1/25/53

Scripture: (Read Psalm 1)

Reference: (Genesis 37, 39, 40, 41-44; 45-50; end of Genesis).

Joseph was a brat! He became spoiled by his position in a large family. His father, Jacob, had already raised ten sons by his first marriage to Leah. Then arrived Joseph, son of the beautiful younger sister of Leah, Rachel, Jacob’s second wife. Jacob loved the baby, showed him a great deal of favor, was indulgent with him. As the little fellow grew older, one of the marks of favor was a coat of many different colors that Jacob had made for him.

The ten older brothers became jealous and resentful. The fact that they had to do the family work, taking care of the sheep day and night, usually out of doors, day and night in all kinds of weather, while the youngster stayed home with father and step-mother did not smooth their tempers any. They had a great respect for their father. But they were tired of Joseph. Of course, Joseph was young and really not hardy enough yet to do much about the work the man-sized brothers had to do. But he didn’t have to parade before them, wearing that coat which so clearly marked him as their father’s favorite. What was as bad or worse, he would tell them about his dreams! And he usually interpreted his dreams as predictions that one day he would lord it over them and they would all have to bow down in his presence! No wonder they muttered whenever he came near. They would have preferred him to keep out of sight.

Jacob was either blissfully unaware of their resentment, or he did not think it amounted to anything to be noticed. For he sent the spoiled and pampered young one out to find the older ones with their sheep at distant grazing grounds. When they saw him coming, they thought they also saw how to get rid of him without the old gentleman, their father, being any the wiser. Somebody suggested they kill him. Someone else said, “No, that is too drastic; let’s throw him in a pit and leave him there” --- which they did. -- Until they saw a caravan approaching. The merchants from afar were obviously going to a distant country. So the brothers stopped the caravan, struck up a bargain with the traders, and sold Joseph as a slave. As the caravan moved on toward distant Egypt, they were sure they were rid of the brat. They only had to concoct a story to their father explaining why Joseph didn’t come back to him. They had kept the many-colored coat; so they roughed it up and tore it, rubbed it in the dirt, got it bloody from the gore of one of the sheep they killed, and took it home to their father, Jacob, saying they had found it in the fields. “Looks pretty bad, doesn’t it?”

And poor old doting Jacob no more suspecting treachery in his ten stalwart older sons than he even suspected how insufferable his younger son had become, believed the evidence seen with his eyes, and concluded that his beloved Joseph had been eaten up by some wild beast.

But of course that is not the end of the story. It turned out that Joseph was not only a brat, but that he really did have some ability. Sold by the traders to an officer named Potiphar, Joseph speedily became an efficient and dependable servant, enjoying many of the privileges and responsibilities of free men. He practically ran Potiphar’s household and business affairs. He became successful not alone because he was shrewd, but because he had the seeds of great and good ability within him. The Bible puts it this way: “The Lord was with Joseph, and he became a successful man.”

There had been a turn in the road for him. He had had a life of pampered freedom taken from him by force. Now he was a slave in a foreign land. The turn in affairs could have meant disintegration and despair. But he met his fate with such courage and faithfulness as to turn the evil of it into incalculable good. For he not only found grace in Potiphar’s sight, but favor in the sight of God. The Bible story reads that “the Lord blessed the Egyptian’s house for Joseph’s sake; the blessing of the Lord was upon all that he had, in house and field.” Clearly Joseph had changed -- and for the better.

But he had his troubles. Being a handsome young fellow, his master’s wife took a fancy to him. Had she had her way, his situation would have deteriorated suddenly and devastatingly to vile corruption; to deceit and betrayal of his master. Potiphar’s wife watched her chances, as Joseph came and went on business. And she pestered and tempted him continuously. Finally, when she thought she would have her way with him, and he had escaped her clutches again, she really “turned rat” and “squealed” that this fellow, Joseph, was trying to break up their home. Well, Potiphar threw him in prison, and Joseph had to start all over again. But he very soon became a “trusty” and was put in charge of other prisoners. “The Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love.” He interpreted the dreams of fellow prisoners who had been thrown into jail, like himself, unjustly, and because someone had gotten angry at them.

The time came when he was called to interpret a troublesome series of dreams of the Pharaoh himself. Asserting that the mighty ruler’s dreams warned of seven years of desperate famine to follow seven years of abundant harvests, he so impressed the Pharaoh that Joseph, at the age of 30, was made economic administrator of the whole country of Egypt. Under his determined policies a fifth of each harvest in the seven years of abundance was stored in granaries so that when the drought and famine came, they were able to ration out food not only for the Egyptians, but for some of those who came from the neighboring countries as well.

The drought not only plagued Egypt, but it threatened to starve people in Canaan as well. And so it happened that Joseph’s father, Jacob, sent his ten sons down to Egypt to buy grain to keep the household alive. How could they have known that it was Joseph with whom they would have to deal? The story of their dickering with him and of his finesse with them is one of the most dramatic in all literature. Read it in the 42nd, 43rd, 44th, and 45th chapters of the book of Genesis. Because he had the power of life and death over then through control of the food they needed, he was able to learn that his father still lived; he was able to force them to bring to him a younger brother, Benjamin, whom he had never seen. And finally, after he made himself known, he got the whole family - father, sons, their wives and children, their flocks and household goods - down into Egypt where at that time, they could live in security near him and near the food they needed.

The story of Joseph is the tale of a fellow who was a spoiled child and who grew to become a man of heroic stature despite the adversities of family hatred, slavery in a foreign land, and the treachery of an unprincipled woman. It isn’t just a Horatio Alger kind of yarn about a fellow who always succeeded because he just couldn’t be wrong. It is the story of a fellow who remembered God and who did not forget that his life belonged to God and to His goodness.

So, instead of helpless bitterness against the brothers who got rid of him, he cherished that which forgave them and saved them. Instead of hiding behind a slave’s alibi that he couldn’t help it if his master’s wife got him into disgrace, he stuck to his principle that even a slave must do no evil against the rightness of God. He could have said weakly, and with some justification, “How can I help it? The woman, she tempted me?” Instead, he said, “How can I sin against God? How can I do this great wickedness?” There was a strength of manly determination in his character that, of his own wish, kept his eye on what was right.

It wasn’t easy to interpret some of the dreams, especially when some of his predictions had to be hard. His fellow prisoner the baker was to be put to death. The king, or Pharaoh, was to face a dreaded famine when people might die in great numbers and there would be mutterings about the rulers and “why they hadn’t managed better.” But Joseph had met each situation with honesty, and courage, and a determination to do right.

1) He couldn’t do anything about having been sold into slavery. But he could work conscientiously and well at the tasks assigned to him.

2) He lived in a pagan community where people did not know of God as he had been taught to worship and heed the most High. But he could and did testify to the righteousness of God and could declare people’s obligation to do right in the sight of the Lord.

3) In the temptation to throw aside moral responsibility, Joseph resisted the evil and determined to do right no matter what the danger. And of course there is danger in a head-on collision with evil, for those who have “lost their soul,” their sense of right, are often infuriated by righteous opposition. Like Gallahad, Joseph might have sung:

“My strength is as the strength of ten

Because my heart is pure.”

4) In the disaster of being thrown into prison, he remained steadfast and dependable. It was not long before the Egyptian jailer trusted him. His fellow sufferers in prison trusted him also -- with their fears and hopes and dreams.

5) He faced a grueling disappointment in the butler who after imprisonment was restored to a former job in the royal household. The butler had promised to put in a good word for him, but once free he forgot all about it. And so the weeks dragged by until the Pharaoh began to talk of dreams that troubled him. Whereupon the butler, at long last, remembered Joseph and spoke to the ruler about him. So, after long, patient waiting, Joseph was released.

6) When Joseph came into power as economic administrator in the land, he apparently remained efficient and just. There was no reported scandal of graft. The food of the good years was stored in abundance, and there was saved the stuff that would keep people alive through seven awful years of drought and hunger.

-------------------------

Now Joseph was not a Christian. He was a conscientious Jew long before the time of Christ, one of the forerunners of the Christian era. But after emerging from his pampered childhood, he displayed some of the character traits essential to Christian living in the pagan world of our day.

There is a great deal of the assumption abroad, on a cynical earth, that every man has his price; and that if the price gets big enough, any person can be bought off. Christians must resist that idea with heart and soul and mind and strength. There is a spot at which the Christian will fight! Joseph stayed straight in the face of fearful odds. Furthermore he walked straightway ahead to his goal at the same time.

There is a certain strip called “Li’l Abner” in which sometimes appears a personality known as “Available Jones.” This fellow is the professional “fixer” of Dogpatch. One of the signs that hangs from his window is: “I can be had, for a price.” Well, the cynic tunes up his horn with the comment, “Practically everybody can be had for a price.” But Joseph couldn’t! His person and his liberty had been sold away by traitorous brothers. But his soul was still God’s, with himself as its steward.

We live in an environment, much of which is essentially hostile to our true Christian convictions. This is not to say that we are a deliberately provoking kind of personality, or that we live among folk who want to be mean -- not many of them. But it is to say that our principles are frequently at cross purposes with the principles of the world in which we live. And as a result, we have to suffer the consequences. Sometimes the consequences are like being sold down into Egypt!

But the ten commandments, tested by sincere folk through ages of the desire to live rightly before God, are still the satisfying rule of life even in adversity. They can even overcome the evil in an unfair and cruel situation. To lose the whole world, and yet to gain self-respect, one’s own soul, is still a victory.

The Lord never promised any outlandish prosperity. He never guaranteed any of his own against adversity. But He has assured us of his righteousness, and that he will provide all things needful for our souls.

Joseph spent all his mature life in Egypt. He was respected and valued in his later years. But he was always a conscientious Jew. He always kept his characteristics, notably the good ones. They lent distinction to his acts.

[So with the Christian]

[Egypt was morally disintegrating; Joseph bore his testimony in that civilization.]

[Christian likewise today]

-----------------------

Dates and places delivered:

Wisconsin Rapids, January 25, 1953.

Wisconsin Rapids, February 5, 1961.