How often do we feel this way in our own lives? Everything is against me. If you're in the middle

of something hard, don't give up hope. We live in a fallen world. We have mortal bodies. We interact

with fallen people who sometimes use their agency in terrible ways. But when we look to Jesus Christ,

we remember that what others meant for harm, God can turn to good.

The same God who redeemed Joseph's story is still writing ours.

Like lots of families, my family has a group chat where we share the latest updates with each other.

And sometimes the group chat gets really exciting, like when my daughter got a boyfriend,

just blew up. Or recently my son shared some videos of his pet snake eating a mouse.

I'll spare you all the videos. But as I was scrolling through our family chat the other day, I wondered about Jacob and all of his children.

What would things have been like if they had their own family group chat?

As you look at this group chat here, if there's anything that doesn't make sense to you yet, just wait till the end of class.

But my point is that Jacob's family probably had to have some tough

conversations over the decades. And today we're going to explore five parts of their story.

We'll see Judah's transformation, God's providence, Ruben's tragedy, Jacob's heartache, and Joseph's

prophecy. Now, we don't talk about Judah as much as Joseph, but his story is really important as well.

The first time we get a close look at Judah is in Genesis chapter 37.

His brothers see Joseph approaching from a distance and they plot to kill him.

Rubin says, let's spare his life, but when some traitors come by, Judah

sees an opportunity. Judah's the one who said, what will we gain if we kill our brother

and cover up his blood? Let's sell him to the Ishmaelites. So here we see that Judah is one

who's willing to hurt others for his own benefit. And in Genesis chapter 38, he hasn't really changed.

We talked about this in our last class.

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