The Revelation of Purpose

Good morning, and let me just add my greeting to the ones you’ve already had today, especially if you are visiting with us in person or online. My name is Kirk and I’m one of the pastors here at FCBC. One of the things I do as I feel to serve our church family in my role on staff is to oversee our Life Groups. So I want to give you a bit of an update about our Life Groups before we dive into the Joseph story today.Sunday worship gatherings are vital to our growth in faith in Jesus, but the Bible says that we not only worship together, but we live in community as Christians. So here at FCBC we worship in our services, but we also live in groups. Our Life Groups are not gender or age specific, but rather they are smaller expressions of the church where adults, teens, and kids learn to love Jesus, love and serve one another, and reach out together with the gospel to those around them. Life Groups are meant to help us live out what the Bible teaches about the everyday life of Christians being the church together. First Peter 2:4-12 tells us that the glory of God is displayed as we together are the outshining of His goodness in everyday life. Being part of a church is so much more than being here on a Sunday. So if you are new, if you’ve recently attended a Welcome dinner, or if you realize you want to walk in biblical community with your church, let me invite you to get involved with a Life Group. Today out in the foyer, after the message, there will be some leaders to help you connect at our welcome table. If you are online, feel free to contact us through our website and ask for help getting into a group. As you can see from this map, we have 24 groups all over the Treasure Valley, with 34 leaders trained in caring for God’s people and reaching out with the gospel. So there is a group for you!But, it’s not just because groups are available that I want to encourage you to find a group. I read an article this week about how life in our nation is going to get tougher for Christians. It might become harder and harder to stand in our convictions as we move forward. And one of the takeaways from that article was a call for Christians to accept this, and one particular way they could prepare. In his book Live Not By Lies, Rod Dreyer says Christians can prepare to maintain hope in a repressive society by:“Creating and committing to small groups…These little platoons,” according to Dreher, “Are required…because the lone, atomized individual stands no chance against the forces of…oppression. In contrast, a fellowship of like-minded truth tellers has the power to withstand much evil."The article I read then asked the question: will we listen? Will we commit ourselves to strong communities of faith?At the end of the introduction of his book, Dreher describes a friend who had formerly lived under Soviet totalitarianism telling him that writing the book would be a waste of time. When Dreher asked why, his friend answered, “People have to live through it first to understand. Any time I try to explain current events and their meaning to my friends or acquaintances, I am met with blank stares or downright nonsense”.I hope we will listen to this warning. First because if 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that anything can happen very quickly and our whole lives can be altered into a less comfortable reality of suffering. Second, I hope we listen because in doing so we also listen to the lives of the persecuted Christians that we prayed for in our service already. As Jeannette from the Central African Republic said, she never thought she would be living through the type of suffering she is living through.And here is my tie-in to the Joseph story from our Life Group update, as a call to be the church that is prepared for suffering, and our day of prayer for the persecuted church. There was one line in the video we watched that I hope you heard, and that brings this all together. It was a line that brought me to tears as I watched the video this week. The narrator says:“These faithful Christians in the Central African Republic have shown God’s love and forgiveness to their persecutors.”Reflect on this one more moment with me as we look at some more pictures of these persecuted Christians. These lovely, beautiful, humans - made in the image of God, brothers and sisters of all us that are Christians, these sweet people in Central African Republic - they who had their family gunned down in the streets. They who are driven to secret remote areas to form new villages as survivors. They who continue to get attacked in new waves. They show God’s love and forgiveness to their persecutors!This truly is awe-inspiring, unthinkable love. It reveals people who have had their hearts thoroughly changed through the love of Jesus to be able to love the way that they do. But they have had their hearts changed through the most horrific of circumstances.And that’s exactly where we find ourselves as we re-enter the story of Joseph this week. We now get a climactic revelation of what has been happening in the heart of Joseph for the last 22 years. And while we know that Joseph suffered, I think that seeing some of the images we have seen this morning and reflecting on real people who are suffering right now in terrible ways, helps us to remember what human tragedy this story of Joseph in the book of Genesis really is.And this scene, as we pick it up in chapter 45 of Genesis, we see the Revelation of Purpose. This chapter is the explosion of the human experience of Joseph into the revelation of divine purposes that have changed his heart, brought about God’s will, and show us a picture of ultimate forgiveness.If you are just joining us, you need to know that the tension has been building to this point of the story right from the beginning of chapter 37, but specifically since chapter 42. Let’s trace the story through the first point that I want to draw our attention to this morning. In Joseph, we are seeing the:Revelation of Purpose through Human EmotionOne way to tell the story of Joseph is simply by tracing the words “mourn,” “weep” or “wept,” or “cry” through this part of the story.Joseph was sold into slavery in Egypt by his brothers, then falsely accused of rape and put into a deep dungeon for a crime he didn’t commit. Serving faithfully and being forgotten in prison for 13 years, I am sure he wept greatly at times, though the text of scripture doesn’t explicitly say.Then, Joseph is exalted to a place of prominence after being called out of his cell and interpreting Pharaoh’s dreams. As he takes his God-given position of prominence, he experiences what is an emotional moment for all of us, marriage, and then the birth of two children. Who can forget the birth of their children! He must have wept tears of joy, but in the naming of those boys there is a hint of sorrow still as he calls one Manasseh – saying, “God has made me forget my hardship,” and the other Ephraim, commenting, “God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.” Prosperity mixed with paint, and no doubt more tears.The story moves on to his wisdom in leading Egypt through its famine, and we arrive at chapter 42 where he meets his brothers again. And we see that Joseph weeps each time he meets them. Look at these accounts:Gen. 42:22-24Gen. 43:28-31Finally, we come to Gen. 45, and we see Joseph weep 3 times. He weeps so loud that all can hear. He weeps one on one with Benjamin, he weeps communally with all his brothers. He weeps! Read it with me:“Then Joseph could not control himself before all those who stood by him. He cried, ‘Make everyone go out from me.’ So no one stayed with him when Joseph made himself known to his brothers. And he wept aloud, so that the Egyptians heard it, and the household of Pharaoh heard it.”Please don’t miss this observation in our story today. It seems that stoicism at some point won the day in the Western world and somehow became associated in the Christian worldview with godliness. It leads to interpretations of the “crying passages” of Joseph as him hiding and holding back out of shame to show emotion. Maybe some of you still hold to the idea that real men don’t cry, or that Joseph’s main concern in sending the Egyptians out of the room was his own pride or shame related to his tears. No. The Egyptians heard it anyway, and most likely had seen his pain back in chapter 43 as well. Remember that up until this point Joseph has not told anyone about what his brothers had done to him. I believe that here, he is covering for his brothers. So rather than making a statement about crying being weak, this points to the strength we see in Joseph in the next words. In the big reveal. More powerful than when Darth Vader told Luke, “I am your father.” Joseph says, “I am Joseph. Is my father still alive?”Now I want you to think about what it means for Joseph to reveal himself to them. Think about him saying his name. He was called Zaphanath-Panea in Egypt. He had a whole new life, a new family, a new identity. Now, in a moment, with liquid thoughts of all the most powerful emotional memories of his life streaming down his face he can own who he is, who his brothers are, and what has happened to him. This is even clearer when we read the next verse:“So Joseph said to his brothers, ‘Come near to me, please.’ And they came near. And he said, ‘I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt.’”First of all, this identifies him to his brothers in an incontrovertible way. No one else could know this but the brothers, God, and Joseph.But even more than that it reveals a complete dispositional change that only can be described as a miracle. This is one of the sweetest, most tender passages of all the bible. Hear Joseph as he says, “Come near to me.” Beautiful, because in Joseph’s voice we have the echo of the one he is foreshadowing, and through Joseph’s emotional pain we have the revelation of a purpose of God for us. In Joseph saying, “I am Joseph,” we have an echo of Jesus, the great I AM. In Joseph saying, “Come near,” we have an echo of Jesus and the grand purpose of the Bible from beginning to end, as God says, “Come near to me.” Joseph’s memory of his brothers and his emotional experience is leading him to embrace them in strength and stability rather than to reject them. What a model for us as we work through our own emotions and stories!Allow me to share one of my memories with you. This picture is a photo of the Forum in Rome. And it is surrounded by kind and gracious words in Italian and English from the people in our first church plant in Rome. It looks so nice! But behind this memory there lies so much pain as well. Financial strife, the difficult days of a young marriage in a foreign land while in the ministry, the birth of a first child and feeling completely overwhelmed without any older folks or family to provide guidance there on the ground, learning a new culture and having small mini crisis of faith on a regular basis. It was a beautiful time, but it was a broken time. I can feel the pain still and I could probably weep right now if I let myself. I used to ride the bumpy cobble stone roads of Rome and sing one of my favorite songs in faith, saying “this broken road, prepares your will for me. By God’s grace I can now say this is a part of my story I celebrate.What about you? What memories of innocence broken still bring you pain? Or what memories can you recall and celebrate what God did in you?Because if you are a believer this morning this is the work that God is doing in you. He is sanctifying your body, mind, and soul. There is no separation from your experience and your relationship with God. He is not making you an unfeeling detached “godly” person. He is sanctifying you to make you more like Jesus Christ in every arena of your life. To be able to articulate when you are overwhelmed, to talk about how you’ve been duped by people, to admit your anger or grumpiness, to share your perplexities, to have every area of your human experience brought into a state of shalom, stability, and peace through these experiences and not despite them. This is the revelation of the purpose of God in your life. It’s God’s will, your sanctification. As it says in 1 Thessalonians 5:23:“Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”He is working a disposition of strength in you as He draws you near through emotional pain. And if you are still searching for answers today, and not sure if you are a “believer,” I also have no doubt that God uses the pain of your story to cause you to grope for Him, to call out for Him, to cry to Him for help. And the promise of His word is that all who call on the name of the Lord Jesus will be saved, will come near to God and know Him. God is perhaps revealing His purpose of drawing you to Jesus Christ through you finding out that there really is not healing medication for your soul anywhere else out there. I want you to truly consider the words of the Lord Jesus when He said in Matthew 11:28–30:“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”Could it be that these words are true? Could it be that you have been walking through pain, hurt, and trauma but not coming to the one who can give you the rest and peace you need? Joseph is a testimony that the God of the Bible truly has a disposition towards humanity that says, “Come.” Just like Joseph paid the cost through the pain of years in jail and absorbed this on behalf of his brothers, so God’s stance towards you has been paid for by the atoning work of Jesus Christ on the cross.But maybe you are saying, this is just too unbelievable. What made Joseph have the capacity to process the level of trauma he had experienced? What gave him the power of self-control to hold back his feelings until the right time? What enabled him to test the boundaries of his renewed relationship with his brothers and not lash out and take revenge? Well there is more to explain, because we see that Joseph also discovered the:Revelation of Purpose in God’s ProvidenceWe only have to read the next three verses to see the core foundation that had been laid in Joseph’s heart that forms the bedrock of his human experience. Look with me:Genesis 45:5, “And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life.”Genesis 45:7, “And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors.”Genesis 45:8, “So it was not you who sent me here, but God. He has made me a father to Pharaoh, lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt.”It’s easy to read those verses, as those who have read and rehearsed the story of Joseph through so many times, and say, “Of course God was going to work it all out!”But, please don’t forget to marvel at this for all that it is. You know that Joseph must have spent night after sleepless night turning this over in his head. ”So, let’s see, the God of my father Jacob, and the God of my great grandad Abraham who promised to bless the whole world through our family, and gave me a dream that I was going to rule, let my brothers do this to me! How does this work? They were so cruel and evil, it hurts so much, I have no friends here, I don’t speak the language or understand their ways. I am so alone.” And on and on I’m sure he thought many times.But what we see in these three verses of Gen. 45 is the solid maturation of someone who has arrived at the only place of refuge possible in this world. He comes to know and believe that God is overarching and working in the affairs of men to bring about His purpose - that is what we mean by God’s providence. Did Joseph learn this in the dungeon? Or when he was exalted to the palace? Or maybe the last penny dropped and he finally realized it when he first saw his brothers bow down to him? I’m not sure. But I know that he knows now. This is really in one sense the theme of his story, and that of the whole bible. We’ll cover this later in the story in chapter 50, but let me just make a few observations.The first thing to say is that God’s providence is no comfort to those who want to theorize about it rather than accept and believe it. Joseph received comfort and security as he believed it. It truly is hard to understand how God takes the fully responsible sinful actions of men and uses them in His plan that will surely take place.The brothers sold Joseph to get him away from them., but God sent him to Egypt to preserve their lives and give their money back.The brothers planned to take Joseph’s life, but God planned to use Joseph to preserve life for his family and the whole region.The brothers tried to take away the dream about Joseph ruling, but God sent Joseph to Egypt so that he could rule in Pharaoh’s house.You know Joseph must have turned this over in his head night after sleepless night at times in those 22 years. “Wait a minute here God, you gave me those dreams, you gave my grandad Abraham and my dad Jacob all those promises. How could my brothers do this? Where will things end up?” But slowly and surely a rock-solid conviction grew in Joseph, day by day, year by year as he realized that his brothers didn’t send him to Egypt, God did! He didn’t arrive at these emphatic statements of God sending him to Egypt overnight. But he believed it and it gave him ultimate comfort and security. Can you say the same about your story? Can you say God sent you to where you are right now? Even if it was through a health challenge, a financial disaster, the betrayal of a friend, the brokenness of your marriage, the rejection of your children, the lack love from a parent? How else can you find any comfort in life or death if you do not believe that God is working over all for His glory and your good?And oh how different this is than mere karma or simplistic statements like, “Everything happens for a reason.” Those are mere guesses, while the God of the Bible is personal and real and has His hands all over your life because you are part of His story, if only you believe.But let’s also see that the brothers could receive comfort & security in God’s providence. Now it would have been totally wrong in this moment for the brothers to say, “Oh yeah Joseph, you know God works all things together for good,” and give him pat on the back. And they didn’t. The previous verses say that they were terrified, they were in a place of shock like they just got shelled by an overflying bomber in a war zone.So, how could they be sure that Joseph’s invitation to them was sincere and real? By God’s providence and plan. Joseph had staged this elaborate plan to test their hearts, but his motive was to see their repentance so he could get to this very moment. But look back each step of the way. Joseph could not have controlled that they ended up in Egypt in the first place. With each trip back and forth to their father’s land, they could have made a different choice. But this complex plan was not hatched by Joseph’s hands, but by God’s.And that is our assurance as well. How do we know that God’s disposition is truly for us? How do we know that whether we come to Jesus, the greater Joseph, today for the first time or the 100th time, that He won’t pull the rug away from us? Look at the complex plan throughout the whole of the Bible. We fell in the garden through our first parents Adam and Eve and ever since then God has been working His plan out in the story of the world to bring about the preservation and giving of eternal life to all who would come to believe in Jesus Christ and His sacrifice. His providence was on full display in the cross of Christ. Look at these two sections from the book of Acts:They both show the tension that part of God’s predetermined plan of salvation was that wicked men would kill His own son, and that He would absorb the cost of eternal life on Himself through His death. This, like Joseph’s life, is hard to understand, and yet, better than fully understanding, is believing. Do you think that if God had this very complex plan playing out throughout the history of the world and through every nation and empire, that He will tweak your nose and tell you He was just kidding when you come to put your faith in His precious son that He crushed for your sins, if you believe? No! The complexity of the plan gives you assurance like the brothers could have in this moment in time as well.One final point on providence. We should have comfort and security in God’s providence in the troubled time we live in right now. Joseph had been a tent dwelling Hebrew, a slave in the prison, and now was a ruler in the world empire of his time. Do you wonder if his heart was tied to his new nation? No, he saw himself clearly in the providence of God though his own personal rise and fall, and through the rise and fall of prosperity in the nation of Egypt. He says that God sent him to preserve a remnant for his people.Based on this and the fact that we are coming up to a tense election this coming Tuesday and possibly more troubled times ahead, I want to apply the truth of God’s providence to us. Our comfort should not be in the results of an election, or in hopes that a party or man would rule or reign, or even in the rise or fall of America itself, but in God’s purposes through it all. Can I ask you, are you hoping and believing for your party to win more than you are for God’s outworking plan through whatever happens? Do you think “all is lost” if this candidate or that candidate doesn’t get into office? What would your social media feed have to say about that?Here’s the truth of scripture: nations rise and fall and God will be exalted. What if your worst nightmare happened and the party you call the fascists hold power? What if communism does take hold in America and the country is never the same again? What if America fell like the Roman Empire?Because that is what happens historically, nations rise and fall, very quickly at times. Outside the walls of the Roman Forum along the Via Dei Fori Imperali, there are 5 subsequent maps that show the expansion of the Romans Empire. It starts with a speck in the Roman Tiber Valley, and ends up covering all of Europe and beyond. But now, we walk by those maps as tourists and trample upon the ruins of that empire.Greece, Rome, Britain, America, and whatever world empires would follow are nothing to the God of providence. Listen to the words of the prophet Isaiah:So, why are we so inordinately fascinated with the security of the empire and the comfort of this country? Surely we should exercise our civic duties and vote, I’m not saying otherwise. But we will never find comfort or security in this election or any other.Instead we should take a mental tour through the Colosseum where they put to death our brothers and sisters in Christ simply for believing in Jesus, and we can laugh. The church walks over the ruins of empires of the world in the providence of God as He continues to work out His purpose of bringing all tongues and tribes to a knowledge of His Son Jesus, just like He brought all the known world under the sway of Joseph so that His people could come and dwell safely in the land of Goshen.This understanding of the providence of God not only enabled Joseph to process his human experience and emotions as part of God’s story, but also led to the:Revelation of Purpose by the Forgiveness & Reconciliation of God’s peopleRead with me as we pick up the story again in verses 9-15:“Hurry and go up to my father and say to him, ‘Thus says your son Joseph, God has made me lord of all Egypt. Come down to me; do not tarry. You shall dwell in the land of Goshen, and you shall be near me, you and your children and your children’s children, and your flocks, your herds, and all that you have. There I will provide for you, for there are yet five years of famine to come, so that you and your household, and all that you have, do not come to poverty. And now your eyes see, and the eyes of my brother Benjamin see, that it is my mouth that speaks to you. You must tell my father of all my honor in Egypt, and of all that you have seen. Hurry and bring my father down here.’ Then he fell upon his brother Benjamin’s neck and wept, and Benjamin wept upon his neck. And he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them. After that his brothers talked with him.”This picture of Joseph kissing not only Benjamin, but all his brothers reveals the purpose of God in this story even further. That God is a forgiving God who works by the forgiving and reconciliation of His people.Joseph and his brothers are an illustration of something that John Stott said so well, that:“Forgiveness is as indispensable to the life and health of the soul as food is for the body.”By the end of this chapter we find that the forgiveness is given and the reconciliation is experienced by the family of Joseph literally revives the heart of Jacob and brings fresh life. So, forgiveness is not some small little element of the Christian message or experience, but it’s at its very heart.I want you to think for a second how you would have responded to the brothers. Would you have said, “Now you’ll get what is coming to you? Now I’ll get my pound of flesh?” But in this story we see the exact opposite in the actions on the part Joseph in response to the actions of his brothers. His brothers tore his clothes off and he gave them clothes. His brothers sold him to gain money, he gave them money. His brother sent him far away from them, he said come close to me.This is the dramatic illustration of the actions of a forgiving heart. It’s the expression of someone who has themselves learned their own debt before God, who know as Psalm 130 says that:“If you Oh Lord should mark iniquities who could stand?”Can you really believe that Joseph is hugging and kissing all of his brothers? And more than that, my question to you this morning in my last point is, can you hug and kiss all your brothers and sisters? Can you forgive offenses that you have to admit pale in comparison with the suffering and hurt that Joseph has been through?If not, then perhaps you have never really been forgiven by God, because our forgiveness of others is a direct expression of the reality of our awareness of our own forgiveness before God. Since God has forgiven us, we will be quick to forgive.Matthew 18 is a New Testament explanation of what we see in the Joseph story. Let’s look at that together:So, based on that, God says to you right now today, if on the cross my son said, “Father forgive them they know not what they do,” are you prepared to hold a grudge against your brother or sister in Christ for the rest of their lives? Of all things the church is to be a people of forgiveness. Is that not part of the prayer the Lord gave us to pray? Forgive us our debts as we forgive those who sin against us.We are going to close with a song called “His Mercy is More.“ And I want to invite you to celebrate the mercy of God in His all-knowing forgiveness of you through the fully sufficient sacrificial death of Jesus Christ. Maybe you need to accept this gift He gives for the first time in order to celebrate that with us today.But I also want to invite you to consider the words of this hymn in regards to the relationships you have around you in your marriage, with you kids or parents, among your roommates, in this church, in your Life Group, or anywhere else. Let these words go through you heart and mind, leading to action as you leave this place and throw yourself on any brother or sister who there are unresolved issues with.“Forgive Our Sins, As We Forgive”Father, forgive our sins as we forgive, you taught us Lord to pray.But you alone can grant us grace to live the words we say.How can your pardon reach and bless the unforgiving heart,That broods on wrong and will not let old bitterness depart.In blazing light, your cross reveals the truth we dimly knew.How small the debts men owe to us, how great our debt to you.Lord, cleanse the debts within our souls and bid resentment cease.Then, reconciled to God and man, our lives will spread your peace.