Dealing with Delays

Dr. Ryan Rush | Genesis 40:23

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By now. By now might be two of the most frustrating words in the world because we usually say them when we're talking about something we're waiting on. By now, I thought I'd have the job. By now, I thought we'd be married. By now, I thought we'd have a child. By now, I thought the relationship would be better. By now, I thought I'd be further along. By now, I thought God would have answered the prayer. I don't know about you, but for me, the hardest parts of life really aren't when God says no, and it's clear. I can take that. It's when I'm convinced something is going to happen, and I'm just waiting on that by now. Well, that's where we find Joseph this morning in our passage. Would you turn in your Bibles to Genesis chapter 40, the very last verse of the 40th chapter of Genesis, Genesis 40, 23. Remember, last week we watched Joseph choose character when it cost him his position, his reputation, and his freedom. He landed in prison for doing the right thing. And so you'd think that obedience like that would call for uh quick vindication, but today it tells a different story. And uh so I'm so grateful. Incidentally, this series has been for everybody, as I've said, but we've had a special emphasis on men. Ladies, I have a favor to ask you today. Uh, there were some cards given out in earlier services, and they they have, they, they were at the low price of free, and so they've they've sold out just these little cards, but you don't need a card. I want to encourage you to uh write a note, just a word of encouragement to a man in your life. Maybe it's your husband or your son or your father or a friend or a mentor. Just share with them that you're praying for them. Share one thing that you're grateful for in their lives. I know that they'll be blessed by your encouragement. We're praying that God would do a work among the men at Kingsland in this season. So, some background on this particular passage. In Genesis 40, Joseph interprets the dreams of Pharaoh's cupbearer and baker, who've both been imprisoned at one time. They both have a dream, and the cupbearer, uh, that dream is interpreted that means he's gonna be saved. And the the baker's dream is interpreted with really bad news that he's gonna be executed. But when the cupbearer is restored, Joseph asks one favor of him, just one. He says, Mention me to Pharaoh. I don't belong here in jail. Three days later, everything happened exactly as Joseph had predicted, according to the dreams, and then comes a painful sentence in the last verse of chapter 40. 4023 says, Yet the chief cupbearer did not remember Joseph. And three ominous words. He forgot him. That's kind of hard to imagine, isn't it? I mean, the one guy who predicted what was going to happen, the flowing out of your dream, the man who told you what had happened, he's the one that you forgot. I mean, that seems like that would be the first thing, the only thing you'd remember. And yet he forgot him. And then chapter 41, one begins with a phrase that I think makes the pain even worse. Because verse 1 begins, at the end of two years, Pharaoh had a dream. Those two words, two years are rough. Two full years passed. It's an incredible statement given all that Joseph's already been through, especially in light of the time he's already waited in prison. And the statement here in Scripture gives us what uh so many of us have experienced, right? It doesn't tell us what Joseph went through in jail for that two years. We just know that he was forgotten in jail. One verse. Two years. So do the math with me for a second. Joseph was 17 years old when his brothers sold him. Verse in chapter 37, verse 2, Joseph was 30 years old when he stood before Pharaoh in chapter 41, verse 46. So that's 13 years. He was given a word from God at 17, and somewhere around 28, he's left in prison with an unkept promise. Now we don't know what those years felt like for Joseph. But I'll bet most of us know what it feels like for us. We're waiting, and we just feel like something hasn't happened that should have happened. I have to tell you, this applies to all of us, but I I've in light of this focus on men, I've met an awful lot of men who seem to be waiting for something they anticipated that has never come. Maybe it was that promotion or the career highlight or a family situation that didn't happen, or maybe a sense of peace. But you know what we know from this passage that Joseph was not forgotten, and you're not forgotten either. Verse 9 of chapter 41 says this. Then the chief cupbearer said to Pharaoh, Today I remember my faults. That's two years later that it happened. The cupbearer finally told Pharaoh all that took place, but goodness gracious, did Joseph have to wait a long time? Listen, the question that we must ask when we're waiting is not, has God forgotten me? You don't need to waste your breath, because the answer is no, God has absolutely not forgotten you. But there is a good question to ask, and it's this one. What is God doing while we're waiting? And this chapter gives us two answers. Two answers that are absolutely true. I want to share with you from the pages of Scripture what God is doing while you're waiting. Here's the first. The first answer is that God is preparing the moment. You see, Joseph wasn't just sitting on this accidental gap in history. God had a schedule in mind. And Joseph was inside of that plan. He was in on that schedule. He didn't know it. You know, the men, uh, many of the men in our church are participating in a Wednesday morning or Wednesday evening Bible study called Shaped at Home, where we're looking at our own lives and understanding how God was working. And uh part of that exercise over the last few weeks has been writing out our timelines in the shape of a baseball diamond. I know it's not the best use of an illustration this morning in Houston to talk about baseball. I get it. But it illustrates the moments in life. So we're looking sort of at like a game summary that altered the course of our lives, the good things, the bad things, the blessings, the challenges. And what we have to understand is that God's working in those moments, not only in our lifetimes, but in other people's lifetimes that coincided with ours. And God is working in all of redemptive history. There are moments, in other words, on God's eternal timeline we cannot possibly get our minds around. Two full years of silence, and then suddenly Pharaoh is shaken by two dreams that he cannot explain away that helps us understand that God was not just dilly-dallying while Joseph is sitting in jail. Look at verse 1 with me. At the end of two years, Pharaoh had a dream. He was standing beside the Nile when seven healthy-looking, well-fed cows came up from the Nile and began to graze among the reeds. After them, seven other cows, sickly and thin, came up from the Nile and stood beside those cows along the bank of the Nile. The sickly, thin cows ate the healthy, well-fed cows, and then Pharaoh woke up. He fell asleep and dreamed a second time. Seven heads of grain, plump and good, came up on one stalk. After them, seven heads of grain, thin and scorched by the east wind, sprouted up. The thin heads of grain swallowed up the seven plump full ones. Then Pharaoh woke up, and it was only a dream. When morning came he was troubled, I guess so. So he summoned all the magicians of Egypt and all its wise men, and Pharaoh told them his dreams, but no one could interpret them for him. So nobody could help Pharaoh with his dreams until the cupbearer remembers. Do you think that was coincidental timing? That the cupbearer didn't remember until this moment? The cupbearer's help wasn't the goal, even though that's what Joseph thought the goal was. God orchestrates the perfect moment. Do you see? Sometimes God is delaying because he's arranging the people who will eventually intersect with your story. There's more going on than you think. When we get glimpses of God's plan, which oftentimes on this earth we don't get to see. We get to see it here, but most of the time we don't get to see the whole story. We recognize that there's a timing to his plan. God is preparing something that we cannot rush. Look at verses 14 and 15. Pharaoh said to Joseph, rather, 15, I have had a dream and no one can interpret it, but I have heard it said about you that you can hear a dream and interpret it. So the cupbearer recognized his faults. He went and got Joseph out of jail and he talked. Why? Because Pharaoh was ready. Do you see? In Joseph's mind, God was two years late. In God's plan, he was exactly on time. The delay was not neglect, it was orchestration. Two years earlier, Joseph could have interpreted the dreams, but Pharaoh wasn't dreaming yet. Egypt wasn't facing a crisis yet. Nobody needed what Joseph had to offer. Then suddenly Pharaoh dreams, the magicians fail, and Joseph's gift becomes exactly what the moment requires. That's what God does. There will be days when you think God is late, but that's never the case. It's why Peter says the Lord is not slow about his promise, as some count slowness in 2 Peter 3.9. Sometimes the delay isn't because you're not ready, it's because the moment isn't ready. Last month, Land and I were coming back from vacation and we had a stop in New Jersey on the way to Houston, and we had one of those nightmare flights where the flight just keeps getting delayed and delayed and delayed. You had those? So we get on the plane, a storm came, we knew we had to wait out the weather, and then we sat on the plane for three hours. And then finally the pilot came on and he said, Hey, we're gonna de-plane for just a short while. And uh nobody on the plane believed it was gonna be a short while. Sure enough, we got off the plane, and at the time, to be honest, we're we were tempted to just stay the night, but who wants to stay the night in New Jersey? All right, so we just waited it out, and sure enough, we got back on the plane and we waited another two and a half, three hours. It turns out we could have flown all the way around the world in the time it took us to leave New Jersey. And I couldn't, I couldn't see anything that was going on except for my watch. I kept seeing my watch. I didn't know what was happening. All I kept asking, like everybody around us, is why aren't we leaving? But the people running the system could see things that I couldn't see. They could see weather hundreds of miles away, they could see congestion at the airport, they could see crews that needed to change, they could see fuel, they could see gates from my seat. The delay looked pointless. From their perspective, there were a hundred moving pieces that had to be taken care of in order for us to be safe. You see, some of you are judging the whole journey by a temporary delay. And you cannot mistake a layover for a destination. Joseph can see a prison cell, that's it. But God can see Egypt and Pharaoh and seven years of abundance and seven years of famine and Jacob's family and the preservation of a nation. He can see all those things that we cannot see. One of the repeated themes in the Bible is waiting on God's perfect timing. I think about Habakkuk chapter 2, verse 3. It says, For the vision is yet for the appointed time. It testifies about the end and will not lie, though it delays, wait for it, since it will certainly come and not be late. In fact, God's perfect timing is central to the story of how he redeemed us, how he forgave us. You know, God didn't come a moment early or a moment late in redemptive history. Galatians 4 tells us when the time came to completion, God sent his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons. Do you see? God's timing was perfect in order to save us. And that means anyone within the sound of my voice who recognizes that he or she is a sinner can come by faith to Jesus and say, Lord, I know I need a Savior. And if you will trust Christ, you can be saved even today because God's timing was perfect. I pray that somebody would come to faith today. And I pray that all of us would start to trust that God is working in ways we can't understand. In God's perfect timing, Jesus came. When the moment was right, God moved for Joseph. And no doubt, God was preparing Joseph for everything he needed when he took the lead in Egypt. Which leads us to the second work that God is always doing while we're waiting. What is God doing while we're waiting? Well, first of all, God is preparing the moment. And second, God is preparing the man. In the midst of this whole account, from chapters 37 to here in chapter 41, we keep reading a phrase that, if you just take it off the page in the midst of the stories, doesn't make a lot of sense. Joseph keeps trying to do right and bad things keep happening. And Joseph keeps trying to do right and bad things keep happening, and over and over and over, and then you have this phrase right in the middle of the account over and over. The Lord was with Joseph. So listen to how the story reads. If you don't skip the refrain, listen to this. Joseph loses his family, the Lord is with Joseph. Joseph loses his freedom, the Lord is with Joseph. Joseph loses his reputation. The Lord is with Joseph. Joseph waits years in prison. The Lord is with Joseph. Joseph is forgotten, and two more years go by. The Lord is with Joseph. Where in the world is God and all the stuff that Joseph is waiting on? He's right there. God wasn't just working on Joseph's circumstances, do you see? God was working on Joseph. Incidentally, we could follow Joseph's example and recognize that when we're in those waiting periods, there's work to be done. Joseph seems to have a motto, but be faithful where you are. In slavery, Joseph served faithfully. In prison, Joseph serves faithfully. Joseph's faithful in the prison before he's faithful in the palace. He has usefulness in obscurity before he has usefulness in the public. Listen, don't let what you perceive that God has not done keep you from doing what God has put right in front of you. Here's the question: What can you work on while you're waiting on what you want? You want the dream job, but you're in a position you did not choose. Be faithful there. You long for the perfect marriage. Right now it needs maintenance. Be faithful there. You want the platform, but right now you're far from the spotlight. Be faithful there. The faithful thing in front of you is not a consolation prize. It may be the training ground, and listen, it may be the calling God really has for you. It might be the place of impact that you can't even see. Be faithful there. And look at how God takes all those seemingly lost moments and redeems them when the timing is right. When the time comes, Joseph doesn't scramble. He cleans up, he shaves, and he walks in with a clear head and the right answer. Notice that the summons come quickly. Verse 14 says, they hurried him out of the dungeon. He has to be thinking, Are you kidding me? I have waited and waited for 13 years, and now everybody wants to microwave this thing. Hurry up, Joseph. But even in a rush, the first thing he does is point to God. Joseph, or Pharaoh says to Joseph, I understand that you can interpret dreams, and in verse 16 it says, I am not able to, Joseph answered Pharaoh. It is God who will give Pharaoh a favorable answer. Do you see? Joseph has spent those years after being forgotten holding fast to what he told the cupbearer in chapter 40, verse 8. Don't interpretations belong to God? God had still been working in his heart, in his life. Joseph didn't walk out of prison defeated. He walked out ready to lead a nation. God prepared his heart because God had bigger plans for Joseph than he could have imagined. Joseph asked for a way out of prison. God gave him keys to the kingdom. Joseph asked for release, and God was preparing him for responsibility. Paul says God is able to do abundantly more than we could ask or think. And that's exactly what he'll do if we'll trust him with his timing. It gets even better because God prepared Joseph for this moment. When he finally stands before Pharaoh, he doesn't just respond to the dream. Yes, he interprets the dream, but he actually has an entire PowerPoint presentation. He hands Pharaoh a full 14-year economic strategy in verses 33 through 36. Think about that. Where on earth does a man get that type of wisdom when he stands before the leader of the nation? It comes from years of running his father's flock when no one's watching. It comes from years of running someone else's house in Potiphar's home. It comes from years of overseeing someone else's prison. Joseph needed more than dreams to lead Egypt. He needed administrative ability, he needed humility, he needed resilience, he needed experience, managing resources, and the ability to work faithfully under authority. Potiphar's house and prison became his leadership laboratory. Seventeen-year-old Joseph had the gifts. 30-year-old Joseph had the capacity. The wait isn't only God's time and catching up with the circumstances, do you see? It's you catching up to what God has planned for you. Can you imagine if this story went differently? And Joseph had gone before Pharaoh when he was 17. He already had demonstrated he could interpret dreams. So just imagine. Like he's sold into slavery, he's in bondage, he's brought into the nation. Maybe he'd been telling the people who were the traitors that brought him about what had taken place, the dreams he'd had, and then they hear wind that uh Pharaoh had a dream 13 years earlier. And they said, if this guy can interpret dreams, he goes before Pharaoh and he interprets the dream. Do you think Pharaoh, do you think Joseph was ready to lead a nation at 17 years old? I know a lot of 17-year-olds who think they're ready to lead a nation. But I don't know about you. I wasn't ready to lead a nation at 17 years of age. No. 17-year-old Joseph had the gift, he didn't have the capacity. He would not have been ready at 17 because he was not the same man at 17. Listen, there are blessings that could crush you if God gives them to you before he forms you to receive them. When I was a young associate pastor, my late 20s, I was uh serving in a large church, and one of the things that I love to do, still love to do, is I love to track down older men in the faith and just pick their brains, learn from them. There was one guy of significant influence in that church who uh I tracked down one day and said, Doug, would you mind if I bought you lunch and just picked your brain, just heard about some of your experience? And he said, I'd love to do that. So we went out to eat, finished dinner, I heard some more of his story, and I said, Doug, what would you say? What words of wisdom would you have to a young pastor like me? And he looked at me and he said, Ryan, God's hand is on you. Man, I love that part. And then he said, But Don't get too good too fast. I didn't like that. I'm not even sure what it meant. Don't get too good too fast. I said, what do you mean? And here's what he said. He said, God has work to do in you that you're going to need to carry out the role He has for you. Don't get ahead of that. I didn't understand it then, to be honest with you, but there was shaping in store that would prepare me for what he had for me. And if I had not gone through some of that refining and that shaping, there's no way I could have been ready for what God had. Same is true for all of us. While we're waiting. What's happening while you're waiting? God is preparing the moment. God is preparing the man or woman. I want to show you an amazing line in light of last week's passage that we looked at. Remember the contrast between Joseph and Judah? Remember how Joseph lost two robes in his long journey of waiting? Remember how Judah surrendered his ring to a stranger to satisfy an appetite while Joseph refused to hand over his character in order to be rectified? Listen to Genesis 41, 42. Joseph's interpreted the dream. He's given the plan. He says, I recommend you find someone faithful in Egypt that can do this. And Pharaoh says, I have my man. And here's what it says Pharaoh removed his signet ring from his hand and put it on Joseph's hand and clothed him with fine linen garments and placed a gold chain around his neck. Do you catch that? It appeared Joseph was always going to be the guy who did right and lost out. But in God's perfect timing, God put a signet ring on his hand and a robe on his back. The two exact items that Judah threw away are the things that Joseph was handed. Listen, there is a blessing in store for the man willing to wait on God's plan. Incidentally, can you imagine him going to work the next day, maybe sitting down at a staff meeting, looking across the table, and there's Potiphar saying, Good morning, boss. I think it's important to say right here, as we read this, that in this life, we don't always end up as the prince of the story. Most of the time, we don't get the signet ring. We wait and we wait and we wait and we don't get to see everything happen this side of eternity. Think about Hebrews 11, where we know it's the faith chapter, where we read about all these heroes, and then at the end of Hebrews 11, we read this All these were approved through their faith, but they did not receive what was promised. Since God had provided something better for us so that they would not be made perfect without us. Did you catch that? They never got the signet ring. But I guarantee you, when they got to heaven, they got a glimpse of a greater plan. This has been the entire theme, you see, of our Shaped It Home series. God doesn't waste the experiences that shaped us. Even the ones we never would have chosen, even the ones we will not see the end of in this lifetime. Are you waiting on God? Stop asking why he hasn't moved yet and start asking how he might prepare you while you wait. Just one more interesting note I couldn't help but think about when I read about Joseph looking at a man and saying, Remember me and the cupbearer forgetting. And then 1800 years later, another man on a cross, a criminal, next to Jesus, looks at the Savior of the world and says, Remember me when you enter your kingdom. The cupbearer forgot. But what did Jesus say? I tell you the truth, today you'll be with me in paradise. If you've never trusted Jesus, he is trustworthy no matter what you've seen, no matter what you've walked through, you run to Jesus, he remembers. And for all of us, whatever you're waiting on, whatever you've been through, this is the exact right answer. You run to Jesus, and he promises he will remember you. That's the source of hope in every waiting season. You may not know what God's doing, you may not know what will happen. You might not know when things are gonna resolve. But I know this God is worth your trusting. He will never fail you. Would you bow with me, church? Gonna pray for us in just a moment, and then we'll have an opportunity to respond right now before we move on in the service. What are you waiting for? What is it that you long for the most? I can't give you the answer of why things haven't gone a different way. I don't know. But I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that God is working while you're waiting. Will you place your deepest concerns and your fears and your hopes in God's hand today? Father, thank you for the promises in your word. Holy Spirit, speak to us now. Help us to wait differently. Pray this in Christ's name. Amen. Hey, Pastor Ryan Rush here, and I just want to thank you for being with us at Kings and Online today. What an honor. But I'll tell you what would be even better. We'd love to see you get connected with the physical church in the days ahead if you haven't already. And that means maybe if you're local in the West Eastern area, we'd love to see you at King's.