The Favor of God in a Foreign Land

Introduction

Okay, so we are in this incredible story which narrates the life of Joseph. And I use this word incredible in the most literal sense of the word. In-credible. Not credible. I mean who would believe this story. How does a Hebrew slave in Pharaoh’s prison rise to the most powerful station in the Ancient Near Eastern context?

Statistically speaking this is an impossibility, socially, economically, and politically. Impossible.

And you’d think that if something like actually did get pulled off, some incredible insertion of force would be necessary to overcome the powers and forces that make this statistical impossible. But that’s not what we read. In the most free and natural way, God uses the uncoerced choices of men and women, believers and unbelievers, Hebrews and Egyptians, to do the statistically impossible. In other words, as we read the story, nothing is forced. Nobody is forced to favor or hate Joseph. Nobody is forced to imprison Joseph or elevate Joseph against their will.

Everybody does exactly what they want. The Pharaoh rules the way he wants, the brothers hate the way they want, Jacob grieves the way he wants, Judah sins the way he wants, Potipher’s wife lusts the way she wants, and in the end, the entire nation is saved from famine, the family members are redeemed, and Joseph is vindicated. It’s one of the greatest redemption stories ever penned.

One of the main lessons we learn from Joseph is to trust in the hidden providence of God. Providence is the doctrine that God has a purpose in the most normal things in the world. That there is a design and purpose in everything we do, from the toothpaste we buy, to the bones we break, to the meals we eat, to the mail we read.

And the reason the doctrine of God’s providence is so helpful is that when we experience seemingly pointless, painful circumstances void of any apparent meaning, we remember Joseph and trust that God is working his plan for our good and his glory.

Now let’s watch how God redeems Jacob’s family through his remarkable providence.

Every rags to riches story has to start with rags.
If you are going to have a redemption narrative you need something to be redeemed from.
If you go from the valley low to the mountaintop high, well, then you have to start in the valley.

In fact, if you were writing a novel with this exact plot, where God as the hero of the story redeems a bunch of undeserving people, how would the story begin? You’d put in a bunch of material in the front about just how undeserving these people are. And the more effective you are at denigrating the character of these men, the more effective your hero-redemption narrative is going to be.

Well, the Joseph story begins in exactly this way and today we come to Genesis 38 which slings even more mud on the faces of the family of Joseph. If you’re just reading along, Genesis 38 seems out of place because all of a sudden, Joseph disappears and we are reading this horribly disturbing story of Judah and Tamar. But its purpose from a literary point of view is to allow us to spend some time on the valley floor.

Smell the putrid air down here.
Look at the sewage flowing down the stream.
I mean the moral temperature here is well below zero. This place is terrible.

Genesis 38 an embarrassing narrative. It’s a pretty ugly scar on the character of Judah and in the history of the nation of Israel. Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber skipped this one. Now today we aren’t going to look at the narrative. We are going to come back to it later. Many of you know the story. All you need to know for today is that this story is an embarrassment. If you were looking for a hero, Judah in this story fails in every single respect. He’s an absolute loser.

So we will come back to chapter 38.

Today we want to continue to advance the Joseph story. We ended last week with the word “meanwhile.” And all seemed lost, but there was a foreshadowing in the word “meanwhile.” Do you remember how Genesis 37 ends?

And God is in that meanwhile. God is doing something. And now we begin to see what God is up to.

Genesis 39 picks up the story. And today we are only going to read 6 verses. And so let’s read them all together.

Now, this is just narrative and there are a thousand questions we want to ask when we read this. Here’s a place that I wish a little more ink was spilled. Tell us more about what this was like! One thing you know for sure is that this was beyond hard. Beyond.

Even though the text mentions none of these things, please, try to fill in the blanks with what certainly would have been the case.

If ever there was a situation that would tempt you to despair, bitterness, hopelessness, anger, and resentment, it was this.

Think of what he suffered.

Just think of day one. Joseph is in the pit. And he’s bruised and thirsty and his pride is wounded. And he’s wondering how serious these death threats really are.

At first, he would have got his hopes up as they lowered a rope, and perhaps he was thinking that the cruel joke was over. Maybe they were having mercy on him hoping to teach him a lesson. And then he sees the look in their eyes. It’s not compassion. Hatred. Betrayal. He’s sold for a handful of silver. He would have watched that exchange take place, the handshake to seal the deal and their backs turned to him as they walk away forever. That scene would have stayed in his head.
And then he begins the walk. And by the way, he’s certainly walking. There is no chance in the world that land traders are going to waste a precious pack animal to carry a slave when he can carry himself. He’s certainly walking. And what is he wearing? Well, he was stripped of his cloak so he’s probably, naked or barely clothed which means he sunburned.
Do you think he has a good meal waiting for him at the end of the march? Think again. Minimal water. Minimal food. He’s been tied up all day so he’s got rub marks, rope burns, and aching feet. Let’s say they traveled 15 miles that first day. How did you feel the last time you walked 15 miles in good hiking shoes, totally hydrated, eating power bars, granola, and jerky?
That’s day one. He’s got 220 miles to go. If they travel at that same pace then he’s got another 15 days to go. Not sure the last time you walked 220 miles in flip flops with a guy yelling at you in Arabic and eating rice and beans without enough water. The text doesn’t say any of this but some version of this happened.
And what is awaiting you in Egypt? A warm bath? Try a slave market. You walk into an auction room with cows and chickens and fish all being sold and you are up next. And everyone is yelling at you in a foreign tongue. They bring you up on stage and tie you by a string to a post and people come right up to you but they are not looking at you. They are looking at your eyes but not in them. They are poking at you and examining your muscles, looking at your eye color, looking to see if you have rotting teeth like you would check the tire pressure and the oil in a car you were about to purchase.
You are 17 years old. How mature were you when you were 17? How would you have responded to this pressure and inhumane treatment?
What would it have been like to go to bed at night and remember the home life?
Joseph would have probably thought of his youngest brother Benjamin who was just 5 years old at the time.
What would it be like to imagine the torment of his father and mother as they heard the news that he had been killed? His father would never come looking for him if he thought he was dead. To scream out in your dream, “Dad, I’m alive!”, only to wake up in a cold sweat with sores on your feet and be reminded that you are all alone and nobody cares.

EVERYTHING HAS CHANGED

Your language gets changed.
Your name gets changed.
Your food is changed.
The smells are different.
The music is different.
The humor is different.
The gods are different.
The culture and values are different.
Your clothing is different.

This kind of change would destroy most of us in the room. Some of you guys have worn the same jeans for 20 years and consider it a trial of a severe degree to go shopping at Ross.

His entire identity is stripped away from him. Who am I?

If you are Joseph, not a single identity marker remains. Everything is stripped away like a skinned animal. And there is no hope of any end in sight. It will never return to normal.

This is your new home. Make the best. So I repeat, if ever there was a time when a person would be tempted toward bitterness, depression, malice, grudge-holding, despair, anger, and hopelessness it would be now. If ever there was a situation where a person would be angry at God, resentful, frustrated, it would be this.

But when we read the text, we see no evidence of this whatsoever. Instead, we read:

“The Lord was with Joseph.”
We see that this closeness of the Lord was observable by his master. “His master saw that the Lord was with him.”
We read that he was successful in his work, which we are told is a direct result of his closeness to the Lord.
We read that he found favor in the eyes of his master which is further evidence of his positive attitude. No master favors a slave who is bitter, angry, and resentful. Joseph must have been joyful, pleasant, helpful, courteous, above reproach, honest, and full of integrity.

These are incredibly remarkable traits given the situation in which he found himself. The sermon is entitled “The Favor of God in a Foreign Land.”

Joseph chose to worship God in the midst of suffering. How did he do this? For the rest of the time today, we are going to explore this question.

Because this is not a theoretical question. Some of you are suffering right now.

It could be psychological suffering where you are enduring an injustice, alone in your suffering and nobody but you and God know about it.
Maybe it’s physical suffering where you have cancer or someone you love very dearly has cancer and is suffering and again, it’s just you. Sure others may know about it, but you suffer in a unique way that others do not. And you are alone.
Maybe you are at a low point of a relationship, a financial crisis, or a legal battle.
Or maybe you just watch the news.

All of this has the potential to destroy you. The goal of the message today is to realize you have a choice in suffering. You have a choice. We are going to talk about three things:

What is the Choice?
When you suffer, here’s the choice: will you choose to worship and serve God in your terrible circumstances or will you choose to be bitter and complain against God because of your terrible circumstances? That is the choice.

Now I want to really emphasize the fact that this is the choice before us in suffering. Because oftentimes, when we suffer, we don’t consciously realize what we are doing psychologically. We just want to vent our complaint and it doesn’t feel like we are blaming anyone in particular.

We say, oh, I hate masks. I hate traffic, man, remember when Boise used to be 100,000 people. I hate all this traffic. Gripe, gripe.

And it doesn’t feel personal. We may even convince ourselves, I’m not bitter at God. I’m just bitter at my circumstances. I’m bitter at other people in general that caused those circumstances.

But guess what, only an atheist can say that. A Christian can never say I generally just don’t like my circumstances. Because those circumstances are never without sovereign design. Sovereign means that no event is without purpose. All happenings and all your circumstance, even though it comes from the minds of completely free men and women, plays a role in God’s ultimate decreed will and therefore is never accidental.

And therefore, our discomfort in circumstances always must be tempered by the reality that a good, loving, in-control God says, “I allow this for the good of my people and the glory of my name.” Always.

Do you remember the Israelites in the wilderness? They go out to the wilderness and they almost immediately run out of food and water. And they begin to grumble. They see themselves as victims. And they start complaining. We have the right to complain because we have been victimized. Liberty and justice for me. That’s what they start chanting.

And the reason that sin was so serious in God’s view is that they are questioning his goodness. God is saying to them, “You are out of water according to my plan, but I did not stop loving you. I want you to glorify me in this moment. Of course I love you and will take care of you. Do you see that I just delivered you from a charging army of Egyptian warriors? Trust me.”

You see, this is exactly what Joseph must have done. Even though the text doesn’t go into detail here, he must have done this. There’s no other way the attitudes represented in the text could be present without having done this.

Be like Joseph.

Joseph didn’t have control of the era into which he was born,
or the family into which he was born,
or the parents he would have,
or the dreams that God gave him,
or the way his brothers would hate him for those dreams,
or the pit he would end up in,
or the march he would make,
or the slave owner that would possess him.

And it might have been easy for him to say, I had no control of these things. The wheels of fate have ground me to pieces and destroyed me. I am a victim of my circumstances. There’s nothing I can do.

But there is always something we can do, regardless of the circumstances in which we find ourselves. We can always praise God. Whatever the circumstance you find yourself in, that is the circumstance in which God wants you to glorify, worship, and thank him in.

There’s no such thing as an ideal place to serve God. Actually, there is an ideal place to serve God; it’s the exact circumstance in which you find yourself.

The recently promoted JI Packer once said something like (it’s not a direct quote), “If you ask, ‘Why is this happening?’, you may get no light. If you ask, ‘How do I glorify God in this circumstance?’, there will always be an answer.”

Joseph chose to glorify God in his circumstance. Is that not inspiring? I want to press one final point in hopes of painting us all into a corner so that we have no escape. We might look at Joseph here and say, “Man, he’s a super Christian. Really impressed. Good job Joseph!” as if we were watching an Olympian break the 2:00hr marathon. Man, he really did an amazing job. And you clap your hands and applaud. But you aren’t thinking you could do that. It’s not even a question. I’m not a spiritual superstar like Joseph. I could never do that.

So let me say this really hard sentence.

If you choose not to glorify God in hard circumstances it’s not that you could not, it’s that you would not. We are never given circumstances so hard that we cannot glorify God in them.

Now if I am going to defend that statement from the Bible, some of you know what verse I’m going to quote right now don’t you. First Corinthians 10:13, “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man.” But do you know the context of that verse?

This verse comes in 1 Corinthians 10. The context of 1 Corinthians 10:13 is Paul recalling to mind the grumbling and complaining in the wilderness. He references Numbers 21 where the people come to Moses and spoke against God, “Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless food.”

He recalls to mind that complaining in Numbers 21 and then says:

So what temptation is he referring to in 1 Corinthians 10? The temptation to complain when your circumstances are difficult. The temptation to say, “God you aren’t doing a very good job at running this universe.” The temptation to say, “I am a victim.” The exact temptation of Joseph! I have the right to be gloomy and grumpy and hold a pity party and mope and cry and whine.

The choice is clear. Will you worship God or curse God in your circumstances? Will you be like Job and say, “The Lord gives and takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord,” or will you be like Job’s wife who says, “Curse God and die”? These are your only options.

We are never given circumstances so hard that we cannot praise God in them. Now that sets us up for our second point. Okay, I have to admit that it’s possible. But it’s hard. It’s really hard to do.
Why is it Hard?

There’s one main reason and I’m not going to sugar coat it. The main reason it’s hard to choose to glorify God in suffering is because we are immature.

There’s a saying in psychology that says, “It takes 50 years to overcome the first 20.”

What’s hard about praising God in trials is plain and simple immaturity. The first 20 years of your life make us think the world is all about us and then by the time you’re 70 you finally realize it’s about God and others. In the first 20 years you say, “If I find myself in an uncomfortable situation, I panic and pull the injustice alarm of the universe and frantically call the divine 911. God, do you have any idea what’s going on down here? I’m not getting recognized for my accomplishments. People aren’t amazed at me. There are other people down here that are smarter than me, more athletic or artistic than me, and more beautiful than me, who are getting more attention than me. Can I get a little help here?”

We tend to see it as a cosmic disaster that I am uncomfortable and that the circumstances of my life are not aligning for my pleasure and my glory. And so immediately we start blaming. All these problems are a result of other people. Other people have caused all these things bad things to happen to me. Everyone should feel sorry for me.

This is immature thinking and every one of us battles this. It doesn’t seem like God is in control because ‘in control’ is defined by our egos as a world in which I don’t suffer and am worshipped.

So mentally we have a construct of a world that is fundamentally flawed.

I’ve often wondered if we already know the answer to the problem of evil. It’s not mysterious, we just don’t like it. When we get to heaven there will be no great reveal. We will just be sanctified in such a way that we will finally love the answer.

Why do bad things happen to good people? Because the universe was never designed to be about their happiness. Oh, okay. And we will come to understand why that is a good thing.

What if Joseph just got stuck on this? What did I ever do to deserve this treatment? I’m the victim, God. This would result in bitterness, resentment, self-pity, anger, and depression.

But instead, he trusted and in trusting you learn. We learn things in suffering we could never learn any other way. Nobody ever learned about their faults by being told. They have to be shown. Life has to show you. Trials show you. Failure shows you. Joseph surely was refined through suffering.

But the same is true of God’s love. Nobody learns God loves you by being told. You have to be shown. Suffering shows you that. Struggle shows you that. Need shows you. When Joseph was all alone and he could not be comforted by his father or mother, when he had no earthly security, no identity he could cling to, he must have learned about the love of God in a profound way.

What’s the choice? Will you glorify God in suffering? Why is it hard? Because we are immature.
How is it Possible?

To endure suffering, what do I need?

You might think, I need some pain medication. I hate pain, and I can’t possibly imagine life without pain medication.
You might think, I need resources and money. That can help alleviate the pain.
I need respect.
I need friends that can help share the burden.
You might think I need answers. I could endure this if I had answers to what was going on behind the scenes.

And no doubt all these things could help. But you know what, there’s only one thing you need. And if you had this thing, all those other things could be stripped away and you could still choose to worship him.

Because after all, Joseph didn’t have any medication when he was hurting, didn’t have resources, didn’t have friends or family, didn’t have respect, and he certainly didn’t have answers.

What’s the one thing you need? You need to know that God loves you.

You see, when you know that God loves you, it creates in you a power that can endure anything. Let me illustrate why this is.

Think about the real suffering you’ve been through or watched others endure. When people are facing death, massive injustices, or when they are broken from suffering and mistreatment, what do they need?

When I came out of seminary, I thought, well, they need answers. Oh, I have a section on that in my seminary notes. Let me flip there and tell you the answer to your problem. Here’s a theology textbook that I’m going to leave with you. I have to rush off to a meeting, but I think you might find some help on page 872.

People don’t need answers primarily.

What we say to people will not amount to a hill of beans unless they know we love them. They don’t need our answers. They need us. They don’t need our talking. They need our presence in suffering.

When you are suffering, do you know what you really need from God? Answers? Answers are good. Answers help. Even if that’s what you think you want, that’s not what you really need.

Because answers are either too complex to do us any good or too insulting to be accepted.

Whenever Apple reveals a product and shows the exploded diagram of a phone, what if you stopped the presentation and asked, “What’s the little chip for?” You can save your breath. There’s an intellectual insufficiency.

But we probably aren’t mature enough to handle answers we could understand. Why am I suffering? Well, because you are extremely self-centered, prideful, arrogant, and conceited. It would probably be too much for us to take in.

We don’t need an intellectual answer. It probably wouldn’t help us. What we need to know is that God loves us. We need to know God’s with us. We don’t need his answers. We need his presence. Psalm 52.

The more confident you are that God loves you, the more you are able to stare at horrific tragedies and say, “I know this looks bad, but God loves me. God will never forsake me. Nothing can separate me from the love of God.”

I know this looks like God has abandoned me, but I know he hasn’t because he’s already proved his love to me on the cross. No greater love has a man than this, that he lay down his life for his friend.

He’s the One, the ultimate Joseph. “He came unto his own, and his own received him not.” Sold for silver, stripped naked, crying out in the dark, lost so we could be saved.

I know God loves me and I trust this circumstance is for my good and his glory. I don’t need any answers, because I know God loves me. You want to know what the love of God does for you? It gives you an unshakeable identity that no set of circumstances can shake.

Because ultimately, for a Christian, your circumstances don’t define you. For everyone else, they must define you. There’s nothing else that could define you. For a Christian, it’s the exact inverse. For the Christian, nothing should define us because the identity that Christ gives eclipses all other lesser identities.
Communion
When everything that defines your worth has been stripped away, what gives you worth? When you find yourself in circumstances like Joseph, what gives you hope? What helps you worship? The favor of God. The favor of God in a foreign land. We are going to sing a song as we prepare for communion and I want you to think about the lyrics:

My worth is not in what I own Not in the strength of flesh and bone But in the costly wounds of love At the cross My worth is not in skill or name In win or lose, in pride or shame But in the blood of Christ that flowed At the cross I rejoice in my Redeemer Greatest Treasure, Wellspring of my soul I will trust in Him, no other. My soul is satisfied in Him alone.
Baptism
Speaking of redemption. Coming to a park near you, we are having a church baptism next Sunday.