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"All Things for Our Good"
My mom and dad gave me a book for my birthday this past
week. Mom’s been trying for the last decade or more to
“help” me remember the family history – which Buckwoldt
married which Arp and a Miller who married a Kolls, which
led to an Arp Kolls union, where the Davis side of the
family enters the picture, right on down to little ol’
me. Through the miracles of modern digital technology
now I have it all together in a little book I can review
with my kids whenever they come for a visit!
It did get me thinking. Getting old does that to you –
makes you a bit more reflective – maybe pay a little
more attention. I don’t know the stories of my relatives
to any great extent. I can’t tell you any great detail
about my great-great grandparents and what their lives
were like. I suspect they were like so many others who
immigrated to this country. They had hopes and dreams.
On a day to day basis they just did what had to be done
without any kind of “big picture” awareness of how their
routine was affecting the future. But there’s no escaping
the fact that the accumulation of all their life decisions
laid a course that resulted in my presence here today!
It is exactly that perspective that I long for you to catch
hold of through this preaching series on the story of the
Bible. When we pick this book up we are reading the story
of ordinary people’s lives, whom God chose and worked
through to accomplish your presence here today. It’s not
an old dusty family album but a living and active description
of how God is still working to bring about the most amazing,
glorious, grand finale to human history you could possibly
imagine.
God’s purpose, God’s goal, God’s strategy, God’s plan is
to get you through your life here successfully and into
the eternal life you were created to have. To do that He
didn’t record every detail of every person’s life for all
of time – for obvious reasons – he recorded the key moments
and the key people to maintain the integrity and continuity
of the story.
Today we meet the 4th generation of a specific family God
chose as His promise bearers. Do you remember the promise?
First to Adam and Eve, then to Noah, but more specifically
to Abraham, then to his son Isaac, to Jacob whose name God
changed to Israel, and now to the twelve sons of Israel –
do you remember the promise? "I am going to send a Savior –
one of your descendants: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. And the Savior,
when he comes, will make life right again – no more fear and
hatred and sickness and best of all – no more death."
It is almost too fantastical to believe but when you hear
this story – the story of the Bible – it begins to shape a
“big picture” awareness of your life. An urge, a notion, a
subtle inquisitiveness that God is still doing what He has
always done – he’s working through your day-to-day routine
to bring you to this very place in your life to hear this
Word. Without the story of the Bible you see it as just
doing what needs to be done to get through today. But with
the story your whole life – coming to Florida on choir tour,
driving to Jacksonville to watch your team play in the
regional basketball tournament, working, studying, playing,
dealing with finances and health and relationships – with
the story the Bible your whole life is leading somewhere –
you have a purpose, a goal, a destination.
To get there – to stay on course God has given us the lives
of those recorded in the Bible to learn from. Joseph is our
guide today. If you haven’t read these 13 chapters of Genesis
in a while, or ever – pick up your Bible this afternoon – it
is an engaging episode. Or if you like broadway musicals I’m
sure you could find “Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dream
Coat” somewhere to watch and listen.
There are three simple stops I want to make as we follow
along with Joseph – the first one I call, “Hatred and
Humility;” the second one is a hard one, “Learning to
Wait for the Lord;” and the last one sounds familiar
but it is in fact new and different every time you hear
it – the last one is, “Forgiveness.”
Twelve brothers, Joseph was the next to the youngest, his
father loved him more than the rest - he knew it and so did
they. Hatred and humility – or to be more specific the lack
of humility – is the default human mode, the normal, easy
path that human beings take which leads to death and
destruction, unless of course, God intervenes.
How did Joseph get so full of himself? Well I guess we
could blame his father – isn’t that what we all do
somewhere along the line if we don’t like the way we
turned out? Every kid who ever took their first high
school psychology class becomes an immediate expert in
diagnosing the impact of family dynamics. You would have
thought Joseph’s father might have known better. The shoe
was on the other foot in Jacob’s growing up years. His
father loved his brother Esau more than him and it tore
that family to pieces. But family patterns can be hard
to break.
Regardless of where it came from Joseph’s super-ego was
very nearly the death of him. Did you catch that? Joseph’s
super-ego was very nearly the death of him. As it was then,
so it is now. That’s what’s wrong with all of us by virtue
of having been born after the fall of Adam and Eve. We all
come into this world full of ourselves. It comes in every
size and variety – from the loud, attention seeking, class
clown to the quiet, don’t mind me, over achiever, to the
trouble making, disruptive, tough guy and everything in between.
When everybody is full of themselves then everybody else
is your enemy. “They saw [Joseph] in the distance, and
before he reached them, they plotted to kill him.” Hatred
born out of our inability to humble ourselves is tearing
our world to pieces. It landed Joseph at the bottom of a
pit and sold into slavery.
But God is still in control. He is not willing to let His
creation destroy itself. The hardest part of the story of
the Bible is learning to wait for the Lord. That’s our
second stop today on the journey of Joseph. The brothers
didn’t know what they were doing – they were acting on
their impulses – their selfish ego’s running their lives.
But God finds a way even through the ugliness of human
behavior and its devastating effects to work His plan.
Joseph winds up in Egypt, where he gets in trouble with his
first slave master for doing the right thing, which lands
him in prison for two years. The fancy coat is gone. The ego
is being reshaped in a different image. God empties Joseph
of himself so He can fill him with something else. God works
to empty us of ourselves so He can fill us with Himself. The
details are fascinating – read them for yourself. Here suffice
it to say that Joseph rises to become the second in command
over the whole nation of Egypt and the instrument of salvation
from starvation not only for the people of Egypt but for his
very own brothers who wanted him dead.
Psalm 27 verses 1, 5, 14 – underline it in your Bible – The LORD
is my light and my salvation-- whom shall I fear? The LORD
is the stronghold of my life-- of whom shall I be afraid?
For in the day of trouble he will keep me safe in his dwelling;
he will hide me in the shelter of his tabernacle and set me
high upon a rock. Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart
and wait for the LORD.
Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for
the LORD. I don’t know what’s going on in all of your lives –
but I know what God is up to – because he tells us – in the
story – in the Bible. Joseph got it. The last verse of our
reading, “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You
intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to
accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many
lives.”
Through Joseph, the entire family of Israel – the promise
bearer of the Savior – is rescued from starvation. They move
to Egypt and settle there and what happens next will boggle
your mind even more. You’re not going to believe what happens
next week! For now, wait for the LORD and come to the cross
with me. I want to show you something. It’s called forgiveness
and it is our last stop today. Forgiveness seems so old and
worn out but it is new every time you look at it because
God is always working it out in the unique circumstances
of our individual lives.
Joseph’s brothers plotted to kill him, but God was still
there preserving the promise to show the world its Savior.
At the cross Jesus’ brothers, that’s all of us, the human
race, in our hatred and egotistical pride executed the plot
and took Jesus’ life. But what we intended for evil God has
used to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of
many lives!
That is the amazing twist in the Bible’s story - the irony
that reveals God’s greatest glory and triumph. Working
through even the ugliness of human behavior God brought
about salvation. Paul said it this way in our Epistle:
“You see, at the just the right time, when we were still
powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.”
What does this mean? It means my friends that you need, by
the power of the Holy Spirit who is working even now to
penetrate our hard hearts and thick skulls, to open your
eyes and look around you. God is at work trying to get
people to the cross – “so that they can be justified” –
declared innocent – “through faith and have peace with
God.” He is constantly seeking to use you and the
circumstances of your life to make his salvation known
of course more and more clearly to you, but for Pete’s
sake, even more importantly to the person sitting next to you.
At the cross God wins. He absorbs evil into himself and
turns it around in the form of forgiveness that makes your
life new and whole and eternal. All of sudden from the cross,
in Jesus’ death, you start to see life like you’ve never seen
it before. God is up to something big and you are part of it.
It led a man named Paul to make a statement as crazy as this:
“we even rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that
suffering produces perseverance; perseverance character;
and character hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because
God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit,
whom he has given us.”
Humility and hatred resolved at the cross. Wait for the LORD
as he works out your salvation and of many others in and through
all the details, all the circumstances both good and bad of
your life. It is the story of the Bible – forgiveness – in
Jesus death and resurrection – the power that will conquer
the world. Open your eyes and your ears. Let the story take
hold of you.
Amen.
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