Hope in Times of Fear: The Resurrection and the Meaning of Easter

by Timothy J. Keller

So at the very end of his life, Jacob gently instructed Joseph to accept God’s ways of free grace and counterintuitive salvation. He looks back on his life and no longer says, “Everything is against me!” as he once did (Genesis 42:36). That was tantamount to saying, “All things are working together for evil for me.” It seemed to him that God was behind the scenes, working at every point to hurt him and make him miserable. Now he says that God has been his shepherd “all my life to this day” (Genesis 48:15), and he even says that the Angel of the Lord “delivered me from all harm” (Genesis 48:16). This is the complete opposite of his previous statement. Now, as he remembers his sufferings (the flight from his homeland, the deception of Laban, the early death of Rachel, the loss of Joseph), he has the audacity to say that he was being “shepherded” and “kept from all harm” in every one of them. He sees that God was working behind the scenes for his good, out of love.