Go back to Genesis 45 now with
me. I was just reading the Scriptures,
and you know how you read one thing and it makes you think
of another thing, and it makes you think of another thing, and
you think of another thing. Well, I landed on that and read
it, and I was just so blessed. It was like I'd never read it
before. And those of you who read that with me, if the Lord
blessed the reading of it, And then I think of those who
have not heard the story. And I'm quite sure that somebody
in here has not heard the story of Joseph and his brethren. There's
definitely someone that's going to listen at some point that
has not heard the story. But there's not a clearer story. in the Scriptures of Christ and
Him crucified, of God's mercy and grace and great salvation
to His people because of Christ. That's the whole story of Joseph. That's why it's in the Scriptures.
It started back in chapter 30 and goes to the end of Genesis.
Nearly half of Genesis is dealing with Joseph because he's such
a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ. I love this story. It begins
in verse 1 saying that Joseph could not refrain himself before
all them that stood by him. And he cried, cause every man
to go out from me. And no one was with him while
Joseph made himself known unto his brethren. This is when Joseph
reveals himself to his brethren. They did not know he was on the
throne. They thought he was dead. He's on the throne, had been
there all along. Our Lord Himself, Jesus Christ,
said, This is life eternal, that they might know Thee, the only
true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent. To know God is
salvation. To know Christ, that God sent
Him to this earth. Why? And Matthew 11, our Lord said,
No man knoweth the Son, but the Father, and neither knoweth any
man the Father, but the Son, and He to whom the Son will reveal
Him. Joseph and his brethren didn't
know that Joseph was on the throne, but he had been all along. And
Joseph here in this story is making himself known. He's revealing
himself to his brethren. And he's going to tell them of
his love for them. He's going to show them. He's
going to tell them of what all God did and what all he is going
to do for them. And they didn't deserve him.
It was his brethren. Look at verse 1, it says, He
could not refrain Himself before all them that stood by and cried,
cause every man to go out from Me. Everyone get leave. He was going to reveal Himself
to His brethren. Who's going to know God? Who's
going to know Christ? His brethren, the children of
God. That's who He came for. And He said, get everyone out
of here. He's going to speak to His brethren.
And salvation, when the Lord reveals Himself to you, or your children, whoever it may
be, it's going to be one-on-one. It's going to be to you. He's
going to speak to you. The Lord's got to speak to you
personally. He's got to reveal Himself to
you. And we're going to see here how He reveals Himself. to each
person, his brothers, his sisters, his brethren. Alright? Joseph loved his brethren long
before they loved him. They did not love him in the
beginning. They despised him. How could they? They hated him. They rejected him. You know that? The story of Joseph and his brethren
begins by Joseph being the father's favorite. Why? He was better
than the rest of them. He was. He was the father's favorite.
He was the only legitimate son of Jacob and Benjamin. And so the father loved him,
and he had a character that was far above and exceeded all his
brethren. All his brethren were sorry.
You read the story, they were a sorry bunch of brothers. And what a picture Christ Joseph
is, isn't he? Oh, he's holy, harmless, separate
from sinners. He said, I'm from above, you're
from beneath. Holy and righteous and just and pure and good and
merciful and love and goodness and God the Father could not
refrain himself from heaven and cried two or three times, this
is my beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased. You better hear
him. He's your only hope. But these sorry brethren hated
him without a cause. And the father, Jacob, had sent
Joseph to see about his brethren. In mercy and love and grace,
he sent Joseph to see about these sorry brethren of him. They didn't
deserve for Joseph to come and look on their welfare. But he
did. The father sent him. Father loved
his sorry son, and sent the son of his love to see about them,
and they hated him. And you know the story, don't
you? Most of you? They hated him, they rejected him, despised
him, and they took him, and they were going to kill him. And one of the brethren kept
them from it. Was it Judah? It was Reuben,
I think. Reuben? Was it? Kept them from
it, but so what they did was they devised a plan to make it
look like he died. And they killed a kid. They sacrificed
a lamb and took that blood and took his coat of many colors
that his father gave him, his robe. They stripped Joseph of
his multicolored coat that his father gave him that distinguished
him above his brethren. Are you with me? You know what that's talking
about. I don't have time to go into all this. This is a long
story. But they stripped him and covered that blessed coat
in the blood of a kid. And they brought that coat with
that blood on it to their father and said, He's dead. He's been
killed. He's been rent by beasts. Oh my, what a picture of Christ. Crucified. Christ crucified. And you know what the Scripture
says? Simon Peter stood up at Pentecost
and he preached to people from all over the world. They'd all
gathered. They're all religious. They're
all there, you know, to worship God. They didn't know God. Why? Because they didn't know Jesus
Christ. They thought He was just a man to do with what they wanted
to do. They thought that, you know, He's dead, He's gone, He's
just a man. And they're playing religion. And Simon Peter stood up and
preached Jesus Christ crucified, buried, risen again, seated on
a throne, and everybody guilty of His blood and in His hands
to do with whatever He pleased. And it struck fear in everybody
that heard it. They didn't fear this Jesus that
had been, you know, dead and gone and all that. But when they
heard from God through the preaching of the gospel, through a preacher
of God, it struck fear in their hearts and minds. Fear of Jesus. And He's no longer just Jesus. He's Lord on the throne, and
everybody's life is in His hands to do with whatever He pleases. And Simon Peter didn't ask one
person, will you accept Him as your personal Savior. He didn't
say to one person, please, He wants to save you, God loves
you, and Jesus died for you. He didn't say that. He just said He's sitting on
the throne. And He sat down. And God struck fear in their
hearts. They had despised and rejected
the Lord Jesus Christ. And buddy, they all, to a man,
to a woman, to a young person, said, what are we going to do?
Simon Peter didn't say, now come down front and we'll sing several
verses. No sir! They all, to a man, to a person,
convicted by the Spirit of God, the fear of God in their hearts
and minds, knowing now who Jesus Christ really is and what they
had done to Him, they feared and they said, what are we going
to do? You're going to wait and see
what the Lord does. You're going to find out. And Simon Peter
said, repent, every one of you. Believe on the name of the Lord
Jesus Christ. Be baptized, every single one of you, for remission
of your sins. Save yourselves from this untoward
generation, this generation that doesn't know the Jesus Christ
description, that doesn't know the God of the Bible. Save yourselves
by repenting to God whom you have it known to Jesus Christ
whom he did not know, bow at his feet and confess him that
he's your Lord to do with as he pleases. Ask him for mercy. He's merciful. That's the story
of Joseph. You know that? That's the story
of Joseph. These sorry brethren despised
him, rejected him, would have killed him, sold him. and forgot
about him. He was gone 23 years, and they
didn't give him a thought. You say, I haven't despised and
rejected Jesus Christ. Do you think of Him every day? Some in here have never confessed
Him. Some in here have never confessed Him before men. acknowledge
Him who He is. Some in here have never asked
Him for mercy. Some in here have never bowed
the knee and confessed with their tongue, You're my Lord, would
you please have mercy on me? Some in here have never done
that. You've despised and rejected. To ignore Him, to not confess
Him, to not repent before Him, to not come and worship Him with
a grateful heart is to reject Him. It's to say, I don't care
if He lived or died. And all men, people, your neighbors
that won't get up and go worship God, they've rejected Him. Your
sons and daughters that will not come with you, they've rejected
Him. And these sorry sons of Joseph,
He should have rejected them. Every one of them did that. I
did it. You did it, didn't you? For so long. This is how you know you're one
of His. He convicts you of your sin. Look back at chapter 42. We say this a lot, don't we?
That it's a sin. Talk about sin a lot, don't we?
What is a sin that God holds everyone accountable for? Unbelief. Rejecting Jesus Christ. Oh, everybody,
I'm blessed. God's blessed me. God's blessed
me. God's blessed me. But what about Christ crucified?
What do you think about Christ? That's the issue, isn't it, John?
What do you think of Christ? Whose son is He? Why did He come?
Why did He die? Why are you trusting your works? Why are you trusting your religion?
Trusting whatever you do? Why did Christ die? Why did He die? What's that say
about God? What's that say about you? What's
that say about sin? Somebody's got to die. Genesis 42, look at verse 21. Joseph had been speaking to them
through an interpreter. It was him. They didn't deserve for him to
speak to them. And God, you know, speaks through
his preachers that men also despise. Look at verse 21. They said,
every one of these brothers said, when they were brought to be
convicted, they said, here's what's wrong. Here's why all
this is happening to us. We're guilty concerning our brother,
Joseph. We saw the anguish of his soul,
and he besought us, and we would not hear. We turned as it was
our faces from him. And therefore, this distress
has come upon us. They thought they were going
to die. They thought they were all going to be put in prison
by Joseph. They didn't know it was Joseph. And now God has brought them
to themselves. And this is what God must do
to every single person that He saved. He's got to bring you
to see first who He is, and who Christ is, and your rejection
of Him, and your undeserving of any mercy and grace from Him,
and your fear for your soul and your life. That's when He's going to reveal
Himself to him. I go to chapter 45. These brethren,
oh my, in the providence of God, brought them all through everything,
their lives, all that they went through, all the sin, all the
suffering, all the sorrow, all the... And they brought them to Joseph.
The Lord brought them to Joseph. Verse 45, now here's our story. So Joseph could not refrain himself. But for all them that stood by,
he loved his brethren long before they loved him. He knew his brethren
before they ever knew him. He forgave his brethren long
before they asked for it. Joseph was waiting to be gracious. Joseph was ready to pardon. And God brought these brethren
to Joseph, and he could not help himself any more. He had to tell
them who he was. For the love wherewith he loved
them. You think about that. There's
a verse in the Scripture, well two verses in Hebrew. One says he's not ashamed, God's
not ashamed to call them brethren. And it says the same thing of
Christ. Wherefore, he is not ashamed to call them brethren. Joseph wasn't ashamed of them.
They were ashamed of him. And Joseph is going to confess
them before all of Pharaoh and Egypt and everybody. These are
my brethren. Sorry though they be, Joseph
is going to confess them before everybody. And they denied him to protect
them. And that's our Lord. Isn't he merciful? Isn't he gracious? Oh, my. He couldn't have refrained
himself. Twenty-three years he had been
thinking about his brother. They never gave him a thought.
Twenty-three years he was praying to God for God to bring him back
together again. Twenty-three years. And now here
they are. And look at verse 2. It says,
He wept aloud. And everybody heard it. Brothers and sisters, John 11,
what verse is it? I forget, 13? One of the most, 35. It's the shortest
verse in the Bible. It's the most remarkable verse
of all. Jesus wept. We weep over sorrow, over things
that we have no control of. We weep over things we react
emotionally to things that happen to us. We don't know why they
happen and so on and so forth. He knew the end from the beginning.
He knew. He's not weeping over something
that happened he couldn't, he had no control of. There's something
happened that he wished hadn't happened. That's why we weep. No, no, no. God's not like that.
God knows the end from the beginning and declares things that are
not yet done, saying, this is what I'm going to do. He knew.
Lazarus had died. A friend he loved dearly. Loved
his sister and both his sisters. And Lazarus had died. Who killed
him? He did. Christ did. He's God. He said,
I killed him. He made him sick. And all these
people were grieving. See, he's touched with a feeling
of our infirmity. We have not a high priest who
cannot be touched, but he's touched with a feeling, in all points
tempted like as we are. And it says, the Scripture says,
with strong cryings and tears. These are not things that he
had no control of, but he weeps, he said he bore our griefs and
carried our sorrows. He became a man to bear our sins. He was grieved by sin, vexed
by sin, a whole lot more than we are, long before we were. It was a long time we weren't
vexed by sin, and it was our sin that put Him on the cross,
and we didn't care. But God, thank goodness, thank God,
finally revealed to us that this is why Christ came. To bear your
sins. That's Isaiah 53. God laid on
Him. We've turned our faces from it.
We've despised and rejected it. But here's the thing, God laid
on Him the iniquity of His house. He bore our griefs and carried
our sorrows. He made His soul a soul that
sins and shall surely die. But God made His soul an offering
for sin. And John, when He reveals Himself to you, that's what breaks
your proud, godless heart. He died for the ungodly. That's
what you were when Christ came and revealed himself to you.
You don't deserve this. And you realize, he did this
for me. And all these brethren, to a
man, said, when Joseph finally revealed himself, said they couldn't
speak. They were so afraid. And then he just told them all
that he was going to do for them. Smiling through tears. Oh my, the grace and mercy of
Joseph and being so glad to see these brethren. Oh my. There's going to come a day real
soon that God Almighty was not going to be able to refrain himself
any longer. He's going to say, bring them
all home. Forget the ones that forgot my
son. Forget the ones that don't care
about my son. Leave them alone. But bring my
sons and my daughters to me. It's over. And boy, we're going
to have a good time. And we're all, to a man, to a
woman, going to say. Well, we're going to be silent.
I love that verse in Revelation. Silence in heaven for a space
of thirty minutes. Like these brethren, they couldn't
speak. And we're going to be silent
in heaven as He speaks and tells us, shows us, look at what all
I've done for you. And we're going to be looking
at each other. Then we're going to erupt and
start singing John and never quit. And start laughing and
never quit. No more tears, no more sorrows,
no more guilt, no more sin, no more regrets, no more earth. A place where in dwelleth righteousness.
Does that appeal to you? Where Christ is. Oh my, look
at verse, I've got to hurry, I don't want to take long here.
It says, in verse 2, it says, Joseph wept aloud, and the Egyptians
in the house of Pharaoh heard it. Oh, all heaven heard when
Christ wept. When Christ hung on that cross,
forsaken of God, and said, My God, my God. You know, the whole
world is, oh my God, oh my God, blaspheming God's name, oh my
God, little kid, oh my God, they say it and it makes me cringe
and it makes God angry. The whole world is saying that.
Well, Jesus Christ has substituted for His people that didn't give
Him a thought for so many years, who blaspheme His name too. And
some of your children and some of these people you know are
blaspheming His name right now and saying, oh my God. I pray,
I hope that God will bring them like these sons to see Jesus
cry and cause them to cry out from their hearts, stricken by
grief and repentance, and say, oh my God, my God, have mercy
on me. But Christ hung on that cross,
John, and he said to his people as a substitute, my God, my God,
why hast thou forsaken me? He didn't deserve to be forsaken.
He's the only human being that ever lived that didn't deserve
to be forsaken. But God forsook him. Why? To keep from forsaking you,
Sally Ann. Now that... I all heard it. Haven't heard
it. I think about the angels watching
them take God's son and not really knowing what's going on. And
nail him to the tree. And spit in his face. The son
of God. And people are still doing it. And they watched him, and surely
they thought, God's going to send us to earth to wipe this
place out. But he didn't. And God said, I'm doing this
for some of thee. Ain't that something? And they
all heard it. And Joseph, verse 3, said unto
his brethren, Joseph said unto his brethren,
I am. Who? Who is Jesus Christ? He's God. He's God manifested
in the flesh. He's God come to earth. You see, man cannot please God. Man cannot satisfy God. is sinful through and through.
There's nothing he can do to please God. Man can't get to
God. God's got to come to man. But God can't die. Man must. The soul that sinneth must surely
die. So God became a man to die. He died on a cross. But he lives
because he's God. as a substitute. That's substitution
and what? Satisfaction. As a man, he pleased
God. God couldn't refrain himself.
I'm well pleased for His righteousness sake. This is a holy man, a righteous
man. I'm going to accept Him. Don't
you love Psalm 45, is it? It comes into heaven. Who is
this coming in then? It's the King of glory. Opened
the gates. He's earned heaven. Walking right
in on the merits of His goodness and His righteousness. His good
life. God said, well, come on in. There's
a whole bunch of people coming in with you. Because He did this for them.
He died for them. He made them righteous. He made
sin for them. And they're made the righteousness
of God in Him. Psalm 24. So, oh my. Joseph said, I am. And our Lord Jesus Christ revealed
to his disciples that he said, I am. He's revealed to us. Is
that important? You don't know God if you don't
know Christ is God. Is that important? Christ said
in John 8, 24, if you believe not that I am, you'll die in
your sin. Only God can save us. Only God can say, I forgive you,
my God. So verse 3, Joseph said, I am,
I am Joseph, doth my father yet live? And the brethren could
not answer him, they were so troubled, they were terrified.
And Joseph said in verse 4, come near, come near unto me, come
here, come on, it's all right. Come near unto me, I pray, and
they came near. Oh, my. You know, we can come
unto Him and come unto God by Him. We have boldness to come
unto God by Him. Our Lord stood up one day and
said, Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, I
will give you rest. And Joseph kept saying this,
Come here, I've got something I want to give you. And they came to him. And he
said it again, I am your brother. whom you sold into Egypt. Now,
verse 5, look at it. Let me hurry. Be not grieved
nor angry with yourselves that you sold me hither, for God did
send me before you to preserve life. Don't be angry with yourself. We read that, didn't we, over
there where they all said, it's because of what we did to Joseph.
We're all going to die because of what we did to Joseph. In
Ezekiel 36, the Lord says what all He's going to do for them.
Give them a new heart, put my spirit within you, and convict
of sin. And it says you're going to remember
your evil ways and your doings that were not good, and you're
going to hate yourself. You're going to loathe yourselves
in your own sight for your iniquities and for your abomination. And
you're going to loathe yourselves all your life, for the rest of
your life. You're going to be convicted
of your sin the rest of your life, because you're going to
keep sinning. And you finally realize it's
against God. And so Joseph said to them, they
were grieved over this, and he said, it's okay. He said, don't be grieved. Come near. He said, don't be
angry with yourselves. Yes, you sold me hither. But it was God that did this.
Isn't that what Peter preached at Pentecost? He said, you with
wicked hands have taken and crucified the Lord of glory. But you did
what God's purpose determined before to be done. This was God
that did that. Yes, you're to be blamed, but
God's to be glorified. God's to be thanked for doing
it. Read on with me. Let's just read through here. He said, God sent me before you,
verse 5, to preserve life. You sold me, but God did it,
and God sent me to preserve your life, and God sent Christ into
this world To preserve life. He said, I am come that they
might have life. To bring us from death unto life. So he says in verse two, or verse
six, I'm sorry. He said, now two years he'd been
in famine. And you know, he brought them
They were all hungry and thirsty, and that's why they came to hear
Joseph speak. And that's why you finally came
to hear the Gospel. The Lord gave you a hunger and
a thirst. Oh, blessed are they that hunger
and thirst. They said, there's still five more years of famine. And if I don't feed you from
now on, you're going to die. I brought you here to preserve
your life. Why are you sitting in that pew? You're hearing the
gospel of Jesus Christ. And there are very few people
who are really hearing this gospel. Very few people out there are
hearing the God of the Bible, the Christ of the Scripture.
You say, that's awful bold. Listen to them. Listen to them. And you tell me if you're hearing
the God of the Bible. Tell me if you're hearing Christ crucified
every time a man stands up. Senators got to hear that, don't
they? Every time. Christ said, if I be lifted up, that's when
I'll draw people to me. No other way. One thing needful. And we feast on that, time and
time again. And there's five years, there's
some more famine left. There's a famine of the hearing
of the Word in this land, all over the world. That's the gospel,
that's the truth. And you're hearing it time and
time again, because God brought you here to hear the gospel.
You're not here by accident. Joseph brought these men there.
They didn't decide to come there. He brought them. God brought
them there to hear Joseph's voice, to tell them what he's going
to do for them. Aren't we blessed? Boy, these
brethren, after this is all over, are thinking, my, how could we
have been so stupid? How could we have rejected Him
when He loved us so much? How? How? What's wrong with us? Aren't we thankful to be here
now? We'd die if we hadn't left and come where Joseph is. If
we hadn't heard His voice, we'd be dead. And so it is with me. He said, God sent me before you,
verse 7, to preserve you of posterity. And don't you love this sinner
reference? Remnants. Do you know this whole
story about these twelve no good brothers of Joseph? The whole story is about them.
Anybody been to Egypt? Nuh-uh. He told the Egyptians
and everybody, get out of here. I'm going to talk to these boys.
I got something to say to these fellas. I'm going to tell them
my covenant. I'm going to tell them my goodness.
I'm going to tell them my love for them. I'm going to feed them. They're going to live in conclusion
of this. He said, you're going to be,
verse 10, you're going to dwell with Me in the land of Goshen.
From now on, you're going to dwell with Me. You're going to
be near unto Me. Near and dear unto Me. Levi? Simeon? Instruments of cruelty? Unstable as water? Semen? Yeah. It's going to be near and dear
to me. It's going to stay with me forever. Your children are sitting here
in this gospel. Your children's children are here in this gospel.
Isn't that amazing? Your son's sitting
there. It's the mercy and the grace
that you're sitting there. There sits your son. There sits
your grandson. Isn't God good to us? Why? Jesus Christ. Sovereign mercy. Sovereign grace. We say that,
but why? Because He's sovereign. You wouldn't
be sitting here. Your children wouldn't be sitting
here. We wouldn't be hearing this blessed message if God didn't
love you. If Christ hadn't died for you.
If God didn't bring you. If God didn't make this covenant
with Christ concerning you, you wouldn't be here. You would not
be here. He'd still reject you. And he
said in verse 11, he said, I will nourish you throughout this whole
famine, lest you and your household all come to poverty. I'm going
to nourish you from now on. In verse 12 he said, behold,
your eyes see, the eyes of my brother Benjamin, and you see
it's my mouth that speaks unto you. You're seeing me and you're
hearing me, that it's me. Didn't our Lord say, blessed
are your eyes, they see. Did you see this sister, did
you see when we were reading Genesis, might as well be Isaiah
45, did you see that was clearly Jesus Christ that we were reading? There was a time you didn't see
that. Blessed are your eyes I say. Blessed are your ears. And some
of you have heard this a thousand times. And yet when you were
reading it, it was just as new and just as precious and just
as sweet as the first day you heard it. Huh? Wasn't it a blessing
to you, reading it? And now you're hearing it again?
You're going to hear this again? Yes! Why? That's somebody that God really
loves and somebody God has put His love in their heart for Him,
for the truth, for Christ, the conviction of sin. You're going to see until the
day you die that you need Christ. In fact, the older you get, you're
going to see you need Christ more now than you ever did. You're going to need this gospel
more than you ever did. The closer you get to glory,
the more sinful you feel. Surely he's done with me now.
Every one of these brethren were older, Kelly. They were old men
by this time. He's going to be done with it?
No. No, no, no, no, no. He loves them. He said, they're
going to be with me forever. You see, here's what I love about
this. They're standing there. They're
not saying anything. And Joseph's just telling them.
Who He is, and what He's done, what God has done, and what He's
going to do with them for the rest of their lives. That's what the gospel is. Not
begging men to accept God. Telling sinners convicted by
the Spirit of God, God accept you. Telling sinners that bow
at the feet, every knee will bow. These brethren said, we
ain't bowing. They heard this prophecy in the
beginning. Joseph said, you're going to
bow to me. You're going to confess to me. They said, no way. I don't
believe God's like that. No, my God's not like that. Yes,
he is. That's not my Jesus. He's standing
outside my heart's door and I'll let him in when I get good and
pleased. That's your Jesus. That's not God's Jesus. And you
will bow your knee. And you will confess with your
tongue. And you will get in that pool
and say, God has had mercy on me. I deserve to die. But Christ
died in my stead. Thank God. Let me confess Him
a thousand times. This generation doesn't know
God, doesn't know Jesus Christ. But you do. Why? Smile. God loves you. You know who He is. He struck
fear in your heart, convicted you of your sin, and you see
Jesus Christ for who He really is. And you've confessed Him. And Christ said, I'm going to
confess you before everybody. The angels in heaven know. It
says they rejoice when one sinner repents. And it's the goodness
of God that leads every single sinner to repent. Or they wouldn't
do it. They wouldn't come. You know why you came? You know
why you come to Christ? Because Christ said, All that
the Father giveth me shall come to me. He didn't ask anybody
to come to Him. He said, Come. And they came.
Did you come? Do you keep coming? God loves you. You're elect. No. And moreover, it says, verse
15, he kissed all his brethren and wept upon them. And they
finally could talk. They finally could talk. Ron,
what do you think they were talking about from here on out? When
they saw who their brother really was, and heard what all He had
done for them, and what God had done to Him for them, and what
all He's going to do for them from then on. You know, they're
just guilty. Their mouths have been stopped.
And now Joseph just reveals all His goodness and His love and
His mercy to them, and what all He's going to do for them from
now on. What's their conversation from then on? What are they going
to talk about from then on? Huh? The weather? Who's going
to be elected next Pharaoh? Who cares? Our Lord's on the throne. And
our conversation now is in heaven. No matter who He put. There were
Pharaoh after Pharaoh after Pharaoh after Pharaoh, but Jesus Christ
is still on the throne. Aren't you glad? You've got nothing
to worry about. And He put you in the land of
Goshen. Now look at this in closing.
Verse 24, He sent His brethren away. And He sent us out in the
world. He said, I pray not that you
should take them out of the world, but deliver them from the evil
of it. And as they departed, His last words to them were this.
You're going out. You're going back. Remember,
He said, you're going to leave that stuff. I wish I had another
hour. He said, don't worry about that
stuff at home. The good of Egypt is here. But He said in verse
24, As they were leaving, see that you fall not out by the
way. Don't fall back. Don't go back. Come back to me. Go back and
get your father and get your brother and bring them to me.
Don't fall out by the way. And brethren, we are His house
if we hold fast the beginning of our confidence and rejoicing
to the end.