The Providence of Envy
Introduction: The Unseen Hand in History
We live in an age that is allergic to the idea of a sovereign God. Modern man wants a God who is a well-meaning but ultimately impotent bystander, a celestial cheerleader who hopes for the best but is constantly being thwarted by the unpredictable choices of His creatures. This is a god made in our own image: anxious, reactive, and frequently disappointed. But this is not the God of the Bible. The God of Scripture is the author of history, not a mere reader of it. He does not just respond to the story; He writes it. And He is not afraid to use crooked lines to draw straight.
Nowhere is this truth more powerfully illustrated than in the life of Joseph, and Stephen, in the moments before his own martyrdom, brings this story to the forefront. We must understand the setting. Stephen is not giving a dispassionate history lecture to the Sanhedrin. This is a covenant lawsuit. He is the prosecuting attorney, laying out the evidence of Israel's persistent, generational rebellion against the God who had saved them time and again. And the heart of their rebellion, the recurring sin, was this: they always rejected the saviors God sent them.
The story of Joseph is therefore a master class in the doctrine of providence. It is the doctrine that teaches us that God, from all eternity, did by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass. This includes not just the good things, the promotions and the harvests, but also the dark things, the betrayals, the injustices, and the famines. It is the story of how God weaves the black threads of human sin into the glorious tapestry of redemption, without getting a single spot of sin on His fingers. Stephen is holding up Joseph as a mirror to the Sanhedrin, and the reflection they see, if they had eyes to see, is their own murderous envy toward a greater Joseph, the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Text
"And the patriarchs, becoming jealous of Joseph, sold him into Egypt. Yet God was with him, and rescued him from all his afflictions, and granted him favor and wisdom in the sight of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and he appointed him governor over Egypt and all his household. Now a famine came over all Egypt and Canaan, and great affliction with it, and our fathers could find no food. But when Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt, he sent our fathers there the first time. And on the second visit Joseph made himself known to his brothers, and Joseph’s family was disclosed to Pharaoh. Then Joseph sent word and invited Jacob his father and all his relatives to come to him, seventy-five persons in all. And Jacob went down to Egypt and there he and our fathers died. And from there they were removed to Shechem and placed in the tomb which Abraham had purchased for a sum of money from the sons of Hamor in Shechem."
(Acts 7:9-16 LSB)
The Sinful Engine and the Divine Checkmate (v. 9)
Stephen begins with the corrupt motive that set the entire story in motion.
"And the patriarchs, becoming jealous of Joseph, sold him into Egypt. Yet God was with him." (Acts 7:9 LSB)
The engine of this whole affair is envy. "Becoming jealous." Envy is not the simple desire for something someone else has. Envy is the hatred of the good in another. The patriarchs saw God's favor on Joseph, manifest in his dreams and his father's affection, and they despised him for it. This is the sin of Cain against Abel. It is the sin of Saul against David. And it is the very sin of the Sanhedrin against Jesus, a fact that even the pagan Pilate could see plainly (Matt. 27:18). They hated Jesus not because He was a bad man, but because He was a good man, and His goodness exposed their fraud.
So what do they do? They act on their envy. They conspire, they lie, and they sell their own brother into slavery. From a human perspective, this is the end of the story for Joseph. He is a victim, his dreams are dead, and his wicked brothers have won. They thought they were writing Joseph out of the family history. But in their very act of rebellion, they were fulfilling the script that God had already written.
Notice the two most important words in the verse: "Yet God." Some translations say "But God." This is the great pivot of all redemptive history. Man does his worst, "Yet God." The brothers throw him in a pit, "Yet God." Potiphar's wife lies about him, "Yet God." He is forgotten in prison, "Yet God." This is the Christian's great comfort. Our lives are not determined by the malice of our enemies or the fickleness of our friends, but by the sovereign, unshakable presence of our God. "God was with him." That presence is the guarantee of the final outcome. The brothers thought they were checkmating God's plan, but they had only moved their pawn into the precise square God required for His own victory.
From the Pit to the Palace (v. 10)
God's presence with Joseph was not a passive, sentimental comfort. It was an active, powerful force that completely reversed his circumstances.
"and rescued him from all his afflictions, and granted him favor and wisdom in the sight of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and he appointed him governor over Egypt and all his household." (Acts 7:10 LSB)
Notice that God's providence did not keep Joseph from affliction, but rather rescued him "from all his afflictions." The path to glory is often through the valley of trouble. God does not promise a trouble-free life; He promises to be with us in the trouble and to deliver us out of it. This deliverance was not a random stroke of luck. God "granted him favor and wisdom."
This is a key principle. God equips the men He calls. The wisdom Joseph needed to interpret dreams and to govern the most powerful nation on earth was not something he cooked up on his own. It was a divine gift. And notice where this favor is shown: "in the sight of Pharaoh." God turned the heart of a pagan king to accomplish His redemptive purposes for His people. God's sovereignty is not limited to the church prayer meeting. He is sovereign over capitols and boardrooms, over pagan kings and secular universities. He can raise up a Pharaoh to exalt His servant, and He can raise up another Pharaoh to display His power in judgment.
The result is a stunning reversal. The slave becomes the ruler. The prisoner becomes the prime minister. The rejected brother is exalted to the right hand of power. Stephen is not being subtle here. He is preaching Christ. Jesus was the one rejected by His brethren, handed over to the pagan authorities, and condemned. But God raised Him from the dead and exalted Him to the highest place, giving Him a name that is above every name. Joseph's story is the gospel in miniature.
Providential Hunger (v. 11-14)
God's plan now expands to encompass the very men who thought they had thwarted it.
"Now a famine came over all Egypt and Canaan, and great affliction with it, and our fathers could find no food... Then Joseph sent word and invited Jacob his father and all his relatives to come to him, seventy-five persons in all." (Acts 7:11-14 LSB)
God's providence is not always comfortable. He sends a famine, a "great affliction." Why? To drive His stubborn, stiff-necked people to the only place of salvation. He uses hunger and desperation as a divine cattle prod. Had there been no famine, the brothers would have lived and died in their self-satisfied sin, never confronting what they had done. But God loved them too much to leave them there. He brought them to the end of themselves so they would be forced to go to Egypt for bread.
And who is in charge of the bread? The very brother they betrayed. The one they sold for silver is now their only hope for survival. On their second visit, he reveals himself. This is a picture of God's work in conviction and repentance. He brings us face to face with the one we have sinned against, and in that revelation, we find not the vengeance we deserve, but the grace we do not.
Joseph does not repay evil for evil. He repays evil with good. He invites his entire family, the ones who hated him, to come and be saved by his provision. This is the heart of the gospel. The one who was rejected becomes the savior of his people. Stephen is shouting this at the Sanhedrin: "You have done it again! You have rejected the one God sent to save you, but His plan will not be stopped. He will still save a people for Himself."
Dying in Hope (v. 15-16)
The account ends not with the glory of Egypt, but with a quiet testimony of faith in God's future promise.
"And Jacob went down to Egypt and there he and our fathers died. And from there they were removed to Shechem and placed in the tomb which Abraham had purchased..." (Acts 7:15-16 LSB)
Why does Stephen include this detail about the burial? It seems like an insignificant footnote. But it is everything. They lived in Egypt, they prospered in Egypt, and they died in Egypt. But Egypt was not their home. Their final request was to be buried not in the grandeur of Egypt but in a dusty plot of ground in Canaan, the land God had promised.
Their bones were a sermon. Their burial was an act of faith. They were declaring that their ultimate hope was not in the bread of Egypt but in the promise of God. They were confessing that they were strangers and exiles on the earth, looking forward to a better country, that is, a heavenly one (Heb. 11:13-16). Their story did not end in Egypt, and neither does ours. We live in a foreign land, a world that is not our home. But we live and die in the hope of the resurrection, awaiting our place in the true promised land, the new heavens and the new earth.
The God Who Means It For Good
The entire story of Joseph, which Stephen so brilliantly summarizes, is itself a summary of the central doctrine of Scripture. Joseph says it himself to his terrified brothers: "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today" (Genesis 50:20).
This is the grammar of reality. God does not simply react to human sin, cleaning up the mess afterward. He incorporates human sin into His sovereign plan. He "meant it for good." The jealousy of the brothers was sinful, it was their fault, and they were responsible for it. And yet, God ordained that very sin to be the instrument of their salvation. He does not cause the sin, but He decrees it. He stands over and above it, guiding it to His own holy ends.
This is seen most clearly at the cross of Jesus Christ. Stephen's sermon is building to this climax. The men who crucified Jesus were fully responsible. They acted out of their own wicked hearts. "This Jesus," Peter would say, "you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men." That is human responsibility. But what does the first half of that verse say? "delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God" (Acts 2:23). That is divine sovereignty.
The greatest evil ever committed by man was simultaneously the greatest good ever accomplished by God. Your salvation was purchased through an act of horrific, envious, murderous injustice. God meant it for good.
This is our rock and our comfort. When you are betrayed, when you are slandered, when you face affliction and famine in your own life, you must remember Joseph. You are not the victim of meaningless chaos. You are a character in a story being written by a wise, powerful, and good God. He is with you. And He has promised to take all the evil that is meant against you and weave it into a story that ends, for all who are in Christ, in resurrection and glory.