That's been my prayer all day
long. If you would open your Bibles
with me to Genesis chapter 37. Let me tell you once again how delighted
I am to be here with you. I'm quite honored that you keep
inviting me back. That's an honor. I titled the
message this evening, Joseph's Coat. Christ's nature. Joseph
is one of the clearest pictures of the Lord Jesus that we have
in the Old Testament. Our text begins in verse 3 of
Genesis chapter 37. Now Israel loved Joseph more
than all his children because he was the son of his old age.
Now right from the get-go, that's a good picture of Christ, isn't
it? Moses says that Jacob loved Joseph the most. He loved him
more than all of his other children because he was the son of his
old age. You see the picture of Christ there? The Lord Jesus
Christ is the son of the ancient of days. And the father has eternally
loved the son. All of his love is in his son. So right from the get-go, Joseph
is a picture of Christ. And throughout his life, we see
Joseph as a picture of Christ. Joseph, the favorite son, was
a shepherd of his father's sheep. He was hated by his brothers,
sold into prison, sold into slavery, and thrown into prison for crimes
that he did not commit. Then, in a matter of an instant,
he was raised to the throne. And he was raised to the throne
for a purpose, so that he would save much people alive. Later
on, he is received as one, received from the dead by his father Jacob.
Joseph wasn't dead, but Jacob thought he was. Received from
the dead by his father. And when he came face to face
with his brothers, who sold him into slavery, who caused this
disaster of a life for many years to happen to Joseph, you know
what Joseph did with his brothers when he came face to face with
them? He forgave them. He forgave them completely and
freely. Now that is the life story of
Joseph and that's a picture of Christ our Savior and everything
that he went through and what he did to save his people from
their sin. And I don't really want to look
at the whole life of Joseph tonight, but I want to just look at this
coat that Jacob made for Joseph to wear. It was not a coat exactly
like we think of as a coat, but it's a long shirt or a tunic. And at the end of verse three,
it says, and he, Israel, made him a coat of many colors. And
when his brethren saw that their father loved him more than all
his brethren, They hated him and they could not speak peaceably
unto him. Now Jacob just made no bones
of the fact he loved Joseph more than all of his other children.
I mean, that is so wrong. That is just the most horrible
parenting story that can be told. It's no wonder Joseph's brothers
hated him. Of course they did. Of course
they did. It is natural in every human
being to want the love of their parents. And you know what? They ought to get it. And when
you don't, of course they're gonna hate the favorite like
Joseph's brothers did. That's wrong. I mean, there's
no excuse for it. It never should have happened.
But just like we see all throughout scripture, our God brings good
out of evil. He's the only one who can bring
good out of evil. And from Jacob's bad parenting
comes a beautiful picture of Christ. And I want to paint that
picture, who he is to us tonight, so we'll see this. I can trust
my soul to him. I want to trust my soul to him.
I'm going to come to him. That's the way I want to paint
this picture tonight, so that we come to Christ believing him
and trusting him. Now this coat that Jacob made
for Joseph was beautiful. Jacob, or Joseph, excuse me,
was more well-dressed than all of his brothers. None of his
other brothers had a coat like this. The coat distinguished
Joseph as the favorite son. Everywhere he went, it made him
stand out. Oh, you can tell from a distance, there's Jacob's favorite.
And Joseph, his coat is a picture of the nature of Christ. the
nature of Christ. The father loves the son the
most. Matter of fact, a better way
to say it would be this, all of the father's love is in the
son. All of it. All of it. The father
loves the son. And with good reason. The son
is everything that the father loves. He's everything the father
loves. He's holy, he's righteous, he's
gracious, he's forgiving. It's the nature of Christ that
makes him stand out as more beautiful than anyone else in God's creation. The Lord Jesus Christ is so beautiful. You know what scripture calls
him? Scripture that cannot air. You know what scripture calls
him? Altogether lovely. Everything about him is lovely
and beautiful. So just like Joseph was so well-dressed
and stood out from everyone, no one has the beautiful character
and nature of Christ except him. The father only loves the son. And the good news to you and
me is this, he loves everyone who's in his son too. Now he
loves us for Christ's sake, but he loves his people who are in
his Son. The Father will only accept people
who bow to his Son, who worship his Son, who come to his Son
begging for mercy. The Father only accepts people
who give up all their works of righteousness. Those things that
they think they can do to make them more beautiful, they give
those things up and they submit. They submit themselves to the
righteousness of Christ. so that they only desire to be
righteous in Christ alone. That's who the Father loves.
And men hate Christ for it. Man by nature hates Christ for
that truth. Men cannot, they cannot by nature
speak peaceably of the Christ of the Bible. Now I know they
can speak in glowing terms of the Jesus that they made up,
but they cannot speak peaceably to the Christ of the Bible. And
you know why? They don't like what the nature
of Christ says about them. It says back up at the end of
verse two there that Joseph had gone out to his brethren, he's
feeding the flock with his brethren, and he brought unto his father
their evil report. Joseph came and brought an evil
report to his father about what his brothers were doing. Well,
do you know the way Christ brings an evil report about you and
me? It's by standing in contrast
to us. He doesn't have to point out
particular things that we're doing wrong. All he does is stand
in contrast to us. His holiness are unholiness.
His righteousness are unrighteousness. His perfection are total depravity. Just by being who he is, in contrast,
that shows our sin. Just like our brother Job said.
He said, I've heard of you by the hearing of the ear. I've
heard about you. Now I see you." And once he saw
the Lord, what did Job say about himself? Now I hate myself. Now I abhor myself. He didn't
do that until he saw Christ. And just by who he is, Christ
reveals our sinfulness and our depravity and our horrible need
of a Savior, and man hates him for it. And you know what that
is? It's like me hating the bathroom
scales when I step on them and the scale tells me I'm overweight.
It's not the scale's fault. All the scale is doing is showing
the truth. That's men hating Christ just simply because by
contrast to us, he shows how sinful that we are. Now Jacob
made Joseph this coat of many colors. Now we don't know any
specific colors that are in this coat. But I feel like I can make
some mighty good guesses about the colors that were in this
coat because of colors that are mentioned in other places in
scripture that are given to us as pictures of Christ. And I
think it's good to know this is a coat of many colors, not
just one color. but many colors. Those many colors
are pictures of the many different facets of the glory of Christ
our Savior. And you put all those things
together, it makes it so clear to us, this is the Savior I need. This is the Savior I must have. This is the only Savior who can
save a sinner like me. When you put all these different
colors together, you know what it shows us? Christ is all. Christ is all. He's everything
that we need. He's everything that the Father
requires of us, and how I pray that we might see Him exalted
so every one of us tonight runs to Him. Now first, I figure,
there had to be some white in Joseph's coat. You know, a good,
bright white. brings out the beauty of the
other colors by its contrast. But it can't be a dingy white,
can it? No, it's gotta be a good, bright white. I love wearing
a black suit and a white shirt. I mean, I just, I just, I don't
know, I just think, I just like it, I enjoy that. Every once
in a while, Chance says, we gotta bleach those shirts, let's keep
them nice and bright. The white in Joseph's coat, It
brings out the beauty in all the other colors. And you know
what that white represents? The holiness of Christ. The nature
of Christ is pure holiness. It is impossible for him to sin. It's impossible. Exodus 28, verse
2, when the Lord's giving Moses instructions for the high priest's
garment. He said, Thou shalt make holy
garments for Aaron thy brother for glory and for beauty, glory
and beauty. That's a picture of the beautiful
holiness of Christ our High Priest. Our High Priest is holy, untouched
by sin. And it is the holiness of Christ
that makes us worship Him. When Isaiah, he saw the Lord
high and lifted up and he saw the seraphim flying around the
throne of God, what were they crying? Holy, holy, holy is the
Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his
glory. What made those angels worship
God, what they were crying out in worship, holy, holy, holy. It's God's holiness that causes
us to worship him. It's God's holiness that causes
everybody who ever sees him to worship him. David said in Psalm
29, verse 2, give unto the Lord the glory due unto his name.
Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Everyone who sees
his holiness, I promise you, they'll worship him. It's the
holiness of Christ that makes his people sing his praises.
In 2 Chronicles 20, chapter 20, verse 21, The king appointed singers unto
the Lord, and you know what he said? This is what you should
sing. Praise the beauty of holiness. Sing in praises to the Lord's
holiness. And it is the holiness of Christ
that gives his people a holy nature that enables the Father
to accept them. Hebrews 10.10, by the witch will,
we're sanctified. All of God's elect are sanctified
through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. The only way sinners like you
and me can be made holy is if we've got a sinless sacrifice,
a holy sacrifice. If the Lord Jesus Christ is not
holy in himself, he never could have took our sins and put them
away. He must be the sinless sacrifice. And it's the sacrifice,
this holy, sinless sacrifice that sanctifies his people. Now
that's something so beautiful. I mean, you think about the Holy
Son of God. being made sin for his people
so that he can make them holy. And he could do that and remain
the sinless sacrifice. That's something that's so beautiful,
that's so wonderful, that's so awe-inspiring. Only God could
do that. That Christ in his holiness is
the holiness of his people. So if you believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ, you are as holy as the Son of God himself. Now I want you to think about
that for a second. If you trust Christ, you're as holy as the
Son of God himself, and you will never be more holy than you are
right now. We won't be carrying that around
in a sinless body anymore, but you'll never be as holy, or more
holy than you are right now. And that makes the salvation
of God's people sure. If Christ has made you holy,
you can't be lost, can you? That's beautiful. That's beautiful,
isn't it? Number two, I figure there must
have been some blue in Joseph's coat. I kind of chose these colors
because they're the colors that God told Moses to put in the
tabernacle, just in case you want to know where I came up
with these. I figured there must have been some blue. Blue is
the color of the sky. It's a picture of Christ the
Savior coming to earth from heaven. When he came to earth, he appeared. That means he came from somewhere
else. He was somewhere before he got here. Where was he? He
was in glory. He was in glory. Now what a miracle
that the Son of God would come from heaven to earth. That's
a miracle. It's a greater miracle still
that the Son of God would be made flesh. That he would humiliate
himself to be clothed in the weakness of our flesh and come
to earth that way. The Apostle Paul who's smarter
than all of us put together, said this, great is the mystery
of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh. And that's pretty much all he
could say about the subject. This is a great mystery. God
was manifest in the flesh. And it's even a greater mystery,
to me at any rate, that Almighty God would come in the flesh for
this purpose, to save sinners who hated Him and rejected Him
at every turn, and would keep rejecting Him unless He and His
mercy and His grace broke their heart. Christ came in the flesh
to save those who hate Him. Can you think of anything more
astounding than that? I can't. I know you haven't had
a lot of time to think about it, but I've had some time to
think about it as I prepared this message. I really, I can't
think of anything more astounding than that. That the Son of God
would come into flesh and sacrifice himself for the likes of a rebel
like me. If that doesn't make you run
to Christ, it's because God hasn't given you life. If you've got
any inkling of what that means, that Christ would sacrifice himself,
come into flesh, so that he can suffer and die to put away the
sin of his people. If that doesn't make you run
to Christ, it's because God just hasn't given you a glimpse of
him yet. And when the Savior finished
the work that the Father gave him to do, He went to the cross
and suffered for the sin of his people. He took the sin of his
people into his own body upon the tree and he died for it. And he lay in the tomb for three
days dead. Then he arose from the dead.
He arose from the dead because his sacrifice for the sin of
his people put that sin away. Death could not hold him because
there was no sin. The only reason for death is
sin. Christ put the sin away, of his people away, he must rise
again. And about 40 days later, he ascended back where he came
from. He ascended back into heaven, where he sat down on the right
hand of the Father, where to this very moment he ever lives,
making intercession for us. You see, Christ came from heaven
to save his people. and he ascended back to heaven
because he got the job done. Let me show you that in Ephesians
chapter 4. That's what this blue represents. Christ came from heaven to save
his people and he ascended back to heaven because he got the
job done. Ephesians 4 verse 8. Wherefore he saith, when he ascended
up on high, he led captivity captive and gave gifts unto men. Now he that ascended, what is
it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of
the earth? He that descended is the same
also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill,
that he might fulfill all things. See, Christ from heaven is now
in heaven. because he got the job done.
That's the assurance of our salvation. Our salvation came from heaven
itself. Now that's beautiful, isn't it?
Then I figure there must have been some red in Joseph's coat. If you're going to have a picture
of the gospel, how can you leave out red? Christ became a man. The Son of God became a man.
So that he could be the representative of his people who are in the
flesh. So he could be the substitute for his people. He also became
a man so he'd have blood to shed. God doesn't have blood. A man
does. So God became a man. So he would
have blood to shed as an atonement for the sin of his people. That's
what the red represents. Now before time began, the father
elected a people to save. Out of Adam's fallen race, he
chose some people to save. But those people are sinners.
They're dead, they're vile, they're guilty, they're sinners through
and through. All they can do is sin. So that means they must
be redeemed from their sin. They've sinned against God and
the price must be paid. The holy God can't be pleased
any other way. Don't ever fall into the trap
of thinking, well, God's pleased with all of our motions of religion. Oh, I never miss a service, I
never miss an offering, I never miss this, I always do that.
That's good, that's good. If you're doing it out of need.
It's good if you never miss a service, I need to be fed. I need to hear
from Christ. That's good. But if you're doing it so God
will be happy with you, you know what God calls that? Smoke in
my nose. It's offensive. That's what God
says. Without the shedding of blood, There's no remission. There must be blood, and it must
be perfect blood. It can't be the blood of bulls
and goats. It's not possible, the writer of the Hebrews said,
that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins. We'll
look at 1 Peter 1. It's got to be perfect blood,
and in case you haven't noticed, that's mighty hard to find. But there's one. 1 Peter 1, verse
18. for as much as you know. Now
you know this. You're not redeemed with corruptible
things as silver and gold from your vain conversation received
by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of
Christ as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. See, he's without
blemish and he's without spot. That goes back to the white.
That's his white, holy nature. And since Christ has a holy nature,
his blood is sinless blood. And that makes His blood the
only blood that's ever been on this earth that can atone for
sin. He's got sinless blood. And verse
20 says, who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the
world. He's the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
But He was manifest in these last times for you. He was manifest. He was made visible in the flesh.
John said He was made flesh. We saw Him. We beheld Him. We
touched Him. We handled Him. He was made flesh.
He was made manifest. He came from somewhere. That's
the blue. He came from heaven to here.
And he came to save. And like I said a minute ago,
he got the job done, verse 21. He came for you who by him, by
his power, by his gift, do believe in God, that raised him up from
the dead and gave him glory, that your faith and hope might
be in God. If you trust the Lord Jesus Christ,
you trust Him to do all the saving for you, your hope is in God. Let's never
forget that Jesus of Nazareth is God. He is God. If He's not
God, He can't save you and me. He is God. Well, if your hope
is in God, you'll never be disappointed, will you? Because God can't fail. He can't fail. He can't do wrong. He can't quit loving you. He
can't make a mistake and drop you. If your hope is in God,
you cannot perish. If your hope is in the blood
of Christ, you are forgiven of all of your sin and you're made
righteous because the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanses
us from what? All sin. All sin. If you've been washed in the
blood of Christ, you're holy and righteous and you can never
perish. There had to be some beautiful
red in that coat, don't you reckon? Then fourth, I figured there
must have been some purple in Joseph's coat. Now purple is
a combination of blue and red. Blue, the color of heaven. read
the color of man. There had to be some purple in
Joseph's coat because Joseph is a picture of the Lord Jesus
Christ who's the God-man. He's both God and man. Two natures, one person. The
Lord Jesus Christ is 100% God. And he's 100% man. Now don't
try to calculate The math of that. That's divine
arithmetic. The Lord Jesus Christ is 100%
God and 100% man. And that's what gives him the
right and the power to save sinful men and women from their sin.
You see, God, he has the holiness and the righteousness and the
power to save, doesn't he? But God can't be our representative.
He's got a different nature than us. I mean, it's absurd. Of course,
I mean, we all know that, right? God has a different nature than
us. So the Son of God became a man. So He could be the second
Adam. So He could represent His people.
And just like the first Adam, we all sinned when Adam sinned. Because we were in it, doing
what our representative did. Well, when Christ came, He's
the second Adam. And whatever it is that the Lord Jesus Christ
did, all of his people did too, because they did it in him. Just
as surely as you sinned in Adam, if you believe Christ, you obey
the law perfectly in Christ. You became a sinner in Adam,
you became righteous in Christ. He's our representative. And
since he's God, Christ Jesus obeyed God's law perfectly. He
couldn't do anything else. He doesn't have the capacity
to sin because His nature is holy and righteous. Then all
of His people are too because He's their representative. He
made them to be what He is. Well, here's the other thing. Now, there's got to be death
for sin. God can't die. God can't die for us. He can't
die. So the son of God became a man so that he could be the
substitute for his people and die in their place. And since
he's God, he's the sinless sacrifice. He's a lamb without blemish and
without spot. His sacrifice did what no animal
sacrifice could ever do. It paid for sin. It took sin
away. You know, those animal sacrifices
and those animal sacrifices, all there was was a remembrance
of sin again made every year. Having to offer the same bullock
and the same goat and the same ram and the same sheep and the
same turtle dove over and over and over and over again just
reminded us of sin. Those sacrifices didn't put away
sin. Christ came and sacrificed himself for sin and brothers
are not another one. because there's no need. His
blood put away the sin of his people. You see, God in the flesh,
that's the only way sinners could be saved from their sin. And
the Son of God suffered the humiliation of being made flesh so that he
could save the sinful likes of you and me. That's beautiful,
isn't it? And then purple is also the color
of kings. I'm just confident that Jacob
put some purple in this coat of his favorite son, maybe not
even completely knowing what he was doing. Joseph's gonna
be king. He's gonna be king of the world.
Which is a picture of Christ, the king of kings, the sovereign
potentate, who saves whom he will, when he will. Joseph was
the favorite son, but little did Jacob know how much his son
would rule. And he would rule as a king as
a picture of Christ the king. Now we talk about the sovereignty
of God. I've got a book, many of you
probably have it too, The Sovereignty of God, A.W. Pink. Well, you
know, Trusting in the sovereignty, saying we believe in the sovereignty
of God, those kinds of things, we call ourselves sovereign gracers,
don't we? I mean, sovereign gracers. I
like saying I'm a sovereign gracer a whole lot better than I like
saying I'm a Calvinist. A sovereign gracer. That's not just doctrine that
separates us from the free willer now. The sovereignty of our Savior
is the only way our salvation can be sure. It's the only way. It's the only way. If it's left
up to you and me, it'll fail every time. The only way a sinner
can be saved is if there's someone who's got the power and the right
to save. Who's got the power? Who's got
the right? The King. Christ the King has
the power and the right to save. And he has engaged all of his
power as king to obtain the redemption of his people. And he's used
that sovereignty to apply that salvation to their hearts and
to keep them to the end. Now that's beautiful. He could
have used that sovereignty to damn me, couldn't he? Instead,
he used that sovereignty to save his people. Now that's beautiful. I challenge you, find an earthly
ruler that will do what he does, use what power he has to help
people without lining his own pockets first. I challenge you
to find one. But Christ our Savior did, and
that's what makes him so beautiful. Then last, I figure, there must
have been some gold and some silver in Joseph's cove, more
than likely gold and silver threads like they had in the tabernacle,
which would be a picture of the value of the person and the value
of the sacrifice of Christ. The blood of Christ is precious
to the Father. His blood is precious because
His whole person is precious to the Father. And since that
blood is precious, that's what enables his blood to pay the
redemption price for the sin of God's elect. Nothing else
is valuable enough to pay the price, but Christ's blood is. And he used it. He used that precious, precious
blood to pay the price for the sin of his people. And Christ is also, he's precious
to the Father. He's also precious to his people.
Unto you therefore which believe, he is precious. In that word, precious is preciousness. Unto you therefore which believe,
he is preciousness itself. It's not just like he's one precious
things amongst many precious things. He is preciousness. He's everything that's precious.
Christ is so precious to his people. Here's how you can tell.
Is he precious to you? Is he all you want? Is he all you need? Can you say,
give me Christ or else I die? He's so precious to me. Give
me Christ or else I die. That's his preciousness to his
people. And that's beautiful. And we won't go into a lot of
depth about this, but I gotta say this. You know what happened
to Joseph's beautiful coat, don't you? It ended up being torn,
covered with an animal blood, and shown to his father, and
says, is this your son's coat or no? And he said, it is. Some wild beast must have destroyed
my son, killed my son. That beautiful coat ended up
being covered with blood to make everybody think Joseph was dead. Well, what happened to the beautiful
character of Christ our Savior? It became covered in blood. In
his blood, his precious blood. Blood that he shed to pay for
the sins of his people. Blood that he shed when he died. He had to shed some blood and
then later on recover. He shed his blood, all of it,
so that he died. See, Jacob just thought Joseph
was dead. Christ did die. His holy, that
holy character, that precious body was torn and battered and
bruised and marred beyond what any other man ever suffered.
Covered in blood. Well, what happened after that?
Joseph was raised to the throne of Egypt. That's a picture of
Christ. He died, but he raised from the
dead and he ascended back to glory to sit on the throne at
his father's right hand. And the Lord put Joseph through
all of that before he got to the throne, and Joseph said,
here's the reason God did it, to save much people alive. You know why the father put his
son through everything he put him through? So that he could
save much people alive. So that he could save a number
that no man could number and save them alive. And when he
ascended back to the throne, I mentioned this earlier, here's
what he's doing. He's not just sitting on the throne doing nothing.
He's making intercession for his people. And the way he makes
intercession for his people is pleading his sacrifice, pleading
his blood, how that marred his precious body, his precious character.
Now, if the Lord Jesus Christ is the successful, victorious
Savior, and he's making intercession for you, I promise you this,
I don't care how dark the night, I don't care how dire the circumstance
looks, If Christ is making intercession for you, you can never perish. And that's beautiful. As far as I can tell, that's
pretty good reason to trust Christ and run to Him. And in closing, if there's someone
here that thinks, oh, I'd like to have Him. I'd like to be found in Him.
I wish he'd be gracious to me. I wish he'd forgive me. I wish
he'd be my king. I wish he'd be my, I need his
blood. I need his righteousness. I need
his forgiveness. I need him. I need, I'm in need. Let me tell you the same thing
Pharaoh told people, came to him when they're hungry. He said,
go to Joseph, he's got it all. I'm telling you and me tonight,
go to Christ. He is all. He is all. I hope the Lord will bless that
to you. I appreciate y'all having me.