Joseph // The Saving of Many Lives

Welcome to the lookout weekly podcast.

Good morning, everybody.

I think everyone's in a slightly better mood with the sunshine for the last couple days.

Um we haven't met yet.

My name's Luke.

So good to have you here with us this morning.

Um today is Groundhog's Day.

And in honor of Groundhog's Day, we are giving away free prairie dogs out in the field, one for you and your whole family.

And uh just go ahead and right after the service, just take them home with you.

It's part of the way we honor prairie dogs, groundhogs at the lookout.

Um, you guys doing well?

You ready to jump in the word today?

Okay.

Um at the end of the service, we are going to invite Graham and Piper Kepin up front.

We're gonna pray for them because they're entering a season of sabbatical, so that all that means is we're not kicking them out, we're just giving them a few months to reset, recalibrate uh for the season ahead.

And so that's something that as a church body that we want to pray for them and bless them uh into.

So that'll be at the very end of our service here today.

But uh coming into the message here today, if you've been with us the last several weeks, kind of since the start of the year, we've been in a series on the life of Joseph.

Um, how many of you guys love the life of Joseph, right?

Um it's it's a beautiful story, and in some way, somehow all of us can find our stories in within this particular story, and some of the bigger questions of life are asked within the story of Joseph.

Just to recap a few big ideas of over the last few weeks.

On the first week, we really talked about the big idea that the story you live in is the story that you will live out.

The story you live in is the story that you live out.

So the story that you wake up to, the story that you woke up to today is the story that will become true of your life.

So if the story you live in is CNN, that's gonna be the story you live out.

If the story you're living in is Fox News, that will be the story you live out.

It's that dramatic, right?

We all have a choice to decide what kind of story we are living in.

We can live in the story of God or all the other subplots of this earth.

How many of you guys, this how many of you guys know the story of God is the only story that can sustain you that is worth living into for all of time?

So Joseph shows us what it looks like to live in a story above and beyond his own personal story.

But the second week we talked about this idea of how God allows detours and delays to get us where he wants.

And this is actually really good news for us if you've ever, if you're kind of taking assessment of your life right now, and maybe where you are is not where you thought you would be.

Maybe your life, uh, maybe your timetable isn't what you expected.

You thought you would be somewhere else by this particular age or somewhere different.

It's a good news that God can take the detours and delays of our life and use them to get us where he wants us to be.

He can always redirect us, just like when you are following your GPS on your smartphone and you don't listen, and you pass that left turn, your GPS doesn't spark back at you and say, Great, you missed it, you'll never get to where you're going.

You're a screw up, right?

Now it says, okay, let's recalculate from here.

And in the same way, the Holy Spirit of God always knows how to lead us and to guide us, sometimes even allowing detours and delays to get us where he wants us to be.

Is that good news to anybody here this morning?

Last week we talked about this idea that every moment counts, my life matters, and God wastes nothing.

God wastes nothing in our life, he uses it all for his glory.

Now, this morning, we're gonna jump into, it's gonna kind of be wrap up our series in Joseph.

If you have your Bible, you can open up to Genesis chapter 50.

Genesis 50 · chapter mention

That's where we're gonna start today.

Genesis chapter 50.

Genesis 50 · chapter mention

I'll give a little context as you're turning there.

And if you don't have Bibles with you, um you can always download the Bible app on your phone, which is awesome, and we're going to uh have it on the screen behind me.

Um but in this particular passage today, in the story, Joseph's family had they had come to Egypt, and through a providential act of God, Joseph is able to meet his family, welcome them, give them food and security.

And we talked a little bit about that last week.

And so they were in Egypt.

All of the twelve tribes of Israel, Jacob even, had made their way to Egypt.

But years later, after their father Jacob passed away, the brothers were worried that Joseph was going to change his mind about how he felt about them.

And that's what we come into today.

This is right towards the end of Genesis, the end of the story of Joseph, Genesis chapter 50.

Genesis 50 · chapter mention

Let's just pick this up in verse 15.

It says this, when Joseph's brother saw that their father was dead, they said, What if Joseph holds a grudge against us and pays us back for all the wrongs that we did to him?

So they sent word to Joseph, saying, Your father left these instructions before he died.

This is what you are to say to Joseph.

Your father, uh this is what you are to say to Joseph, I ask you to forgive your brothers the sins and the wrongs that they committed in treating you so badly.

Now please forgive the sins of the servants of the God of your father.

When their meeting came to when their message came to him, Joseph wept.

His brothers then came and threw themselves down before him.

We are your slaves, they said.

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.

So then don't be afraid, I will provide for you and your children.

And he reassured them and spoke kindly to them.

So we come into this final scene where the brothers, they weren't convinced that their younger brother Joseph wouldn't eventually just smite them Egyptian style.

So they decided to fabricate a story on behalf of their father Jacob, which for me is one of the best parts of this.

It makes the whole thing feel very real to me because that's something siblings would do.

That's what my kids would do.

They would make up a message about what I would say to them to gain the favor of their siblings, all right?

Hey Joseph.

Yeah?

So Dad was saying before he passed away, uh, he he wanted us to let you know that he wants you to be nice to us and to forgive us and uh never do anything mean to us and to give us all your candy.

Really?

Dad said that?

Uh-huh.

He's he said that.

He said to give you all of my candy.

Yeah.

He said that.

So you get this sense of like the brothers just trying to like maneuver around the sibling relationship.

And I'm sure Joseph could see right through it.

Joseph was moved by the fact that they were concerned.

He was moved by the fact that they just didn't know where this was gonna go.

How long would the mercy last?

And he could see through it.

And so instead of, you know, instead of responding the way many of us would respond, he reset the conversation in a powerful way.

And we're just gonna take a look at a few of these phrases.

He starts with this don't be afraid, am I in the place of God?

Am I in the place of God?

And so Joseph, as we know, he had the last 20 years gone through hell and now was in a place of power.

But he is firmly seated, again, in the story of God, not the story of revenge.

Joseph could have been wallowing in despair, that his life was cut out, that he lost so many years because of what was taken from him.

And yet that's not what we see move in his heart.

Rather than blaming them, Joseph, something in Joseph, he was trusting in the leadership of God, even through the years that seem lost.

And the narrative that he runs with is that God actually sent him before his brothers to preserve their life.

How amazing is it that when we come into Christ, when we come into the story of God, that when the very people that try to take our lives that we can actually fight to save theirs.

That's what happens.

That's how powerful it is when you enter into the story of God.

The very people that try to take your life and sabotage you and mean evil towards you, you can come to a point where you actually fight to save theirs.

And that's the paradigm.

This is the Joseph way of life.

This is the frame through which he sees the world and he sees his life, and he cannot unsee it in any other way.

And so he has to just ask the question listen, am I God?

That I have the power to just do with you what I want?

No, I'm not God.

It's because of God that I am here.

And he continues, he says, You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good.

How powerful is that?

You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good.

And this is Joseph's interpretation of his whole life story.

And this is important for us to get.

There's a lot of alternates that we could have put in here.

You could imagine Joseph saying something like, God abandoned me, but listen, I made the best of it, right?

Let's turn lemons into lemonade.

God, he left me alone, but hey, I've got enough grit.

I'm a self-made man, right?

That's what happened.

No, that's not what Joseph believed.

He did not believe that God abandoned him.

He could have said, You intended harm for me because of it.

You got it coming to you.

You've got it coming to you.

Like, I cannot wait to see what happens to you.

That's not what Joseph says.

He's he's not setting up a day of vengeance.

All right.

He's not preparing them for, you know, for this sense of like God is gonna get you back because he doesn't, he's not seeing it through that frame.

He also didn't say this.

This one's this one's a little more nuanced.

He also didn't say, it's okay, everything happens for a reason.

Okay, this is a tricky one, even in church world, because we say this.

Let me just unpack this for a second.

Hey, it's okay, everything happens for a reason.

Whatever happens, it's God's will.

Whatever doesn't happen, it's like he's in control.

We say those kinds of things.

We say them at funerals, we say them at when when bad things happen.

Let me just open this up for a moment carefully to look at it.

Trusting God is not the same as fatalism.

The truth is there are things that happen that are outside of God's will.

It is not God's will that evil prevails in your life or in anybody else's life.

It is not God's will that evil prevails on this earth.

I don't believe it was God's will for Joseph, for evil to happen to Joseph.

I don't believe that when we read this story, we can conclude, oh, God caused all this evil to happen to him to get to Egypt.

That's not what Joseph believes, and that's, I don't think, what this whole, this whole story is teaching us.

See, fate is a terrible God and a terrible storyteller.

Yeah, how does it really go?

Fate is a terrible God and a terrible storyteller.

It's it's this idea that we're all just drifting along and whatever happens is what was supposed to happen.

But if that's true, then why do we walk with God at all?

Why do we discern the voice of the Holy Spirit?

Why do we try to clue into his perfect will in our lives?

Because listen, it's not a biblical view that everything that happens is just the way God, it's with the way the chips are gonna fall and the way it was intended to happen.

That is not a biblical worldview.

The biblical worldview is that even when evil does happen, God and his sovereignty can use the forces of evil against itself to bring about his purposes.

I will say that again.

Thank you, Karen.

I need to hear it.

Even when evil does happen, God and his sovereignty can use the forces of evil against itself to bring about his purposes.

And he'll do that in your life, he'll do that in the world.

There are things, there is evil worth standing against.

And when evil happens to you, it's not because you had it coming to you.

The enemy wants to kill you.

The enemy wants to destroy you, the enemy wants to divide us, he wants to divide our world, he wants to divide our nations, he wants to divide every race and people group.

He wants to separate and divide.

That is what he is doing, and it's not okay.

And we can trust God, and as we live into the story of God, the very things that work to sabotage us and destroy us, God, in his infinite power and the resurrection power of God, can use it to dismantle evil itself.

Come on, guys.

We can just have revival right now.

I mean, Jesus, woo! You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good.

So what does he mean by this?

Joseph is saying, Man has his intentions, but God has his own intentions.

Man's intentions are not always God's intentions.

But we can trust that his intentions can still come to pass, even if we have to endure momentary suffering.

Because the good news is not only do trials create in us character and steadfastness according to James and according to Peter, but the trials in themselves, God can ensure that even in our trials, that the evil will eventually undermine itself.

We'll get back to that in a second.

And he continues, what you intended for harm, God intended it for good.

And he continues, kind of the big why statement, to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.

Come on, say it with me.

The saving of many lives.

See it was now galvanized in Joseph that his purpose in life had nothing to do with just being a special son, it had nothing to do with building a platform or having a cool robe with colors.

It didn't have to do with being recognized, leaving a legacy.

His entire life was used almost like a sacrificial lamb to save lives.

And it turns out that for Joseph, God was positioning him in such a way that the children of Israel could survive a famine and be saved.

The only way to do that was for him to go to Egypt, for God to put favor upon his life, even in the midst of hell, to equip him with dream interpretations and eventually some management skills, a good work ethic, so that lives could be saved.

He never knew there would be like eight chapters in the book of Genesis dedicated to him.

That's not going through his mind this entire time.

But we know in the story of Joseph that his story isn't just about himself, it's foreshadowing of one who was to come.

Every story, everything we read about in the Old Testament is a type and a shadow of something to come or someone to come.

And in particular, Joseph was foreshadowing one who would come, and despite the forces of evil coming against him, his life would be laid down for the saving of many lives.

And if the enemy knew that that was going to happen, he would have changed his mind.

This is what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2, 6 through 8.

He says, Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom.

Listen to this.

Although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age who are doomed to pass away.

But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory.

None of the rulers of this age understood this.

For if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

Come on! If they had understood that God had a different kind of wisdom, they would have not crucified him.

If Satan knew that through the cross, the cross would lead to the liberation and freedom of all who would put their trust in Jesus, he would have cut down every tree in Israel before a cross could even be built.

It's the last thing he wanted, but this is where the wisdom of God intersects with the wisdom of this world and the wisdom of the one who comes against us and comes against this world.

When we live into his story, when we align our thoughts and our ways around him, it changes everything from the inside out.

And it reframes what our purpose is, it reframes what we give ourselves to.

Mark Twain famously said this.

He said, the two most important days of your life are the day you were born and the day that you find out why.

The day that you're born and the day that you found out why.

And in this particular story, this is the final aha moment in the story of Joseph.

It was the revelation that his life actually wasn't about himself the entire time.

He's trying to figure out figure out what about me, and God's thinking about what about life that needs to be saved.

He found out that his story was not about himself, it was about the saving of many lives.

And this was it.

Joseph's calling.

This is this is how we summit.

This is what God was trying to accomplish, the saving of many lives.

Can I ask you a question this morning?

What if the story of your life is not about you, but about those God wants to save?

Can we do that for a second?

Can we suggest that?

I know that feels offensive because we're firmly rooted in our culture.

We're firmly rooted in the messaging that talks about what we're making of our lives.

We live in a generation, even in the church, obsessed with finding, quote, my calling.

My calling.

What's your calling?

Oh, my calling's over here.

What's your calling?

And I don't want to go too hard on this, because it's actually legitimate, right?

We ask these questions: what does God call me to do?

What are his purposes for my life?

What's the one thing he destined me for?

Now, before I shred this to pieces, let me just offer some encouragement.

I I'm partly kidding.

I mean, the thing is, individuality actually is important.

It's actually a biblical idea, individuality.

Psalm 139 is the heart of God, the heart of Father.

Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.

You were fearfully and wonderfully made.

I do believe, and we should believe.

Every single one of us, there's an invitation to know that you are a beloved son and daughter of God.

You are one of a kind, cherished by him.

He loves you.

And I do believe that the way his shape for you is just like the potter and the clay, that he lovingly shapes you into his likeness and his image, but like nobody else, you reflect, you actually image God in a very unique.

Unique way.

I think it's a really beautiful thing.

And we should, all of us as disciples of Jesus, always be asking, God, what is it that you have made for me?

Because a lot of people make things for us.

We get a lot of invitations to follow a lot of different ways and for our lives to look like a lot of different things.

We should primarily ask the question, God, what is it that you have for me that's differentiated, right?

So it's very biblical.

I think the part that we just have to, we have to come into alignment though, a little bit more is this that individuality is good, but it can never be an end into itself.

Individuality by itself, it's neither meaningful or satisfying.

Even Joseph, he was one of the twelve tribes.

He's like, I'm, yeah, you heard of the 12 tribes.

He was one of the 12 tribes of Israel.

He was chosen, he was beloved by his father, he was part of the promises of God, and yet he still had to walk through a long season of being discarded, forgotten, excused, tossed aside in order to save lives.

So the problem is for a lot of us, we very few of us have room in our life's vision for being hidden, unknown, forgotten, and tossed aside.

Very few of us have worked that into as a possibility for our lives.

We love reading about it in the Bible.

We're so thankful for Noah.

I'm so glad that God asked him to take a hundred years to build a boat.

Thank you that he did that.

Thank you, Noah.

Woo! Joseph, thank you for doing what you did for lives to be saved.

I'm just trusting us.

God's not gonna ask me to do any of that.

He's not gonna ask me to trust him through a season of going through hell.

Why would he ever ask me, you know, because my vision is up and to the right.

My vision is success and greatness, right?

And this is part of where we have to intersect our American discipleship versus kingdom discipleship.

You just gotta call it what it is.

We've been discipled into successism and greatnessism, that this is how life should go all the time.

And it leaves very little resource for us when life doesn't actually go that way.

We have little to pull from, which is, I believe, why so many people deconstruct over time, because there's no more resource to draw from in a time of mystery and confusion.

We are told you need to build a platform, you need to build a following, you need to build your personal brand, you must be a self-made entrepreneur, and you have to look really good while you do it.

Achieve your own happiness.

That's what we're told.

You are that it's on you.

Achieve your own happiness.

It's actually baked into our Constitution.

Um, the original document.

So, you know, as Americans, we're entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

These are inalienable rights, and I actually think it's it's good.

I love that phrase.

And I believe that's true.

But how many people do you know that are pursuing happiness in all kinds of ways, and a lot of them don't actually work?

So the pursuit of happiness is really interesting.

When we talk about pursuing happiness, where does happiness actually come from?

Now, I'll quote Victor Frankel again, like I talked about last week.

He wrote a brilliant book called Man's Search for Meaning, just documenting what led to a life of meaning even for the individuals making their way through concentration camps.

And I just finished one called Say Yes to Life, that it's possible to say yes to life.

And it's it's a responsibility for all of us to say yes to life as a gift in the midst of even the darkest shadow of death.

Here's what Victor Frankel says, though.

He says, happiness cannot be pursued, it must ensue.

And it only does so as the unattended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself, or as the byproduct of one's surrender to a person other than oneself.

This is this is this is very important that you know this.

Happiness cannot be pursued, it can only ensue.

What does that mean?

You actually can't just go take hold of happiness.

If it was that easy, you would have done that by now.

Happiness is something that catches up with you only after your life is giving to someone to something or someone greater than yourself, what is meaningful, beautiful, and good, and with others.

And happiness is something that all of a sudden catches up to us as the result of us not turning inward and allowing God to move our vision outward.

I'm just I'm telling you, this is true.

This is why the most generous people I know are typically the most happiest.

And I've been trying to prove myself wrong on that.

Is it possible to be stingy and happy?

I've never seen that.

I've actually never seen it.

Maybe you have.

I just this is anecdotal, this isn't in the scripture.

I'm just saying I haven't seen that.

The people who are who are quick to serve, to quick to listen, quick to inhabit a space with people, are typically they're more enjoyable people to be around.

And they're more generally satisfied with their life.

There's actually studies and statistics about that, that generous people are typically happier people.

And why is that?

Because generosity is not just an act, it's a reflection of a paradigm, it's a reflection of a worldview that I am taking care of, my needs are going to be met, and I have more than enough to give, and my needs will be met, and so I'm gonna continue to give.

And now that's not a plug for anything, I'm just this that's more an observation that people who are selfless are generally happier.

So Warren Kierkegaard, he commented like this, these weren't his exact words, but in a kind of a parable he told, he said, the door to happiness always opens outward.

The door to happiness always opens outward, it never opens inward.

Which means this.

When you try to push open the door of happiness and trying to get happiness, that's pr probably the clue that you're not going to find it.

But when you walk out of the door to happiness and find the world outside of yourself and people to give your lives to, and a cause to give your life to, and a and and and a creator to give your life to, all of a sudden you find a world where you're not in control anymore, where not everything is on you.

It's not about just what you're building, it's what God is building through you.

You're always at your best when you're giving yourself away.

Yeah?

You will always be at your best when you're giving yourself away.

And Jesus.

He's the one who modeled this for us.

And he used a different metaphor in John 12.

He said this, truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains alone.

But if it dies, it bears much fruit.

And we have to admit, we have to acknowledge, we want fruitfulness, but we don't want to die.

Can I have both?

That's just not the way it works.

Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth, meaning lays its life down and dies, it will bear fruit.

And in a similar way, similar way, I think what we what we can see in the life of Joseph, what we can see in the life of the kingdom of God is a recurring principle all the way through the scriptures, that the best life is reserved for those who are willing to give theirs away and to lay theirs down.

And I and I love what one leader, Nick Rector, he said this about Joseph's life, and he said this in the face of a generation who is obsessed with calling and self-fulfillment and what is happening with me.

He said it like this: He said, Joseph's proclamation of his calling from God led him into the crucible of discipline that prepared him for the promise.

I pray that this generation, consumed with quote, their calling, when offered the opportunity of maturing through suffering, would receive both testing and blessing as the favor of God.

So this morning, I think this is just a good place to land for us here.

Can we be reminded that the greatest call of God on our lives is to give ourselves away for the sake of others?

We're created for him and to enjoy him and to go where he's going and to do what he's doing.

And what is Jesus doing?

He's saving lives.

And if that's true, then what could that mean for us here today?

What could that mean for you?

What does it mean for us to participate in the saving of lives, to join Jesus in the work, to save lives?

His heart is that none would perish.

And this can mean all kinds of things.

It does have to do with salvation, I believe.

It does have to do with people coming into the saving knowledge of Jesus, but it could just be people that need hope, people that need grace, people that need healing, people that need the cords of injustice to be broken.

The saving of lives can look a lot of different ways.

And I think a really good place to start this morning, even, just to reframe our thinking across the room.

If you just close your eyes with me here for a second, I just want to ask the question, God, who are those you have called me to lay my life down for?

Just close your eyes and just ponder the question, God, who are those in my life that you have called me to lay down my life for?

Likely that's gonna start with the people that are closest to you.

Mothers and fathers, you're thinking about your kids, you're thinking about your parents, you're thinking about your siblings, right?

But as that kind of moves out from your family, God, would you show us who you are wanting to save?

It doesn't necessarily mean going to Egypt.

It could mean walking across the street.

Some of you, it's it would be harder, it'd be easier to go to Egypt than it would be to walk across the street.

God, who is it that you're wanting to break through to?

Is it the poor and the marginalized?

Is it the rich and the depressed?

Is it your co-worker or neighbor?

Are you willing to participate with Jesus in the saving of many lives?

And I think that's the question that as a church we want to dig into this year.

And we're gonna continue on that theme over the next couple weeks, but for today, it's a good one for us to hold in our hearts.

God, if it's true that your greatest call in my life is to join you in laying down my life for the saving of others and show me who you have called me to so I can participate in your work, that lives would be saved.

See, with Joseph, God redirected his life in a dramatic way, in an unexpected way.

I think for those of us here today, there's an opportunity, I believe, in front of us, even this morning, to pray a bold prayer.

God send me to who you want to send me, redirect my life for your purposes.

Even if nobody remembers my name, even if there's never a book written about me, even if I'm forgotten, would you use my life for whatever will bring you the most glory?

Are we willing to pray that today?

Well, in that posture, I'm going to read a prayer from St.

John Henry Newman.

It's a prayer of surrender.

And I think this is the invitation for us this morning.

It's a prayer of surrender of God, not my life but yours.

And if that leads to platforms and significance and all of those things, there's nothing wrong with that.

It's just what I'm saying is pursuing those in and of themselves are not a worthy pursuit.

What is worthy pursuit is saying surrender to the will of God, whatever may come.

So I want to read this prayer.

Would you just receive this as I read it?

This is written in the 1800s in the UK.

He says, St.

John Henry Newman, he says, Oh my God, I will put myself without reserve into your hands.

Wealth or woe, joy or sorrow, friends or bereavement, honor or humiliation, good report or ill report, comfort or discomfort, your presence or the hiding of your countenance.

All is good if it comes from you.

You are wisdom and you are love.

What can I desire more?

You have led me in your counsel, and with your glory you received me.

What have I in heaven and apart from you?

What want I upon earth?

My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the God of my heart and my portion forever.

Amen.

Amen.