Remember those who requested
prayer. Cucumber boy died, that gentleman died today, didn't
he? Friday. He was 69 years old. James Stewart,
Jimmy Stewart. Cucumber. Remember that family,
your prayers also. Seek the Lord's help for them.
I remember the others who requested prayer. I remember especially
Melvin and Perry. Perry started his treatment yet?
I think he's probably coming in pretty close. He'll be here
pretty soon, I expect. Oh, really? That far away? Okay. All right. Okey-doke. Let's begin our worship service
tonight with hymn number 46, Old for a Thousand Tongues to
Sing. ? Oh, for a thousand tongues to
sing ? My great Redeemer's praise ? The glories of my God and King
? The triumphs of His grace ? My gracious Master and my God ?
Assist me to proclaim ? To spread through all the earth abroad
? ? The honors of thy name ? ? Jesus, a name that charms our fears
? ? And bids our sorrows cease ? ? Tis music in the sinner's
ears ? ? Tis life and health and peace ? He breaks the power
of canceled sin He sets the prisoner free His blood can make the foulest
clean His blood availed for me Hear me, deaf, his praise ye
dumb, Your lucid tongues employ, Ye blind behold your Saviour
come, And leap ye lame for joy. ? Glory to God and praise and
love be ever, ever giv'n ? ? By saints below and saints above
? ? The church in earth and heaven ? Hymn number 15, brethren, we
have met to worship. ? Brethren we have met to worship
? And adore the Lord our God ? Will you pray with all your
power ? While we pray to preach the word ? All is vain unless
our spirit Everyone comes now. Brethren, pray in holy manner. We'll be showered all around. Brethren, see poor sinners round
you, Drink of war, death is coming,
hell is moving. Can you bear to let them go? See our fathers and our mothers
and our children sinking. ? And pray at holy manna ? We'll
be showered all around ? Sisters will you join and help us ? Moses'
sister, ain't it him ? Will you help the trembling ? Morning
mourners who are struggling hard with sin ? ? Tell them all about
the Savior ? ? Tell them that He will be found ? ? Sisters
pray and holy manna will be shined ? Let us love our God supremely. Let us love each other too. Let us love and pray for sinners
till our God makes all things new. Then He'll call us home
to Him. If you have your Bible, it's
Genesis 49. I'm going to read verse 22, but
our text is verse 23 and 24 tonight. The title of my message is Grieved,
Shot at and Hated. Genesis 49 verse 22, Joseph is
a fruitful bough, even a fruitful bough by a whale whose branches
run over the wall. The archers have sorely grieved
him and shot at him and hated him. But his bow abode in strength,
and the arms of his hands were made strong by the hands of the
mighty God of Jacob, from thence is the shepherd, the stone of
Israel. Let us pray. Our Father in heaven, we come to you with our hearts
open by your grace to seek help for this time of need. We would
pray for those among us who are sick and going through trials
and tribulations. Thou knowest every case. We ask,
Lord, your help for them, strengthen them, and turn their eyes to
Jesus Christ. Father, we pray for ourselves as we gather here
tonight that you might be pleased to open your word to us. We have
nothing on this earth save Jesus Christ and nothing in heaven
but him. and his word to tell us about him, to reveal him to
us, to show us his greatness and his majesty, the glory of
his substitutionary sacrifice that sealed our salvation. We
are thankful for your spirit as he lives within us and take
the things of Christ and shows them unto us. We cannot praise
you enough for what you've done for us. Our words are poor, weak,
and fleshly. But thou knowest our hearts. Thou knowest, Father, that you
have saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according
to our works, but according to your own purpose and grace, which
was given us in Jesus Christ before the world began. We can't
begin to imagine the greatness of what you've done. the greatness
of the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ who willingly, voluntarily
stood in our place and took your full wrath, drinking that cup
dry, suffered the punishment that we were due for eternity,
and then gave you that one singular great price that purchased our
salvation because it answered the law and answered your justice
that perfect death that he died. We're thankful, Father. And because
he died, we will not. Because he suffered, we will
not. We're thankful. We can only praise
you. Help us tonight, Father, as we
look at your word. Pray in Christ's name. Amen.
Now last time we saw that Joseph So I'm being described as a fruitful
bough whose branch ran over the wall. And we know that that was
a picture and a type of our Savior and His successful sacrifice
in that He saved all His people for whom He died. His mission
was an unqualified success. It could not be hindered or frustrated
or thwarted by anything. He came into this world to save
sinners. He came into this world to save
His elect. and save them he did. And as
Jacob has declared the success of Joseph in these verses, Jacob
declares that Joseph's grand accomplishment was not done without
the opposition of many, but to no avail. The grief, the shots
fired, and the hatred are different ways of describing the animus
of all those who opposed Joseph. and also a picture of the venom
of those who made it their goal in life to destroy our Lord Jesus
Christ and wipe his face from the face of the earth. Historically,
Joseph was hated by his brethren. There is no doubt about that.
Scripture clearly declares that he was hated by his brethren.
Turn back to chapter 37 just for a minute. Chapter 37 and verse 5 it says,
Joseph dreamed a dream and he told it to his brethren, they
hate him yet the more. Look at verse 4. And when his
brethren saw that their father loved him more, that all his
brethren, they hated him and could not speak peaceably to
him. And in verse 8 it says, And the brethren said unto him,
Shalt thou indeed reign over us? Or shalt thou indeed have
dominion over us? And they hated him yet the more
for his dreams and for his words. There's an indication even here
that when he told his mother and father that they were going
to bow to him too, that they didn't like him very much either.
If you read on it says, And he dreamed yet another dream in
verse 9, and told it to his brethren, and said, Behold, I have dreamed
a dream more. Behold, the sun and moon and the eleven stars
made obeisance to me. And he told it to his father
and to his brethren, and his father rebuked him. and said
unto him, What is this dream that thou dreamest? Shall I and
my mother and thy brethren indeed come to bow down ourselves to
thee on the earth? So he wasn't too happy with him
either, but all these things came true. They all went down
to Egypt and bowed down before Joseph, every one of them, not
knowing who he was, but then finding out who he was and the
prophecy was fulfilled. He dreamed these dreams. They
as it were These brethren, and even perhaps Jacob, took their
bows and knocked their arrows. When they wished him dead, they
sold him into slavery. Then in slavery, Potiphar's wife
hated him, born of unsatisfied lust, and lied about him, casting
him into prison. He suffered much grief, but the
Lord delivered him and made him the savior of his family. And
we know that's a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ as the branches
that run over the wall. His family would become a great
nation in those 430 years they stayed in Egypt. And eventually,
they would be saved with a great deliverance from the bondage
of Egypt and go on to possess the promised land. And as great
and miraculous and glorious as all this was, it was but a picture
and a type of the true Savior and His family for whom He was
humiliated and exalted to say. Our Lord was grieved. It is said
of Him, He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. That
meant His grief was His constant companion, constant companion. The sword of justice, it speaks
of in Zechariah, was drawn from its scabbard and thrust into
the bosom of God's fellow, who is the Lord Jesus Christ. Scripture
says he was hated over and over again, and it also says he was
hated without a cause. There was no reason for anyone
to hate him, but they hated him anyway. Men did not despise him
for the miracles that he did. They gathered in hordes to follow
him when he did those miracles. They didn't hate him when he
filled their bellies, those 5,000 that were fed. It was when he
opened his mouth and spoke As one having authority and not
as the scribes and the scholars of the day, they said of him,
never a man spake like this man. And the scribes and the Pharisees
and the religionists and the lawyers of the day were stymied
by him and upset by him. His words, his words, the word
of God shattered the veneers of the self-righteousness and
cast their vain hopes into the dust. as an axe is laid to the
root of a tree. Though his considerable gifts
caused them to think he might be a benefit to their religious
influence, they wanted him to hang around because he could
do miracles. They liked that about him. Even the Pharisees
were kind of interested in him because of that. His words didn't
bring that reaction to them. His words incited them to homicidal
mania. When he spoke, they wanted to
cast him off a cliff or stone him to death. He told them, and
they were the top cream of religious society, He told them face-to-face. Speaking as the Son of God, He
said, I did not come for you. Imagine that. Here He is, He
said, He's the Son of God. The Son of God speaking, the
Messiah. and he looks at those who have
been talking about the Messiah for centuries upon centuries
upon centuries written about him, scribes writing down the
things that people said about him, books being written about
the Messiah that's going to come, and he looks at them and says,
I did not come for you. I did not come to call the righteous,
but to bring sinners to repentance. He had nothing for them. He had
chosen the refuse of society for his own to be his trophies. Their opinion of him was over
and over again, this man eateth with sinners and fellowships
with them. He must be a drunk, a winebibber,
must be beside himself, he must be out of his mind. He revealed
the religion to be defunct and desolate and amounting to nothing. That's what he said about the
religion now. You say, well, you shouldn't talk about other
people's religion. He did. Over and over again. We have
this idea about Jesus Christ because of religion of this day
that he was really a nice fellow. Really a sweet little guy who
never offended anyone. He would dare not offend anyone.
But he called the very best of society, the religious leaders
of the day, the rulers of Israel, a bunch of vipers poisonous snakes
poisonous snakes he called them children of hell he said the
devil is your father and you don't hear me because I tell
you the truth he called them open caskets full of dead men's
bones rotting putrefying carcasses and they hated him They hated
him. They shot their arrows at him,
but their darts never hit the target, even as they nailed him
to the cross. Unbeknownst to them, they had
been gathered together to do exactly that. As David said in
Psalm 22, speaking as the Messiah, they have pierced my hands and
my feet thousands of years before even a cross was considered a
means of capital punishment. Unbeknownst to them, they had
been gathered together to do what the Lord, according to Scripture,
had foreordained to be done. They were acting just how they
wanted to act, but they were acting according to God's purpose
and God's will. And so it is with this church.
They are His branches running over the wall to the othermost
parts of the earth. They are not despised for the good works
they do, for the services they provide or the kindnesses they
show. They are hated for the words they speak, because those
who are true believers tell the truth to men. And the truth is
not always nice to hear, especially if you are a religionist. If
you tell someone the truth about how God saves sinners, you know
what they are going to do? They are going to hate you, unless
they are believers too. Our Lord said that in John chapter
15. In verse 18 and 19, He says, If the world hate you, you know
that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world,
the world would love you. The world would love you. But because you are not of the
world, because I have chosen you out of the world, therefore
the world hateth you. Now, how in the world can the
world know that the Lord has chosen you.
How can they know? They don't believe the Bible.
The only way they can know is if you go and open up your mouth
and tell them the truth about God. You tell them. That's the only way they can
know that. You can live a moral and upright life and be a kind
and generous people and even tell people you're Christians.
and you can get along with everybody, every church on this reservation
will stick out a hand of appreciation to you. And they'll never know
you were chosen of God if you don't tell them. So the only
way the world's going to hate you is if you tell them the truth.
If you tell them you're a child of God because God chose you
from the foundation of the world, you done said the wrong thing
to religion. And they're going to hate you for it. That's what
our Lord said. Because I chose you, they hate you. Now they
can't know that. They can't know that you were
chosen unless you tell them that. That's the only way they're going
to know. But the end result is that they'll hate you. They'll
hate you. How many times have believers been told that if they
would just not talk about election and predestination, there would
be no problem? I can't tell you how many times
I've been told that. family members and friends, you know, friends
I've known for years. You know, Tim, you get along
with everybody, you wouldn't talk about those things. You just get along
with everybody. And somebody asked Crow a long
time ago at a funeral and said, how come Sequoyah don't seem
to get along with everybody? It's because of that. It's because
the truth has to be told. You say, well, election is a
small doctrine. No, it's not. It's over 140 times
it's spoken of in Scripture. Predestination over and over
again in Scripture. The very heart of the salvation
of God's people is that word proorizo in the original language.
And there's six times it's mentioned in the New Testament. setting
forth the chronology of salvation. We're going to leave that out?
No, we talk about it because we love it and it's true and
the world will hate you for it. The Lord and His family, His
church, His bride, His flock are hated because they can't
keep their mouths shut. They can't keep quiet about how
God saves His people by the blood of the Lamb delivering them from
the bondage of slavery to sin, Satan, and the Law itself. The
Lord and His Beloved suffer grief. He was grieved by many arrows.
They suffer hatred in the slings and arrows of outrageous religion. That is what Paul called our
light affliction. That is what he called our light
affliction because in truth our bow abides in strength that's
what it says in verse twenty four of our text our bow abides
in strength the archers shoot at us and they hate us and they
grieve us but our bow abides in strength joseph stood bowed
as second only to pharaoh when his brethren came and begged
at his feet for food his bow abode in strength so it was with
our lord while he walked this earth his weapon his words could
not fail and they do not fail today i know religions taking
a hard lick nowadays true religion i don't think true religion is
taking a hard lick at all we're pretty much where we've been
the last 30 or 40 years pretty much you gotta hear We've got
the gospel churches just darned all over America. I'm finding
them all the time. People write me and tell me that
they belong to a little old assembly or they tell me there ain't no
church in their area and they love the gospel we preach. You
know, there's God's people all over there and they're not suffering,
but religion is suffering right now and it ought to. For the lies it's been telling
to people all these years. And for the direction of their
teaching. They stand in the pulpit. You
think these clowns on TV ever talk about justification? When
is the Bible a central subject of it? One of the central subjects
of the Bible is how can a man that is born of woman, a worm
of the dust, be just with an almighty God? How can God be
just to justify me? That's a cardinal doctrine. And
they say, we don't talk about justification. We don't talk
about sin. We don't talk about sin when
the Bible's all about sin and the salvation of sinners. There's
a price to be paid for that, but I'm fully convinced that
once the world gets fully ahold of the church, that it'll be
a part of the world just like everything else, and it'll be fine. Not
the true church. It'll always be God's people
here and there, spread out here and there. Because those branches
have run over the wall, and nothing has stopped them. Nothing has
stopped them. This word that we preach, always has an effect. That's the promise of 2 Corinthians
chapter 2 verses 14-17. Paul says we're always triumphant.
What we preach is always a sweet-smelling savor to God. Always triumphant. Always victorious. You know,
we don't look very victorious. Tim, you've got a great big church
building. You've probably seen a hundred
people here. And there's eight of them here tonight. What kind
of victory is that? It's the victory that God has
ordained. I used to love Laverne. People say, well, you didn't
have many people there last night. Laverne say, well, everybody's very supposed
to be there. And that's true. That's true. The gospel, not
us, the gospel that we preach is always victorious. To some
who hear it, it's a savor of life unto life. to some we hear
that it's the savior of death unto death and we're not sufficient
for that. I don't want to be sufficient
for that. I don't want to decide who lives and who dies. That's
God's business. But the gospel itself will do that. It'll make
a person alive or it'll kill him. It'll give him hope or seal
him in his doom over and over again. The bow of his arm is strong. His bow
abides in strength. It abides in strength. His arms
and head are made strong by the mighty God. That speaks of His
salvation. That's how God speaks of His salvation, His mighty
arm. In Isaiah chapter 52, verse 10 it says, The Lord hath
made his holy arm, and made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all
nations, and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation
of our God. He made his holy arm bare. He saved his people, that's what
that means. You read on, it's all talking about the Lord Jesus
Christ beginning in verse 7 of chapter 52 all the way through
chapter 53. It's all talking about the Lord Jesus Christ. Our Lord, as God, He's the only
potentate. As man, He had the Spirit without
measure. Now we have the Spirit, but we
have it with a measure. We don't have the Holy Spirit
in the fullness of His power. He gives us what we need to survive
and get along in this world. Jesus Christ had the Holy Spirit
without measure, so much so that he was able to do things as a
man that were just absolutely phenomenal. Over in Acts chapter
10, Peter is talking about the Lord
Jesus Christ to whom all the prophets gave witness, and he
says this about him in verse 38, anointed Jesus of Nazareth
with the Holy Ghost and with power who went about doing good
and healing all that were oppressed of the devil for God was with
him. Everything he did as a man possessed of the Holy Spirit
without measure. And you know he made a stupendous
promise to his church concerning we know what he did. He raised
people from the dead. He gave sight to the blind. He
gave hearing to those who were deaf. He made the lame to walk. He made those who were demon-possessed
to live and be happy and follow Him. He was king of kings. And as
a human being, He did wondrous and great things. But over in
John chapter 14, our Lord was talking to His disciples in verse
12. He says, Verily I say unto you,
John 14, Verily I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the
works that I do, he shall do also. What? And greater works
than these shall he do, because I go to my Father. And you're
going to have the Holy Spirit. Greater works? Greater works? How can that possibly be? Acts,
Chapter 26, Paul the Apostle. was recording or rehearsing before
a king what God said He would do and what we do when we preach
the gospel so that we can't see it and we shouldn't see it. In Acts chapter 26 verse 17,
He says, Delivering these, talking, Christ said to him, Delivering
thee from the people and from the Gentiles to whom I now send
thee, to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to
light from the power of Satan unto God that they may receive
forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among them which are sanctified
by faith that is in me." You're talking about wonders. That's
why Paul said, I'm not sufficient for these things when he talked
about the success of the gospel. It opens men's eyes. Blind men
who are born blind, opens their eyes, gives them
peace in their soul, shows them that God has forgiven them. Spiritual things that are beyond
imagination, greater than raising a man from the dead. We preach
a gospel that raises spiritually dead men to life. greater than
giving a blind man sight who can see for the rest of his days
but then those eyes go blind again because he dies. We give
through preaching the gospel. We don't do it, the gospel does
it. Gives men eyes that see forever and see things that no men can
see save those who have faith. Greater works than these, the
Lord said. You'll do greater works than
what I've done. Greater works than what I've done. The Mighty
God is Christ in His power and He is the strength of the Church.
Note well as He speaks here in verse 24, He says, But His bow,
abode in strength. His arms and hands were made
strong by the hands of the Mighty God, the Mighty God of Jacob. Christ is the Mighty God. That
is the name that He was given in the promise of His birth.
For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and his
name shall be called Wonderful, the Mighty God, the Everlasting
Father, the Prince of Peace. Note well, beloved brethren,
blood-bought sinners, sinners saved by grace, our God describes
himself as the God of Jacob. Oh, how sweet. The saved sinner's
God, that's who he's talking about. the savior of the supplanter
he's our hope and our help the mighty god of jacob he has ordained
the grief and the arrows and the hatred and they are all employed
in the salvation of his people used of god appointed by god
david said in psalm 76 sin the wrath of man shall praise God and the rest of wrath he will
restrain he says in Isaiah 54 17 no weapon formed against you
shall prosper oh there will be slings and arrows there will
be hatred there will be grief along the way but you're in the
hands of the mighty God you're in the hands of the mighty God.
The archers have solely grieved him, and shot at him, and hated
him. But his abode in strength, and
the arms of his hands were made strong by the hands of the mighty
God of Jacob. Now the rest of that verse I'm
going to look at next week. Because that, I started to deal
with it, but I thought, no, that deserves more than a few seconds.
Which is from Vince. He's the shepherd. the stone
of Israel. That is what we will look at
next week. Father, bless us to understand and pray in Christ's
name. Amen.