The Pits

The Pits

They spotted him off in the distance. By the time he got to them they had cooked up a plot to kill him. The brothers were saying, “Here comes that dreamer. Let’s kill him and throw him into one of these old cisterns; we can say that a vicious animal ate him up. We’ll see what his dreams amount to.”

Reuben heard the brothers talking and intervened to save him, “We’re not going to kill him. No murder. Go ahead and throw him in this cistern out here in the wild, but don’t hurt him.” Reuben planned to go back later and get him out and take him back to his father.

When Joseph reached his brothers, they ripped off the fancy coat he was wearing, grabbed him, and threw him into a cistern. The cistern was dry; there wasn’t any water in it.

Then they sat down to eat their supper. (Genesis 37:18-25)

She was trembling, the kind of inner tremor you can just sense with even the slightest hand on a shoulder. She was in the grocery store. Her eyes were teary, and her chin quivered. He'd left her. After twenty years of marriage, three kids and a dozen moves, gone. Traded her in for a younger model.

He'd just been fired, and the ouster was entirely his fault. He'd made stupid, inappropriate remarks at work. Crude, offensive statements, to be accurate. His boss canned him. Now, he's a fifty-seven-year-old unemployed manager in a struggling economy. He feels terrible, and sounds even worse. Wife’s angry. Kids are confused.

She’s fresh out of high school, hoping to get into college next month. Her life hasn't been easy. When she was six years old, her parents divorced. When she was fifteen, they remarried, only to divorce two years later. Her parents told her to choose: live with Mom or live with Dad.

What a mess. The pits. Can God use such chaos for good? The answer comes from another pit.

A deep, dark pit. So steep, the boy couldn’t climb out. Had he been able to, his brothers would have just shoved him back down. They were the ones who’d thrown him in. “When Joseph reached his brothers, they ripped off the fancy coat he was wearing, grabbed him, and threw him into a cistern. The cistern was dry; there wasn’t any water in it. Then they sat down to eat their supper.” (Gen. 37:23-25)

An abandoned cistern. Jagged rocks and roots extended from its sides where the seventeen-year-old boy lay at the bottom. Downy beard, spindly arms, scrawny legs. Eyes wide with fear. His voice hoarse from screaming. And it wasn't like his brothers didn't hear him. Twenty-two years later, when a famine had tamed their swagger and guilt had dampened their pride, they would confess: "We saw the anguish of his soul when he pleaded with us, and we would not hear." (Gen. 42:21)

These are the great-grandsons of Abraham. The sons of Jacob. Couriers of God's covenant to a galaxy of people. Tribes will carry their banners. The name of Jesus Christ will appear on their family tree. They’re the Scriptures' equivalent of royalty. But on this day they were the Bronze Age version of a dysfunctional family. They could have had their own reality show, or been guests on Jerry Springer.

In the shadow of a sycamore, within earshot of Joseph's appeals, they chew on venison and pass the wineskin. Hearts as hard as the Canaanite desert they’re herding. Lunch mattered more than their brother. They despised Joseph: "They hated him and could not speak peaceably to him . . . they hated him even more . . . they hated him . . . his brothers envied him." (Gen. 37:4-5, 8, 11) Here's why.

The boys’ father pampered Joseph like a prized calf. Jacob had two wives, Leah and Rachel, but one love – Rachel. So when Rachel died, Jacob kept her memory alive by fawning all over their first son. The brothers worked all day; Joseph played all day. They wore clothes from a secondhand store; Jacob gave Joseph a hand-stitched, multicolored coat with embroidered sleeves. They slept in the bunkhouse; he had a queen-sized bed in his own room. While they ran the family herd, Joseph, Daddy's little darling, stayed home. Jacob treated the eleventh son like a firstborn. The brothers spat at the sight of Joseph.

To say the family was in crisis would be like saying a grass hut might be unstable in a hurricane. The brothers caught Joseph far from home, sixty miles away from Daddy's protection, and went nuclear on him: "they ripped off the fancy coat he was wearing, grabbed him, and threw him into a cistern." (vv. 23-24). Defiant verbs. They not only wanted to kill Joseph, but to hide the evidence, too. This was a murderous plot from the beginning. "We can say that a vicious animal ate him up." (v. 20) Premeditated.

Joseph never saw the assault coming. It’s not like he climbed out of bed that morning and thought, “I'd better get dressed in some padded clothing because today’s the day I get tossed into a hole.” The attack caught him completely off guard. And, probably, so did yours. Joseph's pit came in the form of a cistern; maybe yours came in the form of a diagnosis, a foster home, or a traumatic injury. Joseph was thrown in a hole and despised. And you? Thrown in an unemployment line and forgotten; thrown into a divorce and abandoned; thrown into bed and abused. The pit. A kind of death – waterless and austere. Some people never recover. For them, life is reduced to one quest: to get out and never be hurt again. But that’s easier said than done because pits have no easy exits.

And Joseph's story gets worse before it gets better. Abandonment led to enslavement, then entrapment, and finally imprisonment. He was sucker punched. Sold out. Mistreated. People made promises only to break them; offered gifts only to take them back. If hurt were a desert, then Joseph was sentenced to a life of hard labor in the Mojave. Yet he never gave up. Bitterness never staked its claim. Anger never metastasized into hatred. His heart never hardened; his resolve never vanished. He not only survived; he thrived. He ascended like a helium balloon: an Egyptian official promoted him to chief servant; the prison warden placed him over the inmates; and Pharaoh, the highest ruler on the planet, shoulder-tapped Joseph to serve as his prime minister. By the end of his life, Joseph was the second most powerful man of his generation, and it’s not hyperbole to say that he saved the world from starvation. But how?

How’d he flourish in the midst of tragedy? We don't have to speculate. Some twenty years later the roles were reversed – Joseph as the strong one and his brothers the weak ones. They came to him in dread. They feared he would settle the score and throw them into a pit of his own making. But Joseph didn't. And in his explanation we find his inspiration: “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive.” (50:20)

Intended evil becomes eventual good in God’s hands. So, Joseph tied himself to the pillar of that promise and held on for dear life. Nothing in his story glosses over the presence of evil. Quite the contrary; there’s bloodstains and tearstains everywhere. Joseph's heart was rubbed raw against the rocks of disloyalty and miscarried justice. Yet time and time again God redeemed the pain. The torn robe became a royal one; the pit became a palace; the broken family grew old together. The very acts intended to destroy God's servant turned out to strengthen him. "You meant evil against me," Joseph told his brothers, using a Hebrew verb that traces its meaning to "weave." "You wove evil," he was saying to his brothers, "but God rewove it together for good." God, the Master Weaver.

He stretches the yarn and intertwines the colors, the ragged twine with the velvet strings, and the pains with the pleasures. Nothing escapes his reach. Every king, every despot, every weather pattern, and every molecule is at his command. He passes the shuttle back and forth across the generations, and as he does, a design emerges. Satan weaves; God reweaves. That’s the meaning behind Joseph's words: "God meant it for good in order to bring about . . . many people alive."

The Hebrew word translated as “bring about” is actually a construction term. It describes a task or building project similar to the one you’ve probably driven through during weekday rush hours. Three lanes have been reduced to one, transforming your morning commute into a daily stew. The California interstate projects, like human history, have seemingly been in development since before time began. Cranes hover overhead; workers hold signs and lean on shovels, while several million people grumble: how much longer is this going to take? Highway engineers, on the other hand, have a much different attitude about “carmageddon.” They endure the same traffic jams and detours like the rest of us, but do it with a much better attitude. Why? Because they know how these projects develop, and they know they’ll eventually get finished. They know because they've seen the plans and know the builder.

By giving us stories like Joseph's, God allows us to study his plans. And in Joseph’s case, those plans look pretty messy. Brothers dumping brother. Entitlements. Famines and family feuds scattered about like nails and cement bags on a freeway project. Satan's logic was sinister and simple: destroy the family of Abraham and thereby destroy his seed, Jesus Christ. All of hell, it seems, had set its target on Jacob's boys. But watch the Master Builder at work. He cleared debris, stabilized the structure, and bolted trusses until the chaos of Genesis 37:24 ("They . . . cast him into a pit") became the triumph of Genesis 50:20 ("life for many people.") God as Master Weaver, Master Builder. He redeemed the story of Joseph. And if He did it for Joseph, can't he redeem your story as well?

You'll get out of the pits; it’s not forever. You fear you won't. We all do. We fear that the depression will never lift, the yelling will never stop, and the pain will never leave. Here in the pits, surrounded by steep walls and angry brothers, we wonder, “Will this gray sky ever brighten; these loads ever lighten?” We feel stuck, trapped, locked in. Predestined for failure. Will I ever exit this pit? Yes, you will. Deliverance is to the Bible what jazz music is to Tuesday’s Mardi Gras: bold, brassy, and everywhere. Out of the lions' den for Daniel, the prison for Peter, the whale's belly for Jonah, Goliath's shadow for David, the storm for the disciples, disease for the lepers, doubt for Thomas, the grave for Lazarus, and the shackles for Paul. God gets us through stuff.

Through the Red Sea onto dry ground (Ex. 14:22), through the wilderness (Deut. 29:5), through the valley of the shadow of death (Ps. 23:4), and through the deep sea. (Ps. 77:19) “Through” seems to be a favorite word of God's: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; And through the rivers, they shall not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned, nor shall the flame scorch you.” (Isa. 43:2)

It won't be painless. For instance, have you wept your final tear or received your last round of chemotherapy? Not necessarily. Will your unhappy marriage become happy in a heartbeat? Not likely. Are you exempt from a trip to the cemetery? Does God guarantee the absence of struggle and the abundance of strength? Not in this life. But he does pledge to reweave your pain for a higher purpose.

And, it may not be quick, either. Joseph was 17 years old when his brothers abandoned him. He was at least 37 when he saw them again. Another couple of years passed after that before he saw his father again. Sometimes God takes his time: 120 years to prepare Noah for the flood, 80 years to prepare Moses for his work. God called young David to be king, only to return him to the sheep pasture and then run for his life like Ben Gazzara for more than a decade from the crazy king he was anointed to replace. He called Paul to be an apostle and then isolated him in Arabia for three years. Jesus was on the earth for three decades before he built anything more than a kitchen table. How long will God take with you? He may take his time. His history is redeemed in lifetimes, not in minutes.

But God will use the pits in life for His good. We see a perfect mess; God sees a perfect chance to train, test, and teach the future prime minister. We see a prison; God sees a kiln. We see famine; God sees the relocation of his chosen people. We call it Egypt; God calls it protective custody, where the sons of Jacob can escape Canaanite cruelty to multiply in peace abundantly. We see Satan's tricks and ploys; God sees Satan tripped and foiled. You’re a version of Joseph in your generation. You represent a challenge to Satan's plan. You carry something of God within you, something noble and holy, something the world needs – wisdom, kindness, mercy, skill. And if Satan can neutralize you, he can mute your influence.

The story of Joseph is in the Bible to teach us to trust God to trump evil. What Satan intends for evil, God, the Master Weaver and Master Builder, redeems for good. Joseph would be the first to tell you that life in the pit stinks. Yet for all its rottenness the pit does at least this much – it forces you to look up, i.e., someone from up there must come down here and give you a hand. God did that for Joseph – at the right time, and in the right way. He will do the same for you.

Because He knows your name. (John 10:3)

Grace,

Randy