2022 02 27 Joseph's Dark Valleys and Ours

Joseph, who had been favored by his father with a special coat, had to go through many dark valleys in his life. One of those valleys was when his brothers threw him into a pit and later sold him as a slave. Another valley was when he was falsely accused and thrown into jail. But through it all, Joseph remained faithful and eventually became a powerful ruler in Egypt. He had the opportunity to seek revenge on his brothers, but instead, he chose to forgive them and provide for his family. The story of Joseph teaches us that dark valleys are unavoidable, unpredictable, and impartial, but they are also temporary. And in the midst of those valleys, we can find strength, hope, and the opportunity to show love and forgiveness. So, we've been talking the last few weeks in a series called Stress Busters. We've been talking about stress, the effects of stress, the causes of stress, and God's antidotes to stress. And as each of us were given different Sundays to talk about and a basic outline to go with, as I looked at the basic outline, it immediately struck me as familiar to a certain person's story in the Bible, each of the points. Don't you just love it when God seems to be talking to you about the same thing in a whole bunch of different places? I've been doing a course right now studying the Pentateuch, and so we've been going through the first five books of the Bible, right? And particularly we've been focused on Genesis right now and Joseph, and as anyone here who's been helping out with Hope Club will be familiar as well, that's who we've been talking about with the kids as well, Joseph. So I've borrowed a few slides from our kids' curriculum actually, but it's all just kind of coalesced into this topic of dark valleys. Have you guys ever been through a dark valley in your life? What do I mean by that? I mean some sort of hardship where you're walking through, you can't really necessarily see an end in sight, and maybe you trust that there is, but it becomes hard to trust after a while. Maybe it's the loss of a family member, the loss of a job, an illness that maybe that you're going through, or any of those kinds of things, hardships. We all go through them at different times, right? So Joseph in Genesis had to walk through I would say not just one dark valley, but many dark valleys throughout the course of what, there's Joseph from our lovely kids' illustrations, but he had to walk through many different dark valleys just like we all do and different times in our life. So we're going to go through his story today. Now Joseph was one of many brothers who here is from a big family. I know that's subjective, but I have two sisters and one brother. People thought we were a big family, but I knew families with like seven or eight or nine kids, so to me that was a big family, right? So if you come from a big family, then you maybe know that if you're not the oldest, you're probably wearing hand-me-downs, right? You're not wearing the latest style. You're not wearing the nicest clothes and things, but Joseph was nowhere near the oldest, and he had been given something special by his father, and that was this lovely multicolored coat. Now I have here, I don't have a multicolored coat, but I have this multicolored beach towel, okay? So we're going to use our imagination here a little bit, okay? Now you might look at my fabulous coat here, it's just so wonderful, and think, well, you know, that's fine. Anybody can go down to Walmart and get a nice coat, it's not a big deal, right? But back then, for him to get a coat with all of these kinds of colors would not have been a matter of just going to the store, right? They were out in their fields and things like that. If they wanted a coat with one color, let alone many colors, they would have had to get very special dyes, sometimes that might have been imported from somewhere else. So for Joseph to have this coat wouldn't have been just a nice coat or a nice gesture kind of thing. This would have been an incredibly expensive gift, right? I would say maybe this might be a bit more comparable to, okay, anyone here know cars? What's a really nice sports car? Jaguar, that's a good one, yeah, Jaguar, okay. So I would say this is more of a comparison of Joseph's dad, Jacob, giving him a Jaguar, and everybody else, nothing. I would understandably be a little upset if I was his brothers, I don't know about you. So this kind of brings us to the first dark valley, the first aspect of a dark valley that we're going to talk about today, and that's the unavoidable dark valley. We're going to turn to Genesis chapter 37, if you're looking for it in your Bible, it's the chapter that comes after Genesis 36 and before Genesis 38, just to be helpful. You're welcome. Okay, we're going to start Genesis chapter 37 in verse 18. So Joseph's his favorite son, he's got this nice coat, and he's been sent by his dad to go check in on his brothers. And when Joseph's brothers saw him coming, they recognized him in the distance, and as he approached, they made plans to kill him. So just a little context here, Joseph had also been given some dreams already, and his brothers were aware of that, and they were dreams that involved them bowing down to him, and I'm pretty sure they already thought he was a bit full of himself, that did not help. And so, I guess it's got him a bit of a nickname here, so they said, here comes the dreamer, they said. A little bit of bitterness there, I don't know if you're picking up on that. Come on, let's kill him and throw him into one of the cisterns. We can tell our father a wild animal has eaten him. Then we'll see what becomes of his dreams. But when Reuben heard of their scheme, that's one of his brothers, he came to Joseph's rescue. Let's not kill him, he said. Why should we shed any blood? Let's just throw him into this empty cistern here in the wilderness. Then he'll die without laying a hand on him. Reuben was secretly planning to rescue Joseph and return him to his father. So when Joseph arrived, his brothers ripped off the beautiful robe he was wearing. Then they grabbed him and threw him into the cistern. Now the cistern was empty, there was no water in it. So there goes his special favor there. Thrown into a pit, right? What I think is interesting here is this is an unavoidable dark valley for Joseph. Now you might think, oh, Joseph could fight back, but he's, I don't know, if you ever tried to fight 11 people, I wouldn't do that. So it was very unavoidable for him. And in our life, there's going to be dark valleys that we're going to have to walk through that we can do nothing to avoid them. There's no shortcut. There's no way around it. It's not because of a choice of our own that has caused it. It's just happening to us, and there's nothing we can do about it. It's just life can be that way sometimes. What I would take away in the positive from this is to not be blaming yourself in those seasons. I think it's very easy as we're going through an unavoidable dark valley to be playing the coulda, woulda, shoulda game. What if this? What if I had done that? What if I had gone to school for this? What if I had moved there? What if I was with this person? What if I had been kinder to so-and-so? And please be kind to people, but some dark valleys are unavoidable, and so there's no use in blaming yourself. Even if you are to blame, it's not going to get you out of the valley. You have to turn your eyes off of that and on to Christ. So let's move on to our next dark valley, or our next aspect of a dark valley, that they can be unpredictable, right? So Joseph's in the pit, this unavoidable thing, and he probably thought, well, it can't get much worse than this, but this is only the beginning, right? So we're going to pick this back up, Genesis 37, verse 25. Then just as they were sitting down to eat, that is the brothers, they looked up and saw a caravan of camels in the distance coming toward them. It was a group of Ishmaelite traders taking a load of gum, balm, and aromatic resin from Gilead down to Egypt. And Judah said to his brothers, what will we gain by killing our brother? We'd have to cover up the crime. Instead of hurting him, let's sell him to those Ishmaelite traders. After all, he is our brother, our own flesh and blood, and his brothers agreed. So when the Ishmaelites, who were Midianite traders, came by, Joseph's brothers pulled him out of the cistern and sold him to them for 20 pieces of silver, and the traders took him to Egypt. Wasn't that so nice of them? After all, he is their brother. So another dark valley, right away. And Joseph couldn't have predicted that moment. I mean, I don't know what was going through Joseph's mind. Maybe he just thought this was a bit of, I don't know, you know, another brotherly fight, that kind of thing. They might have thought, okay, they're going to cool down, they're going to have their dinner, and then they're going to be like, okay, maybe we shouldn't do this, you know, we'll pull him out of the well. Maybe he thought his special coat and his position of favoritism with Jacob would have earned him something with his brothers, that they would have a fear where maybe they wouldn't want to do anything worse to him, that they'd change their mind. But he definitely wasn't predicting that they were going to sell him as a slave. I think one of the temptations with these unpredictable dark valleys, or maybe you've been through a dark valley before, and you're like, I don't want to go through that again. I am going to plan for every contingency. Who here is a planner? Yeah? Maybe you're not sure if that's you. I'll say this. If you've been on the family vacation, there's always the one person who's just like, let's just go anywhere. We'll leave at any time, and let's drive down the road, and the one person's like, oh, let's stop here. That place looks interesting. And the other person's like, no, that's not on the plan. We have to be at this restaurant by 1245. We have to be there this time. So we have planners, and we have people who kind of go in the moment. And I think that sometimes that personality, sometimes it's a defense mechanism, too, because we've been through hard times. We've been through things, and we're in an attempt to be proactive. We've planned for every single contingency as we can see it. But no matter how much you plan, no matter how much you prepare, you can't predict everything. And I think in a sense, we can use planning as a way to have an illusion of control over our life. And I say an illusion of control because we're never really fully in control of our lives, right? There's always outside circumstances, and most ultimately, as believers, I believe we're in the palm of God's hand, and that's what we have to trust in, you know? That's not to say that planning for things is bad, you know? If you've been through a bad experience, someone's, you know, treated you terribly, and then you decide, I'm going to plan to maybe not be around that person very much. That's not bad, but we also have to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit and recognize that if you were on a family vacation with the Holy Spirit, he's more likely going to be that guy, let's stop here. But that's not because he's willy-nilly, it's because he knows it all. He knows how long that, what stopping there is going to give you that opportunity to speak to that person who needs to hear something today. So just, you've got to trust in the middle of those dark valleys that God is in control and that he can bring out a purpose through all of this. So we're going to move on to our next point about dark valleys, is that they are impartial, right? In Matthew 5.45 it says, he causes his son to rise on the evil and the good, and sends his reign on the righteous and the unrighteous. Bad things happen to good people, bad things happen to bad people, and none of us are good without God. I don't even really like the terminology good people, bad people. It's Christ within us that is good. If there's any good in me, it's Christ. It's not me. I'm not a good person. God is good, right? And so, remembering that then, if you and I are not good people apart from Christ, then it's not a matter of good things or bad things happening to good people or bad people. It's that God has a plan and God moves through good circumstances and bad circumstances. Last night, actually, this is not in my notes, but last night, actually, I watched the kids movie Inside Out for the first time. Has anybody seen that movie? It's a Disney-Pixar movie, and it's all about emotions, right? You're dealing in this girl, she's 11, and all of the emotions going on in her brain. If you've ever met an 11-year-old, you know there's a lot of emotions going on there. So she's dealing with all of those things, and the main, spoilers, but the main big premise in that movie is you have the character of Joy, and who helps the little girl, Riley, feel joy, basically. She's trying to fight with the other emotions to get her to feel joy, right? And her biggest nemesis is sadness. Sadness is always getting in the way and ruining everything, right? But what Joy ends up learning throughout the movie is that sadness has a place. That sadness helps this girl, Riley, indicate to the people around her that she needs help, that she needs comfort, so that other people can help her. And I think that in an attempt to, a very well-meaning attempt to be positive people, we can think, oh, you know, bad things happen, you know, we got to, we got to rebuke that, that's the enemy, or like, don't feel sad, don't feel down, kind of thing. But God can use these things that we, we labeled negative. God never did. We did. That we labeled negative. He can use those things for his positive purposes. So I'll just, we're going to speed through a little bit of the next part of Joseph's story to catch us up to the parts we want to focus on. So Joseph goes to Egypt and he starts working for a guy named Potiphar, right? And things are finally kind of sort of starting to look up as he's working hard and Potiphar is noticing and giving him more responsibilities, putting him in charge of things more, and just noticing how well he is doing things. Unfortunately, Potiphar is not the only one who notices Joseph. Potiphar's wife also notices Joseph and she wants him to, to basically cheat on her husband with him and they, and he, Joseph knows that that's wrong. He knows that he has that, that wherewithal, kind of thing, that that would be a sin against his master, a sin against ultimately his master in heaven as well. And so he's like, no, I'm not going down that road. So he literally runs out of there, right? And she rips a piece of his coat. She's got his coat behind. I don't know, what is it with this guy and coats? And he just says, just stay away from coats, Joseph, and everything's going to be fine, right? But she's got that. So she makes a lie that Joseph had, you know, tried to attack her and that kind of thing. And so Potiphar's very upset and throws Joseph in jail. Great. Another dark valley, right? That's what things were looking up, you know, no good deed goes unpunished kind of thing. He goes to jail. But while he's in jail, he meets two servants of the king, of Pharaoh, who had fallen out of favor with Pharaoh and they both had dreams. Oh, interesting. Joseph had dreams for as well. So Joseph interprets their dreams, and we're not going to go into the specifics of that. It's not important for this morning. But if you are interested, of course, you can go in and read it for yourself later. But the important part is that one of them was restored to their station with Pharaoh, and that's the cupbearer. Unfortunately, the cupbearer forgot about Joseph for a while. You know, he told, you know, tell Pharaoh when you get out about me. Right? So he can get out. And of course, he forgets him. Another dark valley, another time of waiting, right? But eventually, Pharaoh has his own dream, his own troubling dream. And finally, something clicks in the memory of the cupbearer. Oh, yeah, I remember a guy. I know a guy. I know where you can find him. So Joseph interprets the dreams for Pharaoh, and the interpretation explains that the whole area is going to have a famine. No one's going to have any food. And so he explains this, and he says, you should probably get someone in charge of storing up some grains, some rations, so that we don't all die. That would be a good idea. And so Pharaoh is so grateful that he puts Joseph in charge of that. So during this time, he's going that, doing that, he's handing out the rations. And who should show up needing food? Joseph's brothers. Now I don't know about you, but Joseph's gone through a lot because of this. And if it were me, I might not be the happiest to see his brothers. I might think, well, you don't have any food? Wow, geez, tough. You should probably figure something out about that, but I'm not helping. Fortunately, Joseph didn't do what I did. He had an opportunity here, right? Good things and bad things happened to him, despite whether or not he may have thought of himself as a good person. And the same bad things that were befalling the entire land of Egypt were also befalling his family, impartially. So let's move on. But the temporary aspect of dark valleys. No matter how long the dark valley Joseph's going through, no matter how long the dark valley you're going through, it is temporary. And I could say that with all certainty, because if it lasts your whole life here on earth, it's still temporary because your life is temporary. So it's temporary. We can all agree on that. They don't last forever. First Peter 5.10 says that the suffering won't last forever. It won't be long before this generous God who has great plans for us in Christ, eternal and glorious plans they are, will have you put together and on your feet for good. What I think is really interesting about Joseph's temporary dark valley that may apply to some of us as well, is that he started out with an unavoidable dark valley. Something he had no choice in the matter. But now he has a choice. Now he's been given a position of authority and ability to help his brothers who harmed him. Now he has a choice, am I going to bring me and my family through another dark valley, put us into another one of this family strife and causing harm to others? Am I going to put someone else in a dark valley causing harm? Am I going to put myself into a dark valley by doing something against God? Or am I going to take us out of this situation? And I think that you probably all heard the expression that hurt people hurt people, right? Joseph had been hurt by his brothers. He'd been hurt by people who lied about him. He'd been hurt by people who believed those lies. He'd been hurt by people who had broken promises saying they would tell Pharaoh about him. He'd been hurt a lot. And now in a position of power, he has definitely an opportunity to hurt. And he might have felt a sense of justice in that hurt too, right? Because we as humans have this very fractured sense of justice, right? We always want to enact it. This person hurt me, I'm going to hurt them. That's justice. That's not justice. Leave it to God. But he would easily, I think we would easily understand how he might go to that place. But in that time, he didn't really follow a straight line to doing the right thing either. We're not going to go through it all, but he didn't immediately say, Hey, brothers, it's me. Here's some food. You know? He didn't let on to who he was for a while. They didn't recognize him. It's been years. He was speaking Egyptian. He wouldn't have been speaking the same language of them right away. And they didn't recognize him. And he tried to test them and all of these things and send word back to their father and keep some of them in jail. He was really struggling. But finally he came to his breaking point in Genesis chapter 45. Joseph could stand it no longer. There were many people in the room and he said to his attendants, out, all of you. So he was alone with his brothers when he told them who he was. And he broke down and wept. He wept so loudly the Egyptians could hear him. And word of it quickly carried to Pharaoh's palace. In my Pentateuch studies that we've been doing lately, it was pointed out that Joseph, Joseph cries more than anybody else in Genesis. It's brought up that he wept so much more. I think that, you know, everybody's different, but I think that he was obviously someone with a lot of deep emotion, right? And maybe that's you. Maybe you're someone with a lot of deep emotion going through a dark valley and that can cloud your judgment as you go through and you're not sure why God is doing this, why other people are doing things to you, right? But just stay on that true course of trusting him. So he said, I am Joseph. Is my father still alive? But his brothers were speechless. They were stunned to realize that Joseph was standing there in front of him. Please come closer, he said to them. So they came closer and he said again, I am Joseph, your brother, whom you sold into slavery, but don't be upset and don't be angry with yourselves for selling me to this place. It was God who sent me here ahead of you to preserve your lives. This famine has ravaged the land for two years and will last five more years and there will be neither plowing nor harvesting. God has sent me ahead of you to keep you and your families alive and to preserve many survivors. So it was God who sent me here, not you. And he is the one who made me an advisor to Pharaoh, the manager of his entire palace and the governor of all Egypt. I think what's so amazing about Joseph's story here is that it shows us a bit of a glimpse of how God used negative circumstances for his positive purposes in someone's life. And you and I may not have the luxury always of Joseph's clarity here to be able to see God did this, God worked through this. There's going to be experiences that we go through in our life where we might have a moment like Joseph and be able to look back and go, wow, God used this. But we might not have that clarity too. We might not see how it all comes together, but we have to trust and I think God has given us this here in his word so that we can trust, seeing that this is how he operates. You don't have to see how it all fits together to know that this is who he is because we've seen it here. So even if you don't see it in your own life now, even if you never see how it all comes together, we can trust knowing that he has that purpose. If he never experienced that dark valley of being thrown into the pit, his brothers never would have sold him to Egypt because they had to figure out what to do with him. If he never got sold into Egypt in that dark valley, he never would have been thrown into prison. That whole experience would have never happened. If he didn't get thrown into prison, another dark valley, right? He wouldn't have been able to interpret those dreams for the servants of Pharaoh. And if he hadn't interpreted those dreams, then he never would have gotten out of jail to have an audience with Pharaoh and Pharaoh never would have put him in charge of the famine rations, which in itself was a dark valley even though he was elevated to famine, right? But if he was not in charge of those famine rations of this foreign nation, he never would have been able to save his family and bring them back together. Think about it for a minute. Where does Joseph fit in in all of this, right? It's not an isolated story. Nothing in the Bible is just an isolated random story in itself, right? Joseph was the son of Jacob. Jacob was the son of Isaac. Isaac was the son of Abraham. Oh, Abraham, the one who the promise was given to, right? This was a family lineage of promise where God was establishing a nation and a covenant, right? And this covenant family, this family of promise could have all just died out in the famine if Joseph hadn't gone through what he had gone through so that he could have that position. I'm not saying God couldn't have done it a different way, but again, that's the what-if question, right? But what we know is how he did do it and how in his masterful, mighty plan that in the moment looks crazy, you know, and we see that over and over in, in the Bible and in Genesis for this family, right? God came to Abraham and gave him a promise and said, you're going to have this, you know, children, as many as the stars in the sky, uncountable, like the sands, and then his wife was barren, right? But and, and they were, it wasn't until he was like a hundred, right, that he had a kid. But God did that on purpose to show this is God doing this, right? And then through this whole family, and then through this story, through Joseph, we can see, you know, that through what looks weak to everyone around, what looks unplanned to everyone around, that there is a plan better than we could ever imagine. As, uh, as I think about Joseph, I can't help but think about a movie that I watched as a kid over and over and over called Joseph, King of Dreams. And it was just a cartoon about Joseph's life. And there was a song in that movie that I wanted to play for you guys today. And just really think about the lyrics, because it just really brings us this idea of, of God knows better than we do. How many can agree with that? I can agree with that. God knows better than we do. Most people know better than I do, but that's low bar, but, um, God knows better than we do. And so we can trust. I think that's, that is the, the, uh, the beauty of faith. Going back to the, the Pentateuch studies I've been doing, yesterday we had a class and we were asked the question, why do you think God told Abraham, go to this place and I'm going to show you it instead of just saying, it's there, this is the directions, these are the coordinates, this is the place. Because I think that when, that we tend to run ahead of God, we tend to, uh, we want that final destination. We don't want turn left here, go right here, uh, because we will take a different route than he would take, you know, I think if you, if you look at any Bible maps, you'll see lots of things where you're like, why did they take that route? That doesn't make any sense, but it's because God had a plan and a purpose for those stops, right? Maybe your journey is taking a lot of U-turns, one step forward, two steps back, doesn't seem to make any sense. Hang on and trust God. He knows better than we do. I thought I chose the surest road, but that road brought me here, so I put up a fight. Heavenly Father, we thank you that you know better than we do. We thank you that you have a way, you have a plan, you have a direction. Lord, we just pray that you would give us peace as we're facing the different things that each person in this room is facing, has faced, or maybe will face soon. Lord, we just pray that you would give us that peace and ability to wait as you guide. Lord, we don't need to know everything. Help us to let go of that need to know why, that need to know what's next, and hang on instead of, instead of hanging on to a faith in what we know, a faith in who we know, you. Lord, we thank you that although we don't have all the answers, we know the one who does. And Lord, I just pray for each and every person here, Lord, I don't know what they're going through in their life. I don't know, but you know, and I just pray that you would give them the comfort and the encouragement that they need right in this moment for the unique circumstance that they're walking through, Lord, and the comfort knowing that they don't walk through it alone, and that you have been where they're going. You've seen what it's like. You go before them and with them, and that you reside within them right now. Lord, we just pray for a deeper sensitivity to your Holy Spirit so that we can take those steps of faith without knowing where they lead, trusting you at each step of the way. Lord, I pray for the people who might be going through a dark valley that they're blaming themselves for, whether they had a hand in causing that, Lord, you have a hand in bringing something amazing out of it. So Lord, we just ask now that through our circumstances, good or bad, that your name will be glorified, that our lives will be a beacon pointing towards you for others along the way. In Jesus' name, amen.