When God Establishes You

SERMON: 2013-09-29--ac13109--when-god-establishes-you-part-2 SOURCE DURATION: 00:39:03.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.95 APPROVED: false REASON: The entire provided transcript constitutes a continuous sermon, starting with a review of scripture narrative and concluding with pastoral encouragement and affirmation. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: none ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: no ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: none Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- Well, last week we looked at three of five stages that the Lord takes Joseph through in his journey from being a 17-year-old youth at his father's right hand until he becomes governor of Egypt at the age of 30. Very quick review this morning just to make sure we're all on the same page. The story starts with a comment that Joseph is his father's favorite son. Genesis 37.3, "Now Israel," or Jacob, "loved Joseph more than any of his other sons." We know from the rest of the narrative that this one-sided love produced seriously dysfunctional family dynamics. But for Joseph, experiencing the father's love was an incredibly valuable thing because it established in his life the base of security, the base of self-identity that was critical to surviving the things that he was to go through in life. And as I mentioned last week, where that hasn't happened, where people have not felt they belonged or felt secure in love, typically what happens is they spend the rest of their life trying to prove they're okay. You can trace it through scripture from Cain to Ishmael to many others. Or currently, in the lives of people like Hitler and Chairman Mao and Stalin and other great dictators of our own generation, and you see what happens when Satan finds fertile ground on the principle of rejection. Joseph had none of that. He was secure in his father's love. Secondly, we saw that Joseph is a dreamer. Very early on in the story, we're told that he has two dreams in which the varying family members come and they bow to him as an indication of what is to come in the future. And we saw together that whatever God has destined for us is often present in our hearts in seed form. Sometimes it's by virtue of our birth and the circumstances thereof, and sometimes it is multiplied by the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit. But the large trees of life all begin with a tiny seed. Joseph was a dreamer, and because he was a dreamer, his brothers hated him. They hated him because they were jealous of his relationship with his father. They hated him because he flaunted his dreams. They hated him because he tackled on them, and so when the opportunity presented itself, they were fully determined to kill him. And it was only through Rubin's intervention that instead of being killed, he was thrown into a well, and it was through Judah's intervention that he was pulled up out of that well and sold to the Midianites or the Ishmaelites, the name is used interchangeably, and sold as a slave. And just for the fun of it, I got an email from Connie Lute last night showing me one of her more recent paintings of Joseph. Let's just put that up on the screen for a moment. There is Connie's painting based on an illustration by a Guido Bertello. The original we have set up in the foyer by the resource table, and you can see what a brilliant job Connie did painting that. I think you should give her a hand. Beautiful picture. So that's where we pick up the story this morning. Four things we want to note in the story of Joseph is that Joseph blooms where he is planted. And if you know how the story continues, you will know that these Midianite or Ishmaelite slave traders sell him in Egypt to a man called Potiphar. And Potiphar is described as a high official of Pharaoh, and he's further described as the captain of the guard. And that appears to mean that he is in charge of the king's prison. Some people speculate that he was also in charge of executions. He was a tough dude, but Joseph fared well. We don't know how long he was at Potiphar's house, and of course you can read the full story from Genesis 37 on towards the end of the book of Genesis. But we're told that things went pretty well until Mrs. Potiphar cast a wandering eye upon Joseph. Joseph, the Bible tells us, was good-looking, he was strong, he was capable, and so she wanted to go to bed with him. Joseph resisted the temptation repeatedly, finally fled from her. She grabbed his cloak, and then she yelled, "Bloody murder," or rather, "Rape." And you know, the old saying goes, "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned." She reported him to her husband. Her husband, of course, was extremely angry, and Joseph ends up in jail. We don't know how long he was at Potiphar's house. We don't know how long he was in jail. We do know that the two places combined amounted to 13 years. He was 17 years old when he was sold into slavery. He was 30 years old when he got elevated into the position of prime minister or governor over Egypt. But here's where the story gets really interesting because you'd think that a 17-year-old boy sold into slavery would be filled with rebellion, resistment, and resentment. Typically, slaves' spirit needs to be broken in order to submit themselves to being bossed around by their slave masters. But you read none of those things about Joseph. In fact, both at Potiphar's house and in prison, Joseph excels to such a degree that he rises in responsibility. Listen to these verses in Genesis 39, the verses 2, 3, and 4. The Lord was with Joseph, and he prospered, and he lived in the house of his Egyptian master. When his master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord gave him success in everything he did, Joseph found favor in his eyes and became his attendant. Potiphar put him in charge of his household, and he entrusted to his care everything he owned. You may remember that that was part of his argument over against Mrs. Potiphar. He could not sin against God not only, but he could not sin against his master, who had given him everything except his wife. Well, the same thing occurs a little bit later in jail. Listen again then to these verses 39, 20 to 23. While Joseph was there in prison, the Lord was with him. He showed him kindness and granted him favor in the eyes of the prison warden. So the warden put Joseph in charge of all those held in the prison, and he was made responsible for all that was done there. The warden paid no attention to anything under Joseph's care because the Lord was with Joseph and gave him success in whatever he did. Joseph thrived in prison under the most difficult of circumstances. And again, there is, I think, an important biblical principle here, and that principle is this, it is never the circumstances of life that need to define us. Rather what should define us is the favor of God, and the favor of God ought to come to expression in how we submit to his will. As I said, that's the genius of the story of Joseph. He could have complained, he could have tried to run away, he could have done all kinds of things, as most of us typically would do in that kind of situation, but he didn't. He applied himself to the situation, as he says much later to his brothers, "You meant it for evil, God meant it for good, he lived by faith, and he continued at the task that was at hand." Ziegler, motivational speaker, he likes to put it this way, he says, "It is your attitude, not your aptitude, that will determine your latitude." In other words, how well you do in life and how high you fly isn't simply determined by the circumstances of life, it is determined what you do with the circumstances that come your way. As the old saying goes, "When life hands you a lemon, what do you do? You make lemonade." Joseph knew how to honor God in the middle of all of that and use the circumstances of his life to develop the kind of character, the kind of gifting, the kind of ability that would one day prove to be necessary for being responsible for the food distribution in the entire Egyptian empire. Chances are you've heard the little fable of the two frogs who fell into a vat of cream. It's apocryphal to be sure, but it makes for a good little story. When the frogs fell into the cream, they, of course, panicked and desperately tried to get out, but try as they might, they couldn't, and after splashing around in the vat of cream for a period of time, the one frog said, "This is just hopeless, it's useless, I may as well quit." He quit swimming, sank to the bottom, and drowned. The other little frog said to himself, "Well, I don't know how to get out of here either, but I'm going to give it my best," and so he kept on paddling as furiously as he could for as long as he could, and guess what happened? The cream turned to butter, and as the cream turned to butter, he pulled himself loose, and he jumped out of the bucket. It's never the circumstances that define you, it is what you do with the circumstances in which you find yourself, and I believe it's a biblical principle that the higher God wants to raise you up in the kingdom, the more he wants to use you, the deeper will be the valleys that he requires you to go through, because as we all know, difficult as the valleys are, and I can testify to that personally over the years, difficult as the valleys are, the valleys are crucial for shaping us with the skills that we need for whatever position it is that God has in store for us. It's in the valley that our character is tested. It's in the valley where you discover the difference between faith and wishful thinking. It's in the valley where you discover the difference between believing things intellectually with your head and being able to trust God deeply with your heart. It's in the valley where your motivation is laid bare, where you discover how much of what you do in life is all about you as opposed to the purposes of God, even when on the mountain top you think you're doing it all for God, isn't that true? It's in the valleys, it's in the valleys where you learn the discipline that is necessary to walk it out faithfully with God. How many of us know the world is filled with people who will follow God enthusiastically when God blesses them and it feels good and it's all going their way? But how many, when the road gets rough, when the journey is difficult, when their dreams fail, when it looks like God has abandoned them, how many will walk it out step by step in faithfulness to God simply because God is God? I've told you this story before. One of the most defining moments of my spiritual life was when I went very early in my Christian experience through what the saints of old will call the dark night of the soul. It was the place where God's presence was totally gone. It was the place where scripture left me cold. It was the place when becoming a preacher was the very last thing that I wanted to do. It was a place that I wouldn't wish on my biggest enemy. It was a place where I felt utterly abandoned. And I'll never forget the revelation that I had one day when I was just feeling so badly that I wished the earth would just open up and swallow me whole, that suddenly it dawned upon me that what God was after in my life was an ability to love him and to serve him whether or not I got anything out of it at all. And I remember what a revelation that was because up until then, see, I was at the mercy of my spiritual moods. When I felt good, I had no difficulty praising God or bearing witness to his truth or doing what he wanted me to do. But when I felt badly, when serving God cost me and cost me dearly as it has over the years, I wanted to throw in the towel and I wanted to say, "Well, this is not what I bargained for." Having put my hand to the plow, I was looking backward like Israel in Egypt was longing for the cucumbers and the leeks and the onions of Egypt. Anybody here identify with that? There are moments when things are tough. Those are the valleys. And in those valleys, you've got to make a decision. Am I serving God because of what I get out of it or am I serving God because he is worthy? It's in prison. It's in the pit that you discover that God is God no matter how you feel. He is worthy of our allegiance and he is worthy of our obedience. That is the test of maturity. The test of maturity is not how loudly you can sing praise songs when you're feeling good. The test of your maturity is when you can bend the head with Job and say, "The Lord gives. The Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord." That's faith. And it's only Jesus who can give that and you discover it in the valley. And prison is the place where you develop the skills that are needed to do the job that God is calling you to do. And the story is told of President Reagan. He was known in his presidency as the Great Communicator. And many people thought he was the Great Communicator because he had been a great actor before and it's true he had made hundreds of films. And for a good many years, his life was like having a silver spoon in his mouth. He was a popular actor. He was married to one of the most beautiful actresses in Hollywood, a woman who had been chosen as Actress of the Year. And things were sailing along smoothly until just in the aftermath of World War II. And his life and his career went south almost overnight. He lost his movie contract for a number of reasons. His wife divorced him. He had to give up his acting except for small bit television parts and he became instead a spokesman for General Electric. And what a drop down it was from up here to down here. But as one of his biographers, Peggy Noonan, observes, good as his experience was in acting, the thing that ultimately made him a great communicator was serving as spokesman for General Electric because as he traveled all across America, he had an opportunity to hear firsthand what people's concerns were. He had an opportunity to learn firsthand what people were looking for and he was able to rub shoulders with the average American. He was able to refine his own political views so that by the time he got nominated into the presidency, he had acquired a set of skills that he could have never learned if his life had gone as smoothly as he or we might have liked. It's never the circumstances that define us. It is the discipline of the Lord that we need to submit to it. Proverbs 3 quoted in Hebrews 12 puts it this way, "My son do not despise the Lord's discipline and do not resent his rebuke because the Lord disciplines those he loves. As a father, the son, he delights in." And that was the story of Joseph. He learned to bloom where he was planted. Point number five, fifth stage of Joseph's life is that God in the fullness of time makes his dreams come true. Again if you know the rest of the story, you will know that as he is languishing in prison, he is joined by two high ranking government officials. He is joined by the king's chief cup bearer, Butler in older translations, and also the king's chief baker. There is some speculation that an attempt had been made on Pharaoh's life and the suspicion had fallen on these two men and they join him in the king's prison under the supervision of Potiphar. And as the story goes on, and dreams of course as you know play a large role in the story of Joseph, I talk about that in quite some detail in my book, but as the story goes on, both the cup bearer and the baker have dreams. And they both dream similar dreams. The cup bearer dreams about seeing three branches of grapes on a vine and he picks the grapes off and he presses them out, puts them in a cup, and he gives it to the Pharaoh. And the baker similarly has a dream where he has a basket on his head with bread in it and the birds of the air come and they steal the bread and they turn to Joseph who gives the interpretation and as you know Joseph says to the cup bearer, "Listen, the dream means that in three days Pharaoh is going to set you free and he's going to restore you to your position." And to the baker he says, "Your dream means you're also going to be set free. Your head is also going to be lifted up but not in the way that you would like because it's going to get cut off or you're going to die." And of course that's precisely what happens and the importance of that story among other things is that Joseph then makes a plea for his own freedom with the cup bearer. Here is what he says in Genesis 14 and 15, "But when all goes well with you, remember me and show me kindness. Mention me to Pharaoh and get me out of this prison for I was forcibly carried off from the land of the Hebrews and even here I have done nothing to deserve being put in a dungeon." And the chapter ends sadly with these words, "The chief cup bearer, however, did not remember Joseph. He forgot him." And the next chapter goes on to point out that another full two years go by before Joseph gets delivered from jail. And I've often thought that for all the stuff Joseph went through, those two years must have been the hardest of all. Because as the book of Proverbs says, "Hope deferred does what? It makes the heart sick." And to see light at the end of the tunnel and then to discover that it's a train coming your way and not the way out is the most debilitating of all experiences that you can go through. Joseph was stuck in prison. But remember God is sovereign and God has arranged this whole deal not only for Joseph's well-being but for the well-being of God's own people. And so, wouldn't you know it, two years hence, now who has the dream? Pharaoh, do you remember the dream? He has two of them. In the first dream, he has this dream of seven fat cows being swallowed up by seven lean cows and then he falls asleep again and this time seven fat heads of grain swallowed up by seven scrawny heads of grain. And he's troubled by it because he knows this isn't just the average ordinary dream. So what does he do? He calls in his magicians and in his wise men and none of them can give the interpretation and the story is a very close parallel, interestingly enough, to what happens with Daniel and King Nebuchadnezzar in case you haven't caught it. And so, that is finally what jars the cupbearer's memory. And I love the way that he puts it in 41.9. He says, "Today I am reminded of my shortcomings." Duh. He finally clues in, gets past his own stuff and remembers Joseph. And so, to make a long story short, they haul Joseph out of prison. They shave him. They wash him. They put new clothes on him. He gets ushered into Pharaoh's presence and, of course, he's able to interpret Pharaoh's dream when he says there's going to be seven years of great abundance. And then there's going to be seven years of great famine. And not only does he give the interpretation, but being the strategic thinker that he is, he now goes out of his way to give Pharaoh advice. He says what you need to do is you need to appoint somebody who can manage the good seven years so that they will supply the seven lean years. And of course, Pharaoh is so impressed by this time, recognizing the presence of God in Joseph's life that he says, "Who better than you?" And so, overnight practically, you have Joseph going from the dungeon to the throne. He gets placed into a position of being second in command over all of Egypt, supervising the food distribution for the next 14 years. Amazing story. And of course the principle is very clear, the principle is this, it is God who establishes us. As we've said many times now, when we know our authority in Christ and we faithfully start exercising our authority in Christ, being faithful over the little, God himself will place us over much. It is God who establishes us, Scripture says it this way, 2 Corinthians 1, 21, it is God who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us. And in the words of our text, Psalm 75, 6, 7, not from the east, not from the west, and not from the wilderness comes lifting up, but it is God who executes judgment, putting down one and lifting up another. And that, as you know, is the whole message of Scripture. The whole message of Scripture, as we've said many times before now, is that we were created to have dominion, we lost our dominion on account of sin. In Christ, God comes and restores us so that as death reigned through one man, we now reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. And the challenge for all people since that time has been the question, how do I rise above my circumstances? And the world says, you do it by violence, you do it by your own strength, you do it by your own wisdom, you do it by manipulation, you do it by whatever means you have to do in order to rise to the top. And God says when all has been said and done, that's never going to work. It happens in submission to God through faith in Jesus by faithfully exercising what it is that he calls us to, and then it is God who gives recognition to the powers around us so that we get elevated to where God has wanted us to be. That's the story of Jesus, who for the joy that was said before him despised, suffering and shame, and today is seated at the right hand of God in glory. And that, you see, is also how Paul got established, you will recall. For many years after his conversion, he quietly sought out God. The Bible tells us he spent three years in the Arabian desert. And then when he moved to his hometown of Tarsus, he faithfully sought to be about the business of the kingdom until Barnabas took note and Barnabas invited him down. And being second in command to Barnabas, he ministered in the church in Antioch for many, many years until God called both of them into their missionary journey and allowing Barnabas to lead him. They went to Cyprus and all the stories that we've talked about in recent weeks. And there in his power encounter with Elimus, God establishes his credibility. God establishes his authority. And from that point on, as I pointed out in recent weeks, Paul is listed as the lead apostle. Because you see, it's not from east. It's not from west. It's not from the wilderness. It's not from the desert that lifting up comes. It comes from God himself. And I don't know where you find yourself this morning in reference to these stories or even in reference to the journeys that we've gone through as a church community. Maybe you're the kind of person who was here this morning and you have had a solid foundation in your life. You knew what parental love was. This came easily to you in life. You know the reality of God's love and you're just solid as solid can be. And in fact, oftentimes when you hear other people talking about their struggles and talking about their difficulties, there's part of you that just doesn't really get it. And you want to tell them, just pull yourself up by your bootstraps, make something out of yourself, and you're missing their heart and you're missing their lives. As you see, not everybody has the advantages that you've had in life. And if you had those kind of advantages, that's not a bad thing, that's a good thing. It stands you in good stead, but what it calls you to is to share your resources with those who don't have it. And the chances are you might have to go through some valleys in life to get rid of any snootiness that has been written on your heart and to understand the pain of some other people. But maybe you're the kind of person who's here and you've not born with a silver spoon in your mouth. You haven't had a good relationship with your parents. You haven't sensed their approval, you haven't sensed their love, and you've looked every whichever direction to try to make life come together, and you've struggled and you've striven and you've climbed and you've pushed and you've clawed and you're just exhausted because life has been hard. And God says to you, "Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. My yoke is easy, my burden is light." It's not by our works of righteousness that we win the approval of God or the approval of the world around us. It is by God's favor and God's presence undeserved through the person of Jesus Christ. And maybe you're here this morning and the Lord has started to bring you to life and you've begun to hope and you've begun to dream and you've made a decision to start to live. And all hell has broken loose. And everything inside you says, "Whoa, I can't do this. I can't open up my heart because people trump on it all the time. I can't step out with my gifts because I couldn't bear the criticism. I can't handle the rejection. I can't possibly live in this real world because the world is too painful and it is too difficult. I want to curl up into a little ball and disappear. Believe you, me, I understand what that feels like." But the promise is Jesus says, "I will be with you always, even to the end of the age. And even if the whole world turns against you in those places, even if everybody wants to define you, and even if everybody wants to kill you, as sometimes is the issue, you know they cannot get any closer than God allows them to get to you." Remember Joseph, he said, "You meant it for real, but God meant it for good." And in the middle of all of that pain, God is calling you forth and he is refining you and me and he is refining our character and he is building us to make us strong in faith so that when the time comes for God to fulfill his purposes in your life and in my life, God will enable us to do it because he has established us and he has made us strong. He has made us strong because it's not God's interest to destroy us in the fire. It's not God's interest to squash us so that we can breathe or live. God's interest is to refine us with a faith that is purer than pure gold so that when he says go, we can go and when he says woe, we can go, we can woe and he can demonstrate his love and his power through us and in us in the world. And I'll tell you prophetically that in the Lord, I believe as a church community, our best years are still to come. I think what God has taken us through collectively, many of us individually, has not simply been to destroy or to harm or to make life miserable. It is to refine us and to grow us up so that we can lay hold of the commission that he has for us. And as we draw near to our 60th, as we look forward to whatever it is that God has in store for us as a community, I invite you to put your shoulder to the wheel. Let God do in your life what he needs to do because he has said I will be with you always even to the end of the age and collectively together with God's power and God's grace. We can reach the lost. We can see the broken healed. We can see the saints equipped and we can see the workers released into the harvest. And one day when we stand before God on that final day when he hands out the rewards for all eternity, you know what we're going to hear? We're going to hear the words, "Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over little and I will put you over much and nobody will remember the crap we have gone through in order to get there for the glory of God." Amen. 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