Watching Joseph Die — Bill McLeod

You know, revival doesn't come through great preaching, it comes through great praying. It was like that at Pentecost, and in all the great revival sins. But once revival begins, great praying, great preaching develops, and sometimes in strange ways.

This has nothing to do with my message tonight, but something happened. And right after Saskatoon, I was called to come to Winnipeg, I lived then in Saskatoon, and I was called to come to Winnipeg for some meetings, revival meetings.

And during those meetings, a truck driver, who was a new immigrant from Germany, whose English was very broken, was touched by God. And a few days earlier, he was down in the States driving his transport, Sunday morning he saw some cars and a church, and so he pulled in.

As he came in the door, somebody said, and where are you from? I'm from Canada. Oh, the guy said, we heard there's a revival in Canada. And the truck driver said, yeah, yeah, I've got a revival. So the guy at the door told the pastor, and the pastor said, we have a man from Canada who's been in the revival, he's going to come and share.

Well, this guy hadn't done anything like this in his life. When he got home, he told us what happened. He said, I went up to that pulpit, I didn't know what to do, so I did what Bill did. In Winnipeg, he said, and I preached the same stuff, you know, dying to sin, being honest.

He said, I preached, and all of a sudden there was 30 people kneeling at the front, he said. So I decided to keep on preaching. And he said, pretty soon everybody was there, and I couldn't preach anymore.

Well, then he said, I knew that Bill did something like, what do you call it, counseling? He said, I was counseling them people at 2 o 'clock in the afternoon, this truck driver. Yeah, amen is right. Many things like that happen over the years.

When God's in it, you can't tell him how to do it. Just rejoice in how he does it. There's a text given twice in Proverbs, before honor is humility. Before honor is humility. We'll come back to that a little later.

The Wheat Kernel and Dying to Self

They found a jar in a cave somewhere in Arabia, and it had some kernels of wheat in it, 3 ,000 years old. Now, they didn't say how many kernels there were in the jar. So we took the number, well, let's say 500.

So here are 500 kernels of wheat, 3 ,000 years. And you count them, there's still only 500. How can this be? 3 ,000 years, and still not even 501? Why? Well, because it never died. It wasn't planted. Except the kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies.

It can't bring forth any fruit. But if it dies, it brings forth much fruit. And it's the same for your life and for mine. We must learn how to die to self and accept the will of God for all of life. David had to learn that.

Honor doesn't come until we're humbled. He was running for years, living in the wilderness with a crew of motley men, nothing to eat many times. And yet he knew that someday he would be the king of the 12 tribes of Israel.

But he had to be humbled and dealt with before God could give him that. Jacob was much the same. Gideon, Elisha, he poured water on the hands of Elijah. For years. Then someday, Elijah was taken home to heaven.

And all of a sudden, Elisha was a prophet. But he had to learn before honor is humility. We're going to look at Joseph. It's one of the most amazing and beautiful and helpful stories in the Bible. I'm not going to preach on the idea like of Joseph, his life, being a picture of Christ.

In many aspects, I'm not going to deal with that. It's a message all by itself. If I would call this anything, I would just say, we're going to watch. We're going to watch Joseph die. How God did it and what it meant.

Because he went from a 17-year-old kid to be the prime minister of the most powerful nation in the world in his time. But it didn't happen overnight. Somebody put it this way. See, there were 12 boys in the family.

Joseph was the only one of the 12 playing the game by the rules. His brothers were a bunch of rascals apart from Reuben. And he used to bring their evil report to their father. And they hated him. Not only for that, but for other things as well.

But he was the only one on a team of 12 playing the game by the rules. And the great umpire of the universe, God, gave him a 13-year penalty. And so from 17 till 30, he was under a cloud. One of the amazing things about the story is this.

He never complained. It seems strange. How could he go through all of this and not say at least, hey, God, what are you doing down here? No hint. But one thing we see again and again, it says God was with him.

He didn't have a Bible. How could he exist as a believer without a Bible? But he did. He couldn't attend a conference like this. He didn't know of any Christians or believers in God in Egypt. They're idolaters.

He had no helps at all. And he did better than a lot of people in our countries. They have all kinds of helps. God is my helper, we read in the Bible, and he is. The Lord is my helper, Hebrews 13 reminds us.

If you have nothing else, you have God, which means you have all you'll need, right? That's all you need. Joseph, well, he had to die first of all to his youth, because he was only 17 years old when he was betrayed by his brothers.

And, you know, that's, I mean, this is youth. No doubt great ambitions, ideas, and so on, and everything is knocked flat in a minute. He had no idea, apparently, how his brothers felt about him. They were very envious, jealous, angry.

They planned to murder him, actually, and would have, but Reuben kind of talked them out of it, I think. So they just sold him as a slave, and they made a little money at it. Twenty pieces of silver sold to the Ishmaelites.

They went into Egypt, and they sold him naturally at a profit, and likely another 10 shekels or whatever. He probably, in that respect, the same price paid for him as for Christ later on. Anyway, he had to die to his youth.

And that may happen to some 17-year-olds. Here, it won't be just like his. It can be in a multitude of ways, all open to God. He not only sees the beginning, it says he sees the end from the beginning, your life and my life.

Joseph Dies to His Ambitions, Family, and Freedom

Then he had to die, secondly, to youthful ambitions. He'd had some dreams which clearly indicated that someday he would be some kind of a ruler over all his brothers and his mother and dad. And they hated him for these dreams.

One of the reasons for the problems that developed, he had to die to that. He didn't look very hopeful as a slave whose master's name was Potiphar, which meant a fat bull. And he was the head of the executioners.

And really, Joseph had nothing. He didn't even own the loincloth he was wearing. He had nothing. These ambitions, these youthful dreams, oh, come on, he had to forget about it. I suppose he wondered, what did those dreams really mean?

What has God up to? Has he forgotten? Did I just eat too much? Was that the problem? We don't see any indication he felt that way, but I'm sure being human, he must have thought some things along that line.

The next thing is this. He had to die to favoritism. He was the favored child in the family. That's never, never a good thing. If you have children, you know this. Some of your children are very easy to raise and handle, and some are not.

It's just the way it is. And we have a tendency then to favor the child that is easy to raise. Don't make that mistake. His parents did, and they hated him. The more because he was a favorite. So he was in deep trouble insofar as his family was concerned.

He had to die to freedom. As a 17-year-old in the land of Canaan, he was as free as a bird. Could do what he wanted. I'm sure he had a lot of fun roaming the hills, looking after sheep, and all of this kind of thing.

Totally free. And all of a sudden, totally a slave. I mean, overnight. You see, if you're going out to some country as a missionary, you have the privilege, and everybody does it. You try to find out all you can learn about this country.

Population, ethnic origin, economy, all these things, political systems. And you learn all you can, and you get many pictures, and you listen to missionaries who've been there. Well, Joseph had nothing like that.

He'd never been there before. There were no travel brochures he could read. He's just stuck suddenly in a totally foreign country whose language he did not know. So he had to die to a lot of areas. Freedom was one.

He had to die to human love. That's hard. If you're on, like it says of Jesus, neither did his brethren believe in him. And his brothers didn't. They didn't love him. They hated him. It wasn't just that there was no love.

It was that they were full of hate. And they saw their opportunity. And he heard them talking and realized they were planning to kill him. And they might have. But God's hand was in the whole story. And they didn't.

I never knew until years later what had really happened from God. He had to die to his own family, to their love. He never had that. It's hard to work in Christian work if your family doesn't believe in it, if they talk against that.

And we've often counseled with people who had that kind of problem. They don't know what to do. Their own family thinks they're wasting their time, always yakking at them about it. And we've counseled with people, even recently, that had that kind of a problem.

Most certainly, he, Joseph, had that kind of a problem. He died to his own family because he never saw any of them for 20 years. Supposing God came to you and said, now I want you to take on this ministry in a country you've never heard of, never seen, and you'll be gone from your family for 20 years.

You'll have no contact with them. They had no telephones in those days, no internet, nothing like this. Would you accept it? It would be hard. That's what he had to do. He had to die to marriage, which in those days, of course, was extremely important, as it is for many today.

As a slave, no thought of marriage. He just had to obey Potiphar, the fat bull. That's all he had. It wasn't a very intriguing situation, or hopeful, either. So he never died, he never ever got back to his own country again, except to bury his dad.

20 years later, he buried his dad, and he went back with his dad's body to Canaan to bury him. That's the only contact he had with his own country. He had to die to some customs, I'm sure. You know, when you travel a lot in foreign lands, you learn a lot.

You find out they don't do things in many of these countries the way they do in Canaan or the States. We were in South America, and we said something, oh, it was a great thing, and we went like that. Oh, and they said, don't do that, that's bad, that's bad.

I've never heard of this before. So we learned, and in going into a store in some countries, you don't walk in and point with your foot and say, I'd like some of that. You don't even point with your hand.

In some countries, you don't point with your left hand, or with your, yeah, with your left hand, you must point with your right hand. But here's what you do in some countries. You walk in the store, a clerk walks up, and of course he inquires, what would you like?

Now, that's not how it starts. You start by asking him if he's married. Are you married? Oh, yes, yes. Do you have any children? Yes. How many children do you have? And you find out all about the family, you know?

Then after you've asked a few questions, he will ask you, is there something in the store you'd like to buy? We don't do it that way. We just roar and get what we want and roar out again. So you learn how to go slow and to watch others, to see how they do it, and try and pattern your life so you won't offend anybody unnecessarily.

So he had to die to many customs he was used to. He certainly had to die to all spiritual fillers. I'm sure there's times when Joseph just longed to go back somehow to get home, sit around the fire with the family and sing the songs of Zion.

None of that. Certainly, he must have been witnessing for God because there's some evidence later on that others in the nation have become believers too. But I mean, he had nothing to start with. Just God.

Isn't that enough? I guess it is. It has to be. He had to die to his nationality. It says in Genesis that it was an abomination for an Egyptian to eat bread with a Hebrew. So somebody asked Joseph one day, where do you come from?

I came from the land of Canaan. Yeah, but there's a lot of nationalities in Canaan. What nationality are you? Well, the guy said, come on, what are you? Well, I'm a Hebrew. And the guy says, a Hebrew?

Oh man. And he just walks away. So he had to die to his nationality. He had to die to his past work because it says every shepherd was an abomination to the Egyptians. So somebody asked Joseph in the land of Canaan, what did you do?

I worked for my dad. So what kind of work did you do for your dad? Well, I was a shepherd. A shepherd? Ugh. He walks away, an abomination to an Egyptian. So God is closing the door in all directions. He's dying to everything, it seemed.

He had to die to his, well, to a very sheltered environment, we might say, living in a tent somewhere. Now he's in a house, probably a very costly house for those days and times. You know, Ur of the Chaldeans, where Abraham came, they had flushing toilets in Ur of the Chaldeans back in Abraham's day.

They found this out through archeology. And of course, Egypt being the head nation of the time that Joseph was there, they're probably very modern. And he had to adjust to all of this. And he seemed to do it very well.

He had to die to his life's work with Potiphar because he didn't have any freedom at all. He just had to do what he was told and do it right. And then when Potiphar discovered what kind of a man he had, he was delighted.

Everything Joseph did was right. And Potiphar saw this. He could trust him with anything. He began giving him more responsibility. And the more responsibility he gave Joseph, the more blessing he saw happening to his crops and his business and everything.

Finally, he committed the whole business to Joseph and Joseph ran the whole thing. He enjoyed that because after all, he did have some administrative abilities as later we'd learn. And he was having a great time.

Joseph Dies to Reputation and Human Approval

Then all of a sudden, something happened and that had to end. And Joseph, you see there's a verse in Psalm 102 that says, you have lifted me up and cast me down. And he had been lifted up to be the administrator for Potiphar, the head of the executioners in Egypt.

And all of a sudden he's in jail because his wife, Potiphar's wife accused him of trying to rape her. He had not, but that was the accusation. And so all of a sudden, he has nothing. He's not in the administrative end of things at all.

He's out of it. And again, I'm sure he was wondering, well, what kind of a curb comes in their old nets? I wonder what God is up to. So he had to die in these hard areas. He died, for example, to human lust.

That was difficult. That's what got him in jail. When he refused to lie with Potiphar's wife, that got him in jail. He did the right thing and ended up in the wrong place. How can that be? When God's in it, you're never in a wrong place.

You're just in a different place. That's all. Well, then he had to die to his personal reputation. Dear people, this is hard. If he's in jail, so prisoners talk to each other. Hey, Joe, what did you do to get in here?

Well, I was accused of rape, but I never ever did it. And everybody in the jail is innocent. Did you know that? I was taken by a Christian superintendent to the penitentiary in St. Cloud, Minnesota. And he said, we have 1 ,200 prisoners here.

60 of them are lifers, but everybody is innocent. You can't find a guilty person in the whole jail. So I'm sure Joe's got the same problem. So they'd walk away, oh yeah, yeah, we know Joe. We know all about it.

Everybody's innocent. You know, that would be very hard to be in jail, accused of anything if you're a Christian believer. But sometimes it's in the plan of God. So in 2 Corinthians 6, it speaks about us honoring God as ministers of his.

Now, I think the word minister is used not just for people in the ministry, but Christians everywhere. And one of the things he mentions there is this. We are to honor God by, it says, honor and dishonor, evil report and good report, as deceivers and yet true.

So what about, you know, the honor part, that's good. What about the dishonor part? That's not so easy. What about the evil report? That's not easy either. And people regarding you as a deceiver, that's not easy either.

But see, we just look at the one side. We forget there's another side. Christ said, woe unto you when all men speak evil of you. So did their fathers to the false prophets. Christians often congratulate themselves that they're never in trouble.

They think it's just great. They walk as if there's eggs on the floor. So if an egg gets in the way, they just push it aside gently. They don't want to crush an egg. And they managed to make it in perfect health to death's door.

And some people are living that way with these thoughts in mind. Honor and dishonor, evil report and good report, as deceivers and yet true. We have to be prepared for this. If you're going to do anything for God, you have to be prepared.

The Lord comes down the road. He will allow things to happen. He'll allow people to come into your life that are not nice people. He'll give you problems you cannot solve, that drives you to him. All things work together for good to them that love God.

When I preached the gospel in Logging Caps, I'm glad I started, well, not quite started there. I'd been pastoring a church just once before that. But what an experience. In these logging camps, there were people just out of jail.

There were people that should be in jail. They're hiding in a bush camp so they won't be caught. You'll meet people that can't read or write. You'll meet people with university education. You got just about everything.

And they're usually, they're usually rough, not necessarily bad, but when they find out who you are, certain reactions surface. They see you giving thanks for your meal at the table. Oh, it produces almost a riot, you know.

They get laughing about it. It's so funny. They've never seen anybody do that before, you know. So it's time they saw it, right? Anyway, sometimes when you're preaching, they pull out a cigar and light it or a pipe, but you're on their turf.

You can't have them stop. You could do it here. You can't do it there. Or you might pull out a whiskey bottle and take a swig or two while you're preaching, you know. Or they might get up and leave because if it's a Friday night, they used to have fights on radio Friday nights.

And some of your crowd would leave Friday night to watch the fight for a while, then come back to the meeting. Ever have that happen? You just never knew it was going to happen. You just did it and enjoyed it.

And you didn't eat meals there, then lay on your bunk till the evening when you could have a service. You haven't worked for the guys in the bush. And you cut logs with them. And you deck logs with them.

You did a lot of things with them. And when you did, I remember one camp I walked in about 20 miles. It was in the spring. And the winter roads often, they take advantage of the lakes and they travel on the ice.

But the snow was gone. The ice was still there. And there was places where, for the length of this auditorium, there'd be water on top of the ice. So I take off my shoes and stocking. I sit on my pack sack.

Then I walk on my bare feet on the ice to the end of this water. Then I sit on my pack and had a towel and dry my feet, put my socks and shoes back on. I did that maybe five times to get in this one camp.

So when I got there, the guy said, how did you get here? I said, what do you think? I didn't fly. No, but did you walk? Yeah, I walked. And words spread like wildfire through the camp. Everybody was at the meeting that night, you know?

And things like that. God gives you opportunities for doing things that'll soften tough guy's hearts. I remember I was talking in one case, warning about the danger of hell. And one of the men that ran the camp was not a believer.

And I was talking to him afterwards. And he said, I know, he said, there has to be a hell because God has to have a place for the coals. Do you know what a coal is? Any log in the bush that won't make lumber, they call it a coal.

They throw it aside. So he said, God has to have a place for the coals. One of his brothers became a Christian. I do not know if he ever did. Okay, we're to approve ourselves as ministers of God then, by honor and dishonor, evil report, good report, as deceivers and yet true.

And remember this, no matter what they say, the God of truth is on your side. And you don't have to worry about it. Let him talk. Dr. Shields in Toronto used to call him the Canadian Spurgeon. And people said all kinds of things about him.

He took a very strong stand for righteousness and had a large Baptist church in Toronto. And he said, when somebody was talking to him one day and said, you know, so many people are against you. Aren't you upset about it?

He said, I don't care what they say about me just as long as they talk about me. Because he said, every time they open their mouth against me there are people who say, I've got to hear this guy Shields.

Waiting on God Instead of Human Help

And so all kinds of people come because of this. And he served God wonderfully well. He's in heaven by the grace of God today. One of the things Joseph had to die to was human health. Because when the butler and the baker offended the king of Egypt, then they were both thrown into jail.

And so they had a dream one night and Joseph was in charge of the jail by this time. And so he saw they weren't looking happy. And he asked them what their problem was. Well, the butler said he had a dream.

And in his dream, he was pressing grapes into Pharaoh's cup. And oh, Joseph, that's a good sign. You're going to be restored to favor again. Then the other guy, the baker, he felt happy because it was a good interpretation there.

His dream was not interpreted the same way. And Joseph told him, you're going to die in three days. And so it happened. But before they left the jail on that third day, Joseph begged the butler to remember him.

He told him all about himself, how he'd been betrayed by his brother in the jail, all these things that happened all these years. He's probably 28 years old or so at the time. And you know what happened?

The butler forgot. I read that, I say to myself, what kind of a fool is he? How could he forget? It just wasn't God's time for him to get out of jail. So the butler didn't remember. And Joseph, I'm sure, waited a day, two days, three days, four days, a week, nothing happens.

After a month, he knows it's not going to happen. He's going to stay there in jail. But of course, the day finally came. You know, we cannot see God's footsteps are not known. That's the Old Testament.

The New Testament says God's ways are past finding out. You don't know why you see what, but you don't know why. And we have to be quite content with the what and forget about the why. Leave that with God.

Remember that verse in Proverbs, a merry heart has a continual feast. It does good like a medicine, it says. Well, medicine costs money. Having a merry heart doesn't. Why don't you go for it? It's sure a lot cheaper.

A merry heart, just rejoicing in God. Jesus said, don't ever rejoice because the spirits, the demons are subject unto you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven. Written in heaven, O glorious thought, what consolation Christ has brought.

Written in heaven, we can rejoice by night and by day. And we should be to the glory of God. So we are to die to all human help and trust. My soul, wait thou only upon God, only upon God. He's our help.

He's our shield. He hasn't forgotten. He hasn't run out of resources. He cares, casting all your care on him, for he cares for you. Sometimes we look to devil. You see, I came from a broken home. My parents were, I would say by worldly standards, good people.

They loved us four boys, but they didn't love each other. And it got to a place where my mother left. Then my dad had a job and four boys, nobody else in the home. We got into all kinds of stuff. And then my dad was not a cook.

I can still remember those cabbage soups we ate so often, you know. And then what happened was my mother got into a car accident somehow, could have been killed, those old fashioned cars. And she got saved.

She accepted Christ. And one day dad said, your mother is coming home, but you don't have to listen to her religious talk. No, we didn't know what that meant. She was a very wise woman. She didn't lay a heavy gospel trip on us.

She would occasionally say something about Jesus. We'd walk away. Or she'd leave a Bible open somewhere or a Christian book around. Many years later, she told us this. When I came home, I determined that my family would be saved, you boys and dad.

And you know what happened? Nothing happened for 14 years. And when my older brother Don was in his 20s, I was not far behind him, Don got saved. That was the first thing that happened. But she waited patiently 14 years.

And some of us, we give up on God after 14 months or less. Give God time. Let him do it his way. It's a great problem with many believers trying to hurry God up. Hey God, get moving. Haven't you heard me?

My mother said one day the devil got on her back and told her this faith stuff didn't mean anything. Give up on it. This God stuff isn't real. And she said, I wrestled with the devil all that day and I threw him off my back finally.

And I decided forever, I'm believing God, no matter what. So Don was saved a couple of years later. The four boys were saved in the order of age. And my youngest brother, Keith, he was in the Canadian Air Force.

And he and his wife, when they were alone, after they got married, they agreed, they shook hands and agreed together they would never become Christians. But what hope did he have? When my mother was praying and believing God.

And I'll never forget years later when his wife phoned and said, your brother's in trouble, you better come and talk to him. So I went over to the house, he was sitting on the floor. I sat down beside him, what's up, Keith?

He said, I'm so low down, there's no way out now but up. You wanna be saved? Exactly. I led him to Christ. But you know what happened that the night before I called on him, he had decided to end his life.

He had a deer rifle and he first of all went to the house and kissed his kids goodbye. He and his wife didn't get along at all. And then he took his gun and he put it to his head and pulled the trigger and it didn't go off.

So he put a different shell in and the same thing happened, it wouldn't go off. Then he woke up in bed the next morning, he doesn't know what happened. He could never remember what had happened after he pulled the trigger twice.

But God was in it. My mother was praying and he was in the ministry for years as an evangelist. Led a lot of people to Christ in Canada, in the States. They shook hands and said, we'll never become Christians.

That must make heaven laugh, you know. It's just saying God can't do anything here. That's not how it is. I remember a fellow said to me one time, oh, Brother Bill, he said, oh, I really need help. He said, I need so much help.

Please ask God to help me. I said, God doesn't want to help you, he wants to kill you. What? And I explained that to him, so he wouldn't have a wrong idea. And finally he said, Brother, that's what I needed to hear.

And he entered into a new relationship with God when he realized what I was saying. Dying with Jesus, I am, I have been crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live. Yet not I, but Christ lives in me. We sing a chorus, oh, what a salvation this, that Christ lives in me.

And finally all four of us boys found Christ and three of us went into the ministry. My dad was saved when he was 75. He'd moved down to California, Carmel-by-the-Sea, and he built a little house there.

And we never saw him, rarely heard from him. Then he phoned and he wanted to come and spend some time with us. So he came. And after he'd been with us a couple of days, he said to me, why don't you ask me to ask a blessing on the food?

I said, would you like to do that? Well, he said, why wouldn't a Christian like to ask a blessing? That was his Presbyterian way of telling us he'd become a believer. So thank God. You know, my mom up there in the glory land, when I look back, her faith, I thank God.

Not just for her faith, but for the life she lived. Always cheerful. I don't remember her ever being unhappy. And then reading the Bible the way she did. Then helping me get started after I got saved at the age of 22.

The University Professor Who Became Usable

She was always there coaching. It was just so neat. I thank God for her. I can't think of any other human person that I can thank God for as much as her. And over the years, here was a man. He was a university professor, also a Christian.

He heard I was holding meetings in New Brunswick, Canada. And he contacted me and he showed up at one of the meetings. And he told me what had happened. He and his wife heard that revival was buzzing.

So they started praying, search me, oh God. And he said, for three weeks, we've done nothing but pray the prayer, search me. And we've dealt with everything God has shown us. But he said, that's not the problem.

I said, what's the problem? He said, the problem is this wicked self. You deal with sin, but self takes over and you sin again. How do you handle this? I said, you can't, only God can. And we talked about that and he went to prayer.

I think he forgot I was in the room. Was just he and God. And it was a wrestling match. And he kept telling God, I wanna die to myself. And I wanna die now, 100%, he kept saying. No little thing left of self, he said.

I mean, he just went down the line. He took care of everything. And all of a sudden he said, oh, what peace. He was filled with the spirit of God. Now he'd been a high school teacher and a university professor for a total of 25 years.

In those 25 years, he'd never let his soul to Christ. He never had anybody come to him knowing he was evangelical to ask you the questions about God or the Bible. Never happened. In the next 18 months, he prayed with over 400 people.

Some he led to Christ, others were Christians who helped to walk with God. And this university professor even went on the road holding revival meetings, can you believe it? He told me, over the years I often anxiously asked God, God, why don't you use me?

I found out he couldn't use me because self was in the way. He was a very determined sort of person. God couldn't get in. He said, I understand clearly now why. He didn't use me, he couldn't. I was in the way.

That may be true for some of us here as well. It's a problem everywhere. People say they pray, God, use me. That's not the way to pray. God, make me usable. That's the way to pray. He'll use you, he's looking for people.