Seeing Christ in Joseph

Genesis Chapter 50 ends the saga from Adam to Joseph in a very sudden fashion. We learn of Israel’s death at the end of chapter 49, and chapter recounts the days of his mourning and that Joseph’s brothers, fearing that Joseph might retaliate for their wrongdoing in selling him into slavery, send him a message stating that Israel had demanded that he forgive them. Joseph of course did forgive them with the famous words, “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 ESV)

In hindsight, we can often see where God has worked things out for good. And if the story of the Israelites in Egypt ended there, with Joseph as the hero who had saved the world from famine, there would be nothing more to say on the matter. All would be good as the Israelites take their ease with their flocks and herds in Goshen.

But the story, skipping a great number of years, picks up again in Exodus 1.

Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. And he said to his people, “Behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and, if war breaks out, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.” Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens. (Exodus 1:8-11 ESV)

So what God originally intended for good had become a form of slavery because God’s delivery through Joseph was forgotten. This happens frequently in our lives when we allow our deliverer to be forgotten. God accomplishes something for great good and we, by forgetting the great good God has brought us, twist it into a form of slavery. We do it all the time. We first embrace the good with gratitude and then we become complacent. We begin to forget that it was God who provided and we idolize the good things he has provided. We place our faith in good rather than God, and we become slaves to it.

Joseph is a wonderful type of Christ. Through obedience in unjust suffering he rises to become the deliverer of the world. Through his action alone is the entire world saved from sure death. But he is also a wonderful type of Christ in that his hard-won deliverance is soon forgotten. And the Israelites, like the proverbial frog in the slowly heated pot, are a wonderful type of us. Once we have become comfortable, we forget that suffering from which we have been delivered. Peter speaks of one who is not growing in Christ as being “so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.” (2 Peter 1:9 ESV) We are indeed often nearsighted to the point of blindness as we seek our ease.

The key to Christian living is to never become comfortable. This seems odd to us (particularly in the west) who have been subtly taught that the Christian life should be the most comfortable of all – that we have in some way earned the salvation that we have received and so can rest in it. We forget that, like Joseph’s brothers, the only part we played in our deliverance was to provide the sin that made it necessary. We are always looking to hit that comfortable spot and coast in it, but as soon as we do we begin to idolize the source of our comfort and become slaves to whatever it is that makes us comfortable.

That discomfort is an important element of Christian life should be evident in the beatitudes. If we want to inherit God’s kingdom we must be poor in spirit and persecuted. If we want to be satisfied we must hunger and thirst. If we want to be comforted, we must mourn. When we seek to be comforted while avoiding mourning, we become complacent. That is the nature of our beast.

So we cannot expect any state of permanent comfort unless we also expect a state of permanent mourning. We must find a balance between them. We cannot live in a state of free grace unaware of the demands of a holy law. There is a tension that must exist between the two which keeps us from forgetting our deliverance and seeking comfort alone. At the same time we must never allow our mourning to drive us from the source of our comfort. To focus on one without the other is to become imbalanced and unhealthy Christians.

Keep in mind also that Egypt was not to be the ultimate destination for Israel.  God has promised Abraham that his offspring would inherit Canaan. Their slavery also had a purpose; it was to drive them to mourning so that they would again seek God’s deliverance. When we refuse to embrace mourning, God will find a way to force us to it. But if we can recognize that in the impossible standard of the law God has given us reason enough to mourn, we will seldom grow complacent. If we will continually allow the law to reveal our spiritual poverty to us and drive us to mourning, the gospel will be our continual comfort. That is the gospel truth.

God Bless