God's Intentions for Good

In earlier sermons this summer I’ve reflected with you about Family Abraham. We looked at Abraham and Sarah and Sarah’s servant Hagar, from whom Abraham’s first son, Ishmael, was born. But the blessing went to Isaac, Abraham’s son with Sarah. We also looked at Isaac after he grew up and how he came to marry Rebekah. She gave birth to twins, Esau and Jacob who struggled with each other in the womb and continued that rivalry ever after.

Now we need to fast-forward a bit. Jacob eventually had thirteen sons: seven with his wife Leah, two with her servant Zilpah, two with his wife Rachel, and two with her servant Bilhah.[1] From these sons came the twelve tribes of Israel. The youngest sons, Joseph and Benjamin, were Jacob’s favorites because their mother was Jacob’s beloved wife, Rachel.

I’m sure you remember Joseph’s story. Because he was his dad’s favorite he was given a special coat of many colors. But he was also an obnoxious brat and he lorded it over his older brothers. That made them so mad that one day, they almost killed Joseph but instead sold him into slavery where he eventually ended up in Egypt, Then, in a conspiracy of deceit, they told their father Jacob that Joseph had been killed by wild animals. Hearing that news the old man was disconsolate. And there is still more:

So there is a lot of emotion in this story and in the verses just before our text today, Judah, one of the older brothers, pleads with Joseph, whom they still do not recognize, asking that he not keep Benjamin. I want you to hear these poignant words:

“Then your servant my father said to us, ‘You know that my wife bore me two sons; one left me, and I said, Surely he has been torn to pieces; and I have never seen him since. If you take this one also from me, and harm comes to him, you will bring down my gray hairs in sorrow to Sheol.’ Now therefore, when I come to your servant my father and the boy is not with us, then, as his life is bound up in the boy’s life, when he sees that the boy is not with us, he will die; and your servants will bring down the gray hairs of your servant our father with sorrow to Sheol. For your servant became surety for the boy to my father, saying, ‘If I do not bring him back to you, then I will bear the blame in the sight of my father all my life.’ Now therefore, please let your servant remain as a slave to my lord in place of the boy; and let the boy go back with his brothers. For how can I go back to my father if the boy is not with me? I fear to see the suffering that would come upon my father.” (Genesis 44.27-34)

Now we’re ready, I think, for the morning lesson. Let’s read it in Genesis 45.

Then Joseph could no longer control himself before all those who stood by him, and he cried out, “Send everyone away from me.” So no one stayed with him when Joseph made himself known to his brothers. And he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard it, and the household of Pharaoh heard it. Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph. Is my father still alive?” But his brothers could not answer him, so dismayed were they at his presence.

Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come closer to me.” And they came closer. He said, “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. 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 five more years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. 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; he has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt. Hurry and go up to my father and say to him, ‘Thus says your son Joseph, God has made me lord of all Egypt; come down to me, do not delay. You shall settle in the land of Goshen, and you shall be near me, you and your children and your children’s children, as well as your flocks, your herds, and all that you have. I will provide for you there — since there are five more years of famine to come — so that you and your household, and all that you have, will not come to poverty.’ And now your eyes and the eyes of my brother Benjamin see that it is my own mouth that speaks to you. You must tell my father how greatly I am honored in Egypt, and all that you have seen. Hurry and bring my father down here.” Then he fell upon his brother Benjamin’s neck and wept, while Benjamin wept upon his neck. And he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them; and after that his brothers talked with him.

One of the things Merrie and I on vacation was to fly down to Durham, North Carolina and visit our son who is doing graduate work at Duke University. We drove by the university Chapel and I was reminded of a comment made by William Willimon, former Dean of the Chapel. He said that when he met first year students he asked them, “What led you to Duke?” They usually answered something like this:

In other words, nearly all, whatever reason they give, interpret their reason as either a matter of choice — “I narrowed it down to three or four good schools and then chose Duke because it was the farthest from home” or chalk it up to mere chance — “I was looking at Duke, Georgetown, and Princeton, there was this snowstorm, I was stuck in Durham, I went to a party, I fell in love with Duke.” Choice or chance.[2] I suspect that it is not just college students who describe things this way. I think most of us describe our lives this way. Things happen by choice or by chance. That’s just the way life is. So it seems.

But the Bible in general and today’s text in particular affirm something beyond choice and chance. For in and through the choices and chances of our lives, God is at work. In fact, God is at work for good. “Even though you intended to do harm to me,” Joseph would later tell his brothers, “God intended it for good.” (Gen. 50.20a) More than choice, more than chance, God is at work for good in our lives. We call this idea God’s providence and I want to think with you about it for a few minutes this morning.

The Joseph story and, in fact, the whole Bible cannot be understood without affirming the mystery of God’s providence. God is at work for good in and through the choices and chances of our lives. “It was not you who sent me here, but God” said Joseph. The whole Joseph story demonstrates how God’s purposes are ultimately fulfilled through and in spite of human deeds, whether or not those deeds are morally right and this is the abiding mystery of the Bible.[3]

We don’t like mysteries. They make us uncomfortable. We would rather be in control and understand why things happen. So we tend to play down either divine sovereignty or we say that humans are not responsible for their actions. But the Joseph story insists that both divine sovereignty and human responsibility are true and in that we find God’s providence.

“God is at work in all things,” says the Bible. Isaiah declares that God rules even foreign nations and cities.[4] Amos says, “Does evil befall a city, unless the Lord has done it?” (3.6). And the same view is maintained in a different way in the New Testament. Jesus says, “your heavenly Father feeds [the birds]” and “clothes the grass” and “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” (Matt 6.26, 30, 5.45). God is in all things.[5]

Yet human responsibility is equally affirmed by the Bible. That God used the brothers’ hatred to send Joseph to Egypt does not, according to Genesis, excuse that hate. The story spends most of its time portraying the cost of this hatred to the whole family: Jacob’s unquenchable grief, Joseph’s unjust imprisonment, and the brothers’ own guilty consciences. Twenty-two years after selling him, they were acutely conscious of divine retribution overtaking them for their sins, “we are paying the penalty for what we did to our brother” (Genesis 42.21). Human responsibility is real. God’s sovereignty is real. The mystery is that in and through these things God is at work for good.

For me one of the clearest examples of God’s intentions for good in my own happened twenty years ago in the spring of 1985. At that point I was in the midst of a major struggle at my church in Birmingham, Michigan, where I was serving as one of five ministers on the staff. The senior pastor had just gone to another church and the question was how we should manage until a new head of staff was called. Should an interim pastor be called or should I be appointed as interim? There was a lot of debate and anxiety as we tried to decide the wise course. It came down to a decision to be made at a special meeting of the Session.

During the debate several persons spoke who believed I should be appointed interim pastor. But when my strongest supporter was speaking I could tell he was ill at ease. Quite abruptly he sat down right in the middle of his argument, almost in the middle of a sentence. He had planned to say much more but he just sat down. A few other people spoke briefly without much focus and then the vote was taken. The Session decided to call an interim pastor from outside the existing staff.

I was very hurt by that decision. I knew I could handle the responsibility and I felt like what I could offer that church in a difficult time was being rejected, both personally and professionally. In fact, I felt rejected. It was a painful time for me and it didn’t seem like things were working for good at all.

But later on, a close friend of mine who was at that Session meeting, described what happened. She said that when my supporter sat down in the middle of what he had to say, spiritually speaking it was just like a door slamming shut in that room. The Session was considering a certain direction and a lot of preliminary discussion had been done leading in that direction. But suddenly that open door was closed and the Session went in a different direction through a different door. My friend said it was just like the Holy Spirit closing the door and saying, “No, that’s not the way to go.” But at the time I didn’t think that was good.

Yet think of what that closed door meant. For if I had been the interim pastor at that Birmingham church, I would not have been available to consider the call to the church I served in Spokane. And had I not served there, I might not be here. I didn’t know it at the time. But that door closed so another door could open. It took me awhile to grasp that because I couldn’t see the good God intended. The mystery of God’s providence is that God is at work for good in the choices and chances of our lives.

If we had a month of Sundays we could not plumb the fullness of the mystery. But in conclusion, notice this. Because of God’s providence, it is always possible for a new reality to break in upon us. When Joseph revealed himself to his brothers, he scared the dickens out of them because he opened up new possibilities, some of which were frightening. He could have snapped his fingers and his brothers would have been killed. But Joseph said, “Do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves.” In other words, he didn’t want his brothers to live by the past of what they had done and Joseph also would not live by that past. God’s providence brings a new possibility. Not guilt. Not revenge. But forgiveness[6] and hope in the goodness of God.

Notice that when Joseph speaks to his brothers, he doesn’t use his Egyptian royal titles or throne name. He simply says, “I am your brother, Joseph.”[7] He brings newness by entering into a family relationship characterized by the weeping, loving embrace of brothers.

Friends, that’s exactly how God wants to come to us. In Jesus Christ, we have a brother who would embrace us and weep over us and say to us, “Do not be distressed or angry with yourselves. God is at work for good in your life.” That is providence. That is God’s intention for good. That is mercy and that is joy. Thanks be to God.

[1] “Canaan,” The New Westminster Dictionary of the Bible, ed. J. G. Davies (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1970) 141.

[2] William H. Willimon, “Choice, Chance, or the Hand of God,” Pulpit Resource 24.3 (1996): 28.

[3] Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 16-50, Word Biblical Commentary, vol. 2 (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1994) 432.

[4] Isaiah 10.5-6: “Ah, Assyria, the rod of my anger — the club in their hands is my fury! Against a godless nation I send him, and against the people of my wrath I command him, to take spoil and seize plunder, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.”

[5] “It is belief in God’s power to control affairs that underlies all intercessory prayer, for if God does not order our affairs, why pray for daily bread, healing, or world peace?” Wenham, 432.

[6] Claus Westermann, Joseph: Eleven Bible Studies on Genesis, trans. Omar Kaste (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996) 95. “Judah had offered to atone for the wrong through his readiness to take upon himself the punishment. In place of this atonement, Joseph’s redeeming word offers the forgiveness that makes such an atonement unnecessary because it brings about a healing that brings everyone back together again.”

[7] Walter Brueggemann, Genesis, Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982) 345. “In his power to speak a future, Joseph does not abandon his royal role. This speaker is not the typical Egyptian court figure. He is portrayed as a deeply human person who is impacted and transformed by his brothers. The family bond is deep for Joseph, deeper than Egyptian success. Clearly, Joseph cannot resolve the family brokenness by a regal Egyptian act of sovereignty. It requires an act of Israelite passion, an act of salvation. Luther has observed that when this brother announces himself, he uses no Egyptian throne name (cf. 41.45) but his own family name. He identifies himself as Joseph, the one “added” by God, the surplus of meaning and joy and hope given to this family of faith. The point is a central one in biblical faith: The power to create newness does not come from detachment, but from risky, self-disclosing engagement. Joseph’s speech pattern echoes the speech of Yahweh elsewhere, as in the salvation oracles of II Isaiah (cf. Isaiah 41.9-13; 44.1-5).”