Joseph Prince - God's Wisdom Goes Beyond Natural Talent and Logic
This is an excerpt from: Healing And Restoration For Your Mind
Now, remember a slave boy called Joseph? Very nice name. He was in prison, and Pharaoh, the king, had a dream. You see, people of the world can have dreams from God, but they cannot interpret, there's no suniemi. The suniemi belongs to God's people when they ask God. That happened to Daniel also with King Nebuchadnezzar. But Joseph was in prison, forgotten for some time, and then Pharaoh had a dream, and his dream was very interesting. He had two sets of dreams in the same night. He dreamt that there was seven cows that were fine-looking and fat, and then the seven cows was grazing. Then came another seven ugly thin, it says gaunt in my Bible, gaunt, thin and gaunt cows, and the seven, skinny, gaunt cows ate the fat cows, but they still looked the same.
Later on Joseph will interpret seven years of plenty is coming, amen, with seven years of famine. And the seven years of famine will be such that all the years of plenty is forgotten. That's why the cows looked the same. I find it very interesting, and this is my own revelation, please don't take it. It's my own revelation. Very interesting that when God calls the seven years of plenty, he calls them cows, fine-looking and fat. But when he talks about years of famine, it's ugly and thin. Today the world says, "Thin is good, fat no good". Wait, it's just a joke, okay? Hey, I'm just joking, all right? Don't get angry, and please don't write to me, okay? I'm just joking. Now, now, now I'm Joe Prince. Just now, just Joe King. "Pastor, you're so punny. Pun. It's so painful, Pastor". I know. That's why he took all our pains. "Stop it"!
Okay. I'm bringing this to a close. Listen. So, the king had this dream, Pharaoh had a dream, and no one could interpret. All the wise men, all the astrologists in his domain could not interpret. And then when the Butler was there, say, "I remember, oh man". He said, "I remember two years ago, I had a dream, and, this young man, this Hebrew man interpreted, and it all came to pass". The king says, "Bring him here". So, Joseph came before Pharaoh, Pharaoh shared about fat and thin, all right, and also the stalks of grain, also the same full plum in the head in the grain, and this one is skinny and withered. Again, the skinny one at the grain. It doesn't make logic because dreams is dreams, but it's the meaning behind them. And Joseph interpreted, "There'll be seven years of plenty coming, king, but I advise you, find a man who is discerning and wise you can appoint over this matter. Set aside during the years of plenty 20%, amen". And that made Pharaoh and Egypt very rich when the seven years of famine came.
So, let's follow the story. We'll close with this. "And the dream was repeated to Pharaoh twice because the thing is established by God, and God will shortly bring it to pass. 'Now therefore, let Pharaoh'", Joseph is talking, "'Pharaoh, select a discerning and wise man, and set him over the land of Egypt.'" He was probably recommending himself. "If I raise money", the way he does it, he can recommend without appearing like he's recommending. That's wisdom. Like, Ruth, Ruth proposed to Boaz without proposing to Boaz, but she proposed to Boaz. Boaz never knew what hit him, all right? That's wisdom. So, "Let Pharaoh select a discerning and wise man".
Now, look at this. The word discerning is the word, in Hebrew, this is Old Testament, Hebrew is bin, where you get the word binna, and wife is chakam. Many of you know the word chokmah, chakam, that's wise. But don't forget, there's also a Greek version of the Old Testament that's not often used called Septuagint. In the Septuagint it's phronimos, and wise is guess what, guess what? Suniemi. It's actually sunitos, the adjective here, but sunitos is from the verb suniemi. It's the word suniemi. Select a man whom God has given wisdom, not just a natural talent, not somebody who graduated from Egypt University. Find someone that you see is discerning and wise, because all those in the university graduates and all that, none of them could interpret Pharaoh's dream, but this slave who has wisdom from God is able to, amen.
Look at Pharaoh's response. Pharaoh says, "So the advice was good in the eyes of Pharaoh, in the eyes of all his servants. And Pharaoh said to his servants, 'Can we find such a one as this, a man in whom is the Spirit of God?' Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, 'Inasmuch as God has shown you all this, there is no one as discerning and wise,'" same words, "'as you. You shall be over my house, and all my people shall be ruled according to your word; only in regard to the throne will I be greater than you.'" From the pit to the prison to the palace, wisdom will bring you up, amen. I'm gonna pray for you that God's gonna heal your mind, amen, and give you a sense of his love. The greatest wisdom is to know that you are loved and loved by the one who gave his life for you, who came for you.
You know, in Song of Songs it says that the bride say to the bridegroom, I love this, it's a picture of us all talking to our bridegroom, our Lord Jesus, because the Bible likens our relationship like bridegroom and bride. Not even husband and wife, bridegroom and bride, because when bridegroom and bride? Bridegroom and bride is when the love is the strongest, the most vehement, most flaming, fiery, passionate. He likens our love like that all the time, amen. Husband and wife sometimes become no more, lah. But the first miracle Jesus did was turn the water into wine at a wedding, which means, what? Your marriage becomes bland, like water, Jesus can turn it into wine, amen? Blessed, intoxicating wine, and may you all be intoxicated one another's love. It can happen in 2023. We're not looking to ourselves, we're looking to him, okay?
Now, the bride says to the bridegroom, "Your love, let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth". I don't want to know him from afar. Kissing is, what? Very near. Okay, those who don't understand, kissing means very near, all right? I don't want to know other people's love about Jesus and other people talk about their love for Jesus. I want to know personal his love, amen. Then she says this to the Lord. "Your love is better than wine". Wow, what a thing to tell the Lord. Your love is better than wine. Wine in those days is that which, they celebrate, you know, when they have big celebrations, they bring out the wine, amen. And wine also means a good harvest, which means prosperity for all the farmers, many of them were farmers. And he's saying, the bride is saying, "Your love is better than all the greatest earthly pleasures".
I pray that you know that every day. It's wonderful to wake up, when things go wrong, his love is still right. He still loves you. And somehow it gives you a brilliancy to rise above the circumstances. It gives you that knowing that it's gonna be all right. When you know he loves you, his eye is on you. When his eye is on you, it's on you from the beginning to the end, amen. But I cannot close here by not showing you the Lord's response. You'd think that this is great, look at his response a few chapters later. You know what the Lord says to her? The Lord says to her this. "How fair is your love, my sister, my spouse"! We are both his sister and his wife, and his spouse, amen. "How much better than wine is your love". In everything Jesus exceeds us. We say to the Lord, "Your love is better than wine". He turns to us and says, "Whatever little love you have for me, how much better is your love, how much better is your love to me than wine". He always exceeds us.
I asked God for a life partner many years ago. God gave me Wendy. The other day I look at her, and I think she's getting prettier. I really do. And I think I'm falling more in love with her. I envy myself of all these years, we are married for more than, what, 27 years right now, amen. And I still love that woman. I asked God for a small ministry first, you know, just to help people. God gave me all of you, this church. He always exceeds us. One time they brought some children to Jesus. You all know, if you read the gospels, mothers brought their little ones to Jesus, and they asked Jesus to touch, lay his hands on the little ones.
You know what the Bible says? Jesus embraced them. He always exceeds us. He always exceeds us, amen, even in love. He says, you know, "What little love you have, how much better is your love than wine for me". Do we think of ourself that way, that he appreciates our love? Or do you say, "My love is not as strong as Pastor Mark, Pastor Lawrence, you know, and all these other people here"? No, no, whatever little love you have, the Lord appreciates it. And he even says, "How much better". You say to him, "Lord, your love is better than wine," and his love is perfect, our is not. But he says about our imperfect love, "How much better is your love than wine".