They didn't see the Lord, but they could see some kind of evidence that the Lord was with them.

Why?

Somebody stay with me.

Because they could do something they couldn't.

Oh, I need somebody to enter in with me today.

Because when the Lord is with you, you can do what you can't.

Go with me all the way back to Genesis, and let's track back and see when we first begin to see a pattern of, and the Lord was with him.

We would see it earlier in the patriarchs with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, but it says it one time after another with Joseph starting in Genesis

39. Why this is such a perfect text to look at is because it's such varied circumstances,

and yet it keeps saying the same phrase. Genesis 39, I'm going to do one and two, because we're

heading to two and because we just may as well.

Now Joseph had been brought down to Egypt because, ladies, his brothers had sold him into slavery,

put blood on his clothes, taken them to his dad, and said he has been torn up, implied to him that he had been killed by wild animals.

You talk about meanness.

They tried to leave him for dead, and some of the brothers were like, no, no, no, let's at least leave him alive.

We'll just like sell him into this caravan.

And so they took him to Egypt, finds himself there.

Watch what happens, it says.

Now, Joseph had been brought down to Egypt, and Potipur, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard, an Egyptian, had bought him from the Ishmaelites who had brought

him down there. Verse two, the Lord was with Joseph, and he became a successful man, and he was in the

house of his Egyptian master. His master saw that the Lord was with him, and it says that the Lord

caused all that he did to succeed in his hands,

...