FROM SLAVERY TO THE SLAMMER!
INTRO
When we are looking at someone who has everything going for them, our first general assumption is we are looking at someone who has every received all the breaks in life and was born with a silver spoon in their mouth.
• From the distance, they’ve got the charm, the looks, the money, the wealth, the health, friends, happiness, love, name it and they claim it!
Reba McEntire – sings a song entitled “The Girl Who Has Everything”
I just got the wedding invitation
There's gonna be a celebration
Like you've never seen
Just fit for a queen
She's got her mom and daddy's blessing
She's got a long white wedding dress
And his wedding ring
Oh, what can I bring
What do you give the girl who has everything
Oh, what can I bring
What do you give the girl who has everything
She'll hear his promise of forever
She'll hear him say what
I could never get him to say
Oh, he'll say it today
She'll hold his hand and throw the flowers
Drink champagne till the morning hours
The queen has her king
And the world on a string
So what do you give the girl who has everything
The other day I was headed to the office and was listening to some current country and there was a song that was describing a women that a country boy would
consider to have everything going for her. Most people would say the girl in the song is highly successful.
• She had looks, money, education, everything the song writer was looking for.
Part of the lyrics to the song says,
“She’s got her daddy’s money, her momma’s good looks.
More laughs than a stack of comic books.
A wild imagination, a college education.
Add it all up it’s a deadly combination.
She’s a good bass fisher. A dynomite kisser.
Country as a turnip green.
She’s got her daddy’s money. Her momma’s good looks, and look who’s looking at me!”
Do you every quietly look at people like this and think, “If only I could have THEIR advantages. If only I had their family, their money, their education – I could be accomplish great things with my life.”
In a famous study by Victor and Mildred Goertzel, entitled Cradles of Eminence, the home backgrounds of 300 highly successful people were investigated. These 300 people had made it to the top. They were men and women whose names everyone would recognize as brilliant in their fields such as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Helen Keller, Winston Churchill, Albert Schweitzer, Clara Barton, Gandhi, Einstein, and Freud. The intensive investigation into their early home lives yielded some surprising findings:
• Three fourths of the children were troubled either by poverty, by a broken home, or by being rejected, or having over possessive, or dominating parents.
• Seventy-four of 85 writers of fiction or drama and 16 of the 20 poets came from homes where, as children, they saw tense psychological drama played out by their parents.
• Physical handicaps such as blindness, deafness, or crippled limbs characterized over one-fourth of the sample.
Just because someone has arrived at the shore of success, does not mean that they arrived there without a mighty price to be paid.
We come to another man name Joseph. Our first initial glance at Joseph, we walk away thinking -- This boy has it all. He has been born with a silver spoon in his mouth.
• He is young
• He is blessed by the Lord
• His father favors him over his step brothers
• He gets a coat lined with colors
• The texts suggest he doesn’t have to work as hard like his brothers.
Like so many others, we see just the layer of a person. We see the façade. If we could pull back the curtain and view the entire picture we would walk away with another point of view.
Joseph is thrown into the pit:
Because his brothers hated him, Joseph ended up thrown into a pit, by his brothers. Joseph’s brothers had actually planned to kill him.
When Reuben (one of the brothers) heard this, he tried to rescue Joseph from their hands. “Let’s not take his life,” he said. “Don’t shed any blood. Throw him into this cistern here in the wilderness, but don’t lay a hand on him
So Joseph’s brothers stripped him of his robe and — and they took him and threw him into the pit..
Joseph is sold into slavery
As the brothers sat down to eat their meal, they looked up and saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming Their camels were loaded with spices, balm and myrrh, and they were on their way to take them down to Egypt.
Judah said to his brothers, “What will we gain if we kill our brother and cover up his blood? Lets let’s sell him to the Ishmaelites His brothers agreed.
So his brothers pulled Joseph up out of the pit and sold him for twenty shekel of silver to the Ishmaelites, who took him to Egypt.
Then Joesph’s brothers took Joseph’s robe, slaughtered a goat and dipped the robe in the blood. They took the robe back to their father and said, “We found this. Examine it to see whether it is your son’s robe.”
The father recognized it and said, “It is my son’s robe! Some ferocious animal has devoured him. Joseph has surely been torn to pieces.”
Then Jacob tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and mourned for his son many days. All his sons and daughters came to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted. “No,” he said, “I will continue to mourn until I join my son in the grave.” So his father wept for him.
The brothers are lying about what happen to Joseph. They are comforting their dad knowing Good well that Joseph is not dead. That is lo-down.
Joseph goes from his fathers house were he is higly favored.
He wears a garment showing he is set aside as special
He receives dreams from God letting him know he is given a destiny from the creator of the universe.
There are times in our lives when we experience those mountain top experiences.
• You graduate from college
• You get that job you always wanted
• You marry that girl or guy you are in love with.
• You have that child that you prayed about
• Your child gives their life to Christ
• You get that dream house that is now your reality
Then there are times in life when we experience the valleys.
• You were laid off work
• Your house is in forclosure
• You get that dreaded call in the middle of the night rushing one of your kids to the hospital.
• The test results come back positive.
Most of our lifes is spent dealing with the day to day ordinary routine things of life.
• Going to work, paying the bills, meetings to attend, obligations to meet, groceries to buy, family to visit.
It is when we are thrown into the pit, sold as a slave and shoved in the slammer that you not only must digger deeper but look higher On occasion the world bottoms out.
In Genesis 39 - we find Joseph is led down to Egypt.
• But (of course) Joseph wasn’t there as a tourist but as a slave
• He had been stripped from his home and his friends
• Dragged across the desert to a land that he’d never known
• He is surrounded by a strange people who spoke in a language he couldn’t understand.
• He’s the lowest form of life in the nation of Egypt.
• He has nothing… he owns nothing… he IS nothing.
Just like all the other slaves of that day he has no rights, no status, no value.
Have you ever felt down. Down on your luck. Down two you last few bucks, down to your one and only decision. Down on your life?
BUT, Joe held onto one thing that determined his destiny. God gave him his dreams.
• He had a God who cared for him. “The LORD was with Joseph”
Gen. 39:2, 2 The LORD was with Joseph so that he prospered,
Gen. 39:3, When his master saw that the LORD was with him and that the LORD gave him success in everything he did
Gen. 39:5, The LORD blessed the household of the Egyptian because of Joseph
Gen. 39: 21, But while Joseph was there in the prison, 21 the LORD was with him; he showed him kindness and granted him favor in the eyes of the prison warden.
Gen. 39: 23 the LORD was with Joseph and gave him success in whatever he did.
Joseph’s life is a case study in the faithfulness of God’s promises, because God has made us the same promise: “I will never leave you or forsake you.” (Hebrews 13:5).
One of my favorite passages in the Old Testament says this: “…the eyes of the LORD range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him...” 2 Chronicles 16:9.
Psalm 34:15 assures us that: “The eyes of the LORD are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their cry”
Romans 8:28 declares: “…we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”
Whether Joe was in slavery or in the slammer, God was looking out for him. All thing work together for our good. Not all things are good but all things work together for our good.
My grandmother made biscuits from scratch. She used butter milk, butter, salt pepper flour and end and of it none of those ingredients are good but when she worked them together, they were the best biscuits in town.
But why allow Joseph to REMAIN a slave and incarcerated in a prison?
Have you ever looked at Hebrews 11 and 12 lately. There is not a man or women of God worth their salt that did not face the fury of evil and have do make decisions about lives challenges. “There’s something suspect about a faith that has never been tested.
• An army going through basic training is not ready for battle. Not until soldiers have faced the battle,
• A ship cannot prove that it has been built sturdy enough for the storms of the ocean as long as it stays in a dry dock
Joseph was in the will of God and destined for great things.
God had given Joseph 2 dreams that promised him his life would be a life of honor.
But when the dreams were given – Joseph was only 17 years old.
God had plans for Joseph to be a major Leader in Eygpt.
However Joe had to be refined.
• He wasn’t old enough to have the character or the experience necessary to accomplish the things God wanted him to do.
• God allowed some tough grueling situations to shape Joseph’s character. God knows the objective He wishes to obtain.
• All that matters is we may not always understand the circumstances but God can use the turmoil we find ourselves in and make all things work together for His Glory and Our good.
ILLUS: One man told of watching an experienced gardener transplant some flowers. He watched in amazement as the man took the flowers out of their pots and shook them roughly. HE thought this man was surely destroying the flowers.
When he asked the gardener why he handled the flowers that way, he explained:
“The flowers that came here have roots that are cramped in those little pots. What I do is loosen the soil and give the roots a chance to breathe and stretch.”
Essentially, that’s what God did with Joseph:
He was shaking Joseph down to his very roots, because he was going to replant him in a place where he could be used by God..
CLOSE: A woman’s Bible study was reading thru the book of Malachi, when they read this: "He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver." (3:3). This verse puzzled them and they wondered how this statement applied to the character and nature of God.
One of the women offered to find out more about the process of refining silver, & to get back to the group at their next Bible study.
She called up a silversmith and made an appointment to watch him while he worked.
She didn’t mention anything about the reason for her interest, beyond her curiosity about the process of refining silver.
As she watched the silversmith work, he held a piece of silver over the fire and let it heat up. He explained that in refining silver, one needed to hold the silver in the middle of the fire, where the flames were the hottest as to burn away all the impurities.
She asked the silversmith if it was true that he had to sit there in front of the fire the entire time the silver was being refined. The man answered – yes, not only did he have to sit there holding the silver, but he had to keep his eyes on it the entire time it was in the fire. If the silver was left even a moment too long in the flames, it would be destroyed.
The woman was silent for a moment. Then she asked the silversmith,
"But how do you know when the silver is fully refined?"
He smiled at her and answered, "Oh, that’s easy - when I see my image in it."
Dear brother, dear sister….You are in a difficult situation but be encouraged, you are being conformed to the image of Jesus Christ.
