Application Commentary for Lifeway Sunday School Lesson
Genesis 39:21 – 40:23
April 6 - May 18, 2008

God's sovereignty. When I play the computer in chess, it is an exercise in futility and inevitability. Since I am not very good at chess, I usually find that the computer continually puts me into positions where I have to respond with certain moves, yet those very moves lead inevitably to further the computers strategy and ultimate victory. In the rare cases that I feel free to choose a move that furthers my game strategy, I usually discover that my choice is not a particularly good one. If I inadvertently try to make an illegal move, the computer does not allow it. If I make a stupid move, the computer makes me pay for it as it weaves my stupidity into its strategy. If I make a move with evil intent, the computer parties it (handily) and usually uses it to its own advantage.

Compared to God, we are all like bad chess players competing against a computer. There are differences, of course. God is not just in it to win, and God's moves are not mechanically programmed. In one sense it can be said that when he wins, we win. He is driven by love and compassion. Yet, just as in the illustration, we can at times feel caught in the current of the events that surround us, not understanding how we can be winning when it feels so much like losing. When life seems to be going terribly wrong, as it did for Joseph on a few occasions, it is difficult to affirm God's sovereignty.

Yet perhaps it would be too large a step away from God's sovereignty to say simply that he "allowed" bad things to happen. We do not want to be guilty of the reductionism that is so interested in insulating God from damage to his reputation that it cripples his sovereignty. But is there some language that falls between "cause" and "allow" that fully retains God's sovereignty, yet does not impugn him with capricious acts of injustice?

Perhaps we can begin by viewing the big picture rather than addressing individual cases. In this sense we can affirm that God sustains a cosmos that temporarily accommodates the presence of evil. He grants evil a certain latitude with the sovereign confidence that even when it does its worst, he can outflank it. That he often chooses to outflank it rather than prevent it defines what we mean when we say that he accommodates its presence.

To return to the illustration of computer chess, the computer does not make me move one way or the other, but it limits my choices and sometimes forces my hand. It is in absolute control of the game, even though I am making independent choices. Whatever choices I make are powerless to hamper its strategies. Neither the word "cause" nor the word "allow" describes the computer's role in my moves. Since I cannot find a word that describes the computer's role in my moves, it is only possible to describe the computer's role in the game (of which I am involved). It accepts me as an opponent, but its mastery is complete. It controls the game, and I cannot even minutely divert its strategies, let alone defeat it.

I cannot pretend to offer any language that resolves all the problems of reconciling God's sovereignty with the presence of evil in the world. It should be noted, however, that the Bible's own attempt to reconcile these issues is not represented by detailed and technical philosophical treatises. Instead, the important theology is clarified by illustration because, as we all know, where language may fail, illustration can succeed. The story of Joseph, therefore can stand as a living treatise on the theology of God's sovereignty.

God's timetable. In Andrew Lloyd Weber's Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat, the narrator encourages the imprisoned Joseph not to despair because "I've read the book and you come out on top." Unfortunately neither Joseph nor any of us has the benefit of such a prognosticator. Our books are written as we live them out, and none of us knows what the ending will look like. Too often we may feel as if we are languishing in the doldrums of life, waiting for God to bring our work or talents to fruition. But God wants us to be faithful (as, for instance, Joseph was in Gen. 39) where we are, in whatever phase our life or ministry may be in. Our service to God is not just comprised of the end result of our life or ministry; it includes the process by which we get there.

We must realize that the value of the service we render to God is not just measured by how remarkable the end result is. God also finds value in the effort of the journey. In this sense, it can be said that Josephs consistent faithfulness in slavery and in prison was every bit as valuable to God as the deliverance he brought while second-in-command in Egypt. Faithfulness is faithfulness, regardless of the scale on which God chooses to use it.

In God's timetable some people emerge to positions of importance only after a lifetime of struggling in obscurity. Stories of emergence can be multiplied endlessly. I think of Lech Walesa and Nelson Mandela. But we need develop no more illustrations because Joseph is the illustration par excellence of this type of emergence.

But we must also remember that not everyone emerges. God's plan for some is to serve him in anonymous obscurity for their entire lives, receiving no recognition and no thanks, gaining no office and enjoying negligible results. We would not recognize their names,- we do not know their stories—but they will be told in eternity, because God does not forget. Maybe you are one of their number. Be encouraged that God knows your faithfulness and is doing his work through you.

Excerpts from The NIV Application Commentary.
Used by permission.