Joseph then answered Pharaoh, saying, “It is not in me; God will give Pharaoh a favorable answer.” (Genesis 41:16).

God has revealed to Pharaoh what he is about to do (Genesis 41:25).

Joseph named his firstborn Manasseh and said, “It is because God has made me forget all my trouble and all my father’s household" (Genesis 41:51).

The second son he named Ephraim and said, “It is because God has made me fruitful in the land of my suffering" (Genesis 41:52).

Their hearts sank and they turned to each other trembling and said, “What is this that God has done to us?” (Genesis 42:28).

God's name is often invoked, and He is credited with things beyond human control. Joseph acknowledges that only God can interpret Pharoah's dreams. God's providence brought him prosperity in Egypt. The brothers recognize that God brought them into a distressing situation. 

Yet, Joseph petitioned the baker to help him get out of prison. Jacob refused to send Benjamin with the brothers to get food for them. Both did what they thought was reasonable because God had not revealed anything otherwise.

Friends, do you acknowledge that every blessing and every calamity outside of your control is from the Lord? Today, we see that even those things that the servants of God "thought" they controlled were also from the Lord. Joseph's petition to the baker did not speed his release. Jacob's delay to send Benjamin did not change God's outcome for the people of Israel. 

Let us then understand that every outcome is in the hands of the Lord. It remains for us simply to be faithful to what we know, even to what is revealed to us from heaven. Peter, encouraging suffering believers living in foreign lands, writes: "So then, those who suffer according to God’s will should commit themselves to their faithful Creator and continue to do good" (1 Peter 4:19).

Consequently, it is not always necessary to figure out what God is doing or why He is doing it. We don't need to understand why we are poor, hungry and failing. We are simply called to be faithful where we are. Neither should we gloat over our wealth, prosperity and success. These are not necessarily evidence of God's favor, and they must not be a stumbling block to faithful living. To whatever God has called us, His standard is the same: faith and faithfulness.

And Jacob their father said to them, “You have bereaved me: Joseph is no more, Simeon is no more, and you want to take Benjamin. All these things are against me.” (Genesis 42:36)

How desperate Jacob must have felt. It had been twenty years (Joseph was sold into slavery at 17 from Gen. 37:2, entered Pharoah's service at 30 from Gen. 41:46; then 7 years of plenty had passed) since he lost Joseph. Simeon was prisoner in Egypt on suspicion of his sons acting as spies. Now, the youngest, Benjamin, was being summoned. How could they return since they were guilty of theft, taking grain without payment? Soon the grain would run out, and they would starve without the one hope for food in Egypt.

Although we know that this was a fortuitous event for Jacob, Jacob could not have seen it as such. God did not reveal what He was doing behind the scenes, and Joseph also had hidden his identity.  

Friends, have you experienced anything like this? Everything seems to be going wrong, and you see no light ahead. Disappointments compound, distress sets in, and finally despair. You despair because you have no hope. Jacob was close to despair. Job experienced it, for he declares, "May the day of my birth perish!" (Job 3:3). Whatever your experience, no part of it is pleasant.

Yet these examples in Scripture are given so that we may have hope. Paul writes,

For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope (Romans 15:4).

Let us, therefore, persevere in hope, trusting in God our Savior. No matter what disappointments we face or distresses we experience or despair we feel, we can still hope in the Lord, because His promises are greater than our disappointments, distresses and despair. We find this encouragement:

In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us... Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:37-39).

Then they said to one another, “Truly we are guilty concerning our brother, because we saw the distress of his soul when he pleaded with us, yet we would not listen; therefore this distress has come upon us” (Genesis 42:21). 

Reuben answered them, saying, “Did I not tell you, ‘Do not sin against the boy’; and you would not listen? Now comes the reckoning for his blood” (Genesis 42:22).

Then he said to his brothers, “My money has been returned, and behold, it is even in my sack.” And their hearts sank, and they turned trembling to one another, saying, “What is this that God has done to us?” (Genesis 42:28).

God had not spoken to the sons of Jacob, but they recognized that God was very much involved in their current predicament. They felt that He was judging them for their sin against their brother, Joseph. 

Yet, through the vehicle of dramatic irony, we know that the immediate agent of their present distress was not God but their brother Joseph. He was the one testing them to see if they had become honest men? 

But hold on a second. Later in the account, Joseph tells his brothers,

But Joseph said to them, “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives (Genesis 50:19-20).

Without denying human agency, Joseph acknowledges God's sovereign hand in bringing about the events in just such a way to accomplish His purposes. 

Therefore, while it is true that Joseph was an agent in the things that happened to his brothers, he was not the only agent. God was also orchestrating every event so that He accomplished His purposes. 

Friends, we may not receive direct physical and verbal communications from God today, as the prophets and apostles did in the past; however, we can still acknowledge God's sovereignty and providence in our lives. Just because He chooses not to share with us His actions and His reasons does not mean that He is, therefore, inactive or aloof from the affairs of men. 

Joseph and his brothers were not told what God was doing, but they recognized that God was intimately involved in orchestrating their fates. I believe we must acknowledge this as well. God sees all things. Nothing takes Him by surprise. And He always accomplishes His purposes perfectly. Therefore, it behooves us to fully humble ourselves, trust Him implicitly and do our utmost to obey Him diligently. 

It is not in me; God will give Pharaoh a favorable answer (Genesis 41:16).

It is not in me. But God. Praise God! Give the glory to God! 

The last couple of weeks an elderly lady sat in front of me at church and commented that she enjoyed my singing. I said, "Thank you! Praise God!" But it felt awkward. It would have been easier to simply say thank you, but trying to give God glory was awkward. 

This disturbed me. I feel this way at church, how about when I am in front of unbelievers?! 

I remember that I use to walk the campus of Liberty University, my alma mater, loudly singing praise songs to God without reservation. It felt natural, not only because others were doing it, but because I cared only what God thought of me. 

I praise God for the opportunity God has given me to share the Gospel in my travels for the Martial Arts Organization and for spiritual conversations with fellow believers; however, I realize that such conversations don't feel as natural to me as they perhaps should be.

Friends, if you feel this same awkwardness, I want to encourage you to develop the habit of often praising God for things. Don't let him be like the unnoticed person in the room.

I recently finished memorizing through the Gospel of John, albeit in pieces and not altogether, yet from this I recognized how naturally Jesus spoke of the immediate presence and engagement of the Father. Should we not have a similar sense of His presence? After all, His Spirit lives within us. 

So they loaded their donkeys with their grain and departed from there. As one of them opened his sack to give his donkey fodder at the lodging place, he saw his money; and behold, it was in the mouth of his sack. Then he said to his brothers, “My money has been returned, and behold, it is even in my sack.” And their hearts sank, and they turned trembling to one another, saying, “What is this that God has done to us?” (Genesis 42:26-28).

As I read this account again today, this thought comes to mind. Why didn't these brothers immediately return to Pharoah with the money when they discovered that it was in their sacks? After all, their brother Simeon was being held hostage on suspicion that these were not honest men. If they kept the money, this would support the thesis that these were indeed dishonest men. Now, they do return with the money, but only after they run out of the first batch of food. In other words, it would seem that they returned out of desperation rather than because they were honest men. Joseph seems to be playing this ruse with his brothers not so much to punish them but to help them learn their lesson and become truly honest men.

Joseph secretly controlled events (hiding his identity, holding their brother, returning their money, testing them) for the good of his brothers. This is somewhat similar to the way that God secretly controlled the events of Joseph's life to save and teach Israel. As Joseph would later say to his brothers,

You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives (Genesis 50:20).

As I ponder these things, this possible moral application comes to mind. When a teller undercharges me for something or returns to me more money than is due back to me, and I realize it, what do I do? Do I just keep it and say nothing, thinking "God has blessed me" or "It's not my mistake, but theirs"? Yet, if we consider the Golden Rule, "Do to others as you would want them to do to you" (Matthew 7:12), the right thing to do would be to immediately give the extra money back.

This happened to me recently at Bank of America. I went to make a deposit, and there was a new teller there. She took my deposit, but the receipt showed that I deposited $1000 more than I actually deposited. When I reaized her mistake, I immediately returned to have her correct it.

Now, I could have just said nothing and been $1000 richer for it. But God would know it. Even if I gained $1000, it would not compare to my loss of moral standing. What is more, what if they found out about the error through later processing. Can't you just imagine the employees talking amongst themselves about how I tried to get away with swindling the bank? How then would my testimony be at the bank? And this is a bank, where everyone knows me by name. Instead, perhaps they would remember that this Christian man did not hesitate to correct a bank error, even when it was not in his favor.

Let us do everything to bring highest glory to our God!

Friends, it is very easy to read these texts and lose perspective. What I mean is this. You read the account of Joseph, how he has the dreams that he has, is sold by his brothers, finds himself in Potiphar's house, lands in prison, interprets some dreams, and is elevated by Pharaoh to the second highest position of power in Egypt. And, as we shall read in forthcoming chapters, you celebrate with Joseph that he had to go through all these things so that he could be where he was to save Israel from famine.

Really?! Did Joseph have to go through all of that to save Israel? Don't you think that God could have held off the famine, even as he held off judgment on all the areas of the Jews when He later brought the plagues on Egypt? Was God constrained by all the events I just described above or did He rather engineer and use the events in just such a way to bring about His purposes? 

I want to use this as an analogy to those that deny God's predestination to salvation. The argument is made that God would not violate human free will, because otherwise, people would only be robots serving God's purposes. And God certainly wouldn't want to create robots, right? Wasn't Joseph and his brothers, Potipher, Pharaoh, and even nature in a sense robots in the process of fulfilling God's purposes? 

I think we need to put the robot argument to rest. It is naively arrogant, fallacious and unbiblical. It is naively arrogant because we, who are but dust and compared to worms in Scripture, presume to limit God's power. Such an argument might be made by someone that just became a believer and has had little exposure to biblical revelation. But for us, who are daily in the Scriptures and can see how often God intervenes in the affairs of people to control and shape and direct the course of human events, we have no excuse.

It is fallacious because it assumes that any disruption in human freedom means the destruction of all human freedom. Where then would be laws that keep men from stealing and murdering each other? Aren't these disruptions to human freedom, yet we are free. How about natural laws? Doesn't the law of gravity influence people so that they do not thrust themselves off the Empire State Building to their demise?

Predestination does not say that all human free will is removed. It only argues that just as sin and death are universal, man's inability to choose God apart from God's drawing is also universal . Only God has absolute freedom of will in everything. Human beings, perhaps of all nature, have the most freedom. We choose our friends, how we raise our families, our jobs, our homes, and even the sins we commit. But because of our overly high view of ourselves and our limiting view of God, we insist that we must also have the freedom, by which we mean unconstrained ability, to choose God in salvation.

Aren't we being like Adam and Eve in their sin? God told them that they were free to eat from every tree in the Garden except one. But, of course, rather than seeing the generosity of God, they only saw His restriction. They had to be able to eat from the one forbidden tree. Likewise, we have freedom of will in everything except for salvation. But, just as our first ancestor, we insist on demanding that power as well.

But biblical predestination teaches that people do not, and in fact, cannot choose God unless God first chooses them and enables them to choose Him. The Jews stubbornly held on to their unbiblical idea that they "could gain their salvation by keeping the Law of Moses," and so they stumbled over the stumbling block of faith in Jesus Christ:

Brethren, my heart’s desire and my prayer to God for them is for their salvation. For I testify about them that they have a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge. For not knowing about God’s righteousness and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes (Romans 10:1-4).

Today, some people subbornly hold on to their unbiblical idea that they could freely (that is, by free will) choose God, or Christ, for salvation. Sometimes I think this stubbornness is not much different from the stubbornness of the Jews in Jesus' day. But in some ways, I feel that the Jews had a more compelling reason for their perspective than these people do.

Even so, there is a great similarity. There are volumes of Scripture that told the Jews to obey the Law. But, as Christians, we know also from the Scriptures that they could not do it, at least not perfectly, which was necessary for their salvation. But, as the argument goes, why would God command the Jews to do something that they could not do? Our response would be: "So that He might show how depraved they were and how gracious God was to save them by faith." But many Jews could not accept this.

Now, think. Do you see any similarity between the view of these Jews and the view of some professing Christians today. Many people point to texts, where the Lord clearly commands people to believe, and they ask, "Why would God command something that people could not do of their own free will?" Could it be the same reason? Could it be that He wants to show how depraved all people really are, even how imperfect their faith is? -- that we don't even have the "faith of a mustard seed"?! Could it be that He wants to show the extent of His grace that supplies not only the payment for forgiveness but also the means to receive it? My heart resonates with Paul, which might be also be said for some today:

Brethren, my heart’s desire and my prayer to God for them is for their salvation. For I testify about them that they have a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge. 

In the case of Joseph, God predestined just what He needed to bring about His purposes. The Scripture does not say He orders every detail of every event. One way to look at it is to imagine mice placed in a great maze with a big slice of cheese at the end. They are given freedom to move this way and that but they must move forward, and they must follow the path given. What is also important to recognize is that God made the mice, God made the cheese, and God made the maze. What this means is that at any point, God could lift the mice and place them right where the cheese is and bypass the maze altogether. And, in a sense, this is what He will do at the time of our resurrection. He will complete our sanctificaton and make us perfect before Him. I use mice, but God has certainly endowed us with greater worth in Him than many mice.

Dear friends, I know that some of you are frustrated and even angry that I continue to push this point of God's election, that is His predestination of a chosen few for salvation. Yet, I am not alone. I walk in the steps of Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Spurgeon, Edwards, and even one that recently passed away, S.Lewis Johnson. I confess that there are perhaps a lot fewer preachers and theologians who believe in God's elective salvation today, but let it be known, that this is not a reflection of spiritual progress but of growing biblical ignorance and perhaps a harbinger of the end, when people will only stand to listen to what they want to hear. 

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On another matter. We read in Genesis 42:1-2,

Now Jacob saw that there was grain in Egypt, and Jacob said to his sons, “Why are you staring at one another?” He said, “Behold, I have heard that there is grain in Egypt; go down there and buy some for us from that place, so that we may live and not die.”

Do you not find this remarkable? Jacob and his sons are the chosen people of God. Shouldn't they have just prayed for God to bring them an abundance of food? Go to Egypt?! They should trust God, not Egypt, right?

There are plenty of instances like this throughout the Scriptures, both in the OT and the NT. What is problematic is when we take it upon ourselves to pick and choose when it is okay to take matters into our own hands and when it is better to wait on God. It appears that in the days of the Patriarchs, like in our day, they only sought God when they were desperate, and there was no other course of action, or when they were afraid and wanted an extra bit of divine protection. Otherwise, as here with Jacob's command to his sons, they took matters into their own hands. 

Not only did Jacob order his sons to go get food from Egypt to keep them all alive, he also refused to send the youngest, Benjamin, with them. Why? He didn't want to risk any harm coming to him. His keeping Benjamin from going may be equivalent to parents today keeping their young child at home during a cold winter day or a man buying term life insurance for his family in the event of his untimely demise.

I don't think there is anything difficult or controversial here. But let me create a different scenario. What if  there was a heavy ice storm and the roads were dangerously slick? And it is Sunday and time to go to church. One says, we're staying home today because it is too risky to go out. Another says, certainly God wants us to worship Him, and He is bound to protect us, so we will go out to church. Who is correct here? Who is wise? And how are we to judge?

As before, I want to throw this out to encourage critical thinking; therefore, I will not supply an answer at this time :P. I would love to hear your perspective. 

The sovereignty of God is a controversial topic even among Christians. However, when I read this section, it is the first thing I think of...Even before Abraham had his promised son, God told him:

 Yet, before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad—in order that God’s purpose in election might stand: not by works but by him who calls—she was told, “The older will serve the younger.” Just as it is written: “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated." What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! For he says to Moses,

   “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,
   and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”

It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. For Scripture says to Pharaoh: “I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth." Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.

One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?” But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’" Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?