From Adam to Malachi Sermon 7
7. JOSEPH- LET DOWN AND LIFTED UP
For two long days and nights the eyes and prayers of America turned toward Midland, Texas, where little Jessica McClure lay deep in a well. More than 2,500 years ago, around 1700 B.C., another person found himself deep in a well. He was Joseph, the eleventh son of Jacob, the son of Rebecca. And he was not in that well by accident. His ten brothers, deaf to his cries for mercy (42:21), had thrown him in there to die.
Why this cruelty? It was partly Jacob's fault (37:3).
The Bible says he loved Joseph more than the others. He also gave Joseph a special kind of coat. It could have been multicolored (KJV); or extremely long (most commentators); or highly decorated (NIV). Whatever it was, it set Joseph apart from and above his brothers. The brothers' hatred was also partly Joseph's fault. He was a "tattle-tale” (37:2) who brought Jacob a "bad report” about his brothers. Joseph also had dreams of the day his brothers and others would bow down to him, and he told his brothers about it. All this fueled the fires of hatred in their hearts (37:1-11).
When mankind fell into sin, two disastrous results followed; Depravity and Suffering. Joseph met both head on and his life reveals how our wonderful, powerful God can take even these and use them for our good, for other's good and for the good of the kingdom.
Twenty years later, when Joseph met his would-be murderers, he saw the hand of God in his life. He said,
"...do not he distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here. It was God who sent me ahead of you to save lives. You did not send me here, God did.” (45:5,8)."
Joseph was let down - by his brothers, by Potiphar's wife, and by the butler. But all the while God was lifting him up and carrying out His purposes.
He was building character into the soul of Joseph, through suffering. He would later save His people from drought.
And He was getting the people of Israel into Egypt so He could grow His nation that would give us Jesus. We see the invisible hand of PROVIDENCE.
When we think God has left us, He is behind the scenes working. God was in Jacobs' future preparing it for him and he was in Jacob preparing him to his future. He will do this for you and me.
I. LET DOWN - ADVERSITY (Gen. 37-40)
1. Cruelty (Gen. 37).
In the first sin outside the Garden of Eden, Cain killed his brother for no reason. Joseph's brothers showed extreme cruelty. They planned to kill their 17 -year-old-brother for being a spoiled bratt. They threw him into a deep well to die. They showed their hatred towards their father for petting him by not telling him Joseph was dead, they soaked his clothes in blood to show him. Years later they remembered his cries for mercy. The old man's heart was broken and nothing could comfort him.
(1) We try to put what we do out of our minds, but our God-given conscience will not let us. Paul says our own conscience will witness against us at the Judgment (Romans 2)
(2) Once sin takes hold of us, it carries us to depths of cruelty, we never dreamed we would do. If you told David he was going to commit adultery with the wife of his soldiers and have that soldier killed to hide it, he would kill you on the spot for suggesting such a thing.
2. Cowardice
Reuben did not want any part in this, he left and planned to come back and rescue him. But his brothers saw a way to make money out of Joseph. A caravan came by and the sold him into the "living hell of slavery".
- We need to stand up for the right, when we know a thing is wrong. If we wait, we might never get the chance.
3. Commitment Facing Trying Times
Wherever Joseph found himself, he saw it as a time and place to remain faithful. He "brightened the corner where he was." God was behind the scenes and let a good man, Potiphar, to buy him. He treated him well, Joseph worked hard and rose to be his chief servant.
Joseph was bound in a situation he could not escape. We are all bound in some way. We want to be a cheerleader but don't have the looks. We want to star in athletics, but we can't walk and chew chewing gum at the same time. . The list is endless.
Running all through the twists and turns of life are brick walls that block us. And how we handle them determines both our happiness and our usefulness. If we whine, we come up losers. The loser dwells on his problems, the winner dwells on his challenges. The loser whines - the winner shines.
Helen Keller, handicapped beyond measure, said of her limitations, "I resolved that they should not crush or dwarf my soul, but rather be made to blossom. . .
4. Commitment Facing Temptation (39:6B-23).
Joseph had the urges of any young, handsome (35:6) man, and Potiphar's wife tried to seduce him. He refused instantly and when she grabbed his coat he ran out the door with his drawers on. "Hell has no fury like a woman scorned" so she told her husband Joseph tried to rape her. He knew it was a lie. If he thought it was true, he would have had him killed, but instead he put him in prison.
Listen to how he refused this woman. He said, "how could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?” Joseph had made his choice who to follow, long before that woman targeted him. Strength to face temptation comes from deciding before the temptation.
Daniel "purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself" with Babylon's 'bad ways, before he got to Babylon. (Daniel 1)
The time for a girl to decide on staying pure, is not when she is in the car with the football captain in a parked car. It is before she gets in the car. One evangelist said, "Put a Bible on the seat between you" and added, "its hard for that boy to cross Matther, Mark, Luke and John." "Forewarned is forearmed."
4. Commitment Under Discouragement
Joseph, in prison, had every right to believe God had left him and left no forwarding address. But he didn't. He kept on doing what was right, what he knew God wanted. He rose to the highest place among the prisoners, the one in charge.
God won't let us down, but people will. Now in his thirties, the king's butler and baker, who had been put in prison by the king, asked him to interpret their dreams. He told the baker it meant he would be put to death in three days. And he told the butler he would be reinstated in three days. As he left to face the king, he begged the butler to speak to the king about how he had done nothing to be in prisons for. The Butler forgot his pleas for mercy. And two years went by. (40: 23-41:1)
The most dangerous time in the journey of the soul is when, after doing what is right, we suffer for it, and God does not seem to care.
Never is faith more fragile than when God does not answer our prayers for deliverance from undeserved pain.
For two long years the Bible tells us nothing about Joseph, but I believe his prison cell was a Gethsemane, where, like Our Lord he wrestled with God.
And you find God's delays all through the Bible. Abraham's arm is raised over Isaac before God stops him. The disciples rowed all night before Jesus came to them in the storm. The Israelites stay in Egypt for four centuries before God delivers them.
Yes, in that lonely cell it seems that both God and man had let Joseph down. In his next thirteen years, I believe, he was crushed by his loneliness, feeling cut off from man and God.
God delays His deliverances to lead us to the deeper levels of prayer where we learn more about who God is and who we are before Him. It lets us know we don't have a "You scratch my back and I'll scratch Yours" relationship with God.
Helmut Theilicke says, "God always want to know if what the most is God's hand or the COIN in His hand."
The three Hebrew men, threatened to be throne into a blazing furnace, told the king, 'Our God id able to deliver us, but EVEN IF HE DOESN'T, we are not going to bow down."
II. LIFTED UP - PROSPERITY (Gen. 41-49)
1. Political Prosperity (Ch. 41)
God takes His time and sometimes it drives us crazy. We want instant oatmeal and instant answers to our prayers. But God's time always comes, in God's timing, which is never wrong. Joseph interpreted Pharoah's dream, predicted seven good years of harvest, followed by seven years of drought and famine. He suggested a plan to keep the people fed, and Pharoah elevated him to a position second only to him. God's promises to him when he was a boy came true.
During the seven good years Joseph married an Egyptian girl and had two sons. He named the first Manasseh "making to forget” and the second Ephriam "making fruitful.” This was because God made him forget his troubles and made him fruitful in "the land of affliction."
Waiting on God we need to firmly hold on to two things: our FAITH in God and our FAITHFULNES to God. That takes patience only God's Spirit can give us. Remember:
Often the goal is nearer than
It seems to a faint and struggling man
And many the joys of victory would know
Had they stuck it out with one more blow.
2. Spiritual Prosperity (Ch. 42-45)
There is a long story about how Joseph treated his cruel brothers when in the draught, they came to him for grain, without recognizing him. Here was Joseph's chance to get even. With the power of life and death he could give them misery as they had given it to him. But, like his Lord, after him, all he wanted to give was love.
But Joseph, also like his Lord, gave it along the lines of righteousness to get them to face what they had done and deal with it. Finally, when they had been through enough, and the work of remorse and repentance was done; he revealed himself to them with sobs that went all through the streets of town. Jacob came to live in Egypt with all his sons and their families.
Joseph had them bring the whole family to live in Egypt. In the next 400 years they grew and numbered three million people. God delivered them from Egypt, made them His nation at Sinai, gave them His laws and a sacrificial system to use when they broke those laws; gave them His presence in the Tabernacle and used them to give Jesus to you and me.
. The Book of Genesis ends with the words, “. . . and he (Joseph when he died) was put in a coffin in Egypt” (50:26). But that coffin was not there to stay. God's people, like Joseph, were let down into bondage. But they were let down to be lifted up by the mighty hand of God in the Exodus under Moses.
The day came when that coffin was lifted up and carried to Canaan (Ex. 13:19) and when, under Joshua, it was buried in Canaan (Josh. 24:32). That coffin in Egypt was a constant, holy reminder for 400 that God can be trusted to keep His word and our duty is to stay faithful until we die
My life is but a weaving between my Lord and me;
I cannot choose the colors; He worketh steadily.
Sometimes He weaves sorrow, and I in foolish pride
Forgot He sees the upper, And I, the lower side.
Not till the loom is silent and the shuttles cease to fly,
Shall God unroll the canvas and explain tile reason why.
The dark threads are as needful in the Weaver's skillful hand
And the threads of gold and silver in the pattern He has planned.
Are the threads of your life all tangled?
Have the plans that you dreamed gone astray,
Do the bright tones clash with each other,
And the dark ones cloud most of the way?
Remember the Master Weaver can straighten the tangled strands,
And weave anew the pattern if you place the threads in His hands.”
-- Author Unknown
