How different he was from the way that we are. Whenever we find ourselves in a hard and dark place we naturally assume that God has somehow fallen down on the job - after all - don't we "assume" that He should be hovering around us ensuring our comfort? There should be no pit or no pain we should have to endure. Instead, for Joseph, he emerges from prison celebrating what God has done in his life by the very means of his suffering.
We learn that Joseph is another foreshadowing of Jesus. Remember after Jesus was resurrected and He's walking on the road to Emmaus with two men - they thought their new companion must have been on another planet when Cleopas asks him, “Are you the only one visiting Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?” (Luke 24:18)
Jesus then opens their minds to the Scriptures. Now it is not as if they haven't heard the Torah before - maybe they have never understood it.
Perhaps Jesus tells them the story of Joseph this way:
- Remember how Joseph was rejected by the sons of Jacob?
- . . . So was I.
- Remember how Joseph's brothers wouldn't listen to what he said and conspired to kill him?
- . . . So did my Jewish brothers refuse to listen to me and conspire to kill me.
- Remember how Joseph left his home of privilege with the father who loved him and became a slave in Egypt?
- . . . That's what happened to me when I left my Father's home in heaven and came to this world, taking the form of a servent.
- Remember how Joseph was eventually exalted to the kings right hand and his brothers came and bowed down to him?
- . . . That is what is ahead for me. Shortly I will ascend to my Father's right hand, and the day will come when every knee is going to bow and every tongue is going to confess that I am Lord.
Joseph's emergence from the pit of death and eventual ascension to the right hand of Pharaoh also provides to us a picture of the resurrection of glorification of God's beloved son, Jesus.
When Joseph was a Hebrew slave in an Egyptian prison, he interpreted a dream of the Pharaoh. He predicted a famine, he developed a plan which was accepted by Pharaoh who then put him in charge and made him the prime minister of all of Egypt. Year after year he collected food from the Egyptians and stored it in the cities - there was so much food stored it could not even be counted. Then . . . seven years later the famine struck and there was no food for anyone - not just the Egyptians. People came from all around the world because they had heard about the storehouses of grain Joseph had laid up. Pharaoh sent them to Joseph who sold food to them. "Moreover, all the earth came to Egypt to Joseph to buy grain because the famine was severe all over the earth." (Genesis 41:57).
Just as Joseph was the one to whom the whole world came to be fed, just as he became the savior of the world in his day, so Jesus is the one to whom the whole world must come. "I am the bread of life, whoever comes to me shall not hunger." (John 6:35)
Reflecting on Joseph's story and all his suffering - all his humiliation of slavery, imprisonment, longing for his father and his home - God had been at work to put him in place to provide for family when the famine came. But . . . REMEMBER . . . this was not just any family, but the family from whom the Promised One would come. Joseph tells his family, "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)
Our author, Nancy Guthrie, asks us . . . "What in your life would change everything in your life if you were to write across it . . . 'You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good' ? "