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Dec. 19, 2018 - Jim Bakker Show
07:41
Joseph God's Template For Forgiveness - Dr RT Kendall
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Time Text
Joseph's Reflection 00:06:03
What did you mean when you wrote the book and you put the title on it, God Meant It for Good?
Why did you do that?
That's because at the end of the life of Joseph, Genesis 50 verse 12.
Yes.
No, verse 20, 50, verse 20.
Joseph reflecting on the past, those 11 brothers had betrayed him, sold him.
They were going to kill him.
They were going to kill him.
They decided to sell him to the Ishmaelites.
And now Joseph is reflecting on the whole life.
Many years before, and older Jacob had died.
And after Jacob died, the brothers come running to Joseph and they say, please forgive us for what we did.
And Joseph starts to cry.
He says, I told you, I told you 17 years ago that I forgave you.
Not to worry.
I forgave you then.
I forgive you now.
I will look after you.
God meant it for good.
And it's a way of setting people free.
You know, there's nothing more emancipating than for somebody that maybe hurt you or you hurt them can say God was at the bottom of it all.
Yes.
And that was Joseph's position.
He actually said to the brothers when they came to him, not knowing that he was the governor of Egypt.
He was the equivalent of being prime minister of Egypt.
They didn't know it was Joseph.
And then he reveals who he was and starts speaking to them in their own language.
He says, I'm Joseph.
But he says, not to worry.
God meant it for good.
It wasn't you who sent me here.
God did it.
God did it.
You know, these brothers couldn't believe their luck that the very man they were going to kill and then decided just to sell him, get rid of him, they never thought they'd see him again, is now saying to them, God did it.
Not to worry.
God did it.
So is that for everybody, for everything?
When you're going through it?
Because I look back at the prison and I tell people, God allowed me to go to prison.
And they get mad at that.
They don't like to hear that.
But yet, when I dwell on the fact that I lost everything, I lost it all.
And I went to prison.
But when you said in this book, God is going to turn it around.
Even when I was in the midst of the prison, God means this for good.
And today, I feel almost privileged that I was able to spend that time with God.
It changed my life.
Why did Joseph's brothers hate him?
Why did they hate him so much that they wanted to kill him?
This story is unbelievable.
Joseph is not the innocent people sometimes people say.
He was a 17-year-old, conceited, teenager, arrogant.
He was his father's favorite.
Jacob was not a good dad.
In fact, you could make the case the world's worst dad.
Because the worst thing you can do is show favoritism to your children.
Well, Jacob showed favoritism to Joseph.
Joseph was the son of his beloved Rachel.
And so Jacob gave him this coat of many colors, richly ornamented robe.
When we get to heaven, we'll see what it looked like.
The only thing worse than giving it was wearing it.
He strutted around in that thing, insensitive to his brothers.
Then on top of that, he had a prophetic gift.
And his mistake was telling it.
You see, God gave him dreams that one day his brothers would bow down to him.
Well, the dreams were of God, but he should have kept his mouth shut.
I sometimes think that God would show us things if we keep quiet about it.
But no, he said, one day you're going to bow down to me.
And he said, hey, had another dream last night.
The sun and 11 stars were bowing down to me.
You didn't need to be Sigmund Freud to figure that out.
He annoyed them.
Now, that doesn't justify what they did.
It does not.
They hated him.
They hated him, but in a way, you can't blame them.
In a way, you can't blame them.
I mean, he was arrogant.
He was insensitive.
And the father, you know, loved him.
And the brothers hated him.
Who knows?
They probably hated their father, too.
I don't know that.
But they certainly didn't have a good relationship with him because that comes out later on when Joseph is carried to Egypt by the Ishmaelites.
And here's what happened.
The brothers took that coat of many colors off Joseph's back, dipped it in blood, sent it to Jacob.
Some translations said they gave it to him.
Some say they sent it.
In other words, they didn't have the courage to look at their dad in the eye.
They just said, do you recognize this?
Well, Jacob took the bait and said, it's Joseph's coat.
I will go to my grave in mourning.
And they tiptoed away, breathed a sigh of relief, and they said, We got away with it.
Just the Bible says, Be sure your sin will find you out.
And that's what happened.
And in God's time, Joseph needed a time of preparation.
He was put in prison.
Wow, yes.
And he was falsely in prison.
See, what happened?
Joseph, who had never worked a day in his life, now has a job working for Potiphar, an Egyptian officer.
God's Plan for Joseph 00:01:52
And he does well, and he's exalted.
He's made the head of the household.
But then Potiphar had a wife that was not very nice.
She was unfaithful to him, and she was attracted physically to Joseph.
We're told he was handsome, well-built, and she kept saying, day after day, go to bed with me.
Go to bed with me.
Go to bed with me.
Jim, most people I know that avoid an affair do it because they think they might get caught.
Here's Joseph in Egypt.
She's not going to tell her husband.
Nobody back in Canaan is ever going to find out.
He could have said, you know, God, I don't deserve this, and I deserve some kind of pleasure.
But you know what he said?
How can I do this thing and sin against God?
Here he is alone.
He was thinking about God.
And in that moment, the angels said, yes.
He couldn't have known.
He could not have known that he was earmarked for greatness, that one day he would be prime minister of Egypt.
And the thanks he got was that she says to her husband when he comes home, that Hebrew tried to rape me today, which was, of course, a lie.
And the next thing you know, Joseph is in prison.
And you can imagine him in prison saying, thanks a lot, God.
I do the right thing, and this happens to me.
And that was the time that God began to deal with Joseph.
He had a work for Joseph to do, but Joseph needed a time of preparation.
And God has a way of getting our attention so that all we can do is pray and trust him.
And that's what God did to you.
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