GOD IN THE MESS | ALWAYS WITH ME (March 5 2017) - Mike Armstrong

Hey, if you would turn in your Bibles right now to Genesis chapter 39.

Genesis 39 · chapter mention

Genesis chapter 39.

Genesis 39 · chapter mention

Now my grandma, okay, my grandma on my dad's side is actually with the Lord right now.

Um, but I remember one of my favorite memories of her when I was a little kid.

You know how you sometimes you have this just like these really vivid memories from when you were really young, but you just remember how great they were?

Well, one of my favorite memories of my grandma might seem a little random, but she used to take uh my my younger brother and I to the park.

There's this park across the street from our house.

We used to live in Mississauga, and I mean I would have been, I don't know, six, maybe seven years old, and she took us to this park.

Now that was when parks meant business, right?

They were like, they were basically death traps, right?

You know this, and we used to she would take us over to this, you know, teeter-totter, like a seesaw thing.

And you know, back in the day, in the old school days, in the good old days, if you will, this seesaw seemed like it was about, it was just like a 30-foot-long like piece of two by eight, like that wasn't sanded, like you'd get, you know, you'd get slivers on it, and like the fulcrum, kind of the the balancing point in the middle felt like it was about this high.

And I remember you would feel like you're just like way up in the air, as this thing's going back and forth.

And I remember my grandma would let us sit kind of on the one side, and she would stand at the other end and just push down.

But my grandma was, she was actually a really cool lady.

She did all kinds of cool things.

She's a pilot, she was a nurse in the war, uh, she was a great athlete as well, which was pretty rare back in that day.

And so I think she had a bit of a wild streak, and she liked to have some fun with us on the teeter totter as we would kind of go up and down.

I remember she would push like hard down on the one end, and we would go flying up.

I don't know if you've ever done this to your kids, but when you go flying up like that, and your kind of your butt comes off the seat at the very top, and like your leg, our legs would be flying out, we'd be holding on for dear life onto this handle, but we loved it.

Right?

When we would go up and down like that, we would be dying laughing and just think it was the greatest.

And then on the way down, you would think that she would come down really gently.

No, not my grandma.

She would let this thing come down super hard.

You know how it would like bounce hard off the ground?

And it was just like it was kind of painful on our butts, right?

Like that's how it felt.

But we had bounce, and I mean, we I mean we loved all of it, right?

And up and down, over and over, uh, we would go on this thing, and again, it's just one of my favorite memories of her for sure.

Now, over the span of our lives, you and I are gonna experience many ups and downs.

We're gonna experience many of those.

You know, we're gonna have those those incredible highs with so much joy and so much excitement, and everything is going so well, and we just couldn't be more on fire, right?

But we're also gonna have our fair share of heavy lows, right?

Where life can be hard, life can be full of heartache and sometimes even bitter disappointment.

Right?

We've already been talking about that uh in our series uh here so far.

And I mean that was definitely the case for Joseph, right?

We've seen that in our first intro to him in Genesis chapter 37, but what we're gonna see here today from God's word is that regardless of what happens in your life, God is always with you.

Genesis 37 · chapter mention

Okay, regardless of what happens, the Lord is there.

Okay, he's closer than we tend to think.

You ever thought that?

You ever felt that God is distant?

I mean, when we're, you know, sometimes when we're struggling, it can feel like God is far away.

Like, where is he?

It feels like he's a million miles away, but he's really not.

You know, and even you know, when we're cruising along and life is in a season of blessing and everything is just kind of clicking and all of that, right?

He's still there.

Right?

And we often tend to think, though, that uh we don't need him quite as badly in those times, don't we?

We don't think so.

And you know, he's still right there, though, with us every step of the way, providing for every single need that we have.

He doesn't let go of us.

God is always there, always.

Okay, no matter what.

And so this is what we're gonna be unpacking today as we jump into God's word.

So let me pray with you for us now that we would, that our hearts would come and align with this truth, and that our faith and our trust in Jesus Christ would grow.

Amen?

Amen.

Let's pray.

God, we thank you, Lord, for this time together as your church, Lord.

We thank you for uh two years of your faithfulness, your goodness.

Lord, we celebrate you.

Lord, we are grateful.

We want to see you do even more, Lord, even more in our church.

Lord, reveal yourself to us, Lord.

What makes church awesome is when you are here, you are present, your glory falls on us.

Lord, we have sung about that, we have talked about that, we have prayed about that, Lord.

May it be so.

Lord, be here in power today, changing us, transforming us, encouraging us, and at times convicting us.

Lord, show us that you are God of all, no matter what life brings us.

So, God, help us today, we pray.

All of these things in Christ's name.

Amen.

In Christ's name, amen.

All right, well, I think uh congratulations are in order, Harvest.

You know, and I'm not even talking about, you know, the two-year anniversary and all of that.

What I'm talking about is that we made it through the Judah and Tamar story.

Right?

You're feeling that from last week, kind of like the heebie jeebies and kind of the shutters, like we're we're kind of done with that, right?

We can move on to uh just some, you know, some other actually kind of terrible news too, if you kind of know what Genesis 39 is all about, right?

But that's where we're picking it back up again, right?

And we're looking at the life of Joseph again, and we're picking it back up with him and and and rejoining the story there and and and seeing what God is doing with him, okay?

And we're seeing uh that he was just been sold into slavery.

You remember all of that?

His brothers had tossed him in a pit and they had sold him uh to turn a buck.

And so here's the first thing here, if you're following along in your notes.

Okay, the Lord is always with me no matter what happens.

Okay, so when I'm successful, I'll realize that he's behind it and give him the glory.

Right?

When you're successful, we want to give him the glory.

Now, interestingly enough, in Joseph's life, his time of slavery, you might think of that as like the worst thing ever, and I'm sure that it was very hard.

I'm sure that it was very challenging, but what we see here in the text is it actually starts off uh pretty good, right?

He gets off to a pretty good start.

So why don't you read through this with me and follow along?

We're in, again, Genesis 39, verse 1.

Genesis 39:1

Okay, it says, Now Joseph had been brought down to Egypt, and Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard, an Egyptian, had brought, had bought him from the Ishmaelites who had brought him down there.

Now, first of all, you might be thinking, well, who's who's this uh Potiphar guy?

Well, it says that he was the captain of the guard of Pharaoh.

So he's kind of like the head of the secret service, right?

That kind of helps us understand that.

So this guy was like, he was a mover and a shaker.

He was a pretty big deal uh in Egypt.

And so it's kind of interesting to think that this is the guy who God led Joseph to.

Right?

Think about that.

Like it shows us that God had his hand on Joseph's life uh through all of this.

All right, and so that's who uh Potiphar was.

And then what does it say here?

Verse 2.

So, so important.

Look at this verse, highlight it.

The Lord was with Joseph.

The Lord was with Joseph.

You're gonna see this repeated four times throughout this chapter.

Probably pretty important when the scriptures repeat something, right?

It's trying to remind us, it's trying to highlight, point us, show us that, hey, this is crucial.

Understand this.

And it says here that the Lord was with Joseph.

And it says there, and he became a successful man.

And he was in the house of his Egyptian master.

Okay, and this is pretty interesting, verse 3.

And his master saw that the Lord was with him, and that the Lord caused all that he did to succeed in his hands.

Isn't that interesting?

How how Potiphar, as far as we can tell, is a pagan.

He doesn't, he doesn't worship, he doesn't love the true living God.

But isn't it interesting to see that he knew that God was behind Joseph's success?

I find that pretty fascinating.

And as you start to think about that, you might be thinking, like, well, how would he have how would he have known that?

And I and I can just imagine it's because Joseph gave glory to God for everything that was happening.

Right?

As God was working in Joseph's life and helping him work through the betrayal of his brothers and in this new foreign territory, he had grown very close to the Lord.

And so as he rose the ranks, so to speak, through the home of Potiphar, he was like, hey, this is the Lord that's really doing it.

And this spoke volumes to Potiphar.

And so he sees that Joseph's God had made him successful, okay, and he caused all that he did to succeed in his hand.

So verse 4.

So Joseph found favor in his sight, yeah, I guess so, right?

He's like, man, everything this guy touches turns to gold.

I'm uh I kind of like that.

Right?

And so it says that Joseph attended him.

So Joseph served him.

So he didn't just become this kind of big deal in the house and think that he was on the same level necessarily as Potiphar, but he attended him, he served him.

Right?

He showed him uh the the heart of the Lord in all of that.

Right?

And so what did Potiphar do?

It says that he made him an overseer of his house and put him in charge of all that he had.

And then verse 5 says, From the time that he had made him an overseer in his house, and over all that he had, the Lord blessed the Egyptian's house for Joseph's sake.

The blessing of the Lord was on all that he had in the house and field.

So he left all that he had in Joseph's charge, and because of him he had no concern about anything but the food he ate.

Isn't this pretty wild?

That the Lord blessed Potiphar because of Joseph.

Now, this actually reminds us back to where the Lord actually said that he would do this in Genesis chapter 12.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

He said it to Abraham.

In verse 2 and 3, he says, I will make you a great nation, I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.

And then he says this, I will bless those who bless you.

He talks about those who show kindness and goodness to my people, I am going to bless them.

And so we see the Lord doing that very thing, all right, in the life of Potiphar and his family.

Alright, and so what we understand here is that Joseph becomes extremely successful, right?

Really successful.

This was this was like unheard of for a slave to be in this kind of situation.

He gains the favor of Potiphar, as we've mentioned.

He kind of quickly ascends the ladder, so to speak, of responsibility and power and influence in this a very powerful man's home.

Now, what's super clear, I mean, you just can't miss it here, from the text, is that the Lord himself was behind everything that Joseph did.

Right?

It says there that in verse 3, the Lord caused all that he did to succeed.

He caused all of it.

Now, we know that this series is called God in the Mess.

It's called God in the Mess.

You know, we've been reminding ourselves that the Lord is with us in the difficulties and in the challenges and in the messy, kind of awful, slimy, greasy, grittiness of life.

The Lord doesn't run away from all of that.

He moves towards us in relationship with all of it.

Right?

And he even redeems, as we looked at last week with Judah and Tamar, he even redeems us and changes us and transforms us in the fallout of some of our most miserable failures.

Okay, but the other side of the coin, okay, which we have to remember just as much, is that God is also with us when life's amazing.

Right?

And you might be thinking, well, that's that doesn't seem like it's that hard to remember.

It seems like maybe that's easier, right?

But when everything that we set our minds to seems to happen.

You know, when everything that we touch turns to gold and it's just blessing, and life seems to be easy, and everything is coming to us, and nothing is really a challenge and a struggle, we have to realize in those times that God is the one behind it, and he deserves the glory.

Right?

We don't.

Now, we often talk again about how life is, you know, it's challenging, it's hard during the hard times, right?

When we're going through trials, when we're experiencing pain, when we're going through, you know, going through the discipline of the Lord in our lives, as he's changing us and all of that, right?

It's hard to cling to him.

But isn't it also kind of hard to cling to him during the good times?

Have you ever felt this for yourself?

And what I'm going at here is that it's, you know, when we see God as our refuge and strength, right?

I love Psalm 46, verse 1.

Psalms 46:1

We've all heard this verse before, right?

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in what?

Trouble or times of trouble.

Right?

We see him as that, and we understand that wow, he's a help to us in trouble.

But in the good times, how do we act?

We're kind of like, well, thanks, Lord, for getting me through the difficult times, and I can take it from here.

You know, and appreciate the help when I really needed it and when I was crying out to you and all of that.

But now that things are kind of easy, you know, I'll I'll take it from here and I'll just, you know, I'll come back to you when life gets tough again, and I need you to throw me a bone.

Isn't that how we act sometimes?

See, when we when we when we experience success, when life is going well, we have this tendency in our hearts to kind of push God into the margins of our life.

We resume authority.

We resume control and command of our lives.

And we're like, again, we'll take it from here.

It's kind of like we put God in the backseat and we jump into the front seat and try to drive the bus that is our life.

Another way of really looking at this here is that when we taste success, we tend to become self-reliant and self-assured instead of realizing that everything good in my life comes from God.

Like that's how we tend to get.

And again, have you seen this happen in your life?

Have you seen that this can be the tendency of your heart as well?

I know that I have.

And I know that when I've when I've sensed this in my life, and I've seen that I tend to, you know, kind of fail to give God the glory for the things that are in my life, uh I find that, you know, I end up being the one who distanced myself from the Lord.

That's what I do.

But what is it, what do we always do whenever we go through a hard time and we sense that the Lord's fall uh far away?

We blame it on him.

Right?

And we're like, Lord, why did you leave me?

Why did you forsake me and run away?

But usually it's because of in the good time, we've kind of pushed him aside in our self-reliance, right?

In our pride, and we're thinking we think, I can control it, I can take over the reins again and do all of this myself.

And so when I found that I'm in that place of kind of self-assuredness and you know, pride is kind of ruling in my heart, and I'm not giving God the glory, I end up I end up requiring another trial.

I kind of need it because it's in the trial that I learn to kind of give over more control of my life to the Lord again.

That's what happens to me, I'm sure it happens to you.

And so again, I think a good question that kind of comes up out of all of this is well, then how can we learn to give glory to the Lord when our life is successful?

Right?

In the good times, how can we do this and be better at this instead of just kind of pushing him away and then only requiring him when life is challenging?

Well, I want to give you three ways here, and you can jot these down here.

Three ways that we can learn to give glory to God when we're successful.

The first one, we need to embrace that your entire life's purpose is to glorify him.

Your entire life's purpose is to glorify him.

Okay, so whether your life is up, whether your life is down, or whether it's just kind of in the middle and the so-so, and kind of a mixture of good and bad and challenging times and blessing and all of that, no matter what, our entire purpose is to give glory to Christ and everything.

Now, I think probably most of us here, if you've grown up in the church, you know that.

You've heard that before, you've heard the verse, right?

1 Corinthians 10.31.

So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

Right?

And so we know that and we can regurgitate that, but do our hearts get it?

Or are hearts slow to grasp that and receive that and trust that that is in fact my mission?

My mission in life is no matter what, no matter what the times are, good or bad, I'm gonna give glory to the Lord.

If you embrace that as your mission, when the good times come, when the bad times come, when the so-so times come, you're gonna be like, I want to give glory to the Lord no matter what.

In the good times, I'm gonna realize it's him that's causing my success.

And so I'm I'm I'm gonna praise him.

And in the bad times, I'm gonna realize that he's putting me through this, he's allowing this, causing this to happen in my life, to change me, to make me new, to grow my character.

Lord, to you be the glory.

Right?

So we need to embrace this overall mission, this purpose in our lives to glorify him.

Is that your mission?

Is that what you know your life is supposed to be all about, or is your life about something else?

Is your life about really your comfort?

Right?

I just want things to go my way.

I want to be the one in charge, I want to make the decisions, I want to rule the roost.

Right?

We gotta think through that and embrace that your entire life's purpose is to glorify him.

How about this one, the second one?

Choose to be genuinely thankful from your heart.

Genuinely thankful from our heart.

I think sometimes it's easy for us to just kind of be thankful as a way of lip service.

Right?

An obvious example of that is like praying before a meal.

Right?

Uh if you ever you want to experience an impassioned, like or a lack of passion prayer, just experience prayer before a meal.

Thank you, God, for you know, this meal.

It's the same thing over and over, oftentimes.

Right?

But that's not how we want our attitude to be towards the Lord any time that we give him thanks.

We want to thank him from our hearts.

We want our gratitude to be genuine.

It says this in 1 Thessalonians chapter 5.

1 Thessalonians 5 · chapter mention

Be joyful always, pray continually.

And it says this give thanks in all circumstances.

For this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.

Give thanks in all circumstances.

Okay, so you are automatically giving glory to the Lord when you thank him, and when you thank him from a genuine heart.

Okay, so choose to be genuinely thankful.

All right, choose to do that whether you feel like it or not, and pray, Lord, allow my heart to truly feel and be genuinely grateful to you.

Okay, last one here.

Deflect credit when God's uh to God when people praise you.

Deflect the credit to God when people praise you.

I think this is what Joseph was probably doing.

Right?

As he was growing again, as he was, you know, being shown favor in Potiphar's home, I'm sure he was talking about how great the Lord is.

And Potiphar was seeing that.

He was continually deflecting all of that.

Now, it's not wrong to receive a compliment.

I know compliments are kind of awkward for us a little bit.

We don't really know how to receive it, and I feel like the right thing to say is just kind of push it all to the Lord.

I understand there's kind of some awkwardness in that, but I don't think there's anything wrong with receiving a compliment or receiving encouragement.

Oftentimes when people compliment you, they're trying to encourage you.

And so we need to realize that it's okay to receive that, but ultimately in your heart, and sometimes even with your lips, you want to just deflect that to the Lord and realize, you know, it's the Lord that's allowing all of this to happen in my life and how he's using me and what he's doing in my life.

Glory, glory to him.

Right?

He is the one who is ultimately responsible for your success.

Right?

And so as we begin to see here in the first few verses, the first six and a half verses or so, or five and a half verses of Joseph's life, we see that God was with him how often?

Always.

Right?

He was with him always, not just not just in the hard times, but even in the blessing and the good times as well.

He's directly responsible for the achievements that that Joseph was experiencing.

Okay, so why would it really be any different for us?

Okay, the answer?

It's not.

It's not any different for us.

Give him the glory in your achievements as well, recognizing that the Lord is allowing you to experience all of this.

Ultimately, he is behind all of your success.

Alright, second thing here.

The Lord is always with me no matter what happens.

Okay, so when temptation strikes, I'll refuse the fleeting pleasures and flee.

I will refuse the fleeting pleasures and flee.

So take a look at this again, and this is kind of halfway through verse six here.

You see that there?

There's like a paragraph break, probably in your Bible.

Okay, it says this.

Now Joseph was handsome in form and appearance.

And so you're thinking, all right, this guy was like, he was a good-looking fella, right?

That's what he was.

The ladies like this guy for sure.

And then verse 7, it says, and after a time, okay, after a time, his master's wife, so this is Potiphar's wife, cast her eyes on Joseph and said, Lie with me.

Okay, so she is doing what?

She's trying to seduce him.

You're like, man, haven't we seen enough of like this sexual sin and all of this throughout this story already?

Well, it kind of keeps going here.

But then verse 8, look at this, this is so good.

But he refused.

He refused.

He's like, uh-uh, not going there, not having any part of that.

It says, and he said to his master's wife, Behold, because of me, my master has no concern about anything in the house, and he has put everything that he has in my charge.

He is not greater in this house than I am, nor has he kept back anything from me except you, because you're his wife.

And then listen to this.

How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?

Right?

And so I love this.

What you notice here is he starts off by saying, Man, I I can't sin against my master.

I can't sin against he has he has shown me favor, he has shown me kindness and given me so much responsibility.

I can't do this evil thing against him.

And so what does that show?

It shows that he has a heart for other people.

His heart is transforming and has been transformed.

He has changed, and then he goes beyond that and says, I can't do this wicked thing against the Lord.

And so you can see here it's showing us the position of his heart, and his heart is in such a great place because he loves God passionately and he loves others, and he doesn't want to sin against either of them.

So, so good.

Right in verse 10, though, says this.

And she spoke to Joseph day after day, day after day.

He would not listen to her, to lie beside her or to be with her.

And so you see here in Joseph's life, right, that this temptation just continues to come.

Right?

Continue to come over and over and over again.

She's trying to break him down.

And she's trying to get to the point where he would relent, he would give in, and they could do their little thing.

Right?

But Joseph, he stands firm.

He stands firm.

He refuses, it says there, this fleeting temptation, the fleeting pleasures.

He's like, I'm not going there, no chance.

It might be fun for a little bit, but it won't be fun for long.

I don't want to sin against God.

I don't want to sin against Potiphar.

Okay, keep going, verse 11.

But one day, you're like, uh-oh.

Right, something's about to go down here.

But one day, when he went into the house to do his work, and none of the men of the house were in the house, okay, so it's like an empty house.

Okay, so you see where this is going.

Right, she caught him by his garment, so the thing that he was wearing, saying, Lie with me.

But he left his garment in her hand and fled.

Okay, just notice how many times here it uses the word fled.

Okay?

And fled and got out of the house.

Correct response?

Correct response.

Right?

That is exactly what you should be doing.

He's like, I'm out of here.

He doesn't play with it.

He doesn't consider it.

He's not like, well, let's have a discussion about this and I'll try and win you over.

He's like, no, in the face of uh of this relentless temptation, I am out of here.

I am fleeing.

I'm not gonna play with it, I'm not gonna embrace it in any way, shape, or form.

I'm gone.

Right, in verse 13.

Okay, and she as soon as she saw that he had left his garment in her hand and had fled, there's a second time there, he'd fled out of the house, she called to the men of her house and said to them, See, he has brought among us a Hebrew to laugh at us.

Okay, a couple of things to notice here about Potiphar's wife's reaction.

Obviously she's lying, right?

And she's she's crying like attempted rape.

That's what she's crying out here.

But there's also a few things that she does that you have to look carefully at that you can see here.

First of all, who does she blame for this whole thing ultimately?

Potiphar.

She blames her husband, right?

She says, see, he has brought among us a Hebrew to laugh at her.

She says she's blaming the whole thing on her husband.

Probably a little alert, a little note for us to know that her their marriage probably wasn't the most healthy if you didn't already pick up, pick up on the fact that she was trying to seduce Joseph.

Right?

So he has brought among us a Hebrew.

So notice how she doesn't even use his name.

Okay, so what is she also being here?

Racist.

She's being racist, and she's like this Hebrew, right, to laugh at us, to mock us.

Right?

He came in to lie with me, and I cried out with a loud voice.

And as soon as he heard that I lifted my voice and cried out, he left his garment beside me.

So there's some half-truths in this for sure.

And third time fled and got out of the house.

But she laid up his garment by her until his master came home.

So I mean, what a slime ball this woman is.

Right?

Like, honestly.

She's the worst.

She's like, well, I'm also going to tell him.

And so, verse 17, and she told him the same story, saying, the Hebrew servant, okay, so now she calls him a servant, and she continues with the racism and goes beyond it to elitism.

Right, this scumbag who you brought in, this nothing that you brought into our home, okay, laying all the blame at his feet, whom you have brought among us, came in to me to laugh at me.

But as soon as I lifted up my voice and cried, he left his garment beside me, and what's that again?

Fled out of the house.

Right?

He fled out of the house.

So again, what we begin to see here, okay, is we see though the character that had begun to grow and begun to develop in Joseph's heart.

Right?

The power, the influence that he had been given by Potiphar, and we know that it was ultimately by God, that power that he had been given didn't go to his head.

Right?

It didn't go to his head.

He wasn't cocky anymore, which is exactly where he was last time that we were, you know, introduced to Joseph.

Right?

You know, he'd heard the dreams, and he's like, my family's gonna bow down to me, and he just thought he was all that.

He couldn't wait to rub his brother's nose in it and think that he was, you know, the greatest.

Right?

Everything totally went to his head before.

And so again, we're seeing this contrast, and we're seeing what God had done in him, right?

God, in his sovereignty and and in his goodness and in his grace, had graciously used the crisis that Joseph had gone through.

Again, the the being sold and betrayed by his brothers and becoming a slave.

What did he do?

How did God use that?

He used it to humble him greatly.

He used it to humble him deeply.

And truthfully, listen, truthfully, he needed it.

Right?

He needed it.

He was young, he was cocky, he didn't understand it at all.

So listen, listen.

When you are going through something that's kind of like that, like when you are suffering and you're going through some kind of a trial or you're being disciplined by the Lord, don't be so shocked by it.

And don't be like, what on earth is happening right now?

And what good could possibly come from this?

And this is all bad, and my life is only going to be doom and gloom from here forevermore.

Don't ever think that.

Because you should know that God is using that very thing, that season in your life, that challenge, that trial, that discipline to forge deeper character in you.

He's using it as a tool of your sanctification.

This is just what he does with all of his children.

We see him doing it all through the scriptures in the lives of all these men and women that we read about.

Right?

Pick one for any person you see, the Lord doing that in them.

That's just that's God's MO.

So don't be shocked, don't be rattled, don't be dismayed when God is doing that.

Instead, learn to see the long view here.

That, yeah, my life is difficult and it's challenging and it's and it's hard right now.

But ultimately, God is doing this to make me new.

He's doing this to make me stronger.

He's doing this to do what he's doing in Joseph, or what he did in Joseph, where he's creating a strong character in him and developing deep humility and maturity so that when the next temptation comes, a news flash, it's always coming.

But when it comes the next time, you're gonna be strong enough to be able to handle it.

Right?

Just like Joseph was.

God is building you up so that you'll be more humble, so that you'll be spiritually stronger, so that you'll be a God-glorifying weapon in his hands.

That is what the Lord is doing, where he's gonna be able to use you in amazing ways that he couldn't possibly use you right now because you're not mature, just not ready enough.

Right?

So he's doing this to glorify him.

Remember that.

Okay, so because Joseph had gone through these fiery trials and the discipline at the hand of the Lord, again, he was he was able to stand up under the weight of this very strong temptation in this situation that he was in that Potiphar's wife put him in.

Right?

He could have given in to lust.

Right?

He could have entertained the thought, he could have fantasized about it, he could have actually gone down that road, had a fling with another man's wife, and had some fun, at least for a little short while, but he does the right thing.

It says that he refused.

Right?

He refuses the momentary fleeting pleasures, and he flees.

And he flees.

And again, it says that four times in there.

Important that that's how we learn how to react when temptation comes our way.

We need to flee.

We need to refuse and we need to run away.

Now, I think we already know this, but temptation can come at us from all sides.

It can come at us and look like all kinds of different things.

Are there all types of different ways that we can be tempted to sin?

Right?

We can be tempted to spend money that we don't have.

Right?

You ever been tempted to do that?

And to get into yourself into some kind of debt or financial problems that you won't ever be able to recover from?

We can be tempted to do that.

We can be tempted to tell a lie and make ourselves look better than we really are, or be tempted to cheat our way up the ladder at work or whatever it might be.

We can be tempted to give in to anger.

I mean, the list goes on and on and on.

But listen, we cannot ignore the fact that this passage specifically deals with the sin of sexual immorality.

It deals with that very specific sin.

Now, I don't want to spend a lot of time here talking about you know all the dangers of sexual immorality and all of its, you know, various forms and all of the stats that are out there in the church alone, where, you know, the divorce rates because of sexual immorality, adultery, you know, pornography, and how it's gripped the hearts of men and women and all of that.

Instead, I'm just kind of gonna make the assumption that for the most part, we kind of already know that those things uh are dangerous and they are a temptation and they are deadly and can get us into a really, really bad place really quickly.

These things, these, this this sin and this sin of this these various forms promise pleasure.

They promise that, but they fail miserably to deliver on that promise.

Right?

Long term, what do they do?

And a lot of you have experienced this before already, and it's sad, and you're you're dealing with the aching and the gaping hole of I have given into this sin over and over again, and it was fun for a little while, but now I'm a slave to it, and I don't have any peace, and I feel like my heart has just been removed from me, and I feel numb and I feel dull towards the Lord, and I don't care, and I didn't even want to be here today, but I got dragged out, or whatever it might be.

Right?

Sexual sin is absolutely devastating.

And again, I think for the most part, we sort of we sort of know that.

That it prom it promises to give us pleasure and promises to fulfill, but it just cannot, it's impossible, it doesn't follow through.

Okay, so again, we know that, but what do we do if we're neck deep in it?

Right?

What do we do if you know if we you know we kind of see again, right?

Like we look at this the character of Joseph and we see that he had the character to be able to withstand the temptation that was coming at him from Potiphar's wife, but what if we're just not there?

Right?

Like, what if our world currently, as it stands, is is is addiction, right?

And and and and failure, time and time again, it's it's despair, it's it's self-hatred, right?

Like, what if that's our world?

What if you would kind of, as you're sitting here, just sort of do a self-assessment and realize, you know what, that's great that Joseph had that character, but you know what?

Honestly, truthfully speaking, I don't.

I was I'm not mature enough and I'm not strong enough to pull myself out of this hole that I've dug.

Right?

So the question then becomes how do I get out of this?

Right?

How do I break this sin cycle?

How do I get off the merry-go-round?

How do I quit digging the hole deeper and deeper and find the ladder that I can crawl out of so that I can experience victory in Jesus Christ?

Right?

Some of you have wrestled with that constantly and you've gone through that and you've tried to repent and you've tried to confess your sin to the Lord, and you're being you're discouraged about it.

And you're just like, man, I don't I don't know if I'm ever gonna get better at this, or you experienced a great season of victory and joy, but you've like stumbled back into it again.

And so, again, how do we break the chains?

How do we get out of it?

Well, there's a lot that we could say, and you know, part of me considered, well, you know, here's a list of five things that you can do, you know, to try and get your heart to a right place, and sometimes those are very helpful.

But I've got the answer for you in just one word.

You know what that one word is?

It's grace.

Grace is how you get out of this.

Grace is how you transform.

Grace is how you were made new.

Now I know you're thinking, well, how do I kind of make that happen in my life?

Right?

It's easier said than done to just say grace.

That sounds like an overly simple answer here, Pastor.

Thanks for the help.

Right?

Well, I've got this quote that I want to read for you now, and it's gonna be up on the screen behind me, and it is really just like the longest quote of life.

Okay, so bear with me.

Read through this here.

This is from a great book.

I'll talk about it afterwards.

Okay, and this is talking about grace.

It says, God's powerful, transforming grace is available to you.

But many people don't know how to make use of it.

Having the power of Jesus to change without knowing how to use that power is almost like not having the power at all.

It's like being stranded on an island with a fueled-up airplane, you don't know how to fly.

It is crucial to discover how to grasp God's grace if you're going to benefit from it.

If you want to use Jesus transforming grace, you have to do something so easy that many people find it impossible.

And then here it is.

You have to believe it.

You have to believe it.

Transforming grace works when you believe that Jesus gives it to you.

That's how it works.

The moment you believe in Jesus' grace to change you, you are changing.

The more you continue to believe it, the more you will continue to change.

As Paul writes, and then he quotes Romans 6.11 here, in the same way, count, important word, count yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

And so Paul is saying that you are dead to sin and alive to God in Christ when you count it to be true.

That is, when you believe it.

If you want to change and be like Christ, whether in the area of pornography, which this book deals with, or anything else, you must believe that in Jesus you have the power to change.

When you believe the power is yours, it is yours.

Boom.

Right?

That is amazing and so, so true.

Now you might be thinking, you know, what, you know, what is this book?

You know, what is this quote from?

What book is it?

How can I buy like a hundred copies?

Well, I'm gonna tell you.

Okay, it's from this book here.

Now you might be thinking, hey, this is kind of familiar.

I feel like you've shown this before.

It's because I have.

Okay, it's called Finally Free, and this is without question the greatest book that I've ever read on the issue of sexual morality, on the area specifically of pornography.

So good, so well written by a man named Heath Lambert, who's a biblical counselor, uh, and so good at showing us the good news of grace, the good news of the gospel.

It's also and so it targets the heart, right?

And the heart transformation that needs to take place.

But it also talks a lot about very practical things that you can do if you're struggling currently.

You're in that hole, you're in that pit, and you need to get out of this.

Okay, it's a book, again, I started reading the first couple of chapters this week.

I was just like super, like ultra blessed.

Now you can pick up a copy of this.

I checked on Christianbook.com, it's like$12.

You can get like the e version for like$10.

What I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna leave this right here, okay, on that on that chair, and kind of first come, first serve.

Whoever gets it after the service, it's yours.

Uh, you are blessed, okay?

So finally free, phenomenal book.

Now, back to what we're talking about here.

Okay, see, the problem that that most Christians kind of deal with when stuck in sexual sin, or when you're stuck in really any sin of any kind, is that we end up spending kind of all of our time, all of our energy, all of our resources focusing on the sin.

Right?

Don't we end up doing that and we you know we feel so terrible that we've sinned, which you know, we need to feel godly grief about it, godly sore about it.

But we put kind of all of our chips in that basket sometimes, and you know, kicking ourselves and beating ourselves up that you know, I failed again, and you know, I'm so terrible because of my sin, and you know, my sin is so big, and pretty soon the sin becomes this like huge mountain in our minds and in our hearts, and we stop seeing it as something that can be overcome by the grace of God.

Right?

That's how we tend to look at it.

Instead of what?

Instead of focusing on God's grace, instead of believing, as the quote said, that God's grace is available to you.

Once you start believing that God's grace is there and that God wants to change you, and he will change you, he will.

And here's another thing that the book mentioned, and I didn't quote this, but he talks about how we think about grace as unmerited favor, which is true.

Right?

It's a gift of God.

But he also says it is power.

Grace is power.

That's why you say you need grace.

This is something you can't, you can't change yourself.

You need God's grace to transform you instead.

And so focus on that and think about the good news of the gospel and realize that Christ went to the cross not just to save you from sin someday down the road when you go to be in heaven, but he saved you to transform you now.

The same God that raised Jesus from the dead is alive and at work in you.

And you need to start seeing that and understanding that, allowing that truth to make your heart come alive and start to transform your desires from wanting the sin, wanting the porn, wanting the sexual immorality, to wanting him more.

That's what happens as we become more in line with the truth of the gospel, as the gospel washes over us and begins to transform our hearts.

We love him more than we love anything else.

Is that not exactly what happened in the life of Joseph?

Right?

He loved God more than he loved sinning against Potiphar.

He loved him way more because he saw God's grace in his life.

He started to realize I was a punk.

Right?

And I deserve to die in this pit.

But he rescued me and he put me in this amazing home, and he is so good, he is so gracious to us.

We need to focus on the grace of God and the goodness of God in our lives and start believing that he actually will transform us, transform us, not doubting it, not wondering if he's ever gonna do it, not not wallowing in self-pity, celebrating the power that we have through the gospel.

Now, listen, listen, some of you are sitting here today and you want this transformation so bad, and you're like, I want these sins weeded out of my life.

But here's the thing you don't know Jesus yet.

You don't know Jesus.

And if you want him, if you want to have the benefits of having Christ in your life, you need him in your life.

Right?

And it means that you need to come into a saving relationship with the Lord.

You need to understand the gospel, which we've sung about passionately today already.

We've talked about it in communion, we've been going through it here in the scriptures, Lord.

Listen, you need to understand that Christ went to the cross to pay for your sin.

That's right.

Your sin.

You have sin in your life, and it is a problem.

It is a stench in the nostrils of God.

It means that we deserve death, we deserve punishment, we deserve eternal separation and damnation in hell.

We deserve it, I deserve it, we all do.

But God, because of the great love with which He had with which He loved us, He went to the cross instead of you.

And He poured out all His rash, wrath, and His punishment on Jesus, His Son, so that you wouldn't have to receive it.

And so you're like, well, how do I receive this for myself?

How do I become a Christ follower?

Well, it's recognizing just admitting freely, yeah, you've got sin in your life.

It's against the Lord.

Lord, I I've I've sinned against you.

And then asking him to be your savior.

Lord, would you would you be mine?

Would you be my savior?

Would you be my Lord?

Would you forgive me?

Do that today.

Somebody here in this room, I just know it, needs to hear that.

And you need to make this decision.

Put your faith in the Lord and then watch over the course of the rest of your life as the Lord begins to start to transform you.

He begins to do that and he makes you new, he makes you into a new creation.

It's gonna be awesome.

Last thing.

Okay, the Lord is always with me no matter what happens.

Okay, so when I suffer unfairly, I'll trust that he'll handle how it all plays out.

He'll handle how it all plays out.

Now, I wish I could say here that because Joseph is honorable and he does the right thing by Potiphar and Potiphar's wife and the Lord, he honors the Lord.

I wish I could say that everything just kind of immediately works out for him, and he's just like, you know, dump truck full of blessing, backs up and backs that up all over his life.

Doesn't exactly happen, right?

It doesn't play out that way.

Okay, take a look at verse 19 now.

It says, as soon as his master heard the words that his wife spoke to him, this is the way that your servant treated me.

It says his anger was kindled.

And Joseph's master took him and put him into the prison.

Now, interesting that it says they put him into the prison, because what was really stopping Potiphar from just killing Joseph?

Right?

How dare you do this?

I could kill you, I could have you dead.

I think that maybe speaks to us a little bit that maybe Potiphar was kind of questioning his wife's testimony in this.

Right?

And maybe he sensed that she was, again, a little slimy.

And again, what we look at this is as what?

God's protection on Joseph.

God is with him, right?

And so he puts him into the prison, the place where the king's prisoners were confined, and he was there in prison.

Verse 21, look at this.

But the Lord was with Joseph.

He was with him.

Right?

And he said that he showed him steadfast love.

I love that word steadfast.

What does the word steadfast mean?

It means that it's never leaving, it doesn't fail, it doesn't run out of gas and sputter out and die.

Right?

God's love is constant.

It is always there.

God doesn't bail, there's none of that.

Showed him steadfast love and gave him favor.

Does this sound familiar now?

Give him favor inside of the keeper of the prison, verse 22.

And the keeper of the prison put Joseph in charge of all the prisoners who were in the prison.

Whatever was done there, he was the one who did it.

The keeper of the prison, I love this, paid no attention to anything that was in Joseph's charge.

Because the Lord was with him.

And whatever he did, the Lord made it succeed.

And so the captain of the prison is just like this guy's like the dream employee.

And so, just like Potiphar, right, he's putting everything into his charge.

And so again, you see Joseph starting to rise kind of up the ranks here.

Now, something that each one of us here as the church needs to understand is that you and I will suffer injustice at some point.

We are.

We're going to be treated unfairly.

There's going to be times where you stand up for what is true.

There are going to be times where you stand up for what is right and declare the truth in the face of lies.

You're going to take the unpopular stance here and you'll be taken to task for it.

You're going to be treated horribly.

You're going to be cast aside.

You're going to experience in some degree, not to the exact degree, but to some degree what Christ went through as he was mocked and as he was treated horribly.

Right?

Joseph is nothing less than honorable to everybody in this story.

Potiphar, his wife, the Lord, and what does he end up for with it?

He ends up in prison.

That's what he's got to show for it.

Okay, so think about that, just how unfair this was.

And I mean, how does that sit with you when you read a story like that?

Don't you get this kind of sense within you that's like boiling up like this isn't fair?

Right?

I demand justice.

Right, we read that and we see that in Joseph's life, but listen, how does that sit with you when it happens to you?

How does it sit with you when you experience that?

Now, the more insane our world gets, right, the more insanely hostile it gets towards Christians, Christianity, the Bible, the church, all of it, the more this kind of thing is gonna happen to us.

Are you preparing yourself for that?

Do you understand that that darker days are ahead?

Are you working to prepare your kids for it?

Helping them to understand that life isn't just about comfort and ease and having good grades and getting an awesome job and you know taking care of a family and all of that.

It's not just about that.

Challenges are ahead.

Okay, we're gonna be persecuted in certain ways, and some of you have already experienced that.

You know, it's happened in maybe some subtle ways, where it kind of feels maybe a little more passive-aggressive, but some of you it's happened in very kind of outright and obvious ways.

You experience it in various forms.

Okay, but here's the thing, right?

And this is what Genesis 39 pounds into us over and over again.

It's what?

That God is always, always with you.

He's always with us.

No matter what, through the thick, through the thin, through the ups, through the downs, God is there.

He doesn't scatter at the first sign of trouble.

He's with you in the mess, in the good times, too, right?

He's given you all the blessings.

All of it is coming from his hand.

Therefore, listen, therefore, you can trust that he's gonna handle how it all plays out.

You can trust him.

You can lean into him.

You can rest in the fact that your future is in his hands.

And as up in the air as that future might seem to you, because it's in his hands, you can rest secure and you can have peace.

You can have peace.

In Joseph's story, we I mean, we see it so clearly, right?

He's given this raw deal by he's you know he's thrown in prison now after only doing the right thing.

But because we know the whole story, at least most of us do, we're familiar with the Joseph narrative.

Right?

We know that what was God doing?

He was preparing him for even more.

Right?

And God wasn't done with him, and he was setting the stage for even greater things, and not just, you know, this leadership at the prison.

But as we're gonna read about and talk about and discuss in the coming weeks, we're gonna see that God was preparing him for one of the greatest roles in all of Egypt.

Only Pharaoh would be above him, and the Lord would continue to bless Egypt because of him.

Okay, so God knew what he was doing in the life of Joseph.

And it's really easy for us to be like, yeah, totally, I agree with that.

So then why would it be any different for us?

Right?

When we go through things and we're suffering unjustly and life is unfair for us, we tend to be like, well, yeah, he was good to Joseph, but he's probably not gonna be good to me.

Right?

And we doubt him.

And just because we don't see the answer, and granted, that's hard.

Right?

When you don't know how it's all gonna work out, and it really doesn't make any sense from a human standpoint that life would get any better, and it really just does feel like life is always gonna be awful and painful and challenging.

No, he's there.

He's there.

So listen, trust him.

Trust him, church.

Trust him today.

Trust him right now, in whatever circumstance that you're going through, whatever circumstance in life has you all kinds of rattled right now and it's got you freaking out.

Understand, God is with you.

Always.

He is worthy of your faith.

He is worthy of your trust.

Lean into him, throw that back at him.

He can handle it.

Nothing else is worthy of your trust.

You can't figure this out.

You don't know, you don't have infinite wisdom.

He does.

You need to understand and realize and embrace the reality that God is not done with us yet.

He's not done with you.

He wasn't done with Joseph, and it's the same thing with us.

He's got more in store.

He's got more plans.

And again, we don't know what that is.

We don't know to what degree the goodness is that's coming.

We understand that life can take kind of weird, crazy turns, and it can be ugly and it can be messy.

Right when we think that things are about to turn around, it can get bad again.

Right?

And we need to trust that the Lord is in control and he's doing it to root out different things in us and to give us a greater heart for him, a greater trust in him, a more of a passion for Jesus Christ.

So listen, as you read through, as you think through this passage, and maybe you'll go back through it this week, okay, understand and be encouraged.

Be encouraged that the Lord is on the move.

Right?

And when things are challenging, see them as an opportunity to cling to him.

When life is going really well, don't see it as an opportunity to push the Lord away.

See it as an opportunity to give him glory and invite him to continue to work and continue to do great things in you.

We serve an infinitely strong and awesome God.