Why do the Righteous Suffer? 1

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I invite you to take out your Bibles and turn to Hebrews, chapter 11.
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We have been going through a verse-by-verse exposition of Hebrews now for a few years, just going as many verses as we are able to do, look at and give time to.
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And when we came to chapter 11 at the beginning of this year, 2011, we were in chapter 11, we said we were going to focus on the individual people who are mentioned, because Hebrews 11 gives a listing of individual Old Testament saints, all of which give us examples of faith, albeit different types of examples.
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There's examples of failure, as well as success, victory, as well as defeat.
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And we see this all throughout the Old Testament.
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That's what we've been looking at.
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And we come today to the person of Joseph.
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And we're going to be looking at the fact that Joseph, while he suffered greatly, at the hands of sinful people, some being his own brothers that he suffered at their hands, that the strength and power of God was stronger than those who sought to do evil to him.
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So this morning, we're going to begin by simply opening our text to Hebrews 11, verse 22, looking at this short text, which mentions to us the person of Joseph.
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And then we're going to be spending the next few weeks examining his life.
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Let's stand together to read our opening text.
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It says in chapter 11, verse 22, By faith, Joseph at the end of his life made mention of the exodus of the Israelites and gave directions concerning his bones.
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Our Father and our God, we thank you that you have given us this time to study your word.
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And I pray, O God, that you would first and foremost keep me from error, as I am a fallible man and capable of preaching error.
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I pray that you would undergird me with your spirit, guide me with your truth.
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And I pray, Lord, that you would open the hearts of the people to both hear and understand the word.
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And Lord, that we all might apply it to our lives as we see your truth here in this text.
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We pray, Lord, as we examine the life of Joseph through various texts, that our hearts and minds will stay focused on what we have come to learn.
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In Jesus' name, Amen.
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Why do the righteous suffer? Why do the righteous suffer? Well, that question is as old as humanity itself.
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It comes in various forms and in various ways.
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But the most popular form of the interrogative statement normally comes in this form.
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Why do bad things happen to good people? That's the normal way of asking the same question.
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And the immediate and, I would have to say, theologically sufficient answer begins with the recognition that the question is based on a fallacy.
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It's based on an incorrect assumption right out of the box.
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Because when you say, why do bad things happen to good people? You have made an assumption that there are good people.
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And when you say, why do the righteous suffer? You have made an assumption that there are righteous people.
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The Bible says there is none good, no, not one.
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There is none who is righteous.
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There's none who seeks after God, as we've already expressed in our time of communion.
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We have been told from the scripture that we trust and believe in, the very word of God, that there is none good.
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When the rich young ruler come to Jesus and he said, good teacher, what must I do to be saved? Jesus immediately corrected and said, why do you call me good? There is only one who is good, and that is God.
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So again, the question is based on a logical misunderstanding from the very beginning.
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Yet, while that is the intellectually correct answer, that there's none good, so the question is null and void, that rarely satisfies the inquiry.
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Because the true inquiry really isn't, why do the righteous suffer? The true inquiry isn't, why do bad things happen to good people? The true inquiry is, why is it that we see so much injustice in a world that is governed by a just God? That's the real question.
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That's the heart of the question, why do the righteous suffer? That's the heart of the question, why do bad things happen to good people? The real longing and yearning, the real question is, why is there so much injustice in a world governed by a just God? A man stops to get gas while coming home from work and is robbed and beaten by a group of gang members left for dead.
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Certainly, he did nothing to them worthy of such treatment.
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Why did that happen? A woman goes to work at the World Trade Center, unknown to her that she's working on the very floor that only minutes later would be the site of the most horrific act of terrorism in the United States history.
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Why did that happen? A pastor is imprisoned in Iran simply for preaching the gospel and his life is threatened unless he recants his faith and returns to Islam.
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If he dies, his wife, his two children are going to be left without a provider and themselves likely end up dying.
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Why is that allowed? If God is sovereign, why is there so much injustice? That is the question that pulls on the strings of so many people's hearts.
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That is the question that rocks so many people's faith.
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It is easy when we go to church for years and years without having ourselves suffered.
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But yet, when we suffer, the question often becomes the forefront of our own faith inquiry.
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Why did this happen to me? What did I do to deserve this? What have I done that has so offended God that he would allow this to happen to me or to my child or to my mother or to my friend? And this happens so often and we deal with it often, not by turning to scripture, but often people deal with it by turning to anger or turning to fear or turning to hatred or turning to alcohol or turning to sex or turning to drugs, something that can make us not feel the pain.
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Now, there are a myriad of scriptural passages that provide us with insight into the more multitude of injustices in the world.
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But I believe that none are as enlightening to the answer to this question as those which involve the life of Joseph, the son of Jacob.
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And to address the life of Joseph, we're going to have to go back to the book of Genesis, because that's where his life story is recounted for us.
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But I don't want to begin at the beginning of his life.
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I want to begin today because we're not going to finish his life today.
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We're not going to finish his life next week.
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We may go into three weeks.
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We won't be there till Christmas, but we might be there up until close to Christmas because there's no reason to rush the scripture.
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But I want to look at one passage before we even get to his life, and that is the last part of his life in Genesis chapter 50.
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In Genesis chapter 50 and verse 20, we have one of the most profound, I would say, one of the most telling passages of scripture in regards to the sovereignty of God and all of the text.
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Before we read it, I want to recount for you, since we were not going to be able to do the entire thing today, you all who have been here have probably heard me mention Joseph.
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Many of you have been in church your entire life.
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You've read the story of Joseph.
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You've heard the story of Joseph.
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But we all know Joseph suffered many terrible events in his life.
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We know that outside of Job, really, there wasn't many others in scripture that we could say suffered as much in injustices as did the person named Joseph.
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Yet at the end of his life, when his brothers are before him, and you remember his first real act of injustice was committed to him by his brothers.
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When his brothers are before him, they are fearing for their lives because they realize this person who is in front of them now has the power over life and death.
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He has the power of their very existence in his hands.
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They are afraid of him and they are beginning to barter with him and say, look, we know our father's died and we know now you may have been keeping us alive just to placate our father, but now that he's gone, we don't want you to kill us.
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And this is Joseph's words to them.
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And I want you to hear them because it is so profound.
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He says, as for you, speaking to his evil brothers, speaking to the ones who had committed atrocities against him, speaking to the ones who had done evil against him, speaking to the ones who had sold him into slavery and had even wished for his death.
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He said, as for you, you meant evil against me.
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You see, he didn't let him off the hook.
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He didn't say God takes lemons and make lemonade.
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He said, you meant evil.
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Your motivation was evil and you are sinful in this.
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You were wrong.
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But God, how many wonderful, beautiful statements in Scripture begin with the phrase, but God, you see, that's the answer you meant evil against me.
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But God meant it for good.
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You see, that's the key.
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And you'll notice the verb use there is the same what they meant for evil.
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God meant for good.
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Same action, same event, same circumstance.
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They were motivated by their sinful hearts.
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But God was motivated by his goodness.
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For what reason? To bring it about that many people should be kept alive as they are today.
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What you see as evil, what you can only see as evil because your hearts are evil.
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God had a purpose.
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God has a plan.
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God had it so that it would be this way so that his perfect will would be accomplished.
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Now, to be able to say that, brethren, it takes an awful lot of trust in the sovereignty of God.
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You can't say that if you have some kind of a willy nilly Armenian God who has no power over anything that is more powerful than your will.
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That's what a lot of people have.
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They have a God who is bound by the will of man.
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Beloved, that's fallacy.
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The Bible teaches that God's will is sovereign over all things.
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That's what he says is what you meant for evil.
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And it was evil.
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God meant it for good, because what does the scripture say? God works all things together for good, for those who love him, for those who are called according to his purpose.
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Now, I do want to mention something on that regard.
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I'm quoting verse twenty eight of Romans eight.
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I think a lot of people miss this.
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And every time I mention this passage, I like to remind them.
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They say God works all things together for good.
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If you stop there, you miss the whole the whole point because it says God works all things together for good, for those who love him and are called according to his purpose.
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For many people, the world life, death and after death is but a curse for they will spend eternity in hell.
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And for them, I do not promise God will work all things for good for you because you are going to go to hell and that is not good.
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But if you love the Lord and you are called according to his purpose, no matter what happens in this life, God will see to it that it will work together for good.
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Well, it hurts right now.
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Yes, it does.
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And I would never steal from your pain if you're hurting right now.
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I wouldn't steal from the pain that you have and tell you that you shouldn't hurt when someone gets sick or that you shouldn't hurt when someone dies or you shouldn't grieve because that's not fair.
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But I will tell you this, don't look at your life, if you love the Lord or called according to his purpose, do not look at your life and think that your pain is purposeless.
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God has a purpose for everything.
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That is the story of Joseph in a very small, condensed orb is that God never allows his people to suffer without purpose ever.
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I don't like suffering.
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Well, neither do I.
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Nobody likes suffering.
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That's why they call it suffering.
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If it was fun, we'd call it a holiday.
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It hurts.
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It's suffering.
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We suffer.
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We don't like it, but we must never forget, as the passage says, when they met evil, God meant good.
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There's another passage I want to show you.
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It's a few chapters back when Joseph's brothers first realized who he is in chapter forty five.
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Go over to chapter forty five and look at verse five.
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In chapter forty five and verse five, they just found out that he is their brother.
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He just found out that Joseph is who he is and they're afraid for their lives.
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In verse forty five or chapter forty five, verse five, he says, and now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here because they were they were fearing for their lives.
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They were freaking out there.
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They're thinking they're about to be executed.
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So don't be stressed.
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Don't fear for God sent me before you to preserve life.
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Know that God did this.
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God had purpose in this.
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Beloved, that is hard for some people to get their heads around.
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It is hard for some people to believe that God would have purpose in suffering.
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But if you don't believe that, if you don't have an understanding of God's sovereignty in all things, when you are faced with those inevitable struggles, when you are faced with those inevitable griefs, when you are faced with that inevitable time of pain.
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If your theology does not allow for a God who's in control of it, then I pity you because your amount of dealing with that grief is in proportion to your amount of trust in God.
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Is God sovereign or is he not? Is the question.
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And the Bible clearly teaches that he is now having discussed that issue.
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I want to begin our survey of the life of Joseph.
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We we started at the end, which I believe is sort of unfair, you know, because I kind of started with the climax.
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But now we're going to go back to the very beginning because there are some things about Joseph's life that I want us to see and recognize and learn from.
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That's part of what this study has been about.
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It's been about recognizing parts of their life and learning from them.
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We've learned about the most important part of his life.
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And so in the end of his life, he was able to survey his life and he was able to see the sovereign hand of God in his life.
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Are you there, by the way? Are you at a point right now where you can look back over your life and you can see the times of suffering and see God's hand in them? Because you might not be and that's OK.
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You might still be in suffering right now and you may not be able to see where God's hand is.
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But many of us have been through suffering.
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And we look back and we remember I remember that eight year old boy whose parents got a divorce and I hated it.
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I remember crying and I remember wishing that it wouldn't happen.
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I would never met my stepmom.
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I've never been introduced to this church.
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I would have never grown up here and I never went to seminary here and been back here as the pastor.
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If that hadn't happened, yes, it was a horrible time.
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And I remember crying and I still cry sometimes today because it was such a hurtful time in my life.
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But I can see the sovereign hand of God.
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Which brought me here.
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I always like to use myself as an example, but there is an example.
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It hurt.
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I never heard so much in my life and I haven't heard so much since.
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Maybe when granny died, but that was hard.
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That hurt, too.
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But you see what I'm saying? You can at times look back and you see the suffering and yet you see what God is doing with it.
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If you're in suffering now, you are unable to because you don't have an eternal perspective yet.
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You don't even have a perspective to look back yet.
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You're still in it.
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And while you're in it, that's all you can see.
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And that's OK.
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Just don't let it consume you.
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Don't let it consume.
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All right, let's go back to Genesis 37, this is the start of the life of Joseph.
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And again, we're just going to go as long as we as long as we can and where we stop, we'll pick up next week and do it that way.
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Joseph, of course, was the favored son of Jacob.
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Jacob was the patriarch of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
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Jacob was also called Israel.
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He who wrestles with God and Jacob has sons and those sons become known as the twelve tribes of Israel.
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One of them was Joseph.
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He had two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh.
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His two sons would join the others and become part of the twelve tribes.
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But here we are in the beginning and we see in Genesis 37, let's start in verse one.
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It says Jacob lived in the land of his father.
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So journeys in the land of Canaan.
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Then in verse two, it says these are the generations of Jacob.
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Joseph, being 17 years old, was pasturing the flock with his brothers.
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He was a boy with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father's wives.
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Remember, his father had two wives and they had two servants and they became his wives.
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So he ended up with four wives.
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The twelve tribes didn't all come from one union of man and wife.
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They came from a union of one man and four women.
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And of course, we're looking at a different economic system, a different life system.
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And though the Bible does not ever condemn polygamy in the sense that there were Abraham and different patriarchs that were polygamous, it doesn't support it either.
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It simply says that it was.
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And later in the New Testament, it tells us that the Christian way, the leaders of the church is to be husbands of one wife.
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And there are examples to the church that I would say that that example is to also be for the body.
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But we know at this time there was a different social economic system and they lived with multiple wives.
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So Bilhah and Zilpah were there and also were the other two.
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It says his father's wives.
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And Joseph brought a bad report to them or excuse me, a bad report of them to their father.
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Now, I don't know if you have children.
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But have you ever been brought a bad report from one child about another child? If you've got children, you have been brought if you've got more than one.
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If you're the parent of only one, you're not yet a parent.
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It doesn't count.
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You have to have more than two to qualify.
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I'm just kidding you.
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But with two, you always have the one who's going to he's going to give the report on the other is going to tell the story.
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And the thing, though, here, we mustn't simply look at this as tattletaling, because there's a sense in which there's there's that.
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But the more important sense here is that there was a trust relationship between Joseph and his father.
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There was a relationship there that the other brothers didn't have because the other brothers were constantly they were deceivers of their father.
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And we see this later on.
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They would deceive their father more and more, even in the pretending that Joseph had died by dipping his coat in animal blood and giving it to the father and saying, look, your son has been mauled by an animal.
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You know, so so here you have just an early picture of what the relationship was in the household.
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You've got you've got Jacob, who himself was a deceiver.
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Remember, that's what the word Jacob means, deceiver, usurper, one who who grabs the heel is actually the Hebrew there.
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And his sons deceived him just like he had deceived his father Isaac by pretending to be so.
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So here it says Joseph brought a bad report of them to their father.
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Now, Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his sons.
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You see, Israel, Jacob, he did the same thing that his parents had done.
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His parents had favored a child.
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You remember his father, Isaac, favored Esau and his mother had favored him.
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And because of that, there became a divide in the family and there was no trust to the point that the mother felt like she had to eavesdrop on the father just so that she can ensure that her son would would rob the father of the blessing that he was going to give to Esau.
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Here again is this deception in the family or not deception, but favoritism.
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Rather, it says Israel loved Joseph more than the other sons because he was the son of his old age.
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Joseph was a miracle baby.
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His mother was barren, but yet she still was able to have him as a miracle baby.
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And Joseph was loved by his father.
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And then comes that important part, he says, and he made him a robe of many colors.
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Most of us are familiar with that story because it says, 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 because of the father's favoritism.
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Because he loved him and because he showered gifts upon him, Joseph became the disdain of his brothers.
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Now, beloved, all of this is what's going to make up the patchwork of Joseph's life.
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All of this is going to make up the great story of Joseph because it's the beginning of Joseph's relationship with his father, this love relationship that he had with his father, this favored relationship that's ultimately going to end with his being sold away because his brothers can't stand that his father will show favoritism to him, that they're going to be enraged.
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And want to rid themselves of this one who takes the father's attention and the father's time and the father's goods, they hate him and they're going to it's going to ultimately end with his being sold.
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But let's look going to verse five.
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It says now Joseph had a dream.
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Here's where the plot really thickens.
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It says because he 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.
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Behold, we were binding sheaves in the field and behold, my sheep arose and stood upright and behold, your sheep's gathered around it and bowed down to my sheep.
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His brothers said to him, are you indeed to reign over us or are you indeed to rule over us? So they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words.
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Then he dreamed another dream and told it to his brothers and said, behold, I have had dreamed another dream.
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Behold, the sun, the moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me.
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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? Shall I and your mother and your brothers indeed come to bow ourselves to the ground before you? And his brothers were jealous of him.
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But his father kept the same in mind.
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If he was distasteful for receiving a coat.
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Then he was disgusting to his brothers for receiving these dreams.
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Because they didn't see these dreams as coming from God.
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They saw these dreams as coming from his own ego.
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They didn't think that this was God's prophecy that would actually come about.
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And actually everything that everything that he dreamed later became a reality.
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You know, the dream was that he would be lifted up and his brothers would bow to him.
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And then later he would be lifted up.
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And even his father and his and his mother would bow to him and his family would bow to him.
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And the family, of course, they hear this.
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And even the father is like, oh, wait, wait a minute.
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Are you saying that that I, your father, the one who is responsible for you being here, the one who brought you up, the patriarch of the family, you're saying that I'm going to bow down to you? And the brothers hated him for that.
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That's why later on.
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When they see him come and they say, here comes that dream.
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They said, I never forgot.
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I never forgot what he thought of himself.
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But you see, it wasn't that Joseph thought this of himself.
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It wasn't that he came up with this on his own accord, but this was what God was showing him a promise for the future.
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Beloved.
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Few few months back, I preached on the theology of heaven and I preached on how heaven is our is what God has established for us as the end of this life.
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And going back to the question.
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About suffering and about why we endure suffering and what we can do when we endure suffering, one of the things that we mustn't forget is that this life is temporary and we have a promise from God and that that promise will be fulfilled because God is faithful and he has promised it to us.
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The same thing is here with Joseph, because Joseph later.
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Joseph later is going to be suffering.
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He's going to be a slave in a man's house.
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He's going to be in prison.
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He's going to be he's going to help people and be forgotten about.
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Have you ever done that? He's going to suffer and all that.
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But he always has this dream.
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This promise from God.
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He might not understand it fully.
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We don't understand heaven fully.
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But you know what? It can be what gets us through those times to know that this life is not all there is for the present.
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Suffering is not to be compared with the glory that will be revealed to us.
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That verse gets us through that verse, carries us through our suffering.
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This present suffering can be bad.
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This present suffering can be hellacious.
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This present suffering can be painful, but it is not to be compared.
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But what God has prepared for us, that's what gets us through.
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That's what helps us in our suffering.
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As Joseph had the dream and the promise from God that one day he would be lifted up.
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So, too, have we been given the promise from God that though we may suffer, we will be seated in heavenly places.
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We will be with the father and with the son, and we will see them in their glory.
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And we will live forever in their presence.
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That is our hope.
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And that is what sustains us in our suffering.
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I think that's a good place for us to close.
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Let's bow.
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Father, as we come now to consider all that we have learned today from Scripture and all that we have seen, we do pray, oh God, that you would remind us always of the promise of heaven, that when we suffer, we might be able to hold fast to the reality that you have gone before us to prepare a place for us and that your son will return and that he will take us to where he is, that we will forever be with you.
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Lord, as we, over the next few weeks, examine the life of Joseph, I pray, oh God, that you just continue to open our hearts to the realization that while we suffer greatly, we do not suffer in vain.
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You, God, are bringing all things together for good, though we may not be able to see them now.
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We know you never leave us.
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You never forsake us.
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You're always with us.
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And with that, we stand.
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Lord, today, if there are people here who've never heard the gospel, who've never heard that salvation comes only in Christ and that we are sinners in need of salvation, Lord, I just pray that that word has penetrated their hearts and that you would use that in whatever way you see fit, bringing about glory to your own name.
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And it is in your name that we pray.
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Amen.
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Let us stand together and sing our song of benediction.
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And if you have a need for prayer, please come as we sing.