Who Decides What It Means
As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result Genesis 50:20
Meant – “How can this happen to me?” This is probably a familiar question. Life has a way of pushing us toward these questions with each new occurrence of unexpected trauma. One of the reasons I love Genesis is that it shows men and woman in stark reality. The Bible covers up nothing. It doesn’t water down or glorify. It just tells it like it is. And when it comes to the questions about evil events, this story from Genesis helps us re-arrange our perspective. “How can this happen to me?” is a really question about who determines the meaning, not what transpired. Once we get that right, things change.
If there was anyone who could have complained about unnecessary suffering, it was Joseph. His brother tried to kill him. He was sold into slavery. He was tossed in jail on false charges. He was displaced from all his family. Yet, at the end of his life, he sees that all the evil planned for him was turned to good by the sovereign God.
The verb is important. It is hashav. This is not a verb of accidental occurrence. It is a verb of deliberate intention and imagination. People sought to harm Joseph. He was the victim of their abuse. Joseph tells us plainly, “You acted with malice aforethought toward me.” But the true meaning of these evil acts did not lie under the authority of the perpetrators. God took their evil and turned it to His good. The events did not change. God didn’t miraculously alter Joseph’s slavery or imprisonment. He just made something else happen through it; something that the perpetrators could never have anticipated. A follower of God is always just a bit disconnected. The explanations offered do not make sense from the world’s perspective, because a believer is not in the grip of the world’s ways.
Can you speak Joseph’s words about your circumstances? Do you serve a God Who is big enough to take the evil events in your life and turn them to His good? Or do you whine and complain to God, “Why did You allow this? Why did you make me suffer? Why won’t you fix things?” Get the Genesis perspective. God doesn’t need to alter events in order to bring about His purposes. His is a much more glorious plan. He takes what others plan for evil and uses it to bring about good. He doesn’t erase the evil; He transforms it.
If we learn anything from Joseph, it is this: God engineers. Submitted to His will, we must learn to wait before we can see real evil turned into real good. Is your God big enough to turn evil into good, or do you serve a God Who is only capable of miraculous intervention?
