_JOSEPH'S FAITH._[1]
"By faith Joseph, when he died, made mention of the departing of the
children of Israel; and gave commandment concerning his bones."—HEB. xi.
22.
Faith is a word that we hear a great deal of in theological exposition
and in religious teaching. It is a good thing constantly to remind
ourselves of what its actual meaning is. The 11th chapter of this
Epistle begins with a definition of faith, and then gives examples of
it. The definition is a little hard to understand; nobody can
misunderstand the illustrations. According to the inspired writer, faith
is recognising the will of God, taking it and doing it; that is faith,
and nothing else is—no theories about God, no rules, and laws, and
definitions about God's government of the world, no intellectual
adherence to any explanation of theology. Faith, real and living, means
that the God who comes into contact with you in your life and your world
has a will, and shows it to you. If you bow down before that actual will
of God, that it may save you from your real sins, and that He may use
you in saving the dead around you; if you adore it, and worship it, and
account it the best thing in your life, and give yourself up to it, as
the one thing worth doing, though there be many a forsaking and many a
return to God, if you hold on through your life, doing the will of God,
then you are a man of faith.
Joseph was a man of faith, in the olden times, all his life long. From
his very boyhood he had possessed faith. In the dreams that came to him
as a lad he welcomed God's face, not quite understanding all He meant,
and a little misusing the high vocation that came to him, accepting it
in the pride of his heart. In his trials and his prosperity, in his
public career, in his private home life, on his death-bed, he lived with
God, reckoned with God, and loved God, and tried to do God's will on the
earth. One deed stands out supreme and stupendous. Joseph on his dying
bed looked forward into the future, and there, amidst the mists,
discerned the promise of the world's redemption, forecast the coming of
God's kingdom on earth, and chose what to him was the greatest and
grandest thing in his dying, and so gave commandment for the burying of
his bones away in distant Canaan.
I am going to ask you to follow me as I rapidly sketch the great
outstanding elements of struggle and triumph in Joseph's career, in
order that I may show you the splendid feature of faith, and that in
dying he was still loyal to the dreams of his youth. Joseph was a
younger son. He had the misfortune to be his father's favourite; he was
exempted from hard toil; he was kept near his old father; his brethren
hated him for it; probably he misbehaved himself; he was no saint, else
there would be no good in my preaching about him. He had the misfortune
to be spoiled by his father. He had intelligence, and he was wide awake;
but there was nothing in the early years of the lad to give evidence of
any extraordinary ability, or to forecast any splendid career for him,
with the exception of one thing: Joseph was a great dreamer in his
sleep; and as a boy he woke up from his sleep, and saw visions, glorious
castles in the air; and they were not all floating away in cloudland,
high up above him, but he saw _himself_ in them; they had an intense
personal interest for him. Perhaps he was very injudicious, and probably
disagreeable, in the tone and fashion of telling these dreams to his
brothers. Their sheaves in the harvest gathered round and made obeisance
to his sheaf; the meaning plainly being that he was to rise to great
power, that he would hold them in his hand, and be lord and master over
them. They might not have much interest for us; but Joseph belonged to a
family that believed that they held a unique position in the world's
history, and that they were to bring a great blessing into this world.
They had not grasped exactly what it was, nor understood the
significance of the spiritual kingdom of heaven; but none the less they
heard God's voice around them, so that this world became to them a place
in which He lived and moved: thus they rose to the grandeur of the
conception that they were to have a master hand in carving the fortunes
of the world. Out of many of his brethren, God had selected Joseph to be
an inheritor and administrator of the Divine purpose of blessing to the
world, and to do unique deeds of valour for the kingdom of God.
Now I have said that the one remarkable thing about Joseph's boyhood,
the one thing that might excite your expectation about his future, was
that he dreamt dreams; he was a great dreamer in his youth. I can
understand many a shrewd, practical man saying that that was not much to
his credit: "A lad that is always dreaming dreams will not do much."
Quite true, if the one, the only purpose of life is to eat and drink and
to gather all the dirt together with the muck-rake; but if man has a
Divine destiny in him, if man lives in two worlds—a world that you see
with your eyes, a world where money is current, and another world where
your sovereigns are worth nothing, a world of truth and honour,
generosity, love, goodness, self-denial, moral achievement and victory,
then it comes to a great deal; it means very much for a boy's future if
he has dreams that are not of earth, but of heaven. There are dreams and
dreams. There are dreams that come of laziness, idleness, selfishness,
and over-feeding, gross nightmares, fit for swine; dreams coming of
self-indulgence and worldliness, poor grovelling things; a man's mind is
not much better for _them_. There are dreams that are born of a
back-boneless sentimentality, of sweet mock chivalry, that loves to
represent itself in pretty pictures; not much good comes of them. But
there are other dreams, that come out of a man's wide-awake activity;
dreams that are the vapours rising from a fervent spirit, from the
cooling of the machinery. They work out the character that God is
weaving in that lad or in that young girl. These dreams are prophetic;
they have something of heaven in them; they are something higher than
the common: from God they come; they are the threads and fibres by which
He would lead us on to do great deeds on earth, and at last receive us
as faithful and good servants of our Master. I do believe in the dreams
of youth, that come in at that window which is open heavenward in every
young soul, until the dust and dirt of earth cloud it over; the dreams
of romance, that stupid old people try to crush and drive out, and that
the world puts its heel upon; those dreams of friendship and honour, of
truth and purity, to be chosen rather than worldly gain; those dreams of
love, generous and tender, that shall make two lives knit together into
one of exceptional tenderness and goodness. There is the breath of
heaven here; these are the golden glows in the mists of life's morning,
that come from God, and are the guarantees of a splendid sunset on
earth, and beyond, a brighter dawn in heaven. Would to God that all of
us, when we are old men and women, may be able to think without shame
and remorse about the dreams of our youth; that the woman has been true
to her dreams, and has fulfilled the sweet, unselfish ideals of her
girlhood, and been a noble, loving wife and mother; that the lad has
come through this world, at least comparatively unspotted, with a heart
fresh and tender, not eaten up by selfishness and greed, with a clean
conscience, with the benediction in his old age of having made other men
happy and good. Oh, the worst enemies of your dying bed, that will come
to mock you, will be the dreams of your youth, of your boyhood and
girlhood, should they be unfulfilled! But if you can only in part
realise them in your life they will be angels that will come to comfort
you.
There is a great deal more dreaming done in this world than we dull,
prosaic, old people will allow. It is not merely the lads and girls that
dream, for the fact is that we do not know how much we ourselves dream;
both young and old do it, but with a difference: the young folks mostly
dream about themselves, and the old folks are tired of dreaming about
themselves; but there are the wonderful dreams in the hearts of fathers
and mothers, to keep their children pure and good, and to make them
happy. What would the world be without those sweet, loving dreams? Thank
God for them! How much it means for the boy and the girl that their
mother dreamt noble things for them when they were young! There never
was a man yet that came to be a very great or good man in God's world
but his mother dreamt how he was to be brave, true, generous, loving,
helpful to others; and because her dreams came from God, she prayed for
that son that he might be good, and brave, and noble, and the lad grew
great because his mother dreamt great things for him.
There is a sad experience that almost all young folks must come to: the
day which breaks so shiningly, with such sweet promise of goodness,
nearly always clouds over and grows dark and stormy; the dreams get
broken, the dreams that hover over you and seem so easy to reach, recede
farther and farther, like one of those Alpine peaks when you are trying
to climb it. From the village you start from, you see a peak which you
think must be the summit, but when you reach it, it is only to find
yourself separated from a far higher ridge by a valley, which you have
to descend in order to reach it, and you have no sooner climbed up again
than you realise that this, again, is but an intermediate peak. How
toilsome, how weary it is! but in the same way dreams would be worth
nothing if you had not to win them by struggle and battle. It is the
tedium of the contest, I suppose, that disheartens most. It is not easy
for young hearts to wait for the fulfilment of life's promise till it
can be achieved honestly. Joseph is trapped in a pit, betrayed by his
brethren, sold to slave-merchants, settled in an Egyptian house, becomes
the bond-slave of Potiphar, torn from father, from his own country, from
his God, Who had not interfered to protect him, a bond-slave, his
dignity gone, all the pride of life gone! Would it have been wonderful
if all the heart had gone out of him too—if he had said that God had
forgotten him—"My dreams were a delusion; there is nothing worth living
for"? Are there young men and women here whose hearts are aching very
bitterly, and who are tempted to think that there is no outlet to this
slavery of life? How did Joseph look at it? He might have broken down,
and got wild with despair, and said to himself, "I will become
demoralised;" but though he lay down at night tired, yet he was
cheerful, and still dreamt his old dreams, and God was over him. If a
man is true to himself and to his God he will come through anything; if
he will be man enough, if he will not be beaten, if he will make the
best of things, he _must_ conquer. So presently Joseph reached a better
position, things began to look up a little, his master marked his
spirit, and made him his chief slave.
A lad who had dreamt of being a ruler and king of men, so that his
father would bow before him for what he could do for him, how terrible
it must have been for the boy to be sold as a slave! How terribly he
must have been tempted to say, "God has deceived me; He made me to dream
dreams, and here I am left in a dungeon, a slave: I cannot get what I
want honourably; I will get it dishonourably; I will snatch the fruit of
life, even if it be in defiance of what God and good men call right"!
That is the temptation that drives many a lad to dishonesty and
treachery, and many a girl to bitterness and sin. It came to Joseph in
the deadliest form. The mistress of the household made overtures to him
which, had he accepted them, would have meant immediate promotion,
perhaps to the court; for her husband was the chief of Pharaoh's
body-guard. Could there have been devised a deadlier temptation for that
poor, homeless boy, so treacherously treated by those who should have
loved him—who had dreamt such dreams, and had such proud ambitions, and
withal no danger of discovery if he would but take the path that opened
up the way of promotion? I think that was the crisis in Joseph's life;
that was the supreme deed which determined his destiny. Then it was that
he had to stand, and stand for ever, for God and good, or to fall and
sink for ever into ruin. And what saved him? I will tell you what saved
him. When Fortune tells a clerk that he has but to take a little of his
master's money, which he can repay very soon, and she will smile on him,
what he will do all depends upon his past. Those dreams of Joseph's
meant everything to him at that great moment. If his dreams had been of
the flesh, if his dreams had been base, and selfish, and sordid, and of
grasping the world's gains, honourably if possible, but anyway grasping
them, he could not have stood. But that boy had dreamt of being a
prince, a king among men; he had dreamt of a noble, stainless manhood,
of self-respect, and honour, and truth; and he had dreamt of God caring
about him, of God choosing him to be His instrument in this world; he
was a lad in whose soul the whispers of childhood's prayers and of
morning devotions murmured, with sweet echoes of heaven. A lad on whose
head still rests the soft pressure of the blessing of his Father in
heaven is no game for the devil. Joseph turned from that temptation
without a moment's faltering; he said to himself, "Be a traitor and a
knave! stain my soul and my manhood with this foul lust!"—and in the
presence and the sight of God he conquered; he was loyal to the dreams
of his youth, and the result was that he went to prison.
Young men and women, do you sigh? You would fight the battles of life
bravely enough, and resist its temptations, if there were a fair field
and no favour; but treachery and dishonesty are saturating everything.
It is not the best men who get the best wages. The whole city is full of
cheating. I am afraid it is so, for many good men have told me they
could hardly keep their hands clean. When you hear of a lad going to the
bad, for God's sake be just; be not hard on him; it is but the common
immorality tolerated everywhere. But what of that? Are you going to lose
your life, and stain your conscience, because another has injured you?
So long as you do not injure yourself, never mind; be a man in the image
of God.
If you come nearer and nearer to that standard it will be a grander work
to do in your lifetime, if you live in a poor lodging-room till your
death, than to become a millionaire by injustice or cruelty. In prison
Joseph played the man; he was not broken nor dispirited. And remember
what I said about dreams. Those dreams of his did not allow him to lie
down idly in the prison; he wanted to do everybody's work. Joseph was
industrious, and kept working on because of his dreams. The keeper of
the prison was evidently a man who was glad to have things managed for
him; and Joseph got promoted in a wonderful way till he reached the
royal court, and aided by perseverance and intelligence and an
untarnished character, he became the premier, the first prince in the
land. And now followed—what, do you think? Prosperity, peace, ease? No;
immense responsibility, discharged nobly by Joseph, and perilous
temptations. When a man has overcome the temptations of adversity I can
tell him that he has fought a splendid battle, but the deadliest are
those that come in the days of prosperity. The generous deeds that you
thought you would do, when you were a poor clerk, if you were only
wealthy—the help to churches, to missions, to the poor, where are they?
You know the story told in all the collection sermons about a man who
gave liberally when he was poor, but did not give in the same proportion
when he grew rich, and explained it by saying that when he was poor he
had a guinea heart, but now it was a penny heart! But Joseph conquers
once more. He loves his cruel brothers tenderly, and he brings them,
with the old father, to the land of plenty, and tends them. What was his
temptation? It comes out later on, and with it the reason why he
triumphed over it. While the old man lived the brothers that had
betrayed Joseph were safe, because of his love to his father; but when
he dies the brothers are fearful lest Joseph should wreak his vengeance
on them, and so they come with their whining lie to him; the old father
had told them, they say, to implore Joseph to be still generous to them.
Joseph burst into tears to think that his brethren had judged so meanly
of him. But to do these men justice, we must confess that the average
man would act as they did. How came it that Joseph had preserved the
heart of his boyhood amid his Egyptian prosperity? Men and women, do you
want to know the secret of a pure and loving life? Do you want to know
the magic formula that will lift you up and ennoble your character, so
that it will not occur to you to pay off old wrongs when you get the
chance, the formula that will make you a blessing to others? It is to
open your heart wide to the sight, and the touch, and the presence of
God in your life and in your world. When I hear wise men, and men that
mean the world good, telling us that we shall be able to preserve
morality when we have ceased to believe that Jesus had a Father in
heaven, when we believe that we live our little day, and then die and
vanish, and the world goes on as well without us, my heart sickens
within me. Tell men and women that they are the highest race of beasts,
and what motives have they for being generous and doing noble deeds?
Take away the good Jesus, take away the great high heaven with its
sunshine, crush down a low roof over our earth, and you crush out life's
grandeur. Tell men that every human spirit has in it something
mysterious, that death means something awful, that their souls are born
for eternity; then life becomes great and solemn, and the great thought
arises that we are born to be the sons of God.
And now the last thing in Joseph's life. I think that when he died all
men and women in Egypt were talking about him, and I am pretty sure they
talked about him as much in a mistaken fashion and with as many blunders
as people will talk about you and me when we die. There is no man that
ever lived yet that was known to the world; God only knows what we are;
so when we die they are bound to speak of us better or worse than we
deserve, for they will not know you nor me as we are known to God, as we
have lived, and what has been our purpose in life, how earnestly we have
striven for it; these are known to God, and to Him only. Thank God,
there are more merciful judgments up there in heaven about us than the
kindest on earth will deliver. I am pretty sure that the Egyptians all
said that Joseph would be proud to be buried in Egypt. He had lived very
nearly all his life there. Had he not brought his relatives there? Was
he not engrossed, heart and soul, in Egypt, with not a particle of
interest left for the old land, the old home, and the old life? We may
imagine what would have been the exclamations of astonishment if the
Egyptians could have listened at the dying bed of the prince and
statesman, and have heard that while all the time he had been a loyal
servant to his royal master, his heart was nevertheless away in the land
of his boyhood, and that the future he was looking for was not a future
of immortality among the Egyptian dead. "Promise me this one thing," he
says, "that when God takes you back to the sweet dear land, back to make
God's kingdom there, you will take all that is left of me, that you will
take my bones out of this Egypt, where I have been in body, but never in
spirit." Oh, the grandeur of such an utterance! All the Egyptian
greatness, power in one of the mightiest empires the world has ever
seen, is as nothing to him compared with the power that his dreams of
sweetness, and goodness, and the service of God had over him. That is a
life that is not broken in two when death comes.
Men and women here, who have said your prayers when you were young, and
have stopped praying now; who have gone into society and given
yourselves up to the world, stop and look at your poor broken life, and
before it is too late come back to where in your childhood you knelt at
God's throne.
Oh, young men and women that have dreamed Joseph's dreams, pray to God
that you may dream the dreams of your childhood once more, if you have
let the lust and greed of the world into your heart! Old men and women,
for whom this world is not long, go back to your childhood, and end your
life as you began it.
This is the supreme thought (and I like to end with it, for it is a
comforting thought too) in the story of Joseph's life; because I know
that there are so many lives crippled and broken through their own
fault, as well as through the wrongs and injuries of others; lives dark,
and poor, and disappointing; lives that have no triumph in this world,
and find it very hard to keep up heart, to keep true to hope, and faith,
and God. Listen to the lesson of Joseph's life. No true life of goodness
to man and God can ever be a failure. In a pit, in a dungeon in far-off
Egypt, you may seem to be shut out of all splendid achievements; wronged
and smitten by the storms of life, it may seem as if God had left you;
but if you can only keep your heart sweet, and good, and pure; if you
can but keep yourself honourable, and generous, and loving, then, though
God may give you no ties of home life, and all may appear dark and
cheerless; if you can only keep yourself a good, sweet, loving woman, a
brave, true, honourable man, if you can but hold fast to your faith,
there is a great God over you, there is a Christ who came to die to save
you, there is a holiness which God will give you. If you will but hold
fast to the end—to _His_ end,—then your life cannot be a failure; its
roots are in God, and its end shall be with God; from heaven you came,
and to God you shall return.
[Footnote 1: Preached on Sunday evening, October 20th, 1889, in St.
John's Wood Presbyterian Church.]