Ricky Line

I am a retired school superintendent, principal, teacher and basketball coach. I am a sports card buyer and seller who lives in the town I grew up in.

[Ricky Line @LineRicky]

I will ship USPS. I will send a picture of receipt and/or tracking # on bigger items. Shipping free.
PayPay [email protected]

If u send payment via goods add 3.0% to your total

[Ricky Line @LineRicky]

@bryce_spalding They did!

[Ricky Line @LineRicky]

@Logan_Kolas @RedsInFour 1 is more than zero. How can anyone write about the Reds and problems and never attend a game? I am a baseball fan and a Reds fan. I support the team we have.

[Ricky Line @LineRicky]

@nashcardshow Gotta go!!

[Nashville Card Show @nashcardshow]

Nashville Poke Fest is back at the Nashville Fairgrounds November 20-22! Email us at [email protected] and get your tables reserved! #nashville #pokemon #tcg #cardshow

[Ricky Line @LineRicky]

@crummypal @EliBrooks19 @CvilleTigersMBB It shouldn’t get old! Enjoy the ride!!

[Ricky Line @LineRicky]

@PROCESS_DIED Revelation 5:5-7. Jesus stood as a lamb that had been slain.

[Ricky Line @LineRicky]

@SleeperReds The Reds I hope.

[Ricky Line @LineRicky]

@Hokies2022 He can coach!!

[Ricky Line @LineRicky]

@Leaf_Cards Only Leaf!!

[Ricky Line @LineRicky]

@KLW0408 @CardChronicle Tick Rogers

[Ricky Line @LineRicky]

@RyanGarciaMLB And you watched Sal play how many games? Live?
That many voters were wrong?

[Ricky Line @LineRicky]

@Leaf_Cards Only Leaf!!

[Ricky Line @LineRicky]

@SleeperReds No

[Adam | Faithful Messenger @Adam_FaithfulM]

The longest single story in the book of Genesis isn’t about Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob. It’s about Joseph, and it takes up almost fourteen chapters. Read it once, and it’s a gripping family drama of jealousy, betrayal, slavery, prison, power, and forgiveness. Read it again after the Gospels, and you start to notice something. Again and again, the life of Joseph traces the shape of the life of Jesus, nearly two thousand years before He was born.

The beloved son. Genesis 37 opens by telling us that Jacob loved Joseph more than any of his other sons, and gave him a special robe. The exact kind of garment is uncertain, often translated as a coat of many colors or a long robe with sleeves, but everyone in the family understood what it meant. This son was marked out by his father’s love. At Jesus’ baptism, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

Hated for his words. Joseph had dreams in which his brothers bowed down to him, and he told them. Genesis says they hated him even more “for his dreams and for his words.” He was hated not for what he had done to them, but for who he claimed he would be. Jesus told His disciples, “They hated me without a cause.”

Sent by the father. Jacob sends Joseph to check on his brothers, who were pasturing the flocks far from home. Joseph answers, “Here I am,” and goes. He walks miles to find them. And when they see him coming in the distance, they say to each other, “Come, let us kill him.” In Jesus’ parable of the vineyard, the owner sends his beloved son to the tenants, and when they see him, they say, “This is the heir. Come, let us kill him.” In the Greek Old Testament that the early church read, the words are the same. Jesus was telling His listeners that they were about to do to Him what Joseph’s brothers did to Joseph.

Stripped and thrown down. The brothers grab Joseph, strip him of his robe, and throw him into a pit. Genesis adds the detail that the pit was empty, with no water in it. A dry pit was a cistern, a place to leave someone to die. Jesus was stripped of His garments at the cross, and the soldiers divided them. Then He went down into death.

Sold for silver. The brothers sit down to eat while Joseph is in the pit. When a caravan of traders passes, one brother speaks up: “What profit is it if we kill our brother? Come, let us sell him.” That brother’s name was Judah. In Greek, Judah is Ioudas. Judas. Joseph was sold for twenty pieces of silver, which, according to the law of Moses, was the price for a boy his age. Judas sold Jesus for thirty pieces of silver, the price the law set for a slave.

The bloodied robe. The brothers dip Joseph’s robe in the blood of a goat and bring it to their father. Jacob sees the blood on his son’s garment and weeps, saying his son is dead. In Israel’s worship, the blood of a goat was offered for sin on the Day of Atonement. Here, the beloved son’s robe is stained with it.

Falsely accused. In Egypt, Joseph is sold to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh. He serves faithfully, and everything prospers under him. Then Potiphar’s wife falsely accuses him, and he is thrown into prison. Genesis records no word of defense from Joseph. Isaiah said of the Servant, “Like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.” Jesus stood before false witnesses and said nothing.

Between two criminals. In prison, Joseph meets two of Pharaoh’s officials, the chief cupbearer and the chief baker, both in disgrace. Each has a dream, and Joseph interprets them. One man will be restored to life and his position in three days. The other will be executed. Hold that next to the cross. Jesus died between two criminals. One was promised life. The other died in his sin. Joseph even says to the cupbearer, “Remember me when it is well with you.” The cupbearer forgot him. The thief on the cross said the same words to Jesus, “Remember me,” and Jesus did not forget.

Raised to the right hand. After two more years, Pharaoh has troubling dreams that no one can interpret. Joseph is brought up out of the dungeon, cleaned and dressed, and stands before the king. He explains that seven years of plenty are coming, followed by seven years of famine. Pharaoh raises him in a single day from prisoner to ruler of all Egypt, second only to the throne. Genesis notes his age: he was thirty years old. Luke tells us that Jesus was about thirty when He began His ministry.

Pharaoh puts Joseph in his own chariot, and men run ahead of it shouting a command: bow the knee. Paul writes that God has highly exalted Jesus, “so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow.”

“Do whatever he tells you.” When the famine comes, and the people cry out to Pharaoh for bread, he gives them one instruction: “Go to Joseph. What he says to you, do.” Remember the wedding at Cana, when the wine ran out, and Mary turned to the servants and said, “Do whatever he tells you.” The one who was rejected is now the only source of bread for the whole world. Genesis says all the earth came to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph. Jesus said, “I am the bread of life.”

Unrecognized. Then the famine drives Joseph’s brothers to Egypt. They come and bow down before the governor, exactly as Joseph had dreamed years earlier. And Genesis says, “Joseph recognized his brothers, but they did not recognize him.” They are standing in front of the brother they betrayed, the only one who can save them, and they have no idea who he is. John wrote of Jesus, “He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.”

The substitute. Joseph tests them. He sets things up so that it looks as if Benjamin, the youngest brother and now their father’s favorite, must stay in Egypt as a slave. And Judah, the same brother who once suggested selling Joseph for silver, steps forward and offers himself instead: let me stay as a slave in place of the boy. The man who sold one brother now gives himself for another. That is when Joseph cannot hold back any longer.

“I am Joseph.” He sends everyone else out of the room and weeps so loudly that the Egyptians outside can hear him. Then he says to his brothers, “I am Joseph.” They are terrified and cannot answer. And he says, “Come near to me, please.” Then he tells them, “Do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life.”

In the book of Acts, as Stephen recounts Israel’s history, he says that the patriarchs, out of jealousy, sold Joseph into Egypt, “but God was with him,” and that it was on the second visit that Joseph made himself known to his brothers. Stephen was not just retelling history. He was speaking to people who had rejected Jesus.

Meant for good. At the end of Genesis, after their father dies, the brothers are afraid that Joseph will finally take revenge. Instead, he says one of the greatest sentences in the Old Testament: “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive.” Peter said almost the same thing about the cross at Pentecost: Jesus was delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, and yet crucified by lawless hands. The worst thing ever done was used by God to save the world.

To the world, Genesis is a collection of ancient folk tales. But here is a story written down centuries before the Messiah, about a beloved son who was sent by his father, hated by his brothers, stripped, betrayed for silver by a man named Judah, falsely accused, placed between two condemned men, raised up at thirty to the right hand of the throne, given authority over the bread that saved the world, and finally revealed to the very people who had betrayed him, who found mercy instead of judgment.

Maybe you have been on the brothers’ side of this story. You have done things you thought could never be forgiven, and you are afraid of what will happen when you finally stand before Him. Hear what Joseph said, because Jesus says it better: “Come near to me.” He is not waiting to repay you. What you meant for evil, God can turn to good. And the One you rejected is the only one who has bread.

Jesus is the beloved Son, rejected by His own and raised up to save the world. Thank you, Jesus.

[Ricky Line @LineRicky]

@LADodgersMuse You think?
Of course you want him.

[Ricky Line @LineRicky]

@MLBPipeline @MLB @jimcallisMLB Sal Stewart?

[Ricky Line @LineRicky]

@RedsInFour Another reason we sign Pagan and Stephenson

[Ricky Line @LineRicky]

@Leaf_Cards Wow!!! Only Leaf!!

[Ricky Line @LineRicky]

@Retlaw1971 @blogredmachine And he farted twice one game. Results, results, results.

[Ricky Line @LineRicky]

@RyanKennedy_22 Nightmare. I live 4 blocks away.