Genesis 40.
WE have Joseph in the hands of the Gentiles to-night. The Ishmaelites, after buying him of his brethren, bring him down to Egypt, where he is sold to Potiphar, captain of the guard. Then, for many years, there is nothing heard or seen of Joseph’s brethren, excepting what we have in chapter 38, concerning Judah. They typify, as we have seen, the Jewish nation, who, since their rejection of Christ, have had “Lo-ammi” (not My people) written upon them. They are like what is called in railroading, a “dead” train — sidetracked somewhere, and removed, for the time being, from the schedule.
In Judah’s course, as recorded in chapter 38, we have the Jews’ present moral condition shown us. As he was the responsible leader in the betrayal of Joseph, he becomes the representative of them all. So we find him wandering among and mixing with the Gentiles, just like Israel at the present day. He marries a Gentile woman named Shuah, which means “riches.” She bears him three sons, whose names are strikingly significant. Er means “enmity”; Onan, “iniquity”; and Shelah, “a sprout.”
Shuah, riches, is what we see everywhere among the Jews. They appear to be remarkably successful in the accumulation of wealth, and can make money where a Gentile would starve, or speedily become bankrupt. It is perhaps true what is said, that the Jews hold the purse-strings of Europe, and no power on that continent can undertake a war without obtaining the necessary cash from the Jewish money-kings and bankers.
Er is said to mean enmity, and the old-time enmity of the race against the Christ of God seems as much alive to-day as it was on the day when they cried in their hearts’ hatred “Crucify Him I crucify Him!” The mere mention of the name of “Jesus of Nazareth” to many of them is sufficient to make their eyes flash or cause them to hiss some awful malediction from between their gnashing teeth.
Onan is iniquity, and the dishonesty of the average Jewish merchant is proverbial. They seem, in their business, to be given up to lying and cheating; though, strange to say, outside their shops, in their private life, they seem as morally upright, if not more so, than the ordinary Gentile.
Shelah is the last son born, and his name is said to mean “a sprout.” The now outcast people shall yet know a national revival. Israel is the fig tree that putteth forth her leaves. Their long, dark winter will soon be past, and their spring time of sprouting will have come; (see Matthew 24:32-3532Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh: 33So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors. 34Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled. 35Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. (Matthew 24:32‑35); Song of Sol. 2:11-1311For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; 12The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land; 13The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away. (Song of Solomon 2:11‑13)). And the inspired chronicler is careful to tell us Shah’s birthplace. “He was at Chezib when she bare him.” Chezib means “false.” And the sprouting of the nation will take place at a time when false prophets and false Christs shall abound, the culmination of which will be the arch false Christ — the Antichrist. And the nation will have falsehood imposed upon them then as has never yet been done.
So much, then, for the Jew since his rejection of Messiah. They betrayed Him into Gentile hands, and in the chapter read to-night we have Christ’s sufferings under the power of the Gentiles pictured. Joseph in the pit and Joseph in prison present to us two sides of the picture. Cast into the pit, Joseph typifies Christ’s sufferings at the hands of the Jews; immured in the dungeon, he shows us Christ mocked and crucified by Gentiles. Both are necessary to complete the picture; for we see, from Acts 4:2727For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together, (Acts 4:27), that both Jew and Gentile had their part in doing “whatsoever they listed” to God’s holy servant Jesus.
The pit into which Joseph was cast by his brethren was empty; “there was no water in it,” we read. But oh, the awful pit into which his Antitype descended was no empty pit. It was full, full to overflowing with the dark, cold waters of death. “All Thy waves and Thy billows are gone over Me,” He cried from the depths of that whelming flood. And it was for sin He suffered thus, for your sin and my sin, fellow-man. And faith can say, “He died for me; it was for me that Jesus Christ was crucified.” It is then, and then only, that the mighty truth of it all strikes home to the heart. I know a navy surgeon, a Christian, who one Lord’s day morning was reading the 19th chapter of John. He read down to the 16th verse —” Then delivered he Him therefore unto them to be crucified” — and stopped. He could read no further. Tears blinded his eyes, and he could but sit and sob. I tell you, sinner, this is no “woman’s weakness.” It is the mighty power of the measureless love of Christ bowing the hearts of the strongest of men, who know it was for them that Jesus was “led as a lamb to the slaughter.” Spurgeon said, just before his death, “There are four golden words I have lived by, and by which I am now content to die — ‘Jesus — died — for — me.’” He died for sinners, all glory to His name, and so I know it was for me. Who of those here to-night can say, “It was for me”? Oh, claim it for yourself by faith! Appropriate it to yourself and shout,
“ ‘Tis done, the great transaction’s done!”
You will recollect that Joseph’s brethren stripped him of his coat of many colors ere they hurled him into the pit. The many-colored coat, we saw in the introductory address, was a mark of renown, or superior dignity or excellence. And Jesus not only died, but died “the death of the cross” — a death of shame and ignominy. It was like our modern hanging. And you know, if one of your ancestors, however remote, was known to have been hanged, how ashamed and humiliated you would be made to feel by it. The Jews might have killed our Lord by stoning (I speak as a man), or in some other way; but this would not have pleased them as well as to see Him “numbered with the transgressors.” “Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree,” Scripture had said. And the persecutors of the Son of God were not content until they had stripped Him, so far as it lay in their power, of everything suggested by the many-colored coat of Joseph — His dignity, His moral excellence, His honor; everything, in fact, on which guilty hands.
“Every mark of dark dishonor
Heaped upon His thorn-crowned brow,”
We often sing. Yes, they stripped Him; but like a sheep dumb before her shearers, He opened not His mouth. He meekly submitted to the mockery and humiliation, and God has in consequence “highly exalted Him, and given Him the name which is above every name,” Hallelujah!
Before entering upon the chapter before us to-night, I wish to say a word on Joseph’s temptation in the house of Potiphar. I am not sure about its having any typical import, though it is certainly in marked contrast with what we have in the chapter just before. It seems as if there might be some sort of connection between the disgraceful conduct of Judah in chapter 38, and the chaste behavior of Joseph in chapter 39.
Both chapters are wholesome reading, though I might not care to read either in public. But this is no reason why we should taboo them. Matters may be discussed in private, concerning which we preserve a studied silence in public, as, for example, the more private affairs of the family, or subjects relating to certain departments of medical science. A thing is not necessarily evil because it cannot be discussed or mentioned in public conversation. So with certain portions of God’s word. “Every word of God is pure,” we read, though it might not be wise in this age or land to read it all before a promiscuous audience — I say, “in this age or land.” I have a note in the margin of my Bible just at these 38th and 39th chapters of Genesis, showing why I thus qualify my statement. You will pardon me if I read it. It is taken from Neil’s “Palestine Explored.” He says, “They (Easterns) still, as in ancient times, use the greatest plainness of speech throughout the Holy Land. At first, a Western sense of delicacy is greatly shocked. Things, the very mention of which decency forbids amongst us, are there spoken of freely before women and children by people of the highest class, and of the greatest respectability and refinement.... Seeing that the Bible purports to be an Eastern book, written in the East, and first and for long ages only addressed to Easterns, it could not possibly be genuine if these very matters which have given rise to such blasphemous cavils were absent from its pages.” A man went into a book store not long since, and asked for a Bible “with all the nasty things left out.” Poor man; he will some day know that the “nasty things” were in his mind and heart, not in God’s pure and holy Word. “Unto the pure,” Paul writes,” all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled” (Titus 1:1515Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled. (Titus 1:15)). How long-suffering and gracious is God, to endure all these hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him,” and against His Word, which He says He has magnified above (or, according to) all His name. Rent, ye cavilers, ere you discover too late the uncleanness and immorality to be in your own depraved heart, and not in God’s holy Book. It was holy men of God who spoke these things, as they were moved to do so by the Holy Ghost. “Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way?” one asked long ago, who knew by personal and painful experience what a terrible thing moral defilement really is. Hear his answer: “By taking heed thereto according to Thy Word.” And it takes clean water to wash a dirty pair of hands, as everybody knows.
But the Bible can take care of itself; it needs no vindication from me, or from any man. I only speak these things that you may be saved from judging that which God has decreed shall in the coming day judge you.
Now for our chapter. Joseph, because he continued steadfastly to resist temptation, is falsely and foully accused by his temptress, and is cast into prison. It is just like the world; they will first do all in their power to entice a Christian from faithfulness to Christ; and if he resists, and stands firm, they will turn about and begin to persecute and slanderously report him. Peter speaks of this. Writing of the sins of the unsaved, he says, “Wherein they think it strange that ye run not with them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you” (1 Peter 4:44Wherein they think it strange that ye run not with them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you: (1 Peter 4:4)). And I have sometimes thought that in Joseph’s resistance of temptation, and his consequent accusation and suffering, we might see a faint foreshadowing of our Lord’s temptation, and the outcome of it. You know they would have made Him a king on one occasion, and sought in other ways to flatter Him and turn Him from the path of duty and obedience to His Father’s will. After His first temptation by the devil directly, we read that Satan left Him “for a season.” So far as we know, he never attempted to attack our Lord in that immediate way again. But we are sure that he must have returned to tempt Him again (as he had only left Him for a season), and it must have been through the instrumentality of men. The offer of the crown of Israel without the cross, and the desire of the multitude to have Him consent to make common cause with them, was, I have little doubt, of Satan. But, like Joseph, He refuses all these blandishments, and, as a result, His flatterers and professed admirers become His accusers, and He is made to suffer for His faithfulness.
So in Joseph in prison we see the suffering Christ. And we see two others suffering with him — Pharaoh’s two officers, his chief butler and his chief baker. But they do not suffer like Joseph; he suffered innocently, but they, in all probability, were receiving the “due reward of their deeds,” like the two thieves crucified with Christ. Joseph was ruler in the dungeon, and the verdict of the conscience of his co-prisoners must have been, “This man hath done nothing amiss.” The base woman’s husband evidently did not really believe his wife’s foul lie. It was perhaps only to save appearances that he made a show of punishing Joseph. If he really believed her story, it is inconceivable why he should not have had this Hebrew slave immediately put to death. He probably knew her character pretty well. This is the only manner in which his great leniency towards Joseph can be accounted for, it seems to me. And this is just why Pilate was so slow in giving his consent to have “the Lord of glory” crucified. He knew the character of His accusers well; and he did not really believe Him guilty of death. And only as a matter of policy (alas for him!) did he at last pronounce the death-sentence upon the Holy One.
Here I wish to note a contrast in the conduct of two women in connection with the sufferings of the innocent type and Antitype of which we have been speaking. Both are wives of high officers of two of the most powerful empires the world has ever known — Egypt and Rome. The tendency of the record of the shameful wickedness of Potiphar’s wife is to leave her sex under a cloud; the episode of Pilate’s wife retrieves it fully. We read, “When he (Pilate) was set down on the judgment-seat, his wife sent unto him, saying, Have thou nothing to do with that just man; for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of Him” (Matt. 27:1919When he was set down on the judgment seat, his wife sent unto him, saying, Have thou nothing to do with that just man: for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him. (Matthew 27:19)). Who knows but what it was a pious Jewess Pilate had married? or, if a Gentile, that a spark of faith had not been kindled in her bosom by our ever-merciful and wonder-working God, who “is not the God of the Jews only, but of the Gentiles also.” Anyway, she braved her husband’s displeasure in order to persuade him to withhold his consent to Christ’s crucifixion, without which they could not lawfully have put Him to death. (See John 18:3131Then said Pilate unto them, Take ye him, and judge him according to your law. The Jews therefore said unto him, It is not lawful for us to put any man to death: (John 18:31).) The wife of the Roman pleads for the Just; the Egyptian’s wife persecutes. Hebrew historians have given us the record of this contrast; and a poet (one of our own) has penned the spirit of it:
“First in the transgression, and
First at the Saviour’s tomb.”
Let us look now at the dreams of the chief butler and the chief baker in prison. They dream them both in one night; and when Joseph comes in to them in the morning, he notices that they look sad. And they are sad because they do not understand their dreams. They seem to have felt that in some way or other there was a connection between their dreams and their destiny; and because they are not sure of what that destiny is to be, they are “sad.” And well they might be. And some of you are sad to-night for the self-same reason — you do not know your destiny. Yea, how many more ought to be sad, but are not. You do not know that you are saved, and therefore you do not know where you will spend eternity. And while that question remains unsettled, ‘tis folly to be otherwise than sad. For what if hell should be your everlasting portion? And it must be heaven or hell, remember. The old Welsh preachers used to picture heaven and hell as a stopped clock. The believer’s eternity, they said, was like a clock that had stopped at high noon, in endless day and brightness; the Christ-rejector’s was like a clock stopped at midnight, in “the blackness of darkness forever.” Where shall yours stop, sinner? Stop somewhere it must; and what if it should be at midnight, and the outer darkness be your everlasting portion?
“Eternity, where? oh, eternity, where?
With redeemed ones in glory, or fiends in despair?
With one or the other —
Eternity, where?
Friend, sleep not, nor take in the world any share,
Till you answer the question — Eternity, where?”
“I’m going — I don’t know where!” a poor dying sinner once cried, as he felt himself like a man being carried over a dam. You too may soon slip over, sinner. May God awaken you! There is such a place as hell, just as the Bible tells us. Somebody has said, “If there isn’t, there ought to be.” But there is no “ought to be” about it. God has told us of it in His Word. I am not here to prove it; God does not send His servants to prove His Word to sinners; He commands them to preach it. And man’s conscience bears witness to the truth of it, as Scripture says: “The expectation of the wicked is wrath.” That is every Christ-rejector’s expected end — “wrath,” “wrath to come,” “wrath from heaven,” “the wrath of God.” Oh, how can you be gay when, for aught you know, you may be standing at hell’s very door! May God make you serious. The very thought of eternity — that man must live forever somewhere — is enough to sober any person who will give the subject half a minute’s time.
“But,” you say, “who but God knows where we shall each go when we die?” God knows, to be sure. Joseph says to the downcast butler and baker, “Do not interpretations belong to God?” And all that any of us can possibly know about these things must be revealed to us by God. And He has revealed to us how any man may know where he shall spend eternity. His Word, the Bible, gives us a perfect delineation of our destiny. You may know yours if you just listen attentively to how the chief butler and the chief baker learned theirs.
When Pharaoh’s officers confess to Joseph the cause of their sadness, he encourages them to repeat to him their dreams. This they do. The chief butler tells how he saw in his dream a vine of three branches. This vine buds, blossoms, and bears fruit — ripe grapes. Pharaoh’s cup is in his hand, and he presses the ruby juice of the grapes into the cup and gives the cup into the hand of Pharaoh. Joseph interprets the dream, and promises him deliverance.
Then the chief baker, when he saw that the interpretation of the butler’s dream was good, ventured to tell his. He says, “I also was in my dream, and, behold, I had three white baskets on my head: and in the uppermost basket there was of all manner of bakemeats for Pharaoh; and the birds did eat them out of the basket upon my head.” And Joseph tells him plainly that the gallows is his doom.
Now what does all this mean? For it must mean something — there must be some symbolical meaning to be attached to the narrative of these dreams, and their interpretation. If not, they are of little more service to us than idle tales. I make this assertion as a challenge to those literalists who deny that there is anything symbolical or figurative in Scripture narratives of this description, and call this method of ministry fanciful. If we are mistaken, let them tell us why such stories occupy so large a place in Scripture, or what profit they propose to get for themselves or others from the study of them?
We see the gospel pictured in these dreams. The chief butler sees that in his dream which speaks of the blood (the juice of the grape). And he was delivered. The chief baker, on the other hand, dreams of that which at once reminds us of human righteousness, the white baskets. He saw only what he had labored to produce, the bakemeats. And he is hanged. The chief butler sees something ready to his hand, the grape-clusters; and these he takes advantage of and presents to Pharaoh as the blood of the grape. The fowls of the air devour the offering of the baker. Here we have “the only two religions” symbolized — that which makes everything to depend upon the blood of Jesus, and that which ignores the blood and trusts to human righteousness.
Each had its origin at the very beginning of human history. Abel brought to God a bleeding sacrifice, and was accepted. Cain brought of the fruits of the ground, and was, with his offering, rejected. His present, no doubt, looked beautiful to the eye of man, made up, probably, of beautiful flowers, luscious fruits, and ripened vegetables. He had toiled patiently to obtain them; but it would not do for God. It was not acceptable. The blood was wanting. From his whole offering not one drop of blood could have been extracted. Abel brought of the firstlings of his flock. See it, all dripping with crimson-gore! It is not a sight to draw forth admiration, naturally. The sight of blood will turn many people sick. Most have an aversion to it. Oh, how these pictures speak Let me apply these types. Take some characters we know: what fruits and flowers are cultivated in their lives Some are known to fame as painters, poets, philosophers, and even philanthropists. Some, alas, are preachers. They ignore, reject, and even scorn, the Scripture doctrine of atonement by the blood of Christ. “Natural religion” — just what the heathen know and believe in — is their trust. Their creed is but a system of ethics, borrowed largely from the Bible, the central core of whose teaching (the blood) they deny. “I’m not going to make a slaughter-house of my pulpit,” said a popular “divine,” when reproached for leaving the blood out of his preaching. Some contemptuously speak of the doctrine of salvation by the blood as “the butchery theory of the atonement.” “Woe to them! for they are gone in the way of Cain,” God says. They presume to draw nigh to God on the ground of what they are in themselves and what they have done, and scorn to trust to the work and merits of another, even Jesus Christ and His atoning sacrifice. They deny, or ignore with silent contempt, the teaching of the Bible as to the Fall of man. Human depravity has no place in their belief.
They speak much about the universal fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man. Their hymns are being taught and sung largely in our public schools. It is all mawkish sentiment, and the frown of God is on it all, let me assure you. They may call Him “the all-Father,” but He will have none of it. He has decreed and determined “that all men should honor the Son even as they honor the Father “; but this these Unitarian infidels refuse to do. “The all- Father”! Why, the “Almighty God” of the open sinner is a hundred times less blasphemous than this Cainite slogan; for I know not what else to call it. All men are “by nature the children of wrath,” Scripture says; and none are God’s children but through “faith in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:33Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. (Ephesians 2:3); Gal. 3:2626For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:26)).
Cain’s character had nothing whatever to do with his rejection by God. Abel and he were both born of fallen parents, outside the garden of Eden. God made a difference between the brothers because of the difference in their offerings; and their offerings were the expression of the doctrine of their hearts. Hebrews 11:44By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts: and by it he being dead yet speaketh. (Hebrews 11:4) makes this plain beyond the possibility of contradiction. We read there, “By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts: and by it he being dead yet speaketh.” Let him speak to you, my friend, and learn from his example that there is no approach to God by sinful man but by the precious blood of Christ. Why, the blood is everywhere in Scripture! Why did Noah take seven pairs of clean animals into the ark, but to have them to offer in sacrifice after the flood, until others should be born and grown? A ram was slain upon the altar in substitution for Isaac on mount Moriah. The blood of a lamb secured the first-born of Israel in Egypt on the night of the Passover. The book of Leviticus is full of blood. And it is in this book that we have the way of man’s approach to God minutely set forth. And so all through the Bible. The token of Rahab’s scarlet line runs through the very heart of the Book from Genesis to Revelation. For even in that last of the sixty-six books of the inspired collection the blood is repeatedly mentioned. God does not want us to forget the blood. All men have need of it. Popular preachers may affect contempt for it, but God-sent evangelists are like the bride of Solomon’s Song. The king says of her, “Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet.” Then he immediately adds, “and thy speech is comely” (Song of Sol. 4:33Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet, and thy speech is comely: thy temples are like a piece of a pomegranate within thy locks. (Song of Solomon 4:3)). Yes, God delights to have His servants testifying constantly of the blood. Such speech is comely in His ears. He wants me to proclaim it in your ears to-night. “Without shedding of blood is no remission.” “It is the blood that maketh atonement for the soul.”
And we know it is the only remedy for sin. A brother tells how, when traveling in India some time ago, he was brought in contact, on the train, with a cultivated Brahmin. After some little discussion concerning Christianity and the religions of India, the Brahmin offered the brother a few pages of his sacred books, the Vas, to read. He read them, and was surprised at the exalted and beautiful poetry they contained. When he returned them, he was asked his opinion of them. He confessed frankly that he was surprised at finding them to contain such very fine poetry and sentiment. “But,” said he, “it lacks what all your sacred books, and all your religions, outside the Bible and Christianity, lack.” “What is that?” the native asked. “They contain no remedy for sin,” was the reply. Yes, that’s the lack with culture, godless education, rationalism, ritualism, and all the makeshifts and substitutes for the gospel in the land to-day — they provide no remedy for sin. And the sin-question is the burning question for a guilty race to stand up to and have settled. And nothing can settle it but the blood. “And the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanseth us from all sin.” So in his dream the butler sees what stands for the blood, and gets his liberty and reinstatement into Pharaoh’s favor.
Let us have a look at the chief baker now. He beheld in his dream, as we have said, what stands for human righteousness — white baskets and bakemeats prepared by his own skillful hand. And oh, what baskets of good things, as they suppose, are self-righteous sinners all around preparing for God’s acceptance! One will
“In his innocence glory, Another in works he has done.”
It is something they have done, are doing, or what they promise or expect to do. It is anything and everything but what Christ has done upon the cross. And this is not confined to Rome or paganism, as you might suppose, but is common to all communities, even where the Bible is read and preached from. It is well-nigh universal. But God’s word says salvation is “not of works, lest any man should boast”; it is “to him that worketh not,” in fact. “By grace are ye saved through faith.” “Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace.” “And if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace.” These are all, word for word, quotations from the word of God, and I might go on multiplying them. God has spoken fully and plainly on this subject; and if men miss heaven at last by “trusting (like the Pharisee) in themselves that they are righteous,” it will be because they have closed their ears to the truth, that they might hear and believe only their own heart’s lie.
What, after all, is creature goodness? God has told us; hear His verdict as to it: “All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.” You had better read that for yourself. It is found in Isaiah 64:66But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. (Isaiah 64:6). Not very flattering, is it? He calls your very best nothing but “filthy rags;” not rags merely, which may sometimes be excused, but filthy rags, all stained with sin. Think of a man seeking an entrance into Buckingham Palace clothed in filthy rags! But it is ten thousand times more futile to expect to be admitted into the palace of the “Great King.” It would be considered a marked insult to the king of England to attempt to approach his throne in filthy rags. Yet men vainly imagine they can stand before the throne of God as they would not dare to appear before an earthly potentate. Alas for their low, mean thoughts of the holiness of God, and the exalted ideas they entertain about their own! “Woe is me, for I am undone!” cried the prophet Isaiah, when he in vision saw the Lord upon His throne, and heard the seraphs crying, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts.” Job was the best man on earth in his day; yet, when he finds himself in the presence of the Divine majesty, he exclaims, “Behold, I am vile. I abhor myself!” Ah, Pharisee, your boasted uprightness, your works of charity, your morality, and all that you trust to and glory in, is but like so many rags reeking with filth, and fit only for the fire. Repent! Own yourself to be what God says you are, an undone, lost sinner, and trust the cleansing, precious blood of Jesus Christ alone for salvation and acceptance before God. Do not even trust to your contrition of heart or your penitence; trust only in the blood.
“It is not thy tears of repentance, or prayers,
But the blood that atones for the soul.”
It is a common idea among men that the diamond is the rarest and costliest of gems; but it is a mistake. The precious ruby has six or seven times the value of the diamond. The diamond was known to the ancients; but Scripture always puts the ruby first. “Her price is far above rubies”; “the price of wisdom is above rubies,” it says. The old Book is right in gem knowledge, you see, as in everything it touches on. And a sinner’s tears of penitence are esteemed by God. There is joy in heaven over his repentance. But you must, by faith, see the ruby blood of Jesus through your diamond tears. Trust only the blood, I repeat, and you shall be saved.
What became of the bakemeats in the baker’s basket? Why, the fowls of the air (Scripture symbols of evil spirits) devoured them. Pharaoh never tasted one of them. And so with every sinner’s fancied righteousness. God will not have it. It is all defiled by sin; and when trusted in for heaven, it furnishes satisfaction to the devil and his evil angels. They may find pleasure in it (for it crowds out Christ), but God will not accept of it, make sure of that. The baker was hanged, and the very birds that devoured his bakemeats ate his flesh. Joseph says to him, “Yet within three days shall Pharaoh lift up thy head from off thee, and shall hang thee on a tree; and the birds shall eat thy flesh from off thee.” Awful end! fearful doom! And, self-righteous sinner, it is a sure forewarning of thine own. “Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree,” Scripture says. And the curse of God’s broken law is resting on your soul to-night; for it is written, “Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.” And if you die in this condition, you die a prey to demons who have helped by their lies to deceive and destroy your soul.
So we may know, you see, where we shall spend eternity, just as Pharaoh’s officers got to know how their affairs should end. Joseph told them. And the true Joseph, our Lord Jesus Christ, has told men where they are to go when they die. He says, “If ye die in your sins, whither I go ye cannot come.” This is plain enough. And He says, too, “If ye believe not that I am He, ye shall die in your sins.” This is solemn for all who deny our Lord’s eternal deity. They shall die in their sins. They may pride themselves on their ancestry, their Bostonian culture, their benevolence, their external rectitude of life; they may even speak piously of one they call “Jesus,” and hold him up as an example for all to imitate; but it is “another Jesus,” and not “the Christ of God.” But if they refuse to believe on Him as the eternal and untreated Son of God, they shall die in their sins, and where He has gone they cannot come. But to all who believe in His name, and trust His sacrifice for sin, He says, “Where I am, there ye shall be also.” And it will turn out just as He has said, you may depend upon it. It happened to the butler and the baker just “as Joseph had interpreted to them.”
Now just a word to Christians ere I close. Joseph says to the chief butler, after telling him the good news of his deliverance, “But think on me when it shall be well with thee.” And has not our Joseph said to us concerning the Lord’s Supper, “This do in remembrance of Me”? It was one of His last requests. Shame be upon us, then, if, like the chief butler, after hearing and believing the good news of our salvation, we forget Him. For we read, “Yet did not the chief butler remember Joseph, but forgat him.” In the broken bread we see His body bruised for us, and in the cup we see the blood by which our souls have been redeemed. O brethren, may we not neglect or grow careless as to this! And if any have, may you be moved to say, like the ungrateful butler, after years of neglect of Joseph’s request, “I do remember my faults this day.” Thank God, “it is well” with the believer — blessedly, gloriously well — for time and all eternity. Well, then, may we sing,
“O let Thy love constrain
Our souls to cleave to Thee;
And ever in our hearts remain
That word, ‘Remember Me!’ ”