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Answer
God works in ways that are often considered “mysterious” — meaning that God’s methods frequently leave people completely bewildered. Why did God instruct Joshua and the children of Israel to march around the city of Jericho for a week (Joshua 6:1-4)? What possible good could come from Paul and Silas being arrested and unjustly beaten (Acts 16:22-24)? Why did God permit Joni Eareckson, a talented and lively seventeen-year-old girl, to break her neck in a diving accident and spend the remainder of her life in a wheelchair?
The methods God employs, the interaction of human free will and God’s sovereignty, and God’s ultimate purposes are far beyond what the limited human mind can comprehend. The Bible and the accounts of Christians throughout history are filled with genuine stories of how God transformed situation after situation, problem after problem, life after life, completely turning them around — often in the most unexpected, astonishing, and inexplicable ways.
The life of Joseph serves as a prime example of the mysterious manner in which God sometimes operates (Genesis 37:1—50:26). In Genesis 50:20, Joseph tells his brothers, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.” With this statement, Joseph encapsulates the events of his life, starting from the harm his brothers inflicted on him to his realization that it was all part of God’s benevolent plan to save His covenant people (G
Genesis 15:13-14)..
There was a famine in Canaan where Abraham’s descendants, the Hebrew people, had settled “And the famine was severe in the land.”, (Genesis 43:1), so Joseph brought all of them out of Canaan and into Egypt (Genesis 46:26-27). Joseph was able to provide food for them all because he had become governor of Egypt and was in charge of buying and selling food “And Joseph was the governor over the land, and he was the one who sold to all the people of the land: and Joseph’s brothers came, and bowed down themselves before him with their faces to the earth.”, (Genesis 42:6). Why was Joseph in Egypt? Joseph’s brothers had sold him into slavery some twenty years earlier and were now dependent upon him for their sustenance “Then there passed by Midianite merchants; and they drew and lifted up Joseph out of the pit, and sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver: and they brought Joseph into Egypt.”, (Genesis 37:28). This irony is only a small part of what happened in Joseph’s life; God’s paradoxical movement is evident throughout all of Joseph’s history. If Joseph had not been governor over Egypt and relocated his kinsmen there, there would be no story of Moses, no exodus from Egypt four hundred years later (Exodus 6:1-8).
If Joseph had had a choice whether or not his brothers sold him into slavery, it’s reasonable to assume Joseph would have said “no.” If Joseph had been given the choice whether or not to be imprisoned on false charges (Genesis 39:1-20), again, he probably would.I have said “no.” Who would willingly choose such mistreatment? But it was in Egypt that Joseph was able to save his family, and it was in prison that the door opened to the palace.
God “declares the end from the beginning” (Isaiah 46:10-11), and we can be sure every event in the life of a believer serves God’s ultimate plan (Isaiah 14:24; Romans 8:28). To our minds, the way God weaves remarkable events in and through our lives may seem illogical and beyond our understanding. However, we walk by faith not by sight «(for we walk by faith, not by sight:) », (2 Corinthians 5:7). Christians know that God’s thoughts are above our own thoughts and God’s ways are higher than ours, “as the heavens are higher than the earth” (Isaiah 55:8-9).
