As today is the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church, we are reminded in Scripture that we can find hope in a secular culture that is antagonistic towards Christianity and followers of Jesus because God is our refuge, because God is present with us, and because God will one day establish peace on earth.

Genesis teaches us that God is all-powerful, all-present, all-knowing, and sovereign. If we have believed this about God, then we have embraced the God of Genesis, and we are ready to live for Him.

Genesis teaches us that our only hope of deliverance from sin and death and hell is in Jesus Christ - the Messiah prophesied after the fall of the first man and the first woman, whose coming had been so marvelously preserved, and whose return we eagerly anticipate when the people of God will be ushered into the joy of His presence.

Genesis teaches us that all of life is grace. Not only are we saved by the grace of God, but God also sustains us by His grace and will keep us to the end by His grace, in order that we might praise God for His amazing grace, forever and ever.

Genesis teaches us that every fabric of our being is tainted by sin, and that the remedy to humanity's predicament is a righteousness that belongs to Christ and that can only be received by faith alone.

In this passage, we see that humanity is simultaneously wonderful and awful. Though we are helplessly sinful and hopelessly lost by nature, we are also truly wonderful, not simply because we were created in God’s image, but because Jesus Christ came to redeem the image of God in fallen humanity.

In this passage, we see Jacob bless his sons which points to the reality that God "has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places" (Ephesians 1:3), and we also see both Jacob and Joseph die in hope that one day God will fulfill His promise of the land of Canaan which points to the hope we have that one day God will fulfill His promise of a "new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells” (2 Peter 3:13).

In this passage, God promises to be with Israel as they go down to Egypt. But God's presence with His people doesn't mean that they will always prosper. Israel would later be enslaved under a Pharaoh that did not know Joseph. But God would be with them even in their suffering. We may often doubt God's presence with us. But we can be assured that God will go with us wherever we go.

In this passage, Joseph reveals himself to his brothers after seeing their transformation. In His providence, God used the evil deeds of Joseph's brothers to send Joseph ahead of his family to Egypt to preserve Israel from famine. Ultimately, Joseph points us to Jesus Christ who was sent by God to earth to save His people. But Jesus saves not just from famine but from sin, and not just for a few years but for all of eternity.

In this passage, Joseph tests his brothers to see if they are the same men who sold him into slavery twenty years earlier, or if they have changed. We naturally don't want our sin exposed. But God loves us so much that He invites us into the light of His presence, so that we might be forgiven of all our sins and walk in newness of life.