Trusting
“If God were small enough to be understood, he wouldn’t be big enough to be worshipped.”
—Evelyn Underhill357
Having looked at the importance of honest grieving and realistic “lamenting” in handling suffering, it is important to look also at the call to trust God in it nonetheless. Some Christian writers point emphatically to the complaints of Job, the criticisms of Jeremiah, and the Psalms of lamentation as the right way for believers to process their pain. Other writers of a more conservative and traditional temper argue from other passages in the Bible that we must always trust God’s unfathomable wisdom and sovereignty. The fact is that both sets of texts are in the Bible and they are both important. We should not interpret one group in such a way that it contradicts or weakens the claims and assertions of the other.
Trusting the Lord in all things is a difficult assignment. Thankfully, the Bible does not help us do that only with commands and directives. It also gives us stories. On this subject, there is none better than the story of Joseph and his brothers in the last chapters of Genesis.
Joseph’s Story
Joseph was the eleventh of Jacob’s twelve sons. But as the oldest child of Jacob’s favorite wife, the deceased Rachel, he was by far his father’s favorite. Jacob had made for Joseph an extremely expensive and ornate robe for him to wear (Gen 37:3), and when the brothers saw “that their father loved him more than any of them, they hated him and could not speak a kind word to him” (Gen 37:4). When the biblical account begins, Joseph is already an older teenager and the toxic effects of Jacob’s favoritism had begun to show its effects.
Joseph had two vivid dreams, each of which obviously meant that all of his brothers would eventually bow down to and serve him. Now, often dreams make concrete and vivid a desire we have been harboring secretly or subconsciously. Joseph’s eager announcement of the dreams shows that he had a growing sense of his own superiority. He was fast becoming a very arrogant young man, a narcissist with unrealistic views of himself, who would eventually have an inability to empathize with and love others. He was headed for the unhappy marriages and broken relationships and all-around miserable life that such people have.
But Joseph was also blind to the toxins in the family system. His dreams only made his brothers more furious at him (Gen 37:11), poisoning their hearts with more bitterness. They craved their father’s love but didn’t get it. They hated Joseph and competed with one another. The interlude chapter 38, the story of Judah and Tamar, shows the effect all this had on the characters of Jacob’s sons. They were becoming callous, selfish, and capable of real cruelty. The future was dim for everyone. A lifetime of fear, jealousy, disappointment, violence, and family breakdown was ahead of them all.
But then a terrible thing happened to Joseph. In fact, a long string of terrible things happened to him. His brothers were tending their father’s flocks in a remote place, and Jacob sent Joseph out to them to see how they were doing and bring back word. When Joseph arrived at the location, he found his brothers were gone, but a stranger he met there told him where his brothers were. This new, even more isolated location called Dothan gave his bitter brothers their chance to do away with Joseph without being found out. When he arrived they seized him and threw him into an empty cistern, where they kept him prisoner as they debated what to do with him. While some wanted to kill him, others advised that they sell him for silver to slave traders. And that is what they did. Then they told their father that an animal had attacked and eaten Joseph.
The helpless Joseph was taken in bonds to distant Egypt, where he became a house slave. There he worked diligently with the hope of pleasing his master and improving his lot, but he was falsely accused by a frustrated would-be lover, his master’s wife. As a result, he was thrown into prison with no hope of ever emerging.
The narrative through these chapters does not say much directly about Joseph’s spiritual life. We know he cried out from the cistern to his brothers for his life (Gen 42:21), and certainly he would have also called to the God of his fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He would have asked God to deliver him—but there was just silence. Then, in Egypt, he may have prayed that he could escape his slavery, or at least be permitted to work himself out of it. Not only did that not happen—instead he became a hopeless prisoner in the dungeons of the Pharaoh. So Joseph probably prayed for years and years for help from God—and never received a single answer.
But then the turn. While in prison, Joseph met a man from Pharaoh’s court who had been sent there because he fell out of favor with the king. The man, Pharaoh’s cup bearer, had a dream that Joseph interpreted correctly with the help of God’s Spirit. The man was reinstated in Pharaoh’s court but forgot about Joseph until the Pharaoh himself had two puzzling dreams. Then the cup bearer brought Joseph to the palace and there God helped Joseph again. Joseph showed the Pharaoh the meaning of the dreams. They were warnings from God about a coming seven years of famine that would be of unprecedented severity. In addition, Joseph outlined a plan of public policies that would not only prepare and save Egypt from starvation but would also increase Egypt’s power and influence throughout that part of the world.
Pharaoh immediately recognized Joseph’s brilliance and the divine Spirit that was with him. He promoted Joseph to a high government position, giving him the authority to carry out the program he had outlined. Joseph used his new power to set up a massive and effective government hunger relief program that kept everyone in the country alive during the years of famine. Soon, indeed, people from that entire region of the world began coming to Egypt for food. And so it was that one day, ten tired and dusty Hebrew men appeared at Joseph’s door, eager to purchase grain in order to keep their families alive.
They were Joseph’s brothers, of course, but when they saw him, they did not recognize him, now grown up and wearing the garments of Egyptian royalty. Joseph, however, recognized them, and he was cut to the heart. Nonetheless, he hid his emotions and decided to also hide his identity from his brothers. Then, over the course of several meetings with them, he tested them by first wining and dining them, and then by threatening and scaring them. Derek Kidner, in his commentary on Genesis, writes: “Just how well-judged was [Joseph’s] policy can be seen in the growth of quite new attitudes in the brothers, as the alternating sun and frost broke them open to God.”358
This comment by Kidner summarizes Joseph’s strategy. On the one hand, there was “frost,” mild “tastes of retribution.” He accuses them of being spies—which they deny—but he keeps one of their number, Simeon, in custody as a guarantee of their sincerity. All of this reminds the brothers poignantly of their former sins. Joseph continually arranges things so that they are forced to relive their past.
Then Joseph makes his final move. He insists that the brothers bring their youngest brother, Benjamin, to Egypt if they are to receive any more food. Benjamin now is their father’s favorite, the last child of his wife Rachel. They are loath to ask their father and it nearly kills Jacob to send Benjamin, but they feel they have no choice if they do not wish to starve. They return to Egypt with Benjamin, but Joseph arranges it so that Benjamin appears to have stolen a valuable cup. And he gives the brothers his ultimatum. He tells them that they can go home free if they just let him keep Benjamin for punishment.
In short, he sets things up so that the brothers have every opportunity to do to Benjamin what they had done to Joseph. He gives them the opportunity, once more, to rid themselves of their father’s favorite, and sacrifice him in order to secure their own lives and freedom (Gen 44:17). Kidner writes:
“Joseph’s strategy . . . now produces its master-stroke. Like the judgment of Solomon, the sudden threat to Benjamin was a thrust to the heart: in a moment the brothers stood revealed . . . all the conditions were present for another betrayal. . . . The response, by its unanimity (13), frankness (16), and constancy (for the offer was repeated v. 17), showed how well the chastening had done its work.”359
Then one of the brothers, Judah, steps forward. He had taken the lead before in selling Joseph into slavery. But now he makes not simply a plea for mercy but an offer of substitutionary suffering (Gen 44:33–34). He begs the Egyptian lord to take him instead of Benjamin. He offers his life to pay the penalty of the theft, so that Benjamin can go free. He says to the man he doesn’t think he knows:
“Now then, please let your servant remain here as my lord’s slave in place of the boy, and let the boy return with his brothers. How can I go back to my father if the boy is not with me? No! Do not let me see the misery that would come on my father.”
When Joseph hears this, he cannot control himself any longer. Bursting into tears, he says to the stupefied amazement of his brothers, “I am Joseph! . . . I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt! And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you” (Gen 45:3–5). Soon, Joseph is reunited with his entire family, including their father, and they live together in peace and prosperity within the realm of Egypt until both Jacob and Joseph die, old and full of years.
The Hidden God
What does this have to do with how we face disappointment, pain, and suffering? Everything.
Standing where we do, we can look back and ask whether God was really “missing in action” all of those years when he seemed to be absent from Joseph’s life. When Joseph prayed for his life in that cistern, did God really not hear him? And all those years when absolutely everything seemed to go wrong for Joseph, was God not there? No, he was there, and he was working. He was hidden, but he was also in complete control.
Some people have counted all the “accidents” and “coincidences” and other things that had to happen in order for Joseph to become a slave in Egypt. Jacob had to decide to send Joseph to see how his sons were doing grazing their sheep (Gen 37:13). Jacob had to believe that his sons were grazing at Shechem (Gen 37:12). If he had known that they were in Dothan (v. 17b), which was farther away and much less populated, he would likely not have sent him. When Joseph comes to Shechem, he had to “accidentally” run into a stranger who knew where his brothers had gone and who was friendly enough to initiate a conversation (v. 15). The stranger says he knew about the brothers’ whereabouts only because he had just “happened” to overhear a conversation by men in a field (v. 17a). If Joseph had not met the stranger, or the stranger had not overheard the conversation, Joseph would never had gone to Egypt. It is only because they were in such a remote place that they were able to get away with Joseph’s “disposal,” and the story of an animal attack in that region was plausible (v. 19–20). The oldest brother, Reuben, was against the mistreatment of Joseph, and he just happened to be away (v. 29) when the traders came by, enabling Judah and the others to sell Joseph into slavery (v. 26–28).
Then there was another string of coincidences that brought Joseph into Pharaoh’s court. Joseph had to be sent to the estate of a man who had a wife who fell in love with Joseph. If Joseph had not been falsely accused, he would not have ended up in prison. If the Pharaoh had not become angry at his cup bearer, he may never have ended up in prison either, and the cup bearer would not have met Joseph (Gen 40:1–3).
How many “coincidences” was that? We begin to lose count. But here’s what we know: Unless every one of these little events had happened just as they did—and so many of them were bad, terrible things—Joseph would have never been sent to Egypt. But think how things would have gone if he had not gotten to Egypt. Enormous numbers of people would have died. His own family would have died of starvation. And spiritually, his family would have been a disaster. Joseph would have been corrupted by his pride, the brothers by their anger, and Jacob by his addictive, idolatrous love of his youngest sons.
Now, we have looked at the theology of this before. According to the Bible, God is sovereign and in control, and at the same time, human beings have free will and are responsible for their choices. There it is as a theological proposition, but how much more vivid and powerful it is when seen in an actual story. If the brothers had not betrayed Joseph and sold him into slavery, the family (and Joseph) would not have been saved from disaster and death. It was obviously part of God’s plan. God was present at every point, and was working even in the smallest details of the daily lives and schedules and choices of everyone. So this shows that “all things work according to the counsel of his will” (Eph 1:10–11; Rom 8:28).
So was it all right that they did what they did? Not at all. What they did was wrong—no one forced them to do it. And the shame and inner guilt crushed them. They needed a painful process by which they relived their evil behavior and were able to renounce it and get freedom and forgiveness.
How did all this come? It came through suffering. Suffering for the brothers and Jacob, terrible suffering for Joseph too. The terrible years of crushing slavery for Joseph, the terrible years of debilitating guilt for the brothers, and the terrible years of grief and depression for Jacob, were all brought about by God’s plan. Yet how else could they have been saved physically and spiritually? He “disciplines us for our good.” After the pain, comes a “harvest of righteousness and peace” (Heb 12:10–11).
British shepherds often take sheep and rams, one by one, and throw them into a dipping trough, a huge vat filled with an antiseptic liquid. The shepherd must completely submerge each animal, holding its ears, eyes, and nose under the surface. It is of course horribly frightening for the sheep. And if any of the sheep try to climb out of the trough too soon, the sheepdogs bark and snap and force them back in. But as terrifying an experience as it is for the sheep, without the periodic treatment, they would become the victims of parasites and disease. It is for their good. One Christian writer witnessing this process couldn’t help but remember that Jesus is called our Good Shepherd and we are his sheep. She wrote:
I’ve had some experiences in my life which have made me feel very sympathetic to those poor rams—I couldn’t figure out any reason for the treatment I was getting from the Shepherd I trusted. And he didn’t give me a hint of explanation. As I watched the struggling sheep I thought, “If only there were some way to explain! But such knowledge is too wonderful for them—it is high, they cannot attain unto it” (Ps 139:6).360
We too have a Good Shepherd who is committed to his sheep, though he often does things to us that frighten us and that we cannot, at the moment, understand.
Trusting the Hidden God
It is perhaps most striking of all to realize that if God had given Joseph the things he was likely asking for in prayer, it would have been terrible for him. And we must realize that it was likely that God essentially said no relentlessly, over and over, to nearly all Joseph’s specific requests for a period of about twenty years. Most people I know would have given up and said, “If God is going to shut the door in my face every time I pray, year in and year out, then I give up.” But if Joseph had given up, everything would have been lost. In the dungeon, Joseph turns to God for help in interpreting the dream. Despite all the years of unanswered prayer, Joseph was still trusting God.
The point is this—God was hearing and responding to Joseph’s prayers for deliverance, rescue, and salvation, but not in the ways or forms or times Joseph asked for it. During all this time in which God seemed hidden, Joseph trusted God nonetheless. As we saw, in the dungeon, Joseph immediately turned to God for help to interpret the dream. He had an intact relationship with the Lord—he had not turned away from him.
We must do the same thing. Now, we must remember we may be more like Job than Joseph. Joseph eventually got to see what God’s plan was. Things came together and he could look back and see God working all along. More of us, however, never get to see that much of God’s plan for our lives. We are often like Job, who even at the end of the ordeal never is told what the reader knows, that Job’s trial was seen by the heavenly council and became the subject of one of the great literary works of the ages. Most of us are neither like Joseph—who saw many of God’s reasons behind his suffering—nor like Job—who saw almost none of them. It is likely we will see some, and perhaps a few more as the years go by. But regardless of how much we are able to discern, like Joseph, we must trust God regardless.
It is interesting to contrast another event that happened in Dothan many years later, when it was no longer a remote spot but a city. The prophet Elisha and his servant were trapped in the city, besieged by Syrian troops. Elisha’s servant was very afraid, but the prophet prayed to God that his eyes would be opened, and then he saw “chariots of fire”—God’s angelic hosts—surrounding the city, protecting them all. The city was later delivered when the entire Syrian army was struck blind by God (2 Kings 6:8–23).
Now think of these two divine acts of deliverance at Dothan. In the first incident, Joseph cries out to God for deliverance and rescue. But instead, God appears to do nothing at all. In the second incident at Dothan, God answers Elisha’s prayer for deliverance with an immediate massive miracle. On the surface, it appears that God ignores Joseph and responds to Elisha. But that is not so. “It would turn out that God had been as watchful in his hiddenness as in any miracle. The two extremes of His methods meet in fact in Dothan, for it was here, where Joseph cried in vain (Genesis 42:21), that Elisha would find himself visibly encircled by God’s chariots.”361
God was just as present and active in the slow answers to Joseph as in the swift answer to Elisha. He was as lovingly involved in the silence of that cistern as he was in the noisy, spectacular answer to Elisha’s prayer. And indeed, it could be argued that Joseph’s salvation, while less supernatural and dramatic, was greater in depth and breadth and effect. The Joseph story tells us that very often God does not give us exactly what we ask for. Instead he gives us what we would have asked for if we had known everything he knows.
We must never assume that we know enough to mistrust God’s ways or be bitter against what he has allowed. We must also never think we have really ruined our lives, or have ruined God’s good purposes for us. The brothers surely must have felt, at one point, that they had permanently ruined their standing with God and their father’s life and their family. But God worked through it. This is no inducement to sin. The pain and misery that resulted in their lives from this action were very great. Yet God used it redemptively. You cannot destroy his good purposes for us. He is too great, and will weave even great sins into a fabric that makes us into something useful and valuable.
Ultimately, we must trust God’s love. After Jacob dies, the brothers fear that Joseph may harbor residual resentment toward them and now take his revenge. Joseph, however, assembled them and said:
“Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. So then, don’t be afraid. I will provide for you and your children.” And he reassured them and spoke kindly to them (Gen 50:19–21).
This little speech holds enormous resources for anyone facing confusing dark times and betrayal at the hands of others. First, Joseph assumes that behind everything that happened was the goodness and love of God. Even though what the brothers did was evil and wrong, God purposed to use it for good. This is the Old Testament version of Romans 8:28—“All things work together for good to them who love God.” Paul then adds a set of powerful questions and declarations and run-on sentences concluding that nothing “in all creation” can “separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:31–38).
Paul and Joseph are saying that, no matter how bad things get, believers can be assured that God loves them. In verses 38–39, Paul says that he is absolutely certain of this. He bursts the limits of language to say that neither death nor life, not heaven or hell, nothing can separate you from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Nothing. All the powers of evil inside of you and all the powers of evil outside of you cannot separate you from the love of God. Once you give yourself to God through Christ, he is yours and you are his. Nothing can ever change that.
Everything Hangs Together
The story of Joseph shows us that everything that happens is part of God’s plan, even the little things and the bad things. Let me give you just one personal example of this.
I sometimes ask people at my church in New York City, Redeemer Presbyterian, if they are glad the church exists. They are (thankfully!). Then I point out an interesting string of Joseph-like “coincidences” that brought it all about. Redeemer exists to a great degree because my wife, Kathy, and I were sent to New York City to start this as a new church. Why were we sent? It was because we joined a Presbyterian denomination that encouraged church planting and that sent us out. But why did we join a Presbyterian denomination? We joined it because in the very last semester of my last year at seminary, I had two courses under a particular professor who convinced me to adopt the doctrines and beliefs of Presbyterianism. But why was that professor at the seminary at that time? He was there only because, after a long period of waiting, he was finally able to get his visa as a citizen of Great Britain to come and teach in the United States.
This professor had been hired by my U.S. seminary but had been having a great deal of trouble getting a visa. For various reasons at the time the process was very clogged and there was an enormous backlog of applications. What was it that broke through all the red tape so he could get his visa and come in time to teach me that last semester? I was told that his visa process was facilitated because one of the students at our seminary at the time was able to give the school administration an unusually high-level form of help. The student was the son of the sitting president of the United States at the time. Why was his father president? It was because the former president, Richard Nixon, had to resign as a result of the Watergate scandal. But why did the Watergate scandal even occur? I understand that it was because a night watchman noticed an unlatched door.
What if the security guard had not noticed that door? What if he had simply looked in a different direction? In that case—nothing else in that long string of “coincidences” would have ever occurred. And there would be no Redeemer Presbyterian Church in the city. Do you think all that happened by accident? I don’t. If that did not all happen by accident, nothing happens by accident. I like to say to people at Redeemer: If you are glad for this church, then even Watergate happened for you.
Very seldom do we glimpse even a millionth of the ways that God is working all things together for good for those who love God. But he is, and therefore you can be assured he will not abandon you. It is against the background of Joseph’s story that this classic pastoral letter by the eighteenth-century Anglican minister and author John Newton to a grieving sister makes great and powerful sense:
Your sister is much upon my mind. Her illness grieves me: were it in my power I would quickly remove it: the Lord can, and I hope will, when it has answered the end for which he sent it. . . . I wish you may be enabled to leave her, and yourself, and all your concerns, in his hands. He has a sovereign right to do with us as he pleases; and if we consider what we are, surely we shall confess we have no reason to complain: and to those who seek him, his sovereignty is exercised in a way of grace. All shall work together for good; everything is needful that he sends; nothing can be needful that he withholds. . . .
You have need of patience, and if you ask, the Lord will give it. But there can be no settled peace till our will is in a measure subdued. Hide yourself under the shadow of his wings; rely upon his care and power; look upon him as a physician who has graciously undertaken to heal your soul of the worst of sicknesses, sin. Yield to his prescriptions, and fight against every thought that would represent it as desirable to be permitted to choose for yourself.
When you cannot see your way, be satisfied that he is your leader. When your spirit is overwhelmed within you, he knows your path: he will not leave you to sink. He has appointed seasons of refreshment, and you shall find that he does not forget you. Above all, keep close to the throne of grace. If we seem to get no good by attempting to draw near him, we may be sure we shall get none by keeping away from him.362
Newton’s statement—“everything is needful [necessary] that he sends, nothing can be needful [necessary] that he withholds”—puts an ocean of biblical theology into a thimble. If the story of Joseph and the whole of the Bible is true, then anything that comes into your life is something that, as painful as it is, you need in some way. And anything you pray for that does not come from him, even if you are sure you cannot live without it, you do not really need.
The Ultimate Joseph
Joseph says to his brothers, as it were, “You tried to destroy me, but God used this cup of evil and suffering given to me to save many lives, including yours. And because I see God’s redemptive love behind it all, now God has promoted me to the right hand of the throne of power; I forgive you and use my might to restore and protect you.” Joseph’s ability to see God’s hand behind even the bad things in his life enabled him to forgive. But Joseph, as great as he is, is just a forerunner. Kidner writes:
This biblical realism, to see clearly the two aspects of every event—on the one hand, human mishandling (and the blind work of nature), on the other the perfect will of God . . . was to be supremely exemplified in Gethsemane, where Jesus accepted his betrayal as “the cup which the Father has given me.”363
Centuries after Joseph, another came who was rejected by his own (John 1:11) and was sold for silver coins (Matt 26:14–16). He was denied and betrayed by his brethren, and was unjustly put into chains and sentenced to death. He too prayed fervently, asking the Father if the cup of suffering and death he was about to experience could pass from him. But when we look at Jesus’ prayer, we see that he, like Joseph, says that this is “the Father’s cup” (John 18:11). The suffering is part of God’s good plan. As he says to Pilate, “You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above” (John 19:11). Jesus finally says to the Father, “Thy will be done” (Matt 27:42). He dies for his enemies, forgiving them as he does, because he knows that the Father’s redemptive loving purposes are behind it all. His enemies meant it for evil, but God overruled it and used it for the saving of many lives. Now raised to the right hand of God, he rules history for our sake, watching over us and protecting us.
Imagine you have been an avid follower of Jesus. You’ve seen his power to heal and do miracles. You’ve heard the unsurpassed wisdom of his speech and the quality of his character. You are thrilled by the prospect of his leadership. More and more people are flocking to hear him. There’s no one like him. You imagine that he will bring about a golden age for Israel if everyone listens to him and follows his lead.
But then, there you are at the cross with the few of his disciples who have the stomach to watch. And you hear people say, “I’ve had it with this God. How could he abandon the best man we have ever seen? I don’t see how God could bring any good out of this.” What would you say? You would likely agree. And yet you are standing there looking at the greatest, most brilliant thing God could ever do for the human race. On the cross, both justice and love are being satisfied—evil, sin, and death are being defeated. You are looking at an absolute beauty, but because you cannot fit it into your own limited understanding, you are in danger of walking away from God.
Don’t do it. Do what Jesus did—trust God. Do what Joseph did—trust God even in the dungeon. It takes the entire Bible to help us understand all the reasons that Jesus’ death on the cross was not just a failure and a tragedy but was consummate wisdom. It takes a major part of Genesis to help us understand God’s purposes in Joseph’s tribulations. Sometimes we may wish that God would send us our book—a full explanation! But even though we cannot know all the particular reasons for our crosses, we can look at the cross and know God is working things out. And so you can sing to others:
Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy and shall break
In blessings on your head.
Again and again in the Bible, God shows that he is going to get his salvation done through weakness, not strength, because Jesus will triumph through defeat, will win by losing, he will come down in order to go up. In the same way, we get God’s saving power in our life only through the weakness of repentance and trust. And, so often, the grace of God grows more through our difficulties than our triumphs.