Genesis 1:28: Reaping the Rewards of a Go Season

Introduction

For this season, Jesus House London has received a simple and slightly unsettling word: "Go." Bajo Akisanya does not hide that moving is frightening. We would like to say: "Lord, I am fine where I am, and you are asking me to leave? Change scares me." But, he reminds us, you were not designed to stand still. You were created to go into the world, where God sends you, and to make a radical difference there.

His starting text is Genesis 1:28. After creating man and woman in his image, God blessed them and said to them: "Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion." Rather than spend thirty minutes dissecting the Hebrew, the pastor chooses a guide: Joseph, whose story runs from Genesis 37 to Genesis 50.

Eleventh of the twelve sons of Israel, long awaited by his father, Joseph will show concretely what each of these instructions means, and what rewards await the one who agrees to go where God sends him.

Message Outline

1. You Are Blessed to Put Your Gift at the Service of Others

The first thing God does for you, as for Joseph, is to bless you. To be blessed, the pastor explains, is to carry a gift or an ability that God planted in your life before you were even born.
God's blessing on your life is different from that of the person sitting in your row, even if you were identical twins. God has a purpose for you that belongs to you alone.
This blessing also attracts the attention of the kingdom of darkness. Joseph is sold as a slave, sent to an Egyptian house, then thrown into prison although he is innocent. Yet it is there that his gift is revealed in the most extraordinary way.
"When the darkness is total, the candle becomes the brightest thing there is." Going through a nightmare does not mean that God has forgotten you, or that you are not who he says you are.
In prison, Joseph notices that the cupbearer and the baker look sad and kindly asks them what is wrong (Genesis 40:1-8). You were created to be placed in situations where God shows himself.

2. The Change You Are Waiting For Is in the Needs of Those Around You

Proverbs 10:22: "Yahweh's blessing brings wealth, and he adds no trouble to it." Simply being blessed and gifted means you have only one thing to do: bring your gift to light. The gift, or the blessing, will do the rest.
For those who pray for change and wait for God to transform their situation, the pastor asserts that this change is found in the needs of the people around them.
When the Lord said "go," he did not specify how far. The mission field he is talking about may be sitting next to you at church.
Joseph puts his gift at the service of others by interpreting the dreams of the cupbearer and the baker. For those who know the story, this is one of the turning points of his life.

3. Hold On to the Picture of Tomorrow

At the beginning of his story, God gives Joseph a picture of tomorrow: a dream. God's purposes are often expressed through our hopes, our dreams and our desires, sometimes even before we know the one who gave them to us.
This picture is all Joseph has to hold on to, from one trial to the next. When things go from bad to worse, then to terrible, he stays fixed on what God showed him.
Psalm 119:49-50: "Remember your word to your servant, because you gave me hope. This is my comfort in my affliction, for your word has revived me." The word "affliction" here evokes a crushing pressure.
Isaiah 55:11 promises that the word God sends does not return without effect. The pastor illustrates it with the 5:53 pm train to Cardiff: nobody climbs into the cab to tell the driver "I'll take the wheel." As long as you stay on board, you reach your destination. As long as you hold on to the Word, it leads you where you are going.
The enemy's best efforts placed Joseph in the right place, at the right time and in the right shape. "Your problems will become the cause of your promotion." Hence the call to read the Bible and hold fast to it.

4. Bearing Fruit: When the Holy Spirit Takes Hold of You

Hebrews 13:15 speaks of "the fruit of lips that proclaim his name": the praise and confession of our mouths are a fruit that God looks for.
For the pastor, bearing fruit is what happens when the Holy Spirit takes hold of you. In one person a song bursts out; another plays an instrument; another begins to notice what is happening around them; another becomes kind, knows how to cook or solves other people's problems. It depends on each person.
Joseph had two gifts: administration and the interpretation of dreams. As a child at his father's house, administration gave credibility to his dreams. In prison, it gave interpretation a platform. Before Pharaoh, the two gifts work together.
Before Pharaoh, Joseph does nothing different from what he did before. "The problem is not the effectiveness of your gift, it is the nature of your audience." The moment God changes Joseph's audience, he also changes his life.
When God says "go" to you, he is seeking to change your audience. And when he changes your audience, he changes the rewards that come into your life.

5. Multiplying: Making Others Fruitful

To multiply is to bring into a situation something that makes someone else fruitful, through the intervention of the Almighty. With Joseph, it was a revelation.
He tells his brothers: it was not you who sent me here, it was God, to preserve your lives (Genesis 45:5-8). Their anguish, their fear and their tension give way to a certainty: God had gone ahead of them.
To the one who thinks a mistake will define his identity, the pastor answers that this revelation sets free: God works with what you do well and with what you do badly (Romans 8:28). All he asks of you is to set out; the price of arrival, he takes care of.
Before telling it to his brothers, Joseph had to accept it himself. In prison, he was still asking the cupbearer to speak of him to Pharaoh (Genesis 40:14), hoping, according to the pastor, to be sent back home. He moves from "I want to go home" to "I am destined to be here."
If you are praying for change, ask God for a revelation: "Why am I here?" Aligned with God's purposes, Joseph receives in a single afternoon what had been owed to him for seventeen years, according to the pastor: a wife, a palace, clothes, a country to govern (Genesis 41). With no time of preparation, because God had already prepared him.

6. Filling the Earth: Giving God to Others

To fill is to replace what is missing. And the one essential thing God asks you to bring is himself, into the heart of the situations you go through.
Joseph did so by showing the fruit of the Spirit, which the New Testament describes (Galatians 5:22-23), to people who did not really deserve it.
He remains kind toward the cupbearer, who nevertheless forgot him. Before Pharaoh, he stays calm and does not force things. Toward his brothers, he is a model of forgiveness and kindness.
The pastor adds a detail drawn from his reading of the story: according to him, the man who guarded Joseph in prison would have ended up, after the interpretation of Pharaoh's dreams, working under his orders. And nothing indicates that Joseph made his life impossible.
To fill the earth is to offer God freely to others in the midst of difficult circumstances.

7. Subduing and Having Dominion: A Life That Touches Generations

To subdue is to see the enemy's plans reduced to nothing because of your relationship with God. The enemy's plan was that Israel would never leave slavery.
At the end of his life, Joseph announces to the sons of Israel that God will come for them and asks that his bones be carried up (Genesis 50:24-25). According to the pastor, he thereby gives up being taken back to Israel during his lifetime and chooses to wait with them, so that every generation would hear that God is coming to deliver them.
For the pastor, this single act meant that, when God came for them through Moses, the people were waiting and ready.
Your life is designed to touch people you will never meet. When you help a colleague become what he or she is called to be, or when you make sure a stranger has a seat on the train, you change the lives of people you will never know.
The reward: when you move forward for God, he takes charge of your future and that of everyone connected to you. Joseph's influence ends when a king arises who did not know him (Exodus 1:8); according to the pastor, if God let that season come to an end, it is because the time of salvation through Moses was beginning. One man's life secured the future of a nation.

Bajo Akisanya concludes by praying for those who think their season is over, that they are insignificant or that nothing will change: God has already gone ahead of them. He reminds us that Jesus went to the cross for us before we even knew we needed him, and invites everyone to open their heart to him.

Key Takeaways

You were not designed to stand still: God has blessed you and sends you to make a difference where he places you.
The change you are waiting for is often found in the needs of those around you, sometimes the person sitting next to you.
In trials, hold on to the Word and to the picture of tomorrow that God has given you: it will lead you to your destination.
Your gift is not the problem. When God changes your audience, he also changes the rewards that come into your life.
Aligned with God's purposes, you touch people you will never meet.

Personal Application

What gift has God placed in you, and whom can you serve with it this week, at church, at work or in your neighborhood?
What promise or picture of tomorrow has God given you? Write it down and reread it when circumstances get complicated.
Is there a past mistake you are letting define your identity? Reread Romans 8:28 and hand it over to God.
Instead of only asking "when will I get out of here?", dare to ask God: "Why am I here?"
Toward whom can you show kindness or forgiveness, even if they do not really deserve it?

Verses Cited

Frequently Asked Questions

What does the "go" season Bajo Akisanya talks about mean?

It is the word the Church has received for this season. The pastor acknowledges that moving is frightening, but reminds us that we were not created to stand still: God sends us into the world to make a radical difference, sometimes simply with the person sitting next to us.

Why take Joseph as a guide to read Genesis 1:28?

Rather than dissecting the Hebrew text, Bajo Akisanya follows a character who lived out each instruction of Genesis 1:28: blessed, he bears fruit by interpreting dreams, multiplies by revealing God's plan to his brothers, fills the earth through his kindness and, at the end of his life, points all Israel toward deliverance.

What are the rewards of a season when God says "go"?

According to the pastor, when you align with God's purposes, the results become God-sized: in a single afternoon, Joseph receives what he had been waiting for over the years. And God takes charge not only of your future, but also of the people connected to you, even people you will never meet.