A Thread of Providence

My neighbor is a nurse who works with an IT team well-versed in both medicine and technology. She is on the team to be sure the technology side of medicine actually helps the nurses and patients who will be using it. Amazing! Right now her team is implementing new computer software for a medical practice that includes 5 different hospitals. They’ve been working for months and have a long way ahead of them. She tried to explain all the intricacies to me, and I was quickly lost. Layers upon layers of cause and effects. One little change could have vast ripples throughout the system.

I thought of God’s plan of redemption. From eternity past, to the moment in history Christ came to earth, to the coming culmination of glory. How many details were and are involved! What a vast system of cause and effects.

We are studying the life of Joseph in our Discipleship CoHorts this spring. Let me share a small piece of God’s plan of redemption that overlaps with this study. It is like pulling on one thread when it is tied to millions.

When Jesus came into our world, he was born with a DNA decided upon before the world began. That DNA included the genes of a woman, Rahab, who lived in the land of Canaan some 1,400 years before Jesus was born. Canaan was the land that God had told Abraham would one day belong to his children. But not yet. God told Abraham,

(*Amorites is a term that represents the wicked nations that live in the land of Canaan.)

While God is holding all the stars in place, rotating the planets, giving food to all living creatures, He also is arranging details so that Abraham’s family goes to Egypt for 400 years and comes back just in time to execute his judgment on Canaan and save Rahab! So many details. So many causes and effects.

God must not only get his people to Egypt, he must do it in a way that they will be welcomed there but also kept separate from the Egyptians’ idol worship. He must keep them there safely while they multiply to the size of a great army big enough to conquer Canaan, while giving the people of Canaan 400 years to turn from their wickedness, and waiting until Rahab is born.

He decides to send a great grandson of Abraham, Joseph, ahead of the whole family. He will go as a slave but end up as the second in command of Egypt. What a story! Who but God could have written it?

But getting Joseph to Egypt was its own story with many causes and effects. How to get a boy of seventeen 416 miles away to a foreign country?

God used the sin of Jacob’s favoritism towards Joseph to cause his brothers to envy and hate him. Consider what might have happened if Joseph did not have a coat that was recognizable by his father. Perhaps Jacob would not have believed Joseph was really dead and would have gone searching for him? The very coat that produced envy in his brothers, allowed Joseph to get safely to Egypt.

God gave Joseph dreams that deepened his brothers’ envy and hate of him.

God knew Jacob would foolishly send Joseph to find his brothers while they were tending sheep in Shechem. (Really? What fathers sends a young boy into such a dangerous situation with grown men who hate him?)

God arranged details so that the brothers were not in Shechem. Maybe he withheld rain so that they could not find good pastures there? Maybe he caused it to rain and the grass to grow in Dothan so the brothers would go there with the sheep? Why Dothan? It was on the main trade route to Egypt.

God sent a man who happened to find Joseph wandering in Shechem who also happened to know the brothers had moved on to Dotham.

God used the envy and hatred of the brothers that makes them want to murder Joseph when they see him coming.

God used a moment of sanity in Reuben to convince the brothers to delay their murderous scheme.

God kept Joseph safe in a pit until a caravan going to Egypt passed by.

And oila! Joseph was headed to Egypt.

I’m sure I missed many details and many more causes and effects. When God withdrew the rain from Shechem, what else was he accomplishing? What was God doing in the life of the man who found Joseph wandering? What was God doing in the hearts of Jacob and his sons that would later bring them to repentance? God was doing 1000 things we can not see and may never know.

And the story is not over. Joseph was on his way to Egypt but we are so far from seeing him becoming Pharaoh’s right hand man and even farther from Rahab being saved when the walls of Jericho fall down! This post is already way too long, and we have only been pulling on one tiny thread in the vast handiwork of God’s wise and sovereign plan to redeem a people for himself.

Can you trust a God who decrees and orchestrates all of this to care for you? YES!

“Fear not, stand firm and see the salvation of the LORD which he will work for you today. The LORD will fight for you, and you only have to be silent.” Ex. 14:13,14

“He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion.” Phil 1:12

“If God be for us, who can be against us?” Roman 8:21

Another note of encouragement:

God the father who perfectly loved Jesus, sent him to a dangerous place knowing his brothers would kill him. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son. . . . " (John 3:16)

Like Joseph, Jesus said, "Here I am." (Gen. 37:13; Heb. 10:9).