You know, in the New Testament,
the Jewish leaders hated our Savior because He said God was
with Him, and He said God was His Father, thereby making Himself
equal with God. And our Lord Jesus then presented
evidences of His deity. You know what the law says, in
the mouth of two or three witnesses, let every word be established.
And so our Lord, ever true to the law of God, he presented
three witnesses as evidence to back up the fact that he was
speaking the truth, that he was the son of God. First of all,
he presented the evidence of John the Baptist. He said, you
heard his word. you heard Him speak the truth.
It was John who said, Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away
the sin of the world. It was John who talked about
the light who had come into the world. It was John who announced
His coming. So first of all, our Lord says,
the first witness that I would call to the box, as it were,
to testify of His deity, He said, was John the Baptist. You heard
Him. You heard Him, and He spoke the
truth. And then our Lord says, the second witness I would call
upon to give evidence of the fact that I am the Son of God,
my miracles, my works, the works that I do, which even Nicodemus,
one of the Jews, one of the Pharisees, one of the Sanhedrin, a master
in Israel, even Nicodemus said, no man can do the miracles that
thou doest except God be with him, one of your own, one of
your own teachers. He acknowledged the fact that
what I did was by the presence of God. On one occasion, you'll remember
that Our Lord said, after he had talked about his sheep hearing
his voice, and he said, I am the father of one, the Jews took
up stones to stone him. And he said, for which of my
good works do you stone me? They said, for a good work we
stone you not. They could not deny the fact
that many good works were done by him. Now, of course, they
said they were done by the power of Beelzebub, which was absolutely
foolish, because Beelzebub doesn't do good works. He is absolutely,
thoroughly evil. He can do nothing good. But they said, for a good work,
we stone you not. But that you being a man, you
say that you're God. He said, John the Baptist, I
call him as a first evidence that I'm divine. I'm the son
of God. He said, the works that I do,
the miracles that I do, I raised the dead. And they couldn't deny
it. He said, I give healing to those
who are sick. They couldn't deny it. In fact,
right there in John chapter 5, He healed the man who had been
sick of the palsy 38 years. And they knew that man. They
knew he lay by the well there, by the bath there, as it were,
every day. Somebody brought him there waiting
for the angels to trouble the waters. They knew this man and
then they saw him walking. There was no denying that a miracle
took place and all the other miracles that our Lord did, and
most of them were done very publicly, not in secret, but so that all
eyes could behold the great things that he did. He said, I call
as my second witness all my good works. But then he said, I have
a third witness and that's my father and the word of my father,
that is the word of God. And he said to them, You search
the scriptures for in them, you think you have eternal life.
And these are they that testify of me. He said, I call on the
word of God, the word of God that you read and you study every
day. Now, when he said the word of
God, what did he mean? He meant the Old Testament. They
didn't have any of the New Testament. He's talking about the Old Testament
scriptures. He said, I call these three witnesses
to testify on my behalf that I am divine and yet you deny
this evidence, this undeniable evidence that I am the Son of
God. With the third one being the Old Testament scriptures.
He said, these are they that testify of me. And I don't know
of any portion of Scripture from Genesis 1 all the way to Malachi
chapter 4, I don't know of any portion of Scripture that more
forcefully and more beautifully pictures our Lord Jesus than
the life, the history of this man, Joseph. He's a beautiful
picture. of our Savior. I've talked about
His name. Rachel gave Him the name Joseph,
which means adding. You know, our Lord came into
this world. He came to add. He had a positive
mission to save His people from their sins. He came to restore
that which he took not away. You see, Adam, to me, he's the
subtractor. We lost in Adam. We lost life. We lost the way to God. We lost
the truth of God. We lost the life of God. We were
losers in Adam. But our Lord Jesus, He's the
one who adds back to us an infinitely more than we lost in Adam. In Him, we have the way to God
because He is the way. In Him, we have the truth of
God. He is the truth. And in Him,
we have the life of God. because he is the life, and no
man cometh unto the Father but by me." In the book of Acts,
right toward the end, the apostle Paul arrives in Rome, and he
stays in Rome for two years. It's very amazing the language
there in the 28th chapter of Acts. where it says, when Paul
was preaching in Rome, he preached to them out of the Law and the
Prophets. Out of them, he preached Jesus
for two years, every day, night and day. You cannot exhaust the subject
of our Lord Jesus Christ, even preaching from the Old Testament. That's the only Bible that they
had. They didn't have Matthew through
Revelation. They only had Genesis through
Malachi. Yet the scripture says for two
years, every day, every night, he continually preached Jesus
unto them. I'd like to heard some of that
preaching, wouldn't you? It would have been a blessing
to have sat under his ministry, preaching Jesus. Well, how did
he preach Him? He preached Him in type, in picture,
in prophecy, in promise, and then he would have brought in
how the death of our Lord Jesus, His birth and His death and His
ascension, This was all prophesied in the Old Testament. They all
speak of Him. And our Lord Jesus, He came and
like Joseph's name means adding, our Lord added. He adds to the
church daily such as should be saved. When God The shepherd came after
you. He added you to the flock. Oh,
you were already one of his sheep. There's no question about that.
But you didn't know it. You didn't know anything about
it. And he came after you. He searched you out and he found
you. And he brought you unto himself. and He taught you. You were taught
of the Spirit of God out of the scriptures, out of the scriptures. And you learn that Jesus, the
Son of God, the Son of Man, is the one who restored to us all
that we lost in Adam and infinitely more, infinitely more. Joseph's name means adding. But
he has a second name, and I didn't have the time last week to bring
this out to you. I want you to go to Genesis 41.
That was his Hebrew name. Joseph is his Hebrew name. But
he was given an Egyptian name by Pharaoh. And later we'll go into the full
story of this, how that Joseph was exalted, he was second in
command only to Pharaoh, because he correctly interpreted the
dreams. In fact, he had told Pharaoh,
he said, it won't be me, it'll be the Lord. The Lord will give
me understanding. It's the Lord. You see, any preacher
of the gospel, a man who tells you the truth about God, about
your condition, about Christ and Him crucified, that gospel
that we know is a gospel we love because the Lord has revealed
it to us. He has revealed to us the Savior
in His glory. And we can't help but speak of
Him. I was talking to a man the other
day about various preachers, ministerial associations and
preachers' meetings, some of which I've gone to many years
ago. And I told Nancy, I said, you
know, I ain't have much fellowship with those guys because they're
more interested in talking about five points of Calvinism than
they are talking about the grace of God in Christ Jesus. I remember when my dad was on
his deathbed, and we talked about these things, and God had revealed
to him how salvation's of the Lord. Daddy looked at me and
he said, I'll only make this one request, because my dad didn't
have an opportunity to preach the gospel. God taught him the
gospel in the hospital. He was in the hospital a month,
and then he died in the hospital. He said, I won't have an opportunity
to preach the truth to the people at the church. He said, but I
believe you will. He said, the only thing I ask
of you, don't call it Calvinism. Don't call it Calvinism. And
you'll notice I very rarely use that word. because that conjures up thoughts
of, well, you believe everything John Calvin believed. No, I don't. No, I don't. I've read his Institutes
of the Christian Religion. There's some things that I take
issue with, and some of the things that he wrote, frankly, trouble
me. I tell you what, I'd rather talk about the Lord Jesus Christ
and the grace of God given to us in Him. I wouldn't give you
a hoot nor a holler for Arminius or Calvin. It's just not, that's
not worth debating. Fellows love to debate. Remember
this, God's truth is not up for debate. Our responsibility is not to
debate it, it's to set it forth. We're proclaimers of the word. That's what we are. Well, over here in Genesis 41. Joseph had correctly, by the
grace of God, by the illumination of the Spirit of God, correctly
interpreted Pharaoh's dreams. Genesis 41. And Pharaoh exalted
him. And now look at verse 45. And
Pharaoh called Joseph's name, get this, Zaphnath-Paeonea. And he gave him to wife Asenath,
the daughter of Paterphera, priest of own. Zaphnath paeonea means
revealer of secrets. Actually, it has twofold meaning.
The first is revealer of secrets. And that's our Lord Jesus in
that name. Because he said, no man knoweth
the Father, but the Son, Matthew 11, verse 27. No man knoweth the Father, but
the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will, what's the next
word? Reveal him. He's the revealer
of secrets. We read in Proverbs, the secret
of the Lord is with those who fear Him. What is the secret
of the Lord? It's the secret of how He can
be just and justify the ungodly. That's God's secret. And you're
not going to know the secret until somebody whispers it, not
merely in your ear, but into your heart. And that's what Christ
does. He's the revealer of secrets.
But Zaphnath-Paeonea has another meaning. And I don't know whether
your Bible has center column or not, but it says here, priest
or prince. The Hebrews say this is the same
as Savior. Because you see, Joseph, In a
physical sense now, he was the savior of the world. Wasn't he? Sure he was. God used him to save the world. Otherwise, everybody would have
starved to death. Everybody except the Egyptians. And they wouldn't
have known to hoard up the food, save up the food, were it not
for the fact that Joseph was around, by the grace of God,
to interpret the dream. Both dreams. He is the one who saved the world. And our Lord Jesus, He's the
Prince of God come into this world. He said, I didn't come
to condemn the world, but to save the world. That's what He
said. John 3, 17, for the Son of Man came not to condemn, but
to save, to save the world of His elect. to save the world
of His people. You've got to properly define
world. The Pharisees, they saw everybody
going after Jesus. They said, behold, the whole
world's gone after Him. Well, did they mean every single
person throughout this great universe, throughout this great
earth upon which we live? No. Lots of people. Lots of people are following
Him. I'll tell you what, the Lord Jesus, He's the Savior of
lots of people. Lots of people. How many? So many that John said, I can't
count them all. It's a number which no man can
number. So Joseph, even in his name,
he's a picture of our Lord. And in having this coat of many
colors, He's a picture of our Lord. This coat of many colors,
and we didn't read it tonight, but back in chapter 37, and I'm
sure you'll recall in verse 3, Jacob made for Joseph a coat
of many colors. This is not made of a bunch of
scraps of material, discarded rags or something like that.
This was a robe of nobility. This was a robe that designated
Joseph to be over all the other brethren. A robe of nobility. And you can look up in a couple
of verses. Just jot these down. We don't
have time to look at them tonight. Judges 5 and 30. Just jot that
down. Don't look it up now. but a robe
of nobility was given to Sisera that showed him to be the victor. He's the top one. He's the greatest. It's a robe of nobility. Also 2 Samuel 13 verse 18 expresses
the same thing. Now certainly God gives to all
of his people a robe, the robe of salvation, the garment of
righteousness. He gives that to us. He imputes
that to us. But our Lord Jesus, He wasn't
given. He wasn't given the robe of righteousness. He is righteousness. He is the
Lord our righteousness. He always has been righteous. We are by nature unrighteous. He never was. His righteousness, it comes with
Him being God. It's a robe of nobility. It sets
Him above all of His brethren. When we stand in glory with our
Lord Jesus, oh, we'll have on robes, the white robes of imputed
righteousness, the robes of the saints, but he will still be
in himself all that he has always been. Righteous, holy, pure,
the robe of righteousness, the robe of nobility, the robe of
the victor. When our Lord ascended back to
heaven, having defeated all the powers of darkness, all of the
enemies of His people, having put our sins away, and hung His
head down and gave up the ghost, He died, and then He arose again
and went home to glory. All of heaven turned out to see
Him. The victories come home! Open
the gates! Who is it? That's the King of
Glory coming back. Where is He coming from? He's
coming from the defeat of all of the enemies of His people. I'll tell you something else
about Joseph. He was the object of envy. In
fact, there would be the title of the message, Joseph Envied
by His Brethren. Look here in chapter 37, look
at verse 12 or verse 11. And his brethren envied him. You see, Joseph had just spoken
to them on the fact that he was going to be exalted. They said,
well, he shouldn't have bragged. He was speaking the truth. And he didn't take the edge off
the truth. And you see, it was the exaltation
of our Lord Jesus that's what cut his enemies. Not his good
works, but that he said he was God,
and he told the high priest when he stood before that religious
Sanhedrin, the council. He said, one of these days you'll
all fall before me, the Son of Man. And the high priest rent
his clothes. He was so upset. Because the
Lord Jesus said, He's going to be exalted above all. That's
what cut him. He said, God's going to make
me Lord. They said, we won't stand for that. They said, we
will not have this man reign over us. You go ahead and raise
all the dead you want. You go ahead and heal all the
lepers you want. You go ahead and heal all the people with
palsy you want, but don't tell us that you're going to rule,
that you're the king. We won't have it." Well, they may not have it willingly,
but they'll have it forcefully because every knee is going to
bow to this king. Every knee and every mouth's
going to confess Jesus of Nazareth, that despised Galilean, whom
people spit on and made fun of and mocked him and hated him
and rejected him. God's made that same Jesus both
Lord and Christ. And one day they're going to
be forced by the rod of God's justice to bow before him. And
they'll say, he is the Lord. then the Lord's going to cast
them into hell. These men, they didn't want Joseph
to be exalted. They wanted the exaltation. See,
that's what envy is. I want you to have it. I want
it. That's what envy is. And this simple revelation of
God to Joseph that he would be exalted, when he spoke that truth,
oh, it filled his brethren with hatred, with envy, with envy. How come you're gonna be exalted
and not the rest of us? And you know, when our Lord stood
before Herod, or Pilate, excuse me. He stood before Pilate. And there was a lot of things
Pilate was in the dark about. But he did have this understanding. He knew that it was for envy. Mark 15 verse 10 says this. He knew that for envy the chief
priests had delivered him. they envied Jesus of Nazareth. While He had just come into Jerusalem
and people lined the streets, everybody was shouting praises
to Him, putting palm leaves out. There He is riding in. They said,
Praise the Son of David! Hallelujah to the Son of David! Hallelujah to the Messiah! Look
what a following he's got. We can't have that." And I'll
tell you what, old Pilate, he knew it was for envy that they
delivered him. Not for sedition, but for envy. It's like, and I've quoted that
a while ago when the Pharisees said, the world's gone after
him. And in going after Him, you know
what that meant? They've left us. We're losing
our influence over the people. We're losing our power. Where
are they all going? After Jesus of Nazareth. We're
not going to stand for that. Well, what are we going to do
about it? They were thinking the same thing that Joseph's
brethren thought when they saw him afar off. They saw him coming. They said, there he comes, that
dreamer. What are we going to do? Let's
kill him. That's what they said. That's what's said about our
Lord. Let's kill him. Let's put him out of business. And you see, our Lord, the scripture
says, he came unto his own and his own received him not. Who
sent him? Just like Israel sent Joseph
to check on his brethren, God sent Christ into this world.
And the Bible says in John 1, He came unto His own, and His
own received Him not. His own family didn't receive
Him. His own nation didn't receive
Him. His own world didn't receive Him. In fact, do you remember
at the first of the reading here, I said that a certain man, verse
15, he found Joseph, he was wandering in the field. In the Gospels,
what is the field a picture of? The world. Our Lord came down here to this
world, and he was as a stranger in this world. There He is walking
the streets of Jerusalem, going through Judea, going through
Galilee. Who is He? Well, that's the Creator. Surely they'll recognize Him.
Surely they'll bow to Him. Surely they'll worship Him. He's
the one who provides for all of us. And the Jewish religious leaders
said, we know what to do with His kind. We'll kill Him. Go
kill him. And just like these brothers
hatched a scheme to kill him, no sooner had our Lord come into
this world, soon as he was born. When the wise men came to Jerusalem,
they said, where is he that's born King of the Jews? And old
Herod, he hatched his plot. He said, hey, you go find him
and then come back and report to me We'd appreciate if you'd
do that." And he had hell in his heart. He going to put him
out of business. But you see, just like in the
case with Joseph, he couldn't be killed now. That's what his
brethren wanted to do. It wasn't time for him to die. He's got a work to do yet. He's the one who's going to provide
according to the wisdom that God gave him for the needs of
the people. Our Lord Jesus came to this world. We'll put him out of business.
Well, not yet you're not, because he's got a work to do. And he's
not going to die until he does the work that the Father sent
him to accomplish, lay down his life for his people. And as we know, Joseph was sold
into slavery for 20 pieces of silver. And our Lord Jesus, he was betrayed
for 30 pieces. of silver. But here's the point. Joseph's not going to die until
his work is finished. God's got a work for him to do. All of the population of this
world, those whom God appointed to continue to give them life,
Joseph is going to be the instrument that God uses to preserve them. He can't die now. I don't care
what kind of wrath rose up in the hearts of these brethren.
Joseph is immortal until he finishes the work that God gave him to
do. And so it was with our Savior. He was immortal. Until that hour came. And then, he laid down his life. He said, no man takes my life
from me. You're not going to take my life
from me. How can you take life away from one who is himself
life? That's an impossibility. They
couldn't kill him. He said, I laid out my life of
myself. And he did. He said, it is finished.
I finished the Old Testament prophecies. I finished the Old
Testament promises. I finished the work of redemption.
I put away the sins of God's people. I've satisfied my Father's
law and justice. I have established righteousness
for all of my people. Now, it's finished. Then he bowed his head, silently
and sweetly, gave up his life. Dying right on schedule, just
like Joseph will, when the work assigned to him is finished. Well, we'll get into chapter
38 next week. Got some things to say about
Judah.