Open—B. Conrad, R. Klassen
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
Please set the Savior for 228.
Nsnoise.
Nsnoise.
38213.
7.
Teen.
19.
We are.
Still going so hard on.
Love to come back all of our God she.
Nsnoise.
Great Forgeva is head of the body. We look to thee is that one from whom all ministry flows to each member according to thy grace. And we do thank thee that the thousands of thy sheep out of the snow each, one of thine out of the snow each.
Soul here this afternoon.
And intimacy.
As to every detail of our lives, and collectively too. And so we pray that Thou give us that which is suited to meet our needs, according to Thy heart of love towards us. Let us keep the feet of Thy Saints. We pray that, uh, that which is given to us would be used for the Spirit of God to keep us in that narrow way.
We, uh, own the tendency of our hearts, uh, to wander. And Lord Jesus, we pray that we might be.
Drawn close to the let us know the need whether doctrine, whether exhortation or comfort, edification until we just pray for the leading of the Spirit of God. I'll just give us that which is from thyself, from thy heart, and we ask this thy name or Jesus, Amen, Amen.
We turn to the 22nd Psalm.
So yesterday our our brother gave us.
Very wide-ranging.
Are we on here or do I have to? We're on OK.
Yesterday our brother gave us a very wide-ranging comprehensive.
Uh, uh.
Walk through a certain line of things having to do with election.
And uh, which which I thoroughly enjoyed and was edified by.
00:10:04
And in our little section of the meeting room afterwards, there were some conversation and, uh, and I could see there was another pockets too. And, and one of the brothers said, uh, you know, it's often, I've often asked myself in light of that truth, a little question, why me?
And without a show of hands, I suspect that it's pretty common in some of the experiences of life, particularly when we wake up and realize we are now a child of God, that we are saved and on our way to heaven. Why me? And so with picking up just a portion of the time, I would just like to return to three passages.
That have this expression in them.
The first in Psalm 22.
My God, My God.
Why hast thou forsaken me?
Why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?
Oh my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest or answerest not.
And in the night season and then not silent.
But thou art holy without that inhabitest the praises of Israel.
We have the Spirit of God in the book of Hebrews helping us with this passage in the 5th chapter.
By stating that the Lord Jesus in the days of his flesh, we could turn to it. Hebrews 5.
Verse seven. Who in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears unto Him there, was able to save Him from or out of death.
And was heard in that he feared though he were son.
Yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered.
Hebrews explains to us that he really was heard.
He was heard in that he feared for his piety.
In the 22nd home, I think that the, uh, the accurate translations read there. In the second verse thou answer is not.
The Lord Jesus's man is the author and finisher of faith.
No one ever walked through this world.
Imperfection.
His meat was to do his father's will and not his own.
And then we come to this solemn moment that our brother read some poignant and touching scriptures this morning about this time.
And in the integrity of her soul, or what the writer in Hebrews calls for his piety, he looks up to the God that he had served.
And he says why me?
Of all people, why me? Why am I being abandoned? Why do I look up to the heavens and they're like.
Silence and quiet like brass.
You and I know the story.
That without the work of the Lord Jesus, we could have no part with Him.
Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die. Adviseth alone.
And so he was God's elect.
And perfect servant, who from his youth was ready to die, and pressed on to that moment when he would offer himself as a sacrifice for sin. And yet still in all.
Still in all, when the moment came.
Think of it three times.
Separating himself.
From his disciples.
And the Spirit of God says with strong crying and tears.
00:15:01
Very, very few times.
In my life.
Have I ever heard?
A man cry strongly.
And we read in the Psalms.
The Spirit of God is pleased to take back the veil a little bit and to show us in passage after passage.
As though there was no question in the Lord Jesus, holy soul.
With complete dedication to do his father's will that he would not do it.
Yet still he felt all that great contradiction of sinners against himself.
And at that moment.
My God, my God, as the man Christ Jesus stood in the breach, Why hast thou forsaken me?
And you and I sang hymn after hymn this morning. It was so touching.
To respond ahead of time.
To the answer that the Lord Jesus will receive.
In the book of Hebrews it says he was heard.
He was heard in the way that it pleased God to answer him.
Him writer put it fiercely full the joy, as fierce the wrath. And in that coming day you and I are going to be present.
When we see him in the fullness of his joy.
He shall look upon the fruit.
Of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied. What an answer.
To that cry on Calvary's cross.
Why me?
Let's turn now to the book of Ruth.
2nd chapter of the Book of Ruth. Time doesn't permit us to develop the the account the story, but I'm sure it's known to most.
Ruth the Moabitess.
Married the Israelite who strayed with his family from the land of promise, from the land of bread, and goes into a the land of Moab, which in the language of it means what father?
Limelight dyes. The two sons die.
Naomi turns to her daughters in law that are now young widows and says just stay here. It's all a big wreck.
We're we're in modern language, she just said. You know, this is a train wreck.
Just stay here and do what you can. She just was content.
In the sorrow of her soul, to leave them in the land of what Father?
Moab and Scripture is a picture of the pride of the natural man to take care of himself.
What Father? Who needs a father that's Moat settled on his leaves, we read in the prophets.
And she was content to leave those girls there. But she herself goes back and we know that Ruth cleaved to her and comes back too. She, her hap was to light in the field of Boaz.
Who obviously is a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ, a mighty man of wealth.
But he wasn't just wealthy and powerful, there was kindness and goodness in his heart and he displays it towards Ruth. And so the second what me, if I can pick it out here in the second chapter.
In verse 10 after hearing Boaz's pronouncement.
That he wanted her to stay in his field.
Why?
Because he wanted to bless her.
You think, young people, that we tell you, you should continue on, gather to the Lord's name because we want to have you just kind of grid it out in some sort of grin and Barrett type of Christianity until the Lord comes, no.
00:20:02
Told her to stay there because he wanted to bless her.
It's a place of blessing around himself.
And so she fell on her face.
And bowed herself to the ground, and said unto him, Why have I found grace in thine eyes, that thou shouldest take knowledge of me, seeing I am a stranger? Why me?
Have you had that experience?
Maybe you were saved at 8 years old.
And you maybe were at the Lord's Table at 12 or 15. The brother I was riding with this morning, hitching a ride here, said he was at the Lord's table at 15.
Wonderful.
Maybe you haven't had this experience. Why me until you were 20? Doesn't matter.
But when we really did you notice in so many of the hymns this morning?
They kind of built on the ******* we were in, the chains that held us, our lost condition. Almost every him had that element in it and built up to the wonderful deliverance we've experienced in Christ.
You may have been raised in a Christian home. You may have been 4 generations gathered to the Lord's name with a name that is recognized from coast to coast. It's a great, wonderful legacy.
But you come in as a stranger nonetheless. You come in as a stranger, sinners of the Gentiles.
And we come in and I can remember when I was saved in my early 20s.
And you know, I may have said this before, I'm at the age now, I guess I repeat myself, but I got saved and I went back home to visit my parents and I said mom and dad. I guess I'm like the prodigal. I'm back, I'm saved.
My mother, I believe she's with the Lord. She is a was a Christian, a believer.
She didn't come across the room and throw her arms around me.
She said. We'll see.
It's really a good answer.
In a manner of speaking, we'll see. I had caused her a lot of pain and sorrow.
We'll see. And there's a sense in which even after we're saved, we need to be.
To display the fruit of who we are.
And whether she was conscious of that or not, that's the way she felt. We'll see.
And so is the first year and 2nd year and 3rd year. And the Lord led, and things that had no place in an upright person's life were no longer part of my life.
And the Lord led me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
Then it was apparent that something indeed had happened.
And so I'm back a couple of years later, and I'm going along as an upright person. I'm at the Lord's table.
And I'm sitting in a lecture with all kinds of other young people because I needed a trade and I was at school to learn my trade.
And I'm sitting there on the first day.
Huge lecture hall.
And that's the first time since I was saved.
That that question came into my mind. Why me?
Why was I so happy?
Why was I so blessed?
Somebody, an Angel could have walked up the the hallway in that, the amphitheater, in that lecture hall and said, Bruce, the Lord said it's time for you to go.
I'm ready, my life is a success completely already and I was happy and blessed. The tears came down my cheeks.
And I said to the Lord, why me about all these other people?
I don't know the answer to that.
I didn't get up here because I thought I had the answer to that.
It's because He loved me and because He's God and He's sovereign and He chose to bless me.
And I was running down a broad road, and so were you. And he said, You know what, that one's coming with me.
00:25:06
That's I foreknew him.
I have chosen him and now it is time to bring him to myself.
And the incompatibility or the gap between what we know of ourselves and what we were by nature.
And what he has already done, and the best is yet to come, is a huge gap. And the only thing that fills that gap, to my mind is worship.
Sense of what we were in a sense of the.
Pure 100% point 000.
Riches of the grace of God.
Is what has taken you and me as brands from the burning and given us to be sons of God.
And we can already sit in our chair, like the hymn writers put it. We stand accepted in the place that none but Christ could claim.
Totally unmerited favor. Why me?
We'll have eternity, I suppose too.
Enjoy that?
Gap, so to speak, between what we had earned and deserved in our wages of sin and what He has afforded to us.
Let's go to another Why me?
In the book of Job.
7th chapter.
The Book of Job.
Let's pick up the account.
In verse 12 of Job Chapter 7.
Am IA sea, or a whale that thou set us a watch over me?
When I say my bed shall comfort me, my couch shall ease my complaint, then thou scarce me with dreams, and terrifies me through visions, so that my soul chooseth, strangling and death rather than my life.
I loathe that. I would not live away. Let me alone.
For my days are vanity. Just to stop here. This is Job speaking to God and saying to God, would you please just leave me alone? Just let me swallow down my spit until I die.
You had low times in your life. This is a low time in Job's life.
What is man that thou art, that thou shouldst magnify him, and thou should set thine heart upon him, and that thou shouldst visit him every morning and try him every moment? How long wilt thou not depart from me, and let me alone till I swaddle down, swallow down my spittle, I have sinned. What shall I do unto thee? O thou preserver of men, why hast thou set me as a mark against thee, so that I am a burden?
To myself. And why dost thou not pardon my transgressions and take away mine iniquity? For now shall I sleep in the dust. Thou shalt seek me in the morning, but I shall not be.
Verse 20 again, Why me?
I suppose some of us have these kinds of why me experiences before we know that we're saved.
When the Spirit of God is working with us through the circumstances of life to bring us to a place where we can be blessed.
For others, perhaps these kinds of experiences take place after we are saved and we are walking through this world as believers. God is now our Father.
We are his child and he has an interest in our education and he Char has charged himself with.
00:30:04
With our care and our growth and development.
And this was the case, no doubt, with Job. We read that he was an upright, a righteous man, a man who had faith.
But God had more in mind for him. He wanted to bless him.
When Jacob was running away from the mess that he had made in his unbelief.
In seeking to gain the blessing, the birthright with Esau's hands.
He flees and he has a rock for his pillow and the Lord appears to him and he says, I'm not going to leave you go. I'm not going to let you go until I bless you.
And year and years and years and years went by.
And God did exactly what he said he was going to do. He brought him back. He wrestled him so that he could bless him. And at the end of Jacob's life, we know as he leaned on the worshipped on the top of his staff.
He said.
I'm a blessed man.
One of my close family members growing up.
Had a painful experience in life.
Her fiance was taken suddenly in death while on a medical mission to the.
High mountains of.
Bolivia.
There would be no marriage.
There was a funeral.
I had just been saved.
I was looking to the Lord. What do I say to this unsaved?
Relative.
So I went up to her. I don't remember what I said. It's been 40 years.
She said.
God. Don't talk to me about God. I met a God.
But that which he had allowed in her life was a prelude to tremendous blessing.
And whether it's something as dramatic as that or something or a series of disappointments.
The message I want to leave you with and remind myself before I sit down in a few minutes.
Is that God? For a child of God orders all the circumstances of our life. That's number one, and he does it for blessing.
Can a believer get to this place too? Like my relative who says I just want to be left alone? Yes, we can just say just leave me alone. I can remember as a.
From a young boy up until my early 20s, just.
Time after time I just kept getting the tap on the shoulder.
By circumstances.
And I knew I was being something was I knew I was being spoken to.
Even before I was saved.
And you as a child of God, you know when God brings in certain circumstances in your life.
That is for your blessing.
There's a pamphlet that BTP used to distribute. I don't know if they still have it.
It's I think the title of it is, it's called The Disappointments of Life. It's so worth reading.
I I'm gonna find that again.
And the point in it is it it, it says basically the the disappointments are life or the decrees of love.
They're the decrees of love.
And we he takes away this or he postpones that, or he says, no, I'm not going to bless you through the front door. I really have it in mind to bless you through the back door.
As Armstead Barry once said.
And so, as believers, we can.
Be fortified in our hearts with this knowledge. Are we still going to feel disappointed? Yes, the Lord felt disappointment. The Lord felt what it was like to have lover and friend put far from him in this acquaintance Into Darkness. He was troubled. He felt that. It's not wrong to feel that.
00:35:03
It's wrong to get discouraged and down under it.
Enact unwisely in the face of it.
In the Psalm 139, I think it's around the third verse. I want to cut this short.
The psalmist says Thou winnowest my path.
And if you look that word up, I think really what it speaks to is that.
You're can't think of an English word, but he he intelligently and consciously, with a view for our blessing and our latter end, organizes the circumstances of our life.
And so Paul could say when he was in the jail in Philippi, no, wasn't in Philippi, he wrote to the Philippians.
And he said I have learned.
When did he learn that? I don't think he learned it the first year or maybe two, but somewhere along the way he learned, he said. I have learned whatsoever.
Circumstance I'm in there with to be content.
This is part of the equipment, the toolbox, so to speak, the tools that you and I are going to need in this life if we're going to go through this life for God's glory and to be a blessing to others.
We had one of our children and I won't mention his or her name.
But he he seemed to have a little bit of a of a jumpy streak to him.
You know, a loud noise or a dog or something like that. And, and we, I can remember one time he's walking down the we had just done some business somewhere. We're walking down the sidewalk and there's columns holding up the, the little.
Ruth and he, I don't know if he saw a dog that was running this way and boom, a couple stitches there and did it again in the vessel meeting room. Boom, a couple stitches there looking over his shoulder. Don't look over your shoulder. I tell you what's over your shoulder, though.
Eric Bilkington once told us this in a relating a story about a brother that was on his deathbed.
And he's on his deathbed. He kept saying something about they got me, they got me, they caught me. And and his loved ones were around. What caught you? Who caught you? What's wrong? And he says they caught me. He said goodness and mercy have been following me all the days of my life, he says. And they finally caught me.
Well, I think of that, dear Eric, relating that story, because that's what's following you, those two sheepdogs, goodness and mercy, to do as good at our latter end. Take your circumstances from the Lord, the old brothers used to tell us.
And your difficulties to him?
He will never leave us nor forsake us. He's a counselor whose counsel is always perfect.
Let's close by turning to second Peter one.
While we get there.
You know, it's, it's so strange the way we get so surprised by circumstances when the Lord has gone so far out of his way to say to us so plainly.
In the world ye shall have tribulation.
But be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.
But in the world you shall have tribulation, and yet we get so surprised by it. It's our common portion and we need it for our growth and spiritual blessing, which God is more interested in than we usually are.
He's totally committed to your and my spiritual growth in this world and in this life right now.
In second Peter one.
Following up on this line of things that we have been chosen.
Let me jump in here.
In verse three, His divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue, whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises.
00:40:06
That by these you might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
And so this is the position of all of us as believers.
We are in a position of having escaped. We've been selected for that and we've been brought out of this world and we are now fellow citizens with the Saints and of the household of God, and we're strangers here.
And so now the young person says I'm saved. What do I do with my life? What's important now?
And so he says in verse five beside this giving all diligence.
And then there's a list. Add to your faith, virtue, or spiritual energy, and to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge temperance, to temperance, patience or endurance, and to endurance, godliness, and to godliness, brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness, charity.
Where, if these things be in you and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Verse 10 Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure, for if you do these things, you shall never fall.
Our brother laid before us a whole series of things that in a in a spiritually logical way.
Built us up to understand and justify God falling back on His own sovereignty to bless who He has chosen to bless. And if you are a believer here, you, not you now know, I hope, that it was 100% His sovereign action that said, in your dark soul and mind, let there be light, and now there's light.
We elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father. And now what? It's time for us to make Our Calling and election sure.
If you do these things, you shall never fall to press on, now that we have been elect with the confidence that.
He knows what he's doing and he loves us. Let us be seek to be more intelligent as to his ways with us, that we might go through this world being freer from all the fears and anxieties that can cripple us at times, freer to be more help to our brethren.
And more of a light in this Dark World.
Perhaps we could, uh, turn the Ecclesiastes chapter 3.
What our brother Bruce has said is really was what was on my heart. Didn't know whether to accept that it was said in a better way than I could or to underline it and so have patience with me if I'm virtually saying what he said. Ecclesiastes, chapter 3.
And verse one to everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under the heaven and we.
Let's go on to forsake of time, verse 10. I have seen the travel which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised in it. He hath made everything beautiful in His time. Also He offset the world, or that which is eternal in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end, and then.
00:45:22
Verse 14 I know that whatsoever God doeth, it shall be forever.
Nothing can be put to it, nor anything taken from it.
And God do with it the men should fear before him.
You know this matter of the sovereignty of God.
In His grace reaching down and and as we heard yesterday of lifting up, those of us who could not lift ourselves up or even would want to be lifted up.
And to make us his very own children, fellow citizens of the Saints of the household of God.
Oh, we marvel in such grace, but you know that this matter of sovereignty, it's something I believe that we're a good deal of our life learning and coming to appreciate.
I'd like to look turn back to job again because I believe that that's something that.
God wanted Job to learn, even if he wants us to learn it. It's just that with Job.
He started with a man that, uh.
He was God himself says he was perfect. You know, he wasn't absolutely perfect, only the Lord Jesus.
Is, but he was perfect.
As as good as any man has ever been, and God takes that man.
And let's look in, uh, Chapter 4 of Job.
And verse 6 and I, I don't have I meant to bring my new translation up, but it reads something like this. Is this? Is not this by piety like confidence and the perfection of thy ways, thy hope?
You know, our life has said many things that weren't right, but I think he touched something that was absolutely right here with Joel, Joel Goodman that he was. He was counting on God to recompense him accordingly as how he had conducted himself.
And when God allowed to happen to him, what did?
He couldn't understand that that's what he was resting on. That was his hope. That was his confidence. And suddenly we know what happened to him. Our brother said that yesterday, untold sorrow when he spoke of Job. How could we imagine what Job went through? And let's look at chapter 23, because I think it's this matter of the sovereignty of God that he was struggling with.
And we can too, and often do, perhaps.
Verse 10. But he knoweth the way that I take. When he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold. That was Joel's confidence. My foot happy, held in his steps. His way have I kept and not declined, Neither have I gone back from the commandment of his lips. I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food. Now God is obligated. I have done this.
Now he's obligated to.
Respond to me in kind. But in verse 13 he says, But He is in one mind, and who can turn Him, and what his sole desire even that He doeth, For He performeth the thing that is appointed for me in many such things are with him. Therefore I am troubled at His presence, when I consider I am afraid of Him.
For God maketh my heart soft.
And the almighty trouble with me.
He's of one mind. Yes, he is. He has a divine purpose, and we heard about that yesterday. He is predestined, predestinated us to be conformed to the image of his son. Isn't that wonderful? He's of one mind and he's going to accomplish what that mind is.
And Job was afraid of that, he said. I was afraid of that. I believe that that's really the thing that he feared.
00:50:02
Is it somehow God would not have to be?
Umm, treat Job in kind, but that he was sovereign, that he could do his own will. And you know, we fear the same thing, and we fear it because we don't know his heart. As our brother said, God exercises His sovereignty.
For our blessing.
But you know, and, and Job said, God maketh my heart soft. Why does he allow in our lives as our as our brother has brought before us, these things that sow, test and try us, these things that seem like they could have no connection with eternal blessing in his divine purpose.
He knows the way that he takes.
Jill said. And he does. And it's for you and I to rest our will and that perfect will of his. And you know, if we really believe, if we really believe that all his working with us is even amidst our failures, is that he's conforming us to the blessed image of his son.
Then why would we be afraid of him?
Why would we doubt him?
Why wouldn't we rather in any way we could be in sympathy with His sovereignty and say, as we had so beautifully in the Lord Jesus already, not my will, perfect will that it was, but thine be done?
You know God came in in spite of Job. Another thing Elias said to him was acquaint now thyself with him and be at peace.
And it really is only resting in the sovereign purpose and work of God that we will have peace.
He mentioned her brother mentioned, uh, Jacob.
You know, it's interesting that if you turn to Romans 9, where, where the Spirit of God is bringing before us the sovereignty of God and he shows us how that before, uh, Jacob and Esau were even born, God really says what he's going to do, that the elder is going to serve the younger, that that younger one is going to have his blessing.
Well, you say, well no doubt his mother told him that because as as Jacob comes along, he wants the blessing of God.
And through his conniving he he gets the birthright. He already had the blessing coming. God had purposed that.
But you know, in spite of the fact that that Jacob, God brings him out as a as a wonderful example of his sovereignty, you say, well, he would have a firm grasp of that. Instead, it seems like God gives us a picture of that dear man as he's because he's learning the sovereignty of God. I believe much.
The same way that that you and I learn it. It's really not much time, but let's let's go to chapter 37 of of Genesis.
Excuse me is umm.
Chapter 31 of Genesis.
We know how Jacob continued to, even though God said I will, I will, I will. He tried to get that blessing himself. He felt that it depended upon him. And we know how he did such foolish things even as to, to make those rods, thinking that through those rods he was going to come out ahead in regard to the cattle, uh.
In verse eight of chapter 31, he's, uh, umm.
Sorry, verse 10 I came to pass at that time that the cattle conceived. I lifted up my eyes, and I saw in a dream, Behold, the Rams which leaped upon the cattle were rings straight, and speckled, and gristled. And the Angel of God spake unto me in a dream, saying, Jacob. And he said, Here am I. And he said, Lift up now thine eyes, and see all the Rams which leap upon the cattle, that a ring strike speckled and gristled. For I have seen all that Laban doeth unto thee I am.
The God of Bethel, where thou anointest the pillar, and where thou St. avow unto me thou arise. Get thee out of his land. Return of the land, O thy kindred, and so on.
00:55:09
You know, Jacob, if you would have asked him, well, how is that working? You're all that energy you put forth to come out ahead, he would say it's working just like it's supposed to. It's quite a thing that came to me. But you know, in spite of his weariness, one day God allowed him to see Jacob. That isn't you. I'm fulfilling my promise to you. I'm fulfilling what is appointed for you, what I had for you before you were ever born. It's not you.
How many times do we struggle?
We want the Lord's blessing. And so how many times we think it's in our, it's, it's, uh, will be, uh, uh, acquired by our, maybe our faithfulness, maybe our diligence, maybe our striving. And we find the Lord is faithful and he says, that was me. How much energy and time we can spend before we realize the Lord is sovereign and he is going to carry out his purpose.
Uh, we come to, let's skip over a few, but to one our brother mentioned, umm, there's just a matter of meeting Esau and, uh, Jacob's planning and then all of a sudden there's a man that's wrestling with him and all how he wrestles all night.
You know you may wrestle.
With God in regard to His sovereignty.
And I hope you win.
You know, in Jose it says that that Jacob wrestled with God and he won. But if you would have come away from that match and you've seen Jacob hobbling off into the sunset, you would have said, uh, I think I know who won that match.
And the Lord said, yeah, Jacob can because he got a hold of him. And he said, I want, I want the blessing. And now he's crippled. He can't get it through his own strength.
But you know, maybe if he doesn't have strength, he at least could take care of his family and do things right for his family and provide for his family and God allows.
His sons meet up with Joseph and they don't know that Simeon's taken and put in jail and now Benjamin is required and all Jacob says all these things are against me.
Everything that I fought to, to win and get ahead of this famine has taken me down. And what about this blessing? What about this blessing? And now my family, all these things are against me. Well, we know the story. They weren't against him. It was the way God was working in spite of what Jacob was doing because he had already told Jacob he was going to bless him.
You know when when Jacob learns.
The God is sovereign and the beyond his wildest imaginations. His Son is ruler down in Egypt and he has all the provisions and he just needs to come.
I think it was such a tremendous thing that, that Joseph, uh, Jacob went through as he's this matter of the sovereignty of God is coming home to his soul and realizing that yes, God is working.
And he is. It's in view of my blessing. Well, you know, we would have thought he would just run down into Joseph's arms, but he didn't. He comes and he stops.
And God, who is working.
He's waiting on him, you know he's going to go down in a place where now he doesn't have any control at all. He's just, he's not even in the land.
He's just the subject of a king and foreign land. God says go, I'm God, I'm the one that appeared to you in Bethel. And he goes.
And you know, it's so wonderful. We spoke about From Glory to Glory.
When, when Moses says to God, show me now thy glory, God says, I'll show you my glory. I'm going to be gracious to whom I'm going to be gracious, and I'm going to be merciful to whom I'm going to be merciful. That's the sovereignty of God.
I can struggle with that, like Jacob and say, well, what about this? What does it mean for these people? And if that's so and that isn't fair and so on and you know.
I won't win then because God is God in order to be that. That's part of his glory. He will show mercy to who he is. So mercy he'll be gracious to whom he will be gracious. Well, he's his sovereignty is exercised for blessing and and Joseph or Jacob goes down into his to Egypt and you know, you just see him now. He's not striving now.
01:00:08
He's blessing and he goes into that mighty monarch of Egypt.
That man is very interested. What kind of a father does does Joseph have? And he sees this old man hobbling in to his court. He must have looked at his face.
He saw a happy old man, I'm sure of it.
So he he tries to well, how long, how old are you? Maybe touch on the pride of life or something like that. And and you know, that's all aside. Now he realizes that God is blessing him and he doesn't have to be anything in fact, anything but truthful. He says few and evil have been the year days of the years of my life. But you know, Pharaoh, I want you to know the blessing that I have. I know that God a blessing.
And he blesses Pharaoh, and he goes on, he blesses.
His grandsons, it says in Hebrew City, he rested on the top of his staff. Is that really Jacob? Yes, yes. He's come to lean on the sovereignty of God and he worshipped.
The sovereignty of God.
So what's going to produce the highest notes of worship? I believe in that coming glory. As our brother Bruce said, we'll keep right on saying, why me? Not in questioning God's wisdom or his ways, but in adoring worship.
We're going to say, As for God, his way is perfect.
And if, like Job, I was saying, well, I thought he was going to bless me, according to how faithful I was, I had been, oh, you'd say how, how poorly I would have been blessed. He had much more for me than that. He knows the way that he takes. He's made everything beautiful in his time. Nothing can be added to it and nothing taken away from it. And when we see it all.
In all, it's perfection. We'll just launch forth.
And wonder and praise that He's sovereign. And then that sovereignty was exercised for our richest blessing.
Our God and Father.
Our hearts are vowed.
Do we have such a God?
My heart, Sir.
And deep gratitude are gods that goddess reached down wretches that we were, wilful as we were.
And how to say I want to bless that one?
I wanna blossom eternally.
And our God and Father, how richly thou has blessed us.
And what lies before us?
Is only going to be the wonderful display of Thy loving heart. We thank Thee that we could come on it this very day. We do thank Thee for Thy ways with us along our Pilgrim pathway. Lord, we own our unbelief and my goodness, we own how we resist Thee. We own how we on subject we are and how willful we are, but we thank You that Thou are sovereign.
And thou will fulfill thy purpose of my counsel.
For thy own glory, for thy joy, for our blessing, we thank Thee, worthy and precious name of our Lord Jesus. Amen. Amen.