We Need 50/20 Vision - Genesis 50 Series

Every one of us has past events that have the potential to rob us of vibrant life. Now I'm going to say that again. Every one of us has past events in our lives that have the potential to rob us of vitality in our lives. I'll just give you some examples. You can put in what you need for yourself. Let's take the person who was in a relationship and then the relationship went bad, and they got hurt in the relationship, and they now have a hard time taking the risk to get involved in another relationship. That’s an example of what I'm talking about. Or maybe someone got into an automobile accident in the past and now they have a hard time traveling in a car, in a plane, or something like that for fear or anxiety about that. Maybe you had a problem in your childhood where maybe you lived in an impoverished home and so every dollar was treasured and kept careful. So now you find yourself working hard to accumulate as much as you can, because you're afraid you'll find yourself in that poverty again. All I'm saying is that there are experiences that we had in our past that have the potential to rob us of our current vitality. Whatever you want to put in the blank, you can. It may be a health concern, a financial concern, a relational concern. It could be anything that hinders you from being able to move forward and enjoy life the way God designed for you.

We're going to see that in our passage today. We're going to see the brothers who have some stuff from the past that's preventing them from enjoying the present. It's not only the things that happened to you. Certainly it's the thing that happened to us in our past – things we do wrong, or things that we are exposed to, or whatever. But sometimes it's just watching the news. You watch the news too much… You know this. You watch the news too much it creates anxiety in you about where you're going and it robs you of your vitality in life. We always have to be careful about the input we're getting. So in all of these cases, we need a plan. We need to be able to deal with the challenges that we face as a result of past stuff that's in our lives. Because here's what happens. The past stuff forms these bricks that form a wall around us that we call our safe zone. And our safe zone starts to crowd in us so that we feel anxious going outside of that safe zone in our lives. But I want to tell you, personal growth is to be able to go into the anxiety part of your life with the Lord, knowing that there may be some risk involved there and allowing God to work in your life in the midst of that and good things happen. That's what happens when we are involved in personal growth in our lives.

Now today we're going to look at a story where we see a problem taking place in the lives of these guys that happened years ago, but it's still bothering them today, robbing them of their vitality. See, what happens is you have those stones. You know what the mortar is? It's our fears, our fears that we put around, the mortar that boxes us in and prevents us from expanding our lives. God has more for every one of us in our lives. He wants us to experience great things. He wants us to enjoy life. He wants us to meet the challenge. That doesn't mean everything is going to be great and rosy and perfect. But it means there's something there for us. And we have to go past the barriers that are there into that anxiety part with the Lord and so on and good things will happen.

There's seven things in the passage that I'm going to show you today that help these guys in our story address their concerns, and I think we need them. I need these things in my life and I know that you need them too. So let's go into the scriptures and see what God has to say.

Genesis 50. This is the story where Jacob has just passed away. Verse 1 says – Then Joseph fell on his father's face and wept over him and kissed him. And Joseph commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his father. So the physicians embalmed Israel. Forty days were required for it, for that is how many are required for embalming.

So Jacob’s body was taken care of in the culture of the Egyptians there. The morticians, they’re calling them physicians. These are the morticians that are working on his body in order to prepare him for burial. And then it says – And the Egyptians wept for him for seventy days. So there's this state funeral so to speak, or grieving that they've set aside. Seventy days it says.