the gate off. I got out of my car and told the worker to go ahead and call the cops. He directed me to a nearby parking lot to await my fate. As I was waiting for the State Patrol, this worker got the gate re-attached. So when the Trooper got there and saw that the gate was fixed, he asked me if there was any damage to my car and I said, “No, only to my pride.” And he said, “Well, have a nice day, Mr. Carson.” It was undeserved mercy.
b) God's grace shines through when He makes us become what we profess to be. The brothers told Joseph they were honest men. That's ironic because honesty hasn't been one of their virtues up to this point. Even here, they tell Joseph that their one brother "is no more," when they don't know that for sure. They do know that they last saw him he was headed to Egypt very much alive. Yet, they claim to be honest men! Joseph puts them to the test, to see whether they are indeed honest men (vss. 16, 19). If they're honest, they can return with the other brother that they have talked about.
Sometimes we claim to be Christians when we know very well that our lives are anything but Christian. But do you know what? Though God could justly abandon us, He graciously holds us to our words. He says, "You say that you're a Christian, do you? Well, let's put that claim to the test. Let's make you into what you claim to be."
c) God's grace shines through in His compassion which underlies His discipline. Joseph gives his brothers a glimmer of hope when he tells them, "I fear God." That’s the last thing they expected from this harsh official. There was enough hope of fair treatment in those words to keep them from despairing and to reveal some tenderness underneath the cold exterior of this man. If he hadn't been harsh, he wouldn't have gotten their attention. If he hadn't shown them a glimmer of grace, he’d have crushed their spirits.
Please note the contrast in vs. 24. Joseph's compassion is seen in that when he overhears his brothers' conversation about their past sin, he’s so overcome with emotion that he leaves the room to weep. But when he returns, he binds Simeon in front of them. They saw the binding, but not the tears. They must have thought this man to be very cruel, when in fact he was acting out of the deepest feelings of love.
It’s probable that it was Simeon who’d been the ringleader in throwing Joseph into the pit. After all, he’d been the leader in the massacre of the Shechemites. In Jacob's final words to his sons, he refers to Simeon's violence and anger (49:5-7). Placing Simeon in prison prevents him from wrongly influencing the others on the return journey. Joseph also hoped the time in jail would break Simeon’s hardened heart.
In all this, Joseph reflects God's tender yet firm discipline toward us. Just as Joseph didn't reveal himself to his brothers until he saw their repentance, so the Lord won't reveal Himself to us in the trials resulting from our sins until we demonstrate a broken heart. As the brothers didn't know that Joseph understood their discussion, since there was an interpreter between them, many unrepentant sinners don't understand that God knows the very thoughts and intentions of their hearts. Knowing this, His motive in discipline is never cruel. It is always designed for our good. God knows just how much each of us needs to be broken before Him. He lovingly takes whatever means necessary to do it. Yet, until we’re broken, He seems very harsh. But if we only knew, like Joseph's heart toward his brothers, God's heart toward us is always filled with compassion. He disciplines us as a loving father disciplines his children, that we might share His holiness.
d) God's grace shines through when He blesses us when we know we deserve punishment. These brothers don’t deserve any kindness, but Joseph secretly puts each man's money back in his sack and gave them extra provisions for their return journey. I think his motive was simply love. It never crossed his mind that it might frighten them as it did. They panicked because they figured that when they returned for more grain, they’d be accused of stealing this money on the first trip.
People who have not yet come to repentance before God don't understand grace. They fear God's judgment for the things they know they've done and not confessed. Knowing they deserve judgment, they have trouble accepting God's undeserved favor. It’s hard for a lost person to have someone do something for them without somehow paying for it or paying it back. A guilty conscience does not know how to interpret the grace of God and “distills poison out of the sweetest flowers.” And yet, it was when they experienced grace by discovering the returned money that they first recognized the hand of God in their lives. Vs. 28 is the first time they mention “God.” Grace had taught them to fear. Later grace would relieve those fears and teach them the joy of knowing that their sins were forgiven. When God begins to awaken a seared conscience, we begin to get a different perspective.
Conclusion: Famed psychiatrist, Karl Menninger, once said that if we could only convince patients in psychiatric hospitals that their sins were forgiven, 75% of them could walk out the next day!
Time does not erase a guilty conscience. The ache lingers even after everyone in the family is grown; even after the crime is dismissed in the courtroom; even after the divorce is final and you’ve walked away without biblical justification; even if things done in secret are far from anyone’s awareness; even after decades of polluted water have washed beneath the bridge of memory.
If God's hand seems harsh and heavy against you right now, please know that His purpose is to rescue you from your sin and the character traits which ultimately will destroy you and damage many others. When you yield to Him and draw near in repentance, you’ll discover His great compassion and grace. Because of unresolved guilt Joseph’s brothers succumbed to indecision and fear. Guilt is like a millstone around your neck. Living with it is like attempting to drive a car with the brakes on. Guilt can produce serious consequences. Let me close with some common symptoms of a guilty conscience.
* Physical illness can be caused by suppressed guilt. Christian psychologist, Gary Collins, writes that “the mere energy of keeping the guilt out of one’s mind can put a strain on the body and cause it to break down.”
* Depression can be caused by suppressed guilt. Feelings of hopelessness and worthlessness are generated by a feeling that you’ve blown it and that there’s no hope.
* Doubt can be caused by suppressed guilt. If you do not believe God’s promise that He will forgive any and every sin, then why would you trust Him with other things?
* Moral activity can be caused by suppressed guilt. Guilt often causes folk to try to somehow gain brownie points with God by extra activity or by giving extra money.
* Anger or a critical spirit can be caused by suppressed guilt. When one feels guilty, they often attempt to assuage that feeling by becoming petty, or by blaming others and even becoming angry at the “evil” others have done to them to alleviate their own personal responsibility.
And sadly, the greater one’s problem with unresolved guilt, the greater these problems can be. Joseph’s brothers were in neutral for over twenty years because of unresolved guilt. What about you? Is unresolved guilt sidelining you? Why not deal with it today?
Mark Twain's character Huck Finn observed, "A man's conscience takes up more room than all the rest of his insides." If God is reawakening your conscience, please don't turn away from Him in denial of your sin. Turn to Him in genuine repentance and you’ll experience the sweet taste of His abundant grace. Just like Joseph, God wants and desires to forgive and restore us!!
