GOD IN THE MESS | GLORIFYING GOD IN THE MESS (March 12 2017) - Mike Armstrong

Alright, we ready to get into God's word?

If you're ready, say go.

Alright, so why don't you turn in your Bibles now to Genesis chapter 40?

Genesis 40 · chapter mention

Genesis chapter 40 is where we're up to where we are today.

Genesis 40 · chapter mention

Now, a question for you.

Have any of you guys been like decimated by the flu yet this year?

Right?

Any of you been crushed by that?

I heard from somebody today, their husbands at home right now, just like trying to keep it together.

Right?

You ever struggled with that?

You ever had that?

It just feels like the worst thing in the world.

Have you ever had food poisoning before?

And it just feels like life is over.

The end is imminent.

I was actually a friend of mine was telling me just like in the last couple of weeks of a really bad case of food poisoning that he got.

Years ago, he was on vacation to Mexico with a cousin of his, and he got it really bad in Mexico.

He just remembers he was actually at a restaurant when it hit him, and he was like in the bathroom, like just laying on the floor, right?

Like cheek to tile.

I mean, I don't know if there's anything lower than that, right?

And you know, in those moments where you're just so sick, you're just like you start kind of, you know, rehearsing the words of the apostle Paul, right?

You're just kind of like, you know, I've fought the good fight, right?

I've I've finished the race.

In your mind, life is over.

Like the finish line is right there, and you start to kind of mentally, you know, put your affairs in order because it doesn't seem like this is going to improve.

This is not gonna get better at all.

Now, for my friend, obviously things got better.

Things improved.

He lived to tell me uh to tell me the story, he lived to tell about it.

Uh, but what about those those situations, those really hard life situations that we find ourselves in sometimes where you know our circumstances don't seem to be improving?

Right?

Those very difficult trials, like you know, you you find yourself in that position where where you have you have no sense of where the finish line is, or if there even is a finish line.

Right?

It's a trial, it's a challenge that you are going through, and you might be getting the sense, you know, will this ever improve?

Right?

Like maybe for you it's it's a terminal illness.

Right?

It's something like that.

It's a it's a marriage that just fell apart.

For you, maybe it's like it's a police record, right?

That game that ain't going away anytime soon.

These are the things that you just gotta live with and learn how to deal with.

And so the question really becomes for us in those moments, you know, how do I glorify God when I'm in these types of circumstances?

Right?

How do I glorify him?

How do I bring glory to the Lord when life is just plain old difficult?

Right?

It's hard and this thing seemed to be just, you know, lasting forever.

How do I bring glory to the Lord when I'm in the middle, okay, in the middle of my mess?

I don't know if I'm gonna get out of this soon.

I don't know if I'm gonna get out of this later, I don't know if I'm gonna get out of this period.

Right?

How do we do it?

Well, Joseph, of course, provides a really great example for us to look at.

You know, and we've already talked a bunch about his story, but his story was filled with just a ton of ups and downs.

Right?

He went through a lot of awful and difficult seasons in life, and it seemed like every time that it was about to get better, nope, right back into it again.

And life continued to get challenging and difficult.

And so he provides a great example for us to look at.

We're gonna do just that today and see how we too can glorify God in the middle of the mess.

Before we jump into it, why don't we just pause for a second and give this to the Lord?

Why don't you join me as we pray?

God, we thank you so much for this time to get together as the church, Lord.

We thank you for bringing every single person out here, Lord.

And we recognize that being here today is not a mistake, it's not random, it's not a fluke, Lord.

You have a word for them from the scriptures.

And so, Lord, I pray that you would encourage our people, especially those who are in the thick of it right now, in the in the hard and grinding part of a trial where it doesn't seem like the end is in sight, or at the very least we don't know when it's gonna end.

And so, Lord, I pray that you would train our hearts and our minds to bring you glory in the middle of it.

Lord, that we would not wait till it's all said and done and over and look back when we're in a good mood or whatever it might be to give you glory, but that we would do it right now.

Lord, would you teach us from this example, grateful for what you did in the life of Joseph, and how that can challenge and encourage us here today.

So, Lord, help us, we pray.

In Christ's name, amen.

Amen.

Well, in Genesis 40, you know, Joseph, he's in a trial, he's in a situation here where from his perspective, you know, there was no end in sight.

Right?

There is no end to any of this.

As far as he knew, he's right, he's in prison.

Remember after the whole Potiphar's wife thing, you know, and that was all unfair, and Potiphar just, you know, in his in his anger and in his rage, he just throws him in prison.

And so as far as Joseph knew, he's like, I don't, I don't know if when this is gonna end again, or if it's gonna end.

As far as he knew, he might be in prison until his death.

He had no sense of the finish line here, and I think sometimes, you know, maybe you would admit this and realize this.

Sometimes we feel kind of the same way, don't we?

Sometimes we get into it, we get into a trial, we get into some discipline, we get into just some problems in life, and again, we don't know when it's all gonna just kind of tie itself off and uh be done with.

But here's the thing, okay?

Here's the thing that God's word teaches us here today and really challenges us on.

It's even when my circumstances don't seem to be improving, I will glorify God.

I will glorify God in the hard times.

Now that is our mission at all times.

You understand that?

Do you realize that?

Our job, our mission at all times, whether life is up or whether life is down, is to glorify God.

You know, I wonder how many of us, you know, walked into this room here today and we saw the banner, you know, on the either sides of the TV out there, and it says what our mission is as the church, to glorify God, right?

That is the core of it right there.

It's not just the mission of Harvest Bible Chapel and the church as an organization, it is the mission of all of our lives.

It's to glorify Him.

And so, of course, we need to learn how to do that kind of regardless of what life tosses at us.

And so, again, the question becomes, well, how do I do it?

Like, practically speaking, what does this really look like?

Okay, well, here's one way.

It's really the first thing that we're gonna look at today.

It's by caring deeply about others instead of wallowing in self-pity.

By caring about others.

All right, well, so let's read this then, let's go through this, starting in verse 1, chapter 40.

Here we go.

It says, sometime after this.

All right, that that that phrase there, sometime, uh is to signify to us that a significant period of time uh has passed.

And so Joseph, he has been thrown into prison now, and as we saw last week, he started to kind of rise the ranks, right?

And the chief of the prison, the captain of the guard there, put the prison under Joseph's command and under Joseph's charge.

Everything that happened there was because Joseph did it.

And so you can imagine that would have taken time for sure, for him to kind of you know gain favor in the sight of the guard of the prison there.

So all of that's already happened.

And then sometime after, even that, okay, so lots of time here passing.

Here's what it says the cupbearer of the king of Egypt and his baker committed an offense against their lord, the king of Egypt.

It's trying to show us here that it's trying to remind us of just, you know, the offense that this really was.

There's a serious, serious crime uh that was committed here.

We don't know the details of it.

We're not really sure uh what it was, but it would appear uh that the cupbearer and the baker were in on this together.

It seems like it was one event that they were both kind of in on, and Pharaoh, it says verse 2, was angry with his two officers.

The chief cupbearer and the chief baker.

Okay, so there you see the word chief in front of their two titles.

Okay, so these weren't just two kind of low-level guys uh in com in the order of things, all right?

This was the the the chief baker.

He was the guy who would have overseen all of this.

Now, you know, probably, maybe you're aware of this, that you know, back in these days, you know, kings and rulers would be assassinated all the time, oftentimes through food poisoning.

And so this guy had a very, very crucial and key uh role in protecting Pharaoh.

That was the baker, but that was also the chief cupbearer.

Now, this guy was way more than just a dishwasher.

Right?

You think the guy like working the dish pit crew in the back?

No, that's not that guy.

It's the guy that oversaw that guy and probably tons of those guys.

And so they were the chief cupbearer, chief baker.

Okay, so these guys had big time positions, big time roles in Egypt.

So he makes fair, they make Pharaoh angry, verse three, and he put them in custody in the house of the captain of the guard, in the prison where, lo and behold, Joseph was confined.

Okay, so their stories come together here.

Verse 4 the captain of the guard appointed Joseph to be with them, and this is so important, and he attended them.

He attended them.

Now you can easily just kind of breeze over that word here, but that word attended means to serve.

We actually looked at it in the last week too, in chapter 39.

It means that he attended, that he served them.

Now you might be thinking, well, isn't that his job?

Well, kinda, but kinda not.

Right?

He didn't have to give these guys the time of day.

He could have just, you know, put them in prison and let them do their thing and just kind of ride.

He didn't have to give them any kind of special care.

But what this starts to show us is the heart of Joseph towards these guys.

He had a heart of service, he attended them.

And then it says there again, they continued for some time in custody.

Again, so even more time goes by here as Joseph cares for, attends, serves these two criminals.

Now, verse 5.

And one night they both dreamed.

Okay, these are both the chief baker and the chief cupbearer.

They both dreamed, the cupbearer and the baker of the king of Egypt, who were confined in the prison, each his own dream, and each dream its own interpretation.

When Joseph came to them in the morning, this is so interesting, interesting, he saw that they were they were troubled.

Again, why is that important?

Well, again, wait, it's revealing to us the kind of care that Joseph had for these two guys.

Right?

He didn't have to give a flip about these guys.

But he he notices that that they're rattled by something.

He notices that they're upset, and rather than just kind of letting it pass, and I, you know, obviously they're not in a good place.

I better just kind of go over here and just hope the whole thing blows over.

No, he's like, I care for these guys.

I want to help them out.

And so what does he do?

He asks them.

Right?

Yeah, he asks Pharaoh's officers who are with him in custody in his master's house.

He says, Why are your faces downcast today?

And they said to him, We have had dreams, and there is no one to interpret them.

Okay, so you can just imagine here what was happening, right?

These two guys who would have known each other for sure, they served together under Pharaoh, for Pharaoh, and they had on their own these two individual separate dreams, and they woke up pretty rattled about it.

And so they were trying to think through what is this all about?

You know, so many times dreams are just ultra random, right?

They're super random, but they kind of had this sense and they probably would have talked together and then realized, uh-oh, you know, that guy had a dream too, and there's like some eerie similarities about all of this, and said that they were, they were troubled, their faces were downcast because on the outside, right, and when they weren't in prison, they probably would have had access to Egypt's magicians and those kinds of guys who would at least discern through probably sorcery and all kinds of other ways how these dreams were to be interpreted.

And so they were feeling lost.

They're feeling lost.

They're like, we don't we don't know what to do here.

They said, no one can interpret these dreams.

Now, you just back it up here for a second and think about Joseph.

Okay, on a scale from one to ten, ten being, you know, really excited, and one being not at all, how fired up, how pumped do you think that Joseph would have been to be in jail right about now?

Right?

Like a zero?

Right?

I mean, you know the story from last week.

He was, he, all he did was the right thing.

Every single time he showed character, he showed integrity, he honored the Lord, he honored Potiphar, he even honored Potiphar's wife, who was doing nothing but try and drag him down into adultery.

He did the right thing.

And yet, and yet what did he get for it?

Jail.

Right?

He had nothing but pain and problems and difficulty, right?

Not at all fired up about uh about his prison sentence here.

Okay, but notice, did you notice this in chapter 40, how utterly void these verses are of what would be our typical go-to move when life gets difficult, yet again.

Self-pity.

Right?

Have you ever given into self-pity?

You know, it's kind of like, ugh, you know, this is happening again?

You know, Lord, all I've tried to do is honor you.

All I've tried to do is the right thing.

And I think that my life should have turned around and it hasn't.

In fact, it's getting worse right now.

You ever gone into the self-pity mode?

And you get into that?

And of course, we love to kind of bring others in on that, or at least proclaim it, sometimes subtly, not sometimes not so subtly, to other people to let them know.

And we're like, you know, the lip gets dragging, we're pouting, you know, we wear our emotions on our sleeve, and sometimes we even kind of like, you know, fake that we're kind of handling it in a mature way, and we're like, yeah, just grind through this with the Lord.

But really, what we're doing is bringing attention to ourselves and how difficult our plight may be, and you know how how challenging our life is.

Are you ever given into the pity party before when life gets tough and it gets tough yet again?

Now, Joseph, of course, he was human, we know this.

And he maybe or even probably struggled with some of this.

For sure at the beginning, I would imagine that he did.

He wasn't like just impervious to it.

Okay, but what we see here in these verses is not even a shred of it.

We don't see the pity party at all.

In fact, not only do we not see any evidence of him wallowing in all of that self-pity, we don't see any hint of any self-focus at all.

Right?

His focus was not on himself, it was outward.

It was on these, it was on these two prisoners.

You know, he cared deeply for them.

It was genuine.

These men who actually deserved to be in this position, they deserved to be in prison, whereas he didn't.

Now, it's kind of like a pause here or a timeout for just a second.

I think something that would be really kind of important for us to mention here, and something that we need to be careful of whenever we read a story like this, and we we read through this, you know, a great character of the scriptures, like a David, or and of course, in our case, a Joseph, we need to be uh pretty careful here, I think, to not elevate Joseph as the ultimate hero of this story.

Right?

Because is is Joseph ultimately the hero or is the Lord?

Right?

It's God.

Right?

God is the hero here.

Because I think for us, it would it could be very, very tempting and very easy to be like, wow, right, Joseph was incredible.

Right?

What what inner fortitude this guy had.

This guy never made a mistake.

Right, and he had it all figured out, and we end up, you know, kind of mistakenly or by accident giving him the glory instead of realizing that God is the ultimate story of this story, or God's the ultimate hero of this story, and every story out through the scriptures.

Right?

He was the one who was molding Joseph through these difficult circumstances that he was going through.

Right?

He was the one who oversaw and even caused Joseph to be thrown into the pit by his brothers and to be sold into Potiphar's hand and then be right here into prison and stay here and go through all these difficulties, right?

And God in his sovereignty oversaw all of that.

It's because he was using those things to mold Joseph's characters through the through these experiences.

And so we gotta be really careful about that.

But here's on the flip side of all of this, I think it would also be really easy to come at it kind of from a different angle and say, wow, Joseph, Joseph is the man.

Like, look how great that guy was, but I could never do that.

Right?

You ever done that?

You ever read a story of a person with great faith and thought, wow, good for that person.

That person's incredible, but but I could never do it.

You know, I'm not strong enough, I'm not mighty enough, the Lord would never do this in me, right?

And we kind of we kind of feel like that.

And we can walk away.

We read something as we walk away, kind of discouraged and defeated with no real sense that I could grow and that there's any hope for me.

Nonsense.

Do you realize how not nonsensical that is that we would ever think that, that we would ever give in to that kind of thinking?

Okay, because through Christ in you, you can respond like this.

You can respond like Joseph.

You can respond like all the great characters of Scripture.

What is it?

You know, what do we often see when we hear the story of David and Goliath?

Wow, great for David.

He had the courage to defeat this great giant.

How great and awesome is he! No, it's the Lord that gave him that.

Or it's the Lord that did it by his grace in his life, and he will do the exact same thing in you and I.

You know, when you're in a trial, when you're in a situation that and it feels like it's lasting forever, you know, and there's no apparent end in sight, and you know, the temptation is to wallow in self-pity and and despair and the the woe is me.

God's desire is that you would learn to glorify him.

That is his desire in that moment.

It's the very thing that we see Joseph learning to do here as we read through this.

He's giving a heartfelt attention, a focus on the well-being of these convicts.

So again, though, the question becomes well, that's great for Joseph, but how do I get to that place?

What do I need to do here to get into the position of Joseph so that so that in this trial that I'm in, or so, or when the next one comes, I too will be able to respond like this and give God all the glory that he deserves.

What do I do?

Well, listen, it really begins with this.

And this is so crucial, so important today.

Okay, you have to get to, you have to get to 100% acceptance in your mind, in your heart, in your attitude, that you exist on planet earth for nothing less than God's glory.

I'm gonna read that again.

You have to get to a hundred percent acceptance in your heart, in your mind, in your attitude, that you exist on planet earth for nothing less than God's glory.

That is the whole thing.

That is your mission.

Okay, so gut check time.

Is that the chief desire of your heart?

Is that what you want?

Is that the thing that gets you up and out of bed in the morning?

Is that your desire?

I think oftentimes we realize if we're being honest, nope, nope, we don't want the Lord's glory.

In fact, if I really kind of break it down and I really think about this, it's me who I desire gets the glory.

Right?

I want it.

I want to glorify myself, not the Lord.

See, one of the one of the core things that trials and challenges and difficulties and these hard seasons of life accomplish in our hearts is that they reveal what it is that we live for most.

Have you ever noticed this in the difficult times that you go through?

Tough, tough circumstances have this way of unearthing our heart's deepest desires.

Like the most the most ingrained idols of the heart.

And so God points these out to you, and then he tears them out at the roots.

Have you seen him do this in your life?

You know, as God searches our hearts, he removes all that does not glorify him.

That's what God does.

And he does it so that he can replace those self-glorifying attitudes and approach and desires and all of it with this new predominant desire to bring him glory no matter what.

And so don't scorn the trials that you're going through.

Because you need to realize that God is doing this so you become a God-glorifying machine.

And he has to go through this, he has to root out of you these selfish desires because he desires that you would give him glory.

His glory he will give to no other.

Now, this is exactly what had been happening in the life of Joseph.

As he had gone through all these trials, as he'd been going through this difficulties, we already know he was kind of this cocky, you know, rubbing his brothers, rubbing his brother's face and you know, his dreams and everything that was gonna happen.

And the Lord put him through all of this to show him that he was gonna get glory from Joseph, and that Joseph was not gonna be able to claim any of that for himself.

You know, as the Lord transformed his desires from self-glorifying to you know God glorifying, you know, he was able then, because of that, to reject self-pity, which would have been his natural response.

You know, the natural response of this completely unfair you know, prison sentence that he'd been given.

And instead care profoundly for these other two dirtbags.

Right?

He was able to do it legitimately, which in turn brought who glory?

The Lord God.

The Lord God.

And of course, Matthew chapter 2.

Matthew 2 · chapter mention

22, 37 to 39 speaks to that, doesn't it?

It's called the Great Commandment.

And the Lord says the great commandment is ultimately to love God and love neighbor.

And as the Lord was doing this work in Joseph's heart, Joseph was able to do those two very things.

He was able to bring glory to God by showing love to God and showing love to these two other guys.

And so listen, what's the takeaway for us?

Well, I can tell you what it is not.

Okay, the takeaway for us is not some, you know, flimsy commitment to just simply try harder next time.

You know, well, well, next time when life is difficult, I'm just gonna try harder.

I'm gonna grit my teeth more and try to give glory to God, try to have a good attitude, and try to show love to other people.

Right?

That's not what it is.

It's allowing the difficulty that we're in to root out these self-glorifying desires, which will always, always lead us to self-glorifying reactions like self-pity.

Right?

Self-pity is just a symptom of what's really going on deep in your heart.

Right?

And so we need we need to allow these trials and allow the Lord to root these things out, and instead allow the Lord to grow in us a desire to glorify him, which will cause us then to love our neighbor.

Which is exactly what happens here in the life of Joseph.

We'll be able to do that, kind of regardless of the circumstance and the situation that we find ourselves in, regardless of the personal sufferings that we happen to be dealing with in the moment.

That's the place that we're to get to.

Allow the Lord to work in you.

Pray, Lord, help me to glorify you from deep in my heart.

When my heart at its core, at the foundation, is set in place in that proper way, the fruit that's gonna come out of that is gonna be amazing.

Alright, so continue to pray that the Lord would work this in your heart.

Okay, here's the second thing.

Even when my circumstances don't seem to be improving, I will glorify God by realizing that I can be used powerfully by him now, not just later.

Right now.

Okay, let's take a look at this then.

8B here.

Go part way through verse 8.

Well, let's just start with verse 8 again.

They said to him, you know, we have had dreams, and there is no one to interpret them.

And Joseph said to them, Do not interpretations belong to God?

Please tell them to me.

So I love that.

Joseph's not like, hey, well, let me be the hero of the story here.

Let me be, you know, a legend and help you out.

He's like, hey, ultimately this is gonna be this is gonna come from God, and he willingly puts himself in a position now to be used powerfully by the Lord.

So verse 9, so the chief cupbearer told his dream to Joseph, and said to him, You know, in my dream there was a vine before me, and on the vine there were three branches.

As soon as it budded, its blossoms shot forth, and the clusters ripened into grapes.

Pharaoh's cup was in my hand, and I took the grapes and pressed them into Pharaoh's cup, and placed the cup in Pharaoh's hand.

Then Joseph said to him, This is its interpretation.

The three branches are three days.

In three days Pharaoh will lift up your head and restore you to your office, and you shall place Pharaoh's cup in your hand as formerly when you were his cup-bearer.

Only, and then listen to this, only remember me when it is well with you, and please do me the kindness to mention me to Pharaoh and get me out of this house, for I was indeed stolen out of the land of the Hebrews, and here also I have done nothing that they should put me into the pit.

I think this is so important here that we would realize that just because something is un you know unfair to you doesn't mean that you need to be okay with it ultimately.

Right?

Because it's unfair, it if it's unfair, it's unfair.

And we see Joseph, he understands that.

He's like, I still need to get out of this.

He wasn't complaining about it, he wasn't bitter about it.

He was still being used powerfully by the Lord in the lives of these people here, but he's like, it's still unfair, and I would still love to get out of this.

So he takes his opportunity and he says, Don't forget about me.

Okay, now look at this, verse 16.

When the chief baker saw that the interpretation was favorable, okay, he said, I also had a dream.

So he's kind of like licking his chops now, right?

Because he sees, he sees the you know that the cup bearer had a favorable interpretation.

He's like, I think the same thing's gonna happen to me.

Some of us know exactly where this is going, though.

He said, I also had a dream.

And there were three cake baskets on my head, and in the uppermost basket, there were all sorts of baked food for Pharaoh, but the birds were eating it out of the baskets on my head.

And Joseph answered and said, This is its interpretation.

The three baskets are three days.

In three days, Pharaoh will lift up your head from you and hang you on a tree, and the birds will eat the flesh from you.

Now you can just imagine Joseph here.

He's probably like, Well, you know, you asked.

You know, here it is.

But again, he's used, right?

He's used by the Lord uh big time.

Now, while it's very true that God uses trials and difficulties and the mess of life, you know, to sanctify us and prepare us for, you know, greater fruit and greater ministry in the future, you know, don't ever miss the fact here that future use isn't God's only intention.

That's not all that he cares about.

He also desires to use you right now, right in the middle of the challenge and the and the difficulty and in the middle of your darkest hour.

Again, that's exactly what we see him doing here with Joseph.

Just think about how bleak things seem to him.

And he's like, I don't know if I'm ever gonna get out of here.

And yeah, I'm overseeing this whole prison, but it's not the greatest gig in the entire world.

This isn't it.

But he doesn't, he doesn't waste the opportunity to invest in these guys' lives and be used by the Lord.

Right?

Understand that it's the same thing with you.

God desires to use you right now.

In fact, some of your most powerful and fruitful ministry will happen not once you've completed the trials, not once it's all said and done and over and you've learned and kind of gleaned everything that you can possibly glean from it, but actually while you're still in the thick of it.

Some of your greatest ministry will happen in the middle of your trials.

You know, while you're still kind of grinding and struggling away, and you're in that absolutely humble and dependent season of life.

Okay, don't wish for it all to be over too soon.

Allow the Lord to use you.

Now, I don't know if you've heard of Amy Carmichael before, but she was a phenomenal uh woman and another uh great example of a woman of deep faith, a woman who was used despite uh difficult times.

Now, she was born in 1867 uh in Ireland, and she had uh she had a tough life.

She was actually uh she actually dealt with from a very young age, a very kind of painful nerve disease that she struggled with very uh very awful and debilitating.

When she was 18 years old, her father died, right?

But she you know she had a heart for others, and she had a heart to be used by the Lord, and she didn't wait for all of that to end before she decided to be used uh by him.

And so one of the things that she did as a very young woman is she realized that there were a lot of young and very poor and very needy women in uh in her city uh in Ireland.

And they were these are women who were you know working in the mills and struggling and sick and they were poor and they were destitute.

I mean, just a hard, hard life.

And she's like, they need Jesus.

And so she actually started a Bible study.

It was a Bible study that 500 women eventually started to come to.

Pretty incredible the way the Lord used her.

But then uh she heard some great preaching uh at one point by Hudson Taylor, the great missionary to China, and she started to kind of consider hey, maybe the Lord will use me like that.

And she wanted to go to China as well, and that none of that actually uh ended up working out.

So instead, she went to Japan.

But what ended up happening is she got really sick while she was over there, and she had to come uh back home.

And so she did that, and she as she started to heal, she's like, no, I want to continue to serve, I want to continue to work.

So she goes back to Japan, actually to Sri Lanka this time, and she goes and she starts to uh minister there.

Well, guess what?

Same thing happens.

Get sick again.

Only rather, instead of coming home back to Ireland, which would have been more comfortable and easier for her, she actually found herself in India.

And that's where she started to heal, and that's actually where uh she kind of became what you might call a legend.

And she invested big time uh in slaves that were there, in these, in these young women who were uh slaves in Hindu temples.

And she devoted her life to rescuing them and to preaching the good news of Jesus Christ to them and just being a blessing, treating them.

She was basically a mother to all of them.

And and there was actually times where she would actually disguise herself and be a s be like a spy and actually go into these Hindu temples to rescue these women out of them.

Right?

Pretty, pretty amazing.

What happened though, um, at the age of 63, she actually had a really bad fall, broke her leg, injured her back severely, and had to spend the rest of her life, 19 years, uh, laid up in bed.

Only did her ministry stop there, no, it did not.

She wrote, she actually wrote 16 books uh that have blessed.

I know some of you here, you have read those books.

She rewrote even some of the ones that she had written earlier and continued to be a model, continued to be a blessing to many people uh before her death, uh, well into her 80s.

Okay, so think about Amy Carmichael.

There are lots of examples like her.

She didn't wait for her trials, she didn't wait for her challenges to finish, to end before being used massively for God's glory.

Now, here's what I've tended to notice as you know, I've kind of surveyed the evangelical landscape, and maybe you would even in a moment of honesty uh recognize that this has been true for you.

Okay, but when life tends to get hard for Christians nowadays, we tend to actually back out of opportunities to be used by God for God's glory.

We tend to back away, we lean out from all of that, right?

And and it's like it's like self-preservation kind of becomes our chief aim.

Right?

I need to protect myself, I need to get into a healthy place first.

I need to care more about me and invest in me right now, as opposed to being used by God in the difficult times.

And all of that is just so sad.

It's so sad because it's a it's a failure to realize that some of God's richest blessings for yourself and in the lives of others actually happen when you step out in faith and trust God and decide to be used by Him even in the middle of your problems.

So again, I really challenge you, don't wait for your difficulties to blow over before you'll let the Lord use you.

Right?

It's really, if you think about it, it's a faithless move to do that.

Right?

It's a belief that God can't give you the grace or he won't give you the grace in those moments when life is challenging.

Right?

It's a it's a lack of understanding that God desires to use you in the trial, in the difficulty.

I mean, I just wonder how many of us have been so blessed as we've known people who have served hard and have served well, even though life is so difficult.

Right?

It's so inspiring, it's so challenging to us, and it spurs us on to greater faith and greater works as we see people do this.

Just think about Joseph again.

Think about him.

You know, if he never, you know, stepped out and ministered to the cupbearer and to the chief baker, you know, because he thought that, you know, withdrawing from serving others until his trial had finished was the best decision for him, what would he have missed out on?

He would have missed out on the opportunity to pour into these guys.

He would have missed out onto the eventual opportunity, the very situation that got him out of prison and ultimately led to his redemption.

He would have missed out on all that blessing if he just instead sulked in the corner of his cell and thought, you know, woe is me.

Again, how, you know, how bad is my life, and I'm not going to be used here until God kind of sorts everything out for me.

Okay, when you and I refuse to be used powerfully now, we miss out on just countless blessings, countless things that the Lord wants to do in our lives.

We miss out on countless blessings in the lives of others, and ultimately what we're doing in these moments is we're robbing God of glory.

Now, let me just put it kind of in the context of our local church here, our church here today, Harvest Bible Chapel.

You know, we've been going here for you know two years strong, right?

Just last Sunday we had our two-year anniversary, and there was much to rejoice in, and so much that we can celebrate here, and we're excited about that, and that continues uh in us out from here, right?

And it's so good.

But I can just imagine, in fact, I know that many of us here are tired.

You know, we are, you know, we're worn out from the grind of setting up a portable church, for example.

You know, and some of you saw the Facebook post today, how our team got in here like an hour and a half later than usual.

Right?

And you can imagine just the grind that that is and how that that wears on us, even on the best of times, you know, in our in terms of our serving.

And I can imagine some of you have been serving hard and serving hard, and maybe you're not getting the the gratitude or the recognition that you want.

And so maybe you're starting to entertain the thoughts of quitting.

You know, why am I doing this?

You know, what am I doing here?

Why why wouldn't I why wouldn't I go to a church where they have a building?

Right?

Why wouldn't I go to a church where they have lots of people in every single position?

By the way, newsflash, that church does not exist.

Right?

Every single ministry position is constantly recruiting.

Constantly.

And so reject those lies.

Reject those or that kind of thinking right there.

Right?

But maybe you're maybe you're kind of feeling that.

You know, and and maybe you haven't quit, or maybe you've been thinking about it, or maybe you've been showing up on Sundays and kind of on the outside, it looks like you, you know, you're coming at it with all of the right kind of attitude, but inside your attitude is dust.

Right?

It's not great.

And you're bitter and you're frustrated, and and you've started complaining, and maybe you started whining, and you know, the luster of ministry and the passion and the joy that you had in all of it as you started and the excitement in all of it is just flat out worn off.

And here's the thing it's going to.

If it hasn't happened for you yet, it will.

That's a normal, normal part of it.

You know, and you've realized serving is actually hard.

And I expected to have nothing but good times and good feelings through all of this, but you know, I forgot that February exists.

Right?

And it is cold and it is dark and it is miserable.

Right?

And you're like, I don't, I don't think I really want to do this.

And you're starting to kind of you know make excuses and justify, you know, backing out of commitments.

You know, and if I don't do it, someone else will.

Or maybe you're even starting to think, you know, maybe this isn't the church for me.

You know, all of those thoughts feel like pretty good things to entertain at times, don't they?

Listen, listen, do not give in to that mindset.

Don't do it.

God wants to use you powerfully now.

He wants to do it now, in the difficult moments that you find yourself in.

He wants you to glorify him in your weakness.

Don't look at weaknesses and challenges and tiredness and exhaustion and sickness and all of those things that happen and are a reality to completely sidetrack you from the mission to glorify God.

That's all part of it.

And God has that in there in your life to serve and bless others, but to also stretch you, to make you tougher, to use you as a person who will bring even more glory to him, not just now, but down the road.

Okay, so don't lean away from ministry opportunities in the church or outside of the church.

You know, just because it's hard, or again, you're kind of weary and worn out, or you've got a bad mood, or whatever it might be.

No, lean into his grace.

Right?

Lean into the power that is available to you through Christ.

Lean into that.

He wants to bless you.

I remember listening or hearing a senior pastor friend of mine talking about, you know, how he made the transition from, you know, just kind of reading God's word kind of whenever at work during his day to a kind of a commitment to doing it in the morning.

What was his natural inclination?

I'm too tired to get up in the morning.

And then it just struck him, and I'll never forget it.

It struck him, well, do I not believe that God can't give me the energy, you know, throughout the day, if I get up early and give my first few moments to him in God's word?

Do we not believe that God can't give us grace?

That God can't give us joy in the middle of our challenges, and that he can't use us in all of it?

Lean into God's grace and his power.

And I mean, just look out, just watch for what the Lord will do in this church as he does that.

Is this a bunch of weak people who are kind of limping through life and struggling, all that, or are rallying together in the strength of Christ to build this and see this church make disciples?

Right?

Watch what's gonna happen.

In fact, I would say this he's already doing it.

He's already doing it, but do we want it to end?

Do we want to give up now?

Hopefully not.

Right now is a crucial time as we're as we're you know trying to find new energy and find new passion and find new joy.

Understand your mission is to glorify him.

Receive that, accept that.

Don't give in to anything less.

Here's the last thing.

Even when my circumstances don't seem to be improving, I will glorify God by knowing that while people may let me down, he never will.

Okay, he never will.

Check out verse 20 here.

Verse 20 says this on the third day, so he's already interpreted the dreams for these two guys.

On the third day, which was Pharaoh's birthday, interestingly enough, he made a feast for all of his servants, and in fact, lifted up the head of the chief bearer, uh cupbearer, and the head of the chief baker among his servants.

He restored the chief cupbearer to his position, just like Joseph said, and he placed the cup in Pharaoh's hand.

But he hanged the chief baker, as Joseph had interpreted it to him.

So wow, everything is working out until you see verse 23.

Yet the chief cupbearer did not remember Joseph, but forgot him.

Devastating.

Right?

Just a just a bleak and kind of like, ugh, kind of ending to this chapter, isn't it?

You know, when you see that and you're like, man, what a letdown how all of this ends.

But here, I mean, here's something we could agree with.

At least this is reality.

Right?

It's reality.

Because sometimes, as much as we would like, we love it when life kind of just wraps itself up and ties itself off in a neat little package, and you know, I had my little time of suffering, and you know, I prayed to the Lord, and then everything worked out, and everything was way better than it ever was before, and I have like, you know, dump truck load of blessings dumped on me, and again, life is better than ever.

And I mean, the Lord does want to bless us and he will bless us, but it doesn't always go the way that we think it's gonna go.

Right?

This chapter ends with disappointment.

Right?

He's forgotten Joseph's situation, it does not improve.

It doesn't.

And actually, if we were to cheat a little bit here this morning and jump into uh chapter 41 for a second, take a look at the first verse there.

We'll get into this more next week.

After two whole years, right?

Not only did the situation not improve, and it's like, you know, for a week he's left there.

No, it's like two years later, something good finally happens.

And so can you imagine he's just wrestling with all of this?

And you know, those guys are long gone.

You know, the one guy's in the grave, the cupbearer's like enjoying his, you know, the lap of luxury, and you know, he's got the great job again and the great income, and you know, everything's gone well for that guy.

So glad.

You know, I'm sure that's what Joseph's thinking in some ways.

Right, but not him, he's forgotten about.

You know, and again, it's it's hard for us to stomach, even as we think about that.

It's hard for stomach for us to stomach as we you know kind of think about this in our own lives.

You know, we realize that life doesn't always improve right away.

As much as we want to see that, it's just not always reality, is it?

You know, sometimes when things just seem like they're about to get better, as it was kind of looking like here for Joseph, they just don't.

And it kind of continues.

You know, sometimes my circumstances just flat out doesn't seem to improve, does it?

You know, in Joseph's case, you know, he's left to deal with the fact that the you know the cop bear forgets about him and he's left to rot, right?

Huge letdown.

You know, and so and some of you have dealt with this kind of thing before too.

You know, you've been let down.

You know, people have disappointed you.

You've been hurt, you've been forgotten, you've been neglected about or neglected.

You know, it happens for all kinds of various reasons, and we don't need to go through all of them right now.

But what does it serve?

It serves as a painful reminder of the disparity, the gap between what people are like and then what God is like.

Is like right?

Yeah, people are gonna let us down.

It's gonna happen.

We're all gonna experience that.

And I think we just need to accept that on some level it's gonna happen.

It's kind of a part of you know life when life is so marred by sin as it is.

People are gonna let us down.

But listen, the Lord never will.

The Lord never will.

Listen, take comfort in that.

Allow your heart to absorb that, rest in that truth.

The Lord will never let you down.

But yeah, Mike, my my my situation's not getting better.

Yeah, well, it didn't for Joseph either, not for a long time.

But did the did the Lord let go of Joseph?

No, he didn't.

He didn't let go of him.

He continued to have his hand on his life.

And remember that for yourself.

This season that you're in, it might be long-lasting.

It might go on for months, it might go on for years, it might go on for the rest of your life.

I wish I could say that it wouldn't, but sometimes it just does.

But listen, the Lord is with you.

He is with you, he won't let you go.

Cling to him.

Cling to him.

Cling to him for hope.

Cling to him for joy.

Cling to him for peace.

And sometimes, I was thinking about this this week.

In fact, our small group was talking about it a little bit as well.

Sometimes in those moments where it feels that the Lord's not answering our prayer and we're not getting that thing that we're asking for.

And I feel like I've prayed over and over and over again.

What the Lord's trying to show us is that we actually want that thing more than we want him.

Has he ever shown you that?

And oftentimes we we love the gift more than we love the giver.

And so what he's trying to show you is that he is enough.

Not the thing that you want.

Not that you think, not the thing that you think is going to patch up your life, you know, and make everything better.

It's actually him.

And what he's trying to show you is, listen, I'm right there.

I'm in here, in the mess with you.

You know, we think that we need our circumstance to change.

That's what we think we need most of all.

But ultimately, what do we really need?

Jesus Christ.

We need him.

You know, and there are somebody, there's somebody here today, I just know it.

There's somebody here today that you need him so badly.

You need to ask him to be your savior.

You need him to be Lord of your life.

You know, enough of these, you know, prayers, asking God for things, but not just wanting him.

Right?

You need to know that that's why Christ went to the cross.

It's so that you would know him.

He died so that your sins can be forgiven.

That he would remember your sins no more.

Do you realize that that suffering that Christ endured on the cross, this great torture at the hands of sinful men, that's the death that you and I deserve.

That's the death that we deserve because of our sin, because of our sin and how it is against God Almighty.

And God, in his great love for us, he decided, you know what, I don't want to punish my people.

I don't want to see them punished.

I don't want to see them ending up in hell for eternity.

So I'm gonna make a way.

I'm gonna fix this whole problem for them.

I'm gonna send my sinless son to the cross on their behalf.

So that if we would trust, if we would by faith believe that what Jesus Christ did on the cross was enough to satisfy God's righteous requirements, God's righteous demands, if we believe that he did that for us, we would be saved.

And some of you need to lean into that today.

Some of you need to, you're believers, you're Christians, you trusted in Christ a long time ago, but you need to remember that Christ is enough.

Christ is enough for you.

Others of you, like I was saying, you need to put your faith in Christ for the very first time.

Understand that your sin is the only thing blocking that from happening.

Now it's a big thing, but God is a big God.

And that's why he died for you to take care of all of it.

Find joy in this.

Find encouragement, find your peace in this.

Continue to lean into the Lord, knowing that it's through this time, it's through the difficulty, or for you, maybe you're in a good season right now, but you know the bad time is coming, it's around the corner somewhere.

Right?

We've all got those things coming.

Understand this.

Allow the Lord to prepare you now for that.

So that just like Joseph, we can be in a place to give God the glory, that we can serve others, love them, be used now powerfully by Him, not just when it's all over, and understand that as people are gonna let me down, he never will.