There are times in life where opportunities seem to have passed us by. You’ve done the right things while travelling the hard road and yet still things just don’t seem to go your way. What’s going on?

We all have hopes and dreams and you know how it goes, they bubble away in our hearts, we do a lot of day dreaming about our dreams, we paint the picture, we imagine what it would be like when our dream is realised. And little by little things seem to be heading in the right direction but then things take a turn for the worse. It’s in that moment that I would like to spend some time with you today because those moments are as difficult as they come.

I was in one of those places recently, it was a ministry thing, a relationship we were working on with another ministry organisation. It was something we’d put a lot of work in to and we hoped that it would go really, really well and then on the morning I was preparing today’s message in fact, things took a turn for the worse.

The details don’t matter but you should know that we all go through this stuff from time to time, I certainly do and I know you’ve been through it as well. And we’re going to find ourselves in that moment again one day.

Over the last week on the program we’ve been taking a look at how to make sure that we don’t miss Gods opportunities and we’ve been doing that by travelling a way along the path with young Joseph, the son of Jacob or Israel as he became known, in the Old Testament because Joseph had more than enough reasons to give up on Gods opportunities.

Loved by his father his brothers turned against him and plotted to kill him because he was dad’s favourite. Eventually they sold him into slavery where he was shipped to Egypt, sold to one of Pharaoh’s officials Potiphar and made a slave. He did well at that and Potiphar put Joseph in charge of his whole household until Potiphar’s wife, who fancied young Joseph, wrongly accused him of making improper advances so Joseph was thrown into prison.

He did well there too, so much so that the jailer put him in charge of the prison just as Potiphar had put him in charge of his whole household and it’s here in prison that we pick up the story because it’s here, languishing in an Egyptian jail that Joseph has one of these moments, a very long moment actually where it appears his opportunity of getting out of jail passes him by.

Let’s have a listen to what happens, it comes from Genesis 40 in the Old Testament:

Some time after this the cup bearer of the King of Egypt and his baker offended their lord the King of Egypt. Pharaoh was angry with his two officers, the chief cup bearer and the chief baker and he put them in custody in the house of the captain of the guard in the prison where Joseph was confined.

The captain of the guard charged Joseph with them and he waited on them and they continued for some time in custody. One night they both dreamed, the cupbearer and the baker of the king of Egypt who were confined in the prison, each his own dream and each dream with its own meaning.

When Joseph came to them in the morning he saw that they were troubled so he asked Pharaoh’s officers who are with him in custody in his master’s house, ‘Why are your faces downcast today?’ They said to him, ‘We have had dreams and there’s no one to interpret them’ and Joseph said to them, ‘Do not interpretations belong to God, please tell them to me.

So the chief cupbearer told his dream to Joseph and said to him, ‘My dream there was a vine before me and on the vine there were three branches. As soon as it budded its blossoms came out and the clusters ripened into grapes. Pharaoh’s cup was in my hand and I took the grapes and pressed them into Pharaoh’s cup and placed the cup into Pharaohs hand.

Joseph said to him, ‘Here is the interpretation, the three branches are three days. Within three days Pharaoh will lift up your head and restore you to your office and you shall place Pharaohs cup into his hand just as you used to do when you were his cupbearer. But remember me when it is well with you, please do me the kindness to make mention of me to Pharaoh and so get me out of this place. For in fact I was stolen from the land of the Hebrews and here also I have done nothing that they should have put me into a dungeon.’

When the chief baker saw that the interpretation was favourable he said to Joseph, ‘I also had a dream, there were three cake baskets on my head and in the upper most basket there were all sorts of food for Pharaoh but the birds were eating it out of the basket on my head.’

And Joseph answered, ‘This is its interpretation, the three baskets are three days. Within three days Pharaoh will lift up your head from you and hang you from a pole and there the birds will eat your flesh from you’. On the third day which was Pharaohs birthday he made a feast for all his servants and he lifted up the cup bearer and the head of the chief baker among the servants.

He restored the chief cup bearer to his cup bearing and he placed the cup in Pharaohs hand but the chief baker he hanged just as Joseph had interpreted them yet the chief cup bearer did not remember Joseph but forgot him.

See not only did the chief cup bearer forget Joseph it was actually another two years before he remembered Joseph and things started to happen. Two years is a long time even when you’re having fun. Two years in a dungeon is unimaginable. I can’t imagine spending one night in a prison but two more years in prison.

When you’re there because you’ve been wrongly accused and because before that your brothers turned against you and sold you into slavery and shipped you to a foreign land, I mean come on, put yourself in Joseph’s shoes, how do you feel? Everything is piling up against you, your family has turned against you, your master has turned against you because his wife lied about you, she was the one with evil things in her heart, Joseph was the one who did the right thing yet here he was in prison.

And now you do this wretched cupbearer a favour, I mean Gods given you this amazing spiritual insight, a gift of interpreting this dream, Gods here right? So let me ask you, would you be tempted to give up on God in those two years? To be honest I think I would.

Tomorrow on the program we’re going to see that God came back into Joseph’s life in a mighty way, in fact truth be known God never left him, He was there all the time. We know that because without God Joseph could never have interpreted those two dreams and seen them come true in such a short period of time.

What strikes me about this story, the story of God and Joseph together, is that at each turn Joseph just keeps on doing the right thing. I mean if anyone deserved to react badly to the situation Joseph did, that’s what I think. I know I can say trite things like, ‘Do the right thing no matter what’, it’s easy to say, you know how hard it is to keep on doing the right thing though, you just know how hard it is.

You know how much you want to act up badly when over and over again things don’t go your way, opportunities seem to slip by, when you’re doing the right thing and things just go from bad to worse, when it feels as though God’s given up on you, you know how hard it is, you just know.

So let me leave you with this Word from God today, it was written a long, long time later by Paul the Apostle, Galatians 6:9-10:

So let us not grow weary in doing what is right for we will reap at harvest time if we don’t give up. So then whenever we have an opportunity let us work for the good of all especially for those in the family of faith.

And that’s exactly what Joseph did and as we’re going to see tomorrow that’s why eventually God started to show His hand, His hand of blessing.

God is in the business of setting opportunities before us, opportunities that we can accept or reject. Why would you reject a God-given opportunity? Well one reason is sometimes, often times, they can downright scary.

I have a confession to make, I hate heights. I remember once standing on top of a thirty-metre tower when I was training to become an officer in the Australian army. It was a water jump on an obstacle course. The idea was simple, climb the tower and jump into the water. Hey thirty metres doesn’t sound an awful lot does it? I can cover one metre in a single step, easy, thirty metres, not that much.

I was a little bit nervous as I queued that day at the bottom of the tower watching my mates climb up and jump but as I headed up the tower I became more and more fearful. By the time I stood on top of that tower looking down I was completely petrified. You see this is totally unnatural, I still remember looking down, my stomach was tied in a knot. All I wanted to do was run away, couldn’t of course, everybody else so far had taken the jump apparently fearlessly.

Peer group pressure was overwhelming so I jumped. Let me tell you the fall seemed to take forever. Of course not a single person died that day or was injured that day, we all survived to tell the tale.

Leaps of faith can be scary can’t they? And sometimes God comes along and gives us an opportunity that is just as scary. Perhaps you’ve felt a call in your heart to go and do something and the fear of failure has just paralysed you. Or maybe you’ve been hit over the head by failure so many times that you’ve started believing that failure is your default mode of operation. The world, people, circumstances have been telling you that you won’t amount to anything, you’ll never succeed.

That’s the place that young Joseph, son of Jacob or as Israel as he became known, found himself rotting for over two years in a prison in Egypt after being sold into slavery by his brothers and then being wrongly accused of attempted rape by the wife of his master Potiphar.

The reason that we’re taking a look at Joseph’s journey through life is that perhaps more than any other Biblical character this guy faced catastrophe after catastrophe in his life yet at each turn he grabbed a hold of the opportunities that God gave him and that’s what made all the difference.

So there he is, he’s rotting in prison, he interprets correctly the dream of a fellow prisoner, Pharaoh’s cupbearer and soon the cupbearer is released and restored to his position, serving Pharaoh. But this guy, he forgets all about Joseph in jail and does nothing until Pharaoh himself has a perplexing dream that troubles him.

So finally two years on the cupbearer, remembers Joseph and suggests to Pharaoh that maybe this Joseph guy who is still rotting in jail could help interpret his dream. Let’s pick up the story, Genesis 41:8-16:

In the morning his spirit was troubled (this is Pharaoh) so he sent and called for the magicians of Egypt and all its wise men. Pharaoh told them his dream but there was no one who could interpret them to Pharaoh. Then the chief cupbearer said to Pharaoh, ‘I remember my faults today. Once Pharaoh was angry with his servant and put me and the chief baker in custody in the house of the captain of the guard.’

‘We dreamed on the same night, he and I, each having a dream with its own meaning. A young Hebrew man was there with us, a servant of the captain of the guard. When we told him he interpreted our dreams to us giving an interpretation to each according to his dream. As he interpreted to us so it turned out. I was restored to my office and the baker was hanged.’

Then the Pharaoh sent for Joseph and he was hurriedly brought out of the dungeon. When he’d shaved himself and changed his clothes he came in before Pharaoh and Pharaoh said to Joseph, ‘I have had a dream and there is no one who can interpret it. I have heard it said of you that when you hear a dream you can interpret it.’

Joseph answered Pharaoh, ‘It is not I, God will give Pharaoh a favourable answer.’ And so Pharaoh told Joseph his dream and Joseph interpreted it for him. The outcome of that interpretation ultimately led to Joseph being appointed as the ruler of Egypt second only to Pharaoh himself.

Now it’s so easy to read this as one of those ‘and so he lived happily ever after’ stories, you skim over it, well yeah that turned out pretty well for Joseph but imagine how Joseph felt after he’d showered and shaved, whisked from prison and now standing before Pharaoh, a man who had the absolute power of life or death over him. One slip up, one mistake, one bad or unfavourable interpretation and Joseph could well have been relieved of his head. Executions at the whim of Pharaoh were commonplace.

There would have to be a mixture of excitement and trembling in his heart. Excitement at the thought that finally this may be his God-given opportunity to get out of jail, fear at how Pharaoh might react. And it’s that very mixture of anticipation and fear that so often accompanies the God-given opportunities that come our way.

Because when the opportunity appears most times it doesn’t come with a guarantee of success. The fear of failure in our hearts can outweigh the excitement and anticipation that also comes with those new opportunities. And it’s in that place that we have to make a decision.

We can succumb to the fear, a fear which immobilises us, fear that stops us from stepping out into God given opportunities or we can take that leap of faith at which point we’re completely at God’s mercy. It’s like jumping off that platform; I had absolutely no control on the way down, which by the way felt like it was taking forever, the longest few seconds of my life.

When God next places an opportunity before you what will you do? Turn back in fear or step out in faith. The reason I’m asking you that question is that it’s at this point that so many people miss out on God’s opportunities for their lives and in my book that’s an absolute tragedy.

Joseph’s interpretation of the dream talked of coming years of plenty and years of famine in Egypt and he told Pharaoh what to do to prepare for the famine. He told Pharaoh to go and find an administrator who would oversee the setting aside the surplus food in the years of plenty so that there would be enough in the years of famine and this, this is what transpired, verses 37 to 42 of Genesis chapter 41:

That proposal so pleased Pharaoh and all his servants. Pharaoh said to his servants, ‘Can we find anyone else like this on whom is the Spirit of God?’ So Pharaoh said to Joseph, ‘Since God has shown you all this there is no one so discerning and wise as you. You shall be over my house and all my people shall order themselves as you command only with regard to the throne will I be greater than you.’

And Pharaoh said to Joseph, ‘See I have set you over the land of Egypt’ removing his signet ring from his hand Pharaoh put it on Joseph’s hand, he arrayed him in garments of fine linen and put a gold chain around his neck.

I mean Joseph could have ever in a million years have predicted that outcome when word came to him in prison that Pharaoh wanted to see him. And yet God had a plan, Joseph had already demonstrated his powers as an effective manager as Potiphar’s slave and as an overseer in jail and finally after all this turmoil, after all these defeats and pains and losses, injustices and disappointments and apparently missed opportunities that Joseph had travelled through, finally God’s plan was coming together.

A plan that only God Himself knew about. See that’s the thing, so often these difficulties are part of God’s plans as He’s laying out opportunities before us. So let me ask you again, the next time God sets an opportunity before you, it might look scary or impossible, will you turn back in fear or step out in faith?

Every now and then God sets opportunities before us, opportunities to do good, opportunities to be the person He made us to be, to do the things He made us to do. Have you ever had an opportunity before you and wondered to yourself, ‘Is this one from God or not’? Well today on the program I’m going to share with you one of the main things that I do to test opportunities before I step into them.

Life is this crazy mixture of appointments and disappointments. God has this funny way of setting up appointments for us, appointments that are part of His plan. The word ‘anointing’ in the Bible means literally an appointment from God. God appoints you to do a certain thing; He anoints you with His Spirit so you can do that thing.

A lot of times we see an opportunity to get ahead or to do something that apparently on surface seems pretty good but a little way into it we come to realise that this appointment is, well really a disappointment, it wasn’t from God after all.

Have you ever felt that sense of regret after you’ve taken an opportunity and it hasn’t worked out and you’ve realised it wasn’t from God to start with? Not that every God-given opportunity turns out to be successful from a worldly perspective, sometimes God puts opportunities in front of us for us to learn through our mistakes.

But some opportunities are God-given and others are not, it’s just the way it is and anybody who has set their heart to follow Jesus with their lives has been in that place of wondering ‘Is this one from God or not? Should I step into it or not? Should I marry this person or not? Should I take this job promotion or not? Should I move to this suburb or this town or this village or not? Should I … You know the story.

Quite a few years ago now I was involved in an IT consulting firm that we started way back in the late 1980’s. Graham, Mark and I were the partners who owned the business. It had grown internationally, it was a pretty successful and profitable outfit to the point that a public listed company sought us out and purchased the business from us on the condition that we stayed on for at least three years to manage the transition.

At the end of three years Graham, who was the CEO, decided it was time for him to retire. Well I can tell you I was the heir apparent, everybody expected me to step up and to take the reins of this business and drive it forward. I had this deep unease about it, I thought long and prayed hard and finally God showed me why I was uneasy.

There are many things that I enjoy doing but managing people, managing detail, they’re not amongst what I like doing. I can lead but I’m not a manager, there’s a difference. I came to the conclusion that my gifts and talents weren’t a good fit to the opportunity of stepping up to the CEO’s role and so to much of many people’s surprise I declined the appointment.

Looking back on that decision, it’s one of the best ones I’ve ever made and it’s this match of what we’re actually good at, our natural gifts and talents and the nature of the opportunity that is one of the best ways to determine whether an opportunity is from God or not.

When we last left young Joseph, the son of Jacob in the Old Testament, he’d just been handed an opportunity by Pharaoh to become the overseer of the whole of Egypt and in particular the overseer of the God-given plan to store away surplus food during the years of plenty so that Egypt would be ready for the years of famine that lay ahead.

Let’s take a look at what happened, Genesis 41:44-57:

Pharaoh said to Joseph, ‘I am Pharaoh and without your consent no one shall lift up hand or foot in all the land of Egypt’. And he gave him Asenath, daughter of Potiphera, priest of On as his wife. Thus Joseph gained authority over the land of Egypt.

Joseph was just thirty years old when he entered the service of Pharaoh, King of Egypt and Joseph went out from the presence of Pharaoh and went through all the land of Egypt. During the seven plenteous years the earth produced abundantly. He gathered up all the food of seven years when there was plenty in the land of Egypt and stored up food in the cities. He stored up in every city the food from the fields around it.

So Joseph stored up grain in such abundance, like the sand of the sea, that he stopped measuring it, it was beyond measure. Before the years of famine came Joseph had two sons who Asenath, daughter of Potiphera, priest of On, bore him. Joseph named the first boy Manassah ‘for’ he said ‘God has made me forget all my hardship and all my father’s house’. The second he named Ephraim ‘For God has made me fruitful in the land of my misfortunes.’

The seven years of plenty that prevailed in the land of Egypt came to an end and the seven years of famine began to come just as Joseph had said. There was famine in every country but throughout the land of Egypt there was bread. When all the land of Egypt was famished the people cried out to Pharaoh for bread and Pharaoh said to all the Egyptians, ‘Go to Joseph, what he says to you, do.’

And since the famine had spread all over the land Joseph opened all the storehouses and sold to the Egyptians for the famine was severe in the land of Egypt. Moreover all the world came to Joseph in Egypt to buy grain because the famine became severe throughout the whole world.

Now okay, Joseph was given the power to make it all happen but you’d have to be a pretty good manager to bring this grand scheme together wouldn’t you? I mean it turns out that that was exactly what Joseph was good at. Back as a slave in Potiphar’s house, what happened? Potiphar saw how good a manager Joseph was so he put him in charge of all his affairs and in prison the head jailer saw what an effective manager Joseph was so he put him in charge of the prison.

See that was Joseph’s gifting, his natural talent and ability and this opportunity that Pharaoh gave him was a perfect fit with whom God made him to be. It’s a pattern that repeated itself through the hard times as a slave, as a prisoner and now during the good times as the ruler of Egypt second only to Pharaoh.

See God’s plans, God’s opportunities that He sets before us invariably have this strong fit with who He made us to be. It kind of makes sense when you think about it and testing opportunities against our natural abilities is one of the best ways I’ve ever discovered to figure out whether this opportunity is going to turn out to be an appointment or a disappointment. Whether this opportunity is one from God or not one from God.

The Bible tells us that we should test all things so that we can grab a hold of that which is good and keep away from that which isn’t (1 Thessalonians chapter 5, verse 20). Not everything that glitters is made of gold. There are plenty of imposters that come along pretending to be good, pretending to be God-given appointments when all along they’re nothing but disappointments. Even satan, we’re told, disguises himself as an angel of light. (2 Corinthians 11:14).

One of the reasons that we end up missing out of God’s opportunities is because we just choose the wrong ones. The devil doesn’t want you living out the life that God planned for you, the devil does not want you to impact this world with your God-given gifts and one of the great tactics of the enemy is to deceive. That’s why it’s so important for us to learn how to discern those opportunities that are God-given and those that aren’t.

If God is truly God, if He really knows what He is doing then surely He’s going to make us a good fit with the things He calls us to do and that’s exactly what the Bible teaches. Ephesians 2:10 says:

We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus in order to do the good works that he’d prepared beforehand for us to walk in to.

You and I need to know the things we’re good at and the things we’re not good at. Invariably the things we’re good at are the things we enjoy doing, they’re the things we get excited about and animated about. And that excitement, that animation is a really good pointer for what we’re good at and what we’re good at is a good pointer towards the things God’s made us to do and the things God’s calling us to do.

So the next time an opportunity comes your way ask yourself, ‘Am I a good fit with this opportunity or not?’

Yesterday on the program we talked about the fact that one of the best ways to discern an opportunity that’s before us is God-given or not is to consider the fit between our natural gifts and abilities and the demands or the requirements of the opportunity. Does this opportunity really fit with whom God made me to be? But sometimes God calls us to do things that just don’t come naturally.

Over this past week and a half we’ve been travelling along with young Joseph, son of Jacob in the Old Testament, on his journey through life, a journey which had some real downers much like your journey and mine and yet a journey that was heading in a direction that only God could foresee.

There was Joseph one of twelve brothers, the youngest one and dads favourite. His father was Jacob, son of Isaac, son of Abraham although God had given Jacob a new name, He called him Israel. And unbeknown to anyone these twelve brothers were the father’s of what would become the twelve tribes of Israel. That was a long way off yet.

Here’s what the relationship between Joseph and his brothers looked like when Joseph was young, Genesis 37:1-4:

Jacob settled in the land where his father had lived as an alien, the land of Canaan and this is the story of the family of Jacob. Joseph being seventeen years old was shepherding the flock with his brothers. He was a helper to the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father’s wives and Joseph brought a bad report of them to their father.

Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his children because he was the son of his old age and he’d made him a long robe with sleeves but when his brother’s saw that their father loved him more than all the other brothers they hated Joseph and they couldn’t speak peaceably to him.

But things only got worse from here because Joseph had two dreams which he shared with his brothers and father, that one day he would rule over them and they’d all bow down to him. That was it, that was the last straw, his brothers plotted to kill him but ultimately instead they sold him into slavery.

From there he’s transported, as we’ve seen, to Egypt, he becomes Potiphar’s slave, is thrown into prison where he rots for a few years and finally, FINALLY, through a set of circumstances that only God could have orchestrated becomes the ruler of all of Egypt second only to Pharaoh.

And again under God’s hand Joseph as the ruler has stored up in Egypt surplus grain that was produced in the years of plenty so that when the famine hit there’d be enough to eat in the land. And not just in Egypt, people travelled from all over the known world to purchase grain in Egypt because they were starving and, as God would have it some of Joseph’s brothers travelled to Egypt to buy grain as well.

They had no idea what had become of Joseph after they had sold him into slavery. They told their father Jacob that he was dead but lo and behold one day they stood before Joseph and bowed down to him just as he’d dreamed in that dream all those years before as a young boy. Genesis 42:1-8:

When Jacob learned that there was grain in Egypt he said to his sons, ‘Why do you keep looking at one another? I have heard’ he said, ‘That there is grain in Egypt so go down, buy grain for us there that we may live and not die.’ So ten of Josephs brothers went down to buy grain but Jacob did not send Josephs brother Benjamin with his brothers for he feared what harm may come to him.

Thus the sons of Israel were among the other people who came to buy grain for the famine had reached the land of Canaan. Now Joseph was governor over the whole land, it was he that sold to all the people of the land and Joseph’s brothers came and bowed themselves down before him with their faces on the ground.

When Joseph saw his brothers he recognised them but he treated them like strangers and spoke harshly to them. ‘Where do you come from?’ he said, they said ‘From the land of Canaan to buy food.’ Although Joseph had recognised his brothers they did not recognise him.

Now we don’t have time to go through the whole story of how Joseph dealt with his brothers, it runs for several chapters, Genesis 42 to 46, it’s really worth a read, so if you have a Bible grab it in the next day or two and check it out for yourself. But can you imagine how Joseph felt? These mongrels of brothers who’d plotted his murder and then sold him into slavery, now stood before him and bowed down to him just as God had told him in that dream as a young lad would occur.

And he was now the ruler of Egypt second only to Pharaoh and he now had the power of life or death over them just as they had had over him. Finally a chance for revenge, finally here it is, justified with God’s favour on him and these men who had done him such a terrible injustice were begging for food before him, what an opportunity.

And as you read the story Joseph was seriously tempted, he was torn, he struggled between his hatred for them and his love, between revenge and forgiveness. He accused them of being spies and locked them up for three days and then he took one of them as a hostage in prison to force them to go back and get their youngest brother, Benjamin.

He played tricks on them; he gave them an incredibly hard time. You see one of the things that doesn’t come naturally to us is forgiveness. He had been so hurt and damaged by his brothers. He was tempted to kill them all after he toyed with them in the dark and terrible cat and mouse game.

It went on for some time but:

Then Joseph could no longer control himself before all those who stood by him and he cried out ‘Send everyone away from me’. So no one stayed with him when Joseph made himself known to his brothers. And he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard it and the house of Pharaoh heard it and Joseph said to his brothers, ‘I am Joseph, is my father still alive?’

But his brothers couldn’t answer him, so dismayed were they at his presence. Then Joseph said to his brothers, ‘Come closer to me’ and they came closer and he said, ‘I’m your brother Joseph whom you sold into Egypt and now don’t be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, God sent me before you to preserve life.’

‘For the famine has been in the land these two years and there will be five more years in which there will be no ploughing or harvest, God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to keep alive for you many survivors.’ (Genesis 45:1-7)

Joseph took the greatest opportunity of his life, the greatest opportunity God handed him, he forgave his brothers not just in word but also in deed. He saw that God had sent him, even through their evil, to preserve their lives.

Have you ever had the opportunity to harm or to forgive someone who has hurt you? Which way did you lean naturally in the flesh? Towards extracting your pound of flesh? That’s what Joseph wanted to do yet he’d been travelling too long with God to do that. God had been with him in the pit that his brothers had thrown him into, God had been with him on his journey to Egypt in chains, in the slave market where he was sold as a slave, in prison where he was thrown after being wrongly accused, God had been with him every step of the way.

And at each turn God had placed an opportunity for Joseph to do good or evil, to behave well or to behave badly, to use his natural gifts and talents to grab hold of opportunities or not. And at each turn Joseph stepped up to the plate and took a hold of those God-given opportunities. He didn’t realise it at the time but it’s that consistent pattern of behaviour that brought him to the place of power and privilege in which he now found himself and it was in this place that he faced his biggest test of all, to forgive or to take revenge.

Forgiveness goes against the grain, forgiveness when you think about it is unjust because we choose to forgo our right for punishment and recompense but no matter how badly you’ve been hurt, no matter how unnatural that step of forgiveness appears to you in the place where you’re at, it is the greatest opportunity that God will ever give you.

So seriously does God take forgiveness that He sends His only Son Jesus to die for you, to pay for your sins and it cost Him everything, it cost Him the life of His Son. So when this opportunity to forgive presents itself what do you do? Take revenge or forgive?

God is a God who delights in handing us opportunities. Opportunities to do good, opportunities that are good for us, opportunities that fit into His amazing plan for this world. But sometimes, sometimes we miss them because we’re so immersed in the detail that we miss the big picture.

I’m convinced that one of the hardest things in life is to keep our eye on the big picture. Maybe it’s a project at work that involves a lot of people and a lot of complexity, maybe it’s a plan you have for your life and yet time and time again things happen to derail your brilliant plan. Or maybe it’s simply setting your life on a course to follow Jesus with all your heart and yet you discover that the road is narrow and hard and inconvenient and uncomfortable and some days downright painful.

And when that happens what happens to the big picture, the end goal, the reason you’re following Jesus with all your heart? It just kind of, I don’t know, it just evaporates doesn’t it?

Here we are in the last message in this series that I’ve called Don’t Miss God’s Opportunities. Well one of the main reasons that we do miss God’s opportunities to do good on those days when we feel that following Jesus ain’t all it’s cracked up to be, is that on those days we lose sight of the big picture.

Now be fair, we can’t always see the big picture that makes it even harder. When the Lord our God has us on one of those dark, scary, uncomfortable, valley journey’s and you actually can’t see far enough ahead to know what comes next, to know how it’s going to turn out, to know why He’s put you in this place to start with, often it’s only in hindsight that we can see what He was up to all along and even then sometimes we don’t get the full picture.

I was speaking at a businessmen’s breakfast fellowship just recently, all successful high-powered businessmen, they asked me to share my testimony and it’s a story, let me tell you, that has as many low points as it has high points. And as I retraced those steps, sharing the incredible things that God’s done in my life I again just had that quiet assurance from the Holy Spirit that all along I’d actually been on the journey that God had planned. Even in those dark and difficult times, especially in fact in those dark and difficult times.

It’s the sense that Joseph, Jacob’s son in the Old Testament, had when he finally stood on the place that he dreamed of as a young teenager; a position of power and privilege as the ruler of Egypt second only to Pharaoh himself. And as we saw yesterday his brothers now stood before him, those same brothers that had sold him into slavery out of their jealousy and hatred all those years before.

Instead of exacting revenge he forgave them and he explained to them why God had allowed all this to happen. Let’s take another look at this together:

Then Joseph said to his brothers, ‘Come closer to me’ and they came closer. He said, ‘I am your brother Joseph whom you sold into Egypt and now don’t be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here for God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land these two years and there will be five more years where there will be neither ploughing nor harvest.’

‘God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here but God. He has made me a father to Pharaoh and the Lord of all his house and the ruler of the land of Egypt, hurry up, go to my father and say to him, ‘Thus says your son Joseph, God has made me lord of all Egypt, come down to me, do not delay.’

‘You shall settle in the land of Goshen and you shall be near me, you and your children and your children’s children as well as your flocks and your herds and all that you have. I will provide for you there since there are five more years of famine so that you and your household and all that you have will not come to poverty.’

‘And now your eyes and the eyes of my brother Benjamin see that it is my own mouth that speaks to you. You must tell my father how greatly I am honoured in Egypt and all that you have seen. Hurry and bring my father down here.’ Then he fell upon his brother Benjamin’s neck and wept while Benjamin wept upon his neck and he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them and after that his brothers talked with him. (Genesis 45:4-15)

What a beautiful picture of reconciliation after such treachery that brought so much suffering. But the bit that I really want you to notice here is that Joseph finds meaning to all his suffering because he sees the big picture to explain what’s going on:

God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant of all the earth and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it wasn’t you who sent me here but God, he’s the one that made me a father to Pharaoh and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt.

In other words by looking back and seeing the journey through God’s eyes he sees what God was up to all along. God’s purpose was to do his family good, to preserve and protect them and for that purpose, a purpose he couldn’t see in those dark places along the way on his journey which had taken now over twenty years, that’s why he had to suffer treachery and slavery and injustice and imprisonment because God had had a plan.

And now Joseph could see it looking back and yet even at this point, can I say, Joseph really had no idea, none whatsoever of the important part his small journey was playing in God’s overall plan for humanity.

In that passage we just read did you notice the brothers were to go back and get their father Jacob or Israel as God had renamed him and bring the whole family down here and settle in Egypt? Out of that over the next four and a half centuries grew a mighty nation of Israel whom God saved through Moses, crossing the Red Sea with forty years in the wilderness before He brought them back to the Promised Land.

See through Judah, one of the twelve brothers, God started a lineage of generations that finally, many years later, resulted in the birth of Jesus who came to save you and me by dying on that cross. Joseph’s story, Joseph’s journey is still having eternal ramifications in your life and mine through Jesus of Israel.

That’s mind-blowing. The big picture is so big that none of them really knew what God was up to through this terrible journey of Joseph’s. Honestly the only way to lay hold of the big picture when we’re immersed in the trials of our journey is by faith. Just believing that God has a plan, that God knows what He’s doing, it doesn’t matter how much it hurts on the way, that eventually God will reveal to us through hindsight that part of the picture that He wants us to see.

Holding on to God’s picture by faith is what keeps us going, step by step, doing good, doing right, looking for the God-given opportunities that He sets before us:

And faith is the assurance of things hopeful, the conviction of things not seen and indeed by faith our ancestors received approval and by faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God so that what is seen has been made from things that are not seen. (Hebrews 11:1-3)

When we lose faith in the faithfulness of God and His big picture, although we can’t see it for ourselves, we stop doing what’s right, we stop looking for His opportunities, we stop hoping and dreaming, we stop doing what we know is right even when the rest of the world seems to have gone stark raving mad and none of the pain and suffering makes any sense.

My friend, I want to implore you, ‘Don’t give up, don’t lose faith, don’t stop looking for those God-given opportunities to use your gifts and abilities to do what you know is right, to forgive those who have hurt you. Don’t give up because one day you’ll stand before God and you want to hear Him say ‘Well done good and faithful servant’.

That’s why Jesus died for you, that is why Jesus sent His Holy Spirit to dwell in you the moment you put your trust in Him. That’s the big picture, so whatever you do don’t miss out on God’s opportunities.