So, the next of Genesis’ big lessons for us, how God rescues people: how do you sort out a conceited prig like Joseph (like us??), and release all his very real potential?
Joseph is a prat. It’s partly how his family messed him up; Jacob should have known the damage family favouritism (37:4) could do. But Joseph digs the hole he ends up in. Dreaming big dreams is good, but boasting about them (37:6-9) isn’t – particularly to brothers who know they weren’t wanted by their father (29:31-33), and became men who could massacre a whole village (ch34), and happily sell you into slavery. Then, in that slavery, Potiphar’s wife tries to seduce Joseph (more on this next post); and this time Joseph does the right thing – and it gets him into prison. Nice one, God; then in prison, again, he gets betrayed and abandoned. All this sorting Joseph out takes thirteen years, just as rescuing Jacob from his stupid self took twenty. (Lord, please help me not to be a slow learner…) But it takes time because of the stupendous glory that’s to come to Joseph. The same with us. What God predestines us for (Rom 8:29), is shaping each of us for, is, staggeringly, to share all His glory (Rom 8:18, 2 Thess 2:14, Rev 21:11); God our Master is going to share all His possessions with us (Matt 24:47)… And like with Joseph, there’s a lot of reshaping to be done before we can be trusted with that; but God is good at this…
So here’s the first practical thing for us: as Steve Brady says, Be prepared for the pits, and prayerful and patient even if we’re seemingly in prison, because (Gen 45:8, 50:20) God is actually at work even when He seems most absent. Or David Coffey: `Can we cope with the hiddenness of God and His secret working?… We have to find a way of holding on to God when to all appearances He has let go of us…`
But God does keep His promises. All those utterly wearisome years, Joseph is learning lessons he’ll need in the days of unknown glory to come. How to be a good steward (39:6, 22); how to handle temptation when nobody’s in a position to keep him accountable (39:11); how to share dreams wisely (ch41); and ultimately, how to choose to shun bitterness and be patient (that fruit of the Spirit that God works hard to develop in us), how to get a grip when he certainly hasn’t got the top place he expected, and still get on with the job in hand. (A bit like Jesus, Matt 20:26-28, 1 Peter 2:21ff.) Through all those years of mess and suffering, Joseph is being `rescued` and readied for astounding glory, and for the power to make a huge difference to the world (41:57)…
But maybe there’s something else here, another level, because we’re reading an amazing book. Remember how in Isaac’s story we saw both the experiences of a real man, but also how he seems to parallel, foreshadow, Jesus? So too with Melchizedek, says Hebrews 7; and indeed Adam (Rom 5:14); these seem to be, to use Zechariah’s phrase, `men symbolic of things to come`. I remember Ben, son of one of our pastors, asking our church one evening, Who does Joseph remind you of? Beloved by his father, but when he’s sent by the father he’s rejected by his brothers & sold for pieces of silver; as a result he becomes dead to his own people, but God uses that very rejection and suffering so that he’s elevated to the highest power and becomes the source of life to the world (along the way getting a Gentile bride)… Might this remind us of anybody?
Deep dimensions; but actually in the end the two levels are one, and we’ll understand our own lives if we understand this. Because in becoming one of us, Jesus chose to walk the path we sinners make for ourselves, to get involved in all our muck. I wonder even if that’s why the uplifting Joseph story suddenly breaks off to give us ch38, the nasty tale of Judah having sex with his daughter in law Tamar, and then (great piece of sexism) wanting her to be executed for it while he walks away free. Because if we look at Jesus’ genealogy in Matthew 1 we’ll see it includes just four women, and three at least are dodgy; this same pretend-prostitute Tamar, Rahab the real prostitute, and Bathsheba the adulterer (and let’s not get started on David the adulterer). Page one of the new testament tells us that the process of bringing Christ and glory into the world is a very messy one…
And this is the point. In becoming human (thankyou Lord!), Jesus chose to walk the way we sinners (like Joseph) will walk to glory. It’s the pattern of going down to come up; that in this fallen world it has to be cross that leads to resurrection; and it’s suffering that leads (if we’ve brought our lives under God’s kingship) to glory – in fact the new testament often presents them as two sides of the same coin (eg Rom 8:17-18, 2 Cor 4:17, 1 Peter 4:13). (Lord please help me choose to remember that when things get tough…) You could call it the Calvary Principle: sometimes experiences a bit like the cross are the only way to resurrection glory. `Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds`, said Jesus as he foresaw being `glorified` (admitting that it `troubled` him); adding, `Whoever serves me must follow me` (John 12:23-27). So let’s learn this Joseph story, how, if we’re God’s children, suffering must lead in time to enormous glory (He loves us and wouldn’t allow it otherwise); sometime this shape may explain a lot for us, and give us the faith, and the hope, and the confidence to survive…
