God’s Providence and Life’s Pain

Now the point of this for all of us is this, particularly when we walk through suffering and we wonder, what are you doing in my life, God? Just like Joseph did, I’m following you. I’m trusting you. Why have I been sold into slavery? I stood firm in purity. Why am I in prison for years? When you and I ask questions like this, why is this happening? Remember this, we have a Lord who is with us.

God Is With Us

Same God whose presence was with Joseph in the pit from which he was sold and the house in which he served, and the prison which he was thrown before the Pharaoh to whom he was summoned, that same God is with you, brother or sister. In your exaltation, when things are going great, God is with you and in your humiliation, when things are at their worst, when nothing is going right, when you think you are alone, you are never ever alone.

We have a Lord who is with us. We have a king who is guiding us. We learn in Genesis 37 to 50 that God is the ever subtle king. Don’t miss what this means for our lives. God does not overlook some of the details in your life. Do you ever wonder if he is? Has he missed this? Is God not aware of what’s going on around me right now? We start to think that God doesn’t care or God’s not involved in some of the details of our lives.

God’s Providence In Pain

This is where I want to remind you brothers and sisters, God orchestrates all of the details of your life. Again, not in a way that you or others are not responsible for choices made or in a way that’s some kind of robotic control. That’s not at all what we’re seeing in this story. Instead, we’re seeing a God who’s working behind the scenes at every moment, every second to bring Joseph to the right place at the right time.

Think about it. He’s orchestrating a variety of circumstances. You think about Joseph’s life, you could take any one of a number of incidents that happened to him and you could write tragedy over all of them, but when you put them all together, you see a beautiful picture of what God was doing. Think about Joseph in prison.

He tells the cupbearer what his dream means and then he says, please don’t forget me. And the cupbearer forgets him. Well, praise God he forgot Joseph so that at just the right time when Pharaoh needed a dream interpreted, the cupbearer who had forgotten about Joseph just happens to be standing there at that moment and says, I know a guy who can help you out with that. You don’t plan that. God alone can orchestrate that. He’s orchestrating a variety of circumstances and a variety of people.

God Is Working In the Lives of Others

Do you and I realize that our lives are not the only ones that God is working in? Your life is not the only one God is working in. Who can imagine that the world does not revolve around you or me? To go back cupbearer deal, the reality is the only reason the cupbearer was in prison, you look at the story, is because he had apparently done something very minor that it upset Pharaoh.

So ha, God used a bad mood and Pharaoh’s life one day to take a cupbearer to prison so he could have a dream one night, look confused the next morning, see Joseph walk by at that moment. This is God orchestrating all of this. Realize this. Realize when you and I ask God, what are you doing in my life? The answer may just involve what God is doing in somebody else’s life and what God is doing in your life may be an integral part of what he’s doing in somebody else’s life and vice versa.

God is orchestrating a variety of circumstances and a variety of people for a variety of goals. God’s bringing Joseph to a point of humility and joy and gladness. God’s bringing Jacob’s sons to a point of confession. God’s bringing Jacob himself to a point of fulfillment and for God’s people, this is the whole point of Genesis 50:20, all of these goals are ultimately good and based on that reality, I want to remind you of the truth we’re going to see throughout scripture. God’s providence is the only foundation for embracing life’s pain. There are a lot of people today, even some who claim to be Christians, who say that God’s not sovereign over every detail, that God is not in control. God doesn’t know what’s going to happen in the future, and I want you to see what a hollow worldview that is.

Imagine Joseph with that worldview, thinking of himself as a victim of just hopeless chance. His brothers sell him off. He’s thrown into prison and God is with him. But what does that really matter? God couldn’t keep him from being thrown in there. There’s no guarantee he’ll ever get out. God is unsure of how this story’s going to end. So Joseph would’ve no reason to hope in any kind of better future. We’ll just see what happens.

The Providence of God Gives Us Hope

That’s his hope. But no, that’s not what Joseph’s holding onto because Joseph knows the providence of God and Joseph knows that God is orchestrating all these details toward a good and glorious purpose, even the worst details. So after years in slavery, 13 years in a dungeon, he doesn’t go off and slander pot of his wife when he gets out, he doesn’t bring down the cupbearer for years of forgotten him. And when he sees his brothers, he doesn’t condemn them for selling him into slavery. No. Instead, he says, come to me and listen. Come to me nearly and listen, God did all of this. God sent me here. God led me here. God’s in control.

Think about it, brothers and sisters, whether it’s a malignant tumor or an unexpected miscarriage or a sudden tragic loss, know this, God is in control and what that means is he takes evil and he turns it into good. Think of it. Even the wicked words and actions of sinful men who want nothing but to harm you, God will ultimately use for good. God takes evil and turns it into good. God takes suffering and turns it into satisfaction.

Listen to Genesis 41:52. Joseph had two sons. Listen to what he names them. Joseph called the name of the firstborn Manasseh for he said, God has made me forget all my hardship and all my father’s house. The name of the second he called Ephraim, for God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction. Memorize verse 52. God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.

Thriving and Suffering

This is not just surviving and suffering. This is thriving and suffering. And it’s a theme we see all over Scripture, God saving his people. God’s victory for his people often comes through pain and hardship, which leads to the last truth that I pray what God will lodge in our hearts from this story. How do we know that God will take evil and turn it into good? How do we know that God takes suffering and turns it into satisfaction? Some of you’re in the middle of it right now tonight and you are wondering, how can I really know that God is going to make me fruitful in the land of my affliction?

And the reason you can know that is because we have a savior who will redeem us. Don’t miss the parallels in the story here. God uses a dreadful sin to preserve his people in Genesis. God uses sons who wanted to kill their brother, who sold their brother into slavery. Can you imagine the horror of this sin? Selling your own brother as a slave to foreign travelers? But God used it to preserve his people, setting the stage for one day, follow this, everything in history points to Good Friday, right?

This story in Genesis 37 through 50 sets the stage for the day when God will use a dreadful sin to save his people for all of eternity. When God will use the sins of those who falsely accuse and slander Jesus and sentence him to death and nail them to a cross, God will use their dreadful, murderous sin to save his people forever.

God Uses Our Pain

Think about this. Think about this. In both stories God takes the sins of the destroyers and makes them the means of their deliverance. God used the brothers’ sin to deliver the brothers. And in the same beautiful, indescribable way, God used the sin of men who nailed Jesus to a cross. Think of it. And they’re committing that sin and us with them.

They were actually making the way to be forgiven of their sins. Think about this. Standing before the brother, they had offended these brothers and he weeps and he says to them, come close, because of your sin against me, I am now able to save you. And it’s the same thing that we see in the gospel. We stand before Jesus, our savior, whom we have offended, and he says to us, come close, because of your sin against me, I am now able to save you.

Don’t miss the promise. All throughout the story, there’s an interplay between Joseph and his brother, Judah. It was Judah’s idea to sell Joseph into slavery. And instead of leaving him to die, Judah insisted that they come back to Joseph a second time. And in the end, as a result of all that God had done through Joseph, Judah led the people of God into the land.

And there Jacob blessed his son Judah, saying, your brother shall praise you, your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies, your father’s son shall bow down before you. Judah is a lion’s cub. From the prey, my son, you have gone up. He stooped down. He crouched as a lion and as a lioness who dares rouse him? The scepter shall not depart from Judah nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet until tribute comes to him. And to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.

Now it’s Judah to whom the father sons will bow down. It’s Judah who will be the lion. Judah will have the rulers from his lion. The ruler’s staff, the sign of a king and it’s Judah that one day have a king. Capital K, King come from his line to whom shall be the obedience of all the peoples. The point of the story is ultimately to preserve the Lion of Judah. For one day, God will take the Lion of Judah and make them the lamb who is slain.

This promise in Genesis 49:8—10 is ultimately fulfilled in the end when Revelation 5 tells us, John seeing weep no more the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David is conquered so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals in between the throne and the four living creatures among the elders I saw a lamb standing as so it had been slain with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. Don’t miss the point of this story. Ultimately, Joseph is in scripture to point us to Jesus.

You think about all these portraits of Joseph and then you think about the portrait of Jesus. The favorite son came to earth despised by brothers, his fellow men. He humbled himself and became a slave in a foreign land. Pure and righteous in every way, he was slandered and sentenced to death. God did this. God did this. He ordained a sinful murder of his only son so that he might be raised to become Lord over all the land. And through his suffering, he’s able to restore his brothers who had sinned against him, i.e. you and me, only to be reunited with his father. Parallels are not perfect. Details not exact, but the purpose of the story is to point us to the supremacy of Jesus and to give us hope.

Be Confident In God

Brothers and sisters hold onto this hope based on the end of this story and Joseph’s life with Joseph’s brothers surrounding him and enjoying the land. Know this, there is coming a day when we will be completely restored to Jesus, our Savior, where we will join him and the Father in a land where there is no more sorrow and no more suffering and no more sin and no more pain.

And knowing this, knowing that, be confident that God is going to use every circumstance, every occurrence, every detail, no matter what it is in your life. He’s providentially going to use it to bring about the day when you will join with him and his presence for all of eternity. And this grand story of redemption, the one who has saved us from our sins, will one day glorify us with him, pain and providence.