IT’S FOR THE BEST!
GENESIS 50:15-21
INTRODUCTION: How many times have you heard a person say to someone going through a trial, who has suffered a loss, or experienced some great tragedy "I know it’s difficult for you right now, but it’s for the best!" Usually at the time that these words are spoken, they provide little if any comfort. Usually the recipient of such comments is thinking, "It’s easy for you to say! You don’t have any idea what I am going through. You wouldn’t say that if you were in my shoes." While the words provide little comfort at the time, the Bible teaches us that everything that happens in the life of the believer has an ultimately positive purpose. This is no better illustrated than in the life of Joseph where we see bad things happening to a good man for the purpose of preparing and positioning him to be blessed and to be a blessing.
I. Bad Things Happen to Good People.
A. Joseph stands head and shoulders above most men and biblical characters as a dynamic example of what a follower of God ought to be.
1. The New Compact Bible Dictionary says: "He presents a noble ideal of character, remarkable for his gentleness, faithfulness to duty, magnanimity, and forgiving spirit...."
2. He was honest - Genesis 39:1-6 made a steward of the entire estate of Potiphar, captain of Pharaoh’s guard.
3. He had the highest moral character - Genesis 39:7-14 refused to give in to seduction
4. He was loyal to those over him - Genesis 39:22-23 loyal to the keeper of the prison.
5. He was faithful to God in all his circumstances.
B. In spite of all his goodness bad things happened to him.
1. His brothers hated him, threatened to kill him, threw him in a ditch to die, and then sold him into slavery.
2. While in slavery, having rejected the advances of Potiphar’s wife, he was falsely accused and convicted of rape and was thrown into prison
3. In prison, he was forgotten by the butler who promised to help secure his release.
4. He was hated, mistreated, abused, falsely accused and lied about, treated unfairly, and overlooked.
II. Bad Things Happen for a Reason
A. The Master Designer of the Universe is fully aware and in control of His creation. Nothing happens by sheer accident. God overrides in the affairs of men to accomplish His will.
B. "God is never in a panic, nothing can be done that he is not absolute Master of, and no one in earth or heaven can shut a door he has opened, nor open a door he has shut." Oswald Chambers (1874-1917)
C. In everything Joseph did, God was with him. Genesis 39:2 "And the Lord was with Joseph, and he was a prosperous man; and he was in the house of his master the Egyptian."
D. God allowed Joseph to go through what he endured in order to put him in a position to be a blessing and to be blessed God.
1. Genesis 50:20 "But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive."
2. Genesis 45:7-8 "And God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God: and he hath made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt."
3. Consider how God used Joseph as He was put in a position to save the lives of thousands of people during the great famine.
4. As such he was used to preserve the posterity of Israel and provide for the development of the family into a nation.
5. He was exalted as
a. A father to Pharaoh - his advisor and counselor
b. Lord of all his house - comptroller over Pharaoh’s vast holdings.
c. Ruler throughout all the land of Egypt.
6. He became a type of Christ
E. Romans 8:28-29 "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. [29] For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren."
F. John Drummond (1851-1897). "Nothing that happens in the world happens by chance. God is a God of order. Everything is arranged upon definite principles and never at random."
III. God has allowed you to go through what you have gone through to prepare you to serve.
A. Romans 8:28-29 "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. [29] For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren."
B. Philippians 1:12 "But I would ye should understand, brethren, that the things which happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the gospel"
C. In Enterprise, Alabama, you will see one of the most unusual monuments ever built. It is a monument to honor the boll weevil, the little insect that nearly destroyed the cotton on which the town’s economy depended. Why a monument to so destructive an insect? Farmers in southern Alabama who were accustomed to planting one crop every year--cotton. They would plow as much ground as they could and plant their crop. Year after year, they lived by cotton. Then one year the dreaded boll weevil devastated the whole area. So the next year the farmers mortgaged their homes and planted cotton again, hoping for a good harvest. But as the cotton began to grow, the insect came back and destroyed the crop, wiping out most of the farms. Those few who survived those two years of the boll weevil decided to experiment the third year, so they planted something they’d never planted before--peanuts. And peanuts proved so hardy and the market proved so ravenous for that product that the farmers who survived the first two years reaped profits that third year that enabled them to pay off all their debts. They planted peanuts from then on and prospered greatly. The inscription on the monument reads: "In profound appreciation of the boll weevil and of what it has done as the herald of prosperity, this monument is erected by the citizens of Enterprise, Coffee County, Alabama."
D. Balboa goes down in history as the discoverer of the Pacific Ocean. He was the first European to see that great ocean, glimpsing it for the first time on September 25, 1513. He would likely never have seen it, and never have gone down in history, had he succeeded as a planter in Hispaniola. His plantation there failed. To escape his creditors, he was smuggled aboard a ship bound for South America where he became governor of the little settlement that is today the country of Colombia. From there he journeyed west to see the great "other sea" and to his place in the history books.
E. Eric Butterworth noted, "in your own frustrating experience you can and should take a good look at a bad break. There may well be in your frustration the means of making it fruitful!
F. Here are some examples of Christians who triumphed through difficulties:
1. John Bunyan - in Bedford prison wrote "Pilgrim’s Progress"
2. Fanny Crosby - was blind because of a Doctor’s mistake, yet was used of God to write 3000 hymns.
3. Samuel Brengel - was educated, but when approaching William Booth, was told that if he wanted a job to go to the basement and shine the men’s boots. He was humble and said, "If Jesus washed feet then I can shine boots." He became a major leader in the Salvation Army.
4. Elizabeth Eliot - widowed by the cannibalistic Aucca Indians went to the tribe and reached them with the gospel message of Christ.
5. Joni Erickson Toda - paralyzed from a diving accident has become an artist, writer, motivational speaker, head of ministry to handicapped and hurting
G. William Ellery Channing (1780-1842) wrote - "Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict."
H. According to Hebrews 4:15, part of the reason Christ experienced and endured the sufferings and trials of His earthly life that we might have a High Priest who empathizes with us. The word "touched" means to sympathize, feel, and suffer with. It means to sympathize and feel with a person to the point that the hurt and pain are actually felt within one’s own heart. The idea is that Jesus Christ actually suffers when we suffer. He knows and suffers right along with us when we...
·become sick
·suffer trials
·face temptations
·fall into sin
·have an accident
·feel lonely
·sense emptiness
·lack purpose ·lose a loved one
·are stricken with
suffering
·lack money
·are hungry
·lack clothes
·suffer persecution
·face death
Name the trial or pain, temptation, or suffering-name the infirmity or weakness- name any and all human experiences-Jesus Christ actually sympathizes and feels with us
I. An Arabian Proverb says, "No man is a good physician who has never been sick."
J. You have gone through what you have for two reasons - first that God might conform you to the image of Christ, second - that you might be able to minister to the needs of others.
K. God will use your experiences to allow you to help those who are hurting.
1. Has God seen you through marital difficulties? - reach out to those going through those troubled waters.
2. Have you experienced peace in the midst of the pain of the loss of a loved one? - reach out to those who are mourning.
3. Have you seen the provisioning hand of God while going through financial reversals? - reach out to those that are anxious about their financial future.
4. Has God seen you through or comforted you in an illness or disability? - Reach out to those that are afflicted.
5. Has he delivered you from an addiction? - reach out to the addict.
6. Has he forgiven and restored you? - reach out to those in need of forgiveness.
L. Jewish Proverb states "Among those who stand, do not sit; Among those who sit, do not stand; Among those who laugh, do not weep; Among those who weep, do not laugh.
M. I Corinthians 9:22 "To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some."
N. Happinessce Jones is a renowned concert organist and teacher at Baylor University. A number of years ago she played the first full concert on a new million-dollar pipe organ at the Crystal Cathedral in California. At the age of sixteen, she was a piano major at the University of Texas. A sprained wrist interrupted her promising career as a pianist. For six weeks, she could not touch a keyboard. Not wanting to waste the time, she decided to learn to play organ pedals with her feet, and a new career was born. "God has a way," she relates, "to get your attention and say, ’Hey, I have something better for you to do."’ --James S. Hewett, Illustrations Unlimited (Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc, 1988) p. 273.
