A Holy and Hidden Grace
Genesis 45:1-15
Congratulations! You’ve made it to the end. Today marks the conclusion of our long journey through Genesis and the story of the Patriarchs—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In case you missed an episode or two along the way, allow me to briefly recap.
God called Abraham at 75 years of age and told him to pack up his belongings and move to a land that God would give him and his descendants. The first of those descendants was Isaac, a miracle baby born to Abraham and his wife Sarah in their old age. Isaac married Rebekah and had twin boys, Esau and Jacob. Jacob got the better of Esau, obtaining his birthright and stealing his blessing, for which his brother vowed to kill him.
Jacob married Leah and her sister Rachel, and through them and their respective maidservants had twelve sons. Jacob feared the worst when Esau reappeared, but rather than revenge Esau wanted to reconcile.
Still, sibling rivalry remained a problem for this family when Jacob showed a clear preference for his son Joseph. Envious of Joseph’s favored status, his brothers conspired to kill him but instead sold him into slavery.
And to think that some people think the Bible is boring! There’s more family drama in Genesis than in an entire season of Succession, The Real Housewives, or any Spanish telenovela.
Joseph being sold into slavery and taken to Egypt is where we left off last week in chapter 37. By jumping straight to today’s reading from chapter 45 the Lectionary has skipped over a whole heck of a lot of plot development that explains (1) Why Joseph is now in a position of power in Pharaoh’s Egypt, (2) Why his brothers have come all the way to Egypt, and (3) Why they don’t recognize Joseph even when he declares himself to them.
Let me briefly explain what we skipped over and see if we can answer those questions before looking at how and why Joseph reveals himself to the brothers he hasn’t seen in years.
After Joseph is taken to Egypt, he is sold to a man named Potiphar, an officer in Pharaoh’s army. God blesses everything that Joseph touches, to the point that Joseph is entrusted with managing Potiphar’s entire estate. However, when Joseph declines the advances of Mrs. Potiphar, she falsely accuses him of making advances toward her. Jacob is swiftly thrown into prison.
In prison he meets two former servants of Pharaoh, his cupbearer and baker, each of whom has had a dream that God enables Joseph to interpret. Joseph’s interpretations come true when the cupbearer is restored to Pharaoh’s service while the baker is executed.
Two years later Pharaoh himself has a dream that no one can interpret. On the cupbearer’s recommendation, Joseph is dragged out of prison and brought before Pharaoh to interpret his dream. Joseph explains to Pharaoh that his dream is a warning. There will be seven years of bountiful harvests, after which will come a famine that lasts seven years. Joseph advises Pharaoh to store extra grain during the seven years prior to the famine. So impressed is Pharaoh that he makes Joseph his second-in command of his entire kingdom.
When famine does strike, it affects not only Egypt but the surrounding region, including Canaan, where Joseph’s brothers and father live. With a shortage of grain in their homeland, the brothers come to Egypt hoping to buy grain. They are given an audience with Joseph, during which they all bow down to him, thus fulfilling Joseph’s dream from years earlier.
Even though he recognizes his brothers, Joseph accuses them of being spies. Still, he allows them to leave with grain, for which he does not accept payment, but he insists on keeping Simeon as a hostage. Simeon will be released once they return with their youngest brother Benjamin, who is Joseph’s full-blooded brother, the son of Jacob and Rachel.
Much to their father’s lament, the brothers return to Egypt with Benjamin, who is treated like a prince by Joseph. With their sacks full of grain, Joseph sends his brothers back home once more, but he secretly slips his silver cup into Benjamin’s sack, so that he can accuse him of theft and detain him. When the cup is discovered, the brothers return to Joseph’s house in terror.
But Joseph is merciful. He determines to let the brothers go, all except for Benjamin, who will remain his slave. He is testing them. He wants to see whether they will abandon his younger brother Benjamin just as they abandoned him many years earlier. But much to Joseph’s surprise, Judah offers himself in Benjamin’s place. He pleads for Benjamin’s freedom for their father’s sake. Their father has already lost one son, the brothers tell Joseph, who unbeknownst to them, is that lost son. If he were to lose the other, he would surely die.
It’s at the mention of his father that Joseph can no longer maintain his composure, and the mask falls from his face. The second-most powerful man in Egypt sends all of the court officials and servants out of his presence so that he is left alone with his brothers. And then he weeps. He weeps so loudly that those he has just sent out of the room can still hear him.
And like a kettle that has reached it’s boiling point, he cannot keep the truth contained any longer—the truth that he has kept from his brothers during all their interactions in Egypt. “I am Joseph,” he reveals to them. “Is my father still alive?”
All the while Joseph had been using an interpreter to speak to his brothers, maintaining the facade of being a native-born Egyptian. How odd it must be for them to hear the second-most powerful man in Egypt now address them in their native tongue. So odd that they can’t quite grasp what he has said.
And so he beckons them to come closer. Leaning toward them, he says, “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt.”
Let’s pause there for a moment. Imagine their shock. Imagine the fear and dread that must accompany the dawning realization that the brother whom they had sold into slavery now stands before them with the power to do to them whatever he pleases. If this were a Quentin Tarantino film, the next scene would be one of slow-motion violence as Joseph takes revenge upon the brothers who betrayed him.
But this is not a story of revenge, it’s a story of reconciliation. But more than that, it’s a story of redemption. It’s a story about how God can redeem something evil, transforming it into something good. I don’t mean that God makes the most of a bad situation. I don’t mean that God finds a silver lining amid the cloud. I mean that God redeems evil, transforming it—through God’s mercy, grace, and love—into blessing.
That is no small claim. And it is, in fact, the heart of the gospel. Let’s look at how it plays out in this story.
Having revealed himself to his brothers, Joseph explains to them why he was sent to Egypt. It wasn’t their doing, he tells them, it was God’s. “And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here,” he says, “for God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there are five more years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here but God.”
It was not you who sent me here but God. This is the pivotal line. It’s only because Joseph has come to this understanding of God’s providence that he is able to be so forgiving, merciful, and gracious toward his brothers.
And it has been a long time coming. Joseph was only seventeen years old when his brothers sold him into slavery. He is now nearly forty years old. He has spent his entire adult life, and more than half his entire life, in a foreign land. In all that time he hasn’t seen his father. He has every reason to be resentful—not only against his brothers but against God. He was sold into slavery by his own brothers. He was falsely accused and spent two years in prison.
And yet through it all Joseph was somehow able to sense something of God’s providence. Earlier, after Joseph interprets Pharaoh’s dreams and Pharaoh grants him authority over all Egypt, Joseph takes an Egyptian wife and has two sons. He names the first Manasseh, meaning “God has made me forget all my hardship.” He names the second Ephraim, meaning “God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.” Looking back at his suffering, he sees God’s hand at work, not in causing his suffering but in redeeming it.
Looking back at his suffering, [Jacob] sees God’s hand at work, not in causing his suffering but in redeeming it.
That sense of God’s providence only grows when Joseph’s brothers first arrive in Egypt to buy grain. Joseph recognizes them immediately but he treats them as strangers. He senses, I believe, that God has delivered his brothers into his hand, but for what purpose he’s not sure. That’s why he tests them—sending them back home with grain but keeping Simeon as a hostage, then making them return with his beloved younger brother Benjamin whom he falsely accuses of stealing. He wants to test what his brothers will do when he makes Benjamin his prisoner. Will they forsake Benjamin as they forsook Joseph many years ago? Have they changed? Are they at all sorry for the evil they did?
Indeed, what Joseph’s brothers did to him was evil. And yet at the same time Joseph can say to them, “it was not you who sent me here but God.” Joseph is not denying the fact that his brothers sinned. They absolutely bear responsibility. But God—in God’s wisdom and love—used their sin for God’s good purposes, which is to say, for their own salvation. For if Joseph were not in the position that he was, with an authority in Egypt second only to Pharaoh, the family likely would have succumbed to famine. To put it plainly, Joseph’s suffering led to their salvation.
In that sense Joseph is a forerunner of Jesus. That same dynamic that we see play out in Joseph’s life—human betrayal becoming the very means of divine salvation—happens not only in Egypt but also two thousand years later on a lonely hill outside Jerusalem. For Jesus, too, was forsaken by those closest to him, was also falsely accused, and also suffered unjustly. And yet Christ’s suffering is the salvation of us all. This is why we can call the day on which he was crucified “Good” Friday. It’s good not because he suffered but because through that suffering and in the midst of that horror a hidden and holy grace was at work.
All the evil that Jesus endured in the final twenty-four hours of his life—his friends forsaking him, the religious authorities accusing him, the civil authorities condemning him, the soldiers mocking him, the crowds jeering at him as he hung on the cross—in God’s hands becomes the means of salvation for the whole world.
And that same transformative grace is at work even now, in your life as well as mine. Lord knows it’s not always readily apparent. The grace of God is not always easy to recognize when we’re hurting, when we feel betrayed and abandoned. Even for Joseph, his awareness of God’s hand upholding him was something that he came to only gradually. And so, what I say to you now I say not only because it’s comforting but because it’s true. Amid whatever you may be struggling with—health concerns, money concerns, loneliness, strained relationships, a crisis of faith, or something else—know that you are in the hands of a loving and gracious God who never allows suffering and death to have the last word.