Well, I was not only there when it happened, I got a birth certificate to say I was there. These things have I written to you to believe on the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life. I'm glad to be with you again. Been a couple, three years since I've been here, and I'm glad to be back. And I want to introduce some folks that have come with me. Brother Jamie Smithy, would you stand there, Brother Jamie? Jamie's our new administrator that came last July and doing a wonderful job with our school and Jamie's dad is with us today and also his pastor Philip Moore and we're glad to have all of them with us today and We also have a student here, and I'm glad for brother Hammond here. He's doing a I'm sure a wonderful job, and we're proud of him glad to get rid of him actually, but No, actually he's a tremendous student. I know and doing a wonderful job. Thank the Lord for the school here I first became acquainted with dr. Comfort over 30 years ago when I was at Tennessee Temple. He come through preaching and man, God touched my heart. And he preached a message on hell I shall never forget. He preached a message on revival from Kings 22, 2 Kings 22. Again, touched our hearts and hundreds flooded down the aisles to be saved. And I'm so thankful for the influence of Dr. Comfort and now Dr. Beal in this college and what the Lord is doing. And I'm delighted and honored to be with you. I want you to turn your Bibles to the book of Genesis chapter number 37. Genesis chapter number 37. We also have a graduate of yours working for us. Miss Alicia King, who graduated four or five years ago. She's my secretary and doing a wonderful job. And again, we thank the Lord for the influence of Ambassador Baptist College. I've been preaching a series of messages on Sunday morning entitled Great Old Testament Stories. And the Lord touched my heart. Six or eight months ago, we're living in a society that's ignorant of the Bible. Culture as a whole is ignorant of the Bible. And they're ignorant a lot, particularly of the Old Testament stories. You say to the average young person today, Sodom and Gomorrah, what does that mean? They have no idea because they don't know the Old Testament stories. Though I wasn't saved until I was 21 in a church, a Southern Baptist church, actually, I was taught the Old Testament stories as a child. And I thank the Lord for the influence of the stories. When I got saved, I already knew the books of the Bible. I already knew the Old Testament stories. They began to take on new meaning, of course. But we have to have a basic knowledge of the Old Testament to really appreciate the greatness of the Word of God itself. And so I want you to turn with me to Genesis chapter 37. And would you stand with me out of respect for God's Word? And may I begin reading in verse number one, if you would read along with me. And Jacob dwelt in the land of, wherein his father was a stranger, in the land of Canaan. These are the generations of Jacob. Joseph, being seventeen years old, was feeding the flock with his brethren. And the lad was with the sons of Bilhud, and with the sons of Zilpah, his father's wives. And Joseph brought to his father their evil report. Now Israel loved Joseph more than all of his children, because he was a son of his old age, and he made him a coat of many colors. And when his brethren saw that their father loved him more than all his brethren, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably unto him. And Joseph dreamed a dream, and he told it his brethren, and they hated him yet the more. And he said unto them, Here, I pray you, this dream which I have dreamed. For, behold, we were binding sheaves in the field. And, lo, my sheaf arose, and also stood upright. And, behold, your sheaf stood round about, and made obeisance to my sheaf. And his brethren said to him, Shalt thou indeed reign over us? Or shalt thou indeed have dominion over us? And they hated him yet the more for his dreams and for his words. And he dreamed yet another dream, told it his brethren, and said, Behold, I dreamed a dream more. And behold, the sun and moon and the eleven stars made obeisance to me. And he told it to his father and to his brethren. And his father rebuked him and said to him, What is this dream that thou hast dreamed? Shall I and thy mother and thy brethren indeed come to bow down ourselves to thee to the earth? And his brethren envied him, but his father observed the same. And his brethren went to feed their father's flock in Shechem. And Israel said to Joseph, Do not thy brethren feed the flock in Shechem? Come, and I will send thee to them. And he said to them, Here am I. And he said to him, Go, I pray thee, see whether it be well with thy brethren, and well with the flocks, and bring me word again. So he sent him out of the vale of Hebron, and he came to Shechem. And a certain man found him, and behold, he was wandering in the field. And the man asked him, saying, What seekest thou? And he said, I pray, my brethren, tell me, I pray thee, where they feed their flocks. And the man said, There departed hence, for I heard them say, Let us go to Dothan. And Joseph went after his brethren, and found them in Dothan. And when they saw him afar off, even before he came near unto them, they conspired against him to slay him. And they said one to another, Behold, this dreamer cometh. Now, therefore, let us slay him and cast him into some pit. And we will say some evil beast hath devoured him, and we shall see what will become of his dreams. And Reuben heard it, and he delivered him out of their hands, and said, Let us not kill him. And Reuben said to them, Shed no blood, but cast him into this pit that's in the wilderness, and lay no hand upon him, that he might rid him out of their hands to deliver him to his father again. It came to pass when Joseph was come to his brethren that they stripped Joseph out of his coat, his coat of many colors that was on him, and they took him and cast him into a pit. And the pit was empty, there was no water in it. They sat down to eat bread, and they lifted up their eyes and looked, and behold, a company of Israelites came from Gilead with their camels bearing spicery, balm, and myrrh, going to carry it down to Egypt. And Judah said to his brethren, What profit is it if we slay our brother and conceal his blood? Come and let us sell him to the Israelites and let not our hand be upon him. For he's our brother and our flesh. And his brethren were content. Then there passed by Midianite merchantmen and they drew and lifted up Joseph out of the pit and sold Joseph to the Israelites for 20 pieces of silver. And they brought Joseph into Egypt. And you know the rest of the story. I want to speak to you this morning on the subject, the preparation of a godly leader. And I hope you'll listen carefully. Who knows what godly leader is here today, the next person to change our country, the next Billy Sunday. And I pray it may be so. May God help us. Our Heavenly Father, we pray that you would inhabit the praises of your people, and we've heard them today. We pray for the sweet presence of the Spirit of God to help us as we preach. Now, it's promised that you would give us the power of the Holy Spirit if we would ask If you then be an evil, know how to give good gifts to your children. How much more should the heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him? And so we would ask not only for the preacher, but we would ask also for those that listen, that the spirit of God might take the words that come from thy word and wing them to our hearts and mold us into the image of Jesus. And we'll thank thee for it. In Christ's name, we pray it. Amen. And amen. Thank you. You may be seated. Fourteen chapters of the book of Genesis are given to the story of Joseph. That's quite amazing to me, the same amount of space as is given to Abraham in Genesis is given to this man Joseph. Perhaps great length is given to his biography because no one in Scripture typifies the Lord Jesus more than Joseph. One reason so much space is given to him, I think, that when the Lord finds a man that's like the Lord Jesus, He likes to pay attention to him. so that we could pay more attention, of course, to the Lord Jesus. He wasn't sinless, but no blame is found in Him from His appearance as a teenage boy until His death. The way He handled suffering, the way He handled mistreatment, the way He handled injustice was so much like the Lord that by examining the life of Joseph, we see more of the Lord Jesus Himself. Though He was not always aware of it, the Lord was unconsciously preparing Him for leadership. You know, we're not always aware of what God's doing in our life, but God is always preparing us. He's always getting us ready. We don't always understand it or know what we're going through, or the schoolroom God may have us in. But God's preparing us through His unconscious preparation. When I was in Bible college like you are, I understood that God was preparing me. I mean, the subjects that I was taken, I knew were subjects I would need out of the ministry and out of the pastorate. But the truth of the matter is, before I was called to preach, God was preparing me. Long in my early life, God was preparing me. God was preparing my vocabulary and my mental skills as slight as they may be. And He was calling me and preparing me. Before I was called to preach, God brought me a lady of character and a lady of endurance and patience because He knew I would be a pastor. And He knew the difficulties of a pastor on a pastor's wife. And long before I knew that, God knew that. And God prepared me many times unconsciously of my own. All of us are being unconsciously prepared for our future. And one of the great things about this matter of Joseph is that we see his life in the end and we see what God was preparing him for. But we also are able to see the steps that he took to get there and how God led him along the way to get him to where God had a plan for his life. God's hand, young people, is on your life right now. Right now. He's preparing you for something in the future that he has for you. God's hand's in the whole thing. I'd like to, Sunday morning, or Sunday morning before last when I delivered this message, I delivered it particularly to young people. Because Joseph was a 17-year-old boy when this took place. Scripture particularly says he was 17 years of age when he was given over to the Israelites. His mother, Rachel, had just died. His grandfather, Isaac, when this story takes place, is now dead. His father, Jacob, is 108 years of age. And he has 11 brothers and at least one sister, the record tells us, the sister of Dinah. They've recently moved Jacob Hayes, his family from Shechem into the area where they're living now. They've gone back up to Bethel and gone back to see Isaac. And now they're living up in another area. When they were there in Shechem, the Bible reveals a wicked, shameful incident occurring in the life of Dinah, Joseph's sister, and how she'd gone out to see the daughters of the land and how she'd gotten involved in some things and Shechem had taken her and abused her. And then her wicked brothers had contrived a plan to murder that entire town. And they'd gone out under the guise of religion and murdered that entire town of men. And Jacob had said to those brothers, Jacob the dad said to those brothers in Genesis 35 verse 30, You trouble me to make me stink among the inhabitants of the land, among the Canaanites and the Perizzites. And I being few in number, they shall gather themselves together against me and slay me, and I shall be destroyed, I in my house. His boys ruined his testimony in that land. And then God said to Jacob, Get back to Bethel and build me an altar. And Jacob went to see his father for one last time. Isaac then died. And when our story takes place, he's about 60 miles from there in a place called Arba. And he settled there with his family. Ezekiel 22 30 says to us, I sought for a man among them that should make up the hedge and should stand in the gap before me for the land that I shouldn't destroy it. But I found none. But I want to tell you, he found one in Joseph. He found a man who he sent ahead to preserve life, who saved an entire nation from famine, and he prepared him for that date from the time at least that he was 17 years of age, and I'm sure even before that time. What are the things that make up our preparation? Could I give you four of them this morning? Number one is the preparation of righteousness, or the preparation of godliness, or we might say the preparation of purity in our life. Verse number two says, And Joseph brought his father their evil report. Joseph's godliness is seen from his earliest years. You know, there's some who believe you cannot tell the godliness of a young man or a young woman until much later in life. I think it's true that a man has to be tested first. Before you ever know the godliness in anybody, they have to be tested. But if we can find the test that young people go through, if we can find the test that you and I are in right now, we're going to tell our godliness, our righteousness, our purity for right now. It is possible for young people to be pure. Now, by the way, there's a difference between purity and innocence. Purity is tested innocence. It's tested innocence. Adam and Eve were innocent, but they weren't pure until tested. And the same thing is true of young people. They're not pure until tested. They're innocent. But once we're tested, we can see whether we're pure or not. And there are a couple of tests that Joseph went through, his choices early in life that show that he was a pure and a godly young man. The first test I see is his report to his father. He brought to his father their evil report, verse 2 says. It sounds at first like tailbearing. But I want to tell you that wasn't the case. These really were evil brothers. And when it says they brought their evil report, it means that Joseph was telling what they were doing evil. What they were doing wrong, you see. They were evil brothers. In the last story, back among the Shechemites, they had murdered a whole town. Here it says in this passage three different times, they hated their brother. They hated their brother the more. And they envied their brother. Reuben was guilty of incest in Genesis 35. And on and on I could go. These were wicked, evil brothers of his. The evil report was not tailbearing. He was informing Dad of things Dad needed to know. You see, he was passing a test that he was going through. He was making some choices. The difference in tailbearing and giving needed information is who you tell and why you tell it. It's obvious from this whole story that Jacob had to keep a watch on his wicked boys. And Joseph was the young man, even though he was very young, that did it. He could be depended on to tell Dad the truth of what those boys were up to. Obviously, nobody respects somebody that is a talebearer in that sense, or a tattletale, as we might say it. But when we tell things to the right person for the right reason, we do it for righteousness' sake, we do it for godliness' sake, that's a sign of the purity of your own life. It's a sign, you see, the godly young person or old person always stands on the side of righteousness, not personalities. You always operate by conviction, not by emotion. Some years ago in church I pastored in Selmer, Tennessee, we had a youth outing. Had a good number of youth in an overnight outing. One of the young men slipped in something that they shouldn't have had there. They slipped in a bottle of wine. And on a dare, that young man took that bottle of wine and tipped it up and drank nearly the whole bottle. And before the morning light, he was taken to the hospital in Jackson, Tennessee, nearly at death. They had to pump his stomach out and they called his parents, of course, and called me and I rushed to the hospital there in Jackson, Tennessee. Several boys stood around while that young man took that drink. And I preached a message after that to our young men in our school. And I said, had that boy died, you would have been partially guilty because you could have stopped him. All you had to do was say, you take one drink and I'm going to the authorities. That's all in the world it would have took. All it takes is some character. All it takes is some godliness to stop some folks from going wrong if we'll just do the right thing. He brought the evil report to his dad because his dad was somebody that could do something about it. And it says a whole lot about our character and our purity if we're willing to do the right thing in the midst of wrong. This evil report showed this young man's godly character. A second evidence of this young man's purity and righteousness is found in verse 25. He stood alone. Verse 25 says, And they sat down to eat bread, and they lifted up their eyes, and looked, and behold, a company of Ishmaelites came from Gilead. And of course, they did a number of things there to him during that time. But a second evidence of his godliness is his willingness to stand alone. When Jacob was blessing his sons in Genesis 49, you don't need to turn there, but he makes an unusual statement. He says when he's blessing Joseph, him that was separate from his brethren, he stood alone. He really was separate and his dad noticed it. He didn't fit in. And you know it's not always a bad thing not to fit in. Sometimes it's the right thing not to fit in. Peer pressure is neither bad nor good, it depends on the crowd. But peer dependence is always bad. We ought to never become peer dependent. You ought to stand alone. You ought to be the kind of person that can stand alone in a crowd that's going bad and stand alone in a crowd that you love and want to please them. Standing alone, you see, Jesus said of John the Baptist, what did you go out to see? A reed shaken with the wind? Did you go out to see a man that bowed to every group that he was with? Did you go out to see a man that was shaken by the powers that be? What did you go out to see? One of the great character traits of John the Baptist was he stood alone. And it's a great character trait about us. When I say stand alone, I don't mean that you just like to be different. There's nothing great about being a hermit. Some people stand alone because they don't like people. They just like to sit in the corner and suck their thumb, you know. I don't mean that. But I mean when you want to go along. I mean when your friends are around and you desire to please. And a right or wrong issue comes up, you're willing to stand alone. That's the test of purity. And he was willing to stand alone. He was a godly young man. God was preparing him to stand in Pharaoh's house because of his righteousness. Second of all, he prepared him by his relationships. His relationships. I often say to young people, you're not going to be what you decide to be. For the most part, you're going to be what you decide to be around. Your influences have a lot to do particularly in your early life. Your relationships shape you. Particularly, is that true of early relationships and who shapes your early character? And I believe Joseph's leadership abilities were shaped by two relationships. One was with his father. If you look at verse 3 and 4, it says, Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was a son of his old age, and he made him a coat of many colors. And when his brethren saw that their father loved him more than all his brethren, They hated him and could not speak peaceably unto him. That coat of colors had more to do than just a coat that his father favored him with or loved him with. We believe that coat was a coat of rank. It was a coat of privilege. It was a coat of prominence which his father gave him because he took the firstborn rights. He was the coat of the firstborn. You see, he supplanted Reuben. As far as taking the right of the firstborn, Reuben lost his spiritual rights because of what he did. I don't think Joseph was loved by his father simply because he was a child of Rachel. He was loved because his father was now Israel. His father was now a prince with God and he loved the things of God. And he loved that boy because he had the same ideas about life that he did. He loved him because he's headed in the same direction as he was. He was his favorite because of that. He was close to his father in Jacob's latter years when he was named Israel. And I want to tell all of us, you know, I know there's exceptions and I know there's reprobates. But we all stay close to our parents. You all stay close to your father. That's part of the direction of your life. My father was never a godly man, I believe he was a saved man. But way up in years, he's 96 years of age today, I still revere him. And I still thank the Lord for him. And when he was a little bit younger and a little bit senile now, but I loved his advice and counsel to me because he was always interested in my best interest. And your father's always interested. They may not always show it, but they're interested in your best interest. Stay close to your parents. Do what's right to be right with your parents. Don't live with regret in that matter. God guides us by those over us. And directly is that true in the matter of parents. He was close to his dad. Second of all, he had a great relationship with God the Father from very early. His brothers said, Behold, this dreamer coming. But I want to tell you, they would have liked to have had that dream. God was talking to Joseph. And He did with dreams throughout his life and the interpretation of dreams. That was before scripture was finished, of course. And God often spoke to men through dreams. But God was talking to Joseph. God was preparing Joseph. God was getting Joseph ready to listen to his voice and the guidance of the Spirit of God. He had a close relationship to the Lord through his word. And I would tell you, young people, very early develop a close relationship with the Lord through his word. I know another man that God used greatly from his childhood, and that was Samuel. My Bible says he did let none of his words fall to the ground. From an early child, they knew from Dan to Beersheba that he was established to be a prophet. The hand of the Lord was on him from very early. And one reason was, is when God spoke to him, he said, Speak, Lord, for thy servant here. Set aside time for God to speak to you. Memorize and meditate on scripture. Particularly if you're going to the ministry, there is no substitute for that. Memorize scripture. Throughout my Bible college days, I memorized on average three verses a day. Nothing has helped me more than that right there. Correlating and collating scripture and seeing a phrase over here that's mentioned somewhere else, and then meditating on scripture this book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth but thou shalt meditate therein day and night that thou mayest observe to do according to all that's written therein but then thou shalt make thy way prosperous and then thou shalt have good success let God speak to you get away with him early in the morning and if you would begin to set aside time each day for God to speak to you and read his word and let him speak that's a good sign that God's going to use you and God's got his hand on you If you can neglect His Word in the morning and build habits of that, you'll have a habit that'll stick with you through life, I'm telling you. Build a habit of getting along with God in the morning and let God speak to you. Joseph's righteousness, Joseph's relationships. But third, I would show you Joseph's responsibilities. Somebody said that maturity is seen not in how old you are, but maturity is seen in how many responsibilities you have. If you want to mature a young person, don't do everything for them. If you want to mature a young person, give them things to do. Give them responsibilities. And the more responsibilities you have, the more mature you become. Later in Egypt, Joseph handles everything for Pharaoh, everything. When he's put in prison, the prisoner puts him over all the guard. When he's there in Potiphar's house, he assumes responsibility for everything. You know where that came? He was given responsibility as an early child. And he took on that responsibility. That's where he began. Look with me back to chapter 39 if you would, just for a moment. Chapter 39 and verses 2 to 4. It says, And the Lord was with Joseph, and he was a prosperous man, and he was in the house of his master the Egyptian. And his master saw that the Lord was with him, and that the Lord made all that he did to prosper in his hand. And Joseph found grace in his sight, and he served him, and he made him overseer over his house, and all that he had he put into his hand." Where did that begin? It began as a teenager. It began as a child when he took on the responsibilities, if you will, when he took on the assignments that he had day by day. And he did a good job of them. He didn't just hand in something shabby, he did a good job of it. You're not going to all of a sudden graduate and do good jobs when you didn't do a good job through college. You develop habits in your life. One of my favorite little sayings is the benefit of work is not what you get for it. The benefit of work is what you become by. You're becoming something by the way you do things. By the responsibilities that you handle, you see. And his father called him to him in Genesis 37. and sent him to Shechem to check on his brothers." Now, that's an interesting statement because Shechem was 60 miles away and in a dangerous day to travel. And Joseph was assigned to go check on his brothers at 60 miles away. Interesting that those 10 brethren went back to Shechem. Shechem was the place where that tragedy took place. Shechem's the place where the murders took place. And they wanted to go back there. And old dad said, go check on them and check on my flocks and my herds. For somebody to give you responsibility assumes something basic about you. Do you know that? It assumes they trust you. And trust is built by the way you handle little assignments. How you do the daily task determines whether you're asked to do the bigger task. Someone has said, it's not the dream of a lifetime, it's the dream that takes a lifetime. It took a lot of years for Joseph's dream to become reality. It took a lifetime. And a lifetime is made up of days. And days are made up of daily habits and things that we do and responsibilities that we assume. It's not your dreams that get you where you want to be. It's your steps. The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord. You're not going to be 20 years from now where you dream you're going to be. You're going to be where your steps take you. Your daily decisions, daily responsibilities. We ought to handle every decision, every assignment, every small responsibility in a way that it doesn't betray the trust that's been given to us. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego was a young man, young men refused to eat of the king's meat. Later, they were willing to suffer and not bow down to an idol on the plains of Dura and given a bigger test. We learn to run by walking. And you learn to make big decisions by first being responsible and truthful about little decisions. If you can't be trusted with a dollar, who's going to trust you with a thousand? Jesus said that if you have not been faithful in the Mundane things are in the carnal things who's gonna give you your trust the true riches Joseph was trusted by his father to check on the flocks and the herds To take a trip to check on his brothers Later, he's trusted with Potiphar's house later. He's trusted with the prisoners later. He's trusted in Pharaoh's house with all of Egypt That's the development of a leader God's developing you by your responsibilities By what you're handling now and how you're handling it That's the way God develops us. By His righteousness, by His relationship, by His responsibilities. And may I say finally, Joseph's preparation was by His response to being wronged. You see that in verse 24 and 25. They took him and cast him in a pit, and the pit was empty, there was no water in it. And I want you to follow me here. They sat down to eat bread. And they lifted up their eyes and looked, and behold, a company of Israelites came from Gilead with their camels bearing spicery and balm and myrrh, going to carry it down to Egypt. Many years later, 22 years later, when those brothers stood before Joseph in Egypt, it's amazing how the conscience works. Their conscience brought that little incident back to them. And the Bible says in Genesis 42, 21, they said one to another. They're standing before Joseph. We're very, very guilty concerning our brother in that we saw the anguish of his soul when he besought us. And we would not hear. Therefore, is this distress come upon us? When they put him in that pit, the Bible says they went over to eat. And they sat down to eat, and that later commentary says, Joseph began to cry out, Save me! Deliver me! Don't do this to me! And they let his cries go in their ears and did nothing about it. And twenty-two years later, their conscience comes back to haunt them. You know, it's amazing how hard people can be on someone who may be suffering and crying out. when they think they've been done wrong. If somebody has hurt me, if I'm not godly, it's very easy for me to hurt them back. These guys were awfully jealous. They were awfully envious of this young man. He deserves it, I'm sure is what they thought. He's made his bed, let him lie in it. You ever heard people say that? By the way, one person can commit a great deal of evil, but you put more people together who are thinking the same thing, they can do a whole lot of evil and a whole lot of wrong. We better not pass off what the Germans did to the Jews as an atrocity that could never be committed again. Because those people were conditioned through the years of Hitler and beyond that to think a certain way about people. I just finished reading some things about that. The people in the churches, how could they allow a lot of that to go on? And one witness said in the churches, many of them, many of the Lutheran churches, They would hear the boxcars coming, the train coming, and hear the screams of those Jews. And they would turn the music up and sing louder to drive it out of their minds. How cruel people can be. And that was true of these brothers, you see. We needn't think that what happened with Chairman Mao in China and his minions that killed so many millions cannot happen again. You and I can be cruel, and we can wrong people when we think they deserve it or may have hurt me in some way. As a pastor, I sometimes sit and counsel husbands and wives, and I'm amazed sometimes at how cruel a husband can be to a wife who thinks he's not getting all that he deserves, or thinks he's not being done right in some way, or a wife to a husband the same thing. I'm amazed at how people can be cruel to each other, who are kin to each other, when we're not getting something we think, or maybe some supposed injustice has occurred to us. You know, we're all built in such a selfish way that if you attack me, you've attacked the world. I think we way underestimate the depravity of man. And I hope we all learn that down inside of us is the greatest enemy we have. The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? Luther said, I have inside of me a greater enemy than all the popes and cardinals. It's inside of me. And if we're not real careful, we can be mighty cruel. Joseph was wronged. He was terribly wronged. But I want to serve notice on you. Being wronged is nothing new. Most everybody, somewhere, sometime is going to be wronged. It was not the wrong that makes this story such a wonderful story. The real marvel of Joseph's life is how, in the coming years, he reacted to that wrong. Godly leaders are not made from people, usually, who grow up in pristine environments, where everything is just right, and they're never allowed to hurt, or never allowed to suffer. In fact, I want to tell all of you, if you're going to preach, if you're going to pastor or be an evangelist, somewhere you're going to suffer some. Somewhere you're going to have to be quiet when you're hurting and not strike out. You're going to have to learn to hurt alone and not share it all the time with everybody else to get sympathy. Because if you're not careful, you build a case against people. Over 20 years later, Joseph shows why God elevated him. When he had a chance to get even. When when when time had come. He said, you meant it for evil. You really meant to hurt me. And I have to be honest with you, I don't think there's many times in my life that anybody ever just set out to hurt me. There may have been a time or two. I don't know. I tell my people, if you're doing it, don't tell me about it. I don't want to know about it. If you know somebody's out to hurt me, don't tell me about it. It's better not to know. But I do sometimes get caught in the crosswalk when people are in a hurry to get where they're going. I don't think I'm that important that people get up in the morning and say, I'm going to get that preacher today. And you're probably not that important either. But we do get hurt sometimes. All of us do. And it's how we respond to it. God sent me ahead of you to preserve life. You know God's sending you ahead. Joseph wasn't just wronged by his brothers. He was lied about by Potiphar's wife. He was forgotten by the butler. He faced setbacks all along the way. But he learned somewhere along the line to see God's hand in the providential dealings of everyday life. God's hand was in it all. The brothers meant it for evil, God meant it for good. Potiphar's wife designed to get him, but God meant it for good. The butler forgot him, but God meant it for good. And everything that had happened, he saw like that. The blessing of God upon Joseph was not because he had an advantage in life. It's because he knew how to handle disadvantage. Someone has said, and I close, if you cripple a man, at least in one case, you have a Sir Walter Scott. If you lock him in prison, give him a Bible, give him a Fox's Book of Martyrs, at least in one case, you've got a John Bunyan. If you bury him in the snows of Valley Forge, wrap his feet in his own clothing, you've got a George Washington. If you raise him in poverty, you may have an Abraham Lincoln. If you burn him so severely, the doctors say he'll never walk again, and you have a Glenn Cunningham who set the world's record for the mile run in 1934. If you deafen him, you may have a Ludwig Beethoven. If you call him a slow learner, retarded, and write him off as uneducable, you've got an Albert Einstein. Give him aseptic meningitis. Let him forget everything. Let him go legally blind. And you got a man by the name of John Bishop who recently preached in our pulpit and brought blessing to all of us. Let a lady be deaf and dumb from birth. You got a Helen Keller. Let somebody put a poultice on her eyes and let her go blind, and you've got half of the songs in your songbook. Because you've got a Fannie Crosby. What's our problem? What are we up against? Somebody said to Fannie Crosby one day, what would you say to that doctor that put that poultice on your eyes and made you go blind? What would you say to him now? She said, I'd say thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I couldn't have written all these songs had I had sight. Let some wicked brothers contrive and sell you into slavery, into a foreign land and do you wrong. People lie about you. You got a Joseph who was sent ahead to preserve life. I don't know how you've been hurt this morning. I don't know what the setbacks are in your life. But I can tell you this, whatever else anybody else means, God means it for good. God's developing leadership. And may we allow Him to develop it in our lives. Let's pray together, may we? With our heads bowed for just a moment. I don't know what you're up against today. I know as college students, you're probably up against some tough bills. Maybe some work assignments that are very difficult for you. Perhaps some problems back at home that's eating at you. Maybe a problem between some students here. I don't know what it is, but I know that God allows things to come into our life to test us and to mold us. And I wonder maybe while I was preaching this morning if the Spirit of God didn't finger around your heart and let you know that maybe you're becoming a little bit hard and not seeing things the way you ought to see them. And that you ought to ask God to soften your heart this morning so that you handle things the way Joseph handled them. God means it for good. The Lord spoke to your heart about a matter this morning that you feel like you need to deal with. Would you lift your hand and say, pray for me, preacher. Pray for me. Yes, God bless you. Amen. All across. May the Spirit of God help us. It's easy to become hard. Even sitting in Bible college, it's easy to become hard. I'll let Brother Bill give the invitation. If God's spoken to you and you want to do business with God, I trust you will. May the Lord bless His Word.