All right, I'm in the book of Genesis, if you'd like to follow me there, Genesis chapter 37. Genesis chapter 37. Joseph is one of my favorite characters of the Bible, and I don't mean character as in fictional character, he's an actual character, amen? A real person in the scriptures. I love studying the life of Joseph and I love the, from chapter 37, all except for chapter 38, which is a completely different story about Judah, nothing to do with Joseph at all. It's all the way from chapter 37 to the end of the book of Genesis, chapter 50, is wrapped around the life of Joseph. And I want to look at some things here. And this will be like a little mini series, learning from the life of Joseph. There's a lot of things we can learn. And we introduced to him at the age of 17. So that covers some of the younger folks here. And then we, we find that at the point of what we'll call the mountaintop of his life and age 30. And then if you continue to cover that all the way into the whole life of Joseph, which I'm not sure I'm going to follow it all the way, but even when he was going to die and knew that his bones would be in Egypt, He believed that God was gonna deliver them, Brother Carl, and he said, when you leave here, take my bones with you, amen? I mean, that stirs my heart thinking back. So I'm leaving out of here, now my bones are left here. I don't want my bones left in Egypt. I wanna go home. I wanna go, I said, I'm gonna go to Canaanland. I wanna leave when you leave in that exodus. And Of course, they bagged up his bones and took him out of there, amen, and buried him in Canaan lands. So we'll look at chapter number 37 and open up Genesis 37 verse number one. And Jacob dwelt in the land wherein his father was a stranger in the land of Canaan. These are the generations of Jacob. Joseph, being 17 years old, was feeding the flock with his brethren. And the lad was with the sons of Bilhah and with the sons of Zilpah, his father's wives, and Joseph brought unto his father their evil report. Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children because he was the 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 rose, and also stood upright, and behold, your sheaves stood round about, and made obeisance to my sheaf, which means they bowed down before it. Then in verse number eight, and his brethren said unto him, shall 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 and told it his brethren and said, behold, I have dreamed a dream more and behold the sun and the moon and the 11 stars made obeisance to me. This represents real quickly his mom and his dad and all his brothers. Now you see the pattern, you would think they couldn't hate him anymore, yet they found a way to hate him even more. And everything he ever said or did, everything he shared with them, they hated him yet the more. And so they tell this story, and the Bible says in verse 10, he told it to his father and to his brethren, and his father rebuked him. And said unto him, what is this stream that thou hast streamed? 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 saying, and I'm gonna use those verses a little while tonight, and I said it'd be like a little mini series, don't know how long it'll take us to do it, but I'm not gonna rush myself through it. But let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, we pray that you help us, Lord, as we look into some of these things about the life of Joseph, that we could learn and glean some things, apply them to our lives as well. I pray, God, we might see truth within the word of God. Thank you, Lord, for the story being placed here, Lord, and all that it involves. We know that we are taught that Joseph is a type of Jesus Christ, and we see so many comparisons of his life. But, Lord, I pray that you help us, Lord, to also glean out things concerning personal things that we could apply to our life, our living. And we ask you to help us do that and see that in Jesus name. Amen. Now comes to the life of Joseph. learning some things about his life. This may apply to you as a father, it may apply to you as a man, and it may apply to you as a woman, or a young person, or maybe somebody older. There's some things we can learn here from this scripture. Now we go back to verse number three of chapter 37, if you wanna turn there. We find that Joseph was loved by his father. Now there's nothing wrong with a father loving the child, loving a son like this, but we learned some things here about family. You need to be real careful loving one child more than the other child. Be real careful doing more for one child than you do the other child. You know what that creates in the natural order of things? Envy and jealousy and hatred. hated him. And the coat that was made symbolized every now and then. I don't know if y'all ever noticed, but Wade's got some pretty cool socks he wears. If y'all haven't seen them, maybe you could, you know, he'll just, he'll show you. Him and Jared, every once in a while, whoops, I'm knocking all my notes down. I had to get over here and get a wheelbarrow up. You might want to get Jared, he'll show you that. But sometimes people wear certain things like that and they like to show it off. And some things that you wear, you don't even have to try to show it off. It just shows when you wear it. And that coat that Joseph wore, that his father gave him, it was made of many colors. I'm not going to get into all the hidden colors in their meetings. I don't even know what colors they were, really. But there's people that write books on stuff like that. I don't got time to make believe things. But I do know this coat of many colors stood out. And it showed them every day they saw him wearing it that he loved them more. He said, well, how did they know that? Well, where's their coat? Where was their coat at? Now we know the scripture tells us that he loved them and he had a cause, a reason why he loved. Now I'll tell you this, sometimes some children are more lovable than others, that's just the truth. There are some days that some children just, they seem to stand out and say, you know what, you're so agreeable today, it's just easy to love them. And then there's some days, what happened to you, you demon child? You turned into, you just flipped overnight. And then the one that you might have shown favor to all of a sudden pushes every button that you've ever had on the keyboard. And you gotta ask God to help you. I see from this passage of scripture that Jacob made a mistake. I'm not calling Jacob out because he's dead. He's already buried and he's in paradise and then Jesus, the captivity, capped him and led them out. But I'll tell you, I'll call it out as fatherhood goes. I'll just share this with you. In honesty, my oldest son Micah believes we have shown more favoritism towards Jared. There was an event that took place where Jared got injured at church. He got his eye injured. Micah's the one that injured it. They were playing around with a boomerang. Still don't know all the story. Jared may be protecting Micah as his older brother. But it hit him in the eye, lacerated his cornea. His pupil, his iris, part of his iris is gone, and his pupil is completely destroyed. and he needs an artificial lens and a cornea transplant and all those things if he were to ever even have hope and it's not even guaranteed that that would work. Well, when that happened, our life changed and our focus had to be more about Jared than it was Micah. And in that time, as parents, as me as a father, I never saw, and I still struggle with him thinking that, because I tried extra hard to make sure we did not neglect him in the midst of all that. And at my very best, obviously, apparently, he still felt like we were showing more time. And I understand that's just the reality sometimes. Jared had 21 stitches in his eye. He went to the doctor every day for three months, every single day to the eye doctor, every day. Well, it's hard to show other favoritism to another sibling, a child, when the one is dominating all that time. When there's a sickness that comes into your life, It can consume a lot of your attention and your time. And that's when you say, God, I really need you to help me make sure I don't allow my children to fall through the cracks of stresses and trials in my life. Obviously, when Benjamin was born, which was Joseph's brother, he was the youngest of all the family. When he was born, his mother died. And that created an event to where I think Jacob displayed love and represented love in a way that he shouldn't have. I'll say this to you, that special love, Joseph was loved by his father. And that special love caused the jealousy in that family. But that love also did this, it comforted him in his journey. Because there's gonna come a day, he is going to be taken from his home, and he is going to be put in the land of Egypt, and the only thing that he's gonna be able, that coat won't go with him, there's gonna be no family going with him. In fact, the last time he sees his brothers, they hated him, they applauded for him to die. They sell him as a slave. And that love he knew that stood about of all other love, I believe comforted Joseph during that time. Yeah, I'd rather mess up and let my children know I love them because I went too far maybe on one or the other, but I especially don't want one of my children to think that I love another one more than I do the other one. All children are different. Even if you had 11 brothers like they did, every one of them's a little different. Every little child's got a little bit of difference to them. Some have similarities, no doubt. And they may look like each other, they might look like their mom or dad or whatever, but they've got different personalities about them. And this here and Jacob showing love to Joseph, symbolizing that love, that could have even affected Benjamin. I mean, it could have affected anybody. And so I don't recommend that you do that. He's loved by his father. And also we find in verse number two that he's listened to by his father. And it's important that we listen to our children. And it's important our children feel that we are listening to them. We live in the least connected era of our day. I have countless times seen families out eating at restaurants. There are children all around them. And both parents, this is all they're doing, Not even looking at knowledge. I mean, the child could take a whole chicken nugget, stick it in its nose, and the parents would not have a clue what happened, because they're not paying attention. Now, obviously, there's no doubt emails and things, very important things on there that you need to do, but everything should have a priority of when you are doing it. And those years you're around your kids, they're gonna go by in a flash. You'll have plenty of time when nobody wants to call you, no child wants to be with you, and no one wants to be around you. You'll have plenty of time to be on your phone then. So let's be careful about the balance of that. I'm guilty as well, but I've seen it at the restaurant, and I've watched it, where couples are right across from each other. They're preoccupied with those things. He felt loved by his father, and he also was listened to by his father. The Bible says that Joseph brought unto his father their evil rapport. Wonder what you'll do with that. Here comes Joseph again, whining and complaining about his brothers. Over and over, I wonder what they did this time. I wonder what dream they got upset about and hurt little Joseph's feelings this time. We gotta be real careful how we get attitudes and how we approach the things that are going on that may not bother us or burden us, but they may break the heart of our children. We gotta be real careful and ask God to help us be a better parent. Even in disagreement and disbelief, his father did listen, paid some attention. Because go to verse number 10. In verse number 10, He dreamed this dream, Brother Donnie, and he tells them. I mean, he's excited about this. Now, obviously, if you could take everybody in a time machine and take them all the way to the moment when everyone was gonna bow before Joseph just exactly like that dream said, they'd all say, yeah, that's a cool dream, Joseph. You the man. But people don't believe stuff like that sometimes. They don't follow it. But in verse number 10, he told it to his father. and to his brethren, and his father rebuked him. Now understand why he rebuked him. He is saying here that mom and dad and brothers, they're going to bow down to him as a son, as a child. This is abnormal to the order of the family hierarchy, especially with the Jewish culture. That oldest son's got a high priority, a high position in the family. The oldest son, he's a big dude, he's a big dog. And mom and dad are supposed to be respected. And that respect that the mom has should be fought for and expected and demanded by the father. And I've, listen, here's what Jacob says. He, uh, He tells it to his father and his father rebuked him and he said, what is this dream that thou hast dreamed? Shall I and thy mother and thy brethren? He made sure he defended his wife as the mother there in her position that she was not going to bow down to her son. Now we all know he didn't understand it. He had no idea the dreams that God was putting in Joseph's heart and his life as a 17-year-old young man who is at that age would be getting ready to cut his own pathway and doing a lot of things where they follow in his father's footstep. He's the He's the residue of the sheep herding business. He's always delivering or doing running errands. He's a gopher. Anybody like being a gopher? Well, he did that a lot. But he'd come back with evil reports or bad reports and complaints about what was going on. And his father did listen to him. And even though he disagreed with him there, and even though he had disbelief with this, He says, shall I and thy mother and thy brother indeed come to bow down thyself to the earth? What kind of dream are you having? Now, let's just take it to 2024. If one of your children said, I had a dream that you bowed down, I was the king. Can you imagine Tina telling Jerry that? Jerry would smile and, sure. Sure. He's going to be the king. And some of these kids, well, they'd love it. Give me my scepter. Give me my crown. Boy, mom and dad and all the brothers bowing down. I mean, that rhymed. I didn't even try. Well, in this passage of scripture, this dream, there's a point of disbelief here. He just couldn't quite understand it. And here's where the brothers, here's their place. They envy him. I don't know if they envied the fact that he had a dialogue with his dad. I don't know if they were envious because of the coat still. That never went away. The drama with that never went away. But they just envied him and hated him over and over and over. If you study this story, they're going to plot to kill him. They're going to plot to get rid of him. And they even take the coat of many colors. They kill an animal, and they put the blood on that coat. I mean, you'd have to have a CSI detective to figure this out back in the day. And they're trying to make a stage scene that he died by the hand of a wild beast. And they even sell this story to their dad. and make his heart broken that he thinks Joseph was dead when they sell him as a slave. And here, as I said before, if you remember, Joseph is a type, a picture of Jesus Christ. He was sold for 20 pieces of silver, the common going price as a slave. Many years fast forward, Jesus Christ was sold for 30 pieces of silver by Judas Iscariot, the common going rate of that day of a slave. There's a lot of typologies there concerning that, the connection to Jesus and his heavenly father, Joseph and his earthly father. And so these brothers envied him, but notice this, as I'm looking at this point, that Joseph was loved by his father, but he was also listened to by his father. The scripture said his father observed the same. Even if you disagree, even if you have disbelief, we find a point here where he still listened to him, allowed there to be a dialogue, and just observed what was said. Now I'm not trying to encourage you to think that your kids could have some kind of outlandish dreams and that you need to just bow down to everyone. We know we live in a crazy society where the little child could come to his parents and say, I don't want to be a boy anymore. I want to be a girl. And the parents will comply. The school board will comply. The medical world will comply. You know I'm not pushing some kind of agenda like that. But we need to understand sometimes God might put things in our hearts and our lives plans and dreams, and we could learn from that. His man was rejected by his brothers, rudely treated by his brothers, but in the midst of all that, he knew his father loved him. Now, listen, we are a family here at church. We are a part of the family of God. You've got a family, no doubt, brothers and sisters and others in your family. Boy, you can take a lot of envy and jealous and hatred by your brothers and sisters, as long as you know you're loved by your father. it'll get you through some very hard times. Even though there might be disagreements, there might be times of disbelief, and we know in our relationship with our Heavenly Father, the disagreement and the disbelief's on our side, not on His. Sometimes we just can't believe what He could do or what He's going to do or why He's doing what He's doing, and sometimes we might disagree with what He is doing. But thank God, at the end of the day, we know He loves us, our Heavenly Father loves us. So as this young man, he finds and learns that his Heavenly Father loves him. We see that the scripture shows that Jacob listened to Joseph, and he even observed the saying. Now, I don't know what he's doing with what he observes here. It's like, well, maybe there's something to this that I just can't quite grasp, how me and mama's gonna bow down before Joseph, our son, and all his other brothers. I don't know what that means, but I'm just gonna observe the saying, which means you just pay attention You just put things in its proper place. Don't lose cool. Don't jump to conclusions. I'm preaching to myself here, but any of y'all parents qualify for jumping to conclusions and losing your cool and hearing something and seeing something and not observing the same? Can't tell you how many times I've heard, would you just let me finish? Would you just let me say it, explain it? And the parent will not observe the saying. They won't allow it to be finished up. They obviously let Joseph finish what he was saying. The brothers were real excited about it. They loved to hear it. So now I get another dream. Now the whole family's gonna bow down before Joseph. And so dad kind of observes the saying and he did rebuke him at the first, no doubt that he did, but he did observe it later. And God help us to glean some wisdom here on when we have communications discussions with family, people in general, that we be careful that we not jump to conclusions on things, we not just silence people or shut them down, but we observe the saying. Even the book of Proverbs says it's a foolish thing for us to not let a person, you need to hear the whole matter out before you make a decision or a judgment. If you're in a position at work and leadership, you need to learn to let, you need to hear out the matter, observe the saying. You got kids, you need to learn how to observe the saying and listen to what's going on. Sometimes what they don't say says a lot. Sometimes what they say or how they say it are their countenance. And yeah, sometimes that you can get fooled. I was pretty good at fooling my parents back in the day, at least I thought I was. I always got caught. I think somebody was cursing me with some curse or prayer or something. I got caught every time I snuck out, everything I did just about. There's a few times I didn't, but there was a few times I felt like I just couldn't get away with anything. And I'm really glad that I didn't get into as much trouble as I tried to. But I was kind of sneaky. I hung around Preacher Gravely's son, Jimmy Gravely, and some of those preacher's kids. Boy, you've got to watch them. He was sneaky. If he wanted to skip church, he'd put loaf bread in the toilet bowl, make it look like he got sick, and he'd get to stay home. I told Jared and Micah this one day. I said, I learned from one of the best. And I did a few tricks of the trade myself. And I told them, you're going to have to be a lot better than that to fool your daddy. Because if I think that's loaf bread, you're going to church, boy. And so I've learned to observe some things. And I've reaped what I've sown in a lot of areas. I've prayed for crop failure in a few areas. And God, please let there be a crop failure. Please don't let that grow up to haunt me. And I've also learned from some of the bad things that I've done, I've learned to apply them to how I've raised my children. And there have been some times I just flat with all those points put together, still made a mistake and still had to say I was sorry. Now, I don't ever see that in Jacob's life, necessarily, where he apologized on anything. I'll just say this, though. There's nothing wrong with you and I telling our children, apologizing to people that we need to make it right, and try to reconcile it. Because I believe my sons respected me more when I apologized to them than when I tried to pretend like I'd never done anything wrong. And so I tried to make it right when I made a mistake. And so I obviously tried to talk to Mike about how he felt more, that Jerry was more favored than him. And what I did to do that was remind him of all the things I did for him over the years. And he kind of rolled his eyes or whatever there. But just to throw out some experiences in life. It's important our children know that we love them, but we need to be careful we don't make one feel more loved than the other, especially with symbolic things. You know, if some of you kids get a PlayStation 5 and the other one gets a bouncy ball and some jacks, there's some problem there in your family. Somebody's got some favoritism there. So make sure that we learn from that. Now let's go to Genesis 37. Chapter 37, we'll look at verses 5 through 9 again. Bring out a thought here. We'll probably stop for the night. The Bible says in verse five, Joseph dreamed a dream and told it his brethren, and they hated him yet the more. Joseph was a dreamer, and he had a vision of things to come that many people did not understand. And to take something out of this, I want you to understand that it's important that people be able to share their dreams and their goals with each other, with family. Joseph didn't have that with his brothers. He especially didn't have it. They'd shoot it down every time. You're never going to be nothing. And you probably could have, personally, some of you probably been there. You're not fast enough to do that. You can't do that. You can't do that. Now Jared was going in the NBA for a long time. And Jared's not very tall. But he can play some basketball. He can move and shoot and make shots. And I told him, I never tried to shoot his dream down. I said, Jared, the main thing you need to focus on, you know, you ain't going to get no taller. You're going to have to work those legs and jump. And he did try to do that. He practiced on shots. I said, but one thing you're going to have to focus on, if you're going to go to college to play ball, you're going to have to focus on school. Unless you get a scholarship, you're gonna have to go out there and walk on the court and earn it on the academic level and the athletic level. And I try to tell, that's the only way I can tell you, point you in that direction. Because his mama played ball back in the day, I never did. So he didn't get his ball talent from me, I promise you that. I get one lucky shot once in a while and people think that I can hit, but even a broke clock's right twice a day sometimes, amen? And I didn't want to shoot down his dreams of that. Then there were times that Jared wanted to be a field goal kicker for football. I told him the same thing. Focus on the school part, because you're going to have to figure out that avenue there, and if you're going to go to college. Or, one time we talked about, hey, take you down there to a tryout place in Atlanta, and you can go down there and kick with the rest of them. Now I'll tell you this, if you've ever watched a football game, there is a shortage of good kickers out in this world. People can't kick that between them yellow poles to save their lives. They hit the pole, or they hit something else. So he may still have a shot about that. He may be able to go out there and do that. But to share your dreams with your family, the things that God is working in your life are very important. But be careful if you're a young person listening to me tonight, that you make sure that the dreams that you're sharing are things that God ordains, God has ordered, that God has allowed for your life. Because if you're going to go out into the world and live for the devil, you can't expect your godly family and parents to support that. Amen? But if you've got a goal that's within the realm, and sometimes we think that God's got a tiny little world and I can't do what I want in that tiny little world. He just restricts me. You don't understand. If you can really tap into the will of God, the universe is way more wide open than you could ever imagine. In fact, chasing down that dream to go be that next pop star or that next rapper or that next ball player, that's really a confined world. You know how many people graduate from college or go to college and play professional ball of any level? It's less than 1%. less than 1% get to do that. And so try to find something in the realm of doing something that taps into the kingdom of God. That's a pretty big-sized kingdom. and be able to share those dreams there. I know some sports figures that figure people who get a certain platform. They call it a platform, Brother Jared, and talk about God has given them that platform. Tim Tebow was one of those that used that phrase a lot. And he was really good at ball. And he was supposed to have been aborted as a baby. He tells this story. He gives out the plan of salvation. Now he's doing philanthropic work. He's going out doing missionary work, traveling around. But he still uses that. that platform, and that was a dream of his, and apparently God allowed him a lot of leeway within that realm, because he's doing things that a lot of people never thought he would do. And even though he has won more playoff games than a lot of other doofuses out there, they still criticize his play. because they're really envious of his relationship with his heavenly father. That's where it comes down. And so be careful about those that are dreaming and the plans that they got. They may never reach those things. I was going to be a fireman many years ago when I was younger. It was just a cool, trendy thing to do. I don't know Jerry. Me and Jerry grew up in the same realm, you know, the six million dollar man era and all that TV show. I thought about being an astronaut, but there was a few situations there that inhibited that and couldn't allow me to do that. And there was even times I was going to be a cowboy. I'm so old, I still have cowboy TV blood. I mean, I watched some cowboy shows. But as time went on, life begins to change a lot of your dreams. And I think then, Brother Donnie, it's real important that we walk with our children through that. If their hearts get broken, their dreams get shattered, and they have to redefine and find out. Help them understand the best place to search around for their identity is to find your identity in Jesus Christ, who he wants you to be. And it is not restricted. There's a lot of areas there that can do that. You know, there's some people who go to school to learn how to be a pilot, Brother Carl, and you know what they do with that pilot's license? They work a job and they make money, but also later on, they fly missionaries free around the world. How cool would that be able to do that? I can fly a plane, that would be a cool job. I get to take a missionary to a place and take their family and they don't have to pay for tickets and I save them money in the kingdom of God. That's a pretty cool dream. Now you get involved in that, I would support that dream for you and your family, your kids. It might take me a while to trust your kids flying an airplane and me to promise and obligate that I would fly with them one day, but I might do it, I might. It depends on which kid it is. It depends. There's some more trustworthy than others. I know y'all just know I'm kidding, messing around with you. But the dreams that we have, the things that we share, what God's put in our heart, these things that Joseph shared with them, these were things that God would one day bring to pass and everybody else could be made a liar. Everybody else is gonna have to do exactly what those prophecies would say, but in that moment, They didn't understand them. It was hard for them to support them. They envied him. And his own brothers put him in a pit. He come looking for them out in the field. And they said, behold, the dreamer cometh. They hated him so bad. And so they get him, and they grab him, and they bind him up, and they throw him in a pit, which was a dry well. There was no water in it. And they threw him in that pit, and while he's crying to get out and wanting out, they just ignored his cries, and they just sit down and eat and plot. One brother tries to make a plan to get him out, but it was too late to be able to do that. They changed their mind from killing him. Thank God any day your brother decides not to kill you, that's a good day, amen? Y'all ever been threatened with your brother and sister? Some of y'all have. Me and my sister got in some good fights. She had 10 years on me and she's not here to defend herself. She had 100 pounds on me too. She was here, she'd probably hurt me just for saying that. She broke my finger in the door one time. I had no idea that it happened. I wonder why I had so many arthritic problems with it. She's the vault. And she showed me a wall on one of the old houses. We stayed in Illinois, and there was this slice dent in the wall. I said, what is that? She said, that's when you got mad at me, and you slung a record at me, and I dunked, and it went flying into the wall. So I was doing ninja stars before that was even a thing, I think. We got into fights. Even when she was older, we got into a fight, and broke some furniture, broke a door off the wall. We went at it. Well, here these brothers put him in a pit, changed their mind about killing him, and now they're plotting to sell him to the merchant men, to sell him as a slave. And in Genesis 37 verse 28, Then they're passed by Midianites, merchant men. These people traveled, they traveled and sold things from town to town. They also bought slaves, obviously, and so these brothers sell their own blood, brother, as a slave. That's a pretty low place for family to go. That's how messed up dysfunctional this family is. and they sell him. They take him out of the pit and sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites for 20 pieces of silver and they brought Joseph into Egypt. So that's how Joseph gets into Egypt. He is sold as a slave by his brothers. I read something, and my oldest son Micah preached this one time and brought some points out, talked about the slave trade line of the merchant men. They would tie them together with probably ropes or something. They'd have them bound together. hundreds of them or 20 or 30 of them tied together and they kind of drag them across the desert from town to town. Can you imagine being Joseph with all those dreams? Having a coat that spoke to you every day and that coat reminded you of how much your father loved you and now all those dreams, all this world gonna bow down to you and revolve around you and she's bowing down. Now it's all gone. Can you imagine the devil whispering in that ear? Nobody loves you, God doesn't care about you, look at your dreams now. He's walking in behind the line of other slaves, beaten, thirsty, and dry, headed in to Egypt. Egypt is the top of the Bible of the world, a place of great temptations, a place of great testing and trials. And that's where Joseph is heading here, sold as a slave by these slave traders. In the midst of all of that, when you go to chapter number 39, he gets to Egypt and he's sold to a man named Potiphar. Potiphar is, or Potiphar, I like to call him Potiphar, and I know that's probably not how you say it, but it sounds better to me. He's an officer of Pharaoh. Pharaoh is the emperor, the king of Egypt. Great, one of the greatest empires of that day. And this man works for the Pharaoh as an officer. And this man is the one who bought Joseph as a slave to work in his house. And we'll get to this point as we go on to the next Sunday night. But I wanna bring this out. Something I can learn from Joseph is he was faithful. faithful to God, faithful to who he was, even in the hard times of his life. I wonder how I would act under pressure if you took me away, and everybody that I had connected to in my family, most of them hated me. You'd almost be at the point, say, good riddance, I hope I never see any of you again, and go forward in your life, and pretend that you're someone else, and forget your heritage, and forget your home life. But you'll never find that in studying Joseph's life. that he ever did those things. He was faithful to God even in the hard times and the times of testing. And we'll look at that in chapter 39 next Sunday night. I want to leave this with you. The testing that comes into Joseph's life is a lot like the testing that comes in your life. We've all gonna go through tests. And if you think you're gonna get to a certain age and you no longer get tested, you'll find the tests get harder and harder and harder as life goes on. The older you get, they get more challenging. But testing makes us better in our life if we learn what God is trying to do in our life. But if you never learn anything from the testing, the testing will not make you better, it'll make you bitter. And I've seen it time and time again. There is a lot of bitter people in this world. A lot of bitter Christians, believers, who got hurt in their testing. They didn't get better. They didn't grow. They didn't learn what God was doing. They just whined and complained or fussed or cussed or cursed or just rebelled against God and they did not want to go through that test. And so God took them out of that test They did that over and over in their life and they never got better. They never learned, they never grew in grace and knowledge. They just got more and more bitter towards God. Any test God sends in your life, He's got a purpose. This story is hard to comprehend. that God would allow Joseph. He's the one he's given the dreams to. So what's up with God? What is he doing? Did God drop the ball? Did God make a mistake that he's now sold as a slave and he's going to Egypt? What is God doing? Well, that's why I love this story. Because when you get to the end of what God's doing, it's almost amazing to even comprehend that one day everything Joseph dreamed is going to come to pass just exactly like God gave it to him when he was a 17-year-old boy. It's exciting to me to see that. could have gotten so bitter along that journey, but yet he seemed to get better and grow as a person, even at the end when he could have really put it on his brothers. He backed off of that just a little bit when he could have really put it on them. He's faithful to us. And when we see Joseph's life, he was faithful in these hard times. We're going to also see some favor God sends in his life during these hard times. We'll pick up back up with this in chapter 37, Lord willing, next Sunday night. Thank you, Lord, for your word. Help us, Lord, as we study these scriptures, try to apply these things to our lives. So many different dynamics in this one chapter of family affairs, Lord, and also a personal faith. I pray, Lord, that we can learn from it and grow from it. Thank you for putting these stories of these people, these real testing and trials, the real scenarios of life, so that we could learn from these things, learn from the life of Joseph. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.