God in All\u2014Gen_41:51-52<\/p>\n
It is well worthy of our special notice, that every circumstance in the prosperity and glorious estate to which Joseph is now advanced, is as it were confronted with some other circumstance in his former adverse and calamitous condition. His brethren despised and hated him, and subjected him to most injurious treatment: but now the king of Egypt and his princes delight to honor him, and advance him to high place among themselves. His exile is turned into exaltation. All the slavish work of his hands is now exchanged for the royal signet on his finger. The coat of many colors, torn by violence from him and defiled with blood\u2014the garment left in the hand of the adulteress\u2014are exchanged for vestures of fine linen from a king\u2019s hand. For irons on his feet, he has now a chain of gold upon his neck. Before he ministered to prisoners, now to a monarch. The splendor of the king\u2019s second chariot succeeds to the darkness of his dungeon. Before, he was one trampled upon; but now the nation is called to bend the knee before him. He was scarcely known by name before, but now the king bestows a name of honor upon him. And now he who fled with horror from the solicitations of another man\u2019s wife, is made happy in a union with a noble consort of his own. How did all these circumstances affect him? In old time, men expressed their feelings in the names they bestowed upon their children. Now Joseph had two sons, and the names he gave to them embody the sentiments which he desired to connect with these transactions, and to form standing memorials of them.<\/p>\n
The first son he called Manasseh, which means forgetting\u2014or, which may, as a substantive, be rendered forgetfulness. And why? \u201cFor God, said he, hath made me to forget all my toil, and all my father\u2019s house.\u201d It is a beautiful and interesting circumstance in the history of Joseph, that he has God ever before his eyes. When tempted to sin, his cry is, \u201cHow can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?\u201d When the court officers in prison were troubled by their dreams, he said, \u201cDo not interpretations belong to God?\u201d When the king tells him that he had heard of his skill in the interpretation of dreams, he is anxious to turn the credit from himself to God\u2014\u201cIt is not in me: God shall give Pharaoh an answer of peace.\u201d When the purport of the royal dreams becomes clear to him, he again sees God in them\u2014\u201cGod hath showed Pharaoh what he is about to do.\u201d \u201cThe thing is established by God; and God will shortly bring it to pass.\u201d So, when he discloses himself to his brethren, and they are overwhelmed with shame and compunction, he says, \u201cBe not grieved, nor angry with yourselves that ye sold me hither; for God did send me before you to preserve life;\u201d and, \u201cGod sent me before you, to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So it was not you that sent me hither, but God.\u201d Again, in the message sent to his father, \u201cGod hath made me lord of all Egypt.\u201d Also, in the address to his brethren after the death of his father, \u201cYe thought evil against me, but God meant it for good.\u201d At last, he dies in the conviction that \u201cGod will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land;\u201d and so assured is he of this, that he takes an oath of them that they will carry his bones with them to the land of their future possession. It was this constant reference to God in all things, before all things, and for all things, that forms the real characteristic of Joseph\u2019s history, and is the true secret to all his glory and success. So here, in the name of his first-born son, he erects what he knows will be, and what he means to be, an imperishable monument of his conviction that it is God who has made him to forget all his misery, and all his father\u2019s house.<\/p>\n
Now, it is the infirmity of our flesh that we look too much to the immediate instruments of our blessings, and forget God in them, or content ourselves with a cold and formal acknowledgment. It is well for us when, like Joseph, we are able\u2014or rather, when we are enabled\u2014to make the consciousness of God\u2019s presence and intervention in all our affairs, a vital principle of action\u2014a law of life unto ourselves. Nor shall we be therefore the less grateful to the instruments of our mercies. Far otherwise. For he who most clearly sees God as the source of all his blessings, is of all others the man most grateful to the agents through whom these blessings come to him.<\/p>\n
Joseph\u2019s mention of the fact, in giving his son the name of Manasseh, shows the sense in which he is to be understood as having forgotten his toil and his father\u2019s house. It does not mean that these things were obliterated from his mind\u2014for the very act is one of remembrance. It was, in fact, his duty and privilege to remember them; for his impressions of the Divine goodness would have become weak, had he forgotten the evils from which he had been delivered. But in one sense he had forgotten the misery of his former state. He did not allow the memory of it to embitter his present advantages. He cherished no resentful remembrances against those who had been the instruments of his affliction. The memory of his troubles was comparatively lost in the happiness that had now succeeded. So, also, in what he says of his father\u2019s house. His subsequent conduct shows that he had a most lively recollection of his father, and of all the tenderness which had been showered upon his early years. Neither had he ceased to remember the cruel treatment of his brethren; but he ceased to lay it to heart; all that was painful in the remembrances of the past was expelled from his mind. It was with him as with the captives of Babylon\u2014\u201cWhen the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing: Then said they among the heathen, the Lord hath done great things for them. The Lord hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad.\u201d Psa_126:1-3.<\/p>\n
So shall it be with us one day; but not yet, not here. When the Lord shall turn the captivity of our Zion\u2014when the church militant has become the church triumphant\u2014when a King greater than Pharaoh shall put in our hands victorious palms, and array us in more glorious vestments than Joseph wore\u2014then shall we also forget, or remember as a dream, the toil through which we have passed, and all the afflictions of our earthly house.<\/p>\n
To his other son Joseph gave the name of Ephraim, which means fruitfulness, for which he gives the strong reason\u2014\u201cFor God hath made me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction,\u201d in that very land in which he had endured so much trouble and disgrace. No man had ever more occasion than Joseph to know the fruitfulness of affliction; and his history is a striking manifestation of what we have all, more or less, occasion to experience\u2014that God, in the dispensations of his providence and grace, cuts even to the quick the branches of the vine that he wills to bear much fruit. We may search history, we may explore the knowledge and experience of our own lives, in vain, for any instance of much fruit for God or for man, having been yielded by unafflicted men; and, in general, the ingathering of useful fruits has been proportioned to the intensity of the affliction\u2014short of crushing the soul. May God give it to all of us to be fruitful in the land of our affliction\u2014always remembering that there are better lands beyond, and better days to come.<\/p>\n
Autor: JOHN KITTO<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
God in All\u2014Gen_41:51-52 It is well worthy of our special notice, that every circumstance in the prosperity and glorious estate to which Joseph is now advanced, is as it were confronted with some other circumstance in his former adverse and calamitous condition. His brethren despised and hated him, and subjected him to most injurious treatment: … Continue reading ““099. GOD IN ALL\u2014GENESIS 41:51-52””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16451\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}