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Genesis 39 - Day Four | Five Good Minutes · Five Good Minutes

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Five Good Minutes.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: You're listening to today's inspirational message on the book of Genesis with Jake Williams.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Potifar hears his wife's accusation.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: He becomes angry and has Joseph thrown into prison, where the king's prisoners were confined, the text says.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: The movement is really brutal.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Joseph has already gone from favored son to slave, and now he goes from trusted overseer to prisoner.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the painful question is really unavoidable.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: What did Joseph do wrong?
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: In this episode, nothing.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: And that challenges a rooted assumption that we have about life.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: We often believe that if we make wise choices, if we obey God, if we act with integrity, then life should generally move forward and upward.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Obedience should produce visible blessing, we often think, and faithfulness should create security.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: But Genesis 39 refuses that narrative and that formula.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Joseph is imprisoned because he was faithful.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: It means obedience is not a technique for controlling God.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: You can't say, God, I did the right thing, so now you owe me the outcome that I want.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the path of obedience goes downward before it goes upward.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes doing the right thing costs you the opportunity or the relationship or the promotion or the comfort or the reputation.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: The prison is especially hard because Joseph could easily have interpreted as evidence that God's promises had failed.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Years earlier he had dreamed of being raised up.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Everything since then seems to move in the opposite direction.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: First the pit, then slavery, now prison.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever looked at your life and thought this isn't how I thought the story would go?
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: You believed God was leading somewhere, yet the road seemed to move backwards.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: You prayed for healing and got a longer diagnosis.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: You tried to repair a relationship and it still ended.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: You acted honestly and lost something because of it.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: The Bible doesn't give us a sentimental answer here.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't say prison is really pleasant if you have enough faith.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: No, prison is not pleasant, prison is prison.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Injustice is injustice, and loss hurts.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: But the Bible also refuses to let circumstances interpret God.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: We tend to reason like this.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Things are going badly, therefore God must be absent.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Genesis says the opposite can be true.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: Joseph is exactly where he doesn't want to be, yet God is still accomplishing something Joseph can't see.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Joseph doesn't know that the prison, this prison will eventually connect him to Pharaoh's court.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't know that the road to the palace runs through the prison cell.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Providence often makes sense backwards.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: We want God to explain the chapter that we're currently living in.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: Often he asks us to trust the author before we can see how the chapter fits in the story.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: And here again, Joseph points to Jesus.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: If anyone could have looked at his circumstances and concluded that God's plan had failed, it was Jesus on Good Friday.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: The Messiah is arrested, the innocent is condemned, the king is mocked, the Lord of Glory is nailed to a cross.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Every visible sign says defeated.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: But the cross is not the interruption of God's plan.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's the center of God's plan.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: The worst injustice in human history becomes the means by which God saves the world.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't make evil good.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: Judas's betrayal is still evil.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Pilate's cowardice is still evil.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: The cross is still a horrific act of injustice.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: But God is so sovereign that evil can't outmaneuver him.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: He can take what humans intend for evil and weave it into redemption without ever becoming the author of evil.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what Joseph's story will eventually teach explicitly.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: So when obedience takes you somewhere that you didn't expect, don't assume God has lost the plot.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: You may be in a chapter that only makes sense later, or maybe not at all.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: The pit was not the end.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: The prison will not be the end.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: And because Jesus went through the cross to resurrection, suffering never gets the final word for anyone who's united to Christ.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: You may not know what God is doing, but you can know who God is, and you can trust Him.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for joining us here today.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of great content to explore on Orchard Hill Plus and on the Orchard Hill main feed from the weekend.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: Have a great day!