Genesis 40-41 - Listening For God’s Voice Matters
Main Idea: Choose to listen patiently for God’s instructions for you.
40:1-4 - 2 prisoners like Joseph arrive (dreamers with an angry boss)
40:5-19 - God gives them dreams about their imminent futures
40:20-23 - Joseph sees their dreams (not his) come true quickly
41:1-8 - God gives Pharaoh dreams no one can understand
41:9-13 - The cupbearer remembers Joseph’s kindness to him
41:14-16 - Joseph is brought to be honored, but honors God instead
41:17-32 - Joseph gives God’s interpretation of Pharaoh’s dream
41:33-36 - Joseph gives good advice (save in plentiful times for bad)
41:37-45 - God is with Joseph, uplifts him, clothes him, gives him authority, and gives him a bride
41:46-57 - God helps Joseph forget past pain & have a fruitful future
CHOOSE TO LISTEN PATIENTLY FOR GOD’S INSTRUCTIONS
God has a unique path for you within His character.
God often leads you to your path through your care for others.
God is not on your timetable, so accept His timing for others’ good.
God’s instructions are for you to glorify Him, not yourself.
God’s instructions for you will be affirmed by others.
God’s instructions will lead to your spiritual growth.
God’s instructions will lead you into His future, not your past.
SERMON TRANSCRIPT (AUTO-TRANSCRIBED BY APPLE PODCASTS)
If you have your Bibles today, and I hope that you do, let's turn it over to Genesis Chapter 40. Genesis Chapter 40. We've been in a very short series.
I think this is message number four, as we've been walking through Genesis, and we've been looking at the life of Joseph.
And it's been on this topic, character matters, that the way that you live your life, the choices that you make, your financial integrity, your sexual integrity, the way that you care for and love others, hate others, makes a genuine impact.
And so we've seen in Joseph's life, as he starts off, and he's the favorite of his dad's 13 kids.
And if you are the favorite child of your parents, or maybe you were the favorite child of your parents, you know, that doesn't make all of your siblings love you. In fact, it can stoke a whole lot of animosity.
Add to that that Joseph, his mom was only four of the baby mamas that Jacob had. And so as a result, you have these people with different moms, as they are feuding with one another, and there's a lot of hatred.
And I know some of you have seen that play out, maybe in your life, maybe in someone else's life. And so Joseph really kind of had it rough growing up, even though he was the favorite kid. As a result of this, his brothers hated him.
But it got a little worse. You see, God gave Joseph some dreams in his life. Now, I'm not saying like he had an aspiration to be the world's best candy maker, like Willy Wonka or something.
It wasn't that kind of a dream. It was a specific calling on the life of Joseph, that Joseph was called to do something. And specifically, it was that he would rule over his brothers.
And he even had a second dream in which he ruled not only over his brothers, but over his parents as well. This didn't make either the brothers or the parents happy.
And it ended up that one day, as Joseph was sent on a mission by his father to go check on the work that his brothers were doing out shepherding in the various hills of the land of Palestine, Israel, Canaan, as he sent him out to do that, the
brothers hated him so much that they were initially going to kill him. They were dissuaded from that by the brothers Judah and Reuben. And they said, okay, we'll just throw him in a pit.
So they threw him in a pit, and then they saw some merchants that were traveling nearby, some Ishmaelites and Midianites. And they went, oh, listen, we can get some money for getting rid of Joseph.
That's a lot better than getting rid of him and having no money. And so they sent Joseph with these slave traders who then went down to Egypt, sold him into slavery.
He was a worker within the house of Potiphar, who was a captain of the guards there in Egypt. And Joseph did not allow his bad circumstances to affect his relationship with God or even the kind of person or worker that he would be.
And through his faithfulness, through his tenacity, through his work ethic, and through the Lord being with him, as we saw last week over and over again, Joseph was lifted up to be basically in charge of everything in Potiphar's house, except for
Potiphar himself. And so he would look after the servants, he would look after the meals, he would look after, you know, what needed cleaned and when.
And so God blessed Joseph greatly, and he blessed all of Potiphar's house as a result of the fact that Joseph was there. We learned, are you a blessing to wherever God has put you, within maybe your family, within your workplace?
Are you a blessing to those around you? But we saw that Potiphar's wife saw Joseph, saw that he was a young man. He would have been about 19 to 25 or so at that point.
And she attempted to have him sleep with her. He refused her over and over and over again until ultimately, she tried to force him to. He abandoned his cloak that she had grabbed.
He abandoned his cloak, ran out of the house. He lost his coat, but retained his integrity. But with coat in hand, then Potiphar's wife told the servants and told Potiphar, hey, he attempted to abuse me.
Potiphar, only being able to see and hear what his wife had in her hand and what she was saying from her mouth, he had Joseph thrown into prison. And that's where we left him at the end of last week.
Today, we're going to see from chapters 40 and 41 that listening for God's voice matters.
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Listening for God
Listening for God's voice matters.
You see, much like Joseph had a specific path that God had for him of one day ruling, he had to, moment by moment, bad situation by bad situation, unfortunate circumstance after unfortunate circumstance, he had to continue believing that what the
Lord had instructed him to do in his character and in his belief that God would be true to his promises. Joseph had to listen for the voice of God over and over again.
For you and I today, I don't think that God has a specific path for any of you to rule. Like, I don't know, Susan, if you're going to be the next, like, governor of Maryland. I don't think that might be the particular plan that God has.
But God has a plan for you, a path that he wants you to walk this week of your life, this month of your life. And it's much less about maybe a specific occupation, a specific person to date or to marry.
It might not be a specific house that he has you moving into, but it's the kind of person that you are. If you will, God's path for you is the way that he wants you to look like Jesus. Can everyone real quick say, look like Jesus?
Okay. What we're going to see from this passage is that we need to choose to listen patiently for God's instructions for us. You have a unique way that God will want you to obey and follow him and show Jesus to others around you.
But the only way we're going to figure out what God has for us this week or this month or this year is if you listen to him patiently. Let's pray together. We'll dive into the passage and then see a couple of thoughts at the end.
Dear Lord, we love you. We ask that you would be with us. Lord, encourage our hearts through this time.
God, I pray that as we think about what this next week might entail for us, Lord, may we not just be focused on the hard things that we'll have to endure, the fun times that we're looking forward to.
But Lord, may we think about how we are going to love others as you have loved us.
And Lord, the specific paths and walks and choices and words that you have for us, God, we pray that you would help us to listen to your voice, help us to be the kind of people who know Jesus experientially and who hear him and his instructions in
our lives. We love you, and we ask this in your precious name. Amen. There's quite a few verses in today's passage, so I won't dissect everything as much as I normally would.
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Prison Dream Interpretations
But you can kind of see a breakdown even there on your handout of, here's the summary of what occurs.
It says after this, after Joseph now is in the prison, but through his faithful work ethic and his trustworthiness, he is like the prisoner in charge of all the other prisoners, not because he's the kingpin who's knocked everyone else down, but
through his kindness and trustworthiness, other people know that they can rely on Joseph. And so the prisoner, the keeper of the prison, has placed Joseph in charge of everything that is in the prison.
After this, the king of Egypt's cupbearer and baker offended their master, the king of Egypt. Pharaoh was angry with his two officers, the chief cupbearer and the chief baker.
Now, one thing you should know about a cupbearer, that's the person that someone, you know, gives Pharaoh a cup of wine. And the cupbearer's job is to take a sip, see if anything happens to the cupbearer.
And once he has established, yeah, it's safe to drink, then he hands it over to the Pharaoh. So this is a very trusted position. And for the chief cupbearer to get in trouble and to be sentenced down to the dungeons would be a bad thing.
So Pharaoh was angry with these two men and put them in custody in the house of the captain of the guards in the prison where Joseph was confined.
The captain of the guards assigned Joseph to them as their personal attendant, and they were in custody for some time. The king of Egypt's cupbearer and baker who were confined in the prison, each had a dream.
Both had a dream on the same night, and each dream had its own meaning. Okay. At any point during this process, have Joseph's dreams turned out well for him?
No. Makes the brothers angry, makes the parents angry. Now, these guys are going to have a dream.
If you're reading through this, you're going, oh, no, what kind of bad stuff is going to happen now? Says, when Joseph came to them in the morning, he saw that they looked distraught. Pause here.
Joseph's occupation is what right now in the dungeons? He's a prisoner. But notice here that as he comes to these men, even as a prisoner, one unjustly there, he notices that these men looked distraught.
Do you have a care to notice what is happening in the lives of those around you? Do you care if someone is sad or happy, angry or frightened? Do you care for them?
I love to hear that Joseph notices this. And it says, so he asked Pharaoh's officers, who were in custody with him in his master's house, why do you look so sad today? We had dreams, they said to him, but there's no one to interpret them.
Then Joseph said to them, don't interpretations belong to God? Tell me your dreams. They go, man, there's no one to interpret these dreams.
In ancient Egypt, there was a very strong belief that all of the different dreams that people had, they came from the gods. And so there were different tomes of books that had, okay, if this thing is in your dream, then it means this.
And if this is here, it means this. And so you'd have a whole kind of system of, we'd hear about a somewhat similar thing in the New Testament with the Magi. There was a kind of priests that their whole thing was interpretation of dreams.
And they go, man, you know, we're down in the dungeons. There's no one with interpretation of dreams down here. And Joseph doesn't say, oh, I know how to interpret dreams.
He says, interpretation of dreams belongs to God. Can I encourage you? You will not find your future by your star sign.
You will not find the path that you ought to walk in your life simply by asking Gemini or Chet GPT or Grok. Have the direction of your life, have the choices that you make be determined by the Lord. How do we find that out?
Go to the Word, pray in the Spirit, talk to the body of Christ, and see what the Lord has for you. Here Joseph says, you don't have to follow some pagan religion. You can hear the answer from God.
It says, so the chief cupbearer told his dream to Joseph. In my dream, there was a vine in front of me. On the vine were three branches.
As soon as it budded, its blossoms came out, and its clusters ripened into grapes. Pharaoh's cup was in my hand, and I took the grapes, squeezed them into Pharaoh's cup, and placed the cup in Pharaoh's hand.
This is the interpretation Joseph said to him. The three branches are three days, and in just three days, Pharaoh will lift up your head and restore you to your position.
You will put Pharaoh's cup in his hand the way you used to when you were his cup bearer. But when all goes well for you, remember that I was with you.
Please show kindness to me by mentioning me to Pharaoh, and get me out of this prison, for I was kidnapped from the land of the Hebrews, and even here, I've done nothing, but they should put me in the dungeon.
So Joseph says, here's what God is telling you, chief cup bearer, three days, you're going to be out of here, you're going to serve in your old position. Don't forget me when you get there. Get me out of this place.
Now, if you remember, there's two guys, there's cup bearer, chief baker. What do you think chief baker is thinking right now? Yeah, we're only up and up.
I also had a dream. And so maybe good things are coming from me. When the chief baker saw that the interpretation was positive, he said to Joseph, I also had a dream.
Three baskets of white bread were on my head. In the top basket were all sorts of baked goods for Pharaoh, but the birds were eating them out of the basket on my head. This is its interpretation, Joseph replied.
The three baskets are three days? Baker's going, yeah, three days. I'm out of here.
In just three days, Pharaoh will lift up your head from off you and hang you on a tree, and then the birds will eat the flesh from your body. Gruesome. That's not good.
On the third day, which was Pharaoh's birthday, he gave a feast for all his servants. He elevated the chief cup bearer and the chief baker among his servants.
Pharaoh restored the chief cup bearer to his position as cup bearer and he placed the cup in Pharaoh's hand. But Pharaoh hanged the chief baker just as Joseph had explained to them. Yet, the chief cup bearer did not remember Joseph.
He forgot him. Can I encourage you? God has placed people in your life and in mine that have been good to us, that have shown us kindness.
Let us be faithful to remember them, to show kindness back to them. In the words of Scripture, give honor to whom honor is due. It says at the end of two years, Pharaoh had a dream.
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Pharaohʼs Troubling Dreams
Now, again, that's just like next verse.
Two years, when Joseph gave the interpretation of the dreams from God to these men, it had already been something like eight to ten years, at least, since Joseph had received his dreams, and they have not yet come true.
These guys got dreams three days later. Boom, they're out of there. And now, after two years, continuing to languish there in the prison.
It says Pharaoh had a dream. He was standing beside the Nile when seven healthy looking, well-fed cows came up from the Nile and began to graze among the reeds.
After them, seven other cows, sickly and thin, came up from the Nile and stood beside those cows along the banks of the Nile. All right. So how many healthy cows?
Okay. How many sickly cows? Okay.
The sickly, thin cows ate the healthy, well-fed cows. Then Pharaoh woke up. That's a little freaky.
One of the ways, I think it was in like a Veggie Tales or something silly.
One of the ways they illustrated this was the skinny cows just like think how a shark, like a great white shark, like unhinges its jaw and goes like raw and just swallows the healthy cow.
So it doesn't describe how it happened, but that was always a really, really funny way to picture it in my head. Says he fell asleep and dreamed a second time. Seven heads of grain, plump and good, came up on one stock.
Pause right here. Have you guys ever had like a really weird dream and you wake up and you go, I really hope because I have to get back to sleep. I hope that I don't have the weird dream again.
Has that happened to anyone else or just me? That you've had that. So Pharaoh goes, okay, super weird dream.
Here we go. Oh no. How many heads of grain here that are good?
Seven. After them, seven heads of grain, thin and scorched by the east wind, sprouted up. The thin heads of grain swallowed up.
The seven plump full ones. How does grain swallow up grain? I don't know.
Dreams are weird. Says then Pharaoh woke up and it was only a dream. When morning came, he was troubled.
So he summoned all the magicians of Egypt and all its wise men. Pharaoh told them his dreams, but no one could interpret them for him.
I have kind of this funny mental picture of all of these guys, and they're pouring over, you know, the different like scrolls or, you know, papyri and things trying to go like, okay, wait a second, seven heads of grain.
I don't have any dream interpretation cues on grain. What is happening? And so no one could interpret the dreams for him.
Then the chief cupbearer said to Pharaoh, Oh, today, I remember my faults. Pharaoh was angry with his servants, and he put me and the chief baker in the custody of the captain of the guards. And he and I had dreams on the same night.
Each dream had its own meaning. Now, a young Hebrew, a slave of the captain of the guards was with us there. We told him our dreams, he interpreted our dreams for us, and each had its own interpretation.
It turned out just the way he interpreted them to us. I was restored to my position, and the other man was hanged. Then Pharaoh sent for Joseph, and they quickly brought him from the dungeon.
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Joseph Elevates God
He shaved, changed his clothes, and went to Pharaoh. You can think after years and years and years in prison, he probably had a pretty gnarly, like Santa Claus looking beard going on.
He probably did not have the finest washer dryer combo there in the prison. And so there was a need to shave here. This would be especially true in Egypt.
I think at least in some respects, due to the heat that is there, everyone was like cue ball level shaved. So you shaved all of your head, you shaved your beard, all of it, so that you didn't look like you.
You're just one of the non-Egyptian people with all of your hair on your head. I know we have maybe some people in our body, or in our, well, I guess, yes, in the body of Christ.
We have some people in the room today that you'd say, man, I'd fit right in in Egypt. I got that cue ball thing going perfectly. But here's what happens with Joseph.
He goes and he goes to Pharaoh. Pharaoh says to Joseph, I've had a dream and no one can interpret it, but I've heard it said about you that you can hear a dream and interpret it. Okay.
Remember, anytime that Joseph has interpreted a dream, has it turned out well for him at any point during this process? If I'm him, I might be nervous.
I might say, okay, I know God's going to like tell me what's up, but I don't know if I want to tell them what's up because what happens if they get mad at me? I am not able to, Joseph answered Pharaoh.
It is God who will give Pharaoh a favorable answer. Joseph, fresh from prison, he was a slave before he was a prisoner. He was rejected by his family before he was a slave.
And yet all of those life experiences, he still chose to love and to follow God, to give God the honor.
And when he could amass perhaps favor from Pharaoh on himself for being the greatest dream interpreter, he deflected all the glory and praise to God. So Pharaoh said to Joseph, In my dream, I was standing on the bank of the Nile.
Seven well-fed, healthy-looking cows came up from the Nile, grazed among the reeds. After them, seven other cows, weak, very sickly and thin, came up. Never seen such sickly ones as these in all the land of Egypt.
Then the thin, sickly cows ate the first seven well-fed cows. When they devoured them, you could not tell that they had devoured them. Their appearance was as bad as it had been before.
I take that to mean it's not the like, Joey Chestnut hot dog eating contest thing, where after he eats the, you know, three million hot dogs, then he's got like, you know, giant pregnancy gut until the hot dogs are gone. He says, then I woke up.
In my dream, I also saw seven heads of grain, full and good, coming up on one stock. After them, seven heads of grain, withered thin and scorched by the east wind, sprouted up. The thin heads of grain swallowed the seven good ones.
I told this to the magicians, but no one can tell me what it means. Then Joseph said to Pharaoh, Pharaoh's dreams mean the same thing. God has revealed to Pharaoh what he is about to do.
Don't you wish that that's maybe, I say that, none of these dreams have made me go. I really hope that God communicates with me in dreams that sometimes, I mean, there's really scary things that happen and bad things that may occur in our lives.
But sometimes we wish God would just lay out, here's the next 14 years of your life, here's the main things that you need to know. He says the seven good cows are seven years and the seven good heads are seven years. The dreams mean the same things.
So the good set of seven means what? Seven years. He says the dreams mean the same things.
The seven thin sickly cows that came up after them are seven years, and the seven worthless heads of grain scorched by the east wind are seven years of famine. Seven good years, seven years of famine.
He says, it is just as I told Pharaoh, God has shown Pharaoh what he's about to do. Seven years of great abundance are coming throughout the land of Egypt.
After them, seven years of famine will take place, and all the abundance in the land of Egypt will be forgotten. The famine will devastate the land.
The abundance in the land will not be remembered because of the famine that follows it, for the famine will be very severe.
Since the dream was given twice to Pharaoh, it means that the matter has been determined by God, and he will carry it out soon. So now, let Pharaoh look for a discerning and wise man and set him over the land of Egypt. Let Pharaoh do this.
Let him appoint overseers over the land and take a fifth of the harvest of the land of Egypt during the seven years of abundance. Let them gather all the excess food under these good years that are coming.
Under Pharaoh's authority, store the grain in the cities so that they may preserve it as food. If you will, here's some good financial advice. Save 20 percent of your income if you can in four times of need.
Says the food will be a reserve for the land during the seven years of famine that will take place in the land of Egypt. Then the country will not be wiped out by the famine. The proposal pleased Pharaoh and all his servants.
And he said to them, can we find anyone like this? A man who has God's spirit in him. All my friends, that that would be said of us today.
That when someone interacts with Marla or with Esther or with Bryon or with Amy, that they would say, man, I've not met someone that the Holy Spirit of God, I have not met anyone like them that the Holy Spirit of God is within them.
May we ask and pray, Lord, would you fill me over and over again? You can think what Paul says in Ephesians 5, 18. Don't be drunk with wine, that overflowing excess, he says, but be filled with the Spirit.
If you will be drunk on the Spirit, not drunk on the spirits. And so here Joseph is one. Thanks, Jim.
Appreciate that. He says, can we find anyone like this, a man who has God's Spirit in him? So Pharaoh said to Joseph, since God has made all this known to you, there's no one as discerning and wise as you are.
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Josephʼs Leadership
You'll be over my house and all my people will obey your commands. Only I, as king, will be greater than you. Pharaoh also said to Joseph, see, I'm placing you over all the land of Egypt.
Pharaoh removed his signet ring from his hand and put it on Joseph's hand, clothed him with fine linen garments, and placed a gold chain around his neck. Hey, pause.
Remember the super weird week that we had in Genesis 38, I think it was two weeks ago, where all the crazy stuff happened? What did Judah take off of his hand to give to Tamar when he didn't have the sheep yet?
Took off the signet ring, that symbol of authority.
Now, instead of the children of Jacob, God's people, instead of them giving away their authority, in that instance with Judah, to who he thought was a prostitute, now the Gentiles are giving authority to God's people here.
And instead of Joseph having his coat of many colors taken away from him by his brothers, instead of Joseph having his cloak grabbed off of him by Potiphar's wife, now he is having garments put on him.
If you will, for all of the trouble and the hardship that Joseph had gone through in his life, God was restoring what had been taken away. It says he had Joseph ride in his second chariot, and servants called out before him, make way.
So he placed him over all the land of Egypt. Pharaoh said to Joseph, I am Pharaoh, and no one will be able to raise his hand or foot in all the land of Egypt without your permission. Pharaoh gave Joseph the name Zafnath-penea.
The name Zafnath-penea means God speaks, so he lives. And I'm thankful that every breath in our body comes from our God. That if you will, that breath that he breathed out in creation.
We experience each and every day, and it's because of the breath of Jesus when he said, it is finished. The breath of God means that we too will live. It says Andy gave him a wife, Asenath, daughter of Potipharah, a priest at On.
This is one of the giant temples that is there in the land of Egypt. And so he was married. Pharaoh had Joseph married into this very prominent religious family.
It says, and Joseph went throughout the land of Egypt. Joseph was 30 years old when he entered the service of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. Can you imagine being 30 years old and being second in command of the largest world empire at that time?
I don't even think you can be president in the United States if you are 30 years old. I am not yet 30 years old. I'm going to get there next March.
Looking forward to that. I don't think I'll be put in second place in charge of Egypt, but here this is what Joseph went through. It says Joseph left Pharaoh's presence and traveled throughout the land of Egypt.
Notice he doesn't just sit within the capital and then tell everyone else what to do. He actually goes and does it himself. Don't just sit back within your life and watch everyone else do the work.
Everyone else show kindness. Everyone else volunteer and show kindness to other people. Let's personally get up and go and do it.
When God has a path for us, when he has shown us what we ought to do, may we do it personally. So during the seven years of abundance, the land produced outstanding harvests.
Joseph gathered all the excess food in the land of Egypt during the seven years and put it in the cities. He put the food in every city from the fields around it.
So Joseph stored up grain in such abundance, like the sand of the sea, that he stopped measuring it because it was beyond measure. Two sons were born to Joseph before the years of famine arrived.
Asenath, daughter of Potipharah, a priest at On, bore them to him. Joseph named the firstborn Manasseh, which means God has made me forget. He says, instead, God has made me forget all my hardship and my whole family.
If you will, this is Manasseh, it's forgetfulness, amnesia, if you will. Then he says, in the second son, he named Ephraim and said, God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction. So Ephraim is fruitfulness.
So you have Manasseh, forgetfulness, Ephraim, fruitfulness, or if you will, amnesia and ambrosia. He says, then the seven years of abundance in the land of Egypt came to an end. And the seven years of famine began, just as Joseph had said.
There was famine in every land, but in the whole land of Egypt, there was food. When the whole land of Egypt was stricken with famine, the people cried out to Pharaoh for food. Pharaoh told all Egypt, go to Joseph and do whatever he tells you.
Now the famine had spread across the whole region, so Joseph opened all the storehouses and sold grain to the Egyptians, for the famine was severe in the land of Egypt.
Every land came to Joseph in Egypt to buy grain, for the famine was severe in every land. The author wants you to get the point. The famine was severe in every land, and it was a very severe famine.
Here, we can kind of breathe a little bit of a sigh of relief.
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Godʼs Path Principles
It seems like all of Joseph's greatest troubles are over. But how did he get from being thrown in the pit by his brothers now to second in command of Egypt? He listened for the voice of God.
When it came to his relationship with Potiphar and Potiphar's wife, he said, how could I sin against God? When he was in the dungeon and in the prison, he told the man, here is what God says.
When he went before the greatest ruler at that time in the world, his statement was, it is not in me to interpret dreams. It is God. And God has told you what is going to happen.
If we are going to follow God's unique path for us, it means that we must listen to his voice. These statements there on your handout are kind of the conclusion of this portion of scripture in this story.
The first is that God has a unique path for you within his character. The blessings or hardships God has for you are for you alone, so that you would show the world who Jesus is in a way unlike anyone else.
Don't live your life merely listening for someone else's path, seeking only human advice as to what you should do, or trying to replicate someone else's life.
Like, I love this influencer, and so I'm going to do everything that Chloe or everything that Courtney does, and I'm just going to follow their life. Don't replicate someone else's life. God has a unique path for you.
This also means your path might not be someone else's, and your personal choices won't be the choices that God has for others.
Some believers are Peter, others are Paul, some Mary Magdalene, some John, none of whom were identical, all of whom God led, but God led them to obey in different ways. God's path for you as well will always be within his character.
He will never lead you to cheat on your spouse. He will never lead you to be a gossip. He will never lead you to abandon faith in Christ or his church.
If someone says, Oh, but God wants me to do whatever sin, or God would just want me to be happy, and their choice involves disobedience to God's word, you can know that that person is not following God's path.
God has a unique path for you within his character. Second, God often leads you to your path through your care for others. Joseph was brought out of the dungeon and into honor through an act of kindness he had shown to a man two years prior.
God's path is rarely you experiencing meteoric amassment of wealth or status apart from any human interaction.
God's path often involves you caring for someone and learning about your gifting as a result, or you showing love to someone who hurts you, and you learn how to forgive and trust God to be just.
If you want to learn God's path for the rest of your life, or his path for your week or your month, you will find it as you walk God's path of love and care for people. Follow Jesus' steps to the home of the unloved tax collector.
Sit at the table with sinners and the immoral and show them that God's love can fill the void that they constantly pursue in bad relationships.
Bring together the political hothead and the fisherman and the finance guy, and spend time with them, loving them, telling them about Jesus. Pray with the sick.
Take care of a widow, and find out that God's path for you has so much more to do with how you love others than how self-important or self-supporting you would like to be. Third, God is not on your timetable, so accept his timing for others' good.
God will most often bless others first in the way that you wish God would bless you. Let that comfort your heart that God is capable of blessing and that he is showing you that it can be done.
Joseph could have had rage that God answered the cup bearer and the baker's dreams within three days, but he didn't. Joseph waited from 17 years old to 30 years old, waited for God to accomplish his promise.
For you and I, God doesn't owe us anything, especially not working on our timetable. We need to accept that we simply choose to rejoice when he blesses others. Fourth, God's instructions are for you to glorify him, not yourself.
When Joseph was asked about interpreting dreams, he knew that he should glorify God.
For the blessings in your life, your family, your kids, your marriage, your area in church where you serve, your job, your house, do you use those blessings to talk about God and his goodness or your hard work, your importance, your accomplishments,
everything that you and I have, we have because God gave it to us. It might have been through our upbringing, the little circumstances of meeting the right people at the right time, and the strength and health to get where we are.
But it all comes from God, and it is all to be done for the glory of God. Fifth, God's instructions will be for you, will be affirmed by others. Joseph had the call and the dreams from God.
He had the personal experience and the skills necessary that he had learned both at home and in Potiphar's house and in the prison. But those by themselves were not enough to place him in charge in Egypt. He needed the affirmation of others.
When God is truly moving something in your life or in our church, God will confirm it through the affirmations of others. Do you think that God is leading you in a specific way?
Check with your spouse, check with a godly friend, check with a pastor, check with other people at the church, and see if others see God leading you in that way. Hebrews chapter 5 says, No one takes the honor of becoming a priest on himself.
Instead, a person is called by God just as Aaron was. And Aaron knew his call to the priesthood through God's voice and through Moses'. When I became the pastor of Tabernacle, I didn't just show up and say, I'm your new pastor now.
The pastor search committee recommended me, and the church as a whole voted and said, we see God's calling you and we call you to be the pastor here. Value and request the input of others as it comes to what you believe that God wants you to do.
You have the Holy Spirit, and so do your brothers and sisters. So listen to his voice as he speaks through the body of Christ in your life. Sixth, God's instructions will lead to your spiritual growth.
God's instructions are not given to you for you to only or merely have amazing status, abundant wealth, or ideal relationships. God's instructions will lead you to become more like Jesus.
If you're listening for what God wants you to do this week or in the last half of 2026, then he will lead you to do things and say things that are what Jesus would do if he were here physically. Want to become a more Christ-like Christian?
Listen to what God wants for you this week. And then last of the day, God's instructions will lead you into his future, not your past. Joseph could have obsessed about his hardships, but he chose to rejoice in the new things God had done for him.
He names this kid, God made me forget my past and my hardships, and God has now given me fruitfulness in the new place where he's put me.
When God is instructing you, he won't lead you into woeful reminiscing about the past, wishing you would have made different choices or wishing everything could be changed back into the way it used to be. God worked in your past.
That's why you're here today. But God is working in our present and in our future, and that means that there will be new steps of faith as we move forward.
This may mean for some of us that we serve in a different way or in a different area than we ever have before. It may mean that we are okay with new opportunities, new outreaches, new music, new ethnicities, new habits, or new leaders.
If God is moving you or me or moving our church, if He's moving us forward, it will be leading into unknown new territory. I love the quote that I've heard many times. If we always do what we've always done, we'll always get what we've always got.
Let us by faith listen to the voice of God as He leads us into the future.
And to those today struggling with a sin-filled past, or even a sin-filled present, realize that God will never center you on obsessing over your sins and carrying endless guilt over your imperfections.
He wants you to repent of your sins, not bring them into the future. God will deal with your present actions, words, or thoughts. He will not cause you to obsess over all of the sins of your past.
Today, as we think about listening for God's voice, I can't help but see Jesus all throughout this story.
38:53
Jesus and Joseph
He was the one that listened perfectly to God. Everything God said, Jesus did. Everything God told Jesus to say, he said to others.
Jesus, like Joseph, he was with two prisoners. And you can think even in Jesus' conversation with those prisoners, the thieves on the cross, one got lifted up, and one lost his life.
Even as with Joseph, you have the cupbearer that is lifted up, and the baker that lost his life.
You can think, Jesus, like Joseph, he was brought out of the dungeon, Jesus out of the dungeon of death, and he was honored as king of kings, and Jesus was given the name above every name, and Jesus was given his bride, the church, just as Joseph was
given his new name, and he was given a bride. And for us, the spiritually hungry and the deadly famine, Jesus is the bread of life that we can ask for and receive freely.
If you don't know Jesus today, I want to encourage you, talk to myself, talk to any of our elders, talk to a friend that's sitting around you about how you can know that Jesus is your Savior today.
There is no more important thing that you could ever discover within your life. Today, will you choose to listen patiently for the voice of God?
It will lead you into some really hard times, but it will make you look more like the risen Son of God, who reigns and as we sang together, who is coming back again. Will you choose to follow Him this week?
