Sunday, October 16, 2016.
Welcome back to the story. Today we are in chapter 3, the story of Joseph. This is one of the amazing stories in the bible. Full of suspense, drama, tears, laughter and joy.
If you have your bible, or your book, we will be reading selected texts from Genesis - - first Genesis 37:1-4 and 50:15-21.
Before we start, shall we pray?
Now to the reading of God’s word:
Genesis 37:1-4
Now Jacob lived in the land where his father had sojourned, in the land of Canaan. These are the records of the generations of Jacob.
Joseph, when seventeen years of age, was pasturing the flock with his brothers while he was still a youth, along with the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah, his father’s wives.
And Joseph brought back a bad report about them to their father. Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his sons, because he was the son of his old age; and he made him a varicolored tunic. His brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers; and so they hated him and could not speak to him on friendly terms.
Genesis 50:15-21
When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, “What if Joseph bears a grudge against us and pays us back in full for all the wrong which we did to him!” 16 So they sent a message to Joseph, saying, “Your father charged before he died, saying, 17 ‘Thus you shall say to Joseph, “Please forgive, I beg you, the transgression of your brothers and their sin, for they did you wrong.”’
And now, please forgive the transgression of the servants of the God of your father.” And Joseph wept when they spoke to him. 18 Then his brothers also came and fell down before him and said, “Behold, we are your servants.” 19 But Joseph said to them, “Do not be afraid, for am I in God’s place?
20 As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive. 21 So therefore, do not be afraid; I will provide for you and your little ones.” So he comforted them and spoke kindly to them.
Last week, we saw how God was a mission to establish a nation. In the building of this holy and consecrated nation, He chose an unlikely couple in Abraham and Sarah. So today, we move on to talk about Joseph in this nation-building exercise. Joseph is a great grandson of Abraham. The question to ask is why Joseph, after all he had 10 other brothers?
Here is my one statement summary about the life of Joseph:
“He was a man with godly and positive attitude towards trials and injustice, convinced that God is able to make beauty out of brokenness.” That sounds more like James 1:2-4 that reads, “Consider it all
joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials,3 knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. 4 And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”
Okay, now that we have seen the choice of God in the nation-building process, one would expect as humans that his life will be free of hardship. But not Joseph. In retrospect, Joseph’s life was like a roller coaster- filled with highs and lows.
From Genesis 37:3, we read “Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his sons, because he was the son of his old age; and he made him a varicolored tunic. His brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers; and so they hated him and could not speak to him on friendly terms.” suggesting the highest point of being the beloved of the father, but the situation from there dived southward as in Genesis 37:24, his brothers, out hatred and animosity for him and his many dreams “took him and threw him into the pit. Now the pit was empty, without any water in it. This is nothing short of sibling rivalry gone bad, as they changed their minds and sold their blood brothers to strangers – the Midianites traders for a price of a slave (20 shekels of silver), and the Midianites took him down to Egypt and sold him again to Pharaoh’s official – Potiphar! At Potiphar’s house, you would think he has finally made it as we read, “the Lord was with Joseph and he was a successful man; and he was in the house of his Egyptian master. In fact, his master made him his own personal assistant and safely trusted him.
At the next move, it was a downward trend as Mrs. Potiphar lied against Joseph and falsely accused him of sexual assault. At this, Potiphar, burned with anger, threw Joseph into the prison, in fact, the bible says, “he kept him in prison and there he remained (Genesis 39:20) – so no more hope of coming out or achieving the dream God had shown him when he was a teenager.
But the event took a new turn when the Lord brought him out of the prison to interpret Pharaoh’s dreams. From here, it was an upward movement for Joseph in a foreign land and the Lord surely was on target in the nation-building project.
Don’t forget that it took 13 years for the dream to be achieved.
For these 13 years, as we saw earlier, Joseph went through series of ups and downs. In this sermon, I will summarize his ups and downs through three lenses:
1. Betrayal
2. Reconciliation; and
3. Forgiveness
Betrayal
Webster defined betrayal as “to hurt (someone who trusts you, such as a friend or relative) by not giving help or by doing something morally wrong.” In Joseph’s life, he experienced betrayal from family, friends and acquaintances. Dr. Brené Brown, a research professor at the University of Houston in her book - Daring Greatly: How The Courage To Be Vulnerable Transforms The Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead, she compares trust in relationship to a jar of marbles. As time progresses, we add marbles to the jar when someone demonstrates trustworthiness and we pull marbles out if they betray our trust. The safety of the relationship depends on how many marbles are in the jar over time. She wrote, “When we think about betrayal in terms of the marble jar metaphor, most of us think of someone we trust doing something so terrible that it forces us to grab the jar and dump out every single marble.
For Joseph, despite the betrayal, he chose rather not to grab the jar and dump out every single marble – as we shall see shortly. .
1. Firstly, he was betrayed by his brothers.
We read in Genesis 37:28 that, “So when the Midianite merchants came by, his brothers pulled Joseph up out of the cistern and sold him for twenty shekels[a] of silver to the Ishmaelites, who took him to Egypt.” Later in the greater story, we read similar thing happened to Jesus himself as he was betrayed by his close friend and ally – Matthew’s account reads, “When Judas, who had betrayed him,saw that Jesus was condemned, he was seized with remorse and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders. 4 “I have sinned,” he said, “for I have betrayed innocent blood.” “What is that to us?” they replied. “That’s your responsibility.”
2. He was betrayed by his boss’s wife.
By holding on to his integrity, he chose to do what was morally right – refusing to sin against his master and God by not consenting to the pressure from Mrs. Potiphar. In turn for doing the right thing, he was thrown into prison. We read in Genesis 39:19-20 that “When his master heard the story his wife told him, saying, “This is how your slave treated me,” he burned with anger. 20 Joseph’s master took him and put him in prison, the place where the king’s prisoners were confined. Does that not sound parallel to what Jesus experienced in the hands of his accusers? See John 19:4, 6 – “Once more Pilate came out and
said to the Jews gathered there, “Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no basis for a charge against him. As soon as the chief priests and their officials saw him, they shouted, “Crucify! Crucify!”
But Pilate answered, “You take him and crucify him. As for me, I find no basis for a charge against him.”
As we read through these many events in the life of Joseph, you cannot but ask a question, “Where was God?” In fact, one might ask, “God, what are you up to?” But the writer of this story beautifully answered this question on at least two occasions with the statement – “The Lord was with Joseph….” (See Genesis 39:2; and 39:20-21). As it turned out, Joseph himself admitted to his brother later at the end of his story that, “God was behind it – Genesis 45:5, Message.
Have you been betrayed? Dumped by loved ones? A spouse walked out of the relationship? A partner lied about you? You were wrongly accused, and no opportunity to make right the wrong? Name it! I want you to consider, with God’s help, doing what Joseph did, as we shall see ...
Reconciliation
Rather than for Joseph to grab the jar of marbles and smash it, he chose reconciliation. Webster defined reconciliation as “the act of causing two people or groups to become friendly again after an argument or disagreement.”
As I studied the life of Joseph, I saw three levels of reconciliation:
1. He reconciled with God.
If you were Joseph, wouldn’t you be angry at God for all that you had gone through? Perhaps, you will not want to believe again any kind of promise from God. But, not Joseph! Throughout his story, he reckoned with God that God was behind it as we read the Eugene paraphrase of Genesis 45:4-8 – ““Come closer to me,” Joseph said to his brothers. They came closer. “I am Joseph your brother whom you sold into Egypt. But don’t feel badly, don’t blame yourselves for selling me. God was behind it. God sent me here ahead of you to save lives. There has been a famine in the land now for two years; the famine will continue for five more years—neither plowing nor harvesting. God sent me on ahead to pave the way and make sure there was a remnant in the land, to save your lives in an amazing act of deliverance. So you see, it wasn’t you who sent me here but God. He set me in place as a father to Pharaoh, put me in charge of his personal affairs, and made me ruler of all Egypt.”
2. He reconciled with himself
To reconcile with himself is to lend himself to grasp the upper story that God has in all of these. In one verse, Joseph reconciled his past troubles with his present situation as we read in Genesis 41:51 – “Joseph named his oldest son Manasseh (meaning “Made to Forget”—what he meant was that God had made up to him for all the anguish of his youth, and for the loss of his father’s home).
I perceive God is asking some of us today to allow Him to bring forth Manasseh in our present circumstance!
3. He reconciled with his brothers…
I feel it was easy for Joseph to reconcile with his brothers and speak amicably with them as we had earlier read in Genesis 45:4-5 when Joseph revealed himself to his brothers and he said, “Please come closer to me.” And they came closer. And he said, “I am your brother Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. Now do not be grieved or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life.”
Before Joseph finally reconciled with his brothers, he first reconciled with God that He had a better purpose in it all and he resolved with God’s help to forget, hence he called his first son Manasseh!
I perceive God is calling many of us to reconciliatory relationships with himself, with ourselves and with others just as the mission statement of Northgate reads that, “THE COMMUNITY OF NORTHGATE BAPTIST CHURCH EXISTS TO BRING ALL PEOPLE INTO A RECONCILED RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD, THEMSELVES AND OTHERS.”
As we close today, we have seen Joseph’s betrayal and his attitude of reconciliation despite the hurt feelings. But we turn to the greatest attitude and quality that even God demands of us all – Forgiveness!
Forgiveness
For Joseph, he forgave freely because he was able to see the story of his life from the upper story level.
Lower story Upper Story
- You sold me God sent me
- You set me up God set me in place
- You intended to harm me God intended it for good
- You thought you killed me God saved me to save many lives
When we have been deeply hurt, especially by family and friends, we tend to want to hold the other person responsible and in some cases wants to get them to repay – that is revenge! But Joseph didn’t and here are some eternal truth from the new testament:
Romans 12:19-21 – “If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men. Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. “But if your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
And….
Ephesians 4:31-32 – “Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice. And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.”
In conclusion, do you remember the jar of marbles? Did you think Joseph smashed it? NO! He kept it intact and he promised to take care of his brothers and their families after Jacob’s death! This is an amazing attitude of grace! As we close today, I ask you a pointedly, will you please forgive today? Listen to Corrie ten Boom on how to forgive……..
Shall we pray. If you are yet to come into a reconciled relationship with God through His son Jesus Christ, this story will make no sense on a sensual lower level but I ask you today to ask Jesus to come into your life, to forgive your sins and write your name in the Lamb’s book of life.
To the rest of us, as you close your eyes, is God bringing anyone to the back of your mind – someone who had betrayed you or someone who offended you or hurt your feelings? I ask you today by the mercy of God to accept the grace God has provided us through Christ and forgive that individual. Free yourself as you free your captive.