Seeing Family Mess God's

Seeing Family Mess God’s Way Rich Nathan November 21, 2010 Genesis: Family Mess Series Genesis 45; 50:22-32

I’ve been doing a series this fall from the first book of the Bible, the book of Genesis, titled “Family Mess.” We’ve been looking at the lives of the patriarchs – Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph and their wives, Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel and Leah. We see in the lives of these Old Testament patriarchs an authentic description of the messes that we find in our families today: the pain of infertility, family conflict, sibling rivalry, family favorites, the loss of a parent, the loss of a child.

And to this we would add all of our own messes. All of us have less than ideal families. Our mess may involve divorce, or teenage rebellion, or Alzheimer’s, or a spouse with multiple sclerosis, or suicide, or the birth of a child with severe disabilities, or multiple miscarriages, or addiction, or job loss, or conflict over an estate, or a desperately unhappy or unfulfilling marriage.

I want to share with you a brief video from a member of our congregation, Nicole Bromley, who grew up in a family of unimaginable mess and horror. Let’s listen to Nicole’s story.

VIDEO #1 – Nicole Bromley

God where were you in Nicole’s life? Have you ever asked that as you look back on your own childhood or the mess in your own life right now? God, where are you? What are you up to? Have you abandoned me? Do you care?

I’m going to conclude this series with a story of Joseph in a message that I’ve titled “Seeing Family Mess God’s Way.” Let’s pray.

Genesis 45:1-11 1 Then Joseph could no longer control himself before all his attendants, and he cried out, “Have everyone leave my presence!” So there was no one with Joseph when he made himself known to his brothers. 2 And he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard him, and Pharaoh’s household heard about it. 3 Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph! Is my father still living?” But his brothers were not able to answer him, because they were terrified at his presence.4 Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come close to me.” When they had done so, he said, “I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt! 5 And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. 6 For two years now there has been

famine in the land, and for the next five years there will be no plowing and reaping. 7 But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. 8 “So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God. He made me father to Pharaoh, lord of his entire household and ruler of all Egypt. 9 Now hurry back to my father and say to him, ‘This is what your son Joseph says: God has made me lord of all Egypt. Come down to me; don’t delay. 10 You shall live in the region of Goshen and be near me—you, your children and grandchildren, your flocks and herds, and all you have. 11 I will provide for you there, because five years of famine are still to come. Otherwise you and your household and all who belong to you will become destitute.’

And

Genesis 50:15-20 15 When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, “What if Joseph holds a grudge against us and pays us back for all the wrongs we did to him?” 16 So they sent word to Joseph, saying, “Your father left these instructions before he died: 17‘This is what you are to say to Joseph: I ask you to forgive your brothers the sins and the wrongs they committed in treating you so badly.’ Now please forgive the sins of the servants of the God of your father.” When their message came to him, Joseph wept. 18 His brothers then came and threw themselves down before him. “We are your slaves,” they said. 19 But Joseph said to them, “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? 20You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.

Now the story of Joseph can be read in a number of different ways. We’ll consider the Family Mess angle in just a moment. But certainly, interpreters from the 1 st century on have seen in the story of Joseph one of the clearest Old Testament pointers to Jesus as Messiah and Lord. You know that the proper way to read the Old Testament, in fact, the proper way to read the whole Bible is to see it as pointing to and centered on God’s clearest revelation of himself in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus himself gives us the key to reading the Old Testament in the book of Luke when following his resurrection, he speaks to his disciples and says:

Luke 24:25-27 25 He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! 26 Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” 27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself .

Whether we’re talking about the Psalms, or the Proverbs, or the Pentateuch, or the Histories or the Prophets, all of it must be read in light of God’s fullest and clearest revelation in Christ.

How does Joseph’s story point to Christ ?

The ten brothers of Joseph visit Joseph and his identity is still concealed from them. It is only on their second visit to Egypt that Joseph plainly tells them who he is.

Genesis 45:3 Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph! Is my father still living?” But his brothers were not able to answer him, because they were terrified at his presence.

Just as Jesus will make himself plainly known not only to the Jewish people, but to the world, during his second coming, Joseph makes himself known during the second visit of his brothers.

Now, the brothers thought that Joseph was dead and are shocked to discover that he is alive.

Genesis 45:3 Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph! Is my father still living?” But his brothers were not able to answer him, because they were terrified at his presence.

The disciples thought that Jesus was dead and were shocked to discover that he was alive. And the response in both cases is fear.

Joseph invites his brothers to draw near to him.

Genesis 45:4 Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come close to me.” When they had done so, he said, “I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt!

And so does Jesus; he invites his disciples, the ones who rejected him and doubted him to draw near to him and, indeed, to touch the holes in his pierced hands and to feel the hole in his spear-pierced side.

Joseph announces to his brothers the purpose for which God sent him to Egypt in Genesis 45:7.

Genesis 45:7 But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance.

Joseph’s purpose was to save. And so Jesus announces the purpose of his coming into the world. We read:

Luke 19:10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.

Joseph tells his brothers that he has been made lord of all of Egypt.

Genesis 45:9 Now hurry back to my father and say to him, ‘This is what your son Joseph says: God has made me lord of all Egypt. Come down to me; don’t delay.

And, of course, Jesus following his resurrection is proclaimed as Lord in Matthew 28:18:

Matthew 28:18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Joseph tells his brothers to share the message that he is alive. Of course, Jesus tells us to do the same; to go out into all the world and proclaim that he has risen.

And then there is the caravan of gifts that precede Joseph’s reunion with Jacob. And through the Holy Spirit, Jesus gives us every blessing in this life before we are finally reunited with him. There are dozens of parallels between the story of Joseph and the life of Jesus.

But we’ll put a different lens on the story today; the lens of family mess. And the question that Nicole asked and the question that you will certainly ask at some point in your life is:

Why does God allow family mess?

Campus Crusade for Christ distributed a booklet for years called The Four Spiritual Laws. The first of these spiritual principles states: God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life. That statement is absolutely true. But sometimes we think that what it means is that we are going to fully comprehend God’s wonderful plan for our lives and that we are going to sign off on it. That we’re going to approve of it because it comports with our idea of what a wonderful plan for our lives ought to be.

100% of us will live less than ideal lives. 100% of us will have some, if only in our lives, if only I didn’t have diabetes; if only I didn’t have sinus headaches, or ringing in my ears; if only my husband and I were not infertile; if only I hadn’t

gotten into that lawsuit; if only I hadn’t gotten pregnant outside of marriage; if only I didn’t have a difficult mother-in-law; if only I wasn’t so burdened down with debt.

Why does God allow family mess? Why did God allow the terrible series of disasters in Joseph’s life? Think about Joseph’s life. He was hated by his brothers, who were jealous of him because of his father’s favoritism towards Joseph. They considered killing him, but then sold him as a slave. He was taken to Egypt and sold to the household of a man named Potiphar. He was working faithfully for Potiphar when he was falsely accused of attempted rape by Potiphar’s wife. As a result he was imprisoned and threatened with execution. Then while he was in prison, he was faithful there and interpreted some dreams for a man who was the cup bearer to the Pharaoh. The man promised to remember Joseph when he got out of prison, but he forgot about him and let him languish in prison for two more years.

I’m sure Joseph asked God dozens of times: “Where are you, Lord? Why is this happening to me?”

There is absolutely no indication that God explained to Joseph what he was doing during all those years of heartache. We read nothing about God telling Joseph that it would all work out in the end. Nothing in the story tells us that Joseph had any clearer understanding of what God was up to than we do in our own messes. And clearly, God’s wonderful plan for Joseph’s life included a huge amount of injustice.

Why does God allow family mess? The answer is we don’t know why. There is a great deal about this world and in particular our own lives that we don’t understand. In fact, there are times the apostle Paul tells us that not only we don’t know what God is up to, but we don’t even know how to pray.

Romans 8:26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.

There are so many moments in life, friend, where you are going to look up to the sky and say “I don’t know which way to turn,” I don’t know which way to go. I don’t know why these things are happening to me. I don’t even know what to ask God in this moment.

The false answer that many people offer is that the reason these terrible things happen is because of God’s judgment. You are going through all of this family mess; you are going through all of this hardship and pain because you did something wrong. Tell Nicole Bromley that as a 5-year old child she deserved to be sexually abused by her perverted stepfather. Tell Joni Erickson Tada that something she did as a teenager caused her to deserve spending the rest of her

life in a wheelchair as a quadriplegic, who had to learn to paint by holding a brush in her mouth.

Oh sure, we see the natural consequences of many of our actions. We choose to cheat on our boyfriend or girlfriend and we may end up losing them. We choose to smoke and we may end up with emphysema. If we choose to drop out of school, we may end up struggling to find decent employment. Sure, we see links between some of our actions and their natural consequences. But we may never jump to the conclusion that all of the pain in this world, all of the mess in our families is the result of God judging us because of something we did wrong in our past.

We must not be like the Muslim cleric who said that the tsunami that hit Indonesia and Southeast Asia back in 2004 was Allah’s judgment for the sex tourism in Thailand. The very people who were wiped out on the beach in Thailand were the least likely to have been sex tourists and most likely to have been families with little children playing in the surf.

Or the many Christians who went on TV to say with complete confidence that Hurricane Katrina was God’s judgment on the city of New Orleans.

The Bible regularly discourages us from jumping to the conclusion that people who suffer some disaster are victims of God’s judgment. If you are taking notes you might want to jot down John 9:1-3.

John 9:1-3 1 As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”3 “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.

Or Jesus’ statement in Luke 13:1 – 5:

Luke 13:1 - 5 1 Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. 2Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? 3 I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. 4 Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? 5 I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”

The fact is that lots of wonderful people who bless this world with their presence died young. People like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who was killed at age 39. And Jim Elliott, the martyred missionary to the Auca Indians who died at age 39.

Or Oswald Chambers, the great devotional writer, who died at 43. Or Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was hanged by the Nazis at age 39. Or Peter Marshall, who died at age 47.

Why would God make people like this with whom the world was not worthy and then allow them to die at such a young age when the world needed their leadership, their example and their talents? The answer is we don’t know why. We are warned by the Bible to not speculate.

So, where does this leave us?

Friends, there are three things that those of us who believe in God must always keep in mind in every family mess.

What three things must we keep in mind in all family mess?

I want to show you a really helpful graphic of three great biblical truths that we must always hold together whenever we are suffering, whenever someone we love is suffering, whenever someone we are counseling is suffering. There are three great biblical truths that we must hold together even when we can’t fit them together.

Here are the three truths: The utter evilness of evil. The utter goodness of God. The utter sovereignty of God.

We can’t short-change any of these truths. And in the story of Joseph we see Joseph affirming each of these three great biblical truths.

The utter evilness of evil

Genesis 50:20 You intended to harm me , but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.

So often when Christians are giving testimony to God’s activity in the midst of some great tragedy, or after some great tragedy, we have a tendency to minimize or diminish the utter evilness of evil. The Bible never says, “Your sexual abuse is really not so bad because after all, God used it to bring you to Christ.” Are you saying that there was no other way for a person to come to Jesus other than by being molested for 10 years?

Well, the death of that 4 year old child really wasn’t so bad because at the funeral we got to preach the gospel and someone got saved. The death of a child always is wrong. It is always less than what God would have for this world.

So don’t try to explain away evil, or minimize pain, or offset it by the good that came about as the result. Evil is always evil.

And God is always utterly good.

The utter goodness of God

Genesis 50:20 You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.

Behind all of the tragedy in the life of Joseph we must always see the utter goodness of God. God’s plan for this world, and God’s plan for our lives is always good. This is the plan that God had from the beginning in Genesis 1. God, after seeing all that he created and the world that he made for men and women, said:

Genesis 1:31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good . And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.

Psalm 34.8 says:

Psalm 34:8 Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed are those who take refuge in him.

We might say, “Lord, I don’t understand why I’m going through what I’m going through. Lord, I am not seeing signs of your goodness. I don’t know why this is happening. I am confused; I am perplexed.” But the Christian always says, “I know that my God is utterly good.” Like that gospel song:

God is good all the time All the time God is good.

And the third great biblical truth that must always be affirmed is:

The utter sovereignty of God

Three times in Genesis 45:5-8 Joseph said, “God sent me to Egypt.”

Genesis 45: 5 - 8 5 And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. 7 But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. 8“So then, it was not

you who sent me here, but God . He made me father to Pharaoh, lord of his entire household and ruler of all Egypt.

Just like we don’t ever want to diminish the evilness of evil by saying, “Well, its really not so bad,” and just like we never want to compromise the utter goodness of God and say, “Well, he’s mostly good except when he’s not,” we also never want to compromise or diminish the sovereignty of God and suggest that there are some things that even God can’t control. God is trading off his control for his goodness.

Theologians usually distinguish between the decretive will of God in which God directly wills and wishes something to happen and the permissive will of God in which God permits to happen certain things including evil. However we slice it, we need to affirm that something less than God’s perfect will is being done on earth now otherwise Jesus would not have instructed us to pray:

Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Somehow the will of God is being done in heaven in a way that it is not being done on earth and we need to pray for more of the will of God to be done on earth as it is currently being done in heaven.

God is utterly sovereign. Everything that’s being done is being done with the permission of God. And yet, there is much evil and much that God does not approve of. How do we fit it together?

Nicholas Wolterstorff wrote an incredibly honest and painful little book of reflections as a loving father, who’s grieving the death of his 25-year old son, Eric, who died in a mountain-climbing accident.

Lament For A Son by Nicholas Wolterstorff

Here is what Nicholas Wolterstorff writes in commenting on the psalms which protest God’s slowness in acting. The psalmist frequently says:

How long, O Lord, how long?

Wolterstorff says:

If lament and protest are indeed legitimate components of the Christian life, then divine sovereignty is not to be understood as everything happening just as God wants it to happen, or happening in such a way that God regards what he does not like as an acceptable trade-off for the good thereby achieved. Divine sovereignty insists in God’s winning the battle against all that has gone awry with respect to God’s will.

God permits whatever is happening to happen. Whatever is happening is often much less than what God wants. But God will win the battle in the end.

We see these three things – the utter evilness of evil, the utter goodness of God, the utter sovereignty of God – in the life of Joseph. We see these three great biblical truths most plainly in the cross of Jesus Christ. Peter, in the book of Acts, sums up the death of Christ as being the result of utterly evil, morally responsible people. But the crucifixion of Christ was also in accordance with the utter goodness of God and the under the sovereignty of God. Here is what we read:

Acts 2:22-24 22 “People of Israel, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. 23 This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge ; and you, with the help of wicked men , put him to death by nailing him to the cross. 24 But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.

It is all there – our evil, God’s goodness, and God’s sovereignty.

Now God does not cause evil – ever. But he uses evil to accomplish his purposes. And God does not explain evil. But he uses evil to accomplish his purposes.

How does God use family mess?

The Bible promises that God will use all things for our good.

Romans 8:28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

I believe that when the Apostle Paul said “all things” he literally meant “all things” – that God will use all things in our life for good – the good things, the bad things, horrific things, things that we hate, things that we love, trials, tribulation, illnesses, accidents, disappointments, economic downturns, persecution, unjust suffering – all things, even our own personal failures, all things, God will use all things including family mess, for our good.

You say, “How does God do that?”

Hard things increase our dependence on God

What happens, friends, when the bottom drops out of your life, when you are suddenly hit with some pain or trauma, or difficulty, some of it coming utterly out of left field? What happens?

I’ll tell you what happens, if you know Jesus. There are two things that happen: Number one, like me you are immediately put in touch with your own weakness. You say, “God, I can’t bear this. I don’t have the stuff within me to deal with this attack on my reputation, or this opposition, or this diagnosis.” And like me you are immediately put in touch with your spiritual inadequacy. And if you know Christ, you will immediately cast yourself onto him for help.

Hard things increase our dependence on God. That’s what happened in the life of the Apostle Paul. We read in 2 Corinthians 12 that Paul had some kind of thorn in his flesh. What did he do with that thorn in his flesh? He turned to God. It increased his dependence upon God.

2 Corinthians 12:7-10 7…Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. 8 Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 10 That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

How else does God use family mess? It not only increases our dependence on God, but

Hard things increase our longing for God

There are times when things are going so well in this world for us that even those of us who love God find ourselves losing our desire for the return of Christ and for the coming glory that we’ll have when he returns. There are seasons of life when you and I are so comfortable that we almost never think about the second coming of Christ. We don’t ache for this world to be put to right because it is going all right with us.

But then something falls apart. Something goes dreadfully wrong. And we find ourselves groaning, “Come, Lord Jesus. Deliver me. Deliver the people who are suffering in Haiti. Deliver my brothers and sisters who are suffering in jail in Iran and in North Korea.” Hard things increase our longing for God and especially the second coming of Christ.

How does God use family mess?

Hard things increase our assurance that we belong to God

Listen to me now. When you go through something hard; when you suffer some kind of injustice; when you look at your life and say, “Why, Lord, why did I have to go through this?” Rather than prove to you that you are rejected by the Lord, as you see yourself continue to love God and to look to him, you prove to your own heart that you are one of God’s children. The great dividing line that separates the whole human race has to do with the way that you and I respond to all the hard things in life.

There are many people, as the Lord taught us in the parable of the sower, who when they go through trials and tribulations, give up. They feel let down and say, “Well, I always suspected that there wasn’t anything in Christianity at all. I’ve gone through this hard time with my church. I was slandered. I was rejected. I experienced that brutal thing in my family. So just as I thought, there is nothing in Christianity.” And they will walk away.

But then the Lord speaks about those who endure, who hold onto God. They are the true children of God. We always have to ask ourselves the question in times of trial, “Am I more like Job’s wife, or am I more like Job?” In the book of Job when Job went through all of his trials, his wife looked at him, it says in Job 2:9,

Job 2:9 His wife said to him, “Are you still maintaining your integrity? Curse God and die!”

Just give up on God. That’s what she is saying. What’s the point of loving God? There is nothing to this faith thing at all. God has rejected you; reject him. This is what Job says:

Job 2:10 10He replied, “You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” In all this, Job did not sin in what he said.

In the book of Job we find one of the greatest statements of faith in the entire Bible. Job says:

Job 13:15 Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him…

You prove to yourself, friend, that you are a child of God and that the Holy Spirit of Sonship is in your life, when you say, “I don’t care; though he slay me, yet will I trust in him” – you can’t say that unless the Spirit of God is at work in your life. It is impossible for a person apart from the Holy Spirit to say something like that. Its unnatural. It makes no sense. Hard things increase our assurance that we belong to God.

What is God’s one great goal in all family mess?

I don’t know why you had to go through what you had to go through growing up. I don’t know why I had to go through what I went through. I don’t know why you’re experiencing the particular form of trial or tribulation that you are experiencing, or even why I’m experiencing the particular form of trial that my family is going through. I don’t know why. But I know that I know that God is using it in your life and in my life to accomplish one great goal. Here is what Romans 8:28 says:

Romans 8:28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

What is the good? What is God’s great goal? How will God use everything – good, bad, and otherwise in your life and mine?

Romans 8:29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.

God’s goal, God’s ultimate goal in all things is to conform us to the image of Christ. This is the good.

The early Church Father, Irenaeus, said:

Jesus Christ, in his infinite love, became what we are, in order that he might make us who he wholly is.

And the great Church Father, Athanasius, said:

He became what we are that he might make us what he is.

You will never become Christ; you will never become divine; but, God is at work using everything to make you into the person that he created you to be. Filled with Christ, remade around the character of Christ, guided by the mind of Christ, showing forth the radiance of Christ, displaying the power of Christ.

Do you want to know what God is up to in all of the family mess that you’ve experienced in your life? Do you want to know what God is up to in your life? He wants to make you look like his Son, Jesus. That’s the future goal.

1 John 3:1-3 1 See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2 Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is . 3 All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.

In the present we can have some of this now because the kingdom of God has drawn near in the person of Christ. Those of you who are in relationship with Jesus, don’t you want this to be true? Don’t you want to be more like your Lord? Don’t you want to be less selfish? Less moody? Less irritated by things? Wouldn’t it be great if you found yourself more generous? More open-handed? More encouraging to others? Wouldn’t you like to be a better listener? A better friend? A better father? A more loving mother or husband or wife? Wouldn’t you like to have a bigger heart? Be less judgmental? Less self-righteous? More giving and forgiving? In short, wouldn’t you like to be better than you are? Wouldn’t you like to be like Jesus?

You know, the gospel doesn’t simply offer life after death. The gospel says that if you surrender your life to Christ, you can not only experience life after death, you can experience life before death. Joseph experienced the good that God promised in Romans 8.28. Joseph experienced not only life after death, Joseph experienced life before death. He experienced the good and the good wasn’t just being made Prime Minister of Egypt. The good, for Joseph, wasn’t just a successful career. The good for Joseph wasn’t that he was finally vindicated against the injustice of his brothers. The good in Joseph’s life came in two ways: he was used by God for the salvation of many; and, he was changed by God to become a totally different kind of person. Here is what we read:

Genesis 50:15-21 15 When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, “What if Joseph holds a grudge against us and pays us back for all the wrongs we did to him?”16 So they sent word to Joseph, saying, “Your father left these instructions before he died:17 ‘This is what you are to say to Joseph: I ask you to forgive your brothers the sins and the wrongs they committed in treating you so badly.’ Now please forgive the sins of the servants of the God of your father.” When their message came to him, Joseph wept.18 His brothers then came and threw themselves down before him. “We are your slaves,” they said.19 But Joseph said to them, “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? 20 You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. 21 So then, don’t be afraid. I will provide for you and your children.” And he reassured them and spoke kindly to them.

He became kind; he gave up every trace of revenge; he became utterly forgiving. We started this week with the story of Nicole Bromley. I want to end with the story of Nicole Bromley. Her story, by the way, is told in two amazing books she wrote. One is titled Hush and the other is titled Breathe . We have copies in the bookstore.

We also have two groups for anyone here who has been a victim of sexual abuse:

Beauty for Ashes 14 week recovery group for women who have been affected by childhood sexual abuse. Pre-registration with the leader is required. Julie McLaughlin, 614-554-1886, or [email protected]

Integrity.women Healing for sexual brokenness while finding freedom from addiction, shame and rejection. Tiffany Baugher, 740-815-1621 or [email protected] .

Let’s listen to how God used the pain in Nicole’s life for good.

VIDEO #2 of Nicole Bromley

Conclusion.

Seeing Family Mess God’s Way Rich Nathan November 21, 2010 Genesis: Family Mess Series Genesis 45; 50.22-32

I. How does Joseph’s story point to Christ ?

II. Why does God allow family mess?

III. What three things must we keep in mind in all family mess?

A. The utter evilness of evil

B. The utter goodness of God

C. The utter sovereignty of God

IV. How does God use family mess?

A. Hard things increase our dependence on God

B. Hard things increase our longing for God

C. Hard things increase our assurance that we belong to God

V. What is God’s one great goal in all family mess?