The testimony connected with Joseph properly begins from the time he is made governor of Egypt; and this event occurred shortly after the death of Isaac. Jacob is now dwelling in the land wherein his father was a stranger. Isaac dies, and Jacob occupies the place of testimony; but before his death, before Jacob is left alone to maintain it, his sons had, in their fearful moral declension, given evidence of their entire unfitness to support it. Their hatred of Joseph drives them to an utter disregard of their father's feelings; their malice must be consummated in spite of all barriers, even divine ones; for their father's love for Joseph only exasperated the evil that it would cheek Reuben the eldest may remonstrate, indicating that a spark of conscience remained; but it is in vain. Joseph is sold into Egypt; but this is not all. Gen. 37 details how degraded in every sense Judah had become, though there too the voice of conscience is not yet silenced.
The testimony is now transferred to Egypt in the person of Joseph: after thirteen years of sore and heavy afflictions in which he is disciplined according to the will of God for the post he should fill, he is called from prison to interpret Pharaoh's dreams.
We shall do well to bear in mind the way and manner of God at this time. The testimony for God had failed in the land of promise. The one whom God would use as His witness, and of whom He testified and forewarned by dreams, his brethren had refused; and not only refused, hating him the more for his dreams, they had determined on his death, and sold him into Egypt; while his father Jacob, who observed these dreams, was nevertheless unable to check the wide-spread iniquity of his children, and thus represents the faithful remnant; true, but unable to stem the torrent of evil. The testimony is thus diverted from its true place by the working of evil in those who should have supported it, and Gad's vessel is fearlessly and ruthlessly cast out. God, however, in His boundless mercy causes that the fall of Joseph's brethren should be the riches of the world, and His servant after the needed preparation; first a slave seven years to the captain of the guard, and afterward six years in prison, comes forth to maintain His name and truth-riches to the Gentiles-and in relation to His people who had dishonored Him in Canaan how much more their fullness. In the land of Egypt, entirely apart from the land that was promised them, God in His unchanging faithfulness continues the testimony, but where evil is allowed He cannot continue it, and when the force of intent and will is to get rid of the witness, the opposition is in reality against Himself. Hence it shows itself in its dire hate of the one chosen of God. There is no room or place for the testimony, when the instrument which God would use to maintain it, is rejected and refused. Thus was the Jew tried and found wanting. They saw no beauty in the only begotten of the Father. With wicked hands they crucified and slew Him. " Now they have no cloak for their sin; they have both seen and hated both me and my Father."
The unfaithfulness and feebleness of Isaac and Jacob in supporting the testimony was what first led to the open departure from the line and principles of it, in their children. The children or successors always expose, retributively, as I may say, the dereliction of their heads to whom was committed the truth of God. In Gen. 35 we get Esau the son of Isaac setting himself in rule and power in the world independently of God; and in Gen. 37 Judah is presented to us as morally degraded; so that we may say that in both the outward circle and the inward, the declension from their first calling is so great, that there could be no testimony for God; nay, the witness who walked in any power must first separate himself from those who assumed to be such, or rather from the position they occupied. The evil of the children of Jacob has now come to a head; they have sealed their iniquity by putting an end as they supposed to God's chosen vessel and the testimony only lingers in the land.
There is much interesting and important instruction for us in all this.
It is recorded in order that we may understand the ways of God. God's purpose from the beginning was to declare Himself; and in proportion as He declared Himself, the wondrous fact was established; that man, lost as he was, was an object of His love. God had raised up a testimony to Himself, and the purposes of His grace in Canaan as His own inheritance. While the witnesses walked in any truthfulness of conscience, grace and help were afforded them; so that in spite of many failures, there was still recovery, and they were continued in the place of testimony. The long-suffering of God in the history of testimony is very touching and instructive. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, each respectively had been borne with and restored; but now when the evil of the parents works unchecked in the children, it reaches its height in rejection of the chosen of God; the one whom he had ordained to be chief of the family. The solitary spark of the fear of God found in Reuben, God will respect, and in future mercy to the nation acknowledge; but He will not continue the testimony where it has been openly refused and rejected. Joseph the future witness must be led through many and deep trials to declare His name in a scene and sphere entirely new and untried. God, let us note, never foregoes His purpose; but when evil arises-departure from the principle on which it is based-in the place where He would testify of it., He turns aside to another place. We have many instances of this principle in Scripture. God's testimony springs up in Babylon when Jerusalem is in the hands of the Assyrian, because of Israel's apostacy. The grace of God in the gospel is carried out unto the ends of the earth when by the murder of Stephen the Jew had formally driven the testimony from the land. The principle is plain, that the testimony which God has set up must continue until He sets it aside; but if those to whom He has committed it prove themselves unworthy of it, He consigns it to other hands; and I believe, as a rule, effects a change of place as to it also.
Certainly the candlestick (not the light but the lamp which should hold the light), was removed from Ephesus, but God's testimony in and through the Church must continue until He Himself sets it aside. I would call attention to this principle, because I think it explains how in the history of the Church God has used a knot or company of saints at their start for testifying of His truth, which, after a time were superseded by another company more earnest and faithful. And so it must be, I am persuaded, to the end; so much so, that I should hold myself ready through His grace to attach myself, and to walk in company with any knot or company of saints who I saw were led of Him, and were empowered by Him to maintain His testimony. May we walk in such self-denying faithfulness, that we shall be ever ready to accompany the most faithful and earnest.
The principle I have dwelt on is distinctly set forth in the history of Joseph. The evil of his brethren was at its height and he is sold into Egypt! Let us ponder for a moment and survey how God's testimony is maintained at that period on the earth-a dark age we may say! It was the winter which was maturing His plant for an early and fruitful spring. See Jacob scarcely recovered from his sorrow at the death of Rachel, still only on his way to his father Isaac; and now in his seventeenth year, Joseph is sold into Egypt, and the testimony consequently is transferred thither; for he is the vessel of it chosen of God.
Many and varied are the trials to which he is subjected for thirteen years, whether in the house of Potiphar or in prison, but in each he shines brightly as God's witness, the rebuker of evil and corruption in the one, and the interpreter of God's mind and counsels in the other, himself the sufferer for righteousness' sake in both. What a dignity there is in such a witness, and what an ordeal must such an one be subjected to I Here is one, a slave in the house of the chief captain of the guard, not only resisting temptation, but exposing himself because he resisted it, to the malice of the ungodly, who could not corrupt or turn him aside from his path for God, and is thus a warning voice to the unrestrained evil in that day, if known only to Satan. There is something more than mere testimony here. It is not that the vessel chosen of God can at any time at once and openly assume and present himself as a witness, be he either a Paul or a, Luther; but there is a struggling for the very existence of the testimony in the hand of the witness who is called to endure because of the evil which had grown up among the people of God. He must wade through, as I may say, in suffering, all the evil in which he is found, bearing it on himself personally, as if it were all his own or caused by himself, even as it is said of our blessed Lord, of whom Joseph is so marked a type: " He bare our sicknesses and carried our sorrows." Joseph, cast out by his own and as one dead to them, is from that moment ever rising up from the dead, from the depths to which he is reduced, to the place where he can fully assume and maintain the testimony of God. The steps, slow, measured, and sorrowful by which he wended his way to that position have a voice for us. He first wins the confidence of the captain of the guard who sees that the Lord is with him, and that the Lord made all that he had to prosper in his hand. But though the world can bear God's witness while he contributes to its gain, when in true self-denial and fear of God he rebukes and refuses its unholy allurements, it cannot endure him, and stoops to every malicious device to compass his ruin. Thus after seven years' faithful service, Joseph is cast into prison, and for six years more in this new and sorrowful sphere, he, is acknowledged as God's servant. " The keeper of the prison looked not to anything that was under his hand, because the Lord was with him, and that which he did the Lord made it to prosper." Satan outwits himself in driving the witness from place to place. Like as Paul cast into the prison at Philippi there found the " Macedonian," so here Joseph, cast into prison at the instigation of unsuccessful corruption, not only sets forth in such a sphere what is the power and favor of God, but also is distinguished by Him as possessor of that which, hidden from man, belongs only to God. " Do not interpretations belong to God?" says Joseph to Pharaoh's officers, who are powerless to interpret their own dreams. But Joseph, the witness, has the mind of God, and he can say, " Tell me them, I pray you," and then declares the interpretation of them.
Two years longer he remains in prison but now his time was come: the ruler of the people sets him free. He had witnessed for God and declared His mind in humiliation. He is now to do so in the court of Pharaoh, and prove that he has the secret of God when all the magicians and wise men of Egypt had failed. Who can adequately portray the scene now transpiring in the court of the then best organized country in the world! All its wisdom and power are at a standstill, and are entirely ineffectual to resolve the difficulty which has presented itself, when a slave, reckoned as a malefactor, is called forth from prison and all the great and wise ones of the earth are silent and subject while this unknown one, as the witness of God, expounds the purpose of God! How wondrously and beautifully the testimony is raised up and renewed! All man's power and glory are placed in abeyance before the power and word of God in the Hebrew stranger. God as the God of mercy and compassion is declared to the whole world.
Joseph is now governor of Egypt and a witness to the whole world of the goodness of God. Dispenser of blessing and plenty in the time of famine, the wisdom of God which had distinguished him as a witness in humiliation is as pre-eminent in his elevation; and through him the God of Israel is heard of, owned, and feared in many a land, for all countries came into Egypt to Joseph to buy corn; and God thus declares Himself and the compassions of His heart through His faithful witness.
And not only to the world at large, to Joseph's father and brethren the mercy and faithfulness of God in a glorious manner are declared. Joseph's dreams must be verified, and the circle which had so failed as to the testimony and rejected the witness, must own him now as lord of all.
It is beside my subject to dwell on the deeply interesting and affecting way in which the lately rejected but now glorious one leads his brethren to estimate their own sin and bloodguiltiness in compassing the death of him now about to be revealed to them as their savior, inimitable as is the history in its detail; nor can I here trace it as typifying that of the true Joseph in the day of His power. My subject is that of testimony. It was in the ninth year of Joseph's governorship over Egypt that his father joins him. Israel said, " It is enough; Joseph my son is yet alive: I will go and see him before I die. And Israel took his journey with all that he had, and came to Beersheba, and offered sacrifices unto the God of his father Isaac. And God spake unto Israel in the visions of the night, and said, Jacob, Jacob. And he said, Here am I. And he said I am God, the God of thy father: fear not to go down into Egypt; for I will there make of thee a great nation: I will go down with thee into Egypt; and I will also surely bring thee up again: and Joseph shall put his hand upon thine eyes." Jacob had forfeited the place of testimony in Canaan; but still, as true of heart, he is to be blessed now in the place to which the testimony is transferred, and in connection with the witness-God's chosen one, whom his sons had rejected. All his blessing now (and he was richly provided for in Goshen) is apart from the land of promise, and in virtue of his connection with Joseph; but with the promise that, though God will chasten His people, He will eventually restore them to their true place and inheritance: He will bring them up again out of Egypt.
Jacob lived seventeen years in the land of Egypt, but now the time is come that he must die. (Gen. 47:2929And the time drew nigh that Israel must die: and he called his son Joseph, and said unto him, If now I have found grace in thy sight, put, I pray thee, thy hand under my thigh, and deal kindly and truly with me; bury me not, I pray thee, in Egypt: (Genesis 47:29).) His heart clings to the land of promise. In Joseph is his confidence, and to Joseph he looks to separate him from Egypt after death. " Bury me not, I pray thee, in Egypt And be said, Swear unto me. And he sware unto him." Jacob is sick, nigh unto death; his heart bound more closely than ever to the land. The testimony has revived, but not there, and his dependence is on him in whom it had revived-on Joseph, as the minister of God. And in this association of heart and spirit, Jacob is bright and full of divine wisdom. Joseph brings his two sons to him, and Jacob, after rehearsing how God had given to his seed Canaan for an everlasting possession, adopts them as his own" As Reuben and Simeon shall they be mine." Whenever there is faithfulness to God under any circumstances, there the purpose of God, according to His own will, engages the heart of the faithful. Joseph and Jacob are as full of Canaan and interested about it as if they were living there in the happiest association and had no painful reminiscences connected with it. God's counsel has its place in their hearts. Jacob gives the pre-eminence to Joseph; he is to have a double portion in the land, the true seat of testimony. " Moreover (he says), I have given thee one portion above thy brethren, which I took out of the hand of the Amorite with my sword and my bow." And when in his closing hours he, by the Spirit of God, unfolds the history of his seed on the earth, Joseph occupies his mind in the fullest and most blessed way, concluding with, " The blessings of thy father have prevailed above the blessings of my progenitors unto the utmost bounds of the everlasting hills: they shall be on the head of Joseph, and on the crown of the head of him that was separate from his brethren." Wonderful burst of light! Remarkable instance of how God vouchsafes light and knowledge to His people when faithful, though previous unfaithfulness may have reduced them to very painful circumstances, even to a house of bondage.
Jacob dies and Joseph went up to bury his father. The testimony as we have seen is revived, but the inheritance is only enjoyed in hope. In Canaan Mere is a grievous mourning. Joseph must return into Egypt, and there he survived his father sixty-four years, having lived a hundred and ten years in all. " And Joseph said unto his brethren, I die, and God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence."
Thus, having set forth the name of God in the earth, and having manifested His grace and forbearance to his own people, Joseph sinks into the tomb, in vigorous faith of the future of Israel, making mention of their exodus, and giving commandment respecting his hones, in hope of a glorious resurrection. God's line of purpose was fully maintained. While the witness submitted to the low estate and humiliating position to which God in His righteousness subjected him, because of the evil of his people who had dishonored God in the land, but whom God would yet in His longsuffering mercy care for and correct, but never abandon.