“Is It God’s Will?”
Genesis 45:4-8
A sermon for 8/22/21
Pastor John Bright
Genesis 45 “4 And Joseph said to his brothers, “Please come near to me.” So they came near. Then he said: “I am Joseph your brother, whom you sold into Egypt. 5 But now, do not therefore be grieved or angry with yourselves because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life. 6 For these two years the famine has been in the land, and there are still five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvesting. 7 And God sent me before you to preserve a posterity for you in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance. 8 So now it was not you who sent me here, but God; and He has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt.”
A documentary from 2006, Heroes Among Us, Miracles Around Us, recounts many of the stories from September 11, 2001. It included the story of Captain Jay Jonas of the New York Fire Department's Ladder Company 6. Jonas was with fellow firefighters in the North Tower of the World Trade Center. They were running down the stairs to get out of the building knowing that it was about to collapse. But when they discovered Ms. Josephine Harris lying in the stairwell unable to walk, they refused to leave her there and delayed their escape. They said later that they knew this delay could cost them their lives. Even so, they slowly helped her down 16 flights of stairs in the North Tower.
They were still on the fourth floor in the stairwell when the tower collapsed on them -- and miraculously, they survived. They would later learn that had it not been for their delay in stopping to help Ms. Harris, they would have been in a different position when the building collapsed and would have all been killed.
There were other stories of angelic beings who guided people through smoke filled rooms and many, many stories of people delayed or missing work that day all together. Each of the Twin Towers employed over 22,000 folks, but on that day there were less than 10,000 in each one – most of them survived because it took so long for the buildings to collapse. That day 266 passengers died on four planes. The capacity of those four flights were over 1,200. There was also loss of life at the Pentagon. 125 were killed in the outer ring that was struck by the plane. It was being reinforced and renovated at the time and had very few folks working there. That area would normally have 5,000 people working in it.
Whenever someone asks me, “What was God doing on 9/11?” I always have the same reply – “He was very busy!”
With the 20th anniversary of 9/11 coming soon, I planned to do talk about this in an upcoming sermon, but this past week made me change my mind. The news brought us stories of tremendous suffering following the earthquake in Haiti and the collapse of the government in Afghanistan has allowed the Taliban forces to take over much of the country. If you are old enough to remember the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and the taking of US hostages from the embassy, then you probably said an extra prayer this week as they evacuated the embassy in Kabul.
The title of my sermon today is the question we wrestle with when bad things happen to good people. It is the question when the storms of life blow in with a vengeance and devastate the ones we love. This question haunts us when a global pandemic brings death to over four million people; when natural disasters happen month after month and when Believers are executed by Islamic extremists across the world. Is it God’s will?
Teaching about the will of God could get slightly complicated… to say the least. I have told you before – I stopped trying to figure out why other people do what they do because I am not always sure why I do what I do. All of us have had that moment when we looked back at what we said or some action we took and wondered, “Why did I do that?” So we start with a limited understanding of human will. Then we read this revelation in Isaiah 55:8-9 –
“8 “For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways,” says the Lord.
9 “For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways,
And My thoughts than your thoughts.”
If ever there was somebody who had no idea what God was going to accomplish by the ups and downs of his life – it was Joseph.
The story of Joseph
The last 14 chapters of Genesis is devoted to the story of Joseph. He is the eleventh of the 12 sons of Jacob. He was loved dearly by his father and displayed the evidence of prophetic dreams at a young age. His father gave him a fancy coat of many colors – you may have seen the musical. The jealousy of his older brothers drives them to sell him into slavery and tell his father a tale of Joseph’s death. The young man ends up in Egypt in the house of palace official. He rises to be in charge of the whole house but an unwanted advance from his master’s wife lands him in prison. There, he rises to be in charge of the prisoners. It is here he meets two men from pharaoh’s house. He correctly interprets their dreams. One of the men remembers Joseph when the Pharoah has a dream that none can interpret. Joseph gives the ruler of the land the meaning of his dreams and Pharoah puts Joseph in charge of collecting food for the seven years of drought. He is second only to Pharoah when his brothers arrive looking for food. Now there are plenty of twists and turns in there, but those are the basics and it gets us to what Joseph said to his brothers after they realize this Egyptian big-wig is the brother they betrayed long ago:
• v. 5 “for God sent me before you to preserve life.”
• v. 7 “And God sent me before you to preserve a posterity for you in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance.
• v. 8 “So now it was not you who sent me here, but God; and He has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt.”
Just so you understand what he is saying:
• God made sure Joseph was sold into slavery
• God made sure Joseph was accused of sexual assault
• God made sure Joseph was in prison
There’s not one thing on that list we would attribute to God, but Joseph – in hindsight – can see the hand of God in his whole story. It was definitely God’s will for Joseph to suffer for a season so that He could make a way for all the tribes of Israel to find a sanctuary from the famine.
What is the Will of God?
Every time we try to describe God we are limited – the created have a limited understanding of the Creator. When we attempt to understand and explain the will of God, we use a couple of different terms – God’s Sovereign Will and God’s Revealed Will.
God’s Sovereign Will is understood as His will that operates from His throne as the ruler (or sovereign) over the whole universe (or multi-verse). This will of God encompasses all that happens. Jesus was explaining this will of God in Matthew 10 “29 Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father’s will. 30 But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. 31 Do not fear therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.” Now, if we follow that understanding out – every hair in your hairbrush is known by God and is there as a part of God’s Sovereign Will.
So, it was inside of God’s Sovereign Will that Joseph was kidnapped, sold and ended up in Egypt. God knew Joseph would be right where he should be to interpret the dreams that God gave to Pharaoh. Nothing would stand in the way of God making a great nation of Abraham’s seed.
The end of this story includes a great natural disaster – a seven-year drought. Last week we heard about an earthquake in Haiti just after and just before the island was hit by a couple of tropical storm systems. One of those brought flooding to North Carolina and people are still missing as I write this sermon. There are wild fires in the Western states that have demolished a whole town. Are these the Will of God?
This is going to get a little more complicated – God’s Sovereign Will has two parts:
God’s Efficacious Will – which means God caused it to happen
God’s Permissive Will – which means God allows/permits it to happen
This is harder to understand because it is always hidden from us in the moment but we may understand it in hindsight. This is where we struggle with God seeming to answer some of our prayer whiles others would appear to go unanswered. When asked about this, Billy Graham gave this answer: “…God is not capricious or undependable; He is sovereign and loving, and He knows what’s best for us, even if we can’t see it at the time. We also live in a world that’s been corrupted by sin, and is also under the evil influence of Satan and his servants. By His death and resurrection Jesus Christ broke Satan’s power, but death is still with us, and only at the end of time as we know it will Satan be completely bound.”
https://billygraham.org/story/billy-grahams-answer-on-gods-sovereignty/
Let me turn to the second term we use to describe God’s Will – God’s Revealed Will. As the name implies – this one is clearly seen as it has been revealed to us. This was true way back when the Hebrews were taken into captivity by the Babylonians. Three young men continue to follow the food laws revealed in God’s Word and they are healthier and stronger than the other young men. Then, when all others bow down to an idol of the ruler – they refuse and are thrown into the fiery furnace. Listen to what Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego told Nebuchadnezzar - Daniel 3 “17 If that is the case, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us from your hand, O king. 18 But if not, let it be known to you, O king, that we do not serve your gods, nor will we worship the gold image which you have set up.”
They knew God’s Revealed Will of the First Commandant – worship no other gods. They chose to follow God’s Will in this and it would lead to deliverance or death, but that could not change what they had chosen to do. What about us? We also have the ability to follow God’s Revealed Will and the freedom to disobey His Holy Word. To understand this, we need look no further than the first chapter of James – “22 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; 24 for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. 25 But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.”
Here we find the description of a modern-day Believer who is hears a sermon on Sunday morning that makes clear what obedience looks like in these days. He or she feels the weight of conviction and sees what life should be like under God’s Revealed Will. Then, that person gets in the car and by the time they get home that clear vision in the mirror of the Holy Spirit fades away and life goes back to another week on the hamster wheel of disobedience.
I want to return to prayer here - if Joseph had lived in the day of a 24-hour news cycle and the constant drum of social media, we would have heard of his mistreatment by family and unjust imprisonment. We could have joined in the protests outside the prison. We would have prayer vigils and sign online petitions, but God would still permit these things to happen and it would look to us as if the prayers were unanswered. God’s answer would be – NO! I mention this because we are praying for the deliverance of many Believers in Afghanistan because we know they will face torture and execution at the hands of Radical Islamists. To read of God’s Revealed Will in the Book of Revelation is to see over and over the death of God’s faithful saints. In fact, the Church in this day seems to grow the most where God’s faithful are under the most persecution.
While we can’t know the full extent of God’s Will, we can trust the One who made us and made a way for us to be with Him for eternity. We are unable to see it all, but we can trust that He does. Twenty years ago we grieved the loss of life on 9/11, but many were saved that day. What was God doing then and what is God doing in the chaotic world in which we live? He is very, very busy. Amen.
