The Unconditional Covenant of God Pt.2
GENESIS 42:1-3
1 ¶ Now when Jacob saw that there was corn in Egypt, Jacob said unto his sons, Why do ye look one upon another? (I wonder if they feared that they might meet up with Joseph if they went to Egypt)
2 And he said, Behold, I have heard that there is corn in Egypt: get you down thither, and buy for us from thence; that we may live, and not die.
(Notice how this story begins with a crisis of a famine for the elect of God, and so we can see that this story follows the same pattern and similarity of crisis to what the story of our gentile widow woman of Zarephath was also about – because both stories involved a time of famine that led to a struggle and to the uncertainty of life in the midst of a famine, but then both stories end with them coming out of uncertainty and into full and blessed provision by the providence and hand of God)
3 And Joseph's ten brethren went down to buy corn in Egypt.
GENESIS 45:3-4
3 And Joseph said unto his brethren, I am Joseph; doth my father yet live? And his brethren could not answer him; for they were troubled at his presence. (What they had feared had come upon them)
4 And Joseph said unto his brethren, Come near to me, I pray you. And they came near. And he said, I am Joseph your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt.
The revealing of Joseph to his brothers began with the crisis of a famine in the land – and this is why that God will at times allow unpleasant situations to happen in our lives, but then He will use that to lead us into a place of where He can reveal himself to us in a much greater way.
Job also came into a time of a famine in his life, and it was a time that was very unpleasant and uncertain for him, but that uncertainly also led him into a place of where God could revealed himself to Job in a far greater way - and then God took Job out of his uncertainty and blessed him more than he had ever been blessed before. And this is God’s plan for our lives also – to bless us more that we could ever imagine, and He will achieve that.
HEBREWS 6:13
13 For when God made promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no greater, he sware by himself,
HEBREWS 6:18-19a
18 That by two immutable things (Immutable means “unchangeable and unalterable – an absolute that cannot be altered”. And these two things that are immutable refer to God's promise and His oath), in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us: (We all have great hopes for our lives that we have all set before us)
19a Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast,
The Unconditional Covenant of God Pt.2
We want to continue from last week of which we were following on from our subject of the suffering of uncertainty, because God doesn’t want us to be uncertain about anything, especially in this hour of when all the seven seals are opened. But He wants us to be certain of who we are and of why we are here, and for us to be certain of the message of Malachi 4 that he has sent to us in this day, and for us to know that we have been raised up in this hour to believe that message – that is the purpose of God for us, is to believe on him whom He has sent to us.
And so He wants us to be sure of where we are going and that we have a great future that He has prepared for us because that is how the story of Ruth is written – her life went from uncertainty to certainty, from poverty to riches, from death to life – from a life of struggling and insecurities, to a life of peace and everlasting security.
GENESIS 45:3-8
3 And Joseph said unto his brethren, I am Joseph; doth my father yet live? And his brethren could not answer him; for they were troubled at his presence.
4 And Joseph said unto his brethren, Come near to me, I pray you. And they came near. And he said, I am Joseph your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt.
(Notice how that Joseph is telling them of this fact of how that they had sold him into Egypt - because this would have been a secret that only they and he would have known about. And so this private information was what really woke them up to the fact that this was actually their lost brother.
And so this story here is giving us a glimpse of the how incredibly powerful the providence of God works in the lives of people because of the power of prophecy that is on their lives.
*God was able to take a dysfunctional family of brothers that had effectively murdered their innocent brother, and He had allowed all that ugly stuff to happen, and then worked it all out for the saving of all their lives and the fulfilling of prophecy during a future time of famine.)
5 Now therefore be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither: for God did send me before you to preserve life. (Joseph could see the whole picture of the providence of God, and was now revealing the purpose of all the drama that they had all been a part of - of what they had acted out in their past. And so what they had done to their brother Joseph was actually a part of the great plan and providence of God that God would work it all out for everyone’s good in the end)
6 For these two years hath the famine been in the land: and yet there are five years, in the which there shall neither be earing nor harvest.
7 And God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance.
Notice carefully here – all of what had happened to Joseph and his brothers, he calls it a great deliverance by God. Yet as they were living their lives, it had all looked so ugly and wrong for these brothers of Joseph because of the fact of what they had done to him that had been so evil.
And no doubt, over the years their sin would have begun to eat at their consciences, and the guilt of what they had done would have continued to gnawed at their souls and at their minds over the years – and no doubt they would have suffered because of this and because of what their father Jacob had had to suffer because of their bad choices in life.
*But yet all of this of what looked like a big family mess was all being directed and was in the total control and leadership of God.
*And so what looked so wrong, was actually all working out for the right – and it is no different with our lives also – and this is the comfort that we have to realise, is that all of our mistakes are for a purpose that God is using for our good, because ALL things work together for our good – Roman’s 8:28.
**God is able to take all the wrongs of your life and bring it out all right.
Even when our own “brothers” who are supposed to be our greatest supporters and protectors act so mean and seemingly ugly towards us, God is showing us something here in this story that He is able to work all of that out for the good of everyone in the end – and Joseph had come to understand this)
8 So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God (His brothers had always thought that they were the ones who were responsible for sending Joseph to Egypt, but it wasn’t them, it was actually God that did it): and he hath made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt.
The amazing thing of this story is that Joseph had come to a maturity of understanding and to a level of wisdom that he was able to understand all of this. Because to the average person, they would want to pay their evil brothers back for being so ugly and mean to their own flesh and blood brother of whom they should have cared for and protected.
**And so this story is showing us the maturity that we all want to come into - a maturity of an understanding of how that God is going to take all the disappointments and the ugly stuff and all the struggles of our lives, and use all of those things that seem so upsetting to us, and use all those things as a pathway of stepping stones that will lead us into a great fellowship of love and peace and security with everlasting joy.
HEBREWS.CHAPTER.THREE_ JEFF.IN HEB SUNDAY_ 57-0901M
144 "Why did God let this happen, Brother Branham? Why did God?"
God is doing that. Let Him alone. Just walk on. That's God's business. "The footprints of the righteous are ordered by the Lord." Yes, sir. What difference does it make?
145 "Lost all my money, Brother Branham." Well, bless God, anyhow.
146 "Oh, I did this, and this happened, storm blowed away my house."
147 Bless God, anyhow. "The Lord give, the Lord taken away, blessed be the Name of the Lord." Just keep walking on. It's all the glory of God. God knows what He's doing.
Some through the water, some through the flood,
Some through deep trial, but all through the Blood.
148 That's the way He leads us. That's right. Oh, my! I feel like I could just stop and scream. That's the way He leads His dear children.
*Saint Paul wrote in 2 Timothy 4 about his own life – I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith”
*Then in the early second century, Saint Ignatius of Antioch wrote a letter to Polycarp and penned these words “Stand firm as an anvil under the hammer. It is the mark of a noble athlete to take blows and still win the fight.”
We must learn to take the blows and get up again and carry on.
*And so there is a great lesson for us that lays beneath these things - in that we are to learn to take the blows and still stand firm, because like with Joseph’s life, all of those things of what seemed like such terrible and unfair blows that had happened in his life were simply the required stepping stones that were ordained by God to take him to the place of victory and peace at the end.
And this is literally the same for each one of us – all of what seems like the unfair blows that happen in our lives are simply the required stepping stones that God has ordained to take us to a place of victory and peace at the end of our life’s journey – because all of these stories end happily ever after.
GENESIS 45:5-7
5 Now therefore be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither: for God did send me before you to preserve life.
**We grossly underestimate as to how much God actually cares for us and how much He desperately loves us and that He is actually in total control of everything that happens to us during our short lifetimes – and how that He is more than able to take all of the things that have happened to us in our lifetime that seem so wrong to us, and yet make all of it work for the purpose of bringing us to our expected end.
And then we will realise like Joseph and his brothers, that it was all necessary in order to make everything all work out right in the end, and to make the end of our story a story that ends happily ever after.
GENESIS 45:5-7
5 Now therefore be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither: for God did send me before you to preserve life.
6 For these two years hath the famine been in the land: and yet there are five years, in the which there shall neither be earing nor harvest.
7 And God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance.
***This is such an incredible paradox, in that by them acting mean and ugly to their brother Joseph by throwing him in a pit and leaving him there for dead, and then at the last minute deciding to sell him into Egypt, and then lying to their father about it and breaking his heart - then as a result of all of that, they all end up receiving a great blessing out of it at the end as a result of them doing all of that wickedness, Why is that? – because this is what an unconditional covenant with God looks like in the real world. There are no conditions – “I will bless you” saith the Lord, period.
**Because this is the promise that he made with Abraham and his seed after him, and we are Abraham’s faith seed by the evidence of our faith in the word that he has sent to us in this hour.
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*And so we want to take the scenic route on this journey to this destination of our realisation of God’s unconditional covenant with us, and of His mercy and grace toward us by His elective love.
*Last week we spoke about how that Adam and Eve only had one rule to keep, and even though they lived in a perfect world and in the most beautiful place of that world, and neither did they have a fallen nature and a corrupted body like we have to deal with, yet they couldn’t even keep just one commandment that God had given for them to keep.
THE.CALLING.OF.ABRAHAM_ SAN.FERNANDO.CA WEDNESDAY_ 55-1116
E-17 Now, that's the background, a good background for what we're going to talk on for a few moments with Abraham. Now, God in the beginning in the garden of Eden, He made a covenant between Him and Adam. And Adam broke his covenant. Now, man always breaks his covenant with God, but God never breaks His covenant with man.
*And so from the outset of the fall of man in Eden, God knew that He could never rely on man’s self-ability to keep his side of any conditional covenant that God may have made with man. And this has also been proven down throughout the entire bible over and over again.
**Moses failed God, Samson failed God, David and Solomon failed God, and even Abraham and Isaah and Jacob, they all failed God in some way.
*And every human being that has ever been born since Eden has failed God in some way.
*And so in order for God to save and redeem man, God could have never included man in any sort of conditional agreement involving man’s faithfulness to keep his part of the agreement - because man would have always failed to keep his part.
**And so in order for God to save man, God had to make a covenant with himself that would be completely unconditional on man’s part, and this is why that we have nothing to fear of that covenant of God failing us – because as with our story of Joseph and his brothers, these brothers of Joseph had accumulated a lot of guilt and fears over their lives from the things that they had done, and it looked to them like that they would have been condemned for at the end, and this was their fear of what they thought might happen when they finally came face to face with Joseph – but instead of being condemned at the end, the fact was that there was no condemnation that came from Joseph, but all had worked out for the purpose of the preservation of their lives, and to bring them to an expected end of joy and peace.
ISRAEL.AND.THE.CHURCH.1_ JEFF.IN IC 1-34 WEDNESDAY_ 53-0325
76 … You are saved, unconditional.
THE.IDENTIFIED.MASTERPIECE.OF.GOD_ YUMA.AZ SATURDAY_ 64-1205
69 See the love of God! (Notice what he is saying here – It is out of God’s unconditional love that comes His unconditional covenant) After man had fallen and deliberately opened the door to the enemy, and come in and marred him, and set death in him, still God was not willing this be defeated. He came down and started all over again. He was going to make that man again.
70 He put Adam on a covenant, "Do this, and not this; this, and not that; touch not, handle not, taste not."
71 But we find out, when He started again, He started with--with Abraham. And in Abraham He started him on an unconditional covenant. Not "if you will." I have. I've already done it. I've blessed you, you and your seed, and so forth, after you." It was an unconditional covenant. He started with Abraham, His workmanship again, and now with His unconditional covenant. Then, when we find out, He based on Abraham and give him the covenant, unconditional, with the promise.
*And so what we notice is that the book of Genesis that tells us of the story of God’s unconditional covenant with Abraham, that same book of Genesis ends with the story of Joseph, and of how that God saved all the lives of the sons of Jacob (Joseph’s brothers) regardless of the fact of how they had treated Joseph. **And the very last thing we read about is how that Joseph is trying to take all the scare away from his brother by them thinking that they are going to be judged and condemned to death by Joseph for what they had done to him.
THE.ANGEL.OF.THE.COVENANT_ PHOENIX.AZ MONDAY_ 54-0301
E-2 Now, one night this week, if the Lord willing, I want to speak a Gospel message on the "God's Unconditional Covenant." And perhaps maybe tomorrow night, if the Lord will... It's nothing but just to build the faith of the people, just to get them built up to a place where it gets all the scare away from them. And we're trying our best to do that.
The Christian has not one worry in the world. They should be the most freest, happiest people in all the world. 'Cause there's nothing... You can't lose. And all things work together for good to them that love God. So how can we lose? There's just nothing to lose, is there? We're just anchored away in Jesus Christ, going home to glory, having a good time while we're going along, God providing everything for us.
**Joseph was a perfect type of Christ, because the same way of how Joseph’s brothers treated him is the same way that the Jewish brethren treated Christ when he came. And so God is showing us what the outcome will also be with the Jews that crucified Christ.
And yet how much greater is God’s love for His gentile bride of whom He gave His life for.
***When Boaz (at the midnight hour) revealed to Ruth his promise of her full redemption, then he was bound to the keeping of his word to her by the unconditional and unchangeable promise of His word, and then that was the thing (his word of promise) that brought her out of the uncertainty of all of her fears.
Notice – Ruth was brought out of uncertainty of her fears at the midnight hour just like Joseph’s brothers were also brought out of their uncertainty of all their fears of being condemned to death because Joseph had spoken peace into their lives at the time of their midnight hour.
The widow woman was also bought out of her fears at her midnight hour.