Fortner, Don Discovering Christ Day by Day

Sample devotional:

Genesis 43-44
“I will be Surety for Him.”
Gen 43:8-9

We read in chapter 42 that Ruben volunteered to be surety for Benjamin; but Jacob did not trust his Benjamin to Ruben’s hands. There is good reason for that. Our great Surety, the Lord Jesus Christ, is the Lion of Judah’s tribe. Therefore, in God’s providence, as a type of our covenant Surety, the Lord Jesus Christ, to whom God the Father trusted His elect (Eph 1:12), Jacob trusted Benjamin to Judah’s hand, when he said, “I will be surety for him.”

The Spirit’s Work

God the Holy Spirit is anxious for every believer to enjoy the comforting assurance of salvation in Christ. He is our Comforter. That is the work He was sent to perform. His method of comfort is to take the things of Christ and show them to us (Joh 16:7-14). He knows that the more fully we know Christ, and the more clearly we see Him, the more we shall enjoy the comfort and assurance of our salvation in Him.

Therefore, the Spirit of God always points us to Christ, especially in the inspired volume of Holy Scripture. He not only tells us who Christ is, what He has done, and what He is doing for us, He also uses metaphor after metaphor to show us pictures of our great Savior, pictures designed to assure God’s believing people that all is well between us and our God.

Types in Genesis

We see this repeatedly throughout the Book of Genesis. When Adam and Eve were naked, God provided them with the skins of an innocent victim and clothed them (3:21), portraying Christ as our Righteousness, Redemption, and Salvation. When the flood came, God saved Noah by an ark (7:15-16), portraying Christ as our Ark of refuge from the wrath of God, and our salvation by His Substitutionary sacrifice. As the ark bore all the wrath of God so that Noah and his family bore none, so Christ bore all the wrath of God for His people and we bear none (Rom 8:1). As Noah and his family suffered all the wrath of God in the ark, so God’s elect have suffered all the wrath of God in Christ (Gal 3:13). When Isaac was bound to the altar on Mt. Moriah, God provided Himself a lamb for a burnt offering (Gen 22:8; Gen 22:13), typifying Christ as our Substitute (Joh 1:29; 2Co 5:21). When Jacob was alone, helpless, and afraid, God showed him a ladder, by which he could ascend to God (28:12-13), picturing the Lord Jesus Christ as our Mediator.

Christ Our Surety

Here (Gen 43:8-9), the Spirit of God gives us another beautiful and instructive picture of the Lord Jesus Christ and of the grace of God in him. As Judah became surety for Benjamin, assuming all responsibility for him, so the Lord Jesus Christ, who sprang from the tribe of Judah, became Surety for God’s elect before the worlds were made in the covenant of grace, assuming total, absolute responsibility for the salvation of His people (Heb 7:22). In His hands, all is well. What a thought for meditation this is for the day before us!