Joseph: Hope for Troubled Times (1)
Scott Bayles, pastor
Blooming Grove Christian Church: 5/18/2014
ILL. A man came home after a rough day at work. It was one of those days where it seemed like everything that can go wrong, did go wrong. As he walks through the door, he says to his wife, “I’ve had a bad day. Please! If you have any bad news tonight, just save it for another day." To which she replied, "Okay, no bad news. Now for the good news. Remember our four children? Well, three of them didn’t break an arm today."
Bad days happen to everyone. They come more often that we think we deserve, and they sometimes last much longer than we think we can stand.
ILL. Have you ever read the children’s book Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day? Alexander knew it was going to be a terrible day when he woke up with gum in this hair. And it got worse. His best friend abandoned him. There was no dessert in his lunch bag. He had to make a trip to the dentist’s office, where they found a cavity. And, on top of all that, there were lima beans for dinner and kissing on TV! Did you know that book was first published in 1972 and has since sold over two million copies? I think that’s because parents and kids alike know what it’s like to one of those days.
Jesus promised: “In this world you will have trouble” (John 16:33). Some of us are thinking, “Thanks Jesus, like we didn’t already know that.” Maybe everything is going your way right now. Maybe life couldn’t be better. But in an hour or a day or a week or month, maybe next year or the year after that, the bottom is going to fall out and trouble is going to come your way. Someone once said, “Trouble is like home. Either you’re there, going to it, or coming from it.”
So the question is—how do you respond when trouble finds you? How do you live through a bad day? If there’s one person in the Bible who knows what it’s like to survive a bad day, it’s Joseph. His story is told in the second half of Genesis. In fact, more ink a papyrus is devoted to the telling of his tale than anyone else in Genesis, including Abraham. His journey takes him from the pasture to the pit to the prison, and eventually to the palace.
Joseph’s day got worse before it got better. Abandonment led to enslavement, entrapment, and imprisonment. He was sucker-punched. Sold out. Mistreated. Yet Joseph never gave up. Bitterness never staked its claim. Anger never congealed into hatred. His heart never hardened. His resolve never vanished. He not only survived, he thrived. And so can you. For the next few weeks, I’d like to take a closer look at the life of Joseph and, perhaps, find hope and help for troubled times. His bad day begins when he was just seventeen years old with his dreaming.
• THE DREAMING OF JOSEPH
The Bible says “When Joseph was seventeen years old, he often tended his father’s flocks… Jacob loved Joseph more than any of his other children because Joseph had been born to him in his old age.” (Genesis 37:1-3 NLT).
Up until now, Joseph was living the good life. He was adored by his parents. His father thought he was the best thing since sliced bread, and he showed it. At seventeen he was full of youthful optimism. Bolstering his optimistic outlook were his dreams of the future. One morning over breakfast, Joseph tells his brothers: “Listen to this dream…We were out in the field, tying up bundles of grain. Suddenly my bundle stood up, and your bundles all gathered around and bowed low before mine!” (Genesis 37:6 NLT). Just a few verses later, the Bible says:
Soon Joseph had another dream, and again he told his brothers about it. “Listen, I have had another dream,’ he said. “The sun, moon, and eleven stars bowed low before me!” This time he told the dream to his father as well as to his brothers, but his father scolded him. “What kind of dream is that?” he asked. “Will your mother and I and your brothers actually come and bow to the ground before you?” But while his brothers were jealous of Joseph, his father wondered what the dreams meant. (Genesis 37:9-11 NLT).
Can you remember what your hopes and dreams were when you were seventeen? Maybe you dreamed of having a successful career, finding love, finishing your education, or someday seeing the world. We all have different dreams and some of them change over time. But the difference between Joseph’s dreams and ours is that his dreams were actually given to him by God. These dreams weren’t the result of wishful thinking and bad pizza; rather, this was prophetic portrait of his future.
His dreams convinced Joseph that God had a plan for his life. Now he didn’t know the details. He didn’t know how it was all going to work out, but he knew that somehow, someday God was going to put him in a place of prominence.
The same is true for you. As the old saying goes, “We don’t know what the future holds, but we know who holds the future.” God may not have given you a dream or a vision of your future, but he has a plan for your life just as he did for Joseph. What we need to remember though, is that suffering and struggle are often part of the plan.
I read this week about a man who found an emperor moth cocoon and took it home to watch it emerge. One day a small opening appeared, and for several hours the moth struggled but couldn't seem to force its body past a certain point. Deciding something was wrong, the man took scissors and snipped the remaining bit of cocoon. The moth emerged easily, but its body was large and swollen while its wings were small and shriveled. He expected that in a few hours the wings would spread out in their natural beauty, but they didn’t. Instead of developing into a creature free to fly, the moth spent its life dragging around a swollen body and shriveled wings.
The constricting cocoon and the struggle necessary to pass through the tiny opening are God's way of forcing fluid from the body into the wings. The "merciful" snip was, in reality, cruel. Sometimes the struggle is part of the plan. Just as God has a plan for the emperor moth, he has a plan for you too and that plan may involve a great deal of struggle. But whatever you’re going through, there is a purpose in your problems. Joseph didn’t know it yet, but his problems where just about to begin, which bring us to the despising of Joseph.
• THE DESPISING OF JOSEPH
As you can imagine, being his father’s favorite didn’t earn him any points with his siblings. The Bible says, “But his brothers hated Joseph because their father loved him more than the rest of them. They couldn’t say a kind word to him… and they hated him all the more because of his dreams and the way he talked about them” (Genesis 37:4-8 NLT). The Hebrew word for hate, sane, meant “to bear great ill will or animosity.” They despised Joseph. They loathed him. They hated him so much they actually entertained thoughts of murder. Can you imagine what it must have been like growing up in that environment? Every day, they criticized him and cut him down. Every day, they pushed him around poked fun at him. Maybe you don’t have to imagine. Maybe you’ve experienced it firsthand. Amazingly, Joseph never let them crush his dreams or his spirit.
One day, Joseph’s brothers were out working in the field, pasturing their father’s sheep. So Jacob sent Joseph to check on them. Joseph happily obeyed his father’s instructions and set out to find them. The Bible says:
When Joseph’s brothers saw him coming, they recognized him in the distance. As he approached, they made plans to kill him. “Here comes the dreamer!” they said. “Come on, let’s kill him and throw him into one of these cisterns. We can tell our father, ‘A wild animal has eaten him.’ Then we’ll see what becomes of his dreams!” But when Reuben heard of their scheme, he came to Joseph’s rescue. “Let’s not kill him,” he said. “Why should we shed any blood? Let’s just throw him into this empty cistern here in the wilderness. Then he’ll die without our laying a hand on him.” (Genesis 37: 19-22 NLT).
So that’s what they did. They stripped him of his dignity and his beautiful coat-of-many-colors, and threw him into an empty well. Can you imagine what he’s going though in those moments? Do you know what it’s like to be hated or to feel helpless?
Joseph’s pit came in the form a literal cistern—a deep, dark, damp hole in the earth. Sometime, life can feel like a pit. Maybe your pit came in the form of a diagnosis, or divorce papers, or insurmountable debt, or the death of someone you love. Maybe you’re in the pit of abuse, or abandonment, or addiction. No matter what kind of hole you’re in, when you’re down there, usually the only thought on your mind is getting out.
Joseph would be the first one to tell you that life in the pit stinks. It’s awful down there. But for all its rottenness, the pit does one thing for us. It forces you to look upward. Someone from up there must reach down and get you out. That’s what God did for Joseph. Though, not in the way he had hoped. That brings us to the deliverance of Joseph.
• THE DELIVERANCE OF JOSEPH
As our story continues, the Bible says:
Then, just as they were sitting down to eat, they looked up and saw a caravan of camels in the distance coming toward them. It was a group of Ishmaelite traders taking a load of gum, balm, and aromatic resin from Gilead down to Egypt. Judah said to his brothers, “What will we gain by killing our brother? We’d have to cover up the crime. Instead of hurting him, let’s sell him to those Ishmaelite traders. After all, he is our brother—our own flesh and blood!” And his brothers agreed. So when the Ishmaelites, who were Midianite traders, came by, Joseph’s brothers pulled him out of the cistern and sold him to them for twenty pieces of silver. And the traders took him to Egypt. (Genesis 37:25-28 NLT)
To Joseph, being sold as a slave seemed like anything but deliverance. But that’s what it was and it demonstrated God’s protection and providence. Rather than letting Joseph die at the bottom of that well, God arranged for these traveling merchants to pass by at just the right time and used Judah’s greed to change his heart.
Joseph couldn’t have known it yet, but being sold into slavery was the first step out of the pit and into the palace. As believers, we have to remember that even when bad things happen—even when life is the pits and it seems like everyone is against us—God has a plan and God is always working behind the scenes, weaving all things together for the good of those who love him.
Joseph’s dreams convinced him that God had a plan for his life, and even when he was despised and abused he never lost sight of those dreams. Those dreams kept him going, and eventually God brought those dreams to life. Some twenty years later, the roles would be reversed. Joseph would become the most powerful man in Egypt, second only to the Pharaoh and his brothers would kneel before him. But rather than exact revenge for the harm they did, Joseph explains: “You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good” (Genesis 50:20 NLT).
Conclusion:
In God’s hands, intended evil becomes eventual good. The story of Joseph is in the Bible for this reason: to teach us to trust God even in the pit. What Satan and people intend for evil, God can use for good.
Invitation:
Maybe you feel like you’re at the bottom of pit right now, and you’re just waiting for God to reach out his hand and lift you out. I want to encourage you trust that in the right time, and in the right way, he will. In the meantime, you have a family of believers who won’t throw in the pit, but will give you a hand and help you out. If we can do that for you today, talk with me while we sing.
