Podcasts about in joseph

Chapter 80- In Joseph's Tomb Book: The Desire Of Ages by EGW Discussed live on Instagram by Pastor David Asscherick on 5/21/2021 Videos can be found on the David Asscherick YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/c/DavidAsscherick David's Word: Sabbath

When Moroni told Joseph that there was a book made of gold plates that were buried, I wonder what he thought? In Joseph's day, it was all but unheard of that ancient records would be engraved on metal. I wonder if that struck him as odd. We know that several of his persecutors thought it was strange, in fact, that was one thing he was often harassed about. But just because we may not understand something, doesn't mean that God doesn't. And as time went on and more and more things were discovered, we find that engraving history on metal was actually a pretty common practice! In a similar manner, as we come nearer to God and as for understanding, we can better understand God's ways in our lives.

Good morning, and let me just add my greeting to the ones you’ve already had today, especially if you are visiting with us in person or online. My name is Kirk and I’m one of the pastors here at FCBC. One of the things I do as I feel to serve our church family in my role on staff is to oversee our Life Groups. So I want to give you a bit of an update about our Life Groups before we dive into the Joseph story today.Sunday worship gatherings are vital to our growth in faith in Jesus, but the Bible says that we not only worship together, but we live in community as Christians. So here at FCBC we worship in our services, but we also live in groups. Our Life Groups are not gender or age specific, but rather they are smaller expressions of the church where adults, teens, and kids learn to love Jesus, love and serve one another, and reach out together with the gospel to those around them. Life Groups are meant to help us live out what the Bible teaches about the everyday life of Christians being the church together. First Peter 2:4-12 tells us that the glory of God is displayed as we together are the outshining of His goodness in everyday life. Being part of a church is so much more than being here on a Sunday. So if you are new, if you’ve recently attended a Welcome dinner, or if you realize you want to walk in biblical community with your church, let me invite you to get involved with a Life Group. Today out in the foyer, after the message, there will be some leaders to help you connect at our welcome table. If you are online, feel free to contact us through our website and ask for help getting into a group. As you can see from this map, we have 24 groups all over the Treasure Valley, with 34 leaders trained in caring for God’s people and reaching out with the gospel. So there is a group for you!But, it’s not just because groups are available that I want to encourage you to find a group. I read an article this week about how life in our nation is going to get tougher for Christians. It might become harder and harder to stand in our convictions as we move forward. And one of the takeaways from that article was a call for Christians to accept this, and one particular way they could prepare. In his book Live Not By Lies, Rod Dreyer says Christians can prepare to maintain hope in a repressive society by:“Creating and committing to small groups…These little platoons,” according to Dreher, “Are required…because the lone, atomized individual stands no chance against the forces of…oppression. In contrast, a fellowship of like-minded truth tellers has the power to withstand much evil."The article I read then asked the question: will we listen? Will we commit ourselves to strong communities of faith?At the end of the introduction of his book, Dreher describes a friend who had formerly lived under Soviet totalitarianism telling him that writing the book would be a waste of time. When Dreher asked why, his friend answered, “People have to live through it first to understand. Any time I try to explain current events and their meaning to my friends or acquaintances, I am met with blank stares or downright nonsense”.I hope we will listen to this warning. First because if 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that anything can happen very quickly and our whole lives can be altered into a less comfortable reality of suffering. Second, I hope we listen because in doing so we also listen to the lives of the persecuted Christians that we prayed for in our service already. As Jeannette from the Central African Republic said, she never thought she would be living through the type of suffering she is living through.And here is my tie-in to the Joseph story from our Life Group update, as a call to be the church that is prepared for suffering, and our day of prayer for the persecuted church. There was one line in the video we watched that I hope you heard, and that brings this all together. It was a line that brought me to tears as I watched the video this week. The narrator says:“These faithful Christians in the Central African Republic have shown God’s love and forgiveness to their persecutors.”Reflect on this one more moment with me as we look at some more pictures of these persecuted Christians. These lovely, beautiful, humans - made in the image of God, brothers and sisters of all us that are Christians, these sweet people in Central African Republic - they who had their family gunned down in the streets. They who are driven to secret remote areas to form new villages as survivors. They who continue to get attacked in new waves. They show God’s love and forgiveness to their persecutors!This truly is awe-inspiring, unthinkable love. It reveals people who have had their hearts thoroughly changed through the love of Jesus to be able to love the way that they do. But they have had their hearts changed through the most horrific of circumstances.And that’s exactly where we find ourselves as we re-enter the story of Joseph this week. We now get a climactic revelation of what has been happening in the heart of Joseph for the last 22 years. And while we know that Joseph suffered, I think that seeing some of the images we have seen this morning and reflecting on real people who are suffering right now in terrible ways, helps us to remember what human tragedy this story of Joseph in the book of Genesis really is.And this scene, as we pick it up in chapter 45 of Genesis, we see the Revelation of Purpose. This chapter is the explosion of the human experience of Joseph into the revelation of divine purposes that have changed his heart, brought about God’s will, and show us a picture of ultimate forgiveness.If you are just joining us, you need to know that the tension has been building to this point of the story right from the beginning of chapter 37, but specifically since chapter 42. Let’s trace the story through the first point that I want to draw our attention to this morning. In Joseph, we are seeing the:Revelation of Purpose through Human EmotionOne way to tell the story of Joseph is simply by tracing the words “mourn,” “weep” or “wept,” or “cry” through this part of the story.Joseph was sold into slavery in Egypt by his brothers, then falsely accused of rape and put into a deep dungeon for a crime he didn’t commit. Serving faithfully and being forgotten in prison for 13 years, I am sure he wept greatly at times, though the text of scripture doesn’t explicitly say.Then, Joseph is exalted to a place of prominence after being called out of his cell and interpreting Pharaoh’s dreams. As he takes his God-given position of prominence, he experiences what is an emotional moment for all of us, marriage, and then the birth of two children. Who can forget the birth of their children! He must have wept tears of joy, but in the naming of those boys there is a hint of sorrow still as he calls one Manasseh – saying, “God has made me forget my hardship,” and the other Ephraim, commenting, “God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.” Prosperity mixed with paint, and no doubt more tears.The story moves on to his wisdom in leading Egypt through its famine, and we arrive at chapter 42 where he meets his brothers again. And we see that Joseph weeps each time he meets them. Look at these accounts:Gen. 42:22-24Gen. 43:28-31Finally, we come to Gen. 45, and we see Joseph weep 3 times. He weeps so loud that all can hear. He weeps one on one with Benjamin, he weeps communally with all his brothers. He weeps! Read it with me:“Then Joseph could not control himself before all those who stood by him. He cried, ‘Make everyone go out from me.’ So no one stayed with him when Joseph made himself known to his brothers. And he wept aloud, so that the Egyptians heard it, and the household of Pharaoh heard it.”Please don’t miss this observation in our story today. It seems that stoicism at some point won the day in the Western world and somehow became associated in the Christian worldview with godliness. It leads to interpretations of the “crying passages” of Joseph as him hiding and holding back out of shame to show emotion. Maybe some of you still hold to the idea that real men don’t cry, or that Joseph’s main concern in sending the Egyptians out of the room was his own pride or shame related to his tears. No. The Egyptians heard it anyway, and most likely had seen his pain back in chapter 43 as well. Remember that up until this point Joseph has not told anyone about what his brothers had done to him. I believe that here, he is covering for his brothers. So rather than making a statement about crying being weak, this points to the strength we see in Joseph in the next words. In the big reveal. More powerful than when Darth Vader told Luke, “I am your father.” Joseph says, “I am Joseph. Is my father still alive?”Now I want you to think about what it means for Joseph to reveal himself to them. Think about him saying his name. He was called Zaphanath-Panea in Egypt. He had a whole new life, a new family, a new identity. Now, in a moment, with liquid thoughts of all the most powerful emotional memories of his life streaming down his face he can own who he is, who his brothers are, and what has happened to him. This is even clearer when we read the next verse:“So Joseph said to his brothers, ‘Come near to me, please.’ And they came near. And he said, ‘I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt.’”First of all, this identifies him to his brothers in an incontrovertible way. No one else could know this but the brothers, God, and Joseph.But even more than that it reveals a complete dispositional change that only can be described as a miracle. This is one of the sweetest, most tender passages of all the bible. Hear Joseph as he says, “Come near to me.” Beautiful, because in Joseph’s voice we have the echo of the one he is foreshadowing, and through Joseph’s emotional pain we have the revelation of a purpose of God for us. In Joseph saying, “I am Joseph,” we have an echo of Jesus, the great I AM. In Joseph saying, “Come near,” we have an echo of Jesus and the grand purpose of the Bible from beginning to end, as God says, “Come near to me.” Joseph’s memory of his brothers and his emotional experience is leading him to embrace them in strength and stability rather than to reject them. What a model for us as we work through our own emotions and stories!Allow me to share one of my memories with you. This picture is a photo of the Forum in Rome. And it is surrounded by kind and gracious words in Italian and English from the people in our first church plant in Rome. It looks so nice! But behind this memory there lies so much pain as well. Financial strife, the difficult days of a young marriage in a foreign land while in the ministry, the birth of a first child and feeling completely overwhelmed without any older folks or family to provide guidance there on the ground, learning a new culture and having small mini crisis of faith on a regular basis. It was a beautiful time, but it was a broken time. I can feel the pain still and I could probably weep right now if I let myself. I used to ride the bumpy cobble stone roads of Rome and sing one of my favorite songs in faith, saying “this broken road, prepares your will for me. By God’s grace I can now say this is a part of my story I celebrate.What about you? What memories of innocence broken still bring you pain? Or what memories can you recall and celebrate what God did in you?Because if you are a believer this morning this is the work that God is doing in you. He is sanctifying your body, mind, and soul. There is no separation from your experience and your relationship with God. He is not making you an unfeeling detached “godly” person. He is sanctifying you to make you more like Jesus Christ in every arena of your life. To be able to articulate when you are overwhelmed, to talk about how you’ve been duped by people, to admit your anger or grumpiness, to share your perplexities, to have every area of your human experience brought into a state of shalom, stability, and peace through these experiences and not despite them. This is the revelation of the purpose of God in your life. It’s God’s will, your sanctification. As it says in 1 Thessalonians 5:23:“Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”He is working a disposition of strength in you as He draws you near through emotional pain. And if you are still searching for answers today, and not sure if you are a “believer,” I also have no doubt that God uses the pain of your story to cause you to grope for Him, to call out for Him, to cry to Him for help. And the promise of His word is that all who call on the name of the Lord Jesus will be saved, will come near to God and know Him. God is perhaps revealing His purpose of drawing you to Jesus Christ through you finding out that there really is not healing medication for your soul anywhere else out there. I want you to truly consider the words of the Lord Jesus when He said in Matthew 11:28–30:“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”Could it be that these words are true? Could it be that you have been walking through pain, hurt, and trauma but not coming to the one who can give you the rest and peace you need? Joseph is a testimony that the God of the Bible truly has a disposition towards humanity that says, “Come.” Just like Joseph paid the cost through the pain of years in jail and absorbed this on behalf of his brothers, so God’s stance towards you has been paid for by the atoning work of Jesus Christ on the cross.But maybe you are saying, this is just too unbelievable. What made Joseph have the capacity to process the level of trauma he had experienced? What gave him the power of self-control to hold back his feelings until the right time? What enabled him to test the boundaries of his renewed relationship with his brothers and not lash out and take revenge? Well there is more to explain, because we see that Joseph also discovered the:Revelation of Purpose in God’s ProvidenceWe only have to read the next three verses to see the core foundation that had been laid in Joseph’s heart that forms the bedrock of his human experience. Look with me:Genesis 45:5, “And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life.”Genesis 45:7, “And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors.”Genesis 45:8, “So it was not you who sent me here, but God. He has made me a father to Pharaoh, lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt.”It’s easy to read those verses, as those who have read and rehearsed the story of Joseph through so many times, and say, “Of course God was going to work it all out!”But, please don’t forget to marvel at this for all that it is. You know that Joseph must have spent night after sleepless night turning this over in his head. ”So, let’s see, the God of my father Jacob, and the God of my great grandad Abraham who promised to bless the whole world through our family, and gave me a dream that I was going to rule, let my brothers do this to me! How does this work? They were so cruel and evil, it hurts so much, I have no friends here, I don’t speak the language or understand their ways. I am so alone.” And on and on I’m sure he thought many times.But what we see in these three verses of Gen. 45 is the solid maturation of someone who has arrived at the only place of refuge possible in this world. He comes to know and believe that God is overarching and working in the affairs of men to bring about His purpose - that is what we mean by God’s providence. Did Joseph learn this in the dungeon? Or when he was exalted to the palace? Or maybe the last penny dropped and he finally realized it when he first saw his brothers bow down to him? I’m not sure. But I know that he knows now. This is really in one sense the theme of his story, and that of the whole bible. We’ll cover this later in the story in chapter 50, but let me just make a few observations.The first thing to say is that God’s providence is no comfort to those who want to theorize about it rather than accept and believe it. Joseph received comfort and security as he believed it. It truly is hard to understand how God takes the fully responsible sinful actions of men and uses them in His plan that will surely take place.The brothers sold Joseph to get him away from them., but God sent him to Egypt to preserve their lives and give their money back.The brothers planned to take Joseph’s life, but God planned to use Joseph to preserve life for his family and the whole region.The brothers tried to take away the dream about Joseph ruling, but God sent Joseph to Egypt so that he could rule in Pharaoh’s house.You know Joseph must have turned this over in his head night after sleepless night at times in those 22 years. “Wait a minute here God, you gave me those dreams, you gave my grandad Abraham and my dad Jacob all those promises. How could my brothers do this? Where will things end up?” But slowly and surely a rock-solid conviction grew in Joseph, day by day, year by year as he realized that his brothers didn’t send him to Egypt, God did! He didn’t arrive at these emphatic statements of God sending him to Egypt overnight. But he believed it and it gave him ultimate comfort and security. Can you say the same about your story? Can you say God sent you to where you are right now? Even if it was through a health challenge, a financial disaster, the betrayal of a friend, the brokenness of your marriage, the rejection of your children, the lack love from a parent? How else can you find any comfort in life or death if you do not believe that God is working over all for His glory and your good?And oh how different this is than mere karma or simplistic statements like, “Everything happens for a reason.” Those are mere guesses, while the God of the Bible is personal and real and has His hands all over your life because you are part of His story, if only you believe.But let’s also see that the brothers could receive comfort & security in God’s providence. Now it would have been totally wrong in this moment for the brothers to say, “Oh yeah Joseph, you know God works all things together for good,” and give him pat on the back. And they didn’t. The previous verses say that they were terrified, they were in a place of shock like they just got shelled by an overflying bomber in a war zone.So, how could they be sure that Joseph’s invitation to them was sincere and real? By God’s providence and plan. Joseph had staged this elaborate plan to test their hearts, but his motive was to see their repentance so he could get to this very moment. But look back each step of the way. Joseph could not have controlled that they ended up in Egypt in the first place. With each trip back and forth to their father’s land, they could have made a different choice. But this complex plan was not hatched by Joseph’s hands, but by God’s.And that is our assurance as well. How do we know that God’s disposition is truly for us? How do we know that whether we come to Jesus, the greater Joseph, today for the first time or the 100th time, that He won’t pull the rug away from us? Look at the complex plan throughout the whole of the Bible. We fell in the garden through our first parents Adam and Eve and ever since then God has been working His plan out in the story of the world to bring about the preservation and giving of eternal life to all who would come to believe in Jesus Christ and His sacrifice. His providence was on full display in the cross of Christ. Look at these two sections from the book of Acts:They both show the tension that part of God’s predetermined plan of salvation was that wicked men would kill His own son, and that He would absorb the cost of eternal life on Himself through His death. This, like Joseph’s life, is hard to understand, and yet, better than fully understanding, is believing. Do you think that if God had this very complex plan playing out throughout the history of the world and through every nation and empire, that He will tweak your nose and tell you He was just kidding when you come to put your faith in His precious son that He crushed for your sins, if you believe? No! The complexity of the plan gives you assurance like the brothers could have in this moment in time as well.One final point on providence. We should have comfort and security in God’s providence in the troubled time we live in right now. Joseph had been a tent dwelling Hebrew, a slave in the prison, and now was a ruler in the world empire of his time. Do you wonder if his heart was tied to his new nation? No, he saw himself clearly in the providence of God though his own personal rise and fall, and through the rise and fall of prosperity in the nation of Egypt. He says that God sent him to preserve a remnant for his people.Based on this and the fact that we are coming up to a tense election this coming Tuesday and possibly more troubled times ahead, I want to apply the truth of God’s providence to us. Our comfort should not be in the results of an election, or in hopes that a party or man would rule or reign, or even in the rise or fall of America itself, but in God’s purposes through it all. Can I ask you, are you hoping and believing for your party to win more than you are for God’s outworking plan through whatever happens? Do you think “all is lost” if this candidate or that candidate doesn’t get into office? What would your social media feed have to say about that?Here’s the truth of scripture: nations rise and fall and God will be exalted. What if your worst nightmare happened and the party you call the fascists hold power? What if communism does take hold in America and the country is never the same again? What if America fell like the Roman Empire?Because that is what happens historically, nations rise and fall, very quickly at times. Outside the walls of the Roman Forum along the Via Dei Fori Imperali, there are 5 subsequent maps that show the expansion of the Romans Empire. It starts with a speck in the Roman Tiber Valley, and ends up covering all of Europe and beyond. But now, we walk by those maps as tourists and trample upon the ruins of that empire.Greece, Rome, Britain, America, and whatever world empires would follow are nothing to the God of providence. Listen to the words of the prophet Isaiah:So, why are we so inordinately fascinated with the security of the empire and the comfort of this country? Surely we should exercise our civic duties and vote, I’m not saying otherwise. But we will never find comfort or security in this election or any other.Instead we should take a mental tour through the Colosseum where they put to death our brothers and sisters in Christ simply for believing in Jesus, and we can laugh. The church walks over the ruins of empires of the world in the providence of God as He continues to work out His purpose of bringing all tongues and tribes to a knowledge of His Son Jesus, just like He brought all the known world under the sway of Joseph so that His people could come and dwell safely in the land of Goshen.This understanding of the providence of God not only enabled Joseph to process his human experience and emotions as part of God’s story, but also led to the:Revelation of Purpose by the Forgiveness & Reconciliation of God’s peopleRead with me as we pick up the story again in verses 9-15:“Hurry and go up to my father and say to him, ‘Thus says your son Joseph, God has made me lord of all Egypt. Come down to me; do not tarry. You shall dwell in the land of Goshen, and you shall be near me, you and your children and your children’s children, and your flocks, your herds, and all that you have. There I will provide for you, for there are yet five years of famine to come, so that you and your household, and all that you have, do not come to poverty. And now your eyes see, and the eyes of my brother Benjamin see, that it is my mouth that speaks to you. You must tell my father of all my honor in Egypt, and of all that you have seen. Hurry and bring my father down here.’ Then he fell upon his brother Benjamin’s neck and wept, and Benjamin wept upon his neck. And he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them. After that his brothers talked with him.”This picture of Joseph kissing not only Benjamin, but all his brothers reveals the purpose of God in this story even further. That God is a forgiving God who works by the forgiving and reconciliation of His people.Joseph and his brothers are an illustration of something that John Stott said so well, that:“Forgiveness is as indispensable to the life and health of the soul as food is for the body.”By the end of this chapter we find that the forgiveness is given and the reconciliation is experienced by the family of Joseph literally revives the heart of Jacob and brings fresh life. So, forgiveness is not some small little element of the Christian message or experience, but it’s at its very heart.I want you to think for a second how you would have responded to the brothers. Would you have said, “Now you’ll get what is coming to you? Now I’ll get my pound of flesh?” But in this story we see the exact opposite in the actions on the part Joseph in response to the actions of his brothers. His brothers tore his clothes off and he gave them clothes. His brothers sold him to gain money, he gave them money. His brother sent him far away from them, he said come close to me.This is the dramatic illustration of the actions of a forgiving heart. It’s the expression of someone who has themselves learned their own debt before God, who know as Psalm 130 says that:“If you Oh Lord should mark iniquities who could stand?”Can you really believe that Joseph is hugging and kissing all of his brothers? And more than that, my question to you this morning in my last point is, can you hug and kiss all your brothers and sisters? Can you forgive offenses that you have to admit pale in comparison with the suffering and hurt that Joseph has been through?If not, then perhaps you have never really been forgiven by God, because our forgiveness of others is a direct expression of the reality of our awareness of our own forgiveness before God. Since God has forgiven us, we will be quick to forgive.Matthew 18 is a New Testament explanation of what we see in the Joseph story. Let’s look at that together:So, based on that, God says to you right now today, if on the cross my son said, “Father forgive them they know not what they do,” are you prepared to hold a grudge against your brother or sister in Christ for the rest of their lives? Of all things the church is to be a people of forgiveness. Is that not part of the prayer the Lord gave us to pray? Forgive us our debts as we forgive those who sin against us.We are going to close with a song called “His Mercy is More.“ And I want to invite you to celebrate the mercy of God in His all-knowing forgiveness of you through the fully sufficient sacrificial death of Jesus Christ. Maybe you need to accept this gift He gives for the first time in order to celebrate that with us today.But I also want to invite you to consider the words of this hymn in regards to the relationships you have around you in your marriage, with you kids or parents, among your roommates, in this church, in your Life Group, or anywhere else. Let these words go through you heart and mind, leading to action as you leave this place and throw yourself on any brother or sister who there are unresolved issues with.“Forgive Our Sins, As We Forgive”Father, forgive our sins as we forgive, you taught us Lord to pray.But you alone can grant us grace to live the words we say.How can your pardon reach and bless the unforgiving heart,That broods on wrong and will not let old bitterness depart.In blazing light, your cross reveals the truth we dimly knew.How small the debts men owe to us, how great our debt to you.Lord, cleanse the debts within our souls and bid resentment cease.Then, reconciled to God and man, our lives will spread your peace.

Good morning, and let me just add my greeting to the ones you’ve already had today, especially if you are visiting with us in person or online. My name is Kirk and I’m one of the pastors here at FCBC. One of the things I do as I feel to serve our church family in my role on staff is to oversee our Life Groups. So I want to give you a bit of an update about our Life Groups before we dive into the Joseph story today.Sunday worship gatherings are vital to our growth in faith in Jesus, but the Bible says that we not only worship together, but we live in community as Christians. So here at FCBC we worship in our services, but we also live in groups. Our Life Groups are not gender or age specific, but rather they are smaller expressions of the church where adults, teens, and kids learn to love Jesus, love and serve one another, and reach out together with the gospel to those around them. Life Groups are meant to help us live out what the Bible teaches about the everyday life of Christians being the church together. First Peter 2:4-12 tells us that the glory of God is displayed as we together are the outshining of His goodness in everyday life. Being part of a church is so much more than being here on a Sunday. So if you are new, if you’ve recently attended a Welcome dinner, or if you realize you want to walk in biblical community with your church, let me invite you to get involved with a Life Group. Today out in the foyer, after the message, there will be some leaders to help you connect at our welcome table. If you are online, feel free to contact us through our website and ask for help getting into a group. As you can see from this map, we have 24 groups all over the Treasure Valley, with 34 leaders trained in caring for God’s people and reaching out with the gospel. So there is a group for you!But, it’s not just because groups are available that I want to encourage you to find a group. I read an article this week about how life in our nation is going to get tougher for Christians. It might become harder and harder to stand in our convictions as we move forward. And one of the takeaways from that article was a call for Christians to accept this, and one particular way they could prepare. In his book Live Not By Lies, Rod Dreyer says Christians can prepare to maintain hope in a repressive society by:“Creating and committing to small groups…These little platoons,” according to Dreher, “Are required…because the lone, atomized individual stands no chance against the forces of…oppression. In contrast, a fellowship of like-minded truth tellers has the power to withstand much evil."The article I read then asked the question: will we listen? Will we commit ourselves to strong communities of faith?At the end of the introduction of his book, Dreher describes a friend who had formerly lived under Soviet totalitarianism telling him that writing the book would be a waste of time. When Dreher asked why, his friend answered, “People have to live through it first to understand. Any time I try to explain current events and their meaning to my friends or acquaintances, I am met with blank stares or downright nonsense”.I hope we will listen to this warning. First because if 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that anything can happen very quickly and our whole lives can be altered into a less comfortable reality of suffering. Second, I hope we listen because in doing so we also listen to the lives of the persecuted Christians that we prayed for in our service already. As Jeannette from the Central African Republic said, she never thought she would be living through the type of suffering she is living through.And here is my tie-in to the Joseph story from our Life Group update, as a call to be the church that is prepared for suffering, and our day of prayer for the persecuted church. There was one line in the video we watched that I hope you heard, and that brings this all together. It was a line that brought me to tears as I watched the video this week. The narrator says:“These faithful Christians in the Central African Republic have shown God’s love and forgiveness to their persecutors.”Reflect on this one more moment with me as we look at some more pictures of these persecuted Christians. These lovely, beautiful, humans - made in the image of God, brothers and sisters of all us that are Christians, these sweet people in Central African Republic - they who had their family gunned down in the streets. They who are driven to secret remote areas to form new villages as survivors. They who continue to get attacked in new waves. They show God’s love and forgiveness to their persecutors!This truly is awe-inspiring, unthinkable love. It reveals people who have had their hearts thoroughly changed through the love of Jesus to be able to love the way that they do. But they have had their hearts changed through the most horrific of circumstances.And that’s exactly where we find ourselves as we re-enter the story of Joseph this week. We now get a climactic revelation of what has been happening in the heart of Joseph for the last 22 years. And while we know that Joseph suffered, I think that seeing some of the images we have seen this morning and reflecting on real people who are suffering right now in terrible ways, helps us to remember what human tragedy this story of Joseph in the book of Genesis really is.And this scene, as we pick it up in chapter 45 of Genesis, we see the Revelation of Purpose. This chapter is the explosion of the human experience of Joseph into the revelation of divine purposes that have changed his heart, brought about God’s will, and show us a picture of ultimate forgiveness.If you are just joining us, you need to know that the tension has been building to this point of the story right from the beginning of chapter 37, but specifically since chapter 42. Let’s trace the story through the first point that I want to draw our attention to this morning. In Joseph, we are seeing the:Revelation of Purpose through Human EmotionOne way to tell the story of Joseph is simply by tracing the words “mourn,” “weep” or “wept,” or “cry” through this part of the story.Joseph was sold into slavery in Egypt by his brothers, then falsely accused of rape and put into a deep dungeon for a crime he didn’t commit. Serving faithfully and being forgotten in prison for 13 years, I am sure he wept greatly at times, though the text of scripture doesn’t explicitly say.Then, Joseph is exalted to a place of prominence after being called out of his cell and interpreting Pharaoh’s dreams. As he takes his God-given position of prominence, he experiences what is an emotional moment for all of us, marriage, and then the birth of two children. Who can forget the birth of their children! He must have wept tears of joy, but in the naming of those boys there is a hint of sorrow still as he calls one Manasseh – saying, “God has made me forget my hardship,” and the other Ephraim, commenting, “God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.” Prosperity mixed with paint, and no doubt more tears.The story moves on to his wisdom in leading Egypt through its famine, and we arrive at chapter 42 where he meets his brothers again. And we see that Joseph weeps each time he meets them. Look at these accounts:Gen. 42:22-24Gen. 43:28-31Finally, we come to Gen. 45, and we see Joseph weep 3 times. He weeps so loud that all can hear. He weeps one on one with Benjamin, he weeps communally with all his brothers. He weeps! Read it with me:“Then Joseph could not control himself before all those who stood by him. He cried, ‘Make everyone go out from me.’ So no one stayed with him when Joseph made himself known to his brothers. And he wept aloud, so that the Egyptians heard it, and the household of Pharaoh heard it.”Please don’t miss this observation in our story today. It seems that stoicism at some point won the day in the Western world and somehow became associated in the Christian worldview with godliness. It leads to interpretations of the “crying passages” of Joseph as him hiding and holding back out of shame to show emotion. Maybe some of you still hold to the idea that real men don’t cry, or that Joseph’s main concern in sending the Egyptians out of the room was his own pride or shame related to his tears. No. The Egyptians heard it anyway, and most likely had seen his pain back in chapter 43 as well. Remember that up until this point Joseph has not told anyone about what his brothers had done to him. I believe that here, he is covering for his brothers. So rather than making a statement about crying being weak, this points to the strength we see in Joseph in the next words. In the big reveal. More powerful than when Darth Vader told Luke, “I am your father.” Joseph says, “I am Joseph. Is my father still alive?”Now I want you to think about what it means for Joseph to reveal himself to them. Think about him saying his name. He was called Zaphanath-Panea in Egypt. He had a whole new life, a new family, a new identity. Now, in a moment, with liquid thoughts of all the most powerful emotional memories of his life streaming down his face he can own who he is, who his brothers are, and what has happened to him. This is even clearer when we read the next verse:“So Joseph said to his brothers, ‘Come near to me, please.’ And they came near. And he said, ‘I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt.’”First of all, this identifies him to his brothers in an incontrovertible way. No one else could know this but the brothers, God, and Joseph.But even more than that it reveals a complete dispositional change that only can be described as a miracle. This is one of the sweetest, most tender passages of all the bible. Hear Joseph as he says, “Come near to me.” Beautiful, because in Joseph’s voice we have the echo of the one he is foreshadowing, and through Joseph’s emotional pain we have the revelation of a purpose of God for us. In Joseph saying, “I am Joseph,” we have an echo of Jesus, the great I AM. In Joseph saying, “Come near,” we have an echo of Jesus and the grand purpose of the Bible from beginning to end, as God says, “Come near to me.” Joseph’s memory of his brothers and his emotional experience is leading him to embrace them in strength and stability rather than to reject them. What a model for us as we work through our own emotions and stories!Allow me to share one of my memories with you. This picture is a photo of the Forum in Rome. And it is surrounded by kind and gracious words in Italian and English from the people in our first church plant in Rome. It looks so nice! But behind this memory there lies so much pain as well. Financial strife, the difficult days of a young marriage in a foreign land while in the ministry, the birth of a first child and feeling completely overwhelmed without any older folks or family to provide guidance there on the ground, learning a new culture and having small mini crisis of faith on a regular basis. It was a beautiful time, but it was a broken time. I can feel the pain still and I could probably weep right now if I let myself. I used to ride the bumpy cobble stone roads of Rome and sing one of my favorite songs in faith, saying “this broken road, prepares your will for me. By God’s grace I can now say this is a part of my story I celebrate.What about you? What memories of innocence broken still bring you pain? Or what memories can you recall and celebrate what God did in you?Because if you are a believer this morning this is the work that God is doing in you. He is sanctifying your body, mind, and soul. There is no separation from your experience and your relationship with God. He is not making you an unfeeling detached “godly” person. He is sanctifying you to make you more like Jesus Christ in every arena of your life. To be able to articulate when you are overwhelmed, to talk about how you’ve been duped by people, to admit your anger or grumpiness, to share your perplexities, to have every area of your human experience brought into a state of shalom, stability, and peace through these experiences and not despite them. This is the revelation of the purpose of God in your life. It’s God’s will, your sanctification. As it says in 1 Thessalonians 5:23:“Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”He is working a disposition of strength in you as He draws you near through emotional pain. And if you are still searching for answers today, and not sure if you are a “believer,” I also have no doubt that God uses the pain of your story to cause you to grope for Him, to call out for Him, to cry to Him for help. And the promise of His word is that all who call on the name of the Lord Jesus will be saved, will come near to God and know Him. God is perhaps revealing His purpose of drawing you to Jesus Christ through you finding out that there really is not healing medication for your soul anywhere else out there. I want you to truly consider the words of the Lord Jesus when He said in Matthew 11:28–30:“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”Could it be that these words are true? Could it be that you have been walking through pain, hurt, and trauma but not coming to the one who can give you the rest and peace you need? Joseph is a testimony that the God of the Bible truly has a disposition towards humanity that says, “Come.” Just like Joseph paid the cost through the pain of years in jail and absorbed this on behalf of his brothers, so God’s stance towards you has been paid for by the atoning work of Jesus Christ on the cross.But maybe you are saying, this is just too unbelievable. What made Joseph have the capacity to process the level of trauma he had experienced? What gave him the power of self-control to hold back his feelings until the right time? What enabled him to test the boundaries of his renewed relationship with his brothers and not lash out and take revenge? Well there is more to explain, because we see that Joseph also discovered the:Revelation of Purpose in God’s ProvidenceWe only have to read the next three verses to see the core foundation that had been laid in Joseph’s heart that forms the bedrock of his human experience. Look with me:Genesis 45:5, “And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life.”Genesis 45:7, “And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors.”Genesis 45:8, “So it was not you who sent me here, but God. He has made me a father to Pharaoh, lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt.”It’s easy to read those verses, as those who have read and rehearsed the story of Joseph through so many times, and say, “Of course God was going to work it all out!”But, please don’t forget to marvel at this for all that it is. You know that Joseph must have spent night after sleepless night turning this over in his head. ”So, let’s see, the God of my father Jacob, and the God of my great grandad Abraham who promised to bless the whole world through our family, and gave me a dream that I was going to rule, let my brothers do this to me! How does this work? They were so cruel and evil, it hurts so much, I have no friends here, I don’t speak the language or understand their ways. I am so alone.” And on and on I’m sure he thought many times.But what we see in these three verses of Gen. 45 is the solid maturation of someone who has arrived at the only place of refuge possible in this world. He comes to know and believe that God is overarching and working in the affairs of men to bring about His purpose - that is what we mean by God’s providence. Did Joseph learn this in the dungeon? Or when he was exalted to the palace? Or maybe the last penny dropped and he finally realized it when he first saw his brothers bow down to him? I’m not sure. But I know that he knows now. This is really in one sense the theme of his story, and that of the whole bible. We’ll cover this later in the story in chapter 50, but let me just make a few observations.The first thing to say is that God’s providence is no comfort to those who want to theorize about it rather than accept and believe it. Joseph received comfort and security as he believed it. It truly is hard to understand how God takes the fully responsible sinful actions of men and uses them in His plan that will surely take place.The brothers sold Joseph to get him away from them., but God sent him to Egypt to preserve their lives and give their money back.The brothers planned to take Joseph’s life, but God planned to use Joseph to preserve life for his family and the whole region.The brothers tried to take away the dream about Joseph ruling, but God sent Joseph to Egypt so that he could rule in Pharaoh’s house.You know Joseph must have turned this over in his head night after sleepless night at times in those 22 years. “Wait a minute here God, you gave me those dreams, you gave my grandad Abraham and my dad Jacob all those promises. How could my brothers do this? Where will things end up?” But slowly and surely a rock-solid conviction grew in Joseph, day by day, year by year as he realized that his brothers didn’t send him to Egypt, God did! He didn’t arrive at these emphatic statements of God sending him to Egypt overnight. But he believed it and it gave him ultimate comfort and security. Can you say the same about your story? Can you say God sent you to where you are right now? Even if it was through a health challenge, a financial disaster, the betrayal of a friend, the brokenness of your marriage, the rejection of your children, the lack love from a parent? How else can you find any comfort in life or death if you do not believe that God is working over all for His glory and your good?And oh how different this is than mere karma or simplistic statements like, “Everything happens for a reason.” Those are mere guesses, while the God of the Bible is personal and real and has His hands all over your life because you are part of His story, if only you believe.But let’s also see that the brothers could receive comfort & security in God’s providence. Now it would have been totally wrong in this moment for the brothers to say, “Oh yeah Joseph, you know God works all things together for good,” and give him pat on the back. And they didn’t. The previous verses say that they were terrified, they were in a place of shock like they just got shelled by an overflying bomber in a war zone.So, how could they be sure that Joseph’s invitation to them was sincere and real? By God’s providence and plan. Joseph had staged this elaborate plan to test their hearts, but his motive was to see their repentance so he could get to this very moment. But look back each step of the way. Joseph could not have controlled that they ended up in Egypt in the first place. With each trip back and forth to their father’s land, they could have made a different choice. But this complex plan was not hatched by Joseph’s hands, but by God’s.And that is our assurance as well. How do we know that God’s disposition is truly for us? How do we know that whether we come to Jesus, the greater Joseph, today for the first time or the 100th time, that He won’t pull the rug away from us? Look at the complex plan throughout the whole of the Bible. We fell in the garden through our first parents Adam and Eve and ever since then God has been working His plan out in the story of the world to bring about the preservation and giving of eternal life to all who would come to believe in Jesus Christ and His sacrifice. His providence was on full display in the cross of Christ. Look at these two sections from the book of Acts:They both show the tension that part of God’s predetermined plan of salvation was that wicked men would kill His own son, and that He would absorb the cost of eternal life on Himself through His death. This, like Joseph’s life, is hard to understand, and yet, better than fully understanding, is believing. Do you think that if God had this very complex plan playing out throughout the history of the world and through every nation and empire, that He will tweak your nose and tell you He was just kidding when you come to put your faith in His precious son that He crushed for your sins, if you believe? No! The complexity of the plan gives you assurance like the brothers could have in this moment in time as well.One final point on providence. We should have comfort and security in God’s providence in the troubled time we live in right now. Joseph had been a tent dwelling Hebrew, a slave in the prison, and now was a ruler in the world empire of his time. Do you wonder if his heart was tied to his new nation? No, he saw himself clearly in the providence of God though his own personal rise and fall, and through the rise and fall of prosperity in the nation of Egypt. He says that God sent him to preserve a remnant for his people.Based on this and the fact that we are coming up to a tense election this coming Tuesday and possibly more troubled times ahead, I want to apply the truth of God’s providence to us. Our comfort should not be in the results of an election, or in hopes that a party or man would rule or reign, or even in the rise or fall of America itself, but in God’s purposes through it all. Can I ask you, are you hoping and believing for your party to win more than you are for God’s outworking plan through whatever happens? Do you think “all is lost” if this candidate or that candidate doesn’t get into office? What would your social media feed have to say about that?Here’s the truth of scripture: nations rise and fall and God will be exalted. What if your worst nightmare happened and the party you call the fascists hold power? What if communism does take hold in America and the country is never the same again? What if America fell like the Roman Empire?Because that is what happens historically, nations rise and fall, very quickly at times. Outside the walls of the Roman Forum along the Via Dei Fori Imperali, there are 5 subsequent maps that show the expansion of the Romans Empire. It starts with a speck in the Roman Tiber Valley, and ends up covering all of Europe and beyond. But now, we walk by those maps as tourists and trample upon the ruins of that empire.Greece, Rome, Britain, America, and whatever world empires would follow are nothing to the God of providence. Listen to the words of the prophet Isaiah:So, why are we so inordinately fascinated with the security of the empire and the comfort of this country? Surely we should exercise our civic duties and vote, I’m not saying otherwise. But we will never find comfort or security in this election or any other.Instead we should take a mental tour through the Colosseum where they put to death our brothers and sisters in Christ simply for believing in Jesus, and we can laugh. The church walks over the ruins of empires of the world in the providence of God as He continues to work out His purpose of bringing all tongues and tribes to a knowledge of His Son Jesus, just like He brought all the known world under the sway of Joseph so that His people could come and dwell safely in the land of Goshen.This understanding of the providence of God not only enabled Joseph to process his human experience and emotions as part of God’s story, but also led to the:Revelation of Purpose by the Forgiveness & Reconciliation of God’s peopleRead with me as we pick up the story again in verses 9-15:“Hurry and go up to my father and say to him, ‘Thus says your son Joseph, God has made me lord of all Egypt. Come down to me; do not tarry. You shall dwell in the land of Goshen, and you shall be near me, you and your children and your children’s children, and your flocks, your herds, and all that you have. There I will provide for you, for there are yet five years of famine to come, so that you and your household, and all that you have, do not come to poverty. And now your eyes see, and the eyes of my brother Benjamin see, that it is my mouth that speaks to you. You must tell my father of all my honor in Egypt, and of all that you have seen. Hurry and bring my father down here.’ Then he fell upon his brother Benjamin’s neck and wept, and Benjamin wept upon his neck. And he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them. After that his brothers talked with him.”This picture of Joseph kissing not only Benjamin, but all his brothers reveals the purpose of God in this story even further. That God is a forgiving God who works by the forgiving and reconciliation of His people.Joseph and his brothers are an illustration of something that John Stott said so well, that:“Forgiveness is as indispensable to the life and health of the soul as food is for the body.”By the end of this chapter we find that the forgiveness is given and the reconciliation is experienced by the family of Joseph literally revives the heart of Jacob and brings fresh life. So, forgiveness is not some small little element of the Christian message or experience, but it’s at its very heart.I want you to think for a second how you would have responded to the brothers. Would you have said, “Now you’ll get what is coming to you? Now I’ll get my pound of flesh?” But in this story we see the exact opposite in the actions on the part Joseph in response to the actions of his brothers. His brothers tore his clothes off and he gave them clothes. His brothers sold him to gain money, he gave them money. His brother sent him far away from them, he said come close to me.This is the dramatic illustration of the actions of a forgiving heart. It’s the expression of someone who has themselves learned their own debt before God, who know as Psalm 130 says that:“If you Oh Lord should mark iniquities who could stand?”Can you really believe that Joseph is hugging and kissing all of his brothers? And more than that, my question to you this morning in my last point is, can you hug and kiss all your brothers and sisters? Can you forgive offenses that you have to admit pale in comparison with the suffering and hurt that Joseph has been through?If not, then perhaps you have never really been forgiven by God, because our forgiveness of others is a direct expression of the reality of our awareness of our own forgiveness before God. Since God has forgiven us, we will be quick to forgive.Matthew 18 is a New Testament explanation of what we see in the Joseph story. Let’s look at that together:So, based on that, God says to you right now today, if on the cross my son said, “Father forgive them they know not what they do,” are you prepared to hold a grudge against your brother or sister in Christ for the rest of their lives? Of all things the church is to be a people of forgiveness. Is that not part of the prayer the Lord gave us to pray? Forgive us our debts as we forgive those who sin against us.We are going to close with a song called “His Mercy is More.“ And I want to invite you to celebrate the mercy of God in His all-knowing forgiveness of you through the fully sufficient sacrificial death of Jesus Christ. Maybe you need to accept this gift He gives for the first time in order to celebrate that with us today.But I also want to invite you to consider the words of this hymn in regards to the relationships you have around you in your marriage, with you kids or parents, among your roommates, in this church, in your Life Group, or anywhere else. Let these words go through you heart and mind, leading to action as you leave this place and throw yourself on any brother or sister who there are unresolved issues with.“Forgive Our Sins, As We Forgive”Father, forgive our sins as we forgive, you taught us Lord to pray.But you alone can grant us grace to live the words we say.How can your pardon reach and bless the unforgiving heart,That broods on wrong and will not let old bitterness depart.In blazing light, your cross reveals the truth we dimly knew.How small the debts men owe to us, how great our debt to you.Lord, cleanse the debts within our souls and bid resentment cease.Then, reconciled to God and man, our lives will spread your peace.

Scripture: Genesis 37 Series: The Forgiving Prince Why does God allow suffering? In this sermon, Pastor Paul Vanden Brink, addresses this issue through the familiar story of Joseph. It's not just a story about a favoured child with a fabulous coat. It's the story of a man who faces many serious trials caused by the sins of those around him. Selfish ambition, lust and jealousy to name a few. All sins that we can relate to, right? But God shows up in every situation in Josephs life, just as He shows up in every situation in our lives. In Joseph's story, we see what we all know to be true - that suffering is an inevitable part of life. Whether you believe that God is sovereign or not, you simply cannot escape suffering. But how should we handle that fact? How did Joseph handle it and what can we learn? We learn that God allows suffering in our life for our ultimate good. Even when that is a hard pill to swallow, it is a deep, fundamental truth that we see illustrated over and over again in the bible and in our own lives too. If you are struggling with how a good God could allow so much bad in the world, think about this: If we want a God big enough to stop the suffering in the world, we've got to believe in a God that is big enough to redeem our suffering. That is, a God who will make it right.

So we are deep into the Joseph story and we have arrived at what I think represents the power climax in Joseph’s life. Last week’s message was entitled “The Greatest Promotion of All Time.” And I really think this might be true. What man in history could have been promoted faster, further, and higher than Joseph? For 13 years of his life, he had either been a slave or a prisoner. And when you are in either of these positions your job is to simply listen and do. You do not exercise your will. You do the will of others. You do what you are told.“Joseph, go get the pot of water. Sit there till I get back. Why are you doing it that way? We do it this way. Joseph, hurry up we don’t have all day. When you get finished with that, come talk to me, because I have a lot on my plate today and I need your help.”I mean Joseph had no decision-making power. He has no control. He is being controlled. And then in a single day, we are told in Genesis 41, Joseph is catapulted from a prisoner who is serving a life sentence accused of rape to being second in command in the most powerful nation in the Ancient Near East.Now, keep in mind how significant this promotion is. We are told that Pharaoh takes off his signet ring and gives it to Joseph. Pharaoh doesn’t give Joseph his own unique signet, he pulls the signet off his finger and hands his royal signet to Joseph which means that all the power that resides in Pharaoh to effect change has been transferred to Joseph. And remember, Egypt is not a democracy. This is a monarchy, a totalitarian regime of absolutism. Pharaoh, to the people, is a god. Egypt is a kingdom where all power centralizes in the signet of a single person. Beneath one man Joseph now has absolute power. Joseph could pass any law he wanted, set any tax he desired, spend 1 trillion dollars, imprison or free anyone he wished without a reason, assemble armies and he could do it all without consulting a committee or without getting approved by any superior. He had as many aids and consultants as he wanted, he had access to any resource his heart desired.And the amazing thing about Joseph we learned from last week was that he used that power to serve God and the nation, not himself. There’s the phrase, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Turns out we need to caveat that. That’s generally true. Power given to men without character will destroy them. But power given to men of character will result in blessing to many.Today we are going to talk about a power we share with Joseph and like Joseph, if we wield it properly, it could bless many. Of the various types of power Joseph had, this was perhaps the most powerful. The power to forgive! Now in order to wield this power, you don’t have to be Pharaoh or ruler of a great land. You don’t have to be given a position of authority. You don’t have to have a fancy title or education. The only prerequisite needed is that you’ve been hurt by someone. This means it’s a power that we all possess since every one of us in this room has been hurt.All who have been hurt have the power to forgive which is a power strong enough to change the world. Forgiveness is going to be a big topic sprinkled through the upcoming messages and each time it comes up we will have opportunity to inspect a different aspect of forgiveness.Today we just want to talk about facing forgiveness. It’s that moment when you are face to face with the offender, with the one who has hurt you and you are reliving the hurt, reeling from pains you thought were over but now the scab is ripped off and you are bleeding afresh. This is where we find Joseph in the text today.Now let’s pick up the story of Joseph in chapter 42. You will remember from last week that the seven years of plenty had come to the end and the seven years of famine had begun. And this famine was very severe. This week as part of our week of prayer and fasting, I chose to fast from food for a few days, and man, it really helped me to empathize with this famine. Hunger is really a terrible feeling.In just a few quick strokes, so much is communicated. You can almost see the gaunt looks on the faces of the brothers as they have almost completely given up. They are starving. All starving people are waging a two-front war. They are fighting a psychological battle and they are fighting a physiological battle.Psychologically, hunger is chipping at them relentlessly. Hunger gnaws at the mind as much as it does the stomach. It chews away at the resolve and determination. The teeth clack and smack against parched, tasteless gums and all you can think about is food. Hunger is a constant companion that won’t leave you alone. It won’t stop pestering. Psychologically, it’s terrible.But physiologically, it’s just as significant. Since the body always needs fuel, but no fuel is coming in, it begins feeding on itself. Metabolism slows and the body cannot regulate its temperature. Kidney function is impaired, the immune system weakens, and vital organs, muscles, tissues, the heart, and lungs shrink. People feel weak, body temperature drops, chills set in, people can become irritable, and it becomes difficult to concentrate.So all that was happening in Jacob’s tent. They are irritable. They are not in the head-space to make good decisions. And so Jacob, undoubtedly himself irritated, barks at his sons. “I’m old. Do you expect me to go solve the problem? What are you doing just staring at each other? Do something! There is grain in Egypt. Go to Egypt and buy grain to feed our family so we don’t die!”Now, this is no small undertaking. When you are very, very hungry and your beasts of burden are equally parched and starving do you feel like walking 150 miles one way?Es no bueno, amigo.Now we also get an insight into the family dynamics here. Jacob only sends the ten brothers but he keeps Benjamin back. Why Benjamin? Benjamin was Joseph’s full brother, and as far as Jacob knew, the only living son of his favorite wife Rachel. And the text says he didn’t send him because he was scared that something might happen to him. You could read that as just an overly protective father not wanting something bad happening to his last precious son. But I think Jacob was suspicious. He knew the character of his sons. I wonder if Jacob didn’t suspect foul play with Joseph. So he keeps back Benjamin out of fear of either the unfortunate circumstances of the journey, or the unforeseeable savagery of his sons, or both.Now I want you to imagine this moment. You are Joseph. You are administering grain to famished weary travelers. And you’ve been doing this for weeks and months. Day after day, it’s all a very similar routine.And between customers, servants are coming with important documents and you are pressing your signet ring into wax, sending orders here and there. And then all of a sudden you see ten brothers who look very familiar. And I can’t help but wonder if Joseph had been looking for them. I mean, this job of handing out grain to weary travelers of foreign countries hardly seems like a job for the sovereign of the land. Couldn’t some lesser dignitary do this job? Perhaps Joseph chose to personally do this job under some pretense hoping to see his family. At any rate, one day it happens. He sees his ten brothers. It’s been something like 25 years since they have seen each other and they are thin, significantly grayed, and starving.Can you imagine the feelings that would rush upon you? Initially, there would be an almost visceral terror. Even though Joseph is now tens of thousands of times more powerful than his brothers, in a moment he’s transported back to a skinny 17-year-old who’s pleading and begging for mercy at the bottom of a pit. His abusers are before him. Even though he’s the viceregent and wears the signet of the Pharaoh himself, even though he has the power to imprison them for life, Joseph is the one in prison. He is in the pit. Why? Because Joseph was reliving the terror of torment and was now facing his tormentors. He was facing the prospect of forgiveness. He was now being forced to make a choice to forgive or not forgive. To trust or not trust. To reconcile or remain estranged. Four points come out of the text and here’s the first:When you are separated from the one who has hurt, injured, or abused you, it is possible to kind of bury that hurt so long as there is separation. You can find a chamber in your mind and sort-of-kind-of bury it. After all, there’s nothing you can do about it since the person isn’t there. But when all of a sudden you face your offender, when all of a sudden your abuser is standing in front of you, those buried hurts are resurrected. They come tearing out of the buried corners of your heart with redoubled energy and begin screaming and bleeding all over again.Let’s see how Joseph responds when he comes face to face with his abusers.Now the fact that Joseph recognized them but they did not recognize him is entirely understandable. Joseph was 17-years-old when he was captured. He was 30 when he interpreted Pharaoh’s dreams. There have been 7 years of plenty and now they are some years into the 7 years of famine. So Joseph is in his early 40’s. Compare photos of your 17-year-old self and your 30-year-old self. Now add to that the fact that Joseph would have likely been wearing the royal headdress. There is a bit of debate as to who the Pharaoh was during the reign of Joseph, but here’s what one of the likely candidates looked like.I mean, that’s a lot of costume atop a face that had changed quite a bit. Additionally, if Joseph’s brothers were to be on the lookout for their brother, it would be in the market selling fish or pushing some giant stone up a ramp as a slave. I mean, you’d just never suspect it.From Joseph’s point of view, it was obvious. These dudes were obviously Semitic with the beards and robes. They were obviously related. And people don’t change as much from age 25-45, the likely age range of his brothers.So Joseph recognizes them, but they do not recognize him. And this puts him in the unique opportunity to be hurt afresh without them knowing. He is re-wounded, re-injured, and re-afflicted to the complete ignorance of the brothers. Joseph becomes a metaphor for how all emotional pain happens. When we are hurt by someone and we suffer, that suffering is experienced alone. Emotional pain happens in the cavity and vacuum of our own experience. Nobody else can enter completely into our head or feel the pain the way we experience it. It happens in isolation. The one who caused the injury goes about their life in total ignorance of how they have bruised and crushed the heart of another. They perhaps are even happy, laughing, and enjoying recreation while you suffer.When Joseph saw his brothers, the flood of emotions begins to choke him, and he suffers alone. Even if someone there knew a fractional portion of his story, no one would be able to relate. When we face our offender, the hurt is reactivated and relived alone. Not only did the hurt come flooding back. Something else came flooding back. The dream.Can you imagine that out of body experience where you look at all ten of your brothers, bowing in front of you? There they are on their faces in the dust and all you can see is the bald spots on the backs of their heads. How ironic. These hardened desert dwellers, these brothers of mine who had single-handedly, in a fit of revenge, murdered the Shechemites. These brothers of mine who stood over me, kicked me, spit in my face, stripped me naked, pulled out my beard, and threw me into a pit. Here they are bowing before me.You can imagine the shivering realization that this was promised you more than twenty years ago. And now you are staring in solitude at prophecy fulfilled. It would just send shivers down your spine.Now you honestly have to feel sorry for Joseph at this moment. He has swirling emotions of hurt, prophesies being fulfilled, he’s wounded, angry, lonely. How is he going to respond?Now a lot of commentary goes into Joseph’s reaction here. What was Joseph doing? He’s speaking harshly. He’s holding his cards close not revealing his identity. He’s making harsh accusations that he knows are not true. He’s asking them to do something that he knows would be insanely difficult, almost impossible for them to do, to ask dad to bring down the youngest brother. So what is going on here?Was he enjoying the power he had over them, kind of toying with them like cat and mouse? Was he being vindictive? Or was he wanting to trust them and reveal himself but thought it best to first test them? Or maybe, he wanted to forgive but wasn’t in the right headspace. Did he need to buy some time to get his thoughts together?I mean, it doesn’t take a seminary degree to put yourself in Joseph’s position. I’m sure it was all this. The emotions that collide in forgiveness are extremely complex.Confusion is the result of losing your bearings. When you know that north is here, south is here, you are confident. But when all a sudden you discover that what you thought was north is certainly not north and now you have no idea where north is, it creates feelings that are very disturbing and unsettling. Confusion sets in.Relationally, we get our bearings through trust. I can really trust that person. That person will always look out for my best interest. I can lean on this person and they will support me. And when we know we can trust people, that becomes our compass for how to navigate the world.But when that trust is broken, suddenly we find ourselves incredibly disoriented and confused. Who can I trust? I thought they were absolutely trustworthy but clearly they are not, so who can I trust?When we face our offenders, that confusion of trust swirls around and fogs our thinking. Are they still the same person? Or have they changed? Are they still so unaware of how they hurt me? Do they still lack empathy, sympathy, compassion? Do they have any regret at all? Will they continue to go on in these foolish ways? Will they continue to put themselves in the center of the world?Trust and forgiveness are related but not synonymous. You can forgive someone and not trust them. But it’s difficult to have a relationship with someone you don’t trust. Since all relationships are built on trust, no trust equals no relationship. What is Joseph doing in the narrative? He’s trying to forgive but he’s also trying to find a way to determine if he can trust his brothers again.Obviously, as the narrative unfolds, Joseph’s aim here is not to inflict revenge. But he’s also not ready to trust. Clearly, he’s disoriented. He’s acting in a way that all confused, sincere, disoriented, but godly people do. He’s trying to determine where north is.Will I be hurt again? Do they still wish me harm? Even if they don’t wish me harm, do I even want to get involved with them? Maybe the best thing to do is just let them go home and nobody would be the wiser? How do I move forward? Thoughts like these must have been going through his head.Facing the offender reactivates the hurt and creates confusion. There’s a third thing that happens. As the person who is hurt and confused begins to ponder, meditate, and ask the question, “Why am I so hurt?”, the answer surfaces. There is a debt.The feeling of hurt and the feeling of confusion are products of an objective debt. What you see here is quite dramatic. Joseph’s brothers are literally vocalizing and putting words to the debt that was created in the offense. You see, every act of unkindness, injury, insult, abuse, and harm creates a debt.Imagine if you had a precious vase in your bedroom and I walked up with a baseball bat and I just smash that vase into million pieces. I can say sorry all I want, but the vase is still broken. The broken vase represents the debt. That’s real damage. There’s real money that has to be shelled out to repurchase it. And some vases are not replaceable. I mean, certain vases are one of a kind heirlooms that don’t have a price tag. They are priceless. What if you smash one of those? And we have all sorts of vases in our hearts that represent things precious to us, one-of-a-kind items. Some of those can be replaced and some of them could never be replaced.In Joseph’s case what was the debt? What has been destroyed that has been irreparably damaged? His brothers have incurred a pretty significant debt. They robbed him of the prime years of his life. Instead of getting a career started or playing sports, he’s rotting in a dungeon. He can’t get that back, no matter how sorry they are. They robbed him of 30 years of a relationship that he could have had with his father and his full brother Benjamin and many years with his mother. He’s not getting that back. They robbed him of his dignity, his sense of belonging, and his ethnic identity. They robbed him of all his friends, every relationship he enjoyed, every possession he had, and every comfort he relished.But more than all that, it was the steely cold eyes of hatred that ignored his cries. It was their enjoyment of watching the pleas be ignored and their lust to see the bewilderment in Joseph’s eyes. That must have been what hurt the most and it was the thing that caused the most guilt in the brothers. “In truth, we are guilty concerning our brother. We saw his distress. He begged us. We did not listen.” They caused distress in his soul and that distress was unresolved. The debt was very large.So here Joseph his. He has come face to face with his debtors. And as he faces off the hurt has been reactivated. The pain is resurrected and those buried demons come tearing out of the corners of his soul with redoubled ability to hurt. Confusion has been created. Can I trust them? They have hurt me so deeply. Should I forgive them? How can I forgive them? The pain and confusion are all factors of the debt. Joseph has the power to make them pay. He can make them pay for life. But look at what Joseph does.That’s where we end today. Now here’s the fourth thing that happens when we face forgiveness.Will I forgive? That’s a choice and in that choice represents nearly infinite power to change the world. Yes, there’s an objective debt. Yes, that objective debt created hurt. Yes, that objective debt created confusion. But I have a choice. Will I forgive? Joseph’s decision to forgive his brothers will save the world. It could be argued that this power is the greatest power Joseph possess.To illustrate this, let me ask you a question: why do you think Joseph turned away and wept at this point? Why would the sovereign of Egypt weep? We don’t have an immediate explanation. In some way, the consequence of his brother’s sin against him came crashing down upon him. And the feelings represented in those tears are undoubtedly multi-faceted and complex.Sin had created this moment. The sin of the brothers against him had created this moment of deep fracture and relational death. He felt that. And I’m sure he felt compassion on his brothers as they suffered beneath the weight of guilt, the thought of them having to live a lie to their father for 25 years. Carrying in their memories the cries of their younger brother. He felt that and had compassion. And I’m sure he wept because of the cost of redemption. The only path to redeem this was suffering. He has already born in his own body the incredible injustice of that sin. And he would have to absorb in his soul much more if they were to be forgiven. He felt that. As Joseph contemplated forgiveness all of these emotions were present and he just wept. He wept.You see, Joseph is for us a beautiful Christ figure. Jesus Christ is the one who wept, Jesus wept as he absorbs debt for the sake of others. Both Jesus and Joseph save humanity through forgiveness. Consider the parallels. Jesus Christ is the ultimate sovereign. He stands second in command, viceregent to the father. He wears on his finger the signet of the father from which flows all authority, all dominion, and all power. We are the ones who tried to destroy him. We have sinned against him. We are the ones who through our rebellion have kicked him, spit on him, plucked his beard, stripped him of his robe, sold him for a handful of silver, and threw him into a pit.Like Joseph’s brothers, the way our sin has hurt and injured Christ is largely unknown to us. We go about our life totally unaware of the fracture that we have created. We laugh, we absorb the benefits of God’s blessing, we live comfortable lives not realizing the atrocious effects of our sin upon our brother. We cast him into the pit and leave him for dead.But like Joseph, that pit could not hold him because there was a dream. It was prophesied of him that he would rise from that pit and rule. And that every knee would bow and every tongue would confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. And Jesus Christ was resurrected from the pit. And when anyone stands in front of a resurrected sovereign, it’s obvious that we stand in the presence of greatness. The contrast to self is obvious.Our debt is felt against the blinding light of the sovereign. We carry around in us our guilt and our sense of inadequacy. We don’t want the sovereign to discover it. We whisper amongst ourselves thinking he is out of earshot. But he speaks our language. He is right there overhearing the rehearsal of our guilt and the many ways we have hurt him. And terrified of our guilt we bow in the presence of greatness. Jesus looks at our bald spots as we bow to our sovereign. Jesus looks at us and says, “Here my abusers are bowing before me, the ones who closed their heart to mercy and now they are at my mercy.”We continue to bow having no idea who we bow before. Sure we can tell by his signet and scepter that he’s mighty. We can tell he’s in charge - he has authority to judge. But we are woefully ignorant that we are on trial for our lives for the crime of murder of the one we bow before. We are totally blinded by the degree to which we are at fault. We are blind to the offense, the transgression, the breach, and the relational criminality. We have no idea that our careless self-centered thinking sent him to the pit, threw him into the dungeon where he was nailed to the cross, was stabbed in the side, and left to die.The reality is we have incurred a debt. A debt we could never afford. But here’s the good news. Our sins they are many his mercy is more. Yes, our sins they are many, his mercy is more.Our sin was far, far, far worse than we could have ever imagined but God’s mercy was far more expansive than we ever could have dreamed. Our sins they are many but his mercy is more! God is much more forgiving than we thought possible. He’s more merciful, gracious, and slow to anger than we could have imagined. He’s more compassionate, tenderhearted, moved to sympathy than we dreamed. God abounds in loving-kindness, he’s near, and he loves us.Folks, we are here today to celebrate and worship a sovereign who has chosen to forgive. As we come to the end of our week and fasting, we are here to acknowledge that even if the world blows apart to millions of pieces through internal turmoil, suffering and fighting, though our sins are many, his mercy is more! God has fixed the problem of sin through his mercy, his mercy.I’m going to invite up the musicians and we are going to sing this song together. And I want to express what I know your heart is saying to you right now. I want to give you permission to clap and sing and rejoice while we sing this song. It is appropriate right now to celebrate the mercy of God. And I want to practice."What love could remember no wrongs we have done Omniscient, all knowing, He counts not their sum Thrown into a sea without bottom or shore Our sins they are many, His mercy is morePraise the Lord, His mercy is more Stronger than darkness, new every morn Our sins they are many, His mercy is more"Isaiah 43:25, “I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.”Psalm 103:12, “As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.”"What patience would wait as we constantly roam What Father, so tender, is calling us home He welcomes the weakest, the vilest, the poor Our sins they are many, His mercy is morePraise the Lord, His mercy is more Stronger than darkness, new every morn Our sins they are many, His mercy is more"Isaiah 1:18, “Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.”Romans 4:7-8, “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.”"What riches of kindness He lavished on us His blood was the payment, His life was the cost We stood ’neath a debt we could never afford Our sins they are many, His mercy is more So much more!Praise the Lord, His mercy is more Stronger than darkness, new every morn Our sins they are many, His mercy is more Praise the Lord, His mercy is more Stronger than darkness, new every morn Our sins they are many, His mercy is more Praise the Lord, His mercy is more Stronger than darkness, new every morn Our sins they are many, His mercy is more"Why is forgiveness the greatest power that Joseph had? Joseph’s forgiveness made ripples through history that are literally incalculable. As Joseph stared at those bald spots, he was staring at the future tribes of Israel. What if he had executed them? He would be justified in doing so. And he and his brothers would have died and with them the promise of God.You see it would be through these twelve tribes that Messiah would come. The entire future of the history of Israel hung in the balance of that decision to forgive. Messiah came through the line of Judah. Joseph’s forgiveness made a way for ultimate forgiveness to be realized. Joseph’s forgiveness pointed to the ultimate forgiveness of the ultimate forgiver.What our nation needs right now is for people to forgive one another. What if every person in our country completely forgave their five worst enemies? What if that anger, hurt, animosity was replaced with warm benevolent love? Can you imagine the impact that would have on our nation? What if you forgave, truly forgave, those who have hurt you most?BenedictionHe who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.If you would like to come up and accept God’s mercy do that. If you would like to come and thank God for his mercy, come up and do that. The prayer team will be up here after the service to pray with you.

Every time I leave downtown there’s this big billboard that says what the winning lottery prize is: $300 million. And I know I’m not supposed to fantasize about this as a pastor, but I think, what would I do with 300 million dollars? And it’s such an intriguing thing to think about because right now we are all limited by our finances. We want to do things, but we can’t because we don’t have the power to do what we want. Money is just liquid power. You can get a lot done if you have a lot of power. What if all of a sudden you were not limited? What if you had this incredible opportunity to make powerful changes? That kind of money is powerful.Now, this is a surprise to nobody, but according to folks who track this stuff, a third of those who win the lottery end up filing bankruptcy. Roughly the same statistics apply to celebrities or athletes who made their millions in their short bursts of fame and then somehow squander it away. But even more than that, many who are given the gift of this incredible power will say, “Winning the lottery was the worst thing that ever happened to me. I wish it never would have happened.”How can it be that getting more of a powerful resource would represent a bad thing? And here’s the answer: power given to those who lack character will ultimately destroy them.You see, I already know the answer to the question of what I would do with the money. It’s what I do with it right now. What I value is not going to change if I win money. How I care about people now is how I will care about people then. My financial priorities then will be what my financial priorities are now. If I don’t save, serve, and give now, I won’t then.A winning ticket will simply reveal in a more dramatic fashion who I already am. Money is not the problem. Money revealed the problem that was already there. And what we are going to learn today from the story of Joseph is that success, power, influence, and blessing are just as much a test of character as trials, suffering, pain, and hardship. Both failure and success are pressures that reveal either weakness or strength in our character.The sermon today is entitled, “The Greatest Promotion of All Time”, a promotion that will test Joseph far more than any prison cell.In our text today we watch Joseph - in a single day - rise from the lowest position in society with the least amount of power, influence, and purpose (as a prisoner) to the highest position in society with the most amount of power, influence, and purpose (as the second in command in the most powerful nation in the middle east).ReviewNow in order for this promotion to have it’s full and appropriate impact we need to remember the extremes that Joseph experienced. Joseph was the favorite son of a father who suffered from acute favoritism. He was hated by his brothers for that favoritism and consequently thrown into a pit and sold as a slave in Egypt. Now, while in slavery, the rays of God’s providence shine upon him and he begins to prosper. He finds favor in the eyes of his master and is afforded some measure of freedom as a sovereign in the household of Potiphar. In fact, we read that the entire household was entrusted to his care.And then all of a sudden he was hit by a sniper bullet out of nowhere in the form of the advances and proposition of his master’s wife, this artful seductress. Potiphar’s wife had come at him like a lioness with outstretched claws, and he had only managed to escape barely, but it cost him everything, his cloak, his reputation, his freedom. He had previously been dumped like a pile of trash in a cistern by his brothers, and now he has been dumped in a dungeon by his boss. The one who was in charge is now being charged with attempted rape.Now he finds himself in a hole in the ground, full of disease, likely without sun, eating terrible food. You can imagine it. In fact, Psalm 105 gives us some divine insight into his conditions. In the Psalm, David is recounting how God in his loving care was guiding the nation of Israel.So the Psalm gives us some divine insight as to his condition in the pit but also some divine insight as to God’s reason for the pit. Joseph was in the pit. Why? Joseph, I am quite certain, asked the question many times, “God why are you allowing me to suffer?”God was testing him. He was refining his character for significant later use. So we should imagine him enslaved, in irons, around both his ankles and neck. Imagine the neck pain, the rubbing.But then again, the providence of God shines upon Joseph and he finds favor in the eyes of the warden and rises to a position of influence where he is able to interpret the dreams of both the cupbearer and the baker, only to be forgotten again for two full years. And the days, weeks, months go by and Joseph has no idea if he will ever get out.But then it happens. Pharaoh has a dream. He’s troubled. The cupbearer remembers Joseph and he’s brought before the king. And Joseph interprets the kings dream. Today we watch Joseph get promoted, from the pit to the palace. I think this is the greatest promotion that has ever happened in the history of the world. The tides of providence turn Joseph’s life around, almost instantly. In less than 24 hours, Joseph goes from wearing rags to golden garments. He’s riding a chariot. People are bowing down to him. And in all of this Joseph’s goals never changed. Joseph was always asking the question, “How can I be effective for God in my circumstances?”Two weeks ago we talked about how to be effective in the dungeon. Last week we talked about how to be effective in times of change and uncertainty. This week we’ll talk about how to be effective in the palace. How do we serve God when we have been given power, responsibility, oversight, and influence? All of us have been given this to one degree or another. You may be given power to lead your children or your family, to lead a group in your class, to lead a team at your place of work, to lead a ministry. How can we be effective when God sees it fit to give us positions of leadership? Let’s look at the text and find out.We are in chapter 41 and verse 33 and you will remember that Joseph had just finished interpreting Pharaoh’s dream. He said both that the dream was fixed and that it would happen soon. So immediately after interpreting the dream, Joseph speaks.So we are asking the question, how do we serve God when we have been given power, responsibility, oversight, and influence? The first thing we learn from the text is to:Now Joseph has not yet been given a position of power, but he has been given an opportunity to speak to someone of power. He’s given the rare opportunity to influence a powerful political leader. How many minutes do you suppose Joseph had to speak with Pharoah? He doesn’t know. Was this a 5-minute interchange? Was he given 15 minutes?What if you had 5 minutes to speak to the president. What would you say? His time is worth more than a million dollars a minute. You have 5 million dollars of his time. What would you say? Do you feel the pressure?It takes great wisdom to balance all that is at stake in that interaction. It takes great wisdom to talk to a man who does not value what you value but has incredible influence to change what you care about. This is the dilemma of politics is it not? We long for change in our country right now. We long for justice, peace, order, honesty. How do we wisely speak into these situations to people who don’t see the world the way we do?Here Joseph is speaking to a guy that worships the sun god and the fertility god and whose conception of morality would make our heads spin. And he wants to speak God’s truth into this situation. How tricky! Such wisdom would be needed. How does he capture the ear of Pharaoh, represent God accurately, and act in such a way that the nation is preserved? So many conflicting values! So many wrong things a guy could say! So precious few right ways to say it! So much is at stake. It would be so easy to be misunderstood. But Joseph speaks in wisdom. And his wise words direct Pharaoh in wise ways.He says to Pharaoh, “Take advantage of the insight God has given you. When God gives you insight, act on it. You have been given an incredible gift. Knowledge of the future.” In contemporary terms, you know what the NASDAQ is going to do every day for 14 years. You could make a whole lot of money if you knew that, couldn’t you? Go all-in with that information Pharaoh. Don’t dabble.That’s a power advantage, isn’t it? So Joseph speaks to Pharaoh wisely. He appeals to Pharaoh’s self-interest, showing him that he could be a hero and could increase his wealth. He upholds the name of God by insisting on the trustworthiness of dreams and interpretations that come from the God of Israel. He saves the nation by ensuring that the right course of action is taken ensuring that millions of lives would be saved. Joseph says, “This famine is coming and you need to help your nation prepare for it.” And so he suggests a plan. Institute a 20% wheat tax. That was Joseph’s suggestion.And now drum roll here. How is Pharaoh going to respond? Remember, we know how this is all going down. Joseph has no idea. Pharaoh still hasn’t even spoken a word. He’s just listening. Joseph is just speaking, watching Pharaoh’s jaw twitch. Maybe Pharaoh is frowning. What do the furrowed brow and frown mean? Maybe Pharaoh’s got the poker face going on. For all Joseph knows, Pharaoh’s going to fly off the handle and hang him from the next available branch or send him back to prison. Joseph has no idea what’s next.So we are asking the question, how do we serve God when we have been given power, responsibility, oversight, and influence? Here’s the second thing we learn.Joseph tells Pharaoh that to administrate ahead of this coming storm, you are going to need leadership. Now I’m always tempted to read this - and I think I’m tempted only because of how I know the story ends - thinking that Joseph is inserting himself into the suggestion he makes to Pharoah. “Pharoah, here’s what you need to do. You need to pick a very wise leader, but be careful in your selection. You can’t trust a lot of people out there so if I were you I’d pick a pastor, a pastor in west Boise, preferably. They are the most trustworthy. Maybe a man who is 6’4”, brown-eyed, dark-haired…" I mean is Joseph describing himself? Now, I really don’t think so. I honestly think what happened next could not have surprised Joseph more. I think he thought to himself, “Best case scenario, Pharaoh says thank you and delivers me from prison and maybe, just maybe grants me citizenship. Then I’d be free to return to my family. That would be best case.”I mean not even a total lunatic would do what Pharaoh does next. Who turns the kingdom over to a prisoner accused of attempted rape without even a background check? How do you instantly have this much trust in a felon? God is turning the hearts of kings like rivers of waters.And so in a moment, in an instant, Joseph is thrust into the second most powerful office in the world. His head must have just been absolutely spinning. His mind must have been choking from the force-feeding of ideas and swirling emotions being crammed into his brain. Excitement, fear, terror, elation, insecurity, and doubt were all mixing together in his experience.Suddenly he is now in a position to lead. Now he has power. He has influence. Now what he says or doesn’t say will impact those around him. He’s in a position to lead. The only difference from the day before to today is that he has been given a position. He’s got a new office with new responsibilities.There are many people who could be great leaders but are not in the position to do so. There are many who have the talent, who have the ability but are not given the office. Some people would make awesome parents but God hasn’t given them that leadership responsibility yet. Some would be great pastors, ministry leaders, life group leaders, and bible study leaders but aren’t yet in that position. Some would make amazing managers of large corporations but instead, are being faithful as parents. This was Joseph for many years. In fact, let’s just review the timeline for a moment. Joseph here is 30 years old. He was sold into slavery at age 17. So for 13 years, he was in some combination of working for Potiphar or in prison. No wife or children or family to lead. No ministry to lead, no congregation. He’s had some power in Potiphar’s house and in prison but nothing compared to what he’s capable of. For years of his life! Even though he was capable of so, so much more, even though he had the gifts necessary for leading a country, he didn’t have the position.Just because you don’t have a position today doesn’t mean you won’t tomorrow. But it may be that it’s just not the season. Realize, it is the seasons of submissions that prepare you to be the kind of leader that others want to submit to.Remember Psalm 105? God put Joseph in prison to test him, to forge him, to make him a good leader. What is it about prison that prepares you for leadership? Consider what happens to a person as they rise to leadership. As people acquire power they are required to give up freedom. Good leaders recognize that power and freedom are in an inverse relationship to one another. When you are not in a position of leadership you don’t have the power but you do have the freedom to act without it having your decisions affect people. When you are in a position of leadership you exchange freedom for power. Now you have power but you don’t have freedom because you can never just make decisions that have no effect on others. When you say something or don’t say something it has an impact. Acting or not acting. Acting in this way versus this way. It always matters. Good leaders acquire power and give up freedom.It’s so hard to be a good leader because the prison that good leaders find themselves in is not fun. It’s hard to recognize that your life is not your own. That you are imprisoned in service to those you lead. You know what, the best leaders are always the ones who have been trained by imprisonment so that when the imprisonment of leadership comes, they are conditioned and familiar with the bars and are able to serve God in it. Moses was trained by the desert before he led. Daniel was trained by captivity. Jesus himself was trained by 30 years of submission to his parents. Joseph steps into this leadership position well-trained by the dungeon. And that is very evident in his decision making.Now there is a moment for Joseph when this promotion must have just brought tears to his face. “Oh, God has remembered me in my affliction! All this refinement in the dungeon is over and it’s time to be used by God.” Just imagine the transformation! The greatest promotion of all time!So Joseph goes from having an iron chain to a gold chain. The first chain represents the stripping of power and the second chain represents almost limitless power. He goes from bowing the knee to having others bow the knee. He’s given Pharaoh’s signet ring and chariot, this is like Pharaoh’s Visa and BMW. Not only that, he’s given a plaque with an office and a big fancy title. We see here his name is changed which has all the significance of a new identity, new role, new office, new power.Joseph’s name was changed to Zaphenath-paneah. There are a couple of different ideas of what this name might mean. There’s a Hebrew stem in the first part of the name that means ‘to hide.’ The second part of the name could be rendered ‘elucidate.’ So his name might mean something like, “the revealer of hidden things.” Others see an Egyptian root that means God speaks, he lives. In the Septuagint, it could mean the creator and sustainer of life.And to seal the deal, to show how serious Pharaoh is about giving Joseph the office, irrevocably let’s just go ahead and marry him into the royal family. Joseph is given the daughter of the priest of On as a wife. You’re not going to marry your daughter off to a slave who is not a citizen, who has no rights, and who belongs in the dungeon. You marry the princess to who? A prince! To prove that he’s elevated Joseph to the status of prince, Pharaoh gives him one of the kingdom’s princess. He gives Joseph the daughter of one of the priests. The priests were the highest-ranking class in society and Pharaoh himself was part of the priestly class.So you can imagine, the thrill. The elevation. So much new. A new title. A new place to live. A new wife. A new life. Now there are ceremonies, and medals and gold trinkets passed back and forth. There are all sorts of decorations and music and parades and official decrees and fanfare, and talk show appearances, and press releases. People are downloading the Joseph app. I mean Joseph the star is rising. But then the dust settles and Joseph is alone for the first time in days. And he’s just staring at the wall. “What am I going to do with all this power? Everyone is following me. Everyone is looking to me for direction. What am I going to do now that I am in this position of influence and have all this responsibility resting upon my shoulders?”Joseph immediately gets to work. He uses his head to leverage his power. He doesn’t let the power go to his head. He doesn’t rest on top of his heap of abundance. Let’s see what he decides to do with his power.So we are asking the question, how do we serve God when we have been given power, responsibility, oversight, and influence? He’s the third thing we learn.Joseph spoke advice. He was given a position. Now he has to do the work. It’s one thing to say, “Here’s what you should do to be successful.” It’s fun to spend other people’s time and money. It’s fun being an armchair politician. “Oh, if I was in charge of the country, here’s what I’d do.” It’s another thing entirely to make those decisions and be responsible for the outcomes. But Joseph was gifted to do this work.Now there are several things to note here that don’t immediately jump off the text but are apparent upon contemplation. Joseph would have been at least three things. He would have needed to be organized. Joseph would have had to develop systems that worked with repeatable steps. Go into every city and do these things. Immediately begin building silos. Immediately start spreading the word about the coming grain tax. Explain that country is going to begin building food reserves. To have this work effectively, systems, policies, and enforcement protocols all have to be in place. You can see from the text that the entire system is decentralized. Every city is in charge of their own grain supply, their own grain collection and storage, and their own enforcement of the policies. And this all has to be done quickly. No internet, telephone, no way of quickly sending information. The clock is ticking.He would have also needed to be methodical. When you have seven years to work as hard as you can, you have to pace yourself. You can’t go too fast or you’ll burn out. You can’t go to slow and take days off, thinking you have all the time in the world. You have to work at a sustainable, constant speed. Ultramarathon runners are all about pace. One-tenth of a mile per hour to fast and you won’t make it; one-tenth of a mile per hour to slow and you won’t win. What’s that perfect pace that will allow me to cross the finish line with nothing left in the tank?Joseph would have needed to be unrelenting. It says that they just stopped counting the grain. And I’m positive that people were saying to themselves, “Joseph, this is enough. No person alive had seen a famine extreme enough to warrant this kind of preparation. The grain is going to go bad. I mean how could we ever use this much grain? Why do we have to keep pushing so hard Joseph? Can’t we slacken the pace? The grain silos are overflowing. This is ridiculous. Getting a little greedy don’t you think? Joseph, you have hoarding tendencies.”But Joseph as a leader knew how he needed to use his power to serve the people. He knew what to listen to and what not to listen to. He listened if he was pushing them too hard and was in danger of breaking their spirit. He didn’t listen if they said ‘the grain is sufficient.’ So Joseph was effective because he acted in wisdom, led in season, prepared in times of plenty and now we see a fourth one:So we are asking the question, how do we serve God when we have been given power, responsibility, oversight, and influence? He’s the fourth thing we learn.It is right to praise God when we have been blessed. That is good and right. It is part of being a good leader to pause and just say, let us thank the Lord for blessing us. To look back at the ways in which God delivered from calamity.We sing the line in the second verse of the old hymn Come Thou Fount, “Here I raise my Ebenezer; thou hast brought me to this place.” What the heck is an Ebenezer? It means stone of help. It was a pile of stones erected in 1 Samuel so that Israel might remember God’s deliverance and how far he has brought us. Why do we do that? To remind ourselves that God has told us that he is going to be faithful. It doesn’t seem like he is always faithful but we trust him. And now look, he’s proven to be faithful.I don’t want to forget that. And now when I go forward and there more hard times, I will look to this pile of stones and remind myself, if you were faithful back then you will be faithful again. In Joseph’s case, it wasn’t a pile of stones, it was the way he named his kids. He names his first son Manasseh, which means God has caused me to forget. So every time he calls his son it will be a reminder of God’s faithfulness. He will remember a previous time of great pain and hurt and how God blessed him to the point of forgetting all that previous hurt. God will be faithful again.He names his other kid Ephraim whose name means fruitful. Every time he calls him it will be a reminder that God can cause fruitful fields to spring out of deserts.This kind of praise is absolutely appropriate during prosperity. Joseph wasn’t eating dungeon porridge anymore. He was eating the finest leaks and garlic and watermelon that Egypt had to offer. He wasn’t living in the squaller of a sunless dungeon. His palace door had a sprawling eastern view of the Nile River. There were herons and the smells of reeds and grasslands and fertile soil. I mean, life was good and he thanked God for it.I want to apply that corporately for us right now. God, you have blessed us as a church with financial prosperity, stability in our leadership team, a comfortable facility, and the ability to worship freely in our state. It wasn’t always this way. God, you have blessed us and we are thankful. Thanking God in times of blessing and remembering his faithfulness in times of blessing is important because times of hardship are coming.So in times of plenty what do you do? You prepare and your praise. What do you do in times of famine? You serve.Now, this is where it gets good. Joseph is now in a position to really serve. And I’m telling you, this is where all the character is tested. Yes, his character was tested in the dungeon, in times of change and transition, and in the palace as he’s given leadership and the entire country surges in prosperity. But here’s where his character is tested more than anything else. When he is in prosperity and everyone else is in famine. When he has all the chips. When you have all the wealth and influence to help those in need, what do you do then?The story of history is the powerful suppressing the weak. That is the natural disposition of the human heart. That will happen 100 percent of the time unless the spirit of God has transformed it.Consider Jesus. He had all the power. He had all the chips. He had all the wealth. And he surrendered it all. He came not to serve but to be served and give his life a ransom for many. Do you see how significant this point is? When God puts you in a position of power and resources and those around you have none, it’s time to serve.You see, Joseph never saw these gifts as his to start with. It was all God’s when he stripped it away. It was all God’s when he gave him more. It never was not God’s. And so Joseph saw it as his job to serve the people of the kingdom and serve his God. It’s so tempting to see our positions of influence as positions earned. That’s wrong. It’s tempting to see our wealth as earned. That’s wrong. It’s given by God. It’s tempting to see our intellectual accomplishments, artistic, athletic, and work accomplishments as products of our efforts. That’s wrong thinking. All of these are gifts from God. The person you are in the dungeon is the person you will be in the palace is the person you will be when you are in charge of the storehouses in the famine.Now we might not experience a food famine in our lifetime like Joseph, but we certainly will experience other types of famines. Our country is in a spiritual famine right now. And just like Joseph, we have access to food. Just like Joseph, we, as servants of the living God, are able to dispense from the treasuries of the king, the bread of life. We have access to the king’s silos. We have access to unlimited spiritual wealth - to the bread that satisfies, water that springs forth into everlasting life. How are we going to act in wisdom? How will we speak on Facebook, at our workplaces? How will we lead in our respective areas of leadership? How will you prepare and praise in prosperity? As you have time to learn God’s word and study and pray and meditate in freedom, how will you prepare? How will we serve in famine? When all around us are broken people how can we dispense the bread of life? How are we going to minister to our country right now in this spiritual famine?ConclusionNow speaking of famine, we are going to self-inflict a famine on the land this week. This week is a week of prayer and fasting for our body.This year our church theme is “Change What You Love.” What we love determines how we live. Or to say it in terms of hunger - our appetites direct our decisions. We have appetites for food, possession, power, money. What about our appetite for God? By pursuing these lesser joys our hearts can be dulled. There can be a very serious dulling effect of food, money, pleasure.Fasting is designed by God to strip us from the noise of the world. Fasting empties the container of our heart of all the trivial things of this world and makes room for God. You received a handout on the way in. For those of you watching via livestream, there’s a button on the homepage where you can download all this information. And here’s what I want to draw your attention to. We want to pray and fast for three areas:Now let me talk through some practical tips:During the week, we will have a special night of prayer and worship led by Jim and Kirstie Stout.And we’ve also given you some simple resources. This all culminates on Sunday where we come back together and sing to Jesus.

Well, we are deep into the heart of the Joseph narrative. Joseph has gone from mountain high to valley low to mountain high to valley low. Last week we spent some time with Joseph in that valley. Joseph had been unjustly thrown into a dungeon for a crime he did not commit. He was accused of attempted rape and was punished without trial. Last week we talked a lot about how Joseph dealt with his dungeon trouble. We are all in the dungeon at times in our life, but very few will suffer as much as Joseph and hardly any will suffer as well as Joseph.Here’s the guy who has suffered deeply and in the words of James, allowed that deep suffering to have its full effect. Joseph came out of the furnace refined. One of the greatest lessons a man or woman can learn from suffering is that getting rid of suffering is not the main goal. The young and less mature are always just trying to make the suffering go away. The goal is not to remove suffering. It’s to be refined by it.This helps us to rewrite the question. When trials come upon us, let’s agree to stop being surprised. What? Why am I suffering as if something strange is happening? Let’s stop asking, “Why is this happening to me?” and let’s start asking, “God what do you want to teach me? How do you want to perfect me? What good thing have you started in me that you want to complete in me?”As we become complete, our life goals change from escaping trouble to giving God glory from whatever unique platform that he has given us. If you are suffering in the dungeon, then glorify him from the dungeon. If you are rejoicing on the throne, then glorify God from the throne. Joseph is going to have the opportunity to glorify God from all these platforms. The goal is always to glorify God.Well today, we find Joseph between those two worlds. He’s been pulled from the pit but he hasn’t yet been elevated to the throne. He’s not in the dungeon but neither is he on the throne.He’s standing in the swirling waters of a changing tide. There’s a lot of instability in the ocean when the tides begin to change. When the tide is coming in, the water all flows in this direction and when the tide goes out, it’s all flowing in this direction. Even though the directions are completely opposite, at least it’s predictable. You can dip your oar and know what to expect. But what about when you are at that exact point when everything is switching directions? The currents swirl, you get bubbling, confused, foaming, disturbed, and honestly dangerous waters. And this is where we find Joseph today. Joseph is standing in the bubbling, gurgling currents of a changing tide. There’s no certainty about where the current is heading? There are strong undertow currents threatening to pull him under. In uncertain conditions like this, every decision feels risky. Every decision made has incredible consequences. Everything that used to be a point of reference is no longer dependable to rely on. You may know with crystal clarity where you want to go, but you have no idea how your environment will react to your choices.So last week we talked about dungeon effectiveness. How can we be used by God in the low points of our life? In another week we will talk about palace effectiveness. How can we be used by God in the high points of our life? But today we will talk about effectiveness in volatility. How can you be effective in those moments of tremendous change, when everything is volatile and delicate and fragile and there is no certainty or security? When all decisions, even the simplest ones feel risky and have the potential to paralyze you? When a tremendous amount rides on a single decision? Joseph knew this kind of circumstantial volatility and there is a lot we can learn from Joseph.Tidal EffectivenessLet’s set up the scene. Joseph interprets the dream of the cupbearer and baker on, let’s say, a Thursday night. They all kind of go to sleep that night wondering at the strangeness of the day’s events. Could these dreams actually be divine? And is Joseph’s interpretation of these dreams accurate? I bet even Joseph is wondering this. Human doubt creeps in. Was I just overly confident? What if I misrepresented God in some way?But then Sunday rolls around and early in the morning you hear the clanking of keys as the warden makes his way down the underground dungeon hallways. He wakes Joseph from his sleep and tells him to prepare the baker and cupbearer. Pharaoh needs them. Oh, this is exciting. This is precisely what God told us would happen!Joseph excitedly grabs the baker and says, “Hey friend, I’m sorry for what is about to happen. It’s not just. But the good news is, you can be right with God when you meet him. Remember what I told you.”Then he goes to the cupbearer and says, “Bro, remember me. He grabs his hand and writes his name and phone number on the back with a sharpie. There’s my number. Call me. I know it’s going to be a whirlwind of activity, but please, don’t forget me when you get out of prison!”Everything is going exactly according to plan except for this pesky next sentence.Oh, the disappointment! The letdown. The crestfallen, head-hanging, soul-crushing hopelessness. This would be like a man stranded at sea in his dingy seeing a boat turn right towards him and he thinks he’s been seen! I’ve been saved! The boat nearly runs you over, never slows, and it just disappears over the horizon. I mean, that’s the kind of hopelessness that Joseph ingested. The next four words make even the stoniest heart bleed with compassion.Joseph had been in the dungeon for two full years! Joseph is saying to himself, I think the ink from the phone number I wrote on the back of his hand has probably worn off by now. And this is the first thing to do as you wait for the tide to change in times of volatility.Sometimes, we want our bad circumstances to change so badly and it seems like nothing is happening. In Joseph’s case, just because it looked like nothing was changing doesn’t mean it’s not changing. What we can feel and see with our bodies is oftentimes very, very, very different than what is happening to our bodies. In Joseph’s case, he had two conflicting realities. He was trapped in a current that was pulling him in the direction of a meaningless existence, with no power, no influence, no purpose. Every current of his life was pulling him deeper and deeper into that pit. That’s what he could see. That was his reality from the perspective of his senses.But there was the other reality, another current that was flowing in the exact opposite direction. It was the current of the dream. If there’s anything he knew (or at least thought he knew), it was that this dream was from God. He was certain of both it’s source and it’s meaning. One day he would rule over his brothers and even his father and mother.Two currents flowing in opposite directions. But there’s only one channel. And I’m headed due west yet the dream takes me due east. There’s only one way that I’m ever going to go East. The tide has to change. If the dream is ever to come true, it must change. The current must switch directions. Which reality do you focus on? Do you focus on the current you can see or the one you can’t see?The thing about changing tides is that the undercurrents and forces at work can’t be seen but they are oh so real. There are forces patiently and powerfully working beneath and above you that are totally invisible to your eyes but are having a tremendous effect on your environment. Tides, of course, are caused by the moon which is not exactly a force you can modify. Here’s this giant unstoppable body silently and powerfully at work 800,000 miles beyond your reach, a body so incredibly large, so gravitationally massive, it’s pulling with an effect that cannot be countered. But it’s all invisible.I can imagine times that Joseph was in prison looking at the swift current of his unfortunate circumstances and saying to himself, “Man, that dream of mine was a pipe dream. There’s no way that is ever happening. Ever. The current is just too strong. I’ll be swept out to sea.”At first, I’m sure he was hopeful. Maybe the first day after he interpreted the dream he heard the clanking of keys from the prison warden and he thought, he’s coming for me. I know it. But he passes him by. He patiently waits another day with a smile on his face. He’ll come. But the warden never shows up. He waits on the third day and he hears the keys jingle by. “Warden, hey, just curious. Whatever happened to the cupbearer?” “Oh, he was restored to his office but that poor baker, he was strung up a tree. Poor guy. I liked him.”One week goes by and that spark drains away. One month goes by and the shoulders tilt in. One year goes by and the head bows. You can imagine the disappointment. But the lesson from Joseph here is simply this. Be patient. Remember that even though you cannot see God working, he is always working deep below in undercurrents far below your tiny life raft in dark invisible places. The gravity of his sovereignty is - with soft unstoppable power - pulling on you hundreds of thousands of miles away even though you can’t feel a thing.What was Joseph consciously aware of on day 730? If Joseph was marking on the wall of his prison cell, tally marks for days of captivity, his entire wall would be white. He marks the 730th mark and notes that it’s been two full years since the cupbearer forgot him. And he bows his head, prays the same prayer he’s prayed every night for two years, and goes to bed like every other night. This night looks no different, feels no different. But it was very different. God caused Pharaoh to dream. You see, the tide was turning. Joseph couldn’t see it, couldn’t feel it, had no idea of the powers present all around him. The gentle, strong, unstoppable force of the sovereign hand of God was working beneath his gaze.That dream was a product of the hand of God. That dream was about to change everything and yet Joseph went to sleep, like he fell asleep every other night, unaware of what God was doing in the mind of a pagan rule who didn’t even know Joseph existed and if he happened to know he existed, he certainly didn’t care.Here’s the thing about tides. They take time to change. It doesn’t happen quickly. So just be patient. It so often seems that nothing is happening. We want purpose. We want meaning. We want our life to matter in some way. And we want it now. In an age that is obsessed with maximizing every nanosecond, dungeon life can be so incredibly boring. Your life is one hour stacked upon another hour and you accomplish absolutely nothing. What a waste. Think of all the things I could be doing.I was in a car accident last week and I had some neck pain that just debilitated me this week. I had to phone into the elder meeting and one of the elders prayed for me over the phone that God would teach me some things through rest. And I just had a sense that I needed to be taught that lesson. By disposition I’m a 3 on the enneagram, I’m an achiever, I’m a beaver. I want to be doing things. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t even hold my laptop. And I’ve never had a week where I slept so much. I slept and I slept and I slept. I could barely move. On the surface, how ineffective! God, I’m going to serve you this week by being unconscious. What a waste. But it wasn’t a waste. I really did learn a lot. God reminded me of what mattered. He reminded me of the pointlessness of activity for activities sake. He reminded me of my need.It never seems like much is happening in the dungeon, does it? We look at others and we think, “Man, he has a life. She has a purpose. I have monotony. I just wake up and do the same thing over and over again with no apparent purpose and certainly no hope of change.”When we talk to ourselves in this way our Spirit falls. “God, what are you doing with me? I don’t have a girlfriend or wife? I’m going to be 38 and I’d like to have children. God get me out of the dungeon!” Be patient with telling God when you are sufficiently refined. Well, what am I supposed to do in the while I patiently wait? This is exactly what Joseph was undoubtedly feeling. But God was working. Joseph went to bed and added another tally mark on the wall of his dungeon prison while God was causing Pharaoh to dream. Let’s look at the dream.Now you know it’s God because the spirit of Pharaoh is troubled. God is working. God won’t let Pharaoh go about his daily affairs. That dream was different. That dream meant something. That dream was not from Ra or Horus or Isis. That dream was from God.You can imagine this incredible buzz of palace activity when magicians and sorcerers are being brought up. They are bringing up their bat wings and potions and fermented liquids. Now it says that none of them could interpret the dream. I think the whole story opens up if you just put a little thought into that phrase. But there was none who could interpret them to Pharaoh.Now some people say, “Wow, I love the integrity of the magicians. They could have guessed at an interpretation but instead, they confessed their ignorance.” Come on. There’s no way that these magicians are being motivated by integrity. We can do better than that!I’m reading between the lines here a bit, but be king for a day in your mind. You had a dream and you are sick and tired of the lame interpretations that the magicians always give you. They are always giving you fortune cookie interpretations, generic things that could apply to anyone or anything. “Pharaoh, it means your unfruitful labor will be swallowed up by fruitful activity.” You don’t want a lame interpretation. You know it’s possible to make up any bogus interpretation of anything. How do you ensure that the interpretation is from God? You raise the stakes. How did Nebuchadnezzar do it? He said, “I’m not going to tell you what the dream is. You tell me what I dreamed and also you tell me what it means. If you don’t you all die.” No loss to Nebuchadnezzar. He’s sick of those turkeys.I’m guessing Pharaoh used a similar trick: “Now before you interpret my dream, just make sure you’ve consulted well with the gods appropriately because if give me some lame generic interpretation or if you’re wrong, you see that baker up there swinging in the tree? That branch next to him is reserved for you.”I mean, almost with certainty the magicians said they didn’t know because, well, they didn’t know and Pharaoh’s threats called their bluff. But God knows. God sent the dream. And God will give the king an interpretation through one of his faithful servants.Do you want to be used by God in moments of great opportunity? The only way that is going to happen is to have been practiced in righteousness in moments of boring, mundane obedience. Now let’s imagine how Joseph’s previous faithfulness prepared him to be used by God in this moment of opportunity!You see, you never know when God is going to use you in a big way. Suddenly, tragedy strikes and God calls upon you to minister to a family in a desperate situation. Someone asks you to help intervene in a family crisis, lead a Bible study or small group, or you suddenly have an opportunity to share your faith. How effective will you be? It’s the faithfulness all along the way, that makes you useful in that pivotal situation.Joseph had been faithful and was ready to be used. And the lesson we learn from Joseph is that no amount of faithfulness is ever wasted. If you are moving the right direction, just believe that your actions have an effect, even if you can’t see it. For example, imagine I have in front of me an ice cube and the temperature of the room is 28 degrees Fahrenheit. And let’s say that I’m trying to melt the cube. So we raise the temperature of the room to 29 degrees. What happened? Nothing. Absolutely no change. Okay raise it another degree. Nothing happened. Zero visible change. And we keep raising. Thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two degrees. No change. What in the world? All this effort is wasted and we give up.Do you see the point? If you want to melt the cube, you have to pass 29, 30, 31, and 32 on your way to 33 degrees and then the magic happens. All that energy pumped into the room was not wasted work. Its effect was unseen. But it is absolutely essential. Faithfulness to God is much like this. When you are honest and nobody sees, it doesn’t feel like that is very amazing kingdom work. When you do the dishes with a good attitude, it doesn’t feel significant. When you volunteer first, when you clean up the trash and nobody recognized it, when you take the parking spot further away to free up other spots, when you answer cheerfully when you feel grumpy, when you make the hard phone call, or when you return good for evil. It just doesn’t feel all that significant. No angels rejoice. No souls are getting added to the mansion in glory that I can see. It was so normal. That faithful obedience was so uninspiring. When you decide to make God a priority and read your Bible or try to initiate with your family in some way, it just feels so normal. So bland. But all that faithfulness is necessary work. It’s raising the temperature of the room so that when that last bit of faithfulness is added, the great spiritual miracle takes place.All those days in prison faithfulness prepared Joseph to say what he needed to say before the Pharaoh without fear of man. He was able to be used as the messenger of God in front of the king because he had practiced being a messenger of God in front of an inmate.Consider how Joseph’s faithfulness had an unintended result that nobody could have imagined. How does Joseph get out of the pit? How does he get an audience with the king? Well, the cupbearer finally remembers him! But think about that. Read between the lines a bit. This recommendation to Pharaoh represented a calculated risk. The cupbearer had to determine if it was worth it to open his mouth, didn’t he? After all, what if Pharaoh gets his hopes up, Joseph is drug out of the dungeon at great expense to the king in terms of mental energy and time, gets up, and isn’t able to interpret the dream? The cupbearer could very well be held responsible for the bad recommendation. Pharaoh has many more branches from which he can hang servants who annoy him. So I’m certain the cupbearer is carefully weighing his options. He’s calculating the risk. To open my mouth or not open my mouth, that is the question. And he’s likely teetering on the ragged, hairy edge of that decision. And he finally commits. He goes for it. He says to the Pharaoh, “Oh, I have an idea. Remember when you flipped a lid and threw me into the pit for giving you red wine instead of white wine. Well, while I was down there, a young Hebrew was there with us, a servant of the captain of the guard. When we told him, he interpreted our dreams to us, giving an interpretation to each man according to his dream.”Now suppose that Joseph had not been faithful to God clear back in those dark dungeon days. Because he wanted to please man instead of God he told the cupbearer the interpretation of his dream but when it came to the baker he said, “You know, things are a bit foggy. I’m not sure what your dream is all about.” We could conceive that the cupbearer would not be nearly as impressed. The cupbearer may have chalked it up to mere luck or superstition. And that would have cast just enough doubt that the cupbearer would have chosen to hold his tongue. Joseph might be able to help here, but it’s not worth the risk.The point is, Joseph had no idea how telling to the truth at that moment, years ago in the dungeon, would have produced enough of an effect to jolt the mind of the cupbearer two years later in such a way that he dared open his mouth before the king of Egypt. We have no idea how faithfulness over time will be used by God. How has God used you? Ask my kids how I have positively impacted their lives. I’m quite sure you will be surprised at what is on their list. It has nothing to do with the things I tried to do. It was always instead just unintentional byproducts of simple faithfulness to God. I didn’t even know they were looking. I thought they were checked out and weren’t paying attention.Nobody looks at a single act of obedience and is impressed by it. Anybody can obey once. Anybody can stand up in front of a bunch of people and look morally bulletproof. Not many can be morally impressive in their own home. Not many can shock their own spouses or children. Why? Because faithfulness over time is much more difficult than a single burst of impressive behavior when everyone is looking. Faithfulness is like rowing a boat. Rowing is effective not when we succeed in pulling off a single stroke of exceptional power. Effective rowing is simply the cumulative effect of thousands of average strokes. Just keep doing the right thing long enough and it will have an impact.Now, all that training in faithfulness allowed Joseph to be faithful one more time, in a time where it would have been very frightening, scary, and insecure. Here he is in front of the king. He is asked, “You are a Hebrew slave? I hear you have in your spirit the power to interpret dreams. Well, I’ll give you the opportunity to interpret my dream. And if I like it, I might free you. But if you are wrong, you hang.” Now, had Joseph not been faithful to God up to this point, imagine the temptation. Fear of death. Fear of man. Wanting to take credit for God’s gift in him. I mean, so many temptations. But he is a man of practiced integrity. “No, I’m terribly sorry Pharaoh. I can’t help you. But God can.”I want you to realize how much integrity is represented at this moment. He’s been burned so many times by being faithful to God. It would be so tempting for him to think, “Every time I’ve stuck with my convictions and served God, I got punished for it. Forget it.”He is faithful. It’s just another stroke, another dipping of the oar, another paddle in the right direction. When you’ve trained your body to obey God then when the pressure situation comes, the habit is there to just respond. It’s just one more stroke. Now here’s the last step in this process. And this is by far my favorite. This is super cool.You see, God is working. God is doing things. Despite my action or non-action, my faithfulness or unfaithfulness is trumped, over-ruled, and overpowered by God’s decree. Now here’s how it comes out in the text. Pharaoh tells Joseph the dream and he explains how he tried to get help from his sorcerers without success. Pharaoh says,Here’s the big idea: God’s decrees are fixed and God will bring it about. The baker gets hung and the cupbearer gets restored whether Joseph is faithful or not. The years of plenty will come whether Joseph is faithful or not. The famine will come whether Joseph is faithful or not. Do you see the point? God is sovereignly moving, orchestrating, decreeing, and causing his plan to unfold in history. Like the moon pulling around the oceans of our world, there is a force working on history that is unseen, unfelt, and unstoppable. It means that God is working powerfully and unstoppably even though you can’t detect it or see it.Do you want to know what theological gravity is? The theological word for it is providence. In the Westminster Catechism, there is a whole section that defines the providence of God, and it’s worth our time to stop and just read this definition. It’s so good.Do you see what’s happening here? We can hope in the fact that God is orchestrating every detail of our life, from the greatest most significant thing to the least most trivial thing. There is nothing that is happening to you by accident. Nothing. It all has a purpose. Every day of prison has a purpose. Every failure of yours has a purpose. Every victory of yours has a purpose. There is no such thing as an accident in God’s design. Joseph had a dream. And that dream would be fulfilled.When I was a kid, my grandparents owned a piece of property right on the Puget Sound in Washington, a place with huge tidal swings. And the little bay would totally empty during low tide. One of my favorite things to do was to build a sandcastle barricade in anticipation of the changing tide. I’d be out there for hours with shovels and buckets trying to construct this levy to keep back the waters that I knew were coming. But of course, this is the very definition of futility. At first, my little dam was successful. The first wave would lap up against the edge of my fortress and it would be repelled. And the water would begin to rise which would give me new energy. I’d begin shoveling like a mad man. This is the very definition of futility. In a matter of hours, the entire bay would be six feet underwater. My little shovels of sand can’t stop the power of the moon.Listen, God is controlling this world, and all our actions, all our shovel fulls of sand may feel like they are having some effect, but God is pulling history toward his intended end. Whatever is changing around you, just know that God is working. God’s purposes cannot be stopped. Man is going to be shoveling sand trying to influence outcomes, but nothing can stop what God is doing. There is so much comfort in that. So much freedom to just release the cares of this world to God.ApplicationI believe many have described the times we are living in right now as times of uncertainty, unrest. The tides are changing. There is an application for us today. We too need to trust in the unseen hand of God working beneath the surface of turbulent political and social unrest. Although it may seem like chaos, the slow, powerful, unfelt, unstoppable sovereign hand of God is at work.The leadership team believes it would be appropriate to call the body together for a corporate-wide week of fasting and prayer to draw us together as a body and apply the message of today to the times before us right now. Right now in America, there are hundreds who are displaced from their homes and have lost millions of dollars in property value through fires raging on the west coast. There are many communities affected by racial tensions, injustice, broken relationships with law enforcement, and destructive rioting and violence. Businesses have been closed and jobs lost due to COVID. Two hundred thousand people have lost their lives. There is political chaos and a total lack of civil discourse in our nation.These are the times in which we live. None of us would choose them. Who would choose a world in which a virus reigns supreme, fires rage uncontrolled, rioting and vandalism, civil unrest, economic uncertainty? It’s quite ugly. We live in this current. But we have the promise of an undercurrent, a divine gravity that will ultimately turn these tides and win the day.So we want to pray:What is your will for us? What do you want to teach us Lord? How does my perspective need changing?How can FCBC effectively point the world to Jesus Chirst?Prayer for injustice, civility, and peace. Prayer for our national leaders.Please mark your calendars beginning one week from today September 27th - October 3rd to set some time during this week for prayer and fasting culminating in Sunday morning worship. Now I know this is something we are not accustomed to in our society but it has been practiced all through the New Testament and throughout church history for good reason. So look for some help in the form of a newsletter article this week, and further resources next Sunday.

## IntroductionI love survival stories. One of my absolute favorites is entitled “The Endurance,” and is about Earnest Shackleton’s attempt to cross the Antarctic Continent from 1914-1917. And what makes it so gripping is the cycles of hope and despair. You’re reading along and they are enduring unbelievable catastrophes. They are getting stuck in ice, their ship sinks, they are in open seas on an iceberg. They run out of key supplies. And you think to yourself, “Wow, I can’t imagine this getting any worse.” And then you look at your book and your only a quarter of the way through. And sure enough, it gets way worse. But then they get this incredible stroke of luck and you think, “Oh, man they are going to make it!” And you’re on this adrenaline high of hope. And you think, “This has got to almost be over.” And you look at your book and you haven’t even reached the halfway marker. And then you find out why. Tragedy strikes. And then you are just crying in sympathy for these guys. It can’t get worse. And it gets way worse. It just keeps cycling through these incredible highs where they celebrate a stroke of fortune only to be rewarded with an unforeseen tragedy of monstrous proportions.And this is kind of the way the Joseph narrative reads. He goes from mountain to valley to mountain to valley. You could illustrate it like this.Joseph starts out on this mountain top, this incredible position of privilege of an especially gifted, favorite, handsome son. But tragedy strikes! His brothers act on their raging jealousy and strip his identity from him like skin from an animal. His family, privilege, language, culture, values, and even his name are stripped away. His naked body and soul is sold into slavery.It’s a tragic valley low. But then with the Lord’s help, he rises to a position of incredible influence and privilege in Potiphar’s house. And now we are standing on a mountain high. Who wouldn’t love the view from where he stands? That is, until strategy strikes in the form of a seductress.Today we watch Joseph go from being in charge to being charged with rape. We watch him descend back into the valley and reach a low watermark, beneath his previous bottom. So let’s watch how this happens in the text. You will remember that this woman is bad news. On the outside, she looks extremely attractive and is always put together. Her hair is always so effortlessly perfect, the clothes are tailored to the perfect length, very physically gifted, very beautiful to behold.But she’s bad news. Why is she such bad news? From the text alone we can tell she has an adulterous heart, she’s a skilled liar, and she is very manipulative. Let’s re-read part of the text from last week and see the seductress work her angle.He’s getting slaughtered by temptation. But he’s trusting God. If you were to summarize from Joseph’s response his chief reason for resisting this woman, what would it be? “How could I do this great evil and sin against God.” That’s his core reason. That reason has both a positive and a negative built into it. There is a consequence of sexual sin and there is a reward for righteousness. And both are intended to keep us in the place of blessing. But I want to illustrate how important it is to correctly identify the consequence and the reward. Because the incorrect identification of reward and consequence might psychologically destroy you.ConsequenceLast week, we mostly talked about consequences. Sexual sin has consequences that we need to take really seriously. We used the analogy of temptation as bait. Every temptation hides a sharp hook that leads to death. And the reason temptation works is because it deceives. Satan is a deceiver. He’s always making bad things look good and good things look bad.Joseph was able to resist temptation because he was able to uncover the deception. This was not life. This was death. It may be pleasurable now but it will be miserable later. The Bible always tries to help us see the deceptions woven into sexual experience. There are always consequences.This woman was hunting down Joseph. Here was a married woman trying to hunt down a precious life. There are always consequences of sexual sin. Yes. We’ve identified those. But God gives us more than just deterrents. There is also a reward for righteousness.Reward.I’ll say it one more time. It is so important to identify the correct consequences and the correct reward. Because the incorrect identification of reward might psychologically destroy you. So what is the reward of righteousness? Let’s begin with what it is not.Let me illustrate it this way. If you were to listen in on Joseph’s prayer life in the heat of his temptation, what do you think he would be praying? “God help me live a life of complete integrity. Everyone knows I’m a follower of YHWH. God, reward me for my righteousness. I want to live completely above reproach. I want to be like a sheet of Teflon so that no accusation has even the slightest chance of sticking. Reward my integrity!”If you overheard that prayer, what’s reward do you think he’d be referring to? Here’s the mistake most of us make. Most of us assume that with enough diligence, obedience, and righteousness, our life will turn out pain-free, struggle-free, and we will have relational harmony throughout. We think God ought to reward our righteousness with wonderful circumstances.Let me show you how dangerous this can be. Let’s imagine for a moment that Joseph incorrectly believes that the reward for righteousness is favorable circumstances.Motives for ObedienceLet’s keep reading the narrative through the lens of this incorrect expectation:Now, this has got to have a wearing effect on a guy. Let’s suppose for a moment that in the heat of these temptations, what was motivating Joseph was the belief that his righteousness was going to be rewarded. And he had a very specific understanding of what that reward was. Let’s imagine Joseph with the yet-to-be-written book of Proverbs in his hands. He reads chapter 1:And he’s thinking, “Okay God, I’m counting on you take out this adulterous woman. I’m going to obey you. This is tough but I trust this is going to get better. After all, you told me:”“So God, I’m praying that you would fix this situation. That’s what I really want.”And we could imagine a Joseph whose motive for obedience was the reward for his righteousness in the form of vindication, justice, relational harmony, and comfortable situation. Well, look at what happens next.Now Joseph is freaking out at this moment. But he’s got his book of Proverbs and it just so happened that it was September 11 so he had just read Proverbs 11 that morning.“Okay, God, you’ve said that my reward for righteousness is deliverance. Time for you to do that, right now.”And he was so consumed with chapter 11, he read clean through to chapter 12:“Cause my house to stand! The reason I obeyed you, Lord, was that you promised to reward my righteousness. Time for some help here.”Now if Joseph thought in his mind that the reason he is obeying the Lord is that he will be rewarded for his righteousness in the form of comfortable circumstances, he would be very, very, very disappointed. He would feel very betrayed and very confused at this point.Think about Joseph in heavy chains around his neck and manacles around his wrists and ankles. And he would have said something like this, “The whole reason I obeyed you, Lord, is that you promised to reward my righteousness and now I’m in prison. What kind of reward is that?”Many people turn from God for exactly this reason. They are confused by suffering and ask, “God, why did you take my son or daughter? Why did you let that terrible accident happen? God, why did that financial tragedy destroy us? Why are we suffering from this physical illness?” And they walk away from God.Prosperity Preaching in Conservative ChurchesNow most of us realize that suffering plays a role in the Christian life. Now not one of us in the room buys into prosperity theology which basically says, “God wants you to be materially, circumstantially prosperous and so if you are not materially prosperous you are out of step with God’s will. You either don’t have enough faith, you haven’t prayed, you have some sin in your life, or some combination of these factors.” We ought to know, just from a cursory reading of the Bible that this is bogus theology. There are dozens of heroes of the faith that honored God and were rewarded with suffering - including Joseph and even Jesus himself. That can’t be right and it isn’t. We realize that suffering is part of the Christian life.But what I want you to understand is that prosperity theology did not originate with greedy preachers. It originates in your own greedy heart. At a very subconscious level, we believe that we deserve ease. We expect comfort. We expect a physical reward for righteousness. We expect comfort and relational harmony ought to be our reward for righteousness. And here’s how I can prove it. I’m going to trick you so watch for it. See if you can relate to this train of thought: “Man, I have really got myself into a mess. I’ve totally been a terrible parent and now my kids are acting up in this way. I’ve been neglectful. I feel guilty about that. I’ve been totally mean to my spouse and now they are all mad at me and I deserve it. I’ve been really lazy and procrastinated. So now I’m reaping the rewards for that. I didn’t save for retirement and now I’m paying the price. What was I to expect? I made this bed and now God is making me lay in it.”There it is. That is conservative evangelical prosperity theology at it’s finest. Yet if our righteousness does not merit prosperity and good circumstances, then our unrighteousness does not merit poverty and bad circumstances. Why? Because God does not reward or punish primarily through circumstances. If the gospel of Jesus Christ means anything, then it means you are already righteous. You have been merited the righteousness of Jesus Christ. It means the verdict has already been delivered. And there is no judging of your works as if they are the basis upon which you receive pleasant or unpleasant circumstances. The basis of our circumstances is God’s sovereign, providential plan for our good and for his glory. There is no ying-yang. There is not karma upon which the world operates that says because you did this bad thing over here, the cosmic powers that be will ensure this bad thing will happen to you and because you did this good thing over here, the divine forces of the universe will ensure that this good thing happens to you.If you think that your circumstances are somehow divinely linked to your righteousness or unrighteousness, how would you explain what you witness in the world? Is it not the case that sometimes the unrighteous prosper and the righteous suffer? And is not the inverse true? And if you concede that this exists, how would you ever know when your good circumstances are a result of your good behavior or when your good circumstances are a result of God circumventing your bad behavior?God does not reward our righteousness with material prosperity, physical prosperity, or relational prosperity. There is a reward but that’s not it. On the other hand, God also does not punish our unrighteousness with material poverty, physical poverty, or relational poverty. There are consequences to unrighteousness but that’s not it.You want to argue with me, I know. Isn’t there cause an effect? For sure. That’s not what we are talking about. Yes, if you punch people, they are going to punch you back. Yes, if you are kind you will generally receive kind treatment. Is there a connection? Of course. Here’s the distinction I’m making. I’m trying to disconnect the reward of righteousness with circumstances. Yes, certain causes will generally have certain effects. But that effect is not a reward. The reward of righteousness is something else. What is the reward?One of the most remarkable things about Joseph is that he understood reward. The reward for righteousness is simply this: closeness with God. How could I do this great evil and sin against God?Joseph wasn’t looking to get a position of influence from God, nor riches, fame, glory, or blessings from God. He was looking for God! God was the desire of his heart. Joseph appears to have the heart described by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount.It is so easy to confuse the reward, isn’t it? The gift is God. The gift is being with God, closeness, the feeling of satisfaction knowing you didn’t betray him, freedom from guilt, the satisfaction of his smile. This is the reward. This is what Joseph was after.Many are after a different reward. They mistakenly believe that the reward for righteousness is the gifts of God rather than God himself. In fact, if you remember, this is the problem with the Psalmist in Psalm 73. You may recall, the Psalm begins:The Psalm begins by affirming that God rewards the righteous. Great! But what’s the reward? That’s the all-important question we have been asking. It’s easy to get it wrong. And at first, Asaph did get it wrong. Asaph, the writer of this Psalm, says, “My foot almost slipped when I looked around and I saw the wicked prospering.” Everywhere he looked he saw reversals of how things ought to be. He saw the wicked being rewarded. They were the ones who were well-fed, had luxury cars, got anything they wanted, and got away with such evil.If the righteous are rewarded, then how do you explain this? God doesn’t reward the righteous. He’s rewarding the wicked! And what’s God’s answer? You’re totally misunderstanding the reward. The reward of the righteous is nearness to God. Closeness to God is the reward and separation from God is the consequence of unrighteousness. And when the Psalmist enters the house of God, it’s all made clear to him.This was Joseph! “How could I do this great evil and lose the relational intimacy I have with God?”Do you feel distant from God? Perhaps it is because of sin. If I ever feel distant from God, this is always the first question I ask myself. Am I aware of any sin that might be distancing me from God? I might be getting away with it like the man of Psalm 73, but I have no closeness with God. Repent!The godly prize this closeness with God more than anything in the world. How could I do this great evil and sin against God!For Joseph, the reward and the consequences are one and the same. The consequence of sexual sin is that God becomes very distant. The reward of righteousness is that God becomes very near.Now here’s where you can actually see the reward given to Joseph in the text itself. Even though Joseph was unjustly thrown into prison, accused of attempted rape, and had his character drug through the mud, they could not take from him the thing he prized most. Now, look at how it is stated in the text. It’s so beautiful!Now there, my friends, is your reward for righteousness. The reward of the righteous is the awareness of the steadfast love of God, the presence of God, and communion with God. Joseph was rewarded with the awareness of the steadfast love of the Lord. What a beautiful picture. Locked in prison walls, stripped of everything, all men’s power used against you to destroy you, but you have the steadfast love of God! Joseph was richly, richly rewarded!Now, this might seem a little too neat and too tidy. Those who are currently in a difficult situation might say to me at this moment, “You sure look comfortable up there. Have you ever suffered a day in your life? I mean, in the midst of suffering it sure doesn’t feel like I’m being rewarded with intimacy with God. It actually feels more like God is about 10 billion miles away as I scream out my prayer into the night and he doesn’t answer.”You won’t always feel the reward in the midst of difficult circumstances. In fact, do you remember Job? The Bible says Job was a righteous man, blameless and upright and God allowed him to go through a period of intense suffering. Job has lost his house in a hurricane, all his family, his entire 401k has been wiped out, and he’s got some nasty sickness replete with body boils, a sickness that would make COVID-19 look like a dreamy relief. Not only that, but his friends are heckling him that he must have sinned in some horrific way.He’s suffering as a righteous man. What is our reward supposed to be for the righteous? The reward is supposed to be a relational closeness with God. We are supposed to feel close to God. Is that how Job feels?How do we square this? It sounds nice to say that God is our reward for righteous living, but is it true to our experience? As Joseph stood staring at his prison wall, how do you suppose he felt? Elation? I doubt it. How is the reward of righteousness experienced?Let me give you an example. Running is terrible. Those of you who actually enjoy running are freaks of nature. For most of us, we just hate it. You don’t feel like anything good is happening. I generally feel like throwing up, like my legs are rubber mallets, and my lungs are tiny plastic sandwich baggies flapping in a hurricane. It’s truly just torture. But then when I finish, suddenly, the magic kicks in. My body is flushed with energy, I feel loose, my muscles thank me for actually being used. After the suffering is over, I stand back and I realize that the suffering eclipsed the really wonderful things going on at a much more nuanced level.The reward was there all along, it was just being drowned out by the noise of suffering. This is much how the reward of righteousness works in the midst of suffering. James Fixx wrote a book entitled, The Complete Book of Running which sounds pretty definitive, doesn’t it. I’m guessing he’s one of these freaks. And there’s a section in the book where he addresses the psychology of running. He says the hardest thing about running a marathon is winning the mental battle. When you suffer, weird stuff happens to your mind. He says, “I would be in the middle of a marathon and the pain would wear on me to the point where I would ask myself the question, ‘Why am I doing this again?’ But the pain makes you forget.” And he would start to wrack his brain for a reason why he was punishing himself so severely and he would find he had no answer.Isn’t that sometimes how you feel in suffering? I’m sure Joseph felt this way. “God, why did I choose to obey you again? Why didn’t I just give in? God if I had slept with that woman, I would have had a really great night, and probably would have even been rewarded in some way but now I’m cursed. What’s the reward for righteousness again?” And he has no answer.Maybe you are suffering for righteousness’ sake and you find you have no answer. You thought there was an answer but you can’t remember it. So you know what James Fixx recommended? Memorize the reasons. Before every race, he would memorize the reasons he loved running. And when he was super tired, he would recite those reasons back to his own brain. That’s good advice for the Christian. If Joseph had the New Testament, for sure he would have memorized:You could imagine this being very helpful. Because prisons are not fun. Imagine being in prison and what your body would be screaming at you. How would you feel being hungry, hot, the smell of urine and human waste, dirty, sick, and coughing. What’s my reward for righteousness again? Nothing comes to mind.I’m sure in this moment, all Joseph’s dreams about sheaves of wheat bowing down and stars bowing down seemed like pipe dreams. All he can see and smell and taste is the dungeon. But there’s this verse I memorized. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake.Now James Fixx had one final trick. “If things really get bad and you can’t remember what you memorized, the final trick I used to play on my brain is I used to say, ‘Well I know when I get there, I’ll remember it. I know I had a good reason to start. When I get there, I’ll remember it.’”Now there’s a lot of wisdom in this, and this is what Joseph does. Joseph says, “How can I then do this wicked thing and sin against God?” At that moment it’s all clear. But then he gets tossed into prison, and perhaps God feels a million miles away. But he can say, “I have no idea why this happening and I can’t even remember the reason I decided righteousness was worth it. But I know there was a reason and when all this is over, I’ll remember.”Imagine a marathon runner who forgets the reason he runs and just decides to quit. The reward was all around him, it was in him, it was just ahead of him in spades, but he couldn’t remember and so he just stopped. How tragic to lose a race because you forgot!Do you know the Christian’s version of this? It’s Romans 8:28, “God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God and to those who are called according to his purpose.” I don’t know what that good purpose is, but when I get there, I’ll remember. When I get there, I’ll know it. You see Romans 8:28 is a verse for the dungeon. It’s not what you quote when you get a stimulus check. It’s what you quote when you find out you have cancer, or when your child walks away from the faith, or when your marriage is in shambles.Nobody Can Take The RewardYou see, for a Christian, one of the greatest comforts is that nobody can take that reward away from you. Nobody has the power to take away that assurance. In Joseph’s case, everyone tried. Everyone was trying to ensure that nothing worked together for Joseph’s good. There were all sorts of power exchanges going on trying to strip Joseph of his reward for righteousness. If you inspect the narrative closely you will see the story is a story of various powers trying to destroy Joseph and strip him of his reward, but he is indestructible because of God’s righteousness in him. No power can destroy the righteousness of God.And you can see this in the text by tracing the Hebrew word “hand.” In Hebrew, the word ‘hand’ is nearly synonymous with power. In an agrarian society, power is represented by plowing, tying a rope, harvesting, building, farming, weaving, raising children - all things we do with our hands. And there are all these expressions in the Bible that associate power with the hand: - God shuts his hand. - Open your hand to me or do not relax your hand. - A mighty hand and outstretched arm or the right hand. - Deliver my enemies into my hands.The hand is synonymous with power. You can trace the word ‘hand’ through the narrative. At first, Joseph is put into the hand of the Ishmaelites. He’s under their power, under their hand. But soon the power shifts. Everything in Potiphar’s house is given into Joseph’s hand. Everything that is, except Potiphar’s wife. But then the woman uses her imperial hand, her power, to try and grab Joseph. But that grasping hand does not reach Joseph. Only his clothes are left in her hand. She is ultimately empty-handed. And all through the narrative the power shifts, from Joseph’s brothers to the Ishmaelites to Potiphar to Pharaoah to the seductress. Who has the power? Whose hand is controlling these events?As we back away, we are shocked to see, none of these hands are actually doing anything. It’s the sovereign hand of God, orchestrating, keeping, preserving, redeeming, strengthening those he wills to strengthen, and destroying those he wills to destroy. Ultimately Joseph entrusted himself to that gracious hand and when he is safe in God’s hand nothing can touch him. Nothing can hurt him. The hand of the woman could not reach him. The hand of others could not separate him from the hand of God.And this should be a lesson for us in suffering. It’s the thing we memorize. It’s the thing we recall to mind. The hands of men can never ultimately assail me. They don’t have the power to take away my reward. Their hands can’t reach that far.Even though the suffering is so terrible, know that when the suffering lets up the reward will be obvious. For Joseph that suffering lets up. And even though it’s not perfectly clear at this moment in prison, he begins to see glimpses of God’s hand working, saving, redeeming, preserving, and keeping. Listen to it.The story of Joseph is the ultimate example of Romans 8:28. God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God and who are called according to his purpose. What if you were Joseph with one key difference? What if you knew that the answer to your suffering is that your suffering would be written into the pages of the Bible to encourage other Christians? Wouldn’t it be easy to suffer through prison for two years if you knew that you would be made ruler of the entire land?Wouldn’t that change things? Of course it would! Can you trust God if you don’t know the reason? God’s hands are large enough for that. Can you accept the fact that your reward for righteousness will not necessarily be pleasant circumstances, but in that dungeon of darkness, God will show you his steadfast love?Ultimately, this has incredible sustaining ethical power because circumstances don’t factor into the reason why you obey. It’s why Joseph was able to resist. Why are you righteous? Why do you keep God’s sexual ethic, Joseph? What is Joseph’s answer? Because the nearness of God is my good. How could I do this great evil and lose closeness with God? If the only reason you obey God is that you don’t like consequences, you will fail. It’s easy to think, “I’m righteous because it’s beneficial to my business. If I get caught it would be horrific. If I get caught, my reputation would be destroyed. Can’t have that. If I got involved in this sexual stuff, well, I can’t imagine breaking apart my family. That would be more than I could bear.”That’s all fine. What if you were totally righteous but you were falsely judged, condemned, and then destroyed as if you committed all those sins? If the only reason you obey God is for the good circumstances he brings you, then you are preaching to yourself a prosperity gospel. Could you choose righteousness if the reward was nothing else except the nearness of God?ApplicationYou see, the man or woman God uses is not necessarily a missionary or a pastor or ministry professional. Joseph wasn’t any of these. He wasn’t in ministry. The person God uses is the one who resists temptation when nobody can see. One who, in the secret watches of the night, is righteous because he loves the smile of God. A man or woman who does the right thing when nobody is watching. That’s who God uses.

## Introduction So in our studies so far this year, we have tried to re-enforce our theme, “Change What You Love.” We began with wisdom literature in our study of Ecclesiastes. We did two topical summer series, Love the Commandment and Love the Church. And now we are going to end the year with a narrative. Today we begin a 16-week series on the life of Joseph that will take us to Christmas. In our study of Joseph, we see in narrative fashion how love changes. We see the bad love behind jealousy, rage, condescension, lust, power, self-pity, and self-loathing transformed into good love resulting in forgiveness, compassion, self-sacrifice, and worship. We see a man remarkably mature from a 17-year-old soft and immature boy to a 110-year-old sage in such a way that the young Joseph would not recognize his future elderly self if he had met him. God uses failure/success, mistreatment/promotion, suffering/fame to shape the affections of Joseph into a God-loving, enemy-forgiving, leader and savior of a nation. This is a drama that, if you let it, will change your life. Background So let’s dive into this fascinating story. The story of Joseph begins in chapter 37 of the book of Genesis. And one of the things that might be obvious but worth saying is that the author of the book of Genesis would have expected you to have read the 36 chapters leading up to this story. They are connected and there is a larger story that is being told. So I want to spend just a moment understanding where this fits into the book. I’m not doing the obligatory background step here. This is absolutely essential to understanding the narrative. So if you focus, I’ll move efficiently. Deal? Genesis literally means beginnings. And in the beginning, everything is good. It begins with God’s very good animals, living on his very good land, filled with his very good birds. The creation story climaxes with the creation of Adam and Eve, two very good beings specially made in the image of God. Over and over we read that everything is good. And of course, the reason it is all so good is because God is good. This entire good created order is shattered when the goodness of God and his good creation is called into question. God says don’t eat of this tree in the middle of the garden. And he only gives them a one-sentence reason, because if you eat it you will die. Because I am good, you can trust me that this is true. But then they ask this damning question, “How can God know what’s good for me?” I’m the only one who can know that. And so they become the judge of what is good and eat the forbidden fruit. And rejecting God’s good always means choosing a world without good. The poison of sin begins to leech into every aspect of life. If you cut a flower from a vine, it doesn’t wilt instantly. In fact, it looks great but slowly, because it is cut off from the source of life, it dies. And the first 11 chapters of the book of Genesis describe the horrible wilting effects of sin. And everywhere we look in these first 11 chapters, instead of good, we see evil. The ground is cursed. Cain becomes jealous of his brother and kills Abel. God looks down on the world he created his summary was, Genesis 6:5, “The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” God destroys the world in a flood. The Tower of Babel describes the pride of men and people’s evil desire to become like God. And so the first 11 chapters set up the problem. The absence of good has created this space for evil to invade. And it’s painful. The next rest of the book begins to suggest a solution. God appears to a man Abraham and says out of you shall all of the nations of the earth be blessed. He makes a promise to him. The rest of Genesis, chapters 12-50, trace a promise of God through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph to restore good. Over and over again, God makes good promises to evil men. God is faithful while man is faithless. A faithful God revealing himself to faithless men. Now, this is an important point because by the time we get to the New Testament the patriarchs have been immortalized into history as the founding fathers of the Jewish faith and are held in high honor. The Pharisees were proud to say, “We are children of Abraham.” It’s a badge of honor to associate yourself with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But if you read the story of the actual patriarchs as described in the actual narrative, they are a bunch of losers. These guys are a bunch of chauvinistic, cowardly men who use their wives as shields to protect themselves from danger. They are faithless bufoons who revert to paganism, superstition, and generally are an embarrassment to the Christian faith. Now I want to say something here. The point of Genesis is to establish exactly that fact! The goal is to point to God’s faithfulness despite the faithlessness of his chosen people. Maybe the best way to point this out is to illustrate an interpretive problem we’ve likely all had. When you read the book of Genesis there are some embarrassing chapters. After the flood, we read of Noah getting drunk in a tent and involved in some sort of super awkward, lewd behavior. I’m not sure you’ll find an episode of Veggie Tales on that story? And there is no commentary. You just read that and get uncomfortable and move along. You have the rape of Dinah in chapter 34, where Jacob’s daughter Dinah is raped and then the 11 brothers of Jacob go out and murder in cold-blooded circumcision trickery the entire tribe that raped her. And again, there is no commentary. You are thinking, “Is that what God wanted?” I mean, you can search high and low and you are not going to find a Sunday School flannel graph to go along with some of these stories. In chapter 38, you have this story of Judah who thinks he sleeping with a temple prostitute but is really being tricked by his daughter-in-law Tamar who was widowed. And she’s doing that because Judah forced her to remain a widow. I mean, awkward. The whole time, we are wanting God to provide some commentary. Why are you including this stuff in the Bible? This is really messing up my family devotions with my 7-year-old. I’ve heard people say, “I could never worship a God who condones the polygamous marriages we read about in the heroes of the Christian faith. I mean look at Abraham. Look at Isaac. Really? This is the model of how God wants his people to be?” All of this illustrates a profound misunderstanding of the point of Genesis. Your intuitions are absolutely correct. These guys are a bunch of losers. But look at what God can do despite losers. This is why it is so important to see the book as a whole because commentary does come at the end. The whole book is highlighting the failure of men. Adam fails, Cain fails, Noah fails, Abraham fails, Isaac fails, and Jacob fails. They all failed. These men were polygamous, jealous, petty, greedy, and in almost every way, faithless. And then you have God who just intervenes and delivers. That’s how you are supposed to read the book. Now to be sure, you don’t get this until the very end of the book. That’s when it all connects. It all clicks. Have you ever watched a movie where you have no idea how you are supposed to interpret anything until the very end and then great reveal happens and it all makes sense? That’s how the book of Genesis is structured. And that great reveal, this interpretive key comes at the very end of the book, at the climax of both the Joseph narrative and the book of Genesis as a whole. We get this powerful statement, “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.” That’s the commentary on the book of Genesis we were looking for? What does God think of all this crazy narrative? They are wilting flowers cut off from the source of life! Without the life-good they can only do evil. They were evil and did evil. But God is greater than their evil. They meant it for evil but God is good and therefore can redeem it. Joseph So, as we open up chapter 37 and look at the story of Joseph, let’s remind ourselves that we are in a narrative of brokenness where evil is very much afoot. In Joseph’s case, this brokenness was most keenly felt in his own family. Genesis 37 begins. Now let’s talk about Joseph’s family. Most of us come from a home where we have an imperfect father and an imperfect mother. Joseph came from a home where he had an imperfect father and four imperfect mothers, technically two wives and two surrogate mothers. Joseph’s father was married to two wives, Rachael and Leah, who also happened to be sisters. How Jacob came to be married to Rachel and Leah is a story unto itself filled with deception and trickery and doesn’t exactly paint the great patriarchs in very flattering light. You will remember that Rachael and Leah are sisters who are bitter rivals. Rachel is beautiful, bright-eyed, is loved by her husband. Leah is not as beautiful, dull-eyed, and is not loved by her husband. You might think Leah doomed in this marriage save one factor. Rachel can’t get pregnant; Leah on the other hand, if Jacob just winks at her from across the room is instantly three months pregnant. Now in our culture, sadly, having children is not valued very highly. However, in the ancient near east, nothing is more important than bearing children and in particular, male children. Male children carry on the family name and strengthen a tribe. Having male children is like hitting a grand slam in baseball. It’s like draining that eagle in golf. I mean these are things you keep track of on a scorecard. And Rachael and Leah are keeping score. And in chapter 29:32 you have that scorecard. Chapter 29 is the chronicles of the labor and delivery ward of Jacob’s tribe. And chapter 29 begins with Leah giving birth to all these children. And she’s giving birth to them at this astounding rate of one verse at a time. In verse 32 that she became pregnant and gave birth to a son—she called him Reuben; verse 33, she conceived again and gave birth to a son, called him Simeon; verse 34, she conceived and gave birth to a son and called him Levi; and verse 35, she conceived again and gave birth to a son and she called him Judah. And then the narrative pauses. 29: “Then she stopped having children.” So far the score is Leah four, Rachel zero. The story continues in chapter 20. Rachel, when she saw she was not bearing Jacob any children, became jealous of her sister. So she said to Jacob, “Give me children, or I’ll die.” Jacob says, “What’s your problem woman? I’m not God. I can’t control this stuff. That’s God’s business.” And so Rachel did what was customary at the time: she took the servant maid Bilhah that she had been given and she gave her to Jacob as a surrogate wife. Rachel was thinking, “Sleep with her so that she can bear children for me and that through her I too can build a family.” Any children born through the servant maid would be credited as children of Rachel. And so Bilhah gets pregnant, Bilhah gives birth to Dan in verse 6, and to Naphtali in verse 7. So now the score is Leah four, Rachel two with an asterisk. Now the jealousy and fighting and resentment and envy between the sister builds. Leah’s childbearing ability stalls out and so she decides on the same strategy with her maidservant, Zilpah. And Zilpah and Jacob get together, and Zilpah in turn gives birth to Gad in verse 10, and then to Asher in verse 13. And then you have this unbelievable thing here where they’re trading sexual favors for mandrake crops. Mandrakes are a vegetable from the nightshade family that were believed to be aphrodisiacs. Rachael says, “I want some of your son’s mandrakes,” presumably so that she can get pregnant. Apparently, they worked for Leah and so Rachel wants some. Leah says, “No way. You took away my husband. I’m not helping you.” Rachel said, “I’ll let you sleep with him tonight in return for your son’s mandrakes.” So when Jacob came in from the fields that evening, Leah went out to meet him. “You must sleep with me,” she said. “I have hired you with my son’s mandrakes.” What in the world? Don’t look at me like I’m being inappropriate. I’m just reading the Bible here folks. So with that, Leah becomes pregnant, she bore Jacob a fifth son. So she named him Issachar. And then she conceived again, and she bore him a sixth son, Zebulun. And then she pops out a daughter named Dinah. Can you believe this? I mean, this is like a rabbit factory. We got kids all over the place. So here’s the score at the top of the ninth inning. We got six boys and a daughter straight up by Leah; two by her servant maid, so that’s nine; two by the other servant maid—that’s eleven. So we got ten boys, one girl, one dad, four mothers, two of them concubines. You think you’ve got a complicated family? The family contained all the ingredients for a psychological nightmare. Why do we mention this? You need to remember something very important. Even though there are 11 children running around, Rachel has never born Jacob a son. She still has not had a son of her own. For all these years, she has been sterile. Rachel is loved but can’t produce any children to be loved. Consequently, she is steaming and raging with jealousy over her sister. She desperately wants a son. It would validate her womanhood. It would bring her honor. It would strengthen the tribe. She envisions that if only I could have a son, my husband’s love would be complete and my value would be established. And finally, one day it happens. Rachel, the very loved wife, gets pregnant and produces a very, very loved child. Joseph. Joseph was literally the fulfillment of a dream for Rachel. Her whole entire life since she was a little girl, she was told that her purpose in life was to bear children for the tribe. She wanted so badly to have a child. And now finally, here he was. This is a dream come true. How do you handle a gold medal? How do you handle a trophy? What do you do with your most precious possessions? So the narrative begins. Now notice, Leah is not mentioned even though she bore most of the children. Why mention Bilhah and Zilpah? That detail is there to remind us of the family tension. Joseph is living as a privileged son of the favored wife among the riff-raff offspring of concubines. He was the full-blooded favorite. That’s bad. But, the tension on that family spring is just beginning to wind. Now a ton of ink has been spilled on this verse. Was Joseph: an innocent young boy simply telling the truth about his evil, older brothers and unjustly hated, OR was he a spoiled brat ratting on his older brothers and getting what was coming to him? Like most things, the truth is probably in the middle. Certainly, there must have been elements where Joseph took advantage of his privileged position. The brilliant Jewish commentator Leon Kass (professor emeritus on the Committee of Social Thought at the University of Chicago, and chairman of the Presidential Council on Bioethics from 2001–2005), suggests that Genesis 37:2 be translated: “Joseph, being seventeen years old, was shepherding his brothers among the flock.” So if this is correct, it would be a play on words. The older brothers are shepherding the sheep while the younger brother is shepherding the shepherds. Joseph was his father’s pet and his reports were designed to keep it that way. Do you really think that basking in the favoritism of his father, Joseph was able to resist all negative effects? Certainly, he developed in overconfidence and bit of self-righteousness tinged with arrogance. Lest you get too judgmental, let’s remember that we all do this. Let me ask you to recall everything you said about other people this week. You probably spoke to other people about your mother, your brother, your kids, your friends, your enemies, those you are jealous of, those you have a hard time with. So recall those conversations where you reported on the behavior of others. Now let me ask you, was it completely correct? So often we leave out slight details or embellish small bits to give a bad report. Joseph was a junior in high school. I don’t think he’s free of these temptations. That being said, some scholars insist that the story of Joseph as a whole gives no evidence that he had such a character flaw. It certainly betrays character flaws in his brothers. The way they respond to Joseph’s report demonstrates that Joseph’s reports may well have been accurate. It also appears that Jacob could trust Joseph but not them. I’m sure there are elements of truth in both of these perspectives. The virtues and vices of Joseph’s intentions are unclear, but how Jacob treats Joseph is perfectly clear. Now you have to understand how significant this would have been. This would be like making all the older kids ride bikes and giving the youngest baby of the family a Tesla. I mean the degree of favoritism here is embarrassing. The literal reading here is a coat to the hands meaning a long-sleeved coat. Most clothing of this era were tunics without sleeves. The idea of a “coat of many colors” comes from the older Septuagint which says, “many-colored coat.” It very likely could be both. Multicolored, long-sleeved coats were common among royalty. The short-sleeved versions have been depicted in many Egyptian papyri. In a world in which material is costly and color is very scarce, this would have been very extravagant and symbolic of high favor and prestige. Now, this isn’t just a nice gift. This is way more than getting a Nike sweater. Do you know what’s at stake with the coat? You have to understand. Almost certainly what is at stake is the first-born blessing. Even though it’s not stated explicitly, the brothers are stewing with jealousy because they can see the writing on the wall. The blessing always came at the end of life but they could see it plain enough. Their inheritance is getting stripped away by dad’s little pet. Now we look at this favoritism and it’s appalling to us. But remember, this was the son of his old age. This last one would come first. After all, he, too, was the last one who became first (25:23). So why did Joseph’s brothers hate him? So far we are told at least four reasons: He was born of the most loved wife. Whether it was for this reason or other reasons, the text straight up says, he was more loved than they were. He was given a special coat indicating that their inheritance and blessing was being stripped away. He was a snitch. Now if that wasn’t enough, we get a fifth reason. Now the dream needs no interpretation here. This isn’t like the dream of Nebuchadnezzar or even like the dream of Pharaoh later in the story where you have cryptic elements and strange symbols. The dream is so obvious in its interpretation and so crude that it flat out just feels like the made-up delusions of a narcissistic teen. It’s just arrogance in dream form. It’s not like it’s really even artful or poetic. It’s just crude, cave-man poetry. Me big and powerful thing. You weak and tiny thing. You bow to me. Haha. The brothers needed no interpretation. The Hebrew uses a grammatical construction here, the infinitive absolute, that conveys utter surprise that he would dare utter such a thing. Now, if that wasn’t enough, the audacity of it all continues. Maybe you are one of the brothers and you start cooling down and dismissing this as the looniness of immaturity and you are trying to give your brother the benefit of the doubt. But then this happens. Eleven stars huh? Okay, that’s it. This dream is so pretentious, so bald-faced and unapologetic. I have so much gravitational awesomeness that I’m like this supernova in the center of the galaxy and the entire solar system revolves around me. All you 11 weaklings will be captured by my gravitational awesomeness. Even mom and dad will be captured by my awesomeness. I am so awesome… Now the fact that this was universally nauseating to the family is evidenced by verse 10. Even dad, who favored him so highly that he gave him the Tesla, can’t stomach the attitude. Now I want to end on the question that Jacob asks Joseph, “What is this dream you have dreamed?” The story of Joseph begins with a dream. Let’s think for a moment about dreams. Dreams are, as yet, unmaterialized conceptions of how the world could be or might be. We dream of all sorts of things. We make little distinction between whether it happened while sleeping or awake. A kid might dream of becoming an astronaut, or dream of winning the lottery, or dream of getting married. Most dreams are simply dreams. They are impossible hopes. The most unlikely of all possible outcomes. Most dreams are statistical impossibilities. I dream of taking over Amazon or Google. I mean what are the chances? Joseph here has a dream that implies that he will be ruler of all men. That’s a crazy dream, especially given his position. As a kid, you may have dreamed that you would become president of the United States. And it’s likely that your parents deflated your sails in short order. They said, listen, the chances of that are so low. Maybe try being a carpenter. Jesus was a carpenter. This is kind of what Jacob seems to do with Joseph. Joseph, listen, you aren’t going to rule over us. That’s impossible. I want you to think just how impossible this dream really is. Suppose you were an Iranian shepherd captured in battle by the US Forces and detained as a prisoner of war and in Guantanamo Bay. What are your chances of being president of the United States as an uneducated, Iranian POW? I mean you have a greater chance of being struck by lighting 500 times in a row than that dream coming true. Now let me ask you this, "What is the difference between a pipe dream and prophetic dream? The difference is not in the odds. The difference is in the divine power to turn it into reality. God was hidden in Joseph’s dream. When God is at work, nothing can stop it, even when everyone wants it stopped. And that’s going to be the drama for the rest of the book. You see, Joseph’s dream is a threat to everyone in the family. When Jacob rebukes Joseph, do you see what’s behind that? This is no longer funny, Joseph. If it stays a dream, no harm, no foul. But you seem to be pretty assured of this. If that dream even so much as hints as entering into reality we have a serious problem. And everyone in the narrative is going to try to kill the dream. And the battle for the rest of the book is going to be between God who is hidden in the dream and the dream killers. But because God is in the dream, it can’t be stopped. Joseph’s brothers can’t stop it. Potipher’s wife can’t stop it. The baker can’t stop it. Pharaoh can’t stop it. Joseph overcomes the millionth, billionth odds and actually rises to power in a foreign nation to the glory of Yahweh, the God of Israel. You see, when God is for us, who can be against us? Like Jesus, Joseph, the one despised and rejected by his family, ultimately is the agent of their salvation and countless others. Joseph shows how God’s secret providence is behind the darkest deeds of men and works to their ultimate good. What a story! Application Now last week you were handed this Joseph booklet. And if you didn’t get one, they are fanned out beautifully in the foyer beneath the triple screens on your right as you exit. You’ve kind of been bombarded with booklets. But take some time in this. Every week you’ll be given discussion questions for your family devotions, for your small group, or just for you personally. There are also some suggested resources and extra resources to dig deeper.

1. Where we find Christ, we find what- We find salvation-we find the gospel testimony- and we find hope for the sinner as we find what the sinner should bring to God.-2. In Joseph we find the gospel testimony.-3. In the coat of many colors we find testimony that few have ever heard of.-4. In Joseph we find the testimony of the death and resurrection of Christ.-5. In Joseph going to Egypt we find the function of the Law.-6. But everything said and done-what does a sinner have to bring to the Father as evidence of salvation--7. What does God recognize as that which belong to Him- That and more and this is a very wonderful gospel message, with a lot of nuggets and one has to be acquainted with a lot of biblical testimony to appreciate Christ's testimony and it is FREE-

[Quran Chapter 12] 7. In Joseph and his brothers are lessons for the seekers. 8. When they said, "Joseph and his brother are dearer to our father than we are, although we are a whole group. Our father is obviously in the wrong. 9. "Kill Joseph, or throw him somewhere in the land, and your father's attention will be yours. Afterwards, you will be decent people." 10. One of them said, "Do not kill Joseph, but throw him into the bottom of the well; some caravan may pick him up—if you must do something." 11. They said, "Father, why do you not trust us with Joseph, although we care for him?" 12. "Send him with us tomorrow, that he may roam and play; we will take care of him." 13. He said, "It worries me that you would take him away. And I fear the wolf may eat him while you are careless of him." 14. They said, "If the wolf ate him, and we are many, we would be good for nothing." 15. So they went away with him, and agreed to put him at the bottom of the well. And We inspired him, "You will inform them of this deed of theirs when they are unaware." 16. And they came to their father in the evening weeping. 17. They said, "O father, we went off racing one another, and left Joseph by our belongings; and the wolf ate him. But you will not believe us, even though we are being truthful." 18. And they brought his shirt, with fake blood on it. He said, "Your souls enticed you to do something. But patience is beautiful, and Allah is my Help against what you describe." 19. A caravan passed by, and they sent their water-carrier. He lowered his bucket, and said, "Good news. Here is a boy." And they hid him as merchandise. But Allah was aware of what they did. 20. And they sold him for a cheap price—a few coins—they considered him to be of little value. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/mochzamroni/support

God’s dreams seem beyond us because they are.This is the work of God that we get to be a small (very small) part of. The beginning of the dream Isaiah saw was revealed to Joseph. The scandal of the incarnation is that in Christ, God is prepared the rearrange the ordering of creation - beginning not with power and political might but rather through a child born in a manger, and eventually on the cross and in an empty tomb. While scientists can debate the purpose and function of dreams in our lives, God’s dreams have a specific purpose. In Joseph’s dream, we relinquished control and on the cross and in the empty tomb God’s plan for the redemption and salvation of all people was revealed. All of creation will be made new.As the shadows of Advent begin to give way to the Light revealed at Christmas, we recall the beginning of the Kingdom of God in a child and in doing so we await the full realization of a dream bigger than we can imagine but not so big that any of us will be left out.We can dream on because behold, a Savior has come and will come again.

God’s dreams seem beyond us because they are.This is the work of God that we get to be a small (very small) part of. The beginning of the dream Isaiah saw was revealed to Joseph. The scandal of the incarnation is that in Christ, God is prepared the rearrange the ordering of creation - beginning not with power and political might but rather through a child born in a manger, and eventually on the cross and in an empty tomb. While scientists can debate the purpose and function of dreams in our lives, God’s dreams have a specific purpose. In Joseph’s dream, we relinquished control and on the cross and in the empty tomb God’s plan for the redemption and salvation of all people was revealed. All of creation will be made new.As the shadows of Advent begin to give way to the Light revealed at Christmas, we recall the beginning of the Kingdom of God in a child and in doing so we await the full realization of a dream bigger than we can imagine but not so big that any of us will be left out.We can dream on because behold, a Savior has come and will come again.

In Joseph, Jesus shows us a new way of living. We are faithful. Even more, we leave the blame, guilt, and shame where it should be. 

In this message, we will take a look at the birth of Jesus Christ through the eyes of His earthly father, Joseph. In Joseph, we see an opportunity to choose, to seek, to accept Hope. It wasn't an easy choice. In fact, it meant effort and...

In this episode, we continue to highlight key stories of the Old Testament and show how they can connect to our faith today. In Joseph's story (sometimes referred to as Joseph and the Coat of Many Colors), he undergoes many trials, but faces them with humility and faith. We can see how his suffering foreshadows the later suffering of Christ. -- Opening Prayer to St. Joseph Oh St. Joseph, Do assist me by your powerful intercession and obtain for me from your divine son all spiritual blessings through Jesus Christ, our Lord; so that having engaged here below your heavenly power, I may offer my thanksgiving and homage to the most loving of Fathers. Amen. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/theologyontape/message

Subscribe to the Quran Talk podcast: https://apple.co/2lLnsFE Check out video notes: https://qurantalk.podbean.com/ Quran translation on iOS: https://apple.co/2C1YGXj Join us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/QuranStudy19/ Additional Resources: http://www.masjidtucson.org Contact: qurantalk (at) gmail (dot) com [12:7] In Joseph and his brothers there are lessons for the seekers. Dream #1 - Humility  When Joseph was explaining his dream to his father Jacob, there is a slight subtlety that is in the verse that is showing Joseph’s humility. The verse reads: [12:4] Recall that Joseph said to his father, "O my father, I saw eleven planets, and the sun, and the moon; I saw them prostrating before me.” Notice that Joseph didn’t say:  "O my father, I saw eleven planets, and the sun, and the moon prostrating before me.” This repeating of “I saw” appears to be a hesitation in telling his father what he saw, and shows Joseph’s humility even at a young age, that despite what he witnessed in his dream he was not boasting.  And think who was Joseph’s father? Jacob (Israel) one of God’s prophets, who was among the most righteous. The thought of telling his own father a prophet of God that in his dream he saw the solar system prostrating before him he was apprehensive to tell him. As children, it is easier to be humble. [16:78] GOD brought you out of your mothers' bellies knowing nothing, and He gave you the hearing, the eyesight, and the brains, that you may be appreciative. As children, everyone seems bigger than us, smarter than us, more accomplished and respected than us. But what happens when we become older?   Dream #2 - Arrogance When Joseph was in prison we see the following interaction he had with his prison mates [12:36] Two young men were in the prison with him. One of them said, "I saw (in my dream) that I was making wine," and the other said, "I saw myself carrying bread on my head, from which the birds were eating. Inform us of the interpretation of these dreams. We see that you are righteous." [12:37] He said, "If any food is provided to you, I can inform you about it before you receive it. This is some of the knowledge bestowed upon me by my Lord. I have forsaken the religion of people who do not believe in GOD, and with regard to the Hereafter, they are really disbelievers. [12:38] "And I followed instead the religion of my ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We never set up any idols beside GOD. Such is the blessing from GOD upon us and upon the people, but most people are unappreciative. [12:39] "O my prison mates, are several gods better, or GOD alone, the One, the Supreme? [12:40] "You do not worship beside Him except innovations that you have made up, you and your parents. GOD has never authorized such idols. All ruling belongs to GOD, and He has ruled that you shall not worship except Him. This is the perfect religion, but most people do not know. [12:41] "O my prison mates, one of you will be the wine butler for his lord, while the other will be crucified— the birds will eat from his head. This settles the matter about which you have inquired." [12:42] He then said to the one to be saved "Remember me at your lord." Thus, the devil caused him to forget his Lord, and, consequently, he remained in prison a few more years. [61:2] O you who believe, why do you say what you do not do? [61:3] Most abominable in the sight of GOD is that you say what you do not do. [47:30] If we will, we can expose them for you, so that you can recognize them just by looking at them. However, you can recognize them by the way they talk. GOD is fully aware of all your works. [3:159] It was mercy from GOD that you became compassionate towards them. Had you been harsh and mean-hearted, they would have abandoned you. Therefore, you shall pardon them and ask forgiveness for them, and consult them. Once you make a decision, carry out your plan, and trust in GOD. GOD loves those who trust in Him.* [20:114] Most Exalted is GOD, the only true King. Do not rush into uttering the Quran before it is revealed to you, and say, "My Lord, increase my knowledge."   Dream #3 - Confidence  The King's Dream  [12:43] The king said, "I saw seven fat cows being devoured by seven skinny cows, and seven green spikes (of wheat), and others shriveled. O my elders, advise me regarding my dream, if you know how to interpret the dreams." [12:44] They said, "Nonsense dreams. When it comes to the interpretation of dreams, we are not knowledgeable." [12:45] The one who was saved (from the prison) said, now that he finally remembered, "I can tell you its interpretation, so send me (to Joseph).”  Joseph Interprets the King's Dream  [12:46] "Joseph my friend, inform us about seven fat cows being devoured by seven skinny cows, and seven green spikes, and others shriveled. I wish to go back with some information for the people." [12:47] He said, "What you cultivate during the next seven years, when the time of harvest comes, leave the grains in their spikes, except for what you eat. [12:48] "After that, seven years of drought will come, which will consume most of what you stored for them. [12:49] "After that, a year will come that brings relief for the people, and they will, once again, press juice." [12:50] The king said, "Bring him to me." When the (king’s) messenger came to him, he (Joseph) said, "Go back to your lord and ask him to investigate the women who cut their hands. My Lord is fully aware of their schemes." [12:51] (The king) said (to the women), "What do you know about the incident when you tried to seduce Joseph?" They said, "GOD forbid; we did not know of anything evil committed by him." The wife of the governor said, "Now the truth has prevailed. I am the one who tried to seduce him, and he was the truthful one. [12:52] "I hope that he will realize that I never betrayed him in his absence, for GOD does not bless the schemes of the betrayers. [12:53] "I do not claim innocence for myself. The self is an advocate of vice, except for those who have attained mercy from my Lord. My Lord is Forgiver, Most Merciful." Joseph Attains Prominence [12:54] The king said, "Bring him (Joseph) to me, so I can hire him to work for me." When he talked with him, he said, "Today, you have a prominent position with us." [12:55] He said, "Make me the treasurer, for I am experienced in this area and knowledgeable." [12:56] We thus established Joseph on earth, ruling as he wished. We shower our mercy upon whomever we will, and we never fail to recompense the righteous.   From lack of confidence to arrogance to confidence   Mistake confidence vs. competence  Notice Joseph didn’t lecture the people asking him about the dream: he was straightforward, he asked them to investigate even before he agreed to leave; then he said “make me treasurer   *****************INCREASE FAITH THROUGH TRAGEDY***************** Jacob sensed Joseph’s greatness via the dream Jacob sensed the brother’s plot via their words [12:5] He said, "My son, do not tell your brothers about your dream, lest they plot and scheme against you. Surely, the devil is man's worst enemy. Jacob sensed the brothers were lying about Joseph [12:11] They said, "Our father, why do you not trust us with Joseph? We will take good care of him (wish him well). [12:12] "Send him with us tomorrow to run and play. We will protect him." 12 12 6 وَإِنَّا And indeed, we wa-innā ا ن ن 12 12 7 لَهُ for him lahu ل 12 12 8 لَحَافِظُونَ (will) surely (be) guardians." laḥāfiẓūna ح ف ظ   [12:13] He said, "I worry lest you go away with him, then the wolf may devour him while you are not watching him." [12:17] They said, "Our father, we went racing with each other, leaving Joseph with our equipment, and the wolf devoured him. You will never believe us, even if we were telling the truth." [12:18] They produced his shirt with fake blood on it. Shirt wasn’t torn just had fake blood on it [12:18 con’t] He said, "Indeed, you have conspired with each other to commit a certain scheme. All I can do is resort to a quiet (فَصَبْرٌ جَمِيلٌ  / Jameel / beautiful) patience. May GOD help me in the face of your conspiracy.”   Post-traumatic stress vs. Post-traumatic growth [12:63] When they returned to their father, they said, "Our father, we can no longer get any provisions, unless you send our brother with us. We will take good care of him." 12 63 14 وَإِنَّا And indeed, we wa-innā ا ن ن 12 63 15 لَهُ for him lahu ل 12 63 16 لَحَافِظُونَ (will) surely (be) guardians." laḥāfiẓūna ح ف ظ   [12:64] He said, "Shall I trust you with him, as I trusted you with his brother before that? GOD is the best Protector (حَافِظًا), and, of all the merciful ones, He is the Most Merciful." [12:65] When they opened their bags, they found their goods returned to them. They said, "Our father, what more can we ask for? Here are our goods returned to us. We can thus provide for our family, protect our brother, and receive one more camel-load. This is certainly a profitable deal." [12:66] He said, "I will not send him with you, unless you give me a solemn pledge before GOD that you will bring him back, unless you are utterly overwhelmed." When they gave him their solemn pledge, he said, "GOD is witnessing everything we say." [12:83] He said, "Indeed, you have conspired to carry out a certain scheme. Quiet (فَصَبْرٌ جَمِيلٌ  / jameel / beautiful) patience is my only recourse. May GOD bring them all back to me. He is the Omniscient, Most Wise.” [12:84] He turned away from them, saying, "I am grieving over Joseph." His eyes turned white from grieving so much; he was truly sad. [12:85] They said, "By GOD, you will keep on grieving over Joseph until you become ill, or until you die." [12:86] He said, "I simply complain to GOD about my dilemma and grief, for I know from GOD what you do not know. [12:87] "O my sons, go fetch Joseph and his brother, and never despair of GOD's grace. None despairs of GOD's grace except the disbelieving people." [12:110] Just when the messengers despair, and think that they had been rejected, our victory comes to them. We then save whomever we choose, while our retribution for the guilty people is unavoidable. Many people when they suffer a tragedy they will renounce God and move away from faith [12:106] The majority of those who believe in GOD do not do so without committing idol worship.         ********************VALUE******************** How much was Joseph valued by Jacob? Maybe a little too much based on how he was towards his other kids and also from the years of grieving   How much was he valued by his brothers at the beginning of the story? = Envy [12:9] "Let us kill Joseph, or banish him, that you may get some attention from your father. Afterwards, you can be righteous people."   How much was Joseph valued by the caravan? = Greed [12:19] A caravan passed by, and soon sent their waterer. He let down his bucket, then said, "How lucky! There is a boy here!" They took him along as merchandise, and GOD was fully aware of what they did. [12:20] They sold him for a cheap price— a few Dirhams—for they did not have any need for him.   How much was he valued by the governor? = Child [12:21] The one who bought him in Egypt said to his wife, "Take good care of him. Maybe he can help us, or maybe we can adopt him." We thus established Joseph on earth, and we taught him the interpretation of dreams. GOD's command is always done, but most people do not know.   How much was he valued by the governor’s wife? = Lust She wanted to use him only for her own needs not for his well being. [12:32] She said, "This is the one you blamed me for falling in love with. I did indeed try to seduce him, and he refused. Unless he does what I command him to do, he will surely go to prison, and will be debased."   How much was he valued by the king? = Gluttony How much was he valued by his brother’s when they were suffering from famine?   How much did Joseph value his own soul? [12:33] He said, "My Lord, the prison is better than giving in to them. Unless You divert their scheming from me, I may desire them and behave like the ignorant ones." When God sees value in something its value will be recognized universally eventually. All the people against Joseph eventually saw the value he provided including for generations to come His brother’s The governor and his wife The king The Children of Israel who were saved from the famine       ********************SHIRT******************** There is an object in the story of Joseph that is repeatedly brought up This object only occurs in Sura Joesph and is mentioned six times in three different contexts? (12:18, 12:25, 12:26, 12:27, 12:28, 12:93) قَمِيصِهِ = qamees = shirt   Shirt #1 [12:17] They said, "Our father, we went racing with each other, leaving Joseph with our equipment, and the wolf devoured him. You will never believe us, even if we were telling the truth.” [12:18] They produced his shirt with fake blood on it. He said, "Indeed, you have conspired with each other to commit a certain scheme. All I can do is resort to a quiet patience. May GOD help me in the face of your conspiracy.”   Joseph’s garment was stolen from him and used as fabricated evidence against him in an attempt to trick his father to think that he was dead. Shirt #2 [12:23] The lady of the house where he lived tried to seduce him. She closed the doors and said, "I am all yours." He said, "May GOD protect me. He is my Lord, who gave me a good home. The transgressors never succeed." [12:24] She almost succumbed to him, and he almost succumbed to her, if it were not that he saw a proof from his Lord. We thus diverted evil and sin away from him, for he was one of our devoted servants. [12:25] The two of them raced towards the door, and, in the process, she tore his shirt (quamis) from the back. They found her husband at the door. She said, "What should be the punishment for one who wanted to molest your wife, except imprisonment or a painful punishment?" [12:26] He said, "She is the one who tried to seduce me." A witness from her family suggested: "If his shirt (quamis) is torn from the front, then she is telling the truth and he is a liar. [12:27] "And if his shirt (quamis) is torn from the back, then she lied, and he is telling the truth." [12:28] When her husband saw that his shirt (quamis) was torn from the back, he said, "This is a woman's scheme. Indeed, your scheming is formidable. His shirt was ripped, but not taken and it was used as evidence in favor of his innocence Shirt #3 [12:93] "Take this shirt (qamis) of mine; when you throw it on my father's face, his vision will be restored. Bring your whole family and come back to me.” [12:94] Even before the caravan arrived, their father said, "I can sense the smell of Joseph. Will someone enlighten me?" [12:95] They said, "By GOD, you are still in your old confusion." [12:96] When the bearer of good news arrived, he threw (the shirt) on his face, whereupon his vision was restored. He said, "Did I not tell you that I knew from GOD what you did not know?” Joseph willfully provides his shirt off his back Joseph’s shirt that was once used as evidence for his fabricated death is now used as evidence that he is still alive.  I believe the shirt in the history of Joseph symbolizes the things in this world: Both Joseph brother’s and the governor’s wife valued Joseph for what was on the outside, The attention he was getting from his father The lust for his appearance The value he provided by being able to provide them provisions And for they were willing to take from him Our possessions can cause people to be envious to the point that they will attack us over it [12:17] They said, "Our father, we went racing with each other, leaving Joseph with our equipment, and the wolf devoured him. You will never believe us, even if we were telling the truth.” [12:25] The two of them raced towards the door, and, in the process, she tore his garment from the back. They found her husband at the door. She said, "What should be the punishment for one who wanted to molest your wife, except imprisonment or a painful punishment?” The Arabic definition for the word for “hoarding” “al-taka-thoor” means the continuous quest for more but Jacob and Joseph valued Joseph for what was on the inside Jacob didn’t know if the hardship and pain that Joseph endured throughout his life had caused him to grow closer to God or to revert away from God. Or did Joseph get caught up by the vanities of this world. [12:65] When they opened their bags, they found their goods returned to them. They said, "Our father, what more can we ask for? Here are our goods returned to us. We can thus provide for our family, protect our brother, and receive one more camel-load. This is certainly a profitable deal." [12:66] He said, "I will not send him with you, unless you give me a solemn pledge before GOD that you will bring him back, unless you are utterly overwhelmed." When they gave him their solemn pledge, he said, "GOD is witnessing everything we say.” [12:67] And he said, "O my sons, do not enter from one door; enter through separate doors. However, I cannot save you from anything that is predetermined by GOD. To GOD belongs all judgments. I trust in Him, and in Him shall all the trusters put their trust." Joseph spent his whole life fighting and when he won he took his own shirt off his back and gave it to reassure his father Jacob already knew that Joseph was alive [12:87] "O my sons, go fetch Joseph and his brother, and never despair of GOD's grace. None despairs of GOD's grace except the disbelieving people." So the shirt was not meant to let Jacob know that he was alive I see this as symbolism to show to Jacob that he did not fall into the vanities of this world. [12:20] They sold him for a cheap price— a few Dirhams—for they did not have any need for him (zaheed). Only place in the Quran this word is used. It means to signify that what Joseph valued unlike many of the other people in the story was not of this world, but for the Hereafter at His Lord. [12:6] "Your Lord has thus blessed you, and has given you good news through your dream. He has perfected His blessings upon you and upon the family of Jacob, as He did for your ancestors Abraham and Isaac before that. Your Lord is Omniscient, Most Wise.” [12:100] He raised his parents upon the throne. They fell prostrate before him. He said, "O my father, this is the fulfillment of my old dream. My Lord has made it come true. He has blessed me (hasan = He was good to me), delivered me from the prison, and brought you from the desert, after the devil had driven a wedge between me and my brothers. My Lord is Most Kind towards whomever He wills. He is the Knower, the Most Wise."

On today’s episode of Just the Tips, Joseph Romm joins Dean and me to teach us in the art of persuasion. Joseph is Chief Science Advisor for "Years of Living Dangerously," which won the 2014 Emmy Award for Outstanding Nonfiction Series and now generates viral videos online seen by tens of millions a month. He is also the founding editor of ClimateProgress.org, which New York Times columnist Tom Friedman called an “indispensable blog.” Romm is also a senior advisor for New Frontier Data, the leading “big data” firm providing actionable analysis in cannabis, whose content reaches hundreds of millions of people a year. We chat today about Joseph’s extensive storytelling experience and expertise and how he uses that storytelling prowess to create viral content. Making it clicky and sticky Joseph first dipped his toe into blogging when it became a popular way for companies to connect with customers. And soon, he became a bit of a data junky, tracking performance metrics on his blog post, and really putting in the work to figure out what makes a post popular, what makes it really shareable for readers, etc. As he says, he was trying to figure out what makes something “clicky and sticky.” You’re going to want to hear what he has to say about that on this week’s episode of Just the Tips. The fundamentals of making viral content The first step to making a great piece of viral content, Joseph told us on this week’s Just the Tips, is writing a great headline and then delivering on the promise of that headline. So there is a lot of clickbait out there with catchy headlines to draw readers in, but then the post doesn’t deliver. Eventually, you’re not going to be able to build a good relationship with your readers if you’re pulling a bait and switch. And even then, you shouldn’t expect a headline to bring the entire Internet to your post. As Joseph says, a good post by him has about a 15% clickthrough rate. And it’s all about appealing to reader emotions. Listen to this week’s episode of Just the Tips to find out how. How Jesus became the first viral content creator In Joseph’s book, How to Go Viral and Reach Millions, he talks about how Jesus is a great example of someone who knew how to reach lots of people with just how he crafted a story. As Joseph says, Jesus never traveled further than about 100 miles, but his story got out there because he knew how to tell a story in metaphor, various figures of speech, repetition, etc. But Joseph looks beyond historical figures to look at contemporary storytellers who have been able to connect with large audiences based on their storytelling techniques. And luckily Joseph is full of helpful advice on how they did it on this week’s episode of Just the Tips. The three A’s in storytelling One of the things that Joseph tells us in this week’s episode is that you have to grab your audience in the first seven seconds, or you’re going to lose them. And a big part of that is appealing to their emotions, which he breaks down as the three A’s: Anger, Awe and Anxiety. He really digs into the meat and potatoes on this episode, including how videos connect with an audience when that audience isn’t even listening to it (as many people online do). And that’s just the beginning of what Joseph has to say on this week’s Just the Tips. Outline of This Episode [3:23] How Joseph got into creating viral content [5:09] The fundamentals of making viral posts [10:21] Why Jesus is the most viral person in history [12:10] The three-act structure [17:57] The crucial first seven seconds [23:17] What makes stories memorable [30:15] Why short words sell   Music for “Just The Tips” is titled, “Happy Happy Game Show” by Kevin MacLeod (http://incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License Resources Mentioned How to Go Viral and Reach Millions Years of Living Dangerously Connect With James and Dean James P. Friel: AutoPilot Entrepreneur Program: www.jamespfriel.com/autopilot Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/autopilotentrepreneur Site: www.jamespfriel.com Dean Holland: Blog: www.DeanHolland.com FB Page: https://www.facebook.com/DeanHollandHQ Billion Dollar Project: https://www.facebook.com/groups/BillionDollarProject/

In Joseph’s life, we see many shadows of Jesus, who is likewise the favored son of His Father, is clothed in a king’s robe, rules over all the nations in order to care for them and provide them with bread; even though He was betrayed by His brothers, it was all part of His masterful plan to bring all things together under His rule.

In Joseph's life, we see many shadows of Jesus, who is likewise the favored son of His Father, is clothed in a king's robe, rules over all the nations in order to care for them and provide them with bread; even though He was betrayed by His brothers, it was all part of His masterful plan to bring all things together under His rule.

The sermon examines the calling of Joseph versus the fate of the baker and the cupbearer. In Joseph we see what it means to be “with” God, rather than simply being a pawn of circumstance.

Sunday, September 25 | In Joseph's life--and in ours--God works for the good of those who love Him.

In Joseph's first podcast for the Mindpod Network he clearly brings to light the sometimes very difficult convoluted notion of emptiness. As the high Lama Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche says,"When you recognize the empty selfless nature of phenomena the energy to bring about the good of others dawns uncontrived and effortless."

What happens with Abraham and Isaac becomes a symbol for the institute of sacrifice within the public covenant community. In another account, Jacob's struggle reveals the emergence of Israel as a people who wrestle with their God and emerge with their truer identity as those who have been overcome by their God. Jacob is subdued by his God and is permanently marked by that for the rest of his life. God is not the subject but the object of Jacob's struggle. Jacob's struggle is a symbol of Israel's entire history. A major theme in Genesis is the Joseph narrative. In Joseph, God preserves the children and offspring of promise to Abraham. The figural pattern of the Abrahamic promise is worked out in Joseph.

A battlefield evokes something from us. Gettysburg, San Jacinto, Normandy and others cause us to replay in our minds the famous battles that took place so many years before. We are taken back by the events and the history. Life is a battle. It is a strange and dangerous journey. The soul of man is an active battlefield that still engages in conflict with the enemy. No matter the age or stage in life, we never outgrow the battle. We are a target of an enemy that seeks to destroy. Bro. Hughes observes that life is alternately building and battling. Our life is a series of battles. How well we do in these battles determine the outcome. Sometimes what appears to be a small skirmish, becomes the turning point in a person's life. In our text, Bro. Hughes finds a proven strategy for winning the battles of life. There is no better case study of the battles of life than the life of Joseph. His life is both instructive and inspiring. He was a great dreamer. The world both loves and hates a dreamer. Joseph had to live through a nightmare in order to see his dream come to pass. How did Joseph stay true to his character, to his convictions and to his God in the face of the opposition he encountered? In Joseph's story we find drama, pressure, conflict, and pleasure. There was power, temptation and many other elements that the greats of literature use to compel their audience. Joseph was tempted by a woman. She tempted him relentlessly. In this story, we see a man who was steadfast in his resolve to keep himself and his reputation pure. In the moment of great temptation, Joseph left it behind for the promise of a greater destiny. In a moment, Joseph had a decision to make. A moment can make or break a life. If he had succumbed to the moment of pleasure, Joseph would jeopardized his entire future. Joseph faced great odds and stood to overcome. At this time, he was a young man. Daily the advances of this attractive woman must have worn upon him. She was Potifer's wife. She had power and influence. History tells us that women of this time, especially women of power, were very loose in their morals and that this was accepted. She flattered him. Flattery can make us do a lot of things. She also used the promise of promotion to entice him. Joseph was second to only Potifer and he knew it. The enemy will try to convince us that he can give us something that we already have. How did Joseph win this victory on this battlefield of temptation? The answer to that question are found in our text. The first anchor to Joseph's defense was that he took time to look around and see how blessed he was. Since the garden, the devil has tried to focus man on what he did NOT have rather than what he DID have. When the devil comes against us, the first thing he will try to blur is our vision of how blessed we are. We do not need whatever the enemy has to offer, because God is with us. Joseph was blessed. He was chief of all of Potifer's house. Potifer held nothing back. Joseph realized that God had put him in a place of blessing, and he was not willing to betray that trust. Potifer had trusted Joseph, and that was worth more to him than the moment of pleasure would bring. Joseph was thankful. He did not feel entitled to take any liberties with her, he was simply thankful for what he had. The second thing Joseph did was to look inside himself. Ask "How can I do this?" He knew that he did not have to compromise himself to gain an advantage. He chose to live by a higher standard. Joseph drew a line, and refused to move that line. The devil does not care about our lines. He will modify his attack to see if he can get us to move our line. Joseph refused to move his line. The third thing Joseph did, was that he looked to the future to see the outcome of what she was tempting him to do. He had no future with another man's wife. The time to look ahead and anticipate the future, is before it happens, not after. Joseph looked ahead and ask "where is this taking me?" The conclusion he came to was that it was taking him down a path of destruction. In Joseph's no was the clear ring of a made up mind. That decisive mind made the difference in the outcome of his life.

Thursday, May 30, 2013 Go in, listen to , lie beside, be with Genesis 38:7-10 ESV But Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the Lord , and the Lord put him to death. Then Judah said to Onan, "Go in to your brother's wife and perform the duty of a brother-in-law to her, and raise up offspring for your brother." But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his. So whenever he went in to his brother's wife he would waste the semen on the ground, so as not to give offspring to his brother. And what he did was wicked in the sight of the Lord , and he put him to death also. Genesis 39:5-10 ESV From the time that he made him overseer in his house and over all that he had the Lord blessed the Egyptian's house for Joseph's sake; the blessing of the Lord was on all that he had, in house and field. So he left all that he had in Joseph's charge, and because of him he had no concern about anything but the food he ate. Now Joseph was handsome in form and appearance. And after a time his master's wife cast her eyes on Joseph and said, "Lie with me." But he refused and said to his master's wife, "Behold, because of me my master has no concern about anything in the house, and he has put everything that he has in my charge. He is not greater in this house than I am, nor has he kept back anything from me except yourself, because you are his wife. How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?" And as she spoke to Joseph day after day, he would not listen to her, to lie beside her or to be with her. _________________________________________ I won't pretend to have all the answers when it comes to understanding these chapters in Genesis (38-39). However there are hints and themes that point us towards God's intent. May I remind you that proliferation of the human race has been job one since man's creation. And although the blessing of offspring has been particularly promised to Abraham's family that promise has required a lot of faith. And proliferation when it does happen seems to be mired in family conflict, deceit, and immorality. But the key to gaining clarity in this mottled ancestry is to look for God, and God's promise. Who is trusting God even when it appears to be counter productive in realising the promise. See God comes before even the promise. Hearken back to Abraham and Isaac with the lamb. Our experience of blessing should never need to be at the cost of God's glory. We can be faithful to God without forcing our self interest at the cost of regard for God's word. To be honest I don't have all the answers about these two chapters. But I know that we are meant to notice the contrast. Two of Judah's sons are killed by God. Joseph is blessed. But it's not quite that simple. Joseph is a slave. Joseph is in Egypt. Joseph has no children. Judah's sons Er and Onan are wicked and they are not blessed. Judah, Er, Onan, and Joseph all have to make a choice about sex. Only Joseph's abstinence policy is blessed. But again blessing includes prison, slander, and loss. In Joseph's life the way up is very much down. The Lord blessed Joseph's regard for God's way. Judah, Er, and Onan did not consider God's plan. Do you? Are you willing to be blessed while in prison, slandered for doing right, or sold into slavery because you are relating God's plan revealed to you? Ultimately this is a story about Jesus. Can you see Jesus? How would Jesus explain his Father's plan to rescue the world through his humiliation and death in these few chapters of Genesis?