God Always Begins with the End in Mind

God’s sovereignty versus our free will.

Which one determines our future? Maybe the answer is both? “Either/or” creates a dissonance none of us are comfortable with.

It is an argument that has dominated the last five hundred years of church history and isn’t likely to be resolved any time soon.

The “sovereignty” people honestly want to protect God’s prerogative to do whatever He desires…and I can’t fault them for wanting to do that.

The “free will” people want to grapple honestly with a world saturated with evil, and rapidly getting worse, without assailing the sovereignty of God…and I can’t fault them for that.

But what if God, in His sovereignty, chooses to give humanity free will so that those who choose to love and serve Him would do so out of the freedom, given by God, to respond to His grace…and not by any predetermined plan forced on them?

If this is true, then God, who knows the beginning from the end, outside of time Himself, is weaving His sovereign plans for me into an amazing tapestry, with threads of pure grace and threads of, with what He knows ahead of time, will be my choices and actions.

Like Corrie Ten Boom used to illustrate in her messages, all we see is the underside of the tapestry, with indiscernible patterns and hanging threads. What God sees is the beauty of His design in our lives that we will have to wait to appreciate until we see Him face to face.

IN THE MEAN TIME…we trust that, in each of our lives, through all the twists and turns, the mountain tops and deep valleys, He begins with the end in mind.

Take the life of Joseph, just in Genesis 37, as a prime example of what I’m talking about.

• Joseph is loved by his father above all his brothers, which he has no control over, but it sets the stage for more than normal sibling rivalry.

• Joseph is favored by God with two very detailed dreams that seem to indicate a future leadership role for him. He has no control over that.

• Joseph’s response to the dreams, telling his family about them, solidifies the hatred of his brothers. (Maybe he should have kept quiet about the dreams, but God uses even the brothers’ animosity to set the stage for what He is planning.)

• Joseph is sent by his father to check on his brothers and the welfare of the livestock, thought to be in Shechem. The journey and the destination were none of Joseph’s doing.

• Joseph arrives in Shechem, only to learn that, for reasons never explained, the brothers have taken the flocks to Dothan…which just “happens” to be on the caravan trade route between Gilead and Egypt. (If the brothers had stayed in Shechem, they would not have been on this trade route, which God was planning to use to get Joseph down to Egypt.)

• The brothers see Joseph at a distance and some want to kill him and be rid of his dreams. But God intervenes through Reuben and he convinces his brothers to throw Joseph into a dry cistern, instead.

• Then, just as the brothers are sitting down to eat, a caravan of traders on their way to Egypt “happen” to pass by. (That’s because God needed Joseph in Egypt to fulfill His sovereign plan to save Israel from the coming seven year famine.)

• Joseph is sold to the traders as a slave and “happened” to be bid on and bought by the captain of the palace guard. Not to some farmer. Not to some businessman or a slave broker. (God was positioning Joseph so that, later, he would have access to Pharaoh himself.

Now, just think about all of the moving pieces in this story…

• … that got this favored son from Hebron, near the southern end of the promised land, all the way to Dothan near the north
• …right on the trade route between Gilead in the northeast to Egypt in the far south
• …at the precise time a caravan of traders was heading south
• …with the hatred of Joseph’s brothers at a fever pitch
• …with one brother, Reuben, committed to not killing him, but rather throwing him into a cistern
• …the traders in tree gum wanting to buy Joseph as a slave
• …and, of all the buyers at the slave market, Potiphar has the winning bid
• …who gets Joseph close to Pharaoh.

Do you see all the points at which the story could have ended up so differently?

That’s the sovereignty of God.

Do you see, in this story, how God began with the end in mind in Joseph’s life?

That’s the sovereignty of God.

But look at all the points where human decisions were in play…with Joseph, Jacob, the brothers, the traders, and Potiphar!

That’s free will.

And God wove all those threads together so that, at the end of the story, Joseph is able to say to his brothers, “What you intended for evil, God used for good.”

Trust Him today with the threads of your life, even if they don’t look like a discernible pattern to you. He always begins with the end in mind.

Our role is to listen, trust, pray, submit, obey and humble ourselves under His mighty hand.