Joseph
Jeremy MacDonald · Tidal Church Moncton · July 9, 2023 · Give Me a Break series
Jeremy MacDonald looks at Joseph in Genesis 39 and Hebrews 12:1 to show that when crises come, what we fix our eyes on shapes our direction. Fixing our eyes on Jesus carries us through hardship, even when we can't see the ending.
More from Jeremy MacDonald · The Give Me a Break series
Topics: Faith, Suffering, Discipleship
Transcript
[0:00] All right, I got a big question for you. This is gonna be a lot of fun. I'm really looking forward to this little exercise together, and there's a little bit of a twist at the end. So just go with the, with me on the journey a little bit here. I wanna throw this big question up on the screen. What would you do with $50 million? I'm not gonna ask you any questions in how you got it. All right? But sometime this week, if somehow you ended up with $50 million that you don't currently have, what would you do with it? Now, you've probably thought about this before. This is like a common, obviously, daydream. People have, this has probably been a part of your, you know, at some point, just as you're driving, thinking about things like, what would I do with an extra infusion of cash? And so there's ideas, you've, you've had ideas, you've had thoughts. So it's probably something similar, right? You might think like, I'm gonna buy a big house, right? And around these parts, $50 million, I mean, you can't find a house for $50 million, it's not gonna cost you hardly anything to get a house.
[0:50] So if you had that much money, and so you think about like, oh yeah, I would get the house and like the thing would work, the, I don't have to worry about, you know, having to replace the roof. Like everything's just pristine. That's on your mind, right? Like that's the thing. But then you still have more money. So you think, well, what would I spend? I'm gonna probably buy some vehicles, right? I'd finally get that truck that you've been hoping for your whole life. Or you go back and it's a car show weekend. So you probably saw some cars, you could walk down there with a wad of cash and get whatever you wanted, right? Like that would be something special for you. And so keep going though. You think, okay, so I got some cars. Well, I've got the big house, but you still have so much, right? So much money. So, so what would be the other thing? Maybe you'd pay off some debt. So that's a bit of your journey. You know, maybe you didn't, you know, they're not excited about the debt, but like you've got it. And so it's easy. You write the check and then boom, the debt is paid for, but you still have more, right? There's still some more.
[1:36] So what else would you do? Maybe for you it's like, okay, well, I don't know if I'd want one, but people get them. And so maybe I buy a boat. Like, I don't know, people with money seem to have boats. They seem to be fun. You don't really see people sad on boats. And so, I don't know, maybe I get one, maybe I get a, a sea-doo, maybe I get a couple. Like who knows, right? You're just, you got the money, you're spending it, right? This is the point. This is, this isn't the exercise, it's just fun. This is not gonna happen, but it's fun. Okay? Next up, you buy another house because you have so much money. What am I gonna do with it all? I buy another house, maybe buy it in Florida because it's cold here. So I'm gonna go to Florida or I'm gonna go to a different country, and you've got the money for it. And all of a sudden you start to get through and you realize, well, I've kind of bought a lot of the things, like at some time you kind of run out of the list of things. And so you realize, what else can you spend money on? There's all sorts of things you can spend any money on, right? How about this? How about you go on some trips? You see the world, right?
[2:24] There's places that you wanted to go. I don't know where they are, but they're probably nice, and you get there and maybe they are, and maybe you try some new food or maybe you hate the food and you just go to McDonald's. But either way, you're gonna see the world. It's gonna be great because you've got the money for it. Okay? Number two, how about this? You're gonna quit your job. I'm done. I'm walking out. It's not even a two week notice. It's like a two minute notice. I just wanna tell you about this and I'm outta here. If that's your story, hey, it's fine. This is just a daydream. All right? How about this? I have some unique experiences, like skydiving. People go skydiving. That's kind of fun. Maybe I wanna go snorkeling. Not to the Titanic. That's not even, it's not even a, just, we can move on. Okay? So, but the point is, you would try, you would do some different things. Now, the, the fun part about this experience, this is the twist.
[3:11] After you think about all of those kinds of things, this is my favorite part, is what would you do having $50 million this week? What would you do in 50 months from now? 50 months from now is just over four years. I say 50 months because it's 50 million. It kind of just connects in your mind. It's a little bit easier. But you know, four years from now, if you got all that money this week, what would you be doing in 50 months? Because if you're honest with yourself, 50 months from now, if you had gotten all that money 50 months from now, by that point you would've bought all the things. Like there's nothing left on the list. If you thought of it, you've bought it. There's nothing on the Amazon wishlist, it's just, it's already in your house or in your other house. Number two, you've gone on all the vacations, right?
[4:01] Like you've already taken all the trips four years, you know, lots of time, you've gone on all the places. But the issue is, and this is the real issue, this is the thing I want you to think about. The issue is that you still have 24 hours to spend each day. Not only that, but of course you still have 365 days to spend each year. You see, the interesting thing about all of this is that when you get into it and you start thinking about what you would do, at some point you end up with still the same thing you had at the very beginning, which is your time. And this exercise, I think, creates a little bit of a crisis in each and every one of us. So just for a moment, seriously, just in a moment, like what would you actually spend your time doing if you won money this week and you skipped to four years from now?
[4:50] It's a little bit challenging. I think, like, to be honest, it, it creates a little bit of a crisis moment in each of us. It creates this moment where you have to think about, what do I actually care most about? Or maybe put a little bit a different way. A question that I kind of want us to wrestle with throughout time today is this, what are your eyes fixed on? What are your eyes fixed on? Because if we create little crisis moments, even if they're just artificial thought experiments, the thing that brings us through the crisis is usually whatever our eyes have been fixed on, the thing that we've cared most about, the things that we're working towards, the thing that matters most to us.
[5:36] And so the kind of thought experiment of the money simply reminds us that at some point we still have to spend our time. We still have to do something. We still have to move in a direction. In what direction are you moving in? What are your eyes actually fixed on now in your life? You've had crisis moments already. And so you can kind of see by even looking back over the history of your life, the times that you've been carried through a crisis and the ways that perhaps the decisions that you made were influenced by what your eyes were fixed on. Or maybe you realize in the crisis that you've had, you didn't have something clear enough to look to, and that created a bit of an issue. And so there's all sorts of crisis moments. Let's take a look at a few. Adolescence. Classic one, adolescence, becoming your own person, creating your own identity, separating out from your family of origin, deciding who you're gonna be in life carries with it a pretty intense type of crisis. Other people, remember, you remember choosing university or choosing vocation, deciding what you're gonna do for work.
[6:37] That's a crisis moment, to decide how am I going to spend so much of my life in terms of where I go and what I do. How about getting married or having kids? Like a good crisis though? Like it's not like it was a bad crisis. I mean, maybe your story, I don't know, but just be careful who you're sitting beside. No nudging, but like it's a crisis because it changes so much about your life. All of a sudden you've got other people that you're worried about, other people that you're thinking about. And so in that crisis, you start to realize your priorities start to become really, really open and clear and honest. And if they're in conflict with a person that is in your house, I mean, that becomes even more of a crisis. How about this, career transitions, if you've had them, it's significant. You spend so much time kind of being that type of person, doing that type of thing, and all of a sudden it's different.
[7:24] And so what does that actually mean? And then for you, for some of you, midlife, now I wanna be careful here, but the car show, I think there's some people that have experienced some midlife crisis, right? Like there's some car lots that make a lot of money off of that crisis. But it's okay, it's okay. It's just at that moment when there's more life behind you than in front of you, it creates a crisis in your life. And you've tried to figure out, where am I? Where am I oriented? What am I fixed on? Where am I going? What's the direction that I'm in? And then finally, although there's plenty more, retirement creates a crisis for people. Because all of a sudden you get, like our exercise, all of this time that you gotta figure out, what am I gonna do with it all? So in light of that, a lot of times people, they get into the crisis moments and then all of a sudden it's just this clear red light goes off in your brain.
[8:17] You've had this moment and you kind of just wanna scream out just like this. Give me a break, give me a break. Life was so much easier before the crisis moment. Like just, can we just pause and can we go back because it was simpler before? Like, I don't want to go through this thing. If I could just take a break, step back. Life was so much simpler in this series that we've done for the last couple weeks. We'll do in a few, for a few more weeks. It's caught in the same idea that there are these experiences that we can read about in the Old Testament, the Christian scriptures in the Old Testament, the first part of our Bible, where we experience and we can read what has happened for other people, where they've experienced very similar types of crisis moments that we experience. And where surely if we could go back, although not many of these moments are necessarily written in the scriptures, if we could go back and actually talk to them, these folks would say, "Just give me a break." Like, this is almost too much.
[9:12] But in those moments, I think it becomes clear and obvious the necessity of making a clear decision on this, isn't that simply this: what are your eyes fixed on? And it's actually so much easier to make that decision on who or what your eyes are fixed on before the crisis hits. And when you decide that ahead of time, it helps you clarify the direction of your life and it will carry you through even the most challenging of crisis. Another pastor put it a little bit differently, kinda like this, this might be helpful for you. That direction, not intention, determines your destination. This is the most clear in weddings. This is wedding season as a pastor. I've done some weddings before. I've talked to people about weddings and there's all sorts of intentions that happen as a part of a wedding ceremony. People have great intentions.
[10:01] But the challenge is that a wedding is simply a day. A marriage is meant to last a lifetime. And so, you know, if you've been married before in a kind of relationship, that in order to go in the right direction that this relationship would actually last, go the distance, be healthy, be happy, be exciting to be a part of. You have to set a clear direction, you have to move in a spot to go to the right destination. You can't just have good intentions. And so this is just kind of a cognitive exercise, but I think if we could actually go back and learn from the life of this Old Testament character named Joseph, it's gonna become a little bit clear on how this kind of plays out in a specific instance. And I think we can actually learn a lot from Joseph in particular. What I wanna do though is I want to orient us in the middle of the Joseph story. 'Cause again, I don't know your journey, your story. Maybe, you know, you've been following Jesus for decades and like you've read the Bible more than I have. You're, you know, you're 50 or 60 times through already.
[10:54] And so this is gonna feel like a little bit more typical. You get this, but for some of you, you know, this is new for you. Like, you just got, somebody bribed you with lunch or told you they'd pay for you to go see the cars or whatever it might be. And they parked here and they dragged you in here first and you're like, "Where are the cars?" So you'll get there, but you're here for other reasons and that's totally fine. We're glad that you're here, whatever brought you to this place, we're happy that you're here. But I wanna make sure that you feel like wherever you're at in your journey, that you can find a place in this story. And so let me just tell you this character, Joseph, actually finds himself in a lineage that's really important in the Christian scriptures. And it starts actually, if you go back to the book of Genesis and you read through, there's the creation narrative, you know, there's Noah and the flood, there's the Tower of Babel, there's these kinds of, these fascinating stories. And then we get to this story, this lineage: the beginning of the people of God, the Jews, the Israelites.
[11:45] And it all starts with Abraham. And Abraham, actually, Abraham at the very start. But Abraham had many sons, many sons had Father Abraham, sorry, that's an inside joke. An old song. But but he did have many sons. But the point of that whole "many sons" bit was that Abraham was actually promised a blessing, that he would become a blessing to nations. That he would actually have more than the stars in the sky, his descendants. Which is fascinating because I think Abraham went to the grave not fully understanding exactly what God was trying to do in and through him. And so Abraham, we're not gonna go far into Abraham's story, but Abraham had sons and one of them was Isaac. And so Isaac, there's this fascinating, fascinating narrative that we won't talk about, but it's so interesting because God actually asked Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. But in the moment where the sacrifice was to happen, God actually provided, and we read that particular narrative with our understanding of, like, of this day and age. And we're like, this, that's insane. That's crazy.
[12:45] And yet to the readers of the, when this was first written, it was a profound declaration of who this God was. That everybody expected the gods to require something from you. And that this instead was a completely different God. That the God of Abraham was one that would provide and He provided the sacrifice instead of Isaac. It's so interesting. But then Isaac had sons, of which we have Jacob, who then became Israel, renamed as Israel. And this is where we get the nation of Israel, the Jews, the Israelites, all of the same people, the Hebrews, and all kind of referencing again the same people group from Jacob and Israel. We have, then, his 12 sons, and this is the 12 tribes of Israel. And one of the sons, it turns out, to be the one that he actually at the very beginning would've said it was his favorite, was Joseph.
[13:30] And so Joseph is the one that we're going to talk about now. Joseph, who is Joseph? This is helpful just to kind of, again, orient us before we read the passage of scripture of where his story. Just so you know, Joseph, 'cause we're gonna skip over all sorts of things. Joseph was the guy that had the coat of many colors. So, you know, there's the play that maybe you've seen in schools or Broadway. But Joseph had this coat of many colors given to him by his dad. His dad thought, "This is my favorite son, I'm gonna signify it, I'm gonna give him this wonderful gift." His brothers, of course, were really frustrated at that because as older brothers, "How come you're the favorite and you got the nice gift?" But Joseph went on and it was actually a little bit even more difficult because he had these dreams where his family was gonna be bowing down to him, or at least that was the interpretation of it. And so for Joseph to have his family bowing down, he told them the dreams and his brothers are like, "This guy, like, he doesn't get it. This is our younger brother."
[14:20] And so they were so angry with him that when they saw him out in the wilderness with him, they plotted to kill him. And then they changed their mind and they figured they could just leave him. And then eventually they saw these traders come by and they sold him into slavery. This is his story. This is Joseph, sold into slavery. And then he lands at, and this is where we're gonna go for a few minutes today. He lands at Potiphar's house, we'll learn a little bit more about Potiphar, and he acts and he lives as a slave, but in somebody's house. And so in some ways good things happen to him and things work out. But then eventually something awful happens that we're gonna talk about. And he ends up in prison. This is the story of Joseph's life. He lives in prison for years. It's just a few moments as we read through the narrative in our Old Testament. But he actually lives in prison for years before finally the final act of his story is becoming the second in command of all of Egypt and being Pharaoh's right-hand person to orchestrate all sorts of administrative, incredible things that kind of rescued and saved that whole entire kingdom.
[15:21] So this is Joseph and this is a bit of his story. I want us to go to this middle moment of his journey and his story. And I think it's important because sometimes when we read, we read and we kind of know what the end of the story actually is. But the challenge is that for each and every one of us, we don't know the end of our own stories. We only know the moments that we're dealing with and we're wrestling with right now. And so sometimes if we're not careful, when we read even parts of the Old Testament and we realize that there's these ending bits that we can celebrate for sure, we sometimes miss out on the humanity of what it must have been like to have been trying to do the right thing and be in the middle of the story, which is where you are in your own story.
[16:06] And where we find Joseph in Genesis 39, chapter 39, verse 1. Let's take a look. "When Joseph was taken to Egypt by the Ishmaelite traders, he was purchased by Potiphar, an Egyptian officer. Potiphar was captain of the guard for Pharaoh, the king of Egypt." In lots of ways for Joseph, this would've been the best-case scenario at that point, in that moment. So like the nervous, like the nervousness of not knowing exactly what was gonna happen to him, his brothers obviously had turned on him. That would've been terrifying. And then the fact that they sold him to these traders, I mean, obviously awful. And then the fact that they sold him to these traders, I mean, obviously awful. And then to be taken into a different country, I don't know how much, like, there would've been language barriers, but like he's just left at the safety and the security of his home. He's in a brand new place, maybe he hasn't been before, people he's never met before.
[16:54] And all of a sudden he is a slave, losing all of the privileges, and all of a sudden trying to figure out what life was now gonna be like. But the fact that he got sold to Potiphar at least had a, a number of resources. His household was large. The fact that he was the captain of the guard for the Pharaoh, that made a difference. It made sure that he had the ability to actually look after, you know, many, many things. And because of that, what ended up happening is actually pretty interesting. So we read on: The Lord is with Joseph. So he succeeded in everything he did as he served in the home of his Egyptian master. Now sometimes when we read those kinds of things, we think, oh, he succeeded in everything he did. Isn't that such a celebration that the Lord is with him and then good things happen to him? But in those moments, we have to remember Joseph is still a slave in Egypt.
[17:43] Like for you, if you're in the middle of the moment and you're like, where is the blessing of God in my life? You have to realize in this story the Lord was with Joseph. So there were some good things that were clearly happening. And yet at the same time, he's experiencing all sorts of, I'm sure, awful, terrible emotions. He's still forever away from home. He's still going the first year celebrating, not that he celebrated his birthday, but like he's celebrating his birthday away from home for the first time. They didn't celebrate Christmas, but it's like, you know, you celebrate Christmas away from everything that you knew for the first time. He's still completely disconnected from the life that he knew. And yet there was something going on that I don't even know, it'd be hard to know. We could ask him at some point, maybe in eternity, but like, what was he thinking as things were going a little bit better in his life? And yet there was still so much, so much wrong and so much challenging. So Potiphar noticed this, realized that the Lord is with Joseph, giving him success in everything that he did. You know, the interesting thing about that is that throughout the Old Testament we read the idea that God would be blessing people, His people, not for the sake of just giving them a blessing, but so often that God blesses His people so that they can be a blessing to others. It's a bit of an aside, but I think it's worth pointing out, here's Joseph being blessed by God and because of it Potiphar receives a blessing as well.
[19:06] And sometimes I think we have to wonder that if you're following Jesus, if you're a Christian, if you've claimed this faith as your own. As you experience in God's blessing in any way, shape, or form that you might be able to recognize. Part of the reason for that is so that you could then be a blessing for other people. Okay, let's go back and thanks for the extra water. Clearly I'm having issues. This pleases Potiphar. Of course things are going well for him. So he soon made Joseph his personal attendant. He put him in charge of his entire household and everything that he owned. So things are going well for him. We'll continue on. From the day Joseph was put in charge of his master's household and property, the Lord began to bless Potiphar's household for Joseph's sake. All of his household affairs ran smoothly, and his crops and his livestock flourished. So, Potiphar gave Joseph complete administrative responsibility over everything he owned. With Joseph there, he didn't worry about a thing except what kind of food to eat.
[20:04] And this is the moment, I think this is the most fascinating moment at that moment in time. Joseph has spent some time in Potiphar's house. Things are kind of going well for him now. And all of a sudden he's kind of in like that regular rhythm of life. Like you've been there before. We talked about the crisis moments, and there are crisis moments, but then there's also the regular moments, the regular moments where life is just kind of going day after day after day. You know, if you're a Jesus follower, you're a Christian, it's like maybe you've seen God move in incredible ways and there were big moments and then, and then there's these stretches, and sometimes really long stretches, where life is just kind of normal. And for Joseph, here's that moment of kind of normalcy.
[20:51] And it's in those moments, I think. And if that's the moment that you're in right now, that it's worth asking this absolutely critical question. What are your eyes fixed on? Because in those moments, if you can make that determination, if you can make that decision, if you can make sure that you reorient around the way that you want and the direction that you want your life to go, it will make you much more strong in the moment of the crisis that may come up soon after. Cuz life is full of these moments, right? Full of these crisis. You've experienced them, they come outta nowhere and all of a sudden it's like, boom, here's the crisis. What am I gonna do? It's always easier to find your way through the crisis if you've been able to articulate ahead of time what your eyes are fixed on. And I think for Joseph, he had the opportunity through this particular narrative, he could have absolutely easily stepped away from the God that surely had given up on him.
[21:49] Maybe he had heard the promises that God had given to Abraham, his great-grandfather, his grandfather, his father. He had known the promises and the hope with the future. And clearly he had been excluded from it cuz he was gone. He was missing from the family. And so why would he continue to serve this God of his family? But at least we know from the way that he interacts with the next few verses that he had clarified very, very, very clearly what his eyes would be fixed on. So here comes Joseph's crisis. This is a big one too. Joseph was a very handsome and well-built young man. That's not the crisis. It's not a crisis. All right, good. Keep going to the gym. Get wo, man. Okay. Joseph was handsome, he's well built. Potiphar's wife soon began to look at him lustfully.
[22:41] "Come and sleep with me," she demanded. This invitation to express himself in a, in like a sexual way, with somebody who wasn't his spouse. Like that was obviously, and clearly throughout the Old Testament, something that God had put parameters around. God has put parameters around from the very beginning that our sexual expression is meant to be isolated in the context of a marriage relationship. That's it. Full stop. Any sexual expression outside of that, clearly sin. So that was his crisis. And if we're honest, and we're not gonna be honest in like this kind of public setting, but if we're honest and we had coffee together, we could share stories. I bet you've got a few moments in your history and you've got people that you're connected to that you could look and you could say one of the crisis that has been the most turbulent in my experience, in my life, in my family, whatever it is, has been because of this exact same thing, right? Like so much of our world today, so much hurt and heartbreak and pain comes from this one very clear articulation of the way that we're meant to express ourselves for the betterment of ourselves and the people in our community around us, our flourishing.
[23:59] It's this one thing. And it's this thing, it is not the thing that I wanna talk about today, but we should just notice and you should remember and realize that God is in the business of flourishing, of giving us a wonderful, abundant life. And when this kind of thing pops up, it's a crisis. And you've had to make those decisions no matter what your journey is, no matter what your story, you've had to make those decisions as well. And when you're in that crisis moment, what are your eyes fixed on? Who are your eyes fixed on? It's better to know now, but the crisis that you face might be completely different, right? It might be a question of your integrity, it might be a question about the way that you speak about others. It might be the question that you conduct yourselves.
[24:46] Whatever your journey is, there will be crisis moments that pop up and they're gonna be as brazen as this. Like this is pretty brazen and it might even be shocking to you, but you'll have all sorts of moments that are gonna test your resolve and test what you fixed your eyes on. And hey, if you're not a Christian, like you don't have to fix your eyes on the Christian God, that's not what I think. I think you should. But like you've gotta decide, even if you decide that it's not the Christian God, you've gotta decide where you want to go. Because when life throws you these kinds of curve balls, when life brings up these types of crisis moments, this is gonna be a test of your own resolve of who you want to be in the direction you want to go. And so for Joseph, this is a big question, who would his eyes be fixed on?
[25:34] And this is what happens. Joseph refused, Look, he told her, "My master trusts me with everything in his entire household. No one here has more authority than I do. He has held back nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. Not only that, but he says this in the next verse, How could I do such a wicked thing? It would be a great sin against God." See, Joseph has his eyes fixed on his heavenly Father in those moments. And when the crisis hit, he knew exactly what the response would be. It was obvious. It wasn't an issue, it wasn't a question. His eyes were fixed on his heavenly Father, even in the midst of all of the good things that were happening in his life right then.
[26:20] And he would be willing to risk it all for the sake of the direction that his life would move. Now, the interesting thing, at least to me, maybe to you, is that in this moment, Joseph probably realizes how much this is gonna cost him. And the challenge with anything is that we can read, because we've got the scriptures right in front of us, we can read the next few verses and we can read the next few chapters and we can see the way the story goes. But Joseph has no idea. In fact, if he would be honest in that moment, he probably assumed that was gonna cost him his life, because for that kind of interaction to go awry, the wife of his master, she could easily put the pressure on to her husband, of which she did.
[27:12] And Potiphar could have easily killed Joseph for any kind of accusation that his wife made against him. And so that's what happened. His wife, not that he died, but that his wife made this accusation that Joseph was the one that came onto her and that he ran outta the room, she grabbed his cloak. All of a sudden he's being remembered for his cloak again, in the same way, the coat of many colors, a different coat this time. But all of a sudden this is his identity. And Potiphar gets this story and he's furious. But we probably think that he's furious because he realizes the deception of his wife, because he doesn't kill Joseph in that moment. Instead he sends him to jail, sends him to jail, and Joseph goes to jail and spends years in jail. Like, so you gotta think, like, I've been sold by my brothers. I left the blessing of God, I was kind of making it, okay, here I was in the regular rhythms of life, I tried to make an integrity play and because I made that integrity play, it cost me my freedom. And now I'm in jail again.
[28:07] And for years he sits in jail wondering, where is God in the midst of all of this? Like, I did everything right. Where is God in the midst of my story? And maybe that's sometimes the question you ask yourself too. And so what happens? One commentator put it this way, kind of referencing the old play, which is, which I think might be helpful, he says this: in the play, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, the narrator encourages the imprisoned Joseph not to despair, because "I've read the book and you come out on top." Unfortunately, neither Joseph nor any of us have the benefit of such a narrator, right? Like, we're in the middle of your, our story, you're in the middle of your story.
[28:53] You make decisions today on who your eyes are fixed on, and it makes a difference. But you don't know exactly where it all ends. And the way that the commentary puts it, I love this, it's helpful. So he says, "Our books are written as we live them out. Of course, none of us knows what the ending will look like. Too often we feel as if we are languishing in the doldrums of life, waiting for God to bring our work or our talents to fruition." And so as much as we're gonna ask this big question, who are our eyes fixed on, the question, the way that you answer that question, I mean, as much as it can be the right answer, the truth is that it doesn't necessarily bring immediate, like, celebration and big fireworks and, like, everything's gonna go well now, because there's something else at play. And this part of the Christian journey is difficult, because this part of the Christian journey sometimes requires long suffering and a lifetime of obscurity and perhaps even, this side of eternity, not fully understanding exactly what God is doing. And yet, and yet it is still worthwhile to fix our eyes on Him. The way the commentator puts it, and again, I think this kind of makes it make sense a little bit more. He says, "But God wants us to be faithful where we are, in whatever phase of life or ministry we may be in. Our service to God is not just comprised of the end result of our life.
[30:16] Our ministry includes the process, the process by which we get there." The process of which you're in. He goes on. "We must remember that not everyone emerges." Because this is the challenge. The process of following Jesus means that sometimes people's lives experience the second half story like Joseph's did, where God redeems him and brings him to a place of immense importance. And all of a sudden we've got this story, it's incredible. But that doesn't always happen to people who are faithful to God. Sometimes we have to remember, not everyone emerges. God's plan for some is to serve Him in anonymous obscurity for their entire lives, receiving no recognition and no thanks, gaining no office and enjoying negligible results." Who wants to sign up for that? Like, it's not a motivational kind of appeal.
[31:03] And so if somebody sold you a version of Christianity that promised you some kind of, like, earthly blessing and, like, miraculous thing of all times, like, I gotta tell you, there's gonna be a lot of people who experience the faithfulness of God in a way that is not that exciting by world standards. But something else is at play here. And this is what it is. We would not even recognize their names. We do not know their stories. People won't know your story. Like, you will be forgotten at some point. Your life lived in faithfulness to God may at some point, well, at some point be completely forgotten on the face of the earth. You won't have paintings of you or monuments of you or books written about you, perhaps, but you will have your story told in eternity, right?
[31:51] This is the hope that we Christians have, because God doesn't actually forget. There's this sense of that as Jesus followers, that when we fix our eyes on Him, that He is the one that then takes our story and our journey, and He's the one that's gonna do something miraculous through it. And so if you've been frustrated that you're in the regular rhythms of life and the doldrums of life, and you've been following Jesus maybe for 20 years and you're wondering, where's the most recent miracle? I can't think of one in the last decade, the truth is that you may not see something miraculous, although we hope, and we'll continue to pray, and we'll believe that God's gonna do great things in our midst. But you have to know that even if your name is forgotten as you faithfully serve God, you have to know that's not in vain. And we know that because in the New Testament, when the church is trying to wrestle with all of this, like, you have to remember in the very first century, the Christians are gathered, and sometimes they're gathered really secretly, because, like, the Romans are oppressing them, they're killing them.
[32:46] There's these persecutions that it's very violent. And so they're giving up their life, wondering if they've given their life to the right thing. And they're reading these old stories and the book of Hebrews, in fact, it's fascinating. They're reading the old stories of the heroes of the faith. Joseph is one of them. But they're thinking about Moses, they're thinking about Noah, they're thinking about these incredible stories of God's faithfulness. And they're wondering, what's at play here? What's going on? And the writer of Hebrews, in the first century, as the persecutions are still coming around them, promising the early church, we don't know exactly who wrote this, but promising the early church, after explaining about all of those heroes of the faith in Hebrews 11, jumps to Hebrews 12:1. I want you to read it right here. "Therefore, since we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses," and the witnesses are the people who have witnessed God's glory, Joseph is one of them.
[33:36] He explains the incredible faith of Joseph throughout his life, since we're surrounded by Joseph as a witness of that. "Because of that, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles," each and every one of us. And what do we do? "Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes" on who? On Jesus, "the pioneer and the perfecter of our faith." That's the call of the early church. And that's a big call. And that's a risky one. But when you're in the difficult moments of life, the truth is that if you can fix your eyes on Jesus and clarify that every single day, waking up and knowing, who are my eyes fixed on? They're fixed on Jesus, that you answer that question for yourself and you clarify that whatever comes your way, whatever crisis moment comes your way, it clarifies and helps you understand exactly which direction you're moving in.
[34:29] And again, I can't promise that it's all gonna be miraculous and huge celebrations, but I can promise this, 'cause we know this from Scripture, that it's gonna matter to God and that He is the one that will celebrate and lift you up. And that is worthwhile, as one commentator puts, and this is a hard, this is perhaps a hard word, but this is, I think, helpful for each and every one of us. He says, "The life of true wisdom, true wisdom being the one focused on Christ Himself, the life of true wisdom which rejects sexual immorality, which, you know, we talked about, that's a big call. There's a dramatic commitment that Jesus followers make in this regard when you consider the other options that our culture provides to us. But beyond sexual immorality, the life of true wisdom which rejects even greed and idolatry and all of the sin that entangles in favor of a life of integrity before the Lord who is raised from the dead and whose reign will consummate God's redemptive plan.
[35:23] It's the only life with true meaning, with ultimate meaning. It's the only option. And that, and then here's why, it reflects the continuity between God, God's renewed humanity, both before and after the resurrection." That when you fix your eyes on Jesus, that it matters so much in this moment, yes, but it matters for the rest of eternity. And so no matter what part of your journey you're in, no matter where you're at in your faith, no matter what questions and things that you're still wrestling with and all of the stuff that's going on in your life, the simple question is this, and the one that I think we need to wrestle with is this: Who are your eyes fixed on? Who are your eyes fixed on in your life? Who helps make the decisions, no matter what comes your way?
[36:12] Who are your eyes fixed on? And as Jesus followers, our commitment is that we would fix our eyes on Him. And if you're not there yet, gosh, I would say it would be so worthwhile taking a shot at it, because fixing your eyes on Jesus, it makes the most incredible eternal difference and transforms everything and takes you through the crisis. And like I said, and like Joseph experienced, it's not that it's going to keep you out of difficulty and hardship, but that in God's grand story, that He will redeem all things for His purposes and that He will redeem each and every one of us that fix our eyes on Him.
[37:00] Lemme pray for us. Heavenly Father, in some ways it's easy just to say that one line, to quote the writer of Hebrews. And obviously that's a commitment that we're called to make as Christians. And yet we know that for each and every one of us, that call means something a little bit different. And so for Joseph, for Joseph, it cost a lot, you know, in that middle moment of his life, without knowing exactly what you were gonna do. It, man, it cost him a lot. And so for us, in the moments that we live out on a day-to-day basis, I just pray that Your Holy Spirit would do the work that I can't. And Your Holy Spirit is gonna, is gonna speak to each and every one of us, and wherever we're at, and help us understand and clarify what it means to fix our eyes on Jesus. And that because of that work, because of the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts and our lives, that when we gather in this kind of way, we can know that something important is happening even in our own journey, in our own story, that You're working in it, that You're drawing us closer to You, and that You're refining us and You're revealing things to us.
[38:12] And that if we would just focus on You, that You'll bring us each step of the way. And so, heavenly Father, I pray that You would work on our hearts in this way today and this week and this month. In Jesus' name, amen.