Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction (5m)

What is your life script?

What is your life script?

What is it about your past, particularly your life with your family, that influences what you think about life today?

Psychologists believe our life scripts are usually created in childhood.

A life script is what we use to give meaning to the events that happen around us.

Life Script 1 - People always leave me

You may have a life script that says, ‘People always leave me’.

If you wait for people to invite you to events, in order to prove to yourself that they love you and want you to be with them, or if you get jealous very easily, then it may be that you have a fear that you will always be abandoned by the people you love.

That may be connected by a loss you felt in your childhood: a divorce where one parent abandons the family, or death of a parent or other loved one early in life.

This may cause you to act defensively, and to push people away, before you think they are going to desert you.

Life Script 2 - I'm not good enough

Maybe your life script is ‘I’m not good enough’.

The belief that you are inferior to other people.

That there’s something wrong with you.

And that one day, people will suddenly recognise this.

Do you find yourself saying, I can’t do this, I’m no good at it?

Do you avoid competitive situations, even stuff like playing board games — because you fear coming last?

Maybe your parents pushed you too hard.

Maybe they had unrealistic expectations about what you could achieve, and then scolded you when you didn’t reach the expected level.

If you live by this life script, then it’s likely you’ll become over sensitive to criticism or comparison.

And any perceived rejection of what you achieve will simply be taken as confirmation that you are a failure.

Life Script 3 - Bad things happen to me more than others

Or your life script might be, ‘Bad things happen to me more than they do to other people’.

You may find it very easy to imagine the worst case scenario in everything.

You may worry excessively.

You may feel helpless in certain situation.

It might be that a childhood trauma has left you feeling like this.

And you end up with an exaggerated fear of disaster just around the corner.

Going back to move forward

Rooting out these life scripts, dealing with the deeply ingrained messages we have picked up from our past, changing our habits, transforming our ways of behaving, turning around the way that we think, is complex and difficult.

But it can be done.

It has to be done.

As we learned last week, we have to select reverse in order to move forward.

And if you want a great biblical model on how to do that, how to ensure that you live by a good and positive life script, despite your experiences, then there is no better than the story of Joseph.

Explanation (5m)

Joseph’s family history is pretty bad

Begins in Genesis 37. Ends Genesis 50. 25 per cent. of first book of Bible is about Joseph and his family.

This story is a big deal.

J comes from “blended family”.

Father, Jacob had children by four different women.

His wives - Leah and Rachel.

And two concubines - Zilpah and Bilhah.

Altogether, Jacob has 12 sons.

J is second youngest son.

When we meet J, 17, shepherd with his brothers.

Because Rachel is Jacob’s favourite wife, he favours J above his brothers

And this is no jealous supposition on his brothers’ behalf.

This was out-in-the-open, on display favouritism.

So much so, that Jacob gives J a coat of many colours, or an ornate robe, as the Bible puts it, probably of a kind that royalty would wear.

This favouritism makes J’s brothers hate him so much, that Bible tells us they could not speak a kind word to him.

Mind you, Joseph didn’t help himself!

He has a dream where he sees his brothers, in the form of sheaves of grain, bowing down to him.

You can sense that as J tells his brothers this dream, there is more than a hint of arrogance, pride, immaturity.

You can only imagine the brothers response to this!

They hated him all the more.

This hate grows so much and so fast, that the brothers plot to kill him.

In the end, they decide to sell him into slavery instead.

But their hate makes them decide to fake his funeral and to lie to their father about what has happened to J. Jacob believes J has been torn to pieces by some ferocious animal, and goes into deep mourning, from which no one can comfort him.

Brothers continue to live this lie for 10-12 years.

J ends up as slave to Potiphar, an Egyptian official in Pharaoh’s court

P ended up trusting him with his household and everything that he owned.

Clear J had great potential.

And yet, he is falsely accused of sleeping with P’s wife, and thrown into prison for 10-13 years.

Can you imagine how J must have felt?

God, you say you are with me.

You say you are faithful.

You say you have a purpose for my life.

Well, I just don’t see it.

I’ve been betrayed by my family.

They sold me into slavery.

They abandoned me.

I don’t deserve to be languishing in prison.

Where’s your purpose in all of this?

But the story continues

And Joseph is given the opportunity to interpret dreams.

Pharaoh gets to hear of this, and after interpreting his dreams, J is put in charge of the whole of Egypt.

He becomes P’s PM, his number two.

Powerful not just in Egypt, in world.

At the time, Egypt is the world’s superpower.

Equivalent to VP in USA, or PM in Russia.

P renames him, Zaphenath-Paneah, and gives him a princess as his wife.

Seven years later, famine breaks out

J is responsible for distributing food throughout E nation.

Two years into the famine, and Jacob and J’s brothers in Israel are starving to death.

They come to Egypt, to J, and ask to buy food.

They don’t know it’s J.

What would you do in his shoes?

Would you kill them for what they did to you? Would you refuse to help and send them back to starve to death?

Would you throw them in prison and give them a taste of what you’ve been through?

Or would you give them food and tell them to sling their hooks and that you never want to see their faces again?

Well, as we heard, J does something quite remarkable

He reveals his identity to his brothers and forgives them for what they did.

And as he does so, Joseph rewrites his life script with the help of God

Bearing in mind what J had been through, he could be forgiven for thinking: I am worthless.

My life is a mistake.

I should never trust anyone.

I shouldn’t risk anything.

I shouldn’t feel.

I should shut myself off from pain.