He Has the Whole World in His Hands!

Genesis 50:20 As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive.

Joseph had a dream… his brothers had a plan… but God determined the outcome.

Thank You Father!

What a mess we would be if we truly and totally suffered the consequences of our sinful nature. If God truly was a remote and passive viewer of this world, would we even have survived one generation much less thousands of generations? Consider Cain and Abel (the first sibling rivalry – Genesis 4). Cain killed Abel in the heat of jealousy and anger, THEN realized he just might need God’s intervention. He begged God for mercy after blaming Him for the punishment he brought on himself. He KILLED someone (never mind it was his own brother whom he grew up with and shared parents with)!

Even way back in the day, before the “civil law”, he would have had to “run away’ from his crime of murder. Like the natural law of gravity, the law of reciprocity – the law of creation – the law of motion, demanded an equal and opposite reaction to every action. I call it the “Do unto others as you want them to do unto you” law of human nature.

Throughout history, we have had our share of Abels, who quietly did their business and lived a life of love, gratitude and worship for their Creator God. And, throughout history, we have had the equal and reactive Cain’s who had no other thought except love of self.

Two siblings with two different hearts of love. Love of God and His plan to create and fill this world with all of His wondrous creation for all of His wondrous creation. Love of self, Satan’s twisted version of love – the equal and opposite reaction (hatred) to God, who IS Love – the enemy’s plan to destroy God’s creation and His plan. 

I’m telling you, if God had stepped away in disgust and/or boredom for what His creation had become, and left us with only our version of “brotherly love”, we would have been done for! Scripture and History is filled with “Man Plans/God Fixes.

Take the famine of circa 1700 BC or so… where the fix, God’s intervention, began twenty plus years in advance

Genesis 37:2 These are the records of the generations of Jacob. Joseph, when seventeen years of age, was pasturing the flock with his brothers while he was still a youth, along with the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah, his father’s wives. And Joseph brought back a bad report about them to their father. 

Oh, oh… tattletale!

Genesis 37:3 Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his sons, because he was the son of his old age; and he made him a varicolored tunic. 

Spoiled brat!

Genesis 37:4 His brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers; and so they hated him and could not speak to him on friendly terms. 

Alone in the playground.

Genesis 37:5 Then Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him even more. 

Ok, we’re done… When they saw him from a distance and before he came close to them, they plotted against him to put him to death… now then, come and let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits; and we will say, ‘A wild beast devoured him.’ Then let us see what will become of his dreams!”(Genesis 37:18-20) We must love our brother to death!

Reuben intervened (for his own sake with Dad) on the irrevocable piece of the plan (let’s not kill him) so they threw him in a pit and sold him to the traders passing by for twenty shekels of silver. (it’s how Joseph, a seventeen year old sheep herder, got to Egypt in case you were wondering)

Act I Scene 6: “Now we show and tell Papa, the truth according to the evidence. Convince him we are innocent and we have overcome our only hurdle to a better life. Life without the brother who tormented us with his “wicked” ways. Things can only be better!”

Life did go on. Normal, if not pleasant/happy for the boys. Sad and lonely for Dad. Joseph? From slave to prison to second in command over all of Egypt in thirteen year! Now he isn’t just the dreamer, he’s the interpreter of Pharoah’s dreams and along with the interpretation, Joseph is given a plan to save the people from famine.

What are the odds?

His brother’s had a plan to rid themselves of a thorn in the flesh, God determined to save His people from death and annihilation. The people of all the earth came to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph, because of the famine was severe in all the earth. (Genesis 41:57)

Hey boys, what do you think of the spoiled brat now?

We want to pretend that mankind – man and all his siblings –  is the author and creator of any and all success! WE are in control… WE determine who is for us and who is against us… If you are not FOR us then you are AGAINST us and you must BE GONE!

Including God. If God does not follow our rules – our wishes – our commands, then He must go! We sacrifice Him (or believe we do) on the altar of our imagination, or as some call it, our perception. We declare God to be a myth created by an overactive imagination. Our perception convinces us God is no more real than a genie in a bottle. We live as if PERCEPTION IS REALITY. Of course, both, imagination and perception, are equally susceptible to the EYE OF THE BEHOLDER… We waffle back and forth depending upon what my eyes want to see today. I can “imagine” you love me (how can you not?) and at the same time “perceive” that you are not showing love to me, all based upon the reality that love means never making me unhappy.

Joseph’s brothers believed they had created the reality that life was better without Joseph. Their perception was they were “thankfully” rid of him forever. They thought, as they ate their cake of making their life so much happier, that they would always have their cake of self-love to keep their life happy. What they didn’t know, 27 years earlier, was a tsunami of famine was headed their way and JOSEPH would be needed for them to even have a life… oops… who knew?

Once again God intervened…

I can only imagine what the brotherhood thought when they discovered that THE MAN in control of whether they could feed their family or not was the brother they failed to love.

Genesis 45:1-3 He (Joseph) could not control himself before all those who stood by him, and he cried… he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard it, and the household of Pharaoh heard of it (possibly ready to attack the people making their beloved so unhappy?)… “I am Joseph! Is my father still alive?”… but his brothers could not answer him, for they were dismayed at his presence.

SPEECHLESS!

If anyone says, “I love God,” (you know they claimed this – they were raised in the family of Jacob/Israel) yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.” — 1 John 4:20-21

We call a lot of things love. We do a lot of things for the good of our fellow siblings. We would never purposely harm our “brother/sister”, especially if we knew how SPECIAL they were, we would love them like God loves us!

Probably not! Probably more like Joseph’s gang of brothers… you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive.

Oh by the way… Joseph’s original dream was that his brothers and all of his family would bow to him. THEY DID! A dream come true! Thank God! He does indeed have the whole world in His hands and He plans to keep it that way!

Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. (By the way; may not look like Our Big Brother Plan – just sayin!)

**All Scripture quoted comes from the “Bible Gateway” app and is the NASB version of the Bible unless otherwise noted.