We need to learn a valuable lesson. Ron brought this out beautifully
last week in his message last Wednesday night, that all of
history fulfills the purpose of God for His children. It is certainly a fact that all
of the lives of not only the Lord's people, but the lives
of everyone are under the authority and government of our God. Whether they be believers or
unbelievers, whether they're righteous or wicked, whether
you're one of those who will at last enter into the paradise
of God or you will be separated from God forever, our God governs
everything in your life. He's directing all things to
the end that he himself has appointed. We often use a word, and some
of the old timers in our country, some of the old leaders, the
presidents of many years gone by, they used to quite frequently
speak of that which is called the providence of God. And you
would read that, and you'll read that in some of the history books,
and it's a pity that we read very little of that today, and
the word isn't even used hardly ever from any of our leaders. But what is the providence of
God? It is God directing all things
to the end that He Himself has appointed. God has ordained the
end. Isaiah says, from the beginning,
God ordained the end. And it isn't merely that He knows
what's going to happen in the end, but He has ordained everything
up until the end of what we call time. And all things move at
God's discretion and at God's will. Nothing. Nothing is left to luck or chance
or fate. You say, preacher, do you believe
in blind fate? No. I believe God. I believe God. Romans 11 says
that of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom
be glory forever. Now if of Him and through Him
and to Him are all things, That includes everything. There's
nothing excluded. And even the evil deeds of men,
and I would not presume to try to impress you that I have some
kind of knowledge that I really don't have and speak to you about
like what's going on with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I can't explain all of that.
But I will tell you this, God still reigns. And He's fulfilling
His purpose. And I know that because the most
awful, horrific event in the history of this world God ordained
that. Well, you say, what in the world
would that be? You can go back through history
and identify some of the terrible things that have happened in
the history of the world, but they all pale into insignificance
when it comes to the death of our Lord Jesus Christ. One time
in all of Earth's history, Just one time, God permitted men to
put their hands on Him and do what they would with the Son
of God. But that was all ordained of
God. There was purpose before the
world began. because our Lord Jesus, He came
into the world to save sinners by His substitutionary death. Pay no attention to those who
say, well, He came to set up an earthly kingdom, but that
just didn't work out, that didn't pan out, so God implemented a
secondary plan. No, Calvary was not a secondary
plan. That's been God's purpose from
the very beginning. Our Savior is said to be the
Lamb who was slaughtered before the world began, before the world
was made. And all of that, when the Scripture
says, He came unto His own and His own received Him not. The
rejection of the world, the religious world turning thumbs down on
Him. All of those things worked toward
the good of the people of God because it worked toward the
arrest and conviction and death of our Lord Jesus. There was
no salvation for us unless He dies. unless He sheds His blood. Divine justice took Him and,
as it were, arrested Him. I know Pilate had Him arrested at the will of the people, and
He bowed to the will of the people. But overall, God was governing
everything. Because He purposed that His
Son would lay down His life for His people. Hey, what is His
name? His name is Jesus. Matthew 1.21. You know what it says. The angel
said to Joseph, Thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall
save His people from their sins. Well, did He do it? Yes, He did
it. When did He do it? When He died
upon the cross of Calvary. And he settled the issue honoring
justice that demanded death for sin. Now I'll tell you, the lives
and movements of every person, whoever lives, Your life and the movements and
the events and the things in your life don't ever attribute
them to chance or luck or fate. It's God working, working to
fulfill His purpose through you. You see, here's Joseph. He winds
up in prison. And we say, poor Joseph, what
did he do? He was, as we would define good,
he was a good man. In fact, he's probably the only
man in the Bible about whom so much is written without anything
negative being written of him. And in that, he's a really good
picture of our Lord Jesus. And yet his brothers were against
him. They threw him in a pit. And then Ishmaelites came by
and got him and took him and sold him into slavery. And then he's sold into the slavery
of Potiphar. And he is so respected by Potiphar
that he rises in the household, and Potiphar turned everything,
and he said, here are the books. You balance my checkbook, keep
up with the savings account, and all of those things. That's
what Potiphar said. In fact, the Scripture says that
Potiphar, he only concerned himself with what he was going to eat.
All other things were left to Joseph. And you say, oh, things
are really looking up for him. Well, the thing of it is, as
we saw in our last study, Mrs. Potiphar falsely accused
Joseph of making improper advances toward her, whereas it was in
reality her advances toward him. And Joseph would not yield to
the temptation, certainly a good lesson for all of us. Don't yield to the lusts of the
flesh. And he runs and finally, she
grabs his garment, and then when her husband comes in, she says,
that Hebrew that you brought into our house, He tried to attack
me and I held him off and I got his garment though and Potiphar
was upset. And he put him in prison. But he could have killed him. But it wasn't Joseph's time to
die. In fact, I am fully persuaded
that were it not for the providence of God in the life of Joseph,
Potiphar would have killed him. It had been the end of Joseph. But Joseph, you see, he is the
one who is going to be the Savior, little s now. He's going to be
the deliverer of Israel. He's going to save the nation.
So He can't die. Not yet. Not till His work is
done. And you see, that is a picture
of our Savior. The Jews in Luke 4, our Lord
was teaching sovereign grace. Distinguishing grace. The Jews
got so mad at Him, they wanted to throw Him off and kill Him.
Throw Him off a high cliff. He slipped through their midst.
Why couldn't they get their hands on him? It wasn't time for him
to die. He's going to die at the death
of the Savior. Back in John chapter 5, when
he healed a man who had been lame 38 years. Do you remember
that? He healed him on the Sabbath
day, told the man, roll up your bed and walk. And the Jews were mad at him.
And he said, my father worketh hitherto and I work. And they
said, oh no! Oh no, he not only violated the
Sabbath day, but now he says he's the Son of God. He's claiming
equality with God. We're going to kill you. Did
they kill him then? No. No. He's going to die the death of
the Savior, the death that God appointed for him. Then we get
to John chapter number 10, the shepherd and the sheep, and all
of you are pretty familiar with that. And he said, I and my father,
one, the Jews picked up stones to stone him. We're going to
put you out of business right now. I bet you they got some
big rocks too, don't you? Going to bash his brains out. He said, for which of my works
do you stone me? And they said, for a good work,
we stone thee not. But you're just a man. You're
just a man. And you say you're the son of
God. But they couldn't kill him. You see, he had already said
in John chapter 10, nobody takes my life from me. He said, I have
the power to lay it down. He had to lay His life down,
right? He had to lay His life down.
He said, it is finished. When He had finished the work
of redemption and reconciliation, when He had put our sins away
and brought in righteousness, He bowed His head, having already
said, it is finished, He bowed His head and said, Father, into
Thy hands I commend my spirit. And He gave up the ghost. You
see, you will die when God wills for you to die. Our Lord Jesus
died when He willed to die. It's all happening on schedule. And Joseph, he didn't harm anybody. Our Savior, He didn't harm anybody. He healed all their sick. They
never brought anybody to the Lord Jesus with any kind of disease,
but what that person didn't leave, healed. And these were believers
and unbelievers. Oh yeah, unbelievers as well.
No doubt, thousands of people were the recipients of the mercy
of the Lord Jesus Christ. And yet, they killed Him. They killed him because he claimed
to be God. But he could not die until that
time when it was ordained for him to die. And by that manner,
God appointed for him to die. Because in the scriptures it
says, cursed is everyone that hangs on a tree. That's what
it says in the Old Testament. Our Lord Jesus is going to die
on the cross. So here is Joseph. He winds up in prison. And I'm sure he didn't understand
all that was going on. He couldn't have. He wasn't divine. He didn't have all knowledge.
And yet we don't ever find him His belly aching. He'd never
complain. He doesn't raise his voice. This
isn't fair! Why am I having to go through
with this? That's probably what I'd been
saying. That's probably what you'd be
saying. But not Joseph. Because he's a picture of our
Lord Jesus. Who said, not my will, but Thy
will be done. And here he is in prison. Let me state five things for
you. Number one, I'll give them to
you simply and it will help to break down this entire 40th chapter. Number one, God purposed for
Joseph to be in prison. Now, if you'll look back in chapter
39, the previous chapter, look at verse 20. And Joseph's master
took him and put him into the prison, a place where the king's
prisoners were bound, and he was there in prison. Now, it's
interesting to note that Joseph's master was a man by the name
of Potiphar. We're introduced to him back
over in chapter 39, verse one. Watch this, and Joseph was brought
down into Egypt, and Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, now note
this, he's the captain of the guard. He's the captain of the
guard. Now look in chapter 40 and verse
3, which I've already read to you. Look at verse 3. So he put
him in ward in the house of the... Who? The captain of the guard. Potiphar. Now, he's the same guy. And now Joseph is under his authority
again, but he is now under house arrest. There was no wrongdoing on the
part of Joseph. He's cast into prison. Though there was a false accusation
against Joseph, yet he's suffering for something he didn't do. And even in prison he was a model
prisoner. Even under the most difficult
circumstances, he always manifested the attitude of a child of God. Hear me, you who are the people
of God, you who are here and you who are watching. I guarantee
you, God will give you opportunities in your life to manifest His
grace to you in difficult circumstances. You're going to have those times.
You may be very sick. You may have had some other kind
of hardship. Some other kind of difficulty.
And that will present opportunities for you to speak to those around
you of the faithfulness of God and the grace of God. And I'll
tell you this, and may all the people of God, me and you and
those who are watching, may all of us remember this. It's a terrible
thing to be in the presence of an unbeliever and then you go
ahead and complain and fuss about things that are happening to
you and those people you're fussing to. They're thinking, I thought
he believed in the grace of God. I thought he believed God was
in control of all things. She doesn't really believe what
she says. You're going to have opportunities
just like Joseph. to manifest the goodness of God
and to manifest to others that you fully believe that all things
work together for good. Brandon read this back in the
office a little bit ago, and when he announced this, he's
reading Romans 8, I said, thank you, Lord. I'm going there. All things work together for
good. They work together for good. It's like a vast mechanism. And the Lord takes everything
in the life of His children, just like everything in the life
of Joseph, and He puts them all together, and everything fits
like pieces in a puzzle. And in the end, your puzzle will
be complete. And it will consist of difficult
times and pleasant times. It will consist of days of sickness
and days of health. Your life will consist, as you
look back on it, of days of prosperity and days of need. But I'm persuaded that when we
get into eternity, we will understand far more fully than we do now. All those things were working
together for our good. You see, we have the advantage
of looking back on the life of Joseph with all of his difficulties,
with all of his troubles, and we've already read the end of
the story, and we can say, hang in there Joseph, it's all going
to work out for your good. We can say that because we can
read the end of his earthly journey. And we've seen and studied that
He will be the deliverer of His people. He will feed Israel and
Israel will be brought into Egypt in fulfillment of God's Word
to Abraham. But he couldn't see it at the
time. Just like you can't see right now. how all of these things,
all the hardships that you're enduring, or the sickness, or
whatever it is, you can't see how they're working
together, but they are. God purposed for Joseph to be
in prison. And I'll tell you something else.
Secondly, God purposed for the chief butler and the chief baker
to also be in the very same prison that Joseph was in. Most historians, most commentators
believe that these men, the chief butler, he's the cup bearer,
and the chief baker, he's the head chef. Boy, that'd be nice,
wouldn't it? Have a head chef fixing all your
meals. But here, most of the commentators
believe they tried to poison the king. He got wind of it. rebellion, treason, worthy of
death, cast them into prison. And I see a picture of our fall
here. In the treacherous actions of
these men, I see our fall in Adam. Adam was the federal head of
our race. We all fell in Adam into the
dungeon of spiritual death and dullness and danger. And such is our condition, unless
the king, unless the king liberates us, we're going to die. We're going
to die forever. But that's his prerogative. who is to live. See, these men are rightfully
where they belong. It reminds me of those two thieves
between which our Lord was crucified. One of them died and went to
paradise, one of them died and went to hell. Both were guilty. Guilty felons,
guilty murderers, rapists, thieves, getting what they deserved. God
saved one of them. And to show you how much authority
and how much power our Lord Jesus had, even when hanging on that
cross suffering, all the enormous ignominities of dying that ignominious
death of the cross with man having spit in his face, he's crucified
naked, and there he hangs, he's a bloody gory mess, but he's
still all powerful to save one of those fellows. That's our
Savior. That's our God right there. You see, Calvary is not the end
of Jesus. That's His throne. That's where
He conquered. That's where He defeated all
the foes of His people. He took on Satan and He beat
him. Fulfillment of Genesis 3, verse
15, He crushed His head. There's a place of victory, not
defeat. You see, I'll give you this too,
thirdly, God used Joseph to accomplish His purpose even though in prison. All things happen according to
the purpose of God. What you may be going through
now, maybe I'm talking to somebody on the internet, and you're going
through some deep waters, Isaac calls them fiery trials. Or maybe
some of you, and these things come in different There are all
kinds of varieties. There's sickness, there's emotional
stress, family matters, job issues, all of these things. You may feel like you're in dire
straits. but you must remember that our
Lord governs in all things. Let me show you a passage of
Scripture. Hold your place there in Genesis. Look at Psalm 107. Look at Psalm 107. And I think
to a degree we can all kind of associate with this.
Psalm 107. Look at verse 26. For brevity's
sake, I'll break into the context. They mount up to heaven. The
picture is of somebody on a boat on the ocean of life. They mount
up to heaven. Sweet. Pleasant. You have those heavenly experiences
as it were. Nice and pleasant. Warm weather. They mount up to heaven. And
then the bottom falls out. They go down again into the depths. Let me ask, have you been there?
You know anything about that? We all do to a degree. Their
soul is melted because of trouble. And that's a good comparison
of life. Of the life of the child of God.
It's just like this. Isn't it? Don't you find your
life is that way? It isn't. Okay. Everything's
perfect. I don't have any troubles at
all. We all have some kind of troubles. We go up and we come down. So many times, I kind of get
a little seasick, don't you? In fact, he says this in verse
27, they reel to and fro, according to the providence of God now,
and stagger like a drunken man. And they're at their wits' end.
I don't even know what to do. You ever been at your wits' end?
Actually, to be at your wit's end is a good place to be. It's
good when God brings us to our wit's end. And then, you see,
it's only when we come to our wit's end when we can't do anything. Verse 28, then, when you're at
your wit's end, then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble.
He brings them out of their distresses. That doesn't mean that He'll
always bring you out of the physical troubles. But He brings your
mind out. He brings your attitude out. So that you can see, listen,
the reason I'm going up and down in life, the reason I'm riding
the waves is because the Master of the sea is governing my life. He takes me up and He takes me
down because that's good for me. No wonder David said, it's
good for me that I've been afflicted, that I might learn thy statutes. Let's go back over to our text
in Genesis 39. And here, I'll give you the fourth
thing. God rules over even the unconscious
thoughts and dreams of the wicked. Both men dreamed significant
dreams on the same night. And I need not repeat that because
I've already read it to you. But that which they did dream
was under the authority of God. And because they didn't understand
the significance of the dreams, they were sad. And when Joseph
came around in the morning to bring them their breakfast, I
suppose, he saw they were downcast. So he asked, what's the reason? Why are you fellows so sad? Now a psychologist might trace
the dreams to the working of the subconscious, to the subconscious
mind, and perhaps there's an element of truth in that. A physiologist
might attribute it to the fact, you guys must eat some bad food.
Maybe last night when they served you pizza, it upset your stomach
or something and you had nightmares. You had dreams that you can't
understand. But over and above whatever reasons
men could give for these dreams, we know that they came at night
into their minds from God who governs the minds of men, the
thoughts of men, and even their dreams. Now remember, back in
those days, they had no Bible. There was no scripture. And God
spoke to men, quite often the angel of the covenant, the angel
of the Lord spoke, and that's our Lord Jesus in pre-incarnate
form, and sometimes by dreams, one time by an animal. An ass talked. Did God use any
means He wanted to back in those days to communicate with men? Now understand this, now He uses
His Word. Forget about the dreams now. If God's going to speak to you,
He will speak to you through His Word. This is how He speaks. not through an audible voice,
not through a dream, not through some preacher saying, oh, what
did you say, Lord? Okay, I'll tell them then. No,
that's extra-biblical facts or heresy, really. God speaks to
us only through the Word of God. He speaks to us through His Son.
The Son of God is God's final spokesman. When Joseph sees them sad and
they said they had dreams, he said, hey, my God's the interpreter
of dreams. What's your dream? And he explained
the dream. To the butler, he said, in three
days, you'll be restored to your position. Your former position. Remember me, will you? when you're restored to the position
you had before you were cast into prison. The baker overheard
that interpretation. It sounded so good. He said,
oh, interpret my dream! Interpret my dream! And he just
couldn't wait to hear what the interpretation of his dream was.
And Joseph, he said, okay. Those three baskets, three days,
basket up on your head full of food, The birds of the air are
going to pick your flesh off your body when the king hangs
you. Which brings me to the last thing. Our God, He controls the issues
of life and death. Both men were rebels against
the king. You agree with that? Everybody
agree with that? Both of these men, if what the
commentators say is correct, and I have no reason to doubt
them, if they both committed treason against the King to not
only defy Him, but to kill Him, to take Him off His throne. See,
that's what we did. That's what we tried to do with
God. That's what sin's all about. Who's going to be in charge? And we all did that. And both
of these men are guilty. There's no question about that.
They both deserved to die. And the baker, when the king
hung him, when the king had him executed, the baker got exactly
what he deserved. Didn't he? Sure he did. But the butler, he was equally
guilty. But the king showed him mercy.
Because you see in the king's hands are the issues of life
and death. Life and death. And here's a
man, one, who is unworthy of the least
of God's mercies. And he lives. And here's another
man who has no goodness about him. No goodness about him. But he dies. The Lord said, I will show mercy
on whom I will show mercy. and I will be gracious to whom
I'll be gracious." Let me ask you a question and I'll wrap
this up. When the king had one man executed and the other one
restored to his former position. See, that salvation is a restoration
of fallen man, not only to his former position, but even higher
than that. But the butler, his restoration,
it's a picture of salvation by the sovereign mercy of God. So Pharaoh said, you'll live? I'm going to leave you to justice.
You're going to get what you deserve. Now here's the question
I want to ask you. Do you think anybody went up
to Pharaoh and said, that's not fair? That's not fair. Well, if they dared to say that,
I expect they'd be hanging out there beside the baker. But that's the reaction of lots
of people when we set forth the Word of God, that God says, I'll
show mercy to whom I'll show mercy, and whom I will I'll harden. You see, God showed mercy to
the Jews, but not to the Egyptians. Well, who does God think He is?
God is the governor of the world. He'll save whom He will. And
I'll tell you this, out of all of the people in Egypt, how many
thousands of people that was, I don't know. But of all the
thousands of people in Egypt, God was interested in one man,
Joseph. And in this story, He teaches
us through the life of Joseph, that the Lord, He is the sovereign
bestower of life. He shows mercy to whom He will.
You say, well, I guess Joseph, he's going to come out of this
really quick, isn't he? You know what chapter 41 says?
Two years comes by. Two years. And we want to say to Joseph,
be patient, my brother. I know the conditions you're
in, brother Joseph, are not the best. And I know you'd love to
be liberated. but be patient. And I say to
you who are the people of God, be patient. Be patient. Things don't run on your time
schedule. All things happen according to
the will of God. And I'm so thankful they do,
aren't you? Sure we are. And even though
in the midst we may be one of those waves, And we become in our wits and
say, Lord, why is this happening? Well, just trust Him. Trust Him. He's going to make it all work
out for your good. I can rejoice in that, and I
hope you can. God, give us a measure of peace
and consolation amidst the difficulties of life.