The Glory of God's Providence
Through all the hardships of his life, God brought Joseph to the right place at the right time and made him the right man for the task at hand. Today, Sinclair Ferguson discusses the transformative glory of divine providence.
To Listen, click H E R E
Transcript
We’ve been thinking all this week on the podcast about the mystery of God’s providence and trying to draw out some of the lessons that emerged from the story of Joseph in Genesis 37–50. And we’ve seen how this whole section is actually headed: “These are the generations of Jacob” (Gen. 37:2). And we’ve been watching the way the Lord worked providentially and graciously in Jacob, and in Joseph, and then in his brothers. But before the week ends, I think we need to say something more about Joseph himself.
They are wonderful words towards the end of the book of Genesis, aren’t they, when he tells his brothers, “You meant evil by what you did to me, but God meant it for good” (Gen. 50:20). He was really expanding on what he’d said earlier when they discovered, to their horror, that he was the prime minister of Egypt: “It wasn’t you who sent me here,” he said, “but God.” Well, it probably didn’t feel like that when he was down in the pit, or when he was sold as a slave in Egypt, or when his success in Egypt was destroyed by Potiphar’s wife, or when his hopes were dashed, when the cupbearer whose dream he’d interpreted, forgot him and he was left in jail.
This isn’t a story about how God’s providence means God’s people always enjoy health, wealth, and happiness, is it? But it is a story about how God sovereignly works things out for His own glory. I think we can see that in several ways.
For one thing, God brought Joseph to the right place at the right time, didn’t He? God’s timing is significant. There’s a very interesting hint about this in the time markers we’re given in Genesis 37–50. Joseph is seventeen when the story begins, and he’s thirty when he becomes prime minister of Egypt. That’s fourteen years by inclusive reckoning. And that time marker isn’t accidental, because you’ll remember that what he helps Pharaoh to see when he interprets Pharaoh’s dream is that there’re going to be seven years of plenty and then seven years of famine. Seven plus seven makes fourteen. There’s a theology in these numbers, isn’t there? Fourteen long years of preparation for fourteen years of great wisdom.
I think there’s a tremendous lesson for us to learn here. I think we tend to think that a little polishing up for a few days will equip us to serve the Lord. Maybe seven days, maybe even seven weeks, or seven months, surely, would be quite enough to prepare us for many years of service. How naive and self-assured we can easily be. God’s transforming work does not happen overnight. It’s not done by one experience.
Thinking about Joseph actually reminds me of what I think of as God’s cul-de-sac principle, because I’ve sometimes seen that some people I’ve known who have had real gifts and a desire to serve the Lord Jesus seem to be shunted down a kind of dead-end street, exactly the way Joseph must have felt. And yet the marvelous thing is that what God is really doing is—I think you could put it this way—taking them out of the traffic that they’re in, in order to put them back into the traffic where He intends to use them most for His glory. And you can see that, I think, in the life of Joseph. He wants him to be in the right place at the right time. And this cul-de-sac principle works marvelously.
And then there’s something else here, because clearly Joseph is not simply in the right place at the right time, but God has been preparing him to be the right man. What we notice about Joseph when he’s seventeen is that he is impatient, and he’s unwise, and he seems a little self-centered. But through these years, the Lord turns him out from himself, and he becomes God-centered. God gives him wisdom for his folly and, amazingly, gives him patience.
You know, there’s something else you can’t avoid really in the Joseph story. It’s a principle that emerges finally in the Lord Jesus. Remember what Simon Peter said on the day of Pentecost about Jesus? He said He was crucified at the hands of wicked men, but although He was crucified at the hands of wicked men, it was God’s purpose that through that event, others would be brought to salvation. And Joseph’s life is a little picture of that. It’s almost as though, in His providence, God wanted to make Joseph more like Jesus.
And that’s the truth really, isn’t it? We’re not all going to have the dramatic experiences of a Joseph. We’re certainly not all going to end up as prime ministers or as presidents. But here’s one thing that is true in God’s providence in our lives: by His grace, each one of us who’s a Christian is going to be conformed to the image of His Son. He’s going to make us just like Jesus. And then all the providence of God in our lives we will see was worthwhile.
Commentaires