Genesis 41 - Exodus 3, Day 4 of 90-day read through the Bible
God's interaction with people in today's reading shows His magnanimity in light of allowing trouble in His people's lives. Joseph, in Genesis, and the Hebrew people, in Exodus, suffered the evil of oppression, lasting years, and God would exchange evil for good. This was not absent suffering and pain. While death may have occurred in the Exodus story, God continued to offer good.
While I am focused on the things that point out what God says and how the text describes what He is doing or how He does it, today's focus on the beauty of God's work was how Joseph shares God's interaction with others' evil intentions in mind. The evil committed by his brothers was not thwarted, and Joseph let them know they were responsible for their actions, "You meant evil against me." Doing evil is not excused, while God uses it for a greater purpose. "God meant it for good, to save people alive." Joseph lived the consequences of his brother's evil for years, in captivity and enslaved. They were not all easy years, but while suffering these wrongs, God showed Joseph favor, which was recognized by the authorities he was submitted to. God used the difficult years to burn dross, refine Joseph's character, and make him a more usable vessel for His greater purpose. Since sin entered the world, life has not been a promise of a panacea, no matter how faithful you are to The Lord. Sin, in general, is the reason we all suffer; sin, for you or me specifically, may be why we suffer individually. We will suffer; it is a promise, and there are no words of faith to get us out of it.
We do not know precisely when Joseph began to understand God's bigger purpose, but we do see through his story that his faithfulness to God was a lived experience from the home of Potiphar until Joseph's death. We also know he relied on the Chief butler to remember his good deed and help him escape his imprisonment, but the Butler forgot. We get a peep into Joseph's humanity. He was a person of flesh, like you and me. Even in his request and the Butler's forgetfulness, we can be confident that God's timing was in view.
In Exodus, we read of the oppression of the Hebrew people. Their cries did not fall on deaf ears, though the years of suffering could have brought with them demoralizing emotions and allowed them to become insentient. After years of suffering, rescue was being prepared; in the meantime, God's interaction with what they were going through is described in statements such as:
"I have surely seen the oppression..."
"I have heard their cry..."
"I know their sorrows..."
"I have come down to deliver..."
"I will bring them up from the land..."
"... the cry of the children of Israel has come to Me, and I have also seen the oppression..."
How should these chapters cause us to stop and understand that our God is the same God who sees, hears, delivers, brings up, and comes down? The story of the Egyptian midwives also teaches us so much about God. Read that part of the story yourself, Exodus 1. This reality of God in both stories tells me he allows pain and suffering in our lives. That pain and suffering can last years. In those years, so many become discouraged and want to give up. The years do not reflect the lack of God's love and care through the circumstances. We get to choose how we will see God. We can passively allow our faith to dissolve, or we persevere knowing God can take the evil of others, or the pain of a disease, or whatever has captured us in its claws for evil. Our most significant benefit is to recognize the evil used to diminish our faith, then turn and acknowledge "God meant it for good..."
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