Exposed By God's Providence

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“They said to one another, “Surely we are being punished because of our brother. We saw how distressed he was when he pleaded with us for his life, but we would not listen; that’s why this distress has come on us.”” Genesis 42:21

Main Readings: Romans 12 & Genesis 42

Supporting Readings: Jeremiah 29:1-14 & 1 Peter 3

Wim Hof - in case you didn’t know - made a name for himself preaching the health benefits of cold exposure. He believes that there are major physical and mental benefits to be had when people subject their bodies to extreme cold.

That, for a man like me, who reserves shorts and t-shirt only for the very warmest days of the year, doesn’t sound attractive whatsoever. But then, I don’t suppose sitting in a tub of ice is anybody’s particular idea of a good time.

And yet Mr Hof developed quite the following. Mainly because our culture is a riding a wave of health and wellbeing focus whereby, even exposing ourselves to cold showers first thing in the morning, seems like a persuasive idea.

Now, I don’t know if Mr. Hof would quite put it like this, but his whole philosophy seems to suggest that discomfort might be the doorway to deeper health.

That’s not necessarily a biblical idea — but it’s certainly one that echoes God’s providential shaping of our lives – where the end result is not so much physical as it is spiritual.

And it’s that connection that I want to tease out of the passage we have before us this morning.

This is now the third message on the life of Joseph. So far, we’ve learnt that God has been providentially moving in Joseph’s life, not only to place Joseph in Egypt – which is going to prove to be essential to the survival of his family, and therefore the appearing of Jesus – but also that he has been walking closely with Joseph in it all.

But now this morning, we’re at the turning point in the story, where Joseph encounters his brothers for the first time since he was sold by them into slavery some twenty years before.

We’re going to see several ways that God exposes things in the outworking of his special providential plan for our lives.

This chapter of the story is especially going to show us how God’s providence can reveal sin, confirm God’s Word, and pave the way for better things.

By now in the story, there’s not only a huge shortage of food in Egypt, but also in the surrounding countries. Including Joseph’s homeland of Canaan. And, as a result, Joseph’s family are in desperate need.

Verse 2 tells us that Jacob had heard that there was grain in Egypt and turning to his ten sons – who appear to be doing very little about the problem – instructs them to get up and go down to Egypt to buy some food so that they might not die. It’s a long journey but a necessary one.

Even though, by now Benjamin – Jacob’s youngest and, so far as he is aware, his only remaining son to his favourite wife Rachel – even though by now Benjamin must be at least in his early twenties, Jacob feared his loss. It says in verse 3 that Jacob was ‘afraid that harm might come to him’.

Now that’s fairly understandable. Jacob’s old, and he’s scarred by the loss of one son already – that of Joseph. And yet we’re going to see that the fear about losing Benjamin here shows a greater fear in his heart rooted in a failure to recognise that God is working all things together for their good. Instead, Jacob will say later on, ‘everything is against me’!

In other words, his fear seems rational on the surface. But if Jacob were seeing God clearly - as being in and over everything - this fear would actually be exposed for what it really is: irrational. You see true faith is rational not irrational – it’s important to remember that.

Faith, Hebrews says, is ‘confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see’. Jacob, though, can’t see a hopeful outcome for Benjamin if he lets him go, and so he holds him back.

Situational control is ultimately an illusion. It’s something we never actually have, but something we spend our lives trying to attain. And that’s what Jacob was doing here as he sent his sons, without Benjamin, on their way to Egypt.

I guess you could say his cautionary instincts were well founded because when his ten sons arrive in Egypt they encounter a very frosty reception at the hands of the governor of the land – none other than their very own brother Joseph.

Joseph - now 20 years older than when they last saw him – is impossibly elevated in the land of Egypt, dressed in Egyptian clothes, and speaking the local language. In other words he was unrecognisable to his brothers. And they did, what I suppose anybody would do who was desperately in need and at the mercy of a powerful ruler, they bowed down to him with their faces to the ground.

Now these 10 brothers had no idea who it was they were bowing before. But before them was the very brother they had despised because of his dreams. Dreams which said that one day they would bow down to him.

You see, God’s word does not return empty or void. What God says will happen, will certainly come to pass. And so, it did.

In God’s great plan, he had decided that this would be the moment that his word about Joseph would be fulfilled.

It’s like this: God’s divine decrees and sacred promises outlast the complications and manoeuvrings of our lives. This is why, even the parts of the bible we don’t like, are so worthy of our attention. It’s not as if ignoring them will make them go away. It’s not like acting contrary to them will overturn them in some way and cancel their effect. No, God’s word will always prevail - even the parts we don’t like.

And so, even though Joseph’s brothers sought to act contrary to God’s word - revealed in Joseph’s dreams – nevertheless God’s word came to pass in the end.

You can see for yourself, in verse 8, that Joseph made the connection between the arrival of his brothers in Egypt - their bowing before him - and his dreams.

Now, at this point, Joseph has a choice to make, doesn’t he? And I dare say we’ve found ourselves at one time or another with this kind of power also - and we know therefore what it’s like.

The choice he has, now that he recognises them, but they don’t recognise him, is whether or not to use that to his advantage. If he pretends not to know them here, he can inflict some retribution on them for the way they treated him in the past.

Now, it seems to me that many interpreters of this passage have chosen to describe Joseph’s actions here as a kind of righteous test of his brother’s hearts. He’s testing to see if there’s real remorse in them.

I’m not entirely persuaded by that idea, though. I think that we love Joseph, we feel for Joseph, and we see the parallel between Joseph and Jesus. But like with King David later on, we need to acknowledge that Joseph is a man, and no more than a man – and therefore he is prone to sin also – just like any man.

And so, faced with the opportunity that God’s providence has presented, Joseph must choose whether to sinfully string his brothers along for his own advantage or be honest with them. And verse 7 reveals his choice: ‘he pretended to be a stranger and spoke harshly to them’.

He knows where they come from. Yet he asks them ‘where do you come from?’ He knows they’re not spies. Yet he accuses them no less than four times of being spies.

Anybody in Joseph’s position would spot this opportunity – I know I would. After all, who would begrudge the man who had been through the pit, through slavery of Potiphar’s house, through the prison and through all the pain he had been through – who would begrudge Joseph the opportunity to get even with the very people who had kicked the whole thing off in the first place.

Joseph was a righteous man for sure — but even the righteous can entertain thoughts that feel justified but aren’t.

He must have thought: ‘after all it was them who sinned against me, not the other way around. They surely deserve whatever comes their way for their sins’.

That impulse is all too familiar to all of us, I’m sure. But the Apostle Peter gets to the heart of the issue when he says this:

‘Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing. For, “Whoever would love life and see good days must keep their tongue from evil and their lips from deceitful speech. They must turn from evil and do good; they must seek peace and pursue it.

For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil”’.

And you’re left thinking to yourself: ‘Peter are you for real?! What could be more honourable than to make Joseph’s brothers pay for what they did? After all isn’t that what God wants – justice for the oppressed?’

Paul says the same thing as Peter in Romans 12. And right after it he says it he adds this: ‘Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written “it is mine to avenge; I will repay”, says the Lord’.

When we take vengeance into our own hands, then, two things happen. We rob God of his rightful place to avenge sin. And we rob ourselves of a blessing that God has promised us when we bless and do not curse those who sin against us.

As Dave reminded me this week, Jesus showed us how to do this on the cross.

Before anybody had asked for his forgiveness, he prayed for his enemies – ‘Father forgive them for they do not know what they do’.

So, you see, God’s providence was reaching into Joseph’s heart and revealing a root of bitterness in there. It’s good to know that bitterness doesn’t always look ugly on the surface - sometimes it hides under the cloak of ‘justice’.

Now, Joseph had got a taste for the power he could exert over his brothers. And he strikes home to make them even more uncomfortable. In a move to see his blood-brother Benjamin who’s missing from the party, he demands that one brother return home to get him whilst the others remain in Egypt and in prison – a measure of his own misery experienced whilst in Egypt, exacted now on them.

But it’s not only Joseph’s sin that is exposed by God’s providence, it’s the sin of his brothers too. And the brothers quickly connected the opposition from the governor, at the point of their most desperate need, with the sins of their past.

God starts to expose their sin to them by self-incrimination. The first time in verse 10 when they refer to themselves as ‘honest men’. Men they were, but honest they had not been that for a long time - concealing the truth about Joseph from their father for the past twenty years.

Then in verse 13, when they gave the governor their family story, they refer to Joseph as the one who ‘is no more’.

But God really goes to work after Joseph imposes the prison sentence on them. ‘Surely’, they say, ‘we are being punished because of our brother. We saw how distressed he was when he pleaded with us for his life, but we would not listen; that’s why this distress has come on us’.

And Reuben does what we’ve probably all done, he tries to stand apart from the guilt and make out that he’s having to pay the price for his brother’s sin not his own. He says, ‘Now we must give an accounting for his blood’.

So, they’re drawing a cause-and-effect link between their own disaster and their sin against Joseph. All the time not realising that he’s right there in front of them and can understand every word they're saying.

So, what are we to make of this? It means that even through Joseph’s sin - repaying evil for evil – God is at work! He’s not endorsingJoseph’s sin but he’s using it to expose the deep-seated guilt in the lives of the brothers. God is sounding the alarm in their consciences – not necessarily to condemn them, but to awaken them to his grace.

This is, in many ways, how God still works today. He brings us face to face with our guilt. Not to leave us there, but to bring us to the only place where forgiveness can be found – to bring us to Jesus. ‘God’s kindness is meant’, Romans 2 says, ‘to lead us to repentance’.

Even as believers, God can bring us to the end of ourselves through events in our lives and cause us, in a powerful and profound way, to repent of sin and cleave to Jesus for forgiveness. Sometimes he creates radical change in us, in this way.

Now, as I’m sure you all know, God’s providence not only exposes sin it also exposes hope. Which is encouraging because otherwise I think we might prefer to doubt God’s providence rather than embrace it.

But here we see that God is doing a softening work in Joseph’s heart through the arrival of his brothers in Egypt too.

The first place that’s evident is in the softening of Joseph’s heart towards them after he has decided to keep nine of them imprisoned until Benjamin arrives.

Joseph says in verse 18 ‘I fear God’. That’s always a good sign. And then, after saying it, he relents and demands that only one of them remain in Egypt whilst the others return with grain for their starving households. Which is a great mercy on Joseph’s part.

Then there’s the fact that he chooses Simeon – the second oldest – to remain. It suggests he recognises the role Reuben had in trying to prevent his death back in Dothan. It’s a further sign of softness in his heart.

And then, at last, his sadness at the rift between them breaks out in physical tears. And even though he keeps Simeon back, he has their bags filled with grain, their silver returned in their sacks, and provisions made for their journey. So, there is a tenderness we’re seeing here. Joseph’s bitterness is turning because of God’s grace to him through this turn of events.

It's later, when his brothers recount their tale to Jacob, that they note, ‘the governor said we could trade in the land’. The Egyptians were totally suspicious of foreign shepherds (chapter 46 confirms that). So, this again shows Joseph’s softening towards his brothers.

The future, then, is looking more hopeful now. Principally because God is working in the heart of Joseph who happens to be - by God’s own providential working - the most powerful man in the land of Egypt.

And it’s the first indication that Jacob’s family could move out of a land of famine and into a land of plenty and so be saved.

God, you see, is not only creating, but also using, the circumstances of the lives of all the characters in this intricate story to expose realities to them that work something of God in their lives, whilst also working a bigger, but no less significant, picture. An amazing thing!

As the brothers return to Canaan, there’s more fear and angst to be exposed by these circumstances. At finding their silver returned to them in their sacks, their ‘hearts sank’ the passage says. Which may seem odd. Food for nothing is better than food that cost usually. It says, ‘they trembled, asking each other “what is this that God has done to us?”’

God’s sovereign moving is always for the good of his people, but sin so often blinds us that reality. Unconfessed, un-repented sin leads to the false belief that God is being spiteful in the circumstances of life. That somehow, he’s punishing us for our sins, when in fact he’s alerting us to our sin for our good.

Here the brothers think God is working against them because of their sin and they fear what might happen next when they find the silver that should have been exchanged for the grain, returned to them in their sacks.

So, fear knocks right on the door of a flawed understanding of God’s providential working for us in the circumstances of life because of unconfessed sin in our hearts.

After telling Jacob the whole story on their return, the brothers are at some pains to impress on Jacob the necessity that Benjamin go with them back to Egypt. And if there was fear in Jacob because of the loss of Joseph at the beginning, then there’s even more now because of the loss of Simeon also.

Even when Reuben offers the lives of his two children in exchange for Benjamin’s life - if he does not return - Jacob will not let him go. The grief of losing Benjamin as well, would finish him off, he thinks.

But Jacob holds too tightly to what God has given him. He fears the loss of that which he cannot hold on to. If it is God’s will that Benjamin be lost, he will be lost - no matter what Jacob does. And if it’s God’s will that he survives, then nothing Jacob does will guarantee that either.

Never have we lived in an age more self-sufficient than this one. But let me tell you, it’s still God who is the ultimate mover.

He calls us to be diligent with the resources at our disposal and not to squander life, but we ought never to think for one second that even with the NHS, and emergency departments, and 24hr pharmacies that we are in control of anything. It’s God alone who will decide.

This is the truth that caused the hymn writer to pen these words, ‘God moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform, he plants his footsteps in the sea and rides upon the storm’.

Fear is not cancelled by the idea that being in control is better. Because then it’s all on us. The last time I looked I wasn’t that impressive. Rather, fear is put to flight by the reality of a sovereign God who works all things together for our good. And who is himself good! And who is for us because of Jesus.

God’s purposeful sovereignty then is not only working to move people into the right places. It’s not only working to show how close God is to us. It’s working to expose our sin, confirm his word, and give us hope for what lies ahead.

When we’re sinned against, we can trust him and not return evil for evil.

And if the bitter root has already grown up and God orchestrates life to show us that, we can take that to God and have him rid us of that too.

Where there’s relational rift, we can have God heal it by allowing his sovereign work in our lives to create in us soft hearts towards those who have sinned against us.

When we’ve sinned against God and against others, we can see God showing us that. And take our sins to the foot of the cross and receive forgiveness for them there.

Where there’s fear, we can learn from God’s sovereign work in our lives that we’re not in control, but he is. Perfect love for God drives out fear like that.

And we can hope in the future. We can see that God is working all these things for our good to prosper us and not to harm us – to give us a future - as we saw Jeremiah 29 telling us this week.

So, as we step back from the drama of this chapter in Joseph’s story, what are we left with? We’re left with a picture of a God who is not distant or passive, but intimately involved - using every thread of circumstance, every twist of human failure, every painful wound, to weave something redemptive and perfecting in our lives.

He is a God who exposes sin not to shame us, but to heal us. He allows discomfort not to crush us, but to deepen our faith. He exposes fear not to paralyse us, but to draw us near to himself.

And so, whether you find yourself in the place of Joseph, sinned against and tempted to repay evil for evil. Or in the place of his brothers, carrying guilt you can’t undo. Or in the place of Jacob, gripped by fear over things you cannot control. The invitation is the same: come close and trust God whose providence is not only perfect but is also good!