Todays Reading: Old Testament: Genesis 43-45
New Testament: Luke 20
Focus Verses: Genesis 45:4-5
4 Then Joseph said to his brothers, "Come close to me." When they had done so, he said, "I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt! 5 And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. 6 For two years now there has been famine in the land, and for the next five years there will not be plowing and reaping. 7 But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance.
Insight:
God is sovereign and redemptive. He is so powerful and redemptive that he can even turn the wrongs and evils commited by people and turn them toward accomplishing good in the end. Joseph had faith in God's goodness and God's power to redeem. He believed that God had taken the wrongs done against him and turned them to accomplish the good his redemptive will. This confidence in God made it possible for him to focus on the good God was accomplishing today rather than hold grudges for wrongs done to him in the past. Joseph even urges his brothers to stop being angry at themselves and distressed about the wrongs they had done by reminding them of how God was redeeming the situation.
Application:
I need to have complete confidence in God's goodness and power to redeem in my life. God can take wrongs done to me and turn them for my good and the good of others. Even the wrongs I have done are not beyond God's power to redeem. I don't need to be distressed or angry about the wrongs I have suffered or the wrongs I have done. I need to humbly place everything in God's hands trusting in his goodness and his power to redeem all things for good.
Proverbs: 4:18
The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn,
shining ever brighter till the full light of day.
Resources:
When God Interrupts
Finding New Life through Unwanted Change
M. Craig Barnes
