Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #11 in Genesis 37, and we will read Genesis 37:5-8:

And Joseph dreamed a dream, and he told it his brethren: and they hated him yet the more. And he said unto them, Hear, I pray you, this dream which I have dreamed: For, behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and, lo, my sheaf arose, and also stood upright; and, behold, your sheaves stood round about, and made obeisance to my sheaf. And his brethren said to him, Shalt thou indeed reign over us? or shalt thou indeed have dominion over us? And they hated him yet the more for his dreams, and for his words.

We are looking at the fact that Joseph’s brethren hated him, and the Lord is definitely underscoring that in this passage.  We read at least three times that they hated him.  And we know they hated him because he was favored and loved by their father more than their father favored and loved them. 

Also, they hated him yet the more for his dreams and for his words, and that has to do with the Bible, the Word of God.  The Word of God is despised by natural-minded men.  That is a biblical fact.  It is a fact that any child of God who has brought the truth to others will experience in the world.  Just think how willing the people of the world are to discuss practically anything under the sun.  They are very “tolerant,” and today people often say, “There is a need for tolerance toward all ideas, perspectives, religions, and so forth.”  But when it comes to the Bible, we often see much intolerance, and we see that people do not want the Word of God, the Bible, to be permitted in the public realm.  They want it pushed aside, and there is definitely a different attitude toward the Bible in this world than there is toward the writings in any other religion, as well as the writings of secular societies.  The writings of secular societies are available and wide open to all, but when it comes to the Bible there is a “pushing away” of the Scriptures.

And we know why. Throughout the history of the world, God was compiling the Bible, and He made it as a “weapon,” a powerful sword that would go forth into the world in the battle over souls of men in order to save His elect people.  So He commissioned those He saved through His Word, and once they were saved, they would join the army of God and become soldiers and messengers of the Gospel.  And they would be sent forth carrying the Word, and this went on for century, after century, until we reached the date of May 21, 2011, a very special and important date because that is the date God finished the salvation of His people, and He ended His salvation program as far as sending forth the Word unto salvation for His chosen, elect people.  It was all accomplished. 

God did not lose the fight, or give up the fight, but He finished the fight by accomplishing the purpose that He had purposed from everlasting past, and it was carried out over thousands of years, saving certain ones numbering, perhaps, as many as 200 million.  And finally, they were all saved.  Everyone whose name was written in the Lamb’s Book of Life had heard the Word of God, and God had blessed the Word to their hearts, and they became born again.  All the shed blood of Christ had been applied.  I like to use the analogy that the Word was as “hyssop” dipped into that blood shed at the foundation of the world, and it was the applicator that applied Christ’s atonement to each chosen sinner.  The blood applied through the Word washed away all that sinner’s sin, and he became righteous in the eyes of God, forgiven all iniquity.  And that happened time, after time, over the history of the world, up until May 21, 2011. 

May 21, 2011 is often spoke of in negative ways by those that hate the message of the Bible, which is that God had a certain people to save, and He carried out that salvation to completion, and He finished that work.  Remember what the Lord Jesus said in John 9:3-4:

Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him. I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.

Christ said, “I must work the works of him that sent me.”  And what is that work?  Jesus tells us in John 6:28-29:

Then said they unto him, What shall we do, that we might work the works of God? Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.

It is God’s work that His chosen people believe, and Christ worked the works, carrying out that work of belief, and granting that gift of faith through the faith of Christ to each and every one the Lord saved.  That was Christ’s work, and the Father sent Him to do it while it was “day,” an obvious reference to the day of salvation.  Then the night cometh, referring to Judgment Day, and that is the time that “no man,” referring to Christ, can work.  He cannot then do that work because it is all done – it is accomplished.  It is a completed work, and this is a glorious and wonderful thing that God has fulfilled His promise in His Word, the work He obligated Himself to do when He wrote down the names of all that great multitude in the Lamb’s Book of Life.  It is so beautiful!  What superlatives can we add?  It is so magnificent.  It is the completion of God’s magnificent salvation program. 

And May 21, 2011 was not as the enemies of the Bible would have people to believe, saying that it was a pathetic, awful day.  “The door is shut, and there is no more salvation available, as these ‘no-salvation teachers try to say.”  Yes, that is true, but why is there no salvation available now?  It is because God saved everyone that He intended to save – every last one of them!  That means that the utmost of salvation has taken place.  In other words, you cannot get any additional salvation than the salvation of all the elect for whom Christ died.  That is the extreme pinnacle of success.  You cannot go any further than that, so when these people negatively say, “No more salvation,” there is a very definite reason why there is no more salvation.  God cannot save those He did not favor by bestowing His grace upon those He did not elect to salvation.  And that is why salvation came to an end.  So it is not a negative thing – it is a positive thing.  It is a positive thing because God has fulfilled His Word.

But the Word of God is still despised even at this end stage of earth’s history, and it has been despised throughout the whole history of the world by the unregenerate.  We are going to look at a couple of Scriptures that reveal why this is so.  Let us go to John 15.  It says in John 15:18-19:

If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.

Keep in mind that the word “chosen” carries the idea of  elect. The Greek word is often translated as either “elect” or “chosen.”  We should stop for a moment to consider this.  You, or I, or anyone who is a true elect child of God living in this world have become fully identified with the Word of God, the Bible, and the people of the world hate the Word of God.  We know that is one of the reasons the people of God are hated by the world, but it is also because of the Father’s favor toward us.  He looks upon us kindly, graciously, and mercifully, and that has to do with being “chosen.”  We are chosen out of the world, and therefore the world hates us.  The reason the world hates the child of God is because we have been chosen.  Again, this gets noticed often, so we must understand that it is not because of us, although we can do things that are offensive.  Perhaps we are not the nicest, kindest, or gentlest person, so it could be true that the reason we are not getting along with people in the world is our own fault.  That is possible.  But if we are truly saved, and we are now experiencing these things (but in the past we did not have these kinds of difficulties with family, friends, co-workers, and neighbors), chances are it started after we began to live our lives as a Christian, and then we can know is that it has to do with the Word of God, and with the fact that we have been chosen out of the world.  And the world is now at enmity with us, and we are at enmity with them, and this can lead to separation, which is a form of hatred, as we read in Luke 6.

Also, when the Lord Jesus was praying to the Father, it says in John 17:9:

I pray for them: I pray not for the world…

Do you see the preference?  Do you see the favoritism?  It is for the chosen.  Again, it says in John 17:9-14:

I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine. And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them. And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are. While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled. And now come I to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.

Notice verse 14: “I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them.”  There is the giving of the Word, followed by hatred from the world.  It goes hand in hand.  The world loves its own.  The world would not have this kind of reaction to us if God had not chosen us out of the world, and because of that we are no longer “of the world.”  And if you are not of the world, you are not the world’s own, and the world only loves its own.  They cannot love anyone who is not of the world.

And, again, it is because we have identification with the Word.  Remember what it says in Proverbs 8, a chapter where God gives Wisdom personification, so it is as though Wisdom is speaking, who is the Lord Jesus, and Jesus is also the Word.  At the end of the chapter, it says in Proverbs 8:35:

For whoso findeth me findeth life, and shall obtain favour of JEHOVAH.

If we find Christ, we find life. The only way we can truly find life is not through our seeking because the Bible says, “None seeth after God.”  But it is through the Lord Jesus Christ having sought us.  After it says in a certain hymn, after He has found us and saved us, we will find ourselves seeking Him.

It goes on to say in Proverbs 8:35:

But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death.

Again this is speaking of Christ.  Who could hate Wisdom?  Well, the world somehow manages to do that.  They hate Christ, and Christ is the essence of everything good.  And He is “life.”  He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”  So the world hates the “way” of Christ.  That is obvious.  They hate the truth of Christ, and they hate the life that is in Christ.  They prefer life on their own terms as they live in the world according to their own understanding, and they do the things they desire to do.  And yet that is a sinful life, and the wages of sin is death.  Because they prefer to live a life of sin instead of a life following Christ, the Word, they hate Him, and in hating Him, they show their love for death because the end of sin is death.  It is the sting of death.  It brings the sinner to death, ultimately, and for evermore.  That is, unfortunately, why the world is going into the depths of hell, even as we speak, and they will continue to descend into the depths of the condition of death for a little while more, until God finally destroys the world, the sinner, and death itself, in that last day.

We will just look at a couple more verses in 1John 3:11-15:

For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother. And wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were evil, and his brother's righteous. Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you. We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death. Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.

This would describe Joseph’s brethren who hated their own brother, and it indicates a problem in their hearts, and it reveals their spiritual condition of darkness, and of abiding in death.