May 14, 2025 • 25 mins
Empowered Living With Jeff Byrd.
Welcome to Empowered Living. Listen as Jeff tackles critical issues in a way that brings "Insight for business, leadership, and life!
https://www.talknetworkradio.com/hosts/EmpoweredLiving
Welcome to Empowered Living. Listen as Jeff tackles critical issues in a way that brings "Insight for business, leadership, and life!
https://www.talknetworkradio.com/hosts/EmpoweredLiving
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Hello, this is Gabriella on the scene today with Talk
Network Radio. We have a real dread for you just
around the corner, and that is Empowered Living with Jeff Bird.
Jeff is the owner of Jeffrey Bird Coaching and he
will be coming to you weekly to teach you more
about empowered living. Now, let's join Jeff already in the studio.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Hello and welcome.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
This is Jeff Bird, Jeffrey Bird Coaching, and this is
Empowered Living. Our topic today is titled standing Strong when
Life is Unfair. Now, most of us have experience that
at times life can be unfair. Sometimes it can be
extremely unfair. However, our future is never determined by the
(01:21):
unfair things that happened to us, but by our response
to them. The illustration I want to share today is
from a man who had way more than his fair
share of unfair things happened to him, but because of
his exceptional response, he ended up with miraculous results. The
man we're gonna look at is found in the Book
(01:44):
of Genesis, and his name is Joseph. It's interesting that
the name Joseph in the Hebrew comes from the same
word that Jesus is from, Yeshua.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Means one who's.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Say, now, I'm not gonna have time to tell you
the entire story, going to summarize it for you, but
it's found in Genesis chapters thirty seven through forty five,
if you would like to take a few minutes and
have some exceptional.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Read and a varying age story. This man Joseph.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
He's got ten brothers, but Joseph is the favorite of
the father, and the father shows that open, which causes
no small amount of disfrontaledness with his brothers. In addition,
just some dreams that he has where he sees himself
is ruling over them and then bowing down to him,
even the parents bowing down to him, And he kind
(02:32):
of unwisely tells the brothers these dreams, and that makes
them hate him even more, so much so that at
one point they're out tending their flocks and Joseph's father, Jacob,
sends him out to check on them, and when they
see him coming, they decide to kill him. One of
the brothers intervenes and he says, no, no, that's too extreme.
(02:52):
Let's not kill him. Let's let's just dig a pitt.
Or I guess the pit was already doug. Let's just
throw him in a pit and then we'll sell him
to somebody who comes along.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
So that's what they do.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
They throw him in a pit, and when some traders
come along, they pull him up out of the pit
and they sell him to the traders. The passage reads,
this is Genesis thirty seven twenty eight. Then some Midianite
traders passed by, so they pulled him up and lifted
Joseph out of the pit and sold him to the
ishmie Alites for twenty checkles of silver.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Thus they brought Joseph into Egypt. So here he is.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
He's hated by his family, he's disowned, he's almost killed,
and sold as a slave into a foreign country. Now
Joseph could have responded some different ways. He could have
just been bitter. I mean, it would have been so
easy just to dwell on that scenario and that rejection
and this tremendous injustice and just become bitter and good
(03:50):
for nothing and maybe become a drunk or something else
that's just kind of good for nothing. But that's not
what Joseph does. We're told that the Lord was with Joseph,
so he became a successful man. Now this is after
he's been purchased as a slave by an Egyptian man
by the name of Potterphar. We're told that he was
(04:13):
in the house of his master, the Egyptian, and in
this condition of slavery. God calls him a successful man
because the Lord was with him, and everything that he
did prospered. And this man, Potiphar, trusted him greatly, and
so he put him in charge of all his household, everything,
and it apparently he had great wealth, and he had
(04:33):
lots of other people that worked for him, and he
put him in charge of everything and just let him,
Joseph run all his affairs. Now, the problem that came
to Joseph was that Potterphar's wife had a thing for him,
and when they were alone, multiple times she would come
to him and say, lie with me, Lie with me.
And Joseph would say, I can't do this. I can't
(04:53):
sin against the Lord by doing this is strong, can't
you know? Wound my master Potiphar this way, He's given
me everything but you. But she's persistent, and one day,
when they're alone in the house, she grabs him and says,
lie with me, and Joseph runs, but she's hanging on,
and he has this outer tunic on and she has
hold of that, and he flees and she ends up
(05:15):
with this tunic in her hand, and rather than be disgraced,
she decides she's going to spin the story around, and
so she screams, and when the other people come that,
she says, oh, this Hebrew slave that you brought in,
he's come to make a mockery of me. He came
to try to force me to lie with him, and
I screamed, and he ran and left this tunic in
(05:36):
my hands. So not only now has he been rejected
by his family, sold as a slave into a foreign country.
Now people are making up lies again. The Potiphar comes
home and his wife tells him this made up, fabricated story,
and Potiphar's very angry, but he doesn't have him killed,
which is unusual. It seems like maybe there's a little
benefit of the doubt that he gives Joseph. But he
(05:56):
does have him thrown in prison, and we don't know
how long long he initially is in prison, but now
he's in prison. Now he's rejected by his family, almost kills,
sold as a slave into a foreign country, has lies
and false accusations.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
He gets him. Now he's in prison, and.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
We're told here that Joseph's master took him and put
him into the jail, the place where the king's prisoners
were confined, and he was there in the jail, but
the Lord was with Joseph an extended kindness to him
and gave him favor in the sight of the chief jailer.
The jailer committed to Joseph's charge all the prisoners who
was in who were in the jail, so that whatever
(06:35):
was done there, he was responsible for it. The chief
jailer did not supervise anything under Joseph's charge because the
Lord was with him, and whatever he did, the Lord
made to prosper. These are some outrageous circumstances. I mean,
this would make the basis for a really intriguing movie
that would have us all in outrage and how this
guy's being treated. But we're told three times in this
(06:58):
passage that the Lord was with him, The Lord was
with him, the Lord was with them. See, our circumstances
do not make us or a break. It's who's with
us in our corner that makes the breaks. Someone in
the worst circumstances can be a success when the lord's
with So what happens is Joseph's therefore for some period
(07:19):
of time, and God's given him this favor. Now he's
in charge of the jail. And there's these two guys
that are thrown into prison. The king hasn't the Pharaoh
thrown into prison. And one of them is the baker
and another's the cup bearer to the king. And they
have these crazy dreams you can read about them. And
they're in the prison. They're talking about this, and God
gives Joseph the interpretation of the dreams, and he tells
(07:41):
the Baker. He says, well, your dream means that you're
gonna be hanged, and he tells the cup bear some
better news. Your dream means that you're gonna be restored
and be the cup bearer to the king again. And
sure enough, but those things happen. The Baker's hanged and
the cup bears restored. And Joseph asked the cup bear.
He says, when you get restored, would you please remember
me and get me out of this prison. And so
(08:03):
the cup bear is restored to his place and forgets
a Joseph for two full years, not two partial years,
two full years, seven hundred and thirty day. Can you
just imagine that, here's Joseph, He's in this prison, He's
had this miraculous God, God give an interpretation of this
(08:23):
guy's dream that came to pass, and the guy's restored,
and he completely forgets that.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
How do you forget that?
Speaker 3 (08:30):
And every day can't you just see Joseph waking up going, well,
maybe this is the day he's gonna remember, man, I'm
gonna get out of this prison. Maybe he's praying in
the morning, God, please help the cup bear to remember
that you know the interpretation you gave me, and get
me out of this prison. But two years passed in
the prison, and Joseph is still faithful, he's still trusting
(08:52):
the Lord's still with him in prosper in that situation,
and he's still not out of it. But what happens
is another miraculous thing happens. Pharaoh has a dream, a
couple of dreams, and he's very perplexed by them, has
no idea what they mean. And then the cup bearer remembers, oh, yeah,
there was this Hebrew guy in the prison with me
and I had He says, I remember my sens this
(09:13):
day you know, I forgot all about this guy. But yeah,
he interpreted the dreams. Said you were going to restore me.
Pharaoh restored me, and here I am the cup bear.
He said, this guy is one they can interpret dreams.
So Pharaoh goes and gets him out of the prison.
They wash him and clean him up, and he brings
him before him and he tells him the dream and
God gives him the interpretation. He says, I hear that
you can interpret dreams. He says, it's not me. He says,
(09:35):
God interprets the dreams. He just gives them to me.
So he told him the dreams, and Joseph interpreted what
it meant that there was going to be seven years
of abundance and bounty in the harvest and in the
productivity of the land, and then it was going to
be followed by seven years of family. So Joseph told fair.
He says, this is what the dream means, and what
you should do is during the seven years of plenty,
(09:56):
you should build storehouses all over the land and store up, store,
store up, so that you'll have enough for the seven
years of famine. And we're told then that Pharaoh said
to Joseph, since God has informed you of all this,
and there is no one so discerning and wise as
you are. You shall be over my house, and according
to your command, all my people shall do Amah.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Only in the throne will I be greater than you.
Pharaoh said to Joseph, see, I have set you over
all the land of Egypt.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
Then Pharaoh took off his signet ring from his hand
and put it on Joseph's hand, and clothed him in
garments of fine linen, and put the gold necklace around
his neck. He had him ride in his second chariot,
and they proclaimed before him, bow the knee, and he
set him over all the land of Egypt. Moreover, Pharaoh
said to Joseph, though I am Pharaoh, yet without your permission,
(10:46):
no one shall raise his hand or foot in all
the land of Egypt. Then Pharaoh named Joseph Zephanath Peneia,
and he gave him Asanath, the daughter of potter Pharah,
priest of Ann, as his wife, and Joe. Joseph went
forth over the land of Egypt in one afternoon. Because
of God's grace and goodness and the wisdom he gave him.
(11:08):
He took Joseph from the prison to the throne room
and put him in charge over the entire land. Everyone
had to bow the knee when Joseph came through. No
one could raise a hand or a foot in Egypt
without Joseph's permission. Because of his faithfulness, God blessed him.
He raised him up, and he put him in charge.
And here's what's happened. The years of abundance come and
(11:31):
they store up, and they store up, and it says
that they stored so much that they had more grain
than the sand of the sea. And Joseph stopped counting
because the amount they had was innumerable. They had abundance,
and more than abundance. Well, what happens is now the
famine sets in and back down where the brothers and
the family are from, they'd got some famine come in.
(11:51):
So Jacob the father tells them, hey, you need to
go to Egypt and see if you can make a
bargain or do something and get us some food because
we need it. And so the brother come to Egypt,
and wouldn't you know who's in charge of giving out
the grain. Yeah, it's Joseph, the one they almost killed
and sold as a slave all those years before. So
they have to come before him, and they don't recognize him,
(12:12):
and there's an interesting story that goes on. He sends
them back a couple of times, makes them bring back
the little brother Benjamin, but they don't know who he is,
but he knows who they are, but he hides it
from them until I think it's the third time.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
That they're back. He can't take it anymore. He just
breaks down.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
He goes alone and he weeps so loudly that all
the Egyptians hear it. And he finally comes before him
and he reveals himself to them, and this is how
the passage he says. Then Joseph said to his brothers,
I am Joseph. Is my father still alive? But his
brothers could not answer him, for they were dismayed at
his presence. It means they were terrified when they saw him.
(12:50):
Then Joseph said to his brothers, please come closer to me,
and they came closer, and he said, I am your brother, Joseph,
whom you sold into Egypt. Now do not be grieved
or with yourselves because you sold me here, for God
sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine
has been in the land these two years, and there
are still five years in which there will be neither
(13:10):
plowing nor harvesting. God sent me before you to preserve
for you a remnant in the earth, and to keep
you alive by a great deliverance. Now therefore it was
not you who sent me here, but God. And He
has made me a father to Pharaoh and lord of
all his household, and ruler over all the land of Egypt.
Hurry up and go to my father and say to him,
(13:31):
thus says your son Joseph. God has made me lord
of all Egypt. Come down to me.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Do not delay.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
You shall live in the land of Goshen, and you
shall be near me, you and your children and your
children's children, and your flocks and your herds, and all
that you have there. I will also provide for you,
for there are still five years of famine to come,
and you and your household and all that you have
would be impoverished. Behold your eyes see, and the eyes
of my brother Benjamin. See that it is my mouth
(13:59):
which is to you. Now you must tell my father
of all my splendor in Egypt and all that you
have seen. And you must hurry and bring my father
down here then he fell on his brother Benjamin's neck
and wept, and Benjamin wept on his neck. He kissed
all his brothers and wept on them. And afterwards his
brothers talk with him. Because of the faithfulness of this
(14:19):
man and his lack of bitterness, and his trust with God,
and God's presence with him in spite of all that
happens to him, in one afternoon, he saves two nations
and becomes ruler over all of Egypt. He saves Egypt
by the interpretation God gives him of the dream, and
he saves this family who will become the nation is
(14:40):
two nations that are still here thousands of years later,
because one man was faithful in the midst of unfair circumstances.
Drawing from this incredible story of Joseph, I'd like to
give you nine things to remember when unfairness, mistreatment, things
that are just wrong come to your life. Number One,
(15:03):
there is more to the picture than meets the eye.
A greater purpose is in the making. Don't limit yourself
to your perspective on just the immediate circumstances. There's a
bigger picture that may not be present. Number Two, what
you are becoming is more important than what is happening
(15:24):
to you. A temporary difficult situation that helps you become
and bring out those seeds of greatness in you, that
gets results that lasts forever is a good trade off
temporary suffering for a permanent high position and affective life.
Number three, what you are becoming is a choice that
(15:47):
no one can take from you. Now, people might be
able to treat you in certain ways or do things
to you.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Maybe it's wrong the way your family.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
Your boss, other people treat you and the things that
they do, but there's one thing that they can never
impose on you, and that's your choice of how to respond.
They cannot take that. They may take some things, but
don't let them take that. Don't let them take your
choice of how you're gonna respond and what you're going
to become as a result. Number four, Remember God is
(16:17):
with you if you understand his heart towards you, If
you and to do that, you need to look no
farther than Jesus on the cross and see this is
God's heart. His arms are wide open, his heart is
open to me. He's giving everything for me, forgive us
for all the wrongs we've done, as well as the
other people who are wronging us, every wrong, motive and attitude, good.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
And word and action.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
He's taken it all because he, like Joseph with his brothers,
he longs to be reconciled. He longs to be to
fall on our neck and kiss us and embrace us.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
And that's what he's wanted. And he's with you. And
even in those difficulties.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
When you remember that and are mindful of that stuff
focusing on the other people who are doing wrong and
acting wrong, and you focus on him, it's going to
lift you to a new level and give you success
and prosperity. Just like it said that Joseph was a
successful man even while he was a slave.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
God can do that.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
He can make you successful and make you an overcomer
even in difficult situation. Number five, don't interpret delay as
God having forgotten. There can be few things as frustrating.
Sometimes as delay, we're told that hope deferred makes the
heart sick. And sometimes when our vision is a long
(17:36):
time coming, or like when the cup bear forgot about
Joseph for two full years, we're told, boy, those days
can drag out and it can seem like well, the
promise is never gonna happen. God's forgotten about me. There's
nothing there for me. Let me just go, you know,
find comfort the best way I can, and forget about
any bigger purpose.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Don't do that.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
Hang in there, keep the vision, keep the promises in
front of you, keep moving forward. Don't interpret that delay
is the fact that you're never gonna get there. You're
gonna get there. It's it's not a question of if,
it's just a question of when. And keep moving forward,
keep developing yourself, keep pressing on it to do the
right thing. And that leads to number six that where
(18:14):
you are is not where you're gonna stay. Where you
are today, it's not the end. Like Winston Churchill said
one time, this is not the end. This is not
even the beginning of the end. But this may be
the end of the beginning. And we never know, just
like Joseph that one afternoon that Pharaoh had that dream
and he was taken from the prison to ruler over
(18:36):
the land in one afternoon, we never know when that
beginning is going to end and enter us into our
fulfilled destiny. So don't give up, don't sell yourself short
and give up when things get difficult. Keep the vision,
keep moving ahead, and remember number seven, God is orchestrating.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
A greater good than you can imagine.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
I think when Joseph was wanting to get out of
that prison, he didn't have in mind to be ruler
of Egypt. It'd probably been happy to be a fisherman
or sell something on a corner somewhere just to be
out of the prison. Probably had no inclination that he
would be ruler over the entire land and save both
Egypt and the nation of his Number eight, what you
(19:18):
were coming to will be of more value to others
than you can image. So many people have found their
greatest purpose in their greatest difficulties, and once they discovered it,
have been so useful in helping other people through what
they went through themselves. So the value to other people
(19:38):
is going to be greater than we can imagine. And
we never know what's going to come of it, but
we need to keep trusting again and moving forward. And
then number nine, this is the last one. Those who
so in tears will reap in joy. Joy is going
to be the outcome joy of a vision fulfilled, especially
when we thought it wasn't going to happen, and we
almost gave up, and like Joseph, I can only imagine
(20:01):
the joy of what he when he told his brothers,
go get go, get bad, and tell him of all
my splendor in each He's never gonna believe it, and
come here, and I'll care for you. We're told in
Psalm one twenty six, verse six that he who goes
to and fro weeping carrying his bag of seed, shall
indeed come again with a shout of joy, bringing his
(20:23):
sheaves with him. That's it may be difficult as we're
out sowing the seeds and planting, but when the harvests come,
when the harvest come, we're gonna bring it all in.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Jeff will be back shortly to wrap up today's message.
This is Gabriela Steal on the scene today with Top
Network Radio. If you're just tuning in, you're listening to
Empowered Living with Jeff BYRN. If you've missed any part
of today's message, you can hear it again online as
well as the entire archive of Empowered Living at www
(20:56):
dot Topnetwork Radio dot com or search keyword hashtag empowered Living.
We would like to acknowledge our music partners sound ideas
for corporate to the Max and Kevin McLeod for Airport Lounge.
Any scriptures read during this broadcast are from the New
(21:16):
American Standard version of the Holy Bible. If you would
like to learn more about Jeffrey Bird Coaching, visit www
dot Jeffbirdcoaching dot com, that is j E F F
b y r D Coaching dot com. Do a Facebook
search for at coaching rocks.
Speaker 4 (21:38):
Or drop Jeff a line at Jeff at Jeffbirdcoaching dot
com against j E F F b y r D
Coaching dot com. Let Jeff's coaching rocks be the building
blocks of your empowered success.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Now let's go back to Jeff for the rest of
today's message.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
I want to to give you, to give you an
invitation today if so often, and I did this for years,
and I know so many people who have done this,
Like Joseph's brothers. When they saw Joseph, they were terrified
because they knew their wrongs came to mind, and they
knew how they had mistreated him, and they were afraid
of judgment, afraid of retribution. And that wasn't Joseph's heart.
(22:22):
But so many of us have seen God as being
the one who's just ready to just, you know, send
us to hell. The moment, he has the slightest pretext
and just he's just counting all of our wrongs against us,
and he's just waiting to just hammer us. And that
could not be farther from the truth. We see his
heart in the heart of Joseph. For the brothers. They
(22:43):
come in, they're afraid, But all he wants to do
he was He saw that sacrifice and didn't hold it
against him. All that he suffered and all that he endured,
he saw that as God sending him ahead to provide
a great deliverance. And I want to invite you just
to look to the great deliver that God has provided
for us and his son Jesus on the cross. That's
(23:05):
his true heart. It's not there to punish us. He'll
take all the punishment himself for every wrong thing, the
littlest words, the littlest attitudes, to the biggest misdeeds that
you may have ever done, and that I've ever done.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
He's taken them all away.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
All he wants is to be reconciled, like Joseph there,
to embrace the brothers, to pry with them, to bring
them there, and like he invited the brothers to come
and he would provide for them.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
He would take care of everything they had.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
So if you've never seen God that way, I invite
you look at him that way.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Today.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
Jesus reflects his heart perfectly, especially in giving everything for
us and all you. There's nothing you have to do
except just look at him and believe that, Hey, this
is this is who he is, this is what he's
really liked, and trust him. Ask him to you don't
have to ask him. He's already done it for He's
already loved you to the to the all. He has
(23:58):
the love and infinite love. But just trust him. Just
tell him, say, I ask you to come in, and
just you provide for me. You care for me just
like Joseph for the brothers, and he's going to come in.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Just like Joseph. He'll be with you, make me prosper us.
He'll be success.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
It may be through difficulties, and even in the difficulties,
he'll be with you and promises an end beyond what
you and I can imagine. Thank you so much for
tuning at in today. This is jeff Bird, Jeffrey Bird coaching.
This has been empowered living God bless you see you
next time.
Hello, this is Gabriella on the scene today with Talk
Network Radio. We have a real dread for you just
around the corner, and that is Empowered Living with Jeff Bird.
Jeff is the owner of Jeffrey Bird Coaching and he
will be coming to you weekly to teach you more
about empowered living. Now, let's join Jeff already in the studio.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Hello and welcome.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
This is Jeff Bird, Jeffrey Bird Coaching, and this is
Empowered Living. Our topic today is titled standing Strong when
Life is Unfair. Now, most of us have experience that
at times life can be unfair. Sometimes it can be
extremely unfair. However, our future is never determined by the
(01:21):
unfair things that happened to us, but by our response
to them. The illustration I want to share today is
from a man who had way more than his fair
share of unfair things happened to him, but because of
his exceptional response, he ended up with miraculous results. The
man we're gonna look at is found in the Book
(01:44):
of Genesis, and his name is Joseph. It's interesting that
the name Joseph in the Hebrew comes from the same
word that Jesus is from, Yeshua.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Means one who's.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Say, now, I'm not gonna have time to tell you
the entire story, going to summarize it for you, but
it's found in Genesis chapters thirty seven through forty five,
if you would like to take a few minutes and
have some exceptional.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Read and a varying age story. This man Joseph.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
He's got ten brothers, but Joseph is the favorite of
the father, and the father shows that open, which causes
no small amount of disfrontaledness with his brothers. In addition,
just some dreams that he has where he sees himself
is ruling over them and then bowing down to him,
even the parents bowing down to him, And he kind
(02:32):
of unwisely tells the brothers these dreams, and that makes
them hate him even more, so much so that at
one point they're out tending their flocks and Joseph's father, Jacob,
sends him out to check on them, and when they
see him coming, they decide to kill him. One of
the brothers intervenes and he says, no, no, that's too extreme.
(02:52):
Let's not kill him. Let's let's just dig a pitt.
Or I guess the pit was already doug. Let's just
throw him in a pit and then we'll sell him
to somebody who comes along.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
So that's what they do.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
They throw him in a pit, and when some traders
come along, they pull him up out of the pit
and they sell him to the traders. The passage reads,
this is Genesis thirty seven twenty eight. Then some Midianite
traders passed by, so they pulled him up and lifted
Joseph out of the pit and sold him to the
ishmie Alites for twenty checkles of silver.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Thus they brought Joseph into Egypt. So here he is.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
He's hated by his family, he's disowned, he's almost killed,
and sold as a slave into a foreign country. Now
Joseph could have responded some different ways. He could have
just been bitter. I mean, it would have been so
easy just to dwell on that scenario and that rejection
and this tremendous injustice and just become bitter and good
(03:50):
for nothing and maybe become a drunk or something else
that's just kind of good for nothing. But that's not
what Joseph does. We're told that the Lord was with Joseph,
so he became a successful man. Now this is after
he's been purchased as a slave by an Egyptian man
by the name of Potterphar. We're told that he was
(04:13):
in the house of his master, the Egyptian, and in
this condition of slavery. God calls him a successful man
because the Lord was with him, and everything that he
did prospered. And this man, Potiphar, trusted him greatly, and
so he put him in charge of all his household, everything,
and it apparently he had great wealth, and he had
(04:33):
lots of other people that worked for him, and he
put him in charge of everything and just let him,
Joseph run all his affairs. Now, the problem that came
to Joseph was that Potterphar's wife had a thing for him,
and when they were alone, multiple times she would come
to him and say, lie with me, Lie with me.
And Joseph would say, I can't do this. I can't
(04:53):
sin against the Lord by doing this is strong, can't
you know? Wound my master Potiphar this way, He's given
me everything but you. But she's persistent, and one day,
when they're alone in the house, she grabs him and says,
lie with me, and Joseph runs, but she's hanging on,
and he has this outer tunic on and she has
hold of that, and he flees and she ends up
(05:15):
with this tunic in her hand, and rather than be disgraced,
she decides she's going to spin the story around, and
so she screams, and when the other people come that,
she says, oh, this Hebrew slave that you brought in,
he's come to make a mockery of me. He came
to try to force me to lie with him, and
I screamed, and he ran and left this tunic in
(05:36):
my hands. So not only now has he been rejected
by his family, sold as a slave into a foreign country.
Now people are making up lies again. The Potiphar comes
home and his wife tells him this made up, fabricated story,
and Potiphar's very angry, but he doesn't have him killed,
which is unusual. It seems like maybe there's a little
benefit of the doubt that he gives Joseph. But he
(05:56):
does have him thrown in prison, and we don't know
how long long he initially is in prison, but now
he's in prison. Now he's rejected by his family, almost kills,
sold as a slave into a foreign country, has lies
and false accusations.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
He gets him. Now he's in prison, and.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
We're told here that Joseph's master took him and put
him into the jail, the place where the king's prisoners
were confined, and he was there in the jail, but
the Lord was with Joseph an extended kindness to him
and gave him favor in the sight of the chief jailer.
The jailer committed to Joseph's charge all the prisoners who
was in who were in the jail, so that whatever
(06:35):
was done there, he was responsible for it. The chief
jailer did not supervise anything under Joseph's charge because the
Lord was with him, and whatever he did, the Lord
made to prosper. These are some outrageous circumstances. I mean,
this would make the basis for a really intriguing movie
that would have us all in outrage and how this
guy's being treated. But we're told three times in this
(06:58):
passage that the Lord was with him, The Lord was
with him, the Lord was with them. See, our circumstances
do not make us or a break. It's who's with
us in our corner that makes the breaks. Someone in
the worst circumstances can be a success when the lord's
with So what happens is Joseph's therefore for some period
(07:19):
of time, and God's given him this favor. Now he's
in charge of the jail. And there's these two guys
that are thrown into prison. The king hasn't the Pharaoh
thrown into prison. And one of them is the baker
and another's the cup bearer to the king. And they
have these crazy dreams you can read about them. And
they're in the prison. They're talking about this, and God
gives Joseph the interpretation of the dreams, and he tells
(07:41):
the Baker. He says, well, your dream means that you're
gonna be hanged, and he tells the cup bear some
better news. Your dream means that you're gonna be restored
and be the cup bearer to the king again. And
sure enough, but those things happen. The Baker's hanged and
the cup bears restored. And Joseph asked the cup bear.
He says, when you get restored, would you please remember
me and get me out of this prison. And so
(08:03):
the cup bear is restored to his place and forgets
a Joseph for two full years, not two partial years,
two full years, seven hundred and thirty day. Can you
just imagine that, here's Joseph, He's in this prison, He's
had this miraculous God, God give an interpretation of this
(08:23):
guy's dream that came to pass, and the guy's restored,
and he completely forgets that.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
How do you forget that?
Speaker 3 (08:30):
And every day can't you just see Joseph waking up going, well,
maybe this is the day he's gonna remember, man, I'm
gonna get out of this prison. Maybe he's praying in
the morning, God, please help the cup bear to remember
that you know the interpretation you gave me, and get
me out of this prison. But two years passed in
the prison, and Joseph is still faithful, he's still trusting
(08:52):
the Lord's still with him in prosper in that situation,
and he's still not out of it. But what happens
is another miraculous thing happens. Pharaoh has a dream, a
couple of dreams, and he's very perplexed by them, has
no idea what they mean. And then the cup bearer remembers, oh, yeah,
there was this Hebrew guy in the prison with me
and I had He says, I remember my sens this
(09:13):
day you know, I forgot all about this guy. But yeah,
he interpreted the dreams. Said you were going to restore me.
Pharaoh restored me, and here I am the cup bear.
He said, this guy is one they can interpret dreams.
So Pharaoh goes and gets him out of the prison.
They wash him and clean him up, and he brings
him before him and he tells him the dream and
God gives him the interpretation. He says, I hear that
you can interpret dreams. He says, it's not me. He says,
(09:35):
God interprets the dreams. He just gives them to me.
So he told him the dreams, and Joseph interpreted what
it meant that there was going to be seven years
of abundance and bounty in the harvest and in the
productivity of the land, and then it was going to
be followed by seven years of family. So Joseph told fair.
He says, this is what the dream means, and what
you should do is during the seven years of plenty,
(09:56):
you should build storehouses all over the land and store up, store,
store up, so that you'll have enough for the seven
years of famine. And we're told then that Pharaoh said
to Joseph, since God has informed you of all this,
and there is no one so discerning and wise as
you are. You shall be over my house, and according
to your command, all my people shall do Amah.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Only in the throne will I be greater than you.
Pharaoh said to Joseph, see, I have set you over
all the land of Egypt.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
Then Pharaoh took off his signet ring from his hand
and put it on Joseph's hand, and clothed him in
garments of fine linen, and put the gold necklace around
his neck. He had him ride in his second chariot,
and they proclaimed before him, bow the knee, and he
set him over all the land of Egypt. Moreover, Pharaoh
said to Joseph, though I am Pharaoh, yet without your permission,
(10:46):
no one shall raise his hand or foot in all
the land of Egypt. Then Pharaoh named Joseph Zephanath Peneia,
and he gave him Asanath, the daughter of potter Pharah,
priest of Ann, as his wife, and Joe. Joseph went
forth over the land of Egypt in one afternoon. Because
of God's grace and goodness and the wisdom he gave him.
(11:08):
He took Joseph from the prison to the throne room
and put him in charge over the entire land. Everyone
had to bow the knee when Joseph came through. No
one could raise a hand or a foot in Egypt
without Joseph's permission. Because of his faithfulness, God blessed him.
He raised him up, and he put him in charge.
And here's what's happened. The years of abundance come and
(11:31):
they store up, and they store up, and it says
that they stored so much that they had more grain
than the sand of the sea. And Joseph stopped counting
because the amount they had was innumerable. They had abundance,
and more than abundance. Well, what happens is now the
famine sets in and back down where the brothers and
the family are from, they'd got some famine come in.
(11:51):
So Jacob the father tells them, hey, you need to
go to Egypt and see if you can make a
bargain or do something and get us some food because
we need it. And so the brother come to Egypt,
and wouldn't you know who's in charge of giving out
the grain. Yeah, it's Joseph, the one they almost killed
and sold as a slave all those years before. So
they have to come before him, and they don't recognize him,
(12:12):
and there's an interesting story that goes on. He sends
them back a couple of times, makes them bring back
the little brother Benjamin, but they don't know who he is,
but he knows who they are, but he hides it
from them until I think it's the third time.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
That they're back. He can't take it anymore. He just
breaks down.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
He goes alone and he weeps so loudly that all
the Egyptians hear it. And he finally comes before him
and he reveals himself to them, and this is how
the passage he says. Then Joseph said to his brothers,
I am Joseph. Is my father still alive? But his
brothers could not answer him, for they were dismayed at
his presence. It means they were terrified when they saw him.
(12:50):
Then Joseph said to his brothers, please come closer to me,
and they came closer, and he said, I am your brother, Joseph,
whom you sold into Egypt. Now do not be grieved
or with yourselves because you sold me here, for God
sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine
has been in the land these two years, and there
are still five years in which there will be neither
(13:10):
plowing nor harvesting. God sent me before you to preserve
for you a remnant in the earth, and to keep
you alive by a great deliverance. Now therefore it was
not you who sent me here, but God. And He
has made me a father to Pharaoh and lord of
all his household, and ruler over all the land of Egypt.
Hurry up and go to my father and say to him,
(13:31):
thus says your son Joseph. God has made me lord
of all Egypt. Come down to me.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Do not delay.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
You shall live in the land of Goshen, and you
shall be near me, you and your children and your
children's children, and your flocks and your herds, and all
that you have there. I will also provide for you,
for there are still five years of famine to come,
and you and your household and all that you have
would be impoverished. Behold your eyes see, and the eyes
of my brother Benjamin. See that it is my mouth
(13:59):
which is to you. Now you must tell my father
of all my splendor in Egypt and all that you
have seen. And you must hurry and bring my father
down here then he fell on his brother Benjamin's neck
and wept, and Benjamin wept on his neck. He kissed
all his brothers and wept on them. And afterwards his
brothers talk with him. Because of the faithfulness of this
(14:19):
man and his lack of bitterness, and his trust with God,
and God's presence with him in spite of all that
happens to him, in one afternoon, he saves two nations
and becomes ruler over all of Egypt. He saves Egypt
by the interpretation God gives him of the dream, and
he saves this family who will become the nation is
(14:40):
two nations that are still here thousands of years later,
because one man was faithful in the midst of unfair circumstances.
Drawing from this incredible story of Joseph, I'd like to
give you nine things to remember when unfairness, mistreatment, things
that are just wrong come to your life. Number One,
(15:03):
there is more to the picture than meets the eye.
A greater purpose is in the making. Don't limit yourself
to your perspective on just the immediate circumstances. There's a
bigger picture that may not be present. Number Two, what
you are becoming is more important than what is happening
(15:24):
to you. A temporary difficult situation that helps you become
and bring out those seeds of greatness in you, that
gets results that lasts forever is a good trade off
temporary suffering for a permanent high position and affective life.
Number three, what you are becoming is a choice that
(15:47):
no one can take from you. Now, people might be
able to treat you in certain ways or do things
to you.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Maybe it's wrong the way your family.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
Your boss, other people treat you and the things that
they do, but there's one thing that they can never
impose on you, and that's your choice of how to respond.
They cannot take that. They may take some things, but
don't let them take that. Don't let them take your
choice of how you're gonna respond and what you're going
to become as a result. Number four, Remember God is
(16:17):
with you if you understand his heart towards you, If
you and to do that, you need to look no
farther than Jesus on the cross and see this is
God's heart. His arms are wide open, his heart is
open to me. He's giving everything for me, forgive us
for all the wrongs we've done, as well as the
other people who are wronging us, every wrong, motive and attitude, good.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
And word and action.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
He's taken it all because he, like Joseph with his brothers,
he longs to be reconciled. He longs to be to
fall on our neck and kiss us and embrace us.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
And that's what he's wanted. And he's with you. And
even in those difficulties.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
When you remember that and are mindful of that stuff
focusing on the other people who are doing wrong and
acting wrong, and you focus on him, it's going to
lift you to a new level and give you success
and prosperity. Just like it said that Joseph was a
successful man even while he was a slave.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
God can do that.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
He can make you successful and make you an overcomer
even in difficult situation. Number five, don't interpret delay as
God having forgotten. There can be few things as frustrating.
Sometimes as delay, we're told that hope deferred makes the
heart sick. And sometimes when our vision is a long
(17:36):
time coming, or like when the cup bear forgot about
Joseph for two full years, we're told, boy, those days
can drag out and it can seem like well, the
promise is never gonna happen. God's forgotten about me. There's
nothing there for me. Let me just go, you know,
find comfort the best way I can, and forget about
any bigger purpose.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Don't do that.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
Hang in there, keep the vision, keep the promises in
front of you, keep moving forward. Don't interpret that delay
is the fact that you're never gonna get there. You're
gonna get there. It's it's not a question of if,
it's just a question of when. And keep moving forward,
keep developing yourself, keep pressing on it to do the
right thing. And that leads to number six that where
(18:14):
you are is not where you're gonna stay. Where you
are today, it's not the end. Like Winston Churchill said
one time, this is not the end. This is not
even the beginning of the end. But this may be
the end of the beginning. And we never know, just
like Joseph that one afternoon that Pharaoh had that dream
and he was taken from the prison to ruler over
(18:36):
the land in one afternoon, we never know when that
beginning is going to end and enter us into our
fulfilled destiny. So don't give up, don't sell yourself short
and give up when things get difficult. Keep the vision,
keep moving ahead, and remember number seven, God is orchestrating.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
A greater good than you can imagine.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
I think when Joseph was wanting to get out of
that prison, he didn't have in mind to be ruler
of Egypt. It'd probably been happy to be a fisherman
or sell something on a corner somewhere just to be
out of the prison. Probably had no inclination that he
would be ruler over the entire land and save both
Egypt and the nation of his Number eight, what you
(19:18):
were coming to will be of more value to others
than you can image. So many people have found their
greatest purpose in their greatest difficulties, and once they discovered it,
have been so useful in helping other people through what
they went through themselves. So the value to other people
(19:38):
is going to be greater than we can imagine. And
we never know what's going to come of it, but
we need to keep trusting again and moving forward. And
then number nine, this is the last one. Those who
so in tears will reap in joy. Joy is going
to be the outcome joy of a vision fulfilled, especially
when we thought it wasn't going to happen, and we
almost gave up, and like Joseph, I can only imagine
(20:01):
the joy of what he when he told his brothers,
go get go, get bad, and tell him of all
my splendor in each He's never gonna believe it, and
come here, and I'll care for you. We're told in
Psalm one twenty six, verse six that he who goes
to and fro weeping carrying his bag of seed, shall
indeed come again with a shout of joy, bringing his
(20:23):
sheaves with him. That's it may be difficult as we're
out sowing the seeds and planting, but when the harvests come,
when the harvest come, we're gonna bring it all in.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Jeff will be back shortly to wrap up today's message.
This is Gabriela Steal on the scene today with Top
Network Radio. If you're just tuning in, you're listening to
Empowered Living with Jeff BYRN. If you've missed any part
of today's message, you can hear it again online as
well as the entire archive of Empowered Living at www
(20:56):
dot Topnetwork Radio dot com or search keyword hashtag empowered Living.
We would like to acknowledge our music partners sound ideas
for corporate to the Max and Kevin McLeod for Airport Lounge.
Any scriptures read during this broadcast are from the New
(21:16):
American Standard version of the Holy Bible. If you would
like to learn more about Jeffrey Bird Coaching, visit www
dot Jeffbirdcoaching dot com, that is j E F F
b y r D Coaching dot com. Do a Facebook
search for at coaching rocks.
Speaker 4 (21:38):
Or drop Jeff a line at Jeff at Jeffbirdcoaching dot
com against j E F F b y r D
Coaching dot com. Let Jeff's coaching rocks be the building
blocks of your empowered success.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Now let's go back to Jeff for the rest of
today's message.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
I want to to give you, to give you an
invitation today if so often, and I did this for years,
and I know so many people who have done this,
Like Joseph's brothers. When they saw Joseph, they were terrified
because they knew their wrongs came to mind, and they
knew how they had mistreated him, and they were afraid
of judgment, afraid of retribution. And that wasn't Joseph's heart.
(22:22):
But so many of us have seen God as being
the one who's just ready to just, you know, send
us to hell. The moment, he has the slightest pretext
and just he's just counting all of our wrongs against us,
and he's just waiting to just hammer us. And that
could not be farther from the truth. We see his
heart in the heart of Joseph. For the brothers. They
(22:43):
come in, they're afraid, But all he wants to do
he was He saw that sacrifice and didn't hold it
against him. All that he suffered and all that he endured,
he saw that as God sending him ahead to provide
a great deliverance. And I want to invite you just
to look to the great deliver that God has provided
for us and his son Jesus on the cross. That's
(23:05):
his true heart. It's not there to punish us. He'll
take all the punishment himself for every wrong thing, the
littlest words, the littlest attitudes, to the biggest misdeeds that
you may have ever done, and that I've ever done.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
He's taken them all away.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
All he wants is to be reconciled, like Joseph there,
to embrace the brothers, to pry with them, to bring
them there, and like he invited the brothers to come
and he would provide for them.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
He would take care of everything they had.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
So if you've never seen God that way, I invite
you look at him that way.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Today.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
Jesus reflects his heart perfectly, especially in giving everything for
us and all you. There's nothing you have to do
except just look at him and believe that, Hey, this
is this is who he is, this is what he's
really liked, and trust him. Ask him to you don't
have to ask him. He's already done it for He's
already loved you to the to the all. He has
(23:58):
the love and infinite love. But just trust him. Just
tell him, say, I ask you to come in, and
just you provide for me. You care for me just
like Joseph for the brothers, and he's going to come in.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Just like Joseph. He'll be with you, make me prosper us.
He'll be success.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
It may be through difficulties, and even in the difficulties,
he'll be with you and promises an end beyond what
you and I can imagine. Thank you so much for
tuning at in today. This is jeff Bird, Jeffrey Bird coaching.
This has been empowered living God bless you see you
next time.
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