Joseph No.15 Abundant Pardon

Genesis 45 verse 1, Then Joseph could no longer control himself before all his attendants and he cried out, make everyone leave my presence. So there was no one with Joseph when he made himself known to his brothers and he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard him and Pharaoh's household heard about it. Joseph said to his brothers, I am Joseph, is my father still living? But his brothers were not able to answer him because they were terrified at his presence.

Then Joseph said to his brothers, come close to me. When they had done so he said, I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt and now do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. For two years now there has been famine in the land and for the next five years they will not be plowing and reaping but God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance.

So then it was not you who sent me here but God. He made me father to Pharaoh, lord of his entire household and ruler of Egypt. Now hurry back to my father and say to him, this is what your son Joseph says, God has made me lord of all Egypt.

Come down to me, don't delay. You shall live in the region of Goshen and be near me, you, your children and grandchildren, your flocks and herds and all you have. I will provide for you there because five years of famine are still to come.

Otherwise you and your household and all who belong to you will become destitute. You can see for yourselves and so can my brother Benjamin that it is really I who am speaking to you. Tell my father about all the honor accorded to me in Egypt and about everything you have seen and bring my father down here quickly.

Then he threw his arms around his brother Benjamin and wept and Benjamin embraced him weeping and he kissed all his brothers and wept over them. Afterwards his brothers talked with him. When the news reached Pharaoh's palace that Joseph's brothers had come, Pharaoh and all his officials were pleased.

Pharaoh said to Joseph, tell your brothers, do this, load your animals and return to the land of Canaan and bring your father and your families back to me. I will give you the best of the land of Egypt and you can enjoy the fat of the land. You are also directed to tell them, do this, take some carts from Egypt for your children and your wives and get your father and come.

Never mind about your belongings because the best of all Egypt will be yours. So the sons of Israel did this. Joseph gave them carts as Pharaoh had commanded and he also gave them provisions for their journey.

To each of them he gave new clothing but to Benjamin he gave 300 shekels of silver and five sets of clothes. This is what he said to his father and this is what he sent to his father. Ten donkeys loaded with the best things of Egypt and ten female donkeys loaded with grain and bread and other provisions for his journey.

Then he sent his brothers away and as they were leaving he said to them, don't quarrel on the way. So they went up out of Egypt and came to their father Jacob in the land of Canaan. They told him, Joseph is still alive, in fact he is ruler of all Egypt.

Jacob was stunned, he did not believe them. But when they told him everything, Joseph had said to them and when he saw the carts Joseph had sent to carry him back, the spirit of their father Jacob revived and Israel said, I'm convinced, my son Joseph is still alive. I will go and see him before I die.

May God speak to us through that passage of his word. Now we're going to have the notices. A Christmas hymn rather than a Christmas carol, a very wonderful one too, number 164.

I do hope that you will be able to join with us this evening. Six more people going through the waters of baptism, that surely must be something that excites your own heart and life. And for you to be present would be a major encouragement to these friends, some who've come to know the Lord in very, very recent days.

And one or two through strange circumstances in God's providential dealings. So would you like to come? Maybe you don't normally, maybe haven't been to an evening service for years. We'd like you to be present if you can.

Obviously if you're elderly and sick and infirm, then that's a different matter. But it's amazing how many robust 80 year olds we also have at the tab. So we'd be glad of your company this evening.

And then if you'll take that little leaflet that's been printed to indicate something of the nature of our presentation of the gospel next Sunday evening, we'd be glad if you'd use that, maybe entice your relatives, neighbors, friends, what have you to to come along. Father, we offer to you these next moments and we pray that you will speak to our hearts through your word. We do thank you for the assurances in Scripture of the standing that we have before you through our Lord Jesus.

We ask right now that you'll minister your word directly into our hearts, massage it Lord, into the very depths of our personalities and help us to respond to what we hear. For the Savior's sake, Amen. There's a lovely verse of Scripture actually in the prophecy of Isaiah which comes out extremely well in the authorized version of the Bible.

And I just want to read that verse of Scripture to you for a moment. It's Isaiah 55 and verse 7. In fact, part of it, when I've read it, maybe we'll repeat it together. Isaiah 55, 7, which I think has got the advantage of the NIV and the strength of its translation.

It says this, Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return unto the Lord and he will have mercy upon him and to our God for he will abundantly pardon. God will have mercy upon him, God will abundantly pardon. Can we say that sentence? God will have mercy upon him, God will abundantly pardon.

In the church where I was brought up as a youngster, we used to sing from a hymn book, I think it was called Redemption Hymnal, an old song which had, or an old hymn which had as the repetitive refrain, more abundantly and they might have life more abundantly. There is, it seems to me, a special way in which that term abundance refers to God. He always deals with us in a way that's beyond our ken, as the Scots would say.

It's a way that's completely beyond our comprehension that God could be that good. Abundantly pardon. Not just forgive your sins, not just wipe them clean, but grant you an abundant pardon.

Now you may say, well you were on this particular track last time that you were preaching from Joseph and it's true I was. And I'm coming back to it again and I'm just leaving for next year the position of Jacob as he receives this tremendous information from his from his sons that Joseph is still alive. Because I just rejoice in all that this chapter teaches.

Not about the pardon alone of God, but the abundant pardon. You remember I used this particular incident last time to show you how Joseph made it easy for the brothers to be forgiven. These brothers have done some awful things, haven't they? I mean, after all, as far as they were concerned, Joseph might be dead.

He might be languishing, which perhaps would even be a worse option. For years in isolation in some dungeon in Egypt. And maybe all that he'd gone through could have been extremely horrific.

And these brothers really ought to have had a heaped up guilt. And perhaps they did. Perhaps sometimes they didn't rest at night.

They thought as to what had happened. And then you recall with the background knowledge you've got of this lovely incident. How they've been to Egypt to get food because there's famine in Palestine.

How they've been treated in a sort of hot cold way by the Prime Minister. Sometimes this fellow seems to like them. Other times he makes them feel so awkward.

He does the most unusual thing. There's generosity and then there's mysterious acts of smuggling their money back into their sacks and his cup into Benjamin's sack. So much that is curious about this particular man.

And then you recall how he has the brothers in front of him. And he's come to the point where he believes that they're in a position that he can reveal himself to them. That they're in a spiritual condition whereby the sins of the past can now be forgiven.

And so Joseph dismisses his Egyptian courtiers, his attendants. And in the privacy of his own room he says to the brothers in his Hebrew language. So that they would have some insight into the fact that he really was one of them.

I am Joseph. And their immediate reaction was one of displeasure, of grief, terror. After all they'd done so much to him.

They might now feel that Joseph being a human being like them would have a grudge in his heart. He might want to get even with them. But far from getting even with them, Joseph makes it so wonderfully possible for them to be forgiven.

He endeavors to limit to the lowest number possible those people who will know what they have done to him. Because Pharaoh's not around and his men are not around. This is something private because when you're forgiving you want to make it easy for the person who has sinned to receive the full absolution.

The part of the one who has been sinned against. And I use that as an illustration and I spent the first few verses opening it up to demonstrate the point of how our Lord Jesus makes it possible for you and me, brothers and sisters, to be forgiven by our great God. But not just forgiven.

Abundantly forgiven. So that you can go from this place, if not literally, certainly in your heart, dancing with joy, relieved enormously at the fact that God accepts you for what you are, his son, his daughter, part of the family circle. And he guarantees your security throughout the end of your earthly pilgrimage here and ultimately will receive you into glory.

He wants you to know that. He wants you to know that from the depth of your being. He wants every fiber of your personality to glow with this assurance that come what may, come wind, come weather, come riches, come poverty, come light, come darkness, as far as your personal circumstances are concerned, he, God, has you in the palm of his hand.

You are forgiven and your destiny is to be with him forever. An abundant pardon. He's not going to bring up the past.

He's not going to be carping back on something that you did last year or a decade ago or last month. Those sins that he has forgiven have been forgiven forever and on the computers of heaven, they haven't got software which will bring it back on the screen. Praise the Lord.

I thought at least I'd get John to respond. Those who've been forgiven much recognize the nature of the debt that they have to the Lord. Now, Joseph, he wants his brothers, doesn't he, to be absolutely convinced that the one who speaks to him is indeed Joseph, the one who they have sinned against.

So in the 12th verse, you can see for yourselves and so can my brother Benjamin that it is really I who am speaking to you. When our Lord Jesus has been raised from the dead, he reveals himself to his disciples. First of all, it was just to a lady in the garden area where the tomb was and he sends through her a message to his colleagues to tell them that he's going to meet up with them.

Later on, in one room, all but one of the disciples will be present and he will show himself to be none other than Jesus. Thomas is not too sure that the rest of the disciples who were present have got it right. And he says to them, unless I touch the nail print and put my fist into the wound in his side, I won't believe.

Do you remember how Jesus then appears to Thomas and he shows himself physically and he coaxes him to come along and to touch him? And later on, when John's writing his letter, the first letter that bears his name and the first chapter, the first verse, he speaks of the Lord Jesus and he speaks of one whom we have seen, whom we have heard, who our hands have handled. We know that it was Jesus who came back from the dead. Why is it so important that Jesus demonstrates himself literally as being the one who's been raised, the man who had been crucified? Because the disciples knew that they who had sinned against the Lord Jesus, as all of us have sinned against God, could only be forgiven by the one who had been sinned against.

Only Jesus can forgive our sins in the name of the Father. Only Joseph can forgive the brothers for what they have done. And so he spends time convincing them that despite the regalia of an Egyptian Prime Minister, despite the fact that up to this point he's been using an interpreter, there is that in Joseph which convinces the brothers he is none other than the lad who used to look after their father's sheep so many, many years ago.

I am Joseph. He wants them to be utterly convinced, as Jesus wants you to be utterly convinced that he's been raised from the dead and therefore he has the right to pardon you, each one of you, from the sins that you have committed. Jesus gives, says Dr. Luke, in the Acts of the Apostles many convincing proofs that it was he who'd been brought back from the grave.

The greatest news in the whole world for Joseph's brothers and for Joseph's father was that Joseph was still alive. The greatest news, are you hearing me? The greatest news, the best news in the whole world in the 20th century is that the Jesus who was born in Bethlehem is still alive. He's at the right hand of the Father and he intercedes for those who have trusted him as Lord and Savior.

Now if you have good news of that quality, then what you need to do is to tell those you love about him. That's why Joseph is very concerned that the brothers go back home and they tell his father and the rest of the family, the servants, the wives, about what has happened to him in Egypt. Verse 13, tell my father about all the honor accorded me in Egypt and about everything you have seen and bring my father down here quickly.

One of the ways in which you can prove to others that you belong to Jesus Christ is by telling men and women who don't know him about him. If you will confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, says the Apostle Paul, and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Go and tell my father, do you talk about Jesus? Have you spoken to somebody about Jesus Christ who didn't know him during these last seven days, or this last month, or this last year, or this last decade? Will you do it if you haven't? And if you have been in the habit, will you continue it? Because if this is the best news in the world, as you must believe or else you wouldn't be out here on a dull Sunday morning listening to a preacher going on at some length.

If you really believe it's the good news, then you'll want to tell others, won't you? And you want to tell others with a great deal of enthusiasm. After all, in the early verses it seems as though Jacob is very concerned, Joseph is very concerned that his brothers give this priority. He doesn't just tell them to go back, verse 13, but verse 9, to hurry back to my father and say to him, this is what your son says, God has made me Lord of all Egypt, come down to me, don't delay.

Isn't it amazing what happened to Joseph? Perhaps the greatest success story in the whole of the world, don't you believe? I think that very few of us, incidentally, can carry professional success. That's why it seems to me there's a minority, but thank God they do exist. There's a minority of really successful, born-again businessmen and businesswomen.

Because once you're successful, the possibility is at a material front. You'll take the success to yourself. It will deflect you from spiritual growth.

But there are those marvellous exceptions. Joseph is one of them. He can carry a full cup.

He never spills a drop. He never takes it to himself. He pours it at the feet of his God.

Tell my father what happened to me. Let the old man's eyes turn into saucers as you surprise him with an account of all that has occurred during these past years. And my friend, when you think of what God the Father did for that infant who was born in Bethlehem's manger, that man who was crucified on the Roman gibbet, when you consider what the Father has done for the Son, he's given him a name that is above every name.

All authority has been invested in the Lord Jesus. The carpenter of Nazareth is no more anonymous. He's at the frontal point of human history.

He is the most important personality in the whole of the world. And people are to know what this God has done for his son. And you are entrusted in telling the message to others that you have received.

As the brothers were entrusted to tell Jacob about what had happened during the sovereignty of God in the years that Joseph was in Egypt. Now there's something else about this abundant pardon which I was only able to hint at, but now I'll enlarge upon on the previous occasion. And it is this.

The brothers were terrified when they were in the company of Joseph because, well, they thought that all that had happened to Joseph would cause him to be angry with them. They were terrified in his presence, verse three. But Joseph does something which is really quite remarkable considering that you read of this in the early verses of the Old Testament.

He gives them an understanding as to how he has himself computed the various experiences through which he has gone during those years. You see, the brothers think that they are to blame. Not so.

We impounded Joseph. We put him in a pit. We sold him.

We were responsible for him going to Egypt and being marketed there as human fodder. We were responsible, though they weren't aware of all that had happened to Joseph for the time that he spent in the prison. But here is Joseph now giving his own understanding how he reads the circumstances.

Verse seven, or rather verse six. I'll get it right soon. It's verse five.

Because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. Now verse seven. God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth.

Verse eight. So then it was not you who sent me here but God. Now if these brothers were dull, certainly on the third time of telling, they would have grasped that as far as Joseph was concerned, he was in Egypt because God willed it.

I'm indebted to Artie Kendall for this phrase. Joseph let them in to the family secret. What is the family secret? Well there is a secret that you can hardly share with people who are outside the Christian fold because if you did they wouldn't really understand it.

It's a secret that I was prepared to be personal about in relating how I discovered it last Wednesday when I took the Bible study here at the TAB. You see those friends who were present will excuse me if I repeat something I said. I always used to believe that what marked me out from the rest of my relatives back in the north of England, because I was a Christian and many of them are not, is that I had the spiritual perception over against them to acknowledge Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.

You know I contributed towards my salvation in as much as I made a move towards him. And then one day 1963, the 21st of May, I was working on the Greek New Testament trying to translate the epistle to the Romans and I came to this realization that actually it wasn't me that chose God, it was God that chose me. And I can still remember the tears going down my cheeks as that little room which I shared with three or four other people in London became to me a Bethel.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. All the fallout in my life, being born in the middle of the war, our own home just narrowly escaping, being bombed, finding myself as a son with Christian parents. It wasn't as a result of chance nor my commitment to the Lord as a result of spiritual ingenuity that I had.

It was God working out his plan in my life in a most wonderful way. God who took the initiative. So I wrote in the flyleaf of my Bible which I used to work on in those days, "'Tis not that I did choose thee, Lord, for, Lord, that could not be.

This heart would still refuse thee hadst thou not chosen me. Thou from the sin that stained me has cleansed and set me free. Of old thou didst ordain me that I should live for thee.'" You see, Joseph says to his brothers, it wasn't you.

It was God using the evil in your heart in his sovereignty to bring me to Egypt and to set up the scenario whereby I, having become the Prime Minister of Egypt, could not only physically save the Egyptians but could physically save you and my father and ultimately preserve the promises that God made to Abraham that from his loins would become a great nation. For the seriousness of the situation was such that had Joseph not been in Egypt, had there not been this abundance of food that had been carefully conserved, then Jacob and his brothers, his sons, would have died. Now when Joseph pardons his brothers, he reveals to them the secret, the ways in which God, as he's come to understand the Almighty God of Abraham and Jacob, has had his hand upon him and brought all these things to pass.

Not so that Joseph himself is excusing the sin of his brothers but overarching their sin with the sovereignty of God and saying, despite what you did, however terrible it was, God in his great grace has caused the fallout to be as it is so that I can use my influence and my power for you and in the purposes of the Lord. So you see how charged with this information these brothers are not only just pardoned, they feel abundantly pardoned and they have this desire to go and tell their father just what has happened to Joseph. And what's more, they have this particular information that Joseph himself is concerned to have them be where he is.

Hurry back, verse 9, to my father and say to him, this is what your son Joseph says. God has made me Lord of all Egypt. Come down to me.

Don't delay. You shall live in the region of Goshen and be near me. You, your children and grandchildren, your flocks and herds and all you have, I will provide for you there because five years of famine are still to come.

Look, when you first came to know the Lord, you never appreciated the mechanics of it. You didn't realize that God had gone ahead preparing, softening the ground so that ultimately he would reveal himself to you. But when that happened, what were the consequent blessings that came your way? Well, you knew the nearness of God, his presence.

You knew God supplying your need, his provision. You have known God guaranteeing your safety, his protection. What was it that these brothers and their father required more than anything else with the seriousness of the situation as it literally was in those days? Protection.

The presence of Joseph. The provision which he alone could make. And so he sends his brothers back to father and says, come down.

Come down to be near me. As Jesus says, don't you understand to each one of you dear friends this morning, I will never leave you. I will I've accepted the apologies that you've tended for the sins that you've committed and I've forgiven you.

I mean, that in itself would be tremendous, wouldn't it? But he goes beyond that, not just the pardon, the abundant pardon, not just wiping the slate clean of your sin, but saying I want you near me. I want to protect you. I want to provide for you.

So abundant this pardon. I just wished I had the words to disclose to you the feelings of my own heart as this chapter gives me an insight into the affections of God. And it's so necessary, isn't it? That the brothers tell their father this good news in such a way that he responds and they too are so convinced that they'll all come down to Joseph because otherwise there's no other option.

Verse 11, the latter part, otherwise you and your household and all who belong to you will become destitute. There was only one way in which Jacob and his sons and the line of Abraham could be preserved. There were no other alternatives.

There's only one way whereby you can be saved. God has spoken. It's an eternal word and he's not going to qualify it at all.

There is one name given under heaven amongst men whereby you must be saved. You can try all the philanthropy in the world. You can read all the philosophies that there are.

You can be a decent person as best you can. But if you fall short on responding to the offer of salvation which God puts to you through Jesus' son, then your future is hopeless, destitution. There's only one way.

I am the way, the truth and the life. The only way into the father's house is through Jesus. And Jesus offers guarantee for your eternal security.

In my father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.

Here is Joseph and he's promising before Pharaoh has actually come on the scene, he's promising a part of the land of Egypt to these brothers, not so in their father. Joseph doesn't have to take reference from Pharaoh. But when Pharaoh gets the intelligence as to what's been going on in Joseph's palace, he comes through.

He's overjoyed that the brothers are present in front of Joseph and he makes legal what Joseph has already intimated. Yes, come down to this particular tract, the best land in Egypt, I'll give it to you. Pharaoh and Joseph were one in heart, as the father and the son are one in heart.

You gave me these, says our Lord Jesus, speaking of the innumerable company of men and women for whom he died. You'll never separate me from them. You will make it possible that I won't lose one of them.

I want them to be with me where you are so that they may behold our glory. Joseph and Pharaoh are one in heart. The son and the father are united in their concerns for the salvation of the world.

And Joseph wants to give the brothers the most tangible positive proof to demonstrate that when they get back to Jacob, what they are telling him is true. And so what does he do? Well, he selects the equivalent to a Mercedes-Benz or a BMW. Translated somewhat unenthusiastically in verse 19 of the 45th chapter as a cart.

Take some carts from Egypt. The AVI, I think, soups it up and gives us wagons. I think I would prefer chariots.

The covered chariot of the Egyptians, not known in Palestine, perhaps with some of the Egyptian hieroglyphics beautifully inscribed on parts of these chariots. So that when Joseph sees this, sees the entourage that has accompanied his sons back from Egypt, he will appreciate that there is tangible proof that what his boys are saying is indeed true. Because God wants you and me, by the change in our personalities, to convince men and women that we have met up with his son.

That we have in part been enriched in the way that other people are not enriched. A peace, a joy, a patience. All those fruit of the Spirit adorning our lives so the doctrine that we proclaim is illustrated by the people that we are.

Jacob was to be convinced because of what he heard and what he saw. But what's more, Joseph is very concerned that having extended this pardon which is abundant to his brothers, that they bask in a good relationship, one with the other. And so he says to them in verse 24, he's a master pastor and psychologist, is Joseph.

He sent his brothers away and as they were leaving he said to them, don't quarrel on the way. Human nature, isn't it? You may have met up with Jesus, but it doesn't mean immediately you like him. And it's the tendency of immature people to fall out.

You can imagine Reuben perhaps talking to his brothers on the way back and saying, well I never wanted Joseph to have been imprisoned in the first place. It was me who was against it. I was going to release him.

You can imagine Judah coming in and saying, well if it hadn't been for me he'd have died. I suggested that he should have been sold and at least that preserved his life and so on and so forth. So possible for those who have been abundantly pardoned then to fall out with each other.

And to put it bluntly, it's daft. Really, forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. You can't take the former, are you listening? Without the latter, you bear a grudge in your heart for months or for years and all you do is sow your spirit.

You never enter into the fullness of an abundant pardon. You are forgiven. And as you forgive, so you prove the genuineness of the salvation that you've entered into.

You see, there's nothing that will enhance the cause of God in a local church or in the Church of Jesus worldwide than the unity of brothers and sisters. How good it is for brethren to get dwelled together in unity. Why? For there the Lord commands the blessing.

Are you hearing? Are you doing all you can to preserve the unity amongst the saints? To die to yourself and grudges that you may have had in the past. To pull your love and your affection for one another so that together we can go back and tell our Jacobs about what we've discovered in Egypt. Our God pardons, no.

He doesn't just pardon. He abundantly pardons. He wants you to feel beyond any reservation or doubt at all that you belong to Him, that the past has been dealt with, that your future is secure in Him.

And He wants you together to be able to tell others of this. Thank God for Joseph and all he illustrates about the purposes of God for the children of God in the New Testament era. And all God's people said.

Let's sing.