GOD IN THE MESS | WHEN LIFE GOES SIDEWAYS (February 19 2017) - Mike Armstrong

All right, well, good morning to all of you, Harvest.

Love to be gathered with you today in God's house.

Again, you can turn in your Bibles to the book of Genesis, the very first book of the Bible.

We're going to be in chapter 37 today.

And as you're turning there, have you ever experienced, if you've got your driver's license, you ever experienced one of those kind of terrifying moments that you might have in a car?

Maybe for you it was uh it was a close call or it was uh an outright accident.

It was kind of this like terrifying, scary uh moment for you, and maybe anyone else who was in the vehicle with you.

Well, I remember when I was like 19 years old, I had my very I got my very first vehicle, it was a 1986 Ford Ranger, and trust me, it was way worse than it even sounds.

It's like the worst vehicle uh known to man, but uh that's not really the point.

The point was I remember I was driving once on one of the highways uh around here, and I remember I usually took this um this one off ramp.

It was like 60 kilometers on this off ramp uh around this corner, and I decided, I don't know why, but last minute, I was gonna take the uh the the the exit previous to all of that.

Now, it was raining hard, okay?

It was nighttime, it was cold, and uh I was going, you know, the speed limit, I was going around 100, and I kind of merged, I decided to take this one exit last minute, uh, thinking it was 60k around the corner, only to find out uh it was 30.

30k.

And so you have just that, you know what it's like if you've ever experienced a moment like this, right?

You have that moment of kind of uh, and so I remember I just kind of like downshifted really quickly, kind of tapped the brakes a little bit and started to turn.

And I mean, like a hero, okay?

I just took this car, this truck, big drift, huge fishtail all around the corner, as I took it at about 8590, around a 30.

Now, again, if anyone was watching this, they would have just been like, awesome, right?

But inside, I was in sheer like panic fear mode, because all I pictured was the wheels catching the gravel and just doing this, right?

All through uh the median.

But I somehow managed, I went sideways all the way around it, managed to pull it off, and just kind of kept driving.

And you know what takes you like like an hour for your heart to calm down?

That's exactly uh what it was like for me.

Now, obviously, obviously, nothing bad uh happened to me uh at that time in that moment.

But, okay, you and I both know uh like just how my truck went sideways kind of around that corner.

Uh our lives can go sideways as well.

Right?

We know that, and it can often happen kind of in the blink of an eye.

It can happen really quick when you're not uh expecting uh it at all.

Okay, calamity strikes, right?

Some kind of you know, plan fails you.

You have this great scheme and it all falls apart.

Relationships of some kind shatter, right?

And life just comes undone.

And it can happen again at a moment's notice.

Now, in those moments, in those times, uh, we're often left just kind of alone in our thoughts.

And what is it, what's the question we ask?

Where is God?

Right?

Where is God in this moment, in this difficulty, in this challenge?

What is he doing?

Right?

What is he doing in this in this moment?

You know, what is happening?

Is my life ever gonna return to some measure of normalcy?

Right?

Am I gonna, is that gonna happen?

Right, and it's in those, it's in those times where life goes sideways, where you're left with so much fear.

Right?

You're left with dread and and pain and confusion, and and it's in those moments that we often feel kind of so alone, and we're we're just so desperate to see this thing get fixed.

Well, we start our brand new series today, and it's uh it's called God in the Mess.

And we're looking at the life of Joseph from uh Genesis.

We're gonna be looking at Genesis chapter 37, spending our time in that chapter today, and eventually working our way all the way through uh to the end of Genesis uh chapter 50.

Genesis 37 · chapter mention

Now, uh Joseph, okay, this was a guy who I think it's probably pretty safe to say that his life didn't quite go the way that he was hoping it would.

Right?

Is that fair?

I think that's fair.

Right?

He wasn't expecting uh things to get as messy as they did, uh, but it did, and it did in a hurry.

You know, and as we're gonna see here, his heart and his character and all of that needed some serious work.

It really did.

We're gonna see that his family was a complete disaster.

Or we're gonna see that big time today, and we're gonna absolutely see that next week as well in chapter 38.

And we're gonna see his journey that as he moved towards maturity and as the Lord was working in his life, it was filled with so many twists and turns and unexpected things getting thrown at him, left, right, and center, that if any of us went through something like that, it would bring us to, I'm sure, the brink of insanity.

But listen, listen.

God was right there.

He was right there, in the middle of it, in the muck, in the grime, in the mess of his life.

And again, with all of the twists and the turns, God was there.

In fact, you should go you could go so as far to say that he was behind all of it.

Right?

God was behind all of it.

And and just like Joseph came to realize, we also need to realize that this is just what God does.

This is what he does in our life.

He he brings us through trials and difficulties, and at times he will discipline us from sin.

Why?

Because he doesn't want to leave us the way that we are.

He wants to change us, he wants to grow us, he's gonna make us mature.

It's all a part of our sanctification and our growth in Christ.

It's something that God promises to do.

And the sooner, listen, the sooner that we wrap our minds around that and begin to align our expectations with the fact that God is going to bring us through difficulty and life gets messy, listen, the better that that's gonna be for us.

Right?

Because he uses these trials to refine us.

He uses them to weed out the sin.

And listen again, as we're gonna see here through Joseph, and hopefully we're gonna see this in our lone lives.

God is right there.

He is with us every single step of the way.

All right, let's pray.

Let's give this time over to the Lord, looking forward to it.

God, we come before you uh right now, uh, Lord, seeing that you are a good God, Lord, that all power uh is with you.

God, as we're gonna see through this series, and Lord, as we have probably, and a lot of us here have recognized in our own life, Lord, we are powerless to control ourselves and our own existence.

Lord, we are at your mercy.

Lord, and as terrifying as that feels, that's a good thing.

Because it humbles us, it it draws us away from our self-dependence to dependence on you.

So Lord, would you teach us that when you put us through these times, Lord, you're doing it because you love us, not because you hate us, but because you love us and you you don't want to leave us broken.

You want to heal us.

And so, God, I pray that as we go through this, Lord, that we would be able to entrust ourselves to our Creator and our God.

Lord, help us to do that today, we pray.

In Christ's name.

Amen.

Amen.

So, like I said, we're in the book uh of Genesis.

It's the first book of the Bible of the Old Testament, and the word Genesis literally means what?

It means beginning, right?

It means beginning.

And so it's really the account of how life began on earth.

We see in there uh the creation story, right?

And how God uh raised up and chose the the uh the pe this people for him, and then ultimately that that people uh through a number of individuals became this great, powerful, uh, and mighty nation of many people.

He chose them to be uh his own, and how they would be a people that he chose to enter into a covenant with, where he would be their God, and they would be uh his people.

Now, in the Joseph narrative, which we find in the last 14 chapters of Genesis, what that does in in some ways is it functions actually as uh as a bit of a bridge.

Okay, it functions as a bridge between uh what happened previously in Genesis, and so you've got the story of creation, you've got the stories uh of the patriarchs, right?

Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and then it functions as it's the bridge, it's the gap between that and then what happens in Exodus, and how God rescues his people out of Egypt and out of the hands of Pharaoh.

And so you see here how um it bridges that gap, and we're gonna walk through um all of that.

All right, and so the story of Joseph, it shows us really how the Israelite people got to Egypt in the first place, right?

We're gonna see that even here this morning.

Okay, and it also shows us that God is faithful to his promises.

He's faithful to his promises.

No, no matter how sketchy things seem to get along the way, no matter what kind of obstacles threaten to crush those promises and defeat those promises, God's like, uh-uh, nothing will.

I will pull you out of the muck and out of the mire and out of the pit.

So uh so as God has been faithful to Joseph, as he has been faithful to Israel, so he is faithful to us.

Right?

He's faithful to us as his church.

Of course, we know this, we've already been talking about it.

It doesn't mean that our lives are gonna be uh smooth and easy street.

All right, it's gonna be difficult at times, and and life can be, let's just say, let's just say it, it can it can be flat out excruciating.

Right?

And some of you know exactly what we're talking about here.

And we're not gonna pretend that it's not tough, and that it's not difficult, and it's not very hard, and there aren't tears that flow in different seasons of life.

Okay, and I just love that the Bible is just so honest and so real about this.

It doesn't try and sweep it under the rug and just be like, just be positive, right?

It's not like that at all.

No, it's like let's let's press into the Lord during this difficult time, and he has great purposes that he wants to accomplish through it.

Alright, so here's the first thing.

You've got your notes.

There it's this.

Okay, when life goes sideways, and it does, right?

I need to realize that it's not always my own doing, okay, but sometimes I really do bring it on myself.

Alright?

So when life goes sideways, it's not always because of you, but sometimes it is.

Alright, so let's look at this, okay?

And let's read this now.

We're gonna follow through.

So hopefully you've got a copy of God's word on a phone, a tablet, you know, an old school paper version Bible, uh, like I got here.

Uh either way, we're good with all of it.

Alright, so let's read this.

First couple of verses, it says this Jacob lived in the land of his father's uh sojournings in the land of Canaan.

Okay, so his father was Jacob, one of the patriarchs in Israel.

And so it says there, verse 2, these are the generations of Jacob.

Now, what you would normally find after it says a line like that, you say, here's the generations of whoever, and then it would say, you know, you know, so-and-so, son of so-and-so, and then kind of all the way through all these different generations.

Well, here what it does, it kind of pauses after just the first guy, right?

Talks about Joseph, and it gets the whole story of Joseph, and then it's actually not until later, until chapter 46, that we see the rest of the genealogy.

Uh, but here's what it says Joseph, being 17 years old, okay, so he was a teenager, right?

He was a young punk, right?

He was pasturing the flock with his brothers.

He was a boy with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father's wives.

Okay, more on that uh in a second.

Okay, and Joseph, here's kind of where it starts to go south, right?

And Joseph brought a bad report from them to their father.

Okay, so I mean, we're left to kind of speculate and kind of wonder here.

Was it because the brothers were evil, they were doing something wrong?

I mean, it doesn't tell us, right?

It doesn't tell us if it was that or if Joseph kind of had it in for his brothers or what it was, but there was some kind of a bad report here uh that gets things going sideways.

Now take a look at this, verse 3.

Okay, now Israel, so that's uh that's Jacob, it's not referring to the nation, but to the person.

Jacob had his name changed to Israel, and so it kind of goes back and forth from calling him Israel and Jacob.

Says, now Israel loved Joseph more than any of his sons, because he was the son of his old age.

Okay, so you start to read that and you're like, this can't be good.

Right?

He loved, he loved his one son more than he loved his other sons.

Okay, that's that's not too good.

Okay, and then it says this, and he made him a robe of many colors.

And so we see there this favoritism that's starting to play in here, this robe of many colors.

It was this robe that would have been very expensive.

It was made of very fine linens, and it would have been, it would have been something that was kind of like like royalty.

Right?

And so you can imagine this 17-year-old kid getting like the keys to a Ferrari, right?

That's what it's like, right?

And and can you imagine what the other brothers, the older brothers, thought?

Well, we're gonna see exactly what they thought.

Okay, verse 4.

But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peacefully to him.

Okay, so probably not the greatest thing that they could see it clear as day, that their father loves Joseph more than they love him.

Okay, this is this is bad.

This is really bad.

It's not good at all.

And I mean, it doesn't take too much to realize that this isn't, you know, this isn't the greatest, the most healthy family dynamic happening here.

Right?

It's not.

Now, sarcasm aside, okay, how devastating is this?

How devastating is this on a family?

Right?

When a father or or a mother kind of has their favorite son or their favorite daughter.

You you know what that's like.

Have you ever experienced that uh before?

I mean, some of you probably have, and you've experienced, you know, being on one side of that or the other.

You know, maybe for you, you were the golden child, right?

And you couldn't do anything wrong.

And it's like your parents had, you know, a different standard for you than they had for your other siblings.

I love seeing all the siblings elbowing each other right now.

Right?

That's amazing.

If my brother was here, we'd be doing that too.

Right?

But you've seen that, you've been the favored golden child, or you've been on the other side of it.

And you're like, man, like why, you know, if if I do something that's half as bad as what my brother did or as my sister did, I get in like five times as much trouble.

Right, and you just feel like there's this kind of this double standard uh in your family.

Now, I want to be really careful here.

I'm not I'm not saying all of this to like open up old wounds for you and be like, I gotta like call my dad afterwards and ream him out after the service.

No, it's like it's not about doing all of that, okay?

And let's be honest here.

I think most of us we end up growing up and kind of looking back and realizing as we look at our parents and be like, you know what, they were they were doing their best.

I was the problem.

Right?

You ever realize that?

I'm the one that made that life difficult for them.

And I was seeing this kind of skewed, and I wasn't seeing this properly, and my parents were trying to love us and our siblings kind of all the same.

We were just different, different individuals, right?

And they had to kind of approach us a little bit differently.

Right?

We think we have we got such a raw deal, and probably, probably we didn't.

Okay, but in this case, in in the story of Joseph, the favoritism was very real.

Right?

It was real.

And we and we know, if you're if you're familiar with the passage, that Joseph, or sorry, Jacob, the father, he had four wives.

Now you can imagine how complicated that was alone.

Right?

He had he had his wife Leah, right?

He was expecting originally to be married to Rachel.

And then it's his father-in-law, uh Laban, like kind of succored him, kind of tricked him into marrying his oldest daughter, Leah.

Okay, but it was Rachel that he loved most of all.

And then when Leah and Rachel uh weren't able to give birth, they gave Jacob uh two ladies by the name of Bilhah and Zilpah.

Okay, so they were they functioned as concubines and and and wives for Jacob, and they were the ones who gave birth.

And so what you have here is you've got uh uh it's Joseph and Benjamin, who were the two sons of the favored wife, Rachel.

Okay, and then the other ten brothers were the were the children of Zilpah and Bilhah.

And so you've got this, again, this complicated family dynamic uh that's happening here.

And so they were all kind of, Joseph was half-brothers with all of these guys.

And so again, it kind of gives you again another layer of what's going on here.

And I mean, not to excuse any of it, but you could say that Joseph's father Jacob, Israel, okay, he came by it honestly.

Right, you could say that, because I mean, he grew up in a family where his father, Isaac, favored his brother Esau, over him.

Right?

Do you remember that?

And then who was it?

It was his mother, it was Rebecca that favored him over Esau.

And so this is all that Jacob knows.

Right?

This this this mess of a family, and this awful way of raising children and this this awful culture that was being developed here, that he was stewing in and living in.

This is this is normal for him, and this was normal for this family, but it was not at all good.

I mean, just imagine the relational, the conflict that was there, and and the deep wounds that would have been inflicted here.

And again, if you want to, you can read all about that, starting in Genesis chapter 25.

Genesis 25 · chapter mention

And so, as we're gonna see here in just a second, Joseph's life goes sideways, but rather a lar uh a rather large part of it has nothing to do with him.

Right?

He he didn't ask for this.

Right?

He was he was just born into this family where he had a bunch of older brothers from other women, and and they didn't get along and things weren't great, and his his father shouldn't have, but he treated him uh better than he treated the others.

He didn't bring it upon himself, and not that part of it, anyways.

It was his dad that created this family uh culture and dynamic where, again, Joseph was the favored son, could do no wrong, you know, walked on water, so to speak.

He got all the love, he gets the, you know, he gets the sweet coat, where he's given all the gifts, and the other guys, you know, the other brothers are just left twisting in the wind.

Right?

They're frustrated about it.

Listen, there are gonna be times in life, okay, where you are gonna go through trials.

Okay, you are gonna go through hardships, and they are just flat out not your doing.

They're not your doing.

You didn't you didn't do anything to, you know, that you didn't do anything in your life that has a direct cause, it was a direct result of this bad thing happening.

Okay, think about uh maybe it's a lost job.

You're like, man, I I I work hard and I've been serving this company for years, and now they're downsizing and the economy's junk, and they they they had to let me go, and and now this is a trial that I've got to go through, and you know, you didn't deserve it.

It's not it's not anything like that.

It could be an awful disease, right?

It could be cancer, and it's not like you did something wrong to earn that or bring that upon yourself.

Okay, so it wasn't like that.

It's not your doing.

You're you're just simply at the mercy of God.

Okay, you're at the mercy of God, and he sovereignly will put you through these kinds of circumstances, these experiences, not to punish you, but to but to produce character within you.

That is what he's trying to do.

And we need to be really, really careful that we understand that here.

Because I think some of us kind of naturally we begin to think that every bad thing that we go through is like, you know, somehow my fault.

You know, like Lord, Lord, what are you doing?

What have I done that's wrong, that is so worthy and deserving of your anger and your wrath and all of that?

And you see how pretty quickly our minds and our emotions can start going in that direction.

Well, listen, it's just it's just wrong, wrong thinking.

Because it could simply be a trial, a trial that you're going through.

Now, trials, strictly speaking, are not God's punishment towards you.

Trials are not God's punishment towards you.

Trials are a tool of his sanctification.

It's what he is gonna use, he's gonna put you through that.

James chapter 1 talks about it.

James 1 · chapter mention

1 Peter 3 talks about it.

Don't be surprised by the fiery trials when they come.

Don't be surprised by that.

It's gonna happen, and the Lord is gonna use it to grow you.

Okay, so realize that when life goes sideways, it's not necessarily your own doing.

As though you brought it on yourself.

Because maybe it's maybe it's a trial.

Maybe it's a trial, and God and his sovereignty has just decided now's the time for you to go through this.

Alright?

That being said, okay, and you know it's written there in front of you on the page, there are times when life going sideways is something I bring upon myself.

Right?

Sometimes we do kind of walk into it.

Take a look at verse 5 then.

Verse 5 says this.

Now, now Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, okay, maybe that was his first mistake, right, they hated him even more.

And he said to them, Hear this dream that I have dreamed.

And I love this word.

Behold!

Right?

Behold.

What does that word mean in this in this instance?

Right?

He's trying to be dramatic here.

He's trying to bring some energy to the story, and and he's he's trying to make it more awesome than maybe even it was, right?

He's trying to be, he's trying to show them how great this really is.

Behold! I love it.

It's so cocky, right?

Behold, we were biting sheaves in the field, and uh-oh, he does it again.

Behold!

Right?

He's drawing so much attention to himself.

Behold, my sheaf arose and stood upright.

And behold, right, your sheaves gathered around it and bowed down to my sheaf.

Okay, how do you think they're gonna handle this?

Maybe not so great.

Verse 8.

His brother said to him, and you can just imagine how incredulous they were in this, right?

Are you indeed to reign over us?

Are you are you indeed to rule over us?

So they hated him even more for his dreams.

And for his words.

Now, okay, now if j if Joseph had any kind of like social IQ, okay, let's put it that way.

Um, do you think he would should probably just kind of keep his mouth quiet, keep his mouth shut about all of this?

Right?

He should probably realize, man, this isn't this is getting me into hot water, this is getting me into even more of a mess.

I'm just making these guys hate me anymore.

Does Joseph get it?

Nope.

He doesn't.

Take a look at verse 9.

Then he dreamed another dream and told it to his brothers and said again, of course, Behold, flare for the dramatic, I have dreamed another dream.

Behold, okay, that's five times he says it.

He's like, take it easy, buddy.

Right?

Behold, the sun, the moon, and the eleven stars were bowing down to me.

But when he told it to his father and to his brothers, his father rebuked him.

Okay, so even Jacob, who's like, this guy can do no wrong, even he's like, Come on, man, like dial it back to a hundred here, right?

Like, take it easy.

You're coming on a little strong.

He's like, What is this dream that you have dreamed?

Shall I and your mother and your brothers indeed come and bow ourselves to the ground before you?

He's like kind of sarcastic.

Right?

And his brothers were jealous of him.

They were jealous of him.

But his father, interestingly enough, he kept the saying in mind.

So he kind of like, he kind of tried to put Joseph in his place, but he but he also kind of kept it in mind just in case, just in case it was to come up again.

Right?

So again, a pretty interesting times here that are happening.

And what you see here is, you know, kind of all through this, is that Joseph had some pride, okay, pretty clear.

He had some pride, he had some arrogance that just, quite frankly, had to go.

Right?

It had to go.

It had no place in his life.

He wanted to be the center, he wanted people to worship him, he wanted all, all of the glory.

And the Lord would use what happens next, and we're gonna see it here, as a tool to extract that pride and that arrogance and humble him deeply.

Alright, so what's the takeaway for us here as we look through this?

What's the takeaway?

Well, okay, whenever your life goes sideways, whenever my life goes sideways, what we need to consider here are really the the, as I see it, kind of the three possibilities.

Okay, the three possibilities.

Okay, maybe, as we kind of talked about, maybe this is a trial.

Right?

Maybe this is a trial that I'm going through.

I didn't do anything to cause this.

You know, it's kind of a bad situation that I found myself in, and you know, I can't really control it or anything like that.

Um God's causing it.

God's the one kind of orchestrating all of this.

You know, he's bringing it about, he's gonna produce more more um holiness in me.

Okay, or perhaps I did bring this on myself, right?

Perhaps this is kind of my bad and and this isn't a trial, but rather it's God's discipline.

Right?

God's disciplining me, and this is kind of a different, a different aspect of it, or you know, where he's correcting sinful behavior in my life.

And that's not a comfortable thing, that's a difficult thing as well, because that sin is holding me back, and it's uncomfortable as the Lord prunes those dead branches, if you will, John 15, from our lives so that we can bear more fruit.

Right?

So it's it's one of those two things.

It's a trial, or maybe it's discipline, or third thing, maybe it's a combination of the two.

It's a combination of the two, much like it was in Joseph's life.

Right?

He kind of had this raw deal growing up in this dysfunctional, messed up family, but then of course he brought it on himself by being this cocky guy who uh kind of prodded and poked his brothers, kind of poked this sleeping bear.

Right?

That's what he did.

Now, what's our response in those kinds of situations?

Our response uh here, if it's a trial, is to endure.

Anytime you are in a trial, the response for you is to endure, because what's the natural reaction for us?

I gotta get out from this.

Right?

I I I don't want to go through this trial, and I don't I don't want to go through this difficulty, and and kind of our flesh, which just wants the comfort and the ease and the smooth, easy street, and I want peace, and I don't like the chaos and the calamity and all of it.

I need to figure out whatever I can do to ignore the problem, get out from underneath it, walk away, bring bring goodness and good feelings and happiness and all of that into my life.

No, that's not what we're supposed to do.

We're supposed to endure.

Uh the Greek word there is hupomene.

And the word means to remain under.

Remain under.

That's what we are to do in trials and allow the Lord to have his way.

Lord, whatever you are gonna do, I'm gonna stand by, I'm gonna let you do it to produce more of you in me.

So, trials, what are we supposed to do?

We're supposed to endure.

Okay?

But when we're disciplined, okay, when it's discipline that we're dealing with, our response is to repent.

Our response is to repent, to turn from our sin, to agree with what God says about our sin and say, you know what, what I have done is wrong.

Lord, would you help me by your grace, by your spirit, to turn and walk in the other direction, away from that direction, away from that sin that I was going in.

Okay, so when it comes to trials, we endure.

When it comes to discipline, we repent.

We repent of the thing we're being disciplined for.

Okay, so hopefully you're starting to see here that when life is a mess, though, as you look through the life of Joseph and you start to see in your own life, God is very much a part of it.

Right?

God is very much uh involved, he is in it.

And as much as it might feel in those times of pain and in those times of loneliness and the chaos is swimming, and you're in the thick of it, as much as it might feel like he's a million miles away, we have to trust, we have to believe, we have to know that he is very much there.

He is right there.

Okay, I heard a great quote that is that's this when life's at its worst, God is rolling up his sleeves and moving towards you.

God's rolling up his sleeves and moving towards you.

So he's tilling the soil of your heart.

That's what he's doing in trials.

He is unearthing it so we can grow new fruit, bear new fruit in your life.

Because leaving you the way that you were is simply not an option.

We wish that it was.

We fight against it, we don't want to go there at all.

And sometimes we go kicking and screaming, but the reality is that's a fight we ain't winning.

Right?

The Lord will do it.

Okay, so when you're tempted to flee the trial, you know, or harden your heart to the discipline as it comes and say, no, I'm gonna dig my heels in here and I'm gonna stay the way that I am because that's more comfortable for me.

Just know that you're actually working against God.

You're working against him, you're delaying the inevitable.

Once he starts to work in your life as he wants to use you and bring glory to himself through you, you're just dragging out the process.

You're making it way worse.

It's like getting a broken leg and then never going to the doctor about it and thinking, you know, I'm gonna be fine with this wet noodle kind of flopping around.

Right?

It's bad.

It's bad.

It's not a good idea at all.

Okay, God will not let you win.

He won't do it.

And it's because he deserves all the glory that is due to his name.

He is he deserves all the glory that he will get from you when you relent and when you give way to him.

Alright, that really leads us to the second thing here.

Okay, when life goes sideways, I need to realize that it's painful to hit rock bottom, but I must come to the end of myself.

I gotta come to the end of myself.

Take a look at verse 12 now.

Let's go through this again.

Okay, now his brothers went to pasture their father's flock near Shechem.

So they were all shepherds.

Okay, and Israel, as Jacob, said to Joseph, Are not your brothers pasturing the flock at Shechem?

Come, I will send you to them.

And he said to him, Here I am.

So he said to him, Go now and see if it is well with your brothers and with the flock and bring me word.

And so that's exactly what Joseph does.

He obeys his father, he goes out to go and find his brothers who are shepherding this flock kind of far away.

And so he goes out to the valley of Hebron, he finds that they're there's not there, he can't find them.

He's like, Where are they?

He asked the guy, and the guy says, Hey, they went to Dothan, that's where they brought their flocks, and so he goes there, and sure enough, he sees them.

Pick it up in verse 18.

Because they, that's the brothers now, they saw him from afar.

So they see him coming in the distance, and before he came near to them, they conspired against him, against him to kill him.

And they said to one another, Here comes this dreamer.

Right?

You just sense the venom, right?

Come now, let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits.

Then we will say that a fierce animal has devoured him, and we will see what has become of his dreams.

Right?

So you see just the spite and the hatred, and like the you just sense the anger, like the smoke burning, right?

As as they just they're just done with it.

They're done putting up with this guy, and they wanna they want to put an end to it.

But when Reuben, this is verse 21 now, but when Reuben heard it, now who's Reuben?

Okay, Reuben's his brother, but what's in in important to note is Reuben is his oldest brother.

Okay, so Reuben hears it, alright, and he he rescued him out of their hands by saying this.

He said, Let us not take his life.

Okay, and Reuben said to them, Shed no blood.

Throw him into this pit here, the wilderness, in the wilderness, but do not lay a hand on him.

Okay, and it's because he wanted to rescue him out of their hand, to restore him to his father.

Now, I think sometimes when we read this, we start to go, like, ah, like Reuben had a soft spot for his bro.

Right?

And I think we kind of look at it like that, but you know, I'm not I'm not convinced.

I'm not convinced that's it at all.

Because again, remember, he was the oldest brother.

And so who do you think's responsibility it would have fallen on when this guy is killed?

Who's who had to go tell the dad?

Reuben.

Reuben.

So I think in some ways, I mean there might have been some kind of guilt here, and there might have been some of that playing into it, but in many ways, and I think we're gonna see it later here, he's really thinking about himself.

He's he cares about his own skin more than anything.

And so he says, let's just toss him in a pit.

That's not so bad.

They're gonna rescue him.

Alright, so verse 23.

So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe, the robe of many colors that he wore.

They're like, You're done with that, buddy.

And then verse 24, and they took him and threw him into a pit.

The pit was empty, there was no water in it.

Okay, so this would have been during the dry season, okay, where there was it was like a pit, it was like a cistern or a well, right?

And so they threw him in that and it was it was bone dry.

And so this guy, Jay uh Joseph, he literally, you could say, hits rock bottom here uh in this moment.

And then verse 25 is just, it's disturbing.

Then they sat down to eat.

Right?

What does that tell you about their headspace with all of this?

Like, were they second guessing any of their decisions here?

No.

I mean, if you've ever gone through a moment where you feel like you've done like just made a bad decision, what's usually one of the first things to go?

Your appetite.

Like, I don't want to eat, but they're like, they're totally cool with it.

They're just like, this is amazing.

We got rid of this chump kid who keeps rubbing our nose in the fact that he's the favored son and uh life is gonna be good now.

So they sit down to eat, a ice cold.

Right, and looking up, they saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead with their camels, bearing gum, balm, and myrrh on their way down to Egypt.

Okay, so here you see now where the story is going, the direction it's going, the first mention of Egypt.

Then Judah, that's one of the brothers, um, said to his brothers, What prophet is it if we kill our brother and conceal his blood?

Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, and let not our hand be upon him, for he is our brother, our own flesh.

And the brothers listened to him.

Right?

So again, you're like, well, maybe this guy's being kind of nice.

No.

You know, he he he just wants to turn a buck now.

He's like, what's the point of wasting and spilling his blood and potentially that being found out and getting caught?

He's like, let's let's make uh let's make a different decision, a different plan here, and and make some money off of this.

And he's like, and it's the one instance where they're like, he's our brother.

And he's like trying to convince them.

They don't care, right?

They don't care, don't be fooled by it.

Okay?

And his brothers listened to him, verse 28.

Then the Midianites, traders passed by, so Midianites used kind of interchangeably with Ishmaelites.

They were actually two distinct people, but they lived together and uh habitated together, and so they're kind of used interchangeably there.

But they passed by, and so they drew Joseph up and lifted him out of the pit.

Kind of a cool picture of what the Lord does with us uh when we're in trials and we're in difficulties, and it reminds me of uh Psalm 40, verse 2 You lifted me out of the miry pit, right?

Psalms 40:2

Very cool, right?

But this is what they did, and they sold him to the Ishmaelites for 20 shekels of silver, and they took Joseph to Egypt.

They took him to Egypt.

Now, what I find so deafening in this section that we just read here is the utter silence of Joseph throughout this whole ordeal.

Did you notice that?

You don't hear him put up a stink, you don't hear him put up a fuss.

I mean, we do learn later in chapter 42 that he did beg them to spare his life, but they refused to listen.

They didn't do any of all of that.

But because that's not recorded here in chapter 37, what are we left with?

We're left with this feeling of just how helpless he must have felt and how he must have been kind of in that moment.

Right?

I mean, think about it.

It's it's you know, this 17-year-old kid up against nine of the ten brothers, because we know that Reuben wasn't there at the time, right?

We find that out, right?

And so he was up against nine older brothers.

Like, well, what is he gonna be able to do against them?

Right?

I I'm an older brother, and my younger brother couldn't touch me if I really wanted him to, if I really wanted to make that happen.

What was Joseph gonna do against nine bigger, older, scary, mean, angry brothers?

Nothing.

So, so helpless.

And realized that he couldn't do anything to fix this situation.

Now, have you ever felt that?

Have you ever felt that in one of your trials, in one of your difficulties, when life is going off the rails here?

Just that sheer helplessness that that overwhelms you when you realize, man, there's nothing I can do to fix this.

Right?

I thought I had control over some of these things, but this stark reality is starting to wash over me and overwhelm me here that there's nothing I can do to stop this train from roaring down the tracks.

And it is a terrifying feeling.

It's a terrifying feeling, isn't it?

And you've experienced that.

And I would argue, hey, listen, an extremely necessary place to get to for any Christ follower who wants to be used by God.

It's a necessary place for you to get to.

Why?

Because it's in these moments where all of our quote-unquote power, our perceived understanding of control that we might have over all of our lives, right?

All of that gets stripped away.

Right?

And God gives us this crystal clarity, this awareness that what?

I'm not God.

I'm not God.

I flat out do not possess the power that He possesses.

I can beg, I can scream, I can kick, I can yell, all of it.

It's not changing a thing.

God is immovable.

Right?

He is powerful.

I am not.

We're helpless.

You know, our only option as we start to realize that here, and as the Holy Spirit is working on us and humbling us and giving us a right understanding of who we are in Him, our only option is to fall, to lean into the only one who does have the power to take care of all of this.

To fall into His hands.

Okay, hitting rock bottom, again, as Joseph literally did here in this passage.

It is painful.

It's so painful.

Okay, but just like Joseph and his youthful zeal and in the pride of his heart and you know the smug attitude that he had, all of it, just like him, we need to come to the end of ourselves.

We need to.

We must.

Again, if we truly desire to have the Lord be Lord over us in our life, this is the place we gotta get to.

Now, here's a great quote if you want to throw that up there on the screen for us by uh A.

W.

Tozer.

You guys see that up here?

It is doubtful whether a whether God can bless a man greatly until he has hurt him deeply.

Right?

That is a quote to wrestle with.

That is one to work through and figure this out.

What do you mean that God hurts me?

What do you mean by that?

Well, we need to understand that in all of it, God never sins.

In all of it, God doesn't destroy us.

He hurts us where we need to be hurt.

He like resets the bone.

Does that hurt when that happens in surgery?

Absolutely.

The bone is reset, but ultimately it's for our good, it's for our healing.

And it reminds me of another quote by James McDonald: God's love is not a pampering love, it's a perfecting love.

That's the love of God towards us.

We need to remember that.

God is not here.

His mission in life is not to make you comfortable.

Right?

And our again, our flesh, which wants all the comfort in the world, that's what we want, and that's why we fight against when we go through trials.

We want the comfort, we want the ease, we want it all, but God's love is not to pamper you and to pat you on the head all the time and do all of that.

It's to it's to get it's to get his spirit to do some serious work in you and through you and to use you powerfully for his kingdom.

We need to remember that.

And I think we really gotta be careful of quotes.

Have you ever heard this quote, or maybe you've used this quote before?

God will never give you more than you can handle.

Right?

Can you tell how much I disdain that quote?

Right?

If you've ever if you've ever used that quote, you need to like rid it from your vocabulary.

Because is it true?

No, right?

It's it's utter nonsense.

God is in the business of giving you more than you can handle.

That's exactly what he does.

Do you think Joseph could handle any of this?

No.

What about the parent who has a lot has a young child die?

Can they handle that?

No.

In no circumstance can a person handle cancer or Lou Gehrig's disease or anything like that.

We can't handle that stuff.

God puts us through these things because he wants to show us some things.

He wants to show us that he is God.

He wants to show us that that he is good.

He wants to reveal to us sometimes the idols of our hearts, the things that we want more than him.

And so he will, in his sovereignty, in his love, and in his wisdom, he will remove these things from us to teach us and instruct us and ultimately bring us to the place where we say, you know what, God, you were enough.

You were enough.

Some of you, you know, you're hearing this and you're so tracking with it.

Right?

You're tracking with it because you know you've wrestled with God before and you have lost miserably.

Right?

And yet wonderfully, wonderfully you've lost.

Because you've been taken to the mat and you've like, I tap out God.

You know, I don't want to wrestle with you anymore.

I I give in, you win.

I mean, you know also that that pain was so excruciating.

It was so hard and gripping, but but it was eventually replaced with what?

With a joy that you never thought was possible.

A joy that you've never experienced before, as again, you realize that God is God and I am not.

When you realize that God is on the throne and you simply bow before it, there's no sweeter place than that.

Where you start to realize, you know what?

Lord, the Lord is here, and I am under his lordship.

Right?

That's a great position to be in.

That's what the Lord is doing through trials and difficulty.

He's doing it in Joseph here, he does it in us as well.

But others of us, others of you are in a pit right now.

You know, and you're in this trial or you're in this discipline, and you have you uh you're still trying to climb out.

Right?

You're still trying to run away.

You're still fighting, and there's claw marks all around the edge of this pit that you're in because you're trying to get out of there.

And you need to instead fall in exhaustion and in humility and realize here that you're just making things worse.

You're making things worse, and and relenting and and reveal uh and falling before the Lord under the power of his mighty hand is the best thing that you can do.

You need to realize that things are just getting worse as I fight against him.

And you need to stop and consider you know what, the Lord's behind this.

God himself is doing this in my life, and he has got a plan, and he is not done with me yet, and he's not doing it because he's a sadist and he likes to poke us with sharp objects.

Okay, that's not our God.

Rather, he's a skilled surgeon, right?

He knows exactly where to cut, he knows exactly just how much pressure to apply.

So that, yes, we are wounded, as the Tozer quote said, but we are not destroyed.

We are not decimated and demolished.

Okay, so listen, humble yourself if you were in that place.

If you are fighting against the Lord, if you were trying to ignore the situation that you were in, if you have hardened your heart or whatever it might be, relent.

Give way to the Lord.

Listen, some of you are Christ followers and you've been fighting against the Lord for years.

And you need to repent now and say, Lord, enough of this fighting, enough of this running.

I'm way more exhausted in this than I would ever be if I just gave in.

And yeah, I don't know what tomorrow holds, but I know that you know what tomorrow holds, and I'm gonna rest in you and I'm gonna trust you.

Right?

And there are others here who are in this room who need to relent and give in to Jesus for the very first time.

And he needs to be savior and lord of your life.

And you've been fighting against him and saying, Lord, I don't want you at all anywhere near me.

You need to understand that Christ went to the cross to die for you because he loves you.

And because he desires to be the Lord and Savior of your life.

The only thing standing between you and knowing him personally is.

Is your sin.

That's why he went to the cross.

He went to pay for it.

He went to cleanse you.

He went to clean you out of all of that.

And so when you pray to him and just say, Lord, I'm done running.

I'm done shaking my fist at you.

I'm done fighting.

Lord, would you be Lord of my life?

Forgive me of my sins.

You will be what the scriptures call.

You will be saved.

You will be saved.

You will know him.

You will begin a beginning a brand new journey with God that will be an amazing one.

And it will be a difficult one as we've talked about.

But it will be an awesome one that you will never regret.

Because the Lord is good.

Okay, third thing, last thing.

Okay, when life goes sideways, I need to realize that it's easy to despair.

But God is preparing me for better days ahead.

He's preparing me for better days ahead.

Let's look at this now, verse 29, pick it up.

It says, When Reuben, so here he comes, not sure where he was at, maybe he was with the flock or something.

But when Reuben returned to the pit and saw that Joseph was not in the pit, he tore his clothes.

Get something they did when there was great and deep grief and mourning.

So he tore his clothes and returned to his brothers and said, The boy is gone, and I, where shall I go?

Right?

So there he is, kind of thinking of himself again.

Right?

And then that's why I sent I get the sense that, you know, he's not just doesn't just have the soft spot for his brother.

He's like, now I gotta go tell Dad.

This is gonna be awful.

So he's more thinking about himself than anything.

Then when they took Joseph's, uh then they took Joseph's robe, so all of them together, and slaughtered a goat, and dipped the robe in blood, and they sent the robe of many colors and brought it to their father, and said, This we have found.

Please identify whether it is, listen, your son's robe, so not our brothers.

Okay, again, speaks of what they thought of him your son's robe or not.

Okay, and he identified it and said, It is my son's robe.

A fierce animal has devoured him.

Joseph is without doubt torn to pieces.

Okay, so you notice here how they don't tell him that, but they allow him to assume that that's what happened.

Right?

And so they're trying to just get out of this, you know, and trying to you know navigate how do we do this so that the guilt is less on us, right?

They're so guilty though.

Right?

And so that's what they do.

Verse 34.

Then Jacob tore his garments and put sackcloth on his loins and mourned for his son many days.

All his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted.

And he said, No, I shall go down to Sheol to my son in mourning.

Sheol was considered like the place of the dead where where the dead went in Jewish culture, that's what they talked about.

Kind of used interchangeably in some ways with um with death and sometimes uh with hell in other areas in the scriptures.

Okay, so I will go down to Sheol to be with my son mourning.

He's like, No, if my son is suffered, I will suffer too.

Thus his father wept for him.

Thus his father wept for him.

Now you absolutely sense just the despair all through these few verses here, don't you?

You see that.

I mean, you see it with Reuben, though I would say his despair is fairly self-centered.

Uh it was there.

With Reuben, you absolutely see it with Jacob as he mourns the loss of his son.

He refused to be comforted and all of that.

I mean, you can also just imagine what what Joseph himself would have been feeling in this moment, right?

And he's like, uh, you know, all is lost.

I mean, he knows that I'm on my way to Egypt now, my brothers don't care, no one's looking for me, no search parties coming my way.

I mean, it is over.

That's what he's thinking.

And he was probably wrestling, you know, with, you know, choking on the despair himself.

He's like, this is it.

Not exactly how I thought my day would go.

I mean, how easy is it for us to do the exact same thing when life hits the skids?

Right?

We we we despair.

Right?

It's it's it's maybe the the crippling news from the doctor.

Right, you had that before?

Or it's it's the crushing weight of some kind of financial debt that you can't get out from.

Right?

Or or it's the child who turns his or her back on you and your parenting and everything that you ever taught them and said, No, I am done with you.

I'm gonna do this my own way.

Right?

The pain of all of that and the despair.

Right?

It's easy to give way to that, isn't it?

It's easy to despair.

As you think, like, you know, no light at no light at the end of the tunnel.

Right?

It's game, set, match.

This thing is over.

Okay, but here's the thing.

It's not, actually.

Do you know that?

Do you believe it?

I mean, take a look at verse 36 here.

Verse 36, that word meanwhile.

Meanwhile, that is a word of hope, if I've ever seen one.

Meanwhile, the Lord is at work, and it's showing us that the Lord Himself is working behind the scenes to breathe hope, to breathe new life into this circumstance, in this situation.

Meanwhile, great word, circle it, underline it, know that God's doing something here.

It says, Meanwhile, the Midianites had sold him in Egypt to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard.

So we see there is that ray of hope.

That ray of hope.

There is light at the end of the tunnel.

Okay, right when Joseph thinks that life is over, it's done, kaput, okay, God shows us, and he's gonna show Joseph soon enough here, that not all is lost.

Not all is lost.

Yeah, he's humbling Joseph greatly, and yeah, this situation, this circumstance is pretty extreme here.

And the Lord, listen, the Lord will do what it takes to grab your heart as well.

Do you know that?

And at times it'll feel extreme in your life, but he will do it.

He will do it.

But listen, and remember, he won't annihilate you either.

He's not gonna destroy you because he's what?

He's preparing you for better days ahead.

He wants to do good things.

And if you know this story, you're familiar with the story of Joseph, you know that's exactly what God is doing with him.

You know it.

Now, a really important question, it's a tough question too, that we, I think, need to kind of explore here, and we've been sort of poking at it kind of all morning through all of this.

Um, and it's a question that we all ask when life goes sideways.

It's actually a question that I was, we were kind of kind of wrestling through with a friend of mine just a little while ago.

It's this when it comes to pain and trials and suffering and all of that, does God allow it?

Does God orchestrate it?

Or does God flat out cause it?

You ever ask that question?

Does God allow it?

Or you know, is he just kind of, is he actually causing this to happen?

Is he more kind of like orchestrating a bunch of situations to come to bear on my life?

Like, what is it?

Is he causing?

Is he allowing?

Is he orchestrating?

Wanna know what the answer is?

Yes.

The answer is yes.

He does all three.

The Lord does all three.

And there are times in Scripture where we see him doing the allowing thing.

He's allowing, you know, pain and trials and suffering to happen.

I think through the life of Israel, as you read through the Old Testament, you look at the book of you know, 1 and 2 Kings and 1st and 2nd Chronicles, and all of that, and through through Egypt, uh, through Exodus and all of it, you see uh God's people, Israel, make bad decision after bad decision, and and God gives them warning after warning and saying, if you're gonna if you're gonna go after all of these things, listen, bad news is coming your way.

And so what do they do?

They go after those things, and so God's kind of like, all right, have it your way.

Choose to sin, choose to suffer, right?

It's gonna happen.

And so you see God allowing it.

You see that throughout the scriptures.

What else do you see?

We see him orchestrating pain and trials as well.

We see him orchestrating it, where it kind of seems like maybe he's not as involved, but when you really think about it and understand the sovereignty of God, he very much is involved.

Right?

And I think of the book of Esther.

The book of Esther, you know that in that book, the the name of God isn't even mentioned in that book.

Right?

But what you see here is you see this evil man, Haman, trying to extinguish the Jewish race.

And God uses Mordecai and Esther, right, to bring about a rescue for God's people, and ultimately Haman pays the ultimate price.

And so you see God orchestrating all of these events.

Okay, but we also see God straight up causing pain and causing trials as well.

This is the hardest one for us to come to grips with.

But you think about this, David and Bathsheba.

You remember when when David committed with uh adultery with Bathsheba and the prophet Nathan came to him?

And what was the you know, what was the consequence of all of that?

Their son was killed, right?

Their son died.

Now, God, listen, as hard as it may sound, and as difficult of a thing as it is to wrestle with, God caused that to happen.

It wasn't a mistake.

Again, nothing happens outside of God's sovereignty.

And that's hard for us to think through and wrestle through because we need to remember that at no point ever does God compromise his holiness.

At no point does God compromise his goodness, his love, his perfection, his righteousness, his justice.

All of that is happening and taking place at the exact same time that God is also causing these things that are very difficult for us to endure and very difficult for us to even wrap our minds around.

And here's the thing that we need to remember whenever we go through a difficulty.

Listen, it's not up to us to figure out which one of these three, one of these three models or methods that God might be employing in our life.

Right?

The scriptures never try and say, hey, figure it out.

Figure out, is this a is this uh, you know, is God causing this?

Is he allowing it?

Is he orchestrating it?

It doesn't even it doesn't even really matter at the end of the day.

What matters is that God is sovereign, that God will use it, and he will do this in your life.

And it's our job also, I love we looked at this last week, is to trust Romans 8.28.

You remember what God says?

That all things work together for good.

All things work together for good for those who are called uh according to his purpose.

If you're a Christ's follower, you can know that the grittiest, greasiest, most awful thing that you have ever gone through, it could be abuse at the hands of someone when you were young.

God will use all of it, okay, all of it to do good in you if you will let him, if you will give way to him.

Okay, so no.

I mean, really no, not just a head knowledge thing, but allow your heart to be stirred by this, by gripped by this, that whatever uh hardship that you're going through, know that the Lord is preparing you for greater days ahead.

That's what he's doing.

That's what he's doing.

So recognize that and learn to see and then accept the big picture here.

Right?

Understand, have an eternal perspective.

Because what's the hardest thing for us to do whenever we're going through a difficulty?

It's to see anything other than the difficulty.

Right?

We're so in the middle of it, and it's so it overwhelms our thinking, and we have such a hard time focusing and concentrating on other and on anything else, right?

But understand that the Lord is trying to develop in you an eternal perspective.

Understand that he's gonna use this for uh eternal benefits in your life.

And it is not about just the here and now, it's about what he wants to do with you in the future.

And understand that as much as the surgery hurts, and it will hurt, know that what God's doing ultimately is trying to heal you.

He's trying to heal you, he's trying to make you new.

And we don't always understand it.

We don't always, again, know what's even happening tomorrow, let alone in a year from now.

But we know that God is the one who holds our future.

Right?

God is the one who loves us, God is the one who cares.

In Christ, your best days are always ahead of you.

I mean, what joy is there in that?

I mean, it's amazing.

Right?

You're noticing that your best days are always ahead.

You're like, no, it can't be.

You know, my family is a mess, like it kind of resembles what Jacob's family was like here.

Or, you know, finances are, you know, it's bleak.

You know, how how could it possibly be that my life could get better from here on out?

How could it possibly be that my best days are ahead in Christ?

Listen, I don't know how all of your circumstances are gonna play out.

It doesn't mean that you've got financial burdens right now, that God's gonna make you a millionaire.

No one's saying that.

It's just saying that in Christ, your best days are ahead.

The Lord will work this out.

Lean into those promises.

In Christ, it is not over.

Never, never over.

He is always, always working.

And that's a promise that we need to lean into.