The Story, Week 3

This section covers one of the more famous stories in the Old Testament; Joseph.
Let’s summarize our way through this part of the Bible and pull out some practical lessons as we go. The practical application parts are italicized.

Joseph is one of 12 brothers, the sons of Jacob. He is the favorite, and Jacob lets everyone know it. Joseph shares some dreams he as about his brothers bowing down to him. The other brothers were rightfully a little hurt. Even when we are dealing with God’s plans to bless us, humility is so very important. Even if God reveals to you that His plan involves you being very successful in some area, or even if you understand that God has gifted more than others in some area, sharing these things in an improper way always leads to trouble.

This hurt among the brothers ends up going way too far. Jacob sends Jo out to check on the brothers and they see his bright coat coming a ways off. They plot to kill him, but Rueben speaks up and talks the group into just throwing him in a well instead. Rueben’s attempt at mercy seems disgusting (Let’s not murder him, lets just through him in a pit and then sell him. After all, he is our beloved brother). He should have stood up and rebuked his brothers for their hatred. As sad as this is, it strongly resembles our attempts at mercy and generosity at times. We often pat ourselves on the back for helping someone in the most minuscule way, or for treating people just a little bit better than others, after all they are our fellow humans and after all God does love them too. The reality is we often pick and choose who is worthy of substantial help and who is worthy of real mercy, and give everyone else a scrap here and there.

Joseph is sold to the Ishmaelites, who in turn sell him in Egypt to an important guy named Potiphar. Over time he proves his administrative skills to Potiphar until he is running the entire household. Potiphar actually says “You are in control of everything I own.” Potiphar’s wife tries to seduce the young studly Joseph but he resists over and over again. Notice Joseph’s understanding of stewardship. He recognized that in spite of how easy it would be to feel entitled, or proud, or like he had earned the right to cheat a little, none of this stuff was actually his. That included Potiphar’s wife. She grabs him and tries to drag him to bed, but he takes off running and leaves her with his cloak in her hands.
Some situations are risky enough that you should just run. Get out of there. Whether is spiritual pride or the secret desire to keep certain things in our lives, we often think we can continue to be around a certain temptation without it affecting us. “I’m strong enough to resist this, so it’s ok for me to be around it.” That is arrogant, and dangerous. Joseph realized the best way to deal with this very tempting situation was to run. Here’s some practical truth: If you struggle with getting drunk with your friends…DON’T GO TO THE BAR WITH YOUR FRIENDS! If you struggle with boundaries in your relationship…DON’T HANG OUT IN THE BEDROOM WITH THE DOOR SHUT! Don’t continue to struggle with the same things because you’re too proud to get out the situation.

She lies about what happened and convinces Potiphar that Joseph tried to rape her. Joseph gets thrown in jail. While he’s in there are 2 major things happen. First, the jailor begins to see that Joseph’s admin skills are amazing and Joseph gets a pretty serious promotion. He goes from normal inmate to an inmate who is running the entire jail. The other thing is that Joseph interprets a few dreams for some officials and becomes known for this ability.

Now, the pharaoh has 2 dreams that nobody can figure out. He hears about Jo and calls for him. Jo gives glory to God saying, “I can’t do this, but God can.”
It is so easy to begin to think you are the source of good things in your life. You are the one with talents. You are the one with good work ethic. You are the one who is better at this or that than everyone else. Because we think we are the source of good things we think we feel the need to take credit for these things. This is not to say hard work doesn’t deserve credit, but we must remember that the ultimate source of every good thing and every ability is God (James 1:17). Therefore, He deserves the credit.
Joseph explains that the dreams mean there are going to be 7 years of plenty followed by 7 years of drought and famine. Then he suggests Pharaoh save enough from the 7 years of surplus to last through the 7 years of famine and that a very smart person be put in charge of this plan. Pharaoh is so impressed he takes Joseph out of jail and makes him the number 2 person in the entire nation. In fact, similar to Potiphar and the jailor, he tells Joseph, “I’m putting everything in your hands. You are actually running this thing. I’m only more important than you in name.”

Stop and think about this process. This story is one of betrayal and struggle and trial, but it also allowed Joseph to train and develop a raw talent. He didn’t get pulled out of the cistern and land a job as the deputy Pharaoh. Not looking at the roadblocks, but the promotions, Joseph was put in charge of a single household, then a jail of several hundred, AND THEN a nation of several million. How important is it that we are willing to go through the steps? How important is it that we are willing to start small? This is not just common sense, it’s often God’s way: prove yourself in small things and then move up to larger things. You may not graduate from college and land a VP job at Apple. Jesus taught this very principle in Matthew 25:21

This is where the story gets really juicy. 2 years into the famine Jacob and the other sons start to starve. Jacob hears Egypt has plenty of food so he sends them to buy some food from Egypt. He sends everyone except Benjamin, Joseph’s only full brother. Apparently he had taken Joseph’s place as the favorite son and Jacob was worried he might lose him too. They show up and don’t recognize Joseph. But they do bow down. It’s been about 22 years since he had this dream. That’s a long time to wait for God to fulfill a promise. Joseph is nervous that Ben isn’t with them thinking they’ve done the same thing to Ben as they did to him. He concocts this big plan to make sure Ben is alive. He sends them back with orders to bring Benjamin and he keeps one of the brothers as collateral. Jacob is all bent out of shape but they really don’t have any choice. So they bring Benjamin back and Joseph sees all of his brothers. They still don’t realize who he is.

Joseph had the perfect opportunity to have vengeance. They are completely at his mercy. He has the full authority of the pharaoh. He could order them to be killed, or made into slaves, or thrown into a cistern. But he doesn’t. Instead he is moved with love for his family and rejoices when he learns his entire family is still alive and well. In fact, several times in this story it says he got so emotional that he had to leave the room to cry and weep.
Why didn’t Joseph get even? Why didn’t he show any resentment at all towards his brothers who almost killed them then at the last minute decided to sell him instead? Because at this point Joseph realizes God’s sovereign hand has been in this entire situation. At this point he realizes that all this had to happen to fulfill the original dream. I don’t think he denied the suckiness of the situations he had been in, but he saw the bigger purpose behind them and recognized God was working good into these horrible situations. He even tells his brothers, “Don’t beat yourselves up about that. You didn’t send me here, God did.” That realization is so much more powerful than grudges and bitterness.

This new nation that is central to God’s plan was in jeopardy. This nation was only 4 generations old, and couldn’t even be called a nation yet, but they were in danger of starving to death. God went to these lengths to bring Joseph to a position where he could ensure the survival of Abraham’s family.

The Story, Week 2

I said last week that Genesis 3 marks one of the 2 most important transitions in the Bible. From this point forward the entire Bible is about God’s pursuit of man and His plan to get us back. In this week’s chapter we find out that the first phase in God’s plan is to build a nation. The temptation for some is to skim over these parts of the Bible or to see them as less impactful because “I’m not Jewish.” This is indeed the story of the forming of the Jewish nation. But the significance here goes way beyond those who are ethnically or religiously Jewish. This part of the story is significant for every God follower.

What I want to do this week is go over what I think is the main point of this part of the story and then go back and discuss some other interesting parts.

I think the main part of the story here is God’s sovereignty and the oddity of how He goes about building this nation. He chooses certain people to make covenants with and He makes some decisions about who will start this nation that are…crazy. Some of the decisions God makes seem backwards, illogical and wrong. Let’s go through God’s choice for the patriarchs.

Abraham and Isaac
First he chooses Abraham and Sarah. They are old. Really old, way beyond child bearing age. How are they going to start a nation? They live really far away from the land God wants to use and they are part of a people group that worships pagan gods and idols. Nonetheless, Abraham responds in faith and leaves his home. Before God fulfills his promise Abraham lies, twice, about Sarah being his wife to save his hide. He didn’t think God was working quickly enough or in the right way so he took matters into his own hands and slept with his wife’s maid to try to have a kid.
Isaac follows in his father’s footsteps and lies about his wife because he’s scared he’ll get beat up.

Jacob
The oddity of God’s choices gets even more severe with Jacob. Jacob and Esau are twins. Esau is technically older but Jacob swindles him out of his birthright and then partakes in a very elaborate lie to Isaac to steal Esau’s blessing. This situation blows up so badly he has to flee to his uncle’s estate. His uncle, by the way, is just as jacked up and tricks Jacob into marrying the wrong daughter.

What is the point of all this? God uses screw-ups, nobodies, bad decision makers, and low qualifying people. These aren’t the only people, but they are the some of the most common. What does that mean about our place in God’s plan? Do you ever feel like God’s plan involves really spiritual, near perfect, saints with super-faith? What’s amazing is that as we read through The Story we see that God intentionally chooses the imperfect. This is great news for people like me who are not extraordinary. This is great news for the people who can associate more with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob than with Mother Theresa. I’m not saying people in this group aren’t extraordinarily talented. You are. But I am saying everyone in this group falls short somewhere and that does not disqualify you from God’s plan to build something great.

Here’s another part of this week’s chapter that stood out to me: God himself will provide the lamb. God tells Abraham to take his promised son, Isaac, up on a hill, kill him and offer him as a sacrifice. Isaac, unaware of the full plan asks Abraham where the lamb is for the offering and Abraham answers with this amazing line. God Himself will provide the lamb. We get glimpses of the second covenant before God has even instituted the first covenant. God is already hinting at the cross before He has given the Law. This is proof that Jesus was not plan B. This is a beautiful illustration of Abraham’s obedience as well as God’s love for humanity. God stopped Abraham from going through with it, but God did not withhold his son.

Jacob wrestles with God. First, whom is Jacob wrestling? Here it says a man, a few sentences later it says he wrestled God. Hosea 12:3-4 says he wrestled an angel. Who is this? This a Christophany, an example of the pre-incarnate Jesus making an appearance in human history. The Old Testament sometimes calls the Son of God “The Angel of the Lord”. He shows up here, with Joshua before Jericho and with the 3 Hebrew kids in the oven.
Now, the interesting part to me is that it actually says a man wrestled with Jacob. That means God initiated this. Jacob has been in conflict his entire life and is about to have what he thinks is another big conflict with Esau. In this moment, all alone in the desert, Jesus walks up unprovoked and puts Jacob in a guillotine choke. God basically starts bullying Jacob with the goal being to make him yield. God was wanting to see at what point Jacob gave up and said “Mercy!” Clearly God could have overpowered Jacob. This sentence means God could not make Jacob give up.
So, what does this mean to you? It means God really likes persistence. Tired, beat up, wore out, confused...keep going. See you next week.

The Story, Week 1

This story that we are diving into has an abrupt and explosive start that introduces the main character: God. In the beginning…God. It starts by telling us that existence is not an accident, not merely the result of natural laws mysteriously coming into being and chemical reactions accidentally and blindly bringing about humanity. We are here because God wanted us.

The first 2 chapters of the Bible describe God creating and environment for His ultimate creation: people. This account of creation is poetic and amazing on its own. It’s even more amazing when you realize this is all preparation for you; like a parent counting down until a baby is born, getting the room ready, painting the walls, putting the crib together, buying baby clothes, etc. The entire creation account is the description of God doing what needs to be done for us to be.

God’s greatest passion is you. Take a second and think of the most amazing images you ponder in creation. Think of things as huge as galaxies and nebulae to things as small as atoms, protons and quarks. All of this is for you. We’re going to come back to this part, but for now we’ll move on.

From here the story moves to the Fall. One of the details in how God created us is that he gave us free will. The people who put this book together call this part “The Tale of Two Trees.” There is so much that could be said about the fall. Why did they do it? Why did Adam just stand there like an idiot? Is it significant that the very first sin was prompted by wanting to be more like God than we really are?

For time sake, the important truth in this part of the story is that we rebelled. We broke a very simple and wonderful contract. I say we for 2 reasons. First, because Adam was nice enough to give us his sinful nature. Second, even apart from Adam’s nature I’m fairly confident I would have made the same decision. So, WE failed and the 3rd chapter of Genesis has one of the most important transitions in the entire Bible. The entire rest of the Bible is about God’s pursuit to get us back. Even here there are some hints of the extent God will go to in order to have us. God kills innocent animals to make clothes for Adam and Eve. In other words, in order to be right with God after sin innocent blood must be shed.

The sin continues in Cain and as culture develops and cities are built sin increases even more until God has to step in and push the reset button on humanity. The Flood. This did not fix the problem though. It didn’t deal with the sinful nature. God rescued Noah because he genuinely wanted to please God, but Noah took sin on the ark with him.

Now, let’s go back to the creation part. This isn’t part of the prescribed curriculum for The Story, but it’s something I really want to discuss. Go back and think again about all the creation that takes place in the first few chapters. In the first 2 chapters alone there are about 27 references to creative acts by God! At least 6 times during this process God looks around at what’s being created and calls it good. And it is good!!! Think about the galaxies we talked about earlier.




Think about the tiny complexity inside every cell.




Think about the craziest animals you fathom. The shear power and size of an elephant, the stripes of a zebra, the transformation of the butterfly and the absolute absurdity of the duckbilled platypus.



Things get even crazier and more creative in the sea. There are numerous fish that can generate light on their own. The Fangtooth Fish lives at 16,000 feet. The water pressure at this depth is over 8000 psi. The Mimic Octopus can change color instantly, morph its body into unbelievable shapes and impersonate at least 15 other animals.

What’s the point of all this? God made all this. He created it. He imagined it. You hear about singers being influenced by other singers, but God wasn’t influenced by anybody; this is pure creativity. These 2 chapters go on and on about God creating, inventing, imagining and building and it comes to a climax with this phrase, “Let us make man in our image.” We’ve all heard that, but really think about it in its context. God spends 6 days doing nothing but creating and making new things and then says, “I’ll make people in my image.” What is the only image of God we have at this point? A creative God.

Have you ever noticed that the very first event in human history was Adam being invited into the creative process with God by naming the animals? That is literally the first thing we know a human to have done in the Bible; think, imagine, be creative, be original, name. That is truly beautiful.

So, how do we apply this? I want to investigate and develop the creativity in our group. I would love for you guys to share your creative abilities with us. Songs, poems, stories, paintings, photographs, sculptures, blogs, crafts, designs, humor, organization, letters, speeches…anything, share them with us. I’ve already had some tell me they are interested in playing some music for us and another some others who want to share original writings with us. Post them on our page, or figure out when you can share them with us in person. Just share them. Let’s be creative together.