God has this school because men and women are not naturally broken; they are proud and unbroken. He has people who claim to know Him – and don’t. He has people who claim to be broken – and aren’t. And He has people who have His authority – and are unbroken. He has all of this in abundance. But God does not have many men and women who are truly broken.
The proud, unbroken spirit of man is not what the Lord is wanting from us. He wants a meek people, humble disciples, clothed with humility. We can be most effective for God when we are completely broken.
We all want to be close to the Lord. Psalms 34:18 says that the Lord is nigh to them who have a broken spirit. Psalms 51:17 states that the sacrifices He wants are broken spirits. Yes, that is what the Lord is wanting from a people. He has everything else. He owns all. But He wants a people who are not proud, haughty and arrogant. In Isaiah 66:2, the Lord said He would look to those who are humble and have a contrite spirit. God is with those of humble, contrite spirits. Isaiah 57:15.
Jesus said in Matthew 21:44 that we can fall on the rock and break, or else the rock will fall on us and grind us to powder. Falling on the rock and breaking is not a single act, it is a process. That process is taught in God’s Sacred School of Submission and Brokenness.
The school of brokenness is long. How long is up to you. Some learn their lessons sooner than others. It takes some people 15-20 years to graduate. Some take a whole lifetime. Sadly, some never graduate, and some drop out. In fact, we encounter many drop-outs in our Christian experience. The trouble is, often people think they have graduated, or that they are close to graduation, when in reality they are drop-outs.
Some think they are in the school, when they are only taking the entrance exams.
Virtually every great hero in the Bible is a graduate of God’s school of brokenness. Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, the judges, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Peter, Paul, and others did not become great until they first became broken.
Joseph’s Schooling
Joseph, the son of Jacob, was a graduate of God’s School of Brokenness. In Genesis 37, the Lord gave him two wonderful dreams. Verse two says he was 17 years old when he had those dreams. Everyone starts out life with some kind of dreams, ambitions, etc. The difference with this young man was that his dreams were from the Lord, and therefore were assured of coming true.
Isn’t it interesting that the Lord told Joseph about the wonderful future he would have, but did not tell him about the years of suffering as a slave, and a prisoner? His dreams did not launch him into a glorious future; instead, his dreams launched him into loneliness, heartache, separation and suffering. The story of Joseph is the story of being broken. He thought life would be good; instead he got 13 years of heartache, physical pain, mental torture, and shattered dreams. Then he was raised up to stand before Pharaoh. Even then, he did not see his brothers or his father for another nine years. By the time he stood before Pharaoh, Joseph had forgotten his dreams. When he finally saw his family again, he was not the proud young man they had known. His spirit had been broken.
The story of Joseph is well-known. His father loved him, and gave him a coat of many colors. Parents should be very careful about preferring one child above another. Being his father’s favorite only brought Joseph the animosity of his half-brothers. Then Joseph told his brothers about his dreams, that they would one day bow down and worship him. This caused the brothers to hate him.
They wanted to kill him, but Reuben talked them into merely throwing him into a pit. Can you imagine the awful feeling of being in a deep, dark pit? Was Joseph afraid? Judah then suggested selling him to slavers. I wonder if Joseph thought it was just a cruel prank. Did he stand there expecting someone to speak up, and stop the bartering? But he was actually sold. He was tied up, and headed off in the desert to the unknown future of a slave in a foreign land. Did he keep looking back at his band of brothers? Did he think he would never see his father again?
Then there was the humiliating indignity of standing on the auction block in Egypt. A slave has no glorious future. Did despair grip him? A slave owns nothing. Everything Joseph had was taken away: his father, his family, his home, his friends, his possessions. Everything was taken from him but his faith in the God of his fathers. Nobody can take your faith in God; you can voluntarily give it away, but no one can take it.
Joseph was purchased by an officer of Pharaoh. Potiphar gave great responsibilities to Joseph, but in this he was still only a slave. Potiphar’s wife tried to seduce him. He resisted valiantly. Even though no one would have known about such a sin, Joseph would not sin against the Lord. He may have been disappointed and discouraged, but he would not give up his belief in God. Many people yield to various sins when life is rough, and their dreams don’t come true. But Joseph maintained his integrity.
Joseph’s righteous refusal to sin only got him more hardship. Potiphar’s wife lied. Potiphar was very angry, and Joseph was put in a terrible prison. The situation didn’t seem fair. It wasn’t fair, but God was in it. Joseph spent years in prison, an innocent man serving a life sentence. It is true that God gave him favor with the head jailor, but that is of little comfort when you face the prospect of life imprisonment in a filthy, dank, dark prison. God was still breaking Joseph’s spirit. Yes, there were some limited blessings, interspersed among years of suffering. God often works that way.
Joseph thought he might have a chance when he was able to interpret the dreams of the Pharaoh’s butler and baker. He asked the butler to remember him to the ruler. He did not accuse his brothers, or Potiphar or Potiphar’s wife, but merely maintained his own innocence. He placed confidence in the butler. He expected the butler to help him. But the butler forgot him. Genesis 40:41. How many times in our suffering have we placed confidence and hope in humans, - only to be disappointed?
Joseph spent an additional two years in that rotten prison. Yet he did not get bitter over his false arrest and unlawful detention. But he completely forgot about his dreams. He even forgot his family. He believed he would never see them again. A process of breaking was being completed in his life.
Finally, Joseph was called before Pharaoh. He spoke well, and was elevated to a high position. He was given a wife, and had two sons. In Genesis 41:51, he called his firstborn Manasseh, “For God, said he, hath made me forget all my toil, and all my father’s house.” He had forgotten his father’s house and the pleasant life he had as a child. He named his second son Ephraim, because he had become fruitful “in the land of my affliction.” Verse 52.
Are you in the land of your affliction? Joseph did not know why he was there. You may not know why God has put you in a land of affliction, but the Lord has a purpose for everything that happens to His children. Trust God. The only thing Joseph had to hold to was his faith in the God of his fathers. It was enough to sustain him through years of trouble.
Joseph was thirty years old when he stood before Pharaoh. Genesis 41:46. It had been 13 years since his brothers had sold him into slavery. See Genesis 37:2.Even though he was lifted up to a high position in the court of Pharaoh, Joseph still did not see his family for another nine years. He lived through the seven years of plenty, and saw his brothers again in the second year of the seven years of famine. Genesis 45:6.
During those nine years, when Joseph had power and influence, he did not arrest Potiphar’s wife and make her or her husband account for the suffering they had caused him. He did not teach the butler a lesson for forgetting him in prison. He was passing his tests in God’s school.
In Genesis 42:9, Joseph saw his brothers, for the first time in 22 years. When he saw them, he “remembered the dreams which he dreamed of them.” In those decades of affliction and separation he had forgotten his dreams. As long as you can hold on to your dreams, you have not graduated from God’s Sacred School of Submission and Brokenness. Joseph’s dreams did not come true until he had abandoned his hope in them.
Joseph’s Brethren
Joseph was not the only one to have changed over the years. When there has been a long separation, we mistakenly think the other party is the same person he or she was many years ago. We somehow fail to realize that while God has been working on our spirit, He has also been working in the life of the other parties also.
Joseph did not immediately reveal himself to his brothers. He tested them to see if they would treat Rachel’s other son, Benjamin, the same way they had treated him. Before he revealed himself to them, Joseph forced his brothers to bring Benjamin to Egypt. Then he arrested Benjamin on trumped-up charges, and threatened to send him into slavery.
The brothers had heartlessly sent one of Rachel sons into slavery more than two decades earlier, but they were not ready to repeat the same mistake. Judah, who had been a leader in the plan to sell Joseph, spoke eloquently in defense of Benjamin. Judah had a family of his own, but he offered to remain behind, a slave forever, in the stead of Benjamin. These brothers knew Benjamin was greatly beloved of their father, as Joseph had once been, but they were not jealous any more. The brothers had changed, too.
When Joseph saw the change in the spirit of his brothers, he could not keep from crying. He had the authority to arrest them all, and treat them like they had treated him, but all of that spirit had been broken. God had been working on them as well. Judah’s experiences had worked something right in him. God takes each of us through the individualized schooling that is needed to break our spirit.
God’s School in Other Lives
Joseph was not the only notable Bible hero to graduate from God’s Sacred School of Submission and Brokenness. David was anointed to be king of Israel, but spent decades learning to be broken. He refused to strike Saul. He could have been king in one fell stroke, but he would have been unbroken. He chose to break, and the Lord raised a broken man to the throne.
Moses slew an Egyptian in an attempt to lead a slave revolt. At age 40, “he supposed his brethren would have understood how that God by his hand would deliver them: but they understood not.” Acts 7:25. So Moses spent 40 more years in God’s School, tending a few sheep that were not even his own. When the Lord spoke to him from a burning bush, Moses was a thoroughly broken man. He was a man God could use.
The Lord had to break Peter before He could use him. The boastful man had to deny thrice, and often feel the pain of the Lord’s rebuke, as well as the shame of his own failures. Jesus told Peter in John 21:18: “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not.” The Lord was saying, “When you are mature you will stretch forth your hands and another will handcuff you and lead you where you don’t want to go.” The Greek word for “gird” is “zonnumi,” and it means to bind. Jesus said to Peter that another would bind his hands, put him in manacles, and lead him in ways he would not have wanted to go. A proud man or woman will not voluntarily submit to being manacled. Only the broken of the Lord, who have graduated from God’s school, will stretch forth their hands to be shackled.
God can give authority to those who are not broken; He can use the proud and arrogant. He used King Saul to create a nation out of a tribal chaos, and to defeat the enemies. But He is seeking a humble people. Proverbs 16:19; 29:23. We are to learn of Jesus; He was meek and lowly. Matthew 11:29. Can we go through God’s schooling in brokenness?
The work of the Lord will succeed because of broken men and women. Will you enroll in His school? Will you endure until you are broken? Not many will. Few in this world have what it takes. But Paul referred to the broken when he wrote: “Of whom the world was not worthy.” Hebrews 11:38.
Consider these points:
- Everyone in Hebrews 11 was broken.
- Everyone in the bride of Christ will be broken.
- Even those in the two witness movement at the end of Gentile times will wear sackcloth. See Revelation 11:3.
- Will you allow your dreams, hopes, ambitions and human spirit to be broken, so that the Lord can use you in the way He wants to?