angry with yourselves that you sold me hither, for God did send me before you to preserve life." Friends, we come to this very marvelous chapter, Genesis chapter 45. Really it's a chapter bursting with application. One could really spend a lot, a long time in this chapter, but we're going to just go through it go through the whole chapter this evening and try and pick up some points from it. I'm sure you will see many other applications and many especially other parallels that there are here to the Lord Jesus Christ. So many that makes me, again I've said it before, I wonder how people can say that Joseph is not a type of Christ when it's so apparent and so clear in so many ways. But in our previous study, we listened in, didn't we, to that speech, a very moving speech of Judah as he spoke on behalf of his brethren and on behalf of his brother. He spoke to Joseph. He didn't know. that he was his brother and he was speaking to and he made a very emotional plea right from the very depths of his being and his heart. He pleaded for his youngest brother. He wouldn't leave Benjamin alone as they had left Joseph to go alone into Egypt. There's a change that has happened in them. There's a great care now for their aged father. They were not so worried about how he felt. Take robbing him of Joseph and his life initially, but now there's such a tender concern. They don't want to hurt him. They don't want to harm him. For them to go back Without the young lad, Benjamin, it's going to break the father's heart. He won't be able to manage. It will be the end of him. He will surely die. And so he stands and pleads for these things. And it's a plea that doesn't go without reaching its target. It tugged away and it tugged away mightily at the heartstrings of Joseph. And now it's so evident, isn't it, in these brothers that they are truly repentant of the wrong that they have done against Joseph. No longer, Joseph can see, will they leave their brother in a foreign land. No longer are they willing to subject their father to the grief and pain. There is now very real concern on their behalf, a genuine concern for their father and also for their young brother. Well, Joseph himself, that's it. He can hold back no longer. He's been restraining himself all this time, but he can do it no longer. The time has come for him finally, and he's been waiting for the day. It's been a long wait, but finally the time has come for him to reveal who he really is, and the true relationship that he bears to them. He is their brother. He's their kith and king. He is the one whom they had sold into Egypt. Now is the time to tell them these precious things. That's also the time to put off and to put away that severe front that he's been wearing all this time to the Egyptian lord, as it were, who is somewhat severe in his dealings with them. He can put it away. He can put off that garment. He doesn't have to act in that role anymore. He's been wearing it since their first arrival in Egypt. But no more is it necessary. It's time, especially, to reveal to them, friends, His forgiving love. He harbors in his heart no resentment, no bitterness for all the things that they have done against him. No, he's already looked beyond these things to see God's hand in it. The plan of God, the wonderful overruling of evil that they had done for good, all the time has come for him to reveal these things to them. He has refrained himself for such a very long time. and he had wished to reveal himself earlier to them. His heart ached, we can say, to reveal himself to his brothers every time he saw them. It was necessary, as you said, for them first to show fruits that are worthy of repentance. Oh friends, Christ is here. Again, didn't begin to love us when we turned to him. And when we repented of our sin, that was not when He began to set His affection upon us. It was while we were a long way off from Him. While we were in a foreign land, in sin, far away from Him, even then He set His love upon us. Even then He wished to reveal Himself to us. And He ached, we can say in His heart, to reveal Himself to us when We began to seek Him for salvation. His heart, the heart of Christ, longs to reveal Himself to the sinner. But He had to restrain Himself even with us, until we came to a realization of something of the evil of our sin against God, until we came to a genuine repentance ourselves, and then He holds back no longer. And then he comes to us and reveals himself to us to be our God and our Savior, and in such a wonderful way as happens here, even with Joseph and his brethren. But Joseph caused all, with the exception of his brothers, to vacate the room. All the Egyptians are asked to leave and he stands now alone with his brothers. He won't have the Egyptians to be present. This is an intimate moment that he has with them and he's going to reveal himself to them and moreover we could say It's a very kind act on his part, because he knows he's going to bring up their sin of the past. He knows he's going to have to mention that they had sold him into Egypt. And what he's doing here is he's actually covering the sin of his brethren. He knows that the Egyptians, if they were present and they heard these things, well, they would be filled with shock and horror. How could these brothers do such a dreadful thing to their own brother? And here we see that the love of Joseph even covers a multitude of sins. Of course, they would find out a little bit later some of it, but he moves to act in this loving way. But with everyone out, We read that the floodgates opened and he wept aloud. This emotional man who's wept a number of times already in secret, now is willing to share, publicly open and weep before his brethren Egyptians. I don't know if they're listening outside, standing by the door, must have been wondering, and looking at each other in a strange way, saying, what on earth is going on here? What is he crying about so loudly? He didn't just weep in a restrained way like sometimes we do. It was all very loud and it got everyone's attention. Surely the brothers must have wondered as well. What is happening here? I am Joseph. Doth my father yet live? I don't know how he said it. I don't know what kind of a tone he said it. Would it have been a gentle? tone, I'm sure, but his familiar voice now comes back. Maybe he'd been acting in a different kind of voice, the voice of Joseph now, as they probably know it and are familiar with. They say one thing about us, isn't it, our voice never changes, and sometimes you hear these old preachers and You know they're weak, and they're frail, and they're almost on their last legs. But their voice is still the same as years and years ago. And it's a marvel, isn't it? But the voice is one part of us that hardly changes. And now he begins to speak in his native tongue. He's spoken before through a translator. But now he speaks in a language that they are so familiar with. I am Joseph, does my father. yet live, and his brethren couldn't say a word. They couldn't answer him anything. Far from being overjoyed at this revelation of them, they're troubled, dismayed. In fact, they're petrified by this thing. Joseph the brother that we sold into Egypt, the brother who we hated without a cause is standing before us, the one who we stripped of that garment that the father had given to him, that beautiful garment, the one we sold for a certain sum, and the one who really we desired to kill, selling him into Egypt. Well, that was the second option. The first choice, preferred choice maybe of the majority, was to kill him, to get rid of him. And now he's here. He's standing before us. They couldn't say anything. All these thoughts and more rushed into their minds. Fear gripped them, and they are left speechless. It reminds me of Saul on the road to Damascus. He was persecuting the Lord's people, trying to extinguish the church of the living God of Christ. And the Lord met him and said, and said, Saul, Saul, you know, and he said, Who art thou, Lord? He said, I am Jesus who you are persecuting. I'm sure for a moment he must have been petrified to hear that Jesus who I've been trying to extinguish and who I've called and thought of as an imposter and a deceiver and leading people astray, He's appeared to me. He's alive. And he must have been greatly troubled, as he ought to have been, at least for a period of time. Verse 4, Joseph is very quick, really, friends, you see here, to speak a comforting word to them. He says to his brethren, come near to me, I pray you. And they came near. And he repeats again, I am Joseph, your brother. whom he sold into Egypt. He doesn't let them stew in their fear and in their panic amid this revelation. He doesn't revel himself in the pain that they would feel. Perhaps, you know, we would be inclined, isn't it? Humanly speaking, people are inclined to them. Somebody does us wrong and then they're in trouble. Well, good for them. Let them feel the pain. Maybe it's in our power to help them out, but we don't want to do it. Let them feel what I went through. He doesn't think anything like that. He immediately comes to speak in a comfortable and kind and comforting way to them. No vengeance in his heart at all. Come near to me. Oh, you could have a gospel message on that. Come near to me, the Lord says. Come near to him. Come near, believe, sinner. Come near and trust in him. Come unto me, all you who are weary and heavy laden. I will give you rest. What a word of comfort. Come near to me, Joseph says. I am your brother. Be not grieved or angry with yourselves for setting me. God sent me here. This was God's doing. And he did it for a purpose, so that through me being raised to this high and glorious position, the family may be preserved alive. Now look here, he says the famine's going to last for another five years. So verse 7, he says to them, God sent me before you to preserve, he repeats again, a posterity in the earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God. And he hath made me a father to Pharaoh and Lord of all his house and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt. But what kind words those were, isn't it? Be not grieved nor angry with yourselves, he says. They would have probably felt that way. They had done wickedly, and there's no excuse for what they had done. They had sinned against God. They had sinned against their brother. And it is right that they should grieve over it, but here Jacob, sorry, Joseph moves to alleviate them because they already are repentant. Their sorrow is there, it's genuine, they're shown. It doesn't need to go on and on into deeper and greater depths and into an excessive kind of sorrow. There comes a point in time when those who have been sorrowful need to hear that word of comfort so that they can come out. Blessed are they that mourn and go on mourning all the days in a deeper and deeper way. No. Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. So they have to be ready and encouraged to be comforted. The mourning prepares them for the comfort, but it's not God's intention that people go on mourning over sin day after day until they reach glory, but that they know and enjoy the peace of comfort that comes from the Lord himself. As we mentioned, neither do I Condemn you, said the Lord very quickly. to the woman caught in adultery. It's a pity some people come up and say, well, that passage of scripture shouldn't be in the Bible at all. They're robbers of that, because it is. And it is a very precious event and words that we take very much to heart. And excessive sorrow is not what the Lord wants us to go through. You remember how even that a brother in the Corinthian church. And he had sinned, he was immoral, he was with his father's wife and he had to be disciplined for his sin. But then in the second Corinthians, Paul says he's repented now. He's shown true signs of sorrow and repentance and grief over what he's done. He's a changed man. Therefore you must forgive him and comfort him. lest perhaps he be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow." And he goes on to say, lest Satan should get an advantage over him because we are not unaware of Satan's devices. And this is one of Satan's tricks and his plans. How do we keep a soul from Christ? Well, you know, either make them unaware of their sin, and just let them think that their sin is nothing, or the other extreme where they get so anxious like John Bunyan was over their sin, and they think they can never be forgiven, and it's then he keeps the soul in that way, be so discouraged. Well, our crimes, dear friends, are very great, but they're not too great to be forgiven. And we know that there is hope. We cannot say there's no hope of reconciliation. To us who feel, and the seeker who feels the weight of his sins and is sorry for them, Christ speaks that comforting word, be not grieved. And I have blotted out as a thick cloud thy transgressions, and as a cloud your sins." Now friends, Joseph, don't get him wrong, because he is, when he says these things, and when he says that God did it, and God arranged it, he's not minimizing their offense. He's not absolving them from what they have done. They've done wrong. They have committed a sin and a crime. They are guilty. But he does say, I want you to see God's hand in it. I want you to see God's hand overruling all things. Your actions, yes, they were evil. But even through your evil actions, God was working out his own purposes. It's all included in the providence of God. It was all a part of God's design. Now people are trying to work this out for themselves, and our young people have been discussing that for a big time in their fellowship. But it's something that we cannot fully fathom. It's the providence of God, how He uses and even how it's all part of even His design and His will to use the evil and sinful actions of men for His will, for His purposes, for His glory. And this is what he does. He overrules even the evil that was intended. Joseph is saying, you intended evil for me, but God brought good out of it. God used it, your evil intentions and actions, to bring me to Egypt and then to exalt me to this high position in Egypt in order that the family from whom the Messiah was to come would be preserved and would be kept. Let me see the same do we not in in christ And it's coming to save the elect. It was the design and purpose of god For him for christ not just to come and live a good life and earn righteousness But it was written of him that he should be delivered into the hands of wicked and evil men it was through the instrumentality Of wicked hands that he was destined to go to the cross through the opposition of the scribes and the Pharisees and the way they took him and arrested him and condemned him to death. Are they, they are culpable for their actions? But at the same time, God overruled all things. And God brought good out of their evil intentions. So just say a little bit on that, friends. But there are so many applications, really, here. To save his, sorry, big one, the memory of our sins is another thing we could mention. Often the memory of our sins fills us with sadness. but at the same time Christ comes along and he assures us that in all things God is sovereign, and even in our life of sin. that our particular path that we trod, even that has led us to a place where we have come to know Him, to believe in Him, and trust in Him. God overruled even in our own lives. Providence is such a wonderful topic. Providence usually We often think of providence in only one way. Something good happens to us or, you know, something just at the right place, the right time. Oh, providence, we say, when the good things happen. But even when the bad things happen, we should say providence, really, because God works even all things for our good, but he doesn't promise us that they will always be good things that he sends our way. Oh, one more thing before we move on. These verses also teach us something about the preciousness of the Church of Jesus Christ to him. God did all this with Joseph, all these actions from many years ago, all this planning, just to save the family of Jacob, to preserve them through whom the Messiah will come. So also we can think about today in Providence, things are not just happening in the world for its own sake. Things are happening, everything in this happening, really the central thing in God's plan is his church. is the church of Jesus Christ, and all things are being worked out for the good of the church, for the preservation of the church, and to give time and space for those elect people of God to come in to the church, those who are yet unsaved. The church is the very center of all that God is working out to preserve and keep it. Well, hurry back, he says, and tell my father all about me. that God hath made me Lord of all Egypt. He gives the God the glory, and rightly so. Are you doing well in life? Are you promoted recently to a higher position, getting more salary? Are you liked and trusted by your boss? Do you have favor with your employer? Well, friends, give God the glory. That's the way God has brought me to this position. Tell Father, he says, to come down and the whole family too. I will take care of you all. and provide for all your needs. Filial care, fraternal care, he is concerned to look after his elderly father, but he extends even to the whole family, bring them down, I will provide for them all. And then look at verse 13, and he shall tell my father of all my glory in Egypt and of all that ye have seen." What did they see? They saw the splendor of His home. They saw His disposition. They saw all the servants being subject unto Him. They saw the authority that He had. They saw His riches. All the glory. Go back. Tell dad everything that you have seen about my splendor, about my glory. And he wants him to come, of course, and behold his glory as well. Well friends, what a parallel with our Lord Jesus Christ, now exalted to the highest place that heaven affords. John 17, 24, he prayed, Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am. that they may behold my glory." What tremendous words. That you, a believer, this is your end. You will see one day the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. His majesty, His authority, His kindness etched in His face. The marks that are upon him, isn't that his glory as well? The marks of his crucifixion he still bears. Oh, so many things that time fails us to go any further. But after a time of hugging and weeping, finally now the brothers feel free, that they're able to speak. And when Pharaoh hears that Jacob's family have come, he is very happy, very glad to hear this news. And he even commands Joseph to send wagons to fetch Jacob and the whole family. Don't bring anything down with you. You don't need to. I will give you everything that you need, he says to the family. I will give you land. and the good of all the land of Egypt is before you, it's yours. And so it was with this that the brethren set off on their journey home with wagons and donkeys laden full of good things. And as they are sent off, Jacob sends them off with this parting word of caution in verse 24. He says, as they departed, he said unto them, see that ye fall not out by the way. Don't quarrel with one another as you're on the way home. Don't fall into that blame game on your way home. You know, maybe one would have piped up one of the brothers. I knew I should have believed those dreams. I was saying at the very beginning you should believe the dream. Now you dissuaded me out of it. You told me not to believe the dreams. And now look, it's all come true. You wanted to kill him. It was your idea to sell him. It could have gone on and on. Whose idea was it to kill an animal and smother his coat with blood and show that to father and let father make his own deduction? Who came up with that plan? It was you, wasn't it? that sort of quarrelling on the way back. He says, don't quarrel with one another, don't fall out is concerned even for them in such a way. Oh brethren, let us, who are brethren, not fall out with one another along the way, along the way to glory, along the way to heaven. Let us not fall out with one another next week. under retreat, so close, living closely to one another. It's not the easiest thing, I have to say, for us all. We're still in the flesh and we'll be seeing, it's one thing seeing each other three, four times a week. It's another thing staying in the same building as one another and seeing each other for breakfast, lunch and dinner. But it does, it can cause conflict, you know. So let us be careful that even then, We don't fall out with one another, but continue to love and care for each other. While Jacob can hardly believe it when he hears from his sons, Joseph is yet alive. Joseph is yet alive, just like the disciples. They couldn't believe it when the women came and said, Jesus is yet alive. He's not dead. He is alive. In fact, he didn't believe, Jacob didn't believe them at all at first. His heart fainted. We read, for he believed them not. It was only when he saw the wagons that were sent to carry him that his spirit then revives. And he says there in verse 28, it is enough. Joseph, my son, is yet alive. I will go and see him before I die. Matthew Henry says this about this verse. He says, death is as the wagons which are sent to fetch us to Christ. The very sight of it approaching should revive us. Well, friends, I close with this thought. I'm sure that these brothers of Joseph would forever remember the day that their brother revealed himself to them. How could they forget it? How could they forget the tender way in which he had dealt with them? How could they forget his kind words, his gentle, comforting words when they knew they deserved something harsher and harder? Oh, this was a story, a true story, a true experience. They could never forget and they called their children They would tell their children. Another day they would call their grandchildren. And over and over again, they would repeat the same story. This is what happened on that day. And Joseph, your uncle, that he revealed himself to us. This is what happened. And they were never tired of telling the story of his love, of his forgiveness. Friends, the lesson is obvious, isn't it? Don't forget. the day that Christ himself revealed himself to you. Don't forget it and tell other people about it. Don't keep it to yourself. God has given you a testimony. You can tell others about it. Tell it to your friends. Tell it to your family. Tell it friends over and over again. Surely we never get tired. of telling our testimony. You hear me mentioning mine in the preaching, but you have yours. And we are to tell it out to others what God has done for us, how he has treated us, not as our sins deserve. May the Lord bless us with these words. Amen.