Lesson 24 - Jacob in Egypt:
 God Preserves His People
 Read Genesis 45:16-47:31 - www.bible.com/bible/59/gen.45

Do you ever wonder how the bits and pieces of your life fit together? This study shows how the seemingly unrelated and perplexing events of the preceding chapters now serve God's purpose to preserve Jacob's family during the coming famine. This account can strengthen our faith and hope as we work through difficult situations we cannot understand.

Remember a few lessons ago where the men of another city plotted to intermarry with Jacob’s family and thus take all they had and make it their own. In this lesson God asks them to move out of the land of Canaan to make sure such would not happen to them again. By isolating them in the land of Goshen in Egypt, God made most marriages with other nationalities much harder. Of course, there were still some – Joseph married an Egyptian woman, for example.

So an incident that had seemed to be completely negative from a human perspective was something God used for His purpose of making Israel a nation. This principle is what we read in Romans 8:28 – God makes everything work together for good to those who are called according to His purpose. The key is that we must love Him and bring all those things, whether good or bad, to Him to let Him weave them into our life as He wants to use them.

*Has God ever allowed you to see how seemingly unrelated events fit into the tapestry of His will? Please explain.


Sometimes we might think the job we have can never be used of God in any good way. But read how God uses the jobs of Jacob’s family – shepherds and livestock herders – to a good purpose. The people of Egypt didn’t like shepherds because they thought them dirty and bad-smelling. God used this to give them some of the richest land in Egypt so they had a place to care for their animals. It would be a place not visited by most Egyptians.

*What important promise or prayer request are you patiently waiting for God to fulfill?
*How can the story of Jacob and Joseph help you to trust God with the seemingly disconnected and perplexing areas of your life?