John Bevere - Joseph's Tears (Are You in the Pit?)
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How many of you know Joseph in the Bible? Come on, everybody should know Joseph, right? I mean, he has to be one of my favorite characters in the Old Testament. Joseph is this young man to whom God gives dreams of great leadership. He clearly shows him that one day he will be a leader, and his brothers will even be under his leadership. However, when Joseph appears in Genesis 37, the very first verse indicates that he was telling his dad about the bad things his brothers were doing—so he’s a tattletale. Then, if you go a few verses later, like six more verses, it says he is bragging about his dreams and talking down to his brothers.
So, let me lay this out to make it really clear: when Joseph shows up, we have a bragger, a tattletale, and someone who talks down to people. Despite this, God puts Joseph into a leadership position. What you have here is a very narcissistic, insecure leader, someone who could destroy lives. Therefore, God says, «We need to do some work in this boy’s life.» Now, God doesn’t author this; He permits it. You see, you have to understand that God knows the end from the beginning because He’s not bound by time; we are. I can tell you everything that happened yesterday, but I can’t tell you much about what’s going to happen tomorrow unless God shows me, right?
Because we’re bound by time, God knows what his brothers are going to do. He knows they are going to sell him into slavery. So, what do they do? They throw him into a pit. For those of you who don’t know, «pit» stands for «preachers in training,» by the way. Then he is sold as a slave and brought down to the most powerful nation in the world, where he is sold into the house of one of the king’s officers in Egypt, Potiphar. We in the Western world do not understand what his brothers did to him. What they did was worse than killing him because, back in those days, it was everything for a young man to receive his father’s name and inheritance.
When God appears to Abraham, Abraham’s response is kind of like, «Big deal, I don’t have an heir; no one will carry my name on.» Back in those days, if you were a slave, you would work your entire life to build someone else’s name and legacy. The woman you marry would build their legacy, and your children would build other people’s legacies. Now, it’s one thing to be born a slave; it is entirely different to be born the heir of a very wealthy man and have it all stripped away by your own brothers.
So after six months or a year, all hope of a father’s rescue is gone. His dad thinks he is dead. He is a slave for ten years. Think about how long ten years is; go back ten years—it’s a long time, right? Now, God is blessing him because God always blesses, but underneath the surface, something much worse is going on. The officer’s wife gets the hots for Joseph, and she doesn’t approach him once or twice; the Bible says she approaches him every day. Now, I want you to stop and think about this: this woman is probably dressed in the best clothes, smelling the best, and likely has the seducing spirit down to her eyeballs. She is approaching him every day for sex.
Now, you’re not thinking this through. He doesn’t have a connect group or a small group; he doesn’t have podcasts to listen to; he’s not even looking at Twitter. Yet every day, I love how this guy fears God. A lot of people don’t grasp the fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord is not to be scared of God; how can you be intimate with someone you’re scared of? The fear of the Lord is being terrified to be away from Him.
Paul tells us about the fear of the Lord when he writes to the Philippian Church. Now, this is Paul writing to the Philippians, but it’s really God speaking to us. You know what He said to the Philippian Church in Philippians 2:15? He says, «As you have always obeyed in my presence, now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling.» See, it’s easy to obey God when you’re in a good atmosphere like this. But what about when your child is throwing up all night, and you have the presentation of your life in front of the board the next morning? Or when you’re at work in your dream job, and someone gossips about you, totally slandering you, and you get fired? Are you still going to obey God, or will you be a little passive-aggressive, wondering, «Why should I obey you? What have you done for me?»
It’s quiet in this Presbyterian church right now, but Joseph—think about it: ten years, heritage stripped from him; he’s not the bad one; his brothers are. They’re enjoying all the wealth of your great-grandfather, Abraham, while you are working to build someone else’s legacy. After ten years, this woman approaches him, planning her attack. She dresses a certain way, showing some leg and cleavage, and she nests up to him, perfumed, saying, «I’m yours; nobody’s here.» He does exactly what the Word of God says: he flees sexual immorality. She’s grabbing his robe as he runs; it tears, and he finds himself naked.
Her scorn turns into lust, which turns into hate, and she accuses him of rape, the very thing he ran from. So, he gets thrown into the dungeon. I preached in Louisiana a couple of months ago at the largest prison in the United States called Angola, southeast Louisiana, with 6,200 inmates, all serving sentences of 20 years to life, no parole. Let me tell you, that prison was a country club compared to the Middle Eastern dungeons I’ve been in.
We don’t fully grasp what a Middle Eastern dungeon is. Middle Eastern dungeons were usually cisterns that were dried up underground. The average height of a Middle Eastern dungeon, or cistern, is only four feet. There is no sunshine, and it is damp; it is bedrock. So, picture this: there’s no mattress, no pillow, and no running water. You are living in your waste. You throw up, and you live in it; nobody comes in to clean it up. You don’t have a gym, a basketball goal, a television, or any sunshine coming in. The Bible says they hurt his feet with fetters and laid him in chains until the time that his personal promise came to pass. The word of the Lord tested him.
Amazing! You know what they did in those dungeons? They gave you what’s called the «bread of affliction.» What is the bread of affliction? They don’t want you to die; that’s too easy, so they give you just enough bread and just enough water to keep you alive. Then, God brings the greatest test to Joseph. What’s the greatest test? He brings two guys with dreams, a butler and a baker. You know the story, right? They want an interpretation of their dreams.
What’s the test? Listen: can Joseph proclaim to them the faithfulness of God when he hasn’t seen one shred of evidence of it in his own life for ten years? Think about it. God says you’re going to be a leader, and your brothers will be under you. He’s gone from pit to slavery to dungeon. Can he proclaim the faithfulness of God when he hasn’t seen any evidence of it in his own life for ten years?
Joseph could have easily been like many of us: «Have dreams? Leave me alone; dreams don’t come true. I had a dream once.» If he had done that, he would have died in the dungeon saying, «God is not faithful, and God does not keep His promises.» When the reality is, God is faithful and God does keep His promises. He passed the test; he obeys God. Every time he obeys God, his life gets worse. Do you understand this? All he does is proclaim the dream, and he ends up in the pit and in slavery. All he does is flee sexual immorality, obey the Word of God, and he ends up in the dungeon.
Now he obeys and proclaims the faithfulness of God, and the butler forgets him. He stays in there two more years, living in his waste, his urine, all of it. He is underground in this dungeon for two more years, and then the king has a dream. The butler suddenly remembers, «Oh my gosh! I forgot that guy!» He gets restored, there are seven years of plenty, and then two years of famine. Nineteen years later, here come the brothers. Some of us get upset when our dreams aren’t fulfilled in 18 months. Do you know what Joseph’s life shows us? It shows us that no man, woman, child, organization, or demon can ever get you out of your destiny. Joseph’s brothers said, «We will destroy it. We will kill him, and we will see what becomes of his dream.» God says, «Oh yeah? You will be the very ones that fulfill his dream.» The only one that can get you out of your destiny is you.