Last week we started into a brief study of God’s sovereignty by reading the story of a man who Jesus said was born blind “so the works of God might be displayed in him”. A man whose physical ailment was healed and that led to a spiritual opening of his eyes to see and believe in Jesus as the Messiah.

But as we all know, the Bible doesn’t stop with salvation—believe in Jesus, that’s it, now we’re done. But rather what Jesus invites us all to is a life of following him, of willing submission and obedience, of putting him first even when it’s hard, of growing and maturing in our faith. This morning we are actually going to look at two different stories, involving two different groups of people: one from the old testament and one from the new testament.

Each of these stories involves some pretty intense events happening beyond the control of the people, and in both cases they are faced with a very tough choice with potentially dangerous, even deadly, consequences. As we go into these stories let’s remember that: Sometimes God allows things we don’t understand to accomplish something greater than we can imagine.