Genesis 50:20 But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it isthis day, to save many people alive.
Psalms 56:5 All day long they injure my cause; all their thoughts are against me for evil.
Genesis 45:5-8 And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there are yet five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God. He has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt.
Psalms 105:16-17 When he summoned a famine on the land and broke all supply of bread, he had sent a man ahead of them, Joseph, who was sold as a slave.
Psalms 119:71 It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes.
Acts 2:23 this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.
Romans 8:28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
After their father Jacob died, Joseph’s brothers were afraid he would use his power and prestige in Egypt to get revenge against the brothers who had sold him as a slave, essentially leaving him for dead.
From a human perspective, Joseph had the right and the ability to get revenge against his brothers, but he knew God was God and he was not. Such retribution belonged to God, not Joseph’s.
Yet, Joseph did not romanticize the wrong his brothers did. He plainly said, You meant evil against me. Although this was true, it was not the greatest truth. The greatest truth was God meant it for good.
Every Christian should be able to see the overarching and overruling hand of God in their life; to know that no matter what evil man brings against us, God can use it for good. Joseph did not have the text of Romans 8:28, but he had the truth of it: And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. Sadly, some of us who have the text do not have the truth.
Ultimately, our lives are not in the hands of men, but in the hands of God, who overrules all things for His glory.
There was an old minister who had a unique gift to minister to distressed and discouraged people. In his Bible, he carried an old bookmark woven of silk threads into a phrase. The back of it, where the threads were knotted and tied, was a hopeless tangle. He would take the bookmark out and show the troubled person this side of the bookmark and ask them to make sense of it. They never could. Then the pastor would turn it over, and on the front were white letters against a solid background saying, “God is love.” When events in our life seem tangled and meaningless, it is because we can see only one side of the tapestry.
There was an immediate good in the situation: to save many people alive. If this large family did not come to Egypt and live, they would have perished in the famine. Had the family barely survived, it would have assimilated into the surrounding Canaanite tribes. Only by coming to Egypt could they be preserved and grow into a distinct nation.
The evil done by Joseph’s brothers became part of a chain of events that led to the survival of the Jewish people, and the eventual coming of Jesus the Messiah according to God’s plan.
Thankfully, the sin others do against us never is the last word. God has the last word, and believers can therefore forgive those who sin against them. Can you say it? “God meant it for good.” (Guzik)
