The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
00:00:01 [Applause] [Music] so this morning we're going to continue our series in genesis and this chapter 37 as has been read to us dealing with joseph and the hiddenness of god now let's start with the word of prayer lord we ask oh lord that you've done such amazing things to the life of joseph and in many ways joseph is a lot like us in terms of revelation where he never did have any direct revelation from you and yet yet tremendous faith father lord we pray that his life will speak to us today in terms of faith endurance and
00:01:08 perseverance that this will also speak to us in the way we endure to glorify your name we ask for jesus sake amen so what i'm going to do is basically go through with us today [Music] the salient aspects of this story it's a narrative so we'll just go through that and then we'll pick out points on which we can learn in terms of application all right so the first thing that we want to notice that this is a family there are 12 of them and this is like a dysfunctional family it's dysfunctional because there is
00:01:46 biasedness in love you see jacob lived the land of his father's sergeant names the land of canaan and there were generations of jacob joseph being 17 years of age was pastoring the flock with his brothers he was with a boy he was a boy with the sons of bill bilharr and zilpah and his father's wives and his joseph brought a bad report of them to the father so here we actually have attending the flock family family business looking after all the sheep and it talks about joseph being a we fellow he's only
00:02:20 17 years of age much younger than his other brothers and he's basically like supervising or looking around and he you know the problems the brothers must have been goofing off so he brings him a bad report to the father say look the guys are not doing any work they're slouching off they're having tea breaks too often it's like government service is it so so what happens is that uh they get obviously upset and and the the seeds of discord are there in the passage israel love joseph more than any other
00:02:51 wizard because he was the son of his old age and he made him a robe of many colors but when his brother saw that the father loved him more than all his brothers they hated him and could not speak peacefully to him so great strife because here you've got biasedness you love one son more than others and and there's a reason why he loved one son on others because his favorite wife is rachel the one he truly loved the one he got snookered into marrying is leia and then deals two other concubines and
00:03:23 joseph is the son of rachel and rachel actually tragically died after the birth of benjamin so joseph uh was the apple of his eyes that were now the commentators will be divided whether he had a code of many colors or it also can be interpreted a long sleeve coat which actually indicates management which is why a 17 year old guy is looking and giving bad report to the father he's not a snitch he was probably put in charge of them even though he's 17 or 80 actually makes the rivalry much worse how can you
00:04:03 put the younger fellow in charge of all the older fellas so that's the the case and then the other thing that cause strife in a family is is basically dreams he had two dreams one dream which they were you know gathering wheat and then all the sheaves which represented the brothers all bow down to his she's wow 17 year old guy you know he's really entrenched in this management role he has right so they get upset and then he got another dream of the moon and the stars you know everything is bowing down to
00:04:35 him including the sun and the moon which means father mother also about him and and if you look at traditional jewish society that is almost blasphemous you cannot have the patriarch the family bow down to you and this is uh now this dreams are actually prophetic they actually tell what will happen in the future but you could interpret it in terms of why i'm great i'm god's gift to the man i'm god's great greatest gift but that's how the brothers actually interpret it and i don't believe joseph
00:05:11 even interpreted that as a sign he was going to be a pharaoh's right-hand man he just knew that he was going to be given a special task in the future so the motive of evil is hatred all right the more he saw that there was bias love they hated him more and his brothers in verse 8 says are you indeed to reign over us are you indeed to rule over us they hated him more or because of his dreams and his words okay and lastly uh basically they were jealous all right they kept saying uh were jealous of him but his father
00:05:44 kept the saying in his mind so this is his reception of the dream so the story goes on the attendings are sheep and they're at shechem and after a while his father joseph asked joseph to basically go and check out you know what are they doing are they goofing off are they doing well so they got to check them and then he couldn't find him there and basically he goes on about 40 50 miles further north and this place called dothan and that's where the scene of the crime is there and they saw him from far away because
00:06:18 of his long sleeve code big boy coat and then they conspired to kill him they said to wonder here comes the dreamer so he is upset about the he's the guy with the dreams he's going to be the big boss of all of us come let us kill him and throw him into the pit because he's alone we're not miles away from where the father is we'll just accidentally push him then pit so that's the decision to evil and you're thinking what kind of i mean it's one thing to be angry your brother another thing to kill him you know
00:06:52 that's a huge stretch what kind of family this this is actually a very very dysfunctional family their sister diner was raped by some men from a town shechem uh it was a prince over there and you know what happened they took revenge for the rape of one woman and what they did was they said it's okay the guy who raped dinah can marry her but all of you got to be converts all of you must have circumcision so they all had a surgical procedure to the local urologist there right and immediately post-op everybody's
00:07:30 clutching their groin right can't really raise a sword um two brothers came in simeon and and uh levi took their swords against the city when they felt secure and killed all the amazing imagine this is basically genocide you go in the city i don't think the city is very big maybe a couple hundred people but they kill every single male who can't put up a fight because they were sleeping or they're in pain because they're clutching the groins right so he killed everything what kind of people will go in and
00:08:00 slaughter every single male for a rape of one woman this is the kind of bloodthirsty brothers he had and not only that if you look at this incest reuben went and had sex with bilhah's father's concubine if you look at the reuben is here the firstborn leia and bilha billah is basically his father's concubine as it were so these are not very nice people and so we actually have the bottom of the pit this is the view of life in joseph's eyes so joseph came to his brothers they stripped him of his robe of many colors
00:08:37 when he wore it they took him and threw him into a pit the pit was empty there's no water and we know the story ends with him being carted off by a bunch of arab traders off to hundreds and hundreds of miles away now if you notice in this particular passage which gives rise to the topic today is where is god where is god you see if you look back into genesis you see god's the first thing that happens abraham god speaks to abraham god speaks to bahrain several times even though sometimes it was punctuated with a series of like 13
00:09:18 years of finance but god always spoke to abraham so abraham obeyed so the issue that we look at abraham is basically the obedience of faith it's not the issue whether it's revelation that when the revelation there abraham obeyed that was the aspect of his faith that we actually examined when we studied genesis then you've got jacob the issue of jacob he also received revelation there was in battle where he lay down not therefore with this not far from where this scene took place he had a dream and a
00:09:50 dream the lord was standing beside the ladder and the angels were going up and down he had almost a total of eight revelations visions and dreams which very clearly god spoke to him and in fact he even had god wrestling with him that's great isn't it because he needed and we see from jacob's life the discipline of faith but in the life of joseph we see emptiness there is very rare very few instances in the bible where you actually see someone interact with a god who actually doesn't directly produce a
00:10:24 miracle or speak directly to him and in a way that's very much like us although we're in a much better position than joseph joseph's faith was inherited from his father who has told him under the covenant to abraham to jacob and then passed down to him these words would have been ringing in his heart and these are the only words that he can hold in his heart as he lay in the bottom of this pit which is what and yet he triumphed you know why because hebrews says faith is the assurance of things hoped for
00:10:56 the conviction of things not seen throw it by it the people all received the commendation they pleased god because they had faith they were sure of the things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen and that's the lesson the trial of faith to where we can see today where the biblical author of genesis produces no evidence of direct speaking to joseph and yet joseph remained faithful so there are three basic points i would like to draw out from today's lesson one silence is not absence two evil never has the last word
00:11:36 and three grace always works in the background so first thing is silence is not absence at the bottom of the pit he sees nothing and i'm sure at the bottom pit he's crying out to his brothers he's crying out to god the first thing you do when you're in trouble you cry and yet you'll find nothing happens you cry out day after day hour after hour we're just starving and you're feeling sick and god doesn't answer at all here genesis 42 the brothers describe what happened this is fast forward all right good thing when
00:12:14 you read bible you can fast forward all right so they said to one another the truth are we are guilty concerning our brother that when we saw the distress of his soul when he begged us and we did not listen here we have them eating lunch and this guy was a bottom of the septic tank and he's crying up help me help me please give chance i'm only a brother i didn't really mean to have the dream no choice you know maybe i misinterpreted the dream and yet they kept quiet so he was at the bottom of the well if you're
00:12:46 begging your brothers you'll also be begging god and have you ever had a time i've had times when things go wrong with my patients on the operating table and that right at that moment when everything is going sideways you're screaming god help me now please help me now i need to see it and sometimes we expect a miracle to happen you know why because we watch hawaii 500. every bad thing happens it's sorted out within 30 minutes of the show right you're as hostage you're being beaten up by the bad guy
00:13:19 and within you know just within a few seconds or a few minutes just at the nick of time mcgarrett kicks through the door and saves your butt that's how that's the popular culture of which we are brought up in and we expect whole life is basically a quick solution and if god doesn't answer that god is not real silence is absence and so therefore some some pastors will break up these issues so we could have the word of faith or uh believers authority or key or maybe something to be more positive that we could just command god to come
00:13:56 in into our situation if only we had a little bit more faith as it were but god was there all along acts chapter 2 7 he said good thing about the old testament and new testament the whole new testament gives you a commentary what happens in the old testament and now and in retrospect dr luke writes and the patriarchs jealous of joseph sold him into egypt but god was with him and rescued him out of his afflictions and gave him favor wisdom before pharaoh the king of egypt who made him ruler over egypt and over
00:14:33 all his household very clear when he was at the bottom pit when he was in chains god was with him god looked like this but you didn't recognize him at the back of the arab caravan you said my god my god we're getting further and further away and all i can see whose face this fella's face ugly horrible lost his teeth i hate him he's an arab as it were right but you didn't realize you know god was there along he just didn't recognize him and in fact years later on same story same place dothan we had a
00:15:14 situation where the king of syria was attacking the people of israel and we've got elijah with his servants there and it was the servant was freaked out they got you know hundreds and thousands of soldiers outside what are we gonna do and elisha prayed and said oh lord please open his eyes that he may see and the lord opened the eyes of the young man and he saw and behold the mountain is full of horses and chariots of fire all around elijah elijah could already see you know how you saw you saw it by faith
00:15:49 the young man couldn't see and so elijah asked the lord to open up the eyes of the young man because god was there all along and if you go backwards into time and you take these two incidents the same place we know that god and all his angels and chariots was there all the time if the brothers wanted to kill joseph they would not have been able to do it you're only allowed to go as far as god would let you if only you knew that in the darkest moments of your life when you can't hear anything and can't see anything
00:16:30 god was always there and then when you look back in your life you can see many instances where god was actually there but in the middle of the pit god is often silent isn't it and he says jacob sorry joseph years later on and god sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to keep alive for you many survivors so it was not you who sent me here but god he has made me a father to pharaoh and the lord of all his house and ruler over the lands of egypt see joseph recognized but this is
00:17:04 in hindsight he recognized in hindsight that this bad thing that happened actually was part of god's plan he sees god in it all the time you know oswald sanders a great christian leader who writes spiritual leadership looks at this period where you actually cannot actually feel or hear god he writes when you cannot hear god you will find that he has trusted you in the most intimate way possible with absolute silence not a silence of despair but one of pleasure because you saw that you could withstand
00:17:37 an even bigger revelation so at times when it's quiet he's preparing you for bigger revelation and the fact if you look at the lives of people who have done great work for god for example mother teresa struggled for years and years with an apparent desolation or abandonment from god she writes they say people in hell suffer eternal pain because of the loss of god in my soul i feel this terrible pain of loss of god not wanting me of god not being god of god not really existing the terrible longing keeps growing and i
00:18:11 feel as if something will break in me one day heaven from every side is closed i feel like refusing god pray for me that i may not turn a judas to jesus in this painful darkness so darkness is there even though this woman had done remarkable things for god you see when god is silent what will happen is if you've got all these negative feelings anxiety pain confusion anger frustration but negative emotions are not necessarily wrong when we enter a period where we cannot hear or see god if you look in the life of john the
00:18:50 baptist when they put him in prison here's a guy who baptized jesus here's the guy who actually knew that jesus is the messiah and even he had a lapse when he had to ascend word to jesus uh you know are you the one who is to come or are we going to look for another hey hello i thought he was the one who baptized jesus didn't he know see when anxiety takes over your faith or your understanding kind of becomes less real isn't it when you're really there in a cold hard dirt of the prison floor when the cockroaches climb all over your
00:19:27 face then god suddenly all the things that you actually believe you're kind of shaken what about job suffering loss of his family loss of his wealth suffering in anguish he writes after this job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth and job said let the day perish in which i was born and the night said a man is conceived let that day be darkness what about our lord jesus christ hanging on the cross who says my god my god why have you forsaken me that's a negative emotion you know he's not
00:20:05 on the cross to say hey it's great man oh i'm going to be tested by god this is going to be great i'm going to rise again i i'm sure you can know it's going to rise again right but but right at that moment there's negative emotion why do you have negative emotion negative emotions are a function of our finitude we are finite beings and so there's a therefore it's a gap between what we know and what is real and because there's a gap between what we know and what is real that gap is filled with negative
00:20:35 emotion because if it's not filled with negative emotion then yours probably schizophrenic or something wrong or delusional it is natural to have negative emotions but it is important to understand what is at stake at the bottom of the well what is at stake i want to bring up to you one peter chapter five one two chapter five talks to the church the diaspora all over asia minor who are undergoing persecution any any and at the bottom the pit where the church is at he writes be careful your adversary the devil
00:21:11 prowls around like a roaring lion what is at stake is not just your life what is at stake is the fact that this is a spiritual battle and and when you're in a tough spot all we can think about oh my job my my family my comfort my health but you don't really understand that behind these things there's actually a spiritual battle going on when the adversary is trying to frighten you to basically get you to see that god is a figment of your imagination all your experiences in the past were nothing
00:21:51 that is the problem if we understand when negative emotions come in doesn't mean that god is less real it just means that there is an ongoing battle where the devil is trying to take you so what do you do you wrestle with god and you can see here humble yourselves under the mighty hand of god at a proper time he may exalt you casting your anxieties on him because he cares for you be sober-minded be watchful verse 9 resisting firm in your faith knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your
00:22:22 brotherhood throughout the world look at all the verbs humble yourself cast your anxieties be sober-minded be watchful resist him engagement firms up your face so there is actually a process because of this finititude where there's a gap between where you are what you really know and what reality in that gap is negative emotions and we have to fight to turn those emotions into faith that's the gap that's where our spiritual battle is but in the end we firm up our faith we feel for his hands a lot of you when
00:23:01 you don't feel god is there you're alone many people i see this when we run our groups in gamma a lot of folk will come for the lecture right when you come to break off with the groups for sharing and learning together after typical gamma sessions half the guys will run away why because you feel we're lone rangers we're in the fight alone it's me and god i don't need other people but when it's you and god alone when the time comes when you can't feel him you can't hear his voice when you read scripture and it doesn't
00:23:37 seem real you need community and the reason why you need community is that if god is silent in your life he certainly is not silent in other people's life and so therefore when you don't come to the community then you actually deprive yourself of the opportunity to hear what god is doing in the lives of other people which will then encourage you in your life so you you when you're failing feeling times where god is silent he's not absent you need to feel for his hands and the way you feel for his hands and
00:24:10 his fingerprints in your life is to see it in the lives of others engage the word of god because the word of god gives you promises and also look at your events of your life sometimes god speaks to you in dreams sometimes god speaks to you events i remember struggling with a problem that had risen to work and there were legal issues involved i was really depressed being buffeted here and there and at the same time i had we were going off a trip in a far away land you know so when on the trip far away land half the time
00:24:42 trip i was struggling in prayer and feeling totally depressed and then one morning i had a i had breakfast alone outside in a cafe and i know i got up to go in and pay you can you imagine thousands of miles from home somebody paid for my meal and i didn't expect that out of the blue god sort of just touches you with a touch of grace to show you hey brother i'm still here i'm still here and sometimes we need that isn't it we need that touch from god to show us that he's still alive his silence is not absent and if you are
00:25:22 spiritual attune you will actually feel his hands into your life and in fact god screams uh if you if you look at psalm 19 1 i want to look at psalm 19 1 heavens declare the glory of god and the skies above proclaim his handiwork day to day pours out speech night to night reveals knowledge there is no speech nor there are words whose voice is not heard their voice goes out throughout the earth and their words to the ends of the world this psalm is a little bit contradictory there's no voice and yet there's a voice
00:25:59 what he's trying to tell you metaphorically is that when you get out there and look at the mountains and look at the stars and the oceans and the coral and you know i know you cannot see now we got all mco right so what you do is get a 4k tv and then you go on to youtube and you've got all these beautiful pictures of you know a lot of people you know you the more sitcoms you see all that you get more depressed i look at mountains and undersea coral and all that and you can see they actually speak to you they actually speak to you
00:26:32 so silence is a matter of perspective god has left himself lords and if you look at the life of of of joseph there's no mention of that but when joseph is tempted because portugal's wife throws herself on him day after day the reason why he can withstand that particular temptation because he has recognized how then can i do this great weakness and sin against god the primary sin isn't against portugal by having sex with his wife but it is actually against god so joseph has an enduring presence of god
00:27:10 in his mind even though there was no direct revelation which is actually astounding isn't it so silence is not absence next one is evil never has the last word and that's important thing to understand and there's no doubt if you look in scripture this is premeditated evil the brothers hated him after the dreams they hated him even more when judah and his brother says what prophet is it if we keep kill our brother and conceal his blood come let us sell him to the ishmaelites let not our hands be upon him for his
00:27:50 our brother our own flesh this is a win-win situation you're getting a problem make money at the same time wow the show is not china man i mean this is fantastic you know you know what he's doing he's rationalizing his sin selling him forcibly enslaving him and killing him they're still sin and what we do in rationalization is basically we change labels i was watching a documentary on this chap indonesian handsome fellow called rudy kuniawan and he was graduated from the united states and i was in california and the california
00:28:29 wine country and used to buy a lot of wine everybody knew wine country and then he started to sell wines expensive wine most of you here couldn't afford it except a few one bottle of wine would retail for five six seven or even twenty thousand us dollars and he sold a lot of lion wines until they found out you know what he was doing he was in his house lots of very old corks and labels you know if you are connoisseur of fine wine sommelier i always think it's a bit of a con you know you take the the wine you swirl it in
00:29:04 your mouth you know in the most sophisticated kind of way and then you spit it out and it's oh this is like worth ten thousand dollars you know and actually it was true at that documentary you actually took rudy's wine he just took normal wine and he put the expensive label on it and he gave it to one of his uh there are two people there are some professional sommelier and she said wow it's wow fantastic this is twenty thousand dollars worth and he gave it to another guy and he was swirling around another sommelier he
00:29:38 said this is rubbish could you do that one is rubbish which means it's so subjective until one of the richest men in the country bill who really knows his wine actually examined all this and they actually were able to find out that all this was fake and he's about the only man in the united states whoever got jailed for 10 years for fraud because what he did was he he basically cheated people by changing labels and and we do that for for for for our sin isn't it rationalizing sin is this changing
00:30:11 labels imagine a whole line of bottles of of of perfume antiseptic you know you just change the labels all you have to do is change labels but it's still sin re-labeling then you've got a merciless group of brothers he begged us but we did not listen and yet they knew it was wrong you know why so now here comes a reckoning for his blood which means for years and years later on this singular act of sin never escaped their conscience it never lets you if you commit a sin my brother sister it doesn't let you go
00:30:55 genesis 50 is the last chapter and they come the time of reckoning in a time reckoning when joseph reckoned with his brothers and confronted them you know what he said joseph brothers saw this father was dead they said it'd be it may be that joseph will hate us and pay us back for all the evil that we did to him they sent a message joseph saying your father gave this command before he died say to joseph please forgive the transgressions of your brothers and their sin and because they did evil to you
00:31:23 they recognize what they did was sinful as absolutely evil you couldn't disguise it but evil never has the last word because the famous verse in genesis 50 is joseph said do not fear for i am for am i in a place of god as for you you meant evil against me but god meant it for good to bring it about that many people should be kept alive as they are today you see you've got the same thing on one hand you do something that's evil and god uses the very evil which you do for a good purpose which when they sold
00:31:59 him into slavery and he winds up in egypt in the end right hand to the pharaoh god used that evil event for good because he was able to save the people of israel in the end sometimes what god gives us we think you know it is often misinterpreted we need to interpret god's actions in the light of his purposes not ours he says god sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth to keep alive for you many survivors so basically interpreted the evil that they did and the subsequent victory he had in
00:32:42 terms of god's plans because god used that to save the people of israel we interpreted differently this is vijay malay one of the richest men in india at one stage he owned a luxury airline called kingfisher he owned f1 team you know your own cricket team sounds familiar same red color airline yeah get my hint and one day he was a helicopter ride and uh about a couple of hundred feet from the ground it started spinning out of control and they crashed into the ground uh and actually that would have been quite
00:33:22 lethal and he actually walked away bad thing happened right and this is what vijay said you know this is obviously a mention a message from above you know i mean i have a second life obviously i'm doing something right and god needs me oh wow evil never has a last word god always turns evil for good but it depends how you interpret it it could actually entrench you in your evil ways because this guy is a bit of a rogue who cheated lots of people out of their livelihood when you look at the book of revelations
00:33:57 which is time for me advertised gamma we're studying revelations if you want to know and understand this rather difficult book come on log on on wednesday eight o'clock to join us the there's a password fbc gamma the judgment upon the world is cast metaphorically or symbolically the three types is seven seals seven trumpets seven bowls each of escalating intensity upon the world and uh they're all judgment symbols but i want you to note in generation revelation chapter six which introduces these
00:34:33 judgments and you can see now as i watched the lamb open up the seven seals i heard one of the four living creatures say with the voice come and then the four horsemen of the apocalypse bringing plague and plunder and disease and a war each one come up but i want you to note in revelation chapter six who opens the seal who invites the horsemen to come who allows the horsemen to come to bring death and destruction on the earth it is the son of god so evil doesn't have control it's controlled by god
00:35:10 and if and and despite that there's a vision in the midst of the carnage caused by the four hospital apocalypse there's a intermission and during the intermission after this i saw four angels standing at the four corners of earth holding back the winds of the earth no wind might blow on earth or sea against any tree i saw another angel ascending from the rising the sun with the seal of the living god and he called up with a lord voice to the four angels who had been given powers to harm the earth and see
00:35:36 basically what's happened you've got the angels and the all the angels gonna unleash all hell on earth but god holds them back you know what is holding them back he says do not harm the earth the sea or the trees until we have sealed the servants of god on their foreheads and this is a vision to tell you that although all hell and carnage will break loose upon the world whether it's covet 19 or the plague hundreds of years ago god's people are sealed that means he remembers he knows and you're not alone so in the midst of
00:36:12 evil evil never has the last word but we need to call out evil joseph said to his brothers when they came to him you know when they come to you sometimes when you reconcile you know he's done something evil he says hey never mind it's okay friend friend brother brother right actually that's a lie we actually have to confront evil and call you see you meant it for evil but god meant it for good but that doesn't excuse your evil and people misinterpret it all right so he tells his brothers you meant it for
00:36:50 evil he didn't say he's okay you meant it for evil that's the truth you need to admit to that but god meant it to break good and so therefore how do we apply this because i think a lot of christians are confused um look at israel israel was a apostate nation which completed sin after sin after sin then how does god discipline israel god sends a syria northern kingdom to come and wipe them out and come to punish them and to enslave the people kill women and children this is not fun it is discipline it is
00:37:29 like the four horsemen of the apocalypse assyria but then you know what happened to isaiah he turns around the syria you know he does he punishes assyria look woe to assyria see the ones that he used he punishes you know why how does he put it he describes as syria as the rod of my anger which is like my rotten big cane right the staff in their hands is my fury the fact that they're killing you that's an expression of god's fury against a godless nation i sent him who sent assyria god sent him right against the people of
00:38:11 my rahu the people of israel israel i commanded him to take spoil and cease plunder the threat done down like the mire in the streets so this is an instrument okay and yet why does he punish assyria look verse 7 he does not do he but he does not so intend and his heart does not not so think which means when god is using a syria to punish israel a series does say hey god all right i got orders from you i'm going to punish them on your behalf he never did that in his mind assyria was what was it why was he
00:38:51 plundering israel not to obey god but it is in his heart to destroy and to cut off the nations not so a few which means assyria meant it or evil they wanted to attack israel to enslave people and get all the money and all the wealth and all the plunder they meant it for evil but god meant it for good but even though that's the case who gets punished as syria and so elections in the united states are coming up and people equate this gentleman with cyrus who is also a horrible dictator who kills people
00:39:32 and the transactional nature of today's christianity in the western world is that if he you know i'll vote for him as long as he basically does god's will okay but the fact is you have to look at the character of a man he means it for evil when he's gonna overturn roe v wade and all the things he can do he he doesn't do it because he loves god because he's commanded by god he does it because he's going to gain through money corruption influence and so therefore christians especially western christians need to call out
00:40:07 sin where sin is if he's wrong he's wrong if he's an adulterer he's an adulterer if we don't do that we compromise the very faith we're supposed to be witnesses of and after this they'll say oh that's your christian that's the one everybody worships in fact i had actually uh the the the false prophet paula white dance up and down says god walks through the corridors of white house which means that's god is it it's blasphemous don't get this mixed up why does god use evil why is you know why can't god think of a better way
00:40:44 why does god have to use evil to bring about good well because of the evil nature of man you see we need to be shown the error of our ways not merely being told of them look at jacob he's a real trickster isn't it he tricked his brother you think god will appear to him and battle and say hey brother you you're not very good fellow you're you're quite a conniving nasty piece of wood you know and then jacob says okay okay god i i will repent you think he will do this you have to be shown the error of the
00:41:19 ways if you don't show him the error of the ways he will not repent it's like telling a child you know sometimes you don't touch the boiling hot kettle sometimes you don't even touch the truck until then he knows and he remembers that for the rest of his life it's the evil nature of man anybody whose children will understand this we need to we need the veil of our invincibility to be torn down by the very evil we perpetrate unless you see we all superman unless god cares our veil of invincibility down
00:41:53 we will never respond to him in the good times we don't respond to him bad times when we respond to him time and time again we see this in church you know the people in church when they have the illness then they come for prayer otherwise they never come for prayer anyway it's when our veil of invincibility is torn down by the very evil that we actually perpetrate that's why god arranges it so that in our evil world he uses evil for good typical example again he got coveted 19 right the immediately came out two days after
00:42:28 hospitalization and he takes his mask off the very best that would have protected him in the first place he takes it off and he says i think this is a blessing from god that i caught it it was a blessing in disguise you know why it was a blessing in disguise because it educated him on the drugs that can cure kovitt i mean if donald trump caught covet it's an evil thing but god meant it for good so that he will understand that he's not invincible that he should take cognizant effect that he should have worn his
00:43:06 mask that he should have cared for his fellow brothers and sisters in his cabinet in his country in his party but instead of understanding this he understood it as proof of his own invincibility which is why god has to send the people of israel into exile time and time not one time time and time that's in northern kingdoms why because they have to be shown the error of their ways you can't just tell them so but so when evil comes upon us it never has the last word now the silence is not absence
00:43:48 evil never is the last word and let me end with grace always works in the background if you look at that beautiful quote when joseph came to the brothers the first thing they did to take off the code the horrible code maybe it's too many colors they stripped him of his robe the rope of many colors that he wore and they took him and threw him in a bit naked they throw in the pit and the moment they took off that coat is when the moment grace starts to kick in did you realize that you know why that code represented
00:44:24 status authority long sleeve ma i can walk around i can supervise this is what who gave me my father gave me you can't touch me because this code is my father gave me authority security invincibility when i read this code nobody get that i'm 17 you are 55 but you can't touch me because i've got this code and for him this quote was a status symbol security invincibility this code represents love i got discount obviously none of the 11 brothers got to go they all got short sleeve baby singlet but only he had long sleeve
00:45:03 and he's strutting around all the time this quote represents what blessing from god you got not don't have i god huh and i got a dream what is my dream everybody bowing to me oh this quote today i'm management next time i'm king so when they take that coat away what do you think this whole wall falls apart the whole world falls is not just being alone in the pit he doesn't have his security anymore and he thought he's lost but joseph understood more grace comes at the most unexpected places at the bottom of it you probably be
00:45:48 praying that hawaii 5-0 mcgarrett will kick down the door and pull him out right no some ugly arab traders and made it worse take him to egypt some more migrant you know he now you know what he is he's migrant worker no class second class a slave grace comes in the most i mean if this is grace i don't want to have any more grace from you god yeah most of us you know what cancer not only sit down doctor tells you about cancer and then next is that oh stage 1 stage 5. no stage 5 anyway it gets worse
00:46:25 and worse and worse and if this is grace god i don't want any of this and not only that he works his way up the ladder to become chief servant or mentor of portugal's household and because of stupid wife like you know come in the end he winds up worse in the most unexpected places in the bottom of the dungeon and that's because he's in a dungeon he actually uses that to rise up to the top if he wasn't in the dungeon he wouldn't have met the cupbearer who would have told him about pharaoh and all that right
00:47:00 so grace comes at the most unexpected places of when you start to tumble into the arabs caravan or the bottom where you don't think there's even more bottom grace is there and you know his grace was there all along he just didn't see it verse 39 chapter genesis 39 21 beautiful story uh of joseph samuel q will be taking you through that so i won't steal his thunder but what i'm going to do is just take this one verse but the lord was with joseph and showed him steadfastly hebrew is hessed covenantal love and gave him favor and
00:47:42 the sight of the keeper the prison and the keeper of prison put joseph in charge of all the prisoners who were in the prison whoever whatever was done there he was one who did it this is joseph god showed him favor see grace is in the background all the time but in the foreground what do you see you see some people think it's grace grace means let go and let god so he goes out there and imagine joseph in the prison a time for breakfast no he's lying down there i cannot eat i cannot drink you know they kick him a bit and he go
00:48:17 and eat breakfast can you wash the clothes no i don't want i'm waiting for god to work some of us like that you know you see grace is in the background but who is the foreground joseph joseph's faithfulness even in the midst of the hell of what prison is he's always there helping out working out so that it is no surprise that the keeper of the prison put him in charge you think he will put a stupid fellow in charge if joseph was just the average christian who is not really skilled who's not very hard working he's
00:48:50 just waiting every day pray pray pray waiting for god to dump on him do you think joseph was the prayer meeting 24 hours a day he wasn't most of the time you know what he was though he was actually working he was preparing the meals he was looking after the welfare of his fellow prisoners grace is in the background but your faithfulness is in the foreground and then there's an opportunity they had dreams prisoners had dreamed the cup bearer and the bread maker and nobody can interpret them you know
00:49:26 one day they walked joseph hey joseph so we got dream you know what joseph said hey hello you know don't look at me do i look like i have gods here you know i tried to do the right thing and where has it gotten me bottom of prison most of us respond like that right frustrated earlier you're so cheesed off with god that god really doesn't answer you why should i talk about jesus anymore somebody asked ask you about jesus jesus hasn't been kind or fair to me that would have been in response probably my response
00:49:58 but joseph didn't he said do not do not the interpretations belong to the first thing he says the answer to these dreams are god he points to glory to god all the time we don't we would probably say hey actually i'm quite good you know i've been trained my phd in interpreting dreams moda thing no but he points it to god and he and and and and once he gets it correct you know what he does he uses his own wisdom remember me when it is well with you when which means you get out of jail right please do me the kindness to mention me
00:50:35 to pharaoh and get me out of this house for indeed i was stolen out of the land of hebrews and uh and here also i have done nothing and they have put me into prison in the pit so he said when you get out of prison when you're with pharaoh because he holds the keys to judicial power just tell him i'm innocent they threw me here they sold me at a woman you know she falsely accused me in this new me too movement you know you know joseph very naive you think pharaoh gives a damn whether you're innocent or not
00:51:11 he's got thousands of prisons in the in the dungeon so in a sense i think joseph is totally naive he doesn't care most dictators only care about what's good for them which is why when he restored the cup bearer to his position he placed the cup in pharaoh's hands but he hanged the chief baker joseph interpreted them yet the cup bearer did not remember joseph but forgot about him conveniently for god and anyway i believe people to bring it up why why should pharaoh bother because there's nothing to do with him
00:51:43 if he's not going to get anything out of it he's not going to act but anyway he forgot and and what would joseph's reaction been because he saw his party go up is that you know he saw his man go up to the right hand of the king and he thought oh that's my time but god's grace works in the background is never obvious you can't predict you know and then probably in prison you're saying oh the guy is up there for the last two years where's god and that's even more severe maybe you and i would have interpreted
00:52:19 this opportunity to interpret the dream as an opportunity to get out of jail right you you think this god is there 100 god is using this guy i'm going to put all my bets on him and yet two years later on until two years nothing happened frustrated two years later on when pharaoh had a series of dreams about the fat sheep and thin sheep and all that talking about the famine then the cup bearer remember the young hebrew was there with us servant of the captain of the god we told him he interpreted our dreams to
00:52:52 us giving us an an interpretation to each man according to his dream and he interpreted to us so it came about i was restored to my office and the baker was hanged you see the cupbearer the moment he becomes back as the mantri bazaar right you think he remembers the the boy in prisoner everybody only looks after themselves right so it's no surprise that he forgot him for two years once i'm out of prison i'm another person who i can't who what's your name jonah john wada please he don't really care about other
00:53:32 people but when pharaoh has a dream and he's asking you about his dream if you can't interpret dream he's gonna kill you he's looking after himself right and then he's conveniently oh remember the guy who interpreted my dream you see the cup bearer is not a nice man he's a vicious politician vicious politician like everybody else but god used that grace as perfect timing he did it two years later on this came about and grace always over performs and pharaoh said after he interpreted the dream since god has shown you all this there
00:54:08 is none so discerning and wise as you are you shall be over my house and all my people shall order themselves as you command only as regards the throne will i be greater than you so therefore he elevates him to the number two position to save the nation of egypt the lesson from this is a hiddenness of we often fail to see grace in our lives you know why you see we think grace is only accumulated under the title of success good things are be treasured did you look back oh you know the day i got a
00:54:40 good job i got promotion oh that's blessing from god and then you look at the times arab trader portugal's wife my goodness i think i got post-traumatic stress syndrome yeah why do you think people have post traumatic stress syndrome it's because every time they think of the bad thing happen in life they start to shake shake shake shake because that's really bad dude you know it's terrible because we actually unders misunderstand grace and so we we go to doctors you know what doctors do they do psychotherapy
00:55:11 they identify the past traumas so they ask you they lie joseph down and i said i want you to think back to the moment portugal's wife made a move on you she took her clothes off remember her face i want you to bring the face back or bring your face back or headache shaking sweating all right and then while he's bringing the the face of the wife back he gives you a cup of coca-cola nice fan air conditioning strokes him so you associate bad memories of good feelings that's what psychotherapy does right
00:55:48 or we identify triggers oh every time i see ulam i remember he he punched me the other day so i walk away so you avoid after a while you're avoiding everybody in church because everybody had done you wrong at some stage right so that's what psychology does for you or there are new medications do you know their medication they can erase modify or even implant false memories in you because we blame memory all the time and we've got d cyclocerate propanolol and the new drugs that come out the way we deal with it is to take evil
00:56:19 events in our lives as post-traumatic syndrome and we're going to erase them or modify them plant fresh memories that's what we do but let me tell you something it was an old movie some time ago called lethal weapon how many you seen with lethal weapon yeah mel gibson there was a time with where where he had renee russo was the other cop paired up with him and he always looked down with renee russo right she wasn't as tough but actually she was very tough you know what they did at one stage they
00:56:46 were comparing bullet holes proudly prepare comparing bullet holes because each bullet wound each scar although it was due to a traumatic event it represented an overcoming power so the more bullet holes i am the more braver i am more powerful i am the more self-esteem i have because they could go back to look at their past bullet holes and instead of breaking under cold sweat and thinking this post-traumatic stress syndrome they were able to recast something positive as evidence of their bravado strength
00:57:25 and courage isn't it that gives you an understanding that's why the secret he's he joseph brings grace into his pain before the year of famine came two sons were born to joseph asanet the daughter of potiphar potiphara priest of on brought to him joseph called the name of the firstborn mana say for god has made me forget my hardship and all my father's house the name of the second he called he framed for god has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction look at this very important every time
00:58:04 he looks at the two children he has he's reminded of two things god his hardship god made him fruitful in my see the hardship is not forget forgotten recast cut away the hardship and pain in your life is reintegrated with a proper perspective that's how we overcome living in an evil world running away is assuming everybody gets post traumatic stress syndrome one dimensional view of grace is dangerous because it gives you a false reality that only god works in good times and at bad times there's no grace in the
00:58:45 background you see only tappy things blessings only seen in things that make us happy right you will never read matthew 5 and says blessed are those who are poor in spirit blessed are those or more because you don't want because your idea of blessing has been distorted and because only positive events are events from god you therefore fear to commit you fear to sacrifice you fail to pay the price because god's not there because we have a one-dimensional view of grace you know when they convicted rudy
00:59:20 konyawan they took all his wine bottles and they crushed it but do you know right now in the united states they're still in circulation 10 000 bottles of fake wine now ask your question you cannot corn by someone right and you're not willing to bring the fake wine in why because you want to continue in your deception because continuing deception means that you're you're not quite so stupid after all you bought it for you bought a ten thousand a one thousand dollar wine or five hundred dollar wine for ten thousand
00:59:58 dollars as long as you don't bring it in you still live within the confines of your deception and that is because we only see grace in one dimension bad things not blessing from god good things blessing from god see grace lets you see the world it is true perspective we allow to look back at the past sorrows and failures because you know why when we bring god into our past sorrow and failure we actually have accentuated our joy because god is the one who actually lives us out of our failure so the worst things get
01:00:38 and if you bring god in and see how god rescued you the greater your measure of joy so you live in a one-dimensional world where all the bad things you wipe out and only the good things you bring in you fail to see the hand of god working in the background and that's not what it's supposed to be we need to face our past so seeing grace lets you see the world in his true perspective christians are realists christians don't live in a plastic heaven where everything is lovey lovey uh david you know
01:01:09 it's like you know remember the old movie stepford wives watched that before all the wives are replaced by robots and they only go one channel hello dear never give you lip never give you trouble that's the kind of world which is unreal and then it freezes from the burden of being right all the time try to correct somebody in church they'll always get angry with you right because but when you look at grace grace allows you to be wrong takes away the burden of being right all the time we don't have to be so
01:01:43 defensive because we see everything in the light of god's help it allows us to forgive others how is joseph able to forgive others because he sees that you meant it for evil but god meant it for good so when you actually look some of you just can't forgive other people you look at them you hold the grudge for years and years and years you are strange forever because you cast it all as something so personal but you didn't see that something good came out of it and when we are able to look at perceived grace then you're able to
01:02:20 learn to forgive others and lastly grace allows us to enable humility in the face of success when you have success in life you're able to see in the light of god working in you so success you see god's hands failure to see god's hands because grace always works in the background so the triumph of faith in joseph is silence is not absence evil never has the last word and grace always works in the background the most unexpected places and god shows it the most extravagant manner in the long run let me end with a
01:03:05 challenge 19 2017 they found a warship at the bottom of the philippine sea that had not seen the light of day or light from a camera for 70 years this ship was called the uss indiana it was sailing on a secret mission uh completed a secret mission where delivered parts for the atomic bomb that would have been dropped in hiroshima later on because it was a secret mission nobody knew what the navy certainly didn't know where it was or where it was going except very very few people and this caught this
01:03:51 is this subsequent course was not charted and it was sunk by a series of top leaders from a japanese submarine 1200 men were in the ship only 317 survived but 7 800 actually wound up in the waters and imagine they were in the waters covered with oil from the boiler you know many of them did not have live rafts or a life saving device and some were just treading water and they were there for a total of five days imagine trading water for five days and when you're trading water you can hear the testimony of the sailors there
01:04:35 it's so easy because you could just thread or just give up and slide into a watery grave all peaceful no need to struggle why want to struggle and the difference between that is the knowledge why did many men slide into the bottom of the ocean or gave him up you know why the sharks had a real buffet that day they attacked and killed many many men why would you slip under the shadowy depths of the water or give yourself to sharks many did because they knew that nobody knew that they were there the navy
01:05:16 wasn't going to rescue them that's the difference between life and death when you know there's no hope and there's no tomorrow and no one coming for you it's easier to let the shark take you and you know there's a big shark swimming around his name is satan assaytan he wants to swallow us up there's only one thing that keeps us alive faith by faith joseph at the end of his life made mention of the exodus of the israelites and gave directions concerning his bones you know long before 400 years before
01:05:59 exodus joseph knew that god would bring them out here is genesis 15 and joseph said to his brother jesus before he dies i'm about to die but god will visit you see god will visit you and bring you out of this land to the land he swore to abraham to isaac and to jacob how did joseph know joseph never received a vision like jacob joseph never heard audibly from god you know how did joseph know because this was passed down from abraham to isaac to jacob the fact that god is in covenant and when god gives you a promise
01:06:46 he never reneges on his promise and that promised a whole from then until eternity which is why paul could say for i am sure that neither death nor life nor angels nor rulers nor things present nor things to come no powers no height nor death or anything angels else in all of creation will be able to separate us from the love of god in christ jesus our lord how did paul know because he saw jesus and resurrected jesus and the disciples saw him hanging on the cross and they passed this to us through the
01:07:22 words of the bible today joseph triumph because he never lost hope and for us grace and god always works in the background but we need to be faithful in the foreground continuing to be a witness to glorify our great god and we pray father lord we were astounded by the way you deal with us you show us that you could take a man out of the backwaters of ur by the name of abraham and you will speak to him you can take a man as flawed and broken as jacob and you can turn him around and dissipate him with faith and you can
01:08:15 take a boy as young as me as young as 17 and you can fill his brain his heart with visions and dreams of what the future might be but you never speak to him directly and all he has is that he clings on to the covenant the promise that you are a god who will always be true and then you showed us your son jesus christ you showed us his scars on his hands the tears on his feet when he showed us that he rose from the dead and father lord this day of all the patriarchs we your church today are most like joseph we don't hear
01:08:57 you audibly we don't see visions the only vision we have in our front of our eyes is your promise in the person of your son jesus christ and we pray that that will be enough that whenever times are tough we will always remember the absence silence is not absence evil never has the last word and your grace always works in the background we ask this for jesus sake amen
