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So, 

The tables have turned and the mighty have fallen on hard times. 

It could be a story right out of the newspaper. You remember those. They used to get delivered to your house and you read them so you would know what was in the news.

In any case, we all know the story where someone who was hot charging through life hit a brick wall and fell apart. Just this week alone, R. Kelly the rap artist is back on trial, Ezra Miller the young actor checked himself into a mental hospital, and several politicians’ careers went down in flames.

It turns out it happens all the time, not only in the newspaper, but in the bible.

We’ve been looking at the story of Joseph’s life, a tail drawn out over pages and pages of Old Testament text that explains God’s plan for the salvation of Israel.

It’s about the raising up of the great-grandson of Abraham, the grandson of Issac, and the son of Jabob, to save the descendants of Jacob, who was also known as Israel, from a famine that would have whipped them out.

To be clear, the scriptures are full of these stories, where God intentionally uses one willing person to do a task so important that by doing it, God’s people are saved. Of course the opposite is true as well.

Some of those who God uses do those tasks are saints, think Mary, the mother of Jesus!

Some are scoundrels, think King Saul.

Joseph from the biblical account of his life seems quite frankly to be a saint, again and again doing the right thing by people and by God, though as a teenager he was a jerk.

Jacob his father, however, was a scoundrel. At least it seems so to me.

He was one of those persons blessed by God, not because he was a great guy, but because God had plans for him and his progeny. Remember, Jacob is the guy who cheated his brother out of his birthright and later his inheritance.

Then when Jacob met his match in his uncle Laban - who intentionally got Jacob drunk and gave Jacob his daughter Leah in marriage instead of Jacob’s beloved Rachel - cheated his father-in-law right back by making sure his flocks increased while Laban’s didn’t.

For sure, the story is more nuanced than that, but because of it, it should surprise us not that when confronted with the loss of his son Simeon, kept in jail in Egypt by his younger brother Joseph (last week’s sermon) Jacob is not at all concerned about Simeon, but only about himself.

Yep, it’s true. 

Not all who we may perceive as doing God’s work are honorable. 

Nor do they all understand that in fact that’s what they are doing, God’s work. Wrapped up in their own story, in their own glory they do not see how God is at work, preserving his people in the midst of trial and tribulation.

Joseph has survived all that Jacob and his brothers, and the slave traders, and Potiphar and his wife, and jail could do to him. And from it becomes a humble, generous, strong, faithful man of God.

Dressed in the clothes of an Egyptian, speaking Egyptian, his brothers didn’t recognize him. But he was still Joseph, the 11th son of Jacob, who worshiped and served the God of Jacob even if Jacob seemed to do a much less good job of that faithfulness. 

Jacob who saw angels ascending and descending stairs from heaven and who had his hip put out by one, can only see what he would lose if Benjamin, the son of Rachel, would leave him to rescue his older brother.

Joseph’s is a story that is a huge reminder to us that no matter what circumstances we find ourselves in, God has got us! 

God is preparing a way where there seems to be no way. 

And God may use saints or scoundrels to make it happen for us.

A friend recently told me a story of being in a job that was really going nowhere. There were no good promotion opportunities and he was just burning out. He knew he needed to move on, but he also wanted to provide for his family, so he hung in there.

And then he got let go. Why? 

According to his boss, he wasn’t working hard enough, coming in on enough days off, or staying late to work, and instead was going to his daughter’s softball games. Unacceptable.

What’s fascinating is that my friend now believes that God was using that boss, jerk that he was, to help him walk away from that job, into a position he loves, where he is appreciated, where his time off is honored and his family is considered an essential part of the team. 

God has us. God knows us, loves us, and is way ahead of us.

That doesn’t mean the journey will be easy. It means the destination is assured.

What does the hymn say?

Turn your eyes upon Jesus
Look full, in his wonderful face
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of his glory and grace

So, though the tables have turned and the mighty have fallen on hard times; God has got you!

Amen.