Voice of the Nazarene 9-14-25

Voice of the Nazarene 9-14-25

Transcript

Pastor Ray LaSalle: 0:01

Coming to you from North Central Ohio. We share with you the voice of the Nazarene. A week by week, venture into the Word of God sponsored by the Bucyrus Ohio Church of the Nazarene. We join our Pastor Reverend Ray LaSalle, and the voice of the Nazarene. And if you scatter your attention back in the Old Testament, chapter 39 of Genesis, there was someone else that the Lord was with. And a reason the Lord was with Joseph, right there at Potiphar his house. And in verse three, even his master saw it said that the Lord was with Joseph and in prison. In verse 21 the Lord was with Joseph. Showed him mercy. He found favor with the keeper of the prison. Verse 23 and the Lord was with him. And that which he did, the Lord had made it to prosper four times. It says the Lord was with him. I believe the big issues of life is the fact whether or not the Lord is with you. That's the big issue in all of the circumstances of life. Nothing else matters. You say, Well, just look at how successful I am. So what is the Lord with you? Well, look at this trophy wife that I have. She won't be for long. But the big issue is the Lord with you. Well, what about this physique with just like the pastor up there looks, well, forget that part. That physique won't last long, that big hunk, no, it won't last long. But is the Lord with you? What about all of my degrees down in the nursing home? It really won't matter. Is the Lord with you? And in the series, I want to take a look at Joseph and and how he overcame the difficulties of life. There was something about him that God saw, and the Lord continued to be with Him, and He overcame. And when I get to the end, did I overcome. That's my big issue in my life. Our introduction to Joseph is found here in Genesis, chapter 30, verse 22 the Lord remembered Rachel. God hearkened to her and opened her womb, and she conceived and bear a son, and said, God hath taken away my reproach. And she called his name Joseph, and the pages of the Bible are filled with stories of hundreds of men and women, and as you read through those stories, there always seems to be a common thread, whether the character is a king or a peasant, a prophet or a general, whether they're a fisherman or a preacher, nearly every person mentioned in the Bible has either a dark or a hidden side. Noah got drunk. Some of you did too. Abraham and Isaac and Jacob all lied to save their own hides. Solomon ended up being an idolater. Moses was a murderer. David was an adulterer. Peter cursed and he lied, and John the Baptist even doubted Jesus. And the pages of the Bible are filled with the sins of people mentioned on those pages. But in the verses that I read to you this morning, it introduces a man named Joseph. He's the 11th son of a patriarch named Jacob, and his name means Jehovah adds. Jehovah adds Joseph lived for 110 years. Not a single sin attributed to this man. I'm not saying he didn't have his irregularities and his uniqueness, but not a sin. Does the Bible point out in the life of Joseph, he endured trials, all kinds of afflictions that most of us can't even imagine, and nowhere does the Bible even hint that his faith ever wavered, and whether it was in a place of favor, at his father's house or down there in the prison, he was always the same. May I just say to you this morning, all of us in life will have some tests. All of us will face trials. Every one of us will endure some tribulations. There'll be temptations. I want to add to that, you're going to be tested by time, not just one little moment in your life, but over the course of your life. You're going to be tested whether or not you remained faithful, or whether or not you're going to overcome and perhaps that's why the Holy Spirit gives Joseph so much space here in the book of Genesis, the same amount of chapters are written about the life of Joseph as were written about the life of Abraham, 14 chapters, but 25% more verses are written about Joseph than anybody else, and while Joseph receives all of this attention in the Old Testament, he's only mentioned four times in the New Testament. So in studying his life, you've got to look at the record from the pages of Genesis. And I think the study of Joseph's life is a valuable because it sets out a role model for all of us to strive. He never wavered, he never failed, he never complained, he never compromised. He was the same all the way through life, and he never lost his power with God. And the providence of God is on display throughout all of the narrative of Joseph's life. And it's amazing when you read his life, you just see God bringing together Romans, 828, for all things work together for the good of them that love God and are the called according to His purpose. You see the hand of God in his life, and I hope to show you, even this morning, how God can take every circumstance in life, whether it's good or evil, and use it to form and shape our lives behind the scenes. Understand God is all powerful, all knowing, and he's working for all things to work together. Now we hear a lot today about dysfunctional homes, and I realize homes are in tremendous turmoil. You don't have a clue how bad it is across this countryside, let alone around the world, divorces, abuse, all kinds of evil, absentee parents, among many others, and it leaves the home in tatters. And we're told that we're all the product of our environment. In that true we're told that our background shapes our life to a degree, how we were raised will determine how we're going to live in to a certain degree, we're all products of our upbringing. We bring with us certain traits and habits and characteristics from our home in which were raised. But the amazing thing Joseph blows all of that concept and that theory literally out of the water before Joseph was ever thrown into a pit, before Joseph was ever sold as a slave, before Joseph ever served as a slave down there in Potiphar house, before Joseph ever languished in prison, all of that, he spent his formative years in a home marked by sin, sadness, strife, struggles, and yet God made him a great man, and God used him. So I want to examine quickly the early years of Joseph's life, and talk to you about those formative years that could have formed this boy into an evil man, a serial killer, a serial rapist. In no way would I stand in this pulpit this morning and deal with a few chapters that are in Genesis, about all of his background. It's too horrid, I think, to mention in a mixed setting. So I won't go into all of it. You can read it for yourself how he survived. Only God helped him to overcome his family, his upbringing and all the negative influences. First of all, he overcame ancestral challenges. Looking in Joseph's life at those early years, most people would conclude Joseph didn't stand a chance. His brothers never made it out very well, but God in His providence, God in His power, helped him to overcome the negative. First of all, he had a damaged father. He had a damaged father, Jacob himself, the dad had grown up in a messed up home. He had a father by the name of Isaac who was very passive. Maybe he had lived with his wife so long he thought the only way to get along was let her have her way, and she manipulated and schemed and and she was very. Aggressive, and Joseph, growing up in that home, became more like his mother and become a manipulator fact of the matter. He cheated his own brother out of the birthright and fooled his father, deceived him later on, even stole the blessing that was passed on from generation to generation, and Esau so hated Jacob for what he'd done, he set out to kill him, and Jacob ran for his life. For 20 years, he hid from his brother Esau traveled literally hundreds upon hundreds of miles to an uncle's house by the name of Laban. So he's a damaged father, but it was also he had to overcome a dysfunctional home. He's born into a family embroiled in the midst of controversy, and when he gets to layman's house, he falls in love with his cousin. Her name is Rachel. I don't know if Jerry Lee looks better or not. It takes some of you old timers to even know what I just said, and the rest of you could care less, and me too. But he fell in love, and back in that day, it wasn't thought to be such a big deal. There wasn't that many to go around, I guess. But he fell in love with Rachel, and he struck a deal with his uncle layman. He said, I would like to marry your daughter well. He said, you'd have to work for me for seven years. Now, you talk about a trickster. Jacob's a trickster, a trickster, but boy, when he met his uncle layman, he met his match. He said, You can have my daughter, but you got to work for me for seven years. So the wedding day came, and that night, the old trickster tricked. The Trickster, Laman sent his older daughter, Leah, who wasn't nearly as pretty as Rachel, down to Jacob's tent, and when he woke up the next morning and opened the flap, he realized he had married the wrong woman. I don't don't give your testimony. Just sat there. Don't care to hear from anybody today, and maybe took you a week, maybe a month, for you figured it out. That's what she's sitting there thinking, too. And he confronts layman that afternoon, I asked for Rachel. I made a deal for seven years, and you gave me. Leah, well, he said, We have a tradition. You gotta marry the oldest daughter. Younger cannot marry until the oldest is married off. But he said, If you'll work for me for seven more years, 14 years, he worked to get that girl. Now, within a week, he was given the girl, but he had to work 14 long years to keep them both, and Jacob, you talk about it as functional home. He's a young man married to two young ladies and their sisters, and you're talking about a recipe for jealousy and bitterness and all kinds of anger. And it long now that Leah gets pregnant, that's the older one. That's the not so pretty one. Are you following me? And she had, she gave Jacob four sons, Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah, one after another. And Rachel comes unglued, she just couldn't seem to get pregnant, and the worst thing that could happen in that day was to be childless. So she takes matters into her own hands. We've done that a lot of times, haven't we? I've seen people get mad go down to face somebody over something that happened with their kid at the school. We go down and we go to clean house and boy, things get out of hand, or somebody shows up at the city meeting, you know, and things get out of hand. We take matters into our own hands. And she she got her handmade Billa to go in and have an affair with her husband. She said she can just come and when she's ready to deliver, she can do it at my knees. It'll be like my child. And Billa had two sons, Dan and nephilia. And Leah sees this, and no longer is she bearing children. So she gets Zilla, one of her handmaidens, and said, Jacob, go in and you can have a little time with Zilla. And she had two sons, Gad and Asher. And after a time, Leah suddenly has three more children, Jacob Issachar and Zebulun, and then a daughter named Dinah. Are you confused yet? I'm kind of lost. I'm glad I got some notes. I'm not making all this up. Jacob has 10. Signs, one daughter, four women living in the same tent under the same roof, and Rachel's still barren, and she's not happy. And then God performed a miracle and opened her womb, and she had a child, and his name was called Joseph, and it brought happiness from all outward appearance. Joseph entered life at a disadvantage. He'd always be the low man on the totem pole. Reuben would always be the oldest. Joseph would always be boss. He'd always be picked on, and he was and you might look back on your own life and look at some of the disadvantages, and you wonder how in the world you've made it. And then you begin to see the hand of God, that God reached in and touched your life in ways that you were prepared for. And that's why you're here this morning. God's at work, and Joseph early years were literally a minefield, how anyone could survive the pain and the turmoil and have any sanity, any integrity and any kind of emotions intact, I don't know. But I want to take a moment to look at some of the events that Mark Joseph's life. One man, four women, living under the same roof, you talk about a recipe for trouble. And Jacob loved Rachel more than all of them. Now, at an young age, Joseph and his family make a sudden departure from his great uncle's house. It would be actually his grandfather, Jacob's uncle, Laman, and Jacob had outmaneuvered and deceived Layman and had stolen a lot of his cattle, and he wants to leave. And under the cover of night, they flee, and they set out, and they're gone for several days, and layman looks around, and he finds the family's gone. When he comes back home, and he gathers his war men, and they set off and chase and you talk about fear that must have moved through Jacob's family. Joseph's just a kid, and this is all happening, and when layman catches up with Jacob, they have some harsh words and accused him of stealing their idols. And Jacob said, I didn't steal your idols. Come to find out, Rachel, she was an idolater and she had stolen the idols and had lied about it, I'll not go into that story. And so Jacob and Laman make a covenant that they'd never see each other again, and Joseph never saw his grandfather, Laman ever again. Now, as you travel, word comes that old Esau, the brother to Jacob, is waiting for him. It's going to ambush him, and fear sweeps through the concave Jacob's frightened he knew what he had done to his brother 20 years before. And in the meantime, as they're traveling across the country, they they near a town, and a boy from that town rapes The only daughter that Jacob had. Her name was Dinah, and what two of those boys did to those men and killed him I won't deal with. And then here's a third tragedy, the death of Joseph's mother, Rachel. She dies in giving childbirth to Benjamin, and here he is as a teenager without a mother to face to face His half brothers and all the stepmothers he's surrounded by rape, murder, incest, treachery, intrigue, idolatry, jealousy, death and hatred, very negative, very hostile environment. And it may be that many people in this room were brought up in some of the same kind of homes, maybe homes of hostility. Maybe some of you have dealt with physical or sexual abuse. Maybe some of you grew up in homes of drunkenness and drugs and hellish living. And just talking a little bit about Joseph brings back all of those hateful imageries of the past, and I'm simply saying, May God give you the grace to live on past all of that and to make up your mind, I'm going to live better than the life that I grew up in. I'm going to make better choices, and I'm not going to have my kids live the way that I lived. And so looking at the problems that existed ought to help all of us to avoid some of the mistakes. Now, just for the record, if you want a dysfunctional home, I'm going to help you. If that's what you're looking for, I'm going to help you if you want a dysfunctional home, be less truthful with one another. Other that'll start it and be jealous of other family members. Keep the jealousy going, demonstrate favoritism towards one of the kids. You do not take notes. I hope. I want you to have that dysfunctional family, if that's what you need, and then try to help God accomplish His will by doing it your own way, and practice deception as you go along. Operate outside of the will of God, live a life of anger, manipulation and control. That's the way to have a dysfunctional home. Now, how he overcame was by the anchor in his life. Not everything was negative. In Joseph's background, there were positive moments along the way, and I want to give you a few. Number one, he witnessed a changed father. One night, Jacob sent his family on ahead. He's in such total fear of his brother Esau and the confrontation they're about to have that it drives him to his knees, and he gets into prayer, and he had an encounter with God that changed his life. I mean, ladders were set up between heaven and earth, and angels were going up and down the ladder. An angel came and begin to wrestle with that old Jacob, that old deceiver, and his life was changed forever, and when he caught up with his family, they noticed he was limping on one leg, and he tells them, I've got a new name. I'm not called Jacob anymore, the trickster, the heel grabber, the deceiver. My new name is Israel, and it means prince with God, and never again was Jacob the Trickster that he had once been, his life was changed. And I believe seeing the life of his dad, knowing who he had been and who he is now, made a real impact on young Joseph. Now the other boys were a lot older. He didn't change them, but it affected Joseph, and God calls Jacob to come back to Bethel the house of God. All of us need to be in the house of God. You need to be in the house of God. And he demanded of his family, we're going to put away the false gods. We're going to serve God alone. And surely, Joseph never forgot the lessons he learned and the testimonies that he heard at Bethel God's house, and he withstood circumstances because of a presence now over the book of Acts, chapter seven, verse nine, and the patriarchs moved with envy, sold Joseph into Egypt, but God was with him and delivered him out of all of his afflictions. Now, as I've already said, Maybe many of us had flaws in our early beginnings, our background as we look close enough, but yet, by the same token, I think some of us can look back and see how God revealed Himself to us in our early days, I don't know about you, I came from a broken home. I came from a mess that I have never told in a pulpit. And I don't really have any plans to do I'll write it in a book, and you can have the book after I'm gone, if I write it, but I can look back when God saved mom and dad. They were 35 years of age. I was three. My brother was six. Things were terrible. Before that, things begin to change at our house, some of the fighting and some of the hollering and some of the whipping and beatings that took place begin to cease, and I can remember dad trying to have prayer meetings at our house. I remember going to church. I remember some people that impacted my life, that were standouts, that if I ever come to God, I want to be like that person. I felt, I thought. I believe they're genuine. I believe they're for real, and you never can underestimate the importance of a positive influence on a child's life. And in Joseph's case, the positive influence is far more outweighed the negative. Overcoming gives us answer with a message of hope in the early years of Joseph's life, it teach if it teaches us anything, it teaches you that your childhood does not have to ruin you. By the same token, you don't have to let your past define you either. You say, Well, I grew up in a home that was harsh and gossipers and liars and well, you don't have to continue that. You can. You can break the chain. You can make a change. You say, Well, we had that Irish chipper, you know how that is. And mama had it, and I've got it. No, you can choose whether you let temper have its way. You my. Dad was in prison, I know, but you don't have to go there and live that way. And to blame our actions on people of our past is nothing more than a smoke screen saying that I don't want to repent and admit I need God. But not only is it a message of hope, it's a message of the home. If I take anything away from the home of Joseph. It's the truth that our homes ought to be sanctuaries of godliness. May every mother and father in this house that's a part of this church fall on our knees and say, God, let our let our home be a place where Jesus can reside where the Holy Spirit can have his way. May the kids see us in prayer. May they see us resolve things in a Christ like way, maybe a place where Jesus would want to live. But I believe it's not only a message of hope and a message to the home, but a message of help. Looking at Joseph from the outside, I mean, considering all the problems of his dysfunctional home, you'd conclude he'll never amount to anything, but God took his life and shaped him into one of the greatest men of the Bible. Now I don't know about you, but that gives me hope as a parent. I've been a parent. My wife was a whole lot better parent than I was. I've made a few mistakes. I know you didn't, but in case you ever meet somebody that did you know, help you. But I'm glad that God can overcome my foolishness and help the kids to turn out right? It gives me hope. As a pastor, when I I see children growing up and the deck seems to be stacked against them, and I'm wondering, how can they make it six days a week and only show up at church one day and only for an hour can we make the difference and offer them any kind of hope? But I believe we can, fact the matter, it gives me hope as a person. I look at my own life and I see all the baggage that I've carried along the years, maybe you have too. It gives us hope that God can help us to be all he wants us to be. God was looking one day for an apostle for the to the Gentiles. Do you notice he never even looked in the church for one from the most unlikely and the most unimaginable place that he would have chosen? He found a fellow on a horse and knocked him off his horse with a blinding light, and by the time he got through refining, refining and shaping the life of this man, who was called Paul, he had a messenger to the Gentiles when God was looking for someone to be a king to Israel, God didn't go to Saul's Palace, but clear on the backside of the countryside and a little unknown town, he found a boy that nobody else seemed to believe in. His dad didn't choose him. Goliath laughed at him. His brothers made fun of him, but God refined him and shaped him, and his name was David became a man after God's own heart. When God was looking for someone to deliver his people out of Egypt, he found a man who was washed up 80 years of age for 40 years, had been a fugitive and a murderer, and God jumped out of a bush and set it on fire and called him to deliver the people. And I'm saying to you, somebody would look at our lives and say there's there's no usefulness of them, but I want to tell you something, by the time God gets through refining and knock knocking off the rough edges and molding and shaping and hammering on your life, God will get all the glory. Thanks for being a part of the voice of the Nazarene. Visit us every Sunday at 9am with BNC pastor Ray La Salle for more information regarding B and C, visit usirisnareen.org you.