How Kids Trust God Pt 4

Episode Transcript

Ethan (00:00):
Raising joyful children in an angry world, a podcast
dedicated to faithful parentsnavigating their families
through a stormy culture
This is Raising Joyful Childrenin an Angry World.
I'm your host Paul Osborne.
Today we want to continue in ourstory of Joseph and the Coat of
Many Colors that starts inGenesis chapter 37.
We'll get into a look at chapter40 today.

(00:23):
What we're trying to do isteaching our kids to trust God
and not themselves or certainlynot the world.
I was in an airline coming backand they had a couple of
podcasts on the in flightentertainment that really sort
of described this story.
One was called The Iconist, howto stand out.
You know, Joseph's the standingout with his coat of many
colors.

(00:44):
And this one, this is not thelife I ordered.
Now that's certainly where heends up is not on a life that he
would have ordered.
But what's interesting about thepodcast, and there were many
more on there is all of thisself examination, all of this
self empowerment, it tends to bethe flaw that gets sewn into so
many lives because when all ofthis navel gazing and self

(01:07):
examination doesn't really work,we start to blame everything
before we seek.
And so we're going to have totrip over like Joseph is the
stumbling block is Paul calls itthe cross is a stumbling block
and we have to have God open oureyes and I want to see in this
story how God uses injustice andthe stumbling blocks of humanity

(01:29):
in order to begin to open upJoseph's and it's hard to get
this message because we'reconstantly being told that we
can fix ourselves.
I noticed this week Elon Muskwarning about a parasitic mind
virus that's poisoning ourcommon sense.
There's some truth to that, butthat's not our problem.
The story of Joseph is true.

(01:50):
If we want to look at this is anissue of the trust relationship
between him and God and, and howit works in the game that the
world plays.
And that's what we see as Goduses these circumstances in
order to bring about trust inhim and accomplish his purpose.
And we said, we're looking atthis from the catechismic view,

(02:12):
our belief in God, the fatheralmighty, that's who we want our
kids to see as God.
and who we want them tocultivate this trust in.
It has to happen by the HolySpirit.
He has to open the eyes, but wehave to work with them to help
them cultivate what'strustworthy.
because they're going to have totrust in the scandal of the
cross that saves them.
And it's not going to work, justlike this isn't going to work,

(02:35):
by what we might commonly thinkin our sales and marketing, the
art of persuasion, the law ofattraction.
Throw all that stuff out becauseit simply isn't the truth.
Part of this story or how thisactually works and this becomes
very difficult to grasp becausewe are constantly being fed
Theories and philosophies andeven religious stuff that goes

(02:58):
against this understanding oflearning to trust God and not
Circumstances I was in theCaribbean last week and I like
to think of it as Bob Marley'sworld Bob Marley's Everywhere in
the Caribbean, and if you listento Bob Marley's lyrics, they
almost sound Christian, but he'sactually a Rastafarian.
It's a religion that is part ofthat region of the world.

(03:20):
It explains oppression andinjustice.
As the down pression of God totest you before you can make
your pilgrimage to the MountZion in Africa, and it inverts
the relationship, it's not youlearning to trust God, but
they're trying to almost sayit's God learning to trust you

(03:42):
or perhaps prove yourself toyourself.
This testing concept, it leaksinto our Christianity in some
sort of Navy SEAL spirituality.
And we stop asking.
Is he worthy?
Is God worthy to discover thathe is?
Instead, we navel gaze at theworld's philosophy and try to

(04:02):
prove that we are worthy.
I even see this in some of thesepolitical spectrums.
There was a recent book, I'llskip the author, who is
proposing that had the church inGermany and the sermons been
Germany been better, andthere've been more standing up,
the whole third right and theentire scene of Adolf Hitler.

(04:23):
The problem with this is it'sspeculative and there's really
no way of knowing these kinds ofspeculative historical theories.
But what they do sometimes isthey leak this human
responsibility, this humanbelief that institutions, if we
just grab onto them in this sortof culture war mindset, it can
save us.
And we start to lean a littleless on God and a little more on

(04:47):
ourselves.
And it flies in the face of,lean not on your own
understanding, seek ye first thekingdom of God.
This is what we're trying to seehere.
Because ultimately what we wantour kids to do is to understand
the Augustinian understanding oftwo kingdoms.
We are citizens of the kingdomof heaven, fully trusting in God
as we travel through the kingdomof man.

(05:09):
That's what we see in thisstory.
So we started in chapter 37 onthe first section of this.
This is where we discover thatthe family is dysfunctional and
it's largely distrust.
The father, we emphasize thefavoritism, but we forget the
favoritism is to get favors.
I don't trust your otherbrothers.
I want you to go spy on them.
The brothers now don't trustJoseph, right?

(05:31):
And so there's this entiredistrust within the family unit.
And we're going to see how Godtakes the distrust and moves to
trust.
And so he ends up getting soldinto slavery and ends up at
Potiphar's house, who's a highofficial in the Egyptian
government.
God opens Potiphar's eyes to seehis hands of blessing on Joseph.

(05:51):
And so one of the things wepointed out as parents, how we
build trust and how we get ourkids to understand trust is
similar to what happens here.
Look for the things that God hasblessed them with.
And this is this is where wesometimes get confused.
We want to give freedom withoutresponsibility.
And so Joseph literally takesover Potiphar's house.
He becomes more and moreresponsible.
And this is this is where wesometimes get confused.

(06:13):
We want to give freedom withoutresponsibility.
Responsibility goes first, thencomes the freedom.
And then we see how the worldworks, right?
You know, it's not God's downpressure, this is just the way
the world is.
Potiphar's wife comes out,falsely accuses Joseph of
unwanted advancements, andPotiphar has him thrown into

(06:34):
prison.
And, and so, here again, we seeGod now uses the circumstances,
and the man that's the headjailer, His eyes are open to see
that Joseph also has talentsbecause in chapter 40 of Genesis
There's some sort of scandal inthe Pharaoh's court There's a
cup bearer who hands the cup todrink and there's a baker who is

(06:59):
part of the king of Egypt's Iguess officers or servants, and
they're thrown into prison,probably because there's some
scandal that maybe they weretrying to poison him.
And, and so the head jailer putsthem under Joseph's care.
Again, he's givenresponsibility.
And then he sees them in themorning.

(07:21):
And he says to them, why do youlook sad?
You see this shift, right?
He is moving from, uh, look atme.
I had this dream to this morningthat was in chapter 37 to now
he's saying, why do you looksad?
And they say to him, we've eachhad a dream and there's no
interpreter.

(07:42):
And notice his response.
He says, do not interpretationsbelong to God.
Tell them to me, please.
So here we go from, you know,you can see him picking up these
issues of trust andunderstanding that God is
sovereign and understanding thateverything has to go to God in
order for there to be answers,in order for there to be wisdom,

(08:03):
and in order for there to buildtrust.
And you see this shift in histrust.
And so it's interesting thesetwo men come to him and, and
again, we're going to see thetree, we're going to see the
message of life.
And we're going to see themessage of death.
The cupbearer explains his dreamand the bush growing fruit and

(08:24):
the squeezing of the fruit intothe cup.
And he says, Oh, that's threedays.
And in three days, Mr.
Cupbearer, you're going to berestored.
And you're going to put the cupback into Pharaoh's hand.
Oh, awesome.
And he says to him, Hey,remember me, I was thrown into
jail unjustly.
I didn't do anything wrong.
In fact, I, I'm from the land ofthe Hebrews and I was brought

(08:46):
here unjustly.
It's not that he doesn'trecognize injustice, but he's
asking this man to remember him.
And, and of course the Baker'slike, Whoa, this is great news.
And so he explains this basketon his head and all these baked
goods.
And then the birds eating the,the, the bread off of his head
and he has to tell him themessage of death.

(09:07):
No, he says that in three days,Pharaoh's going to have your
head.
And it happens exactly, exactlythe way he said it.
And yet when the, when the cupbearer goes back into his
position, he forgets all aboutJoseph.
And now two more years have togo by and we'll get to where

(09:28):
that comes out in the nextpodcast.
But what I want you to see, whatwe're seeing here in two
different circumstances is thatGod is building responsibility
and God is showing him, I'm theone that's trustworthy.
Joseph's recognizing that andwe're seeing the fickleness of
the world.

(09:49):
I saw this article, I want towrap up on this article because
this is really points out, Ithink largely, of what the, what
the value of this trustingrelationship is.
There was an article in theLondon Times.
It was written by ClementinePettigrass, beautiful British
name, Clementine Pettigrass.

(10:11):
Anyway, she says she quittherapy after 10 years.
and that all the navel gazingwas making her life worse and
not better.
Now what's interesting is shetoo finds herself about in her
twenties in a dysfunctionalfamily.
She says, my parents gotdivorced and it threw all kinds
of chaos and uncertainty into mylife.

(10:31):
And at first she describes justhaving someone to talk to, which
is the value of counseling waswonderful.
But then she says, Later on,it's like 2022, like 9, 10 years
into this, and my therapist saysI should stop seeking external
validation.
See, the therapist sees what'sin this story as well.

(10:53):
Right?
It's the fickle friend.
You gave the friend what theywanted, then once they had it,
they went on and they ghostedyou.
That's the way the world works.
The false accusations that arebeing thrown from Potiphar's
wife.
Your kids live in a world ofPotiphar's wives who constantly
use false accusations.
Uh, the digital world and socialmedia to throw all sorts of
false accusations.

(11:15):
And so the the counselor'sadvice is somewhat good, but
it's incomplete.
And, and here's, here's whereshe comes to.
She says, well, that kind ofwoke me up and I had been
defending my counselor.
All of my friends and family whowere skeptical, skeptical of her
said, Oh, this is a businessmodel.
She's just telling you this, soyou keep going and keep paying

(11:37):
money.
And she says, sadly, I began tobelieve that they were right.
And the conclusion of thearticle is I decided I needed to
get back into the fight of life.
That's what would save me.
Oh, the stiff upper lip that theBrits believe in.
It's that old, you know, FrankSinatra song.
You were riding high in April,shot down in May.
That's life.

(11:58):
And you, and you kind of pickyourself back up by your
bootstraps and you get back intothe fight.
That's not what the scripture isteaching us.
The scripture is teaching us inthis story for our kids to
understand that yes, the worldis filled with people who are
fickle.
Friends who come and then leaveyou.
People that falsely accuse you.
People that make statementsabout you.

(12:19):
But there's also some peoplethat God will show and reveal
what he's doing in your life.
And that, but the ultimatereality, the ultimate trust
isn't necessarily to trustPotiphar.
It isn't to trust the jailer,but it is to trust God and trust
that God is going to use you andthat he's doing his work in you,
that he's actually hidingunderneath some of the

(12:40):
circumstances of evil and ofsuffering in order to save us
and to bring us under histrustful wings.
So that we can walk andunderstand that we're in the
kingdom of heaven, and that'sour validation.
We are a child of God.
He says we were given the rightto become that, and such we are.

(13:00):
That's where we find it.
It is external, but it's avalidation that's not from
humanity, it is from God.
And that is why it is so hard.
for us to come to because itgoes completely against our
natural will.
But Luther talked about thebondage of the will, it has to
be set free by God, the HolySpirit, to seek after God.

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And it goes against the entireculture.
It's completely counterintuitiveto the human being, as well as
countercultural.
And so stories like this, as wesee Joseph, Learning to trust
God, we see how it works, andthese are the sorts of things
that we have to help explainwhen our kids bring us

(13:40):
circumstances.
We have to teach them not totrust the circumstances, but to
trust in God.
When our kids tell us that theywere ghosted by a friend, or
they were falsely accused, wehave to teach them to trust in
God.
not trust in the validations offriends or people at school or
in the life.
This is the lesson that I thinkthis, this story teaches us.

(14:01):
We'll go into it more as we, aswe see him come out of this
prison in two years and what itall means and how it
accomplishes God's purpose inhis life.
The ultimate battle for theheart and soul is a fight for
identity.
Our king invites our kids toknow who they are, what to

(14:22):
believe, and where they belong.
Until next time, let's rememberthe words for theirs is the
Kingdom of Heaven.