God's Good Purposes...
Notes
Transcript
Introduction...
Introduction...
My friends, Welcome today.
So blessed to see you all today. I always tell you, and I always mean it; I am so blessed to see you faces in this house, worshipping together.
There is a great joy in being together, in worshipping and fellowshiping together.
I am glad to see you!
This morning we come to the conclusion of our Joseph series that we began at the first of the year.
Joseph is a great character for us to study, namely to see and know that God is aware of His children’s lives, and He is at work in them. He will always stop evil and turn it to good.
His ways will always be accomplished in and through our lives.
Your life my friends is meant to reveal the ways and purposes of God, we are meant to be used for His glory.
That my friends is awesome, don’t you think so?
So I will use one verse as my kick off passage…
20 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.
This passage is the summary of Joseph’s life my friends, it is the very core of all that has happened… and with it the glory of God’s work as used Joseph to bless the world.
My friends, God can use you to bless the world as well, and He will be glorified for it as well. If you allow him to work through you.
So let me share three thoughts with you about this text that I hope and pray will speak to you this morning.
1.) A Family Reunited 2.) Evil will Always Be
3.) God is in Charge of all that is Good
One of the greatest blessings of Scripture is this truth; We have the joy of seeing God at work from beginning to end in a persons life and the place where God has appointed him or her to serve.
This morning lets finish this journey of what God was doing through this family and this favorite son, Joseph.
Lets begin with this first thought...
1. A Family Reunited.....
1. A Family Reunited.....
At the end of chapter 45 in Genesis, we see that Pharoah is happy for Joseph in fact, Genesis 45:17 tells us about the heart of Pharoah.
17 And Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Say to your brothers, ‘Do this: load your beasts and go back to the land of Canaan, 18 and take your father and your households, and come to me, and I will give you the best of the land of Egypt, and you shall eat the fat of the land.’ 19 And you, Joseph, are commanded to say, ‘Do this: take wagons from the land of Egypt for your little ones and for your wives, and bring your father, and come. 20 Have no concern for your goods, for the best of all the land of Egypt is yours.’ ”
Pharoah loves Joseph, He has been blessed in the land because of God’s own hands and plan for Joseph’s life and as such, the outcome is a man who is king over the land of Egypt knows Joseph is a servant of God. So Pharaoh will extends a warm welcome to Joseph’s extreme family.
And so carts and wagons go to retrieve them and bring them to Egypt, and when Jacob/Israel hears the news that His son is alive He decides to go and travel to Egypt to see his son who he thought was dead so long ago.
And at the beginning of chapter 46, we see a couple of special points I want you to see...
A. The first is His coming to Beersheba… It is this area that so many years before was the principal place where his Father Isaac had lived under the promise of God and then many years later, it is the same area where Jacob laid down to rest one night in the land with a stone for a pillow and God spoke to him in a dream, the dream of Jacob ladder but also the promise of God to bless him and make him a nation as He has promised his grandfather Abraham,
‘B. And secondly he offered sacrifices here and worshiped the Lord and this night the Lord speak to him again… look at verses 1-4 in Genesis 46.
1 So Israel took his journey with all that he had and came to Beersheba, and offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac. 2 And God spoke to Israel in visions of the night and said, “Jacob, Jacob.” And he said, “Here I am.” 3 Then he said, “I am God, the God of your father. Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for there I will make you into a great nation. 4 I myself will go down with you to Egypt, and I will also bring you up again, and Joseph’s hand shall close your eyes.”
Beautiful my friends, God has continued to promise Israel life, and his family would be great. Look at what he says to him..
A. Do not be afraid.. Jacob may have remembered the stories of his grandfather Abraham as he journeyed into the land of Egypt. But God assures him He will uphold him.
B. I will go with you.... God promised to never leave him or forsake Him, He would accompany Him into the land. And why not the whole world is His… He could give to and take from if he so desired. God would go with him. But there is a clause here, I will take you down and I will bring you up again. a future day God would lead them back to the promised land.
C. I will make you a great nation God promises to continue to bless Isreal, The promise He made with Abraham is still in effect and God will honor it. The covenant will continue to make the people of Abraham into a great nation
D. Joseph’s hand shall close your eyes.... The promise here assures that Joseph is indeed alive and he would be there at Jacob’s death bed.
Man how beautiful are the promises of God.
Soon the carts and wagons arrive and they begin to carry their families, all their people back to the land of Egypt.
And so Genesis 46:27 tells us this piece of information
27 And the sons of Joseph, who were born to him in Egypt, were two. All the persons of the house of Jacob who came into Egypt were seventy.
So 70 people entered the land of Egypt, in 400 years as they depart the numbers will be in the millions.
Now since they are shepherding and herding people with cattle and flocks of cattle sheep and goats, they cannot settle within the larger cities of Egypt. But they are given a rich and flourishing land, the land of Goshen. And here they will remain until God says it is time to lead them out.
Now verses 29-32 tells us of the reunion of Joseph, His entire family and of course His father Jacob.
29 Then Joseph prepared his chariot and went up to meet Israel his father in Goshen. He presented himself to him and fell on his neck and wept on his neck a good while. 30 Israel said to Joseph, “Now let me die, since I have seen your face and know that you are still alive.” 31 Joseph said to his brothers and to his father’s household, “I will go up and tell Pharaoh and will say to him, ‘My brothers and my father’s household, who were in the land of Canaan, have come to me. 32 And the men are shepherds, for they have been keepers of livestock, and they have brought their flocks and their herds and all that they have.’
My friends, what a reunion day. They are together after more than a two decades
Can you imagine what it will be like my friends when we have our reunion day, when we see our parents and grandparents, all those dear saints who have gone on before us..
We will see the apostles, and the 12 tribes, but most of all we will see Jesus!
Oh there is a reunion day coming my friends.
2. Evil will Always Be....
2. Evil will Always Be....
The story of Joseph is one that contains evil my friends, evil done to him because of jealously and strife.
As we read it like so many other accounts, it reminds us that Evil is present and real in our world.
As we walk through the Scriptures you can see it time and time again. You see evil as the devil sought to lead Adam and Eve astray, to lead them into disobedience.
You see it again in Genesis 4 as there is jealously and hatred, one brother jealous of another in the story of Cain and Abel.
We see it in Genesis 6, verse 5 when the Lord saw the hearts of men were nothing but wicked, full of evil intentions.
Even Jacob’s own life is full of sin as He deceives his own Father looking for the promise of the birth right in Genesis 27.
You see my friends, evil has been in the world since the fall of man in the garden… And it continues today .. but for now. Lets go back to our text for today..
20 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.
Joseph declares to his brothers, "…You meant evil against me....”
Remember his story… He was a favorite son, the son of Jacob’s old age, the first son with the love of his life Rachel. But Joseph wouldn’t be just any son.
No Jacob would be a favorite son, a son who would be chosen by God to rise up and bless the world..
That coat of many colors would put him in jeopardy, His brothers if you remember would hate him so much, they could not even speak peacefully to him. They couldn’t even wish peace upon him as they met or parted company in course of their days.
My friends that is the ruin of sin. It strips the very sense of humanity, compassion, empathy and love from people, jealously will ruin and hurt every relationship, just give it time.
Evil has always been and it always will be...
Now why do we focus on this thought today?
I want to remind you that you are the Children of the living God, and since evil is in this world. Since the prince and ruler of the air is out to deceive God’s people, I want to remind you to practice humility, and justice and love each day.
You see if we are not careful we could end up like Joseph’s brothers.
We could end up coveting what another has, we could end up jealous of our brother and sister and soon we will find that we cannot even speak peace to them.
And then we wish without saying a word to be like them - while hoping harm comes to them. Remember John in I John 3:15
15 Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.
Now I know, you are saying… that is not me my friend, I would never do that… if you mismanage your Christian life we can easily find ourselves in that problem.
Solomon the wisest of all men said...
23 Keep your heart with all vigilance,
for from it flow the springs of life.
So it is important that we work daily to keep our heart clean and pure so that we can walk uprightly before the Lord.
I have said all of this my friends to just remind us that we must inspect our heart daily, we must search our minds daily.
Al this is necessary if you want to walk rightly before God.
Now my friends just one last thought as we close our sermon series on the life of Joseph
3. God is in Charge of all that is Good...
3. God is in Charge of all that is Good...
One of the greatest truths we can hold onto today is that God is always in charge. He is in charge of every molecule, every atom, He is in charge of the entire cosmos and our lives there in...
I believe this, this is a foundational statement for me to hold onto.. God is in control of everything, and regardless of evil, regardless of bad circumstances, He is there. He is in control and nothing is outside of his work and purposes.
For Joseph, many could have wrote him off never to be effective for the family of Israel. But as His life went away, God was in control.
In fact God is omniscient.. all knowing. Do you believe that? Yes I can say I do and I know that many of you do as well..
So in light of that listen again to what Joseph tells His brothers…
20 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.
By this point in time, Jacob/ Israel has died, just as the Lord told his, Joseph would be there when he passed from this life.
And as Jacob passed the brothers who had treated Joseph so harshly in his youth, who mistreated him, threatened him with death and finally sold him to slavery...
The were worried.
They were living in a a strange land, they were there under his care and they wondered if Joseph might seek vengeance upon them for the way they had treated him in the past.
Lets return to the text Genesis 50:15-21
15 When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, “It may be that Joseph will hate us and pay us back for all the evil that we did to him.” 16 So they sent a message to Joseph, saying, “Your father gave this command before he died: 17 ‘Say to Joseph, “Please forgive the transgression of your brothers and their sin, because they did evil to you.” ’ And now, please forgive the transgression of the servants of the God of your father.” Joseph wept when they spoke to him. 18 His brothers also came and fell down before him and said, “Behold, we are your servants.” 19 But Joseph said to them, “Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? 20 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. 21 So do not fear; I will provide for you and your little ones.” Thus he comforted them and spoke kindly to them.
Joseph’s brother’s sought forgiveness for their previous transgressions.
They honestly deserved harsh punishment in the eyes of the world, but not in Joseph’s eyes.
They gathered together and wept. They wept over their sin and in the blessing of forgiveness they wept...
Forgiveness is given and received and one of the most beautiful verses is found right here, Joseph tells them this....
What you meant for evil, what you sought to do in sin, God was in charge of the outcome and used it for good.
So God prepared the way for one to come and rise up and execute His plans to save the world.
God raised up Joseph for this very purpose.
So in a sense how could Joseph be angry when God was at work in the good days and the bad ones to same him, to save his father and brothers and the world from starvation and suffering.
Let me ask you a question, What has God prepared you for my friends?
What is it that He has walked alongside you in this life, in the midst of sin, in the midst of any suffering you have faced because of this fallen world, imperfect people, and much much more.
What is that God is going for Good in You?
I look back and in the course of things, and I can see God’s hand more and more again. for his glory.
What has almighty God prepared you for my friends.
Pray