We've been thinking all this week on the podcast about the mystery of God's providence

and trying to draw out some of the lessons that emerged from the story of Joseph in Genesis 37 through 50.

And we've seen how this whole section is actually headed. These are

the generations of Jacob, and we've been watching the way the Lord worked providentially and graciously

in Jacob and in Joseph, and then in his brothers. But before the weekends, I think we need

to say something more about Joseph himself.

There are wonderful words towards the end of the book of Genesis, aren't they?

When he tells his brothers, you meant evil by what you did to me, but God meant it for good.

He was really expanding on what he'd said earlier when they discovered to their horror that

he was the Prime Minister of Egypt. It wasn't you who sent me here, he said, but God. Well, it

probably didn't feel like that when he was down the pit, or when he was sold as a slave in Egypt, or when his success

in Egypt was destroyed by Potipher's wife, or when his hopes were dashed when the cup-bearer

whose dream he'd interpreted forgot him, and he was left in jail.

This isn't a story about how God's providence means God's people always enjoy health, wealth and happiness, is it?

But it is a story about how God sovereignly works things out for his own glory.

I think we can see that in several ways.

For one thing, God brought Joseph to the right place at the right time, didn't

He? God's timing is significant. There's a very interesting hint about this and the time markers

were given in Genesis 37 through 50. Joseph is 17 when the story begins,

and he's 30 when he becomes Prime Minister of Egypt.

That's 14 years by inclusive reckoning.

And that time marker isn't accidental.

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