If you would, go back with me
to the book of Genesis now, and we'll go to Genesis chapter 45. I had thought that I would go
on in to chapter 46 tonight, but I was asked if I would address
a particular topic And since she acts so nicely, I then started
studying this message on the subject, it is enough. My wife,
when she studied this, read this passage, said, I wish if the
Lord would lead you, if you'd preach on that statement in verse
28 of Genesis 45, And Israel said, it is enough. Joseph, my son, is yet alive. I will go and see him before
I die. So my subject is, it is enough. Now you will remember that the
sons of Jacob have returned. Joseph has sent them back to
their dad. And Jacob is an old man. Jacob
is 130 years old, and he speaks as one who thinks that he's soon
to die, though he will in fact live another 17 years or so. But the sons told him, Joseph
is alive. And that so startled Jacob. It so overwhelmed him that he
fainted. He just passed out. And then
when he was revived, the scripture says in verse 27, this is after
he revived, and they told him all the words of Joseph. Well,
what was it that Joseph had told them? What was the message Joseph
said, convey these words to my father? Well, it was actually
several things. Number one, if you'll look back
in verse 9 of chapter 45, Joseph said, haste ye, go up to my father
and say unto him, thus saith thy son Joseph. Here's the first
thing. Now remember, they're giving
the words of Joseph now to their dad. And here's the first thing
that Joseph said, go back and you tell my father this, God
hath made me Lord of all Egypt. That's our message concerning
the Lord Jesus Christ. God has made him Lord. He received
his Lordship as the God-man because of his obedience unto death,
even the death of the cross of Calvary. He was already Lord
before He ever came to this world. He's always been the Lord. Because
He's God over all, blessed forever. He was God. He's the Lord. He made all things. He created
all things. He sustains all things. He rules
everything. But as we read there in Luke
2, He became incarnate. And then at eight days old, he
received his name officially, which Gabriel had said to Mary
and to Joseph, call him Jesus, for he shall save his people
from their sins. And this one did indeed save
his people from their sins. He didn't make an attempt at
it. This isn't something in the future that's going to happen.
He saved His people by His redemptive work upon the cross of Calvary
when He satisfied all the demands of law and justice for His people. He died for our sins according
to the Scriptures. He was buried and was raised
again the third day according to the Scriptures. And here,
Joseph is a beautiful picture of our Savior. And Joseph says
now to his brethren, you go to my Father, and you tell my Father,
I've been made Lord. And our message to everybody
is not make Jesus your Lord. Our message to everybody is not
let Him be your Lord. Our message to everybody is Jesus
of Nazareth. who was crucified, buried, and
rose again, has been exalted, and He is Lord over all. and you'll bow to Him either
before your death or after your death at the judgment. Everybody's
going to bow to King Jesus. He's the Lord. That's the first
thing Joseph said. Now you tell my father these
words. And as it says here in verse
27, they told him all the words of Joseph. And that's the first
thing Joseph said. Now you tell my father this.
I've been made Lord. And then secondly, look back
up in verse 9. Right after that, he says, and
you tell my father, you come down unto me, tarry not. You
come to me right now. And they went and told Jacob,
this is what the Lord said. Come to me. And I tell you, our
Savior is not begging you. This is not an invitation. This
is the Lord of glory and He commands you, you come to Him. You believe
Him. This is God's commandment that
we believe on Him whom God had sent. And then thirdly, He says,
tell my father this, look at verse 10. and thou shalt dwell in the land
of Goshen and thou shalt be near unto me. Tell him, tell him,
he's coming to me and I'll never leave him and I'll never forsake
him. And that's what the Lord says to us. I will leave my people. I draw you to me with effectual
grace. This is calling with a holy calling. We come to Him. He says, Thou
shalt be near unto Me. And Jacob was indeed drawn by
the love and grace of his son Joseph. And they were together
from then to the day that Jacob died. And the Lord says to us,
I'll always be with you. Always be with you. And then
fourthly, he says in the next verse, verse 11, I will nourish
thee. Oh, what sweet words are those.
I will nourish thee. I'm not just going to bring you
unto myself and then desert you and leave you on your own. I'm
going to take care of you. And all of the people of God,
all of the children of the Lord, we're cared for by our Great
Shepherd. He nourishes us. He feeds us. He takes care of us. And then
he says in verse 13, here's the fifth thing. You relay these
words now to my father Jacob. Tell him of all my glory. And boy, I tell you, that's our
responsibility. That's the preacher's joyful
duty to speak of the glories of our Lord Jesus Christ. Notice
the words of Joseph that he sent by way of his brothers to Jacob. They weren't words to lay blame
at the feet of these his brothers. In fact, He says nothing negative
about them. His words were of His great advancement
Himself and of His own glories. and what He would do for Jacob,
and for what He would do for His people. Have you ever noticed
this? Certainly the Lord convicts us
of our sinfulness, but He comes to us with sweet words. And it's
like Joseph. He freely forgot and forgave
all the wrongs that his brethren did against him. He doesn't bring
them up. He doesn't say to his brethren,
now you go back to my father and you tell him all the deeds
that you did against me. You go ahead and make known to
him how you sold me into slavery, how some of you wanted to kill
me. No, he didn't mention any of those things. The Lord comes
to us in His sweet mercies and in His grace. And he reveals to us that we're
the beloved of the Lord and that he will always take care of us. You know, Joseph recognized this. Go back into chapter 45. You notice what he says to these
brethren. Look at verse five. He says, now therefore be not grieved.
Yes, you sold me into slavery, but don't be grieved about that.
Don't be angry with yourself. Don't be beating yourself up
that you sold me hither. For God did send me before you
to preserve life. For these two years hath the
famine been in the land, and yet there are five years in which
there shall be neither earing nor harvest. God sent me before
you to preserve you a posterity, a remnant, and to save your lives
by a great deliverance." The Lord sent him. The Lord used
him. in a delivering way, in a salvation
way. For them, it was a temporal salvation. For us, the Lord saves us with
an everlasting salvation. And I thought about this as I
was working on this message today. Would to God that we would remember
that all of the things that happens to us And all of the things that
happens in this country, and all of the things that happen
in this world, they happen according to the purpose of God, brought
to pass by the providence of God. See, this is what Joseph
is saying. He's saying everything that happened,
it happened for your good. And it happened for my good,
even though when those things happened, we couldn't see it.
We couldn't see it. It should be a constant encouragement
to the people of God that the Lord does all things well, and
He makes even evil, evil, and the wrath of men to work to praise
His name. There's a wonderful verse, and
I'm sure you've read it a number of times, in Psalm 76 and verse
10. Psalm 76 and verse 10, and it
says this. It says, Surely the wrath of
man shall praise thee. The remainder of wrath shalt
thou restrain. And we know there's an illustration
of that in the life of Joseph because some of his brethren,
they did want to kill him. They said, let's kill him. When
he came to check on them and they saw him from afar off, some
of them said, that's our brother. He said, we're going to bow down
to him. Or he said, let's get together and we'll kill him.
And it seemed like all of them were in agreement, except for
Reuben. And he said, let's don't do that. You see, it wasn't even possible
that Joseph would die then. It wasn't his appointed time
to die. He would die many years later,
but he has a great work to do. He's going to be the Savior of
His nation. And though there was much evil
brought about that was working, it seemed, against Him, in reality,
God used the evil to work together for the good, not only of Joseph,
but of his brethren. And only God can do that. Only
God can bring good out of evil. You see, the Lord, like it says
here in Psalm 76 10, Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee,
remainder of wrath thou shalt restrain or prevent. The Lord
prevented them from killing Joseph. Don't ever think that evil has
a free hand to do whatever it wants to do. That's not right. Our God governs all things good
and evil. In fact, the Scripture says,
shall there be evil in a city and the Lord hath not done it?
He creates both light and darkness, good and evil. And He uses evil
to accomplish His purpose. And the greatest example of that
is the evil in the hearts of men who wound up having our Lord
Jesus crucified. But they were all exposing and
giving vent to their wrath, doing what they wanted to do, And all
the while they were fulfilling the purpose of God, for He determined
that Christ would die for our sins according to the Scriptures. I know the issue of the existence
of evil and the way of evil. It's been an issue highly debated
by man. And I'll just give you a couple
of thoughts on this. Is evil contrary to the holiness
of God? Of course it is. Does evil exist without the will
of God? Of course it does not. It does
not. You see, the perfections of God,
His grace, His mercy, His justice in punishing sin through a Savior. These things would never have
been manifested had it not been for the existence of evil. We would never have known the
sweetness of forgiveness and how blessed it was that God sent
His Son to die for sinners had not God in His purpose of grace
ordained the existence of evil. We don't explain it away. God uses men in doing what they
want to do in order to fulfill His purpose. And if there's something
that men would want to do beyond what God's purpose is, that's
what He restrains. It's just like He restrained
Joseph's brothers. Let's kill him. God said, no,
no, that's not gonna happen. That's not gonna happen. Go ahead
and sell him into slavery. He'll go into Egypt. He'll go
into Potiphar's house. He'll be falsely accused. He'll
wind up in prison. All the things are going to happen.
It would seem that his delay in getting out of prison for
two years, it seems like that's a step backwards. No, there are
no steps backwards. All things are of God. And everything
moves and exists precisely according to the will of God. And if we
could but remember that, oh, what peace we would have. It's the Lord. Let Him do what
seemeth Him good in His sight. You cannot look at the condition
of our country right now with the evil that exists. You can't
look at it and be in any way happy with it. I mean, we would
say, Nancy and I were talking about it the other day, if our
parents, and especially our grandparents, if they could see what's going
on today while they'd roll over in their graves. Well, there's
no doubt of the reality of evil, but more than that, there's no
doubt that God will use evil to fulfill His purpose. And I
don't know what it is. I don't know what God's purpose
is for our nation. It seems to me we're kind of
exploding from, I guess you'd call it an implosion from the
inside, corruption from the inside. But whatever God is doing, it's
good. It's right. We bow to Him. You just go ahead, go home tonight
and sleep easy. God's at the wheel. He's governing
all things. Say, well, this is happening.
Look at this law and that law. You'd just drive yourself nuts
worrying about all these things. No need to worry. I'm not saying
be unconcerned. I'm saying rest in the Lord your
God who governs all things. Your great Joseph. He's Lord
of Egypt. Egypt stands for the world. Our
Savior is the Lord of the world. Things are moving along just
fine. Just fine. All according to His
will. Well, Jacob, when he hears the words
of Joseph, he just loses consciousness, and then he revived. And then
they said, now look at verse 27, they told him all the words
of Joseph which he had said unto them, and when he saw the wagons,
which Joseph had sent to carry him, the spirit of Jacob, their
father, revived." He saw the evidences that Joseph was alive. Look at all those wagons. Dad,
you see all those wagons? See how they're loaded down?
You know who sent those? Joseph sent them. And his heart
revived. Joseph is alive! Joseph is alive! You know, we know the evidences
of the everlasting love of Christ for His brethren. Wagons loaded
with all spiritual blessings given to us in Christ Jesus. Not blessings to reward us for
a lifetime of service. or obedience. Blessings ordained
for us from before the foundation of the world before we'd done
anything either good or evil. We're blessed with all spiritual
blessings. Children of God, do you see the
wagons that our Lord has sent? Filled with good things for you.
There are no bad things in the wagons. No bad things in the wagons. I remember Brother Scott Richardson,
he said so many good things that are worthwhile and worth remembering. But he said, I hadn't heard any
bad news ever since I heard the good news. There is no bad news. No bad news. Sometime back, went to the dentist
and told me, I'm going to have to have some oral surgery. And
he put it this way, I got some bad news for you. I said, what's
that? And he told me, I said, oh, that's
not bad news. There is no bad news. Disappointing
news. But really, there's no bad news. because the wagons of our Lord
are loaded. But notice what Israel says in
verse 28. And it's no longer, he's no longer
called Jacob, but Israel. This is the spiritual name. This
is the name of a prince with God. He said, it is enough. And the words, it is, they're
italicized. He said, enough! Well, Jacob,
what is enough? Joseph, my son, is alive. That's everything to me, he said. The wagons, that's nice. All
the goodies that he has sent, that's wonderful. But I'll tell
you what means the world to me. And the word enough means so
much or multitude, plenteous. He said, here's what's everything
to me, my son. Joseph is everything to me. The
wagons, thank you. But I'm not taking up with the
wagons and all the stuff in the wagons. It's Joseph who has my
heart. It's Joseph I want to see. And
you see, for all of us who are the people of God, we're thankful
for the wagons of blessings. There's no question about that.
Sometimes we sing the song, count your many blessings, name them
one by one. But I'll tell you what's more
important than the blessings, the blessor. He's all important. He's everything. This is what
Jacob is saying. Enough! I have enough! Because I have Joseph. And I'm
telling you, who are the people of God, you have enough. You have Christ. You have Christ. The great amount of things that
were sent to him, that's wonderful, but here's the joy of Jacob's
heart. Joseph, to see him, to be with
him, to enjoy his presence. That thought, it far outweighed
all the things in the wagons. My friends, we belong to Christ
Jesus. And someday we're going to see
Him face to face. I would never take anything away
from the loaded wagons. election, and predestination,
and redemption, and regeneration, and calling, and justification,
and sanctification, and glorification. All those things are sweet and
wonderful, but there's somebody that we're caught up with. There's
somebody who means everything to us, and that's our Lord Jesus
Christ. Israel said, it's enough. Joseph,
he's enough. And let me ask you, is Christ
enough for you? You know, there are some people,
they hear preaching, like I preach, and preachers that you know and
respect, like they preach, like Brother Henry preached, like
Brother Bill preached. They hear preaching of Christ
and at some point they'll say, don't you have anything else
to preach? Had a couple came to hear me
a long time ago. They tried me out. They said,
we're going to try you for a while. And they said, it's just too
much gospel preaching. You need to deal with some other
things. Too much Christ. I was talking about Scott Richardson
a little bit ago. He told me one time, somebody
said this about him. Said, that Scott Richardson,
he's made an idol out of Jesus Christ. That's what they said
about him. And he said, oh, blessed idolatry. Oh, we adore him. We sang Sunday night, Jesus Christ
has made to me all I need. He's all I need. He's all you
need. He's all you need in this life.
He's all you need at the judgment. He's all you need in eternity.
And He's all you need in the hour of death. Enough! Enough! I have Christ! And I have all of this beside. I got the wagons loaded. But
more than that, I've got Him who is the very glory of God. Him who is the darling of the
Father's heart. Enough! I have enough, Father,
because I have Christ. I have Christ. Is Christ enough
for you? You know what Jacob said? Chapter 46, go over to verse
30. And notice here again, it isn't
Jacob said, but Israel. Israel. And Israel said unto
Joseph, Now let me die. since I have seen thy face, because
thou art yet alive." That sounds a whole lot like what Simeon
said, doesn't it? Over there in Luke chapter 2.
Lord, let me die, I'm ready to die now. Mine eyes have seen, not a baby,
though he was a baby, but he said, mine eyes have seen thy
salvation. Oh my! Have your eyes of faith
seen His salvation, Christ Jesus the Lord? See, what is a man gained if
he has the whole world? He doesn't have the Lord Jesus
Christ. He's the poorest of the poor.
You name any of these billionaires, Lots and lots of money. Extremely. Wealth beyond our comprehension. But you know what? They're the
poorest of the poor. No Redeemer. No Savior. No representative at the right
hand of God. They have no idea how poor off
they are. how bad off they are. Is Christ
enough for you? Is He enough for you in the preaching
of the Word of God? Is He enough in the assembly
of the saints? Well, I'll tell you this, He
will be enough in the very eternity of heaven because He'll be all. Why do we preach our Lord Jesus
Christ? Why do we honor Him? Because
number one, we're honoring the divine command. He that honoreth
not the Son honoreth not the Father that sent Him. There's
no worship of God apart from the Son of God. You don't make much of Christ
Jesus. You may have a religious service. You can have that, but
you don't have a worship service. Churches say, well, worship service,
they put it on their sign. Worship service, 11 o'clock,
10, 30, whatever it is on Sunday morning. And then they don't
honor Christ Jesus? No, they just had a religious
service. No worship. No worship. We honor Him because
of divine command. Number two, we honor Him because
of apostolic example. Here's what Paul said to the
Corinthians. We preach Christ crucified. I don't care what
the passage is. Preachers better get to Christ
as quick as they can. Quick as they can. And I'll tell
you this, we honor Him because there's no salvation in anybody
else. That's what Peter said in Acts
4.12, neither is there salvation in any other. There's none other
name unto heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. And I'll tell you, we must honor
Him. I must honor Him because I love Him. I love Him. I love him because he first loved
me. There's no question about that. But I'll tell you, I've seen
the greater than Joseph by faith. And one of these days I'm going
to die, and then I'm going to see him face to face. That's what the Scripture says
in Hebrews 2, but we see Jesus. How do we see Him? By faith.
We see Him in the Word of God. We see Him in the types and pictures
and prophecies and promises of God. And one of these days, we're
going to see Him face to face. John said, Beloved, now are we
the sons of God. and it doth not yet appear what
we shall be, but we know that when He shall appear, we shall
be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." Jacob said, it's enough. I'm going to see Joseph. As if
to say, I appreciate the wagons. I don't need them. What are the
wagons compared to the Son? Job said, though after my skin
worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh, what does he say?
I shall see God. That's what he said, wasn't it,
Ron? I shall see God. Don't that kind of send chills
up and down your spine? I'm going to see Him. And I'm
not going to be afraid, and I'm not going to be ashamed. I'll
have boldness in that day. Don't you worry about the fact,
Jim, that He's going to bring up all your sins against Him?
No. Don't worry about that. Because
the Lord said, your sins and iniquities, I'll remember them
no more. He's just going to have good
things to say. Precious things to say. The psalmist said, thou wilt
show me the path of life. In thy presence is fullness of
joy. And nobody is shamed in the presence
of Christ. Everybody's rejoicing in Him.
Blessed are the pure in heart. That's who's going to see God.
We're going to see Him. Enough! I'm going to see Joseph. That's what He said. And our
Lord Jesus said, Father, I will that they also whom Thou hast
given Me be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory. The glory which thou hast given
me, for thou lovest me before the foundation of the world."
I tell you, Jacob, he's going to be carried all the way to
Egypt and he's going to see his son in his glory. In his glory. He's heard about the glory of
Joseph. The brothers have talked about
the glory of Joseph. He said it's enough because I'm
going to see that glory myself. And that's the way it is with
the people of God. We've heard of His glory. We've
preached of His glory. We've talked about His glory.
And one of these days, we're going to leave this old world
and we're going to see Him in His glory. And that glorious
Savior is going to embrace us and kiss us and say, welcome
home. Welcome home. And we'll say thank
you for the wagons. But thank you most of all for
you. And we'll praise Him and bless
Him forever. Isn't that the sweetest story
you ever heard? It surely is. It's enough. It's enough. Joseph is yet alive. It's enough. Christ is ever alive. He's going
to take care of us. Don't you worry about a thing.
He sets up all night watching over us. Ain't no use in you
losing any sleep. He neither slumbers nor sleeps. He watches over His Israel.