That particular song has been a real challenge to get into the system. I actually inputted it maybe six different times, and it kept saving a different version into a place that I didn't want it to be saved. And the version that came up was this version I didn't want to be saved. But we'll do that again, and it'll be more familiar the next time we do that. I'd like you to turn with me to Genesis chapter 50. Genesis chapter 50. And if you're reading in the Pew Bible, I invite you to stand and read with me out loud. This is one of the most pivotal passages, I believe, in the scripture. It sets a foundational truth that all of the rest of scripture echoes again and again. If you remember what has happened here before we read, you remember Joseph was sold by his brothers into slavery and Joseph spent 13 years as a slave and then some more years in prison. And finally, 17 years after being sold into slavery, he gets exalted to the number two man in all of Egypt. At a time when it's crucial in world history, a time where the health of the world depends upon Egypt. His brothers end up having to come down because their land is in extreme famine. And they come down to buy food, and he recognizes them, but they don't recognize him. And he kind of tests them to see where they are in relation to what they've done. And then as he reveals himself to them, he tries to reassure them and reestablish the fellowship with them, and the whole family moves down, they get the best of the land, and everything looks hunky-dory until Dad dies. And then the brothers start to think, and their old devious minds come back into play. And they start thinking, Joseph has just been putting on a show for Dad. we better think of something so that we don't end up getting put in prison and put to death. And so they come up with this plan. Join with me in Genesis 50 verse 15. Let's begin. When Joseph's brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, what if Joseph holds a grudge against us and pays us back for all the wrongs we did to him? So they sent word to Joseph, saying, Your father left these instructions before he died. This is what you are to say to Joseph. I ask you to forgive your brothers the sins and the wrongs they committed in treating you so badly. Now please forgive the sins of the servants of the God of your father. When their message came to him, Joseph wept. His brothers then came and threw themselves down before him. We are your slaves, they said. But Joseph said to them, don't be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended harm for me. But God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. So then don't be afraid. I will provide for you and your children. And he reassured them and spoke kindly to them. Father, when we read this passage, we wonder at the amazing ability of Joseph to forgive his brothers. And then we remember that you were at work in his life the entire time. You were teaching him lessons about trusting you. You were teaching him lessons about learning to trust you, even when everything looked like it couldn't get any worse. and you were teaching him the grace of his relationship with you. And you helped him to understand that you are not just a sovereign God, but that your sovereignty has purpose. And that purpose is good for us. So we ask, Lord, that as we open your word today, that you would help us to see everything that's going on in our lives as a tool that you intend for good for us. And Lord, we know that ultimately the work that you are doing through the Spirit in our lives now is to conform us to the image of Jesus Christ so that he might be seen as the firstborn among many brethren, many other people who look and act like him, because he lives in them. And so Lord to help us to abide in you and abide in your word this day. And fill us with the fruit that comes from abiding in you. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. You meant evil. that God meant good. And I just realized, I left all of my notes there by the sound computer. There's a stack of papers there. Jen, could you bring that to me? Thank you. While that's happening, earlier this week I got involved in a bunch of dust and I have been coughing ever since. And so I apologize for that. I will try to catch the cough before it occurs so that you don't have your ears blasted by it. But in case I do miss the mute button, I apologize in advance. title here, You Meant Evil, this is going to be the series title. We're going to look at the life of Joseph over the next few weeks, as God wills. You meant evil, but God meant good. And in fact, to just expand that idea just a little bit, Joseph is saying, when you look at the context of everything going on, is you meant evil toward me. but God meant good toward you. You meant evil for me, but God meant good for you. You intended to hurt me, God intended by your actions to save you." We're going to see that play out over the next several messages, again, as God wills, and I pray that He does. I am so excited about this. I set my notes up and began to realize, I don't know if we can even get through what I hope to do today. So today's message is a subtitle to God meant for good. Satan tries to wreck God's announced plan. God tells the family what he's going to do ahead of time. And Satan works in his brothers. He takes that, you know, James says that it's not Satan that makes us do stuff. We already have the evil in our hearts. And when it conceives, it gives birth to evil. And he's going to take what was already in the brothers' hearts and try to use it against God's plan. By the way, one more note here. God's righteous purposes are often fulfilled through man's sinful acts. The question comes, how could God allow sin? Some even go so far as to say God sinned by causing us to sin, by putting us in a place where he knew we would not be able to stand up against the temptation and therefore our sin is his fault. And yet God is able to allow us and in fact has ordained for us all the days of our lives are written before one of them comes to be. And we choose our sin. But we find out that God has already planned. Note that in this story. I have it in my notes, but you don't have it in your notes. It does not say God used it for good, though he did. But he didn't use it as if as if the brothers sold Joseph into slavery and he thought, oh no, my first plan just went down, went South. I've got to come up with another plan. He didn't use it because He knew what they were going to do. Yes, He knew what they were going to do, but He also ordained what they would do, and ordained it so that His glory might be seen, and might be acknowledged by His people, and ultimately acknowledged by all humanity throughout all of history. It's not as if God had to adapt to a surprise attack. It says he meant it for good. He intended their act so that he could save many lives. they had different intentions. Oh wait, I want to go back and look at one more thing real quickly. Seeing this dynamic throughout scripture, he saved many lives and took Jacob and his family into Egypt. The Pharaoh gave them the land of Goshen, the richest land in the nation, in the territory. And then, Later, it says a Pharaoh grew up who knew not Joseph, and he enslaved the people. And as the people began to proliferate and their families got larger and the nation got larger, they started to realize, oh no, we could be taken over by our own slaves. And so he starts to put to death the sons that are born, thinking this will stop them from growing. And yet God caused the proliferation to continue. And then God hardens Pharaoh's heart so that when he sends Moses and says, let my people go out into the wilderness to worship me for three days, and Pharaoh says, no. Moses comes back and says, let my people go. No. And so then God comes and demonstrates again, showing he intends this for good, he demonstrates that he is God and all of the gods of Egypt are not. Those plagues are aimed at Egypt's gods. The last one being aimed at their living God, Pharaoh. God is saying, you will not let my son come out to worship me. And so I am going to take your firstborn son from you. And then after all these years of slavery and the efforts to impoverish them, to keep them from growing, firstborn son is taken. God said, go talk to your Egyptian neighbors. and they will give you lots of stuff." And so they did. And they went out from Egypt, they had plundered the land. People gave them their gold, their silver, their jewelry, their earrings, their bracelets. They gave them their wealth so that when the Jews came out of Egypt, They were a wealthy, wealthy people. So much so that later, when Moses said, bring your offerings to the Lord, your freewill offerings, so that we might build him a tabernacle that is worthy for him, they start bringing their gold. And pretty soon he says, stop! We can't take anymore. Pharaoh intended ill for them. God intended good for them. They came out with the wealth that they would need to have an economy that could start full bore from the beginning. And he was also going to give them, remember even going down, he had said, the land is not ready for you yet. The sin has not yet reached its full. And so even when they come out and come into the land, he warned them ahead of time through Moses, he said, when you come into where you have houses that you didn't build and fields that you didn't plant and harvests that you didn't sow, don't forget that I am the one who gave this to you. And so even in the delay of sending them out of the land, which Satan would probably think, he promised them land and now he himself sent them out of the land. When they came back, they took the land. God meant it all for good for them. Probably the climactic example of this is the Jews' relationship to Jesus. The Jewish leaders hated Jesus just like Joseph's brothers hated him. And they tried and tried and tried to come up with ways to put him to death, to silence him, to embarrass him, to make him appear like a fool who doesn't understand Jewish law. They tried all sorts of ways to humiliate him before the eyes of the people. And everything they kept trying, God used for good so that it was demonstrated that Jesus is God. And then the ultimate one, they put him to death. Let's look at Acts chapter 2 for just a moment, then we'll come back to Genesis 37. But in Acts chapter 2, we have this amazing interaction here. Peter is preaching. Let's see, what verse did I want to start out? Verse 22. Men of Israel, listen to these words. Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through him in your midst just as you know, because you were there, this man delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put him to death." God's plan was for you to hand him over to be crucified. But God raised him up, and there's a wonderful two-word phrase, but God, raised him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for him to be held in death's power. For David says of him, I saw the Lord always in my presence, for he is at my right hand, so that I will not be shaken. Therefore, my heart was glad and my tongue exulted. Moreover, my flesh also will live in hope. because you will not abandon my soul to Hades nor allow your Holy One to undergo decay. This is a prophecy about Jesus. You have made known to me the way of life. You will make me full of gladness with your presence. Brethren, I may confidently say to you regarding the patriarch David that he both died and was buried and his tomb is with us to this day. It's right over there. And so because he was a prophet and knew that God had sworn to him with an oath to seat one of his descendants on his throne, he looked ahead. He looked ahead and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ that the Christ was neither abandoned to Hades nor did his flesh suffer decay. This Jesus God raised up again to which we are all witnesses. Therefore, having been exalted to the right hand of God and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured forth this which you both see and hear. For it was not David who ascended into heaven, but he himself says, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet. Therefore, let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made him. Excuse me, I may need some water, yeah. Therefore. Therefore, let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Jesus both Lord and Christ, this Jesus, whom you crucified." In this passage, Peter lays out for us the plan of God and how the plan used the evil acts of men. He used their intent for evil against Jesus to produce the greatest good, the saving of many lives. We could use exactly the same passage that Joseph said to his brothers to talk about Jesus and the world. Okay, now we're ready to go on. In Genesis 37, let's start reading here. I can find it. Actually, let me make just a couple more comments. Thank you. Again, the brother's intent was for evil. To use today's language, they intended to cancel their hated brother. They intended to wipe him out from history. But God used their actions with an intent for good, the salvation of many people. And not just Jacob's family, but the entire world. Before we go to Genesis 37, look at Genesis 41 for just a moment. Down to verse 54. I was intrigued a few weeks back when we were watching Answers in Genesis videos with Dr. Nathaniel Jensen talking about DNA and how we can see history played out through the DNA that we're collecting, and more and more people are contributing it, which is giving us more and more information about the past. One of the things that he proposed was at the time of Joseph, the population of the world had not entirely spread out to fill the earth yet. That caused me to start looking. Notice verse 53 of chapter 41, when the seven years of plenty which had been in the land of Egypt came to an end, and the seven years of famine began to come, just as Joseph had said, then there was famine, where? In all the lands. But in all the land of Egypt, there was bread. So when all the land of Egypt was famished, the people cried out to Pharaoh for bread, and Pharaoh said to all the Egyptians, go to Joseph. Whatever he says to you, you shall do. Reaffirming Joseph's authority. I'm not going to make the decision on this. Go talk to him. Verse 56, when the famine was spread over where? All the face of the earth Then Joseph opened all the storehouses and sold to the Egyptians, and the famine was severe in the land of Egypt. Verse 57, the people of all the earth came to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph, because the famine was severe in all the earth. I was watching a YouTube documentary on an interesting aspect about Egypt. They said we are finding more and more cities where the intent with the city, half of the city was just food storage. The other half was the administrators and an army garrison to protect the food. And if I remember right, they found 12 of these things along the Nile River, all of them built next to the river and built with long keys and long docks so that lots of ships could come and dock and buy grain. Now, it's interesting because secular history has pointed out, and I just read an article about this just a few weeks ago, that all of the cultures of the world seem to have experienced a seven-year good harvests, followed by a seven-year famine time. And it happened all over the world. So what the Bible tells us about Joseph and Egypt, that's nothing. It happened everywhere. What if The reason that all the cultures of the world have that story is because in their past, they had a famine that was so severe that they had to go buy food. And the Bible tells us that from all over the earth, they went to Egypt because Egypt had food. Oftentimes I've seen in Scripture where there was something that happened that later stories and myths and legends in other cultures sound vaguely familiar. And I remember Judy reading history to our children, and at the time, I had an office in the back bedroom, and when she was reading to them, I'd open my door so I could hear what she was reading so I could learn how history worked. And several times, I said, wait a minute, did you hear what you just said? You know, look at what that's talking about, and when was it saying it happened, or when was the story being told in that culture? Look several hundred years earlier, and see the same story recorded in the Bible. One of the ones that I thought was fun was they used to say that the use of capitals on top of Greek pillars, the carvings and stuff at the top were fancy. Greece invented this. And that held up until just a few years ago, they were digging in Jerusalem and found from the time of, I can't remember whether it was Hezekiah or before, it was several hundred years before the practice started in Greece, they found a pillar made in Jerusalem with a capital on it. They didn't start in Greece, they started in Jerusalem. Over and over, things like that would happen I am more intrigued and just about convinced that when it says all the people of all the earth came to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph, it was not just talking about Canaan and Egypt and the countries right there. It was talking about all the people of all the earth. Otherwise, why would they have needed to build cities to protect the food? These cities were not small either. Oh, one more thing. Isaiah 55. His thoughts are not our thoughts. Our ways are not God's ways. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are God's ways higher than our ways, and God's thoughts higher than our thoughts. And then it continues on about a verse after that. His word accomplishes what it's sent to do. I have believed this most of my life. I just am growing in my understanding of how complete, how vast, how wonderful that last statement is. His word accomplishes what it is sent to do. Because remember in John 1, 1, who is the word that was with God and was God, the same was with God in the beginning. Jesus. God sent his son to accomplish the work of salvation. And his son returned to him. Having accomplished the work of salvation. Craig pointed that out in one of our Sunday school lessons, and it was just like a bolt of lightning had hit my brain and went, see this one. This is a big one. Okay, now let's go on to the story. Genesis 37, starting in verse 1. We'll read through the first part of verse 4. Now Jacob lived in the land where his father had sojourned, in the land of Canaan. These are the records of the generations of Jacob. And we tend to look at that, we tend to look at those statements, these are the records of And we tend to think that they are talking about what just happened. But this is called a Toledot, or a Toledoth, and it's talking about, this is my record that I am about to share with you. So this is what happened before was not Jacob's record for us. What happens now is what Jacob intended for us to know, and God took that knowledge and included it in the scripture that Moses wrote. This is what Jacob recorded for us. Joseph, when he was 17 years of age, was pastoring the flock with his brothers while he was still a youth, along with the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah, his father's wives. And Joseph brought back a bad report about them to their father. Now, Bilhah and Zilpah were They were his wives, but he took them because they were handmaids of Leah and Rachel, his real wives. And so they become wives by law in a way. And their sons, the handmaidens' sons, Joseph brings back a report that's bad. On top of that, now Israel, Jacob's new name, loved Joseph more than all his sons. That's a problem, because he was the son of his old age. And so he made him a very colored tunic, various colored, and his brothers saw that father loved him more than all of the brothers. Now, In school, when the teacher has a favorite student, what does the rest of the class think? That student is just getting good grades because teacher likes them. In a family, when dad or mom have a favorite child, what do the other children think? They always get everything because they love them more than they love me. When you have a favorite pet, and in our case, we've got three dogs, we had four dogs. Nala was obviously my favorite until Bucky came along. And all of a sudden, Nala had to compete with Bucky, and Bucky was two and a half times her size. In fact, he was three times her size. And so when he jumped up on the bed beside me, Nala got pushed off. I don't think she appreciated that. When a father plays favorites, bad things happen. But it's understandable why he was paying favorites, because Joseph is the firstborn son of the woman that Jacob loved. You remember this story? Jacob went to his uncle Laban, And he had met Rachel, and so he went to her father and said, I would like to marry your daughter. And Laban says, that's great. Yes, let's go ahead and do it. Joseph says, yeah, this is wonderful. By the way, though, I want you to work seven years, and that's her dowry. You work for her, and then after seven years, I'll let you marry her. So he works for seven years with this goal in mind. This is all worth it because at the end, I get to marry the woman I love. And as he sees her during the day doing her duties, I'm sure I know what my eye would do and look over there and say, that's the woman I'm gonna marry. And that would help motivate him to continue working hard. And then wedding day comes, wedding night comes, wedding morning comes, and he sees, this isn't Rachel, this is Leah. He runs to Laban and says, what did you do? You deceived me. You gave me Leah, firstborn sister, instead of Rachel, younger sister. Laban's answer, of course I did. Rachel can't marry before Leah. You should know that. Give me Rachel. Well, you have to work seven more years. I just worked seven years for Rachel. Yeah, and I paid you with Leah. So give me seven more years. And I'll even let you marry her right away and then work off the debt. Okay, but first you have to spend the wedding week with Leah. Now, God blessed Leah with sons. Where is it here? first Reuben, then Simeon, then Levi, and then Judah. Four sons, all born to Leah. And Rachel is all of this time, this is years now, and Rachel is saying, why can't I have a son? God is withholding a son from me. I better get in on this, and so she gave her husband, her handmaid. Does that sound familiar? Nothing good ever comes out of that. She gave him Bilhah, and Bilhah had a son named Dan. And she thought, I'm vindicated, I have a son. No, you don't. And Leah will keep reminding you of that. He's not really your son. And the brothers are going to keep reminding them of that. You're not really Rachel's son, you're Bilhah's son. And then she gets pregnant again and has another son that they named Naphtali. And now Leah is starting to think, Jacob's heart might turn away from me because Rachel is producing sons now. And so she takes her maid, Zilpah, and gives her to Jacob as a wife. She bears Gad, and Leah is so happy, how fortunate. And then she has another son named Asher, and Leah says again, happy am I, the woman will call me happy. Well, then Rachel is thinking, God, when are you gonna give me a son? And so she tries to take a shortcut and she goes to Leah and says, can you give me some of the mandrakes? And Leah says, sure, if you let me sleep with my husband again. Okay, so Jacob comes home and Leah says, I bought you, you're coming to bed with me. She bears another son named Issachar, and then another son named Zebulun, and then a daughter named Dinah. And then it says, God remembered Rachel. Not that he had forgotten her, but he began to act on her behalf and opened her womb. And she conceived and bore a son. And her response was to say, God has taken away my reproach. She knew. that Dan and Naphtali were not her sons, even though she called them her sons, she knew they weren't. God has taken away my reproach. And so she named him Joseph, saying, may the Lord give me another son. And later he does. Gives her Benjamin, after Joseph has been in Egypt for a little while. So Israel loved Joseph more than all his sons because he was the son of his old age. I can see we're not going to get as far as I thought we might. And then we look on into verse four, we continue on. He loved him more than all his brothers, and so his brothers hated him and couldn't even speak to him on friendly terms. Natural. The natural thing. And then in his foolishness, Joseph compounds the issue. He says, brothers, I had this amazing dream. Yeah, right. Please listen to the dream which I had. Yeah, well, okay, go ahead. Behold, we were out binding sheaves in the field. It's a way that they still do harvest in some parts of the Middle East today. They take the scythe and they take a swipe and the scythe catches all of the stuff it just swiped and they pull it off and they stand it up on the stalks and tie it off. And then someone comes along later and picks up all of the sheaves, takes them in to be processed. "'cause we were all out binding sheaves in the field, "'and lo, my sheaf rose up and also stood erect. "'And behold, your sheaves gathered around my sheaf "'and bowed to the ground, to my sheaf.'" Do we kill him now or do we kill him later? They are starting to really now hate him. How dare he? Son number 11! How dare he say that he is going to rule over all of us? His brothers said, are you actually going to reign over us or are you really going to rule over us? So they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words. Then he had another dream. And he told this one to his brothers too, and he said, lo, I have had still another dream, and behold, the sun and the moon and 11 stars were bowing down to me. Wait a minute, there's only 10 of us. How is he bowing down to himself? He's prophesying to them there's going to be another brother, and he will also bow down to me. And then, and you can imagine what they're thinking. They hated him before. How do you add to a cup that's already overflowing with hatred? Pretty tough. You just keep pouring in the reasons for the hate and it just keeps spilling over and spilling over. He related the same dream to his father and to his brothers and his father rebuked him and said, what is this dream that you've had? Shall I and your mother and your brothers actually come to bow ourselves down before you to the ground? So the brothers hated him even more. In their mind is, kill the favorite son. We don't see this yet, and we don't know this until we add more to the context of scripture, but in Satan's mind, it's the stop the fulfillment of God's plan. God said, I'm going to bless the world through Abram's children. God said it's going to be through Isaac and not Esau. And God said it's going to be through, I'm sorry, and then Jacob and not Esau. And so Satan is trying to cut off this plan, this prophecy that God would bless the world through Jacob's children. And so the brothers go out to the pasture to their father's flock in Shechem, and Israel says to Joseph, are not the brothers pasturing a flock out in Shechem? Come, I'll send you to them. And he said, I will go. And he said to him, go now and see about the welfare of your brothers and the welfare of the flock and bring word back to me. So he sent him from the valley of Hebron and he came to Shechem. It was not uncommon for the shepherds to wander to fresh grass and as a sheep will eat a little bit and then lift its head up and look and say, wait a minute, that grass is taller than this grass. Well, of course you just ate it. That grass is taller, I think I'm going to go there. That grass is taller than that grass, so I think I'm going to go there and there and there. And the sheep will wander unless the shepherds keep track of them and keep them together. The shepherds then search out This is Psalm 23 talks about, thou preparest a table before me in the presence of my enemies. The shepherds would go and seek out where's the best grass and take their sheep there. And Jacob's got quite a few sheep because it takes the brothers and they're all there apparently. And they're moving and moving from place to place with this flock to feed them and keep them healthy. And so he goes to Shechem, and a man found him, and behold, he was wandering in the field looking for the sheep. And the man asked him, what are you looking for? And he says, I'm looking for my brothers. Please tell me, where are they pasturing dad's flocks? And the man says, they've moved from here. I heard them say, let's go to Dothan. So Joseph went after his brothers and found them at Dothan. And when the brothers saw him from a distance, and before he came close to them, they plotted against him to put him to death. They said to one another, here comes that dreamer. Let's kill him. Let's throw him into one of the pits, and we'll say a wild beast devoured him, and then we'll see what becomes of his dreams when we're not going to bow down to a dead man. Reuben heard this. I'll stop there for a moment. The brother's mind killed the favorite son. Satan's plan stopped God's plan. God's mind. This is phase one. I'm going to move Joseph to Egypt. And so the brothers are plotting there, let's kill the favorite son. And Reuben wasn't quite with them apparently, Reuben wasn't quite with him. Verse 21, when Reuben heard about this and rescued him out of their hands and said, we can't kill our brother. You remember Reuben is Leah's firstborn. Leah is Jacob's first wife. And so Reuben is the head of the brothers. Okay, what are we going to do with him then? Don't shed any blood. Throw him into the pit that's in the wilderness here, but don't lay hands on him. Don't kill him. And his thinking was that he might rescue him out of their hands and send him back to his father. Now, remember, God announced the events that were going to come through Joseph's dreams. Brothers, you're going to bow to me. And it's kind of interesting, it's in chronological order. Brothers, you're going to bow down to me. Next dream, mom and dad and the other brother are also going to bow down to me. God has announced what's coming. And the brothers are thinking, we can cancel all of that. We can make his dreams all for naught. Let's put him to death. And Reuben, knowing that his father loves Joseph with the love that used to belong to him, we can't do that. Let's not shed his blood. Let's put him in a pit. No water, no food. And the brothers are thinking, that's okay. We put him in the pit and he dies without us having to kill him. And then we can honestly say to dad, something happened to him and he got killed. What did you guys do? We didn't do anything. We did not lay a hand on him. and they can be honest about it and leave him to die. They don't know that Reuben has a different plan in mind, but that seems acceptable. You know, if we were to go and look into Isaiah, I'll do it just briefly here. Isaiah, there we go, starting in about chapter 44 or so, 46 maybe, 45, God says, I am the Lord and there is no other besides me. There is no God I will gird you though you have not known me, though you refuse to worship me. That men may know from the rising to the setting of the sun there is no one besides me. I am the Lord and there is no other. I am the one who forms light and I am the one who creates darkness. I am the one who causes well-being and I am the one who creates calamity. I am the Lord who does all these things. And he says also later in the chapter, the Sabeans are going to come and they're going to walk behind you in a slave's position, and I will make them bow down to you and they will make supplication to you saying, surely God is with you and there is no one else, there is no other God, because I'm going to make the Sabeans acknowledge the information that you should be leading them in. Later, verse 21, Who is the one who has said these things from ancient times? In other words, I said it's going to happen long time ago. who has long since declared it. Is it not I, the Lord, and there's no other God besides me, a righteous God and Savior? There is none except me. Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God, there is no other. And in fact, to me every knee will bow and every tongue will swear allegiance." Chapter 46, down to verse 9. I am God and there is no other. I am God and there's no one like me. I am the one who declares the end from the beginning. I am the one who from ancient times declared things that haven't happened yet. I am the one who says my purpose will be established and I will accomplish all my good pleasure. Truly, I have spoken. Truly, I will bring it to pass. I have planned it. I will do it. We can go on. No purpose of God may be thwarted. The sons have gathered and said, let's kill him. The eldest son comes and says, We can't do that. He's our brother. There's a pit over here. Let's throw him in the pit. He can't get out. He won't have any water. He won't have any food. Let's throw him in the pit.