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May 29, 2026 19 mins

According to Keller, if you ask the average person today why they're skeptical of Christianity, the objection is rarely intellectual. It's seldom "I have trouble believing in miracles." What you're more likely to hear is this: Why did God let this happen to me? If He's good, why did He allow this? In other words, the objections are personal. And the story of Joseph — all the way to its final chapters in Genesis 47 through 50 — tackles those objections head-on.

What the narrative of Joseph shows us, again and again, is this: with God, silence is not absence, and hiddenness is not impotence. Often, when things look like they're going the most wrong, God is working the most for our good. That is the claim we're going to examine today.

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SPEAKER_03 (00:06):
The following meditation is based on Tim
Keller's sermon calledReconciliation, which he
preached in year 2003.
Let me share.
According to Keller, uh if youask the average person today why
they're skeptical ofChristianity, the objection is
rarely intellectual.

(00:26):
It's seldom I have troublebelieving in miracles.
What you're more likely to hearis this, why did God let this
happen to me?
If he's good, why did he allowthis?
In other words, the objectionsare personal, and the story of
Joseph, all the way to its finalchapters in Genesis forty seven

(00:47):
through fifty, tackles thoseobjections head on.
What the narrative of Josephshows us again and again is this
with God, silence is notabsence, and hiddenness is not
impotence.
Often when things look like theyare going the most wrong, God is
working the most for our good,and that is the claim we're

(01:11):
going to examine today.
Background Jacob, Joseph'sfather, is hundred forty seven
years old, and he has lived inEgypt for seventeen years.
Now that's significant becausefor twenty two years this man
grieved his son Joseph, thinkingthat he was dead.
Then God gave him seventeen moreyears of reunion before his own

(01:36):
death.
God is not stingy with mercy.
In chapter seven, forty sevenrather, Jacob is brought before
Pharaoh, and what does he do?
Jacob blesses Pharaoh.
There is something profoundlyironic about this.
The old shepherd, and shepherdswere looked down upon by
Egyptians, stands before themost powerful ruler on earth and

(02:00):
bestows a blessing.
Jacob has stopped striving, heis resting in God's promise, and
it has made him more generousthan he ever was in his younger
years.
In chapter forty nine, Jacobgathers his twelve sons and
speaks prophetically over eachof them.

(02:20):
These are not sentimentalfarewell words, they are
covenant words, carrying theweight of God's purposes across
centuries of Israel's history,and then Jacob dies.
The moment he is gone, Joseph'sbrothers panic.
They send Joseph a message, andmany scholars believe they fab

(02:44):
they fabricated it, claimingthat their father had left
deathbed instructions.
Tell Joseph to forgive hisbrothers.
Then they fall before Joseph andsay, We are your slaves.
Now look at the picture here.
These are men in their fiftiesand sixties.
Joseph has already wept withthem, embraced them and fed them

(03:07):
and expressed forgiveness forwhat they did.
And still they don't believe itit is real.
Joseph weeps not from anger butfrom grief.
Because you can declareforgiveness, but you cannot
force trust to be rebuiltovernight.
The reconciliation is notcomplete, and this shows how

(03:29):
broken relationships take timeto be rewoven, and Joseph's
brothers have not yet foundtheir footing in the grace
they've been offered.
That is the anatomy of a heartthat has never fully received
forgiveness.
It waits, it watches, it keepsexpecting the debt to be called

(03:51):
in eventually.
Joseph's response to hisfrightened brothers comes in
three sentences verses nineteen,twenty and twenty one.
The Old Testament scholar DerekKidner, whose commentary on
Genesis shaped much of thisreflection, writes that each of

(04:11):
the three sentences is apinnacle of Old Testament and
New Testament faith, and that isto leave all the writings of
wrongs to God, to see God'sproviding hand in man's malice
and to repay evil not only withforgiveness but with practical
affection.
Kidna calls these attitudesanticipating Christ likeness.

(04:37):
Three marks of a heart changedby grace, three movements of a
soul that has learned to live inthis world with genuine peace,
and that is avoid God's throne,avoid God's throne, take God's
view, take God's view, and lovewith God's love.
Let's take a look.

(04:58):
One avoid God's throne.
Genesis fifteen chapter fiftyverse nineteen says Am I in the
place of God?
Now this question is incrediblyrich in theology.
Keller points out that puttingoneself in God's place is at the
heart of almost every humanproblem.

(05:19):
Consider how we do this, how weput ourselves in God's throne,
that is.
We do it when we make ourselvesour own moral authority,
expecting others to fall in linewith our standards, deciding
what is right and wrongindependently of God's word, as
Adam and Eve did when theserpent promised that eating the

(05:42):
fruit would make them like God.
The modern version of this issubtler, and that is in the past
people could accept the Bible inits entirety, but now we know
that some of it is primitive andwrong.
Now we know.
You see the problem with thatreasoning lives in the word now
we know.

(06:03):
We easily trade the authority ofscriptures for the authority of
our own times, our own era, andcall it enlightenment.
We also put ourselves in God'splace when we let others look to
us to meet their deepest needs.
In Second Kings five, whenNaaman, the Syrian general, came

(06:25):
to the king of Israel seekinghealing, the king tore his
clothes and said something likethis, Am I God?
Can I kill or make alive?
Now it was the right response,but let's think about this.
Every therapist, every pastor,every politician, every well
meaning spouse eventuallyreaches the place where they

(06:49):
must do the same.
Am I God?
There are needs that no humanbeing can ever meet, and to
pretend otherwise, whether inthe books we write, the promises
that we make or marriages thatwe enter is to occupy the throne
that belongs to God and Godalone.

(07:09):
And then there is the ordinaryworry.
Jesus addresses it directly inMatthew 6.
Excessive worry, as you see, atits root is the belief that you
know exactly what must happenand that you're afraid that God
won't get it right.
That's why you worry.
The more we loosen our grip onthat worrisome certainty, the

(07:34):
more we acknowledge that wedon't fully know what's best,
the more manageable our anxietybecomes.
We're not in the throne thatsurveys all of history and holds
all outcomes, God is.
And thank God for that.
But the way Joseph uses thisprinciple here, the way it
applies to the brotherscrouching before him is the most

(07:56):
personal application of all.
Every person who keeps a grudge,every person who nurses
resentment towards someone whohas wronged them, is sitting in
God's seat.
God says in Romans twelve,Vengeance is mine, saith the
Lord, I will repay.
In other words, God saying getout of my chair.

(08:20):
Only God has a right to sit inthat judgment.
The rest of us are sinners inneed of our own.
Only God has the knowledge aknowledge to judge.
We don't know what someone hassuffered.
What has been done to them, uhwhat they've already paid, and
so forth.
But most critically, only Godhas the power to judge someone

(08:44):
without becoming evil in theprocess.
Um Secondly, let's take God'sview.
Genesis 50 verse 20.
As for you, you intended to harmme, but God intended it God
intended it for good toaccomplish what is now being

(09:04):
done, the saving of many lives.
This is one of the mostbreathtaking sentences in all of
Scripture.
Notice what Joseph does not say.
He does not say what you meantfor evil, God cleaned up
afterwards.
No, Joseph says God intended itfor good what you meant for
evil.

(09:24):
The same event, the same pit,the same slave traders heading
down to Egypt, two intentions,both fully real, fully
simultaneous.
Joseph says in effect, life isterrible, life is hard, and my
life was filled with pain.
You meant evil.

(09:45):
There is no way around that.
But but what you meant for evil,God intended for good.
Now you see both things fullytrue, held together at the same
time.
The Bible is unflinchinglyhonest about evil.
The book of Job is an extendedargument against the comfortable

(10:05):
idea that faithfulnessguarantees protection from
suffering.
The three friends who insistotherwise are the villains of
the story, and yet the whole ofScripture is equally insistent
that God is always, alwaysworking for good, even if it
takes years or centuries or thevery last day of history to make

(10:28):
it visible.
Consider Jacob's own life asevidence.
He sinned, he deceived hisfather, cheated his brother, and
his life fractured as a result.
But only because of that brokenpath did he find Rachel, the
love of his life, and onlybecause of that path did he have

(10:49):
the children that he had fromwhom the Messiah would descend.
Does it mean his sin was fine?
Absolutely not.
He sinned.
And it was his sin.
But his sin did not put him onplan B.
Because in God there is no planB.
The Messiah cannot be anafterthought.

(11:13):
The point is simply this ifyou're a Christian, you simply
cannot muck up your life.
Even your worst failures, evenyour deepest betrayals of
yourself and others cannotstrand you in a divine plan B.
Nothing can sink a life held inthe hands of God.

(11:34):
And thirdly, love with God'slove.
Genesis fifty, verse twenty one.
Joseph says, So then don't beafraid, I will provide for you
and your children.
You see, Joseph does not stopthe hostility and call it even
or reconciliation.
He moves towards his brothers.
He provides for them, hereassures them.

(11:57):
And the Hebrew is striking here.
He speaks to their hearts,active, practical and other
people directed affection forthe very people who sold him
into slavery and left him to rodin an Egyptian prison.
But that history cannot beerased and yet grace abounds.

(12:21):
This is the hardest thing on thelist because loving someone who
has genuinely wounded yourequires two things to operate
simultaneously.
One is deep humility and theother is deep confidence.
Deep humility because you mustknow in your bones that you are

(12:42):
not standing before God on thebasis of your own innocence.
You have your own sins, you yourown moments of cruelty,
selfishness, and failure you'drather not examine too closely.
When that is truly alive in you,not as abstract doctrine but as
felt reality, it becomes verydifficult to maintain a posture

(13:06):
of superiority toward someonewho has hurt you.
That's deep humility.
And deep confidence, because youmust know that God's love for
you does not hinge on what thisperson did to you or what you
now choose to do in return.
His love is not performancecontingent.

(13:29):
Nothing they took from you andnothing you do from here changes
what God has already declaredover you.
You're secure.
You can you can afford to begenerous.
And that is deep confidence.
Joseph had both because he hadlived them.

(13:50):
He had been through the pit andthe prison and come out the
other side, knowing that God'sgrace toward him was entirely
unmerited and entirelyunshakable.
And that double knowledge iswhat made it possible for him to
say I will provide for you andyour children.

(14:14):
Now Joseph is able to do thatbecause of Christ, the greater
Joseph.
Joseph is a remarkable man atthis time, one of the most
admirable figures in Scripture,but he's not the hero of the
story.
He is merely a signpost.
When Joseph asks Am I in theplace of God?

(14:36):
The answer is obviously no.
But there is one who came whowas in the place of God, who had
every right to the throne ofjudgment, and who looked at the
full weight of human betrayal,mockery, false accusation,
crucifixion, and chose not touse it.
He instead chose to absorb itall.

(15:00):
On the cross the greatest act ofhuman evil became simultaneously
the great greatest act of divinelove.
You meant it for evil, but Godmeant it for good.
For the saving of many lives,Jesus did not merely illustrate
that sentence.
He lived it from the inside atthe deepest possible cost.

(15:23):
Anyone who truly understands thegospel of Jesus Christ has a
resource beyond anything thegreat figures of the Old
Testament possessed.
Joseph had a general, hard wonsense that God loved him despite
what he hadn't deserved.
But we have something far moreparticular we have the cross,

(15:45):
the cross of Calvary.
The cross makes us more humblethan Joseph could ever be,
because now we see that our sinwas not a minor thing requiring
minor grace.
It required the death of God,God's own son, Jesus Christ.
We cannot stand before anyonewho has wronged us and claim

(16:08):
moral superiority.
We have none.
And the cross makes us moreconfident than Joseph could ever
be, because if God did not sparehis own son for us, if God gave
us his most precious possessionwhen we deserved nothing, then

(16:29):
what can that person ultimatelytake from us?
What situation can derail a lifeheld in those hands?
Greater humility and greaterconfidence than Joseph, which
means by grace the possibilityof greater lives than Joseph is
available for you and me today.

(16:49):
God is not asking you to pretendthe wound wasn't real.
He is not asking you tomanufacture feelings you don't
have.
He is asking you to trust thatHe is a better judge than you
are, that His justice is morecertain than yours, and that the
life He has called you to, thelife of active, costly, other

(17:12):
directed love only becomespossible when the cross has done
its full work in you.
That work takes time, it takesreturning to the same text, the
same cross, the same faithfulGod again and again.
But it is real.

(17:34):
Joseph is evidence, and so isevery believer who has chosen by
grace to speak to someone'sheart rather than collect a
debt.
So all who love the Lord JesusChrist with an undying love, may
God's grace abound in you todayand forevermore.

(17:56):
Amen.

SPEAKER_01 (18:01):
When I survey the wonder's cross on which the
Prince of Gorita My Chair.
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