God Means it All for Good

We finally arrive at the last chapter in the book of Genesis. Notice that Joseph actually did get to see the Promise Land again, in order to bury his father (vv. 4-14). Also of note are those details about the Egyptian embalming process, including the amount of days it took to perform. Such belong to that great number of facts about the ancient world that demonstrate the Scripture’s authenticity. The core of the passage is where we derive our doctrine—verses 15 through 21.

• The Providence of God is Learned in Our Desperation

• The Providence of God is Gracious for His Chosen People

• The Providence of God is Causal over All of the Events

Doctrine. God cannot mean all things for good if He does not mean (and therefore cause) all things at all.    

The Providence of God is Learned in Our Desperation

The desperation in question here is the fear of revenge. Look at how they tried to take the matter into their own hands with what was obviously a fake message from their father:

When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, “It may be that Joseph will hate us and pay us back for all the evil that we did to him.” So they sent a message to Joseph, saying, “Your father gave this command before he died: ‘Say to Joseph, “Please forgive the transgression of your brothers and their sin, because they did evil to you.”’ And now, please forgive the transgression of the servants of the God of your father” (vv. 15-17).

If Jacob had really intended to say this, he would surely have said it to Joseph when he was so deliberate and thorough with the blessing on his deathbed. But, no matter. The issue is their fear. Calvin took this same lesson from the story, as their fears say more about them than about Joseph:

But, by such perverse judgment, they do a great injury to one who, by the liberality of his treatment, had borne them witness that his mind was free from all hatred and malevolence. Part of the injurious surmise reflected even upon God, whose special grace had shone forth in the moderation of Joseph. Hence, however, we gather, that guilty consciences are so disturbed by blind and unreasonable fears, that they stumble in broad day-light.1

It is with similar superstitions that we first come to God, hoping to appease Him as if He is a remote force of nature without a thought of us, or a random deity annoyed to have discovered us. So we send indirect messengers to our own modern versions of Mount Olympus, hoping that we can fool Him that we are not worth His trouble; as Israel said to Moses, “but do not let God speak to us, lest we die” (Ex. 20:19). Of course we wouldn’t have any such fear of thunder or wars or death itself, if our conscience was clear. As the Proverb says, “The wicked flee when no one pursues” (Prov. 28:1).

So our first lesson in divine providence is that things have not been so random and chaotic. Not to God. He has been behind it all; and, as He said to the captives in Babylon, “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope” (Jer. 29:11). Yes, I know that verse has been taken out of context to stand in, ironically, for the most random, man-centered inspirations; but the whole point is what kind of God that God is for His people. If God simply wanted to kill you, you would have been long dead already, or would never have been born.

The Providence of God is Gracious for His Chosen People

The crucial words are these: ‘God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today’ (v. 20). It was MANY people that were promised to Abraham and which was being fulfilled already. This MANY PEOPLE is so much more specific than the whole other “many” as were kept alive from the physical famine. Many from other nations came. Many from Egypt were already under Joseph’s care.

But this MANY is that same “many” that Jesus spoke of in saying, “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mk. 10:45); or that Paul had in mind in saying, “by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous” (Rom. 5:19). God’s providence governs all of the events of history, and all of the cycles of nature—but it is not a friendly providence to the wicked. For that chosen seed of Israel’s race (as the hymn says), it is a gracious and effective providence.

That you are ALIVE to TODAY or THIS DAY is a statement about the soul as well as the body. Jesus prays to the Father, “I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one” (Jn. 17:15). So God’s providence guarantees the safe passage of our soul, but God will use any other evil up to that point if He deems it best to shape and advance His good cause in our soul. He says to those captives of Judah centuries later,

I will make a full end of all the nations among whom I scattered you, but of you I will not make a full end (Jer. 30:11).

The brothers did not escape a rough life—a life made rough most immediately by their own mistakes. But the message of a gracious providence is not to escape the effects of this life scot free. It is that God is working a greater glory through the mess we’ve made, and the harm others might mean for us. God uses it all, coordinates it all, accounts for it all in His perfectly good decree.

The Puritan, John Flavel, wrote on The Mystery of Providence, and said,

“indeed Providence neither does nor can do any thing that is really against the true interest and good of the saints. For what are the works of Providence but the execution of God’s decree and the fulfilling of His Word?”2

The Providence of God is Causal over All of the Events

All that remains is to go back to the famous verse and ask ourselves a pointed question: ‘As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good’ (v. 20). YOU MEANT … GOD MEANT. You meant what and God meant what? You might say, “Good” and “Evil,” obviously. But that is not quite the question. I am not asking for the indirect object, but for the direct object. In the second part of the sentence, the direct object is plainly stated—GOD MEANT IT—whereas in the first part of the sentence, it has to remain implied. So I am not asking what each meant IT for—the one for evil, the other for good. I am asking about this IT. What was the object directly acted upon by the brothers and by God that was infused with two different meanings. Was it not the same? One IT, two MEANINGS. Let us see the larger action in the Psalms.

When he summoned a famine on the land and broke all supply of bread, he had sent a man ahead of them, Joseph, who was sold as a slave (Ps. 105:16-17).

God summoned a famine and God sent Joseph. God summoned. God sent. You might say, “Well, sort of—God is ‘in control,’ ultimately, of the climate; and God ‘superintended’ things, keeping a close eye on those brothers as they did their evil deed.” Really? But this is a departure from the biblical teaching:

and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, “What have you done?” (Dan. 4:35)

Does disaster come to a city, unless the LORD has done it? (Amos 3:6)

[He] works all things according to the counsel of his will (Eph. 1:11)

For from him and through him and to him are all things (Rom. 11:36).

If anyone should say that this cannot be of this or that instance of evil, I would remind them of those places in the Bible where it is claimed about the most evil actions ever committed. To give two central examples,

this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men (Acts 2:23)

for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place (Acts 4:27-28).

Not just your PLAN, but your HAND. Not just FOREKNOWN, but PREDESTINED.

The question becomes so pointed, that one has to ask if they really believe a thing on the surface which they reject under the surface. How can God mean this thing for good if He does not mean this thing at at all. Or, to put it in Romans 8:28 terms: How can God cause all things to work together for good if He does not cause all things at all? You understand the question, right? If I mean something, then I do that same thing. The meaning of it is simply my goal or motive or aim in the doing. If God is simply the infinite chess player, perhaps knowing all, after the fact, and giving us His meaning afterwards, then it is only interpretive meaning and not an all-wise and, yes, all-loving orchestrating meaning. By this meaning—and when we need so desperately to find what God has meant—we don’t need an “infinite film-critic God” as the credits start to roll. We need an infinite script-writer God who says,

‘Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all the remnant of the house of Israel, who have been borne by me from before your birth, carried from the womb; even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save … for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose,’ calling a bird of prey from the east, the man of my counsel from a far country. I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass; I have purposed, and I will do it (Isa. 46:3-4, 9-11).

He doesn’t just mean, “Give you my two cents afterwards,” but I will give you all things in the end, like I’ve been preparing from the beginning.

Practical Use of the Doctrine

Use 1. Exhortation. Messengers of God’s providence must be means of God’s providence. Observe how Joseph models this:

“So do not fear; I will provide for you and your little ones.” Thus he comforted them and spoke kindly to them’ (v. 21).

God did this. I will do my part. If we want to comfort someone that God’s providence has taken them to this point, we must be willing to be the instruments of God’s providence to that person from this point. Why? Because to say to someone that all of that was God’s will without pledging our own good will has the tendency to discolor that will of God. It comes across as just analytical.

Use 2. Correction. See how our embrace of God’s total providence wars against the root of bitterness. We are told, “See to it … that no ‘root of bitterness’ springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled” (Heb. 12:15). How will providence help? Consider Joseph here:

Joseph wept when they spoke to him. His brothers also came and fell down before him and said, “Behold, we are your servants.” But Joseph said to them, “Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? (vv. 17-19).

If I really begin to believe that God wrote all that (in my rear view mirror) better than I could re-write it, then I won’t live in the past (which I can’t anyway). But I won’t grit my teeth at so and so who did such and such, and put me in this place, because what he may have meant for evil, God meant that same IT for good. And you and I can’t do any better than that.

Use 3. Consolation. Such a total and gracious providence should drive us to prayer in a certain way: “I cry out to God Most High, to God who fulfills his purpose for me” (Ps. 57:2). The God who invites us to cry out to Him is the God who has purposes for us—purposes that He always fulfills.

We do not read into God’s providence from our lowly vantage point, in some of its potholes and ditches. We read God’s providence according to the biggest truths in His word. Flavel wrote,

Providences and Scriptures go all one way, and if they seem at any time to go different or opposite ways, be sure they will meet at the journey’s end. There is an agreement between them to do so.3

Joseph knew this till the end, and so the testimony to his belief in the gospel of Jesus Christ ends the book. How is it a gospel-proclamation?

‘And Joseph said to his brothers, “I am about to die, but God will visit you and bring you up out of this land to the land that he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.” Then Joseph made the sons of Israel swear, saying, “God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here.” So Joseph died, being 110 years old. They embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt (vv. 24-26).

Circumstances of the burial—down into Egypt. Essence of the burial—aimed at the Jerusalem above. Why? Joseph believed what Jacob believed, what Isaac believed, what Abraham believed, when “Abraham rejoiced that he would see [Jesus’s] day” (Jn. 8:56) and “And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham” (Gal. 3:8). Joseph believed that his body would rise; and, though, God could raise those bones from anywhere on planet earth, he wanted to testify to the promise, and be with the people of that promise until that Day.

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1. Calvin, Commentaries, I.2.482.

2. John Flavel, The Mystery of Providence (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2006), 19.

3. Flavel, The Mystery of Providence, 38.