Joseph

Hey, friends.
Welcome back to the Pastor Talk podcast as we continue with Real People of the
Faith.
Today, we consider the patriarch Joseph kind of the last in the line in Genesis.
His story picks up in the 37th chapter and really runs through the end of the book,
making it fairly long by those standards,
nearly a third of the book of Genesis devoted to this story of Joseph.
Jacob is still involved in the story,
but kind of a background character.
And, Michael, as we get to Joseph’s story,
we really encounter a different kind of character.
He stands out as unique, certainly in the story we’ve seen so far.
He does, Clint.
He’s really an interesting
character.
I’m excited to have this conversation and to look at his life a little bit closer.
He defies some of the themes that we’ve seen already.
For instance,
that theme of barrenness,
of having a wife who can’t conceive,
that’s going to be different in Joseph’s story.
He certainly has some
trials and tribulations in his life.
He has lots of reason to not trust God at certain terms,
and yet he continually and faithfully does trust God.
God is present through his story,
though there’s not this theme of direct interaction with God that’s very prominent here,
Clint.
I just think we’re
going to have a lot of resonances with Joseph’s story,
because in some ways,
Joseph is the most
normal person we’re going to encounter,
if you let me use that word,
and in another sense, he’s not.
And so, we’re going to travel some interesting grounds here today.
Yeah, in fact, I don’t know if I thought of it this way,
Michael, but I can’t remember a point
in the story which God contacts or confronts Joseph directly.
Joseph is this man of faith.
He has struggles, but those struggles are really life struggles.
They’re not faith struggles.
He has integrity.
He does what he understands to be the right thing.
And yet, he has some things,
for the most part,
outside of his control that happened to him that are very difficult,
but they’re different than the moral failures or the faith failures we’ve seen
in some of the other characters.
And I think that makes him very interesting.
So, let’s jump in.
I guess the part of the story everyone knows,
he is the youngest of 11 at the time, 10 brothers,
11 boys, and he is the only son for Jacob of his favorite wife,
Rachel.
And that does convey on him a kind of favored status.
Those themes that we have seen of sibling
rivalry and favoritism do make their way into this story.
And Jacob likes him the best because he’s
born, at this time, the one and only child of his favorite wife and treats him accordingly.
Right.
And here in Joseph’s story,
we see how that theme of the youngest versus the eldest
is once again impacting the child.
We had that back with Jacob and Esau,
where we saw that reversal
and it changed both of their lives forever.
Here we have that again,
except it’s different in the
sense that here we have the brothers who actively seek out and do harm to Joseph.
Yeah.
So, Joseph, one of the themes,
Joseph is sensitive to dreams and understanding them.
And as a young child,
this shows up, he has a couple of dreams.
And in these dreams,
he essentially becomes an object of worship,
first for his family,
and then literally for the known
world or the universe even.
And this doesn’t sit well with his brother.
So, on a particular day,
he’s coming out to see his brothers.
They’re working for some reason.
He’s not.
His dad sends them out and they see him coming.
And their words are very interesting.
Here comes the dreamer
and they decide, “We’ve had enough of this kid.
We will get rid of him.” And
they proceed to make
plans to do that.
Right.
And they’re being pretty tricky here.
They’re going to stage it and make
it look like he was killed by a wild animal.
And so, they’ve got this whole plan.
This is premeditated.
And then, Reuben,
one of the brothers,
is not feeling comfortable with this, apparently.
The text doesn’t really say what’s behind it.
But he essentially comes up with an
alternate plan of how he’s going to save Joseph’s life.
Instead of killing him,
he sort of says to
brothers, “Let’s not go through all that work.” And so,
he comes up with a way in which essentially
he can have it appear that Joseph’s dead by dipping his robe in blood and giving that to
the father and telling this story that,
“Look, your son has died.” And then,
the brothers can get rid of him by selling him into slavery.
And that is where Joseph’s story transitions from
one in Jacob’s home,
sort of that traditional idea of the Israelite family continuing,
and he gets moved into,
becomes a part of Egypt’s story.
Yeah.
And it’s easy to read over that.
I think because we get the many-colored coat and we all,
in Sunday school, saw flannelboard pictures of it
or colored it with crayons,
it’s probably easy to read over the more horrifying aspects of
family members deciding to human traffic,
the younger brother, the favorite,
and simply get rid of him.
I mean, this is a very rough,
very kind of brutal thing that they do in some ways
as bad as killing him,
possibly worse.
And it is through that action that Joseph eventually finds
himself in Egypt in the service of a man named Potiphar.
And it’s never said explicitly,
Michael, but we get the sense that Joseph has a lot of gifts.
Whatever he seems to work at,
he seems to do well.
He seems to thrive.
He seems to be intelligent.
He’s thoughtful.
He’s productive.
And he naturally,
when he gets somewhere,
even by a not very good route of arriving there,
he generally tends to do well once he gets there.
We’ve promised in these conversations to sort of tell you when we know we’re straying from the
biblical text.
And this is an ironic situation, Clint,
where I think that maybe it’s worth
pointing out an assumption that people might have that’s not in the biblical text.
And that is, I think some people have the impression that Joseph is arrogant or self-centered, narcissistic.
And I’m not entirely certain that we can glean that from the text directly.
In other words, the Bible doesn’t say that for him it’s all about him.
Now, maybe that’s a fair
inference.
Maybe that’s why the brothers are jealous is because of these worship dreams.
But I think I just want to be careful and say we aren’t told exactly what the conduct
of his character is in this,
Clint.
And so I don’t want us to make assumptions here.
Right.
You could question the idea that he tells his brothers,
“Oh, by the way, I had a dream,
and you guys were all worshiping me.
You were bowing down to me.” You could question the wisdom
in that.
There may be arrogance in it,
but the Bible doesn’t tell us that there’s arrogance in it.
It also is clear that that is what is going to happen.
And when Joseph has dreams in this
narrative, there are six of them,
and they always mean something.
And by the way,
they always come to pass.
So it could be that as a young man,
he simply doesn’t understand what is unfolding in
the midst of that yet.
But I think that’s a good word,
Michael.
We don’t want to cast things on
Joseph that he doesn’t deserve.
He’s clearly the favorite.
He wears the special garment, whatever it is.
He has a favorite status.
His father seems to make that known even among the brothers.
But we don’t know his demeanor.
I think that’s a good word of caution that we shouldn’t
assume that at any level he deserves it,
though it is fair to say that at one point,
even his dad says, “Look,
let’s tone it down a little bit with the dreams.” This is the one when the sun,
moon, and stars are bowing down to him,
which again is symbolism of what’s coming,
but he doesn’t know
how to deal with it yet.
Yeah. And so as we set our sights on Egypt,
where he goes and starts
work for Pilafur there when he arrives,
we have this character,
Joseph, who seems to be able
to, and maybe the right word’s not effortlessly,
but he does seem to have a kind of flexibility
in his own character,
where he’s able to have things happen and adjust.
And regardless of why
his brothers came to this decision,
Joseph seems to have an ability to trust God,
certainly, but also just to be able to adapt in his circumstances.
And pretty soon, we find out that he not only gets sold into slavery and begins working,
but he’s pretty good at this job.
Yeah, it rises to the top of the household.
So it says, “Padafur put him in charge of all that he
had,” which is a theme we’re going to see again in a few chapters.
And it’s at this point where
we’re also told that Joseph is handsome.
He’s good-looking.
He’s attractive.
And unfortunately, not only does the Bible tell us that,
Padafur’s wife is aware of that,
and she seeks to seduce
Joseph.
And again, he responds with integrity.
He says, “I couldn’t do that.
Not only is it against my faith,
but it would be an insult to my master,
to Padafur.” And that gets out of hand.
She essentially frames him.
She tries to grab him.
He runs away.
She’s got some article of his clothing,
which again is interesting.
It’s always Joseph’s clothing that is getting him in trouble or creating some difficulty.
And she accuses him of trying to rape her,
and he ends up in prison,
which again, we have to be careful because we don’t know this.
But you have to wonder if Padafur,
who is a wealthy Egyptian man and probably has the authority to deal with his slaves harshly,
if he believed Joseph had really tried to rape his wife,
would prison have been the place
that he landed or would that been a death penalty?
And there’s speculation in that.
We don’t know that.
But it is interesting that for a crime as punishable as that one,
he ends up in prison.
Joseph defies our expectations here,
Clint, because you might think that the favorite son
who gets the special clothes,
who’s having dreams about the sun,
moon, and stars bowing down to him,
that he’s going to be a lazy, self-absorbed child.
But here we have,
he’s sold into slavery,
comes to work for Padafur.
He works his tail off.
He’s a hard worker.
He earns Padafur’s trust.
And maybe to some extent,
that is speculation, but Padafur certainly does make that choice to
have him go to prison.
And you would think, man,
okay, so that’s a bad shake.
You become a slave.
Now you become a prisoner.
Well, pretty soon Joseph is able to turn this around,
and he rises to the top of this prison ecosystem.
Yeah, and it hinges again on dreams with two men in the prison.
And I think at this point,
it’s been a while.
He’s been imprisoned a while,
and he’ll stay there for a while.
But there are two former employees of the pharaoh,
a cupbearer,
a personal attendant, and a baker,
a cook.
And they end up in prison.
They’ve angered the pharaoh at some level,
and they both have dreams.
And Joseph interprets their dreams.
And he gives God
credit for that.
He says, “You know, it’s not me doing it,
but God has shown me what these mean.”
And he tells the cupbearer,
“You’re going to be reinstated.
Pharaoh’s going to bring you back
into his service,” which the baker says,
“Yeah, well, tell me what mine means.” And he says,
“Okay.” And Joseph tells the cupbearer,
“When you get to the pharaoh,
tell him about me.
Tell him I can help.
Tell him what happened.
Tell him about these dreams.” And the cupbearer may
have had good intentions,
but he forgets or he doesn’t do it,
whatever is the case.
And so, for another significant amount of time,
Joseph remains imprisoned.
Two full years, it says here in chapter 41,
that the pharaoh finally has this dream,
and then the cupbearer becomes aware of Pharaoh’s dream.
And as there’s a rush to figure out what
is this strange dream that the pharaoh had,
that is the thing that spurs into mind, “Oh,
yeah, there was this guy in prison who interpreted my dream,
and it turned out to be right.
And that’s how Joseph gets brought from a prison all the way up to literally the highest office of the land.”
Yeah. He covers the whole ladder in one trip,
and Pharaoh has had two dreams.
He tells them to
Joseph.
Joseph says, again, the same thing.
Interpretations belong to God,
but he tells the pharaoh, “In this case,
both of your dreams mean the same thing.
We’re going to have seven
very good years, and then you’re going to have seven years of famine and blight.”
And the pharaoh essentially says,
“What should we do?” And again,
we don’t know, is Joseph
a little self-interest here maybe,
but he says, “You know what you ought to do,
Pharaoh, is take a
successful person who’s very knowledgeable and has some good instinct,
and maybe even interprets
dreams, and you ought to put them in charge.” And that quickly,
in the text at least,
Pharaoh puts Joseph now as essentially his second in command,
or at least he brings him very high.
And then again,
through his work ethic,
through his success,
he ends up being really second.
I think the Scripture tells a second on the ladder behind only the pharaoh himself.
And just like that, again,
Joseph’s giftedness has taken him high in a situation and really charted a new course for him.
And once again, I think it’s worth noting in particular here,
this is in chapter 41,
verse 16, right before Joseph interprets the pharaoh’s dream.
Joseph says, “I cannot do it,”
meaning I can’t interpret your dream.
He goes on, “But God will give Pharaoh the answer he desires.”
And that’s really good.
Here you’ve got a guy who gets drawn up out of prison,
said, “Hey, do you interpret dreams?” And Joseph is just the first one to say,
“Hey, this isn’t me.
I can interpret your dream,
but it’s not me doing it.
It’s on behalf of God.” And so,
here we got a guy who has gone through a lot,
not pointing to himself,
but pointing to the one who’s
been with him the whole time.
And he doesn’t have these direct interactions with God that we see
with some of his fathers and grandfathers,
but yet suddenly he is naming God in this
conversation with Pharaoh.
So, a really strong note of his character.
Yeah, I think that one of the themes that runs throughout this narrative is remembering and forgetting.
And it’s interesting that Joseph,
who’s had a very tough road,
at least once being completely innocent,
and probably as a child being at least mostly innocent,
has had others frame him and do these things to him.
And now he’s lived in Egypt for some significant amount of time.
And yet,
he still goes first to God in his thoughts, in his accountability,
in his abilities.
He has not forgotten the God of his father and of his grandfather.
He’s not forgotten the God of Israel.
He remains committed and faithful,
even in the midst of the idolatry
and the religious life.
In fact, Michael,
when we start the book of Exodus,
the first thing we’re
told is that a new Pharaoh comes who didn’t remember Joseph.
And so, the thing that Joseph
remembers that’s important in the story is that he belongs to God.
And Joseph’s story is the classic textbook biblical example of what people mean for bad.
God is able to turn for good,
right?
Because the brothers go from killing him to selling him.
And then it turns out that Joseph,
at this stage of the story,
becomes really their savior.
It is because of this interpreting of the Pharaoh’s dream that all of Egypt saves up
resources for an upcoming famine,
that famine hits, and it impacts Jacob’s family.
All of Joseph’s brothers are going without food now because of this blight that has come upon the
end.
And Joseph, having interpreted the dream,
the Pharaoh trusting Joseph,
and then Joseph leading the administrative effort to store up food,
then becomes a storehouse of resources,
which these brothers now come to Egypt to try to seek.
They try to take home food
because Egypt has it and they don’t.
Yeah, they tell Jacob,
“Hey, we’ve heard there’s food in Egypt.
We’ll go and try to secure
some and bring it back.” And they show up.
And Joseph recognizes them immediately.
They don’t recognize him, which probably isn’t surprising given the change in age and that they haven’t
really probably thought much about him and certainly don’t expect him to be second in command
in Egypt.
We’ll condense these stories,
but if there’s a place,
Michael, that anybody could criticize Joseph,
and I don’t know that we could,
he does use his
situation to mess with his brothers.
He accuses them of stealing.
He has them framed.
He keeps one of the brothers back.
He demands that they bring the youngest brother.
They tell him, “No, we have a younger brother,” who he finds out is now his full brother, Benjamin,
the youngest, also born to Rachel of Jacob.
And he says, “Until I see the younger brother,
I’m not going to believe your story.
I think your spies,
et cetera, et cetera.” He keeps, I believe, it’s Simeon in jail or at least under arrest,
though there’s no indication he’s treated harshly.
While the brothers return home,
Jacob says, “We’re not going to do that,” but eventually he relents and Benjamin shows up
before Joseph.
There’s a wonderful part in the text where it says at one point when he
sees his brothers that he had to rush everybody out of the room and that he just broke down, weeping,
and not to get philosophical or psychological,
but I think all of us are
aware that some of those wounds that we suffer in childhood live in deep places within us.
And because as children,
we’re not able to process them psychologically,
they are often raw.
And here we have that moment where it has to come flooding back for Joseph to see his brothers,
to remember that day of being in the pit,
the fear of being sold,
of being taken, of being transferred, of losing all of that and all of the hardship he’s been in.
He has this kind of cathartic moment where it all comes out of him in weeping and wailing, really.
It says that they could hear it,
others could hear it.
And it’s not just Joseph here,
Clint, it’s also the brothers.
They are saying to each other in
their own language, not realizing that Joseph can hear them.
He’s in the room,
but they think that
he’s Egyptian and won’t understand.
And they say,
“Surely we are being punished because of our brother.
We saw how distressed he was when he pleaded with us for his life,
but we wouldn’t listen, and that’s why this distress has come upon us.” And so there’s a sense even in this story
that the family is reckoning.
These brothers are counting some of the reason for their trouble
to what they did to their brother,
assuming that he’s dead.
And there is this sort of theme that
goes throughout the scriptures of the sins being repeated against,
the idea that there are
consequences that roll down the road that you don’t see coming.
And that’s what they’re attributing here too.
And Joseph is, of course, able to understand them far more than they could possibly understand.
And yet God has a plan both for these brothers and for Joseph that none of them,
no character in this story would have been able to predict.
Yeah, and I think there’s even a moment when they go back to Jacob and they say,
“We have to take Benjamin with us.
This man,
this authority figure in Egypt demanded.”
And Jacob says something like,
“First you cost me Joseph,
and now you’re taking Benjamin.” And
there is speculation that maybe there’s been a confession or that at some point maybe Jacob
becomes aware that there was more to the story.
Again, nobody knows that, but biblical scholars have wondered about that language of,
“You took him from me,
and now you’re taking Benjamin from
me.” They come back,
and a little unexpectedly,
Joseph is moved by the plight of his brothers,
he’s moved by their words,
and he unveils himself.
He tells them who he is,
he says, “It’s me.” And as you might expect,
now they’re even more afraid.
Now they stand in front of the one who
they’ve deeply wronged, and they have no power,
and he has immense power,
and they have to think, “Well,
this is it.” That was the end of our story,
that the sins really have come back down upon us.
Of course, if you know the story,
Joseph does sort of pull another trick.
He has a particular
cup, a silver cup, put into Benjamin’s sack, right?
I write on that,
and then on the way home,
he sends out some of his officers and says,
“They’ve stolen something from me,” and of course,
the brothers say, “No, we haven’t done anything,” and then they unload the sacks,
and sure enough, here’s the cup.
Yeah, and again,
they end up reunited.
Joseph and his brothers,
and then the pharaoh says,
again,
in deference, not deference,
in appreciation of Jacob.
He invites Jacob,
or he invites Joseph to tell Jacob and all of the family to move to Egypt,
and so then this
becomes a relocation, which in the bigger part of the story is interesting.
You now have the people of Israel,
the patriarch and the families,
which will one day be the tribes of Israel,
moving to Egypt in the midst of this famine, but they do,
they are well cared for, they do well,
they amass a fortune,
they succeed,
and it really is all Joseph’s doing.
And then, in fact,
Jacob dies in Egypt,
but doesn’t want to be buried there.
He’s made provisions, and so Joseph is able to secure his body,
has him embalmed by the Egyptians,
but is taken back to his own land to be buried.
And notably,
he dies, Jacob dies, and the brothers’ anxiety rises up again because they
have this moment when they think,
“Uh-oh, he’s been good to us because of our father,”
and Joseph assures them,
“No,
don’t be afraid.
I’m not going to hurt you.
I don’t hold this
against you.” And so there is,
in Joseph’s story, a kind of reconciliation.
We saw that between Jacob
and Esau clearly, but there is a reconciliation happening here with family that is pretty beautiful.
Yeah, and then there is an encapsulation of that,
I think, late in the book, chapter 50.
There’s this signature verse in this story,
and it would be,
what are we here,
verse 20,
“Even though you intended to do harm to me,
God intended it for good.” And sometimes that’s translated,
“Though you meant it for evil,
God meant it for good.” And that’s a pivotal verse
in this story because it really frames the whole narrative.
Again, at no point in this story did the author,
the teller of the story say,
“God did this,” or,
“This happened so that this would
happen.” There’s been none of that sort of theological lens.
There’s been none of that
theological explanation, and yet we get to the end of the story,
and Joseph makes this
incredible act of forgiveness towards his brothers and says,
“I now understand as an old man near my death,
you were acting in a way that was wrong.” But in the midst of that,
God was using that
to do good,
to secure a future for us and a place for us,
and in the scope of the story,
even a place for his people down the road.
And, Michael, that verse,
that simple verse, “You meant it for evil,
but God meant it for good,” has evoked
thousands and thousands of pages and hours of theological discussion.
And it’s a really fascinating place to end the story.
It is.
And you’re hitting there,
Clint, I think, on one of the significant applications of Joseph’s
life and our own sort of devotional experience here,
and that is that a lot of us,
I think, can relate to some of the just trying to be faithful turns in Joseph’s story.
Situations happen,
many of them beyond Joseph’s control,
most of them, and he responds trying to do his best,
trying to give God credit,
trying to be faithful,
and each step of the road,
God is faithful to him.
And then he comes to the end and he looks in that rearview mirror and he sees with the benefit of
hindsight being 20/20,
and he says,
“You know,
the thing that started this whole journey,
the thing that you meant for evil,
was always in God’s hands.” And I think all of us can relate
to these moments in our lives that set off important chapters of our stories in the moment
felt like nothing but captivity,
like slavery,
like questions and anxiety and fear and struggle,
all of the things that Joseph would have felt.
And yet we recognize that the overarching
hero in this story is God.
It’s God’s faithfulness to Joseph,
but I think it’s striking in Joseph’s story,
Clint,
that God isn’t always showing up whispering in his ear.
It’s just what you might
call moment-to-moment faithfulness,
and I think many of us can relate with that.
Yeah, and as we kind of turn the corner from the story to practical application,
I think there’s an
upside-downside here, Michael, in regard to this theme.
The upside is that knowledge that God is
at work.
You know, it’s one thing when we face some of the consequences of our own action.
If I’ve done something and it causes some difficulty,
it’s one thing to say,
“Yeah, I probably had that
coming.
I probably deserve that at some level.” Those things that happen to us from outside of
our control are very difficult,
and they’re hard to make sense of.
And so this affirmation that
God is at work in the midst even of things that bring evil,
to use the word, or bring harshness,
hardship,
that God is even there working for good.
You know, we have that wonderful verse in
Romans that, “In all things, God is working for good.” That’s the idea here.
That’s a beautiful affirmation.
It certainly is something that we hold on to in the midst of those moments,
that even when we face undeserved suffering,
we trust that God is still at work to bring good from it.
And what is good now may not be good in the future,
and God is still at work in that,
right?
Because the end part of Joseph’s story is that this new burgeoning nation of Israel
moves to Egypt, and that’s a good thing because they grow and prosper there.
But literally, turn the page, and you’re going to find out that now we have a Pharaoh who doesn’t know Joseph,
and now the Israelites are in Egyptian slavery.
So Joseph’s story is one in which God blesses
the people come to Egypt.
That’s where God is with them,
and pretty soon God is going to start
taking them out of Egypt because it’s a bad place.
And so if you look at God’s story here,
if you look at God’s story arc here,
is God being faithful not just to these people,
not just to their children,
but God being faithful in each one of these terms,
whether Pharaoh’s a good Pharaoh or a bad Pharaoh,
God’s got a plan being worked out.
Yeah.
And that brings us,
I think, to the more difficult part of this idea that God
intends it for good.
Is that question,
did God orchestrate brothers selling their other brother
to slavery,
or did God use it?
Did God intend it,
or did God make use of it?
And that’s ultimately a question we can’t answer.
It has generated a lot of discussion through the years.
But it’s one thing for Jacob,
it’s one thing for Joseph,
excuse me, to say,
“You did an evil thing,
but God used it to bring about good.”
It’s another thing to say,
“What you meant as evil,
God meant as good.” So does God orchestrate
sin to bring about greater purposes?
This is the theological, asterisk,
and the very hard
conversation that has followed this verse through the years.
And just so you know that the
Presbyterian answer has been,
“No, God doesn’t do evil.
God never uses evil.” I’m sorry,
God may use evil and redeem evil,
but God never orchestrates evil.
It’s not possible for God
to do evil because God only does good.
And if God does it,
then by definition it can’t be evil.
That it’s generated lots of head scratching,
but it’s a very interesting verse.
Yeah, I think Joseph, for a modern reader,
looks like a person who got a really bad end of the deal,
and then it turned out that he was able to figure out a way to make lemonade out of the lemons.
And I think that’s not a very nuanced understanding of who Joseph is.
He is an individual
who is really, like you said, almost a third of the book of Genesis,
a significant character in this story of God’s plan being worked out,
his promise to the Israelites.
And here we have
someone who is willing to trust God even in sort of the normal difficulties of life.
And anyone who’s walked through the valley of the shadow of death who knows something of evil that is not deserved,
and that’s a lot of it,
can speak to the heartbreak,
the crying that Joseph has,
even trying to figure out what do I do with these brothers in my midst.
And yet, Joseph is an inspiring character because he never turns to his brothers in anger.
He never uses his authority against.
In fact,
he uses his authority repeatedly to help people,
including Pharaoh.
He was in an Egyptian prison.
He helps Pharaoh in the Egyptian
nation.
He helps his family.
He is willing to forgive and to seek reconciliation.
And these are in some ways the thing that we’re all trying to do.
We’re all trying to let our
faith form us as disciples so that when it comes to the hard moment,
we’re able to speak a word of grace,
a word of love,
regardless of what was deserved or what happened.
And I think in that
way, Joseph’s an incredibly inspiring character.
Pete: As do I,
Michael.
And I don’t think that for a lot of people,
Joseph is going to be called
their favorite biblical character,
but he’s a fascinating biblical character and he seems to
live his life.
Maybe it’s this dream he has as a child.
Maybe it’s the idea that he is his
father’s favorite and he transfers that.
But he lives with this conviction that God is faithful to him.
And so then he in turn will be faithful to God.
And he does so from some very difficult
moments.
And perhaps the greatest lesson that I take from Joseph and that I think maybe Joseph
offers us is that very thing,
to assume that even in the midst of difficulty,
God is working out
what faithfulness to us looks like.
That God has in store for us a future,
a blessing, and that in the midst of our difficulties,
we simply must wait and continue to seek to be
faithful to God in the meantime.
And I have to say,
I think Joseph does that.
You know, the question we frame this podcast is what do they get right and what do they get wrong?
I think it would be hard to argue that Joseph gets much wrong.
I think almost uniquely, maybe
I’m trying to think of another example.
Joshua does pretty well.
There aren’t many biblical
characters, let’s just say it that way,
who don’t have mess ups,
whose screw ups aren’t counted for us.
But I don’t know what Joseph’s would be.
Yeah. And I think that’s a good word for
Presbyterians, lots of whom we wake up today and we don’t,
lots of people don’t have these moments
in their stories where everything goes awry.
Lots of times Presbyterians have been trying
to be Christian their entire life.
They grew up in church.
They did confirmation.
They go to worship.
They try to participate in Bible study.
They try to learn and grow and be changed and be
open to God’s work.
And you know what?
If that’s your story,
Joseph can be an exemplar.
He can be a reminder that as you seek to live out your faith in the common,
in the day to day,
he’s a guy who
works for the Pharaoh.
You go to work.
You do your job.
You try to make a way in life,
even when circumstances are against you.
God is with you in that.
That is God’s invitation to work holiness
in you, even though it doesn’t feel like you’re shaping the world or changing everything that surrounds you.
In many ways, that’s Joseph’s story.
And so I hope that’s an encouragement for each of
us, regardless of where we find ourselves today,
that God’s faithfulness to Joseph is the same
faithfulness that lives in us.
Darrell Bock Yeah.
And regardless of some of the
theological questions it can bring with us,
this idea that you meant it for evil,
but God meant it
for good.
Imagine if each of us could face our struggles firmly convicted that God is using this
thing in my life,
whatever it is, to ultimately bring good out of it.
And that is a wonderful
confidence.
That’s a beautiful faithfulness,
a wonderful path to discipleship.
And I think that
Joseph shows us the way.
Paul Jay And Clint,
I know that you can speak to,
I certainly can speak to,
those people whose wounds have healed well are beautiful reflections of God’s grace and love in
the world.
People who have endured horrendous circumstances and yet can come to church and they
can worship through singing and through prayer and reflection.
I think one of the beautiful aspects
of Joseph’s story is a person who’s been touched by God’s grace and is able to offer reconciliation to others.
When you meet those people of faith,
they leave an impact on you.
It’s an amazing work
that God does in transforming broken human hearts,
people who have had horrendous things,
loved ones who they’ve lost.
And yet somehow God is able to work good in that,
not because of the
bad that happened, but because of God’s great goodness,
His majestic power.
And I think, Joseph, is a biblical example of that very practical and real life reality.
Paul Jay Yeah, I think, unfortunately, the path to depth never runs through easy water.
There’s always going to be difficult in it.
There’s this beautiful moment at the end of Joseph’s story where Jacob
dies and the brothers come to him and they say,
“We’re so sorry for what we’ve done.” And they
throw themselves at his feet and say,
“We’ll be your slaves.” And he begins weeping and then they begin weeping.
And there’s this moment of reunion,
this moment of promise.
It’s in that context where
he says that verse,
“You meant it for evil.
God meant it for good.” But not only has Joseph been
the one who can persevere and who can succeed,
maybe most importantly at the end,
he’s the one who can forgive.
And again,
a beautiful crown at the end of his story to be able to look his
brothers in the eyes and say,
“That thing you did,
not only do I see God at work in it,
but I don’t hold it against you.
I’ve let it go.” And that’s a hard won prize,
but it’s a beautiful prize.
Eventually, the guests,
Clint, those joining us in this conversation,
we could all find something
that this can spur within us spiritually.
A thing that we can let go of,
a thing that we can ask forgiveness for,
a place where we can trust God to lead us through even in difficult times.
And we hope that you leave this conversation,
not just learning something about Joseph,
but that you might actually be challenged yourself,
that Joseph’s story may lead you in your own life and faith
to live out the kind of reconciliation and grace that we see in this man.
Thanks for joining us today.
We’re thrilled that you are,
once again, joined the Pastor Talk conversation.
We will continue with these individuals
who show us God’s faithfulness,
and we continue to learn about the real people of faith.
We hope that you are encouraged and inspired by it.
We would love, and it would mean a lot if you would share this video if you’re on
Facebook, if you would go ahead and give five stars on iTunes.
If wherever you’re listening,
you might be able to give a like that helps people find the podcast and join our conversations.
We know that lots have been giving us feedback,
and we would love for you on this conversation.
Let us know what you learned,
what was encouraging,
and we look forward to continuing
the conversation together next week,
Wednesday,
9 a.m.
premiere on Facebook Live.
Thanks.
See you, everyone.