Making the Most of It (Part 1 of 2)

How do you respond when life doesn't go the way you expected? Some people question God's care or assume they're being punished, but today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg examines one man's surprising response to a devastating change in his circumstances, and he looks at God's role in that trial. Can I invite you once again to turn with me to Genesis and to the 39th chapter, and as you open to that part of the Bible, let's pause once again and ask God to help us as we study it together. Lord, we thank you that you have chosen that when your Word is preached in the power of your Spirit that your voice is heard. And so we pray that that may be our experience now—not the futility of listening simply to a man talk about an ancient book, but the reality of you choosing to take mere, broken, fallible human instrumentation, and by the power of your Holy Spirit to match your Word to lives this morning, some of whom in this instant are not even ready to hear your truth. Only you can do this, and to you alone we look. Save us then, Lord, from every distracting influence, and help us to concentrate on you as you speak to us, for Jesus' sake.

Amen. The picture with which the chapter opens, with which the other one concludes, is not that of Joseph, now in Egypt, going from place to place looking for a job, but rather it is Joseph in the context of an auction. And in order for us to get a picture of it, we should probably think in terms of cattle auctions. And you will be privileged to observe the procedure as it unfolds with regularity, as the door swings open and one sorry beast comes in through the door, whacked by a big stick and prodded into its position of prominence, and then the various nods and winks and scratchings of the heads and grunts proceeds, till finally the beast now has a master, and then the door opens on the other side, and out it goes and on its sorry journey. But here is the picture for Joseph. The dreamer has hit the dirt. He is far removed from the security of his family home. He has been placed probably on a platform in full view of the crowd, a leering crowd, doubtless chained to a block for security's sake, stripped bare—perhaps they did them the kindness of leaving him with a loincloth, but probably not—and there he stands as a teenager subjected to the investigations and proddings of his potential master. Every teenage boy understands the developmental phases of life and would want to guard against any kind of exposure in this way, and so to be subjected to this kind of humiliation was something that would have ripped into the very core of this young man Joseph.

Try with me to get a sense of the pain and the confusion in the life of this teenage boy as he sought to understand what it was that was happening to him. And as in the course of events he realized that he couldn't understand the words of the people around him and was left simply to try and read their eyes, to see what they were actually thinking and what they were planning on doing. And he must have roved the crowd, even as the people cast their gaze upon him, looking to see whose eyes would be the eyes that would finally become his captor. And then the ordeal would have been over, and he would have been escorted, probably under some kind of guard, into the palatial surroundings of this man Potiphar, who was, we're told in verse 1, the captain of the guard, or the chief of the royal police, or the man in charge of the executions of all political insurrectionists. Those who sought to bring down the Pharaoh would be put in the custody of the chief of the royal police, and he would make sure that they wouldn't be bringing anybody down.

And with a very great sense of clinical efficiency, he would remove such a threat from his boss. He was a powerful man, and he probably had the potential for cruelty, or at least he could absorb it and deal with it in the course of his day-to-day routine. So it is an understatement to say that the circumstances into which Joseph now is brought are less than ideal. Years later, when his father was reflecting upon the circumstances of Joseph's life, in Genesis 49 23, Jacob reflected, With bitterness archers attacked him, they shot at him with hostility. A very graphic picture of the vulnerability now of Joseph, as if, as it were, there were a group of archers all around him, and they were simply taking pot shots at him.

And he found himself exposed and alone and disappointed and fearful and wondering. Now, loved ones, here we discover again, and we discover it with frequency in the Bible, an essential, vital, simple truth that has something to say into each of our lives this morning, and namely this, there is no ideal place to serve God except the place in which he sets you down. There is no ideal job. There is no ideal location. There is no ideal office. There certainly is no ideal church to join, in which to fellowship or to pastor. There are good ones.

There are no ideal ones. And those who constantly search for the ideal, for perfection, forgetting that all that is ideal and all that is perfect is saved for heaven, send themselves, send ourselves, on a journey that is marked by frequent disappointment. And here we discover again this essential truth, that for Joseph, this was not ideal. And yet he would have had within him all kinds of emotions to run away, to hide, to give up, to become antagonistic.

And somehow or another, God, as we will see, takes him through the valleys as well as through the high spots. The psalmist, responding to similar circumstances in his life in Psalm 11 and verse 1, says to himself, In the LORD I take refuge. How then can you say to me, Flee like a bird to your mountain? I don't remember who sang the song, but it went like this, We gotta get out of this place, if it's the last thing we ever do.

Remember that song? And some of us have come from a week with the refrain of the song reverberating in our brains, and circumstances and people and counsel and our own spirits inside of us are starting to say, You know, if you could only get away, if you could only get up to the cottage, if you could only get down to there, if you could only get to the sun. And while all of those things may be temporary palliatives, the fact of the matter is, as the psalmist says, In the LORD I take my refuge. How can you say to me, Flee like a bird to your mountain?

Flee if you choose, but you'll take yourself there. And I don't know about you, but I'm my biggest problem. Not my circumstances. Not my colleagues. Not my boss.

Me. And Joseph looks at his environment, and we look at his environment, and we look at our own, and we may find ourselves saying, You know, I never bargained for this. I never imagined being trapped in these circumstances.

I never ever thought it would become like this. And presumably, that's a little of how Joseph was feeling. So let's trace a line through these opening verses. Let's notice four things about Joseph. Number one, he was protected. He was protected. In the course of all of this, the protecting hand of God upon him is quite remarkable.

We saw it in the way in which he was almost dead and then in the pit, and then he was in the pit and not dead, but going to be dead, and then he was in the pit but he was getting out of the pit, and then he was in the pit and on the camel, and now he's still alive. He's been protected. He hasn't been protected from the circumstances.

He has been protected in the circumstances. And so often, we make it a sad thing for ourselves by asking God constantly to change the circumstances or to remove the circumstances or to remove us from the circumstances, when in point of fact, most of the time, what God seems to do with his children is that he doesn't change the circumstances for us, but he changes our attitude towards the circumstances in which we find ourselves. And when we start to pray for someone who's an aggravation to us, when we start to be kind to someone who's a disappointment to us, the personnel remain the same, but our experience may well change. You see, God could have done different things in Joseph's life. God chose to allow these events to unfold in order, in part, I'm sure, to deal with the blemishes in his character.

It was not going to be good for Joseph, who had essentially had seventeen years of everything being hunky-dory, for him in the expectations of God, for him to have the next twenty years similarly. And God purposed that it would be through many dangers, toils, and snares that he would bring his servant in order that he may fashion him and deal with the blemishes in his character, even as he's doing with us, and in Joseph's case, pride, amongst other things. So we find Joseph protected, first of all, by God's presence. He is protected by the presence of God. He left his earthly father behind in Canaan, but his heavenly father accompanied him to Egypt.

His presence with him was the source of his protection. He would have been happy with the words of the psalmist. And I just want to quote a few to you. You can turn to them if you choose.

You can note them and find them later. They are a selection of a vast company of such truths and verses. Psalm 9.9. The Lord is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble. Those who know your name will trust in you, for you, Lord, have never forsaken those who seek you. The twenty-seventh Psalm. For in the day of trouble he will keep me safe in his dwelling.

He will hide me in the shelter of his tabernacle and set me high upon a rock. Psalm 46 and verse 1. God is our refuge and our strength, an ever-present help in trouble. The hundred and thirty-eighth Psalm, and verse 7. Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you preserve my life. Now, sometimes, loved ones, what we need to do in the midst of our days as we find ourselves disappointed and enslaved and broken and unable to alter our circumstances, we do well to go to the soul's medicine chest. And if the Bible is the soul's medicine chest, then one of the best potions in the chest is in the book of Psalms. And to take the Psalms and to read there of the psalmist's experience and realize how again and again his experience of God is descriptive of what we long for and what the psalmist sings God's people experience. For example, in the book of Exodus, when Moses is talking to God about the prospect of leading the people and the sense of fearfulness that he has in relationship to the leadership of the people.

In Exodus 33 and in verse 12, Moses speaks to the Lord, and he says to him, You have been telling me, Lead these people, but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. You have said, I know you by name, and you have found favor with me. If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways, so I may know you and continue to find favor with you.

Remember that this nation is your people. And the Lord replied, My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest. Moses was afraid, I don't want to do this on my own.

I don't want to go this alone. And the Lord says to him, Don't worry about that, my presence will go with you. And Moses replies in verse 15, If your presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here.

How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? In other words, it is the accompanying presence of God in the life of his servant that makes the servant distinctive. It is not ultimately the servant's ability to articulate theology. It is not ultimately our ability to pronounce certain things about the way of the world and everything, but it is that in some strange way it becomes apparent to people that there is this dimension upon the life of the child of God, which is evidence of the fact of God's protection in the life of his servant protected by his presence.

You get the same thing. God speaks through his servant the prophet in Isaiah 43 2, and he says, When you pass through the waters, I will be with you. Matthew 28 20, the words of Jesus telling his disciples, I'm going to heaven, you're staying here, let me tell you what to do.

Go into all the world, preach the gospel, make disciples, baptize them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And as you can see, the eyes of his disciples widening all the time in the prospect of the absence of Jesus, and he says to them, And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Protected by God's presence. Secondly, protected from. The protection of God not only was made clear to him in his presence with him, but was clear insofar as you find that Joseph was protected from certain things. Now, this is not overtly here in the text. It is covertly here in the circumstances as they unfold. But you are sensible people, and you follow this through with me and see if you don't agree that we can say with confidence that God protected Joseph from the silent killers.

From the silent killers. Three of which are these—resentment, self-pity, and bitterness. For Joseph was a sitting duck for any one of these. If ever there was an individual whose most immediate experience had legitimized the possibility of a response marked by feeling sorry for himself, becoming resentful of what others had done, and becoming embittered by the whole process, Joseph was a number-one candidate. For surely in those early days, as he tossed and turned on his bed within the custody of Potiphar's home, his mind must have been filled with so much confusion. His dreams, because he was a dreamer, must have been filled with the happy and the sad aspects of it all. In the night, waking up in a sweat with the eyes of his brothers gazing into him in the pit, as he reached out his hands to his elder brothers and he said, Oh no!

Don't leave me here! And as one after another looked at him and cursed him and walked away and left him, and suddenly he was awake in the night and rattled by his chains into an awareness again, he realizes that he is a captive in a foreign home, and his circumstances are dreadful. Or one of the nights when he has those dreams, the same kind of dreams that you have when a loved one dies, and in the watches of the night you dream that you're with your loved one again, and all is restored and all is fine, and you walk together and you talk together and you awake and you realize it was a cruel fable. How he dreamt of his dad, and of the times with his dad, and his wee brother Benjamin who was five years old, and for whom Joseph must have been a hero, separated by twelve years, enough for Joseph to be the big guy on campus, at least on Benjamin's campus.

And how he probably dreamt of times with Benjamin in the fields and taking him here and taking him there, and in his dreams he's with him and answering his questions and introducing him to the beasts of the field, and suddenly he's awake. And he looks around at the walls of the same old room, and up and peeled upon the wall are the temptations to resentment and to self-pity and to bitterness. Some of us feel ourselves to be in that kind of room this morning at this period in our lives. We waken to the dawning realization that our circumstances are not what we like. Physically they aren't in terms of medical prognosis. Emotionally they're not in terms of interpersonal relationships. Employment-wise they're not in terms of the peculiar difficulties of our days.

And it's as though there are these neon lights that flash to us in the early hours of the morning. Just bury yourself in resentment. Feel sorry for yourself. Just become an embittered soul.

And what do we do? Well, we need the protection of God—not only the protection that comes by way of his presence but the protection from these things. And Joseph didn't allow himself to become imprisoned by the walls of bitterness. In the circumstances that each of us face, known only to us and ultimately to God, we need to ask God to enable us that we might resolve with his help, no matter how difficult our day is, to respond in a way that prevents the bitterness of spirit and produces instead within us soft hearts. Ephesians deals with this wonderfully in Ephesians chapter 4, where Paul says to the believers there in Ephesus, Don't let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what's helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.

And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Well, how will we do that? Well, listen, he says, Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, brawling, and slander.

Just get rid of them. As easy as that? No, not as easy as that, but as straightforward as that. Well, I can't. Don't tell me you can't. Tell me you won't. Problem isn't can't. Problems won't. There's never a command in the Word of God that we are able to answer to, I can't.

It's always I won't. Because he never calls us to an action that he does not enable us to complete the action. So if he says, Get rid of something, you can be dead certain that he applies the power of the Spirit within our lives to enable us to do what he just asked us to do. And so when I live with bitterness, resentment, and self-pity, I made the dungeon for myself.

Make no mistake. And I cannot lay the charge at God. And that's why the wonder of Joseph here is so marvelous. Young guy, protected by God's presence, protected from the silent killers, and protected for a unique purpose. You see, God was at work in the life of Joseph, planning him and preparing him for something yet to come.

His body might be chained, but his spirit wasn't chained. Somehow or another, in his mind, the dreams plus the disasters were leading somewhere. He maybe had an inkling of what Solomon was to later write in Proverbs 3, My son, don't despise the LORD's discipline, and don't resent his rebuke, because the LORD disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in. The greatest of all tragedies is the tragedy of an undisciplined son or daughter. For they live in the worst of confusions, wondering why it is that since they know what they're about to do is harmful to them, why their father would not intervene for their protection, even though they know that they will resent the intervention of their dad. It's a strange and wonderful, weird deal.

So then he was protected by God's presence, from man's perversity, and for God's purpose. You're listening to Alistair Begg on Truth for Life with a message he's titled Making the Most of It. We'll hear more tomorrow. If you find you're benefiting from these messages in the Dangers, Toils, and Snares series, maybe you'd like to use this topic to go through with your study group. If so, there's a corresponding study guide. You can download it for free at truthforlife.org slash dangers. The study guide includes 14 lessons to help your group explore God's purposes for the variety of trials and suffering in the lives of his people. Each lesson includes a brief commentary on the message, questions for reflection and discussion, scripture to memorize or meditate on, and there's a hymn to wrap up your session with praise. As I said, you can download the Dangers, Toils, and Snares study guide for free at truthforlife.org slash dangers. If you'd prefer a printed booklet, you can purchase copies for your group at our cost of just three dollars each. Visit the online store at truthforlife.org slash store. Well, we're glad you've joined us today. Tomorrow we'll find out how God not only protects us in our difficulties, but how he can also use our worst times to prosper us and others. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.