I want to draw your attention tonight to one verse in particular in the final chapter of the book of Genesis, and that's this verse where Joseph's speaking to his brothers in response to their fear that Joseph is going to now deal with them harshly because of, in their own words, the evil they did to him. And then they present What they say is a statement from their now-deceased father. Joseph responds, and we read it in the 19th verse, "'Do not fear, for I am in the place of God. "'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.'" If you're going to live your life and live it with joy in your heart, whatever the circumstances of your life or the trials that you may face, you have to understand the truth that God is sovereign in his dealings with man. God is sovereign. That means very simply that God rules in every aspect of his dealings with man. That God has absolute authority in all his dealings with man. That God does all that is done in this world for his glory and for the good of his people, but he does it because he does it. God is sovereign over all creation, including the evil things that people do. One of the problems that we have in respect of trusting God is that we trust him when things are going well. Where we feel and where it hurts us deeply is that when we're in a situation or a set of circumstances which aren't flowing in the direction that we think they should be flowing in, we begin to have questions about God's love for us and God's goodness towards us. And it's at that moment when we begin to feel in our grasp of God's love for us and God's sovereign purposes towards us, it's at that moment that we have to speak to our souls and say, no, God is sovereign and I will trust him. As we considered this morning, trusting God when things are going well is not difficult to do. It follows automatically. Let me add, just before we get into the substance of this passage, that in saying that God is sovereign over all, including the evil things that people do, and that we should know that and accept that, that does not mean that we should be passive in trying to deal with those wrongs. In other words, If we through no fault of our own, and a lot of our lives is through our own fault, but if we through no fault of our own find ourselves in a situation where we are suffering abuse or one form of another, we shouldn't simply say, God is sovereign, therefore there is nothing that I can do. That's a wrong deduction to make from the biblical doctrine of God's sovereignty. It's totally erroneous. What we have to do is we've got to say, this is happening in my life. I will seek to address it. And if I cannot address it, then I will submit myself to God's sovereign rule. It's not simply that in the acceptance of the rule of God over all things, that God is in control of all things, that we then lie down and do not seek to address that which is wrong in our lives. That's a wrong approach to take to this glorious biblical truth. Joseph's brothers here make it very clear. They understand that their dealings with him in the past have been evil. It's not just that they were misguided. It's not simply that they were misthought out. It's not that they were bad. It's that they were evil. And we've considered the events of Genesis chapter 37 on a previous occasion at length. How that when Joseph went to his brothers, they seeing him coming in the distance, conspired together to take his life. Here comes the dreamer, they said. Come now, let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits. Then we will say that a fierce animal has devoured him and we will see what will become of his dreams. That's shocking. That's shocking at any time in the history of the world. that these half-brothers of this young man could actually contemplate the killing of him and then the conspiring together to dupe their elderly father into thinking that he had been killed by a wild animal. It takes some doing among a group of men for one of them to suggest, and we're not told which one of them suggests it, but for one of them to suggest it and for all of them to agree with it, with the exception of their eldest brother, Reuben. There's a lot has to go into that. You would think that four or five of them would say, listen, I'm not sure. You know, we're talking about killing him. We're not talking about just giving him a good doing. We're not talking about putting him into a difficult situation. We're actually talking about ending his life. There's nobody standing up here except for Reuben and saying, well, what implications will this have for our father? I mean, he loves the boy. He only has Benjamin. You know how much he loved Rachel. We're talking about taking Benjamin, whom he loves, and taking Joseph and leaving Benjamin. It's not a majority vote here that carries this through. It's not that six of them say this and five of them say, well, let's not bother. There's a deep, deep antipathy and anger and resentment that has grown over many weeks, months, and even years against this individual that has become calloused in their hearts. They are hardened with a bitter attitude towards him. And then they sell him into slavery. And then, as we know, they take the garment that has been taken off his back They dip the robe in blood and then they take it to their father and they pretend that he, or they allow him to deduce falsely that he has been killed by a wild animal. And they watch as their father grieves deeply, grieves with a sense of loss that is so manifest before them that they must have been shaken by it. And yet even shaken by the magnitude of the grief of their father, none of them breaks their silence. That again points to how ingrained their evil was. And yet, here in fear, at the end of their father's life, him having been buried in Egypt, They come to Joseph and they speak and plead with him to forgive them. His response is truly remarkable. Given all that he has experienced, he had pleaded with them not to send them with the Midianite train. He had pleaded with them. He had cried out to them. He has probably still the marks on his ankles of the shackles that had been put around his ankles and his neck as he was led off by those Midianite traitors into Egypt. He had the memories initially good in Potiphar's house. And then that day, whenever Potiphar's wife had yet again taunted and teased him, and he had fled and she had held his garment, and then screamed out that he had molested her. And then those days in prison, where he was in the prison, and the events of that imprisonment, and then the cupbearer and the baker, and the thought of getting out, but being left for a further two years. Each of those experiences, and they all went back to this evil that was perpetrated on him by his brothers. And yet what does he say? As for you, you meant it for evil against me, but God meant it for good. How on earth could this man say they meant it for evil, but God meant it for good? How could he mean it? How could God mean it for good that he was stripped of his clothing? How could God mean it for good that he was taken and thrown into a pit? How could God mean it for good that he was sold into a midnight caravan train to Egypt? How could God mean it for good that he was sold into slavery? How could God mean it for good that this woman taunted and teased and as a result of his innocence he was then thrown into prison? How could it be for good that he lay there for two years longer than he should have been? How on earth could it have been for his good? It makes absolutely no sense. Well, now he looks back and he says, the reason why it was for good was that many people should be kept alive as they are today. And you think, well, he's looking back on this historically and he's saying, well, I can see how God meant this for good. You meant it for evil, but it was meant for good. Let's bygones be bygones. But the reality is that this attitude of Joseph's doesn't arise because he's looking back at it historically. Because as we've seen through this study of Joseph's life, at each point he has been trusting in this God. So it's not that suddenly at the end of his life he looks back and says, well, when you weigh it all up, when you put all the coins on one side of bad and all the coins on one side for good, the reality is it didn't turn out all that bad and so you'll be all right. At each stage in the process, we find this man trusting in God. He trusted in God in Potiphar's house. He trusted in God whenever he was put in prison. Do you remember when he was brought out and brought before Pharaoh, and Pharaoh said, give him a dream? And there he was hanging by his life by a thread. He knew rightly what had happened with one of his compatriots in prison. Not compatriot in the sense of being co-joined with him. But one of those who were in prison. He knew rightly what had happened to him. And what do we find Joseph saying? I can't interpret the dream, God of heaven can. He's trusting God. Where does this trust come from? It comes from a clear understanding that God is in control. But there's something I want you to consider tonight. And that's the fact that God is in control of that which is evil as well as that which is good. Job, in the account of his life, the Chaldeans came and raided and stole Job's camels, killing his servants and keeping them, who had kept the animals. Those wicked men were acting of their own accord. They were impelled by Satan and yet God, who is over all of his creation including the fallen angel Satan, gave permission for Satan to attack Job and his family so far but no further. In Judges chapter 14 we read about a situation in the life of Samson where he goes down to Timnah and he sees a daughter of the Philistines And he comes and he tells his father and his mother, I saw one of the daughters of the Philistines at Timnah, now get her for my wife. She was obviously not of the people of God. And his father and mother, they say to him, is there not a woman among the daughters of your relatives or among all our people that you must go down to take a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines? Samson responds, get her for me, for she is right in my eyes. Now here is this young man, and he's going into a territory he shouldn't be in, and he saw a woman he shouldn't be taking an interest in, and he says, not only have I taken an interest in her, I want her to be my wife. And his parents rightly say to him, should you not be having a wife from among one of your own people, one of the household of God? He says, get her for me. For she is right in my eyes." His parents could only see everything that was wrong as regards to this woman. And then we read in verse 4, His father and mother did not know that it was from the Lord. For he was seeking an opportunity against the Philistines. At that time the Philistines rule over Israel. So here is Samson going down into Philistine territory in a sense disobeying the clear instruction of his parents. And yet we read that it was from the Lord because the Lord was looking for an opportunity whereby he would be able to take on the Philistines. Rehoboam in 1 Kings 12, verse 5, seeks counsel from his elders. And he rejects the counsel of his elders, resulting, as it is, in the division of the kingdom. And we read in 1 Kings 12, verse 15, so the king did not listen to the people, that is, his counselors, For it was a turn of affairs brought about by the Lord that he might fulfill his word." So here is counsel coming to the King of Israel concerning the need to maintain unity in the kingdom. This man takes a decision that results in the division of the household of God, and yet we are told that his failure to listen to the counselors was a turn of affairs brought about by the Lord himself, that he might fulfill his word, which the Lord spoke to Ajah, the Sidonite, to Jeroboam, the son of Nabat. A turn of affairs brought about by the Lord, which sees the division of the house of God itself. In 1 Kings chapter 22, We read how King Ahab was killed in battle, but it's astonishing how it happens. What happens is the King of Israel in verse 18 said to Jehoshaphat, did I not tell you that he would not prophesy good concerning me, but evil? And Machaniah, this is a prophet says, therefore hear the word of the Lord. In other words, the Lord is speaking to you Jehoshaphat. And this is what this prophet says. I saw the Lord sitting on his throne and all the hosts of heaven standing beside him on his right and on his left. The Lord said, who will entice Ahab that he may go up and fall at Ramoth Gilead? This is something that is taking place in the kingdom of the principalities and powers of the earth. And one said one thing and another said another. Then a spirit came forward and stood before the Lord saying, I will entice him. And the Lord said to him, by what means? And he said, I will go out and will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. So this spirit comes to God and he says, I'll sort this problem for you. I'll go and I'll be a lying spirit in the mouth of all the prophets of Ahab. And he, that's God said, you are to entice him and you shall succeed. Go out and do so. Now therefore behold, the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets. The Lord has declared disaster for you." Maganiah got a slap in the face for what he said. So obtuse and apparently blasphemous it was. But we read a few verses later that Ahab goes out into battle and he's killed because he follows the prophets who have a lying spirit who tell him to do so. Nebuchadnezzar, we've seen it, how he destroyed Israel and yet he has spoken of as a servant of God. And what of Cyrus, another pagan king? God calls him his anointed in Isaiah chapter 45. And as if we think that God's permitting and allowing and giving instruction is merely an Old Testament reality, what do we read in Acts chapter 4 verse 28 concerning the death of the Lord Jesus Christ? For truly in this city there was gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. It was the Lord God Almighty who predestined by the use of the hands of wicked men the death of his own son. That's very difficult for us to grapple with, isn't it, and understand. We tend to think that God's sovereign purposes are only realized through good things. And we want to tend to question that and say, how can that work? If God is perfect and holy, how can he allow and orchestrate an evil spirit to entice prophets by a lying heart to achieve his purposes in the death of a king? And yet it happened. It's there. I read you the words very specifically and clearly. I just didn't allude to them. I read them to you so you would hear them from the Word of God itself. The fact is that God doesn't just sit back and allow these things to happen as one whose hands are tied behind his back. God does permit, and God does by his providence give rise to that which is evil through the instrumentality of the sinfulness of man's heart and sinful spirits on occasions to achieve his holy purposes. That does not make God, the author of sin, for he is holy." And I think we need to understand that, because I think that as Christians we tend to live in a world in our minds, in our hearts, that God is good and God will only allow good things to happen to us. God is good. We read that and we sang that. That's a factual truth concerning the character and the being of God. And yet, what do we read about in the life of this man, Joseph, that that which they meant for evil, God takes, and it was evil. It was evil. Let's not dodge about the bush. It was evil. It was evil. And it was God who led him into this, because when he was sent up to his father at the very beginning of the whole process, and he goes up to Dothan to find his brothers, God there arranges for him to meet a man that tells him exactly where his brothers are. If God had wanted to dodge the situation, he'd have said to that man in Dothan, go and get yourself a glass of water. And while Joseph came to that place, he wouldn't have met the man in Dothan who sent him. to the place where he was to go. And so we have to accept that God, in his sovereign purposes for his own will, in his own infinite wisdom, does what he does. Now don't forget what I said earlier. Don't forget what I said earlier. If there are difficult circumstances in our lives, we don't sit back and say, God is sovereign in all his purposes in my life, so I'm not to do anything about it. That's not what I'm saying. But what I am saying is that we can't always attribute the bad things in our lives to just the devil playing havoc with us. The devil wasn't mentioned here when it came to the guy at Dothan. The devil wasn't mentioned when the brothers decided to send him into the slavery. The devil wasn't mentioned when it came to Potiphar's wife. The devil wasn't mentioned when there was the forgetfulness of the one who'd been released from prison. The devil wasn't mentioned in any of that. It's God's doing. It's God's doing. And it's hard doing. It's a hard doing. And yet at the end of it all, God meant it for good. And God saw that good would come of it. And God knew that good would come of it. God is good in everything he does. Paul writes that he works all things together for good. When Jeremiah wrote, when the people were carried off to Babylon, he writes to them and says, settle down, Mari, have your homes. He says, for I know the plans that I have for you. This is God, declares the Lord. Plans for wholeness and not for evil to give you a future and a hope. We need to take care that we're not like Jacob. Remember when the news came to Jacob of Benjamin being desired by this power up in Egypt, this man he didn't know was Joseph, and he says, Joseph is no more, Simeon is no more, and you would take Benjamin from me, and all these things are against me." He just could see nothing but harm in his life. He could see nothing but destruction. He could see nothing but hurt. He remembered that day when he saw that cloth covered in blood, and he thought of the mourning that he threw. He knew of the loss of Simeon. He knew that Simeon was not a good man, and he perpetrated violence against the Shechemites. He was aware of that. But nonetheless, he was his son, and he missed him. And now there was this idea that they would take Benjamin. His world was falling apart. Jacob's world was falling apart. In the midst of this famine, there was nothing could be done. And yet, in the reality of it all, God was in the midst of all that was happening for his good. And the good of his son Joseph, and the good of Simeon, and the good of Benjamin, and the good of the whole family, and the good of the nation. How often we are like Jacob. We only see, not the half cup, half empty. It's not even half empty. We say, God, you should be doing better by my life. How easy it is to look upon our lives and say, God, if you hadn't, if you hadn't given me this job, if you hadn't put me into this financial situation, maybe if my husband was different or my wife, Maybe if I hadn't gone through that experience in my life. And you rack your brain and you think to yourself, I honestly did my best. I did my best. I wasn't denying you. I wasn't rebelling against you. I maybe misunderstood what I was to do, but I certainly wasn't in any way angry with you, and yet you allowed that to happen in my life. Why, God? Why, if you love me, would you allow that to happen? Why would you not make it different? We have to accept that God allows things in our lives that we cannot understand. Some of us may understand in this side of eternity, some of us may not. Some of us may make sense of it in this side of eternity, sometimes we don't. Sometimes we don't see with clarity what God's doing in our lives. We don't have the privilege of what Daniel says, or sorry, not Daniel, but Joseph says here, God meant, you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. All we can see is the downside. But it's not in the seeing of the downside as our problem, it's in our response to the seeing of our downside. It's not in our failure to comprehend that this is a difficult situation. Of course it's a difficult situation. We know it's a difficult situation. We don't need people to tell us that. But our difficulty is this. It's our failure to accept that God's sovereign purpose is at work. And we have to move on from saying to God, if only, but God, and trying to fix it for ourselves. Now remember what I said. I said at the beginning, I said at the middle, and I'm coming near the end, I'm saying it again. There are times in our lives when God allows things to happen and we don't sit passively by, we try and effect change if we can. But if that change isn't coming, if that door isn't opening, if we're pushing and we're pushing and we're pushing and we're pushing, at some point we've got to settle our hearts and say, not just at this time God, it's clear. Now that's a difficult one to call. Because we may want it changed now, and God may be saying to us, not now. I mean, how many days did Joseph sit in prison and think to himself, tomorrow he'll remember that he made the promise. Tomorrow he'll come to Pharaoh and say, I remember the young man who made the prophecy and told me the dream tomorrow. But tomorrow didn't come, and it didn't come the next day. It didn't come the next day. It didn't come for whatever times 236 days as a year. 700, 800, whatever it is. Two years. Two years. And sometimes we want God to change it now. And God's saying to us, no, no, no, no. I have a purpose here. I have a reason for this. I'm not showing it to you at this moment in time, but I'm using this to humble you. to humble you, to lay hold of your hand, and to say to you, I want you to walk with me. I want you to dwell with me. I want you to be in my presence. Give me an extra couple of minutes. There's a very famous incident in the life of David, where he was denying the sovereign purposes of God, and he goes up to a foreign king, and he resides with this foreign king. He takes comfort in this foreign king's hospitality. The king gives him a city called Ziglag. He plays the game that I'm with you when he's really trying to avoid Saul. The whole reason why he has lost confidence in God is because God says to him that I'm going to make you the next king and all he sees is Saul perpetually chasing after him. He actually says in the first time of chapter 27 that he's going to perish at the hand of Saul. So he has in his head, God loves me, God's going to make me king, and all he sees on the ground is that he's chasing one day after another, trying to hide from Saul. So he goes up into this other territory, and he dwells there. And then he's caught in a situation where the King Ahash says, right, come with me, we're going to attack the Israelites. And he's caught because he doesn't want to go up and attack his own people. And God intervenes because some of the warlords with King Achish said, we're not having this guy in our midst. You don't know how he'll turn in the battle. So he's sent back to Ziglag. And he goes back to Ziglag, and what does he find in Ziglag? The whole place has been burned. His wives and his children have been taken captive. And then we read that he strengthens himself before the Lord, and what the sense you get from that is that he goes to the Lord, and this is what I was talking about this morning, about when we try to make things right that won't be made right because they're not in God's time to be made right. And we need to strengthen ourselves in the Lord and be patient. And he strengthens himself in the Lord and he is patient. And how do we know that? Because he doesn't dash after the raiders to recover his wife and his children and the wives and his children and his soldiers. He says to the Lord, should I go up? Now the Lord could have said, no, don't go up. In the end, Saul and Jonathan are killed in that very battle. And the children are recovered along with the spoil. Now that happened at a time in David's life when he was being pulled from pillar to post in his own mind. God said to be saying to him one thing and yet another thing seemed to be on the ground. And he was going to sort it out himself. And it was only when he resolved in his heart that he couldn't sort it out that then God sorted it out. God is in control. He allows things to happen in our lives. Sometimes they are hard providences. Sometimes they are difficult providences. Sometimes their providences leave us questioning God's love for us. But if you have not willfully and deliberately broken the commands of God and you find yourself in a difficult situation and the door isn't opening no matter how much you're pushing it sometimes in life you have to say I'm just going to have to wait on the Lord and be patient and that's not saying I don't care that's not saying I don't want it to change that's not saying God I'm happy with this situation what that's saying is I am the clay and you're the potter, and how can I tell you to shape my life? And only when we reach that point, and it takes wisdom and it takes confidence in God, only when we reach that point will we really trust him. Will we say to God, okay, okay, You're at the heart of my life. I love you, I love you every day. I know what you've done doesn't sit with me well. I wish it was different, but you do mean it for good, and good will come of it. I think until we learn the truth of what God's sovereignty really means, We will not be truly able to trust him, for we will always be champing at the bit for him to give us what we want. And when he doesn't, then we'll jump in with two feet and sort it out ourselves and only add to the mess that we're in. Now, I hope I have been clear. If there's anything that has seemed confusing, please speak with me. I want this to be clear. I don't want to be infusing confusion into your heart or your mind, because it's such an important truth for your life. Amen.