The Preparation

Series entitled, when God breaks, shapes, and makes his people. And we saw last week how God was sort of brooding around this very messy situation of a family that was just self-destructive, dysfunctional to the max. And we just see how the story sets up either a cataclysmic failure or a huge victory. But there is some serious work that God has to do in this family. Well, today we're dealing with the next chapter, which is actually two chapters along in Genesis 39.

So I'll get us to turn to that now, and we're gonna read that chapter, Genesis 39, and I'll explain a little bit later what happens between Genesis 37 and this chapter. Genesis 39, verse one. Now Joseph had been taken down to Egypt. Potiphar, an Egyptian who was one of Pharaoh's officials, the captain of the guard, bought him from the Ishmaelites who had taken him there. The Lord was with Joseph and he prospered.

And he lived in the house of his Egyptian master. When his master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord gave him success in everything he did, Joseph found favour in his eyes and became his attendant. Potiphar put him in charge of his household and he entrusted to his care everything he owned. From the time he put him in charge of his household and of all that he owned, the Lord blessed the household of the Egyptian because of Joseph. The blessing of the Lord was on everything Potiphar had, both in the house and in the field.

So he left in Joseph's care everything he had, with Joseph in charge, and he did not concern himself with anything except the food he ate. Sounds like my kind of guy. Now Joseph was well built and handsome. And after a while, his master's wife took notice of Joseph and said, come to bed with me. But Joseph refused.

With me in charge, he told her, my master does not concern himself with anything in the house. Everything he owns he has entrusted to my care. No one is greater in this house than I am. My master has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?

And though she spoke to Joseph day after day, he refused to go to bed with her or even be with her. One day, he went into the house to attend to his duties and none of the household servants was inside. She caught him by his cloak and said, come to bed with me. But he left his cloak in her hand and ran out of the house. When she saw that he had left his cloak in her hand and had run out of the house, she called her household servants.

Look, she said to them, this Hebrew has been brought to us to make sport of us. He came in here to sleep with me, but I screamed. When he heard me scream for help, he left his cloak beside me and ran out of the house. She kept his cloak beside her until his master came home. Then she told him this story.

That Hebrew slave you brought us came to me and tried to make sport of me. But as soon as I screamed for help, he left his cloak beside me and ran out of the house. When his master heard the story his wife told him, saying, this is how your slave treated me, he burned with anger. Joseph's master took him and put him in prison, the place where the king's prisoners were confined. But while Joseph was there in the prison, the Lord was with him.

He showed him kindness and granted him favour in the eyes of the prison warden. So the warden put Joseph in charge of all those held in the prison, and he was made responsible for all that was done there. The warden paid no attention to anything under Joseph's care because the Lord was with Joseph and gave him success in whatever he did. So far, our reading. Preparation.

There's something to be said about good preparation. Slow, deliberate planning. Steady work towards an end result. During World War Two, you may have heard this story. There was an occasion where British intelligence achieved something that would ultimately prove to be a game changer in winning the war. On 9 May 1941, a British boat captured a German submarine which contained a highly sophisticated communication device called the Enigma machine.

The Enigma machine was a German encoding device the Allies thought, and the Germans actually thought, was impossible to decipher. The German military would use this device to send messages to one another, and although the Allies could hear and sense these messages being sent, they had no way of decoding what was being said. After the naval Enigma machine was captured, very intelligent code breakers in our Allied forces went about reverse engineering the machine and eventually broke the code, enabling them to understand what was being sent by the Germans. These top secret messages. But the hard part in this story, and these truths only came out much later after the war, the hard part was not letting the German military know that they knew.

That they could understand the codes. The Allies were still a very long way from winning the war. Preparation for the ultimate battle was needed. Part of that preparation was the difficult decision by the Allied forces to, while intercepting codes and messages of attacks in various places, let some through, to allow the Germans to have successful missions in order for them to think that they didn't understand these messages. But this is astounding when you consider that the Enigma machine was captured in 1941 and the war only ended in 1945.

But slow and careful preparation was needed in order to push for victory. But it cost the Allies many lives. Yet ultimately, it saved the lives of millions. Now we know that God does something similar in the lives of his children, and we see an example of that again this morning. He allows some very difficult things to happen in our lives in order to prepare for the final purpose, the final goal that he has planned.

Genesis 39 is a rags to riches to rags story. At the beginning of the chapter, we find Joseph, the golden boy of Jacob who we saw last week. He's a slave in Egypt. He's serving a man called Potiphar. What happened?

Last week, we were reflecting on the pride and the arrogance of this young, good-looking boy strutting around in a beautiful coat. And now he ends up as a slave in Genesis 39. Well, in the second half of chapter 37, we see the bitterness that was starting to bubble away in the brothers of Joseph. It caused them to get so angry that they planned to murder Joseph. They planned to murder him.

In this story, however, the oldest, Reuben, is not willing to go that far. He convinces the boys not to be too hasty and instead to capture Joseph, to strip him of his cloak, and to throw him in a giant well, in a cistern. His plan was then to come in the night, perhaps, or a bit later, to come and rescue Joseph again. The other boys agree, and instead of murdering Joseph right then and there, they do that. They strip him of his cloak.

They throw him in the well. Now these boys go about, and they probably go back to the normal stuff, but at dinner time, they're sitting around a campfire and they're discussing what's happened in the day, and Reuben isn't there. But as they're talking and discussing, a group of traders, of slave traders, come by. And these guys think, here's a chance to make a quick buck. They decided to sell their brother into slavery for 20 shekels of silver.

Reuben isn't there. He actually comes back later to the well and he discovers his brother is gone, and he is broken. The boys are attacked by him. He says, what have you done? And they tell him that they've sold the brother.

In order to save face, in order to not get in trouble with their dad, they take this cloak off Joseph, this beautiful coat, they slaughter a goat and they rub the blood on the coat. And they tear it to pieces and they bring it to Jacob to say, he's been devoured by an animal. Some sort of beast has killed your son. And Jacob is inconsolable. His favourite son has died.

We see the boys trying to comfort him, but the Bible says that he pushes them away. He refuses to be comforted. He is truly inconsolable. And this is how Joseph ends up in Egypt as a slave. You hear the story and you have to think it seems so unfair.

Joseph had done nothing really towards his brothers, and yet they do this to him. Now, we see that while Joseph is a slave, God prospers Joseph. It says, the Lord was with Joseph and made him to prosper. And through the years, Joseph rises to the top of the house of Potiphar, who is a high-ranking nobleman. He is a chief of the guards.

Life for Joseph at this stage is as good as you could expect for a slave. But then, Potiphar's wife tries to seduce Joseph and when he refuses her advances, she falsely accuses him of attempted rape. He ends up in the dungeon, seemingly worse off than when the chapter started. But God is doing something here. We see the work and the hand of God behind all of this.

We saw last week a very arrogant man in Joseph. Today, we see the start of God breaking down some of that pride. God is doing a work in the heart of this man, and the first thing was for Joseph to realise that God's blessing of Joseph has got nothing to do with Joseph and everything to do with the character and the nature of God. And that principle is what we'll hear about today. God's blessing has very little to do with our success, but more to do with the purpose of God for our lives.

We see three distinct points surrounding this concept of God's blessing. The first thing we see is that God's blessing is not necessarily related to good circumstances. God's blessing is not necessarily related to our good circumstances. Let me ask you this question. Think about it.

Was Joseph more blessed by God when he was at the top of Potiphar's household than when he was in the dungeon? Some part of us might say, yes, he was. He was much better off in Potiphar's household. But the Bible doesn't indicate that at all. Joseph is shown to be very blessed in both situations.

Have a look at this, and you would have probably picked that up as we read. It compares and contrasts the two stories in the same chapter. Potiphar's house is on the left of the screen. The prison situation is on the right. Verse two: in Potiphar's house, we see that the Lord was with Joseph.

In prison, we see in verse 21, the Lord was with Joseph. In verse four, we see that Joseph found favour in Potiphar's sight. Verse 21: the Lord gave Joseph favour in the sight of the prison warden. Verse four: Potiphar made Joseph overseer over his house and all that he owned; he put in his charge. Verse 21-22 says, and the prison warden committed to Joseph's charge all the prisoners who were in the jail, so that whatever was done there, he was responsible for it.

Verse six: with Joseph in Potiphar's house, Potiphar did not concern himself with anything except the food he ate. Verse 23: the prison warden did not supervise anything under Joseph's charge. And lastly, verse three: Potiphar saw that the Lord was with him and how the Lord caused all that he did to prosper. Verse 23: the prison warden also put Joseph in charge because he saw that the Lord was with him and whatever he did, the Lord made to prosper.

We have a brilliant twenty-twenty hindsight perspective here. But as we'll see later in the story, there is a far greater role for Joseph to play, not just in his family, not just squabbling amongst the brothers back in Canaan. He has a role to fulfil in establishing a fledgling nation of Israel. He has, in God's mind, a huge purpose.

And not just the nation of Israel, he is going to save the lives of Egyptians, the greatest superpower of that time. Between the house of Potiphar and the dungeons of Egypt, God is busy preparing Joseph to one day, essentially, to become the prime minister of Egypt. From chapter 39, we see the truth that we can often think mistakenly that if everything is going well, then God must be blessing us. And then when trials and problems hit, then God is not blessing us. Then he has removed his kindness from us.

He has removed his blessing from us. But the truth we see here is that God's blessing, God's presence, is not related in any way to favourable circumstances. We wouldn't be surprised if Joseph, however, was wondering what's going on. He had been obedient in this whole chapter in resisting the advances of Potiphar's wife. He knew that God had spoken to him in dreams years ago, that there was a brilliant plan that was ahead for him.

He dreamt how the sun and the moon and the stars bowed to him in reverence. But where is God now? Why is this all happening? If this is God's blessing, how bad would his curse be? But God's blessing often comes through trials, friends.

Every child of God will go through training and testing where character is refined. You see it in so many lives in the Bible. You see it in Moses. You see it in David. You see it in Paul, the great apostle.

We need to recognise that God's blessing is on us even in hard circumstances that are used to break, to shape, to recreate. We won't know what God is preparing for us, at least not most of the time. He may elevate us to positions of prominence as he did with Moses and Joseph, but he may use us in quiet, unassuming ways. But this is the point. That one purpose that God has for you, God in His wisdom is saying, you are exactly what I need right there.

And then, friend, count yourself blessed because you are being considered worthy of bringing honour to the King. What's really important in the preparation that God is doing in hard times is that we must interpret our circumstances by God's love rather than interpreting God's love based on our circumstances. It's crucial that each of us learns to turn to God, not away from Him in times of suffering. Just because we're going through trials doesn't mean that God has withdrawn His blessing. It doesn't mean that He has withdrawn His presence.

It means that He is training you to become more and more in the image that He desires of you. The second thing we see—so that's the first thing. We see that God's blessing is not necessarily related to nice or good circumstances. The second thing we see in this story is that God's blessing will always be seen by a humble heart with a grace perspective. God's blessing will always be seen by a humble heart with a perspective of God's grace.

There's a wonderful verse that we re-read: verse 20-21. It says this: the Lord was with Joseph in the prison. He showed him kindness and granted him favour in the eyes of the prison warden. Now this kindness that the Hebrew word points to is God's unmerited favour. In other words, it is grace.

Let's face it. Joseph could have developed a very rotten, stinking attitude because of the cards he was dealt. I would have been tempted. He had been terribly mistreated by his brothers. He had been unfairly accused, sent for years to be in prison.

And yet, he had been faithful the whole time, resisting Potiphar's wife, only to be thrown in prison. Yet, we don't get an indication of a bitter man. We get an indication of a hardworking, cheerful prisoner. One that gets the attention of the prison warden. If he had been disagreeable, the jailer probably wouldn't have promoted him as he did.

The question is, why was Joseph like this? Well, I think it's because Joseph walked with God very closely. He came to a deeper and deeper understanding of God's grace, and that was starting to refine his character. Remember, two chapters ago, the pride of this man, this man that strutted around like he was the king of the world, he deserved all the good things that were coming his way, had been slowly stripped away, undermined by some hard cards that were dealt to him. And here we see that Joseph realises that the good that he's been given, he never worked for, he never deserved.

He wasn't any more deserving than any of his brothers, but God chose him. And He sent him a prophetic dream. We don't get an indication that he was far more righteous, far more closer to God or anything like that. Joseph, we see, is clearly an intelligent man, a charismatic man. He works well with people.

Yet, Joseph had not earned that either. Even in his terrible circumstances, we see the hand of God dealing graciously. Joseph could have been killed by his brothers. Reuben, the eldest, is moved. God moves in his heart to protect him and he isn't murdered.

God made the heart of his master Potiphar and the prison warden, the Bible says, favourable towards Joseph and they treated him well. And so with the right perspective, a perspective that seeks to understand and see the elements of God's grace, if we have perspective, we will see God's blessing everywhere. If we have eyes to look for it, we will see God's blessing. Even though Joseph walked uprightly before God, he could not demand God's favour and kindness. That's the thing about grace.

You can't demand it. You cannot earn it. It wasn't a right that Joseph deserved. He could only ever accept the good things in his life as undeserved. And it's important for us to catch that distinctive because it has everything to do with the outlook that we have of our lives.

If you think I've been good, God should bless me or that he should spare me from harsh circumstances, you'll develop a bitter attitude when tough things come along. You will. But if you truly believe of yourself and think of yourself in this way, that I am an unworthy sinner, saved by the precious washing away of my sin by the blood of Jesus, then you will know that any and all goodness, then, any nice thing in your life is then truly from Him.

If you truly see life that way, then you will always see God's blessing in your life even in the midst of the hardest trials. With a heart humbled by the radical undeserved grace of God, you could be sitting in prison and know because I have God, I have everything. God's blessing will always humble a heart with a grace perspective. And this leads us to our last point. Humility will serve God first, and more often than not, it will be rewarded.

It's obvious that Joseph didn't hide the source of his attitude. And because we see in verse three, Joseph and his master rather saw that the Lord was with Joseph and that the Lord gave him success in everything he did. His master, in other words, didn't see that Joseph prospered. He saw that the Lord prospered Joseph in everything he did. When Potiphar's wife tries to seduce Joseph, he didn't give her the impression simply that he's a nice, upstanding guy.

He said, how could I do such a wicked thing and sin, not simply against my master, but sin against God? Additionally, Joseph didn't seek his own advancement as a slave or a prisoner, but rather he seeks in both situations to prosper both masters. He works hard for them in prison and in the home. Joseph sees himself as serving God by being obedient, and this is the point. If we understand that we are working for God's glory, that we are working because God has given us the ability to do that, as if we see that as part of His blessing, if we choose to see our recreation, our work as an act of service to God first, more often than not, it is rewarded.

It's the logical providence of God that by being faithful to your bosses, faithful to your co-workers, faithful to your teachers, somehow you'll be rewarded. These men that Joseph worked for noted that Joseph was hardworking. They noted how he went about things with his attitude and his abilities in check. He was obedient to them, but Joseph was simply being obedient to his God. And that's a key principle in any situation, whether at work or at home.

If you seek to prosper the ones that are over you, God will see that and you'll be advanced in due time. That is often directly opposite, however, to the way that the world works. We often think, or others perhaps often think, that if I sabotage a guy over me, I can grab their spot. We see Joseph doing the opposite here. But then we also see that Joseph doesn't stop with simply being promoted.

He is continuously reflecting the goodness of God. Everyone knew that Joseph was a believer. Everyone knew that Joseph loved God. He did everything with a God perspective and everyone saw that. And so in finishing, I wanna say whether we succeed in business or not, in work or not, whether we have material prosperity or not, whether we become influential or not, what counts when it is all said and done is that the Lord is with us.

What counts when it is all said and done is that the Lord was with Joseph. Four times it is repeated in this chapter. And this is the most important thing God wants us to know about these events. And so we must realise that true success is not about so much where you are, but it's about that God is where you are. God's blessing is not about your income or health. It is whether God's hand is on you.

And in chapter 39 of Genesis, we see God's blessing can stay with you even if you go from Potiphar's house to the dungeon. Like the Allied leaders with the Enigma machine who had to make some hard decisions to lose a few battles in order to win the war, God allows hard things to happen in our lives in order to develop us and grow us for the ultimate purpose He has in mind. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we come before You in good times and in trials this morning, wherever we're from.

And Lord, we ask that You will, by this undeserved grace, give us the strength to endure in hardship. We give us the grace to enjoy the wide roads, the easy roads. Father, we thank You for Your love and Your presence that is never far. Lord, and when we're tempted to doubt, when we're tempted to be bitter, help us to see that You are ever with us, that You have not abandoned us. Father, we pray that in our lives, we will have the perspective of Your grace to see the many, many blessings around us, Father, to be able to have that joy of seeing the work of Your hands in our lives.

And, Father, then help us to give You the praise that You deserve because of it. Help us to realise that and, with grateful hearts, reflect our thanksgiving to You. And so, Father, we pray for our lives. We pray for the work that You will do in our lives in the future in refining and preparing us for greater things. We pray in Jesus's name all these things. Amen.