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Welcome to Pittsburgh Community
Church this morning. My name is Chris Arcady. I'm the lead pastor here
at PCC and I'm glad that you are worshiping with us this morning.
If you're visiting, welcome. Glad you're here. We are continuing
in our series The Promised Land this morning, Chasing the Promised
Land. Please turn your Bibles if you brought them to Genesis
chapter 37. We are going to be hanging out there this morning.
Genesis is the first book in the Bible, and chapter 37. So this is our third week in
the Chasing the Promised Land series, and you know how when
you're immersed in a certain concept, it just comes up everywhere
in life, right? You're just kind of going through
life, and you're like, oh, oh, there it is again. Ah, there it is again,
right? You know, especially if the Lord's trying to teach you
something in that, right? So that happened to me this week. So on Thursday night, I love
football. I'm watching football. It's the Jets versus the Patriots,
right? And at one point, one of the
commentators was talking about Aaron Rodgers, who was having
a really good game on Thursday night. And he was looking at
him through the lens of his career and where he has come from, what
he has accomplished, and Aaron Rodgers is the quarterback for
the Jets, in case you don't know. But he turns to his partner in
the midst of that, and he asks this question, I quote, Can Aaron
take the Jets to the promised land? Now, the answer to that is obviously, No, because it's the Jets. Right? But there it was. Right? The promised land. Now, remember
how we define the promised land. Right? It's a metaphor. It's
a chasing after. A longing for. A realization of a hope or a
dream. Something that will bring fulfillment
and satisfaction. In this case, to every Jets fan.
Right? If you make it to the promised
land, you win the Super Bowl. Right? Likewise, this week I
was listening to sports radio and Shohei Otani, who's a baseball
player, a pitcher for the Dodgers, he did something this week that
no one has done in the history of the MLB. He has hit 50 home
runs and he stole 50 bases in a single season. Nobody has ever
done that before. And so they are talking about
this, and I was listening to these radio commentators just
talking about what an amazing feat this was, that nobody had
ever accomplished this, and then one of them said this. He said,
but when it comes to October, when it comes to playoff baseball,
will Shohei be able to deliver on the promise? Doesn't matter what he just did. Wasn't good enough. There's always
something beyond it. This chasing of the promised
land. And the question that we must ask ourselves this morning
is what are we chasing? Is it a job? Is it a marriage? Is it children? Is it retirement? Is it a certain way of life or
comfort or ease? Whatever it is, what is it that
we look at? And our heart says, man, if only
I had that. then I'd be satisfied. And so we chase and we chase. We chase without ever understanding
that the promise of the promised land is a lie. See, that could
never bring the life, the satisfaction, the fulfillment that we were
looking for. And you know what? God knows that. He knows that
we need a source of life that is better than our promised land. And so he chases us even as we
chase our promised land. But in that chase, we often struggle.
We struggle because we find that God's will is often not our will
for our lives. we find that his plan is often
not our plan. And not only is it not our plan,
but we would never choose his plan. And so what do we do with
that? And in this series, we've been
looking at some of the big questions that we ask when our life or
our walk of faith becomes difficult or disappointing as God messes
with our pursuit of our promised land. And so the first question,
week one that we asked, what if I never get to my promised
land? We looked at the story of Moses. What if God in his
sovereignty just says, no, you're not getting it. And then second
week, week two, we asked, well, what if God takes away my promised
land? Because sometimes life is great,
right? And we have it all. We're actually
in a pretty good spot. And then the Lord gives, the
Lord takes away. And all of a sudden he says in
his sovereignty, I'm taking something from you. What do we do then? Today we're going to be asking
our third question. What if God's promised land is different? than
the one that he thought that we were leading us to. He was
leading us to. What if it's different than my promised land? What if
it's just a different place? What if God actually wants to
lead me to a place of blessing and fulfillment and use, but
I think it's over here, and I think it looks like this? When he says,
no, no, no, the one that I wanna give you is better, but it's
way over here, and it looks completely different than you think it looks. What do we do then? How do we
walk with the Lord in the midst of that journey? And so to answer
this question, let's once just take a moment to pray and to
ask God to lead us in his truth this morning. Will you pray with
me? Father, I thank you that we are gathered in this place.
God is your people and you have given us your word to lead us
in truth. And so I pray God that as we
mine the truth in your word, that your spirit would take that
and use that in our lives and in our hearts in a way that moves
us off of our plan and onto your plan. And so take this this morning
as an act of worship, we pray in Jesus name, amen. Have you
ever had a dream? Anybody here ever have a dream?
I'm not talking about the dreams at night. We all have dreams at night.
We wake up and we're like, wow, that was weird. I don't know
where that came from. No, I'm talking about the dream.
I'm talking about the inner city kid who has a single mom. They're poor. They got nothing.
And he looks at that and he says, one day, I'm going to buy my
mom a house. I'm talking about the little
girl who watches Disney princesses and says, one day, I'm going
to find my Prince Charming. I'm talking about the boy who
loves to play sports who says, one day, I'm going to make it
to the NFL. Dreams. Vincent van Gogh once
said, I dream of painting, and then I paint my dream. Right? What a cool quote. Right? And in a sense, that is true
of all of us. In our chase of our promised
land, we are all trying to paint our dreams. And this morning,
we're gonna look at the story of Joseph. It's a story about
dreams. And Joseph's story begins in
Genesis 37. So if you brought your Bible this morning, go ahead
and turn there. If you don't have a Bible, there's one in the pew in front
of you. Open up to Genesis chapter 37. And we need to understand
that the story of Joseph, it covers the last 14 chapters of
Genesis. And so there's no way we can
get to all of that this morning, but I want to encourage you to
read it this week. What I did want to do, though,
is I wanted to begin at the beginning of the story. And I wanted to
read the first 11 verses of Genesis chapter 37. So would you follow
along while I read that this morning? Genesis 37 verse 1.
Jacob lived in the land of his father's sojournings in the land
of Canaan. These are the generations of Jacob. Joseph, being 17 years
old, was pasturing the flock with his brothers. He was a boy
with the sons of Bilhah and Zilphah, his father's wives. And Joseph
brought a bad report of them to their father. Now Israel,
that's Jacob, loved Joseph more than any other of his sons because
he was the son of his old age. And he made him a robe of many
colors. But when his brothers saw that his father loved him
more than all of his brothers, they hated him and could not
speak peacefully to him. Now Joseph had a dream. And when
he told it to his brothers, they hated him even more. And he said
to them, hear this dream that I've dreamed. Behold, we are
binding sheaves in the field and behold, my sheaf arose and
stood upright. And behold, your sheaves gathered
around it and bowed down to my sheaf. And the brother said to
him, are you indeed to reign over us? Or are you indeed to
rule over us? So they hated him even more for
his dreams and for his words. Then he dreamed another dream
and told it to his brothers and said, behold, I've dreamed another
dream. Behold, the sun and the moon and the 11 stars were bowing
down to me. But then he told it to his father
and to his brothers and his father rebuked him and said to him,
what is this dream that you've dreamed? Shall I and your mother
and your brothers indeed come and bow ourselves to the ground
before you? And his brothers were jealous
of him, but his father kept the saying in mind. Interesting story,
right? So God gives Joseph a dream that
one day his family would come and bow before him, all right? Now put this in context, Joseph
was one of 12 brothers, all right? These are the 12 tribes of the
nation of Israel. He wasn't the oldest brother, not by a long
shot, right? But he was the favorite and everybody
knew it. Now you're not supposed to have
favorites by the way, right? But that's the way it was. And
because of that, his brothers hated him. And you know how younger
kids are, spoiled little punks, always getting what they want,
lack of discipline, always tattling on their older siblings, right?
We don't get that. So they hated him for it. And
then to make matters worse, Joseph's father gives him a gift, right?
This robe of many colors. See, Joseph's father, he's not
even discreet in his favoritism. He's like, ah, it's Joseph. Not
you, him, right? None of the other brothers got
it. And so his brothers are looking at all this and they hated him
for it. So much so, it says in verse
four, they couldn't speak peacefully to him. All right, now just think
about that. Like family dynamics, this was
his reality. And some of you, you know, you
kind of deal with it. You know exactly what I'm talking
about, right? Where you just have this like,
I can't speak peacefully to this person, right? There's just this,
right? That's Joseph's reality. And
then he has these dreams, right? And so he tells his family about
it because why wouldn't he, right? What a little punk, right? And
so like, he's like, hey, hey, hey, One day, y'all are gonna
bow down to me. Uh-oh. And it says at the end
of verse eight, so they hated him even more for his dreams
and for his words. To the extent where even his
father was like, hey kid, I gave you an awesome coat, okay? But
you wonder why you're not popular with your brothers? Lay off the
dreams. And his father rebukes him for
it. But here's the thing. God gave him those dreams, right? It was God who was giving him
those dreams. And now maybe he was too young to handle that
well. And maybe he was a little brash with his family, but he
wasn't wrong about the dreams. All right, now I want to pause
here for a minute. Pretend you don't know Joseph's story. If
you know Joseph's story, you kind of know how it goes or whatever,
but just pretend for a second that you don't. How many people
think that this 17 year old boy would have guessed how God was
going to orchestrate the fulfillment of his dreams? How many people
think that he could have guessed that? Yeah, like not a chance,
right? And so here's our first kind
of truth this morning. See, when God's promised land
is different than our promised land, what we think it's gonna
look like, we need to anchor ourselves to the promise keeper.
Because we're gonna see that Joseph's life was a bunch of
this, right? And it's easy to trust God up
here. It's not so easy when we're down
here. All right, and so we'll see throughout Joseph's story
that no matter what turn his life took, whether that was good
or bad, he chose time and again to anchor his trust in the Lord. Now, back to the story, remember
we have the storm brewing. Dana mentioned last week that
when a verse or when a word or a phrase is being repeated, that's
significant. And so that's what we see here.
Verse four, they hated him. Verse five, they hated him even
more. Verse eight, they hated him even more. Verse 11, they
were jealous of him. We get the sense that a storm's
coming, a great big boulder is about to be dropped on Joseph's
life. And sure enough, it's coming,
here it is. Verse 11 ends. Now before verse
12, there's a header in all of our Bibles. Somebody want to
just shout out what that says? What does it say? Joseph sold
by his brothers. Yikes. Right? Like talk about life taking a
turn. You think he thought that morning
when he woke up, like, man, I hope I get betrayed by my family today.
Man, I hope I get sold into slavery today. No, he wasn't thinking
about that at all. But it happened. Actually, his
brothers were originally going to kill him. So you can see God's
hand on Joseph's life that they actually sold him instead. But
still, it happened. It was a reality he had to deal
with. One day, his whole life in a moment just changed. It
just changed. This younger brother with brothers
five, 10, 15 or more years older than him, who hated him, decided
that they were going to sell him into slavery and he was shipped
off to a different country. Anybody wanna say, ouch? Right? Like talk about your dreams being
shattered. Now we just read it like it's
nothing. Right? Oh, you sold me to slavery. Well,
that's nice. But it's not nothing. What do
you do when your whole life, when your reality as you know
it gets turned upside down and ripped away? What do you do?
Right? When your marriage falls apart.
When a boss lets you go. When you get news that you have
this health issue that is life-altering. And now you've got to live with
it. Now you've got to go to sleep every night acknowledging, this
is my reality. Talk about a dream killer. How's
the promised land looking? Right? Now, everybody look up
here for one second. All eyes up here for one second. Does this mean that God had forsaken
Joseph? Right? The answer is no, right? God had not forsaken Joseph,
right? Not a chance that that would
happen. God is a faithful God, but it does cause us to ask the
question, where is God in the midst of this? And I wanna pause
here quickly and take you to a verse in the New Testament,
a little secret verse in scripture. Actually, it's not secret, it's
really well known. It's Romans 8.28, right? Do you know it?
Do you know it? Romans 8.28, often quoted, often
misunderstood, misquoted and misapplied. All right, but here
it is. Romans 8.28, for we know that for all who love God, all
things work together for good according to his purpose for
those who are called. What a verse. All things work
together for good, according to his purpose for those who
are called. You know what that means? It
means that nothing is wasted, right? Nothing is without purpose. God is always at work doing something
in you, in me, moving us somewhere. But look at what it says. It
says, according to his purpose. In Jeremiah 29, 11, we love to
have that as a life verse that we quote for ourselves. God says,
I know the plans I have for you. Now, yes, they are plans to prosper
you and not to harm, to give you a hope and a future, right? But they're my plans. Proverbs
3, 5, trust in the Lord with all your heart, lean not on your
own understanding. Why? Because our understanding
is limited and it fails us. And so we need to trust Him,
right? Why is this important? Because
here's the truth. Oftentimes, God's promised land,
the place that He wants to bring you is very different than ours. And the truth is that we might
never get the dream as we envision it, but we need to know that
nothing happens by accident. Nothing takes God by surprise. Nothing happens beyond His purpose
and power to renew. And sometimes God brings us to
a place in life where we don't want to be and we would never
choose for ourselves. But even in that place, God says,
I'm working. I am in control. And it's in
faith that He calls us then to trust Him. as he moves us off
of our plans and onto his plan. Question is, will you do that
this morning? Will you trust the Lord? God is moving Joseph onto his
plan. If we turn over two chapters to Genesis chapter 39 in verse
two and verse three and verse four and verse five, it repeats
this phrase, the Lord was with Joseph. The Lord was with him. All right, beloved, don't miss
this. Because even in the midst of broken dreams, the Lord never
abandoned Joseph. And sometime, someone, someone
here needs to hear this this morning. Because no matter where
you are, no matter what has happened in your life, the circumstances
that you're going through, you need to know the Lord has not
forsaken you. Let that be an anchor to you
this morning. Joseph had been brought down
to Egypt, sold by his brothers. He sold again, this time to a
man named Potiphar. Potiphar is the captain of Pharaoh's
guard. And so Joseph starts working in his house. And you know what? Everything starts going great.
You know, the Lord's blessing Joseph, the Lord's blessing Potiphar
through Joseph. Seems like Joseph's able to kind
of right the ship in his life. And in fact, he's thriving and
he's put in charge of all of Potiphar's house. Right? Everything
is locked down. And then comes boulder number
two. Potiphar's wife starts getting
the hots for Joseph. Right? And not subtly. Right? It says here, it says, day after
day, she cast her eyes on Joseph saying, lie with me. Right? Now, this is not tell lies with
me. Right? This is... Right? Right? And so, think about Joseph's
life. Right? Think about you in this situation,
right? Joseph had come out of this situation where he was hated
by his brothers. He had been betrayed by his family.
He had been sold into slavery. And now it's been a few years,
right? And he says, I have worked hard.
I've done all of the right things. I am realizing all of these blessings
in my life. Now it's me time. I've had a
hard life and I'm gonna take what I deserve. And I'm gonna
focus on my wants and my desires for a while. Does he do that?
He doesn't do that. He doesn't use his hard story
as an excuse to release the Lord and start feeding himself. Instead,
he says in verse nine, he says, how can I do this great wickedness
and sin against God? In spite of all that had happened
to him, Joseph was holding on to the dream giver. And he says,
I'm not sure where all this ends. I'm not even sure what I'm doing
here. But while I'm in it, I'm holding on to you in all things. Listen, he makes the right choice.
He does the honorable thing. He honors the Lord. He holds
on to the Lord. And what happens to him? The
wife cries foul. And his employer then rejects
him. And he ends up in prison. for doing the right thing? How's your promised land looking,
Joseph? How's the path working out for you? Probably not like
you thought, right? And scripture is telling here
because at the beginning of chapter 40, it says, sometime after. See, we're not talking about
like, oh, there was a misunderstanding and I ended up in prison for
24 hours and then everybody said, oh, my mistake. You're out, right? No, no, no. He's in there for
years, for doing nothing wrong, for making good choices, for
honoring the Lord. This is what he gets. Remember, he was 17 when all
this started, 17. It's likely in his 20s that he's
thrown into prison. Yeah, and you can just imagine
Joseph sitting there in prison, just recounting kind of his reality.
You know what? He doesn't have the house with
the white picket fence. He doesn't have the wife. He
can't watch his kids grow up. That's not where he's at. And
I'm sure that there were times in his life, like there are in
ours, when Joseph might have doubted the dream. when Joseph
might have doubted the Lord's presence with him. Now, it doesn't
say any of that in scripture, but I'm just looking at it through
a real lens. There are times when we struggle
with that, right? And he would have probably doubted,
oh, maybe the dream wasn't from the Lord. Maybe I just made that
up. Maybe I just wanted that to be
true. Maybe I was, you know, whatever. But would you blame
him if he asked that question? He didn't know where the end
would be. He didn't know when he was gonna get out. He didn't
really have a sentence. This was just his reality. Genesis
39 verse 20, there he was in prison. And in that place, I think it
would have been easy to let go of the Lord. I think it would
have been easy for him to say, okay, all right, time out, God. You gave me this dream, and I
believed it was you, and I had a good life, like with my family,
right? Sure, my brothers hated me, but
it was better than here, right? And I was following you, and
then you sold me, and then I still held on to you, right? And Potiphar's
house was great, like thanks for that, Right? I was killing
it there. I thought that was pretty good
for me. And then I tried to do the right thing. And I tried
to honor you. And what did that get me? Prison? Oh yeah, you're crushing it,
God. Love that for me. How easy would it have been for
him to say, got him out. I'm just out. Right? I think that's where this walk
of faith comes in. because he didn't do it. Now,
maybe it was the dream that God gave him that kept him going.
Maybe it was the dream that anchored him to the Lord. Maybe it was
just what he knew about the Lord to be true, right? We don't really
know, but he did hold on. And in the midst of all of it,
because he held on, the Lord continued to prosper his path.
Don't miss this. Guys, we don't need to be out
of prison to prosper. Some of you need to hear that
this morning. We don't need to be out of prison to prosper. And the truth is that we don't
need to be in prison to sometimes feel like we're in prison. True
or false? Right? That's where we need to trust
in the promises of the promise keeper. Because we're on a journey. And on that journey, as Joseph
remained with the Lord, what he found is that the Lord remained
with him. And because of that, he prospered.
And you know what? You can too. Never have my wife and I encountered
the Lord so powerfully as in the midst of our journey with
cancer. How he showed up, how he was faithful. We might even
say that we prospered in that journey. We would never go back
to the people that we were before that. God was moving us somewhere,
just as he's moving Joseph, and just as he moves you. Now, fast
forward again, time passes and we'll end here, but eventually,
Pharaoh's baker and Pharaoh's cup bearer end up in prison with
Joseph. And they both had these dreams
that they didn't understand. And God gave Joseph the ability
to interpret those dreams for them. Now, it wasn't good for
the baker, right? Three days, you're gonna be executed,
I'm sorry. But for the cupbearer, it was
different. Three days, he was gonna be restored
to his position in Pharaoh's court. And sure enough, it happened
just as Joseph said it would. And in that, Joseph asked the
cupbearer just one little favor, just one favor. Can you do me
one thing? Can you mention me to Pharaoh?
Like when you're restored, when that actually happens, can you
just remember me? Can you put in a good word for me? The cupbearer forgets. Like,
how do you do that? But he did. Right? Now, put yourself
again in Joseph's shoes. This all happens. Right? God gives him the ability. He
must have thought, like, this is great, Lord. I see what you're
doing now. Right? Cupbearer comes down here.
He finds out about me. I help him. He tells Pharaoh.
Pharaoh frees me. I have this great testimony of
how you showed up in my life and everything that you did.
Right? Wow. What a promised land. What a
journey that you brought me on. Then he forgets. And so now Joseph has been betrayed
by his family. He's been betrayed by his employer. He's been betrayed by his friends. Who here would be a little bitter
at this point? Right? Just sitting in there. For two
more years, Joseph sat in prison. Right? We just read that. We're
like, oh, two years. No, it happened. Just to put us in that reality,
I'm gonna wait two years before I say something else. It's a long time. Two years he
sits in prison. Why? Why, Lord, would you allow
that to happen? There can really only be one
answer. Because that wasn't God's plan for him. God still had a
better promised land that Joseph knew nothing about. It was hard for Joseph, but we find
that he's still in the midst of that, holds on to the Lord. I don't understand, don't get
it. Now to end this story, the cupbearer
does eventually remember Joseph. When Pharaoh has a dream, he's
like, oh, wait a minute, there's this guy. Right? Like there's
this dream interpreter. Right? And he can come and he
can help you. Right? So he remembers Joseph and brings Joseph before
Pharaoh. And that launches Joseph on a
journey where he becomes the second in command in all of the
land of Egypt. And in that place, you know what?
The Lord does fulfill the dream that he gave to Joseph. but I'll let you read that on
your own this week. Here's the application. God was faithful
to the dream, but he fulfilled it in a way that Joseph could
have never imagined. God is the giver of good gifts,
but sometimes the packaging is all wrong. And in our pursuit of the promised
land, he calls us to trust. We might not know where we're
going. We might not know what the end of it is. We might not
know why we're in there. But he calls us to trust that the
promise keeper is able to deliver on his promises. Whether it's
in this life, sometimes it's in the life to come. And in that,
the greatest promise that God ever made was the promise of
salvation through his son, Jesus Christ. And if you've never chosen
to follow Christ, know that all of God's promises start right
there. They start right there. Jesus
says, I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to
the Father except through me. So would you put your trust in
Jesus this morning? And then would you follow the
promise keeper no matter where that might lead?
What if God Has a Different Promised Land?
Series Chasing the Promised Land
| Sermon ID | 922242351357357 |
| Duration | 32:56 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Genesis 37:1-11 |
| Language | English |
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