What they meant for evil God meant for good (Providence Part 2)

Thank you for listening to this message from the ministry of Morse Corner Church in Leverett, Massachusetts. Morse Corner is a non-denominational church that is committed to the preaching and teaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Our church was founded in 1896 by two students of the famous evangelist D .L. Moody. We seek to encourage and edify the body of Christ through the proclamation of God's word through the ministries of the local church.

If you'd like more information, visit our website morsecornerchurch .com. We hope you enjoy the message. So God is all-knowing and all-powerful. Let's go back to the basics just for a moment to help us understand this.

God's Omniscience, Omnipotence, and Human Responsibility

God is both all-knowing and all-powerful. What are the two theological terms for this? Omniscience and omnipotence. Omniscience refers to God's knowledge of all things. God knows everything. He is omniscient.

Omnipotence refers to God being all-powerful. He's called God Almighty. So because God is all-powerful and because He is all-knowing, He is able to orchestrate anything and everything to bring about His will, His desired outcome.

And He is able to do it without turning mankind into what would amount as basically a pre-programmed robot. Now we don't have time to get into this whole debate over the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man.

But I think it's important that we at least touch on this. So if somebody asks me, Pastor, which one do you believe? Do you believe in the sovereignty of God or do you believe in the responsibility of man?

You know what my answer is? Yes. Yes, the scripture teaches both. Sometimes people refer to the responsibility of man by calling it free will. That's kind of the popular term. I don't really care for the term free will because going back to last week again, it implies neutrality.

That you're completely free to choose God or to not choose God, to live a holy life or to live a sinful life. Mankind is not neutral. Mankind does not have free will in that sense because the Apostle Paul says in Romans chapter 6, speaking of natural man, that he's a slave to sin.

Mankind does not have free will in that regard. But mankind is responsible. We are volitional creatures. You can make decisions. God is not the puppet master. He has not pre-programmed you. So you have a will.

So the Bible teaches both. All right. I just wanted to bring that up because it's important when discussing this topic. Let's look at Genesis chapter 37. This, of course, is the story of Joseph being sold into slavery by his brothers.

Of course, there was Abraham, Isaac and then his son Jacob. Jacob had 12 sons. One of them was Joseph. Genesis 37 verses one through five. Now, Jacob, who is also called Israel. Now, Jacob dwelt in the land where his father was a stranger in the land of Canaan.

And this is the history of Jacob. Joseph, being 17 years old, was feeding the flock with his brothers. And the lad was with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father's wives. And Joseph brought a bad report of them to his father.

Now, Israel loved Joseph more than all his children because he was the son of his old age. Also, he made him a tunic or a coat of many colors. But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peacefully, peaceably to him.

Joseph then has a dream where there is some symbolism that in the dream, basically, it's he has a dream where he's going to be ruling over his brothers and they're going to come and bow down to him. You can imagine their response.

I mean, they already hate him. And they they hear about this dream that Joseph has. And they're like, all right, that's it. So his brothers, they hate him. Why? He's given a bad report. He's kind of tattled on them, you could say.

He's his father's favorite. They hate him for that. There's the coat of many colors. And then there is this dream. So we can see that everybody's kind of involved in this. The father is involved by showing favoritism.

Joseph is involved through the telling of this dream. His brothers are reacting and they hate him. But where did the dream come from? Yeah, because the dream ends up coming true. So this is a prophetic dream that is from God.

So God is involved in all of this. Look at verse 18. So Jacob sends the brothers off to tend to his flock. Then he sends Joseph to go look for them. Look at verse 18. Now, when the brothers, when they saw him afar off, even before he came near them, they conspired against him to kill him.

Then they said to one another, look, this dreamer is coming. Come, therefore, let us now kill him and cast him into some pit. And we shall say some wild beast has devoured him. And we shall see what shall become or what will become of his dreams.

Do you realize what's happening here? You know, we'll see about these dreams. We're going to bow down to you. You're going to rule over us. Not if you're dead. Here's the ironic thing. The brothers are trying to thwart the will of God.

They're not looking at it that way, of course. They don't understand that. But they are trying to thwart the will of God by stopping this dream from being fulfilled. But their actions actually cause it to be fulfilled.

That's the way. That's why God works in mysterious ways. You can't thwart the will of God. It's impossible. What's the title of the message? All things work together for good. Or we could ask it in question form.

Do all things work together for good? Does Joseph? Here's some questions for you. Does Joseph love God? Yes, he does. Is it good that his brothers hate him? No. Is it good that they are now plotting to kill him?

No. Of course, they don't end up killing him. Instead, they decide to make some money. Hey, might as well make a few bucks. Let's sell him into slavery.

Is that good? No.

But will God cause all of this to work together for good? Yes. But at this point in the story, if you didn't know how it turns out, maybe there's a couple listening who don't know how it turns out. But if you didn't know the story, yeah, you're wondering how on earth can this lead to something positive.

There's nothing good here. That's true. There is nothing good. How could all of this work together for good? Just this whole concept that all things work together for good. Let's just acknowledge that there are many people.

I'm sure there's some Christians who they think to themselves. That's impossible. You know, I'll say amen to that. That is impossible that all things work together for good. But there's a condition to my statement.

You remember what Jesus said in Matthew 19, 26? With God, what? All things are possible. Remove God from the equation. Yeah, it's impossible. So do you believe that? That God is able to cause all things?

Or that God causes all things to work together for good? Do you believe that? I know some of you really can't give a hearty yes or amen to that. You know, that's OK. That's OK. Do you know what this requires?

Requires faith. It's that simple. In the gospel of Mark, chapter nine, there is a man who brought his son to Jesus, who is going through a great deal of of suffering. And before Jesus healed the boy, do you remember what Jesus said?

Jesus said to him, if you can believe all things are possible to him who believes. And immediately the father of the child cried out and he said with tears, Lord, I believe help my unbelief. There are people right now wondering how can this be true?

Maybe you're thinking back to something that happened over the course of your life. Maybe you're thinking of someone that you love. Something terrible happened and it was bad. OK, let's just say it for what it is.

It was bad. There's nothing good about it to this day. Maybe you've seen no good come from it. But this is where the rubber meets the road with the Christian faith. It requires us to believe the promises of God.

I really do believe that if you love God. He will cause all things to work together for your good. Yet not all things are good, but he will cause them to work together for your good. So do you believe this?

And what is believing anyways? What is believing it? Belief and faith, right? The two are connected. The scripture says about faith. Hebrews 11, one faith is the substance of things hoped for the evidence of things not seen.

Right. If you could see it right now, if you could figure it out right now, there'd be no faith required because it'd be right there. Right back to Genesis 37. And don't you think Joseph probably had his moments?

Joseph is one of those biblical characters that is just above reproach. I mean, really, there's very little that you could point to of him lacking faith or doing anything wrong. But presumably he had his his struggles.

Look at verse 23. So it came to pass when Joseph had come to his brothers that they stripped Joseph of his tunic, the tunic of many colors that was on him. And they took him and cast him into a pit and the pit was empty and there was no water in it.

And we don't know what Joseph is thinking at this point. I mean, if you were there, you wouldn't say, hey, Joseph, don't worry about this. It's going to work out for your good. Don't worry about it. You wouldn't say that and it wouldn't be well received if you did.

And if someone is going through something difficult, don't just say, hey, you know, don't worry about it. We need to have some compassion for people to try to lead them in the right direction to see things through eyes of faith.

Here's the thing about this event. Not only will God work this out for Joseph's good. He's going to work it out for the brothers good as well. And for Jacob, his father. Now he has a lot of work to do.

God has a lot of work to do on these brothers of Joseph. He's got a lot of work to do on us, too, doesn't he? So Joseph is in the pit and the brothers then see a caravan of Ishmaelites or Midianites. They're passing by.

Look at verse 28. Then Midianite traders passed by. So the brothers pulled Joseph up and lifted him up out of the pit and sold him to the Ishmaelites for 20 shekels of silver. And they took Joseph. The caravan did to Egypt.

Now skip down to verse 36. Now the Midianites had sold him in Egypt to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh and captain of the guard. OK, so now where is Joseph? He's in Egypt and he is a slave and he's working for this man named Potiphar, who is a pretty powerful individual.

And we remember what happens there. Things actually start going well for a little while because the Lord is blessing the Egyptians house for Joseph's sake. So Potiphar basically Potiphar probably had a whole estate.

And over time, because God is blessing Joseph and blessing Potiphar because of Joseph. What is Potiphar do? He puts Joseph in charge of his whole, his whole estate, all of his affairs until the day comes where Potiphar's wife.

She's been noticing this young Hebrew man around the house and she kind of has a thing for him. So she decides she's going to try to seduce Joseph. Of course, the godly man that he is, because she's married, he's not about to commit adultery with her.

He's not even going to take a chance. So when she kind of corners him and grabs him so that he would lay with her. What does he do? He turns around and he runs as fast as he can in the opposite direction, which is really the only proper response.

And her being a questionable reputation, what does she do? Well, she's mad now. She's angry. She's offended. And she basically accuses Joseph of, you know, maybe something as bad as rape. But he tried to grab me.

And she tells this to her husband, who is a powerful man. Guess what happens to Joseph? I mean, he's a slave. He doesn't really have any rights as it stands. And so now Joseph gets tossed into prison.

However, in a short time, because God is blessing him and he's such a skilled individual and hardworking, guess what? Joseph, after a little while, he's running the prison.

Thanks for listening.

Joseph's Dream, the Brothers' Plot, and God's Hidden Providence

I'm Pastor Michael Grant from Morse Corner Church. If you'd like to listen to the complete message or you'd like more information about the ministry, visit our website, morsecornerchurch .com. And we'd love to have you join us some Sunday morning here in Leverett.

Until next time, may the grace of God be with you.