Well, we're back in Genesis this
morning, and I've called this morning's message, The Gospel
in a Story. You know, we've had gospel in
all sorts of events, and gospel in a story, in a sense, they're
all the gospel in a story. But Genesis is so rich with stories,
and they're excellent stories. I mean, I hardly need to tell
you, look at Hollywood, and look how many movies, films, the film
industry has made based on Bible stories, Samson and Delilah,
the Ten Commandments, and so on and so forth. Genesis is rich
with stories, but they're all to reveal the gospel of grace. And the longest of the stories
in Genesis, and the most vivid, starts in chapter 30 with the
birth of Joseph. Jacob's eleventh son, the son
of Rachel, his beloved wife. And it ends at the end of Genesis,
in chapter 50. Of course, the story is very
well known. If you start reading it, I challenge
you to be able to put the book down. It's a compelling story,
and it's so well known, even in these days, where so little
of the Bible is known. you know, the way the brothers
sold him, and the way he was falsely accused and ill-treated,
but then raised up to glory as the second to Pharaoh in the
whole land of Egypt, and was instrumental in being the savior
of the people of those days in the face of the most severe famine
that had ever been, and the riches that were in Joseph's hands.
It's such a wonderful, well-known story. And it's full of moral
lessons, loads of them, moral lessons. I looked up on the internet
just to see about books on Joseph, and there are many. And I just
dibbled into one or two. And it's always the same. Lovely
moral lessons. Moral lessons. You know, this
point, that point, another point. How we can learn this, that and
the other. But do you know something? Not a mention of Christ. Not a mention. That the purpose
of them is to teach about Christ. You know, if you want just moral
lessons, then read the works of Shakespeare. Wonderful. But
the purpose of Scripture isn't to give us moral lessons. You'll
pick up moral lessons on the way. But the purpose of Scripture
is to speak gracious salvation to the people of God. The people
whom He chose in Christ before the foundation of the world.
The multitude that no man can number that were placed in eternal
union with the Son of God before the beginning of time. And it's
all in human narrative. You know, a novel, a story, is
an extremely good way of teaching deep truth, isn't it? There are
some excellent novels, some excellent works of fiction, that teach
powerful lessons. And the idea of a story This
is a true story, this is not fiction, this is not made up,
this is the truth, this is what actually historically happened,
I believe it 100%. But through this human narrative
of what happened to this man Joseph and his family in the
land of Egypt, through it all, God illustrates salvation from
sin and death. That's His purpose. The purpose
of God in Scripture is to show us His purpose in saving His
people from their sins. Human writers weave some intricate
plots, but this is Holy Spirit work. No mere man could write
this. No mere man could bring out the
glorious pictures that there are of the Son of God in His
saving office. And the more you dig, The more
you dig, you know, the worldling, the skeptic of the world, the
unbeliever, would say, the more you dig, the more you will find
it inconsistent, and the more you will find that the plot falls
apart and doesn't hang together. The children of God know this.
The more you dig into Scripture, the deeper you find it. Who can
plumb its depths? The truth is, it's bottomless,
it's without depth, it's so profound, unbelievably profound. Again,
look in the bulletin at the articles I've put there. And yet, as profound
as it is, it is so simple. Who could understand what God
in Christ has done to satisfy His justice and to save a multitude
of sinners who deserve nothing but the justice of God in condemnation
for their sin, and yet be just and justifier, and make them
the righteousness of God. Who could understand how God
does that? How is it that God is manifest
in the flesh? How is it that God is contracted
to a span? Yet it's so simple, isn't it?
What must I do to be saved? Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
and you shall be saved. Trust, for in believing is the
confirmation of the involvement of the sinner with that which
Christ has accomplished. And if God should reveal it,
it doesn't need intellect, it doesn't need great intellect.
It's so simple that if God, the Holy Spirit, should reveal it
to you, you children listening, if God should reveal it to you,
even a child can see the truth of it. the truth of God, the
truth of salvation. This is my prayer for you, that
you will, while you are young, come to a knowledge of the truth.
There is no time too early to come to a knowledge of the truth
of the Gospel of Grace. To summarize it, in the sovereign
purposes of God, Joseph, the beloved son of Jacob, saves his
evil brothers from certain death by starvation, and the purpose
of the story is to illustrate how Christ The well-beloved Son
of God, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. The
well-beloved Son of God saves those whom, it says in Hebrews
2 verse 11, concerning the people that He came to die for and to
save from their sins, it says that Christ is not ashamed to
call them brethren. Just as Joseph saved his hateful,
evil brothers, from starvation, death by starvation, the beloved
Son of God came and saved from just condemnation for sin those
whom He is not ashamed. He ought to be, we're sinners,
but He is not ashamed to call His people His brothers because
of His grace, because of His favor, because of the salvation
He's accomplished. He saves from eternal death.
Today, all I want to do, if it is possible to do it, is to take
an overview of the life of Joseph, drawing parallels with Christ. And the purpose of it is that
you who hear might bow down before the divine wisdom of God in worship
and praise for all that is accomplished. and that in bowing down before
him you might believe him and trust him to the saving of your
soul, that you might know what it is to be saved from your sins,
to have a good hope to know that you are a joint heir with Christ,
that you will inherit all things, that you will be there in eternal
glory when this life is over. This is what Genesis is about,
it's such a wonderful book, this first book of Moses, the first
book of the Bible, the book of beginnings, the book that tells
us everything, wrong about the fall, wrong about it all, it
teaches us so much. The first Adam, pictures the
last Adam, who is Christ. Represents him, is such a good
picture of him in so many ways. Abel, the son of Adam and Eve,
showed the need for blood sacrifice, showed the need for Christ. Noah's
Ark pictured Christ as a safe refuge in the storm of divine
wrath, that's what it pictured. So graphically, so vividly did
it picture it. Abraham and Isaac at Mount Moriah,
when God told Abraham to go and sacrifice Isaac. Abraham and
Isaac enacted Calvary, the cross of Calvary, when God deserted,
as it were, his own son. My God, my God, why have you
forsaken me? Cried Christ from the cross.
For the father turned his face away when the sin of the people
of God was laid upon his beloved son and The wrath of God fell
upon him instead of them, and that was enacted by Abraham and
Isaac at Mount Moriah, which we think is physically just exactly
where Calvary was. And then Melchizedek appeared
to Abraham and revealed Christ as what we need if we're to come
to God, as a high priest, an interceding high priest. We cannot
approach God. No man can approach God and live,
but in Christ we can. So Melchizedek reveals Christ
as the High Priest of his people. Isaac! Abraham's not his only
son. I know it says he's only son
Isaac, but it really means he's only Isaac. There was Ishmael,
and then there were others later, but Isaac was the only Isaac. In Isaac shall the seed be called
the seed, the promised seed, the seed promised to the woman,
the one in whom the blessing of salvation would come on the
multitude of God's elect. It was in Isaac. He pictured
Christ as the promised seed. the Promised Sea, the one that
was ready to be sacrificed until God provided Himself a sacrifice,
a ram for a burnt offering. And then Jacob came from Isaac,
and Jacob was the one that God loved. And like Esau, Jacob have
I loved. And Jacob, on his own, entirely
on his own, met with God and saw Christ, the ladder, from
earth, from the sin and evil of this earth, reaching up to
God in heaven, in eternal glory. Jacob saw Christ as the ladder. And all those pictures point
to Christ, but Joseph is so much richer than all of those accounts,
because Joseph, well, it's a quarter of the book of Genesis, it's
the last quarter of the book of Genesis, and there are so
many ways in which Joseph pictures Christ. In a true story of what
happened to him, God painted a clear scene of redeeming grace. You know, this whole of this
world, this creation, this universe is the canvas on which God paints
his sovereign grace, his saving grace. Arthur Pink lists 100
ways. In his book, Gleanings in Genesis,
Pink wrote lots of gleanings in different books of the Bible,
but in Gleanings in Genesis, He wrote a hundred ways in which
Joseph pictures Christ. We can barely scratch the surface. But think of his birth, first
of all, the birth of Joseph. You know, Jacob went to Laban,
to his mother's brother, his mother Rebekah. Her brother was
Laban in Paddan Aram. And he went back there to Mesopotamia,
seeking a wife, because Isaac had said, don't take a wife of
the daughters of Canaan, go back there. And he went there, and
by the well, when the camels that he'd taken needed drink,
Rachel came, beautiful girl, and his heart was completely
enraptured with her, and He longed for Rachel for his wife, and
Laban said, you must work for her. And he made him work for
seven years, and then tricked him. And instead of giving him
Rachel, he gave him Leah, the older sister. And because of
the customs and the way marriages were conducted, Jacob didn't
know that it wasn't Rachel. until it was too late, and she
was his wife. And so he said, well, wait another
week and you can have Rachel as well. You know, God said that
the two, man and woman, the two shall be one flesh, not the multiples,
not polygamy, but Laban tricked him. And so he had to work another
seven years for Rachel, who was his wife too. And then there
was there were children born, there were sons born to Leah,
and then they stopped coming, the sons, and Rachel had no sons,
and the maids of Leah and of Rachel, Zilpah and Bilhah, bore
sons to Jacob, and they were mothers, Leah, Zilpah and Bilhah
were mothers of ten sons, and there's one daughter, Dinah,
that we read of. We looked at them last week. There were probably many, many
more daughters, but that's the only one that we read of. But
Rachel, the one he really loved, was childless. She is the one,
who in Genesis 46 and verse 19, Rachel is described as Jacob's
wife. She's the one that was the wife
that he loved, above all others, and yet she was the one who was
barren. And something, therefore, miraculous appears about the
birth of Joseph, because Rachel was barren for many, many years,
while other sons were being born to the other women that were
there in the life of Jacob. All human hope had been tried
and abandoned. Is that not a picture, just a
picture, of how the Lord Jesus Christ was made? You know, God
sent forth his Son made of a woman. What woman was he made of? He
was made of the Virgin. He was made of a highly favoured
woman. Mary, said the angel, you are
highly favoured of God. She was a highly favoured woman,
and she was a Virgin, and the Holy Ghost came upon her, and
She was with child of the Holy Ghost and Christ was born of
a virgin. Born of a virgin, without human
father and therefore without sin. You see the special picture
that it paints. He who was alone qualified to
stand surety and substitute for his elect brethren. The Lord
Jesus Christ is pictured in Joseph's birth. Joseph himself we can
conclude nothing other than that he was a sinner, like the family
from which he came. But, having said that, he was
of exemplary character. We don't read of anything that,
you know, like all of the other patriarchs, we read that the
scripture is very honest about their lying and about their deceit
and about even their murder in cases later on, in the case of
David, committing murder. But Joseph was of exemplary character. What a fitting picture for one
qualified to save. Who is able to save? One who
is qualified to save. The only one who can give his
life a ransom for many is the one whose life is a sinless life. Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ,
a sinless life given to ransom his people from the curse of
the law. His name, Joseph, his name Joseph,
means adding. For when he was born, Rachel,
his mother, said, This isn't the last. God is going to add
to me more sons. In actual fact, it was just Benjamin,
and she died whilst giving birth to Benjamin. But Joseph, his
name means adding. And like Christ, like Christ,
and unlike Adam, who subtracted from the kingdom of God when
he handed over everything to Satan, Christ added into heaven
sons of God, in bringing many sons to glory. Jesus is one who
adds to the kingdom of God. Hebrews chapter 2, in bringing
many sons to glory, Christ added. Joseph, his name means adding.
And then he had an Egyptian name as well. When he got down into
Egypt, into the court of Pharaoh, Pharaoh gave him the name Zaphnath-paneah,
which means revealer and provider. Revealer, one who reveals hidden
secrets. He's not the Lord Jesus Christ,
one who reveals the secret things of God. No man has seen God at
any time, says John 1 verse 18. The only begotten Son who is
in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him. He has made
Him manifest. He has made Him known. He has
declared all things needful. He's given us all things needful,
for He is, as was shown to Abraham when the ram was provided in
place of Isaac as the sacrifice, Jehovah-Jireh, God will provide. He has provided all things needful
for salvation. Then think of Joseph's family
ranking, his position in the family. He was the 11th son of
Jacob. So you might say in human society,
he was way down the pecking order, but you know in chapter 37 of
Genesis in verse three, we read this, didn't we? Now Israel loved
Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his
old age, and he made him a coat of many colors. the son of his
old age, the son of his beloved wife Rachel, and he made him
a coat of many colors. What's that about? I mean, many
people have written and commented on this as to what a foolish
thing it was for the old man to do, to show such favor to
this one Joseph and not to the others. You know, what we read
about the others again and again, the account of them, is not glowing
with moral uprightness. In fact, it's full of sin and
corruption. You read all about what they
did, the things that they did, absolutely dreadful things that
they did. As I said last week, like the script of one of our
worst soap operas on the television. And yet this was the people from
whom the line of Christ and the line of saving grace would come
through, the promised seed of the woman would come through
this family. But there, when this eleventh son was born, this
son of Jacob's old age, he loved Joseph more than all the other
sons, and he made him a coat of many colors, a coat that was
a coat of intricate work. It wasn't just like the musical,
Jacob had a favourite son of all the family, Joseph was the
favoured one, and he made his son a coat of many colours, and
you sing all the colours, you know, the West End musical. No,
not like that. This was an intricate work, it
was showing something about the special position and the special
destiny of this boy. He made him a coat of many colours.
By divine revelation, Jacob knew the promises of God concerning
the line from which the Messiah would come would immediately
be fulfilled through this son, Joseph. I know ultimately it
was through Judah, because Shiloh shall not depart from Judah,
the scepter shall not depart from Judah, says Jacob in his
dying prophecy about his sons, later on in Genesis 49. It says
the scepter, the rule, shall not depart from Judah until Shiloh,
the Christ, comes. I know ultimately it was Judah,
but here and now, the one through whom the line would be preserved
was Joseph, this young son, this youngest son at the time, this
eleventh son. Joseph was the object of Jacob's
love. The old man loved this son more
than all the others. He had good cause. We read nothing
about any bad trait of character in Joseph, he was just upright
and honest, and sought to do his father's will, unlike the
rest of the brothers. Is that not what we read of Christ,
John 3, 35, that when God became man, In the body that God had
prepared for His Son, He came and took upon Him flesh, made
in the likeness of sinful flesh, yet without sin. We read that
the Father loveth the Son and has given all things into His
hand. God the Father loved God the
Son. God the Father loved the man
Jesus, the Son of God. God manifests in the flesh. Look
at Proverbs chapter 8. Again, you read the Scripture,
and all the Scripture hangs together, and all the Scripture is the
Holy Spirit's work. Men wrote it, inspired by the
Holy Spirit, yet, yet it was the Holy Spirit. The message
is consistent throughout, and in Proverbs chapter 8, it's speaking
of wisdom, and it's speaking of Christ. For in Christ dwell
all the treasures of knowledge and wisdom. He is made unto us
wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.
And in chapter 8 verse 22, this is wisdom speaking, so it's Christ
speaking. The Lord possessed me in the
beginning of His way, before His works of old. Verse 30. Then
I was by Him as one brought up with Him, and I was daily His
delight, rejoicing always before Him. The Son was the rejoicing
of the Father's heart. Can you understand the Trinity?
Neither can I. But the Scripture declares it.
And the Son of God was the rejoicing of the heart of God the Father.
And in the same way, pictured, pictured in this human story,
Joseph, the beloved son of the old man Jacob, the beloved son
of his old age, is loved by him. He's the object of Jacob's love.
He's the child of the of Jacob's old age, and so Christ again
there is an allusion to the picture of Christ being the eternally
begotten Son of God. He wasn't a created being at
some point in time, Christ is the eternally begotten Son of
God. In John 1, the first three verses,
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and
the Word was God. The same was in the beginning
with God. All things were made by him, and without him was not
anything made that was made. How can He be a created being?
Without Him was not anything made that was made. He made all
things that were made. He is the eternal, creating Son
of God. He's not a creature of God, but
God the Creator. It says He is the beginning of
the creation of God. That doesn't mean He's the first
thing God created. It means that He is the one who
initiated the creation. He is the beginning of the creation
of God. All of God's fullness dwells
in Christ. The fullness of the Godhead,
bodily, dwells in Him. Again, beyond our comprehension
to understand, but by faith we believe. By the gift of God,
which is faith, we believe. He's not a creature at all. But
God, as it says in 1 Timothy 3 verse 16, God was... Great is the mystery of godliness.
God was manifest. God, the unknowable God. No man
can approach to God. No man shall see me and live.
And yet, the unknowable God, the one that none of us can look
upon and live, was made manifest. Philip. Show us the Father, and
it will suffice. Philip, have I been so long with
you, and yet you have not known me? He who has seen me has seen
the Father. only as the infinite God, only
as the Creator God, only as the sinless God, beloved of the Father,
only as such is Christ able, as it says in Hebrews 7.25, to
save to the uttermost those who come to God by Him. Would you
be saved by the skin of your teeth, or would you be saved
to the uttermost? He saves to the uttermost those
who come to God by Him. The one who would save his brothers
is marked out as special. Joseph had a coat of many colors. I'm sure Jacob didn't understand
the full meaning of what he'd done, but there in the purposes
and plan of God, Joseph was marked out as special among the brethren
because he was the one who would save his brothers from death
by starvation. So Christ Think how special he
was. Joseph had a coat of many colors.
When Christ was born, angels announced his birth to shepherds.
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth goodwill, peace,
goodwill toward men. The angels proclaimed his birth.
God spoke at his baptism, this is my beloved son. The people
heard a voice from heaven, this is my beloved son, in whom I
am well pleased. He is the one who was meek and
lowly and humble, and he washed his disciples' feet. But his,
his feet, the feet of Jesus, were anointed with precious ointment.
He said, the poor and those around you, you have with you always,
but me, not always. Don't say anything against this
woman who's broken this bottle of expensive ointment on me for
my burial. When he died on the cross, the
world went dark for three hours. There was an earthquake, tombs
were opened, dead bodies arose. This is the one who is so special. Even Roman soldiers professed,
surely this is the Son of God. Even Roman soldiers, hard, hard,
tough guys, this is the Son of God. Whilst he was meek, and
lowly of heart. He said that, I am meek and lowly
of heart. Yet he was arrayed in a coat
of many colors, if I can use the metaphor, highly exalted. Therefore has God highly exalted
him. Let this mind be in you that
was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God thought
it not robbery to be equal with God, but laid all that glory
aside that he might come for the suffering of death, to release
His people from the bondage of Him that has the power of death,
which is the devil. And being thus the Saviour of
His people, God has highly exalted Him and given Him a name which
is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee
should bow. And His brothers, the ten before
Him, the brothers, they hated Him for it. Does that remind
you of the brethren of Christ, who in our natural state, as
sinners, we hated Him? He says, they hated me without
a cause. Christ was hated without a cause.
Joseph was given divine knowledge, we read in verse 5, he dreamed
a dream and they hated him yet the more, the dream about the
sheaves, and his sheaf of corn in the field, standing tall and
upright, and the others, the sheaves of the brothers, bowing
down before him. You know it came exactly true.
In things of the earth, on the earth, Joseph was elevated to
a position way, way above his brothers, as Christ is elevated
to a position way above those he is not ashamed to call brethren.
And then he has a second dream in verse 9, and it's the sun
and the moon and the stars made obeisance to him in heavenly
things. He is pictured as having the
preeminence, as Christ does. Christ has the preeminence in
all things. He's given dreams of how the
future would work out. And in verse 11, sorry, in verse
10, Joseph tells the dream to his father and to his brethren,
and his father rebuked him and said to him, what is this dream
that you have dreamed? Shall I and thy mother and thy
brethren, who do you think you are? Shall we come and bow down
ourselves to thee in the earth? And his brethren envied him.
But here's some divine knowledge. But his father, Jacob, observed
the same. There's something about this. There's something that's going
to happen. In the same way that Joseph was given knowledge of
things that were going to happen, Christ came with knowledge from
heaven. Where would you go to? They say,
how can we know what eternity is like? We've got no way of
knowing. Oh yes, we have. If the Holy Spirit is pleased
to reveal to you the things of Christ, the truth of Christ,
the words that Christ spoke, He will give you knowledge of
eternal heavenly things. John 3 verse 13, No man hath
ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven. No
man's able to go and get knowledge of what heaven is like, but there's
one that's come down from heaven. There's one that has come from
the Father to earth, even the Son of Man, which is in heaven.
And what does he say to his disciples? John 15 verse 15, I call you
no longer servants, but I call you my friends, for all things,
all things that I have heard of my Father, I have made known
unto you. The Father revealed the gospel
of grace and the Son Heard those things, if you like, and revealed
them to his people, to his brethren. He told them, he told us, in
my father's house are many mansions. He says that in John 14, right
at the start. Let not your heart be troubled.
You believe in God, believe also in me. In my father's house there
are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have
told you, but he has told us. For He is the One who has come
down from heaven with divine knowledge. He is the One who
has given us that divine knowledge of eternal heavenly things. Would
you know the truth in this world that seems to know nothing about
anything? In this world that seems to be
totally riven with confusion and unbelief? and the most ridiculous
things being done day after day, one thing upon another, and yet
here is the one who comes down from the infinite purity of God,
with the infinite knowledge of God who is over all things, and
he teaches us things that his Father has told us. He has eternal
divine knowledge, and it's pictured in Joseph with his dreams. And
he's sent to his brothers, Joseph is sent to his brothers, this
seventeen-year-old favoured son in his coat of intricate work,
royal coat, and he's sent as a shepherd to provide for his
brothers' needs. Is that not how Christ came?
He said, I am the Good Shepherd. I give my life for the sheep.
He comes for the sheep. And they plot to kill him. We
read about it. And you know the story. But read it again for
yourselves. He's sold into slavery. The Ishmaelites
come and they say, rather than kill him, let's get some money
for him. So they sell him. Wasn't Christ sold and betrayed? Wasn't he sold for 30 pieces
of silver by Judas Iscariot? And Joseph is sold into Egyptian
slavery? And he goes down into the slave
market in Egypt, and the brothers go back and they've killed an
animal and covered Jacob's coat with blood. And they take it
back to their father and they lie about his death. They'd say,
we found this coat covered in blood. Is it not your son's coat?
He must have been killed. Lying all the time. This is the
brothers that he had, sinners. Look at Luke's gospel. Luke's
Gospel chapter 20. Let me just read a few verses
for you. Because there Jesus is speaking
about sending his son into the world. He gives a parable of
the man who has a vineyard and he goes away and he sets overseers
over the vineyard, and he comes to get some of the fruit of the
vineyard, and in verse 13, then said the lord of the vineyard,
what shall I do? I will send my beloved son, because
the previous ones he'd sent, the prophets, they'd killed them.
What shall I do? I will send my beloved son. It
may be they will reverence him when they see him. But when the
husbandmen saw him, they reasoned among themselves, saying, This
is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and the
inheritance may be ours. So they cast him out of the vineyard
and killed him. What therefore shall the lord
of the vineyard do unto them? And so it goes on. But it's illustrated
in this account of Joseph. you know, he sends them his son,
he sends his beloved son to minister to their needs and they plot
to kill him. Look at Joseph's summary, I'm
skipping many chapters, but in chapter 50, look in chapter 50
and verse 19, at the end of the story when Joseph in all of his
regal splendor in Egypt, as the ruler of the land who has saved
humanity from starvation under the direction of the living God,
and is exalted to the highest place in the land. And finally,
his father Jacob are there, and the brothers that so evilly and
badly treated him are there, and he's revealed to them, and
they're scared that ultimately he might take revenge on them.
In verse 18, his brethren also went and fell down before his
face, and they said, Behold, we be thy servants. Was not the
dream fulfilled, the dream of the sheaves fulfilled in the
earth? They bowed down before him, and Joseph said unto them,
Fear not, for I am in the place of God to you. I'm exalted to
a position where as God can kill and make alive, I can kill and
make alive. But as for you, he says to them,
your intention was evil. Ye thought evil against me, but
God meant it for good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to
save much people alive. That was the summary of it all.
You know, they intended it for evil, but God intended it for
good. Look at Acts. If I can find it, wherever it's
gone. Acts chapter 2. Acts chapter 2. Just turn over
there, just briefly. Acts chapter 2, the sermon of
Peter on the day of Pentecost. In verse 23, speaking of Christ,
Peter preaches to the crowd on the day of Pentecost, and he
says, Him, Christ, being delivered by the determinate counsel and
foreknowledge of God, it was all in God's eternal purposes
of salvation, but, but you, You have taken, and by your wicked
hands you have crucified and slain the Lord of glory, whom
God hath raised up. You see, it was all in the purposes
of God. You intended it for evil, but
God intended it for good. You intended it to get rid of
this man. God intended it, to satisfy divine
justice, that his people might be saved. And so he goes to Joseph's,
Joseph is sold into Potiphar's house, and he prospers, but of
course, there's the trickery and he ends up in prison, and
there's the baker and the butler, and you know the details, but
if you don't read the story, we might come back to more of
it later, and he's falsely accused and he's in prison for many years.
Though he only did good, he was a faithful servant. We read in
Genesis 39 verse 2, these are such telling words, the Lord
was with Joseph. Whatever happened, in prison,
you know, we read in that Psalm 105, they hurt his feet in the
stocks. They hurt his feet. He was treated
cruelly, but he bore it with great patience, picturing the
Lord Jesus Christ. But the Lord was with him. The
Lord was with him. He was wrongly imprisoned, but
because of his good character, he was soon made into a faithful
warder of the prison. And he was an interpreter of
dreams. He had divine knowledge. God gave him divine knowledge.
He was despised and rejected in prison. And years had passed,
and now he's about 30 years old. And cometh the hour, cometh the
man. Pharaoh's dreams. Nobody can
interpret them. Joseph does, not bringing glory
to himself, but glory to God who gave him the knowledge of
it. The revelation of God's plan of salvation through world events,
the revelation of God's plan that the line from which the
Christ would come would be kept alive and saved from starvation. When God sent His Son into the
world, they hated Him without a cause. He was, as Isaiah says,
despised and rejected of men. When famine promised death, Joseph
had God's plan. When divine justice demanded
death for sin, God's substitute, His Messiah, His Christ, set
His face as a flint to go to Calvary to make satisfaction
to the justice of God. By Joseph, And Pharaoh's trust
in him, Jacob and the family were saved. They went from being
that little band that Psalm 105 talked about, to being millions
strong, a great nation. And God preserved the line from
which God's salvation would be accomplished. He was hidden and
then revealed. Do you know the account of the
brothers coming to buy corn and they don't know that the man
is Joseph, their brother, whom they sold. And they're frightened
of him and he sends them back and shows them love but at the
same time wants to bring them to repentance. Joseph was despised
and rejected but is now highly exalted in Egypt. But he's unknown
to his brothers. Gradually, they're forced to
face their evil and repent, and finally Joseph is revealed to
them, and his dreams are fulfilled. Is that not the case with Christ?
Hated by his brethren, maybe you and me, in our natural state,
children of wrath, even as the others, unbelieving, but brought
to a position by saving grace to see what we are, the Holy
Spirit brings conviction and grants repentance and reveals
Christ. When it pleased God to reveal
his Son in me, said Paul, he gives the gift of faith and the
children of wrath are adopted into the family of God, as Ephesians
1 and 2 says. Children of wrath adopted into
the family of God. Rejoicing, reunion, there was
the reunion with Jacob, there was much weeping when he was
made known to them, there was much repentance, there was salvation
from starvation, there was prosperity, the preservation of the line
to Christ and the kingdom. and the restoration, 400 years
later or more, of Joseph's bones to the promised land, because
he said, I won't be known as an Egyptian, I will be known
as one of that tribe that God had determined to bless, from
whom the Christ would come. one of God's covenant people,
saved by grace. These Genesis Scriptures speak
of Christ. Just in closing, I just want
to read this because I just think, what can I say? What can I say
to this? Look what it says at the end
of Romans 11, verse 33, oh the depth. of the riches, both of
the wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are His judgments
and His ways past finding out. For who hath known the mind of
the Lord? Or who hath been His counsellor?
Or who hath first given to Him, and it shall be recompensed unto
Him again? For of Him, and through Him,
and to Him are all things, to whom be glory for ever. Amen.