The Story of Joseph and His Brethren/Part 2/Chapter 1
PART II.
CHAPTER I.
HAVING followed this charming history in its plain literal sense, and endeavoured to draw from it some of those moral lessons which it abundantly affords, I now propose to shew something of its spiritual meaning, in which a still more precious history than that of Joseph, and a still more heavenly lesson than his life teaches, are delivered.
All the great public characters of the Old Testament history were types or representatives of our blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; and the history of each of them was representative of His history, not always strictly of His outward life, but always of His inward experience. The history of Joseph has many points of resemblance to that of our Lord, though not always in the same connective order. It does not destroy the correspondence that the incidents in Joseph's history, which resemble some in the history of our Lord, are not in the same order. We find even, on comparing prophecy with its fulfilment, that events do not always occur in the order in which they are predicted. Thus, in the twenty-second Psalm, those remarkable circumstances that occurred at the Lord's crucifixion are distinctly mentioned, but their order is reversed. The first words of that psalm are the last which the Lord uttered immediately before He gave up the ghost—"My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" Then comes (v. 7, 8) the cruel mockery of the Jews at the Saviour in His agony on the cross—"They shake the head, saying, He trusted in God, that He would deliver Him; let Him deliver Him, seeing that He delighteth in Him." And, lastly, we have the acts of the soldiers, which we may suppose the first of the three—"They parted my garments among them, and cast lots on my vesture." Although, therefore, the incidents in Joseph's history, that resemble some in the history of our Lord, are in a different order, you must not suppose that they are less truly prophetical.
It is my object now to point out some of these for your instruction, and I have some hope that you will find them interesting as well as instructive.
I may first mention the general impression which the history of Joseph leaves on the mind,—that the providence of God had a great work for him to do; that the Lord led him through great tribulation as the means of perfecting his character, and finally exalted him to be a prince and a saviour; in which we cannot fail to see a resemblance to our blessed Lord himself, of whom he was so eminent a type. It is true the elevation to which Joseph was raised was only a temporal one. Like our Lord, he saved men's lives; but there was this essential difference, that he saved the life of men's bodies, while the Lord saved the life of men's souls. This is the grand difference between those, generally, who represented our Lord and Saviour and the Lord Himself whom they represented,—what they did after a natural manner He did after a spiritual manner; what they did for time He did for eternity.
But the resemblance or analogy between our Lord's life and Joseph's may be seen in particular parts, as well as in the general outline. The resemblance or analogy may be traced from Joseph's birth. Joseph, as formerly mentioned, was the son of Rachel. You are well aware that in the Divine Word the church is often represented and described figuratively as a woman, as when the church is called the daughter of Zion and of Jerusalem; the church is also called the Lord's wife, and the members of the church are called her children—her sons and daughters. This arose from the circumstance that all who are regenerated, which means "born again," are born of God as a father and of the church as a mother; and so the divine commandment which requires us to honour our father and mother, while it enjoins love to our parents, spiritually teaches us to love the Lord and His church. The church, as a mother, is spoken of as nursing her children at her sides and dangling them on her knees, and the members of the church are spoken of as her children, sucking and being satisfied with the breasts of her consolation.
The church is spoken of under this beautiful imagery, because the church is a means and an instrument by which our Divine Father nourishes and trains us for heaven.
Now, in the historical as well as in the prophetical parts of the Divine Word, women and wives represent the church, while men and husbands represent the Lord. Thus, Abraham represented the Lord, and so did Isaac and Jacob; and Sarah and Rebecca and Jacob's wives represented the church. Jacob, you remember, had two wives, and they were sisters. These two wives represented two different churches. Leah, the eldest and least beautiful sister, was first married and first had children. Rachel, the youngest and most beautiful, and the best-beloved, was married later, and had no children till after Leah had born all her sons and her daughter. Now, Leah represented the Israelitish or Jewish church, and Rachel represented the Christian church. And you will perceive a reason for the difference between these two wives of Jacob when you reflect, that the Christian church was not only younger, but was more beautiful and more beloved of the Lord, because more worthy of love than the Jewish church. A very remarkable prophecy and its fulfilment will shew you the truth of this representative character of Rachel. Where Matthew records the cruel slaughter of the infants of Bethlehem by Herod, that he might make sure of murdering among them the infant Saviour, the Evangelist concludes the dreadful narrative by saying—"Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying, In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and refused to be comforted, because they are not." This slaughter of the children represented the destruction of innocence in the infant church, with the view of destroying innocence itself in the person of the Lord, who had been born into the world in Bethlehem. The Virgin Mary may be considered as the Rachel of the New Testament—as the mother of Him whom Joseph represented—for Mary, like Rachel, represented the church. The very circumstances of Joseph's birth, therefore, mark him as a type of the Lord our Saviour. But, in the spiritual sense, the lamentation of Rachel means the lamentation of the church over the destruction of innocence within her own borders. The slaughter of all the infants in Bethlehem, except the infant Saviour, represented that all true innocence had been destroyed in the church, and that no innocence was left but that which was incarnated in the Saviour, who was thus preserved, that He might be the Restorer and Author of innocence among men.
The naming of Joseph, too, points to his representative character. His name means adding or increase. In the natural or historical sense it refers, indeed, to his mother's confident hope that God, who, in answer to her prayers, at last had given her a son, would add another to complete her happiness. Yet, in the spiritual sense, the name, when applied to Jesus, signifies the "increase of His government, and peace, of which there shall be no end," and consequently the continual addition of members to His church, as children born of the church as a mother. It is for this reason that our Lord is called the First Born, and that those who are born of the church, or regenerated after His image, are called His brethren, as well as His children.