HAS the little reader ever been away from his father and mother for a good long while? If so, he will remember the joy he felt when at last the time came for him to see them. Many of the young readers of GOOD NEWS have just come home for the holidays, after being away for months, and will understand this at once. But none of them have ever known the long, long separation from all those whom he loved, which Joseph, when still but It youth, was forced to know. If you will look into Gen. 37, you will there be able to read all about it. Joseph had gone “about his father’s business” to Dothan, and there his own brethren wickedly sold him into the hands of strangers. Carried into Egypt, he became a poor slave, then was cast into prison, because he would obey God, and there he was kept a long time, forgotten by all like one in the grave. Only his father never forgot him. He mourned him as dead, and said, “I will go down into the grave unto my son, mourning.” This shows how he loved him, and if you will read the whole history, you will see that Joseph loved his father as much as he loved him. At last the time came when Joseph was delivered out of prison. “The king sent and loosed him; even the ruler of the people, and let him go free” (Psa. 105:2020The king sent and loosed him; even the ruler of the people, and let him go free. (Psalm 105:20)). But this wan; not all — “he made him lord of his house, and ruler over all his possession; to bind his princes at his pleasure, and teach his senators wisdom” (21, 22). Thus God rewarded Joseph’s faithfulness, submission, and love to Him and to his father, and, indeed, toward all with whom he had to do. Exalted almost to the throne, Joseph married a Gentile wife, and through all the seven, years of plenty waited in patience for the moment when in God’s own time he should once more see those whom he so dearly loved, and from whom he had been so cruelly parted. At last the period of famine came, and Joseph’s brethren, in their distress, went down into Egypt to buy corn. For a while, Joseph “made himself strange unto them, and spake roughly to them,” though his heart was yearning over them all the time. But he knew they must be brought to repentance for their evil deeds, and so he seemed as if he knew them not, and dealt so wisely with them, that at last they saw the hand of God in what was happening to them, and confessed the sin they had been guilty of in selling their brother and heeding not “the anguish of his soul.” Then Joseph made himself known unto his brethren,” for he could refrain himself no longer. Ah, dear little reader, it is a sweet lesson of love to read what God’s Word tells us about Joseph’s way of making himself known to those who had dealt so bitterly with him. How he “gave forth his voice in weeping;” how he called them to come near him; how he entreated them not to be grieved nor angry with themselves that they sold him; how he encouraged their hearts by reminding them of the link between himself and them in the dear old father left behind in the land of Canaan, still in his long, long sorrow. All this is very beautiful, and teaches us all how to forgive. But it is sweeter still to know that all this is only a little picture of the blessed Jesus.
For was not He sold for thirty pieces of silver, the price of a slave?
Did not He go down to prison and to death itself because He would prove His faithfulness, submission, and love toward God (John 14:3131But that the world may know that I love the Father; and as the Father gave me commandment, even so I do. Arise, let us go hence. (John 14:31)). Yes; and-now, exalted at God’s right hand, He brings poor sinners of the Gentiles to Himself, washing them in His own blood, gathering them together into one Church, and so forming them into
“His body and His bride,”
waiting in patience for the moment when, having “presented her to Himself,” He shall come forth in the Father’s own time (Acts 1:77And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power. (Acts 1:7)), to “make Himself known unto His brethren,” the people of Israel, so dear to Him still, though
“They set at naught and sold Him,
Pierced and nailed Him to the tree.”
Oh, what love can equal this? — love even for the worst of sinners. In the meanwhile, this is the time of plenty, for the Word of God, is spread abroad in all lands, the Gospel is preached, and a full and free salvation is offered to all. Have you received it? Have you come to Jesus? If not, if the trumpet sounds and the Church is caught away, you will not be there to be “presented to Himself” by Him who loved us and gave Himself for us. You will not be with Him when He comes “in His glory” to make Himself known to His brethren. Don’t wait until it is too late. A time of famine is coming, “even a famine of the Word of the Lord,” and we don’t know how soon. Oh, then, go to Jesus now, believe in Him, and then, when “the Lord shall come with all His saints,” you will be there in such blessing as your heart cannot now conceive.
But to return to Joseph. After he had made himself known to his brethren, his first thought was of him from whom he had been so long separated. He had been torn from him in his youth, and, though long years had passed away since then, and Joseph had known many sorrows, though he was now ruler in Egypt, and surrounded with every earthly joy, neither sorrow nor joy could make him forget his dear aged father. I am sure the heart of the little reader will understand this, and that he will readily see that if there was one thing more than any other that would make Joseph rejoice in the power and wealth he possessed, it was that he was now able to make the, whom he loved happy with it. And how much this reminds us again of God’s dear Son! He is now at the right hand of God in all the glory that He had with His Father before the world was. He passed through deeper sufferings than Joseph ever knew, yet neither sufferings nor the glory that followed could make Him forget His own that are in the world. He still watches over them all through their wilderness journey.
“Now seated on Jehovah’s throne,
The Lamb once slain in glory bright,
‘Tis thence He watches o’er His own,
Guarding them through the deadly fight.”
He still has “a heart to feel their smallest woe,” and His great joy is that He can now bless with infinite blessings those whom His Father has given Him. When on earth He was “straitened till the baptism wherewith He had to be baptized” was accomplished, that is till He had borne all the penalty due to our sins even down to death. But now there is no let or hindrance, and so He sends out His gospel message to bring home to Himself every poor sinner, young and old, who will receive His word, that He may make them happy forever. In all this, He seeks His Father’s glory still (John 17:11These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee: (John 17:1)) even as when on earth He could always say, “I Honor my Father;” and as Joseph is in many things a little picture of Christ, he too sought to Honor his father. As I have said already, his first thought was of him. “Haste ye,” said he to his brethren, “and go up to my father, and say unto him, Thus saith thy son Joseph: God has made me lord of all Egypt, come down unto me, tarry not;” and then, having provided everything for his father’s comfort by the way, he sent them off to fetch him. And then at last the happy hour came — which is Forayed in the frontispiece of this the first number of GOOD NEWS for 1872 — when “Joseph made ready his chariot and went up to meet Israel his father to Goshen.” Who shall tell out what he felt as he rode on in all the state that belonged to the ruler of the first and most wealthy country, then, in all the world? What was all that state and earthly glory to him compared with the father he so dearly loved? “And he presented himself unto him,” going before him with the reverence that became a son, though lord of Egypt, in the presence of an aged, honored father. How beautifully the Scriptures teach truth in a few short meaning words! Quite as beautifully, too, they tell the affection of Joseph for his beloved father, when we read, “and he fell on his neck and wept on his neck a good while.” Though a grown man now, he had not lost the love of his youth for him who had nourished him in his childhood, had made him the coat of many colors, and whose favorite child he was. Though a prince and a ruler, he was not ashamed to weep on his father’s neck, and thus tell out before all his court the love of a child for a parent. Never forget, dear little reader, that God has said, “Honor thy father and mother.” Joseph’s mother was dead, but he honored her in the person of his youngest brother Benjamin (Gen. 45:2222To all of them he gave each man changes of raiment; but to Benjamin he gave three hundred pieces of silver, and five changes of raiment. (Genesis 45:22)), and now he used all the glory he had gotten in Egypt to Honor his aged father. When you look on the picture remember that, and remember, too, what Joseph’s great Antitype, Jesus, said — “My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish His work;” “I honor my Father,” and “That the world may know that I love the Father, as the Father gave me commandment even so I do.”
J. L. K.