Providence!

Genesis 43

Good morning! This is Pastor Jerry Ingalls from New Castle First Baptist Church and today is Thursday, May 27.

How do you respond to difficult circumstances in your life?

Genesis 43:1 tells us about the difficult circumstances facing Jacob and his sons in the Promised Land: “Now the famine was severe in the land.”

We are reminded of the difficult circumstance that is the backdrop of this entire saga. The famine is the driving force of this whole story. Actually, the driving force is not a famine; it is God!

God did for His chosen people what they would not and could not do for themselves: God, using a famine, properly motivated them. Amazingly, this sounds very much like a story that Jesus taught about the Prodigal Son. What was it that finally caused the Prodigal Son to return to his father?

You guessed it: a famine! Luke 15:14 captures this easily missed, but critical detail in Jesus’ parable: “Now when he had spent everything, a severe famine occurred in that country, and he began to be impoverished.”

Jesus understands the importance of God’s providence and builds it into His parable.

We often fret and complain about difficult circumstances, but instead shouldn’t we examine each and every opportunity for God’s providence? “Providence is the governing power of God that oversees His creation and works out His plans for it.”^[1]

In fact, providence is the finale of the Joseph saga as we learn from Genesis 50:20, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive.”

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Footnotes:

[1] Gerald Bray, “Providence,” in Lexham Survey of Theology, ed. Mark Ward et al. (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2018). Bray further explains, “Human beings often question God’s good providence in the face of natural disasters—floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and so on. Christians have recognized that such events are indeed tragic but are also part of God’s overarching good plan for what he has made.”