Thank you for taking time to listen to Leading the Way with pastor and International Bible teacher Dr. Michael Youssef. Life balance is often defined as kind of healthy amounts of exercise, sleep, nutrition, and then a good balance between work and family time.
These all need to be kept in check because if anyone gets out of sorts then the entire system is in trouble. Well, that same principle applies to our spiritual lives. Today on Leading the Way, journey into the life of Joseph through a classic teaching from Dr. Youssef called Portrait of a Winner. You'll see how Joseph gives a great example of what it means to balance honoring God with facing the challenges of life and culture.
Listen with me now as Dr. Michael Youssef begins. Most people view God in the way they were brought up. Children who grow up in a stern, angry, abusive parents, most often unless they are instructed in the Word of God, unless they become to know the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, the God, the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, they will immediately think of God as a stern, angry, constantly ready to punish. It was Martin Luther, that Dominican monk who God used single-handed to bring reformation to the whole world. It was him before he discovered the absolute biblical truth of justification by faith alone, of salvation by grace alone. Before that happened in his cell, he would weep and he'd cry all day long.
Why? Because he saw a window right there in the monastery of God standing with a sword in his hand. And every time he had a wrong thought, he would run to the Father Confessor and he would confess some days up to 10 or 15 times until he drove the Father Confessor crazy. Every time he had the wrong thought come to his mind, he would go and confess it. That is why it was Martin Luther who said, he said, when you are tempted and the thought comes to your head, it is like a bird that is flying over your head. You can't do anything about it.
But the moment you start getting into your hair and make it, building a nest, you can do something about it and stop it. It was Martin Luther who would finally discover that great truth and he realized that the fact that he's being haunted by this image of God with the sword in his hand, ready to zap him anytime he had a wrong thought, it was him who brought us the Reformation and back to the Bible, back to biblical theology. And yet there are some Christians who call themselves that we are gods with a small g and therefore whatever we perceive ourselves, that's God.
That's wrong. Yet there are still some others who are so self-righteous, they are so holy, they think they are so right, they do not want to be confused by biblical facts about God. The Bible said that God revealed himself fully in Jesus Christ. The Bible said that if we want to know what God is really like, take a very good long hard look at Jesus. And that is why we must insist, those of us who believe in the scripture as the word of God and his personal revelation, we must refute this reams of paper that seemed to be saturating the churches today, that's coming out of the main line from the head offices of the mainline churches who are declaring that God was in Jesus with Jesus in a special way. Jesus Christ was fully God yet fully man. We must insist that Jesus alone is the full expression of God.
No one like him, no one will ever be like him. There is one thing about God that everybody must understand and it is this, that he would not settle for anything than being at the very center of your life and in mine. He's either at the center or he's not there at all. He doesn't like to be kept on the perimeter of our life. He doesn't like to be kept on the peripheries of our life. He doesn't like to be kept outside the doors of our lives. He doesn't like to sit on the fence of your time and the use of your time.
He doesn't like to be on the fence of your decision making process or your thinking. He wants to be at the very center of all your being or he's not there at all. And that is why in the book of Exodus, if you read chapters 25 all the way to 28, God insists when he tells Moses how to build the tabernacle, he said I want my tabernacle to be in the midst of the camp and not to guesswork, to get the guesswork out.
They were measuring it. He has to be at the very center but that's not all. At the very center of the tabernacle there is the Holy of Holies but that's not all. At the very center of the Holy of Holies there is the Ark of the Covenant but that's not all.
That in the Ark of the Covenant is a symbol of the dwelling of the Spirit of God. He has to be in the center. He has to be in the middle or he's not there at all. Whenever you and I try to move God off to the side, whenever we try to shift him off the center, whenever we try to keep him out of the center of our life we get into trouble. Why is it like Martin Luther, God is zapping you with his sword?
Absolutely not. It is just like one plus one equal to that if God is out of the center you're in trouble and I'm in trouble. It is that simple. We bring the trouble upon ourselves when we shift him off the center. Joseph knew that when he is at the very center of the will of God and when God is in the center of his life, regardless where he may be, he will ultimately win. When God is at the center it doesn't matter if he's hated by his brothers, it doesn't matter whether he is in the pit, it doesn't matter whether he is in the house of slavery, it doesn't matter whether he is in Pharaoh's dungeon, it doesn't matter where he is. When God at the center of his life, when God at the center of your life, you will win.
You will be a winner. And that's what happened to Joseph. When I was thinking of Joseph I thought of an inscription that was found in one of the prison cells in Germany after World War II.
And here these inscriptions on the wall of the prison cell went something like this. I believe in the sun even when it is not shining. I believe in love even when I don't feel it.
I believe in God even when he's silent. This inscription characterizes Joseph's life. In the last message you remember where he has been forgotten in Pharaoh's dungeon for two years. In fact there is a two-year gap between Genesis 40 and Genesis 41.
Turn with me please to Genesis 41. There when we left Joseph in the last message his hopes were running high that Pharaoh's cup bearer for whom he has interpreted a dream that he will remember Joseph and that he will get him out of prison. This were his hope. I try to imagine Joseph sitting in that dungeon. Every time he hears the doors of the prison door open his hopes start rising and he would say now it's my chance. I bet this is the good news I've been waiting for. I bet Pharaoh's soldiers are coming now to get me out and release me out of here.
I bet the cup bearer has remembered me and as soon as the doors are shut again his hopes were shattered. He gets up probably every morning and he picks up the pyramid gazettes and he starts reading. Pharaoh had a habit of releasing some prisoners on his birthday and the birthday of his family members or public holidays and he will say let me read whom he released today and he read and read and read and read Joseph's name was not there and he put that down and his hope is shattered one more time. Surely it must be government red tape.
Surely it must be government bureaucracy that is stopping me from getting out of here. Not in your life. Do you know who was delaying his release?
Do you? God. Do you know who was sovereign, overruling in the cup bearer's memory? God was.
Why? Well think about it. Now some of you are not getting up at you right now because you don't believe that God is in control of everything but just listen to me and humor me for a minute, okay?
Just think with me. Suppose Pharaoh gets one evening and the cup bearer comes in and he has a quiet time on his veranda and the cup bearer being a smart guy he spiked that drink real hard and then Pharaoh keeps on drinking and then he gets drunk. I mean he gets real happy drinking so much of that soup, that Egyptian soup, that it gets real hilarious and then the cup bearer said now my chance. He said now your majesty I have a friend in prison. His name is Joseph.
He's a Hebrew boy. Would you release him? He's drunk and stupid.
He's not even thinking, you know, what's he talking about? He said of course, yeah, let him go. So that could have happened easily, okay? Now Joseph is released. Isn't that great? Isn't that wonderful?
God answered my prayer. What will he do? What will a foreign boy in Egypt will do? Two alternatives. One, he will go, as a foreigner, have to go back to Potiphar's house or somebody like Potiphar back into slavery.
Or there's a second alternative. He will hitchhike a camel ride back to his brothers who hated him so much. That's the only two alternatives that were open to him.
But no, that's not how God works. Because God was at the very center of Joseph's life. Joseph was not going to just be released. He was not just going to be let go from the prison. He is going to be honored to the place of honor, the highest office in the land next to Pharaoh. That's our God.
That's the way he works. The cupbearer forgot about Joseph, but God didn't. The cupbearer forgot about Joseph for two years, but God is sovereign over the cupbearer's memory. God didn't want the cupbearer to remember.
He didn't want him to remember. Not yet. Until God's timing is right. So what happens? Right on God's timetable, Pharaoh eats a Mexican meal. And he gets a barn burner. And he gets two nightmares, one after the other, one after the other.
The first one, seven ugly, gaunt cows eating seven beautiful, healthy cows. Well, he wakes up, goes down to the kitchen. He eats some Egyptian wheat cereal, trying to get his system, you know, working again after the meal from last night. And he goes back to sleep and wow, he wakes up again, startled, similar kind of dream. Seven heads of grain that are scorched by the east wind and they look ugly.
And they eaten and devour the seven heads of grains that are healthy and good. So what does he do? He wakes up the next morning and he calls together his National Security Council and he starts talking to them. And he said, fellas, I've got a dream. And he tells them the dream.
Guess what these fellas were doing? I mean, they looked at each other and they said, Pharaoh, we don't do dreams. Imagine, for an Egyptian to say we don't do dreams is like an Eskimo saying, I've never seen ice. And I don't deal with ice.
And I don't have any ice. All the symbolisms of the dreams in the Egyptian culture are known to all Egyptian children grow up for thousands of generations. Kids grow up knowing what the symbolism are all about. Not the wise men and the magicians of Egypt or Pharaoh. Kids, they grow up knowing as I grew up knowing what the symbolisms of dreams are. There were thousands of them.
I didn't bother myself with them all. In fact, I repented from even trying to think of them because I don't think I have biblical background to them. In fact, in Egypt, if you wake up and you had a dream of snakes, you know that you have enemies that conspiring against you. If you dream of watermelon, it means it's going to be tears. Now if you eat it, you're going to cry. If somebody else eats it, he's going to cry. You dream of raw meat, it means there's going to be death somewhere. You're going to hear the news of death.
Thousands of these imageries, they're floating around, they're taught in the culture. And imagine the Pharaoh's wise men and the magicians did not know how to interpret the dreams. So what do you think they were doing? They were scared to death.
That's what they were. They were afraid to tell Pharaoh the bad news. Because when they tell Pharaoh bad news and he doesn't feel good about it, he'll chop their heads off. And they looked at each other and said, uh-uh, we don't do dreams.
Right at this very moment, the Lord whispers in the Kabirah's ear, now is your chance to be a big shot. Remember Joseph? And they said, oh Pharaoh, yes, I remember Joseph, let me tell you, I know about this guy in prison.
He told me everything that happened. And within minutes, Joseph was shaven, clean bathed, dressed up and whisked by a stretched camel to the White House. Escorted by Potiphar in a moment from the prison to the palace, from the darkness of Pharaoh's prison to the dazzling light of Pharaoh's palace, in a moment from the electric chair to the throne room, in a moment from rags to riches, just like that, just like that. It wasn't like that. It was 13 years, you remember, as being on hold, waiting for God to answer his prayer, waiting for God to fulfill the dreams that he gave him.
You know, I love it when people talk about overnight success and they never talk about the sweat and blood that went in to that overnight success. And Joseph comes in there before Pharaoh, neither angry on the one hand for the injustice that was done to him, nor was he arrogant on the other. In true humility and to the glory of God, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, he stands before Pharaoh and he said, I can't do it, but my God can.
And he can testify to his God. God, not Joseph, interprets the dream for Pharaoh. Joseph recognizes his own inadequacy but he trusted in God's adequacy. Joseph recognizes his own inadequacy but he trusted in God's sufficiency.
Is this where you are? Joseph's confidence is not in himself but in Jehovah-jireh. And Joseph interprets Pharaoh's dream. And as Joseph going through and telling about the seven years of plenty and the seven years of famine, and then in his typical amicable way, Joseph goes in the second mile and he gives him a plan of how to go about this. And as Joseph was talking, you can almost hear the angels singing, to God be the glory, great things he has done.
Praise the Lord. Seven years of abundance Pharaoh are coming upon Egypt, followed by seven years of famine. And here is God's economic plan.
You know what? I think pagan Pharaoh here had more sense than Episcopalian Baptist Presbyterian Catholics and all the Calathenians and all the politicians that we have today. He had more wisdom than they did. He understood Godly wisdom when he heard it.
May God grant our politician that wisdom. He understood God's sound economic policy when he heard it. Our government can save billions of dollars of economic advice if they follow the biblical model, if they follow the biblical principles, if they understand that the Scripture said you don't spend more than what you get in. All of our government had to do, just follow the book and we'll prosper again like once we did as a nation.
I want to tell you what the Word of God for you and for me today is. God is in control of your economy. God is in control of our economy.
He is. I am yet to see a Christian person or a congregation who are faithful tithers that are ever not blessed of God. I have not seen it once anywhere. It doesn't mean that you will not get a crop failure one year. That's not what I'm talking about but I'm talking about God's ultimate blessings. I have seen it in poor countries who are faithful tithers with their little pennies and I've seen it in rich countries.
It makes no difference. Faithfulness to God produces a whole different set of economics than all the economic theories that you can learn at Harvard. I can stand here and tell you a personal testimony after personal testimony but I can't. I don't think I can hold inside say it without emotionally falling down. God is a faithful God and we get tempted to push him off the center get him out to our own detriment. Ask yourself Lord how have I shifted you out of my center of my life? Lord I want to put you back in the center of my life. I want to challenge you for the days to come.
Now I am talking about as a person I have not arrived. I struggle all day long and I fight temptation all day long just like you are. It doesn't mean because I'm a preacher of the Word of God that I have the moment I think that I'm going to tell you I'm going to be down on the floor. So when I'm talking to you I know what the temptation sometimes there are very good things not bad things that tempt you to shift God from the center of your life because they crowd you all day long all day long but it's going to take a decisive decision in your heart. God I may blow it every now and again but I want you to be at the center of my life shall we pray. It is before you that I recommit myself for Jesus to be at the very center of my own life nothing will crowd that. Not my failures and not my frailty because that's a commitment that Jesus will see to it will be made and will be done and I pray for all of us.
Don't let the devil say well yes but down the road listen to the voice of God and obey it. And Father we're not asking for worldly wisdom we're not asking for any kind of wisdom except the wisdom that comes from above the wisdom that lead us to repentance right now the wisdom that open our eyes and says here this is where Jesus is not at the very center. Give us that wisdom and give us wisdom to repent right now that we will seek to forsake whatever stopping us whatever crowding him out with a new determination in our hearts that nothing but nothing but nothing will shift you out of the center for Father we know that is in Joseph's life that is where our ultimate success as ultimate winning will come when you are at the very center of our lives and we thank you our Father for hearing our prayers and for answering them because we know we praying according to your will in Jesus name. Challenging teaching from pastor and author Dr. Michael Yusef on this episode of Leading the Way Audio. And if you missed any portion of this episode or if you're not able to listen regularly won't you consider subscribing to the Leading the Way podcast. It's available on Apple YouTube Amazon Music I heart Spotify Pandora tune in whatever platform you use information and links at ltw.org in the book how to read the Bible I wanted to show everyone that the Bible is a one unit from Genesis to Revelation and the body of believers they are slowly but surely becoming doubtful about the word of God you know when you figure out that eighteen percent of Christians that's the Christians are not saying the non-believers eighteen percent of them read the Bible on a regular basis that breaks my heart some preachers even are moving away from the Old Testament some are saying we need to be unhitched from the Old Testament that we can't trust the Old Testament people in the pew they take what the preacher says and they're always quoting the preacher quoting the preacher I tell people don't quote me quote the Bible that's the way to God you need to read it you need to study it and you need to apply it to your life because it is a power for living the reason I worked for 50 years to write this book is because I want to make it so simple that a freshman in college or a freshman even in seminary before they go in and delve deep into the word of God and our commentaries and their critics and this and that and the other thing you read that book it builds a foundation in which you stand you will be blessed as you read and study this book as an aid to help you it's not in the place of but it is to help you to understand and grow deeper and therefore stronger in your Christian walk for a limited time for your gift of any amount leading the way will send you your own copy to equip yourself for the year ahead by partnering with leading the way you'll be opening doors to unreached people groups as Dr. Yusef and leading the way spread the good news of Jesus reclaim the wonder and awe of God's word and join in boldly reaching the unengaged for Christ get your copy of how to read the Bible as if your life depends on it for your gift of any amount today get additional ordering details at ltw.org this special offer is only available for a few more days and it's a great way to begin the new year ltw.org or call us and speak to a ministry representative eight six six six two six four three five six hey thank you for listening to leading the way and make sure to let Dr. Yusef know that you listen on this station whenever you get in touch make it a point to listen to the next leading the way these days we go to church and we sing just as I am and we go out just as we can the Christian who stopped repenting has stopped growing deal moody said repentance is the tear in the eye of faith dire said there is no going through fair heaven of glory without sailing through the narrow straits of repentance this program is brought to you by leading the way with Dr. Michael Yusef connect further with audio and video content at ltw.org or through your favorite social media platform.
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