All right, Genesis 44, Genesis 44, and we'll start in verse 13, as you can see on your sheet, and we'll read 13 through 15. Well, to put it in context, the Joseph, the brothers are in front of Joseph for the second time and they took their sacks down and found out they were arrogant, maybe a little overconfident, a little cocky. We talked about don't do that, don't be so quick, don't be hasty with your words. A fool uttereth all his mind, the Bible says. And so just, you know, they didn't let things play out. Well, it turns out that Benjamin's sack had the cup. Now they're like, oh no, we're in trouble because That's the one child my father, you know, if he's bereaved of him, then he'll die. And they say that later on in the next chapter, they talk to Joseph about that. But so in verse 11, then they speedily took down every man a sack to the ground and opened every man a sack. And he searched again and began at the eldest and left at the youngest. And the cup was found in Benjamin's sack. Verse 13 is where we're picking up. Then they rent their clothes and laid at every man his ass and returned to the city. And Judah and his brethren came to Joseph's house, for he was yet there. And they fell before him on the ground. And Joseph said unto them, What deed is this that ye have done? Wilt ye not that such a man as I can certainly divine? And we're just going to stop there and take a few minutes. I said this last week, it's not certain to me anyway why Joseph decided to put his brothers through this episode again. This is the second time now that he has sent them off and filled their sacks. And now this time he has made it, he has set it up to look as if Benjamin had stolen from him. And, uh, I think the only, uh, one of the motives I have it on your sheet, other than the obvious desire to keep Benjamin back. You know, maybe this was his justification for having to bring Benjamin back and keep him behind and send his brother's way. After all, Benjamin was Joseph's real brother. He was not a half-brother. He was a full brother. And he was the only other brother he had that way. And so he thought, well, if they discarded me and they got rid of me, and they threw me in a pit and sold me off. What would they do to Benjamin? And I'll just, I want Benjamin here. I want to keep him. So maybe that was his motive. Maybe his motive was, and I do believe this is part of it, to get them to come to full repentance, to recognize what they've done to him and to see if they get a confession on him so that he could properly reveal himself. But anyways, now they understand, reading with me on the sheet, now they understand what it is like to be falsely accused despite telling the truth, like Joseph. You know, there's a saying, the world says it's karma. It's not karma, it's reaping and sowing. You reap what you sow. And the law of reaping and sowing is that you reap later than you sow, and the law of sowing and reaping is you reap more than you sow. And so, they're getting a taste of what it's like to be falsely accused despite... Didn't Joseph actually have a dream from God? Yes, he did, and that's what they hated him for, right? They hated him for that, and so despite telling the truth, they got rid of him. That feels awful. I could tell an illustration right now, but I'll just generalize it. You know, this goes out into the world. We get a lot of people that watch us. I don't know how many actually do, but there are sometimes hundreds of views on one single sermon. We use Sermon Audio, and one of the things that you can do on there is you can look at statistics. Now, they're general. We don't get your home address, that you're watching us, or how long you watched us, and all the details, but we do get to see people from all over the world. We get to see a map, but you know what you get with that? You get feedback. Believe you me, I've gotten plenty of feedback from some of the things that come across this pulpit, and you know it's not always good? Some of the names that come out, and some of the accusations, and some of the things that you hear are, but you know what? It doesn't bother me at all. I know it doesn't bother pastor at all. Hopefully, it wouldn't bother you at all, as a member of this church. When you go to that church, well, hopefully it doesn't bother you. Because the truth is the truth. And Paul is the one who said, am I become your enemy because I tell you the truth? Now the lesson in that statement is that the truth hurts. And the truth is never convenient. And the truth is never always flattering. It's the truth. The truth is just the truth. And so we seek to have truth in this church. I don't seek to come up here and lie my way through a Sunday school lesson or lie to you for whatever reason. I have no reason for no motive for that. But you understand that's what they're feeling right now. We got falsely accused. I didn't say that, or I didn't mean that, or I'm not like that. Well, but now you're being punished for it. And so it's just like they did to Joseph. And not only that, to suffer an unjust punishment of being arrested. Now, they were unjustly arrested. They didn't steal those things. But that's like Joseph. Here's Joseph, all the years that he spent in prison. And we talked about that lessons ago. All the years he spent in prison, unjustly, wondering why. God, why? And, of course, his attitude is really good. We're going to read that his attitude is that God sent me here. He says that, makes that statement in the next chapter. But they must have felt shocked and hurt like Joseph. Have you ever felt shocked and hurt at what somebody might have said about you or what it might have done unto you? Listen, I think we all can experience that at some time. Hey, I didn't do anything. I didn't mean to do that. You know, sometimes our words, that's why we don't want to be hasty with our words. That's why we don't want to utter all of our minds all the time. Because in the multitude of words, you know, there wanteth not sin, the Bible says. You know, one of the risks of getting up here and teaching a Sunday school class week after week after week and him preaching week after week is the multitude of words. It's the idea that we're gonna get up here and somebody, and it does happen, somebody's gonna say, I heard you once say this, you know, probably a year ago. A year ago? You still remember that from a year ago and you're still holding that? And I don't even remember saying it. And if I were to think back, I'm like, I would have never said that. And so I'm just saying that the idea of shock and hurt and the things that people, so it's a caution, right? That we don't always want to utter everything in our minds, but, um, they must've felt that way, just like Joseph. So the Lord has this idea of sowing and reaping. He has a law and these men, Maybe this is why the Lord was prolonging this experience, you know, for them to get called back again so they could feel all these things that they put their brother through unjustly. And then it goes on. Joseph was keeping up his act. Now, we're going to learn later. Here, Joseph says that, don't you know that I can divine? And we're going to talk about divining in a minute. But later, he says in the chapter, in the next chapter, that Pharaoh has made me a father unto him. You know what a father is. We'll get to it later if time permits. You know what a father is. Today, if you're a father, if you're a priest, not a father as in I have children, but a priest, he's called a father, right? And I can show you, and I will get to it hopefully later, but I can show you in the Bible where that started. And how Jesus said, call no man your father. But here's Joseph, and he's telling his brothers, I can divine. And to Pharaoh, he's a father, so he's playing this role really well. He looks like an Egyptian, they don't recognize him. But he says, don't you know that I can certainly divine? And he claims to have that power. Now, divination, go to Deuteronomy chapter 18. Now this is obviously, Deuteronomy is later than the events that we're looking at here. This is the beginning, in Genesis, of the children of Israel. These 12 brothers are the 12 tribes, but later on in the Bible, you've got Deuteronomy 18, 10. is where the Bible speaks of divination. And there's lots of places that it does. It says, there shall not be found among you any that maketh his son or daughter to pass through the fire, or that uses divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord. And because of these abominations, the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee. You can see the list of things that divination is listed with. It's listed with the spirit world. It's a devilish activity. It's a wicked thing. It's an evil thing. Joseph, although he's a type of Christ, he is the one claiming to be divine, and to use that as his reason for knowing where that cup was, and that you guys are the guilty ones. Go to Acts chapter 16 and verse 16. I'm going to show you some negative references here to the word divination. Says, and it came to pass as we went to prayer, a certain damsel possessed with a spirit of divination met us, which brought her masters much gain by soothsaying. Now, let me just read on for a minute. The same followed Paul and us, and cried, saying, these men are the servants of the Most High God, which show unto us the way of salvation. And this she did many days. But Paul, being grieved, now think about Susan's prayer request. She's at work, and what did you call what she says? What did she call that? perceptions. You might call it divinations. You might call it consulting with the spirit world. You might call it, I have these dreams. Me and God talk. And by the way, Christian, when you are talking with other Christians that aren't of your same stripe, realize that when they talk about the word of the Lord, and that's what they call it. The word of the Lord. What's the word for you? What's the word today, brother? What's the word today, sister? You know, the Lord spoke to me today. How did he speak to you? Out of the King James Bible? No, that's fanatical. Oh, but you're not fanatical when you say you spoke to the Lord through a dream. Or when the Lord spoke thoughts into your head in their gospel. Because that's what they do. All right, and that was a timely prayer request today, based on what we're looking at here. It says, and she did this many days, and she was testifying, she was latching right on to the Christian faith. You see that? Oh, well, they claim the name of Jesus at the workplace. Yeah, they do. Of course they do. What do you think the devil's gonna do? He's gonna come with a pitchfork and horns? You think he's gonna show up with an opposite? No, he's gonna name the name of Christ, too. He's an antichrist. But he's going to try to pretend. And this she did many days. But Paul, being grieved, turned and said to the spirit, I command thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. So she had a devil. She had she had the spirit of divination. And what does that mean? She had a devil. The Spirit came out of her on Paul's command in the name of Jesus Christ, the same Jesus Christ that she was promoting with Paul, supposedly. Why? Why? To gain Paul's followers. You know, that's what they do. They follow around the Baptist, the right people with the right doctrine. That's what the devil does, seeking whom he may devour. And he takes the ignorant Christian and he pulls him away and he says, let me show you something even more. Let me show you something even more spectacular. Let's get away from those old paths, those old landmarks, and that old father's religion of yours, and let's just pull over here into something more exciting and something new and something that's really the spirit of divination. And then look at 1 Samuel 28. You say, why would Joseph want to pretend that? I don't know. That's a good question that I've had. But he was trying to fool his brothers, number one. And I don't know if there is a number two. First Samuel 28 and verse eight. And here's Saul doing the same thing. And Saul disguised himself and put on another raiment, and he went, and two men with him. And they came to the woman by night, and he said, I pray thee, divine unto me by the familiar spirit, and bring me him up, whom I shall name unto thee. He wanted Samuel. And so he went to divine to get that done. Now, interestingly, let me just show you a contrast to that. Well, before I do that, let me just give you some things I have to show you what's going on in Christianity out there. I told you a couple weeks ago, we got on this subject about a woman named Valerie Love. Do you remember that? She's a Christian witch. A Christian witch. Now, when you get to the point in history where you can put those two words together and get away with it, there's something wrong with our society. Where you can say, I'm a Christian witch. And I'm just going to read real briefly, I'm going to read it because I got a lot of other things to share with you about what's going on with this idea of the spirit of divination and the familiar spirit world and making that just because you're dealing with the spirit world. Listen, when people say, if you say to somebody, are you saved? And they say, respond back and say, oh yeah, I'm a very spiritual person. They're not saved. because that is not the way you respond to that question if you're truly saved. I'm a spiritual person. I didn't ask you that. I asked you, are you saved? That's an action, you understand? There's a time and a place in your life when you bowed the knee to Jesus Christ and you asked him to forgive you of your sins and to come into your heart and be your savior and dwell with you and take over your life. I didn't ask you if you were a spiritual person, but you know what that means when you're talking to that person? That means that, oh yeah, I deal with the spirit world. Oh yeah, I meditate. Oh yeah, I commune with whatever they commune with, nature. Yeah, the universe. I'm in touch with whatever direction I should go. I just feel like this is what God wants me to do. Spirit of divination. All right, so, Valerie, love. I'm a witch and I'm proud of it. Free to be as God created me. Living my soul's destiny. Magical, mystical, mysterious me. I am love. Well, isn't Jesus love? Isn't that what he said? See how they mix the message together? Listen, the most satanic message, you're not going to believe when I say this, but the most satanic message out there today is love. You understand, if God loves everyone the way they describe it, then there is no love. If you don't have hatred, then you don't have love. You mean to tell me that you can go out and be the most vile, wicked, pedophile, rapist, murderer, thief, con, artist, and God loves you as much as He does? The old grandmother with her Bible open this morning, sitting on her porch, praying to God. I mean, I'm not telling you that works, it's all about works, but what I'm telling you is, if God loves them equally, then what is he against? If you're not against anything, you're for everything. If you're for everything, then you're perverted. You understand that? You might want to think a little bit before you just want to grab arms with everybody and say, oh, that's not fair to do that to them. We need to love them. No, there's a lot of people we need to get rid of. There's a lot of people that need to be behind bars or need to be in electric chairs. And that's just the way it is because, well, we can rehabilitate those people. We can love them back. No, you can't. As soon as you put them back in society, they're right back at it again because that's what they love. You say, well, then why does God let it go on? Because he's merciful. He's long-suffering, not willing that any should perish. You might want to thank God for that kind of love. instead of the other kind of love that this Valerie loved. I am love exceedingly. I am not here to please anyone. I need no one's permission to be who I am. That's what Pride Month is all about right now. Nor do I seek approval or require validation. I am only here for love. The Christian witch. What a message. What a wonderful message. I am a Christian witch, she says. I love my cross and my wand. I consult with my tarot deck, divination, and my Bible. Well, don't you find some opposites there, Valerie? What Bible are you reading, pray tell? I adore and am devoted to Christ and the goddess. Who's the goddess? Well, you might wanna just watch the movie, The Shack, and find out who the goddess is. The Christian movie, The Shack, that was a play in every church that you can name for years ago. Now, I know it's an old subject now, But lo and behold, the Holy Spirit was a female in that movie. And you can talk about this idea of the Shekinah glory and the female goddess, and you can go back in your Bible and read about Diana. I mean, it's a real thing. No wonder she loves it. Because it communes with her, no doubt. Anyway, there's a lady named Jenny Hodge, and she's in Redding, California, and she goes to Bethel Church. And that's, you know, Bethel, Hillsong, Elevation Church, those churches there that set the tone for all the other smaller evangelical churches all around the country. They buy their sermons, they buy their songs, they follow their protocol. This is the guide. This is how you run a church and run 3,000 to 5,000 people, 10,000 people. Don't do what Bible Believers Baptist does and scare everybody away with the truth. and have a little rented building and have a small congregation. My goodness, you don't want that. So, Jenny Hodge, she's the maker of Christian tarot cards. Christian tarot cards. Listen, you want to know your future, don't you? I mean, come on, you've read the Bible a half a dozen times, haven't you? And you really still can't get anything out of it. So why don't you try these Christian tarot cards? And you know what people are doing? I'll take one. I'll take one. I'll take one. And they're buying them. So, she does Christian tarot cards and she does Christ alignment. You know, I go to a chiropractor and they straighten me out. Well, she straightens you out in Christ. She's a Christ aligner. And these are some of her services. Spiritual consultations. They help direct your path into freedom and clarity from a myriad of choices. She does heaven encounters. A deep spiritual encounter where clients are able to see and hear for themselves. It activates and accelerates your enlightenment. Watch out when people talk about your enlightenment and what you don't know and let me enlighten you with these tarot cards, etc. She does spiritual cleansing. This is all happening through their church. We specialize in getting rid of and disabling negative entities and then closing those doors. So get rid of anything that's negative out of your life. Well, I'm gonna tell you something. Two thirds of this Bible is negative. You belong to a negative religion. You know what the Bible says? Your flesh is lost and your flesh is pulling you down and your flesh is this and this and this and this. And we could read the list in Romans chapter three of all the things that your flesh is against God. It's negative. but they want to get rid of that. She does dream interpretation. We talked about dreams a few weeks ago. Our trained interpreters can make sense of the most difficult dream. It's exhilarating. And then she does physical healing. Of course, you know, signed gifts are all gone. The Bible says so. If she reads her Bible, she would know that, but she doesn't. So it's often immediate for team members gifted in healing. The Bethel Youth Ministry, I think we've talked about all this before, but the Bethel Youth Ministry, they teach the kids to prophesy. They teach the kids to speak in tongues. You've got to teach them that, you know. It's not just a gift that comes naturally like it did in the Book of Acts, where it just fell on them and they just started speaking in other languages. I mean, God gave them that. Nobody had to teach them that. But they take your kids into the little classroom like we do over here. How would you like to know that your kids are learning to speak in tongues today? and how we have to teach them the gibberish so that they can get into the... Listen, that's what they do in meditation classes. Just start repeating this, repeating this, repeating this, repeating this, repeating this, and soon you'll know what it is to be in touch with the spirit world. Oh yeah, I'm a spiritual person. So, they teach the kids to prophesy, they teach the kids to speak in tongues, and they travel to heaven and back. Now listen, I've watched some of their videos on this. And the kids all did it. They came, they said, listen, describe where you were. And better yet, why don't you draw a picture of where you were? Show us what it looked like. And you know what those kids sat down with a crayon and a piece of paper and you know what they all drew? The same exact thing. Say, how come they were all dealing with the same spirit? They all saw the same thing. You say, that's not real. It's real. Hey man, I believe in when Samuel, I believe Samuel came up from the dead and he talked with Saul. It's real. That woman that Paul talked to, that's real. That devil that was inside of her, he came out. That's real stuff, but it's not Jesus. Just because you're dealing with something that you can't see. And just because you're dealing with the spirit world doesn't mean that, that it's Jesus. The devils can do the same thing. They sing songs at these churches that we all listen to in our cars. Not me, I don't do that. There's one song that came out a couple years ago. It was spent a record-breaking 45 straight weeks at number one on the Billboard's Hot Christian Song Survey. I mean, can you believe there's such a thing? The Christian Billboard's number one song for 45 straight weeks, Oceans by Hillsong. That's the name of the song. It spent 61 non-consecutive weeks in total at the top of the chart. Now, let me just give you a paragraph from the song, and you can say, oh, what a wonderful spiritual... I love that. Those words just really speak to me. It says, you call me out upon the waters, the great unknown, where my feet may fail. And there I find you in the mystery, in oceans deep, my faith will stand. Let me flip the page here. I stapled this together to help me out, and it didn't help me out. Okay, I know why it didn't help me out, because that's all I have of the song. You call me out upon the waters, the great unknown, where my feet fail, and there I find you in the mystery. In oceans deep my faith will stand. Go to Revelation chapter 17. That's a deep, wonderful truth about Jesus Christ. Coming out of a church. Christians! Let me read it again while you're getting to Revelation 17. You call me out upon the waters, the great unknown. Unknown? Where my feet may fail. Sounds like Peter on the water, but it's not. And I find you in the mystery, the mystery, in oceans deep my faith will stand. Revelation 17 has an interesting something to say about someone on the waters. Verse 1, And there came one of the seven angels, which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying, Come hither, I will show thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters. Look at verse 5. And upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth. That's who she's singing to. That's what that song's about. Listen, there is more to the song. I have it here. Spirit lead me. Spirit lead me. Spirit lead me. Why don't you say Holy Spirit lead me or Jehovah lead me or something more definitive. Spirit, lead me where my trust is without borders. Christ does not leave you without borders. Let me walk upon the waters wherever you would call me. Take me deeper that my feet could ever wander. I want to wander deeper. I want to get more into this. And my faith would be stronger in the presence of my Savior. There's more than one Jesus, that's all I'm telling you. Now, we spent, I guess, enough time on this, but let me just read another person from Bethel Church what they had to say. A great quote, just a wonderful, inspiring quote that they put out on Twitter, and let me just read it to you. My hope is that we discover, along with the love of, let me read it. My hope is that we discover, along with the love of a kind and a good God, our own worthiness of that love, because we were designed for it. Watch out for those people that always talk about how much God loves you, and that He just wants to pour into you, and all that. And listen, He does. But they have a false balance on that, and you'll see in a minute. My hope is that we discover, along with the love of a kind and good God, our own worthiness of that love, because we were designed for it, we were created for it. She said also, you are the water. We're the millstone. You're wind, we're dust blown into ashes. You are spirit, we're the opening and closing of our hands. You're the clarity, we're the language that tries to say it. You're joy, we're all the kinds of laughing. Now, what does that mean? I don't know. I mean, that's just a bunch of gibberish. I mean, it sounds all positive, but you know what that is? It's not a quote from the Bible. It's not even a quote from her own mind. It's a quote from a 13th century mystic named Rumi. R-U-M-I. So this, Amanda Lindsay Cook, worship leader at Bethel, worship leader, the song leader, is quoting a 13th century mystic, and it sounds to the people in the congregation, what a wonderful tweet, oh my goodness, I love you. I love you too. Love, love, love, all we need is love, the Beatles told me that in the 60s, I knew that already. So, Joel Osteen, our buddy, Joel Osteen, I've spent a lot of time in India, he said. I've been with a lot of Hindu people. You know what Hindu people are like, right? Divination. Familiar spirits. I've spent a lot of time in India with Hindu people. They're nice. Kind. People that love God as well. People that love God as well? Yeah, they love about a million gods. Everything's good. Pantheists. Everything is God to them. But Joel likes to put his arm around them and say, you're good people. I like you. I love you. All we need is love. And then he said this, I think the Pope is fantastic. Well, let it be on the record for all the world to see. I think the Pope is the Antichrist. I don't think he's fantastic at all. I can get into this stuff. I can give you hours of this stuff. I'll just read one more. Bill Johnson, Redding, California, Bethel Church, the pastor. Listen to his little thing. You know a lot of people get together at church and they recite things. Let's do the Apostles' Creed. Everybody stand up and let's do the Apostles' Creed. Most churches do it by memory. I don't, we won't do that at this church. We don't, I don't believe in that. Pastor doesn't believe in that, but anyway, they do this here at Bethel Church. This is a declaration that they say before their offering, before they take an offering. Maybe we'll do this today. As we receive today's offering, we are believing for you. Heaven opened, earth invaded. Storehouses unlocked and miracles created, dreams and visions, angelic visitations. Yeah. Declarations, impartations, kind of like what Susan was talking about. And divine manifestations. I don't want any divine manifestations in my room tonight. anointings, giftings, giftings and calls, positions, promotions, provisions, resources to go to the nations, souls and more souls from every generation saved and set free, carrying kingdom revelation. See, to the average everyday non, you know, studied Christian. That all sounds positive, positive, wonderful, wonderful stuff. Boy, I just love that church. It makes me feel so good when I go there. Well, the truth hurts, or you can go where you feel good. It's your choice. But I'm just telling you, and we're way off subject here, I understand, but it's the idea of the spirit of divination. Alright, and this is what churches do today. Churches. Christian churches. Go to the book of Revelation, the very first page of your Bible of the book of Revelation. I'll show you a contrast to that and then we'll move on. I just wanna show you what the Bible, divination, what is that? Well, we went through some of it just now. It's consulting with familiar spirits. But divination is to tell the future, to be able to see the future. Everybody wants to see the future. But look at what they said. Look at what the Bible says. What's your King James Bible called? Look at the title of the book of Revelation. What does it say? Anybody have the Revelation of Saint John the Divine? Does everybody have that? Now, that's not the Bible. All right? That's the title of the book that the King James translators said about Saint John the Divine. But I'm going to tell you it's in the Bible. St. John the Divine, I'm just telling you there is a positive aspect to divination in a way, and that is divining is prophecy. Now, if you're going to line up Joseph with any of the... I'm not going to line up Joseph with Bethel, or Hillsong, or Elevation Church, or any of the modern evangelical movement. I'm going to say it's more like St. John the Divine. To divine, in a simple term, is just to be able to tell the future. Now, another reference that, you know, Just for sake of showing you, the other positive reference in the Bible is Proverbs chapter 16. Take a look at that. Proverbs chapter 16. See, I told you we would get out of the first paragraph today of this sheet. Proverbs 16 and verse 10. And this is more of a different idea of, oh, you're divine. You ever look at somebody or something, that's divine. That dessert is divine. And that's the idea here. So Proverbs 16.10, a divine sentence is in the lips of the king. His mouth transgresseth not in judgment." That means he is speaking pure purity, pure divine words, the words of God. Okay, so if you want proper divination, then that's what you're going to use the Bible to prophesy. Now, we talk about prophesying here. John prophesied. He was St. John the Divine. He told you what's coming. We know all about the future and what's coming down the pike. We even know about a thousand years beyond the tribulation time because of John. So he was Saint John the Divine. This is what I would rather have at this church, a divine sentence in the lip of the preacher. Rather than, hey, help me one more time, what did she call it? Rather than my perceptions, and my dreams, and the word of the Lord that came to me this morning. And in my study, in my meditation, this is what God told me. You don't want that from us. What you want is a divine sentence in the lips of a king. Alright, so moving forward, just back to your sheet. Divination still goes on today. We kind of covered that. Joseph claimed to use a cup, but modern society uses crystal balls, Ouija boards. This list is a small list. If you have any of these things in your house, get rid of them. They use crystal balls, Ouija boards, tarot cards, lines in your palms. Lines in my palms? Well, the older I get, the more there must be about my future. I don't know how they do that, but they do that. Horoscopes, the Zodiac, whatever you're reading in the newspaper just for fun. I quit even reading the stupid little fortune cookies that I get. I like the fortune cookies. I eat them. I crack them open. I take the piece of paper, and I purposely don't even look at it. Say why? Are you afraid of it? No. I just don't want to do it. I just don't want any part of that. So I get rid of it. Don't say, you know, John Albert preaches against fortune cookies, because I don't. These are all ways for the devil, by the way, these are all ways for the devil to gain entrance to an individual. This is what happened in Paul. Oh, yeah, he preaches the way of salvation. And then he commands the evil spirit to come out of her. It's easy to identify the spirit of divination We've dealt with this already. It is always positive about the condition of man. If you want to know if you're dealing with somebody who's not truly a sold-out-for-God Christian, then listen to what they say. They're always positive, positive, positive, positive. Even if they're truly a Christian, they have learned to only speak positive things because the world has told them, if you're not positive, you're going to lose people. If you're not positive, people are going to walk away from you. If you're not positive, you can't be an influencer. That's the big buzzword today in the business world, an influencer. You can't be, you know, you can't really help people if you're not positive. Well, that's how you know the spirit of divination. Say, well, they're Christian. Yeah, but they can still be dealing with the spirit of divination. They can still be dealing with the wrong spirit. It's always positive about the condition of man. It declares that man is in control of his destiny. Isn't that what they said at Hillsong Church before they took the offering? You know, prosperity today. That's Joel Osteen's number one message. And it focuses on living in unity and peace on earth. There is no peace on earth. There will never be peace on earth. And what was his name, Bill Johnson? The last thing he says, saved and set free, carrying Kingdom Revelation. And Kingdom Revelation, you know what the Kingdom is bringing in peace and unity. and it's just not gonna happen, Bill. Read your Bible, wait for Jesus Christ to come sit on the throne, and you will have your kingdom, and you will have your peace and unity, and you will have a better glorified body at the same time. I hope that man is safe, I don't think he is. You know, a couple years back we showed you a lot of this stuff in a Wednesday night service or a Thursday night service, and you know, one of the things they also do is grave soaking. So they go out to great men of God. They always say God. Great men of God, and we lay on their graves so that we can soak up their spirits. They call it grave soaking, and they do it. So, hallelujah, praise the Lord. We'll read the rest of the chapter. We've got to finish Genesis 44 today, and we will. Genesis 44, verse 16 to 34. And Judah said, What shall we say unto my Lord? What shall we speak? Or how shall we clear ourselves? God hath found out the iniquity of thy servants. Behold, we are my Lord's servants, both we and he also with whom the cup is found. And he said, God forbid that I should do so. But the man in whose hand the cup is found, he shall be my servant. And as for you, get you up in peace and unto your father. Joseph's wanting to get rid of him, wants to keep Benjamin. Verse 18, then Judah came near unto him and said, Oh, my Lord. Let thy servant, I pray thee, speak a word in my Lord's ears, and let not thine anger burn against thy servant, for thou art even as Pharaoh. My Lord asks his servants, saying, Have you a father or a brother? And we said unto my Lord, We have a father, an old man, and a child of his old age, a little one, that's not true, he wasn't little, and his brother is dead, and he alone is left of his mother, and his father loveth him. And thou saidst unto thy servant, Bring him down unto me, that I may set my eyes upon him. And we said unto my Lord, The lad cannot leave his father, for if he should leave his father, his father would die. And thou saidst unto thy servants, Except your youngest brother come down with you, ye shall see my face no more. And it came to pass, when we came up unto thy servant, my father, we told him the words of my Lord. And our father said, Go again and buy us a little food. And we said, We cannot go down if our youngest brother be with us. If our youngest brother be with us, then we will go down. For we may not see the man's face, except our youngest brother be with us. And thy servant, my father, said unto us, You know that my wife bare me two sons, and the one went out from me. And I said, Surely he is torn in pieces. And I saw him not since. And if ye take this also from me, and mischief befall him, ye shall bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave. Now therefore, when I come to thy servant my father, and the lad be not with us, seeing that his life is bound up in the lad's life, it shall come to pass, when he seeth that the lad is not with us, that he will die. And thy servant shall bring down the gray hairs of thy servant, our father, with sorrow to the grave. For thy servant became surety for the lad unto my father, saying, If I bring him not unto thee, Then I shall bear the blame to my father forever. Now therefore, I pray thee, let thy servant abide instead of the lad, a bondman to my lord, and let the lad go up with his brethren. For how shall I go to my father and the lad be not with me? Lest peradventure I see the evil that shall come on my father. Now that was a great sermon. because he preached that sermon and you go to chapter 45 you can just read it and Joseph could not refrain himself before all them that stood by and he cried cause every man to go out for me and there stood no man with him and Joseph made himself known he couldn't take it after that sermon he loved Benjamin he loved his father he was thinking about his mother dying at the birth of his brother and all the things were flooding through his mind just like it was yesterday and so he couldn't refrain himself anymore. But Judah speaks up and accepts the blame and the punishment that doesn't belong to him. You can see that in... look at verse 33 again. Now therefore I pray thee, let thy servant abide instead of the lad, a bondman to my Lord, and let the lad go up with the brethren. He was taking the blame. Let me be your bondman. Let me take the punishment. I will take the blame. I will stay here. Let Benjamin go. Let my brothers go. He starts out with some crucial admissions in verse 16. He says this, what shall we say and how shall we clear ourselves? You understand, I'm likening this to a lost sinner trying to be repentant before God, gaining salvation. This is true salvation going on right here, if you want to just make the type. He says this, what shall we say and how shall we clear ourselves? So you know what you do when you stand before God? You don't argue with God and say, well, God, you know, but. and I would like to be saved, I don't want to go to hell, but I think you want me to stop doing this." You don't argue with God, you don't justify yourself with God, and he wasn't doing that with Joseph here either. He was saying, well, what can I say? I've seen the conclusion of the matter. I've seen the Word of God on this, and I'm guilty. I've seen the Word of God, I need salvation. That's how you come to God. Fully prostrate, not that you have to lay on the floor prostrate, but you know what I mean? Spiritually speaking, you're fully just placing yourself in the hands of God and saying, hey, listen, what can I say? I'm guilty. Guilty sinner. This is the only way a repentant sinner will ever be accepted by the Lord. That's what I believe, personally, that it means by, except you repent, you shall all likewise perish. Easy Believism, 1, 2, 3, repeat after me, you said the prayer so you must be saved. Well, am I saved? Well, I remember when you were six years old and you prayed the prayer. I prayed the prayer, but now you're 20 and you're wondering if you're really saved, but you're doing what the world does and you're going back to this magic prayer that you prayed when you were five and six years old. You're saying, well, the magic prayer saved me. Well, were you repentant back then? See, that's what happened to me. I don't remember. Well, you know what? Pastor says it all the time, you can't be saved twice, but you better be saved. And so you go ahead and I bowed my head at 19 years old and said, Lord, I am repenting now. I am at this age, full wits about me, full conviction upon me. I want you to run my life and take control. I want you to save me. All right, there's nothing wrong with that. Don't cling to something that way back in the past. Listen, they call it retreading. We're not retreading Christians here. We don't preach salvation every Sunday to get you under conviction to save you again. But we want you to be saved. And so this is what I believe about repentance. Since the Lord declares us guilty, we must accept the guilt and fall on his mercy. That's what was trying to take place here. Judah was trying to fall on his mercy. Any attempt to justify ourselves will fail. Judah then lays out the story in detail. This may have caught Joseph off guard. I don't know, but it certainly worked on him to the point where he was, now I'm going to reveal myself. But he may have thought, like I said earlier, that they were just gonna ditch their little brother. Hey, good, you've got Benjamin, then we're free. We got rid of Joseph a long time ago, now we're getting rid of Benjamin. Maybe he thought that's what they were thinking. But that's not what Judah said at all. Judah was like repentant and sorrowful. I'll take his place, you're gonna bring my father down to his grave. This can't be, and he's seeing a different brother. He's seeing a different attitude of his brothers. He's seeing maybe the repentance. He's seeing the sorrow. He's seeing the guilt. We're admitting the guilt. What can we say? What can you say? You were falsely accused. You never sold any of the cups. I claim to be a diviner, but they're accepting anything you say, Lord, anything you say. I don't know. I guess I'm that way. If you say I'm that way, I'll accept it. That's where Judah was. but things are different now. Judah accepts the blame and offers to take Benjamin's place. This selfless act touched the heart of Joseph. It is as close to the heart of God as you can get this selfless act that Judah is doing. Listen, I'll take their place. I'll take Benjamin's place. You know, when you do that and you fall at the feet of Jesus, you know that's as close to his heart you're going to get. He gave God gave His only begotten Son, right? And He became your Savior. He took your place. And anytime you're willing to give up your life and take Jesus Christ in place of your life, you know what you're doing? You're doing kind of what Jesus... Paul said, I'm crucified with Christ. I die daily, he said. I give up. I give up this life. I don't want anything to do with this life. You know, one of the reasons why you should want to have the rapture today, one of the reasons is that you just want to get out of this sin-cursed world. You're just sick and tired of who you are. Listen, of who you are. Not all this wretched world around me and the famine and the pestilence and the economy and the hateful people and the mean people. Yeah, there's all that. But what about you? Aren't you sick of you? Aren't you tired of being in a sinful body? Aren't you? Not just because you have aches and pains. Aren't you just tired of your mind always telling you the wrong thing? Aren't you just tired of always being drugged down into the gutter, not by anyone around you, but by yourself? Aren't you just tired of that? You should want the Lord to come back just to get you out of this body. The Bible talks about groaning and travailing, waiting for him to come. So that's where you are, I believe, I believe that's where a person is or ought to be when he gets saved. So you're never as close to the heart of God as when you're doing that. Paul and Moses did the same thing. Look at Exodus, you're close to it. Genesis, Exodus 32. Now, I'm nowhere close to Paul or Moses. Two of the greatest men, I think, in the whole Bible. But Exodus 32-32, he does similar to what Judah is doing now in this story, and he's interceding for the children of Israel. Look at verse 31, Exodus 32-31, "...and Moses returned to the Lord and said, O this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them Gods of gold, yet now, if thou won't forgive their sin. And you got that strange mark in your Bible that no one's been able to ever expound on correctly. Not that I can either, but it's just silence. I believe at that point, probably, probably Moses just broke down. He couldn't even speak anymore. He cared enough for the people of God that they've sinned this sin, that he was going to bat for them. He was interceding for them. And if not, he says, blot me. What? You know, Jesus became sin for us on the cross. He became your sin. The stuff I just talked about, that you should not enjoy about yourself, that you should think is an abomination about yourself, that you can't wait to get a better body, a clean mind, a clean, a pure body with the Lord, and be just like the Lord. You know, Jesus took that on Him. And He was willing to, and the Bible says He took that down to hell. And the Bible says that God forsook Him. That's what Moses was saying here. I mean, I don't know. I just don't know if I could do that. He says, blot me. I pray thee out of thy book, which thou hast written. Go to Romans chapter nine. I'm just telling you this sermon by Judah to Joseph is what got Joseph to break down and say, and finally stop playing tricks on his brothers. Stop trying to give them the same pain he felt and show them, okay, listen, I'm your brother. I love you. I'm your brother. I'm willing and ready to forgive. I can't wait to forgive. I've even prepared a meal. I've prepared a place. I've got all these things. God sent me here to prepare just for you guys and you thought it was evil, but he meant it for good. He's now ready to do that because of Judah and what Same thing Moses did. Same thing Jesus did for us. Same thing Paul said here in Romans chapter 9. Let's see. Maybe I have the wrong reference. Do I? Romans 9, verse 9. No. Verse 3. For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites. So Paul had the same attitude. That's quite a thing. Now, the Lord never allowed either one of those prayers to be answered, because it's not possible that you could die in place of someone else. It's just not possible. Only Jesus could do that for us. But Judah, going back to the paper and we'll finish here, Judah also recited the words of his father regarding the supposed death of Joseph. Understand that that's what the father thought. That's what Jacob thought. That's what Joseph understood. Go back in your Bible to chapter 44 and verse 27. It says, A nice servant my father said unto us, Ye know that my wife bare me two sons. At that point, at that point, no doubt, Joseph is probably thinking, oh my goodness. My mother, you're talking about my mother. And you're talking about my brother. You're talking about my father. And the one went out from me and I said, surely he is torn in pieces. He's hearing now for the first time what his father thought of what happened to him. How would he know? I mean, can you imagine Joseph saying, where's my dad? I'm in this pit. I've been sold off into slavery. I'm traveling down the road. Now I'm in Egypt. I'm in this guy Potiphar's house. Where's my dad? How come he's not coming looking for me? Doesn't he love me? I thought he loved me. I mean, my mom's dead. My baby brother, where's my brother? My brothers. I mean, that's different when your brothers hate you, but when your dad hates you. How come he didn't come looking for me? And he's here now for the first time. No wonder his heart is breaking. And it says, I said, surely he is torn in pieces and I saw him not since he's He's thinking, oh, my dad thinks I'm dead. My dad thinks I was torn by beasts. My dad thinks I was massacred. My dad doesn't. My dad must be. Now it's flipped around. Instead of feeling sorry for myself, I feel sorry for my dad. He's been living with the pain. He gave me this coat of many colors. I know we had a great relationship. And now he thinks I'm torn of beasts. And he's been living with that all these years. And then it says in verse 29, and if you take, and if you take this also from me and mischief befall me, he's hearing the words of his dad, you shall bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave. I can't do that to my dad. I can't allow him to bring, to go, you guys to go back without your, my brother and my, and my dad dies because of what his, the sorrow that he's been feeling. And so, Joseph may have thought about these things, and the culmination of these things caused Joseph to clear the room, weep aloud, and reveal himself to his brethren. You understand? We're going to stop here. We're done. We're going to apply this to being saved again. Not that you come to the Lord with weeping and wailing, but when you come to the Lord and you express to the Lord, I'm not worthy, I don't deserve your goodness. I'm not coming to you worthily. I'm not coming to you claiming my own merit. I'm not coming to you deserving any of this. I'm asking for your grace, completely by grace. I will be your bondman. I will take whatever you have me to do. Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And I come before you. And you know, I don't believe that Jesus is necessarily weeping when that happens, but we looked last week about how Jesus looked at people and he did weep. We do know that he's touched with the feeling of our infirmities. And we do know that man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart. And so when a person comes to God that way, that's how God receives him. This is how Joseph received. He's a type of Christ. This is how Joseph finally received. And you know what he'll do? He'll reveal himself to you. He'll let you finally open up the Bible, as it says in 1 Corinthians. The Spirit of God will come in, and He'll start to reveal Himself to you. I heard a preacher on Final Fight Bible Radio this week say that he got saved, and he didn't know any better. He was living in Australia, and he didn't know where any churches were, so he went to the First Presbyterian Church. He got in trouble there, and I'll shorten the story. He got in trouble there, because he kept bringing people to the church. He kept bringing, I think the total count was he brought 30 people to the church and he got called in by the elders. Presbyterian churches have elders, you know, and so they brought in the elders and they sat him down. He's like, oh no, what did I do? And they said, listen, buddy, you've been bringing in people to the church. He goes, yeah, that's right. They need to be saved. And he's like, that's, they said to him, that's not how God works. They're Calvinists, you understand? And so you need to take this out somewhere else. And they kicked him out. So the story is, he went to a friend who had called him up and said, hey, I'm going to a Bible bookstore, and we're just gonna check it out. I've never been there before, but there's one over here, wanna go with me? And he said, yeah, I'll go with you. So he went into the store with the man, and they had cassette tapes. This is years ago, cassette tapes. And all these cassette tapes by these Baptist preachers. And I forget the names of them all, but they were Baptist preachers that I even recognized. And they were like $0.25 a piece. And he said, and he told the lady, he said, how much are they, $0.25 a piece? He goes, I'll take all of them. And so he took the whole box, it was a box of cassette tapes home. And he said that when he used to have trouble sleeping, he would just put a cassette tape in of preaching and he would fall asleep to the preaching. Many of you do the same thing, but you do it right here. And so he, said, I'll just pop these in and hear what they have to say. He said, I popped these Baptist preachers in, and he said, the thing was I could not sleep. And he said this, he said, I was hearing for the first time, he said, and he made this comment, he said, that's who I am. Because he didn't know who he was. Am I a Presbyterian? What am I? I'm a Christian, but I mean these guys don't want me, and there is no one else around. Who am I? All I'm saying is he realized from the right doctrine, from the right.