The Vision (9.26.25): And the LORD was with Joseph

 

Image: Scene from morning walk, North Garden, Virginia, September 26, 2025.

Note: Devotional taken from last Sunday's sermon on Genesis 39.

And the LORD was with Joseph, and he was a prosperous man; and he was in the house of his master the Egyptian (Genesis 39:2).

Notice the three statements in v. 2:

First: “And the LORD was with Joseph.” This key statement is repeated no less than four times in this chapter, twice in the beginning (vv. 2, 3) and twice at the end (vv. 21, 23). Some have called this the Emmanuel Principle. Paul summed this up in Romans 8:31 when he asked, “If God be for us, who can be against us?”

Second: “and he was a prosperous man.” Last we heard of Joseph in Genesis 37 he had been stripped of his coat of many colors, cast into a pit, most likely naked, and sold into slavery. He had no clothes, no money, no possessions, no family (they had sold him!), and yet Moses says, “and he was a prosperous man.” This is before he rose to the top. He was a prosperous man when he was a naked slave at the bottom of a waterless pit. The man who has Christ in his heart is never a poor man, but he is a prosperous man. This statement is not about the outer but the inner man.

Third: “and he was in the house of his master the Egyptian.” Later, Moses will say, “and he served him” (v. 4). Joseph had respect for those in a sphere of authority over him. He was not anti-authoritarian. He trusted in the providence of God. The LORD was with him, and, in the end, the evil done to him would be turned to good (see Genesis 50:20, perhaps the theme verse of the entire Joseph narrative).

As the LORD was with Joseph, so he is always with his elect.

The Dutch Christian Corrie Ten Boom who suffered in a concentration camp in WW2 wrote, “There is no pit so deep enough, that He is not deeper still” (as cited by J. Currid, Genesis 2:232).

In describing the birth of our Lord, Matthew cites Isaiah 7:14 to say of Christ, “and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us” (Matthew 1:23). In Hebrews 13:5 the Lord says to his saints by his apostle, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.”

Whether we stand at the pinnacle of power or on the floor of the prison, we who believe in Christ know it to be true. He is with us, and that is always enough.

Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle

WM 335: ERIKA KIRK, "Father, forgive them," & the TENACITY of LUKE 23:34a

 

JTR

The Vision (9.19.25): Can anything good come out of unrighteous Judah? (Genesis 38)

Image: Fall tomatoes ripening in the window, North Garden, Virginia, September 2025.

Note: Devotional taken from last Sunday's sermon on Genesis 38.

“And Judah acknowledged them, and said, She hath been more righteous than I…” (Genesis 38:26).

Genesis 37 ended in v. 36 with the note that Joseph was sold as a slave into the house of Potiphar. The Joseph narrative will continue in Genesis 39:1. But what is in-between Genesis 37 and Genesis 39? Genesis 38.

This chapter is not about Joseph. In fact, Joseph’s name is not even mentioned. Some of the old rationalistic scholars of the modern era even went so far as to say, wrongly, that this chapter had been forcibly inserted into the account of Joseph narrative, sort of like trying to ram a square peg into a round hole, denying the unity and integrity and preservation of Holy Scripture.

Genesis 38 is about Joseph’s brother Judah (cf. 37:26-27). So what are we to make of it? What spiritual lessons do we find? It really is a sordid story. It is an R-rated story. Judah does almost everything wrong:

He chooses ungodly companions (vv. 1, 12).

He does not choose a godly wife (v. 2).

He burns with lust (v. 2, 15-16).

He raises two elder sons who are so wicked that God strikes them down (vv. 7-10).

He does not provide for his son’s widow Tamar (v. 11, 14).

He makes promises to her that he either never had any intention of keeping or simply refused to keep (v. 11).

He seeks out a woman whom he thinks is a harlot (but is really Tamar in disguise) (vv. 15-16).

Driven by impetuous lustful desires, he offers up precious tokens (v. 18).

He commits fornication with a woman he thinks is a prostitute (v. 18).

He is a hypocrite, who orders the death penalty for his daughter in law, but takes no accountability for himself (v. 24).

He only seems to express remorse when he is exposed (v. 26).

The label over this entire chapter could be simply, “total depravity.”

The only sliver of light appears when Judah at least acknowledges that Tamar’s righteousness exceeded his own (v. 26). This foreshadows the fact that later when he and his bothers are confronted with what they did to their brother Joseph, they will feel shame and remorse. Relating to Joseph, it also sets up a foil with what happens next to Joseph in Potiphar’s house in Genesis 39. Whereas Judah ran headlong into fornication, Joseph will flee from it (39:18).

Still, we ask: How could anything good come from unrighteous Judah?

As in Genesis 37, God is also seemingly absent from this chapter, his name never being mentioned. He is there, however, as an unmentioned presence working out his will, and pulling it out of even twisted and ungodly circumstances.

Tamar had twin sons of Judah, Pharez (or Phares) and Zarah (vv. 27-30).  To get the significance of this we need to turn to the genealogies of the Lord Jesus Christ in the Gospels. Matthew 1:3 (in the line of Joseph, Christ’s legal father) lists Phares “of Tamar” in the family tree of our Lord. Luke 3:33 also lists Phares in the line of Mary, his natural mother.

From this line, in the fulness of time, would come the Lord Jesus Christ. As one has put it, God very often strikes straight licks from crooked sticks. From unrighteous Judah came Christ, the standard of righteousness. God is working out his plan of salvation in Christ, in the midst of a fallen world, and this plan cannot be thwarted by the unrighteousness of men!

Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle

The Vision (9.12.25): Joseph & the Lord Jesus Christ (Genesis 37)

 

Image: Cobwebs by round bales. North Garden, Virginia. September 2025.

Note: Devotion based on last Sunday's sermon on Genesis 37:

Genesis 37 begins the inspired narrative of the life of Joseph, an account which extends through Genesis 50. It tells us how his envious brothers hated him and sold him into slavery. What do we draw from this inspired account?

We are reminded that there is a sovereign God who is working out his perfect and all-wise will in all the providential circumstances of this life, including in the face of evil, in grief and pain and loss.

It is noteworthy that the name of God nowhere explicitly appears in this chapter. He is not always named, but He is always there.

And we see something in this lesser story, shadows and hints, of a greater story, if we compare Joseph with the Lord Jesus Christ:

Joseph was the beloved son of his father Jacob (Genesis 37:3).

The Lord Jesus Christ is the only begotten Son of the Father from all eternity, made flesh in the fullness of time (John 1:14, 18; Galatians 4:4).

Joseph was given special revelation by God, as a dreamer (37:5-11, 19).

Christ is the prophet, priest, and king, who spoke the Word of God. In the Sermon on the Mount, he said, over and again, “Ye have heard it said….but I say unto you…”

Joseph was hated of the brothers he was sent to deliver from the death of famine (37:4).

John said of Christ, “He came unto his own, and his own received him not” (John 1:10). Christ himself said in John 3:19, “And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.”

Joseph came seeking his brethren to do them good on behalf of their father (37:13).

John 3:16 says, “God so love the world that he gave [sent] his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

Christ told in Mark 12 the parable of the vineyard owner whose husbandmen abused his servants sent to them, till finally he sent his own dear son, and they said, “This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours” (Mark 12:7).

Joseph was stripped of his coat and cast into a waterless pit (37:23).

Christ was stripped of his clothing for which the soldiers cast lots; he was crucified, and then placed in a tomb.

Joseph was sold by his brother for 20 pieces of silver (37:28).

Christ was betrayed by Judas one of the twelve, a friend like a dear brother, for 30 pieces of silver (Matthew 26:15).

Joseph’s coat was dipped in the blood of a kid of a goat (37:31).

Christ shed his own blood on the cross, and He gave himself a ransom for many.

Jacob mourned and wept at the loss of his son, though he did not know Joseph still lived (37:34-35).

The disciples wept and mourned at the death of Christ, not knowing, at first, that he would, as he said, be gloriously raised on the third day.

Our Lord was under the power of death for three days. For 36 terrible hours. 12 hours Friday evening. 24 hours from midnight Friday to midnight Saturday. And for six more hours from midnight Saturday till the early morning on the first day of the week. But then he was gloriously raised just as he said, and death was swallowed up in victory.

One of the great themes throughout this Joseph account will be summed up when Joseph meets those brothers years later in Genesis 50:20, and he says to them, “ye thought evil against me, but God meant it for good.” That is the Old Testament equivalent to Romans 8:28: “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”

Joseph was a great man with a great story, and he had a great role in God’s plan of salvation. But Christ is a greater man than Joseph, with a greater story. He is the Savior of all men. To him be glory forever and ever. Amen.

Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle

WM 332: Discussion: TYNDALE: The Costly Legacy of Faithful Bible Translations

 

Tyndale Film website.

JTR

The Vision (9.5.25): Ambassador in Bonds

 

Chains, Roman period. Archaeological Museum in Durrës Albania.

Note: Devotion based on last Sunday's sermon on Ephesians 6:18-24.

For which I am an ambassador in bonds: that therein I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak (Ephesians 6:20).

As Paul draws his epistle to the Ephesians to a close, he exhorts them to pray “always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit” (Ephesians 6:18). He asks them to make supplication “for all saints,” including himself: “and for me” (vv. 18-19), just as he beseeched the Thessalonians, “Brethren, pray for us” (1 Thessalonians 5:25).

Paul refers to himself in Ephesians 6:20 as “an ambassador in bonds.” This is a title he also used in his second epistle to the Corinthians:

2 Corinthians 5: ²⁰ Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God.

²¹ For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

The title of ambassador is one taken from secular diplomacy. The ambassador would represent his sovereign king. He did not make announcements or call for actions based on his own personal authority but merely conveyed the commands and instructions that were given him by his king.

Paul is saying that this was his calling as an apostle and a minister of the Lord Jesus Christ. We might say that call continues today among all his servants.

In a classic book on preaching, the famed Welsh pastor D. M. Lloyd-Jones wrote about the preacher as "ambassador.” He said,

An ambassador is not a man who voices his own thoughts or his own opinions or views, or his own desires… In other words, the content of the sermon is what is called in the New Testament 'The Word.'

I do not bring my own thoughts and ideas, I do not just tell people what I think or surmise: I deliver to them what has been given to me. I have been given it, and I give it to them. I am a vehicle, I am a channel, I am an instrument, I am a representative (Preaching & Preachers, 61).

That is true for every preacher and for every believer who bears witness to his faith in Christ. Christ is our King, and we must faithfully represent him.

Notice that in v. 20b Paul repeats the request made in v. 19: “that therein I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.” This conveys the fact that Paul, though he makes this request from prison, saw himself not as doing something particularly extra-ordinary or praise-worthy. He was simply doing his duty as a minister of Christ, and he asked the church’s prayers to help him maintain this task.

Let us learn from the apostle to be bold, whatever our outward circumstances, to serve as faithful ambassadors for Christ.

Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle

WM 331: "PhD Onlyism": The Critic Critiqued

 

JTR

Newly Revised Edition of Spanish Translation of "John Owen on Scripture"

From my x post.

Got in the mail yesterday a copy of a newly revised edition of the Spanish translation of my book John Owen on Scripture. The revision was completed by David Astudillo and now has Scripture citations using the @tbsbibles Spanish Bible (RV-SBT).

The new edition was prompted by a request from my friend Pastor Julio Benitez who had copies of the new edition of the book printed and distributed earlier this summer to attendees at a conference at @SRLSeminary in Colombia. SDG!

JTR