The Gospel Through Suffering (Philippians 1:12-14)
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
The Suffering Substitute
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
Good morning. As I said before, my name is Spencer. I'm one of the pastors here. We're going to be in Matthew 27, verses 11 through 31. You can follow along on the screen. You can also grab one of those blue Bibles around you.
It's going to be on page 486. If you don't have a Bible at home, please take that Bible. That is a gift to you once you have a Bible that you can read at home. So, one of my friends from Louisville, Kentucky, when I lived there for five years, he was a church planner and was a pastor. And over the last few years, I've kind of watched, really online, he has kind of developed a following as he's stopped being a pastor. He's kind of moved into more being a motivational speaker.
He's done a TED Talk. And it's been kind of sad. I've watched him kind of depart from kind of the core teachings of our faith and really, really departing from the gospel. And about a month ago, he posted this graphic right there. If divine forgiveness requires payment, then it's not really forgiveness, the restitution. And I saw that and I was blown away.
I just was like, oh, okay. Now, my personal policy when somebody posts something on Facebook that's meant to be a discussion starter, that's meant to really be a little bit controversial, is don't comment. Just don't do it. Facebook is not a place for discussion. It's an angry place now. There's no nuance.
Like, it's just not, you know, it's not worth the bet. And I should say that that's probably the policy that all of you should have. It's when somebody posts something on Facebook, don't comment. Right? You're not going to have a discussion. You're not going to convince anybody of your position.
It's just going to devolve into a lot of angry ranting. It's just not the most helpful place to have discussions. It's much better to do it in person. So, having said that, I commented on that post. I reasoned in my head. I was like, you know what?
We don't have a lot of friends that overlap on Facebook. And I don't know. Like, it's kind of out on the Internet somewhere. I was like, I just want to respond. So I did.
And we had, I mean, we're friends. So, you know, we had a civil discussion. The big following that he has amassed, they were not happy with my take on this statement. So, I looked at that and I was like, that's insane. What it's saying is, is that if divine forgiveness, if God's forgiveness requires payment, then it's not really forgiveness, but restitution. Restitution being a payment for something that is wrong.
And a lot of people looked at that like, oh, that's really deep. That's profound. And I thought, only in a Western culture like ours could you divorce forgiveness from restitution. As if they were two completely different ideas and not two sides of the same coin. As only in our culture that is largely insulated from major injustices. Now, we have injustices.
We absolutely do. But in other cultures across the world where they face genocide, where there are people that are going into villages and hurting women and stealing children. That are going through major injustices. They would look at that and think that how in the world could you divorce forgiveness from payment? As if they're two completely different options. So I tried to have this discussion.
And I thought more about it over the last month. And the reality is, it's not based in the Bible. And one of the people that really like this idea, they don't like the idea of God's wrath. They don't like the idea of sin. They don't like those ideas at all. So it's not based in the Bible.
It's also not based in reality. I mean, for example, if I devised a scheme to steal your mother or your grandmother's retirement. Everything she's worked for her entire life. I stole every penny. And then I got caught. There's one of two options of how that really plays out.
It's either I pay restitution. I pay for the wrong that was done. Or she says, no, you know what? He obviously needs the money. I forgive him. But even in both of those examples, somebody is paying restitution.
Either I'm doing it or she's absorbing the debt herself. In her forgiveness, she's the one that's actually making the payment. There is no biblical reality. There is no reality in general. It separates the idea of forgiveness from payment. And that is because forgiveness is not free.
It costs something. Tim Keller, a pastor that we love and look up to, says the only way God can pardon us and not judge us is to go to the cross and absorb it himself. To make the payment himself. And today that's what we're going to look at. Today we're going to walk through that reality. As we see it very clearly.
We've been following Jesus as he's preparing for the cross. And now he is leading up to the cross. And we're going to follow him all the way up to before he walks up the hill. And as we walk through this today, we're going to see over and over again that forgiveness is not free. That it has a cost that Jesus paid. And my hope is, is for those of us who have trusted in Jesus, my hope is that that would lead us to a deeper affection and love for Christ.
And my hope for those of you that have not trusted in Jesus as your only hope. For those of you that do not know him. My hope is that you would see how much our God loves you. That he sent his son to die for you. So that's, that's the goal.
That's what we're going to walk through this morning. Let me pray for us as we walk through this passage. Lord, we love you. And we are thankful for what you have done for us. God, I pray that you would help us see that so clearly. You would become so beautiful to us.
And that you would work on our hearts and we would respond. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. All right, so. Verse 11. Chapter 27.
Now Jesus stood before the governor. And the governor asked him, are you the king of the Jews? Jesus said, you have said so. All right, so context from last week. Chet walked us all the way up to the trial at the Sanhedrin. So, Jesus is arrested.
He's brought before the Sanhedrin. That's the religious leadership. And they put him on trial. And they're looking for a charge that they can, that they can charge him with under their law. Under the Old Testament law. And the charge they come up with is blasphemy.
Which is ironic because Jesus is God. And they charge him of this. But that's not enough to have him killed. All right? That they need the Romans to carry this out legally. Legally.
And the Romans don't care about Jewish law. So they're going to find a different charge to bring him to Pilate with. They're going to work on the charge of kingship. And they claim to be king. That he's an insurrectionist. That he's trying to lead a rebellion.
That's what they're going to bring to Pilate. Pontius Pilate is the governor of this region. He's the prefect of the region of Judea. He is a politician. He's a politician assigned with the assignment of ruling in Judea over the Jews. And in the Roman Empire.
That's not a glorious post. No one volunteers and gets excited about that post. It's not Greece. Right? He could have been in different parts of Greece. With deep into the Greco-Roman culture.
He could have been in places like Alexandria, Egypt. Lots of places he could have gone to. Been assigned to. That would have been good. But he has been given the task of being governor over the region of Judea.
And it is not a fun place to rule as a Roman governor. Because the Jews hate the Romans. They don't like the Romans. And the feeling is mutual. The Romans look down on the Jewish people. See one of the brilliant parts of Roman rule.
Is that when they conquered you. You liked it. It was nice. Once they conquered you. They brought their culture. And a lot of other places assimilated to.
They grew into being Roman. This Greco-Roman. They call it Hellenistic culture. They liked it. They liked what it had to offer. The taxes were high.
But they had roads and infrastructure. And all kinds of things. And they were kind of fine with being ruled. The Jews were not. They rebelled over and over again. They had a different faith.
A different religion that the Romans looked down upon. They didn't have a lot of shared values when it came to that. And so there is that kind of history between the Romans and the Jewish people. But there is also personal history between Pontius Pilate and the Jewish people. You see when he first came to rule in Judea. One of the first things he did was he took the Roman shields.
Which bore a graven image. And he set them up all around Jerusalem. And that is a violation of the second command. Of having a graven image. In the holy city. The Sanhedrin.
The religious leaders. They protested this. And they led a major protest against Pontius Pilate. Against the Romans. And you can look at two different historical sources. You can look at a historian named Philo.
Another named Josephus. When you piece them together. It looks like this was a major protest. That King Herod had to get involved. And it made Pontius Pilate look bad before Caesar. He got a slap on the wrist.
So there is that kind of tension. Also at one point Pontius Pilate went into the temple. Took some of the money from the temple. And built some water systems in the city. So the Sanhedrin.
And Pontius Pilate. Have some cultural history and differences. And some personal beef with one another. Now you might be wondering. That's great. You love history.
Why does that matter here? First off. History is nice. Gives you some context. But secondly.
It's important to understand what's happening right here. Because these two have to work together. Together. The religious leaders and Pilate have to work together. See Pilate needs the religious leadership. Because they help keep the people in check.
They make sure they don't rebel. And as we've seen with the religious leadership. They love power. They're in bed with the Romans. And they like the power that comes with that. So they have to work together.
All of that history comes into this moment. All of that division between these two political rivals. It comes into this moment. Where they bring Jesus to get authority. So that he can be executed.
So Pilate asks. He says. Are you the king of the Jews? And Jesus does not hesitate. He says. You have said so.
Yes. He confirms. He is the king of the Jews. You might be thinking. Alright. Isn't that the charge that does it?
It's not. The reason why. Is because Pilate does not really care. Over who the self-proclaimed king of the Jews is. He didn't care about that. That's not something that's really important.
There is a king. Herod. He's got a weird spot in the Roman Empire. And he doesn't even like Herod at this point. So that's not enough to actually get him crucified.
He doesn't care about the customs. He doesn't care about the law. The Jewish people have. But what the religious leadership is trying to do. Is they're trying to mount a case. They're trying to help him see.
That the Messiah from the Old Testament. The king. Who Jesus is claimed to be. Is going to have a global reign. He is going to have a global reign. And that is going to put him at odds with Caesar.
We see that in John's gospel. When they say. You are no friend to Caesar. If you don't deal with this. So they're going to try to make a political maneuver against him.
Before his hand. And in the midst of this. Jesus confirms his kingship. To Pontius Pilate. But then he doesn't defend himself.
Verse 12. But when he was accused by the chief priests and the elders. He gave no answer. Verse 13. And Pilate said to him. Do you not hear how many things they testify against you?
But he gave him no answer. Not even to a single charge. So the governor was greatly amazed. So at this point. The religious leadership. Starts mounting their case.
Against Jesus. And Jesus is silent. He doesn't say. A word. And this stuns Pilate. He's like.
Can you hear what they're saying? Can you hear. What. What. What. The things.
The accusations. They're letting against you. He doesn't say. A word. And this is shocking. The pilot.
But this is to fulfill. What was spoken of in the prophet. Isaiah. Isaiah 53. He was oppressed. And he was afflicted.
Yet he opened not his mouth. Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter. And like a sheep that before its shears is silent. So he opened not his mouth. He does not defend himself. They keep making this case against them.
He is silent. Like a lamb that is being led to the slaughter. Because Jesus knows. He knows what the father wants. He knows what needs to happen. Our sin needs to be paid for.
And forgiveness is not free. He will not defend himself. This is a part of the plan. And if he wanted to at this moment. Remember what Chet said last week. He said he could appeal to a legion of angels.
In this moment. At this moment angels could come down by his command. And they would absolutely destroy his enemies. But he remains silent. Because forgiveness is not free. Verse 15.
It says now at the feast. The governor was accustomed to release for the crowd. Any one prisoner whom they wanted. And they had been a notorious prisoner called Barabbas. Alright. So now around this time.
Pilate had instituted really a political gesture. That around the Passover feast time. They would release to them one of the prisoners that they had. And it was kind of genius. Because the fear was around Passover. Is that this is the perfect time for rebellion to happen.
It's when everyone is coming in to the city. From all over the region. And they are celebrating the Passover feast. Which remember. Is the festival. That they helped celebrate.
To remember that God helped free them. From an oppressive regime. And the Egyptians. What better time. To start a rebellion. Against an oppressive regime.
At the yearly festival. Where they remember this. So this is a political gesture. Give them one of the prisoners. An act of goodwill. And see all of this is a political exchange.
And at this time. There is a prisoner named Barabbas. Now Mark's gospel tells us a little bit about who Barabbas is. He is an insurrectionist. Meaning that he is someone who has left. Had a rebellion.
And he is a murderer. He has killed at least one person. He is completely guilty. And the ones who were put on crosses. Were rebels. Were insurrectionists.
You can look at Jewish history. At the time when these rebellions would happen. The Romans would quickly put them down. And very forcefully. They would line the roads. Out of the city with crosses.
And they would put rebels. It was a brutal. It was a brutal form of torture and death. For those who would rebel. So it is fair to say.
That this day. Barabbas was set to be crucified. That Barabbas woke up that morning. Ready to face death. There is something called the death row phenomenon. It is the psychological building up.
That happens with prisoners on death row. And it is pretty intense. I was listening to a pastor. He had interviewed a chaplain. Who was a chaplain on death row. And he said that some of these prisoners.
Would build themselves up. If they were going to face the gas chamber. For example. That they would. Days leading up. Would have moments of just really heavy breathing.
And intense breathing. And really simulating what it is like to be in the gas chamber. Gasping for breath. That those who had been hung before. That they would have this preparation. Where they almost could feel the rope around their neck.
In the days leading up to execution. That there is this. There is this weight to being executed. And Barabbas wakes up this morning. And is feeling and sensing. Maybe even possibly sensing what it is like to be on the cross.
You have to lift up your chest. As you are slowly gasping for breath. As you are slowly suffocating. He is in the cell. Awaiting a grim fate. But then something happens.
Verse 17. So when they had gathered. Pilate said to them. Whom do you want me to release for you? Barabbas. Or Jesus.
Who is called Christ. For he knew that it was out of envy. That they had delivered him up. So Barabbas is waiting in his cell. And there is commotioning happening out in the courtyard. There is political maneuvering that is happening out there.
You see Pilate offers up two different people. And he could have chosen anyone else besides Jesus. He could have chosen a less notorious criminal. It is his choosing. But he chooses the notorious Barabbas.
You see the politics at play here? He presents both of them. Because he understands the motives of the religious leaders. He understands they are envious. They are jealous. And if he can put Jesus alongside Barabbas.
Then it makes it a tough choice for the crowds. All right. The notorious prisoner. Or the Jesus who he knows about. This is the first time that Pontius has heard of Jesus. Jesus.
For three years he has been a celebrity in the land. This traveling sage. This prophet. Who thousands of people have traveled out to hear preach. Who have gone to be healed. It is his job to know what is happening in Judea.
When Jesus comes in and out. When he comes in this very week. Just a few days before. And the people are chanting. Hosanna. Hosanna.
He knows about Jesus. He is this good prophet. That the crowds love. So he puts Jesus alongside Barabbas. Understanding what is at play here. What the religious leaders are doing.
Thinking. That he can get past this. With this political play. But while this is happening. Matthew adds a wrinkle. That the other gospel writers don't include.
Verse 19 says. Besides. While he was sitting on the judgment seat. His wife sent word to him. Have nothing to do with that righteous man. For I have suffered much because of him today.
And a dream. So even more so. While he is on the judgment seat. His wife sends word to him. And says. Don't have anything to do with Jesus.
I have had dreams. I have had nightmares. I have been afflicted because of him. We don't know what the content of those dreams were. But it is enough to scare her.
In this moment. To send word to him. To say. Don't have anything to do with Jesus. Jesus. And while this is going on.
The religious leaders are making political moves of their own. Verse 20. Now the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd. To ask for Barabbas. And destroy. Jesus.
So the crowds. Are there. And the religious leaders are working their way through the crowds. Now crowds can turn very quickly into a mob mentality. Very fast. When I was traveling years ago.
And study abroad. I was in India. And one of the travel warnings we had for India. Was when you were there. If you see a crowd form. They form very quickly.
And a lot of people. Get out. Because they have a lot of protests. And those protests are violent. Very quickly. With mob mentality.
We saw that. And we've seen that here. In our own country. That when a crowd gets together. It just takes a little bit stirring up. And all of a sudden.
It can turn to violence. And that is exactly what is happening here. And the religious leadership. They know how to work a crowd. Working their way through the crowd. Whispering lies.
They probably. It's possible they've even stacked the deck a little bit. Put people in the crowd. Said we're going to free Barabbas. Barabbas. We're going to chant for Barabbas.
We don't need this Jesus. He's going to bring problems for us. Barabbas. Start the chant. Barabbas. Barabbas.
They're building up the chant. Verse 21. Then the governor again said to them. Which of the two do you want me to release for you? And they said. Barabbas.
So they've won the crowds. They've got them stirred up. Barabbas. Barabbas. They're chanting for the notorious criminal. Verse 22.
Pilate said to them. Then what shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ? So Pilate has lost this political game. He tried it. Presenting two different options. They want to free Barabbas.
Okay. So what do you want? What do you want me to do with Jesus? So they all said. Let him be crucified. And he said.
Why? What evil has he done? I want you to see the shock that's in Pilate there. He says. What evil has he done? You see.
The crucifixion was a Roman punishment. It was not a Jewish punishment. They had a great disdain for this punishment. They didn't like it. And it is shocking to him. That they would ask for crucifixion.
That's overkill. Right? That's something that's reserved for rebels. Who have rebelled against the Roman Empire. That is a step too far. It doesn't make sense.
That a beloved prophet. That they would make a move on him like this. He does not deserve the cross. But it says. But they shouted all the more.
Let him be crucified. All the more. Let him be crucified. It intensifies. They want him on a cross. The Sadducees.
The religious leadership. The Pharisees. They have won the crowd. Pilate has lost control. As it intensifies. As they want crucifixion.
Pilate is shocked. Jesus is not. This is a part of the plan. This is part of the plan. Forgiveness is not free. It has to be paid for.
Verse 24. So. When Pilate saw. That he was gaining nothing. But rather that a riot was beginning.
He took water and washed his hands before the crowd. Saying. I am innocent of this man's blood. See to it yourselves. And all the people answered. His blood be on us.
And on our children. Pilate is a politician. And he is a coward. But it is better for one man to die. Than to have a riot. That he has to answer for later.
Because. Having riots. Not being able to control. Your region. Would get you removed. It eventually does.
For him. Because he cannot control this region. So the coward. The coward washes his hands. Which actually doesn't absolve him of guilt. But in his mind it does.
And the people foolishly in the crowd say. Let Jesus' blood. Be on us. And our children. Verse 26. Then he released for them Barabbas.
And having scourged. Jesus delivered him to be crucified. So Barabbas. Is released. He gets to go home. And Jesus is scourged.
Which is a horrific punishment. Scourging. It's called flagellation. Flogging. Was a brutal form. Of torment.
One commentator. Describes this. He says. A Roman scourging. Was a terrifying punishment. The delinquent was stripped.
Bound to a post. Or a pillar. Or sometimes. Simply thrown to the ground. And was beaten. By a number of guards.
Until his flesh hung. In bleeding. Shreds. Hear that. Hung in bleeding. Shreds.
The instrument. Indicated by the Markan text. That would be Mark's gospel. The dreaded flagellum. Was a scourging. Consisting of leather straps.
Plated. With several pieces of bone. Or lead. So as to form. A chain. So.
It's an illustration. Of what this is. The flagellum. Was a tool. It wasn't just a whip. It had.
Bits of bone. Or lead in it. And the goal. Was that. As you whipped the person. That it would latch.
Into their flesh. And rip out. Chunks of skin. And they would do this. Over and over again. Their backs.
Their legs. It was meant to. Absolutely. Fillet. And mangle the flesh. Of the person.
Who was being punished. He goes on to say. No maximum number. Of strokes. Was prescribed. By Roman law.
Unlike Jewish law. That kept it at 39. So we see. In the book of Acts. That. That they.
They get a flogging. Like this. And the Jewish law. Says. Nope. Not more than 39.
40 Might kill you. 39 is enough. The Romans did not have that. They did not have mercy. They were some of the most brutal. The most brutal.
People. That would. That. Their torture methods. Were. Were unreal.
They. They. They wouldn't stop. At 39. They. They would.
To the point of almost. Killing people. It says. And men condemned to flagellation. Frequently collapsed. Then died from flogging.
Josephus. Who's a historian. He records that. He himself. Had some of his opponents. In Galilee.
Scourged. Until their entrails. Were visible. That they. They would be. Scourged so.
Badly. That so much. Flesh. And muscle. Would be ripped out. That their entrails.
Would be. Exposed. The torture itself. Was enough to kill. Somebody. And then.
They're going to put a cross. On his mangled. And bloodied. And ripped apart. Back. But not yet.
Because they're going to humiliate him first. Verse 27. Then the soldiers. Of the governor. Took. Jesus.
Into the governor's headquarters. And they gathered. The whole battalion. Before him. I've pictured this in the past. I've missed that part.
The whole battalion piece. I've imagined. I don't know. It's because. This is from the scene. Of the passion of Christ.
Or whatever. But I. I've imagined. It's just a few people. But it's not.
It's a battalion. Of soldiers. Six hundred. To a thousand. Soldiers. Are going to mock him.
And his. Bloodied. And mangled body. Is brought before him. And they're going. To make fun.
Of his kingship. It says. And they stripped him. And put a scarlet robe on him. And twisting together. A crown of thorns.
They put. It on his head. And put a reed. In his right hand. And kneeling before him. They mocked him.
Saying. Hail. King of the Jews. And they spit on him. And took the reed. And struck him on the head.
And when they had mocked him. And they stripped him. Of the robe. And put. His own clothes on him. And led him away.
To crucify him. So these Roman soldiers. They also have heard of Jesus. And they see the charge. He's going to be charged. As a king.
Okay. Let's make fun of his kingship. So they take a scarlet robe. And they put it. On his back. Now.
Mark's gospel. And John's gospel. They call this a purple robe. Which means either. They're describing the same color. Which happens in some cultures.
They don't have a whole lot of differentiation. Between certain colors. Or it's two robes. The purple one. On his back. Ripped off.
And these are. These would have been. Not smooth. Robes. These would have been rough. Blending into.
His mangled flesh. Being ripped off. And they're. They're mocking him. They're mocking him. As a king.
And they take. A crown of thorns. And don't think. Like rose thorns. These would have been. Thorns.
Native to that region. These are longer thorns. And they take. A crown of thorns. And they force it. On his head.
To mock him. They take a reed. Stick. Made it look like a king's scepter. They put it in his hand. And they bow down to him.
Hail. King of the Jews. Hundreds of soldiers. Laughing. Mocking. The king.
Of the universe. And they spit on him. And they. They take the reed stick. And they hit him. On the head.
It is a brutal. Mocking. A brutal. Torture. But this is to fulfill Isaiah 53.
It says. But. Isaiah prophesied about this. He said. But he was pierced for our transgressions.
He was crushed. For our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement. That brought us. Peace. And with his wounds.
We are healed. Peace. Does not come. Without a cost. Forgiveness. Is not free.
And we see that so clearly. And we will pick this up. On good Friday this week. As we continue. As he goes up the hill. Now.
One of the things. That sticks out about this. Is how absolutely. How absolutely. Injust. This is.
How absolutely. Unfair. This is. How corrupt. And how evil. This is.
I mean. This situation. Is gross. I mean. Jesus. Is completely innocent.
Of all of these charges. He's only displayed. Kindness. And goodness. Towards. The people.
And then he gets arrested. By these religious leaders. And then he becomes. A political pinball. Between two. Godless.
Groups. The religious leaders. And Pilate. And the Romans. And then. These weak.
Feckless. Cowards. Debate. Over the God. Who made them. Over the God.
Who thought them. Into existence. They debate. Over his life. And then they plan. To murder him.
To murder the ruler. Over all things. And Pilate. In his political maneuvering. He presents. Two different options.
You can have. Barabbas. Or. Jesus. You can have. Jesus.
The prophet. Whom all the crowds love. Let me think. Guys. We've been in the gospel of Matthew. For over a year now.
Think of all. Of the beautiful displays. Of our savior. Of how good he is. Of how righteous he is. Of how kind he is.
You can have this. Jesus. Or you can have. Barabbas. You can have this. Notorious.
Criminal. This. Murderer. And the religious leadership. The ones. Who are supposed.
To uphold. Justice. And mercy. And righteousness. They start a chant. To free.
Barabbas. And they take Barabbas. When you look. At all of it. It's not fair. It's not fair.
That Barabbas. Avoids the cross. That was meant for him. And Jesus takes his place. And when you come to that conclusion. And when you fully absorb that.
As the reality of this situation. It is then. That you can begin to appreciate. That Jesus died in our place. It is then. That you can begin to appreciate.
And fully understand. That the reality is. Is that we have sinned. Against a holy and perfect God. That our sin. Over and over.
Is a violation. Of his good will for us. That we rebel. Against the God. Of the universe. That we are insurrectionists.
With our lives. That we hurt. Other people. Over. And over. And over.
And over again. That we are. We are prisoners. In a cell. Awaiting our sentencing. Our just.
Sentencing. Against. For sending against the God of the universe. And we are brought up. Out of. The cell.
And there is an exchange. That happens. For those who trust in Jesus. We point to him. And we avoid the cross. And he goes to the cross.
For us. That is what theologians call. Penal substitutionary atonement. Theologians like to use big words. All that means. Is that.
There is a penalty for sin. That's the penal part. For the wages of sin is death. Romans 6. 23. That we deserve death.
Because of our sin. But God. In his rich mercy. Provides for us. A suffering. Substitute.
That Jesus takes. Our place. My buddy from Louisville. Has lost the thread. On the gospel. There is no reality.
Where forgiveness does not cost. That there is no. There is no. Reality. Where our sin. And rebellion.
Does not cost. And here is the deal. We may not. Play out that same thought exercise. We may not. Come to that same.
Intellectual. Conclusion. But the reality is. Is that for many of us. Practically. We live that way.
Practically. Our lives. Show that we believe that. Because over and over again. We just don't think. Our sin costs.
We don't think. Our sins. That big. Of a deal. We dismiss it. We rather live our lives.
On our terms. And we'll justify it. And we won't think. It's that big of a deal. So much.
Of southern Christianity. Is just. Claiming. To be a Christian. And living your life. On your terms.
And it's this. This thought process. That because God is good. And because God. Is loving. That it'll all just work out.
In the end. That it's forgiveness. Doesn't have this real cost. And we can live our lives. On our terms. And that is an eternally fatal.
Belief. No. Our forgiveness. Costs. Rebellion. Costs.
Paul. In Colossians says. In Colossians 2. He says. In you. Who are dead.
In your trespasses. In the uncircumcision. Of your flesh. That's the sinful nature. Of your flesh. God.
Made alive. Together with him. That's through. Faith. God made alive. Together with him.
Having forgiven us. All our. Trespasses. All of our sins. By canceling. The record.
Of debt. The record of debt. We have an endless. Record. Of sins. That stands.
That stands against us. With its. Legal. Demands. The legal demands. His death.
This he set aside. Nailing it. To a cross. That is the heart. Of the gospel. That in our sin.
That in our rebellion. That we have. Rebelled against God's. Good design. That we are waiting. In the cells.
In the prison cells. Of our sin. And death. Awaiting to be sentenced. And God loves us so. Much.
That he doesn't leave us there. That he steps in. That he steps down. From heaven. That he comes to live the perfect life. That we could not live.
And that he comes before us. And we are brought out of the cell. And all we have to do. Is say. I believe in you Jesus. My life belongs to you.
I trust you. And he says. Good. Take my perfect record. And I will take your place. And he goes to the cross for us.
It is not fair. That God in his rich kindness. Redeems. Sinners. And man. It has a cost.
And I want us to sit in that. This morning. If you are. If you are a Christian. This morning. If you have trusted.
In Jesus. As your only hope. I want you to sit. In this painful. Beautiful. Reality.
I don't want us to stare. To stare away from. The cross. And the brutality of it. It teaches us. Grace.
When we look at the cross. When we think about what they did. To Jesus. It reminds us. That we can never earn that. We can never do what Jesus did.
And praise God. That we could not. That we don't have to earn his favor. That no amount of good works. Could make this right. That we look to the cross.
And we say. Praise God. It teaches us repentance. It motivates us to repentance. That there are moments. When we become so tempted.
When the lusts of our flesh. When our sinful selfish desires. Arise. And present to us. The option of sin. We get to in that moment.
Remember. No. No. We get to literally just picture the cross. And say. No.
No. No. My life was bought with a price. It was too costly. And I'm not going to run. To sin.
I want Jesus. It leads us to worship. Y'all. It's. It's. It's all over the songs.
That we sing. That we respond. And we sing. About the blood of our savior. About what Jesus has done for us. It motivates us.
And it inspires us. To love God. That he's so loving towards us. That he came to die on a cross for us. If you're a Christian. I want you to sit in that reality this morning.
And I want you to see Jesus as beautiful. In worship. If you are not a Christian. If you have not trusted in Jesus. That's your only hope. My hope this morning.
Is that you would see. That God loves you so much. That he did not leave you. In sin and brokenness. We all have sin. All of us have our junk.
We've all rebelled against God. And this morning. He has you here. And he wants you to see. I love you. Can't you see.
That two thousand years ago. I came for you. I died for you. I bled for you. So that you might believe.
My hope this morning. Is that you would see. That his arms are open. And he wants you. And that you would believe. That you stop running.
And sin. That you stop trying to earn. Your salvation. By your own good works. By your own merit. My hope is that you would trust.
Only in the finished work of Christ. He wants you. My hope is that you believe. Because forgiveness is not free. But he wants to give it to you.
Freely. The band is going to come up. And I want us to sit. In these truths. As we prepare to respond. If you are not a Christian.
Please. Do not delay. Don't walk away from this. Don't walk away from conviction. My hope. Is that you would trust.
In Christ. That right now. As we sing songs. You would take a moment in your seat. And you would pray. Pray for God to reveal himself.
Ask Jesus to forgive you. Of your sins. And give your life. And trust. In him. If you are a Christian.
I want you to take a few moments. And just be reminded. Of how good your Savior is. About how beautiful his blood is. About how much our sin costs. And it doesn't lead us to shame.
It doesn't lead us to guilt. It leads us to praise. Because we get to look at our sin. And then we immediately. Get to look to our Savior. Let me pray.
Let me pray. Lord. Your kindness. And your mercy. And your goodness. Are so profound.
And so beautiful. God. I pray. That you would help us. In this moment. See it.
Clearly. Don't let us run away from it. Don't let us hide from it. God. I pray. You've got to work in our hearts.
Right now. If there's anyone here. That's not trusted in you. God. I pray. That you would become so beautiful.
So good. That you would win their hearts. And they would believe. God. I pray. For those of us that are Christians.
Lord. We love you. Help us see. The brutality of the cross. As beautiful. And may it lead us to worship and praise.
In Jesus name. Amen.
Jesus in the Garden (Matthew 26:30-46)
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
Good morning. My name is Spencer. I'm one of the pastors here. We're going to be in Matthew 26 verses 30 through 46. That's on page 486 in a blue Bible that is around you. If you don't have a Bible at home, we encourage you to take that blue Bible with you.
That is our gift to you. We want you to have a Bible that you can read on a regular basis. There are moments in life that absolutely punch you deep in your soul. There are moments where you endure an immense amount of suffering and loss and grief. There are moments in life where you feel so overwhelmed by life itself, by the moment, by the things that you face. This has happened a few times in my life.
One that sticks out the most was my freshman year of college. My freshman year of college, I remember I was in my dorm room. I was taking a nap. I woke up to a bunch of missed calls. I called my father back and found out that my brother-in-law had passed away. I called my brother after that.
He confirmed that he had passed away, that he had actually taken his own life. And when all of that hit, I just felt completely overwhelmed and grief. I remember getting in the car and driving to my sister's house and walking in and seeing her and just the agony of that moment, embracing her and all of the pain that came with that was so surreal. And I also remember in that moment, I remember questioning God from a place of frustration and anger that was just, why? Why would you let this happen? Why would you let this happen to my sister, to my niece, to my nephew?
Why? And this frustration, this anger and this questioning the character of God that just said, why? Why? There are moments that all of us will walk through in life where we endure suffering and loss and grief and pain. And some of you may have been through this and even gone through that and questioning the character of God and asking, why? The reality is, is that you will face moments like this.
If you have not suffered, you will. It is a guarantee in life. Everyone suffers. It is as sure as death and taxes, you will suffer. That is a part of the reality, this side of the fall. You will face situations in your life that absolutely just throw gut punches at your soul.
But as Christians, we have a different approach to this. We have a different understanding. The Bible says a lot about this. Therefore, we have a different response that we are called to in those moments. And my hope is, is that this morning, as we walk through what is a very heavy passage, that we would watch Jesus as He prepares for the moment of the cross. As He prepares for suffering.
And my hope is that we would learn and that we would glean from Him so that we would be able to suffer well. Which is the hope for any Christian in the midst of suffering. So it is heavy. Let me pray. And then we will jump into this passage. God, I pray that you would help us be present this morning.
I have no doubt that there is an immense amount of suffering, even right now in this room, that people are walking through, that people are facing. God, I pray that we would be able to learn. I pray that we would listen. And I pray that you would mold us and shape us to be a people that suffer well by the power that you give us. In Jesus' name, amen. Alright, verse 30.
When they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. Okay, so this is the transition from last week. Last week, the past two weeks, we're at the Passover meal. And then Jesus institutes the Lord's Supper. We walked through that last week. And at the end of this meal, they sing a hymn.
They sing. And I just want to point that out. That Jesus leads the disciples in singing. That singing is good for your soul. It sings truth deep into your soul. So maybe the person that doesn't like to sing when we're together on Sundays, whether it's for your self-conscious, or maybe it's prideful reasons, or you're a dude and you're like, I don't sing.
It's just not what I do. It's just not manly. Which if you think that, one day you can meet the King of Kings and tell him he was effeminate for leading the people in singing. No, it's good for us to sing. And he sings as they close out this moment. And they head to the Mount of Olives, which is a hillside that sits just above the city of Jerusalem.
So it's a hillside that a lot of pilgrims who were coming in for Passover would have camped out. And he takes them to the Mount of Olives. It's verse 31. Then Jesus told them, this very night you will fall away on account of me, for it is written, I will strike the shepherd and the sheep of the flock will be scattered. So again, we've been seeing this.
Jesus is making it clear. This is going to happen. I am going to suffer. I am going to the cross. And he says, and you are going to abandon me. Which had to be a little bit of a shock for the disciples.
Thinking, no, this can't be possible. But he quotes, this is not just going to happen. It's been prophesied. Zechariah 13, 7 from the Old Testament is this prophecy that says that the shepherd is going to be struck. And when the shepherd is struck, the sheep will scatter. Fearfully scatter and abandon him.
He says, but 32, but after I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee. Now there's two things. One of them is very obvious from this. He is declaring that he's going to rise. He's saying that his death is not the end. That resurrection is going to happen.
So that's the clear thing that we see on the surface. But what I love buried in this is a picture of how good our great shepherd is. That in this moment, he just said, you are going to abandon me. You are going to leave me. And he says, but don't worry. When I rise, I will meet you in Galilee.
That I am going to. It's this picture of he sees their failures and still he restores them. I love that we have a good shepherd that restores those even when they are faithless. So, verse 33, Peter hears this and he disagrees. Peter replied, even if all fall away on account of you, I never will. Which that's Peter.
We've seen it over and over again. He's all in. Like he's just full hearted. Doesn't even realize he just put the other disciples down. If they fail and fall away, I won't leave you, Jesus. I'm in.
And then Jesus says, truly, I tell you. Jesus answered this very night before the rooster crows, you will diseminate me three times. That when the sheep scatter and they abandon him, Peter will have even a more tragic abandonment. He's going to deny him three times what you're going to see in the next few verses. He's going to abandon him. Verse 35, but Peter declared, even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you.
He's defiant. And all the other disciples said the same. So, Peter, bold in his stance, I'm not going anywhere. The other disciples were like, no, we would not abandon you, even though it's going to happen in just a few hours. Now, what happens next is one of my favorite moments in all the Gospels. It's one of the most powerful moments in the Gospels.
And it's unbelievably helpful for us to look at and examine and to see what happens next. Because it gives us incredible insight in how to be people who respond well and prepare well for suffering. So if you've ever been in a situation where you have suffered, if you've ever grieved the loss of someone or death, if you've ever wrestled with deep sin, if you've ever faced adversity, if you've ever felt overwhelmed by life in general, this is a helpful passage for us to pay attention to and examine. Verse 36. Then Jesus went to them to a place.
Went to them to a place called Gethsemane. This is the Garden of Gethsemane. And he said to his disciples, sit here while I go over there and pray. So with the reality of the cross setting in, gets his disciples together. And he takes them a little further into the garden. He says, I need to get away to pray.
And then verse 37 says, And taking with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee. That's Peter and James and John. The three that he spent more time with. He takes them in further into the garden. He began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, My soul is very sorrowful even to death.
Remain here and watch with me. Jesus is sorrowful. He is troubled. He is in deep distress. To the point of sorrow and anguish. That it's the point of death.
And he tells them, Stay here. Stay near him. I'm going to go further into the garden. And what he is going to do is, he's going to have some solitude before his heavenly Father. Verse 39. And going a little further, he fell on his face and prayed, saying, My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.
Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will. And this is where we get to see the why behind why he is so sorrowful, even to the point of death. Why he's in such deep distress. It has to do with the cup that he just mentioned. What is the cup that Jesus speaks of? Well, first off, you've got to take it in the context of what he just quoted.
He quoted Zechariah 13.7, which is a prophecy where God is speaking. It is God speaking, saying that He is the one who will strike the good shepherd. Zechariah 13.7 says, Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, against the man who stands next to me, declares the Lord of hosts. Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered. I will turn my hand against the little ones. That is God the Father saying, I will strike the Son.
That God and His sovereign plan brings this about to where Jesus is the one who will be struck. And it is God the Father's plan to do so. The cup that is mentioned here is the cup of suffering that has been prepared for Christ. It is a cup of suffering. The cup was referenced in Matthew 20, just a few chapters back. In Matthew 20, James and John are having an argument over who is going to sit at the left and right hand of Jesus in what they thought was going to be this political movement.
Their mom gets involved and tries to argue on their behalf. And then finally we get to a response where Jesus answered. He said, You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink? They said to Him, We are able. He said to them, You will drink my cup.
But sit at my right hand on my left. It is not mine to grant. The cup is the cup of suffering. He says, You will drink my cup. James later on in Acts 12 is beheaded for his faith. John is the only disciple that is not martyred.
But later on, history tells us that he was thrown into oil to be boiled alive. He somehow survives that. We don't know how. And then ends up in exile on the island of Patmos where he dies. It is the cup of suffering that God prepares. It is also, not just the cup of suffering, it is the cup of God's wrath.
When the cup is spoken of in the Old Testament in passages like Isaiah 51, 17 and Jeremiah 25, 15. It is God's wrath, the cup of wrath that is poured out. And that is what's being referenced here. It is the cup of God's wrath and it is an immense amount of suffering. And that is what Jesus is about to drink. An immense amount of suffering for the sins of man.
He will, in the next few hours, be beaten. He will be tortured. He will be nailed to a cross. And there is a crazy amount of physical agony and suffering that is involved in this. But it is not just that.
It is that He is going to be bearing our sin on the cross. And it is not even just that. It is that this perfect fellowship that He has had with God the Father for eternity is going to change in this moment. Because on the cross, He says, My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? He calls out to the Father in agony. The physical and spiritual suffering.
He calls out and He hears nothing but the wrath of God poured out on Him. He has had this fellowship with the Father that will change in this moment. All of that is what He is preparing for. That is the cup that awaits Him. That is what He is trying to get ready for. And then it says, as He is anticipating this and going a little further, He fell on His face and prayed saying, My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from Me.
If it is possible, Jesus says, take it. He doesn't want to suffer. He doesn't want that there is a part of Him that is very human. He doesn't want to suffer in this way. He doesn't want all the pain and suffering that awaits. But physically and spiritually that awaits Him, He doesn't want to go that route.
But He prays one of the most helpful prayers in all of the Scriptures. He says, Yet not as I will, but as you will. Not as I will, but as you will. in this moment of deep distress, He prays what He taught in the Sermon on the Mount. That Your will would be done. This isn't what I want for myself, but Father, this is what You want. Not my will, but Your will.
I don't want to suffer in this way. But God the Father does because He wants to rescue wayward sinners. And our only hope is Jesus to take steps in faithfulness and to take steps towards the cross. So, Jesus, anticipating all of this, falls on His face before the Father in deep distress. And He doesn't just do it once. He does this repeatedly.
Verse 40 says, Then He returned to His disciples and found them sleeping. Couldn't you men keep watch with Me for one hour? He asked Peter. Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. It's not just prayer.
It's persistent prayer that Jesus models for us. That He needs to keep going back. And He's telling the disciples, No, you need to prepare yourself. You're not going to be ready when temptation comes. What a self-aware thought that the flesh is weak. The Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.
It's something that we need to have so clearly in our own minds. Sometimes the Spirit is willing, the flesh is weak. Therefore, we need to go back to the well of God's strength in prayer. He gets away again. 42, He went away a second time and prayed, My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may Your will be done. Praise again.
It's not possible. May Your will be done. Pray some more. Verse 43, When He came back, He again found them sleeping because their eyes were heavy. So He left them and went away once more and prayed the third time saying the same thing.
And we're on into the night. He keeps going back. He keeps praying, preparing to face what He is about to face. And through prayer, He is going to find the strength to take steps forward in faithfulness. And He is going to bear the sins of humanity and take on a punishment that no one has ever endured or will endure. Verse 45, Then He returned to the disciples and said to them, Are you still sleeping and resting?
Look, the hour has come and the Son of Man is delivered into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us go. Here comes my betrayer. It is time. Jesus will be arrested and He will be taken towards the cross. The disciples will abandon Him in fear as Jesus steps forward in faith.
Now, how does this help prepare us for suffering? What can we learn from this that would help us be better sufferers? I think there are five things that we can learn from this, from Jesus in the garden praying. And the first is that God ordains and purposes suffering. That God ordains. He chooses that we would suffer.
It is an uncomfortable truth that we don't like as Western American Christians. We don't like this idea that God and His sovereign plan allows and ordains suffering to happen. It's something that we just rather ignore because just generally in our culture, we don't like the idea of suffering in any form or fashion. I was reading an article by Tim Keller. He's a pastor that we look up to immensely. He wrote it in the Atlantic this week.
Tim Keller is, he has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and I follow him a lot and just reading and listening to him and it just, it doesn't sound very hopeful. And he wrote this article on facing death and suffering and he, in one part, quotes a memoir from a doctor. This doctor practiced medicine in India and in America and he's comparing the two different systems of medicine, the two different people groups and the two, how we respond differently to suffering. And he quotes this doctor in his memoir. He writes, in the United States, I encountered a society that seeks to avoid pain at all costs.
He wrote in a recent memoir. Patients lived at a greater comfort level than I had previously treated when he was in India. But they seem far less equipped to handle suffering and far more traumatized by it. He's making an observation that in India where they have more suffering, they seem to be better prepared for it. That in America we're more insulated from, we're more guarded against, we don't like to think about the aspects of suffering and death. And when it hits us, we're far more traumatized by it.
And then Tim Keller diagnoses this with his own thoughts. He says, our beliefs about God in an afterlife, if we have them, are often abstractions as well. If we don't accept the reality of death, if we, we don't need these beliefs to be anything other than mental assents. He says, for us, it really just becomes mental agreements with the idea of suffering. That we can hear about it, read about it, absorb that idea, but it's just, it's more of an abstract concept for us. It's not something that's concrete.
Because we're so guarded, our culture doesn't like to look at suffering, doesn't like to face the aspects of death. We insulate ourselves from it. It's a downer. Death and suffering, it's just something we don't want to look at. Like I start the sermon off with a heavy story and it's like, oh man, this is one of those days. We don't like to deal with this.
It's just an abstract concept. And what this passage calls us to do is to stare deep into it and reckon with this idea of suffering. And not just suffering itself, but the purposes that are behind suffering, the mysterious purposes. Now when we look at Jesus and why He suffers on the cross, why does Jesus take the full cup of God's wrath? Why does God purpose that His Son would take on the greatest suffering that anyone ever knew or will know that skeptics will call this is divine child abuse? Why is this?
It is because our world is marred by sin. It is broken. It is because we are broken. It is because we hurt one another. It is because we hurt ourselves. It is because we rage against God in our own rebellion.
We spit on His good will, on His good pleasure. We wreck one another. We wreck this world. And that type of rebellion has a cost. And we are not able to pay that cost. So God in His deep love comes.
He comes to pay the cost for us and to pay the penalty to rescue us and redeem this world. That is why Jesus had to suffer in the garden. That is why He had to suffer. And that is what He is preparing for in the garden. So why does God allow us to get sick?
Our loved ones to die? Why do we suffer? We get some answers. We live in a fallen world. We live this side of the fall and sin and death are a reality. And sometimes we get more answers behind why Jesus suffers than we do at times.
Maybe it is to prepare us for greater things. That is a little bit of what 1 Peter is getting at. There is some sanctifying aspects of suffering that prepares us for greater things. Maybe it is that our suffering gets to be the comfort to somebody else. When you go through something that is difficult and you come through the other side that you get to be a comfort to someone else who is walking through it. Sometimes we get those answers.
Through prayer, discernment, the scriptures. Sometimes we just don't know. We don't get all the whys behind why we suffer. But there is one clear thing that we see. There is some very good news in the midst of this. The good news that comforts us in the midst of suffering is that God is not distant.
God is not distant. Jesus sympathizes with our suffering. That is the second thing I think this passage helps highlight. Jesus sympathizes with our suffering. He is not unable to understand what you are going through. We don't pray to a God who is distant and removed from the aspects of suffering.
Look at 37. It says, In taking with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, My soul is very sorrowful. Even to death, remain here to watch with me. He knows what it means to suffer. He is able to empathize with the struggle.
He has been here. He has lived it. You have been in a situation where somebody, you endured a loss of some type. Somebody died. People just feel like they have to say something. They will be like, I am so sorry.
A couple years ago, I lost my dog. It is like, oh no. this isn't going to go well. You cannot relate in this moment. I want to as quickly and awkwardly end this conversation because it is just not helpful. You have people that try to commiserate. It is like, no, you don't get this.
You don't know what I am going through. Jesus doesn't have a dog story. He chose to come to this world and endure suffering on a regular basis and then suffering on a way that we will never comprehend. him. That is what the book of Hebrews gets at in Hebrews 4. We don't have a high priest who is unable to empathize us but one who is able to sympathize us in every way. He has come.
He has endured suffering so that we pray to God. It is not that we are praying to someone who is distant, who doesn't understand. No, he chose to. He chose to come into this broken world. He can sympathize with our suffering. That is one thing that we see absolutely here.
Third, we see that we don't need to be alone in the midst of suffering. Jesus could have, after the Passover meal said, guys, I'm going to go. I'm going to go to the Mount of Olives. Y'all stay here. He could have done that. He takes the disciples with him.
He takes them with him into the garden. He takes three that are close and nearby. And yes, he absolutely has solitude, which he does regularly, but they're right nearby. He could have chosen to do this alone, but he doesn't, because we're made in the image of a communal God. We are designed to be around one another. So you don't need to be alone in the midst of suffering.
It's not good for your soul. I've said this over the years, that when someone is suffering, when someone has endured loss, you don't always have to say something. You don't have to feel the void of silence. You can just be there. It's called a ministry of presence. You're just there.
You can cry with them. You can sit with them for hours in silence. A lot of times, they don't remember what anyone said, but they remember who was there. And that matters. The third thing we learn is we don't need to be alone in the midst of suffering. The fourth is that we are not sufficient to handle our own distress and suffering.
We are not sufficient in and of ourselves to handle our distress, to handle our sorrows and suffering. Jesus models this by praying. There are passages like this where we're trying to reconcile, which we can't because it's a mystery, that God is fully God. Jesus is fully God and he's fully man. The fact that he is in this moment in need, it's hard for us to wrap our minds around, that he's fully human in this moment. He needs the Father in his humanity.
He comes to him in deep distress, in deep sorrow, that the weight of the full cup of God's wrath that is waiting for him in just a few hours, it's right there. It weighs heavy on him physically. It shows up. So much so that in Luke's gospel, it adds that as he's praying humbly to the Father, an angel comes and ministers to him. He's in need in this moment. He models that we are not sufficient to handle this on our own.
We're not sufficient to handle our own distress, our own troubles, our own sorrows. Here's the deal. Many of us have a category for this, that we're not sufficient, we're not, we can't handle this all ourselves when it comes to the bigger moments of life, when it comes to being overwhelmed and huge, watershed, life-changing moments of suffering. But I want to speak to those of you that feel that sense of distress and overwhelming in everyday aspects of life. I just want to speak to you for a moment. For those of you that struggle with the general category that we have today, it's called general anxiety.
I just want to speak to you for a moment, because I think this passage also has a helpful way to think through this, that is actually good for you to process and think through. There is a categorical difference between distress that Jesus is enduring in the garden, and the category of anxiousness that is a spiritual mistrust of God that doesn't trust in His sovereignty, a need for control. Those are two different things. The Bible has different categories for those. Go back to verse 37. It says, In taking with them Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he began to be sorrowful and troubled.
The word for troubled there means deep distress. It is a different word than what we see for anxious that's used in the scriptures. So Philippians 4, Do not be anxious in anything but through prayer and supplication, make your request unto the Lord. That's a different word. When Jesus says, Don't be anxious about this life. That's a different word than this word for distress.
And here's the deal. If you looked at Jesus in this moment with our modern kind of psychological lens, you see Him praying in the garden. Probably, we don't know, probably, He's sweating immensely. Luke's gospel either says that He's praying and there's sweat that's like droplets of blood, meaning it's thick amounts of sweat, or He's so deeply distressed distressed. There's a rare medical condition where blood shows up in your sweat. It's hard to tell from the text.
Both of those means He's in deep distress. And with modern psychological lens, you look at that and say, oh no, maybe Jesus is actually anxious. But He's not. He's in deep distress. And here's why that's so incredibly important for you to understand. You have a physiological response, all of us.
I mean, if you saw a snake in a path, you would have physiological changes. If you saw a car slam on brakes in front of you, you'd have physiological changes that would happen. You would start to breathe heavier. Your heart would start to race. Adrenaline would spike. You would feel a cold sweat.
That's a physical response that you have to something that is difficult. Some of you have a more sensitive response to that in lots of things. You see your kid on top of a play set. They don't text or call like they were supposed to. You have a presentation that's due at work. You have an assignment that you've got to present.
And you feel that you wake up and you feel this feeling. This isn't the gray area here. But you feel this feeling of distress. And here's why this is so incredibly important for you to understand. When you read passages that say don't be anxious about anything, what you translate that is don't feel the feeling that I feel so regularly. And you've got to know yourself.
There's a difference between a feeling of distress, which is a physical, very human response that Jesus feels, and not trusting the Lord that leads to anxiety. What stands in the middle of that is the recognition and understanding that you are not sufficient to handle your own troubles. It is the fifth thing that we see from this. Choose the God who can handle your troubles and sorrows. That is what we see so clearly here. Jesus feels this distress in the garden.
But you know why does it lead to sin? Because He stops in that moment and He gets on His face and He prays. There's a difference whether you feel this on a regular basis or you feel this in the most difficult moments of suffering in life. what stands in the way between that being just distress and leading to an anxiety that does not trust the Lord is prayer. It's getting on our face in faith and praying, acknowledging that we can't handle this ourselves, but God can. So you have one of two options in this moment.
You can trust God or you can say that I'm sufficient in and of myself, that I can handle this myself. I was talking to Scott Hill about this this week. He's one of our older members. And he says really two responses. It's either this vertical response where you are praying to the Lord or it's more of a circular response. And I love that because I know exactly what he's getting at.
It's a circular response of just crazy. You feel this deep distress. You feel it coming on and then all of a sudden you don't go to the Lord. You want to deal with it yourself and you choose to deal with yourself and then all of a sudden it leads into this anxiety where you're not trusting the Lord. Your thoughts are consumed. But then that physically affects you, right?
And then you feel it and then it causes more distress. And it's this cycle where you feel distress and you try to handle it yourself and it leads to more anxiety and it goes on and on. And what God is trying to teach us to do is to break through that and humble ourselves before the Lord and pray from a desperate place. I mean, Jesus falls on the ground and prays desperately as a physical posture of deep prayer in the midst of distress. That sometimes you've got to fall on your face. In the most difficult moments of life, you've got to get on your face and pray.
That if you are overwhelmed at work, sometimes you need to pause, get on your knees at your desk and pray. Scott was talking about sometimes he just holds his hands out, that physically gets in a posture of prayer. Jesus in John 17 looks up to the Father and prays. One of the things I teach in counseling is deep breathing and I'll do deep breathing exercises, which I always tell people. It's very awkward to breathe with somebody deeply for two or three minutes. It feels very new agey, but I'm sold on it.
I think it is very helpful that there are moments whether you're tempted to look at pornography or you're tempted to fall more into a spiral of anxiety to just in those moments regulate your breathing. Because when you breathe a lot and you get more and more stirred up, your adrenaline spikes, your heart starts pumping and you can't think clearly. And I teach now, pause and just deep breathe. Learn to breathe deeply. And when you do this, it regulates your heart rate, starts to decrease, it floods your brain with oxygen, there's physical changes that happen within you so that you can think clearly.
And then I say, get on your knees and pray. And remember the gospel and rehearse truth and pray. There's some physical things you can do to get to a posture of humility before the Lord. Life is going to throw a lot at you. It is going to throw haymakers at your soul, which in boxing is a huge punch. That it's going to absolutely come at you.
And you have a fork in the road in all of these circumstances. If you are a Christian, you can, in that moment, come to the Father humbly in prayer. Or you can see that you are sufficient to handle yourself. And if you see yourself as sufficient, you will physically bear the weight of that, which will affect you physically. You will, like I've done in the past, question the character and the goodness of God. Or you can come to him humbly in prayer.
You can get on your face and cry out to him. And you can echo the same prayer of Jesus. Not my will, God, but your will be done. I don't want to lose this battle of cancer. I don't want to lose my job. I don't want to wreck my career.
I don't want to fail this test. I don't want to lose this child. I don't want to lose this parent. But not my will, God. Yours be done. That's the model that Jesus gives us.
That we get to come to the Father and pray. In the midst of distress, in the midst of trouble, in the midst of all the swirling suffering that surrounds us. We get to choose the path of Christ and fall in the same line that he did. And I thank Jesus that he chose the path that he chose. I thank Jesus that in that garden as he's praying and he's overwhelmed and he's sweating and he's physically weak that he chose to get up and go to the cross. Because that's the only hope that we have.
The only hope we have is Jesus on the cross. And my hope for us as Christians is we'd see what Jesus did. And that we'd follow the same path in prayer. Matt's going to come up. And I want us for a moment to reflect upon the things that are happening in our life. The things that that are heavy for us.
That are burdensome for us. The troubles that we face. The suffering that's in front of us. And I just want us to do that. I want us to pray. Maybe you need to get on your knees in front of your chair.
Maybe you hold your hands out. But I want us to pray. If you are not a Christian, I want you to see that the God of the universe did not leave you in a world that is so filled with brokenness and sin. He didn't leave you. He came for you. He loved you so much that he got up out of the garden and he went to the cross for you.
So that you don't have to be alone. So that you would have a God who stands in the heavens and hears your prayers and knows what you are feeling. We don't always get the responses we want. There are times we will pray and God says, no. But the path of faith is acknowledging that ultimately God's will is best.
So if you are a Christian, I pray that you would, that would be so clear for you this morning as you pray. If you are not a Christian, I pray you would be so overwhelmed by the love of Christ that you give in to him and believe. Let me lead us in prayer and then take a few moments in silence before we respond in singing. Lord, this world is so painful. we feel sin deep within us. We see it all around us. We see the hurt.
We see the pain of death and suffering and loss. And it is overwhelming. And that is okay. Because you are able to handle it. God, I pray right now that the Christians in this room who are struggling that they would respond in prayer not just now but for a lifetime they would respond in choosing the path of faith and trusting you and they would lay their burdens before you. And you would comfort them.
You would comfort us. You'd be near to us. You'd be gracious to us. And God, I pray if there's anyone here that does not believe this that has not trusted in you may your overwhelming love be so clear right now in this moment that they would believe. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen.
The Hidden Hope of Suffering
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet virtually this week.
Kid City can go on in your living room! Check out songs, memory verses, and our lesson.
In Tenderness
In tenderness he sought me
Weary and sick with sin
And on His shoulders brought me
Back to His fold again
While angels in His presence sang
Until the courts of heaven rang.
Oh, the love that sought me!
Oh, the blood that bought me!
Oh, the grace that brought me to the fold of God
Grace that brought me to the fold of God.
He died for me while I was sinning, needy and poor and blind
He whispered to assure me: "I've found thee; thou art Mine"
I never heard a sweeter voice, it made my aching heart rejoice.
Upon His grace I'll daily ponder, and sing anew His praise
With all adoring wonder, His blessings I retrace
It seems as if eternal days, are far too short to sing His praise.
O Praise the Name
I cast my mind to Calvary
Where Jesus bled and died for me.
I see His wounds, His hands, His feet.
My Savior on that cursed tree
His body bound and drenched in tears
They laid Him down in Joseph's tomb.
The entrance sealed by heavy stone
Messiah still and all alone
O praise the name of the Lord our God
O praise His name forever more
For endless days we will sing Your praise
Oh Lord, oh Lord our God
Then on the third at break of dawn,
The Son of heaven rose again.
O trampled death where is your sting?
The angels roar for Christ the King
O praise the name of the Lord our God
O praise His name forever more
For endless days we will sing Your praise
Oh Lord, oh Lord our God
He shall return in robes of white,
The blazing Son shall pierce the night.
And I will rise among the saints,
My gaze transfixed on Jesus' face
O praise the name of the Lord our God
O praise His name forever more
For endless days we will sing Your praise
Oh Lord, oh Lord our God
O praise the name of the Lord our God
O praise His name forever more
For endless days we will sing Your praise
Oh Lord, oh Lord our God
Oh Lord, oh Lord our God
From the Prison to the Palace
Transcript
Good morning. My name is Spencer. I'm one of the pastors here. We are going to be in Genesis 40 and 41 today. So go ahead and grab a Bible, follow along with us.
If you don't have a Bible, there's a blue Bible on the road. It'll be on page 20. I love stories that are told in a way where everything comes full circle. Movies that do this well are really good. I remember Slumdog Millionaire, which is kind of a movie that celebrates Indian culture. It's told in a way where everything comes full circle.
The beginning starts where this guy, he's a contestant on the Indian version of who wants to be a millionaire. He's getting ready to answer the final question, the 20 million rupee dollar question. And they're like wondering, how does this guy who comes from like the lower parts of Mumbai, how has this guy gotten all this way? And they think that he's cheating. So they walk through all the questions with him to see how he answered these.
And the way the story is told is that each question is a point that points back to a different part of his life, a different memory, a different experience. And the story is told where it's all of it comes together at the end. It all points and converges to him being able to answer a question that's going to change his life forever. I love seeing this in stories that we get to watch, we get to read. I love seeing this when it happens in your own life. I got to see this recently.
I was in seminary. And in seminary, I started taking extra counseling classes. I started taking extra counseling coursework of the church I was a part of. I started shadowing different counseling pastors and learning. And at the time, I could not have told you why I wanted to take all this extra work. It wasn't a part of my degree program.
It wasn't something I was thinking I was going to be doing a whole lot of when I got into ministry. But there was something that drew me to it. As I think back now, I think part of that was that so much of my life has been connected to suffering, to loss, to death, to all different kinds of experiences. And I think part of it maybe was me wanting to have an answer, to me being able to want to walk people through the Bible and walk them through suffering. What I didn't realize is that stepping into my leadership here in this church, the two things that I would help oversee are teaching and counseling.
And I just love in my office now, I see this whole bookshelf, and there's a whole bunch of books that are a reflection of that, that everything has come full circle for me and how God is using me in our church. I love stories that come full circle, and I love this story of Joseph, because it's going to start coming full circle as we walk through the last parts of this story. We've been walking through the story of Joseph and seeing at the very beginning that he is gifted in dreams, that he's gifted in helping interpret dreams, that that's something that God has gifted him in, and when he uses it the first time that we see it, it does not end well for him. His brothers end up selling him into slavery, which leads to the situation we walked through last week, where he is falsely accused of rape, and now he is in prison.
He is in the pit, and he is suffering. But we're going to see his story start to come full circle with the giftings that God has given him. And as we see this come full circle, there's a question that still remains. Is he going to continue to be faithful to God? Is he going to, in the midst of everything that he has suffered, still going to trust God? We're going to see that answer today as we walk through his story, and we're going to see a picture of faithfulness, a faithfulness that we are all called to as God's people in spite of circumstance.
That in the mess and suffering of life that we face, God still calls us to faithfulness. That because God is sovereign, he still calls us to be faithful, trusting him with our lives, and ultimately trusting him with the reward. So we're going to see that as we walk through this. Let me pray, and then we'll jump into the story. God, I'm thankful that through the trials of life, we are not alone. That through suffering, you do not abandon us.
God, I pray you would help us see that faithfulness to you is better than anything else in this world. I pray that you would make that clear to us this morning as we walk through this story. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, so, Joseph, as we walked through the end of last week, is in prison, but he's, like his other work, has been blessed in his work in the prison, so he's kind of become this honorary warden who's helping take care of the prison. So he's in prison, he's helping take care of the prisoners, of the prisoners, and then he gets two new prisoners, which is where we pick up today in Genesis 40, verse 1.
So it says, sometime after this. Now, that's a commentary note from Moses. We don't know how long he's been in prison, but if it's going to say sometime after this, it's probably been years. So he's years in prison, looking over the prisoners, sometime after this. The cupbearer of the king of Egypt and his baker committed an offense against the Lord, the king of Egypt. All right, so we've got two positions, two high-ranking positions in Pharaoh's government.
They're now in prison. We've got the cupbearer and the baker. All right, so the cupbearer in ancient Near East government was a very important position. If you were going to assassinate a king, you did it by poisoning. That was the way to get away with it. So they had cupbearers who would drink the wine, who would drink the drink to make sure it wasn't poison.
So they would take a bullet for them. So that was part of their job. Because they were such a trusted official, they had other responsibilities that were important as well. And then we have the chief baker, also a very important position in the kingdom. He makes the food, which also needs to not be poisoned. It also needs to taste good.
Because if it doesn't, it will end up like an episode of Chopped, and his head will be on the chopping block at the end. And that is where we are at. Both of them are in prison. Both of them have committed offense. We don't know what they did. It doesn't tell us.
Maybe Joseph came to them and said, hey, what did you do to get here? And they just said, unspoken. Like, we don't know. But they've committed offense. They're in prison. And it picks up in verse 2, when Pharaoh was angry with his two officers, the chief cupbearer and the chief baker, and he put them in custody in the house of the captain of the guard in the prison where Joseph was confined.
The captain of the guard appointed Joseph to be with them, and he attended them, and they continued for some time in custody. So again, Joseph is overseeing these guys. These guys are part of his watch. And it picks up in verse 5. And one night, they both dreamed, the cupbearer and the baker of the king of Egypt, who were confined to prison, each his own dream, and each dream with its own interpretation. All right, so they have some dreams that need some interpreting.
Now, we take a step back for a second. We talked about this a few weeks back. I just want to reiterate it. Dreams have value. All right, they have importance.
There's about three different categories we walked through a few weeks back of dreams. Some of them are just random and weird. Just what they are. Like, if in your dream, your dog becomes a person and starts talking to you about your favorite TV show and then turns back into a dog. That's weird. You don't have to read any more into it.
That's just our brain processing things. It's just odd. There's a second category of dreams that has value because it's the working out of different anxieties, fears, experiences, memories. This is what psychology likes to deal in. This is what Froy, one of the fathers of psychology, liked to help interpret, to figure out what our dreams are telling us. And that has value because that is part of what happens in dreams.
We are working through anxieties, fears, all of that. When I was a kid, I had a reoccurring nightmare of these. We were, I remember I was at my house and there was a party going on and then I look up and everyone's gone. And then all of a sudden, these demons start coming down the street to get me. And you may be thinking, wait, that seems a little more spiritual. It wasn't.
It wasn't spiritual because those demons were from the movie Ghost. Ghost. Because my parents thought it was a good idea at five years old to let me watch Ghost. And I don't know if you've ever seen Ghost. That is not an appropriate movie in any form or fashion for a five-year-old. But there are these little demons that are in the movie that would come up and take people to hell.
And it scared the mess out of me. And I had this reoccurring nightmare that those demons from the movie Ghost were coming to get me. So we have nightmares, dreams like that that are sorting out memories, sorting out fears. And there's a third category where dreams can be very spiritual. That God gives them to us and that He's speaking through them. And what we said a few weeks back is as Christians, whatever dreams we have that trouble us, we bring them into community.
We bring them into the church. We have the Holy Spirit as the church and we help sort them out together to see what's going on there. That's how we respond. That is not how they would respond. In their culture, they had specific people who were gifted in dream interpretation. And these men were troubled because they didn't think they had access to anybody like that in prison.
It picks up in verse 6. When Joseph came to them in the morning, he saw that they were troubled. So he asked Pharaoh's officers who were with him in custody in his master's house, why are your faces downcast today? So he sees them and he sees that they're troubled and he could have just kept walking. He didn't have to ask. In the same way that if you're in the office and you see a co-worker who is obviously upset, whose eyes are, you can tell they've been crying, they're red, you could walk past them because you know if you ask them how they're doing, it may turn into a 20 or 30 minute conversation.
Or, you can be a Christian. You can respond in grace and ask them, hey, how are you doing? And that's what Joseph does. He sees that they're dismayed. He asks them how they are doing. Why are you troubled?
And in verse 8 it says, they said to him, we have had dreams and there's no one to interpret them. And Joseph said to them, do not interpretations belong to God. Please, tell them to me. So Joseph has trusted God with this gift. With this gift of interpreting dreams and it has earned him suffering. He had a dream that his family one day would bow down to him, he shares it, he ends up in slavery.
He eventually ends up in prison. That his life has been suffering because of his dreams. So it would be understandable if they said that and he went, hmm, I wish you had somebody who could help. Like hard pass, like I don't want any part of this. It would be understandable because all of his experiences thus far of trusting the gift that God has given him has earned him suffering. But that's not what he does.
He has faith. Throughout all the suffering, throughout all the mess, he still trusts God with the gift that he has been giving. He still has a healthy relationship with God. So he asks them. He offers help. And it picks up in verse 9.
So the chief cupbearer told his dream to Joseph and said to him, in my dream, there was a vine before me. And on the vine, there were three branches. So in dreams and in the Bible, Numbers are significant. So this three sticks out. It has significance. And as soon as it budded, it blossoms, as soon as it budded, it blossoms, its blossoms shot forth and the clusters ripened into grapes.
So this is a dream that he can understand. This is wine, grapes language for a cupbearer. Pharaoh's cup was in my hand and I took the grapes and pressed them into Pharaoh's cup and placed the cup in Pharaoh's hand. All right, so that was his dream. Now Joseph jumps in with the interpretation.
Then Joseph said to him, this is his interpretation. The three branches are three days. In three days, Pharaoh will lift up your head and restore you to your office. And you shall place Pharaoh's cup in his hand as formerly when you were his cupbearer. So he had to have, I'd like to think, a huge sigh of relief at this point.
He's been troubled, which means he's been trying to sort out what this dream is. What does three mean? It's going to be cut into three pieces. It's going to be pressed out like wine. There's all kinds of fears and in that moment, Joseph steps in and helps relieve him. No, no, no.
You will be restored. You are going to be restored to where you were. But this is what Joseph adds. He says, only remember me when it is well with you and please do me the kindness to mention me to Pharaoh and so get me out of this house for I was indeed stolen out of the land of the Hebrews and here also I've done nothing that they should put me in the pit. So he makes a plea.
He understands that this is one of the high-ranking officials that serves under Pharaoh. He says, remember me. When you are restored, please remember me because my whole life I've been snatched out of my own land, sold into slavery. I'm in this prison, in this pit for doing nothing wrong. And how many of us feel that? How many of us, that's your story?
That so much of your life has been trying to honor God, has been doing the right thing and you've been passed over. Whether it was a job promotion, you get passed over. Whether it was a sale, whether it was an opportunity, you did what was right and those who were faithless pursued and cheated and did all kinds of things to get ahead of you and you are left behind. We can feel how Joseph feels in the pit, hoping to be remembered, hoping that faithfulness might actually be rewarded. So this is Joseph.
He makes the plea. And while the cupbearer is getting good news, the baker hears it and he's like, oh, how about me? He says, when the chief baker saw the interpretation was favorable, he said to Joseph, I also had a dream. There were three cake baskets on my head. And the utmost basket, there were all sorts of baked food. There was all sorts of baked food for Pharaoh, but the birds were eating it out of the basket on my head.
And Joseph answered and said, this is his interpretation. The three baskets are three days. He's got some good news. And in three days, Pharaoh will lift up your head. Seemingly good news. From you.
And hang you on a tree. And the birds will eat the flesh from you. And that's his interpretation. The chief baker was so excited. He's like, man, the cupbearer got good news. I've got to get in on this action.
Tell me, dreamer, what you got? I have number three. That's good news, right? I've got three baskets on my head. And I've baked goods. And there's birds eating it.
And they're flying. Am I going to fly up out of here? How is this going to end for me? Tell me, dreamer, what do you have for me? Now, Joseph is good at a lot of things. He helped build a business empire.
He's obviously a good warden. He's taking care of the prison. He is gifted in dream interpretation. He is not good at giving bad news. Because he says it just like you did the cupbearer. In three days, your head will be lifted up.
And it's like, oh, yes. No, no, no. Lift it up from your head. You will be hung. This ends badly for you. And he gives the bad news and it goes down exactly how he interpreted.
On the third day, verse 20, which was Pharaoh's birthday, he made a feast for all his servants and lifted up the head of the chief cupbearer and the head of the chief baker among his servants. He restored the chief cupbearer to his position and he placed the cup in Pharaoh's hand. But he hanged the chief baker as Joseph had interpreted to them. Yet the chief cupbearer did not remember Joseph but forgot him. So it goes down like he said it would and another disappointment happens for Joseph.
Hoping that maybe he might be remembered. That his faithfulness here might pay off. How many days you think he was waiting for someone to come through the prison to come and get him? How many days was he hoping to maybe see the cupbearer maybe see someone that the cupbearer would send hoping that he might be lifted up out of the pit? And at what point did he finally just say I don't know if someone is coming. This is my life.
I am used. I am discarded. I am forgotten. Flip over to chapter 41. After two whole years. He has been in prison for years and two more years of waiting.
That just shows that our timing is not God's timing. It is not God's timing at all. After two whole years Pharaoh dreamed that he was standing by the Nile and behold there came up out of the Nile seven cows attractive and plump and they fed in the reed grass. And behold seven other cows ugly and thin came up out of the Nile after them and stood by the other cows on the bank of the Nile and the ugly thin cows ate up the seven attractive plump cows and Pharaoh awoke. Alright so by dream that's a nightmare.
That's fairly terrifying. My dreams don't ever get that graphic. My typical nightmares are I show up on a Sunday and I don't think I'm preaching and somebody says hey you're preaching today and I'm like no I'm not preaching. And it's like no you are and my reoccurring nightmare is I show up and I am unprepared and I have to preach. That is my naked in the office dream that happens regularly and that pales in comparison to the horrors of what he just saw. I don't know if you heard that.
There were seven fat cows eating, drinking, just being cows and seven thin mangy looking cows came up and ate them. Cows don't eat. The only thing they eat is grass and corn. That's terrifying to see these thin cows attack these fat cows and there's blood and it's horrifying and it's a nightmare and Pharaoh awakes and he somehow gets back to sleep. And in verse 5 he has a second dream that says he fell asleep and dreamed a second time and behold seven ears of grain plump and good were growing on one stalk. So again Numbers are significant the seven matters here. and behold after them sprouted seven ears thin and blighted by the east wind and the thin ears swallowed up the thin ears swallowed up the seven plump full ears and Pharaoh awoke and behold it was a dream.
So in the morning his spirit was troubled and he sent and called for all the magicians of Egypt and all its wise men. Pharaoh told them his dreams but there was none who could interpret them to Pharaoh. Some of you all felt this. You have nightmares night terrors things that disturb you and when that happens the appropriate response is you need to find somebody. You need to sort it out. You need to figure out what happened and that is what happens with Pharaoh.
He has this nightmare these back to back dreams and they're significant and he needs help. So he reaches out to his magicians he reaches out to his wise men and there's no one who can help him until finally somebody remembers. Verse 9 it says Then the chief cupbearer said to Pharaoh I remember my offenses today. When Pharaoh was angry with his servants and put me and the chief baker in the custody of the house of the captain of the guard we dreamed on the same night he and I each having a dream with its own interpretation. A young Hebrew was there with us a servant of the captain of the guard.
When we told him he interpreted our dreams to us giving an interpretation to each man according to his dream. And as he interpreted to us so it came about. I was restored to my office and the baker was hanged. Two years later finally the cupbearer remembers. He tells what happened to Pharaoh how he interpreted the dream correctly and we're starting to see that everything in Joseph's life is starting to converge that all that God has prepared him for is for this moment that dreams for the majority of his life have been his downfall have been his suffering but now they're actually going to be his redemption.
That God is orchestrating it all for this moment and Joseph through it all has not given up on hope has not given up on faith in God that he has been given this gift for a reason. In verse 14 it says then Pharaoh sent and called Joseph and they quickly brought him out of the pit and when he had shaved himself and changed his clothes he came in before Pharaoh. So after years in prison Joseph he's got nasty prison garments he's got to be cleaned up. He goes and he changes out his clothes he gets shaved he gets cleaned up he's being brought before Pharaoh and when he's being brought before Pharaoh he gets it.
He has got one shot at this. He's seen what happens to people in the kingdom that do not please Pharaoh. He has one shot one opportunity to seize everything he ever wanted. Will he capture it? Or will he let it slip? You're welcome to everyone under 40 who listen to hip hop.
Verse 15 And Pharaoh said to Joseph I've had a dream and there's no one who can interpret it. I've heard it said of you when you hear a dream you can interpret it. Joseph answered Pharaoh It is not in me God will give Pharaoh a favorable answer. Joseph hear this he is standing before one of the most powerful men in the world. He is a slave a prisoner I mean there's a lot on the line here and Joseph looks at a man who is worshipped like a God amongst his people and says no you're mistaken no it is God my God that is going to give the favorable news. He looks at this king and he doesn't waver.
He still wholeheartedly believes in God trusts in him but through all the suffering his hope is still secure in him. He stares down this powerful man declares who is actually going to give the news here. So then Pharaoh recounts the dream he tells it again we're not going to read it. Joseph gives the interpretation skip down to verse 25 Then Joseph said to Pharaoh the dreams of Pharaoh are one God has revealed to Pharaoh what he is about to do. The seven cows are seven years and the seven good ears are seven years the dreams are one the seven lean and ugly cows that came up after them are seven years and the seven empty ears blighted by the east wind are also seven years of famine.
It is as I told Pharaoh God has shown Pharaoh what he's about to do there will come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt but after them there will arise seven years of famine and all the plenty will be forgotten in the land of Egypt the famine will consume the land and plenty will be unknown in the land by reason of the famine that will follow for it will be very severe and the doubling of Pharaoh's dream means this thing is fixed by God and God will shortly bring it about.
Joseph and the Technicolor Dream Coat
Transcript
It's good to see you all this morning. My name is Chet. I am one of the pastors of Mill City Church. If this is your first time with us, we're glad you're here. We gather together on Sundays. We have groups that meet throughout the week.
We gather on Sundays. We sing to Jesus and about Jesus. And then we open the Bible and we read it and study it together. If you'll grab a Bible and go to Genesis chapter 37. We've been walking through the book of Genesis. If you have one of these blue Bibles, it'll be on page 18.
If you don't own a Bible, take this one with you when you leave. That's our gift to you. We want you to have a Bible. We've been walking through this story. We've been following this family. And we are now going to begin looking at the life of Joseph.
We're going to be following his story for the next little while as Genesis kind of rounds its way out. So we are in the home stretch. We have turned. We've touched third base and we are headed home. We're going to be able to finish this book up within the next year or two. And the next several weeks we'll be finishing up and studying through Joseph.
I, when I was in 10th grade. Oh, sorry. First of all, let me say I'm glad. But I'm always excited when the elementary students are in here. It's good to see you all this morning. I love having the elementary students in here.
I learn things. Like today, I learned that your soul is located right here. Which makes so much sense as to how I feel after I've eaten. Like I've just fed my soul. And so it's good to see you all this morning. When I was in 10th grade, I was playing quarterback for our JV football team.
And I was not a very good quarterback because I was what my driver's ed instructor called impetuous. And for those of you who aren't familiar with that word, it means when you need to make a decision quickly, you just go for it, which is a problem when you're at yellow lights or when you're throwing a pass into double coverage. So I threw a lot of interceptions. And we were only a few games in. I went to, I faked a handoff. I was rolling out this way.
Somebody grabbed my right shoulder. My left foot got out in front of me and buckled like that. Oh, I actually just did there because it's got problems. And my kneecap shot out of place, which it does. Well, it started around then. And I would have one knee injury every football season for the next six years.
And I learned a lot of things. I was introduced to LCLs and PCLs and ACLs and meniscus and sublexed patellas. I dislocated my kneecap a lot. And if you've never done that, if you've never dislocated like your left kneecap, just imagine what it would feel like to dislocate your right kneecap and then pretend it was over here and you'll have a good idea of what that feels like. And so I did that a lot. And what I was really introduced to was having plans for the way things were going to work out and then having that just knocked out from under you.
That ended my quarterbacking career. I didn't go pro. You know, I just never, it just knocked it out. And I did this every football season. I would get injured again. And so the progress I had made and the way things were working would just get reset.
And I would just have my plans, my future just wiped out from under me. And that was kind of how it began. And this happens in life consistently and on a much greater scale. That we will have plans for our future and just have them snatched away. We'll have plans for our future and how things are going to look and just have our legs knocked out from under us. We'll lose a job.
Somebody will have been drinking and will drive left of center. We will have a parent leave or a spouse leave. We will have plans. We'll have a vision for what future is going to look like and just have it derailed. And that's what happens in this story. That's what happens in the life of Joseph.
And so we're going to ask that question today is what do we do in those times when we just get kind of stuck where we had a plan, we had a future, we had an idea of what things were going to look like and that just gets taken away from us and now we're just kind of stuck in a holding pattern. And so that's what we're going to be looking at this morning. So I'm going to pray and then we'll start reading this text together. God, we come here today from all different places. There are some people who have had a joyous, life-giving week. And there are some people who have had the life beat out of them this week.
There are some who feel much the way Joseph is going to feel like the future was snatched away, like they're stuck in kind of a holding pattern. And we just ask for your help as we study this and we ask for your Holy Spirit to minister to us, to comfort us, to teach us that we might grow to look more like you and that we might grow in our love for Jesus. In your name we pray. Amen. Chapter 37, verse 1. Jacob lived in the land of his father's sojournings in the land of Canaan.
These are the generations of Jacob. Now whenever it says that, it means we're kind of starting a new chapter, a new set of stories. And it says, Joseph being 17 years old. So let's pause for a second and let's remember who Joseph is. At this point, now we left off in chapter 35. For the few of you that maybe remembered that and you're going, wait a second, did we just skip some stuff?
I'm going to read back and find out what we skipped. I'll tell you real quick. We left off in chapter 35. They move towards Bethel. God protects them. Then they live in Bethel for a little while.
They move from Bethel. Rachel dies in childbirth. Rachel is one of Jacob's four wives. You really should only have one. He has four. She's his favorite.
If you have multiple wives in the Bible, you're not supposed to have a favorite. So he's messed this up in multiple ways. But he has multiple wives. He has a favorite. She passes in giving birth to what she names, her son, who she names Ben-Oni, which means son of my strength or son of my sorrow. And his dad changes his name to Benjamin, which means son of my right hand.
And he's honoring his wife and acknowledging that he's lost a part of himself. That is Joseph's little brother. So his favorite wife has two sons, Joseph and Benjamin, who are the second to last and last of his children. And so he's got 10 older sons from his other wives. He's got these two sons. That's who Joseph is.
He's second youngest and first son of Rachel. Joseph, being 17 years old, was pasturing the flock with his brothers. He was a boy with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father's wives. And Joseph brought a bad report of them to their father. All right.
So Bilhah and Zilpah had four sons, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher. And when it says he was a boy with them, it does not mean that they were all, they were friends and all the same age. It means he was their boy. He was their small boy. He was their lad. He was their runner.
So they were teaching him how to tend the flock. And he was running back and forth and having to do all the things they said and working for them. And he brings a bad report. He goes and tells his father that they're not doing right. Now we don't know what they were doing.
It just says he brought a bad report. He tells them that either they're sinning or they're not treating him well. I remember when we were little, I have an older brother and a younger brother. And my older brother kept demanding that me and my younger brother do things. He would send us to do things. He would send us on errands.
We were his small boys because he was older than us. And my mom and dad fussed at him and told him to stop doing this. And then one day we were down playing in the woods. We had a little camp and we said our, I can still remember vividly, he was like three or four at this point, him dragging a two liter Mountain Dew down to us from our house. It was almost as big as he was but we had sent him to get us a drink so he brought a two liter Mountain Dew which is a brilliant choice on the part of a four year old. My parents fussed at us and said, y'all have got to quit telling Vince, making him run all your errands and do all this stuff for you.
And my older brother looks at him and says, Mama, you gotta fuss at Chet. Don't fuss at me, you gotta fuss at Chet because every single time I tell Chet to do something he turns right around and tells Vince to do it. But there's this dynamic here where these four have this small boy Joseph and Joseph goes to his father and he gives a bad report and we don't know, we don't know, there's two kind of ways to give a bad report. There's a way that you tell on someone that is for your own benefit. You're telling on them just to make yourself look good, just to puff yourself up. I remember going to my dad one time and I was doing a service for the family because every time my older brother did something wrong, I would let my parents know.
They needed to know these things. They needed to stay on top of his behavior and his actions. And so I went to tell on him one time and I remember my dad looking at me and going, he just looked disgusted. He just stood there looking at me for a while and I was like, this is not the right response. Maybe I was thinking, yeah, that's right, we should be disgusted at Logan's behavior. I don't know.
He just, but I could tell it was like aimed at me and it was just like, okay. And then he said, you're just a little snitch, aren't you? Just a little rat fink, which y'all should use in real life from now on. Rat fink is an amazing term to call people. And he called me a rat fink and he said, you're just a little tattletale. He said, look, I don't want to hear it anymore.
It's you and your brother against me. It's not me and you against your brother. That'd be messed up. I'm not on your team. Quit, quit narking on your brother all the time. And I just remember thinking, but the whole reason he was doing that was because the only reason I was telling on him was to make myself look good.
It wasn't that I was actually genuinely worried about my brother and his character and his life and his health. I just wanted him to get in trouble because it made me look good and I enjoyed watching him be in trouble. There's also a genuine, heartfelt what they're doing is wrong and giving a bad report. We don't know which one he did. Best guess though is that he did this in integrity, in honesty, just because as you watch this play out, his brothers aren't very good people and he seems to genuinely handle things well. So as best we can watch, they don't seem to have a lot of integrity.
Joseph seems to, so it seems as if he's given a genuine report of they're not doing some things right and he's not a rat fink, if you will. He does tell on them. It says this, it says he brings a bad report which is a good way to make your brothers not like you, whether they're wrong or not. That's a really good way to make them not like you. So they're already reading into this.
They would be frustrated with him. Now Israel, that's his daddy, loved Joseph more than any of his other sons, which is a problem. That's the same thing that Jacob, who's also Israel, that's the same thing his dad did. It caused him a lot of problems. He's turned right around and done the same thing. Because he was the son of his old age.
And he made him a robe of many colors. We don't, that robe, that thing could be a robe of many colors. It could be a robe that was like sparkly or shiny. It could be a robe that had long sleeves. We don't really know. The only other place this is used in the Old Testament is to describe an outfit that a princess is wearing.
So what we do know is that Joseph looked fabulous. He was shiny and colorful and sparkly in his princess outfit. It was amazing. I'm sure his brothers envied him and mocked him because that's how brothers would work. And so he gets this fancy outfit. His dad shows great honor to him, privilege to him.
And in some ways it's treating him the way he ought to treat the firstborn son. And he's messing up the birth order from Reuben down to Joseph. But Joseph is the firstborn of Rachel. So there's this weird favoritism that's plaguing this family. And it says, but when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peacefully to him. Some of you who have siblings know what that is like.
You go through these stages where it's like your siblings cannot talk nicely to you, cannot speak nicely to you. You come in and you're like, hey, what's going on? They're like, shut up, get out of here, Steve. Like, whatever. Like, you just have this kind of, this animosity that grows and this happens. And I want you to know this.
Parents, you have a role to play in how your children get along with one another. Seems as if Israel is further fueling this the same way his dad did, but you have a role to play. There's a family in our church family that has a get-along shirt that they make their two children wear at once so that they'll get along. My dad used to make us hug. You have, after we had fought, you have a role to play in trying to help them get along, and he's not, and it's further dividing, and they cannot even speak to him without being cruel to him. So Joseph, this is verse 5, now Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him even more.
He said to them, hear this dream that I have dreamed. Behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and behold, my sheaf arose and stood upright, and behold, your sheaves gathered around it and bowed down to my sheaf. So he says, we were binding grain, my sheaf stood up, looking good, and all y'all's little sheaves that y'all put together just came right around and bowed down to mine. What y'all think about that dream? His brothers said to him, are you indeed to reign over us, or are you indeed to rule over us? So they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words.
Then he dreamed another dream and told it to his brothers and said, behold, I have dreamed another dream. Behold, the sun and the moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me. But when he told it to his father and to his brothers, his father rebuked him and said to him, what is this dream that you have dreamed? Shall I and your mother and your brothers indeed come and bow ourselves to the ground before you? And his brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the saying in mind. All right, we've got to talk a second about dreams.
Immediately, they understood when he tells them this dream, they understood that this ought to be understood in a prophetic way. That there's meaning behind it and so they're saying, oh, are you prophesying to us? Are you telling us that your dream tells the future and that we're going to bow to you? And that's why his dad fusses at him and says, oh, me and your mama are going to bow to you. They were the sun and the moon and your brothers are going to bow to you. Really?
So they understood it to be prophetic. Now, let's talk about dreams for just a second. There's kind of three ways to think about dreams. There's a group in here probably that just believes dreams are just dreams. They don't mean anything. They're your brain keeping itself occupied while you're asleep.
Like if you dream that you had to build a golf cart with your old PE teacher, probably just a dream. You're not waking up thinking, oh, wow, in the future I'm going to have to build a golf cart with my, like it just seems like it's a dream. Like dreams are just dreams. They're just random things. Some people would say, well, no, dreams tell you a lot about yourself. You can study them for psychology.
You can study them to know more about yourself. Like I have a dream periodically where I get up to preach and I, for some reason, have folded my notes into a tiny little thing and then I'm immediately trying to unfold them up here and I can't get them unfolded. The truth is that's exactly what I did the first time I ever preached. I had written all my notes on a yellow sheet of memo pad, had it wadded up in my pocket and got up and it was one of those lecterns with the microphone right here and then just like sweatingly unfolded it while I was sitting here and I don't do that anymore. Crisp, clean sheets of paper.
But I have that dream. I have dreams sometimes where I can't read the Bible or y'all keep moving so like I'll find it, I'll get ready, I'll look up and I'm facing the wrong way. There's that middle zone. I think it means I'm stressed out when I have that dream. Sometimes you have dreams where you're having to give a presentation at work and suddenly, you know, my wife periodically have dreams where her teeth fall out and that kind of stuff. It's just like I have dreams where my contacts are as big as dinner plates.
I can't put them in my eye. Now some of you who study this are going, oh no, I've just learned seven things about you. We can talk later. And then there's other people who are going, no, dreams are prophetic. They're from God. They're dreams that will tell you things that you need to know, reality that's around, things that are coming.
And the answer to this, yeah, okay, some dreams are just dreams. You wake up, you're like, that was weird. You move on with your day. Or, you know, you wake up and you're like, that was weird. I'll be mad at my husband for the rest of the day. Whatever, however you choose to do that.
Then there's the middle zone of like, yeah, maybe it does tell you about something you've been thinking about, something you've been worried about, something you're stressed about. I wouldn't put too much weight there trying to figure out all the secrets of your soul from dreams, but okay. And then yeah, biblically, some dreams are prophetic. We're going to see that throughout the story of Joseph. We're going to get to see that more. The New Testament carries that out.
There are prophetic dreams in the New Testament. When Peter stands up and preaches at Pentecost, he says, your young men, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. It's this prophecy about coming true through the Holy Spirit. That happens. So what do we do?
In general, you don't want to place too much weight on dreams. You want to place some weight. There's room for them to be prophetic, for them to be from the Holy Spirit. But the New Testament also gives warning. It says that people can be puffed up by visions. They can be led astray by dreams.
So we don't want to give them all the weight in the world. We would share them in community under the weight of Scripture. We would discuss them. You could let other people in on them. You can keep them to yourself and just wait and see what happens. Wouldn't make all my life decisions off of dreams.
And we can do what Jacob does here and keep it in mind. Try to pay attention to it. Ask the Lord about it. Talk about it in community. Let Scripture bear weight on it. Make sure you don't run off after them.
Maybe you feel like you need to pray for somebody. Trust that. Walk with people in it. But we don't place too much weight on them. If you want to talk more about that would be interested too. We will talk more about it as well in upcoming sermons.
That's all we can give it right now. He has dreams. They understood him to be prophetic. He understood him to be prophetic. And so they move forward in the story. His father keeps this in mind.
Pick up 12. Now his brothers went to pasture their flock near Shechem. And Israel said to Joseph, Are not your brothers pasturing the flock at Shechem? Come, I will send them to you. And he said to him, Here am I. So he said to him, Go now, see if it is well with your brothers and with the flock and bring me word.
So he sent him from the valley of Hebron and he came to Shechem. All right, let's pause for just a second. He's no longer their small boy. He's not with them anymore. We don't know if that just means sometimes he did this, sometimes he didn't. When they travel off, maybe he just stays closer to home.
He is 17, which means he's in between being an adult and being a boy. They would not count you in a census as prepared for war until you were 20. And so there is some room here, especially for those of you who are in that 15, 16, 17, 18 range. There are some times where it's perfectly fine to be in your parents' household, to be leaning into them for wisdom, to be asking them for help, to be living under that roof. And there are other times where you need to be capable, like he is, to be doing some work. His dad's sending him three or four days away on his own to go find out about his brothers and to give a report.
If you're 16, 17 years old, can you be at home by yourself for three or four days? Are you incapable of doing that? Are you capable of doing that? There's time to be willing to grow and to carry some weight and also to be understanding that I'm still able to lean into my parents and walking that out and trying to work towards health. And that's where he is. So he's sent out on his own 60 or so miles away to find his brothers.
Verse 15, And a man found him wandering in the fields and the man asked him, What are you seeking? And he said, I'm seeking my brothers. He said to him, Tell me, please, where have they been pasturing? Where they are pasturing the flock? And the man said to him, They have gone away for I heard them say, Let us go to Dothan. So Joseph went after his brothers and found them at Dothan.
That's another 20 miles. That's another day or so journey. So Joseph's just walking around fields like this. They walk over a hill. Somebody sees him and says, What are you looking for? He says, My brothers and our stuff, do you know where they went?
And they said, Yeah, I heard them say they were going on to Dothan. And then he heads on to Dothan. He doesn't head home and say, I didn't find them. He finishes the job and he heads on to Dothan. They saw him from afar. Before he came near to them, they conspired against him to kill him.
Okay, so his brothers see him headed towards him. Now, if you know someone and you're familiar with them, a lot of times you can recognize them from a distance. You can tell how they walk. You can kind of tell, Okay, this is this person. I know this person. I don't know this person.
If that person that you know is wearing a splendid rhinestone coat that they wear all the time, you can tell them from a distance easier. And he's wearing his splendid coat. They see him and they go, Okay, here's colorful. Joseph headed our way and they decide, When he gets here, let's kill him. They said to one another, Here comes this dreamer. Come now, let us kill him and throw him into one of these pits.
Then we will say that a fierce animal has devoured him and we will see what will become of his dreams. So his brothers hated him. Then they hated him more. Then they hated him even more. Then they see him and they decide, Let's kill him.
Some of you have been betrayed, harmed by family. And it is some of the most harmful thing that can happen. And his brothers, his ten older brothers decide, Let's kill him. And they go about this the way that we go about things. They slowly let it grow and fester in their souls so that eventually it seems like a really good idea to do something absolutely evil and wicked. Some of you right now, if we said, Would you ever do this?
Would you ever do this? You'd say, No. But the truth is, you've already planted the seed and you're already letting it grow. An oak tree doesn't seem like it would come from an acorn, but if you plant it in the ground and it has the right circumstances, it can grow. And some of us right now are fostering bitterness, are fostering lust, are fostering hatred. We're watering it and we're letting it grow and eventually it leads to really heinous action so that we do things we never would have thought we would have done.
And that's what his brothers decide, Let's just kill him. And then, and then we'll see about his little special dreams. When he's dead, we'll see who bows down to him. Verse 21, But when Reuben, that's the oldest brother, the firstborn, he'd had some weight in the family, heard it, he rescued him out of their hands, saying, Let us not take his life. And Reuben said to them, Shed no blood, throw him into this pit here in the wilderness, but do not lay a hand on him. And he said this, that he might rescue him out of their hand to restore him to his father.
So Reuben tries to protect him. Now, he's not in the strongest position. He's the firstborn, but he can't just tell him, No, we're not going to do that. Y'all are wrong. I think he probably fears they might turn on him. If they'll kill Joseph, who's Jacob's favorite, they might just kill Reuben as well.
So he just says, No, don't kill him. Just throw him in the pit, in the wilderness. Kind of saying, We'll just let him starve and die, but that way we won't have his blood on our hands. But Reuben's plan was to go get him out. So when Joseph came to his brothers, verse 23, they stripped him of his robe, the robe of many colors that he wore, and they took him and threw him into a pit.
The pit was empty. There was no water in it. He finally sees his brothers. He's been on this trip for days. He's probably like, Oh, here we go. Good.
He may even have some things he was supposed to bring him. We know he was supposed to find out how it was going and give a report. He shows up to his brothers, probably felt like something's a little off here. His brothers gather around him. They rip his robe off of him and they throw him in a pit. Now, he had 10 older brothers.
This probably was a bit of a struggle, but not exceedingly difficult. We can guess that maybe Ruben wasn't really hands-on here, so maybe nine. I don't know if you've ever fought nine people. Unless your name is Jackie Chan, you lost. That's usually how that goes. Because, you know, they don't do the one-at-a-time thing like they do in movies.
And so he is thrown in a pit fairly easily, and I think probably very confused, very hurt. He's the youngest. He's not actually seeking this relationship to be bad. He probably is hurt over how this has all gone down anyway. And now he sees his brothers and they harm him. And they throw him in this pit.
And it's a man-made pit. It would have been used as like a cistern. He can't get out of it. It's probably steep-walled. Kind of like a well. They threw him in a well.
That's kind of how that works. So he fell in at the pit. All right. And then, 25, then they sat down to eat. So they don't even care.
They're not worried about him. And they just throw him in there. And they sit down and start eating. And looking up, they see, they saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead with their camels, bearing gum and balm and myrrh on their way to carry it down to Egypt. Then Judah said to his brothers, he's one of the older ones, what profit is it if we kill our brother and conceal his blood?
Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites and let not our hand be upon him. For he is our brother, our own flesh. So he says, it's probably bad if we kill him. Let's just sell him and make some money off of this deal. His brothers listened to him. Then the Midianite traders passed by and they drew Joseph up and lifted him out of the pit and sold him to the Ishmaelites for 20 shekels of silver.
They took Joseph to Egypt. So Joseph had been in Hebron. He'd headed to Shechem, then to Dothan. These guys are coming around from Gilead down to Egypt. They sell him. He heads all the way down over here to Egypt.
He's now very far from where he started. It says, when Reuben returned to the pit and saw that Joseph was not in the pit, he tore his clothes and returned to his brothers and said, the boy is gone and I, where shall I go? So what he's saying is I'm going to have to pay life for life on this that we lost our brother, that this is under my leadership as the firstborn. He tears his clothes and he says, what have y'all done and where shall I go? Doesn't seem like he's super worried about Joseph. He doesn't say, where did he go?
He says, where shall I go? Then they took Joseph's robe, this is verse 31, and slaughtered a goat and dipped the robe in the blood and they sent the robe of many colors and brought it to their father and said, this we have found. Please identify whether it is your son's robe or not. And he identified it and said, it is my son's robe. A fierce animal has devoured him. Joseph is without a doubt torn to pieces.
In this countryside, they would have had lions, they would have had bears. It was not out of the question that someone would be attacked and killed. And his sons do the same thing to him that he did to his father. They slaughter a goat in order to trick their father away from his favorite son. It's the same thing Jacob did when he pretended to be Esau. And it's the same thing they do to Jacob here.
And Jacob and his family are living out patterns. So he sees it and he says, yes, this is my son and they've, he's obviously been killed by a wild animal. Then Jacob tore his garments and put sackcloth on his loins and mourned for his son many days. All his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted and said, no, I shall go down to Sheol to my son mourning. He just says, I'm going to be sad until I die. Thus, his father wept for him.
Meanwhile, the Midianites had sold him in Egypt to Potiphar, an officer of the Pharaoh, the captain of the guard. Now, if you've ever been watching a show and something terrible happens and then it just ends and you're like, wait, wait, wait, no, no, no, no, no. And then you wait till, okay, I can't wait till the next episode and the next episode picks up and tells you nothing about what just happened in the last episode. That's what happens here. Next week, we're just going to read about Judah and Tamar. The text intentionally says, meanwhile, he's a slave and then just moves on to something else.
It's a Old Testament cliffhanger that we don't know what's going to happen with Joseph. We're just kind of stuck here. And the truth is, Joseph is just kind of stuck. His life was going well. He has 11 brothers. He's the favorite.
They have regular coats. He has a magnificent coat. His dad loves him more than his brothers. Now, we don't know how he handled that. We don't know if he was gracious with it, but he also has these dreams that he, maybe in his youth and naïveness, naivety, tells them what his dream is. And maybe he was bragging a little bit.
We don't know, but he has these dreams from God that say, they're going to bow down to me. He's going to have this position of power. He's going to, in the future, things are going to go really well for him, not only as his brothers, but his dad and his mom. Like, he goes and tells them these dreams. Like, what do y'all think this means? I think it means it's going to be awesome in the future.
He goes, he's working hard. He goes and sees his brothers and immediately thrown into a pit. They save his life, barely, sold into slavery, and everything that was going to happen in his future is taken away. As best he can tell, his whole future, his whole plans, his whole idea of how things were going to work, the way he had marked it out, the way he had mapped it out is just gone. And he's just stuck. I love the word meanwhile there.
Meanwhile, while everything else is going on, he's a slave. And I think sometimes we feel like that. Like, that's how our life works. Like, you, while everybody else was having a good time, while everybody else was advancing at work, while everybody else was having things go well for them, meanwhile, I lost my job. Meanwhile, my family fell apart. Meanwhile, my health deteriorated.
For some of you who are older, maybe you felt this very distinctly when you went to high school reunions, that sometimes you felt like you were showing up and you had the meanwhile story. Oh, you became a doctor. Well, meanwhile, I gained 30 pounds. And, you know, I'm really kind of between things right now. You just feel this on you and that's where he is. He feels, he's stuck.
And we don't get any extra part of the story here. And so what do you do in those moments? What do you do when you're stuck? What did he do? Well, we'll find out later that one of the things he does is he trusts the dreams that he had. He trusts what God had already told him.
He understood that those were prophetic and he trusts them. He believes in them. He would hold on to those, lean back into those, know that this is something that God had said so that regardless of how the situation seemed to be working right now, he could lean back into that. And some of you were like, neat. That sounds nice. I have had zero special dreams.
I've had some weird ones, but none that I'm like, when I get sad, I'll think about that dream and feel good again. That's not how they work. And you're going, I don't have anything special from God that he's told me that I can hold on to in the middle of this crisis, in the middle of this pain. And I would tell you that you're wrong, you have something better. Hebrews chapter one says this, and we'll have it on the screen. It says, long ago, at many times, and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets.
That means that God specifically spoke to people to give a message that this dream is prophetic, that he speaks in a way to declare what his will was, what he was doing, what he was about, what was going to happen. And then it says, but in these last days, he has spoken to us by his son, whom he appointed to the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. That through Jesus, he has spoken definitively and clearly that he loves us, that he's good, that he's the heir of all things, that he's the creator of the world and that there's hope fully and forever in Jesus, that he has spoken through Christ to us, that you have something better than a dream, you have the person and work of Jesus who has gone before us and who our hope is in forever. There was a story written in the middle of the 1800s called The Princess and the Goblin.
There's this princess, her name's Irene. She lives in a castle. She dresses very similarly to Joseph. It doesn't say that, but I'm just helping you picture it here. She lives in a castle. She's kind of by herself and she doesn't know, but there's a goblin kingdom that's near her castle and they've decided that they're going to try to rule again.
She's very lonely. She's wandering around the castle. She enters into this room and she finds her great-great-grandmother who is actually a fairy, as some great-great-grandmothers are. And she starts to talk with her and she gets to building this relationship with her great-great-grandmother. She goes and visits her often. And one of the things that happens is there's some bad things that happen.
Eventually, her great-great-grandmother gives her a ring and it's a magic ring and it has a thread on it that only Irene can see. It's a very thin thread and the grandmother says, if you ever are in danger, put this under your pillow and then grab the thread and follow the thread and it'll lead you to safety and it'll lead you to me. There's this time that comes where the goblins attack the castle. She puts the ring under her pillow. She grabs it and she starts following the thread. And as she heads out of the castle, she comes around and she sees that the thread leads her directly into the goblin's lair.
She just keeps following the thread in her fear and then finally the thread winds and it turns into a giant pile of rocks. She's terrified and heartbroken. This is awful. And she tries to follow the thread back to get out of the cave, but that's not how the thread works. It only goes forward. So after being sad for a while and being confused for a while, she decides, well, I might as well just follow the thread.
That's my best option. So she starts digging the rocks out. She's soon bleeding, soon crying as she tries to get these rocks out. Her fingers are hurt and as she digs them out, she finds hidden in the rocks was a prison and she finds her best friend, Kurti, who was trapped by the goblins. And Kurti's like, how on earth did you know I was here? She said, I'm just following the thread and now I see why it brought me here.
And she says, let's keep following the thread and Kurti says, no, we got to get out. That thread doesn't lead the right way and she says, all I can do is follow the thread. And she follows it and she follows it and she follows it and sometimes it leads to places that seem like there would be utter despair and destruction there, but she follows the thread and eventually she makes it to her great-great-grandmother and she makes it to safety and the thread was trustworthy because her great-great-grandmother was trustworthy. Pastor Tim Keller was writing about that story and he says this, he says, if you asked a seven-year-old, I'd like you to write me an essay on what it's like to fall in love and get married.
He says, when you read the essay, you'll say it isn't very close to the reality. We've got some parts right, but in general, doesn't really understand the process. He says, a seven-year-old can't really imagine what love and marriage will be like and he says, when you start to follow Jesus, you're at least that far away. You're at least that far away from understanding what this is going to look like. You have no idea how far you'll have to go. Jesus just says, follow me and sometimes you'll be following him and you'll be asking, why on earth are you bringing me here?
That's Joseph's story. God has a plan. God's made a promise, but it doesn't look like it's going to work out, but God is sovereign over all of it. Joseph's brothers haven't overpowered God. They haven't outwitted him. And for us, as we follow Jesus, a lot of times we just have a thread and all we can do is go forward.
It only goes that way. And sometimes we're going to hit places that we think, why on earth am I here? How on earth are you going to bring good out of this? But we have good and beautiful promises that are sealed. All the promises of God find their yes in Jesus. And they're sealed in him that he will take all things and turn them to good.
That he will make our suffering matter. That he'll bring glory out of it. That he brings hope in darkness and that we can trust and follow him. And we're not to turn back. We're just to hold on. We're to hold on to the fact that we know that Jesus has gone before us.
That he's suffered more than we have. That he's loved more than we have. That he's been tempted more than we have. And that he's walked it out in faithfulness and we can trust him. And that's our hope. So in those moments of just being stuck, trust that he's good.
That he knows what he's doing. And that you can follow him forward even though it doesn't look like it'll work out. Because he's gone before us. The band's going to come back up. We're going to take communion. If you're a follower of Jesus, one of the ways that we remind ourselves that he is good, that he has gone before us, that our hope is in him, that his promises come true, is that we remember his death in our place, on our behalf.
And so we'll take bread and we'll dip it in the cup to remind us of his body that was broken for us and his blood that was shed for us and to remind us that he has gone before us and our hope is in him. So we'll take a moment if you need to confess and repent of sin, if you need to go to Jesus with your anxiety and your fear and then we'll take communion together. If you are not a Christian, we would ask that you do not take communion because it is something that is for Christians. And in a moment after you've taken communion, we'll stand, we'll sing together one final song. So let's pray.
God, we thank you that you're good and that you go before us and that our hope is in you. We love you and praise you in Jesus' name. Amen.
Suffering Well
Transcript
It's good to see y'all this morning. We are going to be in Genesis chapter 29 and Genesis chapter 30 today. We've been walking through the book of Genesis and we've been following the story of Jacob. We're going to pick right up where we left off and here's what we're going to see today. Jacob is, in some ways, he's on the run. They dressed it up as nicely as they could, but he stole his brother Esau's birthright.
He tricked his, he stole his blessing. He stole his birthright and his blessing, although Esau signed off on the birthright thing very foolishly. And then he tricked his father and he tricked his brother Esau and he dressed up like his brother Esau and he stole the blessing from Isaac whose eyesight had failed him. And so he was able to, by smelling like his brother and by putting on goat's skin hair, be as hairy as his brother, which again, extremely hairy. And so he was able to do that. And he, they found out that Esau said, I'm going to kill him.
As soon as my dad passes away, then I'm going to kill Jacob. And so Rebecca finds out that is their mother. And she says, Hey, you've got to go. You've got to get out of here. And they come up with this idea and it kind of fits with what's going on. But they say, Jacob needs a wife and he doesn't need to marry a Hittite.
So they bless him and he hits the road. Now they dress it up a little bit with the blessing and the send off, but he doesn't really take anything with him. He's on his own. And in some ways he's leaving behind him, busted up family. And he's headed off to go find a wife. As we read this story today, we're going to see the wheels fall off of Jacob's life.
And in so many ways, what, what's going to look like it's going to turn out really well is just going to hit a wall and fall apart. And so as we read through this, we're going to see how they respond. And I want us to ask a question. I want us to look at this and try to see how are we meant to respond in the midst of suffering? How are we supposed to walk out life in pain and suffering and difficulty? And I will tell you that America, that we as Americans are poorly equipped to handle suffering.
We're poorly equipped to handle pain and difficulty. We, our founding fathers started us off with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And by and large, we've bought into that. Well, the goal in life is happiness, that the point in life is happiness. And whether or not you think about that all the time, it's an undercurrent in how we walk through life that I'm supposed to be happy. This is why we say things like, well, we know God wants me to be happy.
Therefore, and then we'll immediately follow that up with, I can kind of do whatever I want because his, his primary goal is my happiness. And we've bought into this idea and that kind of runs underneath everything. And the truth is this, if your goal in life is happiness, we are poorly equipped to handle suffering because every time suffering and happiness step into the ring, it's a no contest. Suffering destroys happiness. Pain destroys happiness. When suffering and happiness face off, suffering is undefeated.
And so what happens in the midst of our suffering, our happiness flees, and we suddenly have the question of how, what am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to move forward? Tim Keller, who's a pastor and an author, in his book, Walking with God Through Pain and Suffering, he says this, he says, in a secular view, suffering is never seen as a meaningful part of life, but only as an interruption. If you think about that, most of us, we've bought into that idea that suffering is an interruption in the midst of our good life. Suffering, difficulty, pain are causing us to have what we're going for be not achievable.
It's taking happiness away. It's an interruption. It's messing us up. It's removing from us what the point of life is. He says, with that understanding, there are only two things to do when pain and suffering occur. The first one is to manage and lessen the pain.
Then he says, this is why professionals now primarily talk about stress management. This is why we have high medication rates. This is why we have the primary goal is to just manage and lessen the suffering. He says, the second way, the first one is to manage it. The second way, the second way to handle suffering in this framework is to look for the cause of the pain and eliminate it, to fix it, find the problem and fix it. And I'm an American and that sounds smart.
You're in the middle of suffering. Make it manageable. And if it's fixable, fix it. The problem with that is there are some seasons of suffering, there are some types of pain that are not manageable and that are not fixable. And that biblically, we're invited into some things that there are times where we have to choose between obedience and suffering, disobedience and pursuit of happiness. There are going to be seasons in life where you get to choose obedience and difficulty, obedience and pain or disobedience and pursuit of happiness.
And we are ill-equipped to think that this is good, to think that obedience paired with suffering and obedience paired with pain is a good and loving thing for God to give us. As Americans, we're ill-equipped for that. We honestly need something, a purpose in life beyond the pursuit of happiness, something that's a little bit more resilient because happiness is too weak. The truth is you will face inevitable suffering and inevitable pain. There will be seasons in life where you are meant to walk in obedience in the midst of pain and in the midst of suffering and not to try to abort what is going on and not to try to just escape and not to just look to something to fix the problem and not just try to find a way to manage it and lessen it and get past it, but you're supposed to find a way to walk in it.
So we're going to read this story today and we're going to watch Jacob and his family respond the way we want to. Manage it, lessen it, fix it, find something to satisfy, find something to get past, and it's not going to work. And then we're going to finish our time looking to see if there's something better, if the Bible holds out something to us better, bigger, more meaningful, if it gives us a better answer to suffering. So let's pray and then we'll start reading. God, we have a heavy task at hand, and in so many ways we're trying to look at your word and swim against the current of our culture, and in so many ways we are going to translate this poorly as we filter it through the way we want to think about the world.
And we ask that your Holy Spirit would enliven us to see your word, to respond well to it. We love you and we praise you in Jesus' name. Amen. Starts off happy. So that'll be good.
Then Jacob went on his journey, chapter 29, verse 1, and came to the land of the people of the east. So his journey is to go find a wife. They specifically told him, go find your uncle Laban, marry one of his daughters. Culturally, that's not uncommon or weird. Culturally for us, that's terrible advice. So don't go find your uncle and marry one of his daughters.
But for them, this is fine. Let's keep moving. He's looking for his cousin. As he looked, he saw a well in a field and behold, three flocks of sheep lying beside it. For out of that well, the flocks were watered. The stone on the well's mouth was large.
And when all the flocks were gathered there, the shepherds would roll the stone from the mouth of the well and water the sheep and put the stone back in the place over the mouth of the well. So Jacob said to them, he shows up, he's some shepherds. He says, my brothers, where do you come from? And they said, we are from Haran. That's where he's supposed to go find his uncle. He said to them, do you know Laban, the son of Nahor?
That's his uncle. They said, we know him. He said to them, is it well with him? How's he doing? They said, it is well. See, Rachel, his daughter, is coming with the sheep.
Okay. Prime, marriable, lady. He's, he's made it to the right place, about 500 miles from where he was. It took a month or more. It seems as if he just walked. That's what I said.
They, they dressed it up like they were blessing him and sending him out. But last time they went to get a wife, there was 10 camels and a bunch of people and a bunch of clothes. And there was like a big caravan. And they were like, go find a wife. Boy, bye. Like that was it.
They just sent him out. He, he walks off, you know, he took his nice rock pillow and went and took a nap. And that's, that's where he is. So he shows up, but it's worked out. He's in the right place. She's coming towards him.
And so he says, he said, behold, it is still high day. It's not time for the livestock to be gathered together, water the sheep and go pasture them. But they said, we cannot until all the flocks are gathered together and the stone is rolled from the mouth of the well. Then we water the sheep. So, he gets the information he needs from them. They say, that's your cousin.
He says, well, y'all need to go on somewhere. It's basically, he's trying to get a little bit of alone time. He wants to talk to her. He wants to have this, not have an audience. And they say, no, no, no, we got to wait for all the shepherds to get here and move that big rock. So, while he was still speaking with them, this is verse nine, Rachel came with her father's sheep for she was a shepherdess.
Now, as soon as Jacob saw Rachel, the daughter of Laban, we find out later that she's pretty, his mother's brother and the sheep of Laban, his mother's brother, Jacob came near and rolled the stone from the well's mouth and watered the flock of Laban, his mother's brother. He got pretty girl strength. And a lot of the guys in the room understand what that is. I once carried a two, it was a two man Job, but I carried it upstairs by myself because I thought my now wife was pretty. And she doesn't realize this, but she married me and I won. Halfway up the stairs, I almost fell.
And I was like, you better not. That's what happens. He sees her and he walks over and he's like, let me pick this stone up. Oh, flex a little bit. I got this. Oh, what?
A bunch of men have to do it. Watch this. And then he waters her sheep. He's trying to make a good impression. And then it says this, it gets weird. And I love that.
I think he kind of did this out of order and it was probably fun. Then Jacob kissed Rachel and wept aloud. First of all, it's not a romantic kiss. This is a normal greeting. It wasn't like, he was like, do you like that? Watch this.
It wasn't like that. Normal warm greeting. Uh, they still do this. They still practice this, uh, uh, overseas. Ben Johnson, who went to Lebanon for about 10 years. Uh, they practice it there.
It said it took him a while to get used to it. But then one of the first times he came home, he had just gotten off of a long flight. He had to run by his home church to do something real quick. He saw the facilities guy. And without thinking, he grabbed him and kissed him on the cheek. He said, the guy about threw him across the hall.
So what are you doing boy? And so, uh, normal here, normal Middle East, not normal in our culture, but that's a normal thing for him to do. So he kisses her. It's a warm greeting after serving. And then it says he wept aloud. Now they're a little bit more emotionally involved.
They respond more emotionally than Westerners do, but it's still kind of weird for him to just start crying. And Jacob told Rachel that he was her father's kinsman, that he was Rebecca's son. And she ran and told her father. So he goes to, he goes to kiss her. And it's like, he's overwhelmed with how well this has worked and how he's come to the right place and met the right person. He just starts weeping out loud, which had to be weird for her.
And she's like staring at him. And he's like, no, I'm your cousin. It's cool. I was came from so far away, but bro's going to kill me. Like she runs and tells her, her dad. And it says, Laban heard the news about Jacob, his sister's son.
He ran to meet him and embraced him and kissed him. And brought him to his house. Jacob told Laban all these things. And Laban said to him, surely you are my bone and my flesh. And he stayed with him a month. We don't know what all these things are, but he told him all the things.
So how, how much he included. I have the birthright. I was the younger son and all that stuff. We don't really know, but he at least tells him enough to know. I am Rebecca's son. So he stayed with him a month.
So it's been a month. Then Laban said to Jacob, because you are my kinsman, should you therefore serve me for nothing? So Jacob's just been living there and working. Tell me what shall your wages be? So he's saying you should earn something.
You should be able to begin to grow your own personal wealth. It shouldn't just be, you are treated like my servant. You're one of my kinsmen. Now, Laban had two daughters. So, this is the marriable group. This is what he was sent to do.
The name of the older was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel. Leah's eyes were weak, but Rachel was beautiful in form and appearance. Leah's eyes were weak, but Rachel was beautiful in form and appearance. There is some question as to what it means by Leah's eyes were weak. This isn't a super common phrase. Some argue that it's a compliment.
It's saying that her eyes were tender. They were distinct from others. They were like a beautiful look. And so there, if that was the way you took it, it would be saying, Leah had pretty eyes, but Rachel was pretty from head to toe. That's what it would be saying. Most commentators and most people believe that it is saying something negative about Leah, because what it says about Rachel after but is something really nice.
So it thinks it's saying she needed glasses. She squinted a lot. Her eyes didn't line up correctly. She had some kind of eye malformation or difficulty or sickness that made him really watery or puffy or something. So it's saying Leah was older, but Rachel.
That's kind of the tone of the text. Leah, but Rachel. And for those of you who grew up with siblings, maybe you feel a distinct pain when that's phrased that way. Because there's something about having siblings that make you consistently just compared to one another. And it's hard for parents to not have some amount of this one, but this one in different categories. And I know, I'm sure that was really tough for my brothers growing up.
They're not here. I can say what I want. But that's what's happening. And so it says, Leah, but Rachel. And so it says, Jacob loved Rachel. And he said, I will serve you seven years for your younger daughter, Rachel.
And Laban said, it is better that I give her to you than that I should give her to any other man. Stay with me. So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him, but a few days because of the love he had for her. Now that is one of the nicest things that has been written in the book of Genesis. This has been a rough book. That was sweet, y'all.
He said, it seems like just a few days because of the love he had for her. He said, I'll serve you seven years. Now it was normal for someone who was going to marry to pay a bride price for the bride, to offer something to the parents of the bride, because you're removing them, removing the bride from their household. And so he offers seven years of labor. He says, seven years. My energy, my effort.
You're not paying me anything. I get some room and board, and I want to marry Rachel. And Laban says, yes. If this were an American story, if this were a Disney movie, we're getting real close to the end. They're about to ride off. It's going to say, happily ever after.
The sort of bird or teapot is going to sing something at us. This is real life. It's not a Disney story. And this is not going to work out well. Verse 21. Then Jacob.
Oh, because it's been seven years. It seemed like just a few days. It's been seven years. Then Jacob said to Laban, give me my wife that I may go into her, for my time is completed. Bruh. Maybe word that differently next time.
Not a super gracious way. Say the thing about how it didn't feel long, because you love her so much. Like, you know, lead with that. But he says, give me my wife. So Laban gathered together all the people of the place, and made a feast.
But in the evening, he took his daughter Leah, and brought her to Jacob, and he went in to her. Laban gave his female servant Zilpah to his daughter Leah, to be her servant. That's going to come up later. And in the morning, behold, it was Leah. Okay, so there's a big feast. It's fair to assume there's alcohol.
It does not lean hard into that. It's not saying that Jacob was blind, drunk, or anything, but it's fair to assume there's some alcohol. When it gets dark, depending on the time of year, depending on the moon, it's dark. She would have been veiled. And also, given the way Jacob worded his, let me have my wife, I don't think he was super talkative. when she was brought into the tent. So what happens, is at some point, Laban worked out this plan, I think, assuming, seven years gave him plenty of time to marry Leah off, and then not so much.
Nobody seems very interested in marrying Leah. I think if he had some actual other offers, he might have done something different. He comes up with the idea to get a bride price for Leah, and to marry her off. You could argue that he was trying to be kind to Leah. I think, as we see Laban's character play out, not so much. He's trying to be kind to himself.
And he's setting his daughters up for some difficulty. And in some ways, Jacob's met his match. So he swaps Leah out. He had to tell Rachel, nope, Leah, veil up, you're on deck, let's go. And in the morning, behold, it was Leah. And Jacob said to Laban, what is this you have done to me?
Did I not serve with you for Rachel? Why then have you deceived me? Now, if we'll just think about being Leah for a second. Seems like nobody wants to marry you. Jacob shows up. He does not choose you.
He chooses Rachel. And by the way the text is written, that seems common. Leah, but Rachel. Then, you have one night with him where he would have been, in some ways, passionate, in some ways, loving. And you know, she has to be nervous and anxious about what's going to happen in the morning. And what happens, I'm assuming the look on her face was never forgotten.
The look on his face was never forgotten by her. When he saw that it was her, and the first thing he did was run out of the tent to go talk to Laban. And I assume that the pain there, and the pain for Rachel, who, as best we can guess, probably appreciated. Jacob probably loved him, and we're never told, but we know that he loved her, and a lot of times, when someone loves you, that's a very attractive quality. Would have been looking forward to getting married, and wasn't able to, and this is a mess. Laban said, this is verse 26, it is not so done in our country to give the younger before the firstborn.
Ooh. If you know Jacob's story, that's a sick burn. He says, oh, maybe where you're from, the younger gets to be treated like the firstborn. But we're 500 miles from your mama's house, and that's not what we do here. So he swapped Leah out.
He says, complete the week of this one, and we will give you the other also, in return for serving me another seven years. That's part of the reason why he views them as property, this one, the other one. And he's not super loving towards his daughters, gracious or setting them up for anything good. So there would have been a week where they would have kind of been a honeymoon week. He says, finish your week, and then you can have Rachel. Jacob did so, and he completed her week.
Then Laban gave him his daughter Rachel to be his wife. Laban gave his female servant, Bilhah, to his daughter Rachel to be her servant. So Jacob went in to Rachel also, and he loved Rachel more than Leah, and served Laban for another seven years. What could have been beautiful is now set up to be a train wreck. What could have been joy filled, and the truth is, that's so often how life works. We think we're on the right track, we think everything's going well, we think we've done what we needed to do to be headed in the right direction, and then in a night, over the course of a few weeks, this fell apart, and now he's married to sisters.
He loves one, he doesn't love the other, and there's no way at this point it's set up to be difficult and painful and hurtful for everybody, and that's the way we feel. So many of us can look back and go, it was all going well until, that's when it fell apart, and that's when the pain happened, and that's where everything came in that got messed up, and from that moment, so many of us have been trying to manage and to fix. If I could just get past it, if I could just get to this, if I could just have this happen, if this would just go away, if this could just be like this, and we're going to see that's what they do for the rest of the story. Verse 31, when the Lord saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren.
Much of the rest of this story is going to deal with child birth, and we're going to see some joy and some pain and hurtfulness mixed in here, and what we see in this very first sentence is that God is in charge of conception, and that's going to be pulled through the rest of this story, that God rules and reigns sovereignly over conception. This is why we ought to take life from conception very seriously, and this is why it can be so painful for those who struggle with infertility, and those who have struggled with poor choices here, and abortion, and those who have conceived a child, but not been able to carry the child full term, and have lost babies. This is painful. So I would just ask that as we continue to read through this, that you would stay, that you would listen, that you would see the pain here, and that hopefully we can reach some redemption on the other side.
But this is painful. And Leah conceived and bore a son and called his name Reuben. For she said, Because the Lord has looked upon my affliction, for now my husband will love me. She conceived again and bore a son and said, Because the Lord has heard that I am hated, he has given me this son also, and she called his name Simeon. Again she conceived and bore a son and said, Now this time my husband will be attached to me because I have borne him three sons. Therefore his name was called Levi.
And as she conceived again and bore a son, she said, This time I will praise the Lord. Therefore she called his name Judah. Then she ceased bearing. There's a few short verses, but it drags out over the course of at least about five years. Maybe longer. What we see is that she kept saying, she has the first one and she says, Now my husband will love me.
But then she has another one, several years later, and says basically the same thing. Because the first one didn't fix it, so she says, Now. Now God's seen I'm hated this one. And she has a third son years later and says, Now. Finally she reaches the fourth one and she says, This time I'm just going to praise the Lord. And it seems as if she's reached a little bit of a place of peace, a little bit of understanding that this idea that if I can just have this, this will fix it, this will solve the problem.
She's looking ahead every time she has a child and says, This will be it. She's looking to some sort of circumstantial fix to the pain that she is in. And a lot of times when we talk as church family, we'll say, You're going through a season of difficulty. And sometimes what we don't mean by season is summer, spring, fall. We mean this. She's walking through six years, five years, ten years.
And every time she gets pregnant, this hope swells in her heart. This time. This time he'll care about me. He's certainly sleeping with her. This time he'll love me. This time he'll be attached to me.
This time he'll care about me. And it doesn't work. Never happens. Chapter 30, verse 1. When Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, she envied her sister. She said to Jacob, Give me children or I shall die.
And Jacob's anger was kindled against Rachel and he said, Am I in the place of God who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb? She looks, She has Jacob's love, but she doesn't have any children and that meant a lot culturally. It still does. There's a lot of hope and life wrapped up in that. But she, there it meant that you were honored, that you were blessed, and she has no children.
She says, Give me children or I'm going to die. You see, she has his love, but she wants children. Leah has children, but she wants his love and everybody's looking for a circumstantial fix. They're looking to something and saying, If I could just have this, then I'd be okay. Then I'd be at peace.
Then my heart would settle. She's looking and saying, If I don't have this, I'm going to die. I have to have this to live. I have to have this to be okay. It's not worth living if I don't. And how often do we do that?
My whole life is hanging on this. I've just got to have this. And if I can't, I don't know what the point is. And if I can't, I don't know how to move forward. Verse 3. Then she said, Here is my servant Bilhah.
Go into her so that she may give birth on my behalf that even I may have children through her. So she's looking for a circumstantial fix. This is not coming from a place of faith. This is not coming from a place of hope. It's just that I need children. I've got to have them.
She goes through this process which was common culturally. There's a lot to the Bible just tells us happens without telling us how to think about it and how to approach it. And a lot of times, especially in Genesis, we're just going to hear some stories. The Bible's going to keep moving. There are places later in Scripture where we see this is not a good idea. This is not the way to go about this.
Not to have multiple wives. Not to approach it this way. But she does this. It's common. So she gave him her servant Bilhah as a wife.
And Jacob went into her and Bilhah conceived and bore Jacob a son. Then Rachel said, God has judged me and has also heard my voice and given me a son. Do y'all see that? She said, he's also heard my voice. That's pointing back to Reuben where she said, God heard me. And she says, yeah, God also heard me.
Which means that Jacob knows that these names meant something. It was common that all the names of these children were saying, Jacob will love me now. And it still didn't work for Leah. Each child she named was a cry for help and he doesn't even care. And then Rachel says, ha ha ha, he heard me too. You're not the only person who can pray.
Rachel's servant Bilhah conceived again and bore Jacob a second son. Then Rachel said, with mighty wrestlings, I have wrestled with my sister and have prevailed. So she called his name Naphtali. This is a terrible home to live in. She named her child Wrestle because she's fighting with her sister. The amount of unrest, venom, pain here is overwhelming.
And some of you can picture this so clearly because you know what it's like to live in a house like this. When Leah saw that she had ceased bearing children, she took her servant Zilpah and gave her to Jacob as a wife. Then Leah's servant Zilpah bore Jacob a son and Leah said, good fortune, has come. She called his name Gav. Leah's servant Zilpah bore Jacob a second son and Leah said, happy am I for women have called me happy. So she called his name Asher.
So at this point, Leah seems that she's no longer just pointing back and saying, these children will give me love. These children will draw Jacob to me. She's just saying, I just want children. They make me happy. They're where life is and she's putting her hope in them. In the days of the wheat harvest, Reuben, that's the oldest, went and found mandrakes in the field and brought them to his mother, Leah.
I'm not sure how many botanists and horticulturalists we have in the room. I think many of you were like, wait, I've only heard about mandrakes in Harry Potter. Are they real? They are. They look similar to the little things they pull out. They're all twisted up and rudy and they're all little people and they've been treated to have special powers since forever.
I think too much of them. They're kind of a hallucinogen and they can kill you. The Bible is not advocating the way they think about this but they understood mandrakes. They call them love apples. So they understood when they found this and it was a rare find that this was some sort of fertility drug, some sort of aphrodisiac and so it was much appreciated especially in the middle of the fight that these two sisters are having.
Then Rachel said to Leah, please give me some of your son's mandrakes. But she said to her, is it a small matter that you have taken away my husband? Would you take away my son's mandrakes also? I can't imagine living in this house. Her response is, you took my husband, which I'm assuming that Rachel would feel like, no, you took my husband. She says, you want my mandrakes also?
You want my super special fertility? I'm going to help you have babies? But she said to her, is it a small matter that you've taken away my husband? Would you take away my son's mandrakes also? Rachel said, then he may lie with you tonight in exchange for your son's mandrakes. So he spent most of his time with Rachel.
She says, you can have him for the night. Give me the mandrakes. She believes that's going to help her in her infertility. When Jacob came from the field in the evening, Leah went out to meet him and said, you must come into me for I have hired you with my son's mandrakes. So he lay with her that night.
This is healthy. Jacob is not leading his family, is not setting them up for any amount of joy. He got pushed into this by Laban who deceived him, who tricked him. And then Jacob at this point is just, it seems, one of the ladies in our teaching team said that it seems like his goal is happy wife, happy life. Like he's just this kind of, whatever they say, he's not trusting in, hoping in the Lord. He's not trying to lead here.
He's just doing whatever they say. He's mostly silent. I think he's just trying to manage the circumstances that he's in. Later, we see later in Genesis when he meets the Pharaoh, he says that his days were few and evil. He's not joyous. He's not trusting.
He's not walking with the Lord. He just is here. He's kind of dead inside. That's what it seems like. So he lay with her that night, verse 17, and God listened to Leah and she conceived and bore Jacob a fifth son.
And Leah said, God has given me my wages because I gave my servant to my husband. So she called his name Issachar. Now that statement she says there, God has given me my wages because I gave him my servant to my husband. The Bible is not saying that's a good theology. It's just saying that's what she said. Also, the theology defined here is that mandrakes don't help you with conception.
God does. And again, for those who struggle with infertility, that truth that God is sovereign over that can bring more pain than to just think it was random. It can be more hurtful than to just think there's, you know, it is what it is. But that's the truth that's found here. And Leah conceived again, and she bore Jacob a sixth son. And Leah said, God has endowed me with a good endowment.
Now my husband will honor me because I have born him six sons. She hasn't fully moved off of the idea that children are going to make her husband love her, appreciate her, honor her. She's still clinging to this, longing for this, and it has been years. And in some ways, who can blame her? But nobody's joyous, nobody's hope-filled, and everybody's looking for something else to fix the situation.
Verse 21, After she bore a daughter and called her name Dinah, then God remembered Rachel, and God listened to her and opened her womb. It's helpful to note that when Rebecca could not conceive, we were told that Isaac prayed for her. It doesn't seem like Jacob's praying. It seems like it's just intentionally kind of saying, listen to Rachel, listen to Leah. Jacob is just there playing no real part in any of this, except for the conception part when they pass him back and forth from 10 to 10. Bore a son and said, God has taken away my reproach.
And she called his name Joseph, saying, may the Lord add to me another son. That's one of the saddest lines in this to me. Rachel has been hurting and pleading and wanting to have a child. She has a son. He's born. She says, God's taken away my reproach.
And you're like, yes, praise him. Yes, trust him. Yes, see that he's good. And what she says is, may I have another. Her heart, even in the moment of naming this child, has not settled. She is not satisfied.
There is no joy. There is no hope. And that's the way it works. When we hang everything on our circumstances, we will not find satisfaction. It will always be short-lived. And the truth is, as you read this story out, and we'll see it in chapter 35, she has another son, and she dies in childbirth.
The thing that she thought would give her life and purpose and meaning ultimately is what kills her. We're going to stop there. Nobody here does anything for us other than model for us over, in short verses, but over a long period of time, how we so often walk through life. If I can just have this, then I'll be satisfied. If I can just make it here, then I'll be okay. Nobody's happy.
Everybody's chasing it. We have to have something more resilient than happiness because we are going to walk through pain and suffering and hurt, sickness. Should the Bible give us any help here? First thing I want to show you is that what just happened here, and then when she does have her next son, Benjamin, is that the twelve tribes of Israel were born. God's promise that He made early on that I'm going to make you into a great nation, that in the midst of this pain and in the midst of this difficulty, He is accomplishing that. In the midst of two wives and two extra wives, He is accomplishing His promise.
In the midst of what is brokenness and sin, God is working towards His glory, towards His accomplishment of His promise, towards ultimately everyone's good in the midst of. He's working actually through it. It has not derailed His plans. That this is ultimately the tribes that will be the nation of Israel. And this is where God shows us how He works in and through suffering. And ultimately as Christians, we know and hold that to be true.
That Jesus Christ suffers. That He's the suffering servant. That He's a man of sorrows. That He's acquainted with grief. That God does not sit far away from our pain. He does not sit far away from our suffering.
It is not just an interruption, but He uses it and works through it for redemption and for good and for His glory and for His purposes. That if we are Christians, if we are people of the cross, we cannot just believe that suffering and pain and difficulty are an interruption to our otherwise meant to be happy lives because that is a false understanding of who God is and what He does and how He works in suffering and what His ultimate purpose is in the world. It is not our temporal happiness. It is His eternal glory. And the beauty of the gospel and the beauty of the scriptures and the beauty of this story is that when we are caught up in His eternal glory, we will have unending satisfaction and unending joy.
And when we aim at temporal happiness, we will never get it. We will have glimpses of it. We will have moments of it. We will have tastes of it. We will get to what we think we see other people having and enjoying it. But what ultimately happens is what happened with Leah and Rachel.
Well, Rachel is looking at Leah and saying, see, she has got the happiness. And Leah is looking at Rachel and saying, see, she has got the happiness. And the truth is we will spend our time looking into the dirt at temporal things that will not satisfy, that will not fill us up, that will not fix the problem. And ultimately, we will die and we will have missed the point, which is that God works for His glory and in that, we get joy and we get good. It's what Romans 8 says. We're going to pull it up on the screen.
I want to read that to you quickly. It says, the Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God and if children, then heirs. Heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ provided we suffer with Him in order that we may also be glorified with Him, that we might be swept up in His glory, that we might be brought in to His glory and it says, for I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. The sufferings of this time are not worth comparing to the glory. Do you know what defeats suffering? God's glory.
Happiness can't do it. Your temporal, circumstantial satisfaction will not satisfy, will not fix the problem, but if we get swept up in God's glory, in His story, in His purpose, if we get brought into what He is accomplishing in the world, if we lean into His eternal purpose and His glory, then we are equipped and we are prepared for all of the temporal suffering that we will face because it's not worth comparing to the glory that is to come. That what we face here on a daily basis and that what we walk through for seasons of life, for decades, when we get the diagnosis back and we are staring down the barrel of pain and torment and torture and death, if our goal is happiness, we are not prepared. When we get the news that our spouse has cheated on us that they are leaving, we are not prepared.
If we get the news, if we find out that our parents have passed, if we pull through an intersection and are hit by a truck and we stand and weep over the graves of our children, we are not prepared unless we know that there is a God who joined us in our suffering and in the midst of suffering brings about purpose and sweeps us up into His glory and gives us an eternity filled with hope and gives us something bigger to lean into and something stronger to hold on to. 2 Corinthians 4, Paul's talking about the suffering that they're facing as they try to proclaim the gospel and he says, knowing that He who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us into Your presence. That life lived for God's glory gives us hope beyond our suffering and purpose in our suffering. And this is the hope beyond our suffering.
That this will not last. This is not eternal. This will not win. And if you are in Christ, you will rise. That the God who raised Christ from the dead will raise us from the dead and this death that works in our bodies will be conquered and we will stand in glory forever. He keeps going.
He says, for it is all for your sake so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving to the glory of God. He's actually saying that they, the apostles, are suffering so that more people might know Christ and ultimately be brought into His glory. so we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away. Our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. He says, we are not crushed even though our outer self is wasting away.
Some of us are in situations where we feel like we are wasting away. We are decaying. We are being crushed. We are being destroyed. And He says, even though that's happening, God's Spirit works in us and He enlivens us daily and He gives us hope and He gives us meaning beyond this. He gives us a way to work through it and ultimately He gives us purpose in it because He is preparing in our sufferings.
He is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory. That there will not be a tear shed. That there will not be a drop of blood that hits the ground. That there will not be a moment of anguish for a Christian that does not roll into God's divine purpose that you might be able to handle how wonderful it is to be in His presence. That it is through our suffering we are prepared to enter into the glory that He has. That we are brought into and swept up into His better purposes that we might be able to handle it through His suffering.
Because Jesus walked through suffering to bring us into glory and we follow Him in suffering so that we might enter in as well. As we, verse 18, look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient. Meaning they'll pass. But the things that are unseen are eternal.
He's saying that the way that we are able to stand in this is that we fix our eyes beyond our circumstances. And this is so difficult to do. Paul at the beginning of this chapter says that they're afflicted, they're perplexed, they're persecuted, they carry around death in their bodies, that they're struck down. But we have to remind ourselves of the glory and the good that is to come. We have to look towards what is eternal and where our hope is found that we might rest in Him. I'm going to pray and we're going to sing more songs at the end than we normally do that we might walk our minds towards the Lord, that we might fix our eyes on Him, that we might see Him in His glory and be brought along with Him.
And then during this next song we will take communion that those of us in the room who have placed our faith in Jesus might sit for a moment, talk with the Lord about where we have trusted other things, talk to the Lord where we have been looking towards our circumstances to solve our problems and help set our minds on what is eternal, on where our hope is and where God's glory is that we might be brought along into a bigger purpose that creates in us a resiliency in the midst of suffering and pain. That you would come and take communion where we celebrate that Jesus' body was broken and His blood was shed, that it was His suffering where God twisted and bent the course of history towards His glory and His fame and His name that He had been working towards that as the pinnacle of history and that we as Christians are prepared to walk through what we're walking through. I don't know what you're going through right now and I don't know what you're going to face in the days to come and I don't know what you're trying to live down in your past but I know that God does and I know that it is not wasted because God works in suffering that we might know Him and that we might be prepared to be in His presence. We don't know why we suffer the way we do and we don't know why you suffer in one way and someone else in another way but we know that God is good and that He loves us and that He has a purpose in suffering and therefore we can trust Him and we can walk through the darkest of days with a hope that will not die.
We will weep. We will doubt. We will hurt. We will have moments when we feel we cannot move forward. Paul says that they were crushed beyond what they could bear and then we will lean into an eternal God who has an eternal glory and trust that it's for His name and for His good and that in that we will be brought into what matters. We fix our eyes on what's eternal.
So sit, pray, lean into the Lord, try to fix your eyes on Him. If you've been looking towards something to say, if I could just have this then I'll be okay. If I could just have this then I'll be satisfied. Repent and trust in the Lord and then we'll take communion. Let's pray.
God, we thank You for Your grace. We thank You for Your goodness. We thank You that our suffering has meaning and purpose and hope. That it is not an interruption, that it does not mean that the good plan for our life has fallen apart but that You work in suffering, that You work through suffering for Your glory and for our good and that we can look beyond our suffering because our hope is fixed in a resurrected Christ and that we can have purpose in our suffering because You are preparing for us a glory that is not worth comparing. Look what we're going through now. We pray that we would point to You well in our suffering as we weep as we're broken and as we trust.
In Jesus' name. as they do nothing. Let's keep it.