Joseph Rises to Power

Story: Joseph Rises to Power

Passage: Genesis 41:37-57

Characters: Joseph, Pharaoh

Summary: Joseph’s suggestion pleased Pharaoh. Pharaoh saw the Spirit of God was in Joseph. Pharaoh put him in charge of all Egypt. He was second only to Pharaoh. Pharaoh gave him a wife. Joseph was thirty. The seven years of plenty came and Joseph stored up grain until he gave up on counting it. Joseph had two sons: Manasseh and Ephraim. The famine came next. The famine was severe in the whole world and people traveled from far away to Egypt to get food.

Notes: It is significant that Pharaoh saw the spirit in Joseph. This is the first time we hear of the Spirit of God being in someone. Joseph had done something miraculous in predicting the dream and the Egyptians knew that it came from God and not Joseph. The meaning of Joseph’s name is not known for sure, but the most likely meaning is “God Speaks and He Lives”. The Egyptians saw that God was behind everything going on. Joseph was suddenly in charge of Egypt! He is now thirty. He was seventeen when he was sold to Egypt. Thirteen years had been spent growing and maturing. God had put him through thirteen terrible years to prepare him for this moment. His character had been built and now God was ready to glorify Himself through Joseph and ultimately to glorify Himself through His redemptive plan. Remember that if Jacob’s family did not come to Egypt, they might have mixed completely with the Canaanites. Joseph’s trials were not just a small but critical part of God’s immediate plan for Egypt, but they were an even smaller but even more critical part of God’s long term plan for humanity. If Joseph had known that he probably would have been overwhelmed. But he kept his focus on God. That is what our job is in God’s plan as well. Our role is to focus on God and obey Him. We don’t know what role we play in His plan, but we don’t need to know. We just have to obey. Anyway, I find it interesting that Joseph married an Egyptian. Then names of Joseph’s sons are telling as well. Manasseh means forgetfulness. He named him this because he had forgotten his hardship and his father’s house. He did not forget his father’s faith though as evidenced by his commitment to God in Egypt. Ephraim means fruitfulness because God had made Joseph fruitful in his affliction. When our life is guided by the spirit, we too can forget what is behind us and bear fruit even in affliction. The fruit of the Spirit should be evident in our lives even during hard times. The names of Joseph’s sons were Hebrew. Even though he was basically the king of Egypt, he still maintained his Hebrew roots and worshipped the true God. The famine came and the whole Earth benefitted from his obedience. This is amazing to me! His obedience affected the entire Earth. There is some powerful foreshadowing in this story to Christ, but I will go into that more in the next post.

Questions: Did Joseph let this power go to his head? Did people leave Egypts religion to worship God because of Joseph? Where did they keep all of this grain?

Lessons: The big lessons I see here involve trusting God even when it makes no sense to. If we trust, follow, and focus on God, then God will be the one people see not us. When we have nothing left but God, God will be the one people notice. We need to bear fruit in every circumstance! We don’t know what role we play in God’s plan, but we don’t need to know. We only need to know God and trust Him. If we play no role but live our lives for Christ, we should be satisfied. Our role is not relevant whatsoever. We want to be effective for Christ and we want to impact the world, but all we need is Christ. We need to let Him determine how effective we are and what our impact is.