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Living with excellence
- it’s much more about building character that achieving success.
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Scientific excellence – Blaise Pascal
Scientific excellence – stephen hawking etc
- multiply disabled from any standpoint, but within that failing body is a steely determination to understand the universe. We do not know his voice, only the synthesised output from his communication machinery
- What makes him different?
Literary excellence – Nathan Filer & Costa prize.
- A mental health nurse spent time learning how to write, wrote his story and won a prestigious prize
- What makes him different?
What does spiritual excellence look like?
- Joseph suffered at the hands of his brothers
- went through horrendous experiences, but still
Joseph
What made this man live with such spiritual excellence?
Baptism indicates a desire for spiritual excellence.
It is all to d with behaviour – what I do? Yes, but only in part.
Is it all to do with how I feel – my attitudes – yes, in part but that’s not the whole story.
Suppose you want to get to 21 Upper Gardener Street in Brighton – and you don’t have a sat-nav. But you do have a map – and that (you assume) is going to be really useful.
But suppose the map you’re holding actually has a major printing error. The cover says “Brighton” but the roads inside are actually the streets of Dover. What would you do?
You might work on your behaviour—you could try harder, be more diligent, double your speed. But all your trying will get you to the wrong place faster.
You might work on your attitude—you could think more positively. You still wouldn’t get to the right place, but perhaps you wouldn’t care. Your attitude would be so positive, you’d be happy wherever you were.
The point is, you’d still be lost.
The fundamental problem has nothing to do with your behaviour or your attitude. It has everything to do with traversing the right spiritual map.
Seeing what is happening around you and where you’re going in your life from God’s point-of-view. When you see God in the stuff of life – whether it’s happy or sad, easy or painful – everything changes.
Being a Christian, knowing God personally, gives you a different map to work with.
That’s why a Baptismal service like this is so important. For one man is declaring “I want my life to be directed by God’s map, not my own!”
Luke isn’t going to be perfect (I couldn’t stand that!)
(Back to our Illus) If you have the correct map of Brighton, then diligence becomes really important, and when you encounter frustrating obstacles along the way, then attitude can make a real difference. But the most important requirement of living with spiritual excellence is having the right map.
What was Joseph’s spiritual map – the map that enabled him to live with spiritual excellence.
On Tables >>>
Talk about something that’s gone wrong recently – what was it, how did it make you feel and what (if anything) did you do about it?
What was it that made Joseph a man of excellence?
He did not bemoan his fate
recap story (ch 37)
he has a choice – say ‘I’m the victim please help me’ or ‘I’m capable, responsible under God for my actions and reactions. I will act without being asked.”
- If he had said “I’m the victim here” these things could have happened >>> angry with his new masters
- disobedient – make life difficult for them
- complaining
But because he said ‘I’m capable, responsible under God for my actions and reactions.’
Character is defined by how you respond to people who oppose you.
Now Joseph had been taken down to Egypt. Potiphar, an Egyptian who was one of Pharaoh’s officials, the captain of the guard, bought him from the Ishmaelites who had taken him there.
2 The Lord was with Joseph so that he prospered, and he lived in the house of his Egyptian master. 3 When his master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord gave him success in everything he did,
He bloomed where he was planted.
God has put you where you are for a reason! So bloom where you’re planted
We believe that living with excellence in God’s eyes will always lead to personal success and happiness. Jospeh’s life tells us that isn’t a genuine connection!
he took responsibility for the man he was
4 Joseph found favour in his eyes and became his attendant. Potiphar put him in charge of his household, and he entrusted to his care everything he owned. 5 From the time he put him in charge of his household and of all that he owned, the Lord blessed the household of the Egyptian because of Joseph. The blessing of the Lord was on everything Potiphar had, both in the house and in the field. 6 So Potiphar left everything he had in Joseph’s care; with Joseph in charge, he did not concern himself with anything except the food he ate.
Whenever it was presented to him, he assumed responsibility
e.g. Potiphar’s court – he sees that Joseph acts responsibly and gets on well with people – so he trusts him with his household organisation
Then Jospeh is promoted – and gets to oversee Potiphar’s money and possessions.
Spiritual excellence is defined by how we live when nobody is looking.
This is a true re-telling of what a man said while talking to his pastor one day.
“I’m in London on a business trip, I have some free timeand I’m walking through the city when suddenly I see a cinema that’s showing a porno movie. 3D. I’m alone, I’m lonely. No-one is looking, and something inside me says ‘Do it!’ In less than a minute I’m standing in a queue behind other guys waiting to buy a ticket.
“All kinds of rationalisations go through my mind. I’ve never seen a movie like this before. It can’t hurt anyone when you’re this far away from home. And who is going to find out anyway?!
And then an old song we used to sing in church begins to play in my mind ‘I would be true, for there are those who trust ,e, I will be true for there are those who care’
You have to picture this: the queue is moving now, one side of my breain is telling me to do it, and the other side is singing this song louder and louder.
I buy the ticket. And go to take my seat. But the song is so lou loud now that I can’t hear anything else. How do you beat an ear-worm like that song?!
So I finally turn round. Walk out the door and rip up the ticket. Wasted money, but a reasonably clean soul. I’m really glad I didn’t go in.”
(see Gordon MacDonald “When me think private thoughts” p200)
That’s what made Joseph stand out from the crowd. You could trust him to act wisely and well, to act honestly and ethically even when you weren’t watching
He closed the door on temptation 6b-19
This is where the incident about the man and the porno movie gets into Genesis!
Now Joseph was well-built and handsome, 7 and after a while his master’s wife took notice of Joseph and said, ‘Come to bed with me!’
a brazened attempt to seduce him
8 But he refused.
Now why did he refuse?
Of course it all depends on Potiphar’s wife! If she was an obese, cantankerous old hag this would be a relatively straightforward temptation to resist. But let’s give her the benefit of the doubt and assume that to resist her advances was something Joseph really had to fight for
Here’s his reason:
‘With me in charge,’ he told her, ‘my master does not concern himself with anything in the house; everything he owns he has entrusted to my care. 9 No one is greater in this house than I am. My master has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?’
If I go to bed with you the trust we’ve built between us will go out of the window.
It’s what I do when no-one is looking that really matters!
10 And though she spoke to Joseph day after day, he refused to go to bed with her or even to be with her.
11 One day he went into the house to attend to his duties, and none of the household servants was inside. 12 She caught him by his cloak and said, ‘Come to bed with me!’ But he left his cloak in her hand and ran out of the house.
I’m sure he was tempted to say ‘Oh just this once’ and get her off his back (so to speak!)
But then the kind of woman she is comes out:
13 When she saw that he had left his cloak in her hand and had run out of the house, 14 she called her household servants. ‘Look,’ she said to them, ‘this Hebrew has been brought to us to make sport of us! He came in here to sleep with me, but I screamed. 15 When he heard me scream for help, he left his cloak beside me and ran out of the house.’
16 She kept his cloak beside her until his master came home.
(sneaky!)
17 Then she told him this [cock-n-bull] story: ‘That Hebrew slave you brought us came to me to make sport of me. 18 But as soon as I screamed for help, he left his cloak beside me and ran out of the house.’
Modesto manifesto
Modesto is a small town in California, USA. But something very significant happened there in the middle of the last century.
Billy Graham is arguably the world’s greatest evangelist. Millions of people have followed JC because of his speaking and his organisation. Remarkably, the Billy Graham organisation has never been dogged with financial or sexual scandal of any sort. – It all comes down to that single town.
Graham and his friends were just starting to get involved in evangelistic meetings and were becoming well-known. At that time, many travelling evangelists were much more common than today, but many of them fell into sin . They were dishonest with money, got hooked up in sexual stuff outside marriage, or went around criticising other evangelists or churches.
Billy Graham and his friends agreed
1. Money
It was common practice among evangelists to put a lot of emotion and flourish into taking love offerings. This could bring unnecessary criticism – and temptation. The men vowed not to emphasize the offering. To avoid criticism they would always have the local campaign committees oversee the offerings and disbursements of funds – they would accept a straight salary regardless of how high the offerings were.
2. Immorality
Religious leaders especially those who traveled were regularly falling to this temptation. The men agreed continually to pray for God to guard them from it. They also set up some rules to follow. They would never allow themselves to be alone with women – lunches, counselling sessions, or riding in cars to auditoriums or airports. And they would always get their hotel rooms close together as another safeguard.
3. Exaggeration
The phrase ‘evangelistically speaking’ has been coined to label exaggerated figures of the number attending meetings or the number saved. The men vowed not to fall to this practice. If numbers were mentioned they were the ones generated by the local police, fire departments, or arena managers.
4. Criticism.
Often evangelists would criticize local pastors and churches from pulpits. The men vowed not to do this, nor would they ever criticize pastors who openly criticized them.
(see Discipleship Journal, Issue 84, Nov/Dec 1994, Page 45)
This is spiritual excellence looked like for them
Some of us may want to take those four things to heart >>>
What do you think spiritual excellence might look like today? Talk about things you could put in place that might help you live with spiritual excellence.
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He accepted unfairness and hardship as part of life v19-23
19 When his master heard the story his wife told him, saying, ‘This is how your slave treated me,’ he burned with anger. 20 Joseph’s master took him and put him in prison, the place where the king’s prisoners were confined.
But while Joseph was there in the prison, 21 the Lord was with him; he showed him kindness and granted him favour in the eyes of the prison warder. 22 So the warder put Joseph in charge of all those held in the prison, and he was made responsible for all that was done there. 23 The warder paid no attention to anything under Joseph’s care, because the Lord was with Joseph and gave him success in whatever he did.
We don’t like pain!
We feel that God is unfair when it comes our way – but not Joseph.
He was imprisoned unjustly (injustice)
His master believed his wife’s lie instead of Joseph’s truthful telling of events.
He was the victim of someone else losing their control
Potiphar ‘burned with anger’ and in a fit of rage sent Joseph to the dungeon.
- The prison was ‘the house of the captain of the guard’ probably not the worse prison in the land, but nasty, nonetheless
How do you feel when you lose out on something that isn’t your fault and is beyond your control.
It’s a natural part of life
It would be easy to say ‘it’s not fair’ – (it isn’t) but what dowe do with that sense of unfairness?
You don’t need to tell God you have a big problem, you need to tell your problem you have a big God!
Don’t give up!
Peshawar church bombing 22nd Sept 2013
Shaloom Naeem <ppt>
Teenage Christian Shaloom went to church of the morning of the attack with his entire immediate family and returned with no-one.
Is father, mother ans sister were all killed but Shaloom’s faith remained strong and he is encouraging his fellow Christians to continue to attend church. He said “although my entire family is dead I am not afraid to go to church. We should thank God for his great love”
Shaloom’s father wanted his son to become a university professor one day. Shaloom hopes to fulfil his father’s dream.
Pray >>>
