2021 02 14 Slow Motion Miracles

The speaker talks about Super Bowl Sunday and their lack of interest in football. They discuss how slow-motion replays in sports and movies can add drama and excitement. They mention that sometimes miracles take longer than expected and can be frustrating. They share personal experiences of witnessing family miracles and encourage listeners to trust that God is working behind the scenes. They then discuss the dysfunctional family of Joseph in the Bible, highlighting the flaws of his father Jacob and his brothers. Despite the dysfunction, God used Joseph for his purposes and eventually brought healing and reconciliation to the family. The speaker concludes by emphasizing that God can heal any family, but it may take time. So recently we had what is called Super Bowl Sunday. I've admitted I know nothing about football. To me American football seems like somebody took soccer and thought it would be more interesting if everybody stopped every few minutes to rethink their strategy. Like somebody thought chess is fun, soccer is fun, let's mix them together. It'll be way more fun. I don't get it but lots of people love it. Now if you love football, go ahead and throw that in the comments. Say your favorite team or whatever. Tell me why I'm wrong. But if you did watch the Super Bowl on this past Sunday, you probably saw what is called a slow motion replay. I didn't watch it. I'm just guessing they probably did some slow motion replays because that's pretty common in sports cast. Or maybe you've seen an action movie, right? Where the hero fights off the villain in slow motion for dramatic effect. In movies and in sports, slow motion can add drama and excitement. But in real life, when things slow down, it can be frustrating and discouraging. There are times God does miracles in our lives. I firmly believe that. But sometimes they take longer than we wish. This family day, you may be praying for a family miracle where there are broken relationships. You know, it's easy to give up believing in miracles altogether when they feel like slow motion miracles. But hang on, we're going to talk about a slow motion miracle that paid off for a family in the Bible. Let's pray. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you that on this family day, on this Valentine's Day, as we're praying for relational miracles, whether we're in a relationship that is not going the way that we know it should, whether we're not in a relationship and we wish we were, and it seems like it's taking longer than we would like. Lord, I just pray that we would have the patience to understand and to trust that you are always working behind the scenes. We thank you for all of this, Lord God, and we pray that you would open up ears, hearts, and minds as I speak your word today to those listening. In Jesus' name, amen. So some people find it easy to believe in certain kinds of miracles because of their personal experience, right? Maybe you have trouble believing in healing because someone close to you passed away of a terrible disease despite your prayers. But maybe you find it easy to believe in miracles of provision because you grew up poor financially, but God always provided for your needs through people giving you guys what you needed. I used to find it hard to believe God for family miracles, you know? No one outside of my immediate family growing up believed in God. My parents did, my siblings did, I did, but no one outside of my immediate family believed in the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. And we went so many years. You know, I could recount my prayers as a kid, and I prayed the same thing, and it just became just a routine without any actual substance because I was just waiting and waiting and not really expecting that to change, right? But one day, my aunt, she got saved, and it was the most exciting thing. My aunt got saved, and I couldn't believe it. I was shocked. Not because my aunt was a particularly bad person. I was surprised because I had given up believing God to do that kind of miracle. So today, I want to encourage you that God does do family miracles. I have seen it, and I have witnessed it. I've seen healing, not just in the physical, not just in salvations coming, but I have seen healing of breakdown in family, you know, bridges that I burned, and I've seen God build them back together. And to illustrate this today, besides my own example that I've just shared from, I want to talk about much more important examples that come from God's Word. And I want to talk to you guys about an incredibly, incredibly, amazingly— you probably think I'm going to talk to you about an incredibly, amazingly wonderful family that we want to pattern our life off of in the Bible. But no, I'm going to tell you about a wonderfully, incredibly, amazingly messed up family in the Bible. And to be honest, you might not think of it at first glance, but there's a lot of messed up people in the Bible, and a lot of messed up families. Okay, we turn to the Bible for advice on family, but there's some really messed up families in here. And we're going to talk about one of them today, and how God used even a messed up family for his purposes. So we're going to be talking today about Joseph. Now, not Joseph from the New Testament, not Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus. We're going to be talking about Joseph in the Old Testament, in the book of Genesis. Now, I'm not going to go into particular depth in the actual verses of his story right now. We are going to get into some other scripture later, but I'm going to be recapping a lot of this for you. But I don't want you to take my word for it. So if you want to go look it up for yourself later, it's found in Genesis, that's the first book of the Bible, chapters 37, and then in 39, and picking it up again in 39 to verse 46. So we're going to be talking about Joseph in a bit. And he came from a messed up family. But God can use messed up people and messed up families for his purposes. So who, let's just talk about Joseph's dad, Jacob. Jacob was a messed up dude. You guys might be thinking right now, what is Chris talking about? The Bible talks about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, forefathers of our faith. But he was not, honestly, he wasn't someone I want to pattern my life after. And let me show you a bit of that. He stole his brother's birthright. He married two of his cousins. He only loved one of them. He ran away from his brother and his uncle. He was not a courageous guy. When he thought his brother was going to kill him, when he was on the way to see him, he sent the women and children first. Now, I could be interpreting this wrong, but to me, that doesn't sound like he was like, oh, I want them to be safe. They go on their journey first. It sounds like he was looking for a human shield and he was using his women, his wives, and his children first. Who does that? Jacob's family was messed up, okay? If you can prove to me that Jacob was, hey, he was an all right guy, and I've looked at him wrong, I might concede that point to you. But that's not where the messed up stuff ends in his family. His wife, Leah, was loved less than his wife, Rachel, right? He had two wives. He only loved one of them, and that was Rachel. So, God, seeing that Leah was loved less, he blessed her with the ability to have kids, but delayed Rachel from having kids, we see in Genesis 29, 31. So, Rachel is very upset by this, right? She's very jealous. Leah gets to have kids. She doesn't have kids. You have to understand that, especially in this era and culture, in history, that kids would have been a status symbol, a status symbol. Giving your husband children would have showed so much status because it would make you seem just more valued, right, at the time. So, Rachel, in her jealousy, says she may as well die if she doesn't have kids, and blames Jacob for not giving her kids. And in her insane competition with her sister, she gives Jacob, her servant, to have kids with in her place. Now, I've heard it said, look, this is cultural. This was not uncommon to have your servant be used in your stead to have kids. Whether or not something is common doesn't mean it's good. This is still messed up, even if it was common in the time. So, what happens? Leah stops having kids, so she gets in on this competition, giving Jacob, her servant, as well, right? So, both sisters are not having kids, and they are giving their servants to Jacob to have kids with because they've got this rivalry about who can have more kids for him. And so now the sisters are basically having a baby-making proxy war through their servants, okay? So, if that's not messed up to you, let's move over to Jacob's sons. His sons were messed up, too. They were carousing around. They slept with their father's concubines. In fact, you remember earlier, I said, if you want to read the story of Joseph, you're going to be reading Genesis 37, skipping over to 39, and reading through 46. Well, 38 in there, you might be wondering what happened to that chapter. Well, it's a story about one of his other brothers, and some messed up going on there. In the midst of this messed up family, we find Joseph, the firstborn of Rachel. Now, Rachel was the one that Jacob loved. Joseph was the firstborn of her. So, you can bet that he favored Joseph over his brothers because favoritism, why not? Let's just throw some more dysfunction into this family. So, Joseph was special to him for that reason, right? So, he gets Joseph to spy on his brothers, find out if they're doing anything wrong, and he gives Joseph a multicolored coat. Now, this is not like going down to Walmart and getting some real technicolor coat here. This would have been so expensive to get those materials, to get the dye and all this stuff in this day and age, in that day and age and culture. So, this is not like... You might think, okay, what do we compare this? Maybe it's like an expensive fur coat. This is not like that. This is like giving Joseph a Ferrari sports car and giving his brothers nothing, bearing in mind that Joseph is by far not the oldest son here, okay? He's just the favorite, and that is obvious here, right? And it would have been obvious to his brothers. So, Joseph wasn't popular with his brothers, right? Well, let's make matters worse, right? Did you ever meet somebody who was really gifted and maybe they didn't try to, you know, intentionally shove it into your face, but it annoys you anyways, because you just felt they were so much more gifted than you, right? Well, he was gifted by God with dreams and the ability to interpret them, right? They did not like that, right? He had some dreams. He had some dreams. And in his dreams, without going into all the details, the basic implication was that his brothers and even his parents would be bowing down to Joseph. Like, the brothers were like, who do you think you are? You get the sports car level coat over here. You get to spy on us. It's obvious you're the favorite son. And now you're saying we're all going to bow down. The brothers wanted to get rid of him, right? The brothers wanted to get rid of this guy. And just to circle back, in case you've lost my flow here, what we're talking about here, and what I'm trying to illustrate, is this dysfunctional family, right? You might think your family is dysfunctional. Your family may be very dysfunctional. I might not know the half of it. But have you ever sold anyone in your family? You heard me right. Have you ever sold anyone in your family? Sold them into slavery, into a foreign nation? That's pretty bad. And that's only because they wanted to kill him. The brothers wanted to kill him. And they thought, maybe not. Let's just sell them into slavery. That won't seem as bad. And not because they had mercy on Joseph, but because they didn't want to get in trouble with their father. So they sell him into slavery to get rid of him. And he goes to Egypt. And he is purchased for the household of Potiphar. Now, Potiphar was an important government official, and he has Joseph. Potiphar was really impressed with Joseph. He worked hard. He did his work. Unfortunately, Potiphar wasn't the only one in his house that was impressed by Joseph. Potiphar's wife was also impressed by Joseph, but not with his work, right? She wanted things from him, shall we say, that would not have been right for him to give. And even though... So here's the thing. She wants something from him. It would be sinful for him to do. And Joseph stays true to God, which is fascinating to me, because to put this out there, as we've mentioned, between his brothers and all this kind of stuff, his family had a history with sexual indiscretion, shall we say. His brothers did, at least. And we see this, and yet Joseph, even though he has really no real example of healthy relationships in that fashion, he chooses to honor God in this situation. And you would think, look at this dysfunctional family. Look at this one ray of sunshine, this one guy who wants to be faithful to God. I am certain that God immediately rewarded that guy. He immediately blessed that guy for following him. Well, you would be wrong, because even though Joseph stayed faithful to God in this situation, he ended up being accused of rape, even though he did not do that, and was thrown in prison for two years. There's the expression that no good deed goes unpunished, and that's probably how it felt for Joseph in his life, too. But even in prison, even in terrible COVID-19 circumstances, God can use us. We know in the New Testament, the Apostle Paul wrote several letters that we now have as books of the Bible with pivotal information for our life, transformation for our life, was written from prison. And in Joseph's own personal and literal prison, God was still using him. But here he is in these negative circumstances, and God is working through them, because what you and I deem negative, the inconveniences to our plans, sometimes are not detours at all, but the straightest line to where God is trying to go and use our life. So here he is in prison. There's other prisoners, too. One of those prisoners is a baker, and another one of those prisoners is a cupbearer, and both of them had dreams. Now, you remember, Joseph was gifted to interpret dreams, right? So here they come with their dreams. They say, they tell, oh, man, I had the weirdest dream last night. Maybe I had too much pizza. I don't know, but I had the weirdest dream last night. And so Joseph interprets the cupbearer's dream and tells him that this dream means that he's gonna get his old job working for Pharaoh, being his cupbearer, back. So the baker's like, sweet, if you're just handing out positive interpretations for dreams, count me in. So the baker comes over, and he's like, tell me what's it gonna be? And he says, I don't know if you wanna hear this one, but it actually means you're gonna be executed. So he asks the cupbearer to tell Pharaoh about him. You might think, wow, Joseph used this God-given gift to tell this cupbearer what was coming next. Surely, surely now, God is gonna bless this guy, right? Surely? Nope, not yet. Not yet, at least not yet in the way that he wanted it to be. Because the cupbearer forgot about him. You know, sometimes miracles take time to come about. We have to wait and use our God-given gift, even when we don't see the results immediately. He didn't see the results immediately, but he used his gift in the context he was in. He used what God gave him, regardless of the circumstances. You know, sometimes I wish I saw immediate salvation in kids and youth, or deeper relationships immediately forming, but it's more like planting a seed and waiting for it to grow as you care for the soil. In the animated movie depicting this story, Joseph, King of Dreams, there is a beautiful image as we hear a musical montage, and Joseph plants and tends a plant within the prison. And that's just like us, right? You're in that circumstance, but you plant anyway. It's not ideal circumstances. If you want to grow a plant, if you want to grow a garden, right, prison is a terrible place to do that, right? He could have been like, I rebuke these circumstances, I rebuke these prison walls, and I'm going to go outside and plant my plants over there, but that's not what God did. So where God put him, where God used him in this scenario to reach using his gift, he planted. What's also beautiful about this scene from Joseph, King of Dreams, the DreamWorks film, there's a song during this time when he's planting this plant. Now, again, this is an illustration. This is not a part of the actual scriptural story. This is an illustration, and I love the lyrics of the song that say, you know better than I, you know the way. I've let go the need to know why, for you know better than I. And that's really what it comes down to, right? We want to be in control. We want to know what's coming next. Why do we want to know what's coming next? Because we don't trust someone else with our future. We think we know best. Wanting to know the future, we don't think of it this way, but wanting to know the future can be a form of arrogance, a form of pride, a form of thinking that if we simply weren't informed about the future, that we would be able to behave the best way possible instead of trusting that since God, since God already knows the future, we just go to Him and say, God, what is this season? What do you want me to do in this season? How do you want me to use the God-given gifts that you have given me in this season? Whether it's this jail cell, whether it's COVID-19, whether it's a breakdown in your family, whether it's not having any family or relationship that you'd like to have at all. Maybe you're sitting there and you're listening to me and you're thinking, you know, oh, you know, February 14th, singles awareness day, and you're thinking, ah, I don't have somebody for me in my life. If only I had somebody for me in my life, everything would get fixed. Or maybe you're a little more realistic than that. You think certain areas would be fixed. It would be just, it would just be great. And I'm praying for you. I want you to have the relationships that God wants you to have, and that ultimate relationship. But what are you doing in the current circumstance that you're in? Whether, you know, that feels like a prison to you. You feel trapped not having that person in your life. But what are you doing? What are you planting? What are you sowing in the ground the God-given gifts that God has given you in the meantime? Because he knows better than I. So one day, Pharaoh had a terrible dream, and the cupbearer finally remembers Joseph. He recommends Joseph to Pharaoh, like, I know this guy. He interprets dreams. I mean, it's kind of 50-50. Not everyone turned out great, but this guy can probably tell you what's going on. So basically, he brings Joseph in. Joseph interprets the dream to mean that there's going to be a famine, and Pharaoh is super grateful, and he gives Joseph a more prominent position in Egypt and wealth and that sort of thing. Now, this famine, when it comes, is widespread. It's not just hitting Egypt, okay? It hits back where his family is. So now his family was suffering to the famine. So his brothers came looking for food in Egypt, and then they meet Joseph, and they don't recognize him. So Joseph, he toys with them a bit, right? And I think this humanizes Joseph in this story, because up till now, he thinks, oh, he's just kind of a victim of circumstances. He's a pretty good guy. He never does anything wrong. He kind of slipped up here. He toys with them a little bit. He pretends he doesn't believe their story about having a father back elsewhere and all this kind of stuff, but eventually, he reveals who he is to them. And his brothers were really afraid, right? They're afraid he was going to take revenge on them. I would be too. But instead, he showed them mercy and had them all come to live with him in Egypt. You know, it may take a lifetime, but God can heal a family. You know, and you have to imagine, it was hard for them to sort of integrate back like everything was fine now, even though there was forgiveness. Those things take time. In fact, his brothers were still afraid later when their dad was dying, so they came and they basically made him promise he wasn't going to do any harm to them for what they had done before. But here's the takeaway, is I want to bring it back to family, to family day. Your family, they might be next to you right now. So, you know, maybe don't get too many visual cues of agreement here, but your family might be the most dysfunctional family around. But God can use you. You are never too far gone for God to use you. You know, maybe your family has had bad blood between each other. Maybe they did sell you to a foreign nation, but God can heal that. Maybe you're in the midst of your own personal prison, it feels like, not of your own design even, but you're stuck in the waiting period. Plant seeds, tend to them, use the gifts God has given you, even if you don't see the result, and wait for God to bring good things about. 1 Corinthians 3.7, you can turn there if you have your Bibles, there's a YouVersion Bible app in Church Online here, or you can pull it up on your phone. Wherever you get this information, it's found at 1 Corinthians 3.7, and it says, so neither the one who plants, nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who makes things grow. The one who plants, verse eight now, and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor. Verse nine, for we are co-workers in God's service. You are God's field, God's building. And this is how you can know it's going to come to pass, because here we see whether you're planting, whether you're watering where someone else has planted before, and you don't even realize it. You don't even realize it. If you're in ministry, if you're dealing with a relative that you're witnessing to, something like that, you don't know, maybe their co-worker is preaching to them as well, and God is going to be poking, just knocking on the door. He's going to be bringing things to their mind, because God makes it grow. You might think, I'm not going to say the right words that are going to get my friends saved, but God is the one who makes it grow. You use your gift to plant, to water the best you can, and you leave it up to the Holy Spirit to make it grow. Don't be discouraged as you wait, as you're praying for that family miracle, as you're praying for that relationship, as you're praying for that job promotion, as you're praying for that healing, whatever it might be in your circumstance, don't be discouraged as you wait. Do not give up. Galatians 6, 9 says, let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time, we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. But you have to remain faithful to where God has put you, whether in palaces or prisons, wherever you find yourself today, find yourself stuck at home, alone, or surrounded by family. Use the God-given gifts that God has given you. Plant, water, and wait. The Holy Spirit is going to make it grow, and God can do a miracle in your family today and mine. And I'm praying for that. Let's pray, guys. Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are a God of miracles, whether it's a physical miracle, Lord God, whether it's a family miracle, Lord God, or relational miracle, you are a God of miracles. And sometimes those miracles feel like slow motion to us, Lord God, as we are so impatient. Lord, we pray that you'd help us to be patient, but not passively patient, Lord, actively patient, where we go to you, we ask you for guidance through your Holy Spirit of what we should be doing next, of how we can be watering, how we can be planting in the midst of it all. Lord, we wait and we pray. Lord, I pray right now for the family of everybody who's watching right now, whether their family is with them or not, whether that family is a future family, Lord. I pray that you would be with them, Lord, that you would prepare those people, Lord God, that you would help them to use the God-given gifts that you have given them to bring that healing, Lord. But we know you're the one who's gonna bring that healing, but help us to play our part, Lord God. I just pray for everyone today, whether they're celebrating Valentine's Day, Family Day this weekend, or it's just another weekend for them, Lord God, I just pray that you would be with them. I pray that you would strengthen them, that you would encourage them, and let them know that they are loved by an almighty God. In Jesus' name, amen.