Being A Part Of God’s Story Series

- Sermon series: “Character Amid Crisis.”

- Joseph is not necessary the most important of the OT characters. That would probably go to Abraham or Moses or David. But I think Joseph stands as the greatest saint of the OT in his behavior. He doesn’t have the major lapses in his behavior like most of the OT saints. You could also include Job in the same category, but I’m going to side with Joseph because his struggles took so long and had multiple stages, yet throughout he stays faithful to God. In that sense, he is one of the greatest Bible characters and one we should look up to.

- The problems that came into his life were huge, yet he stayed faithful to God.

- Joseph occupies the final chapters of Genesis. Let’s be honest, Genesis at times reads like a Jerry Springer script. There is some egregious behavior in there. With that in mind, the first book of the Bible ends on a high note with Joseph. He is a man of character and trust in God, even amid crisis.

- A second note as we begin: Joseph’s father does some terrible parenting to open our story. Verse 3 tells us that it was obvious to the whole family that he loved Joseph more than his other children. In the next sermon we’re going to get into the story where Joseph’s brothers sell him into slavery because of their jealousy of him and we need to say that his father did some lousy parenting to help make that happen.

- In the part of the story of Joseph we are looking at this morning, we are looking at the dreams he had and what they tell us about the way God works and how we can be a part of God’s story.

HOW GOD WORKS:

1. GOD HAS A LARGER PLAN.

- Genesis 37:5-11.

- It’s important to distinguish up front for our purposes this morning that we are talking about a plan from God, not simply things we would like to see happen or visions that we’ve made up.

- This is a small group of things that fall under this category.

- In our passage for this morning, Joseph has a pair of dreams, but these are from God. We cannot say, “Well, any dream I have falls under the same category.” Not true. In the Bible there are times when someone gets a vision from God through a dream. It happened to the other Joseph in Matthew 1:20 when an angel tells him to marry Mary.

- Most of our dreams happen because of unresolved anxiety or because you shouldn’t have eaten that pizza right before bed.

- God still speaks today but we have to careful to make sure we are hearing from Him and not just wishing.

- First and foremost, God is never going to give us a vision for our lives that contradicts the Bible. So we can evaluate things we think God might have said against the Scripture.

- Second, this is just a rare thing. For most people, it might happen once in a lifetime. For myself, I do think that I have heard from God concerning “fire from heaven.”

- Where we want to focus this morning, though, is where we have plans from God that we know are from Him.

- The biggest and most obvious is this: God desires for people to be saved through Jesus, the church is His vehicle for bringing that message to the world, and therefore He desires the success of the church.

- This is important for us to keep in mind. Sometimes the world just seems to be going nowhere or seems to be completely out of control. Certainly there are scary things going on today.

- However, in the larger scheme of things, God has a plan and He is working to bring it about.

- Here, even though it’s not evident in this passage all by itself, we know that as we fast-forward to the end of the story and Joseph in Egypt ruling there, that the end of the plan will be for saving Israel from a horrible famine. The plan is bigger than anyone anticipates, even Joseph.

2. GOD CHOOSES THE VESSELS HE WANTS TO USE.

- Genesis 37:5-11.

- Another thing we see in this passage: everyone wasn’t happy about the way that God was going to bring His plan.

- Joseph’s brothers object to the idea that youngest sibling would end up reigning over them. Even his father objects to the idea that Joseph would rule over his parents and his brothers.

- But, again, it’s essential to remember that this is not a vision of Joseph’s creation. Instead, it originated with God and is ordained by Him.