Prevenient Grace

Sometimes God—the Divine Eagle—disturbs the nest to further His purposes. An illustration of this concerns that remarkable Old Testament character, Joseph. When Joseph’s anxious and unenlightened brothers are ushered into his presence, they fall before him on their faces. What a moment! Joseph must have seen in a flash the panorama of his strange and eventful life: his boyhood in Canaan, the dreams by which he had been haunted, the growing hostility of his brothers, the awful day when they fell upon him, cast him into a pit, and sold him to the Ishmaelites, the journey down into Egypt, and his life as a slave. He must have remembered, too, the extraordinary events that led to his becoming the Keeper of the Royal Seal with an authority second only to the throne.

But it is not the events, significant as they are, that interest me most, but the conclusions that Joseph comes to as he ponders the past: “Don’t be worried or angry with yourselves,” he says, “for selling me here, because God sent me …” Three times he says it: “God sent me ahead of you …” and “It was not you who sent me here, but God …” The astonishing thing is that there was no anger or bitterness in his heart. And why? Because he recognized the work of the Divine Eagle who had pushed him out of the nest in Canaan in order that he might be the provider for his family in time of famine. God moved him into a position of greater usefulness. “You sold me,” he said, “but God sent me.”

Further Study

Gn 37; 47:11-12, 27; 50:15-21

How was Joseph used as an instrument in God’s hand?

What was his final response to his brothers?