From Breakdown to Breakthrough: The Story of Joseph | Tony Evans Sermon

Dr. Tony Evans shares an inspiring message about how God’s sovereignty and providence guide us through life’s most challenging times. God often allows our lives to unravel for a greater purpose—His glory and our good.

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Dr. Tony Evans is the founder and senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, founder and president of The Urban Alternative and author of over 100 books, booklets and Bible studies. The first African American to earn a doctorate of theology from Dallas Theological Seminary, he has been named one of the 12 Most Effective Preachers in the English-Speaking World by Baylor University. Dr. Evans holds the honor of writing and publishing the first full-Bible commentary and study Bible by an African American. His radio broadcast, The Alternative with Dr. Tony Evans, can be heard on over 1,400 radio outlets daily and in more than 130 countries. Dr. Evans’ sermons are also streamed and downloaded over 20,000,000 times annually.

We’ve been looking at people in the Bible whose lives were falling apart.
And it looked like god didn’t even care.
It looked like god was nowhere to be found. It looked like he had gone on vacation.
The telephone line was busy. He was unavailable, and they were just dying.
And we have discovered through the lives that we’ve looked at thus far is that, for his people, god often allows life to devolve, life to unravel for the greater accomplishment of his glory and our good.
It’s hard to see, however, when you’re in the middle of it because all you see is what you see, and what you see, you don’t wanna see.
And we’ve looked at numbers of people in the Bible where they were struggling.
Last time we looked at Job, and his whole life unraveled before him.
His wife said, curse god and die. In other words, hurry up and get it over with.
Curse god. He’ll kill you.
So the bible is full of scenarios of people whose lives were unraveling.
Job says in Job 23, I looked up there. I couldn’t find you.
I looked south, east, west. I looked everywhere, and you were nowhere to be found.
And there’s probably not a person in here who hadn’t thought that or felt that even if you were too scared to say that, but god was not anywhere close.
One of the things I wanna remind you of I wanna remind us of is when god is silent, he is not still.
He may be very silent. He is not still.
He’s not doing nothing in his apparent absence.
Joseph, who I wanna bring up today again.
Here was a young man, 17 years of old age approximately, saw his life unravel.
And for the next 13 or 14 years, his life would keep going south.
And just when he thought he was about to get a break, something else would go wrong.
You ever been there? On the verge of a break and you think it’s a breakthrough and it turns out to be a breakdown.
Dysfunctional family, that’s where he was born. Siblings wanna kill you.
That’s not the place you wanna live. Sold into slavery.
He finally looks like he gets a bright break. He gets a good job.
He’s he’s a slave, but he’s the number one slave.
And Potiphar likes him, and so does sister Potiphar.
And he’s accused illegitimately of rape.
Just when it was he thought he was gonna catch a break, His life unravels, and now he’s thrown in jail for a crime he didn’t commit.
Then, he’s forgotten in jail.
Just when he thought he was gonna get a break, one of the guys was released.
He said, remember me to the king. The guy forgets him.
And so he’s got to spend a few years in prison for a crime he never committed.
That ain’t right.
But the phrase you don’t wanna miss when you read the life of Joseph is that the lord was with Joseph.
So if you are committed to the lord and it’s going south, the lord is with you.
If you are committed to the lord and life is unraveling, It’s going south.
You can’t catch a break. The lord is with you.
Finally you know the story. I’m summarizing all this to get to my main point.
Finally, he is remembered.
He interprets the king’s dream, 7 years of famine, 7 years of good year, the good year, prepare for the bad years.
And he now goes from what I call the outhouse to the White House.
He now is made second in charge in Egypt overnight.
I told you one of these years, I’m gonna do a series and will be a one word series.
It will be simply the word suddenly.
Number of times in the bible, you’ll find that word suddenly.
And that is a reference to when god comes out of nowhere and turns your situation around.
When he just shows up, shows out and it happens suddenly, When he turns something on a dime, when he comes from nowhere and your whole world is turned upside down.
He’s gone about 13 or 14 years in this up and down life and all of a sudden out of down.
He’s now the 2nd in charge.
Everybody’s gotta come through him to eat, including his brothers who sold him into slavery.
He was born in a dysfunctional family, had a bad life, has a prison record, even though unjustly, and the lord was with him.
Now why did I wanna rehearse that?
I wanna rehearse that because of these verses I wanna read to you.
You know them well, but I wanna read them to you again because they really do answer, god, why are you killing me?
Chapter 50 verse 15.
When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, what if Joseph bears a grudge against us and pays us back in full for all the wrong which we did to him?
So they sent a message to Joseph saying, your father charged before he died, saying, thus you shall say to Joseph, please forgive, I beg you, the transgression of your brothers and their sin, for they did you wrong.
And now please forgive the transgression, the servants of the god of your fathers.
And Joseph wept when they spoke to him.
Then his brothers also came and fell down before him and said, behold, we are your servants.
But Joseph said to them, do not be afraid for I am in God’s place.
As for you, you meant evil against me, but god meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive.
So, therefore, do not be afraid. I will provide for you and your little ones.
So he comforted them and spoke kindly to them.
Now if many of us were in Joseph’s situation, we would have been go, uh-huh.
Uh-huh. Next would have been rolling and, you know, uh-huh.
I got I got you. I’m sorry. You know?
But Joseph makes this profound statement.
He says, I am in god’s place.
I am in the location god brought me to.
I am here because god brought me here.
I said I’ve said on numbers of occasions the most important doctrine, the second most important doctrine the first most important doctrine for us is salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.
That’s the most important thing you wanna know.
But second to that, once you become a Christian, the second most important doctrine is sovereignty.
Sovereignty simply means god rules and overrules.
Tucked under the definition of sovereignty is the concept of providence.
God is sovereign and he is providentially so.
Providence has to do with God arranging various things to accomplish a particular goal.
Sovereignty means God is in control.
Providence is his arranging of that control and connect providence is god creating a mixed master in your life.
Most cities have mixed masters, and it’s where highways converge.
Usually, they’re downtown, not always, and then there’s smaller mixed masters.
The to the central hub of travel and of reconnection.
For the believer who loves god and is following god, god has a result he is taking you to, individually and us collectively, a goal.
But god is so good at what he does.
He never limits himself to one root, nor does he limit himself to only using good things to reach his goal.
See, Joseph’s life is full of bad things, negative things.
He couldn’t control the fact he couldn’t control the fact that, you know, he was born into this dysfunctional family.
He didn’t have anything to do with that.
He couldn’t he couldn’t control that his father told him about the coat of many colors and I mean, suppose there was no dream suppose there was no coat suppose there was no dream.
If there was no dream, there was no coat, the brothers wouldn’t have gotten mad.
If brothers wouldn’t have gotten mad, they wouldn’t have sold him into slavery.
They wouldn’t have sold him into slavery, he wouldn’t have wound up in Egypt.
If he didn’t wind up in Egypt, he wouldn’t have been accused of rape.
If he wasn’t accused of rape, he wouldn’t have gone to jail.
If he hadn’t been gone to jail, then he wouldn’t have been available to interpret the dream.
And if he wasn’t available to interpret the dream, he’s now no longer second in Egypt.
For the Christian following the lord, you can erase some words from your vocabulary.
Luck, chance, and fate. Luck, chance, and fate.
You can erase them from your vocabulary. They are no longer meaningful words for you. Why?
Because you have a sovereign god who functions providentially. He connects things.
But depending on where you are on the highway, you may not recognize that you’re headed toward a mix master.
You it may not be apparent you’re headed toward a connection because of where you are located in this particular place where you are in your life right now.
And right now, it may not be a good place. It may not be the best place.
It may not be the preferred place.
But the question on the floor is, to the best of your ability, is it his place?
Is it are you functioning to the best of your ability as much as you know how in accordance with his will?
Because if you’re functioning there, even if you’re in a bad place, you’re on a road headed somewhere even though you don’t quite know when you’re gonna hit the mix master.
If you go downtown if you wanna go to to downtown Dallas, there are numbers of routes to get you there.
Uh, there are a number of ways to get to downtown from here. Okay?
God is so good, he never leaves himself with one route.
He never leaves himself with one way to arrive at his destination. K?
Now, you may only know one way.
But god is so good that if he don’t want you to go that way, he’ll create an accident or allow an accident to force you on a detour, which may be the long way around to get you where he wants you to be.
Providence is God orchestrating scenarios.
That’s why I said, keep your eye open for intersections.
Those are the nouns that the people, places and things.
He creates intersections in order to move us down the line to the next leg of the journey toward the mix master of his purpose for us.
If you are living in concert with God’s will, then you need to know this.
You need to know this. You need to know that as bad as it is, he’s with you.
Now right now, that’s the only encouraging word I can give you, particularly if you’re in jail or you being accused wrongly or, you know, or you’ve been, you know, you’re the result of a dysfunctional family.
Well, all that was true of Joseph.
All I can tell you is that the bible says the lord was with him.
In a bad situation.
The new testament has a a well known verse that we’ve all quoted that summarizes this concept.
Romans 828, all things are working together for good to them that love God and are called according to his purpose.
All things are working together, that’s his providential, invisible hand, turning and twisting and tweaking things.
And they’re working together for good.
But notice who it’s working for, to them who love god Yes. Yes.
And are called according to his purpose. So that means you’re living in light of his will.
His will, his purpose is your is your focus.
Because his purpose is your focus, your good is his goal.
Because your purpose is his focus, your good is his goal.
Because your purpose is his focus, your good is his goal even though right now you’re traveling down a highway called bad.
You may be on a bad stretch of road right now, Bad stretch of road.
And we all have them. Everybody in the bible had them.
But I want to give you the good news tonight that the Lord is with you.
Why did Joseph say God was killing him?
But that is bringing him through all these negative circumstances. He said, to bring me to this place.
And the bad you meant for me, god was using it for good.
Now when you’re in the middle of bad, all you can see is bad.
And that’s why you must I must we must be reminded of the providential sovereignty of God.
His sovereignty is in control. His providence is him stitching the individual elements to reach the goal, and he allows negative things in there.
Why then does he allow negative things as part of the process?
Well, Romans 8 29 says that we might be conformed to the image of Christ.
He is trying to develop us through the process.
He took Israel out of Egypt to the promised land, but they had to be developed in a place called the wilderness.
As long as you know that, you can keep going.
See, as long as you know I’m going somewhere, you can keep going because you know you’re headed somewhere even though it appears right now like it’s somewhere over the rainbow.
You know? It’s way out there. You can’t see it. You can’t find it. It’s invisible.
You you can’t feel it. He said, God did this to bring me to this place.
When you look at scriptures, how God created little intersections, Moses mother, they were praying.
Pharaoh’s killing all the male babies. He’s praying.
All she all she can come up with is this idea to, you know, put him in this wicker basket.
Push him down the river to save his life.
It just so happened that pharaoh’s daughter was taking a bath in the same body of water at this very same time when the wicker basket was passing by.
It just so happened that Moses decided to cry at that very moment, and she overheard the weeping of the baby.
It just so happened that she thought he was and so cute and let me take this little baby home.
It just so happened.
Miriam Moses’ sister saw pharaoh’s daughter pick up the baby, take him home.
She goes and tell her, mama, mama, pharaoh daughter just took up my little brother, your son, in his house.
It just so happened that all the women who applied to be the nurse, the nurse for Moses, all the applicants, she was the one chosen.
It just so happened, She got paid to raise her own baby.
God stitches together in unusual ways in his providential sovereignty, in bad situations that was bad situation, killing babies.
But it talks about Moses’s mother and how much he feared God and when things look hopeless, God was stitching something.
Just so happened, though.
It It just so happened, though, that he couldn’t go to sleep.
The king couldn’t go to sleep. And I I love this story.
I I love this story because because the name God is not in the book of Esther.
You won’t find the the rendering God in the book of Esther.
His name is not there, but his hand is all over the place.
And he can’t sleep.
I don’t know why if you can’t sleep and if you gotta read a book.
I mean, you want a novel. You want something. He goes and says, bring me the registry.
The names and addresses, everybody in the kingdom. What kind of reading is that?
And he’s reading through the registry of the people registered in the kingdom, and he happens just so happened.
Jesel. Jesel. He come across the name of this guy named Mordecai and how Mordecai had saved the nation earlier.
He said, Mordecai, that’s an interesting guy. I need to find out about him tomorrow when I wake up.
And it just so happened. Mordecai is, of course, Esther’s uncle.
And Mordecai, she find he finds out about Mordecai.
And now Mordecai is praised by the king for what he had done, and now Haman has got a problem because he’s built the gallows to hang Mordecai and every other Jew he can get his hands on.
But now the king likes Mordecai.
It just so happened that Haman is now in trouble with the king, and he it’s really funny.
It’s not funny because the guy got killed, But it’s really funny because he’s going up to Esther, begging Esther to plead for the king.
And he got his hands all over Esther, begging her for mercy.
But the king walks in when he touching Esther.
And the king don’t want to hear nothing about begging about nothing.
The king said, now, on top of this, you’re gonna be messing with my wife.
You know I’m sure enough gonna kill you now.
And the Bible says, and he got a hang on the very gallows that he had built for his enemy.
God is, in his providence, can orchestrate things in such a way that what appeared to be going left was really going exactly where God wanted it to wind up.
And the Lord was with Joseph. So could it be?
Could it be that the thing you’re running from most that God keeps blocking?
You trying to get out of jail, he keeping you in jail.
Could it be that the thing that you’re trying to escape most that he won’t let you out of in any legitimate form is because he’s taking you somewhere, And this piece is a necessary piece to where he’s taking you.
And could it be I mean, I’m just saying.
You have to believe that you have a sovereign God who has providential oversight.
And let me close by telling you one other great benefit.
His brothers were terrified because he thought now Joseph in the big seat, and Joseph is gonna do us in because of what we did to him.
They are terrified. You know what he said? Don’t be afraid.
Don’t be afraid. Because God you meant it for evil.
I know you were trying to hurt me, but God decided to take your evil and make it his good to bring me to this place, watch this, to take care of y’all and your children.
It is.
Sovereignty mixed with providence gives you the power to forgive.
See, forgiveness is hard because you did me wrong.
But now when I discover you did me wrong because god wanted to use your wrong to bring good to me, that changes how I look at your wrong.
Now your wrong was still wrong. It’s still wrong.
But I can look at it differently, and I don’t have to carry it because god was using your wrong to help me.
So it changes how I look at you.
It gives me the ability to forgive if god was using your wrong to help me get right Yes.
Yes. To where I was supposed to be. So I want you to try something.
I want you to tell God, I am willing to submit to the process you are taking me through to get me to my mixed master, whatever that is.
Now things that you can legitimately avoid, things that you can nobody wants pain.
Nobody should run after pain, things that you can you can legitimately deal with, handle, get out of, what I mean, that’s that’s all fine.
I’m talking about where you have to illegitimately do it.
I am willing to because God may just be waiting for that to take you to your next highway.
He may be waiting for that to take you to your next highway.
He may be waiting for that to take you to your next highway. To take you to your next highway.
You meant it for evil. God meant it for good.
Oh, by the way, he had 2 sons.
He named one of them Manasseh, and he explained why.
He said, because God has helped me to forget.
Manasseh means to forget.
See, one of our problems is we can’t forget.
We can’t forget how I was hurt. We can’t forget how I was raised.
We can’t forget how I was forsaken. We can’t forget how I was used. We can’t forget.
And that’s because we lose sight of his sovereign, providential care.
And every time he called Manasseh’s name, Manasseh, come in.
He was reminded that he forgot.
He didn’t forget what happened because he said, god used what you did to me to bring me to this place, so he knew what happened.
That’s not what forget means. Forget means I no longer carry the pain of what happened.
I no longer carry that pain. God, why are you killing me?
Because you’re taking me somewhere.