Season 4 Genesis 41:9-13 (Sue Wiberg)
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The Stumbling Block
God’s plan is in order, on time, and precisely carried out.
Two years since the Cupbearer freed and restored by the Grace of God!
Vs 9 Then the cupbearer says, Today. Some versions say, finally, cupbearer speaks. Then he speaks. One day!
He is reminded of his shortcomings, offenses, and sins. What a grace to remind us of our sins.
Today is always a good day to be reminded of our faults, sins, and shortcomings. It’s an invitation to bring it to Jesus because He has overcome all of it!!!
Please make sure you listen to Monday and Joy talking about “today” and repentance and how that leads us to a heart available to God through Jesus. It’s all in the Beatitudes in Matthew 5. Place of falling to our knees when our eyes are opened to see our sin and our need for a Savior!!! It’s right there that the soil of our heart begins to be transformed, the place the Savior enters, and roots grow down. Going through the beatitudes is the place of our heart being fully surrendered to Jesus and transformed to Good Soil in Him that produces good fruit!!!
So the word in vs. 9, “offenses, faults, shortcomings, sins,” really stuck out to me in this section. The Cupbearer remembers his faults, why Pharaoh had been angry with him and put him in prison.
This is where the cupbearer encountered the Rock, Jesus! The Cornerstone. He and the Baker encountered God right there in their faults and shortcomings, being imprisoned by them.
Joseph saw their hearts were struggling, dejected, sad, 40:6-7. They had been broken.
God met them in their sorrow, struggle, and brokenness.
It’s good to remember what God has done, that He has taken our sins and restored us. He doesn’t remember our sins, but it is good for us to remember.
Het or Chet from hata or chata is used for offense, sin, crime, harm, fault, or miss.
There is a target. Once we know that, we can choose to hit it or miss it.
God’s Word gives us the target, and it’s written on our hearts. Cain didn’t have written Word or law, yet sin was crouching at his door in his thoughts of straying from God’s target. Gen 4:7. Sin in verse is a version of hata, hat tat.
God gave a promise in love in response to the first human sin in Gen 3:15. That the offspring of Eve, Jesus, would come to crush the enemy’s head. Come to defeat sin and death that sin has brought.
Through one man, Adam, death came to all humans. Yet through one man, Jesus, grace and the gift of eternal life (death’s defeat) came. Romans 5:12-21
5:6 When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners.
5:15 But there is a great difference between Adam’s sin and God’s gracious gift. For the sin of this one man, Adam brought death to many. But even greater is God’s wonderful grace and his gift of forgiveness to many through this other man, Jesus Christ.
Jesus’ work on the cross is greater than the enemy’s work of sin through humans! Grace is always greater!
Sin is, however, more powerful than humans, where we face our own powerlessness!
Gen 4:7 God tells Cain, sin is crouching at your door, and it desires to have you like a beast before us. God tells Cain it desires to have you, but you must rule and master over it.
Interesting, God created humans in His Image, in His likeness, to rule, reign, and have dominion over the fish, birds, livestock, wild animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground or on the ground. Subdue the earth, bring it under, into bondage. Gen 1:26 and 1:28
Word in 4:7 for rule, master is masal.
Word to rule, have dominion over in 1:26,28 rada.
Similar meanings to reign, have dominion, rule.
In Genesis 2:19-20 God brings the animals to Adam to see what he would name them. Shows the relationship needed with God for Adam to have dominion over the animals. Begins with God.
God gave Cain the same invitation. Sin is crouching at all our doors. We must rule over it. How? The door! Sin is inviting us to go out the door to life on our own! Outside the door is a stumbling block!
God is inviting us to bring all that tempts and has caused us to sin to Him. To go through the door of His Grace, Jesus. To live, abide in Jesus, His house, entered through the door covered by the Blood of the Perfect Lamb!!! As was pictured with the Passover lamb of Exodus 12.
We cannot control sin on our own. Ruling begins with God, just like He designed us for in the Garden!
We are weak. It’s bringing weakness, living in Grace!
2 Cor 12:7-10 The Power of His Grace is always sufficient.
Sin, like the enemy, is subtle, crafty, and shrewd. It sneaks in the back door and dresses as an angel of light. It usually wraps itself in some form of doing something that appears to have a benefit for us or others.
Gen 3:6 The fruit was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and desirable for gaining wisdom; she took some and ate and gave some to her husband.
This seems to be the root of sin, promising something that we think we need or someone else needs, that God must not love us since He is withholding it from us. Something that appears to give life or relief, and yet this always ends up being temporary
Sin
Verb-to break the law of God
Noun-act of breaking the law
Sin crouching at the door desires to have you, to take over your life and control you. Anyone who has fallen to addiction and codependency knows the truth of this statement. Sin crouches at the door to trip us into a dark pit of relying on sin and what it provides. We seem to become powerless in the grips of addiction, codependency, and sin!
Kept going back to Gen 4:7, sin crouching at the door. It’s a stumbling block!
Lev 19:14 Amp You shall not curse a deaf man nor put a stumbling block before the blind, but you shall fear your God [with profound reverence]; I am the Lord.
Isa 57:14 And it will be said, “Build up, build up, clear the way. Remove the stumbling block out of the way [of the spiritual return] of My people.”
Matt 16:23 But Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me, for you are not setting your mind on things of God but on things of man.
Matt 18:7 Woe (judgment is coming) to the world because of stumbling blocks and temptations to sin! It is inevitable that stumbling blocks come; but woe to the person on whose account or through whom the stumbling block comes!
Matt 23 Jesus calls out the Pharisees’ hypocrisy and all their behaviors that will bring woe! Calls them blind over and over.
A stumbling block is the temptation of the enemy to sin, crouching outside the door of God’s house to trip you up. Draw you out of the door and trip you up into a pit of despair, aloneness, darkness, etc.
We walk through the door into spiritual blindness and get tripped!
Jesus flips the script, and the Cornerstone that the builders rejected becomes the stone that trips people up who are going along in the wrong belief. A Stumbling Block.
Cor 1:23, but we preach Christ crucified [a message which is] to Jews a stumbling block [that provokes their opposition], and to the Gentiles foolishness [just utter nonsense].
Isa 28:16-19 Therefore, this is what the Sovereign Lord says: “Look! I am placing a foundation stone in Jerusalem,[d] a firm and tested stone. It is a precious cornerstone that is safe to build on. Whoever believes need never be shaken.[e]
17 I will test you with the measuring line of justice and the plumb line of righteousness. Since your refuge is made of lies, a hailstorm will knock it down. Since it is made of deception, a flood will sweep it away.
18 I will cancel the bargain you made to cheat death, and I will overturn your deal to dodge the grave. When the terrible enemy sweeps through, you will be trampled into the ground.
19 Again and again that flood will come, morning after morning, day and night, until you are carried away.”
Parable of the Tenants are recorded in Matt, Mark, and Luke similarly. The owner of the vineyard rents to farmers, and they plant and produce harvest. The owner sends servants to collect fruit, and tenants beat and kill some.
Finally, he sends a son he loves, saying they will respect him. Tenants kill the heir, thinking they could steal it all. What will the owner do to tenants, kill them, and give the vineyard to others? People were aghast and said, God forbid! Then,
Luke 20:17 Jesus looked at them and said, “Then what does this Scripture mean?
‘The stone that the builders rejected has now become the cornerstone.’[a]
18 Everyone who stumbles over that stone will be broken to pieces, and it will crush anyone it falls on.”
19 The teachers of religious law and the leading priests wanted to arrest Jesus immediately because they realized he was telling the story against them—they were the wicked farmers. But they were afraid of the people’s reaction.
Does this mean He killed everyone on the spot? No, He was the stumbling stone, confronting, offending. Look how the Pharisees respond. Offended!!! Yet, some of these became convicted and were saved!!!!
1 Peter 2:4-10 “A Stone of Stumbling and Rock of Offense.” They stumble because they disobey the Word of God!
Stumbling-proskomma-obastacle in the way, strike foot and stumble. Obstacle over which a soul stumbles, i.e., sin.
Offense-skandalon-trap stick, snare, the thing that offends, a stumbling block. It is most often used in the New Testament for stumbling blocks.
The Jews stumbled and fell face down because they could not keep the law and live up to the conditional promise that if they obeyed and followed God, they would be His Kingdom of priests and Holy Nation.
Exodus 19:5-6 Now if you will obey me and keep my covenant, you will be my own special treasure from among all the peoples on earth; for all the earth belongs to me. 6 And you will be my kingdom of priests, my holy nation.’ This is the message you must give to the people of Israel.”
Rom 9:30-33 What does all this mean? Even though the Gentiles were not trying to follow God’s standards, they were made right with God. And it was by faith that this took place.
31 But the people of Israel, who tried so hard to get right with God by keeping the law, never succeeded. 32 Why not? Because they were trying to get right with God by keeping the law[a] instead of by trusting in him. They stumbled over the great rock in their path. 33 God warned them of this in the Scriptures when he said, “I am placing a stone in Jerusalem[b] that makes people stumble, a rock that makes them fall. But anyone who trusts in him will never be disgraced.”
Praise God for the Stumbling Stone in our path that stops us in our tracks. He confronts us in love! This is love!!!
Hosea 6:1: “Come, let us return to the Lord. He has torn us to pieces; now he will heal us. He has injured us; now he will bandage our wounds.
2 In just a short time, he will restore us so that we may live in his presence.
3 Oh, that we might know the Lord! Let us press on to know him. He will respond to us as surely as the arrival of dawn or the coming of rains in early spring.”
And we are the Living Stones when we repent and believe that we are built up in Him together, held together by the Cornerstone. A firm foundation.
We have to stumble first before we are made into Living Stones.
As Joy said yesterday, contrite=crippled. It’s crushed, broken. We have to be broken by the Stumbling Stone first, then…
Living and abiding in Him, we become little stumbling stones. People will stumble over us when we don’t follow the patterns of this world. When we respond with grace and love instead of offense or confront in love. All of this has to be at His direction and by His Spirit. These will offend.
The Fruit of the Spirit will be stumbling stones to those living by the fruit of the flesh!!!!!
Offense and stumbling block is Skandalon-Scandalous!!!
Eph 2:20 Together, we are his house, built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. And the cornerstone is Christ Jesus himself.
1 Peter 2:4-10 4 You are coming to Christ, who is the living cornerstone of God’s temple. He was rejected by people, but he was chosen by God for great honor.
5 And you are living stones that God is building into his spiritual temple. What’s more, you are his holy priests.[a] Through the mediation of Jesus Christ, you offer spiritual sacrifices that please God. 6 As the Scriptures say, “I am placing a cornerstone in Jerusalem,[b] chosen for great honor, and anyone who trusts in him will never be disgraced.”[c]
7 Yes, you who trust him recognize the honor God has given him.[d] But for those who reject him,
“The stone that the builders rejected has now become the cornerstone.”[e]
8 And, “He is the stone that makes people stumble, the rock that makes them fall.”[f]
They stumble because they do not obey God’s word, and so they meet the fate that was planned for them.
9 But you are not like that, for you are a chosen people. You are royal priests,[g] a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light.
10 “Once you had no identity as a people; now you are God’s people. Once you received no mercy; now you have received God’s mercy.”
Amplified vs 8 “A Stone of Stumbling and Rock of Offense.” This is the Offense that saves and heals! Jesus flips the script on what the enemy intended for harm!!!!
Woes and warning against hypocrisy!
Matt 23
Jesus ends with His heart for them to turn to Him:
37-39 O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones God’s messengers! How often I have wanted to gather your children together as a hen protects her chicks beneath her wings, but you wouldn’t let me. 38 And now, look, your house is abandoned and desolate. 39 For I tell you this, you will never see me again until you say, ‘Blessings on the one who comes in the name of the Lord!’
2 Peter 3:8-10 But you must not forget this one thing, dear friends: A day is like a thousand years to the Lord, and a thousand years is like a day. 9 The Lord isn’t really being slow about his promise, as some people think. No, he is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to be destroyed but wants everyone to repent. 10 But the day of the Lord will come as unexpectedly as a thief. Then the heavens will pass away with a terrible noise, and the very elements themselves will disappear in fire, and the earth and everything on it will be found to deserve judgment.