Pray the word with David Platt is a resource from radical dot net.

Genesis chapter 44 verses and 34

now therefore please let your servant remain instead of the boy as a servant to my lord

and let the boy go back with his brothers for how can I go back to my father if the boy is not with me?

I fear to see the evil that would find my father.

So what's happening here is Joseph is testing his brothers.'s saying hey keep Benjamin here and you guys go

back to your father and Judah steps up and says no like you can't do that we can't do that I will stay instead of the boy like let

Benjamin go back because if we go back and we don't have Benjamin with us then my father will fall apart I mean could die is basically what he's saying and so this is a high point for Judah. We've seen

Judah in some not so good ways in the book of Genesis but here he offers his life basically as a substitute for Benjamin and we don't know

what all of his motivations were but we do know that this is a picture of Judah saying I'll be a substitute so that someone

else can go free.

And the reason why I emphasize that is because this Joseph story in Genesis is really in a bigger way a Judah story.

It's interesting, we don't have time right now to dive into all the ways that Judah plays a pivotal part in

Joseph's story, but this is one of them, and this is a picture.

The reason this is so important is because it's from Judah's line

that will come King David and ultimately King Jesus.

So as we're reading the story, we need to pay particular attention to Judah's line

because that is the promised line.

And it's in this promised line in the line of Judah that we see this picture of substitution.

The reason that's important is because, well one day, King Jesus from the line of Judah would come and he would be the perfect

substitute. This picture of Judah in Genesis 44 is foreshadowing a much greater picture of a

substitute to come. This is in many senses the essence of the cross.

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