Today's scripture reading is from the book of Genesis, chapter 39, and maybe found on page 40 in the Bible underneath the seat in front of you. Genesis 39. Now, Joseph have been taken down to Egypt. Potipher, an Egyptian who was one of Pharaoh's officials, the captain of the guard, bought him from the Ishmaelites who had taken him there. The Lord was with Joseph, and he prospered, and he lived in the house of his Egyptian master. When his master saw that the Lord was with him, and that the Lord gave him success in everything he did, Joseph found favor in his eyes and became his attendant. Potipher put in him in charge of his household, and he entrusted to his care everything he owned. From the time he put him in charge of his household, and of all that he owned, the Lord blessed the household of the Egyptian because of Joseph. The blessing of the Lord was on everything Potipher had, both in the house and in the field. So he left in Joseph's care everything he had, but Joseph in charge, he did not concern himself with anything except the food that he ate. Now Joseph was well built in the handsome, and after a while his master's wife took notice of Joseph and said, come to bed with me. But he refused, with me in charge, he told her, my master does not concern himself with anything in the house. Everything he owns, he has entrusted to my care, no one is greater in this house than I am. My master has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God? And though she spoke to Joseph day after day, he refused to go to bed with her, or even be with her. One day he went into the house to attend to his duties, and none of the household servants was inside. She caught him by his cloak and said, come to bed with me. But he left his cloak in her hand and ran out of the house. When she saw that he had left his cloak in her hand and run out of the house, she called her household servants. Look, she said to them, this Hebrew has been brought to us to make sport of us. He came in here to sleep with me, but I screamed. When he heard me scream for help, he left his cloak beside me and ran out of the house. She kept his cloak beside her until his master came home. Then she told him this story. That Hebrew slave you brought us came to make sport of me, but as soon as I screamed for help, he left his cloak beside me and ran out of the house. When his master heard this story, his wife told him, saying, this is how your slave treated me. He burned with anger. Joseph Master took him and put him in prison. The place where the king's prisoners were confined. But while Joseph was there in the prison, the Lord was with him. He showed him kindness and granted him favor in the eyes of the prison warden. So the warden put Joseph in charge of all those held in the prison, and he was made responsible for all that was done there. The warden paid no attention to anything under Joseph's care, because the Lord was with Joseph and gave him success in whatever he did. This is the word of the Lord. We're now in a series of messages on the life of Joseph. We started this series last week. We're continuing it today and through the rest of May and most of June. The series I've entitled from prison to palace, and part of the reason we're studying the life of Joseph is that Joseph is what vacation Bible school is all about this year. So we're continuing this series today and it's a big long story. I've got a lot to talk about, and so less dive right in. I want to talk with you this morning about three things that we see out of this chapter, Genesis chapter 39. And the first thing is that life is not fair. I think as you've heard that story, you put yourself in Joseph's shoes, you heard about the false accusation that his master's wife leveled against him, you heard about Joseph being thrown into prison based on a false charge. Life is not fair. From a purely human perspective, we would have to say that life is not fair. Bad people sometimes win the lottery. Law abiding citizens get their stuff stolen out of their house while they're away on vacation. Faithful spouses get cheated on sometimes. Christians get cancer. Christians around the world get persecuted. Just like the Psalmist writes in Psalm 73, sometimes the wicked, prosper, and the righteous suffer. Sometimes people can treat you wrong even when you're doing what is right. Let's look more deeply into the injustice that Joseph experienced in Genesis chapter 39. If you were to plot Joseph's life right about now on a graph, perhaps it would look something like this. I threw a graph together, fun over on the left side over time. Let's see kind of how Joseph experienced life in Genesis 37 through 40. Well, back in Genesis 37 where we were last week, you remember that life was pretty good for Joseph at that time. His father had made him that amazing technical or dream coat. He was the father's favorite son. Things were looking pretty up for Joseph back then. He had these dreams about being exalted above his brothers and so on and so forth, but pretty soon the graph begins to go way down. For example, his brothers come up with a plan to kill Joseph. That's down. They would have killed him, but his brother Rubin intervened and so he came to his rescue. The graph goes back up a little bit. They throw him in a cistern. That's kind of a down experience for sure. And then they sell him to some Midianite merchants who carry him off to Egypt down a little further. Those guys sell him to Potapher. He was one of Pharaoh's chief officials. It's not a good thing to be sold in slavery. That's down. Joseph, though, is such a good servant that Potapher trusts him and puts him in charge of his whole household. That's a promotion. That feels a little better, but Joseph is a pretty good looking guy. And Potapher's wife tries to seduce him. That's not good. Joseph refuses to give into her, so she accuses him of trying to rape her. That's a definite down. Potapher believes his wife and throws Joseph in prison. And as you'll see next week, this was just the beginning of Joseph's suffering down, down, down. He goes. And are you aware how old Joseph was when things finally began to turn up for him? If you go over a couple of chapters, chapter 41, you learned that it wasn't until Joseph was 30 years old, that he was brought out of prison and given this amazing honor, you'll learn about that in a couple of weeks. Right now, though, Genesis 39, he's 17. And so this experience of being in the prison goes on for 13 years, for 13 long years, Joseph suffered the effects of injustice. See, life is not fair. I know that there's this Christian school of thought out there that says that if you do everything right and live by the golden rule and give your money and go to church and love people, then God is going to make everything just great for you. You're going to be healthy, wealthy, and successful in the eyes of the world. That is a lie. Don't believe it. It says in 2 Timothy 312, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. While evil men go from bad to worse. Life's not fair. It's not even for those who love God very much. Injustice is a reality in this broken and fallen world. So the question is, as we continue to look at Genesis 39, how are you supposed to do? What are you supposed to do about that? How are you supposed to respond to that graph in your life? What is a Christian response to injustice, to suffering, to unfair treatment, to being cheated on, to being rejected and betrayed, and so on, and so forth? Let's spend a few minutes looking at how Joseph responded to his unjust treatment. Let me share with you three things that this chapter tells us that Joseph did in response to injustice. The first thing that Joseph did was he served others. He served others. Verse 4 of our chapter says that he found favor in Potiphar's eyes and became his attendant. That means servant or slave. Potiphar put him in charge of his household and he entrusted to his care everything that he owned. So what Joseph is doing here is he is trying to serve so faithfully that it is noticed by Potiphar what a faithful man he is, what a man of character, what a person of integrity he is. Joseph made a conscious decision, a choice, that even though he was sold into slavery, even though he was in this foreign land, and even though he was a slave, he would live in such a way as to bring glory to God and good to other human beings. If you ever had a hang nail, I'm sure you have, I hate them. Hang nails are irritating, aren't they? They are these little things that grow alongside your nail. You have to get out some clippers and chop it off, but sometimes you go too far and it just makes things worse. Hang nails are obnoxious. Joseph could have been a hang nail to Potiphar. What I mean is that he could have irritated him. He could have sabotaged him. He could have stolen from Potiphar. After all he had to run in the house, he could have stolen things from him, making Potiphar think he was trustworthy. He could have done those things. He could have been a bad slave, but no. Joseph worked hard for Potiphar. He was a dependable, faithful servant. Joseph could have had a bad attitude, right? He could have said, what am I doing down here in Egypt? God, where are you? You've forgotten about me. He could have really bellied against God and against the people around him. He could have been lazy and bitter and whiny, but no. Joseph was positive. He stayed pleasant to people who were around him. He was a man of integrity and of character so much so that according to verse 3 his master saw that the Lord was with him. I think God would ask, have you ask yourself, are you that kind of person, such that people around you, your coworkers, your fellow family members, your friends, your teachers, your professors, are you such a person that those people who see you who work with you day by day would say, the Lord is with her. The Lord is with him. Have you been a blessing to your boss, to your company, to your employees, to your family? Have you been so trustworthy that your employer, if you are a worker, your employer puts you in charge of more and more things because he or she has absolute confidence in your work ethic, in your dependability, in your honesty? Or, on the other hand, have you been a hang nail? Have you let your suffering become an excuse for laziness and mediocrity in your work? Have you been a source of irritation and of trouble to people in your family, people that you go to school with people in your circle of friends? Joseph, you see, serve Potter for faithfully. He's a good model for us to follow as we suffer the effects of injustice. Secondly, the second thing that we see from Potter for here, not only from Joseph, not only did he serve Potter for faithfully, but he obeyed God carefully. Joseph obeyed God very carefully. Verse 6 and 7, tell us that Joseph was well built and handsome, and after a while, Potter for his wife took notice of Joseph and said, come to bed with me. So she's trying to seduce him, you see. Now, I want you to think how easy it would have been for Joseph to take advantage of this opportunity. There are a lot of, from a strictly ungodly human perspective, there are a lot of reasons why Joseph would have just fallen right for this seductress's wiles. He's a good-looking, young, single guy. He's got a foreign accent, right? Women love guys with foreign accents. True. She's a woman of power. She's probably quite attractive. More than that, she's lonely. I imagine that Potter would spend long hours, perhaps even extended days away from home, working in the government of Pharaoh. Often, Potter for his wife and Joseph are alone in the house or around the house together. No one would ever find out. And remember, Joseph is 17. Talk about raging hormones. There they are. But Joseph refuses her advances. Joseph doesn't give in, and she's relentless, too. Did you notice that in verse 10? It says that she spoke to Joseph day after day. But still, he refused to go to bed with her or even be with her. Joseph tried his best to avoid being in the same room with her alone. When she's in the kitchen, Joseph makes a point of making it out to the living room. When she's back in her bedroom, Joseph makes a point of being outside finding work to do. Joseph surrounds himself with the servants. His fellow servants is often as possible, so he's not alone in the same area with her. But finally, in verses 11 and 12, we find out that Potter's wife decides that she's not been direct enough. So one day, when nobody's around, she goes up to Joseph. She grabs his outer garment and says to him, one more time, come to bed with me very forcibly. And Joseph does what a real man is supposed to do in those circumstances. He runs. He runs. He obeys 1 Corinthians chapter 6 verse 18 that says, that says, flee sexual immorality. He runs away from the source of temptation. Now my question to us is, how could Joseph do this? How could he do it? When there's so many reasons, again, strictly forgetting about godly perspective, there's so many reasons why it would have been fine and understandable for Joseph to give into her temptation. Why did he say no to her? Was it simply that Joseph was a man of great moral fortitude? Is that the explanation? I don't think so. Because you remember last week we were in Genesis 37. We found out that Joseph had a really arrogant streak to him. He could be completely self-centered. Wasn't moral strength that gave him help against Potiphar's wife? Or was it on the other hand, just fear? Fear of what Potiphar might do to him? Well, I'm sure that entered in, but again, no, I don't see that being Joseph's main motivation. Instead, look at verse 9. Verse 9 holds the answer. How could Joseph say no to Potiphar's wife? It's because, as Joseph said to her, how could I do such a wicked thing and sin against god? Friends, Joseph had a god-centered worldview. See, when you begin to put yourself in the center of your universe, there's no telling what you and I are capable of. When we begin to listen to what we and our flesh want, if that's the final arbiter of our decision making, then we're not ready when temptation comes our way. But Joseph began with a god-centered universe. God was in the center. What mattered to Joseph was what God had to say about what Potiphar's wife was doing, not just what he wanted to do. A lot of you know that I'm now a granddad and I have five grandchildren. Our younger daughter, Jennifer had a baby about six weeks ago named Lucy. And last Monday, I went up to Jacksonville to visit with Jennifer for most of the day to check in with her, see how she and Lucy and her husband Tim are doing. It's so fun to watch kids becoming parents. Some of you who have grandchildren, you know exactly what I'm talking about, it's so fun to see our kids becoming parents. I loved you sit back and watch them struggle and stumble and you know figure it out and work it out like Susie and I had to do. Well I was there with Jennifer and I asked her, Jennifer, what about feeding schedule, putting her to bed and how are you figuring all that out? And Jennifer said, I got a book and I'm reading this book and I just do what the book says to do. And I thought that's pretty good, pretty good Jennifer. She does what the book says to do. If you have a God-centered universe, you know what you're going to say? You're going to say, I do what the book says to do. Because when the book says something to do, says to do something, that's God saying to do something. And if God says no, then you say no without debate, without delay, because God's in the center and you live for His glory and you obey has Joseph obeyed the word of God. We're looking at how to respond to life being not fair. Joseph served others faithfully. He obeyed God's word carefully and the third thing that we see Joseph doing is he surrendered. He surrendered to the timing of God. Now this had to be very difficult and we're going to see in a short while how he was able to do it. But I want you to notice that Joseph surrendered to God's timing. You heard the rest of the story. What happened next was that Potiphar's wife felt rejected by Joseph as she was indeed rejected. And so she decided to get him back. She decided to pull a fatal attraction on Joseph. She went to her husband and accused Joseph of trying to rape her. Totally false. Joseph never did the slightest thing toward that. But she accused Joseph of trying to rape her to her husband, Potiphar. And it says in verse 19 that Potiphar burned with anger. And he ended up throwing Joseph in prison. But as I was reading about Joseph's prison experience, I was more struck by what I didn't see than by what I did see. I didn't see any mention of Joseph retaliating against Potiphar and the sentence that he'd been given. I don't see anything about him protesting his innocence or complaining about being thrown in prison. He didn't grow mean or cold and indifferent toward God and spiteful toward other people. Instead it seems that Joseph trusted God's timing. It seems that he trusted that one day God would make all things right. Now Joseph had no indicator of how soon that day would come. Perhaps the next day maybe it would take a week or two or several months or years we don't know what was going on in his mind. But it appears that Joseph was able to trust the providence and the timing of God. Sort of like the first song that we heard this morning if you were here for the song of welcoming those who wait upon the Lord will renew their strength. They will mount up with wings as equals. They will walk and not grow. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint. Those who wait the waiting game the waiting room is a very hard place to be. And so I think it's worth asking where did the power come from for Joseph to do all these things to serve Potiphar as a slave faithfully to be a man of integrity to obey God's word when pummeled by temptation by Potiphar's wife to surrender to God's timetable instead of hurry things up and grab power for himself. And grouse about what he had been given. Where did the power for those three things come from in Joseph's life? And the answer is it was the grace of God. God's grace was what empowered Joseph to be able to deal with injustice in those three ways just as in your life. It will be God's grace that will enable you to look injustice in the eye and keep serving and keep obeying and keep trusting. Where do we see God's grace at work in Joseph here? Well, look at verses 20 and 21 and I'll explain what I mean. The second half of verse 20 says that while Joseph was there in the prison, the Lord was with him. Oh, that's a mighty powerful statement right there, right? The Lord showed forth that he was in manual. God is with us in the waiting room. God is with us in the injustice. He is with us in the unfairness of life. And then it goes on to say that he showed him kindness and granted him favor in the eyes of the prison warden. I want you to notice that word kindness for a moment. It's the Hebrew word. Yes, it. Yes, it. It means mercy. Compassion toward the undeserving pity or as the Greeks translated the word. It means grace. Grace. God gave Joseph grace and granted him favor in the eyes of the prison warden. It is only going to be God's grace to you in the gospel of Jesus that will enable you to get through whatever it is you're suffering today. But God's grace will do it. Now let's again go visit Joseph. He's there in prison. God gives him grace. What. What does that look like though? I mean, is it is it an object? Is it an idea? Is it theory? No, think about it. Joseph is the son of Jacob, who was the son of Isaac, who was the son of whom Abraham. So you have Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. And now Joseph is one of Jacob's sons. Joseph was thoroughly familiar with God's covenant promise to Abraham. And in that covenant promise to Abraham was grace. One of the covenant promises. Well, let me tell you what they all were. It's found in Genesis chapter 12. The covenant promises were three to Abraham back in Genesis 12. God appeared to Abraham back then. And he said this, he said, I will make you into a great nation Abraham. And I will bless you. I will make your name great. And you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you. I will curse those who curse you. And thirdly, God said to Abraham that all peoples on earth will be blessed through you. Now follow this out with me for a little bit because Abraham was given that promise. Isaac was given the promise. Jacob was given the promise. If you read from Genesis 12 through 39, you will see that covenant promise. For Israel to be a blessing to the nations reiterated again and again and again. So Joseph was thoroughly familiar with God's covenant to make Israel be a blessing to the nations. But how is he going to do that? Well, ironically, he does it through suffering. Because look at what God does to make good on that promise to make Israel be a blessing to the nations. He takes Joseph to Egypt on a path of suffering and betrayal. He takes Joseph out of his familiar home, uproots him out of his family, and plants him in Egypt, a place of idle worship, a place where God was not known, 700 different gods and goddesses were worshiped in Egypt. And that's where God takes Joseph out of his comfort, out of his family, and he puts him on a path of suffering and injustice and betrayal and slavery and being framed by Potiphar's wife and thrown into prison for a crime he didn't commit. That is how God chooses to make Israel a blessing to the nations. What's the lesson here? The lesson is that he makes pearls out of sand, like I was telling the children. God advances his kingdom through the suffering of his people. Joseph's sitting there in prison. Where does the power for him to come from to face injustice and to face unfairness and suffering? The covenant promise that God says, I'll be with you and I'll make your name great and I'm going to make you a blessing to the nations. God is always, if you don't remember anything else from this sermon today, remember this God is always at work. He's always at work sharpening and shaping us, always at work growing his church, reaching the nations with the gospel, advancing his kingdom to unreached peoples around the world. And it happens as you suffer. There's grace there friend. There's grace to keep going because God is making you a blessing. And advancing his kingdom and there can be nothing better than that for you and for God's glory. Let me give you a great example of how God advances his kingdom through the suffering of his people. I read about this in a book by Bill and Amy Sterns. And we have to go back to this map here of modern day Russia and revisit the 1930s. Now back in the 1930s this was called the Soviet Union of course. And what was happening back in that time is notice this star where North Korea is. There were thousands of North, sorry, of Korean Christians living in North Korea back in the 1930s. And they fled North Korea due to the invasion of Japan. Some of you remember that history. The Japanese invaded Korea and thousands and thousands of these Christians living in North Korea fled North Korea and a lot of them wound up in Vladivostok. Vladivostok is a port city in the former Soviet Union where you see that second star there. Now the dictator at the time in the Soviet Union was Joseph Stalin. Joseph Stalin is admittedly and he wasn't even a very very evil dictator. And what Stalin was doing at the time was developing Vladivostok as a weapons manufacturing center. He was afraid that these Koreans living in Vladivostok were a security risk. So you know what Stalin did to all those thousands of Koreans living in Vladivostok. He deported them. He relocated them in five areas around the Soviet Union. One of those areas was a city known as Toshkent. It is now the capital city of Uzbekistan. Toshkent is 3,000 miles away from Vladivostok. Guess who lived in and around Toshkent? 20 million Muslims. It was a huge Muslim area. They are called the Uzbeks. For hundreds of years these Uzbeks, these Muslims had violently resisted any effort by Christian missionaries to evangelize them in that part of Russia. But the Korean Christians who now by Stalin were settled in Toshkent were welcomed with open arms by the Uzbeks. Do you know why? Because they were people of great integrity, of honesty. They were hard workers. They were pleasant people. In other words they weren't hangnails. They weren't obnoxious. And so, wouldn't you know it within a generation? These Korean Christians had been thoroughly assimilated into the cultural life of these Soviet Muslims and they were winning people to Christ right and left. Their influence spread from Uzbekistan to Kazakhstan. And on June 2, 1990, about 20 years ago, the first open air Christian meeting in the history of Soviet Central Asia was held in the streets of Alma Ata. Alma Ata, the capital of Kazakhstan. So I wonder if Joseph Stalin knew that his program of deporting these Korean Christians throughout the Soviet Union would actually result in the nations being reached for Jesus Christ. I doubt it. Now, how did those Koreans feel when they got the orders? Sorry, you guys got to leave. We're going to put you in these other cities. They didn't like that one bit. It was unjust. It was unfair. It was suffering. They were given something they didn't want. They had to leave their familiar home and be deported to this place they'd never heard of before in Uzbekistan of all places. But God used their suffering to advance the kingdom, to spread the gospel. That is grace. And it's because Joseph knew that God was going to do that. That he was able to say, I don't like it, but I'm waiting God's timing. And I'm going to serve faithfully. I'm going to obey God. And I'm going to trust that God's always at work. See as Lewis said that God whispers to us in our pleasures speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains. If you're in pain today, suffering, enduring trial, guess what God's doing is shouting, is shouting his grace to you, shouting his covenant love, saying hold on, keep walking, keep trusting, keep serving, keep obeying. I'm with you. The greatest example of this is the cross on the cross, the son of God became the victim of the grossest injustice that's ever been handed a human being in history. But through it all, Jesus was the perfect Joseph. Like Joseph Jesus left his home in heaven, came to a foreign land, lived a blameless life. And instead of being received with open arms, he was slandered and unfairly treated just like Joseph was in Isaiah's words. Jesus was despised and rejected by men. He became a man of sorrows acquainted with suffering. The Bible says that when they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate when he suffered. He made no threats. Instead what did he do? He entrusted himself to him who judges justly. And bore our sins in his body on the tree. Jesus served us faithfully. He obeyed the will and word of his father carefully. And rather than strike out against his accusers, he willingly accepted the timing and the providence of his father and the humiliation of the cross. In short, Jesus gave us Hesse. Mercy. Grace. He died. That all who put their hope in trust in him would have their sins forgiven, be made new and have eternal life in a relationship with God. Have you put your hope in your trust in Jesus? This perfect Joseph. Let me tell you, if you've never done that and don't intend to do that, I don't know how you're going to face life. Life's too hard. This stuff's too real. It happens to every human being eventually. You need someone to give you grace. And that person is Jesus. Let's pray. God. There are a lot of people in this room. Maybe everybody who knows firsthand how unfair life can be. And we thank you that you are good at taking sand and turning it into pearls. Lord Jesus, thank you that our trials are one of your ways of reaching the nations. Thank you that through our pain, you're shaping us into a body of people who love each other deeply and who love the world radically. Lord through injustice, you are reminding us of the one who suffered the worst of all injustices that we may be born again. So, God, we pray today, earnestly, that you will help us in this valley of tears, in this place of distress, in this prison in which we find ourselves, that you will help us to serve and obey and surrender. Would you do that, Lord, for our good, but most of all, for your glory. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.