to him and to his hands the business of life was all over, he was not
_rusting_ out, as we had to say of Isaac. Jacob's silence was husbandry.
We rejoice in these last days as his best days. We rejoice still more in
the grace which provided this pause for him at the end of his journey,
that, in the language of the Psalmist, he might recover strength before
he went hence, and was no more seen.
Gracious indeed is it towards all of us His elect ones, to have such a
sight as this, such a specimen (may I so call it?) of divine patience,
wisdom, and goodness, as this. It is peculiar indeed, having its own
place amid the infinite forms and characters which grace assumes in
relation to the need of the saints. Jacob's last days were his golden
days. To others, to their flocks and herds, Egypt was a land of Goshen;
but it was not to Jacob's flocks and herds, for we do not read that he
had any; but it was to Jacob's _soul_ that Egypt was a Goshen, the very
richest, fairest, best-watered land his spirit had ever enjoyed. It was
more really the gate of heaven to him than Bethel had been. It was more
the face of God to him than Peniel had been. He had the Lord in secret
and in silence with him there, but in real, living power. With all that
would naturally have kept him at home on the earth he was a stranger. In
Egypt Jacob was a delivered, extricated man, as from the beginning and
all through he had been a chosen and a called one.
Are we learning that which God was teaching him there? Are we seeking,
with more single heart, the portion of God's strangers and pilgrims,
thinking rather of Machpelah than of Egypt, of the rapture that links us
with the promise, than of all the daily growing prosperity of this
present evil world?
JOSEPH.
GENESIS XXXVII.-L.
Joseph becomes principal in the narratives of the Book of Genesis as
soon as we reach chap. xxxvii., and so continues, I may say, to the end.
So that I now propose to close with this paper on "Joseph," referring to
the others, entitled "Enoch," "Noah," "Abraham," "Isaac," "Jacob," as if
they had been already read.
Joseph's story has its peculiarity in the midst of the things of
Genesis--its own mystery, and its characteristic moral; as the others
have. _Election_, as we have seen, was illustrated in Abraham;
_sonship_, or the adoption of the elect one, in Isaac; _discipline_ of
the adopted one in Jacob; and now in Joseph, _heirship_ is to be.
All this is a divine order.
And, consistently with this, in Joseph we get sufferings before glories,
or before the inheritance of the kingdom; all this realizing that word
of the apostle, "If children, then heirs ... if so be that we suffer
with Him, that we may be also glorified together."
For while discipline attaches to us as children, sufferings go before us
as heirs; and this gives us the distinction between Jacob and Joseph. It
is discipline we see in Jacob, discipline leading him as a child, under
the hand of the Father of his spirit, to a participation of God's
holiness. It is sufferings, martyr-sufferings, sufferings for
righteousness, we see in Joseph, marking his path to glories.
And this is the crowning thing; and thus it comes as the closing thing,
in this wondrous Book of Genesis--after this manner perfect in its
structure, as it is truthful in its records. One moral after another is
studied, one secret after another is revealed, in the artless family
scenes which constitute its materials; and in them we learn our calling,
the sources and the issues of our history, from our election to our
inheritance.
Thus is it for our learning in this Book of Genesis.
But as yet, while we are in this Book, there is no _law_. We are taught
that this was so in Romans v. 13, 14. But we might have perceived it for
ourselves. Because, in dispensational age, so to speak, the time of this
Book was the time of _infancy_. The elect were as children who had never
left home, never as yet been under a schoolmaster.
Neither is there any _miracle_. I mean no miracle by the hand of man.
For power would no more have suited such hands, than law or a
schoolmaster would have suited such an age. And, besides, there was no
mission or apostleship to seal. Miracles or "signs following" were not
demanded as credentials of a mission. But as soon as we leave this Book,
and enter Exodus, we get a mission or an apostleship, and then we get
miracles, as seals, to accredit it.
So that what we do not get is just as fitting, from its absence, as what
we do get. Neither power nor law would have been in season, and
accordingly neither power nor law do we get.
But I will now pass on to Joseph, or to chapters xxxvii.-l.
The materials which we find in these chapters, and which form the
history of Joseph, may be separated into four parts:
1. His early times at home in his father's house, in the land
of Canaan.
2. His life, as a separated man, in Egypt.
3. His recovery of his kindred, his father and his brethren,
and the results of such recovery.
4. His latter times in the land of Egypt till the day of his
death.
This may be received as the contents of this wondrous story. The way in
which it is told has been witnessed to by the sympathies and
sensibilities of thousands of hearts in every generation.
_Part I._ (xxxvii. xxxviii.)--As soon as we enter on the history, the
heir is at once and immediately seen in Joseph. His dreams are dreams of
_glory_. But _sufferings_ as quickly form his present reality.
The story begins by Joseph being a witness both _to_ and _against_ his
brethren. He tells his father of their evil deeds, and he tells
themselves of his dreams. I cannot blame him in either. I say not how
far nature may have soiled him in the doing of these things; but the
testimonies themselves were, I believe, under divine authority. There
was One who was all perfection, as I need not say, in everything He did
or said, and He bore witness against the world, and to His own glories.
A want of season and of measure may have soiled these services in
Joseph; for a thing out of season and beyond its measure, though right
in itself, has contracted defilement. A vessel in the master's house, at
times, has to _hide_, as well as to _hold_, the treasure that is in it,
and should know where, and when, and how, to use it. David had the oil
of Samuel, the anointing of the Lord, upon him, and he knew that the
kingdom was to be his, but he veiled his glory till Abigail, by faith,
owned it. And in this David may have surpassed Joseph. I say not that it
was not so. But to tell of what his dreams or his visions in the Spirit
had communicated to him, was of God.
And hence his sufferings. The Lord marks him as the heir of glory; he
speaks of the goodness he had found, and of the high purpose of God
concerning him, and his brethren hate him. They envy him; and who can
stand before envy? They had already begrudged him his father's favour,
and now they hate him for God's. They hate him for his words and for his
dreams; and when in the field together (as of old, it had been with Cain
and Abel), they take counsel whether to slay him, to cast him into a
pit, or to sell him to strangers.
And this was at a time when he was serving them. He had come a long way
to inquire after their welfare, and take their pledge, and to carry them
blessings from their father's house with their father's love. Such a
moment was their opportunity. It was not as the bearer of good tidings
that they received him; but "Behold, this dreamer cometh," they say.
"This is the heir" (Matt. xxi. 38); that was the spirit of their words.
For envy they deliver them; for his love they are his enemies; and at
last they sell him to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver.
There may be different measures in the common enmity; but in a great
moral sense they are all one generation. Reuben was Jacob's firstborn,
and we may suppose that he judged himself more answerable to the aged
father for the lad, than any of them. He saves Joseph from the sword,
and Judah proposes a sale of him to the merchantmen, in the stead of the
pit. After such manners as these there are measures in the common
enmity. As some said of Jesus, "He is a good man;" others, "Nay, but He
deceiveth the people." In the parable of "the marriage of the king's
son," some went to the farm, and some to the merchandize, while others
were taking the servants and killing them. But the Lord speaks of all as
of one generation. "The _remnant_ of them," He says, "took his servants
and slew them." The Judge of all the earth will surely do right, and
sins will get their many stripes and their few stripes, but _the world_
has cast out Jesus, and the world is the world; as here, all are the
guilty brethren of Joseph; and, as the issue of their counsels and of
their common hatred, he is sold to the merchantmen, and by them is
carried down to the market of Egypt, for further and profitable sale
there.
It is the heartlessness of all this that is specially shocking; and it
is that which the prophet Amos, under the Holy Ghost, so solemnly
notices in his reference to the affliction of Joseph. Chap. vi. And we,
though at this distant day, may take our share of the rebuke of the
prophet for like heartlessness, if we can willingly love the world which
cast out the true Joseph. And what must we say, when we look on the
boasted advance of everything in that world, the constant skill that is
exercised in sweeping and garnishing that house which is stained with
the blood of Jesus? The beds of ivory, the sound of the viols, the wine,
and the chief ointments, were never so abundant as in these days. And if
we can take up with life in such a world, are we true, as we ought to
be, to the cross of Christ? A heartless heart we have, and a heartless
world we live in, as it is heartless brethren of Joseph we are here
looking at. One knows it for one's self full well; and surely, I may
again say, it is this heartlessness that is principally shocking to
ourselves (if one may speak for others), as it was to the Spirit in
Amos. We are not "grieved for the affliction of Joseph," we are not true
to the rejection of Christ. _Worldliness is heartlessness to Him._
What depths there are in the corruption that is in us! As here, they
dipped the favoured coat, the coat that the old father had put on
Joseph, they dipped it in blood, and sent it to their father with these
words: "This have we found: know now whether it be thy son's coat or
no." This is the language of Cain: "Am I my brother's keeper?" Cain was
laying the burthen of Abel's blood on the Lord, intimating by these
words that the Lord should have been Abel's keeper, seeing He had had
such respect to him and his offering. So these words of Joseph's
brethren seem to lay the burthen of Joseph's blood upon the aged father,
who, if he loved him as well as this coat seemed to say he did, should
have looked after him better than this blood seemed to say he had.
What depths, indeed, in the revolted, corrupted heart of man! What
discoveries of these depths temptation makes at times! They sinned, in
all this, against their aged father, and against their unoffending
brother, at a time when the love of the one had counselled, and the love
of the other had undertaken, a mission to them of grace and blessing; as
is said of a generation which they represent both morally and typically,
"They please not God, and are contrary to all men."
Dark deeds indeed! Joseph's blood is upon themselves, let them seek to
hide it as they may; and the day is before them when their sin shall
find them out, and this blood upon Joseph's coat shall be a swift
witness against them. For the present they do but prosper in wickedness,
that they may fill up their measure. The course of Joseph's history is
interrupted, that we might get this sight of them during Joseph's
separation from them. Chap. xxxviii. affords it to us. And it is indeed
apostasy, full departure from "the way of the Lord," in which Abraham
had walked, and in which he had commanded his children and his household
after him to walk. Judah deals treacherously, marrying the daughter of
Shuah. The way of the Lord is utterly despised and forsaken by Judah.
Still grace gets pledge here. Pharez is a second supplanter. The hope of
Israel is in the womb, a blessing is in the cluster; but truly it is
such a cluster of a wild vine as might well be doomed to the sickle, if
sovereign, abounding grace did not say, Destroy it not. Isa. lxv. 8;
Matt. i. 3.
And such is the sin of the nation of Israel, as of this, their own
father Judah; and such the grace in which the nation shall stand in the
latter day. Grace shall then reign in the story of Israel, as it now
does in the person of every saint, elected in the sovereign good
pleasure of God, and made a monument of the saving power of Christ.
We may not be prepared for this grace of God in some of its surpassing
exhibitions. We may be less prepared for it than we think. Jonah was
not, Ananias was not, Peter was not. Jonah iv.; Acts ix. and x. We are
not always practised, skilful weigh-masters in the use of the balances,
the weights and measures of the sanctuary. Are the heartlessness of
chap. xxxvii., and the defilement of chap. xxxviii., and that, too, when
found together, too bad? I ask. After all this are we prepared for
"repentance and remission of sins" in the grace of God? The moral sense,
the natural conscience, self-righteousness, the laws of society, and the
judgments of men, supply us with false weights and measures, and we
carry them about with us more than we are aware of. But they are an
abomination. Deut. xxv. 16. In our thoughts, the way of the harlot and
the publican are worse than the easy, respectable course of the world.
Had we the balances of the sanctuary, we should assay things otherwise.
"That which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of
God."
_Part II._ (xxxix.-xli.)--In these chapters, which give us the second
part, according to our division, we have the life of Joseph while he was
a separated man in the land of Egypt.
During this time we shall see the beginning of his day, or his
exaltation. But ere that come, we are to witness his further
sufferings--his sufferings at the hand of _strangers_.
We may, somewhat naturally, have the thought that _the Jew_ is specially
guilty, as far as the moral history of this world goes--specially
answerable for sin against the Lord. But in this we are not fully wise.
The Jew had, indeed, a special hand in the sorrows of Christ; and,
nationally, Israel is under special judgment. But the Gentile is a
distinct, not a different man. The ministry of our Lord Jesus tested
"the world," as well as "His own." The record touching the cross is
this, Of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed,
both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of
Israel, were gathered together. Acts iv. All were guilty there. As the
apostle of the Gentiles, in his doctrine, says, the whole world has
become guilty before God. Jew and Gentile are all alike proved under
sin. Rom. iii.
Our present chapters suggest this. Joseph's affliction, begun among his
brethren, is now continued among strangers. His brethren had already
hated him, and put him in the pit, and thence taken him to sell him as a
bond-slave; an evil woman of the Egyptians now falsely accuses him, and
he is put in prison, and then another Egyptian, whom he had served and
befriended, forgets him and leaves him. But, however it may be with him,
whether at home or abroad, God is with him. This becomes the very
characteristic of his history. Chapter xxxix.; Acts vii. For, in His way
with His elect, God's _sympathy_ comes first, and then His _power_, the
sympathy which accompanies them through their sorrow, and then the power
which delivers them out of it. We are prone to desire present ease, and
would have all inconvenience and contradiction removed at once. But this
is not _His_ way. When at Bethany "Jesus wept;" and afterwards, but not
till afterwards, He said, "Lazarus, come forth." Nature would have had
the death, which had called forth the tears, anticipated. We judge that
we might have been spared many a trial, and we reason it out as a clear,
unquestioned conclusion, that God had power. As the friends of the
family at Bethany said, Could not this man, that opened the eyes of the
blind, have caused that even this man should not have died? But they
reasoned imperfectly, because they reasoned partially; that is, only on
the _power_ of Christ.
We ought to (and we should, had we but bowels in Christ) very chiefly
value the age or dispensation of His sympathy; it gives _Himself_ to us
in so peculiar a way. And this sympathy was eminently Joseph's, in this
day of his affliction. As we said, that "God was with him" is
characteristic of his condition. And he had abundant evidence of this.
As soon as he is in Potiphar's house, all under his hand, committed to
him by his master, prospers. And change of scene works no change in
this; for as soon as he is in prison, the same record we read of him,
and the same circumstances we see around him. The keeper of the prison
puts the same confidence in him that Potiphar his master had; and under
his hand in the prison all things prosper, as they had in the Egyptian's
house. So that Joseph had full witness from God, that God was sufficient
for him.
It was not for such an one to leave the help of the Lord for the help of
the creature. But Joseph craves the remembrance and the sympathy of the
butler, and would have him give him a good word with the king his
master.
This was natural. Joseph had befriended the butler of the king, and such
an one was able to befriend him. His craving of his sympathy is not to
be condemned on any natural, human, or even moral grounds. But whether
it was quite worthy of _Joseph_ to do so may be questioned, whether it
was quite the way which _faith_ would have suggested.
And it comes to nothing. The butler, as we know, forgets him, and he is
left for two long years in the prison. For God will still be everything
to him. Help shall come, but it shall come from Himself. With the Lord,
the heaviness of the night is sure to yield to the joy of the morning;
and ere this season of his separation from his brethren came to an end,
Joseph is released, and blessed, and honoured. It becomes the
budding-time of his glories.
Excellent things indeed are found in the condition of the separated
Joseph, such things as bear our thoughts to Him who is the greater than
Joseph. I would just observe four of them.
1. There is great _moral beauty_ in him. He was a Nazarite then, as pure
an one as Daniel in like circumstances, a captive among the
uncircumcised, maintaining his circumcision, his separation to God,
unspotted. 2. There is _precious spiritual gift_ in him. He was a vessel
in God's house, carrying the mind of Christ, and ministering that mind
as an oracle of God; like Daniel again, interpreting dreams, and making
known even to kings, though still in his day of humiliation, what was
coming upon the earth. 3. There is the _right hand of power and dignity
for him_. He is seated nearest the throne, and put in possession of
those resources on which his own brethren, who had cast him out, and the
whole world beside, are destined ere long to depend for preservation in
the earth. 4. There is _joy, peculiar joy, prepared for him_. The king
makes a marriage for him, and he becomes the head of a family among the
Gentiles; and this is a source of such joy to him, that he can, in some
sense, as the names of his children tell us, forget his kindred, and
even rejoice in his affliction.
Surely these are excellent things found in the condition of Joseph while
separated from his brethren. And in them we see the Lord Himself in this
present age, the season of His separation from Israel. A child might
trace the likeness; but He, who reveals to babes and sucklings, has led
the way in this. In Stephen's wondrous word, in Acts vii., we get Joseph
and others put in kindred place and circumstances with the Lord, who is
there called "the Just One." And this is so full of interest, that
though it be but incidental, we must turn aside for a little, and listen
to that great voice of the Spirit of God.
Stephen appears but for a moment in the course of the divine history;
but it is to fill a very eminent and distinguished place. The occasion
on which he is seen, and on which he acts, is full of meaning. Jewish
enmity was again doing its dark deeds, and the God of glory was again
disclosing His brighter purposes.
Stephen is another witness of the Lord passing from earth to heaven,
leaving the earth for a season in its unbelief and apostasy, and calling
out a people for heavenly places.
Stephen's was another separating era. Abraham's had been such, and so
had Joseph's, and so had that of Moses, and that of "the Just One,"
Jesus. The occasion of the separation from kindred to strangers, (and
that is, from earth to heaven,) may be different, but it is alike
separation. Abraham was separated, because God was leaving a defiled
world unjudged; and unjudged defilement God cannot make His habitation,
nor allow it to be the habitation of His elect. The world after the
flood had defiled itself, and the Lord was leaving it in its defilement,
not purifying it by a second flood; and therefore He becomes a stranger
in it Himself, and calls His elect out of it with Him. Thus Abraham is a
separated man. Joseph in his day was another; separated from home and
kindred, like Abraham; and so Moses. But Joseph and Moses were not
separated like Abraham, simply by the call of God out of unjudged
defilement, but by the enmity and persecutions of their brethren. And so
Jesus, "His own," and the world made by Him refused Him, and would not
know Him. Wicked hands slew Him, and the heavens received Him. And so
Stephen.
Stephen is, thus, in company with these separated ones, Abraham, Joseph,
Moses, and "the Just One." And he is naturally directed by the Spirit,
to go over their histories in this wondrous chapter. And these separated
ones have, at different eras or intervals, in the progress of God's way
upon earth, marked out or foreshadowed His higher or richer purposes
touching heaven. For their times, as we speak, were _transitional_.
Stephen's was such. Till his day, the scene in "the Acts of the
Apostles" is laid in _the earth_. In chapter i. the risen Lord had
spoken to His apostles of "the kingdom of God." In the same chapter the
angels had withdrawn the eyes of the men of Galilee, as they call the
disciples, from gazing up into heaven, under the promise that Jesus
should return to earth. When the Holy Ghost is given, as in chapter ii.,
under His baptism it is of things in the earth that the apostles speak.
They testify that Jesus was to sit at the right hand of God in heaven,
till His foes on earth were made His footstool. They then preach, that
upon the repentance of Israel Jesus would return to earth with times of
refreshing and restitution, and that He was exalted to give repentance
and remission of sins to Israel. Israel is, thus, the people, and the
earth the scene, contemplated in the action or testimony of the Spirit
in the apostles in these earliest chapters.
But Jewish enmity again takes its way, as it had done in many other
days, even from the beginning; and divine grace takes its way also, as
it had also done in such other days. And Stephen, under the Spirit of
God, takes such a moment as his text. He looks back at the way of the
nation, uncircumcised in heart and ear, resisting the Lord in one or
another of His witnesses; and he looks back also at the way of the God
of glory calling into new and peculiar blessing those whom either
earthly pollution or Jewish enmity was separating or casting out.