"And the patriarchs, moved with envy, sold Joseph into Egypt: but God was with him, and delivered him out of all his afflictions." (Acts 7:9)
These are the words of Stephen as he stood before the council full of the Spirit of God, and with a face like an angel. God was with Joseph. When was God with him?
• God was with him when his brethren cast him bound into the pit in the wilderness, and when he went down to Egypt as a slave.
• God was with him when he was a bond-servant in the house of Potiphar, and He was with him when he resisted the temptations of his mistress.
• God was with him also when he was in prison, no less than when his captivity ended, and he was made ruler over all the land of Egypt.
God did not come to him, but He went with him. He did not merely come to deliver him from his afflictions, but He went into prison with him. It was because God was with him that he was delivered.
Let this fact be remembered, that the Lord goes to prison when His servants go there for His sake. Christ said that when He comes in glory He will say to some, "I was in prison, and you came unto me," (Matthew 25:36) and to others that they did not visit Him when He was in prison. There are many people who think much of being with the Lord in heaven, when He comes, but who do not realize the necessity and the blessedness of being with Him here in this present time. And it is a mistake to suppose that we have the presence of the Lord only when everything seems to favor us. When Jacob said: "All these things are against me," (Genesis 42:36) God was with him as much as when he was in Bethel or Peniel, and was preparing, out of those afflictions, the means of his future sustenance. So very often it is the case that we can have God with us only by suffering affliction.
Joseph, for instance, could not have kept God with him without going to prison. He might have kept out of prison if he had been willing to deceive his master, and sin against God, but not otherwise. Now it is certain that if Jesus of Nazareth had been in the place of Joseph, He would have done as Joseph did, and would have been obliged to suffer imprisonment for refusing to sin. Indeed, it was only because Jesus was with him, that he resisted the temptation and went to prison. He had the choice, therefore, of going to prison with the Lord, or of staying out of prison without the Lord. Joseph did not hesitate a moment in choosing.
When Jesus was on earth His delight was to do the will of God, whose law was within His heart.
"Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me, I delight to do your will, O my God: yea, your law is within my heart." (Psalm 40:7)
He said: "I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in His love." (John 15:10)
Not one of the ten commandments did He slight, not even the fourth.
"As His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up for to read." (Luke 4:16)
Every one who reads the New Testament must say, in the words of Canon Knox-Little: "It is certain that our Lord when on earth did observe Saturday, and did not observe Sunday." (Sacerdotalism, p. 75)
Now we read of Jesus Christ that: "[He is] the same yesterday, and today, and for ever." (Hebrews 13:8)
He kept the commandments when He was in the earth, because they were in His heart before He came to earth. They were His life. He did not come to earth to act a part, but to reveal God to men; and this He could do because He was in the beginning with God, and was God. He was the same on earth that He was in heaven, and He is the same in heaven that He was on earth.
"Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and today, and for ever." (Hebrews 13:8)
Therefore it is absolutely certain that if Jesus were on earth today, in the flesh, as He was eighteen hundred years ago, He would keep "the Sabbath day according to the commandment." (Luke 23:56)
In other words, it is certain that He would keep the seventh day, and would not keep Sunday. What then would be the result? Just this:
• If He were in Russia, He would be banished;
• If He were in America, He would be imprisoned, and driven to work in the chain-gang;
• If He were in England, He would have His goods sold, if He had any, and if not, He would be thrust into prison, for refusing to recognize Sunday as worthy of receiving in the slightest degree the honor due to the Sabbath of the Lord.
Indeed, when He was on earth, He suffered imprisonment, and every form of indignity, simply because of His faithfulness to the law of God.
It is only by the faith of Jesus that any man can keep the commandments of God. Whoever is truly faithful and keeping the commandments of God, even though the laws of men forbid him to keep them, can be so only if the Lord is with him. If for that faithfulness he suffers the loss of all things, or goes to prison, he may have the comfort of knowing that he is sharing the affliction with the Lord.
But if he knows the Lord to that point, he will know that poverty and imprisonment with the Lord, are more to be desired than riches and freedom without Him. With Moses, he will find that "the reproach of Christ," (Hebrews 11:26) is greater riches than all the treasures of earth.
• The Egyptians did not know that they were sending the Lord to prison when they put Joseph into the dungeon.
• The Jewish rulers did not know that they were sending the Lord to prison when they shut up His apostles.
• The princes of this world did not know that they were crucifying the Lord of glory when they condemned the humble Galilean carpenter to death.
Yet they might have known, because in every case the penalty of the law was inflicted because of loyalty to the truth, and whatsoever is of the truth is of God.--Present Truth, September 12, 1895--Genesis 39.
E.J. Waggoner