Our gracious God and heavenly Father, we thank you for the promise of the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ as the true prophet of the church and the preacher of his own word. We pray as he preached peace to the Ephesians, he will come also by his Spirit today to us here and preach his own word into our hearts. We thank you for your love for us. We thank you that we gather to listen to the voice of our Heavenly Father speaking to us through His Son, by His Spirit, in His Word. We pray that you would move among us, Holy Spirit, and parcel out to us those truths that are prepared for us by Your grace. And bring us, we chiefly pray, into Your presence that we may sense You are with us and speaking to us, that You have not deserted us, but are willing to receive us again and to help us. And this we pray in our Savior Jesus Christ's name. Amen. Please be seated. Our scripture reading is from the last chapter of the book of Genesis, Genesis chapter 50, and reading from verse 15 through to the end of verse 21. Rather wonderful to be in an American church where you don't need to tell people what the page number is, and that's almost a novel experience for me. So, I congratulate you on knowing where the book of Genesis is. And just in order to let you adjust your ears to a non-American accent, let me say before I read that it is a pleasure and a joy to be with you here. Of course, I know all about you because Bob Godfrey and I have been friends for 40 years and there is no secret you have that he has not disclosed to me. But you know that your secrets are as safe with me as they have been with him, and I think I can reassure you that if anything in the ministry of the Word strikes you today, it is only because it is a bow shot at a venture, and not because my good friend and yours has ever told me anything about you except the nicest possible things. So, it is a joy to be with you. Well, let's read God's Word. When Joseph's brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, it may be that Joseph will hate us and pay us back for all the evil that we did to him. So, they sent a message to Joseph saying, your father gave this command before he died. Say to Joseph, please forgive the transgressions of your brothers and their sin, because they did evil to you. And now please forgive the transgressions of the servants of the God of your father. And Joseph wept when they spoke to him. These brothers also came and fell down before him and said, Behold, we are your servants. But Joseph said to them, Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good to bring it about that many people should be kept alive as they are today. So do not fear. I will provide for you and your little ones. And thus he comforted them and spoke kindly to them. It may surprise you since I come from what used to be known as the land of the book that I was brought up in a family that never went to church. But for some reason, although we had very few books in our home, one book that had been kept was my grandmother's old, black, thick, but very small printed Bible. Not only did we not have many books in the house, but we didn't have central heating in the house. And so, I devised my own central heating system when I was about four or five, when I think my mother had already taught me to read. I would find my grandmother's black Bible. I would get into my parents' bed once they had left it, and the heat was still lingering there, and I would look for two stories in this thick black Bible. One was the story of Daniel, which I'd come to love, but it was difficult to find because it was near the end of the book. And the other was this story of Joseph, which I had also come to love, which for some reason was almost equally difficult to find because I couldn't find in the index the book of Joseph. And so sometimes I was frustrated before I was able to read and reread this story. And looking back now, it sometimes struck me that that was an amazing providential gift from God to a youngster who at that time didn't know that he was destined for Christian ministry. Because one of the themes that runs through this marvelous story of Joseph that comes to a climax in this little section that we've just read together is a question he must frequently have asked that may be the question that is most frequently asked to Christian ministers. why are these things happening to me? What has gone wrong in my life? Why is God sending these things to me? And one of the wonderful things about the story of Joseph, which begins in chapter 37 and ends here in chapter 50, is that in a sense, God gives us a whole series of clues that we are able to discover in the story that he only gradually discovered but eventually realized that help us to begin to solve the crossword puzzle of his life. And because God writes this in large letters in his life, and because to a certain extent he completes the crossword puzzle for Joseph, as he confesses here in chapter 50 verse 20. Possible for us to read on this large screen of Joseph's life and to pick up some of the clues that God has implanted in His Word in this story that will stabilize us, encourage us, and help us when we find ourselves, as all of us at one time or another in our lives do, asking the question, what is God doing in my life? What we need, of course, is those of you who love doing crossword puzzles and have that particular kind of eccentricity that you share with my wife, who sees a crossword puzzle as a kind of metaphor for trying to understand her husband, I think most of the time. I think you realize that there are moments as you puzzle when it seems as though shafts of light come into your mind and the answer opens up. And what I want to try to do with you this morning is to survey this whole story from Genesis 37 right through to Genesis 50, and to land on some of the clues that are implanted in this story that I think are tremendously helpful and applicable to us in the day and daily business of the crossword puzzles of our own Christian lives. You're familiar with the story, the opening chapter of the portrayal of young Joseph, a 17-year-old boy, a figure that incidentally is quite significant in the story, his father's favorite as his father repeats the sins of his own father, the jealousy of the brothers, the pride and in a sense the folly of Joseph himself as he comes down to breakfast and blurts out these stories about how his parents and his brothers will one day bow down to him. Their increased hatred because he is the favorite, and it's symbolized by the robe, and eventually their plot to sell him into slavery. And then from those moments of alienation in his family. The narrative moves on to the story of his humiliation in Egypt, moments when he hopes that God is doing something in his life, and then those hopes shattered in the case of Potiphar's wife. And then another moment of hope as he interprets the dreams of the cupbearer and the baker of the pharaoh, and then the hopes dashed again. And doubtless for him, the question that the psalmist asks in Psalm 102, why does God seem to lift me up and exalt me, and then apparently discard me as though I were a child's broken toy? And then as the story moves towards its climax, his exaltation in Egypt as he becomes the Prime Minister, Pharaoh's right-hand man, 14 years after he has been sold into slavery. And then for the next 14 years, he governs the crisis in Egypt. And through that means the brothers and eventually the Father come to him, and he receives them. Although he has ministered to them to bring them to a sense of their shame and guilt and need. And the whole story ends here with the brothers in their concern that all of his generosity has been for the sake of the Father and not for their own sake. And Joseph gives to us the final clue and its answer to everything that has preceded in these chapters. What you meant for evil to harm me. I now begin to see the path of the footsteps of my God as He has planted His footsteps in the sea where I could not detect and discern where He was going. And now I see that He has brought closure on this stage of His purposes. you meant it for evil to harm me, but God meant it for good. And as I say, I think there are several clues in this story that are really helpful to us to apply to our own Christian lives. The first of them, I think, is this, and I've found it helps solve many situations, is the recognition that our God is always working in a variety of circumstances. But our instinct is to say, why is this particular event happening to me? And what we learn from Joseph's story is that, in a sense, God never deals in isolated events. He deals in a large picture, in a marvelous pattern. and that the answer to the question, why is this happening to me, is not actually likely to be found in this. It's to be found in where this fits into the purposes of God in my life or in the lives of others. If I can put it this way, it's as though we're asking God to explain a single word, and He says to us, my child, words do not mean anything until they appear in sentences. And so it's only when you have heard the sentence, it's only when I've begun to bring your life further forward into the future that you will begin to see the significance of that particular word, of that particular experience. This one is striking about Joseph's experiences that on the one hand, he must have felt that he was lost, that God didn't know where he was. And the other hand, if God was doing anything, he must have felt that God was desperately slow. And yet throughout the narrative, as you'll remember, there are these little clues that her planted. The Lord was with Joseph. The Lord was with Joseph. The Lord was with Joseph. I remember years ago driving somewhere listening to a Christian radio program as I went, a call-in program, and a wife who was very concerned about her husband's illness with desperation in her voice was asking the radio guru for some spiritual help, and he said, Madam, what you need is a miracle. And I remember almost shouting at the radio, it's not a miracle she needs. It's the presence of the Lord that she needs. It's the knowledge that He is her shepherd and their shepherd, and that He will be with them. And it's very interesting that it's not Joseph who says in the first instance, well, it's obvious the Lord is with me. It's the narrator who tells us, who helps us, keep your eye on this, because the Lord knows exactly where Joseph is. And not only so, that this Lord who, for Joseph, must have seemed so very, very slow and indeed unreliable. But this Lord was working His purposes out with absolutely perfect timing. That's why I say the time markers in this story are rather significant. Joseph is 17 when we meet him, and then when he becomes the prime minister of Egypt, he's 30 years old. That is 14 years by inclusive reckoning, isn't it? Bible reckoning. But what's the one thing we all know about this story? It is that there are going to be seven fat years, and then there are going to be seven lean years. And the message is fairly obvious, isn't it? That in order to prepare Joseph to serve the people, indeed the whole of the ancient Near East, for the next 14 years, it has taken 14 years of the work of God to give this man the wisdom and the patience that would enable him to serve. And over the years, sometimes watching students that we've had in seminary, watching dear friends in their ministry, I've begun to think that God quite often uses what I call the cul-de-sac principle, the dead-end principle. When His children seem to be taken out of the highway of life and put into a dead-end street from which they can see no exit. But then what you observe as time passes is that God has put them into the cul-de-sac, into the dead-end street, in order to bring them out into the precise place in the traffic of life where He is going to use them with signal blessing. So that when we cry out to God, Oh God, what is the meaning of this circumstance? Explain it to me. Ultimately, the meaning of this circumstance doesn't lie in this circumstance. It lies in what the Lord is going to do to us and through us, for us, in this circumstance. Remember the little and short-lived experience of this the Apostle Paul had? When he was, remember in Acts chapter 16, they're trying to go into Bithynia. They're forbidden to go into Asia. They're not sure what is happening. Why are they in this dead-end street? But in their case, the answer comes much more quickly than it came for Joseph. Because God's purpose is not Asia. It's not Bithynia. It's Europe. It's the man from Macedonia. It's the expansion of the gospel. to the West. And you can see in this clue, can you not, little clues to your own cries, Lord, why is this happening to me? You seem to have lost me. You seem to be so slow. And what we discover here marvelously in Joseph's life is, in a sense, God needs to be slow because of what he is going to do in his life. That cannot be accomplished overnight. You cannot learn to be patient for 14 years if you have been impatient for the previous 14 years. So, what we see here rather marvelously is God always working in a variety of circumstances. But then there's a second clue that's obviously embedded in this narrative, And it's similar. It is that God is always working in a variety of people. My instinct, probably your instinct, is to phrase the question, Lord, why is this happening to me? And then when you survey God's dealings with His people in Scripture, you begin to realize that the answer to that question is not going to be found in me. perhaps the chief reason this is happening to me is going to be found in what God is doing through me in someone else's life. It's part of the mosaic of God's pattern in our lives to employ His own people in order that through His people He may work in others. And this is marvelously displayed, isn't it, in Joseph's story. Here is this profoundly dysfunctional family. And it's almost as though in the story, one by one, these dysfunctions begin to be reversed. And God, through Joseph's hard experiences, using that experience of Joseph to begin to bring about a very radical conversion in his father who has shared the folly of his own parents and reduplicated it in Joseph's life. And it's almost as though God tears the heart out of his father through what happens to Joseph, because it's only through that severe mercy that there is going to be a reconciliation between the father and the other brothers. And then as the story progresses, you can see how Joseph becomes an instrument in bringing some measure of repentance to the brothers. For years and years, somehow they have managed to sustain this duplicity and justify themselves before their father and in their own sight. And then as events unfold, and as Joseph, as an instrument of the Lord, begins to probe them, you remember in those strange events of what happens as they make their way home, until we find that the brothers begin to say, This is surely happening to us because we have been guilty. Amazing thing, isn't it? How small things can awaken a conviction of our own past rebellion against God and our sin against others. And what is one of the most beautiful things in this whole story? You remember us. It comes to something of a climax. And Joseph is there understanding what his brothers are all saying. And they have brought the youngest brother with them. And he whispers to his stewards, set them in this order at the table. Now, some of you are mathematics probably a lot better than my mathematics. And you can instantaneously work out the possibilities of accidentally a large group of brothers. I mean, some of you know families where there are large groups of brothers. What is the possibility of a total stranger placing those brothers without knowledge around a table exactly according to their age? You see what's happening? He's loosening something in them. And then he whispers to the stewards and he says that we fellow there at the bottom of the table, when you serve him pile on five times as much on his plate and I'm going to stand here and watch. And you see what he's doing? He's really saying to the brothers so what's your response to the favorite child now? And the response to the favorite child is one of total acceptance. because God has been doing something in their lives and doing something, too, in Joseph's life. As I say, those time markers are significant. When we meet Joseph, like Joseph is the fellow in high school that maybe all the girls love, but every single one of the boys hates. He's handsome, he's clever, he's enormously talented. He has never suffered a scratch, and he's proud, and he breathes a sense of superiority. And then through the years, the folly becomes wisdom, the impatience becomes patience, The pride becomes humility. And the marvelous thing is, He's not only what we might say now, the right person in the right place. He's the right man to be that person. God has shaped Him. I'm not at all surprised that the brothers didn't recognize Him. I think if you did not see a close relative for a period of 14 years that you had seen every day in your home, I think the chances are you would recognize Him. But I wonder if you've ever met somebody who has been so transformed by God's work in their hearts and lives that when they've told you who they are, and you've said, of course you are him. But I didn't recognize you at first, because he's made him exactly the man he wants to be in the situation in which he's going to serve the Lord best. Now, you know, that often happens to us, and we know nothing about it. It may only be by a happenstance that someone will say to us years later, something about what we said because of what we'd experienced, something about our disposition towards them because we too had gone through something like their own experience, and it all happened unconscious to us. But there are also times when we respond to situations and others, and we mentally think to ourselves as we respond to people, I could never have responded to them in this way were it not for that. And that's something of the beauty as God begins to bring closure and Joseph says to his brothers, let me help you to understand what happened here. You meant it for evil to harm me. That is the reality. But God meant it for good. And when Joseph puts it that way, it probably reminds most of us of a very favorite verse in the New Testament, doesn't it? That God works everything together for good in Christ, for those who love him. And perhaps this is what we are meant to see most of all in the big picture of Joseph's life. And it's almost unmissable, isn't it? This young man who goes through such suffering, who is sold as a slave, who becomes the savior of his family and of the peoples of the ancient Near East, There's a kind of pattern here that's embedded in his life that it's through suffering that he has entered into this new status of glory, that it's through his own suffering that he has been prepared to, dare I say it, bring material salvation to the whole world. And when you see it that way, you begin to see what God was doing really in Joseph's life. He was making him a little like his son in order that he and his situation might become the Savior and Restorer of others. And it's just a little clue because this whole story is part of God's covenant promises and purposes for his people. It's a little stage in the fulfillment of the covenant made with Abraham that eventually is going to come to closure in our Savior Jesus Christ. And embedded in the story is this little hint of what is still to come in the person of the Lord Jesus. Because I think we can say about Joseph, now that we stand in the days of the new covenant and see where all of this is leading. We can look at Joseph and see that God was working in these different ways in his life for the sake of others. But what he was chiefly doing in Joseph's life was making him like Jesus. That's exactly, fascinatingly, the very thing Paul says once he has dictated Romans chapter 8 verse 28, isn't it? God works everything together for good for those who love Him who are called according to His purpose, because His ultimate purpose is this, that those He predestined, He predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son. And in a sense, that's the ultimate answer to all of the clues God gives us to help us answer the question, Lord, why is this happening in my life? Why do you plant your footsteps in the sea where I cannot follow where you are going? And the Scriptures say, hold on to this, that in all things, what he wants most of all is not that you should say to him, Lord, Lord, why are you doing this to me? But that you should say to him, Lord, whatever you're doing to me, through it, make me more like the Lord Jesus, because it's only then that I'll begin to see the fruitfulness of your work in me. That's not an easy word to take. Certainly not an easy word to proclaim. But it's a wonderfully comforting word. It can be a wonderfully illuminating word. It's a tremendously challenging word because at the end of the day, it makes clear to us, what is it that is really important in your Christian life? Because what for God is really important in your Christian life is that He wants to make you like Jesus for this very simple reason, that nothing in you that isn't like Jesus is going to last forever in His presence. And if I can put it like this, in that case, the sooner He gets rid of what isn't like Jesus, the better. It's not easy work, but at the end of the day, it's glorious work. And so, as we think about Joseph and see some elements of our own lives embedded in this big picture. We're able to say, Lord, as you worked everything together for good in his life, even though I can't understand why this is happening to me, or to her, please, by your grace, continue to make us more like Jesus, that through our lives, Others may find your salvation. And then, at the end of the day, we're able to say, Thank you, Lord. It really was all worthwhile. Well, let's pray together. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for your Word. We thank you again and again for the many different ways in which you communicate the truth of your grace to us. in the songs that we sing, the psalms that we love, in the teaching that you give us in the letters in the New Testament, in the parables of the Lord Jesus, and then in these large screen pictures that you give to us of the ways in which you have worked in the lives of your people in the past. You're still the same God today as you were yesterday, still solving the crossword puzzles of our own lives in order that at the end of the day the name Jesus may be written large in them. We pray that by your grace, however these truths touch our lives, today reflecting on yesterday, looking forward perhaps with some anxiety and fear about what may become of our lives tomorrow. We pray that we may be able to say to every circumstance, whatever you meant to do to harm me, I know that my Lord meant it for good. And so to him I yield my all. And this we pray together in our wonderful Savior's name. Amen.