Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Dealing with Adversity- The Life of Joseph

I'm working on a new sermon series that I'm pretty excited about. I've actually been working toward it for several months now. This series is going to be rich with teaching about the providence of God and how we are to respond as Christians to adversity in our life.

We all face adversity at some point or another. But what about facing constant adversity all of the time? That's exactly what Joseph faced. (Genesis 37-50)

Joseph was a very interesting Bible character. He was a man who spent his lifetime trusting God with what he couldn't see. From his days as a child, living in a family environment that was less than predictable or ideal, Joseph learned to believe that what he couldn't see was more important than what he could. It's called faith, and Joseph had it even in all of the adversity in his life...big time! (Hebrews 11:1)

As a teenager, Joseph was betrayed by his own brothers and sold into slavery. He landed in Egypt where he was purchased by an Egyptian official who ultimately put him in charge of all of his affairs. He was then thrown into prison after being falsely accused of attacking the official's wife. In prison he was betrayed by a man for whose release he was responsible. And then when he was released, he was elevated to the second highest position of authority in all of Egypt, just below Pharoah!

This is just a quick synopsis of his life, but you see that all of his life Joseph was going from mountaintop to valley and back again. Have you ever felt that way? The main difference between Joseph and us is that Joseph never complained or questioned what God was doing. "Why is this happening to me, Lord?" never crossed his lips. He had a unique spiritual ability to believe that God's hand was at work in every event of his life, good or bad. God's providence in Joseph's life was never seen more clearly than when he had the opportunity to provide food and a place to live for his own father's family--even the eleven brothers who had sold him into slavery--as they traveled to Egypt to escape the famine in Canaan.

Genesis 50 verse 20 summarizes Joseph's understanding of his life as he spoke to his brothers and said, "You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done."

Joseph is a major Old Testament character about whom nothing negative is ever recorded in Scripture. He was a man who submitted to the providential direction of God in his life and, in doing so, preserved the descendants of Jacob through whom the Messiah and Redeemer of mankind would come.

Join me and let's look at the life of Joseph and see how God will use this man to stretch our own faith in Him.

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