Remember Steve tomorrow now. He goes to the hospital again for surgery. Pray the Lord will be merciful. All right, Genesis 42. The message is gonna come from verse 36 today, but I wanna go back to verse 25 and just read and make a few comments on the way to verse 36. Verse 25. Then Joseph commanded to fill their sacks with corn, and to restore every man's money into his sack, and to give them provision for the way. And thus did he unto them. Salvation. Salvation is free grace, isn't it? That's what you were saying. Salvation is free grace. Isaiah writes, come all you who are thirsty. Come to the waters. And you have no money. Then he says, come by. That's an odd statement. You have no money. Come by. And eat. If I have not, how then? Faith in Christ. Faith in Christ. Buy wine and milk without money or without cost. Verse 26, and they laid in their asses with the corn and departed then. You remember last week I said that they had become guilty there in verse 21, but I don't think it was unto true repentance yet. I think that they had a temporary peace. They went home with the food, but I don't think it was, I don't think until you get to chapter 44 do they really repent and get to the crux of it. Verse 27, and as one of them opened his sack to give his ass for vendor, in the end he has spied his money. For behold, it was in his sack's mouth. Once again, salvation is free grace. You're not gonna pay for it. You're not gonna pay it. And he said unto his brethren, my money is restored, and lo, it is even in my sack. And their heart felled them. And they were afraid, saying one to another, what is this that God hath done unto us? Well, thankfully, what he did to Christ is for us. Everything that God did, he did to Christ. If you're a believer, if you're a believer, everything that was done was done in Christ. Isn't that a blessing? Isn't that a blessing? Verses 29 through 32, though, they still hold on to some self-righteousness. And they came unto Jacob their father into the land of Canaan, and told him all that had befell them there, saying, The man who is the lord of the land spake roughly to us, he was mean to us, and he took us for spies of the country. And we said to him, we're true men, we're somebody, and we're no spies. We be twelve brethren, sons of a good man, great man, our father. One is not, and the youngest one is this day with our father in the land of Canaan. Still holding on. Still holding. They've got some good in them. And the man, the Lord of the country said unto us, Hereby shall I know that you are true men. Leave one of your brethren here with me, and take food for the famine of your households, and be gone. And bring your youngest brother unto me. Christ demands what? He demands all. He demands all. If you're gonna be found in Christ, Christ's gonna get all of you. And bring that other brother unto me. Then shall I know that you are no spies, but that you are true men. So will I deliver you, your brother, and you shall traffic in the land. And it came to pass, as they emptied their sacks, that, behold, every man's bundle of money was in his sack. And when both they and their father saw the bundles of money, they were afraid. And Jacob their father said unto them, me have you bereaved of my children? Makes you wonder if maybe Jacob had some idea that at least the complete truth about Joseph hadn't been told or if not, he'd probably blame, if you'd have been where you were supposed to have been, Joseph wouldn't have had to go to Dothan looking for you. Right? But it seems he blamed the boys for Joseph, however it was. And Simeon is not, and you will now take Benjamin away. Here's the message. All these things are against me. The title of the message is, What I Think vs. What God Knows. All these things are against me. He was 130 years old or so at this time. He had three things against him. Joseph, Simeon, and Benjamin. Three things. 130 years of grace. And that's what we do, isn't it? That's what we do. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Everything that was taking place was taking place for his preservation. Everything for the preservation of his children and his posterity. Israel would come out of Egypt from all this. Fifteen hundred years later, our Lord Jesus Christ would come from him. Everything was working for him. Yet, his perception is what? Everything is against me. What was Jacob doing? Well, he was trusting his view of the present and its outcome. Go over to Proverbs chapter 3. We've read this. Something that the wise man we've been studying in our Bible study warns us about. Proverbs 3 verse 5, Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not, lean not unto your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths. What was Jacob doing? He was leaning on his own understanding. Trust not your wisdom, trust not your wisdom, Don't trust your common sense. The first point of the message is just simple application. Jacob and us. You know, I just read that, and you may immediately think, well, the Lord gave me the ability to reason, which is a blessing, isn't it? Well, my thought is, yeah, it is a blessing, but do you know, to me, the greatest act of reasoning is to just bow before the God of reason. Rely on just what he tells us. Just rely on his unerring, faithful word. Remember, at the beginning of just Genesis study, when we start way back, way back, I think it was back there with Cain, I mentioned a couple of words. I mentioned Believers being analogous as opposed to being analytical thinkers. Analytical is just using your logic to figure something out. Analogous means you compare things. And I think that's what believers should do. What we do is compare what we're going through to what this Word says. And you try to find it. Lord, I'm having this. I'm having this difficulty. And so you try to compare. You try to find somewhere here that you compare what you're going through. That's what believers do. We don't try to figure it out. We don't try to use logic and say, this is why this is going on. It's our reasoning, our leaning on our understanding, on our logic that keeps us from trusting God with our whole heart. And that's what he wants. Whole heart trust. Go to Mark. This is what he wants. Mark 11. Verse 23, you're familiar with this. For verily I say unto you, talking to his disciples, that whosoever shall say unto this mountain, be thou removed, uprooted, and cast into the Mediterranean Sea. and shall not doubt shall not doubt in his heart in God's what he's doubting don't what he doesn't doubt is God's sovereign power and ability to do whatever he's asked to do but shall believe that those things which he hath said shall come to pass by God's will by God's will see we don't we don't Compare Scripture to Scripture, we pray, God, your will be done. He shall have whatsoever he saith. If you believe with all of your heart in God's sovereign control, in whatever he wills to be done, he will do it. You'll have it. Now, there was no reason to move a mountain into the sea. So that wouldn't be prayed for. But the point was, if you believe that firmly in a sovereign God, and His will will be done in your life, and whatever you need according to His will, it'll do. It'll happen. Therefore I say unto you, soever things you desire, when you pray God's will, and then believe, then believe that you receive them, you shall have them. And what's that doing? That's leaning on God, isn't it? leaning on him, not your reason. To lean upon yourself or other people is just a very, very weak support. David tells us not to do it. A couple of times, he says in Psalm 118.80, he said, it's better to trust God than put confidence in men or yourself. Psalm 146.3, don't trust princes in whom there is no help. Well, there's a lot of folks trusting old Trump right now, isn't there? It bothers me. I'm talking about evangelicals. Think he's, he's not God. He may fail worse than we've ever had a guy fail. Don't trust Trump. He'll probably put me in jail if he gets this message. I don't care. Jeremiah is even more. direct. He says, cursed. Cursed is he who trusts man and departs from God. Why is the support of trusting men in yourself weak? Because it's rotted out by sin. It's rotted out by self. It's rotted out by pride. David understood this. David said, your word, your word is a lamp to my feet. He was the king. Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light. It's my guide. I wish we had leaders that just really knew what that was about, don't you? To not use light... My mother fell a few months ago, didn't you? Messed her face up. Didn't use the light. Went in a strange place, wasn't familiar, and fell. If you don't use light, it leads to injuries and falls, hurts. The Bible's full of examples of saints who stumbled. Abraham, remember Abraham over there in Genesis 20 when he went into Egypt and he told his wife, Tell them you're my sister. Tell them if they find out otherwise, they'll kill me." What did he do? God had told him to leave. I'm going to take you from here to here. Egypt was just a point in the middle. He was going to get there. What did he do? He started thinking. He started thinking. Jacob, right here, he starts to think, don't he? Him and his mother thought about the birthright and all. They schemed. They thought God was going to give it to the right. He'd already said it. Then they had to scheme. They started thinking on their own. The disciples, the disciples over in Matthew 16, 22, they did not understand the need of the cross. The need of Christ. They thought that, they believed that it was the Messiah, but they thought, even though they'd been told and told, they kept on thinking that it was, Christ was going to become a king. They were going, Israel's going to make him king. They didn't understand the need of that death, atonement. So what'd they do? They rebuked the Lord. They said, no, no, no, be it far from you. That's not, that's not the way it needs to be. We'll do it this way. They thought, thought. We need to remember this Proverbs, trust in the Lord and lean not to your own understanding. We need it when we interpret scripture. Look, God's word isn't addressed to our IQ. is addressed to our conscience and our heart. The highest IQ is not ever going to understand this word completely. It's our reasoning, trying to IQ it out, figure it out, our reasoning that leads us astray. Man's reasoning, that go by the analytical thinking about the scripture, is the source of every false doctrine out there. Men, men, men single out, because this doesn't sound logical to them, they'll single out passages to build their doctrine on. But it all comes because that just don't sound like something God would do. See, here's some examples. Some folks believe there's no eternal punishment, no hell, that at least will be an eternity of it, Because of this verse, God's mercy endures forever. Some say there can't be any election because God so loved the world and whosoever will. And us, let's don't leave us grace folks out of things. No need for holy living because grace will no longer be grace. So we do our best to avoid any form of work. any concept of work. Well, words do not say, but like you read this morning, you know, we're created unto war, we're his workmanship created unto good works. Can't be any more clear, but Gabe and I were talking about that last week. Our zealousness for God's glory may often blind us to man's responsibility. Salvation is of the Lord would cause some men to say or see no need or command to preach the gospel to all nations. He'll save who he's going to save. Or why should I pray for my children? If he's going to save them, he's going to save them. That's hyper-Calvinism. Yes, yes, last week I made it clear, repentance and faith are gifts of God. But the unregenerate is commanded, you must repent and believe. See, what's happening? Both groups, grace and religion in general, are leaning to their own understanding of things, their own logic. It's dangerous. Don't do that. We need to learn Isaiah 55, these two verses, and then Romans 11, 33. Isaiah 55, verse 8 and 9. For my thoughts, my thoughts are not your thoughts. It's God speaking. My ways are not your ways. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways and thoughts higher than yours. Paul writes in Romans 11, 33, the depths of the riches both of wisdom and knowledge, how unsearchable his judgments, his ways are past finding out. When finite me, when finite you tries to figure out the infinite, we're going to get in trouble. What we're guilty of, and this is a sin, is presumption. What hurts us is we're working against our own joy and peace. And we just sit and try to figure out why. Why, why, why, why, why? Well, God. But God. But God. Scripture says we can't, by reason, find out God, but we just can't let that go, can we? I try to reason it all out. And here you have in this text, Genesis 42, old Jacob's a prime example, isn't he? Everything's against me. Everything's against me. Jacob was walking by sight, judging things from their outward appearance. His perception had become reality. And ours does that often. Our perception becomes reality. The longer you perceive something, the realer it becomes. God, God was left, God is not mentioned here. God's left out of His calculation and consideration. And as the end will show, we know the end, all things are working for His good. Same thing happened over in Exodus. You know, Pharaoh pushes them to the Red Sea. He told them to leave. He got them out. He brought all of those things on the Egyptians. Pharaoh finally said, get them out of here. Now he's pursuing them. But God, by miracles, you know, the Red Sea and Pharaoh's there. And they said, what are we going to do? What are we going to do? They started thinking. Started thinking. Forgot God and put them right there. The disciples, the disciples, after the crucifixion of our Lord, after His death, they didn't understand. They didn't understand. They said, we preach the gospel. We know we're supposed to preach the gospel. I don't understand how it's supposed to work. So they started thinking, thinking. Peter finally said, I tell you what, let's just start fishing again. Let's just go back to the old jobs. You know, let's just start fishing. So they all went back to their old jobs, fishing. Started thinking, started thinking. Didn't understand it, so they just stood praying, like we all do. Just made a bad act, made bad decisions. Always remember this, all trials are to wean us from us. That's what trials are doing, weaning us from us. And one of the us's is our understanding of things. And trials finally will wean you more and more and more. You start by, I didn't understand that, but here I am today. I didn't understand that, but here I am today. And that's what trials are doing. Weaning us from our own understanding of things. But we have to learn it over and over and over. I have no power. I have no mind in this situation. My own strength. My whole everything I have for this trial is going to have to come from above. But we forget. We'll forget it. We'll pick it back up again, woman. How many times I pick things up again. I'll tell you, I ain't doing that no more. I'm going to trust the Lord from now on. I'm not going to say this anymore. I'm not going to do this anymore. I'm not going to worry about this anymore. Two weeks later, now I get the look. You know, you get the looks sometimes. And you get a look. You're like, yeah, I picked it back up. We pick it up, don't we? Aren't you glad our Lord's patient with us? Aren't you? Lean not to your own understanding in these things. We're apt to do it here, these little old grace churches. Lean not to your own understanding in church work and Christian service. You know, we do. We tend to think, we look here, you know, everything's against us. Everything's against us. And our temptation is just to come up with some kind of method, some kind of compromise, to get people interested in the gospel. We all want that, don't we? It's not just the preacher. They're not a parent or grandparent in here. They're not a husband or a wife who doesn't want their spouse under the gospel, who don't want their grandkids under the gospel. You don't, you know, their children say, we all want that, don't we? And it's tempting sometimes just to water this, Glenn, just to water the truth down, you know? Is it all grace or is it, you know, is it something I'd put my hand to? No, it's all grace. It's all grace. If grace don't save my kids or grandkids or spouse or what, grace, works sure are not gonna do it, not gonna keep them. But what we do, we start to think, start to think. Here's God's promise, His word, my word, my gospel will not return unto me void. So what we do? We preach the word. We preach the word. We study the word. We hear the word. We learn the word. We keep our kids under the word. And we just pray that the God of the word will open their hearts. Don't put our hands to it. Don't think. Don't think. The teaching of Scripture on the other part of not only church service, but Christian service. This gets us sometimes, especially if we're still out here in the world working. The thoughts of religion in this world differ greatly from what our view is. Psalm 51, let me read this. This is what it's about. David gets to the end of this. Brings us that this is what God looks for in Christian service. Verse 17, the sacrifices, the service, that's right, the sacrifices, whatever we do, church going, you know, sacrifices, whatever it is, the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart. Oh God, you won't despise that. Despises everything else out here in religion. But you come to him with that, broken and a contrite heart, he won't despise that. That's what Samuel was saying over there to Saul. He said, to obey. God's looking for obedience, not your church service, not your works, not those merits that you think you're gaining. That's not what he's looking for. So clear, isn't it? But religion, religion measures, engages results, don't they? Activity, size, those things. That's the measure of God's preacher and God's church. That church is growing. That's a good church. They got a good church over there. That church is really growing. I hear that all the time. That church came from here to here. They got a good preacher. You better fire me. If that's the gauge, you better get rid of me. We go backwards it seems like sometimes, don't we? That's a false measure, isn't it? A false measure. According to the text, they're looking at it by sight, not trusting God. Sight's their gauge, understanding's their ruler. Moses, Moses was told over in Exodus to get in the people water. He was said, he was told to speak to the rock. But instead of obedience, which what God commands of his people, of his preachers and his churches, what'd he do? He smote it. In anger, he smote the rock. And in doing that, he sinned. It was a sin. And God judged him for it. He wouldn't let him go into the promised land. Well, yeah, the water came. The water came out. It came gushing out. But did the result prove that Moses was right? Don't think we have God's approval and blessing because we have results. Jeremiah 6.16 says, stick to the old paths. Stick to the gospel. Stick to the old paths. May not have instant results, but you'll have God's favor, won't you? You'll have his blessing. All right, here's the second point. Perception versus reality. Jacob's words were, everything is against me. And that could not have been further from the truth. Couldn't have been true. What about us, though? What about us? We ever think that? I do. You ever think the hits just keep on coming? They seem to sometimes, don't they? The hits just keep on coming. And I catch myself, Lord. And I'm murmuring, and even if all I say is Lord, he knows what the rest of it would be. Lord, why? Turn over. Before you do that, how often, like Jacob, do we forget how much grace has been shown in our lives? How much grace has been shown? How much undeserved grace and mercy? We forget those when we're in the middle of something that's tough. No different than Jacob. Jacob had three things. 130 years, he's talking about three things right now. We look by sight and we lean to our own understanding. That's when those things happen. Turn to Romans now, Romans 8. We'll finish up right here. We're going to read these things. Romans 8. Jacob said, everything is against me. Paul said this in verse 31, what shall we say to these things? If God be for us, who or what can be against us? If, that's the key to this whole passage right there, if. If, if implies a password. If God is for us, If, then if Christ. The if is Christ. That's the password. If God is for us, Christ. Are you in Christ? Through His blood, are you at peace with God? If so, then embrace this. Let's go all the way back to verse 28. And we know, we know, We, it's a fact, and we know that all things work together for good. All things are not good at one sometimes, but they're all working for good. But, here it is, two things. To them that love God, do you love God? Then all things are working for you good. To them who are the called, according to his purpose. That's the two qualifications for all things working for good. For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed. Here's the first thing. Here's how we know that God is for us. Number one, He predestinated us to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover, whom he did predestinate, them he second thing, how we know that all things are for good, them he did predestinate, them he also called. Now this is not the same call in verse 28. This is an effectual call. This is irresistible grace. You're not going to be an elect called in verse 28 and never know it. If there's a point in time, you're elect in eternity, there's a point in time that He's gonna call you. You're gonna know it. It'll be an effectual, irresistible call of grace. That's what this is. Whom He called, then He also justified. I have no sin in Christ. God looks at me in Christ as perfect. justified in Him. In whom He justified, them He also not will glorify. He's already glorified them. Like I said, I don't look glorified, but I am. Then he says this, what shall we say then to these things, if God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? That's good, isn't it? All things are ours, that's good. Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? There's no condemnation. You know why there's no condemnation to a believer? Number one, Christ has died. Yay! Here's number two, He's risen again. Who is even at the third thing, He's at the right hand of God. He's power, He's majesty. And number four, He's making intercession for us. That's why nobody can condemn a believer. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Now, we have enemies. We're not to think we don't have enemies. We have four enemies, I think. We have men, men of this world out here. We have this world. We have our flesh, ourselves, and then we have Satan. So we have enemies. But who shall separate us from these enemies? Are these enemies gonna separate you from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword. As it is written, for thy sakes we are killed all the day long. We are counted as sheep for the slaughter. We have enemies. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded. Why can't God be against us? Or who? Let me rephrase that. Who can't be against us? God can't be against us. Christ can't be against us. The Holy Spirit can't be against us. The angels, the holy angels can't be against us. Justice is not against us. The law is not against us. So, 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 death, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. If you have the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, the holy angels, justice is satisfied, the law is satisfied, go back to that. If God be for us, who can be against us?