Resting in God's Will – Joseph - Treasures of Faith - Week 7 Day 1

TODAY'S TREASURE

As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today. 

Genesis 50:20 (ESV)

Transcript

Resting in God’s Will – Joseph

Chuck and Sharon Betters

Faith Principle #7 Biblical Faith Brings Us God’s Peace

Today’s Treasure

As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today. 

Genesis 50:20 (ESV)

Dear Friends,

The idea that “nothing is important but that which is eternal” permeates the life and writings of missionary to India, Amy Carmichael. Called by God to go to that country in the early 1800s, Carmichael spent the better part of her life rescuing Indian children from temple prostitution. The Dohnavur Fellowship of India, the mission she founded, still exists today. Her many writings reflect the deep suffering she and her fellow laborers endured as they cared for these homeless and mistreated children. Yet by seeing her life’s work in the context of eternity, Carmichael was able to find purpose even when the suffering around her and the immensity of the task she faced seemed overwhelming.

Joseph, like this faithful young missionary, also experienced sufferings that taught him to view life in the context of eternity. Though bruised and battered in his life’s journey, Joseph ended life on this earth as he had always faced it, looking forward to the fulfillment of the promises of God. When he was 110 years old, Joseph prophesied the future exodus of the Israelites from Egypt at a time when these people had no reason to leave that country (Genesis 50). Though he had lived in Egypt for all but the first seventeen years of his life and though he would eventually die in that country, Joseph insisted that his family must one day return his remains to the land of promise, the land of Canaan. In his dying moments, Joseph continued to think of himself as a son of the covenant, a member of the blessed family of Abraham, and not as an Egyptian. Moreover, he urged his family to remember that when hard times came, God would come to their aid. How could Joseph demonstrate such deep faith in a God who had allowed him to be sold into slavery and unjustly imprisoned, forgotten by everyone? How could he urge his family to take comfort in God’s presence despite all the hardship he had personally endured?

Joseph’s story reveals a brilliant young man who, through deep suffering, was used by God to accomplish great things. C. H. Spurgeon, a great preacher of the mid-1800s, himself no stranger to sorrow or suffering, declared:

“My witness is, that those who are honored by their Lord in public have usually to endure a secret chastening, or to carry a peculiar cross, lest by any means they exalt themselves, and fall into the snare of the devil…

By all the castings down of His servants God is glorified, for they are led to magnify Him when again He sets them on their feet, and even while prostrate in the dust their faith yields Him praise. They speak all the more sweetly of His faithfulness, and are the more firmly established in His love… Glory be to God for the furnace, the hammer, and the fire. Heaven shall be all the fuller of bliss because we have been filled with anguish here below, and earth shall be better tilled because of our training in the school of adversity.” (as quoted by Richard E. Day, The Shadow of the Broad Brim)

The “school of adversity” did indeed train Joseph for great work. For Joseph would one day not only help supply a famine-stricken world with food, but more importantly, he would be used by God to provide a safe place for his family, the Israelite people, the “covenant community” of that day, to grow and prosper. Harsh slavery and the grim existence of prison life would transform Joseph’s idyllic and easy faith, the faith of a favored and coddled son, into an authentic, pulsating, intimate faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

If you know the story of Joseph, it’s easy to focus on the “happy ending”, but as we wrote Joseph’s chapter for Treasures of Faith, tears often fell down my cheeks as I considered the terror this seventeen-year-old boy experienced as he navigated the betrayal of his brothers and loss of his safe and honored position in his home.  While we honor Joseph’s faith, we do him and ourselves an injustice if we miss his deep wrestling with doubt and fear. Ask the Lord to open your heart to Joseph’s story, and you will be better equipped to walk by faith wherever He places you.

Treasured by Him,

Sharon

PRAYER

Oh Father, teach us how to pray with C. H. Spurgeon: “Glory be to God for the furnace, the hammer, and the fire. Heaven shall be all the fuller of bliss because we have been filled with anguish here below, and earth shall be better tilled because of our training in the school of adversity.” Amen.

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Adapted from Treasures of Faith by Chuck and Sharon Betters with permission from P&R Publishing

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