We open the word of God to 105th
Psalm.
Psalm 105 and I'm beginning at verse 16
and we'll read through verse 23.
Psalm 105 verses 16 through 23.
Speaking about our Lord, and moreover, he called
for a famine upon the land.
That's of course the land of Egypt.
He broke the whole staff of bread.
He sent a man before them.
That man happened to be 17 years old
when God sent him.
Even Joseph, who was sold for a servant,
whose feet they hurt with fetters, he was
laid in iron.
Until the time that his word came, the
word of the Lord tested him.
The king sent and loosed him, even the
ruler of the people, and let him go
free.
He made him lord of his house and
ruler of all his substance, to bind his
princes at his pleasure, and to teach his
elders wisdom.
Israel also came into Egypt and Jacob sojourned
in the land of Ham.
And so the psalmist gives us eight verses
to tell us the story of Joseph.
In the book of Genesis, Moses took 419
verses to tell us the story of Joseph.
Joseph is one of the greatest and most
famous prisoners of all history.
I once had to testify at a child
custody hearing.
It so happened that the father in the
case had been in prison, but had gotten
saved.
I believe genuinely born again.
He was doing his utmost with the Lord's
help to live a good life.
I recall sitting on that witness stand and
the attorney on the other side looked at
me and said, Reverend, do you believe that
you could trust a man who was a
prisoner?
And no one told me you're supposed to
answer yes or no.
And I said, well, sir, many great men
have been prisoners.
And I began to tick them off.
John Bunyan and Adoniram Judson and Joseph and
Jesus.
And at that point I heard, answer the
question.
And I understood why Jesus said, woe unto
you lawyers.
Now you all know the story of Joseph.
You learned it in Sunday school.
The first 17 years of his life, he
was a pampered son.
His aged father, Jacob, was ruining the boy
by pampering him, separating him from the rest
of his brethren and making him somebody special.
And then his brethren who hated him sold
him as a slave.
And for 10 years in Egypt, he was
a faithful servant.
And then because of a lying woman, he
ended up in prison for three years.
And at the age of 30, Joseph was
exalted to be the second ruler of the
land.
Now all of this is wrapped up in
these few verses in Psalm 105.
But from these verses and from the life
of Joseph, we can learn at least four,
if not more, but at least four very
practical lessons to help us in our own
daily living.
Lesson number one, God has his purposes.
Now Joseph didn't understand these purposes.
His brothers didn't understand them.
What they did, they did because they were
envious of him.
Joseph himself later said, you meant it for
evil, but God meant it for good.
Joseph is one man in the Old Testament
who lived in Romans 8, 28.
And we know that all things are working
together for good to them that love God,
to them who are the called according to
his purpose.
Now God has a number of purposes wrapped
up in the life of Joseph.
For one thing, he wanted to make a
man.
That's the way God always operates.
He chooses a man, chooses a woman, and
then he works in that person's life.
I've been a student of Christian biography for
many years, have some, oh, five or six
hundred volumes of Christian biography in my library,
and I've noticed this.
When God wants to do a work, he
calls a worker.
And then God works on the worker.
And having worked on the worker, he gets
him or her where that person ought to
be.
Then comes the work.
And so God has his purposes.
And his first purpose was to build a
man.
Had Joseph been left in the hands of
his pampering father Jacob, Joseph would have ended
up without much character, without much ministry, humanly
speaking.
And so God had to arrange a rather
devious way, a rather circuitous way, to get
Joseph out from under Jacob's leadership and put
him where life was difficult.
God wanted to make a man.
It's rather interesting that when the story comes
to an end, Joseph stands there, the greatest
type of Jesus Christ anywhere in the Old
Testament.
Joseph was a beautiful picture of our Lord
Jesus.
That's what Romans 8, 28, and 29 are
all about.
Who are called according to his purpose.
Now, what is his purpose?
That we might be conformed to the image
of his son.
And so God has his purposes.
And his first purpose is to build our
lives.
You see, when difficulties come, and they do,
when there are trials and problems, family problems,
economic problems, job problems, when difficulties come, they
will either be weapons to beat us down
or tools to build us up.
So God has his purposes, and his first
purpose was to build the man.
His second purpose was to build a nation.
You see, Israel was made up of Jacob
and his sons and their families.
It was kind of a motley crew of
people.
There were inter-family fightings.
You've never had that experience, but they did.
There were difficulties, and God was looking at
those people and saying, I want to build
a nation out of you.
Now, how do you do it?
Well, you write a constitution, you elect some
officers.
No.
One day he had to pick up that
family, took 70 people, and moved them down
to Egypt, and for some time they prospered,
and then they were persecuted.
And God sent a man before them, Joseph,
that that nation might be built in the
land of Egypt.
Had it not been for Joseph, there would
not have been the nation of Israel.
And God had a third purpose.
He built a man who helped to build
a nation, and through that nation, God could
save a world.
That's what Israel was all about to begin
with.
When you read the book of Genesis, you
find all of the Gentiles falling to pieces.
Those of us who are not of Jewish
ancestry have to hang our heads in shame
when we read the book of Genesis, because
God started off with Gentiles.
Gentiles made a mess of things.
God wiped everything clean, and started off again.
And then men began to rebel against God.
They built that tower of Babel, and God
said, we can't have this, and He scattered
everybody.
They said, we're going to make a name
for ourselves.
That sounds just like the Gentiles.
And then God calls Abraham, and God says
to Abraham, I'm going to make a great
name for you.
This crowd back here wanted to make a
great name for themselves, but Abraham, I'm going
to make your name great, and through you,
all of the nations of the earth are
going to be blessed.
And so God called Abraham, and then Isaac,
and then Jacob, and now 70 people, now
a nation, and through this nation, Jesus was
born.
God has His purposes.
Now God has His purposes for my life,
for your life.
He wants to build a person.
He wants to build character, integrity, spirituality, courage,
faithfulness, honesty, dependability.
He wants to build a person.
And then having built that person, He wants
to reach out and save a world.
God has His purposes.
And so you and I never have to
look up to heaven and say, Father, are
you sure you know what you're doing?
You didn't consult with me on this.
I didn't fill out any application forms for
this place I'm in.
And the Father looks down and says, well,
you know what?
I made the whole universe without your help.
I didn't have to call any consultation with
you.
I know what I'm doing.
God has His purposes.
You say, even when my own brethren give
me trouble?
Yes.
Even when people lie about me?
Yes.
Even when I'm going through prison?
Yes.
God has His purposes.
That's the first lesson.
Now, the second lesson that Joseph teaches us
is this.
God has His methods.
I think it's Isaiah the prophet who says,
now, my ways are not your ways.
My thoughts are not your thoughts.
My thoughts are much higher than yours.
My ways are much more profound than yours.
As I read my Bible, I discover that
God doesn't do things the way I would
have done it.
And it's a good thing.
I would have made a mess out of
it.
The Jewish people cried out and said, we're
hungry.
We need something to eat.
And so God, very graciously, very generously, every
morning early, sent down the manna.
First, the dew would arrive to keep the
manna clean.
And then those little round wafers of angel
food cake would fall down to feed the
nation of Israel.
I wouldn't have fed that bunch of rebels
that way.
I would have made one huge loaf of
bread and dropped it right in the middle
of the camp.
But God's ways are not my ways.
When God wanted to deliver the people of
Israel from the land of Egypt, He sent
a baby.
He had a Jewish boy fall in love
with a Jewish girl.
And they said, you know, we really shouldn't
get married because if we have any boy
babies, they'll kill them.
They said, let's do God's will.
And she did give birth to a baby.
I wouldn't have done it that way.
I would have brought down an army.
I would have fixed them.
But God has better methods.
And God has His methods with Joseph.
Now, here is a 17-year-old boy
who's having dreams, not because he ate too
much pizza before he went to bed.
Joseph went to bed, and the only way
God could talk to people in those days,
or one of the few ways, was through
dreams.
And he was dreaming, and he saw the
sheaves of his father and his brethren bow
down to his sheaf.
God was saying, Joseph, someday you're going to
be a ruler.
And Joseph went and told his brethren the
good news.
And they frowned and said this blabbermouth.
Then he had another dream.
The sun, the moon, and the stars bowed
down to him.
That was going too far.
That was lifting it to a much higher
plane.
They said, oh no.
And that's when they decided they were going
to kill him.
Now, Joseph was a dreamer.
And Joseph was a young man.
The Bible says there's nothing wrong with dreaming.
Thoreau used to say, and this is one
of the few things he said that's worth
remembering, Thoreau said that it's good to build
your castles in the air, but put a
foundation under them.
Mr. Moody used to say that some people
are so heavenly-minded they're no earthly good.
Joseph wasn't like that.
Joseph heard from God, and God said, Joseph,
you're going to be a ruler.
You're going to be a ruler.
I can't do it.
I'm just a young boy, seventeen years old.
My father's pampering me.
You see, dreams without disciplines become nightmares.
And God had to translate Joseph's dreams into
reality.
And he had three methods that he used
for doing it, three disciplines that he used.
Number one was the discipline of service.
Joseph wasn't doing much work at home.
His father gave him a very special tailored
garment.
Shepherds don't wear special tailored garments when you're
working around with dirty animals.
You don't dress as though you're going to
visit the queen.
And Joseph was somewhat pampered, and Joseph was
somewhat of a special person.
And the first thing God did was make
him a servant.
You know why?
You can't become a ruler until first you're
a servant.
That's God's principle.
Well done, thou good and faithful servant, thou
hast been faithful over a few things, I'll
make thee ruler over many things.
And God said to Joseph, I can't trust
you on the throne until I can trust
you there in the pantry.
I can't trust you with a scepter in
your hand until first I can trust you
with a broom in your hand.
This principle works all through the Bible.
God couldn't make Moses a ruler until Moses
was first a servant.
Nehemiah was first a servant, then a ruler.
My Lord Jesus Christ, when he came to
this earth, came as a servant.
And now he is exalted above every name
as the ruler.
And God's first method was the discipline of
service.
If Joseph is going to give orders, he
has to learn how to take orders.
If Joseph is going to share honor, he
has to learn how to accept humility.
If Joseph is going to exercise authority, he
has to be under authority.
When a person exercises authority, but he's not
under authority, he's a dictator, not a ruler.
The discipline of service.
Well, he passed that.
God blessed him in such a wonderful way
that Potiphar just gave him everything, gave him
all the credit cards, all the bank books,
everything.
And Joseph was a faithful servant.
Then came discipline number two, the discipline of
self-control.
God permitted Joseph to be tempted.
The story, of course, is given in Genesis
chapter 39, where Potiphar's wife tempted him day
after day.
And Joseph could have done like some young
men do.
He'd say, well, I'm away from home and
they'll never know what I do.
He didn't say that.
Or he could have said, well, when in
Egypt, do what the Egyptians do.
When in Rome, do what the Romeos do.
He didn't say that.
He didn't say, well, we can do it
secretly and nobody will know.
You know what he said?
How can I commit this sin before God?
My father's not watching me.
He's far away and thinks I'm dead.
My brothers aren't watching me.
They think I'm dead.
Your husband's not watching and the police aren't
watching.
And the place is not bugged, but God's
watching.
And one day she got so desperate, she
lunged at him and she got his coat
and he did the smart thing.
He just took off his coat and he
ran.
One of the old Puritan preachers says Joseph
lost his coat, but he kept his character.
Paul may have been thinking of this when
he wrote to young Timothy, flee youthful lusts,
the discipline of self-control.
He made no provision for the flesh and
he passed that, but ended up in jail.
Potiphar must have suspected something was wrong with
this story or would have had him killed.
He ended up there where the political prisoners
ended up and he gets in jail.
And before long, he's the assistant jailer, unofficial,
of course.
And down there in that Egyptian prison, they
put him in irons.
And I can see Joseph, he spent three
years as a prisoner.
I can just see him during those first
months saying, oh God, what's happened to my
dreams?
You told me I'd be a ruler.
Here, look what I am.
I'll never make it now.
I'm a prisoner and I've lost my reputation.
I've kept my character, but I've lost my
reputation.
I'll never make it.
God said, no, you're going to make it.
Just be patient.
About that time, he met the butler and
the baker.
Remember, they had dreams too.
And he interpreted those dreams for them.
And lo and behold, they came true.
And you'd think that the butler would have
remembered.
He didn't.
He forgot until Pharaoh began to dream and
then Joseph was delivered.
And so there was the discipline of suffering,
the discipline of service, the discipline of self
-control, the discipline of suffering.
God has his methods.
Now, Joseph teaches us a third lesson.
God has his times.
The psalmist says, he sent a man before
them.
God knows what he's doing.
Whose feet they hurt with fetters, he was
laid in iron until the time that God's
word came.
During that waiting period, the word of the
Lord tested him.
God has his times.
Now, we don't have to go into it,
but this begins all the way back with
Abraham.
Back in Genesis chapter 15, when God spoke
to Abraham, He gave Abraham the timetable.
He said, now your seed are going to
go into a land that's not theirs.
There's going to be a period of 400
years.
There's going to be suffering.
And He said, then they're going to come
out with great spoil and great victory for
the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet
full.
What was God watching?
God was watching two things.
The timing of the birth of Joseph.
The timing of the judgment of the nations
in Canaan.
God, in His grace, was giving those people
in Canaan land century after century of patience,
withholding His judgment.
That's why the Lord Jesus Christ hasn't returned
yet.
Because God is long-suffering to us.
We're not willing that any should perish, but
that all should come to repentance.
So God had His times.
And God looked at a 17-year-old
lad and said, well, let's see, it's going
to take us 13 years to get this
job done.
Now, if He'd told Joseph 13 years from
now, you're going to be a man, a
man of God and a man of authority,
Joseph would have said, 13 years?
Wow, I'll never make it.
Well, if he had to live a year
at a time, you never would make it.
But it was a day at a time,
a day at a time, the only way
you can live and the only way I
can live.
I think I've told you about my pastor
friend in Northern Kentucky, whose wife died and
the church graciously hired a lady to come
into the house, the pastorium, the parsonage and
clean it once a week.
And one day my friend was talking to
this lady and saying, well, how are you
today?
Oh, she said, Brother Monroe, the trouble with
life is it's so daily.
But the more I ponder that, the more
sense it makes.
I'm glad life is daily.
Can't live two days at a time.
God has His times and God works out
His schedule a day at a time.
And if Joseph is faithful today, he's that
much closer to the will of God tomorrow.
Now, the butler, it only took three days
for the butler's dream to be fulfilled.
The people out in the world, there's no
schedule there.
But for God's people, it takes time.
God can grow poison ivy overnight.
God can grow mushrooms overnight.
But when He wants to build Himself a
sturdy oak, that takes some time.
Some of you students are going to get
to a certain point in your preparation for
the ministry when someone's going to make a
big mistake and tell you how good you
are.
What are you doing sitting in school?
You ought to be out preaching.
The world needs you.
Well, the world's been waiting a long time
for you to come along.
And you're going to be tempted to interrupt
God's preparation for your life.
Don't do it.
Being a good student is as much a
ministry as being a good preacher.
Preparation for ministry is ministry.
Now, Joseph could have finagled his way in
and out of things.
Joseph could have said, Lord, you're delaying too
long.
Let me get a hold of this for
a while.
We're always so impatient.
When the Elsons and my wife and I
went to Africa to minister a couple of
years ago, we walked into the guest house
there in Nairobi, the AIM guest house.
And there on the bulletin board was a
sign, I cannot forget.
It says, Lord, give me patience and do
it now.
God has his times.
Would you think me to be strange if
I told you I don't want to know
what's going to happen next week?
Did you read Ann Landers the other day?
I never cease to marvel at the letters
she gets.
The lady wrote to her and said, I
went to a fortune teller.
That's the first dumb thing.
Second dumb thing was to write and tell
people about it.
I went to a fortune teller and she
told me and she just unraveled a whole
long list of tragedies.
She said, I can't sleep at night.
What should I do?
And Ann Landers gave her the only sane
answer anybody could give her.
Don't believe in fortune tellers.
If that woman could foretell the future, she
wouldn't be collecting 10 bucks a head.
She'd be on Wall Street.
I have to chuckle when I read in
the newspapers about a police, about policemen who
arrest fortune tellers.
How come they didn't know they were coming?
I don't want to know the future.
I go along with Joseph Parker who wrote
that beautiful hymn that ought to be put
back in our hymn book.
God holds the key of all unknown and
I'm glad.
For if some other held the key or
if he trusted it to me, I might
be sad.
You say, well, I just can't wait.
Joseph waited 13 years.
God has his purposes.
God has his methods.
And God has his time.
There's a fourth lesson.
God has his resources.
What is going to keep us going while
we're waiting?
I confess to you and my friends know
it, my family knows it, I get impatient.
I have lost my sanctification on Dan Ryan
more than once.
I know where I want to go and
I know what I want to do and
I want to get it done.
And I think that's one reason the Lord
has me going all over to and fro
upon the earth because nothing can try your
patience like the airlines.
God has his resources.
Now, what resources do we draw upon while
God's making us, while we're suffering, while we're
serving?
What resources do we draw upon while we're
being tempted?
Well, let's look at them in Psalm 105.
He tells us, first of all, the Word
of God.
Until the time that his Word came, the
Word of the Lord tested him.
Now, Joseph got his Word through dreams.
I wouldn't trust that today if I were
you.
Every once in a while in my travels,
I meet someone with a rather strange look
in his eye who says, God speaks to
me in dreams.
And I want to back off and say,
well, God doesn't speak to me in dreams.
And God doesn't speak to me in visions.
I don't hear voices.
All I have to do is just open
my Bible.
And when I open my Bible, God opens
his mouth.
God talks to me.
The first resource that Joseph had was the
promise of God.
While he was in Potiphar's house serving, here
he is scrubbing the floor, and the devil
says, Joseph, Joseph, remember those dreams about being
a ruler?
Everybody bowing down.
Now who's on his knees?
And Joseph said, God promised that I'm going
to believe it even though I can't see
it.
That's the first resource, the promise of God.
That's why it's important for you to read
your Bible.
That's why it's important to mark the promises
of God.
That's why it's important to saturate our souls
with the Word of God.
Because this is our first resource as God
is working in our lives, the promise of
God.
Now he had a second resource.
That's the presence of God.
Over in Genesis chapter 39, and you can
check it out at your leisure.
In Genesis chapter 39, over and over again
it says, the Lord was with Joseph.
Potiphar discovered the Lord was with Joseph.
They did this to him, but the Lord
was with Joseph.
I love the Gospel of Matthew.
I think it's probably the favorite Gospel in
my own life.
I know many people like John.
That's perfectly alright.
But I like when I walk into the
Gospel of Matthew, it says, His name is
Emmanuel, God with us.
Now when I walk out of the Gospel
of Matthew, it says, Lo, I am with
you always.
So at the beginning of that book, Emmanuel,
God with us.
At the end of that book, Lo, I'm
with you always.
But you're leaving, I'm with you always.
You're going to heaven, I'm with you always.
When Joseph was on that forced march with
the Ishmaelites going down to Egypt where he
was a slave, God was with him.
When they were buying the slaves and Potiphar
came along and said, I could use a
nice young man in my home, God was
with him.
When he was being tempted with the kind
of temptations that would have made others to
fall, God was with him.
When they shoved him in prison and put
his feet in irons, God was with him.
The presence of God.
There's a third resource that Joseph had, and
I think we need this today.
The grace of God in his heart.
You say, where do you find that?
You just listen.
If your brothers had treated you, or your
sisters had treated you the way they treated
Joseph, what would you do?
What would you do?
I think I know what I might have
done.
All the way down to Egypt, I'd be
saying to myself, those brothers of mine, I'll
get even.
You say, oh you wouldn't.
Well, let him that thinks he stands take
heed lest he fall.
Scrubbing the floor and cleaning out the garbage
and everything, I wouldn't be here if it
weren't for those brothers of mine.
But Joseph didn't have that attitude.
Joseph had the beautiful gift of the grace
of God to be able to look at
the past and leave it with God.
He carried no malice.
He did not have any hardness of heart.
He had no desire for revenge.
And when he did see his brothers, he
broke down and wept.
He knew he couldn't forgive them until they
were forgivable.
That's why he put them through all those
tests.
But oh, what a joyful occasion it was
when finally he could say, I am Joseph.
And they were scared.
I would have been scared too.
Here is this man with all of this
authority.
All Joseph had to say was, throw him
in the river.
You see, the test of a person's real
character is how he treats those who have
hurt him, over whom he has authority.
That's a test.
And when Joseph saw his brothers, the past
just flooded into his heart and mind.
And the devil was there.
The devil said, there they are.
There they are.
You've got them now.
And God's grace said to Joseph, they meant
it for evil, but God meant it for
good.
And Joseph forgave them.
That's a beautiful grace.
What are our resources as we're going through
the difficulties of life?
Well, the promises of God, the word of
God, it won't change.
The presence of God, the grace of God,
and especially that marvelous grace of forgiveness to
be able to look back and say, I
can see it now.
You're forgiven.
I forgive you.
We read the Old Testament and say, my,
I wonder if God's doing things like that
today.
Yes, He is.
Did you know that when Jesus comes back
and I am raptured up to heaven with
all the rest of God's people and I
stand before the Lord Jesus, He's not going
to be interested in how many books I
wrote or read, or how many sermons I've
preached.
This right now is the 33rd sermon I've
preached in three weeks.
That's not going to impress Him.
He's going to say to me, all of
this you've done, all of this you've been
through, difficulties, blessings, responsibilities, what has it done
for your character?
Are you standing before me more like the
Lord Jesus?
God is still building people.
God has His purposes.
You don't know them.
I don't know them.
I don't have to know them.
During World War II, when the blitz in
London became so severe, they decided to evacuate
the children.
And the story is told of a group
of children who were standing at a railroad
station waiting for the train and a girl
was standing with her little brother and the
little boy was crying.
I think I would have been crying too.
And she said, why are you crying?
He said, I don't know where we're going.
And she put her arm around him and
said, well, don't cry.
The King knows.
That was right.
There are some times when I get to
whimpering and I say, Lord, I don't know
where I'm going.
And the answer comes from heaven.
The King knows.
God has His purposes.
God has His methods and God has His
times and God has His resources.
And knowing that, we can face anything because
God will never fail.
Thank you, Father, that there is no prison
that can hinder the working out of your
purposes.
There's no person who can hinder it.
There is no circumstance that is so unchanging
or unchangeable that your purposes will be thwarted.
We present ourselves to you, Father.
You have your purposes.
Work them out in our lives.
We are not handing you a contract to
sign.
We are handing you a blank piece of
paper that we have already signed.
You write the contract.
Fulfill your purposes.
And use whatever methods are best for us,
even if they hurt.
For we know that though you may hurt
us, you will never harm us.
And Father, give us patience with your schedule.
Remind us that your delays are not denials
or defeats.
And most of all, Father, help us to
draw upon the spiritual resources we have in
the Word of God and prayer and the
grace of God and the presence of God.
That one day you might be able to
put us in that place prepared for us
and for which we have been prepared.
May we not settle for anything less.
May we do your will and enjoy it
and fulfill it for Jesus' sake.
Amen.