The Greatest Challenge Of Them All // Don't Miss God's Opportunities, Part 4

Last time on the program, we talked about the fact that one of the best ways to discern whether an opportunity that’s before us is God–given or not, is to consider the fit between our natural gifts and abilities and the demands, or the requirements of the opportunity. Does this opportunity really fit with who God made me to be. But sometimes … God calls us to do things that don’t come naturally

The Challenge of Forgiveness

Over the past few weeks, we've been travelling along with young Joseph, son of Isaac in the Old Testament, on his journey through life – a journey that had some real downers, much like your journey and mine – and yet a journey that was heading in a direction that only God could foresee.

There was Joseph, one of 12 brothers, the youngest one and dad’s favourite. His father was Jacob, son of Isaac, son of Abraham – although God had given Jacob a new name. He’d called him … Israel, and unbeknown to anyone, these 12 brothers were the fathers of the 12 tribes of Israel. That was a long way off.

Here is what the relationship between Joseph and his other brothers looked like Gen 37:1–4:

Jacob settled in the land where his father had lived as an alien, the land of Canaan. This is the story of the family of Jacob.

Joseph, being seventeen years old, was shepherding the flock with his brothers; he was a helper to the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father’s wives; and Joseph brought a bad report of them to their father. Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his children, because he was the son of his old age; and he had made him a long robe with sleeves. But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably to him.

But things only got worse, because Joseph had two dreams which he shared with his brothers and father, that one day he would rule over them all. That was it. His brothers plotted to kill him, but ultimately instead, sold him into slavery. From there he’s transported, as we’ve seen to Egypt, becomes Potiphar’s slave, is thrown into prison, where he rots for a few years and finally, finally through a set of circumstances that only God could orchestrate becomes the ruler of Egypt, second only to Pharaoh.

And again under God’s hand, Joseph as the ruler has stored up in Egypt surplus grain that was produced in the years of plenty, so that when the famine hit, there would be enough to eat in the land. And not just in Egypt, people travelled from all over the known world to purchase grain in Egypt, because they were starving. And, as God would have it, some of Joseph’s brothers travelled to Egypt to buy grain.

They had no idea what had become of Joseph after they sold him. They’d told their father Jacob that he was dead. But low and behold, one day they stood before Joseph and bowed down to him, just as he had dreamed in that dream all those years before as a young boy. Gen 42:1–8

When Jacob learned that there was grain in Egypt, he said to his sons, “Why do you keep looking at one another? I have heard,” he said, “that there is grain in Egypt; go down and buy grain for us there, that we may live and not die.” So ten of Joseph’s brothers went down to buy grain in Egypt. But Jacob did not send Joseph’s brother Benjamin with his brothers, for he feared that harm might come to him. Thus the sons of Israel were among the other people who came to buy grain, for the famine had reached the land of Canaan.

 Now Joseph was governor over the land; it was he who sold to all the people of the land. And Joseph’s brothers came and bowed themselves before him with their faces to the ground. When Joseph saw his brothers, he recognized them, but he treated them like strangers and spoke harshly to them. “Where do you come from?” he said. They said, “From the land of Canaan, to buy food.” Although Joseph had recognized his brothers, they did not recognize him.

Now, we don’t have time to go through the whole story, of how he dealt with his brothers – it runs for several chapters, Genesis 42 to 46 – it’s really worth a read, so if you have a Bible, grab it in the next day or two and check it out for yourself. But can you imagine how Joseph felt – these mongrels, his brothers, who had plotted his murder and then sold him into slavery, now stood before him and bowed down to him, just as God had told him as a young lad in his dream.

He was the ruler of Egypt now, second only to Pharaoh and he had the power of life and death over them. Finally, a chance for revenge. Finally, here he is, justified, with God’s favour on him, and these men who did him such a terrible injustice were begging for food before him. What an opportunity. And, as you read the story, Joseph was seriously tempted; he was torn between his hatred for them and his love; between revenge and forgiveness.

He accused them of being spies, locked them up for three days, then he took one of them as a hostage in prison, to force them to go back and get their youngest brother, Benjamin. He played tricks on them, he gave them an incredibly hard time.

You see, one of the things that just doesn’t come naturally to us, is forgiveness. He had been so hurt and damaged by his brothers, he was tempted to kill them all, after he’d toyed with them in a dark and terrible cat and mouse game. This went on for quite some time, but …

Then Joseph could no longer control himself before all those who stood by him, and he cried out, “Send everyone away from me.” So no one stayed with him when Joseph made himself known to his brothers. And he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard it, and the household of Pharaoh heard it. Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph. Is my father still alive?” But his brothers could not answer him, so dismayed were they at his presence.

Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come closer to me.” And they came closer. He said, “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land these two years; and there are five more years in which there will be neither ploughing nor harvest. God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. (Gen 45:1–7)

Joseph took the greatest opportunity of all, he forgave his brothers not just in word, but in deed. He saw that God had sent him to preserve their lives.

Have you ever had the opportunity to harm or to forgive someone who has hurt you? Which way did you lean, naturally, in the flesh? Towards revenge right? Towards extracting your pound of flesh. That’s what Joseph wanted to do.

And yet, he’d been travelling too long with God to do that. God had been with him in the pit that his brothers had thrown him. God had been with him on the journey to Egypt in chains, in the slave market where he was sold, as a slave, in prison where he was thrown after being wrongly accused. God had been with him each step of the way.

And at each turn, God had placed an opportunity for Joseph to do good or evil. To behave well, or badly. To use his natural gifts and talents to grab hold of the opportunities or not. And at each turn, Joseph stepped up to the plate and took a hold of those God–given opportunities.

He didn’t realise it at the time, but it’s that consistent pattern of behaviour, that brought him to the place of power and privilege in which he now found himself. And it was in this place that he faced his biggest test; to forgive, or to take revenge.

Forgiveness goes against the grain. Forgiveness, when you think about it is unjust, because we choose to forego our right for punishment and recompense. But no matter how badly you’ve been hurt, no matter how unnatural that step of forgiveness appears to be to you in the place that you’re at, it is the greatest opportunity that God will ever give you.

So seriously does He take forgiveness, that He sent His only Son, Jesus, to die for you, to pay for your sins. It cost Him everything to forgive you.

So, when this opportunity presents itself, will you take revenge, or will you forgive?

The Big Picture

I’m convinced that one of the hardest things in life, is to keep our eye on the big picture. Maybe it’s a project at work, that involves a lot of people and a lot of complexity. Maybe it’s a plan you have for your life, and yet time and again things happen to derail your brilliant plan.

Or maybe, it’s simply setting your life on a course to follow Jesus with all your heart, and yet you discover that the road is narrow and hard and inconvenient and uncomfortable and some days, downright painful. And when that happens, what happens to the big picture, the end goal, the reason that you’re following Jesus with all your heart?

It just kind of evaporates doesn’t it?

Here we are in the last message, in this series that I’ve called “Don’t Miss God’s Opportunities” – well, one of the main reasons we miss God’s opportunity to do good on those days when we feel that following this Jesus ain’t all it’s been cracked up to be, is that on those days, we lose sight of the big picture.

Now, to be fair, we can’t always see the big picture and that makes things even harder. When the Lord our God has us in one of those dark, scary, uncomfortable valleys on our journey, you actually can’t see far enough ahead to know what comes next; to know how it’s going to turn out; to know why He’s put you in this place to start with.

Often it’s only in hindsight that we can see what He was up to all along, and even then, sometimes, we don’t get the full picture. I was speaking at a businessmen’s breakfast fellowship just recently – all successful, high powered businessmen. They’d asked me to share my testimony – and it is a story let me tell you of as many low points as high points.

And as I retraced those steps, sharing the incredible things that God has done in my life, I again just had that quiet assurance from the Holy Spirit, that all along, I’d been on the journey that God had planned, even in those dark and difficult times; especially, in fact, in those dark and difficult times.

It’s the sense that Joseph, Jacob’s son in the Old Testament, had when finally he stood in the place that he’d dreamed of as a young teenager – a position of power and privilege as the ruler of Egypt, second only to Pharaoh himself. As we saw yesterday/ as we saw before the break, his brothers now stood before him. Those same brothers who had sold him into slavery out of their jealousy and hatred. Instead of exacting revenge, he forgave them, and he explained to them why God had allowed this to happen. Let’s take another look at this together – Gen 45:4–15:

Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come closer to me.” And they came closer. He said, “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land these two years; and there are five more years in which there will be neither ploughing nor harvest. God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God; he has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt. Hurry and go up to my father and say to him, ‘Thus says your son Joseph, God has made me lord of all Egypt; come down to me, do not delay. You shall settle in the land of Goshen, and you shall be near me, you and your children and your children’s children, as well as your flocks, your herds, and all that you have. I will provide for you there—since there are five more years of famine to come—so that you and your household, and all that you have, will not come to poverty. ’ And now your eyes and the eyes of my brother Benjamin see that it is my own mouth that speaks to you. You must tell my father how greatly I am honoured in Egypt, and all that you have seen. Hurry and bring my father down here.” Then he fell upon his brother Benjamin’s neck and wept, while Benjamin wept upon his neck. And he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them; and after that his brothers talked with him.

What a beautiful picture of reconciliation after such treachery and suffering. But the bit that I really want you to notice here is that Joseph finds meaning in the suffering, because he sees the big picture to explain what was going on.

God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God; he has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt.

In other words, by looking back and seeing the journey through God’s eyes, he sees what God was up to all along. God’s purpose was to do his family good; to preserve and protect them, and for that purpose, a purpose that he couldn’t see in those dark places along the way on this journey that had taken over 20 years. That’s why he had had to suffer treachery, slavery, injustice and imprisonment.

God had had a plan, and now Joseph could see it looking back. And yet even at this point, can I say, Joseph had no idea – none whatsoever, of the important part that his small journey was playing in God’s overall plan for humanity.

In that passage we just read, did you notice, the brothers were to go back and get their father – Jacob, or Israel as God had renamed him, and bring the whole family down here and settle in Egypt. Out of that over the next four and a half centuries, grew the mighty nation of Israel, whom God saved through Moses, crossing the Red Sea and 40 years in the wilderness before he brought them to the promised land.

Through Judah, one of the 12 brothers, God started a lineage of generations that finally resulted in the birth of Jesus, who came to save you and me, by dying on that cross for us. Joseph’s story, Joseph’s journey is still having eternal ramifications, in your life and mine, through Jesus, of Israel. That’s mind blowing. The picture is so big that none of them really knew what God had planned through this terrible journey of Joseph’s.

Honestly, the only way to lay hold of the big picture when we’re immersed in the trials of our journey is by faith. Just believing that God has a plan; that God knows what He’s doing no matter how much it hurts along the way; that eventually, God will reveal to us through hindsight, that part of the big picture that He wants us to see.

Holding onto God’s big picture by faith, is what keeps us going, step by step, doing good, doing right, looking for the opportunities that God has set before us to do His will.

And faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible (Hebr 11:1–3)

When we lose faith in the faithfulness of God, in His Big Picture, although we can’t see it for ourselves, we stop doing what’s right; why stop looking for His opportunities; we stop hoping and dreaming; we stop doing what we know is right, even when the rest of the world seems to have gone stark raving mad and none of the pain and suffering makes any sense.

My friend I want to implore you, don’t give up. Don’t lose faith. Don’t stop looking for those God–given opportunities to use your gifts and abilities, to do what you know is right, to forgive those who’ve hurt you.

Don’t give up. Because one day, you will stand before God and you want to hear Him say, “Well done good and faithful servant”. That’s why Jesus died for you. That’s why Jesus sent His Holy Spirit to dwell in you the moment you put your trust in Him. That’s the big picture.

So … whatever you do … don’t miss out on God’s opportunities.

God Expects Us to Take Hold of His Opportunities

I want to imagine for a moment, that you’re a parent, some of us are, some aren’t. But just imagine for a moment, you’re a parent, and you have these children that you love with all your heart. What do you do for them?

Well, you work hard to give them new opportunities. You pay for their education, you run them to music lessons, or choir practice, or training for the sports or athletics team that they're on. What’s that all about? It’s about creating opportunities for them to discover who they are, what they’re good at and what they want to be doing with the rest of their lives.

All that we do for our children is about equipping them, and providing them with opportunities. Now imagine that this child of yours, for whom you’ve sacrificed so much, is lazy and disrespectful. Instead of grabbing those opportunities that you’ve given so much to create for you, they laze around, they don’t apply themselves, they whinge and complain about everything.

How pleasing do you find their reaction to the opportunities that you’ve created for them? That’s not a difficult question to answer. So, why do you and I imagine that God is any different? If we as parents know how to give good things to our children, even though we’re flawed and imperfect, how much more do you think your Father in Heaven, is prepared to give good things to you, and open doors for you, and create opportunities for you.

And He expects us to grab a hold of them, and do something worthwhile with them, not to be a lazy, immature, grumbling and complaining individual who never achieves anything with the abilities and resources that God’s given you, through the opportunities He’s prepared for you. So to bookend this teaching series, let me begin with the scripture that we kicked things off with a few weeks back:

As they were listening to this, he went on to tell a parable, because he was near Jerusalem, and because they supposed that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately. So he said, “A nobleman went to a distant country to get royal power for himself and then return. He summoned ten of his slaves, and gave them ten pounds, and said to them, ‘Do business with these until I come back. ’ But the citizens of his country hated him and sent a delegation after him, saying, ‘We do not want this man to rule over us. ’ When he returned, having received royal power, he ordered these slaves, to whom he had given the money, to be summoned so that he might find out what they had gained by trading. The first came forward and said, ‘Lord, your pound has made ten more pounds. ’ He said to him, ‘Well done, good slave! Because you have been trustworthy in a very small thing, take charge of ten cities. ’ Then the second came, saying, ‘Lord, your pound has made five pounds. ’ He said to him, ‘And you, rule over five cities. ’ Then the other came, saying, ‘Lord, here is your pound. I wrapped it up in a piece of cloth, for I was afraid of you, because you are a harsh man; you take what you did not deposit, and reap what you did not sow. ’ He said to him, ‘I will judge you by your own words, you wicked slave! You knew, did you, that I was a harsh man, taking what I did not deposit and reaping what I did not sow? Why then did you not put my money into the bank? Then when I returned, I could have collected it with interest. ’ He said to the bystanders, ‘Take the pound from him and give it to the one who has ten pounds. ’ (And they said to him, ‘Lord, he has ten pounds! ’) ‘I tell you, to all those who have, more will be given; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. But as for these enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them—bring them here and slaughter them in my presence. ’” (Luke 19:11–27)

Are you getting this? God’s blessed you and me with an awful lot, each according to our gifts and abilities. And His expectation isn’t that we waste it; His expectation is that we do something of eternal significance with all that He’s given us. His expectation is that we’ll live a life that counts and a life that bears much fruit for His Glory. His expectation is that we’ll grab onto each God–given opportunity and do something with it for Him. Are you getting this? Your life matters. You matter. And You can make an awesome difference in this world.