You ever ask yourself that? It might not be someone you know. I mean, yeah, people are like myself. Yeah, politicians could fit in that category, sure. Have you ever had an accident? A terrible tragedy in your life? A smashed car? A long-term sickness? If you've lived a few years in life, you have. You've met people or had hardships in life, misery even. Does it frighten you? Does it worry you? Are you afraid of the difficulties facing you now or what you could face? Are you nervous or skittish about some unknown problem to be? Or stress at work or stress at home? Stress, nervousness, fear, whatever you call it, it is not peace and acceptance of God's providence and control in life, is it? Life is hard, but God God is good. And although we can mouth that truth, it is hard to keep believing and living by that truth, isn't it? We still have this weak flesh, and so I hope this sermon will shore up your weak faith and point you to the glories of God in spite of the evils of this world. That's the intent. This is what we should see out of these verses. Misery is here in life. Now, it's certainly not the kind of misery, again, in the Middle East. It's relative to where we are in life. I know that. But it's a proper word, I think. How is this the case? How is this so? Have you ever let your kids go through a difficult time in their life? You wouldn't lift a finger to help them. Have your parents ever done that to you when you were growing up? You've seen other parents do that. I bet you have if you paid attention. and you probably have with your own kids if you think about it. You let them fall, let them fall down perhaps when they're riding their bike so they can learn the balance real quick because they don't want to fall down when they're riding their bike. Pain is a strong motivator. You let them fail a test by not reminding them to study. They knew it was coming and you know they've been lazy and so you just let them go and fall flat on their face. You let them forget to clean their room Again, they're slow to learn or they're making problems and complaints and so you say, fine. I'll let them find out the hard way. Then they get in trouble. They can complain about it. They can complain that you don't love them enough. But of course you know what you did was not wrong. What you did had a greater good to it and a better purpose. You would be okay letting your child get caught speeding to teach them a lesson. I don't think many of you would have a problem with that. Why do those things occur in life? And we don't say, what kind of a parent are you? What's your problem, mother, father? Why do your kids go through such difficulties in life? And what's your answer? To teach them a bigger lesson. It's important enough for them to learn that they have to fail now at home in the school of life before they get to real life. And yet, when the question comes up, When God does this, all of a sudden everyone's like, oh no, red flags go flying everywhere, that's not fair, how can he do that? We do it all the time. It's just that God does it on a grander scale, doesn't he? In a way we can't fully comprehend. Just breathing, I drop an eyelash into my eyeballs and it's driving me nuts. Joseph takes this truth as a given. You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. He doesn't explain it. You ask yourself, how? And he doesn't explain it. It's just there. It's a reality. Isaiah 45 in particular came to mind as I was studying this. Concept of providence, of God's control, is overriding providence, is overriding control over all things, even the evil in our midst. I form the light and create darkness. I make peace and create calamity. I, the Lord, do all these things. Now that word there, calamity, is the same word here translated evil. It's a broad term. We have that in English, we have the word evil or bad, and sometimes they're overlapping concepts, although they're two different words. Bad is a proper translation as well, at times. Or perhaps even calamity, bad things that are happening, that's the idea of calamity, right? But the bigger point is this, that Yahweh is speaking to the pagan king Cyrus, we see a few verses up, and declaring that God is in control. This isn't some guy you just play around with. He's the one who raised you up and brought you for the help of the church of God of the Old Testament to deliver his people, that they may know from the rising of the sun to the setting that there is none beside me. I am the Lord and there is no other. No other sovereign creator God can do this but me. And I'll show you how powerful I am. I create light, I create darkness, I create goodness, I create evil or calamity or badness. I bring these things about. They're not outside of my control as though there's a chance universe I'm wrestling with all the time. It's all firmly within my plans and control. That's the picture there. That's the idea. No other god can make evil, bring forth good. That's what he's doing. out of the situation of men's evil intent, he births forth goodness. You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. God's good intent is greater than man's evil intent. That's what he's saying. Now, it's certainly true that there are two moral agents, and I've mentioned this before. There's man, he's a moral agent, responsible for what he does, he has evil intent. There's God, he's a moral agent, he's responsible for what he does, he has a good intent. They're both there in the same event, the same act. But God's intent is the intent that counts, isn't it? He overrules it, he makes the lesser being, man, his intent fit into God's plan so that it brings forth Glory to his name and good for the people of God. Joseph does not explain how that is, just that it is. It's a given reality to him. We know he doesn't have the Old Testament yet. Moses hasn't written the Pentateuch yet. There is no New Testament. How does he know this? He knows this, I believe, partly from oral tradition. Maybe they even wrote some of that down. The writings are very old. We have a lot. There's a lot of stuff we haven't discovered, even. And partly from natural revelation. The God who created all this? Who's going to stop Him? I mean, He created man. How can man say, how can, what, the clay say to the potter, who are you, O God, to make me thus? So he understands this, he doesn't explain it, he just says, this is the way it is. Do you agree with him? Now, let me ask you, did you have a miserable upbringing? Some people did, I know some of your stories. A hard home, hard life, father ran away or left you, perhaps. Bad parents, poor living conditions, harsh schooling. Back in the old days when they used to beat you at school, right? God meant it for good. Did you have just not an upbringing but a miserable family? The parents who were just terrible and bringing you up. Siblings who hated you. A spouse who divorced you. Maybe that's the family you have. God meant it for good. You have a miserable job, a miserable neighborhood. I don't know. A terrible hours you have to work, an irrational boss. God meant it for good. Do you believe that? Joseph does. Now, it's certainly true that Joseph says evil, but as I mentioned, that word covers a lot of things there in the Old Testament. It covers bad things, miserable things, calamities even. None of that's outside of God's control. If a moral agent's intent is irrelevant to God, how much more non-moral agents, you know, hurricanes and bad quote-unquote accidents, which are of course part of God's plan, of course that's under God's control. He means it for good. Even if you cannot see the immediate results, Did they see the immediate results? Yes, insofar as they're there, and Pharaoh's honoring them and honors their father, and said, this is a great... I love Joseph, he's done such wonderful things for me. But we know, of course, ultimately, that he's talking of the idea that God's going to preserve his church, as he told Abraham, for several hundred years you'll be in a foreign land, and I'll bring you out to the promised land. I mean, that's the greater picture here, right? That's what he's talking about, ultimately. And they don't see that yet. It'll take many generations before they actually see it. Joseph saw it with the eyes of faith. He believed it. It's going to happen, he said. Not in our time. When God so deigns it, it will happen as he says in his word. So that's the miseries of life. And of course, the sins of life here are the second point. God meant that for good as well. Now, it's likely that you can believe that God uses misery for good, because misery doesn't have an intent. Bad things, as we say, happen in life. It could come from people who don't even have bad intent. This is an accident. He just ran into you by accident, right? He wasn't feeling well, he was tired, he got distracted, or whatever the case may be. But sin, sin is a little harder. And of course, that's the direct application of this text. But as for you, you meant evil, not just a bad thing you wish to kind of mess around with me or something. No, you threw me in a pit, and then you sold me to slavery. I was good as dead. And then you lied to my father about it, set the whole thing up and let me look like I was devoured by a lion. They wanted to kill me. You intended to kill me. But you were stopped by one of your brothers. He meant it for evil, the grossest kind of evil. But I tell you, brothers, God meant it for good. How? Again, the Bible doesn't give much of a how of God's sovereign control, but it does give us the fact of God's control over creation. In Psalm 36 it says, the righteousness is like Thy righteousness is like the great mountains. Thy judgments are a great deep, O Lord. Thou preservest man and beast." We know that he's in charge of creation. He even preserves it. In Matthew 10.29, "...are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? And one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father." How? I don't know. But that, yes, he's in control. The Bible's very clear about that. Man and beast. Again, beast, no problem. They're not free moral agents, but humans, what's up with that? There it is, right there in the Psalms. And of course, in Matthew, the application there of Christ says he cares about a sparrow and it doesn't fall outside his will, his control, it's not like an accident. Oh, that bird fell and God's like, whoa, that wasn't my idea. What's Satan doing now, pulling the strings? If that's true, how much more you, he says, that he cares about you who are more significant than that petty little bird. God's in control. That should be enough. The Bible doesn't give us the much of how of God's power, but it does give us the fact of God's power even over chance. Proverbs 16.33, the lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord. That's their dice back then, right? I grew up playing Friday night games, board games, card games. And we had dice, throw the dice, play some Monopoly. So random, we don't know what it is. The best we can do is guesstimate, right? You have a whole mathematical field of statistics, and it's all about guessing. It really is. And, you know, when you invest, you're making a guess at the best odds of this company making money in the short term or the long term under these conditions and the like. But for God, it's not guesswork. It's part of his plan. It doesn't catch him off. Off-guard the lot is cast we throw it out there. We throw the dice out there We throw our money out there in the market or whatever. It may be Taking a chance. We think it's a safe bet a safe chance, but we don't really know But the disposing thereof the results it's gonna land snake eyes, it's gonna land boxcars right six six It's gonna land millions of dollars. All right, the markets up Bitcoin. All right, I missed that train and Now, all that's the result of God disposing. The end result, where it landed, where it goes, comes from God Almighty. Part of His control and part of His plan. The Bible's full of this doctrine. Again, Proverbs 16 is a good proverb to remember. You're like talking to my friend, my evangelical friend, or another Christian I know of, and they deny the sovereignty of God. Go right to Proverbs 16. There are four verses in there. You can't miss them. It's about a quarter each. Boom, boom, boom, and then at the end again. Just says there it is. You can't get away from it. His power, how it functions, we don't know. That it functions, we do know. In creation by preserving it. In chance events, the disposition thereof, the disposing, how it comes out. Remember that arrow that flew up into the air? In the account of the Old Testament, where God told the leader of Israel, you're going to die, he's like, ah, no, I want to put extra armor on, I'll protect myself, he goes out to battle, and it says, by chance, the arrow goes flying in the air, it goes right between the chink and his armor. Now we know it's describing from our perspective, it is chance, and that's why we have a whole field of statistics. Or your gut instinct, whatever works for you. But for God, it's not chance at all, and this is part of His plain promise, why He could prophesy it. How does a God, how does God, if you're friends or if you're tempted to think that somehow there's chance outside of His control, how does He see the future of chance? Because by definition, you can't see it. The definition of chance is you don't know it. It's random. But God knows it, because it's not random for Him. It's relative to us. For us, it is random. We don't know everything. He knows everything, because it's part of His plan, and He's in charge of everything. And that's why, as a side note, Arminianism is halfway into atheism. Do you see why? Because the next step, and they've done it. One man named Clark Pinnock, who was a great professor in the 60s, a great apologist, he was reformed. He didn't want to hold this doctrine here. He just said, this can't get away from free will. So he began to believe in free will. We call them Arminians. That is their definition of free will. Independent of God. And then he thought about it and said, well, if it's really free, then God can't see their actions ahead of time. Exactly. Because if you can see their actions ahead of time, they're not free anymore. God can predict them. He knows exactly what's going on. Where's their free will? And he's one of the founders of the modern heresy of open theism. We have a guy in Denver who really pushes that stuff. Unfortunately, he's in the pro-life movement. He attended our church for a little bit, about 20, 25 years ago. Bob Enyart. He's on the radio. He's a heretic. No, the Bible's very clear. The Bible doesn't give us the much of how of God's might, but it does tell us of the fact that God is mighty over sin. Acts 2.23, Him, that is Christ, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you, this Jewish audience, have taken by lawless hands and have crucified and put to death. Isn't that amazing? I remember reading that all those many decades ago now. I never saw that verse before. What's he saying? Peter says God predestined the death of Christ. Where's his free will? Again, as the world defines free will. And if God brought about The greatest good from the worst evil to kill the Son of God. Why do you think He can't bring good out of your evil? A lesser evil indeed. That's why that verse is very helpful. Very pivotal. Again, the game that a lot of Christians play is, well, that's true right there. Just a little tiny event in history, but everyone else has free will. Really? God does it for the greatest, most heinous crime, to kill the Son of God. Can we not all agree it's the most heinous thing you could do? And what's all this other stuff that's insignificant? And you know, somehow, because they want to maintain their pride, their confused view of free will, no, God can't touch anything else, I'll just let this verse stand, but no, nowhere else. It doesn't follow. It doesn't make sense. It's wonderful. Only God can do this. That's the comfort of the verses, that God's behind it. Peter's saying, yeah, you killed him, but it wasn't like you got God, cut God off guard. Oops! Whoa, where'd that come from? No, God was behind it, his point to his audience is, and yet you're still guilty. Two moral agents. One meant it for evil, the Jews, but God meant it for the greatest good, the saving of his people. If that's true, and it is true, it's wonderfully true, what do we have? We have all things in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Now, there's different sources of the evilness of intent for more close application in our lives. The evil intent against you in the church, for instance, I saw some of that in Sunday school class. You may not have people who try to throw you into a pit and sell you to slavery like his brothers did, that's for sure. But you may have people who wish to vote for politicians to throw you in prison. Or make you bake a cake and the like. Or vote for a law that undermines your family, which is what happened. You vote for judges who turn, all of a sudden, willy-nilly, find these amazing rights that no one saw for 250 years. Those are evil intent. Let's not be naive. Let's not fall into the trap in our day and age, because it's not like it was when the eldest of us were growing up, when you can kind of give a lot of people the benefit of the doubt. I don't believe that anymore. And the more I study, the enemies of God in this nation, the more I'm convinced of that. They mean it for evil. There's an old saying, I want to look up the source of what he was saying, and I think there's some truth to it. They want to take you out. Take your kids. Kill you, mutilate your kids, and laugh about it. They think it's funny. You've heard some of the jokes. The Matt Lauer Do you know they had a roast for him in 2008? I wouldn't look it up. They gave just a truncated version of some of the jokes. He had all kinds of big names there. All kind of politicians, all kind of CEOs, NBC CEOs. And the sexual roasting was atrocious. I heard a lot in the military. I'm sure the Navy guys hear more. And they only gave a sampling of how bad it was. That's what they mean by they laugh at it. They laugh at despicable things done to people. The evil intent is rising. It's there. But who's greater than that evil intent? Who's greater than the will of the American people as we hear our politicians tell us? But God's will. They are but a drop in the cosmic bucket compared to Him. And he shall have the last laugh. He shall laugh in derision at those unrepentant fools. And they try to lastly hear the evil intent against you and your family and the church of God by forcing wickedness upon the church through church courts, like they've done in a number of the churches you're not aware of, because a number of you weren't in those kind of churches. Some of you were. They force women leadership down your throat. That's wicked. That's an evil intent. And that's the worst kind going after the Holy Bride of Christ and wishing to undermine us and sneak in and take silly women captive and even less than silly women captive and men as well. into their evil ploys and their evil plans to undermine the church of Jesus Christ, to dilute us and to water us down. Evil intent by you, of course, you own fleshly struggles with sin, to be sure. These are the different sources of evil in our life and in our America, where we are. But it's not just God overruling evil intentions with his better intention, his good intention. There's more to it in this text. What does he say here? In order, verse 20, in order, or to this end, for this purpose, to bring it about, to save many people. It's not simply an abstract goodwill of God, but he has a concrete purpose behind it, concrete results that come about from the actions of men in Providence. He overrules them for a greater good, for the good, in order to bring about many as it is this day, to save many. And it's important because often we think, as I said at the beginning, that we'll see the immediate results. The salvation of the people here, they only see the beginning of it, right? We're in Egypt, we're safe, we're not starving and dying. Hopefully the drought will pass away in the next 10 years and we'll come back to the promised land. No, they're here for 400 years. They haven't seen the end result of God preserving them yet. And you may not see the end result of the misery and the evil intent in your life, even in your own generation. That's a possibility. I can almost guarantee it for a number of things. So what I tell you, when we preach this doctrine, we see it. unpacked in the Bible. You shouldn't come away thinking, oh, this is great. I'm going to find out tomorrow what God's going to do. You may not find out. You won't see the end result sometimes, or many times, or often. It doesn't follow. That's the eye of faith. I don't see the immediate results of the goodness of God's intent manifested in concrete actions. But I believe it anyways. Do you? I hope you do. I hope I've proven sufficiently you have every reason to believe that fact. God plays the long game. Don't forget that. We don't. We can't see beyond the end of our noses. We can't see beyond a few days, and we try to make some plans for a few years, and we shuffle them every couple of months, every few weeks. God knows the end from the beginning. When he says, I mean it for good, and I'll execute it to the good, Even though you don't see it in your lifetime, believe it, it's true. We don't always see the fruit. We know, typically, missionaries, like in China or Korea, they can go through a couple generations and see nothing. And then the fruit comes forth because some old gentleman heard the old preacher 50 years ago and heard this young preacher and it finally snapped. The pieces came together. God does that. God does give good for us today. He does bring about concrete manifestations to encourage us, because we are weak, and one of those, I believe, is in the aggregate again, if we as Christians, as churches, as peoples, follow God's law, we get good fruits from it. It's no accident that the prosperity we have in large measure in the West is related to those facts. It's not just the Old Testament or the miracles of the New Testament, the formations of nations, as I said, like ours, we were outnumbered and outgunned, and our survival and the blessings God has given us, or the social and political good that God has given us in spite of all the evil intent in America to tear down God's law for decades, if not longer. Amendments for evil because they hate God's created order, as we are seeing more clearly today, and therefore the best manifestation of God's created order, the Church. And Paul's very clear on maintaining the created order within the church. The world needs to see we take God and his created order, which is part of his law, seriously. And so being a reflection of God's holiness, however imperfectly, the world instinctively wishes to tear it down, tear down the beauty of holiness. Life can be hard. And there is misery, and there is much evil intent around us, brothers and sisters. But God, God means it for good. And that's all that matters, isn't it? Do you believe that although the world, the flesh, and the devil mean it for evil, God means it for good? Let's pray. With these words echoing in our hearts, God, may we cherish them throughout the week in our lives. Strengthen us with these words, Lord, that you are indeed in charge and that you will and have and will continue to bring forth good, although men mean to bring forth evil. In your name we pray for your glory alone. Amen and amen.