James 1:1-8 – Hard Times and Wisdom
In the opening of the letter of James, he encouraged believers enduring difficult times, encouraging them to seek God’s wisdom.
God Meant It for Good
But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive. (Genesis 50:20)
After their father Jacob died, Joseph’s brothers were afraid he would use his power and prestige in Egypt to get revenge against the brothers who had sold him as a slave, essentially leaving him for dead.
From a human perspective, Joseph had the right and the ability to get revenge against his brothers, but he knew God was God and he was not. Such retribution belonged to God, not Joseph’s.
Yet, Joseph did not romanticize the wrong his brothers did. He plainly said, You meant evil against me. Although this was true, it was not the greatest truth. The greatest truth was God meant it for good.
Every Christian should be able to see the overarching and overruling hand of God in their life; to know that no matter what evil man brings against us, God can use it for good. Joseph did not have the text of Romans 8:28, but he had the truth of it: And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. Sadly, some of us who have the text do not have the truth.
Ultimately, our lives are not in the hands of men, but in the hands of God, who overrules all things for His glory.
There was an old minister who had a unique gift to minister to distressed and discouraged people. In his Bible, he carried an old bookmark woven of silk threads into a phrase. The back of it, where the threads were knotted and tied, was a hopeless tangle. He would take the bookmark out and show the troubled person this side of the bookmark and ask them to make sense of it. They never could. Then the pastor would turn it over, and on the front were white letters against a solid background saying, “God is love.” When events in our life seem tangled and meaningless, it is because we can see only one side of the tapestry.
There was an immediate good in the situation: to save many people alive. If this large family did not come to Egypt and live, they would have perished in the famine. Had the family barely survived, it would have assimilated into the surrounding Canaanite tribes. Only by coming to Egypt could they be preserved and grow into a distinct nation.
The evil done by Joseph’s brothers became part of a chain of events that led to the survival of the Jewish people, and the eventual coming of Jesus the Messiah according to God’s plan.
Thankfully, the sin others do against us never is the last word. God has the last word, and believers can therefore forgive those who sin against them. Can you say it? “God meant it for good.”
