God Works Through Joseph
September 27, 2020

God Works Through Joseph

Passage: Genesis 37:3-8, 17b:22, 26-34; 50:15-21
Service Type:

God Meant It for Good
Genesis 37:3-8, 17b-22, 26-34; 50:15-21

Walter Brueggemann, an Old Testament scholar, commenting on the story of the patriarchs observed that “family is the place of grace and disgrace.” The patriarchs and their families were deeply flawed human beings.

Abraham, on two occasions, lied about Sarah being his wife. He feared his pagan neighbors would kill him and take her. Instead, he claimed Sarah was his sister, and she went along with the charade. In both cases she almost became part of another king’s harem!

Because Sarah was barren, she gave her servant Haggar to Abraham to produce a child for her. When the scheme worked, Sarah became jealous and dealt harshly with Haggar and the child, so much so that they fled to the wilderness and almost perished.

Jacob was wily from the womb. He emerged clutching his brother’s heel and was named “the supplanter,” that is what Jacob means in Hebrew. Jacob convinced his brother, Esau, to sell his birthright for a bowl of lentil stew. Then Jacob and his mother, Rebekah, conspired to trick aged Isaac into giving his blessing to Jacob instead of Esau. Rebekah killed two kid goats, cooked up a savory stew, and used the goat skins to cover Jacob’s hands, arms, and face. Then she dressed Jacob in Esau’s clothing, and Jacob succeeded in stealing his brother’s blessing from Isaac. Esau was so enraged when he found out that he vowed to kill Jacob as soon as Isaac died.

And that brings us to this morning’s readings from Genesis. Jacob showed favoritism to Joseph in his old age. “Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his children, because he was the son of his old age; and he had made him a long robe with sleeves” (Gen. 37:3). The long robe with sleeves meant Joseph was not to perform manual labor. It was an ostentatious show of favoritism. Jacob’s favoritism created ill will between Joseph and his brothers. “But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably to him” (vs. 4). Joseph, for his part, was either naïve to a fault or an arrogant jerk. He dreamed a dream and gleefully shared it with his brothers. “Once Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him even more. He said to them, 'Listen to this dream that I dreamed. There we were binding sheaves in the field. Suddenly my sheaf rose and stood upright; then your sheaves gathered around it and bowed down to my sheaf.' His brothers said to him, 'Are you indeed to reign over us? Are you indeed to have dominion over us?' So, they hated him even more because of his dreams and his words” (vs. 5-8). Joseph’s brothers had had their fill of him. They could abide him no longer. “They saw him from a distance, and before he came near to them, they conspired to kill him. They said to one another, ‘Here comes this dreamer. Come now, let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits; then we shall say that a wild animal has devoured him, and we shall see what will become of his dreams’” (vs. 18-20). Joseph’s brother Ruben persuaded his siblings not to kill Joseph outright but to throw him in a pit and leave him there to die. Ruben intended to return secretly and rescue Joseph, but the other brothers pulled a fast one on Ruben. They sold Joseph into slavery. “When some Midianite traders passed by, they drew Joseph up, lifting him out of the pit, and sold him to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver. And they took Joseph to Egypt” (vs. 28).

To cover their heartless malice, they killed a goat, dipped the long-sleeved coat in it, and lied to their father, Jacob, claiming Joseph had been killed by a wild animal. The old man was bereft and ironically was tricked in the same way he had tricked his own father, Isaac.

Now, I dare say most families have some level of disfunction in them, but the families of the patriarchs formed a blue-ribbon panel of the dysfunctional! The utterly amazing thing is that God works through deeply flawed human beings.

In the story of Joseph, God is largely absent. Unlike the rest of Genesis, God does not appear or speak in visions or dreams. God does not give instructions or make promises. Yet God was at work through Jacob’s favoritism, through Joseph’s naivete or arrogance, and through the brothers' murderous malice. Later in the story, God worked through the adulterous impulses of Potiphar’s wife to land Joseph in prison. God worked through the Chief Baker, who was imprisoned with Joseph under suspicion of trying to poison Pharaoh. Although the Chief Baker forgot about Joseph after he was found innocent, he eventually remembered him and commended Joseph to Pharaoh as an interpreter of dreams. Joseph was able to unravel Pharaoh’s dream and warn him of the seven-year famine that was coming on the entire region. God worked through Pharaoh to exalt Joseph to become the prime minister of Egypt. All these flawed people were part of God’s amazing plan.

Joseph was given the grace to discern God’s plan. Joseph knew God. He knew God was both sovereign and benevolent. And so, when Joseph’s brothers concocted a tale about their father’s dying wish to save their sorry skins, Joseph was not irritated or irate. He had forgiven them long ago. Instead, Joseph said, in one of the highpoints of scripture, “’Do not be afraid! Am I in the place of God? Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today. So have no fear; I myself will provide for you and your little ones.’ In this way he reassured them, speaking kindly to them” (Gen. 50:19-20).

Joseph’s brothers plotted real evil against him. They intended to do him harm. But God intended it all for good and used their malicious machinations to “preserve a numerous people.” God preserved Jacob and his family from starving to death in the promised land. God preserved the citizens of Egypt from starvation. The larger region was preserved through God’s plan.

As the Apostle Paul will say hundreds and hundreds of years later, “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28). This is not the platitudes “Everything happens for a reason,” or “It was God’s will.” No! some human actions and circumstances are truly evil. But God has the power to take even the sinful actions of his creatures and the terrible events of history and use them to fulfill his good plan to preserve life.

Paul expands the vision of God’s power when he says, “All things work together for good.” Not only human actions are included, the actions of the righteous and the wicked, but God holds the totality of existence in his omnipotent hands and has the power to transform even the worst-- sin, evil, sickness, and death-- into something truly good.

The crucifixion and resurrection of the son of God are the lenses through which we can see God's power unfolding for good. Joseph and Jesus have remarkable similarities. Jesus was favored by his father. He was sold for twenty pieces of silver. He became a prisoner. He was hated by his brethren. He was innocent of wrongdoing. But unlike Joseph, Jesus was killed without mercy. As one commentator observes, “Yet from this greatest of all evils – evils that parallel but infinitely exceed the abuse inflicted on Joseph – God brought forth the greatest possible good: the salvation of a vast company of people.”

Still, it is very hard for us to truly grasp how God is working in our lives and in our world when evil impacts our lives. Elizabeth Elliot was a twentieth- century missionary who lost two husbands. One was killed trying to evangelize Amazonian Indians, and the other died of cancer. Reflecting on her experience she wrote, “The experiences of my life are not such that I could infer from them that God is good, gracious, and merciful necessarily. To have one husband murdered and another disintegrate, body, soul, and spirit, through cancer, is not what you would call a proof of the love of God. In fact, there are many times when it looks like just the opposite. My belief in the love of God is not by inference or instinct. It is by faith. To apprehend God’s sovereignty working in that love is the last and highest victory of faith that overcomes the world.”

We walk by faith and not by sight. We do not understand, but we still believe. And this is what we doggedly trust. God still works through deeply flawed people and circumstances. “Even though you intended to harm me, God intended it for good in order to preserve a numerous people as he is today.” “We know (by faith) that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.”

God’s triumph over sin and death and evil through the crucifixion and resurrection of the son of God is proof positive that nothing shall be impossible with God; nothing can separate us from God’s love which is ours in Christ Jesus the Lord.

God has conquered our sins. God has conquered our death. And God continues to work his good purpose out “as year turns into year. Nearer and nearer draws the time, the time that shall surely be, when the earth shall be filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea.” One day, all that has the power to hurt and destroy shall be banished from God’s good creation. Until that day we live by faith with hope and love in our hearts.

Thanks be to God who causes us to triumph even in this vale of tears. Alleluia! Amen!