Where there’s a will there’s a …. (Gen 49-50; Gal 4)

Where there’s a will there’s a…fight!

Sadly siblings sometimes fall out over the will of a deceased parent. When Jacob dies, the brothers are not arguing over money and possessions but they are fearful that Joseph might have only been kind to them for the sake of their father. Now he is gone, will Joseph pay them back for the evil they have done? Once again their guilt is troubling them. Perhaps like us, they struggle to understand forgiveness.

I remember hearing recently that for those who trust Jesus, God has cast our sins into the sea, and put up a sign saying “no fishing!” Or as Psalm 103 puts it, as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. Yet sometimes, we struggle to believe that God can forgive us. The brothers were struggling to believe that Joseph could totally forgive them. And I am glad that they did struggle, because as a result we have one of the most helpful verses in the Bible – “as for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.” (Genesis 50:20)

What a precious verse this is for it so carefully balances human responsibility and God’s sovereignty. Do you ever wonder if God’s is fully in control, does that mean people are robots of some sort? Here we are told that what the brothers did was evil, they are fully responsible for their actions and yet at the same time, God did not cease to be in control and throughout it He was working for good!

We see a similar thing in Acts 2. Peter is preaching on the day of Pentecost and he tells his listeners that they were totally responsible for putting Jesus to death, and yet this was God’s definite plan! (Acts 2:23). What a God we serve!

Like his father before him, Joseph knew God as his shepherd and so even through the hard times he knew God was with him and working for his good.

This is something we can know as well, our reading from Galatians tells us “when the fullness of time came, God sent his son” (Galatians 4:4). His Son who was born in line of Judah (the one Jacob promised would reign forever – Genesis 49:10) to step into our place (like Judah did for Benjamin) so that we can be adopted into God’s family and receive the spirit of sonship.

In my Bible, at the end of Genesis I have written 3 things, I’m not sure where I got them from but they seem to be a good application of this passage:

1. Leave all the righting of wrongs to God.

2. See God’s providence in man’s malice.

3. Repay evil with forgiveness and practical affection.

Praise God that He is able to work all things, even evil done to us for our good (see Romans 8:28).