Rock Bottom and the Seeds of Hope
Life of Joseph • Sermon • Submitted
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Big Idea: Ultimately we are exploring the idea of substitutionary atonement. The seeds of this idea are sewn in the Joseph in prison story where we see two men at their lowest point and one goes free and the other does not.
Do the mystery seeds from China bit.
Do the mystery seeds in the package bit.
End that by saying: the only really true way to know what kind of seeds are in this package are to plant them isn’t. Only when we see the thing it will ultimately become can we really appreciate the seed for what it is.
So I want you to keep that seed metaphor in your mind because we are going to definitely come back to it.
I actually want to start out this morning by talking about how the Bible works. (The most valuable thing I may have to offer some of you today isn’t going to be our concluding points…although those are not going to be super profound they do have the ability to change the lives of every person in this room…for many of you, the greatest pieces of information that you will get this morning is about the Bible, how it was written, and how to read it well).
Honestly I sort of grew up thinking that the Bible just dropped out of heaven and into our laps in the form that it is in now. The reality is that the process by which God gave us this book is incredible and it is incredibly important to understand if we are going to read it well.
God using the language and culture around Israel to communicate His message moved to the Israelites using their own history and story to weave a shared narrative. They had stories and a framework in their mind that they just expected you to understand when they wrote. They drew heavily from those stories and sometimes it was just snippets or single words that they would refer back to that was meant to bring an entire framework into your mind…and they just expected you to know it. But you have to know the story!
“People can not make sense of anything without attaching it to a story line.” Timothy Keller
Give the story example.
A man approaches you at a bus stop and says: “The Latin name for duck is Histrionicus, Histrionicus, Histrionicus...” Bit
And so when we think about how our Bible works and about how we are supposed to read it faithfully, we have to understand that nearly every single verse, every story of Jesus’ life, every teaching that Jesus or the other New Testament authors gave is rooted in the stories of their past…to include the story of Joseph.
Before we launch into our text with any degree of understanding, we need to understand one more thing about how to read our Bibles the way they are meant to be read. We have to talk about this idea of progressive revelation. Now…this is where our seed imagery really comes in handy.
Progressive revelation is a movement from truth to more truth and so to full truth.
And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel.”
This is what is known as the protevangelium. Do the seed bit… Can you get the gospel from Genesis 3:15? Not entirely…but as we look forward (explain that) can we see where this verse fits in and the hope that God was giving His people from the very beginning? ABSOLUTELY!
So let me give you an example from today’s lesson to show you kind of how we are going to put these concepts into practice.
Then Joseph said to him, “This is the interpretation of it: the three branches are three days;
within three more days Pharaoh will lift up your head and restore you to your office; and you will put Pharaoh’s cup into his hand according to your former custom when you were his cupbearer.
and
Then Joseph answered and said, “This is its interpretation: the three baskets are three days;
within three more days Pharaoh will lift up your head from you and will hang you on a tree, and the birds will eat your flesh off you.”
We see that after three days both judgment and salvation are passed simultaneously.
This idea of three days then judgment and salvation gets developed over the course of scripture. Think about Jonah. It’s funny because I was just having this conversation with someone this past week.
Do the fish as both judgment and salvation bit...
And so to carry this example out to its final resting place: If the Bible is a single unified story that leads to Jesus and the Gospel…do we ever see that concept played out?
YES:
Then some of the scribes and Pharisees said to Him, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from You.”
But He answered and said to them, “An evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign; and yet no sign will be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet;
for just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
“The men of Nineveh will stand up with this generation at the judgment, and will condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.
I’ve told you guys that throughout this Joseph study, we are going to be looking at the story behind the story. There are some amazing things that we can take from Joseph’s faithfulness and actions but if we only look at the immediately evident lessons from the narrative we end up adopting this sort of moralistic therapeutic deism that just has us emulating the good character traits we see in Joseph and staying away from the bad parts we see in his story. Look at me really closely…that approach to reading your Bible has absolutely ZERO ability to produce real heart-level change that will endure over time and circumstances.
Instead, if we see the seeds of the gospel and of Jesus’ own life in the story that has the power to do some real work in our lives.
Romans 1:16 tells us:
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
I would add to that verse that it is not only the power of salvation but for transformation as well.
And so, this morning I want us to look at some seeds that we see being planted through Joseph’s story that we need to have in mind as we look forward to the story that ultimately affects our lives. These seeds are going to present themselves as little snippets, or cross-sections if you will, of things that happen in Joseph’s story that are developed over the course of the Bible and lead us to understand Jesus and the Gospel with a greater appreciation. You guys good with that? The story behind the story…here we go.
Then it came about after these things, the cupbearer and the baker for the king of Egypt offended their lord, the king of Egypt.
Pharaoh was furious with his two officials, the chief cupbearer and the chief baker.
So he put them in confinement in the house of the captain of the bodyguard, in the jail, the same place where Joseph was imprisoned.
Just as a side note, before we get started. I learned something really cool as I was studying for this sermon this week that I had never really noticed before. Did you notice where Joseph and the other prisoners are being held? They are being held in the jail that is attached to the captain of the bodyguards house. What did we learn about Potiphar last week? Genesis 39:1 tells us that Potiphar is the captain of the bodyguard. Ya’ll, Joseph has never left Potiphar’s house! And it was in fact Potiphar who had entrusted Joseph with running the prison in his stead. Just for a little understanding of Joseph’s situation, can you imagine the levels of psychological trauma in Joseph’s situation?
Potiphar’s wife accuses Joseph of this thing that he obviously did not do…it enrages Potiphar and so he throws Joseph into prison there at his house. The place where Potiphar’s wife and the other slaves know that Joseph is innocent. And given the fact that Potiphar still continues to trust Joseph to run his affairs (affairs by the way that could have gotten Potiphar killed by Pharoah if they were run poorly) means there is a good chance that Potiphar actually believes Joseph and his innocence and yet has him imprisoned anyways…a fact that Joseph probably knew and only added to the insult anyways. Just a bit of gee whiz info that helps us better understand the state Joseph was likely in while imprisoned.
But let’s do a little work around this baker and cupbearer.
Explain that the baker was actually in charge of all of the food at the royal palace. (Maybe do the birds eating out of the baskets as a normal everyday part of life bit if there is time)
Explain that the cupbearer was responsible for tasting not just all of the kings wine but all of his food as well.
Finally, explain what could have landed them in prison…could have been just a simple as a lapse of decorum or a small argument between the two men…either way, these guys literally held the Pharaoh’s life in their hand.
From this cultural understanding I think we see a seed. From this, I believe we see that:
The severity of sin is not based on the egregious nature of the act but against who it is perpetrated against.
Do the “hitting a homeless criminal vs. hitting the president bit.”
I’m sure you guys have heard those stories, read the books, or even seen the movies of those people who claim to have died for a second and seen heaven or seen God. Do you wanna know why I don’t believe any of those stories?
It’s because of passages like this in Isaiah chapter 6:
In the year of King Uzziah’s death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple.
Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.
And one called out to another and said, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of hosts, The whole earth is full of His glory.”
And the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of him who called out, while the temple was filling with smoke.
Then I said, “Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I live among a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.”
This is why I don’t believe any of those stories. Its because the people who have actually seen God’s face and heavenly throne room don’t come back to talk about the warm fuzzies they got when they reconnected with a long lost loved one or some sense of renewed purpose. They are freaking terrified!
You guys know me and you know that I’m not much of a fire and brimstone kind of preacher and yet when I read passages about the egregious nature of our sin when seen in contrast with an infinitely holy God, I don’t know how else to talk about it.
Later on in Isaiah’s book, he makes a statement that we all probably have heard at some point…that our righteousness is like filthy rags (now I’m not going to go into the cultural meaning of that statement but suffice it to say, Isaiah is communicating that even the best we have to offer is pitiful and disgusting). Listen to me, Isaiah didn’t write those words as some sort of philosophical platitude about God’s holiness. Isaiah wrote those words as someone who felt the experience first hand.
“I am ruined because I am a man of unclean lips?!?!” ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?! The only reason Isaiah was standing before God is because it was his lips that God was about to use to proclaim God’s message to the world. And yet it is the only thing of value that Isaiah is bringing to the table, his lips and speech, that he is worried is about to get him annihilated in the face of an infinitely holy God.
Yeah that is terrifying. But what’s even scarier and will really bake your noodle is that in the book of Leviticus we get these two classifications of our sin. Sins of commission that are things that we know are against God’s law and do them anyways. We get that right. Don’t lie and then we lie…that is a sin. But what’s scarier is that there are also sins of omission: these are things we fail to do, not necessarily out of willful disobedience but simply because we didn’t know any better. What are the list of things we don’t even know that we don’t know that we do as sins against God?
And yet, we can often times take a very trite view of our sin.
We assign varying degrees of significance to our sins based on the action (a white lie is worse than murder) and yet all of our sins (to included the most ‘innocent’ lie) are egregiously offensive in light of the infinitely holy and perfectly just God against whom they are perpetrated.
I tell you this not to be all gloom and doom and fire and brimstone but because:
When we fail to see our sin against the appropriate backdrop of an infinitely Holy God, we miss the beautiful and scandalous nature of the good news of the Gospel and what we have been saved from.
And from this:
We will fail to approach our future temptations with the type of resolve and holy gratitude that will keep us from engaging in the same patterns of sin again.
Now here is the deal. It isn’t necessarily true that all encounters with God are terrifying. We do get one example of someone who not only walks away from the encounter joyfully but can actually stand in front of God to appreciate His beauty and holiness in a way that none of the other men who had the same encounter can. We get to see the encounter of John the revelator in Revelations 4, 21, and 22 where John see’s God’s holy throne room and even speaks with the son of the living God face to face and his encounter is different. He falls down but it isn’t in fear of being ruined like Isaiah. It isn’t because the holiness of God pushes him to his knees like Ezekiel…it is in a moment of beautiful worship and adoration. And the difference of this encounter is John’s relationship with the risen Jesus…but we will get to that here in a minute.
Alright, on to our next seed:
and on the vine were three branches. And as it was budding, its blossoms came out, and its clusters produced ripe grapes.
“Now Pharaoh’s cup was in my hand; so I took the grapes and squeezed them into Pharaoh’s cup, and I put the cup into Pharaoh’s hand.”
This is meant to be seen in contrast to what happens to the baker:
within three more days Pharaoh will lift up your head from you and will hang you on a tree, and the birds will eat your flesh off you.”
If you write in your bible, underline those words “hang you on a tree,” and “so I took the grapes and squeezed them into Pharaoh’s cup.” You see, their redemption and their judgment is sort of tied to the tools of their trade. For the cupbearer there are images of vines, and ripe grapes, and enjoying the fruit from this tree. For the baker, we see images of birds, and bread, and meat, and yet…there is something that is just out of place enough that it is meant to draw your attention to it. We see a part of the bakers dream that isn’t related to his career and wasn’t even a part of the baker’s original dream. We see that the baker is going to be hung on a tree. Did you notice how that wasn’t part of the baker’s dream?
We have to look forward just a little bit into the book of Deuteronomy to really start to understand what is happening here.
“If a man has committed a sin worthy of death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree,
his corpse shall not hang all night on the tree, but you shall surely bury him on the same day (for he who is hanged is accursed of God), so that you do not defile your land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance.
So you don’t have to be a huge Bible scholar to understand what is going on here. Just with the tools of “knowing story” and “progressive revelation”, do we have any other part of our Bible where a tree brings a curse to all the land?
Yeah!!! How about page three of your Bible. Here is what is even wilder, is that tree that brings a curse is supposed to be seen in contrast with another tree which gives of its fruit liberally in season (the tree of life). Are you seeing the parallels in these two dreams and in their fulfillment? Do you get how this imagery of the two trees (well one is a grape vine in this story but that image is used interchangeably in the Bible), are beginning to create this picture that is telling a greater story as we view it with the collected stories of the Bible which have Jesus as its central focal point?
Do you know how the story of the Bible ends? Probably not the way you would suspect. It ends the way it began…with a description of a tree.
Then he showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb,
in the middle of its street. On either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
There will no longer be any curse; and the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and His bond-servants will serve Him;
Did you notice that that second tree…the tree that brings the curse is strikingly missing from this picture? John actually says in verse three that there will no longer be any curse. And then he tells us that God and the Lamb (meaning Jesus) will be there face to face with their people.
Here is the deal…John refers to Jesus several times in the book of Revelation. We see Jesus as the conquering warrior king. We see Jesus as a roaring lion. Images you would expect of Jesus in the story where he physically conquers sin and death and satan. But do you know the image that stands far above the others in the number of times it is used in the book of Revelation for Jesus? It is of a lamb with its throat cut and blood all over it. That is the image of the Jesus who saves and defeats sin, and death, and satan, and the grave.
This is why that second tree, the one that if you are hung on it it means you are cursed, is missing in this new creation reality. It is because of the slain lamb. It is because Jesus took our egregious sins of omission and commission, our shame, and our guilt and he put them on his shoulder and nailed them to that cursed tree. And so now, the people who live in this new creation reality get to enjoy the fruits of blessing, healing, prosperity, vitality, essentially everything that our hearts long for because someone else took their place on that cursed tree and took it to the grave in an act of ultimate defeat.
And this leads us to our final seed.
In this passage we see the seeds of substitutionary atonement. Now that is just a big three dollar theological term that means someone else took your place in the execution line. And we are going to all walk out of here knowing what it means and its implications today.
Thus it came about on the third day, which was Pharaoh’s birthday, that he made a feast for all his servants; and he lifted up the head of the chief cupbearer and the head of the chief baker among his servants.
He restored the chief cupbearer to his office, and he put the cup into Pharaoh’s hand;
but he hanged the chief baker, just as Joseph had interpreted to them.
Now, the one thing that you won’t see just by reading that a commentary will be helpful in is that it was customary for the Pharoah to release a prisoner on his birthday. We have ancient historical documents that talk about this common practice but it is definitely not necessary to know that when studying this passage for yourself.
Before we understand this, I want us to go back a couple of weeks in the study. Remember I said that we have to know what the original author was trying to communicate to the original audience before we can ever hope to make sense of it in our day and age.
The passage cannot mean something for us that it did not mean for them. This should always be our starting point when opening up our Bible.
I then took us into the shoes of the original audience…recount the generation Moses wrote this to.
If you know the Bible story feel free to answer this but: If you were part of the original audience, was there ever a moment within your own lifetime where one life was exchanged for another?
Do the ten plagues bit and the culmination of the passover event.
Yeah!!! In fact, Jews still celebrate this passover festival with a meal (the longest standing religiously grounded meal in human history).
Let’s keep thinking like the original audience for just a second because in just a few short months time, you are about to receive the law as given by God to Moses. In this law it is going to give you instructions for keeping with this ceremonial meal to remember the lives that were traded to grant your freedom from slavery. BUT...Because God didn’t want us to think that it was just the sins of the Egyptians He dealt with this way, God is going to introduce another ceremony to deal with your sins. Here are Gods instructions about the Holiest religious ceremony the Israelites would ever participate in called the day of atonement.
“He shall take the two goats and present them before the Lord at the doorway of the tent of meeting.
“Aaron shall cast lots for the two goats, one lot for the Lord and the other lot for the scapegoat.
“Then Aaron shall offer the goat on which the lot for the Lord fell, and make it a sin offering.
“But the goat on which the lot for the scapegoat fell shall be presented alive before the Lord, to make atonement upon it, to send it into the wilderness as the scapegoat.
Notice that it was the Lords Goat that was sacrificed… What would happen in this ceremony is that the priest would pronounce the sins of the people with his hand on its head and then cut its throat and then burn it as an offering. Meanwhile the scapegoat was led outside of camp and into the wilderness where it could never return…a picture of the one saved by the substitutionary atonement of the other sacrifice.
There was a whole traditional ceremony that took place throughout the day that culminated in this moment of substitutionary exchange at around 3:00 in the afternoon. In the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ death, Jesus breathed his last breath and died right at 3:00 in the afternoon on the day of atonement.
Just a few hours before that moment however, we get this little story right here:
Now at the feast the governor was accustomed to release for the people any one prisoner whom they wanted.
At that time they were holding a notorious prisoner, called Barabbas.
So when the people gathered together, Pilate said to them, “Whom do you want me to release for you? Barabbas, or Jesus who is called Christ?”
For he knew that because of envy they had handed Him over.
While he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent him a message, saying, “Have nothing to do with that righteous Man; for last night I suffered greatly in a dream because of Him.”
But the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowds to ask for Barabbas and to put Jesus to death.
But the governor said to them, “Which of the two do you want me to release for you?” And they said, “Barabbas.”
Pilate said to them, “Then what shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?” They all said, “Crucify Him!”
And he said, “Why, what evil has He done?” But they kept shouting all the more, saying, “Crucify Him!”
When Pilate saw that he was accomplishing nothing, but rather that a riot was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd, saying, “I am innocent of this Man’s blood; see to that yourselves.”
And all the people said, “His blood shall be on us and on our children!”
Then he released Barabbas for them; but after having Jesus scourged, he handed Him over to be crucified.
Ya’ll, I came to this place in my sermon prep this week and got stuck. Honestly I didn’t and really still do not know how to end this sermon. I found myself at a point where this message impacts me in a way that is too difficult to convey. Giving Gospel sermons has always been that way for me. I used to be ashamed of this because I felt like it should be the easiest thing for a pastor to convey…I mean I watch guys who seem to do it with ease on tv all the time. And yet as my speaking skills have grown over the past year, I find that this subject becomes harder and harder for me to talk about. Not because I don’t believe it…I definitely do…but because I don’t feel I can ever find the language to do it any justice. And so I stopped and I went to my journal and just prayed and wrote. Here is what I wrote:
“I find myself unable to wrap my mind around the severity of the consequences of this topic. At once I realize I do not have the capacity of language to communicate just how scandalous this Gospel of Jesus in MY place truly is. I realize there isn’t enough fire and brimstone in the collective pulpits to accurately portray the depths of my sin and brokenness. Not to mention the rest of humanities. I realize that the whole of all human language and communication isn’t broad enough to be able communicate the richness of God’s grace and mercy as Jesus willingly allowed Barabbas to walk free. I feel a little bit like the Apostle Paul in that I am just praying that God’s Holy Spirit will take my aimless ramblings and weave them into the life changing truth that only the power of the Gospel can accomplish in us. All I can say for certain is…I AM BARABBAS.”
close as the Spirit Leads you to…maybe:
Freedom for our souls.
Freedom from our sin.
Do you wanna know what is scandelous about the gospel…do isaiah bit...
Severity of our sin isn’t based on some classification system…it is based on who it is perpetrated against.
We get no indication that Barabbas turned around and was like thank you Jesus for saving me…and so it is with me…i get up everyday having experienced the fruit of the kingdom of God because Jesus experienced the cursed tree on my behalf and I sort of act like it is no big deal...
Where ever you may be at though, I think there is one thing that every single one of us could stand to do as we are closing out in prayer.
Will you pray that the Holy Spirit will show you the reality and severity of your sin with God’s perspective?
I think that does a couple of things for us.
First, If you are here and you are not a follower of Jesus it leads you to the first step of actually following after him. If God’s Spirit is faithful to bring your mind to that, will you call out to him to save you? He has already done the work. Jesus has already taken your sin, shame, and guilt to the cursed tree and to the grave on your behalf. There is no need for you to do that and Jesus has literally died for the freedom of your soul. Just know that it will not be a jury of your peers that you and I will be judged by one day. Perhaps we would stand a chance of our good outweighing our bad if that were the case. No…we will be judged by an infinitely holy God who’s definitions of right and wrong far exceed our understanding.
Second, If you are a follower of Jesus, I believe that is an invitation to see the beauty of the gospel that Saved you with fresh eyes and in a way that frees us from the patterns of sin that still try and enslave us. It is going back to the gospel to see it’s scandalous nature and the gravity of God’s grace and mercy that engenders the type of love that promotes obedience.
Will you pray with me?