The Plan

Below is the message at the WOW (Worship on Wednesday) service in Gettysburg July 24, 2013.  The Bible verses are Genesis 37:1-36.

The story of Joseph is worthy of a sermon series by itself.  In fact, maybe we'll do that sermon series sometime.  It starts in Genesis 37, which is what we ready tonight, and covers pretty much all the rest of the book of Genesis.  In fact, there's probably more there than we could do in one sermon series, unless it was a pretty long one.

We just read the beginning of the story tonight, the opening chapter, we might say.  In this part of the story, Joseph gets favored by his dad, Jacob.  Now, that's always dangerous, when one sibling gets favored over the others.  It's especially dangerous when the favoritism is really obvious, as it clearly is here, with Jacob giving Joseph this fancy multi-colored robe to wear.

And what happens to Joseph is what happens a lot of times to kids who get favored.  He got the big-head.  He starts telling his brothers about these dreams he has where he becomes greater than they are and all of them, and even their dad, are bowing down to him.  Now, as far as we know, Joseph was telling the truth.  He actually had these dreams.  Still, there's nothing in the Bible that says God told him to tell everybody about these dreams.  As far as we know, this knowledge of Joseph's future greatness was just meant for Joseph.  He did not have to let everyone else know how great he was going to be.

But he did, and that worked about about like you'd expect it to.  Joseph's brothers got pretty mad at him.  Finally, they decided they'd had enough of seeing their brother act like he was better than they were and get treated like he was better than they were.  They were originally going to just kill him, but then they decided they could get something for him, so they sold him into slavery in Egypt.

Now, if you know the rest of the story, you know it all worked out in the end.  Joseph ends up being the number two person in Egypt, second only to Pharaoh himself, and is put in a position to save Israel when a famine hits it.  And we can draw a lesson from that, that God can take even really bad things and use them for good.

That's an important lesson for us, of course.  In fact, it's a really good thing for us to know when something bad happens to us, or when we don't understand what's going on.  We need to know that, no matter how bad things are, God can always use those things for good.

That does not mean, though, that God necessarily caused those bad things to happen.  It also does not give us an excuse for bad behavior.  We should not just feel free to do what we want and trust that God will bring good out of it.  God may do that, but there could be some pretty tough things to go through in the mean time.

After all, look at what happened to Joseph.  In the long run it all worked out for him, but it was a pretty long run.  It took a long time for those things to work out, and Joseph had to go through a lot of hard stuff before it did.

First, he gets sold into slavery.  This favored kid from a wealthy family is all of a sudden the lowest of the low.  That had to be a pretty rude awakening for him.  Then, he got taken to a foreign country.  We don't even know if he could speak the language there.  After he got to Egypt, he had to wait until he got sold to a specific person.  I don't know how long that took, and I don't know where they kept slaves before they got sold, but I'm pretty sure it was not a very nice place.

Joseph was sold to a man named Potiphar, and eventually worked his way up to running all of Potiphar's affairs.  But then he ran afoul of Potiphar's wife, and even though he did nothing wrong, Joseph was thrown in prison.

Now, I know prison is not a nice place now, but it is compared to what it was in Joseph's time.  I'm not going to go into detail about it, and I'm not going to show you a picture, either, but if you're interested, go home tonight and do an internet search for something like “ancient prisons”.  I'll just say that if there's one thing they knew how to do back then, it was punish people.  Prison back then was a really hard thing to endure.

And that's where Joseph was for over two years.  So yes, God worked everything out for good, but it was a long, hard road to get there.  There were at least three years there where Joseph's life was anything but good.  And it was all because Jacob favored Joseph, and Joseph let it go to his head.  I have to think that God would've preferred for Joseph to have been a little more humble to begin with, so God would not have had to work so hard to work everything out.

So, what's the point?  Well, I think there are a couple of points.  One is that God does have a plan for our lives.  Those dreams Joseph had were real.  He was not making them up.  God did plan for Joseph to be a great and powerful person.  And no matter what we do, God will keep working to make God's plan come about.

The second is that you and I can mess up God's plans.  Not because we're more powerful than God or anything, but because God allows us free will.  God allows us to make our own choices, and God sometimes makes us deal with the consequences of those choices.  Joseph did not have to become arrogant and brag about how great he was going to be, but he did.  And he had to deal with the consequences of that.

And we have to remember that other people have free will, too.  That means that God allows other people to make their choices, and the choices those other people make affect our lives.  I mean, we can understand why Joseph's brothers got mad at him, but their reaction was a little extreme.  They did not have to first threaten to kill him and then sell him into slavery.  But they did.  Potiphar's wife did not have to get Joseph thrown into prison.  But she did.  The choices those other people made had consequences for Joseph, too, and he had to deal with those consequences.

But even through all that, God kept working in Joseph's life.  God kept working to make God's plans work out.  I doubt that God's plan for Joseph was for him to become an arrogant jerk, but after that happened, God still kept working to make God's plan for Joseph come about.  I doubt that God's plan for Joseph was for him to become a slave, but after that happened, God still kept working to make God's plan for Joseph come about.  I doubt that God's plan for Joseph was for him to be thrown in prison for a couple of years, but after that happened, God still kept working to make God's plan come about.  No matter what happened to Joseph, no matter how many mistakes he made, no matter how many things people did to him, God kept working to make God's plan for Joseph come about.  And ultimately, it did.

God will do that for each of us, too.  God has a plan for your life.  God has a plan for my life.  Sometimes we make bad choices, and we mess up God's plan.  But when we do, God still keeps working to make God's plan come about.  Sometimes other people make choices that affect our lives.  But when they do, God still keeps working to make God's plans come about.  God never stops working to bring about God's plan for our lives.

But notice one thing.  Through everything that happened, Joseph never lost faith in God.  Even when he was kind of an arrogant jerk, Joseph still believed God had a plan for him.  When Joseph was sold to Potiphar, Joseph still believed God had a plan for him.  When Joseph was thrown in prison, Joseph still believed God had a plan for him.  Through it all, Joseph kept believing in God's plan for him, and kept believing that God would make it come about.

God has a plan for your life.  God has a plan for my life.  No matter what happens, keep believing in that plan.  Even when we mess up, keep believing in God's plan.  Even when other people do things to you, keep believing in God's plan.  No matter what happens, no matter how far-fetched it may seem, keep believing in God's plan for you, and keep believing God will make it come about.


We have free will, and that free will has consequences.  Other people have free will, too, and their free will has consequences for us.  But God has a plan for you.  If you keep believing that, God will keep working.  And ultimately, God's plan will work out.