40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 40 Minutes In The Old Testament: Episode 54

Episode Date: July 28, 2016

Chad and Daniel talk about Joseph's brothers returning to him, everyone getting drunk, Benjamin's special treatment and Joseph's master plan. The wine is flowing, cups are being planted and grace is about to abound when all seems lost. Check it out!

welcome back to 40 minutes in the old testament i'm daniel emery price i am joined by chad bird chad here i am here you are are you awake and ready to do this let's see i've been awake for four hours and 11 minutes approximately nobody knows how crazy that is three three cups of coffee a couple of chapters of genesis under my belt i am raring to go okay well let's not waste any time let's just jump right into it where did uh we leave off last time i actually remember this time i i wrote it down we were in chapter 43 and we had just finished uh verse 10 so that's where we we find ourselves in the middle of chapter 43 we are uh we're in egypt of course well actually we're back in the holy land now at this point in the story but joseph is in egypt

and his his brothers have been down there once and if you remember the story things didn't go so well. And one of them remained behind. Simeon remained behind in prison. It's kind of a down payment to make sure that when the brothers came back, they didn't come back without the youngest brother, Benjamin. So what's happened is basically that the brothers got back and they have stayed gone from Egypt. They're using up all their supplies. They got down there the first time. They don't want to go back because they know if they go back, they can't return without Benjamin. the man to whom they spoke in Egypt, who was Joseph in disguise, he told them that when they came back, they had to come back with their brother.

So they keep delaying it, delaying it, delaying it. And that's what we have at the beginning of chapter 43 is finally the brothers talk to their father and convince him that they have to go because if they don't, then they're all going to starve to death. So finally, Jacob agrees. Judah puts himself on the line. He says, look, if anything happens, I'll be responsible. I'll be the one to be held guilty if anything goes wrong with Benjamin. So that's where we are. And once Jacob decides that this is what they are going to be forced to do, he says, all right, well, tell you what, we got to go back. So let's do it. Let's do it right. So he sends them, first of all, with a bunch of presents for Joseph. Of course,

he doesn't know it's Joseph, but for the guy that's in charge of doling out the food, he sends them down some balm and honey and gum and myrrh and almonds and pistachio nuts. Now, what's remarkable about this is actually that many of these same items that they're now going to be taking down to Egypt to give to Joseph are the same items that the caravan traders had with them when they bought Joseph and took him down into Egypt to sell him into slavery. So a little bit of irony going on here with the gifts that the brothers bear in their hands to give to Joseph. So they go with these gifts, and they also take back twice the amount of money that they took before. You remember that when they left the first time, all their money had been returned to them in their slacks of grain. So they've taken that money back, and they're taking money to buy more grain. so they're taking gifts they're taking money and the last thing that they're taking and in fact the

most important thing that they're taking with them is their brother benjamin so jacob lays this all out he says all right take these gifts take this money and take your brother and then he adds a prayer he says may god almighty grant you compassion in the sight of the man that he may release to you your other brother and benjamin and then poor jacob he kind of this embraces the reality of the situation at the end of verse 14 he he ends it by saying as for me if i am bereaved of my children i am bereaved so basically the the chips are going to fall where they were they made he's i wouldn't say he's given up hope he's just kind of embraced the uh the corner that he's painted into i mean there's no other there's nothing else he can do it's either starve

to death or take a chance and send benjamin down with them so if he loses his children he loses his children so he's kind of at the point where he realizes there's absolutely no control that he has over this situation, which for Jacob, who is a control freak, must have been quite a trying time. So that's kind of the plan of action that Jacob lays out for them as they get ready to start their journey. So that's what they do. They take all this stuff with them, and they head down into egypt they get there and they're they're they're standing before joseph and now we enter into a kind of a interesting interesting scenario here because now we we get to see how joseph reacts to his brothers this time you remember the first time that they came joseph lights into him right

away he's like you're spies it's written all over your faces i can tell you're spies you come down here to check stuff out. You're going to be stealing from us. You're going to be doing whatever. So his first reaction to his brothers when he sees them is accusation. Now, the second time when they arrive before Joseph, he shocks them because he invites them over for lunch. So he sees them and he sees, most importantly, he sees that Benjamin is with them. So So he sees them before they see him. So he sets up this whole whole scene. He says to his his house steward, he says, here's what I want you to do. I want you to bring the guys to my house. I want you to to to butcher an animal, to barbecue it, get everything ready,

because these guys are going to have lunch with me with me at at noon. So that's what the steward does. And he brings Joseph's brothers to Joseph's house. And then we have this, we have the reaction of the brothers recorded. This is the beginning of verse 18. It says, now the men, talking about the brothers of Joseph, now the men were afraid because they were brought to Joseph's house. So they didn't see this as sort of a good omen. Oh, awesome.

You know, Joseph wants to have us over at his house. He must be happy with us. Just like before when they found the money in their sack, uh they they interpret everything uh as as a threat because they're still afraid and and you know understandably they ever ever got to be afraid things have not gone well with them so far so what they think is going to happen is it's kind of it's a trap so he's going to bring them he's going to bring us to his house and then he's going to basically attack us and arrest us and make us into into slaves that's that's the way they're interpreting this invitation

invitation for lunch so what happens well they get there and they want to do everything they can before they go in to kind of smooth things over so before they even step foot into joseph's house they call his steward over and they say hey hey look uh we gotta we gotta clear something up here the first time that we came down here to buy food when we stopped that night to uh to rest we opened up our sacks and and all of our money was there and so we have brought that money back in order that you know it might not be might be clear that we didn't steal it we don't know how it ended up there we're not accusing anybody we don't know how our money ended up back in our sacks but but there it is so here it is in other words they're trying to first of all you know

clear themselves of any charges of theft and they're really you know they're putting the best foot forward they're they're saying look we're honest we're not thieves we're not spies we're not here to do anything but get some food for our family and to get our get our brother back and it's fascinating to me how the steward responds because he says more or less hey just just chill he says be at ease everything's good don't be afraid and then he adds this he says your god and the god of your father has given you treasure in your sacks i had your money so he's really throwing them off here because he's like oh that must have been god he he must have just given you that treasure in your sacks so if they if they're not confused enough already

this just throws them into further further confusion and and i think there's sort of a subtle message here because by the steward saying what he says it's like he's pointing to kind of the subtext of this whole story. And that is that no matter what the brothers do, no matter what Joseph does, actually the real mover and shaker behind everything that's happening here is God. He's the one who brought Joseph down into Egypt to begin with. He's the one who's now brought the brothers down into Egypt. So God is the one who's writing the whole story. And yet nobody realizes it. He's the one behind the scenes, really making all of this, all of this happen, kind of, you know arranging all the puzzle pieces so they're all going to fit together and no one no one realizes

it and certainly the brothers don't so the steward by saying what he does that your god and the god of your father has given you treasure in your sacks he's he's more or less winking at them and saying hey there's somebody behind all this that you're not even you're not even cognizant of he's he's the one who's setting this all up so anyway that's uh that's what happens that's what they say that's how the steward responds and then uh the next thing that's recorded is that simeon is brought out of jail and restored to his brothers we're not told anything about how you know was that a was everybody happy about that what kind of you know reunion they had nothing like that it just says simeon was brought out to them so now we have everybody together we've got 11 brothers

So Simeon, the second born, is there. And then Benjamin, the youngest, is there. And the only one they're lacking is Joseph. So the story goes on, and the steward brings the brothers into Joseph's house. He gives them water. They wash their feet. He feeds their donkeys. Everything's going well.

They get their present ready for Joseph. and uh they bring when joseph gets to his house they bring the present to him they they bow down to the ground and joseph begins to ask them more or less how things are going he says uh first thing he asked them is about their dad is your old father well i think he spoke is he still alive which you know was actually a uh an understandable question because in times of great natural calamity like a famine usually the first people who die are the oldest and the youngest and uh so you know he wants to make sure that even though there's been a famine that his that his father is still alive and they respond yep yep everything's good your servant our father

is well he's alive and they bow down again a lot of bowing down going on here and then finally the the the center of this story comes into play benjamin so joseph looks up and he sees his brother benjamin his mother's son his only full brother and he acts like he's you know kind of in the dark here like he doesn't know who he is he says is this your youngest brother of him he spoke to me and then without even waiting for them to respond he says may god be gracious to you my son now there's a little uh a little tidbit in the hebrew here that i that i can't resist bringing out because usually english english typically puts the the subject in a sentence first and then the verb and then the object so he did that you know whatever whatever

of the situation is that's the usual word order that we use but in hebrew the typical word order is put the verb first and then the subject and then the object so verb subject object but what happens here when joseph speaks to his brother the very first word that he uses is the subject and that subject is god so as one commentator pointed out the very first word that joseph speaks to his brother is God. So God be gracious to you, my son. It's a great way after all these years of separation for Joseph to address Benjamin once more by putting the focus first and foremost on the one who has actually re-reunited them. So here's the brothers. Here's Benjamin and here's joseph now how is joseph going to react to all this joseph simply can't take it uh he's he's

overcome with emotion it says he he had to run out of the room because he was as as my translation has it he was deeply stirred over his brother that's it's it's fascinating to uh to think about just how deeply stirred he was because this particular expression only occurs twice in the old testament it occurs here and occurs in first kings chapter three and it's a description of the emotional reaction that the mother of the child has when she is there uh in in solomon's court and remember that remember the situation was two women were both arguing over whose whose baby was who and that that you had two mothers and the one mother claimed that uh a living child was hers and the other mother claimed that the living child was hers they were arguing with this

and so it's a it's a famous scene from that demonstrates solomon's wisdom and so solomon says cut the child in two give one half to this woman and give one half to the other woman and the true mother of the child when she heard solomon say to cut the child in two it says she was deeply stirred over that and she said no give the child to her so this is kind of a this is sort of a deep almost maternal reaction to someone that you love in this case it's joseph toward his his brother and the other case it's a mother toward her toward her child so this isn't just like he was you know had his heart started palpitating or something like that this is the deepest kind of stirring that takes place when he's finally face to face with his brother so he

has to run out runs out of the room and he cries he goes into his bedroom he he uh he weeps there washes his face and once he's kind of got control of himself again then he comes back to his brothers and says, serve the meal. So to kind of wrap up the story, this part of the story, and we'll talk about it some more. She got this meal scene. So here's Joseph's kind of sitting by himself.

And then his brothers are sitting a little ways from him. And then the Egyptians are sitting kind of in another area by themselves. And we're told this happened because the Egyptians don't eat with the Hebrews. it's kind of a you know one of these cultural taboos they they thought themselves to be superior to all other peoples and so they uh they don't eat with the hebrews you know that would be like uh below them to to do that they're not going to uh not going to lower themselves down

to the level of the hebrews they they eat they eat separately and then there's joseph and then there's his brothers but what's amazing is that joseph takes food from his own table and he puts it on the table of his brothers and to his brother benjamin he gives five times as much as any of the others and then one more one more detail uh about this that i think is that i think is significant this is how much of a party they had and this shows how our english translation sometimes uh attempt to to uh uh what's the word to subdue the stark reality of the hebrew the chapter ends by saying that so they well let me let me read you my translation so they feasted and drank freely with him that's the way that the american standard puts it

But literally in Hebrew, so they drank, and they got drunk with him. So this is not, you know, we're going to sit around and have a glass of wine and chit-chat about life in Egypt and life in Israel. No, this is a full-out party. So they drink, and then they drink some more, and they all get wasted. All the brothers are getting drunk together, and that's the way the chapter is. plenty to eat way way plenty to drink and everything seems like it couldn't be going better for the brothers it's also implied that like this isn't like a setup by uh joseph

uh to get them drunk but him remain sober it says it says that they got drunk with him right right yeah so they feasted and got drunk with him so righteous Joseph is also participating yeah he's not afraid of time I wonder if

I wonder if they like Lord suffered this dinner up you know so there's like you got like 12 brothers or 11 brothers in Joseph right so you have all of them there right very much you know very much like 12 disciples right

and uh and they're they're eating and they're they're drinking and i wonder if they're all on one side of the table yeah right you you probably see the meme on facebook about you know when jesus shows up to reserve the table he says we need a table for for 24 and the waitress is like you have 24 he said no we have 12 we're all gonna sit on the same side of the table yes yeah i'm sure that's the way it was you know that's the way that's depicted in art it's gotta be exactly what a scene you know this this is this is amazing in so many ways first of all i mean it is it is somewhat of a setup because it's actually going to help joseph out that these guys are drunk because as we're going to see when the story

goes on he's gonna slip some money in their bags along with something else but uh you know what it seems like but this is like a common thing like i don't know if you know people understand the hebrew culture but like wine is plays like a big role in oh yeah in the hebrew culture i mean like if you look at the passover you can't drink that much wine and not have it do anything there's a lot of wine that gets drunk in the course of this meal first cup, second cup, third cup yeah there's a lot of wine

it's no wonder after the Passover meal the disciples couldn't stay awake with Jesus right they're like five glasses of wine and I'm like hey can you stay awake with me dude no

can't stay awake well the idea of having a feast in the ancient world without wine was just like having a feast without food. Why would you have a feast without wine? That's why you have it. Or the wedding at Cana, like Jewish weddings.

That was crazy. Yeah, yeah. They run out of wine. And then made a crap ton more wine. Not like, eh, we'll give everyone another glass. I mean like a ton of wine. The best wine.

Yeah. Which is, of course, the best wine is the non-fermented wine. Right. I've always said, I feel like there's a large segment of Christianity that would light that story a lot more. That story would be getting a lot more run if Jesus had showed up to a wedding and turned all the wine into water. Yeah. People would be like, that's the Jesus I know. That's the Jesus I want to believe in. yeah and there's there's no welch's grape juice served at jewish at jewish festivals that would

be i wasn't invented until the the uh the 19th century that would also be that would also be a big insult to serve serve a bunch of non-fermented wine yeah yeah this that would not fly this in this culture feasting is all about having lots of food and lots of drink that's that that's what a feast is uh that's that's the depiction of the heavenly feast is as well so yeah i mean it are uh are kind of a puritanized uh teetotaling uh sections of of christianity really are not in tune with the whole ethos of the feasting culture of of the scriptures where there's plenty to eat there's plenty to drink that's the way they party that's the way they that's just the way it goes that's life for them and they have no qualms about that so here they are you know they're

in the castle or wherever whatever you want to call joseph's place and they're they're living it up you know they uh think of it too you know these this had to have been like paradise for the brothers because first of all they were scared when they got there but hey everything's going well and you know think about their situation they have been living in famine so they've had to they've had to live just by rations and we know it had been getting uh even even lower uh the the rations would begin even even smaller as time went on as they saw they were about to run out so these guys haven't had a lot to eat they're starving and so they show up in egypt and they get invited over to the you know the vice pharaoh's house and they just have more than enough to eat and

and to drink so i'm sure they they slept well and they slept happily that night because at least from their perspective so far things could not have gone better everything has turned into uh just a fantastic trip to egypt everything's good with benjamin uh they're young they're Their almost oldest brother has been restored to them. Joseph seems to be super happy to see them. So the way the story has us going, it sort of lulls us into this state of thinking, man, it just can't get any better than the way it's going right now. Now, anytime that happens in the biblical narrative,

you can almost be assured that something is about to happen. and of course that is exactly what happens in chapter in chapter 44 so let's go on uh we got the party now what happens after the party well joseph is he's in cahoots with his house steward his house steward must know the whole story that's the only way i can i kind of you know put this put this together his house he must have told the steward uh at least enough about his background and who these guys are so that the steward realizes what joseph's plan is so he says he tells his steward to uh presumably why his brothers are asleep to take his his brother's sacks that all their grain is in and to fill them up i mean as much as you can

put in there and then to put once more their money back into the top of the sack now that's not the important detail. In fact, it's kind of surprising. That detail doesn't come up at all in the rest of the account that their money is restored to them. But this next detail is highly, is highly significant. The second thing he tells him his steward to put in a sack is his cup. So Joseph has this silver cup or chalice or goblet or whatever you want to call it. And he tells his steward to put that cup that silver cup in the sack of his youngest brother benjamin so that's what he does sun rises so it kind of we got the whole situation whole situation set here we're not told why this why this was done all we're told is that it was done so he did it

so the sun comes up the men you know wake up probably a little hungover they get their donkeys and they they leave i mean there's no reason to stay right they've got everything they came for they came they got their food they got their older their brother back and benjamin is fine so they take off and they they barely get out of the city when joseph calls his house steward back to him and says okay now step two in my plan you gave their money back you put my silver a goblet in the mouth of benjamin sack now here's what i want you to do i want you to go after these guys and when you catch up with them here is exactly what i want you to say to them quote why have you repaid evil for good is not this the one from which my lord drinks in which he

indeed uses for divination you have done wrong in doing this so oh joseph i i i'm not completely sure what joseph's motivations are here maybe we'll figure it out as we go on but this is the accusation so i mean it's a setup right it's obviously set up they didn't steal anything And yet Joseph puts his own cup in Benjamin's sack. He sends his steward to accuse them of stealing the cup that he uses for divination. So there must have been something that happened at the banquet, at the party the previous night, so that when the brothers hear about this cup, they know which one he's talking about. Now, I don't know about this whole divination thing.

And, you know, it could be that Joseph just pretended to use it for divination, or maybe he really did use it for divination. I don't know. I mean, certainly the use of liquids inside a cup in the ancient world for divination purposes was common practice. What they would do is they would take, for instance, a cup of wine, and they would put some drops of oil on the surface of it. and then you know one of these uh uh whoever the the religious guy was the interpreter he would observe how the oil mixed or moved on top of the wine and from that he would try to divinize you know whatever whatever they were trying to predict a good fortune bad fortune you know somebody gonna get better somebody gonna not get better those those kinds of things so they would

either do that or they would have a cup with with wine and they would put some of the liquid i mean with oil they'd put some of the liquid on the top of that and interpret the movement of the two liquids together so this was it was common practice in the ancient world there was all whole long list of of various practices that that were used for divination for interpreting the will of the gods or of god so here we have this uh this uh divination cup so the the steward overtakes him and he says exactly to them what joseph said to say to them and here's their uh here's their reaction uh they are they are adamant in in claiming that they are innocent of any wrongdoing They say, you know, why are you even bringing this accusation against us?

First of all, so we're not guilty of anything. And then they go on and they say, we're honest. Look, the money that was found in our sacks on our first trip, we brought that back to you. So, I mean, how can we be thieves if we returned the money that we found in our sacks the first time? so that they deny it they they point to their their past actions as evidence of their of their honesty of their integrity and then to reinforce their claims of innocence they say look who if If you were to find this supposedly stolen object with any of us, let him die. So execute him, and then we will all be slaves of Joseph.

They're obviously convinced that this did not happen, that the cup is not going to be found. Otherwise, they never would have put themselves in a predicament like this. that is straight bold oh yeah i mean that's very bold execute the one who's guilty and make us all slaves i don't know if i would say that about my i have i have some brothers if we were rolling out of some uh place and then they were like somebody stole something and i don't know i'd be if i'd be so confident i just have such a low anthropology maybe this is this is how this works but i wouldn't be like yeah if you find this in any of these dudes stuff you can kill them and i'll be your slave i'm not that i'm not that confident in anybody yeah that's that's a whole

lot of confidence in human nature isn't it much much more than they should have had i'd be more like one of you guys better not have done something stupid yeah i'd be looking around like all right who's the idiot who stole the cup yes if you say to the steward hey we'll take care of this we'll uh we'll make sure that this our brother gets uh gets the punishment he deserves but these guys take it the opposite approach you're like nope nope we are all clean none of us none of us did this and they're in a hurry to prove their innocence they get off their donkeys they lower their sacks to the ground they open their sacks and the steward begins his search so he and this is kind of dramatic effect because he starts with uh with simeon sack the oldest

Yeah, it would have been actually with Ruben's sack. So he starts with the oldest, with Ruben. And he works his way down. And you can just kind of envision the whole thing taking place. So he starts with the oldest. Then he moves down. Then he moves down. And every time a sack is open and the cup is not found,

then they must, you know, breathe a little sigh of relief. Like, yeah, I'm probably getting a little bit smug toward the end. Like, you know, we told you. We told you that nobody took it. and then they get to the youngest and of course it's not going to be the youngest right you know if anybody by any stretch of the imagination would have stolen the cup it certainly wouldn't be benjamin but sure enough they open benjamin's sack and there's the silver cup so what do they do well they uh they tear their clothes that's uh you know that's that's a hebrew hebrew action that

shows deep uh grief or or uh just frustration at the at the losses in life at tragic situations so they they tear their clothes because they you know they remember what they just said to the steward right they said let him be executed and let off all these slaves so they each load their donkey and they return to the city then judah with his little switching subject here because the the brothers have all been called the men or the brothers but now in verse 14 it singles out judah it says now judah and his brothers came to joseph's house he was still there and they fell to the ground before him interesting use of the verb there because in previous situations they have bowed down to the ground before joseph this has happened

multiple times but now a different verb is used they don't bow down to the ground in front of joseph this time they fall to the ground before him so this is just basically abject humility face plant themselves on the ground before joseph and joseph says to them what have you done do you not know that such a man as i can indeed practice divination so joseph is like look uh you guys really screwed up this time because you have messed with the wrong person first of all you realize the power that i have whatever i say is going to happen here i have complete and utter authority over your lives so you messed with the wrong guy and you took my cup the cup that i use for divination but do you not think that i have other ways of finding out

who took my stuff so you can take my cup of divination but i have i have other means they're gonna let me know who did this so joseph accuses them and then uh then we come to what i think is the most important verse in this part of the story it really uh it kind of it takes us back to the beginning of this whole narrative about joseph and his brothers and and i think this is what everything has been leading up to this is this is what joseph actually wanted from his brothers this is this is why he did what he did he was leading them up to this particular point so here's how here's how the verse reads this is judah speaking and as you know he's he's kind of become the leader of the brothers uh reuben reuben not

so much uh simeon not so much or levi but reuben the fourth born he's become the leader of the brothers he's the spokesman of the brothers and here's how he start he's how he starts out he says what can we say to my lord what can we speak and how can we justify ourselves god has found out the iniquity of your servants behold we are my lord's slaves both we and the one in whose possession the cup has been found now what's fascinating about this particular verse, one of the things anyway, is Judah's use of this idea of God finding out the iniquity of his servants. Found, that verb found, has featured prominently in what's led up to this particular moment. They talk about how they found the money in the mouth of their sacks previously. And then

they said with whomever of your servants the cup is found let him die and then the steward says he with whom it is found shall be my slave and then they find the cup in benjamin sack so over and over you had this this theme of of finding something finding the money finding the guilty party finding the cup and then so when when judah begins to speak he says god god has found out the iniquity of your servants. It's fascinating to me that, first of all, Judah does not argue for their innocence. He doesn't say, hey, look, nobody took the cup. We don't know how it ended up there, but I guarantee you that we are innocent. He doesn't try to, you know, come up with some scenario to prove their innocence. Instead, he takes the responsibility and he says,

you know there's really nothing we can say god has found out the iniquity of your servants yeah i think it's pretty i think he's talking about a very different iniquity yeah the earlier iniquity right yeah i mean like this this is obviously a um initially i mean all they they attribute all this to like yeah that that messed up thing we did to joseph and and so you get the the distinct feeling that he's thinking that's what this is too like and uh now it's now here we go payday yeah i think that's exactly what's happening so when he says the iniquity of your servant he's not talking about anything recently he's talking about the sin from from the past from years from years ago it it's kind of like uh he's he's given up any hope of self-justification any hope of

getting past the sins that they've committed any hope of trying to argue himself out of this out of this he's he's more or less going to throw himself on the mercy of joseph as he continues his speech he's not making any excuses he's not claiming innocence he's not you know saying oh well you know it was it was kind of a complicated situation and stuff happened that it that shouldn't have no he's simply saying look there is there is nothing that we can do we're not we're not you are you are justified in whatever you do it's kind of like psalm 51 you know you're justified in what you what you say and in in you you alone are you alone are just uh there's there's no excuse that we can make god has found out the iniquity of your of your servants now i i think when you look at

this we'll have to wrap up here but if you look at this in the broader perspective this is really the perfect climactic point for Joseph to reveal himself because he's finally, he's brought his brothers to the point of no excuses, of confession, of repentance, of saying that the only thing they have now is the mercy of Joseph. And when Judah finishes his speech, that's exactly what they receive. Joseph, who had seemed so stern to them and accusatory beforehand, now removes the disguise and appears to them as a merciful and a forgiving and a loving brother. And so when you look at this in the broader perspective of scripture, it really is a beautiful portrait of the sinner before God. We come before God like Judah does and says, look, we have no excuses. You have found out our sin.

You're justified when you speak, blameless when you judge. And all we can do is throw ourselves on your mercy. And that's exactly what God does. He is merciful toward us. He forgives us. He loves us. He is gracious to us in taking away all of our sins. So that's what repentance is.

Repentance is not claiming anything of our own, but claiming we don't have anything of our own except sin. and then god responds by forgiving us and by embracing us as his not only as his children but in christ as his as his brothers yeah yeah and we're going to get into the details of that uh next time yes sir so stay tuned well thanks for hanging out if you'd like to support christ hold fast uh the podcast the blog the city events all the stuff that we do uh you can go over to chrisholdfast.org, go to the support page, and you can do that there. It really helps us out. Thank you so much to those of you who have done that.

Like, share, follow on all the platforms. That also helps us out, sharing stuff. Tell your friends to read and listen, and we will see you guys next week. © transcript Emily Beynon