Life’s higher purpose begins with a simple confession: from God, and through God, and to God are all things – to him be glory forever. God is sovereign and absolute, having created, ordained, and governing all things for his own eternal purposes, so that he operates in and through all things to bring them to their appointed end.
The sermon traces that sovereignty through Scripture’s own stories – Jacob’s struggles, Tamar’s desperation, Ruth’s faith, Job’s realization, and above all Joseph, who could tell the brothers who sold him into slavery, ‘you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring about that many people should be kept alive.’ Because God has purposed it, no one can turn it back, and those who know their God are strengthened to live out that purpose even amid their own shortcomings.