Transcription
How many of you know Joseph in the Bible? Come on, everybody should know Joseph, right? I mean, he has to be one of my favorite characters in the Old Testament. Joseph is this young man that God gives him these dreams, right, of great leadership, and he, he shows them clearly that one day he will be a leader, and his brothers will even be under his leadership, right?
But when Joseph shows up in Genesis 37, the very first verse, you know what it says? He was telling his dad about the bad things his brothers were doing. So he's a tattletale. And then if you go a couple verses later, like six more verses, you know what it says? He's bragging about his dreams, and he's talking down to his brothers. So let me list this out, make this really, really clear. When Joseph shows up, we got a bragger, we got a tattletale, and we got somebody who talks down to people.
So God puts Joseph into a leadership position, right there, you know what you got? A very narcissistic, insecure leader. Somebody's going to destroy lives. So God says, "We need a little work done in this boy's life." Now, God doesn't author this, he permits it. See, you got to understand God, you know, he, he knows the end from the beginning because he's not bound by time. We're bound to time. I can tell you everything that happened yesterday. I can't tell you much of what's going to happen tomorrow unless God shows me, right? Because we're bound by time. But God knows what these boys are going to do, his brothers, right? So he knows they're going to, he, what they, they're going to sell him into slavery.
So what did they do? They throw him into a pit. For those of you that don't know, pit stands for "Preachers In Training," by the way. And, and he's sold as a slave, and he's brought down to the most powerful nation in the world, and he's sold into one of the officers of the King's house in Egypt, right, Potiphar. And yeah, we in the Western world do not understand what his brothers did to him, okay? What his brothers did to him was worse than killing him because back in those days, it was everything for a young man to receive his father's name and inheritance. I mean, God appears to Abraham, says, "Abraham's response is kind of like, big deal, I don't have an heir, nobody's going to carry my name on." And so back in those days, if you're, if you're a slave, you're going to work the rest of your life to build somebody else's name and heritage, their legacy. The woman you marry will build, build their legacy. Your children will build other people's legacy. Now, it's one thing to be born a slave. It is a completely different thing to be born the heir of a very wealthy man and have it all stripped away from you by your own brothers.
So after six months, a year, all hope of a father's rescue is gone. My dad thinks I'm dead. He's 10 years, he's a slave. Would you think about how long 10 years is? Go back 10 years. It's a long time, right? Now, God is blessing him because God always blesses, but underneath the surface, something much worse is going on. And that is this: the officer's wife gets the hots for Joseph, and she doesn't approach him once or twice. The Bible says she approaches him every day. Now, I want you to stop and think about this. This woman is probably dressed in the best, scented in the best, and probably has the seducing spirit up to their eyeballs. And she's, she's approaching him every day for sex, okay? Now, you, you're not thinking this through. He doesn't have a connect group, a small group. He doesn't have podcasts to listen to. He's not even looking at Twitter. And yet, every day, I love how this guy fears God. Every day he's like, "No."
See, a lot of people don't get the fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord is not to be scared of God. How can you be intimate with somebody you're scared of? Fear of the Lord is to be terrified to be away from him. Paul tells us about the fear of the Lord when he writes to the Philippian church. Now, this is Paul writing to the Philippians, but it's really God speaking to us. And you know what he said to the Philippian church in Philippians 2:15, somewhere around there? He says, "As you have always obeyed in my presence, even now much more obeying in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling." See, it's one thing to obey God when you're in an atmosphere like this. It's easy Thursday night when your child's throwing up all night long, and you got the presentation of your life in front of the board the next morning. Or, or what about, what about when you're at work, and in your dream job, and somebody gossips about you and totally slanders and tells lies about you, and you get fired? Are you still going to obey God? Are you going to be a little passive-aggressive like, "Why should I obey you? What have you done for me?" Sure, it's quiet in this Presbyterian church right now. But Joseph, every day.
Now, think about it. 10 years, you've had your heritage stripped from you. You're not the bad one, your brothers are. They're enjoying all the wealth of your great grand, of your grandfather Abraham, great grandfather, excuse me. You're working to build somebody else's legacy. 10 years, and this woman's approaching you, and she's, you know, she knows what she's doing. Finally, they're alone in the house one day, right? And this woman's got it planned. She puts on the right outfit. She got some legs showing out that slit of that nothing. She got a little cleavage showing, and she nestles up to him, and got that perfume on, and she goes, "I'm yours. Nobody's here." And he does exactly what the word of God says. He flees sexual immorality. She's got a hold of his robe, his garment, he runs, that robe tears, he's naked. She's scorned. Woman, her scorn turns into her lust turns into hate. And now she accuses him of rape, the very thing he ran from. So he gets thrown into the dungeon.
Now, I just preached in Louisiana a couple months ago, largest prison in the United States called Angola, in Southeast Louisiana. 6,200 inmates. They're all in there, 20 years to life, no parole. Can I tell you that prison was a country club compared to the Middle Eastern dungeons I've been in? Now, let me tell you, we don't get what a Middle Eastern dungeon is. Middle Eastern dungeons were usually cisterns that were dried up underground. The average height of a Middle Eastern dungeon, the cistern, is four feet. You have no sunshine. It's damp. It's bedrock. So get the picture here. There's no mattress, there's no pillow, there's no running water. Do you understand? You were living in your waist. You throw up, you live in it. Nobody comes in and cleans it up. You don't have a gym or a basketball goal. You don't have a television. You don't have any sunshine coming in. The Bible says they hurt his feet with fetters, they laid him in chains. Put it up for me until the time that his personal promise came to pass, the word of the Lord tested him. Amazing. You know what they did in those dungeons? They gave you what's called the bread of affliction. What's the bread of affliction? They don't want you to die, it's too easy. So they give you just enough bread and just enough water to keep you alive.
So then God brings the greatest test to Joseph. What's the greatest test? He brings two guys that had dreams, a butler and a baker. You know the story, right? They want an interpretation of their dreams. What's the test? Listen, can Joseph proclaim to them the faithfulness of God when he's not seen one shred of evidence of it in his own life in 10 years? Think about it. God says, "You're going to be a leader, and your brothers will be under your leadership." He's gone from pit to slavery to dungeon. Can he proclaim to them the faithfulness of God when he hasn't seen any evidence of it in his own life in 10 years? Joseph would have been like many of us. "Do you have dreams? Last night? Leave me alone. Dreams don't come true. I had a dream once." If you would have done that, he would have died in the dungeon saying, "God isn't faithful, and God does not keep his promises." When the reality is, God is faithful, and God does keep his promises. He passed the test. He obeys. God obeys every time. He obeys God, his life gets worse. Do you understand this? All he does is proclaim the dream, he gets the pit and slavery. All he does is flee sexual immorality, he obeys the word of God, and he gets the dungeon. Now he obeys, he proclaims the faithfulness of God, and the butler forgets him, and he's in there two more years. Two more years living in his waist, his urine, all that stuff, okay? He's underground, cistern, in this dungeon, two more years.
And then the King has a dream. The butler goes, "Oh my gosh, I forgot that guy." He gets restored. Seven years of plenty, two years of famine. Out of the years, 19 years later, here comes the brothers. And some of us are upset when our dream isn't fulfilled in 18 months. Do you know what Joseph's life shows us? Shows us this: no man, no woman, no child, no organization, no demon can ever get you out of your destiny. Joseph's brothers said, "We're going to destroy it. We will kill him, and we'll see what becomes of his dream." And God says, "Oh yeah? You're going to be the very ones that fulfill his dream." The only one that can get you out of your destiny is you.