by Jacob Ninan
God is almighty and sovereign, and He does whatever He chooses (Psa.115:3). But what we also need to understand is that when He chose to create us human beings in His own image, we too have been created with many attributes like His, although everything about us is naturally much scaled down compared to His attributes. As a result, we too have been created with a certain limited might while God is almighty, a certain ability to know things while He is omniscient, a certain ability to move around to different places while He is omnipresent, abilities to think, feel and choose like God but in a very limited measure, and a limited ability to do what we please while God has unlimited sovereignty. It is in His sovereignty that He has granted us this limited 'sovereignty' which we call our free will. Also, as God He holds His sovereign authority over us to intervene with us when He considers it necessary.
It is because of this free will that He has created us with, that He will not force us to do anything. Adam and Eve obviously had the ability to obey or disobey God, and so do we.`Now, God is committed to allowing us to use our free will, while He has the responsibility to carry out the overall plans He has for mankind. The way He does this demonstrates His wisdom and power, and causes us to marvel.
Here is one example that can cause us to marvel.
1. God tells Abraham that his descendants will live in a foreign land for 400 years and afterwards come out with many possessions (Gen.15:13,14). 2. Abraham's great grandson, Joseph, gets a dream that one day his brothers will be bowing down before him (Gen.37:6,7). 3. Joseph's brothers sell him and he lands up in Egypt as a slave (Gen.39:1). 4. Joseph interprets Pharaoh's dream and is made the second highest ruler of Egypt (Gen.41:38,39). 5. Joseph brings his father and brothers to Egypt (Gen.46:3,4). 6. Nearly 400 years later, the new Pharaoh makes the children of Israel slaves in Egypt (Exo.1:8-10). 7. After 430 years in Egypt, Moses takes the people of Israel away from Egypt towards the Promised Land (Exo.12:41). (The extra 30 years were possibly due to the extra time Moses took to complete His preparation from God.)
Why these 400 years of stay in Egypt? This would be the time it would take for the sin of the Canaanites to be ripe for God to mete out His judgment on them (Gen.15:16). This judgment would be carried out by the people of Israel getting there, destroying the occupants of Canaan and taking over the land, which God had earlier promised to the descendants of Abraham (Gen.15:18). While God planned this way of taking Israel to the Promised Land and carrying out judgment on the Canaanites at the same time, He had yet another mission in the whole scenario!
Now that God has revealed His plan of salvation through the life, death and resurrection of God's only Son, Jesus Christ, the whole history of Israel moving from Egypt to the Promised Land can be seen as a picture of this salvation! Israel being delivered from slavery in Egypt through the slaying of the first born sons in Egypt representing our salvation from the slavery to sin through the death of God's first born Son, walking through the Red Sea representing being baptised in water, coming under the pillars of cloud and fire representing being baptised in the Holy Spirit, being fed by manna from heaven, and being given water to drink coming from the rock, and finally entering into the Promised Land is all a picture of our salvation (1Cor.10:1-4)!
I am so amazed by this sovereign way in which God moved through history, in spite of the free will used by all the different people involved (such as Moses taking more time to get prepared through life). If we only look at the historical narrative about the people of Israel being delivered from Egypt and taken to the Promised Land, that itself is full of supernatural interventions from God. But add to that what He was planning for the occupants of Canaan at that time, and for us who become His children by His grace and through our faith in our Saviour and Lord (Eph.2:8,9)! It makes us think what all He will give us to understand when we are there with Him in eternity about various things He has done through the history of mankind which we are not able to understand now! Then we can sit there and marvel at the intricate plans He had in His mind even before laying the foundations of the world. Then we will be able to see the answers to the many questions our curious minds have about many things that are reported in the Bible, and many other things that have not been reported in the Bible! Till then, we can walk by faith, even when there are many things we are now unable to understand or explain, as we keep trusting in our Lord who has an answer to every question.
Many people give up their faith in God and His word because they come up with dead ends as they have sought to find understanding about different matters. But let us not forget that, what has already been revealed is enough to enable us to have faith in Him. When we have that faith in the person of God, we can walk by that faith and leave all the unexplainable things to the time when He will reveal them to us.