Let's move our eyes now to the Scripture in Genesis chapter 50. We will read verses 15 through 21. Tonight we will also cover the Belgic Confession, article 13, the doctrine of God's providence. You can find the article 13 in page 165 in our Forms and Prayers book. We'll start reading Article 13, and then we'll move to Genesis 50, verses 15 through 21. Article 13, the doctrine of God's providence. I will read tonight, this is what the Belgic Confession says. We believe that this good God, after He created all things, did not abandon them to chance or fortune, but leads and governs them according to His holy will, in such a way that nothing happens in this world without His orderly arrangement. Yet God is not the alter of, nor can be the charge with, the sin that occurs. For His power and goodness are so great and incomprehensible that He arranges and does His work very well and justly, even when the devils and wicked men act unjustly. We do not wish to inquire with undue curiosity into what He does that surpasses human understanding and is beyond our ability to comprehend. But in all humility and reverence, we adore the just judgments of God, which are hidden from us, being content to the Christ's disciples, so as to learn only what He shows us in His word without going beyond those limits. This doctrine gives us unspeakable comfort since it teaches that nothing can happen to us by chance but only by the arrangement of our gracious Heavenly Father. He watches over us with fatherly care. keeping all creatures under his control, so that not one of the hairs of our heads, for they are all numbered, nor even a little bird can fall to the ground without the will of our Father. In this thought we rest, knowing that He holds in check the devils and all our enemies, who cannot hurt us without His permission and will. For that reason, we reject the damnable error of the Epicureans, who say that God involves Himself in nothing and leaves everything to chance. Let's move now to Genesis 50, verses 15 through 21, and this is the words of God to His church. When Joseph's brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, It may be that Joseph will hate us and pay us back for all the evil that we did to him. So they sent a message to Joseph saying, your father gave this command before he died. Say to Joseph, please forgive the transgression of your brothers and their sin because they did evil to you. And now, please forgive the transgressions of the servants of the God of your father.' Joseph wept, then they spoke to him. His brothers also came and fell down before him and said, Behold, we are your servants. But Joseph said to them, do not fear, for am I in the place of God? As for you, you mean evil against me, but God meant it for good. So to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, and they are today. So, do not fear, I will provide for you and your little ones. Thus He comforted them and spoke kindly to them." Amen. Let's pray once again. Close your eyes. Heavenly Father, what a challenge we have to understand this text and the providence of God, things that are much higher than our understanding because they belong to the God Almighty. Help us, God, though, to see Your greatness and Your kindness while we see to this text and we see this doctrine. Teach us and help us to understand the glories of Your name. May Your Holy Spirit will guide us while we fix our eyes in the Scripture of God. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. We are in a very important text for the church. The book of Genesis, it's the beginning of everything, but it's also the base of many important doctrines to the church of Jesus Christ. Many of these doctrines, they will be just presented shortly in this book because God doesn't want to give us all the knowledge about His teaching and His works in this world. One example is the first two chapters that speaks about the creation. God was not willing to produce a deep scientific book. He was only saying what did happen. And He explained in His words what He did make to make everything happen. He is the creator of everything. And we basically covered this in the last four or five articles in the Belgic Confession. The article that we cover tonight actually starts once again reminding us that God create all things and after that, He start to work in His creation in another way. And this way, the Belgic Confession calls His providence. And providence is a different doctrine that we will also find in Genesis, in the book of Genesis. But this doctrine will be shown in a different way that creation was presented here, because creation is something that God said and providence is something that God shows to His people through many different situations. We choose just one tonight, the end of the chapter, that is completely different, the end of the book, which is completely different from the beginning. Genesis 1 starts with the creation of life, and Genesis 50 finishes with dad in a coffin in Egypt, Joseph's coffin in Egypt. Genesis starts with God creating life. We will see that life was not given so freely to the people that lived in this world anymore because something happened and you will probably cover that next week when you will see the fall of man. But between this and around all of this, providence is being presented everywhere here. God didn't abandon His people, but He is involved in everything that happens in this world. This is in every story in the book of Genesis, but we will concentrate our thoughts tonight only in verses 15 through 21. I believe everyone here knows Joseph's story, it covers one quarter of Genesis. Genesis is probably the biggest part of one of the patriarchs about what is happening here. Joseph has 13 chapters that will speak how He suffered deeply. He was sold. He was abandoned. He was arrested. He was forgotten. He suffered deeply in many ways, but God came to save him and He made this man the second most important man in Egypt, and He gave him the mission to save not only the whole Egypt, but many other people in the world, including the people of God, the Jews. There are many important stories in the middle of all of these, but we will move our eyes to what happened first in verses 15 through 18 because here we will see Joseph's brother's fears making them try to provide salvation to themselves. Joseph's father, Jacob, he finally died. And after that, many things came to the mind of Joseph's brothers. They remember about everything they did with him. all the evil that they commit for Him and how they try to put an end in His life and they treat Him hardly because they had many situations in their house with Him. And now, knowing that Jacob was dead, they decide to save themselves from Joseph because their hearts were afflicted by one thought. It's in verse 15. The thought that took their hearts, they believe that may Joseph will hate us and pay us back for all the evil that we did to him. They were afraid of the return of Jacob. They were afraid that Jacob was the only one, I changed the name before, they were afraid that Joseph could come to take them because after Jacob's death, they would not have anyone to protect them or anyone to save them. Their father was dead, so now there was nothing who could stop Joseph to persecute them and to pay the evil with evil. That's a common thought that could take the head of any person. But they were very afraid because now they were seeing Joseph as a much higher person. He was the second in command of Egypt. He had the army in his hands. He was respected by everyone in every country around them. And they were completely dependent on him to survive. If he just decide to stop to give them food, they will die without food. But he could use the army, he could punish them, he could make many things, so they were scared. And then, verse 16 will bring us something that there are a lot of debate among the scholarship. Because here, they decide to send a message to Joseph saying that their father gave a command to Joseph before he was dead. And this command is in verse 17, and they said, say to Joseph, please forgive the transgression of your brothers and their sin because they did evil to you. Well, it's a good way to defend themselves. The Bible doesn't say, but I agree that Jacob never said this phrase. He never commanded Joseph to forgive his brothers. They just made that to protect themselves because they were scared. They were completely lost. with the possibility of Joseph's decision of persecute them and pay in return for their evil more evil. So they send a messenger to Joseph with this message that could bring relief to them because of Jacob's death that happened in the first verses of chapter 50. When Joseph received this message, the Bible says that he wept when they spoke with him. It seems it was something that really touched his heart, but as we will see, this is not the reason that he decided to not persecute them. This is something that God brought to make Joseph deal with his own problems. Because pay attention, if we suffer so much damage from someone, it will take a while or maybe it will be very difficult to forgive and to show love to those that hurted so much ourselves. And this is a situation that is presented in many lives in many different ways. People from the church, they are weeping in silence many times because they have a strong difficulty to forgive those who cause them damage. This is something that maybe it's true for you tonight, and we need to learn with Joseph what to do in a situation like this. Jesus, of course, already teach that in the New Testament, and He invite us to forgive everyone as God forgave us from our sins. And that means that we don't have any reason to not forgive because knowing what Jesus made for us, we cannot deny forgiven for anyone. This is a principle established in the Scripture by Jesus itself, but it seems Joseph knew about that even before it was teached because in verse 19, he will say something that will change the subject of everything that was happening until now. Joseph said to them, do not fear for am I in the place of God? This small statement, this question by the end, speaks about the knowledge of Joseph about the God that he knew. First, he gave them a statement saying, do not fear. You don't need to fear me because I will not cause you evil. And then he answers why he didn't would cause them any evil, because he could not be in the place of God. What is the meaning of this answer, and this is the goal that will lead us to providence and will lead us to the understanding of everything that is around this circumstance. Joseph was saying that the only one in control of the peoples of God's life, it was God itself, God Himself. God is the one who controls the day that we are born, the day that we will marriage, the day that we will have a child, the day that we will have a grandchild, the day we will die. He's the one who controls everything. And Joseph was saying, I will not take this power into my hands and offer to you evil as you gave it to me in order to fulfill a desire in my heart. I, of course, Joseph is also saying here that he could cause damage to them, but he was willing to not do anything against them because of God and not because of his own desires. He was saying that before his will There was God's will and he was willing to see God's will being established in their brother's life. Before my actions, there is a God who will provide you the answer. He could think like many that we should bring justice to this world. It's something that many Christians will defend in a situation like this. They were evil. There is no moment in the whole book of Genesis that we will see Joseph's brothers showing any change in their behavior about the evil who were in their hearts. So, they could just say, well, it's okay if Joseph just abandoned them and say, live your life, I will not take care of you anymore. It was permitted to him, they will say, because they caused so much damage to him that he's not obligated to take care of them anymore. But this is not the answer that he provides. He's saying, I will not take the place of God, but pay attention in what he says in verse 21 to 21, do not fear, I will provide for you and your little ones. You cause evil to me. But do not fear, I will not take the place of God and judge you, but I will fulfill the order of God and bless you with everything I can." They became a great nation during the time of Joseph. They received the better lands, they had the better food, they were blessed in a way that they could never imagine, and everything because Joseph decided to fulfill the will of God. But there is something else, and this is in verse 20. As for you, you meant evil against me. But God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive as they are today. Joseph was assuming something that his brothers, they never understood. They never saw what was behind the scenes. They could not see that besides Joseph's suffering and besides all the situation that they were involved in, a God was working to produce salvation and to bless his people in such a way that they could never expect it. If any other man were in the place of Joseph at this moment of the story of the world, the Jews would not be included in the mercies of the Egyptians. They will never receive the blessings that they receive. They will never be included in the salvation that they gave to them because to be submitted to the blessings of the Egyptians, you should be submitted to all their culture and to the gods of the Egyptians. that happened with all the other nations by that time, they need to learn about their gods and they need to bow down to their gods in order to receive food, in order to receive protection, in order to receive everything else from the Egyptians. But the Jews know because they had someone, the second one in command, to protect them and to bless them. This is something amazing, like if we cover the whole story, if we start in the beginning when he was a child having dreams about a situation that they could never imagine before and then we come to that, we will understand the greatness and the power of God upon the nations. the greatness of God upon the biggest and the small situations of life. the control that He has, not only through the decisions of governments, but through the decisions of parents and children in their house. God is everywhere. He's acting everywhere, and He's in control of everything. He's seeing your lives. since the womb of our mothers until the last day that we will breathe here. He's in control of every situation that involves our reality and this is what Joseph is saying here. He's teaching us that God was in control of his whole life. But that brings us to a different problem, and this is what the Belgian Confession will also need to talk about because it seems that God is involved with the evil. He's involved with the sin of man and the Belgic Confession denies that deeply because, of course, we cannot say that God is responsible for sin. But God, not being responsible for sin, He stills allow us to commit sins. Because He, in His sovereignty, He sees the results at the end as we will never be able to see. He allows the evil because He knows that many times evil will become good through the works of a Father which arts in heaven. Will we understand that? Of course not. This is also that the Belgic Confession also says. We need to put ourselves in our place. Or curiosity, it's the word that the Belgic Confession says, can lead us to dangerous places. Because we will not understand what God does because we cannot comprehend Him completely. We will never understand, especially too, because we don't like the evil around us and in situations that will bring damage to ourselves. But we are not in problem, for example, with the evil that came upon Jesus Christ. We are very glad that Jesus Christ came to this world to pay the price of our sins. Of course, we feel responsible for all the terrible things that He passed through, but the truth is It's a blessing for us. And without Jesus' mission, we will not be able to be here today because there will be no salvation to anyone in this world. He paid the price of our sins. He received the wrath of God. The evil that were supposed to go to us, it went to Him. He was punished hardly for our sins. And that's a great good to ourselves. It's a wonderful thing to the Church of Jesus Christ Because of this Jesus, we are allowed to go to heaven. We are allowed to have a relationship with God. We have salvation, we have mercy, and we have grace. But evil came to him before all of this. It seems the situations, they are related. The evil that came to Joseph saved God's people from that. The evil that came to Jesus saved us from that. And the truth is that God is involved in everything. God is around everything, and He's controlling everything to the benefit of His people. He's managing the world to make His people be saved for their sins. And this is something that is happening everywhere in the world, including those countries who are persecuting the church. It's a lot of evil. Even so, God is saving His elect to Him. Many of them are losing their lives as it happened in the past, but still they die to find their Savior. God is not worried with suffering. He's worried with our salvation. And that's why the Belgic Confession speaks about comfort here. It's amazing to see that comfort in Belgic Confession and also we will see that in Joseph's life, it's not related to a life without suffering. We need to establish this very clear here today. Comfort doesn't say that you will not suffer. Comfort doesn't say that you will not cry because of many things that will be happening in your life. Your body will hurt. Your heart will hurt. You will see people that you love be called by God. We will see missionaries being killed We will see the church being persecuted. All this suffering around us is happening while He's bringing us comfort, because comfort is related to His grace, His care, and His mercy. This is what the Belgic Confession says. God is doing everything to your salvation, to my salvation. God is worried not if we will have a good car or if we will have a good house or if we will have money in our bank account or if we will have a busy life. No, He's worried if in the last day you will be saved by Jesus or if you will be lost without Him. That's the main thing that is involved in God's providence and that's what He's teaching us here through Joseph's life. Why did he suffer so much? To bring salvation to many people. Why did Jesus suffer to bring salvation to us? Why are we suffering? To find salvation in Jesus Christ. It's amazing if you see people that has everything, usually they don't believe they need God. I don't know if you know this statistic, but the people in the world today that is that doesn't know Jesus Christ more, it's not like a people in Africa or a people in South America in a native tribe, no. The people in the world who doesn't accept Jesus Christ and is more resistant to Him, they are the most richer people in the world. The billionaires, the millionaires, the people with a lot of resources, they have everything. And when they see someone offering Jesus Christ to them, they say, why do I need Him? I have everything. Among the fields that we need to bring the name of Jesus Christ, this is the most difficult one to preach the gospel. because they really believe deeply that they don't need a savior. If they get sick, they have resources to find the best doctor. If they suffer, they can buy happiness and everything else. Well, it's amazing to see that among the people who suffer, we find a lot of people open to learn and to believe in Jesus Christ. And they not only believe and accept Him, but they trust in His providence daily because Jesus is everything they have. I don't know if I already told you this story, but I think it's very important in the context of this providence. It was about, it's about a woman that I pastor. I think ten years ago and she was responsible to take care of six children and her husband was working in a different city in Brazil because it was the only place where he could find job. It was an expensive city so they could not bring the whole family to live there. And the money that he made, it was not enough to the family. So, we were in the church with a woman and six children and they didn't have enough to eat. So, the church decided to provide food for this family. We organized ourselves with the deacons. We made a huge bag of food. We brought this food to this woman. And when we put the food in the table, like it was more than enough to one or two months, she called her children. they start to take small pots. She opened the beans, the bag of beans, and she started to divide the beans. She took the rice, she started to divide the rice. And suddenly, Each of her children, they start to run with a lot of these pots to other houses in the neighborhood. And I was with an elder and we started to stare at each other like, what is happening? Why is she taking the food out? We asked her, like, what are you doing? We brought you food enough for almost two months and now it's like two, three days. What is happening here? And she said, well, I have a lot of friends, they're Christians around us and they also don't have what to eat. But we learned something, we learned that when we share We will always have enough to eat in the next day because God provides. That day we didn't provide for one family, but we provide for seven. and they were trusting that in the next few days God would bring more food to provide to all of them. Well, speaking with her, she said she always had something to eat. It was not fancy, it was not expensive, but God gave her food every day to her and to their child. That's God's providence and the trust in His providence. That's what God does with people that sees His power, the power of God upon their lives. They are not afraid of the challenges of this world and about the suffering of this world, but they are trusting God that He's everything they need. Joseph did that. He was saying, well, the evil brought good not only to me, but the whole nation of Israel. And by God's providence, until today, we are seeing Him saving people around the world. We are the fruit of His providence here in Walker. We are here because He did everything to save you and to bring grace and mercy to our lives. What can we do then besides trust in His providence every day? Trust that He's really in control of the universe. There's no chance or fortune or coincidence in the world. There is God's providence. There is no possibilities without God's intervention. God is everything that should move us and should guide us. and trusting His providence, we should submit ourselves to Him daily. Even if the day is good or the day is bad, put your heart in His hands and trust Him, and you will see His care. God is working in your life today, and He will keep working until the last day. This is the end of the Belgic Confession, and this is also what we need to believe to ourselves. Let's close our eyes and talk to God. Our Heavenly Father, thank You for Your providence. Thank you for everything you made to bring us here tonight, to praise the name of our Lord because you did everything that it was needed to, to save ourselves from our sins and from death. Thank you, Lord, because your providence gave us life. Forgive us, Lord, when we didn't understand Your ways. Forgive us if we are right now challenging Your ways to ourselves. Help us to see the greatness of our God and help us to trust in You more than everything Help us to believe and to see Your care daily in our lives. And even if the sufferings and trials, they come, we will still praise Your name because of Your care and Your mercies. Help us, God. We pray in Jesus' name.