The Lord Was With Him
(Gen. 39:19-23; Acts 16:19-28)
Did you hear the title of the sermon this morning in the last verse I just read:
“….the keeper of the prison paid no heed to anything that was in Joseph’s care because the Lord was with him…"
That’s the same statement that leads off two of the power, memory verses we have learned: Zeph. 3: 17= The Lord your God is with you..; and again this morning as we said
Is. 41:10= Fear not, for I am with you….
Do you think Joseph believed that? Consider his situation. Joseph is in his mid-twenties, probably around 25 years old; he has been sold into slavery by his brothers, but
has been able to work his way up into a good job as head servant of a leading official in Egypt only to have that official’s wife try on numerous occasions to unsuccessfully seduce him until in her anger at his rejections she falsely accuses him and now he has been unjustly sent to prison for we don’t know how long most likely 5-10 years. Prisons in those days were dungeons, complete with bad food, bad companions, and bad living conditions. So now we have a young man in the prime of his life, wasting away in a prison for who knows how many years, and the prison warden after watching Joseph for some months has decided that he would make a good overseer of the other prisoners, puts him in charge
of the other prisoners because the text says: the Lord was with Joseph.
You might think that if the Lord was with Joseph the last place he would be is a prisoner in a dungeon and not just for days or weeks but in Joseph’s case for years. I could see Joseph when he first got in maybe doing some extra praying and pleading with God to get him out of there especially since he had not done anything wrong but had done what was right. But as the weeks turn into months and the months turned into years, I wonder if Joseph was saying or thinking what the Psalmist said in Ps.13: “How long, oh Lord, will you forget forever, how long will you hide your face from me? How long must I bear pain in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day. How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?....
Maybe we are not in a prison dungeon today, but I could ask myself the same question when I was in the hospital at Cleveland Clinic- not knowing what was wrong with me in those first days, not sleeping, not eating, worried about what lied ahead- do you believe
Parry that the Lord is with you here in this hospital bed at 2:30 in the morning when you can’t sleep and you hurt and the news may be worse tomorrow than today? In a time like that I did not feel the presence of the Lord and my guess is that there were many days and nights in that prison when Joseph did not feel the presence of the Lord.
And you know so often we measure the value and legitimacy of our Christian faith on what we feel. When you ask Christians why they attend worship, the answer most often given is “to recharge my spiritual batteries”; in other words when I get into worship I want to be recharged; I want to be inspired, given hope; I want to feel filled-up or renewed in the
Spirit. In fact, people will say: I could feel or sense the Holy Spirit this morning in worship or I could tell that the preacher really had the Holy Spirit upon him so much so that you may
have wept or felt goose bumps during the message. There is nothing wrong with all of that,
but what I am aiming at this morning is what happens to our faith when we don’t feel the presence of God especially when we are in an unpleasant or unhappy situation?
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It doesn’t take much sometimes for us to “get out of joint” as the saying goes. Let the car suddenly break down on the freeway at night or the increasing stress at work builds up to
the breaking point or the family conflicts keep reigniting and getting worse each time
and before you know it, the last thing we are feeling is anything religious let alone the Spirit of God. Now we are not in worship with other Christians in church, now we are alone in the hospital bed, in the prison cell, in the upstairs bedroom at home awake and worried everyone else is sleeping—now
where is this presence of the Lord that is suppose to be with me- too many of those kind of days and nights and what then becomes of our Christian faith?
And what can be even more disconcerting to this feeling faith we depend on is that on numerous occasions men and women were in or were doing the perfect will of God when it felt very painful or frightening. Jonah had no desire at all to go to Nineveh to preach judgment upon the Ninevehites- you know his story – he ended up in the belly of a large fish and finally went to Nineveh-“feeling the presence of the Lord for Jonah” was like walking into the mouth of a lion. And it wasn’t much different for Esther who was told by her Uncle
Mordecai to go before King Xeres uncalled for at the risk of death to speak up to save her
people. Esther went alright but not without a lot of fear and trembling in her heart- at the time she walked into the King’s chamber there was hardly the feeling of the presence of the Lord- it was more like pure fear and yet she was fulfilling the will of God. And most obvious to all of us is Jesus upon the cross. To be beaten, mocked, and crucified – instead of feeling the presence of His Heavenly Father, Jesus felt abandoned repeating the words of Ps.22 why have you forsaken me; and we know that at the time Jesus was in the perfect will of His Father.
So what am I trying to say? I am saying don’t lose faith in your faith because you don’t
always feel the presence of the Lord. Yes we say “the Lord your God is with you” or
“Fear not for I am with you”- and that is absolutely true but there will be many times, many periods in our life when we don’t feel that and cannot confirm that truth by our feelings or by what we see but only by believing in that truth when everything around seems to deny it- that the Lord is with you.
If we could always feel the presence of the Lord, why would we need to have faith?
As Paul said (Hebrews 11:1):
Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.
And isn’t that what I am talking about this morning; believing that God is with me
particularly when I don’t see Him or feel Him.
The reason we believe by faith that God is with us (with you and me) is that when we become a Christian God gives us His Holy Spirit. Jesus said: … the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. (John 14:26)- that’s why we celebrate Pentecost- the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples and all those who have been called and chosen
to the household of God, the Church. We have the Holy Spirit within us and He is not taken away Jesus said: “All that the Father gives me will come to me; and him/her who comes to me I will not cast out.” (John 6:37) We have come to Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior; we belong to Him and He has given us His Holy Spirit- that means: the Lord is with you
whether you feel it or not.
And let’s not forget that our God is very caring and loving; it is not that He doesn’t want us to see Him or feel His presence particularly in bad or difficult situations. If you go back to any of the illustrations that I have already mentioned with Joseph or Jonah or Esther or myself, you will find that invariably each one did see or feel the presence of Holy Spirit with them. Joseph in prison was to interpret the dreams of the King’s butler and baker and then later the King’s own dream. Said Pharaoh the King as he promoted Joseph to vice president of Egypt: “Can we find such a man as this, in whom is the Spirit of God?” (Gen.41:38) And Joseph was later to say to his brothers: “You meant evil against me (when you sold me into slavery); but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.” (Gen.50:20) There is no question that Joseph saw and experienced (felt) the presence of God with him in spite of those times when the Lord seemed far, far away.
And as you heard me mention a few weeks ago- that second evening in the hospital before my operation was to take place when the doctor asked me if I wanted to pray and then followed my pray with her own pray, there was no question in my mind that God was with me even though the night or two nights before it seemed that God was nowhere to be found.
The Scriptures says in Luke 23:44 : “It was now about the sixth hour (12:00 noon) and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour (3:00 in the afternoon) while the sun’s light failed and the curtain of the temple was torn in two.” Jesus knew in this worst of all worst moments when His pain could not be measured and His forsakenness for our sins was more than any man could bear, Jesus knew in that awful darkness, His Father was there with Him: “Father, into thy Hands I commit my Spirit.”
So let us remember when we leave the Lord’s house this morning where at times the Holy Spirit may be felt mightily that out there at home or work or play, the Holy Spirit is with you when you may least expect Him or feel Him. And in time of crisis or despair, we may look again at Joseph and others like him who carried on in faith believing in what he could not always see or feel, but believing in the depths of his heart and soul to be absolute truth: that the Lord your God is with you.
