This sermon was preached at University Park Baptist Church in Houston, Texas. For more information about UPBC, visit UPBCHouston.org. Let me invite you to open your Bibles to Genesis, first book of the Bible, chapter 37. Genesis 37. Let's pray together this morning as we come to God's word. Father, we confess and I confess There are times, more than I'd like to admit, when I come to your word in my own private devotions or in our gathered time as a church and create a kind of distance. I look at the words on the page or I listen to the words that are spoken and there's a sense in which I'm not connected. They don't apply to me. They are not relevant for me. They are not a help to me. And I walk away the same as I was when I approached you." Or we confess that at the root of that is pride. Us grabbing control of our lives and thinking we know better than you do. And so Lord, I pray that you would give us a humility as we stand before you, your very word. And that we would repent of our self-reliance and our own plans and our own ways of strategizing to make life work. And we would submit to the God of the universe. We would love your sovereignty. not just say we believe it, not just in our statement of faith, but that we would love it because you hold us and you keep us. And things are not just happening in chaos. You're purposeful and wise. And Lord, we know that that matters most when we are hurting and discouraged and confused. And so we just pray that you would Come and be our help now. Give us eyes to see you and your goodness and grace and power in our lives. Help us not to stiff arm you, but to see you working in us. Help us, we pray. We ask it in Jesus' name, amen. Life is hard and we have hope. Life is hard and we have hope. That's the main point of the sermon this morning. Genesis 37 brings those two realities together for us. Life is hard and we have hope. And I don't mean to speak lightly. To speak in theory only, in platitudes, Cliches, you can literally, you could put that sentence on a coffee cup. Life is hard, we have hope. That's not what I want you to do as you think about that sentence. As a pastor, as your pastor, I have a great advantage. When I say life is hard, it's not blank space that comes into my mind, but faces. Specific faces, your faces and your situations. I have the advantage of knowing more than most about suffering, not because I have experienced personally a lot of suffering, but because I know and pray for you, along with your other elders, about pain and loss and abuse, the terrible things that you've walked through, about inequity that you've experienced in your life, the unfairness of life, and I understand life isn't fair, but some of us have experienced particular, acute unfairness, partiality. I know about the tragedy, about the sin. So I don't mean to speak in generalities when I say life is hard. I think there's an unhelpful way sometimes we can give this aura of triumph, triumphalism that just expects everyone to kind of move past that and be happy-go-lucky all the time. But that's just not reality if we're honest. And we wanna be honest about reality when we come together. Genesis 37 is reality. We're gonna see bitter jealousy and hatred carrying scars around your whole life from your past, loneliness, betrayal, being disappointed and discouraged over and over again. Things that prompt real questions like, where is God in all of this? Why would God allow this? Those are not just pastor questions. Those are real questions that many of us, many of you are asking because life is hard. And as much as that half of the sentence is true, so is the other half. So just as much as I want us to be grounded in reality, the reality of the brokenness of our life, I want us to be grounded in the true, ironclad, unwavering, indestructible hope that we have in Christ. A hope that not just looks down at the future and says one day all of these things are going to work out. but believes that right now, in the thick of the unknown, in the pain, in the craziness of life, God is doing precisely what he means to do. And it's for my good. That, beloved, is our battle. The author of Hebrews puts it this way in Hebrews 11, and without faith, it is impossible to please God. For whoever would draw near to God must believe that He exists, and that He rewards those who seek Him, so that we wouldn't be walking around like functional atheists that say we believe in God, but when you look at our life, we are the ones in control. Even when we're in the bottom of the pit, we need to be able to understand Hebrews 11, six, naked and abused and without hope in this world, clinging to the God who would never leave us and forsake us. That's one reason Genesis 37 is in our Bibles. God does not want us to go through life enslaved to victimhood, just like he doesn't want us to go and gloss over the real pain and difficulty of life. He wants us to trust him, to believe in him and his plan, his timing, his purposes, his strength, his love for us, and to press on day after day in faith, even when we're in the pit. And some of us may be in the pit this morning, or we know that the pit is coming, or we might say, you know, we've thrown somebody else in the pit and don't care. We've never seen ourselves truly as we are. We are honestly asleep to God. My prayer is that he would wake you up before that last day, that you would die before you die. that you would see your need to be rescued. One reason life is hard is because we are born in rebellion to the God who made us. We have made it hard. We've messed it up and we need a savior. Life is hard and we have hope. And in our passage, we're gonna clearly see how Joseph, his life acts like a blinking arrow pointing directly to that hope. And so as I walk through the passage, I'm gonna just walk through it in scenes, four scenes that are gonna just serve as an outline for us, so scene one through four. Each one is gonna give a different perspective on God's providence. We talked about God's providence, his wise rule over all things for the good of his people last week. He's gonna ultimately, through that providence, he's gonna bring Joseph to find his brothers. He's gonna work in Joseph being sent to Egypt. And yes, that means in and through the evil plan and actions of his brothers. And God will be at work ultimately in their rescue and forgiveness. And he's at work today, right now. May we have eyes to see it. So let's look at the first scene together, scene one. Last week, we saw the introduction of Joseph and his relationship to his brothers. He was born, if you remember, to Rachel. And just as Jacob loved Rachel the most, he also loved Joseph the most, more than his other sons. He gave him a very special long-sleeved royal coat to display to all of his brothers. And that favoritism that has been this generational sin in Jacob's life has again raised its head to come back and bite him. The other sons hated Joseph because he was the favorite. And not just because that, because then Joseph shares these dreams that he's had from God about what his future is going to be like. He's going to be like a king and his brothers and family are going to bow down to him. Jacob rebuked him, if you remember, for those dreams, but he kept the saying in mind. You see that in verse 11. He pondered it in his heart. That brings us to where we are this morning in our passage. So let's pick it up in verse 12. Now his brothers went to pastor their father's flock near Shechem. And Israel said to Joseph, are not your brothers pastoring the flock at Shechem? Come, I will send you to them. And he said to him, here I am. So he said to him, go now, see that it is well with your brothers and with the flock, and bring me word. So he sent him from the valley of Hebron, and he came to Shechem." Now, given what we know about Joseph's relationship to his brothers, as the reader of Genesis, we ought to be very concerned about this situation. We know his brothers hate him, and he's about to go really far away from his father's protection to be with them alone. So Shechem is some 50 miles north of Hebron and maybe like a five day journey away from Jacob. Now, why would Jacob do this? Why would he send him off to be alone with his brothers who hate him? Well, I think likely he doesn't know how much his brothers hate him. He seems to be pretty blind to a lot of these things. His favoritism and not how that affects others. Perhaps the brothers kept, and sometimes siblings do this in a family, kept some of these things secret from their father, so he wasn't aware. But the other reason for sending Joseph is because in Shechem, if you remember, that would be a pretty dangerous place for anybody who's associated with Jacob. It was Shechem that, in Shechem, that Levi and Simeon went through and killed all the males after their sister Dinah was raped there. Jacob said his name had become a stench to them. And so there's good reason to be concerned. Now, where else have we seen something like this? And you're gonna, I'm gonna say that a few times in this passage. Something like what's happening here. Hey, go check on your brothers. You know, they're in potential danger. I want you to check on them and bring back a report to me. Remember 1 Samuel 17, where we read of another father sending his young shepherd son to check on his brothers who were fighting the Philistines. Jesse sent David with provisions for his brothers to check on them. And if you remember how they respond to that, eventually they were angry with him too. Why have you even come? You just wanna watch the battle. But the result of that mission was salvation for the people of Israel and the slaying of a giant. And here we have a father sending his most beloved son to his brothers who are in enemy territory. I love Joseph's response. Here I am. We would expect the next phrase to be, send me from Isaiah 6. He obediently follows his father's command. And this is a dangerous mission. You don't want to be just wandering around Shechem as one of Jacob's children. It'd be like Vladimir Putin's son just getting lost somewhere in Ukraine and stopping in to ask questions or directions. That wouldn't go too well. So don't miss God's providential hand of protection here. Pick it up in verse 15. And a man found him wandering in the fields. And the man asked him, what are you seeking? I am seeking my brothers, he said. Tell me please where they are pastoring the flock. And the man said, they have gone away for I heard them say, let us go to Dothan. So Joseph went after his brothers and found them at Dothan. Friends, this isn't random chance. He happened to bump into a man, not only who didn't want to kill him, but who knew where his brothers were because he had overheard a conversation that they had had about going to Dothan. So here's my point of application. It's a question for you. If you're a Christian here this morning, do you think like this? When you step back and look at your life, do you see God working like this? Are your eyes open to his providential direction in your life? And I'm not talking about just the big obvious things. The man who was sick and called in sick the day that the two towers were hit by terrorists and destroyed. Obvious, his providential protection of that guy. If he doesn't know the Lord now, I don't know what to do for him. But I'm not talking about just the big things. I'm talking about the small things like this, bumping into a guy, wandering around, the granular things that God does in cancer treatments and school decisions and making your heart beat just now. And then having your afternoon clear just to spend with your family and catch up with them and invest in your children. You've heard often God's providence is like Hebrew, it's best read backward. And that's true, right? Looking back, that was a small pastor joke, nobody laughed, it's fine. Looking back, are you able to see God's hand directing you? His hand of favor, His hand of protection, His hand in that decision that you made. When you look back, It ought to encourage you all the more as you think about your situation right now, as you think about your future, the way God had directed you then and how he will be faithful to you today and tomorrow. I just hope that you will see life like this, have a worldview that knows a God who controls everything like this, who is wise and good and holy. This is who our God is. And Genesis gives it to him over to us over and over and over. Again, keep your eyes open for this God. So Joseph's interaction with this unnamed man leads him another 16 miles away from Jacob to Dothan. If you remember Dothan and other places, that's where Elisha and his servant were being attacked. And he said, Lord, show him who's with us. And he looks and sees all of the armies of God that are with him that no one else could see. We need eyes like that. That's what happened in Dothan. That's where Joseph is going. That brings us to scene two. Scene two, and this starts here in verse 18, and you and I both know, because we know the background, we're reading the story, this is not gonna turn out well. Joseph is gonna go by himself to be with his brothers, not gonna go well, but I don't think anybody expected verse 18. Look at verse 18. They saw him from afar, and before he came near to them, they conspired against him to kill him. Again, I think it's good to ask, where have we seen that before? And maybe your mind goes to Genesis 4 and Cain and Abel. It sounds a whole lot to me like Jesus' parable of the wicked tenants, that he tells in Luke 20, a man plants a vineyard, which is often a symbol for Israel in the Old Testament, and he lets it out to tenants while he's away, but then he sends some servants to sample the fruit, And the tenants beat the servants and send them away. Finally, the owner says this in Luke 20, verse 13, I will send my beloved son. Perhaps they will respect him. But when the tenants saw him, they said to themselves, this is the heir. Let us kill him so that the inheritance may be ours. Sometimes we said last week that these patterns that we see in scripture lead to a person they lead to the person of Jesus Christ. And we are just seeing these patterns played out over and over again, and we will in our study of Genesis. The brother's jealousy and hatred has now boiled over into murder, just like it did for Cain, just like it did for Esau, until Jacob escaped. The sons of Jacob are acting like taking the part of the seed of the serpent here. their plan develops and unfolds as Joseph is walking up to them. Maybe they just identified him first by that sparkling coat that they saw from a distance, and so they begin to unhatch and unpack this plan. Verse 19, keep reading. They said to one another, here comes this dreamer. Come on now, let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits. Then we will say that a fierce animal has devoured him and we will see what will become of his dreams. So their heart is just laid open. We see their heart. God has given a direction through the dream And they're gonna try to keep that from coming to pass by killing their brother. This is not a crime of passion. This is premeditated murder. They have a plan to kill him and even a plan to explain what happened and to cover it up. But as we're gonna see, their attempts to stop God's plan only work to fulfill God's plan. That ought to remind us of the cross. Satan wants Jesus dead and plays right into the hand of God and redeems his people through his death. But before Joseph gets to them, before he gets there, one of the brothers speaks up and it sounds like saves the day, verse 21. But when Reuben heard it, he rescued him out of their hands saying, let us not take his life. And Reuben said to them, shed no blood, throw him into this pit here in the wilderness, but do not lay a hand on him, that he might rescue him out of their hand to restore him to his father. So if you remember, Reuben is the oldest son. And so he has the rightful authority when they're away from their father to make decisions. He's gonna be the one leading out, speaking out first. And he's gonna also be the one most responsible if something bad goes on. And so he does not want to go back to his father and report that his beloved son is now dead. He doesn't want to explain that. So he comes up with this idea to throw Joseph in a pit and later come back and rescue him. And we don't know Reuben's full motives here, but this obviously sounds good. But if you remember, he's blown it big time with Jacob already. He's essentially disqualified himself from the birthright as the firstborn son by sleeping with one of Jacob's servant wives, Bilhah. So could this be a plan to get back in his good graces, or is he just convicted about murdering his brother? We don't know, but at least there's a stay of execution here for Joseph. But he does finally show up, and we see what happens there in verse 23. So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe, the robe of many colors that he wore, and they took him and threw him into a pit. The pit was empty. There was no water in it. So this is a very brutal attack. Just look at those verbs. They stripped him, they took him, and they threw him. And the first thing to go is this robe. That's getting off. The word for stripped here is the word used in Leviticus to skin animals. So this is not a polite undressing. It's a brutal humiliation. Perhaps they stripped him completely naked and they throw him or literally dump him in this pit, like you would dump a dead body. And so all of a sudden, Joseph is beaten and perhaps naked, looking up from the bottom of a pit. And these pits were basically empty cisterns that would be used to store water. And so that's why there's that comment there, there was no water in it. They were cut out of the limestone and shaped kind of like a bottle. And so kind of a smaller opening at the top, and then it opened up a little bit, but the sides were basically vertical. There's no way for you to climb out this pit, it acts like a dungeon, it makes a really good dungeon. Jeremiah found that out, if you remember Jeremiah chapter 38, he was thrown into one of these, we read in chapter 38 verse 6 of Jeremiah, so they took Jeremiah and cast him into the cistern of Malachi, the king's son, which was in the court of the guard, letting Jeremiah down by ropes and there was no water in the cistern but only mud and Jeremiah sank in the mud. So just get a picture of where Joseph is down in the pit sinking down into the mud. And the brothers know this is a death sentence. This is just this is putting off what they were going to do immediately with no water and no food. It's a matter of time. And for David, and for other places in the scriptures, the pit is synonymous with Sheol. Psalm 30 verse 3, O Lord, you have brought up my soul from Sheol. You restored me to life from among those who go down to the pit. That term Sheol is just the Hebrew word for grave. It refers not just to the physical grave, but to the place of the dead. And so from Genesis 3 on, we have been confronted with this idea of death, of this idea of death coming from sin. And the picture of the grave in the Old Testament is really a terrible picture. Bruce Waltke summarizes kind of the Old Testament use of this word in this way. The grave has a mouth which enlarges and is never satisfied. It is so powerful that none escapes its grip, and no one can redeem another from it. It's like a prison with bars. Its father is corruption, and the worm its mother and sister. It is a land of no return, an abode where rich and poor alike, righteous and wicked, Israelite and foreigner lie together. It is a land of silence, darkness, and oblivion. This is the way death is viewed, inevitable, inescapable, irreversible. Just as an aside, friends, I think this may be one of our greatest apologetics as Christians who are talking to others about the gospel and about the trustworthiness of the Bible. What do you mean? Well, everybody dies. Everybody dies, and the Bible tells us why. The Bible shows us the turning point in history. It's not because of old age. It's not because it's just a part of life. It's a result of sin. We die because we have and we do and we will sin against our creator. God said, if you eat of this tree, you will surely die. No one is exempt. No one is good enough to escape this judgment. One day, everyone will find themselves at the bottom of the pit, in the grave. This is the imagery that Moses wants us to get, to understand, and for us to think about. Are we ready for that? Are we prepared? Have we thought through our death and what happens after death and why that death has come? Joseph is done. He's done. Or is he? Look at the next scene beginning there in verse 25, and I just want you to look at those first six words. They should stagger us. Okay, look at the first six words there in verse 25. Joseph is down in the bottom of the pit, and they sat down to eat. Are you kidding me? How callous, how cold do you have to be to sit down to a meal while your brother is helpless in the pit right next to you. And if Joseph's trip to his brother's was like David's trip to his brother's, it means that he brought them provision. He brought them the very food that they're eating. Moses doesn't give us anything here about Joseph's reaction to his brother's evil, but 20 years later, we'll hear about it. In Genesis 42, verse 21, then they said to one another, in truth, we are guilty concerning our brother in that we saw the distress of his soul when he begged us and we did not listen. That is why this distress has come upon us. So he's begging for his life, maybe calling each of his brothers by name, crying out, and they sat down to eat. This is like an anti-Lord's Supper. They are united in their sin and guilt and hatred for Joseph as they share a meal with his screams in the background. Friend, don't ever underestimate the Bible's teaching about human evil and depravity. Case in point. Now let's read the rest of verse 25. Then they sat down to eat, and looking up they saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead with their camels bearing gum, balm, and myrrh on their way to carry it down to Egypt." And I just want to point out this language of, then they looked up or they lifted up their eyes and saw, it often is associated with these acts of providence in different situations. And so these, The timing, just think about the timing of all this, the timing of these traders coming down, with the timing of the meeting with the stranger and pointing him to Dothan, all that just happened to work together at the right moment. And so these Ishmaelites or Midianites, those are both interchangeable, if you'll notice. Probably what happens is these are two peoples that intermarried and now are just used synonymously. They come, And at the appearance, another voice kind of steps up into leadership, into the conversation, and it's the voice of Judah, verse 26. So let's pick it up there. Then Judah said to his brothers, what profit is it if we kill our brother and conceal his blood? Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, and let not our hand be upon him, for he is our brother, our own flesh, and his brothers listen to him. Then Midianite traders passed by, and they drew Joseph up and lifted him out of the pit and sold him to the Ishmaelites for 20 shekels of silver. They took Joseph to Egypt." Now, I don't know, again, we don't You know, often we don't get the motivations of these characters. What is Judah thinking when he makes this suggestion? There's kind of two parts to his idea. On the one hand, he's gonna save Joseph's life by doing this. On the other hand, he's selling him for profit as a slave. Why? He says, because after all, he's our brother, our own flesh. There's some irony in that. Come on, guys, he's our brother. Let's just sell him. Let's don't kill him. So we move from murder to throwing Joseph in a pit now to what the Bible condemns as man-stealing slavery. And the Bible unequivocally condemns this. Sometimes we have to ask, where have we seen this before? Well, we can look in the Old Testament to the prophet Zechariah chapter 11. He pictures himself as a kind of shepherd who is shepherding a flock. And because he's opposing wicked shepherds, some sheep traders decide to pay him 30 shekels of silver to leave them alone. Go read Zechariah 11 later this afternoon. And then he takes the money and throws it away. But then of course, we think of another Judah, just change that word, last little letter, just basically the same word, slight variation, Judas, who sold the true shepherd of God's people into the hands of the religious leaders for 30 pieces of silver. So Judah and the other brothers profit by selling Joseph to these slave traders who are headed straight for Egypt. And so it is out of the frying pan into the fire for Joseph. But notice he is out of the pit. The Lord has taken him out and shown his providence even over evil, even over these evil schemes of his brothers to save his beloved. and now he's headed for a foreign nation, which is exactly what God promised would happen in Genesis 15. Let's look at the last scene together. Scene four begins there in verse 29. Remember Reuben? Reuben had the idea that I'm gonna put him in the pit, I'm gonna wander off, come back and rescue him when my brothers go away, and then take him back to dad, okay? That was his plan. But when he returns, he finds the pit empty. There in verse 29, when Reuben returned to the pit and saw that Joseph was not in the pit, he tore his clothes and returned to his brothers and said, the boy is gone and I, where shall I go? So tearing his clothes, I mean, I think this points to a real concern that he has for his brother, but also to the reality that he's got to now go back to his father again as a failure of the firstborn. I think one thing Moses is showing us is that the seed of the woman, the seed of the promise, it's not coming through Reuben, okay? Where shall I go? How can I go home now? And so there's this cover-up plan that is hatched. Verse 31, something they'd already kind of thought of. Then they took Joseph's robe and slaughtered a goat and dipped the robe in the blood. And they sent the robe of many colors and brought it to their father and said, this we have found, please identify whether it is your son's robe or not. And he identified it and said, it is my son's robe. A fierce animal has devoured him. Joseph is without doubt torn to pieces. I do think it's interesting that the plan involves the killing of an animal and using its blood to cover up sin. I just wonder if you've noticed that. Where have we seen this kind of thing before? Where have we seen a father tricked into believing a lie that involved a goat in someone else's clothes? The irony is so thick for Jacob. Just as he tricked Isaac by cooking that delicious goat and fooling him with Esau's clothes, he is now himself deceived with a goat and the clothes of one of his sons. Friends, God is just. He will not be mocked. Hear the words of Moses in Numbers 32. Behold, you have sinned against the Lord and be sure your sin will find you out. Jacob here is faced with all this. He is completely crushed and he comes to his own conclusions. They don't have to say anything. So technically they're not lying. This is Joseph's robe, he says, and he's been killed by, he must have been killed by a fierce animal and torn to pieces. He's gone, he's dead, and he begins to mourn. And look at the way this mourning is described. Verse 34, then Jacob tore his garments and put sackcloth on his loins and mourned for his son many days. And all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted. Friends, you know there's a grief sometimes that hits this level, where you just can't find comfort. He refused to be comforted and said, no, I shall go down to Sheol to my son mourning. Thus his father wept for him. And don't you see just again the hypocrisy of the brothers rising up to comfort Jacob? When they were responsible for Joseph's loss in the first place, they had lied about it. They had sat down and had lunch while Joseph screamed, and now they hugged their dad and maybe feigned tears while their father wailed in grief because of their lie. Beloved, we all sin. We all sin. We will sin until Jesus comes. We pray less and less. But what sets Christians apart from non-Christians is that we are not okay with our sin. We don't sit in it and be okay with it and do nothing about it, feel nothing about it. We don't live with our sin or carry it around with us in secret. David speaks of his bones wasting away because of unconfessed hidden sin. He's miserable. And brother, sister, you ought to be too. I ought to be too if we are concealing hidden sin. Come clean. Repent. Confess. Know the freedom that comes with forgiveness, freedom to confess your sin because you're accepted in Christ. Bring your sins to light. It's a normal part of the Christian life. It's not for the all-star team. It's for all of us. We ought not to be able to lay our head on the pillow at night when we have this kind of blood on our hands. And if we're okay with our sin, we're okay with letting it go, acting as if everything's all right, then you ought to be very concerned that you are a Christian at all. Turn from your sin. Praise the Lord for the conviction that comes from the Holy Spirit, from the relationships that we have with one another, that we can talk to each other about our sin. We can cut through the superficial norms that's just like the default for church conversations and just go right to the real life. So much better when we're just real with each other. That's when the gospel powerfully is at work in and through us. Jacob commits here to mourn for Joseph until he dies. He refuses to be comforted. He is completely broken in his grief. There seems to be, listen, no hope. But there is hope. There is hope. Notice that last note in the chapter beginning with that important word, meanwhile. Verse 36, meanwhile, the Midianites had sold him in Egypt to Pontiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard. Here we're introduced to Ponifer, whose name means something like he whom Ra, the sun god, has given. He whom Ra has given. He's an officer of Pharaoh. We're gonna learn a lot about him. Captain of the guard, which puts him in very close contact with the king of Egypt. Imagine that. Of all people, Joseph could have gone to, he goes to this guy. He goes to Ponifer. Friend, I just want you to hear me. There's always a meanwhile. in the Christian life for God's children, always. Meanwhile, God is at work. And don't get me wrong, Joseph is having a really bad day. He began the day robed prince of Israel. He ended the day a slave in Egypt. That's a bad day. I'm not trying to discount that in any way, but I want you to see the bad in that day isn't random or a case of bad luck. It's a part of God's providential purpose, not just for Joseph, but for Egypt and for Israel and for the world. The beloved son of Israel has now become a servant, a slave, a suffering servant that would save God's people. When someone who is called by God, inspired by the Holy Spirit, reads and hears things like this, like Isaiah, We ought not wonder why chapters like Isaiah 53 are in our Bible. Listen to some of these descriptions of Isaiah 53, beginning in verse seven, of the suffering servant who was to come. He would be oppressed, he would be afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth, like a lamb that is led to slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgment, he was taken away. and for his generation who considered that he was cut off from out the land of the living, stricken from the transgression of my people. And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death. Although he had done no violence and there was no deceit in his mouth, yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him. He has put him to grief. When his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring, he shall prolong his days. The will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. Out of the anguish of his soul, he shall see and be satisfied. By his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities." In the Bible is one story with one hero, Jesus Christ. He was sent by the Father, fully God and fully man, sinless, and he fulfilled the law in our place. And then he was rejected by his own people, betrayed and stripped and beaten. He really did go down into the pit of death. He died on a cross, taking the punishment, the wrath of God for all the sins of God's people. And he is the true Lamb of God who takes away our sins. His blood not only covers our sin, but makes us clean. Everyone thought he was dead. Everyone mourned. They were defeated and confused, all of his disciples. But three days later, friends, he rose from the grave. And he showed himself to them, that he had defeated and overturned the darkness by his life. And now he offers forgiveness and righteousness to all who would turn from their sins and put their trust in him. So that's my call to you, friend. Turn from your sins and put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ. And no matter what happens in your life, your hope is that, the hope that you have in him can never be taken away. Not by death, not by famine, not by sword, not by disease. What can separate us from the love of Christ? And that has implications, not just for eternity, but for today, for right now. Because you're right, we don't know how Joseph felt in this moment in the pit. We know he was begging to get out, how he felt on the slave block. People are bartering for his life and then being carried off to Pharaoh's dungeons. But we know this, God was with him. As a slave in Pharaoh's house, we read Genesis 39-2, the Lord was with Joseph. When he was falsely accused by Poniphar's wife and sent to prison, Genesis 31-29, the Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love and grace and gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison. We need to hear this, beloved. God was with him. in pain and suffering and abuse and heartache and disappointment and loss, those are not indications that God has left us, that he's not with us, and that he's not at work. So hear the encouragement from the Apostle Paul. Don't lose heart. Don't give up. Don't separate your circumstances from God's wise providence. his kind and caring control over our lives. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4, for this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory. It's purposeful, it's doing something, it's preparing us. By all comparison, this affliction is light in comparison to the eternal weight of glory, Paul says. As we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, the things that are unseen are eternal. So beloved, life is hard and we have hope. A great hope, a hope that doesn't disappoint, a hope that doesn't put us to shame. It's true in Joseph's life and it's true in yours. Let's pray. Lord, we pray that you would now bring comfort in the way that only you can do it by the power of your spirit through your word to those that are hurting and mourning and confused, who have judged themselves irredeemable, who have given up hope. Lord, come and bring comfort and faith. Show us yourself. Lord, give us great hope in the difficulty and the challenge of life, that you are sovereign and good. We love you and worship you and pray, Lord, that we would see more and more of you, even from the pit. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.