God Meant it for Good Genesis 37

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We spent some substantial time with Jacob over the last several months.
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For the last 11 chapters, he's been the main character. We saw the trajectory of Jacob's life go from being a deceiver to a man who fully surrendered himself to God.
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But the focus from this point forward is not going to be on Jacob. Jacob is going to be mentioned a little and mostly in the background.
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The focus now turns to Joseph, Jacob's 11th son.
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You do not have to be a Christian to be familiar with Joseph. A while back I was talking to a student at St.
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Croix Falls High School, an athlete on the cross -country team, and the topic came up that he was in a play at the high school.
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I asked him what play he was in and he said, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
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So like Noah's Flood, the Tower of Babel, and Sodom and Gomorrah, the story of Joseph is well known.
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You don't need to be a Christian to know these famous stories from Genesis. People know that Joseph had a beautiful coat from his father and his brothers out of jealousy sold him into slavery.
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But our goal in this story is not only to see what we already know, these facts about his life, but also to dig in to see all the other treasure that is there.
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This is what we always need to do when we read the Bible. For the last several months at our
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Wednesday Night Bible Study, those who have attended have taken a deep look at the book of Ephesians.
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I've called our study, Mining the Text of Ephesians, and so that's what we're going to be doing with Joseph's life.
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We're going to mine the text of Joseph's life. And there is treasure here and we are going to see what is there in the application for our lives.
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So I encourage you to turn with me to Genesis 37. If you're using a red Bible in the pews, it's on pages 36 and it spills into page 38.
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So pages 36 through 38. This sermon is titled, God Meant It for Good.
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God, in our big idea, our proposition, is the
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Lord weaves together the detailed story of the lives of his people.
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The Lord weaves together the detailed story of the lives of his people. And we're going to see three ways how.
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The first way how is by planning Joseph's superiority over his brothers. By planning his superiority over his brothers.
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We'll see this in verses 1 through 11. It's been three weeks since we were last in Genesis.
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Two Sundays ago we had Resurrection Sunday. Last Sunday I was gone and Bennett preached 1
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John chapter 4. And today we're now back in Genesis. But three weeks ago we looked at the end of Esau's life in chapter 36.
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What we saw in that chapter was his genealogy. When his family left the land of Canaan, the land of promise, and went east of the
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Dead Sea to the land of Seir, his family grew significantly. They had tribes, chiefs, and eventually kings.
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They became more powerful than the natives who lived in the land. This happened to fulfill what
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Genesis 2740 said, that he and his people would be strong, but they would never be as strong as Israel.
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But the focus of the passage was the tragedy of Esau. We know from his story that as the firstborn, he was in line to inherit the great
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Abrahamic promises. The promises that his offspring would be as many as the stars in the heavens, that his people would inherit the land of Canaan, and most importantly, that they would be under the blessing of God.
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When Esau walked away from the land of promise, he walked away never to return again.
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His departure out of the land of Canaan was symbolic of his departure from God.
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When he forfeited his birthright and lost God's blessing, he forfeited his salvation.
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This is the tragedy. He was surrounded by the things of God, yet gave them up for a single meal. He valued earthly things over the things of God.
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And this is where his allegiance was. That's what it showed. And this is a great warning to each of us.
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We must be all in for God, and our allegiance must not be to idols. Now, as we close the book on the life of Esau, we turned our attention back to the main characters, and that is
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Jacob's line. We are going to be spending lots of time with Joseph, as I already mentioned.
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And if you can remember, Joseph is the first of two sons from Jacob's wife,
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Rachel. His favored wife. So the last two children he had, the last two sons he had, number 11 and number 12, come from Rachel.
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So let's begin by reading verses 1 through 4. And we're going to see the important connection here that his favored wife,
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Rachel, his son, Joseph, and now we're going to see how the story plays out. Verses 1 through 4.
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Jacob lived in the land of his father's sojournings in the land of Canaan. These are the generations of Jacob.
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Joseph, being 17 years old, was pastoring the flock with his brothers. He was a boy with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father's wives, and Joseph brought a bad report of them to their father.
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Now, Israel loved Joseph more than any of the other sons, because he was the son of his old age, and he made him a robe of many colors.
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But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peacefully to him.
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The text tells us that Jacob and his 12 sons lived in the land of Canaan, the land of promise.
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And as they live in this region, Joseph, a 17 -year -old, is working out in the field with his brothers.
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Joseph comes in to his father and gives a bad report about his brothers. Sometimes people say that Joseph is an example of one who never sinned in Scripture.
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Obviously, if you look at characters in the Bible, right, they always sin. I mean, there's sins everywhere. Joseph is one of those that he's a pretty good character throughout.
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But I'll submit to you here, I think he's sinning right here, right from the get -go in his story. And I say that because it says here that he gave a bad report about his brothers to his father.
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Now in the Hebrew language, which is what the Old Testament is written in, this can be translated evil whispering or slander.
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So you get the sense here that his brothers may have said something bad and Joseph is tattling on them. He's crossing the line.
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He's not treating his brothers with care as he talks about them. The Bible teaches us always to treat people with care behind their backs, whether they do something bad to us or not.
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And it actually teaches us to go to the person if we have a problem. Matthew 18, 15 says, If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault.
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Between you and him alone, if he listens to you, you have gained your brother. Joseph did not do this.
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So I think he's slandering against them here. Now in verse 3, we once again get the reminder that Jacob loved
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Joseph more than his brothers. As I've mentioned many times before, we should never show favoritism the way that Jacob is showing favoritism here to Joseph.
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But the reason Jacob favors Joseph is because Joseph is the son of his old age, as verse 3 says.
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And what does that mean? Well, I already explained. He's the favorite son because he comes from Rachel, the wife that he loved the most.
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Jacob loved Joseph so much that he made him a robe of many colors, a beautiful robe.
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That would have been a constant reminder to his brothers that Joseph is the favorite.
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Verse 4 tells us that this love that Jacob had for Joseph caused them to hate him. They despised him so much that they could not speak peacefully about him.
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Whenever his name came up, they can only say bad things concerning him. We see right here from the beginning that they wished ill upon him.
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We know what the sin they're committing here is. It's the sin of jealousy. They see
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Joseph as the favorite and they can't stand it. I remember when I was going through a school, it was a high school at this time.
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I had a good friend who I was going to class with and we were in the same class together. The teacher loved my friend, but I could tell didn't have any affection for me.
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As you might imagine, I hated going to this class because my friend was like the teacher's pet.
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I was just one of the guys who she didn't really like that much. I don't think she hated me, but you could tell she didn't have affection for me.
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What came out of my heart then was jealousy. I'm thinking, well, I wish I was like my friend here. The teacher actually gave me the attention that I wanted.
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We see here, this is what his brothers are doing. They're being jealous and it's causing them to hate
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Joseph. This is what our sinful flesh does when someone else is favored over us.
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Something is going to happen that is going to set off something big in the relationship between Joseph and his brothers.
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In the following verses, Joseph has two dreams. The first dream takes place in verses five through eight.
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Let's see this dream here. Now, Joseph had a dream and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him even more.
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He said to them, hear this dream that I have dreamed. Behold, we were binding sheaves in the field and behold, my sheave arose and stood upright.
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And behold, your sheaves gathered around it and bowed down to my sheave. His brothers said to him, are you indeed to reign over us or are you indeed to rule over us?
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So they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words.
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Now, we know that this is an agrarian culture, kind of like Eureka, right?
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We have this here. We can relate to this. And Joseph dreams about the grain that he brings in from the field.
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The grain is put in sheaves. Now, you could probably tell me better than I do what sheaves are.
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I actually googled it this week. I'm like, what are sheaves here? This is the definition I got. You can see if this is right.
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A bundle of grain stocks laid lengthwise and tied together after reaping.
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So these sheaves are laid lengthwise. But Joseph says that in the dream, his sheave stands upright.
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And his brother's sheaves are bowing to his sheave. Ever had a dream like this?
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This is really an odd dream. And as Joseph tells this to his brothers, they know the meaning of this dream.
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It's clear. He's going to reign over them. That's the meaning of the dream. They already hated him because he was the favorite son.
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And now he tells them, you're going to bow to me one day. Now he's about to have another dream that's going to make his brothers feel even that much better.
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Obviously, I'm being sarcastic here. Okay, verse 9. Then he dreamed another dream and told it to his brothers and said, behold,
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I have dreamed another dream. Behold, the sun, the moon, and 11 stars were bowing down to me.
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So in order to understand this, right? How many brothers does Joseph have? 11.
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How many stars here? 11. And then the sun and the moon.
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So they're bowing to him again. He's ruling over them. And this is
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Jacob's response. So we got his brother's response to the first right now. We're getting Jacob's response in verses 10 and 11. But when he told it to his father and to his brothers, his father rebuked him and said to him, what is this dream that you have dreamed?
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Shall I and your mother and your brothers indeed come to bow ourselves to the ground before you?
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And his brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept. The same in mind.
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So Jacob's father does not like what he hears either. But where his brothers aboard what he said, the text says at the end of verse 11 that Jacob kept the same in mind.
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He's thinking, well, you're my favorite. This wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. And what we must understand is that these dreams are prophecies.
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Many of you are familiar with the whole story of Joseph. Later in his life, he would rise up to be the number two man in the powerful nation of Egypt.
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His brothers would be in great need of his help during this great famine that would come on that region.
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And they would bow to him. So what Joseph is doing here is not making things up in order to elevate himself to his brothers.
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Rather, these dreams he experienced are truly from God. Back in Genesis 28, his father
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Jacob had a dream, the Jacob's Ladder event. And in that dream, the Lord spoke directly to Jacob.
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And now in this dream, the Lord's not speaking directly to Joseph, but he is communicating something in it.
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And that is that Joseph will rule over his brothers in the future. So the
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Lord planned this. And we will see this play out in the coming months here.
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So this is the first way how the Lord reveals the detailed story of the lives of his people by planning
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Joseph's superiority over his brothers. So we're going to see the Lord's sovereignty over his power over the events that are taking place in his life.
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The second way how the Lord reveals the detailed story of the lives of his people is by saving Joseph in order to preserve the great design for his life.
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And we'll see this in verses 12 through 24. Now, after these dreams, Joseph's brothers traveled north to Shechem.
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This location was named after the man Shechem, who, if you can remember, assaulted their sister
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Dinah. And after she was assaulted in chapter 34, Simeon and Levi wrongly took revenge upon Shechem and the people of the town by killing them.
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So Joseph's brothers go back to this place where this event happened in order to pastor Jacob's flocks.
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Jacob still had a flock there since he wants to live there. Jacob tells Joseph to leave Hebron to go north to Shechem to check on them.
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And this is what happened. So now we're seeing the scheming that's going to start by his brothers.
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Now, his brothers went to pasture their father's flock near Shechem. And Israel said to Joseph, are not your brothers pasturing the flock at Shechem?
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Come, I will send you to them. And he said to him, here I am. So he said to him, go now, see if it is well with your brothers and with the flock and bring me word.
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So he sent him from the valley of Hebron and he came to Shechem. And a man found him wandering in the fields.
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And the man asked him, what are you seeking? I am seeking my brothers, he said. Tell me, please, where they are pasturing the flock.
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And the man said, they have gone away. For I heard them say, let us go to Dothan.
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So Joseph went after his brothers and found them at Dothan. So Jacob sends
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Joseph to check on the flock to see if it is well with them. And then he wants
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Joseph to give a report on how things are going, so to return to him.
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And as Joseph goes to Shechem to find his brothers, a man spots him wandering, looking for his brothers.
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It's interesting that when you drive in St. Croix Falls or in town, you can usually tell if the person is from here or not.
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They usually drive slowly, searching for where they are going. I mean, you know what I'm talking about, right? And it can be frustrating when you get stuck behind one of these people, but sometimes you get the opportunity, they might ask you, how do
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I get to this place? And then you can help them. So that's a good thing here. So this might remind you of that here. So Jacob, he comes to this place, he doesn't know where he's going.
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He's wandering and this man says, what are you seeking? And Joseph tells him,
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I'm searching for my brothers. And this man tells him where they went and sends him to Dothan, the place where his brothers are.
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And as Joseph travels there, his brothers see him from afar and they are reminded of their hatred of him.
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So much so that as they see him coming, they plot to kill him. They plot to do evil against him.
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Verses 18 through 20, they saw him from afar and before he came near to them, they conspired against him to kill him.
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They said to one another, here comes this dreamer. Come now, let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits.
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Then we will say that a fierce animal has devoured him and we will see what will become of his dreams.
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It is in these verses that we see how much his brothers hated him. I remember as a child asking my mom, what does it mean to hate someone?
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Because you hear people say that in school. She told me to hate someone is to want the person dead.
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I think that's a pretty good response. Now you may not want to murder the person, but you would be okay if that person was just gone.
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And we as Christians should never hate anyone except for the devil and his demons.
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That would be the only case where it would be okay. But the ones we are tempted to hate are enemies.
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We are taught by Jesus to love them by praying for them and doing good to them.
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Matthew 544, that's what Jesus says. He says, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
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It's okay to hate what people stand for. You know, that's okay. But to hate the individual, oftentimes when someone hates what someone stands for, they end up hating the person.
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And that's unbiblical. We should never do that. We should always love God's image bearers.
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But Jacob's brothers are evil people at this point in their life. They just want their brother out of the picture so that their father will love them without always playing second fiddle to Joseph.
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As we saw in verse 20, their plan is to kill him, throw him into the pit, and then say that a fierce animal devoured him.
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But at least one of the 11 brothers has a conscience. And he speaks up in verses 21 and 22.
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The oldest brother, Reuben, speaks up. And this is what he says. But when
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Reuben heard it, he rescued him out of their hands, saying, let us not take his life.
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And Reuben said to them, shed no blood, throw him into this pit here in the wilderness, but do not lay a hand on him, that he might rescue him out of their hand to restore him to his father.
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So the oldest son here, Reuben, desires to spare his life. And so he tells his brothers, let's just throw him in the pit.
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And he thinks they might agree with this because they think, well, if we just leave him in the pit and nobody comes by, he's going to die.
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But Reuben is planning, once my brothers go away and I'm alone, I'm going to come back in.
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I'm going to pick Joseph out of the pit and then I'm going to take him back to his father.
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So you may ask the question here, well, is Reuben, is this a holy action by him or does he have ulterior motives?
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We don't know for sure. He might have ulterior motives here because if you remember chapter 35, it said that Reuben laid with one of Jacob's wives.
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And this was a way of Reuben trying to defy his father's authority. So not only was the sinful act sinful and horrible, but defying his father's authority was very bad as well.
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And so by returning Joseph to Jacob, he might be thinking, well, I could win my father's good graces.
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And later on in Genesis 49, what we're going to read way down the road here is that he would not get the blessing of the firstborn because of the sin that he committed in chapter 35.
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So he's trying to win that back here. That could be one of the reasons or he might actually have compassion for his brother.
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We don't know for sure. But here's what his brothers do that Reuben likes at first, verses 23 and 24.
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So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe, the robe of many colors that he wore, and they took him and threw him into a pit.
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The pit was empty and there was no water in it. So Reuben would have been happy with this.
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They throw him into the pit and his plan is set to work. He's going to come by, he's going to scoop him out of the pit, and he's going to take him back to Hebron where his father is.
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But what we must see here is the Lord's hand in this. The Lord's providence is all over the place.
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God uses Reuben, whatever motives he has, to save the life of his brother
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Joseph. If the Lord did not do this, think of how different the story would have been.
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Joseph would have died at a young age. The young age of 17 from his brothers murdering him.
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No one would have ever seen the great plan the Lord had for Joseph. There would not have been a great story that people from generation to generation would see about God's work in the life of this man.
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As you know, I'm a runner. And I've run in two marathons. Both didn't go very well.
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But anyway, if you have any experience with marathons, it's a brutal race. Especially the elite runners because they're going at such a hard pace for 26 .2
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miles. And it's a long time to hold on to a hard pace. And that's an understatement.
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In 1982 at the Boston Marathon, I know that Mike's wife
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Tammy just ran in Boston. They were just out there. But one of the most famous marathon races in the world is the
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Boston Marathon. It goes back to the late 1800s. But one of the most memorable races run in the history of that event, in any event, any marathon in the history of the world, was in 1982.
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And they called it the Duel in the Sun. It was a race between Alberto Salazar. He was the world record holder.
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And a nobody, someone who nobody knew about, named Dick Beardsley from Minnesota. He had just kind of come out of nowhere.
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He wasn't a star runner in high school. He wasn't a star runner in college. But he just got fast in his mid -20s.
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And he got to that level as a marathoner. And as they were running the race, he said in the early part of the race, in the first three, four, five miles, he felt like dropping out.
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He just felt sick. And he just said, I'm just going to hang in there. But he felt like dropping out. And as the race went on, he stayed with the front pack.
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He stayed with the front pack. They get to mile 17. And there's three guys left. And he's one of them.
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One of the guys drops out. And now there's just two, the world record holder and him. From mile 17 to mile 26, they're running neck and neck the entire way.
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The story doesn't end too joyfully because Beardsley, I'm a Minnesotan. I would have been rooting for him if I was alive at that point.
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But he loses by one and a half seconds. That's it. So there was a neck and neck race right to the finish.
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But what Beardsley said after the fact, I've heard him talk about this race. He said, if I would have dropped out in mile five, think of how much different my life would have been.
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Because people know him for that race. He became world famous because of that race. He's thinking, think of how much different my life would have been.
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And he still speaks on that race and everything. And think about how much different the story would have been in your life if something went different.
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If you took a right turn instead of a left turn, or if the right person at the right time was not placed in your life.
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Think of how much different your story would be. The reason you are here is the
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Lord's hand is on your life. You could be somewhere else. But the Lord mysteriously guided you here.
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And somewhere along the way, you could have walked away from the Lord, but he guided you here.
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And we must understand that as we follow the Lord, the best story for our life, the best way that our life could possibly turn out is taking place.
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You ever think about that? If you follow the Lord closely, your life is gonna turn out better than it could have if you took any other path.
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So as we see here, the Lord weaves together the story of the lives of his people. And the second way how that we see in this text is by saving
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Joseph in order to preserve the great design for his life. He didn't die there.
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The Lord had a big plan for his future. The third way how the
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Lord weaves together the story of the lives of his people is by allowing something bad to happen to him for his ultimate good.
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So this one's related to what we just talked about, but allowing something bad to happen to him for his ultimate good.
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Verses 25 through 36. So we just saw Joseph's life is spared. His brothers tear off his beautiful robe and throw him into the pits.
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And Reuben plans to pull him out and bring him back to his father. And if you stopped right here, you might say, good,
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God used Reuben to spare Joseph's life. And now he's going to return home.
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He's going to be safe with his father. And they are going to live a nice, easy, comfortable life back at home.
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At Hebron. Is that how it happened? No, not even close.
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The Lord writes adversity into his story, and he writes adversity into our story in order to make his design for our lives that much greater.
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You know, Saul, they don't write history books about people who never faced adversity. If you're going to read a biography about someone,
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I guarantee you there will be adversity in there. That's how God writes the stories of the lives of his people.
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So let's read about this enormous adversity that Joseph is about to face. Verses 25 -28.
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Then they sat down to eat, and looking up, they saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead with their camels, bearing gum, balm, and myrrh on their way to carry it down to Egypt.
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Then Judah said to his brothers, What profit is it if we kill our brother and conceal his blood?
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Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, and let not our hand be upon him, for he is our brother, our own flesh.
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And his brothers listened to him. Then Midianite traders passed by, and they drew Joseph up and lifted him out of the pit and sold him to the
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Ishmaelites for 20 shekels of silver. They took Joseph to Egypt.
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Okay, let's stop right there. So in verse 25, the brothers are eating together after they had thrown their brother into the pit, and they see slave traders coming their way.
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And these traders are Ishmaelites who are traveling toward Egypt. And one of the brothers,
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Judah, comes up with a great idea in verses 27 and 28 as to what to do with Joseph.
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And what Judah says here, Why would we kill him if we could make a profit off of him?
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That's a very noble thing to do. So this is what they do. You will notice that this text mentions
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Ishmaelites and Midianites. Now, this is the same group of people. It's that they're just called by two different names.
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And in verse 28, we read that they sold Joseph for 20 pieces of silver. Think about that.
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They sold their brother, their own flesh and blood, for 20 pieces of silver.
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And these Midian traders take Joseph down with them to Egypt. Now, as Joseph is being sold, the brother who tried to save his life,
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Reuben, he wasn't involved with selling him to the Midianites. So he returns, and he doesn't find him.
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Verses 29 and 30, When Reuben returned to the pit and saw that Joseph was not in the pit, he tore his clothes and returned to his brothers and said,
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The boy is gone, and I, where shall I go? Reuben is obviously very upset that his brother is not in the pit.
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And like I said, we don't know what his motives are here, but his plan to scoop his brother out of the pit and bring him up to his father has just been ruined.
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And he says, where shall I go? He's clearly thinking here, my father would have been so pleased.
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And he probably would have looked at me more favorably if I would have just been able to complete this mission of delivering my brother back to him.
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From this point forward, Reuben does not speak against his brothers.
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So he goes along with them. Now that these brothers have gotten rid of Joseph, now they need to make it look like something else happened.
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Verse 31, Then they took Joseph's robe and slaughtered a goat and dipped the robe in the blood.
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This is like one of those crime shows. You ever watch any of those crime shows on TV? What you see is whenever someone murders another, the murderer makes it look like something else happened in order to cover their guilt.
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They blame it on, they set up someone or they set it up like it was an accident. That's what they're doing here.
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So the brothers make the robe look like a wild animal killed Joseph and then they bring it to their father. Verses 32 and 33,
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And they sent the robe of many colors and brought it to their father and said, This we have found.
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Please identify whether it is your son's robe or not. And he, Jacob, identified it and said,
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It is my son's robe. A fierce animal has devoured him. Joseph is without doubt torn to pieces.
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So the trick is pulled off here. Jacob believes them that his son truly was torn to pieces by a wild animal.
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We already saw Reuben tear his clothes in the morning. And M -O -U -R -N -I -N -G, not the time of day, but he's weeping.
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And now Jacob mourns as well. Verses 34 and 35, Then Jacob tore his garments and put sackcloth on his loins and mourned for his son many days.
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All his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted and said,
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No, I shall go down to Sheol to my son mourning. Thus his father wept for him.
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We need to put ourselves in Jacob's shoes here. His grief is tremendous.
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His son Joseph is 17 years old. Losing a loved one is very hard, but I've heard it said that losing a child is the hardest of all.
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And so his grief is tremendous. And in the second half of verse 35,
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Jacob says that he's going to Sheol in sorrow. Sheol in the Old Testament, if you ever
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Googled this on Bible Gateway, it comes up hundreds of times. It's everywhere in the Old Testament.
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But what it means is the realm of the dead. So what Jacob is saying here is he's going to be in deep sorrow for the rest of his life before he goes to that place.
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He's not optimistic that, you know what, I'm going to get over this. He's in deep sorrow because not only did his son die, his favorite son died.
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And as Jacob mourns, he's comforted by his family. It says here his daughters. This could mean
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Dinah and his daughter -in -laws. That's probably what it means. But what is really dark about this is the very ones who are guilty of selling
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Joseph into slavery are there to comfort Jacob. So the perpetrators are there comforting him.
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And they have no sorrow for the horrible crime that they have committed. But they're going to have to live with this guilt for the rest of their lives until they would encounter him again.
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Now finally, in verse 36, we see the story of Joseph take another twist.
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Verse 36, Meanwhile, the Midianites had sold him in Egypt to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard.
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Okay, so the Midianites, these traitors that purchased Joseph, they go south to Egypt.
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Think about this. If the Midianites never sold Joseph to Potiphar, think of how much different his life would have turned out.
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You see the theme of this here? The Lord's providence shows up everywhere, guiding the details of his life.
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Because not only is he sold to an Egyptian, the place where he would live for many years and rise to power, but he's sold to the right
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Egyptian. He's sold to one who has a connection with Pharaoh.
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As the text says here, he's an officer of Pharaoh. You know the old saying, they say it's not what you know, it's who you know.
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That's going to be the situation here. The Lord is the author of all of history, and he weaves all the details of the lives of his people for their good.
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And do you see your life this way? I encourage you to do so. Brianna sometimes is like,
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Seth, all you do is talk about your life as a story. And it's true, I do. I say it, we're in a story.
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It's just amazing. Think about it. We are in a story. And the story you're in is better than any story you've ever read.
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It's real. And it's amazing to think about that. And God is the author of the story.
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If we reflect on our life in this way, it truly is remarkable.
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No day is boring. Every day is exciting. It's an adventure. When you realize that the
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Lord is guiding your life. And you can look back at your life and say, you know what?
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When this was going on, when this happened to me, I had no idea what was going on. And then 5, 10, 15, 20 years down the road, you're thinking, okay, that makes sense.
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I see what the Lord was doing in my life. And you may have thought you were on a smooth path through life.
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And the Lord sends a hardship your way. And you might wonder, why, Lord, are you doing this? But what he's doing is he's making your story greater than it could have been.
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He sends a difficulty. But the end result is he sends you on a better path. I can tell you with 100 % honesty that I wouldn't be your pastor right now if I didn't go through a valley period about eight or nine years ago.
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And I'm so glad he did because I love the path that he sent me down. And when you realize that the
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Lord is guiding the details of your life, it should greatly encourage you. You're in the
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Lord's story. And as we ponder this, it's wonderful. And this story is a story that's going to end with us reigning with him and in fullness of joy in his presence.
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And several months back, I preached on Genesis 24 that is all about the providence of God. And we saw what the will of God looks like from the ground level, from our perspective.
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And in that chapter, Isaac discerned God's will of direction. And the
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Lord led him to his wife, Rebecca. That text answered the question for us. How do we discern the will of God for our lives?
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What steps do we take? And what we learned is we pray.
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We gather all the relevant information. We ask where our gifting best fits.
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We talk to the right people, to wise counselors. And then we make decisions based on that.
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And we shouldn't expect to hear a word from God or have something written in the sky saying, do this.
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But we use the means that Scripture gives us to know what to do and where to go.
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But the text we looked at today shows us the other end. So that was the ground level, our perspective. This shows us
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God's perspective. The Lord is weaving the details of our lives together for His good purposes.
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And sometimes the direction of our life is forced on us by adversity.
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And you may be experiencing that right now. We didn't plan for something to happen, but it did.
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And the Lord is sovereign over that too. And He wants to guide you through that for your good.
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He did that with Joseph here. Do you think Joseph planned on being sold to traitors who were just passing through and having his brothers do that to him?
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And have him go down to a foreign land in Egypt? He never thought his life would play out that way, but it did.
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And the Lord was sovereign over it. So this is the third way how the Lord weaves together the story of the lives of His people by allowing something bad to happen to Joseph for His ultimate good.
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So to summarize the sermon this morning, the Lord weaves together the detailed story of the lives of His people.
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And we've seen three ways how in the life of Joseph in chapter 37, He planned Joseph's superiority over his brothers.
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He saved Joseph through Reuben in order to preserve the great design for his life.
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And He allowed something bad to happen to him, namely, to be sold to the traitors passing through for His ultimate good.
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And everyone here today who knows Jesus Christ, the Lord is guiding your life to an indescribable good.
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To be a follower of Christ means that you are sincerely trusting Him for the forgiveness of your sins, for your salvation.
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And you know you are saved because you're bearing fruit in your life. There's evidence that you have this true faith.
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James says, faith without deeds is dead. And so the offer is always there.
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Every week, I want the gospel offer to be there. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.
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But many in this room who know the Lord, be encouraged that God is writing your story and guiding it towards your greatest good and for His glory.
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Now, next week, we're gonna look at the narrative of Judah and Tamar. So we just started
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Joseph today and we're gonna take one chapter right from Joseph and then we'll be back with Joseph in chapter 39 through 50.
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But buckle up for next week because it's gonna be a wild ride with this story. As we've seen so many in the book of Genesis.
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Let's pray. Father in heaven, we do thank
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You for the Word of God. It is sharper than a two -edged sword and it's able to discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
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It's able to dig into the deepest parts of us, which is incredible. Lord, we can't hide ourselves from You.
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And so I pray, Lord, that as we soak ourselves in Your Word by going through Genesis, by going through this chapter today, that we would learn that You are writing the details of our life and that that would lead us all the more to trust
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You as You weave these details together. And even when adversity comes,
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Lord, it's not an accident and You planned it. And we need to trust You through it and realize,
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Lord, that when we walk with You closely, the story is going in a good direction, even if it might not seem that way from our narrow perspective.
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And so, Lord, we need to hear these words. And so I pray that each one here would take this to heart. In Jesus' name,