Season 4 Genesis 40: 8-15 (Sue Wiberg)
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Genesis 40:8-15 Re-member
Who are you God and what are you like?
Presupposing the goodness of God!
Seeing Jesus through the lens of Joseph!
Just come off these two high level secret service workers being sent to prison where put under care of Joseph.
Wow, what a blessing! Put under the care of Jesus, that’s where we always are whether we see it or not!!!
Joseph’s heart is sensitive to God’s heart and leading. He notices that these two look worried one day. Today!
God Notices Today.
Psalm 5
Vs 8 They’ve had dreams that no one can interpret!
Think of Joseph’s dreams that have brought him to this place, where it seems anything but that dream has been happening.
Joseph never gave an interpretation of the dreams God gave him.
His family thought they knew what they meant. They did not however know they were from God and were for their good!! They harmed Joseph for being Dreamer.
He could be having a flashback at how he was treated with the interpretation of his dreams! That Dreamer!!!
How is it that Joseph is not locked up in past trauma?
Knowing God, that intimacy with God and that God is the interpreter of dreams!
He is able to move forward with God’s help.
The enemy loves to keep us locked up in trauma. Trauma brought real harm/hurt. But God has real healing for you right here!!! He is the answer and will point you to the resources to find freedom!!!
Trauma-too much, too soon. We get overwhelmed and can’t process or handle. Happens often as children when we are harmed/hurt.
Trauma is connected to memory. Something happening “Today” triggers trauma of past. Remembers! We can get stuck in that memory.
Or loss of memory due to trauma.
Confessing sin, hurts and harms too. All of these are trauma!! Denying these, minimizing these effect us more than know! James 5:13-16 About bring all into light with God and trusted people to bring healing from God.
Ask God to help you walk through memory with Him to see and experience with Him, any place He is showing “stuckness”. Joseph had done this.
John 8:31-32 Jesus said to the people who believed in him, “You are truly my disciples if you remain faithful to my teachings. 32 And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you
It’s an issue of belief. Being stuck is about belief. Believing God is good, compassionate, tender, able to take us through these hard places to healing and wholeness!
Joseph was living in that freedom and could respond out of freedom and follow God right here because of knowing God, believing God!
“Go ahead and tell me your dreams.” Proof of dependence on God!
Vs 9-11 A Grapevine, love it. The Vine! We are the Branches. He Prunes the branches.
Branches began to bud and blossom, and produce fruit.
Vs 12-13 Joe now interprets. Pharoah will lift you up! He will Restore you!!
John 15-Living as branch abiding in Vine we get the nutrients needed from the Vine, restored!
Vs 14 Joseph asks the CupBearer to remember him when this comes true and he is restored.
Do we remember everyday that Jesus has pulled us out of the dark pit of death because of sin?
Do we remember what He has done for us?
Do we remember that we were as good as dead, in darkness, that He came and met us right there?
Do we remember the people God has put in our path to intervene in our life?The people that pointed us to the only One that could rescue us?
Do we remember to pray for and bless those that blessed us?
Remember, Re-member, Ann Voskamp?
Remember = Zakar- to mark, to remember, to be male (?), make to be remembered!!!
Oh that, He is working to make us to be re-membered!!! And to make us to remember Him.
Re-member like made whole, healed, complete in Him!!! At just the right time, always!!! Re-Member, we are His, members of Him.
The Body!!!!! We belong to Him, His Body!!!!
Vs 15 This is the first time we hear Joseph talk about what has happened to him. Being kidnapped from home and then put in prison even though he is innocent.
Joseph has not been in denial of the harm done to him. He has remembered under God, and remembered God is with him, remembered the dreams God gave Him, remembered that He is faithful to bring His promises.
Deut 5:15 Remember that you were once slaves in Egypt, but the Lord your God brought you out with his strong hand and powerful arm. That is why the Lord your God has commanded you to rest on the Sabbath day.
Deut 7:18 But don’t be afraid of them! Just remember what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all the land of Egypt. Eradicate fear with remembering
Deut 8:2 But don’t be afraid of them! Just remember what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all the land of Egypt.
Deut 8:11 But that is the time to be careful! Beware that in your plenty you do not forget the Lord your God and disobey his commands, regulations, and decrees that I am giving you today
Rev 3:3 Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; hold it fast, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you.
God always remembers us at just the right time and right way!!! Whole bible is about Him remembering us, the promise He made to us to save us!
About God Re-Membering us to Him
Genesis 8:1 But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock…
9:14-15 When I send clouds over the earth, the rainbow will appear in the clouds, 15 and I will remember my covenant with you and with all living creatures. Never again will the floodwaters destroy all life.
Noah-rainbow marks remember-whoa! He sees it and remembers. Whoa!!!!
Genesis 19:29 (saved Lot because remembered Abraham!)
Psalm 105:42 remembers promise to Abraham
Psalm 136:23 He remembered us in our weakness.
His faithful love endures forever.
Rainbow sign of Him remembering us and re-membering us!!!!
Exod 20:8 “Remember to observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.
That rest in God is what re-members us, puts back our focus on Him, that He remembers us and promises to us. Wholeness, Healing in re-membering!!!
Exodus 20:24b (NASB) in every place where I cause my Name to be remembered, I will come to you and bless you!!! Whoa!!
Zec 10:9 Though I have scattered them like seeds among the nations,
they will still remember me in distant lands.
They and their children will survive
and return again to Israel.
Remembering is about and by God!!!!
Praying asking God to remember us and promises. God loves this! Us coming in agreement and remembering promises He made to us!!! This delights His heart that we remember!!!
Exodus 32:13 Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.[a] You bound yourself with an oath to them, saying, ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars of heaven. And I will give them all of this land that I have promised to your descendants, and they will possess it forever.’”
1 Sam 1:11 And she made a vow, saying, “Lord Almighty, if you will only look on your servant’s misery and remember me, and not forget your servant but give her a son, then I will give him to the Lord for all the days of his life, and no razor will ever be used on his head.”
remembering your servant and giving me a son! He has given us a Son!!!! He remembered us and our need, weakness!
Job cries out to God Job 7:7 remember that my life is but a breath (YahWeh!)
Job cried to God to be remembered and felt he was not! But God!
Following God’s way, obedience from a surrendered heart, He remembers us.
Num 10:9 When you arrive in your own land and go to war against your enemies who attack you, sound the alarm with the trumpets. Then the Lord your God will remember you and rescue you from your enemies.
Creating an intentional environment to remember.
Num 15:39 9 When you see the tassels, you will remember and obey all the commands of the Lord instead of following your own desires and defiling yourselves, as you are prone to do.
What helps you remember who God is, what He is like, what He has done for me.
Journaling
Write a testimony together
Stay in His Word and prayer and ask for help to remember by His Spirit
Psalm 63:6 NIV On my bed I remember you;
I think of you through the watches of the night.
42:6 My soul is downcast within me;
therefore I will remember you
from the land of the Jordan,
the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar.
He is merciful and compassionate remembering our weakness.
Psalm 78:39 Yet he was merciful;
he forgave their iniquities
and did not destroy them.
Time after time he restrained his anger
and did not stir up his full wrath.
39 He remembered that they were but flesh,
a passing breeze that does not return.
Ps 103:13-16 As a father has compassion on his children,
so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;
14 for he knows how we are formed,
he remembers that we are dust.
15 The life of mortals is like grass,
they flourish like a flower of the field;
16 the wind blows over it and it is gone,
and its place remembers it no more.
Remember me Lord
Ps 106:4 Remember me, Lord, when you show favor to your people,
come to my aid when you save them,
The Thief to Jesus, Remember me when you come into your Kingdom!!!!
Luke 23:42-43 Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.[a]”
43 Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”
Not Remembering=Forgetting God
Dis-members-leads to desert, desolation, no fruit, prone to temptation of counterfeit comforts!
Isa 17:10 Why? Because you have turned from the God who can save you.
You have forgotten the Rock who can hide you.
So you may plant the finest grapevines
and import the most expensive seedlings.
Remembering God and whose we are, whose protection we are under, leads to best fruit!!!
Isa 51:12-13 “I, yes I, am the one who comforts you.
So why are you afraid of mere humans,
who wither like the grass and disappear?
13 Yet you have forgotten the Lord, your Creator,
the one who stretched out the sky like a canopy
and laid the foundations of the earth.
Will you remain in constant dread of human oppressors?
Will you continue to fear the anger of your enemies?
Where is their fury and anger now?
It is gone!
Forgetting former things and not dwelling on the past, but remembering God! Right back to Joseph and how he is enduring in God, remembering!
Isa 43:18-19 “But forget all that—
it is nothing compared to what I am going to do.
19 For I am about to do something new.
See, I have already begun! Do you not see it?
I will make a pathway through the wilderness.
I will create rivers in the dry wasteland.
God remembers our sins no more
Isa 43:25 “I—yes, I alone—will blot out your sins for my own sake
and will never think of them again.
Heb 8:12 (Jer 31) And I will forgive their wickedness,
and I will never again remember their sins.”
Remembering who God is, what He is like, what He has done for us past and present, what He has promised, that He is always with us, that He remembers our sins no more.
Remembering what Jesus has done for us:
1 Cor 11:23-26
Remembering, re-members us!
Gen 3:9 God with Adam calling, “where are you”? He’s calling you to remember what has happened and bring it out. And remember why you went where you are. And remember who God has been to you, who He is.