From the Pit to the Promise: Trusting God Through Suffering
Why does obedience to God sometimes seem to make life harder rather than easier? In Genesis 39-40, Joseph remains faithful to God through slavery, false accusation, imprisonment, and long seasons of waiting. Instead of immediate blessing, his obedience appears to lead directly into suffering. Yet beneath the surface, God is working out a greater purpose. This passage reveals striking parallels between Joseph and Jesus, both of whom suffered unjustly while remaining faithful to the Father's will. Through Joseph's story we discover that suffering is not evidence that God has abandoned His people, but often part of His sovereign plan to shape, strengthen, and prepare them for glory. When answers are delayed and circumstances remain painful, believers are called to trust God's character, honour His name, and wait patiently for His timing. The same God who was with Joseph in the prison and with Jesus at the cross remains with His people today, providing strength to endure and hope for the future.
Genesis chapter 39, verses through to the last four verses of the next chapter. Sorry, the first four verses. Here we go. 39 verse one. Now Joseph had been brought down to Egypt and Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the garden Egyptian had brought him from the Ishmaelites who had brought him down there. The Lord was with Joseph and he became a successful man and he was in the house of his Egyptian master. His master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord caused all that he did to succeed in his hands. So Joseph found favor in his sight and attended him. And he made him overseer of his house and put him in charge of all that he had. From that time he made him overseer in his house and over all that he had. The Lord blessed the Egyptian house for Joseph's sake. The blessing of the Lord was on all that he had in house and on field. So he left all that he had in Joseph's charge and because of him he had no concern about anything but the food he ate. Now Joseph was handsome in form and appearance. And after a time, his master's wife cast her eyes on Joseph and said, lie with me. But he refused and said to his master's wife, behold, because of me, my master has no concern about anything in the house. And he has put everything that he has in my charge. He is not greater in this house than I am, nor has he kept back anything from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do this great wickedness and sin against God? And as she spoke to Joseph day and day, day after day he would not listen to her, to lie beside her or to be with her. But one day when he went to the house to do his work and none of the men in the house were there, she caught him by his garments saying, lie with me. But he left his garments in her hand and fled and got out of the house. And as soon as she saw that he had left his garments in her hand and had fled out of the house, she called to the men of her household and said to them, see, he has brought among us a Hebrew to laugh at us. He came in to lie with me and I cried out with a loud voice. And as soon as I heard that, I lifted up my voice and cried out. He left his garment beside me and he fled and got out of the house. And then she laid up his garment by her until the master came home. And she told him the same story saying, the Hebrew servant whom you have brought among us came in to laugh at me. But as soon as I lifted up my voice and cried, he left his garment beside me and fled out of the house. As soon as his master's these words, that his wife spoke to him, this is the way your servant treated me, his anger was kindled. And just the last first four verses here. The cupbearer of the king of Egypt and his baker committed an offense against their lord, the king of Egypt. And Pharaoh was angry with his two officers, the chief cupbearer and the chief baker. And he put them in custody in the house of the captain of the guard in the prison where Joseph was confined. The captain of the guard appointed Joseph to be with them and he attended them and they continued for some time in custody. Beautiful. Well, why don't we begin in prayer before we dive in? Dear Father, You are here with us. Lord, you are dwelling within our hearts. And so we are asking Lord that you might teach us, that you might speak to us through your word today, Lord, and that we might hear you, that we might be encouraged, supported, transformed, made new as we continue to walk this life that you have set us on. Would you open the eyes of the blind today, Father? Would you encourage those who are weak? And Father, would you spur all of us on to pursue you and you alone. In Jesus name we pray, amen. Beautiful. One of the things that I love about Joseph is as you'll read through his story, particularly these next three chapters that we'll do in this week and next week, is you'll just see Joseph as Jesus. You can see it everywhere. We talked about it two weeks ago when we saw about how Jesus was betrayed, just like Joseph was. He was even betrayed by his brother Judah. And what was Judah's name in Greek? You guys remember? Judas, right? All these connections all over the place and we are seeing the exact same thing here. But in these next two weeks, what we are gonna witness is the life, the death and the resurrection of our Lord through Joseph. Because you imagine it like this, everyone talks about life, right? It's up and down. You're up one day, you're down the next. And that's really what we're seeing here, right? Joseph started off, he was the lastborn, but he was the... Jacob's favorite. He had the Technicolor coat, the coat with many colors, right? Jacob loved him. So he's up here, the favorite, and then boom, he gets sold away into slavery. Luckily he didn't get killed, right? So now he is down again. But then again, you see him rise. And now here is particularly where we begin to see the life of Jesus. Because he's been sold off into slavery. but he ends up in the house of this high-ranking man we know as Potiphar, right? He was the keeper of the guy. He was basically the king's executioner, right? He kept the prison, managed all those kinds of things. He was the right-hand man. And you see Joseph as he enters into this household, in the midst of his circumstances, he's in slavery. When all of us have been this hard done by, are you normally ready to jump into it? To say, I might be a slave now, but oh man, I'm gonna work my guts out for you. Probably not, but Joseph does. Joseph gets into it. He labors, he works for the benefit of this man who simply bought him as a slave and his entire house is blessed. Not necessarily because Joseph's the most amazing worker. From what we actually see in the chapter we did two weeks ago, he actually didn't do that much manual labor. But this fella was blessed by God. And so therefore, the house of Potiphar was blessed as well. And so he is simply serving his master, Potiphar, despite his circumstances. Maybe something that's pushing him though is... know, if we go back to Genesis 37, what's he really looking forward to? This dream that he was given that his brothers and even his mother and father would bow before him. So maybe he's sitting there saying, well, you know, God's working, you know. I'm not being slavery, but hey, my God, he literally made my great-grandmother, sorry, I would have been his grandmother, pregnant when she was 90 years old. He could probably make me anything. So he believes in him. He's been faithful to this forefather, so he'll be faithful to me. So maybe he's like, maybe this is how it happens. Maybe this will be the way that the dream comes about. And he starts to come up. Maybe the dream's about to be approached. He's looking at his hope, the endpoint, but then it all comes crashing down again. Right? Potiphar's wife comes along, the seductress, tempting him, leading him astray, but he will not give in for a second. Right? Very godly man. Right? You have a very great picture here of what we should do with sin. Right? Do you know what the, sorry, the type of person that is referred to in Proverbs as the evil one? The one that you don't go to. Who is it? The adulteress, the one that's calling you back when you come, commits sin with me. Do it with me. But he runs, he flees away, he leaves the house. But unfortunately for him, she has grabbed hold of his gun. And so, this adulteress who has not been satisfied as she wished, now turns to her manipulation, goes to her husband and has him punished. By manipulating and, well, know, coming up with a fake story, basically. So now this great dream, this hope, this end point that he's looking for, maybe this is the fulfillment, now he's crashed back down to earth again. Now he's been arrested, imprisoned, and he's done nothing wrong. Sound familiar? I want you to look at similar parallels in Jesus' early life. You read about some of his early years in Luke. It says in Luke 2 verse 40, the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom and the favor of God was upon him. Then you go to verses 46 and 47. After they spent some time in the temple, he was about 12 years old at this point, had lost, Mary and Joseph had lost him, but after three days, they found him in the temple. sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. And then verse 52, and Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature, in favor with God and with men, right? He have his rise. He's just like Joseph in the house. He is just blessed, right? Not everyone hated Jesus at the start, right? People said, this is the Messiah. He could be the one to come. People are excited. People like this guy because he's hanging out with the poor and the marginalized. He has massive crowds following him. They culminate in him walking into Jerusalem the week before his crucifixion. And what do they do? Shouting his name. Hosanna, Hosanna in the highest, right? He is the Messiah, the one, the King. But then one week later... just like Potiphar's wife. Along come those who want to see him fall. John 18 12, so the band of soldiers and their captain and the officers of the Jews arrested Jesus and bound him, just like Joseph. And then John 19 four, Pilate went out again and said to them, see, I am bringing him out to you that you may know that I find no guilt in him. Being arrested for no good reason. just as Joseph was. Why does this happen? Because Joseph follows God, Jesus was God, and what does the devil love to do? Cause suffering to those who follow God. He is the King and the God of this world, Corinthians says. And so he's gonna make it so we do not have a good time. Just read through Revelation 12, you see this picture of a dragon that had missed its opportunity to kill Messiah. And it just says it now hates with vengeance all of the children of God. He'll do anything. It's not even rational. He just wants to cause pain. But you see here, we're seeing something important. Everything in Scripture, this is one of the most important things you can understand about the Old Testament. It's how as preachers we go through and find good gospel center messages, everything in the Bible points back to Jesus. It is always pointing back to the gospels. Why is that? Because what's the point of this? It's not to make our lives better. It's not to instruct us on how to get rich. It's revealing who God is. That is why it's the Word of God. It might be written down by 40 different authors, but it's because they were guided along by God Himself. That is why we call it God's Word. And so if Jesus is, Colossians says He's the image of the invisible God. He's the one who makes God visible. Well, then when you read about Him in the Old Testament, it's going to point you back to the one who has made God truly visible. It points you back to Jesus. And it's going to be important because if we looked at Joseph alone, well, we'd learned probably a few good moralistic lessons about how to deal with suffering. But that's not good enough. You're not trying to be like Joseph. We're trying to be like Jesus. So we look at Joseph and how he points us to him. Otherwise, well, You might be a pretty decent human, you might have some willpower to you, but that's not good enough. You need something other than just yourself. don't need to be like Joseph, you need to be like the one he depended on. You need to depend on the same person you depended on, You need to depend on God. So we're going to look and see how Joseph is pointing us to the one who shall empower us to walk through suffering. So four things that we're gonna look at today. First one being that his obedience led to suffering. both Jesus and Joseph. I want you to take note of, if you go to the verse 9 of chapter 39, it says this, how then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God? Right? And I find this, we're going to revisit this point in the third point, but I find it very interesting. Potiphar was his master, but yet when Potiphar's wife comes and seeks to tempt him, who does he really not want to sin against? He's not actually concerned about Potiphar necessarily. He said, I don't want to sin against God. That is his greatest concern. I do not want to dishonor my master, even though my master has literally led me into slavery at this moment. But then in his refusal to dishonor God, what did that get him? Riches, blessing? It got him suffering. It got him a prison sentence, unjustly. So his choice to trust God rather than give into his selfish desires to enjoy this wife that probably he could have slept with and no one would have found out. Instead of doing that and rather believing that God will remain faithful to him and that he would remain faithful to God, he suffers. He's literally compromised. Remember we talked about, he's on the rise and now he's putting it at risk. but because he continues to trust God. And so, it's just a simple thing, simple first point. Obedience to God's will will bring suffering into our lives. Most important thing, destroys half of the false gospels out there, right? That tell you, you just believe in God, things are gonna start getting better. Actually, the Bible says, start believing in God and Jesus, your life's gonna get worse. It's gonna get harder. You're at least getting along with this world, now you're not. Things aren't gonna go well. Obeying God might cause loss of reputation, loss of friends, money, time. Jesus says, you're gonna sacrifice everything for me. It'll be worth it, but I will call you to lay down all. And you see, as I was preparing this, it got me thinking just about the fact of prison. I've encountered, you know, and some of you, most of you probably have too, Christians who've been in prison before. Most of them probably came to faith there, right? And it's just funny because so many of them I find are just incredibly zealous. It's not to downplay any of us. We all have our different gifts, but there's just something about them. They just seem so... on fire for Jesus. And I always wondered why is that? There was a particular couple we knew in Deer and Bandy that would just, they came into town and just, they could care less about anyone's opinion. They just went about sharing the gospel with anyone who would hear. And you see, I think this is why. I think they've realized how much they've actually gained in Christ, right? How much they've, all the riches that they've received. Why? Because when you go to prison, you lose everything. You don't get to decide anything. Everything is decided for you. You simply follow your orders. Maybe you get to enjoy a bit of recreational time. That's it. And then you leave and you have this black mark against your name that will affect you for the rest of your life. It's not that great. You've lost everything. But if they find Christ, they say, might have lost everything in this world, but I've gained everything. I went into that prison, a convicted criminal, and I've left a child of God. Sure, people might tell me I'm just a criminal. That's not true though. I am a child of God. And now I think it's hard for some of us because we've never gone through the process of losing everything. Hey, God puts us in different places at different seasons. It's not a bad thing. God sent some people to prison because He wants them to lose everything. Some of us, God says, actually don't require you to lose everything to be saved. But understand that when we haven't been in that place, often we don't see ourselves as, well, I was nothing and now I've become something. When we look at the obedience and the commands that we're called to, we think, but that's going to make me lose this friend, these things, my money, my time, whatever thing that I used to define, these things I love. I don't want to let them go. We have never been someone who's lost everything. So we come blinded to the riches because we can't hand over a little bit of money to gain all of it. We can't understand what it's like to be like Paul when he says Philippians 3, 8. Paul was literally the go-to man for the Pharisees. He was very well respected, right? He would have become part of the Sanhedrin, the religious leaders of that time, given enough time. He would have. He was above everyone. He excelled far and above. And he says, who'll be treated like garbage because I've gained Jesus. But I'll continue to serve Him just that I might have more of Him. And just think about it like this, right? You're three, four, five years old. Your dad, mom, parent, whatever, takes you to the reject shop and they buy you a ring, a plastic ring. Maybe one of those lollipop ones that has the big diamond on it that you can suck on. Normally then you're not left with a diamond at the end of it. But it always just reminds you of that memory where that one time your dad took you out and he got you that $2 ring. So you keep wearing it. No one's gonna take that ring off you. You love that thing. Cause it reminds you of that time of your dad. But one day along comes, imagine you're woman in this situation. A fella comes along and says, hey, after a couple months of dating, hopefully, we should get married. gets down on one knee, pulls out a diamond ring. Now that thing is worth a bit more than $2, right? Better yet, that's an affirmation of a lifelong covenant. Your dad's great and your dad's still gonna love you if you take the ring off or not. But that memory's there. But my dad, but these things that I used to love, I don't wanna take the ring off, I don't wanna lose that. And so we don't wanna throw out the $2 piece of garbage and gain the $1,000 ring. But you see, this is what we're doing all the time, right? Oh yeah, I might be a child of God, but I can't lose being friends with so-and-so, you know? But, you know, I know I'm a child of God, but I could also be so-and-so promotion, right? We can't leave these things behind. And so we don't obey God because we cannot stand the costs. Just understand, becoming Christian requires cost, leaving behind old things. We don't stay the same. We change. So we go on to the second point. His obedience, Joseph's, and also Jesus continued in their suffering, right? We see Jesus, right? You know, he rose up. But then as he continued in his obedience to God, he suffered. So too did Joseph. He's going down now. Right? You imagine it like two hills. We're coming down into the valley now. And so I want you to look at those last, those first four verses of chapter 40 that we read. It starts the next chapter, but it talks about what Joseph is now doing in prison. that these bearer and this baker that committed offence have been put in prison, Pharaoh is angry and so now Potiphar who is the keeper of the prison, they're now in his custody. And then it says, the captain of the guard appointed Joseph to be with them, he attended them and they continued for some time in custody. And at the end of the last chapter, we're told about how Joseph's literally become the manager of the prison that he's now in. This dude goes anywhere and he becomes the manager of whatever he walks into. But the most interesting thing, why would you go to prison and then say, I'm gonna continually serve now my new master? Well, what's actually is old master, right? If you read in the first verse says the captain, sorry, not the first verse, the second, third verse, the captain of the guard, it's it. This is the same guy, this is still Potiphar. He's demoted this guy from head of the household now to prisoner, but now he makes him head of the prison and... Joseph's still obeying this guy. You think you'd stop listening to your master at this point? You think you'd be up yours? Come on, you know, I'm... You can't lock me up and then say, continue to serve me. But yet he does. You think he would at least have the right to engage a bit of noncompliance, a bit of bitterness, maybe a bit of water cooler gossip or something, but no. He continues to serve his master. And now obviously we've already painted the point, suffering is the direct consequence of obeying, right? So, this is the result of his obedience to God. But now, as he went through that test with Potiphar's wife, now he enters into another test. If he were to give up now, he's actually giving up right in the middle of the test. God says, are you gonna continue to serve me despite the fact you're suffering? He says, I've already told you, you enter into this life, you will suffer. But is the suffering gonna make you stop obeying? And so you see, this is inevitably difficult for us. It's easy to obey God when it looks like he's helping us out. It's not that easy when he's not. And what is the one question that we always ask? What did I do to deserve this? What did I do? What have I done? Surely I must have done something, right? We always go two different ways with this. Either you spend your days trying to find that hidden sin. That thing that you did that for some reason means God hates you, right? You're saying, maybe my father or grandfather did something, maybe I haven't repented of this sin, that sin, maybe I've got this lingering thing. Or you've done all that and you can't find anything. You've tried to repent, you've tried to be better and nothing's changing. And so you just grow angry and disillusioned with God. You just say, why? I'm sick of you God. I'm obedient enough. I'm trying, I'm doing what I can, I'm reading my Bible, I'm praying and yet I'm still suffering. But understand, both of these parts, very understandable, but still, both of these stem from one, our need to control and also from the fact that our view of God is still works based. We are still operating as though we are saved by works when we view God this way. When we think our suffering is a result of what we have done. Because we always want to put a label on our suffering, right? I'm suffering because I'm a bad Christian, a bad parent, a bad brother, a bad sister, a bad mother, a bad father, whatever. God's not gonna let you do that because the gospel already tells you, yes, you are. You are, you're not a good enough mother, not a good enough father, you're not a good enough friend. You're not a good enough Christian. God already knows that. Surely you guys know we're guilty, right? We're not good enough Christians. Even on our best day, we're not perfect enough for God. But he already sent his son. He has already died for us. And it says, Romans 8.1, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. So that's the end of it. That's the end of any reason that you might say, God's doing this because I did that, Visiting punishment on me, making me suffer. God does not make his children suffer for their past failures. You might suffer the consequences, as in you go and have a child out of wedlock, you're still gonna have the child, but that child will actually become a blessing. That will be a good thing. All of our sins can actually work for our good. So you see, our past failures are not being punished. Suffering is the controlled and purposeful part of God's sovereign plan instead for us to grow. It's what we call discipline. So understand. And this is hard now because we want to have some essence of control. Because if I've done something, I can do something to correct it. One of the hardest things for Joseph is he's just here because he's here. He's actually been a good Christian, if there's such a thing. And he's suffering. And so the hard thing is... We want a reason why. We want the reason why am I going through this? And God doesn't provide detailed immediate explanations. He's given us one thing, the same thing is given to Joseph. The end point. Second Corinthians 4 17. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. So this current thing I'm walking through, big or small, is preparing me for heaven. If I actually didn't go through it, heaven wouldn't actually be as good. I actually wouldn't quite enjoy it as much as I could. and one the hardest things is now Jesus has removed the reason or the only ground that we might have to stand on for our rebellion, for our disobedience. We actually can't because God said, I'm putting you through hard stuff, but it is actually for your benefit. What reason do I have to disobey? He's a good master. Just look at Jesus. He did the same thing. What was he looking at? Hebrews 12 verse two. We look to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. It is very hard to be suffering at 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years of age, whatever age, and say, but... You know, God, I know it's going to benefit me then and now, but I kind of want some of these benefits now. It seems like it's going to go for an eternity, but it won't. There is actually something he's looking towards, just as Jesus, Jesus was looking to the joy set before him, so he was able to endure those six hours. So we look ahead to the joy set before us. Maybe part of the reason we struggle so much in suffering, we're always going to struggle, but struggle so much, is because we don't actually think that much about the joy that's set before us. Do you guys think about heaven? I know we don't have all the pictures of what it would look like, but all I hear in the Bible is just, that sounds awesome. No more pain, no more crying, no more tears. Everything will be made right. But we've got to understand that walking through the misery leads to the joy, right? It will come. The end of your six hours will come. You'll be resurrected to new life. Whether that may be in this life now or in the life to come, but it will happen just as it did for Jesus. So moving on to a third point now. For it is the reason that we suffer, for the honor of God's name. I wanna revisit that ninth verse that we're looking at chapter 29, so 39, where Joseph says, how then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God? So you see, what was the one thing that stopped him? Why was the reason he didn't keep going? Because he said, well, look, I could go and enjoy you, but that would mean to dishonor God. That would be to bring him down. It would be to make me number one and God number two, or number three, even, part of his wife number two. And so he refused because he wanted to honour his master, to continue to serve him faithfully. We're given the same exhortation in Ephesians 6, serve wholeheartedly as if you were serving the Lord and not people, because you know that the Lord will reward each one of you for whatever good they do, whether they are slave or free. Now he's talking to slaves and masters there, but the reality is whoever you're called to serve in some way, you follow this same advice. you see, what was he doing? He was looking past Pharaoh, he was looking past Potiphar to God. He was saying, I serve him. I might have a bad master here on earth, but I have a good master here in heaven. Potiphar has his plan, right? He says, well, I can't suffer the injustice against my household, so I'm going to put you in prison. But God has a higher purpose than that. He's going to use this prison for Joseph's good. And Joseph's sitting there says, well, God gave me the dream. So he's got to make good out of this. So I'll continue to serve him here. continue to honor God regardless of where he was or what earthly master he had. And now see, this is hard in our day and age, because what are we told? The reality is if someone offers you a job with better money and better hours, you take it. Who cares about your boss' loyalty, commitment, whatever? It's about you, your time, your money. So you go and jump ship. That's the only right thing to do. you gotta look out for number one. But you see, that is the shallow, self-centered worldview of the world. They say that's all about you. But we become Christians and we brought it to a new worldview. What do we suddenly realize? Actually, this life isn't all about me. One, it's about others. But most importantly, it's actually about God. Everything is about Him. He made me that I might serve Him, not myself. Better yet, Jesus even coming into this world was for your salvation, but why did God save you? For His name. That He might be glorified. That people might see how amazing He is, not how amazing you are. And you say, the gospel, it displays the love and the kindness and power of God. And so our lives are meant to do the same. And so we have to understand something of what it is to honor the name of God. Honor isn't really something we talk about anymore, but we have to understand maybe that's because we don't really have, I know there is still a slave trade in today's age, but for the most part, it's more employee, employer, right? You know, it's contractual. There are things you don't really have to worry about. Right? Only if it's in the contract. But the reality is we do have a master. We are slaves. Paul says at the start of virtually all his letters, my name is, this is Paul writing to you, a slave of Christ. Sometimes it says servant, but it doesn't mean slave. And so we are enslaved to Christ. He is our master and so we seek to honor him, because he's a good master. Why would we trade him? I always love this quote, comes from one of the very first martyrs that the church ever had, guy named, weird name, Polycarp. But when he was commanded to recant, to say you're not a Christian, to say you don't believe in God or Jesus, he said this, 80 and six years have I served him and he never did me any wrong. How then could I blaspheme my King and my Saviour? And then he went and got burned to death. He refused to dishonour the name of Jesus. He refused to say the name of Caesar because what had Caesar ever done for him? It is his Lord and Savior who had done everything for him and therefore was worthy of the honor. And so we come now to the last point. The hardest part of suffering, we must wait upon the Lord. So I want to give you a very brief summary of chapter 40, because we're going to look at the end of it. Isaac is going to cover most of it next week. So basically, the cup bearer and the baker have come into prison, they're given dreams, and then Joseph happens to know how to interpret dreams. What a blessing. which we know will inevitably be the step he needs to achieve the fulfilment of the dream. And so the cup bearer is given the favorable interpretation. He's restored to his place as cup bearer. He's brought out of prison. But then notice, he says, Joseph says to him, remember me when you are restored, when you're redeemed out of this pit. And so you read in verses 23, at the very end of the chapter, yet the chief cupbearer did not remember Joseph, but forgot him. And then the next chapter, after two whole years, Pharaoh dreamed that he was standing by the Nile, which will then introduce the story of how Joseph was also brought out of prison. So he's now, we have the record of the event that will lead to his elevation, but then... Between two verses, we missed two whole years. That he's just waiting and serving. Goodness, poor fella, he didn't know what was coming. He didn't know when it was gonna be. And my goodness, this is the hardest thing that we must endure. Waiting. It is the ultimate test of our faith. Because we have to sit there and say, God isn't ignoring me. He's not ignoring me. He has a plan. He is doing something. Maybe think about it, right? Pharaoh's dream would come in two years' time, as would the famine. So maybe God was laying it up with that. But God can bring a dream whenever He wants. God can make a famine happen whenever He wants. Well... What about also the work that he was doing in the brothers? As we go through the next couple chapters, the brothers will be introduced, particularly Joseph and Benjamin, sorry, Judah and Benjamin, as main characters. God's also doing a work in these men as well. But the hardest thing for Joseph, between these two verses, he can't see anything of what God's doing. He doesn't know about the last week what we did about Judah's detour, about how he ran away from God, but then he was brought back to repentance. He doesn't know any of that. And so the hardest thing, we don't see it either. We can see it now with this bird's eye view. But the reality is we only ever see a tiny sliver of our reality. God is doing things in other people around this town, and other people in this country, possibly in this world that will impact us one day. The hard thing is God stretches out history so that He might refine our faith. Because the reality is, it's not hard to believe in a God that delivers you instantly. It is hard to believe in a God who says, I'm doing something, just wait. That is not easy. But take this to see how God works from the Gospels. It always says in the Gospels that Jesus came at the fullness of time. Put it another way, at the perfect time Jesus came. Couldn't God just go like that and make it the perfect time? Yes, He could. But to show you how He works, He says, I am going to bear with the sins of men for 4,000 years, working everything in the perfect way so that Jesus can come at the perfect time so that He can achieve this mission. He says, yes, I could just rise up the Roman Empire so they could crucify Him in three days, or I can work for 4,000 years raising up a line of men that will one day end up in Caesar. or pilot who will crucify my son. so it is the same with our suffering. God has the bird's eye view. He has the complete perspective. but we have to learn to trust him with our limited perspective. Incredibly hard when we're in pain and suffering, but we always have hope. How do we do this? So we wrap everything up. We always keep looking at Jesus. You see the reality is when everything else is darkness, when you can't see anything, there is something that is always there. Even when he feels like he's not. He might not feel like he's there, but he is, because he says he is. What do you say at the very end of Matthew? Behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. I'm not going anywhere, he says. He is our strength when we are weak. He will be our light in the darkness. So all of us are going to go through things, have gone through things we never imagined we would. You won't feel sufficient for these things. You won't think that you can remain obedient. There's no possible way. But you must remember, as we said in the kids talk, God is with us. You are not alone. Jesus lives within you. He is one with you. Which means if He can endure crucifixion, then He will give you the strength to endure this trial. He can make it through literal hell. You can make it through this one as well. And at the end of it all, when He has carried us through, He shall get all the glory. Because that is the way that it should be. So I'm going to finish up in prayer. And then as a church, we're going to sing together this reality. That as we go through suffering, It is not me, but Christ through me as we sing the song, not yet I, but through Christ in me. So let's conclude in prayer. Dear Lord, Father. At this very moment, you have children who are walking through incredible pain, incredible struggles, through times where they are crying out, God, where are you? All of us will be in those moments. Father, I ask that you might make yourself known. Father, how I pray that you might redeem us from the pit. But as we have learned today, Lord, we ask most of all that you may help us to remain obedient, to walk with you through the mess, to know that you shall be the one to strengthen us, to know that even as we shall fail in our obedience, your grace shall cover us. Never shall we be punished for our past failures because they have been punished in Christ. And so Father, now we do everything, big and small, not through ourselves, but through Christ in us, with His strength, His wisdom, for the glory of His name and yours. We pray in His name, Amen.