LESSONS FROM THE LIVES OF THE PATRIARCHS
GENESIS PART 2 | PATRIARCHAL HISTORY
JOSEPH: A MAN OF PURPOSE
GENESIS 50:15-21
[INTRODUCTION]
What do you think of when you hear the word “purpose”? Most of us probably think of either doing something “on purpose” or purposely, or living life with purpose; in other words, living with vision, goals, or meaning. Those are, of course, acceptable understandings of purpose. But I want to suggest to us today that Joseph was a man of a different kind of purpose. Joseph was a man of purpose in the sense that he was used to accomplish God’s purposes in this world.
We see the purposes or plans of God being worked out in Joseph’s life through what we call providence. The simple way to explain God’s providence is to say that it refers to God’s preserving and governing all things by means of either primary or secondary causes. So either directly or indirectly God causes all things to exist and continue to exist and also controls all of those existing things.
A more complex definition of providence, but one that helps us grasp things a bit better I think, comes from Wayne Grudem: Providence means that God is continually involved with all created things in such a way that he (1) keeps them existing and maintaining the properties with which he created them; (2) cooperates with created things in every action, directing their distinctive properties to cause them to act as they do; and (3) directs them to fulfill his purposes.
So providence assumes that God is the supreme Creator of all things. And as Creator he prevents the universe from going into non-existence, he guides and directs all of his creation, and he does so in order to accomplish his purposes in every given situation.
The story is told of a missionary who was passing out copies of the Gospel of John in the Central provinces of India. One man took the Gospel of John and the missionary was excited as the man open it to read it. But when he realized it was Christian literature, he tore it into pieces and threw it on the ground. Another man shortly came by that same place and picked up a piece of the torn paper to see what it was. He read these words in his own language, “…the bread of life…”
He did not know what it meant and he asked some of his friends if they knew the meaning of this phrase. One friend told him, “I can tell you that these are words from the Christian Book. You must not read it or you will be defiled.” The man thought to himself, “A phrase as beautiful as this cannot defile.” So he bought a copy of the New Testament and read it until he found the statement, “I am the bread of life.”
Which means he opened the New Testament and read through Matthew, Mark, and Luke until he came to John 6. As he read and studied the passage, the light of the God’s Word flooded his heart and he trusted Christ as his Lord and Savior. And according to this story, that same man became a preacher of the Gospel in the central provinces of India. That’s providence.
Paul Harvey, the famous American radio broadcaster said this: Providence is God acting anonymously. That is the perfect way to describe providence from the human vantage point. Things happen all the time that make the world what it is and the way it is; God is in control of all of that without making his hand directly seen. Those unaware of or unwilling to acknowledge God’s rule would call it coincidence.
Once again Joseph provides for us a supreme example of this great biblical truth.
[READ GENESIS 50:15-21]
Since the last time we saw Joseph in prison because of a false accusation of attempted rape, he has been released on account of his God given ability to interpret dreams. The Pharaoh actually puts Joseph in charge of preserving the nation after seven years of abundance are over and seven years of famine await.
In addition to being given a position of tremendous authority in Egypt, Joseph is reunited with his family. Because of the famine, his brothers come to Egypt in order to buy food. After a period of testing their remorse, Joseph is reconciled to them and his whole family, including Jacob, moves to Egypt.
Now, Jacob has died. And now Joseph’s brothers are worried: “Perhaps Joseph was simply dealing kindly with us for our father’s sake, and now that he is dead he will have his revenge on us.” So they send a message to him once again requesting his forgiveness and pardon. Upon receiving this message Joseph cries, indicating that there was no remaining bitterness towards his brothers.
So they come to him and ask for his mercy in person. And Joseph’s response has gone down as one of the most treasured and memorized phrases in the Bible: you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good. What is Joseph saying there? “You thought you were in control, but no: God’s hand was upon my life. He is the reason I am where I am.” Joseph is revealing in these words his understanding of God’s providence. And I want us to notice what that understanding does for Joseph. First:
[AN UNDERSTANDING OF GOD’S PROVIDENCE ENABLES US TO DEAL WITH PERSONAL TRAGEDY]
So much had gone on in Joseph’s life to this point. Most of us are familiar with the story. Joseph is betrayed by his one brothers and sold into slavery. Once in Egypt he is purchased by Potiphar and things are looking up for Joseph. He becomes Potiphar’s right hand man. But then he is accused of attempted rape by Potiphar’s wife because he refuses to sleep with her. So he is thrown into the king’s prison.
Even there, however, he excels because of the favor of God. He runs the prison and keeps watch over the prisoners. At this point in the story two very important prisoners are placed in jail and Joseph interprets their dreams for them. Some time later this fact reaches Pharaoh and Joseph is summoned to interpret the ruler of Egypt’s dream. After doing so he becomes Pharaoh’s right hand man.
Now that is a roller coaster life. Great highs, but very great lows. How did Joseph deal with all of that? When his brothers betrayed him, how did he avoid sinking deep into the wells of bitterness and anger? Then, when it looked like his life was on the up and up, how did he cope with an unjust accusation of a terrible crime. How did he deal with being in prison for something he did not do?
He responded to life’s tragedies with heavy dose of the sovereignty and providence of God. Whether or not he spoke these exact words in every situation, he certainly acted like he believed them no matter what was going on: you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good. My brothers betrayed me, but God meant it for good. My master’s wife lied about me, but God meant it for good. He was living the words of Romans 8:28 well over a thousand years before they were written: And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
Ravi Zacharias asks this in his book The Grand Weaver: How differently would we live if we believed that every event of our lives – from the happy to the tragic to the mundane – was a part of a meticulous and purposeful design in which all the elements intertwined with breathtaking precision? He also writes: Your hurts and your disappointments are part of that design, to shape your heart and the way you feel about reality. The hurts you live through will always shape you. There is no other way.
Joseph would not have been the man that he was when he received that summons from Pharaoh without going through all that he had. And we have the benefit of looking at the big picture, don’t we? We can stand back and look at the masterpiece that was Joseph’s life and admire all that God worked in him.
But don’t, in admiring the handiwork of God in Joseph’s life, fail to recognize that he is weaving together a similar masterpiece in your own life. As followers of Christ, we have the same Grand Weaver, as it were, developing our lives into a masterpiece for his glory. And that should shape how we respond to the tragedies of life.
When a loved one dies; or a spouse leaves; or a child rebels: God in Christ is there. When a friend betrays you; or a parent disowns you; or boss takes advantage of you: Christ is there. Joseph knew it; and so should we. When we know that the God of our mountaintops is with us in our valleys we will look at those valleys differently than if we thought God had abandoned us. How we understand God’s providence directly affects how we respond to tragedy and turmoil. Now let’s get a little more specific:
[AN UNDERTANDING OF GOD’S PRODIVDENCE ENABLES US TO FORGIVE PERSONAL OFFENSES]
Let’s zoom in on one of the tragedies Joseph faced: betrayal. That is, after all, the life situation that rises to the surface in this story. Joseph is in quite a position here. The brothers who betrayed him were now dependent upon him for their very survival. How would he react? With vengeance? With justice?
Listen to what he says: “So do not fear; I will provide for you and your little ones.” Thus he comforted them and spoke kindly to them. Joseph’s knowledge of God’s purpose in his life allowed him to extend forgiveness and mercy to his brothers.
I am convinced that one of the root causes of bitterness in a person’s life is a failure to acknowledge and apply God’s providence to a given situation. There is a lack of acknowledgment of God’s rule. Think about it for a moment and you will see that this is true.
When someone hurts you, offends you, or mistreats you and you refuse to forgive them; when you refuse to let it go and it develops into a paralyzing anger; you are doing two things. First, you are saying that this particular person was in charge of the situation that offended you. They were in complete control of whatever situation it was, and they used that control to hurt you.
Secondly, you are saying that now that the situation is over with, you are in control of when it is resolved. It will be over when you say it’s over. And you latch on to your hurt and pain as a way of countering with control of your own. In both situations, you are forgetting that ultimate control belongs neither to your offender nor to you. It belongs to God.
When you let hurt and pain drag on and on in your life without relinquishing it and forgiving others for their offenses you are saying to God, “You must have fallen asleep on this one. You should have never let this happen to me. I’m not letting this go.”
Joseph could have done that. He could have held on to the anger and disappointment he had to have felt when he was sold by his own siblings. But he did not. Why not? Listen to what he told his brothers in Genesis 45: And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there are yet five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God.
Did you hear that? Don’t be distressed and angry with yourselves. That means Joseph was not distressed about the situation or angry with them. He knew that it was God who had sent him to Egypt to preserve their lives. And if his brothers would not have betrayed him they would have died of starvation. Now that does not excuse his brothers. What they did was sinful. He even tells them as much (you mean it for evil against me); but God worked through their evil to accomplish good.
Well, there is one last thing that we should notice from Joseph’s response here in Genesis 50:
[AN UNDERSTANDING OF GOD’S PROVIDENCE KEEPS US FROM PLAYING GOD]
Note carefully this phrase in Joseph’s response: “Do not fear, for am I in the place of God?”
What is the human tendency when things in life are amiss? The tendency is to try to fix things and rectify things yourself. You either try to get out of the situation yourself or once you are out of the situation you try to bring justice to the situation yourself. The latter is where Joseph is in this passage.
He is the second most powerful man in the most powerful empire in the world. In fact, in some ways he is the most powerful man: he calls himself the father to Pharaoh in Genesis 45:8 because he is advising the ruler. He could snap his fingers and rid himself of his brothers in an instant. Why doesn’t he do that?
Because he knows that’s not his place. He does not execute revenge for sins. Once again he is living a biblical truth well before it was written: Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. It is God’s job to bring judgment on sin. For Joseph to exact revenge would be putting himself in God’s rightful place. He understood the principle of Romans 12:21: Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Can I just remind you: we love to play God. We love to make idols out of ourselves and try to rule our little universes. Whenever we do that, we not only rob God of his glory, we make a horrible mess.
Imagine if Joseph did not have the understanding of God’s providence that he did. Imagine that he saw this tremendous opportunity for revenge and took it. What would have happened had he done that? The nation of Israel as we know it would have never formed. What a mess he would have made!
Are you playing God in a situation in your life? Has someone hurt you or betrayed you? How are you responding to that pain? With resentment? With bitterness? With a heart set on vengeance? Do not be deceived: God allowed this into your life. And he did so with a purpose that you probably can’t even begin to understand. Let God be God. Let him be the ruler of your pain as well as your pleasure.
Now that sounds nice doesn’t it? If we could all only respond like Joseph when we are faced with similar situations! An honest assessment, though, will quickly reveal that we do not. So what do we do? Here is how we will wrap this up:
[KNOWING THAT GOD’S PURPOSES COME TO PASS THROUGH OR DESPITE OUR OWN PURPOSES GIVES US HOPE]
Does that make sense? We know that we don’t always respond to life’s tragedies and hurts like we should. We know we become bitter and angry. We know we look for ways to take revenge. We know we play God all too often in our relationships. But here is the good news: God’s purposes come to pass either way. Sometimes we will be like Joseph; and sometimes we will be like his brothers. But every time, God will be at work. And our goal is that as we grow in Christ-likeness the times when we are like Joseph continue to increase while the times we are like his brothers continue to decrease.
So we can live with joy and hope; because we know God in Christ is working his purposes in us even as we walk imperfectly after him. Even as we fail, he is at work in our lives. Once again, that does not excuse sin and disobedience. It was for our sin and disobedience that Christ paid the penalty on the cross; and that same cross enables us to understand God’s providence in a positive way in our lives. We are not fatalists. We are followers of a sovereign God who works in and through our actions because of the grace given to us in the death and resurrection of Jesus.
[CONCLUSION]
You may not always understand how God is working in you, but you can know for certain that he is. And if you know Christ as Lord you can be certain that he is not only working in you, but working in you for good. So seal these words on your soul: you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good. If you do, they will help you respond to both personal tragedy and personal pain; and they will be a constant reminder of God’s providence at work in your life.
