Lose the Weight - 1
Of Your Past
January 7, 2007
Pastor Paul W Newell

“I could never lose the weight...I’ve tried before...I’m just big boned...” Make all the excuses you want, but there comes a time when it’s time to lose the weight and you’re not turning back.

For my friend, Rich, it was a heart attack while on vacation in Tahoe. We could pretty much match each other donut for donut at men’s meetings to that point, but after the heart attack I never saw Rich with a donut again. He was determined to put his weight behind him...and I don’t mean his behind.

As we head into the New Year all of us are carrying weight we need to get rid of. Now, don’t be offended, because I’m not referring to physical weight (though I’m working on that part as well!). What’s I’m referring to is the kind of weight that the Bible refers to in the New Testament book of Hebrews:

“...let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up.
And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.   Hebrews 12:1 (NLT)

Over the next few weeks I want us to take off some weight and this morning as we worship in the first day of the New Year, it’s a great time to LOSE THE WEIGHT OF OUR PAST.

Listen to this verse from the first book in the Bible, Genesis:

“During this time, before the first of the famine years, two sons were born to Joseph and his wife, Asenath, the daughter of Potiphera, the priest of On. Joseph named his older son Manasseh, for he said, “God has made me forget all my troubles and the family of my father.” Joseph named his second son Ephraim, for he said, “God has made me fruitful in this land of my grief.”  Genesis 41:50-52

WOW! Those seem like some pretty strange names for your boys. I’m going to name the first one Forgetful and the other one Fruitie. (Boy, I would hate to have hung with those two in the school yard!).

Maybe the background to this part of the story would help.

Joseph is now third in command in all of Egypt, the most powerful nation in the world at that time. He didn’t just happen to get there, Joseph’s path to chapter forty of Genesis is tough (and that’s an understatement).

Joseph started out as the apple of his father’s eye. He was literally his father’s favorite, which wasn’t necessarily an great place to be considering he had ten other brothers who were all ranchers – a pretty tough bunch.

None of the brothers liked Joseph and when the opportunity came, they basically kidnapped him and sold him to a bunch of slave traders on their way to Egypt.

Once in Egypt Joseph was sold to a wealthy business man with a hot wife. Mrs. Potipher was not only quite a looker, she was also a “lookee”...and she was looking a Joseph.

The Bible tells us that Joseph impressed Potipher so much that he made Joseph ruler over his whole household. He was CEO of Potipher enterprises and had access to everything; everything that is but Potipher’s wife. The story is long, so here’s the short version. Mrs. Potipher wanted Joseph, Joseph wasn’t buying and ran. He was falsely accused of rape which Mr. Potipher knew was a lie, but in order to save face – he had Joseph thrown into prison.

It was in prisons through another series of events that Joseph impressed two of the Pharaoh of Egypt’s servants. Through God’s guidance Joseph helped these two servants by interpreting their dreams and eventually word of Joseph’s ability got back to Pharaoh who was also having problems his dreams. Joseph’s intervention so impressed Pharaoh that he made Joseph 3rd in command of all of Egypt as it prepared for an upcoming famine (Pharaoh’s dream).

Because of Joseph’s wisdom and direction Egypt was saved from a great depression because Joseph lead them to save in advance of the famine.
That’s where we pick up the story in chapter forty-one of Genesis.

“...before the arrival of the first of the famine years...” (41:50)

It’s important to learn the lesson here: God often uses crisis (famine) to bring blessing.

God was going to use a crisis in Joseph’s life to bring about a huge blessing, not only for his life, but for millions of others.

That’s how God works. We see the events in our life, especially in our past, as terrible, horrible events; some of them were and are. But God often uses crisis to bring blessing and that’s just what is going to happen next in Joseph’s life. Keep in mind the names of his two boys – Forgetful and Fruitee, I mean Manasseh and Ephriam, we’ll come back to these guys in a few minutes.

The first years of the famine began. Joseph has lived in Egypt for years and has pretty much forgotten the cruelty of his brothers and the supposed neglect of his father for not coming to find him. (His brothers had lead Joseph’s dad to believe he was dead.)

But now Joseph’s past comes riding into Egypt and it would be impossible to ignore it any more. What would he do? Would be use the tragedy of his past as an excuse to do evil in his present?

If we were to take time to read the next few chapters we would learn that Joseph plays a sort of truth or dare game with his brothers who do not realize that this Egyptian who is dealing with them is their brother.

He accuses them of being spies. He arrests them and throws them into prison for three days. He then tells them that he is going to keep one of the brothers and the rest can leave – but they have to return with the youngest brother to prove the story they told him is true.

There are more details, but the end of the story is that the brothers go home, eventually return to Egypt with the youngest brother and Joseph eventually reveals to his brothers who he really is.

This would have been a great time for vengeance and retribution, but instead listen to Joseph’s words...

“I am Joseph!” he said to his brothers. “Is my father still alive?” But his brothers were speechless! They were stunned to realize that Joseph was standing there in front of them. “Come over here,” he said. So they came closer. And he said again, “I am Joseph, your brother who you sold into Egypt. But don’t be angry with yourselves that you did this to me, for God did it. He sent me here ahead of you to preserve your lives...God has sent me here to keep you and your families alive so that you will become a great nation. Yes, it was God who sent me here, not you!” (Genesis 45:3-5)

Did you catch all of that? Joseph had the power, ability to destroy these people from his past, see vengeance, but instead he tells them that it really wasn’t them – it was God who orchestrated the entire series of seemingly unfortunate events.

Joseph was about to lose the weight of his past and allow God to bless his present and future.

How did he do it? Was Joseph that special? Was he any different than you or I?

Now here’s where the boys (Manasseh and Ephraim) fit into this mix...

IN THE MIDST OF OUR OWN EGYPT EXPERIENCES...IN THE MIDDLE OF FACING THE HURTS AND FAILURES OF OUR PAST...GOD WANTS US TO HAVE BOTH A MANASSEH AND A EPHRIAM EXPERIENCE.

• God wants us to forget, let go of the past. We all need a Manasseh moment, maybe a lot of Manasseh moments. He wants us to learn how to forget it.
• God wants us to be fruitful even while we are suffering. He wants us to have Ephraim experiences – blessings even during the hardships. – sometimes because of the hardships!

How did Joseph do it? How was he able to lose the weight of his past?

Two things...

FIRST, JOSEPH LOOKED FORWARD – NOT BACK!

We must look forward and leave the pain of the past – in the past.

It may be that your present seems so black because your vision is clouded too much by your past. That’s how Joseph’s father “saw it”. Back in Genesis chapter forty-two:

“Everything is going against me!” (Genesis 42:36)

Jacob was simply reliving his past and blaming not only his past but everyone in it for his troubles. It’s not that he wasn’t justified in blaming all that stuff and those people – it’s just that it didn’t help.

You may be perfectly justified in blaming your parents, your spouse, your kids, or a whole horde of others for the past stuff in your life – but in reality none of that is going to help your present!

Sure others did a lot of bad things to Joseph in his past, but God also did some things – and all of those things were good.
Joseph let God take care of the people in his past and left the past they caused back there with them.

Romans chapter twelve in the New Testament says it this way:

“Never pay back evil for evil to anyone. Do things in such a way that everyone can see you are honorable...
never avenge yourselves. Leave that to God...” Romans 12:17-19

Here’s the point: You can’t move forward if you’re facing backwards.

Focus is everything and we need to be focused on where we are going, not were we’ve been.

“Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I strain to reach the end of the race
and receive the prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us up to heaven.” Philippians 3:13-14

You’ve got to leave the past pain in the past. So how is that possible?

Denial doesn’t work. You can’t just say it didn’t happen – it did. You can’t just avoid your past – it always comes riding back in – often when things seem to be going their best – opps, there’s my past again, there’s all that pain again.

Here’s the answer: You don’t deny your past pain – you reframe it.

SECOND, JOSEPH REFRAMED HIS PAST  (50:20)

We must reframe you past from God’s perspective.

Look at Genesis 50:20:

“As far as I am concerned, God turned into good what you meant for evil.”

Man, that’s powerful. They may have meant to hurt me. They may have been evil and acted incredibly hurtful to me. The worst hurt of all: They might have hurt me and not even known or cared that they hurt me...but God meant it for His good.

God always gets the last word and He takes even the bad that people do and turns it around for His glory!

There is a corollary to this in the New Testament:

And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. Romans 8:28

God gets the last word.

Did you notice Joseph’s first words?

“As far as I am concerned...”

You know, it’s one thing to know that God is in control and that He takes even the evil of others and can turn it around in our lives...it’s one thing to know that, it’s another thing to actually BELIEVE and ACCEPT IT as a reality in your life!

For Joseph – that was all that mattered... “As far as I am concerned...”

Nothing else matters. I will be concerned with nothing by the truth that God meant all of this for His purpose.

How do you reframe the past? How do you leave past pain in the past?

Look at it from God’s perspective.

The problem is far too often we want to use our past as an excuse for our present. We want to use our past to excuse our present behavior.
You can’t forget your past – it’s just there. God doesn’t expect us to forget our past – He wants us to learn from it. Our past should be filled with object lessons for how we need to live differently today.

Past hurts should lead to different behavior.

Too many of us are just looking for an excuse.

Not Joseph, “Don’t be afraid of me. Am I God to judge and punish you?” (50:19).

WOW! Truth is we want to play God. We want to punish. We want to justify. We like playing God. We’re no good at it, but we like punishing people if we can.

We’re talking about losing the weight of our past, our hurt.

We’ve got to leave the pain in the past – scares are meant to be reminders, they’re not meant to be painful.

We’ve got to reframe our hurts from God’s perspective. How has God used your past hurts to help you? How does He want to use your past to help others?

It was almost beyond bearing when Terrie and I lost our little son, only a month old. As to that the death of a parent and then misunderstanding and a lawsuit thrown at us by people we were only trying to help...that all hurt and it all happened within a few months time. It seemed too much to bear and for a long time it was hard to let go...but God has used each of those painful events to bring maturity into our lives and He’s also used those experiences to allow us to help countless people we might never have related to if it had not been that we suffered through them ourselves.

One final thought as we close...We need to allow God to give us Ephraim experiences as well.

Manasseh – Forget. We want to forget the pain of our past.

But just as important, God wants to make us fruitful in the middle of present suffering and hardships.

You may be facing some hurt and hard times right now. God’s not interested just in your future – He’s here right now in your present. He wants to make you fruitful in the middle of your hurt.

I’m sure Joseph always felt different from the rest of the Egyptians. He wasn’t Egyptian. I’m sure he felt a tinge of hurt every time he thought about his boys never meeting their Grandfather. They would never have uncles to play with – those guys were evil. But in the midst of his suffering – false accusations, prision, loneliness...in the middle of all of that – God still used Joseph. God still blessed Joseph.

As I was finishing the preparation of this talk I got to thinking about the fruit of the Spirit mentioned in Galatians chapter five: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control...

Do you realize that most of those are only seen during hardships. It’s hard to notice peace unless there is turmoil. It’s impossible to display patience unless there’s something that could cause us to be impatient. How about gentleness or self-control – those are seen best when tried the worst!
Others, Satan may mean it for evil – but God is working His best even in the worst of situations.

So how do we lose the weight of our past?

Let go of the pain of the past and let God refocus you on the blessings He’s working in your life right now.

Let go of the pain of the past and let God refocus you on the blessings He’s working in your life right now.

One more time...say it with me...

I will, let go of the pain of the past and let God refocus me on the blessings He’s working in my life right now.

* Special acknowledge to Pastor Tony Evans and his book "No More Excuses" for several key thoughts that lead to this message.

To download the audio version of this message click here.

Lose the Weight - Part Two Click Here