Genesis chapter 41, a rather long chapter. We'll not read all of it, but enough to get the picture. Genesis 41, and it came to pass at the end of two full years that Pharaoh dreamed, and behold, he stood by the river. And behold, there came up out of the river seven well -favored kind and fat flesh, and they fed in a meadow. And behold, seven other kind came up, after them out of the river ill -favored and lean flesh, and stood by the other kind upon the brink of the river. And the ill -favored, the skinny cattle, and lean flesh kind did eat up the seven fat ones, or well -favored and fat kind. Well, that's enough to scare anybody to death. So Pharaoh awoke. I imagine he was reaching for his hatter call or something right there, and he, but he went back to sleep and dreamed the second time. And behold, seven ears of corn came up on one stalk, rank and good, or big and full. And behold, seven thin ears, and blasted with the east wind, sprung up after them. And the seven thin ears devoured the seven rank and full ears, and Pharaoh awoke again. And behold, it was a dream. And it came to pass in the morning that his spirit was troubled. And he sent and called for all the magicians of Egypt, and all the wise men thereof. And Pharaoh told them his dream. But there was none that could interpret them unto Pharaoh. Then spake the chief butler unto Pharaoh, saying, I do remember my fault this day. Notice it was the recollection of his own sin that caused him to remember at last about the man whom he had forgotten. Pharaoh was wroth with his servants one day, and he put me in ward, and the captain of the guard's house, both me and the chief baker. And we dreamed a dream in one night, I and he. We dreamed each man according to the interpretation of his dream. And there was there with us a young man in Hebrew, a servant, to the captain of the guard. And we told him, and he interpreted to us our dreams. To each man according to his dream, he did interpret. And it came to pass, as he interpreted to us, so it was. Me he restored into mine office, and him he hanged. Then Pharaoh said and called Joseph, and they brought him hastily out of the dungeon, and he shaved himself, and changed his raiment, and came in unto Pharaoh. And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, I have dreamed a dream, and there is none that can interpret it. And I have heard say of thee that thou canst understand a dream to interpret it. And Joseph answered Pharaoh, saying, It is not in me. Indeed, God shall give Pharaoh an answer of peace. And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, In my dream, and then he recounts the dream. Verse 25, And Joseph said unto Pharaoh, The dream of Pharaoh is one, or these two dreams are saying the same thing. God has showed Pharaoh what he is about to do. The seven good kind are seven years, and the seven good ears are seven years. The dream is one, and the seven thin and ill -favored kind that came up after them are seven years. And the seven empty ears blasted with the east wind shall be seven years of famine. This is the thing which I have spoken unto Pharaoh. What God is about to do, he showeth unto Pharaoh. Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt. And there shall arise after them seven years of famine. And all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt, and the famine shall consume the land. And old Pharaoh was scared to death. And he asked him what to do. 34, Let Pharaoh do this, and let him appoint officers over the land, and take up the fifth part of the land of Egypt in the seven plenteous years, and let them gather all the food of those good years that come. This is Joseph telling Pharaoh what to do. And lay up corn under the hand of Pharaoh, and let them keep food in the city. And so Pharaoh decides that this is a good idea. And he says, now somebody's going to have to administer this thing. And so he appoints Joseph to be that man. And so, verse 44, In making him the ruler, Pharaoh said unto Joseph, I am Pharaoh, and without thee shall no man lift up his hand or foot in all the land of Egypt. I am making you the top dog in the whole country, and we are going to administer this plan of yours by your own hand. The Pharaoh called Joseph's name, that is, he renamed him, Zephnas Peania. I can imagine that he probably said, just call me Joe, that'll be all right, you know, but he changed his name to Zaphnath Parnea, and he gave him to wife Athenath, the daughter of Potipharah, priest of On. And Joseph went out all over all the land of Egypt. Now the famine happens, and he is the king, and everybody comes to him, and he follows his plan. And now over in the verse 53, the seven years of plenteousness that was in the land of Egypt were ended, and the seven years of dearth began to come, according as Joseph had said, and the dearth was in all the lands, but in all the land of Egypt there was bread. And when all the land of Egypt was famished, the people cried to Pharaoh for bread, and Pharaoh said unto all the Egyptians, go unto Joseph, and what he sayeth to you, do. And the famine was over all the face of the earth, and Joseph opened all the storehouses, and sold unto the Egyptians, and the famine whacked sore in the land of Egypt. And all countries came into Egypt to Joseph for to buy corn, because the famine was so sore in all the land. I have used the word throughout the book of Genesis rather often, type, T -Y -P -E. And I have said that so many events and so many people are a type of Jesus Christ. Well, there may be those of us, I may be assuming, that know, but we really don't know what the word type means. A type is a, shall I say, a caricature, a shadow, a preview, a little miniature of the real thing, a symbol. Did you ever play charades where you acted out the real thing? Well, just as Jesus Christ was smitten on the cross for our sins, and because of his death, the water of life was opened up that men might live by coming to him. So the rock in the wilderness was, when the people were thirsty and hungry, was smitten, and out came water that they would live. That's a type. Jesus Christ was the only way to be saved. And all who would come to him must enter in through him when God's judgment comes upon the world. In the same way, in the story of Noah and the ark, all who would become saved had to enter into that ark. God shut the door. There was but one way. So that is a type or a symbol of Christ in the Old Testament. And the word of God is replete with them. Now, of all the facets of the Lord Jesus Christ, he is here probably best pictured in his judgmental, reigning, sovereign condition in the Old Testament. And indeed, the pages of the word of God throughout the Old Testament do speak to us of every facet of the personality of Jesus Christ. Here, he is symbolized as the one who reigns, and the exclusive one to whom men must come for salvation and life in times of interminable trouble, which inevitably come into the world. Now, the story is simple. He had a dream. And in the dream, there were seven fat cows that came up and ate seven skinny cows. Uh, no, uh, uh, uh, vice versa. And then there were seven, uh, skinny stocks that came and ate up seven fat stocks. Well, he called for the wise men. He called for the soothsayers. He called for the astrologers and the prophets and the foretellers of the secular world. And they were supposed to be able to foresee the future. And what a lesson there ought to be for born -again Christians today. And they went to him, and they could not interpret. Now, the Bible is filled with stories of people who, trying to keep up a good facade, pretend like they could interpret, but really could not. And ultimately, God's man was the exclusive vehicle of the revelation of the future. But these men acknowledged that they just didn't have it. They didn't know it. Well, this old butler remembered. The Bible said that he remembered his sin. He remembered that what had happened to him in the past. And God used that to kind of shake him up. And fortunately, he said to Pharaoh, I remember a man when I was in prison for doing something wrong, who, uh, interpreted my dream. He can interpret yours. So they sent for him. They shaved him and cleaned him up and brought him in. And Pharaoh told him his dream. And Joseph said to Pharaoh, the reason God repeated this thing twice is to give absolute assurance to you that this is of God. It's the same dream. God give it to you twice to make sure you know it is of Almighty God. The dream is that one day there, you're going to have seven years of prosperity, and then seven years of famine are going to come and eat up all of the prosperity. Well, Joseph said, from, was asked of Pharaoh, what ought we to do? He said, you ought to appoint a man over this thing to gather in to store the goodness and to keep enough to suffice in the lean years. He said, that's a good idea. Why don't you be that man? And so he was exalted to a place of leadership and famine came and he carried out his land and everybody lived happily ever after. Now, seven things I want to say to you very briefly tonight, and you know that briefly means about an hour and a half, not seriously though. Number one, God judges sin. You know, we live in a very affluent generation. We live in a day and never misunderstand me. I am all for education and the preacher who does not go to college and does not go to seminary if at all possible and does not go as far as he can is going to sin under God. He is going to make the error of giving God a blunt tool to you. And God can fill you with nothing. He can use you with nothing, but not very much. Not with as much as he could with a good, solid education. But there is a tremendous conflict in most higher education these days in what saith the word of God. And what a shame it is that men have names for everything. They have the solution to all of our problems and they never get to the basic problem of the heart where human nature is in obvious rebellion against God. And we have so many people in positions of high places, both in the pulpit and in the secular world who are trying to solve all of our problems who have no basic concept. They have degrees and enlightenment and knowledge without wisdom and they have no basic concept that the heart is deceitfully wicked and until the hearts of men are changed, the circumstances of men will never be changed. And we have a lot of newfangled names. I heard a couple of supposedly very intelligent preachers on television last Sunday night at 11 o 'clock and they were discussing why they stayed in the ministry. Well brother I'll tell you why I stay in the ministry because God called me to preach and nothing's going to change that. But they were so wise and so pseudo intellectual and they had such a facade about them and I'm sure that the average unsaved man just sat there and drank it in. And sin was a frame of mind and death was merely passing away. And the ministry was something to be turned on and turned off. And the gospel was something that was under, up for grabs as far as its relevancy. And the efficacy of the blood was out of date. And the myth of the, and on and on and on and on and on. Listen, there are some cold hard facts of life that the believer in Jesus Christ had better remember. And that is that all men are sinners, that God hates sin and he forgives sin in Jesus Christ. And the wages of sin is death. And the judgmental nature of God on sin coupled with the mercy of God for the one who confesses his sins are unalterable facts for this and every enlightening. Now you can philosophize and theorize and highfalutin it away until you're blue in the face. But you turn your back on the, on God in the name of anything and live a life in rebellion of God and rejection of the will of God and you're going to suffer. You're going to pay. God has to judge sin. God has to punish sin or go out of the business of being a sovereign God. And like it or not, king or not, president or not, professor or not, pope or not, preacher or not, those are the facts of life. The wages of sin is death. The first lesson is that there is an unalterable penalty that goes with men in the lives of men that sin against God. Pharaoh had sinned. Egypt was living like the very devil. A plurality of wives and harems and drunkenness and rebellion was plotting itself in the face of God. And God came to the leader of that country and said, you're in trouble. I have judged you this night. Egypt was under the condemnation of sin and the judgment of almighty God. And so is America right down the middle. So is this world. We have so many so -called intellectuals and philosophers and politicians who are trying to gloss it over and lead us into a panacea of escape from our problems. And we're getting farther and farther and farther down the road to hell and judgment when Jesus Christ comes back to the world. they have no concept of the fact that the problem with this society is that our nation and our people have sinned against God, and we are under the judgment of the Almighty. Pharaoh had sinned. Egypt had sinned. They'd gone away from God, and God was judging them for their sin. Now, secondly, God warns in advance. People say to me all the time, what about the heathen in Africa who have never heard? I think I know the answer to that. I think I comprehend what the Bible teaches about that, but what concerns me far more is what about you who have heard? What about the hundreds of people who, Sunday after Sunday, listen to this broadcast, hear the Word of God, come to these services, have a knowledge of the fact that the Bible says they're lost, that Christ is the only way, and put their nose up in their pseudo -intellectualism and walk out as though to say, Well, that's old -time religion, and that sawdust -trail theology. That may be good for some, but it's no good for me. I don't buy fundamentalism. But it really doesn't matter what you buy. The unalterable fact is that men are sinners, and the wages of sin is death, and the only way of salvation is in Jesus Christ. Now, I try to get off of evangelism. I try to be very up -to -date, and I try to talk to you about how to live with your contemporary problems. But as I preach through the Word of God, I must unalterably come back to what the Scripture says, and as much evangelism as I find through Genesis and Exodus and Leviticus, that much I will preach, and over and over and over again, our God stops us and reminds us that men pay for their sins, but He warns us and gives us a way of escape first. That God came to Him in mercy. He did not deal with Him in judgment before He dealt with Him in mercy. The Bible says, The goodness of God bringeth us to repentance, and I cannot help but believe from my own experience that that which God uses initially in the life of the believer and the unbeliever to reorient Him in a right relationship to God are the blessings of God. And if any nation in this world ought to be right with God, it is us. Before we whine and gripe and complain about our Social Security problems and our cuts out of our paycheck, I just ask you to get on a plane or a ship and ride around this world and look at the squalor and the hell and the disease and the poverty that the rest of this globe lives in. Oh, how we ought to be giving God what is His and honoring Him as a nation. He used the goodness of God to remind Him that there was a way of escape, that He didn't need to be judged. And He always gives men warning. Well, the third thing is this. The Savior who was the vehicle of escape from judgment, the exalted Savior that was the exclusive way of salvation and life, was chosen by the King. Not man's choice. What kind of sense would it make to take a little boy out of prison who was a foreigner, I thought, and exalt him to the number one height? Why would it have been us? We would have taken the finest men, the mostly learned in all of our congregation. We would have groomed and brought them and wined and dined and pranced and danced and brought them into the very epitome, the very pinnacle of social priority. And then this would have been the exalted ruler. But the king chose to reach down in the prison and take a nobody and make him to somebody. I mean to death. You know, one of my very favorite scriptures says, God hath chosen the foolish things of this world to confound the wise. And the things which are to bring to naught are not to bring to naught the things which are. Why? Why does God do things like that? Why does He take His Son and put Him on a cross and crucify Him? Why does He take a carpenter from Nazareth and nail Him to a bloody, anonymous cross naked before the world and say, you'll go to heaven through Him or you won't go to heaven? I'll tell you why. Because that's not the way man would have done it. Man and his pride would have made something altogether different. Man would have had the glory. Man would have had the honor. And the Bible says, no flesh shall glory in His presence. He was chosen exclusively by the King. It might not be the world's way. A bloody, gory gospel, a slaughterhouse religion, as the world is prone to call the conservative gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, is not compatible to the taste buds of this world. That doesn't matter. It is the way God chose. And it is an unalterable road to heaven. It was the choice of the King. And as Richard Hogue says, we're playing his ballgame, so we're going to go by his rules. He made them up. Fourth, raised from a lowly estate and exalted to a position where he was the Savior, the exclusive Savior of the world, he gave him the innate capacity not only to provide life, but life abundantly. I make no question. In my mind, if there were no hell or heaven or judgment or eternity, just being a Christian here and now would be a good deal. And if there were no blessings in this world, if it meant living in squalor and rejection and misunderstanding, going to heaven, brother, would be a good deal. But in Jesus Christ, we have both. Both. Now look. He said, here's the plan we're going to follow, Mr. Pharaoh. And it was his plan and it was in his power to do it. And only through him was it done. And that's this. He said, every year we're going to live on four -fifths, watch it now, of what we save up. And we're going to put one -fifth over here in the granary over against the awful problem that's going to come, the drought, the famine. And then the second year they lived on four -fifths and they put up one -fifths. Now what happened? At the end of the seven years, they had five, they had seven, and two -sevenths amounts. Now they only need a hundred percent. They only needed sufficient seven years to fulfill the requirements of the drought. But they had two -sevenths left over. There was more than they needed. And it was only through the medium of the Savior that proficiency, that sufficiency, that provision, and in abundance was made available to the people. Jesus said, I have come that you might have life. He said, I want you to live. But he said, I've come not that you might just have life, but life more abundantly. An abundant life over and above. That's the very concept of the Christian gospel. He said, I have not come to destroy the law. I've come to fulfill it. Man, I've come to run it over. He says to those who will believe him and tithe, I will give you good measure, pressed down, running over. The abundance of the Christian life not only meets all of our needs, for our Lord said through the lips of Paul in Philippians 4, I, God, shall supply all of your need according to his riches and glory by Christ Jesus, but added in Psalm 37, for delight thyself, the Lord, and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart. Life abundantly, more than you need. As I've said so many times, I know a lot of folks that aren't Christians that wish they were, but I don't know any that aren't Christians that wish they weren't. I don't find anybody asking for their money back. I don't find any cashing in their coupons and saying they got a bad deal. There was abundance provided through the Savior. Well, just two other brief words. Notice with me, if you will, please, in the 55th verse, and when all the land was finished, the people cried to Pharaoh for bread, famished, Pharaoh for bread. And Pharaoh said here, unto all you Egyptians and all the rest of the world who came, go unto Joseph and do what he saith to you, what he saith unto you that do, to him exclusively. No other one and no other way. He was the only way of salvation. He was the only way to live. The Bible says simply, there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. And I think that if the average Baptist among us tonight would be perfectly honest, we really believe that in the ultimate analysis, a good God is not going to send folks to hell, and it really doesn't matter what we believe, after all. I have heard so many good Christian people rationalize the unsaved condition of a loved one who died without Jesus with a simple, he was such a good man, I know that some way in the providence of God, God's going to take care of him. Oh, that the Spirit of God would strip from our minds the false satanic support of the idea that there are any other means by which men may reach God. I think if he could, it would give an incentive and a drive to our witness, to men in the office, to neighbors, to all, that unless they are under the blood of Christ, they have missed God's exclusive provision of salvation. I repeat, it might not be compatible with your reasoning. It might not be compatible with modern thinking. We're playing in his ball game. We're going to play by his rules. And Jesus said, I and the Father are one. I am the way. I am the truth. I am the life. And hear me, no man cometh unto the Father but by me. It was an exclusive position. The final word is simply this, it was an exalted one. Sometimes I read through the word of God. Like I read a book the other day and it was very intriguing, very mysterious. And I got so concerned and suspicious as to how it was going to end that I just turned over and read the last chapter. You ever do that? And then I look back in the middle of the thing and every time the good guy was just about to get it in the neck, I thought, boy, if you only knew what I know. I know how it's going to end. Now listen, we live in a world that is not God oriented, nor is it God honoring. Jesus Christ three times in Matthew referred to Satan as the prince and the power of the age, the ruler of this world. Because God in his sovereignty has chosen to leave man as a free moral agent who ultimately must serve him of his own choice. And he has taken hands off and has said to man, you can do what you want to. And within restraint, within limitations, within boundaries, he's letting Satan have his way. But one of these days he's going to crack down. He's going to say, all right, it's closing time. That's it. It's time to even the score. We're going to find out whose world this is after all. And listen to what saith the word of God. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who being originally as God was, thought it not something to be desired to remain equal with God, but emptied himself, made himself nothing of no reputation, and came to the earth in the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of sinful flesh. And being found in the form of a man, he humbled himself and became obedient even unto death, the death of the cross. Wherefore, God hath highly exalted him, given him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in the earth and things in heaven and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father. We have robbed him of his glory. We have stripped him of his power. We have stolen his offerings. We have blasphemed his name. We have defiled his day. We have desecrated his commandments. And it seems that Jesus Christ is out in the cold. But as our king in Pharaoh, exalted from lowly status, from the bondage of imprisonment, to the position to which all men must come to him, and only him to live in the same way, our God hath taken him who in obedience unto sin died in the cross for us, and thank God hath highly exalted him, and given him a name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus Christ every knee should bow, and every tongue confess that Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father. I know how it's going to end. You will willingly receive Jesus. You will willingly bow the knee and acknowledge him as your Savior, or you shall ultimately of constraint and force bow your knee and acknowledge him as your judge. It will be a confession not unto salvation, but unto damnation, but you will honor the King. He shall reign, and every knee shall bow and confess that he is Christ, the Lord, the glory of the Father. All hail the power of Jesus' name. Let angels prostrate for us. Bring forth the royal, die to him, and crown him Lord of all oh that with yonder sacred throng we at his feet may fall will join the everlasting throng around yon encircling globe the ages on end world without end crown him crown him crown him lord of all lord of all lord of life lord of death lord of the past lord of today lord of eternity lord of all lord of all do you know him he is god's exalted exclusive returning reigning savior receive him make him your lord and live with him lest you die and perish the dearth and famine of judgment that comes upon our world shall we stand and pray