Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2497
“And they said one to another, We are truly guilty concerning our brother.” Genesis 42:21.
YOU know the story from which our text is taken, how Joseph’s brothers, being envious of him, sold him for a slave, deceived his aged father concerning him and then endeavored to forget the deed. They appear to have gone on with sad consciences for a number of years, but, by-and-by, there was a sore famine in all lands and from all countries people went into Egypt to buy corn. So old Jacob told his sons that they must go down into Egypt to buy from the stores there laid up for the time of famine. And they went, not knowing that Joseph was there in great power. He knew them and, at first treated them very roughly, charged them with being spies, and put them in prison for three days. Afterwards he said to them, “If you are true men, let one of your brothers be bound in the house of your prison: go you, carry corn for the famine of your houses: but bring your youngest brother to me; so shall your words be verified, and you shall not die.” Then it was, but not till then, that they said, one to another, “We are truly guilty concerning our brother.”
See, from this narrative, how, sometimes, trouble and sorrow bring men to repentance. Personal affliction or bereavement, or trial of one kind or another may be most useful to us by making us think about our own condition in the sight of God, and our actions toward Him as well as with regard to our fellow men. There may be someone in this congregation who has had sore troubles, wave upon wave, affliction upon affliction. It will be a source of eternal gratitude to you, my dear Friend, if your afflictions should make you think of your conduct towards Christ, so that you should be moved to say, “I have been truly guilty concerning my Savior, concerning Him who took upon Himself the form of a Man, that He might be my Brother and might redeem me from going down into the pit.”
I shall limit my discourse to this one topic—in our treatment of Christ, we have all been guilty. And I shall try to press this Truth of God home with a demand, in God’s name, for repentance on account of the way in which we have dealt with His Son, Jesus Christ, our greater Joseph. I shall be happy if any have come here in trouble, if that trouble should work with my rebuke to stir up their hearts and move them to repentance before God. When a certain man lost his eyesight, that sight being gone deprived him of the power to join in many a merry party and to go on in his former sin. He then began to attend the House of God and there he found the Savior. And he was in the habit, afterwards, of saying that he was always blind while he could see, but after he had lost his sight, then it was that he truly began to see! There may be some here who are afflicted, perhaps not exactly as that man was, but in some other way. If so, I hope that they, too, will soon be able to say with the Psalmist, “Before I was afflicted I went astray: but now have I kept Your Word.” It will be a good beginning towards such a blessed consummation if they should now confess that they have been guilty concerning Christ.
I will try to handle my subject in this way. First, let us consider our treatment of Christ. Secondly, let us think of Christ’s treatment of us. And thirdly, let us ask the question, What then? I. First, let us consider OUR TREATMENT OF CHRIST.
Let us begin by taking ourselves in the mass, without any division of character. How have we and the whole human race treated the Lord Jesus Christ? He came to this earth with love in His heart, with love in His eyes, with love in His hands, with love on His lips, He was altogether Love Incarnate and when He made His appearance, what was the reception He met with? You kings, have you not a palace for Him who is the King of Kings? Let the purples of Thyatira, let all the dainty damasks of the East be brought forth to wrap the Holy Child Jesus! No, alas, it is not so! There is no palace,
nor even a private house that will receive Him as a guest, and even of the place where others might lodge it is written, “there was no room for Him in the inn.” He lies in the manger of a stable because there is no room for Him in any better place! He grows up, but who are His associates? Is He surrounded by the wise? No, they cavil at Him! Do the righteous, or those who pretend to be so, become His disciples? No, these hypocrites are His worst enemies. He finds no associates who love Him except a few poor and humble fishermen—and these have had to have new hearts before they could see any beauty in Him. “He is despised and rejected of men; a Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief.”
The world has plenty of music for its greatest murderers—
“Look, the conquering hero comes, Sound the trumpets, beat the drums,” sings the world when it sees the warrior come home with his garments red with the gore of his fellow men! Let him ride through the street in pomp and splendor! Run to your windows, climb to your chimney tops and look down upon the gigantic murderer as he goes along the streets in triumph. But the world has no songs for the Savior, no pomp, no praise, no acclamations for Him! A few peasants and children once cry, “Hosanna! Blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord!” But in a day or two that note is changed and, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” is the world’s cry concerning the only Redeemer the world will ever see!