In his sermon, The Sale of Joseph and the Son of God, John Piper begins,
Astonishing Words to Abram
Before we retell the story of Joseph and the spectacular sin of his brothers and its global purpose in the glory of Jesus Christ, let’s back up to Genesis 12. God has chosen Abram from all the peoples of the world by free grace and owing to nothing in him. In Genesis 12:2-3, God makes him a promise: “I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” This is the beginning of the people of Israel through whom Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God will come into the world to save us from our sins.
Then in chapter 15, God makes a formal covenant with Abram. He uses a remarkable symbolic act and some astonishing words. He says to Abram in Genesis 15:13-16, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. . . . And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”
Four Hundred Years!
So at the very beginning of his covenant relationship with his chosen people, God predicts a 400-year stay in Egypt and the return to the promised land. “They will be afflicted 400 years.” He has his strange reasons why they must leave for four centuries (think of it!) and not inherit the land now, namely, verse 15: “the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.” When the Israelites come back to take the land under Joshua in 400 years, they will destroy these nations. How are we to understand that? Deuteronomy 9:5 gives God’s answer: “Not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart are you going in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations the Lord your God is driving them out from before you, and that he may confirm the word that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.” The conquest of the promised land is the judgment of God on the fullness of centuries of wickedness.
God’s People Enter Through Many Afflictions
In the meantime, God says that his people will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be afflicted for 400 years, namely, in Egypt. So there is God’s plan for his pilgrim people—a kind of picture of your life on this earth until heaven. If God plans 400 years of affliction for his people (Genesis 15:13) before the promised land, we should not be surprised that he says to us “through many tribulations you must enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22).
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