GOD AND OUR SUFFERING
Text: Gen. 45:1-8
Genesis 45:1-8King James Version (KJV)
45 Then Joseph could not refrain himself before all them that stood by him; and he cried, Cause every man to go out from me. And there stood no man with him, while Joseph made himself known unto his brethren.
2 And he wept aloud: and the Egyptians and the house of Pharaoh heard.
3 And Joseph said unto his brethren, I am Joseph; doth my father yet live? And his brethren could not answer him; for they were troubled at his presence.
4 And Joseph said unto his brethren, Come near to me, I pray you. And they came near. And he said, I am Joseph your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt.
5 Now therefore be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither: for God did send me before you to preserve life.
6 For these two years hath the famine been in the land: and yet there are five years, in the which there shall neither be earing nor harvest.
7 And God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance.
8 So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God: and he hath made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt.
1. God’s plan is bigger than our dreams. (cf. Eph. 3:20)
- Joseph dreamed that his brothers would one day bow down to him, that he would command them.
- The reality is that they did bow down to him. His dreams did come true. But God’s plan was not that his brothers would bow down to him as their boss in the family business but as the second most powerful man in the world.
Joseph wouldn’t run the family farm; he would take care of every farm in all of Egypt and see to it that every person received food, including his own family.
God’s plans are so much bigger than anything we can ever ask, think, or imagine.
- We need to align our perspective with God’s
- When we
2. God’s purpose is greater than our pain. (cf. Gen. 50:20)
- Here is a key lesson – to understand God’s purpose or even our purpose, we have to understand context. There is no purpose apart from context.
We don’t know why we’re here or why we experience what we experience until we know what we’re connected to. Purpose requires a connection.
When Joseph was in slavery and jail, if he didn’t understand his connection to God, then he would have struggled to understand why.
- If we could see God as He is, we would lean in and align our
- Joseph suffered greatly physically, emotionally, relationally, but God’s purpose was greater than his pain.
3. God’s faithfulness is more trustworthy than our circumstances. (cf. Rom. 8:28)
When Joseph was suffering, he had two options: he could trust his circumstances or trust his God.
1) When we trust our circumstances, we view God through the lens of our circumstances and get a
2) When we trust in God, we take a heavenly perspective. We
4. God transforms our sorrow into joy. (cf. John 16:20-22)
- God doesn’t substitute joy for our sorrow. He transforms our sorrow into joy.
- God uses the very things that brought