Genesis 50:1-21 | When God Uses Evil

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Genesis chapter 50 is two-thirds about a funeral.

Genesis 50 · chapter mention

But we're going to spend most of our time on the other one-third.

The first two-thirds, the funeral part, is largely significant for a huge group of people.

Half a million to two million people standing on the edge of the Jordan River, being instructed to trust God day by day as they go into their promised land.

So the first two-thirds of Genesis chapter 50 are all about relating to that large group of people how God has led them every moment of every day, step by step.

Genesis 50 · chapter mention

So, for example, you'll notice that in the details of this chapter, Moses recounts for us that all of the people of Israel left their flocks and their herds and their children in the land of Goshen.

It's verse 8 of Genesis chapter 50.

Genesis 50 · chapter mention

That's significant.

Because for the people entering the promised land, it was the exact opposite.

Moses insisted to Pharaoh, no, we are not leaving anything.

Not our children, not our flocks, not our herds.

Because God is leading us to the promised land.

Most of our attention this morning is going to be given to the end of the chapter.

And to begin our thinking about that, I'd like to remind you of a news item that is incredibly horrific, but also incredibly challenging at the same time.

You might remember it.

In October of 2006, the Amish community of Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania astonished the world.

A man had walked into a one-room Amish schoolhouse and taken the lives of five girls before ending his own.

Terrible tragedy.

The response of the Amish community, though, was just staggering.

About 30 Amish people attended the graveside service for the murderer.

In the weeks that followed, the Amish community contributed to a fund to support the murderer's widow and her three young children.

And reporters were just continually mystified by how the Amish families could respond what in their minds was so positively.

The answers from the Amish community almost always centered on one element: God's character.

They knew that their God was in control, that he was the only true judge, even though their hearts were broken.

So they could trust God to handle this horrible situation and refuse to attempt to step into his place and take control themselves.

I want you to hold that in mind this morning because we've reached the last scene in the book of Genesis where a man is effectively given the chance to take God's place in the position of judgment and retribution, and he refuses.

If you have your Bible, please open it with me to Genesis 50.

Genesis is a long book.

And it's easy to lose the whole story by the time we get to the end.

Now, we only started the beginning of the summer in chapter 37.

So if you are a guest this morning, that gives you a little bit of history for picking up where we are.

We've started in chapter 37 with the story of Joseph at the beginning of the summer, and so we end with the end of the story of Joseph.

Genesis, though, includes 36 other chapters that all come before that.

And when we end the book of Genesis, it's easy to forget where it all begins.

So as we arrive at this last chapter of Genesis, we need to remember that Moses began his account not in Egypt, but in a garden, where God looked at everything that he had made and he declared it to be very good.

But then we saw a serpent with a juicy lie.

He told the only two people alive that God knew that when they ate the forbidden fruit, their eyes would be opened and they would be like God, knowing good and evil.

In that lie, the serpent implied that God was sort of holding out on Adam and Eve.

That God really wasn't good, that something about this very good creation was not good.

He implied that God was being stingy.

And Adam and Eve believed the lie, and deciding that they knew better, stopped trusting that God was good.

Forty-seven chapters later, another man who had every human reason to believe the same lie believes the exact opposite.

He refuses to do what Adam and Eve did.

And we see that in Genesis 50, verses 19 and 20.

Genesis 50:19

In some of the most astonishing words of the first book of the Bible.

Joseph says, Am I in the place of God?

Am I?

Adam and Eve wanted that.

And Joseph refuses it.

He says, You meant it evil against me, but God meant it for good.

You see, Joseph trusted God to be good and righteous.

And we should too.

So as we look at Genesis 50 now, I want to consider Joseph's brother's misplaced fear in the midst of Jacob's death that ends this story.

I want us to consider Joseph's trust in God's character and Joseph's resting under God's sovereignty.

So first, let's think about the first two-thirds here of this story, where we see Jacob's death.

We see here both death and fear that are a reflection of the very beginning of this story.

Genesis 50 begins, as Webb reminded us, at a deathbed.

Jacob has died, and Joseph fell on his father's face and wept over him and kissed him.

Then we see that what follows, right?

Just a normal, ordinary funeral process or funerary process, except it's not ordinary.

Egypt displays its respect for Joseph by giving Jacob the honor it would only normally give to a Pharaoh.

Seventy days of mourning for this sojourner, this wanderer that spent 17 years in Egypt.

And among those 70 days are 40 days for embalming.

But there's more involved in Jacob's death than that when we consider it in light of the whole book of Genesis.

Because when we put the end chapter with the beginning of Genesis, we are reminded that Jacob's death is a kind of judgment.

God said in the garden after Adam and Eve sinned against him, he said, You are dust.

You're made from the dust of the ground, and to dust you shall return.

And every funeral that we attend, every death that we experience is a reminder that that judgment is still being enforced.

And Jacob is no exception.

As unique and as special as Jacob is, he's no exception from where this story is heading.

God is fulfilling promises, God is directing things to save people, but in the midst of that, humanity is still experiencing the effects of sin.

But God keeps his promise even in the middle of judgment, doesn't he?

Years earlier, when Jacob was on his way down to Egypt in the second year of famine, God told him, I myself will go down to Egypt with you.

And he said, Then I will also bring you up from Egypt.

And Joseph's hand shall close your eyes.

So while in the whole story of Genesis we are experiencing that reminder that God has judged the world for sin, in the middle of that, God is keeping his word of promise to Jacob.

His family and a whole host of Egyptians, we don't know how many, all the elders of Pharaoh's household, the servants of Pharaoh's household, the elders of the land of Egypt, verse 7, this massive group of people takes Jacob home.

And they bury him in the cave that Abraham purchased from Ephron the Hittite.

And so here we are, three generations after God promised to give Abraham all the land that he had walked on.

And the only property the family has in the promised land is a cemetery.

And they bury Jacob and return to Egypt.

Now that's a lot of history and sort of particular family history for us.

But try to put yourself in the shoes of a Hebrew person not too far from Abraham's and Isaac and Jacob's burial place on the river Jordan, about to experience the fulfillment of God's promise.

Makes that story a little bit different, doesn't it?

They bury Jacob and they head back to Egypt.

And back in Egypt, everything turns now to Joseph and his brothers in verse 15.

And it turns in a pretty dramatic way.

The brothers say.

Many commentators trace parallels between the beginning of Genesis and the end.

And I agree with them that there's a parallel here.

Because Joseph's brothers reflect what Adam and Eve believed about God in the garden.

They believe that the one who has been nothing but good to them is holding back.

And in this case, they believe he's holding back vengeance.

And their response is similar to Adam's.

In fear of God, Adam hid behind bushes, right?

He realized he was naked, he hid when he heard God coming.

In fear of Joseph, the brothers hide behind a message.

They send a message to Joseph in chapter 50, verse 16, saying to Joseph, hey, Dad said before he died, please forgive the transgression of your brothers.

Please forgive their sin.

Because they did evil to you.

Now, if you read that carefully, you'll realize that Moses never reported that.

Moses never wrote that down as coming from the mouth of Jacob.

The only way that Moses reports that is in a message that came from ten brothers.

Maybe Jacob actually said it.

We don't know.

We're left with some unanswered questions.

So, for example, did Jacob really say this?

Whose idea was the message?

Whose brilliant idea was it to send a message instead of just go to Joseph?

It seems as though the brothers are at best hesitant to face Joseph.

At worst, they're scared to death.

So they ask Joseph, through a message, for forgiveness.

We need to stop there.

Because they ask for forgiveness for their transgression, for their sin, and for their evil.

Those are the same three words that Moses will later use to teach Israel about God's forgiveness.

God uses those same terms at Mount Sinai as he describes what he carries away from his people.

In Exodus 34, he says, This is Moses on the mountaintop, right?

God passed before him and proclaims, I am the Lord, the Lord, a God who is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, and that is displayed through what?

Forgiveness of iniquity, transgression, and sin.

The same three words that Joseph's brothers ask him to forgive.

It's a fascinating play on words here because what it does is it places Joseph in the place of God with his brothers.

Joseph, you're now in God's place.

We're begging you, please act like God.

The brothers fear Joseph because of their sin, just as Adam and Eve feared God because of theirs.

And you know, sin, sin produces similar sensations from the beginning of Genesis all the way to the end, and even today.

We feel guilt and fear and uncertainty.

And at the end of the story, Joseph's brothers ask him to display God's character toward them by forgiving their evil.

Isn't that just like us?

Now you might ask, what do I mean by that?

Well, isn't it obvious that Joseph has forgiven them?

He's supported them for 17 years.

He's given them everything they needed.

He has supported them, he's fed them, he's provided room for their flocks and herds, he's provided homes for them.

Yet they're still afraid that he hasn't truly forgiven them.

And if we're honest with ourselves, it can be hard for us to trust that others and even God has truly forgiven us.

That shows us the two sides of the guilt and forgiveness coin.

Forgiveness, on the one hand, can be genuinely extended and offered.

But inside of us, on the other side, that persistent guilt breeds suspicion.

Have they really forgiven me?

Or are they going to look for an opportunity to get back at me?

Our inner sense of guilt leads us to believe that we may not have been fully forgiven.

But God doesn't hold our sin over our heads, does he?

He can't and be true to his character.

The psalmist says in Psalm 103 that he removes our sins as far as the east is from the west.

Now, on the one hand, that's a measurement, right?

Where is the east and where is the west?

Well, yes.

That way and that way, so you never have a place to stick your tape measure and end your tape measure.

On the other hand, it's a way of following the sun.

If you go from east to west, you just keep going.

And so it gives the impression then that God, God has this immeasurable distance, that he takes our sins and he removes it away.

And so Jeremiah builds on that in Jeremiah 31, where he says, God remembers our sin no more.

So, beloved, if you followed Dana in his prayer earlier and you have confessed your sins to God, let go of the guilt.

Don't let that breed suspicion in you that God hasn't truly forgiven you.

Don't be like Joseph's brothers, where God has showered his good upon you, and you wonder if he really has forgotten.

So after their father's death, the brothers show a fear that comes from not trusting in Joseph's grace and mercy and provision.

But even more pointedly, Joseph's brothers don't trust his character.

Now it can be frustrating, right?

To display your character over and over and over again and have somebody not believe your character?

Joseph's done that for 17 years.

And his brothers, in essence, say, Yeah, Joseph, we're not sure we trust you.

Maybe it's because they think Joseph is like them.

Now Moses doesn't tell us how this all worked itself out.

So they sent a message in verse 16.

But then they end up being face to face with Joseph in verse 18.

So how long did that take?

How much uncomfortable tension was there?

Was it minutes?

Was it hours?

Was it days?

Was it weeks?

We don't know.

Moses doesn't tell us when the brothers actually met with Joseph, but eventually they did.

And what we find there is something incredible about Joseph.

Joseph is tested in this meeting.

And in that test, he displays God's character.

More than that, that he trusts God's character.

Verse 18.

His brothers also came and fell down before him and said, Behold, we are your.

So once more we see God fulfilling the dream that he gave to Joseph back in chapter 37.

The dream that they got his robe ripped off and thrown into a pit and sold as a slave.

Right?

And that's all, again, coming to fruition.

And they use the word for themselves that is exactly what they did to Joseph.

Joseph, we sold you as a slave.

Now we are your slaves.

If Joseph wants to get even, here's his opportunity.

And Joseph's the second most powerful man in the land.

In essence, he can do whatever he wants to do.

His father is dead and buried back in Canaan, so would you blame him for exacting revenge in some way?

If we're honest with ourselves, most of us would be tempted to do something.

To react in some way.

And subtly, this is one of the greatest tests of Joseph's life.

You remember back in chapter 39 when Joseph was serving Potiphar in his home, and Potiphar's wife accused him of wanting to rape her.

Potiphar's wife was pushing Joseph to sin.

And there Joseph responded, How can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?

Day after day he's being pushed, tempted to sin.

No one's pushing him here.

There's simply a door that's been opened for vengeance.

Imagine that.

Here's the ten guys that sold you.

The ten guys that wouldn't talk to you.

And because of those ten guys, you spent years forgotten in prison.

And now they're on the floor in front of you saying, we are your slaves.

Oh, yes, you are.

Everything is set up here for Joseph to do what he wants.

And those kinds of tests are sometimes the hardest.

When the pressure is obvious, like with Joseph and Potiphar's household, we can at least sense the fight with temptation.

We feel the push, right?

When the pressure's obvious, it's clear to us.

But when the door is just swung open and, huh, well, that's interesting.

I wonder what would happen if I went through that door.

We are less likely to sense that temptation.

No one's pressuring us.

And the only thing that's keeping us from going through that door is what we believe and trust about God.

At this point, we find another surprise.

Verse 17 tells us that Joseph responded with tears.

All the attention is now on Joseph.

It's interesting that when Eve stood before the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Moses told us what Eve thought.

She looked at the fruit and she saw that it was good to eat.

Here, Moses shows us how Joseph felt.

He cried.

Yeah, look, don't be afraid.

I'm not going to go through that door.

Because I'm not in God's place.

Joseph doesn't say that they're innocent, right?

He doesn't wipe the record clean.

He doesn't say, ha, forget about it.

How do you forget about all those years of trial and pain imprisonment?

In fact, Joseph calls their actions evil in the very next verse.

As for you, you meant evil against me.

No, no, Joseph doesn't do that.

He goes to the completely unexpected place.

Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit because they wanted to be in God's place.

Joseph is offered the opportunity to be like God, and he says, No, I am not in God's place.

We learn something about Joseph's faith here.

He interprets his life for us.

So look back at your life, whether it's five years or six years, or it's how old do you grant?

98?

Six?

Seven?

Look back at all the years of your life.

Interpret that for me.

Interpret the years of your, or in Jacob's way of saying it, the days of the years of my sojourning.

Interpret that for us.

Because Joseph looks back at his life and he interprets it for us.

He says, God meant it for good.

What?

You meant it for evil.

But God meant it for good.

At the beginning of Genesis, we learn that Satan wants people to distrust God's good intentions.

Satan didn't want Adam and Eve to believe that God was truly good and that his creation was very good.

Yet here at the end of Genesis is a man who endured slavery, false accusations, and years of being forgotten in prison, and yet all he does is trust that God meant all the evil in his life for good.

Adam and Eve couldn't do it with a piece of fruit.

Joseph does it with his whole life.

When we consider this section in light of all of Genesis, it suggests that Joseph faced a kind of test that we all face.

There are times in life when we will be tempted to question God's character and react by acting in God's place.

And what we do in those moments says a lot about our faith.

Adam and Eve faced that test with disastrous results.

Joseph faced that test.

And he trusted in God's character and sovereign intent in his life.

From the beginning of the book to the end.

As for you, he says, Oh boy, here comes.

As for you, you meant evil against me.

But God meant it for good.

To bring it about that many people should be kept alive.

As they are today.

The same verb is used twice in this sentence.

Meant.

The word means to reckon, to consider, to calculate, to plan something.

It's the opposite, we might say, of chance.

We might say it's premeditated.

It implies intentionality beforehand.

The brothers intended, premeditated evil against him.

God premeditated, intended that evil for good.

The same intentional verb, but with results that are completely different.

So when Joseph says God meant it for good, it points back to the evil, right?

God did not plan something good that sort of moved in parallel, in tandem alongside their evil.

All along, God intended those very evil acts for good.

That means, friends, that evil acts are not outside of God's sovereignty.

Whatever evil has been done to you, whatever evil your family has experienced, whatever evil is in your history, is not outside of God's sovereignty.

And if it's within God's sovereignty, then it calls us to ask the question of ourselves: do I believe and trust in God's character as I think about that evil in my life?

Now, put the Garden of Eden beside this.

God said that everything in Eden was very good.

God meant everything in that garden for good.

While Satan says, No, I mean it for evil.

God gave his very good world a command that was good because God's character is good.

And man steps in and takes God's good command and uses it for evil.

Now, in this last scene, the brothers intended evil and God intends that evil for good.

At the very least, this shows us something about the hearts of human beings and God's sovereign position.

After the garden, sinful humans have no problem meaning evil against their brothers.

It's a painful reality, right?

The painful reality is that because of Genesis 3, all of us have within us this ease of intending evil.

It also means that God has a secure hold on everything and directs everything exactly as he intends.

And Joseph puts those two things side by side, and so does Moses.

What God creates as good for his creation is distorted into evil as though it was going to disrupt God's intention.

But God is the true sovereign, and his purpose will come to pass, and he will even use humanity's intended evil for his good purposes.

Now, Joseph was in a unique place because he could sort of see the reason behind God's work.

He says, God did all of this.

God intended this for good to save many people.

Just look.

Look at all of our family.

They're here.

You can see the result of God's good intention behind your evil.

Israel is safe and secure after seven years of famine.

So they could see this is real.

God did it.

We're never promised that God will make that clear.

But we are promised something.

And it's the thing that we need to cling to.

We often quote it from a New Testament perspective.

Whoever's behind the computer up there, I can't advance slides.

Would you move that on for me, please?

We are promised that there is a good intent greater than evil.

And God's gonna do it.

And we quote that from the New Testament from Romans 8.

Right?

For all things work together.

For what?

For good.

For good.

There was a lie in the Garden of Delight.

You will be like God.

And Genesis 3 through 49 is filled with the wreckage of Adam and Eve believing that lie.

Adam believed it and hid.

Cain believed it and murdered his brother.

Whole civilization believed it at Babel and built a tower.

Ten brothers believed it and sold a boy into slavery in Egypt to see what would become of his dreams.

And now at the end of the book, those ten men fall down in front of that man, begging to be his slaves.

And he turns down the chance to act in God's place.

Genesis begins with a couple who believed they could be like God, and it ends with a man who refuses to take God's place.

He refuses to be in, to step into God's position.

He refuses to grasp hold of it and hold on to it and say, I'm going to exercise my rights.

Adam and Eve were talked into believing that God and his command was not good.

But Joseph rests under God's sovereignty because he trusts that God is good.

In Genesis, doubt about God's character, God's plan, and God's purpose often ends in people trying to be like God.

And it ends miserably.

But confidence in God's character most often ends in peace.

Joseph trusts God with his life.

Even if he has to trust God with evil in his life.

That enables Joseph to extend peace to others.

He says to his brothers in verse 21, Don't fear.

Don't be afraid.

Now the word I, I will provide is emphatic in the Hebrew.

Joseph says, I'm going to do this.

I am.

Trust me.

I will be good to you.

He commits to protecting and keeping and feeding his extended family.

Joseph can completely forgive and commit to his family because he trusts utterly in God working all things for good.

And then it says he comforted them and spoke kindly to them.

That's incredible.

The Hebrew says he spoke to their heart.

Do you remember what we were told about communication in this family back in chapter 37?

It was worse than a communication breakdown.

His brothers, it says in chapter 37, verse 4, could not speak peaceably to him.

And in return, Joseph speaks to their hearts.

Adam and Eve grabbed at the opportunity to be like God, and we've all been paying for that ever since.

Joseph refused to take God's place.

He says, I'm not in the place of God.

Because he believed that God knew what he was doing.

Now, Adam and Eve and Joseph are some of the people we need to consider in this text, but there's a third person that we need to put alongside of them.

And for this third person, you're going to have to go back in your memory a few months to our walk through the book of Philippians.

Because in the book of Philippians, in chapter two, we were told about somebody who actually is God.

Who did not consider being God something to be held on to or grasped at all costs.

But humbled himself and set aside all the prerogatives of his deity, took on the form of a human being, even the form of a slave.

Because he believed that the Father's intentions were good.

Joseph displayed Christ-like character by refusing to follow in Adam's footsteps.

He looked back at the evil done to him and he trusted in God's goodness.

And God used that evil, he says, to save many people alive.

Joseph was sold for 20 pieces of silver that God used to save many people.

The Lord Jesus was sold for 30 pieces of silver.

And God meant it for the salvation of the world.

In fact, Peter proclaimed in his sermon on the day of Pentecost in Acts chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

He says, This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and you killed by the hands of lawless men.

You meant it for evil.

God meant it for good.

And the one man who truly is God looked down from a cross at the people who'd put him there and said, Father, forgive them.

Maybe you've wondered from time to time what God is holding back from you.

God's holding holding out on me.

God hasn't given me all the good that He should give me.

If that's there, friend, look at the cross.

Look at the cross and tell me what ultimate good God really has withheld from you.

Because he gave himself for you so that your sins might be forgiven and washed away and forever forgotten so that you could be reconciled to the Father.

Joseph trusted God to be good and righteous.

And we should too.

From Joseph's pit to the cross, we can see that Joseph was right.

We can trust God with all of the evil in our lives because we can see the evidence of his sovereign goodness in the salvation that he's provided.

So be like Joseph.

Trust in God's goodness.

Would you pray with me?

Lord Jesus, may we always and forever lean on you.

To let go of our own desires to be right, to be in control, to be God.

And to trust that you know what's going on.

To trust that you are working out your purpose just as you've intended.

Lord, I pray that you would bring about peace in our hearts, that when we rest in you, you would give us the peace that surpasses all understanding.

So that we can rest.

Being in a position then to forgive those who have wronged us.

Because you have forgiven us.

We ask this so that we might forever and ever praise the only good and wise God.

In whose name we pray.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

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