THE FACTS OF LIFE
Text: Genesis 50:20 / Romans 8:28
INTRODUCTION
TEXT: Genesis 50:20 And as for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present results to preserve many people alive.
Romans 8:28 And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.
ILLUSTRATION: (Sayings we hear about life in general)
This too shall pass and sometimes it passes into something worse
Life is hard....and then you die
Flip Wilson - “If I had my whole life to live over again, I don’t think I’d have the strength."
ILLUSTRATION: Handley C. G. Moule
There is no situation so chaotic that God cannot from that situation, create something that is surpassingly good. He did it at the creation. He did it at the cross. He is doing it today.
TRANSITION: First of all, we know that Joseph had a PROMISE
I. PROMISE
Joseph was 17 years old when the promise began
Genesis 37:5-7 And he said to them, “Please listen to this dream which I have had; for behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and lo, my sheaf rose up and also stood erect and behold, your sheaves gathered around and bowed down to my sheaf.
Genesis 37:9-10 Now he had still another dream and related it to his brothers and said, “Lo, I have had still another dream; and behold the sun and the moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me. And he related it to his father and to his brothers, and his father rebuked him and said to him, “What is this dream that you have had? Shall I and your mother and your brothers actually come to bow ourselves down before you to the ground?”
A. What is Your Promise?
Family Saved
New Job
Ministry
Deliverance from Present Situation
B. Promise is A Long Time Coming
Fades into distant memory
TRANSITION: Joseph had 5 “P”’s in his life. Right on the heels of his PROMISE he almost immediately was plummeted into a harsh dose of reality when he found himself in a PIT.
II. PIT
Genesis 37:23-25 So it came about, when Joseph reached his brothers that they stripped Joseph of his tunic, the varicolored tunic that was on him; and they took him and threw him into the pit. Now the pit was empty, without any water in it. Then they sat down to eat a meal. And as they raise their eyes and looked, behold, a caravan of Ismaelites was coming from Gilead with their camels bearing aromatic gum and balm and myrrh on their way to bring them down to Egypt.
A. Pit Experiences Affect Our Pride
ILLUSTRATION: (Quote found on the Internet)
“God uses broken things. It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give bread, broken bread to give strength. It is the broken alabaster box that gives forth perfume... it is Peter, weeping bitterly, who returns to greater power than ever.”
B. Sometimes Our Deepest Pit Experiences Come From Those Who are the Closest to Us
TRANSITION: Joseph had a PROMISE which brought him nothing but a PIT and if that wasn’t bad enough, next he had to deal with POTIPHAR.
II. POTIPHAR
Genesis 39:1-3 Now Joseph had been taken down to Egypt; and Potiphar, an Egyptian officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the bodyguard, bought him from the Ismaelites, who had taken him down there. And the Lord was with Joseph, so he became a successful man. And he was in the house of his master, the Egyptian. Now his master saw that the Lord was with him and how the Lord caused all that he had to prosper in his hand.
A. Potiphar Tested Joseph’s INTEGRITY
ILLUSTRATION: Once there was a man named Jim who let his dog out to do its business late one night.
He watched some TV and then remembered to let the dog back in. When he opened the door, he was shocked at what he saw! In his dog’s mouth was his neighbor’s cat, dead!
"Bad dog! BAD DOG!" said the panicked man.
He took the cat away and looked at it. He couldn’t bring himself to tell his neighbor what happened, so he decided to clean it up and leave it on the neighbor’s porch.
He took the cat into the bathroom and washed off all the blood and dirt. It took him forever. He had to wash it four times to get it all cleaned. He brushed its beautiful white fur as he blow-dried it and put its collar back on. Since it was so dark, he snuck into the neighbor’s yard and laid the cat down on the porch, in front of the door.
The next day, he saw his neighbor. "Hi," the neighbor said. "Hi," replied Jim, nervously. His neighbor said, "Something weird happened last night."
"Oh yeah? What’s that?" asked Jim, sweating now. "Well, my cat died yesterday, and we buried him, and this morning he was lying on my front porch!"
QUOTATION: Dwight L. Moody
Character is what you are in the dark.
B. Before God Can Entrust Us with the PROMISE, He has to Show Us What We are Made Of
ILLUSTRATION: Abraham Lincoln
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
C. We have to Know We Can Handle the Promise
TRANSITION: In those PIT experiences, we come face to face with the monster of pride in our lives. Some people never make it out of the pit. Their entire lives are spend dealing with PRIDE. Joseph got out of the PIT only to fall headlong into his next test with POTIPHAR where he was tested to see what kind of a man he truly was. Would his integrity stand up under the promise? But God wasn’t finished with Joseph yet, he still had one more area to reckon with and so soon as POTIPHAR, he found himself confined in PRISON!
IV. PRISON
Genesis 39:7-8 And it came about after these events that his master’s wife looked with desire at Joseph, and she said, “Lie with me.” But he refused and said to his master’s wife. “Behold, with me here, my master does not concern himself with anything in the house, and he has put all that he owns in my charge. There is no one greater in this house than I and he has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do this great evil, and sin against God?”
Genesis 39:40 Then she spoke to him with these words, “The Hebrew slave, whom you brought to us, came in to me ato make sport of me, and it happened as I raised my voice and screamed that he left his garment beside me and fled outside.” Now it came about when his master heard the words of his wife, which she spoke to him, saying, “This is what your slave did to me,” that his anger burned. So Joseph’s master took him and put him into the jail, the place where the king’s prisoners were confined and he was there in the jail.
A. The Prison Tested Joseph’s Steadfastness
B. What You Consider to Be the Best Way Out, May Not Be God’s Best
Genesis 39:20-23 Then it came about on the 3rd day which was Pharaoh’s birthday, that he made a feast for all of his servants, and he lifted up the head of the chief cupbearer and the head of the chief baker among his servants. And he restored the chief cupbearer to his office, and he put the cup into Pharaoh’s hand; but he hanged the chief baker, just as Joseph had interpreted to them. Yet the chief cupbearer did not remember Joseph but forgot him.
C. You Must Be Steadfast to Inherit God’s Promise!
TRANSITION: Joseph heard God’s PROMISE but it first had to take him to the PIT (Pride had to be dealt with), then he fell into the hands of
POTIPHAR (in order for God to effectively use us, we must strive to become men and women of Integrity). The PRISON became his next testing ground and Joseph was found steadfast even there and was ready for his final promotion, and that was to the PALACE.
V. PALACE
Genesis 41:38-43 Then Pharaoh said to his servants, “Can we find a man, like this, in whom is a divine spirit?” So Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Since God has informed you of all this, there is no one so discerning and wise as you are. You shall be over my house and according to your command all my people shall do homage, only in the throne I will be greater than you.” And Pharaoh said to Joseph, “See, I have set you over all the land of Egypt.” Then Pharaoh took off his signet ring from his hand, and put it on Joseph’s hand, and clothed him in garments of fine linen, and put the gold necklace around his neck. And he had him ride in his second chariot and they proclaimed before him, “Bow the knee!” And he set him over all the land of Egypt.
QUOTATION: William Barclay
There are two great days in a person’s life -- the day we are born and the day we discover why.
CONCLUSION
QUOTATION: Frank Peretti, “The Wounded Spirit”
God does not waste an ounce of our pain or a drop of our tears; suffering doesn’t come our way for no reason, and He seems especially efficient at using what we endure to mold our character. If we are malleable, He takes our bumps and bruises and shapes them into something beautiful.”
We want to go from the PROMISE to the PALACE, but like Joseph, there are 3 steps between. We can’t circumvent and be effective in God’s kingdom!
ILLUSTRATION:
John Maxwell, “Developing The Leader Within You”
A study of 300 highly successful people revealed that one-fourth had physical handicaps that by most standards would mark them as probably the least likely person to achieve much in their lives. Also, among that same 300 it was determined that three-fourths of them had either been born in poverty, came from broken homes, or at least came from exceedingly tense, disturbed situations.
Some of the world’s greatest men and women have been saddled with disabilities and adversities but have managed to overcome them.
Cripple him, and you have a Sir Walter Scott.
Lock him in a prison cell, and you have a John Bunyan.
Bury him in the snows of Valley Forge, and you have a George Washington.
Raise him in abject poverty, and you have an Abraham Lincoln.
Subject him to bitter religious prejudice, and you have a Benjamin Disraeli.
Strike him down with infantile paralysis, and he becomes a Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Burn him so severely in a schoolhouse fire that the doctors say he will never walk again, and you have a Glenn Cunningham, who set a world’s record in 1934 for running a mile in 4 minutes, 6.7 seconds.
Deafen a genius composer, and you have a Ludwig van Beethoven.
Have him or her born black in a society filled with racial discrimination, and you have a Booker T. Washington, a Harriet Tubman, a Marian Anderson, or a George Washington Carver.
Make him the first child to survive in a poor Italian family of eighteen children, and you have an Enrico Caruso.
Have him born of parents who survived a Nazi concentration camp, paralyze him from the waist down when he is four, and you have an incomparable concert violinist, Itzhak Perlman.
Call him a slow learner, "retarded," and write him off as uneducable, and you have an Albert Einstein.
