Any and all of that could have broken his heart. And don’t you know that a lot of lesser men would have been provoked by this and finally would turn angry or resentful – "Nothing changes you guys! You’re such stinking manipulators! You’re the same as ever!" Can you imagine, if Joseph even thought they were misrepresenting his father to save their skins, he could have let that really get to him and aggravate him. But he is still tender, forgiving, controlled, generous.

And that brings us to the two most significant statements in this whole chapter. Maybe the two most significant statements in the whole story of Joseph:

Here is where you can find a treasure-chest of perspective for virtually anything that might happen to you in this coming year. Keep those statements in mind. Bring them often to mind during this year. And what I’m going to tell you about what they mean.

But Joseph is saying this because he has observed what Divine providence has done in this situation, and it appears entirely inappropriate that now he, Joseph, should turn events that God has clearly brought together to dispense mercy, and turn it into a time of laying on the justice. "I would be resisting the obvious work of God. That is, does it really appear right, in this situation, that I not forgive you? What basis would I have to withhold forgiveness from you, given who I am and what God has been doing?"

Joseph’s statement is not even centrally founded on "I have to be forgiving, because you repented." It’s really more founded upon "If I was to stay bitter at you and not provide for you, God would have a right to demand of me: ‘Who do you think you are?’ I know I’m not in the place of God." One has to step back from his own agenda at times, and look at how mercifully God has arranged the outcome of a matter. Even as He deals with undeserving people, what has He brought to pass? Ask yourself, "Do I have grounds to step into a plan so obviously loaded with mercy for the undeserving, and turn it into a time of judgment?"

Joseph still holds his power and his high-ranking position in Egypt as a man who knows, "I am subservient to God’s purpose." Yes, his brethren had come and bowed down to him; their stalks had bowed to his stalk, just as in the dream so many years before. He was the man. He had all the power. And he was using all that power to provide for them instead of to punish them. We all need to learn to speak with, deal with, and handle each other with grace: and yes, that most certainly does mean to treat one another better than we deserve.

When there is a family matter that could have ravaged your family, that could have ripped it apart – or when that happens this year! – and then God brings about peace – be careful not to disturb or undo that peace. Be careful not to return to that conflict or re-visit the details of it often, especially just to make a point for yourself or to avenge yourself. Joseph did not just say "I shouldn’t be bitter when wronged." A genuine crime had been committed against him, and he could have imposed fierce punishment before this, and been within his rights to it, without any bitterness. Are judges, who have kidnappers put away in prison for life, bitter men? Not at all. They are doing justice.

But instead of doing that, Joseph interpreted the events which God had brought to pass. He reflected on what God was doing. Do I have a right to become vengeful if I’ve been paying any attention to God’s dealings with you, with me, with all of us in this whole matter? It would not appear so. And everything about Joseph’s responses, from the day he entered Potiphar’s house as a slave until now, show a man who centers his thoughts on God.

Yes, the Lord was with him; and just as importantly, Joseph dwelt in the presence of God. "Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you", we’re told. Joseph was always drawing near to God.

I gave you 3 points in Joseph’s theology a few weeks ago that should be repeated here:

You should not think of it as a surprise; it should not be regarded as some stunning, unexpected, unimaginable thing that suffering would come across our path. But we are surprised. The Scriptures of both the Old and New Testament repeatedly tell us not to take it as a surprise and they don’t merely mean when it’s persecution for the faith. We should not take just suffering, in general, as a surprise, for any cause God that deems to bring it into your life!

Can you interpret sudden, unfavorable turns of your path into the mouth of suffering – repeated ones! – with v 20’s way of thinking? We might be able to start to, if we would at least decide, and get it fixed in our heads that, suffering is not an odd exception for those who place their faith and hope in God; that suffering unjustly – when we have done nothing to bring in on ourselves – is not an odd exception for those who hope in God.

This is the flip side. A lot of the reason we take suffering as a surprise is, many retain in the back of their minds a feeling of a certain innate "right" to expect peace of mind, that life should not to be too hard on us, things should go pretty smoothly. And we don’t recognize that the blessings God bestows are always grace, even the blessings experienced by the most obedient disciple. Even when the most conscientious servant of the Lord is blessed, he can’t say he earned that. We have only done what we ought to have done, come what may in its train; and when we are blest, God has been good again, which He so consistently is.

But probably most importantly, for this takes in Joseph’s theology of God’s providence most completely, and this is the part most often missed:

Do not forget what you get to hear from Joseph again, this one final time, his understanding by faith of all the events which had come into his life: That this whole series of tragedies and wrongs and evils against him – all of it – every moment of it – it wasn’t really you in control. It wasn’t centrally about me either. It wasn’t men at all. It was God.

I know you sold me because you hated me then. But God did not hate me, and He brought that to pass. I know those Midianite traders bought me just to make a profit on the slave-market, and they did not care what affect it had on my life. But God cared for me, and He brought that to pass. I know that Potiphar bought me just for free labor and did not care that his ownership of me separated me from my family. But God cared for me, and He brought that to pass. I know that his wife falsely accused me and let me go to prison with a spiteful grin on her face, but God did not deal wrongly with me, and He brought that to pass. I know that fellow in prison with me forgot all about my kindness to him and blew me off when he got out, but God did not forget me, and He brought that to pass.

He had learned to trust in God.

But he was so disinterested in "his own things" and had learned to put "the things of others" first, that did you notice this in what we just read? – Joseph doesn’t even bring up that he had learned to trust in God. His own growth in faith does not even come up here. "Oh, I can forgive you, because you know, I’ve grown a lot due to all this." Well, that’s good. Of course he had grown in faith. But that’s not "the good" Joseph talks about having seen now in all these events. "The good" is that "many people" have been preserved.

So he grew in faith. That’s nice, that’s fine, everybody ought to be stronger in faith than they are, you should, I should. Progress in faith is nothing to get a medal for, it’s just our duty. But there’s a lot more to life: like, the interests of many people. That’s what this was all for.

And you can reason this out all day long and argue against it. It’s easy to think up logic that has a problem with this: that God could have made one generous, kind-hearted Egyptian man (somebody already living in Egypt!) think up every idea that Joseph thought of to provide for the starving peoples of that region – the storage of the grain and all that – and used that man to feed Jacob and his family. They could have come to him for grain in Egypt! Why did God have to put me through all this trouble, to get me down here, when the omnipotent God could have used a million other ways to meet the same needs, could have fed and kept you all alive, without putting me through this trouble?

Do you have troubles that came out good but you still find a moment of bitterness as to why did I have to be put through that? You are not going to get the answer to that. And when you ask that kind of question this year of the sufferings which come your way, you won’t get your answer by chasing that rabbit either. Everything God ever got done by using people’s suffering He could have done without anyone suffering, so you can always think of the question. But you won’t get any helpful answer that way.

But expect this: God will bring suffering into your life to bring about good – often good on a wider scale and range than just for you. And faith learns to accept that this is clearly, consistently, God’s purpose. He does this all the time. It’s a central cog in the engine of how He runs His world. Get used to it or get used to staying bitter in hell forever.

It surely is one of the most astounding examples of God’s control of all things, to see a bunch of people like Jacob’s household preserved by God in a famine, as an indirect result of their own treachery, when they had nothing in mind but hateful, blood-letting vengeance!

Now, there is one more important feature to this remark of Joseph’s: "God meant it for good" – that I would suffer; so that others would be blest. Everything we know about the Joseph who we find saying that, and the timing in which Joseph says that, shows that when he says "God meant it for good" – that he is content with it. He doesn’t just vent that out from between seething lips and gritting teeth. He’s content with it.

You see, a lot of people who know God is sovereign have never been glad that He is sovereign. You can know He is sovereign without being content that it’s so; without being at peace in His hand and glad that your life is in His hand.

And if you don’t accept this, well, arrogant sinner, what do you think God has done with all the evil you have done, and have you ever started counting the times that God averted and used and turned the wrongs you did into good for others anyway? And you wonder if God is good? If you had any idea how often God has taken your evil against others, combined with your rebellion against Him, and brings to pass His own blessings from it for who knows how many people, and not excluding you, but sweeping you up in the blessing that your own conduct would have made impossible without a perfect God ruling all.

The doctrine of providence brings us comfort in the face of great difficulty and sorrow. If you do not believe in a God of sovereign control over every detail of life, your life, my life your wickedest neighbor’s life, then you have to live in paralyzed fear of what the next knock on your door or phone call or visit might bring. Because God, like you, is just reacting to what occurs. I prefer "God of the predetermined" to Greg Boyd’s "God of the possible." If anything’s possible, what good is God?

I have told you repeatedly, it’s all about theology.

Most think of themselves as gracious and forgiving for not retaliating. As if there were no revenge at all in refusing to help and turning away from opportunities to give. Don’t fool yourself. How about finding a way to love the one who persecutes you, bless the one who speaks evil of you? I believe that Someone Else since Joseph has taught us to do this.

You would assist your brother if you thought him worthy, you say. Or if he would just ask. He has needs, and he may well not ask your aid; he knows he is not deserving. And you desert him because he has done you some unkindness in the past. What hinders your benevolence, but hatred? We prove our minds to be free of bitterness when we send our kindness chasing after those who have badly treated us.

But now he does them the biggest favor of all – one he had done before, but he bends the nail over now. We get to vv 22-26, where we encounter the main points which must not be forgotten.

The man we met as a young man of 17 years of age is now 110. This isn’t a detail, v 22, that the author of Genesis tosses in without purpose; at the least, we can say it shows Joseph’s unwavering constancy in this forgiving, generous, gracious way of life. And he has now lived long enough to see his great-great-grandchildren, v 23.

Haven’t you read somewhere (2 Cor 1:4) that you should comfort others with the comfort with which you have been comforted by God? To encourage their hearts with the very promises that have been your own support? – so that they, too, would rest their souls there. This is how Joseph knows to "witness" of his Lord and God. We do not belong here. We are here now. But God has promised to give us that land, Canaan, and we have to get our family line back there eventually – this is just a temporary thing in His purpose, that we are down here. Don’t get attached to this place. This is not our home. Look to God to put you where He wants you. That was Joseph’s witness.

So his body was one day embalmed and placed in a coffin,
v 26. And that coffin became in Egypt a memorial affirming that God had made a promise to take His people back to that land. So when you go back, take my body back too. In Heb 11, where 16 or 17 people are named as examples of faith, v 22 says: "By faith Joseph, when he was dying, made mention of the exodus of the sons of Israel, and gave orders concerning his bones." If you were going to talk about the faith of Joseph, is this what you would have brought up? I think you would have picked something else. Something more personal to just him. That’s how we think. The NT picks the act which illustrated his faith in action for others.

It’s a pointer, showing the lengths to which this man’s faith clung to the promise of God. He has never allowed himself to be fully comfortable in or adapted to Egypt. Do you realize that from v 21 to v 22, the leap is 50 to 60 years, about which nothing is said? Silence about that part of his life. Clearly, times not as eventful as the first half of his life! But what is clear is, Joseph kept his focus on something other than a comfortable retirement. It’s no skin off his back where his bones are buried when he’s dead! But he is still thinking of everyone else; of subsequent generations. Of how he can speak to them, even when he is dead, about the eternal God they must serve.

This doesn’t just represent some clinging to a tradition of "this land is your land, this land if my land." It has to do with God’s promise. Joseph could not even have yet known why it was important that the Jews go live in Canaan land and make it theirs. But God said it was and so that is where our focus belongs! So, a man who has risen to the top of Egyptian government, who was as central as a man could be in the politics and economics of that country; living in the most advanced civilization of his times, who married an Egyptian wife and had half-Egyptian children, enjoyed the best of Egypt, settled his family into the richest land in Egypt, still he never thought of this as where he belonged. He never made the Egyptian dream his dream; just like, you should not make the American dream your dream. Because it’s not just affecting you. You’re teaching your kids what is really valuable by your example, and that says more about your faith than a lot of other acts.

And I call this Joseph’s biggest favor to his brothers, bigger than forgiving them and providing for them, but pointing them to faith in God: to make sure that they did not settle down into Egypt either when God said He had another plan for their families. You guys keep God’s plan in view! That was Canaan. God wants us there, intends to make us a great nation there, which will result in blessing for all the earth. And that’s all he knew about it. And so we can be sure that during these last 60 years of life, he reminded them frequently of their true home and of God’s purpose for His people.

So it leads us to another principle by which you can handle anything that might happen this year: a man who those brothers could look in the eye and know that he had earned the right to be their teacher about this, said to them: This is God’s plan: Not what we want now. Better things later. Wait on the Lord for His time. Boy, could they ever respect him for saying that!

No matter how much trouble there is now, hope is for the future. "God will surely take care of you" ("visit you," literally) – come to you, be with you. God will be with you. He will! This is one of those things that unbelievers object most often to about the Christian faith: why is it always pointing to later? The future? Heaven? Not now, later. No, unbelievers don’t like that.

But if you want to rest your soul firmly on it, understand that the focus is not simply accepting that "I can handle trouble now because God will do something good later." The focus has to be, "God has purpose in the trouble which is now. He has afflictions and difficulties in the plan now, for reasons. This is His plan: suffering now; glory later. That’s the way He chooses to work."

And are you in God’s place? Would you dare dictate to Him another plan? Tell Him what order and sequence things ought to occur in? Most of you are ready theoretically to submit to Him on this. Then, in practice, be silent and watch the hand of God at work, and be still and know that He is God, and wait. And cling to every promise you have of His.