Let us turn back in our Bibles
this evening to the book of Genesis, and tonight we're going to be
in chapter 43. For several weeks, almost two months now, on Sunday
evenings, we've been looking at lessons from the life of Joseph. Genesis chapter 43, and we'll
read the first 14 verses. And the famine was sore in the
land. And it came to pass, when they
had eaten up the corn which they had brought out of Egypt, their
father said unto them, go again, buy us a little food. And Judah
spake unto him, saying, the man did solemnly protest unto us,
saying, you shall not see my face, except your brother be
with you. If thou wilt send our brother
with us, we will go down and buy thee food. But if thou wilt
not send him, we will not go down. For the man said unto us,
you shall not see my face, except your brother be with you. And
Israel said, that is Jacob, Israel said, wherefore dealt you so
ill with me as to tell the man whether you had yet a brother?
And they said, the man asked us straightly of our state and
of our kindred saying, is your father yet alive? Have you another
brother? And we told him according to
the tenor of these words, could we certainly know that he would
say, bring your brother down. And Judah said unto Israel, his
father, send the lad with me, and we will arise and go, that
we may live and not die, both we and thou, and also our little
ones. I will be surety for him, of
my hand shalt thou require him. If I bring him not unto thee
and set him before thee, then let me bear the blame forever. For except we had lingered, surely
now we had returned this second time. And their father Israel
said unto them, if it must be so now, do this. Take of the
best fruits in the land in your vessels, and carry down the man
a present, a little balm, a little honey, spices, and myrrh, nuts,
and almonds. And take double money in your
hand, and the money that was brought again in the mouth of
your sacks, carry it again in your hand. Peradventure, it was
an oversight. Take also your brother, and arise,
go again unto the man. And God Almighty give you mercy
before the man, that he may send away your other brother, that
is Simeon and Benjamin. If I be bereaved of my children,
I am bereaved. I ended the message last time
where Jacob had sent 10 of his sons to buy corn in Egypt. And when they came there, Of
course, they encountered their brother Joseph, their brother
whom they had sold into slavery. And now he was a governor over
all Egypt. And Joseph recognized he knew
his brothers, but they did not recognize him. They did not know
him. And he accused them of being
spies, of coming into the land to spy out the land. He did this
in order to learn about his father. Was his father Jacob, who was
now named Israel? God changed his name, didn't
he? The God of Jacob changed his name to Israel, which means,
of course, a prince with God. When God saves a sinner, he makes
us kings and priests unto God. He's the God not only of sovereign
love and sovereign election, but he changes the nature, gives
us a new nature, those whom he grants life to. This is a way
that he found out his father was alive and that his brother,
Benjamin, also was alive. Now Joseph kept, at first he
put all 10 of the brothers in prison, bound them all, and told
them that they were not going to get to released, he would
let one of them go back and bring Benjamin, and then they would
all be released. They would prove in that way
that they were honest men, that they were not spies. But then
Joseph, evidently, he realized it would be better to send nine
of them back and keep only one, which he did. He kept Simeon. He bound him and kept him. Now, he demanded of them, and
we read that in the scripture, unless you bring your brother
Benjamin back with you, you're not going to see my face. You're
not going to see my face, and you're not going to buy any corn.
In other words, you're going to starve. There was corn in
Egypt, but no corn. Killed by- as much. and flesh because he took a rib
from from Adam and created Eve and brought Eve to Adam. And that's when the scripture
says whether it was Adam or God that the two would become one
flesh. It didn't say that a man with
two wives, that all three of them would be one flesh, or a
man with four wives like Jacob, that all of them would be one
flesh. And the reason this is so important is because it is
a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ and His bride. We are in union
with Him, just as a man and wife come into union and become one. So we, if we are believers, if
we are saved by the grace of God, we are in union with Christ. We live because He lives. He's
our life. I've said this before, but let
me say it again for all of us here, but especially young people
here tonight, probably. The most important decision you
will ever make in your life is who you marry. Now, you need to give great consideration
to whom you want to be joined to, to become one flesh with. One of the most important decisions
that any of us ever make in this world. Now when Joseph's brothers left
Egypt this time, they left with their bags full of corn, full
of wheat, but also their money. The money that they had carried
there to pay for the wheat that they bought, Joseph had his servants
put the money in their bags. So when they get home, One of
them found out on the way home that his money was in his bag,
but when they got home and showed their father all the corn they
had bought, there was the money also. Each and every one of them
brought their money back with them. Now, tonight we see that
the famine continued. Notice that's where the word
begins, and the famine was sore in the land. This famine, we
know, is going to last for seven years. Joseph knew that. These
brothers didn't. Maybe it had lasted, at this
point, only two years. I'm not sure. But Joseph knew
this famine was prolonged. It was going to last for seven
years. There's going to be seven lean years. And so the famine
continues, and the need of Jacob's family continues. They still
are without food, without corn. They were in need, and Joseph
had told them, there'd be no use, don't come back here. No need in you coming back here
if you don't bring your youngest brother, Benjamin, with you.
That way you can prove that you're honest men, that you are not
spies, because Joseph wanted to see Benjamin. Now Jacob could
not understand. You cannot help but kind of feel
sad for Jacob. If you look in verse six, he's
an old man, and he's lost one of his sons. And the one that's
left of his wife that he loved, they're telling him that he must
send him back into Egypt if they are to buy corn. And Joseph,
or Jacob rather, he doesn't understand. He asks him, why? Wherefore? Why did you tell him you had
another brother? Couldn't you have just kept that
to yourself? Why did you have to tell him
that you had a younger brother? Now, you say that he has to go
back with you. Wherefore, notice in verse, wherefore
dealt you so ill with me? Why'd you do this to me? Why'd
you treat me like this? I'm your father. Why in the world
did you tell that man? that you have a younger brother.
Wherefore dealt you so ill with me as to tell the man whether
you had yet a brother? Poor Jacob. He thought that all
these things were against him. This is not the only time. I
believe one other time we're going to see that Jacob thinks
that everything is against him, that life is against him. And
can't we see ourselves in this sense? We experience what we
are prone to call a dark providence, a dark providence. And some of
them are no doubt very dark and very sad, but we fail to remember
that our heavenly father, that he is working all things for
our good. We fail to recognize that Jacob
did. He failed to recognize that God
was in control of this whole situation. And ultimately, it
would be for Jacob's good. And it would, of course, be for
God's glory, first of all. Many times when we experience
trials and difficulties, we just can't see how. How could this
possibly be for our good? Listen, we don't have to see.
We don't have to see how. What we need to do is believe.
Believe God's word. This is his word. We know that
all things work together for good to them who love God, to
those who are the called according to his purpose. We can't see
how. We don't need to see. But we
do need to believe, to trust that we might have peace Our comfort doesn't come by seeing. Our comfort comes by believing
God. Now tonight, I want to take this
opportunity to speak to us from what Judah volunteered to be
for Benjamin. In verse number nine, Judah volunteered
to be a surety. I will be surety for him. Of
my hand shalt thou require him, if I bring him not unto thee,
and set him before thee, then let me bear the blame forever. He would be surety for Benjamin. He tells his father, let me take
Benjamin, the son that you love, let me take him with you, and
I will be a surety for him. Now I'm sure that most of us
here tonight know that the Lord Jesus Christ is a surety. Let's turn in our Bibles to Hebrews
chapter seven. In Hebrews chapter seven, In verse 22, the apostle said,
by so much was Jesus made a surety of a better testament. Now you know tonight that the
word which is here translated testament is in other scriptures
in the New Testament translated covenant. The same word translated
sometimes testament, sometimes covenant. It is like a testament. Now think of this, this covenant
is like a testament in the sense that it concerns the inheritance. When a man makes out his testament,
his last will and testament, he is dispersing his goods. He is giving them to those that
he wants to receive them. So this covenant is like a testament
in the sense that it concerns the inheritance that God the
Father has bequeathed to all of His children. If you tonight
are a child of God, you know you are an heir. If children,
then heirs. If heirs, then children. You
are an heir of the Lord Jesus Christ, an heir of God. Christ
is a testator, just like in a man's will. When he dies, the will
cannot be changed. And the Lord Jesus Christ, by
His death, He confirmed the Testament. It cannot be changed. And those
who were named by God the Father as heirs before the foundation
of the world and everything that he has bequeathed unto us, if
we are heirs tonight, it's sure, it's sure the testament cannot
be changed. Why? Because the testator has
died. But it's like a covenant. Not
only is it like a testament, he's a surety of a better testament,
he's a surety of the covenant. It's like a covenant for it's
a compact or rather an agreement. It is an agreement. This covenant
is an agreement which was made by God the father and God the
son and witnessed by God the Holy Spirit before the foundation
of the world. It's called an everlasting covenant.
This covenant was made before we actually had an existence. Any man had an existence. This
covenant was made with God. Made before the foundation of
the world and the Lord Jesus Christ as a mediator of the covenant
is a surety of this covenant. Now, I believe that we have two
examples in the word of God that explain the work of Christ as
a surety. Two examples, one in the Old
Testament, our text tonight, and one in the New Testament.
We see in our text that Judah became a surety for Benjamin,
and we have this example of the Apostle Paul who became a surety
for this man named Onesimus. And I want us to look at this
first. If you will, turn over to Philemon. Let's see if we
go back, don't we? Yes, back from Hebrews and Philemon
verse 18. The apostle Paul is writing this
letter to a man who the Lord had saved and he was a wealthy
man. There was a church in his house. He had many servants and
he had one servant by the name of Onesimus who ran away. He
ran away from his master. And don't you love to think about
God's providence? Who in the world is he going
to run into but the Apostle Paul? And think about this. No doubt
he had heard Paul preach the gospel there in that house of
Philemon. No doubt many times he had heard, but he had never
heard. He had heard with these ears. But he had never heard until
he ran away and somehow came into Paul's presence in Rome
and heard Paul preach the gospel again, and then he heard. And
like the prodigal in our Lord's parable, sometimes we have to
go away to come back. You understand what I mean? We
have to go away. Sometimes men have to go away
in order to come back. And Philemon owned this man. Actually, he was a servant. And
he had run away. And Paul is writing back to him,
sending the letter he writes. He writes this letter from prison.
and sends it by the hand of Onesimus. And in verse 18, and this is
the work of assurity, he says, if he hath wronged thee, or oweth
thee aught, put that on mine account. You see, there's two
things to satisfy Paul as assurity. Number one, he would satisfy
the wrong of Onesimus. And number two, he would pay
the debt of Onesimus. Now it should be obvious to every
thinking person that Philemon lived in Philippi. That was a
large city. And Paul, he's not saying here
that he's going to be a surety for every man living in Philippi. He's specific. He agrees to be
a surety for one man, and that one man was named. His name was
Onesimus. Now one of the reasons that we
call this, this covenant, a covenant of grace, even though in the
scripture it's called a covenant of peace, because it shows how
that man may have peace with God, how God has arranged to
bring men who by nature are rebels to be reconciled unto God. Now
we most often refer to it as a covenant of grace, and it is.
And we do so because it's all of grace. First of all, it's
God's covenant. And He is the God of all grace.
And secondly, God agreed in this covenant to accept the work of
a surety. When Paul wrote this letter to
Philemon, offering to be the surety for Onesimus, Philemon
did not have to agree to that. And Paul made that clear, didn't
he? He besought him that he would
agree to this. Philemon could have said, no,
he wronged me, Onesimus wronged me, and he's going to pay me. I'm not going to accept your
payment, Paul. You see, it's just grace that
Philemon agreed to this, and it's grace that God the Father
agreed for a charity, a substitute to pay for us. Those of us who have wronged
him, and owe him a great debt. It's a covenant of grace because
it's God's covenant. He's the God of all grace. It's
a covenant of grace because he agreed to allow a surety to answer
for the guilty. It is a product of the grace
of God in choosing those for whom Christ would be the surety.
And think about this, it redounds to the glory of God's grace. The whole covenant, who gets
the glory here? God and his wonderful, marvelous,
amazing grace. We'll come back here, but let
me read this over in Ephesians chapter one. beginning with verse three. Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual
blessings in heavenly places in Christ, according as he hath
chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should
be holy. Not that we were holy, but that
we would be holy, and without blame. We certainly were not
without blame, But he's determined that we be holy, that we stand
before him without blame, in love, having predestinated us
unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according
to the good pleasure of his will. Now notice, to the praise of
the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the
beloved. Those for whom Christ is surety,
we had all wronged God, just like Onesimus had wronged Philemon. And not only had we wronged God,
but we owed a debt, a debt that we could not pay. You might say,
well, how? How did we wrong God? How did
we run up a debt with God, our sin? By our sin, our father Adam,
and us in him, we broke God's holy law. We offended God's justice. And then as far as sin being
a debt, you know if you compare the two passages, one in Matthew
and one in Luke, that record the model prayer, forgive us,
one passage tells us, forgive us our sins, that's in Luke 11,
but the same parallel And Matthew chapter six is, forgive us our
debt. We owe the debt we could not
pay. Christ agreed to be the surety. Now a surety is not a cosigner. That's something people sometimes
confuse with a surety. I have had men cosign for me
a couple of times when I was young. My father co-signed for
me one time. My brother co-signed for me one
time on loans to buy a car. Now, the bank, they didn't look
to my father. They didn't look to my brother.
First, they looked to me to pay. Now, if I had defaulted, then
they would have looked to those. The Lord Jesus Christ is a surety,
not a co-signer. From the moment, now think, follow
me now. From the moment Christ agreed
to be the surety, God, from that period on, looked to him for
the payment. That's the reason the scripture
says, blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute iniquity. If he doesn't impute it to us,
to whom does he impute it? To the surety. to the surety. The surety paid the debt of obedience
to God's holy law for all of his covenant people. For you,
if you're one of his children tonight, he satisfied the wrong that you were guilty
of and the debt that you owed. Do you remember when The children
of Israel came out of Egypt and on their way to the promised
land, they came to Mount Sinai. Moses, God called up onto the
mountain, and he gave them, gave Moses rather, two tablets of
stone, and God wrote on those tablets the Ten Commandments.
When Moses came down from the mountain, he found the children
of Israel, they had already broken that covenant. There they were
with a A bull made out of gold, I think it was. And Aaron had
told them, behold your God. In other words, they had broken
that second commandment, at least thou shalt not make unto thee
any graven image of anything that's in heaven or earth or
under the earth. And they had already broken that
covenant. And so Moses throws the tablets
down, and what happened? They break, just like you and
I. We've broken. the commandments
of God, the 10 commandments. Oh, how foolish it is for people
to be deceived by Satan into thinking, well, if I just keep
the 10 commandments, I'm going to be all right. You cannot keep
the 10. You've broken the 10 commandments.
And James tells us to break one is to break them all. They're
the whole law of God. So Moses, here's my point. Moses
goes back up on the mountain, and God gives him two more tables,
right? And on those tables, he has written
the same commandments. But what does Moses do with those
commandments? He puts them into the ark. over which the mercy seat was. In other words, for us, Christ,
we couldn't keep the law, but Christ kept the law for us. He said, I delight to do thy
will, O God. I come in the volume of the book
it is written of me to do thy will. And every one of those
commandments Christ kept, and he kept them as a surety for
his people. And in him, we have kept the
law. We have kept the law in our head
that is in Christ. And Christ's surety, not only
satisfied for the wrong, but the dead. the debt of punishment. When he came into this world,
he was born of a woman that he might redeem his covenant people
from the curse of the law. For the law saith, cursed is
everyone that hangeth on a tree. Actually, he became a curse for
his people. Now go back to Genesis with me
just a few minutes. So there's one of those examples
where we have the work of assurity. What was the work Paul promised
to do? He promised to satisfy for the
wrong. of Onesimus, and he promised
to pay the debt of Onesimus. Now here's the other thing that
Assurity, and we see it in Judah, that Assurity agrees to do, and
this is so wonderful, so beautiful. I will be surety, Genesis 43,
nine. I will be surety for him. Of
my hand shalt thou require him. Now notice here, I'm going to
bring him and I'm going to set him before thee. That's what
he's promised to do, to bring each and every one of his covenant
people to God and set us before him, unblameable, unreprovable
in his sight. And as Judah said, if I don't
fulfill this covenant engagement to bring your son, your Benjamin,
and set him before thee, I'll bear the blame forever. The Lord Jesus Christ, if he
doesn't bring each and every one of the sheep that the Father
gave unto him and set us before him, then he too would bear the
blame forever. Because he agreed as a surety
to do that. Isn't that wonderful? We were
singing that hymn a minute ago. I love to tell the story. And
I thought about the line, for those who know it best, I'm not
saying I know it best, And many of you may know it better than
me, but I can say this, seem hungry and thirsting to hear
it like the rest. And that's me, that's me. I'm hungry and I'm thirsting
to hear this wonderful good news from heaven about Christ our
Lord. And I pray that you are too.
David, if you will come and lead us in our hymn.