Dr. Ron Sumners
September 6, 2009
We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.
Those who have been Christians for any length of time, may find that the page in their Bible which contains Romans 8:28 may be a little worn, and with good reason. This great verse is a promise from God that we are not hapless victims of life, at the mercy of fate and chance. We are not driven by some blind impersonal force. On the contrary, we are the objects of God’s providential care. We are under His guiding and protecting hand.
The implications of this truth are staggering because they impact every area and moment of our lives. This truth is one thing that separates the believer from the unbeliever. We need not be concerned about Sagittarius or Gemini or the other signs of the zodiac, or about the movements of the planets and other things that occupy the pagan mind. Jesus says the world may run after these things (Matthew 6:32), but as His people we are to be different.
So we are faced with this incredible truth that God rules in all the circumstances of life. Romans 8:28 is not a pious platitude to be mumbled at a bedside or a graveside when we don’t know what else to say but want to be helpful. It is truth that is meant for life. What we need is a real-life illustration of how this truth looks “with skin on.”
This biblical doctrine is classically expressed in the story of Joseph. As we trace the powerful principle of God’s providential care unfolding in the life of Joseph, we will find that his story is the classic illustration of Romans 8:28 in action.
If you enjoy stories as much as I do, I can assure you that we are at the threshold of a classic in the story of Joseph. The biography of Joseph covers more space than given to any other person in the Book of Genesis. Even people who have only a scant knowledge of the Old Testament probably know of Joseph for the same reason many people know of Noah and the ark or Jonah and the great fish. His story is memorialized by something visually unusual; his coat of many colors.
For those with no biblical clue at all, Joseph may still be familiar, courtesy of the popular Broadway musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, by Timothy Rice and Andrew Lloyd-Weber, and starring Donnie Osmond. Joseph is a man worth knowing!
Joseph’s birth is recorded in Genesis 30:23-24, and he is mentioned several times in the following chapters. But we are introduced to him in depth when he is seventeen years old, a young man tending the flocks of his father, Jacob, with his brothers (Genesis 37:2). Between this notice and the record of Joseph’s death ninety-three years later at the age of 110 (Genesis 50:26), we have the details of a truly amazing life.
The story of Joseph is a tale of jealousy, deceit, slavery, misrepresentation, injustice, lust, rivalry, and forgiveness. It pits brother against brother. We encounter imprisonment and deep trials that do not produce self-pity, and prosperity that does not bring the accompanying pride.
Joseph’s life encompasses all of this and more. And in it all, the overarching theme is that of the sovereign hand of God manifesting itself in His providential care over His dearly loved children and bringing to fruition all He has planned.
Joseph’s life ought to be for us a story of great encouragement and reassurance as we make our way in the walk of faith. We carry the baggage of our past, the fears of the present, and the prospects of the future. We are sometimes tempted to wonder in the midst of all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle of life, Does God care? Is God in control? And if so, what can we expect?
We don’t know if Joseph asked these questions before he was seventeen. We will see that his early life did include a great amount of turmoil, in large part because of his father, Jacob. But Joseph never had reason to wonder what God was doing in his life. All of that changed when he was seventeen. Before we look at the events that sent Joseph’s life spinning, let’s consider the influences on his life up to that point.
Where did Joseph come from? Did he come from a family background we might expect to produce a person of such exceptional character? What were Joseph’s family ties? All of us have them and all of them mean something.
There is no question that Joseph came from quite a family. No other seventeen-year-old can boast that his great-grandfather is Abraham; his grandfather, Isaac; and his father, Jacob. By looking at Jacob, Joseph’s father, we can trace the family ties and the influences of Joseph’s early life.
Jacob’s character was revealed at his birth when he grasped the heel of his twin, Esau, and was given a name that means “Heel-grabber, cheater, deceiver.” Jacob was aptly named for he was skillful at manipulating people and events to get things to turn out the way he wanted. The first thing we learn about him is that he deceived his brother, Esau, out of his birthright (Genesis 25:27-34).
Then, as recorded in Genesis 27, Jacob deceived his father, Isaac, into conferring upon him the blessing that should have been Esau’s. When Esau found out, he said, “Isn’t he rightfully named Jacob? He has cheated me these two times” (27:36). Esau vowed to kill Jacob, so his mother, Rebekah, sent Jacob to live with her brother Laban in the land of Paddan Aram.
It was there that Jacob met and fell in love with Rachel, the younger daughter of Laban. Jacob loved Rachel so much he offered to work for his uncle Laban for seven years for her hand in marriage.
Laban was a bit of a deceiver himself. When the seven years was up he deceived Jacob by slipping Leah, the older sister, into the wedding chamber.
It sounds like a soap opera, doesn’t it? You know that when Laban went to bed that night, he must have said to himself, “Wait until Jacob discovers what I have done. Boy is he in for a big surprise!”
When Jacob realized he had been deceived, Laban tried to legitimize the whole affair by saying it was the custom that he couldn’t give away his younger daughter until he had given away the older daughter. He made another deal with Jacob. “Finish Leah’s bridal week, then we will give you Rachel also, in return for another seven years of work” (v. 27). Jacob agreed and had two wives.
With Jacob’s two marriages, the family album of Joseph began to fill up. The dining room was regularly in need of extra chairs. Jacob favored Rachel but she had no children; Leah had many.
In rapid succession, the Bible describes how the twelve children were born, eleven sons and a daughter. Altogether, Leah bore Jacob six sons and the only daughter, Dinah. Leah also gave her maidservant, Zilpaa, to Jacob, and he had two sons by her.
When Rachel could not conceive, she gave her maidservant, Bilhah, to Jacob. She bore two sons. Finally, in Genesis 30:22-24 we read, “God remembered Rachel. . . and He opened her womb. She became pregnant and gave birth to a son. . . . She named him Joseph.”
This was quite a family! One father, four mothers, two who were wives and two who were concubines, eleven sons, and one daughter. And at the end of this mixed-up, complicated family Joseph arrived. (Benjamin would not be born for several years, and in giving birth to him, Rachel would die).
Between Joseph’s birth and his appearance on the scene for good in Genesis 37:2, his name only appears three times. But he was part of the family during the events recorded in Genesis 31-36, which cover the first seventeen years of his life.
These were Joseph’s formative years, a part of God’s providential work to mold him for the future God had for him. God was already forming Joseph’s character for an exceptional purpose that neither he nor any of the others in his family would understand for many years.
Sometime after Joseph was born, Jacob decided it was time to go back home and face his brother, Esau, in Canaan. We don’t know how old Joseph was at that time, maybe six or seven years old. If so, he was old enough to take in his father’s announcement, “We are moving back to Canaan.” He could not have understood all it meant, but he knew that a big change was about to take place.
The family left under the cover of darkness so they would not be detected. Jacob knew that if Laban found out they were leaving, he would try to stop them. And so, in the moonlight, little Joseph was put on a camel with his mother, and the large caravan started out toward Canaan.
I can hear the questions of a six-year-old, “Father, why are we running away at night? Don’t you like grandfather? Doesn’t grandfather love us? Shouldn’t we say good-bye to him?”I don’t knowabout your relationship with your grandfather, but my grandfather and I were very close. I wouldn’t want anybody tearing me away from my grandfather without a chance to say good-bye.
But that’s what is happening to Joseph. He is going to have a lot of tearing away in his life; most of the time he didn’t get to say good-bye. He was going to have to learn how to weep and deal with pain. And even in these early life experiences, God was forming Joseph in preparation for what was to come.
The final scene in Genesis 31 is one to etch into our memories, as far as the life of Joseph is concerned. Laban caught up with Jacob. They made a covenant together, and then had a meal to seal the agreement, and Laban spent the night before going back home.
I want you to see the emotion here. If you have ever moved a great distance from home, you know the “night before” experience well. The family is gathered, and there is a great reunion. But the joy is clouded by the prospect of the next morning and the separation.
So,it was with Joseph’s family. The text tells us, “Early the next morning Laban kissed his grandchildren and his daughters and blessed them. Then, he left and returned home” (v.55). Don’t you imagine Laban squeezed those boys, maybe givinglittle Joseph an extra hug as the baby of the family?
That part of the story comes to an end without any argument or ugly scenes, but Jacob’s distress was just beginning. Now he had to face the prospect of meeting his brother, Esau, who was comingto meet him with four hundred men. Fear gripped Jacob’s heart at the very thought!
Jacob divided his family and possessions and sent them on ahead. Separated from family and possessions, he encountered God in a surprising, personal way, and the result was permanent. He received a new name and a whole new identity.
In the morning, when Jacob returned to his family, he was limping as a result of his wrestling match with the angel of the Lord. I don’t know if he ever told Joseph what had happened that night, but the event had clearly stamped Jacob, for when he got to Shechem, Jacob (now called Israel) built an altar to the Lord to set his family apart from the surrounding culture (33:18-20).
We are sketching in large strokes the background scenes of Joseph’s life from birth to the age of seventeen. Jacob was reconciled to Esau, but when the family camped at Shechem, a dreadful tale unfolded. A young man also named Shechem raped Dinah, and Simeon and Levi devised a terrible vengeance against the men of that city (34:1-31).
Joseph may have been eleven or twelve at this time, and we can imagine what went through his mind and heart as he heard all the hushed conversations and the extreme agitation of his older brothers. In it all, Godwas working to form the character of this boy.
From Shechem, the clan moved on under God’s orders to Bethel, where Jacob had stopped on his flight from Esau years earlier. Jacob built an altar there to purify his household, and there tragedy and grief struck his home.
First, a woman named Deborah, the nurse to Jacob’s mother Rebekah, died and was mourned (35:8). Then Jacob suffered the loss of his beloved wife Rachel as she was giving birth to Benjamin. The birth of Benjamin was a key moment in Joseph’s life. As the next youngest, Joseph would have the closest emotional ties to Benjamin. Besides this, they were the only two sons of Rachel. The day of Benjamin’s birth was mingled joy and sorrow. Benjamin was born but Rachel died.
Once again ,the threads of pain and sorrow and bereavement were woven into Joseph’s life. Then he had to deal with the death of his grandfather, Isaac (35:29). Joseph experienced another funeral, another reminder of the frailty of life, the reality of death, and the necessity of faith.
There is much in these chapters that will reward your study. When we arrive at chapter 37, the camera lens is focused upon Joseph as the central person in the narrative. Now we are ready to look into the eyes of a young man of seventeen who has already been through more excitement and intrigue and drama than most of us will experience in a lifetime.
In modern-day terms, Joseph came from a dysfunctional family. Indeed, we all came from a dysfunctional background because sin makes us dysfunctional! But when you take all the sins of a large number of selfish people and mix them together in a family, you have a group badly out of alignment with wheels turning in different directions.
I have summarized this background briefly. We need to remember that in the rough-and-tumble of a less-than-perfect family life, God was preparing Joseph for the role He had planned for Him. As a matter of fact, the only explanation for the life of Joseph and the role he played is found in the grace of God. There is no human reason whatsoever that Joseph should emerge from the emotional and spiritual carnage of his family life to be the incredible man of God that he was. The only way that we can explain it is that God purposed it tobe so. “God moves in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform. He plants His footsteps in the sea and rides upon the storm.”
We must not allow our circumstances to become the excuse for the bad choices we make in life. God is greater than all of that, and he can bring beauty out of the ashes. Our trials come, Augustine said, “to prove us and improve us.” The mosaic of Joseph’s background also provides us with a striking reminder of the impact a father’s life has on his children.
Jacob was not a model of integrity. He did poorly when it came to decisiveness. He was slow when it came to action. He tended to avoid the issues rather than face them. But God chose to use this imperfect father to raise the boy He had chosen to redeem His people fromfamine through his experiences in Egypt.
What about us parents? What is the legacy we are leaving? What stories will our children tell? When they stand and gaze at our tombstone, what then? Be encouraged that out of the chaos of Joseph’s background came a man God used as a stirring example of His grace. All things do work together for good for them who are called to the purposes of God!
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