Dealing With Disappointment

Introduction

Life just isn’t fair. My life sure hasn’t turned out the way that I thought it would. I’ve been dealt a bad hand. My dreams aren’t coming true. Things just don’t seem to be going my way at all. Ever said those words? If not audibly, at least said them in your own heart. You ever felt like life just wasn’t turning out the way that you’d hoped and find yourself disappointed, maybe deeply disappointed. I suppose everyone goes through a little bit of that. Sometimes our disappointments in life are over rather insignificant things. I’m disappointed that as a Houston Oiler fan, my football team never did make it to the Super Bowl. As close as they got at times, they never quite did. But in the grand scheme of things, that doesn’t make much difference, does it?

But sometimes our disappointments are far more profound than that. I know a lot of Christian parents whose children grew up and chose not to serve the Lord, and I tell you, that’s just the greatest source of disappointment to them. And that’s something that does matter. Some of us in our lives experience more disappointments than others. Sometimes it does seem that it is unfairly dolled out that some get their unfair share of it. But we all experience. Those moments when it just doesn’t think seem like life is turning out the way we thought it would or should. And if there is an old testament character that could understand that, I think it would have to be Joseph. Be turning, if you will, in your Bibles to Genesis chapter 29.

Joseph was one of the last sons born to Jacob, and he had many of them. His place in that regard is not all that notable. He was not the first son. That would have been Reuben, and so would not have enjoyed the position and the privilege that came with that. Nor was he the son through whom the promise of Abraham would flow. That would have been his brother Judah, so he wasn’t significant in that regard. Yet he would play a pivotal role in the preserving of that promise that God made to Abraham. In fact, what’s interesting about Joseph’s life is if you read the book of Genesis, you will discover that more space is devoted in Genesis to the story of Joseph than to any of the other major characters.

Genesis tells us more about Joseph’s life than it does about Adam or Noah, or for that matter, even Abraham.

To study his life is to discover a remarkable character. Time and time again, Joseph showed himself to be a man of incredible faith in God and of great spiritual strength. And he showed that strength at incredibly difficult moments. I want to tell you this evening, Joseph had some real disappointments in his life. Someone says, Well, that’s no big deal, everybody does. And you’re right about that. But I tell you, what makes him particularly impressive is the nature of the disappointments that he suffered. And the fact that he suffered not just one or two, but just it seemed repeatedly was disappointed in life. For a good period of his early life, it seems like he couldn’t make any progress without being hit with some big setback. The remarkable thing is that through it all he persevered as a man of God.

And I think in that sense, teaches us something about what we need to do and how we need to respond when things just don’t work out the way that we hope they were. And so I’d like you to spend some time with me taking a closer look at the life of Joseph and particularly looking with me at some of the disappointments that he faced in his life. And some things maybe that we need to take away and learn from that. If we could start the story of his life, I guess his disappointments really began at the very beginning. If you’ll be looking at Genesis, I think I told you chapter 39 or chapter 29. We’re going to get there. But really, the disappointments began early on with his family life.

1. A Disappointing Family Life

Joseph was raised in what could only be characterized as a disappointing family life. In fact, I think his father, Jacob, may well have been able to write a book on what a dysfunctional family was all about. If ever there is a dysfunctional family in the Bible, it was the family of Jacob. Now, maybe it’s not fair to lay all the blame for that at Jacob’s feet. If we go to Genesis 29, what you’ll find is that early on there was bitterness and jealousy between his wives. And I think really, probably his father-in-law Laban deserves at least some of the blame for that trouble. See, when Jacob was a young man, he kind of had a fond affection for one of Laban’s daughters, the younger, more attractive daughter, Rachel.

In fact, he worked for seven years to win the right to marry Rachel. The only problem is on the wedding night, his father-in-law pulled a fast one on him. And he wind up marrying him off first to the older, less attractive daughter, Leah. And then when the plot was discovered, well, he was allowed to marry Rachel as well. I want you to think about that, though. Think about the family situation that that creates.

And only by trickery wind up being married to the older of the two. Boy, I bet that made for some interesting family nights together, don’t you imagine? In Genesis 29 and verse 30, it says, So Jacob went in to Rachel also, and indeed he loved Rachel more than Leah, and he served with Laban for another seven years. Now, verse 31, now the Lord saw that Leah was unloved, and he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren. Not only was it a difficult situation, but clearly Jacob made no secret about his favoritism. Leah knew that she wasn’t loved, not like Rachel was. And as a result, it created bitterness and jealousy in that family. Problem didn’t get any better when they began to bear children, or perhaps better said, when Leah began to bear children.

Verse 30 tells us that she was able to have, or verse 31 tells us that she was able to have children, but Rachel was barren, and that only added to the tension and the turmoil. If you’ll turn over to Genesis chapter 30 and verse 1, it says, Now when Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, she became jealous of her sister, and she said to Jacob, give me children, or else I die. Leah was just having son after son after son for her husband. Rachel could bear no children. And for a Hebrew woman, that was, well, that was just the worst dishonor. And so you have that added to the to the family turmoil that already existed. What I’m trying to get you to see is that there were dysfunctional family problems in the home of Jacob long before Joseph ever entered the scene.

But it didn’t get any better when he came along. Because we learn in chapter 30 that Rachel did begin to have children, Joseph being the first of those children. And when that happened, the problem in the family only became worse. If you’ll turn over to Genesis chapter 37 now.

And because he was the son of his old age, just like Jacob had shown favoritism for Rachel, so he showed favoritism toward her child. Verse 3 of Genesis 37 says, Now Israel, or Jacob, loved Joseph more than all his sons, because he was the son of his old age. And he made him a varied colored tunic. It was bad enough that in his heart, Jacob felt a greater love for Joseph than his other sons. What made matters worse is that he made no secret of it. In fact, he made outward expressions of it. How do you think that’s going to go over in this family? Where already the bitterness and the jealousy has trickled down to the children. There’s already been the infighting between the mothers, between the wives of Jacob.

And now that son comes along, Joseph comes along, and oh, he’s the special one. And he’s given special treatment by his father. You think that’s going to go over very well? Not at all. Look at verse 4. It says, and his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers. Now let’s just stop for a moment. Number one, the kids knew it. They could see it. How did they respond? It said, and so they hated him and could not speak to him on friendly terms. There was bitterness in that family because of Jacob’s special treatment of Joseph. You read on there in chapter 37, things don’t get any better starting in verse 5 when Joseph begins to have dreams. This is where I kind of start wondering about Joseph’s intelligence a little bit, at least as a 17 year old kid.

Because he started having these dreams about that in essence envision his brothers one day bowing down to him. That’s one thing to have those dreams. But what Joseph does is he runs, and guess who he tells about it? His brothers. I’ve got to wonder about that. What was he thinking, or was he not? Well, let’s just say that the dreams didn’t sit well with the brothers. Verse 8 of chapter 37 says, then his brother said to him, Are you actually going to reign over us? Or are you really going to rule over us? You’ve got to be kidding if you think we’ll ever bow the knee to you. We need to be careful when we say never. It says, so they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words.

Verse 2 of chapter 37 tells us about Joseph bringing back an evil report about his brothers to his fathers. And so that adds to all of the problems and the unhappiness in that family. And again, verse 4 tells us what it was like. They couldn’t even speak to each other on friendly terms. Someone says, that’s no big deal. That sounds like my children. That sounds like my house some days. And you know what? I have to confess, it sounds like my house some days too. But listen, folks, it runs a lot deeper than that. This isn’t just the petty infighting that goes on in all families. But a deep-seated hatred. In fact, in Genesis 37 and verse 12, Jacob sends Joseph to check on the welfare of his older brothers.

And when he finds them, or as he’s coming upon them, verse 18 says that they plot to kill him. Look with me at Genesis 37 and verse 18. It says, And when they saw him from a distance, and before he came close to them, they plotted against him to put him to death. And they said to one another, here comes this dreamer. They didn’t forget about those dreams. It says, Now then come and let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits, and we will say, A wild beast devours him, devoured him. Then let us see what will become of his dreams. Yeah, Joseph is if you’re dead, it’s going to be hard for us to bow down to you. Oh, folks, this was a deep seated resentment and hatred for their brother.

It would only be the intervention of the older brother Reuben that would save Joseph’s life on this occasion. But he was spared only for the moment. When we get on down to verse 25, we find they cook up another plot. It says, then they sat down to eat a meal. Now, I want you to stop right there. They had thrown their brother into a pit, plotting how they were going to get rid of him, and then they all go, and what do they do? They sit down and have supper. They’re sitting around eating and chatting while their brothers in a pit. Does that tell you something about how they felt about each other? It says, and as they raised their eyes and looked, behold, a caravan of Israelites was coming from Gilead with their camels bearing aromatic gum and balm and myrrh on their way to bring them down to Egypt.

And Judah said to his brothers, What profit is it for us to kill our brother and cover up his blood? Come, let us sell him to the Ismaelites, and let us not lay our hands on him, for he is our brother, our own flesh, and his brothers listen to him. Then some Midianite traders passed by, so they pulled him up and lifted Joseph out of the pit and sold him to the Ismaelites for twenty shekels of silver, and they brought Joseph into Egypt. Imagine that. Judah speaking up to his brother and saying, you know what, guys, it’s silly for us just to kill him. There’s no profit in that. We could sell him. And make some money off of it. And he’d be gone. We’d be rid of him.

And you know, that’s exactly what they did. They sold their own brother into slavery. Can you imagine? What that says to us about the nature of family life in the home where Joseph grew up. Well, I don’t imagine they spent a lot of warm, fuzzy evenings all gathered around enjoying the fellowship of family. What an utter disappointment Joseph’s family turned out to be. Can we agree on that? He knew something about being disappointed with family. And so do some of us. I mean, probably very few of us, if any, have gone through the kind of struggles, the depth of disappointment that Joseph faced with his families, but nonetheless, families can be disappointed, can’t they? Sometimes men and women go into marriage with this fairy tale image of what marriage is going to be like, don’t they?

I think especially young women tend to do that. But it doesn’t always turn out that way, does it? It’s not always the fairy tale that we envision. In fact, sometimes marriage is just hard work and struggles. And some couples have to go through a lot of struggles, and perhaps it just never seems like we ever get to the point that we hoped it would be. It just never is what we thought it would be. And we’re disappointed. Ever felt that way about your marriage? Or maybe we’re disappointed with the way our kids turned out. Maybe we tried in raising them to convince them that they needed to love God and serve God. And when they got up and out of the home and got out on their own, they chose a different path and they rejected God.

And listen, I’ve seen that just rip out the heart of some godly parents. And we look at our kids not serving God, and we’re disappointed. Or maybe as a child we look back on our home growing up, and maybe maybe it was a little bit like Joseph’s. Maybe we didn’t have very good parents, and maybe our parents did cruel and abusive things to us, or maybe it just wasn’t a good, godly home life. And we think about all that we missed, and we look back on our childhood, and we’re disappointed. Joseph could say, I know something about that. Because his family life to him was a great disappointment. But I’d say what Joseph was going to discover is that life is filled with those kinds of disappointments because it didn’t stop with this family.

2. The Disappointment of Life’s Setbacks

I want to tell you secondly, if you’ll be looking at Genesis 39, that Joseph had to learn something about the disappointment of life’s setbacks.

Remember those Midianite traders to whom his brother sold him? Genesis 39 and verse 1, we learned that they took Joseph down into Egypt where he was sold to an officer in the army of Pharaoh named Potiphar. Genesis 39 and verse 1 says, Now Joseph had been taken down to Egypt, and Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the bodyguard, bought him from the Ismaelites who had taken him down there? It says, and the Lord was with Joseph. So he became a successful man. And he was in the house of his master, the Egyptian. Now his master saw that the Lord was with him, and how the Lord caused all that he did to prosper in his hand. So Joseph found favor in his sight and became his personal servant.

And he made him overseer over his house, and all that he owned he put in his charge. And it came about that from the time he made him overseer in his house, and over all that he owned, the Lord blessed the Egyptian’s house on account of Joseph. Thus the Lord’s blessing was upon all that he owned in the house and in the field. So he left everything he owned in Joseph’s charge. And with him there he did not concern himself with anything except the food which he ate. Now Joseph was handsome in form and in appearance. I wouldn’t want to be a slave under any circumstances. But if I had to be, I’d like to have Joseph’s position, wouldn’t you? He did well for himself in the house of Potiphar.

He showed himself to be responsible and a hard worker, and Potiphar came to trust him, and the more he worked for him and saw the hand of the Lord at work in his life, and boy, there’s a lot to be preached there, folks, about how is it that Potiphar came to understand that it was God who was with him and caused him to prosper. Joseph became so reliable that he in essence became the personal assistant of Potter. Everything in the house was under his oversight and under his control. With him in charge, it said Potiphar didn’t worry about anything. Joseph had become his most trusted and relied, lot relied upon, sir. Finally, after such a rough family life, things were starting to look up. Finally, his life was starting to turn around.

After all the disappointments, things were starting to look good for Joseph in Egypt.

You know what that means. When that roller coaster’s headed up and it’s about getting to the top of the hill, what’s the only direction left to go? Someone said to me one time, David, beware when you’re on top of the hill and everything’s great. I said, Why? Because there’s only one direction to go. And old Joseph got nailed with another great disappointment. He hadn’t learned something about life setbacks. Did you catch that little interesting note at the end of verse 6? Where it says, Now Joseph was handsome in form and in appearance. Joseph wasn’t that little 17-year-old kid anymore that had been sold into slavery. He was developing into a fine, handsome young man. And his appearance did not go unnoticed by the wife of Potiphar.

She was attracted to him. And we’re going to talk more about this story in a later lesson. But to spice it to say for tonight that what she did is that she pursued him and propositioned him to commit adultery with her. And like a man of God, he resisted her advances. She did the right thing. And he got nailed for it. When he refused her advances, she accused him of trying to rape her. And as a just as a mere result of her accusation, he was stripped from his position in Potiphar’s house, lost all the privileges that went along, all the advancement that he’s made, and he wound up worse off than when he started. He was thrown into prison. Isn’t that just the way life is sometimes?

Just when it seems like we’re getting ahead and things are coming together, we get nailed with some setback. I remember when Heidi and I first got married. Y’all know how it is when you’re just starting out. Everything in our apartment, and I mean it was this little bitty old thing. We thought it was huge because we’d been living in a dorm room for two years. We were in this little little apartment, everything in it, somebody’d given to us. And we just, together with our two incomes, just were doing what we could to get by. Y’all remember those early years. But we were doing okay. Three months since we got married. She calls me up at work and says, Well, my boss came in and said, they’re going to have to lay me off.

Wham. That was a setback. I think a lot of emotions strike us at that moment. I was scared to death, first of all. I don’t know how we were going to make ends meet. Angry. Why did they hire her four months ago if they’re going to have layoffs? But you know how that goes. Life is like that sometimes. You ever been trying financially, struggling to get yourself out of debt? And just about the time it seems like you’re about to do that, the transmission goes out on the car. Happens to churches. Sometimes it seems like just when we get our act together and things are getting better and we’re starting to do things for the Lord and things are cruising right along, wham, we’re hit with some problem.

3. The Disappointment of People Who Let You Down

Some trouble erupts that threatens to derail everything. Joseph could say to us, I understand what that’s like. He understood the disappointments that come with the setbacks we encounter in life. But you know what Joseph would discover? Is just when it seems like you’ve gotten hit once and then twice, that’s not always the end of it. Because Joseph also had to learn about the disappointment of people who let you down, people that you’re counting on that let you down. After being thrown into jail, Joseph once again showed his resilience. In fact, really, he kind of turned things around in jail just like he did in the house of Potiphar. If you look at Genesis 39 and verse 21, it said, But the Lord was with Joseph and extended kindness to