Sermon Tone Analysis

Bookmarks & Needs:

B: Genesis 45:25-46:7

N:

Welcome

Good morning, church family, and thank you for being here this morning to join together as we worship the Lord.

I’m senior pastor Bill Connors, and I’d like to welcome those of you who are guests of the Eastern Hills family today, whether you’re in the room or online.

We’d love the opportunity to get to thank you for being here in a more personal fashion, so if you’re in the room, take a look in the seat backs of the pews in front of you.

You’ll find a welcome card there, and if you wouldn’t mind taking a minute to fill that out during the service, we’d appreciate it.

You can then put it in the offering plates at the end of the service, or you can bring it down to me here at the front so I can thank you myself, and give you a welcome gift as well.

If you’re online, or you’d rather complete an online form, you can just text the word WELCOME to 505-339-2004, and you’ll get a text back with a link to our digital communication card.

Either way, if you’re in the room, I’d like the chance to meet you and thank you for being here in person.

Thank you praise band for leading us in worship this morning, and thank you choir for reminding us of the way that God has used our armed forces in His providence to ensure our nation’s continued safety and freedom.

Veterans Day was Friday, and I’d just like to say “thank you” to all who have served or who are serving in our armed forces.

Announcements

I have just a couple of announcements this morning before we get to our last ENDEAVOR message:

Business Meeting tonight at 5:30 pm.

We need a quorum to vote on some important things, including next year’s budget.

BSU or Christian Challenge lunch needs (desserts) by Wednesday morning at 9:00.

Opening

Throughout this ENDEAVOR series, we’ve been talking about Joseph, and for good reason: God called Joseph into a God-sized endeavor, a generational endeavor that we’re still feeling the impact of today… an endeavor of generosity and trust, using the time, talents, and treasure that God provided to him, in spite of the circumstances Joseph found himself in.

But interestingly enough, according to Scripture almost the entire story of Joseph is actually a piece of the story of Jacob, or Israel (see Genesis 32 for his name change).

Back at the beginning of the Joseph narrative, we see this interesting statement:

Genesis 37:1–2a (CSB)

1 Jacob lived in the land where his father had stayed, the land of Canaan. 2 These are the family records of Jacob.

Except for the very end of Genesis 50, Joseph’s story is God telling us how He preserved His people Israel: He did so through Joseph, but the thread of the story of the Messiah doesn’t go through Joseph: it goes from Jacob through Joseph’s brother, Judah.

Joseph is absolutely important, but today, we will consider the faith of Jacob as we finish our ENDEAVOR series:

PRAYER (FBC Los Lunas, Pastor James Runyon)

Sometimes walking with God can be challenging.

This is because God’s plans don’t always line up with our plans.

His way of doing things doesn’t always match the way we think things should be done.

Our priorities don’t always align with His.

And that’s really where what we actually believe and what we say we believe come into conflict, as I shared last week.

At the beginning of 1999, I had been actively involved in the student ministry as a volunteer for several years, teaching Bible study on Sunday mornings, going to Wednesday nights and big events, and I was also in the church praise band, leading the music for our contemporary service every Sunday, which we had only started about a year before.

Larry had been pastor for a little over three years, and at the March business meeting of 1999, our youth pastor resigned.

Following that meeting, I was standing at the counter in the church office, and one of our students—Shannon—came up to me and said, “I have something that God wants me to tell you, but I’m not sure you want to hear it.”

An ominous way to start a conversation with anyone, but I knew that Shannon had a pretty good sense of discernment and an active faith.

So that made it even more ominous.

“OK, Shannon… what?”

She looked at me and said, “You’re going to be my next youth pastor.”

Keep in mind that being a pastor of any kind wasn’t on my radar at all.

I was the office manager of a small law firm and a legal assistant.

It was a more-than-full-time job with good benefits.

I had actually thought about and had been praying about going to school to get my law degree, so I could practice law as well.

Eastern Hills couldn’t afford a full-time youth pastor, and I didn’t have any real experience, qualifications, or education to be a youth pastor.

Sure, I loved working with the students and had a good rapport with them, but youth pastor?

“No, Shannon… that’s not what God is telling you,” I said.

“Don’t tell me… I’m just telling you what God told me to tell you.”

I thanked her, gave her a hug, and went to dinner.

I had no intention of acting on what she said, because I didn’t believe it.

I didn’t have faith that my being called to the ministry was God’s plan.

I think that the Webster’s 1828 Dictionary does a good job of capturing the essence of saving faith and its ongoing nature in the life of the believer:

Faith: n. … That firm belief of God’s testimony, and of the truth of the Gospel, which influences the will, and leads to an entire reliance on Christ for salvation.

—Webster’s 1828 Dictionary

So faith can be defined as an active trusting in God.

We considered trust last week.

This morning, we are going to consider the active part of faith.

Think about some of the ways that the Bible talks about faith.

It often uses faith to describe the means of an action, such as:

Walking:

Standing:

Living:

Therefore, faith is not merely a mental declaration of a fact.

It is actively trusting God’s revelation of His person and will through His Word, prayer, His people, and His work by the power of His Spirit, and then acting in accordance with that revelation.

However, there is a process that God takes us through as He works in our lives to deepen our reliance on Him and to move us toward faithful obedience.

The first step in the process is that faith must agree with God in order to BE faith.

1: Faith agrees.

In our focal passage, we find Joseph’s brothers returning from Egypt weighed down with wealth that Joseph has given them to take to Jacob in order to prove that he was actually alive.

This was going to force them to own up to a lie that they had been carrying on for over two decades—that Joseph had been eaten in the wilderness.

And Jacob had lived believing that lie for 22 years.

He wasn’t going to give up that belief easily, which we see in verses 25 and 26:

This is one of those things that I love about Scripture: It shows people as they really are: even the heroes of faith.

Jacob’s favored son had been dead in his mind and heart for over two decades.

This was akin to Joseph being resurrected!

He was going to have a hard time trusting in this new information.

Before he could come to faith, he had to wrestle with his unbelief.

In the first message of this series, I mentioned that Joseph is a type (or picture) of Christ.

Tucked away in the Gospel of Matthew, right before the Great Commission, we find that even among those who saw the risen Lord Jesus, before there was faith, there was a wrestle with unbelief:

Can I just say that this is ok, and in fact, can be good?

I had to wrestle with unbelief as I came to faith.

So if you’re not a believer and you’re hearing this this morning, I want you to know that wrestling with doubts about the Gospel is not surprising at all.

But you’ve come to the right place to look into those doubts.

There are so many people in this church who would love to talk with you about the Scriptures and the truth of the Gospel.

There are good, good reasons to believe that Jesus the Christ, the Son of God, came as a man and died on the cross to pay the penalty that we owe because of our sins.

But just as it says in Matthew, He beat death and came out of that grave never to die again.

He did all of this so that we could have our sins forgiven and that we could have eternal life as God’s children.

Questions were part of the pathway that God used to bring me to faith in Christ.

He can use them in your life as well, to bring you to a place of agreement with the Gospel and surrender to Jesus as your Lord and Savior.

So please, reach out and ask, consider the evidence, and trust in Jesus.

But this agreement isn’t only about salvation.

It’s also about our daily walks.

The author of Hebrews would write about the agreeing aspect of faith, saying:

Agreement comes before action.

No one will draw near to a God whose existence they do not believe.

No one will want to draw near to a God who doesn’t care if we draw near or not.

Faith makes it possible for us to be pleasing to God and to draw near to Him.

Jacob looked at the evidence before him and believed the testimony of his sons, coming to agree with the truth: that Joseph was alive, and that he was in charge of all of Egypt.

Following that conversation back in 1999, I didn’t have Shannon’s faith.

I didn’t agree with what she was saying that God was saying.

But like a rock in my shoe, I couldn’t let that conversation go.

So I thought since I knew Shannon and trusted her walk and discernment of the Spirit generally, it was silly for us to not start praying about what she had said.