But God Will Surely Come to Your Aid—Lent 24, 2021

Genesis 50:22 Joseph stayed in Egypt, along with all his father’s family. He lived a hundred and ten years 23 and saw the third generation of Ephraim’s children. Also the children of Makir son of Manasseh were placed at birth on Joseph’s knees. 24 Then Joseph said to his brothers, “I am about to die. But God will surely come to your aid and take you up out of this land to the land he promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” 25 And Joseph made the Israelites swear an oath and said, “God will surely come to your aid, and then you must carry my bones up from this place.” 26 So Joseph died at the age of a hundred and ten. And after they embalmed him, he was placed in a coffin in Egypt.

With God, a promise made is a promise kept. All the way back in Genesis 15:13 The LORD said to Abram, “Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there.” Joseph’s descendants were on the front end of that period of slavery.

God brought the slavery to pass and it was also promised there would be deliverance. “In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.” (Genesis 15:16)

But four hundred years is a long time.
Some who were born into slavery never left it.
They never saw the promise of deliverance fulfilled.

The ”But God…” that we’ve been looking at throughout Lent, here identified as “will surely come to your aid” still hadn’t happened. Waiting upon that four hundredth year must have been a very long wait. Joseph believed God would surely do it before the time of enslavement even began. That takes faith. No wonder he’s commended for it.

What about you? Is there something in your life that requires faith? How’s it going?

Lord God, help us to see that You are reliable … You are dependable … You are faithful, even when our circumstances scream otherwise. We know it in our core because the Bible says that it’s true. Help us to keep our eyes focused on You even when it seems like You will never come through. We believe, Father. Help us to wait with patient expectation of Your fulfilling everything You have promised including the return of Your Son Jesus, riding on the clouds with the trumpet sound. Strengthen us for these last days, in Jesus’ Name we pray. Amen.

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Lent 2013 looked at The Letter to the Romans: Paul’s Masterpiece to reclaim foundations of our Christian heritage and began February 13, 2013.
A very special and ever popular offering was Lent 2014’s Be Still and Know that I AM God which can be obtained through the archives beginning in March 2014.
Lent 2015 began on February 18, 2015 with a series entitled With Christ in the Upper Room: Final Preparations. We explored what is often called “The Upper Room Discourse” found in John chapters 13-17.
ReKindle, the Lent 2016 series, began on February 10, 2016 and encouraged us to rekindle our spiritual lives.
Light: There’s Nothing Like It was the 2017 Lent series and explored this metaphor often used to portray Christ. It is archived beginning March 1, 2017.
Lent 2018, we explored the questions of Pi and Chi (the Greek letter beginning the word Christos, which means Christ, Messiah, the Anointed One). We asked and answered the questions “Why?” from the movie Life of Pi as we discovered the uniqueness of Jesus Christ in a world of many faiths.
Lent 2019 gave us a deeper window into Easter “More to the Easter Story” since we miss so much when we rely only on a superficial understanding of the work of Christ. These devotionals are archived beginning March 6, 2019.
Our Lent 2020 devotional series offered prayer points surrounding “Be Thou My Vision” and were aimed at helping us to see God for who He is. The full set of devotionals are archived beginning February 26, 2020.
The theme for 2021 Lent Devotionals was how to live between two worlds while waiting for Christ’s return. Into the gap between the City of Man and its fixation upon sin and the City of God with its demand for holiness, two words minister peace: But God. Praise God for His intervention! They are archived beginning February 17, 2021.