Rancho Bernardo Community Presbyterian Church

Genesis 39:1-5, Genesis 50:15-21

“God intended it for good” Genesis 50:20

“It’s the economy, stupid.”

The retired pastor assisting us with visitation ministries years ago in our Arizona congregation hurt my feelings in the staff meeting that day. He did not realize that I was not keeping up with politics. He assumed I would recognize the quote. Instead, I thought he was insulting my lack of economic savvy.

As we worked our way through an uncomfortable conversation to clarify what he meant versus what I heard, I discovered what he really wanted. He was asking me to preach some biblical guidelines for personal finances. To be honest, in those days I was hesitant to address the personal finances of the congregation. I had found over my early years of ministry that nothing seems to scare a congregation as much as mentioning money. Any time my preaching touched on money the congregation assumed my agenda was to ask them to give more money to the church. As a result, while I knew that there were clear Bible principles to help us have healthy personal and family finances, I worried that any discussion of finances in the pulpit was too risky.

That was then. This is now.

He waits at the end of the healing line to approach me. I have announced with the benediction that the prayer teams are available for prayer following the service. On this particular day, since someone else has preached, I add that I am available if anyone would like me to anoint them with oil and pray for healing. Over the next ten minutes, I pray for couples to have a renewal of love in their marriages. I pray with a dad that his child be healed. Finally, I glance up to see the end of the line. He steps forward.

“How can I pray for you?” I ask.

“We need help with our family finances.” His eyes tear up as he describes spending into their retirement savings. They have fallen behind on mortgage payments and are in danger of losing their house. He feels like he is failing his wife and kids. “I need God’s help."

She has been the only source of income for the family for months, while her husband searches for employment. They have dipped seriously into savings they had hoped to use for the children’s college fund. Then, one day, she arrives at work and receives a pink slip. As she tells me her story, I offer my prayers. Nevertheless, isn’t there something more we could be doing as a church?

This fall we are doing a series of biographical sermons to explore the focusing principle of various people’s lives. Each weekend we will be looking at a Bible character to see what major truth God wrote into that person’s life. This week we start with Joseph in the first book of the Bible. Joseph understands hard times. His story is one of sorrow, loss, survival, and even restoration. Let’s review a key lesson we can learn from Joseph.

When Joseph's brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, "What if Joseph bears a grudge against us and pays us back in full for all the wrong which we did to him!"

So they sent a message to Joseph, saying, "Your father charged before he died, saying,

'Thus you shall say to Joseph, "Please forgive, I beg you, the transgression of your brothers and their sin, for they did you wrong."' And now, please forgive the transgression of the servants of the God of your father." And Joseph wept when they spoke to him.

Then his brothers also came and fell down before him and said, "Behold, we are your servants."

But Joseph said to them, "Do not be afraid, for am I in God's place?

"As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive.

"So therefore, do not be afraid; I will provide for you and your little ones." So he comforted them and spoke kindly to them.

Genesis 50: 15-21

Two nuns driving home from their work at the Catholic hospital ran out of gas. They walked to a nearby gas station and asked for a gallon of gas. Realizing that they needed something to carry the gas back to the car, they used a bedpan. Just as they were tipping the bedpan into their gas tank, a Protestant pastor drove by. He stopped the car and called out. “Sisters, we may have our disagreements, but I sure respect your faith!”

Years ago, as a young, zealous, brand new Christian in college, I convinced my roommate to join me in a test of our faith in God. One Sunday evening we drove out of an evening service and headed off into the desert on a quarter tank of gas. My roommate’s old car had no interior lights so we could not see the gas gage dropping. We drove and drove across various desert roads that evening, singing hymns and quoting Bible verses. We recited aloud the Bible promise that we “could do all things through Christ Jesus.” We drove past cacti for nearly an hour and then headed back. We were convinced that only prayers and faith now powered the vehicle. We made it back to a freeway entrance shortly before midnight. Just as we came into the edge of the city, the car chugged and then the engine shut down. We still had enough momentum to coast down the freeway overpass and into a late night gas station. We celebrated all the way back to the University that God had taken care of us as we drove by nothing but faith.

Talk about stupid. I would never do that today! My understanding of how we grow our faith has changed. Maybe this is why I now read Joseph’s story differently.

Joseph’s story is familiar to any of us who have enjoyed Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat.” Let us review the basic story. Joseph dreamed that God had something special planned for his life. He certainly received special treatment from his father when he was given a nice coat. The jealous brothers sold Joseph into slavery and told their father he had died. They poured blood onto the coat and held a funeral for Joseph. Meanwhile, Joseph ended up serving in Egypt as a slave. The master of the house, who bought him, discovered that Joseph had an unusual ability as a steward in the master’s house. Whatever Joseph touched seemed to turn out well. Joseph was a Jewish version of Midas. Whatever he touched became gold.

Just as Joseph was making a dramatic recovery from his circumstances, we turn the page of the Bible and suddenly things get even worse than before. The master’s wife falsely accused Joseph. He ended up in jail for several years. Even in jail, however, he demonstrated an unusual ability to coordinate resources. Soon the head jailer entrusted the entire jail under Joseph’s leadership. Again, he was promoted to a place of trust. Not only did he have the unusual ability to lead, he also had the gift of interpreting dreams.

Soon Pharaoh invited Joseph to his court to interpret a dream. Pharaoh learned from Joseph’s dream interpretation that Egypt would enjoy seven years of good harvests followed by seven lean years of drought. Pharaoh, seeing the natural gift this Hebrew had to lead and manage, put him in charge of the harvests. Joseph saved extra grain during the seven years of prosperity in order to dole out the grain over the seven years of drought. During the drought, Joseph’s brothers arrived in Egypt to beg for grain. He ended up being in the right place at the right time to save his family.

God blessed Joseph. Whatever he touched prospered. For years, when I read about Joseph I thought this was a story of God’s miraculous intervention. God blessed Joseph without Joseph needing to do anything. I assumed it was some kind of spiritual gift. Did God give Joseph a Midas gift of prosperity? Now I am questioning that interpretation of his life. I suspect that the key he learned was to see God’s hand in his circumstances and wisely grow what God gave him.

I see in Joseph’s life an important principle. Joseph demonstrated how to live in the balance of planning and faith. Instead of the tendency we often see that either we must plan carefully or we must pray and trust God, Joseph demonstrated how planning and faith go together. On the one hand he carefully put aside something for the future—planning. On the other hand, he discovered God had something bigger in mind for his resources—saving his family from starvation. We need to learn how responsible planning fits with prayer and faith. These are not either/or options, but both/and.

I recall a conversation a few months after we were married. I was ready to write a check for something when Kate wondered whether we had enough in the checking account to cover the check. I asked her how much she thought we had in our checking account. She estimated, “Five.” I nodded that I understood. “Listen, I’ve been down to five hundred dollars a couple times in college. We’ll just dip a bit below five hundred and then replace it on the next pay check.” Kate looked at me and then clarified. “I mean five dollars.” “What!?”

Coming from a pretty well off home, I had never been down to the last five dollars in my checking account. Before we were married, I had never even bothered to balance my checkbook. Planning was just not my thing.

A couple months into our marriage, I announced I was taking charge of our finances. I would spend money early in the month for going out to dinner or a movie, buying a few books, recreation. By the middle of the month we needed gas in the car, food, basics…. For a few months I thought I was planning pretty well. There was just one problem. End of the month emergencies kept blowing our budget. It looked like we were going to make it to the end of the month before the end of the pay check, when a tire would blow out, or the vacuum hose would break. It just wasn’t fair. Emergencies constantly were blowing our budget. I kept ending the month with less than five dollars in the checking account!

After bouncing a few checks, we made two important decisions. One: Kate would be in charge of our family finances. Two: We needed to include in the budget that something unexpected always happens. In other words, we learned to plan for the unexpected.

I bet it wasn’t easy for the Egyptians to follow Joseph’s insistence that they save a portion through those prosperous years of plenty. “Why do we need to set aside a portion of our harvest? This year has been good, next year will be even better!” However, Pharaoh knew something the rest of the Egyptians did not know. He knew the hard times were coming. Thus, Joseph taught the people to set aside a portion of their good harvests so they would be prepared for the lean times.

Joseph reminds of this important principle: Hard times will hit sooner or later. Plan on it. God wants to take us through it, but we need to learn to do our part in cooperation with the Lord.

In fact, Jesus taught took this principle a step further than Joseph. He taught his followers that this principle not only applies here in this life, but even overlaps into the life to come. In his Sermon on the Mount Jesus said, “Store up for yourselves treasure in heaven…” Did you hear that? He said we are to store up treasures for ourselves. How silly it would be to plan only for the unexpected in this life but fail to include in our planning the big picture of our eternal lives. Jesus taught the same principle as Joseph—plan not only for this life, but for the eternal life.

How are we doing at planning for the future?