Two cups of water, which one
is mine? Oh, there you go. Frustrate Don and
drink a little out of each one. Alright, if you would open your
Bibles to the 37th chapter of John. Now I will warn you ahead
of time that I do not have a voice that carries very well. I will
try to stay nearby this microphone in the hope that you'll be able
to hear what is said. And also in the hope of God's
grace that what you hear will have been worth hearing. Genesis
chapter 37. By the way, let me thank you
right now for inviting me to come here to preach to you and
I pray that the Lord God will enable me to say something that
will be a blessing to you Of course, from the time that
Clay contacted me and invited me to come here, I've been thinking,
what would I preach when I get there? That's just the way I
am. My mind is always way out there ahead in time. And when we got done with services
at our church last week, actually just got done with the Bible
class, my wife came up and said, that's what you ought to preach.
And we've been going through the book of Genesis and chapter
37 is where we've been the last couple of weeks and I'll deliver
to you some of what we have seen in this scripture concerning
the Lord Jesus Christ. For if it is not concerning the
Lord Jesus Christ, it did not come from God. You can be sure
of that. That's not something that we
boast in. I mean, that's That is, it's
not as though we think we are better than others because we
recognize that. Nonetheless, by the grace of
God, we do recognize that. If it's not Christ, it's not
of God. For the Lord God has one message
for the world, and that message is His Son. And no matter what we're preaching,
it has value only in as much as it sets forth the Lord Jesus
Christ in His person and in His work and moves us to great more,
perfectly might be the right word, or more sincerely, to worship
Him. And the life of Joseph, and I
did not pick this because I have that name, I was named Joseph
because that's my grandfather's name. But the life of this man
called Joseph, the son of Jacob, is one of the remarkable and
prominent pictures of the Lord Jesus Christ as he was sent into
the world to save God's people, God's household. Now, it is notable
that so far as I can recall anyway, in the story of Joseph, we do
not find one account of a fall on Joseph's part on something
that he did which casts him in an ill light. Now, I qualify
that with as far as I can recall. I don't remember anything like
that. That doesn't mean that Joseph never did anything wrong.
It doesn't mean that there Couldn't have been chapters recorded of
things he did which were wrong. But the scriptures did not record
them. God did not see fit to leave us a record of them. All
the others, nearly all the others that we find in the Old Testament
scriptures, there is recorded of them grievous faults. Men that we hold up as examples. In fact, a couple of them that
doesn't, Abel and Enoch, there just wasn't enough said about
them to get around to whatever may have been wrong with them
and cast them in an ill light. But you look at Noah. Now Noah
walked with God. And Noah found grace in the eyes
of the Lord. And Noah is held up as an example
of the believer in Hebrews chapter 11. But we find Noah, after the
flood, after all these wonderful things that he did, Noah is naked
in his tent and I think much more is implied there than is
clearly said. Horrible things. Horrible things. Abraham, the father of the faithful. Which of you men would go to
another city with your wife and out of fear that someone would
see her beauty and try to take her at the expense of your life,
you say, well, don't you tell anybody. You're my wife. If you
knew a fellow that did what Abraham did, you probably wouldn't want
to have anything to do with him. Isaac too. And how long the list
of Jacob's offenses, whose name means cheat, whose name means
scoundrel. I'll tell you this, you wouldn't
have wanted to buy a car from Jacob. And yet we get to Joseph, and
there is not, to my recollection, one word of evil said, and here's
why. I believe that God didn't record
those things. He was to stand as a representative
of Jesus Christ in the household of God. And while for everyone
else in the household of God, you could list a long record
of sin and failure, There's not one bad thing you can say about
the Lord Jesus Christ. No matter what part of his life
before his crucifixion or afterward or even now at the right hand
of God, what is there about the Lord Jesus Christ that you could
find fault with? That doesn't mean men don't find
fault, but interestingly enough, the very faults they supposedly
see in the Lord Jesus Christ are His greatest glories. They
spat out at Him, this man receives sinners and eats with them. Oh,
I'm glad. I am so glad. Glory be to the
name of the Son of God, that He receives sinners and eats
with them. They said, this man saved others.
Himself He cannot save. Blessed be His name for that.
He could have saved Himself. But had He saved Himself, it
would have been at the expense of us. Because He could not save
both Himself and us. So even those things the world
thinks is faulty in the Lord Jesus Christ, turn out to be
His glories. And oddly enough, the glories
which they set forth in their Christ, their versions of the
Lord Jesus, make Him out to be very inglorious. Jesus wants to save you. Well,
brethren, I hope he does, because if he does want to save you,
you will be saved. But they say Jesus wants to save
everybody. What's that say about Jesus?
He's not very good at saving. If you went to your job and you
did as poorly in the performance of your job as the universal
Jesus did, they would fire you. But the Lord Jesus Christ did
not come into this world to save everybody. If He did, everybody
would be saved. He cannot fail. He shall not
fail. Nothing that our Lord Jesus put
His hand to came short in any respect. There's nothing about
the Lord Jesus Christ that is not good, that is not glorious,
that is not pleasing to God, and that is not pleasing to everyone
who has been saved by His grace. Now religious people like to
get into religious arguments and they like to get into doctrinal
arguments. And I like to do that at one time. I'm less, much less
desirous of it than I was in times past. And here's one of
the reasons. If I preach the truth, concerning
the Lord Jesus Christ, God's sheep are gonna like it. And
I'm not too concerned with what the goats think about it. I can't make anybody believe
it, but I know that they who believe it will love it. Because
they have in their minds the same estimation as the Father. He said, this is my beloved Son
in whom I am well pleased. And we with similar voice say,
this is my beloved Lord and Savior in whom I am well pleased. As that woman in the Song of
Solomon said after listing detailed account of the glories of her
beloved, She says, He is altogether lovely. Every part of Him I cherish. And when you put all those parts
together, they are even more glorious than they are mentioned
one by one. If you do not love the Lord Jesus
Christ, if every aspect of His character is not glorious in
your sight and a joy to your soul, there's something wrong
with your sight and your soul. That's just so. Now, the Lord didn't record anything
evil about Joseph because there's nothing to record evil about
the Lord Jesus Christ. I want to look at several things
now in the life of Joseph in this chapter that set forth the
glories of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now we're going to start in verse
2, because that's probably where the chapter should have started.
It says, These are the generations of Jacob, Joseph. Now I want you to turn back one
chapter, chapter 36, verse 1. These are the generations of
Esau, who is Edom. And the rest of the chapter is
a list of Esau's wives and the children which were born to him
by those wives, and some of the grandchildren, and who were the
chiefs among them, and who accomplished this and that. In Esau's household,
the household of the world, there are many of significance. There
are many in our history books who have done some what we would
count as remarkable things. At least they're notable to the
world in world history. But notice this, when the household
of God, as illustrated in the household of Jacob, it says this
is the account of Jacob, or this is the generations of Jacob,
and only one name is mentioned, Joseph. And brethren, when we
speak of the household of God, there's only one name to mention.
And in mentioning that name, you have said everything worthwhile
about the household of God. I'm glad that there's a Lamb's
Book of Life, but have you ever noticed that they don't tell
you who's in it? There's names written in it,
but none of them are mentioned. The only name with regard to
the Lamb's Book of Life that's mentioned is the Lamb Himself.
I suppose it's on the front cover, and once you've read that name,
There's nothing more you need to read. Because everything valuable
about the Lamb's Book of Life is wrapped up in the Lamb. When
we speak of the household of God, it is not important who
all these other sons were. They come and they go. They pass
by their generation on the scene. But it is Christ, it is the Lord
Jesus Christ who alone encompasses everything worthwhile about the
Kingdom of God and the household of God. These are the generations of
Jacob, Joseph. These are the generations of
the Father, Jesus. And you just stop right there.
Yes, these other fellas are mentioned. These other 11 brothers of the
Lord Jesus Christ, but you'll notice this. Every time something is mentioned
about them, it's bad. And they are, for lack of a better
way to put it, bit players. Walk-ons in the history of the
household of Jacob. Joseph is everything. And so with the Lord Jesus Christ,
He is everything in the household of God. He is God's only natural-born
son. That's the only phrase I could
come up to describe it. I realized that all of God's
people have been born of God by the Spirit of God. However, I noticed this about
Joseph. Jacob had four wives, or two
wives and two concubines. Joseph was the firstborn of the
wife that Jacob loved. Now I'm not, you know, one thing
we've got to be careful with these types of pictures is we
don't stretch them too far. All I want to illustrate by this,
there's something special about the birth of Joseph. And there's
something special about the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ. I know
that, beloved, now are we the sons of God. but he was the son
of God in a different way. He was the son of God as natural
born a son of God as I am the natural born son of Ray Terrell. He and God are one of the same
essence because he is the son of God. And he took that title
to himself, was not embarrassed to take it, did not hesitate
to take it, and when people heard him take it, they knew exactly
what it meant. That group that calls themselves
Jehovah's Witness, they get all upset if you say that Jesus is
indeed the God. And they say, Jesus didn't say
He was God because when people said, when the Lord said, I'm
the Son of God, and they said, well, you're making yourself
to be God. And the Lord said, well, now,
if He called them gods, to whom the Word of God came, what shall
you say concerning Me? And, of course,
that's with reference into the Old Testament. And indeed, the
word God or gods was used to describe the prophets and others
who were anointed of God to carry out a message, the ones to whom
the word of God came. But the Lord is saying this,
if they were called gods, what shall you say of him who is the
word of God that came? And while Jehovah's Witnesses
want to say, well, that proves that Jesus was backing away from
calling himself God, quite the contrary. Quite the contrary. He is God. God in human flesh,
the natural born Son of God by a superior birth. And then the
Lord Jesus Christ is God's face to this world. All, as near as I can tell from
the scriptures, all that you will ever know about God will
be what you know about the Lord Jesus Christ. God is Spirit. You can't see that. Whatever
Spirit is, and I don't know, but whatever it is, you can't
see it. The Spirit of God comes and like
the wind, He goes where He wants to. You can't direct it. You can't stop it. You can't
force it. You can tell where it's been
by the effect it has. And we can tell where the Spirit
of God has been because it leaves a trail of faith. Wherever He
goes, He leaves a trail of spiritual life and faith. But we don't
know where He's going. We can't see Him. I've heard
people say, oh, among this group of people, I could just feel
the Spirit of God. And when I'm in a more cynical
mood, I say, well, what does He feel like? Really? only one of the Trinity with,
as near as I can tell again, with whom we have anything directly
to do is the Lord Jesus Christ. Now there's nothing wrong with
that because that's one of the things He was sent for. He is called
the Word. He is God's expression to us. He was made one of us that we
might fellowship with God through Him. The word fellowship means
to have in common. What do I have in common with
the God who spoke and it was? Nothing. Until He becomes like
me. And in the mystery of the incarnation,
there is God. And I have something in common
with Him. And I can understand His words
and He can understand mine. And we fellowship. God in human flesh. He is God's
face to the world. We read in 2 Corinthians chapter
4 that the gospel When it is revealed,
is described in this, we see the glory of God in the face
of Jesus Christ. Moses said, show me your glory. Now I'm sure that what Moses
had in mind was a display of a bright light or something like
that. And in some respects he got that, but he was blocked
from seeing it. Because no man can see God's
face and live. Nobody can look upon God in the
bareness of His existence. If that's the only way I know
how to put that. And live to tell about it. So how did God
reveal His glory? There was a rock. And in this
rock was a cleft, a split place. a crag, a crevice. God put Moses
in there. He passed by, and as he passes
by, he covers Moses with his hand, lest the full blaze of
his glory destroy Moses. After he passes by, he removes
his hand, and Moses gets to see what is left behind of the essential
glory of God. But what was the real revelation
of the glory of God in all of that? I will be merciful to whom
I'll be merciful, I'll be gracious to whom I'll be gracious. I will
forgive transgressions for thousands of generations and all this.
How is God going to do that? Through the split rock of Christ
Jesus. Who knows? Maybe even Moses didn't
catch on where the real glory was in that whole scene until
sometime later. I don't know what Moses saw or
when he saw it. But the glory of God revealed
on that day was the Lord Jesus Christ typified as the rock who was split. We are put in Him and from there
and only from there may we behold the glory of God and live. He is The revelation of the glory
of God. If you look over here at Hebrews
chapter 1. Now the point I'm on is this.
We're still expanding on this point. That when it comes to
the generations of God, there's only one name to be mentioned.
And that's the name Jesus. And while I'm tickled to death
to be in the family of God, while I'm tickled to death to be a
citizen of His kingdom, I'm also tickled to death that my name
doesn't show up in the account. Just one name. And I'm in Him. And so long as I'm in Him, and
I hear His name, everything's good. Everything's good. Hebrews chapter one now. This book, I love this book.
Well, I love them all, but you know what I mean. But this sets
forth Christ in all His glory. It says, God who at sundry times
and in diverse or various manners, spake in times past unto the
fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken to
us by His Son. What's He saying here? He's saying
God did a lot of speaking. And He spoke at different times. He spoke in different ways. Here
a part, there a part. But never the whole message. Until he spoke in his son, it
says, in the last of these days. Now I'm not a language scholar.
Language is kind of a hobby of mine, but I'm not what you'd
call a scholar. But my philosophy professor knew it pretty good.
And he said, what days was he talking about? When it says the
last days, he said, the days of God speaking. So in the last
days of God's speaking, God spoke in His Son. And why was that
the last day? Because once the Son spoke, there
was nothing else to say. Just as redemption was finished
by the Lord Jesus Christ, so was revelation. And you'll discover
that all that the apostles did when they went out to preach
was tell us what Christ had said. At any rate, we go on. He says,
Whom He hath appointed heir of all things, that is He is the
firstborn, by whom also He made the world, who being the brightness
of His glory and the express image of His person. Philip said,
Show us the Father and that will be enough for us. And the Lord Jesus with a tone,
a tinge of frustration, I'm sure, in his voice. Philip, have I
been with you so long and you don't realize this yet? If you've
seen me, you've seen the Father. You ever see somebody, a man's
got a son, and it's just, in the South they call it the spitting
image. It's a contraction of spirit and image. I mean, it
just looks just like his dad. That's what the Lord said. You've
seen me. You've seen my Father. There is no difference in us. Do you want to know what the
love of God is? Look at the love of the Lord Jesus. Do you want
to know about the power of God? The power of the Lord Jesus.
Anything you want to know about God. It's in Christ. And that's the only place you're
going to be able to find out about it. He is the express image
of God's person. The Lord Jesus is God's power
in this world. The next phrase there in Hebrews
1, verse 3 is, Upholding all things by the word of His power,
when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down on the right
hand of the Majesty on high. Now, the word. of His power upheld
the world. After all, the Word of His power
made the world. When the Scriptures say, He spoke
and it was, He commanded and it stood forth. Who was it that
commanded? Who was it that spoke? Who was
it that said, Let there be light? Our Lord Jesus did. He did. And He's been the one
keeping this thing going ever since. And here's what I find
remarkable. It says, and upholding all things
by the word of His power, when He had purged our sins, when
our Lord Jesus was at what we might call His weakest moment,
when He was nailed to a cross, when God the Judge of all was
pouring out unimaginable wrath on His soul, He was upholding
all things by the word of His power. Now that's the power of God. He holds the world together even
as he dies under the wrath of God for the sin of his people.
Isn't that amazing? And purged our sins. He is God's
grace in this world. Amazing grace how sweet the sound. All Christians sing that. Who is the grace of God? Now I have no problem talking
about grace as a doctrine. God's grace is glorious every
way you talk about it. But God's grace, just like every
other attribute of God, finds its fullest expression in the
person of the Lord Jesus Christ. When we see Christ dying on the
cross, we find a great testimony of the greatness of our sin. The seriousness of a disease
can be measured by the power of the medicine it takes to cure
it. And if it took the death of the Son of God to put away
my sin, oh, how great must my sin be. And the love, grace, and mercy
of a person is revealed in what he's willing to spend for the
welfare of those he loves. He who spared not his own son,
but delivered him up for us all. I believe this phrase was attributed
to a little kid. He said, I'm not worth much,
but I sure cost a lot. And we aren't worth much, are
we? Boy, we cost a lot. we cost the life of the Son of
God. And there you find God's grace
revealed. There you find the fountain of
grace. Everything about God's grace is right there. So when we speak of the Father,
In His generations, His household, His kingdom, there's only one
name that has to be mentioned, and that's the name of Jesus.
And in the telling of Him, you have told the whole tale of the
people of God. Secondly, we find in this story
of Joseph, the others will clip along a lot faster, because that's
just the nature of it. The first things you say about
Christ take the longest. The Father's special love for
the Lord Jesus. Verse 3, Genesis 37, Now Israel
loved Joseph more than all his children. Now, we have been taught
that no matter how many children you have, you should love them
all the same. And we do our best. We do our
best. But we are flesh. And our children are flesh. And if we have multiples of them,
there are some who are going to just warm our hearts, and
some who may grate against them, and all of them do some of both. But they were not bashful in
these days about showing favoritism among the children. And Jacob,
or Israel, loved Joseph more than he loved any of the others
that had been born in his household, and he had no embarrassment in
making that known. It says, he loved Joseph more
than his children, and he made him a coat of many colors, a
coat he didn't make for his other sons. Now he did for his other
sons, I guess, the duty of a father, but nothing special. And when he gave Joseph that
coat, it was to the entire household a bold declaration of his preference
for Joseph. And probably his brothers realized
that that also meant that it was Jacob's intention that Joseph
received the position of the firstborn, even though he wasn't
the firstborn. Remember, Jacob had the position
of the firstborn, even though he wasn't the firstborn. And
I'm sure his sons knew how that happened, and they're saying,
Dad's going to pull another fast one. Reuben, what do you think
of that? Jacob set forth Joseph as the
firstborn of the household even though he was by no means the
first one born. And it was evident that he intended
that Joseph inherit the household. And they hated him for it. And
God set forth Jesus Christ as the firstborn of all creation.
He wasn't the first human being. He wasn't the first believer.
I said, well, Christ wasn't a believer. Yes, he was. He believed God. He put his trust in God. But he's God's firstborn. He
has the position. And God made it obvious, and
it's interesting, God made it obvious and His brethren hated
Him for it. How did God make it obvious? His preference for the Lord Jesus
Christ. He put on Him a coat of many
colors, a coat of multiple glories. The power that God gave Him.
Nicodemus, coming as a representative of the Pharisees. He didn't say, I know that you're
a man sent from God. He said, we know. Evidently Pharisee's
been sitting around talking. You know, and what are we going
to do about this guy? Nicodemus, you go talk to him.
You find out what he's about. And so Nicodemus goes there and
he says, we know that you're a man sent from God. That means
that they had acknowledged that. No wonder their unbelief was
such a horrid sin. These men did not reject Christ
in ignorance. They rejected Him knowing full
well who He is, who He was. Your man sent from God. Why?
How did they know that? For no man could do these things
unless God was with him. There's one of the colors in
that coat of many colors. The power of God was manifest
in him. He could come upon a blind man.
Blind from birth and healing. I was thinking about that the
other day. A little danger going out on this subject when you've
got an eye doctor right here in the congregation. But as I understand it, there's
more to seeing than what goes on with eyeballs. Because the
brain's got to interpret. what the information that the
eyeballs see. And I remember reading somewhere
that if a person is born blind and then later they're able to
do something, they receive their sight, they do not see properly
at first. It takes a long time for the
mind to learn how to interpret that information. That's why little babies, you
know, they kind of sit there and their eyes just go everywhere. They haven't
learned how to get their eyes to track and their brains to
make sense of the sensory input they're getting. And so I'm thinking,
here's the Lord Jesus Christ in His day and here's a man blind
from birth. I don't know why he couldn't
see. But the Lord made it so he could see and see immediately,
which meant he did more than whatever was wrong with his eyes. He also immediately made him
capable of understanding that information. What a marvelous
illustration of the new birth. We're blind. And it's more than
a problem with our spiritual eyes. Our spiritual mind wouldn't
know what to do with the information if it got it. And God the Holy Spirit, according
to the direction of the Lord Jesus Christ, heals us who are
born blind. And we not only have eyes that
work, we have a mind that understands that which the eyes have told
us. But who but the Lord Jesus Christ. All some of the prophets did
some miracles, but nothing like what the Lord Jesus did. And they did their miracles one
here, one there. The Lord would go through crowds
touching them and healing them just as He walked around. We
only have a few examples, but don't think that while He was
wading through that crowd there wasn't a whole lot of healing
going on. He could do it all that He wanted to. He can even
walk up to the tomb of a man dead four days and say, Lazarus,
come out. And he did. Someone once commented
he started that with the word Lazarus because if he had just
said come out, they'd all come out. That was specific, irresistible
grace. Lazarus, come forth. And in the Gospel, God calls
upon us, or the Lord Jesus calls upon us to do that which is impossible
for us to do, and we do it anyway. Why in the world tell a dead
man to come out of the tomb? The Gospel in which many of us
were raised, the so-called Gospel of free willism, would have our
Lord Jesus Christ standing outside the tomb and say, Lazarus, come
out here and I'll give you life. Can you imagine what offense
that would have been to everybody? I mean, even Martha and Mary
who loved Him would have been troubled by that one. Lord, You
mock us. We've rolled away the stone at
Your command. You mock us. You're only emphasizing the deadness
of our brother. He can't come out here that You
can give him life. But He who is the life spoke the word of
life. And a dead man came alive. There's one of the patches of
color in that coat of many colors. The wisdom of God is in him. Oh, that was a glory. He spoke,
it says, as one having authority, not like the scribes. You know,
just once in a while, the scriptures give a little dig. Those scribes,
oh, they could speak. Who were the scribes? These were
the law experts. These were the men who made the
copies of the Scriptures and were very careful, letter after
letter after letter to make sure all the jots and tittles were
correct. And I tell you, if you wanted
to know what was in the Bible, ask them. They could tell you. But when they spoke, It just
didn't seem to be any real authority in what they said. It was so
much intellectual arguing over useless matters. The Lord Jesus
Christ came and he spoke and his words rang with authority. You knew that what he said was
right. Even the Pharisees did. They
could not stand against His Word. It was said of Abraham Lincoln,
who was a great speaker, a masterful speaker, but it said he spoke
to men's hearts because he spoke from his own heart. How much
more the Lord Jesus Christ, because when He was laying out the truth
of God, He was laying out the truth of Himself. He was honestly
opening up His heart to the people. And there was a power and authority
in there given Him by God that could not be resisted. All the glorious favored Son
of God. And if you look over at John
chapter 1, And I'm going to close with this
point. As always, there's so much more that could be said,
but there's a limit to what we can hear. And we'll leave it
at this point I'm going to make here. That as Jacob had special favor
to Joseph, so God has a special favor on the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the only one. of whom God
said, this is my beloved Son, in whom I'm well pleased. And
we read this, verse 16, John 1, And of His fullness have all
we received, and grace for grace. Now that's one of those difficult
to understand scriptures simply because the language is a little
unusual to us, to talk that way. And let me see if I can't paraphrase
it for you to give you the sense of it. That the Lord Jesus Christ is
full of grace and truth. There is an unlimited supply
of favor from God to the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, from His fullness,
that word can even mean His overflow, From His overflow, we have all
received grace upon grace. Now this word grace, we automatically
think of it in gospel terms, and we often say unmerited favor. And in the gospel, that's exactly
what it is. But actually the word itself
does not carry the sense of unmerited. It says that our Lord grew in
wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and men. Same
word, in grace with God and men. Christ did not need grace like
you and I need grace. All it means is that God was
favorably disposed to the Lord Jesus Christ and Christ merited
all that favorable disposition. He earned it. It was His. God
should be favorably disposed to the Lord Jesus Christ. And
so favorably disposed, or so much favor did God pour out on
the Lord Jesus Christ, there was favor to spare. And it flowed out of Him. And
on to us. Grace upon grace. It's as though
the Lord is... I shouldn't say as though, it's
so. He's the fountain of grace. God pours His favor into the
Lord Jesus Christ. And imagine if you would that
He's like some kind of large container. And it comes out and
spills over the top. And just as it spills out, it's
crashing down over us. A waterfall of grace. And it just keeps coming. And
that's the kind I need. I won't last with this grace
that when I went down to the altar and prayed through or whatever
it was that they say they do, that I get this cup full of grace.
Grace is not a once for all pill that we take. It is as food,
an endless supply to make us alive and keep us alive. And every bit of it flows out
of the Lord Jesus Christ. And here's the shocking part. Because that's the way it came
to us, that means that I am favored, not with a favor like is given
to the Lord Jesus Christ. I am favored with the very favor
that was given to Christ. I'm almost afraid to say that.
And I certainly wouldn't if the Bible didn't. How do I know that
that grace cannot fail? How do I know that I can't out
sin it? Because that grace wasn't given
directly to me. It was given to Christ. And until
he fails to be worthy of the favor of God, I'll have it. The welfare of God's household
is completely tied up in Christ. As it goes with Him, so goes
it with us. I'm glad to know, I guess, that
God loves me, but I'm even gladder to know that He loves the Lord
Jesus Christ. Because whatever He gives to
Christ, He gives to me. All right.