Read with Me
Genesis 39:21-23 (HCSB)
But the Lord was with Joseph and extended kindness to him. He granted him favor in the eyes of the prison warden. The warden put all the prisoners who were in the prison under Joseph’s authority, and he was responsible for everything that was done there. The warden did not bother with anything under Joseph’s authority, because the Lord was with him, and the Lord made everything that he did successful.
Listen with Me
Circumstances are no barrier to the progression of God’s plan. Even though Potiphar’s wife intended to do real harm to Joseph because he had spurned her sexual advances, God had other plans.
The fact is, now that Joseph had arrived in Egypt, God needed to keep him there while He orchestrated the events that would bring the rest of the family to Egypt where they would live for several hundred years while the sins of the Amorites, the current inhabitants of the Promised Land, reached their full measure (Genesis 15:12-16).
Joseph was rising so quickly in status that it was likely that he would soon have been freed from his servitude. He would then have gone back to Canaan, exposed his brothers for their deep sin against both him and their father, and caused rifts in Jacob’s household that would have made it difficult to keep the family together. So, God needed Lady Potiphar’s anger and her plotting ways to hold Joseph in Egypt until the next phase of His plan kicked in more than a decade later.
Placing Joseph in jail might seem harsh to some, but God never abandoned him while He was there. Instead He made him successful, to the point that he was able to rise to second-in-command over all the prisoners, second only to the warden himself, who greatly admired Joseph and who noticed his integrity and his skill.
By the time the next phase of God’s plan started, around 11 years after Joseph’s arrival in Egypt, Joseph was perfectly positioned to be able to respond to the circumstances God was bringing his way. Some see the dreams of the cup bearer and the baker, and those of Pharaoh himself, as happy coincidences that finally turned the poor luck of Joseph around. But all those things were carefully orchestrated by God’s own hand, the next stops in His carefully laid out plan that would lead to the rapid multiplication of his people in Egypt, their subsequent release from bondage, and their conquest of the Promised Land.
Pray with Me
Father, being stuck in time and space, it is nearly impossible for us to accurately see the work You are doing behind the scenes, unless You Yourself reveal it to us. So, help me to trust You, Lord, even when, or maybe especially when, I don’t understand what is happening. Help me to trust You implicitly and to trust Your love for me completely so that I can come through to the other side stronger and more confident in You than before. Amen.