FBC Morning Light – January 20, 2023

Faith Baptist Church

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Well, a good Friday morning coming to the end of another week. January marches by, and I'm not lamenting that.

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The quicker January goes by, then February passes, March comes, and then before you know it, it's spring.

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I enjoy the passing of winter. But anyway, so we're back in Genesis chapters 39 and 40 today, and I want to go back a minute to earlier chapter, chapter 36, where Joseph, or chapter 37, where Joseph has his dreams.

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Remember those dreams? Joseph is a seventeen -year -old young man. He has a couple of dreams. One of them is that he has this sheaf from harvesting, and his brothers all represent these other sheaves, and they come and bow down to him.

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Then he has a second dream, and the sun and the moon and the stars all bow down to Joseph.

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He has these dreams of greatness, and this, of course, were some of the things he should have kept to himself, but he didn't.

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He shared them with his brothers. They just fueled the animosity that his brothers had toward him, and so forth and so on and so forth.

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But anyway, if Joseph's time and place were the 21st century, and he was where we find him in chapters 39 and 40, in a position of servanthood in Potiphar's house, and then eventually in prison, and in those places there were these security cameras or webcams where what's going on in Joseph's life could be viewed on the

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Internet from anywhere in the world, you could imagine his brothers pulling up that website and looking at the webcam of Joseph's life and chuckling to themselves and saying, how are those dreams going for you now, bro?

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How are you doing with those dreams? Servant in Potiphar's house.

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Wallowing in Potiphar's prison. Some dream, right?

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So think about that. Think about that. Here he is in slavery, purchased as a slave, serving in Potiphar's house, and while he's there, he is solicited by Potiphar's wife to engage in immorality, adultery with her.

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He refuses to do it, and by the way, here is an interesting perspective on that.

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How can such temptation be avoided? As a young man, unmarried, nobody in his family anywhere around, nobody would ever know what he does, how is it that he could resist that temptation?

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Well, by living in the light of God's presence. How can I commit this great sin against my master and against God?

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I can't. He's living in the light of God's presence, and living in such a light compels him to say, no,

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I can't do that. But anyway, he's falsely accused of attempting to rape her, so Potiphar throws him into prison.

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Chapter 40, he's languishing in this prison, and he gets raised to a place of prominence in the prison, but nevertheless he's in prison.

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He's nowhere near being in a position of greatness where his brothers are all bowing down to him by no stretch of the imagination.

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But here's the thing that's emphasized repeatedly in chapter 39, that even if he's abandoned by everybody, and isolated, he's hated, he's betrayed, he's a slave, he's falsely accused, he's imprisoned, he's neglected, he's lonely, he's forgotten, even in the face of all those things, here is the emphasis in chapter 39, and it's repeated four times.

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The Lord is with him. You see it in verse 2, the Lord was with Joseph and made a successful man.

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Chapter 3, or verse 3, Potiphar recognizes that the

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Lord was with him. In verse 21, he ends up in the prison, but it says the

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Lord was with Joseph and showed him mercy, and gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison.

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And in verse 23, the keeper of the prison didn't look to anything under Joseph's authority, why? Because the Lord was with him.

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Now, in all that Joseph was enduring, did he always feel like, oh, this is a wonderful experience because the

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Lord is with me? No, no, no, no, no, don't think that. Now he may have experienced a measure of satisfaction in the prosperity that was enjoyed under his hand in Potiphar's house, and by the fact that here he is in prison, and it could have been a whole lot worse for him in prison, but nevertheless, don't think for a minute that Joseph's going through all of this experience and thinking, oh, well, the

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Lord is with me, so I'm just a happy -go -lucky, I'll stay here forever kind of a thing. No, no.

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And one way you know that is in chapter 40, while he's in prison, you know, he interacts with the baker and the chief butler and the chief baker of the

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Pharaoh who have their dreams, and Joseph is able to interpret those dreams, and when he does, he says in verse 14, remember me when you're eventually brought out of jail here in a few days, remember me when it is well with you, and please show kindness to me, make mention of me to Pharaoh, and get me out of this house, for indeed

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I was stolen away from the land of the Hebrews, and also I have done nothing, I've done nothing here that should put me into the dungeon.

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Joseph is living every day with the awareness that he's been wronged, and that where he is, he doesn't belong.

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He's living with that every day, and so when he sees an opportunity for possibly getting out of there, he seizes it.

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He wants to. So don't get the idea that because the

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Lord was with him, you know, Joseph didn't have any of those kind of feelings and thoughts. No, he definitely did, and that makes the end of chapter 41, chapter 40, all the more poignant, because it says, yet the chief butler did not remember him.

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He was still forgotten, and then you go to chapter 41, which you'll read tomorrow, and two years pass, two years pass.

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Here's the thing, you've read the Joseph story before, probably, but if you were reading this for the first time, you'd be wondering, what in the world is going on here?

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What in the world is going on here? I'll tell you what's going on. Here's the short story. God gave

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Joseph a couple of dreams, and God is going to fulfill those dreams, but he's going to fulfill those dreams in his time and in his way, and in the fulfilling of those dreams,

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God will fulfill his purposes for his people, and he will preserve them.

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It's a fascinating and incredible story, but it's a story that exalts and glorifies and honors the sovereign power and authority and grace of our

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God. And so, Father, we do thank you today for all of that, for your sovereign authority, for your power, for your grace.

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We thank you, Father, that you are ever with your people. In heartache, in difficulty, when we're going through times of loneliness and being forgotten and neglected and abused, and all the rest of that, we who are your people can be confident that you are with us.

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Thank you for teaching us that in this story today, in Jesus' name. All right, well listen, have a good rest of your

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Friday and a wonderful weekend, and I encourage you to come out to the Lord's house on this coming

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Sunday. We gather together for Bible study at 930, and then the morning service at 1030, and then gather back again at 6 o 'clock in the evening.