Wonderful.
If you have your Bibles, turn to Genesis chapter 45.
Genesis chapter 45, I want to tell you about we gave the high school graduates Bibles.
And we asked you if you had the opportunity to circle a verse or underline a verse out there
or put your name in it and let them know you encourage them.
And I appreciate you participating.
That's a new thing that we want to try this year and plan to continue that.
And so we're thankful for that.
And then we always give college graduates a devotional book.
And this year we gave Dr. Connor Ph.D. in chemistry.
Hello.
My soul.
I realized we had something in common.
I took chemistry.
So and it didn't turn out that way for me.
But anyway, but what she got was a book by Lou Giglio called At the Table with Jesus.
And a couple of years ago, well, we've I've been meeting with men on Tuesday mornings at 6 a.m.
And at 9 a.m.
And we read a book together.
We read about a chapter a week.
And we talk about it and try to as iron sharpens iron, let one man sharpen another.
It's a blessing time, blessed time together.
And we read a book a couple of years ago that was impactful.
And so I bought a bunch of copies and put them out there for a summer read, a church summer read to encourage you to read in the summer.
A lot of things happen during the summer.
People go places and do things and all that stuff.
Let me just remind you that miss for the extraordinary.
Don't miss for the ordinary.
All right.
Go and do as God enables you to go and do.
And then when you get done, come back and get your tail back in church.
All right.
And so but summer gets us all over the place.
And so we get scattered.
We can have a common bond in the midst of that by reading something together.
We're not going to discuss it together, but we're just going to do it individually.
And gave her this book this year because next week we're going to make available at the Information Center right out there in the foyer this book, At the Table with Jesus.
It is 66 days of just two-page devotions.
Sometimes just less than two pages.
Two-page devotions about the Lord Jesus.
And I just couldn't help but think every one of us needs a touch of the Lord Jesus every day.
Just a little Jesus every day.
And so it's a great opportunity for us to kind of do something in common together.
And we don't make money off this.
Matter of fact, the church subsidizes the cost of these books.
They're $10.
They'll be available next week.
And so I just wanted you to know about that.
It's 66 days.
It's set up to read six days a week.
But if you read 66 days total and you start next Monday, you'll be done at the end of July,
which is just in time for school to start back.
And if you're still in the school system as an employee and as a student, you need a touch of Jesus every day during the summer leading up to the new school year.
So anyway, if you want to take the slower pace, you'll finish in middle of August or something.
So either way, it don't make any difference.
And they're made available for you.
And so I encourage you to pick those up and be a part of that this summer together.
At the 2023 commencement graduation, let me say one more thing too before I get started with that.
I missed a couple of weeks ago because my daughter got engaged to her fiancee.
And they're here today.
And so will you congratulate them and let them know that?
Thank you.
I tried to get him to do it first thing on Saturday morning so I could be back on Sunday, but he didn't want to do that.
And then I'm also blessed today to have my mom and daddy here.
And I'm thankful that they were able to worship with us today.
That's a blessing.
It really is.
Mama's had a rough week.
And I'm thankful that you are here and thankful both of you are.
At the 2023 commencement graduation ceremony at Northwestern University, J.B. Prixker gave the address.
Now, J.B. is the governor of Illinois, and his family owns the Hyatt Hotel chain along with several capital and capital investment companies.
He is safely a billionaire.
And he talked about how our society has become one that weaponizes cruelty as if it was a well-thought-out plan.
He said empathy and kindness are often seen as weakness.
And, however, the most profound thing he said in that commencement address is this.
He said he had found one thing to be universally true, that the kindest person in the room is most often the smartest.
The kindest person in the room is most often the smartest.
Now, think about that as you go and as you interact with others.
We'll see today that Joseph was the kindest.
It's been nearly two decades since Joseph had been sold into slavery by his brothers when we come to our passage today.
And in that time, a lot of water rolled under the bridge, good and bad, for Joseph as well for his brothers.
And neither one of them knew anything about what the other ones had been doing.
In the brothers' lives, Joseph didn't know, both wondered about that.
And now a great famine has hit the land.
All the known world is affected, including Jacob and his family, which is Joseph's dad.
Joseph's 11 brothers are affected by that, as well as their families.
So either they stay where they were and starve, hoping for better days, or they set out for Egypt to get the only grain available from the governor of Egypt.
So they did that.
They left Benjamin behind and they went to Egypt for grain.
Now they didn't realize that the governor of Egypt, the one who was managing this whole food distribution, was in fact their long lost brother.
And they got up and went to get grain, got their grain and left.
And upon arriving home, they realized the silver that they had paid had been put in their bags of grain.
They believed it was a mistake.
They were horrified by it because it looked as if they were thieves.
They ate the grain.
And now it was time to go get more.
And so in the effort to go get more, food is low again.
They will go back and they'll pay for what they got last time.
Hope they understand the misunderstanding and get more grain.
But much to Jacob's horror, the governor had asked when they come back for Benjamin to come as well.
And apparently a favorite of Joseph's, excuse me, of Jacob's, after Joseph's disappearance.
And if you remember, Joseph was a favorite child, very favored by his daddy.
And apparently he took up with Benjamin like he did Joseph, favoring him.
When they came, Joseph fed them well in his home.
And again, they didn't know it was Joseph.
That was the governor of Egypt.
He set them at his table in order by birth.
He fed Benjamin five times more than the others.
He asked them about their father, who was his father, of course, as well.
They never picked up on any of it.
So now remember, I've said this before, but it just rings in my mind.
You know, they look kind of like Duck Dynasty walking in there, you know.
And Joseph has taken on the Egyptian look, which is a completely shaved look,
along with makeup and all the Egyptian garb and that kind of thing.
So they didn't recognize him.
They had no idea.
He played a trick on them.
He placed their silver back in the bag again, along with his personal silver cup, his Yeti.
He placed that in Benjamin's bag and he sent them off.
But soon after they left, they were caught red-handed by Joseph's men in their theft.
So they offered themselves as slaves in response.
They didn't know what else to do.
Their life was at risk.
And Joseph said, I'll just take Benjamin.
The brothers refused to make the same mistake twice.
One time before, they had given their brother over to slavery, Joseph.
They were not going to do that with Benjamin.
And when he saw the love that they had for Benjamin, he gave them a great revelation.
It's in Genesis chapter 45, beginning in verse 1, it says this.
Then Joseph could not control himself before all those who stood by him.
He cried, making everyone go out from him.
So no one stayed with him when Joseph made himself known to his brothers.
And he went out loud so that the Egyptians heard it and the household of Pharaoh heard it.
And Joseph said to his brothers, I am Joseph.
Is my father still alive?
But his brothers couldn't answer him, for they were dismayed at his presence.
So Joseph said to his brothers, come near to me, please.
And they came near.
And he said, I am your brother Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt.
And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here.
For God sent me before you to preserve life.
For the famine has been in the land these two years.
And there are yet five years in which there will neither be plowing nor harvest.
And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to keep alive for you many survivors.
So it was not you who sent me here, but God.
He has made me a father of Pharaoh and Lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt.
Forever their lives would be changed due to their mistakes.
Now forever their lives would be changed through the grace of the one that they victimized.
They had looked at Joseph, but they hadn't really seen him.
And what they got now is a great revelation.
The grace and the kindness of Joseph was so abundant that their lives would never be the same again.
However, their horror was almost more than they could bear.
Verse 3 says, when he said he was Joseph, but his brothers couldn't answer him, for they were dismayed at his presence.
Listen, they had thought two decades earlier they had snuffed him out.
They had made him go away.
They had forgot him and they had moved on.
Or at least they had tried to do that.
But they had never been able to let that go.
In the words of King David, their sin was ever before them.
The guilt continued to haunt them.
And it made them paranoid to leave Benjamin behind.
They weren't going to do it.
They forever scarred their father, Jacob.
Jacob now lived in fear that he would lose another child.
Although they thought it would pass, it never had.
And let me tell you, friend, it never does.
When people are in sin, when people are unrepentant, they continue to try to turn the world up louder and louder,
hoping to drown out the voice of the Holy Spirit speaking to them.
But they can't do it.
And it haunts them.
Such efforts of escape often lead to a spiraling out of control.
Or a fall into a deep, mundane, barely living depression.
It is the rout of sin.
But for them, that's a great revelation for them.
Joseph announced to them, hey, I'm Joseph.
Is my father still alive?
And they went, what?
They were dumbfounded.
Open-mouthed.
Amazed.
They wet their tunics just a little bit.
And he calls them to come to him.
That's not in Scripture.
But anyway, they called him to come to him.
And they walked toward him like my golden doodle does.
When she's been into something.
Tail between the legs, scared to death.
He tells them, again, who he is.
Reminds them of what they had done.
But they needed no reminder.
Because it stuck.
They knew it.
And then he tells them not to be distressed.
Not to be angry with themselves.
God's been up to something.
God's been working all the time.
God's had his hand in this.
God has used their mistakes.
God has used their wrongdoings to put someone in place to oversee and to administer in the midst of a famine.
And to actually protect his own family.
Who does such as that?
In reality, it sounds kind of familiar.
The reality is that Joseph is, in fact, what's called a type.
Or a foreshadowing pattern of Christ himself.
And they call that a type.
Now, a type means a person or an event or an object in the Old Testament that foreshadows or prefigures a New Testament person, event, or object.
Let me explain.
For instance, the sacrificial lamb of the Old Testament is a prefigure of Christ.
Because he would come and become the sacrificial lamb that would be the one sacrifice for all time to take the sins of the world away.
And there would be no need for more sacrifices.
Another example, the Passover event of Egypt.
When death was coming to every house in Egypt.
Every house that did not have the blood of the sacrificial lamb on the doorpost is a type and a foreshadowing of the shed blood of Christ of Calvary.
Because without the shedding of blood, there would be no remission of sin.
There would be no hope of that.
Another one, the veil of the Holy of Holies was the barrier between us and God.
Because God's a holy God.
And the Holy of Holies represented the presence of God.
And we are unholy.
And so there was a veil that separated us from that.
Because of our lack of holiness.
Of course, the death of Christ on the cross removed that barrier as it was torn from top to bottom.
Not because the earth was quaking.
But because God torn the barrier and removed it.
Thank God, due to what Christ did on the cross.
All of those are examples of types.
And there's a study of those types called typology.
Now, I only say that as a background to what Joseph is.
Because Joseph is in fact a type or a foreshadowing pattern of Christ himself.
And I want to show you how that is.
The parallels are startling.
And there are many of them.
And I'm just going to name a few.
One of them is they were both prophesied to be rulers.
Joseph received his prophecy in his dreams.
Remember those dreams that he had?
That he was going to rule the world of sorts?
And he told his brothers that.
And boy, that really made them mad.
But in reality, the very thing that we just read in Genesis 45 is the fulfillment of the dream in which Joseph had.
He was prophesied to be a ruler.
Not only that, but Christ was also prophesied to be a ruler.
The prophet Isaiah talked about Christ coming.
And how he would rule and reign.
Both of them had jealous brothers.
Jesus' brothers tried to get him to be quiet.
He was embarrassing the family.
And so they both had jealous brothers.
Both were stripped of their coat.
Both of the coats are dipped in blood.
Joseph was with a wild animal to try to act like he had died that way.
You look at the book of Revelation and the revelation of Christ.
You'll see his robe dripped in blood representing his sacrifice for us.
Joseph left his home and became a slave of his brother's making.
Christ left his home in heaven to take on the form of a servant.
They both served as slaves.
As a matter of fact, his favorite self-identifying phrase was, Christ was the son of man.
And you know what that means?
A son of that day was a servant to his father and to his father's estate.
And once he had worked in his father's estate until his father's death, then he would inherit at least a portion of that from his father, depending on his siblings and those type things.
But the reality is, when Christ called himself the son of man, what he meant was, upon that imagery, he was a servant.
When he says son of man, he's saying, I am the servant of humanity.
And he did do the ultimate service for us on the cross.
Once in slavery, Joseph succeeded, influencing many, but he was only to be falsely accused.
Christ led the 12, filled four New Testament books with loving outreaches and outstanding miracles.
And although sinless, he was falsely accused and died the most shameful death on a Roman cross.
Both of them symbolized bread.
Joseph was thrown into prison.
He came out a prophet and his faithfulness sustained the world during a time of famine.
Christ was sealed in a tomb.
Jesus arose a Savior, ascended to heaven as the Savior of the world.
And during a time of famine, Joseph managed the bread basket of the world.
In response to a spiritual famine, Jesus called himself the bread of life, meaning his salvation sustains us.
And this last similarity that I want to point to this morning is the great revelation.
The passage we look at today, now in a time of famine, his former hate-filled brothers kneel before their long-lost brother in hopes of relief.
Never believing that they would see him again.
They do now, and in fact, he holds their lives in the balance.
Christ has now ascended to heaven.
He makes intercession for us.
But we'll see him again.
It was our sin that killed him.
But our slackness still stifles his cause.
But I want you to know it today.
Whether you recognize it or not, we will see him again.
And when we do, it'll be a great revelation.
Philippians chapter 2, verse 9 through 11 tells us about it.
It says,
And when that day comes, there are going to be two responses to Christ.
One will be what Christ described as the sheep.
Those are those who followed Christ.
And then there's others who he refers to as the goats.
In Matthew 25, he refers to that.
And he says this,
Then he will say to those on his left, the goats,
Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
For I was hungry, and you gave me no food.
I was thirsty, and you gave me no drink.
I was a stranger, and you did not welcome me in.
Naked, and you did not clothe me.
Sick and in prison, and you did not visit me.
And then they will also answer, saying,
Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty?
Or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister to you.
And then he will answer them, saying,
Truly I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.
And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.
The goats are those that have missed God's purpose.
Wondered kind of what the big deal is.
Just thought of him as maybe the man upstairs, or some other kind of sacrilegious term that ought to never come out of your mouth, by the way.
Instead of realizing he's the blessed king of kings and lord of lords.
I don't want you to misunderstand this passage of scripture.
Your deeds do not get you to heaven.
But the evidence of a real relationship with Christ is found in your deeds.
Christian faith is not just a thought.
Christian faith is a lifestyle.
However, when Christ returns, a second thing will happen on that day for those in Christ, the family of God.
And it parallels what happened in Joseph's life.
First, let's look at Joseph.
Because what happened next for Joseph and his family, Genesis 45 tells us that the family ate together.
They lived together.
They didn't need anything anymore from their own land.
They just, he just told them to come and to live.
All their needs would be met.
So it is when the Christian sees Christ face to face.
Scripture describes heaven as a banquet, as a marriage feast of Christ and his bride, the church.
He'll provide everything.
All we need is him.
Do you believe that this morning?
I don't mean the thought of it.
I mean, do you believe it and live the life according to it?
Have you ever committed your life to follow Christ?
It don't really matter if you're a member of this church or you're not a member of this church.
If you're here this morning and you've never truly committed your life to the Lord Jesus.
Never acknowledge the sin in your life.
Never acknowledge the wrongdoing and the need of a Savior.
Never acknowledge the fact that you need the Lord Jesus to cleanse you, to change you, to come into your life and empower you and to change you.
I'm thankful today that you can not just give a verbal consent of agreement to some theology, but you can commit your life to it.
Joseph's brothers faced a great revelation.
They weren't ready for.
And by the grace of God and the love of their brother, they were rewarded.
Not because of their merit, but they were rewarded.
Friend, we face a great revelation when we see the Lord face to face.
And the question is, are we ready?
More particularly, are you ready?
Because if we're ready, what a reward.
But if we're not ready, it's not going to be a reward.
Scripture says it will be eternally punishing.
There will be an eternal separation from hope and love and light and salvation.
And there's absolutely no reason this morning why anybody here or listening should ever have an uncertainty about that.
You don't have to be uncertain about that.
You can surrender your life to the Lord today.
Give him control.
If that's never happened to you today, I encourage you to surrender your life to God.
Ask him to forgive you of your sins and to come into your life and to change you.
And commit to follow him from this day forward.
And if that has happened to you, have you ever acknowledged that publicly?
Jesus said, if you're ashamed of me before others, I'll be ashamed of you before my Father.
And the reality is, the reason why he says that is because if we're ashamed, we're not really believers.
We're not really followers of Christ.
Have you ever acknowledged that publicly?
Now, Jesus, by his example, as well as by his commission, tells us that the way to acknowledge that is through baptism.
That's the way we publicly profess outwardly something that God has done in our heart inwardly.
And if you've never done that, I would encourage you to come.
We're not going to do it this morning.
We just did it a couple of weeks ago.
We'll do it in another couple of weeks probably.
But I encourage you to come.
We'd love to guide you in that process.
Maybe you're here this morning and God's leading you to Pickens First Baptist Church.
God's doing a wonderful work in our church.
And I'm thankful for that.
We had six people join in our 9 a.m. service this morning.
God's moving and working.
And so, listen, if God's drawing you to be in this place and worship with us, I encourage you to come.
I'd love to guide you in that process.
Listen, for the rest of us, are we where we need to be today?
Are we honoring God in the way that we need to honor God?
Are we ready for the day of the great revelation?
When we see Him face to face?
What in your life would you want different today if you knew you were going to see the Lord tonight?
Whatever that is, let's deal with it.
This morning, right now, let's deal with it.
You can do that where you stand in just a moment.
You can do that at this altar.
I'll be happy to pray for you and pray with you and continue to pray for you if you'd like me to.
I have no idea what God's told you.
I just know I want you to do exactly what He's told you to do.
Never be satisfied with doing less than God's very best for your life.
And I'll never ask you to do more than what God has told you to do.
Heavenly Father, I love you and I thank you for the opportunity that you give us this morning to be in this place.
God, will you lead us right now to be obedient, to simply follow your will and your way, dear God.
Don't let nerves or pride or indifference get in the way of simply following your will and your way in our hearts and lives right now, Father.
I pray in Jesus' precious name.
Amen.