Well brother, once again, the
Lord be with you as you come before us. I believe this is part two,
isn't it? Something like that, we'll see. Alright, brethren. Let's go back
to Genesis chapter 50. I'm thankful for Brother John
and thankful the Lord has put our lives together. I've
been blessed to know Him and blessed to know you. And I'm
very thankful to be with you again. Now, we saw last night Verse 15, when Joseph's brethren
saw that their father was dead, they said, Joseph will perpetuate
us and will certainly requite us all the evil which we did
unto him. And they sent a messenger unto
Joseph, saying, Thy father did command before he died, saying,
So shall you say unto Joseph, Forgive, I pray thee now, the
trespass of thy brethren and their sin. For they did unto
thee evil. And now we pray thee, forgive
the trespass of the servants of the God of thy Father." And
Joseph wept when they spake unto him. And his brethren also went
and fell down before his face. And they said, Behold, we be
thy servants. Last time we saw in these brethren
the unbelief that every believer is sometimes overcome with. They
thought since their father Jacob had died that now Joseph would
repay them for all the evil they had done when in fact he had
told them already he forgave them. And he had put them in
the land of Goshen and he had provided for them and they had
all this good. And sometimes believers can be
overcome with unbelief and see our sin and think things like
this, that the Lord now will cast us out, repay us for the
evil of our sin. But when they finally went to
Joseph, this was Joseph's answer. Verse 19, And Joseph said unto
them, Fear not, for I am in the place of God, But as for you,
you thought evil against me. But God meant it unto good to
bring to pass as it is this day to save a bunch of people alive.
Now therefore fear ye not, I will nourish you and your little ones."
And he comforted them and spoke kindly unto them. Our gospel
is the gospel of free grace. It's the gospel of sovereign
grace. We rejoice to know that all that
God our Father chose in Christ, every one that He elected under salvation
in Christ, He blessed with all spiritual blessings and heavenly
places in Christ before this world was made. And Christ laid
down His life for us and thoroughly, totally put away the sin of His
people. And the Spirit of God is calling
out all His people and He's called you out to believe. And He's
given you life that you didn't have. He's given you faith you
didn't have. He's given you a willingness to believe on Him. And when you
went to Christ, He made you know. He's fully forgiven you. He put
away all your sin and it's all of grace. And how many times when you see your sin as a believer,
And you go to Him and you ask mercy and He continues to drop
this good news into your heart and make you know you're saved
by grace. He's not going to let you go. Grace chose you. Grace is going
to save you. Grace is going to carry you all
the way to the end. We're saved entirely by God. We're saved by our God beginning
at the end. He's the Alpha and Omega. We
have been taught this. over and over and over and over
by our Lord. We hear it, we rejoice in it.
This is our gospel. How many times does a brother
sin and you hear about it? Or perhaps they offend you and they
sin against you. And do you find yourself all
of a sudden acting like you never heard about the grace of God?
We do don't we? People go to talking, the rumor
mill goes, and everybody starts having their input, and everybody
is just stirring one another up to forget God. To forget the God of all grace
and the grace by which He saved us. For believers who believe
on Christ, our sins greatly trouble us. We are yet sinners. We don't love sin. We don't say,
let us sin that grace may abound. But we do sin and we see our
sin. But when you go to the Lord,
The message is still the same. The grace is still the same.
The good news is still the same. And He keeps making you know
it over and over and over. Try to remember that when you
see sin in your brethren. And when your brethren sin against
you and offend you. Try to remember how many times
the Lord has forgiven you. and keep showing you mercy. Mercy. Mercy. Mercy. Forgiveness. Forgiveness. Forgiveness. Forgiveness. And the message is always the
same. When we come to the Lord and our sins are weighing us
down, the message is the same as the first hour He called us
to Him. We would get in this unbelief
and we think, the Lord won't receive me. I've sinned and I
can't be His child. The message is always the same. The Lord says, let the wicked
forsake his way. You and I are the wicked in our
flesh still. Let us forsake our way. And the
unrighteous man his thoughts. In our flesh dwells no good thing.
We're still the unrighteous man in our sinful nature. Let us
forsake our unrighteous thoughts. and let him return unto the Lord. This is what the Lord keeps telling
us. This is what the Lord keeps drawing us with. And He says,
and he will have mercy upon him. Isn't that what He told you the
first time? Isn't that what you heard in
the first hour when the Lord said, forget your wicked ways,
turn from your unrighteous thoughts, go to the Lord and He'll have
mercy on you. And to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.
Listen to God now, for my thoughts are not your thoughts. And my
ways are not your ways, saith the Lord. We're so prone by our
nature not to forgive, and we're so accustomed to dealing with
sinners in the world that won't forgive, that we start thinking God won't
forgive us. And sadly, we get into this place
where we start thinking, well, I just don't know if I can forgive
this brother that's done this. God says, forsake your ways,
forsake your thoughts, return to me, I will have mercy on you,
I will abundantly pardon you, for my thoughts are not your
thoughts. He's not like us. Haven't you
found it to be so? He's not like us. All these things
that sinners use to try to distinguish ourselves from one another. Race,
place, face, even grace. Male, female, educated, uneducated,
rich, poor. All these things we use to try
to distinguish ourselves. You know what Christ did in Ephesians
2? He came and He's our peace. And here's how He brought peace.
He fulfilled the law for his people and took it out of the
way so that there's nothing you and I can use anymore to exalt
ourselves over anybody else and say, well, I'm a little bit better
than they are. He's our peace. He made us both
one. He's speaking of Jew and Gentile
elect, but it's so of male and female, rich and poor, whatever
the distinction, these superficial, carnal differences that we try
to use to say we're different from one another. No, we're not.
I'm a worm and you're a worm. We're a sinner before God. That's
all we are. And if God dealt with us according
to what we deserve, we'd be in hell today. The difference is
the difference grace has made. The difference is God has chosen
His people and He's called His people and He's made us to see
our righteousness, mine, yours, and all who He's called to grace
is Christ and Him only. And we don't have a bit of difference
in ourselves to be able to exalt ourselves over one another at
all. Not at all. This is what creates peace between
brethren. This is what creates peace. Nothing
else. Nothing else. Well, when our brethren sin,
especially if they sin against us and they offend us, how do
we respond when they ask for mercy? Now I want you to look
at Joseph. Last time we looked at Joseph
as a type of Christ and we looked at us coming there with our unbelief.
I want you to look at Joseph tonight as the believer that
he is. And what Joseph does here, he
does only by God's grace. Because he's a sinner just like
you and me. But he did what he did by God's
grace. But I want you to look at this, and I want you to think
about everything Joseph suffered at the hand of his brethren. They told his father he was dead.
And that broke his father's heart for years. And Joseph now knows
about this, that they broke their father's heart, who thought he
was a dead man. They sold him into slavery. He
went down there. He was lied on when he got to
Egypt. You think about this. You know
it hurts when you're lied upon and somebody bears false witness
against you. And there's nothing you can do
to defend yourself. You can't say a word. You're
just going to make it worse if you say a word. And Joseph couldn't.
Bonhoeffer should have known how faithful Joseph had been
and sided with Joseph. But he didn't. And it was just
his wife's word against Joseph, that's all it was. And he threw
him in prison. And all of this Joseph suffered.
And I'll tell you something else. I think more than all of that
evil, and all that was evil that his brothers did against him,
but more than that, After Joseph had forgiven them
and put them in Goshen and did all this for them, they're now
coming to Him. And you think about what they're
really saying. They're really saying, Joseph, we don't believe
that you're going to be true to your word. That's right. We
think you might now, because Daddy died, you might go back
on your word and take vengeance on Him. That's even more hurtful
than everything else they did to Him. Now all of the things He suffered
typified Christ. And if you think of what Christ
suffered for us, think of what Christ suffered for us, for His
people. Think of everything He suffered for His people. And think of how He's forgiven
you. You know, you think about it.
There are sins you can't even remember. Not only that, there
are sins you don't even know. And He bore them. And bore them
away. And put them away forever. And
God says, I remember them no more. I mean, when He has forgiven
us, God who cannot forget anything, God who knows everything, says,
look at the record books. There's no record that you've
ever sinned. Past, present, or future. Your
entire life has been the perfection Christ is. That's what God says. That's what justification is.
It's having no record, past, present, or future, of sin. Only
the perfect righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's
what God freely has given us. That would help us greatly. First
of all, when we start to doubt due to our sin, but also when
a brother sins or a brother sins against us, to stop and remember,
what has the Lord forgiven me of? What's he forgiven you of? So when they came and fell down
and said, we'd be thy servants. Listen to what Joseph said to
them. This is what Joseph knew. You see, what we're seeing here
in Joseph is a man who knew something about what a sinner he is. Now I know the scripture never
says a bad thing about Joseph because he is a beautiful picture
of Christ, and that's why. But he's a sinner. But you know
what you see in Joseph being able to do this? The Lord, if
a man can do what Joseph is doing right here, by God's grace, it's
because the Lord has shown him what a sinner he is and what
a Savior Christ is. That's right. And here's what
Joseph answered them. Verse 19, Joseph said to them,
Fear not, for am I in the place of God? Now just think about that. You know where Joseph was at
this time? Pharaoh is the king. Pharaoh is the Pharaoh of Egypt.
That's like being the king of Egypt. It's a title. And Joseph
is his right hand man. He is the second in charge under
Pharaoh. And Egypt is the most powerful
nation in the world at this time. As far as men goes, you know
scripture refers to men as gods who are rulers. It just refers
to them as rulers. God told Moses, I'll make you
a god, Pharaoh. God told Moses that. And it's
just a symbol of man's power that God gives him. Well that's
what Joseph was at this time as far as the position he held.
He was a powerful, powerful man. He was a very humble man who
had been humbled by the grace of God to see what a sinner he
was. And his answer was, fear not, for am I in the place of
God? Joseph remembered this about
himself and he told them, it's not my place to take vengeance
on you. Joseph said, fear not, I'm not
God. I'm not the judge. That's the
first thing to remember. Joseph knew he was a sinner saved
by grace. And if we know this, we will
remember this. It's not our place to crawl up
into the judgment seat. It's not our place to crawl into
God's seat of judgment. That's not our place. It's not
our place. It's our place to forgive. It's our place to forgive even
as God, for Christ's sake, has forgiven us. God is our Savior. He's our God. He's our Judge. Mine and yours. God saved you
and me by His grace and forgiveness for Christ's sake. And the judge,
the just judge, because He came and satisfied His own justice
in the place of His people and honored His law fully for His
people, the just judge says the just thing is to show you mercy. When you sin, when you fall,
The just judge says, because I've satisfied my justice and
because you're righteous in me, the just thing is to show you
mercy. Aren't you thankful for that?
Aren't you thankful for that? He says there's no more fury
in me. He said I plead the cause of
my people. He said, I've taken out of your
hand the cup of trembling and the dregs of the cup of my fury. You will not drink it again.
That's what God said to you and me. You won't drink it again. But now listen, He not only makes
us know this the first hour He calls us, He keeps making His
people know this. And if we start trying to crawl
up in the judgment seat, He's going to make us know this. Yes,
He is. I had a friend that was, well,
my pastor, Marvin Stoniker, he went to court one day with a
man who was in the congregation there in Franklin, Tennessee,
Jay Bird. And Jay Bird, and I forget, he
worked at a convenience store, and he'd sold alcohol to somebody
that came in and had a fake ID, and he didn't know they had a
fake ID. And he got in trouble for doing it. And he's just working
at a convenience store. So he had to go to court. And
Marvin's sitting there with him. And the judge keeps on calling
out people's names. And several people got up and
tried to go up and talk to the judge and represent themselves.
And the judge was throwing a book at them. I mean, he was just
telling them, you don't know the law. You don't speak my language. And you're guilty. You can't
represent yourself. And he just kept on throwing
the book at them, making their sentence worse, their fine worse
than what it was. This went like some criminal
court. It's just minor court, you know. And Marvin didn't see
Jay's lawyer anywhere. And he was getting worried. And
in a little bit, the judge called out Jay's name. And Jay just about went to stand
up. And when he did, his lawyer stood
up and said, I'll represent him. And the judge said, we'll talk
later. Next. We have an advocate with the
Father. Amen. And it's not our, we don't have
to stand up before God and try to defend ourselves and try to
represent ourselves. We have an advocate with the
Father. And when we sin, Now my little
children, these things write onto you that you sin not. We
don't want to sin. But when you do, we have an advocate
with the Father. Jesus Christ the righteous and
He is the propitiation for our sins. He is our mercy seat. He is our atonement. He is our
satisfaction with God. And He does all the talking for
us. And we don't have to. Can we not remember that when
a brother has offended us and sinned against us? Remember,
I'm not in the place of God. I'm not the advocate. I'm not
in the judgment seat. What would be better? Turn them
to Him who is. Turn them to Him who is. It takes
grace, don't it? It takes grace, don't it? But just say, now when you're
sinned against, and you're offended, and you're greatly offended,
wouldn't it be good if we could just take that, that offense,
and instead of climbing up the judgment seat to one another,
remember, This is exactly how my sin offends God. When you
feel that and somebody did something to you, just stop a minute and
remember, this is how my sin offended God. And yet God, what
did He do for you? He sent His only begotten Son
to bear not just that offense, every offense we committed against
him and bear the wrath that we deserve and put it all away. We really don't have any excuse
for anger or judgment or vengeance of any flavor when somebody has
offended us, do we? when we think about what we've
done to God, and how He sent His Son to lay down His life
for us. And yet, I'm right there with
you. I'm not preaching down to you.
Somebody does something to offend you, and isn't it just? You think
you could have some peaceful time, and you go a little while
and you have some peace, You're walking with the Lord, and your
heart is set on Him, and you think, you think you kind of, you haven't
had trouble. And then all of a sudden, somebody
does something out of the blue, and that flesh, you find out,
it's still right there with you. That's right. It offends you,
and it's still right there with you. Oh, that we could remember right
then and that moment, right then and that moment, I need my Lord
to forgive me of this evil in me. Not that one that's offending
me and causing me. In me, for being offended. And fly to His judgment seat
and cast ourselves in His mercy. Because you know what you always
find there? Mercy. Mercy. never-ending, unceasing,
unchanging, unchangeable love and grace and mercy for Christ's
sake. Now secondly, Joseph suffered
so much evil at their hands and yet he reminds them again of
God's glory and the good God worked in it to save them. He
said, as for you, you thought evil against me. Sin's evil,
brethren. Our sin's evil. That's all it
is. We don't realize how evil our
sin is. Sin's evil. I'm talking about,
and I'm not just talking about them people out there and that
bad stuff that we call sin. I'm talking about whatever is
not equal to the righteousness of God. That's right. Amen. And
that's all that's in our flesh. And I don't say that to excuse
anybody that has committed some terrible sin. I'm saying that
to make you know that though you may see somebody who's committed
some terrible sin, your sin's not any less than theirs. That's what I'm saying. That's
the only way we're going to be merciful, is to remember that. Paul was a regenerated believer
and he said, I delight in the law of God after the end where
man, don't you? Don't you love God's holy law?
You see how righteous your Savior is when you look at that law.
And it's a good law. I mean, if we could keep the
law of God, we would be in heaven. We won't need a law in heaven
because that would be everybody's way in heaven. It's to just do
what the law says. It'd just be our natural way. But you see that law's holy,
it's just and it's good. But the law's good to me because
it not only showed me that I'm not holy, just and good in myself,
it showed me how holy, just and good my Savior is, and it showed
me how holy, just and good He's made me in Him. So yeah, we love
the law, but I see another law, don't you? And it's in your members,
it's in your flesh, and it's constantly It's constantly warring
against the law of your mind and it's constantly bringing
you into captivity. I get so weary of hearing people
talk about how they can mortify their flesh and they can put
down their sin and they can do this and that. Paul said, it
brings me into captivity. And what people that are going
around posting about how they can mortify their flesh and how
they can keep control of their sin, what they don't realize
is they're captive. While they're sitting there making
that post, they're captive. By that very law they claim they're
living above. It's the law of sin that's in
our memory. Who's going to deliver us from that? I thank God through
Jesus Christ my Lord. And you know when you know that?
It's when Paul said, when I'm weak, that's when I'm strong.
That's right. When He's made you see, you don't have anything
in you. We're in the post. Not even any
grace to lift your head up. Not even, I mean, you're just
weak and you just see yourself as a sinner. If He casts me out,
He's just to do it. Like where David was when he
said in Psalm 51, Lord have mercy on me. According to your tender
mercy, according to your loving kindness, feel with me in that. Because I've sinned against you.
I've sinned against you and you only. That you might be just
when you speak. When we're there and God makes
you see, you're righteous in my son. And that moment is when
you know, He's my only strength. He's my only righteousness. I
don't have any. And sometimes when we think we're
doing pretty good and we're walking along, we're being good, good
little believers. It's just so ugly. It's just so ugly. Because we're not dependent on
Christ only. He's got to keep us there. He's
got to keep us there. But think about this. Joseph says, God meant it to
good. You meant it for evil. God meant
it for good to bring to pass as it is this day to save much
people alive. God is so absolutely sovereign
over everything that has ever happened in this world. Everything
has been running exactly on track since the first click of the
first second. Our Lord has not been out of
control of anything. When the devil was cast out of
heaven, that was according to God's purpose. When he entered
the garden, it was according to God's purpose. When Adam sinned,
it was according to God's purpose. And everything that has ever
happened since then, the sin is all of us. The sin is our
fault. We don't have no excuse for that. But God's been overruling
every bit of it since the beginning of time. And all you got to do
is look to Calvary's cross. Men were doing exactly what was
in their heart to do. We were doing that to it. We
need to stop talking about who crucified Christ. I crucified
Christ and you crucified Christ. If you're His, you did. We did
that to Christ. But we meant evil, but God meant
it for good. And He saved all His people. when He did that. He atoned for
our sin. He made us righteous in Christ.
So look to the cross. Everything that happened worked
for the salvation of His people. Now knowing that, when your brother sins, when you sin, when your brother
sins, when your brother sins against you, Can you not stop and remember? My Lord told me the very hairs
of my head are all numbered. He said, not a sparrow falls
to the ground without your Father's consent. He has shown me He is working
all things together for good to them that love God, to them
that are called according to His purpose. Can we say that and remember that? Has He not
overruled all your sin and showed you what good He has wrought
for you and brought out of it? As evil as your sin was, As wicked
as it was, has He not shown you Christ and all the good He's
brought for you in spite of your sin? Oh, that we could remember that
when a brother falls. Oh, that we could remember that
when they sin against us. I don't know how He's going to
work it. I don't know what He's going to do, but it's going to
work out for the good of His people. My good, your good, and
that brother's good. Joseph, think of what he suffered.
You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good, to save much
people alive. How could he be angry at his
brethren when he saw what good God had brought from it? That's
what he's telling them. And he's shown us this, brethren,
every day. Every day he's shown us this.
Now let me ask you something. When you're sinned against, when
you're offended, and I'm talking about, I know now, when I say
this, I'm not saying as soon as you're offended, just overcome
it. No, no, no. You won't. I won't either. But it takes
a little time, and then the Lord brings these things to your remembrance,
and you start considering these things, and He starts humbling
you to remember what He's done for you, And He works all this
for His people. I'm just trying to tell you some
things to help you remember these next time and think about them. Look at what Joseph said. Because
he knew God did all this and brought all this good, he said,
verse 21, Now therefore fear ye not. I wonder what it would
do if a brother sinned against us if we immediately said, Brother,
don't fear. Don't fear. I will nourish you. That's what
Joseph told them. And your little ones. And he
comforted them and he spake kindly to them. Is there anybody here who needs
forgiveness from God? Anybody? Anybody here who needs
forgiveness from brethren? Anybody here who needs to forgive
brethren? Without even knowing your particular
situation, of every one of us, I say a resounding yes. Yes. Because this is the life
of a believer. We need forgiveness from God
continually. We need to forgive brethren continually. And we need forgiveness from
brethren continually. If we could remember that last
part, that we need forgiveness from brethren continually, it
would help us to forgive other brethren. There's some brethren I want
to say, you just don't know how much your brethren are forgiving
you all the time. God's people know God's forgiveness
for Christ's sake. Not yesterday. We know it every
day, don't we? We experience it every day. The
worst of our sin. Let me tell you what the worst
sin we have is. The very worst sin. I don't doubt this at all.
If you read Paul's writing, you'll find out he dealt with this more
and more and more the more the Lord used him. Our chief sin
is pride. Amen. Our chief sin is self-consciousness. Our chief sin is thinking less,
thinking ourselves less sinful than we really are. That's our
chief sin. But what grace He turns us to
behold Christ and what He's done for us continually and keeps
humbling us to see. We don't have anything to be
proud of. We don't. He that glories, let him glory
in the Lord. Now I'm going to wrap this up.
Now listen to what our Lord said. You know, here's where we are.
This is what we do. This is what we say. We're going
to justify ourselves. You know that. I pray that you all hear what
you're saying, They just keep sinning the same sin. They just keep sinning the same
sin. God ever forgiven you of the
same sin? You keep sinning the same sin? This is what our Lord said. Take
heed to yourselves, and if your brother trespasses against you,
rebuke him. Oh, we don't have a problem with
that part. It's this next part we have a
little more trouble with. And if he repents, forgive him. And this next part we have a
great problem with. And if he trespasses against
thee seven times in a day, just keep committing the same
sin. If he trespasses against thee seven times in a day, And
seven times in a day turn again to the exceed, I repent, thou
shalt forgive him. You know what the next thing
the disciples asked the Lord when He told them this? The next thing they asked Him,
Lord, increase our faith. Increase our faith. Here's Joseph's brethren sinning
against Him again. Peter came to the Lord and said,
Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive
him? Till seven times. That's what he'd heard the Lord
say. If he'd sinned against you seven times in a day. Till seven
times, Lord? The Lord said, no, Peter. Till seventy times seven. And
then he told that story. And this is what I'm trying to
say. This is the parable, and this
is the whole message I'm trying to convey to you. There's this
man. He owed his Lord 10,000 talents. He didn't have anything to pay
him. And his Lord came to him for
payment. He fell down on his face and
said, I'll pay you everything. I don't have it, I'll pay you
everything. And his Lord had pity on him and forgave him everything. Same man went out. He had a servant. This servant. This servant owed
him a hundred pence. Far less. Far less. He laid his hands on him. He
took him by the throat. He said, pay me what you owe
me. Same His fellow servant did the same thing he did. He fell
down at his feet and beside him said, have patience with me,
I'll pay you everything. That's the same thing he had
said to his Lord. And he wouldn't. He would not. But he cast him
into prison that he should pay the debt. The fellow servants
came and they told this man's servant. And he said, oh, that Lord said,
oh, thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because you
desired me to. Shouldest not thou also have
had compassion on thy fellow servant, even as I had pity on
thee? And his Lord was angry, and delivered
him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due to
him. And this is what the Lord said
about all that. So likewise shall my Heavenly Father do also to
you, if you from your hearts forgive not every one his brother,
his trespassers." Now, let me tell you something.
I know that you see a brother's sin, and I know you want to honor
God. You want to glorify the Lord.
You do. And I know that you want to see your brethren glorify
the Lord. And when they sin, that's offensive to us as believers
because it's against our rule. And that fast, we forget how
much the Lord's forgiven us. But let me tell you what the
Lord said in James. He said, when we become judges
of the law, We're not doers of the law. There's one Lord. He's the judge. And He's able to save and He's
able to destroy. What is it to be a doer of the
law? It's love. That's what it is
to be a doer of the law. It's to love. And you know what
creates love? There is forgiveness with thee
that thou mayest be feared. It's the forgiveness of God who's
forgiven us all this great debt that makes us love Him and fear
Him and reverence Him. And what our Lord has done us
for is so that when your brother sins and he sins against you, Don't try to take the Lord out
of His seat and be the judge. He's the judge. He sent the brother
to you and put him right in front of you with all his faults and
all his sins and all his shortcomings and gave you the eyes to see
it and know about it and brought it to your ears and brought it
to your attention so that you'd know this brother failed. The
Lord worked every bit of that to bring that right to your face.
Why? to give you the opportunity to
do for that brother what Christ has done for you. That's why. Get that now. That's why He did
it. Not to take him by the throat. Not to throw him out. He did it so that you
could say, But Joseph said to his brother, I know you meant
it for evil, but God meant it for good, to save much people
alive. Fear not. Fear not. I'm not in the judgment seat.
Fear not. Let me nourish you. How are you
going to nourish your brother? What great things the Lord's
done for you and for Him. Remind Him. Turn Him back to
Christ. And remind Him. We have this bad, messed up idea
that we're oppressing people, that we're so religious and know
so much and we've been in the faith so long when we're judgmental
and condemning and that's wrong and this is wrong and we're able
to point out everything. That don't impress me when somebody
does that. I hear it everywhere I go. You
know what that makes me know? This person don't really know
much about grace. And they wouldn't dare take their
clothes off and show you their nakedness in front of you. They
wouldn't dare do that. But that's what men are doing. Trying to
act like they know something and they've been in the face
so long and they know so much about everything and they can
point out all the faults of everybody else. And I want to just sometimes
hold up a mirror and say, what about this one? Grace makes us say, listen now,
I am the chief of sinners. That's not just some religious
platitude. If you really are the chief of
sinners, that will make you say, brother, you following? Well, then, you finally down
here with me. Let me help you back up. I don't have anything to punch
down. Nothing. I'm a sinner. I can't condemn anybody. And the only reason I know this
is God has been merciful and forgiven me and keeps doing it. And I pray he would just keep
on mortifying this Pharisee in me that wants to climb up in
the judgment seat and condemn. Don't you hate that man? I hate
that Pharisee in me. And right when I think he finally
The Lord mortified him a little and got him subdued. There he
comes back again. What I'm saying to you, brethren,
is what we see in Joseph is a sinner who knew he was a sinner, who
saw what great grace God had shown him. How did he learn all
that? He went through all that suffering. He was forgotten in prison. You
look in Scripture. I know we get to complain about
the things the Lord puts us through. The man who wrote 3 fourths of
the New Testament wrote it for a prison. What would you say? What would you say? If you heard
one of the preachers was in jail, and everybody started talking
about it, and everybody started putting their two cents in on
it, on why they thought he was there, That's what was going
on with the Apostle Paul. And Paul said, and everybody
forsook me, but just a handful. And that's the man God used to
write three-fourths of this New Testament. And the man that God
used to write most of the Old Testament, all the sons, his
sons and his family and the Israelites, and everybody wanted to kill
him. And he spent most of his time in caves out in the wilderness
on the run, right there. And both those men paled in comparison
to the man who saved both those men and the one who saved me
and you. Our Lord was forsaken by everybody. You see, what I'm learning from
that is These trials and these falls and these sins and these
sufferings that we go through, that's how we're going to learn.
Salvation is all of God's grace. That's how we're going to learn
what grace is. I know I've kept you a long time,
but I do pray greatly. This is the most important thing
we'll ever learn in this life. This thing of coming in and just
hearing pretty messages and going out. Listen, I want you to come
here and I want to hear the gospel preached and I would love to
come and hear the gospel preached. This is where you're going to
hear it. Out there is where you're going to find out it's real.
And all these things that are happening, they're on purpose.
And God's doing it to teach us salvation is a person, that person
is working, in every life of His people. Let us remember that
and let us love one another and be gracious to one another and
help one another look to Him. Because He's the judge. What
He's doing is right. And He's working it for the salvation
of me and you and each other. If we could just remember that
and be gracious to one another. I pray God will bless that. He's listing off those questions
and I'm sitting here checking them all off with me. Do I need
to forgive somebody? Absolutely. Do I need forgiveness
from some people? Absolutely. Our Lord works in mysterious
ways. Clay had no idea what we were
going to close tonight's song with. Grace. greater than our shame.