Main idea: Trust in the Lord who accomplishes his purposes through every detail.
Application
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Good morning. Faith, Bible Church, it's a joy to be able to be here with you this morning and worship and God's Word together and in song. And my name is Josh Gilchrist, and I am the resident college pastor here. Get to oversee our wonderful college students here, and I get the privilege of being able to preach God's word to you today. So we are continuing our study through the book of Genesis, and our focus has been on the story of Joseph, the favorite son who became a slave and now a prisoner. Last week, our lead pastor, Dan taught us on Genesis 39 and we saw how Joseph was betrayed a second time, as Potiphar tried to seduce him, and after he resisted and refused, she lied about him and got him put into prison. It's the second betrayal, the first one being his brother, selling him into slavery. And as Dan talked about that, we saw that God uses humiliation to train his instruments. He uses shame and suffering. And today we're going to see that training continue. As Joseph longingly waits for his freedom. Stand with me for the reading of Scripture. If you're able, we'll read all of Genesis chapter 40 together.
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And this is right after Joseph was placed in prison by Potiphar. Sometime after this, the cup bearer, the king of Egypt and his Baker, committed an offense against their Lord, the King of Egypt. And Pharaoh was angry with his two officers, the chief cup bearer and the Chief Baker, and he put them in custody in the house of the captain of the guard and the prison where Joseph was confined. The captain of the guard appointed Joseph to be with them, and he attended them. They continued for some time in custody, and one night, they both dreamed the cup bearer and the Baker of The King of Egypt, who were confined in the prison, each his own dream and each dream with its own interpretation. When Joseph came to them in the morning, he saw that they were troubled, so he asked Pharaoh's officers who were with him in custody in his master's house, why are your faces downcast today? They said to Him, we've had dreams, and there's no one to interpret them. Joseph said to them, Do not interpretations belong to God. Please tell them to me. So the chief cup bearer told his dream to Joseph and said to him, in my dream, there was a vine before me, and on the vine there were three branches. As soon as it budded, its blossom shot forth, and the clusters ripened into grapes. Pharaoh's cup was in my hand, and I took the grapes and pressed them into Pharaoh's cup and placed the cup in Pharaoh's hand. Then Joseph said to him, this is its interpretation. The three branches are three days. In three days, Pharaoh will lift up your head and restore you to your office, and you shall place Pharaoh's cup in his hand as formerly when you were his cup bearer. Only remember me when it is well with you. And please do me the kindness to mention me to Pharaoh, and so get me out of this house, for I was indeed stolen out of the land of the Hebrews, and here also, I've done nothing that they should put me into the pit. When the chief baker saw that the interpretation was favorable, he said to Joseph, I also had a dream. There were three cake baskets on my head, and in the uppermost basket there were all sorts of baked food for Pharaoh, but the birds were eating it out of the basket on my head. And Joseph answered and said, this is this interpretation. The three baskets are three days. In three days, Pharaoh will lift up your head from you and hang you on a tree, and the birds will eat the flesh from you. On the third day, which was Pharaoh's birthday, he made a feast for all his servants and lifted up the head of the chief cup bearer and the head of the Chief Baker among His servants. He restored the chief cup bearer to his position, and he placed the cup in Pharaoh's hand, but he hanged the chief baker as Joseph had interpreted to them. Yet the chief cup bearer did not remember Joseph, but forgot him. This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray God, our Creator, possessor of heaven and earth, you are the one who spoke and it came to exist. You are the one who promised to make a great nation of Abraham, and here in Genesis, we find his descendants in less than ideal circumstances. We see Joseph, who most likely understood those promises to Abraham through his father, Jacob, languishing in prison. And we're reminded of the reality that we find ourselves sometimes in situations where we suffer adversity. And injustice, and we don't always know what you're doing with it, Lord, but you do. You are sovereign over every detail, and you are with your people through every high and every low. We pray that as we look at your word today, that you would fill us with awe at your wonders and your power. You're working all things according to your purposes. Lord, strengthen us with that confidence. Strengthen other local churches with that confidence as well. Lord, we pray for fourth Memorial Church and their lead pastor, Scott Liddell and Grace Christian Fellowship Central and the believers there, led by Pastor Brett Sweet Lord, may your word be faithfully proclaimed there this morning, and may you make them fruitful and bringing you glory into making disciples. Lord, pray that you would do the same in our lives. Lord, be with us here now. Lord, as we look at your word, we pray these things in your name. Amen. Please be seated.
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Hopefully. That makes it a little bit better. We'll see the path to eternal glory will be one of affliction and suffering. Scripture makes this very clear. Coming to Christ means taking up your cross and following him, it means being willing to suffer shame for for his name. In our culture of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, that's not really a popular message. It's hard for us, and you probably don't go looking for suffering. And you don't need to, you don't need to go like I want to find a way to suffer. You don't have to do that, but it will be inevitable for those who follow Christ, inevitable in life. But maybe you find yourself avoiding things in life that you know will bring suffering. We love our comfort. We love our ease. We love peace. Maybe you have been afraid to bring up Christ to someone because you know that their reaction will be one of hostility and rejection, or you believe that and think that and that prevents you from speaking up. Or maybe you even have strict rules at work in school where you're not allowed to speak about Christ or religion and you don't want to get in trouble at work or school. Maybe you're afraid to tell someone that they are headed to hell if they continue on the path that they are, that they are on, rejecting Christ and devising their own way and their own religion, afraid of making them uncomfortable with that. But I encourage you to not forget the fact that suffering and suffering for Christ is a blessing, and then when we do that, it provides an amazing opportunity for God's sufficient grace to show up and carry us in the midst of weakness. Joseph's suffering began in Genesis, 37 before the suffering started, he had two dreams where he would be exalted above his family, his brothers and his father, Joseph, was already favored. He was the favorite son, and his brothers resented that, and they decided we're going to bring the suffering to him. They throw him in a pit. They sell him, after that, to a caravan of Ishmaelites, who transport him down to Egypt, where he is sold to Potiphar, the captain of the guard, the keeper of the prison. But God was with him. We saw this last week in Potiphar his house, and he blessed him. He had kind of a Midas touch. Everything he touches turns to gold. There's blessing in everything he does. And Potiphar saw that and trusted a lot to him. But then Potiphar, his wife, falsely accused him of trying to take advantage of her, And Potiphar cast him into prison. There he finds favor as well with the warden. Joseph is faithful in all these stages, and it's a result of God being with him and causing him to find favor. But God is also with Joseph when he finds disfavor. Perhaps you're suffering some kind of disfavor today from someone or you're feeling forgotten from somebody. Families can be really messy. A dad might tell his son, I don't want you coming around here anymore if you're going to be talking that Jesus stuff and that Bible stuff, that's an intolerant message. It's bigoted. You're not welcome here if you do that, maybe you're in a relationship. You're enduring a relationship where you feel more like a doormat, a marriage where your spouse controls, manipulates, criticizes and maybe even gets physical or. US, it can be very weary and discouraging to persevere in such adversity. We find ourselves saying, Where is God in this? What is he doing with this Genesis? Chapter 40 shows us Joseph, God's chosen instrument being refined through the fires of suffering, and we see him remaining faithful to serve God in the midst of it, and glorifying God for the abilities he has. But it seems like every time he finds favor, he's brought low again. And there's another set back. He dreamed that he would be exalted, and he's probably finding himself. I didn't imagine it looking like this. This is not what I imagined, but in chapter 40, which we just read, two new characters versed on the scene, Joseph's encounter with them will provide a major opportunity. This all goes to show us our big idea for today. Trust in the Lord who accomplishes His purposes through every detail. Trust in the Lord who accomplishes His glorious, perfect purposes through every detail of life, every show of favor and every every setback. We're going to look at three parts of Joseph's encounter with these two officials that show us that the Lord is indeed trustworthy at every detail that first part is the dreamers. Genesis is all about God making a people for Himself, and preserving them and preserving Joseph's life so that he can be used to save a lot of human life, as we'll see, the story progress. Verse one gives us a couple of important details. An unspecific amount of time has passed after Joseph is put into prison by Potiphar, he's given some kind of authority from the warden there, but a cup a cup bearer and Baker officials in Pharaoh's court servants are imprisoned because they offend Pharaoh. They do something to make him mad. It doesn't say in the passage what that offense was and whether their incarceration was right and just, but they somehow displeased him, so he throws them into prison, where Joseph was confined. And in verse four, it says that the captain of the guard appoints Joseph to attend these two servants of Pharaoh. They were probably deemed more important because of their connection to Pharaoh, the ruler of Egypt. And it says that the captain of the guard appoints him to that we know from Genesis 3736 and 39 one, that Potiphar was the captain of the guard. However, here in verse four, there's, there's no name. It just says the captain of the guard. So we don't know for sure whether this is Potiphar or a new captain of the garden. It doesn't really matter to the rest of the story. What matters is that Joseph is encountering these two officials, and an opportunity is coming. It's kind of a humbling and humiliating thing, potentially to be a servant of servants, and that's indeed what Joseph is given the task of doing. It seems like a downward spiral for him, but all the way through, God is with him. He's helping him to prove himself trustworthy in the house of Potiphar and now in the prison with the warden and the captain of the guard. It says that they continued sometime in custody. It's an undisclosed amount of time, but we'll do a little bit of connecting. Joseph was sold into Potiphar his house at the age of 17. It's a junior in high school, senior in high school, and he will be 30 years old when he gets out and enters into service for Pharaoh. So there's a 1313 years, a long amount of time, and each of the officials dreamed a dream with its own meaning or interpretation. Now, dreams were such a big deal to the Egyptians that Pharaoh had magicians and wise men who would help interpret them using sorcery, dark arts and magic. There's actual like spiritual forces there, but here in prison. These two officials are cut off from that, and they feel hopeless. There's no one to interpret our dreams back in Pharaoh's court, we could talk to the magicians and the wise men, but little they know that something greater is next to them. Joseph sees them morning after morning and after they had these dreams, he sees that they look upset. Now, this is hard for me to understand. Why do you look upset in prison? I'm in prison. I don't think that you know there's this happy I'm in prison. Face, yay. Yeah, prison. It's great, but I think of it like the pieces of paper that maybe you've seen. The doctor's office when you go in for some kind of pain. And there's the 10 different faces with different facial expressions related to the pain. A normal day in prison is probably a four or five, and today maybe they are at eight. Whatever it is, he can see that they look more upset than the normal something is weighing heavy on them. And so he asks them, why are your faces downcast today? It's really neat to just see Joseph's compassion and concern while he's suffering too, and he wants to help alleviate that, if he can, to try to make prison as pleasant as it possibly could be, he's being a faithful servant and proving trustworthy in verse eight, the two officials share what it is that's troubling them. First half of verse eight, we have had dreams, and there is no one to interpret them. We want to know what they mean, and we are going to find out what the dreams are in the next part.
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But what Joseph says in the second half of verse eight is important. Do not interpretations belong to God. Please tell them to me. Now I hope that you Don't overanalyze your dreams. We all have some strange dreams, and I hope that you don't feel a sense of foreboding that this dream means that something is going to me. One commentator says that dreams are made up of frivolous thoughts that pass, you know, through and out of the mind. I had a dream once where my dad showed up to our house, and he just walked in and he handed me a paper bag that was closed, no explanation of what it is. Just said, Here you go, and then step back, and I'm like, What is it, you know? And then the dream ended, and I was laughing when I woke up. It was really weird. It was really weird. I haven't gone through life worrying about that or wondering what it means. What's in the bag, Dad, what was in the bag? I don't know. I don't know what it was. I don't expect to have some kind of revelation someday where my dad brings me something and some great mystery is revealed in the bag. I'm not expecting that we don't live in that house anymore where the dream took place anyway, so, but here we have two dreams that mean something. These dreams, according to John Calvin, carry the force and significance of prophecy. Joseph knew that the ability to interpret these dreams was something that came from God. He was not patting himself on the back or flexing like, look what I can do. He didn't act like he was something special. I have a direct line with God, but he does say, tell him to me, but that's right after he says, the interpretations belong to God. Now, there's only two places in the Bible where dreams and interpretations are a thing, here in Genesis and in the book of Daniel, where he interprets Nebuchadnezzar his dreams. So it's not the norm. It's not the normal thing. This is out of the norm that the future is being foretold through dreams. But what's not out of the norm is God working wonders and taking care of his people and working to accomplish his purposes. This was just one of the many ways in the Old Testament that God revealed Himself to people through dreams. Is a small portion of our scriptures there, but turn in your Bibles to Hebrews, one, one and two. It's toward the back of your Bibles. God revealed Himself through through Moses, different prophets, kings, shepherds, revealed himself to people who recorded the stories of dreams like this. But in these last days, today we have the full 66 books, the full revelation, God has given us everything we need in His Word Hebrews one, one and two. Says long ago at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days, he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed, the heir of all things, through whom also He created the world. We don't need to rely on dreams and prophecy for authoritative revelation from God. We don't. We have it all. We have everything pertaining to life and godliness. We have his sufficient word. This is not saying that God's word is not living and active. The author of Hebrews will later say that, but what it's saying is that the revelation has been given. He has spoken we have what we need in him, and all the dreams that get interpreted in the Old Testament were dreamed by pagan idolaters. Jesus, whose dreams pointed ahead to the unfolding of events, which we'll see is the case in our next part here. In part one, these dreamers arrive, and Joseph is appointed to serve them, and this will include giving God's interpretation of the dreams. He's a faithful man. He was faithful to the things his father asked him to do. He was faithful in Potiphar, his house. He's faithful to the warden and the captain of the guard, and now being faithful to these officials whom he attends and a faithful servant of God in part two, when he gives descriptions, point two, descriptions, or interpretations of what the dreams mean. The cup bearer tells Joseph his dream, there's a vine with three branches. It buds, it blossoms and it ripens. Clusters of grapes start to grow on it. And in the dream, the cup bearer sees himself taking the grapes, pressing them into the cup and then handing the cup to Pharaoh. So there's a lot of threes in here. There's three vines. The vine does three things. The cup bearer does three things in the dream, and Pharaoh was mentioned three times, and when Joseph provides the interpretation, three is a significant number. The three branches are three days. In three days, Pharaoh would lift up the cup bears head. If we take that literally, it's like my head's down now my head's up, but it carries, it carries a meaning, carries a couple different potential meanings. Simply to lift up someone's spirits, they're down in the dumps. They're in a pitiable condition, and they're raised up to a more honorable, happy position. That's one of the meanings. Then it can also be to summon them, to bring them out of prison. Dan talked about how prison was often a holding place where people would they would decide if someone was going to be executed or not. And so as we look at the unfolding of the story, we'll talk about how that relates to each person. But in this dream, Joseph, as he interprets, it says that you actually will be lifted up from a pitiable position and have your position restored to you. After he gives that interpretation, he asks for help himself. He seeks a mediator. Look at the first half of verse 14. He says, only remember me when it's well with you. And please do me the kindness to mention me to Pharaoh and so get me out of this house. Please, cup bearer, commit yourself to this act of kindness. Loving kindness. Be devoted to that. Be merciful to me. And when you get out, Joseph is so confident that it's going to happen, because it's God's word and it's God's interpretation. When that happens, will you please mention me to Pharaoh? He sees the opportunity that it is Joseph then pleads his innocence. He was stolen out of his land. He's kidnapped and sold into slavery. He says that he was from the land of the Hebrews. That was where he was stolen from. Perhaps he is given that as an important piece of identification information that might be helpful to Pharaoh. So he says this man that's from the land of the Hebrews. His God gave him interpretations of dreams. He says, I don't I don't deserve to be in prison either. Notice that he doesn't mention anyone by name here, he's only concerned with the evil. He's not seeking revenge. He's seeking relief. Here, this, this part of the story where Joseph speaks up shows that trusting in God and faithfully waiting on him doesn't mean that we cannot try to improve our situation by talking to those who could help us if a opportunity presents itself and there's someone who can actually help you in a situation when we're suffering unjustly. Joseph saw that opportunity with this man, but we don't want to put our ultimate trust in what people can do, but we can and should seek help from the people that are in our lives, the son whose dad has forbidden him to come and visit due to his faith. Could talk to another family member or someone that knows the dad, like, hey? Could you try to talk some sense in him? Could you tell him that I love him and miss him and would love to see him again? You do that the spouse who's suffering from cruelty and manipulation and abuse is not required to just sit and take it and sit in silence. She can speak up and talk to people who can can help her or him. Joseph, at this point, has been waiting for about 11 years, either being a servant in Potiphar his house or being Ian prison 11 years. Us that's a really long time, and like I said, we don't want to put our ultimate hope and what people can do for us, but we should know that God also uses people to accomplish his common grace and good in life. Joseph certainly realized that God might be moving through this encounter with the two officials, and he pleaded with him to remember him and mention him to Pharaoh. After his plea for help from the cup bearer, he hears and interprets the Baker's dream. The baker only gets the confidence to share his dream when he sees that the cup bearer's dream has a favorable interpretation.
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His dream is a little a little simpler than the first one. There's less going on. He has three cake baskets on his head, food in the uppermost basket for Pharaoh, and there's birds eating it. It's pretty much that it's the ways that it's different. Pharaoh is not in the dream. There's only food for Pharaoh. The baker doesn't see himself handing food over to Pharaoh, but he sees birds consuming it at all. And so Joseph answers very succinctly and clearly and honestly that something is happening in three days. The three baskets represent three days, and he says, You will have your head lifted up from you. Very different carries the sense of decapitation, possibly or just death could be a euphemism for death. And so here, this is not the restoration or the being lifted up from a pitiable condition to a good one. This is being summoned for a death sentence. He would hang on a tree, nailed and staked to a pole made out of wood. This is the most cursed way to die. The Israelites, reading this, this book of the Bible, when it was being written, would say, that's the most cursed way to die, Deuteronomy, 2122 through 23 makes that clear, and the birds would eat his flesh, birds of prey. God revealed what was going to happen to these two men through Joseph, and he knew that the interpretation was another way, another example that God shows that God is trustworthy and that he's behind the details. And we see Joseph being willing to provide the interpretation, whether it's favorable or not. God has revealed through his word that he is rightfully angry with sin and those who persist in it and who reject him. And he's revealed the eternal destinies of those who find his favor through faith in His Son, Jesus Christ, and the eternal destinies of those who continue persisting in their sin and rejecting him if you have never repented of your sins and trusted in Jesus Christ, today is the day that you can do that believe that he's Lord, and agree with him that you have made something else Lord of your life, knowing that that's displeasing to Him and detrimental to you. Ask Him to show you kindness by forgiving you and bringing you into a saving relationship with him. He's trustworthy over every detail you can trust him with your life, your soul and your eternity. He was with Joseph, enabling him to help these men know what was coming. And he was with Joseph as he asked the cup bearer to remember him to and mention him to Pharaoh. He's behind every detail. So we've seen the Dreamers The descriptions of their dreams. Now we come to our last part of the story, the destinies. It was God, not Joseph, controlling these destinies. He just gave Joseph the skill to interpret. Joseph is not the Destiny maker, and we see in the last four verses, the story unfolds, just as Joseph interpreted. Three days later, it's Pharaoh's birthday, and he wants to throw a party. Verse 20 says that he made a feast for all of his servants. And you know what goes good at a party, beverages and baked goods. So Pharaoh might have seen a need for his chief cup bearer and his Baker to be back. It says that he lifted up the head of the chief cup bearer and the head of the Chief Baker among the servants. This is a public display in front of everybody. So here he's simply summoning them to come back Pharaoh's probably not trying to be nice to His servants. Here. Here and his two formerly imprisoned officials, this seems to me to be a power play. Kids, when it's your birthday, don't you love how you get to decide what you're having for dinner and for dessert, and what you get to do for entertainment, what movie you get to watch. It's your special day, and you get a little bit of power there. Pharaoh, on his birthday, gets to pick the food, the drink and the festivities. Godless kings, pharaohs and emperors love to flex like look at all the things I have. Look at all the people who are serving me. Look at all of you servants who are dependent on me for life. I have power over you. Look at these two guys that I just brought out of prison. I had the power to put them in. I have the power to raise them up. Says that Pharaoh summoned these two officials or lifted up their heads among the among his servants as a display. They're all there, and they're seeing this Pharaoh seems to have a god complex. And in fact, in ancient Egypt, the birthday was often an anniversary of the coronation where the Pharaoh believed that he had become a deity or a god. So the next two verses show the different destinies of the two officials. In verse 21 Pharaoh restores the cup bearer to his office, and what the cup bearer saw in his dream of him handing himself, handing the cup to Pharaoh, he does. In verse 22 we see the baker meets a different destiny. Says, but he hanged the Chief Baker, as Joseph had interpreted. Pharaoh probably thought he was the one controlling these men's destinies, but he wasn't. It was God who was behind every detail. Now, Pharaoh was responsible for the sin and his decision. It's possibly unfair to judge Pharaoh's motives here. Maybe the men really had done a really horrible offense that was worthy of death, and he was just letting one of them go free, which could be a customary thing during a celebration. Maybe Pharaoh just loved wine more than he loved bread, I don't know. But potentially worse, maybe he was providing some kind of court case as entertainment for his birthday party to see who lives, to see who dies, or a competition to see who lives and who dies, whatever it was and whatever happened, hanging and impaling a servant on a wood pole at your party is a very barbaric way to celebrate. This was Pharaoh's way of saying, you see what happens when you offend Pharaoh. If you were the newly restored cup bearer, would you have had the courage to bring up Joseph at that moment? Verse 23 says the chief cup bearer did not remember Joseph, but forgot him. He did not do the kindness that Joseph had asked him to do. He was forgotten and alone in the dungeon where he was placed by his master, whom he served faithfully. What a contrast we see between Joseph and Pharaoh. Pharaoh pretends to be God. We have Joseph serving God and giving him the credit for the abilities of what he's able to do. Joseph remains stuck in prison in this godless land, hoping for a reason to lift his head up. I believe that Moses, who wrote Genesis, wanted the people who were getting ready to enter the Promised Land, and remember that this was the horrible land that they had come out of under the power of another wicked Pharaoh. Also, Joseph's captivity would remind them of their 400 years as slaves in Egypt. The narrator offers no commentary about what Joseph said or thought he is just alone and forgotten, but we can imagine. We know that Joseph was confident in God's word, that God was going to make what he revealed to him happen, indeed happen, but he didn't get a dream for himself, only for the cup bearer and the baker, and so he's still left wondering, like, How is this all going to work out? We don't know, like, I said what he was thinking, but possibly, God, get me out of this house, please. I thought I had a perfect opportunity with this cup bearer, please. I want to see my dad again. Is he still even alive? Does he know what my brothers did? Do my brothers have any kids? Do I have any nieces and nephews at this point? This is 11 years. If you're high school age 17, imagine that just 11 years, the next 11 years of your life, separated from your family. I don't want to spoil too much of what's coming next. Life, but this isn't the end of Joseph's story, as we know. Notice that verse 23 doesn't say that he forgot him forever, but that he just forgot him. He will remember him eventually, in two years, bring the total to 13 years. It's dangerous to obsess about the what ifs. We can do that about the future, but we can also do that about the past. What if this would have happened instead? But I think it's a fair thing to think about what would have happened if Joseph would have gotten out of prison right then and just split and left Egypt. How would that affected things?
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Joseph may have wondered like, What good was that to serve these officials? He has yet another reason to feel mistreated and abandoned here in the prison. He saw what he thought was a perfect opportunity, and it seems to be another miss and disappointment. But Joseph doesn't know what's coming two years from now, at this point, God's preparing something well beyond anything that he could imagine, far better than just getting out of prison. Some points of application from our message today, remember that God's timing is always perfect. God's sense of timing is different than ours, and his is always right. He's always right. We don't always see what he's doing, how he's working, but Romans 828, says that he is working all things for good. We know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, and for those who are called according to His purpose, we don't always like what's going on around us, but we can trust that every last detail is in God's hands. Second application point, use your gifts and abilities to glorify God and serve others. We saw Joseph doing that, interpreting dreams and attributing that to God, and we'll see in the next chapter, when we return to Genesis in a few weeks, how significant the interpretation of that dream would prove to be. We don't know what one word of exhortation or what one act of service or one just act of mercy to someone else, the difference that that might make in someone's life and someone's trajectory, and how God might use that. So I encourage you to trust God even the things that seem small like I don't know if this is making any kind of difference. God controls it all and will use it. Final application point, persevere during unjust suffering. The worst thing that we can do when we suffer unjustly is to forsake God, the only one who can help us and be our refuge, and turn to sin. It's easy for us, though, to know the whole of Joseph's story and say, Yeah, I believe that God is like that. But when we find ourself in a situation like Joseph's, Joseph is in, it's not as easy for us? Is it? It's not as easy. Turn to First Peter 219, through 20.
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Peter wrote the his First Epistle to Christians who were suffering persecution under the Emperor Nero, and he gives them exhortation about how to handle that.
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First, Peter, 219, through 20, for this is a gracious thing. When mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly. For what credit is it? If, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure, but if, when you do good and suffer for it, you endure. This is a gracious thing in the sight of God. Those last words are powerful God. God sees it's in his sight, and it's gracious to him. He's not blind to the unjust suffering that we go through. He sees and he cares. Joseph reminds us of what we read about Jesus. In the next few verses, he switches from talking about what they're to do to what Jesus did in the way that he suffered verse 21 for to this you've been called because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example so that you might follow in his steps. He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, He did not revile in return. When he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously. Verse 24 shows us the wonderful things that that unjust suffering accomplished. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness by his. Wounds you have been healed. Jesus was hanged on a tree and became a curse on behalf of sinners, enabling them to be able to die to sin and live to righteousness. He's in the business of doing that. A new life in Christ is possible through his suffering and what he did, we got to celebrate that this morning with Emily's beautiful testimony and baptism. God accomplishes amazing things through his suffering. The path to eternal glory will be one of affliction and suffering. John Bunyan, a Puritan preacher in England during the 1600s and the author of the famous Pilgrims Progress, was banished to prison for 12 years, about the same amount of time that Joseph was held captive or a prisoner. And while in prison, he wrote the Pilgrim's Progress, he lived during a really tumultuous time politically that sounds familiar. It was a period called the restoration, where the monarchy had been out of power for 11 years and the Puritans controlled England. The Puritans were seeking to purify the Church of the influences of the monarchy and the Church of England, they wanted just a pure biblical religion. And in 1660 the restoration took place, and the monarchy went after the Puritans, and Bunyan was one of them. He was arrested for teaching without a license from the government, and he spent, like I said, spent 12 years in prison, similar to the amount of time that Joseph was held captive the first year of the restoration. In fact, he was torn away from the church that he shepherded and was preaching to. He was torn away from his wife and from his kids, one of whom was was blind, and he described the parting with his family as the tearing of flesh from his bones. It's a horrible feeling to think of like being in jail and not being able to care for your family while in prison. He worked on the Pilgrims Progress and the autobiographical piece Grace abounding to the chief of sinners, in which he wrote the following words, I had this consideration that if I should venture all for God, I engage God to take care of my concerns. If I'm going to give my full life to God and serve Him, I have to trust him with what concerns me. However, if I forsook Him in His ways for fear of any trouble that would come to me or mine, I would not only falsify my profession of faith, but would count also that My concerns were not so sure if left at God's feet as they would be if they were under my own care. Though, with the denial of the way of God, Bunyan came to realize that the things that mattered to him were safe in God's hand. The details that he was concerned about were safe at the feet of God, better than they are at his own trouble may come as we follow God, but he is trustworthy and controlling it all in suffering our concerns weigh heavy, but they're better left at the Lord's feet than in our own hands. May we all remember this, and may we trust and the trustworthy God who accomplishes His purposes through every detail. Let's pray, Lord, you're with your people. We praise you for that. You're with us. You're working even the darkest seasons. Lord, though, there's more to this story, we're prone to find ourselves feeling stuck in a pit and forgetful that you control every detail in your perfect timing. Lord, help us to trust you and serve you faithfully. Bring glory to your name. Thank you that when people fail to show kindness to us, Lord, you never fail. Your loving kindness never fails. When we feel forgotten, you are still with us as you were with Joseph. Lord, you're good to all, and your mercy is over all that you've made. We praise you and thank you in Jesus name, we pray.
Josh serves as Resident College Pastor for Faith's college ministry, Doxa. He and his wife, Pam, have three children.
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