You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. (Genesis 50:20 TNIV)

It strikes me that the first book of the Bible is more about a family than it is about a religion. In Genesis 12, God promised Abraham that He would bless the world through Abraham and his descendants. Abraham, his son Isaac, and his grandson Jacob don't become traveling evangelists. They don't build a temple or write religious books. They just go about their lives in the knowledge that they are God's people and that God is working out his purposes in them and through them.

In Genesis 50, we come to the end of a story of that began in Genesis 37. It is the story of Joseph, Jacob's son, and it occupies about 25% of the text of Genesis. That must be some story. What we find is that God has begun to fulfill the promise he made to Abraham in Genesis 12. God is preserving Abraham's family and blessing the world through Abraham's descendant.

At the end of the Genesis, Joseph is about thirty years old. He is second in command to Pharaoh in the Egyptian government. There is a great famine in the land, and Pharaoh has chosen Joseph to implement a plan that will save all of Egypt (and Israel) from starvation. Pretty impressive, isn't it?

How in the world did this son of a goat herder ever get so high and mighty?

Joseph's story begins when he is seventeen, the second youngest of twelve brothers (born to four different mothers, but that's another story). Joseph has dreams and ambitions of someday becoming a family big shot. He dreams about sheaves of grain that bow down to him, and the stars and planets bowing down before him. He was not overly modest.

These were not, by the way, dreams that he kept to himself; he made sure to tell the rest of the family.

As one of the youngest sons, Joseph should have know that he would never rule the family. That was the oldest son's lot in life, and this was not an equal opportunity society. No one thought, 'I can be whatever I want to be.' One's position in life was dictated by things like gender, social status and birth order and it was downright rude to suggest otherwise. For Joseph to dream that he would someday rule the family meant that he would usurp his older brothers' rightful place in the household. Who did this young man think he was? His brothers even had a sarcastic name for him: the 'dream master.'

But that didn't stop Joseph from dreaming of greatness. He had one foot up already; he was daddy's favorite. Joseph was the first born of Jacob's favorite wife Rachel, and Jacob loved Joseph more than he loved his other sons. So, Jacob made his favorite son a fancy tunic to wear around, the proverbial coat of many colors. Joseph wore it everywhere he went. Don't you know that made his brothers feel great.

Like all good social climbers, Joseph figured he could get another foot up if he could put his brothers down. So Joseph came in from the fields each day and did daddy a favor by reporting just how poorly his brothers worked.

So get this picture: here's Joseph, strutting around in the fancy tunic his father gave him, reminding his brothers that dad loves him most, telling his brothers that he would take what they thought rightfully belonged to them, going on and on about his dreams of greatness, and ratting on his brothers every chance he got. It sounds like it made for a really happy family, doesn't it?

Joseph reminds me of some people I met in college: high opinions of themselves, their futures all mapped out, using everything and everyone to get where they wanted to go. You could never really trust the friendship they showed, and you never wanted to turn your back on them. I wonder how they turned out.

Joseph's life didn't turn out as he planned. His brothers did what jealous brothers sometimes do from the time of Cain and Abel. The brothers threw Joseph in a pit, sold him to slave traders, and told Jacob that he was eaten by wild animals. It was either that, or kill him, and after all, he was their brother.

So far, Joseph had done all that he could to get ahead on his own, and he wound up a slave in a foreign land. So much for the fast track.

The slave traders took Joseph to Egypt and sold him to a man named Potiphar, an officer in Pharaoh's guard force. Potiphar quickly discovered that Joseph was a wise and talented young man and gave him ever increasing responsibility for running the household. Eventually, Joseph became Potiphar's right-hand man. Joseph managed everything that Potiphar owned: his home, his servants, his budget and his fields. You might think of Potiphar as a wealthy business owner and Joseph as the hot-shot CEO with the golden touch. Everything was running so well, that all Potiphar had to do was spend the wealth that Joseph earned for him.

God blessed Potiphar's household because of Joseph and through Joseph. So things started looking good for Joseph again. He might have been a slave. He might have been living in a foreign land, estranged from his family. But he was on the way up.

And then it happened that Potiphar's wife decided that this young slave was muscular and handsome and that she would like him to be her secret boyfriend. You have to hand it to Joseph; he is a lot smarter this time. It might have been an easy to get away with this deception, but it was wrong. Such an act would not only betray the master that trusted him, it would be a sin against God. Joseph turned her down. The sordid interlude of Judah and Tamar in Genesis 38 is (intentionally, I think) quite a contrast to Joseph's uprightness.

Again and again, Joseph turned her away his master's wife. One day, she grabbed hold of his robe and wouldn't let go; Joseph had to run away naked. Potiphar's wife became so angry that she cried 'rape.' She showed the robe to her husband and told Potiphar that Joseph had tried to force himself on her. Once again, Joseph was thrown into a pit - this time, the royal dungeon.

Joseph just can't win for losing. In his father's land, he made a mess of his family relationships and paid the price for it. Here, he made all the right choices and he wound up back in the pit.

Haven't you been in the same situation: doing what's right, but nothing good comes of it. At times like that I want to say, "Listen, God. I know most of the time I blow it, but, hey, I'm doing it right now. Where is my reward for right living?"

Joseph wound up in prison, and once again his God-given talent shone through. Prison officials recognized his skills and Joseph became a trustee. The warden trusted Joseph to run the prison for him. Once again, things looked up a bit for Joseph. It might just have been a prison, but Joseph was in charge.

The prison itself held a certain class of upper-class inmate it seems; these were 'the king's prisoners,' men associated with royal court who had offended Pharaoh for one reason or another. One night, two former government officials - the chief cup-bearer and the chief baker - had dreams that they told the rest of the gang. God gave Joseph the interpretation of their dreams and he told the pair what would happen next. The cupbearer, Joseph said, would be restored to favor and get his job back; the baker would be hanged. And it worked out just as Joseph said.

Joseph asked the cupbearer to plead his case to Pharaoh when he was set free. "I was kidnapped and brought here unjustly. I didn't touch that woman and I'm innocent of any wrongdoing. Get me out of here!"

As the cupbearer left the dungeon, Joseph's hopes must have grown sky high as he awaited word of his release. A day went by, and then a week, and then a month, and then a year, but Joseph remained in prison, forgotten.

It hurts to be forgotten. I wonder how Joseph reacted. Did he curl up in a corner and wish he were dead? Did he go on doing the job of running the prison, knowing that human promises can't always be counted on.

Two years went by before Pharaoh ever heard of Joseph. Pharaoh had a disturbing dream, but none of his magicians or astrologers could interpret it for him. It was then that the cupbearer who had been in prison with Joseph remembered the dream master. Joseph was brought to Pharaoh, and again God gave Joseph the interpretation of a dream. "There will be seven years of plenty," Joseph said, "followed by seven years of famine. What you need is a wise and talented administrator to manage your food supply. You should store up food during the good years so that it will be available during the lean years."

I wonder who Joseph had in mind. Pharaoh said, "You seem like a wise and talented young man and the spirit of God seems to be with you. How about you? Would you like the job."

So Joseph became Pharaoh's second in command. He took an Egyptian name, because that's the way things are done. He took an Egyptian wife with whom he had two sons. Finally, Joseph was on top of the world. The sun and the moon were not bowing down before him, but everyone else was.

I wonder if he could have ever conceived of anything like this in his life. His ambition and drive - his administrative skill - all of these come into play. But Joseph was certainly not the architect of his own destiny. He got where he was going despite of himself and despite of others who stood in his way. In fact, God used the very things that looked like setbacks to get Joseph into this position of authority.

What strikes me about all of this is that God went to a lot of trouble to get this arrogant but talented young man from the flocks of Canaan to the royal palace of Egypt. This is not so much the story of what Joseph did as it is the story of what God did in Joseph's life.

God didn't go to all this trouble for what we would consider a religious reason. He didn't want Joseph to go into preaching or build a temple or start a prayer group. He wanted to use Joseph to feed a hungry world. 'All the world came to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph, because the famine was severe everywhere.'

This all might strike us as strange if we are accustomed to thinking of God's grace in Jesus only in terms of an individual's inward experience . The good news of Jesus, however, is a fulfillment of the story that began with the call of Abraham in Genesis 12: I will bless you, and through you, all the people of the world will be blessed. The gospel of Christ includes personal forgiveness of sins on the basis of Jesus' death on the cross, but it also includes the hope for the salvation and transformation of all God's creation. Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians - usually regarded as the earliest New Testament document - described the Christian faith this way:

... you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead - Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath. (1 Thessalonians 1:9-10 TNIV)

We are saved from sin so that we can live in the transformed and renewed creation that will come into being at Christ's appearing. As Christians, we long not only for personal holiness before God, but for the peace - the shalom - that will someday come to all of God's creation. Joseph's feeding of Egypt represented an early, partial fulfillment of God's promise to set the world right.

God wanted to do one more thing with Joseph however. He wanted Joseph to recognize that even in Pharaoh's house, doing Pharaoh's work, that Joseph was still a member of God's chosen family, an heir of the covenant made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He wanted Joseph to do the work of feeding the world as God's man, not as Pharaoh's man.

Joseph named one of his son's Manasseh, for he said that God made him forget his troubles, and his father's household. It is a good thing to forget the pain. It is not a good thing to forget who you are as a member of God's family.

The famine which Joseph foresaw extended to Canaan where Joseph's family was literally starving to death. Jacob learned, however, that there was grain in in Egypt. The story comes full circle, then, as Jacob sent his sons to Egypt to obtain food. Joseph's work for Pharaoh not only saved Egypt from starvation and extinction, it saved his family as well. God preserved his chosen people - the family of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob - by raising Joseph to this position of great responsibility.

When God called Abraham, he told him, "I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. . . . all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." In Joseph, the God who keeps his promises blessed both Abraham's family and the people of world.

God brought Joseph's family back to him to remind him who he was. And when they came back, all the pain came back too. Joseph played some cruel tricks and psychological games with his brothers for awhile, but finally, God was able to heal the hurt and let him say, "I am Joseph. You meant to harm me. But God sent me down here for good."

It takes a mature faith to see God's hand in all the circumstances of life. It's not that God sends evil on us. We are certainly capable of bringing that on ourselves. But God takes the circumstances of our lives and weaves them for his own purposes.

I guess you would say that Joseph is the hero of this story, at least in human terms. From a literary point of view, Joseph is the hero who overcomes obstacles and roadblocks to achieve power and fame.

From a theological point of view, however, we must say that God is the hero of this story. Generations of Israelites did not pass this story down simply because it is a clever tale about one of the ancestors. The author of Genesis didn't weave this story into his grand history of God's people just because it's a ripping good yarn. God is the hero who blessed Joseph with administrative talent and spiritual insight that came to him in dreams. God is the hero who preserves his people and blesses the world through them. God is the hero who prepares the way and works behind the scenes to achieve his purposes in the world.

The Bible isn't telling us to be like Joseph; it's telling us that we are like Joseph: sometimes vain and petty, sometimes upright and treated unjustly, sometimes forgotten or betrayed. But it is also telling us that God is sovereign, that he works his purposes in the world and that he preserves his people.

We can all have the faith perspective that Joseph only gained at the end of his life. We are not all as fortunate as Joseph to see the purpose for the events that happen in our lives. From our human perspective, we may never see the pattern or purpose until we stand before Christ at his appearing.

What God is doing in us and through us may never become apparent as it did to Joseph, but this is the confidence of faith in Christ: that our lives are not an accident or out of control, but that God is sovereign, "that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose."

See also In the Service of Empire

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