You Have God's Attention

How many of you like attention? I don’t expect everyone to admit to that, but during self-examination be honest with yourself. There are some people who love to be the center of attention. They want to be seen and heard, and if no one is giving them the attention they’re seeking they become upset.

• Now I’m not talking about anyone at this church, but some people are purposely late to church just so that they can be seen as they walk to their seat. There are even some extreme cases where individuals have it real bad, who harm themselves in order to get someone’s attention.

The truth is that we all like some type or some degree of attention. As children we did all kinds of crazy dances, and made funny noises just to get the attention of our parents. We wanted them to see everything we did.

• Now some of you parents are being paid back, because now your children are doing the same thing to you and it always seem like they want your attention when your favorite television show is on, or when it five seconds left in the ball game and your favorite team is about to score.

• But parents just stand in front of the TV while your children are watching it and I bet you’ll get their attention.

In relationships, we desire attention from those we’re dating or married to and when the desire for attention isn’t met, you start pouting (that may be more true for women than men), but let me move on before I get myself in trouble.

• The reason why a lot of children and teenagers get in trouble at school is because attention is desired.

I personally, don’t believe that there is anything wrong with wanting attention as long as it isn’t taken overboard and as long as receiving that attention doesn’t get us into trouble, or shall I say into sin, which is self inflicted non-sense.

• I mean we all want to know that someone cares about us. We want to know that we are loved. We want to know that our voice is being heard and that our opinion matter.

When we’re sick, we want someone to come and see about us. When we’re lonely we want to hear from friends and loved ones. When we’re struggling in life, we want to know that someone is concerned and willing to give us a listening ear or a helping hand.

• And the desire for attention isn’t just something we experience in the physical world, but in our relationship with God, we want to know that we have His attention.

• We want to know that our Father is standing right beside us every step of the way. When we pray to God, we like to know that he has heard our prayer.

• When we fall on hard times and life seems unbearable, we want to know that God sees us in our distress.

And I’m not going to wait until the end of the sermon before I encourage you this morning; I want you to know that you have God’s attention. God does hear your prayers. God sees your pain. God is concerned and He cares about you.

• You’ve had God’s attention before the foundations of the earth were formed. You’ve had God’s attention before you were even conceived, before your parents were conceived, and their parents were conceived.

I’m also not going to wait until the end of the sermon before I take you to Calvary, because the fact and the evidence that we have God’s attention is found in the sacrificial gift of God’s only Son Jesus Christ, who died in our place just so that we may live, and if that isn’t God giving you attention, then I don’t know what is!

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In the biblical pericope, we find the Israelites crying out for God’s attention. They had been in slavery for nearly 400 years as was prophesied to Abraham by God in Genesis 15:13.

• But in order to understand the big picture of our text we need to go back to the story of Joseph, who was one of the 12 sons of Jacob, Jacob being the son of Isaac, and Isaac the promised son of Abraham.

• But Joseph was the son who Jacob loved more than his other children, and because of that and Joseph’s dreams that one day his older brothers would bow down to him, caused his brothers to envy him that originally resulted in a plot to murder Joseph, their own brother.

But Rueben, one of Joseph’s older brothers, pleaded with the rest of the brothers not to kill Joseph, but that they should allow him to return home. Partially ignoring that request, instead they threw Joseph in a pit.