ALL THINGS WORKING FOR GOOD
St. Paul has some very encouraging words for people who are finding life hard, who are ’up against it’. ’We know that all things work together for good to them that love God and are called according to His purpose’ (Romans 8:28). The apostle is writing to the church at Rome an exposition of the Christian message. He wants to convey to the believers at Rome that the redemption God has provided is complete, that no aspect has been neglected. The J. B. Phillips’ translation uses these words: ’We know that to those who love God, who are called according to His Plan, everything that happens fits into a pattern for good.’
It’s easy to accept the truth of these words when circumstances are favourable, when life takes on the appearance of being ’heaven upon earth’. When that’s so it costs nothing to say glibly ’everything that happens fits into a pattern for good.’ But anyone with even a little experience of life knows that it isn’t always plain sailing. Life’s voyage has its stretches of troubled waters from which there’s no escape and no short cuts. But the apostle insists that it’s ’everything that happens’ which ’fits into a pattern for good.’ Yes, even those things, which at the time are so distressing, perplexing and hard to bear.
When Paul wrote in these terms he didn’t do so lightly. We’re quite entitled to ask what evidence can be brought to substantiate his words, especially as we’re convinced that the Holy Spirit inspired them. Now here’s the great value of the Bible stories, recorded for our instruction. The characters in them have made their brief appearance on the stage of time, but the lessons they can teach their successors are abiding and it’s for us to reap the fruits of their experience. Then let’s take a page from God’s casebook and see what principles apply in considering Paul’s emphatic words ’we know that to those who love God, who are called according to His Plan, everything that happens fits into a pattern for good.’
The principal witness we shall call upon to give evidence as to the way God over-ruled in his life is Joseph. He’s addressing his brothers, frightened of what might happen to them now that their father, Jacob has died: ’you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good’ (Genesis 50:20). Joseph’s story is so well known that there’s no need to go over the events of his life in any detail except to draw out lessons illustrating the way that God deals with a Christian in his or her personal life. ’You meant evil against me,’ testified Joseph, ’but God meant it for good.’ The first lesson that stands out is that:
GOD MAY ALLOW EVIL TO TRIUMPH
This is something hard to accept, as it often appears that God has forgotten the victim even though he or she is a person of faith. Joseph had bitter experience of this. You remember how that as a result of his brothers’ hatred he found himself up for sale in Egypt and was bought as a slave by Capt. Potipher. The writer records that ’the Lord was with Joseph’ (39:2) so obviously he was a man of faith, and yet God allowed him to be thrown into prison as a result of the lies which Potipher’s wife told about him. What a reward for his faithfulness to his master and determination not to sin!
He had worked so hard, and it has all come to nothing. He’s held to his integrity, and where’s it got him? Is there no justice? What now of any hope of God using his young life? This must have been terribly hard for Joseph to accept at that point of time but from God’s perspective it was quite different. He would have been astonished had he known that the historian would note following this incident ’the Lord was with Joseph and showed him stead-fast love’ (39:21). And yet by the time that Joseph was telling his brothers ’God meant it for good’, he knew that God had been with him. He would certainly confirm what the hymnwriter affirms: ’Ill that He blesses is our good: And unblest good is ill: And all is right that seems most wrong, If it be His sweet Will.’
That’s how the Christian is called on to accept the apparent victory of the forces of evil: to believe that we are surrounded by the steadfast love of God despite every indication to the contrary. A bishop was once called to the scene of a mine disaster. Someone placed in his hands a beautiful piece of embroidery on which the words ’God is love’ had been worked. What could the bishop say? Surely the fact of the disaster contradicted the message and made it a mockery? He held the embroidered words up so the stricken people could see the message that had been so perfectly worked according to a plan. Then he turned the canvass round and all they could see were the tangled ends of the thread, which certainly didn’t seem to make sense at all. This illustrates that God’s plan and God’s work is absolutely perfect and it’s all initiated and outworked in love. But we can’t see it in that way now. All we can see are tangled ends, and yet one day, some day we’ll understand. Another lesson to learn is that:
GOD’S TIMING MAY NOT COINCIDE WITH OUR COMFORT
Joseph is in prison. It’s unfortunate for him, for he’s just the age when he should be thinking about setting himself up for the future. Still the historian records that ’the Lord was with him; whatever he did the Lord made it prosper’. But year after year rolls by, and all the early promise has been wasted away forever, and then we come to the episode of the butler and baker’s dreams. With the butler’s restoration to favour Joseph’s hopes were high - surely his break must be here at last? But the butler forgot! Couldn’t God have made the butler remember Joseph? Of course he could. Then did God intend deliberately that Joseph be left there day after day, month after month, two long tragic years before He would make another move? Yes, that’s the way God does it. That’s His plan in love.
This is hard to understand as all who have prayed to God with complete confidence and faith and yet have had, in God’s inscrutable wisdom, to wait for the answer. But to wait for God’s perfect time is so worth while. When that moment arrives it’s wonderful to see the way He accomplishes His designs to the benefit of His people: ’His purposes will ripen fast, unfolding every hour; the bud may have a bitter taste, but sweet will be the flower.’ Many years afterwards Joseph could look back with gratitude to God and say, ’God meant it for good.’ A message from a Wayside Pulpit poster declares: ’Life is only understood backwards, but must be lived forwards.’ Joseph’s experience encourages us to trust in God because He sees the end from the beginning. But there’s still more to learn, for:
GOD MAY PERMIT ADVERSITY FOR OUR BENEFIT
From the first glimpse of Joseph that the Bible gives us it doesn’t seem that he’s very promising material for the statesman he became in later life. How he delighted in being superior to his brothers is shown in the way he told them of his dreams. And not only that, he was a talebearer as well. If ever there was a conceited, spoilt brat of youth, it was Joseph. But one has to be fair to him. It wasn’t all his own fault. Just think of the complexes he may have inherited from his father and his family and the influences they would have had on him in his formative years. Jacob had a history of crookedness from the time he cheated his brother Esau of his birthright. He knew how to give as good as he got when he had to deal with his treacherous uncle Laban. And while Joseph was still young, his mother, Rachael, died. She had been Jacob’s favourite wife, and into Joseph’s life is poured all the affection once reserved for his mother. With this knowledge of his background we needn’t wonder at the sort of young man he turned out to be and perhaps we would be more tolerant of the young delinquents of today - it’s not a11 their fault either. Today’s environment - the lack of respect for authority, the casualness in relationships, where very little seems sacred - all acts to undermine standards of righteousness and morality.
Some difficulties and even sorrows stem from our own waywardness and disobedience to God’s laws. The fact that we are Christians doesn’t exempt us from reaping in this life what we have sown. But although it may seen bitter at the time it’s to our ultimate benefit if this grief, as St. Paul said it should, produces a repentance which leads us back to God. So often we see trouble, suffering and disappointments as purely negative - obstacles, hindrances and setbacks. But the Bible casts a different light on them. God’s aim through the suffering of Christians is to give us a desire for, and to make us fit for heaven. If Christ is to present us faultless ’without blemish before the presence of his glory’ (Jude 24) then He must separate us from the sin which so easily besets us. We must be purged of the ugly aspects of our lives which aren’t to go with us to heaven. Because God is love He wills His best for Joseph. He’s at work in him, uprooting the things that are unworthy, and creating instead the qualities that are good. It was a long hard process with Joseph involving the adversity of losin-g his family, his home, his wealth and his freedom - drastic action, but all done by a loving God.
There are some interesting facts about the sisal plant from which is made tough sisal twine. It grows in Yucatan, Mexico, in hard stony soil. Some Americans visited the area and decided that there might be good money to be made in growing it in richer soil under better conditions. So they started a sisal plantation in Florida where the plant found life no longer a struggle for survival and grew to enormous size. The business promised tremendous returns until the time came for reaping. It was then that the leaf from which fibre vital for the twine comes collapsed into a soft pulp. The tough fibre-quality was missing. They learned then that the sisal plant acquired its toughness by its battle with adverse circumstances - the wind, the heat and the barren soil. God doesn’t take pleasure in allowing the blasts of adversity to trouble His people but in His mercy and wisdom knows just what is necessary to foster the growth of spiritual character.
What a blessing God’s dealings with Joseph proved to be. Once his faith and character had been proved in the school of life’s experiences God entrusted him with saving a nation from disaster and at the same time preserving his own family. Our vocation as Christians is even higher. God’s aim is that we should bear the family likeness of His Son. When that has been accomplished by the grace of God I’m confident we shall look back over some of life’s tiresome, even hard, experiences, and be able to say in the words of Joseph, ’you meant evil against me but God meant it for good.’
Whatever God allows has a loving purpose behind it. The apostle Paul dearly loved God and served Him to the utmost of his capacity and yet we read of him being humiliated by ’a thorn in the flesh’. What it was that permanently irritated him isn’t certain. What is clear is that God used it to keep him a humble servant of His and to give him the opportunity of proving that God’s grace is all sufficient. This leads me to say:
GOD’S PURPOSES WILL ULTIMATELY TRIUMPH
We may be assured that everything that affects the Christian comes under the compass of his permissive will. Paul’s experience and the history of the Church teach that the devil often oversteps himself. In reading the biography of D. L. Moody, the famous American evangelist of the late 19th century, and I found an example of this. When he and Sankey were holding a campaign in Dublin some comedians made jokes about their names in the Music Hall, hoping for a big laugh. But instead it must have offended their audience. Someone started singing a hymn and all joined in until the comedians fled off the stage. Happenings that promise to be an over-whelming disaster often turn out in God’s good time to be of great benefit. Obstacles set up by Satan to hinder and stop the progress of the Gospel become stepping-stones.
That’s the quality of the loving support God gives to His people. He’s touched with the feeling of our adversity. Our God isn’t one who is detached and indifferent. He’s ’Emmanuel, God with us.’ Christianity isn’t escapism from life’s tribulations, the problems that won’t go away, but he promises to be with us in them and He will be with us if we are willing to acknowledge Him, to trust Him and to give Him the glory.
A parable is told of a farmer who owned an old mule. The mule fell into the farmer¹s well. The farmer heard the mule "braying", making a terrible noise. After carefully assessing the situation, the farmer sympathised with the mule, but decided that neither the mule nor the well were worth the trouble of saving. Instead he called his neighbours together and told them what had happened. They decided to bury the old mule in the well and put him out of his misery. Initially, the old mule was hysterical! But as the farmer and his neighbours continued shovelling rubble into the well that hit the mule’s back, a thought struck the poor animal. It suddenly dawned on him that every time a shovel load of rubble landed on his back he should shake it off and step up! This he did blow after blow. "Shake it off and step up!" he repeated to encourage himself. No matter how painful the blows, or distressing the situation seemed the old mule fought "panic" and just kept right on shaking it off and stepping up! It wasn’t long before the old mule, battered and exhausted, stepped triumphantly over the wall of that well.
The mule thought at first that what was being thrown at him would bury him but in fact it actually blessed him, all because of the manner in which he handled his adversity. That’s life! If we face our problems, respond to them positively, and refuse to give in to panic, bitterness or self-pity. The adversities that come along to bury us usually have within them the potential to benefit and bless us! Remember forgiveness, faith, prayer, praise and hope are excellent ways to ’shake it off and step up’ out of the wells in which we find ourselves!
’We know that to those who 1ove God, who are called according
to his Plan, everything that happens fits into a pattern for good.’ The experiences of Joseph and Paul confirm this in the life of a Christian. The ’pattern for good’ is anything but ease and comfort, but the God who fully met the need of those in ages past is unchanging in His faithfulness. Paul clinches his argument with these words: ’For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, not things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (8:38,39). He challenges us to prove him true.
