Well, if you'll turn with me in the Word of God to Genesis chapter 41. Our passage this morning will be Genesis 41 verses 37 through 57. Genesis 41 beginning with verse 37. So the advice was good in the eyes of Pharaoh and in the eyes of all his servants. And Pharaoh said to his servants, Can we find such a one as this, a man in whom is the Spirit of God? And Pharaoh said to Joseph, Inasmuch as God has shown you all this, there is no one as discerning and wise as you. You shall be over my house, and all my people shall be ruled according to your word. Only in regard to the throne will I be greater than you. And Pharaoh said to Joseph, See, I have set you over all the land of Egypt. And Pharaoh took his signet ring off his hand and put it on Joseph's hand. And he clothed them in garments of fine linen and put a gold chain around his neck. And he had him ride in the second chariot which he had. And they cried out before him, Bow the knee. So he set him over all the land of Egypt. Pharaoh also said to Joseph, I am Pharaoh, and without your consent no man can lift his hand or foot in all the land of Egypt. And Pharaoh called Joseph's name Zoknok-Paneah, and he gave him as a wife Asenath, the daughter of Potipharah, priest of On. So Joseph went out over all the land of Egypt. Joseph was thirty years old when he stood before Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and Joseph went out from the presence of Pharaoh and went throughout all the land of Egypt. Now in the seven plentiful years the ground brought forth abundantly. So he gathered up all the food of the seven years which were in the land of Egypt and laid up the food in the cities. He laid up in every city the food of the fields which surrounded them. Joseph gathered very much grain as the sand of the sea until he stopped counting for it was immeasurable. And to Joseph were born two sons before the years of famine came. And Masnath, the daughter of Potipharah, priest of On, bore to him. Joseph called the name of the firstborn Manasseh, for God has made me forget all my toil and all my father's house. And the name of the second he called Ephraim, for God has caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction. Then the seven years of plenty which were in the land of Egypt ended, and the seven years of famine began to come, as Joseph had said. The famine was in all lands, but in all the land of Egypt there was bread. So when all the land of Egypt was famished, the people cried to Pharaoh for bread. Then Pharaoh said to all the Egyptians, Go to Joseph, whatever he says to you, do. The famine was over all the face of the earth, and Joseph opened the storehouses and sold to the Egyptians, and the famine became severe in the land of Egypt. So all countries came to Joseph in Egypt to buy grain, because the famine was severe in all lands." Let's pray. Father, we pray for light and heat to be given to us by the power of your Spirit, that you would give us comprehension and understanding of what the Scriptures are telling us. But Lord, also make application to our souls, so that we come away transformed and sanctified, because you sanctify your people by your truth. Help us to walk away more bold. in believing your truth and your promises, because you've shown us time and again that every promise you make, every prophecy you give, is always fulfilled. And for any who are here who are outside of Christ, help them to, by faith, lay a hold of the promise that Jesus Christ receives sinners, and to fly to Him, repenting of their sin, repenting even of their righteousness, and putting their faith solely in Him, that they might be saved. Do this for your honor, we pray, in Jesus' name. Amen. So we've been studying through Genesis 40 and 41. We've seen a central recurring theme that keeps coming up over and over again. And that theme can be summarized this way. Because God cannot lie. He is always true to His word. What He has promised to do, He will always perform. And what he has prophesied will always come to pass. As we studied chapters 40 and 41, I've been framing it under three basic headings, one heading per sermon for the last several weeks. The first we saw this, the prophecies given to Pharaoh's officers. Pharaoh's chief butler and his chief baker, they had dreams that troubled them. The Lord enabled Joseph to interpret their dreams. The chief butler had a dream of hope. whereas the chief baker had a dream of doom. And both came to fruition exactly as God had said they would. Three days later, the chief butler found mercy and was set free. The chief baker was shown justice and was hung from a tree until he died. And Joseph, knowing what was going to happen to the butler, had said, remember me when you get out of this place. And so the man promptly forgot him for two full years. Well then, two weeks ago, we considered the prophecies given to Pharaoh. After Joseph had served a prison sentence for two more years for a crime he did not commit, Pharaoh had two troubling dreams in one night. And it troubled him so badly that he called for all the practitioners of the cult and all the wise men and philosophers of Egypt, but none could tell him what his dreams meant. And so finally, the chief butler remembers, oh yes, I remember when this happened to me. And he begins to tell him about Joseph, this Hebrew servant who was able to interpret these things. So Pharaoh quickly summons him. Joseph is brought out of prison to the presence of the king. And it's interesting, the thing we noted, and this is going to be important as we consider things this morning, remember that Pharaoh looked at him and flattered him and said, I am told that you have the ability to interpret dreams. And do you remember what Joseph did? Not me. It's not in me. It's God. God is the one who will give you a favorable interpretation of your dream. And, of course, you know what the prophecy was. It was a mixture. It was a mixture of prosperity and of poverty. You're going to have seven years of abundance followed by seven years of extreme famine. And Joseph took it upon himself to counsel Pharaoh. It says, find a wise and discerning man to put over this business, and during the seven years of plenty, save 20% of all the grain that's harvested, so you'll have food to prosper during the seven years of famine. All of which brings us to our third heading, which I'm going to give you this morning, which is simply this, the prophecies given to Joseph. I need to go ahead and explain something about this particular heading. Because as we read the text, you may have noticed there's no new prophecies given to Joseph. The prophecies that begin to be fulfilled in our text were given to him 13 years earlier. Now, I emphasize that for a reason. I find it fascinating that the prophecies God gave first are the ones he fulfilled last. Think about it. When he gave prophecies to the baker and the butler, it only took three days before their prophecies were fulfilled. When he gives prophecies to Pharaoh, within the next year, he begins to bring this time of prosperity. But for Joseph, He makes him wait 13 years before he begins to fulfill the prophecy. The prophecy was, your brothers and your parents will bow down before you. And as a matter of fact, it's not even going to be completely fulfilled yet. He's got to wait 9 more years. He's 30 in our text. He's going to be 39 before finally all this comes to fruition. I find it fascinating that God makes His faithful servant wait the longest, whereas He answers the prophecies of the pagans very quickly. And I emphasize that because it's something we've been seeing all throughout our study of Genesis, isn't it? God is just not in a hurry. He gives us promises and prophecies, and we think to ourselves, and we cry out to Him, how long? How long do you fulfill it? But He makes us wait. He tells Abraham when he's 75 years old, I'm going to give you children. I'm going to make your seed so numerous that you can't even count them. And He makes them wait 25 years until he's 100 years old before He gives them Isaac. We see him making prophecies to Joseph, and he makes him wait. And if you've been in the Christian pilgrimage for very long at all, you know how this is, don't you? There may be godly desires in your heart, things that are right, and why does the Lord not answer this? Why doesn't He give this to me? Or He's promised He's going to come again. Why doesn't He come? Because I'm really sick of this world, and I'd like for Him to come back. And yet, He makes us wait. And we can rest assured that though God's timing is never our own, I always would rather him did it yesterday, and he's like, okay, 30 years from now, I'll do it. That's the way it seems to be in my life. How about yours? We can trust him that he knows what's best. And He has a purpose. He has a purpose in the waiting. He wants us to trust Him and to say, I will be faithful in the meantime until we see the fulfillment of the promise. That I'm going to trust you regardless, knowing that He's sanctifying us through it. I remember a number of years ago, there was a desire I'd had for years that I believe was a godly desire. It was a biblical desire. And yet, for all my praying and all my asking, God would never grant that desire. He eventually did. But I remember calling a pastor friend of mine and sharing my heart and saying, why does the Lord not do this? And he said, you know, I desire the Lord to do this thing for you as well. I have desired it for years, I've prayed for it for years. He said, but the very fact that he hasn't means this, that if he fulfilled it right now, it would bring some harm to your soul. And He knows that, and so because He loves you so much, He's withheld the desire, because this way your soul can be sanctified. I appreciate the sweet counsel, my friend, because it's right. God knows what He's doing. I don't know what He's doing. You don't know what He's doing, but He knows what He's doing, and we have to trust Him. That's what it means to wait upon the Lord, isn't it? To trust Him that He knows what He's doing, and He will fulfill His promise in the time of His choosing. So, with that in view, Getting into our text, the first and primary thing I want you to see in our text is this. It's that the Lord used Joseph's humility to magnify God's glory in the eyes of a pagan king. You remember what happened 13 years earlier when God gave his vision to Joseph. It should have humbled him, but it didn't. It did the opposite. It filled him with young man's disease. Suddenly, he was full of pride. You brothers, you're going to bow down to me. Mom and Dad, you too. I had a dream about you. And even Jacob, as much as he was prejudicial or partial to Joseph, even he rebuked him. He recognized the pride there. He says, are your father and your mother going to bow down to you? But he recognizes well that despite Joseph's pride, there may have been God speaking to him because he kept the thing in mind. But here was Joseph lifted up in pride. But God knows how to humble those that are lifted up in pride. Getting sold into slavery by your brothers can do it. And if that doesn't completely do it, getting falsely accused by a lying whore and thrown into prison and having a prison sentence on your record, that can do it and that can begin curing you of the disease. But here's the thing I want you to see, as devastating as these trials were for Joseph, look at the sanctification that it produced in him. Look at how God accomplished his purposes in the heart of his servant. The trials transformed him into a godly man. And they transformed him into a humble man. There are lessons that Joseph learned as a slave and as a prisoner that I believe he could not have learned in any other way. And so God knew it. And God did it. Why does God take you through trials? Why does God take you through afflictions and hardship and difficulties, things that you never would have chosen for yourself, and yet God takes you through them? Diamonds are produced when high intense pressure is put upon coals. And we get this rare gem, this diamond that comes forth from it. Even so, humility is a rare gem that's priceless inside of God. And the way He produces it in your life and in mine is to put pressure on you. He puts the pressure on you to produce this rare thing of humility. His intention is to make you more and more like your elder brother, Jesus Christ, and less like yourself. What is God doing when he takes you through hardship and adversity? Well, he's transforming the motives that govern your heart, so that you're not looking for the praises of men, but rather for the glory of God. He's changing the way that you think, and the way that you discern and interpret the world around you so that you think of it through biblical terms rather than through humanistic terms. He's dealing with your ungodly attitudes. He's stirring up holy affections to cause you to love the Lord and His Word and His people more and more and more than you have in the past. He's seeking to purify your words. He's striving to make you holy. in all your conduct. He doesn't just do that through the good times. He does it through the hard times as well. Look at the fruit in Joseph's life. As we've already noticed, when Pharaoh came flattering him, he immediately channeled the glory away from himself and said, look at my God. It's not me. It's not my gifts. It's the giver of the gifts who will give you the interpretation. It's God. And notice how it works in Pharaoh's life. Look at it again at verse 38. There's this advice that's given to Pharaoh, and he says, that's great advice. Let's appoint somebody. And the obvious choice for the man that we need to put over all of Egypt is none other than Joseph. Why, though? Why did he choose Joseph? Verse 38, Can we find such a one as this, a man in whom is the Spirit of God? The Holy Spirit lives inside of this man, therefore let's choose him, because we see God upon him. Verse 39, "...inasmuch as God has shown you all of this." He doesn't give glory to the gift, He gives glory to the giver of the gift. And then, even when you go down to verse 45, Pharaoh gives him a name, Tzachnapaneh. It's an Egyptian name, probably means, God speaks. and he lives. Now, think about that. When he has this name, that means any time any Egyptian spoke Joseph's name, he was reminded of something. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Joseph is the living God, and furthermore, this living God has revealed himself to men he speaks. Isn't it just like God to take Joseph's humiliation and use it for God's exaltation. That is, he glorifies God so that a pagan king begins to give glory to God, and indeed, the entire nation of Egypt gives glory to God through it all. All of this, God did as Joseph sought to humble himself. Joseph's humiliation resulted in God's exaltation. Have you ever noticed that Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, gives two what seem at first contradictory commands? In chapter 5, he says, In chapter 6 he says, beware of letting men see your good works. But read the context and you'll realize Jesus is not contradicting himself. If your motive is that you want glory to be brought to God through your good works, then let men see your good works. But if your motive is that men may praise you, that you receive glory, hide your good works. Don't let men see them. It's a question of motive. What's the motive behind it? We are to live in such a way that when people see good works in us, they recognize this is a treasure that God has placed in earthen vessels so that the power is from God and not from men. They understand Jesus lives inside of this man, and Jesus lives inside of this woman, and that's why things are the way they are. Joseph could say to Pharaoh, I'm nobody from nowhere, but I have some kind of God. Glorify Him. Look to Him. I like the phrase that when we talk about evangelism, we're nobody's telling everybody about somebody. Because that's really what we're here to do, isn't it? To give glory to His name. If you were to walk outside, and everybody in the street had stopped their cars, and they were outside their cars, and they're standing and looking up at the sky, you wouldn't look at them and say, look at that suit that guy's wearing. Or if there's a woman looking up and say, she has a lovely neck and the way she's looking upward accentuates the beauty of her neck. Or look at what great poise or great posture that guy has as he looks skyward. You wouldn't stop to notice what the people look like who are looking upward. If everybody's looking up at the sky, what would you do? You'd look up at the sky to see what they're looking at. And isn't that what the Christian life is? Who does this person have the gaze of their soul fixed upon? They're looking at somebody. There's something that explains the difference in the way that they live, in the way they speak, in the way they act, that is supernatural, that is not something in and of themselves. It brings glory to others. We find it all through the pages of Scripture, don't we? We find it in John the Baptist. He must increase, but I must decrease. It was a favorite saying of George Whitefield who would say over and over again repeatedly, may the name of George Whitefield perish, but the name of Christ might be exalted. I look at Joseph and I think a little bit of Adoniram Judson. Judson was a lot like Joseph in my mind. If you've read about Judson, he is to the United States what William Carey was to Great Britain, the first missionary sent out from our ranks, sent out as a congregationalist, studied baptism, became a Baptist before he arrived in India, that kind of stuff. But nonetheless, Judson certainly was full of evangelical zeal, but if you read the early accounts of his life, he was also full of Judson. He was full of himself. He had a tendency to be self-willed. He actually rebuked one of the men, I believe it was on his ordination council, trying to instruct him about what he should do. He wrote a letter appealing to his future father-in-law for the hand of his daughter. And suffice it to say, if this was my daughter and somebody wrote this to me, I would throw him through the front door and say, beat it, kid. Who do you think you are? He was very full of himself in those early days. And yet, the Lord has a way of humbling us, doesn't he? He buried child after child after child on the mission field. He was taken into captivity. It will make you weep to read of the things he went through, the way he was tortured, excruciating conditions that he lived under, barely having anything to eat. He would sleep at night with his feet shackled above him, only his shoulders and head were allowed to touch the ground. Threat of death every single day, so much that he actually contemplated suicide at one point. When he was finally released, just a few months later, his wife perished, and they had a newborn baby, and the baby perished a month later. He tried to bury his grief by working harder for the next two years, and after two years, it all caught up to him, and he almost lost his mind. He went out into the jungle that was full of Burmese tigers that were man-eaters, and he sat there and just dug a grave for himself and mourned and wept. Almost lost his mind, almost lost his faith. God was faithful. He restored him. He brought him through it. He married a second wife. They served faithfully together for years. She died. Well, then he married a third wife. And the story I'm going to tell you next is very telling about the differences God made in Judson's life, because he came back to the United States only one time on furlough. And he came with his third wife, and to his astonishment, he would become the celebrity overnight. Everybody had heard about his work in Burma, and all the things he had endured, and all the trials he'd gone through. And so invitations flooded in from all kinds of local churches, wanting him to come and preach for them, and he accepted those invitations. There's a very telling story about one of those places. He went and preached the gospel at one of these churches, and then when he got into the carriage with his wife, the horse-drawn carriage, to go to their hotel or wherever they were staying, she said to him, Honey, you disappointed those people. They came here wanting to hear stories about Adoniram Judson and his mission to Burma, and about snakes and man-eating Burmese tigers and all that stuff, and you didn't give it to them. And apparently she was a little disappointed too. And his response was very telling. He said, Honey, I just gave them the greatest story that's ever been told. I told them about how God sent His only begotten Son into the world to die for sinners. And if that is not sufficient for them, I have no greater story to tell." See how the Lord transformed a man who once was full of himself to now say, I'm not here to preach Adoniram Judson. I'm here to preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified. There's another story similar to that. These stories are worth compounding to get the point, to drive the point home. A group of American ministers in the 19th century went over to Great Britain. on vacation, and they're going from church to church to church, and they said, while we're here, we want to visit some of these people we've heard about, and their wonderful ministries. So they came to one place, and they heard this man preach. There were 3,000 people gathered there that day. And they said the man preached with such power and such force, and they said his personality dominated every facet of the service. And they walked away that morning saying, what a great minister is Pastor So-and-So. That night, they went and visited the Metropolitan Tabernacle, where Charles Spurgeon was. There were 5,000 people there. And the church building was huge. He got up with his beautiful British brogue and began to speak. And he said, but pretty soon we forgot about who was around us, how big the place was. We even forgot about Spurgeon's voice. And we walked away saying, what a great savior Jesus Christ is. That needs to be our heart. Here was a man humbled, Joseph was humbled by God, and what was the fruit of it? The fruit was God was given glory. He abased himself and God was exalted. Go and do likewise, because this is what God calls all of us to be and to do. Well, notice, in the next place, that God's Word came to pass in exacting detail, just as God had said it would. And we see the fulfillment of Joseph's prophetic dreams, and then we see the fulfillment of Pharaoh's prophetic dreams. First of all, the fulfillment of Joseph's prophetic dreams. And it's interesting that, as God's promises so often are, The fulfillment was far greater than the expectation. The promise was this, your family is going to bow down in front of you. It wasn't the whole nation of Egypt is going to bow down in front of you, and that's what God does. In other words, the fulfillment is even bigger than the promise was. Isn't that true of Christ and the coming of Christ? We read about the coming of the Messiah. all throughout the Old Testament. But the fulfillment is far even greater than the expectation could have been. Michael Card has a song where he speaks about the prophets and he says, For a thousand years the dreamers dreamt and hoped to see his love. In other words, they wanted to see with their own eyes the Messiah. But the promise showed that their wildest dreams had simply not been wild enough. that Jesus not only fulfilled the expectations, he far exceeded them. That is, he was even greater than people could have ever imagined or hoped. And that's what we find as we see the promises fulfilled for Joseph. Notice the kind of authority that Joseph gives to him. Verse 40 says, "...you shall be over my house." In other words, you shall have charge over my wives. and over my sons and my daughters, my princes and my princesses." Psalm 105 verses 21 to 22 make it clear just how extensive this authority was. He, that is, Pharaoh, made him, Joseph, lord of his house and ruler of all his possessions. The whole palace was under his authority to bind his princes at his pleasure and teach his elders wisdom. Now, did you hear that? He was given authority to put Pharaoh's sons in jail. So Pharaoh's sons write to Pharaoh and say, Dad, Joseph put me in prison. And his response wasn't, Joseph, what did you do? It was like, son, what did you do? Because he'd come to trust this foreigner more than even his own sons. What kind of trust does it take to put a man in charge of your own household? A man who, by the way, was accused, falsely, of committing adultery with another man's wife. And yet he sees the evidence of God's grace and he puts trust in Him. Not only did he put Him over all of his house, he put Him over all of Egypt. He says, you're going to rule all my people. And how extensive was this? Look at verse 44, I am Pharaoh, and without your consent, no man may lift his hand or foot in all the land of Egypt. In other words, when you say eggs, they're going to scramble. If you say hop on one leg, they have to hop on one leg until you say stop. That's the extent of authority I'm going to entrust to your care, far greater than anything that Joseph could have expected. And furthermore, you'll find that he sends him in a chariot around to everybody saying, bow the knee to this man Joseph. The only limitation to his authority was I alone, Pharaoh, will be greater than you in regards to the throne, but everything else It's your thing to do with as you wish. That's the kind of trust he put in him. There are several things to think about this. First of all, think about the fact, and I'll come back to this at the end, that God had been preparing Joseph for this position for all these years through all the hard things he was going through. Because Potiphar made him ruler of his house, and he learned to manage Potiphar's house, and then the warden in prison put him in charge of all the prisoners, and he was faithful there, you might say that because Joseph was faithful in little, God made him faithful in much. This was the proving ground in which his skills were honed that he would need for future service. But only in regard to the throne would Pharaoh be greater." Now, get this. In those days, the great superpower of the ancient world was Egypt. And that was going to be solidified in the coming years because the entire world would be dependent upon them economically because only they had grain. A worldwide famine hit the place and everybody was looking to Egypt to provide for them. That put them in an economic position to where they were the great superpower. Now, here's the point I'm driving at. We talk about the President of the United States and we call him the most powerful man in the world. Pharaoh was the most powerful man in the world at that time. And yet, here's Joseph under Pharaoh, and he's the second most powerful man, not just in Egypt, but in the world. That far exceeded any expectation Joseph had had. But how did God prepare him to be the second most powerful man in the whole world? By making him a slave. and making him a prisoner. It's just like God to do that, isn't it? He humbles us first and then gives exaltation. Even Jesus himself, the Bible tells us, he humbled himself lower than any man on earth that could ever lower himself. And therefore God has highly exalted him and given him the name above every name, that the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea. And every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of the Father. Humility always precedes exaltation, but pride goes before humiliation. So here was a man who humbled himself under God's hand, and God used him for his glory. Now notice in verse 45 that he's given a wife, Asenath, and it's interesting, she was the daughter of an idolatrous priest, and she was a Gentile. The scriptures give us no commentary, positive or negative, about Joseph marrying this woman. So it's conjecture on my part, but I think it's good conjecture. That because Joseph was a man who loved the Lord so much, I suspect that Asenath was someone who was like Rahab or Ruth. Someone who was a Gentile who came to believe in Joseph's God. Because I can't imagine Joseph, this godly man that he was, and the lover of God that he was, being unequally yoked with a pagan. That's a conjecture on my part, but I think it's probably good conjecture. But at any rate, in verses 46 to 57, we read of the fulfillment of Pharaoh's prophetic dreams. Joseph's 30 years old when he stands before Pharaoh, king of Egypt. And Joseph went out from the presence of Pharaoh and went throughout all the land of Egypt. Verse 45 and 46 emphasize this. Now think about this. A man who had been confined to a prison for many, many years, who was isolated, could not go anywhere, was bound by fetters to the wall very often, this man now has the freedom to go anywhere he wants in all of Egypt. Notice the contrast of how freeing that is that now you can go wherever you want to go, whereas before you have been confined and isolated. And he gathers up all the food and all the land. And notice down in verse 49, He gathered very much grain. Because it wasn't just that God made the land fruitful, He made it abundantly fruitful. So they were having record-breaking crops. Literally, the text says, they were taking it by the handfuls. They just couldn't store enough of it. They stopped counting because they had so much grain in every city to provide for people. And notice the language in verse 49, He gathered very much grain as the sand of the sea. Have you heard that phrase before in Genesis? It reminds us, doesn't it, of another promise God made, a promise He made to Abraham. Your descendants will be like the stars in the sky, or like the sand of the seashore. And why was God bringing prosperity to Egypt? Ultimately, it wasn't for Egypt's sake. They were secondary benefactors, let's put it that way. It was because His chosen people were about to go through a famine, and He was making provision for them. Because if they perish because they don't have food, God's promise would come to an end, and the Messiah would never be sent. And so I believe there's an allusion here to say God gave grain as numerous as the sands of the seashore, so that Abraham's descendants would be as the sand of the seashore. Speaking of which, the text goes there in the very next place. Because Joseph has two children. Two more stars added into Abraham's firmament. Two more sands upon the seashore. God is fulfilling his promise with Abraham because now he has two half-tribes, Ephraim and Manasseh. And notice something about these tribes. Notice the names, verse 51 and 52. Joseph called the name of the firstborn Manasseh. It means to cause to forget. Why? For God has made me forget all my toil and all my father's house. Joseph had doubtless gone through a lot of anger and a lot of bitterness thinking about his brothers, thinking about the woman who betrayed him and lied about him when he had done the morally upright thing and said he had tried to rape her. He's human after all, and so he would have struggled just like we do. And yet, while God took him through a very bitter and hard season, he then brought a season of peace, a season of freedom, a season of prosperity. My point being this, God knows how much you can handle and how much I can handle. And there are seasons we go through that are hard. Have you ever gone through seasons where you feel like every single thing you touch turns to dust? You're trying to do things for God, and you feel like you're slogging waist-deep in quicksand, and you just can't get anywhere, and you're trying, and you're trying, and you're trying, friends betray you, turn upon you, it's a pruning season, and you're just going, you feel so barren in your soul, and you're thinking to yourself, when is there ever going to be light? Well, haven't you found in your pilgrimage that God doesn't keep you there forever? He brings you out of those seasons and He brings you to seasons of refreshment, seasons in which there's times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord to encourage you and comfort you. He prunes you as individuals, He prunes us as a church, and then what does He do? He brings fruitfulness. He brings new growth in ways that we could not have expected. And he does it over and over again because he knows how much we can endure, and he knows when we need relief, and when we need a season of peace. My point is this, the Holy Spirit is your convictor, but he's also your comforter. He doesn't just tear down, He builds up. He encourages, He comforts. He brings seasons of refreshment and of peace. And we see this reflected in Joseph's light. I've been able to forget the hardship of the past because of the season God has brought me to in the present. We thank God that He loves us enough to give us those seasons to encourage us and to build us up. Then Ephraim. Ephraim means fruitfulness. God has made me fruitful. I was barren for a long time, and now I'm not on the shelf. I'm being used by him, and he's caused me to be fruitful in a land of my affliction. Well, then notice verses 3 and 54. The seven years of plenty were in the land of Egypt, which were in the land of Egypt ended, and the seven years of famine began to come. Note the key word, as Joseph had said. I believe that's the anchor point of the entire narrative. It came to pass just as God said it would. There were seven years of plenty, followed by seven years of famine, and it's reminding us again, look at God. Look at God, that everything he says is true. It's driving home the point that I began with, that because God cannot lie, He's always true to His word. What He's promised to do, He will always perform. What He has prophesied to come to pass, always will. Chapter ends with verses 54 to 57. The famine hits. It's a severe famine. It's not just a local famine. It's not just Egypt. It's a worldwide famine. The people of Egypt cry out to Pharaoh, we're starving. Go to Joseph, he'll know what to do. He opens the grain houses, sells them grain, they're taken care of. But it's not just them. It's the surrounding nations too, coming to Egypt and saying, we're starving. We need food. And they're able to purchase through all the wise build-up that they had done for those seven years, they're able to purchase from Joseph. And of course, what this is doing is setting us up for the fact that two years hence, he's finally going to be reunited to his brothers and going to be revealed to them, which is going to be the subject of the next chapters. When I trust the Spirit of God has already made numerous applications to you already, I have three more to add to it. First of all, dare to believe that what God has promised, He is able to perform. It's a central point Moses keeps bringing us back to, isn't it? This is what God said, and this is what God did, and this is what God said, and this is what He did, and this is what He said, and this is what He did, over and over and over again. God told Abraham, I'm going to make you prosperous. I'm going to make of you a nation. I'm going to give you children so numerous you can't even count them. Did he do it? He did. In your seed, all families will be blessed. Has he done that? Is he doing that? Yes. Joseph, you're going to be a great ruler. He made him a great ruler. Baker, you've got three days to live. Butler, you're going to be restored to Pharaoh's good graces. Pharaoh, this is what I'm bringing. Prosperity followed by famine. And Pharaoh, had he not believed the Word of God, would not have acted upon Joseph's counsel, and the result would have been Egypt would have perished. But he believed the Word and acted like it was true. So first of all, if you're here and you're outside of Jesus Christ, maybe you think, I'm so wicked, so vile, God could never, ever receive me to himself. Maybe you're here and you've aborted your own child. And though you may say outwardly it was the right thing to do, your conscience knows better. I saw signs saying black lives matter, and of course black lives matter because black men and women are made in the image of God, and Asian lives matter, and Chinese lives matter, and white lives matter. Human lives matter because we're made in God's image. I thought to myself, will we protest that unborn lives matter? Because they do, because they're made in God's image. All these things matter, yes, it's right, but you look at your life, maybe you've been full of pornography, you've been a blasphemer, you've been involved in all kinds of sexual immorality, and you say, God would never want to have anything to do with me. The Bible says, Jesus receives sinners. He saves ungodly people. He doesn't save godly people, He saves ungodly people. He gives His righteousness to unholy, unthankful, ungrateful people. That's the people for whom Jesus died. And however wicked and vile you may think you are, if you believe His promise, you'll lay a hold of it by faith and say, Jesus received sinners like me. You'll believe Him when He says there's a day of judgment coming, and you'll flee from that judgment by turning from all your sin, turning away from all your righteousness, and putting your faith in Christ alone. Trust Him to do for you what you can't do for yourself. But unbelief will make you say, well, Jesus can never receive me because I'm not righteous enough. Unbelief will say, I don't need to flee to Jesus because I don't believe there's a day of judgment coming. But faith says, these things are true, and therefore I'm going to act upon them. I'm going to humble myself in the sight of God. I'm going to mourn over my sin, and I'm going to believe on Jesus Christ. Please, it's true, there's a day of judgment coming. The fact that Jesus has risen from the dead is proof positive there's a day of judgment coming. And your only hope that you're ever going to find is not in your own works. You're not going to find it in any religion somewhere. You can only find it in Christ, because He's the only way to God. But what about you if you're a Christian? What if you're in Christ? What about believing God's promises? Well, the Scriptures are full of wonderful promises that assure you that if you seek the Lord, you will find Him. Because Christianity at its heart isn't a system of theology or a system of ethics, even though it's full of theology and full of ethics. But nonetheless, it is a relationship with God. It's a restored relationship with God through Jesus Christ. This is eternal life, that they may know you, the one true and living God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. And just as your relationship with your spouse is going to suffer and deteriorate if you don't cultivate that relationship by spending time in the presence of your wife or your husband, even so, you have to grow in grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, and that means you've got to spend time in His presence. Think of all the scriptures that say things like this. James says, draw near to God. And what will He do? He will draw near to you. One of my favorite Old Testament passages is in Jeremiah, you will seek me and you will find me when you search for me with all your heart and I will be found of you. says the Lord. Or how about the writer of Hebrews? He who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. If you believe that promise, it will create a fervent, diligent prayer life in you. But if you throw your hands up and say, well, it's useless. Prayer is a waste of my time. I'm just not very good at it. And all my words are like lead balloons that fall to the ground. We all feel that way, don't we? And I don't think it's worth the time invested, then unbelief will keep you from cultivating a fervent prayer life. Because you have to believe the promise is true if you're going to diligently seek Him. You see, prayerlessness is a sign of unbelief, for one thing. It's a sign of apathy. And it's a sign of self-sufficiency. I can do everything without God's help. But if you believe the promise that He's promised, as futile as I am, as difficult as it is to pray, He has promised that if I diligently seek Him, He'll reward me. Then it will motivate you to get before the presence of God through Jesus Christ and say, Lord, I have no right to come to you except for the merits of Christ. But because of Him, I have every right to come to you. and it will cause you to be fervent and diligent. There's another thing for us as Christians. If you do not believe in God's effectual calling, which is a Bible doctrine, that He effectually calls sinners to Himself, and He has the power to draw men to Jesus Christ, then you'll affect your evangelism. Because you'll look around at the hardness of men's hearts and say, that guy's heart's too hard for me to share the gospel with him. There's no way that person could be saved. I'm finding more and more it's my own unbelief that keeps me from sharing the gospel with people. My own unbelief in the doctrines of grace of all things. Because I have to believe that if God has chosen this man or woman, I don't know who He's chosen. He knows who He's chosen. He just told me to preach the gospel to everybody. And as I invite them to Christ, God is going to draw them irresistibly with irresistible cords of love to His Son, and He has the power to do that. It will stop me from being mute. Yes, I feel inadequate as an evangelist. Yes, I feel insecure as a fisher of men. Don't you too? We all do. I'm just not real good at it. My stammering lips are just not that great at it, Lord. I just don't know how to articulate these things clearly enough." Well, neither did the gathering demoniac. He just told everybody what great things Jesus did for him. And God used it. The point being, if we truly believe God has this power, it will take away our muteness. It'll make us no longer mute, but we'll speak with boldness to say, God can use my stammering lips to draw people to himself. Noah believed God and took action. Abraham believed God, took action. Joseph believed God, took action. Even the pagan King Pharaoh believed God and took action. Go and do likewise. Secondly, present humility and present faithfulness prepare you for future usefulness. Present humility and present faithfulness prepare you for future usefulness. When Joseph exalted himself, God humbled him. When Joseph humbled himself, God exalted him. It's a spiritual law that's all throughout scripture. It's said pointedly that God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. If you've been in the pilgrims of faith for any length of time, you probably can add scores of stories of how God has humbled you many, many times over the years and shown you, OK, I'm nobody, Lord. I humble myself under your hand. But you've also seen, when you've humbled yourself, how God has used and exalted you in ways you could not have expected. But it's interesting to me, in the midst of Joseph's afflictions, he really could have thrown a massive pity party. gloom and despair and agony on me. If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all." And he could have justified being lazy in Potiphar's house. He could have justified being lazy in prison because he could have said, well, God promised me something bigger. But that's not what he did. He humbled himself under the hand of God. And he put his hand to whatever God put in front of him in the circumstances God had ordained. And however much he was struggling with things, he still put his hand to it and said, I will do this for God's glory. I will labor for Him, even though I'm an obscurer in and in prison. Even though I'm a slave in Potiphar's house, I will work as unto God, not for eye service as a man pleaser, but giving glory to God. And look at how God used him. Look at how God prepared him, through that faithfulness and that humility, for future glory, and to make him a skillful leader and ruler in Egypt. You know, we live in days when the neo-Calvinistic movement loves to tell us, be radical. Right? Don't waste your life. Be wild at heart. Be radical, man. Do something radical for God. Give up your college education and go to outer Somovia and do something there. That's what we're being told and drilled to us all the time. You want to do something really radical? Strive to be ordinary. Be faithful. Be faithful in the mundane. Go to work and do an honest day's work for an honest day's wage. Come home and pay your bills on time. You want to do something radical for God. Watch your check account so you're not bouncing checks, because God's name's on you. And writing bad checks is reflecting on His glory and His name. Shepherd your wives and your children. Be faithful to them. Be faithful to the local church. Make Jesus known as you go. And if you die, and that's all that can be said of you, that you were faithful. That's so very important. My mentor Steve Martin, I would say it's the message of his life that he's drilled into us over and over and over and over again. He said, you know, when you're young, faithful doesn't sound very exciting. It sounds really boring and manila. But as you begin to grow in grace and you begin to see colleagues fall morally, you begin to look through church history and realize that people that set out to be radical wind up being heterodox. You realize they didn't end well. And then you realize it's a very big deal to be found faithful to the very end. Because if all that can be put on your tombstone is the word faithful, that's a very big deal. Because how many end well? God isn't going to say, well done, good and innovative servant. Well done, good and radical servant. Well done, good and faithful servant. To be found faithful is what is required of a steward. Here was Joseph who just sought to be faithful. And look at how God blessed him. He submitted himself to the circumstances God put him in. He sought to be faithful. And because he was faithful in little, God made him faithful in much. Go and do likewise. The final thing, and I've been waiting for years to tell you this, because I knew I was going to be preaching through Genesis at some point, and I'd talk to you about Joseph. And here's the thing I want to end with. If you are in Christ, in every circumstance, God is with you. in every circumstance. I'll never forget, it was like the late 80s, early 90s, I was home on leave from Bible college, either winter break or summer break, I can't remember which. And I was visiting the church that I grew up in, and I went and visited the high school, Sunday school class, one Sunday morning. And there's a man named Tommy Strickland, a friend of mine that probably is a distant relative of my wife, but he was teaching through the life of Joseph. And I'll never forget what he taught. He went to the whiteboard and he drew a graph. And he says, you want to graph Joseph's life, it's a series of major ups and downs. Starts off, and what do you see? He's given this vision, I'm going to be a great ruler. And the next thing that happens is, he's made a slave. Well then, in Potiphar's house, he's exalted and becomes this great manager. And then, he's falsely accused by this wicked woman that he's done something wicked when he's done what's right and he's thrown into prison. Then, he's given some hope because he gives a favorable interpretation to the butler's dreams. Okay, remember me and tell Pharaoh about me when you get out. And he forgets them for two years. And then finally, he's exalted and made the second highest ruler in all of Egypt. He said, but despite the pattern of ups and downs, draw a single line, straight horizontal line through it, there's something that never changes. And God was with him. And God was with him. And God was with him. As a matter of fact, isn't it interesting, that phrase is repeated when he's at his lowest. Sold into slavery. God was with him. Put in prison. God was with him. Bow before Pharaoh. The Spirit of God lives in you. God's with you. No matter what his circumstance, God was with him. It's as if the entire life of Joseph is a living, breathing narrative of the truth that we know that all things work together for the good of those who love Christ, to those who are called according to his purpose. That everything in his life was working. It didn't look like the straight path to leadership or greatness, did it? And yet, in God's plan, that's exactly what it was, though at the time it wasn't obvious. A little like your life and mine, isn't it? God takes us through paths and we wonder, why did he take us this way? You look back and go, how did we get here? Because it wasn't the way I would have chosen. But it's the way he chose. And through it all, the hard, the good, the bad, the ugly, God's with us. I will never leave you. nor forsake you." How do we know? Paul says we know all things. We, as God's people, know all things work out. Well, we know it because, first of all, God promised it. He can't lie. We have plenty of examples in the Scriptures themselves telling us of how God worked all things for good. And have you not seen it in your own pilgrimage? Things that you look back upon. Some things I look back on, I still don't understand why God did what He did. But many things I can look back with the benefit of hindsight and say, Lord, I didn't like it at the time, but thank you. Thank you that you did not answer this particular prayer. Thank you you did answer that one. Thank you you did things the way you did them. I wouldn't have chosen that. If I could go back in time, I still wouldn't have chosen it. But God doesn't consult with me. He rules this universe. He does as He pleases. And we look back and we realize that His purpose was to make us more like Jesus. And He's going to fulfill that purpose through thick and thin. And the more we can get a hold of that, the more we can believe it, forgive the cliche, but it keeps you from getting bitter and helps you get better. Because it's easy to get bitter in this life. To look on your circumstances and just say, let me be angry and full of frustration and unforgiveness. And yet to realize that even when men mean evil for us, God means it for good. To realize He's behind it all. He knows what He's doing and I can trust Him. Joseph learned that. It took him years to learn it, probably years in prison to learn it, but he learned it. Go and do likewise. Dare to believe what God has spoken. Dare to believe His perfect will is being worked out in your life, in His providence. When we get to home in glory, we'll understand all of it. Then we'll understand and realize this was what He was doing. But trust Him in the now. Believe His promise and hold fast. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your goodness. We thank you that you are sovereign. We thank you that wherever your providence leads us, your grace keeps us. And we thank you that wherever you lead us, we know that you are good, that you always act according to your character, your promises. We bless you and praise you for these truth. Oh Lord, help us to believe them with all of our hearts and to live like they are true. We ask these things in Christ's name, amen.