Have you ever had to keep a surprise hidden but couldn’t keep it secret because you were so excited to share it? I remember one year at Kohl’s, I set inside the car with our baby boy while my wife and three or four-year-old daughter went Christmas shopping. When they came out of the store and opened the hatch of the car, my wife said, “don’t tell Daddy what we got him for Christmas.” Well, after my wife put my daughter in her car seat and before she could sit in her seat, my sweet daughter blurted out, “Daddy! We got you a watch!” It was great. As we come to the end of this part of the story, Joseph is so overwhelmed with emotion, that he can no longer keep his identity secret from his brothers.
After today’s passage, we will be finished with our readings in Genesis and have 85 more readings to go before we are done. Do you feel that you are getting a better grip on the Biblical story? I pray that you are already feeling strengthed in your faith and encouraged to keep on moving forward with the challenge.
Read Genesis 45:1-46:7
There are two passages that I want to focus on for our devotional today. The first is Genesis 45:7-8, namely, “So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God.” Wow. God took the evil that Joseph’s brothers committed and turned it to everyone’s good. Romans 8:28 says, “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” God had a plan for Joseph’s life, and nothing would thwart his counsel. The same is true in our present reality. Whatever trial and great difficulty come our way, God can take those and turn them into our good and to the benefit of others. Nothing happens in vain when God is in our life. Without him, anything and everything that happens good or bad are in vain. The Lord makes everything have a holy purpose.
The second passage is Genesis 46:3-4. The focus here is, “I am God, the God of thy father: fear not to go down into Egypt…I will go down with thee into Egypt.” I feel that this reinforces the previous point. Look at Jacob and his families direction of life. It’s going down. Some may say it’s going up because they are heading to a land of protection and wealth because of the famine in the land. However, even some good things can turn out to be wrong things because they are not the great things God really has laid out for us. The good is that Egypt would supply them during the famine and be a good place to multiply numbers for the future nation of Israel. However, the good turned to bad as Egypt would enslave Israel. The great is that God had a promised land he wanted them to live in all along. God would go down into good land of Egypt, but He did not want them to stay there forever
God would go down into the good land of Egypt but He did not want them to stay there forever, he had something better planned for them. God does intend for us to be entangled in this world. There are many good things here to enjoy, however, it is easy to lose sight of God’s Spirit in this world for the elements of the world. God has something far better in store for the faithful. He is with us here, but to make us ready and keeping us pure for what Jesus is preparing for us (cf. John 14:1-7).
Jeremy Kamer Ministries 