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Newest Marvel movie reviewThis is the previous week's episode, I just forgot to upload it here. Please still love me

IntroductionWell we are now four chapters into the gospel of John and we have arrived at the story of the woman at the well. And one of the things we’ve tried to mention now a few times is that this book is written for a very specific reason. And because he’s got a purpose, he’s being very selective.We have to keep in mind that there are many things that could have been included in the book of John that are not there. Let me illustrate this way.Have you ever noticed that Mt, Mk, Lk, John and Acts are all about the same length? Why is that? Because it’s what fits on standard length scroll. You have to cut it off somewhere. It’s got to fit in a book.You get little hints of this cutting all over the gospels. In fact, it seems that there are entire volumes of Jesus life that are purposely not mentioned.You remember in Matthew chapter 12 we read of Jesus healing a man with a whithered hand. That act begins to attract huge crowds and attention from the religious elite. So he withdraws into a more desolate place. And there’s this passing comment.That about makes you gasp in amazement as you read along! John, why not write about that! That sounds like really INTERESTING stuff and really important HISTORICAL data. True. But, John’s point isn’t primarily to record history or keep you interested.None of these HISTORICAL, REALLY INTERESTING miracles are recorded. Why? Because his primary purpose pushes out these secondary purposes.When the editor comes to John and says, “We have too much material. John, you are going to have to choose between the healing crusade of Jesus where he heals hundreds and that conversation Jesus had with that woman at the water-cooler.” John says, “Let’s go with the water cooler-convo.”By all accounts, this is a curious inclusion. There’s no great miracle displayed in the story. Jesus does demonstrates his ability to know the secret details of this woman’s personal life but there’s not healing, no altering of physics in any impressive way.John had thousands of stories to choose from and he chose this. Why? Because, this story illustrates his POINT - HERE IT IS: Jesus is the Christ. Jesus is the Messiah. Jesus is God. Jesus is that long awaited Savior of the world. And this story about a thirsty woman next to a well of water profoundly demonstrates not only THAT he is the SAVIOR but it demonstrates HOW he SAVES.Last week Ryan so helpfully began this narrative and today we get to finish it.ReviewThis entire narrative is about thirst.It starts with physical thirst. Jesus needs water and so does this woman he meets at the well. They both are thirsty. How much more human can you get than that?But very quickly it moves from physical thirst to soul thirst when Jesus asks this woman for a cup of water. You see,He was a man. She was a woman.He was educated. She was not.He was a Jew. She was a Samaritan.He was socially respected. She was socially disrespected.He was morally impeccable. She was morally reprehensible.What this simple request revealed is that as far as the culture was concerned there was a barrier between them.There was racial barrier.There was gender barrier.There was political barrier.There was educational barrier.There was moral barrier.Every culture has these barriers - walls that prevent unity. These walls don’t exist without reason. These barriers are erected to protect values.You see, there’s always this nagging concern - If too many of these type of people flood our social circles, the things we care about are going to be diluted. And it’s a real concern. The things we’ve worked so hard to build are going to be torn down by people who don’t care about them. The minority will become the majority and the tides will turn a new direction. And over time what happens is that the people you fear are seen as a disease. They are unclean. And what do we do with diseased people? We should know. We quarantine them.Here was a woman that for all practical purposes, needed to be socially quarantined because her immorality was contagious. She was a MORAL-19 leper. She was a threat to the health of the community. And she knew that she was perceived that way. That’s why she came to the well alone at high noon in the heat of the day. She had a social disease.So by asking for a drink this reality was exposed. Jesus says, "I see by the way you respond to me, there is a need here larger than thirst. Listen, I can fix the disease in you. I’ve got something that your soul needs as intensely as your body needs water. I have something that is as satisfying to your soul as water is to your parched mouth.You have a longing for love. I can see it in you.You have a longing for value and being accepted. You’re wearing it on your sleeve.You have a longing for real life,You have a longing for eternal life. I see that in your eyes.All the deepest longings of your soul and your heart can be satisfied with the water I give you.She says, really? Yes. Well, then give it to me. Okay, I will. But first, go call your husband. Why does he say that?Jesus wants to get personal. She has a sickness. In order to solve the disease the physician has to get close.He has to touch you.He has to invade your space.You have to expose to him the wounded part of you that you are embarrassed to show any other person.If you want him to heal you, your going to have to trust him.Do you see what Jesus is trying to do. He’s trying to get close to the sickness. But it confuses her because she’s learned how people respond to her when they find out she’s sick. Her whole life she’s been conditioned to believe that when people discover who she really is they will recoil in fear of being contaminated. She’s learned to hide, to disguise who she is, to project an image of herself because she doesn’t want her repulsiveness to be discovered.But this is what makes Jesus a Savior. He wants to touch our sickness.That’s so counterintuitive to us. We can only go from health to sickness.If we touch a leper, we get leprosy.If we touch a dead body, we become unclean.If we touch a sinner, we pick up their sin.If you think about the things that are unclean in the Bible, many of them are unclean because proximity to this thing leads to death. We can’t beat death. So if you can’t fight it, then RUN!That’s what we do. But that’s not what the Savior of the world does. Jesus reverses that.If Jesus touches a leper, he is made clean. If Jesus touches a dead body it rises. If Jesus touches a sinner he is forgiven. He fixes the problem. He spreads health.But - AND THIS IS THE KICKER - in order to heal, he has to touch. He has to get close. He has to look at what you’ve been hiding. That’s what’s behind this whole business of asking about the husband and then revealing the five husbands.There’s a soul injury there that is sensitive. Let me see that area. He’s asking her to let him do his healing work but she’s nervous. I don’t usually let people get that close to me. I’ve had bad experiences with that.And she backs away. Ah, I see you are a prophet. She deflects. Maybe you can solve this debate that we’ve had here about worship. The Samaritans say we should worship here. The Jews say we should worship here. She’s deflecting. She doesn’t want to get personal. Jesus isn’t interested in this kind of chit-chat. He wants to get personal, "You want to talk about temples? Fine, I’ll tell you about temples. I’ve come to make all temples obsolete." Let’s get back to the point. What you really need is me.Jesus constantly able to drive to an individuals biggest need, greatest sin, lack of hope, despair, guilt, need. He’s offering himself. He’s offering living water. He says, "I am Messiah and I can meet the deepest needs of your soul."You want to be forgiven. I will forgive you.You want acceptance. I will accept you.You want love. I will love you.You want to live. I can make you live forever.That’s what he means by living water. These deep soul needs of the heart and the real life needs of the body totally and completely fulfilled by Jesus Christ, the author of love and giver of life. What you need is the gift of God. You need water that springs up to eternal life.Jesus reaches across all those barriers to this woman. And she receives it. It’s an amazing story.The ContinuationSo our text today is a continuation of this. So this woman receives Jesus as Messiah. She receives the living water. And she goes ballistic. In a moment she is changed. She runs into town a changed woman gushing emotion and praise.Why? Because she’s tasted of the living waters! Imagine you are in the brink of death because you are so thirsty. Your tongue is a chunk of dry leather in your mouth. Someone hands you a gallon of water. Can you imagine just having one sip and handing it back?This woman has waited her entire life for these needs of our soul to be met. She’s worked hard to find satisfaction and she ends up parched. Every other promise of satisfaction, she’s had to earn. She’s had to work for it. And she worked hard and it failed her. But here’s a gift. She did nothing. She’s just gushing. The Spirit of God is in her. This well inside her is overflowing. And she’s drinking and drinking and the water is sweet and plentiful.Now the narrative is very careful to give us very specific time markers. We have already been told that the disciples were sent into the town by Jesus to get some food. The text is very clear that Jesus has this entire interchange in the absence of the disciples. And they return from getting food right as Jesus is finishing up. In fact, we are told the exact moment.So from the perspective of the disciples, they left and Jesus was alone. They return and they saw Jesus finishing up this conversation, this women so excited, run back into town. They were thinking to themselves, well that is strange? They didn’t really know what happened. They marveled at the fact he was talking to a woman. But they were accustomed to marveling at Jesus so they just kept their mouths shut. They have become accustomed to the flexibility of Jesus to deal with different types of people.Now look what happens next. They are standing around with their subway sandwich bags. Okay Thomas had the flatbread combo. Here’s some for Jesus. And Jesus just seemed pre-occupied. He wasn’t eating. Maybe he was praying. Maybe he was reading.Now they had just traveled some distance and they know how they are feeling. You know that feeling when the blood sugar drops. Man, the body needs fuel. He’s going to get tired. He’s going to collapse in exhaustion. They get concerned for Jesus.The disciples of course are doing what anyone would have done here. They are just interacting and thinking on the plane of physical hunger. They are thinking in terms of body. But Jesus is thinking in terms of body and soul.This is not the first time he’s heard someone say to him, “You look hungry. Eat.” Those words must have sounded awfully familiar. Remember the 40 day fast just weeks earlier. This is not his first rodeo. When he was deep into that 40 day fast, starving to the brink of human physical limits, the tempter came to him and said, Matthew 4:3-4, "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread."Satan said to Jesus, “Jesus eat. Jesus feed yourself. What’s the harm in doing that?”But he answered, “It is written,”‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’"Why did Jesus respond this way to Satan? His point here is not that we can live without bread. Of course we need to eat. His point is that there is something more important than bread. Think about this temptation at its core. It’s a daily temptation for all of us: making the concerns of earth more important than the concerns of heaven.Jesus responds to Satan by saying, there is a higher priority than food. That’s saying something since food is a pretty high priority.I mean it’s one of the 3 basic ingredients of survival: Food, water, shelter. Jesus says, “Nope. That’s wrong.” Word of God, Food, Water, Shelter. That’s the order.In the same way that water meets a need completely different than food. So the Word of God meets a totally different need than both food and water.Food can never feed the soul. Ingesting God’s words feeds the soul which is the highest priority. Of course I’m hungry. But there’s something more important at stake here. I’ve got other food to eat. What is that food in specific?There’s a very specific type of food that Jesus is referencing here. Let’s find out. We have three points here.What is the food?How do I get the food?What happens when I eat the food?Here’s the answer Jesus gives.So the food he’s referencing is doing God’s will.Doing God’s will satisfies a hunger we have in our soul. Most of us ascent to that reality but we have no clue how true it really is. That’s why God gave the disciples this analogy. *Jesus says, “Do you feel how hungry you are disciples.* Do you feel that drop in blood sugar?” Do you have the craving for food? You know that the second you eat that food, you will feel better right? Food is the cure for physical hunger. Doing God’s will is the cure for soul hunger.The difference between the cure for physical hunger and the cure for soul hunger is that with physical hunger we are experts at identifying the cure.A pizza hut pizza, a rack of ribs, a turkey dinner. Any one of those will do the trick. We know how to cure physical hunger.But with soul hunger we get confused. We think that money, or changed situations or changed relationships will satisfy the hunger - but it doesn’t. It’s like biting into a bagel and tasting air. That was a strange experience. So God gave us hunger as a gift to understand the relationship between our soul’s hunger and the cure for our soul’s hunger.The cure for hungry souls, the food for hungry souls, is obedience to the father.Are you starving for purpose? Then open up your Bible and start obeying what it says. His Word is bread. His commands obeyed are like meals for your soul. You can’t find purpose any other way. Do you realize that? Your food is to do the will of God.Are you starving to have your life mean something? Then open up your Bible and eat. Eat God’s Words. Let it fill you. It’s the key!Are you starving? Then open up your Bible and eat. Not just read it, but obey it.Why am I lonely? Why am I struggling with depression? Why do I lack purpose? Do you see the metaphor. The Words of God are food for your soul. You silence the hunger by doing the will of God.If every word that comes out of the mouth of God is the total food option, then that gets broken down into meals. There’s a meal that’s before Jesus and his disciples right now. There’s a specific word of God that needs to be obeyed right now. What is it?So the meal here is to do the work of bringing people to Christ. God has a job for them to do. There is a harvest of souls right in front of them. It’s ripe for harvest. God’s will, and hence our spiritual food, is to do that work of harvesting souls for the kingdom. That’s PRIORITY #1.When a farmer looks at a field yet to be harvested, he’s got to ignore his physical hunger. He has to work all day; he skips two full meals, pulling in those tractor trailers spilling over the side rails with grain - that satisfies the soul even though the stomach is barking at him.If you know anything about farming communities when harvest comes, everybody stops everything. Schools shut down. The harvest is on and it’s work around the clock to take advantage of this narrow window of opportunity. They work before the sun rises till after the sun sets. They skip meals. Why? Because if they don’t work really hard RIGHT NOW, they will loose the harvest. The grain will fall over and rot into the ground. The sugar beats will spoil and mold. The rains will come and the tractors won’t be able to get into the fields to harvest the potatoes.I’ll eat soon enough. I need to work now.This is what Jesus is saying. Do you see all that grain out there? All we have to do is harvest it. It’s ripe. Let’s get to work. “Yes, I’m hungry, but this is no time for a feast. That time is coming soon enough. We’ve got work to do.”Now, just pause for a moment here. He says, "Lift up your eyes." You can imagine Jesus sweeping his hand across the landscape. What are there eyes resting on? Samaria filled with Samaritans. The crop is Samaritans. Jesus is turning their eyes to see that those whom they despise are in fact the target of God’s redeeming love.My food Jesus says, my work as Savior is satisfy the thirst of the people here in Samaria.Our food is to do the will of the father. Okay, that’s what it is. How do I get it?How do we get the food? There’s one work to focus in on here. LABOR. We get the food by working, toiling, laboring. We don’t get the food by just sitting around. This kind of obedience to the will of the father takes work.And it’s important to make a distinction between the WORK required to drink the living waters and the WORK required reap the harvest.Jesus has just finished teaching this woman about living waters springing up to eternal life. To be clear. That takes no work.Now, most people CERTAINLY TRY to work and earn and labor for this kind of life. Most people work to try to earn a reputation, earn money, earn a standing, earn success. They WORK really really HARD. They WORK their fingers down to the bone trying to quench the thirst of the soul.Jesus tells this woman. Stop working. Just receive the gift of life. You don’t have to earn these waters. You don’t have to work for these waters. These waters are a GIFT of God. They satisfy deeply. They will never disappoint. Don’t work. Come thirsty. Drink deeply. It’s free. Receive the gift. Jesus is the fountain of living waters and its free and never ending. That’s the spiritual drink. NO WORK REQUIRED to drink.But that doesn’t mean there is no work. What is the work? We work to get people to the well. The real food, the real work, the real toil, the real sweat is saving people from spiritual dehydration by leading them to the fountain of living water.Our work is not to get these living waters. Our work is to give the living water.Most people toil their entire lives to find living water thinking that when they find it they will finally be able to rest.Christians receive the living waters and rest and out of that rest they toil so that others can find rest.That’s what Jesus is saying. My food is to do the will of him who sent me. My food (my work) is to quench thirsty souls.Food and water are two totally different needs. You need both of them to be satisfied don’t you. You can be right next to an artisian well and die of starvation and vice versa. We need both.We can be satisfied with the living waters of Jesus Christ. But that does not satisfy the hunger to accomplish the mission of God.If your entire infantry is dying of thirst and you have the key to a well, sure you personally want a drink, and you could open that well up and drink but you can’t rest until they’ve all had a drink. You can’t just lock the well back up and say, “I’m satisfied” and watch everyone else die of thirst.This is what Jesus is talking about. He has a compassion for those who are thirsty. He has a hunger to see that thirst quenched.So feed your hunger by eating, by doing the will of God. By reaping. By doing the work of harvesting. By laboring. You have a hunger in you to see people saved don’t you?I know you do because you are a Christian. You’ve tasted the living waters. I know you want others to taste what you have found. You want others to taste and see that the Lord is good.You are satisfied because you have tasted and others you love have tasted. IT is when we all eat and drink that we are finally satisfied in community. It’s the difference between enjoying a vacation by yourself and enjoying a vacation with family or friends. 3/4 of the enjoyment of a vacation is reveling in a wonderful experience together, in community. That’s what worship is!What does soul satisfaction look like? It looks like the woman we see in verse 39. Someone who has both DRANK the living waters and has EATEN of the bread of doing the will of God. This woman is fully satisfied.Now we get to finish the story. So this woman runs back into town. And we are given no details here, but we can easily imagine it. This is a small town. Small towns are all the same. Everybody is into everybody’s business because, after all, that’s the only thing to do in small towns.So she goes back into the town and look at what happens.Do you see what happened? This woman had drank of the living waters. And she was so thrilled. You see what this woman realized and what the whole town realized was that Jesus was Messiah because he came to SAVE by SATISFYING.There are two levels of belief described in this section here. The first is they believed because of the woman’s testimony. Now let me point out something rather amazing about this.This paragraph references this woman’s testimony. This is a legal term. In the court system, describe for me the end goal of having a witness provide a testimony? The goal is for that testimony to be believed. Okay, so if that’s the goal, what are the characteristics of a good witness and a good testimony? You need a witness who is reliable, respected, educated, truthful. This woman had a reputation for none of these things. in a court of law, this is like the worst possible witness you could chose. And yet it’s this woman’s testimony that resulted in the belief of many? People chose to believe her. Why should anyone believe this woman’s testimony?There is an answer here. There’s one very narrow example where being unreliable, disrespcted, uneducated, being a liar, being a moral failure helps your case not hurts it. You know when that is?It’s when you change. If you are trying to sell a weight loss product. Who do you commission - the formerly fat or the formerly skinny? When a person completely changes, you know something happened. It grabs your attention. You know how hard it is to change, how rare it is, and when someone dramatically changes, you believe some power was at work. The more messed up, the more powerful the testimony becomes. These people looked at this woman and said, "I believe that some power is at work here." I don’t know what living waters are but whatever they are she tasted em. She’s got what I want. I believe living waters exist based on what I see in her.Now you want to know why this is good news for us. The way you provide testimony to the power of Jesus is not by showing how good you are, how moral you can be, how exemplary your family is, it’s by showing how bad you were. It’s by showing the ways in which Jesus changed you.I used to be insecure and that manifested itself in jealousy, lashing out in anger, bullying people, hiding, whatever…. but now Christ has saved me from all that! I’m free, free, forever amen. Come join the song of all the redeemed.I used to love money and now I couldn’t care less about money. I just love God and his people. Do you see how Christ rescued me!I used to love power and influence and all I cared about was people respecting me. Now all I care about is God getting glory and respect. I’ve been saved from that pathetic condition!Do you see how powerful it is to testify. Now it says that they believed. We can call this level one belief. What is it? It’s the type of belief where you can’t argue with the evidence. You say, “I’m not sure what happened, but I TOTALLY believe that some power changed her. I believe that. I can’t deny it.” They believe enough to pursue it themselves.And then level two belief happens. Level two belief happens at the end of the paragraph.It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world. We believe because we have EXPERIENCED it ourselves. Do you know this is the goal of evangelism?We don’t change people. We just want to get them close enough to Jesus that they experience him themselves. It’s our mission statement. We glorify God by pointing the AFFECTIONS of all peoples to the ALL-SATISFYING person of Jesus Christ.This passage concludes by identifying Jesus as the Savior of the World. Interestingly, this was a common title in the first century.Greek deities were ascribed the same title: not only Zeus, but Asclepius the god of healing, various gods of the mystery cults, and others.Even the Roman emperors were called savior; Hadrian (AD 117–138) was called the ‘savior of the world.’It didn’t have a universal meaning. So here’s what these Samaritans are confessing. Zeus claims to be savior of the world. Serapis claims to be savior of the world. Even the emperor claims the title.But, INDEED, Jesus is the Savior of the world. They PERSONALLY experienced his saving power. Listen we are all in a quest for satisfaction. God has made you with spiritual hunger and thirst that cannot be satisfied. And we look all over the place for this kind of thing.This is the problem. And this is the solution.Ultimately for everyone who experiences Jesus as Savior experiences him as saving them not from Rome, not political salvation, financial salvation, social salvation.Jesus Christ saves your soul. He satisfies. Our theme for the year is Life in His Love.Jesus saves us because as we are loved, we experience life!

Well, I’m so excited to be back in the narrative this morning and to introduce the main point, I want to read the opening line from Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina. It begins this way:By that, Tolstoy meant that for a family to be happy, it had to succeed in several key aspects. And for that reason, every happy marriage looks similar. They communicate well, they work out conflict, and they are self-sacrificing. All good families share these traits. Bad families will be bad in a million different ways. There are endless ways to be selfish. Only creativity limits the way you can be hard-hearted.Now, we could adapt this observation theologically. We could say, “All salvation stories are alike. Every unsaved man is unsaved in his own way.” And by that, we would mean that every saved person goes through that exact same narrow gate where they abandon all their props, all their idols, all other means by which they hope to save themselves and turn to Jesus Christ. Because that gate is narrow we must first be stripped of all these attachments and barnacles so that we can fit. That stripping process is often very painful. God in some way brings us to that absolute end of ourselves. He takes us all the way down until we are at the rock bottom of our ability. We experience that salvation moment of bankruptcy where we abandon all the things we once loved that we thought would bring us happiness. This stripping of attachments is common to every saved person. Every salvation story is the same in this way. Now today we are going to see this salvation moment of bankruptcy illustrated in Jacob’s life and Joseph’s life in different ways.ReviewThis year our theme is “Change What You Love.” Jacob, like many of us, had a love problem. He loved the wrong things. Or, more accurately, he loved good things too much. He loved the right things in the wrong order. He needed to change what he loved.In Jacob’s case, he loved his son Joseph in a warped and unhealthy way. He made Joseph into a hub around which he ordered his life. And because God loved Jacob, he wouldn’t allow him to continue in that disordered love. So God began the stripping process. He takes away his precious. He takes away his favorite son Joseph. Joseph is sold to some Ishmaelite traders and when the brothers come home from their dirty deed of betrayal, they tell their dad that Joseph was destroyed by a wild animal and present to him the evidence in the form of a blood-stained coat.Now when Jacob hears the news, he gives us the undeniable evidence of a man whose been involuntarily stripped of his precious. He just weeps and writhes bitterly. He refuses to be comforted. He clenches his jaw, pities himself, and wallows in his misery. And that’s it. Jacob just kind of drops out of the scene for a couple of chapters.The story cuts to Joseph. Joseph rises to the most powerful post in the Ancient Near East second only to Pharaoh himself and he does this totally unbeknownst to his entire family. As far as his brothers know, he’s lubricating stones with his blood and sweat as a slave in Egypt. As far as his father knows, he’s dead.But in a matter of fact, he’s been providentially promoted beyond anyone’s wildest imagination to steward the resources of the land. The seven years of plenty predicted in Pharoah’s dream are realized. And under the careful and astute management of Joseph, the crop abundance created this incredible surplus which is squirreled away in anticipation of the coming drought.Now that drought comes. Like the sucking sound at the bottom of a great milkshake, those years of plenty come to an end. The famine that ravishes the land is severe. And it’s the famine that causes Jacob to surface in the narrative again. Our last mental picture of him pinned to the walls of our mind was him grieving because of the loss of his son, Joseph. Now we see Jacob again and he is getting very old and he’s starving to death.He says, “Sons, this famine is severe. Go buy us grain, lest we die.” And when we hear Jacob’s voice in the text we excitedly wonder, “How has the refinement process been going?” God stripped poor Jacob of his idol, his son Joseph, those 25 years ago. Did this painful stripping have the intended effect of refinement?And to our horror, we discover that Jacob has not surrendered his idolatry. He has simply replaced Joseph with Benjamin. Now Benjamin is the new center. Benjamin is the new favorite idol of the family. Jacob has not yet experienced that salvation moment of bankruptcy. God has more stripping work to do in the life of Jacob.So again we watch favoritism play out. Jacob sends everyone, except his youngest son Benjamin. So they set off on the 150-mile journey to buy grain. When Jacob’s sons return from Egypt with grain but without Simeon, his countenance turns stormy. You can imagine his face. “What? Where is Simeon?”“Well Dad, Simeon was imprisoned. And unfortunately - I really hate to say this - he is to remain imprisoned until Benjamin is presented to the man in charge.” Wince!!!Everyone knows that a nerve has just been hit. God is stripping away the idol. These unhealthy barnacle attachments must be stripped away. He’s being asked by God to go through that narrow gate. But he’s not going to go without a fight. Let’s pick up the narrative at the end of chapter 42. We are going to read the end of 42 and we’ll work all the way through chapter 43 today so settle to enjoy the text. Jacob gets the news that Simeon has been imprisoned as collateral for Benjamin.“How dare you suggest to take my son Benjamin down to Egypt? That’s not happening.” Jacob swore it. Jacob was:When we have idols in our hearts and those idols are threatened, we begin lashing out. We begin blaming. We swear oaths to threaten those around us and warn them to back off. One of the initial feelings that surfaces is blame. Jacob’s idol is being threatened. God is asking him to surrender. And instead of confessing that it’s a problem, he blames. “No. Absolutely not. My idol is not the problem. My sons are the problem.”From a rational point of view, his sons have nothing to do with this. They just went down to Egypt to buy grain and all this happened to them but that doesn’t stop the blame!When someone is in blame mode, they are locked down. They aren’t ready to surrender their idol. I’m not the problem, you are the problem. “You have bereaved me of my children.” How often it is, when our sin is confronted, we disregard the legitimacy and just go into blame mode. “You never put away your dishes. Well, if you wouldn’t let this place get so dirty then I’d have the incentive to keep it clean. Your diet is terrible. Well, if you would buy better food, maybe I wouldn’t eat so terribly. You are on your phone too much. Well, if you would pay attention to me instead of playing on your phone, maybe I wouldn’t have to bury myself in my device.”You see when the idol is threatened, the blame starts erupting out of the heart. It’s a self-defense mechanism, “I don’t have an idolatry problem. The problem is not me. The problem is you. The problem is her. The problem is him.”That’s what Jacob is doing here. You guys are such cruel sons to ask me to give up my precious. The answer is no. An emphatic no! My precious. That’s how chapter 42 ends.So some time has transpired between chapters 42 and 43. Maybe six months. Maybe a year. Maybe two years. It’s enough time for all the grain they had acquired on their previous journey to run out and now they are starving once again.At first, God asks Jacob to surrender his idol. What’s Jacob’s response? Over my dead body. Very well. It actually will be over your dead body. Either he dies of starvation or he sends Benjamin down. That moment of salvation bankruptcy is coming. Jacob is being forced through that narrow gate.Imagine growing your tomato plant and normally you get 50 tomatoes per plant. And this year 90 percent of your plants die and the ones that survive only yield 4-5 bug-infested tomatoes that you have to share with dozens of starving people. Oh, this is such a terrible feeling.So Jacob commands his sons to go down to Egypt, but notice that he conveniently ignores what he knows is the prerequisite for going down. “Why don’t you just go down and try to get food… and you know, just for kicks, let’s just have Benjamin stay with me.”Jacob is caged. God has given him two and only two options. Die or send Benjamin so that you can buy grain and live. Jacob is being forced into a refinement situation. At first, it was a question, “Jacob, will you give up your idol?” Now it’s not an option. God is prying it out of his grip. And the response is severe.Jacob is like a caged animal in a corner with wild darting eyes, hissing, claws extended. “Why did you treat me so badly and tell the man of Egypt that you had another brother?”It had to have been so obvious to the brothers at this point that dad was irrational. Dad was just white-knuckling his idol. He wouldn’t let go. He wouldn’t open his hand. It’s almost embarrassing. Of course, it all felt perfectly normal for Dad. But so painful to watch for the brothers. Dad’s twisted love is distorting his decision making. He’s sick in his thinking.Now it looks terrible, but something good is happening. God is stripping those attachments. Those barnacles that once looked so secure are beginning to show signs of losing their grip. That salvation moment of bankruptcy is near. And then finally it comes.And then he says the words they never thought they’d hear. He humbles himself and gives up the one thing he swore he would never give up. The barnacle breaks free. That attachment releases.What we finally see here is open-handed surrender to God. The white flag is run up.He had to surrender his idol. There was an abandonment of that thing that he demanded to be the center of his world. He had to finally give it up and trust the almighty. It’s impossible to know for sure, but when Jacob finally breaks here, it appears to be a change different from the other times he was bereaved. When Joseph was taken from him:You can hear in this verse the gross self-pity. When he was told that Simeon was taken from him and that Benjamin too was being required he said, “I can’t do it. If harm comes to him, my gray hair would be taken down to Sheol in sorrow.” You can hear in this the self-centered nature of his concern. Self-centered, self-pity.But when he finally breaks it appears the focus changes. “May God Almighty grant you mercy. If I am bereaved, I am bereaved.” It is up to God.He was stripped of his attachments, no food, weak, he’s lost two maybe three of his children and that beautiful, beautiful salvation moment of bankruptcy has come upon him. It’s through that narrow gate he squeezes. That beautiful salvation moment of bankruptcy where it felt like all was lost. That decision to give up his most precious will ultimately save his life. He had to lose his life to save it.JosephSo we looked at the process of surrender in Jacob’s life. In Jacob’s case, it was the surrender of a disordered love of his family.Joseph too is being asked to surrender. Joseph is being asked to forgive his brothers and in order to do that, he is going to have to surrender hate. He is going to have to release the grudge and the bitterness that he feels. But unlike his father, he’s not going to blame and fight. He’s going to engage and bless. But it’s still going to be a process.Joseph is being asked to forgive his enemies. And the opportunity presents itself. The brothers pack their camels.So they make the journey and ring the doorbell of the palace and present themselves to the king. Now apparently Joseph saw them coming while they were a way off and gives his palace attendant some instructions.So you can imagine the brothers saying, “Um, we are here to see Joseph.” “Ah yes, he’s been expecting you. He’d like to dine with you at lunch.” What? That’s about the last thing in the world you’d expect. Now remember, the last memory Joseph’s brothers had of Joseph was harsh words and false accusations. “Now he wants us over for lunch? That’s not good. He’s setting us up for something. It must be the money in the sacks. Well if we volunteer it, it will go better for us. Let’s just immediately confess everything.”Now, this is the first real act of grace they have received. This is the first reveal of Joseph’s intent toward them. You will recall that this is the resolution to a test that Joseph set up. He commanded that the put the money back in their sacks. Now why did he do this? Why this test? I think Joseph is doing something really significant here. He’s recreating at this moment the scenario of his betrayal. All the elements are present: his brother Simeon is in a pit, is in prison, and they have all been given money in their sacks. Will they return as honest men, give the money back, and try to free their brother from the pit? Or, will they leave Simeon in prison and take the money and run? Will they abandon their brother for a fist-full of cash? Will they, so-to-speak, sell off Simeon to some foreigners for 20 pieces of silver?Joseph is testing to see if they have experienced that salvation moment of bankruptcy. Have they gone through that very narrow gate where they abandoned all their props, all their idols, all other means by which they hope to save themselves and they cried out for God to save them? Now, the test has been run. They return with the money in the sacks! Do you see? They passed the test. Kind of. Because it’s been many, many months, perhaps even years. We know that they have been holding out as long as they possibly could.So Joseph legitimately asks, “Did they just return with the money because they were starving to death or because they were truly honest men as they claimed?” Joseph has been hurt and now he has to decide if he’s going to re-engage. There is some evidence that perhaps they’ve changed, but it’s not conclusive. What do you do in situations like this? This is not irregular. This is how forgiveness always works! I’m not sure they have changed. Do I want to open up and risk being hurt again?You see a lot of people, out of self-protection and fear of being re-wounded, won’t ever let someone change. They harbor that bitterness. They always see a bad motive no matter how long things continue in a positive direction. No matter how much a person has actually changed, suspicion just follows them around like a dark cloud. And that suspicion and hurt can eventually prevent the person from ever wanting to try. “No matter how hard I try I’m always viewed with suspicion so I’ll just stop trying.”Joseph tells the house servant how to respond. “If they have the money in the sacks, if they confess that it was there, give them the benefit of the doubt. And then I want you to go get Simeon.”And now he sees those bald spots again. The dream comes rushing back. Now Joseph is face to face with his tormentors. He’s again face to face with his abusers. You want to talk about being caged. This is being emotionally caged.But Joseph will not allow the pain of the past to dictate the future. He takes Simeon out of prison. He reunites the family. And then he begins to inquire again about their father.You see, he’s open-hearted here. That such a great picture of the posture of forgiveness. Open-hearted. “I open my heart to you. I’m willing to welcome you. I want to inquire about your welfare. I care about your life.” So he’s willing to engage. He’s ready to bless. And then in that process, he breaks.Here, the most feared man of the land, reduced to a puddle of tears. All those years of hurt and anguish. Benjamin would have been just a few years old last time he saw him. And the tears just rush out of him. He probably surprised himself that all that emotion was even in there. Where is all this emotion coming from?He’s giving them clues of his knowledge of them. He’s starting to leak clues. Can you imagine how eerie this would have been for the brothers to see everyone seating in their birth order? I calculated the odds of this happening at random and it’s about 1 chance in 40 million. It’s so unlikely.Your guest is signaling to you. This would be like showing up to a hotel in Hawaii and your hotel room has a complimentary laptop with your Facebook account open and waiting for you, your bank statement printed for you on your bed, and your last year’s tax returns on the TV screen. What’s going on here?The brothers are saying, “How could he possibly know this? It’s an impossible accident.” And why give Benjamin five times? That could not be more strange. He’s the youngest. Joseph is signaling. “I know you. I have a special connection to Benjamin.” Joseph is opening his heart wide. What we see here is the evidence of surrender. This work was done not over minutes, days, or months but years. God had been plowing the soil of Joseph’s heart to prepare him to weep tears of compassion and warmth.If Joseph had been stewing in his mind for all these years, “My brothers, man they took away my life. I’m so bitter toward them. What did I ever do to them? If I ever see them again, I’ll tear them limb from limb. I’ll show them what it’s like to rot in prison. I’ll show them what it’s like to not see the light of the sun for years.” If that is what Joseph had been doing in his mind for 25 years, then that’s exactly what he would have done. But he had been doing something very different. He turned it over to God. God had brought Joseph through that salvation moment of bankruptcy and he surrendered it to God. No God, I trust you. I will not be bitter. I will love them like you loved me.CommunionNow we are about to take communion here and there’s something significant to notice in the process of surrender. God brings every one of the characters in this narrative through pivotal salvation moments of bankruptcy. He did it to Joseph. He did it to Jacob. We are going to trace it in Judah next week. And guess what? He’s doing it to you and me right now. God loves us too much to leave us unrefined and loving idols. He loves us too much to see our affections unordered. He really does.We clutch and cling to our idols and we do not want to let them go. We have created centers around which our life must revolve and those centers. It could be your career. It could be your family. It could be church ministry. It could be money. It could be an unforgiving spirit. But it’s an idol. It has ahold of your affections. You aren’t free. And God loves you too much to keep it there. So he begins the stripping process. He wants us to confess.When that thing is threatened, at first we blame. Then when it’s forcibly taken from us, we fight. “The problem is not me it’s you.” We make excuses. “If it wasn’t for this situation, I wouldn’t have done it.” But God keeps working on us. And soon we break.And you know what that breaking is? It’s the moment we realize that our sin of attachments and idolatry is a sin against the God who saved us. When we break, it is that moment where we realize that our sin was not against other people. Our sin was against God himself.“Please forgive me for ever trusting anything other than you. That’s me laughing at you and throwing you in the pit. Forgive me for trusting in my money. That’s me selling you off as a slave to Egypt. Forgive me for trusting in my reputation. That’s me selling you for 30 pieces of silver.”Jesus is ready to forgive. Jesus as the greater Joseph, seats us in order at his table, revealing that he knows all about us. He knows our sin in advance of our confession. He’s just sitting there totally and completely ready to forgive. He’s already absorbed all the hurt. He’s already been taken down into the pit. He’s already suffered the rejection. He’s suffered the hurt of betrayal. His body has already been broken. His blood-stained coat is evidence of blood that has already been spilled. And he’s sitting you down at the table ready to bless. Do you see the spread of blessing before you? It’s so wonderful.And here we are wringing our hands. Does he know about us selling off our brother? Does he know about the 20 shekels? Does he know about the hidden treasure in the sacks? Does he know about the lies we told to father?And so in those moments of incredible insecurity, we try to project images of ourselves that we are worthy folks. We are honest men. We have never been spies. But do you not see? He knows everything. Our deeds are laid bare before him.And we are all worked up in our hearts thinking that our confession is going to disqualify us from the approval and love of the sovereign. Oh church, do you see how it is exactly the opposite? It is the act of confession that qualifies us to receive the grace and mercy already purchased for us! Jesus as the greater Joseph knows it all and is ready with open arms to forgive. Do you see that he is waiting and wanting to give that to you right now? Jesus is the ultimate Joseph who seats you at his table and is ready to bless.

Well, I’m so excited to be back in the narrative this morning and to introduce the main point, I want to read the opening line from Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina. It begins this way:By that, Tolstoy meant that for a family to be happy, it had to succeed in several key aspects. And for that reason, every happy marriage looks similar. They communicate well, they work out conflict, and they are self-sacrificing. All good families share these traits. Bad families will be bad in a million different ways. There are endless ways to be selfish. Only creativity limits the way you can be hard-hearted.Now, we could adapt this observation theologically. We could say, “All salvation stories are alike. Every unsaved man is unsaved in his own way.” And by that, we would mean that every saved person goes through that exact same narrow gate where they abandon all their props, all their idols, all other means by which they hope to save themselves and turn to Jesus Christ. Because that gate is narrow we must first be stripped of all these attachments and barnacles so that we can fit. That stripping process is often very painful. God in some way brings us to that absolute end of ourselves. He takes us all the way down until we are at the rock bottom of our ability. We experience that salvation moment of bankruptcy where we abandon all the things we once loved that we thought would bring us happiness. This stripping of attachments is common to every saved person. Every salvation story is the same in this way. Now today we are going to see this salvation moment of bankruptcy illustrated in Jacob’s life and Joseph’s life in different ways.ReviewThis year our theme is “Change What You Love.” Jacob, like many of us, had a love problem. He loved the wrong things. Or, more accurately, he loved good things too much. He loved the right things in the wrong order. He needed to change what he loved.In Jacob’s case, he loved his son Joseph in a warped and unhealthy way. He made Joseph into a hub around which he ordered his life. And because God loved Jacob, he wouldn’t allow him to continue in that disordered love. So God began the stripping process. He takes away his precious. He takes away his favorite son Joseph. Joseph is sold to some Ishmaelite traders and when the brothers come home from their dirty deed of betrayal, they tell their dad that Joseph was destroyed by a wild animal and present to him the evidence in the form of a blood-stained coat.Now when Jacob hears the news, he gives us the undeniable evidence of a man whose been involuntarily stripped of his precious. He just weeps and writhes bitterly. He refuses to be comforted. He clenches his jaw, pities himself, and wallows in his misery. And that’s it. Jacob just kind of drops out of the scene for a couple of chapters.The story cuts to Joseph. Joseph rises to the most powerful post in the Ancient Near East second only to Pharaoh himself and he does this totally unbeknownst to his entire family. As far as his brothers know, he’s lubricating stones with his blood and sweat as a slave in Egypt. As far as his father knows, he’s dead.But in a matter of fact, he’s been providentially promoted beyond anyone’s wildest imagination to steward the resources of the land. The seven years of plenty predicted in Pharoah’s dream are realized. And under the careful and astute management of Joseph, the crop abundance created this incredible surplus which is squirreled away in anticipation of the coming drought.Now that drought comes. Like the sucking sound at the bottom of a great milkshake, those years of plenty come to an end. The famine that ravishes the land is severe. And it’s the famine that causes Jacob to surface in the narrative again. Our last mental picture of him pinned to the walls of our mind was him grieving because of the loss of his son, Joseph. Now we see Jacob again and he is getting very old and he’s starving to death.He says, “Sons, this famine is severe. Go buy us grain, lest we die.” And when we hear Jacob’s voice in the text we excitedly wonder, “How has the refinement process been going?” God stripped poor Jacob of his idol, his son Joseph, those 25 years ago. Did this painful stripping have the intended effect of refinement?And to our horror, we discover that Jacob has not surrendered his idolatry. He has simply replaced Joseph with Benjamin. Now Benjamin is the new center. Benjamin is the new favorite idol of the family. Jacob has not yet experienced that salvation moment of bankruptcy. God has more stripping work to do in the life of Jacob.So again we watch favoritism play out. Jacob sends everyone, except his youngest son Benjamin. So they set off on the 150-mile journey to buy grain. When Jacob’s sons return from Egypt with grain but without Simeon, his countenance turns stormy. You can imagine his face. “What? Where is Simeon?”“Well Dad, Simeon was imprisoned. And unfortunately - I really hate to say this - he is to remain imprisoned until Benjamin is presented to the man in charge.” Wince!!!Everyone knows that a nerve has just been hit. God is stripping away the idol. These unhealthy barnacle attachments must be stripped away. He’s being asked by God to go through that narrow gate. But he’s not going to go without a fight. Let’s pick up the narrative at the end of chapter 42. We are going to read the end of 42 and we’ll work all the way through chapter 43 today so settle to enjoy the text. Jacob gets the news that Simeon has been imprisoned as collateral for Benjamin.“How dare you suggest to take my son Benjamin down to Egypt? That’s not happening.” Jacob swore it. Jacob was:When we have idols in our hearts and those idols are threatened, we begin lashing out. We begin blaming. We swear oaths to threaten those around us and warn them to back off. One of the initial feelings that surfaces is blame. Jacob’s idol is being threatened. God is asking him to surrender. And instead of confessing that it’s a problem, he blames. “No. Absolutely not. My idol is not the problem. My sons are the problem.”From a rational point of view, his sons have nothing to do with this. They just went down to Egypt to buy grain and all this happened to them but that doesn’t stop the blame!When someone is in blame mode, they are locked down. They aren’t ready to surrender their idol. I’m not the problem, you are the problem. “You have bereaved me of my children.” How often it is, when our sin is confronted, we disregard the legitimacy and just go into blame mode. “You never put away your dishes. Well, if you wouldn’t let this place get so dirty then I’d have the incentive to keep it clean. Your diet is terrible. Well, if you would buy better food, maybe I wouldn’t eat so terribly. You are on your phone too much. Well, if you would pay attention to me instead of playing on your phone, maybe I wouldn’t have to bury myself in my device.”You see when the idol is threatened, the blame starts erupting out of the heart. It’s a self-defense mechanism, “I don’t have an idolatry problem. The problem is not me. The problem is you. The problem is her. The problem is him.”That’s what Jacob is doing here. You guys are such cruel sons to ask me to give up my precious. The answer is no. An emphatic no! My precious. That’s how chapter 42 ends.So some time has transpired between chapters 42 and 43. Maybe six months. Maybe a year. Maybe two years. It’s enough time for all the grain they had acquired on their previous journey to run out and now they are starving once again.At first, God asks Jacob to surrender his idol. What’s Jacob’s response? Over my dead body. Very well. It actually will be over your dead body. Either he dies of starvation or he sends Benjamin down. That moment of salvation bankruptcy is coming. Jacob is being forced through that narrow gate.Imagine growing your tomato plant and normally you get 50 tomatoes per plant. And this year 90 percent of your plants die and the ones that survive only yield 4-5 bug-infested tomatoes that you have to share with dozens of starving people. Oh, this is such a terrible feeling.So Jacob commands his sons to go down to Egypt, but notice that he conveniently ignores what he knows is the prerequisite for going down. “Why don’t you just go down and try to get food… and you know, just for kicks, let’s just have Benjamin stay with me.”Jacob is caged. God has given him two and only two options. Die or send Benjamin so that you can buy grain and live. Jacob is being forced into a refinement situation. At first, it was a question, “Jacob, will you give up your idol?” Now it’s not an option. God is prying it out of his grip. And the response is severe.Jacob is like a caged animal in a corner with wild darting eyes, hissing, claws extended. “Why did you treat me so badly and tell the man of Egypt that you had another brother?”It had to have been so obvious to the brothers at this point that dad was irrational. Dad was just white-knuckling his idol. He wouldn’t let go. He wouldn’t open his hand. It’s almost embarrassing. Of course, it all felt perfectly normal for Dad. But so painful to watch for the brothers. Dad’s twisted love is distorting his decision making. He’s sick in his thinking.Now it looks terrible, but something good is happening. God is stripping those attachments. Those barnacles that once looked so secure are beginning to show signs of losing their grip. That salvation moment of bankruptcy is near. And then finally it comes.And then he says the words they never thought they’d hear. He humbles himself and gives up the one thing he swore he would never give up. The barnacle breaks free. That attachment releases.What we finally see here is open-handed surrender to God. The white flag is run up.He had to surrender his idol. There was an abandonment of that thing that he demanded to be the center of his world. He had to finally give it up and trust the almighty. It’s impossible to know for sure, but when Jacob finally breaks here, it appears to be a change different from the other times he was bereaved. When Joseph was taken from him:You can hear in this verse the gross self-pity. When he was told that Simeon was taken from him and that Benjamin too was being required he said, “I can’t do it. If harm comes to him, my gray hair would be taken down to Sheol in sorrow.” You can hear in this the self-centered nature of his concern. Self-centered, self-pity.But when he finally breaks it appears the focus changes. “May God Almighty grant you mercy. If I am bereaved, I am bereaved.” It is up to God.He was stripped of his attachments, no food, weak, he’s lost two maybe three of his children and that beautiful, beautiful salvation moment of bankruptcy has come upon him. It’s through that narrow gate he squeezes. That beautiful salvation moment of bankruptcy where it felt like all was lost. That decision to give up his most precious will ultimately save his life. He had to lose his life to save it.JosephSo we looked at the process of surrender in Jacob’s life. In Jacob’s case, it was the surrender of a disordered love of his family.Joseph too is being asked to surrender. Joseph is being asked to forgive his brothers and in order to do that, he is going to have to surrender hate. He is going to have to release the grudge and the bitterness that he feels. But unlike his father, he’s not going to blame and fight. He’s going to engage and bless. But it’s still going to be a process.Joseph is being asked to forgive his enemies. And the opportunity presents itself. The brothers pack their camels.So they make the journey and ring the doorbell of the palace and present themselves to the king. Now apparently Joseph saw them coming while they were a way off and gives his palace attendant some instructions.So you can imagine the brothers saying, “Um, we are here to see Joseph.” “Ah yes, he’s been expecting you. He’d like to dine with you at lunch.” What? That’s about the last thing in the world you’d expect. Now remember, the last memory Joseph’s brothers had of Joseph was harsh words and false accusations. “Now he wants us over for lunch? That’s not good. He’s setting us up for something. It must be the money in the sacks. Well if we volunteer it, it will go better for us. Let’s just immediately confess everything.”Now, this is the first real act of grace they have received. This is the first reveal of Joseph’s intent toward them. You will recall that this is the resolution to a test that Joseph set up. He commanded that the put the money back in their sacks. Now why did he do this? Why this test? I think Joseph is doing something really significant here. He’s recreating at this moment the scenario of his betrayal. All the elements are present: his brother Simeon is in a pit, is in prison, and they have all been given money in their sacks. Will they return as honest men, give the money back, and try to free their brother from the pit? Or, will they leave Simeon in prison and take the money and run? Will they abandon their brother for a fist-full of cash? Will they, so-to-speak, sell off Simeon to some foreigners for 20 pieces of silver?Joseph is testing to see if they have experienced that salvation moment of bankruptcy. Have they gone through that very narrow gate where they abandoned all their props, all their idols, all other means by which they hope to save themselves and they cried out for God to save them? Now, the test has been run. They return with the money in the sacks! Do you see? They passed the test. Kind of. Because it’s been many, many months, perhaps even years. We know that they have been holding out as long as they possibly could.So Joseph legitimately asks, “Did they just return with the money because they were starving to death or because they were truly honest men as they claimed?” Joseph has been hurt and now he has to decide if he’s going to re-engage. There is some evidence that perhaps they’ve changed, but it’s not conclusive. What do you do in situations like this? This is not irregular. This is how forgiveness always works! I’m not sure they have changed. Do I want to open up and risk being hurt again?You see a lot of people, out of self-protection and fear of being re-wounded, won’t ever let someone change. They harbor that bitterness. They always see a bad motive no matter how long things continue in a positive direction. No matter how much a person has actually changed, suspicion just follows them around like a dark cloud. And that suspicion and hurt can eventually prevent the person from ever wanting to try. “No matter how hard I try I’m always viewed with suspicion so I’ll just stop trying.”Joseph tells the house servant how to respond. “If they have the money in the sacks, if they confess that it was there, give them the benefit of the doubt. And then I want you to go get Simeon.”And now he sees those bald spots again. The dream comes rushing back. Now Joseph is face to face with his tormentors. He’s again face to face with his abusers. You want to talk about being caged. This is being emotionally caged.But Joseph will not allow the pain of the past to dictate the future. He takes Simeon out of prison. He reunites the family. And then he begins to inquire again about their father.You see, he’s open-hearted here. That such a great picture of the posture of forgiveness. Open-hearted. “I open my heart to you. I’m willing to welcome you. I want to inquire about your welfare. I care about your life.” So he’s willing to engage. He’s ready to bless. And then in that process, he breaks.Here, the most feared man of the land, reduced to a puddle of tears. All those years of hurt and anguish. Benjamin would have been just a few years old last time he saw him. And the tears just rush out of him. He probably surprised himself that all that emotion was even in there. Where is all this emotion coming from?He’s giving them clues of his knowledge of them. He’s starting to leak clues. Can you imagine how eerie this would have been for the brothers to see everyone seating in their birth order? I calculated the odds of this happening at random and it’s about 1 chance in 40 million. It’s so unlikely.Your guest is signaling to you. This would be like showing up to a hotel in Hawaii and your hotel room has a complimentary laptop with your Facebook account open and waiting for you, your bank statement printed for you on your bed, and your last year’s tax returns on the TV screen. What’s going on here?The brothers are saying, “How could he possibly know this? It’s an impossible accident.” And why give Benjamin five times? That could not be more strange. He’s the youngest. Joseph is signaling. “I know you. I have a special connection to Benjamin.” Joseph is opening his heart wide. What we see here is the evidence of surrender. This work was done not over minutes, days, or months but years. God had been plowing the soil of Joseph’s heart to prepare him to weep tears of compassion and warmth.If Joseph had been stewing in his mind for all these years, “My brothers, man they took away my life. I’m so bitter toward them. What did I ever do to them? If I ever see them again, I’ll tear them limb from limb. I’ll show them what it’s like to rot in prison. I’ll show them what it’s like to not see the light of the sun for years.” If that is what Joseph had been doing in his mind for 25 years, then that’s exactly what he would have done. But he had been doing something very different. He turned it over to God. God had brought Joseph through that salvation moment of bankruptcy and he surrendered it to God. No God, I trust you. I will not be bitter. I will love them like you loved me.CommunionNow we are about to take communion here and there’s something significant to notice in the process of surrender. God brings every one of the characters in this narrative through pivotal salvation moments of bankruptcy. He did it to Joseph. He did it to Jacob. We are going to trace it in Judah next week. And guess what? He’s doing it to you and me right now. God loves us too much to leave us unrefined and loving idols. He loves us too much to see our affections unordered. He really does.We clutch and cling to our idols and we do not want to let them go. We have created centers around which our life must revolve and those centers. It could be your career. It could be your family. It could be church ministry. It could be money. It could be an unforgiving spirit. But it’s an idol. It has ahold of your affections. You aren’t free. And God loves you too much to keep it there. So he begins the stripping process. He wants us to confess.When that thing is threatened, at first we blame. Then when it’s forcibly taken from us, we fight. “The problem is not me it’s you.” We make excuses. “If it wasn’t for this situation, I wouldn’t have done it.” But God keeps working on us. And soon we break.And you know what that breaking is? It’s the moment we realize that our sin of attachments and idolatry is a sin against the God who saved us. When we break, it is that moment where we realize that our sin was not against other people. Our sin was against God himself.“Please forgive me for ever trusting anything other than you. That’s me laughing at you and throwing you in the pit. Forgive me for trusting in my money. That’s me selling you off as a slave to Egypt. Forgive me for trusting in my reputation. That’s me selling you for 30 pieces of silver.”Jesus is ready to forgive. Jesus as the greater Joseph, seats us in order at his table, revealing that he knows all about us. He knows our sin in advance of our confession. He’s just sitting there totally and completely ready to forgive. He’s already absorbed all the hurt. He’s already been taken down into the pit. He’s already suffered the rejection. He’s suffered the hurt of betrayal. His body has already been broken. His blood-stained coat is evidence of blood that has already been spilled. And he’s sitting you down at the table ready to bless. Do you see the spread of blessing before you? It’s so wonderful.And here we are wringing our hands. Does he know about us selling off our brother? Does he know about the 20 shekels? Does he know about the hidden treasure in the sacks? Does he know about the lies we told to father?And so in those moments of incredible insecurity, we try to project images of ourselves that we are worthy folks. We are honest men. We have never been spies. But do you not see? He knows everything. Our deeds are laid bare before him.And we are all worked up in our hearts thinking that our confession is going to disqualify us from the approval and love of the sovereign. Oh church, do you see how it is exactly the opposite? It is the act of confession that qualifies us to receive the grace and mercy already purchased for us! Jesus as the greater Joseph knows it all and is ready with open arms to forgive. Do you see that he is waiting and wanting to give that to you right now? Jesus is the ultimate Joseph who seats you at his table and is ready to bless.

On this episode, Mado does a review of Hulu Original Series titled "Solar Opposites"Make sure you rate subscribe and reviewThis episode was sponsored by Simpleprunes.comUse the promo code STASHSTREAM at StashMe.net and 10% off your entire order. GET HULU HERE: https://fave.co/2zDmTS3

New research has discovered an association between low back pain and headache. Tune in this week to discover the data, and how you can use it to market your practice!Episode Highlights-The association between headache and low back pain: a systematic reviewThis episode brought to you in conjunction with RocktapeOur members use research to GROW their practice. Are you interested in increasing your referrals? Discover the best chiropractic marketing you aren't currently using right here!

Hello eGPlearners,  in this news update- covering the big stories for primary care over the past week…. lets tech-enhance your primary careIf the first time we are meeting Im Dr Gandalf of eGPlearning where I look at supporting you with technology-enhanced primary care and learning so don't forget to subscribe and ring the bell to be the first to get notified of all these updates. https://egplearning.co.uk/Let us startGP partnership reviewThis piece of the future of General practice was released on Monday 14.1.19 as led by Nigel Watson with seven recommendations at the heart of the review. Recommendation 1: There are significant opportunities that should be taken forward to reduce the personal risk and unlimited liability currently associated with GP partnerships. Recommendation 2: The number of General Practitioners who work in practices, and in roles that support the delivery of direct patient care, should be increased and funded. Recommendation 3: The capacity and range of healthcare professionals available to support patients in the community should be increased, through services embedded in partnership with general practice. Recommendation 4: Medical training should be refocused to increase the time spent in general practice, to develop a better understanding of the strengths and opportunities of primary care partnerships and how they fit into the wider health system. Recommendation 5: Primary Care Networks should be established and operate in a way that makes constituent practices more sustainable and enables partners to address workload and safe working capacity, while continuing to support continuity of high quality, personalised, holistic care. Recommendation 6: General practice must have a strong, consistent and fully representative voice at system level. Recommendation 7: There are opportunities that should be taken to enable practices to use resources more efficiently by ensuring access to both essential IT equipment and innovative digital services.From a digital perspective recommendation 7 is key. Updating systems and allowing innovation must happen, Digitising records would be a major support to practices and help to tackle another uncosted area on subject access requests. Taking this burden away from partners would be very useful. Also working better with statutory organisations for reports for DWP and DVLA would be helpful and reduce considerable administrative burdens on practices. In this past week I have done three reports for the same patient all relating to the DWP- one unified system would reduce unnecessary workload. Updating our IT infrastructure and policies more in line with consumer tech is also a must. Tackling the ‘computer says no' mentality due to a reliance on legacy IT would allow primary care to truly innovate, and I eagerly await the day I do not have to use internet explorer 8 in practice. Many will know I have been critical of the interim review which was published last year. The final review is, however, a good document that identifies the challenges facing partnership and also commends the positive impact the partnership model has in primary care. Several of the recommendations are high quality and call on other pieces of work to deliver an improvement for partnership in practice- particularly the call for a sort out of indemnity and the premises review. I do still feel strongly that a key piece lacking is a direct request to increase the global sum funding for practices, as this would significantly and rapidly improve the partnership the workload impact for partners and attract more staff making it more viable and sustainable. I do still see this as a major omission of the review which is in the terms of reference. It should have been requested and using the long term plan as the vehicle to suggest increased funding does not directly help as this still requires increased work for new money, rather than offer a stabilising impact.

​Ralph Breaks the Internet Wreck it Ralph 2 is now out . So how is it?Our review will tell you all about it.​https://www.3dor2d.com/reviews/ralph-2​ ⚠️ Warning This podcast has full spoilers ⚠️​Official Website:https://movies.disney.com/ralph-breaks-the-internet-wreck-it-ralph-2© Disney, All Rights Reserved, Disney LifestyleWe are sorry for the sub standard audio quality.Listen to the Spoiler Free version of this podcast here:https://www.3dor2d.com/podcast/ralph-breaks-internet-3d-movie-reviewThis podcast is brought to you by 3D Wiggle ! For your 20% Off

2015 - A Year in ReviewThis week we are releasing a clip episode reviewing our year as we are taking the last two weeks of the year off!We discuss an episode every month from January through December including: Ep. 40 - Steve Gerkin, Author of "Hidden History of Tulsa" Ep. 44 - Skytown Ep. 48 - Brad, Chad, and Hunter from Cain's Ballroom Ep. 52 - Brett Birdsong Ep. 57 - Abby and Chris from the Tulsa Film, Music, Arts and Culture Office Ep. 64 - BoxMan Ep. 65 - Jerry Wofford - Tulsa World Ep. 71 - Andrés Franco - Music Director of Tulsa's Signature Symphony Ep. 77 - Cowgirl's Train Set Ep. 81 - Cole Porter Band Ep. 85 - Ian Moore and The Lossy Coils

WARNING: SPOILERS/NSFW'Gotham' 2x11 - 'Worse Than a Crime' ReviewThis is the last part of the first part of the second season!  Jim Gordon just woke up to find himself in the company of Penguin and Edward Nygma!  Alfred just woke up in a junkyard!  Bruce just woke up in Theo Galavan's insideous clutches!  Will Silver wake up in time to make a positive difference?  So much crazy awesome on this fall finale of 'Gotham', and we're chomping at the bit to see what comes next in February!

WARNING: SPOILERS/NSFW'Arrow' 4x04 - 'Green Arrow' ReviewThis episode we talk the first episode of 'Arrow' season 4, "Green Arrow"!  Oliver and Felicity are called back to the newly renamed Star City when Damien Darhk and his army of ghosts begin an endless crime wave on the city with the hopes of destroying it!  With Damien displaying healthy doses of candor, ill-will, and magic, Oliver finds himself at odds with everyone on his old team. From Diggle's inability to forgive him for his actions with the League of Assassins, to Speedy's increasingly violent behavior, things are going to be especially rocky for Team Arrow this year -- especially given that last scene in the grave yard! WTF!?

Expendable 3 ReviewThis months Comic PreviewsAnd the boy get a bit naughty!

captain america movie reviewThis week, Mulango Akpo-Esembe (@theramblingmango), Michael Sorg (@sorgatron) and Mad Mike (@madmike4883) get geeky at the movies with as we talk about Captain America: The Winter Soldier. How was it? What does it do for the Marvel Ciniverse? Spoilers be ahead!