The Mysterious Ways of the God of Wonders 1

Friends, we have come again to search the scriptures. Today, I want to speak on The Mysterious Ways of the God of Wonders. And we are going to take our text from Genesis 45:3-9

Genesis 45:3-9

³ Then Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph; does my father still live?” But his brothers could not answer him, for they were dismayed in his presence. ⁴ And Joseph said to his brothers, “Please come near to me.” So they came near. Then he said: “I am Joseph your brother, whom you sold into Egypt. ⁵ But now, do not therefore be grieved or angry with yourselves because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life. ⁶ For these two years the famine has been in the land, and there are still five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvesting. ⁷ And God sent me before you to preserve a posterity for you in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance. ⁸ So now it was not you who sent me here, but God; and He has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt.

⁹ “Hurry and go up to my father, and say to him, ‘Thus says your son Joseph: “God has made me lord of all Egypt; come down to me, do not tarry.

PRAYER:

Father, we want to dedicate this moment to You as we look into Your Word. May You refresh our minds by the entrance of Your Word, in Jesus Name we pray. Amen!

The Mysterious Ways of the God of Wonders!

In Isaiah 55:8, God says that His thoughts are not our thoughts neither are His ways our ways. In fact, they are as far apart as the heavens and the earth are far apart from each other. To put it differently, God’s thought and ways are as high as the heavens, and ours as low as the earth. In other words, God’s thought and ways are heavenly while ours are earthly. We don’t think as God thinks and we don’t behave as God behaves. This is an indictment of sort because those recreated in the image of God – in the image and likeness of God through Christ should mirror the thoughts and ways of God. Shouldn’t they? Though they can never replicate His thoughts and His ways. Thus the mysteries of God appear even more mysterious the farther apart our thoughts and our ways are from His. By His very nature God is mysterious. He is a being whom none can see or touch. God is mysterious because He is a being that cannot be fully explained, a being who is infinite, though dealing with finite man; a being who is Spirit, but deals with men and women who are physical. No wonder we who are finite and physical cannot really know Him except by revelation. Jesus says that no one knows the Father except the Son and the one to whom the Son wills to reveal Him. This is in Matthew 11:27.

What do we mean by mystery? Mystery, in the Greek New Testament Mysturian, is the truth about God, about His ways and His works, without revelation from Him that will remain unknown to man. The truths about God, His ways and His works that will remain unknown to man except God chooses to reveal them to us. Jesus speaks of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, in Mathew 16:17. Paul the Apostle explains the mystery of the Gospel of grace in Ephesians 3:1-9. The mysteries of God stretch beyond human thought, and cannot be known without divine revelation.

The mystery of God begins. I was struck by the mysterious ways God works when I read the story of Joseph in Genesis, the text we read. We just read a small portion of it. But the account starts way back in Genesis 47. Early in the life of Joseph God marked him out as His instrument or His vessel. God gave him a glimpse of his future as a teenage boy, the future he was supposed to fulfill. But Joseph did not fully understand it, and he did not handle it well. In Genesis 37 if you read from verse 5.

Joseph started revealing to his brothers the dreams of the revelation of him, of his future that God gave him. And he was not very tactful in revealing toes secrets, those mysteries. And his brother who hated him in the first place because he was the favorite of their father hated him even more, because he told them by the revelation God gave him, by the dreams he had, that he was going to be above them, and they would bow before him someday. They did not take that kindly but his father kept those things in his heart. Isn’t it a mystery that God would choose Joseph the eleventh of the twelve sons of Jacob?

Some people give the impression that God chose Joseph because he was morally upright. He was the one who was reporting the misbehaviors of his brothers to his father. And then he was the one too who resisted Mrs. Potiphar’s sexual advances. And for this reason we conclude that that’s why God chose him. Nothing could be farther from the truth. We might as well conclude that God chose the Nation of Israel because of their merit.

Listen to what God says concerning His choice of Israel in Deuteronomy 7:6.

Deuteronomy 7:6-8

⁶ “For you are a holy people to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth. ⁷ The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were the least of all peoples; ⁸ but because the Lord loves you, and because He would keep the oath which He swore to your fathers, the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

God is saying here that He chose them just because He loves them. It was His decision. Isn’t it a mystery not only that God chose Joseph, but that God chose the line of Judah through Perez: from whom Jesus descended – from the family of David?

In Ruth 4:18-22

¹⁸ Now this is the genealogy of Perez: Perez begot Hezron; ¹⁹ Hezron begot Ram, and Ram begot Amminadab; ²⁰ Amminadab begot Nahshon, and Nahshon begot Salmon; ²¹ Salmon begot Boaz, and Boaz begot Obed; ²² Obed begot Jesse, and Jesse begot David.

Who was Perez? He was the product of the incestuous relationship between Judah and his daughter-in-law Tamar. You find that account in Gasses 38. God’s mysterious ways have no end. The Apostle Paul says in,

Romans 11:33

³³ Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!

The mysterious ways of the God of wonders!

The mystery of God unfolds more than the mystery of the choice of Joseph; and Judah is the mystery of the family in Egypt which God revealed ahead of time to Pharaoh. The first thing that caught my attention was the fact that God revealed this serious matter to a heathen king. Why? It was the dream of this famine that led to the release of Joseph from unjust imprisonment. Pharaoh was strategically positioned to effect that release. Pharaoh’s dream brought abbot the fulfillment of Joseph’s dream. Remember he said that God showed him that his brothers will one day bow down to him. And they did more than five times. And this came to pass thirteen years later when they sold him into slavery. They said; let’s see how his dreams will be fulfilled. But they didn’t know they were dealing with God who works in mysterious ways to perform His wonders on earth.

We will continue with this thought when we return next time.

PRAYER:

Father, we have concluded our discussion today. I’m praying for my friends in radio land praying, dear God, that as many of them that have needs in their lives that You, the God who performs wonders in mysterious ways, will meet the needs in their lives: spiritual needs, physical needs, financial needs, in the Name of Jesus. We thank You for hearing us. Amen!