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SOVEREIGN GRACE DOES THE IMPOSSIBLEGenesis 41: 1-40INTRODUCTIONJuly 25, 2002, at 9:00pm, a group of nine men worked in the deepest part of the Quercreek Coal Mine in Sommerset, PA. Unexpectedly, they broke through a wall into a flooded, abandoned mine. Millions of gallons of water began to pour through the opening and flood the mine they were working in. The water rose too fast for them to escape. They made their way to the highest point in the flooded part of the mine and waited. Rescue operations began within a couple of hours of the accident. By the end of the first day, a six-inch hole was drilled into the air pocket where the men waited and began pumping warm, compressed air into the mine to help keep the water back. There they huddled for three days, waiting to be rescued. All they could do was try to stay warm by sharing their body heat. This is the stuff of nightmares; trapped, with no ability to do anything to rescue yourself. They were in an impossible, hopeless situation apart from the intervention of someone else. Mercifully, someone else did intervene. Their fellow miners worked around the clock for 76 hours to drill a rescue shaft. Their families and neighbors, indeed the entire nation, waited and prayed for their deliverance. Then, in the early morning hours of July 29th , rescue workers broke through with a 20 inch rescue shaft and at 2:15 am, the first of the nine men was brought up through the hole. Several hours later the last of the nine men were delivered from their watery tomb. What joy, what gratitude, what praise erupted when those nine men were brought back from the brink of death and returned to their families, to their life. What a picture of the condition of each and every human being and the work of Sovereign Grace to rescue hopeless and helpless men and women from the darkness and death of sin. Let me ask you a question. Do most humans think of their lives as being huddled together in the dark with the floodwaters rising, waiting to be rescued? You and I both know that most of the time, for most humans we do not view ourselves as being in conditions like those of the miners. We generally view our lives as pleasant and ourselves as not helpless but competent and in control. Yet, regardless of what humans say about the condition they are in, God’s word paints a much different picture. The world as God sees it, because he has made it so, is a world in which humans are helplessly trapped in a dark cave and he is working to release them. It is the function of the Bible and therefore of those given the task of teaching the Bible, to help humans see reality for what it is. The prophets and Jesus describe humans this way, “Having eyes they do not see and ears they do not hear.” The apostle Paul says it like this, “The natural person (every human being by nature) does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” The biblical stories are not simply interesting stories. They are not simply moral stories showing us how to live and how not to live. Rather, the biblical story is written to persuade us of the nature of reality so that we live with our eyes wide open rather than in the stupor of self-deception. It is my goal today, as we look at the miraculous deliverance of Joseph from prison to enable us all to feel the reality of our condition and to be amazed at the power of God’s grace to deliver us from our condition. You will never experience the joy that came to the miners and their families if you do not first experience the fact of being trapped in a mine. I want you to experience and live in the joy of God’s gracious salvation and so I want you to feel the reality of your condition apart from grace. MAIN POINTSovereign grace does the impossible by…I. Relegating people to impossible situations (vv. 1-8, 14-15 & 28-32)The first words of chapter 41 are literally, “After two years of days Pharaoh had a dream.” Moses immediately reminds us of the condition of Joseph; a condition that God orchestrated. Joseph lives in the stinking dungeon for two more years after he predicts and then witnesses the deliverance of Pharaoh’s cupbearer from prison. After Joseph lives through 730 days, knowing on every day that there is a man living in the presence of the most powerful man on earth, who is obligated to be kind to him, but who refuses to intercede. 730 days of remembering God’s promise to give him a glorious life as the savior of his family and yet to be living in a pit. 730 days to learn how helpless he is to do anything to deliver himself. 730 nights of lying down on filthy straw to the stench of human excrement with no hope of tomorrow being any different from today. 730 days of knowing and believing that somehow, someway this is God’s will and that God is working out a perfect plan and yet having no idea of how and when it will happen. 730 days of faithfully, joyfully and effectively serving Christ so that all who are in prison with him have a happier life because he is there. It is after Joseph has spent these 12-13 years in hopeless
slavery and imprisonment that God sends a dream to Pharaoh.
It is a dream with two visions in it. It is a dream that
frightens the most powerful man on earth. He awakens on
this birthday morning, 730 mornings after his cupbearer
was delivered from prison, in the midst of a panic attack.
He is terrified by the vivid, gruesome, terrible vision
of evil and gaunt cows devouring, in a cannibalistic frenzy,
well-fed cows and of evil and shriveled kernels of grain
eating plump ears of grain. He immediately calls for the
magician-priests of There are days when the fragility of human existence is impressed upon on us. There are days when our impotence and powerlessness is exposed. We hate those days, as did Pharaoh. We do all we can to protect ourselves from experiencing those days. We buy insurance, we wear seatbelts, we make our kids wear helmets, we see the doctor, we invest in the stock market, we get a college education. We call in the experts. We search the Internet. We hate to be reminded of our ignorance and our weakness. Yet, God, out of his great mercy, because he wants to save, regularly and on purpose puts us in circumstances that pulls back the curtain of human delusion and shows us the terrifying immensities that we actually live in. Pharaoh is terrified by the vision God has sent and he can do nothing to escape the terror. There is no human solution. Nevertheless, God graciously jogs the memory of the cupbearer and he remembers Joseph, just as Joseph had asked him to do 730 days and nights ago. Joseph is brought to Pharaoh, not to be set free but to be given an impossible task. Joseph had asked the cupbearer to intercede on his behalf because he was unjustly imprisoned. Joseph imagined standing before Pharaoh and having Pharaoh affirm his innocence and set him free because he deserved to be set free. God’s plan is very different from Joseph’s plan. He is not bringing Joseph before Pharaoh to have Pharaoh save Joseph but to have Joseph save Pharaoh. God’s plan is more glorious than Joseph’s plan. (Might I just say that God’s plan for your life is infinitely more glorious than your plan for your life.) Notice v. 12. Joseph is young. Joseph is a Hebrew; a racially inferior person. Joseph is a prisoner. Joseph is a slave. How can a young, racially inferior, prisoner who was a slave deliver a king? This is an impossible situation. How can Joseph gain his freedom when the only way to do so is to do what scores of wise, powerful and cunning men have been unable to do? God gives Joseph a task that he is completely unable to perform. His freedom and the future of the most powerful man on earth depend upon his ability to do what he has no ability to perform. Have you ever said, “I can’t do that”? Have you ever been faced with a task, a circumstance and said, there is absolutely no way I can do what I am being asked to do? Has it ever occurred to you that God is the one putting you in the position so that you can learn what is true all the time, you are weak and helpless? When you feel your inability to act, you are closer to reality than when you are feeling competent and in control. Finally, Pharaoh tells Joseph his dreamand
Joseph explains what God is about to do. There are going
to be seven years of abundant harvest in Why is God bringing this disaster upon the world? He is revealing to Joseph, to Pharaoh, to the Egyptian people and to us that he is in control of reality, not us. He is revealing that there is a day of catastrophe coming upon the whole world that is overwhelming and unstoppable. There is a horror coming upon the whole world at the hand of the Almighty God that cannot be altered or resisted. It will be a day when men will cower in terror and call for the mountains to fall upon them to escape the fierceness of the wrath of God against human evil. It is a day that has been fixed by God, that no one can escape, and that is coming soon. Listen to the word of our Lord Jesus Christ, “Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. People were eating; drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all. It was the same in the days of Lot. People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. But the day Lot left Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all. It will be just like this on the day the Son of man is revealed… Remember Lot’s wife! Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it.” Do not let the days of ease and comfort and abundance deceive you. The abundance and peace of these days are going to be followed by an eternity of judgment. Do not live as if these days will never end, for they will end. Live as if you mean to escape the day of wrath that is coming upon the whole world. Lose your life here so that you might gain it when that day arrives. Every experience of helplessness here is meant to warn you that there is a day of utter hopelessness coming and so you must prepare for it. God aims to put you in impossible situations so that you will discover reality. He wants to convince you that you really are living in a cave with no way out and death just around the corner, unless someone intervenes. Sovereign grace does the impossible by…
And by… II. Revealing the way out by his Word (vv. 16-36)Verses 16, 25 and 28 are statements of the unmerited, unearned favor of God. First, in v. 16, Joseph knows that if there is going to be any help for Pharaoh it will not come from him but from God. Joseph has learned that he is weak but that God is strong. He is ignorant but God is wise. He has learned what the apostle Paul understood, “I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good but I cannot carry it out.” “By the grace of God, I am what I am and his grace towards me did not prove to be without effect. No I worked harder than all the other apostles, yet not I but the grace of God with me.” “When I am weak, then I am strong.” Joseph knows that if there is going to be any good coming out of this impossible situation, then God is the one who will perform it. Joseph knows this even though he also knows that he is going to be the one who will speak and tell Pharaoh what his dreams mean. It is not a contradiction for Joseph to say, “Apart from me God will give an answer of peace to Pharaoh” and then for Joseph to speak. Joseph has learned in and through his 13 years of slavery and unjust imprisonment that “apart from Christ, he can do nothing.” Any good that Joseph has ever done has been done by God. Any insight he has that helps others has been given by God. This is not simply religious double-talk, this is reality. Every time you pat yourself on the back for doing good or being wise, you are engaging in the highest form of self-deception. You are not good and you have never performed any good, except that which God has done through you. You are not wise, except God has given you wisdom. You are not a hard worker, except God has made you a hard worker. “What do you have that you have not received? If you received it, then why do you boast as if you did not?” The scene that is unfolding here is astounding. Here is this young, despised, Hebrew slave and prisoner standing before the most powerful man on the planet in the midst of all the wealth and pageantry of the most powerful nation on earth, confidently telling Pharaoh that he has the solution to his problem because God will give an answer of peace. Joseph is confident because Joseph is humble. Joseph knows what is really true about himself and about God. He is nothing. God is everything. He is not intimidated, not because he is somebody but because God is Somebody. Joseph knows he can do nothing and therefore Joseph knows that he can do whatever God wants because God will do it. The second way God’s unmerited favor is revealed is in
vv. 25 & 28. God is revealing to Pharaoh what he is
about to do. God is under no obligation to inform Pharaoh
but he graciously tells him what is about to happen. Don’t
miss this. God is going to send seven years of abundance
and then seven years of the worst famine that Did God do this simply to release Joseph from prison? Joseph does escape prison in this fashion but that is not the ultimate reason God told Pharaoh what was about to happen. Look at v. 33. The reason that God told Pharaoh what was about to happen is so that Pharaoh, Egypt, and the whole world could find a man who would save them from this disaster that God was bringing on the whole world. God told Pharaoh about the disaster that was coming so that he, his nation, and the world could escape the disaster through the work of a wise and discerning man. God has a plan that he is working out in the world. He does not have to tell us what he is doing. As the prophet Daniel says, “All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing. He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the people of the earth. No one can hold back his hand or say to him: ‘What have you done?’” Yet, God mercifully, kindly, graciously tells us what he is about to do so that we will look for a Savior. We must find a Savior that is wise and discerning and who can effectively work to save us from the disaster that is coming upon the whole world. Some time ago, a friend called me and asked if I would be willing to meet with a friend of his who was in great distress. I met with Joe (that’s not his real name). His eyes were swollen from uncontrollable weeping and lack of sleep. He had not eaten for over a week. The cause of his distress was an overwhelming sense of his own inability to do what was right and stop doing what was wrong. He had made promises to those closest to him and he had not kept them. He desperately wanted to do what was right but found no ability to do so. In fact, he continued to do what he knew was wrong and what he knew would hurt those whom he loved. He was terrified by his own unwillingness and inability to do the right thing. I talked with him about the reality of human sinfulness and inability to do what was right. It was fascinating to see him begin to protest and to say that he was a good person. However, I simply reminded him of what he had just told me and asked him if this was the behavior of a good person. It was amazing to see the light come on in him as he openly acknowledged his wickedness. He admitted that he was not good and never had been good. I helped him to see, through God’s word that he was doing evil because he liked to do evil. His behavior was not an aberration in an otherwise good person but the natural outcome from a man with an evil heart. We then talked about God’s view of him and of the certainty and rightness of God’s judgment upon him for his sin. Joe was afraid, but he was only afraid of the consequences in his relationships with those he loved and his reputation among men. He wasn’t afraid of what God thought of him, at first. Again, it was marvelous to see the lights come on as he considered the justice of God against his sin. The first glimmers of true sorrow and true repentance began to be seen in Joe. He began to see his need in a different light and began to wonder how he might be made right in God’s sight. He began to wonder if there was a way for him to escape the power of sin in his life and the wrath of God against his sin. God had permitted Joe to indulge his sinful desires so that he was overcome by his own wickedness and weakness. However, only God’s word had the power to reveal to Joe what was really going on. He did not see his problem in relation to God. It took the truth of God’s word to show him his real problem so that he would look for a wise and discerning man who could deliver him from his real problem. It took God’s word to convince him that he needed a Savior. Humans are in an impossible situation. We are sinners. We love to sin. We hate God. We ought to be sent into an eternal hell for our rebellion. In addition, we have no desire or ability to change. All of us are blind to that reality. However, God has kindly sent into the world his own dear Son to confirm all that the prophets have written about our condition. God, because of his great love for us, has revealed to us the nature of reality and what it will take to deliver us out of the disaster that is coming. His word confronts us with our need for a Savior. Sovereign grace does the impossible by…
And by… III. Rescuing people out of the trouble in which he puts them (vv. 9-13 & 37-40)How do Pharaoh and his advisors respond to the revelation of God that disaster is coming and they need a Savior? They see in this young, Hebrew slave the Savior of the world. In spite of Joseph’s appearance, they recognize the hand of God upon Joseph. They don’t see an imprisoned, despised slave; they see a wise, discerning man upon whom the Spirit of God is resting. They see Joseph as the Savior of the world. Joseph is acknowledged as God’s Savior and is exalted in the kingdom of Egypt to the highest position next to Pharaoh. In a moment, he goes from the dungeon to the palace. He is given all authority in the most powerful kingdom on earth. He is given this power and authority for saving the world. Now listen to me, could Joseph have come to this place without 13 years of slavery and imprisonment? Absolutely not. Can the world be saved by a Savior that does not suffer? Absolutely not. When we see Joseph, in a moment delivered from the dungeon and raised to this position do we marvel at the greatness of Joseph? I certainly hope not. Joseph is not the hero of this story. Here is the sovereign, powerful grace of God at work in and through this despised, Jewish, thirty year old slave to bring salvation to the world. God delivers Joseph out of his misery so that he can be the Savior of the world. The glory he receives points to a greater glory that is the cause of his glory. Joseph points us to Christ. Consider Jesus, the eternal Son of God, the Son of David, heir of all the promises of God, born of a poor peasant woman, growing up in an obscure backwater. Growing up among a people who were enslaved by the powerful Romans. Suffering the derision of the powerful, misunderstood at every turn by those who professed to love him. Yet working in the midst of all this suffering for the good of others. Showing forth the wisdom and discernment that only God’s Spirit can give. Finally arrested, deserted, tortured, murdered upon the horrible cross and buried in a tomb. But then raised from the dead by the power of God and now sitting at God’s right hand waiting for the day when he will return and deliver all his people from the wrath of God that is coming upon all the world. My dear friends, God loves you and so he is constantly placing you in seemingly impossible situations. He is continually confronting you with your wickedness and your inability to change. He is confronting you with your powerlessness to provide for yourself and care for yourself so that you will discover that you need a Savior. Now he lifts up before your eyes this great Savior, Jesus Christ, who lived as a slave of men, who was despised, who was rejected but who is now raised from the dead and sits at God’s right hand waiting that final day. He offers himself to you as a Savior. He can do for you what you cannot do for yourself. He can change your heart. He can deliver you from wrath. He can provide all you need to make it safely to heaven. Just as Pharaoh and his advisors could find no other man who was as wise and discerning as Joseph, upon whom the Spirit of God rests, so there is no other Savior than Jesus Christ. He is the only man whom God has appointed as your Savior. All other Saviors are false Saviors. TV will not deliver you from the wrath to come. Your investments will not deliver you from the wrath to come. Your own goodness will not deliver you. Allah will not deliver you. Sex will not deliver you. Good grades and a good job will be of no avail. New clothes, a new car, a new husband will not rescue you. Your greatest problem is your sin. The greatest danger you face is the just anger of God against your sin. Your greatest need is a Savior from your sin. Christ alone is that Savior. Abandon all other hopes and flee to him. Give yourself to him and he will preserve your life when the wrath comes. Sovereign grace does the impossible by…
©
Copyright 2002 John Swanson. |