So enjoyed guest pastor Randy Pope’s sermon yesterday at Covenant Church. He reminded us yet once again that God uses even bad things for good, and that God is sovereign over all things. His example of Joseph, as a forerunner of Christ endured the same cruelties and betrayals, yet God used each difficulty as a blessing to show us God uses bad things to accomplish good. Yes, even the difficulties of life can be redeemed to show God’s grace, mercy, and even salvation through difficulties. I can see that each difficulty, even in my own life, has spurned me to learning new truths and seeing, in the long term, God was teaching me reliance on Him.
So, loosely listed, from the great message: Without Joseph’s story of redemption, there would be no understanding, ultimately, of our own redemption by Jesus. And even, in his case of the Holocaust illustration, and, I am extending here–the book “Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?”, God can redeem any situation if we look for the lessons and the reliance on God when difficulties in this mortal life arise.
So, as an encouragement, yet once again in my determination to bring encouragement to others, even when there are difficulties in this moral life in a sin-filled world, the ultimate contrast with this life and heaven will one day manifest itself. We can believe what the Bible tells us, and our patient endurance and faith in Jesus as our Savior, one who suffered betrayal, poverty, misunderstanding, humiliation, persecution, doubting of His truths, beatings, a crown of thorns, death on the cross—all because of the sins of man–and yet will one day rule in glory and majesty because He overcame all this without sin and followed the sovereign will of His Eternal Father. I know with assurance, that God blesses His people, and I am one of them, to show us glimpses of that eternal reality. Messages like that of Randy Pope remind us yet again that God is sovereign
over all things, and that ultimately, His judgment is always right.
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