God's Sovereingty and Evil

Scripture Reading: Exodus 1:8-22

Key Verse: Than a new king who did not know about Joseph came to power in Egypt (Exodus 1:8)

Meditation: From the examples of Job, Paul and others we learn we should not attribute all of our human circumstances to the intentional working of God. However, if we accept the fact of God's sovereignty then we must acknowledge God has at least permitted what is happening to us. According to Romans 8:28 Paul also encourages us to believe our sovereign God can rescue good from those things that do not originate with Him. Joseph, in Genesis 50:20 underlines the principle of  sovereignty," You intended to harm me,  but God intend it for good... the saving of many lives." Observe how God "works good out of the evil intentions of Pharaoh and gradually pries Israel lose from the grip of Egypt.

Simultaneous with the inauguration of a new king, the past good fortunes of Israel seemed to plummet immediately. A whole sequence of stringent measures were immediately leveled against Egypt(Israel) that turned their hopes into a nightmare, but ultimately turned their attention back to the land promise to their ancestors. 

Stage One of Egypt's *planned oppression was to suddenly strip the Israelis of their status as legitimate landowner to that of alien slaves. The taskmasters expected maximum output of bricks from increasing limited resources. Then  as the new king observed the tremendous Hebrew population explosion, he became paranoid and started Stage Two of his oppressive measures. He instructed the Hebrew midwives to kill all male children at birth. When **their efforts failed, he decided to enlist the entire Egyptian population in a program of national ***genocide of all Hebrew male children. 

Thought for the Day: The sovereign God continues to be at work in the midst of our trails and He will also consummate our future victory.

* Ramesess II was in-charge of Egypt at the time  And Egypt was the most powerful country at the time. The slave labour force was needed to build the wonderful city he had planned on the Nile River Delta. The city is near a town called Qantir today.

** the midwives were instructed to kill the male babies which they did not do.

***  The genocide did not happen. Colin Humpreys in The Miracles of Exodus uses a whole chapter on how this population explosion did not occur. The number, my uncle has been using (based on the knowledge of himself and others at the time) would have been very great at that time in history.