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I’m going to invite you to Genesis. Chapter 41 is where we’re at together today, Genesis chapter 41. And, uh, we’re continuing to engage the, the, the life of Joseph. If you remember in this story, what we’ve learned together is that God has brought his grace through a particular family that was ultimately going to bring his greatest grace known through the Messiah, who would give his life for us. Um, so, so through the book of Genesis, the first 11 chapters, we get very acquainted with our with our depravity as human beings and our need for God’s deliverance, our need for God’s grace. Uh, we find very fortunate for us that while God was completely just to judge us in our sin, he didn’t, but rather he pursued us to give us an opportunity to know him through the grace that he would bring about through the Messiah who would give his life for us. And we’ve been following that promise through a particular family, through the the line of Abraham. And we followed Abraham’s children, his grandchildren and his great grandson. And that’s where we find ourselves today in the life of Joseph. But what we’ve come to learn about Joseph is that his journey has not been easy, right? Certainly in the beginning he was a, let’s say, a privileged young man. He was given preferential treatment for the early years of his life until he was 17 years old. And that’s where his brothers kidnapped him and sold him as a slave to the Ishmaelites.
Ishmaelites carried him into Egypt, and while I was in Egypt, he was taken as a young man. He was a a foreigner in a land he was not familiar with, and learning a language he probably did not know, sold on to the slave market, to a man named Potiphar. And as he was a slave in Potiphar’s house, he was accused of something he did not do. Even though he walked with integrity, he was accused of something erroneously. He was thrown into prison, and there he sat from the age of 17 to the age of of 30. In fact, at the end of chapter 40 reminds you that as he’s in prison, he ministers to some people. He asks one particular person to please remember him when they get out of prison so that he could be set free because he’s there unjustly. And it tells you the very end of chapter 40, verse 23, and that one person he ministered to cared for forgot all about him. And in chapter 41, at the very beginning, verse one, it tells you. And so he sat in prison for two more years. And so here’s Joseph as a young man from the age of 17 to the age of 30, walking a life of integrity before the Lord. And that led him to a place of slavery. It led him to a position of being in prison, and none of it his fault.
It was people erroneously accusing him, attacking him, treating him poorly and in that position. It’s incredible what Joseph does. You think at that point in life, it would have been easy for him to just say, forget about it, I give up, you know, I keep trying. It’s just not working out. And maybe ask those questions and that struggle that maybe all of us would ask does does God not know where I’m at? Does God not love me? Does not God not care about me? How do I reconcile the struggle that I’m facing with the reality that there is a God? Like what? What? What do I do, right? And Joseph in that moment could have given up. And the same is true for us. We go through the struggles in life. We might often wonder those same questions, uh, needing to reorient us in the truth of what God says. We go through adversity and we ask the those questions. Maybe you’re in it now. God, do you not love me? God, do you know not know what’s going on? God, do you not know how I feel? And in those struggles, we get to that place of feeling like we want to give up. But what we discover in the life of Joseph, and we see this again and again in the Bible, that God does something beautiful in the waiting. Um, in fact, what God desires to do is often we see something far greater than we could ever comprehend in our own mind and imagination.
Uh, we see this played out over and over again. We’ve seen it in the life of, for example, Abraham, that Abraham when when God came to him, he was already 70 years old. And God promised, he said to him, follow me, and I’ll give you a kid at 70 years old. And Abraham had to wait 30 years. He was a hundred years old, which for many of us, if we think about having a kid at 100, that may not necessarily sound like a blessing, but. But for Abraham, he left. And trusting in God by faith for that. And at 100 years old, God fulfills that promise. And in that waiting, God did something beautiful in his life. Uh, same is true for Moses. Moses was 40 years old. He knew God wanted to use him in some way. He took matters into his own hands and decides to kill an Egyptian soldier. And he had to go into hiding because of it. And he spent 40 years hiding in a desert before an 80 years old, God called him back to lead the children of Israel out of slavery in the waiting. God works in his life in incredible ways. Even the apostle Paul, when you study his life. When he first became a believer, he went to the Arabian desert for for three years. And then and then he went to Tarsus and Antioch for ten years before he was called on his first missionary journey.
And in the waiting, God did something incredible. And so this is what we want to learn in the life of Joseph today is really for secrets to to never giving up. Um, I want you to know when I, when I was looking over this again this morning, getting ready to teach, I felt it was a little bit lazy to call this four secrets, because the Bible obviously wants you to know this. So this should not be a secret to us. Um, but if you don’t know this, it’s a secret until you find it. Okay, so. So four secrets to never giving up. And you know, when I, when I thought about this title, fitting this chapter, I even went back. Some of you may remember this, um, Jimmy Valvano’s speech on ESPN when he was, he was riddled with with cancer and he was about to die. And it started the Jimmy V Foundation for, uh, for fighting against cancer. And they had him on ESPN give a speech. And he said towards the end of his speech, he looks back at the clock and he says, uh, I’m not going to. He says something like, I’m not going to pay attention to that. And he’s talking about the clock in the back of the room. He’s like, he looks at the crowd and says, ESPN has a clock in the back that says 30s. He says, I don’t care about your stupid clock.
He said. He said, my, my body is riddled with tumors, and every moment I have in life matters, and I want to make every moment count. And then that’s when he tells everyone, don’t give up. Don’t ever give up. You know, I know for us, I don’t want to wait till we get to the point where we realize we’re looking at the end of life to then all of a sudden make life matter, right? Every moment that we have is special. As people, and we can get to those places of difficulty where we feel like giving up. But there’s certain things that are compelling to the soul in the midst of that adversity, that if we remind ourselves of some truth in God’s Word, it not only not only gets us through that, but it helps us find the victory of the Lord in the struggles that we face. So, so in this four Secrets to Never Giving Up. Number one is this rest in a sovereign God, rest in a sovereign God. And I realize one of the blanks in your notes is the word sovereign. So whoever spells this correct today, the greeters at the front door will give you a $20. All right. I’m just kidding. This not but sovereign is a spelling bee challenge for you, so rest in a sovereign god. Uh, no one take that serious, okay? I’m not giving $20 to anybody. Um, to to to rest in a in a sovereign God, though.
Here’s, here’s what’s important, um, that we we we need to learn some certain characteristics of who God is. That gives us comfort, right? If you’re going to rest in a sovereign God, it’s important that you not just know God intellectually, but you know him experientially. You have a relationship with the Lord, and you’ve come to understand certain characteristics about God that makes it comfortable to rest in his sovereignty. But because here’s the tendency, as human beings, our default is to think much about ourselves and not enough about the Lord. And even though we may know that our our human nature is depraved, we tend to trust in who we are more than in who God is. And what we find in that is, it leads a soul to a lot of anxiety. In fact, one of the great Church Fathers, Saint Augustine, said this. He often talked about anxiety as as God’s way of pointing out to us where we have idols in our lives. Now, I’m not saying this is true for all anxiety, but what what Augustine tended to say is you want to find where idols are really resting in you find out where your heart is anxious, because those are certain things that we’re afraid of losing, or certain things that we don’t want to let go of in order for God to have control. And so we we get anxious over those things. We try to power grab for them and, and put our hope in them and want them to deliver us.
And when we realize they’re not going to do that, it creates this stirring in our soul of anxiety. And it comes in this confidence of resting in ourselves more than resting in who God is. But as we get to know the sovereignty of this God, and as he rules and reigns who he is, that we have more confidence in, in resting in, in him. In fact, some of the characteristics that I think are essential for us to know is, as we rest in his sovereignty, as the all powerfulness of God, right, that he rules and reigns over everything it tells us in Colossians chapter one, verse 16 and 17, all things were created by him. All things were created for him. And in, in him all things hold together, that he is sovereign over it all. He rules over it all. So he is all powerful. He isn’t this this being that sort of got to a position of power. No, he is. He is the beginning of all things. He he is, he he is the self-existent one, the uncaused cause. Right? He is the all powerful. Not only that, he is good, and his goodness is seen in the fact that he rules justly. And in Romans eight it promises that he works all things together for good to those who love God, who are called according to his purpose, saying, there may be circumstances in your life where sometimes it looks challenging.
Sometimes you wonder where the goodness of who God is and what he’s doing. But in Romans eight, it reminds you that he’s got this grander plan of orchestrating things together for good to those who love God, meaning God. If you’re in, Christ, has your best interest in mind. And so learning to trust in that in the sovereign hand of God to orchestrate things is important. This is what Joseph is doing in this story. He’s going through the prison. He’s going into slavery. But he understands that God can have a more masterful plan of what he desires to do in the life of Joseph. Because of the promises that have been given to his family. And so Joseph rests in him. You know, this is this is different than than the culture in which Joseph finds himself here in Egypt in Genesis chapter 41, the first seven verses. I’m not going to I’m going to summarize some sections of this, this Genesis story, because it’s the repeating of Pharaoh’s dreams over and over again, and I just don’t want to keep reading the same dream over and over again for for time’s sake. But, but here in Genesis chapter one tells you, Joseph’s in prison for another two years. Verse two. Pharaoh has a dream. Pharaoh has a dream about these. These lump cows will say, seven, seven really fat cows by the Nile.
And all of a sudden, as he’s dreaming about these beautiful cows, these, these skinny cows come out of the Nile River. And rather than be herbivores, they’re omnivores. They they devour the cows. Right? That’s a scary moment. When you see cow eating cow, it’s like a zombie apocalypse among cows. Right? But. But the skinny cows. Seven skinny cows eat the seven fat cows. And when Pharaoh sees this, he sees it so vividly it shocks him. He wakes up from his dream, and after he settles down again, he goes back to bed. Immediately, when he falls back asleep, he has another dream about wheat. He sees wheat sprout up these seven sprouts of wheat, beautiful lump sprouts of wheat. And all of a sudden these, these other, these other portions of wheat come up seven sprouts of wheat and they’re, they’re scorched by the earth. And these seven sprouts of wheat devour the lump wheat. And Pharaoh’s now challenged by this, he’s wondering, what is God trying to communicate to me? This was so vivid. This has to mean something. And so it tells you in, in Genesis that Pharaoh goes around and he asks the question. He looks for leaders. In fact, you guys give me a click because I don’t have control. Um, verse eight, he asked this question among the the well, maybe. Okay, there we are. Verse eight. He asks the question among the leaders in the morning. His mind was troubled, so he sent for all the magicians and wise men of Egypt.
Pharaoh told them in his dreams. But no one could interpret them for him. So what is what is saying in this passage is Pharaoh knows he needs an answer, and he goes and seeks all of the sage advice he could possibly find in his land. This word for magician is really, it’s better translated as religious leaders in the land. So Pharaoh is. He’s going around and asking religious leaders, anyone of any authority, any wise person in their society, give me some sort of answer as to what’s happening here, and no one can give him a true answer. I mean, I’m sure he’s getting some, some, some pandering to the idea, but but no one’s giving him a direct answer. What this what this represents or what this means. And you know, what I found interesting is I’m reading the story as it’s unfolding in Pharaoh’s dream. I feel like, man, are we like, are we describing America? Could we just transplant this to to society today in America? I feel like I feel like we’re on the the crazy circus together when I have I don’t know if you guys feel this way, but I feel like I’m at a place in life when I turn any television on or listen to anyone sharing any opinion broadly across our country, it feels like, um, it feels like insanity let loose. Like I as a person, I feel like I’m starting to get depravity fatigue from this world, like the America that I feel like I grew up in as a kid.
I look at today and I’m like, what is happened? Right? I just it is it seems exhausting. And it’s like, no matter how many opinions you get, just no one, no one seems to have the right answer. It just sounds like we’re spiraling further, further down the crazy cycle. And and I think this is where Pharaoh is in this story. He he’s looking for something to secure him, something to hold him, something that he knows it’s resonating with what he’s he’s discovered. And no matter how many answers he’s seeking, it might temporarily satisfy. But there’s no depth to it. And much, much like I feel like we’re we’re finding ourselves in, in our society today. But but can I tell you, in the darkest of moments how beautiful it is as an opportunity for the gospel? That if God’s people, rather than run from it, rather than hide in it, rather than just give it over. If we could see the opportunity that God has for us in that, for the goodness of who he is to just shine forth. I think more than any time in our country, people are looking for answers. That’s why as a church that we have been growing so people are just sick of of the things the world is tossing at them. There might be some temporal relief in that, but ultimately they know deep down in their soul that there’s more to life than this.
Which means for you as as God’s people, how important it is to, to to not give up, but to dive deeper in the sovereignty of who God is and discover him in the midst of the struggles of life. I mean, if you were to walk out these doors today and you were just asked people some basic questions that are foundational for life people, people cannot answer them like the questions like, why do you exist? And the general answer people tend to say is to to do as good as I can or just to be a good person, of which is, is, you know, we we definitely want you to be a good person. Like, don’t don’t go out and be destructive in society. But that’s putting the cart before the horse that that still doesn’t get you to the to the most primary question of why you exist. It talks about what you do, but it’s not why you exist. If all you exist for is to simply do good, can I just tell you God is way better at it than you are, and there’s nothing you’re going to do in your own strength that’s really going to impress him anyway. Like God can can. God owns the cattle on a thousand hills. He created all of this, right? There’s what are you going to do in your feeble self that’s going to impress God that he can’t do for himself, right? Like, is that really the reason he created you just simply to do good? I mean, the book of Genesis starts off that way, to reminding us the reason you exist isn’t to do good.
The reason you exist is to know God. You’re made in his image, to connect to your creator. And as your life is surrendered to him as he has given his life for you at the cross, it’s through that relationship with the Lord that then you live out the purpose for which you were created in him, and ultimately you end up doing good to the point that it blesses other people. But it only comes through relationship with the Lord, trusting in the sovereign hand of God, or people asking the question, how do you determine what’s true? And we’ve gotten so far away from understanding it, the idea of a universal truth that in our own country, what we tend to fixate on is, is, is is temporal truth or experiential truth or or relative truth. It’s true for you. It’s true for you. And what’s true for me is true for me. Which honestly isn’t really truth. It’s just a relative statement. But there are certain truths that govern life. And how do you determine what’s true is important? Or or how can you trust in God? What makes God believable? And not just any generic God, the God of the Bible? Why trust the Bible and what makes Jesus who he is? And those questions become foundational for life and being able to to encourage people.
And that only happens in a walk with with the Lord. But but our default is people is is rather than trusting the sovereign hand of God is to trust in in ourselves. And I think this is why we struggle as, as as human beings. We struggle in, in knowing the true God because our lives aren’t fully surrendered to him. We come to God with agendas and conditions we tend to. There’s been studies on America over the last couple of decades asking the question, what? What really is America’s God? And the answer theologians have come up with is our God. Our belief system is therapeutic moral deism, therapeutic moral deism, which means we want to feel good about ourselves. So we’ll kind of do good things in order to feel good about ourselves. And we’ll leverage God for that purpose to make us feel good. The idea of deism is that there’s a belief that God exists, but he’s sort of created the world, wound it up, and he’s distant from us. He doesn’t want to be active in our lives. It’s really up to us from here. And so we just have this therapeutic want to feel positive and do a little good with this deistic god. Not not really intimate relationship. And because of that, we sort of create our own God.
And we come to this God with conditions. We say to God, okay, God, if you do this for me, and we sort of tell him who he needs to be to bow to our will, then I’ll trust in you and I’ll live out this therapeutic, moralistic, deistic belief system. And so we and it fits well with our culture, right? And our American culture. It’s have it your way, Burger King, isn’t it? Just whatever makes you happy, you kind of shape it according to what you desire and even your God. You sort of just pick what you want. But when it comes to the biblical God, that’s not how it works at all. God doesn’t want a part of you. God says it’s all or nothing. God wants all of you surrendering all you are to who he is. As Jesus has given his entire life for you. There is no peace in your. A relationship with God until that happens. But that will never happen until you begin to realize this, the sovereign hand of God, and that this God is good and this God is for you. And you ultimately see that played out through the life of Jesus. If that weren’t true, Jesus wouldn’t walk this path before. He wouldn’t have endured that grief and suffering, and he wouldn’t have given his life for you. But but the fact that God was willing to to lower himself, to take on flesh, to to walk as we walk and to give his life for your freedom, screams at you that there is a God who is sovereign, who cares who who has defeated sin, Satan, and death.
That that as as you have seen his life given over for you, then you in turn can give your life to him. Number one, secrets to never giving up. Resting in the hand of that sovereign God. And here’s here’s how you see it play out for Joseph. Verse 14 Sefaira sent for Joseph, and he was quickly brought from the dungeon when he had shaved and changed his clothes, he came before Pharaoh. Pharaoh said to him, I had a dream, and no one can interpret it. But I have heard that you you can interpret dreams. Verse 16. I can’t do it. Joseph replied to Pharaoh, but God will give Pharaoh the answer he desires. I love this here. Here you see, in order to come before Pharaoh, Joseph’s got a doll himself up. But his walk with God is just raw. He can come to the Lord wherever he’s at. He’s not there to impress God. He just has come to a place where he has been stripped of everything, and in so doing, he’s discovered God is who he needs, and in that lays his life down for the Lord. In any state that he has found himself, his life is given over to God. Pharaoh maybe try to impress at least the people wanted him to by getting him cleaned up.
But in verse 16 he very clearly says to Pharaoh, it’s not me that interprets the dreams, but the sovereign God. This would have been a perfect time to elevate himself, right? To talk about how great is. That’s right Pharaoh, I am amazing, right? But he doesn’t because he knew what ultimately would transform. And it’s not him. It’s it’s it’s the Lord that transforms our life. And that’s who he wanted Pharaoh to know. That’s who he wanted Egypt to know. Rest in the sovereign hand of God. Point number two is this let the joy of the Lord be your strength. Let the joy of the Lord be your strength. Joy is a wonderful thing. I hope you experience it all the days of your life. In fact, in Proverbs 17 it says, A joyful heart is good medicine. And you know we can. We as people can find joy in all sorts of places. We can find it in relationships with people. We can we can find it in circumstances of life. But but more important than any of those things, it is paramount that we find our joy in the Lord. And here’s why. Everything else will disappoint you at some time. At some point in your life, relationships will fail. Your experiences will not always be positive, but the Lord will always remain consistent. The joy of the Lord is to be your strength. In order to experience true joy, you need to find it in something that endures.
And sometimes Christians are even happy. Uh, excuse me, Christians are even careful in how they talk about joy. They’ll often refer to things like that, give a positive experience, like relationships with people as something that makes them happy, or having an experience in life as something that makes them happy, because it sort of differentiates the difference between happiness and joy. That joy should be deeper than that, that that that joy should be something that endures. And the only thing that endures is what you have in the Lord. Now let me just tell you, when you think about joy and you look at Genesis chapter 41, nowhere in this chapter does it talk about joy in the Lord. But, but here’s what I want you to know is the idea of discovering joy in the Lord is repeated over and over again in Scripture without necessarily using the phrase. It wasn’t until you get to the book of Nehemiah in chapter eight that you you finally see someone coining the term to describe what a relationship with the Lord is really about. Uh, Nehemiah put it into words. What? What God’s people had been walking through all of their days. And when Nehemiah put in the words, it was it came in a beautiful place. If you remember the story of the book of Nehemiah, God’s children were taken as captives into Babylon. They were going through a struggle. They would have been asking those questions of struggle.
God, do you love us? God? Do you care about us? God, are you giving up on me? Do we matter to you? In the book of Nehemiah is the story. When they come back into Jerusalem and they rebuild the walls, they rebuild the temple. And in chapter eight they read the law of the Lord, and they realize they had been living as a sinful people, and many of them didn’t know God’s Word. Most of them didn’t know God’s Word. And they’re lamenting in that. And Nehemiah tells them, don’t lament. God has rescued you. God has been faithful, and now you have the privilege of knowing God’s Word to walk with him. The joy of the Lord is your strength. And they had learned that even though they had been consistent to the Lord or inconsistent to the Lord, God had always been consistent to fulfill his promises to them. And they realized as they had trusted in everything else, it had failed them. But it was. It was the Lord who was always faithful. And so they used this phrase, the joy of the Lord is is their strength. And you see this happen over and over in Scripture. Just that idea. Even in job, when job lost his, his, his family, his kids, when he lost his home, when he lost his wealth, when he lost his crop, when he lost his, his, his animals, all that he lost. You know, he asked job at that moment, in an earthly sense, people may look at him and be like, job, you’ll be happy again when you get all that stuff back.
But job says, no, that’s not, that’s not what I’m shooting for. That’s not where my joy comes from. In chapter 23, verse ten, he says, but he knows the way that I take when he has tried me, I shall come out as gold. Job is saying, look, here’s the goal and desire of my life is to honor of the Lord. It’s the joy of the Lord that is his strength, his life completely given over to him. It’s this eternal perspective that that helps him think through the the struggles that he faces in the day. Sometimes we have this tendency when we face adversity, to get so fixated on that struggle that we fail to put it into an eternal perspective, resting in the sovereign hand of God, that God is good and he will work this out for his good. And when you get to take a step back and think to yourself, you know what? No matter what happens, I know who I am because I know whose I am, and therefore I’m going to make my aim, continuing to live for his glory, because I know whether it’s in this world or what’s to come. God’s going to work it all out. Even in Hebrews 12 with Jesus it says, Look to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of your faith, who for the joy.
That was set before him endured the cross. So you see the suffering, the struggle of the moment. But he has a greater purpose, a greater pursuit in mind and despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. He’s saying, in the midst of struggle his life remained constant towards this one purpose, which was to glorify the father. And in so doing, at the at the end he could see be seated once again in heaven at the right hand of the father, which is a place of favor, because he lived an honorable life. When you think about the joy of the Lord is your strength. This is what we see in the life of Joseph, that Joseph is called before the the King in order to, or Pharaoh in order to interpret his dreams. And he has this eternal perspective to the temporal battles in which he’s facing. And as he’s interpreting this dream, this is what he says to Pharaoh in the midst of interpreting, he says, Then Joseph said to Pharaoh, the dreams of Pharaoh are one and the same. God has delivered, has revealed to Pharaoh what he is about to do. It is just as I said to Pharaoh, God has shown Pharaoh what he is about to do. The reason the dream was given to Pharaoh in two forms is that the matter has been firmly decided by God, and God will do it soon.
And in the midst of the struggle, Joseph has just remained constant. It’s the joy of the Lord that he lives, for he knows what he has in the Lord will, will endure and being stripped of everything. I think helped. Joseph continued to remain in this place of absolute surrender to the one who held him in his hands. Point number three. In so doing, you can live in a secure identity, live in a secure identity. When you trust in the sovereign hand of God. When the joy of the Lord becomes your strength. You rest in the identity that you have in him and Joseph in the story, he he interprets the dream and then he tells Pharaoh what he think Pharaoh should do. He says to Pharaoh, look, you’ve got seven years on this dream, seven years of plenty. Well, you’ll have an abundance of food, but then you’re going to have seven years of famine, and you need to take the seven years of plenty in order to carry you through the seven years of famine. And then he recommends for Pharaoh in verse 33 he says, now let Pharaoh look for a discerning and wise man, and put him in charge of the land of Egypt. The only way you ever really have a discerning, wise man is if you have someone whose life is truly given over to the Lord, because any other person is going to use that position of power to serve themselves, but as only someone who truly finds their identity in the Lord when they say, my life wasn’t created for me, God, but created for you, and as your life is shaped in him, then you discover how God has then desired to use you to bless others.
You don’t need other people to affirm you. Your longing is not to have power. So people think you’re great or possession so that you feel great, but rather you’ve come to learn that what you have in the Lord is what you. All you need in life and what you have in God is is far greater than anything this world can give to you and Joseph. In that secure position, he gives this recommendation of what really Pharaoh needs to look for a person of wisdom to navigate the the circumstances in which they’re about to find themselves. You need a person of character. Can can I tell you character is your greatest platform to make a difference for the Lord in this world. It’s the reason people trust you. Now, I know we’re not perfect people, and even in our failures, we can ultimately point back to the character of a God who is greater, who forgives us in our failures. But but character becomes this place of being able to use your leadership to make a difference in this world. It is the most important attribute of any leader. Is that your character and. And when I say character, I mean godly character.
In verse 37, then the plan seemed good to Pharaoh and to all his officials. So Farah asked them, can we find anyone like this man, one in whom is the Spirit of God? Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, Since God has made all this known to you, there is no one so discerning and wise as you, as fair is looking around. And because Joseph has remained consistent in his character, Pharaoh realizes that the person that should be in this position is Joseph. In verse 40, you shall be in charge of my palace, and all my people are to submit to your orders. Only with respect to the throne will I be greater than you. So Pharaoh said to Joseph, I hereby put you in charge of the whole land of Egypt. Then Pharaoh took his signet ring from his finger and put it on Joseph’s finger. He dressed him in robes of Finland and put a gold chain around his neck. He’s about to be a rapper. I think he had. He had him ride in a chariot. I’m kidding. I don’t know where it came from. He had him riding in a chariot and he’s his second in command. And people shouted before him, make way! Thus he put him in charge of the whole land of Egypt. When? When Pharaoh gives Joseph the signet ring. This is an incredible moment. This signet ring is like getting, um, getting all the power of the land.
This is like. This is Pharaoh’s credit card. If you want to go buy something, you just say, charge it to Pharaoh and you stamp it with the ring. You want to make a law, you just write the law and you just stamp it with the ring. That’s. That’s the kind of authority that that Joseph has. But it’s the consistency of his character. Even even when he was accused falsely, he didn’t wallow in the mud with those people he choose, chose to just walk with the Lord and honor him and bless those around him wherever he found himself. Incredible. The only way you get to that place is to be secure in your identity, and the only way you’re secure in your identity is you’re resting in the joy of the Lord. And the only reason you want to make the Lord your joy is because you understand who the sovereign God really is. And because of that, now he finds him himself in this position. And one of the things I really want you to see in this story, it’s like the author of Genesis knew where he was going to end, because when you read in the very beginning of Genesis chapter one and verse 26 and 27, it tells us that when God made all of us, he made us in his image. And for the Hebrew slaves that this book was originally written to, this would have been an incredible statement, because for a Hebrew slave, what they have been taught and learned is that there is only one who is in the image of God, and that is Pharaoh.
Pharaoh is God’s representative on this earth, and at certain points they just treated him like he was God himself. And so there was this way of saying, you know, you guys are lesser than this guy. This guy is God’s guy, and you guys are just beneath him. And when the book of Genesis was written, what it was actually saying to is saying to you, look, there can be people in different positions in this world, but no one is more important than someone else. All of us are made in the image of God, which gives us all intrinsic worth. Your value is not based on what you do. Your value is based on who you are. And so we all have the beautiful privilege of rehumanizing people in this world, that what the world will do is try to shame people, make them feel worthless because they’re not as good as someone else at something that is not biblical, that is not right, that is not good. And so what the Bible helps us understand is the. Worth of who you are in light of who God is, that you’ve been given this intrinsic value. And then you see this illustrated through Pharaoh, that now, while we learn that we’re all made in the image of God, even though Pharaoh was, it was taught to the people that only Pharaoh was that way.
Here you see Joseph now elevated in this position. Now I want you to know, just because he is in this position isn’t when now he has worth. Joseph knew who who he was and the worth he carried all along. That’s why he was able to be faithful to the Lord as he went through this adversity. Just because he got this position didn’t change who he was. And that’s the danger with people receiving power, right? All of a sudden they get power and they start abusing it and they start abusing it. Not because really the power changed them. Sometimes it does, but really the power gave them opportunity to, to fully express what was already in them. But but it’s when, when when you walk with the character of which you were created in Christ and you understand who you are, then you’ll leverage the opportunities that God gives you for his glory in this world to the benefit of others. That’s why power didn’t change who Joseph was, but rather in getting this power, he was able to use it to the blessing of people around him. Live in a secure identity. Um, let me give you point number four. Remain focused on the mission. Remain focused on the mission. Why should you never give up? God wants to do a beautiful work not only in your life, but through your life. Um. In Genesis chapter 41, verse 50, Joseph, right before the famine, he had two kids, and he uses the name of his kids to really tell the story of God in his life.
He says this before the years of a famine came, two sons were born to Joseph by Asenath, daughter of Potipherah, priest of on. Joseph named his his firstborn Manasseh, and said, it is because God has made me forget all my trouble and all my father’s household. Then the second son, he named Ephraim, and said, it is because God has been has made me fruitful in the land of my suffering. Here’s what he’s saying. I could have let all the baggage of my life tell me who I am. But having God in my life taught me who I really am. And because of that, I could put all of the past behind me. I get to discover who I am by the grace of God, because of God made known in my life, and the things that happened to me are not me. I’m something far more beautiful in the Lord. And so Joseph uses his first son to say, it’s important to learn to put the past in the past. When Jesus gave his life for me, he covered it all past, present, and future. And because of that, then Ephraim represents in the Lord. He has a double portion. And what he’s saying is, no matter what this world offers to me, what God offers is doubly better than anything the world can do.
And so he’s learned in his relationship with the Lord who he really is. He’s able to let go of those things that might try to define him, to allow his life to be defined and the goodness of who God is, that he could live in the blessing of the Lord. Knowing what God gives to him is far greater than anything this world could ever offer. And then through that, he can then bless the world, because he’s not looking for this world to give him any affirmation, or this world to tell him what his worth is made of. But rather he’s already discovered that in the midst of the prison, in his own struggles, because he’s found his relationship in God, all of him surrendered to the Lord. And he discovers this in verse 56, when the famine was spread over the whole country, Joseph opened all the storehouses and sold grain to the Egyptians, for the famine was severe throughout Egypt, and all the world came to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph, because the famine was severe everywhere. I mean, here it is. He he could have given up at any time, but he just he knew what God wanted him to do. And that was just simply be faithful where he was. And as he continued to be faithful, God brought him to an opportunity to use his life to bless the entire world. I mean, far, far better than anything could have Joseph.
Joseph could have done in his own strength. God used his life to make a difference, because in the midst of that struggle, he didn’t give up. He trusted in a sovereign God. He rested in the joy of the Lord, and through that found his identity. And because of that, then was able to continue to live on this mission. And he found how it blessed people around him. Now, I know when you read a story like Joseph, and I’ll close with this. When you read a story like Joseph, our tendency as human beings is to look at that and think, man, that’s great for Joseph. But I’m not Joseph, right? And truth be told, you’re not you’re not you’ve you’ve likely never been a slave and never been in prison. You’re not Joseph. Right? Um, but but here’s what I want you to know. Um, you know, on the screen is a picture of people. And here I want you to know something particular about this picture. And that is, it’s of no importance to any of us. There is no one special in this picture. This is a picture of ordinary people I got on an internet, and I decided to look for a photo that had no copyright to it, so I wouldn’t get in trouble. Uh, of just ordinary people. That’s what I googled. Give me an ordinary crowd. And. But here’s what I’ve learned about the Lord over the years is God really loves ordinary people.
And the reason I know that is because he made so, so many dang much of us right there. He filled the world with nothing but ordinary people. But what makes ordinary people amazing is not in and of themselves. What makes ordinary people amazing is when they’re attached to an extraordinary God. And being connected to an extraordinary God. Ordinary people do extraordinary things. God’s not looking for people to impress him with who you are. God just wants all of you where you are. Not in this therapeutic moral deism where you tell God what you want. Rather you surrender to understand who he truly is and understanding who he is. He can become the joy of your life and becoming the joy of your life. You find the identity of who you are in light of who he is, and therefore can live a glorious mission for his purposes in this world. And in so doing, extraordinary things happen. It’s not because of what you’ve done. But it’s because of what God has done for you. He has not given up on you. Even in the moments where it feels like maybe he has even the moments when you’re struggling, you’re asking the question, God, where are you in this? Do you not love me? The cross of Christ screams at you. His life is full of love and grace and mercy for you.