How do you

How do you respond when life suddenly throws you a curveball, an unexpected or difficult event that turns your world upside down?

Do you tend to become bitter or resentful? Maybe you wallow in self-pity.

Today on Truth for Life,

Alastair Begg explains why believers can trust God

and avoid what he calls these silent killers.

Can I invite you once again to turn with me to Genesis and to the 39th chapter?

The radical change has taken place in the life of this young man, Joseph, from being the object of his father's special interest,

essentially the object of a doting dad who loved him with a passion, perhaps

beyond what was even suitable or sensible, he has now become the focus of the attention

of individuals who are in the market for a slave. Now, that's dramatic. Some of our circumstances

have changed over a period of time by means of geography or by social deprivation or whatever it might be.

I'm not sure that any of us have made such a stoop as this, have made such a crashing groundfall as this.

And we do well to remind ourselves, indeed, it would be wrong for us to assume

that the background to the verses before us this morning is anything other than distasteful,

ugly, humiliating, and without doubt, cruel. The picture with which the chapter opens,

with which the other one concludes is not that of

Joseph, now in Egypt, going from place to place looking for a job, but rather it is Joseph in the

context of an auction. And in order for us to get a picture of it, we should probably think

in terms of cattle auctions.

And you will be privileged to observe the procedure as it unfolds with regularity as the door swings open,

and one sorry beast comes in through the door, whacked by a big stick, and prodded into its position of prominence.

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