Are you struggling to make sense of a confusing world? Maybe you find yourself wondering if life really does have meaning or purpose. These concerns have plagued men and women for as long as history has been documented, and today on Truth for Life, Alastair Begg considers the Bible's timeless comfort. We find it as we turn to Genesis chapter 41. Boom.
First of all, we noticed this little phrase: two full years had passed, and we learned the importance of patience in the midst of monotony. And the understanding of the fact that God will give things as He chooses in His time, and in certain cases His time may involve us in waiting until eternity. Second phrase then is his mind was troubled. His mind was troubled. And in the morning, after he'd had these two striking dreams.
His mind was troubled. Well the dreams were troubling, were they not? We were told that we all dream a significant number of times in a week or in a night or whatever it is. I don't know, I'm no great expert on dreams. They say the average dream lasts about 30 seconds.
Although it would seem to me when I'm having one, it seems to last forever, I can't get out of it. And indeed, I was telling people earlier that one of our elders with whom I traveled to Bolivia used to have dreams. that had lasted for years. And he was able To dream certain dreams at will when he went to bed at night.
So he told me, and he's an honest man. You never asked me in the morning for an interpretation, thankfully. But these dreams were extraordinary dreams. These were, as in other dreams, a foreshadowing of God's intervention in the life of an unbeliever.
Something stirring into this person's existence that awakened him in the morning with something a wee bit more than that was a strange dream. The idea of these ugly cows eating the big, fat, sleek, shiny cows. Yeah that's bizarre. And corn. you know, parched and fragmented and Shriveled corn.
Eating really nice corn. I mean, imagine coming down to breakfast in the morning, you know, telling your wife that. But he tells the people around him, 'cause he's got nobody else to tell. Cows and grain represented prosperity and security in Egypt. And he's troubled.
He wakes up. And he wakes up concerned. And he looks around for help. And so, like Humpty Dumpty, who's fallen off the wall, he sends for all His horses and all his king's men. In verse 8.
The wise men, the magicians. And he told them his dreams. But what could they do? Presumably all they did was look down at the floor in embarrassment. Look around at one another shamefacedly.
And finally, look Pharaoh straight in the eye and say, I'm sorry, Pharaoh, you've stumped us on this one. Can I just say, as an aside, all the magicians and wizards of the world are ultimately. confronted with the poverty of their own explanations. And if you've been going to the wizards, If you've been following the 1900 numbers, If you've been tempted to try and find an answer to why it is that you awaken troubled. I want you to know.
In fact, I want to save you a lot of journeys. There are no answers to your predicament in those places. Because God said so. And Calvin, expressing this, says, the Lord so strikes the wicked workers. of deceit.
that they cannot even find a specious explanation of the dreams. They can't even come up with a bogus explanation that the guy might swallow. Nothing. Pharaoh. In a subsequent era might have found himself going through from his bedroom and grabbing a cup of coffee and turning on the radio and turning it to a uh a nice uh easy listening station like uh 104.1, you know.
And drumming his fingers on the side of his coffee cup as the song. Makes his way. It's a long and a dusty road, and it's a hard and a heavy load, and people that I meet aren't always kind.
Some are bad and some are good and some have done the best they could and some try to ease my troubled mind But I can't help but wonder where I'm bound where I'm bound I can't help but wonder where I'm bound And the blankets. that he was pulling over him. Could neither cover him in the night Nor snuggle him in the morning. nor save him from the tyranny of his own mind. And loved ones, this morning it remains the same all these years later.
If you are trying to make sense of your world by pulling, as it were, over you the blankets of materialism and intellectualism and hedonism, narcissism, a preoccupation with who you are and what you've got, if you are trying to cover yourself in those blankets, get ready for waking up. regularly troubled. For those blankets are too short. And they are too narrow. And alas Men and women seek to cover them.
Selves In the moi. It was a privilege to walk around Harvard University this week. certainly felt like a fish out of water. But in an early morning stroll, I came across Emerson Hall. And at the entry, across the entry to Emerson Hall, you have in letters carved in stone about a foot or two feet high.
What is man that thou art mindful of him? And I said to myself, my, my. At least it had a great Beginning. As I was driving to the airport with a friend who had studied there, And I remarked on this, he said, you know, it's an interesting thing. But when they built Emerson Hall, they left instructions to the stonemason.
to put across the entry Man Is the summit Of all things. And then he went on vacation. That was a tactical error. For the stonemason was a Christian. And he said, though they hang me for it, I'll put up here what needs to be up here.
And he put up, what is man that thou art mindful of him?
Now, you see, that is where a worldview begins. With that question. And then the correct answer to that question. And that, you see, was the fundamental question in the mind of Pharaoh. And that is the basic question in every mind.
Who am I? Why do I exist? Is there meaning in my life? And what does my destiny hold? You say, well, you know, this is a long, long, long way away from us.
Well, let me give you a twentieth century pharaoh, shall I? The untold story of Howard Hughes. will reach the bookshelves. It is currently in uh a previous edition of Vanity Fair magazine. Excerpts from it.
Howard Hughes, as you may know, was brought up in the finest lifestyle in Massachusetts, private school, well-bred, clean fingernails, the whole bit. At 18, his father died and left him a multi-millionaire. He took the cash and hit Hollywood. By the time it was 1957, He had already created the Coast to coast speed record in his plane. He'd crashed his plane, nearly killed himself.
He had made at least one fortune. He had contracted syphilis. Unidentified and untreated for a period of time without any kind of antibiotic intervention, which had a dramatic impact not only on his body physical, but also on his neurological function. And in 1957, he decided one morning to begin a journey that was to last for the remainder of his life, some 18 years. And he had the people drive him to a studio lot in Hollywood.
and into a screening room. And he went into the screening room and he sat down. He didn't come out for the next six months. And the writer records how inside this dingy compound, Hughes headed straight for the screening room, a dark enclosure about the size of a studio apartment, and sitting in the middle of the room was his white leather recliner with a T V snack tray next to it. He lowered himself into the chair and arranged the Hershey bars in seven little stacks.
He looked them over, picked them all up again, and arranged them in ten stacks. The piles were too high, he explained to his friend. Start the film. Hughes spent the night in the screening room. The next morning, the aides found him in the same chair eating a breakfast of six Hershey bars and a half pound of Texas pecans.
Mr. Hughes, can we get anything for you? Howard continued to stare straight ahead. Is Abe pressed? Is there anything you need?
Do you have instructions for us? Hughes wheeled around in his chair. As long as I'm here, don't speak to me. Unless I ask you a question or make a comment, each morning and each evening you will bring me a fresh bag of half pecans, ten Hershey bars, and a quart of milk. Don't speak to me when you deliver it.
Just come over and stand next to me. When I ask you a question, which requires a yes or no answer, do not speak. Just nod your head for yes, shake your head back and forth for no.
Sometimes I will need to present you with more complicated questions. In that case, I will use a number 14 grease pencil and scroll the question on one of my yellow legal pads. Once that is done, do not speak. Just write the answer on one of your. Legal pass.
By early March, more than two months after he'd entered, Howard's clothes were filthy, tearing at the seams. They reeked of urine. The white shirt was grey with grime and sweat, splotched by stains from the Hershey bars, and by the third month, Hughes had discarded all of his clothes. He remained naked for months. Filth was now everywhere except on the telephone, which was his conduit to the world and to sanity.
Every morning he took Kleenex and scrubbed the phone until tissues were strewn around him like dirty snow. On good days, it took an hour to clean the telephone. On bad days, four hours. No one was permitted to come within four feet of him. He would remain in the German free zone for the remainder of his life, no matter where he resided.
Los Angeles, Las Vegas, London, Vancouver, the Bahamas, Nicaragua, Mexico. His life pattern was now fixed. The light of the sun, S-U-N, was blocked out. Clothes were largely banished. Television, movies, and the telephone were his only intruders.
He became a disembodied voice on the phone, a sort of wizard of Oz. And while he was doing that for 18 years, He made another fortune. And says the writer Howard Hughes died of an illness called neglect. He left an estate worth an estimated one billion. Howard Hughes died of an illness.
called narcissism. Howard Hughes died of an illness called Me First. And God can take a run and jump. Howard Hughes died of an illness. Because when he wakened in the morning troubled, He just rearranged his Hershey bars.
And refused. like Nebuchadnezzar before him to lift his eyes to heaven. You say, well, You know, we've got Pharaoh in Egypt, we've got Howard Hughes in Hollywood, but we're in Cleveland and, you know. You telling me you don't wake up troubled? You see, the issue is not the zeros.
The issue is not the place. The issue is this. We are all in the same predicament. We are all facing the same raw statistics. Do you realize that the population of the United States since nineteen sixty has increased forty one percent?
We've almost grown by fifty percent since nineteen sixty? Do you know that violent crime has increased five hundred sixty percent? That the U.S. Department of Justice projects that eight out of ten people will be the victims of violent crime at least once in their lives. Go along a roll, count ten, and reckon that only two of you are going to come out, two of us are going to come out clear.
The most active incubator for all of this violence is in the 10 to 17 age group, where the rate of the perpetration of violent crime has soared 400% since 1960. Since 1960, illegitimacy has increased 400%. Since 1960, the rate of teen suicides has risen more than 200%, making it the leading cause of death amongst young people. Since 1960, the divorce rate has increased 200%. The consequence is that less than 60% of children live with both of their biological parents.
And while the spending on public school education has more than doubled in constant dollars since 1960, the SAT scores continue to go down the line. The federal tax burden on families with children is now an estimated 24% of their income, whereas in 1960, when children were doing better in school and better in society, the federal government only asked for 12% of the family income. And the fact is, you can't buy your way out of this problem. You can't legislate your way out of the problem. The Vice President decided to stay in my hotel in Cambridge.
I thought that was quite nice. But all of these security boys, hundreds of them, had them all closeted away because I'd love to have just got a hold of them for a wee minute. And just Say, hey, you know, I'd like to run through my sermon on Joseph with you, see what you think.
Well, uh just one last phrase, huh?
So Pharaoh sent for Joseph. Verse 14, Pharaoh sent for Joseph. When circumstances are happy and prosperous, men and women have little interest in serving, in sending for someone who will help them. And even When the circumstances are bad, If they feel that they don't like the kind of help they're being offered, they're likely to become enraged. That's what you've got in the story of Naaman.
Remember, Naaman wakes up and he's got leprosy. We servant girl in the house says, You know, I've got a good idea. If you go and see the servant of God at his house, I think he can take care of you.
So he humbles himself enough to get his legion of chariots put together and goes to the guy's house. You know the story in 2 Kings 5. One of the servants goes in and says to Elisha, there's a fellow out here called Naaman. He's got a big string of limousines at the front door. He's got leprosy and he wants to know what to do.
Elisha, who's having his corn flakes, looks up and says, Tell him to go and dip himself in the Jordan seven times. You'd like to have had that message to take back to the front door?
So the guy comes out and he says, Excuse me. The word from the servant of God is: go dip yourself in the Jordan seven times.
Now I know I have leprosy. He says. And I know I want fixed. But I'll go to hell before I get fixed that way. And the answer is that is exactly where you'll go.
And as he drives his limousines off in a rage. One of his servants says to him, Naaman, Lehman. If the chap had asked you to do something really difficult, You'd have done it. But he only asked you to dip yourself in the Jordan seven times. And for a second time responding.
to the word of a servant. He turns around and he goes. And he dies. What Elijah said? It pains me more than I can say.
to look into the eyes. With regularity. of the affluent and the well-healed. to find that in many a life There is the preparedness to admit, yes, I need to be cleansed. And then to watch.
As you continue to turn your heels and walk out into your own proud empires. Because you will not bow your knee. to Jesus Christ. You're prepared to come. You're prepared to be religious.
You're prepared to give. And that is wonderful. But it does not save. What are you going to do? Go back to your magicians.
And so he sent for this young man and he said, I hear that you're good at dreams. And goodness, he wouldn't have been expecting the response because Joseph says to him, I'm sorry, I can't do it. What? You can't do it? They told me you can do it.
They told me, Joseph. You're my mean man. No, says Joseph, I can't do it. But God can do it. And in this Simple juxtapositions.
is the nature of all genuine Christian service. Indeed, is the nature of all spiritual life. Would you like to be saved? To know that your sins are forgiven, that heaven is your home. That your destiny is not lostness in hell.
You know what you have to say? I cannot do it. I cannot work my soul to save. I can't have made myself righteous enough. I can't tip the scales in my favor.
I can do it.
Well, if that was the end It would be a miserable existence for us all, but it isn't. The answer is: that's absolutely right. You can't do it. But there is one Who has done it? And in acknowledging my cant.
And his can. I may be brought from darkness. into life. And then, having been brought to faith that I would live to serve him.
Now, could you help us in this way? Oh, I've never done that. I can't do it. That's good. That's the starting point.
But God can. I can do all things through Christ. Who strengthens me. This morning As we take our leave of one another. Especially if we go to serve God in any capacity at all.
Let us take a leaf. From Joseph's. Biography.
So that in our dungeon days and in our monotony and in our routines. We may learn still to trust in God. And in our moments of great opportunity, When people might be tempted to look to us, That we might be lost sight of.
So that they may in turn Look to God alone. For He is the only one. who can deal with a troubled mind. The broken heart. and the rebellious spirit.
Today If you hear God's voice. Do not. Harden. Your heart. Yeah.
You're listening to Alistair Begg, UnTruth for Life. He'll return shortly to close today's program. If you've been trying to find meaning in these confusing times, let me encourage you to request the brand new study guide that follows one man's similar search for significance and satisfaction. This is a verse-by-verse study guide that takes you through the book of Ecclesiastes. It's called Chasing the Wind, and it's designed to use alongside your Bible.
As you go through this guide you'll find questions and insights from Alastair that explore themes like the vanity of life, the reality of sin's consequences, the fear of God and the enjoyment of His creation. It's perfect for personal or group study, and it's yours for a donation at truthforlife.org slash donate. You know, it's your giving that makes studies like this possible, and as we begin a new year we are looking forward to creating more verse by verse study guides for other books of the Bible. And so to day we want to invite you to become a part of the team that brings Alistair's teaching to a great multitude through the Ministry of Truth for Life. Make 2026 a gospel-sharing year by joining our Truth Partner team.
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Now here is Alastair. And now, Father, you have seen into our lives and heard our words. May the words of our mouths and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight. And may grace, mercy, and peace From Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Rest upon and remain.
with all who believe. Today and forevermore. Amen. I'm Bob Lepine. Thanks for listening this week.
Monday, we'll learn how a God-centered life protects us from pride as well as despair. The Bible teaching of Alastair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life. Where the Learning is for Living.
