Deuteronomy chapter 33. I want to begin here by reading
in verse 13 through verse 17. Deuteronomy 33. Deuteronomy 33
and verse 13. And of Joseph he said, Blessed
of the Lord be his land, for the precious things of heaven,
the dew, and for the deep that croucheth beneath, and for the
precious fruits brought forth by the sun, and for the precious
things put forth by the moon, and for the chief things of the
ancient hills, the ancient mountains, and for the precious things of
the lasting hills, and for the precious things of the earth
and the fullness thereof, and for the goodwill of him that
dwelt in the bush. Let the blessing come upon the
head of Joseph, and upon the top of the head of him that was
separated from his brethren. His glory is like the firstling
of his bullock, and his horns are like the horns of unicorns.
With them he shall push the people together to the ends of the earth.
They are the ten thousands of Ephraim, and they are the thousands
of Manasseh. We've started to look, last couple
of studies in this book, in this chapter, we begin to look at
the blessings that Jacob had pronounced upon his children,
his twelve sons. That was in Genesis 49. But here is almost the same blessings
that Moses pronounces upon the descendants of Jacob upon the
twelve tribes. But this man, Joseph, in both
of the blessings, when his father blessed him back there in Genesis
49, and in this blessing here that Moses pronounced upon Joseph,
he had the longest blessing of any of them. He was the favorite
of his dad. And he seems to be here the favorite
of Moses. But what a beautiful picture
he is of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Because Moses mentioned
here in verse 16, he says that he was separated from his brethren. And when his father in Genesis
49 was blessing him, he made mention of how Joseph was hated
of his brethren. This is what he said in chapter
49, verse 23. The archers have sorely grieved
him and shot at him and hated him." That was his brother. He called his brother the archers.
And remember how they hated him and betrayed him and sold him
down into Egypt. And yet down into Egypt he was
exalted as governor and what a blessing he became. Through
Joseph much people were saved alive. And what a beautiful picture
He is of the Lord Jesus Christ. We're told that He came to His
own, and His own received Him not. And He was betrayed, and
He was hated, and He was despised. Even betrayed unto death, wasn't
He? But out of that death, He was
exalted to be the head over all things to His church. And the
blessing, just as Joseph, The blessing rested upon the head
of Joseph. Now these spiritual blessings
rest in the Lord Jesus Christ. They are in Him. So Joseph is
a beautiful picture of our Lord Jesus Christ. And we begin last
week to look at these measurements mentioned here in the blessings
of Joseph. And we saw there were four of
them. There in verse 13 he talks about the heights. And we looked
at that last week, the height of heaven. That's where these
blessings rest in the height of heaven. They reach to heaven.
And then he says there in verse 13, For the deep that croucheth
beneath. These blessings go down deep,
deep blessings. And then in verse 15, look at
the length of these blessings. They reach from the ancient mountains,
that's all the way back to the beginning I guess of the creation
when God made them, to the lasting hills. Now that's a long reach,
ain't it? from the ancient mountains to
the lasting hills. And then in verse 16 we have
the width of these blessings. The precious things of the earth
and the fullness thereof. The breadth of this earth. That
is the way these blessings was to be measured. So you've got
a height of blessings, you've got a length of blessings, you've
got a depth of blessings, and you've got a width of blessings.
That's the way they often measure these blessings in the Scriptures
like this. Paul, when he was talking about
the love of Christ, what did he say about it? That you might
be able to comprehend with all saints what is the height, the
depth, the width and the length of the love of Christ. So there
is a blessing in the love of Christ that's high and that's
long and wide and deep, the love of Christ. And Paul said, this
is my prayer that you might be able to apprehend this love. And the greatest thing we can
apprehend about it is this, that it passeth knowledge. There's
a height that we can't reach, a depth that we can't go to of
the love of Christ. Now why does Moses do this? And
you'll notice over in Genesis 49 and other places, they measure
God's blessings like this sometimes. And why do they do that? Well,
it's for this reason. The children of God often in
the Scriptures measure their troubles by these very same things. the height of their trouble,
the depths of their trouble, and the breadth of their trouble,
and the length of their trouble in the Scriptures. Let me show
you. I want you to turn to three or four Scriptures tonight. Put
you a little marker there in Deuteronomy and turn over to
Job chapter 11. Over to your right in Job chapter
11. These blessings of God's mercy
and blessings of His grace and His love and His saving benefits
and His saving helps, they have a measurement in them that goes
beyond any measurement of our troubles. And we'll see in just
a minute how we measure our troubles, but there is in the blessings
of God, the mercy of God, blessings, a height and depth and breadth
and length that goes beyond all our troubles that you and I could
ever be in. Look here at what he says in
Job chapter 11. Job chapter 11 and look in verse
7. Canst thou by searching find
out God? Can you find out the Almighty
unto perfection? Can we measure His saving perfection? Can we measure His love, His
mercy, His grace, His goodness that's in Jesus Christ? Can we
by search and find out the depths of this and the height of it?
That's what He's asking us, isn't it? You know, sometimes we think
we can. Don't we? Don't we get in trouble
sometimes when we say, Oh, I'm beyond mercy. Oh, I'm so low,
the love of Christ can't reach me. Now we get to thinking that
sometimes. Oh, we've got a little measuring
stick, haven't we? A little comprehension. My wife
keeps in her house. I don't know if she's still got
it. I may have lost it. She don't like me entering her tools. But
she had this little old measuring tape. And sometimes if I can't
find my big measuring tape, I'll go get her a little tiny measuring
tape, but all it's fit for is to measure a piece of furniture.
You can't measure a room because it's just like six feet or so.
That's the way our apprehension is of God's saving mercies and
His saving benefits in Christ. We think we can measure them,
don't we? Can you, by searching, find out God? Can you find Him
up to perfection? Well, we think we can when we're
in trouble. But look what he says here in verse 8. It is high
as heaven. What can you do? It's deeper
than hell. What can you know? The measure
thereof is longer than the earth and it's broader than the sea. Now, has our trouble reached
into heaven? It may get high, but I don't
know if any of us have trouble reaching to heaven. But you know
something, that's where His mercy reaches. Have you got troubles
you're as deep as hell? Are you depressed into hell itself?
Well, here's mercy that's deeper than hell. I don't think we could
ever go any deeper than hell, do you, in our troubles? But
if we did, here's a mercy that's underneath that, underneath of
those everlasting arms. They're in Deuteronomy 36, 27. Everlasting arms are underneath
it. And then he says here, the measure of the ob is longer than
the earth. Now that's a long distance, isn't
it? Longer than the earth? How long
of our troubles may last? Some of them may last all of
our lives. Poor old Lazarus died with his
sores, didn't he? But it don't matter what troubles
you have, they won't last any longer than your life. But here's
mercies that last longer than the earth and broader than the
sea. If we're going to measure the
sea, what would we use to measure it with? We can't measure like
that, can we? But here is mercy in Christ that
is broader than the sea. And of all these measurements,
I think probably what we looked at last time, height is the most
fearful. There is a height in our sufferings,
in our sorrows, in our tribulations and persecutions or whatever
that is very fearful. One of the things the children
of Israel feared more than anything when they went into the land
of Canaan was those high walls. We cannot scale those walls,
they said. And there are giants in the land.
And when they saw those giants so tall, it discared them to
death. Remember in David's day when
David was a little boy and Goliath stood on the other side of the
hill, where was the army of Israel? They were hiding. They were like
little children. They were in the little cubby
holes up there shaking and trembling. And David said, I'm going to
feed you to the birds, the fowls of the air. David, how are you
going to do that? I mean, look how tall he is.
Well, he said, the Lord's going to do it. The Lord's blessing
goes higher than that giant. And I'm coming to you in the
name of the Lord." And the Lord delivered him into David's hands
and He slew him, didn't He? But I tell you, these heights
that we face, as we looked at the last time, it's scary. It's scary because it has to
do mainly with these principalities and powers in heavenly places
that we have to contend with and high things. that exalt themselves
against the knowledge of Christ. But if the high things are the
most fearful, the deep things are the most depressing. The
deep things depress us. David said, I sink in deep mire
where there is no standing. Not only did he sink, but he
was in deep mire. He was sinking in it. And he
could not get out of it because the mire was holding him. And
there was only one way to get out of it. There had to be something
underneath him to stop his sinking and lift him out. And what was
that? That is these blessings that
we are talking about, the depths of these blessings. I waited
patiently for the Lord. He inclined into my cry and He
brought me up. He brought me up. And if David
had not been patient, knowing that there was something that
went underneath his afflictions, he would have kept sinking. But
he said, I waited patiently, and then the Lord was underneath
me with those mercies. And He lifted me up, and not
only lifted me up, he said, but He set my feet on a rock, and
He established my goings. And of all the trouble God's
people get into, I think probably the depths are the most common
that you read about in the Scripture. I want to show you two or three
places in the Psalms. Look over in Psalms chapter 88,
just over to your right in Psalms chapter 88. We don't maybe experience this
as much as you see David did and other writers in the Psalms.
And you see it quite a bit in the writings of the Puritans,
men like John Bunyan and some of the writers like him. Even
Spurgeon went through some times where he apprehended his sins
to be so awful. And he apprehended the displeasure
of God upon sin. And sometimes this made them
sink. I remember John Bunyan at one
time, you read this in Grace Abounded to the Chief of Sinners,
lacked two years. For two years, that man was in
darkness. He had this awful apprehension
that God was angry with him. And he just kept sinking and
sinking and sinking. And maybe some of us have been
there to a degree. that we've seen our sins and
we can't see Christ and how sin has been atoned for. The mercy
now that's there in the love of Christ. And all we can feel
is this sin and the judgment of God upon it and have awful
apprehension. This seems to be what David was going through
here. Anyway, it was causing him to sink in his mind and in
his heart. And look what he says in Psalms
88. Let's begin in verse 1. O Lord God of my salvation, I
have cried day and night before Thee. Let my prayer come before
Thee. Incline Your ear unto my cry,
for my soul is full of trouble, and my life draweth near unto
the grave. I am counted with them that go
down to the pit. I am as a man that has no strength,
free among the dead, like the slain that lay in the grave,
whom Thou rememberest no more. and they are cut off from thy
hand. Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the
deep. Thy wrath lies hard upon me in
thy hand, and thou hast afflicted me with all thy ways." Now we
can probably apply this very easy to the Lord Jesus Christ
when He hangs on the cross, burying our sins. But I think we can
apply it to this man too that wrote the psalm. He had this
feeling here of the displeasure of the Lord and his sins and
even felt that God was against him. Wouldn't that be awful to
feel that way? And saints, true saints have
had this feeling and it made them sink in their heart. And
if it's not for this mercy, these everlasting arms that's underneath
us of mercy. If there's not a blessing in
His mercy and grace and goodness that's down under our sinking
souls, then we'll keep sinking, won't we? And that's why it's
so important to remember that this blessing included the depths,
the blessings of the deep things. Because here we have some opposition
to that blessing, and it's what the writer was feeling here.
Look in another place. Look in Psalms 42. In Psalm 42, verse 5. If you look through the Scriptures,
not only the book of Psalms, but other places, you will see
writers mentioning these depths. And there are different lessons
to be learned in all of them. Here I think probably this had
to do with a little bit of distrust and mistrust and fear and doubt
that it overwhelmed David. I used to know some fellows that
said, ìIf you ever have a doubt of your salvation, then youíre
not saved.î ìIf you ever have a doubt of your salvation, youíre
not saved.î Well, I tell you, sometimes we can fall into this
unbelief, canít we? And we have these awful apprehensions
of our sins and such high views of what it is to be saved. And
the glory and the blessing of all of that. And then we begin
to think, could I possibly be saved? Or when we've sinned,
when we've fallen, and the devil comes and says, you can't possibly
be saved. You can't think like this. You
can't do that and be saved. And we begin to think, Maybe
I ain't saved. And boy, that's when the mistrust
can come in and we begin to turn our eyes on the inside and that
never helps, does it? And this is what happens seemingly
here to David. And he said here in verse 5,
Why art thou cast down, O my soul? Why art thou disquieted
in me? Hope thou in God. For I shall
yet praise Him for the help of His countenance. Oh, my God,
my soul is cast down within me. Therefore will I remember Thee
from the land of Jordan and of the Hermonites and the hill of
Mazar. Deep calleth unto deep at the
noise of Thy waterspouts. All Thy waves and Thy billows
have gone over me." It is smothering him. He is despairing. Yet the
Lord will command His lovingkindness in the daytime, and in the night
His Son shall be with me in my prayer unto the God of my life."
Here is where we've got to live by faith. Here is where we've
got to convince ourselves, if I'm in Christ, then I am redeemed. I am God's child. And no matter
how I feel or how I have these awful apprehensions of sin and
how God hates it, If I'm in Christ, He's not angry with me anymore.
There's no reason for me to catch down. He loves me. That's what
David was convincing himself of here, isn't it? His love. Yet the Lord will command His
love and kindness. And that's what we have to convince
ourselves of. I don't have to despair. I don't
have to sink in these waters of doubt and mistrust and fear. There's this love, this everlasting
love that's underneath. And you can't sink any lower
than that. You just can't. And that's what he's talking
about here in verse 9, I was saying to God, my rock, why hast
thou forgotten me? Why go I mourning because of
the oppression of the enemy? As with a sword in my bones,
my enemies reproach me while they say daily unto me, where
is thy God? Why art thou cast down, O my
soul? And why art thou disquieted within
me? Hope thou in God, for I shall
yet praise Him who is the help of thy countenance and thy God."
I tell you, those people who have never had God to hide His
face, they have no idea how that can
affect the mind and the heart of a person when God hides His
face. We can't do anything then but
wait, can we? And it takes grace then. And
it takes this knowledge and faith to remember this mercy that's
in Christ goes down underneath our sinking soul. And we won't
sink any further than that. Look at one more place. I love
Psalm 86. I've stayed here in the Psalms,
so it won't take us so long to turn. I love this passage here. This is one of my favorite passages,
I think, in the Bible because it gets at what I'm saying here
about these depths. Why we have to have and why we
need to believe in the depths of these blessings is because
we have this opposition that's opposed to these blessings. And
look what David says in chapter 86 and verse 12. I will praise Thee, O Lord my
God, with all my heart, I will glorify thy name forever. For
great is thy mercy towards me, and thou hast delivered my soul
from the lowest hell." What delivered him there? Mercy. So there is
a mercy, a blessing, a blessed mercy that goes beyond the lowest
hell. I don't know how anybody could
get any lower than that. But there's a depth in mercy that
gets underneath the lowest hell. And that's why David said, I
praise Him for what He's did for me, bringing me out of the
lowest hell. So that gives you just a little
bit there of what he's talking about, about the deep, the deep,
the depths of our trouble. There has to be a depth of mercy
and blessings in Christ that goes beyond that depth. Let's
look just a little bit at the length, at the length. If the depths are troubling to
us and cause us depression, these lengths are the most trying because
they just seem like they're going to last forever sometime. You
ever get in trouble and you just get through that trouble and
another trouble comes? Like Job's messengers, they come right on
the heels of another. And finally, you say with David,
Lord, how long? Forever? Are these troubles just
going to last all my life long? You know, they might. They might. But there's something that goes
beyond the length of your troubles, and that's these blessings of
God in Christ, this mercy and this love and this grace. God's mercy in Jesus will outlast
the longest trial we have. I said just a minute ago, I don't
know how long poor old Scabby Lazarus kept his soul. But I
just about imagined that he had them when he died. But there
was something that went beyond his suffering, the length of
his suffering. And that's the mercy of God in
Jesus Christ. That went beyond. He said these
ancient mountains and the everlasting hills, that's from way back yonder
to way out yonder. That's the length of these mercies
of God in Christ. Let your troubles be what they
are. If you're in Christ Jesus, the Lord and Savior, your troubles
have an end. They have an end. But the mercy
of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon you. They have no end. I want you to turn back. Well,
let me just quote this. I've got it written down, so
let me just quote this as a preacher. As a pastor, I think this is
one of the greatest blessings that a pastor can have if he'll
remember this and believe this. You can just leave this then
with the Lord, and that is the knowledge that every elect soul
that the Lord hasn't called yet, He's going to bring them. And
I don't know of anything that's more comforting to me as a preacher,
as I preach. It keeps me from getting involved
in all these gimmicks, trying to get people to do something,
you know, move their bodies or shift something. I preach the
Gospel as earnestly as I can to men, and then I leave the
calling to the Holy Spirit. And I love, I love this passage. You'll find it over in Deuteronomy
chapter 30 and verse 4. Here's what he said, be driven
out unto the utmost parts of heaven. Now, that's a long way,
isn't it? The outmost parts of heaven. From thence will the
Lord thy God gather thee, and from thence will he fetch thee. Now, let's encourage your name. I have got some children that
I hope he fetches. But I tell you, his arm is so
long. I know some people that seem to me like they're on the
outmost. It seems like they're ready to
fall over the edge. And I bet you know some people
like that too, don't you? And you say, I don't know if
there's any hope for them. But listen. He said, if they're
mine, I'll reach them. I'll gather them and I'll fetch
them. That's what we want, isn't it?
Fetching grace. Fetching grace. that's able to
fetch them. What a blessing that is. So there's
a limp in these blessings. And then the width, the width,
the height is fearful, the depth is depression, depresses us on
these depths, and the length is trying because they seem like
they're just going to last forever, and the width, the width of these
sorrows and troubles that we face. fills our hearts with sorrow,
the most sorrowful of all. Sin is like leprosy, isn't it?
It spreads. It's just a spreading thing.
And in Ezekiel chapter 9, there's a wonderful illustration there.
You can see it sometime. But the Lord told an angel to
put a mark on the foreheads of men who sighed over the sins
of the land. They sighed. They sorrowed. And
that's all they could do. They had prayed against it. They
had spoke out against it. But sin had spread through all
the land of Israel and Judah. And all they could do was sigh
in sorrow. And here's what the Lord said
when He told them to put a mark upon the foreheads of those that
sighed. He said, The iniquity of the
house of Israel and Judah is exceeding great, And the land
is full of blood. That's how sin had spread. And
the city is full of perverseness. For they say the Lord hath forsaken
the earth, and the Lord seeth not. When we live in a generation
where people say the Lord ain't seeing, He don't know what we're
doing. Boy, you better look out. Because
men are going to sin as they will then. That's about where
we are in our day, isn't it? Look how sin is spread. It's
just spread. And sometimes you feel like it
does that in you. Did you ever feel that? It's
just spread all through you. It's spread in your affections.
It's spread in your understanding. It's spread in your will. It's
spread all through your body. We're sort of like that little
baby during Ezekiel 16 where the Lord passed by the little
fellow and he was polluted in his blood. Remember that? Somebody
just threw him out in the open field. And there he lay bruised,
sores from his head to his feet and blood, afterbirth. And the Lord said, I pass by
you. And it was a time of love. And he said, I spread my skirt
over you. Now here's how broad. Here's how broad this covering
is. Here's how broad mercy is. Here's how broad redeeming blood
is. I spread my skirt over you, and
I covered your nakedness. How much of it? All of it. All
of it. I used to read that verse, and
I think it's in Romans 4. Blessed are they whose sins are
covered. And I used to think, Lord, I
don't want my sins covered. I want them washed. There's two
things about our sins. We are worse from them. But you
know, we have a knowledge of sin still in us, don't we? Oh,
wretched man that I am! We're so sinful in and of ourselves. But boy, here's a righteousness,
here's a garment that is so broad that it covers all our shame
that even God cannot see it. That's the bread. of these blessings,
a breath of them, a breath of mercy. And I do not care how
sin seems to spread, there is a mercy that can cover it and
it is blessed. In closing, right quickly, let
us consider two things about these blessings. Back over in
our text, go back over quickly to Deuteronomy chapter 33. There are two things about these
blessings. Two of them are found here in
verse Look at this. And Joseph, and of Joseph he
said, Blessed of the Lord be his land for the precious things
of heaven and for the dew and for the deep that croucheth beneath. Now he talks about two things
here about these blessings and he says it's like the dew. It's
like the dew. These blessings are not always
easy to discern. We talk about them. We talk freely
about His mercy and His grace and His love and His goodness
and His blood. And these things are not always
easy to discern. They're working within us. That's
why it's like the dew. When do you see the dew? Well,
if you're out of a mountain and you have a life, you can see
dew coming down. But we usually don't see it until
it's already there. It's not a shower, is it? It's
certainly not a thunderstorm. It's just the dew. It's the dew. And I tell you what the dew will
do, if it's a heavy enough dew, it'll keep the soil soft. And it'll keep the grass tender.
And here's the thing about the grace of God, the mercy of the
Lord, Sometimes it is difficult to discern Him working in your
heart. But if your heart is tender towards
Him, if you are able to believe on Him and follow Him and love
Him and hate sin, then grace is working there. Whether you
can always perceive it or not, you can know it by its effect.
When you get up in the morning and see the dew, Well, there
it is. It's there. You can see it by
its effect in your heart. It makes you tender and keeps
you believing upon Him. I'll tell you when it's not there.
I'll tell you when it's not there. When you can just leave the Lord.
When you can quit believing. When you go back to your sin.
There ain't no grace there, is there? Then he mentions something else
that shows us here that it's a little bit difficult to discern
these blessings. Because he says there in the
last part of verse 13, he says it's these deep blessings, the
blessings of the deep, but they crouch. They crouch beneath. That's what these old lions do
when they're waiting for the prey. They crouch behind the
bush. You can't see them. They crouch
real low. To lie down, that's what the
word means, to lie down or lie under. And it's like a spring,
a good cool spring. There used to be a spring where
I went fishing. I used to go fishing down on
the river by myself. And you get down there, you didn't
want to drink the water. It was clean looking water, but
you didn't want to drink it, too much stuff in it. But I knew
where this spring was. It's back in this bank. But almost
every time you went there, you couldn't see it. You had to rake
the leaves back and then take a rock or something and dig down,
get all the sand back, and boy, there's that cold spring of water
coming up. You can just get down there and
drink and satisfy your thirsty soul. That's the way these blessings
are. You can't always see them. You
can't always discern them. Sometimes the only way is after
you've dug down just a little bit and got some of the debris
out of the way. And that is what he says lastly
about these blessings. In verses 13 through verse 16,
five times he calls them precious. Precious. Blessings of heaven. Oh, how precious. Precious promises. A precious Savior. Everything
is precious about Him, isn't it? Precious faith. Then the
blessings that come up from the deep, I tell you, if your soul's
been sinking and mercy's caught you and lifted you back up, that's
precious, isn't it? And the length of it, the length
of it, He calls that precious. And the fullness of the earth,
it's all precious. But that's why it's so important. Before you and I can know them
as precious, we have to know also this opposition. The only
way to know anything about the blessing is to suffer the opposition. I'm not going to know anything
much about these everlasting arms that's underneath me until
I feel myself sinking. I'm not going to know anything
about the height of the love of Christ and His mercy until
I face some of these giants that seem like they don't want to
fall. I don't appreciate the length of His grace until I've
had go day after day after day in these trials and find this
grace holding me up and strengthening me and helping me to believe.
If we are going to know the love of Christ, then we will have
to know something about the depths of afflictions and trials and
heartaches. Let's close by reading Romans
chapter 8, the last few verses in Romans chapter 8. Romans chapter
8 and verse 35. Look what Paul sets against.
Look at the opposition against the love of Christ to us. The
Lord Jesus trusts His love so much He exposes His people to
all kinds of afflictions and trials just to prove, just to
prove to us that nothing is going to separate you from My love.
And look what Paul says about it in verse 35. Who shall separate
us from the love of Christ? Is it our tribulation? Our distress? Our persecution? Our famine? Our nakedness? Our pearl? Our sword? That's some stiff
opposition, ain't it? As it is written, for thy sake
we are killed all the day long. We are accounted as sheep for
the slaughter. Nay, in all of these things we
are more than conquerors through Him that loved us. For I am persuaded
that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities,
nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height,
nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us
from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Wonderful,
isn't it? So whatever heights are opposing
you, length or depth or width, there's something that goes deeper
and higher and longer and wider than all of that. And that's
these blessings, these saving blessings and helps that's in
the Lord Jesus Christ. May He bless it to our hearts.
Mr. Baker, would you dismiss us?