the timing of God

In the Fullness of Time.

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Then the chief cupbearer said to Pharaoh, “I remember my offenses today. When Pharaoh was angry with his servants and put me and the chief baker in custody in the house of the captain of the guard, we dreamed on the same night, he and I, each having a dream with its own interpretation. A young Hebrew was there with us, a servant of the captain of the guard. When we told him, he interpreted our dreams to us, giving an interpretation to each man according to his dream. And as he interpreted to us, so it came about. I was restored to my office, and the baker was hanged.”

Then Pharaoh sent and called Joseph, and they quickly brought him out of the pit. And when he had shaved himself and changed his clothes, he came in before Pharaoh. And Pharaoh said to Joseph, “I have had a dream, and there is no one who can interpret it. I have heard it said of you that when you hear a dream you can interpret it.” Joseph answered Pharaoh, “It is not in me; God will give Pharaoh a favorable answer.” Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Behold, in my dream I was standing on the banks of the Nile. Seven cows, plump and attractive, came up out of the Nile and fed in the reed grass. Seven other cows came up after them, poor and very ugly and thin, such as I had never seen in all the land of Egypt. And the thin, ugly cows ate up the first seven plump cows, but when they had eaten them no one would have known that they had eaten them, for they were still as ugly as at the beginning. Then I awoke. I also saw in my dream seven ears growing on one stalk, full and good. Seven ears, withered, thin, and blighted by the east wind, sprouted after them, and the thin ears swallowed up the seven good ears. And I told it to the magicians, but there was no one who could explain it to me.” – Genesis 41:9-24 ESV

Two years have passed. During that time, Joseph has remained in prison, waiting and most likely wondering when his God was going to do something about his circumstances. But what may have appeared to Joseph to be a delay was the perfect unfolding of God’s divine plan. God had not been up in heaven coming up with a plan. He was not desperately and hurriedly trying to figure out what to do about Joseph’s circumstances. His plan had been in place for a long time – even before Joseph was born. The seeming delay in God’s plan was nothing of the sort. It is reminiscent of what Paul says in his letter to the Galatians when talking about Jesus incarnation.

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. – Galatians 4:4-5 ESV

At just the right moment, when the timing was perfectly right, God sent His Son. All the conditions were right. He didn’t act too soon and He was not too late. That is the idea we have in the story of Joseph. Two years may have seemed like a long time to Joseph, but for God it was nothing. To Him “a thousand years are as a passing day, as brief as a few night hours” (Psalm 90:4 NLT).

When the time was right, God acted, Pharaoh had his dreams, and the cupbearer remembered Joseph. The Pharaoh, disturbed by the nature of his two dreams, demanded that his magicians tell him their meaning. When they were unable to do so, the cupbearer told Pharaoh about his own encounter with Joseph in the prison. He recalled how Joseph had accurately interpreted his dream and that of the former chief baker. So Pharaoh sent for Joseph. After two long years, this moment had to have come as a shock to Joseph. One minute he is in prison, the next he is standing before the most powerful man in Egypt.

Joseph’s long-awaited moment had finally arrive. He was going to get an audience with the Pharaoh. Not only that, he was going to get to use his God-given ability to interpret dreams in order to do for Pharaoh what no other man could do. But rather than gloating over his good fortune or seeing this as his opportunity to boost his resume, Joseph wisely and humbly gives credit to God. When Pharaoh asks Joseph to tell him the meaning of his dreams, Joseph replies: “It is beyond my power to do this. But God can tell you what it means and set you at ease” (Genesis 41:16 NLT). It would have been easy for Joseph to take the credit. He could have just interpreted the dreams and allowed Pharaoh to think he was something special. But Joseph knew that any ability he possessed had been given to him by God. And he recognized that this was no coincidence. His entire life had seemed to be built around dreams. He had had two of his own and his sharing of them with his family had led his brothers to sell him into slavery. While in prison, he had interpreted the two dreams of the cupbearer and the baker and that had led to this moment in time. And now he was being given the two dreams of Pharaoh to interpret. This could not be a case of coincidence. God was at work and Joseph knew it. All six dreams had been God’s doing. And their meanings and interpretations were the work of God. 

While God is not limited by time, He uses it. While He exists outside the bounds of time, He chooses to work within it. Every event in Joseph’s life, from his birth to his betrayal, his imprisonment to his divine appointment with Pharaoh, had been the work of God. Nothing had happened outside of God’s plan.

The psalmist reminds us, “Be still in the presence of the Lord, and wait patiently for him to act” (Psalm 37:7a NLT). We are creatures who are bound by time. We are obsessed with time. Every day we are reminded of times constant passing. The sun rises and sets. The arms on the clock move around and around in a ceaseless cycle. We run out of time. We long for more time. We bill our time. We enjoy the good times and dread the bad ones. We spend time as well as waste it. We give our time and have it taken from us. But God would have us trust Him with it. Like everything else in life, our time is a gift from God. We can’t make more of it. We are each given just so much of it. And God uses time to accomplish His will in our lives. Joseph’s two years in prison were not wasted. Neither were the years that Paul spent in prison. Jesus’ three years of ministry on this earth were just as important as the hours He spent hanging on the cross. Each moment God gives us is precious and a part of His divine plan for our lives. We must see them and seize them as opportunities to watch Him work. In the fullness of time, He will do what He has planned to do. In the meantime, we may have to wait, but our time will not be wasted.

Waiting On God In Faith.

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By faith he left Egypt, not being afraid of the anger of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible. – Hebrews 11:27 ESV

Once again, we have an apparent contradiction between the Exodus account of the life of Moses and that of the author of Hebrews. Exodus tells us that when Moses became aware that news of his murder of the Egyptian had gotten out, he became afraid. “Then Moses was afraid, and thought, ‘Surely the thing is known’” (Exodus 2:14 ESV). Then it goes on to say that when Pharaoh heard about it,  “he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh and stayed in the land of Midian” (Exodus 2:15 ESV). But the Hebrews account says, “By faith he left Egypt, not being afraid of the anger of the king.” Which is it? Was Moses afraid or not? Did he flee or not? The author of Hebrews, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit gives us insight into just what was going on. Yes, Moses afraid, but the context tells us that his fear was based on his awareness that news of the murder had spread. His little secret was out. By the time Pharaoh heard about it, Moses had had time to think about it and to reflect on what he should do. According to Hebrews, he had already made plans to go to Midian, not out of fear, but out of faith. Interestingly enough, the Hebrew word for “flee” can mean “to hasten” or “to put to flight.” The Exodus passage can make it sound like Moses fled for his life out of fear of Pharaoh. But when you combine the two passages, it makes better sense that Moses was put to flight by Pharaoh. We almost immediately think that Moses was fearing for his life. He ran because he was fearful that Pharaoh was going to kill him. But think about what Hebrews 11:24-25 says, “By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.” Moses had already made the decision to extricate himself from Pharaoh’s household. But as the adopted grandson of the Pharaoh, the likelihood that he would be put to death for murder was probably slim to none. What Moses feared was having to go back to his life in the royal palace with its “fleeting pleasures of sin” (Hebrews 11:25 ESV). Again, we read that Moses left Egypt because, “he considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward” (Hebrews 11:26 ESV).

So it was “By faith he left Egypt, not being afraid of the anger of the king” (Hebrews 11:27a ESV). Moses didn’t leave Egypt because of Pharaoh, but because of God. “He kept right on going because he kept his eyes on the one who is invisible” (Hebrews 11:27b NLT). Moses headed to Midian, not out of fear for his life, but out of faith in God. He somehow knew that God was going to fulfill His promise to His people and restore them to the land. He didn’t know how yet. He didn’t know when. But he believed it was just a matter of time and he was content to go to Midian and persevere until that time came. Little did Moses know that it would be 40 years before God acted. And little did Moses know that when God did decide to act, He would choose to do so through Moses.

The day would come when God deemed it time to redeem His people. Exodus tells us, “During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.  God saw the people of Israel—and God knew” (Exodus 2:23-25 ESV). God knew. And He knew where Moses was. He knew what Moses had been doing. The flight of Moses had been part of God’s plan. Just as Moses had been kept alive in the basket made of bulrushes, Moses had been protected in Midian, removed from the effects of the fleeting pleasures of sin and the treasures of Egypt. During his 40 years in Midian, Moses had given up his quest to be the savior of the people of Israel. He still believed in God’s promise to redeem His people, but he had long ago given up the idea that he might play a role. But God had other plans. He was going to use Moses, but in a way that Moses would find surprising and a bit scary. Hebrews says that Moses “kept his eyes on the one who is invisible.” During his time in Midian, he kept trusting in God. Remember how the author describe faith in verses 1: “Not faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Moses had never seen God and yet he “kept his eyes” on Him. He kept believing in the reality of Him who he could not see and the promises he had yet to see fulfilled. According to Hebrews 11:6, faith is required to please God and whoever would want to draw near to God “must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.”

It would be safe to say that Moses sought God during his time in Midian, and the day would come when God revealed Himself to Moses.

Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. And Moses said, “I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.” When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” – Exodus 3:1-4 ESV

Moses had a direct encounter with the unseen God. He came face to face with Yahweh. And it would be a life-changing moment. Forty years after leaving Egypt, he would be returning, not as the grandson of Pharaoh, but as the representative of God. By faith he had left Egypt and now he was going to be returning the same way – trusting in the promises of God Almighty. To be directed by God requires faith in God. We must believe that He is at work in our lives in ways that we cannot see or even understand. When Moses left Egypt, he left everything behind.  He was forced to begin a new life. But his new circumstances would prove to little more than a temporary pause in the plan of God. God was watching and waiting, preparing to implement His divine redemptive plan at just the right time and using just the right person for the job: Moses.