For June 14

Sermon: Connecting God’s Dots

Intro: Over the last two weeks, we’ve been talking about when God speaks, things happen.  God as the Father, as the Son, and as the Holy Spirit, speaking as three persons, but as One, in perfect unity, as our Triune God.  In the OT, God spoke mainly through prophets, Often prophecies were for short range events, like battles, or warnings against sin. Significant, longer range prophecies were written down for future reference. But as we’ve been seeing, whenever God spoke, things happened, just as God said they would.

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I. Connected Dots

A. We’re most familiar with God speaking through others in Scripture concerning the Messiah, through angels who even directed His name would be Jesus, a name that meant Deliverer. Prophets, like Isaiah, provided many significant details of His birth, death and Resurrection; others pointed to events like His triumphal entry into Jerusalem.  There were at least 100 prophecies concerning Jesus’ NT earthly ministry, every one fulfilled exactly as God had spoken. The NT itself is a revealing of the fulfillment of those prophecies, further proving that when God speaks, things still do happen. But it’s not always easy to understand that all things happen for our good when we love God and are called according to His purpose, as Paul wrote in Roman 8:28.  God doesn’t always provide what we want, or like, or think of as just.   

B. Do you remember those Connect the Dots puzzles?  There was a hidden puzzle that was revealed by connecting a series of dots in a specified order. But, the dots had to be connected in the proper sequence, not randomly, to see the mystery picture. You can’t go from the first dot to the last dot to see the Big Picture. Skipping numbered dots may significantly alter the intended result of the picture.

C. That’s how God works in our lives.  A progression of dots, or events, over our lives. We can’t look at one dot representing our birth then go to the present dot and expect to see God working in our lives. Those intermediate dots, no matter how unpleasant or unpredicted they may seem at the time, are significant when we trust God to connect them for us.  Then we can see the picture of God working in our lives.

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II  Genesis 37:1-11

A.  We can use Joseph in the OT to show God connecting the dots of his life.  For context, Jacob wanted to marry his beloved Rachel, but had to work for her guardian uncle Laban for seven years.  At the wedding, Laban substituted the veiled bride-to-be with Leah, Rachel’s older, less attractive sister. Jacob worked another seven years to marry Rachel.  While Rachel was initially unable to conceive,  Leah proved fertile, as did the two other women that gave birth to Jacob’s combined ten sons. Finally, Rachel gave birth to an eleventh son, Joseph, who, as the only son of Jacob’s beloved Rachel, was treated special. It would appear that God also favored Joseph by giving him two dreams where his brothers and his parents were bowing down before him. You can imagine the older brothers’ reaction when Joseph, already hated by his brothers, told them his dream.

B. When Jacob sent 17 year old Jacob, in his special coat of many colors, to check up on his brother, they had had enough of their spoiled brother, and decided to kill him.  One brother intervened, convincing the others to keep him in a deep dry well while they decided his fate. Suddenly the dot of a spoiled boy connected to that of a terrified teenager in a dark pit awaiting his expected death. 

C. The next dot was him being pulled from the well, only to be sold to a caravan going to distant Egypt, where the next dot would be his being sold as a slave in a pagan country that didn’t even believe in Joseph’s God. It must have been difficult for Joseph to experience God connecting these dots of his life picture.  He’s sold to an important Egyptian official.  He serves his master so well that he is given full responsibility for his master’s household, until his lustful wife tries to seduce him. True to God’s moral principles, Joseph flees from her. She lies, telling her husband Joseph had attacked her. His word as a slave against the accusation of the wife of a powerful official meant nothing, and Joseph is sent to prison.

D. Joseph’s connecting dots seem to be distancing him from God. How distant those dreams about his family bowing down before him seemed now.  Yet Joseph remains faithful to God, and God makes the prison guards see him favorably, even putting him charge of other prisoners.

E. Then Pharaoh’s baker, and his cupbearer (the one who tasted Pharoah’s wine first in case it was poisoned), are sent to prison for offending Pharaoh. One night they both have unexplainable dreams, and the next morning, Joseph asks why they looked so sad. When they tell Joseph their dreams, Joseph tells them God can interpret their dreams, and God tells Joseph their meanings. The cupbearer would be restored to his position in three days, but the baker would be put to death in three days. And that’s what happened, exactly as God had said. 

F. As the cupbearer is being released, Joseph asks him to put in a good word to Pharaoh for him, which he promises to do.  But he forgets that promise for two years and Joseph’s hopes of release become fading, connecting dots in prison.  Still, Joseph remains faithful to God, even though perhaps questioning God’s working in his life. Then, Pharaoh has a troubling dream that his spiritual advisers cannot interpret.  Then, Pharaoh’s cupbearer remembers Joseph’s ability to interpret dreams and tells Pharaoh. Joseph is brought from the prison, cleaned up, and brought to Pharaoh.

G. Pharaoh tells him his dreams: Seven bad ears of corn swallow seven good ears.  Then seven fat cows are swallowed up by seven skinny cows.  Joseph tells the Pharaoh, considered a god in their pagan religion, that he cannot interpret them, but his God can, then telling him that God told him both dreams were about the same thing, that seven good years would be followed by seven years of famine.  Pharaoh is so impressed with Joseph’s confidence and wisdom that he appoints Joseph as his second in command to prepare Egypt for the coming famine.  The connecting dots of Joseph’s life seem to have turned,  beginning to reveal a more favorable picture. 

H. Joseph immediately develops plans to improve crop production, like building more canals built for crop watering, while greatly increasing storage capacity. He had  all the food produced during those seven years of abundance collected and stored.  In each city, he put the food grown in their surrounding fields. Scripture records that the huge quantities of grain were so great that he stopped keeping records because it was beyond measure.

I. Where had Joseph gained all this wisdom? He was only seventeen when he was sold by his brothers, and now, thirteen years later, he is the second most powerful official in Egypt. The only explanation is that God had connected the dots, preparing Joseph for this time, blessing him with the wisdom needed to save Egypt, with enough abundance to share with neighboring countries, like Israel.  

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III.  Genesis 45:3-11

A. Although Joseph’s once hidden puzzle was becoming the Big Picture, God wasn’t through connecting those dots.  In our second OT reading, the famine had also affected Israel, and several of Jacob’s sons had come to Egypt hoping to get grain. They had to come before Joseph with their request. Joseph immediately recognizes them, but in his late thirties, dressed as an Egyptian official, they don’t recognize him. Joseph tests them to see if they’d changed by requiring them to bring them Jacob’s youngest son, Benjamin, born to his beloved Rachel, who died giving him birth while Joseph was in Egypt. Having seen their father deeply grieve, believing Joseph had been killed by a wild animal, the brothers didn’t want to risk anything happening to Benjamin that would again grieve their father. But bringing Benjamin was a condition for the grain they need. 

B. When they return, protective of Benjamin, Joseph sees how they’ve changed.  As they bow before their still unrecognized brother, fulfilling Joseph’s early dream God had given him, Joseph breaks down, weeping loudly, finally confessing his identity to his brothers. They’re terrified, thinking Joseph would surely get his deserved revenge.  But Joseph has forgiven them and embraces them.  He now sees the picture revealed by the connecting dots, telling them not be distressed or angry with themselves for selling him here, because it was God, not them, who had really caused him to be sent ahead of them to save many lives.

C. Joseph has his brothers return to their home to bring Jacob and all their household to Egypt to live.  The whole family – all 70 of them – would live in Egypt, where Pharaoh would give them food and clothes, and even land to grow their livestock. There, God would connect the final dots of Joseph’s life where he would later die.

D. The Big Picture of Joseph’s life had begun as a single dot – a spoiled son being told in a dream that his family would bow down before him, but the connecting dots of being sold into in slavery, then sent to prison over the next 13 years seemed to be outside of God’s care.  But when God completed connected the intended dots, He revealed a big picture of His masterful craftsmanship of preparing Joseph to save not only Egypt, and even Israel and those who had badly mistreated him.

E. Even then it was a picture within a picture.  A picture of God fulfilling His covenant with Abraham, made centuries before, promising a land for his descendants.  Bringing Jacob’s 70 person family to Egypt was a connecting dot that would allow God to multiply that family over the next 400 years to several million people that would be needed to conquer that land.  Slavery forced Israel to remain in Egypt until God began to connect the dots through the Exodus to reveal the Big Picture of the Promised Land, eventually becoming the even Bigger Picture of the Messiah who would be born there, and eventually a worldwide Grand Picture of His Presence   When God speaks, even in a dream to a young man, things do happen. 

F. But this message is not just a  history lesson.  Because all of us have lives of connected dots making up our Big Pictures. If every one of us, sitting here, looks back over our lives, we should be able to see a beginning dot, perhaps a dream, or a hope, as a starting dot, and then see those dots connecting.  It becomes apparent then that ‘our life can only be understood looking  backwards, but it must be lived going forward.’ We must be willing to reflect on the past, recognize the things we missed in the moment, or when we deviated from, trusting God to connect those dots that He has set in advance to reveal His plan. 

G.  Like all of you, I had an early dream of what I wanted my life to look like. God began connecting the dots of my short sighted career goals and personal life, without realizing that He was already preparing me for His much bigger picture of my life.  I experienced those dark, painful moments that seemed as if God had abandoned me. Loss of loved ones, divorce, career dead ends.  But God was using them to give me an understanding of the impact of divorce, the needs of those grieving, and even real life ministry behind prison doors. With those better understandings, He then called me to pastoral ministry, to this very church, where I have been so satisfied and fulfilled.  When I am ordained next week, it will be something I had never thought possible, until God connected the dots. We might recognize that many of our lessons and transformative experiences are understood only in hindsight.  We most often see their value after the fact, even though they didn’t feel like that in the moment, especially when those experiences are painful or difficult, like Joseph’s initial experiences in Egypt. We thank God for those lessons when we can file them away, when they are finally in our rearview mirror. When what we now call a blessing once felt like a curse.  It is often difficult to see or even recognize the value of God working in our lives in the present to reveal his Big Picture design for our future. 

 

Conclusion: But we must trust God, because our God is not a random God.  Like Joseph’s Big Picture, He has a unique plan for each of us.  When we seek God’s will, and trust that His love has meaning and purpose in our lives, He reveals His unique plan for each of us by connecting those experiences over time.  Plans that show how much He always loves us. Amen