(Gen. 42)
The attention of the million is always awakened by some pressing emergency, however varied in its character this may be. Sometimes a political question will arise, like “reform;” and at another time a social question, such as “the schoolmaster abroad.” The nations of Christendom have their emergencies too; and a revolution may clear away the obstructions, or a war adjust “the balance of power.” But far more important than all this is the fact, that God also can create and use an emergency, and often does, in order to bring forward the resources of His own grace, by which He may discover Himself to mankind in the deepest of their necessities as creatures; and, better still, in their most distressing wants as sinners: “For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.”
Gen. 42 affords a striking example of this fact, “now when Jacob saw that there was corn in Egypt,” Jacob said unto his sons, Why do ye look one upon another? And he said, “Behold, I have heard that there is corn in Egypt: get you down thither, and buy for us from thence; that we may live, and not die.”
When God exercises the conscience of a sinner by pressing on him the depth of his need, He will not fail to lead him, in due time, to the Person and the place where his resources are provided. The prodigal began to be in want when he was in the “far off country,” but found abundance and the father’s hearty welcome when he said to himself, “ I will arise and go to my father.” When the extreme pinch comes, men will look one upon another, like Jacob’s sons, and indeed like the prodigal, who looked outside himself, and “when he had spent all.... he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country:” but the citizen did not carry the secret of the father’s house in his heart, and therefore “he sent him into his fields to feed swine.” Man is no resource for his own need, nor can his neighbor provide a remedy.
And Jacob said, “Behold, I have heard that there is corn in Egypt: get you down thither, and buy for us from thence; that we may live, and not die.” How truly may we say, “God’s thoughts are not our thoughts; nor his ways our ways!” They may go down to Egypt about corn; but God’s intentions were that they should find a Joseph and a land of Goshen, although at the same time they are in the right path, and going to the right person about their hunger and the dearth in their land.
“And Joseph’s brethren came and bowed down themselves before him with their faces to the earth, and Joseph saw his brethren and he knew them.” Grace, whether in God or in Joseph, is always beforehand with us, or grace would be shorn of one of its brightest features. “And Joseph saw his brethren and he knew them” is only a companion picture with “when he (the prodigal) was a great way off his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him.” How both these scenes must give place to the grace of the gospel! “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” If Joseph “made himself strange unto them, and spake roughly unto them; and said unto them, Whence come ye?” it is but the ingenuity of a love that yearns after them, and will not be confined to the narrow limits of their own thoughts, but introduce them in due season into the largeness of his own affection. A greater than Joseph made Himself strange to the outward ear, when He said to the Syrophenician woman, “It is not meet to take the children’s bread and cast it to the dogs;” but only to justify her in the end by saying, “Ο woman, great is thy faith, be it unto thee even as thou wilt.” Moreover, if Joseph remembered the dreams which he dreamed of them, and will say “Ye are spies,” it is but in the same grace which will perfect its object in the depths of an awakened conscience, and in the unfoldings of a love suited to the brother and the brethren.
What a foreshadowing of our precious Jesus and ourselves, upon a deeper work between God and our souls! And they said, “Thy servants are twelve brethren, the sons of one man in the land of Canaan; and, behold, the youngest is this day with our father, and one is not.” But this superficial style will not suit the mind of Joseph, either when they refer to their father as “one man in the land of Canaan” or when they speak of himself as “one is not.” He cannot make himself known to them upon such a footing as this. “One is not” indeed! and is this all they have to say about their treatment of this very Joseph, just as men in our day pass over the betrayment, rejection, and crucifixion of the Lord Himself! Consideration for their own blessing will lead Joseph to behave yet more roughly and strangely, that he may put their own sin and its guilt upon their consciences: and “ Joseph said unto them,...... hereby ye shall be proved: by the life of Pharaoh ye shall not go forth hence, except your youngest brother come hither......if ye be true men, let one of your brethren be bound in the house of your prison: go ye, carry corn for the famine of your houses.”
God Himself wounds that He may heal. He kills, “to make alive. Righteousness must now come in, and though mingled with grace, will do its own work in a guilty conscience, and put the trouble and terror of judgment on the heart. “And they said one to another, we are verily guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul, when he besought us, and we would not hear; therefore is this distress come upon us.” Did Joseph utter a word of reproach to call for this self-impeachment? No! but the upbraidings of guilt in the presence of their brother, like our sin when looked at by the side of the cross and in the presence of God, will do what nothing else ever does, and speaks in a language which no tongue can express!
What a way of settling sin is this, by bringing it to light in this present time, and leaving nothing for the future, when mercy shall be hidden from the eyes—how blessed to learn the lessons of the atoning value of the blood of Christ for God, and its cleansing virtue for the polluted sinner. “Though your sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow, though they be red like crimson they shall be as wool.”
And Reuben answered them, “Spake I not unto you saying, Do not sin against the child, and ye would not hear? therefore, behold, also his blood is required.” Their brother’s blood and their sin have now got into their proper places and are doing the work of putting “the sentence of death” upon themselves; but if their wickedness is thus brought to light and to its fullest enmity too—“when he besought us, and we would not hear”—Joseph will begin to show the grace and goodness that are in his heart. “And they knew not that Joseph understood them, for he spake unto them by an interpreter: and he turned himself about from them and wept.” Joseph must be Joseph, supreme in love in the midst of a scene like this, even to tears: if his brethren are as bad as they are, he will be as good, and as great in his goodness, as he is—only to be excelled by the grace of God which pursues the sinner and asks, “ why will ye die?” and pleads with the backslider, “is Ephraim my dear son? is he a pleasant child? for since I spake against him I do earnestly remember Mm still; therefore my bowels are troubled for him: I will surely have mercy upon him, saith the Lord.” And Joseph “returned to them again, and communed with them, and took from them Simeon, and bound him before their eyes.” If Reuben was used to put the sin before his brethren, and to close up all by saying “his blood is required of us,” it is Simeon’s turn to be bound before their eyes, and take his place as their substitute and surety in “the house of their prison.”
What deep searchings of the heart and conscience are here on the one hand; and what reserves for the grace and glory of a future day in Goshen are embodied in this Simeon! But all this has been taken up and exceeded by the love of God in the deeper matter of the blood shedding and crucifixion of Christ by rebellious sinners. How have our sins and transgressions been made the sole business of our Savior Jesus, when at the cross he was taken from prison to be our substitute and surety! Do we see the love of Joseph in all he was doing from first to last? Ο turn to a more perfect love which has busied itself about us, and taken the place of guilty before God, that He may take His new place, by the death of Christ, as the “Justifier of the ungodly that believeth in Jesus.”
If man has exceeded himself in wickedness at the cross, God will be greater there than ever by means of the blood that blots it all out. Is the cross the witness of the deepest enmity against God on the part of man? so shall it be from God to man the brightest expression of a love which nothing could ever turn aside. Triumphant grace!
“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.” Grace will take the rule of its actings only from itself, “and thus did Joseph unto them,” is the manner of his love to the brethren who hated him, and yet the more for his dreams, and for his words. If work is work, and hard work too, grace will be grace, and gives, never demanding nor receiving, and therefore, “sacks filled with corn” for the famine of their households, and the provisions Joseph gave them for the way, and every man’s money in his sack besides, reveal the heart of their brother to them, and tell plainly enough that if they have not discovered him, he has found them out, and will not let them rest till all his purposes of blessing are sealed to them in their forgiveness, and in settled peace and confidence in his presence.
“And as one of them opened his sack to give his ass provender in the inn, he espied his money......and he said unto his brethren My money is restored, and, lo, it is even in my sack: and their hearts failed them, and they were afraid, saying one to another, What is this that God hath done unto us?” Every believer in Christ knows the difference between the exercises of a guilty conscience, and a troubled heart about unconfessed sin, as we have seen with Reuben and his brethren. Joseph is now setting them to learn a very different lesson, that “where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.”—“And they said one to another, What is this that God hath done unto us?” God is found out as a giver, and they are learning the difficult lesson of taking the place of receivers on the ground of conscious worthlessness—debtors to grace from first to last! “Not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” “Their hearts” are not failing them now because their sin is brought to remembrance, nor are they saying one to another now, We saw “the anguish of his soul when he besought us and we would not hear”—heartbreaking recollections these—but sovereign goodness has come in; and unworthiness is felt to be ten thousand times more unworthy, in the presence of grace, which will not open its lips in reproach, but with both hands gives all that it has to give. Oh! it is this that melts the heart, and produces another fear—not a guilty one “which hath torment,” but one which says, “what is this that God hath clone to us?” “And they came unto Jacob their father unto the land of Canaan, and told him all that befell unto them 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.”
The activities of Joseph’s love could produce these precious fruits in a past day, but what could the outgoings of a Father’s love create in the souls of His redeemed family? who are not only standing in “the grace that bringeth salvation,” but looking for the blessed hope of the glorious appearing of Christ, and of being (not in Goshen, but) like Him and with Him where He is. What are Joseph’s actings (though lord of the land as he was) to these? Grace and glory are united at the cross of Christ, we look from one to the other, and a minute will clear the distance! Bundles of money told their tale in Joseph’s clays, but “the unsearchable riches of Christ” now may well lead every adopted child to say, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.” What a portion have we in a risen, exalted, and glorified Lord at the right hand of God. “All things are yours, whether the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come, all are yours; and ye are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.”
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