09.20.2020 SER draft 4
Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 17:00
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God has greater plans for you, Jospeh. If your Joseph and you are going through life in the pits, and slavery, and prison, that last two decades or more, you wonder if life is ever going to change for the better. But you are Joseph so you hold on to the hope of God’s greater plans for you with every fiber of your being.
You and I, sons and daughters of God by grace through faith, we do the same. Even though the troubles and trials, problems and pains of this life can take a lot away, you hold on to the one gift your troubles cannot touch: God has greater plans for you through Jesus Christ. This is the place where hope begins, when God welcomes you into His family through Christ.
You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.
You are God’s child. You are God’s first choice, you are not an afterthought.
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”
God wasn’t obligated to choose you. He didn’t have to give you life. He chose you in love. He chose you because He wanted to. He did it deliberately through Christ.
but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.
Don’t believe that the dash on your tombstone, if you have one, is your life. Paul reminds us:
“When this tent we live in — our body here on earth — is torn down , God will have a house in heaven for us to live in , a home he himself has made , which will last forever ” ( 2 Cor . 5 : 1 TEV ).
Don’t get stuck in short-term thinking. Your struggles will not last forever, but you will.
This tent life, is temporary life. It’s easy to forget. Paul reminds Timothy,
for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world.
Don’t get engrossed in this world.
those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away.
This a temporary life. Jesus warns.
“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Make Christ your treasure. For in Christ, you have something that time, moths, rust and thieves cannot take from you.
You are God’s child. You are more than this life. This life, this world in its present form is passing away. Here are the things that don’t or won’t pass away.
Your word, Lord, is eternal;
it stands firm in the heavens.
God’s Word is eternal. It is unchanging. Always trustworthy. It is not going away now, not ever.
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
God’s free gift of eternal life, which you received by grace through your faith will carry you through to eternal life. Jesus warned the crowd of 5000 men, not counting the women and children
Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.”
Your life is more than this life.
Life. It is a mixture of highs and lows, but most of our life is lived in the middle. Life has it moment, its peaks, like a mountain. When you are up there its great. First, your first home run. Your first date. Your wedding day. The births of your children. Your 25 wedding anniversary trip to paradise. Peak moments in paradise are awesome, but they don’t last. When we’re there, we want to stay up there.
But most of our life is lived in the middle. The day to day. The Monday - Friday days. The work week. Doing what needs to be done. Learning to walk, talk, to run. Getting an education - going to school, homework, graduating, getting a job to pay the bills. Marriage isn’t a honeymoon, though a honeymoon is an expectation that often follows the wedding. Much of life is lived in the middle. Washing the clothes, the car, the dishes. Buy the groceries, fixing the garbage disposal, mowing the lawn. It is paying the bills, and trying to balancing the checkbook, saving for the rainy day. (Remember the rainy day this past week here on our campus when Sally blew in?). Life is lived, for the most part, in the middle.
Then there are the lows, the valleys, the rivers. Last Sunday I quote the prophet Isaiah:
When you pass through the waters,
I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers,
they will not sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire,
you will not be burned;
the flames will not set you ablaze.
Three time the prophet uses the word “when.” Why? Because this life has its valleys, lows, and the bottoms. I pray that most of your life is not lived at the bottom. That’s where we pick up Joseph’s story today. In the pits.
And they took him and threw him into a pit. The pit was empty; there was no water in it.
Joseph is literally at the “bottom” in our Scripture reading today.
What does your bottom look like? Heart attacks. Cancer. Losing your job. Losing your spouse. Trying to keep enough money in your checking account to pay the bills that keep coming in. The pantry’s bare. Your clothes make people stare.
You’ve been there, or you are headed there. Some of you are now there. At some point, we all find ourselves in the pits. When you are in the pits, you feel trapped. You feel like the air is being sucked out of you. You feel like you are there all alone. Let me give you some great news for times when you’re in the pits.
First, you will never go where God is not.
God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’
God never plays favorites, like Jacob did with his sons.
He will have mercy on all, alike.
For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all.
He offer His saving grace to all, Romans 11.
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people,
He has grace and salvation enough for all. Titus 2
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
When we find ourselves in the Pits, David questions and his answers need to reach our hearts:
Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.
No matter where you go, God is always there.
Sadly, too many miss out on the presence of God in their life. They plod through life as if there were no God to love them. As if their only strength was their own. As if there only solution came from within, rather than from above. They live God-less lives.
THAT IS NO place to live.
When Moses was facing the impossible, He made this one request,
And he said to him, “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here.
I would rather go nowhere with God, than anywhere without him.
When David ended up in a pit of his own after committing adultery and murder, when he finally confessed His sin to the LORD God, he made a single request:
Cast me not away from your presence,
and take not your Holy Spirit from me.
He didn’t ask to hold on to the crown or his kingdom. He asked for what mattered most. The presence of God. He believed and held on to what He sang about in the Psalms:
The lions may grow weak and hungry,
but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.
When we find ourselves in the pits, we survive and thrive when we draw near to God.
Not with a hard heart, but like a sponge and what we find is: He is everywhere—above, below, on all sides. We get to choose to either receive or resist what God wants to give you in Jesus. Everything within us and around us may say harden your heart. Run from God; resist God; blame God. But be careful. Hard hearts never heal. Spongy ones do. Draw near to God.
Secondly, Remember His promises,
Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said,
“Never will I leave you;
never will I forsake you.”
The Lord your God is in your midst,
a mighty one who will save;
he will rejoice over you with gladness;
he will quiet you by his love;
he will exult over you with loud singing.
We need God’s presence with us in the pit, to make decisions of faith.
Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my salvation
Don’t equate the presence of God with a good mood or pleasant temperament. God is near whether you’re happy or not. Sometimes you need to take your feelings outside and give them a good talking to you.
God is still sovereign. He still knows your name. Angels still respond to his call. Rulers still yield to His is bidding. The death of Jesus still save souls. The Spirit of God still indwells for saints. Heaven is still only heartbeats away. The grave is still only temporary home. God is faithful.
In uncertain and changing times take hold of the trustworthiness of God.
“When every earthly prop gives way, he then is all my hope and stay. On christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.”
Not one of the words of the LORD has fallen to the ground. Lastly,
Lean on God’s people. Jesus promised,
For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”
Christ’s presence is revealed in the company of His church.
“We know what the bottom looks like, and we know who is waiting there—Jesus Christ.” He’s waiting on you, my friend. If Joseph’s story can teach us anything, it the truth that God can use Egypt to teach you that he is with you. Your family may be gone. Your supporters may have left. Your counselor may be silent. But God has not left you. His promise still stands:
I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”
Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.
Hold on to that promise of Christ. I invite you to stand with me to confess your faith in our God, in the words the words of the Creed.