Turning Point - David Jeremiah

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
He lived in a time and a place far removed
from our own. Yet Joseph remains relevant to our culture
with perspectives on purity, prosperity, and more. Today, on Turning Point,
doctor David Jeremiah shares the qualities from Joseph's life that
we would do well to apply in our own from
the series God Meant It for Good, The Story of Joseph.

(00:28):
Here's David to introduce the conclusion of his message, the
Life of Joseph.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Thank you for joining us. You know, anybody's life has
certain things that stick out about it. If I knew
you as a friend, I would be able to say,
you know, he's a courageous person, or he's a compassionate person.
When you see the life of Joseph and you read
the story of Joseph, some things stick out about Joseph
that are very powerful, and we're talking about those on

(00:54):
Turning Point. Starting yesterday and completing it today. Tomorrow, we're
going to begin and this incredible story with the betrayal
of Joseph by his brothers in chapter thirty seven of Genesis.
So you can read ahead if you want to, but
we'll tell the story tomorrow and going forward as we
study his life together from beginning to end. So many

(01:15):
incredible lessons to learn from this Old Testament patriarch. And
by the way, you can get the study guide and
you can get all of the CDs for this series.
You can do that by getting in touch with us
or by going to our website, which is David Jeremiah
dot org. We love to provide resources for the study

(01:35):
of the Bible, for small groups, for Sunday school classes,
for all the things that we do. I hope you
give us the opportunity to do that by getting in
touch with us today. So here we go with part
two of the life of Joseph in the series Gotten
Minute for Good. Joseph's life was pivotal and it was providential.

(01:57):
God was at work in the life of Joseph. But
Joseph's life was also prosperous. And I like this part
of the story because so often over the years as
a pastor, I have heard successful men and women who
are Christians apologize for their success, as if perhaps being

(02:21):
a Christian you shouldn't be successful. Well, let me tell
you about Joseph. Joseph is one of the few truly
successful men mentioned in the Bible. God records his success
for us so that we might study the principles of
his prosperity. To really understand his prosperity, you have to

(02:41):
examine the fact that Joseph was a dreamer. Kind of
dreamers here today, people. I don't mean sleeping in church.
I mean having a vision for the future. The Bible
records six different dreams in the story of Joseph. The
first two were his own dreams about the future, which

(03:04):
he shared with his father and his brothers, And while
in prison, Joseph interpreted two more dreams, one for the butler,
the other for the baker. And the last two dreams
were Pharaoh's dreams, which Joseph interpreted, leading to his rise
in prominence. Now, in the first dream, Joseph was out
in the field harvesting, and his chief was upright, but

(03:28):
the sheaves of his brothers bound down to him. In
Joseph's second dream, he saw the sun, the moon, and
eleven stars bowing down to him. Now, Joseph, I could
give you a little advice. That might not be the
kind of thing you want to share with your brothers
and your father, But he shared it with him, and
they hated him for it. Joseph knew that this was

(03:51):
a promise from God. We know from reading the whole
story that had actually happened, but his brothers didn't know
that hated him because of his dream about his future success.
God had a plan for Joseph's life, a plan that
would ultimately put him in prominence. It was God's way

(04:13):
of saying, you are going to be prosperous. You will
one day be a successful man under the hand of God.
And that's why the story of Joseph is filled with
phrases describing him as a success. Genesis thirty nine. The
Lord was with Joseph, and he was a successful man.

(04:37):
And his master saw that the Lord was with him,
and that the Lord had made all he did to
prosper and the blessing of the Lord was on Joseph's
life and all that he had in the house and
in the field. Even when Joseph was thrown into prison.

(04:59):
I don't know how you successful in prison, but Joseph
figured out a way. He didn't stop being successful when
he was thrown in prison because he resisted the advances
of Potiphar's wife. The Bible says the Lord was with
Joseph and showed him mercy and gave him favor in
the sight of the keeper of the prison. And the

(05:20):
keeper of the prison committed to Joseph's hand all the
prisoners who were in the prison, whatever they did there,
it was his doing. And the keeper of the prison
did not look in anything that was under Joseph's authority,
because the Lord was with Joseph, and whatever he did,
the Lord made it prosper Joseph everywhere he went, he

(05:44):
became the person in charge, like cream rising to the top.
God made him successful. Joseph didn't make himself prosper. He
followed God, and God made him prosper. And that's the
whole key to it, isn't it. It isn't for us
to make ourselves successful. Oh, we should follow the principles
and practices that we know, but we should ask God

(06:08):
to lead us into the pastures where he wants us
to be, and to the places of influence where we
can make a difference in his behalf. And we should
never apologize for that. When he does it, we should
be thankful and grateful and lift up our hands in
praise to the Lord that he has been so good
to us. And trusted us with such influence and blessing.

(06:30):
So it was with Joseph. There was nothing wrong with
Joseph's dreams. They were God's way of telling him about
his future, and God promised Joseph that he would be successful.
So this man Joseph's life was pivotal, and it was providential,
and it was prosperous. Joseph's life was pure. Joseph had

(06:57):
some tough times along the way, but he always seemed
to learn from them, and whenever God put him in
a pressure situation, Joseph sought for what it was and
he survived it. There were basically three major challenges in
Joseph's life. We'll get to them in more detail later,
but let me just tell you what they were. First

(07:20):
of all, he had to pass the test of self pity. Now,
what do we do when we involve ourselves in self pity?
Here's another word for it. We pout, We feel sorry
for ourselves. We end up feeling like we're the only
ones who are going through what we're going through, and

(07:41):
it's not fair and God shouldn't be doing this to us.
He's picking on us. As one author says, the problem
of self pity is a problem of sight. Self pitying
people have not set the Lord before them as he
really is, glorious, kind, sovereign, and just. They mainly have
set themselves and their circumstances in their field division, And

(08:05):
rather than crying out to God in our big and
small moments of distress, self pity would have us whimper
in the misery of our own hearts. I have to
tell you when I first came here, now, all those
years ago, back in nineteen eighty one, was when I
showed up here as a pastor. There were some difficult

(08:28):
things going on in our church. We had gone into
three congregations. We had a church downtown, we had this
church which had just been started. We had a church
up in the North County. And I was a pastor
of all of them. Now, you know, it's hard enough
to be pastor of one church, but to be pastor
of three churches impossible. Because everybody thought they deserved more
attention from the pastor than they were getting. If I

(08:51):
was down there, I should have been here. If I
was here, I should have been up there. If I
was up there, and we had a lot of issues
and were mad at us A lot Don and I
used to talk about it. There was one month in particular,
I don't know what year it was, but one of
the early years, and we called it Black May because
during that month we didn't know if we were going

(09:12):
to survive or not. And I got into this issue
of feeling sorry for myself. I had started a church
in Fort Wayne. It was going great. People loved me
back there. Everything I touched God was blessing. And I'd
come out here and all these people are after me.
Some of them wanted to run me out of here.

(09:32):
Here's what I did. I had an old blue van
that I got because it was fun taking my family
around on vacation in it. And when i'd get discouraged
or full of self pity, I'd take my van and
i'd get off the freeway and there was a building.
I'd kind of park behind that building and I'd pout.
It was my pouting place. I got up there more

(09:56):
than once, I promise you, and I'd go up there
and I'd argue with God and I'd say, what are
you doing? Man? I don't want to live like this.
I don't want people mad at me. I want people
trying to run me out of here, Lord, what's going on?
And I got pretty good at pouting until one day
I was sitting up there and somebody from the church

(10:16):
drove up there, drove up beside my van, rolled down
the window and said, what are you doing up here?
And I took that as from God? What was I
doing up there? Joseph was dumped into a pit by
his own brothers. Then he was sold as a slave,
and after working his way up from slavery, he was

(10:37):
thrown into prison for telling the truth. He correctly interpreted
the dreams of his fellow prisoners so that they got
out of prison, but they forgot about him for two
whole years. Nevertheless, listen to me, There is not one
word of self pity or grumbling by Joseph recorded in
the Bible. Not one. Always seemed to view his situation

(11:03):
as an opportunity to glorify God. That's what we need
to learn from Joseph. He demonstrates that it's possible to
face life's challenges without internalizing them or feeling as though
God is singing us out for hardship. Let me assure
you of something, my friend, God is not picking on you,

(11:24):
and he's not picking on me. He is instead entrusting
you and me with certain trials to help us grow
and learn and be stronger than we were. And self
pity is never productive and does not lead to anything
good in our lives. And I want to advise you,

(11:46):
if you're a powder, to give it up, because it's
not going to take you anywhere. Somebody said, it's kind
of like jealousy. You know what jealousy is. It's swallowing
poison and expecting somebody else to die. And that's kind
of like what self pity is. So he passed the
test of self pity. Through all of his problems, Joseph

(12:09):
never complained. Then he passed the test of sexual enticement.
In Genesis thirty nine, we were told that Joseph was
tempted by his boss's wife to commit adultery, and Joseph
ran out of the house. The Bible says she had
tried to grab his coat, and he left his coat

(12:30):
in her hands. I wrote in my notes he knew
he was better off without his coat than without his character.
Rather than succumbed to temptation, Joseph chose to obey God.
He knew how much he owed his boss, so he
couldn't do such an evil thing as to sleep with
his boss's wife. He knew how much he owed God,

(12:51):
and Joseph was not willing to sin against the Lord.
And he survived victoriously over that temptation. And you know
what happened to him because of that. He was thrown
in prison and he was there for at least two
years because he did the right thing. And then thirdly,

(13:14):
I think Joseph had another test, which I will call
the test of self indulgence. Just think about this. Now
Joseph comes to power, he has every opportunity to use
his wealth and his power to take revenge on his
brothers or simply to grant his every whim. Instead, he

(13:36):
chooses to use his power for the benefit of others,
saving his family, helping to feed many nations of the world.
I've seen people pass the test of adversity only to
fail the test of prosperity. Now Joseph, he refused to
be sucked in by adversity, allurement, or advancement. And Pharaoh

(13:58):
told us what the secret of his life was. Have
you ever read this verse? Pharaoh said, can we find
such a one as Joseph? A man in whom is
the spirit of God? How did Pharaoh figure that out?
By watching Joseph deal with life, not being full of

(14:19):
self pity, not succumbing to the sexual temptations of his life,
and not being willing to get revenge on his brothers
for what they did to him. His life was pivotal
and providential and prosperous and pure. And finally, Joseph's life
is prophetic. I told you before that Joseph's life is

(14:45):
signaled to us as important just by the press it
gets in the Bible Genesis thirty seven to Genesis fifty.
It's a lot of space. But Joseph was a pivotal
picture in the Old Testament of Jesus Christ, and I
want to prove that to you in a very interesting way.
Joseph is an Old Testament picture of the New Testament. Jesus.

(15:10):
Joseph and Jesus are names that come from a kind
of similar root word. They mean salvation. Joseph became the
savior of the people of Israel. Jesus is the savior
of the world. Aw Pink, who has written on the
Book of Genesis, lists a hundred comparisons between Joseph and Christ.

(15:36):
I'm going to give you a few, but they're amazing
when you think about them. For instance, Joseph was a
shepherd feeding his sheep. Jesus said, I am the good shepherd.
Joseph was beloved of his father, and God said of Jesus,
this is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.

(15:58):
Joseph was hated by his brothers, and reread of Jesus.
They hated me without a cause. Joseph was not believed
by his brothers, and the scripture says, neither did jesus
brothers believe in him. Joseph was envied by his brothers,
and we read of Jesus, the chief priest delivered him

(16:22):
for envy. Joseph was sold for twenty pieces of silver.
Jesus was sold for thirty pieces of silver. Joseph was
sold into Egypt, and of our Lord we read out
of Egypt, I have called my son. Joseph was a
man in whom the spirit of God was, and we

(16:43):
read that God anointed Jesus with the Holy spirit and
with power. Joseph was put into a pit. Jesus was
put into the grave. Joseph was taken out of the
pit three days later, Jesus came out of the grave
after three days. Are those all coincidences? I don't think so.

(17:09):
Those are reminders to us that as we study the
life of Joseph, we see the life of Jesus a portrait,
a portrayal of the Jesus who is to come. Over
and over again. The similarities between Joseph and Christ just
jump off the page. So what can we learn for

(17:32):
ourselves that we can take away from this. Let me
just go back and look over my shoulder for a
moment and remind you that Joseph's life was pivotal, but
so is yours. You may not even realize it, it
really is. For instance, when I moved to California back

(17:53):
in nineteen eighty one, my sister moved out here. She
became the athletic director at cal State Fullerton and the
women's basketball coach up there. She had a marvelous job
and became very much a part of women's athletics. My
brother moved out here for a while, my parents moved
out here. I just came to California, and look at

(18:15):
all that changed. My children were all young. They came
out here. Guess what they met? People from out here
and before you know it. That decision you made under
the providence of God to take a move to another
place is so pivotal it changes everything about the rest
of your life. Have you ever gone back and said,

(18:37):
if I hadn't done that, I wonder what my life
would have looked like. Your life is pivotal. Somebody's counting
on you to do the right thing. God has a
plan for your life, and when you make the right decision,
it won't just be for you. You'll infect your family
and your extended family and your friends. And only God

(18:58):
knows what he's going to do. Don't ever say your
life is not important. Your life is pivotal. Joseph's life
was also providential, and ours is too. God is making
all things work together for good. I could give you
so many illustrations that in my own life, but you

(19:20):
have your own illustrations. You see the hand of God.
After he has done something to show you his way.
Maybe you look up and you say, Lord God, thank
you that I didn't marry that woman, or thank you
that I didn't marry that man, because you had somebody
for me who was better for me and for my future.

(19:44):
The Bible says All things work together for good to
those who love God, who are the called according to
His purpose. God is working in your life, he's working
in my life, and he's working toward a good end,
not a difficult or bad one. God has a purpose
for you, and he's preparing you providentially for that purpose.

(20:07):
And then Joseph's life was pure. In our day, that's
more and more difficult. We bring the filth of the
world right into our homes in a little thing called
the phone. You cannot be pure today unless you make
the decision to be pure. You will not normally be

(20:31):
that way. You have to determine to be that way,
as Joseph did. One day, you will be tested. I
used to tell young people when I was a youth
pastor years ago, the backseat of an automobile is no
place to decide what you believe about purity. You better
make up your mind before you get in that situation.

(20:54):
And that's true for us. We can be men and
women of purity, men and women who stand out above
all of the garbage that's going on around us today.
And God will use our purity as a testimony to others. Yes,
Joseph will teach us how to live life. He's already

(21:15):
taught us a few things today, and I hope that
as we study his life, we will ask God to
help us see in Joseph our own lives, to see
in what God was doing in him what he wants
to do with us. God has a plan for you,
and it is beyond anything you can imagine. You stay

(21:39):
where you are and do what you want to do.
You beat the Carson Fremont who didn't go to the
field but stayed home and married a sweetheart, and you
will miss everything God has for you. The Bible tells
us that if we commit our way to the Lord,

(22:00):
he will give us the desires of our heart. What
does that mean? It means two things. First of all,
what it says if you commit your way to the Lord,
the Lord isn't going to put you in a place
where you don't have any joy in what you do.
When I came here as a pastor, I walked away

(22:21):
from a church that I had started that I loved
people that I knew intimately who had come to Christ
because of what we were doing. And that church grew
and became a major church in the Fort Wayne area.
And God let me come here to this great church
and see what he was going to do here. I
had a little radio program called I can't even remember

(22:44):
what it's called. It was so little, it was fifteen
minutes live. I had to drive to the radio station
every morning at seven o'clock to be there in the winter,
in the snow. I came here and God opened the
door for me to be on the radio all the world.
I committed my way to the Lord, and he gave

(23:06):
me the desires of my heart. But here's the other
part of that. When you commit your way to the Lord,
God gives you his desires, so you no longer just
to have your desires. You have his desires. You want
to do his will, his work, and live life his way.
And God has done that in my life as well,

(23:28):
and He will do that in yours. Give your heart
to God, as Joseph did. Turn your back on the
things that you think are so important for yourself. Make
God number one. Watch what he does. You will be surprised. Well,
that's a true statement. The life of Joseph is a

(23:50):
study and how to live life through the good times
and the bad. And we would love to have you
with us through the whole study. As we've started it
this week. Here we source for the month of September
is our brand new calendar called Following in His Footsteps.
This beautiful calendar, which is one of the most sought

(24:11):
after resources we have during the year, is available now
for you to receive for a gift of any size.
Just send your gift to Turning Point, whatever size that
you are able to do, and say please send me
the calendar and it will get there and plenty of
time for you to start on the first of November
filling in all the blanks and get your schedule squared
away for the new year. I love this calendar. You

(24:33):
will too, and I delight to send it to you
when you help us with your investment in Turning Point.
I'm David Jeremiah. It's my privilege to be with you
every day. Thank you for joining me today and please
show up tomorrow, will you. We'll have a good time
studying Joseph.

Speaker 1 (24:56):
Today's message originated from Shadow Mountain Community Church and doctor
David Jeremiah, the senior pastor. We love hearing how you're
encouraged by this ministry, so please write to us at
Turning Point PO box thirty eight thirty eight, San Diego, California,
nine two one sixty three. Visit our website at David
Jeremiah dot org slash radio, or call eight hundred ninety

(25:18):
four seven nineteen ninety three ask for your copy of
our new fourteen month calendar. Following in his footsteps and
deepen your faith daily in twenty twenty six, It's yours
for a gift of any amount. You can also download
the free Turning Point mobile app to instantly access our content,
or search in your app store for the keywords Turning

(25:39):
Point Ministries. Visit David Jeremiah dot oorg slash radio for details.
This is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us tomorrow as we
continue the series God Meant It for Good, The story
of Joseph on Turning Point