“As for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good . . .” (Gen. 50:20) These words, spoken by Joseph to his repentant brethren, revealed his faith and knowledge of the God who had been with him in the days of his distress, all the way from the prison to the throne. They show clearly that to the child of God there are no second causes! It has been said by someone that God keeps no sharp instruments in His treasury, so He has to employ others—sometimes even Satan himself—for doing the necessary pruning work in His people. “In that day shall the Lord shave with a razor that is hired,” said the prophet Isaiah, and the “King of Assyria” was God’s “hired razor,” to carry out His purposes upon His people Israel. (Isa. 7:20). “I will sweep it with the broom of destruction,” said Isaiah concerning Babylon (Isa. 14:23); and many other instances could be given from the Scriptures of the Lord of Hosts making use of, so to speak, rough instruments for the carrying out of His purposes in the world and among His people. God’s Dealing with Job Satan was permitted to use his fullest resources against Job, but they only served to bring Job into a clearer vision of God, and to far greater prosperity and blessing, for God gave Job, in the day when his captivity was turned, twice as much as he had before. It was so with Joseph. When, as a young man, God showed him a in heavenly vision a glimpse of His purposes for him and, in the innocence of his heart, he told his brethren of all that had been shown to him, he did not know that the jealousy of these very brethren would be the instrument for the fulfilment of his dreams. “Will you indeed reign over us?” said the jealous brethren. Hatred and envy filled their hearts (Gen. 37:10-11) and it was not long before these things bore fruit, and “they conspired to slay him,” saying, “We shall see what will become of his dreams!” And what did they see? God’s counsels stand, and are fulfilled in the fulness of time, but they are brought about through strange means and oft-times bitter tears. We have spoken much of the reigning life in union with the reigning Lord, where the soul is “enthroned with Him in the heavenly realms,” and this reigning life is truly the portion of every believer by faith in Christ Jesus. Many have had their place on the Cross revealed to them, to be crucified with Christ, which has admitted them to the real experience of the liberty and victory of the life in the heavenly sphere. But it cannot be questioned that alongside of this blessed life in the Spirit, united to the Risen Reigning Lord, there is an experiential fellowship of the Cross, indicated in the words of the apostle Paul in Phil. 3:10: “I long to know Christ, and the power which is in His resurrection, and to share in His sufferings, and die even as He died . . .”, or, as it is also written, “becoming conformed to His death.” In accordance with this “way of God” it is not surprising to find that many, who have been enabled to apprehend, by the revelation of the Spirit of God, their death and life union with Christ, have been led more and more into a path in some respects not unlike that of Joseph; “sacrificial” in truth. For through Joseph’s path of sorrow and tears he reached the “throne” and became God’s instrument for the deliverance and salvation of multitudes in the very land where he had lived his hidden life of suffering, and where the “word of the Lord” spoken to him in earlier days had tried his faith to the utmost it could bear. The Church’s Path of Suffering The Lord is manifestly leading His Church along this path at this time. A path of selflessness and sacrifice of all for others. The “martyr” life; the “sacrificial life”; in which we can say to all things now: “God means it unto good.” For the fulfilment of God’s purposes Joseph is severed from his home and country and taken into a path of suffering untold. His father Jacob mourns many days, but God permits the tears knowing that, when the fulness of time comes, Jacob will look back upon the suffering, and say, “God meant it unto good.” So it is with us; if we could but see as God sees, and know what wondrous blessing to multitudes God is planning through our path of loss and pain, we would be still, and say in faith: “God means it unto good.” In the strange land, Joseph must go down deeper and deeper until his soul finds it’s all in all in God. Through it all we see the hand of the supreme agency of God. (1) His life is spared by the sudden relenting of one of his brethren; (2) He obtains such training as fitted him for his rulership of Egypt in his hour of exaltation; and (3) his sufferings made him so self-reliant—in one sense—and helpless in another, as to be a dependable instrument for God. Ah! yes, in our short-sighted vision we forget that God sees the end from the beginning, and in His wisdom often sacrifices and sanctifies the present moment, so He can draw from it some future blessing. The path of suffering which Joseph trod made him able to bear the exaltation to the throne, not only by training and reliance upon God, but by the meek and quiet spirit which truly is “lifted above all things” on the earth that can affect it, by “the loss of all.” No resentment is found in him towards the brethren who had envied and hated him. When they came, in the providence of God, to indeed see with their eyes “what had become of his dreams,” his heart goes out to them in love and tenderness. “It was not you, but God,” he says, to comfort them. “Now don’t be grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that you sold me here, for God sent me before . . .” Still, we must remember it was not God who was the source of their envy and hatred, but God who permitted what was in them to be manifested to carry out His purposes. And so it is with all of God’s children on the pathway of the Cross. It was not God who was the source of the rage of all who gathered together to cry, “Crucify Him, crucify Him,” as they beheld “the Man” brought forth by Pilate; but it was God who allowed the forces of darkness to work upon men’s passions, so as to bring about His foreordained counsel in the death of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. The prince of darkness must ask permission before he brings to bear his power upon a Job or a Peter; and the passions of men—more bitter when moved by religious zeal, like the multitude at Calvary--are under His control. Joseph’s brethren may conspire against his life, but—his life is spared; he may be taken into Egypt, but a place is ready for him, in which he is trained for an unknown future; and when at last the iron pierced his soul (Ps. 105:18), and he is in his darkest hour—then, oh! then—yes then, he is nearest the throne. The reigning with Christ Come, lift up your heads, you children of God. Your “dreams” of the reigning life with Christ shall be fulfilled. If we suffer, we shall reign. The Cross is the way to the Throne. Look not upon the “hired razors” in your life, but meekly let the “shaving” be done of all that God would strip away, that is unworthy of the Throne. You must overcome as Jesus overcame, He who lived so intimately with the Father that He could say, “The Son of Man which is in heaven,” and yet He also said, “The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of men.” The hour will come when, like Joseph, you shall say: “For you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good,” and all the human instruments shall pass away from your sight in the unveiled plan of the Hand of God. “It was not you, but God . . . .” It is the way to the throne!