The Man Who Traded Places

0:01Well, Shabbat shalom everyone. >> Oh, I am here. Well, Mishbaka, I want to begin with a name. I want to begin with a name. Before Judah did anything, before the pit, before Tamar, before the throne, he was simply the fourth son, a name his mother gave him in tears. Think back to Berish, Genesis 29. Leah is the unloved wife. She already has three sons. Each son's name is a wound. Reuben, see a son. Maybe now my husband will look at me. Simeon, God heard that I am hated. In Levi, now my husband will be joined to me. Three sons, three failed attempts at love. Three Hebrew names meaning only longing. And then she has a fourth son. Something breaks loose in her. She doesn't name him after her husband's affection. She calls him Yehuda, Judah from the root word meaning praise or give thanks. And she says, "This time, this time I will praise Adonai. This time it's not about Jacob. This time it's just her and God." Unknowingly, she looked beyond her husband, beyond her rivalry and her exhaustion to grab hold of God. And from that grip came praise. I want you to hold on to that this morning. The tribe

1:50that will bear the scepter of Israel. The tribe whose name we bear every time we call ourselves Yehoudim Jews is named praise. It was born a moment. A broken woman stopped trying to fix her life and turned her face toward heaven. That's the seed. Now watch what God does with it because it's going to get ugly before it becomes glorious. Let's pray. Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for our community. Thank you for Messiah Yeshua. Thank you for the words of your scripture, especially the Torah today as we look into a particular life, Lord. And may the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable and pleasing in your sight. Yeshua's name I pray. Amen. >> The pit. The pit and the man who manages sin. Now, fast forward to Berishit, Genesis 37. Leah's little boy, Judah. He now he's a grown man. He's out in the field with his brothers. And the father's favorite, Yseph. Joseph the dreamer, you know, the one with the fancy coat. He has just walked up to them. You know the scene. The brothers see him coming and their hatred boils over. Here comes the dreamer, they say. Let's kill him. Let's

3:17throw him in the pit and say a wild animal ate him. Now Reuben talks them down for murder. He says, "Throw him in a pit, but don't lay a hand on him." And then Judah Judah opens his mouth. What profit is there if we kill our brother and cover up his blood? Come on, let us sell him to the IshRaelites. Let's not lay our hand on him since he's our brother, our own flesh, and his brothers listen to him. Now, a lot of us will read that and think, well, at least Judah stopped the murder. He's the reasonable one. Well, on the surface, that's true. Joseph does get to live. But look again at how Judah leads his little speech. prophet. Prophet Bates in Hebrew. What profit is there if we kill him? You see, Judah's objection to murder isn't that it's evil. It's that it's a bad deal. But selling him, well, that's smart business. You eliminate the rival and you walk away with 20 pieces of silver richer. This is one of the most dangerous kinds of men in the world. and I've been him and some of you have been him. He's not the hothead who wants to kill. He's not even the coward who runs. He is the manager. He's the guy who looks at sin

4:49that the whole group is about to commit and instead of stopping it, he optimizes it. He makes evil efficient. Notice Judah is the one they listen to. Reuben has lost the room. Judah now has the room. The tragedy is that he's using his leadership to broker a better price for his brother's life. So they pull Joseph out of the pit. They hand him to slave traders. They take his coat and they dip it in goat's blood and they carry him that coat home to break their father's heart. And Jacob, Israel tears tears his clothes. He refuses to be comforted. And he says he's going to go down to Shol mourning his son. Judah did that. Judah did that not with a knife but with a deal. And here's the first thing I want you to take home today. And I'll say it plainly. God is not impressed. God is not impressed that you found a moderate version of your sin. God is not impressed that you found a moderate version of your sin. I didn't cheat. I just kept the door open. I didn't lie. I didn't correct them. I didn't kill my brother. I just sold him. You see, the man who manages his sin instead of killing it still has

6:18his brother's blood money in his pocket. Because faith doesn't negotiate the price of disobedience down. Faith stops it. That's the pit. That's the pit. And now Judah goes down. There's a detour. But this is a man in decline. Very Genesis 38. And this is the chapter that some people I'm not going to say you do, but some people skip because it interrupts the lovely Joseph story. But the Torah put it here on purpose. Right after Judah sells his brother, the very next verse says, "At that time Judah went down from his brothers." He went down from his brothers. Went down. In Hebrew, Yarod Yarod, he descends. And it's not just geography, it's the whole trajectory of a man's life. He walks away from his covenant family and he marries a Canaanite woman and his life starts to come apart. He has three sons, Onin and Shayla. And he gets a wife for the oldest, a woman named Tamar. Now is so wicked, so wicked that God takes his life. And the second son, Onan, is supposed to raise up the child of his dead brother through Tamar. But Onan won't do it. He takes the pleasure. He takes the pleasure and

7:52refuses the responsibility. And God takes his life, too. Now Judah's down to one son, Shayla. And he's scared. And he looks at Tamar and he decides in his heart that this woman is bad luck. She is a black widow. And he's not handing his last boy over to her. But he won't say it to her face. So he lies. He tells her, "Wait your father's house until Shayla grows up." He sends her off to a lifetime of widowhood on a promise he's already broken. Do you see the pattern hardening? At the pit, Judah wouldn't stop the sin. He only managed it. Now in his own house, when somebody becomes inconvenient, Judah doesn't confront it honestly. Tamar becomes a problem to be filed away just as Joseph was a problem to be sold. And then his own wife dies and Judah grieving goes up to shear his sheep. And on the road there's a woman and her face is veiled. And Judah assumes she's a prostitute. And so he propositions her. She asks what he'll pay and he doesn't have a goat on him. So he asks for a pledge collateral until she he can send payment. And Judah hands over three things. Three things. His signate, his

9:26cord, and his staff. His signate, his cord, and his staff. Friends, I want you to understand what he just did. That signate was his personal seal. It was his signature, his identity, his authority. And that staff was his standing. He handed a stranger in the dark his entire identity for one night's distraction. That's a portrait of a man in freef fall. He'll trade his name for an appetite. His life is transactional. And of course, you know the story. The veiled woman is Tamar, the daughter-in-law he cheated. She's taken the only path a powerless woman had to force this man to do right by her. She takes his pledge and then she disappears. Three months later, word comes to Judah, "Tomorrow, your daughter-in-law has played the harlot and she's pregnant." And here, I believe, is the ugliest moment of Judah's life. He doesn't even pause. He says, "Bring her out. bring her out and let her be burned. Judah, who has gotten a stranger pregnant, pronounces the death penalty untoar for the very same act. That's the double standard living in all of us. The sin we wink at in ourselves, the sin we

10:57wink at in ourselves, we burn someone else at the stake for. Judah is ready to light the fire without a single flicker of self-awareness. Friends, if the story ended there, Judah would just be a warning. You know, a cautionary tale we tell our children. Don't be this guy. You know, the manager, the oathbreaker, the man who trades his identity for a night and then wants to burn someone for less than he has done. But God But God isn't finished with Judah. And I love this next moment. I refer to this as the turn and three words that build a kingdom. Now we're in barit 38 verse 25. And they're dragging tomorrow out to be executed. She doesn't scream. She just sends a quiet message to her father-in-law along with three objects. I'm pregnant by the man to whom these things belong. Do you recognize whose they are, the seal, the cord, and the staff? Picture it. Judas stands there, the outraged patriarch. A servant walks up and places in his hands his own signate, his own cord, his own staff, his identity handed back to him as evidence, his name that he cast away in the dark comes back walking into the

12:30light to testify against him. And every man in that scene is watching Judah's face. This is the moment. He can lie. He's good at it. He can have Tamar killed quickly before she talks and bury the truth with her. Nobody would ever know. He's the man with the power. He holds the room. Remember? Instead, Judah says two words in heda in Hebrew said aa many six in most English Bibles that changed the entire trajectory of the Bible. She is more righteous than I. She is more righteous than I. That's it. He doesn't excuse it. He doesn't spin it. He doesn't manage it. And for the first time in his life, Judah takes a sin and he doesn't bargain it down to a better price. He just owns it in public in front of the man who followed his leadership into the pit. She is more righteous than I because I did not give her my son Shayla. That, my friends, is the birth of a king. Not the throne, but the character God can put on a throne. I want to name what just happened because our tradition has a word for it and something we should be familiar with during this present time of aloo teshua repentance. It's not that I feel bad.

14:07It's not I got caught. Real teshua is the turning of a man's whole self back to God and back to the truth. Rambam taught that the beating of a confession, the beating of a confession in Hebrew, vidudi, that's what it is. That's what confession is. It's the beating heart of teshua. You name the wrong out loud. You stop defending it. And you turn. And here's what makes Judah's confession so powerful. He had every incentive to bury it. Yet he chose the truth over his own reputation. That is the great fork in the road of faithful character. It's not will you sin. You have sinned. I have sinned. The fork is when your signate ring comes walking back into the light. When the thing you did in the dark shows up holding evidence, what will you do? Will you kill the witness? Or will you say the three hardest words a person can say? I was wrong. I was wrong. Judah said them. And notice, no one made him. Tamar didn't demand it. She just held up the truth and let him decide who he would be. God does that to us. He just at the right moment hands our signate back to us and lets us choose. Some of you are in that moment right now

15:50this morning. Something's been handed back to you and you know exactly what it is. You've got the power to bury it. You've been managing it. God is waiting to see whether you're a Judah at the pit or a Judah at the turning. I'm telling you, the rest of his life hangs on which he chooses. And so does yours.

16:21But there's one thing about repentance, friends. One thing about repentance. Confession is a doorway. It is not the finishing line. It's a doorway. It's not the finishing line. And Judah says the right words in Beret 38. The question is whether it takes hold. And God in his kindness gives Judah a test. And it's the same one he failed at the beginning. Years pass, a famine strikes. Jacob's sons go down to Egypt for grain where unbeknownst to them, their brother now is the second most powerful man in the world. And Joseph tells them they can't return for more grain unless they bring their youngest brother, Benjamin, you know, Rachel's other son, Jacob's new favorite son. And Jacob refuses. He will not let Benjamin go. And it's Judah. Judah who steps up to his father and says, "Send the boy with me. I myself will be his pledge. You can demand him back from my own hand." Stop on that word pledge. In Hebrew, it's the root aravate. I will be the pledge. I will be the guarantee. If he doesn't come back, the debt falls on me. Now friends, catch what the Torah is doing is doing. Back in chapter 38,

17:54Judah gave a pledge in Aravan Aravan, but it's the same route. He gave his signate and his staff for a night of self-indulgence. He gave away his identity. He gave away his identity for something for himself. Now in chapter 43, the very same word returns, but this time Judah doesn't offer a pledge. You heard this now. Doesn't offer a pledge. He becomes the pledge. He becomes the pledge. The man who once pawned his identity for his appetite now stakes his identity for his family. Same root, opposite man. That's what tshoua looks like when it takes. And then comes the test itself. There in Egypt, Joseph, still hidden, sets a trap. He plants that silver cup in Benjamin's sack and then miraculously discovers it and declares Benjamin must stay behind as his slave. Now, freeze that scene. This is exactly the situation Judah engineered 20 years earlier. A chance to lose a brother to slavery. And Judah can walk away clean. Nobody would blame him. The cup was in Benjamin's sack. He can go home to the famine with the grain in his arms and the favorite son conveniently gone. Exactly as last time.

19:28God has handed Judah the same sin wrapped in the same package with the same prophet attached. And this this is the definition of complete repentance that Rambam gives us. It's when a man stands with the very same temptation, but he makes the opposite choice. Not because he's weak now, but because he got not because he got caught, but because he actually has become a different man. So Judah steps forward, and I believe this is the longest, most moving speech in Beerit. And he lays it bare, their father's life is bound to the boy, and losing Benjamin will kill him. And then he says it in verse 33. So now please let your servant remain as my lord's slave in the boy's place and let the boy go up with his brothers. Friends, look what he just said. Take me instead. Let me be the slave. Let him go free. The man who sold his brother into slavery now offers himself as a slave to save one. In a single sentence, Judah's life bends back on itself, undoing greed with love, standing in the gap to redeem the past. And why? Verse 34, for how can I go up to my father, and the boy is not with me, else I must see

21:01the evil that would come upon my father. Did you hear that? The thing that broke 20 years ago was his father's heart. Jacob tearing his clothes over Joseph and Judah cannot and he will not be the cause of that grief a second time. The man who once helped carry a bloody coat home to break his father's heart now offers his own freedom so that his father can sleep at night. That is a forged man. A forged man. Not a man who never went into the pit. a man who came out of the pit and the detour and the double standard and let God hammer all of it into someone who would lay down his life for his brother. Faith, wrestling, and obedience. Faith, wrestling, and obedience. Judah's whole story is wrestling not with an angel like his father Jacob, but with the worst thing in himself. And he pinned it in obedience. finally stepping into the gap he used he used to run from. So let me bring it home friends. Be verished 49. Old Jacob is dying and he gathers his 12 sons to bless them. You'd expect the big blessing. You know that scepter, the leadership of Israel to go to Joseph, right? I mean Joseph's

22:31the righteous one. Joseph's the one who stayed pure in Piper's house and he forgave everybody. If any brother earned the crown by being good, it's Joseph. But it doesn't go to Joseph. Jacob turns to the fourth son and says, "Judah, your brothers will praise you." There's that name again, praise. It's coming true. The scepter will not pass from Judah until he to whom it belongs will come. To him will be the obedience of the peoples. A lion's cub is Judah. The lion of Judah, the royal tribe, the kingdom. David will come from this line. Solomon will come from this line. And one day, same line, Yeshua, the king of kings. I have to ask, why Judah? Why does the crown go down to the man who sold his brother, lied to Tamar, and almost committed murder rather than the one who kept his hands clean. I think it's because God is telling us what kind of king, what kind of king he builds his kingdom upon. Not a man who never fell. A man who fell, who turned and learned to lay himself down for his brothers. God builds his throne on repentance. He builds it on a broken and contrite heart that finally says she is more

24:08righteous than I. And finally says take me instead of the boy. Joseph's righteousness is beautiful. But Judah's redeemed character, his redeemed character is the one in which God plants his kingdom. That is that is grace. That's the baser. That's the good news written into beer over a thousand years before Yeshua. And it points straight to Messiah. When we open the brides, we find John weeping in Revelation 5 because no one is able to open the scroll. And an elder says, "Stop weeping. Stop weeping. Behold the lion of the tribe of Judah. The root of David has triumphed. The line of Judah. Yeshua again comes through this line. Through the tribe of a man who learn to trade places. Do you see it now? Everything Judah did in the shadow. Yeshua does in full light and in perfection. Judah offered to become a slave in place of his brother. Yeshua actually did it. He took our place and took the whole weight of that execution stake so that his people and his brothers can go free. Judas said, "Take me instead of the boy." Yeshua said it about you. And he didn't merely offer. He went

25:53the true and greater Judah, the lion who became the lamb, the one who truly traded places. So, here's the charge and then I'm going to sit down. character. True battle tested character is not the absence of the pit. Every figure in Beerish has one. Adam fell into hiding. Noah sank into drunkenness. Abraham's well, he lied about his wife to scave to save his skin. Judah built a life on deception. So did his father. You have a pit. You have a pit. I have one, too. No, biblical character isn't what you do when everybody's watching you, but it is what you do when your signate comes back walking in the light. When the thing you did in the dark shows up holding the evidence and you've got the power to bury it in that moment, you're either the Judah of the pit, the manager, the man who prices his sin and files away the people who cost him, or you're the Judah of the turning, the man who says the three hardest word, I was wrong. And then because God is not content to leave you at the doorway, he'll bring you back to the same test, the same temptation, the same easy exit, and he'll watch to see if the confession

27:49you made takes hold. If you finally step into the gap, the one you used to run away from, and you say, "Take me instead." Some of you have a Joseph in a pit right now, a brother, a marriage, or a friend, and you've been managing it. God's asking you to stop pricing it and start dying for it. Some of you have a tomorrow you've wronged, someone you lied to, someone you'd rather see burn than admit your wrongdoing. God is handing you your signate this morning and asking, "Who are you going to be?" And some of you just need to hear [snorts] that the man who sold his brother into slavery is the same man that God put a crown on. Because there's no pit so deep that God can't forge a lion from the one who climbs out of it, who turns around and lays himself down. He did it with Judah. He did it in Yeshua, the lion of Judah, once and for all. And he's ready this Shabbat morning in a room full of God's people to do it in you. Let's be people who trade places. Bashm Yeshua. Amen. >> [applause]