1. Sin causes great stress and distress. When we think of the penalty of sin we usually think of eternal damnation.
2. But when we read Genesis 42:21, we are reminded that sin causes suffering and distress in this life as well as eternal torment in hell.
3. Joseph's brothers did not recognize Joseph, but he recognized them.
4. And Joseph's brothers did not realize that Joseph understood what they were saying (42:21-24).
5. Joseph's brothers came to realize that they were suffering because they had made Joseph suffer (42:21). This is the law of divine retribution.
6. Twenty years had passed, but now their consciences were awake and they finally admitted their guilt.
7. W.H. Griffith Thomas said, "Time does not blot out sin, nor has it any power over the conscience. Why these men should have had this sin so vividly brought to their recollection at this time is a point of very real interest" (Genesis, A Devotional Commentary).
8. Because of the envy and animosity of his brothers, Joseph was cast into a pit, and then sold into slavery, and taken as a slave into the land of Egypt. Then through the providence of God, Joseph was exalted to the second highest position in Egypt. He was second only to Pharaoh.
9. According to Joseph’s interpretation of Pharaoh’s dream, Egypt enjoyed seven good years of great plenty. Soon there was a famine “over all the face of the earth” (Gen. 41:56). People from all over were traveling to Egypt to get food.
10. The famine forced Jacob to send his ten sons (he kept his youngest son Benjamin at home) to Egypt to buy food. Joseph immediately recognized his brothers but they did not recognize him (42:7, 8). They thought Joseph was dead and they never expected to see him again.
11. I want for us to focus in on Genesis 42:21. Joseph’s brothers were under great conviction. They felt guilty over what they had done to their brother Joseph, but they did not realize that it was Joseph himself that was testing them.
12. They spoke to each other in the Hebrew language, not realizing that Joseph understood every word they were saying (Gen. 42:23).
13. The law of retribution is taught throughout the Bible -- sin is always punished, both in this world and the next.
14. One preacher referred to conscience, memory and reason as “God’s three great hounds to bark and bay at the door of the soul” (John Phillips).
15. God always uses these three elements in dealing with guilty sinners.

I. CONSCIENCE -- "We are verily guilty" (42:21a)

1. Matthew Henry refers to the “office of conscience.” He says, “It is a remembrancer, to bring to mind things long since said and done, to show us wherein we have erred, though it was long ago, as the reflection here mentioned was above twenty years after the sin was committed.”
2. I remember hearing a preacher say, “Your conscience is the best preacher you’ll ever hear.”
3. But the conscience is more than a preacher telling us right from wrong. When we do wrong, our conscience is witness, judge and executioner.
4. In Romans 2:15, the apostle Paul refers to man’s “conscience also bearing witness.”
5. John 8:9 says, "And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience..."
6. The problem is oftentimes people turn off their conscience just like they turn off the preacher. First Timothy 4:2 speaks of those who have “their conscience seared with a hot iron.”
7. Paul said, "I have lived in all good conscience before God until this day" (Acts 23:1), and, "And herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void of offence toward God, and toward men" (Acts 24:16).
8. The Bible speaks of a good conscience and a pure conscience, but it also warns us of a weak conscience, and a defiled conscience, and an evil conscience.
9. Nothing is said in Genesis 42 of any accusations brought against Joseph's brothers. Yet "they said one to another, We are verily guilty concerning our brother" (42:21).
10. They did not know it was Joseph standing before them. They did not even know if Joseph was still alive.
11. No voice from heaven condemned them.
12. Proud King Nebuchadnezzar heard a voice from heaven, saying, "O king Nebuchadnezzar, to thee it is spoken; The kingdom is departed from thee" (Daniel 4:30, 31).
13. This voice from heaven rebuked King Nebuchadnezzar, but Joseph's brothers heard no voice condemning them for the way they mistreated their brother Joseph.
14. On the road to Damascus, Saul of Tarsus heard a voice from heaven saying unto him, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?" (Acts 9:4).
15. The Lord Himself spoke to Saul, but no voice from heaven condemned Joseph's brothers for the way they mistreated Joseph. It was their guilty consciences that brought them distress (42:21).
16. Joseph’s brothers may have thought that by selling him into Egypt, they were finished with him. But they were wrong. And now twenty years later their consciences bothered them.
17. And now this whole experience in Egypt brought Joseph’s brothers to the place where conviction was starting to develop in their hearts.
18. They may not of recognized Joseph, but they were now thoroughly awakened to their appalling guilt concerning him.
19. Without knowing that Joseph could understand what they were saying, they discussed what they had done (42:21; cf. 37:17-36).
20. Every man has a conscience – even hard sinners have a conscience.
21. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who wrote the famous Sherlock Holmes novels, apparently had a strange sense of humor. He sent telegrams to twelve different friends with this brief message, “Fly at once; all is discovered.” Within twenty-four hours all twelve men had left the country.
22. There are many examples in the Bible of sinners with a troubled conscience. Consider the penitent thief on the cross (Luke 23:39-41).
23. Think of Herod (Matt. 14:1, 2).
24. Think of Judas Iscariot going out and hanging himself.
25. The ancient poets represented the terrors of conscience under the guise of the Furies, who, with swift, silent, unswerving footsteps, tracked the criminal and pulled him down.
26. We think of Shakespeare’s Macbeth seeing Banquo’s ghost at the other end of his dinner table.
27. Macbeth’s conscience bothered him but he did not repent. His wife’s conscience bothered her but she did not repent. In fact, this is a great theme in Shakespeare's plays -- Hamlet's uncle the king had a guilty conscience; Brutus felt guilty over the assassination of Julius Caesar, etc.
28. Judas Iscariot’s conscience bothered him but he did not repent. Herod’s conscience bothered him but he did not repent.
29. A troubled conscience may not be enough to bring a man to genuine repentance. It is an element of repentance but conscience alone is not enough.
30. When I was a child there was a little cartoon character who used to say, “Let your conscience be your guide. That is a misleading statement. It may be a cute cartoon, but bad theology. The conscience is not an unfailing guide.
31. The conscience must be shaped and trained by the Bible.
32. A man heard Billy Graham preach and then sent him five $100 bills. This man was cheating on his taxes and admitted to Billy Graham that his conscience was bothering him. He wanted Mr. Graham to send the $500 to the IRS. But in his letter the man did not sign his name. I believe that if this man were truly repentant he would have signed his name.
33. A guilty conscience is a good start, but it is not enough.

`Tis not enough to say

I’m sorry and repent

And then go on from day to day

Just living as we went.

Repentance is to leave

The sins we loved before

And show that we did earnest grieve

By doing them no more.

34. Many sinners get under deep conviction, but unfortunately they never repent and get saved.
35. True repentance is a change of mind, which leads to a change of direction, and this certainly includes forsaking all known sin.

II. MEMORY -- "in that we saw the anguish” (42:21b).

1. There is a close connection between conscience and memory. Mark Twain was joking when he said, “A clear conscience is the sure sign of a bad memory," but he had a point.
2. Joseph's brothers were not bothered by a guilty conscience until they remembered their terrible sin (42:21). They came finally to the conclusion that their present distress was retribution for their great crime.
3. When Joseph was in prison, he said to Pharaoh's chief butler, "But think on me when it shall be well with thee, and shew kindness, I pray thee, unto me, and make mention of me unto Pharaoh, and bring me out of this house: For indeed I was stolen away out of the land of the Hebrews: and here also have I done nothing that they should put me into the dungeon" (Genesis 40:14, 15).
4. But soon the chief butler forgot all about Joseph.
5. Until Pharaoh had his unusual dream. "Then spake the chief butler unto Pharaoh, saying, I do remember my faults this day" (41:9).
6. The second element of repentance is the memory.
7. When the prodigal son came to himself, he remembered how he had left a good home, and how he had sinned against his good father.
8. Joseph’s brothers remembered what they had done to Joseph. Even though it had been well over 20 years they remembered it well (Gen. 42:21).
9. I remember one of my professors in Bible college telling us students that one of his former students had recently called him to apologize. She had cheated on a test, and it had been bothering her for over twenty years.
10. Joseph’s brothers said, “We saw the anguish of his soul, when he besought us, and we would not hear…” (42:21).
11. Guilt cannot be buried. It cannot be disposed of. Some people try and drown their guilt with alcohol and drugs but nevertheless the guilt keeps resurfacing.
12. A.T. Pierson referred to the recalling power of memory; the minuteness of detail ("he besought us, and we would not hear"); and the peculiar persistence of memory -- the effort to forget only deepens the impression (Outline Studies of Great Themes of the Bible).
13. Some people go to psychiatrists and psychoanalysts to try and erase their guilt but to their dismay and despair the guilt keeps coming back. Oftentimes these psychiatrists will prescribe pills in an effort to erase the guilt but it does not work.
14. I knew a certain woman that was promiscuous and wound up getting pregnant out of wedlock. She went and had an abortion but the guilt was tearing her apart. She got married and later became a Christian but the memory of her murdered baby would not go away.
15. Psychiatrists could not help her. The medication they prescribed could not help her. She was in and out of various mental hospitals.
16. Why all this pain and suffering? The memory of her sin.
17. Norma McCovey was a young, unmarried woman who got pregnant and decided to put her baby up for adoption. The adoption attorney that was handling her adoption case put her in touch with two attorneys who were trying to overturn the law against abortion.
18. These pro-abortion lawyers told Miss McCovey to make up a story about being gang-raped. It was all a big lie. Norma McCovey became “Jane Roe,” and her Roe vs. Wade case went all the way to the United States Supreme Court in 1973.
19. The US Supreme Court decided to legalize abortion in all 50 states. I read an interview in the newspaper where Norma McCovey said that every time she passed a playground and saw children (or the lack of children) playing she felt guilty.
20. We have considered the conscience and memory. Let us now consider reason -- “therefore is this distress come upon us” (42:21c).

III. REASON -- therefore is this distress come upon us” (42:21c).

1. Here we see man’s concept of divine retribution. Someone has said that within the breast of every man is a defendant, a judge, witnesses, jury, and an executioner. You might say there is an entire courtroom in your conscience.
2. Joseph’s brothers knew that God was dealing with them. They may not have recognized Joseph but they recognized the hand of God.
3. They said, “Therefore is this distress come upon us” (42:21c). Reuben adds at the end of verse 22, “Therefore, behold, also his (Joseph’s) blood is required.”
4. Later on, Judah says, “God hath found out the iniquity of thy servants” (44:16). Yes, the Bible repeats this principle over and over: “Be sure your sin will find you out” (Numbers 32:23).
5. C.H. Mackintosh said, "None can teach like God. He alone can produce in the conscience the true sense of sin, and bring the soul down into the profound depths of its own condition in His presence" (Notes on the Pentateuch).
6. People have come to me after a meeting and said, “How did you know about my sin?” and yet I didn’t know a thing about it. It was God Himself shooting His sharp arrow of conviction.
7. One woman was living with a man out of wedlock and she told me, “Every time I hear you preach the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.” I told her she needed to repent of her sin and get saved. She would not repent and she stopped coming to church. A few years later I was out knocking on doors and she answered the door of a different house. She had moved in with a different man!
8. Oftentimes sinners will be under great conviction, but they will not repent and get right with God.
9. The Bible says, “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon” (Isa. 55:7).
10. Have you ever wondered why Jesus told the woman at the well to go and get her husband? (John 4:16-18). He was reasoning with her. He was getting her to face her sin. He was gently moving her towards repentance.
11. “Be sure your sin will find you out.” It may take time, but it is inevitable. It took over twenty years for Joseph’s brethren.
12. It is God that produces in the conscience of man the true sense of sin. Joseph’s brothers took Joseph and cast him into a pit. Then they sat down to eat like nothing had happened. Joseph’s pleadings fell on deaf ears.
13. But the Spirit of God produced grief of heart, and exercises of conscience, and here they were twenty years later face to face with Joseph, not realizing who he was but feeling guilty over what they had done to him many years before.

CONCLUSION:

1. Genesis 42:24 says Joseph turned himself about from his brothers and wept.
2. That is the first time we see Joseph weeping in the Bible.
3. Altogether there are seven references to Joseph weeping (Gen. 42:24; 43:30; 45:2, 14, 15; 46:29; 50:1).
4. We do not see Joseph weeping when his brothers cast him into the pit.
5. We do not see Joseph weeping when he was sold as a slave to the Ishmeelites for twenty pieces of silver.
6. We do not see Joseph weeping when he was falsely accused and put in prison.
7. We only see Joseph weeping when he was reunited with his brothers and his father.
8. Never once is it recorded that Joseph wept for his own sorrows. Joseph wept tears of joy because God in His providence had brought his brothers to the place of conviction (42:21-24).