much good for me. It's all fine and dandy that Melchizedek is a type for him in that he's not shown as having mother or father, just suddenly appears. but we needed Jesus to have that earthly body as he said to Nicodemus there in the book of John chapter 3 even as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness so must the Son of Man be lifted up and the whole idea about that brazen serpent was that the cure had to be in the form of the disease The fiery serpents invaded the camp and they were biting people. And so God instructed Moses to make that brazen serpent, put it up on a pole and just tell the people, look to that brazen serpent and they'll be healed. And whoever looked to it was healed. Those who didn't look to it, they died. Jesus being lifted up, if we'll look to Him, we can live. But if people reject Him, they refuse to accept Him, they're going to die one day. And I'm not talking about physical death, because as the Bible says there in the book of Hebrews, is appointed unto men once to die. We all have an appointment with death. I'm talking about that second death, the death of eternity in hell. Yeah, you don't want that death, because that is not going to end. That is going to be that way forever and ever and ever. So, let's just look to Jesus. Amen. Put our full faith and trust in Him. which we're gonna look here quickly at a young man who While he certainly didn't know the name Jesus He definitely did look to him because he was looking to God so over here in the book of Genesis 37 And we're gonna break in pretty far down into the story here as it's found in chapter 37. I wanna go all the way to verses 31 and 32 and then we'll back up and we'll go from there. But Genesis 37 verses 31, 32. And they took Joseph's coat and killed a kid of the goats and dipped the coat in the blood. And they sent the coat of many colors and they brought it to their father and said, uh... this that we found no now whether it be that i sons quote or no uh... but read thirty three and he knew it and said it is my son's code in the will be set the bar and joseph is without doubt written pieces now of course uh... you and i know that uh... they just uh... tried to pull the wall overall dear old dad's eyes uh... they took that precious coat that joseph had and uh... tore it up some and dipped it in blood, because back then there was no DNA testing they were going to do. Blood's blood is blood. They just need enough to make dear old dad think that little Joe is dead. But I ain't here to talk about all that. No, no, no, no, no. I want to focus on that coat. You see, these boys thought that coat was so important. They didn't cut off a finger and send the finger back and say, hey, dear old dad, we found a finger. They cut off an ear and sent the ear back, hey, we found his ear. The shepherds were required to bring back something of the sheep to prove that they hadn't killed it. They took that coat. They didn't go for his wallet, his watch, his shoes. Which, you better believe Joseph had shoes, and they could easily use the shoes. No, no, no, no. They wanted that coat as proof of death. Because the clothes that Joseph wore meant something. Joseph's attire was important. Important enough to use that to try to convince Jacob that he was dead. And I want to look here this morning real quickly on this thought of Joseph's attire. Joseph's attire. Father in heaven, we thank you, God, once again for loving us, for saving us. We thank you, Father, for all the many blessings that you've given us, for the answered prayers. We thank you, Father, for the opportunity to stand here and bring your word to your people. And we do pray, Lord, Each and everyone who's tuning in whether it be with the live Facebook feeds or down the road Watching it later then or over on sermon audio That they will get the help that they need from you As it can only come from you can't come from me. I ain't no good and that's just being honest here but you are and we're asking you father, please for a mighty blessing we're asking you father, please for to help us now in this time so that we can get all that you've got for us out of your word today. I ask you Father once again for all the prayer requests that have been made known as well as those that have gone unspoken that you would please answer them according to your most holy of wills. In the precious glorious name of Jesus we do pray. Amen and Amen. Excuse me there for a moment. Most of us, you know, we've got different changes of clothes. I actually have been on vacation the last three weeks and have found that the number of pairs of pants that I have has dwindled considerably. I've either got my work uniforms or I've got like two pairs of jeans. And they're both faded black. They're more gray now than anything. Shirts, the shirts have been shrinking. As a matter of fact, I lost another shirt this past week. One of my good shirts got all stained up. I had to throw it out there. But the fact of the matter is I got a bunch of different clothes, even if I just primarily wear my work uniforms or dress clothes to go to church. Shoes! Yeah! I've got a lot of shoes. I've got closets with clothes. I've got space next to the door to get my shoes stored there. I've got a lot of attire to wear. Of course, I'm not talking about the attire of my gut either. Amen! But the fact of the matter is that we've got a wide variety of clothes we can choose from. And if we ain't satisfied with what we've got, or They got very religious, i.e. holy. They're worn out. They got stained out or whatever. We can run to the store and replace them pretty quickly. Or we can go to the storage bin that we got in our basement and pull out some clothes that we haven't worn in a while from down there. Or go to the closet. We can actually do the near impossible. I guess I'm primarily talking to guys. And do laundry. Now, I do my own laundry, so please don't start thinking that I don't. I do. But the fact of the matter is, we got close. Joseph, as he starts off chapter 37 here, We're told, where is it, verse number 3, Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age, and he made him a coat of many colors. Now what happened here is, and I've talked about this before, we're not going to get all that into every aspect of the of the idea of the coat in many colors here. You can check out our sermon on sermonaudio.com about clothing. Joseph was very proud of this coat of many colors. I realize Dolly Parton sang about a coat of many colors many, many years ago and all that, you know, patchwork material being sewed together and who cared what it looked like it got the job done, okay? That's not what's going on here. We picture so often Joseph walking out of daddy's house there and he's got on this coat with all these many colored stripes, looks like he's wearing a rainbow. That's actually not the case either. This coat of many colors as it is biblically talked about and he starts off with this Excuse me coat of many colors is It is like the the suit that I'm wearing right now The sleeves go down to the hands the the hemline of the pants go all the way down to the feet there and right there on that that him there would be a braid of strings of many colors, and it would be sewed on there to the hem, and the rest of the clothes was going to be white. So the rest of the robe is white, and the hemlines are all multicolored strings that have been sewed on to the end there in a braid. This was something for him to be proud about because it denoted him as being important. Why was he important? Because he was in charge. This coat was going to go to the first born son. Now, Reuben obviously couldn't receive it, even though he was the ultimate firstborn, because he defiled his father's bed. The two sons that were born to the two servant girls to help form the Twelve Tribes, well, they weren't, shall we say, legitimate? Okay, so they weren't going to get it. That only left then the firstborn son of Rachel, in other words Joseph, who was going to get it. And Joseph, he's very proud of this coat. You see his brothers, they got the short sleeves. They got the shorts that were just above the knees because they were required to go out and work. Go out there and sweat to do something. He's a white collar. They're blue collars. They got things they've gotta do for a living. Well, Joseph's management material. Now, this is a little bit of a problem in the long story of Joseph here, in that it did seem to give him a little bit of pride, and God doesn't like pride. It's the first sin, it's pride. Don't believe me? Go over there and study out Satan there. It's pride that got to him. This code of many colors was an issue that was going to have to be dealt with. Now the boys took care of it their way. I don't believe that was God's intention, but God used what man gave him to work with. Jacob had established him to be the next one in charge of the family. That's what God was intended. But no, it wasn't a break glass in case of emergency situation for God. God knew what was going to happen. And I want to let you know, church, that no matter what happens in your life, God can work with what we give Him. And it's better that we give Him more to work with. Amen. But you're never going to run into a situation where God starts panicking and says, oh, what do I do now? We ain't never going to get into a situation where God suddenly is biting His nails to the quick because we did something He ain't expecting. He might have to break us of our pride and let's do our best not to Force that situation because let me tell you from past experience that hurts That's not something we want to be facing Better that we take care of it ourselves, so we don't get to that point But it ended up happening for Joseph here To the point that it ended up changing his attire from a coat of many colors to the cloth of a slave. Skip with me down to chapter number 39. Let me show you over here. We're going to deal with a lot of verses here, but we'll try to be short and sweet. At least I'll be sweet if you'll be short, because I'm 6'3", I can't be short. A little dad joke there for you. Chapter 39, verses 1 to 4. And Joseph, because remember, after his brothers did what they did with the coat of many colors, they had him in that pit, they sold him into slavery to the Midianites. The Midianites go on down here to Egypt, and they sold him. And Joseph was brought down to Egypt and Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, captain of the guard, an Egyptian, bought him the hand of the Ishmaelites. Now, real quickly, I know I said Midianites, Bible says Ishmaelites here. By this point in time, the Midianites and Ishmaelites had so intermarried that the name had become interchangeable. Over there in chapter 37, it does say Midianites and Ishmaelites. So it's all the same thing, just simply a matter of which name came to mind first as it was being written out, all right? Now, that was your lesson for the day. That was free, I won't charge you. Ishmael X, would you brought him down thither? And the Lord was with Joseph, and he was a prosperous man, and he was in the house of his master, the Egyptian. His master. Means he's a slave, church. Means he ain't got free will. Means he don't get to sit here and say, I think I'm just gonna pack my sea bags and ship on back home. That ain't gonna happen. He has been bought. And his master saw that the Lord was with him, and that the Lord made all that he did to prosper in his hand. And Joseph found grace in his sight, and he served him, and he made him overseer over his house, and all that he had he put into his hand." With that coat of many colors, Joseph had been proud of it. He'd been proud to wear it. Now here he has the cloth of a slave. but I want you to know he was prosperous with it. I know that boggles our 21st mind. Slavery, how can you prosper in slavery? We've got to understand this was a couple of days before the Gettysburg Address happened. This was a completely different mindset back then. We also got to keep in mind, like I said, God was breaking Joseph of his pride. That's why he's not a perfect picture of Jesus. None of the Old Testament is a perfect picture of Jesus. But he began to prosper because even though he was now a slave to Potiphar down there in Egypt, Joseph never ever took his eyes off of God. He still continued to follow God. When things start going wrong in our lives, when things aren't going the way we want, are we still keeping our eyes on God? Or are we just sitting here, chin against our chest? Woe is me. Nobody knows what I'm going through. Oh, this is so horrible. I can't do it. No, keep your eyes up. The psalmist said there in Psalm 121, Verse number one, I will lift mine eyes into the hills, whence cometh my help. The whole idea being, you're looking up there, you ain't looking down here. Because he's looking up there, because he's looking to God. Even though things aren't the way he wants, even though things ain't going the way he thinks they should go, he's still prospering. Things may not be going our way. But it does not mean that God has forsaken us. It does not mean, church, that we can't prosper wherever we are at. You know why? Because if we're there, God has allowed us to be there. And if He's allowed us to be there, He's got something for us to do. Wow! So the choice is either for us to languish and moan and groan and bellyache about it, or to prosper. Yeah, it may be the cloth of a slave. It may not be what we want. The Bible says that my God shall supply all your need, not needs, need. according to his riches and glory by Christ Jesus. So he's going to take it one thing at a time. You and I need to take it one thing at a time. That coat, eh, kind of an anchor. When push came to shove, he wasn't about to let it drag him down. So what are you talking about? I'm not talking about the coat of many colors. I'm talking about the cloth of slavery. Notice with me in verse 12. Now, let's back up. Verse 11, And it came to pass about this time that Joseph went into the house to do his business, and there was none of the men of the house there within. And she caught him by his garment and said, Lie with me. And he left his garment in her hand and fled and got him out. He'd had the coat of many colors stripped off of him by his brethren. Now he's got a new coat on. It's the cloth of a slave. Master's wife took a liking to him. She got a hankering. She wants some of that. Hey, come on. Let's have a quickie. Let's go between the sheets and roll around a little bit. Ain't no harm gonna happen from it. He ain't home and no one else will dare say anything about it. It'll be our little secret. and aren't you my slave anyways? You have to obey my commandments. Come lie with me." Just because we're in this world doesn't mean we have to do everything this world wants us to. Jesus said you are in the world but you're not of the world. So what happened? Joseph had to take that coat off. You want the back of it? Go ahead. Okay, that's fine. Whatever you got to do, you go for it. Now I'm going to put this one back on because it's a little chilly out here. But the fact of the matter remains, he saw the anchor that that thing was threatening to be. That it was going to choke him. That it was going to weigh him down. It was going to drag him down. That first sin is always the same thing. It looks so little, innocent. Oh, that little thing there, it can't do much to me. I'll just let it go this one time. And in so doing, we mess up big because it just opens up the floodgates for us. Joseph said, I'm not going to do it. I might have Potiphar as my master, but I've got God as my ultimate master. We might have a boss at work as our master, if you will, the one telling us what to do, but we don't have to let sin become our master. We don't have to yield to what the world wants. So he shed that coat and got out of there. You know what it did? He let him put on a different type of clothes. He got on some chain mail. He got the chains of a prisoner in exchange for that coat. Notice with me all the way down in verse number 20. And Joseph's master took him and said, Congratulations boy, you passed the test. Uh uh. Mrs. Potiphar done told Potiphar, hey, he tried to come in here and, can't use that word here on Facebook, I don't want the problems with that, but came in here trying to force himself on me. Potiphar said, ah, that ain't gonna happen. Threw him in jail. And Joseph's master took him and put him into the prison. A place where the king's prisoners were bound. Remember, he's the captain of the king's guard. And he was there in the prison. But the Lord, I like when God buts in. But the Lord was with Joseph and showed him mercy and gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison. A coat of many colors, he'd been proud of it. The cloth of a slave, he'd prospered in it. But now the chains of a prisoner show us that he'd been perjured against. She lied about him. So when you take a stand for God, guess what, church? People are gonna come against you. People ain't gonna like, and they will twist the truth. They will add to the truth. They'll cut out the truth completely and just straight up lie about you. You want to know what else is a possibility? We'll straight up lie about ourselves. We'll twist the truth about ourselves. We'll sprinkle in some falsehoods about ourselves. Preacher, I'd never do that. When was the last time you told someone about Jesus and you had clear opportunity to? Holy Spirit said, give them a track. Tell them about Jesus. And we just kept right on trucking with our business. We've chained ourselves up. Nope. Can't do nothing. I'm terrified right now. I'm afraid. I'm too busy. I've got other things to do. I'm in a big hurry. They're in a big hurry. They ain't got the time to deal with this. They ain't got the desire to deal with this. They'll just throw the track away if I give it to them. They'll curse me out. Lies, lies, lies. I'm guilty of it myself. I'm looking at the video feed of myself. So I'm literally preaching right at myself here, church. We can put some perjury on ourselves. Others will perjure us. That coat needs to be changed. It needs to be changed. If we're going to move on, if we're going to deal with what God would have us to do, if we're going to serve God the way that we're supposed to serve Him, we've got to take those chains off. By the way, we can't be chained by the enemy. We can wrap the chains around ourselves. The enemy would be sitting here rubbing his hands. Oh, this is good. This is good. This is good But he can't put no lock on there because we have been bought with the price. We are not our own We get wrapped up in sin all the day long, but we still belong to Jesus If you know Jesus as your Lord and Savior, amen So we gotta unwrap the chains we gotta ask Jesus to Break the chains to remove him from us. I If we want to go stand in His presence, if we want to do business His way, the chains have got to come off. Notice with me over in chapter 41 and verse number 14. Pharaoh has had his two dreams. He's freaked out over it. He can't get an answer from anybody about it. They finally say hey, there's Joseph He's down there in the prison house, and he's able to interpret dreams and Pharisees go get him I Need him stabbed. I need him here right now. You know, I don't need him here right now. I needed him here an hour ago That's how direly important. This is get him here right now Verse 14 And then Pharaoh sent and called Joseph, and they brought him hastily out of the dungeon. Okay, they're in a big hurry. We've got to get you up to Pharaoh there, Joseph. Watch. And he walked in, hair a complete mess, beard all over the place, his clothes nasty. No. And he shaved himself and changed his raiment and came in on the Pharaoh. Now I'm sure he didn't put on a nice three-piece suit. I don't know if he shaved all the way to the bare skin. I'm pretty sure that's what he would have ended up doing. Because how they had to shave off as much hair as possible over there in Egypt to cut down on all the insects and what not. So he probably did. You know the good lemonade and possibility for headlights and all that good stuff there. And you don't want to go before the king of the first world empire more or less. I know Babylon the first and all that you get what I'm saying the First great power, how about that Egypt? You don't want to go in there looking like a mess He had to get cleaned up Had to change his clothes. You know what that is for us Church That's us doing what first John 1 9 says if we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. That's Him cleaning us up. But we've gotta confess Him. That confession is like Joseph here shaving the hair off his head and putting on some clean clothes. Because once you've done that, you're gonna find the covering of royalty awaits. Skip all the way down to verse 42 and 43 after Pharaoh and Joseph have talked about the dream and it's been interpreted for Pharaoh as to what in the world is going on here. And Joseph said, hey look Pharaoh, this is what you gotta do. You got seven years of plenty coming up. You've got to store some of that stuff away. If you don't, the next seven years will wipe you out completely. You're gone. Unless you act now. So what's Pharaoh doing? I think we found our man. Verse 41, and Pharaoh said unto Joseph, you know, let's back up. Yeah, let's go all the way back to verse 38. And Pharaoh said unto his servants, Can we find such a one as this is, a man in whom the Spirit of God is? And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, Forasmuch as God hath showed thee all this, there is none so discreet and wise as thou art. Thou shalt be over my house, and according unto thy words shall all my people be ruled. Only in the throne will I be greater than now. And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, See, I have set thee over all the land of Egypt. Verse 42 And Pharaoh took off his ring from his hand, and put it upon Joseph's hand, and arrayed him in vestures of fine linen, and put a gold chain about his neck. Joseph has now gone from the pride of the coat of many colors, to prospering under the cloth of a slave, because he was perjured against, he was given chains of a prisoner. But now, in spite of it all, he's been promoted to the coverings of royalty. What that coat did was prove God true. Because this all started all the way back there in chapter 39. When Joseph said, hey, I have dreamed, and the moon and stars all bowed to me. My sheaf, we were out in the field, stood erect, and all my brother's sheaves bowed to my sheaf. And everyone says, oh, you're going to rule over us? Yeah, Joseph just got promoted, basically, to the throne. Only one human being was greater than Joseph at that time, and that was Pharaoh. God broke that pride. And Joseph worked with what God gave him. And God was then able to work with what Joseph was given him back. And it all worked out in the end. Joseph was patient and stayed true to God. Even when it looked like everything was against him. He could have easily had an affair with Potiphar's wife. Yeah, she may have gotten tired of him after a while, had him, you know, say, hey, you know, he's done this to me and they throw him in jail, they execute him, whatever. He'd had some fun for a little while. Maybe Potiphar would have met with an accident and, you know, Joseph would have been promoted, you know, to head of the house or whatever, I don't know. He's there in jail, he could have remained bitter as can be about it, done the bare minimum, or just sat in a cell all together and not even done anything else. But instead he kept his eyes focused on God. God, I don't know where this is going, but you obviously do, so I'm going to trust you that this is heading somewhere. And it led him to being the Prime Minister. Egypt. Coverings of royalty. He was given the king's ring. The signet of the king was on there. You press that into the wax of the clay, and law was suddenly passed. Joseph had it all now. God didn't just give him the family business like he was supposed to get back there in Canaan land. He gave them an empire to help rule over. See, when we're faithful in the little things, God will promote us to bigger things. But when we show we can't handle the big things, why in the world should He give us something even bigger? We might even get downgraded to something smaller. Now maybe it ends up, well, kind of like Joseph there. He's going to be in charge of the family business. God had to demote him before He could promote him. Maybe we end up that same way, church. But I'll tell you this, it's going to depend upon the type of attire we wear. And I'm not talking our clothes. I'm not saying anybody's got to go out and get Armani. Or any of the other latest fashions, Prada or anything like that. The attire of our heart. Is it one of service? Or is it one of selfishness? Is the one that's looking to God or looking to run from God? I've got a couple of questions here for you in closing. What hard times have come into our lives that are making us want to make some changes? They come. They go. It depends upon what we do as to how they go. The next question is this, is God moving any of them to make us better? Or are we doing something to bring punishment on ourselves? And thirdly, are you fighting with God or yielding to His will? How are you attiring yourself? Is your Christian walk truly a Christian walk? Will it leave others to say, and they're a Christian? Our Father in heaven, we thank you, Lord, once again, that you gave us the chance, the permission to sit here and bring your word to your people. We pray, Father, that everyone here was able to Get what they want or what they need I should say out of the sermon not what we want, but what we need So we can go forward in service to you doing things your way Help us father. Please be more obedient to you in the name of Jesus Christ My Savior my high priest in his name we pray amen. Amen