Things Revealed

So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe — the richly ornamented robe he was wearing — and they took him and threw him into the cistern.

Gen 37:23-24

God made himself known to Abraham and promised to make his descendents a great nation. It was Abraham who was tested when he was commanded to sacrifice his “only son” Isaac. It was Isaac’s son Jacob who God spoke to in dreams and with whom he wrestled at the ford of the Jabbok. And so there would be no mistaking his plan for all of humanity through this family, the Lord himself told Moses at the burning bush, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.”

It was into this special family that Joseph was born, at that time, the youngest of eleven brothers.

His story is well known. His father loved him more than any of his brothers. He made a richly ornamented robe for him. He treated him as his favorite. As a result, his brothers hated him. They were also bothered that he, like his father, had dreams, so they referred to him contemptuously as “that dreamer.” When the opportunity came, their hatred turned to thoughts of murder, and their thoughts to action. Sent one day by his father to check up on his brothers who were grazing the flocks, the word says, “they saw [Joseph] in the distance, and before he reached them, they plotted to kill him.”

Their plot unfolded quickly. They “stripped him of his robe” then threw him into an empty cistern. The intervention of his older brothers kept him from being left for dead, but not from being sold into slavery for twenty shekels of silver. His eventual ascendancy to second in command of all Egypt was an incredible demonstration of the redemptive work of God. In fact, in many ways, Joseph was a type of Christ—a shadow of things to come. He went from privilege to poverty—favorite son of his rich father to lowly slave and prisoner in a foreign land; he was put in the ground only to rise again to great authority, and; he was tested in the wilderness of his troubles where he learned to trust God in all circumstances, even when he was wrongfully accused and punished.

In an odd way, Joseph’s story calls to mind the story of the prodigal son. The prodigal son is a picture of the triumph of love over judgment. Jesus says that when the younger son came to his senses, he decided to go home and seek his father’s mercy. "But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.” Joseph received no such welcome from his brothers who “saw him in the distance, and before he reached them, they plotted to kill him.” The prodigal father moved in love and forgiveness as soon as he saw his son. The older brothers (in both stories, actually) moved in hatred and judgment.

There’s also this: The prodigal father not only embraced his son, but his first order of business was to restore him—to his family, to his position, to his dignity—by ordering his servant to “Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.” Not so for Joseph’s brothers. Their very first order of business was the exact opposite: to strip him of his robe.

The richly ornamented robe was not just a gift of Jacob’s love. It was a prophetic picture of what was coming. Jacob’s whole life was punctuated by prophetic moments, prophetic prayers and prophetic purposes. The robe was a picture of the anointing of God. Joseph was chosen by God. The family might not have realized it and the word says Jacob’s lavish affection for him was because he was the youngest, yet one can't help but wonder if it was also a reflection of God’s favor on his life. But as is frequently the case, God’s favor on one life—a special anointing, a special call, a special assignment—often brings out a special resentment in another, and the misguided notion that if God anoints one, there’s less anointing for the rest of us. Or worse, that God’s anointing on someone else means he loves them more.

God is infinite. He does not become less infinite when he gives freely to one of his children. We do not become less significant when he anoints others for service or calls them into a specific ministry. We who believe in Jesus are all called, chosen by God and equipped for service, each for a different purpose.

We do ourselves and the Kingdom of God a terrible disservice when we resent or covet God’s anointing on other people. Joseph’s brothers immediately took his robe. In their minds, taking the robe stripped him of his special status, returned him to the fold and made him more like them. But the anointing of God is not so easily torn away. The word says that “[t]he gifts and calling of God are irrevocable. “ It’s does not say, however, that men won't try to undermine or destroy them. They will.

They may try to make us feel powerless along the way. Even worthless. But only we can render our gifts and calling useless. By doing nothing.

The apostle Paul put it this way:

But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 3:13-15

The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.

James 5:16

There’s a line that we cross when we become believers in Jesus Christ. Our general sense that there is a God and a heaven gives way to a realization—a revelation—that Jesus is God incarnate and the Kingdom of God is real. And with that revelation comes another: We are not God. More than that, we cannot become God. There is no "God within” to discover and no getting in touch with our own divinity, because we have none. There is rather, a God to recognize, to receive and to get to know intimately. The problem is that he is not like us.

Most people, even believers, have a tendency to make God in their own image, even though God said “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness...” When looking at world history, current events or our own troubles and losses, we frequently judge God’s performance based on outcome. If things work out, God is taking care of business in much the way we would if we were God. If they don’t work out, we wonder about God's motives: Why would he allow our financial losses, marriages to fall apart or the injustice of a child dying? In the last hundred years alone, how could he permit 6 million Jews to perish in concentration camps, 20 million to die in the Soviet Gulag and tens of thousands to be killed by terrorists who murder at will without concern for God’s wrath or vengeance, and worse, seemingly without consequences. He could have prevented all of it.

But the God of Heaven and Earth who was God yesterday when things were going fine, is the same God today and will remain God tomorrow when things are not so fine. To those who are confused and perplexed he declares, "my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways...As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” That doesn’t mean we stop trying to understand him. It means we can never understand him completely.

Yet as baffled and sometimes disappointed as we are by his mysterious ways, we are still made in his image, empowered by his Holy Spirit and set apart for his purposes. And among his purposes are that we be a people of prayer. A people who trust that God hears and answers our prayers, even when the answers are not to our liking. Just as we trust that God hears us even when our prayers are not to his liking.

Look at James and John.

When Jesus was not welcomed in the Samaritan Village, James and John, who were still figuring out their part in God’s work in the earth (like most of us), asked, “Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?” It says that Jesus “turned and rebuked them.” That wasn’t the answer they were looking for, but then their's wasn’t the prayer he was looking for.

Now look at Abraham: When the Lord made known to him what he was about to do to Sodom and Gomorrah (probably the inspiration for the prayers of James and John), “Abraham approached him and said: ‘Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it?’” And in their conversation (prayer), the Lord accepted Abraham’s proposals again and again as Abraham sought mercy for Lot and his family, to the point that God answered, “For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it.” Unfortunately, even among Lot’s extended family, ten were not to be found and the cities were destroyed.

Moses approached God in much the same way. When the Lord’s anger burned against Israel for making and worshipping the golden calf, he told Moses: “your people” have become corrupt. “Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.” Rather than yield to the inevitability of the Lord’s wrath and accept his great-nation proposal, Moses interceded for the people of Israel. He reminded God that they were “your people,” that he had delivered them from slavery and that the Egyptians would say it was his plan to kill them all along. And he finished with this plea: “Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people.” It says “Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.”

Such is the power of the effectual fervent prayer of a "righteous man." Abraham was a righteous man. He didn’t save the city, but his prayers saved Lot. Moses was a righteous man. His prayers didn’t save those who worshipped the calf and indulged in their every lust, but they saved the rest of God’s people and his brother Aaron.

If you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, you are a righteous man or woman. The word says “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” We might not always have the right prayers, but when we do we move in the power of God. And we always have the right to petition the King. More than that, among the lost and a world cast adrift, we have an obligation to petition the King. This is how the Lord put it to Solomon:

[I]f my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

2 Chronicles 7:14

The world may not have a prayer, but we do.

Pray for the lost. Pray for this nation. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Pray for healing. Pray for revelation. Pray for renewal. Pray for revival. “And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.”

The effectual fervent prayers of a righteous man availath much. But only if he prays.

The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

Psalm 103:8-12

It is hard to wrap our minds around the magnitude of God’s grace and mercy. Because it's sometimes so hard to be like him. No matter how much we try, it seems that resentment and unforgiveness can dog us our whole lives. Whoever has wronged us, how ever long ago it happened, we seem built to remember. And even when we have gone through all the steps we know to do as believers, the wrong timing coupled with the wrong moment and the wrong thing said can bring on the wrong response. Some wounds just keep on giving and leave us confronting our own inability to completely forgive. The great irony is that even in the face of our own unforgiveness, we have an uncanny ability to forgive that sin in us. That part of being made in God’s image seems always to function on all cylinders!

But there is a cost to pay for our unforgiveness toward others. While we may forgive our inability to be free of the pain and judgment that comes with old offenses against us, too often we are just as unforgiving about old sins in our own lives.

While fasting in the desert, Jesus could not be distracted from his mission by the twisted words and promises of the enemy. But Satan quickly realized his timing was off and “left him until an opportune time.” That time came later in Jerusalem. The enemy is always waiting for an opportune time to take us down or make us ineffective. And the opportune time is inevitably when we are about to do something for the Lord, something for the lost, or something that advances the Kingdom of God. Until then, why would the enemy bother with us? But when he does, it’s no small matter, for “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.”

What better way is there to attack us than to use our weaknesses against us. As we step out in boldness, our enemy seeks to destroy us. And it’s almost always the same technique: He reminds us how inadequate we are. What we’ve done. What only we know about our past. How we believe we have been forgiven, but how unforgiving we are to others. And that being the case, how we must not be forgiven either. And if that’s true, how unqualified we are to do anything on God’s behalf because we are no different than the pagans and enemies of God.

Half truths, misquotes and the opportune time. Attempting to devour us right when God is ready to move through us. Could there be a better time for Satan to move against us? And could there be an easier way to do it? To remind us of old sins we have forgotten and to make us believe they are unresolved, even though Jesus was “pierced for our transgressions.”

God has already forgiven the repentant believer. He has already covered us in the righteousness of Jesus. He has already declared our sins white as snow. He has already said “It is finished.” And he has proclaimed that our sins are removed “as far as the east is from the west.”

We can't get any more forgiven than that.

We are free, because who the son sets free is "free indeed." The sin that enslaved us and the guilt and condemnation are gone. That’s God’s promise through the ages. It is the whip he has given us to tame the devouring lion. Our response to the enemy reminding us of our sin must be acknowledgement. Yet in the same breath, it must also be “but God has set me free.” Then, in recognition of his mercy toward us, we must again forgive those who have hurt us. The enemy may prowl around like a roaring lion, but we serve the Lion of Judah, the King of Kings, the compassionate and gracious God who is abounding in love and forgiveness.

Forgive yourselves! God has. And put the matter to rest. “The past cannot be redeemed. What has been and what might have been both bring us to what is." (Odd Thomas, by Dean Koontz). You are here now. Your past cannot be redeemed. It’s over. But you have been redeemed. And you have been forgiven for whatever you’ve done in your past. And more than that, God will use your past to mold you into the vessel of his desire. So close the book on it and don’t let the enemy read you the story of your sin to sabotage the call on your life. Those transgressions are history, but your life in God is his story in you, and it is without sin.

You are qualified. You are forgiven. And you are without excuse. He has put the call of God in your heart. Do you really want to take issue with his judgment? He loves you. And he’s proud of you. Now accept that truth humbly as you step out boldly to fulfill what he has set before you.

Or would you rather forgo God’s assignment for your life and give the benefit of your doubts to the enemy of all that’s good, holy and righteous.

That is not God’s plan.

On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple area and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts.

And as he taught them, he said, "Is it not written: "'My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations'? But you have made it 'a den of robbers.'"

The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this and began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching.

Mark 11:15-18

The whole crowd was amazed at Jesus’ teaching because it shattered their understanding. In a moment, what they had known and seen and done was revealed as wrong. Maybe even ridiculous. Until Jesus shook their reality with his display of righteous anger, the crowd had accepted the practices that he found so offensive. They had been brought up in a system and culture that had been captured by the world for so long, they weren’t even aware of the great divide between the Kingdom of God and the way of the world. Worse, for them, the two had become virtually one and the same.

Things are not much different today.

There is nothing inherently wrong with trade and business. Commerce makes the world go round, whether in cyberspace or Samaria. But there are things that are holy and things that are not, and the Lord has ordained that the holy things not be treated with irreverence or contempt.

Look at Belshazzar, the Babylonian King. He held a great banquet for all his friends and decided to break out the good China. Only the good China was the gold and silver goblets that Nebuchadnezzar had taken from the temple in Jerusalem. It was while they drank from the sacred cups and celebrated their good fortune that “fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall.” Daniel was called to explain these things and told the King that by praising gold and silver instead of the God of all things, he set himself up against the Lord of heaven. By treating as common that which was holy, Belshazzar sealed his fate. Daniel then translated the writing on the wall and told the king that he had been weighed in the balance, had been found wanting and that his days were now numbered. Severely numbered, as it turned out. He was slain that night.

Most of us are confident that we would never set ourselves up against the Lord of heaven. At least not knowingly. But something very similar happens all the time. The market place that’s out there has a way of creeping into the temple, into the church and into our own understanding of scripture and of what is or is not acceptable. In our culture, almost everything is acceptable. In fact, tolerance is the god of our times and one of the reasons Christians are so reviled. By taking a biblical stand on almost any issue, we are seen as intolerant and closed minded—heretics of the new world order.

Yet that same tolerance for just about anything infects our own thinking. We’ve all seen how easy (and seemingly reasonable) it is to use proven marketing strategies to grow churches, sell books and worship music, evangelize and advertise. But it's like a Trojan horse. Once we accept the world's way of doing business and apply it to Kingdom matters, lots of other ideas, paradigms and philosophies enter in and become just as acceptable. Just as tolerable. As a result, growth and influence often trump love and intimacy. In the end, believers and unbelievers can become a kind of funhouse mirror image of each other, the one worshipping tolerance but having none for people of faith, the other worshipping the God of love but having none for the lost or even for each other.

Like those who ran the temple of old, we rob the lost of opportunities to hear the gospel when we judge them unreceptive or beyond hope; and when we withhold love out of frustration with their stand against what we value, we rob them of the power of the gospel. If we don’t guard our hearts, we can end up like Belshazzar, setting ourselves up against the Lord’s call to the lost and celebrating our works instead of his worthiness. Or we can end up like the money changers in the temple, exchanging God’s currency for man’s. Love for power. Godliness for worldliness. Then, as now, it’s the righteous anger of the Lord that shows us how much we have unknowingly embraced the world’s way of doing things.

Realizing how worldly we’ve become and just how broke we are in God's economy can elicit two diametrically opposed responses. The chief priests and the teachers of the law had one: they wanted to kill the messenger. Many still want to kill the messenger. The Psalmist has the other; he wants to kill the worldly ways within him:

Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

Psalm 139:23-24

How we respond depends on our hearts since "no one can serve two masters."

Either way, search me is a killer invitation.