The Pit

You'll get through this. Say that out loud with me. You'll get through this. Turn to somebody next to you, look at them and say, "You'll get through this. You'll get through this. René's sermon won't last that long. You'll get through this." That's what we call our eight-week series on the life of Joseph in the very first book of the Bible, the book of Genesis. And in case you don't know, we have small groups related to this material and they're also studying the related book called You'll Get Through This Also on the Life of Joseph by Max Lucato. I hope you check out these small groups.

I'm very excited about the fact that we actually right now have a higher percentage of the church in small groups or support groups or recovery groups than we ever have had before in my 29 years here. It's so fun to see people coming back and people tying into these groups. It's very exciting. So I hope you plug in and if you're not in an official small group, you can sign up at TLC.org/smallgroups. You can also just grab the book with a friend or with your family and go through the questions and pick up a study guide also. That'll help you ask one another questions that are related to the sermons each week too.

I'm so excited about this series because in this story in the Bible, it helps us answer this very relevant question these days. How do you have hope when circumstances are bad and you have no power to change them? A lot of people are asking this question right now. LA Times two days ago Friday had an interesting article Californians 18 to 24 years old were pulled regarding their feelings about the future. Like in one word, how do you feel when you think of your own future? Here are the top five responses. Uncertain, worried, optimistic, frustrated, and hopeless. Look at that. Four out of the top five are negative. And I have a feeling that a lot of us who aren't exactly young would have exactly the same feelings about the future.

How do you have hope? Well what I love about the story of Joseph is that it addresses this question but not in a series of sort of principles or propositions. It's in the form of a story, a narrative. And if you allow yourself to be drawn in by this story over the next seven weeks, you're going to at the end of it really have a sense of help and hope for your own turbulent times. So today we're going to talk about the moment like the hour in Joseph's life that all the wheels come off. He's 17 years old. He's had a super cushy life so far. But this morning disaster. We call it the pit. And if you felt like your life maybe over the last couple of years has been a little bit like a pit, you're gonna love this.

First a little recap. Mark introduced us to sort of the cast of characters last week. They are a wealthy territorial ranching family. Much like the cast of Yellowstone actually. Only this happened 3,800 years before Yellowstone when times were even more brutal and there was a lot of family drama. Like the dad, Jacob, loves Joseph his youngest son at the time more than any of his other sons. He gives Joseph the famous coat. Check this out. This is a painting that was found in the tomb of an official who served Pharaoh in Egypt. And it was 1900 BC which is just about a hundred years before the time of Joseph. So this is probably, it's very likely that this is something like what Joseph's coat of many colors look like because this portrays a Semitic visitor to Egypt.

In other words, somebody who came over to visit Egypt from the land that we now know as Israel. So this is basically an Egyptians painting of what Joseph would have looked like to them. Isn't that amazing? So this is the coat of many colors. This would have been very expensive by the way because the dye for each different part of the fabric that's the patchwork that put this coat together would have had to come from a different berry or a different plant or a different shellfish. It would have taken so long to put together. It would have taken so many people. It would have been so expensive this would have been like the most exclusive one-off expensive clothing item in the world at the time.

It would be like you wearing an Armani suit tailor-made by the most famous fashion guy in the world made out of pure silk from like free-range silkworms or something like that. It's just just ostentatiously luxurious. And his dad gives Joseph this coat and this favoritism just poisons the whole family. It poisons Joseph who early on is cocky, spoiled, socially awkward. I mean remember he has that dream that one day he's gonna rule over everybody in the family yet he seems pathologically insensitive about how he shares it with everybody. He's 17 years old so maybe I give him a break because of that but still just very awkward and spoiled and his brothers consequently hate him.

The text says they can only say unkind words about him so he faces just relentless criticism from them so that with a tension-filled family setup here's this week's episode in Genesis 37 starting in verse 14. Let me read it to you from the Bible. "Go and see how your brothers and the flocks are getting along," Jacob said, "and then come back and bring me a report." So Jacob the dad is sending Joseph on his way and Joseph traveled to Shechem. Now when he arrived there look at this interesting detail. A man from the area noticed him wandering around the countryside. What are you looking for? Yes, well I'm looking for my brothers. Joseph replied, "Do you know where they are pasturing their sheep?"

Well, well yes the man told him that they've moved on from here but but I heard them I overheard them say let's go on to Dotham and so Joseph followed his brothers to Dotham and he found them there. Why is all this detail in this story? You shall see. Stay tuned. When Joseph's brothers saw him coming they recognized him in the distance. Now how could they recognize him in the distance? He's wearing that coat! That shows you how loud it is and they hate that coat. It's the symbol of their father's favoritism and so they're like, "There's that coat!" You know that's what they think of him as. He's the coat and so as he approached they made plans to kill him.

Here comes that dreamer they said, "Come on let's kill him and throw him into one of these cisterns and we can tell our father an animal has eaten him and then we'll see what becomes of his dreams." But when Reuben, he's one of the older brothers, heard of their scheme he came to Joseph's rescue. But you call this a rescue? "Let's not kill him," he said. "Why should we shed any blood? Let's just throw him into this empty cistern here in the wilderness and then he'll die without our laying a hand on him." Reuben was secretly planning to rescue Joseph later and return him to his father.

So when Joseph arrived the brothers, look at the first thing they do, they ripped off the beautiful robe he was wearing, that symbol of what they hated about him. They stripped him of that identity. Who's the who's the favorite kid now Joseph? And then they grabbed him and threw him into the cistern. Now the cistern was empty, there was no water in it. Now I want to help you picture this because we don't have a lot of cisterns around here although we probably should. Cisterns are deep pits or caverns that are carved out of rock that's not water permeable. Sometimes they look like wells but most often they look something like this. This is actually a cistern in ancient Israel built around the time of Joseph and so for scale there's a human there. You can imagine that guy being Joseph, right? Only of course without the light and without the ladder. That's a pretty bleak place.

You can hear the echoes of your own screams in a in an empty cistern like this. Maybe that's even a picture of your own soul right now. Well Reuben, that older brother, was trying to do Joseph a favor. He for some reason, the text doesn't tell us why he leaves for a little bit while all this is is going on. He wants to come back later on but he leaves then just as they, the other brothers, were sitting down to eat and how cold is that by the way? Little bro must be down there in the cistern echoing screaming, "Help! Help! Please don't!" And they're like, "Man, beating up little bro really made me hungry. Let's sit down and eat something."

So they look up and they see a caravan of camels in the distance coming toward them because Dotham was on a caravan route. Shechem was kind of up in the middle of nowhere but Dotham was right there on a little international highway. It was a group of Ishmaelite traders taking a load of gum, balm, and aromatic resin from Gilead down to Egypt. Judah said to his brothers, "You know what? What will we gain by killing our brother? We'd only have to cover up the crime!" Note, not, it would be ethically wrong. It would be so inconvenient. What a hassle that would be. Instead of hurting him, let's sell him to those Ishmaelite traders. These were Gentiles. After all, he's our brother, our own flesh and blood. You don't want to kill family, right? You sell them into slavery. And his brothers agreed.

So when the Ishmaelites who were Midianite traders came by, Joseph's brothers pulled him out of the cistern and sold him to them for 20 pieces of silver. It's interesting, one historian that I was reading when I was researching this says that that's about half the going price in those days for a healthy slave. And so, kind of adding insult to injury, I imagine Joseph going like, "You sold me for a discount! Come on!" So, and the traders took him to Egypt. I'm sure Joseph at this point had to be thinking, "But I had a dream, right? I thought I heard from God. Was I wrong?" Now at this point, Reuben, remember he was gonna be, had plans to rescue Joseph. Now he comes back and they're like, "Oh yeah, Joseph's gone. We sold him." He's appalled at what happened, but he agrees. Well now we all need to cover it up. What's our cover story gonna be here?

Verse 31, "And then the brothers killed a young goat and dipped Joseph's robe," that robe, "in its blood, ruining it. And then they sent the beautiful robe to their father with this message. Look what we found." Yeah, the robe you gave, Joseph, twisting the knife. Doesn't this robe belong to your son, not our brother, your son? "Their father recognized it immediately." "Yes, that's my son's robe. A wild animal must have eaten him. Joseph has clearly been torn to pieces. And then Jacob tore his clothes and dressed himself in burlap." This is the way they grieved then. "And he mourned deeply for his son for a long time." I mean you can imagine, he's like, "Why did I send him? If I hadn't had sent him out to check on his brothers, he'd still be alive today." And so he's just living with his weight of guilt, right?

You're like, "Thank you René for such an encouraging Bible story this morning." Well there's three hidden realities I see in this story that are crucial to navigating life's pits. And if you know these, I think you will really find a lot of wisdom and hope for your own pits of life. And number one is this, and you can find these on your message notes. Number one, the hidden poison of hatred. The hidden poison of hatred or really any other negative emotion. It's like this. Ever see a photo of Mount St. Helens before its eruption? All seems well, right? I mean what is more solid than a mountain? But now look at the after picture. The whole time something was brewing inside that mountain that was gonna blow the top off. Well the same thing was happening in Joseph's family.

Hatred simmered until it just exploded in this violence. Now I want to say Joseph's brothers were responding to something that actually wasn't right. Their dad was showing favoritism that was definitely unacceptable in that culture to the younger son. Joseph was very spoiled. The problem was how they responded. I mean really if you think about it there's no evidence in the text that Joseph's favored status inconvenienced or impacted the brothers daily life in any way. They probably would have had the same chores of looking after the cattle except they allowed it to get under their skin. They allowed themselves to be so bothered by it that it took control of their thoughts to the point where they could justify murder. And that's hatred.

Hatred amplifies unfairness to the point that your response to the unfairness is itself unfair. Out of proportion. And that's why the Bible says watch out that no poisonous root of what? Bitterness grows up to trouble you corrupting many not just yourself. The lesson is not don't feel the feelings when someone or something hurts you. The lesson is don't stoke the feelings. Especially like in this situation in families situation I heard a marriage and family therapist one time say you know there are going to be moments in your relationships when you look at a family member a spouse a friend a child even at that moment there will be part of you that just hates their guts. I'm trapped in this relationship with this horrible human being I'm so mad at them right now.

In my experience as a pastor a lot of people don't expect those feelings and they're blown away when they feel those feelings. I just always want to feel in love right and I want to say welcome to the reality of long-term relationships. Everybody feels that way at times just like in this story. The question is okay now how do I deal with that? I mean let me ask you specifically people have done things that are out of your control to you that were wrong they were unfair but are there now negative thoughts about that which are in your control and when you mull them over and over and over they cause you to spiral and your blood pressure goes up and you lose sleep and the pressure in the volcano is building. Maybe God's saying to you this morning this is time for you to stop.

Now maybe you're thinking René honestly so far this story is just making me feel super bad because you might be thinking I don't identify with Joseph the poor victim. I'm the bad parent in this story. I'm the mean brothers because if I'm honest I wasn't the faithful parent or spouse or sibling that I should have been. I caused a lot of damage. Well let me just give you some hope. Think of what we've seen so far in this story. Jacob Joseph the brothers they're all messed up. Not one of them is a good role model. And of course you know this is almost always the case with Bible stories right. One of the most common misconceptions about the Bible is that it gives us stories full of inspiring people to model ourselves after. But almost every single Bible character has flaws that would get them fired or arrested today.

Why? Well I love what Tim Keller says the Bible's purpose is not so much to show us how to live good lives. The Bible's purpose is to show how God's grace breaks into our messed up lives and rescues us from sin. Don't you love that? I mean you may have come from a dysfunctional family yourself. You may have been the cause partially at least of your family's dysfunction. God can redeem that too because his grace breaks into our messed up lives and rescues us from sin. And when does that breakthrough often happen? When we hit the pit and that's the second hidden reality this story suggests to me the hidden potential in suffering.

The moment Joseph's body hit the bottom of that pit BAM! That was actually the moment his life began to turn around. Listen, hitting bottom can be the best thing that ever happens to you. I mean it definitely turns out 13 years later to have been the best thing to ever happen to Joseph. But look at that phrase right there on the screen. Hitting bottom can be the best thing that ever happens to you. How many of you have seen that to be a reality in your life? When you look back maybe at some kind of an addiction or some kind of a crisis in your life or even a grief you went through or a mental illness and now you're like, "I went bankrupt or I got fired." But that actually was a really good thing in the end. Can you think of that in your own life?

Now raise your hand if you've got something like that. Hitting bottom, leave your hands up for a minute. Leave your hands up. If hitting bottom was the best thing that ever happened to you. Leave your hand up. Now if you're in a pit right now I want you to look around and look at these hands and I want you to get some encouragement from this. If you're in a pit right now you feel like life just sucker-punched you in the pit. Maybe people betrayed you into the pit. Maybe you no longer even hear the voice of God in the pit. But one of the major inflection points of your life can be this pit because character grows in the pit, turnarounds happen in the pit.

I mean look at verse 36. Meanwhile, while all this chaos is happening, those Midianite traitors arrived in Egypt which is just in its glory at this point where they sold Joseph to Potiphar an officer of who? Pharaoh, the king of Egypt. That's a little foreshadowing because it turns out God knows something no one else knows. Of course, God knows that in 13 years after this happens there's going to be a seven-year famine. And I mean in ancient times a seven-year famine, this is, that's complete like that's an extinction level event. So God is putting into motion events that will establish Joseph as executive director of the world's largest grain producer and he's going to figure out ways to store that grain for that seven-year famine to save the world from starvation. The pit put Joseph on the path to the palace and the same exact thing can be true for you.

A couple of weeks ago I am leading a memorial service for Lou Tuosto, a beloved member of our community and I say does anybody want to say anything about Lou? Just raise your hand and I'll come over with the microphone and a young woman stands up and she says this. My name is Sarah. I wandered into a Sunday school class here at TLC years ago. I was a drug addict and homeless and suicidal and Lou welcomed me and told me you have a purpose and encouraged me to go to the Freedom Women's Center. She said that day changed my life. I now have a life I could never have dreamed. I am sober. I am married. I'm a mom. I'm an addiction counselor and best of all I found love in Jesus Christ and all of that would never have happened if I had not hit bottom. The pit can be the path to the palace.

Now I'm not trying to romanticize adversity. Suffering alone can ruin you but suffering with an assurance of God's purpose can transform you and that is what you have. And that's the third and final thing I need to remember, the hidden purpose of God. The hidden purpose of God. See God works two ways in the Bible. The visible hand of miracle, right? And this is what we think of when we think of the Bible. Most the time how does God work in the Bible? Angels appear and Red Sea splits and manna comes down and people are healed the visible hand of miracle or he also works in the invisible hand of Providence. And Providence means God working behind the scenes.

Now I believe in the visible hand of miracle. I believe God still works through miracles. I pray for miracles. I've seen miracles here at Twin Lakes Church but most often in the Bible God works the second way, the invisible hand of Providence. And most often in life God works the second way. I mean just look at this story. To this point in the story we've gone through now a whole chapter of Joseph's life. Have you heard the word God mentioned once? Nope. Yet Jacob just happens to suddenly decide to send Joseph to see his brothers in that moment. The brothers just happen to decide to leave Shechem and go to Dotham which is on a caravan route. That Joseph just happens to run into a stranger when he loses his brothers and the stranger just happens to have overheard the brothers discussing where they were going next.

And then Reuben just happens to have the idea to convince the brothers not to kill him. Then Reuben just happens to leave in the crucial moment when a caravan just happens to come by. And then the other brothers just happen to have this idea to sell Joseph and then the caravan just happens to be going to Pharaoh's palace. And then Joseph just happens to be sold to a guy who works in Pharaoh's front office. If any one of those seemingly random events had not happened exactly like this, Joseph's entire family, not to mention most of the world's known population at the time, might have died. God didn't create the pride and the cruelty that you see in this story, but he uses even that for his hidden purposes.

You know there's a great couple of verses in the Bible in the book of Isaiah 46 where God says, "My purpose will stand and I will do all that I please from the east I summon a bird of prey from a far-off land a man to fulfill my purpose what I have said that I will bring about what I have planned that I will do." And in context in this verse he's talking about a pagan Persian king you know and an animal. God is saying, "I work through all kinds of stuff even if it doesn't look like it's me working." See you and I need to recognize this false belief and this poisons life for so many Christians. God's purpose for me will always be clearly seen in whatever happens to me.

All of us think that way sometimes even if we don't articulate it, God's purpose is gonna be clear in the things that happen to me and then when we're thrown into a pit stuff starts to go on we think, "But I thought God loved me. Look at all the stuff I'm going through. I guess I was wrong about God." And we need to replace it with this true belief God's purpose for me is absolutely certain yet frequently hidden. God is with you even if you can't feel it. God has a plan even if you can't understand it. God is working even if you can't see it. God is always at work even when I can't see Him. In fact say this out loud with me. God is always at work even when I cannot see Him. Say it again. God is always at work even when I cannot see Him. Can you believe that?

Imagine the strength you would have for facing life if you really truly believe that. If you believe that every single time something seemed to go wrong for you. I mean you get fired or your car breaks down or somebody does you wrong or you do wrong every single time you think to yourself, "Okay that was bad but I know for sure God's gonna work through this." Absolutely. As He always does. Truly believing that is like having a superpower for life. I gotta tell you something. Our newest pastor Julian Pizarro and his wife Jessica and they have triplets. They moved here in April from Chile because we after a long hiring process took over a year we finally decided on him and we're like he's the perfect guy to lead our new Spanish ministries. We're super stoked.

They prayed about it. We prayed about it. We feel like God gave us the stream and the Spanish language services are launching October 23rd at 11 a.m. Invite your friends. It's gonna be so great. They're gonna meet over here at Monsky Hall. We were excited. We're sure God's behind this. They get here within the first week Julian breaks his leg. Their storage unit that they put all their furniture and everything else in still hasn't arrived. For a while the shipping companies like, "Yeah we lost it." So they've been living out of suitcases for half a year. Then the whole family got COVID including the triplets and now they just got word that they have to move out of their house. They have two weeks left. I'm sure they would be tempted to think, "Wow were we wrong?" Like things were going so great over there in Chile now. Like everything's falling apart but you know what I've been seeing of them? Absolutely incredible unshakeable faith.

It's like these are just things. This is just life. God is working even through all this. Now of course please pray for them that they get that storage container. That they find a new home because their service launches in two weeks. But they're an example to me of the power you get when you believe this. You know I was thinking how do I wrap up this episode of Joseph's story? Because like I said at the end of the Bible reading it ends kind of hopelessly right? The brothers are still cruel and they're still getting away with it. And Jacob is mourning thinking he's partially to blame for Joseph's death and Joseph is a slave. The end. And so I find myself wanting to end this message today by saying, "Hey dudes you know everybody wait for the plot twist right? Please come back next week you know for the next episode of Joseph."

And then I realized well you know that's the whole point actually of the message today. Wait for the plot twist. If you're in the pit wait for the plot twist because it's coming. We're going to conclude our service today with communion and I love that because talk about a plot twist right? In fact let me ask you a question. What would you say is the most dominant symbol of the Christian faith? Just shout it out. You know the cross absolutely we put it around our necks we put it up in our churches right? But have you ever thought about how bizarre that is? I mean to the Romans the cross meant one thing the dominant power of the Roman army to execute whoever they wanted to the Roman Empire. It meant despair. It meant oppression to everybody and then suddenly at the height of the Roman Empire all these people called Christians love the cross.

They're making jewelry out of it. They're painting it in their houses. How did that happen? Because when our Lord and Savior died on a cross all seemed lost over. Talk about a pit. But in the biggest plot twist in human history God uses the cross to save the world. Jesus takes the penalty for our sin on the cross. Thank you Lord and he ensures our eternity with him and then after he's thrown into a pit of his own the tomb he's resurrected from the dead so that we can know all of our crosses will turn into resurrections and a symbol of despair becomes a symbol of hope. So listen whenever you see a cross I want you to hear a reminder wait for the plot twist. Remember what happened this time? Wait for the plot twist.

I'm gonna ask Trent to come back and lead us in communion with a great song written by John Newton and I'll close with his story. Brutal Man a slave trader. One historian says he gained notoriety as being one of the most profane men at sea but in his own pit which was a terrible storm on his ship he promises God that he'll go to church if he survives which he barely does. Now his conversion was not immediate he then fell into another pit a life-threatening illness and it was there that he finally finds Jesus and becomes a pastor and eventually even works to destroy the slave trade that he once led. Talk about turnaround talk about a plot twist talk about bouncing out of a pit and in a moment of gratitude for his plot twists he writes this song and as Trent leads us and as you prepare your communion elements I want you to think back on how God redeemed you from a pit by his grace and I want you to just say thank you and then before the final verse I'm going to lead us in partaking together so take the communion elements that you were given when you came in or that you have ready at home and prepare them by peeling back that foil and then I'll be back in just a moment to lead us in communion together.