Genesis chapter 43. Our text is dealing with Joseph
bringing his brethren into his house to his table where Joseph
will feed them. And they don't know Joseph yet. They have no idea who he is. And the picture we have here
is of The Lord Jesus Christ, who is the head of His house,
who is the bread from heaven, He came and redeemed His people.
He came and laid down His life for His people. He is the bread
from heaven. And He said that clearly in John
6. And He also said this, But no
man can come to Me, except My Father which is in heaven draw
him. And that's what we have here pictured is Christ drawing
His brethren to His table where He will feed us, give us life
and faith and righteousness in Him. That's the picture here.
Let's begin in Genesis 43 verse 26 and we'll just take it as
we come to it. When Joseph came home, they brought
him the present which was in their hand into the house. and
bowed themselves to him to the earth." This is his brethren.
They brought a present and they bowed down to him to the earth.
And Joseph asked them of their welfare. He asked them of their
peace. That's what it means. Now you
remember, Joseph had dealt roughly with his brothers. And so, That's
how he began dealing with them. And so, when it came time and
he said, bring these men to my house, they didn't want to go
to his house. Remember that? They were afraid that Joseph
was going to charge them with sin and was going to put them
in bondage. And they were scared. They didn't
want to go to his house at all. And yet, once he has them brought
to his house, and they enter to his house, They bow down to
Him, and the first thing Joseph says to them is, How is your
peace? How is your welfare? He spoke
peace to them. That's what he was concerned
about. Now, God may deal with us roughly, and He will. When
the truth comes to us, it's rough. It's rough at the beginning when
He's converting us. It's rough when we're in a trial
and He sends the truth to us. It's rough. He deals roughly
with us because it's making us depart with our flesh and our
sin. So He's going to deal roughly,
and it comes across that when He's chasting us. He's bringing
us to confess our sins. He's bringing us to confess our
need of Him. But we can be sure of this. He
may deal roughly with His child, but God is always maintaining
the peace of His child. That's what His concern is for
his child. As believers, you know, often
you and I become fearful of what the Lord's doing. If you start
having something in providence that just turns your world upside
down, we start becoming fearful. What's the Lord doing? What's
He doing? And it's easy to get caught up
in all the second causes. It's easy to get caught up in,
you know, if this wouldn't have happened or that wouldn't have
happened and so on. But the Lord is always maintaining our peace.
And that's what we sometimes forget. It may be something that
doesn't appear good to us. It may be something that doesn't
appear like it's... or it may be totally sorrowful
to us. But the Lord's maintaining our
peace. That's what He's doing. And who is our peace? It's the
Lord Jesus. The Lord Jesus Christ. So in
all our trials and everything that happens, the Lord is turning
us out of this false way and He's bringing us to behold our
peace and to follow after our peace. That's what he's doing.
Turn over to Hebrews 12. Let me show you this. Hebrews 12.1 says, Wherefore,
seeing we also are passed about with so great a cloud of witnesses,
let us lay aside every weight and the sin which does so easily
beset us. Will we just do that ourselves? Can you just say this to somebody
and they'll do this themselves? Not without the power of God
working in us. And that's His chastening hand. That's what
He's doing when He's revealing our sin to us and showing us
the true way. That's what he's doing. He says,
let us lay aside every weight and the sin which does so easily
beset us and let us run with patience the race that is set
before us. He said it. He said whatever
path we're in, he said it. And we're going to walk through
it. And he says go through it at a steady pace doing what? Looking unto Jesus, the author
and finisher of our faith. who for the joy that was set
before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set
down at the right hand of the throne of God." He went to the
cross for His people. He endured the cross for His
people, and He said that His people's going to endure the
cross for Him. And so, this is what He's doing. And then when
He chastens you, He talks there about chastening. But when it's
all said and done, this is what it's for. Look down at verse
12. "...Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the
feeble knees, and make straight paths for your feet." Where? He just told us, look into Christ. Go straight to Christ, straight
to Christ. And that's what he's teaching
us in all of these rough times when he's revealing our sin to
us and teaching us who he is. And then remember this too, Joseph's
brothers don't even know who he is yet. And so this is a word
to you who don't yet know the Lord too. When you hear somebody
tell you, we're going to the Lord's house, are you like Joseph's
brethren? They didn't want to go. Are you
fearful? Do you think all I hear him talk
about is sin? And it reminds me of my sin and
it makes me feel like I'm in bondage. I feel like he's going
to roll sin on me and put me in bondage. That's why they didn't
want to go. But it may be, if you're like
Joseph's brethren, if you're Christ's, it may be this, that
what He's doing in bringing you under the sound of this gospel
is maintaining your peace. He's going to make you see you
have peace with Him. And if you're His, that's certain.
I know that's what He's doing. So, notice here where Joseph
spoke peace to them. It was in his house. That's where
he was, in his house. And we're like Joseph's brethren
sometimes when we get in a trial. And listen to this very carefully.
When we get in a trial, the last place we want to be is in the
Lord's house. Now that's just true. You get
sometimes to where you can't get any comfort from the Scriptures,
and you don't want to go to the church services. And the sad
thing is whether we admit it or not, the reason that's the
case is we don't want to hear God speak the truth to us. Because
it's going to be painful. It's going to be true. It's going
to be painful. It's going to be rough. But He's always maintaining
the peace of His children when He's doing that. So this is a
lesson to all of us here. Don't neglect the Gospel. If
He speaks peace to you, He's going to speak peace to you through
this Gospel. They don't ever neglect to come to His house,
to His table, to be fed of Christ. Alright, now here's the next
thing. Christ is always, not only maintaining our peace, He's
always in all these things looking out for our well-being. For all
the well-being of His brethren. He's protecting and preserving
His people. Look at verse 27 again. Genesis
43, 27. And He asked them of their welfare
and He said, is your father well? The old man of whom you spake,
is he yet alive?" Now, that's Joseph's father as well, you
know. But when he saw these near kinsmen of his, it moved him
with compassion to ask about his father. Now, you and I are
like that. If we come across somebody or
talk to somebody that we're related to, it will cause us just our
natural affection to want to know how the family's doing,
how's everybody doing. And we do that being sinful.
That's a natural thing with us, even though we're sinful. Well,
imagine the compassion of our sinless Savior towards His people.
Imagine His compassion and His love to maintain the well-being
of His people. Remember last week we saw in
all their affliction, He was afflicted. He's touched with
the feeling of our infirmities. He knows His people and He looks
out for the well-being of His people. It's because God predestinated
God predestinated the well-being of His people. Look here in verse
28. And they answered, Thy servant our Father is in good health,
and he is yet alive. Who did that? And they bowed
down their heads and made obeisance. You see, the reason they bowed
down to Joseph is because Joseph is the one who sent corn to their
father, who's in a famine, and so they bow down in gratitude
to Joseph because that's why their father's in good health.
Joseph has maintained him. Joseph sent corn to him. Joseph
made sure he's well. But you think about this in terms
of God's predestinating grace. Why was Jacob well? Because God
predestinated. God predestinated that Jacob's
going to be fed, provided for, and he's going to be brought
down there to Egypt. The whole of Israel's going to be brought
down there. Well, and God predestinated it was going to happen by Joseph.
Joseph was going to be the one that would save them. He was
going to do it by being exalted over all in Egypt. God predestinated
that. And that's the same with His
children. God predestinated that Our lot is going to be maintained
by Him. He's going to save every one
of His people. And God predestinated that the way it's going to happen
is Christ is going to come and lay down His life, just like
Joseph suffered in Egypt. And Christ is now exalted to
the right hand of the throne of God with power over all, like
Joseph. And God's predestinated that
by Christ, every one of His people are going to be brought to come
down and bow in obeisance to Him by bowing in obeisance to
Christ. God has predestinated that. Just
like He predestinated that Joseph's children would go down there
and our Joseph's brethren would go down there and bow to Joseph.
He's predestinated we're going to bow to Christ. Ephesians 1
says this, He predestinated us unto the adoption of children
by Jesus Christ to Himself, to the praise according to the good
pleasure of His will. And that's why it's going to
be so. But if need be, if need be, in order to teach us and
keep us, Christ sometimes withdraws His presence from us to teach
us how badly we need Him. Look here in Genesis 43, 29.
And he lifted up his eyes, and he saw his brother Benjamin,
his mother's son. And he said, Is this your younger
brother of whom you spake unto me? And he said, God be gracious
unto thee, my son. He interceded for him. Christ
is always interceding for His beloved children. Now watch this.
And Joseph made haste, for his bowels did yearn upon his brother. And he sought where to weep,
and he entered into his chamber, and he wept there. You see, it
wasn't the right time yet for Joseph to reveal himself to these
brethren. Because he has to make them see
their sin, he has to make them confess their sin. It's not the
right time yet. And Joseph knows it's not the
right time. So even though he's yearning for his brother, he
hid himself from his brother and didn't let it be known to
his brethren what his compassion was for his brethren. Well, Christ
is always maintained in our lot. God's predestinated it. But sometimes
it's good for Christ to make it seem to us like He's withdrawn
from us. To show us we need Him and to
show us that we have no strength without Him. And so Christ does
that from time to time. But when He does it, His compassion
for His people never changes. It's always like Joseph's here
for Benjamin. Even though we can't see it,
even though we don't know it, we may not feel it, we may not
have any indication of it, but that's so. And faith simply believes
His Word. And that's what He's teaching
us too. Don't put your faith in feelings. Don't put your faith
in your circumstances. Believe God. Believe God. Believe
His Word. Now look here, this is the next
thing. We see how slow we are to recognize Christ working in
us. We're just slow. You know, we're
slow to get it. And this is why we have to hear
the gospel over and over and over. This is why we have to
go through sometimes the same kinds of trials over and over
and over. Because we're so slow to know that our safest place
is at the feet of Christ, at His table. being ministered to
by him. Now look at this. Verse 31, And
he washed his face, and he went out, and refrained himself, and
he said, Set on bread. And they set on for him by himself. They set bread on the table for
Joseph by himself, and for them by themselves, and for the Egyptians. which did eat with him by themselves. The Egyptians are at a different
table from all of them. And here's why. Because the Egyptians
might not eat bread with the Hebrews, for that's an abomination
unto the Egyptians. And they sat before him. Here's
his brethren now. They're sitting right before
Joseph. They're not at the same table with him, but they're on
the other side of it. You know, they're at his table,
but they're on the other side of it, in front of him. And these
Egyptians are over here at a totally different table. They're not
sitting there with him at that table, because they won't have
anything to do with a Hebrew. And it says, And they sat before
him, and look how they are seated, the firstborn according to his
birthright, and the youngest according to his youth. And the
men marveled one at another. Now, you put yourself in the
shoes of Joseph's brethren. And what I'm trying to show you
here is how slow we are to know Christ and recognize His hand
working for us. These Egyptians won't eat near
them because they're Hebrews. And Egyptians won't eat near
Hebrews. Well, but here's Joseph. This is the man they think is
an Egyptian. This great Egyptian ruler who's
head of state in Egypt. And yet these Egyptians, who
he's supposed to be kinsmen with, who they think he's kinsmen with,
and they think he's the ruler over them, they won't even come
near Joseph. They won't sit and eat with Joseph.
Because that would be an abomination to them. And yet, wouldn't that
be to use some indication that maybe this man that I think is
an Egyptian, maybe he's not an Egyptian. Maybe he's a Hebrew
like me. They won't eat with me and they
won't eat with him either. And then look at this. Joseph
had his brethren seated in order of age. He put the oldest one
here, the next oldest one here, the next oldest one here, all
the way down to the youngest one. He put them and he had them
seated that way. Only Joseph would have known
how old each one of them was and what order they were born
in. Wouldn't that make you say, maybe this man knows me. Maybe
he knows me. And all of this did get their
attention. It says, and they marveled. They marveled at this. Now you compare all this to a
child of God in whom Christ is working. First of all, when God
starts working with us, and He's starting to give you an interest
in the Gospel, or whatever He's... however He's dealing with you,
and making it manifest, you're His. First thing that's going
to happen is, your worldly companions don't want to have anything to
do with you all of a sudden. They don't want to... Why didn't
the Egyptians want anything to do with them? Well, over in Genesis
46, 34, at the very end of it, It says, every shepherd is an
abomination to the Egyptians. And isn't that a good picture?
To this world, Christ our shepherd is an abomination. The carnal
mind is enmity against God. And so Christ said, the way that
they've treated me and the way they've regarded me, that's how
they're going to regard my people. He said this, remember the word
that I said unto you, the servant's not greater than his Lord. If
they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they've
kept my sin, they'll keep yours also. And yet when the Lord is
using this kind of separation to teach His child. You know what we do mostly? We want to try to make amends
with the world so that we can fit in with them. We don't want
the world looking at us as an abomination. We don't want the
world treating us that way. And yet the Lord's doing that
to show us, I'm working in you. I'm separating you out from the
world. And we're so slow to get that.
And then secondly, when He makes us hear the gospel, we begin
to realize He knows us. You sit there and hear the gospel.
And you sometimes tell folks to say, you know, Preacher, you've
been reading my mail because that's just what I was talking
about last night. That's what my family was talking
about. No, I haven't. I don't have a bug in your house,
but God knows you. And God gives the Word for the
time for His people. And He makes you to realize He
knows me. And yet, when He does that, we're so slow and we're
so prone to realize this is God speaking to me. You know, especially
if we're rebuked. And if we're rebuked, I can tell
you this from personal experience. Oh, that's the preacher talking.
That's the preacher rebuking me. The preacher might not even
know what's going on with you. That's what I love about just
going through the verse by verse through the Scriptures. Because
as we come to Scriptures, I'm just dealing with the text. I'm
not trying to preach it at you or to you. I'm preaching it for
you. And I hope you hear it. But if
God makes you hear it, it's because He knows you. Remember when he
saw Nathanael, he said, Here's an Israelite indeed, in whom
is no guile. Nathanael said, How do you know
me? He said, Before you were ever even around, when you were
under the fig tree, I saw you. Remember that woman at the well?
He sat and talked to that woman at the well, and she said she
only had one husband. He said, You've had five husbands.
And she started talking about her religion, and he made her
see her religion was totally vain. You don't know what you
worship, he told her. And she left her water pot. That's
what he's making you do. He's making you leave your water
pot. He's making you leave that vessel with holes in it.
He's making you leave that for him. And she left that water
pot and she ran home and she went and told her kinsman, she
said, come see a man that told me everything about me. This man knew me. Is this not
the Christ? She got it. She understood, this
is Christ that's talking to me. That's what I pray God will make
us see. This is Christ talking to me. That's who's talking to
me. And then there's a lesson here
for you and I who believe this gospel and know this is so. You
know, you'll see this situation right here. And as I read it,
and I was talking to Melinda and the kids about this, Melinda
asked me this question. She said, how did they not realize
that was Joseph? All these things that have happened,
and He's showing them, He knows them. How did they not get that
that's Joseph? And we can look at this situation,
and we can look at it right here and say, how did they not get
that, that that's Joseph? Well, you'll have somebody that
the Lord's dealing with. Maybe they're a believer that's
in a trial. And we get to thinking, how did
they not get what the Lord is showing them? How are they not
getting this? Our eyes were holding at one
time, just like Joseph's brethren. And we couldn't understand, we
couldn't see, we couldn't believe, even now when He deals with us,
until He makes us to know in our heart, we can't get it. So
we have to wait on Him, and wait on His time. And His time's always
the best time. Now here's the last thing I want
to show you. Christ is working these things to draw His children
to His table. That's what we see pictured here.
And when Christ has brought us to His table, and I mean brought
us to bow to Him and to hear Him and to be fed by Him and
to rejoice in Him and to want to come hear His gospel and be
fed by Him, when He's drawn us to His table, Christ Himself
makes us content in Him. He makes us content in Him. Now
look here at verse 34. And he took, Joseph took, and
he sent messes, helpings or servings of food unto them from before
him. Now Christ is the one who takes
and sends the heavenly bread. He is that bread. He said, except
you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you.
And that is a constant, continual, ongoing thing. Peter said, unto
whom coming. We never stop coming to Christ.
And Christ is the one who takes and gives to us. He takes and
He gives to us from before Him. And through faith, He makes us
effectually His redeemed. He makes us effectually take
the bread and feed upon Him. He gives us life. He gives us
faith and repentance. Through the Spirit of God, He
gives us His righteousness. He gives us free justification,
free redemption. He gives us everything that He
is and everything that He purchased on Calvary's tree. He feeds His
children freely. He takes and gives to His elect
people. And likewise, as the head of
the church and the head over all things and having all power
in heaven and earth, whatever we have, whatever substance we
have in this life, Christ gives it. Not more and not less than
He will have you to have. He gives you just what you need
and that's what He gives you. Sometimes it's less, sometimes
it's more. But it's not more or less than
what we need at that time. That's what He gives us. Paul
said this. Look to Philippians 4. I want
you to see this. Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians.
Philippians 4.11. Paul said, I'm not speaking in respect
of want. He said, for I have learned.
See, this is a learning thing. We have to be taught this by
Christ. I've learned in whatsoever state I am in therewith to be
content. I know both how to be abased
and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things
I'm instructed both to be full and to be hungry. Both to abound
and to suffer need. Now look what he said. Everywhere
and in all things I'm instructed. When I'm full, I'm instructed
to be hungry. not to be full and satisfied
with the things of this world, to be hungry for Christ. And
when I'm hungry in this life, I'm taught to be full, to be
content that I have Christ, even though I don't have everything
in this life. And he says here, both to abound and to suffer
need. I can do all things. And he's
talking about all these things. I can abound. I can be full.
I can be hungry. I can be content through Christ
which strengtheneth me. Now what's Joseph doing? He's
strengthening his brethren. He's feeding them. They came
out of a famine and he's feeding them. He's strengthening them.
That's what Christ does. And Christ gives us trials to
test us. He gives us trials to test us.
While He's feeding us in this life, He gives us trials to test
us to prove that our contentment is not in the things He gives,
but in Christ alone. In Christ alone. Is your contentment
Christ alone? We get stuff-itis, don't we?
And when God takes our stuff from us, we're like a little
child. You take a rattler from him,
you know, or a little shaker or something from him, and he
just throws a tantrum. And we get like that. We're content
with Christ. That's what He's teaching His
child. And He's going to send us trials to prove our contentment
is Christ and not the stuff. Watch this. Joseph gives them
a test, verse 34. He sets these messes before them
and it says, but Benjamin's mess was five times so much as any
of theirs. Five times more than any of them
got. Why'd he do that? Why'd Joseph
do that? Well, he loved him. That's for certain. That's his
true brother. That's his mother's son. That's his full brother.
But he's testing the rest of these brethren. Do you remember
how we read in the very beginning of this story of Joseph, how
we saw that his brethren were envious of Joseph? He was the youngest. They were
envious of him because he was his father's choice. He was his
father's choice son. They were envious because his
father gave him a coat of many colors. Remember that? They were
envious because his father gave Joseph the rule over them. Joseph
came out there to watch them while they were tending sheep.
They were envious of all that. So Joseph's going to test them
now. Is their contentment Him? Is their contentment Him that
He's the one providing them food? Are they content now with what
He's given them? Or are they going to be envious
of this little brother like they were of Him? And He gives this
little brother five times as much. That's our story, brethren. These brethren, here they are,
they're eating with Joseph now. But do you remember the last
time they ate with Joseph? They were so envious, they took
Joseph and stripped him of his coat and threw him in a pit wherein
was no water. And the Scripture says, and then
they sat down to eat. There He was in a pit by Himself,
and they're just filling themselves with bread. And that's our story. That's what we did. We crucified
the Lord Jesus Christ to get Him out of our way so we could
go back feeding on the husks of our self-righteous, vain religion. We see it in the fact that they
got Christ down off the cross so they wouldn't break the Sabbath
day. Took the Sabbath, our rest, off the cross so they wouldn't
break a day. They went back to feeding by
themselves. That's our story. And when He
makes you see what He's done for you and what we've done to
Him and what He's done for us, that's when you'll find your
contentment with Christ and whatever He gives. They found their contentment
with Joseph. Look at this. Verse 34 says,
and they drank, and they were married with him. They didn't
fuss. They didn't say, well, you gave
Benjamin more. Why don't you give us more? Nope.
They just drank, and they were married with him. It says with
him. Look over at Luke. Let me see here. I don't know if
I can find it. Let me see. Yeah, Luke 22. Luke 22. Look at verse 25. You know, they started
arguing at the table over who's going to be the greatest. They're
at the table, you know, they're with Christ. They started arguing
over who's going to be the greatest, His disciples. And he said unto
them, The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them,
and they that exercise authority upon them are called their benefactors.
But you shall not be so, but he that is greatest among you,
let him be as the younger, and he that is chief as he that doth
serve. Verse 27, For which is greater,
he that sits at meat, or he that serves? He is not he that sits
at meat, but I am among you as he that serves. That's Christ
speaking. Joseph was serving them. He was
serving them. Christ serves His people. And
look at this, verse 28. Year they which continued with
me in my temptations. And this is true of them, this
is true of His people. I appoint unto you a kingdom,
as my Father hath appointed unto me, that you may eat and drink
at my table in my kingdom. You reckon that day when all
his people are gathered to his table, I mean, we're there. We're with him at his table in
his kingdom. Do you reckon anybody at that
table is going to be arguing over who's the greatest? You reckon anybody's going to
be sitting there arguing over who ought to be the greatest?
No, sir. You know what's going to happen?
We're going to eat and drink and be merry with Him. We're
going to be content with Him. I pray He would work all these
things for us and draw us to His table and make us content
with Him. Content with Him. Alright, let's
stand together. Father, we thank You for Your
Word. We thank You for showing us the works that You do for
Your people. And we pray, Lord, that now You'd
work this in our hearts. To the praise and glory of Your
grace, to the honor of Christ our shepherd, our head, our bread,
He that feeds us constantly. Forgive us now, Lord, of our
sins. It's in Christ's precious name we pray. Amen.