Joseph's Story. A Lesson in Why Things Happen

It seems sometimes events are random, especially the bad things that happen. It’s just one bad thing after another. Consider Joseph’s story. Where to begin. His father, Jacob went to his mother’s family because he was afraid his brother was going to kill him. (That’s another story, but let’s focus on this one.) In Laban’s house, Jacob fell in love with Laban’s younger daughter Rachel and offered to work for Laban for seven years to earn the right to marry her. Well, at the end of the seven years, Laban tricked him, sent his older daughter, Leah, instead of Rachel, to sleep with Jacob. Laban explained that his people don’t marry off the younger daughter before the older daughter but if he’d work another seven years, he’d let him have Rachel now. So Jacob agreed. And even though Leah, her servant girl, and Rachel’s servant girl gave Jacob a total of ten sons, the wife he loved, Rachel, was barren for many years. Finally, Joseph was born. And a little later, Benjamin. Rachel died giving birth to Benjamin. These two sons were particularly special to Jacob, undoubtedly because of how much he loved Rachel, the difficulty she had bearing him sons, and then her death.

Throughout Joseph’s growing up years, he was favored by Jacob. Of course, his brothers knew it. Jacob even made him a special coat. And then Joseph had two dreams that really upset his brothers. Both dreams had the message that “one day you’ll all bow down before me.” Bad enough their father favored him, but it seemed even Joseph had bought into the idea that Joseph was better than them. So they conspired to do away with him. Since he was their brother, they couldn’t outright kill him. But, seeing a caravan passing by, they decided they’d sell him as a slave to the traders. They did, took Joseph’s special coat, poured goat blood on it, took it to their father and said they found it covered it blood. Looks like Joseph got eaten by some wild animal.

Meanwhile, Joseph ended up in Egypt. He was sold to an official who was part of the Egyptian governing class. It soon became apparent that Joseph had a skill with numbers and organizing,

His owner, Potiphar, put Joseph in charge of running his entire household. Life was going pretty well in Egypt, considering he was a slave, and I’m sure it helped soothe the hurt of being separated from his family and the betrayal of his brothers. But then Potiphar’s wife tried to seduce him. He wouldn’t give in to her and when he ran from her, she accused him of trying to rape her. Potiphar did the honorable thing, he had Joseph put in prison.

Again, Joseph showed his administrative skills and the warden soon put him in charge of the administrating the whole prison. But he was still in prison. Then, after a few years, two servants of pharaoh ended up in prison. Both had disturbing dreams and Joseph was able to interpret them. What he said the dreams foretold happened just as he said—one was executed, and one was restored to his position with pharaoh. Joseph asked the one set free to remember him when he was freed. The man didn’t; for two years, he forgot about Joseph.

The betrayals Joseph experienced just never ended! His brothers. Then Potiphar. Then his fellow prisoner. For years he languished. He was completely innocent of everything, undeserving of what he was going through. Yet it appears he did not descend into bitterness and “why is God doing this to me?”

One day pharaoh was disturbed because of a dream he’d had. It was then—finally—the fellow prisoner remembered how Joseph had interpreted his own dream. Pharaoh had Joseph brought before him and the pharaoh told Joseph his dream. A great, seven-year famine is coming, Joseph said. By this time Joseph must have repeatedly demonstrated great administrative skills. The prison warden had put him in charge of everything, just as Potiphar had. I’m sure it wasn’t a flippant decision that pharaoh made in appointing Joseph to oversee the next seven years of plenty in preparation for the coming seven years of famine. I’m sure it was after careful investigation into just who this Hebrew was.

But there he was. In charge of overseeing the gathering and storage of grain harvests. Then, when the famine began, Joseph was in charge of the disbursement and sale of the grain. Joseph probably felt somewhat vindicated for all he’d been through.

One day, as he was hearing requests from people from all over the world to buy grain, he was completely shocked to see that ten brothers from the land of Canaan were standing before him. His brothers. They didn’t recognize him because they were expecting an Egyptian and he looked Egyptian. After all, they were sure their brother Joseph had been dead many years. But he recognized them. Then he recognized God’s plan in everything he’d been through. And his brothers bowed down to him, the Egyptian official, second only to pharaoh. The dreams he'd had finally made sense.

Joseph started out as an apparent favored son, then everything went to hell. How could all the bad things, the betrayals and unfairness he experienced, be part of God’s plan? God gave him a promise by way of the dreams before anything had happened. And Joseph undoubtedly held on to that promise, having no clue what it meant. Until the day that he saw his brothers standing before him. The dream had come true.

During his time in Egypt, God had trained him to be an excellent administrator and leader., skills he would need when the famine hit and pharaoh needed someone to administer grain distribution. And Joseph did his part by never doubting God’s goodness through everything he suffered. That must have been the hardest part. Everything that happened was just so negative. It was never anything that could even remotely be called a “blessing” of God. But in hindsight we see how things pretty much had to happen the way they happened. How else would the baby nation of Israel be taken care of and nurtured? How else could they grow from a family of merely seventy people to a nation of over 600,000? If they had stayed in Canaan, any nearby nation would surely have wiped them out. Or they would have been subsumed into one of the surrounding clans. Being in Egypt they lived in peace, took care of pharaoh’s flocks for four hundred years until God said, “well folks, time to leave.”

Joseph’s life is one of the most important stories to illustrate how God works. He is so in charge and aware of what is going on in our life, how do we dare doubt?