Tonight I want us to look at
this great famine that Joseph revealed, or that perhaps I might
say God revealed through Joseph, this dream that Pharaoh had,
this warning of God. And of his appointment concerning
this curse, this dearth that fell upon all the earth, and
then of those who came to him to find what could not be found
anywhere else. Now, if we've learned anything
in our study in Genesis, it is this, that everything in the
natural, everything we read in here in the natural, runs parallel
with the Spirit. There's a lot of questions that
I ask as a young man that I no longer ask because I understand
now that the Redeemer's hand in creation helps me to understand
what that creation is all about. The Redeemer's hand in providence
helps me to understand what this providence is all about. And
it runs in parallel with the spiritual thing. You know, he
talked there in Romans chapter 8. He said, the whole creation
groaneth and travaileth in pain together. Together with us. Just
like you suffer, it suffers. Just like the curse curses you,
it curses creation. These things run in a parallel.
Just try to picture the Redeemer as pure light. And everything
that He touches He leaves light on it. He leaves light in it.
Everything that he created, everything that he said, everywhere that
he went, everything that he did, all these things that have his
hand upon them have light in them. Speaking of creation, David
said the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament,
the atmosphere around him, that showeth his handiwork. We can
just walk out here and breathe. You can't breathe very long underwater.
And you can't breathe very well in outer space. But we can breathe
just fine here in this firmament, in this atmosphere. God shows
His handiwork. And then immediately after He
talks about creation, He talks about providence. This is over
in Psalm 19. And He said, day unto day uttereth
speech, and night unto night knowledge. There's knowledge
in these things. There's a speech in these things.
There's a declaration in these things. And the key to wisdom
is the Lord Jesus Christ. It's not intellect and science
and this type of thing, philosophy. That's not where the mystery
is revealed. The mystery is made known in
the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the Rosetta Stone. He's
the key to all understanding. It's this purpose of God in Christ. And being one with God in the
beginning, whose very name is the Word of God, He says all
things were given to Him to mediate the will and the good pleasure
of God. He said, I came not to do my
own will. I'm not here just to do whatever pops in my head.
I came here to do the will of the Father. I'm the mediator,
the one mediator between God and man. And I'm here to mediate
the good pleasure of God. Paul tells us in Colossians 1
that all things were made by Him, and without Him was not
anything made that was made. There's light and life in everything
that is made, in everything that is done, and in everything that
He's arranged. It's in the very arrangement
of these things. He's the firstborn of every creature. You know that when He says, I
am the firstborn of every creature over there in Colossians chapter
1, that word is creation. He's the firstborn of creation.
The firstborn. The Lord God of heaven first
appointed Christ. And everything that came about
in time has a kinship to Him. It has its reason in Him. It
has its being in Him. In Him, Paul said, we live and
move and have our being. He's before all things, and by
Him all things consist. And thrones and dominions and
principalities and powers, all things were created by Him and
for Him. He's the head of the body of
the church that in all things, all things, everything, everything
that is, in all things, He might have the preeminence. And I say again that nature and
providence have an analogy. Do you know what analogy is? When we talk about an analogy,
what that means? It means certain similarities
between one thing and the other. Very simply, that's what it means.
It means one thing corresponds to the other. It means one thing
communicates of the other. Let me give you some examples.
Our Lord said that the sovereign Spirit of God is like the wind. You see the analogy between the
two? He's like the wind. He blows
where He listens. And you can't tell where He came
from or where He's going next. The only way you can know his
presence is by the effects of it. It's the only way you can
know. It's like the wind. That's an analogy. And he often
uses these things. Regeneration, he said, he likened
that unto birth. Birth requires a seed. So does
regeneration. Born again, not a corruptible
seed, but incorruptible by the Word of God. It requires development. And it requires care. And then
he likens preaching unto sowing seed. A certain man went out
and sowed. A certain sower went forth to
sow. He likens hearing like a type of ground on which the seed fell.
He likens death and the grave, this place where there's no return,
a place of separation, inability, and coldness. Light, he likens
that unto knowledge and darkness unto God in goodness and wisdom has
filled creation and providence with the testimony of Christ
and his redemptive glory. So much so that in Romans chapter
1, Paul said to those heathens that he wrote to in Romans, he
said that so much is these things revealed, not only in your conscience,
not only in the providence that bears witness of the wrath of
God against unrighteousness in this world, but also in creation. Also in creation. He said that
the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world can
be clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made,
even His eternal power in Godhead. You might leave here tonight,
go home and say to your friends, that old man has lost his mind. Here's a natural event like a
famine and he's trying to make this thing look like the fall
of man. And he's talking about this man down in Joseph who's
given worldly power and trying to liken him unto the Lord Jesus
Christ. He just totally lost his mind.
Well, be warned that the Scriptures say the same thing. Old Stephen
over in the book of Acts, he'd come up before those Jews And
he didn't sit down and intellectually argue with them about the doctrines
of grace. He simply went back in their
past. And he took each event in their past. He took Moses
and told them what Moses stood for. He took David and told them
what David stood for. He took the kingdom and showed
them what the kingdom was all about. He took the Psalms of
David that referred to Christ and he went back and told them
the meaning of it. And when he got done, he said,
you stiff neck and uncircumcised of heart and ears, you do always
resist the Holy Ghost. Because the Holy Ghost in those
things bore witness of Christ. You see what I'm saying? I haven't
lost my mind. I'm doing exactly what they did
in the New Testament. I'm taking the Old Testament,
which is provided for me. provided as pictures and types
and events and things that illustrate the gospel that I'm attempting
to preach. And I don't think I could preach
without it. Once you've seen these pictures, man, a picture,
if I could just get the picture across to you, I don't have to
say anything else. It's in your head. It's in your
mind. It's locked in forever. You know exactly what it's saying. Now, I've got three things tonight,
the very simple things. And the first of those three
things is this. There was a great famine determined
on all the face of the earth. Now, I don't know what he meant
by that. Sometimes he used the word world. And in that word
world, he wasn't talking about the whole world. He was just
talking about the Gentile nations that the Jews just wrote off
as heathens. But it says here on the face
of the whole earth, and I'll take God at His word. That's
all right with me. That's all right with me. But
it fell on the Egyptians and it fell on Jacob's house. It
was a great famine. Nobody was exempt from the famine. I believe that's the picture
he's trying to get across to you. Nobody was exempt. There wasn't a place like Goshen
when When the curse of God and these plagues fell on Israel,
there wasn't a place like Goshen that escaped the famine. The
famine come on everybody. And I believe, and I say this
along with every writer that I read, that this famine represents
the state and condition of all men in the fall of Adam. There's
a famine in us, in us. By one man, it said, sin entered
into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon
all men, for that all have sinned. The famine of Egypt is something
I don't believe. I sit around and thought about
it, and then I decided just to look up the Word in my strong
concordance and kind of go through the Old Testament and look at
these various famines. It will turn your stomach. Some
of the things that went on in those things, I remember one
in particular over in 2 Kings, where this famine was sore on
the land, and one woman said to the other, we'll eat your
child today, and tomorrow I'll have yours. And so the one gave
the child for him for nourishment the next day, and then the woman
who promised third went and ate it. But this is the type of thing
that goes on during a famine. We're talking about no food.
We ain't talking about a little bit. We're talking about no food.
I don't think you and I know anything about that. Nothing
about it. People killing themselves because
it was such torture. It was just unthinkable torture
to live and not be able to eat. Such hunger and such pain. But no matter how great the naturalist
described it, it's nothing compared to the spirit. When man fell
in the garden, his very nature and mind were separated from
God. Now most folks don't know anything
about what I'm telling you right now. Their whole mind, their
very being, their very nature separated from God. It's not
that they have little thought of God, it's that they have none.
It's not that they're just not as righteous as somebody else,
they're non-righteous. Listen to this. Here's the way
God describes man in this famine of soul. He said he looked down
upon the inhabitants of the earth back in Genesis 6 verse 5. And every imagination of the
thoughts of man, of mankind, was only evil continually. Now that's man's state. That's
where he's at. He can't think a holy thought. All he can think
is something mixed, something compromised, something earthly. He can't sit down. As believers,
you and I can't hardly sit down and read the Bible and just sit
there in pure joy and amazement and sit there. Your mind's wandering
and your heart's wandering and your thoughts are wandering limited
in your understanding, and we sit down there in this body of
sin, just fixing, fixing, fixing. David said in Psalm 39, 5, every
man, every man, not some men, every man in his best state is
altogether vanity. Just vanity. He said, surely
every man. This is in Psalm 39, verse 6.
Surely every man walketh in a vain show. Surely they are disquieted
in vain. I'm going to tell you what that
means. That means they sought comfort in riches. They sought
comfort in titles and intellect. But after a while, they learned
that there was no comfort in them. And they spent a lifetime
seeking them. And now they don't have anything.
I thought as I looked at that verse how many rich men I've
known. In their life they had private
planes and jets and things to fly all over the country and
money to have homes here and homes there and homes somewhere
else, three or four or five homes around the country. I bid on
a remodeling job for a fellow. He was a Venezuelan man. He had
houses all over the world and he had a house up there in Kentucky
that he wanted a nearly a two million dollar remodeling job
on the house to give you some idea what kind of house it was.
And this man had houses all over the place and he maintained a
full staff in a farm up there in Kentucky just for the two
weeks of the Derby so he could fly here and be in his own home
at the Derby and then he went on about his business to the
next little whatever it was that he wanted to go to. But then when it comes down to
the end of life, none of those things matter anymore. That's
what this verse is talking about, disquieted, in vain. The bed,
one prophet said, the bed is too short to stretch out on,
and the cover is too narrow to cover them up. There's no peace,
no peace. All this world's promises were
just an empty dream. That old serpent, he soothes
the worried mind by pointing men in the wrong direction. He
loves to do it. He cries, peace, peace, where
there is no peace. He points them to this and points
them to that. He points the troubled men to
hard work and commitment and points men to sacrifice, points
men to all sorts of things, investments and education and savings and
climbing up the social ladder and all kinds of things. He points
men to duties and religion and he points men to catechisms and
high sounding goals and honorable titles and offices. But in the
end there's no peace because there is no bread. That's what
this story is all about. There is no bread. There's no
bread in him and there's no bread around him and there's no bread
anywhere. He's in a famine. He's in a desperate
situation. All his life, he thought, well,
if I want bread, I'll just go down to the store, but there
is no store. The store is empty. Well, I'll just go down to the
church when I get ready to get saved. I'm going to put all my
ducks in a row, and I'm going to get my house cleaned up, and
I'm going to do it. There ain't no bread down there.
And there ain't no bread in here. There ain't no bread. You see what's happening here?
God sent a famine. He sent Joseph down and made
preparation for the famine. And then God pressed the famine
sore on man. He pressed it on him. Here it
is. Here it is. Oh. There's a famine in the souls
of men. They're not yet aware of it.
God hadn't, he hadn't pressed that famine. He hadn't pressed
those things. He hadn't made them soar in the
land yet. Israel wandered for 40 years
in the wilderness. That land was cursed and could
not produce a single fruit. There was nothing out there.
Unless you wanted to suck on one of them old bitter cactus,
there wasn't anything out there. There wasn't nothing to eat.
It wasn't too long before they got hungry, and they cried, and
God sent them down bread from heaven. The reason He sent them
bread down from heaven is because there ain't no bread down here.
Ain't no bread. David said, My sin, my sin is
ever before me. He said, Behold, I shapen in
iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. What is this sin? This sin is a nature. It's our
nature. I don't know if we have ever
got a hold of it. It's our nature. It's what we
are. We do what we do because of what
we are. We have those thoughts. We sit
down. We come in here tonight to study,
and everything in the world is pulling you away from my words
right now. I know how it is. I sit down to study and prepare
this message, and the same thing goes on. This happens. That happens. The phone rings. Somebody knocks
on the door. Bunch of Jehovah's Witnesses
out there those days knocking on my door, interrupting my study,
and I'm going to tell you what I told them. But they know I
don't want to go to their church. They know that. There's a famine. There's a famine. We've got to have bread. I can't
do without it. I've got to have it. I can't
make it anymore. I can't generate bread. I can't
open this book and make bread appear. God has to rain the bread
down. God has to make provision. God
has to prepare the table. He's got to prepare my heart
and prepare your heart. He don't bless me. He's not going
to bless you. It ain't going to happen. It
just ain't going to happen. Oh, David said, my sin, my sin,
it's ever before me. That man had everything a man
could want. He was king. He had anything and everything
he could want. But he just wrestled with this
thing and wrestled with it. And he cried, my sin is ever
before me. I was shaped in an iniquity.
I was born this way. In sin did my mother conceive
me. It's a nature. It's my state
before God. It's my very being. It's my heart. It's my mind. Only sinners can sin. Don't you
think about that. Only a sinner can sin. And all that sinners do is sin. That's what he said. By one man,
sin entered into the world and death by sin. Death. It's death. Our nature is death. Our minds and hearts is death.
If God doesn't intervene, we're going to die. And we're going
to die in our sins. Sin, when it is finished, bringeth
forth death. Oh, our Lord said, your heart,
He told those men and women, He said, your heart is deceitful
above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? We think
we know it. We ain't even scratched the surface
of what we are. Oh, God has left Him light in
His conscience, and God is left light all around him. He's left
the light of creation. And God has preserved for him
a divine testimony in this book. There's light all in this book.
And God sent pure light into the world. And men love darkness
rather than light. That's what kind of nature we
got. There was a famine in the souls
of men. They were hungry. They were hungry
because God pressed this famine sore. And it didn't take them
long to figure out there wasn't any bread in the land. See, when
God gets hold of a man, I know the truth, I know the gospel,
you know the gospel. So why ain't this place filled
up tonight? Why come Sunday morning and ain't
every pew going to be full? Why ain't they out there at the
door, standing in the parking lot? Ain't nobody in trouble. God has to send the trouble.
Oh, I can tell them the truth if God can get them in trouble.
They'll call me. I don't have to call them. They'll
call me. You won't keep going back to that empty shelf. You
go down there, when God sends trouble in the heart, you go
down there, you ain't going to hear nothing. They ain't going
to speak to the trouble. They're still talking about these
outward things. They're still talking about these dreams and
visions and all these other things. They ain't dealing with the trouble. God has to send the trouble.
And then the second thing I see here, there's only one man who
has bread for the hungry soul. In all the earth, there was one
man, Joseph. He had all the corn. The keys
to the grains hanging on his belt. Nobody getting bread. They come to Pharaoh. They went
around Joseph. They didn't want to talk to Joseph.
They went around him. They went down to Pharaoh. And
they said, we're hungry. He said, go see Joseph. Go see
Joseph. That's what folks want to do
today. They want to come through the Holy Spirit and come to God.
They want to come to the Father first. That's what they want
to do. You're not coming to the Father
but by Him. That's it. Joseph had the keys. There was one man in all the
world that had the bread of God with Joseph. Go to him. And nobody knew him. The Egyptians
didn't know him after the flesh. They knew him as Zathnath-Paeonea. That's who they knew. They knew
that name, that exalted name. And he was like a legend to them.
He was a story that inspired. Wow! I heard they took him out
of prison. Made him second in command. And
I hear they make strong men run out in front of his chariot and
cry, bow down to him, bow down to him. They knew him. They knew
him by that exalted title. That's the way Gentiles know
him. The Jews only knew him after the flesh. That was Joseph. That
was just Joseph to him. He wasn't of no value. They sold
him out. Sold him down into... Nobody
really knew who he was. Nobody. Nobody. Not even Pharaoh knew who he
was. God alone knew who Joseph was and prepared him for the
job. I think everybody in Egypt heard
the story of Joseph. And they all knew him by reputation
and fame. But nobody sought him. His story
was inspiring. His story was the kind of thing
that dreams are made of. And his story made him a legend.
No doubt his story was recited at the firesides at night when
they went down to fish. They talked about him. But nobody
sought Him for bread. Nobody came to Him for life.
Nobody came to Him because there was nowhere else to go. They
come to Him as a last resort. They come to Him when God pressed
the famine sore on them and there was nowhere else to go. What
a sad commentary on man. All through the days of plenty,
men and women were content with their stories and content with
the legend and content to know his titles and offices, never
understanding the reality of the dream, never understanding
the famine, never daring to imagine that all the bread and all the
land was in his hands. Nobody. Did you ever have that
thought growing up? I never did. I never did. Nobody sought Joseph because
nobody was in trouble. And nobody knew why Joseph was
there. They just knew he came. I'm constantly
telling you. It's not just knowing his earthly
name, Jesus. It's knowing why. Why he was
there. Oh, this world coming apart at
the seams, and nations are rising up against nations, and kingdoms
against kingdoms, and famines, and earthquakes, and pestilences. And our Lord said, this is just
the beginning of sorrows. It's the beginning. And everybody's
crying, we've got the answer. It's a reformed lifestyle. Think
green and clean. That's what I heard them say
on TV the other night. Think green and clean. Return
to the old values, the old ways, the old paths, the simple life.
We need to enforce morality and legislate more strict laws and
be tougher on crime. Brother, there's a famine in
the soul. The only way you're going to do man any good is give
him bread. That's the only way. That's why
I don't go down here and march in these rallies. And that's
why I don't go down here and take part in these bait sales.
The trouble's in here. It ain't out there. It's in here.
And if God gets him in trouble, in trouble, they bread in Egypt. Bread down there. Great famine was sent into the
realm, and the One was established who could preserve them. The
only One established who could preserve them through it. Nobody
sought Him until God pressed the famine sore on them. Let me tell you something. We've got people in place when
we grew up, and I say we have them in place because it's men
who give them these offices. And there's preachers and teachers
and churches and synagogues all over the country, and men put
them up there. Men elect them, and men choose
them, and men put them up there. And they seem to do all right
under normal times. Old Pharaoh, you remember, had
his magician and wise men, and they could deal with normal things.
You know, if Pharaoh had a backache, they could deal with that. Or
if somebody threatened the throne, they could deal with that. They
could deal with these natural things. That's the way religion
is. They can deal with a bad marriage.
They got counselors in there. They can deal with tragedies,
death, and accidents, and things like this. They can counsel folks
on morality, and being a good employee, or a good husband,
a good wife. But when God unveils the famine
in here, they don't know how to talk about that. What are
we going to do about that? I tell you, I know. I've experienced
the famine, and I went to them, talking to them about, oh, well,
it ain't that bad. Oh, yes, it is. Oh, yes, it is. Oh, there was a famine in the
land, and only one man had what their empty souls cried for.
Now here's some good advice. This is the third thing I want
you to see. Let's look down here in Genesis 41 at the very last
verse and then the first couple of verses of that next chapter. And all countries came into Egypt
to Joseph for to buy corn, because that the famine was sore in all
lands. Verse 1. Now when Jacob saw that
there was corn in Egypt, Jacob said unto his sons, Why do you
look one on the other? He said, Behold, I have heard
that there is corn in Egypt. Get you down thither. Quit looking
to one another. Quit looking around. Quit asking
around. Quit arguing around. Get you
a sack and get down to Egypt. That's where the corn is. That's
where the corn is. and buy from thence that we may
live and not, this is life and death. Life and death. You stand here, you're jacked
back, boy, now Simeon, I know you got some corn here somewhere,
huh? That's what they was doing, they
was going over one another's house. But where'd you hide that
corn? I know you had some. You look too good not to have
a little corn put back. He said, behold, I heard that
their corn in Egypt get you down thither and by that we may live
and not die. Now I'm going to go a little
different direction with this. I believe you have the gist of
what's going on. I think that's a story. Surely
after all these years, you all know that. But I'm going to go
a little different direction tonight with this. And I want
to speak in an area that I believe a lot of us have difficulty with.
I know I do. Now this whole thing, when this
story is done, we learn that this whole thing was according
to the purpose of God. This whole thing. He said you
meant the whole thing for evil, and God meant this whole thing
for good. Old Potiphar's wife meant it for evil, but God meant
it for good. Old Butler forgot me, that was
an evil thing, but God meant it for good. This whole thing, in the end,
was the purpose of God to save Jacob and his house and even
the wicked land of Egypt was blessed to preserve God's people. God appointed a man and through
this man gave the means to preserve the whole kingdom and even all
his surrounding nations to gather in and preserve his elect. And
it's to this end that this thing of election and the eternal purpose
of God in it that I want to talk to you about tonight. This is
where the difficulty is. How do we do that? Because I
read in the Bible, whosoever will, let him take of the water
of life freely. And yet I hear him also say unto
them, where is it? Over in John chapter 10, where
he tells them, he said, my sheep. Here's why you're not my sheep.
My sheep, hear my voice. Well, there's a truth to this
thing. And I'm not trying to be consistent with what I say
so much as I'm trying to be consistent with what God says. It's this thing of election that
troubles me and how I present this thing. The bottom line is,
I mean, I want folks to come here. I want them to be pleased
with what I say. I want you to leave here rejoicing
when you leave here tonight. But more important than that,
I want to present this thing in the right light. I want to
present my Lord and my God in the right light. I want to present
this thing exactly as God presented it in the Scriptures. I don't
want to misrepresent Him. Now what Jacob knew in this famine
is what every child of God comes to know. We've got to understand
that we don't have any corn that's down in Egypt. We're hungry.
We're starving. It's life and death. I'm thinking
about my children now, and I'm thinking about my relatives,
and I'm thinking about my friends, and thinking about people that
I work with that still occasionally call me and talk to me. It's
life and death. It's not just a simple matter
of them going, well, you go to the place of your choice, and
I go to the place of my choice. It's life and death. Jacob knew
that. He said, stop messing around,
get a sack and get down to Egypt and get some corn. We're going
to die. We're going to die. Well, what I want to show you
is this. A lot of folks didn't go down and get corn. A lot of
folks died. A lot of folks died. Why did they die? What are we
going to blame that on? Are we going to blame that on
election? Huh? What I want you to see is election
was not the reason why some didn't go, it was the reason why some
did. If God didn't have an elect down
there, He wouldn't have sent Joseph. He wouldn't have ordained
Joseph to go through that suffering. He wouldn't have ordained Joseph
to go through and learn all the things that Joseph learned. Everybody would have perished
if it wasn't for Joseph. Joseph sat in the seat of power. And by his suffering, he could
sympathize with any and all who sought this precious grain. Everybody
in Egypt came to him. They all knew to come to him.
But there was other countries and other lands that came. What
did they plead? Huh? They just fell down before
him. And Joseph could sympathize with
them. I want you to think about that. Oh, God prepared him for
this job. He knew what it was to be friendless.
He knew what it was to be hungry. He knew what it was to be thrown
in the pit. He knew what it was to be without.
He knew what it was to be lied to and left in the hands of another. That's how our Lord tempted in
all points like as we are. And He exposed to the infirmities
of this flesh. He can sympathize. He can sympathize
with us. And then Joseph had the position
to give. He'd give what he saw fit. And even when they tried
to go around him, old Pharaoh said, he'd point them right back
to Joseph. You go down there. You go down there. And then thirdly,
his granaries were full. City after city. Think of it. It wasn't just Egypt that he
provided corn for. Every nation around. Anybody
that came into Egypt during their seven years, They got corn from
Jacob. He didn't turn anybody away.
Everybody that came got corn. Silo after silo, city after city,
field to the brink. Corn and enough to spare for
all who came to it. And the Word of God tells us
that the Spirit of the Living God and the Bride of Christ. You know what they say? Corn. Corn. Boy, that's a long message,
ain't it? We make things so difficult,
I tell you, trying to appeal to the intellect and trying to
make ourselves seem honorable, I suppose, or trustworthy. He just said, come. That's what
they say. Come. You know why they say it? Because
that's what they did. That's what they did. They say, come. And everybody that hears the
spirit of the living God and the bride of Christ, you know
what they say? Come. And let every man, every woman,
every boy, every girl who hears the direction of the spirit,
let him say come, and let every soul that thirsts, let him come. And whosoever will. Boy, that
kills the cavalry stuff. Why? Why does that hurt us so
bad? If people are going to be made
willing, they're willing. It doesn't hurt me a bit to say
that. Whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely. There was nothing barring the
way of the Jew or the Gentile, bond or free, male or female. Are you hungry? Has the famine
left you helpless and empty? Go to Joseph. Go down there. Where'd you get that cornbread?
I got my corn down there in Egypt. Down there in Egypt. Now, first thing, first thing
you got to know about this cornbread, you have to be elected to eat
it. Ain't what he said, is it? Well, first thing, do you know
anything at all about predestination? What? I'm just interested in
corn. It's down in Egypt. Go down there.
I'm telling you, this is where we mess up. We need to look for
hungry folks. And when you find one, tell him
where the corn is. Tell him where the corn is. Election hinders nobody. Election
is unto salvation, not damnation. And a lot of things might have
kept these folks from coming to Joseph. But not being elect
wasn't one of them. Everybody was hungry, went down
there, and everybody went down there and got corn. I believe
we do a great injustice to the scriptures when we leave men
with the impression that to accept election identifies the elect. I beg your pardon. You don't. Every Jew believed he was elect,
every one of them. Those men who stood before Christ,
they said, we'd be not born of fornication. We'd be Abraham's
seed. We have Moses to our father.
We have Abraham. We have God to our father. He
said, if God were your father, he said, you'd believe me. You'd
believe me. He said, turn with me to John
chapter 6. Christ said to those men, he
said, you neither know me nor my father, but you're of your
father the devil. Election is only identified,
I want you to hear me now, in coming to Christ. That's right. Election is only identified. The only way you can know your
election is to come to Christ. Ain't no other way. Jacob heard
there was corn in Egypt, and he sent his sons. And everybody
that went down for corn, you know what they had to do?
They had to go to Joseph. You couldn't just go get the
corn. You had to go confront his person first. Then you went
and got the corn. The Jews sought a sign from the
Lord. And they gave him an example.
Listen to this, John 6, verse 31. They said, Our fathers did
eat manna in the desert, as it's written, he, talking about Moses,
gave them bread from heaven to eat. Then Jesus saith unto them,
Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread
from heaven, but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven.
For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven and giveth
life unto the world. And then they said unto him,
Lord evermore give us this bread. And Jesus said unto them, I am
the bread. I am the bread of life. He that
cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall
never thirst. But I say unto you that you also
have seen me and believe not." Now listen close to what he says.
This is the one sure way, the only way, that you can know for
sure that you're elect of God. Oh, A-double-L-O, that the Father
giveth me shall come to me. Huh? Ain't no way around that,
is there? No way around that. And him that
cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out. It's not election to keep men
from coming. That's the very reason men do
come. But election, according to 2 Thessalonians 2, 13, and
14, is unto salvation, unto regeneration, unto hearing, unto calling, and
unto obtaining. And if you haven't obtained,
and you haven't been called, and you haven't heard, you're
not elect. All God's elect come to Christ.
Do you know why they come? Because God sends a famine. That's
right. And they ain't interested in
anything but bread. That's right. I tell you, when
a man gets under conviction, he just wants to know Christ.
He don't want to know all this other stuff. He don't want to
know all this stuff that men start counseling him about coming
down aisles and making deceit. It's foolishness to him. I'm
hungry. Tell me where's the bread. Where's
the bread? Pride and obstinance, tradition,
self-sufficiency, and false hope might keep you from coming to
Christ, but not election. Not election. Because he said,
come on. He said, on the last day of the
feast, he said, anybody thirsty? Come drink. Anybody hungry? Come
and eat. Anybody weary and heavy laden,
come to me." Over and over and over he keeps telling. And when
he talked to the Jews, here's what he told them. He said, well,
you're not elect. No, that ain't what he told them.
He said, you've got the scriptures and you search them because in
these you think you have eternal life. And they are they that
testify of me. But you won't come to me. Huh? Now, ain't that the reason? There
wasn't but one reason why a man starved during this famine, he
wouldn't go to Egypt and see Joseph. And there ain't but one
reason why a man will die in his sins in this world, and that's
because he won't come to Christ. He won't come to Christ. But
I'll tell you this, all God's elect will come. They'll come. They'll come because they're
hungry. And they'll come, and they'll keep coming because they're
hungry. You can't feed them. You can't take them down there
and feed them that other stuff. Once they've tasted this corn,
they're going to come back to Egypt. They're going to come
back where Joseph is and get this corn. And when their friends
tell them, old Jacob said when he heard, old Jacob was sitting
back there starving to death. And one of his neighbors was
sitting over there baking cornbread. And Jacob said, where'd you get
that? He said, I got it down in Egypt. Didn't you know? You
go down there. There's a man down there. And
he's got granary full of corn. All we had to do was go down
there and ask. He gave it to us. Jacob went back and he said,
I heard there's corn in each of them. Now get your empty sacks
and get down there. Don't take nothing with you.
Just take your sacks.