Joseph No.8 Handling Success

["All I Want for Christmas Is You"] Look at this third verse, and when I sing that God, his Son not sparing, sent him to die, that's very precious isn't it, boys and girls, it's talking about the death of our Lord Jesus on the cross. Let's sing that softly, let's sing it unaccompanied, as Betty just gives us a note, then she'll join in with us in the anthem for the refrain, for the chorus. And when I sing that God, his Son not sparing, sent him to die, my chest can take it in.

I'm on the cross, my burden's carrying heavy, he's there by my side to take away my fear. And when I go, I'll take my heart with me, I'll take my heart, I'll go, I'll take my heart with me. I'll take my heart, I'll go, I'll take my heart, I'll go, I'll take my heart with me.

I'll take my heart, I'll go, I'll take my heart, I'll go, I'll take my heart with me. Genesis chapter 41, commencing to read at verse 41 as well. Joseph has now been exhorted to this very, very high position in charge of all Egypt.

Genesis 41 and verse 41. So Pharaoh said to Joseph, I hereby put you in charge of the whole land of Egypt. And Pharaoh took his signet ring from his finger and put it on Joseph's finger.

He dressed him in robes of fine linen, put a gold chain around his neck. He had him ride in a chariot as his second-in-command, and men shouted before him, make way. Thus he put him in charge of the whole land of Egypt.

Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, I am Pharaoh, but without your word no one will lift hand or foot in all Egypt. Pharaoh gave Joseph the name Zephanath-Aneir, and gave him Asenath, daughter of Potiphar, priest of On, to be his wife. And Joseph went throughout the land of Egypt.

Now Joseph was 30 years old when he entered the service of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. Joseph went out from Pharaoh's presence and traveled throughout Egypt. During the seven years of abundance, the land produced plentifully.

Joseph collected all the food produced in those seven years of abundance in Egypt, stored it in the cities. In each city he put the food grown in the fields surrounding it. Joseph stored up huge quantities of grain, like the sand of the sea.

It was so much that he stopped keeping records, because it was beyond measure. Before the years of famine came, two sons were born to Joseph, by Asenath, daughter of Potiphar, priest of On. Joseph named his firstborn Manasseh, and said, it is because God has made me forget all my trouble, and all my father's household.

The second son he named Ephraim, and said, it is because God has made me fruitful in the land of my suffering. Amen. I was listening, and I think it was Thursday morning, the very early hours of Thursday morning, to the broadcast from South Korea, of the Olympic Games and the inception.

There's a tremendous description of all the athletes of various nations, coming into that vast auditorium. And great cheers from spectators who happen to have come from the countries of, oh. Let's stand and then visit the scene of bringing glory to God.

You are the Lord, our Heaven and Earth. You are the sun of life and death. Angels are running for you.

World to world and all for one. You are the words of eternal life. You are Jesus Christ alone.

Hosanna to the Son of Man. Hosanna to the King of Kings. Glory to God in the highest.

For Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour. ...that are brought to athletes who are successful in those Olympic Games. There's honor that we want to bring to our Lord Jesus.

There's another song that links, at least in thought, even if not in melody, with what we've just been singing. Speaks of you and me falling before the feet of our Lord Jesus. At your feet we fall, mighty risen Lord, as we come before your throne to worship you.

28 songs of thanks. ...at your feet we fall, mighty risen Lord, as we come before your throne to worship you. ... Now from worship of the Lord, let's turn to consideration of the Word.

Genesis chapter 41 is the passage I want to bring to your attention, and especially the 41st verse. So Pharaoh said to Joseph, I hereby put you in charge of the whole land of Egypt. I've endeavored in breaking this passage open, during the last few weeks especially, to lead off with two dominant thoughts that I think God wants me to share with our congregation.

Now here are an additional two, for right now. God does have a plan and a purpose for your life. He does have a plan and a purpose for your life.

Secondly, He wants to bless you in ways that you can hardly conceive. Beyond your ken, beyond the limits of your understanding, God wants to bless you. He has a plan for your life.

He wants to bless you in a fashion that you can come, you can scarcely comprehend. I remember as though it was yesterday, my brother Iain Land, when we asked him to come on to our full-time staff at the tab, and he surrendered his own, perhaps better guaranteed, and perhaps better recompensed job. I remember him declaring to the congregation here, at a church meeting, that the Lord confirmed this major step in his life, some several years ago.

By a verse from Jeremiah chapter 29, where in the 11th verse it says, for I know, I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you, and not to harm you. Plans to give you hope, and a future.

Now thinking people will appreciate, that encapsuled in that verse, is basically the two propositions that I'm bringing to you right now. God has a plan for your life, and God's plan for you, is for your good. But the third proposition, because I'm pushing another another one this morning.

The third thing I want to link is this, only the spiritually mature can cope with all that God wants to give. Only the spiritually mature can cope with all that God wants to give. I have problems in my word processor this morning.

Those of you who are not into word processing, God bless you, you don't know what you've been spared from. I press the print button, and the printer packed up, the most crucial moment. But there is in computing, that which is known as the wild card.

It's that particular point in a program, that can cut right through, and deliver most astonishing results, in the nicest possible way. The wild card. Can I baptize that expression this morning, and suggest to you, that God has a wild card, that he wants to play in your life.

God has this blessing, or blessings, that he wants to bring into your experience, in a way that you could never conceivably have thought through. But, the way that he delivers the blessing, and what he has for you, may be completely different from what you yourself had anticipated, and expected. Which allows me to go back to a story I told a couple of years ago.

It's got a tinge of humor to it. Of a little boy back home from Sunday school, with tears in his eyes. And mum says to him, what's the matter Johnny? And he says, well we learnt a new chorus in Sunday school.

Well what's the matter with that Johnny? Well I didn't like it. Why not? Well we sang, Jesus wants me for a sunbeam, and I want to be an engine driver. What if the wild card, is not what you wanted, but it is what God wants, and therefore though you don't understand it immediately, it's ultimately for your good.

And brings you, an un-called-for, a non-requested success. You say, what's all this to do with Joseph? My argument is, it's got everything. Turn the page back, will you, to the 37th chapter.

And halfway through the opening verse, you read this, Joseph, a young man of 17, was tending the flocks with his brothers. No indication at all, that he was dissatisfied with what he was about. Every indication from context of Scripture, that he was happy doing that particular job.

Now will you go to verse 46 of Genesis 41. Joseph was 30 years old, when he entered the service of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. At 17 he was a shepherd, at 30 he was a prime minister.

God played the wild card. Ask Joseph, back in Pharaoh's dungeon, what is his desire? And he'll tell you, because there are many implications in Scripture, in subsequent chapters, that reveal where his heart was. He wanted to be sprung from jail, who would not? But not sprung from jail into Egypt, sprung from jail back to Palestine, back to the pastoral scene, to the bleating of the sheep, to the warm embrace of his father.

In his blood was that which coursed through the veins of Abraham. Picked up by his sensitive ears were the promises of God to Abraham. Joseph is a Hebrew of the Hebrews.

He has his own predetermined thought as to what God has for him in the future. So he says to the butler, when you stand before Pharaoh, remember me and get me out, and by implication let me get back. But that wasn't God's will.

God had got something else in store for this would be shepherd. He was going to be a top-ranking politician. He was never to return to the land of his birth, to the land of promise.

In the balance were great plans that God had to preserve the future of a nation, which will always be in a special sense, his own people. And pivotal in the working through of the promises of God is Joseph and his response to all that God has for him. He plans for him in love, not plans to diminish his potential, not plans to rob him of happiness, but plans that will sustain and enlarge the end gifting that he already has, to the extent that when the centuries have gone by, men will thank God for Joseph, but it will take the playing of the wild card.

It will take the acceptance of the cup of success when he was not looking for it. It would take the challenge of being the second most important person in the whole of the world, and being able to pour out the benefits of that promotion at the feet of God, and not to take one little drop and consume it for himself. How do you handle success? How do you handle an unsought-for success in your spiritual life? That, in effect, is our subject matter this morning, and I speak with my voice in somewhat hesitant fashion as I'm forming my words, though when I articulate them, may they come through with the power of the Holy Spirit, because I believe that what I have to say needs to be said to us in our congregation today.

How do you handle success? When Joseph was in jail, did he sing songs? If so, he was to establish a precedent, for it is known for spiritual people in jail for the cause of God, to sing praise to him. If he'd had our hymn book, what might he have chosen? Take my life and let it be consecrated all to thee. Take my intellect and use every power as thou wouldst choose.

Choose thou the path for me, although I cannot see the reason thou dost choose to lead me so. May God in his grace forgive us, my friends, when so often we sing those songs. We're not prepared to be put on the line.

We're not prepared to be tested. The singing is merely the emotional contribution from our hearts, which are disjointed at the moment from our wills and from our brains. When you sing those songs, however you articulate them, the possibility is that God will take you at your word and choose the path and take your intellect and all that you have and direct it in a way that you did not select to go.

But in the pursuit of that way, you'll discover the greatest benefit, the greatest blessing, the most incredible success. Murray McShane says this, it has always been my ambition to have no plans as regards myself. Did you hear that? It's always been my ambition to have no plans as regards myself.

Your plans are to be God's plans. Your ambitions submitted to his ambitions, so that when he plays the wild card, you will be agreeable to all that he has to say. To cope with prosperity can perhaps be a greater temptation than to cope with poverty.

Have you ever thought that? You see, of the two situations, Joseph in jail and Joseph in Pharaoh's cabinet, the latter is spiritually the most dangerous. To cope with a large congregation has inbred within it great temptations for a preacher. To cope with an evangelistic empire, as alas some of our friends in the United States have recently shown, brings with it terrible dangers if you take the spin-off benefits and you use them for yourself.

So when God plays the wild card and lifts a man from being a and makes him the second most influential man in the world at that time, he takes great risks. You ask why there are not many Christians who are tycoons, who are successful businessmen, who are right at the forefront of commerce and industry in the 20th century. I'll tell you why, because God is gracious and he knows that there are very few people who can carry that responsibility and retain their spiritual integrity.

Now it's important that he's got one man, centuries ago, of that mettle, of that stamina. I refer to Joseph, and the beginning of Joseph's success is seen in a most remarkable piece of vindication in which God enters. You see, I directed your attention some while ago, did I not, in this series to that verse in scripture which speaks of our Lord Jesus, the first letter of Peter I have in mind, the second chapter and halfway through, who when he was reviled against, did not revile.

He never vindicated himself. He left judgment in the hands of God, and even as I've told you twice before, in the resurrection appearances of Jesus, he doesn't go and put to right those who, at the human level, directed him to the cross. He leaves judgment to the Lord.

Who can vindicate Joseph? You see, he has been assassinated at the point of his integrity, at the point of his intellectual ability, at the point of his understanding. His brothers perhaps, but they're miles away in Palestine, and they're still besotted with the guilt that they have on their hands for bringing about, if not the death, the estrangement of Joseph from Jacob. And every time the old man's eyes are bejeweled with tears as he recalls Joseph, so the guilt of those brothers will increase.

They could have spoken, but they didn't. There's Potiphar's wife, but all her conniving, all her beguiling, all her lifestyle indicates that she will be the last person to vindicate Joseph. Because you remember, there has been an adulterous charge directed at Joseph, that was the cause of him being thrown into jail.

All right, who is the last person on God's earth who might vindicate Joseph? And the answer is Pharaoh. The last person whom Joseph would ever, at the human level, have met. But in the story of the success of Joseph, the change of circumstances, the one who vindicates Joseph within the sovereignty of God is Pharaoh himself.

As for Joseph's discretion, Pharaoh says, verse 39, there is no one so discerning as you. As for attacks on his intellect, Pharaoh says, there is no one as wise as you. As for his spiritual capabilities, Pharaoh says, verse 38, can we find anyone like this man, one in whom is the Spirit of God? The three areas of attack that Joseph has known, that has compounded his confusion and his, his sense of hurt, that's set to right by God through Pharaoh.

The man who will carry the full cup of God's success will never vindicate himself. He'll leave it to another. He'll leave it to God.

You hearing me? And Joseph, now vindicated in a remarkable fashion, will not turn vindication into vindictiveness. Potiphar's wife can still sleep easy at night. Joseph won't be on her track.

And when his brothers are brought into his own palace, though they will have terror in their hearts, it will be Joseph who has tears in his eyes. Because the successful spiritual man is not concerned with judgment. The successful Christian man, the successful spiritual man, is concerned only to live his life for the honor and glory of God, and the devil take the hindmost.

Joseph's vindication is one of the most remarkable aspects of the success for which he did not strive. With this vindication, chasing its heels, is his promotion. Pharaoh said to Joseph, I hereby put you in charge of the whole land of Egypt.

The wild card is put in. It's instantaneous. There's no probationary period at all.

Not 18 months to see how he handles the situation. Pharaoh with greater faith than Joseph's own father, who questioned the wisdom of his son, who declared that father and mother and brothers would be dependent upon him ultimately. Pharaoh's own faith is greater than that of his dad.

The promotion, so instantaneous, brings with it the reversal of situations. His brothers had him thrown into the pit. Pharaoh has him placed on the throne.

His brothers take that multicolored long flowing robe and tear it and baptize it in the blood of an animal they've slain. Pharaoh takes the royal robe and has it put around the shoulders of Joseph. And all the perks of the job, the chariot and all that goes with success at the human level, it's poured on Joseph.

So that when Pharaoh rides down the roads as they were in those days, Joseph is following. And as Pharaoh has the adulation of the people, so Joseph likewise receives their praise because of his ingenuity and the confidence that Pharaoh obviously has in him. The promotion is fantastic.

It's one of the greatest things that ever happened in the history of any individual. And the reason why it loses its impact on you is that you've known the Joseph story since you were a kid. But there are few people that God can do this sort of thing to, because there are few people whom God can trust with the best that he has for them, which is not in keeping with their presuppositions of what the best might be.

But Joseph, he receives it and he honors God and the chariot and all that goes with it. It can in no way deflect Joseph from achieving the purposes of the Lord. God can do that with some men.

He'll have his Joseph of Arimathea, the only man who was prepared along with his colleague to have the blood-stained body of our Lord Jesus placed in his own newly hewn out tomb. When the disciples who'd been with the Nazarene for three years went out on the scene, it was to the credit of a rich man, Joseph of Arimathea, that he dropped the mantle of privacy and publicly he identified with Jesus. And Joseph of Old Testament fame is of the same ilk.

He can carry this success and it will in no way impair his spirituality. Only a man like Joseph, says one divine, the word divine is a term sometimes used for a preacher of yesteryear who's written extensively. Only a man like Joseph schooled by adversity and sorrow could meet a sudden elevation like this without pride and self-exaltation.

His rigorous training enabled him to encounter success without succumbing to its blandishment. I've given you two words to help swing what I'm trying to say and make it meaningful to you. The words thus far have been vindication and promotion.

Here's the third that's so necessary in considering our subject. The context shouts it out. Resolution.

Resolution. You say what you mean. When I was a kid I can never really understand what James meant in chapter 1 and verse 27 of his epistle.

When he talks about keeping yourself unspotted from the world. My brother had acne and I'd had measles. Unspotted, you know it never really sort of got through to me because I wasn't particularly bright as you've gathered.

Quite what James was on about. But now with a little bit more understanding I realized James is talking about being immune from the world. Living in it but not letting it latch on to you.

Well illustrated by the words I quoted some while ago by Jesse Jackson. I was born in a slum but the slum was not born in me. Joseph was taken into Egypt but he never took Egypt into himself did he? Pharaoh did everything with most honorable intentions to naturalize Joseph.

To make him an Egyptian. He gave him an Egyptian name. He gave him an Egyptian wardrobe.

He gave him an Egyptian vehicle. He gave him an Egyptian wife. He gave him an Egyptian home.

Joseph taken into Egypt but one thing remained clear. Causing us to say of Joseph in the traditional old-fashioned sense that he was unspotted from the world. He refused to take Egypt into his heart.

Joseph you see has been on sale twice. You've only perceived it once. There in the slave market of Alexandria possibly.

When Potiphar comes along and buys it. He's on sale then. He's also on sale when Pharaoh says to Joseph I will make you next to me supreme in Egypt.

But actually Joseph was never on sale. Not in Alexandria nor in the court of Pharaoh. You can't buy Joseph.

Do you hear me? You can't buy the sort of man that Joseph is. Potiphar may have his body but he can't have his soul. Pharaoh may have his brilliance and his expertise in marshalling the economic conditions of the country but he can never have him as an Egyptian.

Because Joseph remains what he was born always to be. A descendant of Abraham. A Hebrew of the Hebrews.

A man though all the world was placed at his feet. He would push the world away and say for me the will of God. The inverse of that is taught by our Lord Jesus in the New Testament when he says a man could gain the whole world and still be the loser if he lost his soul.

That wasn't new to Joseph. 2,000 years before Jesus was around he'd already reached the same conclusion. Offer me your world I don't want it.

The situation you want me to fulfill within the will of God I will. But hear me Pharaoh I remain what I am a Hebrew. I remain one who has been called to the covenant that God made with my ancestor Abraham.

I remain who I am a son of Jacob and all the wealth and all the honor and all the perks of Egypt will never strip me from what I basically am. And when God has got a man like that he's got a man he can use. He's got a man he can trust.

He's got a man who he can invest in authority in. Because that man will take the success and pour it where it belongs at the feet of God. Are you hearing? There has been too much glory taken from God and directed towards man.

And it's become as a manner that stinks in Israel or in their Sinai wanderings years ago. My glory says God I will not give to another. And he can entrust Joseph with the most awesome responsibilities.

And he knows that when Joseph is in Egypt he'll live like a true Jew. He'll only have one wife. And thereby he'll outpace the example of Abraham and his own father.

He will remain true to God's original covenant of marriage. And when he has his sons he'll not give them Egyptian names. Manasseh, Ephraim.

Bringing back to Joseph's memory by the very interpretation of the dreams that all the bitterness has gone out of his soul. As he thinks back to the treachery of his brothers. And all the fruitfulness for that's what one of those boys names means.

All the fruitfulness that he is now enjoying has come from God himself. And at the end of his life when Joseph has run his course in Egypt he makes a request which is picked up by the writer of the Hebrew epistle and incorporated into his twelfth chapter. He talks about Joseph by faith giving direction for his bones.

You say, why on earth does that mean? All right, what does Egypt suggest to you geographically? The land of the pyramids. What is the pyramid? It's a grandiose sepulchre. Where the great of Egypt were interred with their retinue of slaves, with their gold and all the accoutrements that seem to suggest their wealth and prosperity.

Joseph will have no pyramid. When I die, take my bones back to Palestine. Because I'm a Jew.

I'm a Hebrew. I'm within the purposes of God. He has allowed the lines of my life to fall out in ways that I'd never predetermined.

I didn't select to be the Prime Minister of Egypt. God placed me there for reasons I didn't understand at the time. The security of his own people.

But I was never absorbed into Egypt. I die as I live, a son of God, a son of Abraham. You see, you can't touch a man like that.

It's the most annoying thing to the secular powers in our world, that some people can't be bought. You give them all the material success. And thank God there are those who can have that and handle it well.

But they're few. You can give them all the influence. And they die as they were born to be children of God.

This is how you handle success. My propositions were basically these. God has a plan for your life.

God wishes good for your life. But only mature people can cope with God's best. Joseph could and did.

God grant that you and I might be in his category. Let's pray. Hymn of mine, which I think seals what should be our response to the Word of God.

420 hymns of faith. Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart. Not be all else to me save that thou art.

Joseph could have sung this. Let me remind you this evening, I want to address you again with something that burns on my soul. At least the essence does.

I'm not sure at the moment how I'll develop it. Asking more from God. Elijah said to Elijah, I want a double portion of your spirit.

I want to examine whether that was an impossible, greedy request.