Today, people use God’s name in ways that suggest they do not truly know God. I will tell you who God is. God is He who created the heavens and the earth, including you, and to whom you are accountable for every thought, word, deed and action. He is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who led these fathers out of the corrupt environment of their times and set a new way before them. He is the God who required righteous conduct from the people of Israel and who requires no less from you. He is the one who sent Jesus, His only Son, to die for such sin-ruined prodigals as yourself. He is a God who demands that you turn from your sin and place your whole trust for salvation in Jesus and what He has accomplished by dying in your place. He is the God who is working in you now, in the circumstances of your life, to turn you to him.
How do you know that you are beginning to come to grips with the true God of the Bible and not a mere figment of your imagination? It is when you become conscious of sin and are troubled by it. I notice in this story that the brothers’ first confession of sin (though only to themselves) and their first genuine awareness of the true God are found together, within the space of just a few verses. It is always that way. You cannot approach the true God without being aware of your sin. You cannot find salvation without confessing it.
There is another point that also comes from these verses, and I cannot skip over it. The point concerns grace. Thus far in the story the interventions of God in the lives of Joseph’s brothers to bring them to repentance have all had a rough edge to them. They have issued from grace, since they have been intended for good in the brothers’ lives. Still they have not been the kinds of things we would willingly choose for ourselves: the pinch of material want, the pain of harsh treatment, the press of solitude. Here for the first time, in the case of the money being returned in the brothers’ sacks, we have something that is purely gracious, that has no rough edges whatever. Joseph simply wanted to give their money back. So far as we can tell, he had no ulterior motive. Unlike the situation in chapter 44, where his cup is hidden in Benjamin’s sack, Joseph does not send soldiers after the departing brothers. In fact, he never mentions the money again, and his steward even assures the brothers later that he received their payment and that they are not to worry about it.
How difficult it is for unbelievers to fathom grace! In Leviticus 26 there is a verse that speaks of the slightness of that which terrifies the wicked: “As for those of you who are left, I will make their hearts so fearful in the lands of their enemies that the sound of a wind-blown leaf will put them to flight” (v. 36). Proverbs 28:1 goes a step further, showing that a guilty person will sometimes flee from nothing: “The wicked man flees though no one pursues.” In Genesis 42 we have the ultimate extension of this principle: fear not merely of a trivial thing or of nothing at all, but fear of what is good. God was doing good to these brothers, returning their money. But because they were not yet in a right relationship to Him, they feared even His goodness and turned to each other trembling.