Sowing Seeds
But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.
Matthew 13:23 (NIV)
There’s an old story that goes like this: An aged and frail Emperor knew his time was limited and it was time to name a successor. He called all the young people in his kingdom together. He gave to each one of them one seed and told them, these seeds are special. Go home, plant the seed, and water it. Come back here in one year with what you have grown from this one seed, and when you bring back what you have grown, I will judge it and I’ll then choose my successor.
Young Ling was there that day and he, like the others, was given his one seed. He went home, seized a pot, planted the seed, and watered it carefully. Every day, he would water it and watch to see if that seed had grown. Others around him began bragging about the growth they were seeing. Others claimed to have had tall trees and tall plants, but not Ling. And he, of course, said nothing to his friends.
It was time, however, to present what they had been able to do with the seed given to them. Youth from all over that kingdom brought to the emperor their plants for inspection. When Ling got to the palace, he looked around at the beautiful plants of all shapes and sizes. Ling set his empty pot on the floor among all of the growth around him.
Kids, of course, started laughing, being cruel as they sometimes can be. Then, in walks the emperor, and amidst all of this growth and greenery, he spots Ling’s empty pot in the back and orders guards to bring them up to the front. The emperor turns to the crowd and says,
“Behold, this is your new emperor. One year ago I gave everyone here a seed. But I gave every one of you boiled seeds. I knew when I gave them to you that they would not grow. All of you went out and replaced what I gave you and brought me back fakery. And yet Ling was the only one with the courage and honesty to bring me back the seed I gave him. Therefore, he is the one who will be the kingdom’s new emperor.”
This is what has happened to the spiritual understanding of God’s church and the disappointment that the seeds we have planted have demonstrated little to no growth. This reality has tempted far too many who have initially claimed Christ to exchange Christianity for counterfeit seed, which looks good but is not the result of what has been extended from the hand of God.
Jesus understood the danger of the seed of the kingdom when placed in the hands of those who would not scatter it appropriately. So He decided to image it in what is referred to as the Parable of the Sower.
When the Plan Comes Together
As soon as Joseph appeared before him, he threw his arms around his father and wept for a long time. Then Joseph said to his brothers and to his father’s household, “I will go up and speak to Pharaoh and will say to him, ‘My brothers and my father’s household, who were living in the land of Canaan, have come to me. The men are shepherds; they tend livestock, and they have brought along their flocks and herds and everything they own.’ When Pharaoh calls you in and asks, ‘What is your occupation?’ you should answer, ‘Your servants have tended livestock from our boyhood on, just as our fathers did.’ Then you will be allowed to settle in the region of Goshen, for all shepherds are detestable to the Egyptians.”
Genesis 46:29, 31-34 (NIV)
As the tears of reunion flow, Joseph’s heart overflows with awe and reverence for the God of his fathers who had orchestrated all of this divine convergence of human destiny. And in that one sacred embrace, Joseph beheld the mystery of God’s unfathomable grace, which transformed this suffering into a vessel of salvation for his family and the fulfillment of divine promises.
When the storms settle and the suffering ceases and the pain subsides, the blurriness gives way to some clarity that so much of our spiritual growth is developed in the context of our suffering.
How do you respond to life when there’s no more battle to fight? When things have changed for the better and it has finally worked out for your good—when what you have waited for is now upon you, can you take off your fatigues, put down your weapon, and enjoy that the sun is now shining? How do you live then? What is the proper spiritual posture when the plan works, when the blessing has arrived, and when the season has changed?
Joseph teaches us in this text that faith in God is not just response and reaction. Surrender and offering faith is also a thinking matter. Joseph has this deep emotional response to the first embrace of his father Jacob. He hasn’t seen him in more than two decades, and his response is visceral. It is deep. Joseph has been holding on to these emotions for a long time and the text is emphatically descriptive when it tells how he hugs the old man Jacob and weeps for a long time. But then he immediately switches emotions, turns to the others, and says, “We have to exact the plan.”
You can’t stay in your emotions so long that you forget that your faith employs a strategy. Do you see how quickly Joseph goes from emotional gratitude and appreciation to God for sparing the life of his father into action? It’s a flooding of pent-up emotions. He’s weeping so long that the writer needed to make mention of it. But that emotional display did not dissipate the mission that was in front of him. Joseph has enough spiritual maturation to know that faith expressed must be wed to faith strategically moving within the extended blessings of God.
Not Until
Then Joseph said to his brothers, “I am about to die. But God will surely come to your aid and take you up out of this land to the land he promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” And Joseph made the Israelites swear an oath and said, “God will surely come to your aid, and then you must carry my bones up from this place.”
Genesis 50:24-25 (NIV)
Joseph can’t warmly shake hands with death until he gets the promise of his family that when God opens up a door of opportunity and provides them exit from this land—where relations will turn sour and the people will be forced to make bricks without straw—that when they leave, they will take him home to the land of God’s promise.
Joseph says, in effect, “God’s going to deliver you one day, and when he does, when you step foot out of Egypt, I want somebody to promise me that they will go back and dig up my bones and take me home to be buried in the place of my birth. Don’t leave me here.”
Joseph teaches us that a relationship with God will not let you ever be satisfied with anything less than the complete work of God in your life. The apostle Paul would say that keeping the faith and running the race are certainly important, but he also adds that life is not complete until we finish the course (2 Timothy 4:7).
Joseph went into the pit focused on getting back home. He went into the caravan focused on getting back home. He spent time in prison focused on getting back home. He stewarded his responsibility in the palace focused on getting back home. He went around Egypt collecting grain focused on getting back home. He reconciled his relationship with his brothers, he peered at last upon his father, and he parceled out land in Goshen. Now he stands at the end of 110 years, and the one preoccupation in his life is, “When you come up out of here after I have died, dig up my bones and get me back to my ancestral homeland and bury me there.”
No matter how much you have to walk a circuitous route in order to get there… No matter how many people arrive there before you… You cannot quit. Why? Because the faithfulness of God compels you to keep taking step by step, and crawl if you have to. But you have to fulfill the vision that God has released in your life. Joseph looks at his family three generations deep. He looks back on the faithfulness of God and looking back makes him give God praise. But he has to look forward based on the faithfulness of God as well. And when he looks forward, he has to trust God.
God will remind you through His Spirit that until this, you are not living your complete life. You might live a good life. You might even live what some label a great life, but it’s not a complete life until you have completed what He has placed before you.
Having a Moment
As soon as Joseph saw his brothers, he recognized them, but he pretended to be a stranger and spoke harshly to them. “Where do you come from?” he asked. “From the land of Canaan,” they replied, “to buy food.” Although Joseph recognized his brothers, they did not recognize him. Then he remembered his dreams about them and said to them, “You are spies! You have come to see where our land is unprotected.”
Genesis 42:7-9 (NIV)
The text takes all of our guessing and speculation away when it tells us that Joseph’s initial response to his brothers after all these years was to talk to them harshly and accuse them of being spies. Now that word harshly in the NIV really doesn’t get at the description of the Hebrew understanding of this passage in terms of his response. A way of better describing it is Joseph decides to treat them cruelly, severely, rudely.
He is anything but welcoming. Maybe Joseph wanted to test his brother’s character to see if they had really changed since they sold him into slavery. Maybe he wanted to observe their reactions, assess their honesty, and test their integrity. Maybe when he saw his brother standing before him, it stirred up a range of emotions, including anger, resentment, hurt, and the want for retribution and revenge.
Why mention all of these things? Because it’s important to note that Joseph’s actions were part of a larger plan that eventually led to the reconciliation of the entire family. With all Joseph’s anointing, with him living squarely centered in the perfect will of God, Joseph, the man of God, is just having a moment. He’s being rude and cruel and harsh, and it doesn’t need to be painted in a positive light. It needs to be accepted that anointed people have moments.
Joseph teaches us that we can be deeply necessary, powerfully anointed, gracefully successful and still have these moments when we can’t forget what has happened to us. We still have moments when we feel justified in checking other people’s motives as if we can judge the integrity of the human heart. We all have these moments. Accept them and expect them so that you can steward them rather than hiding or ignoring or being secretly controlled by them. Don’t try to hide your bad moments and become a hypocrite until you emotionally implode because you’re walking around holding what you wanted to release instead.
Loving God is not a guarantee that you will not be tempted by these moments when it’s easy to slip out of your spiritual character—the character Christ is forming in you. Loving God does not eliminate having moments where your words don’t reflect just how much you love Him and how much He has been doing in your life.
Managing Moments
“‘This is what you are to say to Joseph: I ask you to forgive your brothers the sins and the wrongs they committed in treating you so badly.’ Now please forgive the sins of the servants of the God of your father.” When their message came to him, Joseph wept. His brothers then came and threw themselves down before him. “We are your slaves,” they said. But Joseph said to them, “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.
Genesis 50:17-20 (NIV)
All of us, as Christians, have fluctuating emotional moments. We confess that there are times when our emotions are all over the place. If you don’t learn to steward these emotional fluctuations, you can frustrate progress. If you don’t learn to steward them, you’ll mess around and say the wrong thing, like “I didn’t mean what I said.” You meant it when you said it. You may regret that you said it, but now you are messing around with the fallout of an emotional moment.
Joseph is crying and weeping, but not because it is a purging of emotions; it is the delivering of a message. This text teaches that when life and human exchanges and lived circumstances force these fluctuating emotional moments—moments where your emotions are sending you all over the place and causing these tough, constructive thoughts and expressions—you must stop being a victim to your fluctuations.
Joseph was strong in intent, focused and passionate in purpose, in love with God, grateful for all God had done. Be like Joseph, making the best out of bad situations, learning how to thrive in tough places, letting your gifts make room for you. Never let life knock you so low that it makes you miss the invitation to prove to the world that you live with a conviction that all things work together for good for those who love God and who are called according to His purpose.
Joseph is not having something pulled from him. He’s having something communicated to him. His tears are delivering a message. And he needed this message because he has lived with detachment for two decades.
These moments in life that hurt us, scar us, inflame us, and anger us, these moments that fatigue us and make us want to quit and walk away: don’t let your response to them steal the power that God gives you to interpret your emotions.
If you have found yourself in Jesus Christ, then no matter what you go through, you ought to have the capacity to tap in so that tears become joy.
