The sermon 'Keeping The Heart' by Paul Carrington focuses on the biblical story of Joseph as an exemplary model of maintaining a faithful heart amidst affliction. Unlike Solomon, who faltered despite his wisdom and prosperity, Joseph remained steadfast in his faith through betrayal, separation, false accusation, and imprisonment. The sermon emphasizes the importance of 'soul-stabilizing theology,' where believers trust in God's presence and sovereignty, even when circumstances seem dire. Joseph's life illustrates living 'coram Deo,' constantly aware of and seeking to please God. His ability to forgive his brothers, seeing God's hand in his trials, highlights the theme that affliction can lead to spiritual fruitfulness. The sermon encourages believers to keep their hearts with diligence, trusting in God's purpose and presence, which ultimately brings glory to Him.

Good afternoon. It's good to be with you all. And to continue in the series that we began just a few weeks ago on keeping the heart, I would ask that you would open up your Bibles to Genesis 41. And if you recall the last time that we spoke about this subject of keeping the heart, we spent time looking at a bad example. We spent time looking at the life and the fall of Solomon.

And He was the one that had actually penned the words, keep the heart with all diligence. But in the face of prosperity, he ended up falling by degrees, by negligence of his own heart. Well today, this time we're gonna be looking at a good example in the rise of a man by the name of Joseph. And it's true that that few have risen to the heights of Joseph if you go through the pages of Scripture. But from the mountain peak of the dreams he received when he was 17, to the fulfillment of those dreams, he had to pass through, I would say, a deeper valley of affliction than any other, except for our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

In fact, he's the opposite of Solomon in many ways. Everything that he had was removed and taken away from him. And so here's why the lesson of Joseph is so important. First of all, the picture that we see, the foreshadowing of Christ is so beautiful, it's so evident when we go into the story of Joseph. But I think secondly, think about it along the terms that some of you right now are in the valley or in the land of affliction.

And I wanted to ask you, were you aware that keeping your heart in this difficult season brings glory to God like nothing else? And I'm not talking about the fact that you're just afflicted, but how do you go through affliction? And that's what we're going to be talking about today, you know, through long, long ministry. After decades of preaching the gospel, Charles Spurgeon observed that the Lord gets his best soldiers out of the highlands of affliction. And I think that's true if you go down through Scripture, if you look through church history, it's very, I think, similar in that way.

And perhaps you're not in the land of affliction right now. Things are going well, but there seems to be a rule of life since the fall, and that rule of life is that none of us can outrun, none of us can dodge, none of us can duck, none of us can evade affliction. I think someone once said either you're currently in affliction, you've just come out of affliction, or it won't be too long before you're entering into affliction in this life, this veil of tears that we live in. And maybe that's why you open up the Scriptures, it's such a common theme. When you go through and flip through the Word of God, you see this thread of challenge, of affliction all the way through.

In fact, a quarter of the first book of the Bible, Genesis, it's dedicated to the life of Joseph, a man of affliction. And so we're gonna pick up here 13 years after his dreams, if you open up and look at chapter 41, and what we're gonna do is primarily focus on a single verse, which is verse 52. So Joseph has been 13 years in bondage. He's been a slave and now a prisoner and he's been released. He's now married to an Egyptian wife.

And in verse 50 to 52 it says this, And to Joseph were born two sons before the years of famine came, whom Asenath, the daughter of Potipharah, priest of On, bore to him. Joseph called the name of the firstborn Manasseh, for God has made me forget all my toil and all my father's house. And the name of the second he called Ephraim, for God has caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction. Let's pray together. Oh Heavenly Father, we come to you here this afternoon and we give you thanks for your Word.

Lord, your Word is so pure, it's so good, It's such a help to our souls. I don't know what we would do without it, but thank you for preserving it for us, Lord. And I pray that you would help us, Father. You would strengthen those that are currently in the midst of difficulty and affliction, those who are about to enter into it in some form or fashion. Lord, that you would be the sustainer and upholder and the lifter up of our heads.

Lord, we look to you and ask you to help us to keep our hearts with all diligence, oh Lord. Be glorified, we pray help us now. In Jesus' name, amen, amen. And so in his book, Keeping the Heart Flavor, he has a whole section where he goes through various seasons of life, one of them being affliction, But his grand objective all the way through the book, it comes down to really a singular theme that he's really trying to press home. And that theme is why Christians ought to make keeping the heart the great business of their lives.

And that's really my hope and design as we go through this series for myself is to be of that caliber, of that desire to, oh Lord, keep my heart and to want to continuously be kept by God, but also that that diligence that I'm required to do. That's what Proverbs 423 actually says when Solomon pens those words, keep the heart. And what he means, he says, if you look at it from another perspective, above all things that you keep, keep the heart with all diligence, because out of it, guard it, because out of it flow all of the issues of life. And so as we go through these few verses here before us, there's really just three points I want to touch upon. The first one is Joseph's theology and taking a look at how Joseph kept his heart.

And the second thing is how we are tempted to regard men and women like Joseph when we look at their lives. And then finally, what is God doing? What is God doing in affliction? Well, we learned something of Joseph's soul, I would call it soul-stabilizing religion, in the verses before us. In that one little verse, it says, for God has caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction.

And I want you to do something here. I want you to put yourself alongside Joseph as we look at the multiple levels of affliction and suffering that this man went through. How do you keep your heart when you consider all that he went through? And you know the first level of affliction was a really difficult one. He was betrayed.

Betrayal, if there's anything that as a cause for bitterness, betrayal has to be up at the very, very top. Because you remember, he wasn't just captured by these Ishmaelites, right? But he was actually sold, his brothers conspired against him and sold him for 20 shekels of silver. And we need to really kind of deeply consider and enter in to what actually happened to this man, you know, what this meant for this young boy at 17 years old. This unspeakable pain And how do you know it was so painful?

Again, we can look at Joseph and say, well, you know Joseph, of course He was able to handle it. But later on when his brothers are recounting their guilt to each other, Joseph can overhear, he understands Hebrew. He doesn't, they don't know that it's him. And of course they're arguing among themselves and he hears them say this to one another. He says, we saw the anguish of his soul when he pleaded with us and we would not hear.

So this is the first level. He was betrayed by his brothers. But there's another level of suffering and affliction that he went through, and that was the separation from his family at a young age. And you can hardly find a worse situation than Joseph's. He was gone in a moment.

He was in a new world. He was in a new culture. He was among people that spoke an entirely different language, paganism on every side, and it was in part as a part of the culture all the way through. And so he's been betrayed, he's been separated. But thirdly, he then, as he was getting used to life and working and laboring in Potiphar's house, he was then falsely accused.

And you can recall that before Potiphar's wife actually came forward with her accusation, it says in Genesis, so it was as she spoke to Joseph day by day, that he did not heed her to lie with her or to be with her. And this was this idea of the adversary attempting to grind down this man's resolve day by day. But he was somehow, by looking to God, able to stand. And of course, we have betrayal, separation, false accusation. But as things couldn't get possibly worse, he was then cast into prison.

And we never really hear him complain. You don't really read about him complaining, but we remember his final plea. Do you remember when the butler was finally released after Joseph interpreted his dream. And what were Joseph's words to him? He says to the butler, remember me.

Please, please don't leave me here. Do something to get me out of this place that he was in, but it wasn't to be. The Lord had it so that Joseph would have to wait two long years before Pharaoh would be given a dream, and the butler would all of a sudden recall, you know there was a man in prison, I should have remembered this, but I didn't. Two more years. Just think about that.

And so, 13 years of his life consumed by locusts, we would say, an utter waste. Or were they? Right? You have to think about this from perhaps God's perspective. Think about your own life.

Is God absent? Is God wasting time that could be better spent fulfilling my dreams? Is that what God is doing? You see, there's two great influences when we look at Joseph's soul-stabilizing theology that I want to draw our attention to do. And the first one is this, that at every crisis point, what do you read?

But God was with Joseph. And there's nothing more important for us to remember when we're going through affliction. And Joseph was a man that he didn't just give mental assent to this fact Yeah, I know God's with me But but he rested all of his weight on the fact that as we heard this morning God these are the promises God is With me and there would have been times He was a human being that his head would have dipped below the waves with all of the problems, with all of the calamity that had befallen him. But there seemed to be this victorious cry that would come from his heart, God, you are with me, you're guiding me. Somehow I can't see what you're doing, but I'm holding on because I know God is true.

And that's a message that we all need to remember because again, you're either in it, you've come through it, or you're gonna go through it, And you need to take firm hold, not of the theory, but of the reality that God is with you. And He's with you in sickness, He's with you in darkness, in prisonment, in cancer, in death. God is with you. And in Joseph, we really see this beautiful embodiment of what another storm-tossed soul happened to say after years and years of suffering. And she wrote these words, never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.

Her name was Corrie Tenboom, and you've probably heard about her and all that she's went through. Well, that's the first aspect of Joseph's soul-stabilizing theology. He had this understanding that God was with him. But there's something else flowing out of that, not disconnected from that, and it's this concept of corum Deo. If you've heard of this little Latin phrase, what it means, R.C.

Sproul actually called this really the big idea of the Christian life and it's he said it like this, to live coram Deo is to live one's entire life in the presence of God, under the authority of God, in order to give glory to God. It's not so much the idea, I better not do this. Have you ever been in fear, I better not do this because somebody will see me or God will see me? It's not so much that as much as I really want to please the God who is watching me and Therefore I'm gonna conduct myself in this way And so think of it along the lines of when Jesus was speaking on the Sermon of the Mount he he would say when you pray Right or when you fast or when you give your arms do it in a way that's pleasing to God. Don't worry about man seeing, but that God would see, and God who sees in secret will reward you openly.

It's that kind of concept. And so why is this important? Why is this so important? Well, the last time when we looked at the life of Solomon, we saw a man who was somehow able to compartmentalize his life and keep certain religious duties on one side, and then keep other things that he was doing in another compartment of his life altogether. And it's a big question that we want to ask ourselves, what do you do when no one is looking?

Or even a deeper question, when you can get away with it. It's an important question, who are you and who am I? You know, as a child you could ask yourself when you're the only one in the kitchen And there's a plate of freshly baked cookies sitting there on the counter. There's that temptation that comes over us. I remember years ago we were in the kitchen, and I can't remember who it was, myself, and maybe my wife and a couple others, and all of a sudden we're just there and we're hearing, mmm, mmm.

And we're like, what? What's going on? And I went and I looked, and behind the couch, I won't say it was one of the girls, it was one of our boys, and he had a tub of ice cream. He was maybe one or two and he's eating the ice cream. But he didn't get this concept, you know, of being able to be tracked and traced.

And so there he was with the sound effects enjoying his time. But we can be somewhat more sophisticated, can't we? We can go and somehow compartmentalize our life and go and do things that are seemingly in secret but God sees. And we as believers, our main desire and intention should be to please the God that we serve. And so Joseph, what's amazing about him is he didn't give himself allowances because he was suffering or because he was away from the watching eyes of his family Because he understood something that God was watching his days, and even more than that, that he wanted to please his God.

And so, you can see that when Potiphar's wife was coming after him, finally he came and he said those words, How then can I do this great wickedness, committing adultery against Potiphar himself? But he doesn't just end there. He says, how can I do this great wickedness and sin against God? You see that? This is what was stabilizing his soul.

God sees me. I'm away from my family. I'm away from everyone that I know, but I'm not away from God. And this is something that we really need to remember. And so what did Joseph get for his troubles?

What did he get for living a life of integrity and walking uprightly. For all his troubles, he ended up getting a life sentence in prison. Remember, there was no, you're gonna go in for five years. This is basically you're thrown in, in there, and the key is done away with. But even in the prison, he kept his heart with all diligence.

And you notice that. How can you tell? Well, he rose to authority within the prison because of his work ethic. Right? He was there honoring his God.

And it tells you much about how he was looking and viewing affliction. And you notice this pattern of consistency, whether he was a slave or whether he was in the prison. And somehow, when we do get little glimpses of his heart, you see him speaking about the sovereignty of God. It wasn't just a theory because when he spoke to the baker, he says, do not interpretations belong to God? There's no bitterness or anything like that in his heart but an understanding that somehow God is overall.

And the man who wrote the book in the 1600s, Keeping the Heart, his name is John Flavel as I mentioned earlier, And he was a man he was acquainted with with trial. He was a man who was acquainted with great affliction. He was two years younger than John Bunyan. And both men and hundreds of others, they ministered at a time in England called the Great Ejection. And men were basically told, unless you're gonna go this way, you're gonna leave your pulpit.

And so this man, John Flavel, ended up being kicked out or rejected from his church. And John Bunyan, we all know the story of John Bunyan, he went to prison willingly, but John Flavel, he decided, I'm not going to go to prison, I'm going to continue to preach illegally. And so, he was on the run from the long arm of the law for about 20 years. He would go and he would preach in private houses. They'd have to have somebody watching.

He would go and preach out secretly in the woods. There was a time when the authorities came in the midnight. He's preaching at midnight and the authorities come and scatter everyone and a group of the men grabbed John Flaval and escorted him to safety in another part of the woods But he was acquainted with with this difficulty, but in his book Keeping the heart Flaval he asks you to say with him this he says in his writing my father is about a design of love upon my soul. And do I well to be angry with him? All that he does is in pursuance of and in reference to some eternal, glorious ends upon my soul.

It is my ignorance of God's design that makes me quarrel with him. He says to thee in this case, as he did to Peter, what I do thou knowest not now, but thou shall know hereafter." And so here we are, and we see Joseph, when he's finally released, he's not only released, but he's highly exalted, and we hear the words of Pharaoh when Pharaoh says, I am Pharaoh and without your consent no man may lift his head or hand or foot in all the land of Egypt. Now if you're a carnal man And you could think along the lines of what I would do if I was Joseph. What would be your first order of business? I'm gonna march right back to Potiphar's house.

I'm gonna arraign his wife. Maybe I'll take the whole family and make a public spectacle of them, hang them, do whatever, but you don't see that. Or maybe march a troop back to Canaan and arrest his brothers, but you don't see that in the life of Joseph. Instead, what you see in Joseph's life is when you come to the naming of a second son. He says, for God has caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction.

Betrayal, separation, he's gone through loneliness, false accusation, imprisonment. It's been 13, 14, 15 years. But notice something when he says this. He says not that God delivered me from the land, but he says God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction." He's not speaking about, hey, God gave me two sons. That's not what he's speaking about.

He's speaking about something much, much more. And if you take his words and illustrate it, it's this picture of a beautiful, fruitful tree on a plane, but all around it everything is just parched. There's nothing else but this singular tree. God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction. Usually fruitfulness and affliction don't go together, at least in our physical world, but they do go together in God's world, in God's economy.

And isn't this what you see when you see someone going through affliction and they're they're burying it well? You look at them and you say, well, they're not getting their sustenance from the ground around them because there's nothing there. It's parched, it's desert. So their sustenance must be coming from another source altogether. Do you see how God gets the glory when we suffer, when we go through affliction well for His name's sake, it's the only possible source of comfort that God has done this.

And you notice something there, He says, for God has caused me, Right? The one who he's attributing this to, he's not blaming Potiphar's wife, he's not blaming his brothers, but God has caused me to be fruitful. It's this recognition that if it was left up to me, I wouldn't have been able to be fruitful, but God is the one that's doing it. He embodies that song that we sing, More Love to Thee, O Christ. And there's one verse in that song, it says, Let sorrow do its work.

Send grief and pain. Sweet are thy messengers, sweet their refrain when they can sing with me more love o Christ to thee more love to thee more love to thee and so above all things that he guarded You see a man that he guarded his heart. And what was the fruit? Well check out the fruit that came, this issue. So notice that, guard the heart with all diligence, for out of it comes the issues or flows the issues of life.

Well, what is the fruit that flowed out of this? Well, Joseph, he became the means of salvation. He's a type of Christ, but he became the means of salvation for his family, didn't he? But not just his family, but the family that actually betrayed him. But not just his family, he became a savior of sorts for the nation that God was building.

The family and the nation from which Christ himself would eventually come. His life should sound very, very familiar because he's such a vivid type of Christ. There's so many beautiful parallels we can't get into today, but this is just something to really consider. Well, the second thing I wanted to focus on is how are we tempted to regard men like Joseph? Because we can listen to Joseph and say, well, Joseph, of course, that's Joseph.

I'm no type of Christ. Or Daniel, of course he was able to stand. Because he's Daniel. Paul was an apostle. Of course he was able to go through all of these things.

But I want to ask you something. Are you a functional Catholic? And what I mean by that is about two weeks ago I was communicating with a group who does, they own a translation of the Bible in a certain language. And I asked them, we want to use your translation and then take Dr. Beeke's notes and make a study Bible out of it.

Then they said, well, before we agree to that, we need to see a copy of his notes. And I sent them the notes. And then they got back to me a week later and said, we're not going to be able to do this. And I asked, why? Well, because on page 1, 083, Dr.

Beeke said, in a commentary on Ephesians, where Paul greets, sends a greeting to the saints, that Dr. Beeke said that saints are not some special category of Christian, but simply Christians. And he said that this is contrary to what the Catholic Church has taught for centuries upon centuries. And the man who wrote back to me said we cannot allow such an insult against the Catholic Church. But the question I have is Sometimes we can be functionally like that.

We put certain believers, we heard a little bit of that this morning, we put certain believers in a special category. And it somehow absolves us of our responsibility to live up to the calling. The Bible that we have and the words that we have in front of us are meant to to cause us to rise up to the thing that is before us. I'll never be like so-and-so per se, but it doesn't mean that we just say, well, therefore I'm allowed to just live in this way as I go through my suffering and trials. You see, you could say that I'm no brainer, I'm no Margaret Patton, I'm no Susanna Wesley, but the same we heard today, and I'm saying it again, the same soul stabilizing theology is available to us.

Why? Because it's the same God that they worshiped, that we're also worshiping. And when you read men like George Mueller, for example, you know Some people would look at George Mueller and say, what a kind man, he was an amazing man. But you know the whole overriding purpose of his ministry wasn't to feed and clothe orphans? If you read his actual diary, you know what he was trying to do?

Is he was trying to display the trustworthiness of his God so that other people would see God is able to be trusted. That is the entire overriding purpose of his ministry. And you can see, I think even with the Apostle Paul, when the Apostle Paul is writing, he recounts all the things he suffered in 2nd Corinthians. And as though we would say, well of course you're able to do that because of the fact that you're the Apostle Paul. But Paul is able to anticipate that, And he actually writes, he says, who is weak and I am not weak?

He says, who is made to stumble and I do not burn with indignation? I had the same motions within my heart as all of you. This is what he was trying to communicate with them so that we can see the same grace, the same promises, the same God is available for us today. And so we must keep our heart with all diligence, especially in times of affliction and especially in times of uncertainty when there's time or occasion for bitterness against others, or maybe bitterness against the circumstances you find yourself in, maybe when there's long delay, when there's setbacks or changes of plans. You know, a few years ago, I was actually, my brother Mike sent me a study on the life of Apostle Paul, and it was by a man named Pastor Ed Donnelly.

And he asked a question toward the latter end of this, it's like 11 sermons, and he says, have you ever wondered why a third, one-third of the book of Acts involves Paul's imprisonment? Really kind of from chapter 21, I think, to the end. Right? There were so many other events that Luke could have written about. There were so many other things that happened he could have elaborated on.

But at the very height of his ministry, the Apostle Paul is sent. He's in prison for two years in caesarea. And you could ask the question, doesn't God know what he could be doing with the best man that he has to spread the gospel? You know, when I was reading through Joseph's life, again the thing out of everything that stuck out to me as I was going through this, it was that two years. Two years, he interpreted the baker's dream, remember me.

Two years later, oh yeah, there's a guy who can interpret you, but was God not doing something in those two years? You can look at your own life and it may seem something along those lines that nothing's really happening, but God is working. He's doing something. And that's what I want to end with here, this third point, what God is doing. His design, I don't know what he's doing specifically in your life, what sickness, whatever job issue, whatever it is, but one thing you can be sure of is that his design in your life is to make you fruitful in the land of your affliction.

It's for your good and for His glory. And I want to read to us just in chapter 45, the first eight verses here, And it says this, then Joseph, this is after a couple of interactions with his brothers and them not knowing who he is. And it says this, it's kind of like a resurrection, you know, picture here. It says, then Joseph could not restrain himself before all those who stood before him. And he cried out, make everyone go out from me.

So no one stood with him while Joseph made himself known to his brothers. And he wept aloud and the Egyptians in the house of Pharaoh heard it." You could imagine this just sobbing, this racking sob. It's like the dam of emotion burst, but it wasn't with anger. But look at this. Then Joseph said to his brothers, I am Joseph.

Does my father still live? But his brothers could not answer him, for they were dismayed in his presence. And Joseph said to his brothers, Please come near me. So they came near. Then he said, I am Joseph, your brother, whom you sold into Egypt.

But now do not therefore be grieved or angry with yourselves because you sold me here for God sent me before you to preserve life. For these two years the famine has been in the land and there are still five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvesting. And God sent me before you to preserve a posterity for you in the earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So now it was not you who sent me here, but God." And you see here in these verses, this is Joseph's soul-stabilizing theology. God was with me.

God was upholding me. You remember that first night he could say when the Ishmaelite camp my ribs were hurting because of my racking sobs as I tried to reckon with what had just happened my brothers had sold me. You could have imagined the day that I was bought off the slave block when everything was going on around me in different language. I didn't know what was happening. God was with me.

The nights that I shivered in my cell, thinking that my imprisonment would never end, God was with me. The times when the devil whispered in my ear, forsaken. As the days became weeks, and weeks became months, months became years, years became decades of affliction. God was with me. You see his reckoning here.

This is what stabilized his soul that enabled him. Look at what's happening here. You have the afflicted doing what? Comforting his afflictors. You have the one who was made an enemy, embracing those that had punished him in such a deep way.

He has these words like Christ, please come near to me. Do you see that there? And then he also says, but now, do not therefore be grieved or angry with yourselves. He doesn't want them to be angry with themselves for selling him into slavery and making his life a living hell because now it's been 22 years from the time they basically at 17 now he's 39 years of age but there's no bitterness there's no nothing like that here he has something he doesn't say you stole 22 years of my life. Now is payday.

You don't see that here. He's comforting his afflictors. And so I wanna just turn to these final words. You know, it's customary. You're going through the life of Joseph and you go right to 50 verse 20, but there's something else I just want to focus on as we close out and that's the blessing that Jacob gives to his son before he dies.

And Jacob's on his deathbed and he gives a kind of a blessing to some of the sons. Some of the sons are just a summary of what their character is like but to Joseph or about Joseph he says this, the archers have bitterly grieved him, shot at him and hated him, but his bow remained in strength and the arms of his hands were made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob." And I was, I couldn't figure out a better way to put it, so I'm gonna read to you what an old commentator said. He says, look at the startling picture. Here stands the solitary man, ringed all around by his enemies, full of bitter hate. And it says as their arrows are on the string and their bows are drawn to the ear the shafts fly thick and when they have whizzed past him and he can be seen again he stands unharmed grasping his unbroken bow the assault has shivered no weapon has given no wound He has been able to stand in the evil day.

And look, a pair of great, gentle, strong hands are laid upon his hands and arms and strength passes into his feebleness from the touch of the hands of the mighty God of Jacob. So the enemy has two not one to reckon with. By the side of the hunted man stands a mighty figure, and it is his strength, not the mortal's impotence, that has to be overcome. And so that's what we want to remember in this whole concept of keeping the heart when we're in seasons of affliction, that you're not forsaken and that you're not alone. You may feel alone, you may feel forsaken, but it's not true.

There's a pair of great, gentle, strong hands that are upon your hands, the hands of the mighty God of Jacob. And so let the same soul stabilizing truth that Joseph enjoyed and what carried him through be the same thing that helps you to keep your heart in all seasons and and make that the great ambition as John Flavel says make it the great purpose of your life to guard your heart above all things that you guard with diligence in whatever season you're in that God may get the glory because he's doing it for our good and for the glory of his own name so let's pray together Lord we We come to you here this afternoon and we thank you for your goodness. Father, we are grateful that you never leave us. You never forsake us, Lord, that even when it looks like everything is against us, Lord, you are with us. We even read in your word, though my mother and my father forsake me, yet the Lord will take me up.

We thank you for your strong faithfulness, Lord. We give you glory and honor and praise. Thank you for hearing us. Thank you for being with us, Lord, in Jesus' name. Amen.

Amen.