God's sovereignty in human suffering

Call to worship

Welcome everyone

“Friendsgiving” this Wednesday at 5:30pm

Invite friends and people who do not have family to share Thanksgiving with OR those who may not be able to have a Thanksgiving themselves OR whoever God lays on your heart

Call to Worship

Psalm 103:15–22 “As for man, his days are like grass; As a flower of the field, so he flourishes. When the wind has passed over it, it is no more, And its place acknowledges it no longer. But the lovingkindness of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear Him, And His righteousness to children’s children, To those who keep His covenant And remember His precepts to do them. The Lord has established His throne in the heavens, And His sovereignty rules over all. Bless the Lord, you His angels, Mighty in strength, who perform His word, Obeying the voice of His word! Bless the Lord, all you His hosts, You who serve Him, doing His will. Bless the Lord, all you works of His, In all places of His dominion; Bless the Lord, O my soul!”

LET US STAND AND WORSHIP!

“What a beautiful Name”

Words and Music by Hillsong

PRAYER OF PRAISE FOR WHO GOD IS

Lord,

“What a beautiful Name”

Words and Music by Hillsong

“What a beautiful Name”

Words and Music by Hillsong

PRAYER OF ILLUMINATION TO OPEN OUR HEARTS

Lord,

SERMON

Introduction

If you want to understand God on a deeper level, then you must become a student of God’s Word. The Bible is God’s revelation of Himself to us. In it we find everything we need to know about the Lord, how to be saved, the origin and end of the world, and how God interacts with mankind.

One of the themes all throughout the pages of Scripture is the sovereignty of God.

Sovereignty means “supreme ruler”. It means God is in control of everything in the universe.

He has power over nature, He has the power over the orbit of the planets, He has power over the future, and He has ability to control and orchestrate human affairs.

Jesus said, “Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.” (Matt 10:29).

Proverbs 16:33“The lot is cast into the lap, But its every decision is from the Lord.”

If God wanted to end the world, He could do so by simply speaking it into history. Nothing it outside of God’s control. That is what it means to be sovereign over the world.

God’s sovereignty is displayed in a remarkable way in the story of Joseph and we are going to see that so clearly in these 9 verses that we are going to study today.

I want to glean from these verses, 4 principles about God’s sovereignty in human suffering with hope that they will cause us to trust God on a deeper level despite the adversity we face in our lives.

Turn with me in your Bibles and lets read Gen 45:1-9

1) God’s sovereignty is much clearer looking back than looking forward

Explanation

(v 5) “for God sent me before you to preserve life”

(v 7) “God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant”

(v 8) “it was not you who sent me here, but God”

(v 9) “God has made me lord of all of Egypt”

I want you to notice what Joseph is doing here.

He is looking back over the past 22 years of his life, reflecting on how God had orchestrated every event in his life whether good or bad to bring him to that very place

It was not clear to him when he was 17 and those brothers the him in the pit

It did not make any sense when he was falsely accused by Potiphar’s wife and thrown into prison for resisting to sin against God!

He must have been so confused as to why the cup bearer completely forgot about him for two full years after helping him

And that’s the way we feel when we’re in the pit and trying to look forward!

Its nearly impossible to see what God is doing in our current situations

All we see and know is the suffering and pain and rejection that we are experiencing

And if we are not careful, we will come to the belief that God simply is not with us, and we will leave God’s will

Application

I want to encourage you to do 2 things in light of this truth:

Take a couple of minutes each day this week to LOOK BACK and thank God for His hand over your life.

We do not have to look back very far at all to see the sovereignty of God at work in our lives

If we really sit down and think, we can likely see God’s hand at work even before we came to faith in Jesus Christ

I can look back before my salvation and see when God had protected me, how God had watched over me, and even how God began to draw my heart from the sinful pleasures of this world to Him.

I can remember clear as a bell the first time God ever spoke to me through Scripture, as a lost man searching for hope, and God revealing things about myself I could not see apart from Him. It was through that very first revelation that I responded to God and I began to seek Him.

I can look back and see when I was in that pit time: time and time again, God was there with me! And God never left me! And no matter how hard things were, HE REMAINED FAITHFUL TO ME!

I remember one time I was in aWednesday night service and there was a band playing gospel music, and they sang this song with this phrase repeated, “hang on a little longer, help is on the way”

I never forgot that! I never forgot how much encouragement I received that night and I felt like God put that whole thing together just for me

Looking back, I see the good hand of God.

We need to look back. Look back and thank God for the way that He does things! Look back and be encouraged by the steadfast faithfulness of GOD!

Looking back will cause us to trust him much deeper when we look forward

Do not let the unknowns of tomorrow, cause you to depart from God’s will today

Joseph never let fear of the unknown influence him to change direction in his life!

Not once do we read that Jospeh was tempted to depart from the will of God!

Even in those most trying times, Joseph still trusted in the sovereign plans of the Almighty.

Following the will of God is a call to walk by faith!

The details of the plan will not become clear to you until you have come out of the pit and weathered the storm, and are able to look back; and then you will see clearly

Hebrews 11:1 NASB95

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Do not expect to see the details of what God is doing!

We do not need to know!

All we need to know is that God is the supreme ruler and there is no better place for your life than right in the center of His will!

2) God uses the sinfulness of others to accomplish His purposes in our life

(v 5) “Now do not be grieved or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life.

Explanation

If there ever was a truth to summarize the entire story of Joseph, it is this.

Joseph has now experienced the full circle of God’s will in his life.

The favored son, became the rejected brother, and then the forgotten slave, then to the exalted ruler, and now in God’s final stage for Jospeh: He has become the savior of the world

And Joseph can see that all along God it was really God behind the scenes orchestrating these events (both good and bad) in order to bring about the present result

To make this more clear to us, I want to trace the sins against Joseph’s, so that we can see how God used them to bring him to the current place that he is in

ch 37: The favoritism of his father Jacob, which led to the hatred of his brothers, who then sold Joseph into slavery which brought him to Egypt (the place God needed him to become Savior of the world)

ch 39: The lust of Potiphar’s wife, which Jospeh refused, which led to a false testimony against Joseph to Potiphar, which landed Joseph in jail where he would meet the cup bearer, who had a direct connection to Pharaoh who had the power to promote Joseph to Prime Minister

ch 40: The cup bearer did not remember Joseph when he was restored, which led to 2 more years of imprisonment until God gave Pharaoh a dream, which led to Joseph’s promotion before the famine, which brought his brothers to Egypt where Joseph could be reconciled to his family

If we remove any of those events, Joseph would not be where he was that day, and his family would have never survived the famine!

QUESTION: Why does God work this way?

Couldn’t God just have just brought Joseph into Egypt another way? Couldn’t God have used some other means to put Joseph in charge over Egypt rather than sending him to prison for years?! Rather than being rejected by His brothers? Did Joseph really have to go through all of that? YES!

ANSWER: Because nothing brings God greater glory than taking the evil actions of mankind and turning them into great blessings for His people!

When God turns evil into good, the power and sovereignty of God is magnified on earth!

God’s power and goodness is visible to a lost and dying world.

There is no one in the universe who can do that!

And when we allow God to have His way with us like Joseph did, the world will say just like Pharaoh did, “surely God must be with You!”

When God uses evil to bring about good, He puts His glory on display for all the world to see like a beacon of hope to a lost and dying world!

This is exactly what God did through Jesus Christ

The Son of God, who never sinned, never did any wrong, even as a child, yet suffered at the hands of wicked men\

He was rejected by His brethren, hung on a cross to die, and God took all that evil intended for Him, and gave the world the greatest blessing in the history of the human race!

And the glory of God has been on display for 2,000 thousands of years proclaiming God’s triumph over sin!

Application

What God wants to do with your life and my life, is take the difficulties, the hardships, the sufferings, the sinful actions of others, and display His power to the world.

And our call is to be just like Joseph:

Resist the temptation to complain

Resist the temptation to worry tomorrow

Resist the temptation to get advice from the world

Resist the temptation to bail out of suffering for temporary relief when God will use your story to point many to Him

The greatest thing we can do for our fellow man is to let God have His way with us.

The Lord knows exactly what the world needs to bring them to Jesus.

The one’s who are willing to endure like Joseph, to remain in the will of God no matter how difficult, will become an object of His glory

3) God’s sovereignty over Joseph’s suffering moved him to forgive easily

(v 5) “Now do not be grieved or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life.”

Explanation

Isn’t it amazing how easily Joseph put all that past behind him?

Last night we watched a movie about Joseph but in modern times

And the movie did a good job of magnifying the sinfulness of his brothers against him

And we got done with the movie, Ashley said, “man those brothers would be so hard to forgive!!”

And how true is that!

QUESTION: How do you forgive someone who has committed such evil against you?

Plotted your death and you have done nothing to deserve that?

Sold you as slave hoping to never see you again?

Heard your cries from the pit as a 17 y/o boy AND WAS SO COLD HEARTED that you could sit down and eat your lunch while his cries rang out?

ANSWER: Joseph cut right through the human emotions and resentment and anger and revenge and looked at his situation with spiritual eyes! He demonstrated godly wisdom!

Yes my brothers did me wrong

Yes I was treated unjustly

Yes I 13 years of hardships!

But over it all, look at the what God was doing!

Had God not allowed all of that to happen, we would not be where we are today!

Bridge

It is essential for us who follow Jesus Christ to understand that above the attacks from others is God’s hand at work.

And because God’s hand is at work, we can look right past those sins and sing praises to God!

We cannot ever fully know what God is doing behind the scenes; BUT WE DO KNOW what God expects from us: TO FORGIVE

No matter how bad the transgression, our call is always to forgive!

And to what level did Joseph forgive?

(v 10-11) “You shall live in the land of Goshen, and you shall be near me, you and your children and your children’s children and your flocks and your herds and all that you have. There I will also provide for you, for there are still five years of famine to come, and you and your household and all that you have would be impoverished.” ’

Joseph did not just say things were ok between them, he demonstrated his forgiveness with actions.

He invited them to come live with him

He invited their children and grandchildren, and flocks and herds

And he promised to take care them

Application

When someone wrongs us, we almost always look only to them for fault (and I am not excusing their faults)

But what we must learn to look past that and see God at work through that

And when we see God working those bad things into good things, we can release that person and forgive

God’s smaller plans for us are ALWAYS part of his master plan for mankind

(v 7) “God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant in the earth”

Explanation

This verse points all the way back to God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:1-2

Genesis 12:1–3 (NASB95)

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go forth from your country, And from your relatives And from your father’s house, To the land which I will show you; And I will make you a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great; And so you shall be a blessing; And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”

God promised Abraham who was Joseph’s great-grandfather that He would make him into a great nation.

Abraham never saw that promise comes to reality, though he believed it would

Abraham died, no great nation

Issac died, no great nation

Jacob died no great nation

Jospeh died no great nation

Fast-forward to the book of Exodus and you will see God took these 12 brothers and made them into a nation so great Pharaoh and all of Egypt feared them!

When Joseph was sent to Egypt to save the people, it wasn’t just about Jacob’s family, it went all the way back to God’s promise to Abraham!

And God's promise to Abraham was not just about Abraham!

God told Abraham, all the families of the earth would be blessed!

It was from the nation of Israel, that Jesus Christ would come and bring salvation to the whole world!

And Joseph was only a tiny part of God’s master plan; But so significant in bringing it to pass.

Bridge

The same is true for us

We so easily lose sight of the bigger picture. It’s easy to get wrapped up in our world, in our problems, in our needs and we forget what God is doing in the whole world

But we must never think we are not part of that much bigger plan

Application

Our service here in this church is for something much bigger than what we can see in front us

We have no idea how God will use this ministry 10, 20, or 50 years from now

One of the worst things we can do is undermine the way God will use his place based on what we can see right now

The call for all of us is to see this part of God’s unfolding plan with an eternal prospective!

To be as involved as we can for the furthering of God’s kingdom

To invest in the lives of this community and church

To invest in the future of this ministry

To believe that it is God who established this church, and it is God who will use this church for His purposes

And then to look at our individual lives and know that they are a part of God’s bigger plans

God does not save people just to save them!

He saves them to use them!

And the master Architect has an essential part for you in His plan

Do not undermine the way God will use you

He used Hannah to give birth to Samuel, who would become a great prophet who anointed King David

He used Naomi to mother Ruth, who would marry Boaz and become the great grandfather of David

God used Zachariah’s continued faithfulness to His temple duties to speak to him, and then bring about John the Baptist, the forerunner of Jesus

Don’t think that God will not or is not using you too

Conclusion

I want to close by reading verse 9 one more time: Joseph said, “Hurry and go up to my father, and say to him, ‘Thus says your son Joseph, “God has made me lord of all Egypt; come down to me, do not delay.”

That is a beautiful picture of the gospel.

God has made Jesus Christ Lord over all of Creation. He is the Sovereign King who rules the universe.

He has came to live on earth in the flesh of a man, so that He my die for the sins of the world.

And the message to us is this: “come down to Me, do not delay”

If you want to truly live, come to Jesus

If you want an abundant life that COUNTS for something, come to Jesus

If you want to be forgiven of your sins and have eternal life, come to Jesus

Come now, do not delay, come to Jesus

~PRAYER~

RESPONSE

PUBLIC INVITATION

“What a beautiful Name”

Words and Music by Hillsong

OFFERING

We will now worship the Lord through our tithes and offering.

BENEDICTION

Numbers 6:24-26 “The Lord bless you, and keep you; The Lord cause His face to shine on you, And be gracious to you; The Lord lift up His face to you, And give you peace.’”