Sermon 3 - Joseph- Plans and promises

This is a sermon to be delivered by Andrew Miles on Sunday 23rd January.

Plans and Promises

Genesis 45: 1-18  (and Genesis 37-47)

I predict that....England will win the world cup cricket having beaten Bangladesh in the semi-final and NZ will win the world cup rugby having beaten England in the semi-final.

I promise my sermon won’t last more than 45 minutes!

What’s the difference between a prediction and a promise? Both look to the future but only one has a sense of certainty and even then when we promise something sometimes we are powerless to fulfil the promise or sometimes we just don’t because we are weak willed or lazy.

It would be much easier for us to be confident in making or accepting a promise if we knew the future. God doesn’t make predictions, he only makes promises. He knows what will happen therefore when God makes a promise it is 100% guaranteed.

God made a promise to Joseph’s father Jacob, during his dream about angels ascending and descending into heaven in Genesis chapter 28, God promised that ‘I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go’. I wonder if Jacob was tempted to wonder whether God was going to keep his promise, as his beloved son was as good as killed, as the famine worsened, as the Egyptian ruler demanded that Benjamin went to Egypt too.

We all know the story of Joseph – it’s a great story. It includes separation, suffering, redemption, forgiveness and reconciliation. Courtesy of Andrew Lloyd Webber and subsequent productions of his hit musical on stage and screen most of us can sing, or at least hum, many of the tunes that tell this story nowadays.

I am not planning to retell the story, or to simply lay out the structure of chapters 37-47. For those of us who are using the E100 readings that will be clear. No instead I want to ask three simple questions today and the first is

What can we learn from Joseph?

The story can be summed up in the phrase, he remembered the Lord in the land of Egypt and the Lord remembered him. Joseph never gave up on God, despite so many setbacks.

How many of us, like Joseph, can with hindsight see God slowly working out his plan. In Joseph’s case he tells his brothers that it was God’s plan that he should be sold into slavery etc. in order that he would then be able to manage resources and so save thousands of people during the famine.

He trusted in God even when he might have been tempted to doubt. When he was thrown away by his brothers, when he was jailed for a crime he didn’t commit, when the cup bearer forgot about him, all this time he trusted in God, his faith remained intact. He even trusted in God’s great plan for his people even though he had just caused the entire Israelite nation, all 80 or so of them to leave the Promised Land. Notice Jacob and his whole family left Canaan to come to Egypt, even though God had promised them the land of Canaan. (This is why the Israelites were in Egypt and why Moses had to take them back home, but that’s another story.) But Joseph was adamant that his bones should be buried in the land that God intended for his people and indeed Moses carried them out of Egypt and in Joshua Chapter 24 Joseph’s bones are finally buried with those of his Fathers back in Canaan. Joseph trusted in God’s promised land. He knew that God kept his promises.

Throughout the story Joseph never takes the credit for his success but continually makes it clear that God is on his side helping all that he does go well and giving him interpretations of dreams. He is always giving glory to God – do we? Or are we more inclined to puff ourselves up when we have success?

How hard did Joseph have to work in order to fulfil God’s plan? Answer very, first as a slave to Potiphar where he rose through the ranks by working hard and being loyal, secondly in prison he did the same sort of thing and finally he ended up running a country for many years through troubled times, God was with Joseph certainly, but this was no reason for him to work any less hard. The same applies to us; the fact that we are trusting in God will not mean that we have to work less hard.

So Joseph trusts in God and never gives up, he works hard and gives glory to God.

What can we learn about the New Testament?

This may seem an odd question but the Old Testament often points us forward to the New Testament and helps us understand more fully what we read in the New Testament.

Joseph’s story has many echoes of the greatest story of salvation ever told – the story of Jesus. God is once again using the great stories of the Old Testament  to point us to his ultimate plan to save all mankind.

Who am I talking about? One man is sold for silver but stays true to God, even through a time of apparent abandonment and so through that man many are saved and there is reconciliation. Does this sound familiar? In Jacob’s eyes Joseph is dead but is brought back to life and through that resurrection God’s people, the Israelites are saved. God stays true to the promise he had made Jacob all those years ago, in a way that Jacob could never have dreamed of.

Joseph realised that throughout so many bad things God had a plan to save many. Jesus knew God’s plan for his life in advance and continued even when he could hardly face it. I sometimes think we are so fortunate to not know what the future holds.

What difference does this make for us?

God makes promises for us that we can trust. Even when things seem way out of control and far from ideal, God is in control. Often we can only see this with the benefit of hindsight, remember though God really does have foresight.

Will he always act the way we would like him to? No, God does not pander to our whims.

So there are two things to beware of:

·We need to beware of trying to persuade God to act according to our plan. For example prayers such as, bless this good idea of mine, or to put it another way please God may my will be done. We need to be like Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane and however hard, we must say “not my will, but thy will be done”. We have to hand over our desires to God and release our future plans to his control, trusting God to know the best plan.

·Beware of assuming that God can’t act through ungodly people, situations or events. Potiphar’s wife, Pharaoh’s cup bearer and indeed Pharaoh are all integral to God’s plan to rescue Joseph and through him to save whole nations. Yet none of those three is in the remotest bit interested in doing God’s will. God is much bigger than we think sometimes. As we read the whole story this week, think of all the sinful acts that God uses to make sure that Joseph is in the right place at the right time to save many.

Is it any more valid to question God’s plan when things don’t go as we’d like to than when things do go smoothly? Deep down we are so self-centred. We never question God’s plan when things go the way we’d like them to, only when they don’t suit us.

To summarise

God has a plan for everyone. He had a plan for Joseph and Joseph trusted in God even when he was so far from the comfort of home and far from the rest of God’s people.

Joseph is a model for us. Not only he does he point towards God’s ultimate rescue plan. He also shows us what it means to trust in God. Even when left to rot in a prison cell in a foreign country.

God is 100% trustworthy, he doesn’t make predictions, only promises.

To finish here are three of God’s promises to us.

Never will I leave you nor forsake you (Heb 13:5)

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. (Heb 13:8)

I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. (John 10:28)