AP

Genesis 45:7-8  But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance.  “So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God.”  

As we read through the Scriptures we are constantly reminded that this is God’s world – he created it, and he continues to exercise his exclusive sovereign control over it.

This would be quite frightening if he were an evil, vindictive tyrant, or even if he were capricious.  But it is very comforting when we come to know him as the God whose great love and forgiveness was shown to all without distinction in the sacrificial death of his one and only Son, Jesus.

Of this God the Apostle Paul can write: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28)  Our perplexing and often adverse circumstances can beguile us into questioning his love, or his power, or both; but his Word constantly and gently rebukes us for doing so.

The two words, “But God”, both the opening and closing words of today’s vrerse, occur in many places throughout Scripture to remind us that there is no limit to either God’s love or his power – his desire or his ability to rescue us from our afflictions, or to sustain us through them.  “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved” (Ephesians 2:4-5).

It is the ‘but God’ that makes all the difference.  So it was in the case of Joseph’s brothers’ evil intent when they sold him to Midianite traders bound for Egypt more than two decades earlier.  God had a purpose in their heartless, cruel action – a divine purpose in his planning from all eternity and one that would culminate in his ‘great deliverance’ through the death and resurrection of Jesus.  It was not they who sent him to Egypt as an integral part of this Plan, ‘but God’.  The truth of all this is clearly confirmed by the dreams God had given to Joseph in his youth (Genesis 37), and which played a significant role in all the events that followed, and which the brothers would now have admit had been quite specifically and wonderfully fulfilled as they ‘bowed down’ to Joseph in Egypt.

As we struggle with inexplicable tragedies in our own lives or in the lives of others close to us, are we able to trust in, and rest in, God’s ‘BIG picture’?  “He loves, he cares, he knows; his love, though never dim, can only give the best to those who leave the choice with him.”  As Spurgeon so helpfully reminds us: “God is too good to be unkind and too wise to be mistaken, so when we cannot trace his hand we must trust his heart.”  It’s not always easy, but it is always rewarding! 

– Bruce Christian